For the first time, we are going to do Project FeederWatch, a hands-on science study of birds that visit our feeders in the backyard. If you are interested in birding, and want to incorporate it into your homeschool, check out the materials from BirdSleuth.
Project FeederWatch Homeschool lesson plans
Enjoy! Let me know if you are participating.
Peter loves raptors like me. Hawks, falcons, eagles. We go out of our way to be close to them. I’ve always been interested in birding, ever since watching the winter Chickadees, Cardinals and Downy woodpeckers at the feeder we could see from my mother’s kitchen window. A memory of third grade: gazing (daydreaming?) out the window to see a bird I’d never seen before. All black with red spot on wing. When home from school, mom and I look up the mystery bird together. Red-Winged blackbird and I are friends ever since.
Did Peter get his interest in the big birds from me? Or is it part of his boyishness to love these powerful birds? They’re killing machines, aren’t they? An eagle swoops, grabs, rips into flesh. You turn away for a moment, you miss it. Unless you have an expensive camera with fancy lens. I have no such camera and even more so lacking: the free time to plant myself outdoors to stalk eagles for pictures.
And I know they are out there, those eagles. The river is prime eagle hunting waters. I’ve yet to see one there, but I hear stories. Perhaps my tribe scares them off. We are too much noise for eagles.
Are Bald eagles shy?
Before Susan turned one year, I dented up the side of our old Sentra on a guard rail because I watched a Red-Tail flying low over a field. Don’t tell my mother.
Doc claims a Bald eagle plucked a fish from the water while we canoed on the lake near our honeymoon cabin. I missed it. I’ve always been jealous he witnessed and I didn’t.
I’m constantly looking for eagles and hawks when outside. I think Peter does too. Susan’s eye is looking for owls. I’ve never seen an owl in the wild. Unless I looked right at a Great Horned owl as it sat in a tree, but too difficult to spot, it blended in well. Owls are sneaky like that.
My sister loves owls and sees them often. I need to call my sister, Thanksgiving is coming; we need to coordinate dinner time, dessert. Feeding of the masses.
I’m thankful for owls, eagles, hawks, husbands with good eyesight, books that give flight to interests like birding and car insurance. The day will come when it will be quiet at the river and I will see that eagle with squirming fish in talons and I’ll turn to my kids to see if they saw too, but they won’t be there. That’s why it will be quiet. They are grown and gone. That’s why I’m alone at last at the riverside; all the quiet I need, yet no one to share the glory of creation.
Just me and the eagle.
As a homeschooling mom, I rely on my online friendships and communities more than my flesh-and-bone relationships. I’m not sure that’s the best thing for me, but it is what it is.
Can you hear the sadness as I type?
When I first began homeschooling officially, when my firstborn turned six, I already had a community of online support I visited frequently. You know how I love books. Using the Five in a Row guides for our early learning kept our days full of fun. We read, did the activities, tinkered with math and lived life. When I needed a mental break, sort of a “Mommy needs to check in with her girl friends”, I logged onto the FIAR message boards.
Don’t you just love message boards? Conversation not reduced to just 140 characters. You can lurk. You can comment. Laugh and cry together. Lift each other up in prayer. Just the thing for a newbie homeschool mom who loves to talk and write.
After a few years, when I grew more confident in what I needed to concentrate on or ignore with our little “non-school at home”, I left behind FIAR. Reluctantly, I left the message boards too.
Housekeeping immediately improved.
Then I discovered blogging.
Housework again tossed aside to write, meet other homeschool, blogging moms. The blogosphere : joy!
By this time, I plugged into two local groups. One a co-op with lots of kids, with moms actively engaged in getting the best learning opportunities for their children. The other is a support group for the Christian homeschooling family.
We didn’t last long at the co-op. The story of why is too long to tell in this post; perhaps sometime I will. As I sit here typing all of this I can see the faces of the lovely moms I felt a true kindred-spirit connection. I miss them. We talked when we met together. We had fellowship.
Now I think of this other group – the Christians-only group in which I currently serve on it’s leadership team – and it’s all frustration and disappointment. And I don’t like laying out criticism on the Internet to whine and complain about an all-volunteer organization, so I will keep this rant brief.
Oh, how I wish my homeschooling, Christian friends would be more flexible and took time for more mom-fellowship, pursued opportunities to get together just to talk and encourage each other. I’m so tired of asking these moms to gather together at a park on a beautiful day so our kids could be together, yet all I receive in return is silence.
Yes, I value my online community – all of you reading this blog, Twitter – far more than the offline world that is nothing like I thought it would be when I began homeschooling six years ago.
It’s online where I know of other Christians learning the unschooling way.
It’s online where I can go with a tweet when I’m having a bad day to get an encouraging word to keep going.
It’s online where I can read the words of a mom just like me and not feel weird, alone or crazy for rejecting government schooling.
I continue to homeschool with the hope that I would find a local, sold-out-to-the-Lord family who doesn’t think textbooks are the only way to learn.
Maybe I need to join another message board.
This week The Homeschool Village is comparing notes on online communities. Write your own thoughts on your experiences with online communities and your homeschooling, then link up. Don’t forget to visit the other blogs participating.