Schooling my kids at home week 2

Hmm, Shall I start this out with the fact that everytime I say we have to do some school Sage runs and hides. poor guy..
Maya on the other hand is so ready and gets her books ready and pencil and loves it! She handles sitting very well but I have to figure out a way to engage Sage again.
It is a big relief to me though instead of thinking if this does not go well then I can put them back in school. Now I think well if this way is not working out then I can try a different way. Cahnge things up a bit and go from there.
Sage is a unschooler, always has been I think. He wants to learn what he wants to learn when he wants to learn it. I have to respect those kind of independent leadership qualities about him. I am working on trying to honor his way of learning and educate myself how I can facilitate this kind of learning even more.
My biggest challenge right now is figuring out to be help educate 2 children in new and different things at the same time.
Micah is having a good time cutting and pasting so I am incorporating some kind of letter recognition with these opportunities. We enjoy lots of stories right now as well.
Back to taking care of children.

Our First Homeschooling Adventure

Homeschooling started for us not when the public schools started but instead started when we taught Sage to count his numbers 1-10. When we read Maya her first book, and she preceded to read it back to us word for word! When Micah started learning his colors. Homeschooling for us is a life long, daily, way we choose to educate our children. We use the world as our classroom, the kitchen as our classroom, even chores as a teaching aid. The most amazing things though are not what we teach our children but what they teach us! I guess you could say we are a learning family because as we are teaching them they are teaching us!
Welcome to our world!

So we officially started on Tuesday, August 18. At least that is what we told the children.
In the morning, we first read a book about turtles that my mom gave us. She gave us the whole collection of these books. They are animal stories and then at the back they teach you some facts about the animals. They are a really good learning tool for the kids.
So our story was about a turtle who needed a home. He went to all these different animals and saw their homes and he wished he had a home like them. Then he ran into a snail and saw that his home was on his back. He could travel everywhere he wanted to go because he took his home with him. How cool was that! The turtle then learned he is the same as the snail and how blessed he was.
I told the children to draw me a picture of something in the book that they remembered and they both drew a weed. It was a beautiful dandelion. Maya is very talented in her drawing and she thoroughly enjoys it. Sage drew one as well but he wanted to go play so he drew it very fast.
We then talked about turtles, snails, and the other animals that we saw in the book and about the different types of homes they all lived in.
Then we had a snack blueberries, granola, and yogurt! Then we went back and did some workbook stuff. learning vocabulary, phonetics, introduction to letters. handwriting.. That was a bit much too soon. I think it wore all of us out. So we took a break and let the kids do what they wanted to.
I had planned on going to KU's Museum of Natural History when Jesse got home so we got ready for that. When we got there, the children could hardly contain their excitement. They saw all of these animals, like polar bears, deer, tazmanian devil, prairie dogs. They saw insects like the hissing cockroach, beetles, and moths. They learned that the KS insect is the honey bee. They learned all about honey bees and that a fungus nearly killed them all. I think Jesse and I learned even more than them. They learned 80 million years ago KS was covered by an ocean. They learned about fossils in KS and what extinct dinosaurs roamed KS. Sage was sad and wanted to see more museums but we stayed there until they closed.
We then stopped and ate some Jimmy Johns. Jesse went to check out some records at the record shop and the children and I went into one of the greatest toy stores ever. If you ever saw Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, then you would love this toy store!
We stayed there for about an 1 hour/ 1 hour and half just playing and being kids! It was a blast.
Then we were on our way home until we saw some kayakers in the water by the dam.
We decided to pull over and let the children out to play. The children threw a bunch of rocks in the water and watched how the current pushed them down into the river. Then they got sticks and watched the river currents pushed those fast to the river. It was a great time to take pictures and I go some amazing shots.
We then went one other peaceful place and trucked it on home. It really was the most wonderful day and the children had a blast. It will be a great memory for our family to remember!