Outdoor Hours in April

We have had a beautiful month.  We celebrated Easter, enjoyed some days of blessed rain and reveled in some days of glorious sunshine.

 

Dandelions

Nature walks (and I use the term walk loosely here) are so very relaxing (except when I am trying to keep toddlers from running away or running into danger).  X-man plopped himself in front of a dandelion and watched it for awhile.  Then he blew on it lightly to see the seeds flutter away in the air.

Princess gathered clover for a bouquet.

Later on in the month, we went to a nearby park with some old friends for our nature explorations.  There was a lake and mud and all kids of branches.  The kids saw fish and tadpoles, they created ‘fishing poles’ with sticks and went ‘fishing’ on the side of the lake, and they waded in to squish the mud between their toes.

Wading and exploring

 

Our youngest explorers- cautious before jumping in

 

But jump in they did!

I love the slow pace of nature walks and nature study.  Kids can sit and reflect and contemplate.  They can get noisy and rambunctious.  They can scream and shout and close their eyes and breathe.  When we are out on a nature walk, the rest of the world just fades away… except, of course, for the constant clicking and clacking of my camera.

Reflection and study

While we were walking along the side of the lake, what did we see through a little gap in the dense shrubs and trees?  Turtles!  Resting in the sun.  I’ve never seen turtles in the wild before.   Once home, I did a little googling and discovered that they are the Western Pond Turtle.  I learned that these guys are apparently really hard to see.  They submerge when humans approach.  The recommended way to see them is to hide behind trees and shrubs.  Due to my extensive expertise, I endorse this strategy.

Western Pond Turtles- so cute!

My little princess found a cluster of poppies growing on the side of the hill.  She loves poppies.

We completed some nature journal entries for our nature adventures this month.

Ah, the great outdoors!

We have been very excited about the new things going on over at the Outdoor Hour Challenge website:  Handbook of Nature Study.  There are so many resources that have encouraged us in our Nature Study pursuits.  Whether or not you homeschool, nature exploration and study is so valuable for the whole family, and this site can guide you in starting a habit of nature study that will bless you year after year.  I know we have been blessed.

Happy Nature Exploration, everyone!

 

 

Teaching Among Tornadoes: Trick #10 Dry Erase Handwriting Cards

Homeschooling is a whole lot noisier than I thought it would be before I actually embarked upon the adventure.  With toddlers and preschoolers screaming, crying, yelling, even screeching with delight and joy, it is hard to get my voice heard to anyone about anything, especially anything school related.  Some days, I feel like my preschoolers are on a specific mission to sabotage any educational attempts I make.  My attempts to counteract these agents of destruction are only occasionally met with temporary and minor success.

I’ve been recording some of these attempts here:

1. Watercolors

2. Stamping

3. New Toy (i.e. Hot Dots and Sorting Pie)

4. School Supplies (i.e. safety scissors & construction paper, dry erase board & marker)

5. Leap Frog videos

6. Pipe Cleaner Sculpture

7. Seashells

8. Sticky Sticks

9. Magnets

My most recent trick was actually initiated by my 3 1/2 year old son.  I was handing out dry erase handwriting cards to my older two for a change of pace in our copywork (handwriting) lessons.  Z-urchin decided he really wanted to join in on the fun.  So I handed him and Shortstop each a card and a dry erase marker and let them at it.

I thought that they would just draw on the card- or on the blank back of the card.  Shortstop indeed did just scribble.  But Z-urchin surprised me.  He actually tried to trace the letters accurately and he did a pretty good job, for a 3 year old boy.

One thing I did learn pretty quickly that Shortstop (who is almost 2) needed to be strapped into the high chair for this activity unless I was in dire need of dry erase marks all over every surface of the kitchen.  Which I wasn’t.

Conclusion:  This is actually a fantastic activity for every day use.  Every day I pull out a card for the older two, Z-urchin wants to do it too.  It doesn’t last very long (5-10 minutes) but it gives me a few minutes to make sure the older two are writing their letters correctly and then gives me a little bit of peace while I prepare their snack.

Charlotte Mason Methods: Short & Varied Lessons

I was introduced to Charlotte Mason when I was looking at Apologia science curriculum and found Jeannie Fulbright’s website.  This was actually before I had ever even given birth to a child.  I was a teacher and working at a homeschool co-op, felt the call to homeschool, and started researching curriculum (because I’m crazy that way).

A few years later, an experienced homeschool mom led me to Charlotte Mason Help and her description of Miss Mason’s methods at work in her home drew me in.  One principle in particular resonated with me.  The idea that you keep the lessons (especially in the younger grades) short, paired with the practice of varying subject schedule to use different parts of the body and brain just made so much sense to me.  As Simply Charlotte Mason puts it, “Short, interesting lessons build the habit of attention.”

In my homeschool experience this year with a 5 year old and a 6 year old, I have especially seen the value of short, varied lessons.  If a lesson or reading drags on to long, their attention wanes, their motivation dwindles, and their restlessness increases.  I can see it in their bodies with the drooping of the shoulders and the glazing over of the eyes.

Short, interesting science lesson

So how do we keep lessons short?

1.  Proper Planning- It took a little trial and error, but I now know about how much we can get through in 15-20 minutes and make sure that I only assign as much as we can reasonably accomplish in that time frame.  Of course, that means that it is all about to change, right?

2. Divide Subjects by Type of Activity– History as a whole subject might actually take 30 minutes, but it is divided into 15-20 minutes of reading followed by a change of venue and then 10-15 minutes of completing a history notebook page.  Math might include a 15-20 minute lesson and then later 10-20 minutes of a math game.

3.   Diligence Required- Sometimes my lessons ended up being long and drawn out not because I had planned too much, but because my children were not focusing on our lesson.  They would ask questions or talk about this and that.  The younger ones would have needs, the older ones would need bathroom breaks.  Then I would get very frustrated.

So I took a look at what Charlotte Mason saidin Volume I, Part IV, “In the first place, there is a time-table, written out fairly, so that the child knows what he has to do and how long each lesson is to last.  This idea of definite work to be finished in a given time is valuable to the child, not only as training him in  habits of order, but in diligence; he learns that one time is not ‘as good as another;’ that there is no right time left for what is not done in its own time; and this knowledge alone does a great deal to secure the child’s attention to his work.” (p 142)

Therefore, I told the children that I had a specific amount of material that we should be able to read in the time I have allotted for this lesson.  If we do not get through it, we will stop this lesson at the appointed time and we will finish it during your free time.  This sobered them up real quick and we have had much more success ever since.

Change of venue for our literature reading with paper to illustrate the reading

4. Use a Timer (or keep an eye on the clock)- The timer keeps me accountable and reminds me to stay focused on the task at hand.  It reminds my children to remain focused or whatever we don’t finish will be completed during free time.  When the timer goes off, we can finish the sentence or a final stroke or item, and then we move to the next subject or task.

And how do we vary the order of our subjects?

I try to intersperse the reading type of lessons between the doing type of lessons.  I tie our chunks of lessons around meal times and give them breaks between chunks of school.

Here, then, is a general schedule of how a typical school day tends to go:

Bible (with breakfast)

Chores & Exercise

Phonics

History reading

History notebook page

Snack

Copywork

Science

Math

Break

Geography/Art/Composer/Poetry (with lunch)

Literature

Handicraft

Break time!

We do not do all of these every day and sometimes we switch the order of things.  But I never put two different reading subjects next to each other.  And I never put two subjects that are heavy on writing next to each other either.  That way, my children stay fresh for each new subject and do not get bogged down by fatigue or discouragement.

Short, varied lessons have really blessed us in our educational pursuits!  Thank you, Charlotte Mason!

 

Teaching Among Tornadoes: Trick #9, Magnets

Trying to homeschool two older children when I have two very active preschoolers whose main goal in life is to seek and destroy can be a bit of a challenge.  So I keep some tricks up my sleeve and keep trying new things to see what might capture their attention for a little while so that I might sneak in some school.

My previous tricks are these:

1. Watercolors

2. Stamping

3. New Toy (i.e. Hot Dots and Sorting Pie)

4. School Supplies (i.e. safety scissors & construction paper, dry erase board & marker)

5. Leap Frog videos

6. Pipe Cleaner Sculpture

7. Seashells

8. Sticky Sticks

My new trick is: Magnets.

Awhile ago, I gave Z-urchin some adorable ceramic animal magnets that he really enjoyed.  However, being the three year old that he is, a few dropped and broke.  I decided to hold off on offering those again until he can be a bit more careful.  So instead, I gave him and Shortstop some foam magnet letters and a cookie sheet and they went to town.  They had a lot of fun pulling out the magnets from the box and putting them on the cookie sheet.  Of course, they ended up dumping the whole box of magnets on the floor… twice.

Now that actually turned out to be a good thing.  This activity had two fun components: magnets and dumping and filling.  They picked those magnets back up and stuffed them in the box, only to do this fun action again.

My conclusion: Super easy for me and for them.  The mess wasn’t so bad and they picked up most of it- in fact, picking up was part of the fun!  We should definitely do this again!