Parental Pride

I can't help it.  I tried and I tried to keep quiet, but I just can't. 

Angie has written her second book ever, and just like the first, it has a beginning, middle and end, complete with conflict and resolution.  (Because, as she said, "Mommy I noticed that in almost every book something happens, like something is lost or broken or someone does something wrong and then they have to figure out how to fix it.")  It is seven chapters (read: paragraphs) and she spent three days writing and illustrating it.  I printed it in booklet format for her from Adobe reader (thanks to Sandie for telling me about that nifty feature) and she is in heaven.  I'm so very proud of her.

I shall provide the text of it here, but if you want a copy of it, you'll have to make a request.  I'll have to scan and edit the illustrations before we can publish :).

The Mermaids’ Seashell
By Angie

Chapter 1

Once upon a time there were two mermaids named Jane and Marina. They were sisters. They were exploring the ocean. They found some pearls so they could make a necklace or bracelet. They were so excited that Jane fell. She fell on a seashell. It was a golden shell. Jane did not know what to do with it.

Chapter 2

Jane and Marina went to the king’s castle to ask the king if the golden shell was his. He said he had been looking all over for it. The two mermaids gave it back to him.  But he said, "You may keep it because you found it." The two mermaid sisters said, "Thank you so much."

Chapter 3

The two mermaid sisters went home to their cave. Marina had a whole collection of pearls. Jane had a whole collection of seashells. But none of Jane’s seashells were gold. Jane thought that it would be nice to give the golden shell to Marina.

Chapter 4

Marina loved the golden seashell. While Jane and Marina were sleeping , a crab came and took the golden seashell to live in. When Jane and Marina woke up, Marina did not see the golden seashell. She was very ,very angry. But Jane told her that she would help look for it.

Chapter 5

First they asked if the king knew where it was. But he shook his head. Next they went to Seashell Cave. But they did not find it. They also looked at Sandy Seashore. But they only saw regular seashells. They didn’t see it anywhere. So they gave up. They started to swim home when Marina saw it and a smaller one too!

Chapter 6

When Marina picked up the two golden shells, one crab popped out of each seashell! The bigger crab pinched Jane because Jane was older. The smaller crab pinched Marina because Marina was younger. Jane swam home as quick as she could ,while Marina was trying to pull the crabs out of the two golden shells. Jane came back with two swirly seashells. When Jane saw that Marina was trying to pull the crabs out of the two seashells she was very angry. Then Jane said, "Leave the poor things alone."

Chapter 7

Marina let go of the two crabs. Jane said, "Here crab". The crabs crawled into the two swirly seashells. Then Jane said to Marina, "Wasn’t that so much easier than pulling them out?" Marina said, "Yes".

When the two mermaids got home, Marina gave the smaller shell to Jane. They went to a shipwreck to find a glass jar to put their golden seashells in. But this time they didn’t leave the seashells behind. When the two mermaids returned to their cave ,they were as happy as could be.

One Year's Temperatures

Many of the decisions made in today's world are dependent on the collection and tabulation of great amounts of data.  And trends in data can often be seen by graphing, a skill which too many children lack.  In the sciences especially, where the correct analysis of data leads to new discoveries that can potentially impact the world, graphing is one of many tools that scientist need.  And because I'm a very math and science minded person, it's important to me to teach my children how to read and create graphs that relate one quanitity to another. So we've begun a project called "One Year's Temperatures".  Here's how it works:

I printed out a graph with temperatures ranging from 0 to 96 degrees Fahrenheit marked every 2 degrees on the vertical axis and the days of the month (1 - 31) on the horizontal axis.  It uses 2 pages in landscape mode, taped together to form one graph.  This hangs on the wall in our Calendar section of the room.

Each day, Angie checks a Weather Channel page ( which you can find for your town by Googling "yesterday's weather yourtownnameandstatehere".  It'll be similar to this link:  http://www.weather.com/weather/pastweather/90210 ) for the previous day's high and low temperatures.  With a red marker, she marks the high temperature and connects it to the previous day's data point with a line.  With a blue marker, she marks the low temperature and connects it ot the previous day's data point with a line. 

Now, we have the kind of line graph that is found so prevalently in stock charts and other time valued data graphs. 

What's wonderful is that she's beginning to understand the idea of a coordinate system and is looking at the graph from an analytical point of view.  For intance, when the temperature plummeted 24 degrees overnight, Angie declared, "Wow, Mommy, do you see that!?!" as she drew the line.  She imeediately understood that the steepness and downward slant of the line indicated a tremendous drop compared, especially, to the relatively minute changes we'd been seeing over the last few days.  She has now related slope of a line with rate of change and direction of slant with increasing or decreasing behavior.  These are Algebra 1 topics, folks.  And my 7 year old (and yours too) can understand them because she's seeing them daily.

Our plan is to complete a temperature chart for each month and string them altogether on the longest wall in our house.  And then, as we gaze at the entire assemblage, we'll mark the changes of the seasons and remark on the cyclic nature of temperatures.  We may even take a single day and graph the temperatures hourly to see how it compares to the yearly one, getting in a discussion of similarity and fractals at the same time!  (Note:  Angie is also already noticing how the monthly charts are similar even though the temperatures are  a bit lower than last month's.)

Oh how I love math!

My Star Students

Here are this year's students, posing for their yearly beginning-of-the-year pictures.  We always take our pictures, print them in Jumbo Wallet size on our Epson PictureMate Dash, then glue them to the front of our "All About Me" books, in which we record pertinent information about our physical selves, as well as our likes, dislikes and abilities. 

 

This is Maddie, who grew three inches in the last year.  She is 4, but I keep forgetting that because she acts (most of the time) like all of her 6 and 7 year old cousins.  My personal goal this year is to remember her age and treat her accordingly.  She is very excited about school, and I'm trying hard to make it fun for everyone by playing games and keeping our daily lessons short but meaningful!

 

This is Angie, my 7 year old bundle of boundless energy who can't seem to sit still for much of anything, but has an amazing amount of concentration when it comes to completing arts and crafts.  She will literally climb the walls if left to her own devices for too long.  She also prefers hands on learning activities, and I've told her I'm working on it and she's being patient with the worksheets and reading we've been doing so far.

 

Although not one of my students, when I saw the filename "Girl with Nice Boots" on my computer, I couldn't help but open it and see what it was, because I never name my photos.  And this is what it was, courtesy of Angie (who really prefers to be called Angelyn, but who settles for Angie because I never remember to call her Angelyn unless she's in trouble for something :) )

Amazing Handwriting Worksheets

If you search exactly that, "amazing handwriting worksheets", in Google, you're very first hit will be this fantastic and free site for making handwriting practice pages in three different writing styles with multiple options for what to put on a page.  It is FULLY customizable. I can't say enough good things about it.  If you need quick handwriting worksheets, this is your tool!  (But don't be fooled by the giant DOWNLOAD buttons in the middle of the page.  That's just for a PDF creator, which you don't need, unless you want to save your worksheets for future printing by printing them to a PDF generator instead of your printer. Or you can photocopy the one that you're going to print out.)  Scroll down the page a bit to find the three choices for writing styles and begin!

When I practice handwriting with my littles (who are 4 and 7), I use this worksheet generator.  I put 4 different letters on the page (one per line) and then 2 short words that use the current letters or letters we've already practiced on past sheets.  The first letter on each line uses arrows to direct the writing.  The second letter on each line is simply dotted, with no arrows.  Then I ask for 5 beautiful copies of the letter on their own.  I sit and correct as they're doing it to avoid bad habits.  Then, immediately after finishing the line, we choose the best example from the five and put a tiny reward sticker above it.  This provides incentive to both finish the work and to do it well.  We always enjoy choosing the best one. When we disagree about which is the best, the child gets to choose. Notice that we're just looking for the best among the five that the child wrote, we're not looking for perfection.

And stickers from the local Dollar Tree are always useful!

Organizing Our Day

Now that Angie is in 2nd grade and Maddie is advancing through Kindergarten level work, I find that in order to keep them engaged and advancing, I have to keep myself more organized so that I know what we've done and where we're headed.  One of the ways I'm trying to do this is through a daily/weekly scheduling process. 

I've long thought (or wished) that planning a semester in advance was the way to go.  And I've actually made the plans several times, but never followed through on them.  So this year, I'm trying to live one week at a time.  It's just enough so that I know where we're going, but not so much that I can't rearrange things easily if we end up doing something other than school on a particular day. 

And to keep the kids in the loop, I've made a weekly check-off chart and daily detailed plans to let them each know (and remind me!) what we're doing each day.  We've used it for two days already and it seems to be going alright.  Now I just need to find a way to make them visible and easily accessible and we'll be in a groove!

Encouraging Independent Reading

My girls are not prone to sitting and reading on their own.  So, to encourage a bit more independent reading, I constructed an incentive chart:

Ok, so it's perhaps a bit bigger than your standard incentive chart, but I had these apple die-cuts from Dollar Tree and I just couldn't resist incorporating them into our schoolroom! If I wasn't so pressed for wall space, I'd have filled out the top of the tree some more, but as it is, I was cramped with our calendar space to the left and Angie's workfolders to the right.

So, each time they read  a book they get to write the name and author on an apple and hang it from the tree.  We're two days into the school year and already they've each hung two apples. I'm not even putting any constraints on what kinds of books count.   If you read it, you can hang an apple!

Use What You've Learned

We discussed the layers of the Earth today, using a nectarine as a model and coloring the layers on a worksheet.  After disbanding and heading outside for some playtime in this gorgeous summerllike weather, the kids began putting their newfound knowledge to use as they dug a giant hole in our as-yet unplanted garden.

 "We're digging down to the mantle, Mommy," Maddie informed me.

 "Oh, really," I said.  "Just be careful that you don't create a volcano." 

"Never mind, I'm not going with her," Maddie returned quickly, pointing at Angie who was still wielding her shovel.

Young Writers Club Week #4: Angelyn

I wish for wings.  If I had wings, I would have pink wings.  I would be a small garden fairy.  I would plant flowers everywhere.

Field Trips: Montclair Art Museum

Our outing today was to the Montclair Art Museum.  Each month, the museum hosts a homeschool art class for 4-8 year olds; each month, the theme is different.  This month's theme was seasons, weather and time.  We first toured the gallery, looking at particular paintings that illustrated the theme.  We saw some abstract pieces and some realistic pieces.  The tour guides asked the children how they knew what season it was, or what time of day it was, or even what the weather was.  In some paintings, the answers were obvious and in others open to interpretation.  I was pleased with Angie's participation; she offered a couple of answers and observations and went along with the group with little concern for where I was in the room.  Maddie, being just a bit on the young side, stuck by me or her sister, preferring me when her sister went ahead with the group.

For the art project, we learned how to use pastels and a smudging technique to create a really interesting effect.  We tore a strip of paper in a curvy, mountainous way.  Then we colored with the pastels near the torn edges of the paper.  We laid the torn paper on top of our working paper, chalked side up, and smudged the chalk onto the working paper, across the torn edge.  The effect was to make a clean, sharp delineation between the softly smudged colors and the paper itself.  It was really wonderful and we all enjoyed making our own pictures of mountains and grass and whatnot. 

We thoroughly enjoyed the program and we'll be back again next month.

Indoor Fun: Kinesthetic Simon

If you have children who require a certain amount of physical activity during the day lest they become monkeys swinging from any and all available furnishings, then you spend a lot of time trying to find games to keep them occupied.  Our most recent game is a take on Simon, the memory game of the 80's where players repeat ever increasing strings of colored light patterns.  But in this game, active participation is key.
Setup
First, make a six-sided die, preferably out of something more durable than paper, that you can write on.  On each face of the die, write an instruction.  Ours included, "clap your hands three times" and "spin around on your toes" and "jump up high two times".  Anything you can think of that gets them moving.

Game Play
The first player rolls the die and does what the instruction says.
The next player rolls the die.  Before he can do his instruction, though, he must do all the instructions that have already been rolled.

Example:
Player one  rolls "jump in the air".  She jumps in the air.  Player two rolls "spin around".  He jumps in the air, then spins around.  Player three rolls "clap your hands twice".  She jumps in the air, spins around, then claps her hands twice. 

Penalties and Variations
There are a few ways to play this so that it is either competitive or not.

Method 1:
If, on any turn, a player cannot remember the full sequence, he is eliminated and the next player rolls the die and takes her turn.  When only one player remains, he/she is the winner.

Method 2:
If, on any turn, a player cannot remember the full sequence, the game ends and a new game begins.  Keep track of how many instructions you made it through.  The goal is to keep the game going as long as possible and beat the previous record.

Method 3:
Have all children in the group do the actions at the same time. They can help each other remember the actions.

Benefits
This game improves memory and coordination.
You can change the game up as often as you like by making new dice with new instructions on them!
Have fun!

Young Writers Club Week #1: Essays

"Where would you most like to live and why?"

I would like to live in a rain forest because it will have  animals and I love animals.It will also have flowers and trees and I love them.
by Angelyn, age 6

I wanted to live in Florida because it has lots of characters like Jake, Izzy and Cubby.
by Madelyn, age 3 (dictated)