Learning in Scatterville

New State new things

2006-08-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

I am trying again to track what the kids have done. It is so hard for me because in reality they learn every moment and me to. I don't have much time to sit and reflect on what we have done because we are also so busy.

Here are some highlights though:
As a group we have gotten catepillars and watched them transform into butterflies and released them.
We have bought a Beta fish and are enjoying Mr. Darcy.
We have gone to the Sioux Falls Park and looked at the remains of the old mill there that was run using the power of the water falls. Very cool thing to see if you are ever in that part of the world.

K: Is still learning letters. Can now identify almost all of them. She is almost finished with her Kindergarten math workbook. Can Identify the word To. She did that yesterday. Also No and Yes. Probably Drop Out also since we play a lot of games.

W: Is writing letters now although does not know what they are. We are trying to learn the alphabet song and the letters that go with it.

T: Has decided that chapter books are great in the last two weeks. He has read the Tourist Trap Edgar & Ellen. Started Circle of Magic Sandry's Book. He is also reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. I imagine he will finish Sandry's Book tonight. He is a super fast reader, he finished the Edgar and Ellen book in one night. We are studing Biomes and he is making a diarama on Deserts.

another great looking phonic letter page

2006-08-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

Literactive - Teaching Children to Read

Strewing or leading

2006-08-08T07:29:00.000-07:00

K and W both want to learn their letters and I am finding some great things to help them. K enjoys using worksheets, loves them, so I bought a few and she gets them out all the time to work on it. W wants to learn the letters and write them. For months he has been writing things and then asking about which letter or word he made. So here are so neat things I found for them to do!

Bembo.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

Water..

2006-04-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

Today was water. I think we are discovering all the elements one at a time. :)
W had the hose which is not unusual at all. I was watering the garden and he wanted a turn. Well I came in to fix a drink and he drenched the wood floor right inside the door. I took control of the hose and asked what he was trying to do. I knew it was an accident. He wanted to make a waterfall down the stairs and then make a river out of the rock on our garden path. No problem. I held the hose in place and watched him work. He carved a small river, then his sister K came out and made a fork in the rock river to make two rivers. Then T came out and sured up the side and worked on being the civil engineer to repare any weak areas and then decided to see what would float down the river. We tried a popped ballon, and a lego. They went a little. Then K came over and put a very small twig in and it floated right on top for quite a while. W was still desiging his rivers, going out about 15 feet or more and then got creative making it go under the minivan.

Everyone worked together and had very much fun. While the hose was out they decided to use the balloons that were in their easter baskets for water balloons. It is so much fun watching W roll his balloon down the street and it doesn't pop. It looks like bowling. He tries so hard to pop it. T wanted his filled all the way up and was exploring the patterns the balloons made as they popped on the street. The third balloon didn't even make it to the street though because it popped all over him as he carried it down the driveway! K decided to keep her share until "the brothers" had used all theirs and then she popped them in the street.

All together we had a ton of fun today. Even this morning after the egg hunt we emptied the eggs and hid them over and over and over. They didn't tire of it and the joy on their faces was wonderful.

Discussion on always being "there" for you kids

2006-04-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

There is quite a discusion going on my AlwaysLearning : Learning All the Time email list about help a mom new to unschooling and allowing freedom for her kids.

Now my kids have tons of freedom, sometimes I wonder if I have helped them to not even ask me for help. Like for example this morning W wanted to get something down we had hanging on a nail up high. Instead of asking me to get it down (I was sitting right there) he dumped out a toys crate to bring it over to stand on it. I asked if I could help him get that down and he said YES!

My kids help themselves to food all day, have no limits and eat what they want. They tend to eat the junky things first and when it runs out they eat the good stuff. I don't have a problem with this. On of the problems this mother suggested was that the kids would drink all the juice boxes in one day and then not have them for the rest of the week. I was thinking about this while organizing my bookshelf. Of coarse K and W were right there playing Lemony Snickets on Playstation and T across the room using the computer so I asked them. What would you do, would you drink a whole box? They all answered together no. First they said it was too much juice to drink in one day, then they said they would like to save some for later in the week. K gave an example of her popcicles that are in the freezer. This week she's had some days when she has had three! The next day she had none but instead have more then a few yogurts. The next day a couple more, but she paces herself.

This is what I believe is an important learned skill that most people are not giving the opportunity to explore when they are children. They are not giving unlimited acess to sweets, or snacks and are regulated by a parent. This ends up usually with bad eating habits once they are out of the parents homes, like college or out on their own because for the first time they are able to gorge themselves and have never found their bodies signals that it is time to stop.
My kids are finding these cues early. I have to say none of them are overweight even with unlimited access to food. They are all in slims.

So the replies that this woman has receive have got me thinking about my parenting skills and my unschool understanding. I let me kids go, make suggestion of more ways to explore things they show interest in but do mostly my own thing throughout the day. They are suggesting to this mother that she should be more involoved in their lives. Now I am with my kids 24/7 except for once a month when I go to discussion group with attachment parenting friends or occasionally the grocery store.

I am asking myself though if I am really there though. I am a very persistant person which means that I like to stick with something until it's done. This results in a lot of in a minute I'll come look. I'll help with the hard part of the game in a little while. etc.
Today I will try to be more there. Hard to do when your in pain but I will try.

Wind...

2006-04-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

The kids have done it again, T and K grabbed the trashbags out of the kitchen and went out into the street to catch the wind. It is quite humorous to watch their bags fill with air and then carry them down the street. Or they let go and then chase the bag before it gets away from them.

W was watering the plants in the garden while they were doing this. I should say I was trying to stay out of W's way so he wouldn't water me! We have been enjoying nice weather this week and yesterday we went to the park with our homeschool group. W and K could not keep out of the little stream in the park. This is usually not a big deal for me but I wanted to go to the store to get red peppers for dinner and eggs to dye for our spring celebration. However I knew fairly quickly that it wasn't going to happen and let them play. W was wearing Crocs so it was not a big deal, but K soaked her tennis shoes. Lucky they are her old shoes. She promtly undressed in the van since her dress was soaking wet.

T join in when they were playing freeze tag, K played too, but it is not like T to want to play any "organized" game. He doesn't like to lose and is pretty slow. He runs with his feet pointing in. He had a blast though.

We hope to dye our eggs tonight and we hope that we can find some newspaper to make some paper mache eggs too. The kids LOVE paper mache.

We have been discovering quite a bit about South Dakota this week, looking at the internet. T has been enjoying his scrambled states of America book. I walked into the TV room this morning to find him reading a science text book back from who knows when. He likes science though.

W has been enjoying playing Harry Potter on the playstation and is known to yell Wingardium Leviosos at the automatic doors in places like Target. Quite hilarious.

What is the family doing this week?

2006-03-26T09:44:00.000-08:00

W has been playing Harry Potter 3 on the playstation over and over and over. He has gotten quite good for a 3 year old and now can target things, knows how to change his spells and is fine with everything except the Dementors. I have to do that part.

On Harry Potter we have been having a kick lately. The kids have been watching all the movies over and over and over. T has been very busy reading for hours non stop daily. Mostly his science books about animals, structures, weather etc. He's also been on VMK and Neopets most of the week.

K wanted me to teach her to crochet. I don't know how so we got a book for kids and both sat down together to learn. Neither one of us got very far before setting it aside, but it was much easier for her to make the chain stitch then knitting. One hook is easier to hold then two knitting needles.

Today's learning, snow

2006-03-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

It snowed 6 inches and since R is on Spring Break and I am in pain from my back and cramps he headed out with the kids to play. They used a flower pot to make a fork and after R came in W and K embelished it with snow packed in their sand buckets. So they got the fort started but it was to cold and their clothes to wet from the snow play yesterday they headed in for hot cocoa. I'm sure they will want to go out later but for now W is building a tower of blocks on a laundry basket, T is reading my Gaiam Real Goods Catalog, he is particularly interested in the composting toliets. Plumbing and toliets have always been his favorite. Big Grin. Kess is planning our next stuffed animal and can't figure out why I haven't started it and made cake, oh and lunch and can she have a playmobil castle too?

New hairstyle... styling.....

2006-03-17T10:36:00.000-08:00

T wanted a mohawk again, this is not the first time, and I am the cool mom. It's only hair really. Plus I was known to have my head shaved once and listened to the (!!!!NOT A KID RIENDLY LINK!!! and DNR only briefly however as my middleclass parents were not real fond of punk at ALL.

So for me it's no biggy. He wants to suprise his dad. His sister went orange last week, she could not be left out of the picture. What beautiful happy shining faces!

What in the world do the kids do all day?

2006-03-13T07:06:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anyting lately on this blog because the kids keep me so busy it is totally unrealistic to keep "track" of what they did when. Especially since they do most of their learning when I'm not paying attention.

K has been very busy for the last two weeks, trying to complete her kindergarten math workbook. She is so darn cute! I bought the workbook that we used when she was enrolled in a virtual school becuase she told me she missed it and wanted to finish it.
When she received it she promptly started at the beggining and worked for hours trying to get caught up to where she was when we stopped using it. She worked again a couple days later for another hour and got caught up to where she was. She is so excited and now wants to get to the money part. I told her we could just skip ahead to it but she will have nothing to do with it. She wants to do the WHOLE book.

She is also learning not only her alphabet but the sounds that go with them, on her own. Unschooling is just awesome. We are still writing stories together, where she tells me what she wants to write and I spell it for her helping her with the letters she doesn't know. I think she knows just about all of them now but sometimes forgets. On top of this she is making associations of letters like I said letter D and she said, D.....duh... like in Dad!

T has been busy too, his new love is Alpha Centari a game we got from freecycle. We also found a neat game at Rich kids smart kids. It is a shame they labled each game by grade level however. T sat and worked out the k-2 grade really quickly, since he's supposed to be in 2nd grade. However when I peeped over he was working on the 9-12 grade and figuring those out too without any problem, just more logic. He looked ashamed that he was jumping ahead to 9th grade but wanted to see what they were all like. I told him it was great that he wanted to explore and see what he could do. So I feel mad that they limit children to learning by telling them what level they should look at.

T has also been writing lately, he hates to write, but he's been busy making of all of these posters for a movie called Flaming butts, or butts in space, or whatever funny name he can come up with using the word butts. I am just silently and quitely cheering on that he is writing without even thinking about it and complaining.

W is busy as always. He loves cords, especially electrical. He maked tangled messes with knots and cords twisted in and out of items, making it impossible to get thing apart. My dad says he should be in boyscouts when he gets older. I think he'll do better learning knots now because he wants to learn how, not to get a cookie, I mean merit badge!

I've been having a conversation with R about unschooling and freedom. I'm so glad that we can talk about things, and he has stopped asking what the kids have learned today. I think he is understanding that they are learning, maybe not like tradition school kids but on their own schedule. I brought up a really interesting point I think.

Kids who go to school spend 13 years "learning" all the things they need to learn to live in the real world. Unschool kids live in the real world. So when schooled kids get out of school they are supposed to decide what they want to be now that they are grown up, or what they want to major in college in. The problem is most of them have no idea and haven't been living their passions so they go into what is expected usually.

Now lets look at unschool, and maybe K if I had lots of money. She loves horses. Let say I buy a horse for her and she learns how to take care of it. She learns everything there is to horses, how to ride them, care for them and breed them. As she gets older she enters competitions for riding because she wants to, she sells horses or maybe keeps them all and gives riding lessons to other kids. When she grown up she has a ready made career of keeping horses, teaching riding, selling and breeding horses, boarding other peoples horses or other horse things, maybe she decides to go to college and become an equine vet. I don't know anything about horses. Now that to me is following your passions.

Now how to help K and her dream of horses. I need to have a little money to afford to buy her riding lessons to learn about horses and how to ride first. So my goal if we are not moving this summer is to find someone to mentor her and let her be around horses.

So as we are discussing this I realize that T has told me he wants to make computer games. I now I need to find ways to help him learn how to make this passion come true for him. I can find some C++ program books at the library but will he be able to understand them? R isn't sure he would even understand them. R spent this week going over an animated room he is building on his computer for a grant he is working on at work and T was so very interested. I will need to find some ways to help him learn what he wants to learn.

As for W. I have helped him already, he has great freedom in his stunts. This week as the weather was nice we had the windows open and he found that we don't need a back door, he just climbs in and out of the windows. I helped him by setting up the ladder for him to climb up so he doesn't have to scale the wall. (It's only a 3 foot climb)

Life is awesome

2006-02-25T15:33:00.000-08:00

I love unschooling, life learning, learning by living what ever you want to call it. Why do I continue to question what I am doing or not doing with the kids all the time. When I was using a virtual school with K we did "school" work everyday. What she said from said school work? Nothing. Really, she would have learned all that stuff on her own in her own time. So she is working on learning the alphabet still, she loves writing. LOVES it! She is already writing stories out and she doesn't even know her alphabet. Here is how the conversation goes.

Mama, I want to write a story. Okay. Once upon a time there was a princess. How do I spell that? Me: O.... K: I know that letter. Me: n... K: what does that look like? Me: Grabs something in room with letter on it, or resorts to drawing it in air. K: Oh. Me: c... K: is that the one that looks like this? (cupping hand in c shape). Me: Yes! Me: E. K: I love E it is one of my favorite letters, but Q is my favorite.

I love this, she is not only writing stories but has in the last week learned at least what 10 letters look like on her own.

Last night she asked me to spell Car. Why hon? I'm going to teach W how to read and I'm making cards with the picture on one side and word on the other. So she made up a set of her own flashcards to teach her 3 year old brother how to read. One was dinosaurs, Honey Grahams, Car, Bird.

T decided yesterday to enter a young writer contest and went straight to the computer to start his story. Of coarse it had to have his photoshop drawing imported in and since mom was quite busy painting the ceiling it didn't get going. Maybe I'll ask him about it again tomorrow.

Right now all the children are very very quite. Could be scary, but we live in a one room house with only one room with contained (a bathroom). They are all drawing at the table, T writing words, which he hates. K is making a paper doll with clothes that she has drawn on them. W is making a baby fuzzy blanket by stuffing his basketball under his blanket and carrying it around.

I found a neat sounding conference to attend called Rethinking Education Conference in Texas. We may just do it this time since it's only a day's drive away. I know the kids would love it.

Numbers Worksheets, Flash Cards, Coloring Pages - Preschool and Kindergarten

2006-01-30T08:45:00.000-08:00

While searching for 1-20 sheets to work on, we found this site. They have some nice pages to work on for K, she is still learning her ABC's and her 1-20 numbers.

Numbers Worksheets, Flash Cards, Coloring Pages - Preschool and Kindergarten

Sites for Teachers

2006-01-28T17:01:00.000-08:00

Sites for Teachers

Wednesday

2006-01-26T12:07:00.000-08:00

K is still sick, so I did not press her to do anything. I read two more chapters out of The Magicians Nephew. K talked about how it relate to the movie we saw. Very interesting observations.

T read a few of his Kids Discovery Magazines and for the most part we just hung out, tired, sick and snotty.

Monday and Tuesday

2006-01-24T15:45:00.000-08:00

Despite T and K being sick still they both did some educational stuff. I hate calling it school work since I like the unschooling approach better, but I think strewing would be better. I put all of the library books that we checked out in the crate by the computer for T. He grabs from it and reads all the time. Some of the books in it are from the k12 reading list, some of just interesting books we see. He is such a good reader and enjoys it. He reads so often that often don't even realize he is doing it. So I hope to capture everything to document just in case some time in the future we move somewhere that calls for that.

So T on Monday read:
Chang's Paper Pony
Pompeii...Buried Alive!
At the Beach
In the Park

He worked on his handwriting without tear (HWWT)
and Study Dog for about an hour.

K worked on the phonics Study Dog program for 2 hours, said her alphabet and wrote some words. She also worked on HWWT.

W played I spy fantasy most of the day counting items, and finding things. so cute...

On Tuesday we were still not feeling well, pink eye all around.
K worked on the Study dog for about 30 minutes.
Did her HWWT which she loves!
She also found all the letters but K and L in the tub and put them in order.

T worked on Study dog for about an hour.
Did his HWWT which he hates!
We did two pages of math on making graphs.

I read Why Frogs Are Wet
and two chapters from The Magician's Nephew (Narnia)by C. S. Lewis

Study Dog

2006-01-24T15:41:00.000-08:00

I found and downloaded the
StudyDog Reading Programand K loves it. So much that she completed all three levels of the alphabet in one night. She isn't really that great at alphabet recognition, but enjoyed it so much she kept at it. The next day she commented that she would work on all 3 levels of each section everyday! Yeah for me! Self directed learning of phonics, where before we both hated it with k12.

All the kids like it so much I downloaded the level 2 for T and he played on it by himself also. He knows most of it but I thought the spelling might be helpful for him.

Even W likes it and tries to figure it out when no one else is around.

Check it out.

New blog

2006-01-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

I have decided to start a new blog to document our homeschooling adventures. Add some resources we use and to list some of things we do daily. Not so much for other people to see what we do everyday, but more for me to keep track of what we are doing and the fact is we learn all the time.