Homeschooling at the "Lighthouse". Interest driven schooling can be the most fun. This morning jack pretended that his toy was an umbrella and asked us to use the rainstick to rain on him. Then we did rain dances to make the rainstick rain. Then we looked up rain dances and other tribal dances on youtube. The children bounced up and down to Zulu and Korean rain dances. So as a tribute, during Jooni's snack, she rubbed blueberries all over her face as face paint like the people she saw in some of the videos. Well, if it's in the name of cultural education, who am I to make her wash it off? After snack, we begun to plant our carrot, beet, squash and pea garden. The kids got a lesson in how worms help make the soil more nutritious for the plants. Mostly, they wanted to touch the worms. They helped moisten the compost and soil in the wormfarm and transplanted the worms to our indoor garden. To incorporate math into the lesson I read the instructions on the back of the seed packages and using a tape measure, Jooniper showed me where we should put the seeds either one every inch or counting by 2's. After the planting was done, Jooniper and I wrote a story about planting a garden. I typed it up and left blank the vocabulary I thought was most suited to her learning level. She printed the words into the story and was excited she could read them herself. 
Next was music time with Scott. Jack loves to join in with a harmonica while Scott plays his guitar and sings songs. Jooniper's favorite song is "naming the animals". She brings her small plastic animals into the room and Scott has to make up a song about each one, the kids get to name the animal IE: Zwanky the zebra and Scott has to fit it into his song. The kids dance, play drums and use shakers to join-in on the concert.
Jooniper loves her computer time, sometimes she wants to play kids games from kids BBC, today she wanted to have fun typing with the word processor. She likes to change the size of the letters, make them bold and Italic. She types the words she knows but to write a story, she likes me to sound out the words so she can type them. Art time today consisted of still-life. She set up her monkey and teddy and drew them. I was quite impressed. Scott, Joon and Jack made a Finding Nemo themed poster, Whales, Sharks, Turtles etc. Now it is time for the little ones to play outside, the adults are exhausted.
