Walk Beside Me

Life Schooling

2012-01-31T03:48:00.000-08:00

We have slipped back into very casual schooling around here. Our days mostly consist of read-alouds, playing games and life skills (okay, trying to keep the house clean). We're sticking with our history studies and reading the occasional Old Testament story, but beyond that, we're not doing anything formal.

Yet Beeper is constantly surprising us with how much he is learning in the "core" subjects. We'll be playing monopoly on the computer, and he'll add numbers on the dice that are higher than I thought he could do, or he'll read a number or phrase off a chance card. I'll be reading a book to him, and he'll point out words to me that he recognizes. Firebirdluver was talking about something in the car one day, and suddenly Beeper chimed in from the back seat, "They would each get three turns." He had divided nine by three in his head. We didn't even know he had been listening. I believe now more than ever that these skills are just like walking and talking - if you wait for the child to be ready, the skills will come. It takes a lot of patience, though.

I feel the need to add that this type of learning may not be what's best for everyone. It may sound like (and sometimes feels like) we have fallen to this out of laziness. We have come to this point after much prayer (and study and trying different things). This is what's right for our family right now. We may find in future years that we need to change our approach once more (I expect, actually, that it will be more than once) as the needs of our family change. I encourage anyone (who isn't already) to find what's best for your own family through prayer and study. I am thankful we have this choice, for this is something I feel especially strongly about in regards to parenting - that parents should choose for themselves what is best for their own family (not just in schooling - in everything).

(I feel like I am repeating myself, but if I am, it's probably because it's important.)

Dear Readers

2012-01-09T11:34:00.000-08:00

My computer has broken down and had to be sent in for repairs. I probably won't be able to post for a few weeks.

-Arwen

Another kindle book deal

2012-01-05T04:16:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to let Montessorians know that one of this month's kindle book deals is Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius by Ageline Stoll Lillard. It's only $1.99.

mid-year evaluation

2012-01-04T04:02:00.000-08:00

We easily slid back into our ancient history studies this week with Ancient Greece (more about that later). I am really glad we decided to study ancient history this year. Beeper has really been enjoying it, and it has given us some structure (admittidly, it's a very loose structure).

For the first few months, I was able to match up our curriculum with the chapters in Story of the World (volume 1) fairly well. However, the further along we get , the harder it is to match things up. For example, in SOTW, Ancient Greece takes up something like eight chapters and Rome ten. The curriculum has both sharing one month. After Rome, we're going to have to use SOTW volume 2, and I have no idea yet how that's going to work out.

I figure this year it's not a big deal to pick and choose the chapters we read. This is all just an introduction anyway. After we have gone through the whole four year cycle, I'll have to decide whether to follow the SOTW four year cycle next time around or do something similar to what we did this time (but maybe Beeper could read the extra chapters on his own next time?) Or I could come up with my own schedule that's somewhere in between. As it is, I am not even sure whether we will spend a month on Greece and Rome together this year, as planned, or give each its own month. We'll just have to see how things go. So far it looks like there is a lot of interesting stuff to do, but who knows how fast we will get through it or whether we will get tired of Greece before we cover it all.

Free shipping at OTC

2012-01-02T06:23:00.000-08:00

Oriental Trading is offering free shipping again through tomorrow with code WCE2741. (The same code will give you $5 off a $50 purchase or $10 off a $79 purchase.) Here's some suggestions for school-related savings:

Dressing Frames - These are in the less-than-perfect section because of the low quality, but if you are willing to fix them up a little, this is a steal at $5 for a set of six. If we didn't already have dressing frames, I would definitely get these. Fixing a few things is definitely easier than making your own, and they are way cheaper than buying some.

Sound Boxes - Again, if we didn't already have several versions of this activity, I'd get these. These are also in the less than perfect section, but it looks like all you'd need to do to fix them up is re-glue the knobs.

Connecting Shapes - See previous post. We love these.

Storage - There are good prices on all kinds of boxes. We recently bought the solar system and human body boxes. They seem to be pretty good quality for that price. They are also easy to put together inside-out, if you don't happen to need that many boxes with pictures of internal organs on them.

Cupcake Beads - A couple of sets of these would make cute counters, don't you think? In fact, there are many things at OTC that would make good counters. Erasers, beads, etc.

New Building Toy

2011-12-28T05:11:00.000-08:00

I've seen these around from time to time and thought they looked like fun. I thought about getting some a couple of times, especially with all the versions that showed up in the Hearthsong catalog this year. Then firebirdluver found a version in the OTC catalog that costs much less and comes with more. Yay!

We got them out a few days before Christmas to help keep restless boys entertained. Beeper LOVES them, and he has gotten quite good at building a variety of things with them. He said, "When we saw these in the magazine, I thought they looked like fun, but now that I have actually played with them, I know that they are even more fun than I thought."

They also have a Christmas-themed set on sale. It doesn't have the same variety of shapes, though, and I don't know whether it fits with the other set. We will probably order it the next time they have a free shipping day and find out.

December Activities: Week 3

2011-12-26T04:36:00.000-08:00

This month has made me once again thankful for homeschool. I feel like this has been a fairly relaxed and enjoyable month. We were able to keep a focus on Christ and the Christmas Story while still fitting other fun stuff that's not really related but often gets mixed in with Christmas, like nutcrackers and trains and penguins. It was the perfect balance of fun without overdoing it and the religious with the secular.

December 17: Trains! Daddy got out his train for us and set it up around the tree (between the village and the presents). We also played with the wooden train tracks. It was a busy day, with shopping and delivering more trays. We finished up the day with a picnic in the living room while we watched Polar Express.

Book: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Advent: Wise man (Matthew 2:7-9)

December 18: Learn about Christmas in the Book of Mormon. This involved a quick geography lesson and reading from 3 Nephi. We also talked about what it might have been like to be one of the Nephites at the time or one of the shepherds in Bethlehem.

Book: A Night Without Darkness

Advent: Star (Matthew 2:10; 3 Nephi 1)

December 19: Little Fish's Special Day with Mama. Mama days were a little shorter than the Daddy days, since Mama and Baby don't like being apart for much more than a couple hours, but we still had fun doing a little shopping and getting a treat.

Book: The Last Straw (love this book about a camel with too much pride whose heavy load forces him to learn to kneel)

Advent: Camel (Matthew 2:11)

December 20: Beeper's Special Day With Mama. It was fortunate Daddy had so many days off this December so that we were able to do these all during the week. Beeper and I went to a matinee of the new Muppet Movie and followed it up with a little Christmas shopping and donuts.

Book: The Biggest, Best Snowman

Advent: Camel (Matthew 2:12-14)

December 21: Nutrition Unit. This was the only really new thing this year, so I put some time into it. Inspired by one of our new books, I decided we'd do a lesson on the new “My Plate” graphic the US government has put out to replace the “Food Pyramid.” I like this one much better. It makes more sense.

I printed a chart on cardstock with examples of the different food groups, using the colors from the plate. Then I got out pieces of felt in those colors, and we sorted some of the boys' play food by food group. Finally I got out a felt mat I had made of the My Plate graphic and used the play food to show some examples of how to make a balanced meal.

I was very excited about this lesson, so naturally, it didn't go well. Little Fish just wanted to sort the food by color. Beeper didn't want to have anything to do with it at all. He was anxious to move on to playing with his newest building toy (more about that later).

Oh well.

Book: A New, Improved Santa (Santa diets, exercises and gets a new look, then finds out the children liked him the way he was)

Advent: Tree (D&C 89 – Word of Wisdom) (yeah, I meant to have a wise man for this day, but somehow I miscounted)

December 22: Make cookies. Since I have been trying to keep things simple this year, we only made cookies once all month, and I told Beeper and his dad that we'd only do one kind of cookie. They both immediately picked peanut butter blossoms. Those seem to be becoming a tradition around here, which is okay by me, because they are a great cookie for little hands to help with. This time Beeper helped roll the balls in sugar and place them on the tray, unwrap the chocolates and place the chocolates on the cookies when they came out of the oven. (Little Fish didn't get to help due to being sick).

We are getting so good at making these that they were done surprisingly quickly, so I decided to make more after all. I made some sugar cookies and dipped some pretzels, but those I did myself while the boys watched Christmas movies with their dad.

Book: Christmas Oranges

Advent: Camel (watch “Wise Men Seek Jesus”)

December 23: Happy birthday, Joseph Smith. I like taking time out from the Christmas activities every year to have a lesson about Joseph Smith on his birthday. Between that and the Nephite Christmas it kind of brings everything together in a reminder that the gospel is all about Christ. We used our flannel board set to review the story of his first vision.

Beeper also arranged the cookies and pretzels from the day before onto plates for his friends, and we delivered them. He sang “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” at both houses. It was obvious his friends were quite tickled to be getting treats, and he was quite pleased to be delivering them.

Book: a board book we have about Joseph Smith

Advent: Camel (JSH 1:10-19)

December 24: Track Santa online. We have enjoyed this so much in the past, and it is a great geography lesson, so I decided to make it the official activity this year. In addition to the geography, it's a good opportunity to talk about how it's night on the other side of the world when it's day here and why that is. It is really fun to spend those final hours of anticipation imagining where in the world Santa might be at any given moment. The highlight of his day was watching Santa fly over the pyramids. A close second was the Great Wall of China.

Book: What Santa Can't Do

Advent: Shepherd (John 10:1-5, 11-17)

December Activities: Week 2

2011-12-20T02:33:00.000-08:00

December 9: Make paper snowflakes. An annual favorite, Little Fish was able to participate this year too. I put one less fold in the papers for his so he had fewer layers to cut through (I find it goes much more smoothly if I fold a bunch ahead of time), but it was still kind of tricky for him, being brand new to the scissor scene, and he only did a couple. Beeper and I experimented with zig-zag scissors, but the ones we have are cheap and were difficult to get through so many layers. The results were very pretty, though, and the zig-zags made doing tree-shapes fairly easy.

Beeper also played with the roll-a-snowman game we made a couple of years ago.

Book: Frosty (old Golden Books version)

Advent: Donkey (sing, "When Joseph Went to Bethlehem") Beeper let Little Fish check the pocket that day, and after he had taken out the donkey, he ran to me with it and said excitedly, "I puyyed out a pony!"

December 10: I woke Beeper up around 5:30 to see the lunar eclipse. For the next half hour we would go outside for a minute or two, then come inside for several minutes to warm up, then go outside again to see how much more of the moon was in shadow. Then we drank a lot of hot chocolate to really warm up. Our official activity for the day was to play some of the folder games I made last year. Most of them were more suited to Little Fish's level this time. They included:

Christmas Tree Board Game (the only one Beeper was really interested in)
Candy Cane Color Match
Cookie Shape Matching

Book: Santa and the Christ Child (this is one of firebirdluver's favorites)

Advent: Baby Jesus (Luke 2:7)

December 11: Dominoes to play after church

Book: The Best Christmas Hunt Ever (I thought it would make a good quiet book for church)

Advent: Cow/Ox (sing "Away in a Manger")

December 12: Decorate Tree. Yes, because of our crazy schedule at the beginning of the month, it took us halfway through the month to decorate the tree. Every day until then, Beeper asked when we were going to put it up.

Book: Merry Christmas Curious George (one of Beeper's favorites)

Advent: Shepherd (sing "Angels We Have Heard on High")

December 13: Nutcracker Day. The other thing Beeper most looks forward to every year is getting out the nutcrackers. We put the big ones around the tree to guard the presents and village (all safe behind a gate so Baloo can't get at them). I also printed out the image from here, and Beeper spent a lot of the day drawing nutcrackers. We were able to listen to much of the music this year, which I had downloaded as part of this album. (hooray for the digital age)

Special Day with Daddy for Little Fish - We started the special days with Mama and Daddy last year with Beeper, and this year Little Fish got to jump on board. His whole countenance shone after spending the morning with Daddy, riding in Daddy's purple jeep, shopping and playing at the park.

Book: The Nutcracker (this version has four or five chapters, great descriptions and beautiful illustrations; it's one of the books my friend gave me and of course one of Beeper's favorites)

Advent: Shepherd (Luke 2:8-16)

December 14: Beeper's Special Day With Daddy. I was impressed when he hadn't thrown a fit the day before about Little Fish's special day. He didn't even ask whether he would get one (yes, the nutcrackers were an intentional diversion), but he was naturally excited when his turn came. I am sure much shopping and Christmas secrets were involved, but he didn't fill me in on any details.

Book: Christmas Dress for Ellen

Advent: Tree (watch "Shepherds Learn of the Birth of Christ") If you haven't seen the new Life of Christ videos, I highly recommend checking them out. They have a mobile app for them and everything.

December 15: Make a paper chain. I like to do this when there are ten days left. We also played some "make ten" games as an addition reinforcement. We used the "ten frame" from here and crumpled up bits of paper to use as "snowball" counters.

Book: If You Take a Mouse to the Movies

Advent: Shepherd (listen to "Handel's Messiah") I have three or four pieces of the Messiah, which came with the same album as the Nutcracker pieces

December 16: Deliver Christmas trays. Instead of cookies or other treats, our tradition is to deliver vegetable trays to friends and neighbors. We have found them to be very well received. Everyone is glad for something different and healthy in the midst of all the treats. (Unfortunately, then they feel bad for bringing us cookies. We tell them not to. We never mind cookies.)

Book: Melrose and Croc (a fun one we found this year; there's not really a moral or anything - it's just two friends who meet and don't have to spend Christmas alone; Beeper loved the way they passed several times before meeting)

Advent: Wise Man (Matt 2:1-2)

Have you heard about this?

2011-12-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

(Don't forget: only a couple more days to enter the giveaway)

This story is a week or two old, so you may have already heard about the school board member who decided to take his state's "high stakes" standardized test for 10th graders with the promise he would publish his results.

Now, this is someone with two masters degrees, and he is working on his doctorate. I have a feeling he is probably pretty literate. Yet he scored 62% on the reading section. He said he didn't know any of the math but managed to guess 10 out of 60 correctly.

Firebirdluver says the he's curious now about how he would do. As a scientist, I think he actually uses math regularly in his job, so he may have retained things better than the rest of us. I wonder how I would do. It would certainly be interesting if schools would let any parent or adult take the tests, just to see, and if a whole bunch of people did.

As for the man who did do it, this successful, well-educated man, this is what he had to say about it:

“If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had.

“It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this state’s children in a future they can’t possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail “cut score”? How?”

“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”

(I just found out there was an update to this story with more details. It is very interesting. Go here to read it. You can also take a quiz with a few of the questions on the test he took. The poems they picked for the reading portion are very ironic.)

Foo

2011-12-15T04:48:00.000-08:00

(Don't forget to enter the t-shirt giveaway)

"Someday I want to have a sycophant of my own. Maybe Santa will bring me my own sycophant."

While we were on our trip a couple weeks ago, we started listening to the audio of Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo. This is the first time Beeper has ever (that I can recall) shown any interest in an audio book. He LOVES it. We didn't finish it on the trip, so now every time we get in the car he says, "Let's listen to the book!"

We don't mind, because it keeps him happy, and we like it too. I was hooked from the very beginning by the author's writing style. I really like his sense of humor and his talent for throwing in unexpected remarks. It's a great story too. We are all dying to know what happens next and how will Lev get out of this mess. The recording is also very well done. It's unabridged, and the voices are fun.

We'll definitely be getting the rest of these.

That boy...

2011-12-14T04:47:00.000-08:00

Because apparently, every good pharaoh needs a war chariot.

In the next "scene" the rocking horse became a donkey, and Beeper was Joseph leading it to Bethlehem.

(You can win this awesome pharaoh shirt here.)

December Activities: Week 1

2011-12-13T04:53:00.000-08:00

This gets easier every year. The mailbox made a return this year, as did the advent nativity. We also have enough books this year to do one (or more) a day. I added a little note in each pocket of the advent calendar with either a scripture or song to go along with the nativity piece for that day.

We were out of town until the 2nd, so mailbox activities started on the 3rd. We also loaned our nativity to the local creche festival for that weekend, so our advent countdown didn't start until the 6th. (Since there are five sheep in our set, I left those out on the table for the days we missed.)

Here's what we did for the first few days:

December 3: Happy birthday, Beeper. In the mailbox was the first clue for a treasure hunt to find his present. Need I tell you how excited he was to receive Toy Story legos? Most of the day was spent working on putting the set together.

We also visited the creche festival that day. Someone told me they had about 1400 or 1500 nativity sets on display this year. It was amazing. Beeper appreciated it more than he has in previous years. We found it was equally fun to look at the simple sets as the fancy ones. Each had its own beauty. We especially liked looking at the homemade ones. Beeper liked the clay sets and declared he wanted to make a set from clay sometime.

December 4: Thanks for the idea, Beeper. The activity for the day was to make a Christmas creche from clay. That afternoon I got out my Sculpey, and we worked together to make a simple nativity scene. Yes, I did most of it, but I really enjoy working together with Beeper on projects like this. He enjoyed himself too and loves the set.

Books: The Stable Where Jesus Was Born and a cloth book of the Christmas Story (made from a fabric panel purchased at Walmart last year)

December 5: Time to get out the felt gingerbread house. This is always popular, and this is the first year Little Fish was really old enough to play with it too.

We ran errands in town that day too, which included going to the library. Beeper was able to get his very own library card. Yay! (The requirements here are to be six years old and be able to sign your name.)

Book: Legend Of The Candy Cane (Beeper loves this one)

December 6: Hang Stockings

Book: The Mitten

Advent: Mary (Luke 1:27)

December 7: Make candied nuts. You can find a recipe for cinnamon-glazed nuts here. They are surprisingly easy and a good recipe for someone Beeper's age. Plus the chemistry behind them is pretty simple, so you can use them as a science lesson too. Beeper especially enjoyed eating them.

Book: Wish For Wings That Work (one of my favorites)

Advent: Angel (Luke 1:30-31)

December 8: Penguin Day. I got out the box of penguins and cards, our parts of a penguin puzzle and a couple of books about arctic animals. We also watched March of the Penguins, and I added a snowflake matching game to the mailbox.

Thursday nights are our "breakfast night." Beeper proposed we have penguin pancakes. He provided a detailed description of his idea, and I made them. They turned out very cute:

Book: Penguins, Penguins Everywhere (a new addition to our collection - a cute and simple book describing some different kinds of penguins)

Advent: Joseph (Matthew 1:20-21)

Walk Beside Me (like an Egyptian) Giveaway!

2011-12-12T04:30:00.000-08:00

**Giveaway Closed. Congratulations, Leann*

T-shirt designing has been a hobby of mine since high school, so I was very excited when ooshirts.com recently contacted me about doing a review and giveaway of their product and service. After some brainstorming, I decided to create an Egypt themed design (knowing Beeper would love it and that there are a lot of other little Egypt nuts out there in the homeschooling world).

The front of the shirt features a scarab beetle necklace and folded wings (a la Yul Brynner in Ten Commandments). The back depicts a faded Egyptian mural where Thoth oversees two pupils (one building with blocks, the other examining a scarab beetle with a magnifying glass).

(clicking on the photos will take you to flickr, where you should be able to see them a lot more clearly)

Ooshirts is a screen-printer, but they also offer digital printing as a more economical option for small orders or if you want a lot of colors. The shirts they sent me were digitally printed, but you could have fooled me. I even took out a cafepress shirt I ordered a few years ago to compare, and the quality of the ooshirts printing was definitely higher. (Note that this was several years ago, so cafepress may have changed how they print their shirts since then.)

There was a strong chemical smell on the shirts when I first removed them from the package, but a run through the wash (which we would do anyway) took care of that.*

It did fade some and dull after the wash. Here is pre-wash:

and post-wash:

Since it looks almost as good as screen-printing, I think I actually prefer the digital printing, for a couple of reasons. I have done screen-printed shirts from a couple of different places in the past, and they have limitations. Screen-printing cannot have gradients (like I included in this design). They generally have a very restricted palette, and the companies tend to prefer vector art for the design submissions.

The design lab is easy to use. They have clipart you can choose from if you want. You can also add text. The t-shirts are the standard selection of Gildan, Hanes, Jerseez, etc, with a Gildan Adult t-shirt as the default.

Ooshirts has a tech team to help you iron out any problems with your design. After submitting my design, I was contacted by one of the techs, who let me know that there was a problem with the placement of my design and that the color shirt I had picked was out of stock so my order would take longer. The placement problem was quickly and easily resolved, and he helped me find a similar color shirt that was in stock (and that I ended up liking better anyway).

If you can't tell, I couldn't be more pleased with these shirts. I hope one of you will be happy with it too, because ooshirts generously printed two – one for us and one to give away.

To win a Youth Large (tan) of the Walk Beside Me (like an Egyptian) t-shirt, leave a comment on this post. Please include an e-mail address, if it is not listed in your profile. If I do not have a way to contact you, you will not win. Only U.S. residents are eligible (sorry, but shipping costs are crazy these days).

The giveaway ends at noon on the 18th. I will try to announce the winner on the 19th.

If you like my artwork, I'd like to put in a plug for more of it. I have an entry in this week's contest on Spoonflower. The theme is cloth baby books that fit on a fat quarter. You can see my design here and vote here. You don't have to vote for mine, of course – there are a bunch of great designs – but you can vote for as many as you want. (Voting ends on Wednesday)

*No, I didn't wash the give away shirt, just Beeper's. I know you want to wash it with your own favorite detergent.

Full Disclosure: I was given two free custom shirts in exchange for an honest and fair review of ooshirts.com. I received no other compensation. All opinions are my own.

Printer and laminator deals

2011-12-09T08:57:00.000-08:00

If you are still deciding what you want for Christmas, or if you are in the market for a new printer, I have some suggestions for you.

I have been using an Espon Artisan 800 for just under three years now. Unfortunately, my beloved printer broke down earlier this week. After talking to tech support (Epson has very good tech support, btw) it was confirmed that there wasn't much to be done for it, and naturally as old as it is, it is out of warranty.

So I started shopping around. We had just bought a new box of ink, so a printer that used the same ink was the preference, plus I really loved several things about the Artisan. So the first place I checked was Epson's website, where I was delighted to find they currently have an Artisan 730 on sale for only $100!!! This looks to be essentially the same as my old printer, minus the fax, which we never used anyway (not having a land line to plug it into). I guess the white "arctic edition" must not have sold as well, or maybe it's just more festive for a winter sale.

Whatever the reason, that's a steal. If you want a nice printer-all-in-one, check it out. It comes with about $75 worth of ink, so you're really only paying about $25 for the hardware. Yes, the ink is expensive, which is the one thing I haven't liked about this printer, but I think it's worth it for the high quality (that's just me, though; you may feel differently).

Epson gives free shipping on orders over $125, so you may also want to throw some extra ink or photo paper into your cart. Photo paper from the same brand as your printer will almost always print best (although we have found Costco paper to print very well on it too). A note on buying ink for the Artisan: there are two different choices when you buy color ink: 99 (regular) or 98 (high capacity). We have found it to be worth while to buy the high capacity. I lasts much longer. (I don't know about you guys, but I do a lot of printing.) And make sure when buying extra ink that you buy both a box of black and the combo color pack. The combo pack does not come with black.

I also learned this morning from My Blessings Above that Amazon is having a sale on the Scotch Thermal Laminator today only. This is the same laminator I have, and I like it. It's about as cheap as you can get, but mine is still going strong after... (actually, I am not sure how many years we have had it). It requires laminating pouches of the same brand. I like to buy mine from Dick Blick. I have found that by buying them in bulk, even with shipping they are a much better deal there than from anywhere else.

I have found a laminator and a good printer to be homeschool essentials. This is a good chance to set yourself up for under $200.

Lunar Eclipse!

2011-12-09T03:17:00.000-08:00

If you live in the Western United States, you should be able to view a lunar eclipse tomorrow morning. You can read more about it here.

I think it's time to test out that night setting on my camera. (I love technology.)

Does this count?

2011-12-08T05:38:00.000-08:00

Looking back on our week of guest teachers got me thinking about what opportunities Beeper has had for socializing so far.

As you know, this isn't an area I have been overly worried about. I don't think school is a particularly good place to learn social behavior anyway, and Beeper is a naturally social little guy (unlike his mom). His ability to make friends wherever we go impresses me.

One of the most surprising is the way he has made friends with the UPS and FedEx drivers.* I have tried to keep him and his brother from peering out the door whenever a delivery truck drives into our driveway, but they are naturally excited whenever packages arrive. Then they started opening the door and greeting the drivers. The drivers have gotten used to it and have gone from throwing the packages onto the porch to greeting the boys and bringing the packages inside and leaving them in the entryway. That would have been especially useful when I was pregnant and when Baloo was brand new to not have to bring packages in, but even now it is kind of nice.

*We live in a "rural" area, so USPS doesn't come out to our house. If they did, I am sure Beeper would have made friends with the mailman long ago.

Guest teachers

2011-12-07T05:04:00.000-08:00

The week before and of Thanksgiving, Beeper had a lot of opportunities to learn from different people.

First, about a week before T-Day, he got to go on a field trip... to school. My friend who is student-teaching a third grade class asked firebirdluver to come do a presentation about geology. He took Beeper along with him, and we called it a field trip.

This isn't the first time firebirdluver has done something like this, nor the first time he has taken Beeper, but it felt different this time for some reason. Maybe it's just because Beeper is school-age now and he is aware of the difference between what he is doing and what other kids his age are doing. Maybe it was also because the teacher was someone he knows. It was a little funny, because when I talked to his dad and my friend about him going, I said, "I think he will be interested in seeing what other kids do all day," then I talked to him, and he said almost the exact same thing: "Then I will get to see what other kids do all day!"

He came home talking about all the neat stuff she has in her classroom and about playing with some other kids there. I was worried again that he may start feeling left out, but it appears he is still happy with current arrangements. Especially after that afternoon when he asked to go play with his friends. I said, "They are still in school, remember? They have to stay there all day," (None of the neighbor kids is in kindergarten.) He said, "All day?!?" The idea of staying there all day definitely did not appeal to him. It did, however, make him look forward even more to when she is done with her student teaching and will begin teaching him guitar.

The following Monday, another friend came over to be a guest teacher for us. She is currently taking a class at the community college about the history of chocolate, so I asked her if she would teach us a little about it to go with our studies about the Ancient Americas. We learned a lot of interesting things from her about how the Olmecs, Mayans and Aztecs all regarded and used chocolate. The Aztecs used the cacoa beans as money. When the Spaniards came, they thought it was goat poop, and they wondered why these people were making such a big deal about goat poop.

Just for fun, we watched Charlie and the Chocolate factory later that week and tried to tie President Uchtdorf's talk in. It's a difficult concept for a five-year-old, but I will keep it in mind for future years.

Grandma and Grandpa Spor came out to visit for Thanksgiving. Grandma is a Family and Consumer Sciences (that's what they call home ec. now) teacher in Southern Utah. Beeper was very excited when I suggested we ask her to be a guest teacher and cook something with the boys.

She agreed to make tortillas with the boys to go along with the Latin America studies. They helped her add ingredients, then she showed Beeper how to work the dough. She helped them each roll out a tortilla and put it on the griddle.

The boys were both so excited about making their own tortillas, and Beeper insists we do it again. Thanks, Grandma!

Afterward we read some of A Ride on Mother's Back, because the first baby is in Guatemala, and it shows her mom making tortillas. We were able to extract a surprising amount of information about traditional tortilla making just from that one page.

Toddler Tuesday

2011-12-06T04:52:00.000-08:00

He has also been learning about a lot of animals. He seems especially drawn to reptiles and amphibians. Oh, and moose. We went to some sporting goods stores while in Reno, and I had to tell Little Fish that the animals were dead so that he wouldn't be scared of the bears. As we were leaving one of the stores, he said, "Dat sad bout the moose is dead."

Thoughts on Pinterest

2011-12-05T04:28:00.000-08:00

I know this latest internet sensation is making it easier for bloggers to share ideas that they have found across the web. However, lately I have begun to be concerned about whether it is causing people to forget about bloggers' rights.

I have seen numerous posts now where a blogger will simply post one of her Pinterest boards as a convenient way to visually share a lot of ideas at once. Sometimes when I have clicked on an idea, I'm taken to another person's Pinterest board, then another, then another. If I stay interested long enough. I may make it back to the original blog post after half a dozen clicks.

Is it possible that sometimes bloggers are being deprived of traffic and/or credit that their ideas merit? Normally, I would not post a picture from another person's blog without his or her permission. Some may feel comfortable posting a picture, but not without a link to the source and appropriate credit given. But it is easy to forget that when it is so easy to "pin" it and share it.

What do you think? I'd like some open discussion about this. And what can be done about it? Do you think responsible pinning should include making sure anything you share contains direct links, not second or third-hand linking? Or do I as a blogger just need to make sure I watermark every single picture I post, and if I don't, it's my loss? (I don't know about the rest of you, but I find that blog posts with pictures are already pretty time-consuming. If I had to add a watermark to each one, I probably wouldn't have time to blog anymore. )

It seems like having that copyright statement in my sidebar or at the bottom of my blog is now pointless, because many of the people now seeing my pictures will never see my blog, and therefore will never see my copyright.

I could be wrong about all of this and it could be a great source for traffic. I saw a post on the Spoonflower boards about how to use pinterest to advertise. My analytics shows that I have gotten some traffic from there. Is anyone else getting a lot of incoming traffic from pinterest?

Fat Quarter Sale at Spoonflower

2011-11-23T03:43:00.000-08:00

Good news! All next week Spoonflower is having a 2-for-1 sale on fat quarters. You can read more details here. This is a great opportunity if you have been thinking of getting some of my kits or some cute Egypt fabric or some of your own custom fabric.

We're going to be gone all next week, so you probably won't be hearing from me for a while. Have a great Thanksgiving!

The Nasca/Nazca and Olmecs

2011-11-17T05:19:00.000-08:00

We read chapter 26 in SOTW last week about some of the earliest known civilizations in the Americas.

The first part of the chapter was about the Nasca lines. You have probably heard of these mysterious paths in ground in Peru. When viewed from the air, they are giant line drawings. Fortunately, I remembered that we have a National Geographic article about the lines. You can find it online here. Or just view the photo gallery here.

I wanted to do an activity to go with it. We were expecting snow last weekend, so I was planning to suggest the boys make pictures in the snow, but it didn't snow, and everyone was sick, so they couldn't have gone outside anyway. Oh well. National Geographic's website also has this activity suggestion. In fact, they have a lot of stuff on the lines. Just type "nasca" into their search engine.

The chapter also included a part about giant heads left behind by the Olmecs and a legend from the Great Plains region. We didn't do any extra activities with those, but Beeper and Little Fish enjoyed the legend. Reading was the easiest thing when they were sick. It was easier than usual, because they moved less and made less noise than usual. ;)

Letters

2011-11-15T04:40:00.000-08:00

Letters have been almost as popular at our house lately as geometry.

The letter trains are always popular with all three boys. You can see I still have quite a few to paint, but we have most of our set now. Hopefully we can find the last few soon, because these particular ones are getting hard to find.

This is sort of like the Montessori printed alphabet. We use these in our pocket chart. Some came with this set, and I made a bunch more the same size. I made the pockets they are hanging in by cutting apart and sewing back together two of these. Beeper likes having them hanging up in the living room, just in case he decides to make some words.

I made another pocket thing the same size and added letter stickers to the front of the pockets. I plan to use it like this for matching objects to letter sounds when Little Fish and Baloo are big enough.

I finally decided to go ahead and make letters like the irresistible numbers, but I used Spoonflower fabric to cut out a few steps. I still have to do the embroidery, of course, which is the most time consuming part, but getting those initial steps out of the way made it easier to get going.

They are worth the effort. Beeper has been just as excited to trace these as he was the numbers.

They turned out slightly bigger than the numbers from the book, so I used 5"x6" pieces of fabric instead of 4"x5". That turned out just about right, although the j and f were a tight squeeze. I suppose I could have designated vowels from consanants by putting one of pink fabric and the other on blue or outlining them in different colors or something. But I didn't. Oh well.

I also made the cards from here based on Letter Factory, because the boys love Letter Factory, and the cards are really cute and well done. I shrunk them down a little before printing them out so they'd fit in my 3"x5" laminating pouches.

I put some in our pocket chart from Target and gave Beeper corresponding moveable alphabet letters for a matching lowercase to capitals activity. He thought it was a lot of fun, and he needs the review. I'll have to do more for him.

Time to vote

2011-11-14T04:19:00.000-08:00

If you haven't already heard, voting is up for the Homeschool Blog Awards. Head over here to vote by Friday (the 18th). Make sure to take some time to look at some of the blogs you're not familiar with. I always find a few new ones to follow every year.

Scissors and crawling

2011-11-11T04:31:00.000-08:00

Little Fish has been showing a great deal of interest in scissors lately. I was hesitant to give scissors to one so young (Beeper was much older when he started wanting to use scissors), especially since I can't provide undivided attention to supervising him. I had to remind myself to follow his interest and let him try.

I have given him papers to cut up on his own and papers with lines for him to cut along. I realized as I watched him cut one day that I can tell some things about him just from the way he was cutting. He approached the whole thing differently than Beeper did when he started out cutting. Rather than going into tedious details (the tedious part is coming up in a minute), I will just say that Little Fish is someone who attacks the problem from many different angles. Beeper, on the other hand, ignores the problem and makes up his own.

Baloo's big accomplishment lately is mobility. He is a month or two ahead of his brothers in this, but what I think is much more interesting is the way they all got there. Each one has found his own path to crawling and walking.

Baloo started out pulling himself forward with his arms. You can see it here. This has progressed to a lop-sided army crawl with which he can work his way across the floor surprisingly quickly. He hasn't shown as much interest in sitting up or walking while holding someone's hands as his brothers did, so I was surprised the other day when he did a sort of pre-cruise along the back of the bench at church. I realized that he was pulling himself along the same we he does when crawling. His brain had made a connection between what he had been doing on the floor and what he needed to do when upright.

Little Fish learned to crawl using the lunge-forward-from-a-sitting-position-and-push-off-with-your-feet method. You can see a video of how that evolved here. So he was up on hands and knees pretty much from the start, and he progressed to walking in what was basically the textbook way you read about.

We thought for a while that Beeper would skip crawling all together, because he was so much more interested in walking. He did discover an army crawl a few months before learning to walk, but he preferred cruising when he could. He learned hands and knees crawling after a bit and found that to be much more efficient.

The reason I am talking about this is that I think it can be related to learning to read, or any other milestone. When left to their own devices, children all have their own way of getting there, ways that reflect their personalities, ways that compliment how their brains work. In the end, they all get to the same place, when they're ready. There's no wrong way or wrong time. (I've also known babies who didn't walk until they were 18 months old, but I am sure that doesn't have any bearing on who they are four or five years later.)

Math and Quilting

2011-11-10T03:51:00.000-08:00

I don't remember whether I have mentioned quilt balls before. I have been putting a bunch together this week, and they go perfectly with what we've been doing. They are a fun way to learn about or be an extension of studying 3-D geometry and the platonic solids. This is a project a child who likes hand sewing can do. I use the patterns and ideas from this book. We've used these for juggling balls, Christmas tree ornaments, baby balls and decorative balls. (For the more advanced geometry student, there is also a section in the book about constructing your own regular polygons.)

We also tried using the instructions from the book to build with the PolyConstructos. It worked out pretty well, because the book shows how all of the pieces fit together laid out flat. I had Beeper follow those diagrams, then I helped him fold them up (he can connect the PolyConstructos when they're flat, but they can be tricky to do 3D, so he sometimes needs help with that).

I am thinking about making a new version of our magnet shapes that is quilt inspired. You can see some fun quilt magnets here. Since the angles of the triangles are different from these, the patterns and concepts will be different, and it will be a fun way to change things up a bit.

Come to think of it, some equilateral triangle quilt magnets would be cool too. That reminds me of a book my mother-in-law had about pinwheel quilts based on hexagons. I wish I could remember the name of the book, but here is an example of what the pinwheels look like.

Quilting is more than just geometry. This blogger uses sudoku squares to teach her daughters to sew nine patch quilts. (part 1, part 2)

There's lots of ways that quilting relates to math, and who can resist the patterns, the softness, the quiltiness.

Speaking of math...

2011-11-09T04:19:00.000-08:00

"Studying" geometry with Beeper lately has had me thinking about a class I had in high school. It was a unique situation where the teacher knew he could get away with a freer learning environment.

Mr. K was the adviser for the math team. If you have ever participated in math competitions, you know that they test the kind of thinking that is not usually taught in schools. Mr. K created a class that was optional for math team members to teach them about the kind of math that's in those tests.

I remember doing a unit on probability. We started with dice and worked our way up to casino games. We learned how to play craps so that we could calculate the odds of various bets on a craps table. We learned how to use those formulas to hypothesize the end results of a craps game, then we tested the theory.

I learned a lot of math from that unit. I also learned how stupid gambling was.

From there we moved on to Monopoly. We found out that calculating probabilities in a Monopoly game quickly gets very complex. I ended up designing a simple program on my TI-85 that would roll the dice and move a piece on a monopoly board for as long as you wanted. When the program was stopped, it would tell you how many times each space had been landed on. Someone else made a more complex program that worked in Chance and Community Chest cards and things like that. It wasn't an assignment or something Mr. K told us to do. We just did it because it was interesting and fun. He told us that there are actually books all about the probabilities in Monopoly and the systems used to analyze the game. Some people in the class went out and found those books and read them. (Did you know that there are properties not worth buying in Monopoly because the odds of landing on them are so low that you most likely will never make back what you paid?)

I remember another time when he taught us about the Harmonic Triangle. He suggested maybe we could try and find a formula that would show a relationship between the Harmonic Triangle and Pascal's Triangle. I saw a relationship right away, but when no one else saw it, I thought I must be wrong. Instead of saying something, I eventually wandered over to where my friend Nate (a real genius) was sitting to run my thoughts by him.

Do you know what Nate was working on? Something completely unrelated.

"Nate, what do you think of this?" He glanced at my formulas and said, "Oh yeah, that's right, but take a look at this..."

Mr. K noticed us talking and came over, not to get mad about us not paying attention, but because he knew us and he knew something interesting must be going on. I remember how he lit up when he saw my formula, as well as when he saw what Nate was working on.

I hope that gives you a picture of the class and teacher. Obviously it was very casual. We didn't have assignments, at least not that I remember. But I did do out of class work - like writing the program and volunteering to make our craps board. He had lessons planned, but it was often more of a suggestion ("I thought we could try this together") than anything. We also brought in our own ideas and questions to work on sometimes too.

I can't think of many classes where I learned that much in one year, especially not that much that was applicable to the world around me. Certainly I can't think of any where learning was that much fun.

I am trying to use that class as one guide now as I try to figure out the best methods for teaching and learning - the way he used some guidance, some teaching, some activities and some leaving things open to us.

I am sure some people would say that the class only worked because it was full of smart kids. Maybe. Maybe not.

The funny part of the story is that Mr. K didn't like paperwork, and creating a new class requires a lot of paperwork. He circumvented part of the process by finding a math class that the school didn't teach anymore and altering its paperwork enough to fit his needs. We all knew that our class was named "Problem Solving" after a lower-than-remedial math class. And we loved it.

Rethinking Mathematics

2011-11-08T03:47:00.000-08:00

Recently my sister-in-law dropped by for a visit and saw some blocks Beeper had out on the table. She sat down and tried to figure out how Beeper could have been making towers from these triangular shaped blocks.

I told her Beeper hadn't been making towers. He had been doing geometry with the blocks.

She looked at him and said, "You're doing geometry?!?" in a tone that implied that geometry is a difficult subject that a five-year-old could never approach. To her, geometry was all about formulas and theorems and stuff too tricky for many teenagers and grown-ups. (In retrospect, maybe I should have informed her that her making of towers was a self-directed study of math and physics).

I think this is the type of thing Paul Lockhart is talking about in A Mathematician's Lament. It's almost like the schools are teaching us that math is hard (and not to be enjoyed).

I was fortunate in my youth to have been given the Joy of Mathematics (the same book I mentioned the other day). I discovered how cool and fun and exciting geometry could be. Later I discovered the follow-up books More Joy of Mathematics and the Magic of Mathematics. I was thrilled.

Another favorite book of mine, that I checked out from the library many times was Math For Smarty Pants. I have heard that I Hate Mathematics by the same author is also very good. If you are not sure where to find the fun in math, I'd suggest trying out some of these books.

The essay also reminded me of this article by Peter Gray. He describes an experiment where students were not taught arithmetic until sixth grade. By the end of the year they were caught up with their peers, because they learned it quickly and easily by that point. On top of that, they were better at story problems and applying math to every day life.

Speaking of story problems, I love this line from the Mathematician's Lament:

Attempts to present mathematics as relevant to daily life inevitably appear forced and contrived: “You see kids, if you know algebra then you can figure out how old Maria is if we know that she is two years older than twice her age seven years ago!” (As if anyone would ever have access to that ridiculous kind of information, and not her age.)

It reminds me of a math class where I decided to spend my energy proving the ridiculousness of a story problem that involved one foot square sugar cubes rather than solving the problem, which would have been easier (we liked to give that teacher a hard time).

Interesting that Peter Gray and Paul Lockhart both talk about removing math as we know it from schools (not as a complete solution, you really need to read both articles), but their reasoning is different (keep in mind that one is a psychologist and the other a mathematician so they are approaching the topic from very different angles).

Even knowing all that, I find it hard to break away from the school pattern of learning math. You have to learn to add and subtract first, practice that a lot until it's memorized, then move onto other skills one at a time, right? I mean, I am happy to explore time and shapes and whatever else interests Beeper with him, but part of me keeps wanting to bring him back to "level" math.

Do you think you could let go of school ideas about math and find the "joy" in it with your kids instead?

Help! Ancient History in the Americas

2011-11-07T05:33:00.000-08:00

We'll be wrapping up out study of Asia and the Far East soon. With every unit it amazes me how into all of this Beeper is. I am starting to think history and culture are more age appropriate for kindergarten than reading and math (and knowing about the history and cultures of the world should be a huge asset for this generation).

We'll probably be doing mostly holiday-type stuff for the rest of the year, but I would like to spend a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving on the aztec, maya and other civilizations from the Americas.

Unfortunately, I don't have many ideas of what to do. There is one short chapter on the Americas in SOTW 1, and a chapter or two in SOTW 2. Neither is inspiring me as to any activity ideas. There is a section in our history pockets about the aztec, but that's about all we have.

Does anyone have any suggestions, either things you've done or things you've seen on the internet? Any books, movies, activities or anything else?

Montessori Geography meets Waldorf Dolls

2011-11-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

At least, these remind me of something you might see in a Waldorf classroom, but I designed them with Montessori-style continent boxes in mind. I have been working on this project for about a year, so I am very happy to finally get it up.

This is part of my latest set of Spoonflower fabrics. You can order 14" handkerchiefs or 18" handkerchiefs. The only sewing required is finishing the edges (however you prefer). If you really don't want to do any sewing, though, you could probably get away with just putting Fray Check (or similar) around the edges of each handkerchief.

One yard will give you six handkerchiefs, one from each of six continents. Each handkerchief is supposed to be reminiscent of fabric or a style of traditional dress from a certain area of that continent. The fabrics can be folded and tied into dolls using these instructions.

While designing the handkerchief fabric, I also ended up making what my sons refer to as "cookie doll" versions. Wouldn't you know it, they like those better. So I have made them available as a fabric as well. You only need a quarter yard for these, although they require additional fabric for the backs and stuffing (and they will need to be sewn).

I think either version would be a fun addition to continent boxes.

More Tessellations

2011-11-01T04:06:00.000-07:00

We found some great tessellations in a book and wanted to try a few of them. Now I want to get more tiles so we can make bigger ones.

Then we tried one of the patterns with the poly-constructos.

Beeper loves the poly-constructos. He decided to build an "army" of pyramids. This is two boxes worth.

Then he made a snowman. Lots of geometry going on at our house these days.

Video 2 - Airplane

2011-10-31T02:16:00.000-07:00

In this one, I had given Beeper a challenge, but he had his own vision. I'll let him explain it to you.

Inventing, mostly...

2011-10-31T02:10:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be fun make movies of Beeper explaining some of his inventions.

Asia books, movies, etc.

2011-10-28T03:45:00.000-07:00

In addition to our other history, art and culture studies in Story of the World and History Pockets this month, I have a stack of Asia-related things in our library for us to pick from when we have a free minute. Here's some of the things we have:

Peach Boy - This is a picture book of Japanese fairy tales. Most of them are only a couple of pages long, a quick and easy read. Beeper has loved these. One of his favorite things this month has been to bring me that book and pick one of the stories to read. His favorite is Silly Saburo, a story about a boy who is always getting things mixed up.

The Jungle Book - We didn't finish this one, and it really only has snatches of Indian culture in it, but it is a classic, and I like it. At least you can learn about what animals live there, right? Yes, I put the movie on the stack too, just for fun. It's a good example of a movie and a book that are two completely different stories. (That is something Beeper has been noticing as we read more classics. "This isn't like the book.")

The Cat Who Went to Heaven - I remember my mom reading this one to us. It's a short chapter book about Buddhism. The main character is an artist who has been commissioned to paint a picture of Buddha blessing the animals. We haven't gotten to this one yet.

The Inn of the Sixth Happiness - This is another one we haven't done yet - hopefully this weekend. Another homeschooler mentioned that it is a good movie for understanding Asian culture.

Mulan - I have to credit the Disney artists for really doing their research. We watched this early in the month, and many things we have learned about China since then have seemed familiar to us, because they were depicted well in the movie, like the emperor's clothing and the royal palace. In fact, when I previewed the Time Life movie on Ancient China (which I decided not to use) I was amazed at the familiarity of the palace grounds. (Anachronistic Granny drives me crazy, though.)

Totoro - This is my favorite movie for really little kids, so I put it on the shelf with Little Fish in mind. The kids will pick up many things about Japanese culture from it, like sleeping on mats on the floor, praying to the tree, the girls bathing with their dad and what rice fields look like.

Taiko Drums - This isn't actually on the shelf; it's just a YouTube video, but taiko drumming is so cool. If you ever get a chance to see a taiko drum performance in person, do it. This is music that is meant to be watched as well as listened to. (As an extension to this, we also watched the Mr. Rogers episode from here where he visits the group "Stomp" - more music that is meant to be watched. Just be ready to get out the pots and pans if you watch this with your kids.)

Go or Othello - We have Go, but I think they are basically the same game (it's been a while since I played, though, so I am not sure). Our Go board is actually in the Klutz book of board games, which is also where we got the Mancala board and rules we used for our Egypt studies. We have an older edition, though, so I don't know whether the same games are in the new one.

MTH 5: Night of the Ninjas - We just finished this, and now everything is ninja-this and ninja-that at our house.

MTH 14: Day of the Dragon King - We haven't read this one yet, but you can see some fun activities my friend did when she read this with her girls here.

I've also got a couple of origami books on the shelf, and we've done some chopstick (starter sticks from here) work this month that I hope to post later. And naturally, we've been eating a lot of Ramen noodles and rice dishes. We love learning about Asia!

(This is part of Montessori Tidbits' continent bloghop this week. Head over there to see lots of fun ideas for geography studies.)

Make it yours

2011-10-27T05:17:00.000-07:00

As a follow-up to the post on self-doubt (thanks for all the comments) I wanted to share one of the most important things I have learned so far about homeschooling: Your homeschool will not (and should not) look like anyone else's.

I don't know about you, but I find it easy to get "homeschool envy" reading through all the great homeschool blogs out there, seeing all the great ideas and fun activities. The internet is a great resource for ideas, but it's important to remember that you don't have to do them all.

In addition to the ideas, there's the methods. Some people are good at following closely to one particular method. It works well for their family. It was hard for me to learn to look at those blogs and say, "Wow, that's great for them," and not feel bad that that wasn't us. Most of us, I think, are eclectic homeschoolers. We each use a unique mix of methods, curricula and our own individual styles to give our families exactly what they need. That's great too. Because my family's needs are different than your family's.

I was finally able to relax on this front when I realized: I have something unique to offer my kids. My personality, experiences and education, combined with their personalities are going to add up to an experience like no one else's.

After all, that's one of the reasons we homeschool, isn't it? We don't want them to be just like everyone else.

So if you find yourself suffering from homeschooler envy, try thinking about what you have to offer your kids that's unique. I know you have things to offer too. Different things than me.

P.S. We all have good and bad days too. Don't for one minute think you are the only one with a messy house, piles of laundry, yelling at your kids or having days when nothing gets done.

Calligraphy and Woodcuts

2011-10-26T04:40:00.000-07:00

We finished up chapter 1o in SOTW last week, where we learned about pictograms and farming in Ancient China. Beeper wanted to read more, so we skipped ahead to Chapter 32 and read about Chinese calligraphy. This is something I have been excited for because I have always been interested in all kinds of calligraphy.

I have a couple of books about Chinese writing and some ink, brushes and paper from Japan, so I got all that out. I wished I had an ink stick and stone to show him, but at least there was a picture of one on the cover of one of the books.

The book we used the most was Brush Writing: Calligraphy Techniques for Beginners. I highly recommend this book for any teenager or adult interested in Chinese Calligraphy. It turned out to be a good book even for Beeper to look through, because the format is simple and it has nice big examples of some basic characters and then shows more artistic versions of them. It also talks a lot about the basic strokes, which was a very good thing, because SOTW talks about them, but the kindle version is missing half the pictures (that's disappointing). The names and descriptions between the two books didn't quite match either, so we went with what it said in the calligraphy book.

Beeper picked a character he wanted to write from the book. I encouraged him to practiced using the brush and ink and making a few basic strokes first. He ended up just doing that and making up his own characters instead of writing a real one, which I think for a five-year-old is just fine.

We also looked at pictures of a few basic characters I thought he'd be interested in, like "sun" and "moon." (Hmm... maybe I should add the characters for the different days of the week to our weekly chart, just for fun).

The chapter also mentioned woodblock printing. The modern version of this is lino-block printing, which is something else I really enjoy and happen to have some tools on hand for, so we got out some of that stuff too.

Beeper has seen this before, because we have used lino-blocks twice to stamp backpacks for our local Cub Scout Day Camp. It's a cheap alternative to screen printing. This year Beeper even helped his dad with printing the bags.

I had a couple 2"x3" linoleum blocks (from here). I traced one several times on a piece of paper, and Beeper wrote his name in each one. He has a unique way of writing his name I wish I could show you that is perfect for this. After he had written it several times, he picked the one he liked, and I cut it out and transferred it to the linoblock (it's important with writing that it is reversed on the block).

I am working on carving the block for him (the baby is pretty fussy these days, so progress is slow). He is so excited to be getting a stamp of his signature. He had been asking about wax seals in a movie we had watched just a day or two before, and I had explained about those, so I told him that this was sort of the Asian version. Wealthy and important families in Asia would (and still do, I believe) have a stamp with their name on it to use on documents.

You can see a tutorial for making your own stamps here. She says she sometimes uses erasers. Dick Blick also sells this stuff, which has the consistency of an eraser and is probably easier for a beginner to work with than the linoblocks (I have some, but I haven't tried it yet.) This is the tool I use for carving (the linozip set). It has several interchangeable blades, which it holds in the handle when not in use.

We got out our M.C. Escher book again (the same one we looked at when learning about tessellations) and looked at which pieces were woodcuts. You can see how he used different styles of lines and shading depending on his medium.

Self-doubt

2011-10-25T04:26:00.000-07:00

I have been questioning myself lately. Are there things Beeper is missing out on? Would he be happier in school? Would he be learning more? Am I meeting all of his needs? Maybe school would be a better place for him, and I am just being selfish keeping him at home. Am I being irresponsible with my son's future? Is it worth the gamble? I have been praying for direction in all these things.

The bus stop is right across from our house. The boys watch their friends standing out there in the morning. Sometimes Beeper and Little Fish go out in the front yard and wave or call to their friends. (One of the oldest is a particularly sweet girl who sometimes comes and gives Little Fish a hug and reassures him until the bus arrives.)

Sometimes I wonder whether Beeper feels jealous or left out. Does he wish he were getting on that bus with them? (I know Little Fish does. He hates being left out.)

It was Beeper who actually calmed my doubts. The school bus and his friends going to school came up in conversation the other day, and I was fearful of what he was thinking. He surprised me with the sudden comment, "I am glad I chose to homeschool."

I found reminders and reassurances in other places too. The quote in my sidebar about not everyone learning the same slice reminds me that it is okay that Beeper is learning different things than everyone else. With so many things to learn, it is good to choose the ones most important. I get to choose some, and he gets to choose some. Dad gets to choose sometimes too.

I was reminded that the things that are most important to us are not the things he would get in school. Friends are good. Family is better. Gospel is best. We need to seek first the best things, and the good ones will come when they will.

It is okay that our learning doesn't look like what is happening in school. It is okay that not every morning is perfect. Batting .500 is still pretty good, right?

I came across this article about homeschooling that was a great reminder of all the good in it.

This post about ADHD was also a reminder of things I knew but lost sight of. Beeper's creativity may be one of the greatest assets that will take him far. I can give him room to flex those creative muscles in a way no school could. I am in a position to see when and where he could use a little push, and when to step back.

Do you know what he was doing the other day? I found him looking through his box of art, sorting out things that didn't belong there or that he didn't want anymore. It wasn't something I had told him to do (or ever thought he would do). It was something he came to on his own.

So now I feel better. Where I'm lacking, Beeper often fills in on his own, and God fills in the rest (especially when I remember to ask).

Liquid and Solid

2011-10-24T04:23:00.000-07:00

We finally made oobleck.

Beeper hated it.

The funny thing is, it was actually his idea. They made it on the Sid the Science Kid Halloween episode, except they called it slime. "Can we make slime, Mama? Please? Please?"

So the next day I set it all up. We weren't even halfway through mixing it before he declared it too sticky and slimy and wanted nothing more to do with it.

I finished mixing it anyway and tried to show the boys how cool it was, but neither one was very interested, so we washed everything off outside and that was that.

Oh well.

If you are interested I found two great websites about oobleck. This one shows how to make it and suggests some things you can do while experiementing with it. This one talks about why it works the way it does. It also talks about clean-up which was very useful information to me.

The next day we played with ice and water instead, in several mini experiments. I had made one of these big ice blocks for the boys with lots of little toys and buttons and things in it. Beeper melted the block a little at a time with warm water to free the objects. This one went over a lot better, but it would have been even better as an activity for outside on a hot day.

I love PBS Kids

2011-10-22T05:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel bad that my kids watch as much tv as the do. But then Beeper says something like, "Mama, next time you make a "P" you should put a perigrin falcon on it. Because that starts with P."

Constructive Triangles and Tessellation

2011-10-21T08:32:00.000-07:00

Beeper has been experimenting a lot with triangles lately and how they fit together. He has been using both our blocks and geometry magnets and discovering how to make all kinds of different shapes using different triangles. Here are a few of the things he has done:

One day when he was working on this, I got out the Melissa and Doug pattern blocks and told him about tessellations. We came up with a couple together:

He also made a couple of the pictures on the cards. He discovered that he could manipulate the colors of the pictures by building the same shape with other pieces:

I also got out a book I have of M.C. Escher art. Most of the pictures in the book are based on tessellations, and it was a lot of fun to look at how far Escher took the concept.

Half-day First Grade

2011-10-20T04:33:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Your Six-year-old: Loving and Defiant by Louise Bates Ames. If you are not familiar with this series, they are great child development books from the 70's and 80's. A few things are outdated, but for the most part they have good information, and it is all research-based. In fact, the books came from the Gesell Institute of Human Development.

The six-year-old book includes a section about readiness for first grade. Something I found particularly interesting was an experiment with half-day first grade. This is what they found:

"...by analyzing the basic skills at the third-grade and sixth-grade levels of children who had experienced the half-day first grade as compared with children in the same school system who had not experienced the half-day... Statistical analysis of data indicate that academically there was no significant difference between the two groups. And 93 percent of the teachers interviewed (teachers who had had two or more years experience with the shortened day) considered that the shortened day resulted in less pupil fatigue; 92 percent felt that it had lessened pupil frustration; 79 percent considered that the children's attention span was improved by a shorter day; 85 percent observed the positive effects of the shortened day in the area of pupil enthusiasm.

"As for the parents of these children, 87 percent felt that the shortened day had met the academic needs of their children; 88 percent felt that it had no negative relationship to the child's acquisition of basic skills; and 82 percent felt that the shorter day met their childs' social needs. Eighty-four percent of all parents questioned recommended the continuation of the shorter school day program.

"Anyway, it is something important for parents and schools to think about."

Yet more evidence that with schooling, less is often more, especially with younger kids. Do you ever feel like we're moving backwards?

Tell me I am wrong

2011-10-18T03:47:00.001-07:00

I had a haunting thought the other day, and it keeps going around in my head, so I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this, even at the risk of offense.

For some reason I was thinking about grades and report cards. I don't know how that train of thought started, but I began wondering what parents really learn from grades.

Think hard about your own experiences in school. Your friends. Other kids you knew. What was the difference between someone who got an "A" and someone who didn't?

I'll wait while you think about it.

...

Were they smarter?

Were they learning more?

Did they work harder?

Well, maybe it's all about the individual. Grades show an individual child's improvement or lack thereof, right?

So I got an "A" last semester and a "B" this semester because...

It wasn't because I suddenly got dumber. It wasn't because I didn't learn as much. It may be due to less effort.

But

The effort wasn't learning. Not real learning. For me a lower grade indicated either that less effort went toward pleasing the teacher OR I couldn't figure out what the teacher wanted.

It seems to me that what grades really tell parents is either how well their child works the system or how well they work within the system.

That's it.

Do they get along well with others? Are they jumping through the right hoops? Are they following the rules? Do they sit still when they're supposed to, read when they're supposed to, turn things in when they're supposed to? Do they know how to give the right answers?

In my experience, that's what grades tell you.

Take an honest look at your own experiences with grades and tell me what you think. Do they or can they communicate anything else?

Now

The other question I find myself asking this morning is why would this haunt me so much? I am not part of that system anymore, and I do not intend to subject my children to it. Why would it bother me so much?

I think it is either because it becomes ingrained so thoroughly that my mind doesn't want to see around it, or because it is disconcerting to know I was trained... well. trained to live a lie, essentially.

I can see that that may be what some people want their children to learn. After all, both working the system and working within the system are valuable life skills that can get you somewhere in life (one probably gets you a little further than the other). So if that is why you send your kids to school, then report cards are important.

Silk and other textiles

2011-10-17T05:40:00.000-07:00

I am afraid I didn't take very good notes the week we learned about India, and I don't remember much of what we did. I know we read some of the Jungle Book and we learned what a sari is. I thought it would be fun to read some of Kipling's "Just So Stories," but the one I picked to start with, The Elephant's Child (always my favorite), took place in Africa, not India. Oops! It is a beautifully written story, though, that tied in well with what we have learned about alliteration.

We moved into China the next week, starting with the legend of how the first Empress discovered silk. After reading it, I brought out some silk scarves for Beeper to look at and feel, and we talked about the silk worm. My friend had just posted something on her blog about spider silk, so we also talked about that and watched the little video from this website.

I also brought out my Spoonflower sample booklet so that Beeper could see another example of silk versus other fabrics. It was also a good way to see different ways to use the same material, since it is mostly a variety of cotton fabrics. I brought out my thread counter (a magnifying glass) so that we could examine them more closely).

This and a comment by Beeper turned into a discussion about the difference between knit fabrics and woven fabrics. We examined samples of both, noting the difference in pattern and stretch.

I got out his weaving loom and we worked on that for a bit. He did much better on this than before when we tried it (several months ago). I helped him with the first several, gradually decreasing how much I did, until he was able to weave them on his own.

We also watched some videos on YouTube of weaving loom machines so that he could see how a bigger, more tightly woven cloth might be made.

To show him how knitting works, I first showed him a larks head knot. I tied a scarf on my arm, then took my arm out so that he could see how the knot would fall apart if it wasn't wrapped around something. I explained that knitting is really a series of these looped together. I made a short crochet chain to show him how a series of knots can be looped together, and I showed him how to finger knit (which I don't think he cared for, not being something that can be put down in the middle). I also got out the Knifty Knittters and showed him how that was the same thing.

I like how much we have been able to work so many "where things come from and how they work" lessons in with the ancient history. With Beeper's engineering mind, I have a feeling this will be good information.

2011 Homeschool Blog Awards

2011-10-14T04:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't been online as much lately and almost missed seeing this. HSBA Post is now accepting nominations for this year's blog awards. You have until the 21st (one more week) to submit nominations here.

Almost better than a Beladuc

2011-10-13T04:11:00.000-07:00

The title is a reference to these layered puzzles. I have wanted one for some time, but we made something ourselves last week that negates the need for one, and making it was part of the learning (and fun).

We had out the big paper last week for tracing the boys, just for fun. Beeper especially enjoyed the project. He and I had recently been discussing the circulatory system, and I was planning to trace an extra outline and do something like this.

We also got out the Halloween stuff, which made him remember our skeleton puzzle. The two ideas came together and turned into a really cool project.

I used the skeleton to make a body outline, to which we added a few features, like face and hair. This would be our skin layer. It kept rolling up after I cut it out, so I glued another layer of paper to it, which stabilized it.

I traced the outline onto another piece of paper, and we reviewed the circulatory system.

Then we built the skeleton on top of that.

And layered the skin over both.

Finally, we gave him some clothes.

The boys loved it. What a fun way to show that there are different system layered together in our body, all working together. Hopefully we'll be adding more layers soon.

Classroom upgrade

2011-10-11T03:57:00.000-07:00

We have a new addition to our library/classroom space, which has been on the drawing board for a while. We're using it a little differently than I originally imagined, since our homeschooling style has changed, but it is still a great way to have more stuff out for Beeper to use.

It takes up a lot of floor space, leaving little room for work in the library itself, but we do a lot at the kitchen table these days anyway, and before things were so cluttered and difficult to keep organized that we couldn't do much in there anyway. Firebirdluver gave it wheels so that we can turn it and move it out of the way to get to things. The other aspects of it could be probably implemented with any book shelf.

It's made from two IKEA shelves (BILLY, same as the rest of the library). I originally just asked for one, but firbirdluver was worried about the stability with it being mobile, and I couldn't argue with twice as much shelf space. Plus, putting the shelves back-to-back allowed for a small, handy space in between:

That's now where I am storing the control maps for our puzzle maps, our latches board, a homemade board game and some pink tower cards. You could also do something similar as rug/work mat storage space with two or three inches of space instead of just one and a lot of dividers.

I think the red rod storage is brilliant (firbirdluver's idea, of course). He used cabinetry handles to stand them upright. Now our material that was taking up the most space is taking hardly any space at all.

On the other side is the bead chain storage. It is nice to have these out hanging like this instead of crammed in a box. There is also a shelf devoted to the rest of the bead material.

The other shelves hold a mix of art supplies, Montessori stuff (mostly sensorial and practical life), folder games and the boys' other favorite activities.

The shelf I was using before for most of the school stuff (IKEA EFFECTIV) is now devoted to things for our monthly units. The top shelf holds the puzzle map and control for the geography unit (the rest of the puzzles are still stacked under the table - a puzzle cabinet would be awesome if we had unlimited space). The other shelf holds the continent box and any books, movies and activities I plan to use during the month.

As always happens when the library has been reorganized, materials have been getting a lot more use, and Beeper has been doing more self-directed projects and activities (although he still leans mostly toward "inventions" and art projects).

I have started giving Little Fish more freedom in choosing activities too. The library is gated, and until now he has not been allowed in there most of the time. Now I go in with him and let him pick an activity from certain shelves to do in the living room or at the kitchen table. I am really glad to have space for the pink tower, brown stairs and red rods so that he will have easier access to them when he is ready for them. Besides the bead material, they are my favorite Montessori material and I like having them out.

Catch up

2011-10-06T04:28:00.000-07:00

We finished up with Mesopotamia last week, reading a chapter on Babylon and one on the Assyrians.

Babylon talked about the Code of Hammurabi, which was an opportunity for discussion about rules. We talked about why rules/laws/commandments are important. We followed up with a Family Home Evening about family rules.

According to the book, the Babylonians also were the first to break the year into twelve months and the day into twenty-four hours. They also knew that the earth orbits the sun. That worked in well with what we're already doing, learning about the calendar and telling time.

I'm afraid our Mesopotamia study wasn't as exciting as our previous units. I didn't have much planned, and Beeper's interest in SOTW in waning. But I think it was a good foundation to have for our Bible studies.

I let him pick whether we'd go to Asia next or the Americas, and he picked Asia, so that's what we'll do this month. He's dying to learn about the Great Wall, and I have a lot of other ideas, so this should be a fun month.

For those who have asked about the SOTW activity guide, I want to point you to this blog. They just started SOTW a couple weeks ago, and they are using the activity guide, so you can probably get an idea of what it's like there.

And as a follow-up review of the history pockets and how they are going, Beeper doesn't always want to do everything, so I haven't been making him, but the other day he said, "I am glad we are making this book." I think they have been a fun way to re-enforce what we're learning and a way to include Little Fish by letting him color the same things as Beeper.

Ancient City Word Puzzles

2011-09-29T03:52:00.000-07:00

Beeper was interested in the picture word puzzles on his cereal box, so I showed himhow to solve them. Then he was sad that there weren't more, so we made some up ourselves. These are four cities from Egypt and Mesopotamia. I think a couple are easy, but the other two are a little more obscure.

KISMIF

2011-09-28T04:37:00.000-07:00

If you have ever done Cub Scouts, you probably know that that stands for, "Keep it simple. Make it fun."

One of my best friends is student-teaching a third grade class this semester. The regular teacher was injured recently, so my friend has essentially been doing the whole thing herself from scratch. She is also a Scouter and was telling me how she has been using a lot of ideas she has learned from Scouting, like the patrol method, KISMIF and "fun with a purpose."

It got me thinking just how much both Cub Scouts and teaching Sunday School have affected the way I homeschool. In fact, I think there is a lot of going back and forth between all three. Working in one seems to inspire me in the others.

The most important thing I try to remember with all three, though, is to keep it simple and make it fun, and that it is fun with a purpose. When I follow those ideas, things just seem to go more smoothly. I think that may be one reason things have been going so well this year for us. We've been keeping it simple and fun.

What experiences have influenced the way you homeschool?

A deal not to be missed

2011-09-27T05:40:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite book stores is having a killer sale today only. BetterWorldBooks is giving a 50% discount on all bargain bin books today. Since the bargain bin books are usually $3.98 each, I just paid just under $14 for 7 books (all in “good” or “very good” condition). That will finish off my collection of the “Your ____-year-old” books by Louise Bates Ames.

(Note to any Swagbucks users out there. BWB is in the Swagbucks mall, so make sure to shop through the link there instead to earn swagbucks at the same time. They usually take about a month to show up in your account.)

Life schooling

2011-09-26T04:50:00.000-07:00

Things have been more unschooly around here for the last couple weeks.

I haven't had as many activity ideas as we move into the Mesopotamia chapters in SOTW. Mostly we've just done the history pockets and whatever ideas Beeper has had.

I decided (once again) to lay off the formal math and reading lessons for a while. I discussed it with our principal, who agreed. We especially have wanted to take advantage of the favorable weather and let the boys play outside as much as possible, since we only have really good playing outside weather about three weeks out of the year.

It always amazes me how much we end up learning when we're not trying.

I mentioned Beeper's interest in calendars. He has also been asking to learn to tell time, so we have been doing things with clocks in addition to the days of the week study. Between the two we are getting language, math and practical life all rolled together. And it is easy, because it is something he wants to learn.

The thing that interests me most right now is the kind of language study we have had. I did not know how thoroughly you could study literature and language without being able to read and write. I recently explained word play to Beeper, and he loves that. He is always pointing it out now when someone tells a joke or makes a pun. "He's doing that word play thing!" I also explained alliteration one day when he was playing with word sounds. He really liked that concept as well and played with it for the rest of the day. He seems drawn to the poetic uses of language, like rhyming and alliteration. Maybe I should find a way to turn his interest in patterns into a lesson on rhythm.

On top of all that, of course, is reading together as much as possible. I really think with his learning styles that this is where most of his learning is going to come from - read alouds. Plus, we both really enjoy it. I have noticed too that while he still occasionally asks for picture books, he is preferring the chapter books more and more. (And strangely enough, when we do read picture books, he pays more attention to the pictures than he used to.)

It is nice knowing that I can let things ebb and flow like this. It feels right to sometimes be more focused and activity centered and sometimes just let learning happen as it will. It is nice to have the reminders that we are learning either way.

You may be losing comments

2011-09-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

I have seen this discussed on a few other blogs, but some folks still may not know. If you have a blogger blog and are using the type of comment box that opens at the end of the post (as opposed to opening in a new window or going to a new page) then some people may have trouble or not be able to post comments on your blog, especially if you don't allow the name/anonymous option.

I know many bloggers love getting comments, so I thought you should know that you might be missing out on some just because of your comment box style. I seldom comment on those blogs, because I have to change browsers to do it, and I am sure there are others who are doing the same.

Dinosaur Opening

2011-09-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

I know there are several other dinosaur fans reading, and some of you live in or near Utah, so I wanted to let you know if you haven't heard: The main building at Dinosaur National Monument has been redone, and it will be reopening early next month.

The Utah Museum of Natural History has also been under construction this year. They are moving into a new building, which will be opening on November 17. This is the museum "Dr. Scott" from Dinosaur Train is associated with. According to his blog, one of the new exhibits will be a brand new species of Troodont discovered by his team in Southern Utah.

If you wanted to really make a big dinosaur trip of it, I think Hogle Zoo might still be running its Zoorrasic Park exhibit.

We're hoping to take a field trip to Dinosaur soon. Maybe we'll see you there!

Egypt Books

2011-09-21T04:33:00.000-07:00

We read so much about Egypt from other sources that by the time we got to the chapter in SOTW about mummies an pyramids, all of the information in it was redundant, and we ended up skipping it. (I wasn't sure whether or not we should read it anyway, so I gave Beeper the option, and he opted to skip it.) Here's what we read:

Egyptology: Search for the Tomb of Osiris - This book is a lot of fun. It has a scrap of "mummy cloth" to feel, a short list of hieroglyphs, and even a senet board with pieces and instructions (the instructions were not very clear, but a little online research revealed that no one really knows how the Egyptians played senet, so you can pretty much play however you want). The format of the book did confuse Beeper, though. If you're familiar with the "ology" books you know that they have a story behind them, and the journal/scrapbook format makes it more realistic than reading a story would. It's that very premise that confused Beeper regarding what was real and what wasn't.

Magic Tree House Research Guide: Mummies and Pyramids - We did read the research guide all the way through this time, and Beeper was very interested from start to finish. In fact, I think this was our very best resource for information on the subject. It was right on his level and just the right amount of information.

Mummies Made in Egypt - This book by Aliki has great pictures and information, some might say a little too much information. It goes into great detail about the embalming process. It didn't seem to bother Beeper too much, but it made me a little queasy! It also didn't seem to interest Beeper too much. I am not sure what age to recommend on this, but I think it might be appreciated more by a slightly older child (who is not turned off by gross details).

Ancient Egypt - This is a thick reference book and obviously not something we actually "read." I like it mostly for the pictures. It is full of great photographs of the area, artifacts and monuments. It also has some charts and maps. This was our best resource for visuals.

Tutankhamen's Gift - I am not sure exactly what to say about this one, because frankly, I didn't enjoy the story, but others might. It doesn't bother me that the genealogy is a little off (I don't think my five-year-old really cares whether Akenhaten was Tut's brother or father), and I thought it would be fun to have a fictional account of events, since Akenhaten was an important part of Egyptian history (he's the pharoah that tried to turn Egypt to monotheism, but they went back to polytheism not to long after he died, under King Tut's rule). In the end, I just didn't like the way the story was presented. I love the illustrations, though!

Homeschooling Question Thingie

2011-09-20T03:04:00.000-07:00

I was tagged by Pam, who I always enjoy trading homeschool thoughts with, so here we go:

One homeschooling book you have enjoyed:

Dumbing Us Down by Gatto. It gave me a new perspective on education. I wish everyone would read it. I don't think everyone would agree with it, but I wish they'd read it anyway. If you have a kindle (or use a kindle reading app) I'll loan you my copy. Seriously.

One resource you wouldn't be without:

I was going to say the internet, but that's too obvious, right? Our Old Testament Stories book. We actually picked it up at a thrift store, and I am so glad we have it. It has turned out to be the best thing for teaching scripture stories.

And the internet. And my printer/copier.

One resource you wish you'd never bought:

This is a tricky question, because even though there have been mistakes, I feel I've learned from them all, so I don't know that I "regret" them exactly. I did buy an $85 preschool curriculum once that didn't suit us at all. That was probably the biggest monetary mistake. Sometimes I wonder if we might have been better off without Gettman, tantalizing us with all those materials and an image of something we'd never achieve. That was probably the biggest psychological mistake.

One resource you enjoyed last year:

My husband. Besides the internet, he was my biggest go-to resource last year. I certainly couldn't homeschool without him!

One resource you will be using next year:

The Tiger Cub Handbook.

One resource you would like to buy:

A microscope. I think we can wait a little longer on that, though.

One resource you wish existed:

Story of the World: Volume 2 on Kindle. We're going to need this sooner than I thought. We're going to have to buy the paperback, because currently only volume 1 comes in kindle format. Although there are disadvantages to ebook format, I have loved having this on the kindle, and I would like consistency in format, not to mention less clutter.

One homeschool catalog you enjoy reading:

Does Amazon count? Or OTC.

Tag six other homeschool bloggers:

We Don't Need No Education

Home Educated Mom

Family Fun Notebook

Maybe Montessori

love2learn2day

Cornelia's Kids

Montessori Tidbits

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog, btw. I enjoy hearing from all of you.

Also, if you've done one of these, would you please put a link in the comments? I am enjoying reading about what other people are using.

Scholastic Dollar Sale (10 FREE)

2011-09-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

I just found out this morning that Scholastic is having another ebook dollar sale that ends tomorrow, and this time you can get ten of your books for free with a coupon code. Go here for more information.

Here are a couple I've downloaded in the past that we've gotten some good use out of:

Science Mini Books and Manipulatives

Word Building Activities

Arrr!

2011-09-19T03:56:00.000-07:00

We've been needing something to mix things up a bit. Fortunately, I actually remembered Talk Like a Pirate Day ahead of time this year (with some help from the CurrClick Newsletter). We started reading Peter and Wendy this weekend, and we will be spending the day snacking on pirate booty and watching pirate movies (my favorites are Muppet Treasure Island and Hook). Maybe we'll even throw in some education with some sink/float (walking the plank) activities, learning the "ar" phonogram, a round of "Where's the Boat?"... maybe even a treasure hunt.

Will there be pirate talk at your house today?

*If pirating is not your thing, Hobbit Day is also this week (Thursday).

**Obscure tie-in: I am a big pirate fan, because I went to a high school with a pirate mascot. Why not drop by this post and tell us about your homeschool's mascot (or make something up).

Egypt fabric

2011-09-16T04:08:00.000-07:00

A fellow Spoonflower artist designed this fabric last year for the desert contest. If you do a search for "Egypt" on Spoonflower, there is actually a whole bunch of fabrics now, including this very cool collection, but I think "Wee Egypt" is irresistible. I managed to get all of this out of a fat quarter (notebook, two drawstring bags, two bookmarks). You can see more pictures of these on my flickr page.

Beeper especially loves the notebook. It holds a small drawing pad and a set of colored pencils. It should be useful for church and road trips. Or maybe just a field notebook for sketching outside.

Story of the World: Chapter 3

2011-09-15T04:06:00.000-07:00

Someone asked what I know about the activity books that go along with Story of the World. Answer: Nothing. Well, I do know they cost a lot.

For us, activities that go along with the story have suggested themselves naturally. One of the areas I am trying to work in where I can is art history, art styles and experimenting with different media. For Chapter 3 in Volume 1, this was especially easy, because the whole chapter is about writing. It talks about cuneiform and hieroglyphs and the differences between writing on stone, clay and paper.

The pictures in the book aren't that great, but we have a lot of books about Egypt and Ancient Civilizations in general, so we looked at those. We found really good pictures of both kinds of writing and studied them and talked about them.

We got out some play-doh, and I showed Beeper how a pointy stick pushed in clay made the triangle marks in cuneiform. I tried to explain how using a hammer and chisel on stone would also make similar marks. We tried drawing pictures like the Egyptians in the clay, but that was a lot trickier. The cuneiform is supposed to be picture writing too, but the pictures are more abstract, because they were designed to fit the medium.

I was going to save paper-making for the Chinese, because I thought making papyrus was different, but the book describes the papyrus-making process as pretty much the same: they made pulp, flattened it and let it dry. So I decided we'd go ahead and make paper now. We can always make more when we get to China.

You can easily find plenty of paper making tutorials online. We used this one. It is a simple and straight-forward video.

I used our local freecycle yahoo group to ask if anyone in the area had some window screening we could have. I explained we were going to make paper as a homeschool project and only needed a scrap. I received a reply from someone who makes paper as a hobby and had an extra set of frames she was willing to give us. Yay!

It was easier than I expected to make the paper. We made several sheets. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures, and we sent the best sheets to grandparents for Grandparents Day. We were going to write notes on the "papyrus" for the grandparents, but Beeper had too much trouble with that. We sent them blank sheets for their own use instead and included a card written by Mama explaining that we were learning about Egypt and had made paper.

We are going to start saving all of our paper scraps from cutting projects and whatnot in a box so that we can recycle them into new paper. I don't know that we're really saving anything because of the amount of water required to make the paper, but it is fun.

I also wanted to do an activity about what my art history teachers referred to as the Egyptian Canon - the rules the Egyptians followed when drawing (the reason the all looked so funny, and the way the relative size of the person shows how important he is). I printed a picture of the Palette of Narmer to look at and talk about. I thought we could do some sort of project on graph paper, but I should have put together something more concrete, because the activity flopped. Oh well. Next time. (Beeper loved the picture, though, and ended up adding it to his history pocket for Egypt.

I'd like to do more with hieroglyphs too. We'll probably find a way to work those in somewhere else this month.

Sensitive

2011-09-14T03:43:00.000-07:00

We had a Mama Sick Day last week. To entertain the boys so I could rest, I picked through our box of sensorial materials and pulled out anything I thought either of them might be interested in.

I decided to try teaching Little Fish about rough and smooth using the touch boards. That was something easy we could do while snuggling in my chair. He enjoyed the presentation and enjoyed feeling the boards.

Beeper came over, touched one square on the boards, made a face, and went off to find something else to do instead (he ended up spending a lot of time that day with the baric tablets).

I found it interesting that even now Beeper does not like touching the sandpaper, yet Little Fish had no problem with it and even enjoyed it. Beeper has never liked the touch boards, touch tablets, sandpaper letters or sandpaper numbers, even the 600 grit. (Actually, "runs screaming," may be a more accurate description than, "doesn't like.") That's why we now have alternatives to the touch tablets and sandpaper numbers, and I have thought about using this idea to make felt versions of the sandpaper letters.

I have been asked why Montessori didn't work for us, and I think this is one reason. Beeper is one of those over-sensitive kids (I think there's a medical term for this now, but it escapes me), and he hates all the touch activities, which are a big part of the early Montessori sequence.

I have learned that there really is no perfect system of learning that works for every single child. It really is important to be able to recognize when something is not working and be able to move on to something else, no matter how cool the system seems to you or how well it's working in someone else's home, or even with another one of your kids.

After all, that's one reason we homeschool, right? Because the system doesn't work for everyone.

Not to be pushy, but...

2011-09-13T03:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was in the mothers' room at church with three other moms. It's not usually that packed, but there are a lot of babies right now, and we have two wards (congregations) meeting at the same time. Somehow the conversation got on cloth diapering. The one mom I didn't know had cloth diapered a couple of her kids, but not this one, because she didn't feel like the effort this time around, not that it's hard, and it's okay if you don't, but it's great if you do...

That's cool.

The mom who was just there to change a diaper made a hasty exit somewhere in the middle of the discussion on bidets. (I sort of wish I had gone with her.)

The conversation moved on to organic smoothies (or were they juices?) and detoxing and the poisons we put in our bodies.

Okay, whatever works for you.

I think it was when she started talking about how her diet was the embodiment of the Word of Wisdom and started likening cheese to poison that I started having trouble not rolling my eyes.

Then she brought up vaccines. Oh boy. One of the other ladies is a nurse and I could tell she wanted to defend vaccines without causing too much contention (or maybe it was just that she couldn't get a word in edgewise). There were statements flung by the non-stop talker like, "You should do your research," and, "Did you know..." It looked like the nurse really wanted to say, "As a matter of fact, I did know, and that's why..."

This is when I excused myself, because I had to go teach a class. (Yeah, class didn't start for ten more minutes, but I hate to be late.)

I was upset. I felt like this woman had cornered us (in more than one way: she stood in front of the doorway as she was talking, and it's hard to leave the mothers' room if you're not done nursing) to force her opinions on us. Sharing differing opinions is one thing, but I didn't like the way she had done it - the attacks, the "you're hurting your child" refrain, the "this is practically gospel" attitude.

I was forced to reflect. How do I share the things I am most excited about (like homeschooling or scouting or breastfeeding)? Is there a way to share that excitement without making others feel trapped, inferior or defensive?

I want people to understand homeschooling better. I want then to know that it is not as hard as they think and they could probably do it, if they tried. I want them to know that there are many different ways to learn, and homeschooling is not only different than public school, every homeschool is different from every other homeschool. It is where you get to collaborate with God and design what is best for your family all the time.

I want to help them understand that in homeschooling you get to learn right beside your children. You will learn more about everything from dinosaurs to the Roman Empire. Your knowledge and understanding of the gospel will grow. You will even learn things like patience, getting along, how to see someone else's point of view, making up and starting over when you have a bad day. Right alongside your children.

How do I convey all that and still convey that I respect your parenting desision, even when it's different than mine? I just want you to know what's out there, instead of just accepting the default. Because if you do know all of that, and you prayerfully made the choice that was best for your family... that's cool.

I just don't want you to miss out on something great. That's all.

While I will probably never be able to say all that very well, I recently came across a blog by someone who is good at saying all of the things I have been thinking. This post does an especially good job of describing how I feel about homeschooling: The Hidden Lessons of Home Education.

Beeper meets Egypt

2011-09-12T03:45:00.000-07:00

...and falls in love.

I have some Ancient Civilizations DVD's I had to buy a few years ago for a college course (I don't think I paid near that much for them. I don't know that they're worth that much, especially as a homeschool tool). I was watching the Mesopotamia and Egypt episodes to see if they'd be appropriate for our studies. Beeper came in during the Egypt one and after a minute was saying, "Wow.... Wow." Something about those giant monuments spoke to him, I guess.

You can bet we started right into our Egypt studies. We bought the Egypt toob a while ago and have been saving it, so I got that out, and we read the next chapter in Story of the World.

The toob made Beeper think of the Around the World toob, because it also has the pyramids of Giza. He wanted to compare the two, so we got out our Africa box, where I had put the other pyramids. It turns out the pyramid models from the two different toobs are actually a little different. We spent some time looking through our Africa box, especially at pictures of the pyramids and the sphinx.

After the Africa box, we took out our Africa puzzle and control map and did that together. We moved all of the pieces onto the control map, then back to the puzzle. I like the way the Montessori continent puzzles familiarize younger children with the shapes of the countries and how they fit together.

The chapter in SOTW talked about the Nile overflowing and how that affected farming in Egypt. We did a small version of this project. Ours didn't turn out as nice, but Beeper still got the idea.

The History Pockets activities for Egypt are all pretty cool ones, so we did all of those right away too. Little Fish even colored some for himself. (Both boys especially liked the little crocodile going up the Nile.)

Beeper is very excited about Egypt, so we are looking forward to more fun activities. Some silly stuff we also did that day included watching Garfield's Nine Lives and looking at Find Waldo Now (which it turns out covers almost all of the time periods/civilizations we'll be taking about this year).

Note to self

2011-09-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

I am writing this down, because it is something I want to make sure I remember:

Making cookies with Beeper, just the two of us. "Mama, I like making cookies with you. I like getting to talk to you."

Spend more one-on-one time with Beeper. Let him talk.

What we are reading

2011-09-09T04:21:00.000-07:00

We are currently reading four chapter books simultaneously. Beeper is handling this much better than I expected. One of the books is, of course, Story of the World Vol. 1. We usually only do a chapter (give or take) a week and base many of our activities around it. Then we have three books going that are more fun, and Beeper just chooses whichever one he is in the mood for. They've been getting about equal time.

The Phantom Tollbooth is a book I remember my mom reading us at some point. As I recall, it has a lot of math and English in it and may qualify as a "living book." I wasn't sure whether it would be too old for Beeper, but he likes it. There is a lot of advanced vocabulary in there, but Beeper likes learning new words, and he loves the word play. (He was chuckling for days over the watch dog's reaction to killing time.)

Ramona: Age 8. Beeper is a big Ramona fan, and this is the one I remember my third grade teacher reading to the class.

Mummies in the Morning - We're moving into Egypt, and Beeper was happy to see there was a Magic Tree House book about it. He couldn't wait to start it. Hopefully we'll also get to the research guide this time.

More Math

2011-09-08T04:27:00.000-07:00

To help Beeper learn math facts I decided we need to start checking the "Little" number books from the library again. Beeper loves these books. I checked out My Ten Book last week, and he could wait to read it. Then he wanted to read it a second time.

After the second reading, I gave him ten counters (trains) and he spent several minutes adding and subtracting them. I didn't give him any kind of direction in this. Beeper seems to have a natural number sense. I just let him play with them to give him a feel for the number ten.

When we did the skip counting, we ended up talking about odds and evens. I gave him a hundred chart and instructed him to cross out one, circle two, cross out three, circle four, etc. After a minute, he said, "I see! It's a pattern!" Then, to drive the point home, I had him set out our number cards and 45 rocks in the pattern outlined here. Again, he picked up on the pattern and he had a really good visual representation of the difference between odd and even.

I am not sure whether this really counts as math, but Beeper asked me to teach him about the week. I put together a simple chart for him of the days of the week. I drew some pictures on each one to represent things we do every week on that day:

I added a post-it with the word "today" on it. Beeper enjoys moving it every morning and saying what yesterday was and what today is. It's a very simple activity, but he likes it. (He also likes TMBG's song about the days of the week.)

Adam Through Tower of Babel

2011-09-07T04:52:00.000-07:00

Most of our Old Testament studies over the last month have involved either watching the stories here or reading them out of our Old Testament Stories book and talking about them.

We did do some activities to go with Noah. The color wheel and rainbow activities we did last month were meant to be part of a Noah unit. We also did this skip counting activity:

The pictures came from a couple of different downloads from here.

We played a game from The Siblings' Busy Book called, "Where's the boat?" One boy would turn around while we hid the boat. Then we would recite, "Ahoy, [name]! Your ship was lost at sea. Wherever could it be?" For Little Fish, of course, we had to hide it in a really obvious spot. He liked it best if we hid it in the same place over and over. For Beeper we played 'hot and cold.' For the baby, the book suggested having one child hide the boat behind his back. Then you hold the baby in front of each child and say, "Does _______ have it?" and let the baby enjoy looking at his siblings' faces. The child with the boat then gets to bring it out and say, "Peek-a-boo!"

We made up a game that could be used either with Noah or Adam (Adam names the animals). It uses the animal cards we purchased from the dollar spot at Target, and we call it the Wild Kratts Game. Beeper recently discovered and loves Wild Kratts, a show on PBS Kids, and that's where we got the idea. To play, one person picks an animal card and gives the other person one or two clues about the animal pictured. The other person asks questions to try and figure out what animal it is. It's basically twenty questions with only animals.

When we did the Tower of Babel, I got out our pink tower (Montessori tool). It's way too easy for Beeper, but he still likes doing it. The full tower is way too hard for Little Fish, but he can build the toddler version with every other block. He is always happy to knock it down.

We started our timeline this last week and tried to include scripture stories. I decided we'd try a fold-out book format. For the dispersion I used colors for the lines that correspond with the continent colors on our Montessori maps. Beeper and I took turns drawing pictures for it. Hopefully this will help us see how things fit together as we go through the year.

As I have been trying to increase my own knowledge and understanding of these scripture stories and their connection to history, I have discovered the Maxwell Institute's website. It is packed full of writings by big LDS archaeologists. I highly recommend this page and the next one by Hugh Nibley, which cover archaeological findings relevant to the Tower of Babel and the brother of Jared. It is full of really cool stuff. Now I am working through Abraham in Egypt, also by Nibley, in preparation for both our Egypt unit and learning about Abraham.

Toddler Tuesday

2011-09-06T05:23:00.000-07:00

It has been sometime since I have done a Toddler Tuesday. Sometimes I try to give Little Fish his own Montessori-type, practical life activities, and sometimes I try to just include him in whatever I'm doing with Beeper. I've been trying to include occasional comments in my regular posts about juggling the three boys in case that may help someone (and some days it really is like juggling - back and forth, back and forth, back and forth).

There is certainly a difference being a second child. I happened to start this blog when Beeper was the age Little Fish is now. I was looking through those old posts last week, and I found myself thinking many times, "I was doing that with a two-year-old?" Beeper was (is) definitely gifted, but I think in my over-enthusiastic, hyper-focusing way I tried to push him too much. I guess it didn't do too much damage, as he is a pretty good learner now, and those three years of experimenting certainly did me some good.

Sorry for the meandering reflections. Back to Little Fish. He tends to love the few activities I do give him, and even though he is not doing a lot of what Beeper was doing at that age, he is doing things Beeper wasn't doing.

I made this lacing snake for Beeper when he was two, and he didn't want anything to do with it. Little Fish loves it. (idea came from Montessori Mama)

Here he is untying the bows on a dressing frame. He saw me getting a shoelace tying lesson together for Beeper, and he wanted to do it too, so I gave him this to do. He did it many times.

They have both loved dropping toothpicks into a cheese shaker. (idea originally from Chasing Cheerios)

He has shown a lot of interest in matching lately, so I'll be putting more of those kind of activities together for him. He also has an interest in pouring. Unfortunately, since he doesn't have Mommy's full attention, I am not usually right there to see when the activity starts disintegrating, so I can't properly swoop in and divert his attention before he ends up making a big mess. I also haven't been able to teach him good cleaning up habits.

Still, he may end up being more of a Montessori kid than Beeper was. Having less push from Mommy will probably help too. I guess there are both pros and cons to that.

The First Nomads Become Farmers

2011-09-05T04:23:00.000-07:00

The next section in SOTW was another one that lent itself to many activities. The first was actually accidental. I was pulling some stuff out of storage to use for the week when Beeper saw his farm set. He grabbed it and set it up on the table for he and Little Fish to play with while I read the "The First Nomads Become Farmers" section to them.

Little Fish especially liked these rows we have of tiny vegetables that can be "planted" and harvested over and over.

We could not talk about farming without pulling a few carrots out of the garden for a snack. We had more and bigger carrots this year than ever before, which has been fun, but we also learned that bigger isn't always better. Our biggest carrot turned out very bitter.

During naptime, Beeper got out our Imaginary Island game. Together we made a very big island. Then we talked about where the best places to live on the island would be. Since our island had a lot of water, there were plenty of inhabitable spots. Beeper pulled this out again the next day, just for fun, and we ended up singing, "'Give,' Said The Little Stream," and a song Beeper made up called, "Go Little Stream."

We used a suggestion from our curriculum and made crescent rolls for dinner that night as a reminder of the "fertile crescent."

We spent one morning in the yard looking at different kids of dirt. Unfortunately, we don't have a big variety here, but Beeper got the idea. We talked about how the quality of the dirt affects what you can grow and that is another advantage to living near a river - better dirt.

Beeper didn't understand what canals were, so we dug a river in the sandbox with a couple of canals coming out. Then we filled it with water.

SOTW has a picture of an ancient farming tool called a shaduf. As I was talking to Beeper about it, I had the impression that he didn't quite understand how it worked, so at some point during the week I built one for him. Note: if you do this, I recommend round sticks (like dowels) rather than flat sticks (like popsicle sticks) so that it can pivot.

As long as we had the popsicle sticks out, though, the boys had fun playing with them.

Super easy and cheap fabric box 2

2011-09-03T04:33:00.000-07:00

I recently ordered a swatchbook from Spoonflower. It's a little sample book of all their different fabric options. This would be a really, really easy way to make the second Montessori fabric box yourself. It would cost $2 to order two of the booklets. Then all you would have to do is remove the grommet or cut the fabric from each book using pinking shears.

The fabrics in the book are all white except the newest one - cotton silk - which is currently printed on. The variations in texture for many of them are subtle, which is why it would be better as a second fabric box. You'd want the child to have some experience feeling different fabrics before tackling these.

If you are a new homeschool blogger

2011-09-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

If you have a blog that you started since October of last year that is about homeschooling, or at least talks about homeschooling on a regular basis, go link up at The Homeschool Post. They want to know who you are so they can welcome you. (I don't think there's there's a gift basket, but you will probably get some followers out of the deal).

Sling

2011-09-02T03:13:00.000-07:00

I threw in one more primitive weapon into our nomad study - the sling. These are pretty simple to make and fun to learn to use. Plus, it will be a good thing for the boys to be familiar with for some of the scripture stories we'll been covering.

I made our sling using this video tutorial as a guideline. There is also a link on that page to a video about how to use a sling. Our ammunition? Marshmallows, of course! At least until Beeper gets good enough that we can trust him to fire the rocks in the right direction. We'll also throw a foxtail around for practice, because the mechanics are the same. (Note: for younger kids, use a foxtail softie; for older kids, this is a physics/math lesson in tangential momentum (the flight path will be perpendicular to the angle the sling is at when you release it))

Paper Paris

2011-09-01T04:15:00.000-07:00

This could be a fun addition to a continent box or continent study:

Paper City Paris

History Pockets

2011-08-31T03:51:00.000-07:00

I decided to try out History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations. In the reviews for these, people either love them or consider them busy work - too much coloring, cutting and pasting.

Since Beeper currently enjoys coloring and cutting, I thought they might add a little something to our studies, if we stretch them out and only do a little at a time.

What these are is a lesson with a set of activities for each of the subjects listed. The pocket is something you make yourself out of 12"x18" construction paper to store everything in (one pocket for each subject). Then you tie all of the pockets together with a cover to make a book.

So far things are going well. We have just about finished our "What is History?" pocket. I especially like the, "When did it happen?" project (the above picture was taken before we did that one). I thought Beeper would be bored with it, but he was actually quite engaged and learned a lot about past, present and futute. I also did the lesson from Montessori For Everyone's Christ as the Center of History download and added that to his pocket. It worked out well that we had just been working with the golden beads and number cards a couple of days before.

We will probably be working on Egypt and Mesopotamia at the same time, going back and forth. That's the way Story of the World is ordered, and it looks like it makes the most sense that way, so I think we will stick with that for now.

I was planning to do some lapbooking this year too, but I think that probably would be too much, so we'll skip it this time around, unless Beeper really seems eager for more of that kind of work. I'm thinking when we come around the cycle again in four years Beeper can do the lapbooking, while Little Fish and Baloo do the History Pockets. (There's a Story of the World super-lapbook here and Old Testament lapbooks here and here).

How big is 1000?

2011-08-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

This was one of our naptime activities last week (stuff that's better without toddler participation).

*I'll reiterate the disclaimer that though we use Montessori math manipulatives, this is not the "real" Montessori way to present them (although it is inspired by it). We like the materials, and we like the theory, but the method just never worked out for us.*

I had shown Beeper tens and 100's in previous lessons. I thought we would focus a whole lesson just on how big 1000 is. I got out a 1000 number card and 1000 cube and told him for each, "This is 1000." Then I reminded him what a 100 square was and asked how many he thought were in 1000. We counted layers on the 1000 cube, then got out ten 100 squares to stack them up. To drive the point home, I then got out ten more 100 squares and laid them out in two rows of five. Now we could see 1000 in several different ways.

However, 1000 is a dramatic number, and I think it deserves a dramatic presentation. So I explained to Beeper that if we wanted to make 1000 out of ten bars, we would need 100. ("Woah! That's a lot.") Then I got out the 1000 chain so that we could see just how long that would be. We laid it out, starting at one end of the living room. It ended up crossing the living room and going most of the way down the hall.

Each 100 in my 1000 chain is divided by bigger rings, so I had Beeper count the number of ten bars to the first big ring. Ten. Ten tens is 100. Then he counted out the ten 100's.

I was planning to stop there for the day so that could sink in, but Beeper took it one step further. When we went back to the table where we originally had been working, he took nine of the 100 squares and the 1000 cube and said, "I wonder how many there would be if we stacked these on this?"

So I had him go get a 900 card from his number pockets. I showed him how 1000 and 900 stacked together make 1900. Then we added tens in. He wanted four tens and four 100's this time, so I had him get the appropriate number cards. I pushed the stacks of beads together, then stacked the number cards to make 1440. We tried a few other combinations and added in units as well.

I'll probably let that simmer in his head for a little while. Then I'll get out the decimal mat I made and we'll try some addition.

(My bead material is almost all homemade. You can read the posts about it here. I think it is well worth the effort to make.)

Nomads

2011-08-29T04:03:00.000-07:00

These activities were spread out over a few days, but I am condensing them all into one post. I actually wasn't sure we'd have much to do, but after brainstorming with firebirdluver, we ended up with tons of activities.

Last week I read Beeper the first part of the first chapter in SOTW 1: "The First Nomads." The girl in the story hunts for lizards to put in a stew, so I sent the boys on a lizard hunt. I hid a bunch of rubber/plastic lizards, frogs, snakes and bugs in the backyard. I gave them each a little sack and sent them out to find as many as they could. They loved it so much, we did it two or three more times.

Then we pretended to make a stew out of them. We talked about what the early nomads would have had to use to cook in and with (a reminder of our lesson the week before with the clay). I had brought out the Boy Scout Handbook and my Young Women Camp books, and we looked at the pictures in those of different ways to cook with a fire.

Later we talked about how they could make a fire without matches or lighters. Earlier this year firebirdluver and I attended a class at University of Scouting about primitive fire building. I did not realize people really did start fires with sticks and things, but there were several people in the class that had done it many times. The instructor gave us a DVD of clips he had downloaded. Most of them came from this website. I let Beeper play with the DVD on the computer while I took care of his brothers. He was fascinated with the ones involving twirling the sticks. His favorite was the pump drill. We'll have to make one sometime.

We also watched a clip about how to build fires and read about it in the Boy Scout Handbook.

As usual, Beeper had his own idea. He decided to build a "fire" using blankets and pillows and pretended to light it with a match, just like what he had seen in the video. His brain works in mysterious ways, but at least it's working.

When I had my hands free we went out and gathered tinder, kindling and fuel and built a fire in our little backyard "fire pit." We didn't light it right away, though. It was for later.

That evening we had a campfire for dinner and Family Home Evening. We did s'mores and Daddy told us nomad stories from the scriptures (Lehi's family and the Israelites).

Beeper apparently was paying attention the week before when we talked about cave paintings and I explained what charcoal was. He asked whether, after things were cool, we could use "the black wood from the fire" to draw. So that was one of our activities the next day:

Am I crazy? Probably, but it actually wasn't as messy as you'd think. Now I need to get some charcoal pencils so Beeper can see what those are like.

We also did some spear throwing and archery. Apparently Beeper's grandpa taught him how to throw a javelin at some point, so he ended up teaching me the technique. I didn't want to try making a bow and arrow, so I let Beeper play with a marshmallow bow the boys' cousin gave them a while back. I don't let them get it out very often, so while it was not an authentic experience, it was fun.

(Sharing some of the leftover ammunition. Yes, that was an overload of marshmallows between the two days.)

We also had a tent inside, just for fun. I don't remember where I originally saw the idea of using fitted sheets to make tents and blanket forts, but I thought it was brilliant, and we have done it that way ever since.

We talked about what qualities would be important in a tent if you were a nomad. We looked at pictures of some tents and tepees, and we had seen some tents a few weeks earlier at the Trail Center.

Firebirdluver recently picked up an SAS Survival Guide, and the boys have been quite taken with it, Little Fish especially. He carries it around almost everywhere he goes. My theory is the attraction has to do with the small size.

Whatever the attraction, Beeper noticed the pictures of plants in it and how some had the poison symbol by them. He had been asking his dad about that, so we looked through that section of the book and read about some of the plants you can and can't eat. Very important knowledge for a nomad!

At the end of the week the two older boys slept in a tent in the backyard with their dad. It was the perfect way to end our nomad week. (Maybe when we do this again in four years we'll have to try and scudule a camping trip when we study nomads.)

Two More Dinosaur Books

2011-08-26T03:50:00.000-07:00

Firebirdluver loaded up on a bunch of books recently from the library's used book sale, including several dinosaur books. Two of them I thought were especially worth mention, and they both happen to be by the same author. They are short, non-fiction picture books, full of concise, straightforward, easy to understand information:

Digging Up Dinosaurs - This one is a Reading Rainbow book, and it does seem familar, especially the page with pictures of how fossils are formed. That was something I intended to explain to Beeper during our dinosaur unit but never got around to it. When I was reading this book to him and got to that page, he said, "Oh!" as if pieces suddenly fell into place for him.

Dinosaurs Are Different - As a dinosaur geek, I found this book very cool. It explains how dinosaurs are classified in a very basic, easy to understand way. If you have a budding paleontologist or a big fan of Dinosaur Train, this would be a good book for him/her. Unless, of course, you'd rather not hear all day long about the differences between Saurichian dinos and Ornithischians. I could understand that.

When I looked the author up on amazon, I was pleased to see that she not only has several more dinosaur books, she has also written books on the middle ages, ancient Greece and Egypt. I am going to have to see if our library has them. If not, we may have to buy them. Fortunately, they all qualify for Amazon's 4-for-3 deal.

Book It!

2011-08-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

Did you know that you can sign up to participate in Pizza Hut's "Book It!" program as homeschoolers (for K-6)? Just go here. The deadline for signing up for this year is September 1, so don't put it off.

I don't know what is actually involved in Book It! these days, since it has been about 20 years since I last participated, but I seem to recall it has something to do with reading and free pizza, and I think it's awesome that Pizza Hut is recognizing homeschoolers and offering a them a way to participate.

Cave Paintings

2011-08-25T04:34:00.000-07:00

I came across a really cool website when we learned about cave paintings last week. You can take a virtual tour of the caves at Lascaux.

Colors

2011-08-24T04:31:00.000-07:00

I was going to wait until we were a little closer to Noah to work with the color wheel and rainbows, but Beeper did a little color mixing when they were playing with clay, and I could see the light bulbs going on, so we jumped into a color mixing lesson the next day.

We started with the color mixing wheel from Mama Jenn. Beeper was so excited to see the colors show up on the paper towel, and he wished we could keep it, so we got out the watercolors to mix and make a new color wheel on paper.

We talked about the relationship between the color wheel and rainbows, and we played with a prism for a while.

We took a break and read White Rabbit's Color Book. We also read Dr. Suess's My Many Colored Days, which isn't about mixing colors, but it's one of my favorite books.

Then we got out the color box 3 cards and made a color wheel with those.

We looked back at out watercolor color wheels and talked and learned some new vocabulary: secondary, complimentary, warm and cool (Beeper already knew about the primary colors).

We were on such a roll that we finished up with a watercolor lesson. We made backgrounds using a wash of complimentary colors (blue and orange make a fantastic sunset, and purple and yellow are good for a sunrise). Beeper used some crayon drawing the next day to complete his picture. I still haven't finished mine.

Archaeology

2011-08-23T04:54:00.000-07:00

We had a couple of those days last week that leave you thinking, "This homeschooling stuff is great!"

I started out our new focus of study one morning by reading the Introduction to Story of the World Volume 1. It covers "What is History?" and "What is Archaeology?"

Beeper was quite interested in archaeology. I assume part of the reason is his familiarity with geology and paleontology. (He probably thinks "ology" has to do with digging in the dirt - which isn't a bad metaphor.)

We played a game where I rounded some things up from around the house, and we pretended to be archaeologists hundreds of years from now making guesses about our family and society from those things. The bike helmet might tell someone that we like to ride bikes or that we're safety-minded. The toys indicate that we have children and show what kinds of vehicles might be common. A pin showed us that our family is into scouting.

We learned that the more you already know, the better your guesses will be. For example, if you recognized the Sicilian crest on one of the necklaces, you might deduce that at least one member of our family had been to Italy. If you were unfamiliar with it, you might come up with some pretty interesting ideas about our family, beliefs or culture.

After we played this, Beeper had his own idea. There is a junk pile out in the back of our yard left by the previous owners. Beeper suggested that we go play archaeologist with that pile. So we took a field trip (literally - it's out in a field) to learn more about the history of our house and its previous occupants.

It turned out to be not so interesting. We learned that the old family probably had a garden and enjoyed working on cars. We were also able to deduce that at least one of our porches is not the original, because there is at least one lying in pieces out in the field.

After our expedition we talked about how, in a pile like that, the oldest things are usually on the bottom and the newest on top. Looking at the layers is one clue archaeologists, paleontologists and geologists all use when trying to find how old something is.

When it got too hot to play outside, we went in and played with clay. I explained to Beeper where early people got their clay. We talked about what kinds of tools they would have had to use. I demonstrated pinch pots, and then later, slab pots. As the boys played we also ended up talking a little about inventions.

We also watched Backyardigans "Cave Party." It wasn't particularly educational, but it was fun.

Back to School

2011-08-22T03:24:00.000-07:00

A few years ago we went to a community event at one of the local elementary schools. It was called "Family Reading Night," or something to that effect. Our K-and-under group was in one of the kindergarten classrooms. As we listened to the stories, I looked around the room at all the fun stuff - the books, the fish tank, the crafts hanging from the ceiling, all the things on the walls. I wondered whether I would be depriving Beeper of all of this fun stuff by keeping him home instead of sending him to school.

After doing "kindergarten" with him for the last few weeks, I am really glad we made the choice we did. Sharing kindergarten is a blast. Now I feel like if I had sent him away, I would be missing out.

Last week was especially fun as we moved on to a new "month." Things were lagging, so Beeper and I decided we were getting bored of dinosaurs. Here's some of the things I hope to cover over the next month (give or take):

History: Ancient man; What is History? What is Archaeology? First few chapters in Story of the World

Old Testament: Adam and Eve through Noah

Math: I've been slowly re-introducing the decimal system and the golden beads. Hopefully he'll be more ready for them this time. We'll also start skip counting when we get to Noah.

Geography: We'll be putting away the landforms and getting out the Imaginary Island game.

Reading: Continuing work with sight words.

Art: Clay; Color wheel and rainbows

Practical life: Shoe-tying

More dinosaur stuff

2011-08-18T03:43:00.000-07:00

Here are some more of the dinosaur things we bought that we especially enjoyed playing with this month:

Dinosaur Skulls Toob - When I first saw this, I thought, "Uh... it's just a bunch of heads," but firebirdluver thought it was cool, so he bought it, and they ended up getting a lot of use. We already have a bunch of skeleton dinosaurs, but it turned out these did a better job of showing what the dinosaur bones really look like. I used them to explain to Beeper that this is what the scientists see, and they have to imagine from there what the dinosaurs looked like. Did they have scales, fur or feathers? What colors were they? Did this one have ears or maybe a flap of skin there? Little Fish used these the most, though. He liked identifying the ones he knew and matching them to the pictures on the card that came with the set. Undoubtedly we'll also be getting the Ancient Fossils Toob one of these days.

Mini Neon Dinosaurs - Don't you love OTC? We used these for sorting, counting, adding, and even in the landforms. There are also these if you want something a little more realistic.

Dinosaur Drawing Kit - Sorry I don't have a picture or link. We hit the going out of business sale at a Borders a few weeks ago. I spotted this little kit near the door for only a couple of dollars. It came with a tiny book, colored pencils and an eraser. It was $2 well spent, because Beeper loved it. He went crazy drawing dinosaurs for a couple of days. I think it worked well for him because the pictures in it were really simplified.

Dinosaur Marionette Kit - As soon as I saw this in the clearance at Dick Blick, I knew Beeper would go nuts for it, and he did. Something I didn't anticipate was Little Fish's reaction. (duh) I had to throw together a little triceratops for him out of a toilet paper roll, scrapbook paper and popsicle sticks. Fortunately, he was satified with that.

Dinosaur Books

2011-08-17T11:00:00.001-07:00

We're wrapping up our dinosaur activities, but I still wanted to share some of the resources we used.

A Guide to Dinosaurs and A Guide to Rocks and Fossils - These are great resource books. (We also have the Guide to the Night Sky, which is equally awesome.) The dinosaur book covers several topics relating to paleontology, dinosaurs and early life, and it has a chapter with pretty extensive information about different kinds of dinosaurs. The other talks about geology and the history of the earth and describes different kinds of rocks and fossils. These are the books I referenced most when I made our dinosaur and fossil cards.

Dougal Dixon's Dinosaurs - This one has great information too, but I like it best for its illustrations.

Usborne See Inside Book - We recently bought this for Little Fish, and he loves it. It only has a few pages, but I am impressed with how much information they packed into those pages. I like how it has everything by time period so that you can see what animals were most likely living together.

The Big Beast Book - We don't actually currently own this one, but I intend to buy it. I remember checking this book out of the library a lot when I was a kid. This is where my dinosaur geekery really took root and the reason parasaurolophus is my favorite dinosaur (and where I learned how to pronounce it)(still working on the spelling, though). It's also by the same people who wrote my favorite math book, which I also checked out many times: Math For Smarty Pants

Dinosaurs Before Dark - Thanks to recommendations, we decided to try out the Magic Tree House series. It worked out well that the first book happened to be about our first topic. Beeper loved it. I didn't realize what short, easy reads these books were. Even Little Fish enjoyed it. (It helped that he loves dinosaurs and this happened to feature all his favorite kids.) We also got the Research Guide on dinosaurs, but we didn't make it too far in. The research guide might be more interesting for a kid who can read and wants to learn for himself. I am looking forward to learning more with Jack and Annie in a couple of months when we do Egypt.

What are your favorite dinosaur books?

You can tell he's a homeschooler...

2011-08-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

Beeper likes to play school. He is the teacher, and he teaches his imaginary friends.

The other day he told me one of his students "got an 'A' in show and tell." He was quoting a Charlie Brown movie. Beeper elaborated, "He took this chalkboard and drew an 'A' on it."

Oh right. Why would he have any concept of what "getting an A" is.

Free Narnia Download

2011-08-09T04:46:00.000-07:00

This is an opportunity not to be missed. You can download a free audio of The Chronicles of Narnia here. This is legit. The radio station got permission to make and share the podcasts of Chrissi Hart reading the books. The downside is that you have to download each episode separately – there are 101 of them – and each episode has the same intro giving information about the podcast and the reader. If you want to put them on CD you'd have to either trim each file or just have that interruption every half hour as you listen.

Herbivores and Carnivores

2011-08-08T04:36:00.000-07:00

To go with our dinosaur study we have been watching Dinosaur Train almost every day. It is surprisingly good, and the boys have been learning a lot from it. I have to admit some of my ideas for activities have just been extensions of something that caught the boys' interest on Dinosaur Train.

They had an episode about herbivores and carnivores that Beeper especially liked. It inspired me to whip up a herbivore/carnivore muffin tin lunch that day. Beeper even asked for leaves for lunch, like the herbivores, so I thought he might actually try the salad. He didn't. Oh well.

It also gave me ideas for two games that would help him remember the difference between herbivores and carnivores and work on math concepts at the same time.

The Hungry Herbivores game is part of my dinosaur pack. There are five herbivorous dinosaurs with numbers on them and leaves with simple addition and subtraction problems. I glued the dinosaurs to envelopes, Beeper would "feed" the leaves to the corresponding dinosaurs.

I have a really old set of Jurassic Park playing cards I bought when the first movie came out (although I have always preferred the book - naturally). Beeper and I used them to play "War" but I told him it was called "Carnivores" because the big dinosaurs eat the smaller dinosaurs. I realized as we were playing that it was good practice figuring out which numbers were bigger. Beeper had to have help for the first few, but he caught on quickly and didn't have to think to hard about it after that. Since War can go on indefinitely, we only played until we got tired of it (and I thik Beeper had captured all of my aces). Then we compared our stacks and determined he had won.

Primary Songs

2011-08-06T06:33:00.000-07:00

We're trying to get "circle time" going again. For us, circle time is basically singing, dancing, instruments, stories, walking the line, or whatever else seems like fun that we can all do together. I love the Primary songs and I try to incorporate them into circle time, especially the songs for the Primary program (you can see the list of what's in this year's program here).

"I Will Follow God's Plan" is one of the songs for this year's program, it goes perfectly with our studies this month, and it is the perfect circle time song, because it has a distinct rhythm you can clap or shake instruments to, especially during the chorus. In fact, when I was in Omaha, the primary chorister there had the children do a clap, clap, slap, slap (on the knees), snap, snap, stomp, stomp while we sang the chorus.

I'm also trying to work songs that fit our studies into everyday things, like singing to the baby or singing while we clean. Other songs that fit what we've been doing this month include:

I Lived In Heaven
I Am A Child Of God
My Heavenly Father Loves Me
First Article of Faith

Articles of Faith

2011-08-05T04:29:00.000-07:00

We have been teaching Primary in this ward for three and a half years. It has been the same two groups of boys the whole time, one group twice, the other three times (we have them both combined this year as Valiant 10 and 11) . I wish we had worked with them more on Faith in God and the Articles of Faith before now, and I really want to do better with that this year. I decided to put together a kit of activities and a list of memorization ideas for working on the Articles of Faith. That way I will already have several ideas ready to go for class, and we can use them in homeschool as well.

The above picture is of card sets I have been making for each one. I put one word on each card and laminated them in business card sized pouches. This is a big investment, both in time and money, but I hope to get a lot of use out of them. (Another possibility for storage on these might be the expanding cards files you can get in the school section at Target right now.)

They can be used in several ways:

Tape the words up in order on the board (or you could use a pocket chart). Recite the verse over and over with the students, taking a certain number of cards away each time.

Distribute the cards to the students and have them construct the verse in order. Whoever has the next word lays it down. If there are more than one of the same word, whoever lays it down first gets to leave it. We did this in class with the 10th Article of Faith, and it was a riot. If your students are really good, have them try it without talking. (Ours aren't there yet.)(source)

Lay the cards face down on the table or floor and have the students take turns picking a card. They need to lay the word down approximately where it should go in the verse. (A pocket chart could also be useful for this game.)(source)

Our class's favorite game so far is a memory game. Half of the cards came from this set, and the other half are just the numbers 1-13. They have to match the number to the corresponding key word. This is for helping them remember what the articles are actually about and which is which.

That same website has a ton of other downloads and ideas.

I think these puzzles are really cool, but our class hasn't shown too much interest. I think maybe they would work better for homeschool and with slightly younger kids. (I found these through Latter-day Homeschooling.)

Another way to work on memorizing any verse is to put just the first letter of each word up. For example, the 1st Article of Faith would be: W B I G T E F A I H S J C A I T H G (commas optional).

Here's a description of how one teacher taught a class of girls the 13th Article of Faith by discussing the meanings of the words. We did something similar for a Sharing Time once with number 10. I had written down meanings and explanations ahead of time and had two of our kids act as "Dictionary" and "Gospel Resource." The other kids asked them about words or phrases they didn't understand.

Here are some beautiful bookmarks/posters. These are what I used to label the envelopes for my cards.

You can find word search puzzles here and crosstics here.

This blogger made some very nice flashcards.

I'd love to hear about it if you have any other ideas to add to the list or know of any other great resources. To finish up, here is a nice article of resources as well as why you should work the Articles of Faith (and other gospel teachings) into your homeschool curriculum.

Creation Unit

2011-08-04T05:52:00.000-07:00

You could almost call this Creation Montessori-style.

We had a short week last week and an unexpetedly short week this week, so we probably will be doing Creation through next week (which is fine; we have all the time in the world). This includes what we've done, plan to do and other suggestions as well.

We started off with a flannel board lesson on the Creation to get the overall picture. Then we did activities for each of the days (actually, we skipped a couple of the days, but I've included ideas for all of them). I think breaking down the days like this not only helped us remember them, it also helped us appreciate God's creations more. We'll finish up with some more activities that cover the whole thing together.

Day 1: This was my favorite day. I made a big blanket fort that we could all fit in and that would be fairly dark. The boys each had flashlights to play with. We did some shadow puppets. Then we talked about how we needed the flashlights to make the shadows and we needed the room dark to be able to see the light from the flashlights. Bonus gospel and science concept: you need light to see dark and dark to see light, aka: there must needs be opposition in all things, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Day 2: The water cycle. I saw a fun flannel board lesson for this a while back.

Day 3: For separating the waters from the waters with land we got out our land and water forms. Since we're doing dinosaurs right now too I gave each of the boys land, water and air dino toys to use in them. They loved that.

The plants were also created on Day 3. We did some gardening. This would be a good chance for a botony mini-unit or the Montessori botony puzzles.

Day 4: Astronomy mini-unit. This post has a bunch of astronomy activity suggestions.

Days 5 & 6: Since God created the sea and sky animals separately from the land animals, I thought an animal sort would be fun. This basically involved three squares of felt to represent land, water and air together with a bunch of toy animals. This was a little bit difficult for Little Fish and too easy for Beeper, but they liked it anyway. Beeper got to use our new Galapagos Toob for it, which was a perfect extension, because it includes some variations like a bird that doesn't fly (penguin), a tortoise that goes on land and a turtle that goes in water, and both a land iguana and marine iguana. His favorites, though, were the red-footed boobie bird and blue-footed boobie bird.

Day 6 also includes Adam and Eve. What better way to appreciate God's creations than to study the wonders of the human body in an anatomy mini-unit? We colored body books from this ebook (wait for one of their dollar sales) and we got out our Usborne lift-the-flap book. This puzzle would also be fun.

Here are two fun Creation activities geared at different ages.

You can find a Creation matching game here.

Here are several downloads including handwritinging pages, lapbook ideas and file folder games.

This website includes a Creation to Flood lapbook. (They also have some great Ancient History lapbook elements.)

Here is a tactile idea inspired by Godly Play.

Plan of Salvation

2011-08-04T04:21:00.000-07:00

We began our Old Testament studies by talking about the pre-existence and Plan of Salvation. I picked a moment when the boys and I were just sitting together relaxing outside to tell them about the pre-existence in a story-telling sort of way. They found it very interesting, and Beeper asked questions and everything.

He was understandably sad when hearing that many of the brothers and sisters followed Lucifer. I realized that he didn't have an understanding of what two-thirds vs one-third meant, so the next day we did a lesson on fractions. I got out the thirds from our fractions circles, three ten bars, three hundred squares and some counters.

He's played with the fraction circles may times, so that made it easy to show him the basic concept. I wanted to show him how a group of something can be broken into thirds, though. First we looked at the ten bars. That was pretty easy too. He could divide three tens into thirds. Then we looked at the hundred squares. I wanted him to see that a third of a larger number was also a larger number, so that he could understand that a third of the host of heaven was a lot. Finally, I wanted him to see dividing into thirds with multiple separated objects. I got out twelve of the counters and showed him how to divide them into three piles. I think he sort of understood the lesson. Well enough to be a foundation for later, anyway.

After talking about the pre-existence, we had a lesson for Family Home Evening on what Heavenly Father's plan was. I did use the term Plan of Salvation, but I stressed the term Plan of Happiness.

Last year when we did this in primary I made a giant version of the Plan of Salvation with card stock and contact paper. The circles are dinner plate sized. I purposely made it durable so that I could save it for later use. Both the boys in our primary class and our boys like the big size. It was definitely worth the effort. For the FHE lesson I had the boys help me lay the circles out in order while I told them a little about them. Then we added in some discussion about forever families.

I also made this last year for Beeper. I pulled it out the day after the FHE lesson as review. To make this I printed the image onto printable silk, sewed on a little pocket to hold the felt pieces, and sewed it to some fleece backing. I cut simple versions of the images out of felt so they could be matched to the pictures. Obviously this is designed for a younger child. This could be made as part of a quiet book. Notice that the colors match the larger version so that they can be used in conjunction.

After Beeper had matched the shapes to the picture, he decided to rebuild the diagram on the flannel board. I thought it was a great extension of the activity.

All in all, I felt it was very successful and was surprised at Beeper's interest and participation throughout. It was a great way to kick off our studies.

Old Testament Flannel Board Kit

2011-08-03T04:17:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I don't have files to share, and I am not quite done with it yet, but I wanted to share what I have done so far for our Old Testament flannel board kit. The above picture is from our Creation lesson, which the boys absolutely loved.

I made my pieces using iron-on transfer paper and white felt, which I saw suggested on Chocolate on my Cranium. A lot of people prefer to just print the pieces on paper or card stock, laminate them and put some velcro on the back. You could also print them on magnetic paper and use the fridge or other magnetic surface. I try to cram as many pictures onto one page as I can. So far I only have used three or four pages. Don't forget if you are doing iron-ons to reverse the pictures before printing them. (I think ComC's are already reversed.)

If you want ready-made files, there are some for several scriptures stories at ComC. I decided I wanted to do pieces that could be used for multiple stories. I used some of the pictures from there and supplemented with a lot of other stuff. As you can see, I used some of the pictures from the Creation kit. Then I found a bunch of pictures of plants online, including a fruit tree. These are useful for the Creation, the Garden of Eden and any other time I want some extra scenery. I looked for pictures of birds (including a dove for Noah's Ark), sea animals (including a whale for Jonah) and land animals (mostly in twos so they can be used for the Garden on Eden and Noah as well as Creation). Of course I included a snake for Adam and Eve, and the lions could also be used in Daniel. I need to do some sheep as well, which would come in handy for many things. And maybe a wolf.

The Adam figure came from a set you can get here, which has eight Old Testament prophets. They also happen to be the same ones as in "Follow the Prophet," so we will be able to use them for circle time when we do that song. Eve came from another set on the same site. There is also a set there which includes a couple more good Daniel pictures. If it's easier for you, you could just use the Adam and Eve from ComC (in the Creation set).

I also made a couple of boats (the Ark and a smaller fishing-type boat), the Ark of the Covenant (ran across the picture when looking for a good Ark and figured why not), a rainbow, a raining cloud, and the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Most of that came from either the kits at ComC or google searches.

We've already used the flannel board several times during school time and for Family Home Evening and the boys are really loving it. I had them both helping put things on the board for the Creation lesson, and they thought that was just great.

Religious instruction

2011-08-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

I was having a conversation the other day with someone about homeschooling and other schooling. Not a parent yet, he was telling me about someone he knew who sent their children to a religious private school. He felt that while the children going to the school knew the scriptures really well, their academic education was lacking. He thought the two could be combined better. The example he came up with was using the battles in the scriptures as a math lesson.

I think he's on the right track. When I first started thinking about homeschooling, I didn't see how gospel could fit seamlessly in with other subjects. The light bulb went on recently for me. I think it was after I read Going In Circles.

All this week I plan to share ways we have been incorporating gospel study in with the rest of school. Some days will be topics more of interest to my LDS readers, and other days will be relevant to a broader religious audience (anyone who studies the Old Testament).

We've been having a lot of fun with this, and I hope we can keep the momentum going. I also hope others can find some things they can use in what I share.

Rethinking Learning Styles

2011-07-26T04:23:00.000-07:00

I just came across an interesting article called Matching Teaching Style to Learning Style May Not Help Students. A large percentage of the article is made up of scientists arguing about each other lacking sufficient research, but there are some interesting tidbits to spark some thought and discussion.

All the scientists agreed that there are different learning styles. They also agreed that professors that have attended learning style training and are aware of their own teaching styles are more effective. They do not agree on the whys and hows.

The main point of contention is a study that students learned best when the teaching style was matched to the topic being taught, rather than the learner. The students with a different learning style just didn't enjoy it as much, even though they learned more effectively.

So here's my questions. Tell me what you think:

Is it more important for the student to learn or to enjoy learning?

Is it important to teach in a variety of ways both for more effective learning, as in the study, and because students should be exposed to different ways of learning things whether or not it's something that comes naturally to them?

Are homeschooling moms already doing this without knowing it, which is why so many end up describing their style as "eclectic" where they pick and choose what "works best for us."

Is there just insufficient evidence on either side and more research needs to be done?

Or does it even matter what way is "best" as long as everyone is learning something?

I have to draw from my experience teaching Sunday School for my answers. We try to mix things up in our class when we can to keep it interesting. There are some scripture stories that lend themselves better to adlib storytelling, some that are better read straight from the scriptures and some that are best acted out. It also depends on the age of the students and what kind of a mood they're in. We can read more straight from the scriptures with 11-year-olds than we could teaching the same boys at 8. On the other hand, that probably wouldn't be the case if we had never read from the scriptures with them when they were younger (or their parents or other teachers never did). And there's those days when they're in a silly mood and can't focus worth anything. I'm not sure there's anything we can really do those days except maybe entertain them with goofy missionary stories and whatnot. There's always the balancing act of helping them learn to love the scriptures and helping them understand essential gospel principles. I think one makes the other easier. In the end, though, I think a large part of our effectiveness comes from the fact that we've been teaching the same boys for a while now (two years with one group and three with the other - they're combined now into one class) and have established a relationship of trust with them. (Now there's a good argument for homeschooling.)

What do you think?

Dinosaurs!

2011-07-25T05:10:00.000-07:00

I was planning to start our school year in September, but we just couldn't wait. The theme I had planned for the first month was dinosaurs, and the boys have been on a dinosaur kick lately (probably because we visited Hogle Zoo last month, which has a dinosaur theme going on right now). Beeper was excited to start, and I couldn't wait to start, and I had most everything for the first month ready, so we decided to go ahead and start.

The book I am using for my outline suggests for the first month studying early man and working dinosaurs in just for fun. She admits that dinosaurs don't really have much to do with early man or ancient history, but they are a lot of fun, especially for the younger kids.

I have always been something of a geek where dinosaurs are concerned. I love dinosaurs. We all love dinosaurs. So I thought it would be fun as a kick-off for our first "real" year of homeschooling to use dinosaurs as our main theme for a month and talk about history and early man and start Story of the World and History Pockets and all that fun stuff next month (or whenever we get tired of the dinosaurs).

We started last week, and we have been having so much fun so far. I'll try and share more of what we've been doing later this week. In the meantime, to share our excitement with you, I am offering my dinosaur file free on Lulu today only. This evening I will put a price on it. I'll also post it in the etsy shop after today.

I have added several things to the dinosaur and fossil cards I had posted on Lulu before. The thing I am most excited about is a book I made for Beeper to practice reading word families. I think if we work on word families and sight words it will help his fluency. He's already showing improvement. I hope I can explain the book, because I couldn't get any really good pictures of it. It's like those books where you mix up the sections from different animals or people to make silly new ones. There are five dinosaurs that are cut in half so you can mix up their fronts and backs to make new dinosaurs. They have word beginnings and endings on them so that as you are mixing them up you are also making new words. Most of the combinations make words. There are only a few that don't.

The dinosaur and fossil cards are something I designed for our local museum to correspond to the rubbing plates we got for them (the same dinosaur and fossil rubbing plate sets you see for sale at a lot of educational sites). We don't have the rubbing plates, but the cards are fun on their own too. Little Fish has been loving matching toy dinos to the cards. He has even learned the names of a few already, which I didn't expect. (He can only say, "Teggy (Steggy)," and, "Tops," but he defenitely recognizes their names.)

I'll post about the other stuff from the file as we use it.

We've also started our Old Testament studies and have been having fun with that as well, so I should have more on that soon too.

Pocket Chart and Flannel Board

2011-07-20T04:20:00.000-07:00

My order from Learning Resources a couple of weeks ago included these and these for use in their tabletop pocket chart. I didn't buy the chart itself, because I figured I could make something like it.

Unlike many of my projects, this one came together easily and turned out almost exactly like I planned (yay). I used flannel (it took two yards) so that it could be turned inside out and used as a flannel board. It's great that it's two-sided so that both boys can use it at the same time if the want.

Of course, after going to all of that trouble to make a pocket chart, I had to find plenty of things to use with it. I found I already had some things. The picture cards from the above picture were from a set of phenomic awareness cards I bought on clearance at a book store a while back. They fit perfectly. I also have some downloads from the CurrClick. If you look through their freebie section there's a lot of possibilities. You could use these Whatever the Weather cards in some kind of pocket chart activity. There's also these musical instruments cards for sorting. I made the letters in the above picture, inspired by the ones that came with one of the sets I bought from LR. There were only two of each letter, and I wanted more. It was really easy t whip up the file, but there also is a free moveable alphabet file available right now at CurrClick. I plan to make more activities using what's for sale at school supply stores (like here and here) for inspiration. Good free downloads were hard to find. I did find these at Kinder Printables, and 1+1+1=1 just started a pocket chart section in her downloads. Here is a website that specializes in pocket chart printables. They only have one freebie right now, but the files don't cost too much if you don't want to make your own. And here's a kindergarten teacher who shares all kinds of ideas and downloads for literacy centers. I turned her "bossy r" pictures into a pocket chart activity for Beeper, and I'll probably use a lot more of her stuff.

Beeper loves the pocket chart and both boys love the flannel board, so I think we will get a lot of use out of it. It's a way to mix things up a bit. If you're not ambitious enough to make your own pocket chart, I understand they are in the Dollar Spot at Target again this year, if you are you are lucky enough to grab one before everyone else (we don't live near a Target, so I can't vouch for that personally). There's also these on clearance for a dollar right now at OTC. The reviews say they are too flimsy to hold the cars they were designed for, which is probably why they're being clearanced, but they might be useful for cards. We're getting a couple, so I'll let you know if they work out.

Goodbye, Sandpaper Numbers

2011-07-19T04:12:00.000-07:00

Hello, Irresistible Numbers!

These are from Meg's (Sew Liberated) new book (which is also irresistible). They definitely live up to their name. Ever since I started working on them, Beeper, the boy who will have nothing to do with sandpaper letters or numbers, has been asking to trace them. Once they were all finished he laid them out in order and traced them over and over. It's almost tempting to make an alphabet the same way (this would be a perfect template).

It's the embroidery around the numbers that gives them a traceable texture, so you can use them in place of sandpaper numbers.

They also remind me of the number exercises in Teach Me to Do it Myself, like hanging numbers on a line together with little bags of objects (a more involved version of cards and counters).

They'd also be great for the memory game. I think we'll be getting a lot of use out of these.

History of Space Exploration Day

2011-07-14T06:54:00.001-07:00

The anniversay of another historic event is also next week - the Apollo 11 moonlanding (July 20, 1969)

Here's a review of some resources for a space or moon unit:

Free:
Solar System Learning Pack from 1+1+1=1
Astronaut Preschool Pack from Homeschool Creations
Montessori-inspired space ativities from Counting Coconuts
Space-themed Sensori Bin from Counting Coconuts
Life Cycle of a Star download from Counting Coconuts
Phases of the Moon downloads from etc Press
Planet cards from Monterrori Mom
Grades 5-8 Solar System Math from NASA
Sunrise/sunset/moonrise/moonset chart from the Navy
Make a moon phase chart
Night sky maps
Pictures from the Hubble Telescope
Lunar surface activity

Here's some of our favorite shows and books about the space program and the Apollo program:

Geared more for the teenage/adult crowd:
From the Earth to the Moon tv mini series (This series is very cool. And it's hosted by Tom Hanks.)
The Right Stuff (potty language warning, and the focus is more on Mercury and Gemini)
A Man on the Moon (this is the book the tv series was based on)
Moon Shot (This book is written by people who were actually involved in the program; I haven't read it yet, but the kindle version is only $4.74 right now.)

Children's books:
Take Me to the Moon - Not realistic in the least, but a fun short chapter book (very short - like 5 chapters)
Find the Constellations by H.A. Rey
Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System

Civil War

2011-07-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

This has been my own personal study (with firebirdluver), not something the boys have been really involved in.

It started when firebirdluver bought DVD's of the series North and South. It's really good. Unfortunately there's a lot of immorality and other things not fit for kids. I think you could use parts of it for homeschool studies if you planned ahead - watching it without your kids around to decide exactly which parts to show them.

Despite all those American history courses, my knowledge of the Civil War was almost zero before watching the series. I found myself hooked and went online to see if I could find any free kindle books about it. There are several. I've been enjoying The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War. A man wrote his memories of the Civil War, using the letters he wrote to his parents as reminders.

My most recent issue of Smithsonian has Civil War cannons on the front too. It turns out that next week is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run, so now's a good time to be studying the Civil War too.

Scripture Activities

2011-07-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

I have been gathering and making activities to go along with out Old Testament Studies. I came across this very handy page on the lds.org website that lists a whole slew of activities that have been published in the Children's Friend. It shows what topic each activity is and what type of activity it is.

I have also been putting together a file for both homeschool and our Primary class for memorizing the Articles of Faith. If any of my LDS readers are interested, I can list my resources for that as well.

Direction

2011-07-05T03:51:00.000-07:00

I have a mini battle of doubt going on in the back of my mind. Our plan for school this year is so different than the way I pictured us homeschooling.

I don't think five-year-olds should be forced into learning or made to sit still. They should be building with blocks and coloring and digging in the sand. They don't really need heavy academic training so early. There are convincing arguments that it can even be harmful. My educational goal is not to create the smartest kids on the block.

Yet here I am planning out a curriculum for my five-year-old. A curriculum focused on ancient history, no less. Because it feels right.

As much as I like the various methods and theories we have looked at and tried so far, none of them panned out for us. They didn't fit Beeper. Or he wasn't ready. Or they didn't fit me.

This will be uniquely us. I would call it unit studies, centered around history and the Bible, with some Montessori, unschooling, Charlotte Mason and lapbooking sprinkled in. I started with the outline from Going in Circles, but I rearranged the months a little. And I threw out most of the science and literature segments (we'll save those for much older). I have created long lists of ideas for each month, which I'm sure will keep growing. Undoubtedly I'll go back to the book for more ideas as we go.

It is a lot like the dabbling we did with monthly themes earlier this year. And it should still be fairly laid back and activity focused. Just with more overall structure and planning. It's also more book-centric.

I did decide to use the Story of the World Vol. 1 as our spine, and possibly A Little History of the World as a supplement. I've coordinated geography, art, math and science ideas for most months as well, depending on whether he is ready or whether we get around to it. It can be tweaked as we go, depending on how things go and what comes up. We'll just keep doing what we've been doing for language. I'm hoping to throw in some activities to involve Little Fish as well, maybe even Baloo occassionally (adapting ideas frim The Siblings' Busy Book).

I think it will fit him better, and I think he is ready. He has reached a point where he is really excited to learn. He wants to learn, and he is excited about being a homeschooler.

Aside from those few doubts, I am really very excited. And if it doesn't work out? We'll try something else.

Win a Kindle

2011-07-01T14:32:00.001-07:00

There's only a few days left on this; the drawing is on independence day. Several independant authors have put together a site where they are offering a chance to win a Kindle loaded with their books. They will also be giving ebooks to runners up. You can enter here:

Kindle INDIEpendence Day Giveaway