PIE

Peregrin House smells like apple & pumpkin pie today. Mane learned more about fractions while we worked on the pies together. This year we're having a pie-making extravaganza. We're making SIX pies. That is a lot of pies at my house. Hmm...maybe we should have tied this into Harold and the Purple Crayon and made nine pies...because Harold had all nine kinds of pie at his picnic. We're only having 3 kinds.

Yesterday Mane read two Bob Books, practiced her math doubles on the computer, and made her own book about the universe (going through the steps: street, neighborhood, city, state, country, continent, planet, solar system, galaxy). The book took a very long time...but it was fun. I think she has a very good handle on how all those things fit together now.

Peregrin House goes to school

Have I mentioned that Mango (that's my husband) is a public school teacher? Well, he is. And his classroom this year has been one gigantic disaster. He's teaching 3 classes he's never taught before, and he was given a truckload of equipment and supplies about 2 days before school started. Now, before you get all excited thinking that's a wonderful thing, please note that these supplies were the leftovers from some departments being dissolved in other schools. In any case, the supplies filled his classroom and he had no room to teach. Furthermore, since he's teaching 3 classes he's never taught before & he has only one prep hour, he has ZERO time for classroom cleaning and organizing. SO, today Peregrin House went to school. Mane and I packed up our lunches and school supplies and went to clean the classroom. Mango teaches in another classroom because his is too full of stuff. Our mission was for Mane to learn some things and for the tables to get cleared in the classroom.

Mane took her math test & worked on a phonics workbook we picked up at Target a while ago. We read about constellations, added several pages to her school notebook about our neighborhood, city, state, country, continent, planet, solar system & galaxy. We also read Down, Down the Mountain again, and then Mane practiced reading/writing/spelling on the white board. She also swept the floor & cleaned out cabinets with me!

The big news is that the classroom is clean enough for Mango to be able to teach there now! And we had a fun time being in his workplace all day, chatting with co-workers and students, and having lunch with Mango. It all worked out way better than I thought it would, and we're all feeling proud and accomplished tonight!

Birds

I thought I'd mention something about Mane's love of birds. I'm not even really sure what inspired it, but he interest in birds has been so intense that we bought her a book of North American birds from Half Price Books last spring, and she's been carrying it around various places ever since. An unexpected pleasure of moving to our new place has been the birds we see out the window in this little protected yard. We have sparrows and at least one cardinal that perch on the grape vines that hang down outside our kitchen window. Mane can watch them for considerable lengths of time. She likes to sit on the counter while I cook and give me a running commentary on the birds. :)

We've also been watching the squirrels. They're getting awfully chubby this time of year, getting ready to sleep most of the winter away...

Down, Down the Mountain

Today we read Down, Down the Mountain, the book we'll be rowing through next week. It's set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which will give us the opportunity to talk about Virgina, the pilgrims, the Wampanoag, and Thanksgiving.

Yesterday we saw Bach to the Future at the MN orchestra. The performance was staged around a student trying to write a report about the history of classical music. Her uncle "accidentally" invented a way to travel back in time, and she traveled back in time to meet various famous composers...while the orchestra played to appropriate accompaniments. Mane got a kick out of it, thought it was really silly!

After the performance we went to Chipotle across the street, which is one of the few places where nearly everything is gluten free. Then we went to Central Library to find books to keep us occupied for the next homeschooling week, including some Bob Books.

We took the bus to the orchestra, and Mane counted her own coins to ride the bus. We had no quarters, and we needed 75 cents. So, Mane counted nickles and dimes to 75 cents. You gotta love life lessons!

Mane has also started reading over my shoulder at the computer! Yikes! I'd better watch my e-mails from now on. She isn't very good yet, but she's starting to pick out the easy words. I'm so excited to see her beginning to really read. I don't know what my big vent was about a week ago. All the sudden, the issue is beginning to resolve itself.

Oh, and we also resumed family Bible reading Wednesday night. Hooray for us! We're trying to get back in the habit before Advent. It's so easy to get out of it when there are soccer games and lots of company (i.e. Novio). I informed Novio that he isn't company any more, and we're going to do our family Bible reading whether he's here or not. I should've done that a long time ago.

New Friends!

I'm very hopeful about the new homeschool group we visited Tuesday! Mane had a blast, and I really enjoyed hanging out with the other parents. There weren't any girls Mane's age, but there were a few older and a few younger, which is just fine with me and a whole lot more like real life.

Today Mane finished lesson 17 in math with plans to take the test tomorrow. Friday will be a math facts practice day. She has been reading words incidentally all over the place, but she *has* announced that the book we've been using is boring. I told her we need to stick with it, though, and I think we will to a certain extent, but I also plan to do a better job creating variety in her reading experience.

We also read a couple of light books yesterday about the solar system & stars. I wasn't too impressed with them. So, I won't list them here. The plan is to do some drawing tomorrow demonstrating the progression from neighborhood to city, state, country, continent, planet, Milky Way, and UNIVERSE!

We will also be visiting the MN Orchestra tomorrow for "Bach to the Future," and we were excited to learn that some of our new homeschooling friends will be there!

Finished Rowing Harold

We finished up with Harold and the Purple Crayon today. We reviewed compound words. Mane listened for them and wrote them down as we read the story. We talked about puns and wrote those down, too. Then we took ourselves on over to youtube.com and watched videos about how crayons are made! Mane printed a page from pbskids.com about crayon-making and added it to her school notebook. Finally, we reviewed the moon phases (from earlier in the year when we rowed Owl Moon ), and Mane wrote down the moon phase that we see in Harold and the Purple Crayon next to a copy of one of the pages from the book in her school notebook.

Mane continued lesson 17 from Math U See, and she read Pug's Hugs and Click, Click by Dr. Maggie. Her reading seemed much more smooth today.

Mane got out her drawing book on her own and drew a panda bear. It's amazing the way she can follow the instructions in the "how to draw" books. She got the animal one last Christmas from Grandma & Grandpa, and it has provided hours upon hours of entertainment.

Early Readers

The book Mane read yesterday is called Top Job, Mom by Margaret Allen. It's book 3 of "Dr. Maggie's Phonics Readers" by Creative Teaching Press. Today Mane read book 7 called Click, Click. These are similar to Bob Books, but they're more colorful, and Mane very successfully read both books. By the end of book 7 she was even starting to sound more fluent.

I keep asking myself over & over if I'm approaching reading in the right way, or if I'm creating lifelong reading problems by pushing the reading issue. The philosophy of The Ordinary Parent's Guide To Teaching Reading is that kids need to practice reading every day, and, though they may not like it. It's like any other thing we make them do for their own good - like eat vegetables & take baths. In some ways I agree. It's difficult to learn new skills, and often the practice isn't a while lot of fun. The pay-offs come later. On the other hand, reading is something I'd like Mane to do for pleasure, and if it's just a big struggle all the time, it isn't going to be pleasurable. I guess I'm afraid that if I make a big deal of it, she won't ever learn to read well because she'll view it as something difficult. If she could get to the point where she's reading really well, then reading would have its own rewards.

Anyway, we've tried Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but that quickly got very boring. They also use a lot of scripting (for the teacher), and a lot of symbols to cue the child on how to pronounce the letters. I don't want her to have to un-learn symbols and stylized writing in order to read real books.

We've read a lot of Bob Books, too. These are fantastic, truly wonderful. The stories are cute and funny. Mane started digging in her heels about reading them, though, when they got increasingly harder.

The books she read yesterday & today are very, very easy - also very fun and colorful, which is something she's been missing in the Ordinary Parent's Guide. She is, of course, so happy and proud when she feels successful. I'm wondering if I shouldn't let her just really master some easy-peasy early readers, and then move one at a time extremely slowly to a higher skill level.

The thing is, she is learning from The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. The practice and repetition are good for her. It's just as boring as 100 Easy Lessons, but I like the format better. The stories are also typically kind of funny, though they have no pictures. Mane is easily distracted by pictures, but they also help string her along when she's trying to read.

Perhaps the answer is just that I have to keep a lot of variety going. Mane is very kinesthetic. So, any games we can play are extremely helpful. I think I might move to teaching her new reading concepts with the magnet letters, using the Ordinary Parent's Guide as my "guide." I like having something to tell me what order to introduce new concepts, but maybe I need to back off on having Mane read from the actual book and focus more on fun and interesting things she can read, along with some games and such. I have to keep the balance of reading practice and actually having fun...

Fractions & Friends

This week we rowed Harold and the Purple Crayon and cut out pictures of food for Mane's notebook (like Harold's pie picnic in the book). Then we divided the food into fractions and talked about...well...fractions. Mane was pretty proud. She also got to watch some of her favorite Harold movies this week, and we checked out the Spanish version of the book from the library.

Today we played with magnetic letters & practiced some of the letter blends Mane has been learning in her reading book (shr-, squ-, -ank, -ink, -onk, -unk, -ang, -ing, -ong, ung...). And Mane read me a book at the library. She was quite successful and proud of herself. That's twice in the very recent past. I'm glad to see her feeling so successful!

Now it's time to find some friends... Seriously. So, I contacted a homeschool group leader in our area, and we plan to visit the group next week. Hoorah for us! Last year we tried unsuccessfully to find a group that fits for us. I'll spare you the details. It just didn't work. This group is a 45 minute bus-ride from our house, but it's on our bus line - meaning we don't have to transfer buses and stand out in the cold anywhere waiting for the next bus. I'm totally willing to do that, as it gives us time to read books, talk, look out the windows... It's good. For those of you who don't know, Mane and I are without a car during the weekdays as Mango needs the car for work.

Before anybody jumps all over the socialization question, I will say that what Mane needs is simply friends, not socialization. She is being socialized just fine at home, but she's getting lonely. She wants some kids, especially girls, close to her own age to play with. I'm hoping this group fits the bill for us. Right now she hangs out a lot with littler people, and though she loves that, she could use some plain ole friendship.

I'll keep ya'll posted on how it goes.

Fishing for words

Yesterday, at the suggestion of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading I made up a game for Mane using specific word endings she's trying to learn. She had the word ending in front of her & a bunch of letters face down on index cards scattered on the table. We put paperclips on all the index cards. Then Mane used a pencil fishing pole (a pencil with a magnet dangling on a string) to fish for the letters. She then read the word made by the letter she "caught" and the word ending in front of her. This was such a great time for her that she practiced reading for much longer than usual and wanted to show the game to Mango when he got home.

Earlier in the day Mane finished coloring the states red & blue for the election, and she used math blocks to total the number of electoral votes Obama received.(This was a good exercise in geography, as well as learning about the election.) Today we will total McCain's electoral votes and do math test 16 in Math U See. I'm intentionally slowing her down a little in the math book to make sure she's solid in her math facts before we move into subtraction. She's been practicing math facts on Math U See's website.

I'm still mulling over what book to row for next week. I went to East Lake library today and all the Five in a Row Volume 2 books that they have were checked out already. Yikes! Perhaps we'll choose another that we already have at the house - Harold and the Purple Crayon or Albert maybe.

Election Day 2008

This morning Mane came with me to vote. We talked about how people cannot advertise or campaign at the polling station (or within a certain number of feet of the polling station), and that's why she couldn't wear a sticker for the presidential candidate. We also talked about how this election isn't just for president but for many other state & local offices as well.

At home we printed a U.S. map & practiced finding the states and writing down the number of electoral votes each state gets. This means that, of course, we talked about electoral votes and how they work. We talked about red states & blue states, the symbols of the donkey & the elephant, and we printed pictures of Obama & McCain for her notebook. Tonight we'll color states red & blue according to their electoral votes. We briefly discussed other parties, too (and that the word party refers to a group of people, not a fiesta!).

Mane asked a lot of questions today about the differences between the candidates for president, and we ended up talking about how taxes work, along with the basic issues of the environment and education. It always amazes me how much she's interested in everything AND how much she learns when she's interested.

We have been working a fair amount on learning that disagreeing with the other political party doesn't mean that we hate them or that they're bad people. This is a difficult concept for children who are still in the concrete and literal stage of development. As a matter of fact, this is a fairly difficult concept for most people, too, especially during election season. I know that Mango & I speak harshly of the other political party, and having small ears listening is teaching me to speak with more care and grace. It's hard to teach that it's ok to be frustrated (even angry?) about another political position without thinking the other person is bad. I've been repeating this type of thing a lot: "Mr. ____ just has different ideas about how to take care of the earth. I think his ideas are wrong, but that doesn't make him a bad person." Maybe we should all work on that.

We read Papa's Mark by Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert, which tells the story of a black man voting for the first time & also raises the issue of how African American people were not allowed to learn to read, write or do math as long as they were slaves. We followed up with the story, Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom , by Carol Boston Weatherford, as a continuation of talking about slavery & freedom.

Tonight (and tomorrow) we'll add electoral votes together for math practice!

Slavery, Politics, and Volunteering

We finished out the week by adding a map of the underground railroad to Mane's school notebook, along with a page about Harriet Tubman, and another page about African Americans & women getting the right to vote.

This week we read:

When Esther Morris Headed West: Women, Wyoming, and the Right to Vote by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
I Could Do That: Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote by Linda Arms White
Vote! by Eileen Christelow, and some of
Don't Know Much About the Presidents by Kenneth C. Davis

Mane watched the Reading Rainbow episode featuring Follow The Drinking Gourd. This one was heavy. I have hesitated over and over again in introducing slavery and the civil war to her. It's always tough to know how to talk to our kids about the tough topics, but I also think it helps build compassion for others AND appreciation for one's own freedoms and comforts in life. Mane is still very wide-eyed about the topic. We're going to let it rest for now (after reading one more picture book about Harriet Tubman) while we follow the election and learn a little about George Washington. The topic of people getting the right to vote was a nice transition from one unit study to the next.

Friday night, for Halloween, Mane went with us (that's me, Mango, Vespera & Novio) and a group of students from North High to Feed My Starving Children, an organization that puts together food packets to send to starving children and families in other countries. They began the night with a video of children receiving the food, of children who were starving and are now healthy because of the food from Feed My Starving Children. Much of the food goes to Haiti, and Mane has 4 girlfriends who were adopted from Haiti. So, this was a special connection for her. She helped stack and box the bags after they were sealed. We weren't sure about the gluten content of the food. So, we kept her away from the actual food. It appears to be gluten-free, and I'm communicating with the organization about whether it really is or not. We all had a fantastic time working together, listening to music, packing & boxing as fast as we could. They have avery efficient method set up for getting everything done. The organization expects that in the hour they spend there, groups usually produce about one box of food bags per person. There were 44 people there Halloween night, and we put together 50 boxes! Once we cleaned up, the managers of Feed My Starving Children invited those who so desired to come and pray over the boxes of food and the children they were going to feed. I think we'll be going back there again. It's definitely a very practical and simple way to help people.