Playdough Mat Maps and Furry Distractions

Getting ready to head into two different novels set in Canadian provinces, Farley Mowat's Owls in the Family, in Saskatchewan...

...and Margaret Craven's I Heard the Owl Call My Name, which takes place in British Columbia...

...it seemed like a good time to throw in a quick country study.  We normally begin our country studies with a sugar cookie map project.  This morning though, noting from a number of posts in my blog reader, that it was play dough appreciation day, and seeing at the same time a couple of interesting mapping ideas from Die fantastischen 5, and angelicscalliwags  I decided to take an easier route, and follow the crowd.

Before the children got up this morning, I printed out a couple of maps of North America, one with the provinces, and states colored and labeled, and another that was just a blank outline.  I slipped the maps into plastic page protectors, and placed them on the breakfast table with a couple of cans of Play-Doh.

C (age 8) took right off covering the provinces, and a few states that matter to her, with Play-Doh...

...while E (age 9) began covering all of Canada with a single color of dough.

I had great plans for having them mark capital cities, and add major rivers, and such, until I spotted the baby bunny trapped in one of our basement egress window wells, and all thoughts of Canada were forgotten, in favor of a full scale rescue mission.

Which is not in anyway to say Canada is boring, or even the least bit uninteresting.  But, really how could any country compete with so much cuteness?

I had my hands full convincing the children, that unlike Farley Mowat's heroes, they could not keep their rescued "pet", and that wild animals, no matter how soft and cuddly, belong in the wild.  Thankfully for my cause, the only owls we've seen since moving into the neighborhood have been either on the pages of our books, or the walls of our dining room, or I'm quite certain we'd have a stowaway rabbit being "kept safe" in somebody's closet tonight.

When Company Leaves, Or Peach Pie for Breakfast

Usually when company leaves, especially company as dear as the children's grandparents, we lose a day to mournful mopiness. But, I think I've finally found a solution - peach pie for breakfast! It can't be any worse than Pop Tarts right?

And besides, it wasn't just any old peach pie. It was the special pie, that A (age 10) made together with her grandmother.

The children looked a little puzzled as they watched me dipping it up.

"Really?" they asked. "We're really having pie for breakfast?"

Instead of answering, I hit play on Brian Hall's "Pumpkin Pie For Breakfast", which I had downloaded from Amazon (you can go there to hear a snippet of the song, if you're not familiar with it). It cost me 99 cents, but it was worth it to watch the children's confusion turn first to annoyance, as the folksy, kid-songish notes began to play, and then to amusement, as they caught the words of the chorus:

"How 'bout some pumpkin pie for breakfast, and some Digimon juice,

Pokemon cereal, with marshmallow Pikachus?

How 'bout some pumpkin pie for breakfast, and some Power Ranger punch,

Obi-Wan Kenobi Fritos in your Darth Maul lunch?

How 'bout some pumpkin pie for breakfast?"

By the time the song ended, everyone was eating happily, except for G, who didn't want pie, unless she could have ice cream with it, and D, who likes routine, and was disturbed at the lack of muffins on the table.

In other words, we were back to normal.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Sharks In The Rainbow, Or An Unschooled Day

A couple of months ago, I posted a play by play of one of our days. As it so happens, it was one of our more structured days. I thought maybe it might be good (hopefully not too boring), for those of you interested in unschooling, to post a glimpse of one our more unschooled days. Yesterday, just happened to be one.

We had company coming in the evening, so I needed to get the house ready, and the distraction of the news out of Japan, has been making normal studies seem trivial, not to mention the time change throwing us off. Even so, the day was not lost - just different.

7:30 a.m. - D (age 8) is the first of the children to get up. He emerges from his room full of observations about a new set of "Wild Republic", toy sharks, he's received recently. The set contains 12 different sharks, each with its name on the bottom, and has really sparked his imagination.

Trying to capture some of that interest, and direct toward writing skills, which so far he hasn't been to interested in pursuing, I picked up The Everything Kids' Sharks Book by Kathi and Obe Wagner.

While I have a few minutes alone with him, I pull out the book, and after skipping over the first few, heavily evolutionary laden pages, he settles very happily, into a puzzle page dealing with Megalodons, writing out words without complaint.

Then, he drags the book off to his room, where I know he is looking through it, by the number of very corny shark jokes I'm treated to for the rest of the day.

8:00 a.m. - T gets up, and reads his Bible while waiting for D to finish his puzzle, and the rest of the children to get up, too.

9ish - The rest of the children are up, breakfast is served, while we all listen to a few chapters of Blue Balliett's Chasing Vermeer, and look through Vermeer, The Complete Works by Arthur K. Wheelock, for a visual of the paintings mentioned in Balliett's book.

9:30 The older children, and I watch Ken Ham's Why is There Death & Suffering, in response to C (age 4) asking, "Why is God killing everyone?" A question prompted by the news out of Japan.

I did my best to explain the nature of a fallen world to her, in simple terms for a four year old, but wanted something more in depth for the older children. The Answers In Genesis video, is directed at Christians, and spends about as much time refuting old earth theology, as it does explaining suffering in the world - but it was perfect for our day.

10ish The younger girls demand a craft. So, while the older girls oversee bath time, I set out tissue paper scraps, and cut a paper plate in half...


...for the girls to squish, and glue together...


...into rainbows.


Then, we read Eric Carle's Let's Paint a Rainbow. It's a board book, and too simple for the girls (ages 4 and 6), but it is the only rainbow themed book within easy reach, and the illustrations in typical Carle fashion, are interesting enough to hold the girls' interest.


At the same time, A (age 10) has pulled out the craft sticks, and set to work on what she tells me, will be a pencil holder.


While everyone is crafting, I clean the kitchen, and field more shark, and ocean related questions from D, such as, "How big is a plankton?" It's, about half a centimeter, if you're curious. We check the size on a ruler.

T (age 13), reads about multiplying polynomials in Algebra Unplugged by Kenn Amdahl.

G (age 11), works on a list of spelling words, she'd like to master.

By 11:30 when the Man of the House arrives home for lunch:

• Everyone has bathed.


• The crafts are cleaned up, and cleared away.


• The three younger children have settled in to watch "The Magic School Bus Takes a Dive" (click the link to watch it on Gamequarium), mainly to determine the name of the fish, that attaches itself in a symbiotic manner, to sharks (the remora fish).


• The older children are playing Roblox.
  

We have lunch, with cherry pie for dessert, and reread How to Make a Cherry Pie and see the U.S.A. by Marjorie Peiceman. The younger children look at the map in the back of the book, and ask whether Alaska, and Hawaii are part of the United States. We discuss the terms "continental United States" and "contiguous United States".

The Man of the House, and I watch more coverage on Japan, while the children eavesdrop. This leads to a number of discussions about Japan, and its history, and culture, WWII, earthquakes, the tilt of the earth, our responsibility to help, and so on.

After lunch - I have to run out to deliver a youth retreat form to our church for the older children, and stop by the library, to return one pile of books, and pick up another. I leave T in charge, and D reading from Betsy Maestro's A See Full of Sharks, to his younger sisters.



When I get back, I find T and D discussing whether the bald eagle is large enough to take on a great white shark. T has Googled bald eagles, and pulled out a yard stick to demonstrate height, and wing span. I find myself on my knees, modeling the height of an eagle, holding a yard stick, along an outstretched arm, representing wing span.

I pass out the library books, and ask T if he'd be willing to read Dr. Stanley F Schmidt's Life of Fred, Advanced Algebra. The math will be too advanced for him, but I'm curious about the story, and format. He asks me if I'll pay him for a review. We negotiate, and agree on back allowance due, in exchange for reading.

The older girls ask to make cookies, since we have company coming in the evening. I give them a cake mix cookie recipe, orally (1 chocolate cake mix minus 3 tablespoons, 1/3 cup of oil, and two eggs, mixed together, and added to 1 cup of white chocolate chips, rolled into balls, and baked for 9 minutes, on a greased cookie sheet, at 375 degrees Fahrenheit), from memory, and leave them alone, to see if they will follow the instructions.

The younger girls have gone off to play "library", D has returned to his sharks, and T is off reading.

I straighten up in preparation for our evening company, and return to the kitchen, to find the girls have made the cookies, and written the recipe into their own recipe book. The kitchen is a disaster, but the cookies look great.


2ish - The children go down for a "nap". The older children read, except for G, who writes a long overdue, thank you letter to her aunt. And, the girls clean their room.

I read a couple of chapters in my own book, start dinner, and work on a Jell-O rainbow snack for later - just one of those layered Jell-O things...


...but with a larger layer of blue, so I can stick in a few gummy sharks.



They eat it after the company leaves, while watching "The Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow".

This is not a complete day, of course, other things happened, that I simply missed, or can't remember to include, such as random piano playing (mainly Christmas songs), spelling (often directed into Roblox), checking of strange, miscellaneous facts (to solve arguments), younger children playing learning games on NickJr.com, a lot of time, though not enough, spent in prayer for the people of Japan, and so on.

Oh, and by 10 p.m., while I was working on the beginning of this post, T emerged from his room, having finished The Life of Fred book. He skipped over most of the math problems, but was interested enough in the story, and the idea, that I will be searching out Life of Fred, Beginning Algebra, as soon as I can. And that one, I won't pay him to read.


It's great to be a homeschooler.

Signs of Fall (or maybe winter!)

I have another fun (at least, I think it's fun) science project, planned for later today, but this morning, everything is on hold, while I do a quick inventory of winter coats, hats, mittens, and the like. This is the view we woke up to today...

And, just in case you can't tell, those arrows are pointing at freshly fallen snow. It's only a little, and it's a long way from the valley floor, where we live, but even so - it's snow!

I was hoping for a few more days of summer, which we may yet get, but I think it's definitely time to get our boots in a row, so to speak. Still, it's a much better view from our driveway, than what we had earlier in the week.

Nothing puts out a forest fire like rain, and early snow.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

If You Don't Like The Weather in Montana, Wait 10 Minutes and It Will Change

That saying, apparently, goes for views from your deck, too. Remember the forest fire from last weekend?



This is the same view, from tonight.


And, in case the clouds look a little dark, and ominous (I wouldn't want to traumatise any other young children out there ;), this...


...was the view, at the same time, looking in another direction, off our deck. They really aren't kidding, when they call this big sky country.

It's great to be a homeschooler - in Montana.

Educational Reform

The children, and I didn't do a craft, science, or art project this morning. Instead, while we ate our morning muffins, we watched President Obama's speech on educational reform. In case you missed it, here's what we gathered from it.

• Teachers need better pay.
• Teachers need to be held accountable for what their students are learning.
• We need better tests, to assess what children are learning.
• Some schools need to be restructured entirely.
• "No Child Left Behind" was a failure.
• Parents need to be more involved in their children's education.
• We need to teach our children to say "Yes, we can!"

Hmm...

It's great to be a homeschooler (and I don't mean that in an arrogant way, it's just nice to be free from some of the same old, same old).

Mom, Is That A Volcano?

Like yesterday's view from my deck?

No, Montana is not coming to volcanic life. No fears from Yellowstone.

It's just the beginning of forest fire season.


Another part of any Montana summer (and summer in many other states, as well).


After spending some time watching trees burst into flame, through our binoculars, and the fire growing, before bed, we were happy, as the clouds parted this morning, to see things seem to be calming down - for now, at least.

A few happy campers, had to be air lifted out of harms way, and there are a number of very brave, and sure footed fire firefighters risking their lives this morning still. But so far, no one has been hurt, and because of the remote location of the fire's center, it's suspected to be naturally caused (don't let the houses fool you, over that ridge is real wilderness). So, we can sit back, and enjoy watching the helicopters flying in with giant buckets of water, and planes circling over our slightly more dramatic sky line.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Bad Hare Day - A Hairstyling Craft for Scissor Happy Little Girls

With four daughters, it's inevitable we will have our share of unexpected haircuts. Cutting their own hair, does seem to be a universal right of passage for young girls. I cut my own hair once, too.

So, I probably should have clued in sooner, when my five year old announced she wanted to be a hairstylist in Paris when she grows up (something the Man of the House tells me I have "Pee Wee's Big Adventure", to thank for).

My teacher instincts kicked in, and I added French to our fall studies. But, I should have realized with a five year interested in cutting hair, I'd soon have a four year old with a hair cut. My mommy radar has been off, lately.

For instance, when I saw said four year old, wandering to her room with a handful of beads, I probably should have said more than, "Don't put those in your mouth." I should have remembered to say, "Don't put those in your mouth, or up your nose." (Sigh)

But, the bead blew out, without a trip to the emergency room, and a visit to a real hair stylist "fixed" the cut. Then, there wasn't much to do (after the obligatory crying, and lecturing), but laugh - laugh, and do a craft to channel some of those creative urges in a less destructive way.

First, we read Miriam Moss' Bad Hare Day, the story of a young hare up to creative mischief in her uncle's hair salon. I couldn't have asked for a better library find.



I had the girls, and their older sisters, draw some bald people for me.



Then, I gave them an assortment of yarn, curling ribbons, hair clips, markers, and glue, to style to their little hearts out.





I gave them extra long pieces of yarn, so there was plenty of room for cutting. They had a great time, snipping, and shaping, and when they were done...



...I put the scissors away.



It's great to be a homeschooler.

How Unschoolers Learn to Say Frog (and what frogs say) in Japanese

Now I'm sure, this is not the way every unschooler out there learns to say frog in Japanese. And, I know just enough Japanese to know saying frog is probably a good deal more complicated than what I'm going to share here. But, I was so struck by the sheer unschoolness of the moment, that I had to tell you about, too.

It started when the Man of the House took our seven year old fishing (this is apparently our summer for fishing).

D, had a great time fishing, observed for most of it, by his new friend - the frog. The arrow in the picture to the left, indicates the location of the frog.

Being seven, he was quite taken with the amphibian, and was very excited to find out all about it. When, he got home, and we'd loaded the pictures onto the computer, we were able to sort through the various frog information, and pictures in the online Montana Field Guide (a terrific resource), to determining it was a Columbia Spotted Frog.

The field guide provided some interesting tidbits about the frog, but I decided it would also be nice to gather some more kid-friendly information for my little herpetologist.

So, I made a quick stop at our local library's website, to put some of books about frogs, both fiction, and nonfiction, on hold. Then, I popped over to Netflix, to see if there were any instant streaming, Discovery Channel type shows about frogs.

What I came up with was Sgt. Frog, some sort of strange cartoon - not what I was looking for, but it caught the attention of the 12 year old, looking over my shoulder.

"Wow, that's coming out in English, huh?"

Of course, being a mother, I quizzed him over what he knew about the show, and where he'd seen it. Apparently, he's run into it, while searching for information on other animes, but he's always seen it talked about under it's Japanese name, "Gunso Keroro" (I think I got that right).

While he was explaining that to me, I watched a little light bulb go on over his head.

"Hey, if gunso means sergeant (which he learned from some other anime), do you think Keroro means frog?"

So, I steered off course, to an online Japanese/English translator, where we found out that keroro does not mean frog. Kaeru means frog. But, the sound frogs make in Japanese is kero kero, from which keroro is derived. So basically, if I'm understanding correctly, Gunso Keroro means Sgt. Ribbit.

I don't think it's a linguistic lesson either of us will soon forget. Of course, the little man also brought home a pocket full of purple pebbles from the stream, so I think there some geological studies in our future, too.

It's great to be a(n) (un)homeschooler.

Twin Lakes, Mt - A Camp Out With Dad

This post is mainly for the grandparents, and maybe a few of my siblings, who have their own Montana, fishing memories, and might enjoy these. But, I'm also going to link it to Debbie's Geography and History blog hop over at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children learn, because this is Montana.

In fact, it's nearly Idaho. On the map below (which I copied from the Montana Chapter of the American Fisheries Society site), of western Montana, you can see Twin Lakes, where the Man of the House took the girls for their camp out, marked with a red X.

All the lakes marked with red X's are known to be home to a native population of lake trout. My girls didn't catch any lake trout...

...just cutthroat...

...and little ones at that...

...nothing big enough for pan frying. They were all thrown back.

You can see from the girls' attire, that it was chilly. That's because Twin Lakes sit at 7200 ft., in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. It is home to a great deal of wildlife, including these two bucks, who seemed to like to hang out around the campground.

The girls found lots to do, fishing, hiking, watching chipmunks, roasting marshmallows, chopping firewood...

...and playing on a fallen pole pine, which because of the way it landed on a stump, made it a bouncy, balancing beam. How Waldorfy is that?

And, of course I wouldn't want to forget the highlight of the camp out (okay, now I'm being sarcastic)...

...watching Mommy's borax pine cones not burn. They were supposed to burn, and turn the flames green. But obviously, I'll have to chalk that one up to a science project, failure. Still, the lake was beautiful.

I asked the girls if it was really as pretty the pictures, and they said it was prettier. It almost makes me wish I liked to camp.



It's great to be a homeschooler.