Game Schooling - Dread Pirate

While not technically an "educational" game, Dread Pirate is a beautifully crafted family game. It's fast moving and suitable for players of all ages. For the younger set, counting dice and planning a route provide some educational value. For the older set, the pirate lore on the playing cards provides an entertaining education about famous pirates.

St. Paul Winter Skate

Wells Fargo WinterSkate rink in St. Paul is a beautiful place to skate!

We went for the ambiance and loved the holiday lights, the horse-drawn carriage clip-clopping down the street nearby, and the cozy warming house!

Inside the warming house, looking out on the rink!

Museum of Russian Art

One of Mane's Christmas gifts this year was getting to pick out her own matryoshka doll from Russia! We ordered from: Matryoshka Dolls. And then we took a trip to The Museum of Russian Art.

The museum is practically right in our back yard (though not quite so close as the Minneapolis Institute of Art), right off 35W and Diamond Lake Road, and we couldn't believe we'd never been there!

Current displays include "Winter Holidays in the Soviet Era," with "New Year" ornaments, memorabilia, and propaganda from the time when the Soviet Union forbid the celebration of Christmas and tried to replace it with the New Year. Another exhibit called "Life on the Edge of the Forest" celebrated the woodwork and forests of Russia, primarily with displays of window frames and distaffs:

A third display had watercolor paintings of mushrooms by current artist, Alexander Viazmensky. His paintings are used in botanical texts because of their accuracy and detail. 

The permanent collection included beautiful works depicting the Russian countryside and some small churches:

Thousand Word Thursday - Advent/Chanukah

Week 1

Week 2

Chanukah Picture Books

1st Night of Chanukah

Wordless Wednesday - This MN Girl is Finally Learning to Ice Skate

Game Schooling - Sequence

She won!

Sequence comes in a bazillion different forms (States & Capitals, Letters, Numbers, Bible, Travel, Jumbo...), but all we've got here is the original playing card version. I realized as I was playing with my friend's 5yr old the other day how valuable this game is, not only for number recognition, but also for eye scanning and tracking skills (same principle as word finds). This is helpful for both the pre-reader and readers, who are building fluency. Having read a whole lot about dyslexia, I'm aware that eye training exercises can be part of skill-building and therapy for kids with dyslexia. Hats off to another fun learning game!

We let the little guy have the edge of the board for his tokens!

Game Schooling - Gobblet

Gobblet is another logic game, a smart spin-off from tic tac toe. Mindware.com says:

This game has won more awards than we can fit in this space-and no wonder, with astonishingly easy rules and addictive, fast-moving play. Players place four pieces in a row to win, "gobbling" their opponent's pieces. A wonderful exercise in strategy and logic.

This is another game we received when Mane was about 5, and it was an instant hit with both older and younger folks in the family. I even had a good friend of mine playing round after round with me on a camping trip a few summers ago! As Mane gets older, her play gets more sophisticated. It's great practice for learning to stay focused and attentive, too.  It reminds me of chess because of the way that you have to "see" several different possibilities for your opponent's next move. In Gobblet you have to plan for bigger pieces to be able to "gobble" littler pieces and strategically place the larger pieces that cannot be "gobbled."

Chemistry Lesson - Lewis Dot Diagrams

We are STILL loving the middleschoolchemistry.com lessons, and we got to the end of chapter 4 today and wanted to play around MORE with Lewis Dot Diagrams. So, I found this website that let us practice online:

http://chemsite.lsrhs.net/bonding/flashLewis.html

Then I started putting together a list of materials that we need for chapters 5 and 6. These chapters are a bit more materials-intensive than the previous chapters. For the homeschooling family this can be a bit of a challenge. I'm reading through the lesson to see what can be adapted and what we definitely want. If there's anything we feel like we definitely need and can't get locally, we'll be ordering from Flinn Scientific.

Game Schooling - Blokus

I had a lot of fun this week teaching my friend's 5yr old to play Blokus! (And the 2yr old played his own pieces with help from both of us)! In 2011 Blokus was featured in the journal Mathematics Teaching in Middle School, and was cited as teaching students to "exercise spatial awareness, analyze attributes of two-dimensional shapes, compare patterns, and use logic -all of which encompass NCTM's Content Standards."

We started playing Blokus when Mane was five and received it as a Christmas gift. The whole family loved the game. We took it on a family vacation, and it was enjoyed by the 5yr old, the 17yr old, and both parents! That's definitely a win! Blokus gets more complicated as players develop the skills listed in the journal article. A review at The Guide for Toys says this:

Blokus Classic is an award-winning game of strategy in which players compete to be the first to place each of their 21 colored pieces on the game board.  With each color beginning at one corner of the board, each piece must touch at least one other piece of the same color but only at the corners.  With every move, players use thinking skills for strategical moves and blocks.  The game ends when all players are blocked from laying down any more pieces. The player with the highest point total based on number of pieces played and any bonuses, wins.

Math Homework

Math homework in a cozy kitchen with a warm mug o' something! Mane is drinking her "not-no" coffee, Cafix, with coconut milk in a Harry Potter inspired hand-painted mug.

This year she's doing Saxon Math 87. This is our fourth year with Saxon, and Mane is doing awesomely well. We like the way Saxon teaches incrementally, making learning feel pretty effortless. And we like the way that lessons provide constant practice and review for maximum retention. And, FINALLY, today I heard Mane exclaiming, "Oh, I like these kind of problems!" as she hit certain problems in her lesson.

America: The Story of Us

This is how history is done at Peregrin House! We've been watching the History Channel series, America: The Story of Us. The History Channel website has study guides, bonus videos, and links to other websites to extend the lessons. Mane kicks back on the couch with her history binder and answers study guide questions as we go along.

We're currently on episode six. (This is Week Eleven of the school year for us.) I must say that the videos have been a little bloody, but, then again, that is what a lot of history has been. I'm happy that the series is not sugar-coated. It *does* go by fast. Twelve episodes take the viewers from the revolution to modern times. We've taken some time in the middle to watch supplementary videos about President Lincoln, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement. We've also checked out picture books from the library about a number of the early presidents and their families. Mane has been keeping a list of presidents and their wives. She's working on memorizing the names of the presidents.

After this, our plan is to work our way through the PBS series, Faces of America, about the history of immigration in the U.S.A.

Covalent Bonding Experiment - Day 2

Yesterday I posted the beginning of our project separating hydrogen and oxygen in water with a 9v battery. Here's what we've got today:

 See the gas bubble in the top of the test tube? That wasn't there yesterday, and the tube was completely submerged under the water. So, no outside air could get into it. That's hydrogen gas!

We know it isn't oxygen collecting in the tube because the oxygen is reacting with (oxidizing) the copper wires and turning it blue at the bottom of the jar:

Note: This project is set up somewhat differently from the project described at middleschoolchemistry.com. We used 2 test tubes under water in order to collect the gas (rather than just watching the gas bubble in the jar). The wires go directly into the tubes under the water. We held the tubes close together with a rubber binder so that the electricity would flow between them better.

Atoms, Molecules, and Bonding

We are still working our way through chapter 4 of MiddleSchoolChemistry.com. We've worked through the lesson on energy levels and valence electrons. Today we talked about covalent bonding, double bonds, and ionic bonds. Then we put together a contraption to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water! This one we did with Mango's help:

Submerged test tubes filled with water (no air bubbles) in a mason jar full of water

Placed wires under each of the test tubes without letting any air into the tubes!

Set-up Success!

Wires connect to 9 volt battery...

This one will sit on our table for a few days while we watch the tubes fill with hydrogen and oxygen, as the water molecules are blown apart by electricity!

The Three Questions

Last night we had a smart and lively philosophy discussion surrounding the book, The Three Questions, by Jon J. Muth, based on a story by Leo Tolstoy.

I cannot begin to tell you how much we enjoyed this book and the discussion that followed. We used several of the questions from The Center For Philosophy For Children as a springboard:

What do you think of Nikolai’s questions? Do you think they are the most important questions in life?
Do you believe that what we think about these questions changes over time and with experience? Should it?
Are the most important questions in life the same for everyone?
How do we know the right thing to do when we are faced with a difficult decision?
What does it mean to do the right or wrong thing?

Mane is currently working out her own Three Questions. Last night she was able to articulate one of her own questions and the rationale behind it. I enjoyed seeing the conversation move from Mane simply agreeing with the questions in the book to being able to ask her own questions and think "bigger picture" about them.

It has been important to establish that I am not interested in "right" answers. I'm interested in where she gets her ideas and how she formulates them. This is different from a lot of parent-child or teacher-child conversations, since often we're asking questions to assess knowledge and correct misconceptions.

Last week we had a conversation about philosophy in general: what it is, what the word means, what philosophers study and what questions they tend to ask. We drew some connections between logic, faith, and philosophy. This week's conversation extended how those things are interrelated. We tend not to be able to answer the Important Questions in life unless we are informed by something. For us, our faith lays a foundation that helps us answer the Big Questions and make meaning out of life.

It has been interesting, also, for me to see how Mane has conceptualized faith up to this point in time, how she views the Bible and our studies of Torah. She has always been a rule-follower, and she talks about right and wrong being about following "the rules." When I inquire about "the rules," she points to scripture. I'm looking forward to investigating with her the nuances of "rules" - the "letter" vs. the "spirit" of rules and laws.

Minneapolis Institute of Art - Impressionists

After spending some time studying impressionism this fall, we took a trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to see some famous paintings in real life!

Autumn in the courtyard is stunning!

Admiring Van Gogh's Olive Trees

Sketching in front of one of Monet's paintings

Working on water lilies

Inspired to paint at home!

Corn Maze Field Trip

Earlier this week we took a field trip to the Waldoch Farm corn maze. Mane had five straight hours to run with her friend. They raced pedal cars, ran obstacle courses, got lost in the maze, jumped hay bales, and swam in the corn pit! Nothing beats homeschooling in the autumn in MN. This is the time of year when everyone should be outside!

 

Corn Pits are for big kids, too!

Pedal Cars at the finish line!

Um...big blue feet?

Periodic Table

We're currently working our way through Chapter 4 of the American Chemical Society's middle school chemistry curriculum. Most recently, we did this activity matching elements with their symbols and with their numbers of protons, neutrons and electrons:

I sure did wish I had a laminator. I used packing tape to reinforce every single one of those cards!! The cards say things like, "The atom you are looking for has 3 more electrons than carbon." Or, "The atom you are looking for has about 16 neutrons." Students need to understand atomic number and atomic mass in order to figure out what those numbers are and what they mean. The elements table in front of Mane had places for her to fill in the blanks with numbers of protons, neutrons, and electrons based on atomic number and atomic mass.

Eisenhower Observatory - Hopkins, MN

We recently visited the Eisenhower Observatory in Hopkins, MN with members of Mane' Percy Jackson book club.

Unfortunately for us, it was a cloudy night, and there wasn't much to see. Being in the dome and seeing the telescope was an experience unto itself, though, and we were inspired to look up the Observatory at the University of MN, which we hope to visit soon.

Lawrence Sauter Telescope

Game Schooling - IZZI

We found this logic puzzle at the thrift store the other day...solvable in dozens of different ways - if you can manage to solve it all!! Simply match up the edges of each piece until you've build the entire 8x8 square:

It's a little like trying to do a rubics cube - infuriating and addicting.

American Chemical Society

Did you know that the American Chemical Society has a FREE chemistry curriculum for middle school students? You can find it here: middleschoolchemistry.com. The book is available for free download. Lessons include activity sheets, simple animation videos, labs and assessments! The lessons are lab-based, meaning that students learn by doing. Every Single Experiment we have tried from this curriculum has been successful, which is not something I've been able to say for other science lessons I've found online. I am totally impressed with this as an inquiry-based intro to chemistry!

In our first week, we made thermometers and learned about molecules in motion...

 

We made rain and frost...in lessons about evaporation, condensation, sublimation, deposition...

We watched alcohol, water, and oil separate out into three layers in our lessons about density...

I cannot say enough good things about how these lessons systematically reinforce concepts, particularly if you actually work through all of the labs and questions for each chapter. Embedded in the labs are lessons on the scientific method, variables and constants, control groups, and confounding factors. 

Hats off to the American Chemical Society! I am looking forward to digging into their other resources when we finish this set of lessons!

Game Schooling - Games for the younger set...

I also have the great pleasure of walking alongside a friend of mine as she begins the homeschool journey. Her kids love to play games at my house, too!

Among the favorites:

Tenzi - Throw a set of dice (Tenzi is supposed to be with 10 dice, but we started with 5 and worked our way up.) Decide on which number you're going to "collect." Keep the dice showing that number and throw the rest of the dice again. Keep any of the number you are collecting, and then throw the dice again...until all your dice are gone. With older children this can be a speed game. This works on counting and number recognition for the smaller kids:

War - Remove non-numeric cards from the deck and deal the rest between 2 players. Players turn up their top card at the same time. Whoever has the higher number takes the trick. Keep playing until all the cards are gone. Then practice counting even higher by counting who has the most cards!:

Hide and Eek - This game works on the concepts of odd/even and higher/lower for numbers 1-100. There is also a little memory work involved for cards that do not remain face-up. And there is some strategy for where to move the mouse once you've rolled the dice and know whether you're trying to land next to numbers that are odd/even or higher/lower:

Scrambled States of America - This game works on letter recognition (example: find your states the begin with the letter "A") and syllables (example: find a state whose capital has 3 syllables) along with state recognition by shape and location. Fun and quick enough for the big kids to enjoy with the little kids. Bigger kids will catch on to state capitals and nicknames, but this game is not so rigorous that I would include it in the learning games for middle schoolers: