My Birthday

My birthday was the 5th, and we went to the beach. The weather wasn't nearly as warm as I would have liked, but other than that, the day was perfect. We went to Cannon Beach, and played and ate a picnic lunch. Then we explored the town, and drove down the coast for a few miles. We found a little dirt road that led up a hill to a cliff overlooking the ocean. There was just enough room for our car, and barely enough room to turn around when we left. The girls had fallen asleep by that time, so D explored the hillside. I laid a towel out on the ground and did yoga, meditated and prayed while watching the waves. So relaxing!


L kept laying down in the sand and "swimming."



Playing in the sand.




E running around on the beach. As you can see, E was the only one in a swimsuit. In fact, she was the only person on the entire beach not in a sweatshirt! :) She wore it from home, and we thought that once she got there and got cold, she'd put on some clothes. After about an hour, as we were walking back to the car and it started to rain, she decided to get dressed.



D buried E in the sand.



A rare shot- I'm not behind the camera!







Cannon Beach



Cannon Beach looking the other direction.



On the way home, we saw the sign for Cooterville. This is the Cooterville City Hall. Aparently it's also the antique/junk store.


We got a good laugh out of this!

Picnic and Fireworks

On the 4th, we went to a picnic with our church. E and L played with their friends, and went swimming in the river.


L in the woods.



L and her friend A.



E and her friend Y. They were pretending to rescue animals.


Then we saw the local fireworks show- it wasn't that great, but the girls liked it. They were both a little scared, but fascinated at the same time. As long as we were holding them and they could bury their heads into our shoulders sometimes, they were ok.

I think this is one of the pictures E took.

Sign Language

Somehow a sign language advertisment got onto our google/dell default homepage. It's here if you want to see it, but basically it's just a computer animated hand signing the alphabet. So, every couple of days, E has been asking me to show her the signs, and we go through them once or twice. I learned some sign language when I was a kid, and I don't really remember anything except the alphabet.

I've been meaning to find her some other signs, but hadn't done it yet. Then today, we went to our Davidic/worship dance group, and they were teaching a new dance with the signs to the words. How timely! E was getting tired by that point, so she wasn't interested in joining in, but we did sit and watch.

Just now, I found an ASL site that shows signs for lots of different words. On youtube I found some sign language students signing the words for the song Bring Me To Life by Evanescence, which is one of my favorite songs, and I can sort of play it on the piano. They do a beautiful job!

I'll show these to E tomorrow, and see what she thinks.

I haven't done very many baby signs with L, and I really should do more. It makes communicating so much easier. She knows the sign for nursing, and is picking up on the diaper sign. I want to at least be more consistant about showing her the signs for water and hungry, since she's eating solids.

Neglectful, Schoolish, or Option C?

I was re-reading my last post, and looking at my dining room, and it struck me how "schoolish" is looks with the flags and the maps and the numbers. It made me laugh, because I just finished reading a homeschooler's blog post where she bashed unschoolers, saying that we are neglecting our children's education and not providing them with any opportunities. So, while the schoolish looking parts of our house are only a fraction of the learning that happens here, I thought I'd share what happened when I bought them.

I was actually helping E look for something to spend her own money on when I saw the map of Europe and the numbers poster at the store. I threw them in the cart without saying anything, and then lifted her up so she could see the higher shelves. She picked out chalk and some glittery lotion. She also thought about buying some chapstick, but she only had two dollars. She decided not to get the chapstick, because we have some at home, but we didn't have any glittery lotion at home. At the checkout, she saw the gum and decided she wanted it. I reminded her she only had two dollars, and she choose to put back the lotion in place of the gum.

In the car, I showed her the things I had bought for her. She was excited and couldn't wait to get home to put them on the wall. When we got home, I hung them up, and she asked me to tell her the names of the countries. I told her a few, and then D walked up and we started talking about the location of Scotland and Ireland and how that affected the land wars between those countries and England. Then E wanted to look at the map on the computer. So, I brought up mapquest, and we looked at the whole world. Then I zoomed in on Europe and said that was the same as the map on the wall. She wanted to zoom in more, and we ended up on Germany.

Mapquest had little picture links to find stores, pharmacies, motels and other places on the map. One of them was to find 4th of July celebrations. She clicked on it, and it said that nothing was available in that area. When she asked why, I said that 4th of July is an American holiday, so people in Germany don't celebrate it.

So, here we have budgeting, math, decision making skills, history, geography, culture, computer skills. I guess the playing in the sprinklers is PE, and the chalk is art. Or maybe writing, since she's writing some letters. Not bad for a day in the life of a neglectful, lazy unschooler with a 3 year old.

Oh, and she could have chosen to watch tv that whole time.

Full, Fun day

Today was full, busy, fun, long, tiring, and filled with discovery. We went to Target and Walmart and bought new shoes for both girls. At Target I also found a wall map of Europe, a map of the US puzzle, and a poster of numbers for $1 each.




The maps were a neat find because of E's interest in flags. Seeing the flags is leading to her wanting to know where the countries are located. We have a globe, and we use mapquest, but the wall map and puzzle will be different ways for her to see them.

We also went to the garden today, and saw lots of BIG spiders, a butterfly, and a dragonfly. I haven't gotten a chance to take her to see any bug exhibits, but we've been finding lots of bugs everywhere we go.

When we came home, the girls played in the sprinklers.






And they drew with chalk.



Oh, and speaking of flags- I told my mom about E's interest in flags and she sent these:



The small ones are the American flag, and state flags for Maine (where E was born), California (where we lived for a while, and where grandma lives) and Oregon. Thank you mom!