Ruminations on Education

January 14, 2011

A Day in the Life

By Mindy

I’m joining in the fun at Simple Homeschool today as we share glimpses into each other’s homeschooling days.

This is our first “official” year homeschooling as Henry is of kindergarten age. So far, we’ve fallen into a rhythm that I’m happy with. Typically, I try to do school with the boys during nap time for the girls. But more often than not, I try to take my cues from the way the day is unfolding and fit whatever I can in whenever I can.

I sit down on Sunday night to plan our learning week. This is just a rough list of things I’d like to see happen by subject. I keep this list (complete with boxes I can check off) in a binder that I use to account for what we did each day. So none of our days are fixed; some days we might be schooling for several hours and other days, none at all. We shoot for four days a week, though.

We’re using RightStart Math (which we LOVE), Mudpies to Magnets for science, Getty and Dubay for handwriting, Storybook Art for art, Children Just Like Me for social studies, Hooked on Spanish for Spanish, and I’m up in the air right now with our Reading curriculum. Henry completed the Hooked on Phonics Kindergarten reading level in four months but is currently on a reading strike. I borrowed the BOB books from a friend to see if that would interest him. It didn’t, but it interested Samuel, who has been dying to learn to read. He’s doing well. I’m trying to back off and let Henry have a little break and we’ll come back to reading when he’s ready, but in the meantime, we still do spelling games and other word games that are non-book reading.

Anyway…

This is how our day unfolded yesterday.

5:00 a.m.: Rise, personal devotional and scripture study

7:00 a.m.: Get myself ready for the day, kids are up

7:30 a.m.: Scripture reading with the kids around the kitchen table

7:40 a.m.: Work on the poem we’re memorizing while the oatmeal cooks

8:10 a.m.: Breakfast finished, kitchen table cleared off, kids get dressed

9:20 a.m.: Out the door to a friend’s house (kids play while moms make laundry detergent)

12:20 p.m.: Back home for lunch

1:30 p.m.: Thing One down for nap

1:50 p.m.: Thing Two down for nap

2:00 p.m.: School, which consisted of reading to the boys, working on our art project for the week, doing a math lesson for Henry, and prepping our science project for later in the day. School time was also peppered with multiple interruptions from Thing Two, who kept needing potty breaks as an excuse to get out of napping.

4:00 p.m.: Henry (age 5.5) was playing with play dough, Becca (age 2.5) was still napping, Samuel (age 4) was playing in the front room with some toys, so I enlisted Kate (the non-napper, age 2.5) Â to help me unload and load the dishwasher and help me start dinner.

5:00 p.m. Dad is home from work. Becca wakes up from nap.

5:20 p.m.: Read to Kate in the front room because she lost the privilege of watching her Wiggles show

5:40 p.m.: Grampa arrives for dinner and to help with science project

6:00 p.m.: Dinner

6:30 p.m.: Kids get ready for bed, no baths tonight

7:00 p.m.: Kate to bed

7:10 p.m.: Boys do their science project with Grampa while Becca sits at the kitchen table and draws

7:40 p.m.: Bedtime stories

8:00 p.m.: Bed

8:15 p.m.: Joe and I fold two baskets of laundry while we catch up with each other

9:00 p.m.: Lights out

My mom has always told me, “Flexible people are happy people.” I’m finding this to be my mantra with homeschooling and rearing four young children who are three years apart. Yes, I get a thrill when a day goes exactly according to plan and yes, I like happy, cooperative children. But I’m learning that if I can be less uptight about things when they don’t go according to plan and the kids are monsters, I can still go to bed happy.

We’re loving the journey!

3 comments | tags: Day in the Life | posted in Ruminations

January 7, 2011

Trying New Things

By Mindy

I finally got brave enough to jump into some art mediums other than drawing and painting. We’ve recently tackled “It Looked Like Spilt Milk” by Â Charles G. Shaw (Storybook Art, page 33) and “Snow on Snow on Snow” by Cheryl Chapman and Synthia Saint James (Storybook Art, page 86).

The kids did a project based on “It Looked Like Spilt Milk” with my parents while we were in Chile. They blobbed some white paint in the middle of blue paper and then folded the paper and opened it back up. Once dry, they looked at their image from different angles to see what it looked like and wrote their impressions on the paper. Such fun.

If Storybook Art hadn’t had this other project to go along with the book, I would have left it alone. But I was really curious to see how this one would work.

You take shaving cream and white glue and mix together. Plop a blob down on a piece of paper and let your kid explore and shape and create. Whatever they come up with will dry puffy.

This was such a sensory activity for the girls and Samuel that they didn’t get past smearing the shaving cream mixture all over their paper and the table. Henry had the only picture that dried puffy.

Here they are:

Kate, loving the feel of pure squishiness

Exploring.

It took Becca a minute or two to fully embrace the experience.

Henry was very deliberate in his creation.

I was a little more skeptical to try “Snow on Snow on Snow” as it was a cut/collage project, but figured that we needed a baseline to determine time between projects such as this. As we read the book together, I tried to draw the kids’ attention to the pictures, asking them how they would create a scene like that, or pointing out that nothing was drawn; the images we were looking at were void of detail and drawn expression.

My takeaway was that my littles are still a little too little for a project like this. They had lots of creative ideas but haven’t developed the fine motor and scissor skills to execute independently. Henry wanted to draw his objects and then cut them out, which was fine. Samuel had a whole story in his head that he dictated to me while instructing me what pieces to cut out of which color papers. The girls also had specific ideas of what they wanted on their snow scenes, but ultimately ended up more interested in the glue sticks (as you will be able to see on Kate’s picture).

Here’s what they came up with:

Here is Kate’s Frosty the Snowman at the bottom of the sledding hill, complete with flecks of goldfish cracker that stuck when she sneezed without covering her mouth. All of the yellow on the green background is dried glue from the glue stick.

Becca and her tutu were pretty proud of the “nummy” (cat), doggie, and baby frolicking in the snow.

Sam liked the idea of the “nummy” and wanted to copy it, although he was insistent on cutting his own tail for the cat. He put glue on the wrong side of the cat so it had to face the opposite direction from where he originally intended it to face. So he changed the story to be that the cat was running away from something scary. Enter the shark. Then he liked the idea of Becca’s baby, so he wanted to have a mother holding a baby. Evidently, they’re not as scared of the shark as the cat is. The snow at the bottom of the picture and the giant snowflakes (big brown and white squares at the top) were Samuel’s original and independent contribution to the project.

Henry was the only one to work independently 100%. I get the house on the snow but am a little unsure of what the red arch is. I was very pleased with his efforts, though.

Leave a comment | tags: Collage, Education, Homeschooling, Storybook Art | posted in Art

December 29, 2010

Homeschooling Survival Tool #3

By Mindy

I think that one of the most important keys to maintaining your sanity as a homeschooling mom is to have a third-party sounding board or two. I call it Tool #3 because I think the only two tools that are more important are to be absolutely committed to it yourself and to have your spouse on board and 100% supportive.

Meet my sounding boards:

These are my go-to girls on my left and right. C & C. They offer wisdom, experience, and a fresh perspective. All of which were needed last night. We hit Mimi’s Cafe for hot chocolate and apple crisp and batted ideas around and swapped curriculum helps and marveled that we are even doing this at all. But what I needed most from the evening (and found) was their ability to take me by the figurative shoulders, pull me back, and show me that things are waaaaaayyy better than they appear myopically.

I needed that. Thanks, girls.

Getting to Yes

By Mindy

The simple question “Why?” pulled me up short this week.

Here’s the context.

We’ve spent the morning up to our elbows in an art project. The kids are now on an art kick and have gotten their drawing easels out. Chaos is reigning and Mom is trying to keep up with everyone, prevent unnecessary messes, and put necessary fires out. “No, don’t do that,” or some variation on the theme is frequently issuing forth from my lips.

We’ve hit a lull. I’m on the floor with somebody piled on my lap. As we chat and watch those still interested tackle the art easels with chalk or markers, I look up to see Samuel coloring all over a piece of chalk with a colored pencil.

“Samuel! Don’t color on the chalk!”

“Why, Mom?”

Enter stunned moment. Usually I’m pretty good about coming up with ludicrous answers on the spot but I sure didn’t have one good reason why he shouldn’t color on the chalk. So I said,

“Never mind. Go ahead and color on the chalk.”

How did I get here? To this spot where “No” flies out of my mouth like a knee-jerk reaction?

I mentally flogged myself all that afternoon.

It probably wasn’t chance that I heard echoes of advice I was given at a baby shower for Henry run through my mind that night as I brushed my teeth:

“Say ‘Yes’ as often as you can and save ‘No’ for the times when it really matters.”

I’ll try.

He did it!

By Mindy

Kindergarten Reading: Complete.

Bring on the first grade reading program!

2 comments | tags: Education, Homeschooling, Hooked on Phonics | posted in Reading

November 18, 2010

Ah, life!

By Mindy

I think I was a little over-ambitious this week. I thought it would be fun, given the simplicity (term used loosely) of the projects, to have the girls join us in art and science. Maybe it was fun for them. It wasn’t so much for me. I don’t know how public school teachers do student/teacher ratios of 20:1 or 28:1. Sometimes 4:1 does me in.

Our art project was based on “Harold and the Purple Crayon” by Crockett Johnson Â (Storybook Art, page 51). The idea was simple: get a long roll of paper and three or four different marking mediums and draw a long unbroken line. It could be as light or heavy, curvy or straight as we wished.

Bottom line? Fail. The best part of the project was reading the book. One of the kids ended up in time-out because of hitting when someone else drew out of turn and into their line. A short-lived project that went right into the trash.

Ever forging onward, Mom pulled out the science project for the day: “Rampin’ Up” (Mudpies to Magnets, page 51). The idea was to explore planes (not air-) and the effect of a given plane on how far a little toy car could travel. We were supposed to build varying heights on support blocks and find the best angle for helping the car travel the farthest.

Fail #2. Someone ended up in time-out for throwing a car at someone else’s head. The only scientific conclusions arrived at were #1) Mom is mean because she wouldn’t let the kids race every single one of their HotWheels down the ramp, and #2) Becca ruined the ramp because she kept stepping on it.

Some things just aren’t worth trying to patch up.

Leave a comment | tags: Education, Homeschooling, Mudpies to Magnets, Storybook Art | posted in Art, Science

November 17, 2010

Two Things

By Mindy

Two things that have made my heart happy this week:

1) I love teaching my kids. Love it. Best job ever.

2) I was chatting with Henry on Sunday about his feelings about the things he’s learning and asking about what kinds of things he wanted to learn, etc., and he spontaneously offered, “I love doing school at home, Mom.”

All right.

1 comment | posted in Ruminations

November 15, 2010

Back in the Groove

By Mindy

After taking a two-week break (one for prepping for a vacation and the other taking the vacation), I think I just might be a proponent of year-round homeschooling. I have been astounded that it’s taken us a full month to get back to a normal routine with our schoolwork. Last week was the first week where I planned and executed the plan and we got everything done that I wanted us to do.

We’ve added a few more components to our curriculum since we started a mere four months ago.

Since being called as a Primary chorister at church, I’ve realized that sometimes it’s easier to remember things if you can sing them. So we’ve been tackling the Articles of Faith in song form vs. rote memorization. I think it’s made a world of difference in how Henry and Sam are able to grasp new vocabulary. It’s easier to sing “privilege,” “dictates” or “conscience.” Sometimes when they’re playing with their Legos or drawing, I’ll walk through the room and casually hum the first line of the song and then pause while I exit the room. Without fail, they will start singing the Article of Faith to themselves as they play. (Heh, heh! How’s that for incorporating memorization?)

We’ve started the Getty and Dubay program for handwriting. The thing that I liked about this program was how they group letters into family groups, so that letters that have similar strokes are learned together. This week, we’re working on lower-case h, m, n and r. It makes so much more sense to me to learn it this way instead of alphabetically.

This handwriting program has also illustrated just how much perfectionism resides within Henry (curse of the oldest child). Today, he scribbled all over his page in frustration and left the table in a huff because he couldn’t make the lines in his m’s straight enough. I certainly sympathize. I cried during more than one piano lesson in my younger days because I didn’t play my piece perfectly.

Finally, I’ve started reading books aloud to the kids. We made short work of “James and the Giant Peach,” enjoyed “Squanto, Friend to the Pilgrims,” are almost through “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle” and have simultaneously started “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” I’ve been surprised by how quickly we make it through each of these books. But I confess to loving it when the clamors for “more!” begin as I end each chapter. Oh, all right, twist my arm!

Still loving this journey!

Leave a comment | posted in Handwriting, Read-Alouds, Ruminations

November 12, 2010

The Best-loved Bear

By Mindy

“Corduroy” by Don Freeman is one of those childhood classics that I couldn’t wait to share with my kids. I love that they’ve found it as enchanting as I remember it being. So it was no great surprise when all four kiddos wanted in on this art project. (Storybook Art, page 19)

Given that they all started with the same template, I thoroughly enjoyed watching each of them create their own Corduroys, pouring their personalities into each of their creations.

I started by giving them a piece of cardstock (color of their choice, of course) and told them to draw any design they wanted as a background. Then we divvied up the bears I’d created the night before: two cardboard with construction paper overalls and two bears cut from corduroy fabric with fabric overalls. The craft box came out of the cupboard and eyes and buttons found their way onto the papers. They all thought Elmer’s Glue was the greatest. And they were all quite proud of their artistic efforts and all four renderings are on display in our Hall of Fame.

Here’s Kate’s. I love how she felt it necessary to add more “background” right on top of her bear. Also love how Corduroy has one button on his overalls (as per the story) but how he ended up with pierced ears and toe rings, too.

Sam’s. Love how he used a button for the nose but drew in the eyes with marker.

Becca’s. Easily the most fascinated with glue and buttons. But I also love her deliberate markings for the background.

I thought Henry was doing a great job BEFORE he added button arches for the eyebrows. But I understand that eyebrows add character.

This was a really fun project!

2 comments | tags: Education, Homeschooling, Storybook Art | posted in Art

October 19, 2010

Of Masks and Monsters

By Mindy

In honor of Halloween, our art project this week was based on Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are.” Instead of going with the project as outlined, I tweaked one of the variations offered at the bottom of the page. We made Wild Thing masks. The boys had a blast. (Storybook Art, page 59)