Three Plus Two

This Week

A cicada emerges from its exoskeleton.  Photo by Katydid.

This week we had a few "cool" days (in the 80's) so we spent more time outside.  The twins and Chipmunk fought ants and caught caterpillars.  One of the caterpillars they caught may have been a cabbage white caterpillar, and they spent an entire morning counting and pooling their money so they could buy cabbage to feed it.  Alas, the poor creature was "wounded" (or so I was told) and did not survive the day.  Katydid surreptitiously dumped it outside.  The boys were again focused on their ongoing battle with the billions of ants that populate our yard anyway.

 

Farmerboy tamed chickens.  I think the one he's holding may be named Domino.  She's a Dominque, a breed we remain partial to because they're like cats, only more useful. The chicken heading into the hole in the stall door is a Salmon Falverole affectionately known as "Runt".  As a chick she developed a lot later than the other birds, so much so that we thought there was something wrong with her and that we might have to cull her.  Instead we fed her vitamins.  She survived a dog attack and is now one of the chickens with the most interesting personality. 

(If you don't have chickens, you might not realize that they can have interesting personalities.  But some of them do.

Also, did you remember that our barn used to be a weird sort of mauve and tan color? Probably not, considering how little I've posted in the past year.  If you don't remember the weird mauve color it used to be, you won't know how much improved the green is.  Just trust me.)

FB also spent a considerable amount of time working on a Lego coral reef.  We finished reading Pagoo last week and this week we moved on to One Small Square: Coral Reef, mostly because it came in the mail finally and because when I looked inside, the word LEGO jumped out at me.  I'd ordered it from Winterpromise a long time ago, along with some other books, including Atlas of World History.  The other books came, but the Atlas and the One Small Square book did not.  For over a month.  (I was reading a blog post the other day in which the writer and various commenters led me to believe that this situation was not uncommon with Winterpromise.)  Anyway, at least it was a nice surprise to open a box with interesting books in it that I wasn't really expecting.  Coral Reef suggests using Legos to build corals, and of course that was all the encouragement FB needed.  Here you see staghorn coral being feasted upon by a Crown of Thorns Starfish, while a giant clam resides nearby, hiding a pearl.  Katydid told him clams didn't make pearls, but that didn't really seem to deter him.  I think he's claiming artistic license on this one.

Another interesting coral reef book from this week:  

It's all about the Great Barrier Reef.  And he watched this National Geographic Great Barrier Reef video.  And a bunch of the other videos on the same page, too.  And now I have heard that he wants to be a diver.  Which means he'll be wanting more swimming lessons, I guess.

It was a marine biology week for Katydid (age 12/7th-ish grade now) as well.  She seems to naturally concentrate on one subject for a while, then move on to the next one.  Over the course of a year, if left largely to her own devices, she usually acquires a pretty well-rounded education.  But if you looked at it on the level of the week, you might not see that.  This week was one of those weeks.  It seemed like every time I saw her working, she was working on marine biology.  She and FB played some of these BBC Sea Life games in addition to the work she did using Seaside Naturalist: A Guide to Study at the Seashore.  She told me she "accidentally" wrote a report while she was trying to take notes. 

Gareth works in a similar fashion, except intensified by several degrees.  This week was all about geography for him, considering that we got that new atlas and he's reading Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies , and writing and science fiction.  He and Katydid are working on the Other Worlds curriculum together.  He's also moving at a good pace through Jacobs Geometry with the aid of the Ask. Dr. Callahan DVDs and syllabus.  I must say that this is a relief to both of us after all the wrestling with algebra. This week was a further focus on deductive proof.

The younger boys had a "math morning" this week... I think it was Thursday, when it stormed all morning.  It wasn't planned; math was just what they wanted to work on. I do try to work on math daily with the K-3 set, but a) that's not usually a problem with Pop, who will tell you that he has a "math brain" and b) Thursday morning they just wanted to keep going with various mathematical activities.

I put out some pattern squares on the table.  I made a flower.  Nobody could guess what it was.  (Pop: "A satellite? Radar?") FB sat down and immediately put all the squares in a battle array and then informed his brothers of the rules to the game, if they should wish to play.  Of course they did, and of course they immediately protested that it wasn't fair because FB had all the soldiers. So... we spent some time figuring out how many soldiers FB actually had (beginning multiplication, multi-digit addition, regrouping, then division when he split them up).  I only had to break up a few fist fights before we were finished.

Boys.

We are doing lots of schooly stuff every day, but it is still summer time.  My garden this summer has become an abysmal failure -- well, "abysmal" may be a little strong, but it's a tempting word to use when squash bugs destroy half of everything you planted and even your green beans don't really bear.  Anyway, there are several Bartlett pear trees in our neighborhood, and they're getting ripe this time of year, and today one of our neighbors was cutting grass for another neighbor, who has a tree loaded with pears but doesn't use them, and he said we could have the pears if the kids would come get them.  So I sent the three oldest over with the cooler on wheels, and even though one cooler full was probably enough, our neighbor said the kids should dump their load and come back for more.  I'm not sure how much this is -- a bushel and a half? Two bushels? Or what I'm going to do with them either, considering that Bartlett pears tend to be hard as rocks.  But I figure they might be good for preserves or pear butter.

 

Linking up!

Weekly Wrap Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning with Lego

I've been having a hard time getting enthused about homeschooling lately, so I decided it was time to not worry so much about "making progress" and to do something fun instead.

It's the flag of Denmark!

Cue: this Lego unit/lapbook, which I first learned about on the Aussie Pumpkin Patch blog last fall.  I'd tucked the idea away in the back of my mind, and these dreary, sick January days seemed like a good time to present it to my Lego-obsessed 7 year old.  Farmerboy is not an independent reader so he really couldn't do this unit independently, and he didn't have much interest in making a lapbook, but we had fun watching all the videos and doing the "building challenges".  Gareth and Katydid joined in on occasion, too.

We've only gone through the first 3 days because Pip had to make an unscheduled visit to minor medical on Thursday with an infected finger.  Farmerboy is looking forward to doing more learning with Lego this week... so much so that I'm afraid I'm going to have to come up with my own building challenges for many more days!

Farmerboy's taxi-truck from Day One... we couldn't find the taxi instructions, so Farmerboy made up his own.

The ship from Day 2... It's a speedboat.  His finger is hiding the prop he added to the back.

 
Katydid's mosaic from Day 3... a treasure chest.

We also used the nice spread on Lego manufacture in the book See How It's Made and found a good article about the science of how Lego works (among other things), which I read aloud to everyone.

Farmerboy has now added "Professional Lego Builder" to "Paleontologist" when asked what he wants to be when he grows up.  Next I think he will probably answer, "Nathan Sawaya".

 

 

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 13: A nice November

We're having a relatively warm November, which means that last week we were outside a lot.  The question here is not if it will get cold soon, but which day.  Our forecast doesn't look bad, but usually the snow moves in around Thanksgiving and stays until... oh... April... May... a long time anyway.  So I think we can be forgiven for ditching some academics to take advantage of the occasional warm spell.  It's a really long winter.

Anyway, the little boys spent a lot of time this week digging.

In a Montessori classroom, I guess "digging" would count as practical life.  The boys actually dug their deep holes so they could be "cities".   I have had a hard time making "cities" into a formal project, but I think that's because it's really a game.  They don't really want too much interference from me, because this is a kid universe.  So they dug deep holes and tunnels all week, and built up "volcanoes" and "cliffs", and told each other how people got around their cities, whether they could use cars or not because there were or weren't roads.  

One day I was trying to keep the little boys occupied while we read in the morning and I suggested they might like to draw a picture of their cities.  Somehow this became drawing planets and imaginary solar systems.

N. started it, and soon all the other boys (including Gareth) were doing their own solar system pictures.

 (My camera lens seems to have a tiny scratch on it which sometimes shows up as a smudge.  I dropped the camera a while ago and smashed the viewfinder, too, so I may be in the market for a new camera soon.)

The solar system pictures aren't finished yet, because the boys wanted to add background and didn't have time.  I'm hoping to give them time to finish their pictures this week in the midst of all our Thanksgiving cleaning. Or maybe next week while I cook.  Farmerboy started painting a model solar system, too, but hasn't finished it yet.

When I said we "ditched" academics, I meant that we didn't spend long hours on them.  The big kids did still actually do some academic work.  The One Year Adventure Novel  kit arrived and Gareth and Katydid actually gave up playing outside to go inside and start working on it.  So far, so good.  Gareth also finished his Life of Fred: Fractions book and is preparing to get started on the second half of the pre-algebra sequence, Decimals.  Life of Fred hasn't magically cured his math frustration, but he did like it more than Saxon.  Life of Fred is much less rote learning than Saxon, and much more application.  He covered all the fraction topics included in Saxon's Algebra 1/2 , but in a much more informal, applied way.   My only quibble with the book is that there's not enough practice available on topics that students stumble on (say, unit analysis). 

And Katydid started working on long division.  As with most things mathematical, she is not doing this the traditional way.  Which I suppose only proves the maxim that in order to really understand a concept, you have to teach it.  I'm 37 years old and have gotten through the last 20 years breezing through long division problems with aboslutely no idea why the method works.  Katydid has to know the why's and wherefore's, though, before she gets a concept.  Which means I have had to do a little thinking.  In the future, I'll try and detail our process, just in case anyone else out there needs a non-traditional approach to long division.

Our history reading in the morning continued to go well this week.  We began Beowulf: the Warrior, which is one of the best boy read-alouds ever.  This re-telling is awesome.  It remains faithful to the poetry of the original, and also -- for the boys in your family -- it still retains the scene where Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm.  So there you go.

And just in case you want to envision me and all my kids snuggled on the couch while we read aloud...

 
  You probably shouldn't. (Make sure you look underneath the table.  Also, I am sure that even the kind people who said they didn't notice the clutter in the other photos will notice the clutter in these pictures.  Why does decluttering always make my house look so bad?)

Not enough picture books this week to make a nifty widget, so I'll just have to list them...

• Destination: Space

 Our Solar System (revised edition)

I Can Read About Planets

 Yankee Doodle (illustrated by Steven Kellogg, one of my kids' favorites)

 

 
 

Week 7: Busy Week

9/28 -10/4

Of course, the busy weekend could be coloring my perceptions of the whole week.  Swim lessons began (for Gareth, Katydid, and Farmerboy), violin lessons continued (for Katydid), there was a trip to the library, and the rain held off long enough for our Little Flowers and Blue Knights groups to meet at the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville.

 
The shrine is built on the site of the martyrdom of St. Isaac Jogues and his companions.  Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha was later born here, and baptized just a few miles away.  We had a picnic lunch with one of the priests and the kids played soccer in the field by the gift shop.  

Another important event this week...

The twins turned 4! Four years ago I could not imagine surviving to this point.  And yet -- here we are. :-) 

So those were the special occasions.  The boys had to unwrap presents early on Saturday morning as fast as they could, because Andy had to take Farmerboy to his swim lesson by 8 AM.  I don't think it bothered them much, though. ;-)

Other highlights of week 7...

The boys rediscovered stamping.  Here, Farmerboy is experimenting with thumprints.

 
Inspired by a project in The Usborne Complete Book of Art Ideas, Gareth cut up an eraser to make his own stamps.  He found that stamp ink worked better than the black tempera paint he started out with.

Gareth and Farmerboy also messed around with acrylics a bit...

Gareth's gas giants inside a nebula.  As he was painting, he realized he had very little black paint.  I provided him with a very cool book I bought off a bargain table several years ago, a collection of Hubble photos called The Universe.  Since some regions of space are full of colored dust, Gareth decided that might work for his background.  He tried to fill in some black in the gaps.  This was basically a painting to experiment with the qualities of acrylic.  Since I know very little about painting myself, I will need to do some research and experimentation to figure out how to extend his explorations.  I find that this is the area in which I often fall down.  I do a fair job at introducing the kids to novel materials and projects, but not such a good job at deepening skills.

Farmerboy was inspired by Gareth's painting, so he decided to paint his own planet:

The red circle is the planet, surrounded by purple atmosphere, streaming off into space.

Katydid and I fooled around with oil pastels this week.  I sat down one day when the boys were stamping to experiment with blending oil pastels.

I was just laying down patches of color to figure out how oil pastels work (on black paper).

Katydid drew a landscape instead:

On another day, she copied down this poem she wrote and illustrated it with oil pastels:

She and I also did some sketches for the monthly sketch project, but I'll put those in a separate post.

A Brief Summary of 1st grade academics:

I often forget to mention Farmerboy's academics, which are a little different (obviously) from the big kids'.  This is what we're using:

Modern Curriculum Press Phonics A , spending a longer time working on consonant sounds, as he has some trouble remembering them

Handwriting Without Tears , the 1st grade book

A mish-mash of reading materials, including silly sentences I write for him, word cards I cut out from cardstock he can use to make his own silly sentences (silly is a big draw here), and Sonlight's I Can Read It! series (Book 1).  I find the Sonlight stories a little weird in some places, but it's nice having them all together in a few books.

Mainly Montessori math materials... the 100 chain is what he has been interested in most since we began our school year in August.  He's learned to lay out the tens cards and count the beads one-to-one to 100.  He also counts on the 100 board, counts piano keys, counts lots of stuff spontaneously.  When we first began, he would often skip numbers, had trouble remembering the -9 to -ty (29, 30, etc) transition, but he's got them down now.  Last year I tried to use Singapore's kindergarten workbook with him, which was a disaster.  He learned to write his numbers, but that was about it.  (In my defense, I had to be able to do something with him while also rocking a baby for 2 hours every afternoon.)  This year, since we've switched back to Montessori, is going much, much better.  I've done presentations of the decimal system using base 10 blocks, and he is keen to be able to go on to the 1000 chain now that he can do the 100 chain.

 

A few words about the assortment of books here... on Sept. 29, the Feast of St. Michael and the Archangels, the kids reminisced about the year we made shields.  So Farmerboy got off on a bit of a knight tangent.  He made himself a cardboard and aluminum foil suit of armor, and shields for himself and his little brothers.  The boys then added their own coats of arms.  Why don't I have pictures?  I have no idea.

And then... the duck and chick books.  On and off for months, the twins have made it evident that they are fascinated with eggs.  They pretend to be flood monsters hatching out of their eggs (they lie on their backs and put pillows on their bellies for "eggs").  They pretend to be gigantic plum-plums hatching of their eggs. (Pip's invention.)  They pretend that they are chicks and I am the Mommy and they hatch out of their eggs and then go on the road. ("Chicks on the road!" they call just like we do when the chickens wander into the street.)  Their dearest wish is that we would get a rooster so instead of eating our eggs, we would let some hatch.  And then they became enamored of Daisy.  So I have been canvasing the library shelves for chick/duck/egg picture books.  I think I have found all of them by now, and will probably need to hunt through the rest of the library system.

(Ack!  How could I forget?  We also read Five Little Ducks about a million times this week!)

Read this week

Gareth: Peter and the Starcatchers, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson; Fellowship of the Ring; St. Dominic and the Rosary (Vision Books); various Dig!, Muse, and Faces issues re: prehistory

Katydid: Little Women; Dealing with Dragons, Patricia Wrede; Louisa May Alcott issues of Cobblestone; Queen Victoria issues of Calliope; Dig! Neandertals

Read-alouds this week: The Hobbit (everyone); Farmerboy (little boys); Once Upon a Time Saints: Around the Year (appropriate pages)

Listened to this week:  Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, CDs 3&4 (mostly)

Watched this week: The Planets: Formation of the Solar System; Ken Burn's National Parks: Episode 3 (I have no idea why #2 was skipped)

 

   

 

Week 2, Winter Term: Break for Blocks

We're having a bit of a problem getting back into a groove again.  While we made it through the holidays without getting sick, a couple of colds hit hard after New Year's.  Last week was a run-down sort of week.  Nobody had very much energy, although I doubt you would have thought that had you peeked in my windows and watched my little boys brandishing light sabers and chasing each other round and round the living room.  Anyway, here's a taste of what did happen around here last week.

 Some Montessorians out there just flinched.  Yes, those are pieces of the Pink Tower and the Brown Stair Chipmunk is loading into Andy's boots.  They are only some of the many things we find in our boots these days.  Chipmunk is a spatial kid, and there is nothing he likes more than testing open containers (or boots) for fit.  His next favorite activity is pushing chairs around so he can climb on them and loot the high shelves meant for the bigger kids.  Therefore, I have very little in the way of Montessori out on any shelves, and I've also had to scale back on our nature area. (He broke the Our Lady of Grace statue on the china cabinet this morning, so I have to find a new home for our religious display, too.)  I do, however, give Chipmunk some Montessori-ish activities to do in a very relaxed manner.  Some of the things he enjoys (other than loading up people's boots):

• putting craft sticks into containers with different sized necks, such as spice bottles and cornstarch containers
• matching lids to different containers
• pouring and spooning cheerios
• Duplos
• putting on and taking off play silks knotted into capes
• pushing carts, walkers, etc

In addition to normal toddler chaos, the twins gained access to one of my Montessori storage closets, which could have been Very Bad.  Fortunately I was right there and could set them up with the knobbed cylinders before they dragged every single thing out into the hallway.  (I would have the knobbed cylinders out, but I don't have anywhere to put them where Chipmunk won't leave pieces scattered all over the place... or attempt to choke himself on one of the small pieces.)  Chipmunk joined in with the knobbed cylinders (of a safe size) and did quite well:

 The twins were both able to do two blocks at once.  The challenge held their interest longer.

It was actually a fairly spatial week. Since nobody felt 100%, sitting down with blocks was a good way to pass the time, especially while I read. 

In this picture, Farmerboy is using Katamino to build 3-D structures, Katydid was making patterns using Pattern Play blocks, Pip and Pop were trading blocks and the Rush Hour game (they just like arranging the cars and trucks on the grid, but here's a neat online version, which is also very addictive), and Chipmunk was sorting fish and transportation counters... after a fashion.

And while we're focusing on Chipmunk for a change, he had another first this week:

 

His first hair cut!

Week 8: Working on our learning spaces

(You know, I have to first apologize if I came off a little whiny in my weekly review two weeks ago; when I said I'd decided to keep writing these reviews "even if nobody reads them", I wasn't fishing for comments, honest! LOL And I'm sorry if I sounded a bit cranky.  I am very grateful for everyone who reads this blog, and for all the comments you leave.  Sometimes I just have to justify the way I spend my time to myself, if you know what I mean.)

As I attempt to get the house cleaned up in preparation for Thanksgiving, I'm also working on our learning spaces.  We don't have an entire room dedicated to school; instead we use parts of the dining room, family room, and living room.  This presents some challenges, especially in the dining room which also houses the wood stove and is where we eat at least twice a day. 

Our nature area, which I've designated the top of a sideboard in the dining room, had collected some clutter and the display was a little out of date.  I cleared it all off Monday night, and Tuesday morning I started adding things back.  Katydid and Gareth got into the act and brought out a few pieces of their personal collections for us to display.  This was nice because it meant I didn't have to twist anybody's arm.  One of the problems I am attempting to solve is one of effective display: the artwork gets buried in my files and nobody ever sees it; the rocks and feathers and bones all get secreted away in the bedrooms, never to be seen again. 

So far, the new and improved nature area has been the cause of much excitement.  I'm pleased, because so many of my ideas fall completely flat.  (That book display in the Halloween post, for instance?  I originally got it to go in the boys' room, because they were demolishing their books.  But after I got totally fed up and removed every single book from their room instead, I decided to put it in the family room.  As soon as I got it where I wanted it, Chipmunk walked up, studied it a moment, then proceeded to climb it like stairs.  My husband then had the audacity to laugh.)

A few photos of the new nature area:

 

From left to right:

• Chipmunk, about to throw a whole bunch of puzzle pieces on the floor
• rocks and fossils tray
• 30x portable microscope
• tufted titmouse nest, turkey feather, and ruffed grouse feather
• leaf basket (parts of a leaf cards, parts of a plant cards, rubbing plates, leaves)
• botany puzzles
• drawings of leaves by Pip and Pop
• basket of pine cones, bark, seed pods
• amaryllis and sumac in pots
• clay statues by Farmerboy
• wooly bears in plastic container "habitats"

Since I took the picture I've added a jar of Lyra skin-tone pencils for drawing November-ish landscapes and a bowl of Plastilina for making molds of shells, etc. to simulate fossils.  On another shelf (because it wouldn't fit here) is a leaf tray:

 

... which is very popular with Pip. 

 

... who started working as soon as he woke up many days this week.

  

Here is a collection of the work he was doing at around 7:30 AM one morning: using the Lyra pencils to draw leaves, doing the earth element puzzle, observing his wooly bear caterpillar with a magnifying glass.

Most of the kids seemed most interested in the rocks and fossils tray, however, and once I brought it out, it trumped everything else in the display.  Actually, I started out with one rock, then mentioned to Katydid that I was changing the display and asked her if I could put out one of the really amazing fossils she has, and the tray grew from there.

 

The small wooden box (mostly) holds those sorts of things which often become fossils: seashells, snail shells, shark teeth, a bone (discovered in our garden).  The two big rocks are the best fossils; Gareth and Katydid found these at the farmhouse we rented when we first moved here.  They are like chunks of the sea floor and contain probably hundreds of small fossils.  A while back Katydid rediscovered hers underneath her bed (don't ask) and brought it out to see if I knew how old it was.  After a little research, we discovered that the rocks in our area are from the Devonian period -- the Age of Fish -- when New York was covered by sea.  We spent most of Gareth's second grade year and Katydid's kindergarten year studying dinosaurs -- dinosaurs were sort of like a freight train in our house -- but considering the fact that Katydid is now 9, she thought she might want to learn more about rocks and fossils.  I got some books around that time, but they seemed to fall flat.  Since I put together the tray, however, the interest has bloomed afresh.  She and Farmerboy spent a fair amount of time this week looking at all the rocks with microscope and magnifying glass, pressing various materials into Plastilina to make casts and molds, and digging around for more fossils out in the garden.  Gareth, who is reading about prehistoric mammals right now, joined them for some model fossil making and some fossil hunting, but mostly he's been reading.

 

I think I will probably take down the leaf basket and the botany puzzles, because no one seems very interested in them, and make more room for rock-related work.  Gareth and Katydid set up some notebooks for their various projects -- Birds of the World, Missionary Orders, and Rocks and Fossils for Katydid, and Prehistoric Mammals for Gareth.  (I'll try and put our rock/paleontology books in the sidebar some time this week.)

The little boys also worked with some Montessori materials this week.  Pip, Pop, and Katydid made some insets:

 

 By Pop

 

By Katydid.

And Farmerboy was intrigued by the hundred chain when I got out the short bead chains and squares to help Katydid with squares and square roots.  Katydid regaled him with tales of the thousand chain, and so then he wanted to get that out, and we did, and he was properly impressed.  He and Katydid counted it by tens.  The fraction skittles have also had a bit of a workout -- or at least they seem to be moved every time I walk by.  I also put out the Geoboard for Farmerboy to build on his marshmellow work (ahhh... no pun intended...), but he left it out on the table and it seems as if every time I walk by that it has a new design on it done by one of the big kids.

And we have also been reading a lot of Thanksgiving books.  Which I will hopefully add to my sidebar before Thanksgiving as well.

Building with Marshmellows

 

A while back Farmerboy and I watched an episode of Curious George that was all about building bridges.  The kids in the video clip following the episode were attempting to build bridges using marshmellows and toothpicks.  I'd heard of the idea before, but this time I made sure it stayed in the front of my brain.  Farmerboy is the kind of kid who likes projects.  He wants to do things.  Experiments and any kind of construction are generally big hits.

So. Usually Andy does the grocery shopping after work, but I finally managed to get to a store in person and saw a display of marshmellows, and of all things - toothpicks!  I picked up about 4 bags and a couple of boxes of toothpicks, and we were off.

I don't have these out on a shelf.  The marshmellows, along with any creations, are kept in ziploc bags in the pantry.  The pantry is easily accessible to Farmerboy, who can build with marshmellows whenever he likes as long as he picks up afterward.  The only problem is insuring that the construction materials aren't all eaten by the end of the week.

 

Farmerboy's first creations were simple strings of marshmellows and toothpicks which he would test by stringing out over supports made of books, blocks, toys, chairs, etc.  He told me it was hard to build "up" because the marshmellows kept falling over.  One afternoon I asked him if I could build, too, and I built with squares and triangles to show him how he might be able to build higher. I didn't say: "I will show you how...", I just started building.  He saw how I did it, and began to include the same shapes in his building.

 Some marshmellow cubes, or "towers"...

Starting to build a bridge using both squares and triangles, for support.  While building, he hypothesized that he could keep the "walls" from falling in by connecting the marshmellows across the top.

As Farmerboy worked with his marshmellows, he had the idea that he could build a marshmellow "city", with houses and buildings and "power plants".  (The kids have been playing Sim City lately, and "cities" are a recurring theme around here lately.  I have some ideas stewing about that, too.)  He started using some other materials in his construction, like playing cards:

The cards make good platforms for bridges and roofs for houses.  He also wanted the "buildings" to be different colors, so I thought that he might be able to do that with food color paint.  We diluted the food coloring with quite a bit of water and used a brush, and the results turned out not too badly.  But food coloring doesn't really mix too well on the marshmellows; some of the colors get kind of muddy.  Farmerboy also experimented with dunking the marshmellows directly in the food coloring paint, but that results in soggy marshmellows.

 

At this point, somehow all the marshmellows got eaten, so it was back to the store for a few more bags and another gentle reminder that we cannot go through 4 bags of marshmellows in a week and a half (or so).  This time I picked up a bag of small colored marshmellows, too.  (I'd been looking for gumdrops, but I couldn't find any.) 

 

I've been having some technical difficulties with the USB ports on the desktop, so I'm having to figure out a few quirks about downloading pictures onto my laptop.  I think I have some pictures of Farmerboy's latest creations, which are more complicated geometric forms involving toothpicks as diagonals, but they aren't downloaded yet.  

What do I think he's learning from all of this?  Well, obviously quite a bit of geometry.  But also problem-solving skills, science (there's a bit of physics involved in building bridges), art, and arithmetic (he often counts the marshmellows).  It's also good fine motor work.  And it happens to be fun.

To go from here, I bought some neon-colored straws to cut up and use as different connectors.  I would also like to find some gumdrops and possibly some of those candy orange slices.  To extend the "building with food" idea (and because Farmerboy has been bugging me for "little pans so I can learn to cook"), I'm going to bring out my copy of Cooking Art.  This also may finally be the Christmas that we make a gingerbread house, but I'm not promising anything just yet.  

May So Far: Uncategorized Learning

In April, I was trying to get us back into a routine that would carry us to the end of May, when we would break for getting the garden in.  I forgot, of course, that May -- if it's cold and rainy, the way this May has been -- is often one of our sick months.  Sick month = little, if any routine.  We've been spending a lot of time at the doctor's office.  And very little time reading aloud or having Choice Time.  (If you could spare a few prayers for Katydid, I would appreciate it.  She has been through strep and may or may not have mono or Lyme or a really bad sinus infection.  We're waiting on test results.)

But I have been pleased at the amount and variety of learning activities that have gone on anyway.  Some of them have been my suggestion, or the result of a suggestion I made a long time ago, or an idea that I exposed the kids to on purpose.  And other things have been completely child-initiated.  The reason I titled this post "Uncategorized Learning" is because, as the years go by, I realize how we fit in no boxes.  I think this is how homeschooling is supposed to be -- tailor-made to the family, to the individual.  I'm sure that our style of learning probably wouldn't work wholesale at your house, but I also think that is a good thing.  When we're not running off to doctor's offices and labs, I've been reading to the kids from the Golden Children's Bible about the epistles of Paul.  I read to them what Paul had to say about the Church needing a diversity of gifts in order to function, just as the body needs all its different parts.  They laughed at the image of a body made up entirely of ears or eyes.  Sometimes I think that even homeschoolers succumb to the prevalent undercurrent in educational philosophy that this philosophy (whatever brand is being espoused at the time) is the best way to educate -- the implication being, the best way to educate everyone.  I've always had to scratch my head at this attitude among homeschoolers, because aren't we homeschooling because we wanted to get away from cookie cutter education? Unschooling or Montessori, applied to everyone without thought, would simply be more cookie cutter philosophy. 

Well, no cookie cutters here.  Just a sampling of what's been going on lately:

 

This looks like Farmerboy is playing Star Wars, right?  He's hiding with his light saber in a messy living room.  But actually, this is a photo from "World War I Day".  I had nothing to do with World War I Day -- or, more correctly, I was only tangentially involved.  I read them books about WWI a few months ago, I provided Katydid recently with a copy of The Mary Frances Cookbook (because I want to teach the kids to cook and she wants to learn), which has a recipe for milk toast in it that the kids connected to a book called Hero Over Here about the 1918 flu epidemic, I let them make trenches in the living room for their mock battle, and I watched the battle as it unfolded (with lots of very dramatic death scenes). Then Katydid made milk toast for a bedtime snack.

Katydid hasn't been feeling too well lately, but she's still been practicing with the camera and keeping tabs on the woods when she can.  I picked out a few of her photos to show you:

A dragonfly, resting on a blade of grass...

Blue-eyed grass (we think)...

Pansy in the front planter.

She's also been reading quite a bit, but I think books are going to have to wait for another post.

Everyone has been keeping tabs on the tadpoles, too, and Katydid and Farmerboy are reading together through the pond books linked on the sidebar.  Here, Gareth was sketching what he saw in the pond water, which was a Choice Time activity.  We've been adding rain water to the bowl and the tadpoles seem to be reasonably happy.  They eat the duckweed still growing on the surface of the water.

Gareth finished his math book (Saxon 6/5), but decided he wanted to just keep right on going into the next book.  So he started Saxon 7/6 this week.  "Hey, here's an algebra activity!"  I'm pretty sure my jaw actually dropped.

I've seen little clues lately that Pip and Pop are getting older.  I don't have many activities on the shelves because I haven't been able to keep up with them, but I do still have out a couple of puzzles which were being ignored due to our topsy-turvy routine.  A few times lately I have been surprised by Pop calmly working in various rooms on this animal puzzle.  (He's in gray here; Pip is in orange.)

Pip has discovered the sandpaper letters, which I keep in an unlocked cabinet.  Both boys have been very interested in letters lately, but Pip probably a bit more than Pop.  (Pip is a huge fan of SuperWhy, too.)  I had too many letters out for the twins, so I sorted through them and only kept the beginning letters of all our names plus the letters I was pretty sure they could already recognize. 

Of course, after this bit of hope, the boys have been getting up at the crack (and I do mean the crack) of dawn, which means they're not getting enough sleep.  And when my kids don't get enough sleep, they end up not tired and cranky so much as absolutely wired.  Last night, the twins found their way into my bathroom and completely destroyed it.  They dumped the shampoo bottles and all my makeup in the toilet.  They turned on the bathtub and dumped water, soap, and shampoo all over the floor. They threw the toilet brush and plunger in the bathtub. 

They wreaked all this havoc in ten minutes or less.  And you do not want to know what they are like at the doctor's office.

So -- still toddlers.  Definitely.  But with brief glimmers of non-destructiveness peeping through.

As when they discuss their truck magazines...

And (ahem) play priests.  (Which is when you begin to understand what Mass sounds like to a two year old: "Aaaaheeeeeummmmmumblemumble, Deesus, Mawee, Dod... Amen!")

And Chipmunk is being his normal, happy, hair-pulling and completely attached to Mama self.  Nobody really wants him to grow up.  But I would like him to take a nap.

Our Living and Learning Room

A picture is worth a thousand words, but unfortunately I can't upload photos on my husband's laptop.  So I'll just have to try to paint a picture of our learning room in language, as inadequate as that may be.

Before we moved into this house -- lo, a little over a year ago -- I would entertain myself into sleep contemplating how I would set up the shelves in the living room. (Follow the link and scroll down to see them.)  At that point the house was a blank slate, and I had many happy fantasies of making the living room into a schoolroom. In these fantasies, I knew where everything was in every box, and I unwrapped it calmly and surely and put it in its place.

And then reality hit.  The boxes just sort of exploded on their own, spewing out toys, books, art supplies, and various math manipulatives like chunks of volcanic rock.  The living room ended up dedicated to toys, many of which were merely clutter, or broken, or missing a couple of necessary pieces.  I attempted to set up a Montessori-ish environment in the dining room, where the kids could do seat work and art at the table, but they continually migrated into the family room, where our old, familiar couch and coffee table are located.  So I cleared out the shelves in the entertainment center and put some Montessori materials there.  The kids proceeded to ignore them.

It was therefore after much thought, discussion, and frustrating trial and error that we decided to pursue my original idea: why not make the living room our "school"room?

The Loveliness of Learning Spaces fair, and an impending visit from my mother and father-inlaw, got me motivated.  Toys, for the most part, have been relocated to the other side of our shelf-sculpture-thing, housed in blue plastic bins on the entertainment center shelves or placed directly on the shelves, neatly.  Montessori materials that remain on that side of our long front room are the Pink Tower and Brown Stair, which fit nicely on the shelf underneath the coffee table, and are often taken out by Farmerboy and the babies, who like to pick up the medium-sized blocks and move them onto the floor.  Katydid often builds and unbuilds towers for them, which they enjoy.

While we've made a lot of progress, the living room proper is still being transformed.  I ran into a setback when I moved the loveseat into the family room area in order to make room for a table for the older kids.  In the basement there's a table that is probably original to the house; it's one of those fifties formica tables with the metal legs.  The former owner used it as an art table, and I was going to cover it with a nice vinyl table cloth and set it up next to our weird shelf-thing.  Alas, all the little rubber feet had been plundered from the table, making it a hazard to wood floors.  When I mentioned it to Andy, he said he'd rather have a nice wooden table in that room anyway, since it is our living room and practically the first thing you see when you walk in the door. 

So I made a trip to the furniture store today and bought a small, relatively inexpensive kitchen table set, which will be delivered in few weeks.  The table is a simple style and the chairs that came with it go with our larger dining room table.  It also came with a bench that matches a bench we already own.  I'll probably switch the chairs for the bench that's already at the dining room table, and use the two benches with our new learning room table.  It looks pretty durable, and there's room for a lot of kids and art projects.  It should serve us for years.  Still, making such a largish purchase leaves me somewhat giddy.

What's actually in the learning room now?  Well...

• One red couch.  Not tomato red, or fire engine red, but a nice, warm apple red. (You can see the bottom of the couch and the rug in a picture from this post.)  It faces out the long fifties ranch window onto the road and the field across the street.  You can also see our big spruce tree in the front yard, which is nice in the winter.  The couch is set a couple of feet in front of our wall of bookcases (bought unfinished a long time ago, and stained a honey maple, which goes nicely with our floors in this house), so that it makes a little hideaway behind it where a kid can sit with a book (or two or three) and hardly be noticed. 
• Two bookcases, not quite floor to ceiling. Organizationally, these were in horrible shape.  We had our books arranged so that each subject had its own shelf, or shelves, but certain people (ahem) had begun sticking books in any which way when they got them out.  So the bookcases were a mess.  I took out every single book (that's a lot), weeded out five diaper boxes of books to donate to the library, and bought Wal-Mart out of red, white, and turquoise canvas bins (they didn't have any other colors.)  These bins are just the right size for picture books.  Preschool books got coded to the turquoise bins and moved elsewhere (I'll come to that in a minute), science got white (Katydid's pick); history and geography red; and literature of a paperback size got woven baskets.  I pulled out all the short chapter books and the harder readers and separated them into baskets for Katydid, too.  (I can't claim originality on this idea, though; it was Dawn and her coffee boxes that inspired me.  Unfortunately, I don't drink coffee and couldn't find any cardboard boxes that would work.  They had all been recycled, or they were the wrong sizes.  So off to Wal-mart it was.)

In each subject, I sorted the books by topic and dedicated a bin to each topic.  It was interesting to see what we had.  For instance, our science books fell into several categories: animals, birds (in Katydid's room), horses (Katydid again), dinosaurs (oh, do we have a lot of dinosaur books); plants, including trees; insects and spiders; general earth science (weather, volcanoes, earthquakes, rocks); space; oceans (we did an oceans unit last summer); general nature (including books about nature journaling); and a sort of catch-all how things work, physical science category, which includes books about magnets, electricity, recycling, and construction.  I broke our history books down into time periods instead of by theme.  There wasn't enough room to do theme baskets there, but I can easily make baskets by pulling out the appropriate books from the bins in which they're stored.  Geography got its own basket and its own shelf below the history books. 

(Before I start in on listing our materials, you should probably note that many of these are the results of birthdays and Christmases.)

• Preschool and "Geometry/Spatial" Corner.  This is the right-hand corner of the room.  (Here's that link again for reference.)  The preschool table and chairs are here.  One side of the built-in cabinet holds the blue bins of preschool picture books, and the other side holds farm blocks, wooden color/pattern blocks, Interstar blocks, geometric solids, and a wooden train set.  (Because the shelves are very deep, I am using shelf extenders.) Against the wall are Rubbermaid containers of Duplos and wooden blocks.  On top of the cabinets are activities that contain small pieces unsuitable for babies: a smaller pattern block activity; Cuisenaire rods; some puzzle blocks; and unit cubes.  On the shelf above are the small Legos.  (I plan to add more spatial/geometry activities for the older kids -- hopefully including some paper-folding -- but I haven't yet.)  The two shelves above this hold some of my homeschooling books.  In one of the decorative nooks, I've set a sandalwood scented yellow candle.
• Math and Science Cabinet.  This is the left-hand cabinet , which has fewer shelves above it.  It is still very much in progress.  Right now the math side holds a bin of math picture books; a couple of number puzzles, fraction circles and squares; Base 10 blocks; a Flashmaster; and a plastic learning clock.  It also holds a copy of How Math Works.  My plan is to set out a tray with projects from this book weekly, but we will see how that goes.  I haven't put out any of the Montessori activities either, which I'll be using with Katydid and Farmerboy.  The science side is a little sketchier.  It holds copies of How Nature Works and How the Universe Works, some science readers for Katydid, and a solar system floor puzzle.  The kids have recently become interested in magnets, so I'll probably put out some magnet experiments.  Eventually I hope to acquire a microscope, which we'll store here, too.  And I need to collect all our magnifying glasses, binoculars, and other field equipment in one place.
• Computer desk.  Our computer desk is old and battered and has always been missing a pencil drawer.  I could not make it simply elegant if I tried.  I did clean it off, however, and I cleaned out my file drawer, too.  In this file drawer I keep files of Gareth and Katydid's work, the paperwork I file with the state, homeschooling regulations, and Farmerboy's artwork and narrated stories.  The Lego Mindstorms robotics kit is on the top shelf.
• Art Appreciation Shelf.  This is an old printer stand and holds a bin full of art appreciation books along the lines of A Child's Book of Art,Come Look With Me, and Katie and the Sunflowers.  I hope to display some postcards on top.
• Language Arts Shelf.  This is a small bookshelf of the Target variety.  It fits underneath the big window, so it's not very big.  This presents a bit of a problem, as I try to figure out how to include activities for the older kids while still putting out things like letter puzzles for my three year old.  The puzzle cabinet is on the bottom shelf here, and the babies make a beeline for it every morning.  This means that the floor is almost always covered with big wooden puzzle pieces.  Other items in this bookcase include: a small box of cardboard tactile letters, modeled on the Montessori sandpaper letters; a tray of Magnetic Kidwords, which has different parts of speech in different colors; a rolodex I'm going to make into a spelling dictionary; and a basket of short chapter books for Katydid.  I'll add a basket for Gareth as well, since one of our rules is that during "school" time he has to read something that doesn't involve Star Wars, Bionicles, or Captain Underpants. 
• Culture Shelf.  Another small (old) Target-variety bookcase underneath the window.  There are readers for Katydid, a basket of farming books (the kids want to do a unit on farming); a farm floor puzzle, and a Leap Frog globe, one of the best birthday presents Gareth has ever received. (He practically wore it out in the first year listening to all the national anthems.) The bottom shelf is dedicated to the babies and has nothing to do with "culture": instead, it holds some gears, an activity pyramid, and a basket that is currently full of textured balls.
• Religion Shelf.  The third Target bookcase and the end of the window.  There are baskets of pictures books on saints and faith, and a personal bin for each child containing a story Bible, a rosary, and prayer cards.  This is where we keep the Bible we read from and The Catechism of the Catholic Church.  I hope to add Catholic Mosaic books, notebooking supplies, and Catechesis of the Good Shepherd materials. 
• Music Shelf.  The babies' favorite right now.  This is an old TV cart on the opposite wall, next to the bookcases.  On the bottom is a basket full of baby-safe musical instruments, a Mozart Music Cube(the babies love this), and a drum.  On top is our collection of rhythm instruments (tone blocks, rhythm sticks, finger cymbals, castenets, shakers) and recorders; a bin of music books (a book of Recorder music; Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (And What the Neighbors Thought),Composers Fandex, Bravo! Brava! A Night at the Opera; and a Fisher-Price tape recorder and tapes.
• Basket of baby board books
• Basket of school totes.  This is another idea I borrowed from Dawn.  Last year we had bins for school books and things got piled up and it was hard for the kids to dig out the books on the bottom.  I always enjoy pulling the books out of a tote when we travel, so I thought we would give it a shot this year at home.  The kids won't have many workbooks/textbooks this year, but they'll need a place to keep the few we do use.      
• The Reference Shelf.  This is technically out in the entryway, but we didn't have room for it in the living room proper.  It holds our dictionaries, our science and history encyclopedias, and other reference books.  A painting by Andy's grandfather hangs above this shelf.  His grandfather attended art school in Paris in the thirties, and we have a number of his Paris paintings hanging around the house. 

And that's about it.  Our art cabinet is out in the dining room, and our stack of current read-alouds is always on the coffee table in the family room area.  The kids also do a fair amount of work in their rooms, but I think that's the subject for another post.