Left overs that need to get on the blog

Here are a couple of things I've meant to put in other posts, or they just didn't fit in any other post so they get dumped here.

This is the children's favorite book about the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. The pictures are very child friends, as is the retelling of the stories. They like this book so much, I think they would be happy to get it for their birthdays or Christmas or something, so I highly recommend it.

sorry it's on its side like that.

This a is an interesting book about Alexander the Great, whom we learned a little about last week. We also read two or three other books about him. One was comic book style, which Abby didn't like. One was from the series, "you wouldn't want to be..." and in this case, a soldier in Alexander the Great's army. And I can't remember the third one, if indeed their actually was a third one. In any case, this book, although I doubt some of the historical accuracy of it, has beautiful pictures and I think it was the kid's favorite.

I've mentioned that each day Joshua has a spelling assignment. Well, he is an awful speller. I know the kids in the public school do spelling tests each week in 1st grade, but I don't know if I could put myself through that, so instead, when Joshua and I notice he is struggle with a certain word, as in he consistently spells in incorrectly, we put it up on the wall, like this. And in the case of words like should, could, would, because "would" was actually the hard word, I just put up the "word family" so he could see all these words are spelled similarly. I think in the future, like maybe over the summer, we will do spelling tests with words grouped alike, such as for one or two weeks, focus on past tense words with the -ed ending, since that is sometimes hard. You know, he forgets the e or puts on a t instead. Stuff like that.

Abigail has developed an interest in drawing fairies. The green one is named Rasely (pronounced Rozzelee) and it is her birthday today. I didn't catch the names or backgrounds of the other fairies pictured. :)

And this is a drawing Joshua made a week or two ago when he was practicing drawing the gods and goddesses and black attic pottery. It is especially fun when the kids use their free time to continue learning about/showing interest in what they are learning about in "school."

Preschool - the long A sound and "this little piggy"

I taught/hosted preschool last week. Our themes were the long A sounds, as in ape, apron, apricot, and the nursery rhyme, "this little piggy" as in this little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home.

On day one we focused an our sound. Phoneme, if you want to get technical. We talked about how the letter A can make more than one sound, as this was confusing to some (one) of the children. I think he had maybe seen this youtube video one too many times (hee hee). Actually, he was quoting the video so the I suppose I could have omitted the "maybe" in that last sentence.  Anyway, then we worked on a couple of worksheets to make a letter A (long A) sound book. We did about half of the book before snack and finished the book after snack. Other than that we played.

But for snack we used graaaaapes (long A exaggerated there) and cubes of cheese and toothpicks to make aaaaaliens. This was the most fun. What kid doesn't like to play with their food.

This one was mine!

On day two we focused on the nursery rhyme "this little piggy." We did a little role play where each kid got to hold up a prop and hold it high when we said their part of the rhyme. The shopping basked for the pig at the market, house keys for the pig who stayed home, a plastic piece of steak for the pig who had roast beef (these kids don't know what actual roast beef is anyway) and an empty bowl the pig who had none, and the piggy who said wee wee wee all the way home had a little whistle he or she could blow. We did that about 3 times. Then we read a book called "this little piggy" but after the original nursery rhyme, and little toes to illustrate the piggies, the next page says, BUT on the other foot... this little piggy dug dancing, this little piggy sold hot dogs, this little piggy....  Then the first foot of piggies gets jealous so one of them has a costume party, and another plays the drums. At the end all the piggies are tired out so she go through a bedtime routine (this little piggy reads stories) until they all fall asleep. This is one of the cutest and most fun little books I have seen in a long time. Love it.

Then we went upstairs and for snack we ate pigs in a blanket (hot dogs baked with crescent roll around them. But I had forgot to preheat the oven so we stalled by reading another book about piggies with manners and piggies without, which was dragged out as long as possible with intermittent discussions on proper etiquette and general how-not-to-annoy-your-parents tips from myself. More stalling was involved but eventually the pigs in a blanket were done and everyone loved them... of course.

Our second activity was to make little piggy finger puppets out of pipe cleaners. Each child made five so they could tell the story to their moms. It was interesting to me, as they retold the rhyme to their mothers, that some of these children had never heard this rhyme before. It shouldn't have come as such a shock because I'm not sure my children knew it before either, but since I knew the rhyme and have all my life, I guess I figured all kids should know it. My kids probably don't even know pat-a-cake. I have some real back up work to do!

The yellow and red puppet were mine and the orange one is Lukas's. That's a pretty good face drawn on there for a 2 year old boy! I'm was impressed.

Anyway, preschool was a success and I am glad I'm done for another 6 weeks. My next assignment is the letter P, popcorn, and peas porridge hot. That should be lots of fun too.

Grandpa Arnold

My last living grandparent passed away on December 27th, 2013. This was my Grandpa Arnold, my dad's dad, who lived in Cupertino, California. My Aunt Duane put on a memorial for his this weekend in Saratoga, where he lived while he was raising his children, and my entire family on that side (a grand total of 6 of us if you include my mom and step-dad who aren't technically related) flew in from around the country to be there. It was the most wonderful memorial/funeral I have ever been too. Partly because it was for my grandpa, but partly because my aunt is so capable and wonderful and she did a perfect job.

She patterned it after an Irish Wake. Family and friends gathered together and visited, got to know each other, and shared stories of grandpa with each other. Then she welcomed everyone and we sat down and enjoyed a wonderful catered lunch. Afterwards she said a few words about her father and his life. Then she had a slide show presentation put together of photos from his boyhood through his entire life. It was about 15 minutes long and set to music, and that coupled with her biographical sketch was a wonderful tribute to his life. Then those who wished to share a story or memory of grandpa could have a microphone passed to them and share just for a minute or two. Then it was over. It was wonderful, although I cried and at an Irish Wake it is supposed to be more a party than a funeral, but I couldn't help it because my relationship with my Grandpa was a huge part of my life and furthermore, it's ok to mourn the death of a loved one. But at least I did cry and blubber my way through the entire thing like I did with my grandmother 4 years ago. THAT was embarrassing. Anyway, here are some photos. (And did I mentioned it was about 75 degrees outside and SUNNY! It was hard to leave!)

The next is a photo of my sisters and my aunt, from left to right, Gwen, Aunt Duane, myself, Claire, and Catherine.

And then we went to Japan.

Actually it was the Hanoke Japanese Gardens, but still, it was kind of like being transported someone else entirely because one moment we were at a memorial, the next we were in historic downtown Saratoga (cute as could be, you should go if you ever get the chance) and the next moment we were in a beautiful Japanese garden with huge bamboo and a ponds and a fountain and waterfall, koi, tea plants, actual flowers blooming in the middle of January (!). Although it would probably have been more beautiful in the early summer - and if I wasn't still wearing my heels from the memorial - it was peaceful and a very interesting place to be.

This is a photo of my grandfather with all of his living descendents. It was taken last 4th of July in Santa Cruz, California.

P.S. And I've decided that when I die I am not having a funeral, but an Irish Wake and a graveside service. But to alleviate the stress of those preparing the wake, you will be required to RSVP. And you are all invited. You can tell stories about how I was too wordy in my blog but you loved me anyway, stuff like that.

Ancient Greece part 1 and Whales

I'm surprised, well kind of, that I didn't take more photos. I feel like we've been doing some really cool things. Oh well. Let's just get on with it.

We've been reading a lot of fun books on ancient Greece. Our plan of study goes something like this. 1. Trojan War/Odyssey/Illiad (this is quick and easy because we've already covered that by our fun reading. 2. Spart vs Athens and the concept of a city state and every day life. 3. Gods and goddesses, myths and stories. 4. Alexander the Great. 5. Architecture like the Parthenon and Columns. 6. Famous Greeks like Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Pythagorus, and other guys. 7. The Olympics!! (and just in time for the Sochi Winter Olympics, too!) And at the end I have a couple other things we can add if we want.   So far we've gotten half way through gods and goddesses. With all of our subjects we've also been working on lapbook pages, which the kids enjoy doing, but I've found they enjoy doing them a lot more when I am coloring and making a lapbook right along with them. So this unit I will have my very own lapbook. woohoo. I will photo a few of our favorite books later since we really have had some good ones. Abigail's favorite is about the first marathon!

Anyway, for related projects we made a Trojan Horse and some red and black pottery. The kids chose to decorate theirs in the black attic style, which was helpful since I had more red paint than black (black attic means the decoration is in black but the pot is red and red attic is the opposite).  Joshua had been practicing drawing his favorite gods and goddesses so he decided he would also decorate his pot/mug with the same drawings. Abigail and I followed his lead. We also added a key pattern to make our pots look somewhat authentic and more Greek.

 This is my pot (above and below) The top shows Hades in the underworld with his 3 headed dog, Cerebro, and a cyclops there off to the side. The bottom pictures shows Poseidon with his trident and a horse, he is said to have invented the horse (weird), and Zeus with his lightning bolt on Mt. Olympus next to their palace.

 Joshua's pot, shown also above and below. Above is Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, and then Hades is under the hill and I think that is the Parthenon to honor Athena standing on the hill. Below is Poseidon and his trident and Zeus and his lightning bolt.

 Abigail's, above and below. Abby had a hard time thinking of what she wanted to draw so I told her she didn't have to draw a god or goddess but maybe a flower or butterfly or something would be nice. So she started with this butterfly, above. Then, once her confidence was up, we remembered the story of Demeter and Persephone and Abigail decided to draw them. And a sun and two clouds.  I helped her out a bit with her key pattern up at the top of her pot.

We also read a lot of books about whales! I love whales. I've always loved whales. We did a fun little experiment illustrating how baleen works with pepper and toothbrushes, we practiced drawing whales by using a quick and easy step-by-step instruction found online (www.howtodrawanimals.net/how-to-draw-a-blue-whale and http://www.howtodrawanimals.net/how-to-draw-a-killer-whale) and I've posted our best drawings here (except Abigail's who is keeping her's safe in her room). And we also wrote books about whales, but I don't have any photos because Joshua wouldn't let me and Abigail's isn't quite done. The books were cute, though. The pages are cut out in the shape of a whale and there are three lines to write on a the bottom of each page and then the kids drew their own pictures at the top of the page. In fact, Abby's is so cute, I'm going to go find it right now and take the pictures of it even if it isn't quite done. She did such a great job writing her letters, even if she can't read what she wrote.

 Above and Below - Joshua tries to catch krill with "teeth" (his fingers) while Abigail shows how much more krill she can catch using baleen (the toothbrush).

 Above is Joshua's best drawings of whales. He's got in there a blue whale, a killer whale, a squid, an octopus, a few jellyfish,  a star fish, a few sea sponges, and a sea anemone. Below is my picture, Joshua named it for me.

I know that is hard to read, especially because she wrote it in German, but the translation is "Once there was a whale named Afely. She lived with her family. It was a happy family."

Joshua hates writing. He even hates writing down the answers to his math problems. I'm slowly learning what I can do to help him but it is a slow process. I've learned that boys often are not good at writing and don't like it in the early years because their fine motor skills just aren't as developed, so I'm not worried about him or upset or anything, just trying to figure out how I can help him. The first thing I've done is play more math games, instead of doing more math work in his math book. We did that with the flash cards and the simple addition problems by making a matching game out of it. In his book recently they have introduced multiplication. I seems as though they are more interested in the kids learning the concept and less into memorizing the multiplication tables. I feel it is quite young for the kids to do that anyway, so we're not going to memorize those until 3rd grade, but anyway. So to help Joshua get the concept I wrote 0 x 1 through 5 x 5 on little sheets of paper and then folded them all up and put them in a bowl. As Joshua pulled out a multiplication problem he would then have to show me what it meant by using unifix cubes. For example, three groups of two each. Or two groups of four each. Joshua loved this game and would go through all the slips of paper and then want to go through all of them again. It was easy enough that even Abigail could play, and she did and had fun.

And finally, we decorated our window with snowflakes in honor of January. It's really cold.

Sorry for the horrible picture. Until next time, which will hopefully be not to long away.

A Long Time Ago in a Month called December

Here are a few things we did in December for home school that I didn't have the energy to post last month. I also don't have a ton of excitement for elaborating too much about our activities in this post, so again it will be mostly pictures.  BUT, I am very exciting for the rest of the year. Christmas break came just at the right time. I think we all needed it. Now we are ready to go. We've got a month of ancient Greece, the Mayans and Aztecs, Ancient China, India, and Africa, another month of ancient Rome, and then a quick Byzantine Empire and wrap up and then we are already done with the school year! I can hardly believe it. Joshua's reading has jumped up to the next level. I'm checking out the advanced early readers at the library for him. We're going to move through the rest of his second semester 1st grade math book and then spend the rest of the time (and the summer) an supplements to really solidify these basic concepts. We've got about 4 more weeks of animals before we move onto the human body for 6 weeks and then plants for the remaining 10 - just in time for the spring planting. Joshua's already staked out his personal garden plot (unfortunately it is right in the middle of our lawn so there will need to be a little negotiating there).  And I am excited to start teaching Abigail to read next month. I think she is ready now. Lukas is excited for "potty trains" and he often reminds me that when he doesn't have diapers anymore and he uses the potty he gets a chocolate chip. And Kaleb can finally pull himself up to a stand! I know, at 13 1/2 months. He's definitely a Mock. My goal for him is to have him walking by the time he enters nursery... in 5 months. I hope he's on board with my timetable.  Anyway, back to December.

Math - addition flash cards up to 18
I felt Joshua needed more drilling with his basic addition so we used these flash cards everyday and we came up with a really fun matching game - You'd pick something like the number 15 and then you got to pick up every card that equaled 15.

Stonehenge - We weren't totally into this and the books weren't exactly at the kid's level but we still learned about the different kind of stones they used and how nobody really knows anything about it. And then we made our own out of play dough.

This is the destruction of Stonehenge in fast forward

Giraffes - Our books were really good, but no offense to giraffe lovers, giraffes are kind of boring. We made a strip of orange/brown paper as long as the longest giraffe ever recorded and displayed it on our ceiling... until it fell down because scotch tape isn't really that good at holding giraffes up on the ceiling.

Backyard Birds - the kids LOVED this activity. We checked out a bunch of guide books and made bird feeders out of pine cones, peanut butter, and bird seed. Then we hung them up in locations that we could look at from the bedroom windows and waited. The kids set up stations in their rooms, each with a guide book, some paper, crayons, and pencils. Anytime they would see a bird (I mean, ANYTIME) they would run to their stations and sketch it and then try and look it up in the guide book. They recorded some interesting finds, however all I've seen around lately are our doves that harass the neighbor's walnut tree. It took a few weeks but we finally got some takers on the bird feeders. The kids loved their stations so much that I just barely returned a guide book to the library, majorly overdue at this point, and Joshua was still complaining because he wasn't done with it yet. Still, it was kind of magical to show the kids when the birds came and actually ate from their feeders.

view from Joshua's window

View from Abigail's window - I guess you would only see the feeders if you knew where to look - but I promise, they're hanging out there.

 

 

 

The Food Storage Room. In other learning activity related news, Joshua has been helping a lot with our first in-home-home-improvement project. I didn't get a photo of the before picture, but here are a couple photos of the work in progress. First Derek took all our food storage OUT, then he tore down all the built in shelves, next his dad helped do all the electrical work, and then his brother came out and they worked on all the insulation (which takes a long time when you decide to DOUBLE insulate everything) and then they finally started the drywalling. Now Derek is working on mudding, then he will paint, then put in a tongue and groove wood ceiling, stain that, and add carpet. I'm sure I've left out a step. And I know you are thinking, this is only a food storage room that nobody is going to see (actually we use it almost every day - or we did before the project started) but this has been a fun project, a learning experience, and wonderful time for Derek, his dad, and brother to spend time together. Joshua and Lukas have also been right in the thick of it. And so far we are in need of only one tetnis shot! In the end, the room will be so nice, we might make it another bedroom. Just kidding. No matter how many times Derek brings it up, I remind him children should not sleep in closets!

still tearing out

new lights and a new switch and outlet, double insulated, and partly drywalled.

Last but not least - This doesn't happen very often so I took a picture. Sometimes it's fun to have to share a room. (Actually it's mostly fun until you are a teenager.) There are 5 pillows on that bed! I only have three kids who use pillows but it isn't unusual to find 10 pillows downstairs, all being used.