Week 5

Like the new design?

Lots to report since our last update:

We spent the Sunday before last in Bear, Delaware with some old friends. When Dave was 19 he spent the summer at Friendship Baptist Church there as the summer youth director. It's been nearly 21 years since he's seen some of the "kids" and it was great to catch up with them. (We didn't take as many pictures as we should have - but we're going back in a few weeks).

Amy & Rebecca

We also got to see our long lost friend, David Carswell and his wonderful wife who is great with child. Good food at El Rodeo in Harrisburg and good times getting caught up with each other.

Nikki & Dave

I'm also happy to report that we're drifting gradually closer to a more "unschooling" style of homeschooling. In other words, the boys are starting to take interest in some real life activities and skills that allow for experiments and experiences, rather than textbooks and worksheets. We're still doing pretty traditional stuff with maths and literacy, but science, art, music, and computer skills are coming along more naturally. These last two weeks we've learned about music scales, chemical reactions, states of matter (these two we've learned from cooking and mixing stuff that goes SPLAT, WHOOSH, and SIZZLE in the kitchen), monochromatic painting, horizon lines, and on and on. It's a bit disjointed and random, but they're remembering things they wouldn't from a worksheet or lecture.

Mad Scientists


Music and archaeology (more like digging dinosaur toys out of dirt eggs...)

The boys have gotten hooked on a blog called Lego Quest - the blogger presents a Lego Challenge every few weeks for the kids. Sometimes they have restrictions on certain pieces, piece limits, or just a theme - this week's was Natural Disasters. They boys wanted to have a plane crash, but decided to add the lightning to make the disaster a bit more natural.

Rich also started Ice Hockey this week. He's wanted to play for a few years now but there were time and money obstacles. Obviously, Hockey is HUGE up here, so there are lots of options. He started speed skating while we were in Arkansas, and took a few ice skating lessons when we first arrived in Harrisburg. The coaches thought he was doing well enough to start training for junior Hockey, so off he went. He seems to be a natural on the ice - especially playing defense, as he did in soccer. The plan is to play Hockey when he can, roller skate when he can't, and try to squeeze some soccer in during the off season.

We've also gotten deeply into the Revolutionary and Civil Wars using Netflix Liberty Kids series, and a bunch of library books on Lincoln, Jefferson, Sam Adams, Davis, etc. The tough part is trying to keep the two wars apart. Tuesday, we did our bookwork at the Midtown Scholar bookstore in downtown Harrisburg (a few blocks from the beautiful capital building). They had literally hundreds of books on both wars so we spent a few hours doing school work and browsing.

There are two basement levels filled with books. Honestly, this store has more books than all the libraries in Harrisburg combined.

Hopefully we're headed to Dutch country in Lancaster this weekend, or possibly Washington D.C. depending on how things go. Stay tuned.