News from the Mud Kitchen Cafe

A few years ago I was dying to ditch the old plastic kitchen set that lived in our back yard.  I knew my girls would love a place to cook (we are foodies, after all) so I built them a mud kitchen (thank you, Pinterest).  We used the existing fence to hang a few crates and shelves and put a pallet down for a floor.  From there it has evolved.

Mud Kitchen Cafe- 2015

I am really surprised how long this little place has survived.  The neighbor's tree provides shade and the girls do the rest.  Grace especially gets a lot of joy out of puttering around out here.  I hope someday she lets her sister cook.

Girls sharing their cafe- 2015

Grace is the chef and Rain is her hostess/server/dishwasher.  They share creative influence in the project.  The menu rotates seasonally and current offerings include fresh raspberry leaf tea, chive and rock stew, marinated mushrooms (rocks) and an amazing mud pie.  The girls have learned a lot about collaboration, kitchen management (time and materials, mostly) and customer service.  All while playing outside!

Mud Kitchen Cafe 2017

This is the kitchen, today, heading into its third summer.  Daddy and I like to sit out here in the evenings with the girls sipping on beer and ordering amazing food from their little kitchen.  I wish they made real food- I bet it would be awesome.  Soon they'll start harvesting from the garden and we'll have some edible meals out of this place.

Summer is on it's way- how do your kids get outside and enjoy it?

Summer Learning- the real scoop

Summer learning always begins with lots of great books.

We didn't advance three grades over the summer as I had hoped.  In fact, I think we may have lost some academic ground.  Now that we're in full swing in the new school year I find myself reminiscing about our past summer.  I had big plans, but instead this summer came to be termed "The Summer of Her Boyhood."  Someday I'll write more about that- the idea that there's a special, fleeting time in a girl's life where she is free to just be herself, to be wild and untamed and romp and play to her heart's content.  Grace Girl turned 7 and Baby Rain turned 3 this summer. It was a fantastic, wild romp of a good time.

So, here are a few things the girls learned from our big wild summer:

• Grace Girl and Baby Rain invested in long-term projects and enjoyed the outcome of hard work.

Playing in the Sunflower House

•  Sure, she can't spell worth a darn, but check out those waterfall-fairy charming skills!

Hiking at Horsetail Falls in the Columbia Gorge

•  Maybe Grace Girl's measuring skills are rusty, but she understands "scale" in a whole new way!

Making friends with the Sea Lions at the Oregon Zoo

• Baby Rain explored the language of math through music and rhythm.

Exploring music, costume and art

 We missed some reading lessons, but Grace Girl's learning to communicate in new ways.

Found a snake at a wilderness lake on her first backpacking trip

 We backed out of gymnastics and didn't do sport camps this summer, but we stayed in shape the old-fashioned way- hiking, running, climbing...what a view!

Wilderness wildflower meadow romping near 3 Fingered Jack

 Grace Girl learned about physics, gravity and force!

Oregon Coast wave jumping

Baby Rain deepened relationships with the people that matter most.

Beach walking with Daddy

•  They may be a little wild and untamed- ok, maybe more than a little- and I'm so glad.  May they never forget the wildness of their own souls.

Wild summer days- camping on the Little Santiam River 

My prayer for our new year is that each adventure would bring learning, and each cause to learn would be a glorious, swashbuckling, fabulous adventure.  Yes.  I said swashbuckling.  Because it's a great word.  Go ahead.  Say it out loud.  I dare you.

May the road always rise to meet you...

Summer learning begins... with Spelling!

There will be lots of tree-climbing, too!

Now that our Grace-girl has officially completed first grade and we've taken a few weeks off, I'm busy planning for our summer work (don't tell her it's work) and even thinking ahead to fall.  Our main shortfall this year was that we didn't focus much on spelling, though we did make major strides in reading and grammar, which will ultimately help with spelling.  This summer instead of working on "writing" we are going to have some spelling fun!  She'll also get some printing practice in there without realizing it, just to keep us going before cursive starts in the fall.

During the school year we run a fairly classical school, but in the summer I prefer a more organic, Charlotte Mason approach.  We do a lot of gardening, bike riding, hiking and natural observances of the world around us.  We do still accomplish some formal education in the midst of that as I absolutely hate the idea of having to re-teach something we've already learned!  If you add it all up it looks like a lot of school time, but most of this is organic learning time for our whole family.  I imagine we will actually sit down for "school" less than 2 hours a week.

• Bible Study- The girls and I read a Bible story every morning, discuss, and pray together.  We also work on a new memory work passage every month or so (45 minutes/week).  When Matt is home he joins us or leads us.  Prayer and worship time are also regular moments in our day.
• Grammar- One lesson per week from our First Language Lessons book, plus review of the first grade memory work (20 minutes/week) so we don't forget!
• Spelling- One or two lessons per week which will mostly be a review of first grade (20 minutes/week).  See below.  I might just find a cheap summer supplement book to work through to have an end point in sight.  I think this will be a good school activity to take camping.
• Reading- Our wonderful library's summer reading program will serve as an inspiration and motivation for summer reading (90 minutes/week).   We will also be attending a few of the summer reading program activities (there are many) and regular weekly (or bi-montly) Storytime for Baby Rain.  Our library reading fuels our decisions for other subjects of study and can sometimes lead us to a unit study tangent.
• Math- we'll be starting Singapore Math in the fall, so we are mostly reviewing and solidifying skills over the summer with a focus on problem solving, critical thinking, measurement and integrating science.  We'll do some flash card work but we also like to include lots of fun games as part of our math time (90 minutes/week).  Some of our favorite math-oriented games are Monopoly, Rummikub and Catan games (Catan Kids, Settlers of Catan and Starship Catan).
• Science- One weekly nature study using our Anna Comstock (Handbook of Nature Study) and library books (45 minutes). Includes writing practice, drawing and observation in her nature journal.
• Classical Conversations- It's important to not completely forget everything we learned last year, so we will review cycle 1 memory work during the summer (about 60 minutes/week of mostly auditory practice in the car) but we'll wait to start cycle 2 until we get to September.
• Art/Music- These occur naturally at our house as we lead worship at church and work with several instruments.  June is a motivated student of drawing and will no doubt fill her time easily with art projects and fun craft projects as the motivation and occasion arrives.  

In my quest for more spelling practice, I looked for some free online resources and I've listed some interesting-looking ones below.  Do you have others you like to use and want to share?

Zaner-Bloser- nice printable worksheets to practice writing words.

TLS- lots of different worksheets on many topics, among which are spelling.  Fun!

Grade Spelling- this is a fun interactive site for spelling practice.  Not a pressure-cooker, just fun activities and age appropriate spelling word lists.


Enjoy your summer!  Enjoy learning!  And don't forget to do both at the same time!

Summer School and Flowers, too!

Summer School on the deck

Don't freak out.  We don't force school all summer long. Grace-girl really wanted to learn about plants and flowers and how they work.  I knew she was ready for an in-depth study that was more than pretty pictures and fun books from the library.  We've planted seeds, watched them grow, learned basic plant stuff and now we were ready to tackle flowers and pollination.  SO I put together a lapbook, of course!

We had several books from the library about plants and flowers and especially about bees and pollination.  But the best resource I used was Anna Comstock's The Handbook of Nature Study.  This one book has been my go-to resource for so many science questions (you can see it on my patio table in the picture above).  We could have spent days reading about flowers and pollination and different types of asexual reproduction, but we moved on to completing the lapbook.

Lapbook with closed elements

I didn't find a free lapbook I loved for this topic, so I took things from many places.

Lapbook with open elements

This place has tons of great mini-book and foldy fun stuff for lapbooks.  Great for making up your own stuff, which is what I wound up doing for some of this lapbook.

Sunflower Growth Mini-book.  1 inch per day.  Wow.

Simple wheel book describing a plant life-cycle

Grace-girl loves sequencing, so I just had to turn this mini-book into a sequencing activity.

The Itsy-Bitsy Seedling accordion fold

 And I wanted to find a way to use some pressed flowers from our own garden.

A math/measuring mini-book

 It is really amazing how much a five year old can memorize and retain.  She loved this project and actually learned and remembered the inner-workings of a flower and the purpose for each part.

The back of the lapbook.  She assembled this by herself.

 My favorite little element from this lapbook was a special poem that Grace-girl wrote a couple months ago.  (She narrated, I wrote).  I kept it and did this little petal-fold piece to surprise her.  She loved it.

"The Seed"

When the walls grow and sprout

The little people come about

And when the walls get all tattered and torn

and fall off

Then the people find another home.

Breaking for Summer

Our spring has been swallowed up by projects.  Our self-proclaimed love of gardening, homeschooling, community activism and so on has somehow caused months to disappear.  SO, today I find myself holding a cup of coffee at a nameless corporation with my five year old, having a heart-to-heart. 

"Let's talk about something, mom."
"Ok, what?"
"I don't know.  My birthday party."

Her birthday isn't until August.

We outline a theme for her party and sketch out some ideas.  But mostly we talk about the REST of the summer and all the fun we have planned with summer library programs, Vacation Bible School, special family visits, camping trips, beach trips, playdates and, my favorite, weekly local hikes.  We got excited about having no regular agenda beyond the weekly calendar.  By September I'm sure we'll both be ready for homeschool co-op, violin lessons, choir and gymnastics. 

Our summer reading so far has included these themes: ladybugs, baby animals, big sisters, knights, castles, owls, dragons, colors, famous artists and more.  I'm sure it's just the beginning.

Coming up this fall:  The Three Week Roadtrip:  That thing that all homeschool families talk about wanting to do and that's why they homeschool. I will be blogging about it, here.

What are your summer plans?  What are you looking forward to in the coming year?  Share...