ORVA (like ORCA only better?)

Okay, deja vu? I am enrolling in ORVA. WHY, do you ask? Why go through the attendance craziness? The following the teachers advice? The rote memorization? The curriculum that means nada? WHY?

Schedule, organization, accountability.

Don't ya know I am a Libra, balance is pretty much tattoo'd on my brain waves. We unschool one year, then do something like ORCA. Then decompress on year, then attempt some other elaborate plan. I like to say I am consistent, but I am only consistent at INconsistancy. Just think, my kids will be able roll with whatever life throws there way (kidding).

We are going to *try* it until Winter break (we start in Sept) and see how it goes. Will keep everyone posted. Yes, this is against my homeschooling philosophies, but frankly, we gotta shake up the rut somehow!

Summer School?

So for the rest of regular school attending society, school is almost out! For the 2006-2007 year we used a very generous and oppressive online school, ORCA to be exact, and let me tell you how hard that was to balance ORCA for 2 kids, take care of a preschooler and a NEWBORN baby...a year with many tears shed by all. However, it did give a kick start to reading.

This last school year, the one about to end, 2007-2008- we unschooled all the way. My house look a little better for it, the kids were a lot happier and well, I got to enjoy my toddler (*was* baby) a lot more!

The question is, do I dare *try* to homeschool over the summer, or just dedicate our summer to just reading books and me learning more about Unit Studies & Lapbooking? That sounds good! Start fresh and new in the Fall! Our co-op is planning on starting up and going bigger this fall, so some prep for that will be good too.

Happy Summer!

Unit Studies & Lapbooking

I am gearing up for our first Unit Study...Farm Animals. This is one I have always wanted to do since Morgan was a toddler. I think this will be fun since I can easily tailor it for all the kids, it is Spring and there are a lot of baby animals out there being born, we just came from the Ag Fest and it leads into our next Unit, Veggie Gardening. These are min-Units because I am learning how to do this, and we will do at least one Lapbook during the unit on something specific. I am SO excited, this is what I have always wanted to do, but never really knew where to start. I have a bunch of info from the workshops I took at OHEN and will be posting more soon!

OHEN Conference

I attended the OHEN conference this last Saturday. I am going to copy & paste my description from my SASH yahoogroups...

I went to the TV free class, the Unit Studies class, Lapbooking class and the Unschooling class.

The TV free/limited TV class was small, about 8 of us, but really discussion oriented and I loved how it worked out for our small group. We learned a lot, shared a lot and got some hand-outs. Nothing I didn't know already, but helped to reinforce my thinking of "limited meda" for so many reasons, a place I am at right now...fed up w/ too much media mediums in our home.

The Unit Studies class was great, and I got a lot out of it! I took a bunch of notes on her powerpoint slide show and just loved the hand-out too. I am really thinking that Unit Studies will be fun for all of us. Her style may have rubbed some the wrong way, but her having 5 boys and one girl, well, honestly...perspectives change once you have a "troop" of kids (especially boys), and people can sound harsher than they are meaning to (just their style of humor w/ a big family!).

The Lapbooking class style got a little grittier, I could tell she was just exhausted! However, I learned some great things on Lapbooking, how to integrate into Unit Studies or between them. Very helpful! (Youtube has a bunch of lapbooking clips).

The Unschooling class...well, let's just say I was wishing it was as engaging as her opening speach in the morning. Not what I would've said in a speech about unschooling, and I am not an expert. Some gems in there though, and pulled as much as I could out of it, taking notes all the while.

I am going to some of Scott's talks at the "Life is Good" unschooling seminiar in Vancouver next month or May (keep forgetting when it is!), so I skipped his talks.

Last year the whole thing was WAY bigger I think...bigger space, more classes, bigger rooms to sit in. But they are a very small group of women making this whole thing happen, and I think they did an excellent job it just being them! I think maybe more PR and bigger speakers to rally up more people?

I didn't get my registration in until Friday night, so I had to actually get in my car and leave for lunch (didn't make one and they were out of them, only taking pre-orders), so I missed the walking around and checking out name tags. That and getting my 10 year old to his classes and then to mine.

We drove around a part of Beaverton I wasn't familiar with and found their enormous health food store- New Seasons Market. It was SO cool, wish we had that down here!

I did really enjoy it though, and sadly, they only happen every 2 yrs. We will be attending the A Good Life unschooling conf. in May as a family though, and that should be fun too (especially since I HATE leaving Logan for so long & far away!).

Rabbit Romp

We bought this kit at the Oregon Zoo Rabbit Romp. A Ukrainian woman was running the candle/beeswax/egg dying/egg blowing free event, all alone I might add! She was just amazing, and her artistic eggs (shown on cover here) are mind blowing (or is that egg blowing?). These 3 eggs are the ones the boys did at the zoo, and it was really neat (I wish I did one!), and they actually had candles burning all over this table for the kids to melt their beeswax, that was the most impressive, that the kids were allowed to do this themselves (throwing generic egg hunt experience to the wind!). Watching her blow eggs was, well, just plain gross. Anyway, we are going to try this next year!

The kit comes w/ some dyes, some art, a glob of beeswax and a little was holder thingy. Here is her website! http://www.ukrainiangiftshop.com/

Spring Break!

Media frenzy, that is all I can say. Too much TV, too much Gamecube, Too much computer! They are just so happy to get all this back, it is really quiet around here...they aren't fighting as much either. Yesterday it was dry, so they were actually sent outside, cut off from technology, and so they played in a friends back yard and then came over here to play in the sandbox for an hour! YeeHAW! I just love to see them playing, creating, imagining, BEING outside and kids. I am just so vehemently opposed to the whole media thing, I mean, I had video games & cable as a kid (MTV was only 3 years old when we got cable, I was 9), but I played outside so much!

Oh, and no guilt for me since spring break!

Unschooling the Lazy Way

We are less than homeschoolers, we are less than unschoolers...we are mediaschoolers. First, I want to say that we aren't less in a sense of "we equal less" but in a less as an "educational substance" amount.

After we stopped doing ORCA, we were free at last...free to do whatever we wanted, whenever! So, I set this goal of getting the house caught up before Winter Equinox, then it was New Years, then it was the end Jan...Feb...now March. You see the pattern? ORCA was like a ball & chain, but it was also a good thing...it held us accountable and kept the kids doing something, even if that something was mundane and almost meaningless in the grand scheme of things, it was something.

So, in the past month, I haven't caught up on housework, I have been blogging, doing my own research online, and depressed.

I did turn a new leaf this month though, the kids have been reading books at least once a day, and every so often they do penmanship. Sometimes they do educational stuff online. Oh, and less media overall since I put the no video/computer games in affect a week or two ago. Progress, but we need another shake up in the right direction.

Yesterday I locked all the non-educational channels on cable, so that it wasn't so easy to turn on. No computer, Gamecube or DS/Advance games at all. Now they just watch PBS, Animal Planet and skim around for other "educational pursuits" on the TV. Still, not good enough, but better.

I am starting to feel the "ohmygosh" Morgan's going to be a "junior high kid" next year! But in reality, he is only going to be 11 in June, he can still be considered an "elementary school kid" next year too.

The next step...NO TV, period. We'll get there!

Oregon State Championships!

We went to Bend for Morgan's gymnastics meet this past weekend, and by .6 he made it to regionals! Regionals will be in Beaverton this year (not Boise like last year, woo-hoo!). We hiked to the lava caves and opted out of seeing the bats & caves, turns out it kills them when people wake them on accident (due to the bats having to use their fat stores and using up their energy/food stores and so they don't make it through their hibernation). So we played in the snow, sledding mostly.

The boys had fun w/ their 2nd Cousin Eric, he is just so into kids, the friendliest & most considerate guy...I would have to say in the whole darn family! It is nice to have other family members for the kids to look up to, there just aren't many kids on either side of Mark's family, so when we find someone who is insterested in our large family, we latch on!

Anyway, more on Regionals later!!!

Life

Yesterday was another game day. We played the game of Life. Again, cereal stuck to the board, crackers mixed w/ the money (despite "no eating around games"), but our game went so long (3 hours) that hunger happened!

They are reading more and more, this game thing really encourages them. Reading, math, learning about which careers make more or less, taxes, lifes pitfalls and celebrations, the inportance of insurance, playing the stock market and families.

Jordan had 5 kids and was a proud Papa, it surprised me! Morgan, who is great w/ kids, took a route leading to more money and missed having kids, he was bummed though because he wanted them. Hayden, he married a guy and had two kids, a boy and a girl. He is in anti-girl space still, but doesn't realize he drops it when he plays with Victoria, Leniesha & Danielle and other girls he knows.

They don't take on long conversations about all of this, but learn it by playing, talking a bit about it here and there, and playing some more. I really do love playing long games, but have to say, playing w/ Logan is kinda like, well, keeping a puppy from jumping on you! He is my last little wild guy, and I think that naming him Rogue didn't help.

So our lessons have been board games, me reading books to them at night time, and watching animal shows on TV. Better than nothin'!