It's the Christmas season, but that doesn't mean that we haven't done anything around here.
We learned about Jamaica and made rasta bracelets as our activity.
We learned about Costa Rica and made worry dolls as our activity.
We learned about Peru and made god's eyes. (My nieces actually taught this to my kids---gotta love family.)
We learned about Panama and made bird molas.
And we learned about a couple other countries without doing any activity.
Notice how the pictures I have are of Maxwell? Yah, my other boys gather round for the reading and sometimes dabble in the activity, but Maxwell is the one who is REALLY interested in crafts. I practically had to bribe and threaten Hyrum to make the bird mola pictured above (top right,) yet Maxwell could do it all day (Maxwell's is bottom left.) Not sure if that's how it will always be, and I don't often force Hyrum to take part, but it is interesting how different all my boys are.
We also had our monthly geography fireside today instead of the first sunday of the month because our speaker thought he had to go back to school by next sunday. Our speaker was Denny Burton, and he did an awesome job of teaching us all about the Netherlands and Belgium. If you've ever seen The Best Two Years, that was exactly what Elder Burton experienced.
It was really funny, he showed us a picture of his first area which was the same city as the movie-complete with the same people who were members who had parts in the movie. There were the four missionaries who shared an apartment. One was about to go home, one was girl crazy, one was a bit up tight, and one was an enthusiastic new guy all full of hope and nerdy. (Elder Burton was the new guy) They even LOOKED like the actors in the movie! It was awesome to have him come and talk to us.
But it was, of course, CHRISTMAS! And so we had a few Christmas activities that were mandated by the kids, not me. Seriously, these kids do crafts! Even Hyrum--when it's something HE came up with. Look at Daniel's Santa:
And they INSISTED on a gingerbread making extravaganza---LOOK AT ALL THAT CANDY!
And I doubt I'll get much of anything done next week except math. I HAVE to do math because I don't want to get too behind in anything. I want to be DONE on time for summer since-----
Yep, we're going to have one more pupil for next year!
This week we did a lot, but we didn't do a lot. Whatever. Welcome to my homeschool.
On Monday and Tuesday, the rest of our immediate world had snow days. Homeschooler's don't have snow days. I did use this as an excuse to not do science club though. In fact, science, robotics, and co-op are on hold until after the holidays (yippee!)
We went to a Jewish synagogue this week. We were going to Calgary anyway, and I was reading cub badge "world religions" requirements, and I got inspired to find the fanciest synagogue I could and get an appointment for a tour.
We ended up going to Beth Tzedec Conservative congregation. It was a really awesome experience. The Rabi was super nice and informative, and we got to ask questions I've always wanted to ask a jew. It was amazing how many things are affected by not having a temple "we don't do sacrifices because we don't have a temple" "we don't have priests because we don't have a temple" "we don't have tithing because we don't have a temple" and when you talk about rebuilding the temple "That is a BIG if. The Messiah would have to come before that is possible." So fascinating!
Anyway, the boys all had to wear yamakas into the synagogue, and we got to see handmade scrolls that were 100s of years old.
If you live in this area, I totally suggest doing this.
Moving on, we studied Guatemala this week. We made banderitos as our activity. All the boys loved this.
We also studied Cuba. We made little "Tody" birds as our activity. Only Maxwell was really interested in this out of my boys, but hey, we had a million cousins over. Cousins are more interesting than crafts.
Lastly, we had our Alternate school Christmas party. Can I just say once again that I am one blessed homeschool mom to have so many resources and people who support me? Anyway, as part of this party, they had tryouts for the two plays they are doing this spring. The teenagers are doing Shakespeare, and the littles are doing Peter Pan. I hardly ever check one of my email accounts, so I got this notice late, so my boys didn't have too much time to prepare (one day) but I think they were pretty cute anyway:
Hyrum got the part of Michael, and Maxwell's a lost boy. I have to admit, I'm a bit excited about them being in a play. I sure loved being in them when I was little.
This week's science really stank. There were hardly any experiment suggestions. We finished learning about the rotation of the earth. We focused on the foucault pendulum. We made our own mini version, which was a pendulum in a jar on a turn table. Needless to say, the pendulum did not care about the turn table.
We also made globes from flat paper to show that the earth is definitely not flat and maps are wrong (we already did this as a family for geography with an orange peel, but whatever.)
For geography we learned about Judaism. It was fun to talk about their "word of wisdom" and talk about what exactly is kosher. We talked about Hanukkah and we made dreidels and played the game with them and then we even had fry bread for dinner since apparently they eat fried food as part of Hanukkah.
We finished our random songs:
We also started learning about specific countries. I think I'm going to like geography from now on. When learning about countries, I don't really care if they remember specific details about each country. It's more of cultural literacy that I'm after. So showing them lots of photos, learning a few facts, but then reading children books from that country (which seem to be easy to find for the few countries I have planned in the next few weeks) gives them tastes of how everyone's different, and everyone's interesting and of worth.
Mexico was our first country. We made a pinata. Maxwell made this 90% on his own, and I think it's our best pinata that we've ever made:
The coolest part of our week though, was our first GEOGRAPHY FIRESIDE! Whooo Hooo, I actually organized it! I had this awesome lady from Mexico come. She was perfect. I've never seen that group of kids be so respectful, and I think we've all learned a lot.
You know how last week I was saying how we had to move school to the counter because William was taking over the table top? Well now nothing is sacred. He climbs on top of the counter. He plays in the sink, he gets in the cupboards, He takes everything out of the school bins. He is EVERYWHERE! We've already had to be DEVOUT at keeping the bathroom door shut at ALL times since he LOVES water (the only water he could reach was the toilet's water btw) and then we had to keep the office door closed because he sits on the computer and climbs up the desks. He finds the ipad and claims it. (The ipad is NOT a toy and NOT for kids in our house.)
I feel like I need a door for my life so I can keep William from it! Holy cow that kid is BUSY!!!! here's William in the sink when it was on purpose, but he's in here at any time of day in his clothes when it's NOT on purpose, and a photo of him with my lap top. It was on my desk closed and is now on his lap open. Yah, uhhu.
Before school began I started reading a bit of Diane Craft's books. She teaches that when something is harder than it should be it's like teflon and slips out of the brain. You need to try a totally different approach so that it will stick like velcro. It seems so obvious, but when you are caught up in teaching, you don't see what's right in front of you.
That "different approach" usually includes pictures and stories to go along with those pictures.
Hyrum has some learning "glitches." He's been diagnosed with a language processing disorder, and I've diagnosed him with dyslexia. He is, simply put, not your ordinary learner.
I'll give you a glimpse into how severe this is, and what it's like to teach him: Math has been exceptionally hard for Hyrum. He couldn't count to 4 when he turned 4 years old.
I have started up Rightstart Math this year. In fact, by the end of last school year, he learned the rightstart song:
He sure is animated, isn't he?
The first foundation of this program (which has been an incredible program for Maxwell) is to RECOGNIZE the numbers 1-10 in different ways WITHOUT COUNTING. Here's some of their flash cards to give you an idea of what I mean:
If you listen to the song, you'll see that it just reinforces this. Super simple--right?
But Hyrum could NOT memorize this. The numbers 6-9 were just too hard to recognize, and he would sneakily count, and then say the number.
TWO MONTHS of teaching and nothing stuck. Yes we've been learning different things too, like odd vs even, parallel vs perpendicular, squares vs rhombus, etc, but this was the main thing that needed to be learned. We were both very frustrated.
I was lying in bed one night, and it finally came to me. It's harder than it should be. I needed to CHANGE the way I was teaching. (I know, I know, it took me two months? duh) And so I laid awake thinking of how to make these concepts into visual stories. This is what I came up with:
Seven=heaven, meaning a marriage that is heavenly that will last forever. That's why there are TWO on one hand, and all their kids on the other.
Six=sick, meaning there is ONE sick guy on one hand that everyone is avoiding on the other hand.
Eight=ate, meaning that the two guys on either side of the ice cream ate the ice cream, making that THREE on one hand and all the sad guys on the other hand who didn't eat.
Nine=mine, meaning "Mine! where's mine? Everyone else has a buddy but me!" making only FOUR on one hand while the other hand has one more, five.
TWO DAYS people. TWO DAYS and Hyrum confidently could recognize numbers in all the ways Rightstart wanted him to. I'm sure the previous two months helped, but not much.
Anyway, in the way of the usual stuff, for science last week we learned about the moon. We learned all about tides, the dark side of the moon, months and eclipses.
The fact that there's a high tide on the other side of the world fascinated me, so I spent some extra time on that. Here's a photo of us talking about the gravitational center of the earth and how it's affected by the moon, and the slinky experiment explaining how the tide on the other side of the world is caused by the ocean's inertia. I found this experiment here.
This week we learned about the earth's rotation. Looking at what's suggested for next week, I should have just combined both weeks. whatever.
One thing we learned is how the zodiac changes in the sky because of our location around the sun:
Also, we drew pictures of astronauts, satellites, space stations, and things so that we could complete a scout badge requirement.
Geography last week and this week: Last week we studied Buddha and Confucius. We learned about yoga, meditation, and had fortune cookies with confucius' sayings in them. I really loved the books "the cleverest thief" by Padma and the Values tale about Confucius. My boys doing yoga and meditation:
We studied reincarnation as part of this, and it just felt wrong. Hyrum and Daniel are too little to learn something with the intro of "We don't believe this, but..." I want my kids to learn about all religions. I want my kids to understand all people in the world, but I think there are different stages in life to learn all that children need to know.
This realization put a kink in my plans. A kink is my word for rationalized delay. I knew I didn't want to teach Hyrum and Daniel about Islam, so I just delayed teaching Islam until this week and didn't have time for Judaism and non-LDS-Christianity (although I have no problem with teaching Hyrum and Daniel about these.)
Well, I did teach Maxwell (and a few of his cousins) about Islam. We talked about the five pillars of Islam and how they relate to the LDS faith, and we made our own Mosque with five parts. One for each pillar.
Umm yah I guess you can only see three here. Oh well.
Anyway, I had to include this photo of Daniel. He is enjoying kindergarten wonderfully and has mastered learning his "Magic 'C'" letters. Here he is in his magic cape as he practises his letters.
Notice that we are on the counter, not the table? Ya, monster one-year-old William has been wreaking havoc on our individual school time because he can get onto the table easily. He has yet to figure out how to get on to the counter. Thus we moved.
I feel like (after we are 1/4 of the way through) I am finally on track.
This week we learned about world population. For our activity, we played this game called "who sliced this pie?" Where you divide the world's population into 30 students (or paper dolls for us homeschoolers) and then give treats to each group to represent 1) the distribution of food throughout the world and 2) the distribution of wealth throughout the world.
It is an awesome demonstration of how uneven the population and wealth in our world is. My kids kept on saying how we should share and how unfair it was. WHOO HOO they got it!
We also learned about government. We had already talked about democracy awhile ago and looked at a few campaign adds by Obama and Mitt Romney. I couldn't find any good ones for Steven Harper, but then I read about how the people don't actually elect a prime minister. I have a lot to learn about Canadian politics!
To talk about monarchy, I had the kids "harvest" little candies off the ground and then they had to bring it all to the "Queen or King" who decided how much candy they got to keep. (Usually one piece) and if they ate any of the candy without the royalty's permission, you got "beat" with the scepter. I then briefly mentioned how dictatorship is basically the same but instead of being born into power, the army gets you to power.
Don't worry, they "beatings" involved a lot of laughing.
We also talked about revolution. For our activity, we played UNO and after a couple rounds we changed all the rules.
We also have finished memorizing our mountains song:
For science, we started learning about space exploration. We talked a lot about the need for thrust, and showed how a balloon rocket has thrust:
We also had a few gravity experiments. One that was cool was to have a jar inside a jar with balloons wrapped around the tops. when you lift up the balloon of the big jar, the little jar's top lifts up too. Just like how things without gravity would lift up.
We watched some youtubes about real astronauts. A few years ago, Maxwell was on an astronaut kick, and we had an impromptu unit, and at that time there were hardly any youtube movies showing real astronauts. Now there are hundreds, all thanks to Chris Hadfield. He is AWESOME! I have to admit, I'm proud he's Canadian.
We had this meal after watching this video:
And I would also like to share some Photos of my boy's robotic's club. My friend Cayleen does such an excellent job. She's so cute. She puts on her long white "lab coat" every class time. My boys are learning programming and engineering. So incredibly practical and fun!!!!
Okay people, I've been horrible with keeping up with this blog this year and----I haven't done geography for over a month. I blame this on three things:
1: my camera was stolen, and if I can't take photos easily, I'm less likely to be motivated to do activities (really pathetic realization, but true.) But I now have a NEW. PRETTY. SHINY. CAMERA!!!! Behold my baby:
And you better believe I am NEVER letting it leave my side EVER!!!
2: I've been feeling miserable and had tons going on. But now I have less going on and don't feel quite as miserable and will just suck it up.
3: Although I planned 90% of geography before school began for the entire school year, I did not write it down here, and I did not figure out the last 10%. I plan to do that RIGHT NOW. So here it goes.
First, let me lay out what the entire year SHOULD have looked like (for future use, seeing as I redo this every four years.) ICG stands for International Crafts and Games by Cynthia Adams. NPLH stands for No Place Like Home from Ebert's Four Year Plan.
September:
begin continents song
maps-make topographical map out of salt dough
maps-paint map
maps- mercator maps on oranges
maps-draw your own country using geography terms
begin mountains song
maps-start BIG map with longitude and latitude
maps-"Temple cruise" packets started
government-democratic/republic Prime Minister Election
government-monarchy/theocracy one kid is king and has all kids "harvest" all the tiny candies that have been scattered on floor and give it all to king who only gives one or two pieces back.
begin deserts song
government-anarchy/revolutionary play uno for a little while and then change rules every couple of rounds.
culture-clothing-international fashion show
culture-natural resources- play settlers of Catan
culture-food-international taste test
begin seven seas song
culture-population-play "who sliced this pie"**(explained below)
religion-Eastern religions-learn yoga, fortune cookies with Confucius sayings stuffed inside.
religion-Islam-make model of mosque (talk about five pillars)
religion-Judaism-play dreidel (ICG p39), compare with mormonism, sing hebrew songs.
religion-Christianity-put on pageant of New Testament story
November:
begin americas song
Mexico-make little zapotec people and a saturday market setting Saturday Market
*Dictator Game: Each person is given the same amount of points or treats. In the game, there would be advantages and rebellions. For example, the dice 2 and 6 would be "advantages" 1 and 4 would be "rebellions" and 3 would be "cooperation." There would be around a 2 min. round time. They would sit in a circle.The teacher who is in charge of the treats would have sign saying "army" the teacher would choose the dictator, and then we would begin. The children would take turns rolling the dice. If they got an advantage, the army would give the dictator the treat (regardless of who rolled the dice) If they got a rebellion, then the one who threw the dice would get a treat taken away. It would be up to the army whether or not the dictator got the treat. A cooperation they would simply pass the dice. At the end of the round, the next child would be the dictator.
**Who Sliced this Pie: (Got this idea from public school teacher with 30 kids, but I'll use paper dolls) Divide room up into continents (Frustratingly Australia and Russia go together statistically)
Population (#of students/paper dolls)
Asia=52.18%=16
Africa=10.66%=3
Middle East=9.88=3
Europe=9.62%=3
North America=5.17%=2
South America=8.52%=2
Australia/Russia=3.14%=1 (if just Australia 1/2)
Distribution of food production (#of chocolate kisses) btw-I couldn't find new statistics for this one, so these statistics are at least 10-15 years old.
Asia=36%=9
Africa=7%=2
Middle East=oh bother, um, not sure. goes with asia statistically
Europe=31%=8
North America=16%=4
South America=9%=2
Australia (Not Russia too---problems when you take statistics from different studies urg)=1%=1/2 kiss
none for antarctica
Wealth (# of caramels)
Asia=24%=6
Africa=1.01%=1/4
Middle East=4.1%=1
Europe=27.06%=7
North America=33.67%=8
South America=6.44%=2
Australia/Russia=3.38%=1
Interestingly, I took the newest population and wealth statistics I could find, and asia has gotten richer and other nations poorer from when this lady first did this activity. Hummm.
WHEW! I was NOT 90% there! That took me forever! Ugh, now to figure out how to condense this since I missed a month....
government-monarchy/theocracy one kid is king and has all kids "harvest" all the tiny candies that have been scattered on floor and give it all to king who only gives one or two pieces back. government-anarchy/revolutionary play uno for a little while and then change rules every couple of rounds.
culture-population-play "who sliced this pie"**(explained below)
begin deserts song
religion-Eastern religions-learn yoga, fortune cookies with Confucius sayings stuffed inside.
religion-Islam-make model of mosque (talk about five pillars)
begin seven seas song (or just not get to this song this year)
religion-Judaism-play dreidel (ICG p39), compare with mormonism, sing hebrew songs.
religion-Christianity-put on pageant of New Testament story
begin americas song
Mexico-make little zapotec people and a saturday market setting Saturday Market
And let me quickly catch you up on the last two science clubs we've had:
One week we learned about the outer planets. One experiment we did was to run around a pole. One person was the earth and went quickly and one planet was an outer planet and was slow.
(not taken by my new camera obviously)
And last week we learned about comets, astroids, and meteors. We made our own comets whose tales pointed away from the hot "sun" (hairdryer.)
And of course, it was HALLOWEEN. I love Halloween. I would say it's my favourite holiday, but I feel sacrilegious saying it, so I'll just think it.
Can you guess which one is not my child and was our yummy meat loaf?
