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.

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.

Shaping Up

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Geometric Insets
• Matching Two-Dimensional Shapes
• Basic Land Forms
• Basic Weather Phenomena
• Ocean Animals and Their Habitat

We started today's homeschool session by tracing some shapes, which allows Parker to practice using a pencil (thereby helping prepare him for writing). I made the geometric insets out of some brightly colored foam sheets my mom sent us. Parker loved the way they looked and felt; he spent a few minutes taking the shapes out of their frames, feeling their edges, stacking them and lining them up. They ended up being all form, no function, though: the supercool foam just wasn't sturdy enough to trace around. I quickly grabbed the plastic template I'd used to make the insets--which I'd deemed not preferable as a learning tool due to its jumbled appearance--and let Parker use that instead. It worked fine, and Parker had a grand time tracing shapes. After he completed each shape, I had him draw horizontal lines, from left to right, within it (more pencil practice). (The plastic template is from a Learning Resources Attribute Block Set, a very neat and versatile product I look forward to doing more with soon.)

Oops, too flimsy. (The pencil kept slipping under the foam.)

Ah, much better.

After tracing, we moved on to matching two-dimensional shapes. In this activity, the child matches gradated circles (or triangles or squares) to corresponding holes/outlines. I painstakingly prepared the materials for this activity yesterday morning, and I have to reveal that my husband laughed when saw the raggedy, misshapen result. In my defense, I could locate only one compass here on island--a cheap, plastic, ineffectual one. I did my best, but even I had to admit that my efforts didn't amount to much. I needn't have worried, for two reasons: Parker didn't seem to notice any of the apparent defects and he took all of thirty seconds to complete the "white puzzle" (as he called it). This activity must not pose much of a challenge to Parker, so its (imperfect) materials will most likely be retired fairly quickly. Since he did complete the purported activity with such ease this morning, I had to brainstorm up some alternative things to do with the gradated circles. We stacked them from biggest to smallest, then smallest to biggest, then lined them up from biggest to smallest. And then we put them away, because after awhile it's hard for a little boy to resist the urge to turn circular objects into wheels. Or frisbees.

Hmm, I don't think this is quite right.

All done.

While we were in California last October, I spent a couple hours perusing the aisles of Morrison School Supplies. I, of course, wanted to buy at least half of what I found there; if only homeschool supplies were government-subsidized! I allowed myself a (crammed) basketful of educational materials, which I'm slowly but surely presenting to Parker. The Learning Resources Attribute Block Set was in that basket, and so were two sets of Creative Teaching Press photo cards (Our Earth and Understanding Weather). We studied the photo card sets for the first time today. Though (or because?) our own weather can get to be pretty boring (85 and sunny, day after day, for days on end, ho hum), Parker loves talking about snow and rain, wind and fog. He'll announce that it's "freezing cold" outside, and tell me it's time to (pretend to) put on our hats, coats and mittens. So he definitely liked looking at the weather photo set. And we've also been talking about different ecosystems; of course the one in which we live, but also forests, deserts, and the like. The earth forms photo set helped further our previous discussions.

The Ohio inspiration.

In anticipation of our arrival in Ohio last September, my mother-in-law had put the materials for various Montessori activities out on her pink shelves for Parker to work with throughout our stay. He particularly liked the farm animal habitat activity. Using some pieces of felt, miniature farm animals and popsicle sticks, he made a farm, complete with pens for the animals. He had a ball opening the pens to let the animals out so they could drink from the pond and taking the animals out to pasture. Watching him work, I made a mental note to pick up some felt before we returned home. In addition to the farm habitat, I've made a forest animal habitat and an ocean animal habitat. The ocean animal habitat consists of sand, shallow water, coral reefs and deep water. While Parker plays with the assorted sea animals, we talk about who lives where, what they eat and how they defend themselves. Sometimes the ocean animals decide they need to go swim in some real water (read: the bathtub).

Ocean animals at play.

The Rainbow Connection

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES:

• Matching Two-Dimensional Shapes
• Color Tablets
• Graduated Rainbow
• Fun with Magnets
• Sorting

One downside to homeschooling? Having "real life" intrude on your child's school time. Our new-to-us Jeep Cherokee (the one that's been continually in and out of the shop since we bought it back in November) started overheating this morning, so I had to deal with that mess before my son and I could start our homeschool session. If he'd been in a traditional, outside-the-home school, our car's cooling system troubles wouldn't necessarily have interfered with his education. The hour or so we spent tracking down our mechanic and then transporting our vehicle to the big gravel lot where he works wasn't a complete waste, though: Parker now knows the word "thermostat," and has a rudimentary grasp on what an auto thermostat is supposed to do. This, in addition to the other words he's learned since we bought our lovely lemon: solenoid, (car) computer, radiator. Once we'd been dropped back home by our mechanic (Parker directed him to our house--a skill I hadn't realized my son had already acquired), we did have a good (if foreshortened) homeschool session. We're still working on sensorial activities, but I've also put some basic math (sorting) and science (magnets) materials out on Parker's school shelves, just to mix things up a bit.

There's a more traditional "matching two-dimensional shapes" Montessori activity, which I will prepare and introduce to my son soon. In the meantime, the mini-puzzles out of the Lauri Toys Primer Pack I bought Parker prior to our last big trip make for pretty good practice working with geometric shapes. He disassembles all four puzzles at once, then puts them back together, piece by piece. There are various-sized circles, ovals, triangles and quadrilaterals, so he has to identify size as well as shape to complete the puzzles.

Color tablets are insanely easy to make: you just cut up paint sample strips! In this activity, the child is supposed to grade the shades of one color, i.e. line them up from darkest to lightest. I saved half of each paint sample strip to serve as the control of error; after my son does his best to line up the color tablets in the correct order, he can compare his work to the still intact paint sample strip to see if they match.

Working with shades of purple.

Checking his work.

My mother-in-law sent me a box of Montessori goodies a while back, which we've been enjoying. Parker particularly likes an activity called the "graduated rainbow" (I made that name up--I don't know its technical title). It consists of pieces of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple felt cut into half-circles, graduated in size. The red half-circle is the largest and the purple half-circle is the smallest, so you end up with a rainbow when you do the activity correctly.

Another treasure from Grandma Betty: farm sorting cards. These are twelve square cards with pictures of horses, roosters and pigs glued on. There's one pink, one red, one yellow and one black horse; one pink, one red, one yellow and one black rooster; and one pink, one red, one yellow and one black pig. Parker can sort the cards either by animal or by color. Today, he lined up the pigs, pink, black, red, yellow. Then he copied that color sequence with the horse cards, placing them above the pigs, and then again with the rooster cards. Then he sat back and realized that he had rows of the same animal and columns of the same color. Cool stuff.

Magnet fun.