rabbit and crocodile

Our math work for the second half of this week was focused around the Enki Education Math Story, "Rabbit and Crocodile", in which a clever rabbit outsmarts a hungry crocodile by betting him that he has more friends. The crocodile calls all of his friends in, they stretch from shore to shore, and rabbit counts them as he hops across their backs to reach the other side and safety. After recalling the story yesterday, we made these cute paper bag rabbit puppets, which we used in a math game today.


We also incorporated our digit cards from Wednesday in our game. The kids took turns drawing from two piles to make a two digit number.












(The only cards in the first pile were "0" and "1" so the drawn number was never larger than 19.)

Then they had to count out that number of "crocodiles" (silk scarves) and lay them across the living room floor. They did an impressive job of figuring out how many scarves to add or subtract for each subsequent number, despite the fact that I've not discussed the concepts of addition or subtraction at all. In fact, during our next math block, we'll introduce these concepts via story. As is typical of kids their age, they are already discovering the use of the math concepts prior to me labeling them as "addition" and "subtraction" -- it will be a simple task to give them the names for what they already know later.

Then both kids, with their rabbit puppets on their arms, jumped from crocodile to crocodile, counting out loud as they went.

The game was great fun, and the boys had a blast. They've requested to play it again with The Map Man tomorrow.

WOW

Far and away my all time favorite you tube video -- enjoy!

Snowy Adventure Circle

Here's our current adventure circle, for your reading pleasure! For the convenience of other Enki Education movement book owners, I've included which movement book (Grade One or Kindergarten) and the page that the activity can be found on. I've also included which sensory skills we are working on with each activity. Activities designated with astericks are just straight sensory integration work and do not include a verse or song.

Call: Round and Round (Move to bedroom during last verse, climb into bed and under the covers.)

“Once upon a time there were two boys who loved the snow. One chilly winter morning, they woke up to find a winter wonderland outside.”

Opening: Rise With The Morning (Grade One, pg 66)

“The boys jumped up and down with joy”

Awakening Breath/Vestibular/Proprioceptive: **Bed Jumping**

“Then, still unable to contain their excitement, they ran around the house”

Awakening Breath: **Running** (wind up in living room)

“They quickly put on their outdoor clothing”

Midline: (mime, crossing midlines as you go)
“Snow pants: left leg, right leg
Boots: left leg, right leg
Coat: left arm, right arm
Gloves: left hand, right hand
And a hat!

Then they hurried outside.”

Midline: Snowstorms (Grade One, pg 96)

“The boys knew right then what they wanted to do! They grabbed their sleds and went running to the big hill.”

Vestibular: Winter Secrets (Grade One, pg 68) (Hold scooter boards over heads during verse, moving down hall to kids' room -- one verse per repetition of following sequence, leaving boards at bedroom door for rest of sequence.)

“The boys climbed the big hill”

Motor Planning/Core Strength: **(climb into loft)

“took a big jump”

Proprioceptive: **(jump/crash into bed below)

“climbed onto their sleds (belly down on scooter boards)

“and down, down, down the hill they went!”

Midlines/Core Strength: **(pull themselves down hallway with arms, belly down on scooter boards)**

“Then they did it again!” (repeat)

“And again!” (repeat)

“Until they were so tired, they needed to rest.”

(Flop down on backs, panting)

“They laid down in the snow, exhausted, and watched the snowflakes falling to the earth.”

Vestibular/Proprioceptive: Winter (K pg. 131)

“There were some other kids sledding, and the boys heard them talking about a sleigh ride this afternoon at the horse farm. That sounded like fun! But to get to the horse farm, they had to cross the river, and the bridge was closed because of the snowstorm. One of the boys knew where they could cross the river by jumping from rock to rock.”

Motor planning/proprioceptive/balance: **hop from pillow to pillow**

“They were almost to the other side, just one more BIG jump to make”

Motor planning/vestibular: Jump Rope Game (recite verse while jumping across swinging rope)

“Whirling winds around me fly,
How will I get to the other side?
Over the bridge in one big stride,
Safely across before I ride.”

“Once on the other side, the boys could see the farmer hitching up his team to the sleigh. They knew they had a few minutes before the horses would be ready to go, so they joined in with some other children to build a giant snowman.”

Fingerplay: Snowman (K, pg 173)

“The farmer called the kids over -- it was time for the sleigh ride to start! The boys hurried to take their places in the sleigh next to the other children. When everyone was snuggled comfortably under the thick woolen blanket, the farmed called to the team to “g’yup”. The horses started out slowly, picking up speed as their hooves got used to moving through the fluffy white snow.”

Midline: Horses (K, pg 76)

“The faster the horses moved, the louder the bells on their harnesses jingled.”

Vestibular/proprioceptive: **bounce up and down hall on moon bounces, singing Jingle Bells**

“The farmer dropped the boys off back at their house. The snow was falling again, and tomorrow promised to be another day filled with snowy adventures.”

Proprioceptive: Winter White (K, pg 130)

Closing: Sun is Rising

digit magic

Even though the digits are only zero to nine,

They make up every number, each and every time.

-from "Digit Magic", Enki Education Grade 1 Movement Activity

Getting back into the swing of our curriculum, we started our our new math block with a review of the digits, via reading "The Story of the Sun Dance", a legend from the Blackfeet tribe. Here, in J's story drawing, he shows the hero of the tale, Scarface, along with one of the four sweat lodges (with 2 colors) that he built, and his 3 healers (the Sun, the Moon Woman, and Morning Star, who, by the way, has 5 points).


Zoo Boy's story drawing. (He says that Scarface is INSIDE the sweat lodge in this drawing. Makes sense to me. But he did add an earthworm -- that squiggle towards the bottom of the page -- to represent the "1".) He asked me to write his title for him, but showed me where he wanted it to go.

Today we wrote out a chart with the 10 digits -- there was a space for each numeral from 1 to 9, and I let them draw the "0" wherever they wanted it -- J's is obvious (his is the bottom sheet), Zoo Boy's is harder to see, it's in the margin above the 2. We then discussed the fact that these digits are the only digits there are, and that every number in the world is made up of these 10 digits. We did a few of the rhymes and movement activities from our first Math Block as well, as a review and to help "reawaken" the material.

Then we moved to the floor with two sets of digit cards, and the kids played around with combining the digits to make numbers. They were extremely enthusiastic about it, and spent half an hour coming up with two, three, and four digit numbers, finally pulling out an encyclopedia and recreating dates from history.



My version of the Sun Dance drawing, for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing. I included the 4 animal helpers and the 7 wolves that make up the Big Dipper as well.

It feels GREAT to be back to our regular rhythms again. I've finally broken out of my January Inertia (only because the kids insisted -- I would have been perfectly happy wallowing for another couple of weeks) and feel like a normal human being again. What IS it about January?!?!

Oh, and as a quick addendum to yesterday's post about my kids' inaugural experience, the boys were both thrilled to recognize the melody of the Air/Simple Gifts rendition performed by the quartet before the Oath of Office was administered -- we used "Simple Gifts" in our last adventure circle! Zoo Boy planted himself directly in front of the TV for the actual swearing in, then when it was over, came to snuggle in next to me, saying "This is NICE!" Both boys listened very attentively to President Obama's speech, and when it was over, J said "Malia and Sasha must be so proud of their Dad!" It was a wonderful experience to share with the boys, I feel so fortunate to have them at home with me so that we can celebrate our living history together.

history in the past and in the making

I toted my camera along with me today, snapping photos of our new 10 inches of snow, the boys studying geography under the covers while I was out doing chores this morning, cavorting down the hall during our new adventure circle, and baking bread this afternoon, fully intending on documenting and posting about our triumphant return to schoolwork today. Then I sat down this evening to discover that I didn't have my memory card in the camera. Danged camera, you'd think it would be smart enough to let me know that all those great pictures I was taking were going nowhere!

But anyway.

This morning Zoo Boy woke up to a cleverly folded little stand-up paper sign created by J, which said "Good Morning and Happy M.L.K. Jr Day". Zoo Boy read it, and immediately asked "What do we do on Martin Luther King Jr day"? Both boys turned their attention on me. Tempted to provide them with more information than they are developmentally prepared to handle, I reined myself in and answered simply, "We remember an important man who had a wonderful dream." "Martin Luther King, Jr?" J asked. I nodded. It was all they needed -- all they could understand right now. In years to come, we will study the man and his life and times, and read his inspiring words. Plenty of time for that.

But what about history in the making? The history of OUR times?

It's tempting to provide more information than the kids are ready to process. Understanding WHY this is such a big deal in the history of our country depends a great deal on understanding where it is that we came from. And I just don't think it's in my young children's best interest to know the darker parts of our history just yet. So while I have a burning desire for my boys to be a part of this, to have that understanding, it's just not the right time for them to be made THAT socially aware.

So we'll have the TV on mid-day tomorrow, a great rarity in this house. And I will allow my kids to experience this bit of history on whatever level they are able to. I will save the analyzing, the details, for future study, when they are old enough to truly understand the history of our country and all the twists and turns in the road to get here, to this place. They've already picked up from the climate around this house that this is an important event, something that their parents are thrilled about, and they are every bit as excited to watch our new President sworn into office as we are. For now, it is enough.

easing back in

The north wind doth blow, and there shall be snow....

And what will my family do then?

They'll snuggle in tight

And sleep through the night

And dream of an early spring.


Ok, so I couldn't resist sharing this photo (and being a little silly with the rhyme from one of my kids' new favorite seasonal poems/songs).

It's true, it's hard to deal with all this cold and ice and snow. But we can't help but smile a little at this VERY typical winter. The past several years (or longer!), it's been abnormally mild in January. It's much easier to plan snowy themes around January the way it's SUPPOSED to be -- cold, white, and semi-miserable. It's just not January without a touch of frostbite....

Seriously, though, I've been spending the week planning out our next couple of blocks. We'll be starting our 2nd Math Block of the year on Monday. During this block we'll be introducing the concepts of greater than and less than, and odd and even, amongst other things. These topics are typically covered during the same block at the numerals, but I decided to split up the material into two blocks. For my kids, I felt that the extra attention on comprehension and moving at a slower pace is a good choice. Add to the fact that Zoo Boy really isn't old enough for first grade yet, I thought the way the curriculum was written moved a bit fast for him. I'm in no hurry to get through the materials, and taking care to establish a deep understanding of the concepts is very important to me. No need to rush things!

Today I put the finishing touches on our new Adventure Circle (with a Snowy theme, of course!), which I'll share once we actually start using it and I can get some pertinent photos to go with it. I still have a couple of manipulatives to make and activities to plan out for the math stuff, but I will feel ready by Monday. Unlike this PAST Monday, when my kids were clearly ready to get started again, but I was not. Instead, I ramped up our daily rhythms a bit in preparation for next week.

So this week we're getting up at our "normal" time (rather than whenever we felt like rolling out of bed, like the past couple of weeks), which means that I've got breakfast on the table right at 8:00. We're doing some sensory-rich relay races instead of circle at it's assigned spot in our rhythms, and playing board or card games in place of story work, but it's giving our mornings a more structured feel. We're still having the longer rest (2+ hours) during the afternoon (which I honestly wouldn't mind keeping as a permanent part of our rhythms), but we've added Reading Practice time back into our afternoons again. (The kids wouldn't allow me to put that off any longer -- they insisted on starting with that again by the end of last week.)

So we're getting ready. Which means I'll soon have a reason to update the blog more regularly. Thanks for your patience in the meantime! I've needed the break, and have been quite enjoying being away from the computer a bit more than usual.

ice and cold

We're struggling to drift ourselves back towards a more stable daily rhythm, while buried beneath a heavy blanket of ice and snow. (Gotta love January -- um, not.) I'm also gearing myself up to start blogging a bit more regularly again. But in the meantime, enjoy some photos I snapped while out doing chores the other morning, before our most recent snow storm: