One of the requirements of our homeschooling cooperative is that everyone contributes by either teaching or co-teaching a class. This semester I signed up to teach a science class on a topic of my choosing. As an environmentalist and nature lover, my first thought was it should be something that involves going outside. I decided to use the pond behind the building as my inspiration and teaching tool and led a 2 hour class on water conservation and pond life. The kids loved it and so did I! We learned about water pollution and filtration and the ecosystem of a pond. After the classroom portion, we went outside with nets, scopes, and magnifiers and explored to our hearts delight- thanks to my wonderful forest preserve district for lending us some fun equipment. The kids were amazed at all they were able to find, including some awesome snail shells. What a blast!

Not much to say but here's a few pictures from our first week:

After listening to the tale of St. Genevieve on Friday, we did some watercolor paintings of her in her lovely blue cloak, then a few more of other pretty things like rainbows and flowers.

My first grader is in love with her new nature journal. After admiring her older brother and sister's journals for the last couple of years, she finally has one of her very own.

Wildflowers the girls picked for me on a nature hike.

Today we took the homeschool bus, aka minivan, to co-op school for the day.

The kids were glad to see their friends again and start a new year at the co-op. So the first week was a success (for my public school-er too by the way) Let's hope we can keep it up.

Back to School and Not Back to School

Summer is not over!

I feel the need to say this because it seems like as soon as those yellow school buses start appearing on our neighborhood streets, everyone starts acting like Fall is already here. I, for one, am holding fast to summer as long as I can. The Autumn Equinox is still several weeks away so until then it's still summer, despite the backpacks and the slightly cooler temperatures. Besides I'm sure we still have many more warm, summery days in store for us. In fact I plan on taking the kids to the pool this week before it closes- we'll call it P.E. class. We will mostly likely have it all to ourselves since everyone else will be away at school. :-)


Okay now speaking of school and my denial of summer coming to an end, we have in fact resumed our homeschooling. Monday was our first day of the new year but it was a little different than usual. Remember how I mentioned those yellow school buses? Well, my second eldest child got on one of them that day and off to public school she went. She had been asking if she could go for 5th grade and we finally agreed. It's not something I'm entirely happy about, but I'm happy that she's happy about it (so far) and I'm proud of her for trying something new. She's only two days into it but so far so good.

On the homeschooling front, today was our traditional Not-Back-to-School picnic since the rest of us are not going back to school. Well not to public school anyway. My 6 yr old however is excited about officially being a first-grader now and my 13 yr old has happily jumped into his 8th grade studies, glad to have something more interesting to do. His words. :-) My 4 yr old daughter is having fun starting another preschool year and the 2 yr old is just happy to be along for the ride.

So off we go into our 4th year of homeschooling....minus one, but I think it will be a good year for everyone. :-)