Homeschool Adventures

Some more adventures we've been on as we've been up to this homeschooling thing: 

(This is the best life I can possibly imagine.) 

Alice in Wonderland at Kingsbury Hall (University of Utah). 

This is our fourth theater adventure this year. (1-Annie Get Your Gun, 2-Frozen, 3-Velveteen Rabbit, 4-Alice) We went with our little neighbor Lilly who lives next door to us and is also homeschooled. I'm so glad that Lydia has friends who have chosen the same educational path and that there are so many resources and opportunities available - like this production specifically targeted to school-aged kids! So many neat things we can be involved in. 

Spring Break Day! 

So, we didn't take a very legit Spring Break this year. Technically Spring Break was the week that the Haderlies were in Morgan when we went to stay and spend time with them - but I still had Lydia do a good portion of her school work, only taking a day or so off. I kind of felt like we didn't need a Spring Break and I was happy to keep working through our stuff. But towards the end of the month, I decided that we DID need a break so when the kids woke up I surprised them with a Spring Break Day! We headed to the mountains to go on a hike. We didn't make it all the way to the top because ... I realized about halfway that I'm 31 weeks pregnant and carrying a two year old up a shouldn't-have-been-classified-as-an-easy-spring-hike-becauseitwasactually-really-steep wasn't really on my game-plan for the day. Even though we didn't make it to the top, we made it to this beautiful river with a fun bridge. We ate a little picnic lunch right by the river and then headed back down. It was beautiful!

Spring Break Day Part 2

After our hike through the mountains we stopped at the store and picked a box of fun popcicles and took them to a fun park in Sandy that we'd never been to before. There were 12 popcicles in the box and I let them eat them until they were all gone. We played at this park for 3-4 hours. I just sat and watched while they climbed and played and laughed. We played hide and seek together and I pushed them on the swings. I wasn't expecting to stay so long, but I wasn't in a rush. It was exactly the spring break day that we needed. As the grand finale, we picked up a Little Caesars pizza on the way home and their lives were made. So glad my kids are easy to impress!

Onion Research Project

This may be one of my favorite projects that we've done all year. Lydia found an onion that had sprouted in our basement, left over from last September when we picked onions at the USU extension in Kaysville. (When I say sprouted, I mean, it had 18 inches worth of growth.) Lydia thought it was so cool and asked to learn about onions. I found a couple of YouTube videos and a website about onions (plus a couple of fun songs about onions) and we learned all about onions together. Then we spent about an hour cutting up the onion. We counted the layers and just explored the vegetable with no particular end goal in mind. At the end I had Lydia write a page about what she had learned. It was a huge homeschool success. Totally unprompted but ended up being engaging and interesting!

Reading

That's all this girl does these days. 

Planting Seeds

We did a unit on seeds and prepared to plant a garden. We planted peas, carrots, watermelon, zucchini, and corn. Lydia bought a strawberry plant with her family economy money (and I bought a tomato that I'm hoping survives until I can plant it outside). We learned about lots of different kinds of seeds and what things seeds need to grow. We will watch them grow inside until it's warm enough to transplant them outside. I have grand plans for a garden this summer with pictures of me happily weeding while the kids play outside and my baby sleeps in her bouncer next to me. I know it probably won't be so dreamy and already I'm thinking my garden eyes were bigger than my garden stomach (meaning I bought all the things but maybe should have just focused on a few things). But it's been so fun to watch our peas sprout and know that the rest of the seeds aren't far behind.