Parts of a Plant flip-book - great little project for beginning this topic. By the time Maverick had completed this project she had practiced drawing and writing each part on the lined side of the book. Now this can be used as a consistent tool to teach.

Simple Thanksgiving Leftovers

Wonderful fare does not have to be time consuming or difficult. We like to get back to basics here - whole foods!!

Pictured here is a simple apple, carrot, and cilantro salad - dressed with a prized possession from Thanksgiving dinner - my Mom's homemade blue cheese dressing. Really easy and hearty, this little meal was amazing.

Books, Books, Books!! Haywood has come leaps and bounds with his reading skills this year. It has been a real joy to see the piles and piles of books that he gets through in any given week. We were even thinking about purchasing a nook, kindle, ipad, etc. for this purpose. As always, we try to thoughtfully work through purchases of any kind. In this arena, the library won out - how can we as parents, skip past this amazing resource to move straight into the digital age?! There is plenty of time for that in the future - now is the time to reuse amazing books at the library, because the impact of that is so great for Haywood.

{Great Scott, It's a Time Machine}

We just adore the movie Back to the Future, so this was an amazing find of Haywood's while walking through a local antique/thrift shop. Number one, love the idea of finding something to reuse in the world. It is a truly powerful concept to learn early on.  

Number two, this is the best movie ever and this little toy set is crazy adorable. A tiny Mary McFly and Doc? Even Einstein. Gave Haywood a new appreciation for the movie.

Toasted Marshmallow Cupcakes

These were pure genius. Toasted marshmallow, done in the oven, on top of a brownie cupcake. Daddy bear and I came up with this cooperatively one night, when thinking of a good dessert for a dinner party with kids. A simple recreation of the smore's without the graham - because really, all you want is the chocolate.

Ingredients:
Any Brownie Mix - bake them as cupcakes
Marshmallows - add last 5 min of baking

Natural Resources as Art

We like this idea - recycled things from our land, for use as artistic, natural pieces of art.

Here you see pictured are leftovers, limbs that have fallen off our oak trees and the ends that get cut off each christmas tree as it comes in the front door. A nice reminder to us, of all the amazing christmas trees of the past and we have a nice crude art installation. The kids and I painted the oak limbs white to mimic snow, because who wouldn't want snow year-round?

Pancakes - the most wonderful breakfast ever?!

We are pretty obsessed around here - banana pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes, oatmeal pancakes and all the multitudes of syrups that can be invented. Pancakes are pretty universal and can be shared in many locales with many different people - you know, pancakes - they bring people together. If you really want to get in the pancake mood - put on Jack Johnson (here) and you can make it an entire lesson. Often, we go through all the steps, measuring, stirring, flipping, etc. with the kiddos - maybe one day, we will wake up to pancakes.

LIZARD SPECIMEN

Haywood ran into the house with this one - while working with Dad in the yard. We live on a wildlife refuge on a fair amount of property, so animals, reptiles, etc. are pretty close. We count ourselves lucky that this is the case and explain to M&H frequently that this is something to treasure. Haywood never disappoints in his excitement when finding the next specimen.

You can see here - pictured above - is the shed skin of a nice sized lizard, Haywood immediately went into discovery mode, wondering aloud what the size and weight of this lizard was when it was alive. Then he recounts a story of the most recent lizard he saw, hoping he can find clues that would match this as "his" lizard. Seeing the wheels turning in his head is the best part. He just loves this kind of find.

Picture below is a shot of Haywood's desk, on which currently sits his specimen of Lizard skin and another bug we are in the process of identifying. The incredible learning opportunity these specimens present is priceless in regards to value for our homeschool classroom.

Eco Friendly Hostess Gift

It happened to be our Grandma's birthday recently and she happened to be the one hosting Thanksgiving this year. The perfect 2012 hostess gift was born - a wonderful turkey bowl, for display during the holiday dinner and a pair of lovely touch screen gloves, for our gadget loving grandma. Both from Cost Plus.

Now she can use her iphone and ipad while wearing these stylish gloves. In total a pretty little gift, with no wrapping paper needed, just a simple yellow ribbon bow.

Toasted Marshmallow Syrup

(1) Bottle Toasted Marshmallow Torani
1/4 cup Butter
Glass Bottle

We happened upon this flavor of Torani syrup while at Cost Plus. Daddy Bear loves pancakes and thought this would be a fun experiment, does Torani make a great syrup? YES, it does! We heated up our little glass bottle for about 40 seconds + in the microwave, then stirred it up - the result was the most amazing, light and toasty syrup we have ever had. Yum!

We found a downtown piece of Outdoor Edu of a different sort. Really neat way to display local historic photos.

The local historical society added these wonderful historic picture tiles to a bench project. Kids can run up and down the wave like benches that are meant to mirror the Sacramento River that runs through our little town. Although you can see the wear and tear, the kids really enjoyed these pictures, esp trying to figure out where the spot was located (now) in time. The best part, these are in an urban/outdoor area where kids can run about.

Experiential Learning - is a body of theory centered around learning by doing. Skills of self-sufficiency and leadership are easily facilitated by creating activities where kids can slowly but surely do things on their own.

Cake project pictured here - great example. It was Haywood's birthday and the activity here was a - (Make Your Own Cake Kid) - all set up and ready to go. Both kiddos learned how to frost a mini double layer cake, a sweet skill for little hands. Both loved the activity and they loved the self-created cakes. Learning by doing is a fabulous tool to give any kid.

(Radically Great) Motto

We live life with the aim to be (Radically Great) and to us, that means living in a way that is healthy, productive and thoughtful. We think about the earth and our choices in respects to protecting and caring for the natural environment. We teach that it is better to reduce, reuse and recycle and that continual education/learning on this topic will make life wonderful for us and the earth. M&H take this seriously and would undoubtedly shout this from the rooftops or announce it on a billboard, in the case of our picture here.

One last look at the summer as fall barely touches down, only to be replaced by near winter like conditions.

M&H pictured here, on a trail, having a blast, loving the world outdoors. This was a spot of the trail at Sierra Nevada College, we mentioned earlier that this is a wonderful, amazing resource for kids interested in all things ECO. The Center for Environmental Sciences is a partnership between UC Davis and Sierra Nevada College. The exhibits + trails + outdoor edu exhibits + coffee shop on campus make this an amazing free activity.

Night Games

Night and all the things you get to do as a kid, in the dark, at night, are always a great adventure. Whether it's a night hike, night paddle, late night soccer game or other outdoor pursuit, it's always a wonderful time of day to be out. Maverick, pictured here - is participating in one of the many night games for the local soccer league. The kids were almost giddy during night games and it was almost a magical experience as each one marveled at the lights and excitement of being at the soccer park in the dark, love it.

Pretty Paper Purses - We have grandma to thank for this super cool gift. A book full of pretty paper purses. While this activity was directed towards Maverick, Brother Bear also helped put them together. First off, each item is so wonderfully made, these truly end up being durable play things when they are finished. Second, they were so simple to put together - kids could do this all on their own.

Grandma found this in what I hear is the most amazing bookstore in Portland, OR. Powell's Books has this (Pretty Paper Purses) and much more.

Mr. Bones

Haywood found this wonderful book at our local library, still the best resource around.

At the library, Haywood is always scanning the shelves for books that are on topics he loves. Mr. Bones has been a favorite topic of his since Kindergarten. Haywood was lucky enough to have friends in Kindergarten with a Dr. for Dad and he would bring in his (Mr. Bones) to the classroom. Haywood was enthralled from that first meeting.

This book is titled - The Amazing Pull-out Pop-up Body in a Book and for Haywood it was just his size too. This was the greatest part of the whole book - for our 8 year old it was a perfect match. Haywood spend almost an hour laying next to the book, looking at all of the amazing detail.

In general, we always revery back to hands-on elements in our classroom. Nothing hits home like something the kiddos can pick up and feel, education theory supports this concept. Making sure to use as many senses as possible when learning a topic is a good way to increase retention of any topic. We continually see this over and over again in our homeschool classroom. Every concept can benefit from the addition of hands-on elements and we are continually seeking out resources in this arena.

I find it interesting that the most common source of all inspiration ends up being Pinterest, let someone else gather tons of ideas for you to use!

We also found this Skeleton Learning Chart - great low cost resource that can stand the test of time. Unfortunately, this one has been dis-continued.

Turkey Hand Prints

Maverick loves turkeys - most likely this is due to the fact that we live with gaggles of turkeys. Here on the wildlife refuge we have a large pack of turkeys that roams the area. Often, you can here turkey's gobbling in the distance. On some days they lay beneath our trees, seeking refuge from the blazing summer heat. Every once in a while we walk out the back door to find a male with his feathers up, looking like we have just interrupted his good time. Our dogs love to chase them around in circles before we call them off for harassment.

Turkey hand prints are probably the most simplistic art project, but Maverick loves it. I can't get enough of it, they are just so darn cute. Her little hands create the most adorable little turkeys.

On the day pictured here, I had gone to the grocery store in the morning, after promising each child something special from the store. I came back with something healthy and inspiring, new boxes of chalk. At just under $1 they were the perfect (something special) from the store and Maverick went right to work.

It's fall and around here that means we have about a week or two of falling leaves. Around here summer lasts forever and then fall comes quickly, only to be ushered out by winter. Time to savor fall flavors and fall foods - we started off with Gingerbread.

This Gingerbread came out of the freezer from last year and boy, were the kiddos and Daddy Bear happy when they smelled this cooking. Everyone came running to see what was in the oven. Stored in a nice parchment square, then in a freezer ziploc, this dough defrosted perfectly. I used little individual pizza pans to cook huge cookies.

Then, below you can see the final creation - Gingerbread Caramel Sundaes. Crumbled Gingerbread with a hot caramel drizzle, a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream on top and another hot drizzle of caramel on top. Everyone loved this and it was so easy to whip up - given that I had frozen Gingerbread.

Note to self - keep at least a couple of the finest cookie doughs from this season in the freezer, next year I would like to have more than one awesome dessert up my sleeve.