Wednesday January 28, 2009
Rocket Boy used to obsessively do puzzles, but for the last year really hasn’t been interested at all. A shame too, because we have some really nice ones. Well this morning he decided that he wanted to do puzzles. Great! We started with a tangram, but with one missing piece we didn’t get too far. Then we moved on to the 48 piece wooden puzzles (Melissa & Doug) that come with their own tray. I had him make a chart of the puzzles he wanted to do so he could time himself to see how much he can improve. He did a total of five puzzles with 48-100 pieces. The kid had puzzle mania. I won’t complain one bit. They hit on all sorts of skills he needs. The last two puzzles he did were very fanciful artwork from a company called D’jeco. One in particular was populated with all sorts of space creatures and planets. Rocket Boy was painfully slow putting that one together because he kept making up stories about the creatures. The completionist part of me was getting impatient, but the educator part was thrilled.
After he finished it we did a story cloud exercise, in which we came up with a main idea for his story and four secondary points. I then got my writer-phobic child to actually write several sentences. He cheerfully (mostly) wrote about the aliens going to a birthday party but the way was dangerous. Then he listed three of the obstacles they would have to pass to get to the party. He filled about 3/4 of a page in his notebook without complaint! That is unheard of in our house. The story had a beginning and middle, but no end, but that’s ok for now. There’s no need to quash excitement by forcing too much lesson. We’ll deal with that another day.
Next time I want him to write I just need to remember to involve space aliens in peril.
He was so excited about his story that he put on a play of it, complete with ticket taking and an imaginary participatory audience. Then he realized that he could make a book of it. He was zooming with excitement and at that point I was bone tired from keeping up with him.
We cuddled on the couch to watch some PBS and the school day was happily done.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Back to basics and a huge milestone!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
After the irregularity of last week and yesterday, today we mostly stuck with the basics. We spent most of the day working through the 1st grade workbook, catching up on a couple of worksheets we didn't do last week and working on through more basic lessons on letters and numbers. I'm still attempting to impart counting by twos and even vs odd numbers. After much work, I think he finally got it, especially when Hypersteve reenforced it with an after dinner game of mancala.
After a late lunch we turned on the computer, after all, I did deem Tuesdays and Thursdays computer days. Otherwise Rocket Boy gets a bit too obsessed with it. We did math code breaking again - simple addition problems whose solutions correspond to letters to answer science questions. This time it was a fish theme. We followed it with time on the Museum of Natural History's kids' website, Ology. Going along with the fish theme, we stuck to the marine biology section and played all kinds of games and activities. It's fun to make a 6 year old with a missing tooth try to say "ichthyologist."
That's right, Rocket Boy lost his first tooth the other day! Of course he put it under his pillow and the tooth fairy did her job, but he wanted to know when we were going to have the party. Apparently, he thought that losing a tooth is cause for a party - friends coming over, cake, balloons, games, the works. I broke it to him gently. Of course he kept asking what would happen if he lost two teeth, or all his teeth. I guess he's still bucking for a party.
So what should I do with the tooth?
After the irregularity of last week and yesterday, today we mostly stuck with the basics. We spent most of the day working through the 1st grade workbook, catching up on a couple of worksheets we didn't do last week and working on through more basic lessons on letters and numbers. I'm still attempting to impart counting by twos and even vs odd numbers. After much work, I think he finally got it, especially when Hypersteve reenforced it with an after dinner game of mancala.
After a late lunch we turned on the computer, after all, I did deem Tuesdays and Thursdays computer days. Otherwise Rocket Boy gets a bit too obsessed with it. We did math code breaking again - simple addition problems whose solutions correspond to letters to answer science questions. This time it was a fish theme. We followed it with time on the Museum of Natural History's kids' website, Ology. Going along with the fish theme, we stuck to the marine biology section and played all kinds of games and activities. It's fun to make a 6 year old with a missing tooth try to say "ichthyologist."
That's right, Rocket Boy lost his first tooth the other day! Of course he put it under his pillow and the tooth fairy did her job, but he wanted to know when we were going to have the party. Apparently, he thought that losing a tooth is cause for a party - friends coming over, cake, balloons, games, the works. I broke it to him gently. Of course he kept asking what would happen if he lost two teeth, or all his teeth. I guess he's still bucking for a party.
So what should I do with the tooth?
Monday, January 26, 2009
Homeschooling is where the heart, um car dealership, is
Monday, January 26, 2009
We were still in NJ after spending a nice long visit with Hypersteve’s mom. She now has a brand new knee. I’m actually really glad we didn’t get out to see her sooner. The hospital she was in was very hospital-y in all the anxiety producing ways. Her leg was swollen and infected and she just didn’t look like herself. It would have scared the pants off of Rocket Boy. Now she’s in an orthopedic recovery center that’s clean, roomy, warm feeling, with a good food and a very friendly staff that is not viciously overworked. And did I mention the game room? She’s feeling far better and is cheerfully agonizing through physical therapy.
Just down the street from the hospital is the Toyota dealership. Last year I lost my key fob (the only way I have of unlocking or starting the Prius) so Hypersteve and I have spent the last year switching off. Since it’s a smart key that automatically unlocks the car when I touch the door handle and starts the car when I press the power button, I can’t exactly take it down to the locksmith to make a spare. I have to go to the dealership where they will give me a new fob and program it to the car’s computer – for just under $300. That’s a lot for a key, but if we were just unlucky enough to loose the only key we have, we’d have to call a tow truck to take our car to the dealership where they would have to replace part of the car’s computer in addition to the cost of the keys. That would have run us close to $900 so I’m happy to shell out 1/3 of that. Of course the car also needed new front brakes and the pads replaced on the rear brakes. I had known that but had been putting it off. It was due for an oil change, a new cabin air filter, and a tire rotation. I was so happy they threw in a complimentary car wash. So 3 hours and nearly $1000 later, the car is happily purring and we will be able to open our doors and stop the car whenever we want. Considering it was all maintenance stuff that is part of what everyone has to pay to keep a car I don’t feel too bad. I’m getting a little sentimental about the car. It’s at 95K already. I’ve never owned a car for so long or so many miles (and so few tanks of gas, thank you sweet Prius!)
So we spent the time at the dealership working on reading and math. They had a whole bunch of kids books and Highlights magazine – none of which we had read before. We played long games of Uno – first addition Uno where Rocket Boy has to add the number of the card he’s laying down the number of the card before it. Then we did subtraction Uno the same way. We didn’t get into negative numbers, just subtracting the smaller from the bigger. We also had a long discussion about digit placement. He just does not believe that there is such a thing as ones, tens, hundreds place. He refused to accept it. I think I may need to get him an abacus or some counting beads or something. Maybe I’ll look into the Montessori number system.
That was the extent of school today, short day, basic lessons, and lots of playing and visiting grandma. S’all good.
We were still in NJ after spending a nice long visit with Hypersteve’s mom. She now has a brand new knee. I’m actually really glad we didn’t get out to see her sooner. The hospital she was in was very hospital-y in all the anxiety producing ways. Her leg was swollen and infected and she just didn’t look like herself. It would have scared the pants off of Rocket Boy. Now she’s in an orthopedic recovery center that’s clean, roomy, warm feeling, with a good food and a very friendly staff that is not viciously overworked. And did I mention the game room? She’s feeling far better and is cheerfully agonizing through physical therapy.
Just down the street from the hospital is the Toyota dealership. Last year I lost my key fob (the only way I have of unlocking or starting the Prius) so Hypersteve and I have spent the last year switching off. Since it’s a smart key that automatically unlocks the car when I touch the door handle and starts the car when I press the power button, I can’t exactly take it down to the locksmith to make a spare. I have to go to the dealership where they will give me a new fob and program it to the car’s computer – for just under $300. That’s a lot for a key, but if we were just unlucky enough to loose the only key we have, we’d have to call a tow truck to take our car to the dealership where they would have to replace part of the car’s computer in addition to the cost of the keys. That would have run us close to $900 so I’m happy to shell out 1/3 of that. Of course the car also needed new front brakes and the pads replaced on the rear brakes. I had known that but had been putting it off. It was due for an oil change, a new cabin air filter, and a tire rotation. I was so happy they threw in a complimentary car wash. So 3 hours and nearly $1000 later, the car is happily purring and we will be able to open our doors and stop the car whenever we want. Considering it was all maintenance stuff that is part of what everyone has to pay to keep a car I don’t feel too bad. I’m getting a little sentimental about the car. It’s at 95K already. I’ve never owned a car for so long or so many miles (and so few tanks of gas, thank you sweet Prius!)
So we spent the time at the dealership working on reading and math. They had a whole bunch of kids books and Highlights magazine – none of which we had read before. We played long games of Uno – first addition Uno where Rocket Boy has to add the number of the card he’s laying down the number of the card before it. Then we did subtraction Uno the same way. We didn’t get into negative numbers, just subtracting the smaller from the bigger. We also had a long discussion about digit placement. He just does not believe that there is such a thing as ones, tens, hundreds place. He refused to accept it. I think I may need to get him an abacus or some counting beads or something. Maybe I’ll look into the Montessori number system.
That was the extent of school today, short day, basic lessons, and lots of playing and visiting grandma. S’all good.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
With that many people loving science, we'll be ok, right?
Saturday, January 24, 2009
It was Cyber Chase Day at the New York Hall of Science. Rocket Boy had been looking forward to it for weeks, thanks to daily reminders on PBS. I was all for it, that was, until we actually walked in. The place was mobbed and ill equipped to handle such a huge group. The lines were long and the transactions took forever with lots of people asking oh so may redundant questions, especially if they had spent any of their long waiting time actually reading any of the admissions signs. After we finally got through the line we got into another line for the coat check, found out that we had to by coat check tickets when we got out admission, went back to admission, got back in the coat check line, got in line for Cyber Chase (free tickets, but handled separately from admission, all gone by the time we got there at noon L), then got in line for the bathroom. It took over 45 minutes from the time we walked in the door till we got into the line for our first exhibit.
After the third time we had someone get in front of us, I got very firm about letting other children and their parents know that several children had been waiting patiently in line and that their children could wait there, at the end. Had I not done that, Rocket Boy would never have gotten a chance to experiment with the tennis exhibit or try to pick up rocks from the bottom of the ocean. I am flabbergasted that some people just do not understand a basic social contract of first come, first served. Nor do they seem interested in teaching their children of being conscientious of others.
Aside from the crowds, the museum had some great exhibits, well designed to teach all sorts of concepts. We were both particularly mesmerized by the comet simulator (using dry ice dropped into a shallow pool). He also loved the Mobius strip experiment – absolutely amazed by cutting the strip in half. Rocket Boy got a little frenetic at one point, zooming from one exhibit to another, pushing buttons and levers, and running to the next. All flash no content. I stopped him and we took a break for lunch. We talked about the reasons for the exhibits, which is not just to push buttons, and resolved to address the next exhibits a little more calmly. The break worked and the afternoon was far less frenetic.
We will go back, but on a weekday and I will try to pair it with lessons during the week. We may even wait till the science playground is open in the spring. I’ve read about it in landscape magazines and can’t wait to try it out first hand. It looks fun!
It was Cyber Chase Day at the New York Hall of Science. Rocket Boy had been looking forward to it for weeks, thanks to daily reminders on PBS. I was all for it, that was, until we actually walked in. The place was mobbed and ill equipped to handle such a huge group. The lines were long and the transactions took forever with lots of people asking oh so may redundant questions, especially if they had spent any of their long waiting time actually reading any of the admissions signs. After we finally got through the line we got into another line for the coat check, found out that we had to by coat check tickets when we got out admission, went back to admission, got back in the coat check line, got in line for Cyber Chase (free tickets, but handled separately from admission, all gone by the time we got there at noon L), then got in line for the bathroom. It took over 45 minutes from the time we walked in the door till we got into the line for our first exhibit.
After the third time we had someone get in front of us, I got very firm about letting other children and their parents know that several children had been waiting patiently in line and that their children could wait there, at the end. Had I not done that, Rocket Boy would never have gotten a chance to experiment with the tennis exhibit or try to pick up rocks from the bottom of the ocean. I am flabbergasted that some people just do not understand a basic social contract of first come, first served. Nor do they seem interested in teaching their children of being conscientious of others.
Aside from the crowds, the museum had some great exhibits, well designed to teach all sorts of concepts. We were both particularly mesmerized by the comet simulator (using dry ice dropped into a shallow pool). He also loved the Mobius strip experiment – absolutely amazed by cutting the strip in half. Rocket Boy got a little frenetic at one point, zooming from one exhibit to another, pushing buttons and levers, and running to the next. All flash no content. I stopped him and we took a break for lunch. We talked about the reasons for the exhibits, which is not just to push buttons, and resolved to address the next exhibits a little more calmly. The break worked and the afternoon was far less frenetic.
We will go back, but on a weekday and I will try to pair it with lessons during the week. We may even wait till the science playground is open in the spring. I’ve read about it in landscape magazines and can’t wait to try it out first hand. It looks fun!
I love Frog & Toad, new pillows, and a stocked fridge
Friday, January 23, 2009
Wow! Why do I forget the days so quickly? I sit here on Sunday night, catching up on the last few days and I already have trouble recalling what happened on Friday.
We did, um, stuff. Right. It’s coming back to me. We planned to go to the NY Hall of Science all day Saturday, so I decided it would be a fine time to get some necessary errands run, teach for a half day, and make up some work the next day.
We went to Ikea to pick up some new pillows. After yet another night of poor sleep, I decided it was time. Luckily Ikea is right next to Fairway so we did the grocery shopping afterwards. I made it as much of a teaching trip as I could (though not as teach-y as the last time – that would have taken forever).
At home we made lunch then settled down for some workbooks and some reading. Rocket Boy read an entire chapter of Frog & Toad with almost no help. I love those books. I loved them when I was a kid and I love them more now that I’m teaching. So many of the easy readers are so explicitly illustrated, that Rocket Boy can guess most of the words instead of actually reading the words. Not with Frog & Toad. We added some more words to his word box, but couldn’t finish the task as it was time for tennis.
That night I slept deeply and well. Ahhhhh, new pillows!
Wow! Why do I forget the days so quickly? I sit here on Sunday night, catching up on the last few days and I already have trouble recalling what happened on Friday.
We did, um, stuff. Right. It’s coming back to me. We planned to go to the NY Hall of Science all day Saturday, so I decided it would be a fine time to get some necessary errands run, teach for a half day, and make up some work the next day.
We went to Ikea to pick up some new pillows. After yet another night of poor sleep, I decided it was time. Luckily Ikea is right next to Fairway so we did the grocery shopping afterwards. I made it as much of a teaching trip as I could (though not as teach-y as the last time – that would have taken forever).
At home we made lunch then settled down for some workbooks and some reading. Rocket Boy read an entire chapter of Frog & Toad with almost no help. I love those books. I loved them when I was a kid and I love them more now that I’m teaching. So many of the easy readers are so explicitly illustrated, that Rocket Boy can guess most of the words instead of actually reading the words. Not with Frog & Toad. We added some more words to his word box, but couldn’t finish the task as it was time for tennis.
That night I slept deeply and well. Ahhhhh, new pillows!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Paper Airplanes
Thursday January 22, 2009
We started out the day under assault. After feeling like they were finally under control, the roaches are back in the kitchen. So our usual leisurely morning was supplanting with moving the stove, laying down more poison (which I HATE using, but really I HATE the bugs way more), and more caulking of various cracks and crevices that got missed last time. Luckily for me Hypersteve did most of that while I slept. I’ve been exhausted lately. The new homeschooling schedule is making me tired; I keep wanting to nap in the afternoons. I guess I just did not anticipate how much energy it takes to engage a 6 year old all day long. I’m sure I’ll adjust after a few weeks, but really it just makes me think that I need to do a lot more exercise to get my energy levels back up.
No one wanted breakfast at home after this morning's visitors so we headed to the diner. We have a greasy spoon right around the corner. It’s not great, but it’s fine for eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches; except last time we went there we found that they had increased their prices dramatically. Used to be you could get 2 eggs, coffee, toast, home fries, and a mini OJ for $2.75. For that price, I could put up with the greasy spoon-ness of it, but not when they’re charging $4.75. Goodbye George’s! So we hopped into the car and went to a place further away, but where the food is good, cheap, and the wait staff knows us. We had a great time, especially since we haven’t had a lot of all together family time lately. I’ve been trying to be better about what I eat so I got poached eggs with whole-wheat toast and grits, instead of the usual over easy and home fries. I’m sure I cut a huge amount of fat from my meal by making those choices.
Then it was back home and back to school. Rocket Boy really wanted to make paper airplanes, so I found us an appropriate website. We talked about flight and a little bit about engineering, then we talked about what might influence how far a plane flies and I had him come up with some variables. Then I had him write up a science experiment, complete with experimental goals. We made the airplanes then tested their distance down our long hall. We charted the results, creating a point value for each flight. We did 6 test flights in total. I had Rocket Boy add up the values and determine which plane flew the furthest. It took most of the day, but we did math, science, reading, and writing: all under the auspices of paper airplanes. Homeschool is so much more fun than regular school.
We started out the day under assault. After feeling like they were finally under control, the roaches are back in the kitchen. So our usual leisurely morning was supplanting with moving the stove, laying down more poison (which I HATE using, but really I HATE the bugs way more), and more caulking of various cracks and crevices that got missed last time. Luckily for me Hypersteve did most of that while I slept. I’ve been exhausted lately. The new homeschooling schedule is making me tired; I keep wanting to nap in the afternoons. I guess I just did not anticipate how much energy it takes to engage a 6 year old all day long. I’m sure I’ll adjust after a few weeks, but really it just makes me think that I need to do a lot more exercise to get my energy levels back up.
No one wanted breakfast at home after this morning's visitors so we headed to the diner. We have a greasy spoon right around the corner. It’s not great, but it’s fine for eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches; except last time we went there we found that they had increased their prices dramatically. Used to be you could get 2 eggs, coffee, toast, home fries, and a mini OJ for $2.75. For that price, I could put up with the greasy spoon-ness of it, but not when they’re charging $4.75. Goodbye George’s! So we hopped into the car and went to a place further away, but where the food is good, cheap, and the wait staff knows us. We had a great time, especially since we haven’t had a lot of all together family time lately. I’ve been trying to be better about what I eat so I got poached eggs with whole-wheat toast and grits, instead of the usual over easy and home fries. I’m sure I cut a huge amount of fat from my meal by making those choices.
Then it was back home and back to school. Rocket Boy really wanted to make paper airplanes, so I found us an appropriate website. We talked about flight and a little bit about engineering, then we talked about what might influence how far a plane flies and I had him come up with some variables. Then I had him write up a science experiment, complete with experimental goals. We made the airplanes then tested their distance down our long hall. We charted the results, creating a point value for each flight. We did 6 test flights in total. I had Rocket Boy add up the values and determine which plane flew the furthest. It took most of the day, but we did math, science, reading, and writing: all under the auspices of paper airplanes. Homeschool is so much more fun than regular school.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Wed Is The First Regular School Day This Week
Wednesday January 21, 2009
Back to normal
This was the first complete school day of the week. We both needed to ease into it. We started the day (after a Choose & Do playing Mousetrap) by going through some of the worksheets in our basic curriculum book. We did first sounds, last sounds. As usual Rocket Boy was getting mighty frustrated with his letter formation. I decided to try an altogether different tactic. He told me his favorite lower case letter is “n” so I capitalized on that to remind him that if he’s really good at n that means he can easily write all the letters that are part of the n family. “Letters don’t have families!” So I spent a long, long time explaining how n, m, r, and h are all related in shape. That blew his mind a bit and we spent a good amount of time using the dry erase board morphing those letters into one another. We did the same with o, l, and v. I was surprised and impressed at how well he took to understanding the lowercase when I approached it that way. Tonight I might make up a few of my own worksheets that have him writing the letter families.
As a sideways strategy towards strengthening his writing confidence, we did an exercise from the Drawing With Children book that involves some shape copying. If we do those regularly I think he will get a little more hand control or at least we will be able to identify what stoke or movement is causing him trouble. Usually he as fun with those exercises, but this time he was getting frustrated with himself. Each time I asked him to check back with the original and evaluate his work he got upset at his marks. He clearly had had enough of writing (it was lunchtime).
While he was waiting for lunch to be ready he did a few addition worksheets and a counting by 5s sheet. After a delicious lunch (pirogue, applesauce (for him not me), and steamed broccoli tossed in butter and garlic) we had a little quiet reading time – Christmas at Mud Flat and a book about a cat on moving day, but I am just that lazy that I won’t go in to the other room to confirm the title. At that point I was seriously beat. It was all I could to stay awake. No more cozy books on the couch. We moved on to playing card games: alphabet go fish, alphabet memory, and a crazy run around the house looking for the right card game with constantly evolving rules that Rocket Boy made up on the spot. One day I’ll need to read some Calvin & Hobbes to him. He’ll appreciate Calvinball.
That took us to 3:00 and I officially called it day. On went PBS for some afternoon shows and I promptly fell asleep on the couch as Rocket Boy climbed and bounced around me. Tonight I must go to sleep at a decent hour. We did fine today, but would have done better had I not been so tired.
Back to normal
This was the first complete school day of the week. We both needed to ease into it. We started the day (after a Choose & Do playing Mousetrap) by going through some of the worksheets in our basic curriculum book. We did first sounds, last sounds. As usual Rocket Boy was getting mighty frustrated with his letter formation. I decided to try an altogether different tactic. He told me his favorite lower case letter is “n” so I capitalized on that to remind him that if he’s really good at n that means he can easily write all the letters that are part of the n family. “Letters don’t have families!” So I spent a long, long time explaining how n, m, r, and h are all related in shape. That blew his mind a bit and we spent a good amount of time using the dry erase board morphing those letters into one another. We did the same with o, l, and v. I was surprised and impressed at how well he took to understanding the lowercase when I approached it that way. Tonight I might make up a few of my own worksheets that have him writing the letter families.
As a sideways strategy towards strengthening his writing confidence, we did an exercise from the Drawing With Children book that involves some shape copying. If we do those regularly I think he will get a little more hand control or at least we will be able to identify what stoke or movement is causing him trouble. Usually he as fun with those exercises, but this time he was getting frustrated with himself. Each time I asked him to check back with the original and evaluate his work he got upset at his marks. He clearly had had enough of writing (it was lunchtime).
While he was waiting for lunch to be ready he did a few addition worksheets and a counting by 5s sheet. After a delicious lunch (pirogue, applesauce (for him not me), and steamed broccoli tossed in butter and garlic) we had a little quiet reading time – Christmas at Mud Flat and a book about a cat on moving day, but I am just that lazy that I won’t go in to the other room to confirm the title. At that point I was seriously beat. It was all I could to stay awake. No more cozy books on the couch. We moved on to playing card games: alphabet go fish, alphabet memory, and a crazy run around the house looking for the right card game with constantly evolving rules that Rocket Boy made up on the spot. One day I’ll need to read some Calvin & Hobbes to him. He’ll appreciate Calvinball.
That took us to 3:00 and I officially called it day. On went PBS for some afternoon shows and I promptly fell asleep on the couch as Rocket Boy climbed and bounced around me. Tonight I must go to sleep at a decent hour. We did fine today, but would have done better had I not been so tired.
A New President is the Best Lesson of All
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Today is the big day, the day our country can finally start over. Definitely not the day for school as usual, well at least not entirely. His first activity was choose & do – computer this time. I have computer limited to Tuesdays and Thursdays or he would want it all the time. Luckily the PBS Kids site has lots of games that involve reading and math skills. After that we did reading and writing – he’s still struggling with forming letters, getting very frustrated with it, but I am happy to say his word recognition is growing by the day. We also did a lesson on government, complete with a fun journal exercise where we imagined what would happen if dogs ran the government. It was a very silly way to get across the idea of how lawmakers make laws in the interest of the people they represent. I was considering putting in a Schoolhouse Rocks video, but it was time to go.
We left to go to the NY Explorers play space where they were having a kid friendly Inauguration watching party. Rocket Boy listened to about half of it but then got sucked into playing. He found a kid who nearly perfectly matched him in play style, so they played happily while we watched more of the coverage.
Afterwards we got lunch nearby and by that time it was time for Rocket Boy and Hypersteve to head off for chess and playing all afternoon while I got a few hours to myself. Chess was a no go – the library changed the day from Tuesday to Thursday without updating the website, but they got to have a mad snowball fight in the park before heading home. Hypersteve even took it up on himself to work though a few pages of an addition workbook.
Today is the big day, the day our country can finally start over. Definitely not the day for school as usual, well at least not entirely. His first activity was choose & do – computer this time. I have computer limited to Tuesdays and Thursdays or he would want it all the time. Luckily the PBS Kids site has lots of games that involve reading and math skills. After that we did reading and writing – he’s still struggling with forming letters, getting very frustrated with it, but I am happy to say his word recognition is growing by the day. We also did a lesson on government, complete with a fun journal exercise where we imagined what would happen if dogs ran the government. It was a very silly way to get across the idea of how lawmakers make laws in the interest of the people they represent. I was considering putting in a Schoolhouse Rocks video, but it was time to go.
We left to go to the NY Explorers play space where they were having a kid friendly Inauguration watching party. Rocket Boy listened to about half of it but then got sucked into playing. He found a kid who nearly perfectly matched him in play style, so they played happily while we watched more of the coverage.
Afterwards we got lunch nearby and by that time it was time for Rocket Boy and Hypersteve to head off for chess and playing all afternoon while I got a few hours to myself. Chess was a no go – the library changed the day from Tuesday to Thursday without updating the website, but they got to have a mad snowball fight in the park before heading home. Hypersteve even took it up on himself to work though a few pages of an addition workbook.
Volunteering on MLK day
Monday January 19, 2009
Martin Luther King Jr Day. Since we are homeschooling and since Hypersteve is a freelancer, days off don’t really mean much. In fact I had thought to ignore the holiday and go on with school as usual, even though all the public schools are closed, of course I would spend a little extra time on social studies with a nice discussion about Martin Luther King Jr. We started the day with some basic letter writing practice and some word recognition. As we worked I had NPR on in the background. They were talking almost entirely about Obama’s call that this should be a national day of service (Congress declared MLK day a day of service 7 years ago, but with. I used to do a lot of volunteer work back when I was a kid and would like to help Rocket Boy get into the same habit. Without the time limitations of regular school, we can schedule it in pretty easily. Anyway, it was still early in the day so I decided to do a quick search for volunteer opportunities that might be appropriate for a 6 year old. That’s a pretty tall order. It has to be meaningful for him but it also has to be significant to the organization. I used to lead a lot of volunteer groups and know that unskilled volunteers are almost as much of a liability as a help.
We found Children for Children, a group connects kid volunteers with agencies. They were having a service extravaganza of a NYC high school. It sounded perfect. I declared a quasi-school day.
We got to the high school and there were hundreds of kids and about a dozen service projects – everything from writing birthday cards for seniors at a nursing home, to decorating and packing bags of books to go to underserved schools. Some of the projects were kind of inane, but we found a group making blankets for a shelter – those silly no-sew fleece blankets which are basically two pieces of fleece, with the edges cut into small strips and the strips knotted together – it was right up our alley. They had a group crocheting too, and Rocket Boy really wanted to do that, but they didn’t have enough hooks.
It was great, we worked for a few hours, we talked about what volunteering is and why it is important, and we talked about civil rights and MLK.
Not reading, writing, and arithmetic, but a really productive fulfilling day.
Martin Luther King Jr Day. Since we are homeschooling and since Hypersteve is a freelancer, days off don’t really mean much. In fact I had thought to ignore the holiday and go on with school as usual, even though all the public schools are closed, of course I would spend a little extra time on social studies with a nice discussion about Martin Luther King Jr. We started the day with some basic letter writing practice and some word recognition. As we worked I had NPR on in the background. They were talking almost entirely about Obama’s call that this should be a national day of service (Congress declared MLK day a day of service 7 years ago, but with. I used to do a lot of volunteer work back when I was a kid and would like to help Rocket Boy get into the same habit. Without the time limitations of regular school, we can schedule it in pretty easily. Anyway, it was still early in the day so I decided to do a quick search for volunteer opportunities that might be appropriate for a 6 year old. That’s a pretty tall order. It has to be meaningful for him but it also has to be significant to the organization. I used to lead a lot of volunteer groups and know that unskilled volunteers are almost as much of a liability as a help.
We found Children for Children, a group connects kid volunteers with agencies. They were having a service extravaganza of a NYC high school. It sounded perfect. I declared a quasi-school day.
We got to the high school and there were hundreds of kids and about a dozen service projects – everything from writing birthday cards for seniors at a nursing home, to decorating and packing bags of books to go to underserved schools. Some of the projects were kind of inane, but we found a group making blankets for a shelter – those silly no-sew fleece blankets which are basically two pieces of fleece, with the edges cut into small strips and the strips knotted together – it was right up our alley. They had a group crocheting too, and Rocket Boy really wanted to do that, but they didn’t have enough hooks.
It was great, we worked for a few hours, we talked about what volunteering is and why it is important, and we talked about civil rights and MLK.
Not reading, writing, and arithmetic, but a really productive fulfilling day.
Friday, January 16, 2009
All Reading & the Magic of Reverse Psychology
Friday January 16, 2009
I have to say, I love that home schooling keeps us from having to rush out the door every day to get to school on time. Getting Rocket Boy out the door has always been a bone of contention, especially to go to school, which he never liked.
Mornings are so much more relaxed now. Rocket Boy gets up and watches PBS for a while. Either Steve or I set him up with breakfast. I sleep another hour or just have a leisurely start of my day. We start at 9 and inevitably Rocket Boy chooses to have Choose & Do time – any game, book, or activity of his choice. Today, yet again he asked to play Scooby Do’s Haunted House Game. It’s not in the least educational, but it does help him transition into official school time.
After that, we sat down for writing time. I’d love for Rocket Boy to be up for journaling, but he is simply not comfortable with writing. Actually this makes me realize I never addressed in any of my logs what grade I’m teaching. Well it’s a little of K and a lot of 1st grade, and then some more advanced stuff, depending on his strengths. I’m actually using a Learning At Home 1st Grade book as my guide, just to make sure I’m not missing anything. There are a few bits he’s just not ready for (writing) and a bunch that he is way beyond. I know there are lots of curriculums out there I could be using, but to be quite honest, there are too many choices and it makes my head swim to try to sort them out. My time is pretty limited since I’m full on with him for so much of the day. By the time he’s in bed it’s 8:30 or 9 and I’ve only got a couple of hours left in me to clean house and do all the things I need to do otherwise. Not much time left for the massive amounts of reading and analysis that would go into finding the right curriculum. Besides he’s got one foot in either grade, so we’re going to have to customize anything we get anyway.
So on to writing. It makes him extremely frustrated, complete with anxious panting. We focused on the fundamentals of letter formation, again with me having him critique himself – i.e. write this letter 5 times and pick out the best one and tell me why. We went through the alphabet a number of times and aging he got frustrated at my trying to help him hold his pencil a little differently. I encouraged, I hugged, and I reminded him that when he was a baby he didn’t suddenly get up and walk – he fell a whole bunch. That morphed into silliness about letters tripping and falling until he was all smiles. We tried writing some more but the smile did not last. Then I pulled out the good old reverse psychology. “No! There is *no * way you’ll be able to write a perfect “E” I just don’t believe it!” It worked like a charm. Aside form the alphabet practice we went over vowels vs. consonants, and long sounds vs. short sounds.
Rocket Boy and his dad spent yesterday afternoon playing chess at the library and got a nice pile of books, so we spent another big chunk of time reading, with Rocket Boy reading to me as much as he could. We made a collection of new words for him to add to his word box (16 more today) and used the words to practice more letter formation, vowel identification, and long vs. short sounds. Somehow the earlier lesson folded into this one quite gracefully.
After that it was time for his first tennis lesson (which he loved) and we called it a day.
Over dinner one thing we discussed was adding more science. We are all big fans of Radio Lab and Science Friday. So we talked about having our very own Science Friday. He charmingly asked if we could be on the radio too. It occurred to me that it might be fun to make our own home schooling science pod cast. I have the digital equipment, a little radio knowledge, and I have friends with lots of know how (hi Sally!) It might be a worthwhile project. Now I just have to find a spare second to think it through. This new lifestyle makes me very happy, but extremely tired. I’m used to being the energizer bunny, always ready to continue when others are dropping onto the couch. My energy levels the past few weeks have been lousy. Being full time mom, with Hypersteve around less (he’s doing far more work to make up for me not working) is exhausting in a way I can’t quite comprehend. It has put me on a de-cluttering kick because if there’s less stuff in my life there’s less I have to keep track of or clean. Right now I need less responsibility, not more. I barely have time to do all the basic housework as it is, much less carve out time for special projects which I have stacked and waiting in the wings. But I shouldn’t complain. I figure after a few weeks we’ll get into a nice rhythm and I’ll be able to regulate my sleep better. Even with my erratic sleep and the pains of adjusting to a new lifestyle, I find we are all just plain happier.
I have to say, I love that home schooling keeps us from having to rush out the door every day to get to school on time. Getting Rocket Boy out the door has always been a bone of contention, especially to go to school, which he never liked.
Mornings are so much more relaxed now. Rocket Boy gets up and watches PBS for a while. Either Steve or I set him up with breakfast. I sleep another hour or just have a leisurely start of my day. We start at 9 and inevitably Rocket Boy chooses to have Choose & Do time – any game, book, or activity of his choice. Today, yet again he asked to play Scooby Do’s Haunted House Game. It’s not in the least educational, but it does help him transition into official school time.
After that, we sat down for writing time. I’d love for Rocket Boy to be up for journaling, but he is simply not comfortable with writing. Actually this makes me realize I never addressed in any of my logs what grade I’m teaching. Well it’s a little of K and a lot of 1st grade, and then some more advanced stuff, depending on his strengths. I’m actually using a Learning At Home 1st Grade book as my guide, just to make sure I’m not missing anything. There are a few bits he’s just not ready for (writing) and a bunch that he is way beyond. I know there are lots of curriculums out there I could be using, but to be quite honest, there are too many choices and it makes my head swim to try to sort them out. My time is pretty limited since I’m full on with him for so much of the day. By the time he’s in bed it’s 8:30 or 9 and I’ve only got a couple of hours left in me to clean house and do all the things I need to do otherwise. Not much time left for the massive amounts of reading and analysis that would go into finding the right curriculum. Besides he’s got one foot in either grade, so we’re going to have to customize anything we get anyway.
So on to writing. It makes him extremely frustrated, complete with anxious panting. We focused on the fundamentals of letter formation, again with me having him critique himself – i.e. write this letter 5 times and pick out the best one and tell me why. We went through the alphabet a number of times and aging he got frustrated at my trying to help him hold his pencil a little differently. I encouraged, I hugged, and I reminded him that when he was a baby he didn’t suddenly get up and walk – he fell a whole bunch. That morphed into silliness about letters tripping and falling until he was all smiles. We tried writing some more but the smile did not last. Then I pulled out the good old reverse psychology. “No! There is *no * way you’ll be able to write a perfect “E” I just don’t believe it!” It worked like a charm. Aside form the alphabet practice we went over vowels vs. consonants, and long sounds vs. short sounds.
Rocket Boy and his dad spent yesterday afternoon playing chess at the library and got a nice pile of books, so we spent another big chunk of time reading, with Rocket Boy reading to me as much as he could. We made a collection of new words for him to add to his word box (16 more today) and used the words to practice more letter formation, vowel identification, and long vs. short sounds. Somehow the earlier lesson folded into this one quite gracefully.
After that it was time for his first tennis lesson (which he loved) and we called it a day.
Over dinner one thing we discussed was adding more science. We are all big fans of Radio Lab and Science Friday. So we talked about having our very own Science Friday. He charmingly asked if we could be on the radio too. It occurred to me that it might be fun to make our own home schooling science pod cast. I have the digital equipment, a little radio knowledge, and I have friends with lots of know how (hi Sally!) It might be a worthwhile project. Now I just have to find a spare second to think it through. This new lifestyle makes me very happy, but extremely tired. I’m used to being the energizer bunny, always ready to continue when others are dropping onto the couch. My energy levels the past few weeks have been lousy. Being full time mom, with Hypersteve around less (he’s doing far more work to make up for me not working) is exhausting in a way I can’t quite comprehend. It has put me on a de-cluttering kick because if there’s less stuff in my life there’s less I have to keep track of or clean. Right now I need less responsibility, not more. I barely have time to do all the basic housework as it is, much less carve out time for special projects which I have stacked and waiting in the wings. But I shouldn’t complain. I figure after a few weeks we’ll get into a nice rhythm and I’ll be able to regulate my sleep better. Even with my erratic sleep and the pains of adjusting to a new lifestyle, I find we are all just plain happier.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Ecosystems and butterflies, two by two
Thursday January 15, 2009
Yawn . . . oh excuse me. Last night was date night, which was fabulous. I love going to a venerable NYC institution. It makes me feel like I’m not a complete shut-in. Of course today I’m sleepy because of it – not so much earlier in the day, but now that Rocket Boy’s school day is over and he’s out for Thursday afternoon daddy time, boy am I dragging.
I had, what I was thinking of as a slow day, but in reality it was just fine. Our start time is a pretty rigid 9 am, but we’ve ended anywhere from 2:30 to dinnertime. If Rocket Boy is excited and on a roll, I just keep going with him. If he’s losing it, well I call the school day done. Luckily for me he does not have a firm grasp of telling time so I can really milk it when I want.
Today was largely science and art. We spent the morning on habitats and ecosystems, including a neat little interactive dot-to-dot at the Ology web site. Instead of connecting to the next number, you connect to the next item in the food chain. Rocket Boy couldn’t get enough. On almost each ecosystem, butterflies were art of the system so we went on a butterfly tangent and did some art. I printed out a line drawing of a monarch then sat the boy down at Hypersteve’s light box to trace it. We talked about composition and tilted the paper so the butterfly would appear to be entering the page angled from the bottom left. While he traced, I read to Rocket Boy all about monarchs and what they eat, how they migrate, and about metamorphosis. It took him forever to trace the whole thing, but I think it’s a good thing. It’s helping him learn more fine motor control of a pencil. Hopefully that kind of careful mark making will help him exert more control when it comes to writing. I’m actually thinking that I need to print out a writing sheet that I can put on the light box for him. He seems to really like it and concentrates well while doing it. Besides we get to hang out in the studio with Hypersteve, which makes us all happy.
After the hour long tracing extravaganza (he really sat for an hour!) we compared the angled tracing to the straight on shot and talked more about composition. Then we went back to the living room to color. I pulled out all sorts of colored pencils in various shades of yellow, orange, brown, and red. I had him test each color on a new sheet of paper, then test what happens when you blend certain colors. His desk has some bumpy bits and he realized that when you rub the pencil over those spots, the texture comes right through. He got excited and ran around the house trying out textures. His favorite was the wood grain from the laminate floors. For faux wood they have lots of wood grain texture, in fact probably more texture than my actual wood floors have with their coats and coats of polyurethane. After a while we sat and colored together. He put me in charge of black – mostly because there is a lot of intricate black around lots of little dots. It would have driven him crazy to do that part. He did all the orangish bits. I have to say, it’s a beautiful collaboration.
Then came lunch. Rocket Boy said he wanted to rest so we climbed on the couch and read the three stories from the easy reader “Eek! Stories to Make You Shriek” and we read a silly barnyard yarn called “Bob.” The stories nearly drained all the energy out of me. I was so sleepy I barely finished my sentences.
I had to move around or I was doomed, I also needed some outside help. Enter Schoolhouse Rocks. I put n the number two song and Rocket Boy and I went through a worksheet with 1-100 printed on it, circling all the even numbers. Then I tried to explain the concept of counting by twos. I don’t think I handled it so well, even with telling the story of Noah’s Ark and doing a drawing activity. I had him draw his family with all our hands in the air. Then I had him count the people, then count the hands, then count by twos pointing at each body but indicating the number of hands. We kept adding people to the paper. He had a blast adding more people and counting, but I still don’t think he really got it. I have to look into how to introduce counting by twos. 5s and 10s seem so much easier since I can use coins.
At that point it was three and time for Hypersteve to take Rocket Boy to chess club, where they are right this minute.
Yawn . . . oh excuse me. Last night was date night, which was fabulous. I love going to a venerable NYC institution. It makes me feel like I’m not a complete shut-in. Of course today I’m sleepy because of it – not so much earlier in the day, but now that Rocket Boy’s school day is over and he’s out for Thursday afternoon daddy time, boy am I dragging.
I had, what I was thinking of as a slow day, but in reality it was just fine. Our start time is a pretty rigid 9 am, but we’ve ended anywhere from 2:30 to dinnertime. If Rocket Boy is excited and on a roll, I just keep going with him. If he’s losing it, well I call the school day done. Luckily for me he does not have a firm grasp of telling time so I can really milk it when I want.
Today was largely science and art. We spent the morning on habitats and ecosystems, including a neat little interactive dot-to-dot at the Ology web site. Instead of connecting to the next number, you connect to the next item in the food chain. Rocket Boy couldn’t get enough. On almost each ecosystem, butterflies were art of the system so we went on a butterfly tangent and did some art. I printed out a line drawing of a monarch then sat the boy down at Hypersteve’s light box to trace it. We talked about composition and tilted the paper so the butterfly would appear to be entering the page angled from the bottom left. While he traced, I read to Rocket Boy all about monarchs and what they eat, how they migrate, and about metamorphosis. It took him forever to trace the whole thing, but I think it’s a good thing. It’s helping him learn more fine motor control of a pencil. Hopefully that kind of careful mark making will help him exert more control when it comes to writing. I’m actually thinking that I need to print out a writing sheet that I can put on the light box for him. He seems to really like it and concentrates well while doing it. Besides we get to hang out in the studio with Hypersteve, which makes us all happy.
After the hour long tracing extravaganza (he really sat for an hour!) we compared the angled tracing to the straight on shot and talked more about composition. Then we went back to the living room to color. I pulled out all sorts of colored pencils in various shades of yellow, orange, brown, and red. I had him test each color on a new sheet of paper, then test what happens when you blend certain colors. His desk has some bumpy bits and he realized that when you rub the pencil over those spots, the texture comes right through. He got excited and ran around the house trying out textures. His favorite was the wood grain from the laminate floors. For faux wood they have lots of wood grain texture, in fact probably more texture than my actual wood floors have with their coats and coats of polyurethane. After a while we sat and colored together. He put me in charge of black – mostly because there is a lot of intricate black around lots of little dots. It would have driven him crazy to do that part. He did all the orangish bits. I have to say, it’s a beautiful collaboration.
Then came lunch. Rocket Boy said he wanted to rest so we climbed on the couch and read the three stories from the easy reader “Eek! Stories to Make You Shriek” and we read a silly barnyard yarn called “Bob.” The stories nearly drained all the energy out of me. I was so sleepy I barely finished my sentences.
I had to move around or I was doomed, I also needed some outside help. Enter Schoolhouse Rocks. I put n the number two song and Rocket Boy and I went through a worksheet with 1-100 printed on it, circling all the even numbers. Then I tried to explain the concept of counting by twos. I don’t think I handled it so well, even with telling the story of Noah’s Ark and doing a drawing activity. I had him draw his family with all our hands in the air. Then I had him count the people, then count the hands, then count by twos pointing at each body but indicating the number of hands. We kept adding people to the paper. He had a blast adding more people and counting, but I still don’t think he really got it. I have to look into how to introduce counting by twos. 5s and 10s seem so much easier since I can use coins.
At that point it was three and time for Hypersteve to take Rocket Boy to chess club, where they are right this minute.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Reading & Writing Basics
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Whoo hoo, the school day is over! In 2 hours the babysitter will be here. In that time I have to shower, get dressed (very warmly as we have to brave the teens. Even after 4 years in Syracuse I don’t like it when it’s below 20. I’ll happily take the snow, but keep the teens and single digit temps, kthnx), make dinner, replace the cat litter, put away three loads of laundry, log in the schoolwork we did today, and vacuum Rocket Boy’s room and the living room. Phew.
Date night here we come!
Today Rocket Boy and I stuck to the basics of reading and math. Rocket Boy was definitely not himself – seeming tired and rubbing his eyes a lot. It was a good day to cuddle on the couch and read lots of stories. He even asked for some rest time! We read three It was a Dark and Silly Night stories from the Little Lit collection, Wanda Gag’s Millions of Cats, and an all-time favorite Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. I have to say I am a bit annoyed at Lyle, maybe it’s because we’ve also been reading a lot of Madeline lately and I am more than a bit over reading about over privledged people. At least Lyle and most of the characters in the book are not entitled snobs. We did all your basic reading comprehension questions and did a bit of artwork based on Lyle. The crocodile is trying to win over a skittish cat by giving her his most toothsome smile, which only terrifies her. Rocket Boy did a drawing of what the cat perceived when Lyle smiled – all teeth. I had him read to me as much as he could – about 6 pages before he got whiny and started rubbing his eyes again. Not bad since there is a decent amount of text on each page. We also used Lyle for the basis of adding more words to our word box – 14 more today. Rocket Boy is still getting frustrated at writing, but he’s so excited about new words that it keeps him on track. We turned words into math by creating a line graph so we can chart how many words he earns each day. So far he has 44 in his box.
Since the writing really tried him, we took a break to play letter go fish – I have deck that has upper and lower case letters to match. We then used the deck to do a word family exercise. One of today’s words is cat, I pulled out the “a” and the “t” then we went through the rest of the deck adding new letters in front. Each time we made a real word, Rocket Boy wrote it in his notebook and drew a picture. Then we made up a cute little story about a fat cat mistaking a rat for a mat and sitting on him. Writing was still hard for him, but since the “a” and the “t” were consistent with each word, it did go easier than yesterday with the 26 completely different words. I have to find new ways to bring more writing into the day and to make it more fun. If I can inject it in fun small doses, he’ll build the confidence he’s lacking.
We ended the day with some math – counting by 5s and by 10s – including playing the Schoolhouse Rock 5 song over and over again. It will take a while for him to get the 5s, but we’re on our way. I’d reinforce the lesson with nickles, but we turned them all in to the bank the other day.
Whoo hoo, the school day is over! In 2 hours the babysitter will be here. In that time I have to shower, get dressed (very warmly as we have to brave the teens. Even after 4 years in Syracuse I don’t like it when it’s below 20. I’ll happily take the snow, but keep the teens and single digit temps, kthnx), make dinner, replace the cat litter, put away three loads of laundry, log in the schoolwork we did today, and vacuum Rocket Boy’s room and the living room. Phew.
Date night here we come!
Today Rocket Boy and I stuck to the basics of reading and math. Rocket Boy was definitely not himself – seeming tired and rubbing his eyes a lot. It was a good day to cuddle on the couch and read lots of stories. He even asked for some rest time! We read three It was a Dark and Silly Night stories from the Little Lit collection, Wanda Gag’s Millions of Cats, and an all-time favorite Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. I have to say I am a bit annoyed at Lyle, maybe it’s because we’ve also been reading a lot of Madeline lately and I am more than a bit over reading about over privledged people. At least Lyle and most of the characters in the book are not entitled snobs. We did all your basic reading comprehension questions and did a bit of artwork based on Lyle. The crocodile is trying to win over a skittish cat by giving her his most toothsome smile, which only terrifies her. Rocket Boy did a drawing of what the cat perceived when Lyle smiled – all teeth. I had him read to me as much as he could – about 6 pages before he got whiny and started rubbing his eyes again. Not bad since there is a decent amount of text on each page. We also used Lyle for the basis of adding more words to our word box – 14 more today. Rocket Boy is still getting frustrated at writing, but he’s so excited about new words that it keeps him on track. We turned words into math by creating a line graph so we can chart how many words he earns each day. So far he has 44 in his box.
Since the writing really tried him, we took a break to play letter go fish – I have deck that has upper and lower case letters to match. We then used the deck to do a word family exercise. One of today’s words is cat, I pulled out the “a” and the “t” then we went through the rest of the deck adding new letters in front. Each time we made a real word, Rocket Boy wrote it in his notebook and drew a picture. Then we made up a cute little story about a fat cat mistaking a rat for a mat and sitting on him. Writing was still hard for him, but since the “a” and the “t” were consistent with each word, it did go easier than yesterday with the 26 completely different words. I have to find new ways to bring more writing into the day and to make it more fun. If I can inject it in fun small doses, he’ll build the confidence he’s lacking.
We ended the day with some math – counting by 5s and by 10s – including playing the Schoolhouse Rock 5 song over and over again. It will take a while for him to get the 5s, but we’re on our way. I’d reinforce the lesson with nickles, but we turned them all in to the bank the other day.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
G is for Groceries
January 13, 2009
I was up way too late last night cleaning house, but at least all the holiday stuff is put away and one of the cabinets in the kitchen does not look like a schizophrenic lives here. Of course that means that today I am feeling that there’s not enough coffee in the house to make me feel awake and Rocket Boy is full of his usual energy.
Since I’m not working I’m fully embracing the role of stay at home wife and home school teaching mom. That means all the childcare and all the housework fall to me. Hypersteve and I need to work out a new division of labor. Since he’s the only earner, he’s working a little extra these days and doing less of house stuff. The housework shouldn’t be only my job, but I need to be shouldering more of it we just have to sort out which more of it I do, what he still does, and what we outsource so I don’t stay up till 1 am cleaning, leaving me ill equipped to handle a day of full energy Rocket Boy.
Even so the day is moving nicely. We started out with choose & do – mousetrap, the game went quickly this time, thank goodness. Then on to science – we used the Museum of Natural History’s ology site to do all sorts of science activities – mainly paleontology. Rocket Boy did really well with a logic game sorting out the sedimentary rock layers and the fossils found within it. Next we did some activities with graphs and charts.
That took us through most of our morning. I have desperately needed to get some grocery shopping done, so I will integrate that into today’s lesson. To prep we played an alphabet game, going through alphabet cards and putting them in the right order. He was bursting with energy so in between each letter of the alphabet I had him run a sprint from one side of the house to the other (about 120’ each time). That calmed him a bit. Then we tried to make a list of the items that we could find in the store. Writing is a struggle for him. After a few words his attention really begins to wane. I have to be fully on him and helping with every single letter. What should have been a few minutes of writing turned into a much longer struggle. Finally we were off to Fairway, a set of alphabet cards in hand. Each time we added an item he had to identify its first letter, then tell me where in the alphabet to find that letter. If he did both correctly he won the card.
It was the longest grocery shopping trip ever.
I was up way too late last night cleaning house, but at least all the holiday stuff is put away and one of the cabinets in the kitchen does not look like a schizophrenic lives here. Of course that means that today I am feeling that there’s not enough coffee in the house to make me feel awake and Rocket Boy is full of his usual energy.
Since I’m not working I’m fully embracing the role of stay at home wife and home school teaching mom. That means all the childcare and all the housework fall to me. Hypersteve and I need to work out a new division of labor. Since he’s the only earner, he’s working a little extra these days and doing less of house stuff. The housework shouldn’t be only my job, but I need to be shouldering more of it we just have to sort out which more of it I do, what he still does, and what we outsource so I don’t stay up till 1 am cleaning, leaving me ill equipped to handle a day of full energy Rocket Boy.
Even so the day is moving nicely. We started out with choose & do – mousetrap, the game went quickly this time, thank goodness. Then on to science – we used the Museum of Natural History’s ology site to do all sorts of science activities – mainly paleontology. Rocket Boy did really well with a logic game sorting out the sedimentary rock layers and the fossils found within it. Next we did some activities with graphs and charts.
That took us through most of our morning. I have desperately needed to get some grocery shopping done, so I will integrate that into today’s lesson. To prep we played an alphabet game, going through alphabet cards and putting them in the right order. He was bursting with energy so in between each letter of the alphabet I had him run a sprint from one side of the house to the other (about 120’ each time). That calmed him a bit. Then we tried to make a list of the items that we could find in the store. Writing is a struggle for him. After a few words his attention really begins to wane. I have to be fully on him and helping with every single letter. What should have been a few minutes of writing turned into a much longer struggle. Finally we were off to Fairway, a set of alphabet cards in hand. Each time we added an item he had to identify its first letter, then tell me where in the alphabet to find that letter. If he did both correctly he won the card.
It was the longest grocery shopping trip ever.
Money Monday
January 12, 2009
This is about Monday, only I’m writing it on Tuesday and I can’t quite remember any of it anymore.
We did lots of alphabet work today – Rocket Boy sat and wrote out letters more times than I thought possible. He’s doing this annoying thing where he purposefully does something exaggeratedly wrong in an attempt to clown around – a “P” with a giant loop, an “H” with a crazy curly leg. It could be fun, except he’s not really doing the letters correctly. I wouldn’t mind some clowning if he could show me his proficiency first. I suspect it’s a coping mechanism. He doesn’t really know how to do it so he clowns. My correcting him only makes him act out more so I countered it by letting him do an alphabet as he saw fit, then I had him correct his own work, marking an x next to the letters that were wrong. Next I had him rewrite those letters. I’m not sure if it really worked, but if I let him turn a critical eye on his own work, I’d be able to judge if he knows correct letter formation or if he’s having some recognition problem. Turns out he knows what’s wrong. Making the judgment call himself might motivate him better.
Next it was math and money time. We emptied out the two quart mason jars full of coins onto the table then sorted them, talking about cents and how many make up a dollar. We talked about the kinds of coins, the presidents, and even got to compare some foreign coins. Somehow euros and Canadian ended up in the jar. I need to dig up the other foreign coins we have, but I can’t imagine where they are now. We had a big talk about bartering and the development of money when it became impractical to walk around with three cows in your wallet (giggles galore). Next was the big field trip to the bank. We opened a passbook savings account for Rocket Boy, depositing all the coins and the birthday/Christmas money he got. We have another account for him for college, but it is an investment account that took a big hit recently. Things will bounce back in time for him to go to college, but in the meantime I felt perfectly fine setting up an account for him that is fully liquid. TD bank is extremely kid friendly – handing out crayons, an activity book, and a piggy bank to their new customer.
Then we met Hypersteve for lunch. We got back home with only about an hour of time left. I pulled out alphabet cards and we played a highly managed version of Go Fish in which we asked “Do you have the letter that comes after/before . . .” we need to strengthen his letter order recognition. He still has to recite the alphabet to himself to know what goes next. I’m looking for more ways to get him used to knowing that N follows M without having to sing the song every time.
I think we called it a day after that, or at least I can’t remember anything else we did.
At least the field trip to the bank made an impression.
This is about Monday, only I’m writing it on Tuesday and I can’t quite remember any of it anymore.
We did lots of alphabet work today – Rocket Boy sat and wrote out letters more times than I thought possible. He’s doing this annoying thing where he purposefully does something exaggeratedly wrong in an attempt to clown around – a “P” with a giant loop, an “H” with a crazy curly leg. It could be fun, except he’s not really doing the letters correctly. I wouldn’t mind some clowning if he could show me his proficiency first. I suspect it’s a coping mechanism. He doesn’t really know how to do it so he clowns. My correcting him only makes him act out more so I countered it by letting him do an alphabet as he saw fit, then I had him correct his own work, marking an x next to the letters that were wrong. Next I had him rewrite those letters. I’m not sure if it really worked, but if I let him turn a critical eye on his own work, I’d be able to judge if he knows correct letter formation or if he’s having some recognition problem. Turns out he knows what’s wrong. Making the judgment call himself might motivate him better.
Next it was math and money time. We emptied out the two quart mason jars full of coins onto the table then sorted them, talking about cents and how many make up a dollar. We talked about the kinds of coins, the presidents, and even got to compare some foreign coins. Somehow euros and Canadian ended up in the jar. I need to dig up the other foreign coins we have, but I can’t imagine where they are now. We had a big talk about bartering and the development of money when it became impractical to walk around with three cows in your wallet (giggles galore). Next was the big field trip to the bank. We opened a passbook savings account for Rocket Boy, depositing all the coins and the birthday/Christmas money he got. We have another account for him for college, but it is an investment account that took a big hit recently. Things will bounce back in time for him to go to college, but in the meantime I felt perfectly fine setting up an account for him that is fully liquid. TD bank is extremely kid friendly – handing out crayons, an activity book, and a piggy bank to their new customer.
Then we met Hypersteve for lunch. We got back home with only about an hour of time left. I pulled out alphabet cards and we played a highly managed version of Go Fish in which we asked “Do you have the letter that comes after/before . . .” we need to strengthen his letter order recognition. He still has to recite the alphabet to himself to know what goes next. I’m looking for more ways to get him used to knowing that N follows M without having to sing the song every time.
I think we called it a day after that, or at least I can’t remember anything else we did.
At least the field trip to the bank made an impression.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
First (in our actual home) homeschool day
January 9, 2009
Home sweet home. Today is our first home schooling day at our actual home. The hard part was that the place was in disarray – our suitcases still unpacked, the tree still up, and the detritus of Steve home alone for a week all around. I tried very hard to ignore the disorder and do schoolwork as usual, but we just weren’t well set up.
I managed to eek out a few bursts of cleaning and organizing while I set him on a task, but we still have a long way to go. It was a little harder to keep him focused – after all his home is filled with all the cool new toys he got for the holidays, even so I still feel like we had a really productive day – with lots of reading and math. We added at least six more words to his word box based on Bedtime for Francis. We also had a really neat discussion about the reason for fairy and folk tales that was paired with reading The Changeling – a kids folktale we picked up when we were in Wales a couple of years ago.
While were adding to his word box, Rocket Boy started to get really antsy and downright bouncy – jumping on the couch or spinning around in between reading almost every word. He was at a point where he needed to change activities but was also so excited about adding words to his collection that we just needed to barrel through the rest of the story (or at least that page of the story).
It was time for hopping math. We made lily pads with numbers on them and laid them on the floor. I then called out questions and he had to hop to the right answer and then hop that many times. “What number comes after 3?” “What number is before 2?” What is 2+2?” He got the wiggles out and got lots of math practice in. We both really liked this game and I think I see many more lily pads in my future.
Home sweet home. Today is our first home schooling day at our actual home. The hard part was that the place was in disarray – our suitcases still unpacked, the tree still up, and the detritus of Steve home alone for a week all around. I tried very hard to ignore the disorder and do schoolwork as usual, but we just weren’t well set up.
I managed to eek out a few bursts of cleaning and organizing while I set him on a task, but we still have a long way to go. It was a little harder to keep him focused – after all his home is filled with all the cool new toys he got for the holidays, even so I still feel like we had a really productive day – with lots of reading and math. We added at least six more words to his word box based on Bedtime for Francis. We also had a really neat discussion about the reason for fairy and folk tales that was paired with reading The Changeling – a kids folktale we picked up when we were in Wales a couple of years ago.
While were adding to his word box, Rocket Boy started to get really antsy and downright bouncy – jumping on the couch or spinning around in between reading almost every word. He was at a point where he needed to change activities but was also so excited about adding words to his collection that we just needed to barrel through the rest of the story (or at least that page of the story).
It was time for hopping math. We made lily pads with numbers on them and laid them on the floor. I then called out questions and he had to hop to the right answer and then hop that many times. “What number comes after 3?” “What number is before 2?” What is 2+2?” He got the wiggles out and got lots of math practice in. We both really liked this game and I think I see many more lily pads in my future.
Homeschooling in the Car
January 8, 2008
Traveling
In the beginning of 2008 I took a 9-6 Mon-Fri job. It is the first time I had had a traditional schedule in over 10 years. In the last decade I have either run my own business or been in grad school. The one 40 hour a week job I did have was at my discretion. During some of that time I had RocketBoy in daycare or pre-school. We could come and go as we (mostly) pleased. I also worked my rear off, often working crazy hours, but at least I decided when to come and go. The same for my husband – he’s been a freelance artist for his entire working career. Needless to say, the workaday job only lasted a few months – it felt somehow undignified to have to ask someone for a day off or an adjustment to my hours.
I got the same feeling when we had RocketBoy in the public school. When we missed a day I got a call from the central office, notifying me that he was out and giving a stern warning that if he missed more than 10% of the school days he would not be eligible for promotion to the next grade. That’s reassuring if you’ve got a older kid who might be skipping school, but for a 6 year old it just feels a bit big brother-ish.
Why do I even mention this - because today we are homeschooling in the car as we drive from Maine to NYC. Sure it’s limited, but we were able to go through about 40 pages of a workbook covering all the basics. In addition we had all sorts of neat discussions about geography and weather. We read a couple of books and RocketBoy got to listen to a few stories on the iPod – greek mythology this time.
One thing I am very glad about is that neither of us get car sick.
Traveling
In the beginning of 2008 I took a 9-6 Mon-Fri job. It is the first time I had had a traditional schedule in over 10 years. In the last decade I have either run my own business or been in grad school. The one 40 hour a week job I did have was at my discretion. During some of that time I had RocketBoy in daycare or pre-school. We could come and go as we (mostly) pleased. I also worked my rear off, often working crazy hours, but at least I decided when to come and go. The same for my husband – he’s been a freelance artist for his entire working career. Needless to say, the workaday job only lasted a few months – it felt somehow undignified to have to ask someone for a day off or an adjustment to my hours.
I got the same feeling when we had RocketBoy in the public school. When we missed a day I got a call from the central office, notifying me that he was out and giving a stern warning that if he missed more than 10% of the school days he would not be eligible for promotion to the next grade. That’s reassuring if you’ve got a older kid who might be skipping school, but for a 6 year old it just feels a bit big brother-ish.
Why do I even mention this - because today we are homeschooling in the car as we drive from Maine to NYC. Sure it’s limited, but we were able to go through about 40 pages of a workbook covering all the basics. In addition we had all sorts of neat discussions about geography and weather. We read a couple of books and RocketBoy got to listen to a few stories on the iPod – greek mythology this time.
One thing I am very glad about is that neither of us get car sick.
Half Day & Packing
January 7, 2009
Homeschooling Day 3
I woke up early today, yet not feeling rested or motivated to take on a whole day of me and RocketBoy on our own. I think the 9am start time is great for us. It gives me the time I need to really get with it and RocketBoy happily gets some tv time. We’ve been so restrictive with the tv lately that I think giving him some regularly scheduled time to watch makes it less of a forbidden fruit. I’m even considering coordinating lessons with certain PBS favorites. I’ll happily let him watch Cyber Chase then use the concepts in a math lesson.
Today he was all about reading. We started out with “The Treasure” by Uri Schulevich (sp?). First we read very slowly, stopping at each word RocketBoy can read. He carefully printed each word on a cue card and placed it in his new “word box.” I think we added over a dozen today before his attention started to wane. Then we just sat and I read the story for the story’s sake – not a single interruption to define a word or ask him to read something. Then I asked him a ton of questions about the story – I am duly impressed with his comprehension – he was readily able to retell the major events and only faltered at the metaphorical bit. We then went on all sorts of tangents imagining what if. It was funs and silly and decidedly bouncy. In fact RocketBoy bounced away from his chair a few times so I decided a wiggle break was in order.
Earlier RocketBoy noticed that I had an activity book. It is actually the “School At Home” book for 1st grade with 36 weeks of lesson plans and activities. After moving his body, he asked to do some pages out of the book – really simple stuff for him – beginning sounds, a maze following alphabetical order, and lower case vs capital letters. I turned the lower case/capital one into a math lesson by having him count how many of each and making a graph.
After that he really wanted to plan UNO again. This time we did it with addition – he had to add the card placed to the card below it. He did really well.
Then we had luch and things broke down a bit. I got word from my father that he was on his way back and someone wanted to see about renting the place at 2. I needed to do some serious cleaning and packing in no time. In went Word World again, and again I had him pick out words and write them in his notebook. Then I had him pick his favorite and draw and write a story about it. This time it was watermelon. Leave it to RocketBoy to pick the longest word. He drew it growing from a seed to a full-grown fruit. He wrote a couple of words about it. I got us packed up.
After my dad got back it was mayhem. We were trying to get out by nightfall, but had lots to do to extract us from our home for the last 5 days. RocketBoy Really wanted to do social studies again – in the form of a giant United States floor puzzle. That was great except that he really did not want to do it alone which ended up frustrating us both a bit. We managed to do the puzzle in between me straightening up. Not the ideal situation. It really has to be either or. I think he was feeling a little lonely. It’s been just the three of us for quite a few days, mostly just him and me. I think he’ll be quite happy to be back in NYC with his dad and some playmates (must get aggressive about planning more playdates!)
We got ourselves into the car and on the road by 6 – after dark, but at least we ended up doing to the rive to town behind the snow plow. Slow, sure, but nice to have a freshly cleared road. At the hotel at 11, with a long dinner in between. The driving was slow snowy/icy. Home tomorrow, hopefully with better weather.
Homeschooling Day 3
I woke up early today, yet not feeling rested or motivated to take on a whole day of me and RocketBoy on our own. I think the 9am start time is great for us. It gives me the time I need to really get with it and RocketBoy happily gets some tv time. We’ve been so restrictive with the tv lately that I think giving him some regularly scheduled time to watch makes it less of a forbidden fruit. I’m even considering coordinating lessons with certain PBS favorites. I’ll happily let him watch Cyber Chase then use the concepts in a math lesson.
Today he was all about reading. We started out with “The Treasure” by Uri Schulevich (sp?). First we read very slowly, stopping at each word RocketBoy can read. He carefully printed each word on a cue card and placed it in his new “word box.” I think we added over a dozen today before his attention started to wane. Then we just sat and I read the story for the story’s sake – not a single interruption to define a word or ask him to read something. Then I asked him a ton of questions about the story – I am duly impressed with his comprehension – he was readily able to retell the major events and only faltered at the metaphorical bit. We then went on all sorts of tangents imagining what if. It was funs and silly and decidedly bouncy. In fact RocketBoy bounced away from his chair a few times so I decided a wiggle break was in order.
Earlier RocketBoy noticed that I had an activity book. It is actually the “School At Home” book for 1st grade with 36 weeks of lesson plans and activities. After moving his body, he asked to do some pages out of the book – really simple stuff for him – beginning sounds, a maze following alphabetical order, and lower case vs capital letters. I turned the lower case/capital one into a math lesson by having him count how many of each and making a graph.
After that he really wanted to plan UNO again. This time we did it with addition – he had to add the card placed to the card below it. He did really well.
Then we had luch and things broke down a bit. I got word from my father that he was on his way back and someone wanted to see about renting the place at 2. I needed to do some serious cleaning and packing in no time. In went Word World again, and again I had him pick out words and write them in his notebook. Then I had him pick his favorite and draw and write a story about it. This time it was watermelon. Leave it to RocketBoy to pick the longest word. He drew it growing from a seed to a full-grown fruit. He wrote a couple of words about it. I got us packed up.
After my dad got back it was mayhem. We were trying to get out by nightfall, but had lots to do to extract us from our home for the last 5 days. RocketBoy Really wanted to do social studies again – in the form of a giant United States floor puzzle. That was great except that he really did not want to do it alone which ended up frustrating us both a bit. We managed to do the puzzle in between me straightening up. Not the ideal situation. It really has to be either or. I think he was feeling a little lonely. It’s been just the three of us for quite a few days, mostly just him and me. I think he’ll be quite happy to be back in NYC with his dad and some playmates (must get aggressive about planning more playdates!)
We got ourselves into the car and on the road by 6 – after dark, but at least we ended up doing to the rive to town behind the snow plow. Slow, sure, but nice to have a freshly cleared road. At the hotel at 11, with a long dinner in between. The driving was slow snowy/icy. Home tomorrow, hopefully with better weather.
Field Trip Day
January 6, 2009
Homeschooling Day 2
The everlasting ick that I seem to have caught has morphed again. Over the weekend it was a sore throat and post-nasal drip, Monday digestive nastiness and joint aches later in the evening, and today I woke with my sinuses in misery. I’m not sure what RocketBoy learned yesterday, but I learned that if I could teach through a stomach bug, I could manage through anything.
He woke up at 7:15 filled with “I love you” and “when does school start?” This is a huge contrast to before we took him out of school when the first question out of his mouth was “Is today a school day?” followed by a groan when 5 times out of seven I answered “yes.” I had to remind him of the strict (made up yesterday when I couldn’t get out of bed) rule that school starts at 9 sharp. Not a minute before. Addendum to this rule: before school starts he has to be dressed, breakfast eaten, and teeth brushed. Also, he can watch TV before school as long as everything else gets done. I still shake my head in disbelief that some rules he just accepts as unquestionable and other he pushes till they break. This one he buys. I’ll happily take it.
First, RocketBoy wanted to go through his bag of treasures. We spread newspaper on the table and sorted his finds into groups: Lobster claws, mussels, barnacles, seaweed, rocks, seashells, pine cones, and sea urchin. We talked about each group in more detail and made lots of little observations (you’d think after all the lobster I’ve enjoyed, I would have noticed the hair-like fuzzy bits on the claws). We did not talk about overall beach nature and wave dynamics because RocketBoy was getting antsy. Instead we counted all of the items and RocketBoy carefully recorded them in his notebook. This part was pulling teeth. He really did not want to do it after the first few were done and kept rubbing his eyes. Time for a snack. Even after the snack it was tough to get him to finish, but I persisted and he did. By the end he was really excited again because he counted 64 rocks. He was blown away by the number - nothing else in his collection was past the teens. Since he seemed to like big numbers I decided to add on to the math lesson and we worked on adding up the numbers of all his treasures – 120 total. There went the whole morning – math, science & nature, and writing. We stopped for choose and do time. “Choose and do’s” are what his Syracuse prechool, Jowonio, called free play time. It is a happy association and I think RocketBoy is delighted to have “choose and do” again.
[Side note – Jowonio might just be the most wonderful school in the universe. I still miss it and wish I could find something like it again. There is a charter school in NYC whose founder is an ex-Jowonio teacher and is modeling her elementary after Jowonio, but because of the lottery system and the district preference, we have no hope of ever getting our boy there. If Jowonio existed past pre-k I’d consider moving back to Syracuse. It was that good. Even now, if we have any other children I will regret that they will not get to experience Jowonio. Thank you Ellen, Pam, Jed, Audrey, and all the others that make that place wonderful!]
For choose and do we played a couple of rounds of UNO and RocketBoy asked to chop the carrots to go into the chicken soup I was making (so sad that I had to make my own chicken soup – when you’re sick someone else should do that for you). He asked if we could make cooking part of homeschooling. My answer is a big fat yes!
After that it was field trip time. We went to a hatchery run by the Fish & Wildlife service. Their last visitor had been in October, so they were happy to see us. We were there on an egg day – when the freshly fertilized eggs get transferred into hatching trays. We walked around to all the tanks – each with a larger atlantic salmon. Eggs, egg fry, fry, , smolt, adult. They’re trying to restore what has been badly overfished.
Then home, bath, dinner (the soup was excellent by the way – not bad considering I had no herbs, maybe even better than usual), and an after-dinner giant floor puzzle of the United States.
Now RocketBoy is finally sleeping. Tomorrow we need to get to the beach early, before the snow and ice, and get more reading in.
Homeschooling Day 2
The everlasting ick that I seem to have caught has morphed again. Over the weekend it was a sore throat and post-nasal drip, Monday digestive nastiness and joint aches later in the evening, and today I woke with my sinuses in misery. I’m not sure what RocketBoy learned yesterday, but I learned that if I could teach through a stomach bug, I could manage through anything.
He woke up at 7:15 filled with “I love you” and “when does school start?” This is a huge contrast to before we took him out of school when the first question out of his mouth was “Is today a school day?” followed by a groan when 5 times out of seven I answered “yes.” I had to remind him of the strict (made up yesterday when I couldn’t get out of bed) rule that school starts at 9 sharp. Not a minute before. Addendum to this rule: before school starts he has to be dressed, breakfast eaten, and teeth brushed. Also, he can watch TV before school as long as everything else gets done. I still shake my head in disbelief that some rules he just accepts as unquestionable and other he pushes till they break. This one he buys. I’ll happily take it.
First, RocketBoy wanted to go through his bag of treasures. We spread newspaper on the table and sorted his finds into groups: Lobster claws, mussels, barnacles, seaweed, rocks, seashells, pine cones, and sea urchin. We talked about each group in more detail and made lots of little observations (you’d think after all the lobster I’ve enjoyed, I would have noticed the hair-like fuzzy bits on the claws). We did not talk about overall beach nature and wave dynamics because RocketBoy was getting antsy. Instead we counted all of the items and RocketBoy carefully recorded them in his notebook. This part was pulling teeth. He really did not want to do it after the first few were done and kept rubbing his eyes. Time for a snack. Even after the snack it was tough to get him to finish, but I persisted and he did. By the end he was really excited again because he counted 64 rocks. He was blown away by the number - nothing else in his collection was past the teens. Since he seemed to like big numbers I decided to add on to the math lesson and we worked on adding up the numbers of all his treasures – 120 total. There went the whole morning – math, science & nature, and writing. We stopped for choose and do time. “Choose and do’s” are what his Syracuse prechool, Jowonio, called free play time. It is a happy association and I think RocketBoy is delighted to have “choose and do” again.
[Side note – Jowonio might just be the most wonderful school in the universe. I still miss it and wish I could find something like it again. There is a charter school in NYC whose founder is an ex-Jowonio teacher and is modeling her elementary after Jowonio, but because of the lottery system and the district preference, we have no hope of ever getting our boy there. If Jowonio existed past pre-k I’d consider moving back to Syracuse. It was that good. Even now, if we have any other children I will regret that they will not get to experience Jowonio. Thank you Ellen, Pam, Jed, Audrey, and all the others that make that place wonderful!]
For choose and do we played a couple of rounds of UNO and RocketBoy asked to chop the carrots to go into the chicken soup I was making (so sad that I had to make my own chicken soup – when you’re sick someone else should do that for you). He asked if we could make cooking part of homeschooling. My answer is a big fat yes!
After that it was field trip time. We went to a hatchery run by the Fish & Wildlife service. Their last visitor had been in October, so they were happy to see us. We were there on an egg day – when the freshly fertilized eggs get transferred into hatching trays. We walked around to all the tanks – each with a larger atlantic salmon. Eggs, egg fry, fry, , smolt, adult. They’re trying to restore what has been badly overfished.
Then home, bath, dinner (the soup was excellent by the way – not bad considering I had no herbs, maybe even better than usual), and an after-dinner giant floor puzzle of the United States.
Now RocketBoy is finally sleeping. Tomorrow we need to get to the beach early, before the snow and ice, and get more reading in.
Homeschooling Day 1 – An Inauspicious Beginning
January 5th, 2009
Homeschooling Day 1 – An Inauspicious Beginning
What not to do the night before your first day of homeschooling? Get a stomach bug. I went to sleep pretty early (10pm!) for me at least, with high hopes of being rested when RocketBoy demands that I wake up. Well I was up at 3 am sweaty and nauseous. It just got worse from there. At one point I remember sitting on the bathroom floor trying to think if there was any sort of cushion I drag in so I could sleep comfortably near the toilet all the while missing my first tiny on-my-own in NYC apartment with the bathroom so small that one could sit on the toilet while comfortably leaning one’s head on the sink.
I could have given up on starting that day, but I decided to stick with it, heavily leaning on my friend the DVD player since my father was working and my husband was 500 miles away. We went through the cards, RocketBoy choosing “Reading and Writing” first. Hooray! In went a DVD of World World. I sat RocketBoy with his notebook and instructions to write seven words that he wanted to learn and draw pictures of them. That bought me about 30 minutes more sleep and a trip downstairs where there was some immodium stashed. I mustered enough energy to really work with him for the next half hour. He picked his favorite word from the seven, “cake” and we made a list of all the –ake words we could think of, then made up a story using them.
Next he wanted “Science and Nature.” In went the DVD of Winged Migration and I got another desperately needed nap. He came and sat on the bed near me and we talked about why birds migrate and why some don’t. We talked about geography and why some places are warm year round. Considering how not with-it I felt, I think we did smashingly. Next came lunch. I was starting to feel hungry and had some oatmeal, with happy results, but I lost all energy afterwards. When RocketBoy asked if he could play UNO I said sure. I could sit in a cushy chair and play for a while – it was about all I could do. I feel I have to justify that at the kindergarten/1st grade stage playing UNO is a math lesson, really it is. I swear.
A little later grandpa came in and suggested a trip to the beach. I was feeling much better by then since the immodium was clearly working. Even so, I kept swinging between feeling fine and feeling utterly drained. I relaxed in the car while my dad drove the 25 minutes of back country roads to the beach. Downeast Maine is nothing but coastline, but much of it is bay or lake or private property. Even though we can see water from the porch of the house, we can’t actually access a public ocean beach for quite a distance. There are lakes and inlets closer, but most of those are iced over – we wanted a proper beach. The drive was fine by me. A long car ride means RocketBoy got to listen to a book on CD (Magic Schoolbus Wild West) and I got downtime.
RocketBoy loved it there and spent ages just throwing rocks into the ocean. After lots of running and throwing (exercise time!) I got him a bag so he could collect treasures from the shore – perfect for tomorrow’s lesson. We had to cajole him into the car after 45 minutes. Apparently he was having so much fun, he didn’t notice that it was 25 degrees out. The rest of us did. I wish I had had the werewithal to take pictures, not this time.
We hit the grocery store and got back home in time for dinner, a bath, and some Wallace and Grommit.
Not bad for our first day.
Homeschooling Day 1 – An Inauspicious Beginning
What not to do the night before your first day of homeschooling? Get a stomach bug. I went to sleep pretty early (10pm!) for me at least, with high hopes of being rested when RocketBoy demands that I wake up. Well I was up at 3 am sweaty and nauseous. It just got worse from there. At one point I remember sitting on the bathroom floor trying to think if there was any sort of cushion I drag in so I could sleep comfortably near the toilet all the while missing my first tiny on-my-own in NYC apartment with the bathroom so small that one could sit on the toilet while comfortably leaning one’s head on the sink.
I could have given up on starting that day, but I decided to stick with it, heavily leaning on my friend the DVD player since my father was working and my husband was 500 miles away. We went through the cards, RocketBoy choosing “Reading and Writing” first. Hooray! In went a DVD of World World. I sat RocketBoy with his notebook and instructions to write seven words that he wanted to learn and draw pictures of them. That bought me about 30 minutes more sleep and a trip downstairs where there was some immodium stashed. I mustered enough energy to really work with him for the next half hour. He picked his favorite word from the seven, “cake” and we made a list of all the –ake words we could think of, then made up a story using them.
Next he wanted “Science and Nature.” In went the DVD of Winged Migration and I got another desperately needed nap. He came and sat on the bed near me and we talked about why birds migrate and why some don’t. We talked about geography and why some places are warm year round. Considering how not with-it I felt, I think we did smashingly. Next came lunch. I was starting to feel hungry and had some oatmeal, with happy results, but I lost all energy afterwards. When RocketBoy asked if he could play UNO I said sure. I could sit in a cushy chair and play for a while – it was about all I could do. I feel I have to justify that at the kindergarten/1st grade stage playing UNO is a math lesson, really it is. I swear.
A little later grandpa came in and suggested a trip to the beach. I was feeling much better by then since the immodium was clearly working. Even so, I kept swinging between feeling fine and feeling utterly drained. I relaxed in the car while my dad drove the 25 minutes of back country roads to the beach. Downeast Maine is nothing but coastline, but much of it is bay or lake or private property. Even though we can see water from the porch of the house, we can’t actually access a public ocean beach for quite a distance. There are lakes and inlets closer, but most of those are iced over – we wanted a proper beach. The drive was fine by me. A long car ride means RocketBoy got to listen to a book on CD (Magic Schoolbus Wild West) and I got downtime.
RocketBoy loved it there and spent ages just throwing rocks into the ocean. After lots of running and throwing (exercise time!) I got him a bag so he could collect treasures from the shore – perfect for tomorrow’s lesson. We had to cajole him into the car after 45 minutes. Apparently he was having so much fun, he didn’t notice that it was 25 degrees out. The rest of us did. I wish I had had the werewithal to take pictures, not this time.
We hit the grocery store and got back home in time for dinner, a bath, and some Wallace and Grommit.
Not bad for our first day.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Getting Ready for Homeschooling
Sunday, January 4th 2009
I had planned all along to start Monday, the day all the other kids are going back to school after the winter break. How do you make god laugh? Make a plan.
Last week we got word that Aunt Jeanne (or Great Aunt or Great Great Aunt, depending on your generation) had passed. She was in her nineties and it wasn’t unexpected. Now I am not at all close with the Maine end of the family. In fact I have barely met most of them. My dad is not the most social of creatures and he is my connection to them. Normally I would not think to run to the funeral of someone I haven’t seen in 15 years, but my dad was flying up from Florida and tickets to NYC are far cheaper than to Portland. Besides, Rocket Boy has never met them and I thought it would be good for him to recognize that he has other family, so we packed the car and off we went.
We got to Maine on Friday night for the wake, Saturday was the funeral and then up to my Dad’s house Downeast.
I had planned to do some shopping to set up our new homeschooling system, could be done in Maine just as well, right? So Sunday night I ended up in that store I usually swear never to go into, but I got what I needed. Because RocketBoy has only just turned 6 and he is the precious, precious child I love so much, I knew that I would need some visual and tactile way of organizing our day or I would be sunk. We’re using cards and wallet insert that holds credit cards. Each card has a subject and represents a half hour (math x2, science and nature x2, reading and writing x2, social studies x1, computer x1, TV x2, exercise x1, choose & do x2). I let RocketBoy choose a card, and put it inside the zipper part of the insert and we work on that subject next. Pair that with a stopwatch and we have a nice orderly way to go through our day that allows me to meet my targets and RocketBoy to feel like he’s got some measure of control. I don’t imagine that we’ll use all the cards every day and we may end up adding more cards as we work the kink out.
I originally wanted to make the cards sized to correspond to a daily schedule sheet, so we could keep easier track of stuff. In this ad hoc situation we don’t have that together yet. Let’s see how it works.
I had planned all along to start Monday, the day all the other kids are going back to school after the winter break. How do you make god laugh? Make a plan.
Last week we got word that Aunt Jeanne (or Great Aunt or Great Great Aunt, depending on your generation) had passed. She was in her nineties and it wasn’t unexpected. Now I am not at all close with the Maine end of the family. In fact I have barely met most of them. My dad is not the most social of creatures and he is my connection to them. Normally I would not think to run to the funeral of someone I haven’t seen in 15 years, but my dad was flying up from Florida and tickets to NYC are far cheaper than to Portland. Besides, Rocket Boy has never met them and I thought it would be good for him to recognize that he has other family, so we packed the car and off we went.
We got to Maine on Friday night for the wake, Saturday was the funeral and then up to my Dad’s house Downeast.
I had planned to do some shopping to set up our new homeschooling system, could be done in Maine just as well, right? So Sunday night I ended up in that store I usually swear never to go into, but I got what I needed. Because RocketBoy has only just turned 6 and he is the precious, precious child I love so much, I knew that I would need some visual and tactile way of organizing our day or I would be sunk. We’re using cards and wallet insert that holds credit cards. Each card has a subject and represents a half hour (math x2, science and nature x2, reading and writing x2, social studies x1, computer x1, TV x2, exercise x1, choose & do x2). I let RocketBoy choose a card, and put it inside the zipper part of the insert and we work on that subject next. Pair that with a stopwatch and we have a nice orderly way to go through our day that allows me to meet my targets and RocketBoy to feel like he’s got some measure of control. I don’t imagine that we’ll use all the cards every day and we may end up adding more cards as we work the kink out.
I originally wanted to make the cards sized to correspond to a daily schedule sheet, so we could keep easier track of stuff. In this ad hoc situation we don’t have that together yet. Let’s see how it works.
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