Month(!) in Review

Yikes, I really dropped the ball on posting. October was a very busy month for us, so I'll blame it on that. We've done all our usual work - Colwyn has about 8 pages left in his Singapore 2A workbook, so that'll get done this week, then we can start on the second half of his kindergarten math. He's pretty much done with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
, so we're moving on to using easy readers for his reading lessons (which we try to do for at least 10-20 minutes a day, in addition to our regular read-alouds).

We've been working a lot on science/history. We covered (the basics of) the formation of the Earth, composition of the Earth, plate tectonics, the start of life, early life, and evolution. Most of that was through the The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History
. We used some websites for the composition of the Earth. Plate tectonics was covered in the Usborne book as well as through some Science Day hands-on activities with our homeschool group. To complement the Usborne book on evolution, we also read How Whales Walked into the Sea by Faith McNulty.

For Earth Scouts, we read When The Root Children Wake Up
by Audrey Wood. Then we brainstormed some ideas on how to take care of the Earth and used those to play "Mother Earth, May I?" It's pretty much just like "Mother, May I?" except the kids say, "Mother Earth, may I compost our kitchen scraps?" and then the kid playing Mother Earth tells them how many steps to take. They seemed to enjoy it, I think. We were supposed to go on a walk to look for creatures outside, but it was rainy, so I assigned that as homework. The week before, we had done a Recycled Art Day (which Dani planned and hosted), so the kids who participated in that got a Recycling Badge.

For book club, we read The Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame. We only read the first three chapters or so, but Colwyn (surprisingly) really liked it. I think a lot of it went over his head (due to the language), but it was so enjoyable to read aloud. Both boys participated really well during the book club activities and enjoyed playing outside with the other kids afterwards.

We also went on a field trip to the Aquarium, which was quite a lot of fun. The boys spent a lot of time exploring with Alex and Mila, which was nice. We toured the Beverly Fire Department last Tuesday and will do an encore tour of the Danvers Fire Department this Tuesday. That obviously led to many discussions on fire safety, but I think the boys were most excited about climbing in the fire truck.

Our homeschool group's Halloween Party was a big success, as well. We rented a room at Endicott Park and the kids played that "Guess the Body Part" game with cold spaghetti, a peeled tomato, hot dogs, lunch meat, etc. One of the dads entertained the kids with some acoustic guitar music, which was super nice of him. They played Red Rover and Duck, Duck, Goose - both big hits.

So, all in all, a pretty busy month. We also had various park days, playdates, and who-knows-what-else going on. I'm going to make a concerted effort to stay on top of the journaling, since it's a pain the butt to try to remember what happened over the course of a whole month. :)

Colwyn and Lachlann got a bunch of games for Christmas. They've really been getting into board games lately, and it might have to do with the fact that Lachlann has been betting a little more patient with them lately. My sister got Colwyn Castle Logix, and we played it for the first time today. It's actually quite fun, and the highest level puzzles even took me a minute or two to do. It's fun watching him try to figure them out; he does the easy ones quite quickly, but we didn't try the harder ones. I saw Royal Rescue today, and it looks like it would be a good companion game.. I might order it with some of his Christmas money he got from family.

The other games they got were Hullabaloo, the new version of Operation (which is much too hard), the Candy Land Castle Game, and Ned's Head, among others. Between those and the games they already have, they're quite well entertained. I'm convinced that with all the variety out there, they could complete their entire elementary education just through playing board games.

Checking In

I haven't disappeared off the face of the Earth, I promise. It's been three months since I posted last, and it's been quite a busy three months. Little Fiona was born two months ago, and we've really taken a break from anything resembling 'educational activities.' Not that I really set up structured activities to begin with, but whatever. We've been going to the playground, to a few indoor places, reading good books, watching interesting things on TV, listening to fun music, and playing around the house. The main thing is that the boys have been learning SO much about families and babies and working together. They've been learning about responsibility and being helpful and how to nurture little ones. And good discussions get thrown in about everything from nature preserves in Africa (from this story) to tides (from a trip to the park) to house centipedes (from finding one inside our house!).

So, please excuse our absense. We're quite busy, though it's generally not the sort of stuff I can brag about here. :) The good thing about unschooling is that I have faith that even though I'm not sitting down to make the kids to worksheets, that they're still learning valuable information.

Warm Weather!

What a great end to the week. Monday-Wednesday was pretty rainy and warm, so when we woke up on Thursday morning to find sun and no snow, we headed to the playground. We met friends of ours there and the kids had a fantastic time. They were so excited to be at a playground and everytime they did something daring (which had become routine last summer) they ran up to me, beaming with pride, saying, "I did it, I did it!" The sun, fresh air, and warm temps sure did a lot for my disposition, too. Afterwards we went to a little pizza place we'd never been to before and I was amazed at how good their chicken fingers were. Like.. I could go for some right now. :)

When we got home, it wasn't quite naptime so the kids played out front and in the car while I got all the trash and soggy hats/mittens and whatnot out of the car. After naptime, we went back out again for a walk around the block. Our neighbor had some flooding and had lots of tubing pouring water into the street, so the kids marveled at the 'river' and then spent a good 20 minutes finding stuff to drop down the drain. On the way back we found some lovely sticks to bang on the sidewalk, then threw them in the marsh, then found more pinecones to bring home. Fun stuff.

So today, it was nice again, though a little bit chillier. We met some different friends at a different park and, once again, had a great time. The kids played tag and hide and seek, pretended to be the billy goats Gruff, and made mulch soup. Afterwards we went to Kelly's for lunch with our friends and the kids had fun there, too.

Not bad for early March. :)

Power Outtage

A few days ago we had a power outtage that lasted all frickin' day. We spent the morning at Bonkers and Target, but when we finally got home, here's what we did:



The pillows and blankets on the floor were meant to be a pirate ship, and the kids were my crew. They had lots of fun dodging sharks, alligators, and rolling around on the floor when big storms hit. We also had several David Shannon books on board that we read.

Later in the day, I made a fort for the kids and they camped out with some of their Cars toys.

A Brief Reprieve

Well, it's raining again. We had a nice weekend, but it rained Wednesday-Friday, and now it's drizzling.

In the meantime, I took these pictures of the kids outside. Well, the first is of Lachlann playing dressups, but whatever. Anyway.. as you can see, the kids love the water and the swings. You can also see that although we start off fully dressed, the boys usually end up in undies and diapers pretty quickly.

Colwyn's asking me to play Koala Brothers with him, so this will have to be a short entry.

Free Play

Yesterday afternoon was nearly idyllic. I wasn't expecting much from our afternoon, as the kids had gotten up super early from their naps. But we went outside, I watered the plants, and hooked up the sprinkler pool. The kids played for a good half hour, splashing, pouring cups of water over their bellies, and such. It had cooled off a bit, and the water spilling out of the pool and onto the deck was cold beneath my feet.

After a while, I asked if they might like crackers with Henry's delicious cheese spread, to which they answered with a resounding "yes!" I brought out the snacks and a huge cup of limeade. They ate for a few minutes, then ran out into the yard to play on the swings. For almost forty-five (yes, 45!) minutes straight, they swung on the swings. They swung on their bellies, on their bottoms, and on their feet. They straddled the swings and pretended they were riding horses. They pretended they were airplanes, and Lachlann experimented with balance, leaning all the way back and extending his legs fully. They grabbed onto a rope that was hanging from a branch and flung their legs up into the air, to see how long they could hold on. They climbed into the kiddie swing and took turns pushing each other, willingly and happily climbing out to trade spots.

I sat in the shade, eating crackers and drinking limeade (which I willingly shared with the kids whenever they ran over with a sip), watching my boys play and be themselves.

I'm so glad I can give them this: the time to just be and play and learn and grow.

Worksheets Galore

Colwyn's been in kind of a worksheet mood lately. I printed off a bunch of things from Enchanted Learning and he did them all really well. These are some that he did a day or two ago. On this one, the only one he needed help with to figure out the pattern was the bottom one. I was really surprised that he did so well on it.



Colwyn counted the bats, then I held his hand so we could form the numbers. This is also how we write his name on the worksheets. He wanted to work from the bottom up on this one, and I thought of how nice it was that nobody was forcing him to go in a set order to follow along with the class.



Ah, don't you just love my artwork? I wanted to see if he knew longer vs. shorter, which he obviously does. They're circled twice because we went back and circled the shorter ones after. Again, it's nice to be able to let him follow his whims.



Colwyn loves mazes. We did about four or five of them in a workbook today because he asked if he could do his "work." Sometimes he purposely goes down the wrong path so he can say, "Oh, no! Look at that! I have to go backwards!"



We did some other worksheets today but I didn't want to bore you with too many pictures.

Today the kids engaged in doll play for a good half hour. Colwyn dressed up in a kangaroo costume that has a little joey in the pouch, so he pretended to be the kangaroo mommy (normally I refer to him as the daddy when he plays with dolls, but obviously, only mommy kangaroos have pouches) and gave his joey milk, baby food, and a binky. Lachlann also played with his dolls quite a bit, it's so cute to see him feeding the babies and smacking his lips. He pushed the stroller around for quite a while (a bit faster than is acceptable with real babies, heh), then put the babies to sleep in his bed. It's interesting to see how differently the boys play with dolls vs. how I remember my sister and I did.. when Colwyn was giving the joey a binky, I asked if the joey was upset. Colwyn sad, "Yes, he's scared that the T. Rex is going to get him!" Any time Colwyn says T. Rex, in any context, it's always in a deep, scary voice. I don't think my sister and I ever mixed dolls and dinosaurs. :)

Oh, and we finally got around to correcting the color of two of the planets on our space display. I told Colwyn how I thought that we painted Mercury and Venus the wrong color, and asked if he would come help me find out what colors they're supposed to be. We sat down at the computer, and he watched me look up the website that I had found explaining the true colors of the planets. I explained how when we don't know something, that we can use a book or the computer to find out what the answer was. We talked about how silly we were to make a mistake, but how we just had to fix it and it would be all better. He got a kick out of the fact that we messed up.

While it's important for me to teach the kids some facts and skills, I think my most important job in homeschooling my kids is to teach them how to learn on their own. I don't want them to be the type of person to say, "Oh, gee, I don't know what such-and-such means, oh well" - I want them to go and find out. So hopefully this whole fixing-the-planets thing is the first of many "lessons" in how to learn.

The Boys Get Wet

I don't talk too much about Lachlann in this blog because, to be honest, I'm not really doing much "homeschooling" with him. Not that I'm doing any school-y academic work with Colwyn, but I do make more of an effort to plan fun learning activities for him, where as with Lachlann, I just play. He is, after all, only 18 months old.

One of the "enrichment" things that I do with Lachlann (and Colwyn), though, is water play. In the summer, water play is easy.. but in the winter, it requires a bit more work. At least once a week, I lay a few towels on the kitchen floor and set out several big bowls of water and as many interesting utensils as I can spare. The boys have tons of fun with this activity. Just so ya know, kids that engage in frequent water and sand play are more likely to have better language skills.



In other water-related news.. we took a 45 minute walk today down near Norwood Pond. I say near because we never actually made it there.. turns out it's a much longer walk when you have two kids and it's icy. The weather was really nice, though, close to 50 degrees, so we went for it. The kids had a really good time, despite getting wet, as did Maddy, who we actually let off leash for a bit. We didn't see much in the way of critters, but we did hear a woodpecker. We talked a bit about what woodpeckers do, and when we got home, looked up a picture on the Internet.





So Colwyn has resumed his interest in space. I finally got him to glue down the planets, sun, and appropriate labels. He really likes pointing to planets and either telling me which ones they are or asking me to identify them. I don't have a picture, because unfortunately, I realized that two planets are painted the wrong color. Apparently, a lot of the pictures you see in the paper or on websites are artificially colored. So, I found the right colors, and as soon as I feel like bringing out the paints, I'll explain it to Colwyn and we'll fix them. I figure it'll be a good lesson in correcting your mistakes, and in how to research things. I may "stage" looking up the real colors online.

But we have done a few other cool things. The most recent was when we dropped objects into a container full of baking soda to see how moon craters are made. We did this after watching a Naked Science episode about the moon. Colwyn really liked this activity. Here he is dropping an "asteroid" onto the "moon":



And here he is shaking the container to clear the craters:



Right now Doug is reading Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I'm Off to the Moon! by Dan Yaccarino. I've got some other recommendations for good books about space, so I'll try looking for those at our next library trip.

And just for the fun of it, here's a quick picture of the boys dressing up in Doug's t-shirts. Colwyn wore his all day, and insisted that I call him Dad. It was kind of weird saying, "Here Dad, let me wipe your bum" and various other things I would never say to Doug. :)

Dinos: To Your Rockets!

We seem to be making a transition from the dinosaur obsession to a space obsession. Or (hopefully) if it's not a real transition, Colwyn is at least making room in his busy life for two obsessions.

I think I mentioned before that Colwyn likes the Magic Schoolbus episodes that have to do with space. He's also really liked the Little Einstein's episode where they visit the planets. Lately he's been pretending to be in a rocket and will take off to visit Mars or something. So, I decided to try to do a bit more with this interest. We're making a styrofoam ball model of the solar system, using one of those giant cardboard displays. Today we painted the display board black (and talked briefly about why space is black), and started painting the styrofoam balls I had cut in half. So far we have the sun, Earth, Mars, Saturn, and Neptune.



But dinosaurs are still a feature in much of Colwyn's play. Last night we used a 50% off coupon to get him a nice dinosaur puzzle at AC Moore. It's a 48 piece Melissa and Doug one. Here he is searching for that elusive piece:



Afterwards, he had to "hide" from the Allosaurus:



He really is quite good at puzzles, and only rarely needs help. Sometimes we prompt him with observations like, "That puzzle piece you're holding looks like it has part of a spotted dinosaur on it. Where might that go?" Reminding him to look more carefully at the piece in his hand is usually all the help he needs.

Actually, my mom and I got into a bit of a argument over the puzzle yesterday, as she insisted on giving him way too much help, or doing pieces for him, or cheering him excessively. I know that seems like a stupid thing to argue over, but the way I look at it.. what is he learning when someone tells him exactly where to put a puzzle piece? He's capable of doing it perfectly well on his own. As for the cheering.. we certainly tell Colwyn he's doing great, but we try to keep our level of praise consistent with his level of achievement. To us, putting an easy puzzle piece into place merits only a "Nice" if anything. Harder pieces, ones that he has to really think about, or finishing the whole puzzle gets more praise, like "Wow, Colwyn, look at how well you did. Aren't you so proud of yourself?" We really want him to have intrinsic motivation to do things.. that is, we don't want him completing a puzzle so that we'll praise him. We want him to feel proud of himself because he thinks he did well, not because we heaped on the praise. Plus.. I think laying it on thick when he hasn't worked hard for something kind of cheapens the comments, you know?

Well, anyway.

I tried to teach Colwyn to play Red Light, Green Light today (gotta get in PE somewhere, right?). We've done something similar in the grocery store before, where I'll say "Red Light!" if he runs too far ahead, and say "Green Light" when we catch up. He follows those instructions just fine, but today he completely ignored all my "Red Light" commands. I think he just really felt like being three. :)

We're having Thomas and Aidan over again tomorrow, and on Thursday we're going to Jen's house to bake bread with Calvin and Miles (Thomas and Aidan will be there, too). Wednesday is our other playgroup, and we're going to Lisa's house since it's school vacation week. Hopefully we'll be able to paint the rest of the planets sometime over the next few days and glue them onto the display board.

There's Order in the Universe

We were cleaning up Colwyn's room today, and I asked him to pick up his dinosaurs. I told him to put the biggest dinosaurs on one side, and the littlest ones on the other. This is what he did:



Alright, Colwyn!

And while I'm at it, here is a picture of the playstands that Doug built for the boys. He still needs to finish them up a bit, but as they were supposed to be from Santa and still weren't done on December 24th, he was a little rushed. ;) They look great, though, and the boys love them.



We had a great playgroup today at Imajine That! in Lawrence. Lachlann really seemed like such a big boy while we were there. I'll write more about it in my other blog (note the links off to the side) tomorrow maybe, as it didn't really have much to do with homeschooling. But my little baby sure is growing up.

Playgroup, Gumdrops, and Dinos

A few times lately Colwyn has asked to play with gumdrops and cups of water. At first, I had no idea what he was talking about. But I eventually figured it out.. he wanted to play with eyedroppers and cups of water. He likes it when I tint the water so he can experiment with dropping red water into clear water and so on. It's also great for his fine motor skills. And he likes making art with it, too.. he drips colored water onto white paper, and it dries quite nicely, actually.



He also got a new states puzzle and a globe. The states puzzle is a bit advanced for him, but he likes point out which states have planes or buffalos or whatever. And the globe, while small, will be great for pointing out places we read about.





We had a Heritage themed playgroup for our Pre-Homeschooling Co-op today. We all brought food that is symbolic of our heritage, and the kids played while the moms ate. ;) Well, the kids ate some, too. Colwyn and Lachlann seemed a bit more at ease this time, since they've met the other kids twice now. We're hoping to have Dani's kids, Thomas and Aidan, over next week. Hopefully that'll give Colwyn the chance to get to know Thomas a bit better. He always seems to do much better one-on-one than in large groups.

I think the Co-op will be really nice once it gets going. We'll be able to set up "classes" for the kids where if one mom is really good at math, she'll do a math project with all the kids one week, and next week, another mom who is great at science will do a science project with all the kids. That way the boys will get experience working in a group and taking direction from another adult. We're also planning on signing Lachlann up for swimming lessons (I think at the Lydon Aquatic Center) in the spring, and Colwyn will probably take a sports class at the Y where he'll learn about a few different sports.

Tomorrow we're going to our regular playgroup at Imajine That in Lawrence. We've never been, but I hear it's really good. Colwyn's looking forward to seeing his friends, and I'm looking foward to getting out of the house again. I know it won't be long before the kids are sick again, and I want to take advantage of their health while I can.