what did your USer do today? - Page 3

[4evermom]

Originally Posted by moominmamma 

I love these threads too. On the other hand, they do tend to attract accounts of notable days by people who are (justifiably) excited by the interesting and varied things their kids did on that particular day. So as an antidote ... we had a boring day yesterday, and this is all we did:

That's part of why I posted the below earlier in the thread .  We have some awesome busy days full of learning by anyone's standards.  But more often, a good chunk of the day involves online gaming.  It is helping him develop his typing/spelling skills, however.
 

Originally Posted by 4evermom 

Ds has been playing his ds.  We ran out to Gamestop so he could load the pokemon, Celebi, onto his game.  And he has done some research on youtube about games.  He's being a stereotypical radical unschooler, today. 

[midnightwriter]

When my oldest was 3-4 years old, I had a blog, and the main purpose of it was to document unremarkable days (and even worse), because every unschooling blog I read was documenting such a perfect unschooling life.  Mine wasn't perfect. Still isn't.

Today DD9 spent hours in the yard, playing by herself and with the neighbours, finished crochetting a purse, watched some cartoons, and did some math.

DS6 watched cartoons, played on tinkatolli.com which included some math (super cool new game, very creative. it is still in the beta stage, so technically he was 'beta testing' it ), built circuits with snap circuits, made tranformers out of duct tape and cardboards, and mostly vegged.

DD3 played, played, played.

I re-organised and cleaned the kitchen

[orangefoot]

Today started ok but quickly descended into a lot of yelling and impatience on all fronts. We were away for four days last week camping on a lovely site and the girls have been a bit restless and bored since we got home as we have no brook or rope swing or trees to climb.

I've done three loads of washing and got them all dry outside, we've dismantled our slide which got severely damaged yesterday when our girls and a neighbour rode down it on a skateboard. It has had a hard life, this poor old slide, and much joy has been had on it but it is now time for it to go to the recycling centre. Who was having a turn at undoing the bolts was a source of massive disagreement and I resorted to getting the Rescue Remedy out at one point!

Dd1 had a try at sewing a dress for a Barbie but soon realised that the thing would not cover her massive breasts. Dd2 wanted to colour in some dresses rather than try to sew them so I downloaded some for her to colour.

Dd1 spent a while playing her recorder as she has a concert coming up on Thursday. Dd2 hates the recorder playing, probably because she wants to be able to play but can't yet. This was another source of strife.

We've been trying to sort out the stuff we brought back from camping and catch up with all the mess that we left behind and which the fairies didn't clean up while we were away! Coming back from camping always makes me want to throw away everything we own....

Dh came home after lunch and took them up the rad to the park where DD1 stepped on a bee and got stung so hopped back a but grumpily.

At 3pm the neighbourhood kids get back from school so they were both out playing with them in and out of our garden and theirs. Now it's time for dinner before I go to our bi-weekly home educators evening get-together at a local village pub. Peace and quiet in the evening sunshine beckons :)

[4evermom]

Hmm, bi weekly homeschool meetings at the local pub... What a good idea!

I'm happy ds has finally figured out his newest MMO.  It isn't as intuitive as most so I was getting frustrated with the level of help he needed.  It's way too hot here so we are holed up with the computer and dvds until the weather breaks.  We camped out in the living room with the A/C over night which was fun:)

[Greenmama2]

Today DD5 got up before 7 (unheard of for her) nd went off for a bushwalk (hike in your language I think ) with DH. DS2 and I slept for a little longer then got up and fiddled around making coffee & breakfast. He watched some tv online (we don't have an actual tv but the national broadcaster here puts all it's content online) while I cooked & had a shower.
Then we got a call from DH and DD who were a lot further away than I expected. So DS and trundled up to the village shops to meet them. The littles and I went to story time at the local library. Saw some other homeschoolers there and the stories were read by the nun who runs our meditation centre (we are Buddhist) so it felt very warm & fuzzy community-like Then back to the shops for lunch with DH who had been waiting at a cafe and then home again so he could work.
DD played for about an hour outside climbing on the tree that fell down in the wild windstorm we had last week. Then both littles busied themselves building an elaborate cubby house in the playroom. DS got bored after the actual construction was complete but DD stayed in there for quite a wile adn I suspect she even fell asleep for 10 minutes or so. Later they made playdough snails, did some drawing leaning on a big whiteboard which was propped on cushions on the loungeroom floor (side effect of the cubby house construction). Then dragged the whiteboard into the bedroom and propped it against one side of the bed, piled cushions at the bottom and made it into a brilliant indoor slide (slippery dip to some).
Later still DD practised piano and violin, and DS always has to have a "turn" immediately afterwards. So really, they both did. Then she asked me to find Peter Pan online. I searched youtube/veoh/etc but couldn't find it so offered the classic Alice in Wonderland instead. She loved it but DS wasn't interested so he listened to me practice flute, interrupted DH working a few times to read to him, nursed, played, made messes etc.
Then they both watched another cartoon online, had a quick bath and we headed out to dinner at the local pub. DS fell asleep in the car on the way home and DD hopped into bed as soon as we got back and was out like a light 5 minutes later. For my night-owl child to be asleep before 9pm without us both lying next to her and without even a single chapter of a read-aloud or audio book is, well, is the moon blue tonight???

[Attila the Honey]

Today we went to a rock and mineral show and it seems to have really sparked a lot of interest in the topic for dd.  We bought her "discovery blocks" - hardened blocks of sand that contain different minerals and fossils and rocks.  She's been pounding away at them all afternoon and getting her identification guide out to figure out what she "unearths".  The most exciting find so far - horn coral and a fossilized shark's tooth.  At this very moment she is in the tub with her slabs of picture jasper.  lol

Dd wants to learn "all the math there is" so she spent awhile working on 4 digit addition without regrouping.  At the gem and mineral show she used her allowance to pay for the things she bought and she did remarkably well counting her money and her change.  Using her very own money provides more impetus for learning about money than a worksheet ever could!  lol

She read a lot today - between the identification guide; "The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby"; and a couple of library books including one about Ancient Egypt (another one of her favorite things).

Her chrysalis "hatched" today!  A HUGE moth.  We haven't identified it yet.  That was exciting.

She watched a lot of Beakman's World this afternoon.  It was too hot to do much besides relax in the A/C.

She loves theheadoftheclass.com - most days she logs in and picks and chooses which activities to do.  Today she did one on punctuating sentences with commas.

It was a really busy day!

[SweetSilver]

6.5yo DD1 and I have been reading the Lord of the Rings steadily for several weeks.  I love that I can read it outloud with different voices, slowly and descriptively.  We have to read it in short bits because 4.5yo DD2 can get very impatient and disruptive.   Now we have reached halfway through the Battle of Pelennor Field, after the Lord of the Nazgul attacks Eowyn, and she can't wait to read more.  Well, good, BUT we had already read more than DD2 could stand and now DD1 is having a tantrum, very much like the over-excited tantrums we get right before Christmas.  This after the tantrums caused by the new toys they paid for from the dogsitting money they earned (worked their butts off for!)  We had a rough day.

     It's been fun to look up the archaic words we come across ("hythe", "byre", "sward") and others ("hauberk", "hilts", "helm", "rampart", "ram", etc.) so I've brought home a few books from the library on knights and castles to give her a way to visualize what she is hearing.  Today we found a picture of a siege tower.  This is all in line with her love of scary things-- sharks first, then whales, dinosaurs, any predator with big teeth really.  Now she loves dragons and monsters, especially the Balrog.  This is a nice change of pace because we read a lot of science books before, now we get to read some fiction.  I'm a bit worried that she will never let me read something sweet to her, like Charlotte's Web, again...

     Today, again, more rain.  When will we get a summer?  But they got the "scoots" out (bikes w/ no pedals) and rode splashing through the big puddles in front of the driveway all morning.

[zebra15]

DS is on an Alfred Hithcock kick right now.  He is also working on an essay contest and Theater Camp starts Monday.

In general we have been laying around practicing our relaxing skills most days.

[4evermom]

Yesterday, we had a family trip to Valley Forge.  Rumor had it that there were supposed to be more reenactors than usual so we were actually a bit disappointed.  But there was a fellow set up with a display of the surgery equipment used on the battlefield and we had his undivided attention.  Ds was full of questions though he thought the whole topic was gross:-)  It's a huge park and the website wasn't as helpful as we hoped so we had trouble figuring out where to be.  But ds did the junior rangers workbook and got his badge (and a patch) which pleased him.  He likes getting those from the parks we visit.

Today, I think he is going to play Starcraft while I do a yard sale.

[Attila the Honey]

Today we learned about a very common caterpillar disease - the black death. :(  DD had found a gorgeous, fuzzy, white caterpillar and a couple of days ago.  We identified it as a Virginia Tiger Moth caterpillar and found out  it eats grass and clover.  We had him for a couple days, but today he started turning black.  We googled and learned he has a fatal bacterial infection.  Everyone is very sad, especially dd.

We read about the first Olympics and the water cycle.  She did a workbook page on multiplication and another on silent letters.  She practiced cursive for awhile.  We read about the Tuskegee Airmen to get ready for tomorrow, when we will be meeting 3 of them and seeing a WWII fighter plane. (! so excited!) We read "The Tempest" from E. Nesbitt's "Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare for Children" to get ready for tonight - we will be seeing a version of "The Tempest" at a local college.  We watched "Walking With Cavemen" and then watched our Monarch caterpillar eat his milkweed for awhile.  

Right now she is playing in the sink with water and slabs of picture jasper.  When she's done we will go water our garden together and pick some greens for the pet bunny.  After the play tonight we promised her she could do sparklers and then we'd use the sky map to name stars.  We've been doing that every night, it's one of her new obsessions.

[NellieKatz]

That happened to us with our two monarch caterpillars. I think I was more devastated than my son. I had been at fault....I had (a) been stupidly "misting" the caterpillars' world, thinking that they needed the moisture (they don't---the moisture they need comes from the leaves that they EAT) and (b) between that and all their poop, it was too much for them. Poor little things. We (they) learned the hard way.

[TheJoyfulMom]

Today we were all up fairly early.  We watched some cartoons and ate dry cereal.  I had to rinse my DD10's hair because she slept with hot pink manic panic in.  DD12 went to her last day of drama camp- DH dropped her off because she wanted to go early so she could take a run with the dance teacher.  

DD10 and DS6's friends came over and they played at their creek fort for awhile. DD10 went sailing after lunch and we went out to watch.  She took her brother and 1yo cousin for rides in the bay.  

Then we had DD12's final performance of the summer.  Afterwards she went to spend the night with her friend and we came home and had chinese food for dinner.  DD10's BFF is spending the night, but DD10has a roller derby match in the morning so they both went to bed early-  I think around 10pm.  I was making cupcakes and working on her jersey at the time.

Between all the running around we managed to get 2 bins of Legos out as well as all of the outside toys.  :)  Before bed, DS6 watched an hour or so of iCarly and brushed all of the cats.  (We have 4.)  

We've spent most of the summer running around between sailing camp and drama-  today was the last day.  I'm looking forward to still doing cool stuff- but without the being in the car 4 times a day!

[xzaviers_mama]

DS1, 7, has been in public school for the last 2 years, and *might* be starting 2nd grade this fall.  I've been looking into our HS options here in WA, and really wanted to take the qualifying course type thing, but didn't get to the one offered in July.  I really think he would thrive as a HSer/USer, but I'm feeling very overwhelmed.  (I also have 2 other DS, ages 3 and almost 2, and one more DS due in October  )

I love being able to see what all of you USers are doing!

[moominmamma]

Yesterday ... 

My 17yo dd is on tour with Canada's National Youth Orchestra. She spent the day rehearsing Mahler's Symphony #5 with an orchestra of 106 other 16-to-28-year-olds and brushing up Shostakovich Symphony #15, Richard Strauss' Rosenkavalier a couple of modern pieces for performances today. She also managed to go for a run at 6:15 a.m. in temperatures hovering around 80F -- before the heat of the day struck. She's on the other side of the country from us and we hear from her every couple of days.

Where we live by contrast it has been very cold and wet. The kids were up late the night before playing music at an opening reception at a local gallery, so we got a late start on the day.

My 14yo ds spent most of the day watching movies. He's doing a sort of informal self-designed film studies course, watching his way through classic movies from the past three or four decades. He watches on the computer, supplementing with text and video interviews, reviews and research about the films, their directors and the settings and production. I'm not sure why he's so obsessed, but he's sure learning a lot. He came to supper wanting to talk about the Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes and Oliver Cromwell. He's also been sketching, photographing and photoshopping all sorts of neat things and sharing them with his friends via facebook. Some steampunk-style illustrations, some nature photography, some impressionistic digital painting. He did a couple of pencil sketches today and got some encouragement and feedback from friends on-line. Most of his friends live the better part of an hour away and he doesn't see them much in the summer, so I don't begrudge him his social media. 

Dd12 (who is considering attending school next fall) is currently on a big French-language kick. She's worked through the middle third of Rosetta Stone Level 1 in the past few days and probably spent a good three hours at it yesterday. (She's quite bummed that the school doesn't offer French -- in Canada! -- and she'll need to switch to Spanish in the fall.) She's learned to crochet and did up an 8" square yesterday, her third, for the Knit-a-Squillion charity project. She worked some more on building the cold-plunge pool in our creek, mowed our immense lawn, played Scrabble with her sister, invented a bunch on nonsense words and wrote out the definitions for "ideas which should have words to go with them," and helped make two dozen knitting needles for kids at a music camp next week.

Dd8 was out of sorts all morning while her sister was busy with French. She helped me bake some cookies and did a fair bit of moping. She knit a few rows on her current Knit-a-Squillion square, and read a bit from a novel from the Warriors series. Then, along with her sister she had a blast all afternoon playing / building in the creek, doing yard work, inventing words and playing Scrabble. She spent most of her evening sharpening, sanding, staining and oiling dowels to make knitting needles, and then creatively topping them with Fimo knobs.

All the kids practiced violin / viola in preparation for next week's music camp. 

Miranda

[Greenmama2]

Miranda I assume you mean the Rosenkavalier overture unless there is a young opera program running aside the orchestra? Weirdly my DD 5 used to love our Rosenkavalier DVD and developed a habit of running to get her dressing gown "robe" whenever guests arrived (from the opening scene, she didn't get what was going on but it was cute).
Today was Friday which DD dubbed "fry-day" almost a year ago and decreed we must eat pancakes for breakfast. Both littles usually help DH cook the pancakes but they were both in incredibly independent moods today so did most of the cooking themselves with DH monitoring safety. For some reason out slow combustion fire went out last night so we spent the better part of the morning clearing out ashes and getting it going. Again, DD and DS insisted on doing the bulk of the work themselves. The slow pancake process combined with the fire meant that we didn't eat breakfast till nearly 12. It was delicious though.
After some cleaning up and a lot of dithering about getting dressed we finally headed out into the glorious winter sunshine at about 2 pm. For a Homeschool park day that started at 12. Oh well. We stopped at a bakery to pick up some lunch and got to the park just before three. None of ur friends were there but DD was pretty thrilled to see a home schooled teen who performed in a community theatre play we saw a few weeks ago. So she spent some time being star-struck and admiring from afar. The littles both had a good play and we left as the shadows were starting to get too long and cold.
On the way back we stopped in at the deli that sells flavouring/preservative free ice cream and grabbed one each.
Once home DS and I had a long shower together and DD did a lot more fiddling with the fire (DH was working on his laptop in the lounge so on safety duty again ). Then they watched some online tv while I finished making dinner. After dinner DD got in the bath so DS hopped back in with her. Eventually he got out and fell asleep after two books and milk in bed. DD stayed in for ages as is her habit and eventually also got out, climbed into bed with me, listened to three short books and was almost asleep when DS woke to nurse. She doesn't like to go to sleep on her own, even just over the other side of a big family bed so she got up again and snuggled on DH's lap while he worked to fall asleep instead.
Not a "wow, what an awesome unschooling day" day, but I enjoyed it

[Ekatherina]

Hello all! ...we are also USs but with ds2 birth our life has been revolving around him, with kids learning "how to take care of newborn baby" course.......today kids went to kind of summer camp done by local church till noon, then done some planting with dh, and now ds1 went to his karate lesson and dd is running, playing around, trying to wake up ds2.......

Am currently working to open up our own educational center for kids, with all types of activities and to start an organization which will take care of all that....it's kind of difficult to gather the people but I am trying my best. Also tried to talk russian to kids, but was failing whole day, switching constantly to arabic...

[incorrigible]

oh, hey...I'll play. We'll call "today" starting at midnight...all 4 of us are on different sleep schedules right now.

Ds12 was up till about 3am mostly kibitzing at me about Not Back To School Camp. He will be old enough just before the last session this year, so he's going in Oct. The superiority complex he suffered from when he was younger has turned into an inferiority complex as he's approached his teens. The envy of his public schooled friends and family have convinced him for years that unschoolers are better, smarter, and more capable people than the rest. He's realized HE'S not some kind of superhuman...but he hasn't yet wrapped his mind around the idea that other unschoolers aren't either. lol He'll do fine and have a great time, but he was reading over the handbook and was hit by a wave of nerves. He woke around noon, took a bath, complained again that I STILL haven't bought more cottage cheese. He's had his headphones in and music blaring since he dried off, and has had his head in his DS all afternoon. He offered to make dinner tonight, so he'll start that around 6. We'll watch some family TV before dh has to be at work at 10. Then, ds will find himself drawn into some project or another until he gets sleepy.

Dd10 was also up late. She was using her "Disgusting Science" kit to take samples from her nose, mouth, feet, and armpits...to grow cultures in petri dishes...which she's storing in her bedroom (eeewwww). She fell asleep for a while but was up at 6am (really early for her) asking to watch last night's Colbert and Daily Show with me. We watched those, then had a power outage and had to find candles for the windowless bathroom...and calm the big chicken of a dog down. She eventually fell asleep and is STILL out cold. lol She'll wake up in time for dinner, watch a little TV with the family, then probably spend most of the evening practicing piano. We finally found a book she can work from on her own and she's inspired.

I have been up since about 9pm last night, and am oddly not tired yet. I'll probably catch a catnap in a bit and get to bed shortly after dh heads to work tonight. I expect a good deal of my prolonged energy is that it's such a mellow day for me. I don't have anywhere to go and have been taking care of bills and emails and stuff like that. I don't expend nearly as much energy just laying on the couch with a laptop as normal, you know? =)

[SweetSilver]

Wednesday is my lazy day after a huge day at work, but this day ended up none too lazy, which is a good thing.  The day started to get away from me when my 4.5yo wanted to cross the street with me to visit this year's stray kittens.  No big deal, I had my coffee.  I was still in my jammies but we live in the quiet corner of a small town.  No one to.....ooops....see me....except that neighbor.  Wave.  Be polite.  Pretend like this is No Big Deal going on a walk in my ripped up longjohns, ratty sweater and dh's fat old birkenstock gardening clogs several sizes too big.

It's a nice morning so we stay outside playing.  I'm drinking coffee, not doing anything because I cannot operate in the mornings.  Suddenly, the girls want to wash the car.  Not later. Now.  So I help them collect stuff, turn on the hose and let them wash the car.  At 8:30 in the morning.  Perfectly normal.  This is actually a good thing.  Aren't we unschooling parents trying not to insert ourselves into their projects until we're asked?  So we can resist the urge to make it ours?  I had no trouble this morning.  The project was all theirs to start and stop as they wished.  Finished drinking my coffee.

Next we have to drop everything and ride the bikes the 4 blocks to our little library because it's story day and their friend will be there.  Today it's about Egypt.  Odd, silly way to teach about Egypt.  "This is a mummy."  Ummmmm....no it's not; it's a mummy *doll*.  "Come see our Egyptian museum."  Ummmmm.... no it's not.  But at least the stories are good and their friend is there.

Then across the street to play at the park.  The girls are riding bikes on the new basketball court.  Wow!  My 4.5yo is getting really good on her bike sans pedals.  Five minutes later I hear my 6.5yo ask their friend to come play.  Okay....glad she ran that by me.  Sure enough, he's walking home holding my hand while the girls ride their bikes home.  His mom is coming in a couple of hours.  They went straight to the garden to snack on blueberries and peas, carrots and baby green beans.  Who says kids don't like vegetables?  Watered the garden, did an tots' Erector set project and soon enough his mom stops by to pick him up.  Beyond some tears at leaving such a fun toy, and with promises of a quick return we bid our best friend "goodbye".

[orangefoot]

This morning when I was working I noticed my 4yo standing by the edge of the door then measuring where she thought her head reached to with my sewing tape measure. My 8yo has been perfecting her fragranced water spray and changed the lavender flowers for stalks and flowers today to see if that kept the water from going green. So far so good....

We have been making patterns with a kids shape thing I bought earlier in the week and we've been taking pictures of the different patterns we've made. I had one as a child and loved it so I thought they might too. By 11am they were getting to the point of fighting over the 'puter  (watching Austin Powers on You Tube) so I gave dd8 the camera and suggested that she go in the garden and take photos of some red things. She came back with about 11 photos and we made a collage of them with photobucket. She then went out and did a blue series and we'll see what we can do with them tomorrow.

After lunch we went the nature reserve that is 5 minutes walk from our house for a talk and walk about ponds and pondlife. We discovered that the pond we know as the 'tadpole pond' has many more creatures than just tadpoles and we've learned some new creature names too. One of the ponds is currently quite dry but still sticky enough for dd4 to get her boot well and truly stuck in the clay much to the amusement of the older folks in the group. The children were so excited about the creatures we collected in the net and this infected the grown ups who probably ended up looking at more things and telling more stories than they would have had the children not been there.

We met friends at the walk so went to theirs afterwards for a cup of tea and for the kids to play. On the way home dd8 asks me who I think is more adventurous - her or her friend? Knowing the friend well, I say that of course dd is more adventurous and she says. 'Hm that's what I think but it's not what she thinks. She thinks I should go to school and be more adventurous' Oh the irony! Then she says that her friend has criticised her handwriting and spelling and doubted her reading. I have been trying to limit time with this friend as we always end up dissecting her criticism of dd after any meetings but dd is coming to terms with accepting their differences and liking the things she likes about her better, which is quite mature.

Tonight dd4 showed her brother than she can read Wacky Wednesday by herself and he humoured her kindly and listened carefully. She then had him read The Cat in the Hat to her which he hasn't read for years and had forgotten how tricky some bits of it are!

They played outside making hopscotch on the path with a little neighbour before it got dark then watched more Austin Powers and went to bed. I'm sure I'll be hearing 'Who does Number Two work for?' a lot tomorrow.

[Ekatherina]

yesterday was a disaster day I spent in bed, terrible stomachache and a headache. so today is the "clean up after yesterday's disaster" day. kids colored some pages I printed out from web, ds: animals, dd: hellokitty ...then we printed out flashcards in spanish from theheadoftheclass and make a little book from them. we'll practice the words later with dh in the evening. kids had light lunch and went to the swimming pool with dh and the summer camp group. in the evening we have friends coming over so have to prepare some supper. maybe we'll do norimaki, still thinking...