History Fair

We had the homeschool history fair on Monday. I thought the kids did great and we had a lot of good information on our display board. The Trojan Horse was a big hit, especially at the end when we dragged kids around it in. We borrowed a big wagon from our friend Jane and built the Trojan horse on top. The kids pretended to be Greek soldiers, who jumped out to sack Troy!

Our Charlotte is back at The Gnu School! Very happy to have her back!

Schoolgirl

Here's our girl after her first day of school at Hartley. She was pretty wiped out!

Charlotte has been wanting to go to school for some time now. She likes to be busy, and she likes to know exactly what's going to be happening next. Also I think it'll be good for her to be around potential friends every day.

And so far it's going well! Her teacher said she's a good student. She likes getting little tokens for doing math, which she can use to purchase gummy bears, or special solo trips to the library. She really likes computers during "specials." She likes running a huge lap around the playground. She likes scootering to school and back and seeing all the neighborhood dogs -- she will always give them her own "woof, woof!"

We who are still homeschooling miss her so much! But we will support her efforts to learn, and we are here to help her with art projects, piano and playtime! And we are always available for curling up to read a good book.

One Drop Can Make a Wave

So much has been happening...

On St. Patrick's Day we helped put on a benefit performance for the Omaha Nation Water Walk. This was held on the Unitarian Church, and our friend Renee did spoken word performance of her poetry accompanied with music by Diane Robinson Kerr and Fran Collier. It was a beautiful performance, and it raised some money for the Water Walk.

Renee's plan is to do the water walk to pray and raise awareness for the problems with the water treatment on the Omaha reservation in Northeast Nebraska. There have been ongoing problems with e-coli contamination. The communities on the reservation have had numerous boil water alerts, and people are getting by with bottled water and paper plates.

The water system is in bad shape and it would cost big money to replace or fix.

Will and Charlotte helped with the sound check the afternoon before the performance. The last song included the audience on percussion, and this was great fun for everybody. The final song was "One Drop Can Make a Wave." This is a fitting description for what we want to do to make sure folks on the reservation have clean water.

Irish Myths and Fairy Tales

Today we read three stories (so far) from Irish Fairy Tales & Legends. They included "How Cuchullain Got His Name," "The Magic Shoes," and "The King's Secret." This book has beautiful illustrations, cool Celtic designs, and a key in the back for pronunciations of the Gaelic names (quite important).

Charlotte wants to go to Hobby Lobby to get stuff to make crafts for tomorrow.

I found some pretty green cloth downstairs and thought I'd make a little dress for her using one of her dresses as a pattern. Of course, she wants me to make a dress for Rose too!

Yesterday

Yesterday, William was sick with a scratchy throat, so Charlotte and I did a lot together. She read a whole level 3 book out loud ("Arthur and the Back to School Surprise"), and learned about Helen Keller, air pollution, global warming and mummies. Charlotte made a little scrapbook from construction paper and cut out pictures from a sales flyer and wrote captions. Pretty cute! I read to her, quite a few chapters of her fairy book. We also, as noted in the post below, made cookies! Charlotte invented a new kind of cookie. We haven't named it yet.

Charlotte asked me to tape Good Eats from the Food Network, so it's good that she's capitalizing on this new interest.

Charlotte really wants to make a new bag for dance. I told her I would knit one, but she found some fabric she really likes. I'm hoping to make it today.

We're having trouble getting used to the time change!

A Gnu Cookie

Charlotte wanted to invent a new cookie. We started out with the base of for chocolate chip cookies. Then we added chopped mixed nuts, sunflower seeds, peanut butter, oatmeal, raisins, chopped almond bark, and a little strawberry cream cheese. They kind of ran together in the oven, so we should make them smaller next time.

Mahoney State Park Activity Center

Charlotte wanted me to post a picture of Mahoney State Park. This is the indoor play structure, where a kid can play for over an hour and you won't even see them but you can be almost certain that they're OK.

Oh, hey, it's Friday

Today was enjoyable. No Friday classes on account of a wedding at the church, so we were able to stay at Food Net and help out more than usual. We went to Mahoney State Park to meet up with Jasper and Isaac and their families. It's so beautiful up there, and I think everybody had a good time playing. Ah, friends.

I had fun talking to Jen and Beth about possibilities for Friday classes next year. Jen wants to teach a PE or tumbling class, and also a class consisting entirely of science experiments. There will be more space for all kinds of classes, and people will be able to leave their stuff there, and like the drama class could build sets.

We went to hear a singer and storyteller, Jack Gladstone, at the Ponca Center. He's part-Native American and part Irish. He played guitar and sang and talked, and it was cool. We saw Renee and Amber, and Renee is talking about collaborating with Jack to write some lyrics for his music. I think Charlotte was kind of worn out, but Will got a lot of out it I think. He's said it felt like it lasted only 15 minutes, so that's a good sign I think.

The Ponca Center is in this great building that looks like a Swiss chalet. There's a great big main room with a huge fireplace, and HUGE dreamcatcher hanging above it.

I friended Bob Kerrey on Facebook, and he asked about "extreme homeschooling." I feel a little silly that I sent him the blog link -- really just to show a picture of a gnu. Our school is "extreme" in the sense that it's extremely just exactly what we want it to be. He's the president of the New School in New York. It's fun to have a brush with fame. I've always liked him.

The Gnu School

What do you think?

Should our school be called The Gnu School?

Homeschooling on the Edge of the Volcano

Hello world! I thought we should keep better track of what we do in our school, and that blogging would make it easy to access and maybe more fun. It's not intended for public consumption. It's not intended for animal consumption. It is intended for consumption by the Guthrie humans who make up the Rose and Shamrock Homeschool.

Which brings up a good point -- should we change the name of our school? At the start of the schoolyear we made a list of possibilities. None of them struck our fancy. I liked El Shaddai Homeschool, or the Ivy Bungalow School.

Hmmnh, suspiciously, our little list of possible names is missing. Or at least, I can't find it.

Which reminds me: we need to get on that decluttering project. Get on it and ride like the wind!