This Week on CAGW: Beeswax Candles

poured beeswax candles in recycled containers

and hand-dipped beeswax candles

Sydney, especially, had a huge amount of fun with a crock pot full of melted beeswax in the past few days, making candles with me:

She used to be my kid who gagged when she felt oobleck for the first time, but now she loves nothing better than a huge, messy, elaborate, free-form, all-day art project. Will used to be very much that kid, and she'll still immerse herself in projects, but much of her energy and creativity is internalized these days, into reading and absorbing what she's read. Syd used to want to sit on the couch and be read to, or look at picture books, or listen to audiobooks, all day, but these days she's a hands-on girl, ready to jump into an activity and stay there. The two types call for very different learning styles, it seems. Willow's intellectual focus is good for reading, memorizing information by rote, learning languages and grammar, and computation. It's less suited for handwriting, art, mastering math concepts that call for manipulatives, and science projects. Syd's hands-on focus is great for handwriting, art, learning math concepts such as measuring and graphs, science projects, dance, and other physical skill-building. It's less suited for learning to read, math computation, memory work, and knowledge building by rote.

I still require them to do all of the above, of course (learning to read commences, regardless of our inability to get through a reading lesson without exactly one tantrum at some point, because Syd continues to improve, and screw the haters), but these trends are good to notice, because they help explain some things, and help guide me to better methods. Of COURSE Willow likes mental math these days, and resists learning how to carry (which I've been explaining using Base Ten blocks), I finally realize.

New math strategies coming up!

A DIY Moveable Alphabet

When the girls are first learning something, I really like to separate out the various skills involved, especially with writing, which both girls, and Willow in particular, still often find challenging in regards to letter formation and positioning.

So although I want Sydney to be able to physically form words, because it helps her read and memorize them, I don't necessarily want her to have to write them--she'll be reading and memorizing with part of her brain, yes, but only the part that's not already focused on which way the "b" goes and which part of "p" sits on the line and how to make "a" so that I don't erase it and ask her to do it again.

Instead, when Syd has a new phonogram to learn, she "builds" her words using a DIY moveable alphabet that we put together. It's mostly made up of Scrabble tiles--

--but we've got some FIMO letters in the mix, and some letters punched out of cardstock and pressed in my pinback button machine, and some that the girls made by sticking alphabet stickers on 1" graph paper and then cutting it out.

I set the alphabet out for Sydney along with a stack of words that practice a particular phonogram, and she sprawls out on our (unvacuumed) carpet to build and read the words:

Handwriting is a separate subject, but one that we do every day, so don't worry--she still gets to write her words out!

The test of a successfully written exercise, for Sydney, is that the letters are all correctly formed AND she can read it to me, so I deviously sneak in a little more practice reading those brand-new phonograms there.

Two-Digit Subtraction without Regrouping

Math is something that Will and I tend to move a little slowly through, because it's really important to me that she have the concepts not just memorized, but ingrained. To that end, we've also done a lot of sensorial work in math, building numbers with Base 10 blocks or Cuisenaire rods, for instance, instead of necessarily speeding through computation concepts.

Having a good knowledge of those Base 10 blocks and Cuisenaire rods, though, makes learning the computation so much easier, I think, especially because, even when handling big numbers, I want the girls to understand not just what they're doing on paper, but what they're actually doing with actual numbers.

For instance, I'm not sure if Willow would have really understood what was actually happening with two-digit subtraction without our Base 10 blocks and, most importantly, the Montessori-style Base 10 number cards that we use with them. 

Case in point for how slowly we move through math: I explained how to build big numbers using Base 10 blocks and Montessori number cards back in January, as preparation for Willow learning how to add with carrying, and she STILL doesn't add with carrying! But she has her addition math facts memorized up to 10+10, and she can add multi-digit numbers in her head by rounding. And now we're going to do subtraction for a while, and we'll just come on back to carrying later.

To subtract two-digit numbers without regrouping, at the same time modeling each problem to demonstrate how it physically works, drag out all the Base 10 blocks and Montessori number cards. I wrote a set of problems in Willow's notebook for her, so for each problem, she first built the subtrahend (in blocks and with the cards), then built the minuend the same way, then lined them up vertically:

We often start math by building a couple of numbers like this, simply because it reinforces the concept that 75 is made up of 7 tens and 5 one units, however you play with them and rearrange them and fiddle them about.

For the first couple of problems, Will physically subtracted the Base 10 blocks--first the units, then the tens. Then, when she counted the units back up to find her answer, I noted that you could also find the answer by subtracting the units, then the tens, just using the Montessori number cards: 

This is a good path towards the simple pencil-and-paper computation, since 1) we've already spent so many hours keying these Montessori number cards to the Base 10 blocks that the representation is well ingrained, and 2) the cards are stacked in such a way that you can unstack them and easily see the units and tens that they're made of; physically stacking them to build the number reinforces this, and helps you remember the concept.

When it looks like Will understands the procedure and, more importantly, the concept underlying the procedure, I let her finish up her set using just her pencil and paper:

We'll likely end up doing this exact same lesson again in the near future; as we were working, I discovered that Willow doesn't have all of her subtraction math facts up to 10-10 memorized, nor does she have the complete vocabulary of subtraction memorized, so we'll be doing flash cards and simple subtraction drills for a bit of review this week. We may then have to repeat this particular subtraction lesson afterwards, but Willow will be better equipped to master it and move forward with that basic grammar of math memorized.

Will's Singapore 2B workbook wants her to be able to both mental addition and subtraction of multi-digit numbers before she moves on to the next unit; I don't know if we'll choose their roundabout rounding method for subtraction, as we did with addition, or if Will will actually choose borrowing as her method, but she'll be able to choose for herself after she's learned both methods.

Pioneer Study: Mason Jar Butter

We make Mason jar butter a lot.

Proof positive:

• making Mason jar butter in June 2010
• making Mason jar butter in March 2011
• and again, making Mason jar butter in August 2012:

Pour heavy whipping cream into Mason jars. Some people add marbles, but that isn't necessary.

Shake it like a Polaroid picture!

 Since we've made Mason jar butter so often, I now know that the whipped cream stage?

It's special.

Willow made whipped cream!

 Although both kids had Mason jars full of cream, and each shook her own jar--and, unlike in previous years, they each shook their own jar all by themselves (it wasn't as much about the process this time, or the science, but about mimicking the hard work that went into Ma's butter in Little House in the Big Woods)--when the first jar reached whipped cream, the girls unscrewed it, gathered a couple of spoons, then took turns, one kid shaking the remaining jar and one kid spooning whipped cream into her happy face:

We're listening to Story of the World just for fun, if you're wondering what the audio track is there. Did you also see the look on Willow's face as she intently watches her sister eat whipped cream? Cracks me up.

This batch didn't take as long as in previous years, but it was still well over half an hour before we had--

--butter! To really do this right, you should then squeeze it and rinse it to get out all the buttermilk, but we just plop that jar into the refrigerator and eat it up until it's gone.

Next time, my new experiment is going to consist of putting cinnamon and sugar in the jar with the cream. In that situation, I may be right there with the girls, peering into the half-shaken Mason jar, spoon in hand.

Pioneer Study: Morse Code

Remember how fascinated the big kid was by Morse code at Conner Prairie?

Well, we went back home and learned it.

Not all of it, but enough of it for the child to at least be able to call for help--

--and to tell a telegraph pen pal her name (sort of):

She wasn't interested enough in the topic, in the end, to memorize the entire alphabet, or make her own telegraph, or study electricity, or follow any of the other billion or so leads that a child who continued to be inspired by Morse code could follow, but she and her sister and I did enjoy the following resources in our little study:

• many, many youtube videos (for some reason, I really like this old-school Army video)
• this Morse code translator--this is a favorite, because I think that the kid's fascination with Morse code is mainly because she loves listening to it
• many, many books, including:

Because this big kid loves books the most, I like to use books, in particular, to build context and expand her interest in a particular topic. So while we have a couple of books just about Morse code there, I also offered books that included Morse code in with ciphers, codebreaking, and other languages.

It worked, because reading the code books got the kid interested in the Rosetta Stone...

So that's another topic to dive deeply into on another day!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

My Latest over at CAGW: Re-sized Sheets and Painted Toys

a tutorial on re-sizing fitted sheets to fit a smaller bed

and a tutorial on how kids can paint and seal their own wooden toys

This latter, especially, was such a rewarding project. I can't tell you the immensity of pleasure that I get from watching my children so completely immersed in a project:

We've got a couple of unusual colors of liquid watercolors--silver and gold, which get their sparkle from rheoscopic concentrate, it appears, and white. The silver and gold didn't work on the wood, because the rheoscopic concentrate wouldn't saturate, but the white worked great, and the kiddos really loved discovering the effect that a white overpainting would have on another color:

And then there was reading, the listening to of audiobooks, more painting of a mural in our hallway, some cooking, some Zoo Tycoon, some block building, some toy pony play...and goodness, that was our day!

One Night on Top, the Next Night on Bottom

The girls couldn't decide who would sleep where in their new bunk beds, so they switch.

Every. Single. Night.

One night a kid gets the top bunk, with the ladder and the tent top:

You can tell that's Willow, even though she's sleeping under Sydney's I Spy quilt, because she has the crank flashlight so that she can read in bed.

The next night that kid gets the bottom bunk, with the kittycat strung lights and the quilt tent walls:

You can tell that's Sydney, even though she's sleeping under the antique quilt that's supposed to be on MY bed, because she has a portable CD player and headphones so that she can listen to audiobooks in bed.

I'd like to add a curtain to the bottom bunk, and soft wall pockets to both the top and bottom bunks, but nothing, of course, that's personalized to an individual child, since they switch.

Every. Single. Night!