Blending A Family of Dorks

One of the advantages of homeschooling is the ability to really engage in whatever is most interesting to the child being homeschooled. Davis has always been interested in anything to do with science and nature so when I saw a post on a Facebook homeschool group I'm a part of about a class on rocks and minerals, I immediately said we'd be there. This class was planned and scheduled by a fellow homeschool mom who has boys very close to the same ages as my boys so I knew this would be a great one for Davis and Tyrion.  Of course Davis got a lot more out of it than Tyrion but it was still fun for Tyrion to have the chance to touch and pick up a variety of different rocks and just be around other kids learning things at the same time. Between Davis and I we took a lot of pictures so I'm going to let them do most of the talking for us. First up are pictures of the tools used to mine rocks and crystals.  The kids each got to choose a few rocks from this bin ...

Earlier this week, Davis and I attended a program at one of the local public libraries on the topic of Native History and Culture in our area. It was presented by members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, Hoban Sanford (Many Walks), his sister Millie (Mother Wolf) and their cousin Sly Fox. A few things really stood out to me during the presentation, mostly that this is a portion of this country's history that is often overlooked or glossed over in schools. I don't remember learning very much about Native Americans in school beyond the fact that they were helpful to the pilgrims. I think it's important to study all aspects of history, not just the pleasant parts or the parts that make us feel good about our ancestors. The other thing that stood out to me was some thing Sly Fox said about why he no longer calls himself Native American. He said he has had discussions with other people who claim to be Native Americans as well because they were born in America, which sounds re...

This particular experiment was put together very quickly and was not a favorite for Davis. The end result was quite goopy and a little slimy,  he doesn't like handling things with that texture so definitely keep that in mind if you plan to recreate it at home. We found this experiment at Science Fun . They have a lot of fun looking experiments that we plan to try in the future so be sure to check them out if you like the ones we've done before. We'd love to hear what you think and get some new ideas for experiments to try so please leave a comment below.

As Tyrion is only 2, we are not doing any formal homeschooling with him yet, it is mostly free play. We have begun being more intentional about making sure he has a wide variety of learning opportunities though. We visit several libraries in the area but the one we consider our home library is the Haverhill Public Library, we spend a lot of time there because they have an great selection of books, a variety of programs for both kids, and an amazing staff. The Haverhill library has two different programs for Tyrion's age group on alternating Mondays. One week they do a lapsit story time with books, songs and some fun additions to keep the kids moving and interested. The opposite week they do a program called Little Explorers which is Tyrion's favorite. This program is always something different but it's all based on sensory play. They've done playdoh, textured balls, a variety of car tracks, wrapped things in aluminum foil for the kids to unwrap, water play and many ...

One of Davis' favorite subjects has always been science and in particular he loves hands on experiments so now that we're homeschooling, we plan to do a lot of these. Since he enjoyed creating the Neighborhood Nature Tour video , we decided to set up the camera while he did this cool experiment too. I actually saw a video of this experiment on Facebook before we did it and it was so simple that I didn't bookmark the video or website for the instructions however, I'm now seeing many variations on different science websites so we may have to revisit this one and see how the variations turn out. As always, please feel free to leave feedback with advice or new experiments you'd like to see Davis try. Thanks for visiting and viewing his videos!

Davis has been asking about being homeschooled for a couple years now and honestly it's something that I had looked into when he was still an infant but it just didn't make sense for our family until recently. Over the last 18 months, our family has been through many big changes including Matt's job loss and recovery from alcoholism, moving in with friends for 8 months, Matt making a career change, moving into our own apartment, Davis switching schools and many other more minor changes as well.  While some of these changes were very good and some not so good, all of this has been stressful and it has definitely taken it's toll on all of us. Davis in particular has never handled big changes as easily as some people seem to so all of this has sort of created a large amount of stress and anxiety for him. Couple that with the fact that he honestly gets bored easily in a traditional public school setting (through no fault of the public school itself or his teacher...

Davis recently recorded a series of videos that the edited along with pictures into a YouTube video guiding people through the nature he has found in our own neighborhood. While I held the camera and showed him how to use the editing software, he did all the actual writing and directing as well as the editing to create this video. We were really lucky to see a bald eagle and some smaller birds as well as some beautiful river views and we discovered a small creek nearby where we hope to see some other animals in the future. He had a lot of fun filming and editing this so hopefully we will be doing more of them in the future. We would love to hear what you think of this video and if you have any advice or topics for future videos.