Winter Fun

It doesn’t usually snow much here in the city, though in the surrounding mountains it does. So it’s a real treat when it does. Today we went for a walk to a nearby park in the hopes of building a snowman. But the snow wasn’t very sticky and I couldn’t get much of a snowball started. Instead we made a pile of snow which was shaped like a cone and DD decided it was a “snow volcano”. She noted some leaves at the bottom of the pile and said that was the lava that had flowed down the volcano. So we added some more leaves to complete the lava flow. Does that count as science?

Last week we went to the library and got more dinosaur books as well as a book of home experiments. DD isn’t quite interested in doing them yet, and I think most of them would be lost on her, but she saw the word “science” and decided she must have it. Still, it gives me great ideas for when the kids are a bit older.

One of the dinosaur books we got was a new one, DK’s Dinosaur Encyclopedia. Most dinosaur books seem to be pretty much the same, featuring the same cast of popular beasts, but this one has been interesting. They have photos of 3D models which really bring the animals to life, and for each one a scale image next to a human. For example, I didn’t realize that Pterygotus, an ancient sea scorpion that predated fish, was about 7 feet long! I always imagined it about the size of a lobster. Dunkleosteus was one of the first fish, so-called bony fish since skeletons hadn’t evolved yet and they were covered with armor; it was over 16 feet long!! Again, I’d seen pictures of this kind of animal before, but always assumed it was the size of a salmon. One of DD’s favorites is Cothurnocystis, a soft-bodied creature with a “notochord” – the evolutionary debut of what would become vertebrates. Anyways, the book is so good that I think we’ll be ordering our own copy soon.

Finally, we started on some Math with DD. We were playing with markers and I was drawing letters and numbers for DS. Out of boredom I started writing small equations. DD has seen them before and knows they are “math” but hasn’t yet really grasped the concept of addition. So I wrote “1 + 2 = ” and asked her what the answer was. I told her to first take one marker from the pile, then take 2 markers. Then I asked her how many she had in her hand. Three! From there we went on to do a few more small equations. And I also showed her that different groups can add up to the same amount. Like 1 + 4 and 2 + 3 both equal 5. She still hasn’t quite got it, but it was apparent that being able to manipulate objects was getting the point across much better than drawing it out or explaining it with fingers, etc. I’ve always suspected that Math could be much better taught in general, and I think using “manipulatives” is an excellent way to go. I think we’ll look into getting some Miquon Math or whichever one is the “manipulatives” program. 

Space Crafts

Yesterday was a good homelearning day. The house was pretty organized, so we were out the door running errands and back by noon. We stopped at the Looney Store (Canada’s equivalent to the Dollar Store) and picked up a bunch of craft items. Looney stores are generally full of a lot of cheap, useless landfill crap but for craft stuff it’s a good deal. We got a ton of stuff for $30. The idea in my head was Christmas stuff, but when we got home and looked at our loot, DD decided that the styrofoam balls would make good planets. So we set out to make a solar system.
DD knows all the planets, and their order from the sun, as well as their relative sizes but we were limited by the size of the paper “sky”, and the fact that we had only 3 sizes of styrofoam balls. Thus, Jupiter is the same size as the Sun, lol. And we decided not to bother putting them in the right order of distance, again for space reasons (pardon the pun, lol). We talked about each planet and what colour it looks like, etc. while we were crafting. We noted that Earth is the only planet with Life on it (that we know of) so DD decided to decorate it with lizards (we have a stamp that cuts lizard-shaped bits out of paper).

I’m quite proud of our crafting centre. DS is still more of a destructive influence, which is a bit of a drag – he ended up watching DVD’s most of the time while DD and I crafted. His one contribution was to spill the bowl of water for the paints!

After crafting we did some reading and I played with DS and his wooden train set. I felt really good about the amount of “floor time” I had with the kids today. Also, my Dad has instituted a weekly reading date, which happened yesterday. He stops by on the way home from work and reads to the kids for about half an hour. After he got over the notion that he was actually going to have a say in what books were read, it went okay. He had visions of reading Winnie the Pooh stories (which he’s really good at since he has just the right accent) but instead DD wanted him to read her Science book, and then partway through it decided she was going to read him a story from her Space book. She makes them up as she goes along, but it’s amazing to hear what she knows. How many 4 year olds know that Black Holes have such a strong gravitational force that they pull anything that comes close to them down into the centre and “never lets them go”? Of course, I think any 4 year old could know this, I just get a kick out of the fact that DD is so into this stuff.

Next time, check the tide charts!

On Friday the heavy rain we’ve been having all week had finally let up, so the kids and I planned a Field Trip, homelearner style. We were going to the beach to search the tide pools for neato animals and take photos of them. Back home we’d identify them, print the pix, and make a book of our finds. DD wanted to call it “The Big Book of Creatures”. So with camera in hand we headed off. Unfortunately, as you can see from the photo, we got there only to discover that the tide was in. There were no real tide pools to see, and we couldn’t find anything under the rocks we overturned – no crabs, hermit crabs, or little fish. All we came away with were some barnacles and seaweed (the photos of which turned out blurry). In the end, we spent most of our time there wandering along the seawall, with the kids jumping in all the puddles they could find. At first I was disappointed that we weren’t doing any “learning”, then I had to remind myself that Life is Learning. Jumping in puddles is learning. And just being out with my kids is what it’s really all about.

We love our maps

DD has been interested in maps for a long time now. At the tender age of 3 one of her favorite books to cart around was the Historical Atlas of Europe. I don’t think she understands that you can use maps to help you get around, but she loves the symbols and the demarcation of various regions. Give her any sort of map and she’ll be entertained for hours.

DH returned from a business trip to Korea with this gift for her: a 3D puzzle of the world. We’ve been having a lot of fun putting it together, and it really helps me with my geography. I am very poor in geography, much to my well-travelled mother’s dismay. Just goes to show you “they don’t teach you nothin’ in school”, lol. And just another reason why I’m so happy to be homelearning – I get to learn stuff too! 

Who says homelearners can’t get diplomas?

The latest course we took at the Ecology Centre was about slugs. I found it just as interesting as DD did. That is one of the fun things about homelearning, is that I often learn right along with them. The diploma reads:

Diploma of Slugology, This diploma is awarded to Emily who has successfully
completed the Understanding Gastropod Habitats program (UGH).

It is signed by Dr. Slugman.