2nd day of 2nd grade!

So my children must have some sort of internal clock that tells them that they should be done with the lazy days of summer this week every year, becasue yesterday, ( although I hadnt planned on doing any formal "school" stuff for several weeks), they decieded they wanted to work on some math problems, have a couple of violin lessons, watch 2 shows about sharks, and read a little bit of course... so I deemed it our 1st day of 2nd grade. (Not that our 'school days" versus 'non school days" look all that different at this point!) Anyhow, it was a relaxed day, but they were certainly in the mood to used their minds.

I have to say that this new thing we are trying with math, makes it see like math problems are much more like they are solving little puzzles or playing little games than"work" which is how I think it should be... not like trying to force information into their little brains, but letting them practice it in a non stressful way till it is just something they know, and can use whenever they need it.

Today we have done a little math review.. they listened to me reading a star wars book at their request, Em has done her First sequential spelling lesson ( which she said was easy peesy!) An we looked at my teachers calendar book to learn about what is special about this date.

They are also asking if they can play the games on Starfall that they used last year.. which they are probably well past understanding.. but hey, as long as they like it.

Probably going to try to see if Ian wants to try the spelling stuff later, but I have some appointments this afternoon, so we might have a laid back rest of the day... and you know what, we can, because we can do things on our own schedule, and still get so much done, soooo much faster and easier than expected! We LOVE Homeschooling!!!

Gearing up for 2nd grade!

Hello big wide world!!!

I realize we havent written anything since last spring.. but hey.. its been summer and we have been too busy going out and exploring, taking trips, making plans.........

Anyhow, wanted to update everyone on our plans for 2nd grade, as well as throw out a few of the fun things we have done this summer.

We got a few new curriculum ideas at a convention in Virginia in June, which includes the whole family self teaching ourselves how to play the violin.. we've been slow at it so far, but plan to get more regular once we can get in a normal routine in the fall.

We also picked up Math on the level, which is a different Math curriculum, which should be good for several years (yay for not having to buy more math stuff every stinkin year!) and is much less workbook/ text book focused than what we were using before... sure we will still throw in some fun workbook stuff ( such as the oversized workbooks we just got at Sam's club, which help the kids with telling time and money), but aside from short concept reviews and little tiny quizzes, MotL is based around using real life experiences and games to demonstrate math, and make it more relatable. It will take more effort to do it this way most likely, but the kids get so much more out of experiences than they historically have out of pages and pages of questions, which seem to just be an exercise in frustration, especially for my son.

We got a spelling curriculum, which just breaks spelling lists into a more logical order, and some other kind of random stuff for reading practice, and a new handwriting/ drawing curriculum at the used curriculum fair.

We are going into this year with much less of a focus on recreating a typical schoolroom in the home, because as we figured out last year, it is just a little to rigid for us, and doesnt really contribute to true learning.. at first the kids thought it was fun.. like playing house.. but soon it developed into drudgery for everyone. So, our whole approach this year is to focus on keeping things interesting, making information and concepts as fun a possible, and being thinkers, instead of doing things for the sake of completing a curriculum.

Even with our slow downs due to re-thinking some of our choices last year, I'm happy to report that both kids are ahead of their grade level in reading, and generally vary between being patient with math to which they don't immediately know the answer, to not even letting me get a math related question out before they are answering... so that has been successful, and I'm amazed at how quickly they are picking things up.

We are going to continue reading our volume 1 story of the world, because we didn't get through it last year. We simply take so much time on every time period they talk about and do more research than they recommend or expect ( plus we are always on the look out for other unrelated subject matter), but I'm not complaining.. if the kids are interested, they can take as much time to get as much information about something as they want!

I think our current science plan (as if a plan matters.. its never going to stay within the confines of a plan!) is to do a big study on Ocean life this year. This comes on the heels of a few awesome aquarium trips, as well as the opportunity to pet and feed dolphins over the summer... I have to say I'm pretty psyched about this one... see homeschooling is just as much for the parents as the kids!

We also just signed up for our fall co-op classes... the kids are taking classes about transportation, sign language, inventions, science experiments, and creative writing. They have been asking for months now when their co-op classes will start back up, so I think they will be pretty excited to see their friends and have some fun. I'm also hoping to sign the kids back up for Kidzart in the fall.. they loved it last year... hopefully they will open registration soon!

I've been doing a lot of research on different opportunities for the fall, there are just so many things happening... I think we might do some workshops at the Walters art museum, St. Mary's city, a bunch of wildlife preserve stuff, tours and exhibits at gardens and arboretums, the science center (of course), picking fruit, library events and book clubs.... yeah we are going to be busy. Add to that, our jiu jitsu classes, and the kids working on a new dance routine to debut at the US Open in November, and I think we have plenty planned.... maybe I should stop looking for stuff to do!!!

Some of our experiences over the summer.. of the top of my head:

The Statue of Liberty

Fort Clinch

Fort McHenry

Dolphin Experience at Marineland

Crystal Grottos Caverns

The Indianapolis Children's museum ( thanks nana and pappaw!)

Kinderfarm park

Learning to ride 2 wheelers

Niagara Falls

historic Palmyra ( and other locations in Upstate NY)

I'm sure I'm missing something.. but thats what I can think of right now! This week, assuming it ever stops raining, we are going to the National Cathedral... where rumor has it there is a gargoyle shaped like Darth Vader.. score!!!! Next week we are going to Boston, and I'm going to see if we can actually schedule some sightseeing in between our other commitments while we are there... also we are ring some Canadian friends of ours back from Boston with us, and they want to go sightseeing in DC while visiting, so I'm sure we will do some fun stuff then as well!

X-rays and related discoveries

So this morning the kids woke up all excited to play some math games we had talked about last night, but we got a little side tracked over breakfast which delayed our plans. One of the kids asked while watching one of the dogs beg, "How do dogs wag their tails?" So after breakfast we got on the computer and looked up dog x-rays. We found pictures which explained the original question in addition to a bunch of X-rays showing that dogs will eat some crazy things!

Then Ian said, "Can we see some human x-rays?" which led us to learn the name and placement of many bones and the kids trying to feel those bones on themselves. Then we came across a X-ray of a stomach, which was glowing because the doctors had the patient swallow barium. The kids were amazed by this and asked what Barium is. Then with my limited memory of chemistry I tried to explain that it is an element ( to which the kids said "like the element of surprise?") I laughed and pulled up a periodic table of elements, which I never would have imagined would interest 7 year olds. On that page there were pictures of kids baking cookies and decorating them to create a periodic table with one cookie per element... guess that will be a project today or over the weekend!!

Just saw this clip on You tube (although I had heard about it before)... I love that there are young people out there who aren't afraid to think outside of the box and can value education as an experience rather than a goal.

Watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M4tdMsg3ts&feature=related

Or read it here:

http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com/2010/07/coxsackie-athens-valedictorian-speech.html

Just something to think about!

Chicago Part 2

Finally getting around to finishing posting about our trip to Chicago. I apologize for the delay, but I've been sick this week whch has really slowed down my productivity.

On monday after the dance competition we went with a couple of friends of ours from France (did I mention that the kids learned a little French and about France hanging out with Maxence and Emilene?) to the Shedd Aquarium. BTW, homeschoolers, if you show proof of being a homeschooler you can get the teacher discount.. which is awesome!

First we spent several minutes staring at the hypnotic Tropical reef tank:

We also noticed that at many of the exhibits there were interactive computer displays which had little games or movies to help kids understand more about the animals they are observing. this one was about frogs which have developed special adaptations to help them survive in extreme climates.

We then went to a show ,which included information on how the rescue and train animals that we see in the aquarium. Some of the animals we saw were beluga whales, white sided dolphins, and penguins. The animals were just amazing, and the kids learned some training tips (especially after talking with some of the trainers) which they plan to use on our dogs.

After seeing the show and spending like 15 minutes watching the cutest sea otters swim around we went down to an area where they had water tales, and the chance to touch live starfish. They certainly felt differently that I expected, and came in so many more varieties than I previously thought.

Emily being afraid of Jelly Fish:

This isn't a very good picture, but we got to spend some time watching a sea lion being trained up close. He was so smart, reacted to our and his trainers praise, and definitely had a distinct personality. So cool!

We were lucky to go on a day where they were open extra late ( even though apparently, not a lot of peole knew about it), so we had alot of the museum almost to ourselves. I have a really cool video of an amazonian turtle playing with me that i will try to post later.

Here is the view of the skyline as we left and walked to dinner.

Chiiicccaaaaago! Part 1

Last week I mentioned that we were planning a trip over a long weekend to Chicago. the reason for the trip was a dance competition, that the kids and I participated in (the kids were rock stars.. one of the judges wants to be like them when he grows up!) But since we were going to be there for a few days we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see some sights, and maybe learn something new along the way.

Here are the kids at the airport waiting to board our flight.. you cant tell from this angle, but behind then there is an armored truck loading hundreds of packages of money under our plane... i think each passenger should have recieved a parting gift form the airline....

Notice Ian and his hot (really lukewarm) passion tea from starbucks... my kids are too cool to be 7.

(it was St. Patrick's Day.. hence all the green!)

When we arrived in Chicago after about 5 hours of traveling, we spotted a really cool play area near security that the Chicago Children's museum set up, to be very airport themed, complete with plane and cockpit, and air traffic control tower.. the kids were ticked off when we insisted that we had to pick up our bags or they might send them back to our house, leaving us unclothed and smelly for the remainder of our trip.

We didn't do much the first night there, other than getting setttled into our hotel, meeting up with some friends, having dinner, then going to bed early in anticipation of our day at the Field Museum.

The kids were pretty excited to ride the "L" although once we were on our way they were less excited about the amount of walking involved.. They were however pro's at figuring out the maps, and how many stops we had to our destination, and where to transfer trains.

On the walk from the train station to the museum we got some really great views of the city skyline, and tried to point out that we could see the Shedd aquarium ( which is next door to the museum) from the train station so it couldn't have been that far of a walk... the kids weren't convinced.

We passed a monument on our walk of Christopher Columbus, which sparked a lengthy conversation about who he was, and sort of a debate over the claim of discovering the America's.. leave it to our family to play devil's advocate on pretty much any topic.

Once inside and having ditched our coats at the coat check, the first order of business according to the kids was the Egyptian exhibit... seeing as how we have been talking about Egypt and watching a lot of National Geographic programs about it over the last few months, this shouldn't have been a huge surprise. What was surprising was how great the exhibit was... I went to a special (very expensive) King Tut exhibit in Philadelphia a few years ago, and in my opinion this was much much better.



The kids got a feel for how good we have it, when they laid on a replica of a bed that wealthy Egyptians would have used (less wealthy people sleeping on the floor).. basically it was strips of material stretched and woven on a frame, with a neck support that looked like one of the things you see holding corpses heads in the morgue on crime shows.. ouch!

We then found a little room, after a bathroom break (the egyptian exhibit was THAT long!) which had bug collections and examples of small animals and bugs trapped in amber. This reminded the kids of the part in Jurassic Park (the edited for TV version of course) where they extracted DNA out of a mosquito trapped in Amber.. We told them we couldn't back up any claim that that is possible, but it is pretty neat how well preserved these bugs that are millions of years old are within this hardened rock.

The Field Museum, also has a kids area, which was really neat, but also meant dragging the kids out when it was time to move on... I guess they are just too anxious to learn.. everyone should have our problems...

The kids got to play on and learn about drums from around the world...

Be scientists in a child sized lab..

Play with dinosaur themed magnetic murals, footprints and nests

And learn about agriculture and daily living in Desert cultures...

The Field Museum is also home to "Sue" the T Rex, ( which was actually our original reason for going after the kids friend Bobby declared his love for Sue. This is the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever found, and the majority of it is set up to stand in the main floor of the museum, so you get a really great look at it.. just amazing!

We also visited an exhibit on life underground, and how soil is a part of every life cycle. I dont have as many pictures of this, because the gigantic bugs, freaked Ian out, thus alot of time was spent calming him down, or chasing him as he attempted to sprint through the exhibit. However at the end was some more hands-on stuff, that they really enjoyed.

After that, before we went to our 3D movie, we went through most of an exhibit called Evolving Planet, it was really neat, basically taking you through the evolution of the Planet, and the species on it, and the major mass extinctions. They had some really amazing fossils, that brought so many species that I'd only ever read about to life.

Then just in the knick of time we made it to our 3D movie which was about the discovery of Sue, and how they think dinosaurs lived.. very very cool.. Em wanted to go see it again.

Stand by for more of our trip later!!!!