The Farm School at Home Experience Day

a Day at The Farm with other homeschoolers. A BLAST!

Field Trip to Botanic Garden

William took photos

"gingerbread" houses

The Midsouth Eclectic Homeschool group was graciously hosted by Tommie and her family last week. They made gingerbread houses. Tommie made the royal icing, cut the graham crackers and provided some toppings. Families provided the artists/architects and more toppings. Here is William and some of his work. Max played Risk and skipped buildling. William made wall to wall carpet, a fire in the fire place and rock on the outside of the house where the fireplace was. Later at home he added some landscaping. Unfortunately Fudge, the super Yorki, ATE the house while we were at Teen Night. He is becoming VERY bad in his old age, but we still adore him.

On the road again

This week finds the boys and I hitting the road on a week long jaunt. Our first stop is our favorite, Margo and Peggy's! I fell down on the photography job and simply enjoyed their company. Brought homemade bread and a big bottle of wine. We enjoyed a cool quiet evening. Thank you for your incredible hospitality.

We took off early the next morning and headed for Chapel Hill, NC. Easy trip and a great hotel. You might be in NC when the hotel sheets are Carolina Blue! I highly recommend the Best Western University Inn if you ever travel to Chapel Hill. It is close to the gym where the Triangle Kendo Club practices and UNC. Again, for some bizarre reason, no photos! Except for the one of me blow drying flour tortillas for wraps. That was hilarious! It seems the ice in the cooler melted and the ziplock bag leaked. Rather than have soggy wraps for dinner, Max suggested we blow-dry them. Weird, but it worked and we enjoyed a great dinner (and me a well deserved glass of wine!) William, lucky kenshi, did get to practice with Mike Watson-sensei and the rest of the Chapel Hill Triangle dojo Wednesday night. Despite a gym without air conditioning and a constant stream of UNC students gawking at the doors, William pronounced it an excellent practice and hopes he can go back! Arigatou Gozaimasu!

A lousy day spent with the geeks at All Kinds of Minds and Center for The study of Development and Learning. Big thanks to my generous parents for footing the bill. We were all keenly disappointed in the evaluation process. They appear to have a rather large stereotype about homeschoolers and I was surprised to find how standardized test-bound the evaluators were. Our experience was diametrically opposed to everything written about this organization. I would never recommend anyone attend unless you are completely and utterly clueless about your own child. They gave us no new information or help regarding how William learns and how to approach lessons differently (even said he had no strengths! What a laugh!) and succeeded in upsetting everyone. The visit cost $900 included standardized tests adminstered by a psychometrist, despite the literature saying they did not use standardized tests, and the "demystification" process offered no useable information we have not already heard and tried for years.

Heifer Project Field Trip

I highly recommend anyone and everyone find some reason to visit a Heifer Project location. We are fortunate in that my friend Andrea is a devote' of this charity and alerted me to their location in Perryville, Arkansas. The stalwart crew who got up early to attend PeaceJam was the same crew who made the 3-4 hour drive each way for this field trip. Vera's family and our family are truly wonderful kids. Both of us wonder why others didn't take advantage of this excellent opportunity (aside from the few who's children were under the age of second grade.)
We were given a long and indepth tour of the ranch, the history and function of Heifer and several hands on opportunities. We learned about zero-grazing pens, the health risks of open indoor cook fires and that chickory is a natural de-wormer for sheep! Our guide, Ken, was a wealth of information and gave us special treats as our group was small and moved quickly. We visited all the global village, several gardens, all the animals and had a great picnic lunch. The kids are motivated to do some fundraising for Heifer so don't be surprised when a special event involves a request for a donation to heifer.
After a stop for some caffeination and cold drinks for the kids, the drive home was blissfully uneventful.

fun at Vera's

It took weeks, but we finally got the kids together after their very successful Eclectic Homeschooler's entry into PeaceJam 2007. It was warm, then cloudy, sunny and hot. The kids had a blast! Vera was a saint (as usual) and took everything in stride despite the fact she was having out of town company the next day. The dogs even got along. Thanks Vera!

PeaceJam Memphis 2007

I regret that I invested heavily in another event during the weekend of PeaceJam so was unable to attend as an advisor. I am, however, thrilled that another homeschool mom and 3 of her kids agreed to go along with our kids. Here are a few photos of the weekend compliments of the Eclectic Homeschool group. Next year I vow to concentrate on this event to the exclusion of others. Bridges is the sponsor locally, but the event is international in focus. Betty Williams was the Nobel Peace Laureate who participated this year. She is, from my very brief encounters with her, a warm and passionate individual. As our fourteen year old son said "it was all very deep". PeaceJam was not a feel good event, but a thinking event that spured our already heavily motivated and involved children to even greater events. Thanks to Rody for including us.

I'm learning Japanese, I'm really learning Japanese I really think so

Apologies to the 80's band that covered that song. Here are the boys working on their Rosetta Stone Japanese. I was floored that one of them ASKED to work on it after having finished two gruelling tests in other classes. Neat! Also very expensive. Here is a link to the full-version online demo. http://tinyurl.com/y49std

The postman rang twice...

but that's because I was busy recovering from grooming the dog (no, I'm not really hurting him, he just HATES to be groomed), encouraging the boys to focus on their respective work and doing laundry. When I finally answered the door he was holding the box that contained my KnittingParents gift exchange. thanks Eliz! (sorry, Sara pointed out I had not mentioned the contents! 2 skeins of rowan Big Wool and 2 skeins of Skye Alpaca Organic Cotton! A book I have never seen, written by a lesbian knitter and LYS owner :))

Pizza!

Homeschool science. While studying about chemical reactions, the subject of cake batter as an example of an endothermic reaction was mentioned. Energy in the form of heat. That lead to pizza dough, which lead to pizza. It was excellent by the way. Look at his cute little shirt too!

Midsouth Eclectic Homeschoolers field trip

Thanks to Ron Brister, Director of Collections (I hope I got that right). Ron has been with the Pink Palace family of museums for a few decades and is a fount of information. The MEHS were privileged to get a behind the scenes tour of the Pink with Ron as their guide. When he retires he's interested in resuming some of the programs that the museum hasn't had the staff for, including the Junior Curator program! The Pink also owns Coon Creek which has a full camp facility and I have high hopes it will re-open for summer or seasonal camps before our own children are too old to join in.