Crafting

Three posts in one day is a little much but I wanted to establish here... just a few pictures of craft and free time from a few weeks ago for the kids and a link to an article about crafting.

For my birthday I got a few books about making felt creatures from my dad. :)

I feel like I am way too serious and this will help - that and my husband and kids being able to crack me up (this balances out the infuriating effect that they can also have ha ha) - anyhoo, I found this article about how important crafting is for kids.  Here is an amazing quote:

"It [crafting] has been shown to increase intelligence in seemingly unrelated areas."

There have been studies on the effects of say, knitting on the mind of the knitter and how it is pretty much the same as meditation!! I simply love hand sewing but have never really found myself too crafty, despite my genetics. I have some really crafty and artsy relatives. Aside from painting a few times a year, I really don't find myself wanting to craft and haven't passed that on to my kids.

But the simple creatures in the aranzo aranzi books are really fun. There are some pretty funny little descriptions in the book and it really ends up cheering us up and is super fun. I'm almost done with a robot panda for Little Y but Sissy made these creatures completely uniquely...there are no limes or pirates in the book and the faces were completely unique and funny that she made:

pirate lime couple. respect it.

Brother is still into lego building and is realllly into his Percy Jackson book series currently, so that takes his free time (does he even have free time because Little Y always wants to wrastle?)...he also loves making little comics and he has started his sketch book again. He really isn't as into lego as he was a couple years ago, but he did this one the other day - just a little vehicle contraption -  but takes patience nonetheless and I'm always happy to see what comes from my little guy.

So yeah, free time, projects, structured learning, independent projects --- Roots and Wings Academy is in business. 

First project

Sis was begging me for a project...this is part of her high energy stuff that can turn toxic if she doesn't have something to put her energy into. I really thought I was giving her enough but she says to me today, "I need a project, like pile on the stuff for me to do...I want a project to work on!"

We're flying by the seat of our pants here folks, but this is how we work, I suppose.

I say, "What project are you thinking? What would you like to research?"

Randomly she blurts out, "Hand sanitizer!"

ha ha ha

Without skipping a beat, I'm assigning her to tell me the history of when it was invented, who invented, when it hit the market, are there any warnings/drawbacks, etc

She is to write notes, an outline, find some pictures and be able to share all her sources. She has due dates for her draft/notes/outline/finished project.

Ahh, homeschooling sweet nerds is fun!

So fun. 

Summer begins

Goodbye, school year!!

The new journey starts now. This blog is a place for me to record what they do...part of what they do. The part that I need to recognize as apart of their education and to hopefully catch any gaps as well as recognize our achievements...and maybe discuss some struggles.

I may post educational articles and insights...I am not sure who my audience is and what I'll be comfortable sharing. Am I just recording what I do or sharing what I'm learning? It may be both.

I need to catch up from last week:

Everyone started on their summer/early fall workbooks through this line of books:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1609963326/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

*edited to fix link

Little Y is going through about a letter a week

He learned to cut with scissors

The older two have assignment checklists each day:

Three pages of workbook
Mental math practice on softschools.com
draw a sketch
read for about an hour
one hour of Skyrim
1/2 of free internet time
chores for each (for age level)
devotion time

Today Sis made bread independently which is a great skill!

Tuesday was library day and Sissy spent the day with her b/f/f

Our first garden is live --- learning first hand about life sciences and developing a love of nature/environment