Playing Games

My son has been interested in board games lately, so I decided to do a unit on them. We began our unit as I usually do, with a trip to the library.

We read lots of books on the history of board games, dating back to before Ancient Egyptian times. This was one of the first units we did where I could clearly see history becoming a part of our unit. We did talk briefly about ancient astronomy, but I felt the history in this one more personally as we discussed the first games people played. Where they might have found "playing pieces" and how did the "rules" get passed along?

Finishing off this unit, we made two different games. The first game we constructed was an ancient marble game.







After that, I had each kid think of their own board game and create it. We talked about how many players could play, what the board might look like, will it use dice, what is the object of the game...? I had meant to have the kids write up the instructions, but we never did get around to that. We celebrated their games by playing several rounds of each!

Here, my daughter made a game where you need to build a smoothie by the time your player gets to the middle. She included cards to draw, pieces to represent the smoothie ingredients and a foldable game board.









Here, my son make an ice cream cone shaped game board. Players roll the die and follow a snake-like pattern up the board. Some squares help you move forward, others make you move backwards.

Curiosity Filled the Hat

Curiosity killed that what?

I love watching my seven year old son explore the world of dominos. He sets up domino runs by himself during times when I need to work one-on-one with my older daughter. When he can't figure out what he wants to do, he jumps onto YouTube and finds a new idea. Then he walks to the living room and tries it out himself.

From the other room, we can hear him talking to himself as he sets the dominos up. We can also hear them crashing down, followed by loud sounds of frustration as he sets them back up, or by cheers and pitter patter of feet as he comes to tell us of his successes. These cycles of discovery can go on for a very long time.

I love that my son is able to delve into the world of dominos without worrying about the bell ringing, signifying the end of playtime and that he is allowed to leave them up for days at a time instead of having to clean up after 15 minutes. Perhaps he's missing out on learning how to share, take turns and from the creativity of others. But for now, he gets unlimited time to discover his own originality unhampered by others.

Reflecting on Light

Periscope Up!

We did a unit study on "light" a few weeks ago. I've been wanting to make periscopes as part of this study but was unable to find mirrors in time. I finally went to Michael's Arts & Crafts store and found some small square mirrors to use. My husband was nice enough to help the kids make a periscope using the mirrors and the inside tubes of wrapping paper.

The kids can now spy on the neighborhood! They also figured out how to see each other using both periscopes at the same time.

Saxon Math didn't work for us

What we like:

Very easy to use. For the first grade, it even gives you the complete dialog to have with your child. Just read out loud, allow your child to answer and voila, you're teaching math. There are very clear instructions on what materials you need for each lesson (most of which you can find in your own home, a few manipulatives you may want to purchase separately) You can go off script, of course, but if you don't know what to say, or feel uncomfortable teaching math, this is a very good curriculum for you. It was a great curriculum for me to get my feet wet.

What we don't like:

Saxon Math is VERY repetitive. Very. Very. Very repetitive. Get it? This is why I bought it. I thought my kids would benefit from repetition. However, it turns out they didn't. They rolled their eyes at having to answer the same questions in lesson 50 as they answered in lesson 1. That's not to say my kids are experts and know it all perfectly, but they got easily bored with the format and would stop answering all together. For a month, we fought, there were tears and we were not doing well. I finally gave myself permission to skip pages, skip dialogs, and once I saw they got the concept, we'd skip the practices and breeze onto the next part. Once I did this, the kids were much happier and so was I.

What are we doing now:

We did decide to change our curriculum away from Saxon, however, it's hard for me to just stop using the books we already have. All I see is dollar signs. I realize, in the bigger picture, it may be ok to just abandon the curriculum and go with the new one. But I can't quite go there. So, we are going through the rest of the books quickly, only concentrating on concepts that are new to us or need a little practice. Once we are done with the current books, or when I give myself permission to skip the rest (which ever comes first) we will begin using a form of Singapore math called "Math in Focus". I've talked to a lot of other homeschooling moms, Singapore is one of the curriculums I hear about most. We'll see if it's for us!

Matters of the Heart

The Lonely Valentine
My daughter (9) has been a little sad the past few weeks. She loves Valentine's Day (or any celebration for that matter) and knows she's missing out on classroom celebrations this year. She won't get 35 Valentine notes from classmates. She won't be a part of a popcorn party. So, I was happy to accept an invitation from a new friend to celebrate together with her two children. The kids made "hearty" crafts and decorated pretzels with chocolate and sprinkles. One of the best things about being out of a classroom is no longer worrying about FDA rules and sharing homemade food (I learned about that one the hard way. After making 28 hand decorated cookies for her kindergarten class, I was told we couldn't hand out handmade food. At least the staff was able to accept, so someone enjoyed our hard work!)

Plants and Beyond

Learning all about plants:

We just completed our latest unit on plants. After reading and researching about photosynthesis, chlorophyl, and root systems, we dived into a few projects. We tried to germinate an avocado pit (once with a conventional pit and once with an organic pit, both faile

d) as well as a potato (failing now). I'm not sure why they aren't working, other than I do *not* have a green thumb. We followed directions, but for whatever reason (maybe it's winter and we don't have enough sunlight) they did not sprout.

We did get to explore a local store (3 miles from home) that we've never been to before and found it to be a fabulous, locally owned store. There, we purchased seeds and grew some wheat grass and cress (pictured in a heart formation) which worked great in less than a week. We had fun sketching them each day as there was a lot of rapid growth to keep us interested.

At the end of our unit, we made Japanese gardens and wrote Haikus to display with them.

Daughter's garden and haiku (could not convince her it was not a zen garden):

"A Zen Garden"

Here's a zen garden

Zen gardens are beautiful

I made mine today

Son's garden and haiku

"My Seeds"

Seed grow in the soil

They need water and sunlight

They become flowers