Rowan's Schoolin'

This post is all about Little Ol' Ro'. At 2 years & some months, he does what he can to keep up with his 7 year old brother and then some.  Here is a solar system Rowan made all on his own from books, a clock, balls, and even a model planet!

Most of what he knows about planets, he learned from Fynn.  Here is one of Fynn's scale models of the solar system:

Here is a painting Rowan made of the planets; this was before he started making me do everything!

Brilliant!

Rowan and I had fun painting a lot of different things that day.  His planet painting was inspired by this drawing by Fynn, which is also the reference for most of Rowan's planet projects:

"Everything I need to know about planets I learned from my big brother!"

Another of Rowan's favorite things to do these days is to make planets out of playdough.  They have to "talk" (I help him with smiley faces) and don't forget "The Galaxy"!

For some reason, they can't be balls; they have to be squished flat? :)

The black one is "The Galaxy".

Next we have some house-keeping activities; Rowan is such a domestic little laddie! One day I was ironing, and just as I suspected he asked if he could iron too.  To my surprise he waited patiently for the iron to cool down, then picked out some of his own clothes and brought them to the table to be ironed. When he was finished, he folded them up and took them to his room! So sweet!

One night for dinner we had rice and Rowan looked down at his chair and the floor and said something to the effect of "Oh no, look at all that rice! Don't worry, I'll get it," and then grabbed the broom and started sweeping it up (spreading the rice all around, of course). I get such a big kick out of this, because Fynn HATES to clean. Getting anything cleaned up at all is always a huge fight with him.  But Rowan has been known to push his chair up to the sink, begin washing dishes, and then wash his hands and face in the process. CRAZY!

Lately it's all about Cars (the movie) and those loveable characters have practically become part of our family.

In these pictures, Rowan is building different Cars characters from stacks of Legos.

He's been having me draw these chalk cars for him...

And the alphabet too.

Happy learning!
~Beth

A Day of Horse Boy Style Fun!

The other day we went out to Horse Buds farm to visit with Miss Deb, who is trained in Horse Boy Learning.   Horse Boy Learning is based on intrinsic motivation ~ following the child in their interests.  (Check out horseboyworld.com.) We also got to meet Miss Merry, who was there helping out.

We had a great time! Miss Deb had prepared lots of fun things to do, based on Fynn's current interests.  The great thing about Horse Boy is that it's healing for the whole family (esp. siblings) - not just the affected child- so there were tons of fun things for Rowan to do as well.

There were animals to meet, (kitty, horses, goats, and a little pig), a huge box to paint and turn into a whale, apples to pick & eat, hay bales to climb on, a huge sand pile to play in, and tons of land to explore! We filled a tub of water and learned how squids use jet propulsion, and played with toy animals in the water.  There were rope swings, tire swings, hammock swings...

Fynn was so well behaved while we were there, and I think all that open space calmed him down.  Also I think it was being somewhere where he was allowed to be himself.  I think it made his whole week better.  Thanks, Miss Deb! And Miss Merry, too.

~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.