Homeschool Happens

Today is Sunday. It is not a "school day" and we don't have our usual "school time". No math, or science, or literature studies.

But really?

Brother-Bug is helping Papa-Bug brew a beer - a nice, dark stout for the colder days of fall and winter. Sister-Bug is helping too of course, but she is more of a spectator.

In the past hour or two we have covered volume measurements: how many quarts in a gallon? How can we measure that? How many gallons in a carboy? (5-7, depending on the carboy.) We watched a thermometer carefully until our heating water reached 167 degrees. Also, along with this math is a fair bit of cooking process - pouring carefully, awareness of hot stoves, etc.

As it turns out, there are 4 quarts in a gallon, and an accurate measuring device is a better choice than a bottle that looks close.

What about learning a little science on a Sunday? Right now Papa-Bug is explaining how the barley in the beer will convert its starch into sugar to make the sugars to feed yeast. We have also covered energy and thermodynamics in heating water, what is specific gravity and how to test for it using our brewing/scientific equipment, and now we are covering the conversion of yeast to alcohol in more depth.

We aren't sitting and "learning", but that doesn't prevent plenty of on the fly lessons that present themselves. I was just interrupted to hear the "first law of "propane dye-hammocks" - which he got right (thermodynamics- you can't create energy and you can't destroy energy).

I paused writing to get a batch of bread going, and now we have moved on to the intriguing question: "If we had 100,000 jelly beans and had to eat them in one year, how many jelly beans would we have to eat every day?" This was followed by the more philosophical question: "Can you have too many jelly beans?"

We have (almost) daily school time and I think that half-hour or so is important. We learn routine, sitting and focusing even if we don't always want to, and other valuable skills. The beauty of being out and about in the world with homeschooling is just that - seeing the entire world as a learning opportunity. You never know what lesson is coming your way or what question is about to be asked. So I don't worry at all when our structured school plans go askew, because often a bigger and better lesson is just about to fall in our laps and we can learn all about propane dye-hammocks.

First-Grade Launched!

Origami day! World culture, art, geometry, fun!

If Brother-Bug were in school he would be starting Kindergarten next week. But he's days from six and we've been doing Kindergarten level work for 2 years now. I asked him what he wanted - more Kindergarten or to move on to First Grade. He decided to go forth and First Grade it up.

I love our plan to teach subjects in month long blocks, but we are loosening that structure for the moment, to be more flexible with the beginning of our new baby's life. Instead, here are some of the up and coming adventures in our first grade plan:

1) Have a baby. Incredibly educational, and a good reason to put out usual plans on hold. Baby-Bug is coming in November so much of the autumn will be spent getting ready for that addition. It's been really sweet to see Brother-Bug get all excited and to help explain things to Sister-Bug. He remembers a lot from waiting for her and he's doing a great job of helping us all get ready for a new baby.

2) Daily school time. We are focusing on 10-40 minutes most week days on "school time" when we sit at the table and focus on an educational project of some sort. I believe that this daily practice is the lesson in itself.

3) Hand writing. This is how we start off our school time. I print out a d'Nealian worksheet for each day and he loves it. A longer post (rant) about hand writing will be posted eventually.

Working with patterns. Basic math. 

4) Lots of math exploration. I've mentioned my Dad's wife in previous posts - she was a teacher in an amazing school in North Carolina for 30 years. She shared her manipulative-based exploratory math curriculum with me. What a blessing! I'll write more about that later also.

5) Science Club! I gathered several families from our homeschool group and we are meeting once a week for our K-2nd graders to do an experiment together. Exciting! This will combine learning, socializing, and parental-networking all it two hours a week. It's a homeschool win!

6) Papa-Bug was a political-science major, and loves an election. We will be using the Presidential Election as a great opportunity to learn a little about how government works. Already Brother-Bug is fascinated by the electoral maps at 583.

7) Ballet, just like last year. And also working on more formal piano lessons.

It looks like a lot, all written out like that, but in reality we spend 1-2 hours a day engaged in "school". The rest of the time we are playing, reading, questioning, and exploring. And who knows what will change as we move through this third-trimester. Of course lots of other adventures will find us - hikes, explores, canning peaches (today!), reading aloud, story telling, drawing... We would have to lock ourselves in an empty room to prevent learning from happening!

===

I am keeping Sister-Bug involved also. Each day for school time she gets to select a coloring sheet and color it with  her special "school crayons" while I work with Brother-Bug. Sometimes we mix it up with beads to string, or other 2-year old appropriate activities. School time is her favorite time of day and I'm glad she is already getting used to the daily habit of sitting down together for some focused learning time.

Sea shell coloring. Special crayons. She's happy. 

October Kindergarten Review: Weather & Seasons

With the weather changes and fall leaves that blow about, October seemed like the perfect month to think about weather and the change of the seasons.

We got a bunch of library book, pulled out some of the science books, and jumped right in.

Brother-Bug was already good on the seasonal differences, knows what season we all have our birthdays in, and some of the things that are traditionally done in each season, so much of the focus was on weather.

The first thing we did was make a calendar of October and start charting the weather each day. We marked if it was sunny, rainy, or cloudy, and if we thought is wag hot or cold. This was excellent practice for handwriting skills and observation (especially the observation skills for my book-bound little boy who would rather read than do anything else). On November first we counted up how many of each kind of day we had had - how many hot, how many sunny, etc. and made a list. We had a little discussion of what there was the most of, the least of, and how (looking at our list) we would describe the October weather. Was it consistent with our memories?

The detailing of the day's weather.

We did two awesome hands on science projects to learn about pressure in the atmosphere. The first was making clouds in a bottle! Papa-Bug found the instructions on this site and what fun we had. It was great for us to see exactly how pressure changes the cloud state. I think I learned as much in the project as Brother-Bug did.

Changing the pressure, creating a  cloud.

Once we knew about pressure, we made our own barometer, using these instructions. We watched the pressure everyday - here again I think it was just as fun and edifying for the grown-ups. We've decided not to disassemble the barometer because it's so fun to check everyday, as well as being useful for biking and hiking and planing other outdoor activities. Brother-Bug wrote a short report about what a barometer is and how it works. The way we write reports right now is that I ask leading questions and write down his answers, helping him find the answer if he gets confused.

We did seasonal activities, like a visit to the pumpkin patch, and hunting mushrooms - with discussion about what things are specific to each season, what comes ripe and what is happening in the garden, and similar.


Papa-Bug put a Weather App on his iPhone that Brother-Bug could easily navigate. Then they put location pins in familiar places - where friends live, where favorite books are located (James and the Giant Peach, for example, is in New York City). Bother-Bug would take the phone and Papa-Bug would quiz him to find out what the weather was in... North Carolina? Is it hotter or colder there than in NYC? What will the weather be like in three days where your Aunt lives? And so on. We learned all kinds of geography (a great carry over from last month's study of maps), comparisons, research, and sorting skills - and it was on the iPhone... which always makes it a special project.

We started a simple art project, making a tree showing all four seasons to tie into our conversations. I set Brother-Bug the task of using the hole pinch to meek snowflakes. He was having such fun with that job that I changed my plan mid-stream to let him do a lot more punching. He punched small green leaves and pink flowers for spring, and cherries for summer while I glued things. Then we listed out some on the things we notice or do in each season, leaving plenty of room. Finally (to keep enjoying the hole punch and do some math) we sent out a text to many friends and relations, asking their favorite season. When they responded, he found the season and joke punched it to tally. Of course we followed up with a review of the results - which season has the most/least kind of questions. .

Those were the high points of our October. On to November and learning about emergencies - first responders, what to do, who to call, buying a fire extinguisher, and so on.

===

Usually I get these reviews out in the first week of a month. With the Occupation work our family is doing, regular life, my writing projects, and preparing for the holidays, blogging has taken a bit of a back burner. Thanks for your patience. After Christmas we will return to our regularly scheduled blog adventures.

August Kindergarten Review: Food

In lieu of formal curriculum, each month we choose a subject (or I choose a subject) and make that the focus of our learning projects for the month. Brother-Bug is kindergarten-aged (more or less), so our topics are broad and simple. I try to keep them easy to work into our day and fun to play around with.




For the month of August we learned about Food. This was a particularly easy one for a family deeply immersed in whole food eating, local food, canning, and who all love cooking. As the month progressed it was fun to see Brother-Bug take on more and more of the food challenges, and his awareness of what I was serving him at meals (and why) deepened as well.

We started off with a Preschool Lesson Bin from our local library all about food - a collection of a CD, some puppets, a DVD, and about 10 books all centered around Food. It was a good start.

We read some great books and did some excellent projects.

Muzzy kicked us off with her great Ice Cream Project! Brother-Bug said this was his favorite because he got to eat ice cream at the end.

Brother-Bug samples the produce

We also enjoyed blueberry picking at Adkins Farm, and the resulting work making jam, freezing berries, drying more berries, and making pie. Mmmm...pie....

We made our own mozzarella one day, using Ricki Carroll's book and instructions. It's fun and easy to make, and very satisfactory. Brother-Bug said he really liked the kneading and pulling necessary to make mozzarella. And when we hung the whey up to make ricotta (which didn't really turn out) he liked how the dripping was "cheese pee".

With the leftover whey, we made bread! We measured, mixed, kneaded, let sit, punched, and waited, and finally baked. It was perfect with honey. We talked about how the yeasts work (they make the bread fluffy by eating sugar and then 'farting'...lots of giggles there!), how to be safe with the oven, and other general learning tasks presented themselves - measuring math and so on.


So far, all these projects are just things that happened in the course of our days. Part of our rhytem of August. The cheese was made because we had extra milk. The bread was made because we had the whey from the cheese.

Kneading, kneading, kneading...

We talked about the 3 Gs - something I have written about on this blog. We cut out food pictures from magazines and made a 3 Gs collage. Along with the collage we discussed healthy eating choices, the importance of balancing healthy food with treat food, eating a rainbow of colors...and had fun with scissors and glue!

We had a field trip to a local fresh pasta maker - Pasta Plus - and learned about how food is produced in a factory. Brother-Bug got to cut his own sheets of pasta which we later had for dinner. Super tasty.

In our library bin there was a Sesame Street DVD about funny food songs, which was a favorite. Brother-Bug got to write a first 'Media Report' about it - dictating to me while I asked him questions. It was a real challenge for him to put his thoughts together about the movie, and I was thrilled that he was very excited about that particular challenge. When we thought back about the month's activities, he specifically mentioned enjoying the challenge of the report.

Our major math activity was making a Bar Graph of likes, dislikes, and favorites. Brother-Bug worked with his friend T, asking people in their world yes/no questions and filling in the graph I made with stickers. After the information gathering was done, we looked closely at the graph, asking several questions - is there anything that everyone likes, but is not anyone's favorite? How many people like ice cream and how many like celery? Which has the most likes? And so on.

Our graph - green indicates 'like', yellow indicates 'dislike', and red indicates 'favorite'.

To finish up the month we read Everybody Cooks Rice and located the countries represented on our globe with post-its. We also read The Life of Rice, about how rice is grown in Thailand and the culture that surrounds that staple crop.

To augment, I found some websites with food-related games for when he really wanted to play computer games. There was no game or site that stood out as excellent, so I'm not going to bother sharing them here. I threw them in mostly to keep consistent with our Food theme. 

We had a great time with all of this, and since we are only in kindergarten, I don't worry too much about retention and the ability to regurgitate information. It's enough for me that we are learning and doing and enjoying - forging pathways of life long learning and experiencing all that we can. That's what it is all about for me.

===

Nest month we leap into maps and how they work - playing with geography! I can't wait to see where the month's adventures lead us!

Just The Summer Thing

We are blessed in having my dad and his wife as a part of our merry band, backyard neighbors, for six weeks in the summer. They live in North Carolina the rest of the year, but darling grandchildren have lured them out here for more and more time each summer, and my family is thrilled to host them and their RV.

We are doubly blessed that my dad's sweetie, whom the kids call Muzzy, was once upon a time a teacher at the excellent Duke School for Children, and brings all those skills and enthusiasms to our home for fun and learning. It pretty much rocks for my kids.

Today it was hot (for here, which is not hot for many places). In the mid-eighties. Brother-Bug had a friend over for the day and Muzzy busted out a cooking & science project;


Making Personal Ice-Creams

Can you think of a better thing to learn with on a hot summer day? Here's the deal:


You will need materials:

A small recycled can (clean!) - tomato paste or small juice sized - one per child
Cup measures (1/4 cup and up)
Measuring spoons
A bowl or container almost as tall as the can, and much wider - one per child
Aluminum foil
Wooden tongue depressors or popsicle sticks - longer than the can's height - to stir with.

Reading directions...

You will need ingredients:

Whipping cream or half -and-half
Vanilla
Sugar
Salt
Rock Salt
Crushed ice

(For a non-dairy option your could simply use a favorite juice to make sorbet. Lemonade would make a lemon ice, for example. You could use yogurt instead of cream for frozen yogurt...)

Assembling:

Into each can put:
1/4 cup cream
1/8 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
A very small pinch of salt

Learning measuring and fractions...

Muzzy had lovely print-outs with the directions and she encouraged the kids to read the directions to her as they worked. 

Stir the milk mixture until the sugar is dissolved.

Cover the top of each can with a piece of foil so that no salt or ice can get in.

Lots and lots of salt is required... but why?

Put each can into a larger bowl/container.

Put crushed ice around the can, filling the bowl as full as possible.

Stirring, stirring, stirring...

Add lots of rock salt, but don't go all the way up to the top of the can. You want some of the can to stick out to prevent salt in the ice cream.

Rinse any salt off hands!

Carefully uncover the can - don't let any ice or salt get in!!

Just beginning to freeze...

Let the cans sit and get cold for a few minutes.

When the edges of the cream begin to freeze, start stirring with the tongue depressors. Scrape the sides and the bottom as throughly as possible.

We used plastic spoons to stir, because we didn't have tongue depressors. This was a little hard for the necessary scraping. We strongly recommend an actual wooden stick. 


Keep stirring until ice cream is formed. It might be necessary for kids to taste their ice cream as they go. It can take 10-15 minutes to get it "all the way ice creamy" (to quote Brother-Bug).

Add ice and rock salt as you go, to keep the bowl full of cold.


As we stirred we made up a song about ice cream, talked about the condensation on the outside of the large bowls, and why we need salt on the ice to make ice cream (do you know why?). You could also read a book about ice cream, play a game, or ???

Almost frozen!!

Finally, after you stir and scrape and stir and scrape, it is ready to taste. If you want it to be harder, more frozen, you can put it in the freezer. After all the long stirring, my little folks opted for soft-serve.

Ready to eat! Finally! That fifteen minutes felt like fifteen years...

As I mentioned earlier, we made up an ice cream song, which I am including here. We sang it to the tune of "Hungry, Hungry, We are Hungry"... and it ended up that the kids mostly made up their own tune anyway. 

Notice that some of the lyrics (the flavors) are bold. Muzzy made the structure of the lyric and the kids filled in the flavors - real and funny flavors. Take that and make it your own if you want!



We Like Ice Cream

Sister-Bug didn't help but she still enjoyed...

Ice cream, Ice cream,
We like ice cream.
Ice cream, ice cream,
Here we come.
We like chocolate,
vanilla, and marshmallow,
peanut butter pickle,
chunky ice.

We like lemon,
orange, football.
We like cherry,
turtle, too!
Ice cream, ice cream,
We like ice cream
'til our lips are turning blue.




So that's it. Simple. And it makes only about a quarter-cup of ice cream for each person, so it isn't a huge sugar treat - just enough sweet for a kid to really enjoy. All in all, it was a perfect project.

A perfect ice cream for a hot day!