Art and Language Arts

Zach has known his letters and their sounds for some time, but hasn't really tried to read much and I haven't tried to help him much. He has done some sight reading, recognising a word today, forgetting it tomorrow. I'm in no hurry, so I left it alone.

Now Zach draws ALL THE TIME. This is no exaggeration. So does Simonne actually.... but let's talk about Zach. Because of his constant drawing, his handwriting is pretty good for his age. His fine motor is very strong. He started to copy letters from the cover of books as part of his drawings (he would draw the cover of the book). Then he would copy each page of the book, so would copy a word from the page on the drawing. He wanted to know what letters were in 'cow' so he could put it on the picture of his cow. He became fascinated by writing both the words and the pictures so I could ask him what words he wants to write (read that 'what pictures does he want to draw?'), he would tell me, I would write them on paper, he would copy them and then draw a picture depicting the word.

If I wrote the word 'tiger', he would write the 't' then ask "What word does 't' make?", then write the 'i', then ask, "What word does 'ti' make?" etc, till he's furnished the word.

I've been fascinated watching him explore sounds, words, and integrate them into his art.

Simonne is a good reader, but was a reluctant writer until the art frenzy began in our home. Now, her writing is beautiful. She takes the same pride in her writing as she does in her drawings. Now, she will actually write a few sentences as part of a story that she has already done some drawings for (the drawings are loosely related, hopefully the story will tie them together!).

She now studies the illustrations in the books we read, thinking about how they were done: paint, pencil, markers,... and listens to the stories for the details she saw in the illustration! This one is a biggie. It translates the other way too. Her memory of the details in the stories is getting better, as she flips to a later page and recalls some detail that we had read before.

I'm excited to be watching this process unfold!

Nature - Insects

So it's spring, and we should be outside more, but .... Anyway, to celebrate, I started a series of explorations in books and online about the wide range of creatures outside. It's somewhat random, following this great book we have, the Christian Liberty Nature Reader, Book 1. They have short blurbs on a variety of interesting creatures, then we follow up with google searches and other investigations of our own.

The life cycles, habits, food, etc of these animals have been fascinating! In the past few weeks, we have talked about and probably drawn:

• the caddis fly


• the ichneumon wasp - drills into trees and lays eggs in the larvae of other insects (see photo above)


• the gall fly


• the cicada - it's larva spends 17 years living underground!


• mosquitoes - no containers of still water in the backyard


• grasshoppers - (did you know that they don't start out as worms, as many other insects do?)


• solitary and social spiders


• the diver spider


• solitary and social bees....

I could go on. I've been fascinated at the connections I'm making. I'm hoping the children are equally fascinated. They cluster around to hear more every time I take the book out. I think I'll get Book 2.

Art at 11:20pm!!!

Just a note on how flexible you can be when homeschooling!! My kids are night people, like me! How hypocritical to be telling them bed time has passed!

I Can Draw!!!!

So if you want to learn how to do something, homeschool your kids and teach them how to do it!!! I cannot believe I did that drawing! I was one of those who's art homeswork was eaten by the cat! Here's another one.

We have been using a few online drawing resources. One of my favorite is Mark Kistler's website. He explains the concepts soo well, even I could listen to him and teach art! Youtube drawing classes have also been fun, just be sure to check the outcome before letting your kids go on to draw.

Here are some pictures Zach (who is 4) drew recently:



Some art from Simonne's sketch pad coming soon!

Carrot Juice, Barley Green, celery, asparagus, spinach juice!

This morning, Zach spilled his vegetable juice on the floor, so didn't get to drink much of it. He came into the kitchen to ask for more, while I was talking to a visiting friend. She listened in shock to the request, and was in even more shock when Zachary threatened tears because there was only a little bit left. She was stunned that my kids found the home made vegetable juice yummy!

So here is the thing. I freely admit to indoctrinating my children so that they don't eat candy and they love barley green. I'm so excited that I get to homeschool and be the voice that reinforces that message everywhere I can. I also don't have to worry about the effects of candy at close proximity, like in the cafeteria.... So, today in science, we are reading about how the human body gets sick. I'm not sure how, but the kids decided that the white blood cells like the vegetable juice and other healthy foods (maybe I suggested it?) and that the germs liked the junky foods. I'm thrilled at this association and I reinforced it with gusto!

Stop by one morning for a glass of carrot juice with barley green, celery, asparagus, spinach, apple and garlic! Give your immune system a kick!

Babylon, Purim, History & Geography!!

I LOVE homeschooling! I guess you figured that out by now. I'm just so excited about what I'm learning! I think every homeschool parent must first be a self directed learner. After all, isn't that what we want in our kids? Then how can we help facilitate something if we aren't doing it? So I find myself doing what I want my kids to be doing, exploring and making connections between the different things we find out.

So this morning, Simonne and I were reading about Ancient Babylon in "A Child's History of the World" and looking at Mesopotamia on the map, locating ancient Babylon, which is now Iraq, and exploring some of their customs. As soon as we said 'Babylon', Simonne's face lit up. Where have we heard of Babylon before? Why, in the story of Daniel, of course! So as we read, we were linking some of the things we knew from the Daniel story to the experiences being described in the book.

Then, later today, I was talking to a wonderful friend, a Jewish woman about Purim, investigating it's origins, and she told me the story of Esther, another familiar one that the children also love. The map of Mesopotamia had also highlighted Persia. So this evening, Simonne and I talked about Purim and Esther and the celebration with hamantaschen, remembering Esther's courage in letting God use her to rescue his people. I was just awed by all the connections between history, geography, bible and life. I wish I had seen them as a child. It would have made so much more sense than a set of discrete facts did.

Simonne decided we needed to watch the Esther story to celebrate Purim (we have it on a Veggie Tales DVD) and to make triangular cookies.....maybe the cookies will come next year! Happy Purim!

Math Bites with Rods

Today we visited with 2 other homeschool families and Simonne showed a bit of what we are exploring with the cuisenaire rods. As we all talked, I realised that I haven't yet found any online resources for using implementing Gattegno's philosophy with rods. I was thinking to do a few posts on how we use Gattegno's method to explore mathematical concepts.

Let's start with getting familiar with the rods through play. I don't think the child needs to start with number symbols for the rods. Knowing that this rod is the 'red' rod, and that is the 'green' is sufficient representation as s/he plays with the rods and gets familiar with the relationships between them. Gattegno really teaches that teaching should be subordinated to learning. What I think that means is really letting the child explore, ask them what they are noticing, and letting the learning be it's own reward, vs celebrations, "good boy!" etc. He encourages us to just let the kids free play with the rods for a while, and in the process discuss the things we notice. Let them build whatever they want, arrange the rods in a variety of ways. All the while, they are internalizing important relationships between the rods.

Some activities to try:

• Make a ladder or stairs with the rods and notice that the size of the step is the size of the white rod. We can make stairs that are a little 'bigger' where the size of the step is the size of the red rod. Although the picture below has number associations for the rods, remember, that really isn't important right now.


• We can make trains of a particular length: e.g. how many trains can we make with length orange rod that only has one or 2 colors?


• We can play guessing games, taking out a white and a red rod, giving it to the child and asking him to close his eyes and give u back a particular one. That way, they become familiar with the rod by feel. You can add in the other rods (green, pink,...), as the child becomes familiar with them.

Have fun! Next time we will talk about exploring simple operations with the rods.

Mommy, where's my book???

Silly Mommy! Can I upload pictures of one child's book and not the other, when 2 books were made that day? Here is Simonne's book on her favorite subject: butterflies. She had me show her images of butterflies on google images so she could choose the butterflies for her book. And I figured out something about uploading pictures!

We started making books!!

I tell you, everything can be found on youtube! One of our goals for this new year was to make books. I found a video on how to make books with children, by Susan Gaylord (note her website: http://www.makingbooks.com/aboutsusan.shtml) and decided to try it with the children. We have sooo much artwork that happens here every day, I have to hide and throw some out! (I'll blog on that at another time). I've been hoping to convince the small people to use them as illustrations in a book. I'll share with you Zachary's first book. He chose all the content himself, wrote and illustrated it! I hope you enjoy it.

More Math with Rods

I've been sooo excited to be exploring math with rods. I'm sure I said it before but I really didn't understand much math through undergrad and grad school! I'm so grateful to be developing a strong core for myself (at 38!) and to be helping my kids at the same time. Take a look at these pictures and see how some simple rods illuminate important math principles.

The picture to the left is a wall exploring the number 20 (5 pink rods). We build as many trains with eh same length as we can and then look at what we can learn from the trains. So the yellow train tells us that 5 yellow rods gives us the same as 4 pink rods. We also learn that 2 dark greens and 4 reds give us 20. So if we convert to numbers, we know that 4 and 4 and 4 and 4 and 4 is 20, which is the same as saying that 5 groups of 4 is 20. I love sliding into multiplication without rote learning! Yippeee!

The picture of the church shows that kids can be pretty creative with the rods, and at the same time, be internalizing principles of symmetry, etc.

Homeschooling and Holiday Traditions

As I think about the 2008 holiday season, I realize that homeschoolling saved my holidays! I have to confess to being apathetic to the holiday season, appreciating the original intent of the holidays, but finding little meaning in the celebrations. Christmas, in particular, was very much an anti-climax. Then there was homeschooling!

Kids love holidays and are motivated to do all kinds of academic stuff disguised in holiday tradition. I needed to find some traditions! Last Christmas, I saw advent calendars and thought that would be a great addition to our holidays. I could create the activities that we would do every day. I also found out about Jessee Trees, a visual representation of Jesus' family tree, almost a biblical timeline of great moments leading up to Jesus' birth. Both these traditions involved several days of doing something leading up to Christmas, and I liked the idea of wallowing in the holiday, of milking it for all it really had. Great ideas, but by the time I got to implementation, Christmas was over!

This year I was ready. We did a combination of advent activities, themed copywork, coloring pages and Jesse Tree craft and discussions for the entire month of December. The kids had a great time leading up to Christmas. I extrapolated meaning for myself from the discussions and activities and felt really good creating these experiences for the kids, and doing 'school' at the same time! So the picture above is of our Jesse tree, symbols drawn and colored by all of us (ignore the date on the camera, please!)

Here are some other things we did:

• We had an actual Christmas tree with lights! And we put gifts under it. Next year it may get some tinsel.


• We put lights on our window and our fence.


• We made Christmas themed soaps for our friends and family as holiday gifts.

So we had a great time creating meaning for ourselves. The kids enjoyed the activities and I have a new set to add, to enrich my traditions in 2009. Like having a Boxing Day box, to collect gifts for the community.....

Play with Math using Rods and Gattegno!!!

Just a quick note about the wonderful method of exploring and internalising Mathematics that we recently found. I encourage you to investigate it for yourself. It was pioneered by Caleb Gattegno and uses Cuisenaire rods. I can't describe the experience, but I have done mathematics to the graduate level and taught it to the college level, and trust me, there is a lot that I do not understand. So much of mathematics seems to be the following of rules that you just don't 'get'. At my ripe old age, I'm just understanding what they meant when i was 'carrying the 1' in subtraction! So, as a homeschooler, I really want my kids to 'get'.

Gattegno's method helps the children to become familiar with mathematics in a very intuitive and visual way. More details on his methods later, maybe, but take a look at Simonne and Zachary exploring concepts that are become second nature (instead of rote learning math facts). So here is Simonne looking at all the ways to make rods of length 11 units. I think she was more excited about building the wall! She then wrote out that O+W = Bl + R and so on, also becoming familiar with algebraic notation.

Here is Zach building a ladder, which is just him becoming familiar with the order of the rods when there is only a difference of one unit. The visual piece is so important and leads to such wonderful realizations later on. They start to 'see' the mathematics.

Of course, we don't only have to build walls and ladders!!!

I'm excited about this because I've found the method to teach Jaedon math, when he is ready for it. I have heard that this works so well with special needs kids, who may not get the 'rules' of mathematics, but just start to 'see it'. Whatever you do, keep looking for methods and approaches that are right for your kids. If they aren't out there, you can create one!