Just popping in here this morning, to share some goofy unschooling stuff that we've been doing around here.... by the way, we do use Horizon's Math 5 and Geometry 6 for math... although, I use it mostly as a spine. And, I always have the salt shaker hidden in my hand.. adding salt when he's not looking!

Yesterday we met up with a couple homeschool families to enjoy a 4 mile hike around a local walking trail... never in my life, had I seen so many dead carp! Our friend Pam, was pretty knowledgeable about the theory of why this happened- same thing happened in her pond...and Brad validated it...not enough oxygen. Pam also showed us how to look for hibernating turtles! This morning, I'll have Tommie write a paper and research this on his own. I swear, I'm not in any hurry to eat a fish stick.

Sometimes, to spice things up, I take a kitchen towel, and hide a dozen or so items underneath it on a tray. I let yours truly, study it for 30 seconds... I then remove 3 items and see if he knows what is missing. It's a great way to weave critical thinking into the day... I copied the idea from his Building Thinking Skills workbook. It's just more fun to use real items, I think.

And, why not teach your child map skills using the real thing? I've been guilty of buying the fake workbooks with made up places and names... jeesh, I said to myself... if I'm going to have him do this, he might as well be learning REAL places. That said, and since it's Eli Whitney week here, I used Massachusetts...shame on me...he didn't know what a "sound" was... as in Cape Cod Sound. See what I'm telling ya? It's good to use the real stuff...because sometimes I just take things for granted. I used this atlas and made up a homemade, three page treasure hunt.

I confess, fractions don't mean anything to me on paper. There, I said it. Just doing problem after problem, not really knowing why, is probably why I loathed math in school. It's just going through the motions. UGH. I don't really want to teach things, without a reason. So, when it came time to review fractions this week, I chipperly (is chipperly a word?) decided to make it real. I made up four plates full of items... valentine candies, legos, cars and different size glass jars... then I made up a homemade worksheet, write the fraction for blue cars, yellow lego's, red candy kisses, small jars.... reduce the fraction and then number them from largest to smallest. BING, BANG, BAM. 12 problems done, standing up at the kitchen table, without hesitation---umm, I mean complaining or dawdling and concept understood. For review, we did it orally. Much easier for us, when I keep it real and hand's on. EXHALE.