We Found a Treasure in our Attic

Like, real treasure. Seriously.

Here's the story:

We waited until the fall until really exploring our attic, because attics are hot in the summer. We knew that there was some stuff up there, because the former homeowner had told us so--"Mostly Christmas decorations," he'd said. "You keep them."

Well, I'm NOT the type to say no to the possibility of vintage Christmas decorations, or even the possibility of a junky attic with old stuff in it--there could be comic books up there! Or toys! Or treasure!--so we were totally fine with that arrangement, but when it was fall, and we were finally settled and unpacked-ish (we're still not fully unpacked, just so you know), we figured we might as well do some exploring and see what needed to be cleaned out.

You get into our attic like this:

This attic must have been accessible only from the outside before the house's expansion (you're looking from our front hallway into the kitchen, through it into the playroom, and through that to the old front door), so I'm guessing that anything in there was put in during the 1980s, after the remodel put this attic door inside the front hallway, and it mustn't have been used very often, because getting into it is a bitch. I didn't expect much, then. Tacky Christmas decorations. Dishes, maybe. Paperwork.

There were no dishes, but there were tacky Christmas decorations, all of which the children ADORED. To hear them tell, they'd always longed for their very own ceramic light-up Christmas village, and indeed, they did set that village up under our Christmas tree this winter, and fuss with it daily, so I suppose they're telling true.

There was paperwork, mostly old drive-in stuff (the former homeowner is also the former owner of the drive-in next door, you may recall). I was sorry to see that there were record albums--Friends, do NOT store your record albums in the attic! You might as well just go ahead and toss them into the trash if you're planning on storing them in the attic. Around some of the Christmas decorations there were decades-old newspapers, the comics pages of which entertained the children to no end: 

And then I found a heavy cardboard box, and I peeped inside that cardboard box, and I found this:

I had found all of the letters that our former homeowner sent during the years of 1942-1945 to a woman addressed as "Ruth" in the earlier letters, "the Future Mrs. Stewart" in the middle letters, and "My Dear Wife" in the last letters. They were sent first from officer training here in Bloomington, then from San Francisco, and then from, depending on the date, either somewhere in Europe or somewhere in the Pacific.

Although I wouldn't have said no to a Captain American #1, I know you'll agree that this?

This is treasure. Treasure found right in our attic.

Because we have very nosy noses, the kids and I of course spent an afternoon "putting them in order"--this is my euphemism for nosiness, because of course the postmarks were often smudged, so one must look at the letter itself to determine its date, and if one is looking at the letter, one might as well read the letter, yes? I mean, it's already open right there in one's hands!

The experience was a fabulous crash course in World War II history for all of us. Our former homeowner did not write anything relevant about the course of the war or his specific actions in the war in his letters (this was also educational, explaining to the children why that was the case), but to see the types of things that he *was* interested in and allowed to write about were fascinating, as was learning to decipher his handwriting--

--as was discovering the other little souvenirs of the time. The children saw real telegrams for the first time. We found these enemy aircraft spotter flash cards:

We found an officer's training notebook, and some shells, and a straw handbag souvenir.

Here's everything all nicely organized:

We have to track down the contact info for our former homeowner, so that we can get these precious letters back into his hands. We're also going to super nicely ask if he'll let us record him telling some of his stories from the time, and maybe let us ask him some nosy questions.

And you know that my heart is joyfully singing the following song: was there ever such a wonderful impetus for a World War II unit study?!?

Work Plans for the Week of March 16: St. Patrick and the Bad Kitty

This week is Spring Break for our local public school system and university, and although we follow a year-round schedule and so will have our usual four days this week, the kids' weekend extracurriculars on both ends of the week are cancelled, and there are some fun public library programs during the day to attend, so I think it'll be a relaxing school week, overall.

Books of the day this week include Mandarin vocabulary, fictional books about the Lipizzaner (for Syd) and World War II (for Will), a book of horse stories for Will, and a couple of books on the periodic table, as they were in the same section as the books on crystals that I was pre-researching for Syd and they looked like something the kids would like.

MONDAY: I am SUPER excited about this Bad Kitty livestream that we'll be watching at 10:30! I re-checked out (because of course the kids have read them all before) all the Bad Kitty books from the library last week, and I was pleased to see that both kids read them all and are really into Bad Kitty again--they're going to be so excited!

Since it's Spring Break, our regular volunteer gig at the food pantry is probably going to be chaos. Just sayin'.

I'm not doing an extra math enrichment assignment for the kids this week, especially since we did so much celebration of Pi Day last week! In Math Mammoth, Will is reviewing decimals and then just practicing computation for ages, and Syd is in measurement, which thankfully has some hands-on suggestions included.

I downloaded a St. Patrick's Day unit study that looks cute--the kids make green flubber, and go on a green scavenger hunt, etc.--but I didn't think that the actual content was as cute as the cute stuff, so what we're actually going to do for this short study is listen to The Story of the World chapters on the coming of Christianity to Great Britain, read a biography of St. Patrick (Will tells me that the Wikipedia one is quite good), and, since our Pi(e) Feast was so much fun on Saturday, we might have a Green Feast on Tuesday before going to an Irish music concert that evening.

Syd finished her Pets badge last week by making a toy for a pet (she hand-sewed a stuffed fish and sewed it to a ribbon. The cats freakin' LOVE it), writing care notes for our cats (including the one that doesn't actually belong to us that we feed), researching how much food for each cat costs for a year, and watching a DVD on cat first aid. Will didn't do as much Girl Scouts-related last week, so I'm hoping that she'll be more inspired this week--it won't be long until they both bridge, after all, and then they'll have a whole new set of badges to earn!

TUESDAY: Neither kid did much work on their Science Fair project last week, so they're going to need to start buckling down this week. Syd is doing crystals, so she plans to research crystals, grow several types, and make 3D models of the various crystal shapes. Will is doing the Hexbug Nano, so she plans to figure out how it works, make a maze for it, and "hack" it in some way.

Syd has written several great short stories this year, so I'd like her to either write a new one or edit a recent one to submit to the PBS Kids Writer's Contest this week. I left Will's writing assignment open-ended, figuring that she will probably want to work on her blog.

WEDNESDAY: The kids have First Language Lessons today (one of these weeks I need to just start assigning it every single day until we finish it), and a Hoffman Academy keyboard lesson. They're still really enjoying Zoology for Kids, and although the Butterfly Life Cycle activity that I'm asking them to complete from the book is something that they've done before, it'll be a timely review for Spring!

There's a Minecraft program at the public library that afternoon, and so I imagine that the rest of our day will be spent there.

THURSDAY: I discovered last week, as the kids struggled with their Chinese class homework, that I need to encourage them to study the Chinese characters for their vocabulary words more. While they play on this BBC Languages site, hopefully I can scare up some flashcards online to print out for them.

The capitalization of "I" is a super-quick grammar lesson; I plan to explain that the pronoun "I" is always capitalized, no matter where in the sentence it is, and then ask each kid to write me five sentences in which "I" is not the first word. If I'm feeling extra mean, I'll make them write them in cursive!

Last week, the kids finished their family tree for their immediate family, including the cats and chickens, sigh. I want them to also include both sets of grandparents and their uncle, so they can do that this week.

Our Thursday afternoon homeschool playgroup has moved to the park, now that the weather's nice. If it's raining, though, there's another public library program that the kids can attend.

FRIDAY: I haven't figured out if the kids' math class will be held this week or not; if it is, I'll send the kids to it, since they missed last week, and then have our Free Day otherwise, but if it's cancelled for Spring Break, we'll probably spend the day at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and/or the Indianapolis Zoo. I'd like us to volunteer in the Paleo Prep Lab at the museum, but if the weather's great, the kids will also want to see the orangutans.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: No weekend extracurriculars mean no places that we have to be! Of course, I want to clean house and do yardwork, and Matt, I'm sure, wants to cook, but there's also some sort of salamander celebration at one of our state parks, so we'll probably do that instead.

Because salamanders beat yardwork. I mean, obviously.

So Many Essays, and How to Write Them

This HBCUs essay was a bitch to write; the kid had no choice but to slog through some difficult articles to get her information, because there's very little written for children on the topic.

For some reason, January and February are THE months in which, if you want to hold an essay contest for children, you hold that contest. The two essay contests that my kid entered for Black History Month make sense, but she also participated in a Hoosier Heroines essay contest, and both kids participated in a human rights essay contest. For my older kid, that was FOUR big essays in two months!

If she wasn't comfortable belting out a research essay before (and she wasn't), she is comfortable belting out a research essay now! She's not happy about it, necessarily, but she does have the procedure down pat.

Here's how I break down these big essay assignments into manageable chunks:

DAY 1: Brainstorm your topic.

The child reads the essay prompt, highlighting the important information. We then review that prompt together, so that I can make sure that the child notices each requirement for the prompt, and what her essay should include.

If there is a choice of topics, the child will go online or to an encyclopedia and briefly research each topic. She should take into account her preferences, but also how well each topic could be made to meet the requirements of the prompt. She should make notes as she goes.

If the prompt requires creative writing rather than research, I might write a brainstorming sheet myself or pull one off of the internet to help the child organize her thoughts. I always require her, in this case, to brainstorm at least three ideas, so that she has some choice.

Many fits are thrown on this day, because kids see the entire process as overwhelming. It's very important, therefore, to not cave in; this step, like all the steps, does require focus, and it can be time-consuming, if the essay prompt offers lots of options, but it's not difficult, and kids absolutely must see that, which they only will if they complete this step. After this step, you can remind them during all the other steps that each step alone is not difficult, and the big result will come from adding each small step to the previous one.

DAY 2: Research your topic.

First, the kid should reread the essay prompt and any brainstorming notes that she wrote about her chosen topic.

Let's go to the library! I do some sneaky pre-research for this step, both so I can recall books if they're checked out, and so I can have some expectations of what the child will find. I also flip through the subscription websites that I have access to, places like Britannica for Kids or Discovery Education Streaming, so that I can point those sites out to the kid if there's anything useful that they could find there.

This day actually can be a little tricky--some of the essay topics for the contests that my older kid entered this year were really obscure; she couldn't simply check out a library book on Anthony "Kapel" Van Jones, for instance, and she had a hell of a time finding a "Hoosier" heroine. Also, nobody has written much kid-level information about Historically Black Colleges and Universities. For those, especially, my pre-research is essential--for Van Jones, I logged into our local university's Time Magazine subscription, and pointed my kid to the Indiana Magazine of History archives for her Hoosier Heroines research, and to Britannica for Kids to start her HBCUs research.

I will let a child use Wikipedia for research--I mean, of course--but I will not let her only use Wikipedia for research.

Online articles should be printed, including the bibliographic information for the essay's Works Cited page, and relevant information highlighted. Printed materials can either be photocopied and highlighted, or the child can make notes on a separate page--my older kid loathes writing by hand, so she always photocopies and highlights

This step can be split into two or even three days.

DAY 3: Write an outline.

Have the kid reread the essay prompt, and her brainstorming notes, and have her flip through or skim her research, rereading the highlighted passages and her notes.

The kid's outline should include headings for the introduction, each key point in the essay prompt, and the conclusion. My younger kid still really likes the visual nature of this sticky note outline, but for my older kid's longer essays, I usually let her dictate to me and watch as I type the information in outline-form in Microsoft Word--she's quick to point out any grammatical or punctuation errors!

I do not permit the children to simply quote their information from their source to the outline--everything, unless they want to literally quote it in their essay, must be rephrased. Otherwise, it's too easy to forget what hasn't been rephrased yet, and much too easy to plagiarize. My older kid also likes to change as little as possible when she rephrases, just putting the odd synonym into what's basically an unaltered quote, so I require her to completely cover the sentence that she's trying to rephrase, and then tell it to me--that always results in a more thoughtful construction.

This step is the hardest--I like to have the kid get all of the hard work of thinking what to say done in the outline, so that the actual writing, which can seem like the most intimidating step to a kid, becomes just a matter of putting the information into essay format. This means that the conclusion must also be tackled--here's how I teach how to write conclusions.

Here's my older kid's outline for her Van Jones essay:

And here's the one for her HBCUs essay:


DAY 4: Write the essay.

Have the kid reread the essay prompt, and her brainstorming notes, have her flip through or skim her research, rereading the highlighted passages and her notes, and have her read her outline. She may object to doing this every day, but it's crucial to stay familiar with the prompt, all the information, and the notes that she's made so far--she may need to add information or alter things in the editing stage.

You may disagree with me here, but I have my kids dictate their essays to me. They must sit or stand at my elbow, so that they can see what I'm typing, and they must tell me where to make paragraph breaks, but dictating does mean that I handle all the spelling and basic punctuation myself. The thing is, though, that rhetoric/composition is NOT the same thing as handwriting/typing; they are two different skills, and at the ages that the kids are, learning both as they are, when they focus on both tasks at the same time, both tasks suffer. A kid who is also concentrating on forming her letters correctly or  holding down the shift button for every capital letter is not able to give her full concentration to creating an effective sentence, or when to start a new paragraph. If I want a kid to practice the physical acts of writing or typing, as well, I give them copywork, or ask them to write a letter or a creative story or even a book report. But if I want the kid to be able to do her best work on a composition, I do not ask her to also physically write or type it as she creates it.

That being said, there are no big standards for a rough draft. Remember, the idea is to show the kid that this single step that seems so overwhelming and significant is really just one small step in the greater whole. I remind the kid that an essay is more than just an outline strung together, but if that's what they end up doing, then fine--we'll fix it in the editing step. If they have no paragraph breaks (although if nothing else, the outline makes these breaks obvious), then that's fine--that's fixable in the editing step. As long as the essay has some identifiable introduction, meets all the points of the writing prompt, and has some attempt at a conclusion, it 100% DOES NOT MATTER how good or bad the essay is. It's just a draft!

DAY 5: Revise the essay.

Have the kid reread the essay prompt, and her brainstorming notes, have her flip through or skim her research, rereading the highlighted passages and her notes, and have her read her outline.

Ask the kid to read her essay and make note of anything that needs to be corrected or changed. She may note some things and she may not--it's not a big deal, either way. The important thing is to make reading that essay for the purpose of revision part of the process.

Let the kid move onto something fun for a while, then you sit down with a pen and mark that essay up. Circle grammar or transition errors that you can verbally explain or she should be able to fix without comment. Write notes about things that she's done especially well--"What an interesting fact!" and "You've put this into context very well here" and "Great choice of adjective!" Also write notes about things that she should correct--"These are long paragraphs; could you break them up more?" and "What is the significance or relevance of this fact?" and "This doesn't seem to fit here; is there a better place to put it?"

If there are a LOT of things to correct, that's totally fine. Choose to only comment on the number of issues that it seems reasonable for the kid to handle, then have her complete the revision step with those comments, then evaluate it again and let her revise again.

Have the kid read your notes, and discuss each one with her--a DISCUSSION, not a lecture. Rules are rules, so grammar and punctuation errors must be corrected, but if she disagrees with you about stylistic things, and you've said your piece and she doesn't agree, then she gets her way. It's more important for her to understand that she is the boss of her own essay than for her to have a perfect essay in your eyes.

I also tend to take any attempt at revision as a successful attempt. One of the critiques that I most often make is something like, "Add context to support this/details to expand this." I need the children to not simply string facts together, but to begin to express their own thoughts about these facts. That's why, in the essays that I'll show you in a minute, you'll see lots of details and lots of context. You'll notice, though, that they aren't always totally relevant details or context. And that's okay. I suggested that the kid add context to what she said, she did her best to do what I wanted, and I'm sure as hell not going to browbeat her until she also does it exactly according to my own ideas--I might as well write my own damn essay on Maude Essig then, right? If I'm still constantly suggesting that they add details and context, then we're clearly still at the "add details and context" stage of composition instruction. When I no longer find myself having to make that suggestion for every fact, then we can start with the "is this detail relevant?" stage.

Have the kid dictate her revisions to you as you dutifully type them, then send her on her way. Even if you're doing some of these steps on the same day, like with an older kid, the next round of revisions or the next step should take place tomorrow at the earliest.

DAY 6: Make final revisions, and write the Works Cited.

For a change, the kid does NOT have to re-read all her preparatory materials first. She'll be thrilled!

The kid should re-read her essay and make any notes for revision after every round of revision. Even when you have no other corrections to make, you should nevertheless print out yet another clean copy and have her re-read it. When she looks up and tells you that she has nothing more to correct, then, you just look at her and say, "Great!"

I have my kids make parenthetical citations for facts in the bodies of their essays, so our final step is to help the kids compile all the sources that they used, alphabetize them by author, and write them down for our Works Cited page.

Taken as a whole, I know that this process seems really intense, but this really is how you write an essay--small step by small step, taking up plenty of time. The last thing that you want to do is hurry this process, because all that teaches kids is to hurry the process, and they'll end up among those college students miserably pulling all-nighters to tumble out sub-standard essays. They certainly don't learn anything that way, and they're not enjoying themselves, so what's the point?

Here are some of the essays that the kids have written in the past few months using this process. They're not perfect essays, of course, but the kids learned a ton doing them, and, even if they didn't have fun, per se, they were pleased and proud of the results, and that's the important thing:

Edible Plant and Animal Cells

For the past few weeks, the kids have been completing a weekly lesson in Zoology for Kids (given to us for free from the publisher). We've done biology studies off and on for our entire time homeschooling so far--my favorites have been the animal unit studies that we did a couple of summers ago, involving classification, anatomy, and animal care, and the endangered animal unit study that we did for much of last semester--and it's always been a hit with the kids.

The units are always pretty much led by me, however, in that I take a kid's interest, create some projects that will explore it, assign some research and the reference materials, and dictate guidelines. Zoology for Kids is a nice break for that, in that it's written to the kids, down to having a glossary in the back of the book to explain the big words, and most of the activities in the book can be done completely independently--I don't even have to be in the room!

The one exception to that is this edible cell model, and only because we had to make a special trip to the store for the decorating supplies--one thing that I do NOT need is a pantry full of Reese's Cups and M&Ms and Twizzlers. Since I was helping out, anyway, I changed the format from cake to cookie (cookies are yummier!) and assigned one kid to make an animal cell and the other kid to make a plant cell:

I required the kids to learn all the parts, but I did not require them to learn what each part does--that's more depth than the book requires, and rather than lead us down a rabbit trail of cell biology, I figured I'd just let them go with this until the next time we visit cells:

These kids LOVE edible projects!

Who wouldn't, though, right? I mean, it's a plant cell, AND it's candy!

Snow Days

All winter, the kids waited and waited and waited for that One Big Snow.

The sledding snow.

The snowman snow.

The icicles and snow angels and snow fort snow.

It was bitterly cold all winter, but dry. Every day I shoved the kids outside to play in that cold, brown, dead world, and they were sick of it. They wanted snow!

Thank goodness, then, for February! The Monday after Valentine's Day, we got our first big snow of the winter:

A business trip for Matt coincided with our second car being in the shop, so the kids and I had our own version of Homeschool Snow Days. We cancelled all our outside activities and just enjoyed this first snowfall.

We discovered, after this first snowfall, that the drive-in next door is a wonderful place to romp in the snow!

We're following "Mystery Footprints" (Don't tell her, but it's a cat).

And then we got another one:

Snow on top of snow means that you can make snowmen!

And then we got another one!

The kids call this power line cut behind our property "The Meadow," because in the summer the grass grew up taller than their heads.

There's a surprise waiting for Matt when he gets to the top of the hill!

The children know better than to give such surprises to Momma. Even so, this looks like a close one...

As far as snow goes, even though we had to wait the whole winter for it, this was about the best possible scenario: we had several huge snowfalls to pile it on, the kids got to play and play and play, and then about three weeks later, just when they were starting to get tired of it and it's starting to look all grungy and dirty, the temperature shot up to the upper 40s and it's gone.

And now it's spring!

Work Plans for the Week of March 9, 2015: Science and Superheros

Our curriculum is especially science-heavy this week, with Science Fair prep and Science Club and zoology, but that's what the kids are into right now. History and Literature and Art and Civics will all still be waiting when the Science Fair is over and the zoology curriculum has been completed and Science Club is adjourned for the semester.

The kids' dailies this week consist of Chinese language practice (mostly using videos from Learn Chinese with Emma), keyboard practice (based on their Hoffman Academy lessons), typing practice (still using Dance Mat Typing, although I think the children have maxed out that program and need me to find them a new one), cursive practice (I've got them copying stanzas from "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," in preparation for a cute project that I have in mind), and the book of the day, which this week includes Chinese vocab and mythology, a Mongolian short story, horse books, and some grammar--basically whatever I've got on the library shelf for them but don't have any other immediate plans for.

MONDAY: We have big plans for Pi Day! Most of our plans for March 14 involve making lots of pie for an evening Feast of Pi(e), but I've got some enrichment activities planned to prepare for the big day. Later today, the kids are going to get out the tape measures and rulers and many circular things, and I'm going to see if they can discover the principle of pi on their own.

We've got our regular volunteer gig at the food pantry today, and the kids have another Hoffman Academy lesson, with its accompanying worksheets. Chinese class will be on hiatus for the next two weeks so that the children's instructors can go on Spring Break, but the children do have homework, so the first of my promised enrichment lessons for Chinese will be spent completing that.

Last week, I had the kids prepare these Girl Scout badge checklists, and I encouraged them to look through each checklist, note activities that they've completed this school year, and write them down. I think this will make it easier for the kids to see when they've already completed two or three out of the five activities for a particular badge, and therefore encourage them to complete the remaining activities to finish it up. They'll be using their checklists to figure out what Girl Scout badge they'd like to work on this week.

TUESDAY: In Math Mammoth this week, Syd is studying division, and Will is finishing up decimals before starting a long computation review next week. I've also got them, just for fun, watching the BrainPop movie on pi and reviewing a song they memorized last year--it's the first 25 digits of pi!

In Mandarin class, the children have been learning vocabulary for family members, which is kind of complicated in Mandarin, as paternal and maternal grandparents have different names, as do older and younger siblings, etc. I discovered, during this, that the kids can't automatically recall who is a maternal and who is a paternal relative, so I'm going to start them on a family tree project. I plan to have them use photos of family members, calling or writing for a photo when necessary, and I'll ask them to lay them out in family tree format, and then label them in the languages that we've studied recently, so Latin, Spanish, Mandarin, and, of course, English. For projects like these, I tend to let them work together on one (it makes the whole project seem less important and useful if you know you're making duplicates, don't you think?), but that one project must end up looking pretty darn nice.

The kids are really excited about Science Club on this night--they'll be doing the ubiquitous Egg Drop Experiment!

WEDNESDAY: We've got First Language Lessons on this day, but I actually have some functional grammar that I want to teach--paragraphs, the capitalization of "I", the fact that you don't capitalize the word that comes after a comma--so I'll probably be ditching or supplementing FLL beginning next week.

Speaking of paragraphs... Syd dictated the longest book report in the world to me a few weeks ago (seriously, I was nodding off at the keyboard while typing!), and there was not a single paragraph break in that whole damn report. Believe you me, she'll be putting in some paragraph breaks on this day! Will has horseback riding class on this afternoon, with the resultant homework to complete beforehand.

I love that most of the activities in Zoology for Kids can be completed independently by the children, AND the book is written directly to them, too, so I'm happily able to simply hand it off and let them get on with it. I've flipped through it, however, and have notes on what activities I want to require them to do; they've always chosen to complete additional activities just for fun, which is the sign of a great textbook, if you ask me.

Watching a video of the Sleeping Beauty ballet fell utterly flat last week--both children nodded off, and napped comfortably curled up together on the couch for the duration of the program. I think now that my plans to take them to a production of the actual ballet this month are off. Nevertheless, we'll have a lovely time listening to the music of the ballet, simply because I'll bring out the coloring books!

THURSDAY: This will be an easy ending to our school week, as we've got Gym Day, a talk about our community center's history as a segregated school, and Syd has gymnastics. I'm hoping that we'll have time, nevertheless, to try pysanky, as I've been looking forward to it, and yet have had to continually put it off for a couple of weeks now. If not then, then perhaps during the weekend.

Syd completed the City of Rocks Junior Ranger badge book a while ago, but it got lost in my paperwork--oops! I discovered it this weekend, and figured that if I was going to send in one badge book, I might as well send in two, so Will can complete hers on this day while Syd is at gymnastics.

FRIDAY: Free Day!!! We'll be going on an all-day field trip on this day to the Indianapolis Comic Con; I'll have my face painted to look like my favorite superhero, Krrish, and I'm not ashamed to tell you that I am PAYING the children--five bucks and one Snickers bar each--to wear their Awesomes costumes. There are some panels that I want to attend that may seem a little dry to the children (how many lectures on gender in comic books/superhero films/manga can two kids sit through?), but we'll compromise with plenty of time in the board game room, kids' craft room, exhibition hall, and movie rooms.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Thanks to our local university's Spring Break, we surprisingly have NOTHING scheduled this weekend! Also, the weather should be gorgeous. Hiking, perhaps, then. Pysanky eggs. Yardwork.

And, on Saturday, pi(e) for dinner!

My Latest: Cookie Boxes and Egg Blowing

a round-up of crafts to make from Girl Scout cookie boxes

and a tutorial for blowing out eggs so that you can decorate them and keep them forever!

The whole family is going to try pysanky for the first time today, either before or after Will's Ice Show performance. 

In other news, this is the last day that I'll have the Paypal Donate button for Operation Cookie Drop up. Next week, I get to turn in my troop's cookie money and finish up with Girl Scout cookie season! Anyway, four bucks buys a box of yummy Girl Scout cookies for our soldiers, and the button is at the top left of my blog... for now.

Using Board Books for Foreign Language Study, and other Adventures in Mandarin

For years, I had been looking forward to outsourcing the children's foreign language study. I'm confident at imparting a reading/translation knowledge of any of the languages that I, myself have a [very much lapsed] reading/translating knowledge of (Latin, Attic Greek, Spanish, Icelandic, Old Norse, Middle Welsh, Old English), but I'd rather that they learn pronunciation for extant languages from native speakers.

What I did not realize, however, and yet should have, I suppose, is that even with the children taking a foreign language class, as they are this semester--Mandarin Chinese, through a grant program at our local university--there would still be a lot of work for ME! This isn't just free time in my school schedule, alas. The kids have homework, and of course they must practice daily, and since they're crap at telling me what they did/learned/were assigned in class, of course I must look it up for myself, then find the resources to get them the pronunciation models that they need to accurately review their vocabulary each day.

So each weekend, part of my lesson planning for the coming week is to look up what the kids did in Mandarin class that Saturday, and find the resources to support that particular vocabulary review. The instructors provide excellent cultural enrichment during class, but if I find anything extra that fits with what they did, I also throw that in.

My absolute favorite resource is this YouTube channel, Learn Chinese with Emma. So far, I've managed to find a video from her that covers every single piece of new vocabulary that the children have studied.

There are the basic greetings:

The numbers:

Helpful vocabulary for the New Year celebration:

The seasons:

And new for this week, family members:

One thing that works GREAT for learning a foreign language is board books. You know board books--those laminated cardboard books that they give to babies so that their slobber doesn't dissolve them and they can't rip them up. They're short, because babies have short attention spans, and they have simple vocabulary, because babies don't know many words, and generally the vocabulary is pretty basic, because you want your baby to learn "blue" and "truck" before she learns "disestablishmentarianism" and "fuschia." We use the dual-language approach to reading that I learned from Miss Nancy in toddler Spanish playgroup many, many, many [10] years ago: you read what you can read in the target language, and read everything else in English. Here's Syd practicing her Mandarin vocabulary with a dual-language board book:


You can hear the very beginnings of the tones that she needs to use. Will is still very much "tone deaf," but I'm glad that they're getting the exposure to it. It'll be easier to hear when their study continues, whether that's next semester or in 20 years, you know?

Now that the kids have this much vocab under their belts, I think my lesson plans will begin to reflect an enrichment activity for Mandarin every week--this totally defeats any freedom in my schedule that outsourcing the language provided, but, eh. The kids need it for the reinforcement, and the immersion is fun!

One area that I still need help in supporting them is the written language. As far as I can tell, the class doesn't focus on it, but all the new vocabulary is also written down for the children, so they could certainly learn to read it. I'd like them to learn to write it, as well, but I do not have the first idea about how to start with that. Perhaps my research for these enrichment plans will lead me in the right direction...

So, knowing that we're still very much in the middle of this first Mandarin language class, here are some of the reading/viewing listening resources that we've been enjoying so far:

My Latest: The Awesomes

My round-up of the week's paid writing is late, because on Sunday I was deliberately NOT doing all the productive things that I usually do on Sundays. Instead, I watched Birdman, and spent a lot of time sledding, and ate Tibetan food--you know, the kind of stuff that the normals probably always do on a Sunday.

Anyway, here's what I got paid to write last week!

a tutorial for making a DIY camera lens cap leash

and ALL about the superhero costumes that I made for the kids and submitted to our town's Trashion/Refashion Show jury

I wrote this tute on appliqueing jersey knit without using fusibles. 

Syd and Will both helped piece the T-shirt fabric for their capes.

I made a template, and their job was to piece together something that was larger than that template.

Then I cut that piece to size, and added it to the cape.

I decided not to take the time to starch, so instead I painstakingly pinned while watching... is that Supernatural or New Girl? Can't tell.

Here are the rest of my build notes for the completed garments. 

I'm not super pleased with how these came out--if I hadn't been spending most of my time last month managing the Girl Scout cookie business, I think that you'd be looking at a much more elaborately detailed, intricately pieced pair of costumes right now--but I think that what you are looking at at least has more of the feel of a homemade, kid-designed superhero costume, like what a kid superhero would actually look like if she actually had the skills to applique herself a cape and sew herself a leotard. 

And, of course, the kids like them, so, you know, fuck you, Perfectionism!

Work Plans for the Week of March 2, 2015: Ice Skating and Ballet

Much of last week was actually spent finishing the kids' superhero costumes, and much of this week will be spent shuttling Will back and forth to rehearsals for the Spring Ice Show (Momma Moment of Brag: Will was promoted yet another level in ice skating this session! Next session, which alas won't be until the fall, she will be in Level 6, the second highest level in the program, and can also choose to join the figure skating club. It's a Big Deal), so we didn't finish all of last Friday's schoolwork, and I'm frankly not sure if we'll do all our work every day this week, especially since I didn't carve out a space in the lesson plans for those Ice Show rehearsals. No pressure.

To help the kids keep track independently, I've added their daily practice work to the work plans, so that they can see what they need and check it off without having to ask what's left. Since I've begun asking them to do this, I've deleted our ten minutes of daily memory work in the car; you can't do cursive or keyboard OR typing in the car, and their Chinese practice mostly involves relevant videos from the Learn Chinese with Emma channel on YouTube. We really like to listen to audiobooks in the car, anyway, so this gives us more time for that.

This week's assigned books include more Chinese vocabulary study (board books are GREAT for this, by the way), Chinese mythology, fiction involving the Lippizaner, for Syd, and Degas, for Will, and some a picture book about the ballet--although Syd at least knows the names of the various ballet terms when spoken, neither of them are familiar with them in print.

MONDAY: We've got our volunteer gig at our local food pantry as usual, today, and Will has Ice Show rehearsal. At home, Syd is starting a unit on measurements in Math Mammoth, while Will, still in decimals, is getting some extra practice converting between decimals and fractions today before she continues in her Math Mammoth unit.

Both kids will take a Hoffman Academy lesson, which they can do independently, and they can choose a Girl Scout badge to work on, also independently. Sometimes I add extra work and reading to the badge requirement to turn it into a unit study, but since both kids are bridging into a new level this summer, right now I'm pretty much just letting them get on with earning whatever badges they'd like to earn before they bridge.

We're still studying Sleeping Beauty, in preparation for Syd's spring ballet recital on that theme. We watched the Disney version a couple of weeks ago; this week focuses on the ballet version, and then we'll read the fairy tale version, and then I'll ask them to analyze and compare all the versions.

TUESDAY: Free day! Robotics Club and Ice Show rehearsal are at the same time on this night, so I'm going to have to ask Will to choose. I wonder what she'll pick?

WEDNESDAY: We've got First Language Lessons, but I am officially on the lookout for a grammar study with shorter lessons that Syd can do daily, as First Language Lessons is no longer really working as something that the kids use together. Syd needs more reinforcement/practice, whereas Will just needs to learn labels for this stuff and then move on. So, if you've got any ideas, pass them to me!

Thank-you emails didn't get done last week, so hopefully they'll get done on this day. Zoology for Kids DID get done last week, and it was a huge hit, so now the kids are tackling the next chapter.
Both kids now like to attend Magic Tree House Club on separate computers, rather than both huddling around one as they used to. This means that I sacrifice my laptop to one kid on Magic Tree House Club days, and THIS means that I actually cook dinner on Wednesdays! It's pretty amazing what I can do to get out of it on all the other days of the week.

THURSDAY: Syd has more thank-you notes that didn't get done last week, this time for Trashion/Refashion Show clothing donations. And even though the Science Fair isn't until April this year, I like the kids to get started on it early, because sometimes Science Fair projects take a lot of time to complete. Will thinks that she wants to make a maze for Hexbug Nano robots, and explain how they work--I'd like her to do some simple hacks on them, as well, but we'll see. Syd thinks that she might want to do something with plants, or something with chickens. I'm debating between letting her scroll through my science pinboards for inspiration, or making her use her own brain to come up with something that might be much more or much less creative and interesting.

Our homeschool group is meeting up for ice skating instead of gym time on this day, so I don't know--Will might not be enthusiastic about yet more skating by then, especially as she'll have to be back on the ice four hours later. We might just have a little more unplanned free time instead!

Meanwhile, Will is VERY upset about some recent choices that the newspaper made regarding their Sunday comics. She'll be explaining them in a letter to the editor.

FRIDAY: A couple of these assignments are hold-overs from last Friday, when I didn't even attempt school, instead just focusing on finishing the kids' superhero costumes and leaving them to themselves for the day. Syd is still having a lot of fun writing and illustration short stories, however, so I've got that as an assignment for her to encourage her to do another one, and, for my own personal pleasure, I've been interested in getting the kids into fan culture, which is a big academic interest and hobby of mine. Fan culture can be a really accessible entry into all kinds of creative fields, so I'm going to see how the kids might like reviewing some of the Minecraft videos that they watch and creating a podcast on the topic.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ice Show rehearsal, Ice Show performance, ballet, Chinese--kind of a busy weekend, but all the kids' weekend extracurriculars will be on break for the next two weekends due to the university's spring break, so it's okay to have a busy send-off.

For me, I'll be relishing this week as a chance to get back to business as usual after a February that consisted entirely of Girl Scout cookies and Trashion/Refashion Show designs--I've got blog posts to write, etsy orders to create, some unit studies to research, some books to review, and a couple of field trips to plan. I do like to keep myself busy!

World Thinking Day 2015: A Trip to Mongolia

In our council, the Girl Scouts celebrate World Thinking Day with a giant Geography Fair. It's even more fun than a regular academic fair, because more kids working together means MORE elaborate displays, MORE games and activities, MORE food to taste, and MORE presentations--what homeschooler wouldn't love that?!?

My troop, led by another mom who speaks the language, has traveled there, and thus has lots of knowledge plus cool souvenirs to share, presented on Mongolia. The girls all worked on different parts of the display, and it came out really well--very informative, very elaborate, but clearly kid-made all the way through:

As you can see, we've got photos and facts about Mongolia, info about Mongolian horses and Genghis Khan, the Girl Scout motto in Mongolia, its map and flag, demonstrations of a game played with sheep ankle bones, and food samples of fried bread and salty, milky tea. 

I'm impressed that I managed to get photos of the display as a whole looking like that, because most of the time it looked like this:

Yeah, there were a LOT of kids there. 

Fortunately, my troop has enough kiddos that the girls could trade off offering food samples, stamping passports, demonstrating the game (that's what my two mostly did)--

--and visiting all the other countries at the festival. They also presented a puppet show of a Mongolian folk tale, including making the decorated curtain, making the puppets, and practicing telling the story over and over and over again so that they could do it unscripted.

It was an awesome experience for the kids, and just the kind of cross-curricular, high-intensity, immersive, FUN academics that I like for them to have.

In our family, we also used the weeks when we were preparing for this festival as a short unit on Mongolia, so the kids researched and did their display as part of their schoolwork, researched Mongolian horses, completed the Story of the World chapters on Genghis Khan, and learned to recognize Mongolian music (there's a ton on Spotify!). Here are some of the reading/watching/listening resources that we enjoyed during this unit: