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Cross-Canada Trip Journal

4:36 PM - Jul. 11, 2008 - Wild Thoughts {1} - Add to the Wildness

We began journalling our travel adventures in between the West Coast (2006) and the East Coast (2007).

I had so much help and enthusiasm, we were whipping through it (at a snail's pace--"Don't put scissors in your mouth." "Please don't step on the pictures...").

This was an idea from a homeschooling magazine I read--can't remember which one now. It was either Homeschooling Today or Homeschooling Horizons. The writer enthusiastically remembered scrapbooking her way through family vacations with her sisters. Not necessarily keeping a traditional diary, just making a collection of mementos and scattered thoughts.

We began by getting an old atlas and a hardcover journal. I cut out the provinces from the Canada map in the atlas. We decided to journal chronologically (where we actually went) rather than province by province, since we got to the coast last. It didn't make sense to start there.

I made a title page for the whole trip, then a title page for the first part of it. I glued Saskatchewan and Alberta in place and marked our travel route on them with contrasting pen and highlighter for good measure.

We printed off some of our digital photos, and I made several maple-leaf-themed templates. Some for photos, and one for them to write a few thoughts on. We trimmed pictures with great creativity (and new scissors! Joy!!), jotted down favourite events and memories, and created layouts before gluing them into place.

Even Brat Boy filled out his own entry, writing "bunny" and "T-rex." (The bunny came into our campsite on the second night. First the kids fed it, then they chased it. Typical.)

I went back to my old blog posts from last year and printed them off, with a few edits. These made up the actual travel log for our Alberta segment. To make sure I could glue it in, I opted to space the paragraphs wide, print it on half-pages, and do some artful paper-tearing to fit things in the journal.

The result is a family collaboration that looks lovely so far, and contains the individual thoughts and memories of each of us. It's not really Daddy's kind of thing, so I doubt he'll contribute. We may convince him to after awhile, just so as to have some of him in the pages too.

Skills have included:

creative writing

spelling (they each had a mistake or two and a question or two)

copywork (Squirrelly Girlie wanted to write "my favourite things in Alberta" just the way I did)

dictation ("Banana, tell Brat Boy how to spell T-rex while I print the bunny picture.")

art

co-operative tasking

fine motor skills for the little ones

(A friendly neighbourhood rerun from our unschooling portfolio at LifeLedLearning.Blogspot.com)

© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2008

What to Do With the Homeschooling Blues?

5:50 PM - Nov. 2, 2007 - Wild Thoughts {3} - Add to the Wildness

I've been working on a redo of our unschooling pages. Here's a sample. Most link lists are merely ideas of content I'd like to include--things like the videos I've been assembling from our travel footage, that cool bumblebee mating clip, sailing stuff.

Since Banana Brain and I are also doing NaNoWriMo together, I think it would also be cool to add some Flash books, like the chapter samples you can read on Amazon. Only the whole thing, since it's all just for fun anyway.

I'd like the site to be a place of refuge for homeschoolers in need of quick ideas, safe, educational stuff for their kids to explore, and inspiration for family-centred activities. Only, more of a personal thing from my family to yours. Basically, the kind of site I'd like to have on hand on days when the homeschooling blues are sabotaging our progress.

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© Copyright 2005, 2006, 2007 Lazy Creek Online. This blog content is not authorized for reproduction outside of the HomeschoolBlogger.com hosting site and Lazy Creek websites. Violations may be reported to Cathi-Lyn Dyck at: www.Lazycreek.net

Does the World Need Another Homeschooling Website?

4:50 PM - Nov. 1, 2007 - Wild Thoughts {0} - Add to the Wildness

Okay, so I've completely neglected this blog for months. Lately, I usually post our homeschooling notes over at the website's homeschooling blog. However, much of our website isn't really up to date.

We've quit market gardening, and we've quit honeybees. I've considered shutting the site down altogether. The one thing that keeps me from that is, I'd like to change it up in favour of homeschooling content. I could just blog stuff, but I was thinking of doing some permanent pages with our cross-Canada trip. Also, Banana Brain and I are doing National Novel Writing Month together this year. (She's doing the Young Writers' Program.) It might be nice to have a story gallery or something. And I'd keep some of the gardening and honeybee stuff, for sure. The kids definitely learned from it.

I dunno. Is it worth the work, when there are so many other, better homeschooling sites out there?

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© Copyright 2005, 2006, 2007 Lazy Creek Online. This blog content is not authorized for reproduction outside of the HomeschoolBlogger.com hosting site and Lazy Creek websites. Violations may be reported to Cathi-Lyn Dyck at: www.Lazycreek.net

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