Night School

A few nights ago we had some serious thunderstorms in the wee hours of the morning. Joy has always been afraid of thunder (and other loud, sudden noises), so we weren't surprised to find her at our door saying, "Mom, Dad, I'm scared!" I got up and went to lie down with her in her bed, which is our usual response. However, Joy was very wiggly and not willing to calm down, and it seemed the storm was winding down, so I scooted on back to my own bed.

CRASH! The thunder started up for real just a few minutes later. I didn't even wait for Joy to arrive at our door; I simply got up and said, "Let's go watch the storm!" She was surprised because we usually try to go back to sleep, but this time, the lightning was continual, the thunder was deafening, and the wind was incredible! I wanted to see if there were any weather warnings, and I knew nobody was going to be sleeping (unless it was Dad!).

So we settled onto the couch by the picture window and watched the show. It was reminiscent of John Archambault and Bill Martin Jr's Listen to the Rain: "The lightning-flashing, thunder-crashing, sounding, pounding roaring rain." The electricity went out almost immediately, so I grabbed my smartphone to see the weather... and decided it was time for some homeschooling.

"Hey, Joy!" I said, "Look at this!" And I showed her the weather map. She knows the location and shape of our state, the surrounding states, and most of the states we've visited. I pointed out where the state boundaries were because they were hard to see with all the yellow, orange, and red on the map. She was delighted to see our state and our city.

We talked about what the colors meant and we were both suitably impressed by the colors covering our part of the state. She was a little frightened by the storm, but definitely engaged in the weather map. Then I animated the map.

"Whoa! Mom! Why are the colors moving??!!" And I explained how storms happen when a mass (defined by me as a "bunch") of cool air moved into a mass of warm air. We watched for a few minutes, then Joy exclaimed, "The colors are moving away from us!" So we turned our attention back outside, where, indeed, the storm was calming a bit. We watched the storm move away on the phone and in front of us.

Pretty soon, Joy was confident that the storm was ending, and we went back to bed, calmer and a bit wiser about weather. Another line from Listen to the Rain runs through my head now: "The dripping, dripping, dropping, the slowly, slowly stopping, the fresh, wet, silent, after-time of rain."

Stealth Kindergarten at its best!

Old McWrite has some Vowels!

Vowels are TRICKY! Understanding them and how they work is one of the most important tasks of an emergent reader. As Joy has learned the letters over the past three years, I have always pointed out whether the letter is a vowel or a consonant. Not that I expected her to remember, but that she knew there were such things.

One day, as Joy and I were belting out songs in the car, I realized that "Old McDonald Has a Farm" and its "E-I-E-I-O" could easily be modified to be about the vowels. So I made up a new version, which goes like this:
                         Old McWrite had some vowels
                         A-E-I-O-U
                         And with these vowels he made some words
                         A-E-I-O-U
                         With a vowel-vowel here
                         And a vowel-vowel there
                         Here a vowel
                         There a vowel
                         Everywhere a vowel, vowel
                         Old McWrite had some vowels
                         A-E-I-O-U

Joy learned the song immediately and has been singing it for the past year and a half. Which has made teaching her to read much easier! As she's learned sounds, I can point out that the vowels make more than one sound. Most the consonants make only one, occasionally two. It's made teaching her some of the early rules of phonics easier: "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and says its own name."  Can't make much sense out of that without knowing what vowels are!

Today, Joy and I took a bunch of Scrabble tiles and spread them out on the table. Then I helped Joy pick out all the vowels. Once we had all the vowels out of the bunch, I chose a beginning and an ending consonant. I chose them based on which consonants would make lots of words with various vowels in the middle.

After setting up the consonants, I had Joy move one vowel of her choice to the middle of the word. Then she sounded out the word. This reinforced the short vowel sounds, but also left open the possibility of an irregular pattern. I believe it's important to let children see the words that don't fit the patterns, too, so they know that the patterns aren't written in stone.

So Joy built a whole bunch of words using the tiles. I think I set up three consonant patterns, including t_n, s_t, and b_nk, which made bank, benk, bink, bonk, and bunk. The nonsense words are just fine, although I point out that they're nonsense. If Joy didn't know what bunk means, I would tell her, just to build her vocabulary. (I wouldn't expect her to memorize the meaning or anything, but I would just describe what a bunk is and remind of her bunks she might have seen.)

A fun song and a quick activity to use with your emergent reader. Have fun today!!!

Our Decision

My husband and I spent lots of time last evening discussing whether we should send Joy to the public Montessori school or keep homeschooling her. We talked with Joy and explained the decision we had to make. We asked her for input, but told her it was our decision. We listed the pros and cons of each. We prayed together, asking for guidance in the decision. We came to the understanding that Joy would probably thrive in either setting.

So what did we decide? We're going to homeschool.

It came down to what would help Joy continue to gain security, stability, academic progress, and character. See, Joy has had many changes in her young life; too many. She has absolutely thrived in the year+ that I have stayed home with her. A little more than a year ago, Joy was having multiple daily melt-downs, usually triggered by trying to fit "too much" into her day. These days, Joy goes days without a melt-down, as long as we don't try to cram too many scheduled things into her time. So, choosing to go to school would mean stopping most of her other activities: gymnastics, church youth group, piano, volunteering to help with MOPS at our church. Without school, these things are simply a part of our life, but in addition to school, they would be way too much!

Joy herself showed a bit of insight about this when we talked with her about the choices (before we made a decision). She said, "How long is school?" When I explained, she thought for a while and said, "Maybe it's too long." In considering where Joy would get the most benefit, it was clear to us that our current activities are ideal for her.

I spent some time researching the Montessori school yesterday, of course. One of the factors in our decision was their list of "Essential Outcomes for Kindergarten." Now, I know that the essential outcomes are the bare minimum expected, but there were none of these essential outcomes that Joy cannot already do! I know that the teachers would encourage her to continue her learning, but I also know that Joy doesn't like to try difficult things, so I could easily see her playing around all year. I don't want that to happen! The teachers will be focused on those students who haven't met the essential outcomes due to the pressures they receive about kids passing tests.

This morning, when we told Joy that we were going to continue to homeschool, she was quiet for a moment. Then she started listing all the things that she was going to continue to do: Y Kids' Care, gymnastics, etc. And she said, "Okay" and went on with her breakfast with a smile.

Good decision.

A Dilemma

We have a serious dilemma on our hands today. You all know how much I've loved homeschooling Joy, and how successful it's been for her. And how she is strong-willed and self-directed.

Well, the public choice school that we tried to get her into, a Montessori school, called today to say they have an opening. Did we want to send Joy? Um.....NO.  Um.... YES. YIKES!

We love what our family is doing right now, but we know Joy would also love spending more time with a group of kids. We know that we are still in the process of leaving our town eventually, and fewer transitions might be a good thing, so homeschooling makes sense.

Our original decision in applying for the Montessori school was that the teaching style fits Joy's learning style. She would have some choice in how her time is spent, some control over her day. Plus, since it's a public school, it wouldn't be prohibitive tuition-wise. When she was denied entrance, homeschooling was the choice we made.

But if we send her to the Montessori school, she will still get plenty of mom-time because it's a half-day program. Joy would automatically be accepted into the Montessori program next year (and following years), which, if we're here, would be a better placement for her than the local public school.

I realize that part of my reluctance to send Joy to public school kindergarten is my own sense of purpose and fun in homeschooling her. That's a bad reason to homeschool, though. I will enjoy having a bit of time to work on my glass art, and I will still have a half day with Joy, if we send her to school.

Argh! I wish I knew the "Right" answer... except perhaps there isn't one. Perhaps Joy will thrive and succeed in learning in either environment. I know that my husband and I will pray over this decision, and make the best decision we can with the information we have on hand. Watch for the next blog entry to find out what we decide.

How 'Bout Some FUN?

I have to confess that I am LOVING the freedom of homeschooling. Our schedule is delightful! Joy and I can take a field trip on a whim, make "school" out of moving the kindergarten stuff to a new room, or have a shaving cream party in our yard!

That's just what we did yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, I had provided Joy and her best friend some shaving cream, and they played with it. They had a great time, but I thought of lots of possiblities for foamy fun. So I planned a Shaving Cream Party. Kind of like our Mud Party, only cleaner.  And boy, was it fun!!!

The kids slid and slipped and danced and fell and surfed and belly-flopped in the shaving cream. They giggled and chuckled and outright squealed with delight in the slippery fun. They covered themselves (and each other!) in shaving cream, clapped their hands and sprayed cream everywhere, and they added the big plastic political signs (from about 10 years ago; they were stored in our barn!) to make the slide longer.

It was great fun! I wouldn't trade that afternoon for much of anything in this world. It was one of the joys of homeschooling: The freedom to pursue silliness with abandon. I'm certain that's not in any educational standards or benchmarks! But was it educational??

Hmmmmmm...... Here are some of the things that convince me that Joy was learning yesterday, amidst her fun:
1) She helped plan the party! In other words, she counted cups, popcicles, figured out what we might want out besides shaving cream, and generally prepared for the guests;
2) She realized very quickly that the political signs added lots of fun, but should be overlapped. We all learned that they should all be overlapped the same direction to avoid small gouges in knees and ankles! And
3) Joy learned that meeting new people and including them was a positive thing. She hadn't met one of the families that participated before, and she was a little leery of having new kids, but she absolutely loved  the slightly older girls that helped spray the shaving cream and then slid with as much enthusiasm as the smaller kids. She said to me afterward, "Can we invite _______ again?? I wish they had come to the Mud Party!"

I'm sure she learned much about balance and slipperiness and more, but the most important thing that happened was the pure bliss of doing something goofy and enjoying it so thoroughly!  I loved it, too.

Games and Graphs

I know I've said before that playing games is a terrific way to build education into your child's day. We play lots of silly games with dice, including "Roll Two, Add and Compare," "Order the Dice," and today's game, "Graphing Dice." In "Roll Two," each player simply rolls two dice, each adds their dice, and the winner is the one with the highest number. Obviously, you could adapt this in many ways, including playing a cooperative version where each player rolls two dice, adds them, and then all players add the dice together for a grand total. All players win when the grand total is higher than the target you set.

"Graphing Dice" starts with a handful of dice. The child throws the dice, with help as needed. The more dice, the more fun! We only used regular (1-6) dice today; I have dice with up to 20 sides, which would increase the challenge of the activity.

The child then orders the dice (which is basically the game of "Order the Dice"), as shown on left. We are working on ordering the dice from least to greatest, but it would also work greatest to least. Once the ordering is done, it's time to make the graph!

Because this is Joy's first experience with formal graphing (Besides Sid the Science Kid), I drew the x-axis and y-axis and labeled the graph. As an introduction, though, I used the correct terminology as I created the graph: "Joy, I'm drawing the x-axis for our graph. That's the side-to-side line! The up-and-down one is called the y-axis. I made a title for our graph; it's called 'Dice Throw.' And I'm labeling the x-axis with the numbers on the dice." Enabling your child(ren) to understand the academic vocabulary is very important! Use those words you know; your kids will learn them, and they'll learn when they need to ask for an explanation.

Joy watched me count and fill in the bars for the first two numbers. Then she counted and filled in the others. Note that I put the pips in the same shape as on a die as a clue for Joy! I want kids' experiences to be successful! I would've filled in more bars if needed; it's all guided by what the child needs.

We actually played this twice because Joy was so interested in it. This was during our sit-down school time. I drew the second graph, but she ordered, counted, and graphed the dice. I used more vocabulary the second time, mentioning that the mode was three since she had the most threes. I also identified the maximum (6) and the minimum (1). Later, Joy will tell her dad about the activity, and I'll encourage her to use the words, if possible. If she can't, I will! More exposures = More understanding!

The other extension I did today since Joy was so positive about this activity was comparing the two graphs. This is a pretty advanced skill, but Joy did a great job! She noticed that the number of 5s stayed the same, and that the mode was 2 in the first throw and 3 in the second throw. And yes, she used the word mode! It was a lot of fun, and so easy to set up and do. Get those dice out... and THROW!!!

Puffins and Projects

 This is a poem (Oh, There Once Was a Puffin by Florence Jaques) that I memorized a long, long time ago. It came up on our vacation, when we went on a puffin adventure boat. We got to go out to a puffin island and see puffins! Because we were going to do that, I recited this poem a couple of times, just because I'm goofy, I guess. Joy listened to it and laughed at the puffins eating pancakes (one of her favorite foods). Then she asked if I would teach her the poem. I NEVER turn down a chance to have her learn anything, so I said, "Sure!"

Within a couple of days, she had memorized the poem and was reciting it endlessly. I knew the day would come when I would use the poem for instruction. I made a copy (left) of the poem and had Joy read it for school. Then we found the rhyming patterns (colored highlighting and boxes). We also examined the rhythms of the stanzas.

Then last week Joy blurted out, "I want to make a movie!" In discussing the movie, I suggested that she make a movie of the puffin poem, and she loved the idea. So we began making puppets. We found pictures on the internet. I did most of the cutting on the puffin because Joy was not feeling brave enough to tackle it.

She did most of the cutting on the fishes, though! I drew the shape on the first two, but then she designed them herself.

 Of course, we were reading about puffins from the internet (I even got a chance to discuss which sources were more credible, comparing National Geographic with Wikipedia!) and from library books. Joy wrote about puffins in her "letters" to Mom and Dad. She writes these spontaneously all the time. The one on the right says, "I like puffins. They are fun! From Luv Joy"

We tie-dyed fabric for backdrops, which turned out fabulously! Then we put together our "stage" from a side-turned card table and our backdrops. We built an island with a box and markers.

We videotaped five "takes" and used flipshare to edit the best of each of the six stanzas together. It turned out GREAT!

Joy had a super time doing all this, and she learned so many things! She memorized, recited with expression, planned and created art, researched puffins online and in books, and wrote about the puffins and the process. Stealth Kindergarten at its best!