Gospel for Asia

Our church has been a supporter of Gospel for Asia for a couple of years now. Yesterday we had a real treat, the Vice President of Gospel for Asia came and gave a presentation during our Sunday School hour and also spoke during both church services. He brought a table of maps, books, dvds, and missionaries to support. Grace picked out a missionary from India for our family to start supporting. Very excited. If you are also interested in supporting a missionary or their organization please visit www.gfa.org .

Lots Going On

There is so much going on right now I don't know where to start. Currently myself and a close friend are in the beginning process of planning and starting up a fine arts academy. We have already worked together with a youth theatre group for the past four years together and wish to enlarge the scope. Hoping to have classes available in art, dance, music, choir and drama at a very economical cost for families in these hard economic times. So if you will excuse my vanishing act over the past few days I hope to be back blogging regularly in the next few days.

What We Did Today

This morning we went to a hour long class of Jazzercise and returned home for lunch. One of Grace's Keepers projects is to study a foreign country and language, she chose Germany. Today we decided to make a traditional German strudel. According to Scott it turned out delicious. Grace wanted to make a deal with me to finish her math book today (three lessons left) and not do any writing. I was completely okay with this because quite frankly I am ready to be finished with math for a couple of months too. While the strudel was baking we read two chapters from Anne of Green Gables and one chapter from Heroes of Invention. Today's chapter was about Archimedes and early inventors. She also watched LibertyTreehouse this morning while eating breakfast with information about Johnny Appleseed and Albert Einstein. Yesterday Grace started taking some free online piano lessons so I am sure she will continue that this afternoon also. Tomorrow we will probably concentrate on her German project and an ebook I am reviewing for Notgrass about the upcoming Olympics.

New Arrivals

Yesterday all five eggs that Peacock was sitting on hatched. Five fuzzy, healthy chicks. Today they will be moved with their mother into the nursery coop. These eggs were given to us by a friend and are a mixture of breeds. I am pretty sure that 4 are Buffs but a little unsure of the black one. Hatching eggs is so much fun it kind of gets addictive. Our Game Fowl are great sitters so we might do another round of hatching in a couple of months.

Keeping Records for Unschooling

This is our new journal for recording unschooling like activities. There are many activities, discussions, tv watching stuff going on each day that really never get recorded as school time. When you think about it most of our children are learning something from sun up to sun down. This journal is made for recording all these situations and so much more. I purchased our journal from www.notgrass.com . There are many different covers to choose from for your child's interests. Each two page spread is for one week starting with Sunday and running through Saturday. On the far left are areas to fill in with what was accomplished each day. On the right is boxes for each category to fill in those activities. This way it is very easy to see if your child's education is balanced or if some boxes are missing any entries. There are eleven catergories

• Spiritual Life - Bible Study, Worship, and Christian Fellowship
• Learning to Work- Chores, Service, and Life Skills
• Relating to Others - Character and Relationships
• Learning about God's Creation - Science and Technology
• Learning About People and Places - Geography, Government, and Foreign Language
• Learning About the Events and People of the Past - History and Biography
• Learning About the Thoughts of Others - Reading and Literature
• Being Creative - Art, Crafts, Music, Drama, and other Creative Activities
• Learning to Communicate - Letter Writing, Grammar, handwriting, Creative Writing, and Journaling
• Caring for My Body- Exercise, Sports, and Health
• Learning Math, Problem Solving, and Thinking Skills
  

In the back of the journal are pages to fill in all the books the student has read and another list for books that were read aloud to them. There are also more pages for grades, test scores, and awards that are received throughout the year. So far I have been very pleased with this journal.

We Love Seeing the UPS Man

The UPS man visited us yesterday with two packages. As I mentioned in a previous post each night after dinner is family time. We have started watching Little House and The Waltons and will be adding the Brady Bunch while playing games. As a family we had not played alot of games in the past so I needed to purchase a few. From Rainbow Resource we got World Almanac for Kids, Tri-ominos, Swap card game, Dutch Blitz, and Settlers of Catan. When we go to the convention in May I will try to find a few others at the used sale. Last night we played World Almanac and had a good time.

I met an online friend through SCM forum that has a living books library in her home. If I'm not mistaken about 10,000 books. She has software to keep everything organized andabout 50 patrons that visit her library weekly. She has very much inspired me. I love books so much and with the fate of alot of libraries hanging in the balance these days I thought I might make this a ministry for our family also. A couple of weeks ago Robin posted books that she had more than one of and I grabbed some great titles. I have a year or two to go before I can actually open my library up to borrowing (still lots of collecting to do) but I also have alot to learn before doing it. We hope as a family to visit Robin's library in Tennessee sometime this year and get a good idea about how her system works and if it would work for us.

My Friends Will Think I Am Crazy

The past couple of days this post has been swimming around in my brain. I don't know how to tell all my homeschool peeps that we are now unschooling. In the homeschool world alot of adults view "unschooling" as a dirty word. We have tried the traditional, structured method for 6 years and it just isn't working. I asked myself, "Do I continue to force information and work on a child that doesn't care about it and doesn't remember any of it or do I let her start charting her own course". There are many things that she is passionate about - drawing, computer work, drama, and peforming. Our form of unschooling will not be the radical kind that you read alot about. She will have guidelines of what she needs to accomplish in a day, a week, a month. But she will be able to chose just what subjects and materials and how much. Over the years I have researched alot about unschooling and it had always intrigued me. There is so much we do on a daily basis that doesn't usually get counted as school. Like conversations about anything and everything, jazzercise classes, gardening and preserving food, chicken care, documentaries and television programs, games played. It is all educational. I think the only subject that will be daily and she will have no choice in is math. We will continue to use Teaching Textbooks. So there you go, we have come out of the closet, we are now unschoolers/independent learners/very relaxed homeschooling. Whatever you want to call it.