Poco Mountain Girl

Caleb is home, and Tuesday was his first day back to school.  After spending the weekend enveloped in hugs, kisses, and custom-made drawings from Zia, they spent Monday sledding in cardboard boxes down our little hill.  Yesterday he finally escaped her clutches.  He rode his motorbike to the bus stop with his backpack stuffed to bursting–almost as big as himself–with trumpet, gym clothes, binder, and all his other scholarly necessities.

It was also Zia’s first day back to school, at home.  We started a unit study on Australian animals from Homeschool Share, which is a great free resource.  We’re reading The Story of the World (now Volume II), and we both love it.  It’s a world history in four volumes stretching from ancient to modern times, in a story form interesting to all ages.

We have Bob Books for reading, as well as The Reading Lesson, and we work Cuisenaire Rods into our unit studies for math, along with found-at-home manipulatives.  She has a geography, but we get an even better sense of geography from the events and maps in The Story of the World.

I got her a subscription to Zoobooks magazine, and it’s right up her alley.  She’s a sucker for all kinds of crazy details about animals. Did you know koalas have two thumbs on each hand? Neither did I.

She likes to finish her schoolwork with a National Geographic or BBC movie from YouTube on some kind of nature topic–preferably a gigantic dino or creepy prehistoric wolf.

I, on the other hand, would rather tie her movie in with her unit study–today, wallabies or wombats or some other Aussie marsupial.  Which reminds me of something else we found out today:

There were never any mammals except for marsupials (pouched mammals) on the continent of Australia until explorers brought other mammals over by boat.

I am so baffled by that.

Today was the first day of Zia’s second session of dance. Lots of old friends, some new ones.  They’re learning a new song which will probably be kept top secret from the mamas and daddas until the recital comes up.

This boy had his own first today: a tooth. It’s been in the works for a couple of months, and it finally broke through today. He now has a very sharp little bottom front leftie.  It’s not quite so cute when he’s nursing…but with a smile like that, who couldn’t forgive a little chomp now and then?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2013 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Caleb, Cash, Little Redhead Girl, Reading, unschool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.