Organizing Written and Oral Reports in Elementary School: The Iceland Project

My kids write reports and essays fairly often, but our homeschool group's frequent academic fairs are great opportunities for them to really dig in and up their skills--and show them off!

I tried a new organizational strategy this time, borrowed from Third Grade Thinkers, that worked out so perfectly that we're going to keep it for all time. Heck, I may start using this method!

After the kids had each read a couple of general resources on Iceland (Culture Grams and Britannica School gave the best results for this particular subject), they chose some narrower subjects on which to focus: Will wanted to write about Iceland's volcanoes, geysers, and glaciers, while Syd was most interested in Iceland's language, food, and horses.

I cut off a long section of butcher paper for each kid, then wrote their focus subjects, plus a section for the introduction and conclusion, as column heads across it. As the kids read and re-read all the print and online resources they collected, I asked them to find at least one general fact to help them write their introductions, at least one fact with "meaning" that would help them write their conclusions, and at least three facts relating to each focus subject:

I LOVED Third Grade Thinkers' use of sticky notes to write facts on, and for the exact same reasons: they're easily manipulated to reorganize the flow of logic, and their small size encouraged the kids to summarize instead of copying. Intellectual honesty begins young, folks--NO PLAGIARIZING!

The next challenge, of course, is to not let the kid just string the facts together to make each paragraph, but instead to contextualize, be it with example, personal observation, or a sense of meaningfulness. As you'll see in the reports, Syd had an easier time doing this in her oral presentation, simply because of the subjects that she chose to cover; she was able to do an audience participation activity when reporting on Iceland's language, and we made and brought in laufabraud (more on that another time, but yum!) to enrich her reporting of Icelandic food.

For the International Fair, the kids had the final challenge of translating their written reports into engaging oral presentations. We did this in a couple of different ways. When the kids wanted to insert something unscripted--such as the Icelandic greetings that they memorized, or Syd's Icelandic naming activity--into their report for the oral presentation, I had them write what they wanted to do centered and in caps in the appropriate spot of their report, so that they would see it as they were reading and remember to pause their report and complete the unscripted portion. This worked okay, although I had to help Syd get her Icelandic naming activity both started and stopped; I'll have to think more on how to help her work through that independently next time. I also wanted Will to look at her report less and at the audience more, so I narrowed the margins on her written report way down, printed it, and then had her cut the paragraphs apart and glue them to index cards. In rehearsals, she did an excellent job referring to the cards but speaking to the audience, but during her actual presentation, I don't think she looked up from those index cards once! At least she remembered to speak loudly and clearly.

Don't feel as if you have to watch this video of their presentations; for one, I'm ashamed of how shaky my camera work is (I don't think I was actually looking at it as I filmed, because I was so focused on the kids), and there's also an embarrassing part in which both Matt and I rush to chastise Will as she's interrupting/correcting Syd mid-presentation, because we're both super traumatized by the time the kids fought on TV and I, at least, wouldn't have been surprised if Syd had leaped onto Will pro wrestler-style and began to roll around with her in a cloud of dust.


Fortunately, everyone emerged from their presentations unscathed, and the little hellions were able to later pose in triumph:

After the presentations, as everyone's milling around and looking at displays and eating geographically-themed snacks, these two totally random people literally just wandered into our conference room and began to look at all the displays. And it wasn't just walk around, glance at stuff, and wander out again--these people were INVESTED! They stopped at one particular kid's Ancient Egypt display, and admittedly, this kid had done a seriously tremendous job--she's too young to be a fully literate reader, I *think*, but she stood there and recited, from memory, just a giant amount of information about Ancient Egypt--but this couple stood there for something like forever, reading all the captions and actually translating the title of her presentation and her name from the Egyptian hieroglyphics in which she'd written them. Matt was pretty sure that they were going to kidnap the kid to be their language officer at the Stargate, but I sort of imagined them as very clueless and naive tourists from some random country, coming to the United States to see all the sights, and then seeing on the library calendar that, "Oh, Guthrun, look! An International Fair! I remember reading about World Fairs in our history books as a child! We MUST attend!"

And since this kid is definitely still in town and hasn't been indentured to the Stargate, clearly my theory is the correct one.

Here's a partial list of the resources that the kids used to study Iceland:



Of course, there are many more than these, and we didn't even begin to cover Norse myths or the sagas or do any of the activities collected in my Iceland pinboard (and how I dearly wanted to help the kids make a set of runes!). Ah, well...

Gotta save something for next time!

Our In-Home Branch of the Public Library

What I'm about to show you is embarrassing, I'm told. I don't personally think it's embarrassing, because I have zero sense of personal shame, but I do recognize that you are probably going to think that this is very, very weird.

Okay, here it is. This is an entire bookshelf in our home. Ninety-nine percent of this bookshelf holds materials from our town's public library and our university's libraries. We call it the Library Bookshelf:

At the top left there, you see some undergrad chemistry textbooks that I've checked out from the IU library. I was studying biology through the MIT OpenCourse system, but kept running into a bunch of chemistry that I didn't know, so I switched to chemistry. Of course, now that I'm studying chemistry, I keep running into a bunch of electricity stuff that I don't know.

When Will was researching for her Biography Fair project, way back in the fall, we all got really into Jules Verne. Now, most nights of the week, Matt reads aloud to us a chapter of The Mysterious Island before the kids go to bed. We keep having to return it to the public library and check it out again, because it's something like the longest book ever.

I got interested in Lewis and Clark after Syd chose a documentary on them to watch as a family some time ago. A friend suggested the historical fiction of James Alexander Thom, all of which was clogging up the library bookshelf for a while before I decided that I would save them all as a treat to read on our big road trip this summer, but in the meantime I also got interested in the Native Americans of that time, especially the ones who lived in what is now Indiana, and will be incorporating a lot of that material into our Indiana study.

I always have a ton of teaching materials checked out from the IU School of Education library. They give me a LOT of help in teaching math, especially, but they also have manipulatives, textbooks, board games, and children's books, and their lending period is immense. The kids' Latin textbook actually belongs to the School of Ed, and I think that we've only had to return it and check it out again once in the past year. Most of those Latin books on the shelf (though not all) are from the IU libraries, actually, as well as that whole Saxon Math collection--I like Math Mammoth, but I always have my eye out for alternatives.

The magazines belong to us. I don't know why, but I can never seem to sit down and read a magazine unless I'm on a road trip, so I save them up.

Will wants to learn to solder. I feel doubts about this.

Those entomology books are also all from the IU libraries. I've finally decided on a humane-ish killing jar, but I still can't figure out where to buy the chemicals to charge it.

Homemade pizza is a staple in our house.

We always have a lot of materials that support our Story of the World studies on our shelves. I really should return the rest of our Ancient Egypt materials, since we'll be coming back to Ancient Egypt again in a few chapters. We completed the Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (or something like that) chapter this morning, and I think that instead of bothering with spending another week doing mapwork for fictional characters, we'll move straight on to Hammurabi next. Looks like I'll be doing another library search!

Yes, I am very interested in post-apocalyptic fiction. Anything will do, although I love zombies the most. Matt keeps most of his pleasure reading in the car, since he likes to hide out there to read during his lunch hour at work, so imagine another big stack of graphic novels and histories there.

Syd's earning her Potter badge right now in Girl Scouts, so we've got some pottery and ceramics books on the shelves. Will's interested in woodworking, which explains those books, but just decided this morning to start earning her Geocaching badge, so expect a bunch of geocaching books on the shelves in a couple of days.

Both girls read non-fiction books about animals, comic books, joke books, and trivia books. I just replenished Syd's stack of easy readers, so there are about twenty more on the shelves than there were in this photo.

Will's also really into fantasy, and also novels about kids who rescue pets, or girls who help ponies, etc. Those titles come and go at lightening speed, however, so the specific ones are pretty hard to pin down. I do know that right now she's reading Tom Sawyer, a book that we own, but only because she came up out of nowhere one day and asked, "Why can't I understand what Jim is saying?"

I paused, closed my eyes, and contemplated all possible contexts, before my library science and liberal arts training pinged and led me to the correct conclusion: Jim, whose speech is written in dialect, friend of Huck Finn but also of Tom Sawyer, whose book I know we own. Will and I then had a lovely conversation about why it's tacky to write in dialect, what such writing is trying to show, and why black men of that time might not have learned, or be comfortable speaking with, correct grammar and pronunciation.

I need to move us into a dinosaur unit, so that we're all experts for our summer dino dig. I'm still unsure of exactly where to start, however, since we've studied dinosaurs so often before.

I'm hoping that we'll stay with the bird study, as we focus more on Indiana-specific wildlife.

The kids' monthly day-long nature class has an emphasis on survival skills; they find that kind of disaster-prep reading fascinating.

We've backed off a bit on Will's history of video games study, just because we've had so much else going on. I need to check in to see if it's still an interest, and if it is, we need to get back in it.

Soooo... yeah. That's our bookshelf. Sometimes people come over, happen to see it, start to browse, then ask, with horrified fascination, "Are all those... LIBRARY BOOKS?!?"

Um, yes. Yes, they are. So if you've ever been at the library trying to check something out, only to realize, frustrated, that ALL the DK biographies are missing, or ALL the James Alexander Thom novels, or ALL the children's books on pottery, then you'll know:

I have them, and I'm not giving them back until they're three days overdue.

Work Plans for the Week of March 3: Latin and Libraries

I'm pretty well over the way that the Box widget that embeds my work plans always insists on scrolling immediately to them when my blog loads, and the way that Box has completely ignored my question about this, so at some point I'm going to have to make the time to research other document embedding systems, sigh. Until then, however...

MONDAY: While the local schoolchildren are suffering through yet another snow day here, it's business as usual for us--it looks like even our local volunteer gig will be open today, so add "De-ice the car" to my to-do list! Syd's working on her factor chart (I got the idea from an old elementary Montessori manual--I'll tell you about it another time, if it turns out well) right now, while Will, who's finished part of her reading work, is heating up some French bread for our breakfast.

We've got chapter 19 of Song School Latin today (more body parts), instrument lessons--and I am REALLY going to have to kick their butts on these, because it's been a while since they've really focused on regular practice--and we'll be able to spend a few weeks doing some regular creative writing, since our local PBS station finally got their butts in gear about the PBS Kids Writers Contest.

TUESDAY: The kids have both Math Mammoth and First Language Lessons today, which I always appreciate during lesson planning since they're so blessedly easy to schedule. A playdate and baking a king cake to celebrate Mardi Gras will use up most of the rest of the day, but we'll also be working on the kids' Girl Scout service project. They need to provide a bookshelf as part of this project, and at first I thought that we might get it donated, but the dimensions required are pretty specific to fit into a limited space, AND Will has expressed so much interest in woodworking lately, that I've finally decided that we'll just make the bookshelf. It's still a little cold for woodwork outdoors, so we may find ourselves with lumber, the portable work bench, and the circular saw in the living room, but I think it's going to be a great beginning woodworking project for the kids, and one that they're guaranteed to see in use every week at our regular volunteer gig.

WEDNESDAY: Will's big Spring Ice Show performance is this night--wish her luck!

THURSDAY: We've still got a couple of chemistry experiments centered on acids and bases to perform, but I didn't get around to getting all the materials for those yet, so I'm moving us on to the paleontology that we'll be studying off and on as we lead up to our dinosaur dig this summer. I imagine that we'll be interspersing this paleontology study with seasonal studies, like botany and animal biology, and kid-led interests, but for now, I'll be grounding the kids' understanding, and sneaking in a little more Latin!

I think the kids are also ready to start interspersing Drawing With Children lessons with other types of hands-on art, so we'll be trying out this copy of The Color Book that I was sent to review (ooh, I just saw that it hasn't been officially released yet--how fun to have it in our paint-covered little hands!)--it's focused on exploring color through a variety of activities, so it should be a fun integration into our week.

FRIDAY: We're soundly into our Indiana study, but I wasn't quite prepared to move into the next chapter of The Story of the World (nor am I quite sure, yet, how I'm going to handle that chapter, since it highlights one of the book's few flaws, Bible stories treated as history--we may end up just listening to the chapter one week and then moving on, but first I need a little more time to decide if there's anything really historically relevant there), so fortunately, there's ALWAYS something more to do with Ancient Egypt!

The kids get in moods in which they seem to forget about formerly favorite pastimes, sometimes, so this week's logic is a board game of each kid's choice, to remind them that they like to play board games! That, combined with a library program, should round out our school week on a VERY fun note.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We might go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art as a family, or we might send the kids to a pottery class and claim some grown-up time. We might go hiking, if the weather warms, or we might drag the bikes out and get them ready for a season of riding. We *might* order a couple more chicks from a local hatchery, although every time you ask me that one, my answer changes.

Homeschool History: Make a Sarcophagus

Creating a model sarcophagus is an excellent enrichment activity to add to an Ancient Egypt study, and it fits in well with chapter four of The Story of the World: Ancient Times, the chapter on Ancient Egypt that includes information about mummies and pyramids.

I found little cardboard... pencil boxes?... on clearance one day in one of the big box arts/crafts stores that I frequent as little as possible due to my tendency to buy things on clearance that I don't need and probably won't use for years, and kept them on a shelf in the study/studio for, yes, years before realizing that they were the perfect material for this craft. Can a time lag of three years still be described as serendipity?

Any little box that's longer than it is wide will work for this craft, however, whether it's cardboard or wooden--I don't think plastic would work well, but you can make your own cardboard box that's the exact size that you want. For a very miniature sarcophagus, you could even make a matchbox work, and that would be super cute!

Before the kids began their own sarcophogi, we researched a bit and did a Google Image search in order to study examples. Based on that, we talked about having a facial portrait on the sarcophagus, including decorative elements and patterns, drawing symbols or representations of the meaningful gods, and recording important scenes from their lives. We also talked about the importance of the sarcophagus being their best work, and thoughtful, and including a lot of details and creative embellishments. I introduced the idea that artists often create sketches or rough drafts of their work before they begin the piece itself, and to that end I gave them these sarcophagus design sheets and asked them to create a draft of their piece first. Will fussed at this, of course, because she hadn't focused yet and thus didn't feel invested in the project, and actually tried to scribble her sarcophagus out as fast as possible on the cardboard box, but I erased her work, done quickly and shabbily to try to make a point, and required her to do her design sheet first. 

While working on her design sheet, she finally focused and found herself invested in her work, and worked hard and happily until she finished:

Seriously, though--school in Cinderella pajamas? That kid doesn't understand how good she's got it.

The kids copied their designs onto the cardboard sarcophogi in pencil--I reminded them to be mindful of the scale, but that's a concept we clearly need to keep working on, since both of their drawings ended up pretty small--colored them with Prismacolor and Sharpie markers, and, since their designs left extra room, I had them each research and write the cartouche for their names on the boxes, as well:

I actually think that I will have the kids use these sarcophagi as pencil boxes, and if this alone serves to stop their bickering over who stole whose pencil, then it will be three bucks well spent. This does bring to mind, though, my favorite thing to do with a kid's finished project--use it! For us, at least, a project used or displayed is a project that brings greater overall enjoyment, and a project that eventually gets worn out or messed up in some way, and therefore a project that eventually gets thrown away, guilt-free. Guilt-free de-acquisition? YAY!!!

Possible extension activities for this project:

• Sarcophogi were sometimes decorated on the inside, as well (in the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, we saw a sarcophogus made by a coffin maker for his daughter. On the inside, he'd written all the information from The Book of the Dead that his daughter would need for her journey--a beautiful relic of his last act of service to his beloved child), so you could also decorate the inside of your sarcophogus, perhaps even with hieroglyphics.
• You could create a mummy to live inside the sarcophogus. Some homeschoolers have symbolically mummified Barbie, and I don't think that's such a bad fate for her.
• A matchbox sarcophagus could be entombed inside a model pyramid.

This project is shared with the After School Link Party over at Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational.

Work Plans for the Week of January 13, 2014: So Much Science!

MONDAY: Our homeschool Science Fair is in three weeks, so it is time to get cracking! Ideally, I'd like the kids to get most of their research done this week (hence all the research and reports on the work plans), and their big project done next week, leaving that last week for them to have plenty of time to finish up their work and prepare their oral presentation and display board.

So science will be a big part of three days this week--fortunately, our other work for today is fairly cut-and-dry. The kids LOVED Roll 'n Multiply (and don't tell them, but I *may* let them play it for their multiplication table memory work this week, instead of the plain old tedious study that I made them do last week), Will once again balked at learning one more new line in "It's Raining, It's Pouring" but found it simple to do once she focused (when she begins to have the self-awareness to realize this pattern and cease it, I swear I will buy her a present!), and we are all eagerly anticipating heading back to our weekly volunteer gig in an hour or so, after our long holiday hiatus (as was exclaimed over breakfast this morning, "We haven't been to the Hub since LAST YEAR!!!).

TUESDAY: For their Science Fair project, the kids need to research paleontology, the skeletal system, and chicken anatomy, so on this day they're going to use our human skeleton model kit to create a plaster of Paris model of the human skeleton, glue it to a cardboard base, then use paint or embroidery thread--we'll see what they prefer--to key its bones to the identical bones on a diagram of a chicken skeleton. Both humans and chickens have mandibles, and femurs, and clavicles, etc.

That big project, plus a continuation of the work for the Girl Scout World Thinking Day badge (Will still needs to research another country's educational system, Syd still needs to watch a couple of international Sesame Street episodes and compare them to the US version, and they both need to begin their big service project), should intersperse nicely with the book work that they've got for math, grammar, and logic, leading to a pretty nice, if full, school day.

WEDNESDAY: Finally, we're horseback riding again! The kids are so excited to get back on their horses. I'm sure Cody and Lola have missed them terribly, too!

THURSDAY: We're going to move ahead to the next chapter of The Story of the World next week (mental note to ME to request library books and get the prep work done for that!), so we're working on the last two mummy and pyramids projects that I wanted us to complete first. For this day, there are SO many great interactive games about Ancient Egypt online, and the kids are going to think it's a real treat to get to explore them all for school. On the next day, they're going to transform Mason jars into canopic jars--I'm really eager to see how that project turns out!

Last week, Will loved using Scratch to play Spacewar, and spent more time goofing around on Scratch afterwards, even finding some games based on some of her favorite books (she's a big fangirl over the Warriors series, just so you know). She mentioned that she might like to try programming something of her own, but then never got around to it, so I put it on her schoolwork as encouragement. Syd also had a blast planning her fashion show design last week, and claims that she's going to sew it completely by herself this year (YES!!!), so I may have her sew a muslin of a shirt pattern that I think will be easy enough for her to use. Of course, I thought I had a pants pattern that was easy enough for her to use, but I sewed the muslin for her myself, and she didn't care for the style, so it's back to research for me! Maybe if she has to sew her own muslins she won't be so picky...

As a side note, Syd plans to use the following types of fabric for her garment:

• orange jersey knit--We're talking orange T-shirts here, or orange graphics on T-shirts, or even orange notions to embellish the garment.
• green formal fabric with sequins--Wish me major luck here, because who on earth would have a formal gown made out of green sequined fabric?!?
• green bottomweight--I'm tacking this one on myself, because I plan to STRONGLY encourage Syd to piece the inner thigh portion of the green sequined pants that she's planning on making with a regular green bottomweight fabric. I mean, walking the runway with sequins between your thighs--can you imagine?

So if you have any orange T-shirts, green curtains, or green sequined prom gowns that you're dying to get rid of, send them over to our house! 

FRIDAY: This may end up being more work than we can do on this day--I'm still playing with how to incorporate the kids' math class into their schedule--but if everyone can get focused, we *should* be able to create lapbooks based on G is for Golden: A California Alphabet (I LOVE the Discover America State-by-State series, as well as the lesson plans that go with the books), sculpt canopic jars, make some progress on the World Thinking Day badges, and write a report on chickens, chicken anatomy, and the life cycle of the chicken. I'm curious to see how these reports go, actually--I'm going to ask the kiddos to collaborate on each of their reports this week, instead of writing two separate reports. Will they realize that this makes the project much quicker and easier to complete, or will they fight the whole time and make it take ten times longer?

We'll see!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY/MONDAY: Here's to another holiday, another long weekend, and another short work week to come! I'm pretty excited that we have NOTHING scheduled for Saturday or Sunday; I hope the weather will allow us to take a long hike or go mountain biking. On Monday, I'll be doing our regular volunteer gig by myself while Matt takes the girls and some friends to a different volunteer gig with the Girl Scouts.

Also in the plans: yeah, they'll probably be boiling down a whole chicken carcass, bleaching the bones, and then beginning to re-articulate the skeleton.

Yay, science!

Works Plans for the Week of January 6, 2014: Back in the Game

It's another week when it's easier to be a homeschooler than not--our part of the country is stymied under record, dangerously low temperatures, and our city has basically shut down and ordered everyone to stay home and snuggle up. Public schools are out--and will be out tomorrow, too--but it's probably not so much a novelty for those kiddos coming on the back of their two-week break, and I think they're going to have to make these days up at the end of the year, anyway--yuck (Ooh, I just discovered that Indiana schools are NOT going to make up this snow day, but it will result in them not meeting their flat-out minimum 180 days of instruction this year. Interesting...)! For us, though, it's business as usual (minus our volunteer gig and aerial silks class, both having been cancelled), and the children, having had enough of vacation and staycation in the past two weeks, are happy to get back in the game.

MONDAY: I knew ahead of time that our outside activities would be cancelled today, so I snuck in an extra subject--and the kids didn't notice, whee! Our pattern blocks activity today was focused on square numbers, which ties nicely in to our current memory work of memorizing the multiplication table (Will's late to this, which doesn't bug me, and Syd's early to it... which also doesn't bug me!). In Latin, we're onto animal names, which the kids are finding super easy to memorize--a refreshing change from the struggle to keep those darned tricky words in their heads! I found some good Youtube piano lessons that are making Syd's keyboard time much easier; Will threw a fit over having to practice her recorder piece until she actually got it right, but then was stoked at having gotten it right, so there you go.

Our big project this week has to do with the kiddos' first Girl Scouts badge! We are just at the beginning of this journey, I know, but already we are all so excited about all the opportunities that come with being a Girl Scout. I registered the kids as Juliettes, which means that we can work independently and with our friends who are also Girl Scout Juliettes, but they can still attend all the TONS of Girl Scout activities and workshops and camps and classes in our area. The badge activities are excellent, too--I like that there are choices, and that they're all so cross-curricular, and the kids like that they're all so hands-on and varied.

The first badge that we're working on is the one for World Thinking Day, which is coming up next month. I love this one, as it's focused on the issue of childhood education and access to it. We've already had some great conversations about education as a right and responsibility versus education as a privilege, and how that affects children's attitudes about their education (Ahem!!!). Among other activities, both girls will be comparing girls' educations in other countries (namely India and in Africa) to their own education, and planning and executing the creation of a children's literacy corner in the local food pantry where we volunteer. For this latter project, they'll need to write to the volunteer coordinator and ask permission, design the spot to fit into the cramped area already set aside for children there, source and obtain all the supplies, set it up, and maintain it weekly. Today we talked through some of the planning, and then Will watched a video about a little schoolgirl in India and wrote a rough draft of her comparison/contrast list, and Syd created a storyboard for a photo diary that she's going to create about her typical school day.

TUESDAY: I want to start Science Fair prep as soon as possible--can you believe that it's next month?!?--but until our library books are ready for us to pick up (and the library is closed today AND tomorrow, probably, sigh), we can finish up our acids and bases study with a few more of the experiments from the kids' chemistry set. I'm back to scheduling grammar only once a week, leaving time for more projects, and I think that I'll keep the kids with word ladders for logic until after the Spelling Bee--every minute of practice counts!

WEDNESDAY: I still don't know what the weather will be like on this day, frankly, and if we'll even get out to aerial silks. Free days aren't quite as fun when the temperature is so dangerously low that your friends can't even come over for a playdate, and you can't meet them for sledding.

THURSDAY: Surely we'll be able to go ice skating with friends by then... although it is supposed to snow again on Thursday. Otherwise, we'll keep ourselves busy with chemistry experiments and drawing lessons. Will is going to master the first videogame ever, and Syd is going to sketch out some plans for her Trashion/Refashion Show design. I really hope that she designs something that she can sew for herself this year!

FRIDAY: We didn't finish the California facts during our last week of school last year, so we'll finish them now. We'll probably do a few geography-based projects next week--the vacation scrapbooks, California lapbooks, etc. I also need to remember to do the prep work this week so that we can work on some bigger Ancient Egypt projects next week, but especially after we saw those real-live versions at the Rosicrucian Museum, I think the kids will have a lot of fun creating their own model sarcophogi in cardboard.

Over break, we listened to audiobooks of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, and saw the play and movie versions of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, AND made chocolate from scratch. I wanted to bring the topic back around to our summer studies of Hershey before we moved on, so I've got a documentary on Hershey for us to watch, and then the kids are going to design their own chocolate factories on large-format drawing paper. I wonder if their factories will be more Wonka-esque or Hershey-esque in nature?

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Nature class, chess club, and lots of playing in the snow and swimming at the Y, is my guess.

California Field Trip #3: The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose

It took a trip to California to really bring our study of Ancient Egypt to life. The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, right in San Jose, boasts an absolutely epic collection of Egyptian artifacts, and that's where we and the girls' grandpa spent one very happy morning:

I bought the girls these little "passports" that had questions and activities for the various exhibits, and stamps to collect in all the galleries. It was just the thing to keep the younger kid occupied and engaged--

--while the older kid and I shared an audio tour (it's a free download!):

Isis with Osiris' coffin, just like in The Story of the World!

Matt reckons that their Egyptian tomb recreation is an even more elaborate version of the one in the Children's Museum of Indianapolis--there aren't that many pristinely-preserved tombs to recreate, you know:

Look--cuneiform! We've read about it, we've copied it, we've downloaded images of it and pasted them on our timeline, but this is the first time that we've seen it in real life:

And as a counterpoint... look--papyrus!!!

California sunshine? It's verra bright.

giant Senet

 The girls gained a ton of valuable context to our studies here, and I got some more great ideas and great inspiration:

Model pyramids! Kid-made Senet games! Home-sewn Egyptian costumes! Mythology skits!

I'm more sure than ever that we will NEVER move beyond Ancient Egypt in our history studies, sigh.

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...

Pattern Block Math Play

I like to make one of our math units each week involve some concept that we're not currently studying. Sometimes it's a cool, big project, sometimes it's a small game or puzzle, sometimes it's something that connects to some OTHER subject that we're studying  (Ancient Egypt is great for math!), and sometimes it's simply something that involves one of our school materials that we haven't pulled out in a while.

For the past few weeks, for instance, that unit has been all about the pattern blocks:

We all love pattern blocks--they're so colorful and pretty and fun to play with!--but until recently, I never really had the variety of uses for them that would cause them to regularly appear in our school work. I mean, with Cuisenaire rods and Base 10 blocks and number tiles you can do addition and subtraction and multiplication and division and fractions and so on, but we only ever pulled out pattern blocks for patterning, symmetry, and fun.

But now that I've focused in on pattern blocks, I've discovered that there are PLENTY of other mathy uses for them. Most of the resources that I've been using come from our university's education library--

--in particular, this pattern blocks logic/math book that we've settled into:

The kids have been practicing some really great logic and problem solving skills using the activities in this book, especially Will, who's not naturally a visual learner:

This task in particular, which required them to fill each shape with exactly seven pattern blocks, frustrated and stumped her long after Syd had blithely breezed through it:

I know I shouldn't have helped her at all, because it was well within her capabilities, but I did suggest just once that perhaps that bigger block could be made up from two smaller blocks to increase the number of total blocks, and I was frankly amazed when she actually took my suggestion with good grace, and then ran with it, zipping through the remaining shapes. Perhaps that success will give her better stamina for the next project, so that I won't even feel tempted to help her.

At some point I splurged on paper pattern blocks and a set of pattern block stencils, so to finish up each activity I always ask the girls to either paste their solution on or trace and copy it on--they like it, and it makes it look nice for their math portfolio.

Fortunately, the IU Libraries have LONG check-out periods, so if the girls seem bored with pattern blocks in a few weeks we can take a break and still keep the book for when they seem fun again. I've also got a couple of DIY projects in mind for patterny block manipulatives, and I put a bunch of pattern block ideas into my Homeschool Math: Geometry pinboard. Next up, though: we're doing fractions in Math Mammoth right now, and it turns out that pattern blocks also make great fraction manipulatives!

Work Plans for the Week of October 28, 2013

Our break was good for mind and soul, but I'm also very happy to be back in business. We've got so many exciting things to learn and do and see and explore!

Here are Syd's work plans for the week.
Here are Will's work plans for the week.

MONDAY: I'm trying out a new method of getting the memory work practiced regularly. It's a learning curve, though, since Will and Syd both found the concept of checking off the correct assignment on the correct day on this chart absolutely baffling at first. It's funny what random things kids don't know!

I'm trying to strike a balance between hands-on math and computation skills, so both girls are testing out a different pattern blocks skills book today (I didn't like the one we tested the other week, sigh). I'm also trying to incorporate more living books and movies into our days, since the girls always seem to remember that content so well, so I'm adding that to subjects throughout the week whenever it seems relevant. I've been downloading videos from Discovery Education Streaming and creating themed DVDs for various units--the recorder, Ancient Egypt, our 50 states study, etc.--and this makes having the kids access those videos a LOT more handy!

You might notice that Syd no longer has Reading as a daily subject! She's at about a Level 2 reader, so instead of making it a curriculum subject, I'm including in her other daily subjects something that she can read to me, and something that I can read to her.

In Latin we've moved on to commands, and in music Will is still reviewing some of her recorder songs that she forgot over our hiatus from the instrument, while I'm trying out having Syd, who has no interest in learning an instrument but who does enjoy singing, learn and practice a song this week.

TUESDAY: Over the weekend, we went to the Physics, Geology, and Chemistry open houses on campus--always a BIG hit!!!--and so I wasn't super surprised when Will said that she'd rather study chemistry now than continue with human biology. We hadn't gone far into human biology, fortunately, and have finished our animal biology unit, AND own a really nice chemistry set that comes with a series of graduated experiments and demonstrations, so I'm actually pretty excited to make the shift. It will release me from a TON of prep work, too!

I've still got Craft as a subject for Tuesdays, since it's great for fine motor and problem solving skills, and although Syd's pretty crafty in her free time, Will rarely chooses such activities. I've still got Will doing some grammar, too--although my long-term plan is to put her into the third level of First Language Lessons with Syd later this year, Will already has such an excellent inherent grasp of English grammar that it's easy for her to memorize parts of speech.

We have to remember to bring gloves to horseback riding this week. It's getting cold!!!

WEDNESDAY: I've given up on "fun school," keeping just memory work and the math packet in what's otherwise a free day. We've gotten out of the habit of doing big day trips during the week, but aerial silks, our usual Wednesday activity, is actually easy to shift to another day, so there might be a field trip renaissance in our future. First up: the girls are making noise about visiting the Children's Museum of Indianapolis' Haunted House. Do we dare?

THURSDAY: Yes, I really did schedule a full day's work on Halloween. What was I thinking? Actually, it may storm on Halloween, so it's a good thing that we did all those trick-or-treating events and parties all weekend, even though they made me miserable. Otherwise, the girls are continuing their special units, with Syd making more raisin bread (I'm trying to choose recipes that she can potentially memorize, and definitely master) and Will working more on a real-live working pinball game. I bought a clock kit, and I'm really excited to set them up with the supplies to make their own clock--you can't not know how to tell time after doing THAT!--and there will also be our homeschool group's play group, perhaps ice skating with friends, perhaps dinner with friends, perhaps trick-or-treating with friends...

It can't REALLY storm on Halloween, right?!?

FRIDAY: Math with Math Mammoth is still going great. Will's still zipping through the cumulative reviews, stopping occasionally to complete the odd unit, but Syd's found a good place to settle midway through the second grade level. She's still moving very quickly, though, so I won't be surprised if she eventually reaches the point where she can't complete a unit a day.

Scrapbooking our summer vacation is also a BIG hit. I'll share the girls' scrapbooks with you some other time, but they're having a ball gluing down photos and souvenirs and writing captions, and the scrapbooks are going to be lovely mementos for them when they're done. I'm curious to see if the papyrus paintings that we'll be doing for history will also turn out cute--it's the last project before we move on to the mummy chapter!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Oh, let's see... There's our university's homecoming parade. Evening activities at our local hands-on science museum. Read to a Dog at the library. A hockey skills workshop. Some work that needs to be done on the chicken coop. Maybe mountain biking?

I think we'll stay busy!

Work Plans for the Week of September 23, 2013

After spending much of the summer with work hours, and the last few weeks with a daily checklist, I am EXCITED to get back to weekly work plans!

Here's what the girls have got going on this week:


Work hours and daily checklists are more flexible than weekly work plans, but Will's been feeling rather bossed around lately, I think, and weekly work plans are VERY empowering for the independent-minded child. She likes to do what she wants when she wants, and she doesn't mind chores and other responsibilities, but she doesn't want them to interfere with her big plans for the day, all of which consist of reading books in various spots around the house, yard, local park, and library.

So unlike work hours, during which I'm chaining her to her responsibilities for two hours, or even daily checklists, which must be completed even if one is feeling quite unmotivated, or has just come home with a giant stack of new library books that day, a weekly checklist lets a kiddo read for half the day, and work for half, or read all day, and work extra-hard the next day, and still complete all her responsibilities. Wednesday and the weekends are "relaxed" homeschool days, there for a kid to catch up on any procrastinated work or to spend her time as she chooses if she's kept up. These are the days that I also entice a kid into trying out the latest educational video game that I've checked out of the library, or watching a documentary that I think she might like, by adding it to her checklist.

This week, in particular, should be a good one. We had bathroom remodeling all last week, and we'll have two giant field trips next week, but hopefully, HOPEFULLY, the bathroom will be finished on Tuesday this week, letting us have some chaos-free at-home time for the rest of those days. I'm gambling on it, too, since I put some more intensive, hands-on activities into our schedule--the kids have been great about park school and library school and Barnes & Noble school, but they're ready to put the pencil down and get their hands dirty!

I think the kids will also like that chance to earn some extra cash that I snuck in there--normally I ask them to pick up after themselves in the bathroom, as well (so many wet towels and dirty clothes abandoned on the floor, so many bath toys...), but since we don't really *have* a bathroom right now, they can instead earn some candy money in that chore spot and I can get some extra chores done. Still won't get us completely caught up on chores or result in a sparkling house inside of which a nourishing dinner has been prepared, but I might get them to clean the deck. Or scrub the downstairs bathroom. Who knows what someone will do for a quarter?

Monday: I'm trying to get us back into Latin, which we skivved off of for the summer, so we'll be reviewing for a couple more weeks, I think. Math Mammoth is still going great, so both girls will keep working through their material every day this week, but hopefully next week this bathroom will absolutely be finished so I can put some hands-on activities that reinforce their Math Mammoth material into the work plan, as well. Will's scissors skills are deplorable, bless her poor left-handed heart, so she's going to have to start really practicing that every week now, which is going to result in a flurry of gripes, I know, but the fact that we'll be biking over to the public library first thing in the morning for her to do some research on her biography fair subject, as well as to see if there are any other books on dragons that she *hasn't* read yet (there aren't), should cheer her up. The girls will probably be working on their school later into the afternoon than we usually do, because our volunteer shift takes up two full hours in the middle of the day, but I've got the supplies to make pizza, and I'm sure there's something on Netflix that we can turn into a family pizza + movie night afterwards.

Tuesday: Syd might be done with the whole Sight Word Caterpillar business by the end of October; her reading exploded this summer, and since we work on it every day, I think it's safe to say she could be through the third grade sight words--which is where our caterpillar is going to end--by then. Spelling, now... wow, if you want to watch a perfectionist child throw a fit, give them a spelling word that they don't know. Syd's still doing Spelling City every day for her spelling list, because it's all fun and games (literally), but Will's participating in the Scripps Spelling Bee this year, and has a LOT more words to get through to be competitive, so we've been mixing up her spelling memory work some--some Spelling City, some drills, some videotaping herself, etc. First Language Lessons is still taking FOREVER to get through, because although the lessons are short, Syd refuses to complete more than one per day, so I'm trying to work that into more days, because I'd like to have both girls together in Level 3 of that program by summer. The animal biology portfolios are also still incomplete, mostly because we've been so uprooted by this bathroom remodeling project that we simply haven't had the time to sit and stare at critters under the microscope, or research hamster birth, etc., lately, but at this rate, with all the time that we've spent on them, they are going to be absolutely stunning when completed.

Wednesday: In the afternoon, Will has a meeting with the Magic Tree House Club, and then I take her to aerial silks class so I can gossip with my friends there while Syd spends the last hour or so of Matt's work day with him. Before that, though, I'm eager to see what documentary the girls will choose and what computer game or ipad app they'll want to play--and if they'll let me, play, too!

Thursday: We nearly always have leftover work to make up from this day, because sometimes our Park Day meet-up with friends really does take all day, but it's almost always stuff that's fun for the girls to do with Matt on the weekends, if it comes to that, so it's not really a chore. We finally got around to taking our Drawing With Children diagnostics and I'm looking forward to incorporating these lessons into our week and hoping that they go well--Syd was NOT happy with the diagnostic, but since its purpose is to contain elements that are too difficult, in order to determine your correct starting point, it's understandable. Here's hoping for a tantrum-free Lesson 1! I want to get back into our regular Story of the World study, which we took a break from for the entire summer so that we could study the Civil War instead, so we're working through the couple of random Ancient Egypt library books that we've still got on our bookshelves to get us focused back on the time period. Will's non-systematic, games and puzzles logic study is still going REALLY well; she came home complaining that her lesson at chess club this afternoon was "boring and easy", so we're doing chess as our logic this week to maybe boost her confidence enough for her to ask her coach if she can attend the advanced lesson at the next chess club, instead of the one for little kids.

Friday: I *might* cancel most of the work on this day and take the girls to the apple orchard if the weather is nice. If it's gross out, though, it'll still be great weather inside for continuing our slow-as-molasses states study, and for doing some music enrichment. Will and I are going to get back into studying the recorder pretty soon, and I'll try to persuade Syd into joining us, so I'm not sure if I'll continue this musician study, but if the girls like it, then it'll be a keeper.

Saturday and Sunday: I DO require that the girls do some schoolwork even on the weekends, and they've got a Saturday morning science enrichment program that they love, but other plans include watching rugby, attending a picnic hosted by the food pantry where we volunteer, baking carrot cake for Matt's do-over birthday (long story), and possibly getting dragged to the loathsome indoor inflatables place that the girls adore and we hate.

And then they'll head off to campus to watch football on the campus cable TVs, and I'll make another week's lesson plans!