It is Fall, It is Fall....

Maybe not quite yet, but fall is coming. It's getting cooler, leaves are coming down, it's time to pick apples. Unfortunately for our neck of the woods, many orchards lost all or most of their apple crop, so no apple picking this year. I'm personally hoping for a very cold and snowy winter. Along with Fall come school time, at least homeschool for us. Last year, ("kindy") was pretty laid back, with the focus being on creative play, social interaction, and everything their interested in. Day to day life has no loss of learning experiences. This year we're still focusing on these things. Reading is a big thing for us this year. We're currently reading The Hobbit, and have a number of historical sources on deck to read too. L is also reading aloud to me each day, which is really exciting. I can see him getting better and have to applaud him for how much effort he has been putting into it. Math is talked about everyday still, and I had to laugh when L corrected me on my subtraction the other day. Science is another everyday thing it seems, but I keep seeing fun experiments to do too. I am still a big fan of unschooling, and have found that I need to be armed with a spreadsheet of goals for each subject by grade. I like knowing what the expectations in a standard school are and finding ways to introduce these topics in our learning. So far I'm very happy with how things are going. This week was our first official one, as the previous two were spent on vacation. I could insert a paragraph about how we're learning all the time, even in the summer, but I won't :) I'm hoping to make more regular updates here, as an easy way of keeping track of our progress. So far I've picked up: The BOB Books, The Story of the World, and Games For Writing. We're using various Level 1 & 2 reading books for L to read to me. Reading Eggs (website), is a huge hit here. I also have a huge list for the library. I hope to blog about the hits and misses here, and I say hope because life seems to get in the way of writing far too often.