Half-baked Homeschool

Shortbread turned six on Saturday, and after hosting a few little friends on Friday, we had a quiet family dinner complete with his birthday cake choice: coconut cream pie.

I am struggling a bit with the thought that if "we" are now six, "we" are no longer very young.

Seems that something helpful might be to focus on the multitude of things about my no-longer-very-young baby for which I am thankful. I'll dedicate this list of gifts to him:

46. his most frequent complaint or request: he wants to snuggle

47. his huge missing-tooth smile and his mousy brown hair

48. his "I love you" after asking "Mama?"

48. that he still has a wet thumb, a threadbare blankie (that smells vaguely of puppies and cheese), and a holdable frame

49. his wonderful creations, especially the ones he's made for me: bracelets, colored paper flowers, and the double-stick tape purse (It's picked up a little hair by now.)

50. that he counts his brother as his best friend and a perfectly wonderful sleep-over buddy (who would never make fun of his thumb or his blankie).


Happy Birthday Moochie!! XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

To join in listing your gifts or enjoy what others have to share, go to A Holy Experience.

We've been a little loose with our schedule this past week, mostly due to other activities and the impending Thanksgiving/Christmas preparations. Also, the weather has been lovely most of the time, and I want the boys to enjoy what may be the last of the really mild temps for the year.

Truth be told, this is the time of year when I would typically start to slow our school schedule down, and I'm missing that freedom. Since we started the hybrid school for humanities, I have had to come to grips with working according to someone else's schedule; it's been my greatest challenge this year. We are likely, however, to accomplish more this holiday season in school than we ever have before.

We are closing in on our first 12(!) weeks with Biblioplan, and we'll soon move on to the 18th century. The topics for this week (week 11) were "Indians, Canada, and Pennsylvania". This included a study of the conflicts between Native American tribes and the colonies of New England and New France. In our look at Pennsylvania, we me both William Penn and Benjamin Franklin. We especially enjoyed reading a biography about each of these men: William Penn:Founder of Pennsylvania by Steven Kroll and D'Aulaire's Benjamin Franklin.

In a case of perfect timing, one of our local state parks hosted a Native American Pow-wow last weekend, and we were planning to be at the park for an early birthday celebration for Bearclaw anyway. After the birthday ropes course was completed, we headed over to the pow-wow for an opportunistic field trip.

Here's Bearclaw tackling one of the course challenges:

And Shortbread tackling his own "little guy" ropes course:

We were able to see aspects of Native American life from both western and eastern nations recreated at the pow-wow. We saw encampments, cooking demonstations, weapons, fire making, tanning, and dancing to traditional music/drums.

Here are some glimpses:

Most of Bearclaw's efforts outside of history this week were concentrated on writing narrative paragraphs. His teacher assigned the topic "The Worst Party I Ever Attended", and Bearclaw's little story made me chuckle, especially the part about a pinata full of Barbies for a boy party. The horror! Clearly, he's getting his ideas for fiction straight out of his nightmares.

Shortbread had two weeks to work on his assigments from last week, so we were in the middle of letter "Tt" this past week. We actually had a tough time coming up with books for "T", and almost everyone Shortbread spotted was in the word "the" - which didn't count. We did get to read one of our favorites, though: Bear About Town.