Tag: homeschooling

Posted in art, family life

nature walk in the neighborhood

Posted on by kristinabean

Sometimes we drift along in a repetition of the same old activities – reading, playing out back, building Legos, etc. – and sometimes I have a sudden idea to do something new (or forgotten and recycled). I’ve found that often just a small taste of novelty can make an activity seem exciting and engaging for the kids, so I can come up with iterations on a theme when I’m not bursting with enough creativity to imagine something completely new! For example, today, as everyone was ambling around not sure of what to do, I decided we should take advantage of the beautiful Arizona spring weather by going on a walk. Then, I looked around the kitchen and saw the empty egg carton in the recycle bin, and had an epiphany. Instead of just walking, which we do fairly frequently, we could walk with an egg carton each, and use each of the twelve small compartments to collect a different small natural treasure.

We had a few difficulties (Limerick collected a clump of dirt and it disintegrated in his carton, and then he found a thirteenth treasure and couldn’t decide how to make it fit; Aubade got all the way through the walk without filling her carton), but overall all three kids had a really good time exploring the neighborhood with a fresh goal in mind. We found dappled arugula-like weeds, and wild red lettuce, and juniper cones under a neighbor’s tree; palm fronds (which they cut small enough to fit in the egg carton), huge black prickly seed pods, and petals from our own Hong Kong orchids; pink rocks, flakes of clay, and small spherical ficus seeds.

When we arrived back at the house I had another epiphany. We had a huge piece of paper currently lying on the floor, having just been taken down from the wall after serving another purpose, which I spread out on the wooden patio table. This was our canvas; our treasures were the medium of our art.

Rondel instantly knew that he wanted to create a tree with his treasures (he supplemented his small egg carton collection with several large objects from our yard, like the grapefruit and the dried broccoli leaf):

Limerick started by setting his treasures one by one onto the paper, moving them around semi-randomly until he noticed the shape of a person forming; he then added ground, and a sun, and then an avalanche starting to fall on the person’s head… it became quite the story!

the avalanche and sun are not visible here, just the little person with ground beneath their feet. Their legs are in such a wide stance because they are running to escape the avalanche!

Aubade thought Limerick had an excellent idea and copied it, avalanche and all 🙂 But her person looked quite different, as she had different treasures to use and her own interpretation to lend to the concept.

We played around with the art a bit more after the initial creations – Limerick made a rocket ship using rocks from the yard, and Rondel took apart his tree and made a person of his own – but I think the nicest thing about the whole experience was realizing how much natural beauty was waiting in our own city neighborhood for us to discover and explore. We just had to look in a different way.

Posted in learning together, musings

learning together: from history to current events

Posted on by kristinabean

Rondel and I have been slowly making our way through Joy Hakim’s wonderful series A History of US, an American history narrative that manages to be both honest about our nation’s flaws and proud of her successes at a level that children can understand. We’re on the third book now, watching the 13 colonies gradually coalesce into a single nation, and so far we’ve encountered quite a few striking dualities: religious persecution and the pursuit of religious freedom; the desire for liberty and the acceptance of slavery; the mingling of cultures and traditions combined with vitriolic racism. We’ve seen people leave England to be able to practice their faith freely (as Rondel commented, when will those kings ever learn that laws won’t change what people believe?) – and then create governments equally as intolerant of dissent. We’ve seen how European settlers as a whole used and abused the Native Americans they encountered, and how they built their economic success on the backs of unpaid labor.

He’s six, it’s his first time sailing through the choppy waters of history, and a lot of it is going to go over his head or be remembered in only the most general of ways – but the concept of slavery has been probably the most jarring and concerning element to him. He asked me why one group of people would think it was ok to treat another group of people that way, and all I could say was that people do a lot of horrible things because of greed and the love of power – that people did, and still do, attempt to convince themselves that another group of people is less than human or deserving of less dignity and justice if doing so will make their lives easier or more profitable in some way. We talked about how the consequences of those horrible parts of history echo down to the present time: how difficult it is to ever fully eradicate that toxic way of thinking, and how generational disadvantages persist unless deliberate work is done to counter the wrongs of the past. We talked about the privilege that he will have as a white man, not because there is anything innately superior about being one, but because of those historical roads our nation has traveled – and how that privilege comes with the responsibility to seek justice and equity for those to whom the trajectory of history has not been so kind. Which all sounds pretty intense for a six year old, but it flowed naturally from what we were reading (especially since he is very sensitive to injustice against others) and I think it’s one of those conversations that has to be had throughout life in age-appropriate ways.

And with all of this fresh in my mind, watching Hamilton for the first time thanks to DisneyPlus, I was able to see the diversity of the performers in a way I don’t know if I would have before. The characters’ races are not historically accurate, but I honestly think it is better that way – more thought-provoking, more eye-opening. We are so used to seeing our history in the color white – which is in our present culture the color of privilege. But those revolutionaries, while still racially privileged at the time, were looked upon with scorn and contempt by the British government for being colonists and “provincials.” Many of them were poor, working their way up the ladder of opportunity in a way that wouldn’t have been possible in England; many of them were the unwanted refuse of London seeking a place to thrive in a new world; many of them professed a faith that differed from the official Church of England and had fled from persecution there. They were a motley crew, to use the expression: their government saw them as a source of profit, as second-class, rather than as full citizens to whom full rights ought to be given. In our modern culture, showing us the revolutionaries as black and brown helps remind us of those historical truths. And it beckons to its audience with a call of hope: if the second-class citizens of Britain, the outcast and oppressed, could fight for liberty and justice against a “global superpower” and succeed, then just maybe the oppressed peoples in our nation today (most prominently people of color) have a chance to establish more perfect justice and liberty for themselves as well.

So study history well. Notice the parallels between the present and the past; follow the pathways that led from then to now. Whether you’re six like Rondel, thirty-one like me, or any other age entirely, there are stories to learn, connections to make, and hope and wisdom to be found for shaping a more perfect future.

Posted in family life

socialization and social distancing

Posted on by kristinabean

As a homeschool mom with autism and social anxiety, some of my greatest parenting worries revolve around social skill development – making friends, navigating a variety of social situations, participating in classes and activities with other people, and so on. I worry that I’m avoiding things that are beneficial for the kids because of my own anxiety; I worry that they aren’t going to be able to make close friends and have the incredible blessing of loyal and persistent friendship; I worry that they’re doomed to be awkward and lonely because of me; I worry that I’m not doing enough to help them engage with other people and become familiar with social norms.

But now, in this season, all that weight is temporarily lifted: because everyone is supposed to be at home, and all the classes and activities are shut down anyways. It’s such a relief not to have those worries pressing down on me! And it is so beautiful, in a quiet and peaceful way, to be able to devote this time to cultivating our own family relationships and creating an atmosphere of love and contentment in our own home, without the constant nagging voice whispering that I should be doing something more, something else, something better.

I’m not sure how I’m going to phase back into social endeavors over the next few months. My default preference is to stay home with occasional trips to parks, pools, and libraries; my default inner response is that my default preference should generally be overruled as being most likely defective in some way. (Obviously this is a cause of some internal tension…). But I hope that as the social acceptability of outings and personal interaction increases, I am able to remember the goodness and value of time spent at home as a family and not automatically bow to the cultural pressure that says more (activities, acquaintances, experiences, etc.) is necessarily better. I hope that I will be able to find the path that is best for our family – with all of our neurological differences – instead of trying to fit someone else’s notion of what we should be doing or aiming for.

Posted in learning together

learning together: erupting citrus!

Posted on by kristinabean

Inspired by one of Limerick’s class experiments at our co-op, we spent an afternoon watching baking soda and citric acid react explosively in our kitchen 🙂

Limerick applying the baking soda to the lemon! (and his shirt, lol)

One thing I really liked about the way his co-op teacher presented the baking soda/lemon juice reaction was that she asked a lot of questions designed to help the kids come up with hypotheses and logically critique those hypotheses. Each lemon volcano had three components: the lemon, the food coloring (to make it look more like lava!), and the baking soda. So she asked them what they thought made the eruption happen, for example, and when a lot of the kids said the baking soda, she pointed out that the baking soda wasn’t making fizzy bubbles when it was all by itself in the bowl!

Limerick at co-op, right after adding the baking soda to his lemons.

So when we replicated and expanded upon the experiment at home (Rowan was so jealous that Limerick got to do it at co-op and he didn’t!), I tried to ask similar leading questions. We also decided to test other citrus fruits with the same reaction, so I had the kids think about the differences between the fruits and guess which would make the biggest reaction beforehand, so we could compare our hypotheses with our results.

To my surprise, the two types of oranges we tested had drastically different results. The big navel orange was even less reactive than I’d expected, while the small juicing orange was almost as explosive as the lemon! The grapefruits were also quite dramatic, being overripe and thus extremely juicy and very fun to squeeze everywhere to create great “lava flows” of fizzy reactive liquid. I do think the lemons were still the most reactive, although the results were not anything like quantitative 😛

While we didn’t draw chemical diagrams and get into the atomic reason acids and bases react, we did have a lot of fun exploring the reaction itself! It’s such an easy and exciting way to see how different types of substances can interact.

Posted in learning together

learning together: biomes

Posted on by kristinabean

While the kids were playing together, I set up an activity for the next lull in their imagination. Pulling out two of our giant whiteboards, I quartered them and placed a biome card (from our Waseca materials) into each of the eight sections: Oceans, Wetlands, Tropical Forests, Temperate Forests, Grasslands, Desert, Mountains, Polar Regions. Pulling out the box of toy animals, I began sorting them into the biomes: zebras in Grasslands, tigers in Tropical forests, dolphins in Oceans.

It wasn’t long before Rondel came out and was instantly engaged, asking if he could help sort the animals. So we sorted together, talking about which biomes would make the most sense for animals which are domesticated, for example, or adapted for a range of habitats. When we had at least a few animals in each biome, I brought out the biome question and answer cards.

There were six questions altogether (asking about temperature, moisture, soil, plants, animals, and humans), and each one had an answer for each biome, so Rondel’s task was to match each answer to the correct biome after I read the card. He only needed help on one or two of the cards, and showed a good conceptual understanding of how the environment differs between biomes, how plants and animals have adapted to different biomes, and how humans have interacted with biomes in different ways (both positive and negative).

The pictures show the animal question and answer cards; I thought that matched best with the animals in their biome quadrants! You may notice Rondel added some people to the biomes also, and split the polar animals into Arctic and Antarctic subsets 🙂

I noticed that our animal representation was heavily skewed towards African grasslands and oceans; the Waseca teacher’s guide recommended using animals cutout from magazines, which would increase the diversity, but I didn’t have any that I was willing to cut up. I may just need to buy a big batch of old National Geographics or ZooBooks off of Ebay – old magazines can be really useful craft and learning supplies!

This activity was a good summary of the information we’ve learned about biomes as well as a good overview before diving into more detail on any one area; I think we’ll explore animal adaptations next but I have a lot of ideas.

Posted in wwlw

learning to love math

Posted on by kristinabean

Rondel never took to the “3 R’s” of education quite as naturally as Limerick (most people don’t, honestly), though he is an information sponge for the things that interest him, which have throughout his life been mostly science-related. We’d tried a couple of different approaches to learning and practicing math before I came across the Life of Fred curriculum (and I don’t even remember where, or I would definitely send them my thanks!).

Life of Fred is very, very different from any other math curriculum I’ve used. Every math concept is introduced in the context of a story about Fred Gauss, a five-year-old math professor (yes, it’s strange, but you have to just roll with it), and the end of each short (ridiculous, hilarious, bizarre) chapter has a few practice questions that work in both new and old concepts. So kids reading through the stories begin to see math as something useful, lovable, and even beautiful as it snakes its way through Fred’s everyday life (and his very odd adventures). And the stories will have kids laughing out loud along the way, if they are at all like Rondel (and myself!).

The elementary series for Life of Fred starts with Apples and Butterflies, which are both kindergarten level, and goes from there – through decimals, fractions and percents, through pre-algebra and algebra, and all the way through calculus (which was actually the first book the author wrote, oddly enough). While the books are published by Polkadot Publishing, I couldn’t find a way to purchase directly through them and ordered from ZTwist Books instead (free shipping!).

We are just beginning Cats now, having spent an average of 3-4 weeks each on the first two books. Rondel has been asking me to read Life of Fred all the time – more than I can right now with my lingering sore throat, and more than Aubade has patience for at times – and I can see his confidence with math growing week by week (we’ve been using the books for over two months by now). He will now tell people that math is his favorite because of Fred; he doesn’t get overwhelmed by basic addition and subtraction problems; he is starting to understand analog time-telling; he is getting better at remembering the days of the week and months of the year; he will skip-count for fun; and he is learning to notice patterns and sets in the things around him. The practice problems force him to focus as he has to recall information and use concepts in new contexts, but there are never so many in a set that he can’t make his way through them all.

In short, I am so glad we found these books and highly recommend them for anyone else, particularly those kids who are struggling with a traditional approach to mathematics.

Posted in family life, sqt, Uncategorized

{sqt} – because my kids are weird and wonderful

Posted on by kristinabean
  1. No one is ever interested if I offer to read them a book, but if I sit down on the couch and start reading aloud I am covered in children within two minutes.
  2. Aubade currently refuses to be called anything except her first name. Literally. To the extent that she takes offense at being called beautiful, or helpful, or big, or little, or tough, or silly. I’ll say, “I love you little girl!” and she’ll reply, “I’m not a little girl, I’m an Aubade!” The exception is if she’s playing a pretend game, in which case she is usually a little alligator and objects to being called anything other than that…
Aubade twirling in a blue dress with a pink lei around her head and a ponytail sticking up
  1. Everything is fair game to become part of a Solar System. Countless rocks have been pressed into service as various planets; all the balls and balloons in the house have been used multiple times; and Limerick and I even built a version using pattern blocks the other day. The most amusing was when we went to the grocery store and the boys planned out a whole Solar System using the different varieties of pumpkin in the fall display… I think they were inspired by the pumpkin that was so big they could have curled up inside it, which made a rather stunning Sun 🙂
Mercury is the single hexagon block on the far left, followed by the other seven planets in order. The tiny green triangle in between Mars and Jupiter is the dwarf planet Ceres.
  1. If I clean up the brain flakes, so all three jars are full and there are no more random pieces lying around on the floors, the kids will pounce upon them like a tiger on its prey and immediately dump them all back out and begin building as if the world contained nothing else. They usually stay cleaned up for no more than ten minutes, and that’s if I attempt to hide them…
  2. Aubade has quite a unique fashion sense. This morning she was wearing an overall dress with no shirt underneath but a skirt instead. The other day I came home from work to find her dressed in pants and a t-shirt with a tunic tank top and shorts layered over it. She also is very adamant about wearing socks and usually has at least six out around the house at any one time (she likes to layer the socks, too, on her hands and her feet).
Slightly blurry image of Aubade in pink heart pants, orange monster shorts, pink t-shirt, and sparkly navy tank, with a pink tiara on her head and a purple wild tied around her ankle. She never holds still for pictures…
  1. Rondel must be approaching some sort of growth spurt, because he is eating ridiculous amounts of food. The other day I roasted four medium potatoes and four large carrots and he ate all of them, plus two pieces of toast, just for breakfast. Another day I made a batch of waffles (whole grains, loaded with carrots, an extra egg for more protein) and he ate four of them (I was full after two, for comparison). And he tells me all day long that he is hungry. I’m starting to be nervous about how much he’ll be able to eat as a teenager!
  2. Limerick asked me, after seeing a selfie my mom took with Rondel when he was a baby, how she could take the picture and be in it at the same time. This was the result. Pretty much sums up how good life is with these crazy awesome kids 🙂
Limerick hugely smiling with his mouth open wide and his eyes shut tight, leaning on my shoulder.
Posted in family life

lift off!

Posted on by kristinabean

Our biomes curriculum started off by introducing our planet’s location in the Solar System – it’s kind of important, after all, since the sun plays such a crucial role in shaping climate, determining the seasons, and maintaining life. It’s intended to be just a brief overview, before diving down more deeply into Earth itself, but both Rondel and Limerick have become completely, utterly captivated by outer space.

Limerick in particular has attacked it with his rather academic and obsessive bent, spending hours poring through images of the sun and the planets (always in order, from Mercury outward, including the dwarf planets), asking me to read and reread the books we have in the house, getting out the play dough day after day to model the solar system and using the kitchen scale to make his planets as close to an accurate scale as he can. (Since it’s finicky in its old age and won’t switch from standard to metric units, he’s gotten some practice working with pounds and ounces as well. It is rather irritating when something needs to be 1000 times larger than something else and you have to divide by 16 to get the correct number of pounds.)

 

(I may be to blame for his obsession with accurate scaling… for our first solar system activity, we made a scaled model of the solar system with play dough, based on NASA’s mass estimations for each planet, and measured out the appropriate distances between the planets so we could set them up down the hallway. Jupiter was so much larger that we ended up making a new double batch of play dough, using it all for Jupiter, and scaling everything else in relation to that.)

From top left, clockwise: all eight planets before placing them relative to the “sun” (the bookshelf); the whiteboard with calculations (and on the bottom a comparison of Jupiter’s mass in kg to various family members in kg); Jupiter looking out toward the other gas giants; Neptune looking in toward the “sun”; Jupiter looking in toward the inner planets.

Over the weekend, both boys decided to make paper models of the solar system as well, not to scale, but showing all the planets and the sun. They even wrote labels for each planet, which is the most handwriting they’ve ever done at one time! (Rondel’s picture is on the left and Limerick’s is on the right – Rondel included Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, and Limerick gave his sun quite a few solar flares.)

They’ve also been asking to read from our (admittedly small but at least quality) space book collection at bedtime and throughout the day. We’ve been cycling through Our Solar System by Seymour Simon (published in 1992, and lacking a lot of newer information), The Magic School Bus: Lost in the Solar System (published in 1990, so the same problem), and Astronomica by Fred Watson (published in 2011, absolutely massive, with amazing images and detailed information which I have to skim through to read at a level the boys can understand).

I’m planning on finding some supplementary books from the library about different space missions and picture book biographies of people involved in space exploration, so we can incorporate some history into our space study as well. We’ve already made a timeline with the lives of family members and individuals from books we’ve read, so it would be natural to include important dates in space exploration. Since ASU has a large space exploration exhibit and 3D show open to the public, I’ll probably try to incorporate that as well. And while Limerick has already used math with all the scaling he’s done, I’d like to find a way to show the boys how much math was used in designing spacecraft, planning missions, and charting the orbits of planets – Rondel enjoys math far more when it involves a topic he’s interested in. It might not have been my original plan for the beginning of the school year, but what’s the point in homeschooling, after all, if you can’t be flexible and use your children’s interests to motivate their learning?

Posted in sqt

{sqt} – july quick takes: getting ready for school

Posted on by kristinabean
  1. School starts early here in the valley, and while we’re not tied to any specific school schedule, I’m feeling ready to settle into more routine and structure than we’ve had in our (very fun and very busy) summer so far. Actually, for the first time in my life I’m creating tentative weekly and monthly schedules and will be trying to keep track of things in my own custom planner! I have never been able to maintain a planner for more than a week, so we’ll see how this goes.
  2. The most exciting part of preparing for school has been making a list of all the books I want to buy 🙂 My husband will probably arch his eyebrows at me and comment about our lack of shelf space, but I currently have forty-five books on my list and I’m sure I’ll come up with more!
  3. I’m also thinking of purchasing a science curriculum – I found one that is about climate and biomes from a Montessori background, and while I definitely can’t buy all the physical props to go with it, the curriculum itself still looks like a solid introduction to those topics (very beautifully and thoughtfully laid out). Rondel moved up to a full-day scholarship amount through our state’s ESA program, so we have funds to cover more than speech therapy this year and I may be a bit over-excited about it…
  4. Rondel turned six this month! I haven’t uploaded any of the pictures from my camera yet, but he had a great party with both sides of the family present. He has so much energy now, and so much creativity, and such a love of nature. He’s also starting to decode words and is willing to spend more time practicing writing, so I think we have a pretty solid foundation going into the school year.IMG_3056
  5. One of my other major areas of focus this year is going to be on the saints. Probably more than half of my picture book list is about the lives of various saints, working out to about 1-2 every month (I have several from the library as well – I work at the university, so I can get year-long loans on most of the children’ books, for school purposes). Each saint portrays a slightly different way of loving and following God, and inspires us to love and follow Him in our own way. The community of saints is such a powerful and beautiful reality – and the stories of the saints help us see how the truths of the faith that we hear at church and read in the Bible can be lived out in different cultural and personal circumstances.
  6. Music and art is another thing I want to be more intentional about this upcoming year. Rondel especially loves to make crafts, but he needs a lot of help and things can get messy and I know the creativity won’t be able to shine as much as it could unless I schedule it in and make myself deal with the mess 🙂 And since we do have some auditory sensitivities in the family, I may gently ease into music by making some simple instruments during our craft times, and then using them while singing together. Actually, if you have a list of high quality folk/traditional children’s music I would absolutely love it…
  7. Most importantly, our schedule is full of wide open times to play, explore, and go on adventures and trips. Routine provides stability, but flexibility and (some, minor) spontaneity provides a spark of excitement and energy.

How are you preparing for the new school year? Anything especially exciting or new? Also, don’t forget to visit This Ain’t the Lyceum for the quick takes linkup today!

Posted in wwlw

what we’re learning wednesday, episode 7

Posted on by kristinabean

This week the boys have been practicing writing numbers and letters on their own!

Rondel has always struggled a bit with fine motor skills, but recently he has been developing a lot more control and finesse, so he’s been starting to show more interest in actually writing things himself; he has a tendency to flip letters and numbers around when writing and reading, and left-to-right directionality doesn’t come naturally, but his writing is getting noticeably better the more he does it.

Limerick, on the other hand, was obsessed with letters at 18 months and could write rough approximations of all of them in sidewalk chalk at that age. His handwriting now is quite clear with chalk, and a bit more wobbly but still legible with pen or pencil (I think the thicker chalk is easier for him to control than the narrower options). The only number he consistently reverses is the 6, and he only occasionally needs to verify which side the “1” should be on when writing the number “10.” He can also write much more quickly than Rondel.

Despite these differences of background and innate ability, I’ve never heard the boys compare themselves or their writing (and I try not to either, when they are around to hear it!). They are both just doing their best, continually learning and improving, excited about each other’s accomplishments and encouraging each other to try new things.

Anyway, we got together and over a couple days drew a human-sized numbered game board on the driveway, taking turns writing the numbers until Limerick completely took over around 78 and continued all the way to 196. (Since then we’ve washed the driveway off and completely covered it with different variations on number lines and letters multiple times… it’s all he wants to do whenever the ground is cool enough to tolerate).

We also discovered a free app this week called ABC Kids that offers alphabet tracing games; I didn’t think the kids would be interested, but Rondel has spent hours carefully tracing the letters, both upper and lower case, in the correct directions and with the recommended motions, which I can only imagine is good for his fine motor development as well as his familiarity with the letters and handwriting skills. (The app supposedly offers phonics as well, but since we can’t get the sound to work it doesn’t, functionally at least. But it is great for tracing, for matching lower and upper case letters, and for identifying words beginning with each letter.)

So that has been our focus this week! Writing, writing, and more writing, in all different media! Maybe we’ll try finger-painting some letters and numbers next 🙂