FlashMaster

FlashMaster: I purchased this when we started homeschooling to help with math drills. The kids thought it was neat, then it ended up on the shelf...until today when Sarah asked for it.

Sarah ended up in multiplication tables today while doing ALEKS (she hasn't mastered addition and subraction) and wanted to use the FlashMaster. Today she realized that 2 times 3 is taking a group of 3 twice. That's awesome!

Mom Reads-Free At Last-The Sudbury Valley School by Daniel Greenberg

Recently I posted about learning math HERE. That's when I put this book on hold and I'm reading it now...a book about the Sudbury Valley school called Free At Last by Daniel Greenberg. Excellent reading, love some of the true life stories! From the Sudbury Valley website:

"Sudbury Valley School is a place where people decide for themselves how to spend their days. Here, students of all ages determine what they will do, as well as when, how, and where they will do it. This freedom is at the heart of the school; it belongs to the students as their right, not to be violated.
The fundamental premises of the school are simple: that all people are curious by nature; that the most efficient, long-lasting, and profound learning takes place when started and pursued by the learner; that all people are creative if they are allowed to develop their unique talents; that age-mixing among students promotes growth in all members of the group; and that freedom is essential to the development of personal responsibility.
In practice this means that students initiate all their own activities and create their own environments. The physical plant, the staff, and the equipment are there for the students to use as the need arises.
The school provides a setting in which students are independent, are trusted, and are treated as responsible people; and a community in which students are exposed to the complexities of life in the framework of a participatory democracy".

Mom Reads-Albert Einstein by Kathleen Krull

Albert Einstein by Kathleen Krull was a delight to read, in fact, I read it in bed one night!

I first read this author in an elementary book published by Scholastic on presidents. I love her writing, but I wouldn't read her to my kids. I totally enjoyed this book!

Sir Ken Robinson On Creativity

My friend Barbie shared this excellent (as usual) presentation by Sir Ken Robinson on institutionalized school and creativity.

If the video below doesn't work, you can go here:
http://youtu.be/hkPvSCq5ZXk

Literature For Lunch-New Lunch Read Aloud-CLICK! A Story About George Eastman by Barbara Mitchell

We just read CLICK! A Story about George Eastman by Barbara Mitchell which was awesome!

Sarah took some scraps of chenille and made old man eyebrows for Black Kitty!

Black Kitty and Baby

Black Kitty and Baby :)

Literature For Lunch-New Lunch Read Aloud-Betsy Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace

So sweet! We are all enjoying the imaginative play of Betsy & Tacy. Betsy Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace.

My Card Shark Daughter

FIRST PHOTO: Wednesday night
SECOND PHOTO: Thursday night

Wednesday night we played four hands of Hearts together after dinner. Sarah SHOT THE MOON! That is difficult to do! We saw it coming as she collected the Queen of Spades and all the hearts. Happy for her but dejected for our scores, the rest of us accepted our 26 points...

THEN

on Friday we played another three hands to finish the game. SHE DID IT AGAIN! We weren't expecting it because WHO SHOOTS THE MOON TWICE IN 7 HANDS OF HEARTS!?! On the very last hand, she led off with the Queen of Spades! Such drama! Smarty pants! Black Kitty tends to distract her while playing, so she perched him on the iPod player to watch.

My daughter is a card shark. In September, she Shot The Moon during Hearts AND when we played 5 hands of poker (5 Card Draw)...she got TWO FLUSHES (and a 3 of a kind!) and won most of the chips! She was DELIGHTED at her good fortune!

Dan Wins Die Siedler von Catan

Daniel LOVES board games (just like his dad!) and this is him winning at Die Siedler von Catan after dinner. FUN game. I was always short on sheep, baa. There's an english version called "Settlers of Catan".

Literature For Lunch-New Lunch Read Aloud-Germ Hunter-A Story About Louis Pasteur by Elaine Marie Alphin

Germ Hunter-A Story About Louis Pasteur by Elaine Marie Alphin was fantastic! We read the entire book in one afternoon and Daniel was RIVETED. He said, "let's read about some more scientists"! AND in the same way we read FINE PRINT on Gutenberg's death day Feb 3rd, there was something significant about Feb 15th in this book!

Dan's Valentine Lego Design

 

This is a scene from Daniel's most recent design on Lego Digital Designer for Valentine's Day...Daddy is giving Mommy pans! Cute!

Yum?

Sarah's food experiments...LOTS of hot chili sauce...it smells really bad and clears the sinuses! Thankfully, she moved on to sewing before COOKING it!

Sarah's Kitty Pillows

Sarah enjoyed using my sewing machine to make the turquoise & pink cat pillow but stitched the beach kitties on her machine. She loves stuffing them when the sewing is completed!

Learning Math With ALEKS

I keep this blog for me as a reminder of our days and weeks and months and years. It is such a delight to look back over the photos of my precious children and reminisce about their unique, creative learning processes.

I went to college to become a math teacher hoping to change the world for good by helping students ENJOY math and see it in all its' practicality. My husband has a BS in Math so you can see that we LIKE math in our house. I find that I'm attracted to crafts that involve lots of math...formulating recipes for soy candles and lip balm, crochet, sewing and quilting. It is a good day in my mind, if I have to use algebra to solve for an unknown in my measurements!

Basic life skills include communication and computation. At the core, communication requires reading and writing and computation involves basic mathematical functions. In the grand scheme of life, a person needs these tools to move their education forward. The how and when are debated feverishly throughout humanity. 

We started our homeschool journey under the heavy load of a lot of curriculum which included a math curriculum. Recently, I realized the repetitive worksheets were really just busy work and set them aside for a time.

Shortly thereafter, a friend mentioned ALEKS. I'd heard about it when some friends used ALEKS to pass required college level classes so I thought it was only for advanced math. I was so wrong! I just wanted to post about ALEKS because though I limit screen-based activities, this is really worthwhile in my opinion.

I signed up for the 60 day free trial. I told Daniel the only requirement for the 60 days was to visit ALEKS everyday and do a minimum of one problem. He has done that-and MORE. In a few short weeks, he's spent over six self-motivated hours of interactive, self-assessing math with a high level in enjoyment.

Here's what I like about ALEKS:
-FREE 60 day trial (thank you!)
-student decides what to work on
-knowledge base divided into "pies" (student selects topics to explore)
-no boring explanations or lessons (if the student misses a question, they click the HELP button to find out how to get the right answer, "reverse engineering" is a great way to learn!)
-no lifeless, repetitive drills

I expect to sign up for the paid subscription when the trial is over. ALEKS offers a way for homeschoolers to master math concepts in a student-directed way that I appreciate.

Daniel's Lego Blacksmith Shop

These photos are precious to me. When we were doing the phone interview, Barbie suggested we take photos of the kids' work to post on Facebook. Rachel swiftly started taking photos for the live discussion.

Daniel has been on the LOLACHE Kids Forum looking at other LOL kids' projects. He is very interested in Peter L's smithy. We checked out some library books on blacksmithing but I don't think they've been read yet.

When Marilyn asked me to bring some of the kids' work for the phone interview, this Lego smithy was one of several Lego items that Daniel selected to bring.  I would have never really noticed it in all the Lego creations he builds except that it was selected to show Miss Marilyn.

This work is significant to me!  This is an official "product" of learning! I blogged about Daniel's interests and some concerns regarding his learning process. But here is EVIDENCE that something IS germinating in there!

And I LOVE how those lightsabers came in handy in his smithy design! Love the overhead light, too!

(photos by Rachel Poling)

Phone Interview With Miss Marilyn

Marilyn Howshall will be hosting live telephone conference calls for Lifestyle of Learning™ Beginnings Interviews and today I got to be her guest!

I have received SO much from Marilyn. Because of her sacrificial ministry to me, I've wanted to give something back to her. When I first met her, she was concerned about her fingernails. As a professional, licensed nail tech, I saw an opportunity to bless her and have been doing her nails for the past several months. She will often bring something to bless the kids and we often discuss their learning processes.

One day, she helped me with the kids' writing which I blogged about here.

This simple instruction has made the world of difference in our table time and is what we discussed on the phone call.

When we started homeschooling, I used a VERY intense writing curriculum, then we moved into copywork and recently I was printing a photo and having the kids write three sentences about the photo. This turned out to be busy work so I stopped.

In its place, we are doing "real life writing"...mostly thank you notes since Christmas. I'm having the kids write a rough draft of the thank you and then copy that onto stationery. We've been focusing on doing their BEST WORK. Quality over quantity.

Marilyn guided me to proofread and correct their real life writing with a red pencil. She had me explain to the kids to expect the red pencil and it was a tool to HELP them and not to fear it. I am to not just leave them to write alone, but be in the process with them and take a detailed look at their work. I'm looking for proper letter formation (is this too high? is it round enough? is it well formed?). I'm looking for proper punctuation, grammar and spelling.

You can see a sample of Dan's writing before I started correcting and helping him and after we started with the red pencil. He grips his pencil so tight that his hand gets sore quickly so we've had discussions about how to help reduce the pain when writing.

In public school, the kids are expected to write creatively AND work on their handwriting at the same time starting very early. This is MADNESS and contributed to Daniel hating to write.
Next month, Marilyn will have me as a guest again and we'll discuss our progress. Stay tuned.

Let's Play Plushies

Sarah would play plushies 24/7 if she didn't need to spend time eating and sleeping. The kids have recently started playing in earnest TOGETHER. LOVE their elaborate plots and cities!

Just Do The Math Article

Since we started homeschooling, I've read a few books by David H. Albert. There was a chapter in “Have Fun. Learn Stuff. Grow. Homeschooling and the Curriculum of Love” that fascinated me because it was about math.

An excerpt from the chapter:

"I had just explained how the Sudbury Valley School (www.sudval.org), a democratically managed, child-directed learning environment that has been around for almost 40 years, has demonstrated repeatedly that a child could learn math – all of it grades K through 12 – in eight weeks. Average (if there is such a thing), normal (never met one), healthy children, scores of them, learned it all, leading to admissions to some of the leading colleges and universities in the nation".

EIGHT WEEKS? Only 20 contact hours? I've never heard of such a thing. The article went on to describe how this was done.

Reading this gave me a huge sense of relief that there's not one exclusive formula for learning math. It also gave me "permission" to reconsider how and when my children will learn computation skills. This is very freeing! Thank you SO much David!

Black Kitty Mummified!

Black Kitty has now done it ALL!

Literature For Lunch-New Lunch Read Aloud-Fine Print A Story About Johann Gutenberg by Joann Johansen Burch

FINE PRINT-A Story about Johann Gutenberg by Joann Johansen Burch captivated Daniel. We took three days to read this book and what great discussion we had! Ironically, we finished the book on February 3, 2012 and Gutenberg's "death day" is considered to be February 3, 1468. We finished this book on his "death day" 544 years later!

Literature For Lunch-New Lunch Read Aloud-George Washington by Ingri d'Aulaire

Because we enjoyed Benjamin Franklin, we read George Washington today by Ingri & Edgar Parin d'Aulaire.