Homeschool Mo

Preschool at Home–The Human Skeleton

2012-02-25T00:41:00.001-08:00

This week, Dora and I continued to look at the human body, this time focusing on the skeleton. We started off the week by reading two good books about the skeleton. The first was Jessica's X-Ray.

The book’s illustrations aren’t the best, but it includes several real x-rays in it. In addition to traditional X-rays, they cover MRI’s, CT Scans, and ultrasounds. I had no idea that the book covered ultrasounds, but it was so nice that it did, because the next day found us at Children’s Hospital getting an ultrasound of Dora’s kidneys! It was really great, because she knew exactly what to expect. The technician had never heard of the book, but was really impressed with Dora’s understanding of the what to expect.

I will warn you that if you decide to use this book, I personally found the MRI image a bit creepy, as you can see the person’s eyeballs. Dora was not afraid of it at all and she is very sensitive, so maybe it’s just me, but I felt I should give you all a head’s up that it might scare some children.

We also read the book Bones: Skeletons and How They Work. This book was aimed at somewhat older children and some of the pages scared her, so I ended up setting the book aside for right now. It looks like it will be an excellent book to come back to at a later date.

We had fun putting together this skeleton made from true-to-life human x rays. The photo at very top of this post is of the x-ray of the hand on our light table.

We didn’t get a to particular craft project this week, though, as always, Dora did lots of painting, coloring, collaging, and other art forms on her own. She has lost interest in the Child Size Masterpieces series of art matching cards (probably because she has maxed out all the cards that don’t require reading to do and hasn’t had any new cards to match for months). I even took the cards out of their folders and displayed them on easels in an effort to make them more enticing, but no such luck. So I brought out some books that I had left from Gohan. I have very few materials left from Gohan as I didn’t want to save many things for ten years. I only saved a select-few, very-special items. One of which was the Katie art series. This series of books is about a little girl named Katie, who frequently visits the art museum with her grandmother. Every time she is at the museum, she slips away from her grandmother and climbs into some of the paintings. Through her adventures in the paintings, children learn a about art history and appreciation. I had worried that the series would be a bit too advanced for Dora as Gohan was a few years older when I read them with him, but Dora loved the book I set out. I only set out Katie and the Mona Lisa and plan to set out one new book a week as long as Dora is interested in the series (or until we run out of books, whichever comes first).

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

I'm linking this post to The Play Academy at NurtureStore and…

DIY Bendy Fairies

2012-02-22T23:18:00.001-08:00

I found this great tutorial for making bendy dolls and I thought they would be a great step up for Dora in her small doll play. She currently has a dollhouse where the dolls only move at the waist and shoulders. I wanted her to be able to have her dolls be able to sit, hold onto things, etc. As Dora has recently been introduced to Tinkerbell movies, I also wanted more of a floral fairy look than the tutorial uses, so I used an artificial flower for the skirt and left the embroidery floss plain for the shirt. I also hot-glue gunned on some wings that I cut off from some artificial butterflies that I found on sale. Overall, I was happy with the end result, given that this was my first bendy doll, though I want to work on making better faces in the future and I’d like to hide the pipe cleaner in the hair better.

Later, I found a book from Klutz that offers some different approaches to making flower fairies. What I liked most about this book, however, is that you get tons of flowers with it. It is just one ring/petal for each flower, but that’s all you need for a skirt. So instead of spending a fortune on buying artificial flowers, you just buy this book and have enough flower rings/petals to make tons of flower fairies.

Disclosure: Some item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

Montessori Monday–Priming the Primroses

2012-02-20T23:30:00.001-08:00

Last week, while Dora’s kidneys were well and before she caught Gohan’s cold, we had a bout of mild weather. So we made a run to the nursery and stocked up on primroses. Dora picked out all the colors, dug the several holes, and planted many of the plants. She is very proud of how colorful our front yard looks. Now I just hope that we don’t get anymore snow!

I’m linking this post to:

Preschool at Home–The Human Body

2012-02-18T06:58:00.001-08:00

This week we studied the human body, focusing on the heart for Valentine’s Day and the kidneys so that Dora might understand a little bit about what has been making her so sick. We used See Inside Your Body, which kind of scared Dora at first, but by the end of the week, she was fine with all of the pictures except the muscles one. I really liked the number of lift-the-flaps the book has, I’m not sure if she would have been engaged by the book without them. I kept things simple and only read the main text and what was under each flap. I also gave her a real stethoscope. She has a couple of play ones for her doctor kit, but was very excited to get a real one and went around checking everyone’s hearts. The photo above is of her checking her own heart. If it isn’t obvious, she has started picking out her own clothes, and she loves mixing and matching prints! I have matured some as I have aged, so I am able to let her enjoy doing this, during this time when she can get so much joy from matching her favorite clothes without the self-consciousness that comes for most of us as we age. I wasn’t so mature with Secunda and Tertia and have always regretted suppressing their creativity in that aspect. I was fine with them mixing and matching at home, but always made them chose matching outfits if we went in public. Now, I could care less if people care about Dora’s wild combinations.

We also read The Valentine Bears, which is about a couple of bears who set their alarm clocks for February 14th, so that they can celebrate Valentine’s together. It was written by Even Bunting and illustrated by Jan Brett, so you’ve got an award winning duo there, but I didn’t feel that it was an award-winning book. I’m a bit of a cynic about Valentine’s Day, however, and I think that greatly altered my outlook. The older I get, the more I want to rebel against the holiday altogether.

Of course, we did one requisite Valentine’s Day craft. When Dora wasn’t looking, I colored a white heart on watercolor paper. Then I told her that if she painted the paper, my secret Valentine to her would be revealed. She started painting with the watercolors and could see the heart being revealed, but I finally had to guide her to paint on the outside more as she was about to rub a hole in the paper trying to get the paint to stick on the heart! She was so impressed, she had me do some other secret messages and I showed her how it was done then. I still had to work with her to get her to paint on the borders of the images more than trying to force the image to appear by painting heavily on the crayon resist part.

Though her kidney/bladder infection was controlled most of the week by antibiotics, she caught a bad cold from Gohan, so we did not go on any fieldtrips this week. We see the pediatrician on Monday, so will hopefully have more answers then.

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

I'm linking this post to The Play Academy at NurtureStore and…

Montessori Mondays–Language Trays

2012-02-14T01:09:00.001-08:00

Last week, I ended up setting out several trays to occupy Dora while my finger healed. One of the trays was what I call a “language tray”. I don’t know if these are actually a Montessori thing or not, but they seem like they should be and they use Montessori materials, so I am calling them Montessori. A lot of materials for teaching language are on paper - cards, lotto games, worksheets, matching puzzle pieces, etc., but Dora has made it very clear to me that she is only interested in truly hands-on learning. She has rejected all of the puzzles and lotto games, turned her nose up at flashcards and worksheets, and generally made it clear that paper is not useful to her for learning language skills (unless it is in the form of a book). At the same time, she evidences some of the problems with language that both Primo and Gohan struggled with at this age and they both ended up having language processing disorders. So I am trying to work a lot on language skills with her. Right now, I am trying to get her to map words using as many neural pathways as possible (i.e. an apple can be associated in the brain as a fruit, as something associated with the fall, as something red, as something roundish, as a type of pie, etc.). The more neural pathways a person uses to access language, the easier word retrieval is and the more fluent speech is. So first I made a go-togethers tray, with simple objects that go together (i.e. moon/sun, bat/ball). This tray proved to be a real challenge for her and I realized that I needed to step backwards a bit. So I made a categories tray instead, using four objects for each category and having three categories on each tray. She struggled a bit at first, but is getting the hang of it now.

For the objects, I simply used objects that I have in our alphabet box. I first read about alphabet boxes on Counting Coconuts, when Dora was about one-years-old. I knew as soon as I read about it, that I wanted to make one for her. So I have been collecting objects for over two years now and have a very extensive collection (we have many more objects than most alphabet boxes have, but I knew I wanted to use miniatures for other language activities, so I bought extra). Mari-Ann, of Counting Coconuts, does an excellent job of telling you how to set up an alphabet box and where you can get miniatures for your box, so if you are looking to set up your box, head on over there. My Boys’ Teacher at What DID We Do All Day? also has an excellent post about other ways to use your miniatures. After reading her post, I’m realizing that I need another storage box so that I can start working on blends and digraphs.

I also set out a basket of cheap bead necklaces to let her cut them up. She had already cut some of them and had started working on some of her nicer necklaces, so I was hoping that by isolating these beads with the scissors, she would stick to cutting only the cheap beads. I’m afraid that it didn’t work and neither did any of our attempts to talk with her about why she couldn’t cut some things up. She took the fact that she could cut these beads as permission to cut up anything and everything. When she started cutting up the pants she was wearing, we finally had to take the scissors away and put them up out of her reach for a while.

On another tray, I set out a metal inset with some paper, in hopes of enticing Dora to give the insets a try. It worked like a charm. She immediately started using the insets.

I also put out some tongs with bath dots and showed her how to tong marbles on to the dots. Though it did not present much of a challenge for her, she really enjoyed it, so I still have it out this week.

Finally, we did some cylinder work, putting the knobless cylinders in the knobbed cylinder blocks. Dora thought I had completely lost my mind when I first started trying to do this, but she quickly joined in (what she doesn’t realize is that I lost my mind a long time ago, so I don’t have anything left to lose).

How about you? Did you get in any Montessori work last week? I’m linking this post, as always, to Living Montessori Now, your source for Montessori inspiration 24 hours/day, 7 days/week!

Preschool @ Home–Sense of Taste

2012-02-11T02:20:00.001-08:00

Dora and I finished up looking at the five senses this week with studying the sense of taste. Ideally, I would have had Dora experiment with the Montessori tasting cups for this unit, but I knew that she would not have appreciated tasting extremely salty, bitter, or sour foods. Since she is so good about taking her various liquid meds, which she absolutely abhors, there was no way that I am going to pressure her to taste anything else that she does not like. So we went on a field trip to The Root Beer Store instead. I have been meaning to go there for ages and this proved to be a good excuse. It did not teach Dora about the various types of taste buds, but it did reinforce the idea of tasting things with our tongue and comparing various tastes. Plus, it was fun! Can you believe that they have 100+ types of root beer, not to mention all of the brands of root beer “cousins” that they carry (sarsaparilla, cream soda, ginger beer, etc.). If you are ever in the Seattle area, they have two stores and host root beer tastings on the weekend.I did have a craft project planned, but was not able to do it, because of the stupid splinter in my finger (read my previous post if you want to know exactly how dangerous splinters can be!). We read tons this week, but the the best book we read for this unit was Handa's Surprise, which was a really cute and funny book that taught Dora about some fruits that she has not tried yet. We also read Taste (Five Senses). We have really enjoyed this whole series. It teaches about all of the senses at a level that a preschooler can understand. I also really like the illustrations, which border on being Waldorfian (yes, I just made that word up, but it sure sounds so cool - it almost sounds like something out of Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica!).

Finally, we read the M&M math book, which I used to love when my older kids were younger, but hated this time around. I am now just much more aware about the fact that we don’t need things like candy to entice children to learn. I also am more sensitive to the nutritional ramifications of using candy in the learning environment. I had not actually planned to buy M&M’s, but Dora really wanted to try the exercises, so I broke down and bought some. She has made it clear that she feels we should have M&M’s every time we read the book, so I am going to discretely dispose of the book sometime this week.

We, of course, spent a lot of time playing with our new favorite toy (or I should really say MY new favorite toy), the light box. For starters, we played with some Valentine’s Day tic-tac-toe gel clings on the light box.

I also followed Play at Home Mom’s DIY instructions to set up a mirror exploration station for our light box.

By this morning, Dora’s new antibiotics were really kicking in, so she wanted to get out of the house. She specifically requested that we go to the Children’s Museum again. It was great to see her have so much more energy this week. She spent so much more time exploring things. We finally had to leave and she had only seen about half of the museum. Boy was she worn out tonight though! The one thing that she spent the most time on was, surprise, their light table! I guess light tables are kind of the new fad (or maybe they’re an old fad and I’m just really slow). I was very disappointed with the quality of the bulbs that the museum uses. You can see above that the light is very yellow and not very strong. They did have translucent magna tiles there, however, which we probably won’t be buying as they are just so expensive and I am not convinced that their learning/fun value equals their price.

Dora also spent a lot of time exploring the giant ball run and water table.

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

I'm linking this post to The Play Academy at NurtureStore and…

It Could Have Gone Better–Fairy Tree House

2012-02-09T22:28:00.001-08:00

Last weekend, I got it in my head that I was going to make Dora a fairy tree house. I was trying for one that looks like the above tree house from Magic Cabin, which actually is a kit that you assemble. I went out and bought a lot of supplies to build the thing. When I went to the craft stores to buy wood rounds, I had a real hard time finding them. It seems that the craft stores in my area don’t carry them, like they do where other bloggers live. Also, the few that I did find, were all extremely oval shaped, which I did not like. After I got home and sat down with some DIY instructions, I realized that none of the pieces that I had found were large enough to serve as a base. I also learned that working with wood that you find while hiking is a little more complicated than I realized. If you don’t want it to rot or have bugs, you need to treat it. After doing extensive research online, I concluded that there was no way I, personally, could do this project for less money than buying a professionally made one would cost. I would however, spend a lot more time and frustration if I did it myself. So I bagged everything up and returned it.

While buying the items, however, I got a small splinter in my middle finger on my right hand. It hurt like a dickens at the time, but I was able to remove it fairly easily. The next day, however, when I woke up, it was swollen, pussy, and extremely painful. I washed it, applied Neosporin, and kept it as clean as possible. As the week progressed, the skin seemed to heal, but my finger hurt more and more and swelled to the point that I could no longer bend it. So last night, I finally went to the doctor. They had to drain it (after giving me a numbing injection right into the site, ouch!) and put me on antibiotics. It ends up that they see a lot of patients for splinters, especially in the summer. Who knew!?!?! Not me, that’s for sure. I’ve had a lot of splinters in my 43 years and never had one do anything like this. This only took three days to go from a splinter to major infection, which is kind of scary. There was even discussion of the possibility of my losing my finger if not treated properly!!!!

Anyhoo, I felt that this story was a really good one for my new blog subtheme: “It could have gone better…” ‘Cuz let’s face it, this project definitely could have gone better. And it also is a very good example of why I am not much of a DIY person. Disaster stalks me everywhere I go in the DIY world.

If you are feeling brave or actually have some experience with working with wood, there are some DIY instructions for making play tree houses at (also, the last I read, these people managed to not only build these things, but still have all of their digits, so obviously they have some talent that I don’t):

Apartment Therapy:

Childhood 101:

Kinder Days:

The Great Backyard Bird Count 2012

2012-02-09T01:06:00.001-08:00

It’s that time again! The Great Backyard Bird Count will be running February 17 – 20 this year (at least in the USA, last year a blogging buddy pointed out that the date was different in the UK). They have a lot of fun bird watching prizes this year! "What is the Great Backyard Bird Count?" you ask. I’m glad you asked!

The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual four-day event that engages bird watchers of all ages in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are across the continent. Anyone can participate, from beginning bird watchers to experts. It takes as little as 15 minutes on one day, or you can count for as long as you like each day of the event. It’s free, fun, and easy—and it helps the birds.

"But, how do I participate?" you ask. You sure do have some good questions today!

1. Plan to count birds for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count. You can count for longer than that if you wish! Count birds in as many places and on as many days as you like—one day, two days, or all four days. Submit a separate checklist for each new day. You can also submit more than one checklist per day if you count in other locations on that day.
2. Count the greatest number of individuals of each species that you see together at any one time. You may find it helpful to print out your regional bird checklist to get an idea of the kinds of birds you're likely to see in your area in February. You could take note of the highest number of each species you see on this checklist.
3. When you're finished, enter your results through our web page. You'll see a button marked "Enter Your Checklists!" on the website home page beginning on the first day of the count. It will remain active until the deadline for data submission. (We'll let you know when that is for 2012.)

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Montessori Monday–Feeling Yucky, But Still Doing Some Fine Motor Work

2012-02-06T23:20:00.001-08:00

Dora is still not feeling up to par, so her energy level and patience with new activities have been a bit low. We’re not really sure what is wrong with her. It is beginning to look like she may have some sort of congenital defect of the urinary tract/kidneys. She has always had these off and on periods of running fevers and never really getting sick, but I thought she was just fighting off viruses. I even took her to the doctor a couple of times, but every time I got her there, she’d perk up and her fever would break, so I kind of just got used to it over time. She has always been what I have called, “high maintenance”, never seeming to be comfortable in her own skin. Now it appears, that she may have been fighting off kidney infections all her life. In early December, she had a fairly obvious bladder infection, so I took her to urgent care and she’s not been well since. At this point in time, she has had three documented bladder infections in the last eight weeks, all different bacterial strains. She has been on antibiotics almost non-stop for the entire period of time. Then in late December, she had a seizure, so we spent weeks trying to determine if she had a seizure disorder. At this point, it does not appear that she has one, but that she had a seizure as the result of another bladder infection that we did not know about at the time. The photo above is of her getting an EEG, which she did not enjoy. We just got the latest culture results back today and have an appointment in two weeks, where we will be figuring out with her pediatrician what steps to take now as far as further testing and seeing specialists goes.

She is not really laying around and still has periods of bouncing off the walls, but she also has periods when she sort of shuts down. In addition, she has started losing her patience with challenging things and will throw the offending work across the room. Also, as I mentioned last week, she just wants to stay home all day, every day. I am really trying to honor that wish. Being out and about is clearly not comfortable for her. She is needing to be at home with a lot of snuggle time and not stressed by the various sounds, sights, and smells of the outside world.

At home, she does stay fairly active, though with more sedate activities most of the time. She has really gotten interested with bead stringing all of a sudden.

She even went so far as to take some beads that we have for shape sorting and started stringing them on the leaf sticks from her Honey Bee Tree game. So I gave her some pipe cleaners and she really loved putting the beads on those.

She has also been working with scissors a lot. I made her some cutting strips and put stickers in between the lines. She enjoyed cutting those for one day, but has not expressed any interest since. She seems to prefer just exploring using the scissors in a variety of cutting patterns. She also has started cutting all of the cheapy beaded necklaces that we have into individual beads (the necklaces are like the ones people throw at Mardi Gras). It is no fun cleaning them up, but she is clearly building up some great fine motor skills doing it. We have several pairs of children’s scissors available to her at all times and she uses them all at different times. She started with My First Scissors, which are easier to hold for toddlers, as they do not use finger holes. She then progressed to Maped Koopy Spring Scissors. You can turn the spring off if you want, but the spring is nice at first, so the child only has to close, but not open the scissors. She has more recently started using Fiskars Kids Classic 5-Inch Blunt Tip Scissors, but did cut herself (no blood) once and has been a bit scissor-shy of them since.

I’m linking this post to:

Disclosure: Some item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

Preschool at Home–Sense of Touch

2012-02-04T00:57:00.001-08:00

We ended up spending a lot more time at home this week than we usually do. Part of this was, because Dora has suddenly started refusing to go to any of her activities. So I am just canceling them as clearly she is feeling that she needs more time at home. It is only on the days that we are home for most of the day that she really starts exploring the materials/toys that we have at home. Of course, conversely, if we are home too much, she becomes bored. It is a precarious balance. Anyway, this week we studied touch. I had tons of “fun” stuff to do. The only problem was that Dora did not like the feel of any of my “fun” activities. We tried working with fabric matching and touch boards, which she hated (she wouldn’t even touch the touch boards at all after the first time). We made doughs, slime, and clays galore and she hated them all. Then yesterday I saw this post about making transparent silly putty at Play at Home Mom to play with on light boxes and I knew that we had to try it! I had been looking for liquid starch for a very long time and having so much trouble finding it. Today I went to several stores and was just about to give up, when I tried one last store and they had it! The putty was an absolute success! It looked so cool and Dora loved playing with it. It was not too gooey for her at all. Yay! She spent most of the time making designs by putting beads into it. Meanwhile, Tertia just HAD to try to blow bubbles in it like Play at Home Mom’s son did.

For a craft activity, we tried our hand at embossing with a set from Allison’s Montessori. I had never done embossing before and am not sure I was doing it right. Dora decided that she preferred using the designs as stencils and using a puncher with them instead anyway.

We went to one of our local children’s museums, which had lots of activities for Dora to explore her sense of touch with.

For literature, we read three good books. We read Pat the Bunny, which I somehow missed buying for her when she was younger. Despite it being aimed at somewhat younger children, she really enjoyed the book and I ended up reading it far too many times this week.

We also read Fish Eyes: A Book You Can Count On, with cut out holes for the eyes. Dora insisted on poking a finger through every single eye on every single page.

Finally, we read the last in our series of senses books, Touch (Five Senses). Interestingly, she has been going over to the science shelf and asking me to reread the other senses books and I just finally started paying attention to the last page of each book, which has a medical type drawing of the body part involved with a LOT of details. I pointed out the pictures and described the details and Dora was fascinated by it all. I guess it really must have made an impression on her, because suddenly her imaginary friend, Ana, has started having some very strange “health problems”. I had planned to not go into more of the human body with her after we finished the five senses, but her obvious curiosity about the subject, combined with some of the health issues that she has been dealing with lately, have made me feel that I owe it to her to cover more of the body’s systems.

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

I'm linking this post to The Play Academy at NurtureStore and…

Did You Think That I Stopped Following You?

2012-02-03T21:21:00.001-08:00

You may or may not have heard that Google Friend Connect will be retired at the end of this month for non-Blogger blogs. That means that if you have “followed/joined” a blog that is hosted on a non-Blogger platform, you will no longer automatically receive blog post updates from that blog. What I have been a bit unclear about, is how self-hosted Blogger blogs will be affected. I own my blog’s address, meaning that “blogspot” is not part of my web address, but I do use the blogger platform. Several other blogs follow the same practice. It guarantees that you own your blog name, makes it easier to switch over to other platforms if you become dissatisfied with Blogger, yet allows me the simplicity of using the Blogger platform.

I was in the process of switching over all non-Blogger blogs to RSS feeds, instead of “following” them, when I realized that “following” blogs is just a pain at times. It makes it really hard to “un-follow” blogs in general, but especially blogs that go private or are deactivated. Plus, there were times that I had accidentally “followed” a blog and subscribed to it’s feed, so would end up seeing the same post twice in my reader. So, I just decided that I am only going to use RSS feeds for now on. So if you area blogger and I suddenly “un-followed” you, I didn’t really stop following you, I’m just reading yours posts via RSS feeds now instead of GFC.

Growing a Terrarium

2012-02-02T00:06:00.001-08:00

This is a project that Dora and I actually started in the fall and for some reason I never blogged about it. This is actually one of those projects that I can honestly say went really well. Our terrarium is still thriving, in fact I need to figure out how to trim the plants as they have all reached the top of our jar, and that is with quite a bit of settling of the dirt and what not.

I had never grown a terrarium, but have been interested in them for some time. I also would like to own some poison dart frogs (which actually aren’t dangerous, as long as you don’t feed them spiders, ants, and other venomous bugs), but for now had to settle for plastic ones. After reading about growing terrariums at many sites, I settled on using the instructions from The Garden Helper. Were I to do it all over again, the one thing I would do differently is to make my layers smaller.

If you would like to grow a terrarium, it is very easy. First select your vessel. I chose one that had a lid, because I didn’t want to ~~murder~~ forget to water the plants. With a lidded vessel, the moisture says in the container and waters the plants for you. I’m sure I’ll need to water them some eventually, as it is not 100% airtight, but they have not been watered for three months now. Next, you need to select your plants. Our nursery had a special section for terrarium plants. Terrariums are meant to be grown in indirect sunlight, else the glass will focus the sun’s ray and fry your plants, so keep that in mind when selecting your plants.

Next you add a layer of gravel, sand, or small rocks for drainage.

Then you add a layer of activated charcoal, which can bought at an aquarium/pet supply store if they do not have it at your nursery. According to Garden Helper, this layer will help clean the air of the fumes caused by the decomposition of organic matter.

For the third layer, you add some sphagnum moss, which prevents the soil from sinking down to the bottom.

For the final layer, add potting soil. Then plant your plants and add any decorations you want to use. I found that chopsticks work very well for helping to arrange things. And voila, you have a beautiful, practically no-maintenance addition to your household.

Read the post at The Garden Helper for more help with choosing plants and maintaining your terrarium.

Montessori Monday–Knobless Cylinders

2012-01-31T01:00:00.001-08:00

Last week, I introduced Dora to the knobless cylinders. Though she has expressed absolutely no interest in working with the knobbed cylinders, she loved working with the knobless cylinders. They are the perfect tool for teaching about variations in height and width, as well as the accompanying descriptive labels, such as “wide”, “thin”, “tall”, “short”, “large”, “small”, etc. We also did a lot of what Montessorians call “extensions”. The use of the word “extension” in regards to the Montessori Method seems to refer simply to using materials for anything other than their original intended purpose (please someone correct me if I am wrong, I could not find a definition anywhere). At our house, we call this “playing with blocks” and it is something that we excel at. We combined the cylinders in various fashions, created patterns with them, and made designs with them. I even had fun creating “math problems” for myself while Dora was doing her own thing, but refusing to let me go anywhere else. Here are some photos of the work we did:

Here are my “math problems”. I decided to create various numbers of stacks of the blue cylinders while having as few blocks left over as possible. After finally deciding to assign each block a value (the shortest block equaling 1, the next shortest block 2, and so on), it was much easier to do. I found that the total number represented by all ten blocks is 55. Therefore, there would be one block left when I created 2, 3, or 4 stacks, but none leftover if I created 5 stacks, thereby using knobless cylinders to illustrate the concept of factorization. Now that I have amazed and stunned you with my incredible math prowess, here are the photos of the towers that I built to support my hypothesis.

As always, I am linking this post to:

Preschool at Home–Sense of Sight

2012-01-29T01:59:00.001-08:00

Though the week started off a bit rough, it finished on a really good note in regards to homeschooling. Dora and I looked at the sense of sight this week and did some really fun projects. The biggest hit, hands down, was the light box. I had read about several bloggers using light boxes with younger kids, but had wondered if Dora would be too old to warrant the cost. Then a few other projects came up where a light box would be really beneficial for us to have, so I took the plunge and bought the Porta-Trace 10" x 12" Stainless Steel Lightbox with Two 8 watt, 5000°K. Lamps. Once it arrived, I realized that we didn’t have a lot of the fun stuff that I have seen other bloggers use with light boxes, because I am slowly, but surely, trying to purge our house of plastic. So first I brought over our marbles, which looked really cool and were just fun to roll around on the lightbox.

We did have some plastic color paddles left over from last year’s study of color, which worked really well with the light box. The colors came out really true with the light box, so when the paddles were held together, they blended perfectly. This really helped to cement Dora’s knowledge of mixing primary colors.

I also got out some acrylic gems that I have for collage work, as well as some wooden buttons. Dora felt that those needed to be studied with a magnifying glass.

Dora then asked for a pitcher and some glasses and ended up turning the experience into a light-filled pouring exercise!

Finally, we used the Haba Kaleidoscope Blocks. I just love the way Haba blocks are so consistently made. We have a variety of their sets, plus some of their marble runs and they all mix and match perfectly. After we played with the Haba blocks on the light table, we took a red, yellow, and green block and stacked them on the floor like a stop light. I then proceeded to shine a flashlight through the various colors while Dora drove her bus around and sometimes obeyed the “traffic signal”, while other times preferring to repeatedly “break the law” so her bus would be “put in jail” (which the bus would then proceed to crash out of – which I guess is what I deserve for building a bus-jail out of wooden blocks, what was I thinking?).

We were supposed to go to the eye doctor for our “fieldtrip”, but the exam had to be rescheduled, though we did go to two eye glass stores looking for glasses for Primo, where Dora begged me to buy her some glasses (little realizing that her wish may soon come true and she’ll have her first lesson in being careful about what you wish for). For our new literature selections this week, we read three books. Our first selection was Elmer by David McKee, which is all about being yourself. At first, I was little worried that it was going to be too preachy as several books with that theme are, but all of a sudden, a surprising and silly event occurred that had both Dora and I laughing. The book finished on a light-hearted note, reminding us all to be ourselves, without hitting us over the head with the message. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this was our favorite read-aloud for this “school” year, thus far.

We also read Sight (Five Senses) from the senses series that we have been reading. Once again, the book conveyed the topic simply and enjoyably. Finally we read Spotted Yellow Frogs: Fold-out Fun with Patterns, Colors, 3-D Shapes, Animals for math, which is one of the weirdest books that I have ever read and that I can’t really recommend. I’ve decided that this whole “Living Math” approach to math is just not for us. Honestly, I’d rather use workbooks than read unenjoyable books in an effort to teach math. Many of the books that are recommended to teach math using a “Living Math” approach are either really hard to find (and sometimes very expensive as a result) or just not enjoyable. The author will decide to teach a math concept and write a book around the concept rather than have a story, from which a math concept evolves. In my mind, this difference is what distinguishes a book from being just a “book”, as opposed to literature. So I am just going to start sticking with using the Montessori approach to teaching math and if I find a book that looks good and happens to teach a math concept, great, but I’m not going to exert myself trying to find “Living Math” books anymore.

How about you? Have any of you used "Living Books” to teach math? If so, did it work well for you and if it did, do you have a good list of recommended books?

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

I'm linking this post to The Play Academy at NurtureStore and…

Getting Hacked

2012-01-26T00:20:00.001-08:00

I’ve been a bit quiet this week as I have been very busy trying to prevent all of our accounts from being hacked. I mentioned last week that my husband’s e-mail was hacked. Well, the hacker learned some information through that e-mail account that enabled him to greatly complicate our lives. Fortunately, we’ve managed to stay one step ahead of him and protect our financial information (at least we think so, this may come back to bite us in the butt in a couple of months if/when the hacker sells our information). Our hacker has even taken to trying to extort confidential information about my husband’s company and threatening our family. I’m not sure if our hacker is just kind of lame or what, but he bragged a lot, publicly. This allowed me to figure out who he was. I really know a lot about him and his family, more than I should know about anyone that I am not directly related to. At first, it was so easy to track him down, I thought that surely I was wrong, but time and time again, we have had his identity verified.

Another interesting thing that I’ve learned is that no one seems to give a rat’s ass about the fact that I have tracked down a crook, which is probably why our hacker doesn’t feel the need to better conceal his identity (that, or he’s really stupid). We have not been this hacker’s first victims and we will not be his last. He also steals/sells credit card numbers, does/deals drugs, and so forth. I guess he is just too small time, but multiple reports to the police and FBI have been ignored (realizing that I have already done all the footwork and handed him to them on a silver platter). Calls and e-mails to the large companies involved in the hacking have resulted in nothing but frustration. Essentially the companies don’t seem to care, unless you know how the hacker hacked your account (meaning that you do their work for them). I really have found the lack of accountability of certain corporations to be incredible and the lack of any police presence in cyberspace is just scary. The whole incident has left me feeling incredibly vulnerable and both my husband and I have contemplated removing ourselves from cyberspace rather than risk dealing with this type of event ever again.

If my experience hasn’t convinced you that cyber crime is becoming more of a problem every day, take a look at these scary statistics from Wikipedia:

A survey of college students in 2010, supported by UK's Association of Chief Police Officers, indicated a high level of interest in beginning hacking: "23% of 'uni' students have hacked into IT systems [...] 32% thought hacking was 'cool' [...] 28% considered it to be easy."

I thought I would share a few things that I have learned from our experience.

Understand that you are pretty much alone if your are attacked by a hacker or other cyber criminal. The cops won’t come help you anytime soon and software company tech support employees are infamous for their inability to help you (heck, face it, you’re lucky if they speak your native language in a comprehensible fashion). For all intents and purposes, calling tech support is generally a waste of your time. Sometimes tech support employees will even make matters worse. If you have to call to get your account closed, check up on the account. Don’t assume that because an tech support employee assured you that the account was closed, it was.
Read up on cyber crime and keep abreast of the latest trends in regards to cyber security. Maybe even attend hacker conventions and join their forums (under assumed names with e-mail accounts created solely for the forums).
Only get your e-mail accounts from companies that use a 2-step verification processes. Gmail and Facebook are the only ones that I know of that use this process at this point in time. I realize that Facebook is not really an e-mail account, but it is a similar means to communicate. (This option can found on Gmail by going to account settings/”accounts and import”/”change password recovery options” and on Facebook under account settings/security.)
Make sure that you use the 2-step verification process! Yes, it’s a pain. It makes it difficult if you want to read e-mail or login into something on another computer or your phone, but that is the point. A hacker cannot hack these types of accounts, because they cannot be used on any computer, but your own without a specially generated password. A hacker cannot lock you out of your account, because he cannot change your e-mail contact information without a code from a text message sent to your phone or other e-mail account. (Realize that within two years of me writing this post, a 2-step verification process will probably be old hat for hackers, you will always have to keep one step a head of them).
When using Facebook or Gmail online, view them using https only. (This can be found on Gmail under account settings/general and on Facebook under account settings/security.)
If you or your kids engage in online gaming, have a special e-mail account just for gaming. Post as little personal information as possible on these accounts.
Do not use credit cards or Paypal to pay for online gaming accounts. Buy pre-paid cards from local retailers and pay for your membership with those instead. Yes, it’s a pain, but if someone hacks your gaming account, they can run up all sorts of charges if your Paypal or credit card information is stored in your account.
Be sure that your or your kid’s gamer tag is not part of your e-mail address (i.e. gamer tag is joesmith and e-mail is joesmith@hotmail.com)
Make your passwords difficult to hack. Not only should you use capitals, numerals, and special characters, but try to make your passwords as long as possible. Longer passwords are harder to crack, because of the sheer number of permutations that exist compared to a shorter password. Never use your name as part of your password!
Do not use your name for login names. This way, if someone hacks your e-mail account, he still has to work hard just to get your login information, much less your password.

Both my husband and I have opted to maintain our cyber presence, but we have learned a lot through this incident. We have gotten lax as we have gotten older and not kept up with technology like we used to. Hopefully this post will spare someone else from the nightmare that we have been going through this week.

Stay vigilant and let’s take the internet back from criminals!

Preschool at Home–The Sense of Hearing

2012-01-21T02:15:00.001-08:00

This week has been insane for us! Mr. Mo had to go to Whistler, Canada for a meeting for work. I know, I know, it is hard to feel sorry for someone who has to go to a ski resort for a meeting. This was really bad though, as a HUGE storm rolled into the area the very day he had to leave. Fortunately, he was able to get a ride with a co-worker that is very skilled in winter driving (he is even skilled at dodging all the bad winter drivers that reside in Seattle – majorly important here). Meanwhile, however, I was home alone with all five kids and a HUGE storm rolling. Did I mention that it was HUGE? We’re talking snopocalypse 2012 here! At first it was all pretty and nice and we played in the snow, made snowmen, snow slides, snow dogs, snow angels, etc. We even tormented Gohan and Primo by throwing snowballs at their windows, since they were poopyheads and wouldn’t come out and play in the snow. Then, the snow became not so fun. It turned to ice, not sure exactly how. Everything got covered in ice, then it snowed again, then things kind of melted, then things froze again. So we had ice on top of snow on top of ice on top of snow (got that?). In Seattle, that means “snowbound”. You know how it goes, I had no desire to go anywhere, but the minute I realized that we were snowbound, the cabin fever set in and the LONGEST day of my ENTIRE life started. Then Secunda and Tertia started arguing like they were preschoolers or something. Then the power went out. Ugh! Then Mr. Mo’s co-worker somehow managed to get Mr. Mo home from Canada. Then the power came back on. Yay! Then we learned that someone had totally hacked a bunch of Mr. Mo’s internet accounts. Boo!

We were not entirely without homeschooling during the power outage and snopocalypse. We played tons of board games, read a lot of books, and I pulled out some of the Steve Spangler science items that I keep on hand just for emergencies such as this. We made giant jelly marbles, which we soaked in water that we had colored purple with some of the color fizzers. Secunda even went so far as to experiment with poking with the marbles with toothpicks and freezing them, which Dora found fascinating.

And because we didn’t have enough snow to keep us occupied, we also made Insta-snow.

As I mentioned last week, Dora and I started studying the five senses last week. The sense of smell didn’t go over so well last week, as I mentioned in my post about smelling bottles. This week, however, the book I ordered for the smell unit arrived and thankfully that went over very well. It was a scratch-n-sniff book, which I honestly had forgot even existed. It was called Little Bunny Follows His Nose, and was originally published in 1971. According to some reviewers, they’ve removed some of the best scents, but when I read this book to Dora, you would have thought I had just shown her the secret to eternal youth or something. She thought the book was the coolest thing since sliced bread. I read that book, many, many times this week. The reason the book went over so much better than the smelling bottles is that the scents in the book are very subtle, so no headaches for either of us.

This week, we also studied the sense of hearing. All in all, it was a good unit. We worked with sound cubes, which Dora loved and was quite skilled at matching. We read the Hearing (Five Senses) (last week, we read the sense of smell book from the series, which is entitled Smell (Five Senses)). These books are written at the perfect level to introduce Dora to the senses, there is one book for each sense. She has been really engaged by each one, thus far. In addition, we read/sang My Favorite Things, which we both really loved (seriously, how could anyone not enjoy singing that song?). The book has the lyrics, which can just be read as a poem, assuming you can resist belting out your best imitation of Julie Andrews. Each page is beautifully illustrated with gentle drawings and now is one of my favorite things.

For math we worked with the first tray of the geometric cabinet. I know, I know, all you Montessorians, the geometric cabinet is a sensorial work! In my mind, a lot of the sensorial work overlaps with math. Geometry is a math subject, so I am going to call some sensorial work “math work” for now on. And this is my domain, so I get to make the rules (ha ha! get the pun, it’s my “domain”, but it is also my “domain”, as in my web address! Aren’t I punny?). For you non-Montessorians, the geometric cabinet is a cabinet with six drawers of different shapes. The drawer we worked with was various sizes of circles and we just kind of introduced the drawer and discussed circles and Dora lined them up in order of smallest to biggest. Then we read 12 Ways to Get to 11, which is a highly reviewed book, but honestly I didn’t think it was that great. For one thing, counting to 11 gets old really fast, so I really didn’t want to do it on each two-page spread. Secondly I just found parts of it to be confusing. For instance, one two-page spread reads, “In the hen yard, five eggs, three cracking open, two beaks poking out, and one just hatched.” Which to me means that 3 out of 5 of the eggs are cracking open, two of which have a beak poking out, and one of which is hatched. Instead it means that there are five eggs, plus three cracking eggs, plus two eggs with beaks poking out, plus one just hatched egg, which equals 11 eggs in all. Anyway, the book just didn’t click with us. Dora didn’t even want to read it to begin with and I kind of had to bribe her to get her to let me read it to her.

We art, Dora has been doing a lot of watercolor painting with Stockmar Watercolor Paints. I’m going to say that when these arrived, I had no idea how to mix them and there were no instructions. I did some research and really didn’t find much help on the internet. I finally just started mixing small amounts of the paints into jars of water until I achieved the desired concentration. These paints are very expensive, but as everyone will tell you, they will last forever, because you use so little of the actual paint to make a jar of paint. The jars and holder were a separate item. You could just use recycled jars or storage tubs that you already own to store your paints. You don’t throw them out every time you mix up a batch of paint, though I am unsure of how long they can be stored. I’ll try to post and update about how long we end up storing ours for. Even Secunda and Tertia have joined in on the fun with these paints. I personally have been frustrated with my inability to achieve the exact color I want by blending paints (like how hard is it to make brown?!?!), but I seem to be the only one feeling that way, so I think it is just me being a bit too OCD-ish.

Dora has also been playing with the Child-size Masterpiece cards a lot the last couple of months and is already on Level 3, Advanced!

Our fieldtrip was supposed to be to go to a Seattle Symphony kids’ concert, but once Dora learned that we would be going to watch other people sing and dance, instead of other people watching her sing and dance, she wanted nothing to do with such audacity. Last week, however, we did go to Pike’s Place Market to try to smell a variety of smells. Unfortunately, the only one we really smelled was the fish market and they weren’t even throwing fish around (they are kind of famous for their fish throwing there, yep, one of Seattle’s claim to fame is that we have famous fish throwers, yep….). Honestly, I’ve never quite seen the appeal of Pike’s Place Market. It is like a giant farmer’s market, but inside. I find it kind of depressing and the parking borders on downright scary. They do have some quaint little shops, but whenever I have been there, the shops are too crowded for me to go in (we’re talking the middle of January here, so what it is like in the summer, I don’t know, maybe less crowded as everyone wants to be outside instead????). There was a used bookstore there that I really wanted to go into, but I just couldn’t get in without having to shove people aside. They had some really nice quality children’s classic books in their window though, so I gave some serious contemplation to forcing my way in, but neither Dora nor I are good in crowds.

And that, my dear readers is our week in a not-so-short synopsis. How was your week? I know a lot of other places that don’t usually get snow have been getting it, while places that usually get snow aren’t. Global warming/cooling/chaos I guess????

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

I'm linking this post to The Play Academy at NurtureStore and…

Montessori Monday–Smell Bottles

2012-01-16T22:22:00.001-08:00

Last week, Dora studied the sense of smell. I didn’t post a weekly wrap-up, because the unit was cut a bit short. One task that we did complete, however, was matching smell bottles. I put a cotton ball into each bottle and then dropped a few drops of various extracts on to each cotton ball. The extracts I used were vanilla, cinnamon, peppermint, orange, rum, and anise. Each pair had one black-topped bottle and one white-topped bottle, but I also added colored stickers to the bottoms of the bottles for control of error.

Dora was easily able to match the bottles. I must emphasize, however, that we learned the hard way that extracts are just too strong for those of us with a strong sense of smell. If I were to do this again, I’d use more mildly scented things such as pine needles, orange peel, etc. This would require opaque bottles, so that she couldn’t see the objects, but would be more pleasant for both of us. Both Dora and I had horrid headaches by the end of the activity. Neither of us had any desire to do any other of the sense of smell activities that I had planned, such as making scented play dough or painting with spices.

As always, I’m linking this post to:

Our New Homeschool Space and a Link-Up

2012-01-16T01:33:00.001-08:00

For a variety of reasons, this school year has found me without an office or homeschool space. To complicate matters, it has become apparent that Dora has some sensory issues, so we wanted some space to set up some sensory equipment for her. So over winter break, I finally decided to get rid of our formal living room and dining room (we never had set up the formal dining room anyway). We moved the living room furniture to the family room, which now looks much nicer and really is more comfortable to watch TV or sit by the fire in.

I thought I’d show off our new arrangement. I’m also adding a link-up at the bottom of this post for others to show off their homeschool spaces. Our space is not 100% complete, Secunda and I plan to paint the walls, but haven’t decided on a color. Also, one thing to keep in mind, if this seems over the top, is that Dora currently does not have a bedroom - she sleeps in our room and has a very few toys in our room, but for the most part, this is all of her toys. Dora has definitely been playing, exploring, and learning much more with this new arrangement. Even Gohan has taken to doing all of his bookwork in the room, because of the comfy bean bag chairs!

This first photo is of what I consider the most important change, it's a Haba Piratos Swing Seat. It is hammock swing that mounts in the ceiling. Dora loves to swing and when she gets stressed out, swinging can be the best way to calm her down. This indoor swing spares us from going outside in all sorts of nasty weather, but also, the hammock style of swing can be very soothing to kids with any sort of sensory issues.

My second favorite change is this rug, it is a Hands Around the World Rug. I love the bright colors, the peaceful theme, and that the continents are colored by the Montessori coloring system. This means that the rug colors will match all continent mapping activities that we do.

The third and final product that we bought specifically for this room change, was two Jaxx Cocoon Jr.chairs. These chairs are filled with foam, not beans. They are extremely comfortable and make for a great place to cozy up and read books with Dora. They are also fun to lay on. I bought them specifically for Dora to have a place to crash into, literally. Thus far, she still favors crashing into me instead.

Next are some of our bookcases, that we already owned. The top shelves of these bookcases house all of my homeschooling supplies on top (i.e. teacher guides, materials for future use, idea books, etc.). The lower shelves have our sensorial and practical life materials (oh yeah, that is the chicken butt on the floor!).

This set of bookcases is home to Dora’s language arts and math materials. The big black thing on the right is a desk apprentice from Staples. It stores most of Gohan’s materials. The window ledge above these shelves also has some of his science materials (safely out of Dora’s reach).

These buckets hold all of Dora’s blocks and Haba Ball Track Construction Set pieces (otherwise known as a marble run).

This is Dora’s kitchen/grocery store area with her little play table, which is used for a variety of activities. The phone on the wall is actually a bank that Secunda bought a long time ago and was going to donate to Goodwill. Dora uses that phone to “call” people so much, I can’t tell you how much use it has gotten!

This is Dora’s dress-up area. The green storage piece also houses a few role playing toys.

This area needs the most to be improved upon. On the sides are various indoor physical activity materials, which are a must in the Pacific Northwest. I have not found a good way to corral all of these things, so they are stacked kind of willy-nilly. If anyone knows of any good storage for these types of things, please comment below. The shelves contain all of our art supplies, Dora’s musical instruments, and her science materials. I believe that I will add more wall shelves above all of the physical activity materials in order to get more storage for science materials, which we definitely need. I don’t think we will be keeping that bouncy horse for long, I feel bad, as it was a Christmas present, intended to replace her rocking horse that she had outgrown (and was in danger of hurting herself on by falling backwards while rocking). This horse plays sounds and is like a giant stuffed animal, but has yet to garner more than a few minutes of her attention. The trampoline also takes up a lot of space and is used very little, but sometimes when she is ~~being super hyper~~ feeling very energetic, I get her to jump on it and set a “record” for the most number of jumps ever. In general, she does not use much of the physical activity equipment, except the balls, which are technically stored in the purple bucket, but usually are located all over the house.

And that is our new homeschool space/play room. As Dora grows older, I'm sure it will eventually morph back into a living room, but for the time being, this is the best use of our space. What about you, do you have a special room for homeschooling? I know a lot of homeschoolers have blogged about their learning/playing spaces, but I don’t think there has ever been a link up for it. So I thought I’d host a one-time link up for people to share their homeschooling spaces. So, if you have posted about your homeschooling space, please add your link below (please be sure to link to the actual post and not just your home page).

Ironically, I am linking my link up to another link up from Chestnut Grove Academy, Brag Time Thursday. Our new space is something I really feel like bragging about, it took a lot of thought and time to put together. If you are interested in reading about other homeschooler’s brag-worthy activities, check out the link-up at:

Disclosure: Some item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

Blog Theme Changes

2012-01-15T00:16:00.001-08:00

Those of you that read Homeschool Mo on the actual blog site, as opposed to a reader, may have noticed that I completely changed the layout. I did this because I wanted a layout that was more truly representative of me and our homeschool. When I first started blogging, it seemed like all of the “good” bloggers had these lovely electronic-scrapbook-style blog layouts. As I wanted to be a “good” blogger so that I could easily supplement out family’s income (uhm, yeah, you read that correctly, I had read a blog article about how easy it was to make a couple hundred bucks a month, just by starting a blog and as this was written by a blogger, who must have done it, it must be true, right? – HA! anyway….) I felt compelled to design my own electronic-scrapbooking layout.

Over time, it has become apparent that blogging is not the means to easy street that the article I read lead me to believe. I continue to blog now, because I enjoy blogging. I enjoy documenting our homeschool. I enjoy engaging with other bloggers, parents, teachers, and homeschoolers. I enjoy belonging to the blogging community. I enjoy all that I learn by reading lots of blogs. I enjoy the different perspectives that I would never be exposed to if I didn’t blog. I enjoy the fact that blogging compels me to think and write more. I enjoy that blogging makes me more organized in our homeschooling, as I want to be able to report on how things have gone. What money I have made, has been very little, on very few occasions, and I do not have the time, energy, or desire to do what it takes to change that. So I will be blogging for myself for now on. Which means, I want a design that more truly reflects me and our homeschool, which is not this nice lovely homeschooler/bird with her little chickadees all in a row.

I also have come to the conclusion that I should be a bit more honest when I post about out projects. I should be more forthcoming about the many bumps in the road that we encounter. Secunda and Tertia have started teasing me, asking me if I am going to blog about the various projects that I try that don’t work out so well and somewhere along the line, they and Mr. Mo started teasing me to change my blog name to “It could have gone better….” I’m not going to go to all the trouble of changing my blog name, but I did add the phrase as my tagline, and I am going to start being more forthcoming about things. Sure, we may have ended up with a very nice looking project, but it may have fallen apart the minute after I photographed it or it may have taken several attempts to get it right or Dora or Gohan may have hated the process or it may have entailed two hours of cleaning up afterwards or…. These are the types of things that I want be more honest about for now on.

I partly feel the need to be more honest after seeing the look on the face of the daughter of one of my blogging buddies. You see, in December, 2010, we tried experimenting with burning frankincense and myrrh. I blogged about the experience, but failed to mention how bad the stuff smelled (I didn’t actually praise the smell, but I also didn’t go so far as to say that it smells like @#&!). After that, my blogging buddy from Life’s Adventures, Anna-Marie, said that she was going to do it this year (she was the one who inspired me to buy the stuff in the first place). Then, Anna-Marie blogged about the experience and she was a bit more honest than me, and her daughter’s face said it all (bottom of the post). One the one hand, I laughed so hard, my stomach muscles hurt after seeing her daughter’s expression, on the other hand, I felt guilty for not being more truthful in my post and perhaps sparing their poor olfactory senses. Frankincense and myrrh smell awful! Why the stuff was so highly valued in olden times, is beyond me (at times it was worth more than gold!). If I ever figure out how to time travel, I’m going back in time and sell them some Febreeze or something!

Anyhoo, this is my attempt at explaining my new look. Hopefully it will give people a better idea of what my blog’s really about, when they first come to my site and hopefully, it won’t scare anyone away…

How Memory Works

2012-01-11T23:07:00.001-08:00

I received an e-mail today about another infographic from onlinecolleges.net. This one is about how memory works and I thought could be especially useful for those of us who have students that have troubles with retaining what they’ve learned.

Via: Online Colleges Blog

Montessori Monday–My Montessori Birthday

2012-01-10T00:36:00.001-08:00

Since we were studying winter birds last week, I let Dora practice pouring bird seed for a practical life skills activity. She just loves pouring activities, which is nice, because there are not many things that she will do by herself for any length of time. I gave her an assortment of cups and bowls to pour into and pitchers to pour from.

I also presented the zipper dressing frame to Dora. She knows how to unzip, but even then, needs to be reminded to hold the fabric if the zipper snags at all. I was hoping that she would really take to the dressing frames as she seems to have very little interest in learning to dress herself. Unfortunately, she had zero interest in the dressing frame. I guess I am supposed to take this as a sign that this is not the appropriate sensitive period for her and put the frames away for awhile. Sigh, adhering to one’s philosophic principles can be frustrating at times.

Dora caught me opening the package with the metal insets in it and then insisted on working with them. I was amazed at how well she was able to do the work. Above is a photo of her very first attempts with using the insets. On the left, you can see where she used the outer frame of the inset to trace a near-perfect oval. On the right, she used the inset, itself, and you can see at the top, the point where she had to figure out how to navigate around her hand that was holding the inset. Her solution was to let go of it, which caused the inset to move around. Obviously, we’ll need to work on that.

How did we afford all of these new Montessori materials, you ask? I’m glad you asked! This year for my birthday (I’m now 43, if you must know), I asked for Montessori supplies for Dora. I’ve become extremely passionate about the Montessori method of education. It is ironic, because I actually attended a public school Montessori kindergarten way back in the 70’s. My parents were so underwhelmed by the school, they pulled me out of public school and sent me to private school until they were able to move to an area with better schools. I well remembered the school and agreed with their assessment, so had never, for even a moment, in the last nineteen years, considered using Montessori methods in our homeschool. Then I started reading blogs and finding fun activities to do with Dora and wouldn’t you know it, they were Montessori inspired? So I did some research and have come to the conclusion that the school I attended just did a really, really, really bad job of implementing the Montessori method.

Every time I find myself saying, “Well, I like it all, except for this or that…” I end up realizing that the only parts of the Montessori method that I don’t like are the ones that I don’t understand. For instance, using all the beads in math seemed silly to me, until I started reading more about them. Now, I realize that these materials will help Dora to not only learn her math facts, but to be able to do things such as truly visualize quantities and many other math concepts (by visualizing quantities, I mean that if she sees a group of four marbles, she doesn’t need to count each marble to know that there are four).

At this point, my only complaints with the Montessori method are that I didn’t use it with my older children, and that it is so hard to find resources that teach me how to implement the method. I have neither the time, nor the funds, nor the desire, to become a certified Montessori teacher. I just want a crash course in the basics to use with Dora. I learn a lot from reading other blogs and I have found a few books that are helpful, but thus far I haven’t found the perfect guide for me. So many of the books are either geared towards convincing parents that Montessori works or helping parents make Montessori supplies at home or are written for parents of babies/toddlers. I have many of the real supplies, even if they aren’t the fanciest version, but I just need to know how to use them. Thus far the most helpful book that I have found has been Basic Montessori: Learning Activities For Under-Fives.

As always, I am linking this post to the one of the best Montessori blogs out there (if not THE best), Living Montessori Now, from whom I have learned so much.

Disclosure: Some item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

Preschool at Home–Winter Birds

2012-01-08T00:24:00.001-08:00

We kind of, sort of, studied winter birds this week. We made some bird treats using suet, peanut butter, and bird seed. Don’t they just look yummy! (That is sarcasm, in case it wasn’t obvious. If you’ve never worked with suet before, it is rendered beef fat and for some reason it is the “thing” to put into bird treats, though I doubt you will ever find these birds eating cows in the wild. Anyway, the stuff is greasier than anything that I ever worked with before. I had to wash my hands about 25 times to get it off of them. Then I had to clip all of my nails super short as the stuff had worked it’s way under my nails. Then I realized that my hands still had some suet on them, so I washed them about 10 more times. So I highly recommend using rubber gloves if you are going to work with it.) Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any winter birds in the area, so the treats remain untouched. I have been informed by a friend that if you want to feed birds that winter over, you need to start feeding them before winter sets in, so that they know where food is. I guess we may have to take our treats down to the duck pond that is right by our house (not even squirrels seem to be investigating our trees).

In addition to this messy craft project, we did a Montessori bird puzzle and Dora then insisted on not only doing all of the puzzles in the animal puzzle cabinet, but doing all of the puzzle activity cards that are labeled with the body parts’ names, some of which I didn’t even know how to pronounce! Finally, we finished the forest section of Maurice Pledger's Animal World and are almost completely done with the book. We were supposed to go bird watching, but had to get some medical tests done instead. So no field trip this week, though we did go to our homeschool support group’s young kids’ park day.

Dora took one look at The Burgess Bird Book for Children and declared it “boring”. Nothing I said could induce her to give it a chance, so for our new literature selection for the week, we read poetry from The Classic Treasury of Children's Poetry instead. She was not able to sit for some of the longer poems, but enjoyed many of the shorter ones, especially the ones that she had heard previously while watching Maurice Sendak’s Little Bear. It was like she thought the book had some magical ability to channel Little Bear or something. As soon as I read one of the poems that had been in Little Bear, she would sit up in a “I know that poem” way, and then her face would light up with joy and excitement when she realized it was from Little Bear.

For math, we read Anno's Counting Book and played with the long red rods. Dora understood the concept of the long red rods, but since she did not line them up at the bottom, she was not really able to accurately compare the length of them all. In the above photo, she took them out of the stand, in order, and I lined up the first few, trying to demonstrate the process to her, but she just was not ready for that step yet. She did really enjoy working with the red rods, however, much more than the brown stairs or pink tower. In regards to Anno’s counting book, one thing that I really liked about the book was the way he managed to work the flow of the seasons into a wordless counting “story”.

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

I'm linking this post to The Play Academy at NurtureStore, Footprints in the Butter’s Reading Aloud Challenge, and…

The Homeschool Mother’s Journal–January 6th

2012-01-07T00:31:00.001-08:00

In my life this week…We started back with our normal schedule on Monday, though Mr. Mo took this week off work, so things weren’t quite back to normal. My asthma set me back some with jogging, ends up that it is the mold that is doing me in. I finally had to stop my allergy shots as I was having too adverse of reactions to them. So this week, I started trying to jog shorter distances (2.75 miles), more frequently, and my lungs were much happier. I will slowly build back up to where I was, distance-wise and then hopefully build up to a full 10K 3-4/week. It may be that I will just always have to take things a bit easier in the fall/early winter because of mold. I didn’t know this before, but it ends up that fall’s leaves are a big source of mold.

What’s working/not working for us… I have been very bad about writing wrap-ups for Gohan this year, so I’m writing his first this week. The subject that has been the most interesting lately, as far as I am concerned anyway, has been Physical Science. We’re using the Advanced Version of Exploration Education’s Physical Science. Overall, we’ve been very happy with this program. The lessons are very clear. The program comes with almost all the lab materials, except for a couple of common household items (these are really “common” household items, not like the ridiculous items some companies consider “common”). My only complaint is that I wish they had divided the lesson up a bit more evenly. Some of the labs end up taking us two weeks to complete. I wish they had broken them up more, had the student do smaller parts over the course of several lessons. The only other snag we have hit is that we got really excited playing with the car after Gohan made it and it broke. Then it ends up that it is called for in many of the other experiments, which we have therefore not been able to do. Most recently, Gohan has been studying machines and heat exchange. The above picture if from one of the experiments using a steam boat that he made.

We have finally settled on Saxon Algebra 1/2 for Gohan and it is proving to be a much better fit for him than any of the other math curriculums that we have looked at this year. While he grasps the concepts easily enough, he still struggles with mechanics of multiplication and division with long digits. Obviously, this is his learning disability rearing it’s ugly head. Up until last year, it had seemed that he had escaped without it affecting his math, but we were not so lucky. He completely understands how to set up the problems, even the really advanced ones, but then just has these big “brain farts”.

Speaking of his learning disabilities, we’re looking into getting him an IEP with the local junior high. I would like to know what they would offer him in regards to services. We’re mostly looking into supplementing what we’re doing already, but we are also contemplating sending him to school fulltime next year. Our reasons for contemplating school for him are twofold, one he has been a bit uncooperative and antisocial since I pulled him out of the ALE. He misses his old friends, but this is a non-negotiable issue for me, so we’ve been butting heads some. Once we begin the IEP process, the ALE will no longer be an option as the ALE was in a different district, which will not accept interdistrict transfer students with IEP’s. Secondly, I’m not sure that I am able to fully meet his needs right now. Dora is a very high maintenance child and Primo has needed much more of my help, in regards to transitioning to the adult world, than I had expected. I do think that Gohan may have some trouble, socially, if he went to public school as he would be a special ed. student., plus he is very unathletic. So we will need to spend a lot of time weighing the pros and cons. He is currently open to the idea. The IEP process will definitely help to clarify exactly what our options are.

While working through the IEP process, we will be still plowing ahead with language arts to the best of our abilities. I have switched up his curriculum again, though I think we are pretty set at this point as have been using these since early November. Gohan just finished reading the latest book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Cabin Fever and is using the following:

Gohan decided that he just didn’t want to study Japanese anymore and I do not require a foreign language until 9th grade in our homsechool, so he is not doing Mango Japanese anymore.

He really despised doing the art projects for Meet the Masters, so we are using The Usborne Book of Art to do a more traditional art history/appreciation course. We have been doing this since November and he has been a much happier kid ever since. Finally he is still happily reading Cartoon History of the Universe 1 Vol. 1-7 and not so happily doing some work on his History Odyssey Timeline.

Outside of the home, he continues to take a homeschool drama class and Taekwondo/Arnis. He also plays in two separate Yu-Gi-Oh leagues. So he is outside the home for about 12 hours a week, which I guess isn’t terrible. It just is that almost all of his time not spent doing bookwork, chores, or attending these things is spent on his computer, Skyping with friends. They play games, chat, make video collaborations, etc. So he is being productive and socializing, and does see most of these friends once a month at a “Game Night”, which is hosted at each other’s houses, but I would love to see him try to extend his social network a bit more. At this point in time, he is resisting 100%. We try to allow our children to make as many decisions as possible in regards to their life and education, though we obviously are not extreme unschoolers and do have certain limits. Still, we do not believe in making him attend things that he doesn’t want to attend or in limiting computer time as long as his schoolwork and chores are done and he gets in a reasonable amount of exercise. This doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t ~~waste~~ spend a large amount of energy worrying about my children's’ choices. I figure I’ll stop worrying one day, once I’m in my grave.

I’m reading…The February issue of Ellery Queen. I got behind on my Ellery Queen reading, which I do love and just finished December’s issue. It was bit weird to read so many Christmas stories right after Christmas. February’s issue is timely for me as Mr. Mo and I just saw the most recent Sherlock Holmes movie and the first story in Ellery Queen is a Sherlock Holmes’ pastiche. Between the movie and the pastiche, I’ve decided to devote 2012 to catching up on Sherlock Holmes and filling in some of the gaps of my knowledge about him.

I’m cooking…Nothing this week. Secunda and Mr. Mo went on an Atkins diet and Secunda did all the dinner cooking as as result. As a wannabe-tarian, there is no way that I am cooking for an Atkins diet. When Mr. Mo goes on Atkins diets, which is usually every January, he eats things like pork rinds, big hunks of meat, etc.. Blech! Secunda decided today that and Atkins diet is not for, so I will be back to cooking again next week. To tell you the truth, it will be worth it as Secunda believes that there is no such thing as too spicy of food or using too many dishes to cook.

Disclosure: Several item links in this post are affiliate links. I will make a small amount if you click on them and make a purchase. All opinions expressed, however, are 100% my own.

I’m linking to:

Left and Right Brained Learners

2012-01-05T22:37:00.001-08:00

Here is a infographic from onlinecollege.org. I know one shouldn’t put too much stock in such learning classification systems, but I also do think that it is good to remember that different people learn differently. Interestingly, when I was younger, I was very much a left-brained person and looking at this graphic, I realize that I have morphed into a right-brained person as I have gotten older. I’m not sure how that has happened (and you can keep your snide comments about “how all my left brain cells died off from old age” to yourself, thank you very much). Click the graphic to go to the site/enlarge.

Via: Online College Advice

Welcome 2012, Health Issues, and Chicken Butts

2012-01-03T22:09:00.001-08:00

I kind of fell off the face of the Earth for the last couple of weeks, blogging-wise, but things got really hectic with the holidays and then I just wanted to be able to relax and not worry about blogging. Over the last two weeks, we did what much of America did, we celebrated Christmas and New Year’s. We also celebrated both my and Gohan’s birthdays. There really was nothing remarkable about our celebrations, there were pretty much like everyone else’s. I guess one thing that stands out is that we had Chinese takeout for our Christmas dinner.

Unfortunately, over the last two weeks, Dora also had two seemingly unrelated health issues come up. They may both turn out to be nothing, or they may turn out to be big things. I will blog more about them, once more tests have been completed and I have more answers.

Another wonderful issue that has arisen with Dora is that she has learned to ask “Guess what?” and when one responds, “What?”, she retorts with, “Chicken butt!” I have no one, but myself, to blame. My husband has often used the “Chicken butt” line in our household, but I was unaware that it was something that anyone, but he and his childhood friends said, until I saw a stuffed chicken in a catalog that says the whole spiel. Of course, I had to get it for him! Well, he is on vacation or he would have already taken it to work to torment his co-workers with. Instead, Dora has become obsessed with the thing and the expression. The worst of it is that I fall for it every time! Yes, I am gullible to the nth degree, but her voice is just so innocent and there is not even a hint of a smile, when she nonchalantly asks, “Mom, guess what?” She also has the timing and spacing down perfectly. She doesn’t ask it often enough that I’m prepared for it, but she asks often enough that it is getting darn annoying.

Anyway, that is a brief summary of the last two weeks. We started back with homeschooling today. How about you? Did you do anything special over the holidays?