OK I said this last month but… the month has flown by! It seems like this month went even faster than last month! Here are some of the fun things we did during October!

	We have been learning more about plants, specifically parasites & passengers. Here you can see our model of a parasite plant using straws!
	We have been learning a lot about Egypt and early writing. Here you can see Alana’s hieroglyphic note to her friend Seth… something about Meet me by the pond on the corner of the baseball field when there is a rainbow and we will go fishing. Then we will roast marshmallows. Something about her falling and hurting her knee… then going west… stop… go… and in the end everyone was happy!
	We finally got to use our Groupon tickets to The African Safari Wildlife Park (which Groupon is running a special on today!) My camera battery went dead at the beginning of the adventure, but we were still able to get a few good pictures. (It wasn’t until after we were all the way through that I remembered I had my video camera!)
	Alpaca’s need love too!
	Here you can see Alana is not very happy with the quality of the car we built after she read all of the directions to me! Thank you Hooked on Phonics for the great idea but poor design! I had to hear about it for hours!!!
	We got to go for a nature hike and look for parasitic and passenger plants as well as identifying leaves.
	The girls had a blast burying daddy in the leaves! I just loved listening to their squeals and giggles!
	We also found a strange bug near our brush pile that resembles a squash or stink bug but it appears to have some sort of stinger coming from it’s head. Can you help us identify this bug?
	We finished off a great year of soccer. Here you can see Alana cheering on one of her teammates after they scored a goal! I am so proud of her and the entire time… they did have a great coach!

What fun things have you been doing with your homeschool? We would love to hear about them in the comments below!

Are you wanting to homeschool… but are struggling with the cost of prepared homeschool curriculum?

Last year we learned of a website called Ambleside Online that lays out all of the curriculum for you and most of the books can be read online for free or checked out from your local library.

Ambleside Online is a curriculum guide and booklist designed to follow Charlotte Mason’s method of homeschooling. Charlotte Mason believed in using “living books” to fuel a child’s mind and not textbooks that were just loaded with facts. Each year/grade has a list of books to lay out what resources will need to be collected or purchased, and an optional weekly schedule based on a 36-week school year to break the resources into smaller increments to help with pacing the books throughout the year. There is no fee to use the curriculum or website.

You can completely customize the curriculum to meet your needs. Some families follow it exactly as it is laid out, some tweak it here and there and others just use components of the curriculum such as the Picture Study or Composer Study. The curriculum uses as many free online books as possible, and there is no cost to use the information or join the support groups.

We used the curriculum last year and we were so pleased with the low cost option, especially since we had already read about Charlotte Mason and her techniques and were wanting to incorporate them into our schooling. This year we are using several different homeschool curriculum resources but we are continuing to do the Artist study and Composer study and that is one of my daughter’s favorite parts!

If you are not familiar with Ambleside Online or Charlotte Mason and her philosophy then visit Ambleside Online to find out more information.

You can also find a few free resources also based on the teachings of Charlotte Mason from Simply Charlotte Mason.

Do you know of some great free homeschool resources? We would love to hear about them in the comments below!

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