More Unschooling with Pepper

Got a box from Timberdoodle in the mail today.  LOVE Timberdoodle!  I find the best treasures there.

 

Here is today's treasure:

 

Pepper and I have a lovely few moments together today.  The two big girls were off at Take Your Daughter to Work day with Dad.  Banana Boy was at preschool and Sunshine was napping.  Pepper and I got to break into the new puzzles. 

 

This human body puzzle is cool!  It's two-sided, nice and thick and not too easy, but not too hard, to put together.  Pepper spent a few minutes, once it was completed, matching the numbered body parts to their names at the bottom.  Ta Da!  Science!  Yay, Me!

 

 

Homeschool Gems

First of all, I have to say that I am so blessed to have such a beautiful library!  Thanks, Honey!  Secondly, I have to confess that I have a little, tiny addiction to books.  ahem.

 

However, as we were listening to one of our favorite CDs this morning, I began to think about my very favorite homeschooling gems.  These are the things I return to kid after kid.  These are the things I enjoy each time I use them.  These are the items, if I was forced (at gunpoint) to give up all but a few homeschooling things, I would keep.

 

One Hundred Sheep skip counting CD  This is the CD we were listening to this morning.  It teaches skip counting from 2s to 10s via Bible stories and song.  And these songs are crack-up-the-adults-listening hilarious!  Our favorite is the 6s.  Plus the skip counting song part sticks in your head.  A good thing.

 

WeeBeeTunes DVDs  For geography, we love these!  There are two DVDs (I wish they'd make more!).  Each continent has it's own character who travels around and visits different countries.  Again, there are songs (I love learning to music) and the video.  At the top of the page in the link, you can click on Samples and hear some of the songs.  You don't get the benefit of the video, but I can tell you, it's very cute.  MeiLin Yak is our favorite character.  "What's in your backpack, MeiLin Yak?  What do you have to show us today?"

 

Singapore Math has made us very happy.  You can buy teacher's guides for it now, but I've never used one because it comes intuitively for me being a math geek, and all.  I'm currently taking my 4th kid through the K books and still love it.  Rose Bud went to public school this year into the 6th grade math program they are using.  It all was very easy for her, which was fine for me.  The testing, if nothing else, was new to her.  On the standardized testing, she actually did just average, except for the algebraic portions where she was BELOW average.  However, at the semester, her math teacher (love you, Mrs. H!) asked if RoseBud could be moved into the advanced math class (doing 7th grade math) as the regular math was not challenging her enough.  I was all for that!  And she segued in without much trouble (thank you, Mrs. F, for giving her the extra help and time!).

 

Now Rose Bud (and the rest of my kids) are all math geniuses....I mean naturals at math (math geeks, we like to call ourselves), so she likely would have done fine with a different program than Singapore.  But it has worked well for all of us so far and we're stickin' with it!

 

Rod & Staff English  This is an excellent, very solid grammar program and all three girls have loved it.  We never seem to finish a whole book before moving on to the next one, but it always works out.  They have a very good survey of grammar topics, diagramming, lots of practice and some review of writing (although I've heard from others who use the writing in here that they like it, we never get to it).  We do most of the work orally, except for diagramming and things they need extra practice on.  We have always used just the student text book and no other components.  When we do do the writing assignments, they always work on the white board.  Their favorite part of this program has always been when they need to identify two different things (say the noun and the verb), I hold out my hands, labeling one noun and one verb.  Then the girls "pick up" the word out of the book and drop it into the proper hand.  Silly, but effective!

 

The best place to buy it is directly from Rod and Staff, but they are not online.  You can call them at 1-606-522-4348.  The service and friendliness is awesome and shipping is very fast!  (I've heard that the Anabaptist website that sells R&S materials online is not as reliable and is a different company)

 

Word & Song Bible CDs produced by Focus on the Family  Banana Boy knew Bible stories I hardly knew after listening to this at bedtime and naptime for several months.  Most stories have a corresponding song to go along with them.  The voices are by an all-star cast including, Packer fans, our dearly departed Reggie White as Samson!  The Bible itself is so-so (I mean the Word & Song Bible, not THE Bible) but the CDs are worth their weight in gold!

 

Geopuzzles  Love these and my kids do too!  Banana Boy was doing these last year at age four (he is rather gifted at puzzles!).  In his case, he was just learning to recognize the shapes of the countries and how they fit together, but the girls, of course, could read the names.  Fun, easy, brainless learning.

 

My Base Ten Blocks, which I've mentioned before.  Just noticed in re-reading that entry, that Leslie had asked where to buy them.  Plastic blocks are available at Rainbow Resource (free shipping if your order is $150 or more.  I never seem to have trouble making the minimum...)  The wooden set is available at Christian Book Distributors (CBD).

 

My ABC Bible Verses   Love, love, love this little book!  There is a Bible verse for each letter of the alphabet and a sweet story illustrating its meaning in a way preschoolers and kindergarteners can understand.  All my kids have begun memorizing Bible verses with this book and Banana Boy is beginning to work through it.  Yesterday, I came into the kitchen pretending to whine at him about something (he is my star whiner) and he came up to me with a little smirk and said, "Mom, A soft answer turns away wrath."

 

Bob Books   The BEST little phonics readers for beginners.  All those trendy, character-based phonics sets they sell in the Scholastic catalog can't hold a candle to Bob Books (which are also sold by Scholastic, BTW).  The others aren't truly phonetic and contain too many site words for beginners, IMHO.

 

Let's Read And Find Out books  I can't own enough of these very basic, easy to understand yet in-depth science books for elementary students.  Our Favorite is What Happens to a Hamburger.

 

I Can Read series of history books  These are wonderful history readers for 1-3 grade.  My girls read them over and over.  Most of the other I Can Read books are great too.

 

Ok, they are going to shoot me with that gun if I keep adding stuff.  I guess those would be my absolute favorites.

 

I'd love to hear from you if you're a homeschooler reading my blog what your homeschool gems are.  Please share!

 

Blessings,

Sandwich

Peter Stuyvesant

One of the books we're reading, which I've mentioned before, is The American Story: 100 True Tales from American History by Jennifer Armstrong.  I have rather mixed feelings about it. 

 

I like it.  I like the drawings.  I like the stories it chooses to tell.  They are definitely multi-cultural, telling the stories of the Indians and the Jews and the Africans, etc.  I'm not far enough into it to see how fairly they represent Christians, if at all.  Seems like every group gets its day except for the Christians.

 

It is also a bit of a difficult read for the younger set.  I've found myself really having to explain what is going on in my own words to the girls.  Daisy "gets" more than Pepper does.  If it was just Pepper, a first grader, I don't know that I would choose this book.  

 

They've chosen an eclectic bunch of stories--some very well known, like the Pilgrims, Pocahontas, Paul Revere's Ride, Benjamin Franklin flying his kite--things I would consider the essentials for an early elementary American history survey.  But they've also included some lesser-known stories, which I like, such as People of the Longhouse, the city of St. Augustine, the Manhattan real estate deal, the planning of the capital, etc.

 

I think I'm beginning to contradict myself.  Anyway, I like it.

 

So today we read "A Manhattan Real Estate Deal" and "Keeping Watch, Keeping the Faith."  The first story was about the Dutch buying the island of Manhattan from the Indians.  We had a good discussion comparing it to someone coming to our house and offering Daisy $10 to buy her bedroom.  Daisy takes the $10 and the bedroom belongs to the newcomer.  Only, then RoseBud gets off the bus and finds a stranger living in her room!  She didn't agree to this deal, she got nothing from this deal and so she chooses to ignore the deal, sleeping in her bed as usual.  Of course, the newcomer is not happy that she refuses to vacate his new room and quarrels ensue (probably a few arrows and bullets exchanged).  Daisy meantime is happily living across the hall with Banana Boy and her $10.

 

"Keeping Watch, Keeping the Faith" was a story I knew little about.  Peter Stuyvesant, the new governor of New Netherlands (aka Manhattan Island) was all alarmed to find a boatload of Jews moving in.  He refused to grant them citizenship or the rights of citizens, including the right to stand watch at night. Instead, he "allowed" them to pay a Dutch citizen to take over their watch.  All fine and good if you had the money, but what if you were poor?  Asser Levy was one such poor man who could not afford to pay to have his watch covered.  He would joyfully stand the watch--he had lots of time!  But PS would not allow it.  Eventually, Levy persevered and just stood the watch anyway, gaining the right of citizenship for the Jews in New Netherlands.

 

The very fun part of this was that I also had at home a library book called, The Day Peter Stuyvesant Sailed into Town.  It went along perfectly with this story and was a charming rhyming picture book about cranky Peter Stuyvesant (who had a peg leg!) and how he whipped New Amsterdam into shape and made it a successful colony.  Written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel  (author of Frog and Toad books--love those!)  The illustrations were funny--my kids love clever illustrations.  For example, on the last page, they show PS sleeping in his bed with his boot next to the bed.  (As Pepper said, "His ONE boot!")

 

 

In other recent school developments, we did art one day!

 

We are still in Secondary Colors and the project was to make a picture which radiated out from the center.  Here is what the girls came up with (mine just looked dumb.  I hate art)

Daisy's is on the left and Pepper's on the right.  And that's my toe at the very bottom of the picture...

 

Left to their own devices, the girls also come up with their own art projects.  Lately, they've been cutting up paper plates and decorating them.  Banana Boy got in on the activity, too.  His is the white one.

 

 

 

And this is Banana Boy's latest artistic endeavor.  I think it looks like a monkey, but he assures me it's a person.  It has a pet on a leash in its right hand and what I thought was a ball in the other.  But it's an Easter Egg basket.

 

Making samplers

I'll include finished pictures when they are done.

 

 

Bet the Pilgrims never slacked....

We've been slacking lately.  We're in the process of buying a new house and selling this one, so I guess we're entitled.

 

We manage to accomplish math and geography every day.  Sometimes we read and sometimes I hand the girls a big stack of books they can read to themselves.  Luckily, there are a bunch of books they will willingly read anytime.  Like the Time Traveling Twins, and these cool photographed-at-Plymouth-Plantation books  (there are two more: Sarah Morton's Day and Samuel Eaton's Day) and any of the If You Lived... books.

 

So I dumped a stack like this at their feet and let them go at it.  We are also having lots of fun with hands-on crafts.  The easiest are those from Hands & Hearts.  The girls made lavender sachets--easy as pie!  All the materials were included, from the muslin and calico bits, the dried lavender, a ribbon and a little sewing kit!  Thread, needles, the whole kit and kaboodle!  I know, I could go down to my basement and find the bin with cotton scraps in it and I could run to the variety store to pick up dried lavender and I certainly could scratch up a needle and thread.  With a little luck, I have some ribbon around that coordinates with the calico scraps I found.

 

But when I can open the box, print out the directions and et them go at it with mimimal guidance, it is worth the $65 to me.  As an added bonus, they took the extra fabric scraps  and made teeny-tiny lavender (there was PLENTY) sachets for their dolls.  And one for their best friend next door.  I didn't help at all with those.

 

Now they are working on cross stitch samplers.  The pattern and idea I got from our Time Travelers CD.  In this set, you just get all the directions and paper patterns.  So I pulled out my cross stitch stuff (why is it so much fun to start a project, but not fun to ever finish it!?) and gave each of the girls a bit of Aida cloth and some floss.  Daisy is tooling along on hers, but Pepper lost interest pretty fast. Oh, well.  She is once again on a school strike.  Except for math, I'm not sure she'll ever finish first grade.

 

So there is what little we've been up to lately.  Enjoy!

 

 

The Lost Colony of Roanoke

An interesting story.  The girls heard the story of Roanoke from The American Story: 100 True Tales from American History.  Then they had a mini-book to complete where they got to fill in what might have happened to the lost colony, and the whole thing was made up into a scroll.  We got the activity from Easy Make and Learn Projects: Colonial America.

 

Today's pictures are from guest student, AJ, who is spending the night with Daisy since it is her public school spring break.  Our homeschool is not on spring break this week.  So AJ got to homeschool with us.  A bright little button she is.  I'd keep her with us every day, if I could!

 

"The colonists were starving so the Croatans (Indians) said 'Come live with us.' And they did.One of the colonists wrote "Croatan" (on the tree) to let John White know where they went.

 

We also made interesting things from our maple syrup.  Mr. GT collects and boil sap each spring and he and the kids make maple syrup.  Yum!  We found some recipes for other things the colonists did with maple syrup in the book Colonial Days so we made Jack Wax (boil the syrup to 230 degrees and pour over snow...er, um, ice cream)  We also made Maple Cream (boil the syrup to 239 degrees, beat (oops, a step we forgot) and pour into a buttered container.  Supposed to be like fudge.)  It turned out like homemade caramels.

 

Mr. GT's syrup

 

Next adventure....looking for new dandelion leaves to try in a salad.

Columbus, de Gama, Magellan, Oh My!

Well, we've whizzed through the explorers.  I'd have like to have spent more time here, but sometimes you have to weigh their age and abilities against the fun of the cool resources out there.  Pepper is only in first grade, so I'm not requiring as much from her.  That she knows Christopher Columbus's name, country of origin, some of his story and what he was famous for, as well as the fact that he did both some good and some bad things is good enough for me.

 

Daisy also learned about Vasco de Gama, who was the first guy to make it all the way to India by sea (that's where Columbus thought he was going!)  And then we all read some about the rest of the explorers:   Magellan, Cortez, Ponce de Leon, Cabot, etc.

Slideshow of the girls' Explorer work

A field trip

Yesterday, we took a field trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum to wrap up our study of the American Indians.  MPM has a great Native American exhibit and it's so much more interesting to view it when you know what you are looking at!  I've been there about 40 times (it was a yearly trek with my Grandma when we spent a summer's week with her) and I've seen the exhibits all those times.  But to look at them with my kids, through their eyes was so much fun!

I never noticed the cool totem poles they have, nor how the Northwest exhibit is housed in a cedar plankhouse.  They even have some actual cedar planks from the Northwest, over a hundred years old.  They have mini dioramas of life scenes of many different tribes.  Daisy is particularly fascinated by these.  Often, they will have actual artifacts displayed nearby as depicted in the diorama.  The girls loved to read the desriptions of the items and shout, "Mom!  look at this!  We read this in...." 

 

There is even a real Haida canoe hanging from the ceiling in the lobby!  How cool is that!  In all the times we were there, we never saw it!

 

We examined the inside of a Pueblo, saw an impressive Kachina collection, found Blackfeet artifacts, looked inside a teepee and saw a recreated, life-size Iroquois encampment.

 

The very best part, for every child who visits the museum, however is the Buffalo Hunt!  It is a life-size diorama with 5 or 6 real bison, 2 real horses with Indians on horseback, in a hunt.    There is something awesome about seeing real bison up close and personal, even if they are dusty.  There is a small swatch of buffalo hide to pet and feel.  Then there is a small diorama of a chase-the-buffalo-over-the-cliff hunt which always fascinates the kids.  They love to look at death and destruction.

 

It was a very fun day.  Sunshine stayed with my mom, so it was relaxing, too.  It was good to have some time with just the three middles.

Leif the Lucky

This week we've been reading about Leif the Lucky and the Vikings.  Did you know Leif Ericson  actually landed in North America (present-day Newfoundland) around 1000 AD?  That was 500 years before Columbus!

 

 

Here are some very cute online games and resources about Vikings for the younger set.  Vikings for K-3

 

And here you can write your name in runes.

 

Next week:  Columbus!

 

 

Further Adventures of my Unschooler

The best way to motivate Pepper, I'm finding, is to assign something to Daisy.   Suddenly Pepper is all interested in the project and takes off on her own, doing way more than I would have asked of her or she would have done for me had I asked.

 

Daisy and I have been exploring colors in art.  We've moved on to the secondary colors and our first project was a symmetrical string painting.  The idea was to dip two strings in two different primary colors, lay them in a sheet of paper, fold the paper in half and pull the strings out.  The two primary colors would mix together, creating a secondary color.  And we could talk about symmetry as the halves were mirror images.

 

Of course, as soon as the paint came out, so did every kid in the house from Rosebud on down to Sunshine.  So everyone did the project.  Unfortunately, the red and the blue did NOT make a lovely shade of purple, but rather an ugly blackish color, so Daisy and Rose Bud will not get their paintings displayed here.

 

However, here are Pepper (yellow and blue make green) and Banana Boy's (yellow and red make orange) paintings:

 

Over the weekend, Pepper took it upon herself to do further work with secondaries after she found 3 primary paint pens in the paint drawer.  Here are her results (of which she was very proud!)

As I said, had I set before her the task of mixing and painting a picture using the secondary colors, it would have been like pulling teeth.  "I can't!  It's too hard.  I can't think of anything to paint!"  Left to her own devices, she did a beautiful job!  (That's an orange and a bunch of grapes near the top there)

 

 

Northwest Indians

In the Northwest, we studied two completely different tribes.  The Tlingit are actually considered Northwest Coast Indians and lived in plank houses with totem poles.  The Nez Perce were actually Plateau Indians, living much further from the coast and a much different lifestyle similar to the Plains Indians.

 

We studied the Nez Perce because we had access to such great resources about Kaya, one of the American Girl history dolls.  In addition to her storybooks, there is also Kaya's World, which tells many more details about the Nez Perce life, the toys (we have the Kaya doll), and other resources.  The girls loved the Kaya stories, about half of which I read aloud and the other have which they read themselves.  It was Pepper's first time reading an American Girl book and she found she liked it!  She read the entire book 2 in one evening!

 

I'm just going to give you some pictures of our projects, rather than of the folders this time.  If you want to see the folders, you'll have to come visit us!

Daisy's Totem Pole

 

 

 

Pepper's Totem Pole and the Dover Northwest Indians Punch-Out House the girls built

 

The plank house and totem poles (LOVE Dover books!)

Daisy's cradleboard (holding Mimi, pretending to be Native American)

Pepper's Cradleboard (holding Katie)

Sunshine's Cradleboard holding a toilet paper tube Indian the girls made for him

 

So now we are done with the Indians, at least as our main focus of study.  We will, of course, revisit them throughout our adventure through American History.

 

On to Leif the Lucky and the Vikings!

 

 

Dead Things

Thank goodness for dead things, or my kids would never learn any science!

 

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is the interesting natural learning experiences we can have.  The other day when we came home from somewhere, there, in the middle of the driveway, was a dead squirrel.  Now we have no shortage of squirrels around here, so it's not such a sad thing.  But what was interesting was that you could see the tracks in the snow where it had scampered for about three feet, then down the bank to the driveway, where it collapsed and died.  Do squirrels have heart attacks?

 

So today we watched a crow munch on it where Mr. GT had scooped it up and thrown it on a snowbank.

 

We also discovered, half-buried in the ice in the driveway, a squirrel tail. (different squirrel)  After examining it up close and pondering why it was just a tail, we left it.  Later, it occured to me that it is probably a part of the one that clogged Mr. GT's snowblower last weekend.  He was out blowing the heavy wet snow when it stopped blowing.  After a bit of puzzling investigation, he finally discovered he had snow blown a squirrel!   He does figure it was already dead, though, probably slipped from a tree branch covered with ice.

 

Other interesting things we've discovered in our yard:

A dead robin

A huge horned caterpillar marching across the driveway

Monarch caterpillars in our garden (milkweed is one weed we allow to grow!) which we bring in every summer and raise to butterflies

Swallowtail caterpillars--we successfully raised one of these

Caterpillar parasites--one year our poor monarch caterpillar developed gross-looking eggs on its back which ate away its insides once they hatched.  We let them hang out in a separate tank to see what they were.  They appeared to be regular flies.  That was gross!

A pumpkin which grew into the fence around the garden.  We watched it slowly decay over the winter into the spring.

A hawk (sharp-shinned!) which flew itself into our greenhouse window and died on the lawn.  Hawk talons and beak are cool!

Mud

Dead moles and mice are fun to look at.  Have you seen a mole's feet?!  And once we found a star-nosed mole, dead on the trail!

Bird-watching (live birds)

Feather finding--today the kids found the remains of a purple finch and last summer we had a flicker scattered all over our lawn.  Last month they found an owl feather.

Owl pellets--owls live or perch in our pine tree and cough up their stuff onto the lawn.  We've seen tiny little skeletons and skulls

Pinecones and wildflowers and lichen and moss and bark and buds and roots

And, last but not least, a deer which died in our woods.  It had been shot, ran off and made it as far as our back yard.  (We wondered why that dog kept hanging out in our woods all winter!  Blech!)  In the spring we discovered the bones, antlers and skeleton, all very interesting to examine.