Thursday, September 26, 2013

In the spirit ... IHSW Day 4

Day 4 of International Homeschool Spirit Week  finds us on "Volunteer Outside the Home" day.




In all honesty I had no idea what I was going to do today with the children when I went to bed last night. My back was sore and it had been a couple of long days. When I woke up this morning my back was so bad that it hurt to move and hurt to stay still. My loving husband, aka the genius, says "It's spirit week right? Why not take the day off, make some phone calls about volunteering, and let the kids try unschooling for the day." I was relieved and excited at the thought and embraced it right away.

Today also happens to be good neighbor day here in the states and I really really like being a good neighbor. Especially after finding a couple a few doors down who my husband and I get along with really well and have made friends with.

In the spirit of spirit week: In the spirit of spirit week, and because volunteering is on this season's bucket list, I made several phone calls to places around town and asked if any of them would allow us to volunteer as a family. Many of them said no because the youngest is only 5 and the rest of the places have said that they'll get back with me because I was merely interested in finding something we could do within the next few weeks. So there will definitely be an update about our volunteering.

In honor of good neighbor day: In honor of good neighbor day my son went next door to the elderly lady and offered to cut her grass and shovel her snow for only $5 a week. Saying that he'd do it for free but needs to use his dad's mower and keep gas in the tank. It's an offer that she accepted (this will allow her to fire her lawn service and still save money without having to do it herself). Beginning next week ECJ will be mowing her lawn for the rest of the season.

Unschooling?: Ok, so maybe it was more of a day off... maybe it's unschooling. I'll let you be the judge. 

I made crowns for the kids yesterday and this morning Daddy was joking around with Peanut and asked "How round is your crown?" Which sparked off poems and pictures about round crowns:







The eye glass cases are in the pictures because the girls had written their names on their crowns (YCJ had done it at the top of her page as well). I didn't correct any spelling, or ask them to redo the work as this was impromptu and fun. Each poem is cute (says a very prejudicial mamma) and the drawings are always nice.

After the poetry "lesson" I decided to see if a slow walk would help my back and took the girls with me to "go the long way and check the mail". Doing that takes about half an hour and brings us home down the two track. Nope, it didn't help my back but when I returned home it was to find several sketches that ECJ had done because he wanted to 'work" on his drawing skills. 










He sure is getting better each and every day. For a few minutes Peanut tried to make a paper air plane...


And YCJ spent a few minutes tracing circles for a drawing of her own using a paper towel tube as a template...
Sharpening a pencil...
They've been relaxed and not arguing with each other all day and have spent the last hour or so outside and probably won't come back in until dinner. *Which, by the way, takes us to a total of about 13 hours of outdoor time this week. Only 7 hours away from our weekly goal of 20 hours of outdoor time and we still have tomorrow and Saturday to go (we only started Monday).

My back is still sore and I'm not able to sit still or stand or walk for too long of periods so I keep switching what I'm doing. This little post took me forever to do because I had to keep leaving the computer.


Tomorrow is the last day of    International Homeschool Spirit Week   and it's Super Hero Day. I'll be back again to post about what we do tomorrow (spoiler: there's going to be a super princess) and post another weekly wrap up tomorrow afternoon/evening.

Next week I will be posting about the misconceptions that all homeschool parents are rich and are saints when it comes to their kids.


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