Three Plus Two

New Year, New Plans, New Routines: part 1

(I started writing this post Monday, Jan. 4.  I am completely unable to start writing without setting the scene, and I like rooting my thoughts in time and place.  Even if the ending of a post is written weeks after the beginning.)

Yesterday (i.e., a couple of Sundays ago), while the snow whipped past my window and piled into 3 and 4 foot drifts like waves on a white sea, I sat down with a big stack of papers, catalogs, and books and attempted to provide some direction to my two oldest kids for the next quarter.  It was a good day for planning.  The wind chill never climbed above zero all day and the 4 inches of snow we were supposed to get turned into 6 or 8 or 10.  (I mean, if the size of the drift on my front walk is any indication.  It looks just like ice cream that's been frozen just a little too long, then cut with a scoop. Funny how I can go from waves to ice cream in less than a paragraph.)  We had been supposed to spend the afternoon sledding with our Little Flowers and Blue Knights group, and then on to dinner at a friend's house, but I had canceled a few days before because all 4 of the little boys have rotten colds and anyway, once the weather turned bad, sledding was out of the question. So there was really nothing better to do but sort through that big stack and try to make some sense of it.

I work from quarter to quarter.  While I might have a broad theme (usually historical) for our family studies for the whole year, or a math or Latin book, the details get planned out a few months at a time, and not in such great detail.  Around the end of December/beginning of January, I also think about how the year has gone thus far and if any changes need to be made for the remaining time.  (I think this is pretty common, so I'm not telling you anything original here. )

We often need a schedule shake-up in January, too.  The holidays plus winter's viruses (etc.) in combination with a definite change to WINTER weather have usually wreaked havoc on our schedule, and it usually becomes apparent about this time of the year that a portion (or portions) of the schedule are broken and need to be fixed.  Maybe we've been banging our heads against the wall over some piece of time management for months (usually mornings in our house) and things have finally come to a head.  So January can be a bit of a mix-up for a while as we sort out old, new, broken, and fixed.

My New Best Friend

 ... is a yellow legal pad.  Nothing fancy, 1 of a 3 pack picked up at the grocery store.  I had been using a moleskine journal to scrawl notes, but while it's good for brainstorming and writing, its size was a bit limiting and of course, I couldn't tear the pages out.  At this point I like my yellow legal pad better than a computer because it's a)more portable; b)it has no buttons for 2 year olds to push randomly in an attempt to demolish hours of Mommy's work; c)it requires no tutorials in order to use; and d)it can't crash, lock up, or perform any maddening adjustments to your formatting.  So here I am, a bit of a Luddite. 

Anyway, I have used my new yellow legal pad to troubleshoot our old schedule, to make various new schedules hoping to address our morning problems (i.e., big kids getting up later and later, therefore making it impossible to have our normal prayer/catechism/read aloud time), and to make a neat Montessori math chart for Farmerboy so I would have some idea of what to do next with him (which is what you see in the photo above.  Page numbers correspond to the NAMC Primary Mathematics Album.)

The New Schedule

After too many mornings that didn't get started until 10:00, I made out a couple of new schedules and showed them to Gareth and Katydid.  After discussing how the day would go using each one, they chose one they preferred.  Fortunately, it was the one I liked best, too, but it is requiring us to make a few more changes in our morning than just getting up earlier.  On the other hand, this new routine is much more like the routines we had when the kids were younger.

6:00-7:00: I get up and have breakfast with Andy.

7:00-8:00: I drag the big kids out of bed and at some point take a shower. The little boys usually get up some time in between 7 and 7:30 anyway, so this is normal for them.  They can watch a little TV at this time.  The big change is that the big kids do not have to get dressed when they get up, but they do have to be at the table for breakfast by 8 AM-ish.  (The reason we used to have the "you have to be dressed when you come out" rule was because certain people were taking so long to get dressed that it crunched the before lunch work time.)  And instead of everyone eating here and there, everybody eats at the table.  We have morning prayer, go over the Baltimore Catechism, and then I read aloud (currently D'Aulaire's Norse Myths and finishing up Beorn the Proud).  After the kids finish eating, they can get "something to do" while I read... this morning for the little boys it was paper punches and scissors.

 

Around 9:00 or 9:30 (depending on how long our reading session lasts; this morning we spent some time talking about Haiti before we read and then during our reading of Beorn, we had to get out an atlas to look at Jutland, so it was about an hour and a half), it's time for everyone to get dressed and do chores. We have an hour for this, as chickens need to be fed and watered in addition to everyone's assigned house chores, and it takes a while to help three little boys with clothes and teeth.

10ish/10:30 -- 12:00: This is a work period.  (Beginning with a snack for a pregnant Mommy and four "starving" small boys.)  We've always had a period of work (or choice time) before lunch, but it was getting squeezed shorter and shorter and/or pushing lunch later and later.  Hopefully, the new "breakfast at 8 in your pajamas" will help. 

A new element to this work period, however, is that Farmerboy (my 1st grader) is doing some of his required work -- math, phonics, handwriting -- at this time instead of waiting to do it all in the afternoon.  That's the way I used to have it set up because the twins and Chipmunk made it impossible for me to work with Farmerboy individually or for Farmerboy to concentrate.  So we waited until the three littlest were asleep before we tried to do any sort of required work.  The problem with waiting until afternoon has always been that a)it's afternoon and b)Chipmunk still will not sleep for more than 20 minutes on his own.  It is very hard to do any kind of math with manipulatives while lugging around or rocking a sleeping two year old. 

Anyway, although I do use phonics workbooks and primers, we're still using straight Montessori math.  He doesn't really have a choice of whether to do it or not, but I do like to introduce him to enough math works so that he has a choice of what math to do every day.

 Right now we're working on place value.

12:00-2:00: Lunch and a break.  Outside, weather permitting.

2:00-4:00: Another work period, primarily for Gareth and Katydid. And yes, it does usually go to 4:00... but that's only because either chores eat into the morning work period, or the kids are outside and don't come in until 2:30 or 2:45... I'm not likely to interrupt sledding if they've been stuck inside all week.  (I just count sledding as PE.)

This brings up another point.  Our work periods are not primarily devoted to seat work.  For instance, if Gareth decides he wants to use the elliptical during work period, or if Katydid tells me she wants to take a nature walk, that's perfectly fine with me.  The point is to be gainfully employed, not sitting around playing Pokemon.  Both kids do have some required daily work and/or weekly work (which I'll talk about in a minute), but I like to leave the order of the work up to them.  If there's a conflict somewhere (say, I can't help two people with math at the same time), I let them know my limitations and we work something out.

Also during this time I read to the little boys and put the twins and Chipmunk down for nap/quiet time.

4:00-6:00: The kids can play Wii during this time.  The problem we're having is they all want to play Wii individually instead of together, and so their allotted 30 minutes a piece (except for the twins, who do play together) racks up.  The related problem is that even though most of them are waiting for their turn, they're watching everybody else's turn.  Thirty minutes of game time a day I'm ok with; two hours is pushing it.  So we're still working on this.  Wii time was actually a point of contention in the creation of a schedule, because previously the afternoon work period lasted from 2:00-5:00... which, I will just tell you now, is nuts.  But we were doing that because  our days weren't starting, for one reason or another, until 10.  Anyway, if they had to work until 5, then not everybody could have Wii time before dinner, which made it seem like Wii just went on all night.  (On the other hand, Andy sometimes likes to play Lego Star Wars with the boys after dinner, which is a bit different.)

I usually get on the computer for a little while during this time, then wake Chipmunk up so I can fix dinner and do laundry.

Chipmunk helps.

Next up... new work for the new year.

Week 16... I think...

I'm not going to try to catch up on weeks 14 and 15, as mostly we cleaned house, had Thanksgiving, visited with Grandma and Grandpa, and I chewed gum assiduously in an attempt to keep early pregnancy nausea at bay... and alas, I have no pictures from this week because I was too busy participating in whatever activities the boys undertook (cookies, glitter) to wield a camera at the same time... but here are a few notes from this week... whatever number it is.

(Actually, I did take a few pictures this week.  But that was it.)

Read Alouds This Week:

Life of Our Lord for Children

Favorite Celtic Fairy Tales (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)

 Our Island Story

We actually had a couple of other picture books which it wouldn't let me add to the carousel.  The boys enjoyed them, though, so I thought I would mention them, too:

The Christmas Cobwebs, by Odds Bodkin

Gawain and Green Knight

Farmerboy's comment about Gawain... "It's a really strange book, isn't it, Mommy?"

The big kids seem to be slogging through some of their reading right now... Gareth informs me that The Two Towers has hit a "boring" point, and Katydid is determined to finish Little Women, even though, "The ending isn't as interesting as the beginning.  They're all older."

I had to confess to her that I had never finished Little Women either. 

And on the other hand, over the past couple weeks (and honestly, before I really wanted her to), Katydid has been perusing the stack of Advent/Christmas-related books I got for her, including The Anne of Green Gables Christmas Treasury and A Fairy-Tale Christmas: Creating Magical Celebrations Inspired by an Enchanted Castle.  Her favorite is A Fairy-Tale Christmas, I think.  She has loved fairy tales since she was very small.

Other than that...

We made cookies.  Once.  Snowball cookies.

The boys made cardboard spaceships from pizza boxes.  J. covered his in glitter.  Farmerboy got immensely frustrated trying to contrive a way to put landing gear on the bottom of his ship so that they would stay and hold the ship up.  N. cut himself with a pair of safety scissors while I was in the shower and bled much more than I thought possible from a cut given by "safety" scissors. (He's ok.)

Chipmunk lovingly covered many, many sheets of construction paper in lots and lots of glitter.  I am thinking of cutting out ornaments from his glittered paper.  It can't actually matter that any more glitter comes off considering the amount of glitter already swept into the corners of the room. 

Chipmunk really would do well at a Montessori school.  He is in a "washing hands" period right now.  The problem: I can't really stay in the bathroom with him as often as he wants to go in there and wash his hands.  Sometimes this can be disastrous, as today when he got bored with washing his hands and decided to wash a sink full of stuffed animals, dirty socks, Legos, and a walkie-talkie.  Later, he got bored washing his hands and stuffed a foam sword and a bunch of Legos in the toilet.  And no, I do not really let him in there without supervision.  His siblings just need to learn how to close the door.

More on the Chipmunk/Montessori theme... he also likes to watch me cook.  I must supply him with measuring cups and spoons of his own and something to pour and scoop.  Not thinking one night, I supplied him with sugar.  Sugar should not really be used in Montessori pouring and scooping activities.  I mean, if you thought you might try it sometime.

One thing we have not done lately is go outside.  I just haven't had the energy to get everybody bundled up and deal with the mud.  I did stuff everyone in snow clothes to go outside on Tuesday so they could play in what snow there was before it melted, and good grief, it took at least 45 minutes, if not more.  It's no wonder I'm ready to move to Florida by the end of January.

The big kids continue to be dedicated users of the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum, putting in at least an hour a day, and sometimes two or more.  I would like to do a review, but I can't say when that will happen.  I will say that I think, in spite of the price, that it's been worth it.  I don't know that I'd consider it for a child who is a self-starting writer, who will sit and write for hours on his or her own... but for a child who wants to write a book and can't figure out how to start or where to go from the beginning... it's excellent. 

Week 12: Life with little ones

November 1-8

Katydid and Gareth were sick for at least part of week 12.  When Katydid first came down with whatever it was, it sure seemed like it was flu because it had all the classic "flu" symptoms: chills, sudden onset, fever, sore throat, upset stomach, body aches.  But it didn't spread to any of the little boys, really (although Farmerboy took a nap every afternoon that week.).  So I have no idea what it was.  The big kids all had their seasonal flu shots and the little boys didn't, so it seems odd that the kids who got flu shots would come down with a flu and and the kids who got no shots would avoid it.  H1N1 was aboslutely rampant in our area that week, bad enough that several schools were closed, but... who knows.  It was a mystery virus.

Anyway, because the big kids were sick, the week was mainly focused on little kids.  We did manage to finally finish The Hobbit, and to start reading Our Island Story and The Story of Europe, both by H.E. Marshall.  It felt good to get back to some history again. We're continuing to read A Life of Our Lord for Children by Marigold Hunt.  This is the third book we've read by this author (The First Christians: The Acts of the Apostles for Children and St. Patrick's Summer: A Children's Adventure Catechism are the others) and the kids have enjoyed them all.  More than that, they retain a lot from those books, some pretty deep concepts.

I'm afraid that we haven't done much that's special to mark any feast days lately, though... We make a point of praying for the Poor Souls every day, which I hope is enough.

Monday

The twins did a lot of "matching cards".  I actually had to invent some on the spur of the moment, because they would go through a set and demand more.  This is a Bug Bingo game.  Technically, it's supposed to be played like bingo, but for our purposes, I gave them the boards and let them match the cards to the pictures on the boards.  

 
  Chipmunk liked searching for O's in the Alphabet Zoop cards.  (He'd also already drawn on himself that morning, as you can see by the green on his cheek.) 

In the afternoon we headed outside to play on the logs:

Which are useful as forts, ships, and also sometimes nature study...

Tuesday:

Tuesday morning was devoted to all things dinosaur.  I got down a puzzle and the boys argued cooperated to put it together.   I also printed out some matching cards and coloring sheets from this Homeschool Share dinosaur unit.

In the afternoon, the boys shifted gears and concentrated on coloring King Arthur paper dolls from Paper Dali. (HT: Jessica, who shared the Paper Dali link in her Google Shared Items.)

Farmerboy has been on a King Arthur kick lately, thanks to Jim Weiss, and was excited when we encountered Merlin, Uther Pendragon, and Arthur in Our Island Story (in Week 13).

Katydid colored many saint paper dolls, but she immediately whisked them off to her room so I don't have any pictures.

Tuesday also happened to be Daddy's birthday, which he celebrated by making a business day trip and getting home late to eat cheesecake.

Wednesday:

Daddy celebrated the day after his birthday by making a trip to Boston.  The boys demanded American Revolution paper dolls.   They also complained that they couldn't build really good castles because there weren't enough wall blocks for all 4 of them to use at the same time.  I took a deep breath and offered to go down to the basement and bring up all the blocks I had taken away a few months ago because they were not being picked up in a -- shall we say -- timely and cheerful fashion.  We spent the morning sorting and building with the "new" blocks:

That's what it looked like on Wednesday of last week.  By Friday night, all the "new" blocks had been put up in a closet out of reach again, because that was the deal: If I bring these blocks out, you have to pick them up when you're told to, or I will have to put them away again.  Oh, yes, Mommy, we'll pick them up, can we pleeeeese play with the blocks?  Unfortunately, there was a breach of contract, proving yet again that home is not like school.  Many of the Reggio books you read have fantastic block creations and/or block areas, or at the very least inform you that you are to include lots of different kinds of blocks and other materials for children to build and dramatize with.  Personally, I agree.  It is hard to build big castles if someone has used all the wall blocks.  But at home with a large family, reality must be negotiated.  I don't have time to pick up millions of blocks every day, and I shouldn't have to.  (The two year old is actually far better at picking up than his brothers.)  So at some point the environment must be used to teach responsibility, respect, and obedience instead of science, math, or anything else.  In my experience anyway.

I do hope I can try again with the blocks, though, because I really like some of them, and so do the boys.

Thursday

Thursday we went outside.  We had been stuck inside for two days, which is not good for active young boys.  (Can you hear my fear of winter?) Anyway, it was a bit chilly -- temperatures down around 40 -- so we put on our bigger coats and headed outside while the nearly-recovered big kids stayed inside where it was warm and read books.

Did you notice N's new glasses in the block picture?  It turns out his eyesight is really bad, and that's the reason he has always seemed so clumsy (which is why we took him to our developmental optometrist at just barely 4 years old.)  Now, his brother, J., has never seemed to trip as much or run into things as much, so I didn't schedule a screening for him.  When N. got his glasses, J. was most upset.  He therefore decided that he would wear his sunglasses just like N. wore his real glasses.  So he put them on in the morning and took them off at night.  I tried to comfort him by telling him that he does have an eye appointment scheduled in January, but of course that might as well be twenty years from now if you're 4. 

(And, yes, we do still think they're identical.  How identical is identical often depends on conditions for each in the womb, and N had to deal with an improperly implanted cord while J did not.)

Anyway, while we were out, we decided to take a short nature walk in the field, which was cut short by J being accidentally hit in the eye by Farmerboy.  On our way back we stopped near the house to investigate the milkweed seeds by the deck.  (J was feeling better by then.)

The boys called the seeds "parachute guys" and brought some inside to play with.

Friday

Friday is extra chore day, so mostly we clean.  But in the morning, the boys set up some domino rallies...

That's N, who should have his glasses on.  Confusing, I know.  And actually, Friday morning went kind of like this:

8:30 AM -- the little boys have already watched Curious George, a Dinosaur Train episode about poop, been banned from playing monkeys (an old rule) and orangutans (a new rule), searched through a stack of old copies of Ranger Rick and Your Big Backyard to find animals they are allowed to play ("We could play worms, Mommy!"), requested a stack of books about "jungles", moved on to dinosaur books, asked if I could go downstairs to find the dominoes and what about "that number matching game?" (Triominos), set up domino rallies, argued about who has more dominoes, and received instruction in both counting and social skills.  Can I take my shower now, please?

I was going to do a 7 Quick Takes post, but never got the chance.

So that was our week, with the exception of the picture books, of course...

 
 

 
 
 

Week 11: Halloween Week

Just the highlights... I imagine everyone in the US is either tired of pumpkins by now or has at least moved on to turkeys.  Our turkeys are spending their last days out in the field eating pumpkin seeds, which gives one a completely different perspective on the usual turkey crafts that crop up during the month of November.  But, back to Halloween.  This is what we did during Halloween week:

• Gareth started his Teach Yourself Old English course.  He spent quite a bit of time with it, actually.  The new grammar book he's using, Our Mother Tongue: An Introductory Guide to English Grammar by Nancy Wilson, also contains some neat little sidebars about the history of English.  One of those sidebars happens to be The Our Father in Old English.  I have to admit that I like languages, and when I was in college I took a "History of English" class from an excellent professor and studied a bit (a wee bit) of Old English. So I attempted to read the prayer out loud to Gareth in Old English.  He, apparently, thought this was quite interesting, and so here we are.  The grammar book itself is also going well, too.  In addition to being much more interesting than your typical drill-and-kill grammar workbook, it also seems to be less... hmmm... condescending.  This quality is hard to explain, but what I like about the book is that it seems to treat the subject manner in a much more adult way than most 7th grade grammar textbooks while also being easily understood by 7th/8th/9th graders.  I think this, along with the historical selections and the use of real literature as examples, appeals to Gareth.  The book is recommended in Ambleside Online's Year 7.
• Katydid started First Start French.  This program is set up in a very similar way to Memoria Press' Latina Christiana program, which we also use.  She has been very excited to start French, but was a little daunted at the pronunciation when we first began.  She wants to be able to talk to my mom in French over the phone.

( I'm going to start calling the twins by their initials instead of "Pip and Pop".  I considered more pseudonyms like "Tom and Huck" or "George (Curious) and Dennis (the Menace)", but finally I thought that they will grow up one day.  So Pop -- pictured here -- will now be known as "J." and Pip will be "N." Not as colorful maybe, but easier for Mama.)

J. produced a whole menagerie of "good animals" using 2 lbs. of Model Magic. 

Chipmunk found Duplos to be good for squishing Model Magic.  Here he's also shining a flashlight onto the blocks.  Flashlights were also a fascination this week, probably as much for the way they could be put together and taken apart as for their light. 

Model Magic after it has been impressed by Duplos.

Chipmunk also informed me that he needed better activities on his shelves:

Yes, those are plastic counters (fish mostly).  And, yes, he did stick them all, one by one, through the bars of the fan.  I could hear the sound of the counters in the container and on the floor, and silly me, I thought he was pouring them.  But instead he invented his own Montessori activity.

We also did some painting, because J. wanted to paint his "good animals".  Farmerboy had some problems with the dinosaur painting he wanted to make, so I took a piece of paper and sketched out a painting in the style that Farmerboy had wanted, demonstrating how to sketch with a small brush, how to make drips of paint into something else (birds, in this case), how to hide lines I didn't want... My picture is at the top.  After watching me paint my picture -- just meant to help him learn to calm down, really, and deal with "mistakes" -- he decided to copy it.  We used acrylics.  Chipmunk mixed the blue paint for us. ;-)

We did do some pumpkin related "stuff" as well.

One morning while I read -- well, actually Gareth ended up reading more than I did, which has become a common occurrence lately -- I set out some construction paper shapes so the boys could make pumpkins.  I had tried to suggest earlier in the week that we paint pumpkins, but that suggestion went over like a lead balloon.  Nobody wants to paint the same thing.  So we just did collage pumpkins.

 
After they were done, I mounted them on construction paper and put them on the wall of their bedroom, by request.  J. (Pop) did the yellow pumpkin face and the pumpkin on the very bottom right corner. N's (Pip's) are the pumpkin that looks like it is set on a pedastal and the one mounted on green paper.  As you can see some of the pumpkins have arms and eyebrows, yarn hair, and -- because we are talking about boys -- "bottoms".  However, you cannot see the "bottoms" (insert wild giggling) because they are appropriately located on the backside of the pumpkins.

Farmerboy (I'll probably be changing his name, too, as soon as I decide on something) whisked his pumpkins away and taped them to the wall by the bed before I could mount them.  (The pumpkin on the left has a mustache and a beard.)

Katydid did her own version of pumpkin collages, but made the collaged illustrations into a Halloween book for the boys.

(She used oil pastel for the drawings.)

And we carved some pumpkins, too...

(It's not a knife.  It's a spatula.)

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

  

Weeks 8, 9, and 10: End of quarter 1

Weeks 8 &9 --  We finished up quarter 1... or at least we decided that we would take a break.  Gareth attended a forestry program for Scouts, and earned most of his Forestry badge.  It did not snow... much. I chickened out and did not take Farmerboy or Katydid to swim lessons on the day Gareth and Andy were at the Scout program, because taking 2 hyperactive 4 year olds and a 2 year old to any place with a large, deep body of water and no barriers is not my idea of a good time.

Week 10 -- we take a housecleaning "break".  Mostly what we do is excavate the long hallway that serves as the playroom for Lego and Playmobil. (It has a door, so we can keep toddlers out.)  It also seems to serve as the place where containers full of dirt, rocks, and worms are tipped over, if what I found in there is any indication.  We also stripped the wallpaper off the boys' room wall, which was only half-wall papered because we'd stopped last year when it started turning out badly... and prepped it for painting.  And we did an intensive clean of the family room, which also needs to be painted.  Strangely, the family room doesn't look any better than when we started, but at least I know that the toys are all out from under the couch and the window screen and glass lamp shade are not full of dust and bugs.  This is enough.

Weeks 8, 9, and 10 in a nutshell. :-) 

A collection of photos from weeks 8, 9, and 10...

The biggest event: Gareth turned 13.  I thought about making a big blog post, but... I was worried I might embarass him.  So I'll just embarass him slightly here. ;-)  13 on the 13th...

And he even made and frosted his own cake ("Milk Chocolate Cake", from a 1950 Betty Crocker Recipe), by request.  The cake turned out great.  It didn't even stick in the pans like my cakes so often do.

I cleaned up and rearranged the nature area.  From left: basket of river rocks, basket of feathers, basket of pine cones, plant press, tray with paper and pens for drawing, Timeline of Life, wooden trays of fossils. (It doesn't look this anymore, mostly due to use.  I need to rearrange it again.)

Apples by Katydid, inspired by a drawing in Museum ABC...

Apples by Katydid, inspired by a photo from the Monthly Sketch Project...

Apples by me, inspired by the Monthly Sketch Challenge...

Farmerboy's plans for how to make a spear and kill a mammoth...

A little downy woodpecker that appeared on the kitchen window sill one afternoon...

A little nature printing...

A little Montessori...
 

Some collage...

Some toddler activities...

And a nature walk.

 
 

 

A little more learning with Chipmunk

As a (relatively) quiet two year old in a big family, Chipmunk often gets left out of the weekly reviews.  That doesn't mean he's not doing anything, though.

There are his collages, of course, but he has other favorite activities that he concentrates on as he moves through the week.  For instance, as I write this, he is sitting in a chair by the art cabinet using safety scissors to cut tape so he can cover his truck with it.

(Don't worry; I'm sitting right next to him to make sure he doesn't hurt himself.)

I don't know why he likes to cover his trucks with tape -- last night it was a tractor decorated entirely in masking tape -- but I suspect that it has something to do with practicing fine motor skills.  He can't get his fingers inside the scissors handles yet, so he's just working on opening and shutting the scissors once.  And then there's the control involved in getting the sticky tape off your fingers and onto the exact right place on the truck.  Very satisfying.  I would not have set this activity out for him, but I noticed that whenever his older brothers got out the tape and scissors to build something (tape is the connecting material of favor around here), he would get into the scissors and tape, too.  At first I took the scissors away, but then I noticed that he really was trying to cut.  So I just make sure he has the safest ones.

When he's not cutting, he likes to pour:

Fish and truck counters here, from one container to another.  (I haven't really set him up with beans or rice because he does still put things in his mouth from time to time.  And because I can be frequently called away, I am afraid of the mess potential :-/). 

He also likes to line them up, but I'm not going to show you that picture because apparently someone (not saying who) had changed his clothes in the family room and left all his dirty laundry sitting on the couch, where it was caught forever on film.

Anyway... more activities that Chipmunk likes right now?

• Using this stacker
• Duplos
• Playing with the wooden train set
• Moving around big lumps of playdough with his construction equipment
• building with the Brown Stair and Pink Tower
• Building towers with big geometric wooden beads (he's not quite up to stringing yet)
• Sorting anything by color
• Sorting, pouring, and lining up river rocks of various color (purchased in bags at Michael's)
• Reading transportation books and Franklin books with the "big boys"

 

 

Collage with Chipmunk

Chipmunk is two now, and eager to join in with his big brothers -- whether it's playing knights, Jedi, or making art. Over the past few weeks, the boys have done some collage here and there -- usually to decorate a box they want to use as a ship (space or pirate).  Chipmunk's approach to collage is a little different than the other boys', though.

When the other kids do art, we often talk about "filling up the page."  That isn't a problem for Chipmunk.

Chipmunk's method is generally to dig out big handfuls of collage materials and dump them on the paper.  This often gives good results, with a little adult spreading-out:

(I had an idea to try to draw the twins with their egg-interest into an activity using an egg-frame drawn on paper.  I set out a whole bunch of materials, drawing pens, and oil pastels.  The twins didn't want anything to do with it.  But Chipmunk climbed up on the bench and got right to work.)

While we worked here -- Chipmunk scattering sequin shapes and me wielding a bottle of Elmer's glue -- I tried to emphasize that he needed to put the shapes on the glue or they wouldn't stick.  I'm not sure how well that lesson "stuck", but we're working on it.  What I will often do  is to pour some glue (Mod-Podge is the glue I like best) into a bowl and give him a brush.  He gets glue all over himself, but it washes off.  And that way his "stuff" is almost guaranteed to stick.  He can't use a bottle of glue yet, but he does like to have one if the other boys' are using bottles, too.  If that's the case, I often squeeze out big loops of glue for him, and he just focuses on putting the materials onto it.

In the case of his "shiny egg", I have been thinking that maybe I could set out another one for him to make.  Then I could cut them out and glue them together, back to back.  Then I thought I might punch a hole in the top and hang it from the ceiling in the dining/learning room, where it could catch the light.  We'll see if it pans out :-).

Here's another of his collages that I particularly like, and that I enjoyed watching him make:

 You can see that I put down a little extra glue -- a bit ahead of where he was, I guess.  Pop was using the beads for something else at the time -- gluing them on a box, I think, as "buttons".  I started out by giving Chipmunk the long beads since he was insistent on having some.  (He does still sometimes put things in his mouth, so while he's doing this work, I have to sit or stand beside him all the time.  If he starts to put something in his mouth, I know he's done because he's not concentrating on his work anymore... he's beginning to just goof off.  He knows he's not supposed to put the art materials in his mouth.) He began carefully putting the long beads together in a train.  If there wasn't any glue beneath them, I moved them over just slightly -- trying not to disturb his concentration -- and squeezed out a bit of glue underneath it.  He had to work very hard to put the beads down just so.  It was good work for him, and he had that happy, fulfilled manner that Montessori talks about when he was done. 
  

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)

 

   

 

Seventh Grade Plans: Shield of Faith

Since I do everything backwards, I posted about a day at our house and our first week before I posted anything about the kids' plans.  I probably should have done it the other way around.  But like I said -- backwards.

Anyway, I am at long last getting around to posting Gareth's seventh grade plans.  I finally learned how to save screen shots, so I'm going to put up some copies of our plans saved in.jpeg format.  You ought to be able to click on the image and see it larger.  I did not do the original work on building the tables, however.  The tables come from the Sunflower Basket at Serendipity.  Jen was kind enough to send me editable files of the tables so I could use them to plan for Gareth, and also to tweak for Katydid (since I was making pretty heavy tweaks for her.)  All I did to make them into "boy" tables was to change the yellow to blue and add a knight graphic.  (And then my son said, "Why is there a knight on here?" And I said, "Because, you know -- Shield of Faith..." and then he looked at me with that look your kids get when they're sure you're slightly addled but they're humoring you.)

Before I start in on the plans, I should tell you a few things.  First, they are not designed to be generic.  They're designed specifically for Gareth, according to the interests he listed for me a month or so ago.  (The list: "How to throw a spear/prehistoric people/evolutionary biology/military strategy/communications badge/archery/fishing.")  I firmly believe that one of the best things about homeschooling is that it allows for quirky, individualized educations.  So, if you can use something I've put together, then by all means feel free to use it.  But if this all looks ridiculous to you, or like it would never work with your child... that's okay.  Your family and your child just need their own quirky education.  Quirky is good.

When Jen told me she was using the Catholic Girl's Guide for her daughter back some months ago, I immediately wondered if there was a Catholic Boy's Guide.  Turns out there is, only it's called The Young Man's Guide.  It's organized according to St. Paul's "armor of God".  Since we'd already planned to start medieval history this year, I thought such a guide would tie in well.  I thought it might also be good to emphasize chivalry at this age.  Then Gareth threw me for a loop with "prehistoric people". 

But I decided that a study of prehistory and evolutionary biology would go well with the first chapter of The Young Man's Guide, which is "The Shield of Faith."  Not because we believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis and a young earth (we don't), but because after reading through many of the resources I thought would be good for Gareth to use, I became frustrated with the two polarized positions inherent in most of the literature.  Apparently religion and science are "in a war", in which scientists must "fight back" against Creationists (and vice versa).  What has really happened it seems is that "evolution" has completely lost its status as a scientific theory and become either a religion or an anti-religion, depending on which "side" of the "war" you're on.  In the literature, evolutionists seem to be unable to mention God and so jump through lots of hoops which involve personifying the Earth and physical processes, as if they "sense" and "control" things, and of course anti-evolutionists must also try really hard disprove anything that seems to have taken a long time to form. 

Thankfully, the Catholic Church has a different position on the matter, which brings the theory of evolution back into its role as a theory, affirms God as the creator of everything no matter what mechanisms scientists discover (or think they discover) at work in nature, and does not require the faithful to deny evidence which would seem to indicate that the universe has been around for a long time.  (In fact the Big Bang theory of the universe was developed by a Catholic priest.)  In this way, Faith and Reason are not at war with each other, and this is something I want to emphasize to my kids -- that there is such a thing as the Unity of Truth.  But when you read any book that talks about evolution... ugh.  You need a strong faith, because almost everything I could find was written from an atheistic viewpoint, in which evolution is either "random" or guided by some unidentified superorganism called mostly "Nature" or "Earth". 

Fortunately, thanks to an enlightening old thread on 4real, I found Mary Daly's Creator and Creation.  This book includes Pope John Paul's Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on evolution. 

It's probably better suited to an older teen, but I've mentioned before that Gareth is "twice exceptional", and science is often where we run into that kind of asynchronous development.

Ok, so without further adieu... the actual plans.  You'll notice they're pretty full, and that I did not always include page numbers.  That's because I wanted Gareth to have some freedom of choice and I was not always sure which books would appeal to him most.  So I listed some I wasn't sure about and made it clear to him which ones those were.  These plans are also designed with our seasons in mind.  Until mid October, we will be able to get outside... and should, as much as possible.  Because after mid October we can get snowstorms.

  

Notes: This is Gareth's daily work, more or less.  We've made a few tweaks.  Logic is an experiment.  I wasn't going to include it this year because Gareth really needs to work intensively on writing and spelling.  But I do want him to be able to read critically for argument, especially in some of the selections regarding evolution.  Traditional Logic says it's for "as early as 7th grade", but once I got the book, I got the feeling that maybe the authors thought it might be better left until high school in the majority of cases.  The book was backordered, so it took a while to come, and Gareth just got started on it last week.  I'm not sure he liked it much, but I want him to complete at least a week or two of lessons before we decide whether to delay it or not.  (He is going to have to do it sometime.) 

 

Notes: This is the first year I have actually assigned Gareth any reading.  To be honest, the only reason I'm assigning reading this year is that Gareth's taste in fiction tends to be narrow.  Using the Kolbe Junior High Literature guide, I chose two books I thought would have a high level of interest for him, to kind of ease into this assigned reading thing.  All summer long I told him how I was going to assign him really boring books... you know, like Fellowship of the Ring.  And he would laugh.  So fast forward to now, two weeks into us being back to school.  He's been spending most of his time doing literature.  He gulped out of the Silent Planet in a matter of days before we even officially started, which sort of wrecked the plans to use the Kolbe guide to structure his reading and writing.  Oh well.  I'd rather him be excited about the books than just doing the bare minimum every week.  He's working on a book report for Out of the Silent Planet now and reading steadily through Fellowship of the Ring.  He did request the other two books in CS Lewis' Space trilogy and so we may scrap other parts of the plans so he can read through those.

Notes: Since I was just writing this for our use, I didn't always include on the chart details like author's names or (unfortunately) the whole titles of magazines.  I'm actually still waiting for those back issues to be delivered, actually, and will be trying to get in touch with the Cricket Publishing group again this week.   Five Boys in a Cave is a book I read when I was a kid and enjoyed.  It's a classic adventure story about five boys who get lost in a cave which turns out to have cave paintings like the ones at Altamira and Lascaux.  So it's not actually history, but it is a good read.

  Notes: Gareth tends to have intense interests, and, like I said before, sometimes narrow reading tastes.  He also has a tendency to be "bored".  Anything that falls outside whatever his interests are at that time is likely to earn the label "boring".  Unfortunately religious reading has always earned that label.  We do many religious read alouds as a family, go through the Baltimore Catechism as a family, read the Bible as a family, pray as a family.  But now that he is nearly 13, I want him to go a little deeper.  So I assigned him some reading.  I don't really want him to do it grudgingly, but I do want him to do it, so it's a delicate balance.  You'll see we're using Seton Religion 7 this year, which may seem somewhat textbook-y for a child who tends to label subjects "boring".  But I decided to include it because it has a lot of information in it that I, as a cradle Catholic who was basically uncatechized after the age of 11, am still learning about.  I found value myself in reading through the book, and so I decided to have Gareth read it, too.  

Notes: I wasn't sure whether or not to include the Zoology Coloring Book, which now turns out to be OOP (or something) because it is "currently unavialable" in its latest edition and only available used.  So I didn't buy it over the summer and left it up to Gareth.  It should probably have been listed in the "supplemental" section anyway.  (My thinking was that building up a decent knowledge of how animals are put together would help in understanding their evolution.)

Notes: This summer I could tell a new interest was about to develop because Gareth would say things like: "That might be interesting, trying to make a new strain of corn." Or, "If you bred a chicken..."  Then one day he said, "I think I'd like to breed that white Ameracauna hen and see if we can get any more that look like her."  (Ameracaunas are interesting-looking, with beards, and lay "Easter eggs".)  So I told him he needed to read up on genetics.  I included the project on his chart, although I wasn't sure just how interested in it he really was.  It turns out he was very interested in it, and has been reading Genetics of the Fowl before bed at night.  He even brought it to the ER with him when he needed his leg stitched up... er, stapled... last week.  (Actually, the illustrations in this book appeal heavily to boys... they mostly deal with genetic abberrations like, chicks with 4 wings, chicks with 2 heads... that sort of thing.)

I'm actually thinking that, together, the study of evolutionary biology and genetics would be for high school credit.  I ran across a CD-ROM text/course from Duke University's TIP program called Foundations in Biology: Genetics, Evolution, and Ethics for grades 7-10.  I thought, "Hey!  That's what we're doing!"  So I'll probably see about getting the CD-ROM for when the weather turns colder.

Gareth has added the book Swords: An Artist's Devotion to his "Military Studies".  He also watches documentaries on the Military Channel.  And he hasn't started the dulcimer.  And his "Field Guide to Imaginary Creatures" is something he enjoys working on here and there, but not a requirement.  I just wanted him to know it was an option if it was something he wanted to do during school hours.

So it's a lot.  Stuff I haven't written down: chicken and turkey chores every day, and he'll have a chance to get his First Aid Merit Badge in October.  New York State requires a certain number of hours in English, Math, Science, History and Geography every year for 7th and 8th grades, and a certain number of hours in Art and Music combined for 7th and 8th.  The state also requires Practical Arts, PE, and Health.  So I'm a little more regulated than some of you (an understatement, actually).

I hope to do a planning/scheduling post about all of this at some point, but right now -- it's Labor Day!  Hope yours is good :-).

Week 1

Before I forget what we did in week 1 ... here's a run-down, heavy on the little guys.

Also...

• Ice Cube Necklaces

Water and Weather:

Pop went through a phase where he would come in from playing outside every night and ask to check the weather for tomorrow.  The boys also watched a show about the effects of hurricanes: what hurricane force winds would do to a mobile home, how water could push a car off the road and wash it away, etc.  Ever since we watched the NOVA Flood! back in the spring, the twins have been fascinated by floods.  They build floods (using pillows and blankets) and pretend they are "flood monsters" who hatch out of "eggs" (they cover themselves with their pillows.)  So I decided to start out with a relaxed focus on water and weather.

 I made a weather chart for our first week.  Farmerboy enjoyed filling it in, but we forgot about it a few times.  I'll have to make another chart and get going again.

Week 1 was hot, so the boys played in the hose quite a bit.  Playing in the hose involved flooding certain areas of yard and driveway, and doing experiments with matchbox cars and other objects, to see how much water force was needed to push which toys.  I think Farmerboy did a few float-and-sink experiments on his own as well.

And we read a few books:

• Weather Words and What They Mean
• The Storm Book
• The Magic School Bus Inside A Hurricane

Pip and Pop drew pictures of thunderstorms, but for some reason I don't seem to have any photos.  Hmmm.  Could have sworn I took some pictures of their pictures...

Art:

Quite a bit of "random" and not so random art in the house during week 1.  Over the weekend prior to our first day of school, I chanced upon a Jo-Anne's while we were out looking for clothes for Andy.  I rarely get out to actual craft stores, so I jumped at the chance.  Then I remembered why I don't usually go to craft stores; they make small children nuts.  Anyway, I stocked up on a few supplies: clay, stickers, fabric for Katydid, wooden stuff to paint...

Pip loves to paint and will do it for long periods of time.

He's using a foam paint I bought a long, long time ago from Discount School Supply.  I got it out for Chipmunk to smush around with his hands.  The paint itself is like shaving cream. I'm not sure Discount School Supply carries it anymore.

Katydid used tempera paints to paint a crucifix.

It was kind of funny; as soon as I took all of the containers of dead tent caterpillar moths and dirt that once housed earthworms out of our science/nature area and cleaned it up, Pip immediately brought in an orange bucket full of dirt and we needed a place to dry treasure chests and crosses.  Oh well.  It exists to be used, right?

In the category of "themed" art, Katydid drew a Victorian girl to accompany her Sunflower Basket...

And Gareth, inspired by the book Swords: An Artist's Devotion, began a series of pencil sketches of swords, which he continues to work on.  (He's experimenting with shading these days.)

We also got out the new clay.

 

And had baths.

The theme of the day seemed to be "farm animals".  Pip and I made that cow in the center.   Pip gets very frustrated when he can't make his hands and materials cooperate with the vision in his head.  It's my job to provide him with direct instruction on how to use the materials, show him how to use the materials, and to be very, very patient.  He really wanted to make a cow, but he couldn't get the "foot" to stick onto the leg he'd made.  So I showed him how to rough up the clay and use slip to stick the parts together.  Then he was still upset so I had him guide me through the process of making the cow.  After we were done, he happily made a snake on his own, using the techniques I'd shown him to attach a head to a body.

(These are my new shelves, by the way.  I originally wanted them for paint, but they seem to have begun holding in-progress work by default.)

ABCs and 123s?

Well, a bit.  I was going to try to start doing some of Farmerboy's academic work with him in the morning so that the twins could sit in, too.  The problem: keeping the twins involved in the same activity for more than five minutes, and keeping Chipmunk from eating the tips off all the markers.  So Farmerboy is once again doing phonics and math in the afternoon. 

Here are a few of the Montessori-ish activities (homemade) the 3 and 6 year olds did this week:

I made up some pattern/matching cards using stickers. (I originally say this activity a long time ago on one of Katherine's blogs.) The boys did all the fish and butterfly cards --although the twins seem to have trouble with the idea of "matching" when their natural inclination is to make all sorts of interesting sticker pictures instead.  I have to admit that I'd probably rather make sticker pictures, too, but Farmerboy liked making the patterns and whizzed through the harder ones that I'd made for him.

Pop also did a bunch of scissors exercises, and Pip worked hard on coloring ladybugs and bees in the Handwriting Without Tears preschool workbook which I dug out of the basement for him.  They both want to do "math" like the big kids, complete with books, so I will have to see what I can do.