Homeschooling

School Pictures

September 28, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I’ve gotten a few fun pictures recently of boys doing school. This first one was in the evening, but it shows all the males in this household engrossed in watching a YouTube video of (I think) how a methane digester can be made and how it works.

Mr. Diligence being diligent.

Mr. Inventor busily doing math.

Mr. Diligence kept doing this stunt during his lesson, for a couple of days. I finally told him that if he did it again he would have to let me take a picture. He stayed down for a few minutes—and then forgot!

When it was warm for a few days, Little Miss entertained herself during school in this way.

One morning when I went out to milk, this was the scene in the living room: Mr. Diligence, Mr. Handyman, and Mr. Inventor, all busily working on their math lessons (before breakfast), and Little Miss entertaining herself.

Dead Boring Bike Hike, 2015

September 16, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Today was the annual bike hike for our homeschool group. We start in Waikari every year, and anyone who wants to rides to the home of one of the families, just outside of Scargill. It is a total of about 22 kilometers. Every year, we remind the children that the bike hike is NOT a race. Every year, the boys make it into a race! This year, for the second time in a row, Mr. Inventor was the winner, finishing the ride in only 32 minutes. Mr. Handyman came in third. Mr. Sweetie rode for the first time; he rode nearly half the route. He was pretty happy about that. Mr. Imagination and Little Miss stayed in the van with me and were bored silly. I let Mr. Imagination eat his lunch and take a few pictures, and Little Miss chewed on a carrot stick most of the way—until she put it on her shoulder and couldn’t find it again!

Here are the boys, waiting to start out.

Mr. Sweetie, ready to go. I drove him to the end of the steeper hills before he started.

Mr. Imagination took these next two pictures.

Here, Mr. Sweetie was pedaling past a hedge that caught fire a year ago.

Another of Mr. Imagination’s pictures!

The welcoming committee at the end of the ride. I grabbed a picture quickly as I drove past to park on the roadside, so it turned out fuzzy.

After eating the lunches we took along, we spent the afternoon together enjoying each other’s company. We have such good friends!

Art Projects

September 10, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I do not teach art to my children. As I said in my guest post on Esther’s blog, the year I decided to teach art we had a grand total of three lessons. However, my boys are very creative and some have made some pretty impressive items. This train model is the latest project. Mr. Diligence had the idea, and did the painting. He and Mr. Intellectual made the models. Mr. Inventor drilled holes.

The garden—raised beds. He filled them with glue, then added bits of macrocarpa needles.

A man made out of copper wire, in a tree.

Another man, at the gate.

The train station.

The train.

The fences and telegraph wires were made of copper wire threaded through holes drilled in the posts. The posts were glued into holes drilled in the board.

Here are some more projects Mr. Diligence showed me when we talked about their creations. He made this man by gluing rocks together.

He built this house a couple of years ago.

He carved this boat.

Mr. Diligence also made this windmill.

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence worked together to build this truck. They use it to store treasures.

Reading, Art, and Guilt–A Guest Post on Purposeful Learning

September 9, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I am guest posting (for the first time ever!) on Esther’s blog, Purposeful Learning. When I told Esther about the two revelations I had recently had, she told me I should write a blog post for her. So, here it is! Please go to her blog to read the full post.

Twice in the past two months I have had an “ah-ha!” moment. Both times, I suddenly had an answer to something that I had been feeling guilty about for years.

I was reading by the time I was three years old. When I was a baby, someone gave my mom a book, something about “Teach Your Baby to Read.” I was the first baby, so she had time, and she made flashcards to put on objects all over the house. I can’t remember not being able to read, and I’m guessing maybe she eventually regretted teaching me that young, as I quickly developed an addiction to reading! I remember being excited to start first grade, but then being very disappointed because the first day of first grade the reading lesson was simply, “God.” I was reading whole books by then! I spent hours and hours reading thousands of books as I grew up, and put that love of books to good use when I started a bookstore in my late teens. However, after I got married, little by little I started feeling guilty for loving to read, and guilty for taking time to read when there were other things to do, as there always are. Comments some people made such as, “I only ever read the Bible and ___________(church paper),” or, “Reading is a waste of time for me,” added to that feeling of guilt. I still read, because I can’t make myself stop reading, but always with a slight feeling of guilt.

Reading, Art, and Guilt — One of my son’s art projects.

Last year, my daughter came in from her bedroom one morning saying that she felt like the Lord had given her an idea. She wondered what I thought of a website devoted to book reviews. She would include warnings with the reviews of anything that parents might want to know about the book before giving it to their child, and build a search function to help parents find books about a particular area they were studying. After we all prayed about it, she built the website, and soon I started writing some reviews for her of books I read to myself or aloud to the other children. Still, I felt somewhat guilty about loving to read!

Cape Farewell

August 21, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After eating a late picnic lunch after the long walk at Farewell Spit, we drove around to Cape Farewell. It received its name because it was the last land seen in New Zealand by Captain Cook and his crew as they headed home in 1770. The cape is included in land operated by the Department of Conservation. The land is used for grazing animals, and we had to walk past a few cows to get up to the viewpoint. A crew of DOC people were cutting up a huge macrocarpa tree. We really enjoyed the bright green lush grass—such a beautiful sight in comparison to our drought-stricken area!

Mr. Handyman, Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Inventor heading up the hill. I gave them strict instructions to stay at least 10 feet from the cliff edge or be sent back to the van. They did well at obeying.

Mr. Imagination coming up the hill with his daddy.

The tree-cutting operation. They were putting branches on a bank to stop erosion.

The boys had fun rolling and bumping down the steep hills. This is Mr. Imagination and Mr. Diligence.

Mr. Sweetie

The sun was in the wrong place to get a good picture of this rock formation, but trust me, it was spectacular.

Mr. Imagination was bumping down the hill on his bottom. I was trying to get a picture, and just happened to snap this as he flipped around to grin up at me. I love that look of delight!

Mr. Diligence found a cave, and Esther was there with her camera.

Mr. Inventor rarely slows down.

He did here, though!

How do you like the look of determination on Mr. Sweetie’s face? He wants to keep up with the big ones!

Mr. Diligence

Impromptu Lessons

May 5, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One thing I love about homeschooling: Learning truly happens at all hours of the day.

One evening at bedtime, Mr. Inventor was busy working on his math lesson for the next day. He likes to do his math after dark, when it’s harder to work outside, so that he can have more daylight hours for doing his own things outside. He asked me a question about what he was doing, and I suddenly had an inspiration for a way to teach him something he had been struggling with for a long time! He was not understanding the difference between perimeter, area, and volume, and when to use a plain unit (such as inch) and when to add a superscript to indicate square or cubed units. To illustrate, I asked him if he had a string in his pocket, and being a boy he did. I took the string, a piece of paper, and a wooden block that was laying on the floor, and illustrated the different dimensions. It was so fun to see his face light up as he got it! He actually understood a concept that he hadn’t grasped before.

Another evening, as I was cooking dinner, Mr. Diligence came along and asked if there was a way to tell if something was heavier than water. We had just read Archimedes and the Door of Science, and one chapter talked about how Archimedes figured out that the king’s crown was not pure gold. I told him that if something floated in water it was not as heavy as water, but if it sank it was heavier. He grabbed a cup of water and started dropping things in to test them—mustard, ketchup, honey, a raisin—all sorts of things! He would guess if they would sink or float, and then check his guess. When one of his brothers showed up, he had great fun getting him to guess, too! I loved that informal science lesson. The picture isn’t very clear, but there are a lot of bits of things at the bottom of the water in that jar—things that are heavier than water!

Diligent Students

April 30, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

I thought Grandma might like to see pictures of my diligent students! These were not all taken at the same time; it’s hard to get this kind of picture, because I’m busy teaching lessons at the same time.

Mr. Handyman

Mr. InventorMr. Intellectual

Mr. Diligence

Mr. Sweetie

Mr. Imagination

And this is how Little Miss does her schoolwork! We’re all glad when her eyes are closed during school hours.

This was another day. She was happy in her new Bumbo for a long time, and Mr. Imagination was quite entertained as well, putting her socks on top her head and then making them fly off. Thankfully, he never hit her head!

And, just for fun: The one picture I took at the Waipara River when we went there for a fun day with our homeschool group (not the fossil walk but a different day). When we first arrived, Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence found this tree they could walk up. I told them they couldn’t do it with other children around, though.

Sonlight

April 24, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We have been using Sonlight Curriculum ever since Esther was six years old. This week, I started using it with Mr. Sweetie. He was thrilled: Stories just for him (and Mr. Imagination, when he feels like joining us)! Today was our third day, and he was happy to have me take a picture with them holding the books we read from today. This is my fourth time through this level! You can tell that some of the books are pretty worn! The Boxcar Children is falling to pieces; I need to use some glue on it one of these days. It’s been quite a favorite. I love Sonlight because it gets me to spend time reading with the children when I otherwise would probably let it slide.

Fossil Walk in the Waipara River

April 22, 2015 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Two weeks ago, one of the dads in our homeschool group led a walk up the gorge of the Waipara River, to look for fossils. There are a lot of fossils in the rocks there, and they wash out in floods. He has an extensive collection of fossils, and has found some pretty interesting animals—one was even named after him!

We started with a picnic in the river bed. After everyone was done eating, we started walking. The first thing we did was cross the river in a place that was about a foot deep, then walked through a very rocky area. For a ways, we walked in the river, where it was only a few inches deep, then walked on the rocks again, then on a grassy area. Eventually, we came out at the base of a cliff littered with concretions, enormous round rocks. They are at all levels of the cliff, and as the cliff face erodes, they come down. Thankfully, none came down while we were there! Our leader didn’t allow the boys to climb as high as they wanted to, for their own safety. We only saw a few fossils, but had a beautiful walk with good friends! The man in front center of this picture, wearing a backpack and gumboots, was our leader.

That tiny white object my finger is pointing to is a shark’s tooth! In the one area we walked through, there were a lot of these shattered rocks.

This was a vertebrae from a marine reptile.

My Mr. Diligence found this greensand, a type of sandstone.

That’s my Mr. Handyman in the middle, helping carry one of the little children. The first concretion I found. I sat on it to feed my baby, and the wife of our leader commented that she had sat there to feed her baby several years before!

The boys all had fun climbing up and sliding down this cliff!

One of the concretions, ready to come down (it was probably 50-100 feet above us).

Another fossil vertebrae.

More concretions. Mr. Imagination on a concretion in the river.

This picture is for my Mom. I thought of you, Mom, when I saw this very unusual thistle here and there along our walk.

Mr. Handyman on a concretion!

The scenery along our drive was spectacular, too! Also, notice how dry everything is. We have only gotten about an inch of rain since New Year’s.

Yes, one place the road was really this steep!

Two Videos

March 7, 2015 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We ended up with two videos worth saving in February on my memory card. I found a lot of other videos, from the evening I let the 5-year-old take my camera outside, but it was getting dark and they were quite grainy, and some were so shaky I felt queasy just watching them! Our latest budding photographer needs a few lessons before I share many of his videos.

This first one shows a science experiment we did. We’re studying Apologia’s Zoology 1 book this year, about flying creatures, and they suggested an experiment to show how lift makes flight possible. Air going over a bird’s wing moves faster than the air under the wing, because the top of the wing is curved. That causes less air pressure above the wing than below it, which causes the wing to be pushed up. To demonstrate this, we cut a drinking straw so it would come just above the top of the water in a cup, then blew across the top of the cup through another straw. Because the air pressure directly above the straw was less than over the water in the cup (because it was moving faster), water blew out of the straw!

This second video is from one evening when Gayle coached the little boys and then brought them to the kitchen to sing “Read Your Bible, Pray every day” for us.