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.