One Crazy Month

So this past month was super crazy for us and I have tons of pictures to share!  Rob had to take a month-long review course in Washington DC, and I didn't want to sit at home by myself with the kids all month.  So I decided to spend a couple weeks in Atlanta and was able to fly up to DC (without the kids!) for a few days to see Rob.  Rob and his med school buddy, Garrett, arranged it so they could take the course at the same time, so they were roomies for the month and then Hannah (Garrett's wife) and I met them for a few days and had a blast catching up and seeing the sites.  For some reason, when I posted these, the order got mixed up and I'm too lazy to manually drag them into the correct order. So without further adieu--the pictures!

Trunk-or-Treat #1 (in Atlanta)

Upside down picture of the Halloween bags to match their costumes!

Loving the swing at Andee and Dave's house

My little Dragon

Halloween playdate (Charleston)

"Music Lessons" with Papa

Our Halloween Queen

Playing with cousin Grant

After a fun night of kickball and hanging out with high school friends.  Sorry Mike, the only non-fuzzy picture is the one with your eyes closed!

Paining pumpkins

Pumpkin patch

Hayride and cousin Megan!

Lots of time spent reading with Nana.

Hammering nails into our jock-o-lantern to make light holes.

Halloween party for the cousins at Nana's house.  Adeline was so excited to help Nana plan and prepare for the party.

Way too many mornings spent with the kids coming into my room way too early.  Luckily the iPad and Netflix kind of gave me a few more minutes of rest.

Georgia Aquarium for Halloween.  There was hardly anyone there!

The dolphins were the highlight of the trip.  Especially the dolphin show!

Loving her Halloween costume!  Good thing too, because it was a LOT of work to make it for her!

Apparently, Bobby likes to drink sour cream.

Trunk-or-treat #2 (also in Atlanta)

Pictures for our actual Halloween trick-or-treating

White house!

The Washington Monument had scaffolding all over it and the lights on the scaffolding looked really cool at night!

China Town

Co Co Sala (Chocolate themed restaurant!)

Shopping with some crazy kids!  I still make them both sit in the cart every time we are in a store!

I wrote a piece for my writing group about my dad and his guitar while I was in Atlanta and we found this great picture of him.

Back at home Bobby cutting a vase of flowers from the yard for Grandma Sherie.

Rob did a little protesting while he was in DC

Bike riding at Rock Creek Park in DC.  They close the road on Saturday mornings for bikes so we road from Silver Spring, MD to downtown DC.  It was so much fun and absolutely beautiful!

LOVED the museum of Natural history.  Especially the parts about geologic time and evolution.  It was so interesting!  And this chart blew my mind.  You can't see in this picture, but the swirl represents the history of the earth and the green and blue and orange parts represent things like plant life and fish and reptiles, etc.  The part that represents how long humans have been on earth is a tiny red line at the end (you can't even see it in the picture)! 

Library of Congress.  Not a great pic of the building, but it is incredible.  We took a guided tour and it was fantastic.

Arlington National Cemetery.  Beautiful fall day.

We ate tons of great food!

At the James Bond exhibit at the International Spy Museum.  

More good food.  Nandos Peri Peri was delicious!

At Chinatown again.

Adeline learned to climb really high at this park in Atlanta.  Unfortunately, she didn't learn how to climb down by herself.

Stopping for lunch and some "light" shopping at ikea on the way out of town.  The kids decided to have a little tea party with the display setup.

Rob's buddy Ben was in Atlanta for a conference so they got to hang out for a day before we headed back home.

More Homeschooling Fun This Week: Electricity!

These pictures are in pretty random order.  Lately I feel like our whole lives are in random order (Rob's schedule has been crazy since he's been working nights, so we haven't had any semblance of a regular daily routine for the past 3 weeks!  But we've had a lot of fun spending time with Rob on his days off!)

More of Adeline's iPad drawing:

 Adeline wanted to learn how to type words.  She loves to "do work."

Making shapes with playdough:

 The kids love to get into my educational games from when I taught school.

 Adeline is very interested in learning how to write words now.  She wrote all of this on her own without any help at all!  (Bouquet, nap, play, pee)

 Watching a youtube video about electricity:

 Investigating electricity.  Bobby loved taking the fan apart and using tools (I thought it was pretty fun too;).  

 Making an electricity poster and drawing circuits.

 Adeline asked for one of our coffee table books about space so she could study.  She drew pictures of what she was "studying."  

 Rob had a few days off between working nights so we did a lot more fishing!  The kids love to hold fish.   I still ask Rob to put my bait on and take the fish off the hook if I catch something! 

 Stylish kids going to the library.  Adeline kept asking me to make her a ballerina bun so I finally looked on youtube and learned how to make a sock bun.  It is actually pretty easy (probably because Adeline has amazing hair!).

 Handsome little guy!

I can totally see how our interests inspire the kids to learn more. I've read a few things about unschooling and I'm really drawn to the idea of it. Sandra Dodd (who writes a lot about unschooling) said "If a parent isn't living an interesting life at all, and can't think of interesting things to do, unschooling isn't going to work very well." Hopefully Rob and I are interesting enough to make it work for our family and I'm really encouraged by Adeline and Bobby's curiosity in what Rob and I enjoy. So, here they are sorting through zinnia seeds with Daddy. This is Rob and Adeline's "thing." Adeline loves to cut beautiful blooming flowers for me, and whenever she see a dead and shriveled one, she cuts it for Daddy so they can find the seeds. I cannot tell you how many dead flowers are laying around our house right now! They also set up an experiment to see which seed would grow faster, one with the seed coat left on, or one with the seed coat off. The results were surprising to us. The one with the seed coat on sprouted a day before the one with no seed coat.

 Electricity experiments.  We made a little circuit using a flash light and some wires with alligator clips. The kids loved testing different objects to see if they were conductors or insulators.

 She found a conductor!  (PS...she dressed herself today!)

 Bobby was very interested in testing the water and ice.  The water was a weak conductor, but got stronger when we added salt.  An ice cube did not work.

 A paper towel soaked in water made a fun conductor.

"Look Dad, I'm a conductor!"  (PS...she did not get shocked--her hair is just crazy like that all the time;)

 "Me too!"

 The whole reason we decided to study electricity this week is because Adeline wanted to make Christmas light cupcakes from one of my cookbooks.  I told her we could, only if we learned all about how Christmas lights work first.

 Who needs a fork...or hands, for that matter!

 Harvesting sweet potatoes from the yard.  Don't they both look so grown up here?

 More fishing and flounder catching!

I think one of the main things that is making our homeschooling work so well is that Rob and I are both involved.  We both love teaching the kids things and we are making it a part of our lives throughout the whole day.  Its a family effort and school is not just done while Rob is at work.  The kids don't see either of us as "the teacher."  Our role right now in our homeschooling journey is to be the supporters of learning.  We encourage their interests, help them organize their experiments, read stories together, help them find library books on what they are learning about, and try to say "yes" as much as possible to anything that could lead to learning.  Its been a fun week!