week #9 (1st week of 3rd block)

(J reading a chapter book -- one of the Magic Treehouse books, which was a birthday gift -- to Zoo Boy.)

We were all excited to get back to our Language Arts work this week! We worked with the letters "T" and "P", with the Enki Fairy Tales "The Golden Amulet" and "Soonimaya" respectively. After the week (of chaos) off, and in part due to our almost upside-down rhythms this week, we didn't get much accomplished other than the story work. We did no practice work, no painting, no crafts, and no baking. We did a very short, loose formal circle drawing movement activities from our last adventure circle and our co-op community circle, which got the big thumbs-down from Zoo Boy, although J happily participated regardless. Mostly we tried to just walk whenever the weather allowed it.

Monday's homeschool classes are winding down -- this was the next to the last week. The cold has driven the picnickers indoors, so we lost our space to do Community Circle. This was going to be the last week for Community Circle anyway, as it's just not working out how we'd envisioned it when we decided to do it. It was worth a try, though, and I enjoyed working with the couple of families who chose to participate -- I know those few kids are disappointed to see it discontinued, as they all asked me about it. J and I did folk dancing, and he played soccer while I taught the preschool class where Zoo Boy and the other kids made some really cute felt bears. We spent Tuesday afternoon at my parents -- well, the kids did, I spent some of it in the dentist's chair (just a routine cleaning, everything is actually great!). On Wednesday, an internet friend, L, came to visit with her adorable son C and her sister S (who took this photo of us all). We had a nice lunch, and the boys had a good time showing C around the farm, and Butterscotch had a good time giving pony rides (poor Annie felt very left out, however!).

(The kids used a partially completed puzzle to play an intricate pretend saga involving a fire, a candelabra, a Playmobil pirate, and a couple of Pokemon figures. Don't ask me any more about it, as I totally have no idea what it was all about, all I know is that it looked really cool and the kids seemed to know what they were doing.)

Thursday we got some much-needed shopping done (finally bought some pants to fit the ever-growing J!). Friday we hosted some good friends, and it was a relief after our crazy week to just hang out and play (and eat!) all afternoon. We had our usual Friday evening fireside Nature Story, followed by a Saturday theatrical production of that story, "Autumn's Warm Blanket".

(Zoo Boy puts on a simple puppet show -- both kids have been doing that this week, using a chair as a puppet theater, and drum mallets as characters, usually kings, queens, princes, etc. In this particular puppet show, the mallets are a boy and a girl that like to throw a ball.)

I used the "down time" from not having extra "school work" to put the final touches on our next Adventure Circle, this time a Canoe Trip theme. I'll post details as we get going with it (starting tomorrow). I've also been working on some adjustments in our school year's schedule. I've more or less decided to tag an extra week onto this block, taking us through the 2nd week of December, and then go on Holiday Break until the middle of January. It's less than I planned on doing when we started the school year, but I've never gone wrong by taking things slower and doing less, and my heart is guiding me in doing what I think is right for my kids, for me, and ultimately for our family. It does mean that I'll need to do a final block in June, which I was toying with taking off entirely. But with a break after Zoo Boy's birthday in March, it'll break things up enough to not feel like we're doing too much during the 2nd half of our year.

(J experimenting with transposing music, figuring out how to write the notes from songs he knows, then playing them back again. He's becoming fairly proficient in reading music.)

J had his chorus rehearsal tonight. The Map Man took him, and told me that the duet that he was supposed to be doing with another boy in the chorus has sort of fallen through. So he went and signed up for a solo instead. He's chosen "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", which surprised me, as I don't think it's a song he knows in it's entirety already, and not one I've ever heard him singing. So he's got a bit of work to do. The Map Man will get him some copies of the sheet music tomorrow, and I guess we'll just leave it with him and his keyboard to figure out. (Of course, I'm available to help him if he needs it -- I am going to try to find him a recording to listen to, as he'll learn it faster that way. I'm thinking Bruce Springsteen's version might not be the right way to go....) There are only 2 more regular rehearsals, plus a dress rehearsal, before the shows.

Storytime stories this week were In November, by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Jill Kastner; The Deer in the Wood, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, illustrated by Renee Graef; and Every Autumn Comes the Bear, by Jim Arnosky. We also started a new chapter book, The Cricket in Times Square, by George Selden.

autumn's warm blanket

Our nature story (read by the fire on Friday night, with plenty of popcorn to eat, of course!) for the week was "Autumn's Warm Blanket", from the Enki Education 1st Grade Nature Story collection. For artistic digestion on Saturday, we decided to put on a play about the story. The main characters were Black-Eyed Susan (played by J) and Yarrow, (played by Zoo Boy).

The kids were really excited at the thought of putting on a play, and worked diligently on their costumes. For Susan's petals, J cut out construction paper petals and taped them onto a head band. Zoo Boy glued crumpled up bits of Kleenex on a piece of construction paper to create the small white flower clusters of Yarrow, and attached the entire cluster to a headband. They then cut out leaves to hold, of each flower's type.


Then we worked on the scenery. The story takes place at a field's edge, and Zoo Boy decided to draw the field, while J decided to draw a tree whose leaves would fall upon the sleeping flowers at the end of Autumn. We decided that autumn-colored silks would serve as the falling leaves. I noted that J used the edges of his block crayons to created the trunk and branches, then switched to stick crayons for the leaves, all on his own without any input from me (other than suggestion holding the paper the long way). I drew a field along with Zoo Boy so that he'd have an example to follow. He asked for a little bit of help (hand-over-hand coloring) getting started with his drawing, but for the most part he did it himself.

Our stage is set. It was Zoo Boy's idea to use a sheet as our "curtain", and he selected a yellow one from his bed, as it was the color of the yellow Autumn fields. On the right is Zoo Boy's field, in the middle is J's tree, and on the left is my field. We held a dress rehearsal, then pinned up the "curtain" and waited for The Map Man to get home and serve as an audience.

The final scene -- Susan and Yarrow asleep for the winter under a colorful blanket of autumn leaves. The show was a huge success and drew rave reviews from the critics. Rest assured, this will not be our last production.

soonimaya

Golden pillar rising high

Will bring the Prince a bride.

In pain she walked so long alone

And now she'll be his prize.

-from "Soonimaya", a Fairy Tale from Nepal (adapted by Enki Education)

For the second half of our week we read and worked with the story of "Soonimaya", a Fairy Tale from Nepal. Towards the end of the story, the ill-treated heroine falls to her death, and a golden pillar rises up from the ground under which she is buried. The pillar is brought before the King, and when he touches it, the pillar transforms into Soonimaya, who then marries the Prince, and, as in all good Fairy Tales, everyone lives happily ever after. Here's J's picture of the pillar, representing the letter "P".

Now, I thought I was being far too obvious with my embedding of the letter P in the pillar. But neither kid found it, not even when they already figured out (from an emphasized reading of the verse) that we were looking for a P. Look below in my drawing to see if YOU can see it. Once I traced the P on my drawing with my finger for the kids, they were able to see it and trace it in their own drawings. But they certainly had more trouble with this than any other letter since the first couple of stories we did. I'm not really sure of the reason, but it may have been partially due to the fact that our rhythms were turned on their heads this week (due to other commitments), and we were doing the bulk of our story work in the afternoon rather than in the morning. Although they did a better job with the recall than I expected, given the time of day they both heard the story and worked with the recall. So, who knows!

The boys' big letters. Zoo Boy isn't even making an effort to follow what I'm doing, but at least he wrote the letters, in his own style. He did not, however, write any of the verse. And so the writing strike continues!












Even J wasn't particularly interested in writing. At the end of the second line he put down his pencil and declared himself done. I was surprised, as he usually works diligently until the entire verse is written. "You don't want to write the rest of it?" I asked him. "No, I'd rather play, " he said. I mentioned that he could play AFTER he wrote the verse, but he told me he'd rather play THAN write the verse. So I dropped it and he scampered off to play. (My instructions are that they can write as much or as little of the verse as they'd like.)

My drawing, for comparison. Honestly, I think that P is much more obvious than some of the other letters have been. What do you think?

the golden amulet

Golden Tree of the deep dark wood,

Tall and true and treasured,

Guide my love along the trail

O'er trials and tears beyond measure.

-from "The Golden Amulet", an Indian Folk Tale (adapted by Enki Education)

It's great to be back in the swing of another Language Arts block! I was pretty ambitious with the choice for our first story, "The Golden Amulet", as it was longer than the stories we read during the first block. But the kids did great with recall the next day, both of them remembering lots of details, so I guess they are ready for longer tales! This first drawing is J's rendition of our story drawing, showing the lost wife in the reflection of the golden tree (as happened in the Emperor's dream). The letter "T" is hidden in the drawing (the shape of the golden tree), and the kids had no probably seeing it right off the bat the next day. (Note that the word "Golden" in J's title is encased within the golden branch of the golden tree. Clever boy.)

Zoo Boy's drawing. He's back to asking for a lot of help, although he wasn't pleased with the results. He burst into tears and said he didn't want his tree to look the same as mine. I explained that it needed to look similar, as it was a led-drawing, and reminded him that we were going to look for a letter the next day, and if his drawing was wildly different than mine, he wouldn't find the letter in his. That soothed him somewhat, although not enough to actually draw the bride's reflection in the tree. He did, however, say that when HE pictured the golden tree in his mind, there was a waterfall. We all liked that idea so much that we each incorporated a waterfall into our drawings (although Zoo Boy was quick to point out that he didn't picture it in the location that I drew it on mine -- he did draw his own on his, just where he wanted it). However, when it came time to put titles on our drawings, Zoo Boy wanted nothing to do with writing and clearly requested that I write it for him, which I did.

He seems to be on a writing strike in general. Given that he's a bit young still for 1st grade, I'm not worried about it. We've taken a couple week break from handwriting practice (couldn't have come at a better time for him!), and I'm just letting him do his own thing. As you can see from his letter Ts (bottom), he's not taking his attempts at writing very seriously at this point. My approach to any of this sort of thing, as Enki recommends, is just to make note of it and continue to observe. I highly suspect that next year, when this sort of work is appropriate for the age he'll be, will find him more attentive to his work.



As you can probably guess, as usual, Zoo Boy chose not to participate in the writing of the verse. However, J went to town. He was very attentive to leaving enough space between words initially, but that deteriorated as he got more tired further along in the verse. Also of note, for the first time, instead of crossing out mistakes and following them with a corrected version, he wrote over the mistake letter with a darker correct letter. Interesting!

Here's the drawing I did which they followed along with to create their own drawings.

week #4, block #2 (school year week #8)

Alright, I know this has been a VERY long time coming, but I finally have the time and energy to summarize the last of our first math block's week, which took place the last week of October. It was difficult fitting in everything I wanted to cover with all of the excitement and distraction of the week, but we did it. (Of course, we wound up having to take off the following week from any work at all so that we could recover!) This was the week that the weather "turned" on us and reminded us that winter is just around the bend -- we had to drag out our winter coats for our morning walk.

(Here's Zoo Boy and The Map Man on the hay ride at Pell Farm.)

During this last week (for now) of math, we worked with the numbers 7, 9, and 11, finishing up the bulk of our Number Quality work. (We have the option to work with 12 and 13 during our next block, which we may or may not do.) Really, this only encompasses about half of what the Enki 1st Grade curriculum calls for during the first math block, but I see no reason to rush things along, and will continue to follow the pace that suits us best. I love how well the kids did with this block, and have seen time and time again that they are absorbing the materials I'm presenting to them and turning around and finding ways to integrate them into their every day lives. This was also the last week of our Pumpkin Patch Adventure Circle.

Of course, it was a busy week event-wise as well. We had our usual Monday Homeschool Classes, where we had Community Circle, Folk Dancing, and J played soccer while Zoo Boy learned about Raccoons in my Paws-n-Claws class. We spent the next two afternoons preparing for the onslaught of end-of-week excitement. On Thursday we celebrated J's 8th birthday with his friends at a local seasonal petting-farm, where we also picked up our two new piglets. Friday was Halloween, and the kids went trick-or-treating with The Map Man while I...

...picked up our new puppy, Grace, seen here herding our ducks. As if that wasn't enough excitement, we had J's family party on Saturday here at home. Sunday I had to go pick up a few new lambs, then we all headed to my parents' house to celebrate my nieces' birthdays. Needless to say, we were all ready to collapse by Sunday night, and our lack of doing ANYTHING productive for the entire following week was the result. (Although we DID finally buy a car for The Map Man to commute in -- you wouldn't think in this day and age it would be so hard to find someone willing to carpool, but as it turns out, his month of carpooling wound up being a month of frustration for us all, with his ride blowing him off almost as often as it showed up for him. So we sucked it up and returned to 2-car Family status.)

Handwriting practice went on as usual. Reading practice included GHOSTS! Ghostly Tales from Folklore, by Alvin Schwartz, illustrated by Victoria Chess, for J; and Halloween Mice!, by Bethany Roberts, illustrated by Doug Cushman, for Zoo Boy. Storytime books for the week were Pumpkin Moonshine, by Tasha Tudor; The Runaway Pumpkin, by Kevin Lewis, illustrated by S.D. Schindler; and Miss Fiona's Stupendous Pumpkin Pies, by Mark Kimball Moulton, illustrated by Karen Hillard Crouch.

Back to Language Arts next!

girls' weekend

While the kids spent the weekend with The Map Man, working on assembling and painting a model of the Solar System that J got for his birthday, I took off on my own adventure with two of my girlfriends...



...to S's WONDERFUL house on Lake Champlain. It was officially a "girl's weekend", so we only took girl dogs with us -- C brought her young Golden Retriever, Tessie, S claimed my Sheltie, Lily, and I toted along our Border Collie pup, Grace. S's house was the perfect weekend retreat! And while it was a bit on the rainy side, the unusually warm weather (especially for November in northern VT!) allowed us to not care about the precipitation (and for the most part it held off while we were actually outdoors).

We took a lot of scenic walks....

We played on the beaches....

And had a rollicking good time in general.

When it rained, we sat by the roaring fire eating popcorn and watching chick flicks. When it wasn't, we were out exploring the island, playing with the dogs, and enjoying the INCREDIBLE view.

It was a PERFECT weekend, and we can't wait to do it again! In fact, if we thought we could get away with it, we'd sneak back up there this weekend....

catching up a bit

Yeah, yeah, I know -- it's already Thursday and I haven't summarized last week yet, or posted anything at all since Halloween. Six days into the new month, and you've not heard a thing from me. Well, it's because we've been busy. With things like:

Our new puppy, Grace.

Cute, no? She's a border collie, the kids are thrilled, and I'm honestly being run a bit ragged. It's hard to housebreak and puppy and do....well, just about anything else. That alone should be excuse enough, right?

But we've had other stuff going on this past week, too, like:



J's birthday party.

Where our house was filled with family and food and fun. And presents. Lots and lots of presents. And, that means:

No hope whatsoever of getting any school work (or anything else other than playing with new gifts) done this week.

The kids have been having a blast building and reading and exploring and playing. So who can complain? It became obvious early on that we were NOT going to be starting our 2nd Language Arts block this week. In fact, getting dressed by noon has been a challenge.

And then there was one of the biggest distractions of the week for us:

Our future First Family.

Is that not the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?? Like the rest of the country, we've been swept up in the very emotional historic happenings, and the rejoicing at what this means, at how far we've come as a nation. I've never felt prouder to be an American. Good things are coming, people. GOOD THINGS!

The kids were swept up in the excitement as well. We never really talked directly about the election process and implications with them -- they're still a bit young for that kind of introspection -- but they've been soaking up the general feeling of how important an election is, excitedly asking me who I voted for when I got home from the polls. They voted in the kids' election at the children's museum. They enthusiastically checked in with the election coverage during breaks in play to see how many "points" each of the candidates had at that time. And they staged their own election, with two of their dollhouse dolls going up against each other for President of the Dollhouse. Here's the votes being tallied. It was a very close race, and ended in a tie, so both "Dorthy" and "John" will be President of the Dollhouse.

Aren't kids amazing??