Albert and other things...

We've been rowing Albert by Donna Jo Napoli. In the story, Albert is an eccentric young guy who puts his hand out the window each morning to check the weather and see if it's a good day for a walk. Each day something just isn't quite right, and Albert decides to stay inside, not to mention that he finds some of the noises outside (garbage trucks and people arguing) quite disturbing. Then one day a cardinal builds a nest in his outstretched hand. Albert is forced to live for some days with his hand out the window. He learns to manage his fear of the frightening outside sounds and helps the last baby bird overcome its fear of flying.

This book is so rich with possible study topics that we've been totally absorbed for the last few weeks. We read a book about wings, and Mane drew this picture of an animal, other than a bird, with wings:



Because Albert was especially observant of sounds, we learn about ears. We used to subject of ears as a jumping off point for taking a look at all of the five senses, and we connected that to our previous studies of the nervous system and nerve cells:



One day we sat at Starbucks and wrote a list of all the sounds we heard. Then we wrote onomatopoeia for all the sounds:


Mane has continued to read "incidentally" all over the place. I looked over a book of what's on the standardized reading test for 1st graders and realized that she already meets 1st grade "standards." So, I'm letting the reading rest a bit...again. Ever since I let go of more formal reading lessons, she's been reading more on her own. I was prompted to relax a little but some reading I did about how pushing a child to read before their eyes are developed enough for reading can create dyslexia and a need for glasses. So, while I do some research on that, I'm going to stop pushing.

Yesterday Mane took test 27 in Math U See...just 3 more lessons to go, and we'll be done with Alpha! I'm learning some things about how to make learning more relaxed for Mane. I really don't want her to lose her love of math, but she's getting more and more resistant to workbooks. So, I read the math questions to her. She did the math in her head and gave me the answer. I wrote the answers down. Somehow this made her entirely happy to do the math test. Later I told her story problems, and she worked them out either in her head or with the math blocks. Story problems are really the only math problems worth doing according to Mane. So, I'm creating more story problems. I create story problems around the math problems in her book, and she happily supplies me with the answers.

I've been making observations lately of Mane's ability to tell time and count money. Interestingly, we've done very little formal work on those two things, but Mane has learned all the basics this year. One word for that: unschool. It's amazing what kids are learning when we aren't formally teaching.