We Find Seashells at the Seashore

When my nephew was visiting he really wanted to go to the beach to look for shells.  We took him to our favorite shelling beach.  As you can see, quantity is not the issue.

We, including the adults in the family, are trying to learn the scientific names of our local shells better.  Here is a selection of  what we found:

Florida pricklycockle (Trachycardium egmontianum)

Speckled tellin (Tellina listeri)

Common jingle shell (Anomia ephippium)

Lettered olive (Oliva sayana)

left:  Pear whelk (Busycotypus spiratus) right:  Atlantic kittenpaw ( Plicatula gibbosa)

Florida wormsnails (Vermicularia knorrii)

Our go to reference for all things we find on the beach is below. It's our favorite because it covers crazy stuff you find other than seashells like egg cases, beach trash, and seeds.   I used to keep it in my glove box.

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Sunday Showcase

Last Week of September

We had some fun adventures this week.

1.  Making butter in the cracker house at the Tampa Bay History Center.

2.  Homeschool History Day was the reason for going and here's their mystery object activity.

3.  Sensory bins for the little ones.

4. Floor sized compass rose to label with the cardinal directions.

5.  Our first family triathlon.  It was a mini triathlon with a 1 mile run, 3 mile bike, and 1/4 mile swim.  We completed it as a family with a new family best as it was the first one we've done.

6.  We finished our volcano lap book.  This was a great freebie from homeschool share available here.
 
And of course we did the regular stuff like the 3'rs too.

Please Tell us About Your Country - Australia Edition

Here is the link to the original post to see what this project was about.  Australia/Oceanis is the first continent we're visiting on our worldwide 'tour'.

The envelope on this one was even exciting as instead of a return address it had the seal of the Australian government and an address label with a boomerang.  We'll be cutting those out and putting them in our lapbook.  The Australian embassy was kind enough to send:

• Australia compact reference map - a nice very complete map.

• 2 Australian flag temporary tattoos

• 2 packets of coloring pages with Australian images like koalas and the Sydney Opera House.

• A booklet called Tell Me About Australia geared towards kids.  This has all the info you would need for a unit study on Australia.  The booklet is available on the embassy's website here as a PDF.

Good on ya mates! 

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Glittering Muffins 

Fishing in Lava - creative writing

I did a post last week about our lack of attention towards creative writing activities. Here is the link to the post that was mainly about free fishing printables for creative writing.

My goal is currently at least one story that Toad dictates to me and one he writes himself each month. His handwriting skills are pretty bad and he finds the act of writing frustrating so I can't push that too much without a lot of conflict. 

I gave him the writing prompt of combining fishing and lava for his story. We're wrapping up our study of volcanoes this week and next week we'll move into the continent of Australia/Oceania and start reading Call it Courage. Those are some themes included in those upcoming subjects so I was trying to build in a pre-project.   Being the staid, boring adult I was expecting something along the lines of someone who fishes in Hawaii but he got much more creative. 

This was his first draft: 

I fish in lava. I catch rocks. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water. Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch. I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch. 

On one of the listserves I subscribe to, someone recommended a PBS creative writing story guide issued in conjunction with their annual writing contest. I thought this curriculum would meet our needs nicely at this time.  Obviously, I liked that it was free since this is not a huge focus of ours, but I also liked that it covered all the basics in child friendly language (freeing me from having to effectively paraphrase), was illustrated with kids art, and emphasized being creative first and then editing what you've got.

Once I got his story all written down, we talked about what a paragraph is, editing for clarity and word choices.  I used colored pencils to mark up the story I transcribed and he got it right away.

This is an approximate copy of what I showed him about the flow of his story.  I just circled his work with colored pencils.

I fish in lava. I catch rocks. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water. Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch. I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch.

I explained the elements of his story using the concepts of subject, setting and plot and showed him how the purple sentences were about him as the subject and where he was.  The green sentences were action and the blue would make a great conclusion since it summarized the point of his actions in the story.  As soon as he saw the color blocks he got it right off and liked how it sounded rewritten to this which includes two sentences he added:

     I fish in lava. I catch rocks. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water.   
     Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch.  Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch.   I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house.My house is made out volcanic rocks.  My house is made out of the hardest rocks.

Now he liked the structure and I was really pleased by his quick editing.  Being the teacher I wanted to draw his attention to his word choices so I marked it up with one color to draw attention to his word choices.

      I fish in lava. I catch rocks. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water.   
     Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch.  Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch.   I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house.  My house is made out of volcanic rocks.  My house is made out of the hardest rocks.

Obviously he likes the word sometimes.  I mentioned how many times it was in there and we talked about some synonyms.  He chose to keep all of the sometimes'.  I gave him the word buoyant because I didn't think he knew it.  He chose to keep most floatable.  We talked about how rakes as an object didn't really go with all the other cookware and he agreed and chose to drop it.  He did see the repetitiveness in his last two sentences and so this was his final draft.  At his point I should stress I'm in no way trying to squelch his creativity so these are all gentle suggestions.  If he says no, it's his choice since it's his story. 

     I fish in lava. I catch rocks. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water.   
     Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch.  Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch.   I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house.  My house is made out of the hardest volcanic rocks. 

I don't know why it never occurred to me to use the color to help him organize his thoughts but it worked great.  I wrote his final version into an accordion book.  In the past, we've made the accordion books as a project.  This year I knew I wanted to focus more on what was going in the book so I bought book kits from the art supply.  He illustrated his sentences.  The covers were from free art time last week and were repurposed for this since they were volcano colors.

I consider the project a resounding success.  He enjoyed it, learned something, and worked diligently for a long span of time.

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No Ordinary Blog Hop

Is My Child Gifted? Freebie

Current freebie at Currclick.

Is My Child Gifted?  Helping Homeschooling Parents Identify and Understand Giftedness by Paula Vaughn.

Free ebook on Ethics and Integrity

The National Association of Mothers' Centers has just released a free ebook called 5 Timeless Tips for Developing Ethics and Integrity in our Children.  It's available as a free download here.

Nobel Peace Prize Winners 1901-1907 - 3 part Montessori Cards

 World Peace Day was celebrated yesterday, Sept. 21st

The day is "devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples."  Here is the link to the official UN page.  Here is the link to the UN's peace curriculum through their Cyber School Bus.

The reminder about the day and getting the Montessori cards below reminded me of the day I spent at the Caen Memorial Museum when I was in France.  It was an amazing place and the Gallery of Nobel Peace Prize winners exposed me to people I never learned about in history like the people who founded The Hague.

I've been having trouble deciding how to start world history with the Toads.  Yes, much of human life has been brutal and short but it seems like many history books tell history as a succession of battles for political control illustrated with men using historically accurate weaponry.  Accurate yes, appropriate for 6 year olds, not as much.  So I'm trying A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich.  It's barely illustrated and I intend it as a read aloud right now.  I like his writing style, it covers more than just western Europe, and it includes more than battle descriptions.



So, with all this inspiration and swirling thoughts, I made up a set of 3-part Montessori cards for the Nobel Peace Prize winners from 1901-1907, since they were not available anywhere I could find.  The arbitrary years are based on number of pages.  I included where the winners were from to complement our geography work and why they won the prize or a brief quote from the recipient.  They could easily be turned into a book or printed double sided as folio cards if that suits your needs better.
Nobel Peace Prize Winners 1901-1907

I was inspired by this project so I will continue to work up through the years and hopefully complete a full complement of cards for all the winners.  The website for the Nobel Prize has extensive info about all the prize and winners.

In celebration of World Peace Day, Montessori Helper is having a dime sale on their Nobel Peace Prize Winners 2000-2010 3-part cards.  Here is the direct link.  *If you purchase the cards through the link I will get a teeny commission that will get put towards other Montessori cards.

We donated this book to our local public library for older Toad's birthday this year.  It has dynamic illustrations and is good biography for young kids.

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Living and Learning at Home

 Living Montessori Now

Print a Palooza 
What DID we do all day

Kandinsky Inspired Paintings

Last week in art class we looked at the work of the influential Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky.

The primary objective of the project was to give the students experience mixing colors to get secondary colors, shades and tints.  Secondary colors  (orange, purple, green) are made of two primary colors.  Shades are colors mixed with black.  Tints are colors mixed with white.  Also, it helps build brush skills by learning to keep the bristles in the same direction and never scrub paint on.

We used big paper (at least it seems huge to a 5 year old), 24" X 18.5".  Many of the students have access to art materials at home but I like to provide materials that even experienced students are not likely to have at home.  Big paper encourages kids to work their whole arm when making marks and not see their work as quite so delicate and precious.

To do this at home any size paper is fine.  Start by folding the paper in half one direction.  Fold it in half the other direction.  Open the paper up and you will have 4 equal sections.  Now fold just the top half down to the center fold.  Open it up and fold the sides in to the center line but only crease above the center fold.  When you're done you'll have 8 small rectangles and 2 large rectangles.

Now the students want to fill each of the cells they created with paint.  Start with a small circle inside one of the rectangles.  Pick up different colored paint with the brush and go around the first circle.  Continue doing that until there's no room for any more circles (it will be a bullseye) and then paint the remaining rectangle.  It's not necessary to clean the brush because it's about experimenting with color.

If you'd like more info on Kandinsky, the Guggenheim has a brief bio on Kandinsky here.  If you do a collection search, they have over a dozen works online.  Bauhaus Online has more information about the Bauhaus and Kandinsky's contribution here.

For older students, Kandinsky's writings about art are very interesting.

Free Fishing Notebook Printables

Family values are very important.  Every family has their most cherished principles.  If my husband and I sat down and made a list of our most important values I'm 100% certain his number one would be love of fishing.  He would make a concession if you loved lure fishing more than fly fishing but it's still not really deviating.

So you get the picture how important fishing is in our house.  We do a lot of fishing but our homeschool is lacking in creative writing.  I feel we don't try to do enough as well as older Toad finds it harder than it needs to be or he should.  So we need to spend more time on the subject.

Because of all this, I was really excited to get a new freebie today.  The Crafty Classroom is sharing some free fishing printables with nice graphics here.  The printables are all free but the page has lots of ads on it, FYI.  

I know we'll put them to good use as we can combine one of our most frequent, most favorite activities with one of our least!

Please Tell Us About Your Country - Mexico Edition

Here is the original post to read what this project was about.

The Mexican embassy generously sent:

• National Geographic Traveler Mexico 50 Discoveries 

• Mexico Beyond Your Expectations

• A kids booklet called Mexico for You produced by the Mexican Cultural Institute

Muchas Gracias!

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Montessori Tidbits

Lilly the Lash character building books

At our homeschool group meeting this week, there were some vendors.  One of them was Julie Woik, author of the Lilly the Lash books.  They're a series of secular character building books.  Currently, there are three in the series.  I bought the third, Ocean Commotion, which addresses honesty.

One of the things I appreciated about the series was the work she put into background materials for parents.  If you go to the Lilly the Lash website there is a downloadable motivational game board and curriculum materials.  Also there's some Girl Scout materials and a kid's area with games.

I'm looking forward to going through the book and materials with the toads.  We can always use some emphasis on honesty around here and a marine themed package is guaranteed to please. 

Sharing All About Spelling and Life of Fred

While my nephew was here, I did slip away one evening for our local homeschool association monthly meeting.  It was the annual curriculum showcase night and I volunteered to bring All About Spelling and Life of Fred which had not been shown before.  This is our second year using both these programs and here are my pros and cons.

All About Spelling:

• It's easy to modify every lesson.  Each lesson has multiple components, if we're struggling with an issue we may do all components over one or more days.  Conversely, it's super easy to abbreviate a lesson to not overwhelm a short attention span.

• It's multi-sensory.  Each lesson has components that are heard, said, moved and written so it works great for sensory learners.

• It builds on previous work.  We started with book one, which was below Older Toad's spelling level but learning the rules from the get go allows us to refer back to them if we run in to trouble.

• It's a stand alone spelling program.  We have no issues with reading.  Many programs for early elementary are combined.  Toad just needs to work on his spelling.

• On the downside, it feels expensive for what it is.  It's hard to find used so it's a given expense.  Also, since it has many components, you'll need to find a way to store all the parts so nothing gets lost.

Life of Fred:

We started homeschooling with Math U See.  After one week, Toad said, "I hate math."  Toad loves math so I knew I'd made a mistake.  I bought Math U See because it was similar to the Cuisenaire rods we'd used for preschool.  I struggled for several months with what to do and then found Life of Fred.

• It's a narrative based, contextual math program.  There are no pages of worksheets that don't seem to apply to anything. 

• It's funny.  I actually have a two chapter a day rule.  Toad would read the whole book in one sitting if I let him.

• The lesson lengths are just right.

• It's more about math concepts than rote memorization.

• It's durable and you don't work in the book so you can pass them on or resell them easily.

• Which is also it's downside, sort of.  Every kid needs more or less help with something and you'll need to supplement in areas that are giving you trouble.  If you need all the curriculum laid out for you and really need to stick to the plan, this may not be for you.  It could still make a nice supplement but couldn't be your spine.  I do supplement.

* I did not receive any compensation, in kind or paid, for this review.  These are my opinions based on curriculum we've used.

Critical Thinking Co. Freebie

I've had family visiting for over a week and while it was a great visit, the rest of my life went on hold.

Here's a quick post on a current freebie.

The Critical Thinking Co. is currently offering 3 free downloads.  Here is the link.

Mondrian Inspired Paintings

Today was the first day of Modern Art class at our local coop.

The kids created Piet Mondrian inspired compositions.  I like the first day to be painting, because it's so much fun.  The class is open to kids 5-8 of all art abilities so I like to cover all the basics.  Primary colors are a great place to start and next week we'll move into color mixing.

They started with using rulers to draw parallel lines in one direction on the paper with pencil.  Then they turned the paper 90 degrees and did parallel lines the other way.  Each direction was 4-5 lines.  Then, they could choose to erase or add lines within the cells they'd created to add some variety to their compositions.

Next they went over their pencil lines with crayon.  Sharpie would work equally well.

Then they were ready to use the tempera paint in blue, red and yellow.  Since I used this project to introduce primary colors, the examples we looked at were all Mondrian paintings done in primary colors.  They were encouraged to not put the same colors next to each other.  They were also encouraged to clean their brushes between color switches so they wouldn't be getting secondary colors.  They were also not supposed to fill in all the cells.

If you would like to do some Mondrian inspired artwork Art Projects for Kids blog has some ideas as well as TeachKidsArt.  This is a very accessible artist and project to do at home and can easily be modified for whatever art supplies you have on hand.  Everybody really enjoyed today and it's a small group this time, so it's easy to give everyone lots of attention.

Here's the website for the Mondrian Trust to find out more about this artist.

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Red Ted Art 

Volcano Science Projects

Today we did more volcano science projects from our volcano science packet by Ring of Fire Science.  My nephew, who is also 6, is visiting and really wanted to do school with us.

Ejecta from famous eruptions

Each cotton ball represents 1 cubic kilometer of ejecta (pumice and ash) from a famous eruption in history.  I usually use curriculum like cookbooks, which means I edit or change as necessary to suit us.  This project in the example had an additional eruption but the paper got very crowded and with the ages of the kids, simplifying a little seemed best.  You could do this project with any eruptions you're studying as long as you hunted down the relevant data.

We also did a layers of the earth project.  We did start the day with  a bit of reading on volcanoes and the Earth's layers.  Then we did a short layers of the Earth Montessori work.

 Our second project entailed creating the layers of the earth to scale.

Layers of the Earth

The favorite part of this project was using the compass. Neither of the boys had used one before and they enjoyed turning it and figuring out how to set the distance with the ruler.  It was a great chance to talk about radius and diameter of circles as well as the metric system of measuring.  Again I modified the project by adding more colors.

They're looking forward to more later in the week. 

Previously Unknown Volcano Erupts in Florida

First recorded eruption of Mt. Florida

Really!  Since we have no elevation here, this was the highest thing on the beach.

We're moving into volcano week so obviously we built the model explosion.

I used the recipe from Currclick's, Volcanoes:  Science Activities which fortuitously was a freebie several weeks ago.  I think the recipe was very safety conscious as I upped everything to accommodate the larger volume of this vessel and it made for a pretty inactive volcano.  I had brought 3 sets of materials so each kid could get one try and we went through them all just for this one.  I don't think our version endangered any tourists so find a better recipe and do try this at home.

We used (successful in the end recipe):

4 c. water
a couple squirts of dish soap
6 TBL baking soda dissolved in the water
food coloring (I was low on red but they didn't seem to notice the strong yellow lava)
6 oz. distilled vinegar

Organizing A Week's Lessons

Last summer a fellow homeschool parent shared this link  from Dana Rayburn about an organization tip for students with ADHD.  My toads and I don't have ADHD but this is a great idea to help anyone stay organized.  We used it to manage our daily studies for about 4 months and then we fell off the wagon.

It fell down for us in a couple of ways:

• It was time consuming for me to prepare the week's folders.  I'd do the post-its and slip in worksheets for each day.  It made for a bit of double prepping because I already had a master spreadsheet of goals for the month.  We live in Florida and the state requires we keep track of what we do so I'd have then record everything in binders which meant 3 levels of handling the same information.  Sometimes we didn't do everything and I'd have to refile the extras.

• Toad learned to cherry pick.  He caught on in about two days that I was stacking activities the fun activities to later in the day and we had the daily debate about why we couldn't start with the fun stuff.

 

• It was Kindergarten for Toad and learning the calendar is pretty important.  He had the days of the week down no problem but it wasn't helping him track the month as a whole or visualize the difference between the 10th and 24th of the month.

• ... and I had guilt about recycling stacks of post-its.  I started getting vague on them, like writing reading, rather than names of books, so I could reuse them but then we had to have the conversation about which book and "Why can't I read that one instead?".

So it seemed like a great technique but not the one for us.

This year we're trying a blank student assignment journal I got cheap from Rainbow Resources.  I printed mini labels from the office supply store with our subjects.  When he's done with a subject he puts the sticker in the right row and column and I add in the specifics, i.e. name of the book.  It's taking less time than the other method and not difficult.  The down side however, is the book came blank.  It doesn't have any pre-printed dates or even spots to write it in.  He's too literal for writing in margins so I'm doing that but again we're missing the larger calendar reinforcing.  It also doesn't allow us to track regularly scheduled items well, like sports practice the same time every week.

So I'm thinking of tweaking it yet again. 

Homeschool Creations shared a calendar math printable recently.  I'm thinking about incorporating more official 'classroom' type calendar activities into our day but still use the sheets to track what we actually did in the day so it keeps my workload down.

I know many of you have good homeschool organization ideas.  Feel free to comment your ideas or links to things you've found helpful.  I'm clearly on the search for the "perfect" way to keep us organized.