Yesterday. We looked at a pinecone and discovered how it spreads seeds to make new trees. We reviewed the usual stuff.
I was up until 3:30 am writing the last chapter of a 72,000+-word novel, so forgive my brevity here. I'm tapped out.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Thursday, September 3, 2008 - Urban Nature Sanctuary
The science museum owns a nature preserve, and that's where Isabel's science program - a hands-on program for kids aged 5-7 - met today. We went for a walk through the preserve (which they call an "urban nature sanctuary" - I don't know why, but that strikes me as funny) and were able to see and touch all kinds of plantlife, and some animals and bugs, too!
Tifft (the preserve) is wonderful. It's right in the city, but when you get in on the trails, it feels like you're a million miles away. We saw a family of egrets in one of the small lakes that dot the preserve, on our way out. Isabel loved watching them - we saw one fly away, and the others were fishing.
The paths go through forest and wetlands. In the wetlands area, a system of raised platforms allow visitors to walk over the water - we looked over the railings and watched frogs and turtles in the water. The frogs blend so perfectly with the surrounding water plants that staring right at one, you would be lucky to see it. We found several bullfrogs submerged, just their eyes peering up over the surface of the water. Dragonflies were everywhere. And the cattails grow so tall, they're all you can see in every direction.
The class instructor, Miss Meghan (who is just fantastic - we love her), pulled a cattail flower and let all the children rub it, to feel how fuzzy it is. Then she opened it up and showed us the seeds inside, which look very much like dandelion seeds. This fit very well with the seed project Isabel and I worked on yesterday. She showed us how the wind carries the seeds, and the seeds will land and sprout new cattails.
We also found a very neat nest of tent caterpillars. There were dozens - maybe even hundreds - of caterpillars wriggling around in the nest.Evidence of beavers was everywhere, too. We saw a dam, some trees that have been downed by beavers, and a beaver lodge.
It was a fun time. We all went, so it was a nice family outing, as well. We plan to go again.
And now, we must examine ourselves for ticks before turning in for the night.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008
Today was not nearly as busy as yesterday... we started with a walk outside, where we found some maple seeds (helicopters!) and leaves, and some fluffy and yellow dandelions.
Back home, we went over our address and phone number, and Isabel practiced writing her name. Then handwriting - we're on Starting Corner capitals right now (from Handwriting Without Tears) and worked primarily on "L", though we also reviewed several of the Frog Jump capitals. Isabel's handwriting is really coming along nicely.
We went back to vowel sound practice today, because the short vowel sound of "I" is still really tricky for her (odd, because it starts her name...). I think she's getting it now, though. We read a few practice sentences and I notice that the phonemic blending is beginning to take off as well. The issue we battle right now is Isabel's tendency to insert additional sounds, like sounding out i-s, and ending up with "its" instead of "is". In the process of blending her sounds, she often adds stops that are unecessary and lead her to add new phonemes to the word. This is a problem with "R" words, too, as another example - "red" becomes "ered".
I wanted to save the seeds for last, but Isabel was itching to get on them, so we moved on to our seed project. I wanted to just make a poster, but she decided she wanted to make a BOOK. We compromised on making several posters to cover different stages of the plant life cycle, which we'll then bind into a book. For today, we made a poster about seeds. Isabel sounded out and wrote "SEEDS", and drew a picture of seeds in the ground. She correctly identified the three things seeds need to grow (soil, water, sun) and we discovered how seeds are spread by examining the dandelion and maple seeds, and blowing them with our mouths and a hairdryer (um, they go really far this way). We discovered how the two seeds, even though they look very different, share the same structures. Isabel taped the seeds to the poster, along with what they will grow into (we used a leaf for the maple, no room to tape a tree to the page).
We ended our schoolwork today with two math worksheets from the Miquon orange book. Numbers are starting to make more sense to Isabel now, something I'm pleased to see. One of the worksheets had four rows, each with four boxes. Each box had ten shapes. In some of the boxes, a certain number of the shapes would be colored in - in that case, Isabel had to write that number (say, 7) in the box. In other cases, the number would be written, and Isabel would have to color in the appropriate number of shapes. But yet, in OTHER cases, the box would be blank, with no shapes colored in. And Isabel would have to predict what number SHOULD be in that box, based on the numbers elsewhere in the row. I thought this concept would be too advanced for her, but she actually got it. She further surprised me by correctly grasping that "0" meant coloring in NO shapes. She did very well. Then she built a fort with the Cuisenaire Rods. I guess that's what "fun with math" means.
Back home, we went over our address and phone number, and Isabel practiced writing her name. Then handwriting - we're on Starting Corner capitals right now (from Handwriting Without Tears) and worked primarily on "L", though we also reviewed several of the Frog Jump capitals. Isabel's handwriting is really coming along nicely.
We went back to vowel sound practice today, because the short vowel sound of "I" is still really tricky for her (odd, because it starts her name...). I think she's getting it now, though. We read a few practice sentences and I notice that the phonemic blending is beginning to take off as well. The issue we battle right now is Isabel's tendency to insert additional sounds, like sounding out i-s, and ending up with "its" instead of "is". In the process of blending her sounds, she often adds stops that are unecessary and lead her to add new phonemes to the word. This is a problem with "R" words, too, as another example - "red" becomes "ered".
I wanted to save the seeds for last, but Isabel was itching to get on them, so we moved on to our seed project. I wanted to just make a poster, but she decided she wanted to make a BOOK. We compromised on making several posters to cover different stages of the plant life cycle, which we'll then bind into a book. For today, we made a poster about seeds. Isabel sounded out and wrote "SEEDS", and drew a picture of seeds in the ground. She correctly identified the three things seeds need to grow (soil, water, sun) and we discovered how seeds are spread by examining the dandelion and maple seeds, and blowing them with our mouths and a hairdryer (um, they go really far this way). We discovered how the two seeds, even though they look very different, share the same structures. Isabel taped the seeds to the poster, along with what they will grow into (we used a leaf for the maple, no room to tape a tree to the page).
We ended our schoolwork today with two math worksheets from the Miquon orange book. Numbers are starting to make more sense to Isabel now, something I'm pleased to see. One of the worksheets had four rows, each with four boxes. Each box had ten shapes. In some of the boxes, a certain number of the shapes would be colored in - in that case, Isabel had to write that number (say, 7) in the box. In other cases, the number would be written, and Isabel would have to color in the appropriate number of shapes. But yet, in OTHER cases, the box would be blank, with no shapes colored in. And Isabel would have to predict what number SHOULD be in that box, based on the numbers elsewhere in the row. I thought this concept would be too advanced for her, but she actually got it. She further surprised me by correctly grasping that "0" meant coloring in NO shapes. She did very well. Then she built a fort with the Cuisenaire Rods. I guess that's what "fun with math" means.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008 (We're back!)
So, I got lazy over the summer. With the blog, that is. We were actually so busy I'm amazed I remembered to breathe, much less feed and clothe myself and two children. And although we kept up a basic level of schoolwork over the past few months, I didn't impose any sort of structured routine. When all the summer activities finished up, we earmarked today as the day to get back into a routine and kick off a new year.
Prep work for Kindergarten is pretty minimal, really. I printed off my list of NYS learning standards for K, and was pleasantly surprised to find that we covered most of them last year. This is good, as I was hoping to really focus on literacy and numeracy this year. Isabel is enrolled in a program at the local science museum, to augment our science studies, and I'm using those classes as a guide to other science activities at home. And so, it was with this guidance that we launched a unit on plants today.
Prep work for Kindergarten is pretty minimal, really. I printed off my list of NYS learning standards for K, and was pleasantly surprised to find that we covered most of them last year. This is good, as I was hoping to really focus on literacy and numeracy this year. Isabel is enrolled in a program at the local science museum, to augment our science studies, and I'm using those classes as a guide to other science activities at home. And so, it was with this guidance that we launched a unit on plants today. We spent the morning and early afternoon at the Botanical Garden. We had an absolute blast. And we learned stuff, too. Isabel completed a scavenger hunt, finding flowers, plants and other items from throughout the gardens. We also reviewed the five senses and figured out which senses we could use in a plant/flower investigation; then, as we proceeded through various garden rooms, Isabel selected a plant or flower and used her senses to investigate it. We decided that taste probably wasn't a good sense to use for investigation plants and flowers, and I was ready to dismiss hearing, too, but Isabel thought we should use it. So in each space, we touched, smelled, looked and listened to the plants she selected. The palm tree was "REALLY huge!" and rough, and the magnolia smelled sweet. We watched koi in the koi pond and found a bunch of dinosaur topiaries - this was fun because we did a lot of reading about dinosaurs last month. Isabel was nervous in the cactus room when I explained that we can't touch the plants, but we rubbed the dirt in which the cactuses grow.
Once we'd made our way through the gardens, we headed outside to the childrens' garden. Both Isabel and Aidan had a great time playing. Isabel loved the water pumps, and Aidan enjoyed the sand pit. We looked at the flowers and other plants growing outside, as well. When we left, the children were wet and filthy, but happy.
Back home, we practiced writing Isabel's name, reviewed letter sounds and completed two worksheets (one on shape matching and another maze-type sheet for motor skills).
Some more pictures of our time at the Botanical Garden:
Thursday, June 12, 2008
June 12, 2008
Blah.
That's right. BLAH.
Three days of silence, and all I have is "blah"? Yes, that's right. Want to know why? Because our home was infiltrated this week by the sick. The pukey, high fever, whining, miserable sick.
Needless to say, there has been no animal-book-making happening here this week.
Today, both kids were starting to perk up a bit. No vomit, no temperatures. Just some over the top hysterics at the drop of a hat, I think because the sick has left the children a little tired. But by this afternoon, we were pretty much back to normal. With cautious optimism, I even packed up the wee ones and took Isabel to her first soccer practice this afternoon. She desperately needed to be OUT after being cooped up all week, and she did great.
This afternoon, discussion of the sick led us to look up the digestive system. As soon as I got around to mentioning that unused food is passed from our bodies as poop, Isabel was hooked. Yay, poop! We looked as illustrations of the digestive system, talked about how nutrients are converted to energy by our bodies and, of course, all about poop.
We also talked about that some creatures have more than one stomach. Apparently, this was a fascinating revelation and we discussed cows and bees, which then further continued into a discussion about how honey is made. Did you know that bees chew nectar in order to make it into thick, sticky honey? I didn't. Bees tongues are also hollow, like straws, and that's how they suck up nectar from flowers.
Isabel's most urgent inquiry was whether bees collect nectar from dandelions. I would have thought no, but it turns out that they do.
That's right. BLAH.
Three days of silence, and all I have is "blah"? Yes, that's right. Want to know why? Because our home was infiltrated this week by the sick. The pukey, high fever, whining, miserable sick.
Needless to say, there has been no animal-book-making happening here this week.
Today, both kids were starting to perk up a bit. No vomit, no temperatures. Just some over the top hysterics at the drop of a hat, I think because the sick has left the children a little tired. But by this afternoon, we were pretty much back to normal. With cautious optimism, I even packed up the wee ones and took Isabel to her first soccer practice this afternoon. She desperately needed to be OUT after being cooped up all week, and she did great.
This afternoon, discussion of the sick led us to look up the digestive system. As soon as I got around to mentioning that unused food is passed from our bodies as poop, Isabel was hooked. Yay, poop! We looked as illustrations of the digestive system, talked about how nutrients are converted to energy by our bodies and, of course, all about poop.
We also talked about that some creatures have more than one stomach. Apparently, this was a fascinating revelation and we discussed cows and bees, which then further continued into a discussion about how honey is made. Did you know that bees chew nectar in order to make it into thick, sticky honey? I didn't. Bees tongues are also hollow, like straws, and that's how they suck up nectar from flowers.
Isabel's most urgent inquiry was whether bees collect nectar from dandelions. I would have thought no, but it turns out that they do.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Back from vacation
It was a long week, but FUN. We spent all day Monday at the Toronto Zoo, which was fabulous. I can't say enough about that zoo. It's amazing.
Tuesday and Wednesday, we spent at the Americana waterpark resort in Niagara Falls, Canada. It was fun, but mostly just because Nick and I had a quiet moment not long after we arrived in which we murmured to one another that we were going to make the best of it and enjoy ourselves, period. It was an okay place, but not impressive. Our biggest complaint was that the cleaning service was poor. At best. In the end, I hunkered down with baby wipes and soap on a washcloth, and washed down the bathroom as best I could, myself. Now, I have a lot of sympathy for housekeeping staff at hotels - I think human beings, in general, can be fairly disgusting animals and people who are in the professions that clean up after people are like really badly paid zookeepers. But even my sympathy has limits, and clumps of hair on the floor in the bathroom are way, way, waaaaaaay beyond those limits.
The waterpark itself was also a lot smaller than we'd thought it would be, and the majority of the features were closed at any given time. I was actually fine with that, thinking that if the options were to have everything open but overextended lifeguarding staff, or adequate lifeguards covering fewer features, I'd opt to have things closed. BUT the lifeguard staff was pretty lazy. Or so I learned when the one at the top of the waterslide waved people through even while saying he was supposed to have them wait eight seconds but "who cares," and then allowed me to go down the slide situated backwards on the tube (something I figured out a quarter of the way down, when I almost toppled back on my head and spent the rest of the slide in a state of pacnicked struggle, trying not to knock myself out).
Don't get me wrong - we still had fun. A LOT of fun. The kids had a blast and we laughed and smiled all day long, both days. But we will not go back again.
We got a ton of pictures at the zoo, and next week, in addition to starting up our consonant review, we are going to get prints made of the various animals and use the Toronto Zoo map as a guide to look up each animal, write down facts about that and glue in the pictures to make an animal book. Isabel's favorite thing by far (mine, too!) was the stingrays. We'll spend a lot of time on them, I expect.
For now, a few pictures from our trip (animal pictures to follow next week, as we look things up):
Tuesday and Wednesday, we spent at the Americana waterpark resort in Niagara Falls, Canada. It was fun, but mostly just because Nick and I had a quiet moment not long after we arrived in which we murmured to one another that we were going to make the best of it and enjoy ourselves, period. It was an okay place, but not impressive. Our biggest complaint was that the cleaning service was poor. At best. In the end, I hunkered down with baby wipes and soap on a washcloth, and washed down the bathroom as best I could, myself. Now, I have a lot of sympathy for housekeeping staff at hotels - I think human beings, in general, can be fairly disgusting animals and people who are in the professions that clean up after people are like really badly paid zookeepers. But even my sympathy has limits, and clumps of hair on the floor in the bathroom are way, way, waaaaaaay beyond those limits.
The waterpark itself was also a lot smaller than we'd thought it would be, and the majority of the features were closed at any given time. I was actually fine with that, thinking that if the options were to have everything open but overextended lifeguarding staff, or adequate lifeguards covering fewer features, I'd opt to have things closed. BUT the lifeguard staff was pretty lazy. Or so I learned when the one at the top of the waterslide waved people through even while saying he was supposed to have them wait eight seconds but "who cares," and then allowed me to go down the slide situated backwards on the tube (something I figured out a quarter of the way down, when I almost toppled back on my head and spent the rest of the slide in a state of pacnicked struggle, trying not to knock myself out).
Don't get me wrong - we still had fun. A LOT of fun. The kids had a blast and we laughed and smiled all day long, both days. But we will not go back again.
We got a ton of pictures at the zoo, and next week, in addition to starting up our consonant review, we are going to get prints made of the various animals and use the Toronto Zoo map as a guide to look up each animal, write down facts about that and glue in the pictures to make an animal book. Isabel's favorite thing by far (mine, too!) was the stingrays. We'll spend a lot of time on them, I expect.
For now, a few pictures from our trip (animal pictures to follow next week, as we look things up):
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Once again, it is unspeakably late. One day I'll go through and edit all these nonsensical, jumbled, poorly-written late-night entries.
Good day today. Everyone was in a great mood and we got a lot done. The morning was hard because Aidan was exhausted and cranky but refused to nap. Isabel decided to play gymnastics while I dealt with him - she misses her gymnastics classes. We're currently in a 6-ish-week lull between Spring and Summer programs, and she's getting a bit stir-crazy. Everything starts back up at the end of June and beginning of July. For now, though, we have a pink plastic balance beam and a very dedicated little gymnast hard at work in the living room.
Aidan finally fell asleep around lunchtime, so I whipped up some food and Isabel and I got to spend some time sitting together, eating and talking. When we finished with that, we moved on to some schoolwork.
We finished our vowels! It feels like we've been covering vowels forever. We will continue to do brief vowel reviews regularly, but we are done learning our vowel poem and working intensively on short-vowel sounds. Tomorrow we move on to consonants. It's possible I'll put aside our letter/phoneme work until after next week's vacation. It may be best to periodically call out to Isabel, "Hey, what's the short-vowel sound of A?" over the next week or so, for review, then start fresh with consonants when we get back.
We've also been working on Frog Jump Capitals in Handwriting Without Tears. We reviewed letters we've covered so far, then played a game in which Isabel had to begin writing a letter by making her line and frog-jumping back up, then I'd call out what letter to write. It reinforces the correct way to form the letters and Isabel thought it was great - she was giggling so much that her pencil was shaking. We also did some copywork
A friend of mine sent a lovely package to us with some gorgeous shirts her daughter has outgrown, a package of Brain Quest cards and a neat little workbook dealing with story sequencing, something I've spoken with my friend about Isabel having some trouble with. Isabel adores workbooks of all kinds and was chomping at the bit to begin a new one. She likes workbooks the way most kids like coloring books. This workbook is wonderful because it involves cutting out the various sentences from the story and then gluing them on the page in order. Anything that requires cutting and gluing makes Isabel very happy. We completed one story and I promised Isabel we'll do the next tomorrow.
The Brain Quest cards were something new for me - I've seen them in stores but never looked at them carefully. So after I read Isabel a story, we sat with the cards to see what they're all about.
They. Are. Awesome.
Isabel LOVES them. I'm going to have to go buy her more, as many as I can find. This packet had 300 questions in it - we promptly went through 150 of those questions and only stopped because I said we should save the rest for later. Isabel would have happily plowed through the other 150 right then if I'd let her. The cards have all kinds of questions - pictures with items missing that need to be identified, sequencing (yay!), number recognition, counting, shape recognition, letter recognition, rhyming, and so many others. We had a lot of fun with them.
We rounded out the day by watching Annie and then, when Nick got home, he and Isabel played a game they made up that involves trying to knock one another's blocks down by rolling a ball. I'm not sure I fully understand it, but they love it.
Good day today. Everyone was in a great mood and we got a lot done. The morning was hard because Aidan was exhausted and cranky but refused to nap. Isabel decided to play gymnastics while I dealt with him - she misses her gymnastics classes. We're currently in a 6-ish-week lull between Spring and Summer programs, and she's getting a bit stir-crazy. Everything starts back up at the end of June and beginning of July. For now, though, we have a pink plastic balance beam and a very dedicated little gymnast hard at work in the living room.
Aidan finally fell asleep around lunchtime, so I whipped up some food and Isabel and I got to spend some time sitting together, eating and talking. When we finished with that, we moved on to some schoolwork.
We finished our vowels! It feels like we've been covering vowels forever. We will continue to do brief vowel reviews regularly, but we are done learning our vowel poem and working intensively on short-vowel sounds. Tomorrow we move on to consonants. It's possible I'll put aside our letter/phoneme work until after next week's vacation. It may be best to periodically call out to Isabel, "Hey, what's the short-vowel sound of A?" over the next week or so, for review, then start fresh with consonants when we get back.
We've also been working on Frog Jump Capitals in Handwriting Without Tears. We reviewed letters we've covered so far, then played a game in which Isabel had to begin writing a letter by making her line and frog-jumping back up, then I'd call out what letter to write. It reinforces the correct way to form the letters and Isabel thought it was great - she was giggling so much that her pencil was shaking. We also did some copywork
A friend of mine sent a lovely package to us with some gorgeous shirts her daughter has outgrown, a package of Brain Quest cards and a neat little workbook dealing with story sequencing, something I've spoken with my friend about Isabel having some trouble with. Isabel adores workbooks of all kinds and was chomping at the bit to begin a new one. She likes workbooks the way most kids like coloring books. This workbook is wonderful because it involves cutting out the various sentences from the story and then gluing them on the page in order. Anything that requires cutting and gluing makes Isabel very happy. We completed one story and I promised Isabel we'll do the next tomorrow.
The Brain Quest cards were something new for me - I've seen them in stores but never looked at them carefully. So after I read Isabel a story, we sat with the cards to see what they're all about.
They. Are. Awesome.
Isabel LOVES them. I'm going to have to go buy her more, as many as I can find. This packet had 300 questions in it - we promptly went through 150 of those questions and only stopped because I said we should save the rest for later. Isabel would have happily plowed through the other 150 right then if I'd let her. The cards have all kinds of questions - pictures with items missing that need to be identified, sequencing (yay!), number recognition, counting, shape recognition, letter recognition, rhyming, and so many others. We had a lot of fun with them.
We rounded out the day by watching Annie and then, when Nick got home, he and Isabel played a game they made up that involves trying to knock one another's blocks down by rolling a ball. I'm not sure I fully understand it, but they love it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
