In search of my childhood

Sort of.

I home school. Ooooh. :o) Its not as off-the-wall as you may be thinking, I haven't taken the BIG LEAP of actually doing it myself. LOL We home school through our local school district, it is considered public school, but I teach and we are at home. We do meet with a teacher once a quarter, and I can call her if I need a hand. Its nice, but it lacks the excitement of 'really' homeschooling.

So I've decided that next year I still will not take that BIG LEAP, but I will supplement with my own things. Kind of like earlier in the school year, my 1st grader was studying Biblical history (through the school no less!). She was learning about David & Goliath, before that she was learning about Moses and the Exodus. We're big Veggietales fans, so every time we'd get one of those lessons we would pull up the Veggietales movie, either from our collection or on YouTube, and compare to actual history. It was fun. And almost always lead into other realms of discussion.

Next year I'm going to add ACTUAL Biblical studies, because it fits with our family beliefs. Not an every day catechism, but a once a week family study. Should be fun. I'm looking at Sonlight Bible curriculum, but I've not completely decided yet. Have a suggestion for one, let me know.

I'm also going to buy the girls DK's History: The Definitive Visual Guide. Thanks to Pioneer Woman, I NEED to have that book to supplement our history lessons! :o) She waxed poetic about it, gave some away and I didn't win. I must get this book!!

So I was thinking I also wanted to get the girls a chemistry set like MY mom got me when I was about 10. They don't make them anymore. Not like the cool one I had anyway. The one I had was awesome! It had about 20 different bottles of chemicals including borax, phosphorus, some kind of acids (probably citric) and sulphur. I remember mixing some chemicals together and them turning blue. Mix another set together and get red. Invisible ink. Smoke. Neat stuff! Now its dangerous to let kids experiment with chemistry sets, they might discover something O_O, or their big brother/sister might discover the set and make methamphetamine. :o( Thanks for killing the joy of learning!

I also got, that same year, a circuit set. It had TONS of little color-coded wires (I remember red ones, blue ones and black ones... each different lengths). You followed the directions and connected wires to connectors and you could turn a little light bulb on and off, or run a little motor. Many little electronic tricks. So cool! I wish I would have had the foreknowledge to save it, because I have no clue where to find something like it either! Anyone?

I want the girls to have fun with science, and I'm not talking the whole soda bottle tornado thing or Mentos in Diet Coke. I think I also need to find them some cool microscope slides, no need for a microscope... Rick found one back when he was driving tow trucks. One of the cars they were selling had a kick-ass microscope in a metal box... quite old even :o)

Off to do some non-scientific, and not even educational, TV watching :o) Happy trails.