Analyzing Our Classroom By Selena

On Tuesday evening Selena got so into writing out her numbers 0 through over 100 counting by 10s. It was fun to watch as she followed the pattern and so confidently wrote her numbers. While this is something we have played with in the past, I really wasn’t sure it was making much sense to Selena until she finally showed me her ability. I drew her close when she was finished and asked her how well she is enjoying school this year? and What changes would she like to see? Her answers did not surprise me, “I like my school work, especially my books. I would love to have more free learning of my choice, geography, crafts, Internet searches and exploring.”

We woke yesterday morning and Selena quickly jumped in and did a page of Math. I then called the day our official unschooling day with all books set aside for the most part. One of the first things I wanted to do though was start our Time Line based on our curriculum. I explained to Selena what a time line is, and how we can refer to it for so many things. We decided to pull out all her little booklets and begin our time line from the very beginning of creation.

We wrote the information on large index cards starting with Day one of Creation and moving on to Day 2 and then Day 3. This brings us up to current of where she is in her curriculum. She of course wanted to hang these on the wall, but I talked her into getting a file box instead. Though I wanted to dig deeper, as anyone who follows my blog knows we do a lot of that. I set out to explain to Selena God’s perfect plan.

We broke this down into each day. On day 1 God created light, sun, stars, and moon. We then discussed why did he create the sun. Selena was very quick to point out that we need the Sun for warmth and with out the Sun we would not have life. We moved on to Day 2 God created the land and water. Selena pointed out that we need water, we all have to drink water, we need the dry land and good soil to grow food. This brought us to Day 3 God created all the plants and trees. This is where I took over the discussion and dug in deeper explaining the importance of plants and trees to our environment and life then just the foods we get from them. Selena loved seeing my ease of use of Chemistry abbreviations for Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide that I started to loose her a bit, she wanted to see more of these abbreviations. Pulled back on track it wasn’t long before Selena announced, “God knew just what He was doing and had us in mind throughout all creation, everything was created for us!”

We moved from this to the computer and discovered that a Killer Whale was tagged or tracked in the waters off Grays Harbor. The first thing Selena asked, “What does a Killer Whale look like?”

No sooner then the picture loaded Selena shouted, “That is an Orca!” I love Orcas!” I pointed out that the Orca and the Killer Whale are one in the same. I thought we would dig deeper into this concept but Selena decided that was enough for today, she was still hung up on the fact that a Killer Whale is truly an Orca.

On one of our adventures out to the barn Selena discovered a bird’s nest, which brought about so many questions, “How did it get there?, What type bird built it? and Why would birds build a nest so close to where the horses eat?”

We set out to answer some of these questions. We quickly discovered that this nest would be the home of a Swallow or Barn Swallow.

We read how this little bird builds it’s nest, by gathering mud pellets in it’s mouth, then mixing this with it’s saliva to create a sticky paste to hold straw or hay on the side of the barn wall or in this case beam. We then discussed that many birds like to hang out where horses live, because horses provide a great source of nesting material as well as when ever they move, they stir up bugs that birds like to eat. Selena of course was worried that the horses would hurt the birds, but that was quickly explained that most of the time the horses don’t even know the birds are around them.

It truly was fun to have a day of free child led learning. I know we will be doing a lot more of this. We both love our little curriculum, and Selena is mastering a lot of skills from it, but we both want to get back to extending our schooling back on the unschooling side. I think we are off to a very nice start.