Theme Days!

I love homeschooling. I love being with our kids all day. I love watching them learn new things. I love seeing them help and teach each other. I didn't love that we had gotten stuck in a boring pattern. We kept doing the same routine everyday. Which is ok if your not me. I need fun and excitement and that's the reason we decided to homeschool in the first place (well, there were lots of reasons). Letting the kids choose what they wanted to learn about and have fun doing it were big ones. So we are changing it up a little and spending some days just learning about one thing. The first theme day we had was Eagle Day on March 15th. It was great! We read books about eagles in our actual sized eagle nest made out of blankets, (which is 8-6 feet across by the way!) watched eagle videos, and acted out hatching and flying and catching prey. We even made eagle cookies and had an eagle sighting in our backyard. Since then we've done theme days on St. Patrick, and polar bears, and last week we studied all about weather. This week we are learning all about Shakespeare and reading the kid versions of his plays by Lois Burdett. Hurray for fun! Also, Peter bought me an ipad, so the kids are really motivated to finish their work because the first one done gets to play on it until lunch.

St. Patrick's Day was fun for two reasons. Learning about St. Patrick (which we'd actually been doing since the beginning of the month, but mostly for my own curiosity) and Irish traditions. We had Dubblin Coddle for dinner - it was delicious! And Dada decided it was the day to get our new baby chicks!

This time we went to Dell's to get sexed chicks. And each kid picked out their own chick and named it. Eben got a Buff Orphington he named Tiny II, Kivi got a Rhode Island Red she named Dotty. Dada and Berg share Friar Tuck also a RIR. Jasper chose a Black Sexlink he named Jasper, but now calls J.J. Opal has a Golden Sexlink called Pokey. Mama has a Barred Rock named Rocky. We'll see how many of these live or are actually hens. So far they are much healthier than our last batch.

A guy offered to take our picture outside of Dell's and I'm so glad he did. I love this one!

The chickies live in the fireplace for now, like the last batch did, and we get to see them and hold them all the time. Now we just have to wait - hopefully not 8-9 months this time for eggs!