Caramel, Clay, Scrabble, and Siddhartha

For first-time visitors: My 13yo son, Lu, and I have been homeschooling for five years. This year, Lu wanted to start a goat farm. He got his first goat at the end of last November, and now has six goats - three of which were born here, that Lu delivered himself.

Having goats means waking up very early to milk the goats, many hours of grazing on the mountainside behind our house, coming home to make cheese (we are getting LOTS of cheese), keeping their water bowls full and clean, and occasionally cleaning the goat pen. So, Lu is a very busy boy.

Just look at that tired little face. 

It's around 9:30am when he's done making cheese, 

he's already been up and at'em for 4 hours, 

and it's time to start school.

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We've been playing Scrabble over breakfast almost daily. 

Lu has now beaten me a few times and suddenly LOVES the game :)

I'm the family Scrabble champion, so this is a pretty big deal,

and I'm thrilled to finally have some real competition!

 After breakfast, it's time for reading.

Lu is currently reading Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse.

We had a blast sculpting this week,

it was so much fun!

 I'm not very artsy/craftsy, 

but I think my purple Mama goddess came out pretty awesome :)

And I love the combination of these two <3

*     *     *     *

One evening Lu decided he was going to make caramel out of 10 liters of milk that had accumulated. He started at 4pm and continually stirred the milk until 10pm. It wasn't until about the last hour that we could actually start seeing a change in color and texture. He says we'll have to eat it slowly because he doesn't plan on doing that again for at least another year! It was a helluva job.

Other stuff we're doing that I didn't get pictures of this week: 

Geography review - capitals of Americas, Europe, and Asia

Documentary series "Journeys to the End of the Earth"

Dance improvisation class with other kids

Music composition with Garage Band

Making a poster of the Periodic Table

Guitar practice

Algebra

And that's about it for this post! No insightful ideas on how to deal with teen-agers (but please do pass them along if you have any :) No step-by-step activity descriptions. No book reviews or analysis of our homeschool style. Just some of the cool stuff we get up to with the freedom that comes with homeschooling.

A Goat/Kitchen-Centered Life

This picture of our kitchen table is very telling of what our lives are like these days. Lu is trying to figure out how to assemble his new cream separator that came with a manual in some Eastern European language. You can see our 30-yr-old Scrabble board. That red tub is goat lice treatment. And the baby bottle you ask?

The baby bottle is for our little Almendra (almond). 

She and her sisters were born on another farm

and separated from their mother,

so she needs to be bottle-fed.

Her sisters have since gone to other homes,

and we officially have six goats now.

 The cream separator is still learning how to be used. lol

But we'll soon be eating goat butter and goat cream!

Lu has been experimenting with different cheese recipes,

and we're having ricottas and mozzarellas daily!

This is a chili and herbs rolled cheese.

Lu is managing an on-going fermentation process 

that makes a hibiscus flower probiotic fizzy drink.

He also has some ginger beer fermenting :)

 It's a pretty goat/kitchen-centric life right now,

but we also do normal school things.

Like guitar-playing:

 Lu is currently reading Don Quixote

Our algebra skills are getting pretty solid

if I do say so myself.

(If you've been here a few times,

you probably know that math is NOT my forté)

This is a year of Revolutions in History class.

We finished our studies on the American Revolution

and now we're learning about the French Revolution.

 

Besides all the exercise Lu gets walking the goats

for two hours every morning,

we also do swimming and dancing for P.E.

Goats and school make for a hectic schedule, no doubt.

Our days start at 5:30am and it's go, go, go until dinner time.

But we're happy and inspired with everything we're doing,

and that's a lot to be grateful for.

Another Day-In-The-Life

I usually wake up at around 4:30am to pee. By then, Cha is already working in his office, and Lu is (most days) in our bed. He's almost 11, and he's had his own room for 2 years, but old habits die hard. 

I climb back in bed, slide my arm under him, pull him in close, and sleep for another couple hours until Cha calls up to us in a sing-song voice with his British accent: "It's a quarter past six."

Lu jumps up, puts on his pants and is READY TO GO! I usually stay and stretch under the covers, extending arms and legs in full occupation of the bed, like I could always do when I was single. And then I'm up.

I walk down the hobbit hallway between our bedrooms and open the door to the dressing room, where my puppy (above) attacks me full-force in a jumping-licking frenzy. Cha and Lu are in the kitchen getting their breakfasts and talking about... I don't know what they're talking about because my brain isn't working yet. I need coffee. But first I call Lu into the bathroom to make sure he drinks a glass of water. I do this eight times a day. Our water filter is in the bathroom. Tap water carries all kinds of tummy bugs here. If I don't remind him to drink water, he won't.

I feed the puppy and make my coffee. Then puppy and I go upstairs to my office. Puppy sits on the draw-bridge window that looks out onto a sea of trees, and a majestic volcano. I upload yesterday's pictures to my photo library and find one that Lu took of the sky. It's beautiful. I smile.

At 8:00 am, I call Lu up to do a Spelling worksheet with me. He needs me for the dictation part of it, but then I'm free to go. I'm finally hungry, and I have to teach a class in 45 minutes, so it's time to get some food in me. I usually throw some corn tortillas on the griddle and, while they warm up, grab a pair of tights and a tank top. It's a bodyweight training class that I teach today. I flip the tortillas, stick some brie in between them, and spread on some orange marmalade. It's my intercultural breakfast.

9:45 am and my class is over. I chat a while with the ladies (my students), and then go check on Lu. My studio is about 20 steps and a flight of stairs away from our house. He's baked a cake in the time I was gone. No, not a cake. I am informed that it is a Cacao Banana Bread.

 

 

I praise the creation and ask him to get on to math and geography - 

both are free internet programs that he can do on his own. 

Khan for math and Shepperd for geography.

In the meantime, I do half an hour of weights in my office. I don't workout quite so vigorously every day, just Tuesdays and Fridays. I do, however, make sure to get an hour of exercise a day. Be it dancing, walking, or lifting. I go nutso if I don't move.

I'm done with my bicep curls and we watch a short science video. Then, Lu writes and draws pictures about the new concept in his science notebook while I get a quick shower and then make lunch.

We often watch a documentary with lunch.

Usually about history, nature, or space.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: 

If you get your kid to enjoy documentaries, 

homeschooling is a gazillion times easier.

I remember reading on someone else's homeschool blog that a child who is eating is a child who is listening. Just make sure the meal doesn't involve a lot of on-plate preparation - like tacos, or anything that needs dipping. We eat lots of beans and tortillas.

After lunch, we take a walk downtown. Each with our own dog. I pick up some vegetables at one of the street stands, and some beer at the store. We don't have a car. Our town is so tiny, everything is just a short walk away. I drink dark beer. Sometimes with lunch (if I don't have an afternoon class), always with dinner.

We get home and find a little friend has come to visit. She sits on Lu's lap while he reads from our history document on the screen. She looks at the picture of Mongol warriors invading Slavic territory. We got all into Genghis Khan. Did you know that the Mongol Empire was the largest land empire EVER? I didn't. The Mongols were highly kick-ass.

 

And this pic isn't from today, but here it is - from the start of the week. Lu's puppy (the sandy-colored one) recently got fixed. He waited at the vet's with her, gently talked to her while she came to, and took on complete responsibility for the administration of her pain killers and anti-biotics - taking the orders directly from the vet. He was compulsively punctual with the pills, and a great nurse. He spent the first two days of her recovery on this mattress, on the kitchen floor with her - making sure she didn't pull her stitches out.

A Productive Morning and a Chicken Bone

It's not something I do everyday, but this morning I laid Lu's work out for him to work through in whatever order he wanted.

He chose history reading first,

 and read about Ancient Mesopotamian

games, music, and sports.

 After math (which we did together)

he did his science reading.

Right now, he's learning about Food Webs with Mr. Q

Lu REALLY digs the way Mr. Q writes like he's talking to him, and makes funny jokes. He laughs while he's reading science! What better recommendation can there be than that?

3 baskets -

The top basket is for daily work,

the middle one is for once or twice a week work,

and the bottom one for finished work.

Finished packets are filed in the blue storage unit on the right.

Next, he moved on to Geography.

He's studying Asia.

We're using Sheppard's Software and  

Head of the Class videos for geography. 

I'm not a big fan of spending time on flags, but he insists.

 

By mid-morning, the daybed-couch is always covered in papers and books. Lately, I'm spending a lot of time on that one meter of floor space doing sit-ups and stretching. Lu is becoming so independent that I need something to do when I'm not needed, and sit-ups are a good thing to do while waiting for the occasional "Mama, I don't get this." And even then, most times, before I can even finish the explanation, he's already got it, and (not always) politely tells me to go back to my whatever I was doing, thank you very much. 

mmmm.... Yeah, just you wait until we hit algebra and essays, and then you'll need me again. Little Mr. Know-It-All. But I'm kidding, kind of. Cha keeps saying that it's a great thing, and that that's exactly what we want - a self-guided learner. But I miss working on stuff together and feeling needed :sniff:

Anyway...

 Back to our day -

 Lu decided to go out to the river with his snorkeling gear.

and found the most amazing...

CHICKEN BONE!

What???

 Okay, it could have been a vulture bone, 

or some other bird... but chicken is funny.

 Then we sat by the river and read a story together.

 A lovely, lovely story.

 Then one more dip, in the natural jacuzzi...

After lunch, there was knitting and cookies.

 Lu started Roald Dahl's The Witches this week.

I love that he loves to read. It is a wonderful thing.