Working with the Place Value Apartments

Why Quakers don't celebrate Hannukah

To conclude our Hannukah study last night, the boys and I planned on making latkes. Since I had forgotten (what with sick kids in the house and all) to light our menorah the past few days, yesterday afternoon I thought I'd light it to get the candles all lined up how they are supposed to be. Thing is, I forgot about it and the whole thing went up in flames!

So then we have our traditional type meal we have when we decorate our Christmas tree: cheeses, meats, vegetarian meats, crackers (Corn Thins actually), and lox. I serve the latkes with this. Since the Explorer won't eat lox and barely touches cheese I let him choose his meat earlier that day in the grocery. True to form, he chose ham. It didn't dawn on me, the whole ham is not kosher thing, until after we ate. Not that I was going for kosher, but it still seems sort of wrong somehow to serve ham with latkes the same evening after you set fire to a menorah.

We did play dreidel, only without the gambling aspect.

So, it was a sort of Hannukah study that would be unrecognizable to any truly devout Jewish family. But we still learned a lot and had fun.

(And the advent wreath still stands!)

Word Family Town part 1b

For some reason, blogger isn't cooperating with me so I'm breaking this post up into more than one post. More letters to introduce:

m is a mountain man

r is a rat

f is the Tiny Goddess (her real name starts with F)

w is a walrus

p is a pretty princess with a ponytail

j is jumping (see it even jumps for the photo!)

b is a boy with a baseball

h is a man with a funny hat

and t is a knight with "terrible the sword"

Then we planned parties for the various homes. In order to attend a party at a house, the letter had to be able to make a word with the family. So we went through them all and I made a list. We will probably review it today and tomorrow and then make another village with some more houses next week, maybe even add a few new letter friends.

planning..

I'm in full on planning mode right now. I'm planning our home ed year, knitting Christmas gifts, planning a class on herbal something or other, planning our vacation to Cornwall, and visits from both my parents and a friend. Whew! But it's all going well. It's nice to have stuff to be excited about.

So, no blog posts yet. I am working on one about how I use my iPod for our homeschool. Until then, check out how this mama does it.

Our Bookbags...

I know, so many posts in one day. The three readers I have must be quivering with excitement!

So, to borrow an idea I've used before with good results (and also Dawn does something similar), we have our bookbags.

I did this back when I was pregnant and either on the go all day or resting up from being on the go all day. For a while I did a different bag for each subject, but as I'm revamping my whole process of education around here now, the subjects won't be so clearly defined.

So basically what we have here is this: Each child (and all four of them!) has his or her own bookbag. On the days we go to home ed group, they will just simply empty the contents of their bookbag into a dish tub so they can take it on the train to carry lunchboxes and bring creations back. The boys have a backpack each. On nursery school day, again the Tiny Goddess will empty (or mama will) her bag into her dish tub and carry what's needed for nursery school in the bag. The Tiny Goddess has a backpack on the way from Amazon.co.uk but for now she just has a bag.

Here are the contents of each person's bag:

The Artist:
clipboard
small art kit
colored pencils
a big A4 sized envelope for work to be done (mostly math worksheets)
another envelope for completed work
an envelope with drawing paper
his independent reading book
his spelling journal
his math journal
his copywork journal
his school journal
copywork book
his calendar (a project we've sorely neglected)
and his roll up chalkboard (these are lovely. I will post pics of them at some point.)
British bird sticker book
Maps of Britain sticker book

Wow, that's a lot. Lots to explain there. To begin with, each of us has our own clipboard that we painted together with one of the other ex-pat families from Sweet Benny's work. They also home school. There is another family, too, who are really nice and their kids go to school. I plan on taking these clipboards back to America with me and painting the back of them with chalkboard paint.

Now, you are probably wondering what all these journals are for. Let me go down the list for you. The spelling journal is where I put his spelling words and he writes them for me 3 times. He was writing sentences but after the meeting this morning, I'll be writing the sentences as he dictates them. The math journal is where he puts new math stuff he learns. Now that I'm doing a more artistic approach, I plan on having him draw pictures and paste them into the math journal, too. The copywork journal is where he writes his copywork. The copywork book is full of ideas for copywork, but he tends to prefer to get them out of books he's reading. His school journal is where he does creative writing assignments. (He also has a personal journal that I'm only allowed to read out of as he gives permission.)

Here are the contents of the Explorer's bookbag:
clipboard loaded with drawing paper
art kit
A4 envelope for work to do
writing book
copywork book
Biscuit book
Roll up Chalkboard
Calendar
math workbooks
math manipulative kit

His writing book is where he is writing a story about a sticky, gooey, little monster. The Biscuit book is a selection of books about a little puppy named Biscuit. He's learning to read with this book. (Using ideas from a book called Teach a Child to Read with Children's Literature) The math workbook is called Math Mastery. We are sporadic about using it. Often I just give problems on a chalkboard or whiteboard and talk about them.

The Tiny Goddess' bookbag:
Clipboard loaded with drawing paper
hot pink A4 envelope with coloring sheets, extra paper, ect. in it
her current "In the Night Garden" magazine (she enjoys ripping them)
stickers
art kit

and let's not forget Miss Mousie:
a board book
a toy or two
and scrap paper for wadding up and chewing on

Oh, and I have a bookbag as well:
Clipboard loaded with notebook paper (and whatever needs my attention)
current and next weeks file folders (in an A4 envelope)
my art kit
my ipod (really I do use it for home ed!)
this record keeping system I use for the Explorer (which I'm thinking of dumping)
our home ed journal/planner
The Complete Phonemic Awareness Handbook
Starting Sensory Integration Therapy
current read alouds
my personal journal
my camera
current poetry book
this animal book we are using (title later)
an extra pad of notebook paper

I'm not a huge fan of the notebook paper here. It only has two holes and you can't get looseleaf. I'm seriously thinking of getting some in America.

Sorry not to have titles for you, later I will fill them in.

Also I will post more on art kits later.



Now

Revamping our home school

The boys and I had a nice chat about our home school today. Here are the notes from that chat (note that in parentheses I put the initial of the boy who came up with the idea. A= the Artist, E=the Explorer)

This was prompted by the Explorer coming up to me this morning and telling me he had a great idea for our home school. He suggested we have a time for drawing every day.

Now our list:
(E) Drawing time every day "Everybody grabs a book and draws a picture from it."
(E) More Max and Lewis stories
(A) a few different types of math problems every day instead of all one kind
(A) more copywork (this surprised me!)
(A and E) More crafts
(A and E) More science experiments
(E) The Explorer is not a big fan of Circle Time. The rest of us really enjoy it so we are brainstorming ways to make it more fun for him.
(E) The Explorer doesn't like the little homemade workbooks I used to make (haven't made one in a long time, but "Friends, he was making sure")
(A) The Artist likes spelling, but he would rather say his sentence than write it. (I pull words from his writing that he misspells and I make a list of it. He works with five of them a day writing them 3 times each and then writing, now saying, a sentence with the word. Every so often I give a quiz and any words he misses go back on the list of words to learn.)
(E) The Explorer does NOT like copywork. He is willing to try to copy one or two Star Wars related words instead.
(E) "Every day there could be a time where we go outside and do homeschool."
(A) More gardening (Frankly, I don't know how this will happen as I don't have the energy for this. I think I will provide him with pots, soil, seeds, and plants and let him have at it on his own. I do have plans for a wormery in my brain. Does that count?)
(A) "Pick out an animal and learn about it all week and at the end of the week do a report." (Something that has been in my brain for a few weeks and has been mentioned to him more than once.)
(A) The Artist wants to learn about the different types of caterpillars.
(E) "We make books with drawings in them."


I also have some ideas about organizing so that we can do work lying down, outside, or on the go if needed. Basically revamping some things I used to do. Don't worry, the file crate system plays a part in this.

Blogs I Love

In no particular order, I am going to discuss these. (NO particular order, y'all!)

First off, By Sun and Candlelight is one that I check in the morning and if there is a new post I am pleased all day. I first skim the post to see what it's about (not much time online in the morning) then I come back later when I have time to savor it. And savor it I do. I have gotten so many ideas from Dawn that I can't even list them. So much wisdom in her blog. I love her cheerful attitude and her deep love for her family and her overflowing faith. I am a convert to her file crate system (although I am not so good at keeping up with it). So far it is the only "system" for home ed organization that I keep coming back to.

This blog is the reason that I now put my nature observations here for you to see. In fact Dawn's style of blogging is sort of how I model my own blogging on. I love that she is so down to earth and honest. She often talks about how she blogs the good and happy things about her life and that's my intention here.

(Whoa! Huge rook at the neighbor's birdfeeder! Darn! Flew away before I could get a picture. I wonder if the fact that seeing a rook gives me a sound in my head is a sort of synesthesia type reaction? )

I love this blog so much that when I didn't have internet here in Wales and was very homesick for America I would download pages from her blog onto my desktop when I would go out for my weekly computer time (wifi at a local restaurant/hotel/pub) and chew on them when I got home. When I was at the end of my pregnancy with Miss Mousie, I went through and read the whole thing. It helped distract from the pain.

So, there we go. I hope you enjoy Dawn's blog as much as I do. I have begun commenting here and there and once she even responded to my comment in a post. I felt a little bit famous for a minute there.

Thank you very much, Dawn, for all the time you put into your lovely blog and for permission for me to jabber about it here.

British Birds

I have this fascination with the birds here. Greeting me as I came off the airplane when we got here were 2 magpies. Now, around here, they are kind of pesky, but they are so breathtakingly beautiful to me. I also love the big black crows/ravens/rooks, or whatever that gather in the bare naked trees in my yard at dusk. (I can't tell what they are...yet.)

But, it is always a treat when we spot one of these in our yard. It is a pheasant, and yes I know they have them in the states, but it isn't often you see one and never so close.

Wow.

and so we begin

I'm trying to decide whether or not to blog from here or from Facebook. I am not sure how private this blog is and honestly not sure who I want to be able to read what I put here.



Right now we are in a hotel "in town" for about two weeks while we wait for our flight. While it is nice to be done with all the packing and such, I still can't believe we are moving. I have always wanted to live out of the country, but never thought I would. Now that I am, well, I'm just amazed by it all.



The title of this blog is the Welsh word for friend. I know, it makes for a hard to remember title, but I like the idea of that.



I think now that I have space for anything not move related I can begin again to think about homeschooling. So that is what this post will be about.



I have, in the past, tried to cram too many things into our school day. I'm going to change that this time around. Since we will be just settling into our new home, I'm going to keep it light and fun for December and honestly I'm going to work to make things more fun in general.



I bought this book of monthly ideas for December from this educational supply store. It is full of little coloring sheet activity things involving the December holidays. I'm thinking for each week of December (yes even Christmas week), I will have a different holiday to focus on. Now, please realize I don't have the book in front of me, so there is a good chance I will change all of this. For the first week of December, we will do St. Nicholas day. We'll learn a little bit about the history of St. Nicholas and a little about Holland. For the second week, Santa Lucia day with a little bit about Sweden. I forgot what the rest of the weeks were, (don't have the book in front of me), but I do think I will cover Hannukah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, and Las Posadas. Italy and the story of Befana (I'm unsure if I'm spelling this all correctly) will be touched on the first week of January.



I would like the kids to learn a few carols, too. I'll probably start this with them this week. Basically I will just start singing them a lot. I think we'll do The Holly and the Ivy (we kind of know this one already) and then I don't know what else. Wonder if there is a Welsh carol we can learn?



What we will be doing each week is just a simple little bit of reading about the holiday, find the country on the map, and maybe make some kind of goodie. We'll also do math and reading and writing. I found this and I'm going to use some ideas from there for writing prompts for the Artist. I'm not going to buy the book, I'm going to just use the ideas and have him write it in his journal. I also found some ideas here and here. I'm going to use the time between us getting settled in and when our homeschool books come in to work really hard with the Artist on basic multiplication facts.



The Explorer will continue with his therapy work and with Max and Lewis alphabet stories. Max and Lewis are these two brothers. Max is the same age as the Artist, Lewis the same age as the Explorer. Max and Lewis have two younger sisters named Lily and Poppy (and they are the same age as the Tiny Goddess and the baby aka Miss Mousie). Lewis is of course the main character of these stories when I tell them to the Explorer. Turns out, their family is also planning a big move except instead of moving to a new country they are moving to a new planet! Lewis learned A while watching his dad fly off in a rocket to visit the new planet (his dad was a little bit scared and so he screamed out, "Aaaaaaaaa!" Also the rocket was shaped like an A.) Lewis learned about Bb when Lily got ahold of Poppy's bear and smushed him into a ball and hit him with a stick. (Poor little Poppy!) Lily has more mischief in store when she takes a big bite out of Lewis's cookie to make it into a C shape. (I was going to have a story about cats, but since we just gave away our cats, it is too fresh to make them into our story.) I'm just going to have fun with the stories and take as long as it takes to get through the alphabet.

I'm also going to start up doing "reading lessons" with the Explorer. The lessons are based on ideas from the book Teach a Child to Read with Children's Literature

I'm post phoning science, history, and Latin until after the first of the year. I think I will do some light spelling work, but just based on words the Artist misspells. He has been asking about copywork, believe it or not, so we will do some of that, too. After the first of the year, I would like to introduce some dictation but we will see.



I have this grammar lesson series based on A Cricket in Times Square. I started it back in the fall but dropped it. I may or may not do it in December. Probably I won't do it until after the first of the year, though.



So there you have it. I also have decided what to do about this blog. For now, I'm keeping it public. I like having the option of just babbling on about homeschool stuff and on my facebook blog I think it may not interest other folks. Plus I like the idea of being able to revise my ideas out loud so to speak.