Work Plans for the Week of October 31, 2016: Handwritten and Handmade!

In the three weeks since we've returned from our American Revolution road trip, we've been between semesters in some ways. We finished our American Revolution unit study and Song School Spanish--

Back to the library for these books!

--as well as our sharks and rocks/minerals studies, and hadn't started (until this week!) our Greek/Roman mythology studies, nor our formal grammar book, nor typing instruction, or our animal behavior MOOC, or Will's SAT exam prep. 

What we did do in those three weeks was continue with Math Mammoth, cursive and journaling, letter writing, Books of the Day, with lots of fun projects, games--

--Girl Scout badge work, and, yes, helping me in the house and yard. Those black walnuts and persimmons aren't going to harvest themselves!

We're back on our official schedule this week, with work plans written by the week and including several units of study that I've written more detailed lesson plans for. Books of the Day this week include some leftovers from our completed rocks and minerals unit, a few civics selections, and a couple of readings inspired by our road trip. Memory work includes continuing "Paul Revere's Ride," identifying and characterizing quadrilaterals, and lots of review of previously studied facts.

And here's the rest of our week, handwritten (on pages from this really cool bullet journal) as I continue to try to figure out how I want to redesign our work plan template:

MONDAY: I may be shooting myself in the foot here a little, beginning our new semester on Halloween AND on a day when we had to bustle out of the house early for dentist appointments, but after the dentist (no cavities for either!), I treated the kids to breakfast and here we sit afterwards, the older kid working on grammar and the younger kid on math.

In Math Mammoth this week, the younger kid is working on calculating with decimals and the older kid is working with quadrilaterals. She's forgotten the names and characteristics of many quadrilaterals, so we've added that to our daily Memory Work and we'll be playing more with quadrilaterals later this week, to reinforce the facts.

The older kid finished her Wordly Wise last semester, and I haven't bought her the Grade 7 book yet, so while the younger kid works on Wordly Wise every day this week, the older kid gets to do a Word Ladder (which means that the younger kid gets to do a Word Ladder, as well, since as soon as the older kid finished hers this morning, the younger kid snatched the book and insisted on completing two puzzles before she'd work on her math). The Word Ladders are too easy for the older kid, alas, and the set doesn't go any higher, so when I pick up her new Wordly Wise, I think I'll add this book of mind benders for her new quick and easy logic work (and probably the next younger book for the younger kid, too).

Analytical Grammar for the older kid and Junior Analytical Grammar for the younger kid are new curricula for us this semester. For my own pedagogical reasons, I've deliberately kept formal grammar study to a minimum thus far. Both kids, though, have an intrinsic knowledge of correct grammar and punctuation and are confident creative writers--they're ready for a grammar curriculum that will give them labels and guidelines. I sprang for the student and teacher books for both sets, although I wish now that I'd just purchased the student books, as the teacher books are really just answer keys, and I don't think I'll need them. Oh, well! Regardless, both books look well-suited to the kid in question, and will make for one more daily work this semester.

We got off track with "A Year of Living Poetically" last semester, but it is something that I'd like to continue; I think that we can get by with doing one poem a month, then adding that poem to our Memory Work to keep it fresh. In at least one of the remaining three-ish weeks every month, I'd like to have the kids work more consciously through their MENSA reading lists, and the other weeks I can toy with poetry composition, book reports, or simply work in different subjects.

The kids have both mastered cursive, but still struggle with writing long passages--they know they want to type their work, but their prior keyboarding lessons haven't stuck. Well, we're going to fix that this semester! I've played with other typing instruction resources in the past several years, but I'm hoping that typing.com is going to be the end-all, be-all solution for us. Here's hoping!

We all loved our sharks MOOC so much that we're doing another one this semester, this time on animal behavior. Although we ended up actually doing our sharks MOOC twice--once along with the class, and then another time on our own with enrichment work that I assigned--I'm planning to do this archived animal behavior class just once, with enrichment activities a combination of my own assignments and class assignments. We've actually did Wednesday's assignment of visiting the animal shelter to interact with companion animals today--we witnessed two dog/cat tests, one pass and one fail, and filled out an application to hopefully adopt Jacob, a one-year-old black lab/Newfoundland. That means that on Wednesday we'll do the nature hike/wild animal observation that was technically today's assignment, and that should work out fine.

TUESDAY: Inspired by her obsessive love of the Percy Jackson series, the younger kid requested a Greek mythology study for this semester. I signed the kids up for the National Mythology Exam, and am using their bibliography as our spine for this study. The basic lesson plans consist of studying one god/goddess per lesson, using the assigned reading (the older kid has more assigned reading than the younger kid), and completing one enrichment activity. This week's activities will be reading the introduction and labeling a map of Ancient Greece, then studying Gaia and her family tree prior to Zeus and beginning a unit-long family tree of the gods and goddesses. The kids will also learn how to write each god/goddess name in Greek, and I'm seriously considering studying Song School Greek concurrently, maybe beginning next week.

Neither kid is enthusiastic about learning an instrument, but I feel like I have to make them give it a try just one more time before I give up on it forever. The younger kid did enjoy Hoffman Academy for a while, and I do have all of their written materials, so we're going to review that for a bit and see if it sticks this time. This week, it's lesson 1!

WEDNESDAY: The older kid needs some more reinforcement in identifying quadrilaterals, so it's time to once again bring out the pattern blocks! We'll be challenging ourselves to build similar figures with the various pieces. Good times will ensue.

THURSDAY: I normally have the kids work together on larger projects, but I think that I'll have them each do their own family tree for their Greek mythology study. The younger kid might want to make hers more decorative, and I can make the older kid put more information on hers.

FRIDAY: We've got a Girl Scout meeting to earn the first aid badge on this morning, and then I'll be staying afterwards to complete my CPR/first aid certification.

The lesson in this day's Animal Behavior MOOC concerns the importance of observation in studying animal behavior, so the kids will practice that with an animal of their own. I'm sure many new discoveries will be made about chickens and cats on this day!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet class, Mandarin class, Nutcracker rehearsal! We may actually finish the tree house this year, if we can just get a couple more good weekends like this one is supposed to be. Or maybe we'll go to the apple orchard instead!

What are your plans for the week?

American Revolution Road Trip: Bay Front Park, Maryland

I was feeling like pretty hot stuff as Matt pulled into the Bay Front Park parking lot; I'd researched this magical place to find fossil shark teeth, found a time when we could go and it would be free (instead of over 50 bucks!), programmed the GPS to guide us there, and there we were, in a small parking lot at the side of a random road outside of a small town in Maryland, just a short hike away from what was going to be a very amazing experience.

(Psst--here's why we were so excited to go here!)

I came down a little bit when we reached the beach and I realized that it was total coincidence that I'd happened to bring us here when the tide was at its lowest, as I hadn't researched THAT at all--oops!

Oh, well! It was, indeed, low tide, so shark tooth hunting we did go!

While Matt and the younger kid walked around a bit and explored and played, the older kid and I became immediately and thoroughly obsessed with finding fossil shark teeth. I handed my camera off to Matt so that I wouldn't drop it in the water, and so most of the photos that you'll see here are his, as he entertains himself waiting for me and the older kid to eventually come out of our shark tooth trances.

He apparently entertained himself in part by finding weird stuff that other people did on the beach.

The younger kid entertained herself by getting cold and wet.

 

And the older kid and I did this!

Our preferred method was to scoop up some of the rocks and sand underneath the flowing water and gently sift it in our hand or shovel, much like we'd learned to do when panning for gold.

But did we find fossil shark teeth, you may be wondering?

We did! We didn't find dozens upon dozens, but in the two hours that we spent there, the older kid and I each found several.

Every time I would decide that we really should go--we still had to drive over to Valley Forge that night!--I'd find another fossil shark tooth, and be re-immersed in hunting, all over again.

Finally, just as the very last rays of sun were hitting the beach, I tore the older kid and myself away from the sharks so that we could take just one walk and experience, you know, the actual beach!

And then it seriously was this dark, so we really did leave!

I have plans to identify, organize, and display the beautiful fossil shark teeth that we collected, but I'll tell you about that another time. For now, put your winter clothes on, because we're headed to Valley Forge!

American Revolution Road Trip: Mount Vernon

On our last day in the Washington, D.C., area, we packed up (how can we have made such a clutter out of our efficiency in only four days?!?), headed out, and were waiting at the front gates of Mount Vernon, happily right in front of a giant busload of field trippers, when they opened for business.

We met the Washington family--

--and then while Matt and the older kid subjected the model Mount Vernon to close inspection, the younger kid and I raced down the connecting footpaths and winding ways so that we could see the real thing before it became crowded with tourists!

Although it didn't rain, it was overcast off and on, so you'll have to excuse the color scheme of my photos. I still haven't gotten the hang of shooting on cloudy days.

This one's okay.

But I seriously back-lit this photo, underestimating how bright that cloud-covered sun would be, and there's only so much that you can do in post-production. Oh, well!

We weren't allowed to take photos inside Mount Vernon (although they do have an app that has a decent floorplan that you can peruse), so I snapped this photo from their front porch, looking out onto the Potomac:

Matt is a huge George Washington fanboy, and with his running commentary (he's read this amazing biography, which is on my to-do list), and the authentic set-up, you really could gain some interesting insights into Washington's life, times, and personality:

The older kid beelined towards the stable. Washington took a long ride around his property every morning.

 

Washington was really invested in making his property productive and prosperous, and he invented quite a few novel techniques and designs:

 This leads me to a fascination that I had no idea would be so intense before we arrived, but oh, my goodness: THE GARDENS! I was deeply fascinated with the gardens.

Here you can see fruit-bearing trees, grapes trained on a fence that both marks the path and makes harvesting simple, and plots for produce, most with borders made from perennial herbs.

 

I was fairly sure that you weren't allowed to pick anything, I mean of course, but I wanted a little cutting of lavender to keep as a souvenir so badly that the older kid and I concocted a plan. She fell behind us, hopped into a bed and picked a little cutting, then ran up to show it to me, whereupon I scolded her, took the cutting from her and pocketed it, then squeezed her hand and quietly told her that she was my good girl.

I promise that one day I WILL try to martial her powers for good, not evil!

Look how orderly and lovely everything is! 

I also really love the groundcover on the path between plots.

I had a major crisis of self-worth in this garden. I want to have a lovely garden so badly, but I clearly don't want to put in the work or invest my time, so I'm just a lazy, brown-thumbed, garden failure with a trashy yard. I express this, pretty much just as I said, and Matt's all, "Um, you were listening to the tour, right? Washington ENSLAVED PEOPLE and made THEM work these gardens for him! You want to enslave 40 people and put them to work 16 hours a day? Your yard would look nice, too! 

 

Point to Matt, I guess.

Here's another garden that the enslaved people made awesome:




There's a giant greenhouse on one side of this giant, ornamental garden, and in the winter, Washington made one of his enslaved workers, often a child, sleep in front of a fire that warmed it so that they could keep the fire going all day and night.

Asshole.

Random, but I taught the younger kid this hysterically funny mash-up of the Running Man and the Cabbage Patch, and I am constantly making her perform it for me so I can laugh:



She's such a good sport.

We made a pilgrimage to Washington's tomb--

 --and then made a pilgrimage to the memorial for his enslaved workers:

The memorial is on the site of the old cemetery, where all of the enslaved people, even the ones who were "special" to Washington, were buried in unmarked graves:

Archaeologists are using imaging techniques to identify where there remains lie, so that their burial spots can be honored:

They've laid out the outlines of their remains. Some of them are very small, and there are a lot of them:

Another part of Mount Vernon recreates a working farm of the time, with historical reenactors in some areas to show you how they worked:

We found that everywhere we went, we were able to easily learn about the likely experiences of the enslaved people who lived and worked here. Here, for instance, is the small shack of a family whose wife/mother worked on one of Washington's farms. The husband worked on another farm miles away, and was permitted to walk home on Saturday nights, spend Sunday with his family, then walk back on Sunday nights.

Other enslaved people lived in dormitories behind the greenhouse, and others, of course, lived all over, in areas that haven't been recreated.

Below, I'll share with you more of the resources that we used to prepare for this visit, but the most valuable of these was the Youtube channel, Ask a Slave. There's some language that's not kid-friendly in it, but on the whole, it's highly educational and makes the experiences of the enslaved people feel more immediate and real (and it helped us answer a couple of the docent questions on our tour!):

The museum inside Mount Vernon also had an excellent exhibit on his enslaved people, with a lot of artifacts and original documents to explore. I was a little burned out on Washington by the time we hit the part of the museum that was actually about him, but Matt pored over every. Single. thing, and I did find some things to entertain me:

Such as the younger kid wearing Washington's dentures!

And to answer what I'm sure is your burning question from my last post, no, I did not buy a stuffed George Washington. We zipped straight through that gift shop when we were done, made sandwiches at the car and took them to our seats, and drove to Maryland, marveling, as we left the neighborhood of Mount Vernon, how the area that we were driving through, with its houses and strip malls, was likely once part of Washington's vast estate.

But why Maryland, you ask?

Because that's where the fossilized shark teeth live, of course!

Here are some of the resources that we used in our study of George Washington:

American Revolution Road Trip: Smithsonian National Zoo

The older kid has been wanting to go visit Smithsonian's National Zoo since we were planning our last trip to Washington, D.C., years ago, so I was thrilled that we could finally take her!

And nope, we didn't let the all-day rain stop us!

While we did see every single animal who lives in the National Zoo, the highlight for me (the kids saw some at the San Diego Zoo) was the pandas!!!!!!!

One panda was hanging out in the rain...

...but all the other pandas were staying comfy and warm inside.

Comfy, indeed!

See? Proof that I am both on this trip, AND saw a panda!

 

The younger kid's camera battery died halfway through, so we shared my camera for the rest of our visit:

Will really wants peafowl, and I even know where to buy the chicks, but they're 50 freakin' bucks unsexed, so I've told her that she has to spend her own money if she wants one.

 All of the exotic birds on display, and the younger kid was the most fascinated with these...

We stayed so late at the zoo that all of the gift shops were even closed by the time we walked out, meaning that I could not buy myself a stuffed panda souvenir. Yay for saving money, although I really want a stuffed panda souvenir!

Would I settle for a stuffed George Washington instead? Stay tuned and find out!