Part Twelve—Buried Treasure and the Voyage of the Frugal Frigate 1992-93, 1993-4

For the 1992-93 school year circumstances prevented the Sinclair family from homeschooling.  We had just moved and I was pregnant so our family joined Karen and her sister Cynthy for school this year.

Buried Treasure and the Voyage of the Frugal Frigate

1992-93 & 1993-94

The year was based books and centered on a poem written by Emily Dickinson

There is No Frigate Like a Book--

There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away

Nor any Coursers like a Page

Of prancing Poetry –

This Traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of Toll –

How frugal is the Chariot

That bears the Human Soul

Here are some highlights of the first year--1992-1993

Which consisted of the first two topics--Kidnapped and The Secret Garden

   



We named a few items in our school with nautical terms. One of those names stuck, and to this day we still call our window seat, Poetry Port. It was the place where my children could sit to memorize the poem of the week, and they did. 

We first read Kidnapped by the Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson because books kidnap us and take us away to far away lands. That fall I read Kidnapped to the children during literature time. I remember the concern I had that Hal, who was only five years old, would be able to understand, so I asked him about the story line, and he understood the whole thing. (This taught me that parents can and should read at greater levels than a child can read to themselves.  This way they will be exposed to more complex sentence structure and learn vocabulary by context). 

The book details the Scottish countryside including descriptions of the heather. I was pregnant and felt that this baby was a girl. One day I said to the children, " 'Heather' is a pretty name. We could call our baby 'Heather' ."  As we discussed this possibility, someone realized that she would be born in the autumn. 

Hal and I already had one daughter with a flower name and a season name, Jasmyn Summer, and we entertained the idea of having another child with a flower and a season for a name--Heather Autumn.  I liked that, but I thought that Autumn Heather was a better name than Heather Autumn.  So even though we didn't know the sex of our child, the name Autumn Heather was found during literature time.  Autumn Heather was born in November that year. 

  

Jasmyn came as the visitor, Mother Nature, which she decided to do pretty much on her own. She really liked being a visitor and chose to teach us about flowers.  Here she is teaching the parts of a flower. (She also showed the clip from Disney's Alice in Wonderland, where the flowers sing Golden Afternoon). 

After her description of the parts of a flower we all dissected our own flowers,

taped the pieces to pages, and labeled those parts.

You can see Hal, Brittany Kindrick, Chase, me, Jasmyn, and Amber:

 

Brittany and Amber examine a flower part:

In January of 1993, Karen's daughter Amanda came as the Quite Contrary Mary, who grows a garden.

Here she is holding Autumn Heather: 

Mary gave each of us our own sketchbook...

 ...and we headed out to Karen's garden to draw. 

Ashley and Chase

Amber and Brittany

Will and Chase

Hal went into the herb garden...

...and found the perfect place to sit:

I later came as the visitor, "Dirt", as opposed to soil. There is a difference. After sharing some key points about why plants need soil to grow, we did some activities.

Some of the activities the kids created were snails races and mud facials:   

The highlight of that year was the presenting of year-long projects, given by the children.

Amber, age 10-11, did her project on roses:

I have these photos of her project because she documented the steps of planting a rose:

Chase, at ages 2-3, collected seeds for his year-long project.  He gathered seeds from all the fruits and vegetables we ate, from the plants outside, and taped one of each seed to cardstock which I labeled for him.  He was so diligent in seed-collecting that we planted the bell pepper seeds from the pepper we bought at the store, and they were some of our best home-grown bell peppers!  Our learning was fueled by our passion for the individual subjects we chose to study. 

He was Johnny Appleseed during his presentation. Here he is showing the largest seed in the world, a coconut:  

Hal was 5-6, and chose the topic, photosynthesis.

Hal asks, "How can you know that this plant (a mushroom), doesn't make it's own food?"  (Answer: it's not green). 

Plants that are green produce their own food through photosynthesis:

 Jasmyn, age 8-9, studied ladybugs. 

That spring she taught us that the ugly black and orange bugs on our roses, which we had been killing, were ladybug larvae!  (We stopped killing them).  

After all the presentations were over we had a garden 'tea' in Karen's gazebo. Everyone chose and was called by our flower names during the tea--I was Daisy, Amber was Larkspur, Jasmyn was Lilly, Hal was Snapdragon, Chase was Johnny Jump-up, and we named Heather, Sweet Pea. (I only know this because I just watched the video). 

After the tea, the girls made flower dolls and accessories while the boys mostly

played in the yard. 

Chase stands inside our newly planted Sunflower House--

That summer the sunflowers grew and formed the walls, but the morning glories didn't get high enough to string across to make a roof. (This idea came from the book, Sunflower Houses). 

1993-94

We continued this theme the next year, which I wouldn't do again, even if I didn't finish the second half of the curriculum.  

I have no photos of the second year. I think they are all in the kids' journals, (I used to divide the photos between the children's journals and our family scrapbooks).  I also don't remember a lot from that year, though I read several of the thematic books to the children, like My Side of the Mountain and the Little House books. 

Here is a clip from Chase, Hal, Jasmyn and Amber giving their project presentations for the Secret Garden:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xra2NlfKfks