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

What can I expect from my children?

Have *I* Learned Anything?

Depends on what time of the day you ask me. I feel that I am learning daily on what works and what doesn't work for my family. My daughter just completed her biography report. There were many times where we walked the fine line of "critique, criticism, constructive suggestions, brainstorming". Sometimes it went well, other times we fought to where we would come to a creative stand still (that's code for "lots of tears".)

How high can I set the expectations?

I still am not sure how to gauge the quality and level of work to expect from my children. What is age appropriate? I didn't pay much attention to how her past teacher's taught language arts. For example, how many 45 minute sessions did it take the class to write one project? How many minutes were spent on introducing the project, first draft, second draft, final draft, presentation, etc. How often did my daughter complete her daily goal and was just waiting around for the rest of the class to be finished? I have very high expectations, I want them to have attention to details and have pride in their work. However, if I expect too much, will it cause them to feel less than adequate, set up to fail, resistant to doing the project at all? I am still trying to figure this issue, no answers yet.

Dioramas

Animal Habitats

The kids wanted to study animals. So I gave them both the assignment of

1.Checking out 2-3 books on their chosen animal from the library

2. Researching on the internet (at least once source)

3. Writing a report of what they learned (include habitat, are they endangered, if so why?, what they eat, where they live, basic characteristics...)

4. Create a diorama of the animal's habitat

5. Completing a resource page (daughter only)

Scaffolding: My son (6) chose the house cat. This diorama shows the different rooms where a cat might go during the day (master bed, computer desk, tv room, kitchen). He learned about the many ways a cat communicates through various meows. When we came back from a short trip, he cried when our own cat meowed as he interpreted her saying, "I missed you."

I helped a lot with this project, reading the materials to him (even though he can read), helping him with the questions, and mostly, helping create the diorama. They were all this thoughts, ideas and creativity, but he needed help in the execution of it all.

My daughter (9) picked the leopard, a big cat. She did the entire assignment on her own, from finding all her books at the library, to her diorama. I could not convince her to take notes, she stated she had all the facts in her head. She only had to look up one or two facts, so I wasn't able to argue the benefits of note taking on this project. We'll work on that later!

I did get upset at one point, when I noticed an entire sticky notepad used up. I couldn't understand where all the pages went. Then my daughter showed me how she crumpled up the pages, leaving the sticky part to allow her to stick it to her "tree" without using glue. How could I be angry after seeing how genius the method was!

National Parks and Geocaching

School On The Road

We decided to take a longer trip for Thanksgiving. I planned to make the most of it and printed out tons of activities for the kids to do. I didn't bring the math books, but I did bring some mapping activities, word puzzles, writing assignments and more. Long story short, we didn't do most of it. We were too busy doing other

activities. So, I'm not sure how other families study "on th

e road" but it didn't seem to work too well for our family. Maybe our trip was too short (two weeks) to find time for worksheets. We had an activity planned for almost every day, so by the time bedtime rolled around, we were all exhausted. We did look at the maps, to see where we were driving each day, but the rest of our school work grew cobwebs.

School Happens Everywhere

However, part of our new found thinking is that school happens everywhere, not just in books. When we knew we were going to visit Muir Woods, near San Francisco, my husband looked on line and found a great activity for the kids to do while we were there. We printed the pdf Redwood Discovery a Quest at Muir Woods at our hotel and armed each kid with a pencil. When we arrived at Muir Woods, the ranger station had a "junior ranger" program already there. If we hadn't had our quest, I think we would have done their program. It's great to know that there are activities at national monuments to keep kids involved and interested. The junior ranger program was similar to our quest, it asked kids to find things along the way. However, you then turned in your sheets, and later, they send you a junior ranger patch. The quest, on the other hand, gave you a sticker at the end (if you figured out all the clues to be able to open the lock). It was nice to have immediate gratification for our hard work.

Geocaching is World Wide

Geocaching, a GPS based treasure hunt, has been a great discovery for our family as well. Whenever we are away from home (or even at home), and in need of something to do outside, we think of Geocaching. There are thousands of little treasures hidden all over. On this trip, we found ourselves in Golden Gate Park. As we explored the trail system in the park, we discovered three geocaches in 30 minutes!

Our Writing Class

Getting down with grammar:

I have been very concerned with my ability to teach language arts. I did ok in school, but it has never been my strongest subject. In fact, it was my weakest. So, how am I supposed to school my kids in this area? At my children's ages (currently 6 and 9), I think I can get by with some workbooks and making sure they read or are read to every day. But how far can I go on like this? How do I make sure that by the time they are college age, they are ready to write their thesis?

Take a step back:

I know, don't panic. But I can't help but worry about making sure they get all that they need in this area. I feel fortunate to have come across someone who's teaching a writing course for kids my daughter's age (9). There was an opening and we were able to jump in (a little late). The course very vigorous and I'm not sure how we're going to keep up with the time demands, but I'm finding it very helpful in many ways. Not only is my daughter getting exposed to thought processes, research methods, ideas and more, but I am able to talk with the parents of the other students at the end of class. This part has been a wonderful benefit as I hear what other parents are doing that work and what didn't work for them. I'm an introvert by nature, but am finding that I have missed talking to other parents on a daily basis (I used to do this at pick up time in the hallways.) I get to ask a lot of "newbie" questions and everyone seems more than willing to share their advice and experiences.

Here's my daughter giving her first presentation in the class.

Teachable Moments

Every Moment is a Teaching Moment

Each moment is a teaching moment. Think about this and let it sink in. Each moment is a teaching moment. I know many parents probably already know this sentiment and already live this way with their children. I didn't. I was always busy, in a hurry, too tired, too frustrated and just plain done.

At the end of the day, who wants help in the kitchen when it just makes a mess and I can do it faster on my own? How much easier is it to answer, "I don't know" when your child asks the umpteenth question you can't answer or don't want to answer? How many times has your child, "I wonder what would happen if...?" and you helped them find out?

After thinking about homeschooling, my entire mindset has changed. For example, I almost brushed off the question when my daughter asked, "I wonder how much it would be if you added 1+2+3+4 and so on, until you get to 80?" This was going to take some time, so I could easily have said, "I don't know" and distracted her with something else. Instead, we took out paper and pencil and worked it out. She had a method she wanted to try. I had my method. We compared answers (which weren't the same). Then I went to Google to find out if there is a formula we could use as a shortcut to verify our answers. Voila! n(n+1)/2 is the formula! And now we've all learned something.

Perhaps my daughter won't remember the formula (I didn't, I had to look it up again for this post), but I believe she learned many other things. One, there are formulas that exist to help math problems go more quickly. Two, you can Google (or do other research) to find these formulas. And three, mom cares about what I think, hears my questions and has time for me.

Another example: The kids asked, "I wonder what would happen if you tried to freeze ketchup?" Again, how easy to brush it aside and move on? Instead, we filled plastic cups with different liquids or foods and froze them. As we did this, we made predictions and wrote down what we saw and time intervals to see if our hypotheses were right or wrong.

What did the kids learn this time? Scientific process. Testing hypotheses. Setting up and conducting an experiment. We even learned that if you label the bottom of a plastic cup, it will appear backwards when reading it through your liquid. So, we adjusted our behavior and wrote backwards, so we could read the label forwards!

Last year, I NEVER would have searched for formulas or froze items from the refrigerator. I was always too tired after a day of making lunches, shuttling them to/from school, volunteering in the classroom, etc. Or too busy helping them complete homework, classroom projects, etc. I'm not saying I can do this every time. I still get too tired to answer all their questions or to help them figure out how to find the answers. I still like to cook alone (this one, I'm REALLY trying to change, as it's a life skill they should know!) But my mindset has changed and I'm finding that I brush off fewer questions each day.