Caves- Preschool Style

Hello from Denver, Colorado!

I've been here since Wednesday night enjoying some primo training time at MOPS Int'l headquarters! So, while I have just a moment...I wanted to be sure and update my blog while I can. We've been getting some technology training (so we can connect with moms and MOPS Leaders better) and what a scary thought that if I don't blog for five days- I'm irrelevant! So...here I am! Phew...that was close.

So, you might remember that we've been studying caves. The other night J4 requested a reading on Rocks and Minerals and of course I obliged. How fun that he assisted with his head lamp. He is all about rock types and cross sections of the earth. He likes to point to the different layers and name them.

J4 sports his head lamp while I read about Rocks and Minerals at bedtime- at his request.

Future geologist? Maybe... for now he is just crazy cute with that head lamp. Every kid needs to have one. WAY better than a book light.

I'm looking forward to catching up on the cave reading once I arrive back in NY Sunday evening.

Until then...I will continue experiencing the Rocky Mountain High. The Rockies are still stunning (if you've been reading a while, you might remember I saw them for the first time this time last year and it took my breath away).

And I enjoyed a Sonic drink for the first time on this trip. My MOPS staff prayer partner gave me a Sonic gift card for my birthday in November. I've been waiting to use it here in Denver ever since.

Daily slushie goodness. It's everything I thought it would be.

Encouraging the Reluctant Writer

My latest article is up over at Heart of the Matter. Read about Encouraging the Reluctant Writer. Below is a tidbit to lure you over there...


Isn’t it amazing how different each of our children can be? As homeschoolers, we get to witness this first hand as we work with our students at home. Out of four children, I have one who can hardly wait to get started and could write pages upon pages of information or story and most of it will look great without much to edit. I have one who is very eager to write and is still a little rough around the edges. I have one who loves to write and won’t take an ounce of instruction on how to do so (let’s hope this improves after preschool!) and I have one who loves ideas and dreaming up stories but has no time for the conventions of writing.

Each of our children requires us to know them well so that we can customize our instruction for them. If you are like me and you have a child who is a very unwilling participant in the writing process, then you know it is a challenge to engage this student in a way that will be encouraging. Hopefully, with some extra effort on our part, we can see some progress.

Read more...

Sewing Math

Speaking of making math more useful...

R9 really does not enjoy math for math's sake. I know what you are thinking- no one does, but I'm here to tell you there are people out there who do and I live with at least two of them.

However, she can so easily use her math when it suits her and she does it well. She may not enjoy adding fractions on paper, but give her a chance to freely create on her sewing machine and she will enthusiastically figure out her seam allowances (which involve fractions).

Now ordinarily, one might not need so much math as much as some spatial awareness if one used a pattern. Miss R doesn't like to operate under such rules and convention when it comes to her creativity.

She prefers to strike out on her own and make her own patterns. She'd much rather do the math for her own creation than to have to work within the confines of someone else's pattern!

Take the doll skirt above which is made from a fat quarter. She knew the skirt had to be a certain width plus seam allowances and if she only wanted one seam it had to include enough from each side (adding fractions!). She also knew she needed to add some fabric in because she didn't want it to be a narrow straight skirt. She carefully used her tape measure and made a plan. Not bad...she just needs to finish the hem and put the elastic through the casing and some lucky doll will have a new winter skirt.

In case you are interested there are a few books for those of us who don't like to follow rules while sewing...one I bought this time last year and the other one R9 received as a Christmas gift from her grandparents. They could recognize when a girl needs to break out.

Both of these titles are by Amy Karol who has the Angry Chicken blog. These two books are a great discovery in how to move away from the conventions of sewing and still make things work.

The whole point is that our creative daughter, who claims not to enjoy math, will gladly pull out her tailor's tape measure and do the math needed to sew something she dreams up in a heart beat. And something must be sticking because her creations always turn out right.

Math Resources: Puzzle Books

Teaching with Math on the Level is a totally different experience for us over traditional math books. Without being tied down to a workbook for our math practice, we get to explore a lot of different resources. I picked up this puzzle book a few months ago at the Salvation Army store. Neither of the two nearby to us have great books, but every so often you can find something nice. This was a good day!


I pulled it out last week and gave E11 the assignment to figure out the Triangle Numbers pattern. He also enjoyed, "the last straw" puzzle. I'm not sure he got the equilateral part just right, but he did manage to take six straws and make four triangles from them.
I have especially enjoyed the focus on finding meaningful math challenges with Math on the Level and the chance to focus on skills when we think it's time to work on them. With more traditional math programs, the text or program decides the pace, the order, and how the concept will be taught. As a teacher, I have found it useful to be able to choose those things for my kids. We can devote as much time as needed to a concept without "falling behind". I also look for ways to use the math in real life along the way. Since I'm essentially leading the charge, I get to forge ahead the way that is best for each of the kids.

And the most important thing is that when the rubber meets the road, the kids are showing they know the concepts. Just last night there were 14 fries left on the tray and four kids wanted thirds. R9 was up to distribute them and Dan asked her how many they could each have. She thought a moment and answered there would be 3 for each with a remainder of 2. This from the girl who still hasn't memorized every multiplication table and therefore has only scratched the surface of division and has not done long division much yet at all. But give her a real problem and she is right there with you. That is actually pretty satisfying.

10 Days in Europe

E11 received this game as a Christmas present...I mean you know we'd have to round out our collection. We started with Africa, added Asia, and now we have Europe!

You get around Europe by plane and by boat across the various seas. Planes can only get you from country to country when the colors match. This series of games is a fun way to concentrate on the geography of particular continents. It's not a difficult game, but it's new every time depending on the cards you pick.

We are still missing the United States and of course The Americas is coming out in June. It'll be fun to see that one when it is released.

We have other geography games as well- that might be a fun post. What geography games do you have at your house?

Cave Study Resources

(Luray Caverns- Luray, Virginia)

Here are a some websites I found which will give you some good pictures of caves or some fun information. The USGS (United States Geological Survey) has a great website full of really nice lesson plans for teachers. We've been reading Angus Lost and talking about cave formations and having a really good time at it.

Show Cave Directory

The Virtual Cave

Exploring Caves USGS teacher packet. This is what I'm using for the bulk of our cave study. It's put together really well with a fictional story they authored that leads you through all aspects of caves.

National Caves Association- gives facts about caves and a state by state look at where the caves are. There's a nice cave science section as well.

Have you ever watched Dragonfly TV? Our kids love this science documentary program with kids as hosts and investigators. I remember watching an episode with a segment on caves. So...I did a little detective work and found myself praising the internet! I can't tell you how awesome it is to have this stuff at your fingertips. The kids couldn't wait to watch the kids explore the cave again.

More Than Skin Deep (A Teacher's Guide to Caves)-this one has a lot of resources and lessons on caves and bats.

That last one is a link from a section of website for the National Science Teachers Assocation (NSTA) of which I am a former member. Turns out they have a lot going on over there to look at and use in SciLinks. How did I EVER manage to teach anything without the internet? Probably a lost art in the classroom teaching world for sure.

Books on Hand:

• The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth by Joanna Cole
• Caves by Jenny Wood
• The Usborne First Encyclopedia of Our World
  

The Exploring Caves unit mentioned above is really very good. We've had a lot of good discussions and I'm looking forward to doing more with the kids. When we've produced more to look at I will share with them with you. Of course.

For now enjoy the resources. That way the post won't be gigantic when I post some progress.

Follow the Drinking Gourd

In the fall, we started the FIAR study on Follow the Drinking Gourd which led to this long and winding rabbit trail study of the Underground Railroad and the Civil War.

We did an art lesson on textured drawings which was a lot of fun for all of us. This is R9's.

J4's- he's got a lot of texture going on...

I7's- complete with slaves running

E11's- is that a light saber he's holding? Really?

And my very own...

There are many good lessons that go along with this book. R9 read some other picture books on the same theme and we plan to compare those different books a bit. There's a great lesson on compound words we will do for a language arts lesson. It will give you the perfect opportunity to look at the stars and discover constellations as well.

However, we've been in a Civil War holding pattern for over 8 weeks now! We plan to finish things up in the next week and a half before heading west with Westward Ho and doing a Little House study from the Prairie Primer.

TOS Crew Review: Bertie's War from Kregel Publishing

As a part of the TOS Crew, I was sent a copy of Bertie's War by Barbara Tifft Blakey to review. The book is historical fiction which takes place in 1962. It's about a young girl named Bertie whose adolescence takes place at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Throughout the book, you follow the twists and turns of her life as she struggles with her dad's rules, her sister who teases her and her naughty brother. By the end of the book, Bertie learns a valuable character lesson which helps her to confront her fears.

The book is printed by Kregel Publications and retails for $7.99.

This book would be a great read for late middle school through high school to enhance modern history. It gives the reader a glimpse into what life was like during the period of national panic that was the Cuban Missile Crisis. The character lessons in the book could provide great discussion for your adolescents.

The Leaky Faucet: A Living Math Lesson

So, in the midst of the holidays, our anniversary, buying a new van, and being sick (yes...we've been sick with colds. Again.) we discovered a leaky shower faucet. Dan's been knocking happy home owner jobs out left and right and last weekend when he announced he would be trouble shooting the drip with a leak rate, I told him it was a great moment in math. I know Dad...where does this all come from now?

Admittedly, though I thought this was going to be the ultimate math lesson, I really wasn't on board with why one needed to know how much water was leaking in order to fix a leak. Dan had the kids carefully measure the mass of water that had leaked in 10 minutes. I know, right? It's a pretty decent leak we have going in there. Tip: If you don't have a kitchen scale like this one...you need one! Very homeschool friendly little device.

They used the weight of the water to figure out how much was much dripping per hour and per day and they worked it out over a year. Dan worked with E11 and R9 on unit conversions and how to use density to calculate mass and volume.

Which brings me back to the question of origin. Why do you need to know how much the faucet is leaking? Answer: So that when you make an adjustment, you can tell if things are getting better or worse or they are no different. Really?

Dan says that I view leaks in a binary sense. Either it is leaking (1) or it is not (0). While he is more of analog guy. Alright it is leaking...but how badly? Which reminds Dan of a funny tshirt he saw on a college guy this past summer. It said, "There 10 people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't."

Preschool Block Play

J4 was asking to play blocks over the weekend. So, Dan sat down with him on Sunday and I7 joined the fun. J4 chose the wood blocks from our block stash.

The Block Pile

So, they all built buildings and knocked them down. However, Dan declared that his was a historic landmark and could not be torn down. So, that prompted the kids to ask what he meant and he explained it very well. He also added- we don't want to forget the architecture ( he paused to look at his watch) from 6:50pm. He cracks me up.

He cracks the kids up too because of course you have to add sneezing out blocks to block play...I spared you the picture of the block "hanging" from his nose. He's SUCH a boy.

Never underestimate the teaching power of block play. A fun time was had by all and yes...this is on our preschool morning rotation for activities ready for J4 when we begin school.

Preschool Math

J4 and I (and his brothers and sister) have been doing a lot of preschool math stuff over the last several weeks. In no particular order I'd like to share some of what he's been up to.

He loves to play with our learning cash register by Learning Resources. This is the deluxe model. the other day I caught him playing a game with it where the register asks for coins to be put in. I watched him place all the right coins in the slot. When the voice asked for a penny, he inserted a penny. So, then we played with money some more. He had a great time.

While sharing these skills with Dan, Dan decided to pull out real coins and let him have fun with those. My cell phone provided this picture of J4 sorting coins with Dan.

J4 has been working on counting from 11 to 20 and this week he hit the milestone! This is an excited J4 demonstrating a great session with his number train. Cool.

The other day he wanted to sew some buttons. We love buttons.

This is from the Preschool Activities in a Bag Book 2

On to the second button...just like R9 he says!

Check out a few more activities from Preschool Activities in a Bag Volume 2. I have quite a selection of bags from both volumes 1 & 2 because I participated in two swaps. That's the way to go. You are just responsible for making a certain number of one activity, you mail them off, and then you wait for your mailbox to fill up with fun!

He's also been working on the Mathletics Kindergarten level when it's his turn to do school computer time. There is no preschool level so I have him working in kindergarten. Math-wise he's been doing well, but it requires reading so we all help him out with what the problem is here and there.

As we begin each school day, I like to have an activity out for J4 waiting for him. I also work on his Before Five in a Row stuff at the start of the day. We read the Before book and then talk about it some, then I send him off to do his activity. I try to have one building item (one morning this week it was Wedgits) and a bag activity ready to go for him.

If I don't fill his bucket of love first, there is sure to be mischief while I'm trying to work with the older kids. So, this works well for us. I'm working on establishing a rotation for these things so that it doesn't take long to figure out. I'd say my biggest challenge this school year has been being prepared for each day early in the morning. So, a set rotation would help me out a lot.

Cabbage Juice Lab

So, I referred to cabbage juice being an indicator the other day in my post about using iodine as an indicator for starch.

Red cabbage juice makes a great indicator for acids and bases. All you need to do is take a head or even half to one quarter of a head of cabbage juice and boil it. What's left behind is a whole lot of purple cabbage juice.

Using an egg carton or paint palette or container with a few wells for holding liquids, you can fill the wells with substances to test. Using an eye dropper, you put a few drops if the cabbage juice in the well and wait for a color change.

The color change will be pronounced and immediate. In the presence of an acid, the color will turn to bright pink. The weaker the acid the less pink it will be. Purple or no change means the substance has a neutral pH. Blue indicates a weak base and green is a strong base.

This is a really fun one for kids and gives them more practice with a pipette or eye dropper.

Acid or Base
My embedded document here was inspired by Michelle at Delightful Learning who uses them with her Instant Challenges. I printed one off and plan to link up one day soon, but I had try the embedding. Thanks for using Scribd Michelle. It rocks.

Stop Motion Animation: Yoda Rocks

The kids put together a LEGO stop motion movie yesterday. They had some unschooling technology moments while they put their series of pictures into Windows Movie Maker. There was some question about the frame rate which they never could work out so Dan helped out and here we are. I'll show the kids this morning how he did it.

I'm quite certain they'll be unstoppable now.

And I'll try to refrain from saying, "Yoda used his wand to recreate the droids." I knew as soon as it left my mouth that was mistake. Dan is probably still laughing.

For the record, I do know it's a light saber. Really.

Ticket to Ride

We gave E11 Ticket to Ride last year for his birthday and as is the case much of the time, I let him read the directions and get us started. Well we played over the holidays at my brother's house and it turns out, as is also often the case, that E11 had the directions wrong!

So, we've had a resurgence in interest for the game. If you don't have it, I highly recommend it. You basically try to collect train cars to place on the map and complete a destination card. You get points for placing routes and completing destination cards and the one with the most points at the end wins.

The kids were sick most of the last week and a half and we played a lot of rounds of this game. Here's the board mostly train car free.
Here we are closer to the end of the game. You can also get extra points if you have the longest route.
In addition to the original game, there is a 1910 Expansion (I'm hoping to get soon) and there is a Europe edition. 1910 Expansion has regular sized cards and additional destination cards. That's what we played at my brother's and it was a lot of fun.

Play Foam for Preschool

Word on the street was that J4 loved this foam stuff he plays with at MOPS. So, I found it at Rainbow Resource and we acquired it for Christmas.

Introducing PlayFoam- glow in the dark style

J4 begins to mold

He's making a snake.

Then he announced he was making it wiggle. Such a professional!

Dan had to touch it and so did I. I mean you can't resist. It isn't sticky except to touch it, but it only sticks to itself. Very cool stuff. It won't dry out either so we bagged it up and saved it for next time.

In our preschool, we mold something every day. J4 is a BIG molder.

Face Painting Fun!

One of the things R9 wanted most was the Klutz Face Painting book. I used to do a lot of face painting with the kids but haven't in a while. You know there are face paint recipes out there if you are interested.

There are a lot of fun ideas in the book with step by step directions. The paints themselves are professional and easy to blend. R9 has really enjoyed creating with them.

I was the first customer. Check out the snowflake and cupcake. So fun!

E11 was reluctant, but I convinced him she was good for it.

Doing pretty good here- E11 is relaxing...

Go Hokies! Awesome he was ready for game day on New Year's Eve.

She took the kit to Maryland and did a fantastic job on a Killer whale for I7. I wish I had a picture! It was amazing. Many cousins lined up and if I were into sharing faces, you could see her cousin A5 all done up in a snow princess face. Such great pictures of her doing up A5's face.

This kit definitely appeals to R9's creative personality. Lots of fun and lots of party ideas if you are so inclined. Something tells me R9 might that one a go come June.

New Fun!

Along with new coin collecting items, the kids got some other fun things at Christmas. Here a few just to share. They are a good representation of how the kids have spent their time over the last two weeks. I have some other things to share specifically so stay tuned for that.

Anyone else have new LEGOS in the house? Our boys got a bunch for Christmas and then received money for the LEGO store in Annapolis, MD where we go to visit our families. They are in LEGO heaven. Here I7 displays a new Power Miners set- the Thunderdriller.

R9 received a pile of new arts and crafts supplies. She has a fondness for Pipsqueak markers so we filled her up. Between these and the fat Pipsqueaks and this fat little memo pad she has been a doodling maniac. Yet more evidence that R9 is very Picture Smart (read up on your multiple intelligences lately? I have!) Note- she has a dolphin on her hand. More on this later...

J4 asked for a sport coat for Christmas. He saw Dan wear one for the Christmas Cantata (he sings tenor in the church choir) and he was fascinated. He's also a blanket boy and the fact that Linus says he will turn his blanket into a sport coat intrigued him so when he found out what it was he had to have one. Providentially, I was able to find one at a local consignment store. He also loved his special sound guarding headphones and the headlamp. All the kids have headlamps now. This will be awesome for any spelunking we do while studying caves! J4 looked like this most of Christmas Day. And the headlamp we see every night at bedtime from all the boys.

We have enough older mp3 players now (E11, Dan and I have upgraded over the years) that Dan loaded two of the four extras with kids CDs and our audio books. The kids have had fun taking turns to listen to stories and songs.

Since my player was replaced just in November and it has the most memory of the old ones, I think we're going to load it up and leave it in the car so that we can have most of our stuff at the ready when we drive around.

Testing for Starch

In Cranberry Thanksgiving, Mr. Horace, the city man, is dressed nicely in starched clothing. So, one of the lessons talks about starch and how it can be used in laundry, but also how you can test for starch with iodine. The Fold n Learn has a little data sheet to use for the experiment, but in the end I couldn't use it. This science teacher needs big action when it comes to an experiment! So, as every good scientist does, I broke out the Styrofoam egg carton. I filled it with bunches of kitchen items so we could test for the presence of starch.

I bet you're curious as to what we have here:

• bread
• potato
• sugar
• flour
  
• Old Bay- just to get our Maryland on
• cornstarch
• egg shell
• carrot
• rice
• cooked spaghetti- I raided the trash because I'm that kind of homeschooling mom...
• green bean
• liquid sizing from our laundry area- works like starch without the stiffness (according to the can- honestly I would not know what to do with it and Dan will concur)
  

All set up- good science is about to happen. Can you feel it?

For the experiment, you will need medicinal iodine. You can find it in your pharmacy. Typically, iodine is found in solution. It's a rusty color. We also have a disposable pipette.

We are underway! J4 takes a turn. I taught the kids proper pipette technique and they put a few drops on each item in the egg carton well. We watched for a color change. Look in the lower left corner of the picture below to see J4's data chart- he filled the whole page with circles and stuff inside. He didn't want to be left out!

I had the kids make their own data charts. They had to draw the circles to be the wells and they drew what was inside and labeled it. I like to have my kids make their own data charts because it helps them to learn how to organize information. I mean...no one hands a real scientist a data chart every time he/she goes to investigate something. They used colored pencils to color the item it's original color before we started.

All done! I let all of them have a turn using the pipette and we talked about the results. Which ones turned color (iodine turns purple/black in the presence of starch) and which ones didn't. Some turned quickly and some didn't. And it turns out that Magic Sizing has no starch in it. Crazy, huh? We did do some predicting ahead of time because that's what scientists do. The kids correctly picked out the veggies/grains that had starch so we are doing something right in the area of nutritional instruction.

Finished data chart- I had them show an after iodine picture as well and they had to make statements about what they observed. We added this to the lapbook and I made a color copy to go with our study on chemical and physical changes which we'll doing early next week.

What's fun too is to discuss chemical indicators. Iodine is a good indicator for starch. Cabbage juice is a good indicator for acids and bases. I mean really good. That's another fun experiment.

E11 did a Daily Quest on iodine yesterday using Web Elements. Iodine is a halogen found on the next to last column of the Periodic Table. Check out the contact explosive video. Dan actually made something in his lab that did the same thing. Iodine is pretty reactive and you can check out more chemistry facts yourself. I'm just sure I've peeked your interest!