Followby, exercise, and a summer break

Suzi has been enthusiastically drawing rainbows lately. She loves to use markers and draw all the colors in the proper order. The other day she was sitting at her desk, singing a little song and drawing. Then she held up a bluish-greenish marker and asked "Mom, is this followby?" I wasn't sure what she was talking about, so she went on to explain. "You know, like in the song! Red, orange, yellow, then green, followby, blue! Indigo and violet, that's a rainbow soooong for you!"

It's a song she learned from The Cat in the Hat on TV. I explained that it was actually followed by. I think followby should be a color, though. It would be beautiful.

We haven't been doing much homeschooling lately. It just felt like time for a summer break, probably because that's what I always had. I went to public school, and when school let out each day at 2:30 I went to after school care because my parents weren't done with work for another hour or two. But the lucky thing is that my mom was a teacher, so every summer we got to spend lots of time together!

I also got to spend lots of time alone. During the summer I had oodles of time to do whatever I wanted. I loved playing in my room with my dolls. Organizing my extensive troll collection into "families." Playing old records on my Fisher-Price record player and dancing to them. Going out in the yard and using the red mud for clay. Running through the sprinkler. Catching lightning bugs in a jar. Watching TV. Yes, I loved watching TV. But mostly I just ran around playing silly little games I couldn't possibly describe now. Some of my best childhood memories are of this free time, and that's what my girls are having a lot of right now. I don't know exactly when we'll pick up a normal schedule again.

Jordan just cut our grass, so this week will be a good one for running around in the yard playing and looking for bugs. They love to jump some energy out on the trampoline. When they play at my parents' house, my mom gives them each a bucket of water and a paintbrush and lets them "paint" their large concrete walks and patio. It dries right up and they paint it again. They love putting their bathing suits on and playing with the hose, too. Grandma's house is fun!

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to introduce some unique opportunities for exercise to the girls, so that they can hopefully find something they love to do and grow up developing that. A couple of weeks ago Jordan, my mom, and I took the girls skating and had a good time. Suzi didn't want to go on the big floor, but she had fun on the carpet. Now Suzi has asked for skates of her own. After we went skating, I decided to try out roller derby with a friend--and loved it. So it looks like rollerskating might be an activity that we enjoy together for a while! I'm glad. I love it because it's not only affordable fun exercise, it's also a stress-reliever. Feels like flying. I'd totally forgotten how much I loved it and I hope my girls will come to love it too.

A while back there were some children's yoga sessions at the library, but unfortunately we missed them. Today we turned on a yoga for kids YouTube video for the girls and they had a good time following along. I think yoga could be good, especially for Suzi, since she frequently needs a calming activity. This might become something we do several times a week, especially during those difficult times of day when we all need a little relaxation.

I've been wanting to let Suzi try running, too. It's so hot now, but hopefully soon I can take her out early in the morning and see what she thinks of a short jog. In November I really want to take her to the Color Run. Since it's a fun run and there's no rush to finish, we'll probably take the whole family. Can you just imagine my little followby girl at the Color Run? It's perfect for her!

June 4 - 8

Boy have we been lazy this week! There was just so much cleaning and party prep going on last week that it felt like a good week to rest a little. I don't think we did a single premeditated lesson on anything.

Well, I take that back. First of all, I spent a significant amount of time homeschooling myself in geography. I was tired of my astounding lack of knowledge in that department, so I went here and spent lots of my free time (and by that I mostly mean nursing-at-keyboard) playing their absolutely wonderful free games. Seriously, go try them! I am now familiar with almost all the countries, some of the capitals, and all of the states and capitals in the United States. Why couldn't I have had this website in seventh grade? I would've aced world geography! As for Suzi, that is all a bit over her head at the moment. She is learning to identify our state on a map of the US, and we let her play around with her Daddy's tablet on Google Earth. Seeing the Earth this way and then zooming in to our country, our state, our house (yes, it's amazing) helps connect bits of knowledge to form a working understanding of both local and world geography.

As usual, we read books and played a lot. Suzi worked at her desk, drawing pictures and making things like this outfit for Puff the Magic Dragon. I think he looks awesome in it. We went to story time at one of our local libraries. The girls love listening to "that fun librarian" read books, and it's even better because she has a big velcro storyboard to go along with most of them. We spent some time with Grandma and Grandpa Wednesday and Thursday. The week flew by!

Today we had a playdate at our local botanical gardens. I feel so lucky to live near it. It's the perfect place to spend a morning with friends! We didn't have any planned lessons here either, but we did see some interesting things that will make nice leads for nature learning in the next few days. We found some tiny frogs (perhaps toads?) as we played, and when we walked down to the pond there were tadpoles. We discussed the life cycle of a frog a few weeks ago. Mostly the kids just explored and played, and we had a great time with our friends!

When we came home, all three kids took a nice long nap and I set things up to make recycled paper. Earlier this week I bought a children's paper making kit at one of my favorite consignment shops for only 50 cents! The kids loved using it and it seemed to work great. The paper is outside drying right now. This is a great activity to do while discussing recycling. The kids get to see how much effort can be required to recycle an item, and how much more effective it would be, in this case, to use less paper in the first place. I think our shredded EOBs and bank statements are going to make some pretty interesting paper, though. Maybe you can see how there are whole letters sprinkled here and there. Alphabet paper!

I've been contemplating unschooling quite seriously this week. Last night I bought a new book to read on the subject. Just seeing how excited and self-motivated Suzi can get when an idea is hers makes me feel called to unschool at least part-time. Even though it is scary and the complete opposite of how I was educated. My own education also serves as inspiration to unschool, though, because of all the times it didn't work. I'll post more on this later. Daddy is home and we're starting our weekend!

Counting by fives

Because Suzi had a birthday last week, she received several cards with $5 bills in them. She was so excited. Of course, she wanted to count her money. This led us to try counting by fives. I hadn't intended to start that quite yet, but for counting money it definitely comes in handy!

I remember having the hardest time counting by fives as a child. The only instruction I recall getting was rote memorization and calling out the numbers as a class. There may have been some sort of manipulative used, but I do not remember it. We were probably given worksheets for it, but those were torture for me as I couldn't finish them fast enough, couldn't focus, and was kept in from recess to work on them. Anyway, during skip counting I was lost in a sea of chanting children. I needed a visual or some sort of way to tangibly connect counting by fives to something familiar. When I forgot which number was next I was totally stuck, until one day my brother's girlfriend told me that if I got confused I could just count five up to the next number. It literally hadn't occurred to me!

I told Suzi to hold her hand up and count on her fingers. Starting with her thumb, I told her to whisper "1, 2, 3, 4," and then when she got to her pinky finger to yell "5!!!" Suzi loves yelling. Then we started back at her thumb and counted "6, 7, 8, 9... 10!!!" We continued to about 30. Then we did a little dance and counted rhythmically by fives up to 30 or so. Memorizing things this way is fine, but some kids (like me when I was little) need to have this information anchored in a meaningful way to something they already get, in a way that is agreeable with their learning style. We will also use our little number chart that I colored for skip counting. I colored the fives and tens in red. That way, Suzi can count just the reds and she will be counting by fives. It's already been a helpful visual aid for counting by tens.

I found this neat website called IXL the other day. It has all kinds of interactive online games for teaching math skills (and other subjects as well). Check out their problems for counting by fives! You don't have to pay to play the games, but if you buy a membership you get access to more features. I am seriously considering it, but there are just too many fun things to buy! Homeschooling can get expensive fast.

If you have already started skip counting, how did your child understand it best?

May 28 - June 2

This is how my kids spent most of their time. Playing, dreaming, creating, being silly. I love that they have tons of time and energy to do this stuff. It is the heart of why we homeschool.

We didn't do a lot of formal stuff this week, because Wednesday was Suzi's birthday and she wanted to take the day off, and I had a party to prepare for as well. I've noticed lately that even when we "take the day off," so much learning still takes place spontaneously, and Suzi initiates educational activities on her own. It's hard for me to embrace an unschooling approach because of my own very structured educational background, but I am starting to see how it works, and I'm thinking of making an effort to incorporate the philosophy more and more.

Math - We worked a little on adding and counting up from a given number rather than starting at one. This time we used the counting bears. I wrote the problems out ("2+1=") and helped Suzi write the answers so she could have a visual of what we were learning. The rest of our math for the week was unschooling. Suzi got birthday cards with money in them--several $5 bills, so we decided to try counting by fives. I'll post a little later about how we are learning that. Suzi did some chores to earn a little extra money, and Saturday we went shopping at yard sales. Suzi brought her own money and paid all by herself. She was so proud. I also made up some Iveybucks to pay Ivey so I don't have to give her possibly hazardous coins. 10 Iveybucks=$1, which I can give her safely. I love helping the kids learn about money. I think money management is probably the most important math lesson a child can be taught. There are lots of math lessons that most people will never really use, but everyone will always need to understand money!

Science - We read our Oak Meadow story, "The Maple Tree." It was about how maple syrup comes from trees. We looked at our little potted maple tree that we brought home from a trip to the mountains, and Suzi and Ivey did leaf rubbings from Treebo, our tree friend in the front yard who is an October Glory maple. Daddy made french toast so we could eat maple syrup on it, but then we realized we were all out! Darn!

Our prisms came in the mail this week. We hung them up, admired the rainbows and connected this back to our science story from last week. We taped little pieces of paper under the rainbows, and I invited the girls to copy them.

For Suzi's birthday, Jordan's mom and dad gave her a bug-catching vacuum, a bug observation jar, and a butterfly raising kit. (My in-laws are really great.) Suzi spent some time at her party searching the backyard for bugs to catch. By the end of the day she had gotten a couple, looked at them through the magnifying glass and then let them go. I went shopping for a little while at Goodwill and happened to find "Bug Safari" by Bob Barner--a fun little read about ants, and at the end there are some fun facts about insects. Suzi liked it a lot and it only cost me a few cents! Right now the girls are on their way out to the backyard, equipped with bug jars and Suzi's "super duper sucker-upper," to have a bug safari of their own.

Reading/Writing - Still reading our easy readers and doing some new sight word flash cards, but mostly taking it easy. Want to guess when Suzi gets most interested in reading and writing? When I stop nagging and leave her alone. I'll probably let her play a while on starfall.com later today.

Social Studies - We are spending a little time each week learning about different careers and important people in our society. This week we read "Mr. Griggs' Work" and talked about how the post office works. We found a short PBS video on YouTube about the post office, too. Then Suzi wanted to wait for our mail carrier to come, so we sat outside on the front porch for about half an hour. It started to rain, so the girls danced in the rain. Eventually we had to go in because Robert was upset, and I told the girls they could watch through the window. Suzi went upstairs to change her shirt, which was wet, and in that minute the mail came! She was so upset that she missed it, but she still got to go get it from the mailbox with me and waved at the mail lady as she drove back up from the cul de sac. Maybe we will wait on the mail another day. This week it was extra important to Suzi because people had mailed her birthday cards.

Health - We read "Mortimer Mooner Stopped Taking a Bath" and talked about personal hygiene. We went over why we need to brush teeth, wash hands, take baths, etc.

Clock - Suzi was getting tired of clock drill, so instead I found this Paddington clock book from my childhood and read it to her. She enjoyed setting the little clock to the time given in the story.

Arts and Crafts - The craft from our Oak Meadow curriculum was to make a "love collage" by cutting out pictures of things we love from magazines. Cutting and gluing--my girls' favorite! They ran out of steam pretty quickly and only ended up getting a few things on their papers, but at least they had fun for a while. The girls always prefer the projects they think of themselves, anyway, and they made things this week just like they always do. For example, Suzi took the box our large prism came in and decorated it to be a gift box for her Green Lantern doll's tenth birthday gift.

What's up next: At a yard sale Saturday, I was excited to find a foam map puzzle of the continents. I'd love to get one of the United States too. Maybe next paycheck. Geography is a huge educational weak spot of mine, and I'd like to make sure Suzi gets a firm grasp on it while simultaneously improving my own body of knowledge. There, um, might be a few states I am unsure of (*blush*). Might have to make a trip to the Learning Safari store sometime soon!

Also, this week Jordan and I registered to attend our very first homeschooling conference! It's the Love to Learn conference in Charlotte, NC. A bit of a drive for us, but I wanted to go to this one because it's inclusive and I felt many of the sessions would be especially helpful to me. There are a few on unschooling, which I desperately want to learn about. I will probably take my netbook with me so I can furiously type notes. I can't believe I have to wait until August to go to this!