Johnny Appleseed

Yesterday we read Johnny Appleseed: A Poem by Reeve Lindbergh, and began talking about autumn and trees and leaves and the varied topography of the United States. Mane made a picture in her notebook for Johnny Appleseed, and it was so cold that we had our first fire in the fireplace for the season. Mane laid out her notebook in front of the fire, and I fell in love with this idea of us homeschooling here in our cozy living room before a crackling fire...



We did a quick review of our history studies so far and put all the related papers in a binder, which will become our timeline. We looked over a National Geographic book about India, and learned more about how the people of India lived and what they believed. Mane did a word search activity from the back of the Story of the World Activity Book 1. This is good for remembering words associated with the history we've learned so far AND her reading and scanning skills.

Today we went to Bible study, had a picnic at the global market, and babysat for the friend of a friend. Now Mane is practicing reading with Grandma. She's starting to take pride in her reading!

I didn't write about Monday because it was filled with running errands and a long trip to the library, but, notably, Mane made a list of all our errands and checked them off as we went. She also sat in the car reading the map. Fun, practical reading practice. :)

India

Today (after our standard math & reading) Mane & I read from Story of the World about ancient India. We'll be studying ancient India for at least the next week (and possibly longer). We found the Indus River on the map and looked at how it connects to Mesopotamia through the Arabian Sea. We talked about how difficult travel was over the land and why people chose water instead. Now I'm on an internet quest for some fun web pages about ancient India.

Lately Mane has also been helping make dinner. I know this is something I should have gotten around to a lot sooner, but I'm finding that having waited didn't harm anything and she's actually old enough to be real help now. She made meatballs this week and helped make lasagna. She's watching me carefully, and I think cooking is going to be one of those things she loves to do. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to pass it off to her in a few years? ;) Now I'm thinking of it as part of her education. Cooking is part of growing up and being responsible. It's also a place to read, measure, and be creative...a fantastic venue for learning.

The Prairie

I flipped through Mane's school notebook this morning so I could remember what exactly we've done with our week! We read Three Names again, and Mane wrote down common nouns and proper nouns as we read. We researched prairie plants, animals, and insects and made a page for each in the notebook. Briefly, we discussed the various biomes of the earth and printed a map.

This morning we did some more reading about water. We made a pie chart of how much of the earth is made of water. This was a great way to discuss percentages and fractions. Then we made pie charts for the percentage of water in women, men & babies. Mane had some fun guessing how much of herself is water, since she's not a baby and not yet a woman.

Mane drew a water molecule, and she explained to me all the things she already knows about water molecules in the solid, liquid and gas form. She tells me that Mango told her all about it, and she surely did know all her stuff! Then she asked why ice floats, and we found the answer in one of our many library books on water.

Finally, this morning we followed some instructions for watching bean seeds grow from her nature book. Place seeds in a jar between the wall of the jar and some blotting paper, pour water in the bottom of the jar, watch beans sprout and grow:

Walker Art Center

Some photos from our trip to the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden last week when we went to see No Impact Man:













And believe it or not, here is Colin Beaven, No Impact Man!

Homeschool in the midst of life

We finished out last week by reading books about the prairie and identifying plants and animals of the prairie.

Mane spent the weekend with Mango while I went back and forth to the hospital with my aunt. My uncle was in the hospital near our house. Mane did lots of reading with Mango and also had some good playground time!

Monday I brought Mane to the hospital with me and we looked at a book about marbles, since the children in Three Names played marbles. We played a game where one person hides some marbles in the their hand. The other person guesses how many they're hiding. If the guess is correct the guess-er gets to keep the marbles. If the guess is incorrect, the guess-er has to give the difference to the person who was hiding the marbles. I quickly discovered that this is a great way to teach and practice small number subtraction facts! Yeah for us, and my aunt was quite impressed!

My mom was at the hospital as well, and Mane was quite happy to show off her new reading skills by reviewing her most recent Hooked on Phonics stories with my mom. Then she did a math page while we were waiting to talk with doctors and getting ready to leave for lunch.

After lunch, Mane drew a picture of animals that live in the prairie and had a conversation with my uncle about herbivores and predators of the prairie.

Today we biked to the clinic and to Target. Mane is getting to know her way around very well. She's always been very observant of her surroundings. Now that we're biking she leads the way to most familiar destinations. We're both exhausted from a weird weekend, but homeschooling allows us to spread our learning out through the day rather than cramming it into the first 6 hours.

No Impact

Mane & I went to see No Impact Man together at the Walker Art Center on Wednesday. Earlier in the day we went to Bible Study, did some math & reading, reviewed to portion of the 23rd Psalm that she's learning, and then did some research about No Impact Man. We talked about the things we already do to reduce our impact on the environment, and Mane drew some pictures of those things in her school notebook - biking, walking, recycling, and using less electricity. We related this to Three Names by talking about the ways the world has changed since the time of Three Names. We used a chart from homeschoolshare.com to categorize things into how things were done in the past and how they're done in the present (things like washing clothes and getting water).

At the Walker Art Center we wandered around the sculpture garden after securing our tickets. We arrived super early (by bus) because we wanted to be sure to get tickets. The tickets were free, and the art center was expecting a full house. As it turned out, we didn't have to come as early as we did, but it was fine because we played Swap & Fluxx until we got our tickets and then ran around the sculpture garden until showtime. Mane drew some pictures during the film, and she listened attentively to the film maker after the film. As a special treat, Colin Beaven, the author of the book & subject of the film, made a guest appearance. So, we got to see him live and in person. Mane was quite impressed. ...and she wants to start composting our food waste.

Thursday we met up with some friends and spent the whole afternoon at the beach! This felt like the second special treat of the week - to have it warm & beautiful enough in September to spend another day at the beach! Mane came home with a little collection of shells and a rock...and a darker suntan!

Today Mane played with the children of some friends of ours who are home on furlough from Russia. They have been missionaries in Russia since they got married several years ago, and now they have 3 children. The woman is planning to homeschool her children. So, we had a nice conversation about homeschooling while the kiddos played.

Later we'll be driving (gasp!) Vespera to school and stopping by the bank and the library. We have been SO busy this week that it feels like we've hardly gotten anything done, but I suppose it only feels that way if I think of seeing educational films and playing with friends, and exploring the beach as nothing...which I don't. So, I guess we did plenty, just not what we planned. ;)

Three Names

This week we're rowing Three Names by Patricia MacLachlan. It's a book written all about a boy's grandfather and how his grandfather grew up on the prairie with his dog named Three Names, who would follow him to school every day. There isn't a lot of action in the story, but it's a very beautiful and simple description of prairie life for a young boy in America's pioneer days. The book is going to lend itself well to our continued study of horses. We're also learning about rivers, water supply, water cycle and prairies.

Today we read books about rivers while we were on the bus on the way to our homeschool group. Then Mane played for three hours with the other homeschoolers!!

Mane had done some reading before we left the house. Now she's working on putting together a vocabulary book for the words we've encountered in Hooked on Phonics that she did not know. I'm finding clip-art for her to demonstrate the word meanings, and she's practicing her handwriting putting the words into a book.

Yesterday Mane started & finished MUS lesson 3. I continue to marvel at how quickly she learns math concepts.

Another Day

As promised, here are the photos of the architecture stamping activity:







Before we got down to stamping, Mane watched lesson 2 of MUS, did a couple of practice pages, and took the test. I guess we'll be moving on the lesson 3 tomorrow. She also continued in her Hooked on Phonics book. She told me today that she didn't really like Hooked on Phonics very much when we first got it, but now it's not so bad. ;)

We read some more about New York today from a book called New York: The Empire State by Margery Facklam.We printed a map of New York, traced the outline and the Hudson River, found the Erie Canal, and looked for all the Great Lakes. I also pointed out to Mane that there are two mountain ranges in New York, and one is the Appalachian Mountains, which we studied last year.

Mane requested that we look at the world map and sing the song about the continents. So, we did that, and then we traced how the Great Lakes lead out into the Atlantic Ocean through New York, and we talked about how that affects trade and commerce in New York.

Art Studies

I LOVE my local thrift store, and in the last few weeks it has proven itself to be a treasure trove of homeschooling supplies. Today I picked up the Make A Word Bingo Game for $1.5o.
Mane and I have played it already, and I can tell it's going to be another great tool in my reading toolbox (or treasure chest?).

I also purchased The Prestel Art Game for $2.
Mane, Mango & I played this game at a coffee shop this afternoon, and it was great fun! We didn't know the answers to most of the questions, but we had a good time reasoning out the answers, and Mane learned some new art-related vocabulary.

The art game reminded me that a few weeks ago I also purchased Fun With Architecture for $1.50:

This is a stamp set of architectural elements, which can be combined to create buildings and bridges. My plan is for Mane to follow the instructions in the booklet for both a bridge and a lighthouse this week to go along with The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. I'll take pictures when we're finished! (As a side note, Fun With Architecture is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City! I can't wait to tell Mane that when we begin our stamp project.)

I'm excited to see some art and design work trickling into our time together. Today we saw a sculpture (outside the coffee shop) entitled "Allegory of Excelsior." What made this especially special was that Mane just finished studying the New York flag this last week, and there's a little banner on the New York flag that says, "Excelsior." So, we talked some more about what the Latin word "excelsior" means and what the sculpture and the flag were both trying to represent.

We did actually have a little art lesson last week that I forgot to mention. We did some exercises from Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes. We've done lessons from this book before. So, this was just to get us warmed up. I'm committed to doing some real art lessons once a week (not just craft projects). So, the Drawing with Children book will be my base.

Rowing The Little Red Lighthouse

We continued rowing The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge Thursday and Friday last week. On Thursday we read the book, and Mane wrote down all the compound words she heard in her school notebook. On Friday we talked about nouns, and Mane wrote down nouns as we read through the book again. She also made a page in her school notebook for places she'd like to visit in New York someday, including the statue of Balto in Central Park, the zoo, and the Statue of Liberty.

We read several books about New York and the Statue of Liberty, including:

Building Liberty: A Statue is Born by Serge Hochain, which is a story of several people who had a part in making the Statue of Liberty happen - a young engineering apprentice in France, a boy working on the ship that brought Liberty to the U.S.A., a boy who sold newspapers in New York and helped raise money for the pedestal for the statue, and one man who helped put Liberty together after she arrived in the U.S.A..

New York, New York: The Big Apple from A to Z by Laura Krauss Melmed and Frane Lessac. This is a book with something about New York from every letter of the alphabet.

Journey Around New York from A to Z by Martha and Heather Zschock, another book with something about New York City from every letter of the alphebet.

The alphebet books led to some discussions of Wall Street and stocks, Ellis Island and immigration, and September 11th, 2001. Mane was visibly disturbed by the story of September 11th, though she didn't say anything about it. I didn't go into detail. The alphabet books brought it up under the subject of firefighters and the firefighter's museum in New York. Later she said that one of the places she'd like to visit in New York is the firefighter's museum.

Friday evening Mango spent some time looking at New York on Google Earth with Mane. Since we had focused so much on New York City, she was surprised to learn that their are mountains and wide open spaces in New York, as well.

I've been spending some time on-line looking for lighthouse models we can build from legos. This will be one of our projects for the next week.

New York

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge is based on a scene the author witnessed in New York. So, yesterday Mane & I found New York on the map, printed a map of the U.S. and colored in New York for her school notebook. She got out her big 50 States coloring book and colored the page about New York, which included the New York state flag and the state flower. Mane put various pictures related to New York in her school notebook.

We read more about Przewalski horses, the last remaining breed of wild horses. Mango was very interested in the differences in chromosomes between Przewalski horses and the rest of the horses in the world. We talked all about Przewalski horses over dinner with Mango.

In the afternoon Mane played with a friend of hers for several hours - building with train tracks, jumping in the beanbag, and making crafts.

Today we went on a long bike ride to a park. Then we got back to practice reading, and Mane took test 1 for MUS Beta. She finished some coloring on the New York page, and we did an art lesson from Drawing with Children. Now Mane is listening to All of a Kind Family on itunes, and I'm putting together some books to read to her about New York a little later today.

Lighthouses! (And A Walk in the City)

We started out the day with the "real" story of Moses from the Bible. We talked more about Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur. Mane asked questions about what those words actually mean and what language they are and WHY.

We did some math & reading lessons quickly and then took off on a trip to the library. Mane whined about walking to the light rail because we've been biking everywhere lately, but all the way there she commented on the things you can notice when you're walking because you're going more slowly than biking! Talk about night & day. Here are some of our discoveries:

HUGE can tab


Mushroom


Daisies


Relaxing at the station


While we were downtown, we sat at a coffee shop and looked over a book about lighthouses from the library called Lighthouses by Phillip Plisson.



This week we're "rowing" The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. So, our perusal of the lighthouses book was a good intro. As I write this, Mane is reviewing the book with Mango. She was very impressed to learn that there used to be lighthouse boats AND lighthouses that we just on pieces of rock in the middle of the sea. Lighthouse keepers had to slide on a rope down to a boat to get off the lighthouse. Now people are dropped from helicopters to get to the lighthouses for maintenance.

A book about lighthouses seemed timely since we just visited the Two Harbors lighthouse on Lake Superior:





And our trip to Two Harbors reminded us of our trip to Split Rock lighthouse last summer:





We spent a great deal of time in front of the map today, too, finding New York (the setting for The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge), which led to finding all the other places we know on the map and singing a song about the 7 continents. AND we found a youtube video with actual footage of "The Little Red Lighthouse."