Day 22 / 103 - Card Countdown

We were drilling our subtraction facts today, so we spent a little time playing this game.

Each player started with the number 100 and a deck of cards face down in a pile.  A player would draw the top card from their pile, subtract that value from 100 and record the difference.  They then drew the next card, subtracted that value from the remaining difference and recorded that answer.  We continued to draw cards, subtract, and record answers working as quickly as possible until we reached or went below 0.

This took my children no time at all, so next time we play we're starting with a number higher than 100.

Day 21 / 103 - Sentence Purposes

Another task we complete regularly in our Essentials curriculum is identifying and rewriting a sentence by its purpose (Declarative, Imperative, Exclamatory, Interrogative).  This activity, that I did with my own children, along with their Essentials class earlier this week, helped them to review and begin mastering the purposes. 

We started with a Simple, Subject - Verb Intransitive sentence.  We wrote it as a declarative sentence.  Then as an imperative sentence.  Next as an exclamatory sentence.  And finally, as an interrogative sentence.  I gave the students post-it notes, each color corresponding to a different sentence purpose.  They wrote their sentences on the post-it notes and stuck them to the board. 

Day 20 / 103 - The Squire Who Cried Dragon

This week, in our IEW curriculum, my children were learning about the basic elements of a story -- Setting and Characters, Conflict / Plot, and Climax / Resolution.  We discussed how every story needs to contain these same basic elements.

As a related assignment, they wrote a story borrowing a conflict and a resolution from a story they already knew, but creating the characters, scene, and setting themselves.  They rewrote The Boy Who Cried Wolf with a medieval theme, The Squire Who Cried Dragon. 

They produced excellent papers and even had a little fun completing the assignment!

Day 19 / 103 - Even More Map Work

I have posted time and time again about the importance and value of drawing maps to learn Geography.   (Here, here, here, here and here -- that I know of.  I might have missed one).  We have implemented this tactic since we began homeschooling five years ago.  The other day I asked my children to draw the continents and oceans without looking at a map.  In less than 10 minutes, the above pictures are what they produced. 

I was beyond impressed.

Day 18 / 103 - ... And Draw Another

In 1783, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to his 11-year-old daughter where he outlines his expectations for her school day.  It reads:   

With respect to the distribution of your time, the following is what I should approve:
From 8. to 10. o'clock practise music.
From 10. to 1. dance one day and draw another.
From 1. to 2. draw on the day you dance, and write a letter next day.
From 3. to 4. read French.
From 4. to 5. exercise yourself in music.
From 5. till bedtime, read English, write, & copy. 

If I heed his advice with my own children, it is acceptable that my dining room table look like this everyday of the week.

The laptop is there for drawing tutorials only. :)

Day 17 / 103 - 28 Sentences

This is my third year keeping this blog.  Since my educating style is (mostly) classical, that means I teach my children the same concepts over and over and over again until they begin to master the concept.  So roughly, each year of their primary years of learning look pretty much the same.  We repeat most of the same activities.  That being said, I'm starting to run out of things to post on this blog, because I have already posted an activity similar to this here.  And again here.  However, I still have to produce a portfolio at the end of each academic year.  And, I'm super proud of my children for this activity they completed today.  So, I'm posting it again, because clearly I like repetition.

Our Essentials program teaches us that there are only 112 sentences in the English language, and that every sentence can be identified as one of the 112 if you know how to identify a sentence's structure, purpose, and pattern.  Today, I had my children come up with 28 original sentences to fit the first sentence structural layout all on their own.  My daughter needed a little assistance to get started, but my son NAILED the activity.  He will be 'graduating' from this class at the end of this year, so I am beyond pleased that he is showing mastery of this concept.  We will still continue to work through this activity this year.  28 sentences down, 84 to go.

Day 16 / 103 - Labeling Nouns

This week we discussed nouns in our Essentials (Language Arts) class.  In a 5-minute time period, I challenged my children, along with their classmates, to label as many nouns as possible with post-it notes.  I encouraged them to identify 200.  They easily met my challenge.  We briefly discussed how to define those nouns with one of their eight attributes (singular, plural, common, proper, etc).

At home, my children and I further discussed the 8 attributes while drawing pictures to help us remember them.  Naturally, we're still drawing on the windows.

Day 15 / 103 - Duct Tape Warfare

Over the past few weeks, my son has 'upped' his duct tape game by venturing into creating medieval weaponry.  This is quite fitting as we are studying the Middle Ages this fall.  His duct tape arsenal includes (that I know of) swords, battle axes, throwing axes, knives, and a shield. 

Day 14 / 103 - School on the Patio Sliders

My children noticed that my latest package of Expo dry erase markers included the phrase "Safe for Windows".

Them:  Mom, can we write on the windows?
Me:  Only if it's educational.

Voila!  Here is their Classical Conversations Foundations and Essentials memory work for Week 2 initiated completely on their own.  FYI - we draw lots of pictures to help us remember all the information that we memorize.  An added benefit to this new system is perhaps my patio sliding doors will now be cleaned more than once a season.

THIS is why I homeschool !!!

Day 13 / 103 - Jupiter: Planetary Giant

Earlier this week, my children and I attended a planetarium movie at the Clay Center's ElectricSky theater.  We traveled to the outer reaches of our Solar System for a tour of giant Jupiter and the Jovian system.  We discovered how different this planet is from others as well as learning some of the mysteries behind its many moons. Following the movie, we listened to a star talk in the planetarium as we witnessed 10,000 stars fill the domed screen with the night sky.  It was a perfect precursor for our study of Astronomy later this fall.

Day 12 / 103 - The Lord of the Rings

From my husband:

The Lord of the Rings has always been one of my favorite stories, and I have read it numerous times over the years. A few years ago I thought I would share it with the kids too. Much like Frodo, I had no idea what I was getting myself into...

Although a wonderful story and beautifully written, reading The Lord of the Rings out loud is one of the most difficult things I have ever done. Vivid descriptions of forests, waterfalls, and landscapes that go on for numerous pages, references to lore that are obscure even within the story itself, genealogies, and characters with multiple names or titles, were only some of the challenges to reading out loud. During self-reading, one can skip some of these, or read them without full comprehension by moving on to the next element of the story. But when reading out loud, such things have to be contextualized and understood.

The result was a 3 year journey to read the series from start to finish. We took several very long breaks. We studied maps of Middle Earth. We traced journeys on the maps and reviewed which characters came from where, and what race. One thing that struck me is how integral the map of Middle Earth is to the story. I simply do not know how someone could follow the tale without knowing the geography too...just like our own history.

We have a rule in our home that one must read the book that a movie was based on before they watch the movie. This is so we have the chance to let our imagination work first, rather than having screenwriters do the imagining for us. The kids waited patiently for three years before they watched the movies. Then, it was a 9 hour film festival, replete with criticism of deviations from the story, to imagined landscapes and character portrayals.

One fun moment: in the first book, Samwise has to release his pony, Bill, into the wild so the Fellowship can travel under the Misty Mountains through the mines of Moria (check your map). My daughter, who was 7 at the time, was despondent that Bill would be killed by wolves, or the creature that inhabited the pool outside the gate. I of course knew that Bill shows up in Bree (check your map) at the end of the third book, but couldn't give it away. She wouldn't let me read to her for weeks until she had told us another "Adventures of Bill the Pony" story, whereby she guided him safely back to Bree, without knowing this was what actually happened. Imagine her surprise, two years later, when Bill was in his old stable waiting for Samwise to come back! And I like to believe that her stories made up the bulk of Bill's untold journey home.

For his part, my son understood every twist, every relationship, every character with several names in different languages, everything. Oftentimes I would find myself asking him who said something earlier in the story - which maybe we had read 18 months prior - and relying totally on his memory. He knew who had what hair color, or jewel, or was related to who else, without fail. His reading comprehension is simply unbelievable.