January Homeschooling Adventures – To China and Back Again

Although I’ve always known we’d be on the path to homeschooling, this year we really got down to business and made a commitment to this way of life. Our kids Luca (age 7), Rose (age 5) and Remi (age 2) explore life and learn every day through reading, imagination, play, and time spent together and with our community. We are documenting our experience here. Enjoy!

This month we are studying China… but before heading to the other side of the world, here we are exploring the incredibly beautiful Mushroom Rock State Park in Kansas. I explored these rocks many-a-magical-time growing up and it was delightful to see my kids and their cousins finding that same magic among the majestic prairie rocks.

img_7470 img_7469 img_7502 img_7499 img_7483 img_7475

…on to China! Here is our dragon for the Chinese New Year in the making:

img_7591 img_7590 img_7593 img_7601 img_7605

The kids filmed me doing a dragon dance:

The kids loved the idea of creating a Chinese garden with all of the traditional elements present: a building, water, a bridge (Lego of course!), flowers (fake, but look pretty good!) and trees (branches snapped off of our Magnolia tree).

img_7613 img_7614

Can’t do China without noodles!

noodles

We are so lucky to have family around us who are happy to lend a hand in our homeschooling exploration – here is Aunt Mary sharing Chinese numbers with us – Rose trying out some number writing on the Buddha board!

img_7584 img_7587 img_7586

Luca capturing some Chinese characters in his journalimg_7567 img_7568 img_7569

We also enjoyed a wonderful morning with Meme and Grandpa Bill – diving into pictures and stories from their travels in China and family history (Sandy’s great grand parents spent a good deal of time in China and Sandy’s grand mother was born there).

img_7550

Sampling some traditional teaimg_7572

Sandy’s Aunt Eleanor and her mother (the kid’s great great grandmother) in Chinaimg_7573

Hand painted bottles from Meme and Grandpa Bill’s travelsimg_7563

We had a wonderful Chinese New Year party! Here is the invitation:

img_3662

Rosie’s Chinese princessimg_3703

Luca has really been enjoying The Magic Tree House series and this one seemed fitting!img_3609

Some other lovely books that we found at the library. Our favorite was The Story About Ping of course!img_7630

A section of Rose’s world princess puzzleimg_7580

Luca’s collection of dragon paper air planesimg_7578

Also this month we’ve touched a bit into Exploring Nature with Children – especially enjoying reading the poems and looking up the artwork that is paired with each week.

img_7521

Luca spent about 30 minutes whittling with his pocket knife on a little willow branch. But I could hold this memory in my mind’s eye forever…img_7536 img_7535

Checking out the winter beach – always magical finds.icey-beach

Enjoying a brief hike up into the Northumberland forest with the whole family.

img_3697 img_3678

Some other lovely books we enjoyed:

books

My boy band:drums-and-guitar

Loved this moon phase craft that we did at our library hour:img_3667

Rosie playing the addition, subtraction gameimg_3591

Our usual:img_7530

There is maybe nothing better that Luca likes creating then weaponry! Thank goodness for duct tape!img_7526 img_7528 img_7524 img_7523

Flags are also always a hitimg_7520

Remi checks out our growing rocks that Aunty Lua gave us for Christmas – they turned out so beautiful!img_7594 rock-crystals

Another great library project – mini constellation peek holesimg_7574

Rose loves to take pictures on my phone:roses-photots

Save

Save

Save

Save