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:

Logic and Philosophy at Peregrin House

I am so excited for some of the new things we're studying this year. Next, after Game Schooling, on my list of things to share is Logic and Philosophy! Yay! First we began with this marvelous book we found online called An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments.

After reading the first chapter of the Bad Arguments books, about Arguments from Consequences, Mane wrote her own Bad Arguments. For examples, "If all the cars in the world disappeared, I would get to ride a horse, and I like riding a horse. Therefore, all the cars in the world will disappear." Now there's an "Argument from Consequences" for you. Check this one out: "Nothing is better than chocolate. Broccoli is better than nothing. Therefore, broccoli is better than chocolate." That's an equivalency argument. Awesome.

We're looking forward to using the Center for Philosophy for Children later this year to explore philosophical questions through children's literature and find ethical dilemmas to discuss and argue (with our Bad Arguments). Their website is simply crammed with ideas for developing the philosophical minds of children. Grandma is going to be so proud (that's Mango's mama, the philosophy professor).

Last year we did a whole lot of logic puzzles: Deducibles, Mind Benders, and Sudoku. This year we're hoping to build on some of those logic and reasoning skills to make real world applications.

Game Schooling - Mad Libs card game

Mane LOVES Mad Libs. I don't think I can express in words just how happy Mad Libs make her. If we get her nothing but Mad Libs books for her birthday, Christmas, and Chanukah this year, she would be over the moon. This is serious.

So, when I saw a Mad Libs card game at the thrift store for $1 the other day, I bought it. Don't let the serious face fool you, Mad Libs require your full attention:

As most of you probably know (but just in case you don't), Mad Libs are great for learning parts of speech and sentence construction. The game is played like Rummy, requiring players to make sentences of different lengths for each of six rounds. Cards are color coded for parts of speech.

We'd love to see Mad Libs get rid of the words "weirdo" and "dummy," though, and we'd love to see extension sets with better vocabulary. This game, which can be played similarly, is on our wish list: You've Been Sentenced.

Game Schooling - Bible Challenge

It's been a struggle for me to find what I'm looking for in a Bible/Theology study for Mane. As a 7th grader, she's past just learning the basic stories but still needs reinforcement of the facts and practice finding things in scripture. There's a whole lot I have to say about teaching and studying theology for kids and middle schoolers, but today I'll just feature the games we've been using as that base for solidifying the facts and scriptures...

Mane made a set of these popsicle sticks with the books of the Bible written on them. They are color coded for genre. She is using them as a way to learn the order of the books. Scrambling them up and putting them back in order is great practice!

We are also playing a game called Bible Challenge as a part of our regularly scheduled curriculum! I grew up playing an older version of Bible Trivia, and I credit that game with helping me learn a great deal in a way that I still remember it today. This version does not give multiple choice answers to the questions, making it a bit more challenging. Players collect rings in seven different colors representing categories of questions in order to win the game.

Mango recently sent me a link to a American Radio Works radio show called The Science of Smart that was primarily about how people learn and retain information. Researchers have found over and over again that the best way to study information in order to retain it is to be quizzed (or to quiz yourself) on that information. It seems to me that trivia games are a great way to accomplish that repeated quizzing that helps us remember!

Game Schooling - Prestel Art Game

This year "Art Class" is about reading poetry (over tea, in bed at night, with breakfast, while studying theology...), listening to Classics for Kids radio, hearing excerpts from renowned pieces of literature, looking at types of architecture, placing styles of art & artists on a timeline, and....playing the Prestel Art Game!

We've been playing this for several weeks now, and it's pushed us to learn art terminology, recognize famous pieces, and learn about eras in art history. One thing I really appreciate is that you don't have to start out knowing a whole lot about art and artists in order to progress in the game. There are enough questions that are, "What do you think?" type questions to keep it moving. We use our creative and critical thinking skills to imagine what artists might be trying to say with a piece, what the subjects in a painting might be thinking, and what is most striking about certain pieces of artwork and why. Players "compete" with those questions by seeing if their answers match up with the answers of other players. There are also some "Pictionary" and "Taboo" type challenges.

As a way to extend the learning with this game, we keep the laptop around to look up other pieces of art by some artists or to search for similar styles and eras in art history!

Game Schooling - Rummy Roots

We have always loved a good game here at Peregrin House! And this year I've been focusing on ways to integrate games into our regular schedule and curriculum. I'm thinking that we should begin calling ourselves Game Schoolers, rather than Home Schoolers. I've been clogging my facebook feed with photos of us playing all our new (and old) games and decided it's high time I get them all recorded in the blog!

One of my very favorite new games is Rummy Roots! I'd been considering all kinds of vocabulary curriculum ideas for the latter half of this year, once we finish Logic of English and was on the brink of purchasing some workbooks when I ran across this game at Heppner's Legacy Homeschool Resources store in Elk River, MN.

 

The first version of the game is basically "Go Fish," except the draw pile is the "Root Pile," and you "Go Dig!" Both Greek and Latin roots and their English translations are in the deck. You ask for either the Greek/Latin or the English root word to make your match. Players have a cheat sheet with all the roots listed. Later versions of the game are played like Rummy, combining the Greek/Latin roots to create words. A small lexicon is included for assistance in playing the Rummy version of the game.Scanning the list over and over to find the matching root is good practice for using alphabetical lists and good eye training for children with dyslexia. Memorization happens without a person even noticing!

For now, we're going to forgo the root word workbooks and play games!

Rummy Roots has a web page here: http://rummyrootsgames.com/