Momma, Ph.D. : Applying Child Development Principles At Home

CoronaStayCation: Distance Learning In Action

2020-03-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

We are VERY, VERY fortunate. While many schools are scrambling to do anything, or have packets with workbook review pages to pick up, or are simply not doing anything at all, our school has done a phenomenal job setting up distance learning without skipping a beat.

Our school did have the benefit of our regular spring break falling exactly on our first week of "Shelter in Place" (SIP), but I am impressed that the teachers and administration were not taking a break, and were instead coming up with a plan for distance learning. The school was deep cleaned, and many of the teachers came in, got their doc cams, laptops, and teaching materials from the school during break and set up home "classrooms". Other teachers come into the (mostly empty) school and teach from their classrooms, maintaining social distancing, which is pretty easy if most teachers are home and the classroom is only used by that one teacher!

Without missing a single day of school, we had one day of independent work posted online before live, distance learning started. On that day of independent work, the teachers attended training for distance learning.

Both of my children (4th grade and 7th grade) have teachers who teach from home and I'm super impressed with how smoothly its going. There are only a few technical glitches (For example, on day 2, Gsuite was down, so no one could get on the Google Meet for the first 15 minutes), and the students are already getting new content and being graded on it, not just reviewing like a lot of schools are.

Monday through Friday, students log on to Google Meet with their classes for two one-hour sessions, with a 30 minute break between. This might not seem like a lot, but it has allowed them to stay on track for English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. From what I can see, the pacing is on schedule. I wish that they were still getting Social Studies and Science instruction, and would happily accept perhaps an additional 30 minutes each of Google Meet time to do so, but I understand that it's easier to catch up in those content areas in the fall with their teachers in the next grade.

On FaceBook, I see that teachers have a lot of challenges, but the beautiful thing about all of this is that they are rising to the occasion and still giving our children a world class education despite having small children of their own in their laps or playing and getting into things nearby! From what I can see, the students are also thriving in the online environment and it's a supportive and effective virtual space. In some ways, I think my kids actually prefer this format and its efficiency.

As schools roll out their plans for distance learning (especially as the dates for return continue to get pushed back), it is apparent that not all children are in as good of a situation as mine and there is a lot of debate out there about how schools should handle this situation. I will be addressing some of these topics in future blog posts as things develop.

Now that the children have school, we have a little less time on our hands, but we still try to have a bit of a structure for time outside of school and homework hours to keep us from having lots of screen time or mindless time (it's good to have some, but not all day, every day!).

Here is what our first day of distance learning looked like:

7:00

[All] Breakfast

Get Dressed/ Showered

Free Time

8:00

[Boys] Chore: Empty Dishwasher;

[Mom] Fold Laundry

8:30

[All]

Get ready for school and Get ready to log in

9:00

[Boys] Log in to school

[Mom] Start Picture Organization, Writing/Blogging

10:00

[Boys] Free Time

10:30

[Boys] Log in to school

11:30

[All] Assess homework, make a plan to complete it

12:00

[All] Lunch

1:00

[Boys] Active Time

[Mom] Cleaning Chore of the Day: Clean out locker bins and junk bowl

1:30

[Boys] Homework Time

2:00

[Boys]

Homework/ Productivity/ Creative Time

[Mom] Sewing/Laundry/Photo Organization-Backup

3:00

[Mom and Logan Time] - Garden
[RJ] - Homework/Productivity/Creative Time

4:00

[Mom and RJ Time] - Rollerblading
[Logan] - Productivity/Creative Time

5:00

[Mom/RJ/Logan] Feed Sour dough starter, make observations

5:30

[Dad/RJ/Logan] Exercise time

[Boys] Free Time

6:00

[Mom] Make Dinner (Taco Tuesday)

7:00

[All] Eat dinner

7:45

[Logan]

Shower

8:00

[All]

Get ready for bed

Family Reading Time

9:00

[Boys]

Bed time

[Parents]

Quiet time/Bedtime

CoronaStayCay, Spring Break Edition (March 16-20, 2020)

2020-03-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

My goal for my kids' spring break, which was also our first week of everyone staying at home due to the Coronavirus (which I have now dubbed "CoronaStayCay") was to balance fun and freedom with a little structure. I wrote a schedule over the weekend for Monday. I didn't think it was overly ambitious and I tried to make sure that we had lots of time for each activity, whether it was an extended breakfast or more time to get ready. I set times, but I wasn't holding the kids to them rigidly. Having a schedule is also good for me, because I do much better having a plan, even if I end up changing it. Without a plan, I end up spending a lot of time on my computer or phone, instead of doing the things that I actually want to do, and the kids will retreat to their corners and spend time on screens, waiting for something to happen. When they were younger, they would spend hours playing, but now that they're older, they seem to have forgotten how to do that. Eventually, I'd like to get them to a point where they choose to engage in more productive activities and plan their own days, but this is the first step.

This was my first draft for Day 1:

6:30

Wake time

Eat Breakfast Get dressed

7:00

Mom - Online Barre Class, bike, yoga, or run after (weather)

Kids - Finish breakfast and dressing

Kids - Chore: Put clothes away and help sort laundry

8:00:

Mom - Shower & Finish sorting Laundry

Kids - Read and/or Creative Activity

9:00: Check in and Plan the day

9:30:

Mom/Logan: One on one time

RJ: Independent time (no YouTube, Shows, or video games)

10:30:

Mom/RJ:

One on one time

Logan: Independent time (no YouTube, Shows, or Video Games)

11:30: Mom/Kids Fun Project/Play

12:30: Make and Eat Lunch/TV time

1:30: Productivity time

Mom - Sew

RJ -

Logan -

3:30:

Free Time

5:30:

Dad/RJ Exercise

6:00:

Mom: Make Dinner

RJ/Logan: Empty Dishwasher

RJ/Logan: Help make dinner or do something creative - no screens

7:00:

All: Dinner/TV

8:00:

All: Clean up from Dinner/Shower

8:30:

Family Reading time

9:30:
Bedtime

In reality, the kids didn't wake up until I finally woke them up at 8:30, because I was busy doing my own stuff and it was nice to have quiet time!

Then, by 9:00, RJ was in the shower and Logan was getting dressed and putting his basket of clothes away. When that was finished Logan and I started the chore of sorting the dirty laundry. It wasn't until 9:30 that I realized that they didn't get breakfast like they were told.

So, I make sure they ate breakfast and had a brief morning meeting to plan what they were going to insert into their time blocks.

Our morning schedule was modified so that each kid had an hour of time with me and then we had lunch. We skipped the time with both of them so we could stick to the rest of the schedule.

For the rest of the week, we loosely followed the modified schedule below (which was adjusted based on Monday's reality, but the times got shifted around depending on when the kids actually woke up and what time I had vFit classes (which, by the way, if you are a busy parent, this is a phenomenal live but virtual fitness studio that has lots of different formats and times!)

5:45

Mom:

Wake time

Eat Breakfast Get dressed

6:00

Mom - Online Exercise class [Do Not Disturb - this is a LIVE online class]

6:30

Kids - Eat breakfast and Get Dressed

7:00:

Mom - Shower

Kids - Read and/or Creative Activity (no screen time unless approved)

7:30:

Chore: Fold Laundry

Kids: Socks

8:00:

All: Check in and Plan Free Times, etc.

8:30:

Mom/Logan:

One on one time:

RJ:

Independent time (no YouTube, Shows, sleeping, or video games): [Insert what you want to do here. See ideas below.]

9:30:

Mom/RJ:

One on one time: [Insert what you want to do here. See ideas below.]

Logan:

Independent time (no YouTube, Shows, or Video Games: [Insert what you want to do here. See ideas below.]

10:30:

Mom/Kids Fun Project/Play: Science Kit - Globe, etc.

12:30:

Make and Eat Lunch/TV time

1:30:

Productivity time

Mom: Data Backup, Sewing

RJ: [Insert what you want to do here. See ideas below.]

Logan: [Insert what you want to do here. See ideas below.]

3:30:

All: Free Time

5:30:

Dad/RJ Exercise

6:00:

Mom: Make Dinner

RJ/Logan: Empty Dishwasher

RJ/Logan: Help make dinner or Creative Time

7:00:

All: Dinner/TV

8:00:

All: Clean up from Dinner/Shower

8:30:

Family Reading time

9:30:

Bedtime

Here are some of the things I did with the kids:

Mom and 10 year old:
1.) Built Legos
2.) Went through stuff in his room to organize it (over a few days)
3.) Started weeding the garden and planting seeds in the greenhouse (over a few days)
4.) Mask making with clay, alginate, and latex

Mom and 12 year old:
1.) He taught me how to use Adobe Premiere Pro
2.) We researched hockey roller blades
3.) Went rollerblading at the park, being careful to keep our distance from others. ( We did this a few times)
4.) Made slow-motion videos of his hockey shot.

Together, with both boys, we used some of the science kits we had laying around, but, unfortunately some of these were not as engaging as I had hoped. For example one of the old kits had a plastic globe that they were supposed to paint, which is not their thing. This is probably why it sat in our science area for years. We also built the weather station, but don't have a good support in our back yard to nail it to. What the boys did enjoy all together was making homemade protein balls.

My my my my my Corona...Staycation (An Introduction)

2020-03-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

I haven't used this blog since 2013, when my now 7th grader was going into first grade. I think that's when I simply got busy with volunteering at the school, managing the kid's various activities, and then a few years later, working as a substitute teacher. Now that we are in a state mandated "shelter-in-place" and preparing for distance/online learning for the kids (7th grade and 4th grade) for the foreseeable future, I thought that blogging the experience was a good idea.

Prior to our mandated staycation, we were commuting to school and back (25 minutes, one way) hockey practice 3 times a week (25-35 minutes one way), had hockey games on the weekends (25 - 90 minutes away for regular games, plane rides away for tournaments), and were practicing for science olympiad several times a week. The last two weeks contained daily practice after school for Science Olympiad. To make a long story short, we started what I've dubbed "CoronaStaycay" pretty burnt out, so I have embraced the situation to give us a chance to relax, reset, and hopefully get some stuff done around the house! I plan to write about the things we did and what worked and what didn't (and maybe why if I have time). For this post, here is some background on our timeline.

Monday March 9 - The husband had a work event that was poorly attended and he came home early and started his 100% work from home stint.

Thursday March 12 - We heard that L's Science Olympiad competition (schedule for Saturday March 14) was cancelled and would not be rescheduled. After school that day, instead of the practice we were expecting to have, I picked up all of our science olympiad supplies that I was storing at school and my fellow mentor mom and I cleaned out our shelves. (I did this just to grab things before spring break, but it's a good thing I did, because my stuff would've been held hostage at school for who knows how long if I hadn't!)

Friday March 13 - Sent the kids to school, our house cleaners came and cleaned the house, the husband and I braved Costco because we were legitimately out of orange juice and low on yogurt. We also got milk, eggs, cheese, and bread, among other things because we were there, so it made sense to stock up (nothing crazy though - we didn't over-stock our house!). We tried to practice social distancing, but people were a little too close for our liking. After school, we decided to let RJ go to the ice rink with a friend, because we received notice that schools (ours included) were closing until April 6, and that it might be awhile until he got to go again since we were staying home during the virus crisis.

Saturday March 14 - Sunday March 15 - In our first official days of sheltering in place, we gathered ideas about what the kids wanted to do (in the house) over their Spring Break week and I tried to get a rough schedule so that it didn't turn into the YouTube and video game fest that our rare days off tend to devolve into. I wanted them to have fun, but I also wanted to make sure that their fun was a little more structured because we'd be doing this staying at home thing for a while and I wanted them to take advantage of the extra time to actually do something productive rather than just filling time.

Monday March 16 - Friday March 20 - School Spring Break (regularly scheduled)

Thursday March 19 - We learned that the kids would be logging into live, online classes for two hours with a break between during their time away from school. I wish we were given guidance on how much classwork/homework outside of those two hours would be, so that I could plan ahead, but I suppose we will find out soon enough. My hope is that they don't have more than two hours of work outside of those live times, so that they have daily time for other pursuits that they normally don't get to, because of school. In other words, I'm hoping that the official schoolwork will be minimal, so I can take a stab at a bit of homeschooling/experiential learning.

Monday March 23 - Friday March 27 - Distance Learning Week 1

Monday March 30 - Friday April 3 - Distance Learning Week 2

Beyond April 3 - We don't know yet. Officially, school is closed until April 6. However, due to the standing shelter-in-place order in the state of California that has no official end date as of yet, we really don't know anything beyond April 5. Our governor, Gavin Newsom, has stated that we should be prepared for schools not re-opening until the fall due to the outbreak, so we will adjust as we need to.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

2013-07-30T21:38:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

Outdoor: Bike to Park (Thoming)
Math: Number Duplos Game
Literacy/Science: RJ Blog about Caterpillars, Letter Duplos with L, Thank you letters
Art: Egg carton caterpillars
Math: Price comparison Spreadsheet

How it went:

Outdoors: We did bike to the park with L in the trailer and RJ on his bike. RJ's stamina is really improving. He goes full steam to the park and back and still has energy to spare now, not like a few weeks ago when he was running out of steam before we got back home!

The rest: We spent more time at the park today, so it was after lunch before we actually got around to starting anything else, and even that was later because RJ and I played chess during/after lunch. I'm not sure what it says about my chess abilities when I actually do have to try hard to play against him! He is thinking at least one step in advance, sometimes two, and from multiple places on the board. I think it's pretty impressive for a 6 year old.

We did spend some time looking at the caterpillars, especially since we have our first chrysalis, but we didn't get around to documenting them on his blog because I was busy cutting out and gluing the chores-for-hire that we came up with yesterday to craft sticks so we could start using them. (I did take pictures though, and we will be doing more documenting tomorrow! Predictably, earning money via chores was a major interest and I managed to get RJ to do a minimal-effort dusting of the living room (he only got 1/2 salary since I could still find dust in a lot of places, but we are going to work on quality of the job each time), feed the cats, and help snap beans for dinner. L chose to wipe down the kitchen baseboards with a damp cloth. So if we keep this up, it would be really nice!

After that, I started work on taping the sight words and letters to the duplos, but I only finished one sheet of words, and it took much longer than I had expected. During that time the boys took it upon themselves to build with the duplos. RJ did read a few of the words though.

Looks like we'll be moving some of these activities to another day!

Monday, July 29, 2013

2013-07-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

Outdoor Activity: Playground, Soccer

Science/Literacy: Documenting Caterpillars, Write about them on blog

Math: Assigning Coins to Chores to make magnets

Literacy: Designing Chore/Goal/To-Do Chart

Errand/Math: School Supply Pricing - Target - have RJ record prices for the items he needs. We will later look at Amazon and Walmart and compare

How it went:
Outdoor Activity: We went to the park with their bikes, but forgot the soccer ball. They still had fun though and we ran into one of L's friends from gymnastics there.

Science/Literacy: We definitely spent a good deal of time throughout the day looking at the caterpillars. All five are alive (we thought at least one, if not more, were dead), moving and growing. RJ even called me over when he saw two of them "fighting". I think they were just bumping into each other, but it was more activity than they've ever shown us. We're hoping to see them molt soon, since they're getting big.

We didn't end up writing about the caterpillars on the blog, but RJ did blog about his crystal growing experience. http://rjsmagic.blogspot.com/2013/07/crystal-growing.html

Math/Literacy: We did end up discussing chores, and RJ and L liked the idea of having some regular chores that they were expected to do as members of the household as well as having extra chores that they could do for money. This wasn't much of a math activity yet though, since it's just a list and I assigned the payments for each chore. I need to make these into magnets still. We didn't get around to doing the chart yet, so we'll add this to tomorrow's tasks.

Errand/Math: We did go to Target and recorded the prices for all of RJ's school supplies and we talked about how we were going to try and save money by shopping around and comparing prices. Our goal is to save enough money for him to buy a small toy with the difference. Tomorrow we will enter our data into a spread sheet and look up everything on Amazon.

Monday July 22, 2013

2013-07-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

Outdoor Activity: Rollerblade to the park (bike for L)

Visit Preschool
Literacy: Harry Potter alphabetical order word sorting
Math: Create a graph of all the items on the floor, then pick them up
Science: Test tube crystal ball
Art: Draw Crystal, Document

How it went:

Outdoor Activity: Rollerblading is clearly something we need more practice with. We never made it to the park, and the act of Rollerblading was frustrating for RJ. L also was in a mood, since he didn't want to be outside for some reason (it wasn't hot yet,so it shouldn't have been temperature-related).

Visit Preschool: We are enrolling L in preschool when RJ starts 1st grade, so we wanted to visit RJ's old preschool and get paperwork to fill out and find out what their half-day program looked like now. We visited and RJ got to see his old teachers, which was fun.

Math: I really wanted to clean up the first floor since it's been a while. I've been more focused on doing things with the kids than keeping the house clean, but it was time. I tried to make cleaning up a learning activity and perhaps a motivator. I made a chart with different categories of things that we might find around the house to pick up. I went over the chart with RJ and shared with L that we were going to be recording what we cleaned up. Then as we went around picking things up, we placed a tally mark in the correct category. In doing so, RJ and I discussed how each item is represented by a tally mark, and that every 5th tally mark is drawn across the previous 4, so that we could count by fives in the end when adding up the tallies. At first this concept was difficult for him, as he was initially convinced that the cross line wasn't an actual count like the rest. By the end he seemed to get it, though he was still asking me every time if he was marking his tallies correctly. When we finished picking up everything that was on the floor (the idea was that I could sweep and steam the floors easier without all the toys and random things strewn about), we sat down to count up our tallies. This was good practice counting by fives for him (especially since the numbers got embarrassingly high). He also wrote some of the final numbers down. We made the bar graph of the data after looking at a Harry Potter graphing worksheet. RJ drew the bars for each category.

You might wonder what L was doing during all of this, and I have been struggling with getting him to participate in any of the activities, even those that are at his level (while he is capable of picking things up and was helping out, the tallying and counting by fives was beyond him). Lately he has just wanted to play on his own when we do these, and I've taken advantage of that to do some activities with RJ in preparation for First Grade. When RJ returns to school, there will be a lot more for just L.

Literacy and Science: The cleaning effort took away activity time, so we didn't get to these quite yet.

Art: RJ did document his crystal again today. It's been a while unfortunately, but you can see the differences. We hope to write about the crystals on his blog when the water fully evaporates.

Friday, July 19, 2013

2013-07-19T13:03:00.000-07:00

The Plan: We didn't have one! After spending Thursday out at an amusement park and having a late dinner out with friends, we counted on a lazy day at home.

How it went: It was mostly a lazy day, but the kids asked me to read this book, so I did. It's a pretty cute book too!

Crinkleroot's Guide to Knowing Butterflies and Moths by Jim Arnosky

Concepts Covered:

Butterflies and moths are among the most numerous of insects
In the Order of insects called lepidoptera

Lepidoptera means scaled wings

Scales rub off like powder
Microscopic scales give wings color

Anatomy

Antennae

Moths have feathery antennae

Forewing
Hindwing
Head
Thorax
Abdomen

Butterflies rest with wings upright
Moths rest with wings folded down
Monarchs are most recognized with orange and black pattern

Viceroy butterfly resembles monarch (it's a bit smaller)

Other butterflies

White Admiral
Red Admiral
Zebra Longwing
Diana
Mourning Cloak
California Sister

Have to approach butterflies slowly to get close
Swallowtails have little tails on their wings

Zebra Swallowtail
Tiger Swallowtail
Black Swallowtail

If you wait until a butterfly lands and starts to feed, you can get close

When sipping nectar, butterflies don't pay attention to much else

Sip nectar through proboscis, long hollow tube

Proboscis can be unfurled to reach deep in a flower

Common wildflowers that butterflies like

Queen Anne's Lace
Clover
Milkweed
Thistle

Caterpillars like plant leaves
Butterfly begins life as a caterpillar
Change from a caterpillar to butterfly is called metamorphosis
Life Cycle of Butterfly

Egg
Hatches into a caterpillar (larva)
Caterpillar eats green leaves
Grows fast
When grown it curls up and forms a hard shelled case around it - chrysalis
Inside Chrysalis the caterpillar changes into a butterfly
When the time is right the butterfly breaks out, unfurls wings and flies away

Caterpillar types shown

Monarch
California Sister
Black Swallowtail
Zebra Longwing

Not all Butterflies are big and boldly patterned, but rather small and soft, pastel shades

Yellow, Blue, Copper, White
Orange Bordered Blue
Cloudless Sulphur
Purplish Copper
Cabbage White
Alfalfa Butterfly
Dogface Butterfly
Acadian Hairstreak
Common Blue

Butterflies with Mottled or Checkered Patterns

Checkerspot
Painted Lady
Checkered Skipper
Crescentspot

Most butterflies like sunny open places
Some butterflies like the woods

Brown Elfins
Wood Satyrs

Woodland butterflies are mostly brown and gray

Have to look harder for them

Butterflies are day fliers
Moths fly at night

Moths are attracted to light (we don't know why)

Types

Cutworm Moth
Dried Leaf Moth
Maple Spanworm Moth
Gypsy Moth

During the day, Moths sleep on trees or brush camoflaged against bark
Moths have the same life cycle as butterflies, starting as eggs and hatching as caterpillars

Isabella Moths are better known as Woolly Bear Caterpillars
Geometer Moths are better known as Inchworm Caterpillars

Moth Caterpillars (depending on species) eat plant leaves, stems, fruit, grain, flour, and clothes
Moths feed on nectar as adults
Some moths are known for their size

Big Poplar Sphinx Moth
Polyphemus Moth
Luna Moth
Regal Moth
Cecropia Moth

Underwing Moths are hard to find when at rest because their closed forewings are completely camoflaged

But when they spread their wings, you see a colorful underwing
Sweatheart underwing

Some moths aren't night fliers

Forester Moth
Ctenucha Moth
Hummingbird Moth

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

2013-07-17T12:09:00.000-07:00

The Plan:
Outdoor Activity: Ride to another Park

Literacy/Science: Read "Can You Tell a Butterfly From a Moth?" by Buffy Silverman

Art: Butterfly and Moth Handprint Painting

Clean up Art Area, Steam Floor

Science/Art: Document Crystal Growth

Swim Lessons

Math (RJ): How many letters does Harry have? Math worksheet

Math (L): Counting Dots (while I'm cutting out the numbers to put on duplos for another activity)

How it went:

Outdoor Activity: Another successful outing to the park, this time to meet friends and play.

Literacy/Science: We read the book (concepts covered will be below), the kids liked it. RJ paid more attention than L.

Art: Both kiddos enjoyed making their butterflies and moths. I painted their hands following their directions and then they used their hands to form the wings of the butterflies and moths. Not unexpectedly, L quit after printing his butterflies, when RJ went on to make moths too. We also discovered that apparently fairly new black tempera paint can explode and smell like sour milk. I shook the (less than a year old) bottle and when I opened it, it basically shot out and sprayed my neck (thankfully missing my face) and continued to bubble out when I ran to get a rag to clean it up. I've never had that happen before!

Crystal Growth: Unfortunately we did not get around to this today. RJ looked at it, but didn't document.

Swim lessons/Math: The boys have back to back lessons (unfortunately they couldn't fit them into classes at the same time), which gives me a little time with each of them when the other is in class. When RJ was in his class, L matched capital and lowercase letters. I had planned on him drawing and counting dots, but he was more interested in the letters and I was able to keep cutting out the words and numbers while working with him that way. When L was in class, RJ worked on the Harry Potter Math Sheet. I was hoping he would finish it, but he stopped after 4+4, so we will have to continue with that later. He ended up drawing a little and playing with other kids waiting.

Butterfly Concepts Covered:

Butterflies and moths look alike

Adults have 4 wings

Wings are covered in tiny scales

Scales give wings their colors

Butterflies and Moths are insects

Adult insects have six legs

Tell butterflies and moths apart by their colors

Butterfly wings are bright
Moth wings are dull

Usually gray or brown

More kinds of moths than butterflies
Butterflies fly during the day
Moths fly at night (usually)

Most are noctural (active at night)
They tend to fly near porch lights

Butterfly folds wings up at rest
Moths spread wings at rest
Butterfly body is skinny
Moth body is fat and fuzzy
Insects have antennae

Use them to feel, taste, and smell
Butterfly antennae have knobs on the ends
Moth antennae do not have knobs and can be feathery
Wave their antennae to smell flowers
Moths and butterflies use antennae to smell for a mate

Butterfly unrolls a long tube and pushes it into a flower to eat

Tube is the butterfly's mouth
Sips nectar (a sweet liquid) from the flower
[I asked RJ what the tube was called and he recalled "proboscis"]
Moths eat the same way

All insects start life as eggs

Caterpillars hatch from butterfly and moth eggs

Caterpillars eat leaves and grow
Caterpillars molt (shed old skin and have new skin underneath)

Molt many times as they grow
[Asked RJ how many times. He recalled 4 from the other books]
[Based on pictures we noted that moth caterpillars were fuzzier than butterfly caterpillars]

Moth caterpillars hide under leaves or soil when done growing

There, they spin a cocoon

Cocoon is made of silk
Covers the caterpillar tightly
Inside the cocoon the caterpillar sheds its skin again
Grows 4 wings and six long legs
Changes into a moth

Butterfly caterpillars attach themselves to a leaf or branch with a strong silk button

Hangs upside down from the leaf
Molts one more time
Hard shell called a chrysalis forms around it
Inside it changes into a butterfly

Butterflies and moths fly in gardens, meadows, and woods
Some spots on butterfly or moth wings fool creatures that eat them (like the pictured moth whose spots look like owl eyes
Caterpillars also rick some hunting birds and insects

Tiger swallowtail caterpillar looks like bird poop, so other animals leave it alone

Older tiger swallowtail caterpillar has spots on its back looking like eyes, making it look like a snake
Monarchs taste bad, so they are avoided

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

2013-07-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

Outdoor Activity: Bike Ride to Park

Literacy: Write First Blog Entry, Document yesterday's crystal experiment

Logan's Gymnastics Class: RJ write a thank you note

Science: Crystal Ball

Art: Draw Crystal, Easel Painting

Swimming

How it went:

Bike Ride: We got a later start than I had hoped, but we eventually got the bike trailer hooked up for L and rode over to the park, which is about a mile away. We played for a while and headed back. I was pleasantly surprised with RJ's endurance and we even managed to stop at a yard sale we passed on the way home.

Literacy: RJ wrote his welcome message for his first blog post. However, his blog posts are likely to be short because he is only content to be writing and spelling for so long. We did not work on the Crystal post.

Thank you note: I was able to convince RJ to write one of his Thank You notes while L was in his gymnastics class, which means that in a few weeks, maybe he will have finally finished them all.

Science: We didn't get around to the crystal ball experiment. I was trying to get some of the house clean, and they were engaged with playing other things on their own.

Art: RJ did draw his growing crystal for day 2. Logan was completely uninterested in drawing or painting and insisted on doing his own thing.

Swimming: We didn't get in the pool as we just ran out of time until it was time to make dinner.

Monday, July 15, 2013

2013-07-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

Outdoor Activity: Ride bikes to our local playground

Math Activity: Harry Potter Color by Math Problem

Literacy (and Science): Read "The Butterfly" by Sabrina Crewe, Start RJ's Blog, Write one birthday thank you note and take pictures.
Science Activity: Crystal Growing (Start, Document on RJ's Blog)

Art Activity: Draw Crystal as it is now

Swimming in the Pool

How it Went:

Playground: This was supposed to be a standard ride around the block to the playground, play, and come back before it got too hot. First, L wanted the balance bike instead of the pedal bike (which has the push bar). I really want him to work on his pedaling, but as long as he was doing something other than walking there, I let him choose. It was just a lot slower, since I couldn't speed him up with the push bar. Then RJ found the inches deep puddle from the sprinklers and spent the rest of the time riding back and forth through it on his bike. L insisted on following him, but unlike RJ, was wearing his sneakers rather than crocs or sandals (which I purposely put on him because he hates getting bark in his sandals!), and immediately got angry that they got wet, even though I did warn him that they would and that I didn't have his sandals with me. So he got mad, took them off and just ran through the puddle. I try to pick my battles wisely, and running through the large puddle was fine by me as long as he knew that I didn't have dry clothes immediately available and that he did, in fact, need to wear clothing on the way home (for sun protection mostly, I could care less about public 3 year old nudity). He did need some convincing to let me get his shoes back on to head home though. Anyway, this playground trip and the short trip to and from it took a lot longer than usual!

Harry Potter Color-by-Number: I'm officially in love with the person who created all these Harry Potter worksheets. I am normally anti-worksheet, but these seemed fun and related to what RJ & L are most into these days, so I decided to try them. I figured that coloring by number was too simple for RJ, so I blacked out the numbers in the key and put in 7 easy addition problems where the sum matched the number paired with the color. I gave L one, in its original configuration, since he does know his numbers and I colored the words, so he didn't have to read to know which color he should use. He was happy to do the first color, but then quit and refused to do any more coloring, even when I told him that he could color it however he wanted. He really doesn't like drawing/coloring for more than 5 seconds, which I'm trying to work on, looking for things that will interest him. At 3.5, I'm not super concerned though, and we just find other ways to work on fine motor control. Given that he LOVES destroying and creativity reassembling all of RJ's lego minifigures on a regular basis, I'm confident that he has pretty good dexterity. RJ loved this though and stayed engaged the whole time, taking his time and coloring neatly, even!

The Butterfly - The book mostly reinforced what we've already learned about the butterfly life cycle, but there are a few new concepts too. I'll list the theme concepts covered below.

RJ's Blog - RJ and I talked over the weekend about him having his own blog to document science projects and write stories to share. So today, we actually set one up on his google account (which I created a LONG time ago when I needed more space on Picasa for our family photos), picked the name, and selected the background, template, and layout. Now we just have to add entries.

Birthday Note: We didn't get to this. We really have to - it's been a few weeks since his birthday party!

Crystal Growing: This was part of a science kit, so it was basically reading a blurb about crystals provided by them (of course RJ just focused on the fact that they mentioned that some people believe that crystals have magical or medicinal properties), boiling some water, mixing the crystal growing powder in and pouring it over a rock. He seemed to like the process, but I was a bit disappointed because the powder didn't dissolve in the boiling water fully as it was supposed to. I'm hoping the crystal will still grow, but we'll have to wait and see.

Once we finished preparing our rock for growing a crystal, RJ drew a picture of it as is, and labeled it "Crystal Day 1"

Swimming: The boys mostly played Quidditch in our small pool, using noodles as brooms and a shovel as the "snitch". Harry Potter has even taken the swimming pool by storm.

Butterfly Theme Concepts Covered:

Butterflies lay their eggs on leaves
Eggs are tiny
After 4 days caterpillars emerge
Caterpillars are very small
First food is their eggshell
Caterpillars eat leaves
Caterpillars grow fast
Caterpillars' skin spilts when it gets too tight

a new looser skin is underneath
New skin is colorful with stripes

Caterpillar has many legs

6 front legs

Help caterpillar feed

10 back legs

Legs have hooks to help caterpillar hold onto plants

Caterpillars have predators

Colors tell predators that it tastes bad

Fully grown at 18 days
Caterpillar sheds skin 4 times
When it's full grown, it attaches its tail end to a plant
Pupa stage is when the caterpillar forms the chrysalis

Caterpillar's skin splits again as it's forming a chrysalis
Skin of chrysalis is soft, but hardens soon
Chrysalis has tiny holes to let air in and out
Inside the creature is completely changing shape

[I added what we read from another book: Remember that the caterpillar actually turns to liquid and the cells reorganize to form a butterfly.]

At two weeks the chrysalis has turned more transparent and you can see the butterfly inside

Chrysalis splits and the butterfly crawls out
Butterfly has wings and antennae
Butterfly has only 3 pairs of legs
Butterfly's wings are initially crumpled and wet
Blood pumps into their veins, the wings stretch
Dries the wings in the sun

Wings are covered in scales

Two wings on each side of body
Scales give butterfly its colors
Colors warn predators that the butterfly tastes bad

Butterfly eats nectar from flowers through a proboscis

[I added that the proboscis is a tubelike tongue that they drink through]

Butterflies like warmth

In the fall, they migrate to warmer places
They spend winter asleep on leaves and branches of trees
Migrate back in the spring

Butterflies have mating smells in their wings

Males and females find each other by the smell
[I added that mating is what they do to make a baby, in this case eggs with caterpillars in them]

Female butterfly lays eggs on a leave

She leaves the eggs to hatch on their own

Butterflies need wild places with wildflowers containing nectar and the right plants to lay their eggs on
Parts of a Butterfly:

Wings

Covered in tiny hairy scales

Thorax

Middle part of the body [I added that it had the legs]

Abdomen

Rear part of the body

Antennae

Used to smell and sense things around them

Head

Front part of the body

Proboscis

Used for sucking nectar
Rolled up when not feeding

Compound eyes

Made of hundreds of tiny eyes that each see part of the whole picture

Feet

Used to walk
Used to taste plants before eating or laying eggs on them

Butterflies are insects

All insects have three parts to their body

Head
Thorax
Abdomen

6 legs
Wings

Butterflies in this book were monarchs
Other butterflies

Adonis Blue (Europe)
Apollo (Europe)
Marbled White (Europe)
Queen Alexandra's Birdwing (Southeast Asia)

World's largest

Long Tailed Skipper (North America) [Where we live]
Red Admiral (Northern Hemisphere) [Whole top of the globe]
Australian Beak (Australia)
Easter Tiger Swallowtail (North America)

Monarch Butterflies live in North America and migrate North and South across America in certain routes (pictured)

Summer Vacation 2013 and the Invasion of Harry Potter

2013-07-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

I have long abandoned the idea that this blog would be the perfect, continually updated source for parents who want to use thematic curriculum at home. In some ways, it's a failed experiment that I just refuse to drop completely, because I haven't been really doing the research I set out to in the beginning, or at least I haven't analyzed my data from the first couple of themes. In other ways, it's a realistic picture of what a parent can do when they are a stay at home parent of two children with a spouse who, due to a long commute, is gone for long hours every day. The reality is that I don't get very much planning time (none if we are busy on the weekends) and our focus shifts depending on what's going on. With my oldest in Kindergarten, and my little one spending some time in his co-op and in his 2 hours, twice a week preschool gymnastics class, I was able to find some time this spring to implement a theme here and there around our other activities (swim lessons, gymnastics, playdates, planning for our ridiculously over-done thematic birthday parties, school work, making dinner, making lunch, cleaning the house, taking care of the cats, etc.).

May was the last month of school and I think both RJ and I were burnt out from it. I was burnt out from the constant drain of finding new ways to get him to do his (boring) homework and I think he was just done with the whole thing. We were also spending inordinate amounts of time focusing on preparing for RJ's birthday party, which transformed our home into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yes, my now 6 year old has been obsessed with Harry Potter for a good year since we picked up the first book to read to him. Some of the themes, especially in the later books (we're two chapters from the end of Half Blood Prince) that we're getting to now, are quite advanced for a young elementary school kid, but he was so interested in the books when my husband and I were reading them last year, that we decided to try it anyway. I don't think that either of us expected him to be the Potterhead that he has become; rather expecting that he would be bored by listening to the stories without any pictures and quit the series before finishing the first book, thus avoiding having to discuss the more difficult story lines concerning death and being a double agent. But that was not the case. Instead he looked forward to us reading more and more, and seemingly absorbed every last deal, thus making it so that we have had to deal with all those difficult themes, and he's just kept on going. Even around his Kindergarten work and my themes, Harry Potter was always present in his pretend play. It wasn't until we were planning his birthday that I temporarily dropped the music theme and let him just focus on Harry Potter, of course bringing L along with him (he might only be 3.5, and has never had the books read to him, but he still knows and loves all the characters and the basic story just from playing with RJ and watching RJ play the Lego Harry Potter game on our Wii).

So for the month of May and much of June, we handcrafted wands, I sewed Harry Potter wizard robes, we cut fabric scraps to make owls out of toilet paper roles, we research "spells" for pretend play usage, we even put together a few potions at his birthday party (which of course required planning), we cooked food and treats that were depicted by J.K. Rowling, the boys played with the Harry Potter legos, and RJ had limited time to master his problem solving and hand-eye coordination by playing the Lego Harry Potter game on the Wii. His birthday party came and went, and now, a couple of weeks after, we are midway through Summer Vacation and finally ready for a refocus of our activities. The last couple of weeks have been fairly unplanned and random (around our regular activities of course), which is nice to do from time to time, but with vacation time withering away, we want to make sure that we cover all the things that we want to, before the grind of the school year starts up again!

Our activities are going to include a mix of themes for a little while. We are going to be getting some caterpillars in the mail in a couple of weeks, courtesy of a birthday gift, and so we will be spending a good deal of energy on taking care of the caterpillars/butterflies, and documenting their development and learning about them. I also have some random activities that don't fit themes that I've wanted to fit in for a while, and we have a lot of summer fun to engage in, like swimming and play dates, and field trips to various places that we're doing before school takes over our lives again.

So, stay tuned...I generally don't go MIA from this blog for TOO long before coming back.

Music Activities - Thursday May 2, 2013

2013-05-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

Little Kid Co-op Hosting -

Water Music Play

Sprinkler

Singing - Bear Hunt, etc.

Rhythm Parade to Get RJ from school

PM -

Go through Orchestra Book, talk about the instruments they want to.

Usborne Book - Review Classical & Orchestra, Cover Romantic

Cleaning out Car (not at all musical, but very necessary since it's a mess, inside and out) - we can play music while doing it though!

How it went:

The little kids (aged 2-3) loved playing in the water, exploring the different sounds, before they moved over to cooling off in the sprinkler.

We never did get around to any singing inside, as we spent more time making green cookies (they are cookies made with arugula & almond milk puree) than anything else. A good portion of our time indoors was spent getting into swimsuits, getting sunscreen on, changing diapers for the younger two kids (L has been potty trained since he was barely 2), and then getting dried off and dressed again when we came back in from outside. I always underestimate how much time wardrobe changes take with 3 little ones!

After getting their lunch prepared and packed up, they all chose instruments to play during the walk to pick up RJ from Kindergarten. We must be quite a sight with a full double stroller, RJ's razor scooter resting on the stroller handle, and one kid on my back in the ergo! The kids did enjoy their walk, happily making music along the way.

The afternoon did not pan out at all. My allergies (or maybe a cold, still not sure which) kicked in, and I was just exhausted and stuffy. So, I let my two kids have free play while I rested. It wasn't ideal, but sometimes you need an afternoon to just relax, so we did.

Music Activities - Tuesday April 30, 2013

2013-04-30T22:40:00.001-07:00

The Plan:

Tuesday is cleaning day, but I try to take breaks to play with L. RJ has Kindergarten in the morning and co-op in the afternoon, so all these activities are for L. Like yesterday, I probably won't get to all of these, but it's nice to have options of what to do when I take breaks from the cleaning to play with L.

1.) Listening to Baroque & Classical Music while cleaning

2.) Looking at Pictures of the pages we already covered in Usborne book - reinforcing topics

3.) Making of a Piano video (since L missed it yesterday): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAInt7hIZlU
4.) Rhythm practice

5.) Pitch Practice

6.) Glee Karaoke (L's favorite song of the moment is Don't Stop Believing and I've been intending to catch him singing it on video)

How it went:

1.) L did want to listen to music, but he insisted on listening to a variety of different versions of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing". Luckily after the 4th version (We listened to the original and then 3 different Glee arrangements), he let the playlist continue. We'll try Baroque & Classical music another day.

2.) Didn't get to this

3.) He did get to watch the video, and I was impressed it kept his attention the whole way through, since it was a bit technical. Even if he didn't absorb the details, I would file this experience under "It's better than him watching cartoons when I'm trying to sweep the living room floor".

4, 5, & 6.) We did not get around to these. I suppose singing along to "Don't Stop Believing" on repeat was pretty much what we would've done with the Glee Karaoke on the Wii, just without the microphones and knowing if we were hitting the right notes. Unlike the karaoke game, I was able to sweep the floor in our family room and kitchen as I was doing it, which was a bonus. When we were in the family room sweeping (and listening to music), he brought out the drumsticks and was freely playing the drums (okay, he was playing the RockBand drum pad even though it wasn't on - his drum kit is in the other room) along with the music.

While you would think that L's obsession with one song would get old, I have to consider myself lucky that this time it's one of my favorite songs too. It is completely normal for 3 year old children to crave repetition. Most parents probably see this most clearly in their child's frequent requests for a favorite book or a favorite movie, but it's common to see lots of repetition in music choices and in children's play as well. It makes sense from a developmental standpoint, because repetition, both with and without variation, allows for mastery of skills, as well as deeper understanding with each repetition. Even in your own life, you probably find that you catch something new when you watch a movie for the second (or the 10th) time. Since children don't necessarily grasp all aspects of the plot (for books or movies) or lyrics (for songs) the first time around, they choose to go back and try again (and again and again) until they fully understand it. In L's case, he's heard the song here and there for a good portion of his life, because I like the song and it's featured in one or more of it's incarnations on at least three different heavy rotation playlists. Something about it was interesting to him, and he latched onto it. He started asking for it as his bedtime lullaby a few weeks ago, increasing his frequency of asking to play the song, and now he walks around the house singing parts of the chorus and also sings along to the verses and chorus when the song is playing. With that said, it's a good bet that part of his motivation for this little obsession was learning the lyrics was that he could sing along like I do.

I think the main reason why we didn't engage in the book review, rhythm practice, or pitch practice today was because he wanted to build with legos for our longer cleaning break in the morning. So, I was spending time with him in between the cleaning, just not on music themed stuff. It happens. I try to maintain a balance of child-led play and adult-led activities, and some days have more of one while others feature more of the other. It really depends on how much RJ & L are engaged in their free play and how the lulls in their play fit in with the times that I'm free for playing (because while I'd love to always be able to play, the house doesn't clean itself, nor does dinner cook itself, etc.)

Music Activities - Monday April 29, 2013

2013-04-29T21:51:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

Read Usborne - Classical Music and The Orchestra

Watch Piano making video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAInt7hIZlU

Listen to Beethoven, a sonata,

Singing - pitch matching

Glee Karaoke

How it went:

Well this was definitely an overly ambitious plan. Sometimes that happens - I get too excited and forget that we have other things to do. This time, I think I forgot to leave time for RJ to do chores (he has some extras to do since he is working off a shattered globe from our light fixture), so it cut into our activity time.

We did an impromptu review of the previous pages of the The Usborne Story of Music book. This was helpful because I saw how much the kids remembered, reinforced it, and re-discussed what they didn't before moving on to a new period.

RJ remembered more about the instruments than the names of the composers or the time periods. But I was impressed that he remembered that the lowest and largest of the four recorders was the bass recorder. And he read the names of the others for himself. He also led the pitch demonstration on his own accord! RJ and L really like making high and low noises with their voices). L was able to make the sounds of the bass and descant (highest) recorders when we asked him, not just as we were doing it too.

This time, I also took some time to go over geography, since we reviewed that music was being written in Europe. I sent RJ and L over to the wall map to discuss where Europe is. Our map doesn't have the country borders, but at this point, I think knowing that Europe is across the US and across the Atlantic Ocean from us in California is appropriate. RJ was however able to point out where we live in CA on the map on his own.

We read the pages on Classical Music, but they were already loosing interest, so I plan on going over the info in another way, since the page content wasn't inherently interesting to them, other than the picture of the piano.

After reading, we ran out of time and had to go grocery shopping. When we returned, L had fallen asleep and got deposited on the couch, surprising me, because a nap is a rare occurrence So, only RJ got to watch the piano making video when I was making dinner. I will have Logan watch it tomorrow when RJ's not around, though, so not all is lost.

We didn't get to anything else, it was just too busy of a day with both boys busy in the morning with school (RJ) and gymnastics (L), followed by time at the park, followed by homework and chores and the grocery store, and then dinner and gymnastics for RJ.

Concepts Covered:

See previous post on Renaissance and Baroque Music for full content.
We mostly reviewed the instruments pictured - flute, lute, bass viol, viol, recorders, wooden flutes vs. modern metal flutes, Stradivarius Violin

Classical Music

Classical is often used to describe all music that isn't pop, folk, or jazz, but it really means music from late 18th, early 19th centuries.
Baroque concertos and sonatas developed into the forms we know today during this classical period
Haydn

Worked for the Esterhazy family in Hungary (I showed RJ & L approximately where Hungary was on the map)

Mozart

Mozart played difficult pieces on a harpsichord and organ by the time he was 4

Harpsichord and Organ have keyboards like a piano

He spent his life composing, teaching and conducting his works throughout Europe

Beethoven

Developed a way of writing that inspired composers of the Romantic period (which is next)
People thought his music was very complicated

Piano

Invented in Italy around 1700 by Bartolomeo Cristofori
Proper name - pianoforte, meaning soft-loud in Italian
Unlike a harpsichord, you can play both loud and soft

forte - Italian for loud
piano - Italian for soft

Concerto

Developed from the Baroque concerto
Piece for orchestra with one or more soloists

Music played by the soloist is often more difficult and exciting than that played by the orchestra

Sonata

In Baroque period, Sonata described many different types of instrumental compositions

Classical Sonata developed from this into a piece for one or two instruments

Most sonatas are for pianos alone or for another instrument accompanied by a piano
Sonatas are usually in three or four sections called movements

The Symphony

Means sounding together
Developed from the Baroque sinfonia

Sinfonia - piece played at the start of an Italian opera

Classical symphony - piece for orchestra with four movements

Music Activities - Thursday April 25, 2013

2013-04-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

I didn't plan anything ahead of time for this afternoon, but some of the books we got from the library did lead to notable learning.

1.) L and I had picked out "The Magic Flute" when we were at the library last week, and while RJ and L had no interest in actually reading it (which was weird, since they normally love being read to), I was able to find an animated version online, so they were exposed to it, and I told them that they were watching and listening to an opera, which involves the characters acting and singing out the story. Part 1, 2, and 3 are all on YouTube.

2.) A little later in the afternoon, RJ and L wanted to read The Usborne Story of Music, which we had also borrowed from the library. We had borrowed this particular book from the library before, back in September, but had only made it to about page 5 before getting sidetracked from the music theme by the rigors of kindergarten homework, so we returned it before finishing it.

Today, when RJ opened the book, he recognized it and accurately told me where we had left off before. He told me that he wanted to continue where we left off, so that's what we did. We read the pages covering Renaissance Music and Baroque Music, each of which comprised a two page spread. This book is actually intended for older children (Amazon's listing has it rated for age 10 and up), but I like to use more advanced books fairly often. Whenever I choose a book from the library, I choose it because it has good information either for me to provide in a developmentally appropriate way, or because it is actually a good read for the kids. I choose this book for both reasons. While there are a LOT of concepts covered per page, the information is arranged similarly to a Children's encyclopedia, with relevant illustrations nearby, which is appealing to my children.

I also don't just read the text to my kids, who are a few months shy of 6 and 3. Instead, I start reading text I find interesting (skimming quickly is a great ability to have for this - I can usually get through half a page to find the interesting stuff before they start bugging me to start reading!), and then follow their inquiries about the pictures to jump around, filling in any missing information as needed. Luckily in this book, each two-page spread has fairly discrete bits of information, so many of the paragraphs do not need to be read in order to make sense. This is helpful when reading to a three year old who likes to jump around on the page depending on which pictures are interesting to him. I also don't push them to move onto the next section, but rather take time to discuss the pictures and answer their questions and engage in impromptu demonstrations. Doing this is the main reason why I can read a book intended for a 10 year old to my significantly younger children. For example, there was a small section about recorders, which had a picture of the bass, tenor, treble, and descant recorders. L asked, "what's that?", and pointed to the picture. The text merely said, "Recorders of different sizes were often played together", but I explained that they were all recorders, like the one they have, but that the different sized recorders play different ranges of notes. Then RJ chimed in, saying that he thought the biggest one played the low notes and the smallest one played the high notes. Then, I asked him if he could show us what kind of notes each recorder could play and the three of us sang our lowest notes for the bass, and our highest notes for the descant, while I helped them make some medium notes for the tenor and treble recorders. They really enjoyed making the different pitches with their voices.

Concepts covered:

Any concepts in parentheses and italicized were my addition to what was in the book, or something that I should add in the future.

Anything printed in red was in the book, but we skipped, accidentally

Renaissance Music

Great interest in music, art, & learning in the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe (Note to self: I should probably have shown them where Europe was on their wall map)
Renaissance means rebirth
Composers - people who write music

Composers work at the courts of wealthy noblemen, kings, and princes
Composers wrote music to entertain, for dancing, and for church
Duke of Burgundy in France employed the best composers and musicians

Guillaume Dufay
Gilles Binchois

they wrote French songs called chansons

Printing developed during this time (1450) in Germany

First music book was printed in Italy in 1501
Before printing they had to write out music by hand
Printing made it cheaper and easier to print throughout Europe

Pictured

Man playing treble viol (looks like a violin)
Man playing a lute
Man playing a flute
Man playing a bass viol (looks like a double bass)
Dancers - they could only take small steps while dancing because their clothes were stiff and heavy

(They were not wearing costumes - that's how people dressed when they went to parties back then)

Before 16th century, instruments were used to accompany singers

From around 1500 instrumental only music was being written, primarily for dancing
Some of the instruments were the recorders and a keyboard instrument called a virginal

Recorders of different sizes were often played together
Pictured - Bass, Tenor, Treble, and Descant Recorders
Discussed and demonstrated that the pitch range for the bass recorder was the lowest of the recorders, then the tenor, then treble, then descant, which had the highest pitch range of the recorders. We sang our lowest and highest and middle pitches together.

Church music was still prevelant

Thomas Tallis started writing church music for the whole congregation, not only the choir

Madrigals - songs often about love, sung in small groups

first written in Italy
Andrea Gabrieli wrote many famous madrigals

Before the renaissance, instruments were played by professionals, but during the renaissance, rich people were learning instruments for pleasure.

Baroque Music

European Music from 1600-1750
Instrumental music became more important
New types of music were written

Invention of opera

Organ music was prevalent

(An organ is an instrument with a keyboard that controls the flow of air through the pipes, which makes the sound)

Instruments such as the flute were improved to play more notes

Unlike modern metal flutes, baroque flutes were made of wood. (We talked about how my flute is made of metal, but the pictured one was a hollow wooden rod with holes to cover with one's fingers to make the different pitches, more like their recorder)

People wrote books on how to play instruments
Composers began to write marks on their music to tell the players to play loudly or softly, using Italian words

'piano' is italian for quiet

When the player sees it, they should play quietly

Concerto Grosso - piece of music for a small group of solo instruments and an orchaestra

Famous concerto - The Four Seasons, written by Vivaldi

I have Summer on my iPod so we listened to it, and I explained that it was only one part of the concerto. (Note to self: I should get the other three seasons)

Famous concertos - six Brandenburg concertos by Bach in 1721

Oratorio - a religious story performed by a choir, orchestra and solo singers

Unlike an opera where the singers act out the parts
Famous oratorio - Messiah by Handel
I reminded them that the Magic Flute from earlier was an opera (although I left out that it was an opera from the classical period, not the baroque)

Violin was very popular during the Baroque period

Especially in Italy
Stradivari was a famous violin maker

Violins made by his workshop are very valuable today
Called Stradivarius Violins

Public concerts started during this period

Previously, only churches and wealthy people hired musicians, the latter only to play in their homes for parties
Musicians no longer had to rely on churches and the court for their livelihood
Handel made his living from staging operas and oratorios

Suites are a set of songs to be played one after the other for dancing

Jean-Philippe Rameau wrote suites for keyboard instruments like the harpsichord
Pictured - harpsichord

Music Activities: Co-op Edition - Tuesday April 23, 2013

2013-04-23T23:34:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

Kale Cookies -
seriously, they're made with pureed kale

I am hosting a big kid co-op in the afternoon, so the morning will be spent cleaning the house, putting dinner in the crockpot, and making our cookies for snack. L will probably help me with the cookies and otherwise have free play.

Here's the cookie recipe in case you want to get some leafy greens into your kids - http://versatile-vegan.com/2013/03/17/dont-call-these-spinach-cookies-although-thats-exactly-what-they-are/

1.) Create an instrument with legos.
2.) Dance Party
3.) Rhythm Band
4.) Percussion Water Play - bowls and spoons in water table
Cool site that talks about Musical Water Play - http://childsplaymusic.com.au/2012/01/17/water-play-music-play-children-a-natural-combination/

How it went:

1.) For this week's co-op, I had two five year olds and my three year old. Both older boys are big fans of lego, so I thought that the make-an-instrument-out-of-legos activity would be a big hit. First, Z and RJ built a drum and cymbal, respectively, when L requested help in building a guitar. Then RJ took the activity one step further (delighting me!) by asking if he could build a made up instrument. Perhaps I wasn't clear when I told them they could build any kind of instrument they wanted in the beginning, but in any case, I was thrilled that he was using his imagination.

This is his unnamed instrument:

As per his explanation, this instrument has a string made of different materials where one part of the string makes high pitches and one part makes lower ones. The "string" is the jagged blue piece. The string also makes the grey pronged lever at the end vibrate, making the instrument make noise both from the strings vibration and the vibration of the end piece. RJ said that it makes those two sounds at once, making his instrument different. I thought it was pretty cool. It is played with another lego piece that sort of resembles a two pronged pick.

2.) Dance party was a success with RJ and L, but Z wasn't into it and instead wanted to play with the workbench and then the car ramp. I thought he would like it since he regularly has "dance party" at his house and I specifically tried to add the pop/electronic/dance sounding music that he would like to my "Kid's Dance Party" playlist on my iPod (rather than my usual classic rock/alternative/pop ballad/broadway/most of what they cover on glee tastes). But maybe next time he'll be in the mood to dance.

3.) No one wanted to play Rhythm Band, so we skipped it.

4.) When they wanted to go outside and get their swim suits on to play with the water (it was a glorious warm spring day, near 80 degrees here in Northern California), I brought out the various bowls, spoons, plastic mallets, etc. for them to play with. I also brought out our water xylophone and water whistle to play with (they normally live in the bathtub, but I might keep them for the water table now that it's warm out and the kids have mostly switched to taking quick showers anyway. They'll get a lot more use that way). The neatest sounding things were the stainless steel mixing bowls that made a wavering "boiiing" kind of noise when they were hit on the bottom when filled with water that you gently shook around (I should have recorded it - maybe next time). RJ in particular perfected the movements necessary to make that noise. Once they explored all the different sounds and how the pitch changed with the addition of more or less water, it mostly devolved into throwing water at each other, but that is to be expected on a warm, sunny day!

Music Activities - Tuesday April 16, 2013

2013-04-16T22:21:00.000-07:00

When I'm not hosting co-op, Tuesday is usually a cleaning day, but I try to add in a few fun activities for L in between the cleaning and free play, especially since his brother is gone for kindergarten in the morning and then 4 hours of co-op in the afternoon. And before anyone thinks that I have a clean house because I have time set aside for cleaning on Tuesdays, be informed that it's really not. Unless we have people coming over, it's usually not clean. At all. But we have fun and learn lots, which is more important!

Plan:

Morning -

1.) Xylophone patterns

2.) Rhythm patterns on the drums

3.) Library time

Afternoon -

4.) Drawing Letters and Notes

How it went:

1.) I couldn't find his xylophone mallet anywhere, so we settled for drumsticks. This actually worked out better because I could draw upon some of the patterns I learned in elementary school music class (which is sadly missing in so many schools these days) on the "Orff Instruments" (i.e., xylophones, glockenspiels, and metallophones), which involved two hands. He did pretty well, but liked it better when I guided his hands in the patterns and let me know that it "sounds pretty". I learned a couple of things from this.

a.) Drumsticks make awkward xylophone mallets, even though the mallet that came with the xylophone wouldn't have worked much better
b.) Our xylophone, which I originally liked because it was part of a Melissa and Doug set of wooden instruments, doesn't work very well. The bars stick, so the pitch doesn't reverberate, and sounds like a wood block, rather than a pitched xylophone. For a toy, it's wonderful, but as a musical instrument, it falls rather flat. Looks like a real xylophone will be added to the kids' wish lists!

2.) L did much better with this activity one-on-one than he did when I was playing with him and RJ.

3.) We headed to our library and L picked out a couple of books from the non-fiction Music section. He selected a book about trumpets and a book about drums based on the pictures on their covers.

4.) L did not have any interest in coloring or drawing of any kind and was determined to play with his brother's Harry Potter legos, so we opted to do some uninterrupted building and playing in his absence. Just another example of the need to be flexible with kids. Forcing him to draw or write wouldn't accomplish anything at this point, so we will do this another time. He usually gets coloring/drawing time in his preschool-gymnastics class and likes to draw when RJ is doing kindergarten homework (which I will continue scanning and reviewing at some point - as it has NOT gotten much better), so I wasn't too concerned with his choice to do something else during our play time.

Music Activities - Monday April 15, 2013

2013-04-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

The Plan:

1.) Music Mat Activity for RJ during Homework Time /Drawing or Dancing to the Music for L

2.) Drum Rhythms on the Homemade Bongos ( http://mommaphd.blogspot.com/2013/04/co-op-activities-march-19-2013.html , http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/05/boppin-on-diy-bongo-drums.html )

3.) High, Low, and Middle - Game to recognize pitch
http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/music/highlowandmiddle.htm

How it went:

1.) We didn't end up doing this today - we will another day when we have more homework time before needing to run out to the grocery store.

2.) Both kids did this briefly. RJ being older matched the rhythms fairly well after a few tries for the more complicated beats. L was able to match the simpler beats, but mostly wanted to just make his own. At this point, I'm happy with exposure and him at least trying before going crazy on them!

3.) I wanted to see if they could tell me if one note was higher or lower than another. RJ was able to correctly tell me if the second note I played was higher or lower than the first. At first he told me that he knew because he was watching my fingers and knew that the higher notes were to the right and the lower notes were to the left (which is interesting because I only told him that once), but when I made him turn around, we discovered that he was also able to use auditory discrimination because he didn't make a single mistake, even when not looking at my hands. L watched, but didn't participate. He seemed interested, so I think he was absorbing some of it. I will have to try it sometime with him alone.

Since RJ was doing so well at the higher or lower game, I decided to grab our cat keyboard so that he could try to match notes with what I played on our not-as-cute keyboard that I've had since I was a kid. This was largely a trial and error game since he is not familiar enough with the keyboard nor absolute pitch to be spot on, but he enjoyed playing different notes until he heard that he had found the right one. Once or twice he would say the note was the same, despite it being an octave lower or higher, but then we'd listen again, and he would say that one was higher, leading the way for me to say that it was the same letter note, but a lower or higher octave. Unfortunately, despite RJ being engaged, L was much more interested in reaching over and hitting the buttons that start the pre-recorded songs on the cat keyboard, so we let the game end and let L explore the instruments more.

Co-op Activities - March 19, 2013

2013-03-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

I participate in an informal co-op with two other moms, where we basically trade off hosting each others kids on a weekly basis. It was my turn to host the big kids (who are now all 5 or almost 5), so I thought I might try some music activities with them.

Ages: 3 five-year-olds (well one is almost 5), 1 three year old

Plan:

Making Ice Cream - Peanut Butter Chocolate

Bongo making with balloon tops if we can find enough containers.
http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/05/boppin-on-diy-bongo-drums.html
Learning Rhythms with the percussion instruments

Lego building (because the legos have been hiding in RJ's room for too long since L's birthday party in early February) - maybe they could design their own lego instrument models?

How it went:

Co-op was significantly shorter than normal with our friends coming over later than planned, so I made the bongo drums with RJ and L. The kids didn't really want to decorate them when we started and wanted to go straight to the drumming, so I admit that I ended up doing a lot of the work, especially putting the balloons over the canisters. Unlike the version made in the website I cited for my inspiration, we did not use duct tape to hold on the balloons, opting instead to cut the center out of the lid, using only the rim to hold the balloon on. The boys helped, but this was definitely not as hands on as I would've liked, until they started to play them at least!

I ended up making the ice cream on my own due to lack of interest, the legos and other toys being the bigger draw today.

We never really got around to learning rhythms, either, as the kids really just wanted to have some free play with their limited time, and I didn't want to push them into doing anything they weren't into.

Activities - Monday March 18, 2013

2013-03-18T22:31:00.002-07:00

Plan:

1.) Listen by instrument on the computer - try to name the instrument, talk about pitch and how bigger instruments are typically lower pitched, although there is range overlap.

http://www.sfskids.org/templates/instorchframe.asp?pageid=3

2.) Try to match singing pitch with the keyboard.

How it went:

1.) I initially wanted RJ to not look at the computer and guess which instrument was playing, but he and L had other plans that included peeking. This didn't really hurt though since for the few that they did guess at, they were mostly wrong. With looking at the screen, they were able to see the instrument, which allowed them to have the visual too. So, this is just one of those activities where you have expectations about how it will go, but it all turns out in the end if you allow the children to modify the plan. I was planning on showing them the instruments when we talked about pitch and how it relates to the size of the instrument, which is most prominently seen in the string instruments; violin, viola, cello, and double bass.

2.) RJ seemed to do reasonably well for the few notes we tried, but L decided that it was time to play his drums, which led RJ to screaming like a rock star instead of actually singing. What was neat was that L was approximating a rhythm that I had taught him on the drums, before RJ's screaming reduced it to random banging. It was a start, and certainly musical play!

Music Theme Activities - Thursday March 14, 2013

2013-03-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

Our Tuesday and Wednesday were busy this week, but Thursday provided us with an opportunity for some structured activities related to music.

Plan:

1.) Music note worksheet for RJ (I'm actually going to slip this in with his homework since he's likely to resist any sort of worksheet if it's in addition to his homework, which he generally despises). I normally despise worksheets too, but I wanted to see how this one would go, and I wanted to see if he remembered any of the note values from Monday.

2.) Music Mat Activity

From: http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/01/music-measure-of-math.html

3.) Drinking Straw Pan Flute

From: http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2012/04/making-magic-drinking-straw-flute.html

How it went:

1.) While he was skeptical that this was actually part of his school homework (smart kid!), he went along with doing it anyway. While I might be biased in saying this, he did seem more engaged in this worksheet than the standard math worksheets he gets from school. He is still working on remembering how many beats per note, but we've only introduced this, and he's remembering a lot. I will have to try some more complicated math problems with notes, since once he translated the notes into numbers, his answers came pretty fast.

2.) I LOVE this music mat activity. It was good for further learning the beat values of the notes and rests, and then required RJ to utilize his mathmatical reasoning to put together various combinations of notes (numbers) that add up to 4. Plus, it was NOT a pencil and paper activity, which helped keep his interest because he's been rejecting any sort of pencil-and-paper activity because he is inundated with them at school. While it was clearly more for RJ than L, L did seem interested enough to watch and he even (accidentally) put a whole note in a measure, which was a correct solution! RJ made L feel really good by complimenting him on doing the right thing, and we made sure to tell him that a whole note was 4 beats and so it had a measure all to itself. RJ liked the hands on aspect of it and worked through a couple of different combinations of notes and rests to make 4 beat measures. This was also our introduction to rests. We will definitely take this out again! (In fact, we did break it out again today to show daddy!)

Yes, he's dressed as Harry Potter.

3.) I think I have a new favorite blog, because the drinking straw pan flute was also a success. It obviously doesn't sound like much, because it is made of drinking straws. However, its simplicity was key here. I liked that L (age 3) was able to participate quite a lot. He was able to cut the straws on the lines (that RJ and I measured together), and helped tape them together. And he liked cutting the straws on the line so much that he kept cutting at the scrap ends of the straws too. So he got more cutting practice! And RJ not only learned that the shorter straws had the higher pitch, but also got some good practice counting by twos when we measured where to cut the straws to vary the pitch (each straw got shorter by 2 centimeters and I made him tell me the total that we had to measure for each one). Overall, a very successful project!

Music Theme Activities Monday March 11, 2013

2013-03-13T10:38:00.002-07:00

I am resuming the music theme. Kindergarten (and its homework) and other activities have overrun our life for too long. It's time to get some more planned learning into our schedule. So, today, we're going to do some music stuff for an hour, because that's the time we have between all the other stuff (grocery shopping, school, gymnastics, playground time, making dinner, etc.). After a critical look at our schedule, we should get at least an hour, and sometimes more for one or both kids, for these planned activities every day but Wednesday. I want to make sure that with them getting older and having more scheduled, structured activities and school/pre-school that they still have lots of outdoor play time and free play at home (when I am not playing with them unless invited), but I don't want to abandon our themed learning play either, so here we are.

Plan:

1.) Introduce the staff and G clef, and whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes, play scales

2.) Draw to the Music (use classical music from my iPod)

3.) Free note placement on the staff paper

How it went:

1.) L had no interest, but he's three, so it's quite a bit advanced for him. He was much more entertained by trying to erase my lines on the white board. RJ was resistant at first, but then he wanted to copy what I was showing him and that kept him engaged. We talked about how the placement on the staff determined the pitch, denoted by letters A - G, why the treble clef is called a "G-clef", and talked about whole notes being 4 beats, half notes being 2 beats (which he reasoned by thinking through what half of four was), and then quarter notes as 1 beat. I drew out a two octave scale (key of C) in whole notes so he would see it.

He was interested in hearing a scale, so we went to the keyboard and I showed him how one could sing a scale and play one on the keyboard. Then we got out the recorder (for him) and flute (for me) so we could practice playing whole notes. He learned the fingering for middle C.

2.) I actually thought painting to the music would be better than drawing, so I got the paint out for their easel, popped on some classical music from the iPod and told them to paint like the music feels. RJ seemed to really get into it and his paint strokes seemed to match the music. L just painted. But he's three, so exposure is really my goal at this point for him.

3.) We didn't get to this, so we will go for it another day.

Conclusion:

It feels good to get back into the swing of doing planned activities again. I feel RJ really learned something and L got some exposure to classical music (as opposed to classic rock, top 40, broadway standards, and glee covers that we usually listen to), as well as some expressive painting time. Overall, this is a win. And I posted on the blog again....finally.

Kindergarten Homework Critique #2

2012-09-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

Critiques of RJ's second homework packet.

Scarecrow Surprise

The objective here was to color boxes with matching letters. The main issue is that it was a completely boring activity. Also, while the worksheet is titled "Scarecrow Surprise", the activity has absolutely nothing to do with scarecrows. AT ALL. RJ even asked while speed-coloring his way through the sheet, "Why is this a surprise for the scarecrow?" I had a difficult time holding myself back at that point, because the first response in my head was, "Funny...I had the same question" followed by, "you should ask your teacher and point out how irrelevant the work was to the scarecrows". Instead I paused for a second and said, "I'm not sure, but maybe they consider each match a surprise?" And don't even get me started on the ambiguous instructions to "color the boxes with matching letters". Is the child supposed to color all the matches the same color? Use different colors for each letter pair? Use all different colors? It's really not clear from the direction alone. Sure, as an adult, I easily determined that we should use a different color for each pair - but what if children were expected to do this on their own? I feel that they should be explicit.

To make this worksheet better, students could be encouraged to build "hay bales" or other farm stuff by putting together matching first letters together. So for example, an H pair would depict pictures of hay, a T pair would have halves of a tractor, etc. It would be a cut and paste instead of coloring activity, but still more engaging, and incorporating more than matching skills alone, since the object halves would start with the same letter sound, aiding phonemic awareness.

An even better option would be to design a worksheet that was more in the style of Word World (the PBS Kids TV Program), where the letters actually build a word (rather than just matching letters to their mate).

And the best option for transforming this worksheet into a learning activity would be to put letters on lego bricks, mix them up, and then have children match them (so practicing the same skill as the worksheet), or build words themselves. The beauty of the legos is that they could be used over and over again for different letter activities too! To make this a tangible homework assignment, parents could take a picture of the matches/words and send that to school. And since not every parent has access to a digital camera and a printer, they could opt to have the child draw their matches to turn in instead, which would also provide writing practice. Along with the lego activity, there could be some sort of context for making the matches as well. Different letter matches could make different parts of some lego structure that all the pairs would complete when put together.

Go, Team, Go!

This one wasn't horrible, but I put it in the category of "busy work". It wasn't challenging, and involved coloring, so I couldn't imagine any parents had a difficult time getting their child to complete it, but yet, it still could have gone a step further to engage the children and teach them more.

My suggestion for designing a new worksheet would be to cut out the bears and paste the letter bears on one side of the field and non-letter bears on the other side to make "teams". One could also even have the number of bears on the paper match the number of players on the team in football. I think this would be great for kids because they'd be learning something about the rules of a sport, which could be interesting to them, while also providing practice discerning letters from other markings, which was the original intention of this worksheet. Also, the suggested activity would help children practice fine motor skills through cutting and pasting as well as coloring.

Letter Tracing/Shape Tracing

URGH! If this isn't already a recurring theme, it soon will be. This worksheet is devoid of all context, making it completely boring. In other words, kids don't want to do it and rush through it, not really trying to be neat and then get angry and frustrated when they have to re-do it. (I know can only really speak about the one kid I observed, but I find this hard to believe that other kids aren't bored by this too.)

If one wants to work on letter formation and other fun fine motor skills, that's awesome. However, I am a firm believer that rote practice is a great way for kids to get bored and discouraged and then it takes longer to get them to focus. If this happens frequently enough, I wouldn't be surprised to have a child who never wants to do their homework! There are better ways to build these skills that are more novel to children, which can maintain their interest for longer, thus providing more practice toward achieving the final goal of having fully developed writing abilities!

One idea is to have children use a wet paintbrush to "erase" letters written in chalk on a Blackboard or Sidewalk. Parents could send in a picture of their kids doing this if a tangible product is necessary. Taking this one step further, children could trace actual words, which would be less boring than just random letters. For even more context, they could trace sentences with some thematic content. Another option, if fine motor control alone is the goal (as opposed to specifically letter writing), would be to trace intricate famous artwork. In this last scenario, they would be building fine motor control, as well as having exposure to famous works of art, which they could learn more about in a theme or in art class.

Homemade Fun

Finally!! Active Learning! This was a sheet with suggestions for home activities, many of which were good. (See, I give positive reviews too.)

Making play dough (or any kind of cooking activity, really) is great for kids as it teaches math reasoning and science concepts such as transformation of substance as a result of a catalyst (usually heat with cooking). I have a better play dough recipe, so I would choose just to use my own recipe rather than the one provided (which I'm sure works just fine, but I still have play dough that I made nearly a year ago and it hasn't dried out or broken down).

Making modeling clay letters is also engaging and exercises fine motor muscles.

Drawing a picture for a friend was a great suggestion because kids like to do this anyway and open-ended drawing is great for fine motor control, creativity, and representation skills. Writing a letter to a friend along with the picture would have been a great addition as well, adding literacy practice and letter formation to the mix.

The last on this sheet was "My Life" which involved talking about past events with the child. This is great as a memory builder and RJ really enjoyed watching old movies of himself as a baby too. To make this into a tangible homework assignment, at the beginning of the school year, teachers could have children, together with their parents create a scrapbook of them and their family with a couple of choice memories, complete with captions written by the child. This would be better writing practice than isolated letters and more engaging for children because they see the final product as something real, rather than just a worksheet of random letters.

So, while I was pleased with these activities being included, I still think that the teachers could do a better job of meeting their other objectives by expanding these and cutting out the rote practice worksheets.

Music Theme September 10-14, 2012

2012-09-16T20:59:00.000-07:00

This week was a little low on theme activities, but that happens sometimes when we get busy with other things or when the kids get into their free play and let me accomplish things around the house. This week the kids also had a little TV time (they watched Sesame Street if you're interested) when I was doing other things.

Monday:

Morning (during Kindergarten):

Playground
Grocery Shopping
Put Groceries Away
No time for Theme Activities

Afternoon (after Kindergarten):

Homework
French Horn Coloring/F worksheet (L wanted a french horn to color, RJ saved his for another day)
Lego organization (our new lego drawer set arrived so that took away any time left for theme activities)
TV time/Free play during dinner prep
RJ's Gymnastics Class

Tuesday:

Morning (during Kindergarten):

House Cleaning
Blowing on recorder on the route to and from K pickup - (L)
Musical Instrument Exploration during free play (L) - banjo, maracas

Afternoon (after Kindergarten):

Homework/Coloring
Big-Kid Co-op at J's for RJ
House Cleaning, Free Play/Attempted Nap/TV time for L

Wednesday:

Morning (during Kindergarten):

L Gymnastics Class
L Play Date

Afternoon (after Kindergarten)

Homework
Chores
TV-time
Free Play

Thursday:

Morning (during Kindergarten)

Hosted Little Kid Co-op

Instruments out on the table for exploration
Toilet paper rain sticks with beans - Kids poured beans and then decorated with paint.

Note: Beans turned out to be a great sensory experience as well as a great mess all over the floor! They loved shaking their rain sticks too!

Musical Ice in Water Table (from: http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/2011/06/musical-salt.html )

Note: this didn't really make much music unless a massive amount of salt was poured on all at once. However, the children did enjoy a wonderful sensory experience with the ice and salt and water as it melted

Afternoon (after Kindergarten)

Homework
Chores
Read
TV time
RJ made his rain stick on his own during Free Play

Friday:

Morning

L and I played "drums" on recycled pirouette cookie tins with pencils

Concepts: rhythm He repeated some simple patterns (1, cross; 1, 2, cross; 1, 2, 3, cross)

Played with the felt board notes

Concepts:

whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth note,
I showed him that the notes translated to sounds on the recorder, labeled the notes with the letters

Afternoon

Homework/Coloring (brief since we mostly finished it!), also music worksheets from last week (RJ also wrote the names of the instruments by request)
Chores
TV time/make dinner time
Swim lessons

Fun Musical Lunches this week:

French Horn Tortilla

Tuna Salad Sushi Roll Oboe

Web Sites for future reference:
http://www.classicsforkids.com/games/
http://www.sfskids.org/templates/home.asp?pageid=1
http://pbskids.org/music/
http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/music/notevaluechants.htm

Kindergarten Homework Critique #1

2012-09-16T16:14:00.001-07:00

RJ's elementary school career started recently and while I am trying to keep an open mind, I am disheartened by how his Kindergarten teacher does not utilize developmentally appropriate practice, at least when it comes to homework. I cannot attest to what happens all day in the room, since I have not had my turn to volunteer yet, however, if the work he brings home is any indication, I am not impressed. You can feel free to disagree with me, as these are my opinions and I encourage debate (although try to refrain from the "I did these and I learned just fine" arguments. That's not the point. The point is to get children interested in learning and the kids who aren't "doing just fine" are the ones that need these changes the most. And even the children who are "doing just fine" deserve to be challenged more, in appropriate and interesting ways. Much like how we want to help children who are struggling to improve, we also don't want children who learn quickly and easily to become stagnated, bored, or for them to become lazy because school is easy for them. ) I simply feel that there is considerable room for improvement that would leave kids more engaged and interested in learning the skills necessary to be successful in school.

When RJ came home with his first homework packet last week, I got inspiration to start critiquing it. I'm not naming his school or his teacher, but I am presenting his homework here for you to see. As the nature of homework is to have the children turn in a tangible product, I understand that pencil and paper activities are necessary. I also realize that pencil and paper activities do have some value considering the goal of developing good penmanship in Kindergarten. However, I also know that there are ways of achieving these goals without utilizing a litany of rote practice worksheets (which our recycling bin will quickly fill up with). My biggest criticism, which is as much for the district, who chooses the curriculum standards and system, as it is for the teacher herself, is that these worksheets lacked any context for the children. They're boring. I've been out of kindergarten for a long time and while it would've taken me about 30 seconds to finish some of these, I wouldn't want to spend even that much time doing them. I can't imagine how one would convince an unwilling child to do these sheets without some sort of major coercion (which would be bad, because coercion doesn't lead to a love of learning!)

So, as a resource to kindergarten teachers everywhere, I am examining RJ's homework and explaining why it is problematic and then, where possible, providing easy ways to improve the assignments.

The first page in RJ's homework was the Mary Had a Little Lamb Matching Page.

The first thing that came to my mind as I saw this was, "wow. lame". This wasn't because recognizing similarities and differences aren't important, but rather because it was too easy and lacked any sort of real context to make it interesting.

This really lacked any sort of real-world importance. Why did they need to be matched up? Where would we have to do this in real life?

Having a real-world example would not only enable children to use their observation skills to recognize minute differences between objects and match the similarities, but would also teach them something valuable about the world.

This is where I think thematic curriculum would be the most helpful, because themes can provide a context for the so-called academic skills that administrators and teachers alike deem important.
Since in my house, we're studying music right now, I immediately thought about having a worksheet where there were several orchestra instruments (of which there were two pairs with small differences for each instrument). Students would color and cut out the musicians with their instruments and paste them onto another sheet, arranging them into their like pairs and placing them where they belonged in the orchestra seating chart. There are several reasons why I think this activity would be better than this simple lamb matching one. First, coloring and cutting are great fine motor activities that most children inherently enjoy. So in addition to matching, which is the main goal, you're also working on fine motor control, which is necessary for good penmanship. Second, arranging the musicians by their instruments is something that would happen in real life, so it makes sense to do so. And finally, children can learn something more than just matching by learning about orchestras and why the instruments are arranged the way they are.

Next, was the Color Recognition Page.

I actually thought this page was a good one. It was open-ended and allowed the child to be active and search his/her environment, which is very developmentally appropriate. RJ enjoyed this one, too. Also, while the directions said to record RJ's answers for him, I took it upon myself to use the opportunity for writing practice as well, since taking notes on one's observations is a real-life science skill. I did write some of the longer words since the lines weren't really meant for a developmentally appropriate writing size, but the line size would honestly be my only criticism, and learning to write to the size of the line is something children will eventually have to do in their lives anyway.

I like when writing practice involves writing relevant words rather than focusing on one letter at a time (which his worksheets from school essentially are). Kids want to communicate, but that's difficult to do when they're focusing on only one letter at a time. When RJ wanted to start writing (he was about 3 1/2), it was because he wanted to communicate with his daddy - we started by writing out a menu of what we were eating for dinner so that my husband (who has a late commute and eats after the kids and I) would know what was for dinner. I taught him how to write the letters as we needed them to write the words and he was engaged by the process.

Classifying by Color

Kids like coloring, so this was better than circling objects that can be that color, but I'm still not impressed here. This was another case where RJ zipped through the assignment because he was largely trying to just be done with it. It was too easy for him. L (at age 2.5) could tell me which objects could be which color. I get that not all children have the same background as mine and I do want them to have the opportunity to catch up to where they need to be for kindergarten, however, I do believe there are better ways to do this. For example, why not let kids be creative? You don't need a fancy worksheet!!! Just give the instructions to draw and color one thing of each color (and include all the colors of the rainbow, not just two primary colors and two blends).

Circles

This is exactly what I see as wrong about our educational system and the awful curriculum systems that we have in our schools. This clearly comes from some uninspired workbook.

Imagine for a moment that you are a 5 year old kid. On what planet would you want to draw 16 circles and 3 spirals for no apparent reason?? And why wouldn't you rush through it just to be done? Yeah, RJ's circles aren't perfect here; he crossed or missed the lines, but this activity was so bad, that I didn't have the heart to make him erase and re do it either. We can practice circles in a more developmentally appropriate way on our own. I want to keep this critique civil and informative, but this sheet just incites a bit of a rant in me, so I will shout a little and then get back to the critique: BORING BORING BORING BORING!!!!!!!

Sure, curriculum companies and teachers and district administrators, I understand that you want my kid to have good fine motor control and be able to draw shapes and letters and numbers with accuracy. I agree, these skills are important. However, giving sheets like this ad nauseum is one way to ensure that a child who isn't strong on fine motor control will never want to practice his/her skills.

To kindergarten teachers everywhere, I realize that not all of this is your fault. Your districts mandate your use of various curriculums and the pacing of such curriculum. You're sort of stuck. However, last I checked, there was no one telling you that you needed to give out this worksheet. Yes, you need to get my kid to make decent circles, ideally starting and stopping at the correct points and staying within the boundaries of the lines. However, at the very least, could you please provide the child with some sort of reason for doing this? Can you make it into a game of some sort? One idea I had was to have them pretend that they're making rings for a ring toss game that have to be perfectly round (and concentric) and correctly sized to work well. You could even have them cut them out and try them out using a pencil stuck in play doh as the ring toss target. Practicing by independently drawing objects that require circle shapes would work too. Or, eschew the pencil/paper tasks all together and have them practice making circles with paint on easels or using an unsharpened pencil in salt or sand or mud. Any of these would be better. Looking at the spirals, I thought that even having some sort of labyrinth style maze that they had to go through with their pencil (with some story of why provided) would be more interesting for them than this sort of rote activity.

Number Verses

These are basically just instructions that are said in a sing-songy kind of voice. I like the idea of using music to learn, but having just a worksheet for these is inappropriate. I think this is better used as a teacher reference for a classroom activity where the teacher and children sing the words and practice writing the numbers in sand/salt trays or on mini chalkboards/magna doodles or something. Then again, I don't even think THAT is much better.

My main criticism of all of this is that there is zero context for learning these skills and they're all presented in isolation. Kindergarteners should be learning science and social studies in addition to learning how to write letters and numbers, right? Why can't their writing practice be within the context of a science activity? They could plant seeds and record how tall the seedlings are every day using a ruler. They could measure each other's height, arm span, etc. and record those numbers. They could play grocery store and have to write out the price of things on a "receipt" and add them too! There are so many better ways to incorporate writing practice into meaningful activities. They don't need to be able to practice writing numbers perfectly in a rote setting before they can do interesting things with the skill!

RJ's homework did end on a positive note though. One of the activities in RJ's homework was the Alphabet Card Activities, which was more of a game that involved him manipulating the cards in various ways.

I liked that the activities suggested were on multiple levels, starting with just seeing which letters the child knew (RJ knew them all, except he floundered a little with lowercase q, but he quickly showed after that fact that he knew that one as well) and leading up to identifying vowels and consonants. One thing that I saw as missing from the list was to name things that start with each letter. This could also be used with thematic curriculum as you could name animals starting with each letter, or pick the letters that start each planet or find the letters that start various musical instruments. The possibilities really are endless when you have an engaged child. I also wonder if adding a story could help a non-engaged child to participate. I could see some sort of riddle scavenger hunt for letters around the room being fun. RJ didn't seem to need any additional prompting as he was more than happy to just arrange the letters and match the upper and lower case letters and name things starting with them (actually when he was matching the upper and lower case, he did this all on his own, so we went with it). My only major criticism is the "Alphabet Slap Game" because I really don't see why slapping is AT ALL necessary, but that's just my general stance on non-violence coming through.

I hope you find this critique helpful and that some of you kindergarten teachers out there on the internet can use some of these ideas effectively.