Satori Smiles

We’ll be on our Wisconsin trip until August 1, total driving over 32 hours just there and back. I’ve loaded up my iPhone so we can listen to audiobooks in the car. Our local library has free audio downloads and we’ve gotten quite addicted to listening to audiobooks in the car on long drives. Here’s what we’ll be listening to:

• Ramona the Pest (just in time to watch Ramona and Beezus this Friday)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (have this timed to arrive on Netflix in Wisconsin)
• Peter Pan (will be seeing this at a dinner theater in August)
• Disney Fairies
• Ella Enchanted
• Charles and Emma (more for David and I on the ride back)
• The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 2)
• Story of the World – Ancient Times (will review what we’ve read up through today)
• Burgess Bird Book for Children

The only movies I’ll have along are Anne of Green Gables (just listened to this audiobook on our last trip), Pocohontas, and King Tut’s Final Secret.

As for the blog, I’ve scheduled a bunch of posts to activate throughout the week, so no one will get bored staring at the same last post!

I included this in our Flat Satori envelope, but thought I’d share here as well. Click the image to it see full-size and print out if you like.

The state flower is a photo we took a few weeks ago! I also learned the West Painted Turtle became a state symbol just a few years ago.

My favorite homeschooling forum started a Flat Stanley project and it launched this past week! What is Flat Stanley? The idea originates from a book series written in 1964 about a boy who got flattened one night from a bulletin board falling on him. He then travels the world by mailing himself in an envelope!

Our list will send Satori through over half the states of the United States and two other countries, with participants emailing us photos of Flat Satori in their various geographic locations! In turn, we’ll take photos of their Flat Stanleys in front of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado.

To make Flat Satori, I selected a recent photo of her entire body. I lucked out and found one right away. I printed it out on cardstock paper, cut it out carefully, then laminated it. Here she is!

For a size perspective, here’s Real Satori  holding Flat Satori.

We have to make them small enough to fit in an 8×11 manila envelope.

We’re sending it out to 50 families. Because I didn’t want to get bored with the same old photo, I used Photoshop to make a couple different versions. A few of her facing the other way, and one with a blue dress. Thank you “Replace Color” in Photoshop.

Here’s  our Flat Stanley book collection.

I wanted people to be able to hold Flat Satori up without covering her body, so I stuck a magnetic stick on the back. Never mind little orange mouth girl in the background…

During shipment, the stick can be moved up and stored perfectly behind Flat Satori.

Some people make their Flat Stanley children out of a template, which also sounds like a cool idea! But being an amateur photographer myself I thought it would be cute to see an actual Satori everywhere.

Here’s a selection of photos from our 9-day trip across the National Parks of the West! We explored Yellowstone, Grand Tetons and Glacier National  Parks. We hit 5 states – Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and back to Colorado. Here we are on our hike in the Tetons overlooking Jenny Lake at Inspiration Point.

Can’t miss Old Faithful! I’m so glad we sat here to get the geyser all backlit like this.

One of David and Satori (my favorite) hiking in the Tetons.

A view of the Tetons from down below.

In the Tetons we saw quite a few moose, close to the road too. We saw so much wildlife that were so close that we could actually reach out and touch some (of course we didn’t though).

A mountain goat in Glacier National Park.

We also saw a baby mountain goat feeding right next to the road, and he was sooo cute! He had the sweetest little bleeeaatt he did over and over.

Driving Glacier was so scary, the road was so narrow, and up so high, and they had construction to boot! Luckily David drove on this harrowing road. I barely had enough courage to pull the camera out.

Yellowstone showed us tons of bison. These two were leisurely strolling down the road.

Our family in front of Yellowstone falls.

Why Yellowstone is named after “yellow stone”.

Speaking of the human body, I’ll share a few other resources we’ve used in our little unit study foray.

After a very healthy spring with Mom constantly talking about eating right and exercising, Satori decided she wanted to learn about the human body and become a doctor. So for a month we learned about human anatomy by reading this First Encyclopedia of the Human Body, a very gentle introduction for a young one.

Off Netflix (not Instant) we watched National Geographic’s Inside the Living Body. Satori couldn’t get enough of it, she watched it four times before I sent it back. She said she wanted to watch it  until she had it all memorized. Last time she did this was when we studied prehistory and she watched Walking With Monsters a dozen times.

As a finale, we saw Body Worlds at the Denver Nature & Science Museum. Of course photography wasn’t allowed inside the exhibit so I don’t have photos of this field trip.

This was simply an introduction to the human body, but Satori really was interested and retained so much. She’ll bring up things she’s learned in everyday conversation everyday now. I can’t wait to go into more detail and study anatomy again.

The Smart Lab You Explore It Human Body has been a cool homeschool investment. It comes with a body model that you can explore with the included plastic tweezers and forceps. Lots of fun squishy organs, skeleton and muscle examples, and a clear “skin”. There are already very thorough Amazon reviews, so I won’t go in that much detail, just wanted to share a few photos.

You then place the organs and parts on the Organizer sheet.

As you’re doing all this, you’re following a pizza slice going through the human body and hitting all the major systems. Step by step they guide you where the pizza is and which systems are processing it.

It was really a great educational toy!

And then it helps you reassemble your body. Here he is with his organs back in the body.

My goal this summer was to have Satori reading chapter books. We took a pretty long spring break, and still have about a month of our reading program to go. Even taking two weeks off, we should be finishing Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading around mid-August. After that, we’ll be reading for fun, improving fluency and vocabulary.

I took this photo a few weeks ago, but thought I better post it now before it becomes seriously outdated. But here’s her lesson from a few weeks ago and an example of what she can read. She’s now into 3-syllable words and learning new word endings.

Just out of curiosity, I did place an easy chapter book in front of her and she read the first chapter no problem. Most of you will probably be familiar with The Magic Tree House series. I took a video of her reading, I’ll try to post that soon.

I am so tempted to get their 28-book Boxed Set, they come with a timeline and world map, but I’m just not sure as anything could happen. She might not get into these books, could find them boring, she might move past them quicker than anticipated… Some people consider them twaddle, but they all have some kind of useful lesson in them.

We’ve also started our Nora Gaydos readers again, we’re on Level 4 (the last level before the Independent topic books). I have the Science book lined up next, it looks pretty neat. These books come in a set of 10 books in a magnetic binder and have stickers in the front, 4 for each story. They’re cute and colorful and make Satori laugh, so I’m glad we have them.

I really want Satori to love reading as much as I do, but she doesn’t pick up books to read as often as she sits down to write a story. I do not push her to read on her own, and we’ve never really focused on early readers, as I want her to read books that are more exciting. This fall, after we finish OPG, we will start practicing our reading until she’s fast and fluent. Here’s my methods:

1. Mom continues to read-aloud good literature.
2. Satori works on Explode the Code workbooks as long as she wants for phonics practice.
3. To take the place of our 20 minute OPG reading lessons, she will read 10 minutes of reading that I’ll select to be a bit of a challenge.
4. At night she will read material that is easy for her, to build confidence and speed.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon with the Colorado NICHE folks! Satori got to meet some other homeschoolers in our area. They were all super nice and we had a great time!

Most of the children attend OPTIONS, which we’re planning to start this fall, one day a week school down in Boulder.

We made little sponge balls, dubbed “funges”!

The kids loved to get them saturated with water and have a sponge ball fight while out in the water.

We can’t wait to do more stuff with this fun group!