Eclectic Parent

GEOGRAPHY
So D decided to put together the USA floor map puzzle again. This time only putting in states he’d been to. While some have been in quite a bit, others have only been driven through. None the less, pretty well traveled by 8, 6 and 4 - especially if you include Ireland and Mexico.

1    Alabama
2    Arizona
3    California
4    Colorado (not B)
5    Connecticut
6    Florida
7    Georgia
8    Illinois
9    Indiana
10    Kansas
11    Louisiana
12    Maryland
13    Massachusetts
14    Mississippi
15    Missouri
16    Nevada
17    New Jersey
18    New Mexico
19    New York
20    North Carolina
21    Ohio
22    Pennsylvania
23    South Carolina
24    Texas
25    Utah (not B)
26    Virgina
Washington, DC

Ireland (not C or B)
Mexico

SCIENCE
We started the day with little sprouts. We took a four kinds of dried beans and checked them out. Some were smooth, some bumpy, white, black, tan with brown spots. On most we could find a little spot where the inside of the bean showed through the hard shell. We split one to see the inside and the shell. Then we put them on a damp kitchen towel on a pizza pan. The kids journaled what they saw- D and C both wrote: Day 1 - Just beans, while B drew a picture. Then we covered them and put them in the sun.

We also  checked the cacti we’ve been growing from a kit. We had meant to check every day and keep track so we could say which day they grew on, but the package said 7 to 56 days and well, that’s just a tad bit long, which is why we switched to much quicker beans. But after ignoring them on a window sill for about two weeks, we have itty bitty cacti starting.

We also finally got our worms last weeks. Yup worms. We have had the Worm Vue Wonders kit for a while but finally sent off for the worms, dirt, alphalfa, etc.  According to their own blurb ‘teaches kids of all ages how worms move, eat, dig, recycle and much more’. Sounds good, right? It has a booklet with experiments, observations to make, and a guide to worms. Unfortunately the worms arrive pretty punch drunk from shipping. They say to give them 24 hours and then start. A day after putting ours in the tank, we couldn’t find them. The had dug their way down fom the top and just disappeared. A week later, we’ve done nothing but look at rich, dark brown soil. Next step . . . garden store to purchase earth worms

SOCIAL STUDIES
D, C and I also read most of the first chapter of The First Americans. Only most of the first chapter because while it is written for children, it is not written down to them and is very information dense. We discussed the ice age, woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers, atlatl and how it would make your spear go further,hunter gatherers vs farming, why you couldn’t carry all your food with you and more. So about 3/4 of a chapter and a whole lot of discussion.

BOOKS
We are several days into two chapter books. We aim for 2 chapters a night. C is most of the way through The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. He was really enjoying it at first, but it’s getting a little long for him now; this is his first chapter book. The last two nights we’ve read one chapter of Mouse and a picture book. We have a pretty good cat collection at home and our last trip to the library yielded even more. Today it was Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton.

D and I reading The Great Cape Rescue by Phyllis Shalant. Regular, plain old boys getting to be superheros - super cool. He loves the superhero aspect but doesn’t understand a lot of the anti-school attitude, bullying, and name calling. Usually he has a couple books going at the same time but with this one, everytime it’s reading time, he wants more chapters.

B has about a dozen books read to her a day, while the boys go for one or two. She’s currently enamored with Fancy Nancy - obsessed some might say. We’ve been reading Fancy Nancy and Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy, both by Jane O’Connor. If you’ve never ready any Fancy Nancy, I highly recommend her - especially if you have a tiara-wearing, jemstone-encrusted, fluffy-clothes wearing princess. While Nancy may enjoy being quite fancy, she has a fabulous vocabulary she shares with readers. Our newest Nancy book, Fancy Nancy and the Boy from Paris, is one that D reads to her.

HOW’S THIS DIFFERENT FROM SCHOOL?
So, how is this different from school? All of it except the social studies was their idea and they weren’t against the social studies when I suggested it. Also it only takes 5 or 10 minutes for most of what we do and it’s scattered throughout the day. In between they build impregnable lego fortresses, feed and rock baby dolls, write in spider letters, watch tv and climb the walls. And unlike a teacher who expects them to have a certain body of knowledge and experience based on age or grade, I can remind them that we’ve seen woolly mammoths and saber tooth tigers at the dinosaur museum (American Museum of Natural History). Might we eventually have a higher ratio of specfically learning stuff to play-learning? Possibly. But right now I only have one that is mandatory school age and play is everyone’s job.