brick art

A smattering of photos from our visit to the Fine Arts Museum in Springfield, MA, this past week with our friends Kyra and Fluffy, to see the special exhibit called "The Art of the Brick" by artist Nathan Sawaya. These sculptures are all made out of lego bricks.

My favorite picture:

WAY cool exhibit, I recommend seeing it if it comes to a museum near you!

progress report week: science

As hard as it might have been to write a progress report about reading the other day (because reading happens day in and day out around here and I long ago stopped gauging my kids' reading ability, since they are capable of reading pretty much anything), I think that science might be an even harder topic to quantify. (Hm, I think that might have the makings of a good joke....)

Our entire lives are science -- every minute of every day the kids are making observations and discoveries about the world they live in, the way things work, the ins and outs of living organisms, the chemistry and physics of life. Whether or not I choose to label it as 'science' is entirely beside the point. They are learning either way and there's nothing I can do to stop it, even if I wanted to.

Even in the formal portion of our science curriculum, there is a great big blurring with art, since most of our artistic digestion of the Nature Stories (which comprise the aforementioned curriculum) was done via watercolor painting this year. I find that nature just lends itself to art, don't you? That LIFE (and hence, science) lends itself to art. It's just screaming to be acknowledged, interpreted, recorded, seen through the lenses of our own unique eyes. (And look, it lends itself to poetry too, which in itself is art. Or is it writing? Or reading? You see my problem with this?!?!?!)

Even their play is science -- here they are with their friend Fluffy, playing -- ok, well, building -- or rather, creating with legos at an exhibit at the Springfield Museums (where there is currently a lego-based sculpture exhibit, which deserves it's own post when I get a chance....but anyway, right back around to art again!). But this isn't in the art museum, this is in the science museum where lego robots are observing and recording the weather as we speak. Science. Art. Life. It's all the same, I tell you!!

But anyway, back to the "progress" part of this report. This academic year we spent gobs of time at both the Springfield Science Museum and the brandy-new CT Science Center, and the oldy-but-goody Children's Museum, where we got more than our money's worth out of our memberships to all three places. We saw a multitude of planetarium shows, we looked through telescopes aimed at planets and nebulae, we participate in classes and programs on matter, chemistry, geology, ecology, biology.... we got hands-on experience with high-tech science equipment, and we sifted through pond muck for dragonfly nymphs. We built robots and wired circuits and sent paper helicopters soaring up to the ceiling. We got up close and personal with insects, slugs, earthworms, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

We had a rollicking good scientifically artistic (or artistically scientific) time.

And we don't plan on letting the good times stop anytime soon!

progress report week: the arts

Now that I've covered the Three "R"s over the last 3 days, I'll move on to the other important pieces of our learning year. I'm lumping all of the arts together in one post, otherwise this progress report is going to go on for weeks....

At left is a sampling of weaving that we did this spring, both in association with a co-op we worked with (where we took a fleece all the way from the back of the sheep that grew it to a finished woven product), and messing around with it here at home just because weaving is fun.

As usual, I didn't do nearly enough crafting (by my estimation) with the kids as I had hoped to. For some reason this always winds up on the back burner, and even though I intend on doing more crafting, it seems to be the thing that is dropped first when we run out of time. Next year, crafting will become entwined in our story work, and will have a more prominent place in our daily rhythms so that it is not so easily dropped. I also find it's easier to work on crafting with groups of kids rather than just us here at home, so much of my kids' crafting this year happened in classes (that I taught, and in classes they took with others), or just on their own.

Fortunately, both boys just love making things with their hands. J continues to crochet on and off when the spirit moves him to pick it up, and he does a daily origami project, which he likes to work on before the rest of us are up in the morning so he can surprise us with his creation of the day. He worked his way through a paper-airplane making book and came up with some cool designs. Zoo Boy is receiving the magazine "Ranger Rick: Just for Fun" which is a crafting and activity magazine, and he loves making those projects on his own. He also completed a workbook on cutting, and is now quite adept with a pair of scissors. By request, he is currently working with a cutting-and-pasting workbook at his own speed, making simple craft projects almost daily.

Drawing of course is a major part of our school work. J's drawing has always been wonderful, but I saw him really mature with his work this year. He puts a lot of good thought into planning out his page and what technique and colors he wants to use to tell his story. Zoo Boy has also come a long way with his drawing skills, although he'll still say that he really doesn't like to do it, especially if we are all drawing the same scene from a story. He's much more interested when he's allowed to draw whatever he wants.

Zoo Boy much prefers painting to drawing. I think the fact that the output isn't as obvious, and the brush strokes are so much less precise, is what appeals to him. J enjoys painting also, and while we did much more with painting this year than we ever have before, I still feel like we could have incorporated it even more. A goal for next year! Unlike with drawing, Zoo Boy does not balk at my leading the painting with a verse or story.

One area where I have definitely not adequately touched on is sculpture, and I really need to do something about that for the coming year. Fortunately, our discovery of Keva Planks filled that particularly void nicely this spring. But we only pulled out and sculpted with beeswax a couple of times, and I can't really blame that on anything other than having planned on it, but never having actually just done it.

And of course I can't forget music and the performing arts! It's been a big year for that, especially for J who discovered a passion for dance. Between singing with the youth chorus and doing solos in both the winter and spring shows, taking 3 dance classes and landing a solo in the recital, performing in a musical with the Monday Homeschool Classes group, as well as their talent show, and now participating in rehearsals in the leading role of "Oliver!", J's pretty much covered all of the performing arts bases. The only horizon yet to explore is musical instruments, and I'm in the process of lining up guitar lessons for him to start in the fall, if not sooner (which is the instrument of his choice -- he also plans on learning the piano as well, but has decided he'd rather learn that himself via instructional books rather than have formal lessons).

I haven't forgotten Zoo Boy -- he too is a lover of the performing arts, but more as a patron than a participant. He loves watching J rehearse and attending shows, but has no desire to be up in front of an audience himself. But I know that he is getting his own nourishment from being an audience member, and he's got a beautiful singing voice that he enjoys using to harmonize with his brother in the privacy of our own home. He also is helping J learn his lines for "Oliver!", reading all the other parts for him when he practices at home. He's also told me that he'd like to work on the scenery for the show, which will be a great way for him to get involved with the performing arts on a level that he is comfortable with.

progress report week: reading

Some of the books the boys have read this year on the "been there, read that" book shelf.

I guess it's time to talk about reading, since I've already covered the other two "r"s over the last two days. This is more a state-of-what-I'm-giving-the-kids-to-read report rather than a progress report, because they will (and do) read anything they can get their hands on. Which puts the burden squarely on my shoulders to make sure they've only got access to what I want them to have access to. NOT an easy task. We pretty much avoid the library, and try to only spend the briefest of times in book stores, where the access to books that are supposedly "age appropriate" are found in quantity. You know, books like Harry Potter (eek! Have you read those?!?! My kids are no where near emotionally mature enough to handle that! I barely am!).

The other aspect of all this is that if I gave them unlimited access to new reading material, there is little else that would ever get done around here. Both boys would spend the entire day reading if they had their way, especially Zoo Boy. J you could probably bribe away with the promise of a dance class....

So anyway, I only gave them each one new book a week all year long. (Of course, they have access to all of the books they have previously read too, so there's way more reading than just that going on around here.) They first read the books to themselves. Then they read them aloud to each other. So they are getting all the benefits of reading practice -- reading to themselves, listening to stories, and reading aloud. Plus the fact that they listen to a couple of stories a week (and occasional chapter books) from me as well. No lack of reading going on around here.


So J started the year finishing out the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborn. He is SO ready for "real" chapter books in terms of reading skills (in fact, he can easily read and understand material intended for adults), but since he's reading everything to his little brother, I'm trying to be careful to choose content that Zoo Boy is mature enough to handle as well. Fortunately this hasn't presented a problem, J really enjoyed the Magic Tree House books, as well as the next series that he's working on now (which I'll talk about in a couple of minutes).

Zoo Boy Started the Year with simple chapter books such as Frog and Toad and other similar books by Arnold Lobel, then moved on to the Henry and Mudge series of simple chapter books by Cynthia Rylant. J enjoyed listening to Zoo Boy read these books to him as much as The Boy enjoyed reading them. (J sort of skipped over these types of books, since his reading skills sort of went from zero to 60 in a matter of months -- although Zoo Boy was an early reader, at least his skills developed in a more typical fashion.)

Now both boys are on The Secrets of Droon series by Tony Abbott, and are loving it. Where the Magic Treehouse books had just the right touch of magic for them at the right time, the Droon books have just the right touch of fantasy. Sort of a "diluted" Harry Potter type of thing, and incredibly age-appropriate. At 2 new books a week (one for each of them, although they are carefully reading them in order), there's still enough in the series to take us into the fall. At which point I've got yet one more of these sorts of series set aside for Zoo Boy's sake (the A-Z mysteries, by Ron Roy and John Steven Gurney) and I'll have to carefully choose some regular chapter books for J. (I've got ideas for a couple dozen, so I think I'll make it through the school year OK -- in another year and half he'll be turning 11 at which point Harry Potter and the like will be appropriate, and then I'll have no end of options.) Once Zoo Boy is into real chapter books, it'll be taking them more than a day to finish a book, and my guess is there won't be so much reading aloud going on anyway.

progress report week: math

This wasn't such a big year for math for us. It was pretty much all review and expansion of their understanding of the four processes (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). We did start working (very gently) towards rote understanding of the "fact families" (number facts to 20), but I can't say we were 100% successful with that.

The good news, they have both become very comfortable with math problems featuring the 4 functions, both in equations and in word problems. I feel like they have an excellent understanding about the relationship of the numbers when they look at an equation, and they feel very confident about being able to figure out the answer on their own.

However, they do tend to scramble for the counting stones (or figuring on fingers in Zoo Boy's chance), which tells me that while they understand the processes, they haven't internalized the math facts yet. For J, it's more a day-to-day thing -- sometimes he'll whip through a list of equations in no time, sort of on auto-pilot. But some days he figures out the answers rather than counting on his memorization of them. Zoo Boy almost always has to figure the math, although his skip-counting skills are coming along really well, so he's definitely on his way.

That's OK -- knowing the addition and subtraction facts up to 20 is an end-of-2nd-grade type skill, and we've still got another half year of 2nd grade to go. (And honestly, it doesn't matter to me if they learn these things now or in another 6 years -- they'll learn it when they feel that they need it -- but this is a progress report, so I'm comparing skills to my targets for when I expect they'll come about.)

Then again, even though we're working within the 2nd grade structure in regards to curriculum content, I do expect to see J at a bit of a higher level than Zoo Boy given that he's 2 yrs older. And sure enough, this is as true for math as it is for writing (as shown in yesterday's post). J is just starting work on memorizing multiplication charts, which is a 3rd grade skill and right where I expect him to be working.

As for other, non-arithmetic math, J has a really good handle on money, time, geometry, and measurement. Zoo Boy's time and measurement skills are decent, but he's still not confident about money (although he knows more than he's willing to admit). I'm going to be working on him with that this summer.

Measurement will be a big part of our 3rd grade math work, so we'll get plenty of that type of work eventually.

progress report week: writing

I've decided that a fun way to wrap up the school-year on my blog would be with a little progress report on each of what I consider the major topics of study/work for my guys this past year. I'll start today with writing, both handwriting and creative/story writing.


Both of the boys made huge strides with the actual act of writing this year. This was the year that J learned cursive, starting work on it right after the holidays and quickly achieving competency with it. All of his school work is now done in cursive, he is allowed to choose either cursive or printing for his journal.

Zoo Boy also made an enormous amount of progress with his handwriting. He still struggles with it a bit, but most of his resistance is gone (as long as I keep his writing assignments a reasonable length), and he's slowly becoming more confident about putting pencil to paper. His pencil grip was helped out by his Occupational Therapist's suggestion to have him hold a little piece of clay with his last two fingers while he writes, and he now immediately reaches for a bit of clay whenever we sit down to write. He still needs a lot of practice with handwriting, and when we take a couple days off he starts to forget how certain letters are made. So we'll be continuing into the summer with it.

For creative writing, I look mostly to their journals to see what they are doing on their own, since journaling is the one assignment I never make suggestions about or critique. It is an entirely child-led activity (other than telling them that they need to write SOMETHING in it), so they are allowed to choose content and writing style, and I don't correct spelling, punctuation, or grammar errors.

J's definitely taking the "creative" part seriously, and has developed a writing style that is clearly his own, addressing potential readers and joking with them with ease. This is today's journal entry.

And this is J's journal entry from last week. One of the things I'm having him work on is planning out his page so that everything he wants to put there will fit, rather than running over onto an extra page. That can be difficult sometimes, but he's getting pretty good at condensing what he wants to say so it can fit.

Zoo Boy has just recently started writing about actual events in his life, after spending most of the year writing about Pokemon and Bakugan and other make-believe creatures. Today's journal entry (at left) is a wonderful example of his progress with this! It is also, I believe, the first time he's actually written in a sentence format rather than in phrases. We'll keep going all summer with the journals as well, as it would be a shame to risk losing this progress. Besides which, the kids really enjoy the journaling, I'm not sure they'd let me stop.

Here's a very involved journal entry from Zoo Boy, from last week. He decided he was going to draw Antarctica and the animals from there (and a polar bear, which he threw in just to be funny, then made him say "Hey, take me away, I don't even live here!" He went on to do a full key of all the animals. Quite involved, this took him two days to complete.

nesting dolls, and feeling done

This week we read a fact-families called "Nesting Dolls" from the Enki Education Grade 2 Math curriculum. The story is intended to be used as a reawakening of the fact-families work we did in 1st grade. It's a fun story, very clear in intent (the two children stacking up to "equal" their Mother), but I feel like I did it at the wrong time. (J's story drawing and verse are way better than mine, so I won't even both posting mine.) I just feel like we're "done" for the year, and starting a reawakening block now doesn't really make sense.

Zoo Boy's drawing and verse (the first two lines).

Obviously, I didn't realize I'd feel this way, otherwise I'd have saved the story for the fall. If I hadn't read it, we'd probably just bind our good books this coming week and call the year done. But I'm feeling like we need another week's worth of work to tie in with the story before we can just stop, otherwise I'll have the feeling that I left it unfinished, and I don't think the kids will have gotten as much mileage from the story. So we'll press on for another week, then bind the books the following.

The kids are also feeling ready to stop. I've been meeting with new resistance from Zoo Boy as I start singing our transition song to start our day. He's just done with it all, he feels the call of summer and the need to expand into a more relaxed schedule. And J is knee-deep into his summer project already -- he's playing Oliver Twist in a local production of the musical "Oliver!", and rehearsals got underway this week, 3 evenings a week. So his focus is primarily elsewhere these days. He's also very much looking forward to some summer dancing, which starts up in a couple of weeks.

I'll post more about our summer plans as we shift into that mode, but we're not dropping everything entirely as that wouldn't serve us well. Instead we'll shift into a more relaxed rhythm and drop those things that require much planning and follow through. We're keeping some practice work, as Zoo Boy is not at a point of comfort with handwriting yet that I'm willing to just let that be for months on end, and I know he won't write on his own without a bit of structured support. I'm also drizzling some math practice into the summer, as I did last year, so that their skills are where they need to be to start some new material in the fall. And I'm going to be doing a very "lite" India block for 4 weeks, just telling some Jataka stories and the story of the Buddha. We're not going to be doing recall or drawing from the stories, so I'm just offering the stories as a "gift" rather than looking for the kids to take them in on a deeper level.

Bring on the summer!!