Moonstruck

Man, I am LOVING homeschooling a four-year-old! No offense to my son, who only recently graduated from the Tyrannical Threes (as I so affectionately called them), but I am so very thankful that his little self has now orbited the sun four entire times. Four definitely equals fun. There was a troubling time last summer when the strength of my desire to homeschool my son began to ebb. Day after day after day of pouring rice and stringing beads and dusting surfaces had dulled my enthusiasm. I knew the practical life activities my son was practicing were providing him with a strong sense of self-sufficiency (as well as introducing him to the structure and routine of our homeschool). I knew also that preschoolers crave repetition; that they acquire new skills by performing routine tasks ad nauseum. I knew all this and still I could not help feeling mind-numbingly bored during our homeschool sessions. Well, it's a new dawn, it's a new day and I'm feeling good. All of a sudden (sort of), my son is no longer a short-attention-span-possessing, emotionally-unstable, instant-gratification-seeking toddler. All of sudden (sort of), he is a little boy, curious about the world, passionate about animals and space (and also vehicles, of course), willing to concentrate, able to stay calm (mostly), capable of discussing various cool and awe-inspiring topics with me. Seriously: new dawn, new day.


So we've been having an absolute ball in our homeschool (and outside of it as well). We've been learning about animals--having these great, fun talks about myriad species (a lot of said talks edifying not only to my son but also to me). We've been spelling words using the movable alphabet. We've been having fun with geometry with the Magna-Tiles I wrote about in my last post. And we've been discussing space a lot. Parker is fascinated by space right now. He loves learning about the planets; he loves creating rockets and flying them to the moon; he's half-terrified, half-enthralled by the fact that meteors exist. It warms my heart, seeing my son so in love with learning. All I want to do is foster that love, to nurture it and help it grow. In light of that, I recently visited the National Geographic Store's website, expecting to only browse around, possibly purchase one or two educational books about the solar system or animals. (Brief aside: I read a while back that boys--even little boys--usually prefer to read nonfiction; that storybooks don't do it for them as much as informative, fact-packed texts. At the time, I thought to myself, "Yeah, right. Why do people insist on stereotyping our children based on so-called gender-based characteristics?" About a nanosecond after I thought that, Parker started pulling out only his nonfiction books at story time, and continues to do so. I, being female, would love to read scads of magical storybooks with my child; Parker prefers his Usborne flap books.) Anyway, it's a good thing I can comfort myself with the nonprofit mission of the National Geographic Society, because I spent a chunk of change buying books from their online store. There were just so many cool kids' books! (And I could seriously use a break from reading Parker's flap books.) Our new books arrived last week, and we've been reading Moon from the "Jump into Science" series repeatedly. It's a neat little book, with cute illustrations and fun facts about the moon. The author clearly explains why the moon goes through phases, why it looks like it's the same size as the sun (but is really not), that the moon orbits the earth, how the craters on the moon are created and that the moon reflects the sun's light (rather than creating light of its own).


I really like National Geographic Kids' "Jump into Science" series; each book has a "bonus" experiment at the end. Moon's experiment is "Making Craters." You pour about an inch of flour into a cake pan, then find five rocks of various sizes. After explaining to your child that the flour is the moon and the rocks are meteors, you have the child drop the rocks into the flour from about two feet above the pan. (Parker REALLY liked exclaiming, "Here comes a meteor!" every time he dropped a rock.) Then you talk about what happened; how the flour flew out of the way when a rock hit it, creating a crater; how big rocks made big craters and little rocks made little craters. In the book, the author explains that the earth's air protects us from most meteors by causing them to burn up, so I made sure to remind Parker of that fact while he was making meteors crash onto the "airless" moon. Of course, Parker wanted to repeat this experiment over and over and over, which was fine. It wasn't super fun cleaning up the spilled "moon dust," but I'm fine sacrificing a little elbow grease for the sake of science.


Postscript: The next day in school, we did another moon experiment. We brought a small mirror and a flashlight into "outer space" (the darkest room in the house, Parker's bedroom). I held the mirror while standing about five feet from Parker, with the flashlight propped on a table in a corner of the room. First, with the flashlight turned off, I asked Parker if he could see the "moon" (aka the mirror). The I turned on the flashlight, pointed it away from the mirror and again asked Parker if he could see the moon. Then I moved the mirror so that the flashlight shone on it and the light reflected onto Parker. He said, "I see it! And it's bright!" I explained that the flashlight was the sun, the mirror was the moon and he was the earth. Fun stuff.

First of many craters.

"Here comes a meteor!"

Collecting moon dust and meteors.

Sifting the moon dust from the meteors so that he could repeat the experiment.

Spoils of Birthdays

Though I have been lax in my blogging, my son and have been hard at work in our homeschool, writing letters in salt, spelling words using our movable alphabet, studying the solar system and learning about tropical animals (like manatees) and seabirds (like gannets and turnstones). In addition to all this, before my very eyes, my son has transformed into Super Geometry Boy, fiendishly building two- and three-dimensional shapes out of the Magna-Tiles he received for his birthday. (Thank you, K, Dad, Dec and Keira!) My husband, a geometry nut himself (Super Geometry Dad?), has wholeheartedly encouraged our son's newest passion, teaching Parker about isosceles and equilateral triangles and even building whimsical structures out of the Magna-Tiles all by himself, late at night when Parker and I are both asleep. We've talked about how two isosceles triangles form a square, how six squares form a cube, how six equilateral triangles form a hexagon and how it's possible to build three-sided and four-sided pyramids. Parker is so jazzed about his ability to make squares out of triangles that he has literally spent hours building cubes out of isosceles triangles (first making six squares, then putting them together to form a cube). I like the Magna-Tiles because they present Parker with just the right amount of a challenge: they're not super easy to assemble, but they're also not frustratingly hard. He has to concentrate and use both his motor control skills and geometry knowledge to build his structures. It's super fun to see him so engrossed.

Of course, the structures that Parker builds using the Magna-Tiles almost always have to possess a final cause. He's built garages for his cars, houses, space shuttles, and space objects (in addition to other unrecognizable-by-me stuff). Here are some photos.

Dual-purpose structure: garage and helipad.

Mommy pyramid and baby pyramid.

Pyramid playpen? Pyramid in jail?

The tallest spaceship in the world.

OK, who's seen Wallace & Gromit's A Grand Day Out? Here is the robot skier exiting the space shuttle. (Parker built a hexagon to serve as the moon.)

Going Mobile

I used to long for a room of my own. You know, like Ms. Woolf wrote about, almost one hundred years ago. Lately, I've realized that that dream is totally unattainable (for the foreseeable future, at least). Now, I'd really just settle for a desk of my own. Ooh, no! For a secretary! A secretary of my own! And I'm not talking about a human assistant. No, I'm talking about a super functional piece of furniture in which I could store sundry supplies; one that would boost my productivity and help me stay organized. My mom has a beautiful old secretary--she's had it since I can remember--the nooks and crannies of which I used to love to explore as a small child. A secretary would be perfect for me! Its footprint is small, but its storage capacity is well nigh boundless. And I could use it as a desk! A desk! Oh, what I would give to own a desk again...

I've been fantasizing about office furniture (never mind an actual office!) of late because it's gets a little difficult at times to prepare our homeschool materials sitting on the floor or on our couch. And I've hollowed out a shelf here and the corner of a closet there in which I can store some homeschool stuff, but certain things--like books, my laptop, projects in progress--need to be kept on hand. I'm far too lazy to be continuously pulling stuff out of storage and then stowing it again just a little while later. The layout of our apartment here is a little funky; the kitchen is tiny and the second bedroom is more like a loft, but the bathrooms have a ton of counter space. I'd never really found a use for all that square footage of blue formica before I started homeschooling my son. (If I "put my face on" each morning like some women do, the counters would for sure be laden with foundations and eyeshadows and lipsticks and such. As it is, I've been feeling proud of myself lately because I haven't been forgetting to coat my freckly face in sunscreen everyday.) Now I just stash half-finished projects on the bathroom counters whenever I need to stop sewing or cutting or gluing and start cooking or cleaning or racing Hot Wheels cars around what used to be our kitchen table (before it became Parker's play table). I even keep our new printer on the counter in the upstairs bathroom. There's really no other horizontal surface upon which to place it.

Teachers often half-think about their to-do lists throughout the day; the lesson plans they need to write, the materials they need to prepare for upcoming classes. For the past several weeks, at random moments, I've found myself worrying about a movable alphabet, a crucial component of Montessori classrooms which students use to analyze and form words as they prepare to read and write. I've had some measure of success fabricating homemade Montessori materials, but I knew that creating a functional movable alphabet here at home would be beyond my abilities (or at least beyond my recent energy levels). I could order one, of course, but we've just spent a bundle on fixing cars, buying a laptop and a printer and purchasing Christmas and birthday presents. Our bank account could use a break from debits. I kept thinking about this "Read and Spell" letter game my mom purchased for Parker a year ago. It comes with 86 letter cards, at least two of each letter, the vowels in red and the consonants in blue (including one red, vowel y, and one blue, consonant y). Perfect. The only problem is that the letter cards are all jumbled up in a little box. (Parker could never stand to play the "Read and Spell" letter game for very long because he'd get frustrated trying to find the letters he was looking for.) Movable alphabets should be neatly displayed in a divided box, copies of the same letter placed together, so that the child can easily see (and find) all twenty-six letters of the alphabet. OK, so I had the letters for our movable alphabet, but where would I find a divided box, with at least 26 2"x2" compartments? I searched all over Amazon--craft boxes, tackle boxes, tool boxes, ornament boxes--and even ordered something that I thought might do the trick, but when it arrived the compartments turned out to be too small. Vendors don't describe their products very assiduously, I've discovered. Finally, while we were shopping on St. Thomas last week, I found an almost perfect divided container at Home Depot. It only has 24 compartments, but beggars can't be choosers, right?

Anyway, our new movable alphabet has been sitting around on the bathroom counter upstairs, waiting for me to decide that it's the appropriate time to present it to Parker. I figured he should get through more (if not all) of the phonetic alphabet before he starts to work with the movable alphabet. Probably I should have actually put it away somewhere--and I meant to, I did--because Parker happened upon it and seemed to be totally taken with it. The thing about it being in the bathroom, though, is that Parker kept wanting to work with it right when I was either on my in or on my way out of the shower. Wanting to spell "stupendous" is all fine and good, but I'd rather not help my son sound out a ten-letter word while half-naked. Because of this, I brought the movable alphabet downstairs yesterday morning. I left it on the downstairs bathroom counter, meaning to find a place (more like create a place) to store it, then got distracted and, of course, forgot all about it. I came inside, just before lunchtime, having been working outside, cleaning our deck, then vacuuming out our Jeep, to find Parker spelling "exit" with his pants down around his ankles. Apparently, he'd gone pee and then, seeing the movable alphabet, been so overcome by the urge to spell a word that he couldn't be bothered to pull up his pants. (I pulled up his pants for him, then snapped the below photos.)

"I'm spelling the word exit Mommy!"

Now the last letter.

Exit!

Postscript: The sky yesterday morning was breathtaking. Here are a couple photos I took in between sips of coffee.

I Want My Four Dollars

We ended up having another field trip yesterday. After a couple weeks of being carless (and having frequent car trouble for several weeks before that), our cupboards were decidedly bare. And I'd already used up the black ink cartridge in my new printer; not by printing scads of super fun school materials, but by printing out menu covers for my husband's restaurant. A trip to St. Thomas to do some big-box store shopping was unavoidable. So I skipped my morning walk yesterday, loaded the cooler in the car and drove down to ferry dock instead (with Parker ensconced in his car seat, of course). My shopping list was four stores long (Home Depot, OfficeMax, Kmart and Cost-U-Less, St. Thomas's Costco), and I always get a little harried when I'm hurrying to catch the ferry (for no good reason, since there's always another one arriving within a half hour), but I did remember to grab the four dollars Parker received in a birthday card from his grandparents. (My in-laws didn't just give him cash for his birthday. They sent him actual gifts, too.) Aboard the car barge, on our way to St. Thomas, I gave Parker his four dollars--he'd already declared his intent to use it to buy (toy) cars--and told him he could spend it while we were shopping, if he saw something he liked. I figured we could do some "unschooling" on St. Thomas with those four dollars. Parker and I would have to talk about money, math (what does four dollars buy?), limited resources (it doesn't buy much!) and how to conduct a financial transaction. I intended to give as little input as possible; I wanted the whole episode to instill in him a sense of independence.

Parker asked if we could go to Kmart (or, as he used to call it, the "car store") first. I guess those four dollars were burning a hole in his pocket already. The toy car aisle is all the way in the back of the store, and he fairly ran there, he was so excited. The conversation about limited resources started almost immediately; Parker kept selecting big ticket items, like Hot Wheels tracks and Cars (the Pixar movie) characters. He'd see something he liked, then ask me its price. We talked about "more" and "less"--for instance, if something cost eight dollars, I'd ask Parker whether he had enough money to buy it. "No, Mommy, I need more money for Snot Rod." He did find finally find a few toys he liked, each of which cost about four dollars (thankfully, there's no sale tax here so I didn't have to try to calculate that in), and was having trouble deciding which to buy. That's when I said, "Hey, Bubs, did you know that these Hot Wheels cars each cost only about one dollar? You have enough money to buy three of these cars." Good thing we got an early start yesterday, because that occasioned much more debating and dithering. I could definitely see the wheels turning in his little head as he tried to wrap his brain around the fact that he could use his four dollars to purchase either one single toy or three other toys. Value is such a crazy, intangible concept, is it not?

Well, in the end he decided to buy three Hot Wheels vehicles (one race car, one truck, one plane). He loves those little mass-produced toys so much that I'm sure he would have gladly spent all four of his dollars to buy just one. The fact that he could purchase three obviously elated him. We made our way to the registers and proceeded to practice waiting patiently. It always (always!) takes at least 15 minutes to get through the lines at the St. Thomas Kmart; poor Parker was ready to burst by the time it was finally his turn to pay. He conducted the transaction by himself, and was ecstatic when the saleslady gave him thirteen cents back, in addition to his new toys. It was pretty fun to watch. I wish the rest of the shopping we did yesterday had been as amusing.

In the car, on ferry, clutching his four dollars.

OK, I'm ready to go pay!

Making propellor plane sound effects.

Postscript: The North American Montessori Center's Montessori Homeschool Program is giving away one free program. I'm linking to their site here in order to try to win. I've never ever won anything in my life, but I'd sure like to win this. I mean, I'm having fun getting all crafty and creating our homeschool materials, but man would it be awesome to have the real thing to help me educate my son.

Field Trip

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Making Patterns
• The Phonetic Alphabet
• Zoology - Anteaters
• Basic Weather Phenomena

Phew. I am finally sitting down. Sometimes, Manic Mondays reduce me to incoherence. My landlady just dropped by with a birthday present for Parker (who turned 4 yesterday!), and I couldn't complete a single sentence whilst briefly conversing with her. I'm pretty sure she is now convinced I've completely lost my marbles. Oh well. She's lived in the Caribbean for over thirty years. She's used to crazy people by now.

Well, both Parker and I woke up this morning still pretty exhausted from yesterday's birthday festivities. But I had high hopes--as well as a long "to do" list--for today. You see, Jack the Traveling Mechanic came to our house on Saturday and by the time he left, late in the evening, our little green Honda was fixed! What a difference possessing a working vehicle makes! I had a lot I wanted (needed!) to do today, and I absolutely wanted to make sure schooltime happened somewhere in the midst of my chores, too. And naptime; I knew that Parker and I definitely needed naps today. And we were actually doing OK on timing at first, but then my husband called and gave me the best Valentine's Day present ever: our (bright red!) Jeep Cherokee was finally ready to come home! So, just when we were about to start school, Parker and I quickly put our shoes back on, drove our old green Honda down to the bank (mechanics down here take cash, and only cash), waited in line in order to withdraw a bunch of money, stopped at St. John Spice to buy some whole coriander seeds for the restaurant, picked up my husband and drove up to Hally's gravel lot to find our Cherokee fabulously, fantastically fixed. (KNOCK WOOD!) After we paid for the repairs, my husband drove back to work on his own in the Honda and Parker and I drove to the playground in the Cherokee. (That my husband could drive away on his own was cause for joyous celebration; he and I have been sharing a single vehicle for almost six years. It can be a little stressful: two drivers, one car.)

Now, it was almost noon by the time we'd collected the Cherokee and were driving down the hill, back towards Cruz Bay. We definitely could have dutifully returned home, done some school activities, eaten a quick lunch and then settled down for naptime. It was totally possible. Did we? No. I looked at Parker, Parker looked at me, and we drove straight to the playground. Sometimes (especially those times when you've finally gotten your car back after being stuck at home for weeks on end) a field trip is necessary. We had a grand time at the playground today. We experimented with a simple machine (a lever, aka the seesaw), we had fun with gravity (descending and ascending multiple slides), we made patterns out of leaves and rocks, we practiced the letters a, t, n and o (using sand in lieu of salt), we discussed (and then pretended to be) anteaters (digging holes in the sand to look for ants and termites to eat with our sticky tongues), we polished our social skills after meeting a nice little boy and his mother and then we had a quick chat about weather, as some storm clouds approached and we hurriedly gathered our sand trucks and said goodbye to our new friends. (The rain turned out to be fortuitous in that we had enough time after we got home to shower and snack before Parker's afternoon tumbling class.) It was so nice to get out of the house for a while. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Bright Blue Hearts

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• The Phonetic Alphabet
• Pictures and Sounds
• Sorting
• Lauri Puzzles

Parker was super excited to get the salt pan out of the refrigerator this morning and start school. (Let me pause for a moment to explain why the salt pan lives in the refrigerator, taking up precious space that could otherwise be used by actual foodstuffs. If we left it out, the salt would get all clumpy, thanks to the inescapable humidity here in the Caribbean. Our refrigerator is full of things that most people--people who don't live in the Tropics, that is--store in their kitchen cabinets: cereal, sugar, flour, bread, crackers, chips, dried fruit, candy. If it can get stale, grow mold or attract bugs in less than a week, I stick it in the fridge. And most everything can get stale, grow mold and/or attract insects in a matter of days--more often hours--down here. The jungle is always encroaching, eager to take back the territory civilization has seized. There's a reason this small island (less than 20 square miles, the majority of that a national park) supports at least ten different landscaping companies. Weed whackers, chainsaws and machetes are always at work, keeping the jungle at bay.) While Parker got out the salt pan, which was nicely chilled, I grabbed the sandpaper letters off our school shelves; I think it's a good idea to keep having him trace the relevant sandpaper letter before practicing writing that letter in salt. Eventually we might skip the sandpaper letter step, but (like I wrote in my last post) we're not in any hurry here. Why start doing away with steps so soon after getting started on learning letters? After he'd traced the a and the t while pronouncing their phonetic sounds, and before I gave him the salt pan, I took out some index cards I'd prepared the night before for the "Pictures and Sounds" activity. Using Google Images, I found three pictures for each letter; each picture is of an object the name of which starts with the phonetic sound of the letter. For example, for the letter a, I found an apple, an alligator and an ant. I printed the pictures I'd found, then taped them--one each--onto index cards. With Parker sitting there, the a and t sandpaper letters on the table in front of him, I showed him a card, asked him to name the object pictured and then asked him to select the letter that starts the word he'd just said. (Man, did that sound Byzantine or what? Yet, I cannot for the life of me think of a less convoluted way to describe that process. Basically, it goes like this: "What's this, Parker?" "An apple, Mommy." "What sound does apple start with?" "Aaa, Mommy." "And which letter makes the Aaa sound?" "This one!")

Tiger starts with Tih!

When I showed Parker the picture of the ant, he pointed to the letter a, but then said, "But there's a Tih in ant, too." I agreed, explaining that the Tih comes at the end of the word, whereas the Aaa sound is at the beginning. Maybe I should have left it at that, but I couldn't help grabbing the n sandpaper letter to show Parker how that letter completes the word. Then I had him trace the n, and say its sound, and that's how n spontaneously became our next letter. After that I let him practice writing a, t and n in the salt pan. Just when I thought we were about finished with letters for the day, Parker started drawing circles in the salt, saying, "Now I'm writing Ahhs, Mommy." And that's how o became our next letter.

Getting salty.

Picture cards for a, t, n and o.

I found a great Valentine's Day-inspired math activity on Counting Coconuts. It combines sorting, counting and an introduction to graphs. To prepare the materials for this activity, all I had to do was buy some conversation hearts and make a basic grid with pictures of colored hearts along the "x-axis" (as in the photo below). Parker sorted the candy hearts by placing each in its appropriate place in the grid (orange hearts above the orange heart, one heart per cell, yada yada yada). When he'd graphed all the hearts, we sat back and looked at the result. I asked him which column had the most hearts, and which the least. Then I asked him to count how many of each color there were. Then we ate the hearts. Or attempted to eat them, I should say. Those were the worst conversation hearts I have ever eaten! They should taste like Necco Wafers (which some people don't care for, but I adore), but instead they tasted like medicine, or worse. And the white, pepperminty hearts had been replaced with bright blue, "blue raspberry"-flavored hearts! An abomination! Parker spit his out. I just sat there, heartbroken. I'd been really looking forward to eating those conversation hearts.

Postscript: I just read on the Necco website that they changed the flavors and texture of their conversation hearts in 2010, in an aim to make them "softer and more fun to eat." This is a tragedy; way worse than when the Mars Corporation did away with the brown M&Ms. Valentine's Day will never be the same.

Fine Print

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Sorting
• Making Patterns
• The Phonetic Alphabet
• Lauri Puzzles
• Bead Stringing

Hi, my name is Megan, and I am addicted to my new (!) printer. My poor husband has no clue that I have fallen passionately in love with the gorgeous, sleek, black machine that came home with me last Monday and now sits upstairs, spurring to action at my command, spewing out perfect page after perfect page. I shudder to think that this affair may one day end in hair-pulling, handwringing frustration--it is an HP printer, after all--I mean, I'd really hate to go all Office Space on such an aesthetically pleasing piece of equipment. Thankfully, as of now my printer and I are still happy honeymooners, madly in love and printing with wild abandon.

Now that I can print anything anytime, I'm realizing just how much the internet has to offer homeschooling moms like me. It's fantastic, but it's also a little overwhelming. Surfing the web, perusing all the wonderful websites supplying educational resources, I'm reminded of how I feel whenever I go shopping at thrift stores: I know there are gems to be found but I don't know whether I have the energy to search through rack after endless rack to find them. Luckily, I don't have to actually leave the house and wander through some old musty-smelling store to search for good, appropriate educational materials and activity ideas. The internet is literally on my lap, at my fingertips, so I can sit back at night with the TV on and browse around while sort of paying attention to Mythbusters or The Daily Show or Top Chef or whatever.

This morning, I put a couple new activities on our school shelves--one sorting, one patterning--the materials for which I found on www.montessoriforeveryone.com (in the "Free Downloads" section). Parker chose the sorting activity first, probably because its big red Xs appealed to him. (He's loving X-ing things out.) It's basically "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other," like those old Sesame Street segments. I at first thought he didn't understand the point of the activity, because he kept X-ing out the black bird in the first four-set (a set three birds and a stack of plates and cups). I finally realized (over an hour later, of course) that he'd singled out the black bird as not belonging because it was the only thing that wasn't colorful (the other two birds were multicolored, as well as the plastic tableware).

X-ing out the black bird.

The nest doesn't belong in this one!

Parker found the pattern activity a little more challenging. We've been creating simple two-item patterns (e.g., rock-leaf-rock-leaf) together for a while now, mostly just for fun while we're at the beach or coloring or bead stringing. (Or even eating and drinking. Parker will alternate bites/sips, then exuberantly declare, "There's a pattern in my tummy, Mommy!") In the activity I downloaded, the aim is to complete various patterns, which consist of three items rather than two (like apple-orange-fruit basket, as in the picture below). We'll definitely have to keep working on these more complex sequences.

The pattern strip needed to pretend to be an inch worm before we could proceed with the pattern work.

We repeated the phonetic alphabet practice we'd done on Monday. I didn't add any new letters or supplement the activity in any way. I want to be very careful not to overwhelm or pressure Parker as he learns to read and write. It's a long, elaborate undertaking, and there's nothing to be gained by hurrying him through it. That being said, he did remember all that we'd practiced on Monday--the sounds of a and t, and how to trace them, then write them in the salt--which surprised me. I thought I'd have to remind him, but apparently not.

I recently moved Parker's Lauri puzzles to his school shelves. In terms of the pacing of our school sessions, it occurred to me that he could benefit from taking a break from "desk work." Sure enough, after he'd been sitting at his table for a while, sorting and completing patterns and learning letters, Parker reached for his stack of puzzles, sat down on the floor and completed four of them. The Lauri puzzles are pretty difficult--they consist of just a bunch of different-sized shapes that you have to assemble within an empty frame--completing them helps Parker acquire an understanding of how two-dimensional shapes can fit together to form a picture.

Getting started on the helicopter puzzle.

Finishing the airplane puzzle.

Getting Salty

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Cutting
• Pouring
• Attribute Blocks
• Tracing
• The Phonetic Alphabet

Happy Monday. My son and I enjoyed a quiet weekend at home--well, except for the extremely fun birthday party we attended Saturday night. Our Jeep Cherokee is still away at rehab, so we stayed at the house, homeschooling in the morning and doing "snow day stuff" (those things you do when you're stuck at home) in the afternoons. For nameless reasons, I've been thinking (albeit indirectly) about Schrödinger and his notorious cat; wondering whether by "measuring"--closely observing, photographing and then blogging about--our homeschool sessions, I've been in some way influencing (negatively?) my son's learning. For the sake of sanity, I've chosen not to (try to) definitively answer the question. Instead, I decided that it'd probably be a good thing to periodically let homeschool happen away from the scientist's prying eye. This is all to say that, new computer aside, I won't be blogging everyday, about every single homeschool session. I'm pretty positive you'd get bored (and, oh so much more importantly, I'd get bored) if I did.

OK, having said that, I did put on my scientist's hat this morning. Maybe it's because he's a lefty, but Parker is still having trouble using scissors. (Despite the fact that he did, just this morning, while I was out walking and my husband was upstairs showering, climb onto the kitchen counter, grab a bag of organic quinoa out of the cupboard--the most expensive item he could have chosen, of course--use his scissors to open said bag and then pour oodles of quinoa onto his table so that he'd have a pile to push around with his miniature bulldozer.) Parker has been practicing cutting with some colorful strips of paper printed with various types of lines (straight, slanted, chevrons, curvy) which my sister-in-law (a teacher at a public Montessori school out in Colorado) sent me a while back. He hasn't really warmed to the idea that he should actually keep trying to cut along the lines; instead, he's happy just cutting the strips up willy-nilly. I've recently started reading other homeschooling moms' blogs (see my list to the right there?), and got an idea for an alternative scissor practice activity from Counting Coconuts. (You have to scroll down quite a bit to see the heart strips she made for her son. Do not get me started on how incredibly, insanely intimidating the productivity of this woman is. And she lives on an island, too! So I can't even tell myself, "Well, yeah, it's easy for her because she can go to Target and Michael's and stuff!" But she does have magnificent ideas, many of which I find motivating, so I can't help but appreciate all that she does.) The goody bag Parker received as we were leaving Saturday night's birthday party contained a sheet of little frog stickers, upon seeing which I thought, "Perfect! I will commandeer those for the new Counting Coconuts-inspired scissor activity." I cut up long strips of paper, then placed the stickers on the strips, leaving about a centimeter between each sticker. Instead of having to try to cut along a line, Parker just has to cut between the frogs. He sort of liked it. It seems as though he doesn't feel very confident about his scissor skills (notwithstanding this morning's quinoa episode).

We started work on the phonetic alphabet this morning, an activity I saved for last because it involves placing a pan of salt in front of my son--I just knew he'd be itching to get his miniature bulldozer (and other trucks) into that "sandbox" ASAP. The books tell you to introduce only two letters at a time, choosing letters that both sound different and look different. (In other words, don't present "b" and "d" at the same time.) I used an amalgam of two methods this morning, and it seemed to work well with my son, so I'll continue to do so as we slowly make our way through the alphabet. First, I presented the letter to Parker using a sandpaper letter, saying the sound of the letter and using my finger to trace the shape of the letter in the same way I would write it. I then gave him a turn with the sandpaper letter, asking him to repeat the sound of the letter, and then trace it with his finger the way I'd shown him. After he'd done that for a bit, and was reliably tracing the letter in the right direction, I slid the sandpaper letter aside and placed a cake pan--its bottom covered with table salt--in front of him. I repeated the phonetic sound of the letter, then used my finger to "write" the letter in the salt. I passed the pan to Parker, asking him to say the sound, then "write" the letter in the salt himself.

I was (understandably) both immensely excited and awfully nervous to embark on this letter endeavor today. Our homeschool thus far has been mostly fun; my son has been learning almost accidentally as he's worked with the Montessori materials I've prepared for him. Teaching him the phonetic alphabet seemed to me so much more like "real" instruction. "Will he be even remotely interested?" I asked myself. "Will I have to ceaselessly cajole him to sit down and learn his letters?" (If the answer to that first question had been no, then I'd have put the materials away and tried again in a month or so. At least, I'd like to think I'd have done that.) Well, while my son didn't exactly exude jubilance while learning the letters a and t this morning, he did act attentive and I could tell that he derived some pride from his efforts. Because Parker is left-handed, demonstrating how to trace/write the letters posed a bit of problem for me. In order to properly show him how to do it, I had to trace/write with my own left hand, and it was almost as if I was also learning how to write the letters a and t. I actually finally understood why all those ignorant educators way back when found it easier to just force left-handed children to use their right hands. It probably made teaching writing so much simpler (for the teachers, of course, not for the actual students). The only other (minor) issue I had this morning was the problem of working with salt in a tropical environment. It's just too humid here. The salt kept sticking to Parker's hands, and clumping up. But if that's the biggest hurdle we have to face while working our way through the phonetic alphabet, then I'll count myself lucky.

"I'm ready to just play now."

Parker working with his Aunt Mandi at Ross Montessori School last September.