Alternative Education

Earlier this year Angie told me a little bit about lapbooking. Lapbooking is kind of a little "scrapbook" of what the children have learned. At the time I tucked it into the back of my brain and wasn't sure what I would do with that information. When I was making plans for this school year I did not put in any plans for science and history for the simple reason that I wanted a simple year. I would put in some sort of studies of science & history but wasn't sure what it would look like.

I asked the kids the first day of school "what are some things that you would like to learn this year". They gave me a list of things and I am supposed to now run with that. So for the past week I have been making a list of fun field trip ideas that would somehow involve the list of ideas that they would like to learn about. This is the time when lapbooks come back into the picture. I finally decided to look them up and really decide to figure out if it would work for us. I'm glad I did. I think this is going to be our answer to science & history. As we prepare for field trips we will be learning about what we are going to go see (or went to see depending on how prepared I am).

Yesterday we had a plan to go to the Gilbert House for their homeschool day. This time it was held in the evening because they wanted to have a "star party" afterwards, which works great for us because than Daddy can come too. So lapbook momma printed out some mini books on astronomy and that was school yesterday. They learned about planets, the phases of the moon and comets & meteors. They started their lapbooks and than we went on to the Gilbert House. Guess what? Everything we learned about during the day we talked about and discovered last night at the star party. Yahoo, Success!!!!!! Emma was so excited when she could see Jupiter and 5 of its moons. We talked about comets & meteors on our way home because they thought they saw a "shooting star". We couldn't see the moon last night, I'm not sure if that was because it was a new moon or it was out of sight???? (pictures will come later of the lapbooks when they are completely finished.)

In any case it was such a fun day of alternative education and it was a fun evening as a family. My kids are amazed that school actually lasts all day long and doesn't end when the books are closed. Alternative Education doesn't have to mean weird people, it just means that what we are doing doesn't line up with what everyone else is doing. That's OK because if everyone did the same thing, we would look like a society of robots.

By the way, I give God ALL the glory in the way this year is going to look for us because there is no way I could have figured all this out on my own. God is the one who has orchestrated our school year and I'm just trying to figure out His plan.