O Adonai

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,

who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush

and gave him the law on Sinai:

Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

O Sapientia

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,

reaching from one end to the other,

mightily and sweetly ordering all things:

Come and teach us the way of prudence.

Learning Notes (Dec. 7-15)

A few things that tagged along at the end of last week that I didn't mention in the previous learning notes, plus everything (I can remember, at least) that we did this week, too.  Enjoy!

Stuff we did!

We played with slime and putty!  I will admit, here and now, that I do not understand slime.  I mean, playdough you can play with, but slime is just this gross goop that does nothing.  And it looks like mucus.  And it's incredibly expensive.  I dunno.  I don't get it.  But anyway, my children had never played with slime before so I picked some up just to say we'd experienced it.  Shudder.  The putty was no better, although it was even more expensive, made a rude noise when you squeezed it, and was slightly less mucous-like.  I have looked and can't find pictures online of whatever brands we bought (the slime was glow-in-the-dark and the putty was 'galaxy' coloured).  Kids are gross.  The end.

We listened to audio stories from Adventures In Odyssey!  (The children got volume...46?  I think?  as an early gift).  Audio stories just make the drives so much faster.

We started forcing bulbs in the kitchen!  At the end of the summer I let the hyacinths naturally dry up and lose their leaves, and then I wrapped them in newspaper and stuck them in the back of a crisper drawer in the fridge.  Last week I took them out and let them warm up on the counter.  And now I've put them in a shallow dish with water on the table.  We're talking a lot about bulbs!

The 7yo got onto a hand-sewing-cloth-bags kick, so she spent a lot of time doing that.

The 5yo wanted to practice writing out all of her letters and numbers.  She filled pages and pages with these.  We took the opportunity to review the first 30 lessons of Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons.

The 5yo got a Prodigy math account set up and I reviewed the children's math work - they're doing well!  They all got to play math games on the computer this week.

Places we went!

 - The 7yo had a dentist appointment, the 9yo had a piano lesson, and on the Wednesday we welcomed my mother for a respite visit.

 - We went on a nature walk and discussed our Advent reading about rabbits, how quickly the snow dissolved when you breathed on it, and how to camouflage yourself in the winter.

"I wonder why those mourning doves are in such a big flock

 but some are in one tree and some are in another.  

I wonder if the ones up in the tall tree are lookouts 

for the ones in the spruce, who can't see as well.  

What do you all think?"

 - We practiced our graphing by going to a restaurant and recording how many people came in or out wearing a hat, a hood, or having just a bare head.  This book is great for those sorts of hands-on math outings, if you need suggestions for things to do outside of the house in a mathy way.

We had a dr. appointment, shoveled snow for ourselves and neighbours, went to the hardware store to buy a new windshield wiper and install it on the car, cleaned the house together, went to a Christmas party and made crafts there, returned our library books and took our some new ones, cooked...

Books we read!

We finished this one as a group read-aloud (see my review of it here):

And the 9yo and I continued on with this one:

New group read-aloud was started!

Advent read alouds, various other read alouds, books in general...

We read about ancient Australian Aboriginal culture, the history of the Maori diaspora,
and the Frankish peoples united under Clovis.

Conversations we had!

What are the pros and cons of graphic novels versus completely print novels?  What are the differences between comics and graphic novels?  That hot foods are common in hot countries because they make you sweat when you eat, which cools you off.  Electrons, protons, neutrons, and the Large Hadron Collider.  How the atomic bomb worked.  If 'c' and 'k' and 'ck' (and others) all make the same sound, why have that many options?  

"Mama, the colour white absorbs less heat than other colours!"

"Hey Mom!  So assuming you had been born with a hole IN your head, and someone could reach in and touch your brain, did you know that you couldn't feel that?  Because the brain doesn't have nerve receptors!"

Book Review - The Magician's Elephant

The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Read aloud to the 5yo, 7yo and 9yo

The Good

An excellent read-aloud format with short chapters that, while they merge together well if longer reading is desired, are also distinct enough to work well as a shorter read.  This novel would be excellent for multiple ages - younger children will enjoy the magical story that ends happily, older children will enjoy the mystery and fantastical world.

The Bad

Kate DiCamillo is an acquired taste.  I could see some children finding her sad or depressing or dark, and in a lot of ways I suppose this is accurate.  She encorporates a darker theme to her writing that is often absent from children's literature.  This story takes place in winter, the characters are cold, the wind is icy, and an orphan hears from a fortune teller that his little sister is still alive, even though she was very premature and he had been told she was stillborn.  The fortune teller also tells him that he can find her...if he follows the elephant.  But, he wonders, WHAT elephant?  And then we hear of a failed magician who somehow conjures an elephant, who falls from the sky, through the roof of an opera house, and paralyzes a noblewoman.  The magician is imprisoned in a dark cell looking up at a single star, the elephant is shackled by the legs in the ballroom of a local society lady, the boy's guardian is feverish and ill, his downstairs neighbour's yearning for a child they will never have, the little sister stuck, hungry, in an orphanage.  You can see how this story could, quite quickly, be very, very sad.  And it IS sad.  It is cold and haunting.  But it is also those things in the same way that a classical fairy tale is those things.  There is real trouble, and simply because the story is 'for children', DiCamillo makes no concession to a naive and rose coloured world.  If you haven't read DiCamillo before, I really suggest a quick read first before reading it to the children, just to make sure you and your littles are up for it.

My Thoughts

DiCamillo's trademark melancholy magical realism is in full swing in this novel, which is not her best known (I feel like that honour would have to go to The Tale Of Despereaux, but that being said none of her work is trendy).  Much like her other stories, this one explores serious concepts seen through younger eyes - in this case the story asks us to consider if lying to save another's feelings is justified, if true courage means behaving like a soldier, how to save something that cannot save itself, and what family means to us.  And yet, despite these very deep and somewhat troubling ideas, the novel is very gentle and innocent; this is very much a child's story.  DiCamillo is undoubtedly a modern storyteller in the lineage of the great recorders of fairy tales - she doesn't believe, as so many current authors seem to, that children either cannot handle big topics at all, or that if they can they must be introduced to these topics in harsh, unyielding ways.  The dark war scenes and desperate poverties are missing from her tales, but none of the lessons are ever lost with them.  The book is for ages 8-13, but my 7yo liked it the best of the three children.  The chapters were short and simple to read and there are full-page black and white illustrations (in the style of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, although the illustrator is Yoko Tanaka).

Division of Topics

Link

Generally I divide things we consider learning or have the option to learn into four categories, and treat the different categories individually.

1)  Topics we are both (teacher and student) interested in learning about.  

Obviously, if we're both on board with a topic, this is where we shine.  Sometimes one of us is on the edge of being interested, but can be convinced by the other.

2)  Topics the teacher is interested in, and the student is not.

If I want to us to cover something and the child does not, how I handle the situation depends on the topic.  Is this something that I really think the child will enjoy once they get into it or am I going to have to cajole, which I dislike?  Here's an example:  let's say I have purchased a fun puzzle book, and I know that we would enjoy solving the puzzles together, but the child says they are not interested in that at all.  Firstly, sometimes the idea has just not been presented at a good time - maybe they had an argument with a sibling or read a tense part in a book or are frustrated with their craft - and if I offer on a different day, I will get a different answer.  This lasts over the long haul, by the way.  It took me almost a year of offering the Spiderwick Chronicles to my 9yo every single library trip before he ended up picking them up and devouring all six books in about two days, and then watching the movie with us (and explaining all the ways the film was wrong).  Persistence matters. 

Let's say I have tried a few times and this idea is just not catching on.  I find at this point I can encourage simply through doing it myself.  "You don't want to do this puzzle book with me?  Do you mind if I start it on my own, then?"  Often I will start working on something and because my children naturally want to do whatever I'm doing, they gravitate towards me and interact with the activity they thought they didn't want to do.  

If there is a lot of push back, I will occasionally offer compromises to get us over the hump of starting a new thing.  Maybe you can just sit in the room with me while I read aloud, but you can do whatever quiet thing you like, including reading your own book.  Maybe you can help me do a single puzzle in the puzzle book, and then in return I will play Lego with you for 15 minutes.  Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't.  When starting a new book recently, I set up the playdough in the livingroom for the two girls and the boy had a huge Lego castle kit to work on, and because I allowed those toys during read aloud time, I managed SIX chapters of the novel, which took well over an hour.

3)  Topics the student is interested in, and the teacher is not.

This is the perfect opportunity for independent study, in my opinion. We are not clones of each other, and some people enjoy different activities from other people, and that is why it is okay to go do the things you want to do without expecting others to have to do those things, too.  So after setting my children up with whatever they need to do the thing they want to do, I leave them to it. 

"You would like to weave?  I don't particulary want to weave something right now.

Do you have a loom?  Do you need any help?  Alright, you're all set, enjoy your

weaving and let me know if you need me."

That being said, there are compromises to be made!  I've sat through my share of tea parties and puzzle box Youtube videos and games of hide and seek where I am always 'it'.

4)  Topics that neither teacher or student are interested in.

Ah, and this is where it gets tricky, because these topics exist.  So I approach them wondering if we actually really, truly need to look at them, and if so, at what depth.  Is this a book that we're reading because we were told it is a great story and we both detest it and it isn't getting better?  Or are we talking about, like, ALL OF MATH?  The book, well, we can just not do it, and that's fine.  No one will read all the books, good or otherwise, that they 'should' read over a lifetime.   Math, on the other hand, well...we need to cover that whether we want to or not.

If we've established that we have to do the thing neither of us wants to do, we use two techniques to get through it.  First of all, we try as much as possible to make the very best of the situation.  We outsource in fun ways, we encorporate games into the topic, we make this as appealing as possible.  Music playing!  Lots of treats and things to look forward to if we succeed!  As much applause and admiration for our bravery in facing the thing we do not want to face!  Lots of admitting to each other that we both detest this but let's soldier on through anyway because this is One. Of. Those. Things.

Secondly, we try and pinpoint exactly what we dislike about the idea of learning it.  Is it that the lessons are very complicated?  Then perhaps we can simplify.  Is it that the books we're using are awful and dull?  Let's try different books.  Any and all suggestions are worthwhile.  What if we only did ONE math problem, but did it the best we could?  What if we set the timer for FIVE minutes?  We could do anything for only five minutes!  This book we've been looking through has a test and you don't want to take the test?  What if I just only read the questions out loud to you and you answered orally instead of writing it all down?  Would that make it better?  Then let's do that.

Alternatively, I have actually just ignored a topic with the idea that we would circle back to it at some point in the future with a fresh outlook, and then discovered that the child naturally picked it up by themselves.  This happens to me quite a bit with the two oldest these days.  They didn't want to do the thing, but eventually they decided to do it on their own, and learned it just fine, and I didn't really have to think much about it at all.  This is why I often review topics I think people may know already, and skim through lessons, because my children have a habit of going off and learning something on their own, and when it comes time for me to teach them, they already know the thing.

"Oh mom, I already knew that about Lillian Thrasher!  Did you know that she..."
"Actually, the volume of the cyclinder is found by..."
"I think if we need 1 cup of the flour and only have the Tbsp measure we could just..."
"Hey, this reminds me that..."

Sigh.  I can't teach those kids anything.

Learning Notes (Dec. 1-7)

Hello beautiful Advent!  This week the children helped with Christmas baking (two loaves of fruitcake, two dozen sparkly ginger cookies, 30 miniature raspberry pies with homemade jam, a tray of lemon squares...), they shovelled for the neighbours and us, set out stale bread on our bird feeder, did plenty of chores around the house, helped shop for groceries, and much, much more.

Some of the games and such played with this week...

Also racous outdoor games of capture the flag, playing with playdough at the kitchen table, the girls playing elaborate games of grown-uppishness.  "Let's buy stuff at the store!"  "Excuse me, ma'am, I have some questions for you."

Books read!  This is the Advent devotional I use for the children.  It tells stories of animals in winter over the days of the season.  It's simply beautiful and the perfect addition to a December nature study.

And on a lighter note...We finished this one entirely over a few bedtime read-alouds.

Still working through this one, though!

and a few more...

We read about medieval Japanese culture...

And started a new read-aloud...

The children read alone a LOT.  We took a two hour trip to the library to return books and pick up armfuls of new ones.  We also put together two big puzzles, including this one, which I thought was very cool:

Link

The 5yo discovered the Early Reader section.  The 7yo discovered the Mercy Watson books.  The 9yo started reading some new graphic novels:

He read the first two books.  Also read aloud to me from The Horrible Histories - Amazing Aztecs book.  And then he picked up this book and finished it in two days:

I have every intention of reading it aloud to them again, and the 9yo heartily approves.  He thought it was great.

The two oldest practiced the piano and played their online Prodigy math game extensively.  The 7yo designed Christmas cards.  We all went on a very long hike and identified the animal prints we saw in the snow and found as many old nests in the branches as we could.

7yo "Mama, what's a vertices?"
Me:  "Oh, it's a.."
7yo "Never mind!  I figured it out!"

***
5yo "Mama, what's 'promotion' mean?"

Conversations! - Can ants live in the jungle?  What is the froth on top of the soaking potatoes?  When was soap invented?  What is Vitamin C?  Can ascorbic acid pop a balloon?  Will ascorbic acid dissolve us if we eat it?  Who is 'Uncle Sam'?  What is cremation?  Do people plan their funerals before they die?  How do they do that?  What other cultures besides the Aztecs practiced sacrifice?  What does 'obligation' mean?  Should you finish reading a book you aren't enjoying?  What does 'literally' mean?

The 9yo and I took several 'Conversation Walks' together, talking about a variety of things.  I'm going to write up a post sometime about why I consider our conversations to be a valuable part of homeschooling.  (Edit - I did this.  Here is the post!) The most memorable of the walks included discussing the books we'd read recently and why we did or did not like them.

Videos and such!

How to beat any escape room!
The 'scam science' of carnival games!
A world without friction!
Visiting the world's biggest vacuum chamber!  *This one was actually really cool.
How were the pyramids at Giza built?

The Power Of Curated Conversation

I mentioned in a previous post that I use the concept of invitational presence to invite my children into a family lifestyle of learning, and how that has proven to be a pretty successful teaching tool for us.  But it is a very overarching tool, not a terribly specific one.  If you want to know HOW I homeschool, I think I would have trouble articulating our methods very clearly.  What I can do, with slightly more success I think, is to outline some of the more daily tools we use to encourage that invitational presence, and to encourage learning in general.

1. We Have A Lot Of Curated Conversations.

So, there are many times I speak to my children without a topic of discussion in my mind, obviously.  This isn't that.  This is intentionally building time into our days and weeks to discuss specific topics with a specific child.  I sometimes prepare (in a very general way) for the conversation.  For example I might mentally outline some of the key points I want to touch on, stories I want to share, facts that might be of interest related to the topic, etc.  Here's an example to illustrate what I mean:

Let's say I want to chat about birds with the 7yo.  I arrange a time when I will be with just her, so that we can have a conversation about birds.  I go over in my mind some of the things I'd like to touch on such as...

Our birdfeeder and why I put out the food I do.
Why the lady one street over gets so many more birds at her feeder than we do.
The new birds we've been seeing in the area - where are they coming from?
What happened to the birdsong of spring and summer?

When we walk out together, I will say something like "I really wanted to talk to you about something I've found very interesting".  I use 'I wonder' or 'Have you ever wondered' questions.

"I wonder what happened to the birdsong we used to hear so much?"
"Have you ever wondered why I use black oil sunflower seeds in the feeders?"

Often the conversation will go in wildly different directions from where I anticipated it would go.  We might discuss the seeds in the feeders, progress to suet balls, then to carnivores and herbivores, then to the food chain, then to human impact on agriculture, then on to how a supermarket is organized.  Unlike normal, fun, average conversations I just have regularly with my kids, these curated conversations are more intentional, so I do try to bring us back on topic gently when we drift off.  I might say "There's something else I wanted to talk about in regards to birds!" and then start discussing the next thing.  But I don't force the conversation, and if we're just not going to be able to talk about whatever it is today, then that's fine too.  We play it by ear.

Now, where do the topics come from?

Often I pick topics based on whatever I am currently interested in.  We try to cultivate a spirit of curiousity in our homeschool, and that includes the parents, so often my husband and I are on some 'kick' and want to share our excitement with the children.  I try to keep in mind what I've mentioned before about being the best teacher of the things you love.  If I am passionate about birdfeeders right now, then let's talk about birdfeeders!  Alternatively, I'll pick a topic based on a current interest of theirs, if they have a really driving desire to master something at the moment.  Surprisingly, I don't like to choose child-led interests mainly because if a child is interested in something you cannot keep them from learning about it - no child needs an adult's encouragement to talk about or learn about a subject they already love.  These curated coversations are my opportunity to introduce NEW topics of discussion and open up new pathways as alternatives to thinking in the same patterns.

How long do these conversations last?

As long as we like, really, or have time for.  But there is a 'sweet spot', I find.  Too little time and you don't really get the creative, thinking juices flowing and get to dig into a topic.  Too much time and the challenge of thinking has tired a small person and people might start to think of these conversations as dull.  The amount of time will vary, but I wouldn't say less that 15-20 minutes would be of much value.  You're aiming for about as long as an elementary school lesson.

When the talking is over, what next?

I believe in the ideal of a Great Conversation - the great minds throughout time all working on problems and thinking thoughts and passing down information and ideals to future generations.  And introducing the children to this Great Conversation is one of my joys in teaching, really.  To this end (although it doesn't always work out this way) I try to really integrate our conversations into our daily life - make them flow seamlessly into our family, so to speak.  Going back to the bird discussion - this would be the time I'd go to the store with the child to buy seed, this would be the time I would pull out relevant books, or even make a new design on the strewing windowsill.  And I always try to make the conversation a multi-day thing; I don't want to talk about birds and then stop talking about birds.  I want to talk about them and then talk about them again and again and then mention something we talked about a week from now and then call a child over in the library to see a related book, etc.  Even if only one 'official' curated conversation happens, the outcome of that conversation is, essentially, that now we can include 'birds' in our list of things we might discuss periodically.

Now, as I said, that's an ideal follow-up.  Sometimes I do nothing but have a conversation.  Sometimes I have the conversation and then periodically more conversation and then it trickles off.  Sometimes we have already read books about a subject and then we have the conversation.  You get it.

So there you go, another odd little tool I use in our school days.