Apples at Anderson Orchard

We finally made it to the apple orchard! Our belated adventure was made much better by the fact of the unseasonably beautiful November day, and the presence of Matt, experiencing his inaugural trip.

Turns out that Daddy has his uses!

Have you ever seen a bigger apple?

Syd actually took this excellent photo of us. It's probably been 18 months since our last photo together.

Matt took this photo of me. I'm always pleasantly surprised when someone wants to take my camera and put ME in a shot!

This is what Will's hair looks like in direct sunlight. Spun gold, I tell her.

An entire enormous haystack to play upon, and *this* is what they decide to do for fun.

All that happiness in the day, AND we came home with two bushels of apples.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Vintage Doorknobs and Comic Books

tutorial for jewelry holders made from vintage doorknobs

and a tutorial for building blocks decoupaged with comic books

This latter project, in particular, turned out AMAZING, and quickly led to even more comic book building blocks, which led to more comic book building blocks, which led to putting yet another trip to our local comic book shop (and its super-discounted old comic book bins) in the planner. 

Eventually, I had to pretty much make myself stop making these so that I could work on, you know, the giant etsy orders that are paying for Christmas. 

After Christmas, though...

There may not be a building block left un-comic booked.

To-do in California

We have a ton of things to get done BEFORE our Thanksgiving trip to California. We need to fix up the chicken yard, and set it all up to make it easy for our chicken sitter to manage while we're gone. We need to pack all our stuff into backpacks so we don't have to pay to check a bag on the plane. Will needs to finish memorizing "The Gettysburg Address," since she wants to recite it for Matt's family's talent show the night of Thanksgiving (...don't ask). We need to request the tons of digital library books that will keep Will's and my heads from exploding during the trip, and figure out the complicated system of who gets to read them/listen to audiobooks/watch movies/play games on the ipad/ipods/laptop without an epic battle for dominance. I need to go shopping for black jeans and a hoodie without a logo on it--the essentials, you know.

My to-do list FOR California is even longer, but fortunately the stuff to get done is much more appealing. Museums to visit. Tidepools to explore. Sourdough to eat.

The essentials, you know.

1. Golden Gate Bridge: Matt's driven me across this bridge several times in his dad's convertible with the top down, and only once did he almost get us killed on the turnaround just past it, the one with the one-way tunnel that you're NOT supposed to drive down when the light is red, Matt! One day, probably not on this trip, I want to walk across it, but for this trip, I'd just like the girls to see it again. The best spot to see the bridge without crossing it is from Crissy Field.
2. San Francisco Zoo: All the years we've spent visiting San Francisco, and I can't believe that we've never been to the zoo! If the weather's nice it'll be a nice outdoor activity, and a wonderful addition to our Year of Zoos. The zoo is also near another of our favorite beaches, Ocean Beach--got to get those beach visits in when you can!
3. Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum: It's not related to our California study, but it is VERY relevant to our Ancient Egypt study! We've been very fortunate to be able to travel to several museums that have excellent Ancient Egypt artifacts over the past couple of years, but this collection will be by far the most superior.
4. Pebble Beach: Formally known as Bean Hollow State Beach, this beach is the girls' favorite place on earth. It's a bit of a drive from Matt's parents house, so we weren't able to go last year, but the girls began their campaign to get us there this year weeks ago.
5. Pacific Pinball Museum: An entire museum of vintage pinball machines, all on free play?!? And we're actually STUDYING pinball machines right now!
6. House of Air: An indoor trampoline park isn't *exactly* a California-centric must-do, but doesn't it sound super freakin' fun?!? AND it's within walking distance from Crissy Field!
7. Charles M. Schultz Museum: Both girls love comics and comic strips, and they LOVE Peanuts. I think they would probably happily go here and read every single comic strip in every single exhibit in this entire museum.
8. The Tech Museum: We went to the Tech last year, and three of us loved it! It made for a good Thanksgiving eve trip, in between airport runs and while the rest of the family was baking pies.
9. The Randall Museum: It's not really a must-do, but our ASTC Passport membership through our local hands-on science museum does get us free admission there, and I like to make use of THAT particular benefit whenever I can!
10. Lawrence Hall of Science: Another ASTC Passport participant! And it's in Berkeley, where I enjoy tooling around, anyway.
11. Happy Hollow Park and Zoo: And ANOTHER ASTC Passport participant! We've visited this park once when the girls were toddlers, and I was really impressed that they have a capybara.
12. California Missions: I thought about taking the girls to a mission as part of our California study, but unless we happen right past one on our adventures, I'll probably wait until they're older. The gift shops attached to the missions are good places to buy Christmas presents for my Catholic relatives.
13. Winchester Mystery House: I think Will, especially, would LOVE this tour, but it's another place that can wait until they're older.

And yes, that is WAY more than one family can do in one week, much less one week with Thanksgiving smack in the middle. 

The first five, though? We'll give it our best shot...

Work Plans for the Week of November 18

It's the last full week of schoolwork before Thanksgiving vacation!
MONDAY: For a change, after Project Week and just before our Thanksgiving vacation, we don't have a bookshelf bursting with library materials, so I had to think for a bit before assigning reading enrichment. Eventually, I settled on some realistic fiction for Will to read and write about (she normally chooses fantasy), and an early reading Mad Libs activity for Syd. I am already looking forward to getting rid of all of our early reading/phonics materials--I doubt we'll still need them by Spring!

Pattern blocks are still a hit--the girls are actually doing their pattern block activity right now, as we sit at the table together after dinner, since they preferred to play this afternoon after our volunteer gig instead of settling back down with schoolwork--and we're still all tooling along with Latin, and Will with the recorder. Syd's got the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner" down, but not the melody (JEESH, not the melody!), so I gave her a research project for this week's music, and we'll keep practicing the song for this week's memory work.

TUESDAY: This week's chemistry involves long-handled matches! The girls are already SUPER excited. Their math packets are taken from Math Mammoth--Will gets the cumulative reviews, and then a unit if she doesn't do well on the review, but Syd just gets a unit a day. Pretests for her are disastrous, because she hates being wrong more than anything else.

Syd and I are still doing First Language Lessons, but both girls are also memorizing the parts of speech, and we're going to do something different for grammar after Christmas. If I have to keep using the first two volumes of First Languages Lessons until we're done, I think my brain will die.

And yes, we ARE finally going to carve our pumpkins! Just, you know, for Thanksgiving, not Christmas.

WEDNESDAY: I am already looking forward to this free day, as I have some huge etsy orders to make. Gotta earn Christmas money, doncha know!

THURSDAY: I might rearrange Thursdays for a few weeks by shifting one of its assignments to Tuesday, since Tuesday horseback riding ends this week and won't resume until January. Our Thursdays are pretty light, but still overscheduled--sometimes we meet up with one of our homeschool groups, sometimes we go ice skating with them, and this week we're going bowling with them after a lunchtime playdate with another family. It's hard to work the formal learning into such a fun day!

Until then, however, Thursday means math, and grammar, and our next lesson in Drawing with Children, and the girls' special subjects--Syd is making more raisin bread, lord help us, and Will is researching and then playing with pendulums. I'm really excited about that last activity, because there are a lot of cool activities that you can do with pendulums, but some of them--the paint, the sand, etc.--may need to wait until next Spring.

FRIDAY: We're going to combine our study of math with our study of ancient history here, by reading about and then constructing geometric solids. I've had these Zome tools for almost a year now, and although we've done some cool projects with them, I'm going to make it my business to really learn this material and find more ways to incorporate it into our work.

A couple of Friday's assignments are secretly prep work for our big California trip next week. I'm going to show the girls how to make a scrap paper travel journal with pockets in it, and then making writing in it daily one of their work assignments during our trip, and we're going to start with the big facts about California, record them on our big kitchen map and start memorizing them, so that we can make a larger study of California when we return.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: There are a couple of fun activities on the schedule--chess club for Will, and the new Doctor Who episode for me--but mostly I'm going to be working my young ones all weekend. We're trying to avoid checking a bag on this flight so that we can save the checked bag fee (I'd rather have $40 in my pocket than a full week's wardrobe in California!), so there will be plenty of VERY careful packing, some house cleaning, chicken yard winterizing, chicken sitter briefing, maybe a little clothes shopping, etc.

And then we fly!

Tick-Tock, Make a Clock (Cake)

I'm going to call this clock cake activity lightly educational.

It requires familiarity with the clock face, so that you get all the numbers going the right way. It requires geometry, so that all the numbers are in the right places. If your kiddos make their cakes independently, which mine did, it requires all the miscellaneous math skills that go into everyday baking.

But mostly, this cake is just a fun little thing for you to do with two kids who found analog time-telling VERY non-intuitive and yet stuck with it until they had it down pat.

The cake is just a simple box cake mix, take your pick of flavor. I, personally, am not a fan of box mixes, but I AM a fan of them for the kids. The kids can make dishes like cakes and cupcakes from scratch by themselves, but not without me there to say things like, "Hmm, that doesn't *look* like a teaspoon...", and to therefore save our taste buds from a batch of cupcakes that has 1.5 tablespoons of baking powder in it--ugh!

And sometimes a kid just wants to make herself a batch of cupcakes, you know, without a big lesson on fractions. For that, I am ALL about the box mix.

Anyway, the older kid made herself and her sister a plain ole box mix cake, no drama, no maternal presence in the kitchen, in two round pans. I made up a batch of maple frosting, and colored half of it with our natural food colors and spooned it into Ziplock bags with one corner cut off--instant pastry bag!

The kids frosted their clock cakes white--

--and then worked on writing the numbers. I had them write the 12 first, then the 6 opposite the 12--

--then the 3 and the 9 halfway between the two on each side.

The numbers in between are slightly trickier, since you can't center them, but it's good practice in visualizing thirds.

I didn't think I had any other decorations on hand, but the younger kid found these gross candy corns leftover from the candy corn brownies that she and her sister made before Halloween, and she made herself a nice little set of hour and minute hands from them.

When they were done, the clock cakes looked just fabulous. They tasted pretty great, too!

The kids inhaled one entire clock cake during the day, and then we all inhaled most of the other one while watching The Avengers for Family Movie Night that night. The younger kid is a major Avengers fangirl, and we've just recently introduced both kids to the live-action films starring the Avengers characters, mostly because I SUPER wanted to go see Thor 2 this weekend!

Which we did. It was awesome. This fangirl, and the mini fangirl, were both thrilled.

Story of the World Map Work

I feel like we have to listen to each chapter of Story of the World a few times before everyone has really mastered all of the information. One of the many nice things about our audio version of Story of the World is that this repetition is painless--simply find some busywork, press play, and have a seat! Usually the busywork consists of coloring pages related to the chapter; these have the added benefit of encouraging even more content mastery later, since the girls usually show Matt their pictures later, and he'll ask them questions about it. For instance, this morning we got to tell him the story of Set and Osiris and the coffin, as he admired a picture that Syd had colored of a scene from that story.

So usually each Story of the World chapter goes like this:

• WEEK ONE: Listen to the chapter (and a couple of later ones) as the girls color, then introduce the quiz questions. I copy these onto index cards and they become part of our history memory work forever.
• WEEK TWO: Listen to the chapter as the girls color, then do the chapter's map work.
• WEEK THREE: Listen to the chapter as the girls color, then add in the new timeline cards. These timeline card are switched off and on with the quiz questions for history memory work.
• WEEKS FOUR UNTIL WE MOVE ON: Watch a documentary or read a non-fiction or living history book, then do a hands-on enrichment activity centered on the chapter's content.

This past week, it was map work day for our chapter, so the girls colored, and then we got out the Prismacolors, photocopied the map, pulled up Google Earth on the computer, found the globe, and got to work!

I like to arrange Google Earth so that what you see on the screen is almost exactly what the paper map shows, and then when we discuss the placement of various items on the paper map, I can zoom Google Earth in to look at the real item, such as the Sphinx or the Nile Delta or the mountains of Upper Egypt, close-up.

I also like context, and a lot of it, so much of our conversation goes like, "The geographic area of Sumer is called Iraq now. Iraq was who the US fought against in the Persian Gulf War. Right, there's the Persian Gulf! Your Uncle Dickie fought in that war. He worked with these crazy-looking planes called AWACs. Want to see what they looked like?" etc., etc.

Also good for context? A great big globe!

There are some more involved map projects that we also like, and that we've done already for Egypt--the salt dough maps of Egypt turned out great, but NOTHING beats a cookie map!

I might actually consider doing that cookie map again, because we last did it a while ago, but yesterday we JUST made cake clocks.

There's only so much deliciousness that one school week can handle!

Fourth Grade Book Reports

I've been experimenting with having my older read a book of my choice and write a book report on it every week, and it's going so well that it's going to be a part of our weekly work plans for the foreseeable future. It's a good way to get her to read classics that she's so far skipped over but would enjoy, and living books that relate to our areas of study but that I'm not interested in having my younger kid read, too.

As a former composition instructor at our local university, I have to say that composition is one of my favorite subjects to teach to the kids. Instead of giving them a checklist of instructions to follow, or asking them to write a draft independently and then have me grade it, I've been having a lot of success taking dictation while I coach in the moment. Some of my in-the-moment edits are simple, such as reminding my kid that the first sentence of a book report must include the title and author, and that the title of the book report cannot be simply the book's title (I can't tell you how many college freshmen brains I also had to train that specific edit into!).

Some edits, of course, are much more meaningful, and this is where I feel that in-the-moment coaching is invaluable. Plot summary is important, and will take years to perfect, but it isn't a hard skill to begin. Contextualizing, however--THAT is a hard skill to begin. I have met so many college students who are uncomfortable coming up with an independent thought about a text, and I know how hard it is for them to give up that comfy five paragraph essay format and do real mental work for the first time. So yes, book reports are plot summary practice, but more importantly, they're practice in engaging.

The exact same advice that I gave to my college students also works with my kid--you must put the book into context, or you must discuss the book's relevance, or you must discuss the book's importance. We didn't really do this with Fantastic Mr. Fox, because she worked SO hard on the plot summary that I thought she'd done enough work for one book report, but the reason that I asked her to read I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906 WAS the context, so we skimped a bit on the summary and focused on context.

I told the kid that her book report must answer one of the following questions:

1. CONTEXT: How does the 1906 San Francisco earthquake fit into history? An answer to that question could discuss California earthquakes more generally, and how earthquakes are prepared for now.
2. RELEVANCE: How is the 1906 San Francisco earthquake relevant to your life? An answer to that question could discuss the kid's family who live in California, or her many visits to San Francisco.
3. IMPORTANCE: How is the 1906 San Francisco earthquake important? An answer to that question could discuss what made it so unusual or memorable.

The kid chose #3 to answer in her conclusion to the book report, and I was quite pleased with her work (hyperbole aside, to deal with later...).

So far, we've written all our reports using the Pages beta on iCloud (update: we now write everything in Google Docs!). It's a really user-friendly program, can be used wherever we have access to a computer or ipad, and has some great, easy image editing features. My kid's favorite aspect of the program is also her favorite part of writing a book report: when she's completely done with the text, she may search Google Images for an illustration and add it to her report.

Illustrations were always my students' favorites, too, but I would rarely permit them in their papers, unless they were crucial to their arguments.

That's why it's good to be a fourth grader!