Comets, Bubbles and More

Can't wait for Halley's Comet?

Then make your own! As part of our first unit study, on the solar system, we learned about asteroids and comets. We decided to end the unit by making our own comets with dry ice, sand, and salt. It was a learning experience for me as well, seeing as I had never purchased dry ice before. The store clerk wasn't too enthusiastic in figuring out how to make 5 pounds out of the small pie

ces they had, so I took a 10 pound bag and we made the most of every ounce!

Hands on experience:

We invited the cousins (yes, my brother and sister-in-law are homsechooling their children too, lucky us!) to join us to help create the comet. Having only four children in our "class", allowed each one of them to really get hands on experience instead of just watching the experiment happen. And because we had so much ice, we were able to do the experiment more than one time, make a giant bubble with soap, and more.

Passion Versus OCD

Following Their Passions

Following your child's passion is a perk of homsechooling. Yes, all parents can support their child's interests (soccer, drama, piano, dance, etc.) but with more time available to us now, I feel it's even more important to pour energy into areas for which they are enthusiastic. Both kids are into Minecraft, a sandbox computer construction game. It is a great arena for creativity and teamwork, but also a time suck. So if you don't want to lose your children to this game, don't investigate. However, if your child is already into computers and these kinds of games, it's actually a really cool one.

So, in trying to support their interests, we decided to make our own Monopoly board game for Minecraft. Sounds more like fun than school work, right? To make this game, the kids had to research of both games, write a lot of descriptions for card and come up with creative ideas for the instructional cards. It turned out to be a lot of work, but we also had a lot of fun! We looked into making Shrinky Dinks with plastic #6, but found that clear plastic #6 is harder to find than we thought. So we went to the local toy store and purchased blank Shrinky Dink sheets to make our moveable game pieces.

Who's doing the project anyway?

Well, I really tried to allow the kids to do as much of the project as possible. But my control issues got in the way. I wanted the game board to be flat, no bubbles under the plastic protection sheets. I wanted everything to be typed neatly, not written. I wanted the cards to be cut in straight lines. The list goes on. So, I did end up doing a lot of the execution. In the end, I'm trying to see this as a lesson for *me* to remember that I need to step back and allow the kids to do more of the work. This is not a forum for me to show off my ow artistic skills. I am finding that I am continually figuring out where my influence needs to end and my kids involvement begins. When to push, when to help and when to back off completely.

Alone at the Museum

Alone at the museum (sort of):

A friend was unable to use tickets, which were about to expire, to the aquarium. We decided to buy the tickets from her and went to the aquarium during the week. It was nice to be there when it was not too crowded. Most of the other kids that were there were younger (probably pre-school age?) We did see one other family there with older kids, but I didn't have to courage to ask if they were a homeschool family or not!

One obvious benefit of being able to go to popular places during the week is less crowds. Maybe less obvious is the benefit of the staff's expertise. I have found on more than one occasion that staff yearn to share their knowledge with you. They are hungry for an audience. In our case, one staff member sought us out to show us the new baby octopi. How cool is that? I imagine it's very different on the busy days when they spend a lot of time handling crowds.

Hiking or Playing Hookey?

Is it hookey?

Today was a beautiful day in town. Warm and full of sunshine. Friends, who are also making the leap into homeschooling, invited us on a hike at a local trail system. While the kids were exploring the shortcuts and throwing rocks into the river, I felt giddy and a little bit guilty. Were we just playing hookey? While the rest of the town's children were sitting at their desks, we were out enjoying what nature had to offer. In the end, we could adjust our schedule to go on the hike when it made sense (sunny and warm!) and do more "bookish" studies in the afternoon as the sun was setting.

Learning goes on ALL THE TIME, not just between 8am-2pm!

But even if we hadn't done any "schooling", would the kids have learned something that day? Would they learn math from a book? No. Writing complete sentences with proper punctuation? No. But would they have learned anything at all? Socializing with children of different ages? Treating nature with respect? Learning to enjoy the beauty of trees along a river? Learning why the river level was so high compared to the last time they were there? Yes. Yes. And yes!

Slow down!

The best thing we're doing as a family is slowing down. We still rush from time to time for one reason or another. We still get frustrated when the kids don't put on their shoes until the fourth time we've asked. But overall, we're changing our lifestyle to fit our newfound schedule and we're slowing down. So, on this hike, I found it nice to not compete with other families for space on this beautiful day. We adults had no other agenda, so we were not pushing to "get there". We were able to go at the kids' pace as they touched curious items along the way, asked questions, walked alone, walked together, and explored in general.

Thematic Units

What is the Thematic Unit?

I took this definition off of the "interdisciplinary teaching" wiki page: "The most common method of implementing integrated, interdisciplinary instruction is the thematic unit, in which a common theme is studied in more than one content area (Barton & Smith, 2000)."

Why did I choose Thematic Units?

I really like the idea of studying one subject from multiple angles to reach a more in depth understanding of that subject. I also think this type of teaching will allow me to scale the work for two individual levels, while teaching the same concepts to both of my kids.

Our first unit:

We started with the Solar System. We had fun learning about the planets, the sun, comets, moon cycles, and more. Here you can see one of the art projects (a hanging mobile) we did at the end of the unit.

First Project

How to Begin? As for our first task as homeschoolers, we decided to paint a mural on one of the walls of the room we would be using as our classroom. The kids traced themselves onto paper, cut them out and then taped them to the wall. After tracing their bodies on the wall, they painted in their shapely shadows. Three days later, we completed the mural and our first project was under our belts. The best part of this project, was going to the paint store during "regular school hours" and answering our first set of "why aren't you in school?" questions!