The blog is slacking, but the school isn't!

Now that it's Fall Break for city schools and we have a week off of our organized activities, maybe I can get some blogging in. And can I just stop for a moment and tell you how much I love Unschooling??? It never ceases to amaze me, although it darn well probably should by now, how much these kids learn whether we're "teaching" at them or not. There's big stuff going on in those little noggins.

Tex and Noodle have discovered a new online game at PBSkidsGO.org, part of the show Design Squad, whereby they have to use various shaped widgits to get a certain number of Tribble-like Fidgits to fall out of their tube and into a little box. So they have to use geometry to figure how to bounce the Fidgits in such a way that they head towards the box, they have to consider the physics of the materials used and how much energy each absorbs (each widgit can be made of rubber, wood, or concrete), and there is definitely a certain amount of creativity and trial & error involved in getting it to work. I especially appreciate this aspect as Tex is a perfectionist, my typical first child who only looks up to adults and thinks he should be as skilled as us with much less practice. It's nice to have a game where, first thing, you HAVE to fail. You HAVE to let those Fidgits drop out of the tube and just let them land wherever they may, and not get into the box at all. Then you have to try out a solution, but it's probably going to fail, too, and that's good because it gives you more information. And so on and so on until finally you tweak your design just right, and those little squeaky, beepy Fidgits finally get in the dang box and shut the heck up. I love this game.

And Noodle, oh Noodle, my little electro-nut. Last week Noodle and I put together Tex's Electronics Lab because he just could NOT wait any more! It had wires! It had springs! It has transformers (NOT actually robots in disguise, though you would have thought so by how excited he was) and capacitors and did I mention WIRES?!?!?! Oh, the joy on his face when he completed a circuit and that little red LED lit up, it was priceless. I must admit I was pretty tickled, too, having never really known before how any of this stuff went together; it was a flashback to the old HeathKit television my dad built when I was about 7 years old. And two days later Noodle and I went right to the library to try to find some books on robots again (they said they'd order more for us) and left with a grade-school book titled Artificial Intelligence and three books about Star Wars (because Star Wars has... you guessed it... robots!). Strike what I said a few posts back about Tex building the spaceship and Noodle being the unwitting test pilot; I'm now quite convinced that they will be full partners in their plot to launch themselves out of the garage. For my part, I just don't know what I'm going to do when they get to more complex physics issues; that is not a class I took and I was quite happy about it. Perhaps they have a kindly grandfather or uncle who will help them experiment safely... or just enable their craziness, you never can tell in this family.

We've started reading the Chronicles of Narnia aloud, and so far Tex is thoroughly enjoying it. Only the second night, but when I finished Chapter Two tonight he very sweetly said "please don't stop", and who am I to deny this kid a good story?? Frankly, at this point anything that isn't a dinosaur book is a-okay with me! Truly, though, he still insists that he dislikes reading as an activity AND a school subject (even though he's getting better at it all the time), so anything that gets him excited about reading is something I want to encourage. He even wanted me to follow along with my finger so that he could tell where I was on the page, which is something he usually finds distracting. I do so hope that at some point he's going to find the book or topic that makes him want to read things on his own, so that he can get in some more frequent practice and start to reap the rewards. Of course, I should also remind myself that just because being "a reader" is important to ME does not mean that it will or should be so for him. DaddyO is not ravenous about books the way I am by any means. In fact I can only think of a few in which he was so engrossed that he didn't want to put them down to eat, work, or sleep, while I could probably say that about a few dozen books at least. There's almost nothing I like more. On the down side, we're running out of shelf space.

So there you have it, in a week filled with paper-making, computer and board games, The Magician's Nephew, and lots of outdoor and gym play, we have all grown leaps and bounds. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Harvest Day!

I've been staring out the boys' window at our raised tomato garden bed, and looking at the dozen or so ripe Roma tomatoes waiting to be picked, so when Tex and Noodle were willing to help me pick them today we headed right out to do it! We got a bunch of tomatoes, a load of basil, one tiny pepper that Noodle spotted, a bunch of lavender (the boys want to make "dream pillows" like the one I made Daddy-O years ago), parsley, and a peck of bugs to go with it all! As we speak there is an inchworm on a basil leaf, and another leaf with some sort of larva or chrysalis webbed onto the back (haven't figured that one out, yet), resting in our "bug keeper" cage. We even got to check out blooming flowers on the basil, then some spent flowers with the seeds visible, and we discussed how the positioning of the seeds (on the underside of the seed pod) allows them to simply fall down to the soil and grow new basil plants whether we like it or not (we do!). The boys then helped me to "process" the basil, picking off the good leaves and rinsing them for me to make pesto later.

Tex and I (ok, mostly me) have slacked off terribly lately on his building projects. I keep leaving it up to him for us to make a trip out to buy materials, but I've come to the conclusion that like most kids he just wants to do it when he wants to do it, and I'm going to need to gather some materials to have on hand for him to explore building. I need some strong wire to be the skeleton for his dinosaur sculptures, several decks of cards for building houses of cards, and maybe even some bamboo for outdoor structures. We agreed to spend some time tomorrow making a big list of projects to go on the wall where we'll be reminded of them often, and so that I can be picking up materials as we have the money.

Tex and Daddy-O are scoping out Cub Scout troops in the next couple of weeks. Given Tex's intense interest in wilderness survival skills we're hoping that Scouting will be a good fit. Tex has been watching Daddy-O go to his old Boy Scout troop's meetings as an adult leader for the last few years, and he's thoroughly enjoyed the times he's joined Daddy-O for activities with the troop. The challenge will be finding a good fit. They went to their first meeting tonight with the goal of "being good scientists and observing", which they will do at a couple more meetings with other troops over the next few weeks before making their choice.

And I have a book recommendation!! Tex and I actually read it last week but I forgot to mention... Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland. The story concerns a young squire named Radius, son of Sir Cumference and his wife, Lady Di of Ameter, and his quest to become a knight. In this "math adventure" you find an exciting story that introduces the concepts of angles and degrees and incorporates them into the narrative with lovely little memory tricks that I can tell will help them stick better than the rote memorization I always depended on in school. I originally saw these in a learning catalog, but then ended up finding them on the shelf at Barnes & Noble. I may just have to buy one every time I get a B&N coupon. :-)

Happy learning!

Active week

The boys have really been into physical play this week. There's a new indoor playspace in town with a big wooden "pirate ship", moon bounce, and a bunch of other ways for the kids to stay active and have some imaginary play time. There's even a special area for Monkey to stay if she wants to be away from the big kids, although most of the time she just does her best to keep up. We spent at least 4 hours there this week. We also got Tex signed up for Homeschool P.E. class at the local YMCA and he had his first class this week; came out red-faced and sweating after playing soccer and loved it! :-) He was actually interested in moving his conflicting gymnastics class so that he could attend the Y's class twice weekly instead of once. Noodle is simply excited that we're going to start going swimming during Tex's class time, and I'm betting Monkey will be thrilled, too.

The boys have also enjoyed a lot of game playing this week. Computer games, Battleship, board games. And I've noticed that Tex has particularly delighted lately in being the teacher. He doesn't know it, but I love this b/c it helps me to know what lessons he's really absorbed. This week Tex taught Monkey about why clouds rain, he taught Noodle about the different environments that animals live in as they were building a Zoo Tycoon zoo together, and I remember hearing quite a few things I didn't know before, but apparently I need to work on MY listening skills because now I cannot recall a one! Perhaps he'll be good enough to repeat himself this week if I promise to wear my listening ears?

Today we had a field trip to a local hydroponic farm with a group of homeschool friends. The kids got to see the benefits of their vertical planting system which needs one acre for every 18 a traditional farm would use, and uses 2,600 gallons of water daily compared to the 50,000 gallons a traditional farm growing the same number of plants would need. (See, today I had my listening ears on!) We also saw a wicked huge grasshopper, ladybugs and their larvae, stink bugs, squash bugs, learned the difference between beneficial and harmful insects, between male and female squash flowers, and supported a local farm all in one fell swoop!

Back in the saddle

Last week was just crazy and we barely got any homeschooling done each day. Of course the kids are always learning no matter what I do to/with them, but it's nice that this week we're able to get back into focusing on learning.

Big plans are afoot in the Berry Patch. The boys are planning some backyard camping trips and, if all goes well, possibly one at an actual campground. Noodle is absolutely over the moon about being able to camp outside; I've decided not to mention the ratio of bugs-to-Noodle in the great outdoors and just dip him in DEET before they go out. ;-) Tex was really hoping for a "Man vs. Wild" style drop-off and survival marathon, but as Mommy doesn't have access to a helicopter or parachute, we had to put the kibosh on that one.

For Table Time today Tex decided he wanted to play Battleship for math practice. Can't wait to get that kid into doing graphs and such, he already loves grids and code-breaking and all that sort of stuff. And he cheated, but he didn't win even then, so I'm hoping he'll get the idea that cheating sours the game without any guarantee that it will pay off. Teaching ethics is tricky to a kid who cares more about winning than about being fair! But I'll keep at it with the attitude that I still love him even though he's a big fat cheater ;-P, and that it's only going to hurt him in the long run anyway.

Oh, and Tex is also designing a "blaster" to go with his Megatron costume. He drew up a couple of designs, drew each design from 3 different angles (!) so I could see which I thought might be easier, and now he's planning to start small-scale mock-ups with toilet paper or paper towel rolls before we move on to the full-size model using a mailing tube. Y'all watch out, if this is where we're at at age 7, I don't even want to think about what he'll be building at 16! I might go out in the garage one day and it will be like a scene from The Explorers (y'all remember that one, with River Phoenix and the singing alien?). Twenty bucks says Noodle's the test pilot...

Even in the midst of chaos...

We've had a death in the family this week (DaddyO's grandma, God rest her soul) and a memorial for my grandfather who died back in June, but the learning just keeps on happening! We enjoyed a trip to SciQuest this morning where the boys spent most of their time concocting a "recipe for disaster" in the kitchen portion of the model home. Then Tex went to the gift shop and spent his allowance on a Life-Size dinosaur book (very cool!) and a stick of rock candy, which was a nice way to practice his money skills.

Oh, and that darn celery experiment is giving us SO many opportunities to learn!! Grrr! The blue food coloring hardly showed up at all even though the celery

Life lessons

Today we discussed the structure of a tooth, and what happens when decay gets to the middle of the tooth and infects the root. Know why?? Do ya, do ya, do ya??? Because Mommy has to go to the dentist tomorrow for a root canal!! LOL Yes, the boys and I spent some time looking at my poor half-dissolved tooth, drawing a diagram of a tooth and discussing the root canal procedure as explained to me by my dentist, and then looking at DaddyO's tooth that had a root canal and crown applied about 10 years ago.

Tex and I read some of a dinosaur library book today. He gets really annoyed if I just try to read to him what the book says, so he looks at the pictures and says things like "What do you notice about this guy? What do you think is cool about him?" and I ask it back to him and then find little bits of the text to throw out as additional information to go with our observations. Today we noticed the depressions in the skin of 3 drawings of carnosaurs, and then spotted them a couple of pages later as openings in the actual skull of an Allosaurus. Tex is very interested in paleoartistry, where artists have to gather information from the fossils of a dinosaur such as where its ligaments were attached and any remaining skin evidence to create what they think is the most accurate picture of that creature.

Noodle and I worked up a new science experiment at Table Time today. It's the old standby of the celery in the food coloring. I've never done it before but DaddyO has and said it's pretty cool. We should have blueish celery in the morning. Hope it works!!!

At bedtime last night I introduced the concept of myths, not in the Mythbusters sense, but as legends. We were reading a book about insects that Noodle got from the library last week and I mentioned how spiders got their name (the story of Arachne and Athena) and told the myth as I remembered it from grade school. I explained that legends are stories that are so amazing and exciting that they pass down through the years simply because people enjoy them, true or not, while myths are something people use to explain why or how things happen. The boys were already familiar with the legend of the sun-god riding his chariot across the sky after watching Fantasia, so I was able to relate back to that.

The drawbacks of Unschooling

Ok, not really, because it all evens out in the end, but some days I do find myself watching my children do (from my point of view) pointless playing all day and I just want to yell "learn something!!!" Sometimes I need a reminder that they spend their day learning whether I appreciate what they're learning or not.

Transformers reign supreme in The Berry Patch, and dontcha know that every toy company and kids' television channel out there has some kind of website to go with their products so that kids can get even more marketing shoved into their little brains. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to see that the Hasbro Transformers websites do have a couple of interesting games: one teaches keyboard familiarity by challenging kids to type a "secret code" in a time-sensitive situation, and the other uses a very kid-friendly program to help them put together a "video" of transforming bots and transition shots, corresponding sound effects and dialogue, and background music. It looks a LOT like the software DaddyO used to use when he would edit audio as the producer of a morning radio talk show. In fact DaddyO showed me Windows MovieMaker, which is a legit next step for Tex and Noodle after they outgrow the Transformers video or actually want to go further with their current filming jag. (Note: the kids are also getting an underwater video camera for Christmas this year, which I'm betting will lead to plenty of opportunities to learn editing.)

Table Time has continued. Tex worked some more on his dinosaur code book and is doing really well. He wanted me there to help but the only thing I did was point out when he was trying to read that he'd filled a letter in incorrectly. Oh, and I helped him sound out the word "sturdy". His reading has come along very well and I can see he's becoming more confident. Need to get his glasses fixed after Monkeygirl decided they'd make a good pretzel, though. We continued our table time with an experiment from Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman; identifying the marker used in a crime by the way the ink bleeds when wet. Tex took one piece of paper towel as his control and wrote a message on it without me being able to see which marker he used. Then he took that marker and two others of the same color, but different brands, and made three experimental swatches. He then got each one wet, allowed the water to bleed fully, and it was my job to match the correct marker to the control. I was surprised how really obvious the different inks were!

Our other fun, yesterday, was to identify the giant flying bug that I killed in the kitchen. As I scooped it up into a napkin Tex noted that it looked like a really big fly and must be a horsefly. We looked in our insect/spider book and sure enough it was an American horsefly, identifiable by its green eyes.