Thousand Word Thursday - Formal Day at the Homeschool Co-op

Hair Braiding Practice

Vespera worked on Mane's hair while Mane worked on mine...

Vespera & Mane

All Dressed Up...no shoes for this wood elf!

Game Schooling - Quick Pix Animals

I picked this game up for next to nothing at the homeschool book sale about a month ago, and then I saw it at the science museum store. You know it's a good game when they're selling it at the science museum!

How to Play:
Each player gets 5 cards, which they place face-up in front of themselves. Each card has two animal categories, such as "mammals" or "reptiles" on it. The deck contains animal picture cards. When a card from the deck is flipped up, the first player to match their category card to the animal card keeps the match. I require older kids to call out the correct category, not just slap the right category card down on the animal.

We're finding that even our smallest player is getting pretty good at this game! The category cards have pictures of the animals on them. So, he can identify the matches by using the pictures:

Just look at his card stash on the couch there!

Learning:

Younger players practice matching/patterning and eye scanning skills. Older players learn animal classification. Grown-up players learn to be quick...because the kids are FAST! The game rules come with information about classification and all the animals included in the deck. Even our adult players learned some new things about some animals from this game. (Did you know that manatees are hoofed mammals? And that the porcupine is considered a rodent?)

Homeschool in Spring!

It's spring in Minnesota! Time to celebrate with books and bubbles on the front porch!

Game Schooling - Quiddler

I cannot believe I've made it this long without playing Quiddler! The game came out in 1998, and TDmonthly lists it as one of the top ten most wanted cards games STILL in 2014. The Card Game Reviews blog says:

Quiddler has won more than a dozen gaming awards, including a MENSA Select Award, a spot on Newsweek‘s Perfect Presents list, and the 1998 Tiger Award for Best American Game.

The game comes with a fat stack of letter cards, which players make into words. Play is simple, following a draw and discard format. Round 1 starts with 3 cards (meaning players will be making 3-letter words). Round 2 begins with 4 cards, Round 3 with 5, etc... up to 10 cards. Players must use their entire hand (minus 1 card to discard) to make 1 or more words with the highest point value. House rules could make this game easier or harder for kids of different ages. Those just learning to read could make shorter words than experienced readers. The deck could be stacked to include (or not include) letter blends. Players could decide to play up to a certain point value, rather than a certain number of rounds or to play all rounds with the same number of letters.

As a card game, Quiddler is delightfully small and pack-able, and Mane commented on how much she likes the design of the letters! I love a game that is beautiful, educational AND portable. This one definitely has some camping/road trips in its future!

Filming

Just a fun shot of Mane helping set up to film a fundraising concert with Mango back in March...

She's learned a lot over the past few years about the set-up and take-down of video & sound equipment for events, as well as getting good camera angles and doing a little active filming.

Passover 2015 - Bag of Plagues

For Passover this year we decided to use the idea from the Martha Stewart website and make a "Bag of Plagues" for Mane and her younger friends. We replaced a couple of the items (see below). Rather than dark chocolate cherries for blood (YUCK!!), we made red slime...

Here's the list of what we used for each plague:

Blood: slime (borax, polyvinyl alcohol, red food coloring)
Frogs: Plastic frogs
Lice: glitter
Swarms: Plastic bugs
Cattle disease: Plastic cows
Boils: Orbies
Hail: Altoids
Locusts: Plastic locusts
Darkness: Blindbolds
Slaying of the first born: Plastic lambs

Spring Break 2015

We had such a fabulous spring break this year! We saved up all our field trips and brought Mango along while he was on spring break, too. First up was the Habsburg Exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Thanks to my lovely friend, we got to go for free! Mane was much more interested and attentive than I thought she would be. She's gotten so much more grown up this year. I'm really glad she got to go, and I know it's an exhibit she'll remember. 

Later in the week we headed out to see Debutante's Ball at the History Theatre, a comedic play about Filipino immigration and coming-of-age parties. We got to bring along my friend, whose mother immigrated here from the Philippines. She said the play was spot-on, reflecting a lot of her experiences with her family and the tension of first and second generation immigrant. 

We followed up the trip to the History Theatre with the Space Exhibit at the Science Museum where we saw the new omnifilm, learned about the missions to Mars, and saw this giant astronaut:

Spring break ended with some serious kite flying and a beautiful Passover Seder...

Passover Moon & an owl kite...

Logic Curriculum - The Fallacy Detective

This was one of the best Christmas presents ever! We received The Fallacy Detective by Nathaniel Bluedorn & Hans Bluedorn from Mane's former-philosphy-professor grandmother. It had been on our wish list since the beginning of the school year. So, we dug right in as soon as we got it. Lessons are short, straight-forward and much easier to understand than what we were found in An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments. Each chapter is one lesson and include cartoons, examples, and a quiz. The quiz at the end of each chapter includes both the newly learned fallacy and all of the fallacies from previous chapters. We can easily cover a chapter in a half an hour, or we can spend a whole morning discussing the example arguments in the quizzes at the end of the chapter. The sample arguments relate to real world issues like belief in God, taxes, the Revolution, education spending, homework, chores, and global warming. 

Recently Mane read a ridiculously horrible parenting article by an expert, who shall remain nameless, and she was able to break the whole 8-page article down using what she knows from the first 12 chapters of The Fallacy Detective. She was so proud of her ability to read something by an adult expert and think about it critically. She wrote a paper describing the difficulties of the article, and we used this as an opportunity to work on writing skills and tactful argument, as well as critical thinking and logic.

Looking forward to the next two-thirds of the book!

Middle School Chemistry - Review

We finished up Middle School Chemistry from middleschoolchemistry.com this week, and I cannot say enough good things about this curriculum. It's totally FREE, but that it's nearly the best part. Middle School Chemistry was written by actual chemists, who clearly know the science, love it, and know how to teach it. Texts, labs, and animations are all available on the website in a clear sequence. Lessons reinforce and build one after another. Mane remembers things from the very beginning of the year because the concepts continue to be reinforced throughout the curriculum. Concepts that eluded me in college suddenly made sense when I went through the material with Mane. The text does not talk down to kids. It isn't silly or dumbed-down, yet it grabs the attention. The lessons all end with take-it-further labs and questions that relate the text and labs to real life situations.

And it wasn't hard. I'm serious. Chemistry is often considered the most difficult and esoteric of the sciences. Middle School Chemistry laid it all out in such a simple and straightforward way that it was almost impossible NOT to understand. It teaches all the correct vocabulary and concepts (I checked with my chemistry teacher husband) using language and explanations that you don't have to be a scientist to understand. After learning chemistry this way, though, a person could easily move on to become a scientist, having been taught the appropriate language in an understandable way!

Lab set-up to solve for an "unknown" substance

Can you tell what the unknown substance is?

Game Schooling - Chess

Do I really need to say more? You all know what chess is, right? But I always forget how much I enjoy playing, and the educational benefits are considerable. Chess is a game of strategy, requiring a whole lot of both planning and flexibility. There are entire conferences and considerable research studies devoted to the benefits of playing chess. From The Susan Polgar Foundation: Excel Through Chess:

Countless researchers and studies have shown over the years that chess does indeed strengthen a child's mental clarity, fortitude, stability, and overall health. Many schools are now finding chess as an inexpensive but essential way of helping kids grow mentally. In this technologically driven world, chess helps aid in the synthesis and growth of certain areas in the brain and mind where many children can benefit as they grow older from the game.

In 1986 a program called Chess-In-The-Schools was introduced in New York City to promote chess as a tool for developing essential skills for school children. The program is still going strong today. In 1992 New Jersey passed a bill requiring all students in New Jersey schools to be taught to play chess in the 2nd grade!  And just this April a senator in California introduced a bill to designated October as "California Chess Month," recognizing both the educational value and popularity of the game.

For an interesting history of chess, beginning with its origins in India around 600AD, check out the United States Chess Federation website. Fortunately for all of us, chess is available in a multitude of forms today - from high-end, hand-carved display games to mobile apps, and resources for everything from basic game rules to complex strategies can be found all over the internet. So, go dig out the old dusty box in your game closet, and start playing chess!!