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!

Homeschool crafts: Make a feely box!

When I was little and my mom was in the middle of her career as a teacher, there were a few things she had in her collection of classroom learning tools that I was especially drawn to. One of them was a yellow box with a hand drawn on the top and a sock coming out of a hole on either side. There were all kinds of things inside the box, but you couldn't see them. You couldn't even peek because of the socks. You had to put your hand in and feel instead. I loved to feel around in the box, guess what I had grabbed and then pull it out to see if I was right. It sounds simple, doesn't it? But that feely box was so... so... mysterious! I can still remember reaching in and finding a soft, scruffy hairbrush.

The other day a Facebook discussion on homeschool manipulatives and activities made me realize it would be fun to have craft days to make some of these things. The feely box was the first thing that came to mind. It's versatile and easy to make.

The feely box makes for a fun, relaxing activity that can easily be revamped by changing out the items in the box. I'm thinking of keeping several sets of items handy and reloading them every month or so. You could also fill the box with items to go along with whatever you are learning at the time. If you are learning about the ocean, perhaps some seashells, sponges, driftwood, and smooth stones. You could combine the feely box with a sink-or-float experiment, asking the child to guess if the item will sink or float before they pull it out of the box. Obviously, the feely box would be perfect for teaching sense of touch, and it also helps develop vocabulary.

It's mostly self-explanatory, but here are the instructions for making the feely box. I took the time to cover mine and sew special tubes for it, but you could skip some of these steps and make a simpler box. Sorry there are no process photos; with the kids distracting me, I was doing great to finish my box at all!

Items needed:

sturdy corrugated cardboard box, ~10x10"

two socks (I prefer to use sweater sleeves)

poster board in a pretty color

duct tape in a coordinating pretty color

small paper cup or other circular item to trace (your hand needs to fit through)

brads

scissors

exacto knife or cutting tool

ice pick or other pointy tool

items to put in your box

1) Tape your box together and tape it shut.

2) Cut a square of poster board for each side. Don't forget which sides of the box are the non-taped ones. Put a dot or something on the center of two of the sides that are solid during this process (one on each side) so you will know for the next step. Cover the box with the poster board, and use the duct tape to secure the edges and make it look pretty.

3) Place your cup in the middle of the box on the two sides you marked and draw around it. Then cut the circles out with your cutting tool. You should be able to look straight through your box.

4) Use your ice pick to make small holes around each big round hole. I did 12 holes about 3/4" from the circle, arranged like the numbers on a clock.

5) Cut the top of your sock off so you have a tube a few inches long. Tuck the raw edge inside the hole in the box and secure it all the way around with brads. Do this on both sides.

6) All you need to do now is stuff your box with fun feely items! In ours I put toothbrushes, combs, seashells, erasers, baby spoons, tiny slinkies, scrubby sponges, little plastic maracas, wooden eggs, squishy stress balls, and some of those gummy/spiky toys that feel so neat. I included two of everything so we could play the following game.

One of my friends sends her sons to Montessori school and told me about a Montessori work that could be adapted to the feely box. I put two of each item into the box. Then I let Suzi put both hands in and feel around for a pair of items. Once she pulls out two things that are alike, she passes the box to Ivey. Ivey (almost three years old) is able to play this game too and it makes her so happy when she is successful. This game would work with one child or with a bunch of children having circle time.

To tell the truth, I still enjoy playing with the feely box myself. Brings back good memories. A big thanks to my mom for the inspiration, information, and help creating these!

May 21 - 25

It's been a rough week. Last weekend didn't offer us much of a break to get organized, and the kids have been wild and uncooperative. I've had a cold all week. And, we are heading right into a busy Saturday tomorrow! I'm looking forward to a relaxing Sunday. We did get some stuff done this week, though.

Math - We used our Melissa & Doug abacus to work on addition up to ten. I'm trying to help Suzi learn to start counting from a number other than zero. For instance, if she is adding 3+3, she can slide three beads over, say "3," and then count "4, 5, 6." She is getting it, but with a lot of guidance from me. Needs practice. We are also still working on counting past 20, which needs more work, but during the last part of each month we practice it fairly often on the calendar. Her birthday is coming up on the 30th and she loves counting the days that have passed and figuring out how many she has to wait until her special day! We are also still counting by 10's. She can do it pretty well looking at the sheet, and I'm trying to help her learn to do it without looking at anything. Today we tried counting by 10's on our fingers.

Science - We talked about taking care of the environment by picking up our garbage and recycling. Also for science, we read our Oak Meadow story, which this week was about the journey of Rainbow Raindrop. We only just got around to reading the story today, so we'll have to do the suggested activities (watching rain puddles for evaporation, looking for a rainbow) next time it rains. Speaking of rainbows, I have been wanting a set of prisms for our windows for years, and today I finally ordered some on Amazon! Can't wait for them to get here. Lastly, Suzi is still interested in termites! I'm having a hard time finding any more videos or interesting material about them to show her!

Reading - She can now easily get through those first eight flash cards. We'll start a few more next week. As usual, we read some easy readers and I read some longer, just-for-fun books to the girls. Today we read "The Art Lesson" by Tomie DePaola because it went along with the rest of what we discussed.

Social Studies - I wasn't quite sure where to start with this, but I knew from questions Suzi has asked in the past that the subject would interest her. I decided we'd begin discussing different jobs in our community. Suzi's Busy Town drama class was an excellent start for this. They talked about different roles in our community, and in the play there was a teacher, a doctor, and a police officer. This week I talked to her briefly about police officers and EMTs, and taught her to dial 911. I'm sure I'll have to refresh her memory on that later. I'd also like to teach her her phone number soon. She already knows her address. Then we talked about teachers and read "The Art Lesson," which is one of her favorite books. Suzi says she does not want to be a teacher--not even an art teacher. She just wants to be an artist! I told her that one thing artists can do is draw the illustrations for someone who has written a book, or, like Tomie DePaola, write the book themselves and do their own illustrations. She says I can write the book and she will do the illustrations. I told her I thought that was a great idea! Write a book illustrated by my daughter - it's on my bucket list!

Clock - We are taking a little break from this. Suzi is sick of doing it and it turns her goofy whenever I pull it out. Do you know what I mean?

Money - She hasn't had a desire to do chores for money lately, but she is still learning the coins and keeping up with her own money. We practice naming the coins and telling how much each is worth at least a couple times a week and whenever it comes up in day-to-day life.

Health - We talked a little about different kinds of exercise, but I'd like Suzi to see/experience some new things. I want to take the girls rollerskating, but that's going to be hard with Robert--if Jordan or I fell while carrying him in the Ergo, it could be bad. I think sometime soon I might ask my parents to keep Robert while Jordan and I take the girls skating. Or maybe Grandma can come to the skating rink with us and we can take turns holding Robert, since Grandma loves to skate too. Also, I need to remember to keep my eye out for that children's yoga class! Maybe in the meantime I will try to find a yoga program online or on DVD and invite Suzi to do it with me.

Other activities this week included a friend's birthday party at the water park (my mom kept Robert so I could enjoy some time with the girls, hooray!), and on Wednesday my mom came over to help me and a friend make these for our kids.

Know what it is? Stay tuned for my next post!

May 14 - 18

Our Oak Meadow curriculum recommended finding a tree friend to visit frequently and to watch for changes across the seasons. This is ours. Suzi named him Treebo last fall.

We didn't get a ton of actual "work" done this week. We had some fellow homeschooling friends over Wednesday, went to the gym Thursday, and went berry picking Friday. I think, at least in my case, the number of outside activities a family can handle goes down as the number of children goes up. Especially when they are little children. I am trying to simplify--cut back on what costs lots of money, time, and energy, and keep the most worthwhile activities. After some consideration, I'm planning to cancel our gym membership. I can join the rec center that is local to my mom for a fraction of the cost, and she can help me take the kids swimming. There is a children's yoga class starting soon that I might sign the kids up for, too. Anyway, here is what we did...

Math - I made a number chart for Suzi sort of like this one from schoolsparks.com. I can't print in color right now, so I printed one I made myself and colored it. I started Suzi out counting by tens, just counting down the column on the right. This is most of what we accomplished in math. It needs practice.

Science - We read our Oak Meadow curriculum story about clouds, and looked at the different kinds of clouds while we were out. It was a good week for this because some days the clouds were white and fluffy, and some days the whole sky was covered. Suzi looked at clouds and tried to predict whether or not they were rain clouds.

Reading - We continued our easy readers and flash cards. Suzi can now identify the sight words we started her on (it, is, I, pie, Daddy, we, did) except for one--who. These are all words from the first couple of books she started reading. We are reading more new books now, because I don't want her to get bored and tired of doing the same ones over and over.

Clock - We are still doing well with full and half hours, and are slowly working on :15.

Health - We talked about ways of protecting our sight and hearing, and discussed how some people do not have use of all five senses.

Drama - The girls finished their drama class and we attended their short performance at the end. It was a Busy Town unit. Ivey played Sally Cat and Suzi was Miss Honey the Schoolteacher. They did a good job and were so cute! I was especially proud of Suzi, because she really didn't want to play that part. I explained to her that when you're an actor you don't usually get to pick what you want to play; that is the director's job. She played the part and did it well.

Physical activity - We went swimming at the gym one day, but that is mostly a mommy workout! The kids also played in the yard with friends and ran around at the berry farm.

Art - My parents had the girls at their house Saturday and took them to a local arts festival. I had been so excited to go, but ended up spending the entire day sick on the couch. I'm glad the girls got to go, at least.

Here they are on stage singing "You Are My Sunshine." Looks like they had a great time!