Fun With Glaciers & Paper Chains
In our science lesson last week, we were discussing glaciers and how they help shape the land. Anytime we’re working on science concepts, I try to find places where we can go that demonstrate the concept. Most of the time, so far, that’s been feasible. We have pictures of erosion in a riverbed, along the banks and from after hurricanes Rita and Ike along the beaches. We’ve gone to the beach and checked out the dunes, and talked to our local State Park Rangers about rebuilding them after a storm. We’ve gone to Anahuac to see the salt domes and the oil wells all around the perimeter of them. For almost every type of land formation that we’ve studied, finding a local place to see it in action hasn’t been all that hard. But we live in Texas, and there just aren’t that many glaciers around these parts.
So, like all smart and crafty homeschooling moms, I improvised. I’ve been seeing these ice block/salt/food coloring art projects posted all over the web lately, and since our science text’s experiment also called for ice blocks, I figured we could kill 2 birds with one stone in a combined science/art project.
Behold:
The pictures REALLY don’t do them justice; the kids had such a great time with this project! We froze plain water in plastic containers overnight and then brought them outside and drug them around a bit to collect dirt and leaves and debris, much like a real glacier would. On softer ground, the ice left marks (shaping the land), and in other areas slid over it. This obviously wasn’t the most accurate relation; a glacier moves much more slowly, has ever so much more weight and also melts and re-freezes as time passes, picking up and releasing debris from one area to another as it moves. It was a bright, sunny day here, so no re-freezing was possible. Even though it wasn’t an exact replica, the kids got some decent notes out of the experiment for their journals and we had a good discussion about it.
After we were done with Phase I, we got out the salt and some food coloring and added them to the ice blocks. That was the most fun; watching the salt melt the ice and shape the block as the saltwater melted the ice and ran down the sides. It created rivulets and runnels down the sides of the ice; it was easier to explain how glaciers form and re-form as time goes by. Next time we do this, I think we’ll play for a bit, then re-freeze, then maybe add more water to see how the colored block gets frozen inside of a ‘new’ block.
A word of caution: salt kills grass. We now have a few bald spots in our yard where the saltwater seeped into the ground, killing all the grass… Dad was less than thrilled. So if you do this project, you may want to water the area thoroughly when you’re done to dilute the salt, or use trays and endeavor to keep the salty water off your lawn. Also, we used food coloring and the staining… oh, the staining! Blue/green hands and faces all around. Wear old clothes and maybe gloves. That should help!
In other news, we made orange and black paper chains this morning. It helps to have the kids do something with their hands while I read aloud. Today, I read our history lesson and asked them to recite while they crafted. Aside from a few minor ‘look at me! I have chains on my arms!’ moments, this is a good, mindless sort of craft to keep their hands occupied while they’re listening. This afternoon, we decorated the school room for Halloween with the chains (and added a purple and black stand, because more is always better), added bat cut-outs and listened to ‘Lyke Wake Dirge’ from Reclaiming’s ‘Let it Begin Now‘ and other seasonal music to get in the mood for the weekend.
Do you decorate your school spaces for holidays?
Warmly,
~h
NBTS Blog Hop: School Room
I don’t think I participated in the NBTS Blog Hop last year, and I remember being super envious of all the lovely homeschool rooms and such, so I wanted to participate this year. This week is ‘school room week’ and though I am chiming in late, I am glad to play along!
I’ve mentioned over the past few months that we’e in a transition phase, house-wise. With several home improvement projects going on, we currently have a bit of a cluttered mess in the homeschool room. August is the middle of our school year, not the beginning, but we usually take stock and re-organize a bit with all the ‘back to school’ excitement. Plus, our homeschool group does follow the traditional school year calendar, so even though for us the school year is nearing a close, August still is a ‘beginning’ of sorts.
We’re actually back in the school room though, after a few months of combined unbearable heat/storage related issues forced us into the kitchen for school. I have to say that transporting our stuff from one room to the next, then back again at the end of the day makes me really value having a whole room that is dedicated to schoolish pursuits. Even with the added clutter, we still have floor space and room to move. We’ve added some shelving (and yet still have book-storage issues) and with all of the moving around, all of the craft supplies have also moved into the school room. I’m hoping to add more shelves up close to the ceiling for some long term book storage and seasonal/holiday oriented materials.
I did take down most of the posters that we had on the walls. I left up the US map and our calendar (though it’s hidden behind the guitar and drums at the moment). They were bugging me, so I cut some of them up into flash-card pieces and others into envelope activities. The ones that couldn’t be cut up are going to go in a big artists’ portfolio for easy use. I also made anchor charts on a giant pad and keep it on one of the chalkboards to flip through as needed.
Here’s how it looks now:
I don’t know how much sense this will make, but I don’t have a panoramic camera, so I tried to do a panoramic layout. Meh. If you can decipher it, this is how 3 walls of our schol room look today:
The picture makes it look bigger than it is. From left to right, the supply cabinet, my desk and in the corner is a chalkboard, our calendar, a set of file cabinets that kinda got cut off in the picturing process, LBB’s desk (today; they keep switching back and forth), a room divider screen (to put between the boys when they start bugging each other) and PeaGreen’s desk with the new shelving above, and the door – up the stairs is our living room.
One of the things that strikes me most about how our room is right now is the sheer amount of THINGS that are in here. In fact, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to participate this week because of all the ‘extra’ stuff in our room right now. This is the most we’ve had in here since we started homeschooling and it’s both depressing and motivating to look at all the bright, cheerful spaces that are open and – not spare, but definitely more streamlined. I’m making notes for what I want our school room to look like and hopefully will be making that happen soon.
Want:
I love the HP lightswitch plate and the desks would work well in our school room, I think. My main ‘want’ right now is to paint. I love the light aqua in the desk picture; we have orange, blue and green on the walls, which isn’t bad, but could be better.
In any case, that’s how our school room looks right now!
Warmly,
~h
To see the other participants, click the picture, or click here.
The Homeschooling Friendly Home
What makes a good homeschooling space? When we first started, I was insistent that we have a dedicated space for homeschooling. I didn’t want to tack the work of ‘homeschooling’ onto the already high-traffic areas of the kitchen space, or the living room space. Those areas of our house were busy enough, and filled with the accouterments of each of those activities as it was.
I would have said that a good homeschooling space is a dedicated space for you and your child to shift gears mentally. After reading what other people had to say on the subject and living the homeschooling life for nearly a year now, I think that for us my gut instinct was pretty dead on. That’s not to say that we don’t ‘do school’ in other areas of the house, or that the school room is dreadful to go into, but that having a dedicated space for school without the distractions of a dual-duty area allows a clear mental delineation of thought from ‘normal’ mode into ‘school’ mode.
I’ve read a lot about the attitude that homeschooling shouldn’t be separate from the rest of life, and I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve often said that homeschooling is how we live, not something we do, but I maintain that having a dedicated space allows for focus that might be scattered in other areas of the house. As I’ve mentioned before, my oldest son is ADHD, and there are benefits to having his own space to work in (although I freely admit that he’s the one who is more often in another area of the house doing desk-work). The advantage for him is that when his attention starts to wander, we can re-focus by coming back into the school room and basically ‘re-setting’. I must admit that I also enjoy having school in a place that we can close the door on when school is over. I keep most of our posters and wall charts and school-related decorations limited to the school room, and though we integrate learning into nearly every aspect of our day, being able to ‘leave’ school is nice, too.
Granted, this is a luxury. I know that. Many homes barely have space for the people who live in them much less an entire room to devote to school. Even our school room is really a multi-purpose room; our laundry is also in that room (I’m not a traditional housekeeper – we keep our clothes in a communal closet in this room instead of in the bedrooms and use baskets and hanging racks instead of dressers. I’d never tell my grandmother, but the boys have toys in their dresser! It works much better for us this way). We also have ‘school-ish’ stuff in the kitchen – our crafts box and other supplies are stored in a corner cabinet in the kitchen. It’s not overly large, but having easy access to crafting supplies makes me much more willing to have the children underfoot with an art project while I make dinner. Our living room, and even bedrooms are also prime areas for doing ‘deskwork’. My kids often spread out on the living room floor or couch, on their bed or even in the yard to do worksheets or reading or journaling.
Overall, I think that the focus of the homeschooling home should be organization to the point that when inspiration strikes, the materials are both available and easily accessible. Whether that’s a desire to write a story or work on needlecraft or play a game, I try to keep our materials within easy reach for the kids. I also think that things should be able to be put away quickly – we often craft or have something out right up until the moment Dad comes home and need to switch gears quickly, so I try to keep clean up to a relative swipe into a box and push into a cabinet (not that my Loverly Husband ‘requires’ a quick clean up – just that the kids tend to lose focus when Dad comes home).
So how’s your house set up? Any special tips for organization and accessibility so that your home is a ‘homeschooling friendly’ environment?
Warmly,
~h
Party Plans for 100 Days
Our 100th day of homeschooling is next Tuesday. I can’t believe that we’re already there. I was just talking to a friend of mine about 100th day activities and I was thinking we still had a ways to go – but no – its next week.
I’ve been assembling ideas on how to commemorate the occasion, and here’s what I think the plan is going to be:
I’m going to decorate our homeschool room Monday evening after the boys go to bed. We’re inviting SFK and her girls to come celebrate with us, so I’m going to keep the boys out until they arrive so that the decor can be a surprise.
The whole day is going to be a celebration; I think we’ll start off with 100 silver dollar pancakes (small pancake bites if you haven’t heard of them before). I’ve seen lots of ideas about dressing crazy – we may have to figure out something to do with clothing – maybe a hundred pieces of clothing between all of us? We can brush our hair and teeth 100 strokes, and maybe make a secret word that when said causes all activity to stop and count to 100. That has the potential to be a lot of fun and/or extremely annoying.
I found a ’100 days’ Crown Pattern that the kids can color and we’ll staple them to a sentence strip. I may have to do one for myself, too. I also found a site with 100th day songs & poems and a sheet, I Can Write 100 Words that we may work on throughout the day. I’m also going to have the boys tell me about their first 100 days of homeschool; I’ll record them in a blog post about that day and code them in appropriate colors. we’ll talk about things like
- What have you learned in 100 days:
- Best thing /worst thing about homeschooling:
- Best day/ Worst day:
- Most fun / Most boring
I will probably add a few more to that list. I also found a ton of other ideas that we may use:
- As part of our 100 day celebration, we make several boxes of Jello “Booberry” flavored jello (it is blue in color). We pour it into a shallow glass pyrex plate and let it set for a little while. Before it completely sets, we insert 100 red candy swedish fish. We count as we insert them. We then let the jello completely set. When set, you have a 100 fish aquarium. ~Barbara W., East Newark, NJ I really love this idea! I asked SFK to make it and I think I’ll make something with gummi worms – dirt cups, maybe?
- Margo Ennis has several great ideas: Clip 100 paper clips together. With a partner measure things in the room that are as long, shorter than, and longer than the paper clip chain We use third grade partners to work with the kindergarten students. They measure together. After each measurement the third grader writes the word for the item, the kindergarten student draws a simple picture of it. This would be a good one for us because we’ll have at least 4 kids, one older and one younger. There are literally a thousand things around here that we could measure this way.
- We sing the following song to the tune of “Ta-ra-ra boom de ay”
It’s the 100th day.
So shout hip-hip hooray!
We’ll count and eat and play,
On the 100th day!See all we’ve collected.
100′s on display.
Join in the fun and say,
Hooray for the 100th Day!
- One Hundred Hanging Objects I love ceiling hangers! Our schoolroom has a super high ceiling, so we may have to come up with a clever way to get things up there (since Mom so does not so heights), but I want to put something up there – 100 birds, maybe.
- Students draw a picture of how they will look when they are 100 years old. (These are hysterical!) They also write about the picture. ~Sandra D. Littekin I love this idea, too!
- Make a lei necklace using any kind of cereal with holes (Cheerios, Fruit Loops, etc.): Take a piece of yarn (or use red rope licorice) and tightly wrap a piece of masking tape at one end (this aids in threading the cereal). Thread 10 pieces of cereal on the yarn, then add a short piece of straw, add ten more pieces of cereal, then straw, etc. until you have 100 pieces of cereal on your necklace. You’re teaching place value: 10 tens make 100!
- Flip a coin 100 times. Graph the number of heads and tails.
- Make a list of the hundred most important people and tell why they are important.
- Read 100 books on the 100th day of school. Have students work together towards this goal and estimate how many books each child will have to read for them to reach 100. Students record the title, author and a sentence about their favorite part on a paper circle. I then tape the circles along the wall with a bookworm head at the start saying “We read 100 books on the 100th day of school!”. This works well with grade 1 or 2 students since they are often reading shorter books. Lisa Black ~ Toronto, Ontario
Some of those may be a bit ambitious, but at least I have a lot to choose from! I’ll take pictures, so look for a 100 Day Update on Wednesday next week. What kinds of activities have you done or do you have planned to celebrate your 100th day?
Warmly,
~h
Report Cards!
Today marks the end of our first learning module in homeschooling – and, thanks to Homeschool Tracker’s lovely (and FREE) program, I have report cards to prove it! Yay!! I have found that for lessons that don’t have a point value assigned or easily visualized, a “scale of 1-10″ works well, and I enter all tests 2 times so they count more (I didn’t know that was a thing to do until I read about it; apparently, it’s called “weighting” the grades…handy!).
I don’t remember if I’ve covered this before so if I have, please forgive the lapse in memory. If I haven’t, here’s a breakdown of our schedule. We begin our school year in January, so even though we’re technically in the middle of the 2009-2010 school year according to traditional academic calendarl, my kids aren’t really starting in the middle of the year according to our calendar. We’re using Ambleside Online’s curriculum (link in sidebar) and staging, so we’re officially in Year 1 with them as well.
January 3 (the first Monday), 2010 began the first learning module (“mod”) in our year. I mark off 6 weeks (that’s M1), then we take a one week break. We do another six weeks of school (that’s M2), and then a one week break, and so on for the whole calendar year. That gives us seven 6-week learning modules (instead of only 6 like “regular” school) and we stop at the end of November/beginning of December, depending on the calendar. Then we take the month of December off (except for maybe the first few days or so if the calendar is wonky that year), and begin the next school year in January. I haven’t done the math to figure up exactly how that compares to a traditional academic calendar – we end up with 168 school days per year; I seem to remember our former school’s calendar had something like 77 school days in a year (but that could be off).
Our school week is Monday through Thursday, and we test on Thursdays in Math and Spelling, and we do a mid-mod review at week 3 in Science, Social Studies/History/Geography (combined) and another review at the end of the mod. We go to the Library on Wednesdays and we also meet with our playgroup (weather permitting). Since we have a short school week, we try to schedule field trips for Fridays or in the afternoons so they don’t interfere with “class time”.
I guess you’d say what we’re doing at this point in time is “school at home”, though admittedly with much more flexibility than “real school” (that’s not to say that we will always “do” school this way, but it’s working for us right now, and so we continue). A lot of what we’re doing is oral, or comes from literature instead of text books, so it doesn’t feel like school-in-a-classroom, even though we have a mini-classroom here. I was reading about how some families started out with a dedicated homeschooling room/space and eventually abolished it because “school is life”… while I respect the sentiment, I know that I need to have “school” contained in one area and not taking up half my kitchen, and I definitely don’t want it cluttering up the living room! It makes me a much happier mama to be able to close the door to the school room and have my house company-ready (not that we ever have company, hermit that I am lately). That doesn’t mean that learning stops when the door closes – most of the kids’ craft supplies, and mine, too eventually has migrated or will migrate into there, so we’re constantly using the space for something, and as soon as I get a rug, I’m sure even more fun will be had, strewn across the floor. Today, even though our tushies were cold, we made Valentine’s cards whilst lounging on the school-room floor. It was nice!
So, like I said, today marks the end of our first mod in homeschooling. Even though this mod is short by 2 weeks due to the boys still being in public (well, charter) school for the first 2 weeks of the year, I want to stick with our calendar so I am marking M1 officially
SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED!
{bows to wild applause and whistles of congratulations}
Thank you, thank you… it’s been a journey, but one we were more than happy to undertake. {/smarmy speech}
I just can’t get over how impressive it all looks on paper! Well, impressive to me, at least. In 4 weeks, we’ve had 16 school days, and spent 67+ hours (it varies a bit by kiddo on the minutes) in official lessons. That doesn’t include the extra learning that happens just because we’re an inquisitive family… and just think – that’s 67 hours of almost PURE learning/instruction time – not 5 minutes of learning and 20 minutes of trying to get in a quiet, straight line so we can go to the next classroom/lesson. With only 2 kiddos, my time is pretty evenly divided between them, so that’s nearly 34 hours of one-on-one instruction time that each of my boys has had over the last month. If they were in school-school, taking out 30 minutes for lunch and 15 for recess, that’s 6.5 hours of instruction time per day (and that’s not counting the 5 minute between-class bells – so it’s actually going to be even less time than that). Anyway – with 6.5 hours in her day, a teacher with 25 students (the ratio at my kids’ former school) can give each child, at most, 26 minutes of her time per day. Over a week, that would be a whopping 1.3 hours per week; 7.8 hours per 6 weeks; 46.8 hours per school year. And that doesn’t include making lesson plans, keeping the “class” on-task, lining up, handling discipline issues, sick kids and emergencies, fire drills and other interruptions that plague the classroom teacher daily. Gee, based on that math, I could stop RIGHT NOW and my kids will have gotten almost as much time with their teacher as they would in school-school….
Seeing everything laid out like that is really reinforcing the idea that we made a good choice here. So… any friends out there who wanna make plans for next week since we’re out of school? 
Warmly,
~h
Our Homeschool Room
It’s FINALLY done! All in all, it didn’t take that long, really. A week of near-solid effort and I have the room that I envisioned (minus curtains and a rug that I haven yet to make/buy).
You can see the entire album with the before and after pictures on Photobucket.com here. I’m only going to post the after pictures here.
This is my desk. If you’re standing in the doorway, this is what you see.
This is the far corner. It used to have a bunch of boxes and things stored there, but now we have a chalkboard, white board and reading chair (rocker that I bought when I was pregnant with LittleBoyBlue). I also found that little easel at HEB for $19. It is a little small for my boys, but if they sit, then it will be just the right height for them to use. I figure that it will be perfect for art and for them to work on their nature journals.
This is LittleBoyBlue’s space. He and my husband are big fans of the Halo video games, so my son is thrilled to have Master Chief watching over him while he works.
This is PeaGreen’s desk. He is looking forward to filling the wall above his desk with samples of his work.
This is where the washer and dryer live, hidden behind the curtain. I anticipate being better able to get laundry accomplished since we’ll be in the same room with it every day!
So that’s our space. I’d love to implement workboxes, or a similar system in the near future. I am not sure if we’re ready for that just yet, but I do love the idea and the system seems to work for a lot of people. I saw a 13 pocket file folder thing that we might try as a “school on the go” type system.
I am so pleased with how the space turned out, and that I met my goal of finishing on time! I am normally such a procrastinator – I start out strong on projects (especially painting. Half the rooms in our house are halfway painted.) but fade once something else catches my attention and I rarely go back and finish the project. But I am super proud of myself for following through with this one.
Tomorrow is the big day! Wish me luck 
Warmly,
~h
Almost Ready!
I know that having a “room” for school in our house is a complete luxury. After seeing some of the spaces that other homeschooling families have carved out in their living rooms, kitchens or corners, I am both aware and very thankful that we have a home that allows a dedicated space for our educational endeavors.
I have transformed our laundry room/media/game room (which is a closed-in former garage) into our school room. Although truthfully, there was a lot of junk that ended up in that room, too. I’ve purged boxes and clothing and other stuff that we’ve held on to for no apparent reason. The space is really coming together!
I took a bit of inspiration from NicandBoy’s room – it’s one that I’ve seen referenced over and over again when I was looking for ideas, and no wonder – it’s great! My kids’ colors (LittleBoyBLUE and PeaGREEN) also needed to be represented, so I used all 3 colors – a bright orange for my space, a nice blue for LittleBoyBlue and a lovely shade of spring green for PeaGreen. Balanced with white in the “non-school” areas of the room (because it is still our laundry room, after all) and the bright colors in the school space are balanced with an almond/taupe shade that is neutral. I’ll add curtains (for the 2 windows) and a rug as soon as I find fabric that works and a rug that compliments.
We have a small wall painted with chalkboard paint, and I have another chalkboard that I will be hanging tomorrow. I have a whiteboard poster-board hung on the back of one of the doors, so we’re set for writing demonstrations on an alternative to plain, boring paper! I also have the big desk computer set up and will be bringing at least one, maybe two of my big bookcases in there for storage and to set up the kids’ library.
It’s so cool to see this all coming together! I can’t wait till tomorrow evening when (theoretically) it’s done!
Warmly,
~h
