On account of weather

We had planned to visit Williamsburg, VA today but on account of the rainy weather, we ended up going to the Science Museum of Va instead.  Not all was lost.  The shark exhibit was fun; the sand sculpture was especially impressive.  We practiced our Segway driving skills. And the cow eye dissection was very educational (albeit gross!). 

Then there was the finale of going to The Dairy Bar for lunch and some of the best milkshakes in town. Yum!

Recently . . .

A friend and homeschool dad in the group was kind enough to include us in his newest endeavor.  He recently invited some of us over to witness his building a mountain banjo from scratch.  Tim is an accomplished musician and his love for banjo music inspired him to make his own instrument.  It was amazing to see this work of art in progress which began with just a simple round wooden cheese box.  He's promised to show us the finished product and provide us with a clip of music played on his new creation.

We started back to co-op 2 weeks ago. This year we'll study topics such as Earth Science,

Entrepreneurship, and Cooking, to name a few.

We love our Co-op!

We also recently visited some nearby farms to get a taste of the good life, practice our milking skills, and meet Stevie the Watusi Steer.

Learning in Depth

Today we began a 10 year journey.  Today each of the kids was assigned a topic of study that they will research and explore over their entire educational career. The project is called "Learning in Depth" and it's a project created by writer and educator Keiran Eagan.  The idea is to assign a child a topic of study as they enter their first year of primary education (1st grade) and they study that topic throughout their schooling. 
Mr. Eagan believes that our kids are educated to know a little about a lot of things but end up with no in-depth knowledge about any one thing.  He wants to see kids graduating from high school with expert knowledge on at least one topic. 
We're a little late getting started here as Kerby and Joelle are entering 3rd and 4th grade. However, the hope is that 9-10 years of study on one topic will give them a pretty firm foundation of knowledge on their respective topics.
You can see in the pictures that Joelle's topic is WATER and Kerby's topic is ENERGY.   Their assignment today was to list all the things that they already know about their topics. 
If you want to find out more about Keiran Eagan's Learning In Depth project, visit this website: http://www.ierg.net/LiD/

Homeschool Hilton

 

 

Camping at Bear Creek Lake State Park

Here we are in front of our "Homeschool Hilton" as Scott likes to call it. 

It sure beats the tent camping we've done for the last 12 yrs.

I don't think we'll ever go back to the tent.

Cookin' Up Somethin' Good

We spent most of Tuesday this week in "Cooking School." The kids along with one of their best friends, Savannah, cooked a mouthwatering Mexican meal from scratch (chicken cottage cheese enchiladas, Spanish rice and sopapillas). The moms coached but did nothing else to help. The three chefs worked hard for 5 hours in order to sit down to a delectable meal for about 20 minutes (a lesson well learned).