Nature Comes Calling

Grima the Second

This is a snake.
On my carpet.
This was the second time I found a snake on the floor in one day.

This morning, as I was walking downstairs I see a snake shaped thing on the floor in the library. I assume it's one of the boys' rubber snakes. As I get a bit closer, I realize they don't have any that are quite so wiggly...and long...and alive. Luckily, I am not afraid of snakes so it wasn't as big of a deal for me as it would have been if something like a large spider were sitting in the middle of the floor. Then I might have dropped my coffee and run screaming back up the stairs. Instead, we found a container to pop him in and tried to decide what to do. As it is currently around 30 degrees Fahrenheit most days, it didn't seem like putting the poor thing outside would be an option.

I made a phone call to the park naturalist we know from some homeschooling events. She told me he had probably been hibernating in our walls and came out when we had a warmer spell the last couple of days. I already knew that the snake was a northern ring neck since the snake from our critter zoo was the same species. I also still had our terrarium in the garage from our last adventure in snake containment. While all of this planning was going on our visitor was waiting in a plastic container on my desk in the office. When I got off the phone and brought the terrarium into the classroom, I found the snake on the floor. It had escaped from the storage container. The lid was the snap-on type, but not the exact fit for that particular container. I never thought it could get out of there AND off the desk.

So, we scooped it up again and popped it into the terrarium. I made absolute certain there will be no more escapes. I took a pipe cleaner and tested all along the edge of the lid to be sure there isn't even a tiny space for him to slip through and terrorize the house. The boys named him Grima in honor of the first ring-neck who was also Grima. Our first Grima was released back into the wild in the fall of 2011. There was a bit of debate over whether this was in fact the same Grima. Ring necks don't do all that well in captivity, so we only plan to keep him until he can be released in April when the weather is right.

For now, I guess I'll be stocking up on red worms and keeping my eyes open for any more surprise guests this winter.

Where on Earth?

new book

Over our holiday break, I made a few revisions to our routine. One place where I made a change was with our geography study.  Last year, and for the first half of this school year, we have been doing one geography lesson a week.  This would include either work in the Maps, Globes and Graphs workbooks published by Steck Vaughn or our passport program we started last year. I found that one day a week didn't allow for great retention of new knowledge. I decided to switch geography over to the same model of study we use for other 'minor' subjects.  We will now be spending two to three days a week of more in depth study over a period of five or six weeks.  We already cover music, civics, and health in the same way.

Conveniently enough, there are five major themes in geography, so that works well with my plan of a five week unit.  Each week we will focus on a different theme using resources such as BrainPOP, our Usborne Geography Encyclopedia, and other online learning tools. In addition, I purchased a new book for our library, Challenging World Geography by Richard Rayburn. The book is split up into sections for each of the seven* continents. We decided to start with North America since our home happens to be located on that landmass. This new workbook is really helping the boys to learn how to use tools like atlases and search engines to find answers in the activities.  Yesterday they each had a worksheet that gave them a list of mountains of North America.  They had to find the location and height of each, arrange them in order from the tallest down, and then create a bar graph comparing the five tallest. Today they needed to locate notable bodies of water of North America.  We also watched a BrainPOP video about climate types and did the corresponding printable quiz.

I find that splitting subjects out into these smaller units really helps, not only for the boys' focus, but for my planning.  When I allow myself to spread a subject too thin, I don't always spend the time working out the details.  Concentrating on one thing for a few weeks at a time keeps the subject matter focused and keeps it from becoming tedious.

When we have completed the geography unit, we will only have our health unit left before our school year wraps up for the summer.  It's freezing here tonight, with an expected low of 2°F. It's hard for me to believe that summer is just around the corner when I feel that frigid wind blowing, but I know it won't be long before I'm wishing the heat away again.


*There was some debate in our household over whether or not there are seven continents.  We found C.G.P Grey's video, What are Continents? to be an amusing explanation and are still not sure what we believe.

Variation on a Book Club

Warrior Cats

A few months ago, while chatting with a fellow homeschooling mom and the children's librarian after an event, the topic of book clubs came up.  The other mom was sharing experiences her children had at recent book club meetings.  Many times the books were not of interest to her kids or it was obvious that others had not read them and couldn't contribute to discussions.  We wanted to look at starting our own book club, but finding the right book would be tricky.  Our pool of children would be small and span a wide group of ages.   

And then I threw out an idea,  "Why do they all have to read the same book?  Why can't we just allow each child to read what they want to read and then share with the group?" 

Therefore sealing my doom to start a new book club based on this idea.

In all honesty, this project has been an easy one with much support from those involved.  The librarian made the children's section of the library available to us an hour before opening on the days we will be meeting.  She also suggested that we bring lunches and have time to just hang out after our discussions.  I found a book in  my pile of resources, The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists with a section titled, "Book Report Alternatives".  This is a list of 50 ideas for sharing a book with others, including examples like number 25, compare the movie and book versions of the same story, or number 38, paint a mural that shows the key incidents in the story.  I shared this idea list with the parents that planned to attend.  Our local homeschooling parents have a Meetup group, so I posted the event on there. The most difficult part of the project came next.

I had to get the boys motivated to work on their presentations.

EM chose the final book in the first series of the Warrior Cats books, The Darkest Hour,  as his book for the meeting.  I told him it might be a good idea to just share about the world of the Warrior Cats, instead of focusing on the plot of the book he chose.  I knew it would be difficult not to give any spoilers to the story if he went into very much detail about that book.  He sat down with a couple of index cards and made his notes.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how quickly he took on this task.

book club poster

 JT chose the book Stowaway by Karen Hesse.  This story is historical fiction about a young man who stows away on James Cook's first voyage on the Endeavour.  JT made a poster showing the route of the journey and also historical maps from before the trip to show how maps changed after these exploratory journeys.

The day of the book club meeting we packed our lunches and book projects and headed off to the library.  The only other family to show up for the first meeting was the mom from the original discussion.  I had high hopes that more would take part, but I have learned not to expect too much when starting something new.  I was just happy that we had enough kids to have a meeting.

In all, there were five participants from age 9 to 14.  Everyone shared a book they were either currently reading or had recently finished.  Several wonderful discussions were sparked by the speakers.  Warrior Cats turned out to be a favorite of a few.  Two shared books that were based on video game worlds and that led to much discussion.  The librarian helped to facilitate when the speakers were unsure of what they wanted to say.  When all had shared their books, we broke out our lunches and kept the discussion going.

We ended up staying at the library for almost four hours that day.  My boys and another participant logged on to the library computers while I chatted with the adults.  Hopefully next time we will have a larger crowd to share the fun.

In the end, my homeschooling mindset of one size does NOT fit all, worked well with the book club.  Not everyone is going to want to read the same book...and they shouldn't HAVE to in order to participate in a book club. It's already difficult enough to get most kids to sit down and read a book when they have so many other options for entertainment. Hopefully, the book club discussions will bring new books to their attention, allowing them to expand their reading options.

Reading has always been one of my absolute favorite things to do.  I want my boys to share in that joy.  Nothing beats getting immersed in the world of a book. 

And that adventure should never be turned into a chore.

Out With the Old, In With the New

new composition books

Even though my boys kept their computer use to a minimum during the holiday break, I decided we should have a little laid-back schooling this week to keep the extended vacation time from turning into a week of slug-like activity.

Because I wanted to continue my planning work during this week, I came up with a list that allowed the boys to work independently most of the time.  I put daily assignments on separate index cards for each subject for each boy.  As they completed their work they placed the cards into the work basket.  Most of the days, they worked quickly without my help.  I limited the subjects to reading, math, computer programming, book club project, and educational videos.  I chose most of the videos for the week with each boy being allowed to make one selection.  They also spent time playing outside in the snow, visiting the library, trying out new board games they received for Christmas, and reading their new books.

While they were occupied with learning, I started some planning for the remainder of our school year.  I picked up a few new books over the summer that I haven't incorporated into our schedule yet.  Don and Jenny Killgallon's books Sentence Composing for Elementary School and Sentence Composing for Middle School are looking like a good alternative to a more traditional method of teaching composition, especially for JT.  I am also considering using Dandy Lion's Advancing Writing Skills with JT.  As always, I have too many good choices and am struggling to choose the best one.

a few math choices

This lightly scheduled week also allowed me to test out a few new ideas with the boys.  EM just finished Singapore Math 4A prior to our break.  Before I start him on 4B for the remainder of the year, I wanted to see what he could do with Henry Borenson's Hands-On Equations Learning System.  He flew through the first several lessons, immediately understanding the concepts.  I think I will be incorporating this product into his learning.  I also pulled out a fun logic book by Mindware, Sequencers, and found that JT excels with this kind of thinking, while EM needs more help.  JT also did a free trial on ALEKS math and decided he would like to use it for the rest of his pre-algebra studies.  I will also be opening an ALEKS account for myself.   I signed up for an algebra class with Coursera as a review for my old skills before JT starts it next year.  The professor highly recommends that all students have an ALEKS account to use for the work.  So now we'll both be using ALEKS math.

technology to conquer

My final project this week will involve learning how to use my dad's telescope for our astronomy unit.  It is a Meade Polaris 114DS.  Once I know how to use it, we will be able to link it up to a screen and stargaze from inside the house!  The rest of the unit is coming together fairly well.  This will be the first science unit where the boys will be working most of the time on separate materials according to their ability level.  I have the Our Night Sky lectures DVD from The Great Courses for JT.  EM will work through a fifth grade astronomy unit.  Both will use Janice VanCleave's Constellations book.  Plus, both will put the telescope to good use throughout the rest of the school year.

I feel like things are really coming together for the upcoming months.  It's hard to believe we are already half-way through this school year.  As always, time flies when you are having fun!

Home for the Holidays

cozy

Our holiday break started Wednesday.  I'm not entirely sure how long we will take off.  Last year we ended up adding an extra week to our planned Christmas vacation, so it could end up being longer than I think.  The holidays are so hectic, I can't really say I'm doing much resting while we aren't actively schooling.  So extra time off is always good.

My birthday also falls in the week prior to Christmas.  This year I am turning 40.  It still surprises me when I look in a mirror and find I am not the 16 year old me I expect to see.  To celebrate, I planned my own little party.  My two sons, daughter and her husband, my husband and I all went to see The Hobbit in 3D at the IMAX theater today.  Afterwards, we went for dinner at the Cracker Barrel restaurant.  Tomorrow I will have to get back to serious holiday preparation.  But tonight it's nice to know there are no lessons to plan, no workbooks to correct and no science experiments to organize. 

I won't be posting for the next two weeks, so have a happy holiday season and I hope to see you back here in 2013!

Time Well Spent

pie chart guilt

Saturday has traditionally been the one day a week the boys have unlimited computer time.  On days we are schooling, they can't use the computers for games or watch videos that I haven't assigned, until after their school work is finished.  They rarely finish school work before 5pm.  When you add in the time we spend eating supper, potential away from home evenings, and bed time prep beginning no later than 9:30pm, they really aren't racking up that many hours most days.

But then comes the weekend.

My children are two very different individuals.  EM has generally been up with the sun most of his life.  JT will sleep until I drag him out of bed.  But on Saturdays, they share a mission.  EM sets his alarm and, with JT's permission, wakes him up so they can squeeze as many hours of computer gaming as possible into one day. 

I sleep in and am happy to let them interact with glowing screens.

Saturday evening, around 8pm, we were having a discussion about the number of hours they had wasted (my word) on screens that day.  They were trying to argue that they hadn't spent most of the day in front of their computers.  I started drawing a pie chart to prove them wrong.  The green sections in the picture represent time spent either playing computer games, using the Wii, or watching videos.  We don't have television service in our home, so it's only what we own that they can watch.  But they weren't watching documentaries on Saturday.  They were watching the Three Stooges.  So they can't even try to argue that was educational.  When they saw the percentage of time they had spent on computers was nearly double the time they had spent on other activities that day, they made the wise decision to spend their last waking hour playing with LEGOs.  They also planned to wake up early Sunday, before we needed to get ready for church, so they could spend more time playing together with the LEGOs...not on computers.

Ah, the clarity that cold, hard data can give. 

But...computers also played an important role in creativity this week.  It all started when JT got in trouble for picking on his brother and lost his computer privileges for the day.  During the desperation of withdrawal, he had to come up with a way to be allowed to touch his computer...even if it meant in an educational sort of way.  When they lose privileges as punishment, we do allow them to continue to use computers for schooling.  Otherwise, they might not regret the loss quite so much.  Playing the system, JT knew if he told us he needed to work on a project, he might be able to fill his need for computer interaction.

ready for battle

LEGO armies are a familiar sight in my home.  Both boys must have rooms with tardis-like capabilities, otherwise the volume of LEGOs they own could not possibly fit in a small bedroom.  Usually, there is at least one battle going on in the middle of someone's floor.  Conquering armies travel from one room to the other.  When I'm not feeling especially prone to tidiness, they even end up in other rooms.  The games they create are elaborate, with point systems and more rules than any normal human can keep straight.  They are also big fans of Pokemon and have regularly played the card game together.  They haven't branched out into other collectible card games yet, thankfully for my credit card bill, but they love the concept of these types of games.  This week JT decided to make his own game using his LEGOs for inspiration.

rough draft

JT created a few different characters from his LEGOs.  Then he employed EM, the photographer of the two, to take a few pictures for him.  JT then asked if he could use the computer to make his template for the cards.  Up until now, whenever he came up with an idea for a card game, he always wanted to draw them by hand.  I'd suggest making templates to simplify the process, but he didn't want to invest the time learning to use PaintShop Pro.  Having to choose between using computers to design his cards and having no computer time made him suddenly see the light.  He asked for a little help from his dad getting the pictures into the program.  From there he quickly created a sheet of cards for a test run on the game.  A couple days later he had a full deck ready.  They have played the game several times and it seems to work well.  Soon he will make a few grammar corrections on the cards and reprint them on card stock instead of regular printer paper.

The battle is about to begin.

It always amazes me how the boys work so much harder on a project that they have designed on their own.  I know that's the way it's supposed to work, but my traditional school thinking wants them to be just as committed to writing an essay that I assigned as they are to creating some incredible bit of work from their own imaginations.  If I can just push those voices screaming, "They'll never make it to college if you let them spend all their time playing games," to the back of my mind a little more often, maybe they'd manage to get a valuable education.

Plus, it won't hurt if they keep losing their computer privileges from time to time.

Expected Results

good idea

The problems we have had this week in science have been almost entirely my fault.  I did not spend enough time preparing for the hands-on portion of our study.  In the past, I have found that a quick check to be sure we had all of the necessary items for any experiments or demonstrations was enough to guarantee successful activities.

Nope.  Not this week.

My first mistake was changing from our favorite tried and true science guru, Janice VanCleave, to something unfamiliar.  While the Photon U book appeals to our sense of humor and desire for quick and easy demonstrations of scientific concepts, it does not seem to produce the same level of learning for my boys.  Also, out of the five experiments we tried, only two gave anything close to the kind of results we were expecting.  With the Janice VanCleave series, we have had a few experiments fizzle in the past, but it has been a very rare occurrence.

fudged data

Our first lesson in the light portion of our current science unit focused on the different colors that make up visible light.  To demonstrate that each color has a different wave length, the Photon U book had an activity called stretching rainbows.  We had six different colors of thread representing six colors in the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.  The directions were to line up the thread along its corresponding wave on the diagram, then cut the thread.  When we had a sample of each, we were to lay out the threads and compare the lengths.  This idea sounded fun when I quickly paged through the book a few weeks ago.  In reality, you have no idea how difficult it is to keep a piece of thread in place well enough to get accurate length pieces to compare!  In the end, JT's blue thread was much longer than his indigo, so he trimmed a bit off to get the desired result.  That is really not what I want to be teaching them about science.  We do NOT want to alter our data to meet our expected results!  I should have spent the time and tried it myself before handing the assignment over to the boys.  Hindsight is 20/20, right?

I guess I forgot that bit before we moved on to our next lesson.

Lenses were the next topic we covered.  The book had a nice little model of a lens you could make using cardboard, tape, and saran wrap.  Once you cut a round hole in your cardboard square, you covered the hole with saran wrap, secured it with the tape, and added water until you had a lens.  Trying to get the perfect amount of water on that piece of saran wrap, that kept getting too wrinkly to see through, also turned out to be a bit of a flop.  EM did enjoy pipetting water all over the classroom, so I guess it wasn't a total loss.

romantic candle light experiment

Our last attempt at using the book came yesterday.  Looking at how our eyes interpret images and use light was actually clearly demonstrated with this activity.  We filled a glass candle holder with water, placed a candle about 10 cm away and observed the upside-down flame on the piece of paper held another 10cm behind.  However, the table we were to fill out in the book was unclear and not really much of an addition to what we were learning.  Mostly it just confused us.  We decided to scrap that part and instead played with our display for a bit on our own.  I had an old bottle of corn syrup in my science supply cupboard, dated 2009, that we deemed sufficiently aged for such an experiment.  We replaced the water with corn syrup and observed how the reflection seemed clearer with the thicker liquid.

close up

Overall, the boys still learned some things about light this week.  It would have been a much smoother journey had I taken the time to try out each experiment on my own in advance.  Sometimes I know I rush through my prep time, hoping the magic homeschooling moments will carry me through.  Many times they do. But, being a good scientist, I can't fudge the data when they don't.