In General
I'm taking a little breather from the final sorting of the girl's stuff to share with you this week in homeschooling.
March has been a lovely month for the kids and I as we've settled into a steady late winter routine. In reality though we're experiencing an early spring but I haven't been out too much (the kids have) to take advantage of it. I just can't wrap my head around spring in March. I still have too many projects that I had planned to do indoors this month and once those wrap up I will embrace this next season. At which time we'll probably have a snowstorm!
Some of our learning has been outdoors: hikes and play dates at parks with homeschooling friends, a visit to the farm and backyard science.
Other activities have been indoors: a symphony orchestra concert, setting up marble works (like every other homeschooled kid this week who watched this amazing video), drawing lessons, making crystals using the kit Laurent got for his birthday and Celine sewing. Always Celine sewing.
It was a good week. Most days I really enjoy being home with my kiddos (honestly). But this week I especially felt that way. Enjoying these last days of winter (that are suspiciously warm) before the intense activities of yard clean up, gardening, bike riding, trampoline jumping and everything else that spring holds in store.
You'll find my monthly post published today at Simple Homeschool. I've written about two things we enjoy very much; reading and the outdoors. The combination of these is a post titled, Great Books for an Outdoors Education.
Reading is something that inspires us to get outdoors more; to experience this great, wide and beautiful world we've read about. Then, after we've been outdoors and want to research what we've discovered for ourselves (ie: identifying the bugs, leaves and forest floor wildflowers) books are where we turn to find our answers.
Just this morning I read Henry David's House to the kiddos. Reading this very edited and richly illustrated (oh I just love children's picture books) version of the American classic Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau inspires me to follow my dreams for simpler living, leaves me pining to return to the woods (only 4 more days till our next hike) and has piqued my curiosity to read the original.
If you'd like to find more outdoor/nature type books to read with your children you can check out my nature study shelf at Goodreads.
This winter Damien upped the nature-book ante by reading outdoor adventure books to our family during the evenings. These are stories about people truly being in the outdoors, not just studying it from the comfort of their heated living rooms or well equipped science labs. He's got a booklist going also at Goodreads that you can see at the bottom of the AdventureinProgress mainpage.
Have any of you read Walden, or Life in the Woods? What did you think? Would you recommend it?
PS. I know there's been a lot of posts lately on FIMBY about the outdoors. This blog reflects my life, it's not an abstract writing project, and we've been reading about, talking about and spending lots of time outdoors. And we hope to do more. It's a good thing but I do plan to post about other more "homey" subjects. Maybe hopefully spring gardening, with some pretty photos.
Over the past year as I've started to share more about our family's outdoor adventures I've gotten questions from people asking how we do this with our children.
I think the overall vague question of "how do you do this?" can actually be broken down into several questions. Two of them being, "how do you make the time?" And "how to you get multiple family members on board?"
As we have time to articulate our thoughts (we're actually quite busy having adventures and making time to write about having adventures is challenging) we plan to answer these questions fully. Here at FIMBY, our home blog, and ADVENTUREinPROGRESS, our adventure blog and eventually in a book devoted to that very topic, hiking with your family.
But before we ever publish a book with gear lists, menu plans and clothing guidelines we would like to help families get started by addressing a few of the basics, one of which is making the time.
Damien just published a fantastic post on this subject. Time is such an important topic to discuss because if you are wanting to be outdoors more with your family finding the time to do so will be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome.
Damien's post, One Day A Week, explains in some detail our family's experience with setting aside one day a week to be outdoors, all together, for the better part of the day (ie: morning till supper). I plan to follow up on his post with more practical tips from a homemaker's perspective. Let's just say actually getting out the door is the hardest part of the whole adventure. Never mind hiking up the actual mountain!
When I get around to writing that I'll be sure to give you a heads up. But to get you started you can read what Damien has to say about how to make family day a priority.
PS: With this recent "new look" you'll notice at the bottom of the FIMBY main page that you can read the titles of the last 10 posts written at AdventureinProgress.
