Weekly Wrap-Up, Sept. 17

So far, I'm LOVIN' the child scheduled workboxes. My biggest worry was how long it would take me to prepare the night before. I was tired last night and almost didn't get the boxes ready; instead, I decided to time myself. LESS THAN 10 MINUTES! While workboxes aren't for everyone (I didn't need them with my older dc), they are great for some children...my current homeschooling child in particular!

A few highlights from the week...

Sonlight Core 3 - Intro to American History
We started in June with the Core, so we're actually on Week 10.

*Bible-- it works well to have the Sing the Word CD on my iTouch and in the workbox. (Love, love the CD!) DS can read through the daily scripture and then listen to the song in one swoop.

*History-- we don't use the Sonlight timeline materials. I had a friend (with a box factory) make me a custom piece of cardboard. When folded, it's 24" x 12". When open, its length is 120". It allows kids to see and understand history and where things happened in relation to one another. I strongly prefer this over a book where the child must flip back and forth between pages without really being able to see the amount of time between events. This week my ds added Jamestown and Plymouth to the timeline and was surprised to discover how recent it occurred as compared to Ancient Egypt.

We watched the Sign of the Beaver movie and made a venn diagram comparing the book and the movie. The book is strongly preferred! DS found the audio tapes of Sign of the Beaver at the library and is listening to the book again. For fun!

After reading about how people advertised (sometimes falsely or with little real knowledge) about the "New World" in an effort to get colonists to come, ds made a brochure of his own.

*Writing/Art/Science-- Our sunflower project has really blossomed! After doing three observations (by eye, magnifying glass, microscope), we learned that sunflowers were new to the "Old World." He wrote a paragraph to the "Old World" people, describing a sunflower. I was especially impressed with this simile about a sunflower seed... "It tastes like a burnt rice cracker." I doubt if that's ever been said before!

*Poetry-- After listening to the Pied Piper poem, I encourage ds to read several Pied Piper books. It helped him to more fully comprehend the poem which was a little incomplete as presented in the CD.

*Extra-- I introduced ds to a card game, Into the Forest. He asks to play it daily. Over and over and over.

*Math--We finished up Bridges Unit 1 and began Unit 2 and Base 5. Lately, we've been working hard on learning (and practicing!) strategies for addition and subtraction facts.

Preschool--

We did a lot of preschool math workboxes. Youngest ds has been sick, so we haven't gotten a lot more done. (Photo is from an idea taken from Confessions of a Homeschooler.)

It's been a busy week! Check out some other weekly wrap-ups at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Sunflower Science (and Art...and Writing)

An incredible mentor professor/teacher introduced me to this activity. She did it with her class at the beginning of the year. When I taught third grade, I began the year the same way. I've added parts and tweaked it over the years, but it continues to be a winner!

Day One
Ask child to look closely at a sunflower, drawing a picture of everything they can see. (It's best to have a sunflower with seeds rather than just the ornamental kind shown in the photo.) Ask them to do some "5 Sense Science" and brainstorm a list of words that describe the flower...seeing, hearing, tasting (seeds), touching, smelling.

Day Two
Using the same flower, provide a magnifying glass and have the child draw the flower as seen using the tool. Again, use descriptive words to tell about what is seen under some magnification.

Day Three
Again, with the same flower, separate small pieces (petals, leaves, seeds, etc.) and look at them under a microscope. We use an inexpensive one with results adequate for this exercise. Draw new pictures and, if desired, create a new list of descriptive words.

Day Four (optional)
Write a descriptive paragraph or poem about a sunflower. Try to describe it so that a person who has never seen one could picture it...see/hear/taste/touch/feel.


And, since we're just finished Sign of the Beaver, this applies...
In the movie, The Sign of the Beaver, a colonial boy, looking for a snare, says that he can't see anything. The Native American grandfather replies, "All of creation is here. Look close. Like you're reading words."

Look closely at a sunflower. You'll find a lot to admire.


Link up to something you did on your first day of school! 

Kid-Scheduled Workboxes

As I mentioned, I never thought I'd try workboxes. And *try* is still a key word here. I'm going to try them.

Why workboxes?

*I am organizationally challenged. I hope this will encourage me (and my children) to keep things in their place and have things ready for each new school day. No excuses.

*With several workbox tweaks (described below), I want to foster my children's independence.

*My preschooler. At four, he desperately wants to "do school." He has a couple boxes in which I'll stash some hands-on activities and books.

*I have a LOT of school materials around here; I'm hoping this encourages me to use some that I've forgotten about.

Here's my plan...

I want my son to continue to schedule his day. I love the way this gives him a sense of responsibility. It's also beneficial for our parent-teacher-child-student relationship. *I* am not telling him what to do. The schedule--which he created--is telling him what to do. Don't get me wrong. I have no problem telling my children what to do (or I wouldn't have had FIVE); however, I do think that one of the challenges in homeschooling is the ever increasing amount of directives coming from adult to child. For homeschoolers it's not just parent-child directives, but also teacher-student.

I prepared* the schedule cards for this year as follows. (*I prefer to have the child create the cards, but in this instance I needed to figure things out as I worked. Tweaking, always tweaking.)

When my son wakes up in the morning, the chart will look like the one to the left. The orange/yellow cards indicate landmarks that I schedule: breakfast, lunch, rest time, outside play time, my exercise time, etc.

His first job in the morning will be to schedule his day using blue subject cards. Each card has a number in the lower right corner indicating approximately how many minutes of school time need to be reserved. I will set out the cards needed that day; each card will have a corresponding workbox, already filled and ready to go.

Blue cards include subjects:

• science 
• math calendar
• reader/history (Sonlight Core 3)
• journal
• art
• math 
• writing workshop
• violin
• foreign language
• Bible (Sonlight Core 3)
• read aloud/history (Sonlight Core 3)
• history (Sonlight Core 3)
• cursive writing
• "extra" (catch-all box)

And a few daily jobs:

• pick up house
• pick up room

(Remember, the subjects aren't all done every day. I will give him the cards he needs each day.)

Each subject card has a labeled box. (Or at least the ones that use school materials do. Things like "violin" are just part of the schedule and not boxed. I don't have violin-sized boxes! ;)

A few boxes are double labeled like the one at left; we will do art and science on an alternate schedule. A few boxes have an additional sticker. The MOMMY sticker.  This sticker indicates how many minutes Mommy needs to help. For a few subjects, it's the entire time. For most, it's a smaller length of time, designed to introduce a subject (teacher/student), followed by some time to do some independent practice work (student).

Each box includes all materials needed to complete the task. In the "read aloud" (Core 3) box at right, for example, the box contains the book as well as the iTouch containing the CD with the poems read aloud.

When he finishes a subject, he empties the box into a large "I'm done" box and turns over the related blue card.

No moving discs or worrying about velcro. And he still will set his own schedule. The biggest benefit to me is that I am accountable for having his entire school day ready to go the night before. As I told a friend, it's your basic "lay out your clothes the night before" routine. Just for school.

I never was good about laying my clothes out the night before. Hope I can do this. Although we're on Sonlight Core 3, week 9, and have been doing it all summer, we "officially" start school on September 7th. I'll report on my workbox progress then.

Two of my focus boxes on this blog will be preschool math and living math books/related activities. Check back!

See also: Kids, Homeschool, and Schedules

Pre/Post Columbus: Play Dough Maps

We're doing a little review on some of the explorers before we begin talking about European settlement in North America. Today, LilDude made maps with play dough to show what Europeans knew about the world, pre & post Columbus' voyages.

Here's pre-Columbus:

Post-Columbus:
*note the Nina, Pinta & Santa Maria

After he labeled continents and oceans, the big kids came to admire his work. Anakin (14) rearranged all the labels while LilDude hid his eyes. All labels were rapidly returned to the correct places.

I don't know where we originally got it, but my kids have all learned the continents with this song. (Tune sounds like "I'm a Little Teapot" at the beginning. Maybe I made the rest up?):

There are 7 continents in the world.
North America, South America,
Europe, Asia, Africa.
Don't forget Australia.
Don't forget Antarctica.
Seven continents in the world,
that is what they are.
North America, South America,
Europe, Asia, Africa.
Don't forget Australia.
Don't forget Antarctica.

They don't forget the continents! ;)

While LilDude was working on continents, GG (4) was working on his letters. He is very proud of this play dough "A."

Incan Quipu Math (place value, history)

During the Inca empire, a system of knots was used for adding numbers. We've been reading about it in a fascinating math/activity/history book,  The Secret Life of Math; discover how (and why) numbers have survived from the cave dwellers to us!

We did a little quipu activity and quickly figured out why this math method--though effective--didn't last to the present day. At least not if everyone was as bad at knot tying as we are! ;) It is, however, a fun activity to explore history and reinforce knowledge of place value.



Inca Quipu Math activity

Materials needed:

a thin dowel or chopstick
thin cord
colored markers
scissors
paper/pencil (optional)

Procedure:

1. Tie four long cords onto the dowel. If the cord is too short, you won't be able to tie many knots, so leave yourself plenty of room. The three cords to your right are the addends, the cord on the left is the summation.

2. Though the Incas didn't do this, we added colored marks on the cord so we could easily see the divisions between each place value grouping. As you tie knots the cords won't continue to line up evenly, but it will help you be able to see that the hundreds are between the orange and purple marks, etc.

3. Decide on three numbers you'd like to add. Tie knots on your cord to represent the numbers. For example, on the cord on the far right (below) we chose the number 2,133. This is represented by two knots in the very top section, one knot in the next section, three knots in the third section, and three knots in the bottom section. We made number cards just to help us remember what we were doing. (Later it was fun to mix and match the cards with the cords!)

4. Add the knots in all the ones sections on all three cords. Record the total number of ones on the summation cord. For us, the ones totaled 11; therefore, we put 1 knot in the ones section and 1 knot on the tens section on the summation cord. Continue through each subsequent place value section.

We did this activity during a study of Inca history. My student, age 7, found it difficult to tie the knots, so I did most of the tying. He did the adding and writing. When we finished he said, "That was FUN!"

Another place value game that my children enjoy from time to time...Learning Resources Dino Math Tracks Place Value Game. Here's the Amazon product description:

"Prehistoric pals make this award-winning math game a blast. Roll the dice and move the dinosaurs around a delightfully illustrated game board. Learn all about numbers - from counting, addition and subtraction to place value skills. Includes game board, 16 dinosaurs, cards, number die and instructions for various levels of play. For 2 to 4 players."

I also found a little online activity to practice identifying place value in a number.