We have family scattered all over the country, so Anna often asks what state so-and-so lives in.  I decided a month or so ago to slowly introduce her to the states and try to give her the basic facts about each one.  I’m sure she won’t retain a lot of it, but she’s enjoying the activities that we’ve done so far for the two states we’ve done.  Prior to starting, I emailed family asking them to send postcards for any state they go to, and to try to find one that has the state name on the front of it.  We already have a bunch of postcards that we’ve received (mostly thanks to my parents who travel a lot) that are ready to go when we do future states.

I created a binder, as you can see in the photo above and just put a simple map of the U.S. in the front of it.  Each time we start a new state I’ll let Anna color that state in.  You can see that so far we’ve done Tennessee (where Grandma lives!) and New York (where Auntie Em, my sister, lives!).  I didn’t get a photo, but we also locate the states on our globe so that she can see the scale of the states compared to the rest of the world.  She’s actually pretty good at remembering locations on maps or globes and knows the locations of several of the states already.

Inside the binder, we started with Tennessee.  Here’s our cover page with the postcard that Grandma sent of the TN Aquarium, a place that Anna LOVES.

She did several coloring sheets over the course of a few days.  The first one is just of the state and also shows the capital city in there somewhere.  We go over the capital a few times in hopes that it maybe gets stored in the back of her brain for a few years from now.  :)

The first of these next two I found on Crayola’s website.  They have one for each state that shows the state flag, and then a couple of other pictures of the state bird, state flower, state butterfly, state motto, or a variety other things.  I love these.  There are also flash cards that you can print at the bottom of that linked page.  I might print those out later down the road.  The second page is just another that shows Tennessee’s state flower (Iris) and bird (Mockingbird).

We also did a little lesson on Davy Crockett who hails from Tennessee.

Anna’s next state of choice was New York, since her Auntie Em lives there.  We received two postcards from New York so she glued those down and wrote “New York” on the cover page.

Here’s our state coloring page, and you can see that Anna likes things very colorful.  She couldn’t just color the state in a single color…and then when she was done she decided to continue and decorate the rest of the page…

Here are her other three coloring pages.  The first one from that Crayola site happens to show the state fossil (a Sea Scorpion).  Did you know states have a designated state fossil?  No?  Neither did I.  And I bet you’ve never seen a fossil as colorful as this one!

And then another of the state flower (Rose) and state bird (Bluebird).  In case you can’t read it, these tell you the colors to color each part of the flower and bird.  She actually read the colors and followed directions, which doesn’t always happen.  She is 4 (almost 5!) after all.  :)

Along with the coloring sheets, I want to sometimes cook something specific to each state and find some books at the library that have to do with the state.  As we go through I’m sure we’ll end up finding other fun activities (other than just coloring pages) to do with them.  When we’re finished we should have a big binder that she’ll be able to look back through, which I think will be pretty cool.

To finish off this blog post, here’s a tissue paper rainbow she made today, which has absolutely nothing to do with this post about learning the states, but it turned out looking pretty good.

Even though Anna knows her colors and a couple of the color mixes, I thought it would be fun to have her do a little “experiment” so she can see exactly what happens when we combine two colors. When I first set up the glasses and mixed the food coloring into the water she was pretty excited and very intrigued. She wasn’t quite sure what we were going to do.

I gave her a piece of paper with 6 circles on it and labeled the paper “Color Wheel.”  I had her color in the first three circles to match the colors in the glasses and then attempted to explain about primary colors and how those three colors are used to create every other color out there (except for the grayscale colors).

Then we mixed the first two colors of her choice, BLUE:

…and YELLOW:

Seriously, the look on her face was awesome.  She was completely amazed that these two colors mixed together would turn green like that.  It was like magic to her.

After that I had her color in green on her color wheel between her yellow and blue circles.  The next colors she chose to mix were red and yellow.  These didn’t work so great because I think the red was a little overpowering.  It was just light enough though that Anna saw that they created orange (which is one she already knew).

Orange was colored in on the color wheel.

She then mixed the last two colors: red and blue…

…and she promptly stated, “Look Mommy! Red and blue make black!”  Hmm..  It was a little dark.   I think my blue was too blue maybe?  I’m not sure.  I held it up to the light and she said, “Oh. It’s dark purple!” So those two colors didn’t work so great either.  I’m glad we started with the green though since that one turned out perfect.

She then finished her color wheel and VOILA! She now knows the primary colors and the three colors they make when combined.

We then completed our colorful day and made some big crayons in a mini-muffin pan using bits and pieces of old crayons:

Overall, great lesson, she really enjoyed it and she now has some new big crayons to color with.  It was a very colorful, rainbow-like day..which is gearing us up for her upcoming “Rainbow Brite” themed birthday party in a week and a half.

About three years ago in my first or second semester of school I had to write a big argumentative research paper and got to choose from a list of topics. I had to pick a topic, choose a side, research, research, research, and do this big paper plus a video presentation. It was a little daunting since I HATE to write (which I’m sure you can tell by how often I actually post on here…) so I decided to go with what I thought was the easiest topic: “Homeschooling.” I chose to write AGAINST homeschooling because I thought it would be so easy to use the socialization angle to talk about why homeschooling is a really bad idea.

So I researched and researched and read many, many articles for and against homeschooling. And then something strange started happening. I began to think that maybe homeschooling wasn’t such a bad idea. The more I researched, the less information I could find that would support my stance. I was finding more reasons that homeschool is a good thing, a GREAT thing, and just couldn’t find much to support my own argument…and what I did find didn’t seem good enough, or wasn’t supported enough. So, I changed my stance and started over and did a pro-homeschool research project.

That project really opened my eyes to the world of homeschooling. I’d never really thought too much about it other than the most common arguments you hear out there: How can you properly socialize your child if they’re not in school? Won’t they turn out weird? What if you completely screw your kid up? How can you teach them everything they need to know? Those were pretty much my arguments against homeschooling going into that project. After completing the project I had a new found respect for parents who homeschool. Even though Anna was only around two at the time and we weren’t even thinking about school of any sort, homeschooling her became a very small blip on my radar.

Over the past 2-3 years I’ve read a lot, A LOT, about homeschooling in books, on the internet, in magazines… It seems to have started becoming more mainstream. A lot of families are homeschooling these days for various reasons. There is such a huge wealth of information out there, especially on the internet, about homeschooling. I read several homeschooling blogs on a regular basis and have learned so, so much. Dan and I decided a year or so ago that homeschooling might be a good option for Anna. I’m almost finished with school to actually be a teacher so I feel more than qualified. I stay at home with her so I have the time. And she’s a smart cookie. I want her to excel and I fear that she’d be bored in a regular classroom.

We decided to start a trial run at the beginning of August to see how well I’d be able to work with Anna on a regular basis. Anna isn’t eligible to start Kindergarten in public school until NEXT fall since she has an early fall birthday (WA’s cutoff is August 31st), but she’s been reading for almost a year now, can do very basic math, count well past 100, etc…so who knows where she’ll be in a year. She’s going to be way ahead of a lot of her peers in a regular Kindergarten classroom. So we’ve been trying the homeschool thing and I’ve been fairly consistent, getting in about 3-4 days a weeks for at least an hour or two of some kind of school “work”. Really, I’m trying to keep it fun right now so a lot of her “work” seems like play to her, which is what she needs.

Just in the past couple of weeks Dan and I decided that homeschooling is definitely the path we want to take. Anna’s doing great with it and I’m amazed how much I’ve taught her just in the past month and a half. She’s enjoying it, and so am I. I’m still trying to get into some kind of groove with it, but from what I’ve read it could take awhile. So, we pulled Anna out of her preschool class and enrolled her in the homeschool P.E. group at the YMCA, which starts next week.

Why did we pull her out of preschool? It just didn’t seem necessary and we’d like to save that money. Really the only reason she would attend would be for the socialization aspect but she can get that elsewhere and gets plenty of it.

How will we ensure that she’s fully socialized? If you’ve met my daughter you know she’s pretty much a social butterfly. She’s never been clingy and is always trying to make friends. She goes to gymnastics twice a week and will do the homeschool group at the YMCA twice a week. She also sees our friends kids on a really regular basis. I am not worried in the least about her socialization. Not. In. The. Least.

Do I have a problem with public school? Not really. I just think at this point it’s not for us. I realize things could change in a year, but if Anna were in a public school right now I don’t think she’d do all that great. I think she’d be completely bored and then would probably act up and not pay attention. Also, I’d like to protect her and keep her as innocent as possible for as long as possible. Schools aren’t like they were when we were kids. Some of the things you hear about happening are scary. I don’t want to keep her in a bubble forever, but maybe for a few more years. :)

So that’s the new path we’re on. Homeschooling. I’ll try to blog about it and am going to attempt to update this thing more often with our homeschool activities and projects we’re working on.

Sorry this was long…when I get going it’s hard to stop typing sometimes.

I took a bunch of video the other day of Anna practicing gymnastics at home.  I was testing out the HD video on my new, AWESOME Droid X.  I think it did a pretty good job.  This is the quality AFTER I converted from 3gp (the file type of the video on my phone) to mpg and then ran it through my video software to put it all together.  Not bad, eh?

Our garden is finally producing!  We’ve been getting strawberries for awhile, picked our first few cherry tomatoes a week or so ago and I just picked the first squash today!  Hopefully it’ll taste ok.

I took a bunch of photos at the end of July but I never updated here so I’ll show where the garden was then and then show how it’s grown SO MUCH in the last month.  It wasn’t really growing much into the beginning of July, but then I went on vacation for 2 weeks, came back and it had grown exponentially.  I guess maybe that means I really don’t have a green thumb…since it grew so much while I was gone..  Anyway, here’s how the garden looked on July 30th.  The cherry tomato plant is on the left, the larger tomato plant is next to it, there’s pumpkin and strawberry plants behind those.  The tall thing in the back right corner is supposedly a raspberry plant, but I’m not too sure…and then in front of that are two squash plants.

Here’s how the garden looks today (with much better lighting), almost a month later:

See how much it’s grown?  Crazy.  The big one in the middle is the large tomato plant (can’t remember the name of those tomatoes..  “Big 100″ or something??).  To the left of that is the cherry tomatoes.  The squash plants on the right are huge.  My raspberry plant is crazy.  It grew straight up taller than the 6′ fence and then it started bending over.  I think if I straightened it out it would be about 9′ tall.  I couldn’t get a full picture of it, but my pumpkin plant is INSANE.  You can see one end of it sticking out in front of the squash plant.  I planted it right behind the cherry tomato plant.  It is now going in 4 different directions and is in the shape of an X.  Each of the 4 directions is about 10-15′ long.  It’s taking over my garden.  I may have to trim it back.  A lot.

I didn’t really get any of the full tomato or squash plants today but here’s some of the produce from those.

This is our first squash that we picked!  I’m going to cook it up tonight and see how it tastes.

A couple more of baby squash (click for larger image):

Tomatoes from the big tomato plant (click for bigger):

Cherry Tomatoes (click for bigger):

A few strawberries we picked.  They are SO YUMMY.

Here’s part of the pumpkin plant.  Hopefully we’ll get a pumpkin before Halloween..

Last but not least…the crazy raspberry plant.  My dad thinks it’s not a raspberry plant.  I’m thinking maybe not either.  I believe he has one and it’s more like a bush.  This one just keeps growing up and up and UP.  Here it was on July 30th:

…and here it is today.  Unfortunately I just took a pic of the top of it, but you can see that it started sprouting things from the side and is bent over at the top.

So there you go.  Our garden is growing!  It’s so exciting to be able to pick the produce and eat it.  I think we’ll do a lot more next year now that I know we can actually grow stuff.

I forgot to mention in my last post…  In all the biking Anna has done in the last two days, the only fall she’s had was when she had stopped her bike and was standing with it by a curb.  She leaned over and the front wheel turned causing her to fall and scrape her knee.  She has yet to actually fall while she’s riding which I think is awesome.  :)

Well, we’ve reached another big milestone in Anna’s short life. As the blog title not so subtly hints, Anna is now riding her two wheeler bike with NO TRAINING WHEELS! We tried to take them off a month or so ago but she really just didn’t get the whole balance thing. She was really dependent on those training wheels. Our friends, Andre and Mary, have been been staying with us while they’re in between houses and they have “no pedal” bikes for both of their kids. Anna really liked riding her friend, Olivia’s, and she very quickly figured out how to balance on it. Here’s a video of her riding it down our street:

She was getting to where she could ride for pretty long distances without putting her feet on the ground so I thought we’d give the no training wheels thing another try.

Yesterday, I took her to a big, empty parking lot since it was a gorgeous day out. She practiced for a bit on the “no pedal” bike and then we got her bike out. I got a really good workout running along beside her the first few times. Initially I gave her a big push and put my hands on her just enough to keep her balanced. Once she realized that she could stay balanced as long as she kept her speed up, I just ran along side her, just in case, and then helped her stop at the end of the long straightaway that we were going down.  After maybe 5 or 6 long straight rides, she finally figured out how to brake using her hand brake.  I ran with her a couple more times (See?  A GREAT workout!) until I was confident that she could stop on her own.  I still had to help her get started as neither of us could really figure out how to get her going by herself, but once started she could ride around for a long time.  By the end of our hour or so in the parking lot she was able to ride all around everywhere, in circles, around curves and she was stopping really well too.  Here’s a video in the parking lot.  It’s a little “bumpy” because I apparently can’t walk and video at the same time…..

Later, after we got back home from her gymnastics class she wanted to go back out on her bike.  She kept telling me how much she loves riding her bike, that it’s so much fun!  We went up to an almost empty street with a cul-de-sac and she rode around there for a good 45 minutes or so.  She didn’t like riding on the sidewalks to get to that street because they’re too narrow, but she’ll get used to them eventually.  By the end of our trip to the cul-de-sac she was even able to get going all by herself too!  Here’s another video.  There’s a shot of her getting started by herself towards the end of the video.  And this one is MUCH better than the last one since I was able to stand still to video..

Pretty awesome, huh?  I certainly think so.  Today we went out again this morning and she rode around that cul-de-sac again and we went down a couple of other empty streets as well (so that she could stay riding on the street since she isn’t as crazy about sidewalks).  She’s pretty confident on the bike already and has gotten pretty consistent at getting started by herself.

The one thing I’m sad about is that Dan wasn’t here to watch her ride the bike without training wheels for the first time.  I took her out not really expecting that she was going to get it so quickly.  Dan was out camping with a friend, but he got back tonight and Anna was SO excited for him to watch her ride her big girl bike.  He was so proud of her and I can tell he’s excited to turn her into his little mountain biking buddy.  Towards the end of the evening when she was riding outside she was even starting to stand up and pedal a little.  I think she’ll be riding the trails with Daddy in no time.

Here are a few more photos from yesterday.  Click on all of the photos in this post for larger versions.

And you know, sometimes you just gotta stop and make a phone call…

Riding off into the sunset…sorta..

I really believe that the key to her learning balance on her bike was riding that “no pedal” bike for a few days.  Granted, she’s always had really good balance, but I do believe that helped her body understand how to lean on the bike to keep it upright.  I think that we will forgo training wheels altogether with our next kid (whenever we make the decision about having one..) and start them off with one of these “no pedal” bikes and then go straight to a two-wheeler when they’re ready.

What a great milestone though.  I’m so proud of Anna and she LOVES riding without her training wheels.

While we were in Victoria a couple of weeks ago we went to Butchart Gardens.  Even though the roses weren’t in bloom yet, and it was kind of rainy, everything was still so gorgeous! I loved taking photos of all the flowers and Anna even had a good time too.  She loves flowers so she was in heaven.  Here are a couple of collages so I don’t post a zillion photos.  Click on each for a larger version.  Click here for the full album of photos.

Here’s a garden update..  I never did finish weeding.  My excuse is that I am not getting enough plants to fill the space so it’s just going to fill up with weeds again.  It’s a lazy excuse, I know…but that’s basically why I haven’t finished it.  I did, however, get some plants in the area that I weeded, with the help of my mom!  Here are some photos:

Here’s a photo of the whole area.  The plants from left to right are: 2 strawberry plants, 2 different tomato plants, a raspberry plant…in front of the raspberry plant are 2 squash plants.  In front of the strawberry plants is a little pumpkin plant that I don’t think will survive.  I think something has been eating the leaves.  There was a cucumber plant to the left of the squash plants but it got trampled by little feet…

The strawberry plants:

..and we even have little strawberries sprouting up already!

The tomato plants.  One produces normal size tomatoes and the other produces cherry tomatoes…but I can’t remember which is which.

Raspberry plant:

Squash plants…looks like something may be eating these leaves:

Then we also have a little area against the back of our house that has a bunch of flowers, thanks to the previous owners.  There are two rose bushes and they’re just starting to bloom.  There are also some other flowers that I’m not sure of.

The rose bushes:

A rose and a couple of buds:

Some of the other flowers:

Anna was a big help helping me water:

More garden updates when the fruits/veggies start growing!

Anna started writing her first story today.  However, once she was done with the first sentence she decided that she’d write the rest another day.  She has a good start though!

(Click to see a larger version.)

I explained about using capital letters as the first letter of the sentence and for names, reminded her to put a space between words and told her that we put a period at the end of the sentence….other than that she did the rest.  I obviously did not help her with spelling.  ;)  We need to work on her lowercase “e” and her “S/s” but she does pretty good with the other letters.  In case you need a translation, her sentence says “Ariel and Cinderella went to see Aurora.”  (Aurora is Sleeping Beauty for those not all caught up on their Disney Princesses.

Here’s another picture Anna did today of a Bird.  I was very impressed and thought she did a good job!  She’s just starting to branch out from drawing simple people.

(Click to see a larger version)

She tried to write “Bird and Anna” but for some reason put the “d” in “and” on the left instead of the right.  Not bad though!  I was pretty impressed that she actually put the “e” in “Berd” (Bird) instead of just spelling it “Brd”.  She’s learnin’!