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Category Archives: learning at home

Sep 5 2011

How We Workbox ~ Part 3 (Ditching the Plan)

by Toni

If you missed Part 1 of this series you can find it here.

Don’t know what workboxes are? Check out this link.

In July I began my planning for the 2011-12 school year but before I started searching for curriculum I attempted an honest assessment of the previous year. What had worked and what hadn’t. I applied the 80/20 rule to help me focus on what deserved our time and what was just fluff.

Resetting tags and schedule strips, creating and maintaining learning centers and waiting stations, as well as being a slave to the notion that all 12 boxes must be filled every day had consumed most of my time. In addition to these I realized that my detail oriented personality had been a significant part of the planning time problem.

What?!? I was part of the problem? Surely not!

But it was true. I had wanted every detail of every box planned out in advance for the entire week. Then when interruptions happened ~ as they inevitably would ~ my whole plan had to be completely re-vamped before we could continue. Translated that meant I spent a lot more time planning than doing. I even spent some time preparing lessons that we never used ~ more time wasted. And to top it all off, the combinations of lessons I planned were complicated. (book 1 on Monday, book 2 on Tuesday, back to book 1on Wednesday, project on Thursday, back to book 2 on Friday) This meant that most every box had to be refilled from scratch every day.

What I needed were books that planned themselves: base materials that would remain in the boxes for long periods of time. That would eliminate all the switching and refilling. But what about the fun?! The same books day after day would get boring.

What I really needed were books that wouldn’t get boring because we’d only use them as written when I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare special projects but otherwise we would use them as jumping off points for further exploration.

Okay, so now I’d established that I needed non-boring curriculum that planned itself, which sounds like crazy talk but actually it was an epiphany. A strange little stirring began in my soul and let me tell you that even though this post is supposed to be about workboxes it’s also about God and about the every day minutia of our lives that He uses to speak to us. My workboxes were in trouble because I planned way too much. I hadn’t yet discovered a way to be flexible and follow the flow of each day. My life was in the exact same situation.

Scripture directs us to acknowledge God in “all our ways” and then it goes on to say that if we do that “He will direct our paths” but this whole problem I had of planning every detail, it totally cut God out of the picture. It said, “Don’t worry, Lord. I’ll cut this path myself. Why don’t you go find someone who really needs your help? I’m good here.” But in reality, I wasn’t good ~ far from it. Because while the paths we cut ourselves may seem okay, God’s paths are always better.

So when I had this epiphany about non-boring curriculum that planned itself for our workboxes I heard that still small voice say, “You need that for your life too.” And I knew exactly what He meant. The Bible would be my base but the part that would keep life interesting and make it fun was acknowledging God and being flexible enough to follow His voice.

Like all epiphanies the idea came before the practice and in regards to the whole “minimal planning” idea I needed a LOT of practice and it started with the workboxes.

to be continued ….

Categories: faith, learning at home, workboxes | No Comments »

Sep 4 2011

Artist Study ~ Claude Monet

by Toni

I love, love the Impressionists. Looking at their paintings always makes me feel peaceful and happy; so I was delighted this week to continue our Impressionism study with Claude Monet. Last time we pulled a lot of resources from the computer but this week I was feeling more hands on so mostly we looked at books from the library.

(clicking the image will re-direct you to Amazon)

All of these were wonderful books but our favorite thing was watching an animated version of Linnea in Monet’s Garden on Netflix. It starts out a bit slow and I could tell the children were simply watching because I asked it, not because they wanted to. Brother sat on the floor flipping through the stack of other Monet books. Sister languished over the back of the couch. But somewhere around minute 5 they were hooked.

“Look, Mom!” Brother says, pointing to a picture in his book, “That’s the one they’re talking about.”

“Is that a real place?!” Sister asks when presented with a photograph of the actual garden.

“Yes. And you can actually visit it.”

“Wow! Really?!” Since so many of her own pictures come from books or her imagination I don’t think she had previously made the connection between Monet’s art and the real beauty that he copied.

As a side note I will mention that if you don’t subscribe to Netflix already you should consider it. They don’t always have the most popular new releases for instant viewing but there is a wealth of educational materials available.

For our art projects this year we are mainly working from the book Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters by MaryAnn F. Kohl and Kim Solga but since the activity this week called for painting outdoors (which Monet would have loved).and since we are STILL in a heat advisory I found a replacement book with and INDOOR activity.

So many of Monet’s paintings incorporate the use of reflections on water so our project this week explored that concept. First, we covered the bottom half of a light blue sheet of construction paper with a darker color of blue construction paper, gluing the two together.

The little board book you see is one I picked up for Dora so she would have an art book too. She loves to be just like the big kids.

After gluing we used colored chalk to draw an outdoor scene on the light blue paper.

We lightly misted the drawing with water and folded it over onto the other half.

A coin rubbed across the back helped transfer the image.

After the paper had dried we had our own art and its reflection. Not how Monet did it, I’m sure but fun nonetheless.

Brother’s Masterpiece

You will note that there are no pictures of Sister’s finished artwork. She was very displeased with her attempt and so crumpled up the paper and threw it on the floor. There was no point arguing with her about the quality of the work. She truly is an artist at heart. My saying her picture was good wouldn’t change her thoughts on it in the least. Still, I couldn’t have her throwing trash about.

“Sister.” I said sternly, “Is that what Monet would have done with artwork he didn’t like?”

“No, he would have burned it.”

“Well then??”

So that’s what she did.

Just because it’s not the lesson I planned doesn’t mean it wasn’t learning.

Categories: Artist Study, learning at home | No Comments »

Sep 3 2011

How We Workbox ~ Part 2 (Change is Good)

by Toni

If you missed Part 1 of this series you can find it here.

Don’t know what workboxes are? Check out this link.

The schedule strips do exactly that. They are laminated strips of paper with velcro dots on them. To the dots the teacher applies schedule tags in the order she wants the tasks completed. Schedule tags could be a box number, a learning center task, some sort of chore (like “feed the dog”) or even a random exercise (do 10 jumping jacks) (examples here and here) The idea is that they allow you to order much more than just your school day and that the tasks you schedule break up the monotony of only doing boxes. Great concept so I made a set of strips for each child along with all the appropriate tags I could think of. In the beginning, they did help order the day. The children faithfully moved tags from strip to workbox to a “completed” pile for about three weeks. Then I noticed that only about half of the tags were being moved each day and then a couple and then none at all. Having acclimated to the new system the children, of their own accord, dropped what was no longer useful. I started to be upset. I had spent a lot of time cutting out those little tags. Besides the system said you should use them. Leaving them out wasn’t “right”, was it? Then I took a reality check and realized the answer was, “Yes. It was right, for us.” Change #1 ~ complete.

Change #2 ~ The end of my perfectly perfect school room.

You can actually do workboxes just about anywhere (Nowadays we sometimes even take ours outside.) But in her e-book Sue Patrick does place some emphasis on providing a particular work space for each child. Because all the materials are readily available, the child should not stray from that work space and that will help him/her remain focused on the task at hand. In theory, a good idea.

His space.

Her space.

In reality, these pictures show our school room in the cleanest, most uncluttered state it has ever been or ever will be because each day after school time was over this room reverted back to its original purpose(s): toy playing/game playing/tv watching room. This meant that in addition to refilling boxes each evening I had to do a massive cleanup of the space to prepare for the next day OR motivate the children to do a massive cleanup OR have school the following day in a pit of chaos. More often than not the lot fell to choice #3 and let me tell you a pit of chaos does NOT promote focus on the task at hand. So I let go of my notion that school should have a room and we moved downstairs to the very sparse, uncluttered and generally clean dining room table. An unexpected and delightful side effect of this move was that now I could complete simple tasks like throwing in a load of laundry or preheating the stove for lunch without going “all the way” downstairs. A good thing since any mother knows leaving a room for more than 5 minutes is an open invitation to bicker with your sibling.

The new space ~ Love the light!

The last change happened after the first of the year. Baby Z arrived at the end of November. Then there was Christmas and sometime in January it became obvious that school needed to get back in gear or we’d never finish. Unfortunately, as I had predicted, there was even less time to plan than before. There was no way I could come up with material for 12 boxes …for two children … every night. So I didn’t. We dropped down to 6 boxes most days and only 3 or 4 on others. In those boxes I placed workbooks that the kids could do on their own with consistently simple instructions (like complete 1 page per day), or a book they could read on their own with consistently simple instructions (like read 1 chapter per day), or direction to use a computer program on their own with consistently simple instructions (like visit 1 lesson per day). I’m guessing you’ll have picked up on the pattern by now. In this manner, nightly planning went from 1 hour plus to 10 minutes and we finished out our year (making up for lost months) about mid-July. It wasn’t pretty. There were far more worksheets than I liked but they did the work … daily. They did it well and without complaint. Even with all these tweaks the workbox system still worked. The next question was how to take this knowledge and add back in some fun.

to be continued …

Categories: learning at home, sanity savers, workboxes | No Comments »

Sep 2 2011

How We Workbox ~ Part 1 (The Way We Started)

by Toni

We’ve been homeschooling for about 4 years now. At first it was just Sister then, last year Brother joined the mix. At that time we had a one year old in the house and were expecting a fourth. Life was crazy! Homeschooling was hard and inconsistent at best. When we did “do school” it wasn’t the fun stuff like science experiments, PE games or art: it was worksheets because worksheets are easy to plan. Unfortunately, they do not inspire a love of learning. I knew that something had to be done so I went on a quest; reading about all sorts of methods and systems and that’s when I stumbled upon Sue Patrick.

Sue had developed this system that could be used with any curriculum and any age. She claimed that it made the day flow better, that it made planning easier and that it allowed kids to be mostly independent during school time. I bought the e-book and read dozens of blogs on the subject and then jumped on board.

The idea is that each child has 12 numbered boxes. Divided among each of the boxes are their assignments for the day AND all the supplies needed to complete those assignments. For example, a young child’s box might contain a color by number sheet. It would also contain a box of crayons. Or a box with cut and paste work would contain scissors and glue as well as the necessary papers.

This is what Sister’s filled workboxes looked like when we started.

And Brother’s

In addition to the simple rule of always providing the correct supplies. There are other important nuances.

**The boxes are numbered because it is expected that the child will work them IN ORDER. This allows you as the teacher to follow a not so favorite subject with a favorite one and by so doing keep your child motivated.

**There must be some visual cue so the child can easily look and see which boxes are complete and which are left. The original system calls for removing completed boxes from the shelf altogether. We have tweaked this a bit and use removable tags.

**Boxes are meant to be worked independently UNLESS otherwise specified by a “work with mom” tag.

Sue’s original system incorporates more than just seat work for the day. She adds in learning centers, games, chores etc. so she also uses what she calls “schedule strips”.

(in this photo you can see Brother’s yellow schedule strip hanging from the wall.)

Following the system to the letter worked great! …. at first. The kids had a clear understanding of what was expected each day. The whining and complaining became magically almost non-existent. They could continue working even when I was distracted by my littlest and consequently we were typically finished with seatwork by noon and often much earlier. I loved it. They loved it. But oh, the planning time it required.

I spent about an hour each night filling boxes for the next day, printing out or writing instruction sheets and resetting the schedule strips. This time was significantly increased if I wanted to add in any special activities or make/change the learning centers.

Sister at our “Sign Language Learning Center”

The system was great but for me it was not sustainable. I had another little on the way. Sleep was already a precious commodity. I needed something that didn’t require so much daily care and feeding. In addition, while I wanted my kids to be able to work independently, I also wanted to work with them when I was not changing diapers or picking up toddler messes. So we started making changes.

to be continued ….

Categories: learning at home, sanity savers, workboxes | 6 Comments »

Aug 31 2011

Simple Family Football

by Toni

In the words of Sister, “We’re not really a sporty kind of family.” But we are trying to remedy that this year. Will found a PE curriculum that fits us just right because it’s written by a mom who as a child experienced all the not fun parts of phys. ed. and took those out of her book. We do fun stretches, fun games, fun challenges and on top of all that we’re learning the basics about a variety of sports. This week’s sport is Football. (That’s American football not to be confused with soccer.) I knew I wanted us to play a version somehow but there are only two kids big enough to play and we are in a heat advisory (over 100 degrees) all this week. Also, I was not about to allow football throwing in the house so we came up with something else.

Using a tape measure and some white electrical tape we turned our large dining room table into a football field. The kids did the measuring, dividing and number writing and we called that math for the day.

marking the yard lines

up one side

and down the other.

Finished!

Our table is just shy of 10 feet long so for simplicity’s sake we didn’t measure out the end zones. Nor did we do all the hash marks for single yards. Despite these discrepancies and, you know, the fact that it was a table …. indoors, we managed to make our little game work.

Our other supplies included two dice, two different colored rolls of tape (to use as markers) and an origami football that Sister made by following this video.

Oh, and we also referenced the book Football for Fun! by Kenn Goin because we know nothing about football and it seemed like a good idea to have a reference.

In case you’d like to play, Simple Family Football works likes this.

1. There is a coin toss. The winner chooses to Kick or Receive first.

2. There is a kickoff. The “football” is launched from the 10 yard line (instead of the customary 30).

3. The Offense “catches” the ball where ever it lands. This is the first line of scrimmage.

4. The Offense launches the ball from the line of scrimmage. The Defense rolls a die to determine what happened:

** A roll of 1 or 6 means the pass/run is good and the landing spot becomes the new line of scrimmage.

** A roll of 2 means the Offense fumbled the ball but kept possession (move the ball back 10 yards from where it landed.)

** A roll of 3 means the Offense fumbled the ball and lost possession (play proceeds from the last line of scrimmage.)

** A roll of 4 means the ball was intercepted (the landing spot is the new line of scrimmage.)

** A roll of 5 means there was a flag on the play. The Offense rolls the second die to determine who gets a 10 yard penalty. (an even number and the Offense gets the penalty, odd and the penalty goes to the Defense.)

5. Using this method, play continues until the someone scores a touchdown. Then the scoring team chooses to either Kick a Field Goal for the extra point or try for a 2 Point Conversion. Again the ball is launched and the Defense rolls to determine the outcome.

** The Field Goal is good if any number BUT a 1 or 6 is rolled.

** The 2 Point Conversion is successful ONLY if a 1 or 6 is rolled.

6. Just as in real football there is a kickoff after each score.

7. We timed our game @ 30 minutes with a break at half-time to put the little kids down for their nap.

** I also made two special rules at the beginning that we discussed but never actually used.

1. The Offense may choose to attempt a Field Goal anytime they are between the 20 yard line and the End Zone.

2. The Offense may also choose to Punt if the situation seems hopeless. We never used this one because play moved pretty quickly and even though we (kind of) kept track of downs it was rare that anyone ever got past a second down.

There you have it: Not so Simple indoor, on the table Family Football.

Let us know if you play. Maybe we could start a league. Smile

Categories: games 'n activities, learning at home | 1 Comment »

Aug 22 2011

A Story About Stickers

by Toni

Dora loves stickers! See?

So when I saw these in Target’s dollar section, I knew they were an activity waiting to happen.

I printed out this simple alphabet page.

handed her the stickers,

and got out of the way.

Here’s where she finally turned to me and said, “I don wan any more.”

And I say, “Okay.”

The End.

(This is not only fun alphabet practice but stickers are great for practicing fine motor skills. Unfortunately, they can become quite frustrating while those skills are still developing. To help limit frustration I often take off all the “border sticky” and then hand Dora the sheet. In most cases this makes it a lot easier for her to get the actual stickers off.)

Categories: games 'n activities, learning at home | No Comments »

Aug 19 2011

MemoRing–2 Timothy 1:7

by Toni

I made one of these a while back for Psalm 23 and it turned out so well I decided to make another. This time the verse is quite a bit shorter but completely apropos. Brother had a little freak-out session a couple of nights ago over a ~~scary~~ Scarry show he’d watched so I thought we’d better focus on some “no fear” verses.

*all images taken (or created) from MS Word clipart.

Categories: faith, learning at home | No Comments »

Aug 18 2011

Balcony Math

by Toni

My recent post on Staircase Math triggered a memory from this past February. That would be the very same February that snow fell continuously on our state for days and days. Those would be the same days and days that we spent indoors with 4 children ~ four very bored children. So one day when tensions were especially high I pulled out Dora’s basket of Duplo blocks and we threw them from the balcony. Amazing how much stress throwing things can relieve. Anyway, BEFORE we started throwing things, I placed some bins on the floor below.

in the bins I placed numbers for scoring

Each person was assigned a specific block color and could drop as many blocks as they wanted as fast or as slow as they wanted. Aiming, of course, for the bins below.

When the basket was empty, each child was responsible for adding up their own score. (In this instance it was easy because scoring was all about counting by 5’s or 10’s but you could do 2’s or 3’s or 12’s or whatever.)

Finally, I sent them downstairs to gather all the blocks and they came up to do it again… and again … and again.

Categories: learning at home, sanity savers | 1 Comment »

Aug 16 2011

Staircase Math

by Toni

Sister & Brother like math and I want to keep it that way so I’m always looking for fun, tactile ways to explore new concepts. This works mostly but I was running into trouble when it came time to review plain ol’ math facts. Repetitive worksheets can get pretty boring but nearly every one in their math books has an entire section devoted to simply answering math facts. Add in that neither child is especially keen on writing and their love of math was heading downhill fast. Flashcards to the rescue … at least for now.

Each day I pick out flashcards that match the exact problems on their respective worksheet and send them to the top of the stairs. A correct answer allows them to take a step down and an incorrect one sends them up one. We have a rather long staircase so this works pretty well. You could also do it outside on the lawn and just have them step forward or back. When they get to the bottom they are done. As they get better I may start sending them all the way to the top for a correct answer or I may add in a time limit. There are a lot of possible variations and hopefully, by the time we run through them all 9+7 will be as easy as 1+1.

Categories: learning at home | 1 Comment »

Aug 10 2011

Artist Study–Edouard Manet

by Toni

Last year the subject of art didn’t receive a lot of attention. Sure we did projects here and there. Sister even participated, for a time, in an actual art class. But the hassle of pulling out art supplies when there was already so much baby paraphernalia around just didn’t appeal to me and consequently, art fell by the wayside despite good intentions.

This year I’m trying to be more intentional because the kids love art. They like learning about the artists and talking about the paintings and they love the doing of art. Since I have much less time to plan elaborate projects, this year we are working from the book, Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters by MaryAnn F. Kohl and Kim Solga. The idea of this book captured me as soon as I saw it. The authors provide a bit of background on a given artist and then present a simple project in the style of that artist. Such artistic styles as Renaissance, Romantic, Impressionist, Abstract, and Surrealist are represented along with a number of others and introduced, basically, in order of their occurrence in history. We will tackle a new artist and project every third week and at this rate there is more than enough material for three school years worth of study. Woohoo! Art planning done for the next 3 years.

This week we discovered Edouard Manet ~ our first in a series of impressionists. (The book doesn’t begin with the impressionists, in fact it’s chronological from the 1300’s forward, but the advent of Impressionism better matched where we are in history so I chose to start there.) Early in the week we talked about Manet himself and looked at a few of his paintings online. The Google Art Project is awesome for this sort of thing because you can zoom in on many of the paintings and really get a sense of brushstrokes and color. The two we looked at were In the Conservatory and The House at Rueil.

To see a greater variety of Manet artwork we looked here; focusing especially on his still life paintings since that is what our project would be based on.

Today was the day for actual artwork: Still-Life in Melted Crayon. Do to the “melted” nature of this project I chose to wait until the Littles were sleeping before proceeding though in the future I plan to include them as much as possible.

First I set up some still-life arrangements – (Actually, the first thing I did is cover my table in plastic.)

Unfortunately, real fruit was not available today. Many thanks to Dora who let me raid her play kitchen for replacements.

Classic “Puppy on books” arrangement. What’s that you say? It’s not a classic? Hmm, you’re probably not a “Dogs Playing Poker” fan either.

Next, we broke crayons into a muffin tin and placed them in the oven to melt. (The book said to use old broken crayons but we already used all ours up this summer on a different project so I got a new box of 24.) It made waaay more paint than we actually needed so afterwards we let it cool and will store it away for another day. For painting rocks, perhaps?

Fortunately, we had 12 (one for each color) cheap brushes from watercolor kits long since used up. If you don’t have this many then q-tips would make a good substitute.

Whatever you use be prepared to throw it out afterward or save it to do this project again. They won’t be good for much else.

We practiced our technique on plain paper before starting our actual paintings. I recommend using a heavyweight paper because I noticed later that the test papers began to curl. Oh, one more thing – that’s an electric griddle in the front there. We covered it with foil and placed our muffin tin on it to keep the wax melted while we worked.

The results: