Puppets, long division and learning to read!

Keeping busy on the boat, Dodger reads out loud.

Dodger has been working on his narrative about our sailing trip so we'll post that soon!  The multi-day sailing trip was a success, if only that we learned that it is possible to live together, cook together, weather high winds together and even floss our teeth on our boat without a murder.  We sailed south and it was a mini adventure.  What impressed me so much is that the kids never seem bored even though we sailed hours and hours and hours.  Not that they don't crank and bicker and do what kids do (and grown ups too).  But I'm noticing that they seem to get along better these days and I can't help but think it has to do with the slower pace of life now that we aren't on a traditional school schedule.  It isn't uncommon these last few weeks to find the kids playing card games together or kicking the soccer ball around outdoors together or just generally being more supportive of each other and less competitive.  It could be the change in seasons or who knows what and its early days to say it is due to home schooling, but life has been more peaceful than usual on that front.

Searching for treasure on land

How have we been learning?  Well, a variety of ways.  We do math everyday we can...even weekends sometimes and Dodger is working on long division puzzles this week, I've included a photo of his "workings out book" which he seems proud of since it looks to him like a mad scientist’s lab book!  We are working in Math Mammoth, which is going well.  The kids have a clear idea what they need to accomplish and we do it.  Sailor has been storming through addition 1-10 and we've switched to telling time for something new before we begin subtraction 1-10.  We'll also be focusing on money this week since we are planning to sell baked goods (pumpkin pasties as a nod to H.P.) at the "Home School Bake Sale" to benefit a local homeless shelter on Friday.  This opportunity segues into learning about homelessness in our community.  Which is a subject worth understanding and changing, in my opinion.

We managed to combine art, literature and writing into our Flint Heart project.  We read the book "The Flint Heart" which is on the Dorothy Canfield Fisher award nominee list as well as about to become a movie next year!  After reading the book Dodger and I broke the story down into the 8-point-story-arc and then made a puppet show script.  The kids all made the puppets and we put on a show for Sailor and Kitten's birthday party.  We made a "doorway" theater in our kitchen using fabric and cedar decorations.  The show was a hit and the kids now have puppet skills under their belts.  By creating the characters into puppets we had lots of talks about what type of traits each character has e.g. magical, mean, kind, curious and all in all it added so much more to the story for us.

Fum and the Magical Zagabog!  Gotta love those acorns!

To continue to tie our study of the lake together we have been reading Abenaki stories out loud and learning more about the native people of our area.  Popasquash has been working with the kids on their knot tying skills, hierarchy on a ship and nautical flags.  I came home from work on Sunday to find they’d spelled out “Hi Mom, We Love You Sugar” from the mast of our boat! And I replied “Whisky-Oscar-Whisky!”

Watercolor postcards ready to send!

Sailor and I read every day and it’s getting easier.  I can’t believe how much I’ve had to relearn in order to teach Sailor how to decipher words.  Curse the dratted English language and all its nonsense!!  Our favorite books so far?  Dr Seuss’ “Up!” and “I’m Not Getting Up Today!”  Which fits in perfectly with our sleepy heads…another added benefit of home schooling is sleeping in ‘til 8am!  8:30am in Dodger’s case ;)

The infamous "workings out book" of Dodger's