Math in the Garden Follow Up

It has been a little while, and our mini garden box is starting to show signs of life. First up, of course, was the radishes. They are always very rewarding for the less expeirenced gardeners with how fast they sprout. The kids just LOVED watching them come up. Then were the sunflowers... and then Logan knocked the whole thing over. lol... so we had to carefully adjust them, so that the seeds were in the right places again. Now the carrots are coming... and the whole box is truly looking alive!

Alex is an avid seed collector. Sometimes he will collect seeds or seedlings and put them in pots. This time, he has been rewarded with a few Calendula seedlings coming up for him, and starting to grow at an alarming rate! He is very excited that he has his own little pot of flowers. :)

The big garden is showing signs of life too:

Black bitter current flowers (the sweet ones are not near so pretty, but I have two bushes and they cross polinate each other).

Spinach seedlings. Aren't they cute??

Garden sunflowers. Ready to bring bees right where they need to be.

Did you ever wonder the difference between "Fall Baring" and "June Barning" Raspberries? It is pretty clear this time of year:

Weekend Schooling

We have a very loose idea of what school should be around here. Being eclectic with a very strong "unschooling" vein in my schooling, I take whatever opportunities I can to teach my kids. Utilizing such experiences as a dog bite, a episode of MeerKat Manor, or a weekend Master Gardeners class for extra learning opportunities has become second nature to me this year.

The Master Gardeners class was yesterday. We picked Alex up from his Spring Boy Scout Camp Out, and were off, with just enough time for him to change his shirt, to "Growing At The Fair", put on by the Master Gardeners in our area. The kids got to go see a really nice children's garden, and then got to sit through an hour long talk about pumpkins, garden styles, how to enter your produce into the fair, and how plants grow. After that, they got to plant a pumpkin and hear a talk about how to make seed tape and then they got some of their own carrot seeds to make seed tape with at home. It was fascinating... and I was only in their for half of it as Logan was bored after a while and we went to walk about the gardens again.

With the kids plants growing in my main produce garden, in Cyan's mini garden that she planted during the Garden Math Class sprouting radishes like mad, and their pumpkins on the window sill, this house is starting to be full of Spring life. It is neat to see how many learning opportunities you can get from just one task: growing your own food.

Art is also something I really encourage. I am not a fan of painting... I find it much too messy for our tiny house... but I do encourage drawing, clay art, and fiber art (creative sewing, those little beads that you iron shapes out of, decoupage, and collage). So when Cyan got into the rainy day box today and found these blank puzzles, she had a blast planning, and then finishing her puzzles for her penpals while listening to Shakespeare for Children on CD (I LOVE audio books!):

"A moose on a hill and a log"

"A fisher girl, her house (A frame), and a sunset."

Kids are so full of natural creativity and they want to learn, they want to suck things up like sponges. It is hard for me to say "You HAVE to learn these things" and have them sit down at the table. I would much rather have her write a story about one of her puzzles here, and then have her write a letter to her penpal about it, all while sitting in the yard outside. lol... I feel like that is plenty of 'direction' for most subjects. Especially at the younger grades. I find it fascinating what their little brains come up with. The other day, while we were waiting for her prescription for the dog bite cream, Cyan was looking at the glasses in the display model and trying them on (I wear glasses)... I had her try on a pair, and as she put them back she said "I like them, but I think I will keep looking for the ideal style for me." 'Um, ok.' (As I think "You're six!) 'Knock yourself out kiddo.'

Alex, right now, is using the Perler Beads to make a man mowing his lawn, and a lady behind him in a very sweet, (and very short) purple skirt. I will show that tomorrow when he fills it in and I get it ironed. Yay for rainy day activities and audio books!

Kids are amazing!

Nature... and my daughter

And here is one of me from last summer. My mother in law took this one at Watershed Park.

Crash course in dog etiquette

Cyan got bit by a dog yesterday. She was playing with him and they both went for the same toy at the same time. He bit her face. I know it was an accident, but the owner of the dog is being less than understanding about my asking them to train the dog, so my daughter is being trained instead. (And of course, she is not allowed to go over there anymore.)

In truth, this 'training' is needed for any child who loves animals as my daughter does. She would often rather be around a neighbor friends dog, than around that neighbor friend. She LOVES animals... esp dogs. Talks constantly about how we are getting dogs when we buy a house, etc. So this was coming. But I wish it didn't come with discourse and frustration of her being hurt and them not being understanding about that. I took the high road. I can only hope that it will come back to me in the hereafter, because right now I feel like a dupe... but a dupe that is keeping the neighborhood peace.

Anyway... Cyan's 'training' will include Loki & Alex, Not Afraid of Dogs, Good Boy Fergus!, and May I Pet Your Dog. It is also including a few volunteer hours with a vet we happen to know, and hopefully (if my email proves fruitful) some time working at the local Shelter with dogs (with me of course, she is only 6 after all).

I am sorry this happened... but I am grateful for the ideas it gave me to help my daughter understand the dangers of dogs, and yet not be afraid. Trying to see this as a blessing. Hopefully it doesn't scar.

Earth Day

The sickies are finally gone! We have had the sickies in our house this last week. Cyan got a throat infection and then Logan got the chicken pox. He is still all scabby, but doing great as far as mood is concerned. Cyan is still recovering. So we are taking it light on school today.

Earth day... my favorite holiday. It was fun to do all this stuff with her, but she gets these reminders all the time... so it was sort of boring. lol...

Checking her sprouts from the Garden Math class was better. :)

Elephant Art

So in our study of Africa, we have worked on a lot of different amazing animals. Last week, we researched the "Honeyguide" bird and figured out that the bird will guide other larger animals to honey bee trees and hideouts. We found out that the bird eats wax and pupa of the bees, so this "guiding" also gets it it's dinner, as well as a sweet snack for the larger critter that knows to come along. That is amazing, isn't it?

But this? This blew me away:

Cyan's review for April

Language arts...
She is making great progress with reading this month. We have been working on nouns and short vowel sounds. She has left the 'sound out every letter' phase and is moving on to reading more quickly with sounds ('un', 'in', 'an', etc). Currently, we are reading aloud "Dick and Jane Look and See" (her to me) and "Prince Caspian" (me to her) as well as about 12 books on Africa for our Science studies and books on tape as well.

Math...
We have crossed the place value mark! She is able to add and subtract numbers up to 30 and we are working on making it to 100 before the year is out. She is doing great, and we will be moving to geometry next week to work on some shapes, then fractions and then back to addition and subtraction review just before the year is out. We are also graphing the garden on graph paper as the starts come up and making a table of the dates they popped out of the ground.

Science...
We have been working with Math and Science in the garden (Life Science/Life Cycles of Plants). On May 1st we should be getting our caterpillars as well as the manipulative's we ordered. We are also working on growing a small garden for her in a large planter box and recording our findings in a notebook she and I made on the growth of the roots and the above ground growth.
Social Studies...We have been reading African Folk tales that go along with our African unit study. She is also working on 'the golden rule' or ('the shiny secret' as she calls it). We are still with our homeschool group at least once a week... more like three times a week now that the nicer weather is chasing us all outside more. :)

PE/Health...
Lots of talk about nutrition lately. Lots of talk from her like "I know it isn't good for my body, but it won't hurt my body if I just eat it this once." lol... we have PE play dates with our homeschool group every other Friday. She is also starting swimming lessons, and plays endlessly outside every day. In the last month, she has learned to skate, and ride a bike with no training wheels. She is doing great in this area.

Fine Arts...
'Drawing Fest 2008' still continues at the Rose Garden Homeschool. She draws/colors/sketches something every day... sometimes all day long. We are drawing the flowers we see outside, we are drawing the measurements we make inside, we are drawing and taking pictures of the birds that are showing up to the feeders we made this winter. Her handwriting is amazing for first grade, and she is now learning cursive and 'princess letters' which was an idea we got from a fellow 'nimble fingered' first grade homeschooler in our area.

Technology...
This month she has learned how to get on You Tube to look up different artists. She only does this with my permission, of course. She uses technology such as a compass, measuring devices, humidity gauge, propane lamps for outside evening study, my stand mixer, thermometers, the freezer, hammer and nails, and the computer at least once a week each for all of the activities listed above with apt supervision.

Math in the Garden Class

I am doing a math in the garden class with the 6 1st graders in our small homeschool group. Today was the first class... and omgoodness... it was a bit scattered, but SO much fun! The kids had a total blast making their journals and planting their seeds. I sent them home with basic, but very loose instructions so they could continue their observations throughout the 5 weeks between the two classes.

First, we made notebooks:

These are made with a cardstock front and back, and on the back, there is a 7 inch ruler. The stick is held there with one rubberband that stretches the length of notebook that comes thogugh two holes punched in through the book. It is one of the cuter designs for a seasonal notebook that I have seen so far.

Here is Cyan with her notebook. She is also holding the leaves that we measured with our rulers that are on the back of the notebooks.

Then we planted the kids own mini-gardens:

Every one of the kids were completely thrilled with this. Even Cyan, who has done it a million times before. There is something about doing it with your friends that just brings out the fun.

The second part of this class, that isn't happening for 5 weeks, we will pull up all the seeds except for the sunflower and parsley. We will be measuring out the roots of these plants, and talking about the contrast between above the soil, and below. As we planted today, we talked a bit about the art of planting seeds. How the tiny ones need to be barely in a depression in the soil, but the larger ones need to be deeper down, so they each get the right amount of sun, water, and protection. About how seeds are like babies. After this talk, the smaller the seeds got, the louder the girls would exclaim as I pulled them out. "And here is some carrot seeds... the smallest seeds of all" and all of the girls would "Awwwww!" like they were looking at a newborn kitten. It was completely adorable!

It was great! And I can't wait for the second part of the class after they have made all their observations, and written in the notebooks we made a little bit. It will be SO much fun to graph the seeds growth (and be able to do it very loosely, by whatever these kids have wanted to document) and pull them up and see full sized radish, and half sized carrots. Just so much fun! It was a great class. :)

The glory of the first sunny day...

Today it is warm. For us, that have been in freezing tempratures up until last week, it is down right hot. The kids are in tank tops, the pool has been filled (even if they only went in it up to their knees), and we are having all sorts of fun with the sun... my dad, Margret, and I top dressed the garden with smelly compost soil, it took about two hours. And the kids occupied themselves:

"Something is in here... I know it is..." (perhaps mostquitto larve? Blech!)

Flower collections for all (my neighbor and I were both given one).

"What do your kids do when you are hucking soil?" my neighbor asks... "They light things on fire." I say without a hitch.

Alex is currently writing on dry leaves with a magnifying glass... sort of burning/writing... I told him he was allowed to move up to paper if he kept it on a plate and had a hose handy...

Homeschooled kids are the coolest!

What I do when I am sick

I am sick today. Luckily, it is Nature Day, and so the kids spent the morning drawing nature outside... keeping a loose eye on their baby brother while I sat in here (inside the picture window) and vedged on the computer with tissues and a cup of tea.

When I get sick, I feel useless. It is a hard mix... because uselessness makes me restless... and restlessness makes me do stuff and tire myself out. And tiring myself out, usually makes me more sick. So I am constantly finding the balance between being a lump who just thinks of a million things to do, or doing them all and being sick for a week.

So today, all I tackled was the homeschool closet, the homeschool shelf, and the living room. It was a big job... but I didn't fold laundry. I held back. lol...

I wish I had some 'before' pictures. But I don't. So you will have to suffer with only imagination to see what it looked like before. (A well organized, but cluttered tornado would be a good estimate.)

Here is 'after':

There was four times the stuff in here. I had all of the prop boxes for Nutrition/Body Studies, Life Cycles/Butterflies, Sign Language, Pioneer Days, and Astronomy. These are huge boxes... sometimes with things from 5 different families studies in them. So they took up a LOT of room. Now they are taking up a lot of room, in the garage. And just the stuff I use daily (or weekly) is left in here. It looks SO much more accessible than it did. I can even find my Yoga stuff at the bottom with out digging under blankets (which were retired to Goodwill).

Ok, the homeschool shelf:

This is pretty much the way it was. It was just on the other side of the room, and in this spot, was a 6ft sewing table, which has been retired back to the garage again. I have finished the two quilts I was working on... and it has just been clutter (except for Cyan's Sewing Thursdays) for the last month.

Not that Sewing Thursdays will not continue. They will, for sure! We are both really enjoying them... but she just got to using thread... so 90% of the stuff I had out here was for my use, and I am not using it. So this, and a small Tupperware in the closet with a needle set, thread and some machine thread is all she will need for a few weeks yet. Then, hopefully I will have gotten my sewing room in the garage up and active again and the living room will be a little less cluttered until it gets cold again.

Ok, that is all. I am going to have a cup of tea, and watch a show with my darling (and patient) husband who has been pampering me all day long. :) Goodnight blogworld.

Twigs

Our twigs have leafed out! They are beautiful now... all with budding green leaves that are growing in all directions from every branch we cut. A strange thing happened though... most of the flowers died. I think it is too warm in our house for early spring flowering trees. It makes sense afterall, because the flowers are ready to burst into their color now (at 45* outside), and it is 68* in our house... much more of a "leaf" temperature than a cherry blossom temperature.

The only flower survivors were the apple blossoms. And how pretty and delicate they are! I love them... a little bit of lace in all that greenery.

The kids and I all wrote down when we thought the branches would leaf out... specifically the Apple and the Cherry branches. Here is how it broke down:

Cherry:

Alex: 1 wk (bedtime)

Cyan: 2 days (in the middle of the night)

Me: 1 day

Don: 2 days (day time)

Apple:

Alex: 8 days

Cyan: 10 days

Me: 4 days

Don: 2 days

Alex ended up being right on the Cherry, and Cyan on the Apple. They took a LOT longer than I thought they would! They were so heavy with buds when we brought them in, I was sure they would only take a day or two to burst open. But I was dead wrong... it took 6 days at least for both to even start to leaf.

It was a real fun nature experiment though... I plan on doing it again later with hardwoods like Oak. We are going to make a leaf baby book. :) Document (via leaf rubbings) how big the leaves are every two days in a little book for each tree we find that is leafing. We won't be able to start that until may... so between now and then, our tree ring discovery kit came. Wow is it neat!

Plans for Next Year

My plan is to keep making my own curriculum.  We will have a artist, and a composer each month that we will be studying.  We will stick to the schedule we have now (M- Library day, T- Cooking day, W- Nature Journal day, Th- Art and Sewing day, F- Field trip day (days can change if need be... that is just what worked this year)) and will cycle through the composers and artists we have picked twice total through out the year.  Then we will be using core studies (Singapore Math, Explode the Code, and Cursive Handwriting without Tears for Cyan, and I am still looking for Alex.)

For history, I was thinking about making a curriculum that is based on the Beautiful Feet Ancient History Intermediate packet.  This is mostly for Alex of course, but I can find one craft, or something that links it for Cyan, and all the reading outloud (from books like Aesop's Fables, stories from the bible, Greek myths, Roman myths, and hosts of others) will be for them both. 

For most of this, we will have two things going.  A huge map of the world, where we will mark all the places we are "traveling" to, and a timeline (a notebook form timeline like the Accordion Fold Format on this page).  This will give a base in Geography and world studies. 

That is about it.  It will have to be adjusted of course, as I go along.  But I think it will be well rounded, and leave us tons of room to decide (like we have many times this year) to spend a couple more weeks on one thing, or only a few days on another. 

I would love input from anyone who has done two grades that are completely different like this.  It would be wonderful to get some other ideas on how to incorporate the grades.