practice practice practice

One of my challenges has always been finding time in our daily rhythms for practice work. Regular practice work is important to help with myelination of the skills needed for handwriting and basic math. (The process that firms up the neural connections that go into doing these tasks.) It gives me a time to make sure those schooling "Rs" are being addressed. And it gives the kids a time where they are responsible for their own work, which may be the most valuable use of practice time.


In any case, I've found it difficult to actually fit it into our days. Traditionally, we did this immediately following rest in the afternoons. However, afternoons have always been sort of full of other things, as we like to get out and about and "do the social" with friends and others. And now that J has begun pursuing his passion for dance, and furthering his passion for singing, we always seem to either be at a class or on our way to or from one. Often we are listening to stories on tape for rest in the car on our way out. And since J's classes seem to either end or begin right around dinner time, I can't drop back to doing this before dinner as we have also done in the past.

So finally I decided to just throw it into our morning schooling schedule. This wouldn't have worked even this past fall, the kids just weren't able to do so much "school work" all at once. But maturity is a glorious thing, and my kids are now capable of a fuller morning schedule. So we're doing two morning lesson blocks, each with a practice time built in. After our movement, when we first sit down and recite our poem of the week, I break out the boys' handwriting practice which they do in advance of their story work (or journaling on the first day of the week). After story work, we break for snack. Then we start up again with either the reading of a new chapter/story, or some sort of hands-on work (painting or craft). The boys then transition to creative play for an hour or so, after which they sit back down to work on their math practice (work with cuisenaire rod worksheets, as in the first photo, and math problems as in the second photo) for the half hour or so before lunch.

And it's working beautifully! Even Zoo Boy enjoys his writing practice, supported by the little "alphabet 8s" as seen on his tablet in the previous photo. While working on practice writing, we have him hold an item (in this case a gemstone) in his lower 2 fingers to help him maintain a proper pencil-grip. (This was via advice from his OT, and he actually LIKES having the help to hold his pencil properly, amazingly enough.) I do not have him do this when he is free-writing (in his journal, etc) or for story work, as I want him sinking into his work, not worrying about his pencil-grip at those times. As the proper pencil-grip starts to myelinate, he'll begin using it more in his other writing as well.

Meanwhile, J's writing has benefited tremendously from our work with the "alphabet 8s" on a larger tablet. Here is a sheet of his practice writing, and I'm pleased to say that he finally seems to have gotten the hang of writing his lower-case letters from the top-down. He's pretty proud of himself for having finally figure it out!

So hurray for finding a time for practice! And hooray for having the flexibility to do what we do best during the afternoons without feeling like we're missing out on doing something we "should" be doing!

multicultural mayhem

Ok, I made a whoopsie. I wasn't thinking about my intended focus on one culture at a time in our cultural blocks, now that we're into the 2nd grade materials. So I went ahead and signed my kids up for programs from other cultures without even considering what it was that I was doing. Here they are making masks in a class about Mardi Gras on Thursday afternoon, and then we brought them to a Chinese New Year's celebration on Friday night.

(J, working on creating a plaster mask.)

So, what's wrong with what I did? The programs were both of good quality (I wouldn't have signed them up for them otherwise!), and the boys really enjoyed both. But it was a peek at two other cultures, without any deeper connection for them, and worse yet took them out of the culture that I'm currently trying to immerse them in (Western European) before I've even firmly established that culture (this is only our 3rd week working with it).




(Zoo Boy modeling his cloth mask.)

My goal is to allow the boys to thoroughly sink into the culture they are working with via our curriculum stories, by exposing them to the crafts, foods, and music of that culture. To support that, I have to do a better job of considering which "extra curricular" activities I'm choosing for my guys. There are plenty of quality options available -- J's formal choir class at a christian church, sword classes for Zoo boy, visiting the Italian Renaissance art exhibit at the local museum: these are all supportive of sinking into and experiencing the targeted culture. Mardi Gras mask-making and Chinese New Year celebrating, just the opposite is true.

(J's dragon mask from the Chinese New Year celebration.)

Were the programs a bunch of fun? Yes! Is there anything wrong with having fun? Well, no. However it's entirely possible to have fun AND keep within the culture we are working with. And that would be much more nourishing for them for many reasons.

(Zoo Boy's dragon from the Chinese New Year celebration.)

So from now on I'll try to do a better job of keeping our target culture in mind when scheduling classes and activities!

St Francis, chapter 2

For our 2nd chapter in the St. Francis story, J chose to draw the moment when Francis hears the musicians singing a song about knights (the turning point in the chapter when his father realizes that he is not longer a little boy, but ready to be a knight). That's his father across the square, on the other side of the singers, noticing Francis' reaction to the song.


Our summary of the chapter, composed by all three of us, written here by J.







Zoo Boy's chapter drawing, of Francis on his horse, ready to ride off to war.








Zoo Boy's simplified summary.











My chapter drawing.

St Francis, chapter 1

We started our Sage Block the beginning of this week. The story we're reading is of the life of St. Francis of Assisi from the Enki Education Grade 2 Tricksters and Sages collection. The first chapter was about Francis as a mischievous child. I decided to let the kids free-draw all of their sage stories, as I don't want to be dictating what they should be taking from these stories. J drew Francis day-dreaming about being a knight while ignoring his schoolwork.


When we recalled the chapter yesterday (the day after reading it), we created a summary which I wrote up on a pad of newsprint. Today J wrote out that summary, copying from the large version.


Zoo Boy's drawing, of Francis dumping a bottle of his father's red wine in the streets to see "the streets flow with wine."








Although Zoo Boy was an equal contributor in the summary we created, he's not capable of writing out an entire paragraph yet. So I created a shorter summary for him to write out. Even this made him a little nervous until he got going with it. He's very comfortable with our handwriting practice (working on lower case letters with the alphabet 8s as support), but he's not yet comfortable with writing out sentences on his own.

My story drawing, of a neighbor getting vengeance on Francis and his friends, who had been knocking on doors in the night and running away to hide. This neighbor tricked them by keeping his lamp dark and dumping buckets of water on them from an overhead window when they knocked on his door.

poem painting

We used this week's poem (see the 'trees are bare' post a couple posts back) as our inspiration for this week's painting. I made up a story about little yellow that skipped here and there, through meadows and across fields, up hills and between trees, etc, as we filled our paper with yellow. I said that as she skipped here and there, she recited a poem that her mother had told her, and then I switched us to blue paint as I recited the poem. As I started reciting, I drew lines of blue on my paper, and when I got to the "chickadee, chickadee" part, I dabbed my brush on the paper with each "dee". We repeated "dee dee dee" for awhile until we'd dabbed on as much as we wanted. I'd say it was pretty successful for my first off-the-cuff painting story (although I had a LOT of help from that poem!). Above is J's painting, below is Zoo Boy's.

Interestingly, although I hadn't mentioned any particular form for this painting or labeled it in any way other than reading the poem, J said, as he finished up his painting, "How do you like my forest, Mommy?" Below is my painting -- sort of looks like pussy willows, don't you think? And just as a side note, the yellow is no where near as washed out in real life as these photos are showing -- it's a dark, stormy day and I needed my flash to take the photos, which washed out the yellow quite a bit.

before the snow

We took advantage of one nice day (yesterday) before our next snowstorm (currently in progress) to meet our friends Tr, Q and O (and their doggies) for a walk at our favorite walk-the-kids-and-dogs place. Enjoy the photos!

trees are bare

Tree Are Bare

oral tradition

Trees are bare everywhere,

Snows are deep and skies are gray,

Yet one bird may be heard

On the coldest day.

Ask his name and he'll reply,

Cocking up a roguish eye:

"Chickadee, chickadee, chickadee,

Chickadee-dee-dee-dee."

The boys' journal entries for today (J's above, Zoo Boy's below).