Three Plus Two

K-2 Year in Review: Language Arts

Note: I apologize for the state of my sidebar! The typepad design editor has not been working for me very often.  Sometimes my content disappears, sometimes it turns up again, and it never really goes where I put it.  

I don't have to turn in any end-of-the-year paperwork to the state this year, but I thought I would like a wrap-up anyway.  Nothing we did was revolutionary -- mostly it was just trying to hang on -- but maybe somebody needs to see what it means to just hang on in the early years.  Lately it seems that I have heard many newish homeschoolers with young kids really stressing out about first and second grade (or kindergarten) curricula and I always want to tell them to relax. 

So, anyway, this is a review of what I can remember that we did.  I'm combining my 7 and 5 year olds because they mostly did things together.  Technically my five year olds were not in kindergarten because their birthdays come in October, but it didn't seem to make a difference to them.   I decided to declare our year over about a week ago, and we'll start back up in July when it gets hot.  Although we did about as well as we could this year, considering, I am hoping that next year is better, and really thinking hard about homeschooling styles, balance, and this marathon that is raising (and homeschooling) a large family.

Phonics

Somehow my five year old twins (and my three year old, too) learned all their letters and letter sounds this year.  The twins and I occasionally sat down with  Phonics Pathways  (known in our house as The Big Book of Letters) for formal reading lessons, but mostly -- I am somewhat embarassed to say -- they learned these things from Starfall.  I felt a little guilty about this for a while, and then I thought, why not just be happy it was so painless.  The twins are blending, doing a little reading in McGuffey and Bob books, and Chipmunk is spelling STOP signs.  Pop is upset that he cannot yet read Star Wars chapter books.  They seem to get that words in books can actually be read, and that they ought to be able to apply the skills they're learning to books they want to read, or coupons, or whatever.  My second grader, on the other hand, is still convinced that letters are meaningless squiggles only designed to give him a hard time. We made it through long vowel sounds this year, and we have been using Phonics Pathways (and Modern Curriculum Press Phonics A ) methodically. In fact, I think a little too methodically; in April I became concerned that "reading" had seemed only to become a school subject for him, so I ditched the texts and just asked him to read to me from our large collection of early readers (Gareth was eight and a half when reading finally clicked for him, so I have amassed quite a few).  He chose to read from our sets of Brand New Readers, which are not strictly phonetic little books, but the stories are funny and Katydid loved them, too.  They're short enough and repetitive enough to give him a sense of accomplishment, which he needs at this point.

Handwriting

Pip and Pop used Handwriting Without Tears.  Sort of.  Both have problems with fine motor skills, and neither has the concept of "just do one page".  Or "wait and let's use this neat little chalkboard".  This was not something I required, just something I had on the shelf for them to do when they wanted.

Farmerboy (grade 2) has beautiful handwriting, especially for a leftie, and completed Copybook I from Memoria Press.  When I say "completed", I mean he did all the writing.  This child does not like to illustrate his work, so we just left all the "draw a picture here" pages blank.

Narration

I'm including this as a topic because I know people are interested in it, and I tried to do it more formally this year with Farmerboy.  I have to tell you, narration in my house is a little exhausting.  As soon as it becomes a formal process, no one wants to tell me anything.  If I am sneaky - or if we have a genuine discussion - my kids demonstrate excellent comprehension. (Educationese for: they like to talk about books.)  If I ask directly for someone to narrate or retell immediately after we read, I am usually met with rolling eyes.  I understand that doing formal narration eases kids into writing later on, but the energy required to sustain the process is often something I just don't have.  On the other hand, I know my kids pick things up just from listening to books and talking about them; the other day I sat down with Pip to read Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms and after I had read the first page, he said, "But what's the problem?  Books usually have a problem."

Yep, kiddo, a story without conflict would be boring.  (And Fletcher does actually run into a "problem", but not on the first page.)

Fairy Tales and Folk Stories

I stuck with something simple this year, and that was a good thing.  For some reason I had a really hard time keeping a regular read-aloud time, even for the little ones.  I did not write this plan down; I did not decide ahead of time which stories or books I would read; I just decided that this year I would try to read the younger kids more fairy tales.  There are many, many lovely picture books illustrating single fairy and folk tales, many of which we own, but we stuck primarily to collections this year. (The boys loved the Tiger and Rabbit stories in this collection.)

(Tried to narrate from this one.)

(Lots of short stories, with wonderful illustrations.)

(Farmerboy retold these tales for days afterward.  I began to think that Paul Bunyan was a relative.)

 

There were more read-alouds and books on audio -- including marathons of Redwall books -- but nothing terribly organized.  In fact, I think Ill remember this year primarily as "The Year of Biggles, Redwall, and Harry Potter."

I meant to do the whole year in review all at once, but at this rate its going to take me until 2012! Sheesh!  Cross your fingers and maybe I'll get to Science, Math, and History before the next presidential election!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

K-2 and Early Learning: November 1-7

This week was a "hither and thither" sort of week... heavy on the "thithering".  Andy took off on All Saints Day so we could run moving-related errands; Katydid had her once a month choir practice for her once a month choir (which, unfortunately, she will not be able to attend because so many of us are sick); we spent Thursday visiting gyms to find a good preschool gymnastics program; and the little boys, pumped up on Halloween candy and irritated by a virus most of the week, did their share of "thithering", too.  In other words -- it was a light week academically.  

While we were driving around we listened to Hotel for Dogs, by Lois Duncan.  We haven't seen the movie, but the book is good.  I did my fair share of indentifying with Andi Walker, the 10 year old main character. 

Because I apparently have SO MUCH to talk about for a "light week" (ahem), I'm going to break my usual weekly review post into two.  This one will focus on Farmerboy and the twins, who are roughly 2nd grade and kindergartenish, respectively.

Art and Nature Study:

I forgot to mention last week that we started a family nature journal.  It's not an original idea, but I can't remember where I first heard about it.  Anyway, I thought it would be a good way to encourage the little boys in some nature drawing and possibly to encourage my 14 year old as well.  (Katydid has her own nature journal in which she draws frequently.)  Our first project was leaf rubbings:

(Sorry about the glare from the page protector.) 

We're just using a 3-ring binder.  Katydid and Farmerboy made a cover for it and then led all the little boys on a nature walk around the yard.  They drew what they found and filed the pictures in the binder. 

This week's "excursion" (hands-on science in the yard, basically) was a dig initiated by Farmerboy, who wanted to see if any rocks could be found at all.  When it was so dry, the dirt was as hard as rock, but with our rain this week, it softened enough to take a shovel.  Unfortunately, no rocks were discovered, but a long, rotting board was, and also signs that a raccoon has taken up residence in the barn.  The raccoon will have to be evicted somehow; one of our jobs this winter is to convert one of the big stalls on the outside of the barn into a chicken coop.  Raccoons are bad for chickens.

By Sunday afternoon, the trench had become an entire river system, complete with tributaries, mountains, volcanoes, bluffs, forts, and civilizations.  Chipmunk and Pop had apparently been assigned the titles of "Erosion." 

 

Pip worked hard coloring some bird notebooking pages.  He has become very meticulous about his nature coloring pages, prefering to work from actual photos in order to get the colors right.  In order to color his blue hen chicken (the state bird of Delaware), we had to round up Storey's Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds, which has excellent color photos of all the breeds it references.  (And, really, if you are at all interested in raising poultry, you need this book.  Read it alongside the poultry catalogs, which is what we're doing right now.)

Math

Farmerboy and the twins have also been learning to tell time for a while now.  Farmerboy started out last spring with a few pages in Seton's Math 1 for Young Catholics, but math workbooks usually give telling time and the concepts behind it short shrift.  Time (like most mathematical concepts) is a concept best dealt with in a practical, hands-on manner anyway, but the kids do like practicing their time-telling skills on paper.  This is where typical math workbooks can become frustrating, because once you've done a page or two of clockfaces, you've exhausted the workbook's fund of time-telling practice.  So this is what we do:

Montessori clock cards :  These are not the same cards I have, I don't think, because I printed mine from somewhere I can't remember back when Katydid was learning to tell time.  But Lori's materials are top-notch, and I'm fairly certain this set is more comprehensive than the one I have been using.  The twins are working on telling time to the hour; Farmerboy is struggling a little bit remembering :15 and :45, but he's getting there.

Judy Clock:  Again, the teaching clock(s) I actually own are not the same.  I bought them (I bought two of them, one for Gareth and one for Katydid, back when there were only two kids to buy for) at an amazing teacher supply/educational bookstore we used to frequent when we lived in the St. Louis area.  (The best thing about the store was that it had a large play area in the back.)  Our clocks are not as fancy, but I actually like them better because they have the corresponding minutes printed beside the big numbers to help kids learn to tell time in 5 minute intervals.  The boys use these a lot, for fun.  They sit on the couch turning the hands and say, "It's 7 o'clock!  It's 3 o'clock in the morning! It's 12 o'clock now!"

Clock Stamps: The boys are not as keen on these as Katydid was, but they do use them occasionally.

Books:  Well, you knew there had to be books, right?  Two of our favorites: Telling Time with Big Mama Cat and Little Rabbits' First Time Book (Little Rabbit Books).   Mama Cat has been read with so much enthusiasm over the years that the hands on the clock were torn off, so it is in need of being replaced.  Little Rabbits is one of Chipmunk's favorite books at the moment.  A book I found at the library this week that shows some promise is All in One Hour.  It's illustrated with colorful cut-paper collages and digital clocks timing a chain of events set off by a cat chasing a mouse in the early morning.  (Another book of which I have fond memories is Gail Gibbons' Clocks and how they go, which I read over and over and over and OVER to Gareth when he was about 4 years old.)

Another opportunity for time-telling practice is letting me know when it's 4:00 and time for computer/Wii time. ;-)

Farmerboy is also working on adding and subtracting two digit numbers in Seton's Math 2 for Catholics.  This is work he enjoys doing, but he gets horribly frustrated if anyone talks while he's doing it.  Finding him quiet corners in which to work has been a challenge.  Also, this is another instance where kids really need some concrete, hands-on work, but our base 10 blocks were all packed up.  I finally managed to unpack them this weekend and am hoping to introduce Farmerboy to "trading up" (and hopefully the snake game, too).

And the twins spent a few hours on Sunday morning before Mass inventing their own games using Rummy Roots card decks and other board games.

Reading

Because Farmerboy was sick much of the week (including a three day headache), he didn't do too much reading, which is more difficult for him than math.  But he did read most of a picture book to me, Drat That Fat Cat!, which I found at the library.  This is a really excellent book for young readers -- SO much more intelligent and funny than most phonetic readers, and with a vocabulary mostly based on short vowel words.  I had to interject some help here and there (eg.  as with "This is an outrage!"), but Farmerboy could read a lot of it on his own.  I think that struggling readers often think they are doomed to read short, meaningless books about "nags", "cats", and "hams" for a long time, so I was happy to be able to provide Farmerboy with something different.  Glasses certainly improved his reading, but we are still going slowly.  This week has been the first I have heard him try to read words in the books HE likes to look at, or on the closed captioning on the TV.

Pip and Pop are anxious to try out their fledgeling reading skills, too, and are just at the "starting to blend" stage.  Pip in particular demands long lessons using Phonics Pathways, and this week I helped him along through his first book: a short K-4 phonetic text from Abeka I have had sitting in our container of readers (I keep sets of early phonics readers each to their own ziploc bag in a tall Rubbermaid container) for... a really long time.  Gareth and Katydid never picked them up, but they seem to be just right for the twins at this stage. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ice Cube Necklaces

Yesterday was a tough day, and hot.  But there was a bright spot.  A cool spot?  The little boys and I made ice cube necklaces. 

I got the idea from More Mudpies to Magnets: Science for Young Children.  This is a book I have thought about buying for years.  This year I have a bunch (as in 3) experimentally oriented young children, so I bought the book. 

Ice cube necklaces are super simple.  All you need are a couple of ice cube trays, yarn or string, and a collection of smallish objects that will fit in each cube.  I took the boys on a walk around the yard and garden, and they collected flowers, leaves, sticks, rocks, and a small piece of sidewalk chalk.  I held the ice cube trays, and the boys just put their objects in wherever they wanted.  We insured that one row did not hold rocks or other small chokable objects so that Chipmunk could have a necklace, too, and the boys were warned repeatedly that they weren't to eat these ice cubes since we weren't using food to make them.  (Actually we did use some edibles -- dandelion leaves, rose petals, lemon balm -- but exceptions are too complicated.)

After you fill the trays with objects and water, lay strands of yarn or string across each row of cubes, making sure that the yarn dips down into the water in each cube.  Here's what our trays looked like when I put them in the freezer:

As you can see the most difficult part was ensuring that the yarn stay in the water.  It kept bobbing up and needed a little re-arranging.

The twins were not sure what would happen.  Farmerboy knew the cubes would freeze, but he didn't know how long it would take, so he kept checking until the big kids went outside to play in the hose.  It actually took about 4 hours for them to freeze.

The boys melted the ice in their hands, banged it on the deck to chip it into pieces, refroze parts of it, and tried to wear it... but it was too cold!  We talked about solids and liquids and states of matter, and how you could freeze grapes into ice cubes and then you could actually eat your necklace.  Later that night we read What Is the World Made Of? All About Solids, Liquids, and Gases (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science, Stage 2) and looked through more experiment books.

Simple. Fun. Cold. A satisfying bit of summer science. 

A picnic basket for the little ones

 

I was clearing out some shelves in the laundry room today to make more room for storage.  Some things I cleared off the shelves went straight into the trash, and others went into the garage sale box.  Then I ran into this picnic basket.  My sister -inlaw gave us this basket many years ago.  I have always loved it... but have never used it.  There are only four place settings in the basket, and our family quickly grew beyond the four settings.  But it appeals to the reader in me -- having enjoyed too many scenes in books about picnicing on sandwiches and lemonade beneath shady oaks.

So, as I sat on the floor in the laundry room wondering how I should use it (and feeling guilty that I hadn't used it), the boys came in to see what I was doing.   And I decided that I would take a chance and let them use it, as I had often thought of doing when I saw it sitting up there on the top shelf near the ceiling -- lonely and gathering dust.

I see it as sort of a combination Montessori/Reggio material.  The dishes are real china and must be handled carefully.  The basket has latches that must be twisted to close and open.  The place settings fit into an inner basket that can be lifted out of the larger basket.

One of the features the boys found most appealing is the way the utensils slide into the leather strip on the inside of the lid.  (I removed the forks and knives.  I didn't feel like making any more ER visits this week.)

I folded up a table cloth and laid it in the basket underneath the dish insert.  The boys then filled it with toy food and immediately carted it off to have a picnic in the family room.  I think that it will be a way for them to practice manners and social graces.  It will also be interesting to see what sort of "picnics" they have.  I predict that it will be taken "caving" in the closet at least once.

Fortunately, we have a ready-made place for it, too.  (Which is not always the case when I have a bright idea.) 

 

It fits right here next to the toy kitchen. (And yes, that is a stethoscope from a doctor's kit on the toy stove.  I don't know why.)  The kitchen fits in the space between a sort of free-standing room divider that divides our family room area from our living room area (for lack of a better way to describe it).  On the other side of the toy kitchen is the piano.  (It's not a perfect arrangement, but it's the best we could do.)

The twins have needed some guidance with the dishes, but I remain optimistic.  At the very least it was something interesting to do on a rainy day.

Reggio Reflections

Gae left me a thoughtful comment with lots of good questions the other day regarding my Designs for Living and Learning post, and I tried to provide a briefish answer in the combox with the promise of more in a post, but... none of my comments showed up.  So I thought I would just dispense with the briefish answer and go on to the more complicated one.

Here is what Gae wrote:

This looks like a really interesting book.
Did you find that it actually was a lot different from what you have already implemented with your young ones.
Have you read the Reggio books ( all th ones in your side bar)that seem to be going around?
I am not so sure this is any different from what I already do.
Any insight on this in your own family, please?

(And if you haven't checked out Gae's blog, Cherished Hearts at Home, please do.  It's a good one.)

I'm going to jump to the easy question first. :-)  Yes, I have read all of the Reggio books I have in my sidebar, if not in their entirety at least partially.  I will probably be adding a couple more after I finish them.  I do try to make it a point never to put anything in my sidebar that I haven't read or that my kids haven't read or at least that I don't plan on using.  So if you see a book in my sidebar, you can be pretty sure I've at least read part of it and liked it enough to put it up there. 

I do know that most of these books are difficult to impossible to get in Australia.  In the US they all seem to be expensive and many libraries do not have them.  I have been ordering my books over a period of two or three years, many of them used.  If I could get my hands on only two books, I would recommend Authentic Childhood: Experiencing Reggio Emilia in the Classroom and Working in the Reggio Way: A Beginner's Guide for American Teachers (which isn't up on my sidebar because I only just received it about a week ago.  But I think it's a far better introduction to the Reggio approach than some of the other books in my sidebar.)  Authentic Childhood is a good (and thorough) general introduction, including the educational philosophy that underlies the approach taken by the Reggio schools.  Working in the Reggio Way is a more practical book, including questions to ask about your "practice" (I have to put that in quotes because it seems silly to talk in those terms about learning at home).  Both books are written in a much more down to earth manner than the typical theory-laden Reggio book.  (Sometimes I wonder if they would be easier to read in Italian!) Anyway, I think that Working in the Reggio Way is worth having just for the chapter on projects.  No other book that I've read has explained the Reggio approach to projects quite as well. (And Working... is a lot cheaper.)

The best Internet resource is, of course, Camp Creek.  There's a wealth of information there for homeschoolers, it's all free, and Lori is super helpful if you have any questions.  (She usually has an open thread for questions every weekend.)  So, if you can't find the books, or you don't have money to buy them and your library doesn't have them, it may be just as fruitful to hang out at Camp Creek for a while reading through all the archives.   Sarah at Amongst Lovely Things is also posting all her reading notes.

So that's the easy question.  Now onto the harder question, did you find it was a lot different than what you had already implemented with your young ones?

Hmmm.  Not exactly.  But that is one of the reasons I have found reading about Reggio to be especially fruitful -- because I recognized so much of how my kids actually learn there. 

When I started reading about Reggio, I was trying to jam my family into a Montessori model.  (I wrote about some of my frustrations here.) It wasn't that Montessori was completely at odds with the personalities and learning styles of my children (and me).  I had been led to Montessori in the first place based on the need to allow my children freedom while providing structure, giving them hands on work (especially in reading and math), hoping to improve some attention spans, and encouraging independence.  When Montessori popped up in my radar, I was nearly 20 weeks pregnant with twins.  My other kids were 8, 6, and 2 at the time.  Independence -- skills like pouring, making your own breakfast, vacuuming a carpet with a stick vacuum -- was high on my priority list.  Kids like to be independent, and some of the most valuable lessons I learned from Montessori were about how to encourage independence in daily life with children.

But many of the standard Montessori exercises and materials were not working with my family.  They either didn't hold the kids' interest or I couldn't maintain that kind of environment with that many kids under the age of 3... especially since two of them have affectionately been refered to as "Stuntman" and "Crash."

Anyway, what I was trying to do with my little ones (and to a certain extent, my big ones, too) wasn't working.  So I took stock of what did work and I went looking for some other model to help me gather all the various threads of our learning into a cohesive tapestry.  I could have just decided to focus on what worked without reading anythng, but unfortunately, I tend to be the kind of person who needs to read. In my first stage of learning, I gather up lots of data -- as much as I can -- then I push all the books aside and let the data stew a while.  Then I write about it and try out anything that strikes me as being useful.

So.  Here's what does work around here (in general terms):

• Nature
• Books
• Art
• Pretend play
• Following/developing interests as they arise

My first stop was Waldorf, but I ended up deciding that Waldorf is too scripted for us.  I had seen a brief mention of Reggio Emilia in an online article comparing "alternative" forms of education, so I went there next.

Reading about Reggio was a pleasant surprise because I recognized so much of what actually worked in our house in the pages of the books I read.  So in that sense, no, it is not so different than what I do instinctively with my kids, and what my kids do instinctively.  On the other hand, that's exactly what makes learning about the approach so valuable to me.  Instead of having to alter our personalities to fit the program, I can accept our personalities (including my own) as they are and find suggestions about how to build on that and make our natural learning environment fuller and richer -- not just for the little ones, but for the older kids, too.  Part of what I have gotten from reading about Reggio is just feeling a little more comfortable in my own skin. 

I don't like everything I read about the Reggio approach.  For instance, the literature is avowedly secular, and there is a strain of "all knowledge is subjective, there is no objective knowledge" running through it.  But I guess it's like anything else: I take what I can use and leave the rest.

I'm battling with finishing up here at this vague point just because I'm not sure I will ever get this post published otherwise, and with taking longer by giving you an example of how my reading has helped build upon what I would normally do.

An easy example is our art cabinet.  Art shelves have been a fixture in our house since Gareth was very small.  Even before I read a single piece of educational philosophy -- before homeschooling even crossed our minds --  we instinctively, as parents, supported Gareth's interests by giving him opportunities to play with them (toy garbage trucks, laundry baskets -- as trash cans -- , and a bunch of "stuff" to take to the "dump" in his case as a two and three year old) and provided tools for him to use to express himself -- crayons, markers, paint, glitter glue, collage materials.  Organizing all the "stuff", however, has been a constant learning process, especially as we have added more children.  I would notice that various materials were not being used because either I would forget about them, or the children would forget about them, or maybe they were just buried at the bottom of a bin and hard to get to.  

Reggio schools are known for their ateliers, or studios, in which a huge amount of art supplies are made accesible to children and teachers by storing them in transparent containers arranged in an aesthetically pleasing way.  It's not a new concept in the art world, but it isn't something you see in children's environments all that often.  After thinking about it for a while, I decided that I could use my stock of mason jars to make our materials visible, usable... and also to keep the small stuff away from the baby.  I reorganized our art shelves last November and just did my annual summer clearing out to tidy them up (the batteries in my camera are dead, so I can't take a picture right now), and have in general been very pleased with the results. A bonus has been that the art supplies also become like decorations, enhancing the beauty of the room.  They're much easier to keep neat, too, even with a toddler who has never met a chair he can't use to get what he wants.  The under 3 set seem to recognize that the art supplies are tools, which does not apply to the Montessori materials which often become missiles.  So while we do our share of washing crayon and colored pencil off walls and floors, I do not continually have to pick up an entire shelf of pencils that have been tossed all over the floor and used as bombs.  What I am running into now is that we don't have enough shelf space, so I'm looking at all our walls with a critical eye.

That's just a small example, but it has made a difference in our learning.  Another example: I've been encouraged to keep a learning journal, not exactly along the lines of the project journals Lori describes on Camp Creek, but sort of.  So, for instance, I have an entry on 12/15 that goes like this:

After the boys washed the floor, walls, coffee table, and benches this morning (J&N always on the edge of silliness), E took the canister I was saving for the baby and wanted to make a shaker using buttons, pasta shapes, and tape.  I rescued the tin by providing water bottles, lentils, black-eyed peas + glue and tissue paper.  K, E, J, and N each made a shaker -- much more absorbing and calming than washing the floor... Shakers were interesting, though, and maybe part of E constructing an "alphabet of materials" -- in this case, recycled materials, which has been a theme with E for a long time.  It's often buildings out of cardboard... but I suppose the larger theme is toys.  He usually builds things to play with.  Then the other kids then follow along w/his creativity.

"An alphabet of material -- In the Spirit of the Studio, 'From the Beginning of the Atelier to Materials as Languages', p. 13 - an interview with Giovanni Piazza... "It is through interactions between a child and a material that an alphabet can develop.  As the children use paper, clay, wire, and so on, different alphabets will develop from different materials.  As children use their minds and hands to act on a material using gestures and tools and begin to acquire skills, experience, strategies, and rules, structures are developed within the child that can be considered a sort of alphabet or grammar."

You can see the results of this day's work here if you scroll down through the Christmas stuff.  It's hard to say what I would have done if I hadn't been doing so much reading.  Would I have suggested making the shakers? Maybe.  Would I have connected making shakers to the larger processes of building skill and knowledge Farmerboy (he's E) was working on at the time? Probably not.  In this case, I had also noticed that the kids were doing sort of the same thing when they worked with clay.  They weren't interested in making finished products so much as they were interested in learning how clay worked.  The products they made to express themselves with the clay were only vehicles for the larger process of simply learning how they could express themselves.  

Whew.  You may now be sorry you asked! But I think your questions were important.  It's so easy as a homeschooling mom to be drawn into "what's going around" just because "everybody else is doing it" -- at least it is for me.  So I think it's right to have a healthy skepticism.  And I also think that if you're happy with how the learning is going -- if it works for you and your kids-- then you should do what works and don't worry about the "stuff" that's floating around.

But, if you're curious, I do think it's worthwhile to investigate the Reggio approach.  It isn't anything that you have to adopt wholesale, but the ideas are fertile ones which can be applied in a variety of situations.  And they may make you feel better if you find yourself unable to make your kids stick to plans for long periods of time. ;-)  

  

Designs for Living and Learning

"Children are miracles.  Believing that every child is a miracle can transform the way we design for children's care.  When we invite a miracle into our lives, we prepare ourselves and the environment around us.  We may set out flowers or special offerings.  We may cleanse ourselves, the space, or our thoughts of everything but the love inside us. We make it our job to create, with reverence and gratitude, a space that is worthy of a miracle! Action follows thought.  We can choose to change.  We can choose to design spaces for miracles, not minimums."  ~ Anita Rui Olds

My copy of Designs for Living and Learning: Transforming Early Childhood Environments came yesterday, and after flipping through it expectantly, I settled into the rocking chair with Chipmunk and began to read.  The Anita Rui Olds quote prefaces the entire book.  "Wow," I thought. "'We can choose to design spaces for miracles, not minimums.'" 

Olds was talking about institutional childcare environments. But how often does this apply to my home?

The first chapter of the book contains a helpful assessment for current environments to help teachers decide what is working and what they want to change about their space.  Some of the questions they list don't apply to the home environment (one of my strongest first impressions is that the authors continually exhort teachers to make their environments more "homelike", which made me think, hmmm), but others do. 

The first thing they suggest is that you draw a floorplan of your learning space and ask a set of questions about each area.  Since the book is directed at early education environments (and since that is what I'm focused on, too), the questions are asked from the point of view of a 3-6 year old. 

1. I can see who I am and what I like to do here...
2. The natural world can be found here (such as objects from nature, animals, living specimens.)
3. There is something sparkly, shadowy, or wondrous and magical here.
4. My teacher leaves a special object out here every day so I can keep trying to figure out more about its properties and how it works.
5. There are materials here that I can use to make representations from what I understand or imagine.
6. I can feel powerful and be physically active here.
7. I can learn things from different perspectives here, literally and through assuming roles in dramatic play.

Lots of full-color photographs pepper the text for inspiration.

I'm very happy that I finally ordered this book after months of looking at it on Amazon. It's meeting me right where I am, clearing out, organizing, and rethinking our home for the new year.

 

 

Spring Term, Week 7

Week "7" -- or whatever number it really is, considering the fact that I have lost track -- was very, very busy.  Mostly because we were cleaning, But also because I had to go back to the doctor for my asthma (hopefully coming back under control now!), and there was vision therapy, and a family Scouting project (helping clean up a park), and Andy had a late Friday night meeting, and Saturday we hosted our Little Flowers and Blue Knights group so we could finish putting in the garden we're growing for the Little Sisters of the Poor.  (Andy and I joke that the Sisters' garden will probably do a lot better than ours because they have St. Joseph on their side.  We are having a really bad year in the garden this year, so the Sisters might need that help from St. Joseph!  Hardly anythng we planted from seed has come up.)

I also had to finish up our quarterly reports for the school district, which I did, and write letters of intent to homeschool for three students this year, which I also did, yesterday afternoon.  I keep feeling like there ought to be time to take a breath here. Well, maybe tomorrow.

In lieu of extensive commentary, I'm going to post some photos:

 

The remains of dinosaur building.  We're making dinosaur sculptures using newspaper and masking tape armatures, as demonstrated in Make-a-saurus: My Life With Raptors & Other Dinosaurs.  We checked this book out back when Gareth was obsessed with dinosaurs in 2nd grade.  We were living in St. Louis then, and were happily surprised when we found the book recently in our local library here in New York.  I really should own this book and I don't know why I don't.  It's about how an artist goes about recreating dinosaurs. The second half of the book gives directions on how kids can make their own.  The armature making is a bit too complicated for the younger kids because you have to roll tight tubes for arms, jaws, legs, etc.  But they should be able to do papier mache and paint without much help.

We're keeping the pieces of skeleton in bags at the moment.  Hopefully we'll get to the papier mache part in the next day or so.

  

The other "big" thing around here lately...

 

Eastern Tent Caterpillars.  Of which Pip is king.

 

One of his has even made a coccoon.

 

The thing about Pip and caterpillars is that sometimes he wants to sleep with them.  And sometimes he sleeps with them inadvertently because they crawl out of their container and end up in bed with him.

The boys "helped" Andy build a turkey roost:

 

And, as I mentioned, we hosted our Little Flowers group:

 

This week should be a little quieter... but I think it's going to take me a few days to adjust!

Winter Term, Week 11: CAT Testing

Our focus last week was the required standardized testing New York requires every other year in 4th through 8th grades.  This is when one discovers that the state thinks social studies is all about reading charts that tell you how many students belong to various school clubs. And that an important math concept is being able to read a TV schedule.  I used to think -- before the kids took their first tests two years ago -- that the tests were probably totally useless, but I've made my peace with them now. They sometimes point out hitherto unknown problems, such as that one of my children has trouble reading charts (probably due to visual issues, but maybe not), or that another of my children's spelling trouble probably does qualify as a learning disability.  But mostly what we can take from standardized testing is that the relaxed, eclectic learning we do around here is more than enough to match the schools. 

My biggest problem during testing week is keeping the little ones quiet.  Because we're not usually going our separate ways with academic work being done in the morning, being quiet in the morning is a novel experience for my little ones. I could have turned on the TV, but I didn't.  I also could have -- probably should have -- made plans, but alas, I didn't do that either. (The way things have devolved lately is probably yet another post that I won't have time to write, but... maybe.) Instead, I set the microwave timer for the big kids and hovered like a hawk over the little ones, taking their lead.

 

One of the things we did was to make a big mess on St. Patrick's Day by making some homemade playdough.

 

Green, of course.

 

Chipmunk dumped out half a box of cornstarch on the table, but since he was happy and quiet, I left him at it.

   

Which made him happy.

The little boys also had a bit of a knights kick last week, when they spent quite a bit of time perusing knight books and coloring knight coloring books.

Fortunately, we had some nice days during testing, which was good for everyone.  Since Gareth and Katydid decided to do more tests a day than I had originally planned on, they got done early and were rewarded with most of Thursday "off".  Katydid spent her Thursday holiday writing a report on red-tailed hawks and birdwatching, birding journal in hand.  Gareth built Lego space ports.  But of course all I have are pictures of the little boys:

Construction begins again, photo courtesy of Katydid.

Winter term, Week 8: More glitter

 

Mardi Gras masks!

You'll have to pardon this post, because I am ending up the week with a cold and three sick little boys. (The littlest boy was sick over the course of the week, but was he sick with what we've all come down with today or with the last mild cold that passed through our ranks?) I did want to post about last week while it was still relatively fresh, but I'm afraid that my commentary might be a bit on the brief and unenlightening side. I am very bad at just vegging out, though, and I have spent all day investigating correspondence and umbrella schools and tutorial services. I doubt that we will ever sign anyone up for a full program, but using bits and pieces... that's something we do around here.

But without further ado, a brief glimpse at Week 8. Week 8 was...

...the beginning of Lent, when I brought all the kids to Mass on Ash Wednesday by myself and had to drag 4 small children - 2 of whom were screaming that they didn't want to go -- into the cry room during the homily. The cry room was inexplicably full of grown-ups. But this was still a better experience than last year, which you really don't want to know about. And then we went to vision therapy.

... also Mardi Gras, which involved mask making and listening to Cajun music.

We had cleared off the china cabinet and set it up for Lent, but unfortunately there was nowhere else to dry the Mardi Gras masks. But we can lay both sorrows and joys at the foot of the cross.

 

   Lots of glitter -- Pop's, of course.

 

Gareth's cat mask.

I tried setting up a few activities for Chipmunk on the train table while I read aloud. The plastic jug is probably his most beloved "toy"; he loves taking the top off and putting it back on again. The oatmeal containers have various sized balls in them for pouring out and putting back in:

 

The oatmeal containers are also well-loved. This set up kept Chipmunk occupied for about fifteen minutes, after which he did this:

 

I have no idea where he found that purple marker, or why he loves biting off the tips.

 

Pip practiced his scissors skills by cutting yarn. And those boxes...

 

... became a tank. Built by Farmerboy, of course.

 

Soon turned into a fleet, so everyone could play.

As for the big kids, when they are not battling prepositional phrases or grappling with the mysteries of percentages or multiplication, they have been doing a lot of this:

Winter Term, Week 6 and 7: Spelunking and a little glitter

Week 6: Valentines, Valentines, Valentines:

 

Katydid, wearing her rose-colored glasses (they actually are rose-tinted, to help with her headaches) looks very Valentine-ish, doesn't she?

 

Most of the Valentines this year involved large amounts of glitter.  I think this is Pip's. Pip wasn't interested in making Valentines at first.  Instead, he spent a few days making cards for himself. You can see one of them above the Valentine in this picture, but most of them only involved drawing with markers and me writing dictated letters: W G M T... that sort of thing. I wish I had a photo, but I think the cards have all been used past the point of photographing by this point.

Pop was much more interested in the artistic value of Valentines:

 

Or, perhaps more importantly, the artistic value of glitter.

Chipmunk, on the other hand....

 

... Chipmunk just wanted to bite the tips off the markers. So he was confined to his high chair.

 

You can't tell that he colored his nose, mouth, and cheeks orange in this picture, can you. But he did. And his tongue.

Week 6 AND 7: Caves

Inspired by One Small Square: Caves, Farmerboy took his brothers "spelunking" in the closet. (In the closet because it's dark in there with the door closed.) Here you see him with his caving outfit: an equipment bag full of "food" and "first aid", and a camping lantern.

In week 7, we finished reading The Story of Caves, which ended up having quite a bit of information about Howes Caverns, the caverns we hope to visit soon. I suggested that Farmerboy might want to make his own cave one morning, and he decided to make one out of a cardboard box. Pretty soon Katydid and Gareth were also in on the fun:

 

Gareth's cave has stalactites, stalagmites, natural arches, fried egg formations, and gypsum (the white stuff on the wall.) It also has a stream.

In Farmerboy's cave, the stalagmites are made from clay. He also put fried egg formations and gypsum in his cave, and also cave bacon, bats on the wall, and a pack rat's nest in the "twilight zone" in the front of the cave. Then he got his Playmobil guys to be "spelunkers" (no plain old caving in our house). This particular Playmobil guy is outfitted with camera, flashlight, and laptop... in case he wants to look up the animals he finds.

To be honest, the suggestion to make caves was thrown out in desperation, but I was very pleased with the result.  I had no idea that Farmerboy had absorbed such a lot of information about caves.  In fact, he enjoyed this project so much that he has continued to play with and tinker with his cave for a good part of two days. He named his cave "Carlsbad Trap."

While the big kids made caves, Pip and Pop made owlish masks out of paper plates and also decorated some big cardboard letters I picked up from Dick Blick. I had been looking for these things for a long time, and happily, the little boys enjoyed decorating them:

 

Pop glued ANIMAL shapes on his A, but Pip is all about the markers. The ones Chipmunk hasn't eaten, anyway.

During week 6, we also participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count. Alas, we didn't see too many birds. But we did have pine siskins. And a couple of blue jays...

 

We also (collectively) decided that Gareth is going to be working on a high-school level designed-by-us paleontology course, which he is excited about. He's particularly excited by our discovery that some trilobite beds are just down the road. But those, unfortunately, will have to wait until the snow melts.