Here we go again, onto our third year of homeschooling! I didn't feel quite ready to start, but start we did, and so far so good. We had a really wonderful week.
Tuesday was the day the public schoolers in our area went back to school. We celebrated "not back to school day" by taking Dallin to the dentist to have three teeth pulled (in preparation for orthodontic work) and then by hanging out with our local homeschool group for their "not back to school" swim party.
I had fun plans for Wednesday, our official first day of school. Dallin is starting the year with a lesson block on Utah geography, and our first task was to tell the story of the land in our area and how it was formed. I took him and Sariah here for the morning (we got a babysitter for Preston, I knew nothing educational would happen while I tried to keep a toddler from getting lost in the brush):
This is a bench overlooking our valley. In the distance you can see the Great Salt Lake. I have more awesome views of the lake from my bedroom window, but the bedroom didn't seem quite as fun for a first-day-of-school field trip. We walked around and admired the scenery while I told the story of Lake Bonneville, the ancient lake that covered half the state of Utah, including the spot where we live. I told how the different elements of water, earth, and fire all combined to form our valley. Water: the lake, flooding, glacial activity in the Salt Lake valley, stream erosion, etc. Earth: earthquake activity, boulders and debris from glaciers, sediments deposited by water, etc. Fire: volcanic activity. Dallin was blown away that our area was once cold and icy, and he was excited to think of sabertooth cats roaming here. We didn't get into the role of air, but that will come next week.
After that, plans went awry. My plan was to go to a nearby canyon where there is a small stream, where we could eat lunch and then play. I had planned that we could make our own landforms and practice sculpting our own little landscapes using dirt, rocks, and then water from the stream. We could see for ourselves was a catastrophic flood could do, or a landslide of boulders.
However, when we pulled up to the park alongside the stream, we saw this sign:
Yep, my kids wouldn't even get out of the car. In case you can't see, the red letters say, "Warning! Cougar sighted in area and has shown lack of fear toward humans". Sariah would not even unbuckle her seatbelt. As I wondered what we should do, I wandered over to the stream, only to find that it no longer exists. Well, the bed where it is supposed to be still exists, but apparently our drought this year did away with our little stream.
At that point, we packed up and went to the park to eat and play on the playground. Day #1 finished!
On day #2, we started the process of making a papier mache contour map of our valley. Papier mache is the perfect homeschool activity because every single child in the family can participate. I think Preston had more fun than anyone, and the other two had way too much fun! (I also had way too much fun cleaning up the mess afterward...)
On day #3, we painted our maps. Dallin's is quite realistic, looking toward the north and the lake:
This is a fabulous activity! We had some great discussion about where the tallest mountains were, which canyons had streams, what colors best represented our landscape, etc. I think there is so much a child can learn through modelling.
Sariah was just free to make whatever she wanted--it didn't even have to be a map. But this is her creation:
Our other artistic activity this week was to paint the Great Salt Lake in watercolors. Dallin proclaimed this his best painting yet:
And I was pretty pleased with my two paintings as well:
This is "recess", a lively game of soccer between Dallin and Preston.All in all, it was a lovely week. I have been very apprehensive about this year, but we settled back into our routine pretty easily and all the children were for the most part really cooperative. It helps that Preston is older and has a more consistent nap time; there are fewer interruptions in the morning when we are trying to do the bulk of our school. Dallin seems to have calmed down--so far.
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