Sydney's Sight Words

I know that I've told you this before, but it bears repeating, since it's so clearly marked throughout our school days:

My Sydney is a girl who likes to have the correct answer.

Unfortunately, school (like life) is all about incorrect answers, and daily Sydney is confronted with words incorrectly decoded, math problems incorrectly solved, lowercase y's and g's written incorrectly above the baseline.

I've taken to sending Syd to lie down in her bed and rest for several minutes when she throws a fit during schoolwork, and I'm surprised at how often she does fall asleep during this time, but mostly she isn't tired when she throws a fit.

She's frustrated.

It's led me to a different way to do school with Sydney, because Willow HATES review, but Sydney loves it. She thrives on it. Getting the correct answer, whether it's for the first or the hundredth time, makes her really, really happy.

So although this sight word activity that I'm about to show you would have driven Will utterly around the bend, it's one of Sydney's favorite moments of each school day. We call it the Sight Word Caterpillar, and it comes from Confessions of a Homeschooler, who has generously created a pdf of sight word caterpillars for all the dolch sight words from kindergarten through third grade.

Syd is currently working on the kindergarten and first grade sight words. When we first began this activity several weeks ago, she cut out all the sight words in those two groups over the course of a couple of weeks, and put them in a little brown paper bag that's hole-punched so that it will stay in her school binder. Mondays are "test days," in which Syd takes a try at reading every word in her bag, sorting each into a "can read" and a "not yet" pile (She usually has to go lie down a couple of times during this task). The words that she can't yet read go back in the bag, and every school day for the rest of the week I pull them out, read each one to her, and put it back in the bag. The words that she CAN read she adds to her Sight Word Caterpillar, which is taped near the bottom of one wall in our living room. Every single school day, during our reading time, she then does this:



Every. Single. Day. It's so repetitive that I don't think I'd make her do it if she didn't like it, but she likes it! It takes two minutes to do, it constantly reinforces what she knows, it's helping her with that subconscious pattern-building that's eventually going to unlock full literacy for her, and it's a practically painless memory drill. Even though Sydney can read all the words on the wall (they wouldn't be on the wall if she hadn't proved she could read them), she's clearly got the earlier words memorized and she's just as clearly still decoding each of the more recent words. I can't tell you how much easier she's finding reading now, with such a larger stash of memorized words to draw from, but I can tell you that we do get through entire reading lessons without fits these days.

Syd's almost through all the dolch sight words for kindergarten and first grade, and so I'm about to have her start on the second grade words. Her own reading material isn't at the second grade level yet, but after watching how these memorized words have improved her confidence in reading, my goal for her is to memorize all the dolch sight words through third grade during this academic year.

That's going to make for a REALLY long caterpillar!

A Slow and Informal Keyboard Study Progresses Apace

Ever since October, when I finally decided to stop fretting about figuring out formal music lessons and just have us all learn our collection of instruments as we liked, we've actually been doing well with our music study. There's nothing like the sense of accomplishment that comes from exchanging worry for action!

On the weekends, when I'm finalizing the girls' lesson plans for the following week, I ask them which of our instruments they'd like a "lesson" on. I figure out the next logical skill that we should be working on for that instrument and how to present it, and we have our lesson for it on Monday, so that the girls can practice that skill for the rest of the week.

And yes, you may practice your keyboard balanced on the back of the couch!

This is our most recent keyboard skill:


We've all previously learned how to find C, and how to find middle C, so this lesson involved starting each hand on C and playing a scale with both hands at the same time. Tricky!

When they've got that mastered, the C Major chord is next, and then, perhaps, a first melody?

(Re-)Introducing Multiplication Using Cuisenaire Rods

Since the kids are still working on memorizing how to skip count through all the numbers to ten, they're also still doing pre-multiplication activities for their hands-on math time. A couple of years ago, when the older kid was briefly very interested in multiplication and division, she and I did some hands-on multiplication using Cuisenaire rods, and she really liked the activity.

She STILL likes it!

This time, I added centimeter-squared graph paper to the activity (I LOVE this graph paper, because it's correctly sized for both Cuisenaire rods and Base Ten blocks, both of which we use very often). The kids picked a rod, then figured out all the one-color trains that could be lined up to perfectly equal that rod. They copied their results onto graph paper, and I helped them translate those results into multiplication facts:

They each repeated the activity, until they had found the factors and created multiplication facts for the numbers 1-10.

As they worked, the older kid noticed that the only one-color train that would work with some numbers is the one centimeter rod; my baby discovered Prime numbers! That was a good discussion, there.

Something changed about the older kid's attitude towards math during this activity, and I was privileged to watch it happen. I've long been telling the kid that she's a clever child--of course, I often tell both of my children this, but this kid is particularly quick to pick up on academic subjects, quick to discern patterns, quick to memorize. It's forever frustrated me, then, that the kid has, for a while, claimed to dislike math, because she's clever at math, and things that you're clever at are actually the things that you could really enjoy, because you could immerse yourself in them using your higher level of understanding to pave your way.

Anyway, the kid was working away at finding factors using her Cuisenaire rods (and working quite happily, I noted), when she began to name factors without having to use the Cuisenaire rods. I don't quite know how she was doing it, since we haven't even begun to memorize the multiplication table, and we've barely begun to memorize skip counting--repeat addition done mentally, perhaps? Visualization of the rods? Perhaps, as with reading, she unlocked the pattern subconsciously?--but there they were, all correct. I said to her (and yes, I've read enough parenting books to know that many of you are going to be horrified at my positive reinforcement), "Clever girl!" and it was as if a roller shade rolled up behind her little eyes, and suddenly I could hear her thinking, "Why, I AM a clever girl at math!"

The next school day was the much-dreaded Worksheet Thursday, for which I handed the older kid two pages of review problems on multi-digit addition (Drill! Drill! Drill!). Before I really knew that she'd even begun, because, of course, I hadn't been required to tell her multiple times to begin and reprimand her multiple times for not beginning, she was handing me the first page of completed problems with, for the love of all that is good and holy, a SMILE!!! on her face! They were all correct, and I complimented her on having a completed page with zero errors, because she's never done that before, and sent her off to complete the next page.

Several minutes later, she handed the second page over to me, just as happy, and again the problems were all correct. I said, "[Child], this is your best math ever!", then told her to go put it on my desk.

Later that night, as I was collecting the day's work to date stamp and file away, I found her page of problems--written across the sheet, in the distinctive hand of my little lefty, were the words "[Child]'s Best Math Ever."

And that's how my kid loves math! (at least this week...)

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

How We Spent our Winter Vacation

This year, for the first time, Matt was off work for a full ELEVEN days over the winter break, so it really was a family vacation this year!

we decorated

we drove around to enjoy other people's MUCH more elaborate decorations:

(This house belongs to the Hodo family, who live in the next town over from my hometown.)

we made our Christmas gifts to family and friends


we finished up the last of the etsy orders before I shut my shop down for the holidays


the girls received letters from Santa Claus, in answer to their own letters to him




we did a LOT of traveling


we visited my family, ate some fabulous meals, gave them presents, and received some pretty great gifts in return

My Pappaw taped bills to an empty aluminum foil roll, put it back in the box, and had the girls pull out their Christmas money bill by bill--it was a BIG hit!

we came home to a LOT of snow!!!

snug in our comfy house with piles of snow outside, we did a ton of cooking

biscuits

kale pesto and granola

with nowhere we had to go and nothing we had to do, we had a lot of crafty time on our hands

Sydney's rainbow rolled beeswax candle

Willow's clay snowman

my fleece pants for Willow, the Oliver + S Sandbox pants

we played games, in groups of two or three or four

I did NOT accept Matt's blatant cheating at Axis and Allies with good grace!

Crazy Eights

Tsuro

the girls played with toys, both old

and brand-new

This remote-controlled helicopter was a gift from Willow's Poppa and Grandma Janie, and it's amazing. It's too messy still to play with it outside, so Will's been practicing her take-outs and landings.

the girls spent some of their Christmas money

and somehow, supposedly recovering from all those rich Christmas meals, we STILL had a lot of treats

Sydney's suggestion for a family activity one morning consisted simply of "Doughnuts!!!"

Yes, we DID have frozen yogurt for lunch one day!

It was a perfect winter vacation.
It was epic.
It was amazing.
It was everything that I could ever have hoped for.

It was, I hope, one that my girls will keep in their hearts even after they're grown. (Including the part where Sydney heard Santa Claus on the roof and began to cry hysterically. She's going to hear that story every Christmas for the rest of eternity.)

Outdoor Art in the Snow

With a high in the upper 40s, most of this snow here will be melting today, and I'm already having regrets that we haven't enjoyed it enough--not enough sledding, not enough snowmen, not enough hikes and explorations and stomping around and playing. That's one of the ways that I know that I am definitely not completely sane, because we have enjoyed the snow plentifully, happily! I feel the same way every autumn, about our garden--not enough sniffing the flowers, not enough watching the basil grow, DEFINITELY not enough weeding!--and after every holiday (we didn't do an advent calendar this year, or gingerbread houses!!!).

Anyway...pack down the weirdness, and back to snow art.

To set up the art supplies for my girls, I poured colored sand into squeeze bottles, the kind with a pretty wide spout--

--and filled spritz bottles with liquid watercolor; the last time we did snow paint, I used food coloring and water, but I am vastly enamored with the vivid colors of liquid watercolors. I do need to buy more spray bottles, however, because the little spritz bottles that I usually use to make watercolor spray paint are difficult for kids in gloves to operate (although they do make the fingers of their gloves look bright like crayons!)

All the supplies that we used look great on snow:

sand

birdseed

liquid watercolor spray paint 

How fun is that?

In the break between snows (because of course there will be more snow this winter), I think that I'm going to try some better-late-than-never lasagna garden prep for the Spring.

There will be MORE flowers to sniff! MORE basil to watch! Definitely MORE weeding to do!

shared with Friday's Nature Table

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Candle Bling and Kid-Made Jewelry

Both of my tutorials this week came from projects that were really, REALLY big hits with the kids. Over our post-Christmas staycation (oh, how we NEEDED those six days all at home, altogether!), as I worked on a new design for a rainbow beeswax candle--

--Syd worked very hard on a rainbow candle of her own:

Syd maps out her candle design before she begins.

She was pretty thrilled when I showed her how we could personalize her candle with these beeswax sheet cut-outs:

 On another day, I had the idea that the girls might like to use their brand-new, SUPER awesome gel pens (Thanks, Grandma Beck!!!) to make themselves some jewelry, so I cut pendants out of old cardboard record album covers for them. I had planned that they could decorate the blank backs of these pendants, so I fussy cut interesting abstracts from the front cover side, but Willow, who in general is less interested in creating her own drawings from scratch, discovered a passionate interest in (and quite a knack for) embellishing the printed images:

Don't they look great? Gel pens are the perfect tool for an artistic activity like this, because they're vibrant and they stick to a very wide variety of media, looking equally well on rough materials like newspapers and smash books and smooth materials like glossy magazine pages and photographs.

Grandma Beck bought each girl her own large set of gel pens in a metal case, and I keep unabashedly stealing each girl's set for my own work. Every now and then a kid, who has been well-ingrained to pick up her own stuff and who prizes her pen set and so WANTS to keep it nice, will walk by, notice her pen set mysteriously open mysteriously near me, and, giving me a quizzical look, will quietly pack it up and put it away again.

They don't yet know that their mother is a thief--don't YOU tell them!

Story of the World Chapter Two Timeline Review

Our Story of the World Study looks mostly like this:

1. Week One: Listen to our current chapter on audiobook. Answer the quiz questions and review all prior quiz questions. Add the current quiz questions to the girls' list of material to practice daily that week.
2. Week Two: Listen again to our current chapter on audiobook. Complete the map work from the Story of the World Activity Book. Compare the completed map to our other geography references--Google Earth, our Montessori puzzle maps, our family atlas, etc.
3. Week Three: Read a picture book or watch a documentary related to our current study. Add new timeline cards to our materials, and glue them to our big basement timeline. Order all the timeline cards covered so far, and add ordering the timeline cards to the girls' list of material to practice daily that week.
4. Weeks Four and Beyond: Read more picture books, watch more documentaries, and complete other unit-based hands-on studies and related memory work until at least one of the kids feels ready to move on.

I always think it's exciting to add new material to our big basement timeline: 

It's still not a project that the girls ever show a lot of interest in outside of the school-time study that we do with it (although they do always perk up when I suggest putting something that they're otherwise interested in, some book or myth, on the timeline), but it makes me, personally, very happy to have it, and I think that one of these days they'll grow into it and get excited about it and take ownership of it.

Since we come back to Egypt again in Chapter 4, for Chapter 2 we'll be doing projects that deal specifically with the geography and mythology of Ancient Egypt. For books, I've checked out every single story about Egyptian gods and goddesses from our public library (yes, I AM that obnoxious!), and my hope is to have the girls record some sort of family tree/genealogy for each figure, as well as a summary of some of their stories. I'm not yet sure how this will work--a homemade book with a page for each figure and brief summaries, as well as video recordings of the girls re-telling their stories, perhaps?

Other projects that are in the running, as long as interest holds out:

• cookie map of Egypt--The girls are CONSTANTLY on the lookout for things to recreate in cookie form! I think we'll do a cookie of modern Egypt, and decorate with frosting and candy to represent the boundaries of Ancient Egypt, the Nile, and the location of major ancient monuments.
• A Coloring Book of Ancient Egypt depicting tomb art (we can do more of these in Chapter 4, when the pyramids are discussed)
• map of Ancient Egypt flip book
• labeled map of Ancient Egypt coloring page
• interpretations of the myths--I want to keep encouraging the girls to think about how stories are continually re-interpreted and used to give different meanings to different times (this will help when SOTW begins to avidly re-tell the Christian myths), so I'm considering having us watch Stargate all together, or listen to the audiobook of The Red Pyramid, which both contain some really fun re-interpretations of Egyptian mythology.
• paper models of the Egyptian gods and goddesses
• posters of the Egyptian gods and goddesses for matching games and memory work
• I SUPER want to buy these Egyptian gods and goddesses toys!!! I won't, though.
• Egyptian gods and goddesses coloring pages--these would be perfect for the book that I want the girls to make.

Okay, that's a crazy amount of projects, but it's okay, because we only have to do the fun ones.

And two chapters later, we can start mummifying things!