Back to the Library

We finally made it back to the library, paid an embarrassingly large fine, and promptly took out 48 more books.

 It really had been a while, as you can tell since one of the overdue books was The First Thanksgiving. 

Still, it was less than 50, so I considered that a win (although, I also didn't bring two kids, so maybe that's cheating).

At any rate, my poor book starved children were enchanted by the stacks of new books: there was nothing but blissful reading and, "Hey, look at this!" for hours when we got home.

Driveway Phonics

I most often use my big flat chalk board for math, and I do love my number playground, but, while we were playing on the number line, I realized the driveway would work for phonics, too.  One of the kids was tripping over diphthongs- this has nothing to do with dorky attire - ch, sh, and th were giving him trouble!

It was easy to draw a train track covered with "ch", leading to a house with a sleeping baby (labeled "sh").  The youngest two had fun running up the tracks going "Ch, ch, ch" til they got to the house and "shhhhed" over the sleepy baby.  I eventually added an arrow sign with "th" as in "this" way.

Then I needed somewhere the arrow to point to, so I drew a silly frog and a set of lily pads for skip counting by 5s up to 100.  That was fun, especially when I realized I could also use it to have them count by 10s.

I remember thinking someone could do elementary school with nothing more than a bucket of sidewalk chalk and a library card, and, really, that's not far from the truth. Except for rainy days, I guess!

Why We Learned to Read

 

So we can spend large amounts of time sprawled on Mom and Dad's bed, reading comics.










Please note that Mxyl additionally spent a great deal of time (and his own money) getting PJs that clash quite so supremely!!

Didn't We Have Some Short People Around Here?

 It's high time we had a post about them!

Choclo and Oob are having a splendid school year.  Anything either of them can do, the other wants to do (better).  This makes for amazing progress...

Choclo is on the very last of the last (fifth) box of Bob Books.  Hooray, Choclo!  He has also started reading everything he sees.  The other day we were driving on the highway and every time we passed an exit sign, he would announce it with a cheerful, "EggggZIT!"

I had no idea there were that many exits, let alone that each one was marked by two or three signs...



Oob is in the middle of the second box of Bob Books, and has just shifted from sounding the letters individually to saying the sounds slowly together.  Go Oob!

Both boys are adding and subtracting, but with varying degrees of reliability.  I took out the chalk and a bag of mellocreme pumpkins and we headed for the driveway.  The key here is to make a number line with the space between numbers about the size of the kid's stride.

We started with just the number line and I waited while they ran up and down on it, counting forward and backward (it's actually faster to let them get that out of their system and then try your lesson - if they never finish, they weren't ready for your lesson but they still learned). 

Then I showed them my bag of pumkins and asked how many pumpkins they had. 

Zero.  Right!

Then I asked, if I gave them four pumpkins (place four pumpkins, one on each spot on the number line, counting aloud), how many would they have?

Four.  Right! Zero plus four is four!

But if they came along and ate two pumpkins (they each eat one) how many would you have?

Two. Right! Four pumpkins take away two pumpkins is two pumpkins!

Continue until they are sick, you are tired, or both.

Actually, as I did numbers that were larger than I wanted them to eat, I had a "big pumpkin eating monster" gobble up large numbers of pumpkins (I put them in my pocket and belched loudly). 

The big trick is, whether you are picking them up or putting them down, count the pumpkins as you move them, then restate the question conventionally: 11 pumpkins take away 7 pumpkins are 4 pumpkins!

Early Reading Idea

Here's an early reading tool that's fun, fast, and easy (did I mention cheap?).

You take a piece a paper and cut six slits in it (three sets of two).

You take a second piece of paper and cut it lengthwise into strips (however wide you made the slits).


You write some letters on the strips. I used c, s, h, m, p, f, and b for the first strip; a, e, i, o, and u for the middle one; and t, n, s, m, p, and g for the last one. Personally, I think it's important to use lower case letters, but you can do anything you like.

That's it! Oob has been quite fascinated and will play with it (with or without me) for quite a while. I think Choclo is interested as well. I may make one for him that includes a silent e (fourth strip alternating e and blank space).

I suspect this idea could be adapted to math (matching dots and numbers, simple addition or subtraction problems), science (life cycles of plants, frogs and butterflies), or other things.

Bobbing Along

What happened to last week? I have no idea!

Well, OK, some idea. I had Mother's Day and a birthday, but I do that every year.

We went Down by the Bay (where the watermelons grow) and found the most sharks teeth ever: 50 teeth, 15 ray plates and an assortment of bone fragments!

We planted all our warm season veggies: peppers, basil, cosmos, nasturtiums, sunflowers and so on. I also got a knockout rose (Blush), a hydrangea (Nantucket Blue), some lily bulbs, and a foxglove for Mother's Day, so it was a garden heavy week.



The most exciting thing, however, was Oob's continued interest in reading. He read two Bob Books. Which made me realize I had lost the rest of the first set. Theoretically, I suppose, I could still have a complete set from when Mxyl was learning to read. In my actual life, however, any given set will last 1 1/2 children (meaning there are some gaps for the next kid but we can make do). I just ordered my third set from Amazon. Still worth the money!



I actually have been doing a lot of reading instruction by writing things for Choclo and having him read as I write. He likes it some of the time, but he misses the feeling of satisfaction from finishing "a whole book."

Navel Gazing

It's a seasonal thing. This time of year I always end up mulling over our homeschool philosophy. What's working? What isn't?

Part of that has to do with the fact that the kids are always growing and changing and need different things. This year there have been a number of other external prods.

In the fog of low thyroid, I made a foolish decision to go forward with something that, while good of itself (let's learn research skills by preparing presentations on different countries!), was not good for us (let's ditch US History!).

We have come to the reluctant view that the co-op we've been in for the last nine years is not going to work for us next year. It's actually a great amount of time for a co-op to be useful, but it's also hard to let go. :(

I realized I was (probably in the thyroid fog) drifting more into the "schoolish" side of things (let's get these boxes checked off) and doing less fun"isn't-the-world-amazing" stuff.

Mostly, I'm realizing that the way I'm called to home school is a gift. The way others are called to home school (or parent, or live) is God's gift to them, this is God's gift to me and I need to be faithful to that gift.

Ironically, I think about peer pressure for my kids, but I didn't realize that hanging out with other home schooling moms would be peer pressure for me! The way I've been called is more on the unschooling end of things, but my friends have been called to a more "schoolish" approach. Not that I intend to stop being friends, of course! I more feel that God's put me on notice to keep my eyes on my own page.

That means following the kids interests. It means doing as much hands on stuff as I can. It means holding steady on a few core subjects (Math and English). It means looking at each child and seeing what thy need to to take the next step. It means the time to strike is when the opportunity presents itself (by which I mean, when a kid's curiosity is raised, he will absorb and retain the most information the most quickly and easily). It means looking to my older kids to organize more of the fun and amazing stuff. It means following a trajectory towards healthy, happy, holy adulthood.

I do believe that God lets us know when we are off track, if we're willing to listen. He also lets us know when we are on track. A few days after I started making these adjustments, Oob squirmed onto my lap and asked me to write his name. Then Choclo's name. We snuggled and I wrote and he sounded out the names. A dozen names later, I started writing words...and he kept on sounding them out! When he was done, he told me, "Thank you, Mommy. Those were fun puzzles!"

Thank you, God, for reminding me why I home school.

What About the Little Guys?

Oob has been pretending to be a puppy. He's been doing lots of fetching and licking people. And he loves being read to! If only we could convince him not to bring us library books in his mouth.

Choclo is reading more and more. He has done the Leap Frog videos (to me the easiest way to teach toddlers their letters and sounds). He is still watching Between the Lions and Electric Company and getting a lot out of them.

He has been reading Bob Books for a while (and will be for another year, I suppose). We love them because they are such nice graduated chunks. The whole "I read the whole book!"idea is a very powerful motivator.

Choclo (and Oob) are also very into Starfall. We always end up with both kids on my lap for this. I really can not believe that this is a free website! It's a top notch phonics program with a highly motivating mix of games and stories. We are currently doing lesson 6 in "Learn to Read." Great stuff!

Choclo has also just got into Puzzle Buzz. Wow! Most definitely not free, but it's exactly at his challenge level and he loves it. Great mix of stuff and he is always so excited that he did it.

Choclo is Reading!!!

I got two of these little mailboxes from Target's dollar section. Unfortunately the doors aren't hinged like the one in the picture, but they pop on and off easily enough.

I cut up a piece of poster paper into sizes that would fit into the mailboxes (I suspect index cards would be easier, but I didn't have them). I wrote simple words on each card: cat, sat, mom, dad, on, in, hat, pot, pop, you get the idea.

I put one into the mailbox and put up the flag. Choclo siezed it, shook it around and sang, "We just got a letter..." (Thank you Blues Clues!). Then he opened it, spun the card around a few times, and sounded out the word (c...a...t). He then asked me what it said, I sounded out the word exactly as he had done and he then announced, "It says, 'cat!'" We did this over and over and over. We started stringing the words into sentences like, "Choclo sat on Mom." Key: we stopped before he was tired of it. Stopping before they want to stop is a fantastic tool in teaching reading (or anything else).

Eventually he will get tired of spinning the card and sounding it out slowly and asking me to repeat him. Right now that's part of the game, but probably for only a few days. And then... Bob Books!