After the Break -- Week: November 26th-30th

We took a little break from documenting unfortunately. But these past couple of weeks have been filled with Thanksgiving, Grandma and Papa visiting, cheering Mama and Papa on as they run a half marathon, and dealing with a slightly nasty cold that doesn't yet want to completely leave us.

However, now that we are back we have implemented a new idea to help us cover all of our subjects!

Jonas helped me make a weekly schedule that he can read (words and pictures). When each subject is accomplished for the day he gets a sticker for that subject. I've also made it so that he can decide which subject we cover next, so long as all are included in the day. Spanish and Visual Arts are not included on the board because they are included in any/all subjects.

Another thing I decided was that Jonas does not have to do EVERYTHING in his book (a bit tedious for a 6-year-old to have to write everything down). So now some of our lessons are going to be written in the book, and others are going to be talking and playing with concepts outside his notebook.

So this last week we put this schedule to the test. Success!!

Jonas has happily reinstated Question Investigation as a subject. He asked how sharks move their tails and so we hypothesized that strong muscles and a very flexible spine allow the sharks to move their tails back and forth to propel them forward.

Both boys wrote a letter to Santa this week telling him that they'd been good, mostly, and asking for certain specific things for Christmas. Grandma found them Advent calendars so that they can count down the days, instead of asking every morning: "Is it Christmas yet mom?"

Because of our botched attempt in the past to document the growth of a bean plant, we began again this week. Ronan chose a white kidney bean and Jonas chose a black bean. They are both measuring their bean from root to the tip of the sprout every evening in millimeters and charting their plants' progress on a grid. Their observations will also be noted as writing practice and science.

Jonas also practiced spelling this week and investigated how tree roots collect water. I helped him write out our findings but he wrote the question and drew a tree, complete with a hole for a bat (which he spelled out on his own: B-A-T). He is also interested in how Eels capture their prey, which we will have to continue to investigate.

Ronan is slowly beginning the reading lessons that Jonas has been through but I'm taking it much slower because of how young he is, I don't want him to dislike the work. He likes playing with the sound tiles but hasn't really put them together into real words except by accident. He does ask great questions for his investigation time though! This week for him we explored what allows our bodies to run. We hypothesized it was partially due to: energy from eating healthy foods, strong muscles and bones, and flexible joints.

In addition to what we put in the notebooks the boys and I explored the world map finding all the continents (except Antarctica which wasn't on the map...we pointed out where it would be though), the countries in North America, Peru (where daddy comes from), Iceland (where Grandma's horses originate), Madagascar, Australia... We talked about N, E, S and W some more and talked about which direction was which from where we were sitting in our living room.

We played with math also: Uno, halves and thirds (using a clementine to illustrate), word problems with subtracting and adding.And for history we began to talk about the first people's of America, and put together a puzzle of many of the different tribes.



Overall I think it was an excellent first week on our new schedule!

11/5/12 - 11/9/12

Once more I am a little slow to summarize our previous week in schooling. However, we had a truly excellent week!

Monday Jonas began with a review of his reading and building words. He wrote many of these words out for me but only after he'd read them aloud. Ronan practiced writing his R's and his name while Jonas was reviewing his reading. We moved on from there to math where we reviewed the concept of half. I used the kids' blocks to illustrate half and gave them a number of blocks to divide into halves. Ronan stuck with the blocks but I eventually gave Jonas 6 numbers to divide in half and write the answers in his book.

Before we were done with school on Monday we read some poetry and talked about rhyming. Then we played a rhyming game: If I say _________, you say _________. At the end of our rhyming practice I gave the kids each a set of words and a blank space beside each word for them to write a rhyming word.

We practiced our violins together and then we were done with school for the day. Jonas is beginning to play Good King Wenceslas in preparation for Christmas. I hope to cover several Christmas carols so that we can play together by Christmas.

 After horseback riding lessons with Ms. Monica on Tuesday we returned home to study Election day and voting! We accomplished this through a short reading about elections followed by yes or no statements about this reading (similar to True/False). We talked about who our current president was (Obama) and left a blank space open for writing in who won the election (Obama).

We discussed the voting process as well and then held our own vote for what we wanted to eat for dinner: chicken or ribs. We constructed a voting booth and ballots. We talked about voting privacy and made a graph of our results. Chicken won.

Last but not least we colored pictures of the American flag. Ronan got his colors right but put all his red stripes together and all his white stripes together. Jonas colored it beautifully.

On Wednesday Jonas built sentences from sightwords and Ronan practiced O's and N's. After reading and writing we talked about some plant vocabulary in Spanish: planta, flor, hoja, arbol, semilla, tronco... and the kids drew pictures representing the different words.

We had violin practice again and Ronan worked on playing his open strings without screeches. Jonas worked on his GM scale and Christmas carols.

Thursday we talked about how to tell what direction you are going when you are outside (based on the direction of the sun and time of day). They drew the sun traveling from east to west on their compass.

When we were at the farm-stand for our CSA share I had the boys inventory (through pictures) the kinds of vegetables we got.

Friday we played our rhyming game more and Jonas learned three new sounds (l, o and n) in lesson 7 of his reading book. I helped him write a sentence he wanted to write for grandma about horses also: Horses eat grass.

We have been trying to document most of what we accomplish in school but, as always, we do more than gets recognized in the books. We play Uno, practice rhyming, talk in Spanish, and many other things that are difficult to document in the boys' notebooks. I will continue to explore new ways of recognizing these extra things.

Oops...Friday November 2nd, 2012 (a bit late)

This Monday in school Jonas and I began once more with a reading and writing lesson. Lesson 4 in his book was a review of all his previous sounds and an introduction to our two single-letter words: I and a. We wrote a sentence using each of those and he practiced all of the sounds he has learned in lessons 1-3. He also practiced reading words comprised of those sounds: mad, sad, it, did, fist...
Ronan practiced writing his a's and t's (his choice) and made great progress in his handwriting. Then he wanted to draw a rainbow, and he told me that rainbows need water and light to exist (I think he learned this on "The Cat in the Hat, PBS kids." I helped him draw a rainbow with the right amount of spaces for colors and he colored it in with the colors: ROY G BIV.

Also on Monday we talked about the concepts of more than, less than and equal to. I showed Jonas and Ronan the symbols and we used blocks to decide which pile had more than, less than or the same number as the other pile. Then for Jonas I wrote out a page full of pairs of numbers and asked him to tell me which was greater than, less than and equal to it's pair. He breezed through the exercise like he'd known it forever. Ronan did quite well too, although I had to help him figure out which symbol to put he understood the concept.

Both boys practiced their violins.

On Tuesday the boys had riding lessons with Ms Monica and helped clean one really messy stall. After this we came home and they continued their studies on the directions (N, E, S, W). We used a place-mat map of the US and I asked them which state on their map was the furthest in each direction. They both did a great job and wrote the states in their books.

Ronan asked to draw a picture of a spider and, though we have many drawings of spiders from Ronan, I allowed him to draw his best spider in his notebook since Halloween was the next day.

On Wednesday the boys earned Halloween stickers instead of stars after they accomplished an assignment. Jonas began with reading and writing. Lesson 5 in his book covered the sounds r and th. He practiced all of his sounds and then wrote words (but only after reading them to me) in his notebook.

Both boys drew a new picture of their bean plants. Their bean plants were sprouting above the soil!

We also began measuring their bean plants but have since decided to start all over again with a new bean so that we can get a daily measurement.

After school on Halloween we, of course, carved pumpkins. The boys were careful to save the seeds so that we could cook them. And after we returned from Trick-or-Treating I stole their Jack-O-Lanterns back and baked them (as the kids had carved my sugar pumpkins and a squash for baking).

Although we did not put it in their notebooks we also practiced a lot of Spanish on Halloween. Especially Halloween words: Araña, fantásma, monstruo, murcielago...

Thursday the boys had one school assignment and that was to draw a map for their bat to get home. They both drew and owl as a danger for their bat (from Stellaluna I imagine) and told me how their bat had to get home according to directions (N, E, S, W).

The rest of Thursday and Friday the assignments were household clean-up in preparation for Jonas' birthday party Saturday. Jonas learned to sort laundry and began to help me load the machine. Ronan vacuumed the stairs and helped with general pick-up. And both boys helped with several other jobs each day until the party (although somewhat reluctantly, of course).

The party was fun too! :)

October 21s t- 27th

We began this week on Sunday because Jonas and I were so excited about starting a new reading program that a friend of ours lent us called Right Track Reading Lessons, by Miscese R. Gagen. Jonas began straight away with lesson 1: sounds m, t and a. Once we talked about the individual sounds of these letters Jonas was asked to form a few words (I gave him the words and he put them together from tiles with the sounds written on them). After forming the words he was asked to read some words with the same sounds from the book. He did great!

On Monday we continued with the reading/writing lessons and he learned the sounds s and d. Once more he wrote the sounds and we talked about reading from left to right again. He formed words (given him again) with the sounds from lessons 1 and 2 and then he read more words from the book. We also have been making flash cards to practice the sounds from every lesson.

In addition to reading on Monday we also began to put more math exercises in the notebooks. Jonas and Ronan explored the concept of most and fewest. In this exercise I wrote a list of many members of our family and they had to decide which name had the most letters and which the fewest. Jonas counted all the letters in each name and wrote the number next to the name so that he could more easily figure out the answer. 

On Tuesday we began with geography, talking about the earth. We looked at pictures of what the earth looks like from space, we talked about water and land masses and cloud formations and we began to discuss the 7 continents. Both boys drew a picture of the earth in their books with North and South Americas in green and water in blue.

After geography we started a science project. The boys each planted a bean on the side of a clear plastic cup so that they can watch it grow.

They also had horseback riding lessons in the big arena!

On Wednesday we started school-time with a Spanish lesson on animals. As a family we are trying to incorporate more Spanish into daily life. Wednesdays are Spanish days though, and we try to do everything in Spanish including bedtime reading and songs. One exception to this, however, is our reading lesson. Jonas did lesson 3 in his reading book studying the sounds i, and f. This lesson was particularly difficult, not in the subject matter, but in the length. He was asked to make many words, and also to read quite a few. I think in future I will pick and choose which words he needs to make/read.

Wednesday night in our math before bedtime we discussed the concept of half. I used their "tippy taps" (pogs as I remember them) and gave each of them several groups of them that they were asked to split into halves. Ronan needed some help to figure his out but Jonas took to the concept quite easily.

On Thursday we talked in more depth about plants. Both kids drew a diagram of the parts of a plant (Jonas drew a tree that even included a woodpecker's hole and the seed from which the tree grew and Ronan drew a remarkably good flower with seeds, roots and lots of leaves). They also both drew a picture of the cup with their bean sprout in it and we talked about what plants need to grow (sunlight, water, air, mineral rich soil). Jonas began an observations page for keeping track of his bean's progress and he noticed that his bean was bigger! He observed that this was probably because of all the water it had taken in.

After our talk about plants we continued with geography, studying maps and the four main directions. We drew our own maps and tested our ability to recognize the directions on the map. Ronan did a remarkably good job at writing out the directions on his map!

Music: Several days this week the boys practiced their violins. Ronan is just beginning and therefore we talked a little bit about the parts of the violin and he started to play open G and D strings. Jonas is coming back from over a month without practicing but he can still play his G major scale remarkably well and his sight-treading is pretty good on Good King Wenceslas. 

On Friday we made more observations about our bean plants. The kids also began helping me more with household chores, Jonas put away the dishes and Ronan swept the stairs. This is something that I will be adding into our learning: how to care for yourself and your home. Included in this will be cooking, cleaning, organizing and projects.

What a fantastic week we've had!

Friday, October 19th, 2012

Beginning Kindergarten for Jonas, Preschool for Ronan

One of the challenges of teaching two young children of different ages at home is keeping them both interested and learning, but teaching them at their own level. Jonas is ready to read while Ronan is just beginning to write and recognize his letters. Jonas knows his numbers and basic addition and subtraction while Ronan is just beginning to catch these concepts on his fingers.

Vacation time is now over and our vacation was much longer than most as we took a whole month in Peru at the beginning of the school year. This was by no means wasted learning time. Both children learned a lot of Spanish, visited some very important parks (Attacama Desert, Islas Ballestas from Paracas...) and ruins of ancient Incan culture (Machu Picchu), and were exposed to differences in culture which we will begin to explore in these first couple of weeks of being home.

This week in schooling we are beginning to create our pattern. At the beginning of the week we were still recovering from our trip. Therefore Monday and Tuesday were basically days off. On Tuesday however the kids had a riding lesson with Ms. Monica and loved it. Afterwards they helped Ms. Tiana clean out a stall for one of the horses while mama finished cleaning a different stall.

Wednesday we came home from the gym to begin our lessons in front of the white board. We learned how to write today's date and where on our paper we should put our name and the date. We talked about the three parts to writing the date (month, day, year). Jonas and Ronan both wrote October 17th, 2012 (I helped Ronan with the numbers) and their names in their notebooks. After name and date we moved on to beginning some word recognition. We talked about the words 'a' and 'and.' Jonas and I created a sentence with each word and Jonas wrote them in his notebook. Ronan practiced writing A's and his name. They both earned 5 stars (written every day on the whiteboard) and earned apple pie.

Thursday we began our lesson with a scavenger hunt. I wrote up 5 clues of short rhymes and they followed the clues to find stickers and temporary tattoos. After the hunt we sat down by the whiteboard and reviewed writing the date by getting our new page ready with the new date. Then we talked about the sounds 'th' and 'sh.' Jonas and I came up with 4 words for each sound and he wrote them in his book. Ronan practiced writing 'L's and 'I's in his book (and made their sounds). After sounds we talked about different kinds of lines (vertical, horizontal, squiggly, zigzag,...) and how these can be used to make shapes. Each child was asked to create a self portrait in lines. They both earned 5 stars again and we put the tattoos on their arms.

 Today we began again with a scavenger hunt. This time they requested it to be longer so I hid nearly 10 clues leading them to today's lesson, several Halloween activity sheets. Ronan practiced the concepts of more and less, bigger and smaller, and decided his favorite thing about Halloween was black cats (he wrote 'black cats' and drew a picture of a robot black cat). Jonas connected groups of spiders to their written numbers, practiced writing today's date and his name on all of his pages, wrote 'My favorite thing about Halloween is dressing up' and connected pictures to their beginning sounds.

Looking back I think I missed a good opportunity this week to go over rhyming. But since scavenger hunts were such a big hit perhaps we can go over that this weekend. We continue to do math time at bedtime however, I look forward to adding math lessons into our sit-down time in front of the whiteboard also. As I plan out our next week I will begin to create a better balance of subjects including science, geography, music. This weekend I will work on a schedule of subjects to keep this balance.

As I am slightly at a loss as to how to properly teach reading and writing a teacher friend of mine has offered me curriculum resources for teaching/learning and documenting these processes. I look forward to beginning Jonas' lessons in reading this next week. Ronan will begin "Handwriting Without Tears" as well and Jonas will probably end up reviewing this although his handwriting is very nice when he focuses. I will start Jonas on cursive letters as well.

This weekend we will focus on outdoor time when available and observation/question learning.
Next update will be on Friday, October 26th, 2012.

Washington Studies

Our study of Washington state will, I believe, take us to the end of the year. I have not been posting weekly updates but we continue to explore what's around us. We have talked a little bit about Washington wildlife, had an impromptu science lesson on the beach, watched a parade of the species, planted some for our garden and learned a little bit about growing veggies in our climate, and read some in our library books!


Our impromptu lesson on the beach took place on one of our first sunny days of the season. We decided to take Jake to play because he was going to be left at home all day the next day. When we got to the beach there was only one other family there with their lab puppy. Their son was about Ronan's age so the boys all began to play together. Jake did his best to ignore the puppy in favor of his ball but the puppy had a blast bugging Jake! The father of the boys' new friend happened to be an oceanographer. So we spent the next hour or so turning rocks over to observe the life underneath (mostly baby crabs), and trying (without success) to dig up a gooey duck. Even after their new friend left the beach Jonas and Ronan continued to look for crabs, clams and gooey ducks.

The day after our beach lesson we all drove to Olympia for the Procession of the Species, a special earth day parade. In this parade people dress up like all different kinds of animals and show off their costumes. It was a fun day with Chelle, Ale and Kayleen! To represent Washington there were floats made to look like a huge salmon, and an orca surfing a wave as well as many others. There were even mythological creatures this year.

The boys continue to watch their tomato and sugar snap pea plants grow. Hopefully we will be able to plant them in the garden soon. They continue with riding lessons (Jonas has begun trotting by himself!) and Jonas continues with his violin as well! He has grown out of his first violin already and we are in search of a 1/4 size for him. Cross your fingers that I'm not outbid today!

As far as letters/numbers/reading/writing go the boys practice in their notebooks, Jonas does letter recognition in conjunction with his violin practice too (A-G) and we are starting to sound out words. Ronan recognizes many letters but gets just as many wrong hehehe. He loves the letters in his name. They both love to practice their letters and reading on the Kindle Fire (educational games).

Hawaii and Farm Studies

These past several weeks have been a whirlwind of adventures in Hawaii as well as a return to Washington just in time for Easter! We studied local animal/bird/plant life, soaked up the sun and saltwater at the beach, marveled in the warmer rain, and conversed with farm animals. The kids and I were treated to fresh creamy Hope milk (she's a jersey cow) several times a day and, directed by grandma and papa, helped with a few farm projects.

During our stay in Hawaii we welcomed a new kid (baby goat) to the farm from the other side of the island, picked up a horse trailer and used that horse trailer to transport a 4-month-old jersey heifer calf to the farm as well. Continuing the whirlwind of adventure we installed a trailer on the farm to be the residence of a farm hand or possibly horse trainer in the future. This summer it will be occupied by a young man from our neck of the woods (Washington state) who wishes to learn about maintaining a farm and is willing to work for that knowledge.

As for schooling I mostly let the boys lead me during this vacation time. We talked about fish and crabs. They learned not to turn their backs to the ocean when at the beach so that they could see what kinds of waves are coming. They practiced their swimming skills in the shallow pools. We went for walks on the farm and also into Volcano National Park. Through the Thurston Lava Tube about a dozen times just to be able to re-enter the cave! On the walk in Volcano we noticed fiddleheads on the hapu'u ferns (tree ferns native to Hawaii). We also looked up to the roof of the lava tube and saw the ohia roots hanging down.



One day we visited the Panaewa Zoo with a high school friend of mine and her son. Sadly, my kids were more interested in the spectacular playground equipment than the animals. I'm afraid they've been spoiled by our Woodland Park Zoo here in Seattle. It was nice to revisit one of my old haunts though, especially because I ran into the woman who used to oversee us volunteers when I worked there at the petting zoo with the ios (Hawaiian hawks). We were both amazed at how time has flown by and now I'm bringing kids to the zoo! Helena and Roo were great tour guides at the zoo also because they are frequent visitors. What a delight to hang out with an old friend and our kids!

Plane rides to and from Hawaii were long but loads of fun for the kids. They not only had the great adventure of being on-board a plane but they also were marveling in the excitement of our newest teaching tool: The Kindle Fire. In preparation for the long flights I found several very useful teaching games. There's a Spanish lesson app, a US Geography puzzle that you fill in and learn about the states, a story app that reads "The Frog Prince" in English, Spanish or Mandarin, and also some flashcard apps and math apps. I've been against video games for so long, and I will still keep them away from our TV but I do believe that the kids need to be up-to-date with technology and a few learning games can be great tools.

With Easter weekend coming right after our return from Hawaii I did not manage to get our acts together for this week in school but I'm working together a month or so of weeks about our own state, Washington. I think it's time we explored in more detail what is around us here. And what better time to start then the beautiful start to spring!