About snow

In my last post, I mentioned that I decided to hastily put together a unit study on snow to carry us through the two or three weeks until we decide to pack homeschooling for 2013 away for the year.  This unit is mainly for Jaelyn, as Nicholas is happily writing about birds and is diligently watching his bird feeders for Project FeederWatch.

Jaelyn's reading has simply exploded over the last month or so.  While she's typically done a good job of reading the words in her readers, I was never quite sure if she was reading the library books she cozied up with on the couch or if she was looking at the pictures.  Now I know that she's reading them word for word and understanding them.  She reads to me or to Astrin, and is proud to tell me how many pages she's devoured during her day.

Since this little one loves to read, we started off our unit on snow with the tale of The Snow Queen.  We spent a little bit of time each day for a week doing some sort of activity related to this story...reading it, drawing a picture about something from the story, narrating a summary of the story, writing a poem. 

We're using blank sketch books to compile all of our work.  It's my attempt at a main lesson book used in the Waldorf philosophy.  While I have no idea whether I'm doing it "right" and fully intend to do more research at some point, it serves its purpose for now and Jaelyn is enjoying what she's drawing and writing in her "green" book, as we refer to it here.

I'm looking forward to getting into some learning about snow crystals themselves and how they are formed next week.  We will be reading Snowflake Bentley (a perennial winter favorite here) and looking at some of the pictures he published in Snow Crystals.  We'll be catching our own snowflakes (we're in for a big dump of snow early next week), photographing them and making sketches, making snowflake cutouts to decorate our windows, and creating our own snow crystals inside.  There are also a couple of books kicking around here on snow storms and blizzards that could be an interesting treat.  And of course there are all sorts of chances for building snow forts and snowmen in the fluffy white stuff.  But more on that later - stay tuned!

Free-range Monday

I write this post with lunch-time approaching.  But everyone seems so immersed in their work that I hate to disrupt them.  Here's what's going on throughout my house...

Jaelyn is making Valentines for her friends and family.  I'm helping by cutting out hearts of all shapes and sizes (which is very meditative).  I asked her who she would like to give Valentines to, and wrote out the list she dictated to me so that she can work at her own pace.  She's also organized her list by family, and by how she knows each family.  I'm pleased that she's writing a little note in each one, and decorating them with her own artwork and other special items.  That being said, she's only finished two so far, and her enthusiasm may whittle out as she gets to the end of her list.

Nicholas is upstairs in his room reading Whispers of War:  the War of 1812 Diary of Susanna Merritt.  I truly believe there is no other place he would rather be right now than laying on his bed, fully immersed in that book, which is adding further details about the war that he will imaginatively play out later.

Astrin is, well, sleeping.  We went for our morning walk, and then settled down at the table where she started drawing and then promptly dumped all the crayons on the floor.  I brought her down to clean up her mess, and then she informed me she wanted to go to bed.  And it's been quiet ever since.

And me?  Besides cutting out hearts, I've put together a birthday party invitation, imagined the activities I'll lead for this month's homeschool co-op classes, mentally added things to our grocery list, and rearranged what the day's meals will look like given the errands and activities that need to be done today.  If the afternoon continues like the morning, and my little toddler sleeps much longer, I may even pick up the knitting needles and do a round or two. 

Sticks

After having my husband unexpectedly home for most of last week, combined with a seemingly endless number of errands to be run, I found myself waking up to today a little disoriented.  Nothing on the calendar.  No field trips planned.  A week that is pretty much an empty slate. 

I was also expecting the children to sleep a little later than normal.  After a sleepover this weekend and a late night watching the last CFL game of the season, I thought they would be loving the chance to catch up on some much-needed rest.  So, imagine my surprise when everyone was up at about the same time!  A little grumpy, a little restless, a little mischievous.  And me a little groggy.

We got into our groove this afternoon.  After finishing up our little bit of schoolwork and reading about Zeus, we settled in to some games.  The old-fashioned kind.  We played Sorry and then we played a new, homemade favorite, which was a gift a couple of years ago.  It's a card game called Sticks. 

Sticks is aptly named, as the game is simply a few decks of cards and a bag full of sticks.  Each stick has instructions describing what you will be collecting for the hand - examples are 2 sets of 5; the ace, king, queen of hearts; 4 runs of 3.  If you can collect what is on your stick, you lay down and then try to get rid of the rest of your cards by laying down other runs or sets of 3 or more, or adding on to runs and sets laid down by others.  If you can't you try again the next hand (and the next and the next) until you get it.

It's a fun game that works best with three or more people, and usually with those with larger hands to hold all those cards (each player is dealt 15 cards to begin with!)  That being said, Jaelyn's little 6-year-old hands are more than capable of playing - she just puts the cards she no longer needs face-down on the table until she is ready to show what was on her stick.

Minding our B's and D's

I rarely write about the formal bookwork we do here at home.  While I'm not worried about how well my children read, our adventure into reading is important to me.  My son is a very strong reader, and he doesn't need to be motivated to read on his own.  I often find him reading in the morning, before he's even saddled up to the table for breakfast.

Jaelyn is just learning how to read.  She has a pretty firm foundation under her.  Our first small steps on the road to reading included saying letters by their sound and not their name.  We also had an alphabet placemat that listed the letters and pictures for each letter.  Any time that Jaelyn showed interest in writing, like creating birthday cards, she would bring out her placemat and we would help her write the words.  If she was writing "love", we would say the letter sound ("lllll"), then refer to the picture on the placemat ("like 'leaf'"). 

Somehow, we took a jump from these first steps to her trying to read on her own.  We've used several sets of books so that Jaelyn has some choice in the books at her reading level.  We started out with Bob Books, which are short, fun books.  For the beginning reader, there are very few words on a page, the words are easy to sound out, and they give that thrill of success because the whole book can often be read with little stress.  We also used Dick and Jane books, because we liked the repetition - once she sounded out a word, she could read it several more times in the same story.  Lastly, we've been using Primary Phonics books and the accompanying workbooks.  The workbooks introduce the new sounds and the books bring it all together. 

Lately, I've been noticing that Jaelyn is mixing up her "b's" and "d's".  I'm not pushing the panic button, but I wanted to find a way to reinforce what each letter looks like.  So today, when she mixed them up, we talked about it.  I wrote "Dad", and I told her that the bumps on the letters face one another because dads and their children look at one another when they talk to each other.  Then I drew faces on the "d's" to show them looking at one another.  Jaelyn surprised me by sharing a rule that she learned in kindergarten.  First, she drew a big "B", then she drew a smaller "b" inside, and said that the small "b" was a baby inside the big "B".  So, now she has a couple of tricks to keep in mind when reading and writing.

Going forward, I'm going to look into a few Waldorf books to see if there are any stories and pictures I can share with her to help her integrate everything together.

A good book

My children love to read...all of them.  We've read to them since they were quite young.  And not just board books either.  I remember reading novels, biographies, and non-fiction science books to my son from the time he was 2 months old - about the time when I thought I would go mad if I read The Cat in the Hat one more time, as our in-house library had about five children's books in it.

It doesn't take too much to motivate my children to listen to books.  I confess that my son hesitated to read books on his own, likely because he was forced to read a book aloud to us daily when he was in Grade 1 and Grade 2.  Now that the pressure is off, he loves to hunker down with a good book.  The picture from last week with the light on in a tent - that's my son reading in the late hours of the evening.

While I do take the time to read to the children on those hot, sweltering days, we also do a couple of things to fit reading into our schedules:

  ~ I read novels to the children while they are doing the nightly dishes.  The benefits are three-fold - there is no fighting, we get plenty of reading, and the dishes get done...eventually.  The downside is that they get so absorbed in the story that they forget to do dishes.

  ~ I also read novels to the children when we go on family road trips.  Last summer, we took a month-long vacation and trekked half-way across the country.  There were some awfully long days on that trip, and I would read to them until I went hoarse.  It was on this trip that we fell in love with the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series.

  ~ Occasionally, we will get audio books.  The best hit by far was Stuart McLean's Vinyl Café stories.  We could listen to them on repeat over and over again, and the hilarious stories never get old.  These are great for adults and kids alike.  Another great one geared towards kids, but in a calm, peaceful way is Sparkle Stories.

  ~ I ask the older children to read to their little sister, especially when I'm making supper.  For my son, this means reading the words.  For my daughter, this usually means reading the pictures or going from memory.  She is just starting to read on her own, and we find that reading the pictures helps a great deal when it comes to reading the words.  The pictures provide additional context and clues for guessing a word she may be stuck on.

  ~ During the summer, our library holds a contest based on the amount of time spent reading.  The more minutes read, the more chances to win prizes.  Our children are big on prizes, so when we finish a book, there's a race to the fridge to mark off how long we read for.

  ~ We read fictional stories based on activities we will be doing.  On that long road trip last summer, we planned to tour the Plains of Abraham.  We read The Death of My Country before our visit, and it helped connect head, hands and heart to the history of the site.  Similarly, we are reading the Anne of Green Gables series and No Safe Harbour in preparation for an upcoming trip to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.

  ~ We work hard to bring home and encourage our children to select "good books".  You know the kind.  If you think you're going to fall asleep after 5 minutes, it's not a "good book".  For us, the dummied-down books based on movies or TV shows fit in the category of not a "good book".  If the book holds your interest and your child's, it's a good book.  All the ones listed above have been good stories for our children.

Happy reading!

Errands

I must thank our wonderful friends at the local library for their Mainly Mother Goose program.  It's a program of songs, fingerplays, bounces and stories aimed at the under 2 crowd.  And the songs and fingerplays we learned came in especially handy today.

My littlest one is a curious girl.  There are some places that are open to having little explorers, like the swimming pool.  There are others, however, where exploring doesn't work so well - like at the doctor's office.  And that is where we spent a good hour and a half this morning.  While we brought her favorite books, there's only so many times one can read Are You My Mother? or Up Up Down before both mama and toddler have had enough.

Her favorites were the bounces and the fingerplays.  We played "This is the Way the Lady Rides" countless times, and her older siblings were so eager to have a turn taking her for a ride.  We sang "Wind the Bobbin Up", "This is Big, Big, Big" and "Peter and Paul" over and over again.  When we had exhausted those, it was time to bring out the secret weapon - a snack perfect for little fingers.  Thankfully, we were on our way before it was all gone!

What do you do to pass the time with your little ones when you've got extra time on your hands?