Despite being very pregnant, exhausted all the time, and so sore, we've still been managing to do quite a lot as far as 'lessons' go. Colwyn has made a lot of progress in his math workbook.. he's gotten through counting by 5's and 10's (which he already knew, really), subtraction, and telling time. The time unit was simplified because it came before counting by 5's, so he mainly knows how to tell the hour and if it's half past. Lachlann picked that up as well, and even though our only analog clock in the whole house has Roman numerals, they can still tell what hour it is.

Colwyn's doing great at reading, getting more confidence and all. His main problem now is that he'll guess too quick, rather than actually paying attention to the words. We have to remind him now and then to focus on the words. Lachlann is great at sounding words out, if he knows what sounds each letter makes. He's spotty on letter sounds, so I'm going to try and dig up our old LeapFrog videos.. but still, if I just tell him what each letter says, he can sound words out pretty well. Not reading, but doing quite well for a 4 year old.

In my last post, I hinted that early humans might be a big topic for us, and boy, have they. Colwyn is just so fascinated that we've been spending a lot of time on it. We've done most of the links given in the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History, we've watched various documentaries I've found on NatGeo and PBS, and we've picked up supplemental books from the library (like the DK book on Early Humans). We had been planning to do a science day about it but I was sick then, so our last science day before the new baby comes will involve some caveman role playing. I've got a couple games all worked out, and Colwyn can't wait.

We finally got the deck washed off (the chickens have been free ranging all winter, and they spend a lot of time on our deck looking for handouts.. thus, lots of chicken poop on the deck) and refilled the bird feeders, so for the last couple of days, we've been IDing birds that visit our house. We've also had a few really warm days and we've been out as much as possible. We're due to have another stretch of good weather starting tomorrow, so we've got lots of park playdates planned.

We've been watching some interesting shows on TV, which has led to fun discussions and games. The first was a show where a team of archaeologists tried to recreate an Egyptian sea-going barge. Colwyn and Lachlann were really into and asked lots of great questions. Later they played with blocks and created their own versions. That led us to try some engineering challenges for our science day this month. I love the website Think! Engineering. We tried building a few different bridges using the supply lists given, and we also tried the catapult (which we sucked at).

Another day, we watched Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, which we probably haven't seen in a year or more. Colwyn especially liked the parts with the hominids and Neanderthals, so I think we may skip the dinosaur section of the World History book so we can move onto human evolution. After all, they've been studying dinosaurs for years.

Lachlann surprised me a week or two ago by doing some simple addition and subtraction orally, in his play. A while later I asked him a few questions like, "Hey, I want to bake some cookies, and I need 6 eggs, but only have 3. How many more do I need?" and "I bought 2 donuts and Auntie bought 2 donuts, how many do we have altogether?" He was able to do them all pretty quickly, in his head. Like I said in my last post, he observes Colwyn's math lessons most of the time.. I just didn't realize he was getting that much out of it. It makes me feel better because the other day, my mom seemed surprised that he still wasn't writing his name. Right now, I have him cutting paper as his lesson--I'm trying to come up with fun fine motor activities for him so writing will hopefully come easier.

I checked some of the books Colwyn's been reading to determine his reading level. Turns out he can pretty easily read at the second grade level. He was quite pleased with himself when I told him that. It's normally something I'd keep to myself, but he tends to get down on himself for not reading perfectly like Mommy and Daddy do, so I thought he could use the boost.

Post-Holidays

I love the holidays, really I do. But each year it's sort of a relief to be through with the craziness.

So Colwyn is starting on subtraction in his Singapore Earlybird 2B workbook. He's done great with addition and seemed to get subtraction immediately. It reinforces my feeling that the practical, hands-on, incidental math we do daily really helps. I almost feel like the workbook is just a way of checking to see what he already knows. When he pipes up with, "Mom, you gave me seven pieces of chicken, I ate five and just have two left, can I be all done?" - do we really need a workbook? But it is nice to not have to draw up my own worksheets so he can learn the symbols, I'll admit to that. Lachlann is working on learning how to write numbers. His recognition is great, but his pencil (well, dry erase marker in our case) grip is horrible, and it makes him not enjoy writing. We've been playing with plates of flour or sugar and drawing numbers (shapes, letters, etc) with our fingers. I'd love to let him do that with shaving cream, but Doug doesn't use any.. maybe I'll have to grab some at Target. Lach observes most of Colwyn's math 'lessons' so I'd be surprised if he didn't breeze through subsequent lessons.

Colwyn's reading is coming along really well. It's wonderful to see how proud he is of himself when he reads through an Elephant and Piggiebook. The only time he really experiences difficulty is when his own impatience or irritation gets in his way.. then even an easy word can seem hard. That's when we usually take a break and come back to it later. For book club, we just finished The Five Lost Aunts of Harriet Bean. That was a big hit with Colwyn. Last month was Welcome to the Bed and Biscuit, which was very sweet. We ended up missing the actual book club meeting that month, though, as the kids were sick.

Our other work has been haphazard, at best. We're slowly working through the Early Life section of The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History, which has included working on learning the names of the continents and oceans. We've explored some of the neat websites on arthropods, and Colwyn liked making the connection at the Museum of Science when we saw fossils of arthropods. The kids got a calendar for 2010, so we talk about that daily. In the process, I've learned that, yes, Colwyn is firm on the days of the week, and yes, he knows his cardinal numbers pretty well. The months are new to him, but no biggie. He likes knowing what day it is, and we draw little symbols or write easy words on days we have stuff planned, so he'll tell me, "Mom, we have two more days until Lego Club!"

What else? We've worked on our Secret Agent social studies sporadically. Our Earth Scouts meeting last month dealt with the water cycle (briefly) and habitats. The kids all created terrariums, which was much more fun than I expected. The mess was exactly what I expected. Thankfully all the moms are great about helping pick up. We also did caroling at a local nursing home, which was a great experience. I was surprised at how Colwyn was really into memorizing the words to the songs, he did really well. The kids were a big hit with the elderly residents as well as the staff. For science day last month, we created a diorama of a dinosaur habitat, as well as Play Dough dinosaurs. The diorama included a volcano, which we set off with baking soda and vinegar. The kids loved that part, and with some foresight on my part, it wasn't very messy at all.

We've got a bunch of stuff coming up this month, it should be exciting. Hopefully I'll get better at keeping track.

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. :)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by Colwyn Raum

Voldemort killed Harry Potter's mommy and daddy. And then Hagrid came and got Harry Potter and then brought him to Dumbledore. And then Dumbledore brought Harry Potter to the Dursleys'. And then Hagrid came and Harry got what he needed to go to Hogwarts. The Dursleys brought him to the train station. And then the train took Harry Potter to Hogwarts. And then Harry Potter practiced flying his broomstick and got to play Quidditch. Malfoy is a student and he is very mean to Harry. Harry gets in trouble sometimes. Like when Harry and Hermione were going to give the dragon to Charlie's friends and before that, Hagrid said, "Mommy misses you!" because Hagrid thinks that he is the dragon's mommy. And then Hagrid told Harry Potter and Ron and Hermione how to get past Fluffy. And then they got past Fluffy and they had to play chess and in order to win the queen had to knock out Ron. So Ron got knocked out. And then Hermione drank the biggest bottle that let her go back into the purple flames and Harry Potter drank the littlest bottle to go in the black fire. And he ran into the black fire. And then Harry Potter saw someone that wasn't Voldemort and wasn't Snape. It was Quirrel. And he was trying to take the Stone to give it to Voldemort. But then Harry Potter looked in the mirror and he got the Sorcerer's Stone. Harry got knocked out when Voldemort tried to have Quirrel kill him. Then Dumbledore came and rescued Harry and brought him to the hospital that almost looked like a candy shop. His friends gave him the candy. Dumbledore told Harry that now the Stone is destroyed. Dumbledore told Harry that his mom saved him and that she loved him. And then they got a lot of points back at the feast and that meant that Gryffindor won the House Cup.

Week in Review

This week has been a pretty slow week for us. Doug and I have been really sick (the kids just had sniffles), so I haven't been very motivated to do much.

On Tuesday, we got the boys' new bunk beds delivered, so that was an interesting experience. We did our usual reading lesson, and then because Doug was home sick, he helped them do a science kit we had - digging for dinosaur fossils. The kids have done similar activities before, but they still enjoyed it.

Wednesday was our big apple picking field trip and it went so well. I was really dreading it, because when I went as a kid, the branches were all so high and it was a real pain. So, I was imagining having to lift the kids up to pick apples. But we were pleasantly surprised when we got off the hayride to see that the branches were almost brushing the ground, and they were heavily laden with fruit. I think it took the boys maybe five minutes tops to fill their bags. When the hayride dropped us off back near the farm store, we got to have cider donuts and cider, and then each of the kids got some animal feed. I figured the boys wouldn't be interested since they typically hate farm animals (except our chickens, of course), but they ran off ahead of me and fed the chickens and the sheep. Fiona, for her part, loved the pigs and did not want to leave them. She kept oinking, though her version sounds more like a Frenchman laughing (ie - 'Hon, hon, hon!'). It was very sweet. When we got home, we did a reading lesson and called it a day, I was exhausted.

Thursday was a park day, so we met at Endicott Park. There were a few moms there, all new members with only toddlers. It was interesting trying to make conversation since they don't have any older kids, but we managed. That afternoon, Colwyn did his math workbooks (which also included reading, as he's working on the number words). Then we did a page from his history book, though it was more earth sciences than history - composition of the earth, plate tectonics, continental drift.

On Friday, we did more reading, but mostly had a lazy day. In the afternoon, though, we decided to go into business selling eggs (we have a surplus from our chickens). The boys made signs and I filled a cooler with eggs, which we set out in the front yard. I told the boys that they could keep any money people gave us, figuring that would be a good way to move into learning about money. We also gave our neighbors some eggs as a gift, but they surprised us and gave us $5 when they returned the basket. The boys were thrilled!

Week in Review

Last weekend, we went to King Richard's Faire. We didn't think we were going to be able to go, since we usually get free tickets, but our 'source' moved away. Thankfully, we lucked out with a new 'source' and got enough free passes for all of us (admission is normally $22 per person or something like that). We watched a bunch of different shows, including two jousts, and had a really great time.

On Monday and Tuesday, we did reading and history (reading from the Encyclopedia of World History). We also went bowling with our homeschool group on Tuesday, which was a huge success.. we had a few families show up unexpectedly, families that we haven't seen since the spring. Hopefully everyone's gearing up for the 'school year' and will be more active. On Wednesday, we went on a cruise up and down the coast between Manchester and Marblehead with Mahi Cruises out of Salem Willows. I don't know that the kids listened to a whole lot of the narration, but it was definitely a fun experience. When we got home, we did more reading and did 'cookie math' - which is basically just us baking cookies, but the kids do learn about measurements.

On Thursday, we had Calvin over for a playdate in the morning, then did more reading and worked on our journal entries for this month's book club. The books this month were Friday was book club and was (surprisingly) a huge hit, as well. It was surprising because we tried out something new.. instead of all the moms sitting with the big kids while they presented journals, but the meeting being mostly free play, Jen had a few activities planned and also did a lengthy circle time where they read two books and had a discussion. While all that was going on, those of us with little ones hung out in the playroom so the babies wouldn't be disruptive. I was expecting Colwyn and Lachlann to resist, since they're normally very shy at book club, they they did really well. They sat for the whole circle time and even shared quite a bit of info. I was super impressed.

After book club, we came home and worked on a part of their math workbooks I'd been putting off. It involves pouring water from one container into many smaller ones, or filling up one big container with several smaller cups of water. We've done that activity before, but for some reason it came up again. I'd been putting it off because it's involved and makes a big mess, but we did it during Fiona's naptime, so it was fine. After that, they each did a few pages in their math workbooks, and Lachlann actually finished his Earlybird 1A book! Woohoo, Lachlann!

Week in Review

Our week was pretty full this week, but not nearly as full as next week's will be. We did reading lessons most days, two days of math, and three days of reading from The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia Of World History. We did cooking math one day (brownies, yum). We had health lessons on two days, when both Lachlann and I had physicals.

Friday was our first Earth Scouts meeting, and it was a big hit. At first, I was counting myself as very smart for not inviting everyone over to my house for the meeting, but that morning as I was trying to pack everything, load it and the kids into the car, and get everything into the library, I realized that I was wrong. :) Luckily, the space at the library was just perfect for us and the staff was super nice. While we waited for everyone to arrive, the kids decorated the folders they'll use to keep their journaling pages together. Then we sat in circle and listened to the first Rosie Emery song (I was expecting earthy, hippie type music, but 'Cooperation' emulated a hip-hop, rap-ish song and was a little embarrassing). Then we talked about what Earth Scouts do - the kids enjoyed listing everything they could possibly think of that lives on the Earth. We did a few cooperation games next, with much laughing. Then the kids had a snack. Once snacktime was over, the kids made their individual pictures depicting our Earth community that we made into our Earth Scouts banner. While they did that, I demonstrated the woven belts for the moms, and that was about it. All the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves and were well behaved. Fiona, who I had forgotten to bring toys for, entertained herself quite well for over an hour and a half, with very little help from me. I was so impressed.

I think Earth Scouts will be a big hit for this year, and can't wait until our next meeting. :)

We also made two trips to the park this week.. Lynch Park with Charlotte and Sam, and Stagefort with the homeschoolers. This is my favorite time of year for park days.. the ground is dry, there are a lot of overcast days, and the temperature is almost always cool. Woohoo for fall!

Week in Review

Last week, we more or less stuck with all our regular activities. We did two days of math, two days of history, and one day of social studies. Colwyn is especially interested in the books we have about ancient Egypt, specifically mummification. I'm going to look up other activities we can do relating to ancient Egypt. Colwyn did a reading lesson each day and Lachlann did about four. Colwyn's really coming on with reading.. he can read a bunch of small words quite easily, and is slowly building up his sight words.

For outings we went mini-golfing one day at Richardson's and talked a bit about dairy farming and nutrition. We also had lunch at the mall another day. It was rainy for most of the week which made it difficult to get out. Unfortunately, this week is supposed to be much of the same, which sucks.

We had our big homeschool BBQ at our house on Saturday. There were 28 people, including our family. Everyone had a great time swimming, playing, eating, and socializing. Doug said it was the best BBQ we'd ever had, in part because everyone talked positively and supportively about things we're doing - gardening, chickens, homeschooling, homebirthing, etc. I commented to Jen at one point while surveying all our guests at how great it was to see so many people doing the same things we were. All the other moms commented later about how great it was for their husbands to get to see families similar to their own - us moms see that regularly, but the dads aren't so lucky.

Week in Review

This week we've done our usual 'lessons.' I call them lessons but they're totally optional, and Colwyn gets to choose which ones he does on any given day. His motivation, other than his natural enjoyment in doing these activities, is time on the Wii. I'd been hesitant to buy a Wii because I'm worried that the kids will spend too much time playing on it. But the boys were more than willing to make a deal that in order to play video games, Colwyn has to do two 'lessons' and Lachlann has to do one. Lachlann's lesson can count as observing or helping with Colwyn's, depending on what it is. They can choose between math, reading, social studies, and history.

For math, we're still working with the Singapore workbooks in addition to real life experience. Colwyn is about halfway through 1B and Lachlann is halfway through 1A. They're not expensive workbooks, but they'll add up over time and multiple children, so we use a page protector and a dry erase marker so they'll hopefully last for all the kids. They both have been breezing through them, doing at least five or six pages at a time. They did math on Tuesday and Friday; on Friday, Colwyn was up to learning about even and odd numbers, and skip counting.

For reading, we've been using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
. It's not the most fun, but it gets the job done and Colwyn likes that each lesson takes under 10 minutes. He's consistently able to sound out easy words. Lachlann has even showed some interested and on Thursday, I did the first lesson with him. He did the second on Friday and enjoyed it, even asking for more (though unfortunately, Fiona woke up before we could go onto the third).

We signed up for a great program through Highlights that teaches social studies. It's called Top Secret Adventures and because it's meant for kids 7-12, I have to help him with it quite a bit. Mainly, he needs help with reading.. the puzzles he can solve on his own when I give him directions. The first package was for Australia and we finished that on Thursday. Then We started the next one, which features Mexico.

We're using The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child: Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor for history, supplemented by lots of books from the library. For the prehistory section, we used Stone Age Boy and Everyday Life in Prehistory, among others. For the second chapter on early Egypt, which we just started this week, we checked Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Ancient Egypt and How the Amazon Queen Fought the Prince of Egypt out from the library, among others.

This is all in addition to the regular stuff we do, like art, science, literature, etc, which are done more loosely as the kids feel like it and as topics come up.

Our homeschool group was comparitively inactive this week, with only a park day that we attended on Thursday. We went to Lynch and had a picnic, and the kids enjoyed playing on the playground equipment. We saw Alex and Mila, Simon and Satchel, and two new friends, Morgaine and Ronan.

The kids also spent quite a bit of time helping me in the garden, which not only makes my job easier, but teaches them about agriculture and life cycles of plants, and the niches that bugs and other critters fill in our local ecology.

Caught in the Whirlwind

Our lives are so busy, so full of fun and activity, that I shudder to think of what it would be like trying to cram preschool and kindergarten in there. Everything we do with the children is stuff we would probably do with them anyway, excepting the workbook pages Colwyn asks for (I imagine if he were forced to do workbook pages all day, he wouldn't ask me for any).

Colwyn and Lachlann have been really productive on the art front. They draw and write incessantly. Lachlann's writing is mostly just scribbles, reminiscent of a heart monitor's readout, but Colwyn does a pretty good job. His favorite is making love cards, which usually include a nice drawing as well as some combination of the words, "Colwyn" "Mommy" "Amma" and "Lve" (he often leaves out the o). The other day he drew a remarkably detailed Captain Rex, which I meant to save but might have gotten tossed by accident. We live with a near constant litter of construction paper, it's hard to remember what should be saved.

This past week we went to tour the Salem Post Office with our homeschool group. It was the first field trip I'd planned for the group, and I was super anxious about it. Homeschoolers can be a bit.. flaky.. at times, and I was afraid nobody would show, and there I'd be at the Postmaster's door, looking like a total idiot. Well, thankfully, we only had one no-show, and the kids were all super well-behaved. I think the moms learned more than the kids, but not by much. Colwyn, of course, said that the only thing he learned was that post office workers like to go to Dunkin Donuts, just like us. Yeah, he's at that age.

We go to Jen's house every other week for book club. The boys have always played really well there during one-on-one playdates, but for the last four book club meetings, they've refused to play with the other kids. I suspect that Lachlann would, except that he doesn't want to leave Colwyn alone. They just sit with me in the living room, which is fine since they don't really complain, but it leaves me less able to talk freely. We plan on continuing to attend, in the hopes that they'll eventually get used to the group. I think part of the problem is that we now tend to have mainly 5-6 year old boys, and as you can imagine, it gets rather rowdy. I don't want to push them, but I also want to make sure they're exposed to groups like this. It's a delicate balance, and I don't always feel like I'm doing a good job.

More Literacy

Book club is going well. We've had a bit of a difficult time having regular meetings, as most members have had sick kids at various points over the last month. But we finished most of Little House in the Big Woods and did some work in the journal. Colwyn drew a picture of a panther in a tree, ready to attack Pa (or Pa's father, I forget how the story went). Then he dictated some to me, just about his favorite parts of the book and how our family is alike/different from the family in the book. Then we read My Father's Dragon (and then the second book, and we're now in the third book in the series). Colwyn drew a picture of Elmer Elevator with tangerines in his hands and his knapsack on the ground, with lollipops, hairbows, and a toothbrush inside. Then he drew a separate picture of a rhino in a pond. We finally made it to Jen's house for book club yesterday and showed them our journal, and Calvin showed us his. It was pretty fun. The next book we're going to read is Stuart Little. All in all, we're having a good time, and I'm proud of Colwyn's ability to concentrate on the chapter books.

Colwyn has also been continuing to progress at sounding out words. It's really quite amazing to watch. He brings me notes all the time.. sometimes they're just scribbles (when he has a lot to say), but other times they're pretty good approximations of names or labels for pictures. I get the feeling that this is the way he'll end up teaching himself to read.. he'll learn how to spell, first. What a funny little boy.

Emerging Literacy

I don't know where I got this idea from, but when I remember, I'll sometimes ask Colwyn to write me a note. Usually, I ask him to write down what he wants for lunch or dinner and bring it to me while I'm putting the baby to sleep. He had just been getting the first letter and occasionally a middle letter right, but today when I asked him to do it, he wrote "PESA," which I think is a pretty good approximation of "pizza."

Our first real book club meeting is this Friday. We met two weeks ago to discuss and plan a bit, and so we've been working on reading Little House in the Big Woods. It's an interesting book.. there's talk about guns, butchering animals, spanking, and other stuff like that. Colwyn really likes it, and I've only skipped over a few things (like references to "Injuns"). We're going out tomorrow to buy a journal and then I'll see what he wants to do with it. On Friday, assuming we're all healthy (we're recovering from colds), we'll go share with the other kids.

Fledgling Co-Op

Our homeschool group is going through some changes. Now that it's not nice enough for us to just meet up at the park, attendance has been changing and I've had to reevaluate what the group needs and what I can do to keep everyone coming. Jen and I talked about it and we decided to set up something along the lines of a co-op. Jen is going to be in charge of a book club geared towards younger kids. They'll meet every other Friday to do an activity based on a book we've all read. I think she's going to go for beginner chapter books.. the sort of things that parents can read to their kids if the kids aren't reading on their own. We did a bit of brainstorming about what kind of activities we might be able to do.

On the alternating Fridays, we're going to meet at my house and do either science experiments or craft projects. Today was the first meeting at our house and only one family showed up, but that was actually great since it was a nice way to ease into it. We let the kids play for a little while to warm up, then I lead an experiment about color dispersion and molecular properties. The only problem was that Fiona was fussy, so I was trying to soothe and entertain her while also keeping the activity moving along. Robin was a great help setting and clearing up, and we got to chat for a while, too.

Hopefully with some cross-posting to other groups, we'll get a bigger turnout and it'll end up being something that everyone looks forward to attending.

Picking It Up Along the Way

Colwyn is making progress both in reading and in math, without us really having to do any work. For reading, all we really do is read books, visit the library, and have occasional conversations about how to sound out words, what letters words start with, etc. From the library, he's figured out how they arrange books, and will look at the bottom of books for the first three letters of the author's last name. He's pretty good at finding books if I say, "Yaccarino. Yyyyy-accarino. Sounds like a Y, right? Y-aaaaa-ccarino. Try looking for YAC." He'll also give me letter/sound hints if we're playing a guessing game, and he's usually accurate, too. I love that he's experimenting with letters, sounds, and words with no pressure, in ways that interest him. I'm thinking of doing some note-writing.. me writing him short notes, and asking him to write me short notes (like, "Colwyn, I have to go change Fiona's diaper, but could you try writing down what you want for lunch?"). It doesn't really matter what he writes, just that he tries. I think it might provide him with some valuable knowledge, so long as he's into it.

He's also learned how to do simple addition and subtraction in his head. I don't know that he'd have the faintest idea of what to do with a written math problem, but if we're talking about, say, cookies, and I ask him, "If everyone in our family has a cookie, but the dog eats three of them, how many cookies will we have?" he can get the answer pretty quickly, and without even counting on his fingers. I was super impressed when I realized he could do this.

I love these validating moments. :)

Signage

I picked up some John Holt books at the library and have been reading through them. They're very interesting and he brings up a lot of good points, though I don't agree with him on everything. It was a funny coincidence, though, when I read one afternoon about him making labels for objects around the house to encourage familiarity with written words, and the next day Colwyn came up to me and said, "We're going to sell our candy. We need signs that say we sell candy."

So I readily agreed and within a few minutes we were set up at the table with crayons and index cards. The candy selling was forgotten, but they did make several signs--Colwyn with lots of M's and hearts, and Lachlann with lots of 'changing colors.' For my part, I cut about five index cards in half and wrote words on them like, 'door,' 'window,' 'stove,' and 'bedroom.' I gave them one at a time to Colwyn with some tape and he had a blast taping them up where they should go. He also taped up his own signs, and Lachlann taped up some of his.





That was a few days ago and Colwyn is still having fun reading the signs. I'll see him running his finger along under the word and saying it aloud. Too cute.

Yikes.

I know, I know. It's been way too long. To be completely honest, we haven't been doing a whole lot of homeschool-y stuff lately.

Well, that's not entirely true. We've been busy, but so much of we do is educational but isn't directed homeschooling, so sometimes I forget that I should be blogging about this stuff.

As for 'real' schoolish stuff, we really haven't done too much in the last month or so. We do the occasional page in our Singapore Math book, we write letters/draw pictures and send them to friends and family, we watch Between the Lions and Zula Patrol, and have endless discussions about what letters words start with.

We did get to take a fun tour of the Danvers police station, which I think Kristine and I may have liked better than the kids, but whatever. Doug and I also took the boys to the Beverly fire station's open house, which was really fantastic. The kids got to climb in fire trucks and ambulances several times, they got to watch firefighters slide down poles, and they got to examine CPR dummies. Colwyn got to climb in a van filled with gear for water rescues, so he got to check out the wet suits, flippers, a giant motor, flash lights, masks, and all sorts of good stuff. We also brought home bags overflowing with goodies. But the best part of all was the jaws of life demonstration. We got to watch the firefighters totally dismantle an old car, and.. wow. It was so cool. Colwyn really got that they were practicing what they would do if there was a bad car accident and someone was trapped inside, so that was good.

But, like I said.. that's about it. We've been doing playdates here and there, and we try to make it to storytime every week. We've been keeping up our every-other-week library trip and we've gotten some great books lately. I'm still keeping track of everything we check out in an Excel spreadsheet, in preparation to reporting to the school district, although that's still two years away.

Colwyn's birthday is tomorrow, so we're planning on going to Imajine That and meeting up with Mary, Charlotte, and Sam. Then on Thursday, we have a playdate scheduled with Heidi and her kids, who are also homeschoolers. Then on Friday, we're hoping to get together with Jen and her boys, which will be our first intentional playdate since her baby was born two months ago. Colwyn is psyched to see Calvin, and I'm looking forward to obsessing over homeschooling and childbirth and all the other fun stuff we haven't gotten to talk about lately. I also planned a meeting for next week for the homeschooling group I'm starting up. Dani said she's going to attend, and hopefully some others will too. I'll mention it to Heidi and Jen this week and maybe they can come too. We'll see.

Reading!

Colwyn is sounding out words! I'm so proud, probably more than an unschooling mom should be, but hey, this kid is fantastic.

Okay, so it's not like he's going to be reading books on his own anytime soon, and to be honest, most of the sounding out he does isn't looking at letters, it's me saying, "sss eh ttt" and he says, "set!" But when we play a matching game with these foam letters we have, I'll point at the 's' and he'll say "sss" and when I point at the 'e' he'll say "eh" and so on. Then he says it fast. Sometimes he's unsure and will ask me to tell him what sound the letter makes, but when he does that, if I prompt him with, "the 'h' says..." he'll always fill it in for me.

If I can get my act together tomorrow, we'll start working on Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.

Fan Mail

Following the advice of Esmé Raji Codell in her book How to Get Your Child to Love Reading, we've always included the author's name when we start reading a book (like, "Okay, here's Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen"). So Colwyn knows which authors he likes best, and often impresses nearby librarians when they hear him saying, "Oh, let's look for a book by David Shannon now."

So, anyway. His favorite author BY FAR is Dan Yaccarino. He absolutely loves Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I'm Off to the Moon, and we have a few of his books at home in addition to the ones we get regularly from the library. The other night, at about 11:30pm, I mentioned something to my husband about Dan Yaccarino, so he had the bright idea to see if he was going to be doing any book signings that we might be able to attend. We ended up spending a good 15 minutes browsing his website, and I got the bright idea to ask Colwyn if he wanted to send him a letter (we try to write letters/draw pictures to send to friends/family once a week).

Yesterday I went to look up his address on the website and couldn't find it, so I emailed him.. nervously, shyly, because in our house, Dan Yaccarino is like a HUGE celebrity. And today he emailed me back.

I was beyond thrilled. The kids are sleeping but I actually called my husband at work and practically shouted over the phone that Dan Yaccarino himself emailed us. Funnily enough, Colwyn had asked him a question (he dictated to me) about a picture he saw of Dan Yaccarino dressed up as an astronaut, and it turns out that he retired from NASA to write/illustrate children's books. Colwyn will be so impressed.

Yes, I know, I'm such a dork. :)

Reading Games

We haven't been doing too much this week, 'cause the kids are sick with yet another cold. It's getting ridiculous.. this is August, not February!

One of the new things we have done is a reading game I devised. At the dollar store, they have foam puzzles with lower case letters, so I bought one of those. At home, I took a bunch of index cards and wrote words like cat, hat, sat, dog, fog, log, and so on.. three or four words with each vowel. I tried to get a good mix of consonants in there, too. So, I show Colwyn one of the cards, and he gets to look through all the foam letters (we remove them from the puzzle) and match them up. I try to be careful to only use letter sounds to identify the letters, like "Oh, look, you still need the 'buh' - wonder where it is?" In a little while, we'll try out a program called "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons." For now, Colwyn's enjoying our new game and watching Leapfrog's Letter Factory and Between the Lions on PBS.

Speaking of TV shows, we finally found Zula Patrol on one of our PBS channels. I'd heard it was really great for introducing science concepts to preschoolers, and it's actually a pretty cool show. I set up a series recording, and I may use it to intro some basic experiments. For instance, yesterdays episode discussed the states of matter, what matter is, and even talked about molecular theory. So maybe sometime next week we'll rewatch that episode then fool around with ice, water, and steam.

This afternoon, we're going to the library to pick up Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, I'm Off to the Moon, which we requested on interlibrary loan. We've got a bunch of great books out from the library right now, including If I Built a Car by Chris Van Dusen, Punk Farm, by Jarrett Krosoczka, Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown, Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, and many more that I can't remember while at work.

Whew.