October Homeschool

 We had a lot of pleasant weather in October. It hardly rained and the leaves seemed to stay on the trees for a long time. The ones on our block are finally dropping so I'm out with my rake every day. I put them on the garden beds in a big pile, run my weed whacker through them and then spread them around. I'm finding a lot of dead spotted lantern flies in the leaves, which makes me worried about how many eggs must surely be around. I guess we'll find out in the spring. 

Laurel continued her study of George Washington this month. We went to the Heinz History Center and Fort Pitt Museum, read some biographies and listened to a lot of podcasts...the favorite being History that Doesn't Suck. She's writing an essay on his leadership. She's also been learning how to sew and made her Halloween costume....a dragon based on a character from the book series, Wings of Fire. She sewed horns, scales, wings and a tale onto a sweatshirt...it turned out pretty well and she really did do the whole thing by herself. 

Marko worked on his costume, which was centered around this paper mask of a mountain goat he found online. There were 19 pages of tiny pieces to cut out and fold and glue together! He decided to paint the horns gold. It was impressive when it was done, although not that sturdy. It made it through the damp weather on Halloween but I don't think it's something he can use multiple times. 

Max went as baby Yoda (Grogu) and his costume was pretty simple...a headband with ears on it that he found at the thrift store, a shawl that I repurposed as a cloak, and some green face paint. We haven't done face paint on the kids before and he loved it. 

We also went to Bicycle Heaven, a museum we had seen advertised when we were on our bike trip. It's a huge, private collection of steel bikes in a warehouse on the North Side. The bike from the PeeWee Herman movie is there. It's a working bike shop. Oddly, there was a nail salon as well. 

Marko and Max are working through some social studies units on the miscellaneous things that textbook editors think elementary students should know....latitude, map scale, world religions. Everyone learned about the digestive system, and my mom created a hands on model of the digestive tract for them. 

I bought a new math book to hopefully help Laurel level up. She's not terrible at math and actually pretty intuitive when it comes to practical applications like estimating money or ingredients for baking or sewing. But I have noticed gaps in her math vocabulary during the last two months of working in the Algebra book. Hopefully this supplemental book (called Bridge the Gap: Math) will help. I'm making Marko do it, too.

To be honest, October felt a little flat for homeschool. I think I just really prefer traveling and loved doing the bike trip in September. Part of that joy comes from my ability to focus solely on our kids. On the bike trip, I didn't even turn my cell phone on except a few times in town. We were really focused on one thing and experiencing it together. When we are home there are a lot of other situations that need my attention and our activities are scattered.