Learning is Fun!

Just thought I'd share a little fun we had here in our home over the last month.  I'm somewhat ashamed to say that with my educational background I'm not more intentional about "teaching" my kids at home.  I'm pretty random and would be challenged as a home-school mom.  I do love to teach my kids though only most of the time it just happens and very rarely do I have a "plan".  So most of the learning around here comes by way of reading, conversation, Aaron's great knack for sharing lots of random information and Malachi's great knack for absorbing absolutely everything.  But we're always crafting and making something and sometimes, some great learning happens from these "busy" little projects!  I love it when that happens.

Well, our last great learning escapade started as this cute little toilet paper owl craft from a friends' blog.    For some reason I'm always collecting toilet paper rolls and this was a perfect chance to use up my stash.  The kids really enjoyed making these little owls and they were so easy. They took such care with the color and the designing of the wings and Sonora just had to add that cute little feather hat on her blue owl because everything is so "fancy" these days with her.  After they turned out so well I thought we'd copy my friend and make a tree for them.  So we drew out the tree and stuck it up in our kitchen, which was needing some life and color anyway.

Well, after we had it all hung up and I was feeling like I had just created a beautiful bulletin board like back in my teaching days, I announced (without really having a plan) that we were going to learn about owls and that the secret code word of the week was "nocturnal."  It somehow got attached to the "magic" word and everything was "nocturnal please" for awhile.  Anyway, I gave them some guesses as to what it meant and Malachi had the meaning nailed by the end of the night.  The word was sticking to their brains.

So from there it just sort of grew into spontaneous fun learning.  They watched some videos on owls one evening before supper.  We asked at Sonora's school how to say "nocturnal" in Turkish.  Her teacher gave us another fun owl craft to make at home and we wrote everything we had learned about owls on it. One night we had a "nocturnal" meal where we ate snakes (enchiladas) and rats (brownies) by candlelight.  It was fun.  Malachi ate his rat like a true owl, evening tearing it apart with his claws!

Then one day the kids announced that we were going to study bats next.  It became a "nocturnal" theme at that point.  So much like with the owls, we did a craft, read some books, watched a video and had another "nocturnal" meal.  This time it was insects.  They went crazy with toothpicks and cut up veggies and olives and created all sorts of insects that were very fun to eat.  I can't remember what I supplemented that meal with but I know we ate more than insects.

We were going to do hedgehogs next but decided to take a break.  Maybe we'll get to it, maybe the tree will morph into some sort of "spring" theme one of these days. . . who knows.  But it's fun when learning is fun.  I learned some new things myself and that too is fun!