An Autumn Walk

This was just so cute, I had to share!

The End! Time to eat peaches!
~Beth & Ro

The Coolest Toy Ever!

The other day we were at Wal-Mart and Fynn found the most wonderful thing! It was a set of nesting mixing bowls with rainbow colored lids! Five bucks.

He graciously let Rowan play with them before taking them into his room (as I had promised) to spend quiet time photographing.  Rowan and I made our own colored lids to play with while waiting for Fynn's quiet time to be over.  "Here Mama, try this purple!" he said.

 After Fynn got up, they played together with the bowls.  It was the first time they've really played together without fighting in weeks!  I thought about suggesting filling the bowls with different items that matched the lids, but when I looked, they were already doing it!

 They were getting all excited, running around together, filling the bowls with different surprises.  "What is Papa going to say when he comes home and sees all these!?" they squealed.  They played them like drums too.

Surprise! It's yellow paper! Surprise, it's a blue W! All the red letters! A green spooky!  It was like Christmas.

And they stack up to make a wobbly tower.

It was great to see them playing together again and using their imaginations to create something new that they really didn't need me for!  At first I had told Fynn he could play with them for a few days, then let me use them for the kitchen & stuff, but when I saw the way those bowls sparked the kids' imaginations, I told them both, "These are for you two, to do whatever you want to.  As long as you share them."  Fynn was so excited when I told him that, he jumped up and down, saying, "Thank you, thank you!"

And here's Rowan's "Tunnel Slide". "Wheeeeeeee!"

"That's my Doin'," he says.
The end. 
~Beth

Exhaust th' Passion!

Exhaust th' Passion. 

Th' great thing about homeschooling, and follow th' child learning is that you get to take your kids' interests to the extreme. 

If they are passionate about something, your challenge is to use that passion for all it's worth. You take an interest and see how it applies to to all subjects, all areas of life. Th' kid decides th' subject, such as snakes, or trains, or whatever, and you get to apply it at th' kids level all across th' board. this way th' learning takes place in an exciting way, using th' childs interests, and he'll take in as much as possible. It's the opposite of institutional learning, where you learn individual subjects such as math, spelling, science, etc, one at a time, and rarely overlap them. It's a challenge i personally find very exciting. I'm constantly learning from my kids, and learning is exciting, keeps your heart and mind young. 

So, to follow up with Fynn's new found interest in spelling. 

Grandma and Grandpa found a box of wooden letters at a garage sale and bought it for him. He and Rowan were both very excited about the letters when they first saw them, they were big, and painted pretty colors, and they both lined them up like a train. 

But there were some letters missing, and few doubles, so spelling was limited to a few words. But that's easy to remedy. We found a piece of wood, drew letters on it, and cut them out.

 After we cut them out we had to paint them. Which of course was a blast in itself. We used milkpaint, which we mixed up together, laid out all our colors and got messy. 

 At the end we had a nice collage of letters, and Fynn was involved in every process of making his own letters from start to finish. Once they dried we were really able to spell some words, though i can see that we're gonna have to make more of these, and some numbers too. 

 We talked a little about vowels and consonants, and of course Fynn spelled silly words that i had to read. But that's ok too, because even then he's getting familiar with th' sounds of th' letters. 

 Can you read this?

We've had a lot of fun with these, and spent some precious moments together, just sitting around in th' grass, in th' sunshine, making good memories.

Big Fever is th' name of Fynn's pet toad

And Old Ro managed to spell a word too. Qonkur. Since he does everything Fynn does he is by no means missing out on his spelling lessons.

Until next time, follow your passions, follow th' child.