November was a difficult month with lots of travel. The beginning of the month my husband was gone with two business trips of about 5 days each, then we had Thanksgiving with some family about an hour away from home, then we left for California at the end of the month! Definitely crazy, and I wouldn't want to do it again, but at least some fun memories were had.
The Fall was surely apparent this month! We had a lot of fun being outdoors and enjoying the radiant colors of the leaves changing. We've joined a meet-up group that meets weekly for nature walks around the Seattle area, and we've enjoyed trying new parks even if it is getting pretty cold this time of year. Here are some pictures of our time at Discovery Park:
We've also enjoyed hanging around our closer parks. We love Twin Ponds park with its arboretum, community garden, playground, and of course its twin ponds!
Another park we tried with our meet-up group was Coal Creek Trail in Bellevue. We were hoping to see some old mining equipment, but were disappointed. We did find a mine shaft, and the trail was lovely. It was a bit of a drive though so I probably won't go there again.
Buddy with the mine shaft
We also renewed our Museum of Flight membership. They opened their new Space exhibit this month, and it looks really neat. We went on opening day so we didn't brave the 1+ hour lines to go inside the space shuttle training facility, but now that we are members, we can go again!
We do stay home on occasion too! We've had lots of leaves to rake, bread to bake, homeless packets to make, and Christmas goodies to prepare.
Playing the backyard
Making bread
Making Homeless Packets
Cinnamon Ornaments
A Christmas gift for the Grandparents of a lot of the art the boys have made this year.
Another meet-up nature walk was at Carkeek to see the salmon spawning. Sadly, we only saw dead fish, and it was so cold that we went home early. However, we tried again a week later when Daddy could go with us, and we were able to actually watch the salmon jump upstream. It was so amazing.
Our first trip wasn't as exciting
Here is one of the salmon we saw on our second visit
We also did a few things in our home preschool to celebrate Thanksgiving. We read Eric Metaxas's book on Squanto, played with paper Pilgrims and Indians, decorated our hearth, and put up a Thanksgiving tree.
We had a lovely Thanksgiving with Phil's family down near Puyallup. We then spent few days at home before heading down to California for a wedding on December 1st - but as that is in December, it will have to wait until another post!
N will be taking Geometry this year. A Little Bit of Background His last year was split between taking his first semester of Algebra I at the local middle school as an 8th grader and his second semester being homeschooled. Khan Academy was a fantastic resource for him to make sure that he didn't have any gaps in his learning. We also used IXL to supplement. He took a math diagnostic right when we started homeschooling, and then took the personalized lessons to make sure he wasn't missing anything from even earlier math. N likes math, but it isn't an obsession for him like it is for his brother. I'm a huge fan of the Art of Problem Solving's courses especially since we loved their elementary series, Beast Academy, when they were younger. However, AoPS is extremely rigorous and expensive if you take their online courses, so they are better suited for students who want to focus a lot of their attention on math. However, they do have a FREE online learning platform for...
Hello! Welcome to my blog. What you will find here are my attempts at sorting through my ideas and implementation of homeschool curriculum and activities that I have pursued with my own two boys. The Beginning I began this blog in 2008 when my oldest was only a year old. It began as a family blog chronicling our adventures as a young family in Seattle. We decided early on that we wanted to homeschool our two sons. Honestly, now, I don't remember why we decided to do that, but we did it nevertheless. We began teaching our children as soon as they could walk and talk. We made many mistakes along the way and so learned to follow the lead of our children in what they were interested in. We focused on delight-directed learning with a lot of outings and fun things to do. When things got rough, we learned to adapt and switch things out. Moving To Thailand In 2015, our family moved to Thailand. We started another blog for our time there, but alas it was not a good fit for us. We had int...
Overview of Mexico Videos 10 Facts about Mexico (we skipped the folklore section) Flag Worksheet Children Just Like Me book Map Coloring Page Geo-Puzzle America Food: Tortillas and Salsa! Pyramids Mexico Pyramids Pyramid Book Make a Lego Pyramid Art: Make an Ojo de Dios (this was a HUGE hit) Frida Kahlo How to Draw Frida Kahlo Body Cast Printable Art History Lesson and Printable Things we didn't do at school, but could be fun: Make Aztec Hot Chocolate Tons of resources here Mexico Unit Study Math: Mayan Numbers The Dawn of Numbers Mayan Counting Worksheet Science: Monarch Butterfly Migration Life Cycle and Migration to Mexico Song Monarch Butterfly Release Butterfly Symmetry Art More Mayan Info: Hour long video on Mayan Code by NOVA Mayan Glyphs explained Mayan Math Game Archaeology Game featuring the Mayans Another game (costs money) with a lot of worksheets ...
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