The Truth about New York

E11 has been working so hard on this game. He's finally finished! As part of our study of The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, E11 decided he wanted to make a game to learn things about NY. I had in mind a travel brochure, but I thought why not. Surely he put more effort into this game than I ever would have gotten on a travel brochure! Lesson to homeschooling moms: be open to a change of plans!

When I saw how excited the kids were about this project, I splurged and bought some game making materials from Bare Books. They sell blanks of lots of fun things including game boards and other game making supplies like money! The cost is very nominal, but you have to have a $25 minimum order. So, I stocked up.

I bought two game boards with squares around it and two blank ones waiting for creativity, two packs of blank money, and a couple of blank spirals for notebooking.
E11 did a great job on all the details of the game. He started by making up all the trivia questions- 20 for each deck (group and solo). Then he set about making game pieces. He chose NY landmarks, saved the images and put them in a paint program for resizing then into a word document for printing at one time. We used cardstock and then I laminated them. We used little plastic stands from a Pooh Candyland game (we don't set up all the characters anymore) and it works great. He chose the Statue of Liberty, the George Washington Bridge (of course), the state capital building, Niagara Falls, apples, and The Wilder Farm in Malone, NY. Very fun!


After making the trivia questions, he designed the board. He chose cities from around NY that would go onto a board like Monopoly. He had to adjust when he found out there are fewer spaces on our board. He grouped them by proximity and population. Pretty cool. I helped with the game board itself at his request. Sharpie markers to the rescue and some good handwriting and voila! Instant gameboard. We also used stickers we'd gotten from Bare Books and a local craft store.
These cards are the improvement cards- think hotels and houses from the Monopoly game. Once you get a city set and a building permit you can put improvements in your cities. Improvements are parks, campgrounds, and monuments. Pretty clever.
I plan to laminate these cards sets so they last a while and because they have pictures glued to them. It took some tweaking as they played. For example, they needed the second set of money because there wasn't enough in one set and they started with two die and realized that took you around the board way too fast. So, now they use one.
The property cards- names of cities with the list of rent and what rent costs with improvements.
E11 considered typing out all his cards, but preferred to do it this way in the end. He is planning to enter this game into the 4-H Fair so he may end up typing it for that.

He spent a lot of time typing out the direction sheet. It has two columns and carefully explains the game. I thought about putting them up in Scribd, but that might not be so exciting for you all. Just let me know if you'd like to see them and I'll post them. Great writing assignment for E11. It's not always easy to write good directions.

This was a lot of fun for E11 and a great way to review state geography and history. R9 has a game in mind but lost her motivation very quickly- I think this was due to watching all the gobs of work E11 was doing...she thought better of it! However, I think she can pull it out with my help. It's also a well thought out game.

I'm saving the game boards for a game I have in mind- on habitats. The first stop will be freshwater habitats.

TOS Crew Review: The Terrestria Chronicles

As part of the TOS Crew, I was sent two books from Ed Dunlop Ministries. When these arrived I eagerly handed one to E11 for him to read.

The cost for the books is $7.99 each or $19.99 for the set of three.

E11 thought it was an interesting read. He enjoyed the book. However, he thought the author tried too hard to make it a "Christian" book. He felt the author could have spent more time developing the plot line rather than concentrating so hard on making it a religious book.

I take this to mean that you can give stories Christian morals without making it so blatant. Take the Chronicles of Narnia for example. Classic allegory which doesn't hit you over the head with the Christianity at every turn in the book.

The author's aim is to encourage young readers to listen to the right voices. Perhaps I should have chosen a different reader in my house. I7 might really enjoy this series. E11 has a discerning palette for good books. He sees through formula in an instant.

My opinion is that if you have a reader in your house and you are looking for a wholesome library of tales, then Tales from Terrestria is a safe place to land.

TOS Crew Review: The Travels of Wiglington and Wenks Virtual World

As a member of the TOS Homeschool Crew, I was given temporary access to Wiglington and Wenks- a virtual world for kids.

From the website: The Travels of Wiglington and Wenks Virtual World is an exciting new massive online virtual world for kids where players can travel to places around the world, through time and space, meet famous historical people, play fun enriching games, make new friends own exotic islands, build culture-inspired houses, wear all kinds of cool clothing and costumes, explore secret locations, solve ancient mysteries and become a legendary traveler!

My kids have spent some time safely wandering around in this virtual world and they've discovered some fun places- just not the super educational ones.

The cost is free to go on there and there are membership options from $2.99 to $59.99 depending on the length of your membership and the options you choose.

I really like the idea of the virtual world where kids can interact with history and places around the world. However, this one is missing some key security features that are important like turning off the chat room options.

However, I will say my kids had a hard time getting around in there and given the time I allowed the to spend on it, they did not end up discovering much except silly games. In fairness, we've been reviewing quite a lot of computer material and this one was just a bit harder to navigate I think. So, my kids didn't make as much of an effort.

If you are in the market for a virtual world for kids for their computer time, I recommend trying Wiglington and Wenks with some guidelines from you. I think, given enough time, it would be a really worthwhile experience for whatever media time your kids have.

Math Happenings

We have been busy with some fun math practice this week and last. I picked up this Math Puzzle DK game at a local consignment shop. I thought it was time for I7 to focus on some addition and subtraction facts for a bit. He sometimes has trouble remembering them when he is doing regrouping problems (aka- carrying and borrowing if you are old school. Like me.).

He found a groove and made piles of the sums and differences and another pile for the problems.
I dug in to the Math Card Games book from RightStart. Remember when I was busy acquiring the card sets and making my own?
We settled on a sequencing game for multiples. It took a while for R9 to catch on. It is a good game for her because she can work with the multiples of one set and get to know them better. I could play the game well because I know my times tables. ha!
Here's a close up of the game. They have to go in order rather like solitaire and you can move groups of cards to other to make the sequence grow. The object is to get rid of all your cards.
And then there's been dice math. Roll the dice and make multiplication problems with it. I7 did his in addition. R9 is getting better at her facts. The tables are to check answers and help if she's stuck.
Today we tried some domino math. J4 has been enjoying some domino action with the Reading Rainbow show about the mouse and the cookie- chain reactions, etc. R9 made a multiplication problem from the dots on her dominoes. I7 did a bit of dice math and then did some dominoes to finish up his practice.

The kid had a successful run at setting up a big domino track so I'm looking forward to loading up that fun little video.

We've just been consistent with the math practice this spring. I'm hoping it pays off. What fun math activities have you been doing?

Really?

April in upstate NY...

Family Math - Middle School

E11 has been taking a class at co-op called Math Games and Puzzles. He and about 4 other kids work on activities from Family Math- The Middle School Years. He loves it!

This is also where I pulled the linear graphing activities for our family graphing day. There's a lot of algebraic thinking in this volume which is great for my 6th grader.

In class a few weeks ago, they played this tax collector game. It was hard to win if you weren't the tax collector that is for sure.

If you aren't familiar with Family Math at any of the levels, I encourage you to find a copy. There are a lot of games and activities in there that make math fun and you can do them in groups or individually. Lots of great discussions.

Art Strips- at Last!

As part of the art center that Dan built for R9 last summer for her birthday, we finally finished putting up the art strips. I painted them with acrylic craft paint and even added a layer of glitter bling. Click for the close up. Now whatever she creates at her art desk, she can proudly display. And there's room for plenty.

A glimpse of the surface. Sometimes this gets out of control and I have her clean it. I have her well conditioned to the fact that if she doesn't make it beautiful, I will come in and do it. Highly motivating for her. She has some of her craft books in the corner standing up. Her markers are always there. Sometimes she even has to scrub glue off the surface and she does it pretty well. That little ribbon board I made as a MOPS craft one time. She likes to put her fashion drawings there. Notice the analog clock on the wall. She loves that thing.

A close up R9's fashions. She appears to be into the swirly skirt right now. And many, many patterns. I hear last week at her creative sew class that she fiddled with making a doll dress on a dress form. I bet she was in heaven! This reminds of the story The Hundred Dresses- a great read if you haven't seen it. I have multiple resources to study it sometime.

Some art found its way to a clip. Outstanding. Do you see her concentric circles painting- acrylic on canvas? She did that two years ago. Someday it would be fun to frame that piece of art. I bought the canvas in a pair so she has one more to make beautiful. I'll have to think on that. I see her hand sewing workbox is on her desk as well. She's working on a Bugga Bugs set.

Here is a sample collage from her co-op class called, Mixed Media Collage. This class involves lots of glue and filling up space with stuff. She absolutely adores this class. We had just the place for it above her light switch remote.

While I'm at it, I'll give a tour of the rest of the room- R9 has gutters too. Just two small ones next to her bed. She might have her own room, but she shares it with some American Girl company.

Her dollhouse is at the end of her bed. Polly Pockets currently reside here and there appears to be a pile up on the second floor. Notice my mom takes a super flower picture. My favorites are those black-eyed susans on the bottom. What can I say...I'm a Maryland girl at heart (MD state flower).

And behind the door we have the American Girl stash. Don't ask me why all the clothes are balled up in that pocket on the bottom of the holder. Wouldn't they look more elegant on the hangers? That pocket is not well behaved even when it's not full of stuff.

A vision complete. At long last. One month short of her next birthday! But who's counting?

This itty bitty room is 8' x 10'. Just right for a girl and her art and her doll friends. And as long as she keeps her floor clean and her bed made, you can get in the room!

Small spaces are my specialty.

Our Boys' Room

So, we finally got around to putting up the art strips in the kids' rooms today. They were part of R9's birthday gift- last June. Dan had prepared the strips and I had bought the clips. But he never painted them. So, I finally stepped in with my craft paints and went to town. Then Dan devised a way of putting the clips on the thin strips and getting them fastened to the wall. Today was hang up day. Woohoo!

Even though it was R9's gift, I didn't want the boys left out. They love to hang their works of art too. So, we had enough leftover to make some short strips for two boys. E11 has a magnet board at his disposal as you will see. You will also see that a short strip is all we had room for!

J4's art strip. It'll be fun to see his favorites there.

I7's art strip above his head on his bottom bunk. Take note of the edge of his gutter shelf on the wall next to him.

E11's lair is his top bunk. Notice the magnet board which is currently sporting lego Star Wars kits and his VT parking sign. You might notice the smudgy stuff on the walls- that is actually their names on the wall near their beds.

This is the other half of the room opposite the beds. My mom does a really nice job at nature photography so those grace our walls all the time. Though Mom and Dad, there is always room for the BALD EAGLE pictures...hint. hint. The dresser was our baby changing dresser for all the kids and now it is the LEGO model display surface. There's more gutters. The Pooh cross stitch in the middle I made for E11 while I was pregnant with him. I took Tigger down, but the only thing that can replace him now is a BALD EAGLE hint...hint...

This room has been undergoing upgrades. We put the yellow sticker border up and some sports stickers on top to replace the old border which you can see a peek of next to the little bed up top. It was a sponged blue edge and alphabet block stamps that I did when we moved in ten years ago.

The alphabet curtains are about to go. I am making space valences with the liner. Since the background is black, they will be shorter. I like lots of light!

Their new ceiling fan is space themed believe it or not and we already have stars and planets on the ceiling to match- glow in the dark. This fan rocks. It's got black blades with rockets and stars on it and the light globe in the middle is painted like the planet earth from space.

It's an eclectic ensemble, but it represents three boys in the same room! This room by the way is about 9' x 12'. I'm all for the triple decker bunk bed when J4 outgrows his toddler bed. Dan...not so much.

Oh...and pardon the unmade beds! And that stuff under the bed is capable of looking neater- there are lots of labeled bins...just not this time. Or most times. You caught me.

Teaching Multiple Levels...How Do I Do It?

This is a question that comes to me often through emails and posts on my favorite homeschooling forum (well the only one I visit and participate in actually) - the FIAR forums.

There are multiple levels of Five in a Row. Before FIAR is for preschoolers 2 to 4 and is just a gentle little program full of fun. FIAR is for 4-8 yr olds and has four volumes. The units revolve around picture books and are designed to be one week long. The last volume is a stepping stone volume for 7-8 yr olds and has two week units. Beyond FIAR is for 8-12 yr olds and has three volumes. These units are for chapter books rather than picture books. Finally, there is Above and Beyond FIAR which currently has one unit- Hitty the First Hundred Years is the book that is studied and this program is for 12 yrs and up.

I wanted to provide this little crash course in Five in a Row because it is often the context in which people ask me how I teach the different levels at our house. This year we've been schooling 6th, 4th, and 2nd grades along with preschool.

First of all, as with anything we do, my approach to this changes with time. When my kids were younger, I often kept up with more than one level of FIAR. Now that my children are all a little older and our youngest is approaching school age, we can more easily work together as a family on our units.

I have been known to row a Beyond title, for example, Betsy Ross with my two oldest kids while the younger ones do a FIAR title. For the longest time, E11 rowed Beyond titles by himself and R9 and I7 rowed FIAR titles together. Those were the days when J4 was really young.

Often with those scenarios, lessons overlap and if one set of learners is doing a science lesson, then everyone will join in. Only the child whose lesson it is has to do the recording. Everyone else gets to observe and join in and discuss.


One thing I don't do is try to create enormous studies of one topic and correlate the different levels of FIAR that way. If we rabbit trail into a topic and it's a popular one- as was the case last fall with The Civil War, then we take a break and all do it together. That unit sprung out of Follow the Drinking Gourd and E11 was beginning George Washington Carver. We left GWC behind and went full monte with The Civil War as a family. In other words, I resist the urge to row consecutively FIAR titles that are related in theme/topic.

FIAR was designed to offer students a wide survey of topics for study. If we cram them all together as one big, fat unit then we miss the blessing of revisiting those topics with our kids as time goes on. I like to see those topics come back around so we can see some prior knowledge in action and build on another layer as our kids get older. Plus, I find that if a study gets too huge we lose the spark as time goes on.

These days I'm mostly doing family studies with all three older kids and Before FIAR with J4. J4 will be kindergarten level in the fall (so hard to believe!) and I would like to finish up Before with him before fully taking on FIAR for kindergarten. We only have a few titles left at this point.

So, by now I'm sure you all want some real deal, applicable ideas. Here are a few things that I practice regularly.

• Make sure your kids are invested in what they are studying. If you are not a unit study person, then this probably sounds absurd. What comes next is what comes next. However, my kids always perform better when they are invested in what they are learning. I often "bring them to the table" to discuss what direction our schooling is going in. They don't get totally free reign, but they do get to be part of the decision making process. This usually makes for a successful study as a family.
  
• Be open to a change of plans when your kids come up with ideas. For example, when we began a study of The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, I had in mind that the kids would do a travel brochure for NY or NYC. In the process of sharing with them the things we might do during the unit, my son asked if they could make a NY game. E11 and R9 both began planning away and shouting out ideas they had for a game. Now I had a choice- do I stick with what I thought would be good or do I let them run with their ideas. I let them run. Both games are excellent in idea and E11 has worked diligently everyday on his. It's going to be a fabulous game and it's almost done. I would never have gotten that same quality of work and passion for the travel brochure.
• Family studies are a great way to involve everyone on their own level. Don't assume it can't be done just because some kids are way older and have more skills than others. This is especially true if you are following the first two guidelines. See how that all comes together? I'm more flexible with my preschooler, but the older kids can always find their niche in our studies. E11 will get to go the extra mile with his portion while R9 and I7 work on the same assignment at their level. For example, when we were studying birds in our Angelo unit, the kids all did a bird report. I gave I7 a form to fill out where he had to use reference material to find his answers and draw a picture. R9 had to put the information from the form into a written page with a picture. E11 had to do a full on report. He chose the bald eagle and wrote about two pages of well organized facts about the eagle with a hand drawn picture.
  
• The older kids can choose something extra they will do during a study. So, if someone wants to write a puppet script for a part of our study or make a meal or plan an activity, they can. I get to work one on one with that child for the activity while the others are doing other work- either passion pursuits or sometimes this happens during free time. In this way, their notebooks may not look exactly the same, but everyone is working on the same topic.
• I modify the same activity for each student. Last week we studied rivers. We talked about where they originate and where they go at the breakfast table. I asked I7 his thoughts on the topic. We discussed it further with input from everyone. Later on the kids had to find and name some of the major rivers in NY. R9 and E11 listed them outright looking at an atlas when they got stuck. E11 I charged with listing major rivers in the US and around the world. I7 dictated his answers to me and I typed them into StartWrite and he used the list as that day's copywork. Once the written portion started, everyone was working at the same time. I was helping those who needed it and pointing things out as they went along as well as answering questions. We also do our math adventures this way. Check out the living math link so read about how we do math together at once.
  
• Use meal times to your advantage. Many of our school days begin right at the kitchen table during breakfast. I go over the plan for the day and the kids give me feedback on that. Sometimes they point out things I've forgotten or they interject with another idea. Sometimes we try it and sometimes we don't. I can read the FIAR story or another read aloud, ask questions, have a discussion, ask opinions, etc.
• Make sure to include all the kids in a discussion and make sure the oldest one isn't always answering. Now this one is a teacher thing most likely, but I think anyone can figure out you can't have the older kids answering everything for the younger kids. I remind E11 that I know he knows something and to let I7 answer. Or I will call his name and say, "I7, what do you think about _____?" He knows he has the opportunity to tell me his thoughts without interruption or without someone else snagging it first. You can also do this by just asking for ONE answer of something that has several. That gives others a chance too.
• Include the older kids in with the preschooler's study. Early this year, J4 and I rowed Angus Lost together. It's a Before FIAR book. In it, Angus the dog, finds himself lost and staying the night in a cave. Since we have been focusing on earth science a lot this year, I decided to use this Before FIAR book to do a unit on caves with the whole family. J4 was excited and proud that it was his book the other kids were using as a starting place for their study. Each morning we began with Angus and we'd do some things together with J4, then we'd talk about our cave topic for the day. We made the salt dough caves and learned a bunch more together. It even gave me a chance to do stranger danger type stuff and what to do when you are lost not just with our preschooler but with all the kids- at their level.
• Use independent work or play time to work with just one or two kids at a time. If I'm working with my older kids on something, I let the younger kids have free time or I give them one assignment they can do on their own. If I'm working with my younger kids, then I have the bigger kids do independent work. This is a great time for them to work on whatever it is that they are doing extra in our study.
• Be flexible and remain steadfast in reaching your goal. I have a list of school things I want to complete in a day and I try to stay focused on those few things I have set. Many times it will include math, writing/reading, unit study. Your day will have some dips and turns. That will happen. How you handle it is everything. Just keep looking for that next moment when you can pick things back up. And follow through when that moment arrives. This is great advice for those of you with babies and toddlers. You might enjoy a post I wrote back when J4 was two- A Day in the Life of a Homeschooling Family (a hall of fame post).
• Realize that homeschooling occurs all the time. Learning is part of our lifestyle and we do it together. So, record it! Even if your state requires very little to no reporting, I think it is valuable to record what is happening in your school. It helps me to reflect on where we've been and how my kids are doing. I just turned in our 3rd Quarterly Report for the year for my three school aged kids and it is a nice boost to see in one spot everything we've done. I really like the Lifestyle of Learning journals. I have a home made version and Kendra at the Pumpkin Patch has made something similar you might like.

Ok...this is the longest post ever and I reserve the right to come back and add something! I lost a portion of this last night so it's taken me a while to restore it.

If you have a tidbit to share with us on how to work with various levels, please share them with a comment.

More Monopoly

You might remember my Monopoly Math post from a few weeks ago. Well this afternoon at the library, while was I looking at book with J4 (he was pointing out the "black smokers" from deep in the sea in an earth book), I spotted a book on the shelf that I thought might interest E11. He was next to me sleepily browsing through a baseball DK book.

He sure enough grabbed it off the shelf and has been reading it ever since. Understand that R9 is the Monopoly shark around here. When E11 was listing some new information he'd come across, she'd say, "Yeah...I know because..."

And therein lies the reason she wins. A lot.

Leaving Behind Conventions

My new post is up at Heart of the Matter Online Magazine. Please click over and read the rest. Then tell me what you think!


The other day it was such an unusually warm day that while we were out for a walk in the afternoon; we turned toward the school and decided to enjoy the playground. When we arrived, there was an afterschool program there which was called together to return to the school building shortly after we got there. What followed was almost 10 minutes of the teacher coaxing the students to put their coats on and wait in an orderly fashion to go inside. “Whatever your parents sent you in is what you need to be wearing,” was the teacher’s direction. This initiated comments from the kids about whether their parents had actually been home to send them to school. If they had it, they had to wear it. So, despite it being nearly 60 degrees outside, there were students dressed in snow bibbers and winter coats. Finally, the teacher was satisfied and they followed her back into the school.

This scenario brought a flood of things to my mind as I reflected on my days as a public school teacher and on our homeschool. It reminded me that scenes like this are carried out all day long in a school building. (Read more...)

Snack Math!

So, I had this wild idea to do some snack math with the kids. It was born out of the fact that although I can prepare plenty of meals for the freezer, I have a hard time following through on snacks. Snacks are just snacks and I always have good intentions, but it often gets pushed aside. So, my idea was to use snack freezer cooking as a math activity and to have the kids work with me to get some good snacks into the freezer. We are part way finished with the activity and it's worked pretty well.

J4 loves to count and we counted up lots of sticks. They helped to unwrap them and I cut them in half for the dipping and rolling portion. These are breaded cheese sticks that you bake and eat with tomato sauce. They are a huge hit and lack that fried food problem of the more traditional variety in restaurants. A great snack.

I7 picked the mozzarella sticks. We began by counting them up. Blogger is acting a bit peculiar so pardon the seemingly out of order pictures!

So, the first thing we did was to pick out the snacks we wanted to make. All of the snacks we chose (other than the chocolate chip cookie dough) came from The 30 Day Gourmet. We have had the basic book for years to use for getting meals made ahead of time. There is a whole snack section which I encourage you to check out. If you go to the website and become a member, you'll be able to see some of the recipes (including the mozzarella stix Jana!) The snacks chosen were:

• frozen peanut butter bars
• apple squares
• mozzarella sticks
• snack mix
• chocolate cookies/dough

The next step was to determine the ingredients and to see if any of them were in the grocery store sales flyer. I gave student a copy of the worksheet below. It turns out that none of our ingredients were on sale. There was the first lesson. Often, the basics are not on sale.

Let's Go Shopping

The next step was to use the recipes themselves in the grocery store to determine the cost of the snack. Imagine my children, all equipped with clipboards, walking with me in the grocery store in the late afternoon (as things are picking up with the after work crowd joining us) recording the cost and volume for the ingredients on their list. We would come back to these sheets later on.

The next day, I made these sheets below for the various recipes. I made a chart where given the amounts in the original recipe, the kids had to double, triple, and quadruple the recipe and record it in the chart. This was a great exercise in multiplying fractions and in some conversions.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Multiples

Frozen Peanut Butter Bar Multiples

The original recipes are written out (Click there to see an example of a recipe- that one happens to be fried rice I think) into those large multiple amounts so it was easy to check our answers.

E11 went so far as to determine the cost of the original recipe. He used the price and volume from the product and did the math looking at how much was required of the recipe to determine the total cost of the snack. We were surprised at the initial amount for the frozen peanut butter bars!

This was a terrific exercise in using math in real life ~ living math! We will finish calculating the cost for the rest of the snacks and we'll make them all. Healthy snack right from our freezer and the kids will know the value of the cookie they make compared to the cost of the ones at the store. And they taste better too!

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

Two weeks ago we started a FIAR book we have not done before in honor of a trip we were supposed to have taken a couple weekends ago. The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge is a wonderful little story about a lighthouse on the Hudson River right on Manhattan Island. We had this trip to NYC scheduled earlier this year- another tag along trip with Dan. Unfortunately, we have been all kinds of sick. Even Dan missed three days of work. We had one on the nebulizer, one with a fever keeping her up at night, and one with severe pollen allergies. Though, E11 is on copious allergy meds including an antihistamine for his eyes, his eyes were nearly swollen shut from going outside. So, we've been doing some light schooling and I've been busy taking care of everyone and making sure they are all taking their medicine. So...no trip to New York City this time.

I purchased the FIAR fold n learn to go with this story and we had some fun today putting together the folders for an actual lapbook. I don't always use the file folders so this was a novelty.

We spent some time mapping New York State. It's always nice when we visit our home state with a study. I always take the opportunity to pause and get a good look around so we can report on that for the quarter. I used the Old World Maps from Homeschool in the Woods and I used the state report page from the US Map set. I really like it, but it did challenge the kids to go beyond the state bird and flower. They didn't like that so much. The book below is The United States of America- A State by State Guide.


Our kids love maps. I mean really love maps. They will come to me and ask if they can print them so they can play adventure. How can you refuse that? Print on kids! Map the world!
Both E11 and R9 have designed a New York State board game. E11's is almost done. He's actually waiting on me to cut up some more cards from poster board. I took the time to order the game boards from Bare Books along with some NY stickers. E11's game is called The Truth about New York and is a combination of trivia and real estate activity. You can buy cities as "properties" and instead of building just hotels, you have to make some improvement like parks and museums. His game is well thought out and pretty clever. Once he gets those property cards made, then we need to play it a few times to see how it plays. He's been enjoying the process. I'll be sure to blog on the final product.

More on this study to come!

Workboxes: One Year Later

So, it's been just over a year since the Workbox craze began all over the homeschooling corner of the internet and in our home. I thought it would be a great idea to share how things are going one year later.

Last year, after being introduced to the concept on the FIAR forums, I jumped in with both feet. I was even asked to write an article about them for Heart of the Matter online Magazine. As a side note, I've seen the original picture from that article pop up on other blogs and websites over the last year and it cracks me up- to see our playroom/school room with its paneling splashed across the blogging world. Surprisingly, there is still a low level fervor about them and people are still blogging about "What's in the Workboxes for the Week".

In the article mentioned above I touted the usefulness of the boxes to help the kids have a living checklist and that it's great because everything is laid out ahead of time. I also said we could pull things off the shelf we don't use all the time and kept me in line.

So, what I have I observed about the amazing workbox? Well, several things actually.

• It's hard to keep up with them! Loading up anywhere from 6 to 12 boxes for 4 kids is a lot of prep work to be done daily/nightly.
• You have to be vigilant to keep them clean/have the kids keep them clean. Look below to see "the Messy".
• It's WAY too easy to put busy work in the boxes. I had to really evaluate here. Am I putting this in the box because it is valuable for this time right now? Or am I putting it in the box because this activity fills a box. Or in other words, if I wasn't "filling boxes" is this an activity I would have my kids do?
• We do a lot of our school day together. This fact does not exactly match Sue Patrick's Workbox Philosophy. Workboxes are designed to have kids move throughout their day independently. My kids CAN work independently and do some of their work that way, but we work together on discovery quite a lot. I'll be doing a post on that soon. So, more later on that one.
• The schedule cards are a NIGHTMARE. They do not mesh with my homeschooling philosophy whatsoever. If you are a long time reader, then you can probably imagine this to be true. We do not move through out day in a methodical fashion with each child checking off whatever piece of busy work I put in the box.
  

The Messy- though I give E11 credit for keeping his workbox world together (see left)

The Messier- this shows the woes of little mama maintenance

After the clean up! Every so often we need to spiff up.

R9's boxes- one box is missing. It's her sewing box which I will share with you soon.

The littler boy boxes- I rotate things in and out for J4.

Now you might be thinking that I don't use the workboxes any more. We do use them. They provide a function for us that is very useful and I'm glad we have them. However, we have modified their use for our particular brand of homeschooling. Please note that Sue Patrick is pretty stringent on how the system should be used. She designed the system to meet a need in her homeschool that may or may not be a need in yours. Keep that in mind as you consider workboxes and think about your own.

So then, how DO I use them?

• We store the core subjects we do in one box each- so the older kids have a FIAR box, a math box, geography box, timeline box, writing box, nature study box, a Story of the World box which is used here and there. That covers half the boxes there.
• Each child has a box that pertains to their passion pursuits- drawings, sewing, Magic Treehouse passport badges, buttons for play, paper folding book, their own creative writing, etc.
• I will put an activity in there they haven't done in a while- could be a craft project for the kids, a reminder of a play set to be used that day, book, game, etc.
• I do not use the schedule cards- I have a pattern we use to move through out day and the boxes are set up in that order. So, the kids can walk over there to get materials and bring them to the table for that time. Then when the lesson/activity is complete, they return the materials to the boxes. Herein lies the messy factor. I do not police the putting back of materials and things do get out of control from time to time.

It's been an interesting study for me to reflect on our use of this system. I wanted to use the boxes to make sure I was delivering on all kinds of instruction. I came to realize that the workboxes are school at home. I knew that when I first read about them, but I thought I could use them close to how they were designed and NOT have that effect in our home. I was wrong. Filling the boxes with independent activities for each child- not so much independent from ME but independent from one another, is not congruent with our unit study/work together philosophy. Actually, Sue mentions that in her book. The system, she says, is not really designed for the unit study except for maybe short ones. She's definitely not a unit study person.

The workboxes are not without value at our house, but over the last year I have come to realize how they best fit into our school.

How are things going at your house? Tell us how you manage to fill them every day. Do you have a secret?

April- Already?

Not only is it April, but it's mid-April! An early burst of spring here in upstate NY has brought on E11's tree pollen allergies. We thought we were ready with the antihistamines early, but that proved wrong as his eyes swelled shut. I7 is wheezing, R9's had the fever...we are heading back to the dr today actually. Ok editing to add that we have two more rounds of antibiotics for the kids. I've been making great calls on that lately. No..."it's just a virus" kind of talk. It's the real deal. The Target pharmacist told me to stay away for a while. Yeah...we've been there that much.

In the meantime, baseball season has begun! All three boys are playing and this is the first week of practice. It's rocking my world. The world where dinner is on the table at 6:30pm and now has to be ready at 5:00pm. I haven't completely shifted my afternoon to accommodate this change. Which means rushing out the door moments before practice begins. Good thing the ball fields are a quarter mile away.

R9 has three more sewing shop classes and we've been really enjoying being outdoors with the unseasonably warm weather we've been having.

It also means we only have 3 more homeschool co-op classes this semester. Where has the time gone??

This is a view from the field behind our co-op location. I'm helping to teach a birds class and we went out to observe this past Monday. The class didn't see or hear much. The birds quiet up close to 3pm. However, J4 was given a Popsicle in his 5 Senses class and I couldn't get into the new van with that so we took a walk back to the field. And look what we did find. We heard him and then R9 spotted this Chickadee. What do you think of the Cybershot's images? Not bad...
Remember we were getting a new camera? I think it might be a keeper.

I don't think I've reported on co-op yet...here's what we've been up to since mid-February:

• R9 is part of the homeschool production of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. She has two small parts with two speaking lines. She is the white stag and a member of the witch's army and her speaking line is so heart warming. She taunts Aslan during the stone table scene. Pretty well too. Makes a mama proud.
• E11 is in our First Lego League class- we are teaching the kids more NXT programming to be ready for next year's challenge.
• I7 is taking "Making Things with Stuff" class- the name gets us every time. He's made yarn belts, paper airplanes, and burlap pouches which go perfectly with his newspaper fedora complete with a snakeskin.
• J4 has two classes- playdough class which he loves. They have a new theme each week and he has shared with us many facts that they must talk about with the kids while they mold and he's taking Fun with the Five Senses. He has done a lot of cool exploring in there.
• E11 is also taking Math Games and Puzzles which he thoroughly enjoys. They've been using Family Math Middle School Math and enjoying the challenges with the other kids.
• Finally, R9's other class is Collage Making- it's a class using mixed media to make collages. This involves lots of glue and R is in heaven on earth!

So, it's a busy time especially when you include all the school quarterly reports are due and my MOPS work is off the charts this month. Plus, my commitment with the TOS Crew is drawing to a close next month (thankfully!) and I have quite a few outstanding reviews left to publish in the next 6 weeks.

We've also been doing a lot of fun school- I just haven't had the time to blog about it. But look out...I'm feeling like it's time to get things published!

So, it's April. What has your family been doing?