Our Month of August

If last month was all about dominoes and swim lessons, this month was all about baking and playing Monopoly. Tommy baked something nearly every day (and sometimes two or three times a day!) His 9 and 7 year old cousins are also baking a lot, and have started to give each other baking lessons. So far there have been two lessons. One day the boys went over to their cousins' house to learn how to make fudge, and another day the girls came to our house to learn how to make pretzels. 

We went to the San Francisco Zoo for our foster baby's 1st birthday. 

One of the many games of Monopoly played this month. 

We all venture to downtown San Jose once a week for our foster baby's visits with her bio-mom. We usually have lunch at Panera and then find a nearby park to play at. This time we found a giant Monopoly board at the park right next to The Children's Discovery Museum. The kids had a lot of fun pretending to be the pieces and moving around the board. 

Tommy got interested in RC cars this month and decided he wanted to get one. Our family rule is that if kids want toys, they have to earn the money to pay for them. He washed both our cars, vacuumed a few rooms, folded his baby sisters' laundry, did ironing, cleaned bathrooms, and lots of other chores around the house to earn the $30 to buy this car. 

Ben also earned a bit of money to buy this RC car. By some slick business dealing, he bought this car from Tommy for only $5. 

Reading time with little sister

Evening family walk. 

Other things we did that aren't pictured:

- Listened to Story of the World and some other audio books during our car trips

- Played lots of board and card games together

- Legos

- The boys found a renewed interest in drawing, and stayed up late many nights drawing pictures of King Kong and other creatures

- Playdates with friends

- Piano lessons

- Taekwondo lessons

- Read-alouds: Pinocchio, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Child's Story Bible

Our Month of July

July was a blur. Having a foster baby means lots of visitations, doctor appointments, medical professional house calls ... which all adds up to a very busy week. On top of that, the boys had swim lessons twice a week, there was a week of VBS, Mark worked late every night for a whole week, I went out of town for a weekend for a homeschool conference, then Mark went out of town for half a week. July really flew by!

Lucy turned 2:

More swim lessons

Trips to the library 

Quiet time fun with dominoes

Cookie making 

This is fun: Someone gave Tommy this car a while back. He's had a lot of fun with it. But then little sister got hold of it and broke the wheels. So Tommy decided to make it into a lowrider. Then he wanted to take pictures of it to make it look like a real car. 

The boys heard about Minecraft from somewhere and wanted to play it. They worked for a day to earn the money to buy the app. They have been loving it!

Our first full-day outing with all four kids. We visited Garrapata State Park and Monterey. It was a long day, but a really good day. :)

Mark stayed home with the girls one day while I took the boys to San Francisco. We went to The Exploratorium, drove down Lombard Street, ate some Haight Street pizza, and hung out at Golden Gate Park. It's hard to do all that with two babies! 

When we were at The Exploratorium, the boys participated in a Tinkering workshop. They loved it so much that we made our own tinkering space the next day. They have been gluing and constructing every since.

Our Month of June

Life got crazy this month because we got a new foster baby. We knew for a few weeks that we were picking her up near the end of the month, so we got all of our traveling out of the way beforehand. 

The boys got interested in Harry Potter towards the beginning of summer, so Mark has been reading that to them every night. They've read through the first two books and just recently started the third book. They are loving it!

We spent a weekend at Point Reyes:

We visited this Adventure Playground in Berkeley:

Lucy is chillin' in the bay while her brothers were at the playground

Mark and I spent four days in Monterey for our 10th anniversary. Our actual anniversary isn't until August, but that's okay. :)

Our new baby!

Piano practicing

Swim lessons

Tommy built this cool structure during quiet time one day:

The month of June was a complete blur, and July was pretty much the same way.

Week of June 2

Monday

Watched Mythbusters with Tommy in the morning. 

Lots of outside play.

Taekwondo.

Tuesday

Tommy and Ben got interested in domino toppling, so we watched several YouTube videos about it. We also learned about stick bombs, so we watched a few videos and tried to figure out how to make them ourselves. 

Math review worksheet.

Bide ride in the afternoon.

Wednesday

Watched Mythbusters with Tommy. 

More domino rallies. 

Started our Benjamin Franklin biography.

Piano lessons. 

Sidewalk chalk drawing with Ben. 

Taekwondo.

Thursday

Lots of outside play.

Friday
Point Reyes!

Week of May 26 + Weekend

Weekend
 Went to Point Lobos and explored tide pools. Did a lot of hiking and saw parts of Point Lobos we've never been to before.
Tommy was brave and let a tiny crab crawl on his hand. Mark caught a large crab and Tommy handled that as well.

Monday

Memorial Day. Went to our church BBQ and the boys played with their friends.
In the evening we had a picnic with family and the boys played with their cousins.

Tuesday

Playdate with a little friend for Lucy at my house 

Tommy made fortune cookies (he mixed the ingredients and I formed them). 

We listened to Story of the World during lunchtime, about mummies and King Tut. After lunch we watched a documentary about mummies on Netflix.
Went for a walk around town.
Tommy asked to make bread, so we mixed the dough. Will bake tomorrow.

Wednesday

Tommy baked 4 loaves of bread, mostly on his own.
Piano lessons.
 First day of Taekwondo, which the boys absolutely loved. (Tommy has been asking to take martial arts for over a year now). They are counting down the day until they can go back.
I went to the library with Lucy to pick out books for the boys. I found several comic book-style books, called Toon Books, that Ben likes, and lots of science books for Tommy. They must have liked what I got, because for the rest of the week I would find them huddled over one of their new books.

Thursday

Went to an end-of-schooyear party at a friend's house.
Finished our Thomas Edison biography. The boys are very interested in learning more about his inventions, so we are going to look up some YouTube videos to find out more.

Friday
Watched Mythbusters with Tommy, an episode involving car subwoofers (and shotguns, but that's not relevant...) He became very interested in how subwoofers work, so we watched a few YouTube videos about that.
Impromptu summer party at our house with some homeschool friends. Lots of water balloon fights, slip 'n slide, bubbles, and popsicles.
Found the boys reading books on their own a lot today!

Week of May 19th

This is our first official week of summer vacation. Not much has changed, though. The boys still have most of the day free to play and work on their projects. The only difference is they won't be working on math or handwriting until school starts up again in August. They are still taking piano lessons and practicing daily. 

 Monday

Mostly hanging out and not doing much. We went for a walk in the morning.
I played Super Mario Bros on the Wii with Ben.
After Monster Jam on Sunday, Tommy decided he wants an RC monster truck.
We read aloud from our Edison biography, a part where young Tom wants to buy chemicals for his laboratory, so he does jobs around the neighborhood to earn money. Tommy decided he wanted to do the same thing, so he washed my van to earn money towards his truck.

Tuesday

Outside play
Video games (new geometry and spelling games on my iPad)
Went out to lunch as a family with Daddy
Tommy made a mini monster truck race track out of dirt
Read aloud from Edison biography. Learned about slavery and the Underground Railroad.

Wednesday

Video games (too many, in my opinion!)
Outside play
Edison biography read aloud

Daddy finished reading Harry Potter aloud to the boys

Thursday

Exploratorium.
Watched some YouTube videos about learning basic Spanish.

Friday

Park day with homeschool friends
Watched Harry Potter for family movie night. We have a rule that we have to read the book before watching the movie. The boys seemed to appreciate seeing the story come to life on the screen. 

Monster Trucks

Last Sunday we went to a monster truck rally. That's within the realm of things I never considered part of my future. Tommy has always been interested in monster trucks and I've either tried to ignore it or passively try to talk him out of reading more monster truck books, with the thoughts 1) You've already read every book about monster trucks, can you finally pick something else to be fixated upon!? 2) There's nothing educationally valuable about monster trucks. They are just grown-up toys. 

But since I've been reading more about unschooling, I discovered the concept of feeding kids' passions. Not discouraging their passions because they aren't 'good' or 'educational enough'. I've been doing a lot of discouraging passions. I never say, "That's dumb, don't be interested in that", but I will just ignore it as much as I can, hoping it goes away. Lately I've been trying to be a lot better about being respectful of the boys' interests. So when Tommy asked to read more about monster trucks, because he'd already read all the books our library owned, we tracked down every book on the topic in the entire library district (thanks to inter-library loan). He looked up YouTube videos about monster trucks. He read articles about them on the internet. 

When I took a step back and looked at who my child is, I realized that Tommy has been interested in monster trucks ever since he was a baby. He's always gotten monster truck books from the library, even before he could read them. I've just dismissed it as "one of those boy things" that kids eventually grow out of. I never took it very seriously. But lately I've been trying to take their interests more seriously. I've been talking to them about the things they love and why they love them. I've been joining them in learning more about their passions. They love it when I take an interest in the things they love. :)

And so I had the idea to take Tommy to a monster truck show. Originally it was to be for his birthday, but there were only two shows happening, one in a few weeks (from when I started looking into it) and the next one wasn't until January 2015. We opted for the show in just a few weeks. 

Fast forward to the day of the show: Tommy was absolutely over-the-moon excited. He practically trembled with excitement and happiness at seeing the monster trucks drive around, do jumps, crash cars, and smash into things. I almost cried to see him so happy, his eyes alive at watching everything going on. 

I've truly learned that the things my kids are interested doesn't have to make sense to me. It doesn't have to be something I'm interested in. But it is worth it respect them as individuals and to join in with their interests and learn together. It is so worth it!

And then, the topic of educational value... Just in the past few days he learned about marketing, economics, math, advertising, geography, business ethics, not to mention suspension systems, aerodynamics, geometry, physics (force, mass, acceleration). I couldn't possibly have come up with a unit study of all these things if I tried. Tommy has learned so much just through his interest in monster trucks. 

Since the show, Tommy has watched more YouTube videos about monster trucks. We've learned about how the whole Monster Jam franchise works. He built a mini monster truck arena out of dirt for one of toy monster trucks. He decided he wants to buy himself a RC monster truck, so he's been doing chores around the house to earn money towards it. 

So much for monster trucks not being of any educational value.