Distinguishing Living/Biological, Natural Earth, and Human-Made Things (B-2)

We did the bulk of this lesson outside on our front porch so it was easy to observe a mix of biological, natural earth, and human-made things. We started out by reviewing what we covered last week (states of matter), and then I said we were going to learn about another way of organizing things and introduced the idea of living/biological things. Right then a spider crawled by our feet, so that was a fun introduction. We saw a bird fly by, and also talked about the trees and plants. I talked about how items made by living things are also biological, and of course Leif eventually mentioned poop. We then moved into talking about natural earth items and found them a little harder to come up with than biological things. Dirt, rocks, mountains (which Zion pointed out are made of dirt and rocks), volcanoes...I mentioned air and water. Then we talked about human-made items and after a bit it came up that all things are made of either biological or natural earth materials. Zion was surprised to learn that rubber comes from a tree, but Clive and Leif seemed to know that already (maybe from Wild Kratts). Each kid had a paper with three sections labeled with each of the groups and they took notes or drew pictures of the different items we mentioned.

We came inside and watched this video: Cookie Monster discusses living vs. non-living . I was hoping for a BrainPop or Bill Nye video on the subject, but hadn't been able to find one. We then brought up the remaining characteristics of living things listed in the book.

Final point I brought up was technology and we discussed early human technology (arrowheads, spears, pottery) and modern day technology. We looked at the tags of everyone's tee shirts to see where they were made. Each of them were made in a different place. Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala, and the USA. We looked through this article about inventions inspired by nature. We skipped over some of the more detailed/complicated examples.

Finished up A/B1

Yesterday we wrapped up our discussion on classification by talking about how things are organized at Costco (a familiar store for us). We brought up how they don't just have all the dairy products together because some need to be refrigerated and some need to be frozen. I hopefully made the point that different organizational systems are chosen because they work. We talked about possible ways to organize clothes. 

We watched the BrainPop video on Classification and took the quiz. We also watched the Crash Course Biology video on Taxonomy. My 6 yo commented that he didn't really understand much of the Crash Course video, but I figure it is still exposure and good for something. Plus I'm sure that the older two picked up more from it. There is also a BrainPop Jr video that we didn't watch but might as a review next week. 

BFSU A/B-1 Organizing matter

I had each of the kids gather 7 assorted items, and I did the same. Then they worked on figuring out how best to categorize the items. It got a little heated, as things tend to when both my oldest kids are involved.

As categories were suggested or tried I wrote them on the white board. After unsuccessful attempts to come to consensus, we decided to let each person have their own attempt to categorize. Here are the results: 

After we finished, Zion wanted to try sorting them by color. 

The sock and the cast iron bird statue seemed to be the most challenging items to find a good grouping for, according to the kids. 

We then walked around the house and pointed out how things are organized and grouped together. 

This part of the lesson took a lot longer than I anticipated, but the kids were enjoying it and pretty engaged, so I think it was time worth spending. We will hopefully wrap up when we have our next science class. 

Haiku

For Poetry Teatime today we read haiku poems and discussed how to write one. These are the ones the kids came up with:

Noodle:

Chase it chase it dog.
Accidental backflip, oops!
Who put that hole there?


Spud:

Ok here's a haiku
about a turkey vulture
that's all for now


Sprout:
My giraffe farted
And it was very stinky.
His butt exploded.


I wrote a few, a couple of them inspired by my boys talking (you can probably guess which ones).

Elephant, large, gray.
Eats pounds of grass daily.
Makes many big poops.

Tugging and twisting
A brave battle fought daily
Getting toddlers dressed.

Round, brown, and crunchy.
To dip and dunk, delicious.
More Oreos, please.

Long grasses swaying
The smell permeates the air.
Big elephant fart.


The kids really enjoyed it, and I was happy to see that Spud wanted to copy his over again because his first draft was quite messy. Then they wanted to laminate them and make frames with colored electrical tape. Sometimes things turn out better than you expected!

Fresh Start

Ah, January. It's a good time to evaluate how things are going. How grateful I was for Christmas break this year to take some time and make some changes. I think what works for me and homeschooling is to steadily make gradual improvements by tweaking areas as necessary. It's really hard to change up a LOT of things at once. Keep what works, fix what doesn't.

Spud is rather behind in writing. After trying a variety of different approaches, I was able to figure out that he needs the following:
1. Clear instructions
2. Predictability
3. Not to feel pressured to be overly creative
4. Not to feel worried about mistakes in spelling and other mechanics

I asked for input on the Well-Trained Mind forums and had several people recommend Essentials in Writing as a potential fit. I read some more detailed reviews and it was mentioned to be good for the reluctant writer. We have been taking a Brave Writer approach to more things, but I realized that the writing assignments given were a bit too open ended for him to feel very confident with them, and it was a bit too dependent on me to give very clear instructions, which is not really my strong point. I can explain things well, but Spud wants things EXPLICITLY DETAILED, and he has very little patience for adding things like, "Oh, I should have mentioned XYZ," or the like. So a scripted curriculum works best. We are two days into Level 3 of EiW (I opted to start a grade level below so as to give him more chances to succeed before it gets beyond his understanding) and so far so good. I actually asked him if he would be willing to do two lessons/day since they are short (at this stage) and he agreed to that.

To address his other major issues with writing, handwriting and spelling (the big one!), I ordered a Handwriting Without Tears cursive book and pulled out the Logic of English materials I bought 3 years ago but didn't really get into at all. It was too much for Spud (then a 1st grader) and wasn't very essential for Noodle (then a 4th grader), so I shelved it. I actually think it's going to be really beneficial for Spud now and he is going along with it nicely so far. He is actually excited to be doing the cursive book, which is kind of amazing since he's never been a fan of handwriting. I told him I wanted him to learn cursive so he could at least read it, even if he chooses not to write in cursive. I think he likes the novelty factor of it.

Both Noodle and Spud have been using Teaching Textbooks for Math this year.  Sometimes it would go well for Spud, sometimes not. Finally, after another math meltdown yesterday I told him we were returning to Math-U-See for him, because he did well with it and it worked. He got very frustrated with the spiral nature of TT, with a ton of review in each lesson. I told him that with MUS it was set up to be a lot easier to move forward once material is mastered, so I think he will be glad to use it again, even if right now he's still kind of bothered about it.

Sprout is doing Math Mammoth 1 for Kindergarten math and he likes it quite well. He is also doing Dreambox, which he likes okay. I was doing Life of Fred with him, too, but he didn't seem to love it.
Additionally, he is working through Explode the Code 1.5, HWOT Numbers & Letters for Me, Rusty & Rosy Learn With Me (we paid for a subscription because it worked so well for him for preschool), reading BOB Books and I See Sam books, and joining us for Story of the World - Ancients and Spud for science.

The twins are going to a babysitter in the mornings for about 2.5 hours. From Sept-December they went 3 days a week, but that sitter moved and we found a new one, so now they are likely to go 4 days a week. It has been a huge help to have them out of the house while we do Math, Language Arts, and History/Science. Since they still take pretty good naps, we get another 1.5 hours or so in the afternoon to have some good school time. It has been a sanity saver.

Oh, just to finish out what we are doing for curriculum: Noodle is using Uzinggo for science, which I have been pretty impressed with. We are focusing on Life Science this year, and I think they do pretty great coverage for a middle school level.  She isn't super into science, but she enjoys it well enough.

Pyramids

Kids asked how regular Egyptians were buried, so we looked that up. 

http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/pyramids/about/otheregy.html

 Sprout's coloring page. 

Thoughts...

Today I sent the following IMs to my good friend Laura who also homeschools:

Sigh....I'm getting that anxious feeling that I get when I feel like I'm not going to be able to DO IT. I want so much to do this awesome mashup of Brave Writer and Project Based Homeschooling but I'm afraid that it won't feel enough like "learning" to me and I'll sabotage it. I am afraid to trust it, even though it really seems philosophically sound.

  I don't want my kids to be "schooled" I want them to learn how to learn, but I only have an example of being schooled...at least until graduate school. And in my regular, non-school based life.

 After a nice chat with Laura more time reading today and corresponding some with Pam (Noodle's super fantastic writing tutor/mentor), I'm feeling better.  I'm actually feeling pretty excited, but I'm trying to keep my excitement real since by now, going into my 8th year of homeschooling, I know that reality has a way of kicking even the most delightful plans in the shins. But I am excited, and I hope that I can remember to have a more Zen approach to the hiccups and interruptions that are inevitable in any life, but especially in a life with twin toddlers.

One thing Laura mentioned was that she has an easier time feeling productive if she blogs about what gets done. I relate to that as well. Even though in retrospect I find it amusing how I blogged about our little accomplishments and projects when Noodle & Spud were in early elementary, I felt happy and productive. As they've gotten older, I've felt more pressure to do things that seem more like regular school, and in the process a lot of the joy has left. One of my primary goals this year is to make room for that joy. To cut out what really doesn't need to get done and spend time learning as a family. Less school-at-home and more cultivating learners. In public schools we spend 12 (usually 13, more if you include preschool) telling kids what they have to know and what is important to learn. But throughout those years we are constantly asking them what they want to do or be when they grow up. Do we really expect them to know when we don't give them a chance to develop their individual skills and talents now?

I have a talent for school. I was always an excellent student, and most of the time that corresponded at least somewhat with being a pretty decent learner. But I haven't been in school for almost 10 years now (I defended my masters' thesis two weeks before Spud was born), so that talent of being a student doesn't serve me that well now. The talent of knowing how to learn does, though. A major mistake of traditional schooling, as I see it, is that the talent of being a student is the only one that is really measured, and therefore valued. There is a parallel track of being a good athlete or a good performer, but there are so many other talents that get ignored and go undervalued. We give every student the same box of tools while ignoring their natural gifts, and then expect them to do great things and have new ideas. I just don't think that's the best approach.