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Traveling and Living Math with Navigation

Little Buddy and his Daddy have had some special time during this first portion of our RV trip. Little Buddy has acted as our navigator. We created another binder for this trip as I discussed in a previous post, How to Survive a Five-Hour Road Trip. He has utilized his book as we have traveled to help his Daddy about campgrounds, directions, etc.


We did have to veer just a bit of track when one of the members in our RV group has some difficulties. Then, we just switched Little Buddy to paying attention to the navigation system in our RV. He would check to tell his Daddy how many more miles to the next turn and the name of the major roads.

When our trip first started, he kept asking the dreaded question of "how much longer?" Fortunately, my husband has the patience of Job and the ability to redirect our son to make it a learning experience. So his reply, "Let's figure it out." Little Buddy was surely engaged in the game with that challenge.

Together, they have calculated:

- distance

- time

- speed

Have you tried any specific living math activities while you are traveling? If so, please do share. We always need to add more to our idea bank.

Giveaway! Shakespeare Can Be Fun!

Our Homeschool Home is hosting a giveaway. We are so excited about the current book that we are reading, Hamlet for Kids, that we are giving a copy away! When I ordered the other books in the series for Little Buddy, I ordered another copy of Hamlet for Kids from Amazon to giveaway on our blog.
All you have to do is enter a comment. We'll pick a winner next Tuesday and get you your copy to enjoy! We would also love for you to follow along with us on our many adventures. You just never know what we'll be up to next.

Lightening Bugs and Fairy Tales

Driving through Illinois on our was to OshKosh we have enjoyed the most amazing scenery. Little Buddy has been so impressed with the farms of corn and soybeans, the beautiful barns, and the windmills. Being from the south, we enjoy seeing farms, but our farms are very different from those in the corn belt.

Last night as we were pulling into our campground for the night, we could see what seemed like millions of twinkling lights across the soybean fields. Now, we have plenty of lightening bugs in the south and certainly enjoy chasing them on our farm even. But never in my life have I seen so many lightening bugs in one place. It honestly looked like a fairy tale.

Little Buddy and I imagined that it was where Tinkerbell and her fairy friends lived. We made up very imaginative stories about those fairies and all the fun things they were doing in that soybean field. Our story continued for a long while. Little Buddy even asked to sleep with the front curtain to the RV opened so he could watch them as he fell asleep.

For real information on lightening bugs (or fireflies), check out this website. For today, we'll continue our fairy tale story.

Reading Now: Hamlet for Kids

This week's read-aloud is Hamlet for Kids, by Lois Burdett of the Shakespeare Can Be Fun! Series. This is the first in the series we have read. Since Little Buddy is 7, I was a little concerned that he might not really enjoy these books. Boy, was I wrong! He absolutely adores it.
He has really gotten into the story of The Ghost of King Hamlet, Prince Hamlet, Queen Gertrude, and the evil King Claudius. The suspense and intrigue of the story have captured and held his attention.
The illustrations in the book are completed by children from about 6 - 10. There are also summaries written by children of the same age. These have also gotten Little Buddy excited to see what other children drew and wrote about the story.
The only drawback - I only wish I had ordered and had on the hand for the trip more in the series. I have already gone online to Amazon and ordered more in the series: MacBeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing. They should be at my house when I get there. These are exactly the books I want Little Buddy to really enjoy reading.
Have you read a similar series of books that you would recommend to us?

Excursion to Dairy Farm

Today, we took an excursion on our RV trip to OshKosh. We visited Fair Oaks Farm in Indiana. The visit was so educational and all 15 people in our group thoroughly enjoyed the visit.

The most amazing part of the entire trip was being able to watch the birthing of twin calves. I was originally a bit apprehensive about the questions that might come from Little Buddy in observing this part of life. Then, I decided that we have animals on our farm. So, surely, we could handle questions about a cow's birth. Oddly enough, his questions were very well asked and were:
- Does it hurt the mother cow?
- When will the baby start walking?
- Since they are twins, why don't they look alike?

Simple enough to answer. Whew, that bullet was dodged. This time.

Weekly Wrap-up: Week 5 - Curriculum

This week for our Weekly Wrap-Up, Kris at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers has asked for us to share our Curriculum ideas. I love this idea! I love to see what curricula other parents have chosen for their homeschools. I also love to hear experiences that parents have had, both the good, bad and down right ugly, about each.
When I was researching homeschooling and still "on the fence," I traveled the blogosphere searching high and low for any information that I could find on what was "the best." What else would do? Of course I had to find "the best" for my child. Why else would I even consider homeschooling.
The more I read, the more I studied, I discovered there is not one "best" out there. It really depends on you and your child. Now, there are some very good highs and there are some very bad lows. Here is how I narrowed my selections:
1. Visited with veteran homeschoolers in my community whom I respect and value their opinion.
2.Read everything that I could get my hands on about homeschooling approaches, curricula, and models.
3. Requested samples from curricula sources. Many vendors provide good samples online that you can download or view on their websites. However, some, you just have to contact and request for them to email or mail you a few sample pages or even a sample book in some instances.
4. Attended fairs and conferences to not only learn from the excellent speakers on what curricula they utilize, but to network within the homeschooling community.
I will say that through my long and in-depth study, I was impressed with the classical education approach (Trivium). Reading The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise-Bauer and Jessie Wise helped me to bring it all together into one nicely bound package.
The curricula that we follow at Our Homeschool Home is posted on our blog here.
We love to get your comments on what we have selected. Especially if you are or have used these materials. I will say that we are progressing pretty rapidly through our studies and I will be adding items the first of 2010 for our next studies.