Seven Quick Takes Friday is a format I used to love to do back when the blog got regular use. I'd just take all those little subjects that probably weren't great for a standalone post and corral them into one blog entry. The blog that used to host SQT doesn't exist anymore, so I am free to do something wild like turn it into Five Quick Takes, or Seven Quick Takes But With Kittens.
Since my children's education takes up a huge portion of my brain cells these days, I thought this post should be all about homeschooling!
#1. Big Kids
It is disconcerting to look back just a few posts and see a tiny Oscar doing early elementary work, when my current reality is that he is now 5'11" and staring down the barrel at high school next year. The kid has a mustache and runs track with the local high school. WHAT.
Allen is eleven, and Cici just turned nine, so we are completely out of the themed activity tray days. What a difference five years makes!
#2. Rick Steves
We are binging the Rick Steves Europe show on Amazon Prime right now. It is such a great way to learn about the culture and geography of Europe! Here's a clip from one of our favorite episodes:
#3. Interest-Led Learning
This school year has been super duper relaxed. Ever since I was a high school freshman reading The Teenage Liberation Handbook, I have always been "unschooling curious". My main goal this academic year was just to survive through it, so I thought this would be a great time to ditch the curriculum and try something far less formal. Funschooling books helped the kids have some structure-- they are basically record/prompt books for interest-led learning. These were a few of the favorites:
The kids got to deep-dive into some really cool stuff. Allen has been hardcore studying food, not so much the cooking aspect but man's relationship to food. Things like artificial sweeteners, veganism, kosher food law, and high-quality food vs. fast food. He had a lengthy conversation with one of our older relatives at the funeral about aspartame. He was aghast to hear that I use artificial vanilla in my baking, so we're probably going to be making our own vanilla extract soon. He has also been creating 3D animation movies using the ancient Microsoft Movie Maker program, probably working an hour or more every day on his movies since July.
#4. Tiny Baking
Cici was into regular baking at first... until she discovered miniature baking on YouTube. Miniature baking is simply making tiny food with tiny bowls, tiny utensils and tiny ingredients. I thought it was kind of dumb until we got Cici her own tiny baking set, and now I actually think it's an ingenious option for kids who like to bake: they get the hands-on experience using a fraction of the expensive ingredients. There are no tempting piles of baked goods laying around, and the smaller recipes bake up in half the time, freeing up the kitchen that much faster for me to make dinner (that might actually be a downside 😅).
#5. Art Class
One thing I have outsourced this year is art. We have a local organization that offers a weekly arts and crafts class, and the kids have been having a ball. Even I get to participate on slow days! I have a spot on the wall to hang up the creations as they come in.
#6. Library Love
Boy howdy, do homeschoolers love their local libraries, and we are no exception! In fact, I have a cart at home dedicated solely to storing library books. Does it keep my kids from losing half their books when they are taken upstairs to be read at bedtime? Not a chance. Our library is very cool because you can check out passes for the nearest science museum and the museum of arts and culture, as well as other things like Snap Circuits, a rock tumbler, and several board games. I am very thankful to have moved to the library system we have.
#7. Study Buddies
When reading inside the house just won't cut it.
Thus concludes Seven Quick Takes!
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