What to be Thankful For

As soon as the lapbooks are all finished, I will post a picture... Since November is the month of Thanksgiving, Taliesin and Nathanael have been working on a fun set of lapbooks from In the Hands of a Child's Daily Devotional unit. Each day, we have been reading about ways, watching DVDs and videos about, and lapbooking about ways that we can be more like Christ. For instance, we lapbooked about the Golden Rule. We've watched Veggie Tale DVDs about forgiving and letting go of anger. We have even read about loving one another as displayed in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Our units will culminate the week of Thanksgiving with being thankful and counting our blessings. Taliesin and Nathanael are both having a really good time with this. That's one thing I just love about homeschooling/unschooling. We can do our own things in the ways we are interested in doing it.

After this unit, Taliesin and Nathanael are looking forward to our Christmas Cheer unit and then the Twelve Days of Christmas. If anyone has children that enjoy lapbooking and unit studies, I would definitely recommend In the Hands of a Child. Their products, along with Five in a Row, are so excellent!

Kandy

Fall - Part 3

I'm sorry about the delay in getting these posted. These are some fun pictures from the past week's activities.

Taliesin made this fall picture for his dance teacher.

Nathanael at his dress-up dance class this year. Last year, he would not go. He was scared of the kids in costume. This year, he was happy to dress up as Obi Wan and went right in.

At the Mall. Taliesin was more into this than Nathanael was. But Nathanael enjoyed the candy. LOL

The Fall Festival at a local church. Nathanael loved the slide in the middle picture. He was on it most of the night! In the picture, you see a black streak coming down the slide. That's Taliesin in his Darth Vader costume. The bottom picture is one of the cars in the Trunk or Treat line.

Kandy

Fall - Part 2

Decorating Pumpkins

Kandy

Fall - Part 1

Fun at the Pumpkin Patch

Unschooling Interests

We are having a conversation on the Christ-Centered Unschoolers list about "lessons." You know, the daily plans we homeschoolers often like to have to be sure that our kids are "learning." One thing I've noticed about unschooling parents. They love it when their kids enjoy - um, let's just say - non-traditional things. They understand when kids get into a specific movie or a specific genre of writing or a specific type of music - and they encourage that interest. I blogged a week or so ago about how Taliesin and Nathanael are so much into Star Wars right now. And as much as I - um - do not care particularly for Star Wars, they have learned a lot from those movies. They inspire them to study more about space. They get us into discussions about good and evil. They get us into the whys of individual actions and how our behavior affects others. Why would I ever want to stop that kind of natural, interest-driven learning - even if it is from movies that I could live without watching over and over and over.

Kandy

Superstar!

Taliesin and Nathanael have been playing with their keyboards today, and I caught this picture of Taliesin singing into the microphone. No autographs, please.

Kandy

Lotsa Lapbooks

I should not be surprised that Taliesin has taken to lapbooking so much. Just this evening, he has finished up his volcanoes lapbook and started one on the Book of Genesis. We're also keeping prayer journals for devotional lapbooks we'll be starting in the near future. (This week, we're planning to make a "kindness pie." There is a cute paper "kindness pie" activity in the Hands of a Child booklet for a Devotional a Day, and Taliesin and Nathanael got the idea to make an actual pie. So that should be fun). Nathanael has even gotten into lapbooking. He's made two so far - one on dinosaurs and one on volcanoes (two of his favorite subjects). Tomorrow, we're working on pirates again, according to Taliesin. And then he wants to start a map lapbook to go along with his unit study over Mirette on a Highwire, which, of course, takes place in France. So we have our next few days cut out for us. LOL

Kandy