My One Day Confiscation Policy

I came into the boys room just as we were starting our morning clean up time to find Alan changing pants.  When I inquired as to the reason for this wardrobe change, he informed me he wanted to wear shorts with a pocket.  


Fair enough.


Then I learned the reason for his pocket need: a toy cell phone.  And, of course, cell phones belong in pockets.  At least around here they do.


As we worked our way through cleanup time, it seemed every time I looked up Alan was fiddling with his cell phone instead of the task at hand, so I told him to leave it in his pocket or I was going to take it.  I felt a little harsh with that statement, more like a school-teacher than a mama.  But in case you haven't heard, wishy-washiness isn't exactly recommended in parenting, so I let my edict stand.


We got through the rest of our cleanup and a good bit of school before I saw the phone again.  Turns out Alan's phone was too big for his 4T pockets and kept sliding out.


Alan saw me observing his trouble, and bless his little heart, he laid his phone up on the counter where I was making lunch:


"Here mama - you can just take it.  It won't stay in my pocket."


Thank goodness  I knew he was tired of messing with it - otherwise that sweet submissiveness might have been just too much for my heart to take!


I tried to talk him in to keeping his phone, but it sat there on the counter for a better part of the afternoon while Alan happily went about his business... cell phone free.


I sure love that boy!


(And I am pretty certain there is a lesson here about laying down our burdens instead of letting them become distractions, hm?)

Weekly Wrap Up - Week 4

This week we:


 - Read about Grandma Moses and looked at some of her work. (Tuesday was her birthday).  While this attempt at an artist study didn't seem to grab my boys in and of itself (am I doing something wrong?), it did inspire them to make art of their own.  Dale built a bridge with his blocks, sketched it, and then painted his sketch, adding lots of color and a good bit of detail.  So, whether he fell in love with Grandma Moses or not, it was time well spent.  And we kept the books about her to do some more next week, so stay tuned.


- Went around looking academic:

 - Learned about synonyms.  And how to pronounce the word 'synonym'.


 - Put up a 13 ft model of the solar system.  


 - Listened to Dvorák.  His birthday was Wednesday.


 - Read about the sun and stars and constellations. 


 - Did NOT go outside to do any nifty sun / shadow experiments or observe constellations due to days and days of rain courtesy of a tropical storm / hurricane.  Where will that thing be when we're studying weather in a month or so?  That's what I want to know.


- Did some baby-wearing:

 - Made soap bubble paintings.


 - Read many, many books, including the story of William Tell and the first few chapters of book 1 from the Sugar Creek Gang.


 - Totally slacked on planned preschool activities.  Alan stayed plenty busy doing cool stuff, but I left his column of my planning sheet blank and filled it in as we went.  In other words, I didn't plan.  I just wrote down what we did and then checked it off.  Not sure I want to keep this up long term, but I also know he wasn't enthusiastic enough about some of the sit-down stuff I was giving him to make it worth all my planning and prep time.  We'll find our groove, I'm sure.  It's just going to take a few weeks.


 - Abandoned our detailed schedule I spent weeks planning.  Yep.  After 3 weeks of living by the clock I had enough of being the grumpy drill-sergeant and only posted a list of what needed to be done.  


Two main results from that:
#1 - Mama Buffalo was much more relaxed.
#2 - We didn't finish up our list of things to do until a couple of hours later in the afternoon.  I am ok with that because, well, see #1.


I am torn about what to do next week.  I like the structure of a schedule, but I don't like the pressure of following it.  I think the only reason we got away with tossing the schedule this week was that after following it for 3 weeks and one day (Tuesday) we were able to coast the remaining 3 days.  I imagine that if we leave the schedule completely we'll end up in a downward slide into unproductiveness.  Of course, the worse that could happen is that we start scheduling again for a while, right?


Do you schedule your days by the clock, or follow a checklist?  How do you make sure everything needed gets done, and in a timely fashion?

Lesson of the day:

When a kid-craft blogger...

...tells you a project is going to be messy...

... believe her!

(But go ahead and do it anyway!)

The Solar System in our Hallway

My boy is a visual, hands-on learner.


I, apparently, am a slow learner, because I am still always pleasantly surprised when projects like today's resonate so well with him.

Gathered 'round our book.

For our model we didn't worry about the accuracy of the size of the planets.  We made Jupiter the biggest and Mercury and Pluto the smallest (yes, we counted Pluto as a planet) and arranged the rest in the middle.

From the sun on the left, through Jupiter on the right edge.

Where we got out our measuring tape was for relative distance from the sun.


Handily, we had the sun Alan made a couple of weeks ago when he was learning about creation, so we started with that.


From there, we measured: 
2 inches for Mercury
3 inches for Venus
4 inches for Earth
6 inches for Mars
1 foot, 9 inches for Jupiter
3 feet, 2 inches for Saturn
6 feet, 5 inches for Uranus
10 feet, 1 inch for Neptune
13 feet, 3 inches for Pluto


Our hallway is the longest stretch of wall in the house, and since we're planning on painting it sooner or later anyway, we just stuck our planets up with scotch tape.

Not only did this visual help us get just a tiny bit better understanding of the vastness of our solar system, it turned out to be a fantastically fun play scene.  

As crowded as it was near the sun, look how far Pluto is!

Long after I had seen all I needed to, we still had astronauts in taxis and all other manner of spacecraft zooming up and down the hall, to infinity and... well... you know the rest.

-------------------------------------------------------

The idea for this project came from a great little book from our library:

This little winner is copyright 1987.  In it you will find facts about the sun and each of the planets in our solar system.  Their orbits, sizes, etc.  You will not find any nonsense about big bangs, the passage of billions of years, or anything else of the sort.  While it would be great to find such a factual book that also includes the true creation of the solar system, after sorting through so many big-bang-books I found even the neutrality of this one refreshing!

Weekly Wrap Up - Week 3

We've finished 3 weeks of school.  Really?  Just 3?  Feels like it ought to be 6!


Dale covered Exodus and Leviticus in Bible this week.  Monday, after reading an overview of the first 18 chapters of Exodus, I had him imagine what he would experience for each of the 5 senses if he had been there.  My favorite was his answer for sense of touch: darkness you can feel (9th plauge - Exodus 10:21).  


Monday also began our unit on bridges.


Alan learned about Adam and Eve this week and did lots of activities with the letter 'A'.

Tuesday I got out a handful of toothpicks for Alan to practice making A's.  We ended up spelling lots of words out of toothpicks, and seeing Dale get into that along-side us reminded me to get him away from pencil and paper more.  So when spelling test time came around on Thursday, we got out our letter tiles and Dale spelled his words that way.


That wasn't the only one of Alan's activities Dale was interested in.  Our number-hop game intended for a preschooler to have fun identifying his numbers turned into a great way for a 2nd grader to practice his math facts!

In science we started our unit on space.  This week we covered the planets in our solar system.  Each day I had Dale read a few selections from the plethora of space books from the library and our own collection.  He narrated information on 3 planets a day.  On Thursday I typed up his narrations and printed them for him to illustrate and make into a book.


After hearing Dale tell about Venus having acid in its atmosphere, it occurred to me that he had no idea what acid is, so we did a basic introduction with the vinegar / egg experiment:

One egg.  Add vinegar.

See the bubbles?

They do!

This morning our egg was soft!  We're going to let it keep sitting over the weekend to see if it will get down to just the membrane, like it is supposed to.  


As always, Friday meant library day.  We sorted our books into 'keep' and 'take back' and headed off with our list for next week.  As usual, I checked out more than I brought back!


Dale, however, missed library day this week.  He has spent the day helping Gramps mend fences, literally.  Knowing my bundle of energy and future young man spent his day out working with Gramps makes me glad we follow a four-day week, and incredibly thankful for homeschool!

Building Bridges

A social studies, geography, math, (and more) unit.

Our social studies article for this week, Building Bridges of Hope, was cut from Parade magazine, the little insert that comes in many Sunday newspapers.


In it we read about Ken Frantz and his organization, Bridges to Prosperity, that travels the world building (what else?) bridges in key places.  The bridges built by Frantz's organization allow people in remote and poor areas to more easily access medical help, trade, and other necessities.  These bridges literally change lives.


These bridges also provided a week full of stuff for us to learn!


Some of the following ideas we have already done, others we will do as we finish out our week.  Still others would be ideal for older kids or a longer, more intensive unit.


Science /  Math:
In addition to the Parade article and the Bridges to Prosperity website, we also checked out a bridge book from our library.  It gives a beginning look at bridge types and the science behind their construction.
Search Amazon.com for bridges


We worked on building our own bridges the high-tech way after downloading free bridge design software from West Point.  It's a little advanced for Dale, but he thinks it's fun anyway.  Who am I kidding?  It's over my head and I still think it's fun.  I'm determined to build a bridge that won't collapse!  This software would be great for a highschooler or anyone interested in engineering.  The website even offers an annual bridge-building contest!


After reading the bridge book and practicing with the software, I'm planning on getting out our wooden blocks this afternoon to see what kind of bridges we can build with them, too.


Geography
For geography, I printed a world map (with countries).  Together we read the article through again and identified each country in which Bridges to Prosperity has built a bridge.  Consulting our jumbo world atlas, we colored the countries with bridges on our map.  We also used this time to discuss the continents.


Missions
Next we will research and find out what missionaries our denomination has in each of those countries.  We will take a moment to mark them on our map and pray for them.


Writing
If Dale was a little older, I would have him write a story from the viewpoint of a village child, telling the excitement of the bridge builders coming or how he will be able to use the bridge in his own life.  Or maybe a news story about bridge built by Bridges to Prosperity (you can read about all their bridges on their website).


History
This unit would be great to learn about historic bridges in the US or around the world.  There are so many out there!


Art
To finish up our mini-unit on bridges, I'm thinking we will choose a picture of a bridge (either one from Bridges to Prosperity or a famous one) and draw it, adding in materials like toothpicks, string, etc to create the bridges.


I know we have only scratched the surface of what could be done with a unit on bridges.  We may have to visit the topic again someday!  If so, this website is full of lesson plan links and ideas, or a simple google search pulls up a multitude of ideas!


What bridge ideas have I missed?  Do you have any favorite unit studies?

I would've blogged today....

...but I had a nap instead.


I'm not usually a napper, but I couldn't resist.  Two of my three were asleep, and it was raining.


It hasn't rained in weeks!  And to make it even better, the rain was punctuated with occasional faint rumbles of thunder.  Mmmm....


It was a nice nap.


Speaking of naps...


This little guy likes his two-a-day naps.  This is how he woke up from one earlier this week:

See that hand print right under his chin?  I wonder if that hand was tingly when he woke up.


Are you a napper?  How do you like yours?