catching up

Wow, I'm really falling behind with the blog posts. Here's an attempt to catch up with what I've not posted about in the past several weeks. There'll be a couple more posts today with more significant events that occurred over the past week, but for now here's what has been keeping us too busy to blog over the past few weeks!

First, the weather has been a lot like this first photo. It hasn't snowed every day. But the cold....oh, the cold!!! Needless to day, our activities have taken a major turn to favoring indoor events lately.

The kids have participated in lots and lots of classes. I've not been good about taking pictures at classes these days. Sometimes it's because I forgot my camera, but mostly I'm just too busy myself while they are going on. I lead several craft workshops on Mondays for our homeschool group, since our classes have ended for the semester. So we've been braiding rugs and felting soaps and dipping candles. The kids have had art classes and nature classes, and J's geology class wraps up today. They've been to museum programs and we've gotten together with friends to play or just hang out. In other words, our busy fall has continued right into the start of winter!


At home on their own time, the boys have been playing with our word-family town board (as featured in posts over the past month). I found this on the table one day, Zoo Boy experimenting with building words using the same consonant but different word-family endings. He's also creating stories (all verbal) using the words he makes. In fact, my day has been just FULL of Zoo Boy's stories recently. He comes up with them far faster than I can write them down, which is a shame because the boy has a pretty creative and entertaining mind.

We've been visiting the Norad Santa Tracking site each day, where they are posting a new game every day for the kids to play. Some are print-outs, like this word scramble. (They've also done a crossword puzzle and a word search.) Some are on-line puzzles. Some are simple on-line video games (very, very simple, the sort that don't even bother me). And some are just nice (like Christmas music to listen to). We spend a few minutes every morning on the site to get a bit of a holiday fix before moving on with our day.

J's getting near the end of his origami page-a-day calendar and is nervous that we haven't ordered a new one. I actually had a heck of a time coming up with one, but there WILL be one for him under the tree. The designs in the 2010 calendar seem to be much simpler than in the 2009, so I hope he's not disappointed. I also ordered a joke-a-day sort of calendar for Zoo Boy. The jokes seem pretty harmless and stupid, so right up his ally.

J's also been doing a lot of story retelling, drawing illustrations on his magnadoodle. Here's an example of mirror handwriting. Apparently Leonardo Da Vinci wrote his journals in mirror handwriting, because he was left-handed and it was just easier to write backwards? (That's what J says anyway, obviously he's been reading about Da Vinci lately....in fact, I had to ask him how to spell Da Vinci....)

All of us have been absolutely mesmerized by the dance competition show "So You Think You Can Dance", which we started watching as a family a couple months ago. The kids spend a good part of their day imitating the dance moves they've seen on the show (here's Zoo Boy doing his best B-Boy impersonation), and J is absolutely begging me for dance lessons. (He says he plans on registering for So You Think You Can Dance when he's 24, as that should give him plenty of time to learn everything about dancing.) The local children's museum is having a "try it" dance class put on by a local dance troupe, so I've got him signed up for that, then we can look into lessons from there once he decides what style he'd like to pursue. We're taking them to see a performance of The Nutcracker this weekend, that should only add fuel to the dance fire around here.

As for me, here's a peek at what's been keeping me away from the computer. This is only the small "pre-holiday distribution" pile, there's a much larger unwrapped (and in some cases unfinished) pile for the actual holidays. I'm not letting you see what's inside the wrapping, as maybe there's one headed your way and I'd hate to ruin the surprise! But I'll give you a hint: it involves yarn and a crochet hook....

Look for more posts later today, I'm by no means done with my catching up!

that's a wrap!

We finished up our week working with the "Vowel Friends" story, which introduces that famous rule "when two (vowel) friends go walking, the first does the talking." Of course, the Enki version of the story is very rich in imagery and language.


This time I'm leading with my drawing -- after recalling the story the day after reading it, we drew the fire scene with the vowel headings. The next day (today) we wrote in the vowel friends and underlined them each, then filled in to make words around them.



J's work. The kids insisted on coming up with their own words for most of the vowel pairs (we had to call Mimi for an assist with "ei" though -- right off the top of her head she came up with "weird"! Since we'd struggled so long without coming up with anything, we all wrote that one down).








And here's Zoo Boy's work. He was really into this, and as a result did quite a bit of writing without tiring.

And that's pretty much a wrap on 1st Grade! There's still one more Math story, along with a handful of related games, that I plan on using in a mini-block February-ish, and I'll probably throw together a really "lite" January block (because my kids will be ready to start again long before I will be after our holiday break) involving some of the fragments of 1st that we skipped over in addition to more focused handwriting to try to help Zoo Boy with his difficulties there. But I'm officially calling 1st Grade over. It's on to the 2nd Grade format and materials (which, never fear, I'll post PLENTY about) when we start up full-swing again, late February or early March.


Meanwhile, we're kicking off our 2-week Holiday Block with some pretty exciting stuff. I'll give you a hint:




I'll give you a bigger hint (see if you can pick J out in the 3rd row. There are 4 rows, look in from the left side....):







More details -- and photos! (and if you're lucky, a video clip) -- at the end of the weekend!

pronouns

The extended portion of our LA block has started off with a bang, working with the "Perfectly Proper Pronouns" story to gently introduce the kids to the concept of proper pronoun usage. The story is pretty mild (the above summary is pretty much all there was to it -- of course the story was much more detailed than that, but that was pretty much the entire content), and both boys complained about it after I read it to them on Monday. "That's it?!" asked J, with a note of disgust in his voice. "I like stories where things happen," commented Zoo Boy. He's still disappointed that we're not reading any more Word Family Stories.

So Tuesday we recalled the story and composed the summary, then drew our story pictures. I decided that, after 4 weeks of free drawings, it was time for another led-drawing. I was probably right, as the kids didn't follow me real closely with their drawings. I'm going to switch off between led and free drawings for awhile to try to find a balance. Anyway, above is J's drawing, and this is Zoo Boy's.

Then today the boys wrote the summaries out. J's is at the top, and Zoo Boy, who was instructed to choose one sentence to write, chose the key sentence in the story -- The new King walked in front of the Old King.

Then we played a game based on the story. One of us was the poor subject and one of was the old King (indicated by a crown). The subject hides some jewels, then recites a verse about showing the king where there are jewels, and the King insists that the subject should keep the jewels for his hungry family. The subject leads the way to the jewels, then the King puts his crown on the subject's head, and he's the new King, while we all recite "Our lives may be changed as we wander the Earth, but our names stay the same from the day of our birth". We played several rounds before the kids moved into free play -- during which they, of course, dressed up as a knight and king and continued to play out their own version of the story.

My drawing, for comparison. The funny part of this drawing is that I think I really should have them headed in the other direction for it to make sense when writing a sentence based on this concept, but didn't realize that until I was nearly done. It didn't end up mattering much, since neither of the kids drew their kings in the same configuration I used (Zoo Boy's are headed the way I should have done mine, and J's are facing each other). Oh well. Should have given it more thought first! While I was muttering to myself about it, J was working on writing the title on his drawing, so, ever the comedian, he wrote "Perfectly (well, not really) Proper Pronouns." What a card.

ANYWAY! Our game will morph over time into a more direct use of pronouns (for example: "I ate breakfast. She ate breakfast. She and I ate breakfast.", etc). The lines from the game we are playing now will serve as reminders when the kids make mistakes. For example, if they were to say "I and she ate breakfast," I could remind them "You lead the way and I'll follow behind" (or more simply, the new king walked in front of the old king). If they were to say "I ate breakfast. She ate breakfast. She and me ate breakfast," I could remind them "Our names stay the same from the day of our birth." The visual image that we established with the story, drawing and game will support their later understanding of proper pronoun use.

suddenly winter!

Lookie what my family woke up to this morning while I was off cavorting around northern Vermont with Christine and Susan on our "girl's weekend"! I left the camera home with The Map Man and was not dissappointed with what I found on there when I got back!

It sure is pretty, but brrrrrrr, it's cold.

five families

We did a Word Family wrap-up exercise at the end of last week. I gave each of the boys their own story involving the five word families we worked with this block (eep, ail, ight, oat, and ule) to read to each other and draw pictures from. J's story was called "Moonlight Adventures", in which a sheep, a snail, a goat, and a mule explore the moonlight in a pool. (Here in J's photos you can see the snail looking at the reflection while the other animals are looking up at the moon itself, the way the adventure begins.)


Zoo Boy's story was called "Word Family Picnic" and described what happened when all five families decided to go on a picnic together. He depicted every member of each family in the story, along with their animals, and wrote their names across them. It was a pretty big project and took him quite some time, after which he told me that he was just too tired to write a title. J decided to write a title for him so that he would remember which story this drawing was about. (I took the photo before that happened.)

I'm going to extend this LA block one more week (for a total of 5 weeks) before moving on to a brief 2-week holiday block with the boys. Then we'll pick up with our final 1st Grade math block some time after our holiday break. That break could be anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks long, depending on how much reading of the 2nd grade materials I get done, since we'll be starting to work with those around Zoo Boy's 7th birthday in early March. Mostly I'll be looking at how to adapt it to meet Zoo Boy's needs as a late-1st grader/early 2nd-grader, while properly mirroring J, whose development has leaped forward quite a bit this semester and more closely approximates that of a 3rd grader at this point. (In fact, he's been telling people he's in 3rd grade when asked, which I find just fascinating since we never discuss grade level....)

Anyway, there are certainly some thoughtful posts in there somewhere if I can ever find a chance to sit down and actually put my ideas in writing....

the "ool"s go to school

This week we worked with our final "official" word family, "ool". Of course, the kids will come up with their own word families to work with (this morning it was the "up" family!). In this story, Mama "ool" sends her kids off to the town of Conso-Nant's schools, only to find they can no longer play by the rules. I particularly like this story because in the end Mama decides that homeschooling is best!

This first drawing is J's, of the "ool" kids a the great gate to the town, with Mama shadowing them to see what happens during their school day. (That's Mama in the lower left hand corner, I'm really impressed by J's sense of perspective!)


Here's our town board, all set up for "ool". This was a really fun family for us -- the kids immediately made "Yule" despite the fact it's not in our story. And the kids quickly discovered other possible spellings of "ool" beyond the ool/ule depicted in the story. (For example, jewel and cruel.)



Zoo Boy's drawing, of the town board again, each of the "ool" children depicted with the naughty behavior they displayed, and Mama "ool" peeking over the gate to the town to see what they are doing.








J's writing. I've reduced the size of his "forest paths" so he has to write smaller.

Zoo Boy's writing. He decided to write extra words for "ool" (to the sides of the printed sheet), and he asked me to write "jewel" and "cruel" so he could write those too at the bottom. He also made up stories to go with all the words he wrote.

I have one more wrap-up exercise for them (for today), and then we'll be done with the word families during our main lesson time. I'll leave the town board and the family cards available for them to play with as they desire, and will probably come up with some fun story-building games for practice time in another month or so.

goodbye, Carolyn!

Good luck in the mid-west, we'll miss you!