Homeschool Discoveries

Tech Tuesday: “Teach Me…” Apps March 20, 2012

Filed under: Technology — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:32 pm
Tags: iPad

I usually might wait and see if an app “stands the test of time” as far as how well my kids like it before I would share it here, but I am so impressed with the “Teach Me…” series of apps by 24×7 Digital! I just couldn’t wait to share about these apps!

I’ve seen Carisa at 1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1 mention these apps several times in her posts and in her list of favorite iPad app, so I have been meaning to check them out for a while.

There are currently 4 “Teach Me” apps — Toddler, Kindergarten, 1st Grade and 2nd Grade. I purchased Toddler, Kindergarten and 2nd grade for $0.99 each. Trust me, these apps are a bargain. Some apps at this price point offer a few minutes of entertainment, but these apps have a lot of content.

Each app presents educational material that gets progressively more difficult as the student advances along with rewards that get more complex with each app.

The toddler app covers shapes, colors, numbers and letters — typical toddler and early preschool material. This is right where Mr K is at right now. He knows all his colors and all but the more difficult shapes, but is just beginning to consistently know letters and numbers. The rewards are simply stickers to post on a sticker scene, but Mr. K loves it!

The Kindergarten app is starting out almost a bit too easy for Mr. E, but he is enjoying it anyway and is proud that he can ace most questions in an app meant for the “grade level” he technically won’t start until next fall. The Kinder app has basic math operations, with visual cues to help out (problems like 1+2 and 2-0), as well as K-level sight words and basic phonics. The rewards get a step more complex as well, with coins being earned, which can then be spent on stickers.

Finally, Miss M tried the 2nd Grade app for the first time today. The 2nd grade app involves spelling, sight words, “speed math” (basic math facts) and “long math” (more difficult multi-digit adding and subtracting). The level is right on for all but the sight word reading (Miss M is an excellent reader — way above grade level). So far the spelling is pretty easy, but she needs all the practice she can get! While the Toddler and Kinder apps involve touching a correct answer from a selection of choices, the 2nd grade app asks the students to write answers using their fingertip (or, I suppose, a stylus would work – we may try that!). It’s a great idea, but sometimes it missed what letter or number Miss M was trying to enter. It’s hard to write neatly with your finger tip! The 2nd grade app has more complex rewards including not just the stickers, but a virtual aquarium, photo booth and more where the “coins” users earn can be spent.

I highly recommend this entire series of apps if you are looking for an all purpose, level-appropriate educational app.

I’m linking up with Tech Tuesday at Sunflower Schoolhouse!

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Looking Back to 10 Read-Alouds from Fall 2011

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 7:47 am
Tags: read-aloud

One of the things I’m eager to consistently share on this blog is the books that I read aloud with Miss M (Age 7.5 — 2nd grade). I love discovering new books via the reviews/recaps that other bloggers write, and I hope to help others do the same! I went back to the list of books we read this school year in the months before I started this blog. There happens to be ten of them. (How convenient…so I can link up to “Top Ten Tuesday“!). 🙂

I doubt I will find the time to write complete reviews or recaps of these books, so here is a tidbit about each of the books I read aloud with Miss M this fall/early winter:

Heidi — A classic story of friendship and unconditional love set in Switzerland.
A Wrinkle in Time — This was one of my favorite books growing up and I may have overshot a little bit by reading it to Miss M at such a young age. It’s a fantasy/science fiction genre story, but I was surprised as I read it how much the story is really about personal exploration and finding a sense of self worth. Miss M seemed to enjoy it anyway (we also went to see a play based on the book), though I will have to encourage her to read it for herself again when she is older!
Alice in Wonderland — I’m not sure I actually read this growing up. Parts of the story were familiar to Miss M and I from having seen two different movie versions. It was a fun read, though I will admit we skipped over some of the song/poetry sections!
Through the Looking Glass — Somehow I find Through the Looking Glass to be even weirder than Alice in Wonderland. Parts of the story were familiar since movie versions tend to combine highlights of the two books. Miss M and I were scratching our heads at points wondering exactly what was going on, but I think we still had fun with it.
The Wheel on the School — This Newberry-award winning book tells the story of a group of school children who are very intent on finding a way to make storks come and nest in their small village, just as they do in the other nearby villages. As odd as that premise sounds, this is a great story that Miss M and I both really enjoyed. It’s definitely one of my favorites of the books we’ve read aloud this year. I love how the story starts with one very determined girl, yet through the course of the story she really brings her whole village together. I felt very drawn in to the lives of the characters, and how they were learning about hard work, friendship and valuing others as they tried to accomplish the goal of finding a wheel for the roof of their school (the wheel being the place for the storks to nest!).
All of a Kind Family — I had never heard of this book until I saw it mentioned in a positive light in a short list of books that also included my beloved Betsy-Tacy series. This is story of a Jewish family of five girls in early 20th century New York City. Miss M could have read this on her own (and did read the sequels on her own), but once we started reading it out loud, I wouldn’t let her finish it on her own because I really wanted to share it with her. I really appreciated the look into the life and experiences of a Jewish family and their holidays and customs, and it was right up my alley as a story of “fun adventures” (though there is a bit of a plot arc as well).
Door in the Wall — Another Newberry winner (we’ve read a lot of those this year!). I picked this to correspond with our history studies, since we’ve spent most of the year in the Middle Ages. This was a bit more of a stretch for Miss M to listen to due to the vocabulary, but she still enjoyed this story of a young man learning to overcome a handicap and find his place in society.
The Family Under the Bridge — We had this one on our shelf for a while, and since the title wasn’t particularly appealing I avoided it for a while. But 0nce we got going, we read through this story quite quickly of a older homeless man in Paris who takes a family of homeless children under his wing.
Caddie Woodlawn — Having enjoyed the last few books in the “Little House” series over the summer, we decided to try this pioneer adventure as well. Caddie is a girl who doens’t fit the “pioneer girl” mold in quite the same way as Laura Ingalls. While Laura definitely has her moments, Caddie is in another category all together as she is much more often to be found adventuring with her brothers than helping her mother. Caddie is a strong protagonist that learns how to use the ways she “doesn’t fit the mold” for good.
The Thirteen Days of Christmas — I chose this as a Christmas-time read-aloud after reading a review of it at the blog Orange Marmalade. This is a fun, silly story of a suitor in Tudor England wooing his girl, based around…you guessed it, the song “The 12 days of Christmas.” That’s Miss M’s favorite Christmas song, so we had a lot of fun with this book.

Happy Reading!

Collage Friday: Museum Day, Pi Day, Sick Day March 16, 2012

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 2:43 pm

Wow, it has been a really out-of-the ordinary week for us! For one thing, we’ve gone somewhere every day. That never happens. It may have helped that the weather was absolutely gorgeous. Weather in the 60s and low 70s is very out of the ordinary in March in Minnesota! We didn’t get nearly as much “regular” school work done this week as usual, but we certainly had a ton of fun (and I’m sure plenty of learning happened along the way!).

I took a lot of pictures this week, so it will take three collages to sum it up! 🙂 On Monday, our water was off all day for water main repairs. I considered my options and decided that hightailing it out of my house for a field trip day was the best one. Lucky for us, my mom was going to be in town anyway for an afternoon meeting. So we arranged to meet up with Grandma at the Minnesota Children’s Museum — one of our favorite “field trip” destinations. If you are in the Twin Cities, I highly recommend their new exhibit “How People Make Things.” I think I enjoyed it as much as the kids!

Tuesday was a pretty regular day, with school time in the morning and just a trip to the library after dinner. Though with the nice weather, the kids spent all afternoon outside, with Miss M’s best friend from across the street joining us for most of it. Then on Wednesday, we celebrated Pi Day:

My collage came out non-chronologically, so my list will be as well. 🙂

1 & 2: In the afternoon, we joined friends for homeschool skate at the roller rink. It was the first time at the rink for all the kids. Miss M got the hang of it and even made it around eventually without the push bar. The boys, however, were much more interested in the arcade games!

3. All my Pi Day Pi-rates. 🙂

4. We followed most of the educational ideas I had in my Pi Day post. Here the kids have gathered plenty of round objects from around the house for us to measure.

5. Pi Pie! (We tried to eat lots of round foods all day — cheerios and bagels for breakfast, Pizza for lunch, Taco Pie for dinner and of course this fruit pie for dessert).

6. A quick stop at Sonic for “happy hour” on the way home from the roller rink…celebrating Pi Day, warm weather, and Mr. K finally putting his poo where it belongs on his own!

7. Enjoying the nice weather outside after the roller skating outing. Miss M is so glad to be able to head outside to read!

And for the rest of our week…

1. Lots of time outside this week with the beautiful weather!

2. Work continues on Miss M’s horse lapbook.

3. Miss M had an “Intro to Woodwinds” class in the afternoon on Thursday. The boys and I played at the playground nearby during her class. First playground outing of 2012!

4 & 5. Mr E has taken a sudden interest in the history of weapons. At first he wanted to make a gun lapbook, and then this morphed into the idea of a lapbook on all kinds of historical weapons. I couldn’t really find many pre-made lapbook pieces for him to use on this subject. Lucky for me, he told me all he really wanted to do was glue a bunch of pictures in a folder/on cardstock. That’s easy enough! We got a few books on the history of weapons from the library, and we’ll add some captions to his “lapbook” at some point.

6. I had been hopeful for a full school day today (or as full as is possible during the first real week of warm weather). Instead, however, it’s a sick day for Miss M. She went to bed with a mild headache/sore throat with no fever, and woke up in the middle of the night with fever and much worse headache/sore throat. A quick trip to the Target clinic this morning confirmed strep throat. Miss M is resting and reading for fun today when her headache isn’t bothering her too much (and enjoying plenty of ice cream, applesauce and pudding of course!)

I’m hoping everyone is well enough for some St. Patrick’s Day celebrating tomorrow! I’ve always wanted to go to the local St. Patrick’s day parade and festival, and the weather should be great for it this year (though crowded I’m sure with the nice weather and the fact that the holiday is on a weekend this year!).

Have a great weekend! I’m linking up with Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners and the Weekly-Wrap-Up @ Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

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Book Discoveries This Week: Roller Skates March 15, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 11:04 pm
Tags: read-aloud

Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer is a book that surprised me in several ways. This 1937 Newberry Award winner wasn’t on our read-aloud list. I intended to start Adam of the Road as our bedtime read-aloud after we finished Hitty (and we are reading “Adam” now). But, in browsing the list of Newberry winners, the title of Roller Skates caught my eye as I pondered whether I could make it a goal to complete reading one entire decade of Newberry winners in 2012. And having read only part of one review, I requested it from the library.

Roller Skates is the story of one year in the life of Lucinda, a ten year old girl in 1890’s New York City. She is an “orphan” for a year while her parents travel in Italy and leave her in the care of two single women. Lucinda takes every advantage of the new-found freedom this situation provides. Her year is spent making all kinds of friends from every social class, reading Shakespeare and, of course, roller skating like wildfire through the city.

I started Roller Skates with pretty high expectations. A story about the adventures of a young girl taking place in a similar era to my beloved Betsy-Tacy books? That’s something pretty appealing. However, I was surprised to find myself having a hard time getting “into” the story at first. Many, many characters are introduced early in the story. After a while, when Miss M asked me to remind her who a particular person was, I couldn’t recall either and had to look back to discover the identity of this minor character, who turned out to be a neighbor. Some of the early chapters felt long as I read them to Miss M at bedtime.

As the story builds toward the celebration of Christmas and Lucinda’s ambitions to put on a puppet-theater showing of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the story grew on me more and more. One of my favorite passages in the book comes as Lucinda reflects on the Christmas celebration that she arranged for and with her friends, particularly a little neighbor girl from a poor family named Trinket.

“There is always one Christmas that belongs to you more than than any other–belongs by right of festival and those secret feelings that are never spoken aloud. This Christmas belonged to Lucinda in this way, and I think it belonged to many of her friends. I know it was the only Christmas the Browdowskis [Trinket’s family] kept everlastingly green in their hearts.” (p. 116)

After many mostly happy adventures for Lucinda, I was also surprised to find the story taking on a more serious note toward the end. It turns out that this story has some passages that I could see upsetting some sensitive children. Lucinda discovers one of her many friends murdered. It took me so much by surprise I had to ask Miss M if she was okay after we read about it — she was. It’s not graphic at all, but I don’t think we’ve really come across anything similar in other books we’ve read.

Lucinda also has an another experience with death late in the story. I won’t go into too much detail as I think it might spoil the story a bit if you knew what was coming (again, something that might be upsetting if you have a sensitive child). By the end of the book, you really get the feeling that Lucinda has matured in so many ways. She is no longer just a carefree girl looking to make the most of being out from under the thumb of parents and governess. She becomes a young woman who knows what it means to truly care for others and to appreciate the year of freedom experienced.

By the end of the book, I found myself wanting to know more of what happened to Lucinda (though you get the impression that perhaps her future years were not quite as exciting or adventurous as this one was). It’s the kind of book I want to revisit again with Miss M as she gets older and could perhaps experience it on a bit deeper level. There’s a lot that could be learned or studied further from this book about city life in the 1890’s, their fashions, views on immigrants and differing social classes, and so on. For right now Roller Skates is going back to the library, but I could definitely see myself buying this one and adding it to our permanent collection.

I’m linking up with Read Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!

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D is for Differences March 14, 2012

Filed under: Creativity — kirstenjoyhill @ 4:38 pm
Tags: creative writing

There’s no doubt that each kid is a unique individual. I’m sure that this will be true even among my three boys, but I see this difference so strikingly between my daughter (Miss M — she will be eight in May) and my oldest son (Mr E, turning five later this month).

Miss M had a “brainstorming” sort of assignment in her Spectrum Writing workbook last week. First she needed to make a list of topics she is interested in and knows something about. Then she picked one of those topics and listed everything she knows about that topic, as well as a list of questions she would like to know the the answers to related to that topic (yes, that’s a grammatically awkward sentence, I know).

Mr. E heard Miss M and I working on this (Miss M talked me into being her scribe so we could get her ideas on paper more quickly). He wanted to do the same thing.

Check out Miss M’s list of things she knows something about/is interested in:

Horses
Tea Parties
Art
Book and Reading
Stories about Pets
Sea Horses (her “expert day” topic at co-op last year!)
Cooking
Bunnies
Tennis
Dancing

Now check out Mr. E’s list:

Fighting
“The Avengers” Super Heroes
Star Wars
The Heart of the Shield (a secret weapon from a series of stories about knights)
Tree man, an action figure (hmmm…I think he made this one up!)
Clone Troopers and Storm Troopers (yep, more Star Wars)
Guns

These lists could hardly be more different, huh?

I think I got even more insight into my two oldest kids in the next step of the process. Miss M picked “bunnies” for her next step and we wrote out a nice list of facts she knows about bunnies, as well as some good questions. Mr E. didn’t actually want to do exactly what Miss M was doing for his assignment. He wanted to give me a list of questions and topics — things he is wondering about or wants to know about. It’s a great list!

“The time of history” (he clarified that this is “stuff from a long time ago”)
“Roman people in Italy” (Fascinating…not sure if this was a random guess on his part or he remembers us reading about the Roman Empire months ago and where it was located)
People that knights fought in the time of knights
What were the weapons of people that knights fought?
How are crayons made?
How are crowns with jewels made?
Why do we have bones in our bodies?
Why do we have joints in our body? (I pointed out that we’ve been talking about bones and joints in science, but he said his “why” questions had not been answered yet)

He also told me he wants to build a robot, made a real model airplane (not one made out of paper), a model airplane “launcher”, and his own Star Wars movie.

Fun stuff, and fun questions! So, I thought I would ask Miss M a question that might lead her to make a list like Mr. E gave me. Her response was that she wanted to learn more about horses (that’s her “expert day” topic for our co-op this year), and that she just wanted to read lots of books.

I pressed her a little bit, and she said yes, she did want to do more art projects, and learn history as we read through our history curriculum and learn how to play tennis through the park tennis program again this summer…but what she really wants to do with “extra” time is immerse herself in all kinds of stories. She wants to read stories, write stories and “play” the stories. I was the exact same way at her age! I had insatiable curiosity about things like science and computers as I got older, but when I was a second grader…I was cleaning the library out of stories from my favorite authors and series too.

I just love the different ways that God has created my kids and the differences in their interests…it makes our home an even more lively and exciting place!

I’m linking up with:

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10 Things to Do With Kids’ Artwork March 13, 2012

Filed under: Getting Organized — kirstenjoyhill @ 5:00 am
Tags: art, crafts

I’m often amazed by how many items made of paper my kids produce every week. Whether it is schoolwork, drawings, paintings, sticker collages or more elaborate art work, it can be a big chore to deal with all of it. Here are few ways that we try and tame our “paper tiger” without just throwing all our kids’ hard work in the trash can.

1. Have a designated spot to put it (and sort through that spot regularly). Here’s our current “done bin” as the kids call it…hmmm…I think it’s time for a clean out! 🙂 Unless something is obviously trash or someone wants to display it right away, most paper items in our house go here first. Maybe it’s procrastination, but I like not making each and every clean up time a battle over what to save or toss.

2. Display it. This could be a Top Ten list of its own, and more. A search for “display kids art” on Pinterest results in many, many creative ideas. We currently have a bulletin board in the school room. The kids can pin any of their work to the board, but they either need to take something down of their own or get permission from a sibling to take something down before a new item can be added. For quite a while I had a special display area in the dining room that I stocked with pictures. I took an old poster frame, added black posterboard to the back, then put 4 of my favorite pieces of artwork in the frame. I hope to get this back up soon, as it was a great decoration for the dining room.

3. Make an artwork binder. Maybe this is where I am being a little bit lazy, but I have been letting Mr E in particular save almost any flat 8.5 x 11 piece of paper that he wants to save in a binder. Here’s how this got started. He and Mr. K love stickers. They love to just sit and put stickers on paper. That’s art to them, I guess. It just killed me to be spending money on stickers and then throwing them away so fast once they were put on paper. Enter the artwork binder! I punch holes in the paper, and many, many sheets of paper fit in each binder. And, you know what? The boys actually sit and look at these two (so far) binders and enjoy looking at sticker pages and various drawings. They tell each other stories based on what they see. The items in these binders may not be “keep forever” sort of things, but it seems to be something they enjoy greatly for now!

4. Scan it. What about the “good stuff”? Well, if it is flat and standard size, I often scan it. This gives us a lot of versatility of what to do with it in the future!

5. Photograph it. Items that are too big to scan, like this “Happy Halloween” banner, or 3-Dimensional items can be saved for posterity in this way.

6. Save a few items for the “permanent collection”. I ask Mr. E and Miss M to choose 5-10 pieces of 2-D art to save each year (or I may pick a few favorites myself). I may or may not have scanned the items first, but after a few favorite items are no longer being displayed, I pack up these items in a large plastic bag. I’m not sure if we’ll ever do anything with these, but they don’t take up a lot of space, and I think my kids may at some point fondly look back on these items. Or maybe I’ll just be fondly looking back at them when they are grown. 🙂

7. Make a photo book from scanned or photographed art. I got this idea from Pinterest and I have followed through on actually doing it yet…but wouldn’t this be a fun thing to have on our bookshelf?

8. Use photos or scanned files to make calendars or other gifts. This has become an annual tradition for us. Grandparents love to get a new calendar every year decorated with kids’ artwork! Photo sites like VistaPrint, Shutterfly and Snapfish have dozens of “photo gift” options and often run really great sales. Why not make a mug, keychain or notecards decorated with your kids’ best artwork to give as gifts?

9. Re-purpose it. Once you’ve scanned the artwork you want to scan, and you’ve saved the cream of the crop to store for the future, turn some of the originals into something else? Large pieces of art could become wrapping paper. Smaller items could become part of a greeting card. Or if you want to really get crafty, check out this idea for re-purposing your toddler’s scribbles!

10. Give it away. Grandmas seem to love having their grandkids’ art to decorate the fridge. You could go one step beyond just giving it to Grandma by thinking of other distant relatives who might like getting a drawing in the mail, or even giving pictures to older friends and neighbors who might find that a child’s art would really brighten their day.

Do you have any other great ideas for dealing with kids’ art? I would love to hear them!

I’m linking up with Top Ten Tuesday @ Many Little Blessings!

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“It’s Okay Mom!” March 12, 2012

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 9:05 am

Miss M was taking a break from school work on Friday to make her birthday list. She’s planning ahead — her birthday isn’t until late May. Her brothers decided it was time to make a K sandwich on E and M. 🙂 Just as I was about to shoo the boys away and tell them to leave their sister alone, Miss M tells me, “It’s okay, Mom. Let them stay there for a minute.”

Eventually it turned into them all giggling on the floor together. For as many chaotic moments as we have had lately and the number of times that Miss M is running away screaming as the boys forget (again) that they may not point even pretend-finger-guns at their sister if she doesn’t want to play “shoot em up games”, I love to see the kids loving one another and having fun together.

And I even turned the birthday-list-making into an opportunity for spelling improvement once she had filled up a whole page of ideas, many of which needed some “assistance” in the spelling department. 🙂

I’m linking up with:

Moments to Remember and You Don’t See That in Public School!

Get Ready for Pi Day! March 11, 2012

Filed under: Holidays — kirstenjoyhill @ 4:04 pm
Tags: math, Pi Day, RightStart

I know there are lots, and lots of random holidays out there. But Pi Day might be one of my most favorite!

Pi day is March 14th. (Get it? 3-14?). The past few years we have celebrated Pi day just by eating pie. I serve something pie-like for dinner (like taco pie, shepherd’s pie, or a spinach pie…pizza would work too!), and, of course, a sweet pie for dessert.

This year we’re going to incorporate it into our homeschool day.

While we have done some nifty geometry lessons with RightStart math level C, we haven’t done anything with circles yet. So one of the first things we’ll do is talk about measurement terms for circles (radius, diameter and circumference). Then we’ll try a “finding pi” activity. I thought this lesson plan did a nice job of explaining how it might be done. Even though the grade level listed is significantly higher than that of my kids, I think at least Miss M will be able to “get it.” Mathisfun.com had another interesting “finding pi” activity, but I think we might save that one for another year.

I have requested a few Pi-themed books from the library. I don’t know if I made my requests in time, but I am especially hoping that “Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi” arrives on the reserve shelf by Wednesday.

Since my kids love crafts, we might need to make some circular or pi-themed crafts. I like the suggestions at Helping Little Hands, which includes some paper plate crafts and a pi-themed patterning worksheet!

I think we’ll also talk just a bit about the history of Pi. Check out this page from the organization that founded pi day for a quick read on the history of Pi.

Until I saw this pin on Pinterest, I had never thought about incorporating Pirates (or would it be pi-rates?) into Pi Day, but I know that’s something Mr. E and Mr. K would love! Maybe we’ll read some pirate-themed books or do some pirate themed crafts or printables. (Photo Source: instructables.com via Kirsten on Pinterest)

A fun Pi Day would definitely not be complete without some pie, of course (and perhaps some other circular foods?). We’ll have Taco pie for dinner with Blueberry-Cherry Pie for dessert. Maybe pancakes for breakfast and pizza for lunch? And don’t forget pi-neapple for snack. 🙂

If your are looking for even more amazing Pi Day ideas, check out my Pi Day board on Pinterest!

Are you going to celebrate Pi Day this year? Do you have any other fun Pi Day ideas?

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Collage Friday: When Life Gives You Broken Eggs… March 9, 2012

Filed under: Weekly Highlights — kirstenjoyhill @ 10:36 pm
Tags: art, iPad, RightStart

Have you read the story or seen the episode of Thomas and Friends where Thomas drives too fast and breaks the farmer’s eggs? At the end of the story Sir Topham Hatt tells Thomas that all is well because he will eat scrambled eggs for breakfast (or was it omelets?). I wonder if Sir Hatt got lots of dirt and straw in his breakfast. I know that the floor in front of my fridge is not nearly clean enough to make breakfast from.

Yes, Mr. K was feeling quite mischievous this past week. The eggs on the floor were a bit of a “fail” on my part. It happened in the evening and I thought both boys were upstairs with Tony. I was relaxing on the couch, just me Facebook and baby J. Eventually I became aware of a strange noise coming from the back of the kitchen (where our fridge and freezer “live”). With dread, I made my way there and found Mr K and the dozen or so broken eggs (a carton not in the picture was already completely empty). He smiles and says to me. “I say YES to eggs!”

You may notice in the picture that several of the eggs are perfectly broken, as if they were ready for the frying pan — so he was clearly very purposeful about what he was doing. And, believe it or not, this was only one of several mischievous acts on the part of Mr K this week. I’m still trying to decide if he is bored, testing the boundaries or going through some other new developmental phase. But keeping up with Mr K definitely took more time than usual this week.

We did manage to have some fun and learning this week amidst the extra chaos:

1. Miss M had a really great collage idea that she executed almost entirely on her own. She found a picture of a doll in an old Christmas toy catalog we had in our stack of magazines. She then sought out similarly sized pictures furniture, food and even a dog. Then she asked me if I could “use google to find her a blank room”. Smart idea on her part! I found an appropriate looking picture of an empty room and she made her work of art!

2. The boys did water colors while Miss M did her collage. Mr. E says that his work is entitled “Millennium Falcon and Storm Troopers.” 🙂 This boy always has Star Wars on the brain these days.

3. Mr E and Mr K with a new-to-us dinosaur game passed along to us by our neighbors. It’s kind of like “Operation” for dinosaur bones…and it even relates to what we’ve been talking about in science, since we have been discussing human and animal skeletons!

4. Miss M decided that Mr K needed some “tot school” this week. So, to be honest, I haven’t been doing a lot in terms of working on numbers, letters and so on with Mr K. He isn’t chomping at the bit to learn this stuff most of the time, he only just turned three, and I have other priorities for him like getting to the potty on his own more frequently and not causing chaos everywhere he goes! But he seemed to enjoy doing a letter coloring page and “letter hunt” with Miss M while she read him an appropriately themed story that she picked out. Hmmm…maybe we are on to something here!

5, Oh, column addition…both teacher and student wished we never knew you. We only made it through about two and a half RightStart math lessons this week. We’ve made the big shift in gears away from geometry. Miss M struggled with not making small mistakes in the column addition problems, which led to answers I could see were so close, but not totally correct. It was discouraging for her to have to retrace her steps to find her mistakes and she couldn’t always find them. Attitudes may have been deteriorating on both of our parts by the end of the week. I am glad to see that after the lesson that is currently half-finished we switch gears again to subtraction for a bit. Maybe that will go better for us!

6. Miss M working on her math while baby J keeps her company (I had been sitting in between them, and when I got up I thought they looked so cute together!).

7. Family science night around the iPad, while daddy shows the kids pictures of animal skeletons to discuss similarities and differences between various vertebrates.

8. Snack and a history lesson. We don’t read over a meal or snack very often…because, to be honest, I am usually too hungry to read. But I wanted to read a long lesson from MOH III on Leonardo DaVinci today, and some cinnamon/sugar biscuits seemed like a nice diversion.

9. A complicated afternoon play-date situation didn’t quite work out as we had planned it, but the end result was great — we ended up with five kids around the table building with toothpicks and marshmallows (and only a reasonable number of marshmallows were eaten, I think!) provided by a friend who hadn’t originally planned on staying to play at our house.

I’m hoping for a relaxing, not too chaotic weekend and looking ahead to a busy week next week that includes a water-main shutoff on Monday, Pi day on Wednesday, a woodwinds class for Miss M on Thursday and maybe some St. Patrick’s Day activities thrown in for good measure. Oh, and we were invited to go roller skating too. We’ll see if we’re ready for all of that!

I’m linking up with Collage Friday @ Homegrown Learners and the Weekly Wrap-Up @ Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

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Book Discoveries this Week: Ballerino Nate and other picture books March 8, 2012

Filed under: Books — kirstenjoyhill @ 9:34 pm
Tags: picture books, read-aloud

A few weeks ago at a friend’s house, Mr E was a ballerino. Luckily for his future teenage self, I won’t post the pictures here as he might not appreciate them! Mr. E and his friend decided that since Mr E is a boy, he must be a “ballerino” instead of a “ballerina” when he danced in his friend’s tutu. I thought this was a very clever word choice on the part of these 4-year-olds.

Then, much to my surprise, I ran across Ballerino Nate by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley while reading this post I found via Pinterest. Of course, I had to request it right away from our library!

Ballerino Nate is a very sweet story about a boy who wants to dance. But can he, a boy, learn ballet? And will he have to wear a pink outfit in order to do it? Nate’s older brother tries to convince him at every turn that dancing is for girls. Even all the other kids in his first ballet class are girls. But, as you might guess by the title, Nate’s parents help him to see that these stereotypes about ballet aren’t so true after all.

While I don’t think Mr. E is really all that interested in being a ballet dancer (I think he dressed up in ballet garb mostly to be a good friend), I do think most kids need reminders every now and then that activities, interests and careers need not be limited by gender. Mr. E thought it was a “nice story”, and it was certainly a change of pace from most of the books he selects for himself.

Here’s a few quick takes on some other picture books we’ve enjoyed recently:

Mary Had a Little Lamp by Jack Lechner features illustrations by Bob Staake, who also wrote and illustrated Donut Chef (a book we enjoyed a few weeks ago). The style is so similar that Mr. K kept asking me if the Donut Chef was in this book too! Imagine what might happen if Mary brought a lamp everywhere instead of a Lamb, and you get the concept of this book. Simple but funny, and we read it many times over the past two weeks.

I really enjoyed the illustrations in Tugga-Tugga Tugboat by Kevin Lewis, with Illustrations by Daniel Kirk. This sparked a really great discussion with the boys about tugboats. Are they real? Can a little boat really pull a big ship? Why do they do that? We watched a few videos on youtube about tugboats after reading this book!

Chickens to the Rescue by John Himmelman is a short, silly little story that had us laughing as chickens solve problems big and small on the farm. There are lots of fun little details to see if you take the time to look at what all the chickens are doing.

Finally, this week I actually remembered to read a book to Baby J. He is on my lap or eating while I read for many, many books every day. But he is getting to be a bigger baby now…my little guy is not just a newborn bump on a log any more. 🙂 I got out one of my favorite Usborne board books to enjoy with him: “That’s Not My Puppy“. I totally love the “That’s not my…” series. They all have the same predictable format, but they are super cute and each page has a fun texture. Baby J enjoyed his first just-for-him story time experience too. He was entertained with grabbing at all the textures in the book for quite a long time!

I’m linking up with Read Aloud Thursday @ Hope is the Word!

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