ThadenPierce School

I’m consolidating all my prior posts and adding some new traditions we just learned about.

- back to school cake & special dinner.
- kindercones (Schultute) w/treats and new school supplies.
- new composition book/journal and let them decorate it (modpodge it.)
- Kit suggested buying some easy lunch stuff for the first week back into school so Mommy will eat.
- new school year blessings at FHE.
- breakfast of ABC pancakes.
- let them pick whatever they want for bfast, lunch or dinner.
- go out for a special lunch or pack a picnic lunch.
- go have school pictures taken.
- pick special new outfit for school pictures.
- go shopping for school supplies (best sales are in fall) & let them do a scavenger hunt to find them or pack into backpacks.
- have a “teacher” meeting to go over curriculum, goals
and routines with both parents. August & January.
- plan a special back to school fieldtrip to a location like the park, zoo, or a museum. Most PS don’t have fieldtrips in the first of the year so those places are empty.
- make “All About Me” sheets at the beginning and
end of school year, including self portraits and list of favorites.
- have a family conference and let each child pick the areas of focus they want for the next year. With young kids maybe pick one special topic. With older kids this needs to be a much more in depth special date to go over their areas of concern, what they want to focus on, having them establish their schedule, setting up time to review with them, etc. But for grammar stage, just picking a couple special topics to get library books or coordinate field trips around.
- write a list of books to read aloud as a family
- “NOT back to school” picnic with other homeschool families.

New Ones:
- Russian Day of Knowledge on September 1st, students bring flowers to teacher (that would be me, right? ) Make tissue paper flowers or get real ones.
- Japanese nyugakushiki, formal celebration: dress up for a candle lit family dinner the night before school starts.
- Maori haka: show children “primary school haka” on internet and let them create their own new school year dance.
- Indian Praveshanotsavam (admission day) is during monsoon season. Make a fruit smoothie with marshmallow “rain clouds” and paper cocktail parasol.
- Israeli kita aleph (first grade) walk under canopy or arch of older student’s arms, release balloons. Create an arch of balloons or tissue paper, etc at home and take photos under it, write new school year wishes on rainbow arch, get balloons to keep around home and cheer up first new week.

This was fun, from our first back to school picnic with friends in 2007:

Joseph mostly ran around watching, Emy watched (and occassionally shimmied) and for the first time Bennett really got into it! The older three all learned most of their routine for our at home recital next week. I’m impressed at how quickly they picked it up!

Interesting article link my sister sent from an art program she’s attending this week.

- Don’t tell someone to be creative (too much pressure/expectation.)
- Get moving (increase activity level.)
- Take a break, switch between projects if you hit a wall.
- Reduce screen time, decreases creativity.
- Explore other cultures (adaption, flexibility, awareness of another way of thinking.)
- Follow a passion (finding the zone.)
- Ditch the suggestion box (encourage individual action, not waiting for someone else to implement change.)

I cannot summarize this article but go read it – Teaching your Child. Fascinating, some of it I knew but some of it I knew and forgot and it will be changing how we approach things. Reminds me of Charlotte Mason in that we need to let children develop skills and have time to explore at their own pace before we attempt to turn them into academics and push them faster. Let them be kids and spare all of us a lot of grief by forcing something they aren’t ready for (and maybe shouldn’t ever be ready for! I went insane trapped at a desk for hours a day in school and I would go insane if I had to do it as an adult.)

We got a cool surprise in the mail today, a package from the Mealer grandparents filled with eight double sided placemats. The kids LOVE, love, love them and are sitting around the living room now reading them! They are heavily laminated so we can use dry erase markers on them and wipe them off and use them at mealtimes as well – these are fantastic, we’re so excited about them.

Topics include the presidents of the US, the solar system, multiplication tables, world map, US map, shapes, numbers and letters. The backs have games and more information for the kids and they are all entranced, from the 8 year old (telling me who is on each bill or coin as he looks as the presidents) down through the 1 year old (yelling, “W! One!” as he identifies things.)

As the kids loudly proclaimed, “IT’S A BABY iPAD!”

Kit’s work just ordered his new laptop and it came with the option of a free iTouch (after rebate) so we went for it. How could we pass that up, it’s like a little iPad? And goodness knows we’ve had enough fights over the various laptops/iPhones/iPads around here. The kids are begging me to install all their games & tools but I’ve no clue how (waiting on Kit) but I am excited to have it. We’ve mostly done free apps but we did spring for a couple educational ones and I’m sold – the iPad (or iPhone/iTouch) are fantastic educational tools. C can do his multiplication flashcards (self correcting) which he knows is required before playing any games but there are also great educational games. I’ll have Kit and the kids write up a better post later to explain what they love about these lovely new tech tools.

Fascinating book my sister suggested, Boys Adrift discussed the difference between a theoretical or academic knowledge (wissen in German) and an experiential or personal knowledge (kennen in German.) In many languages (besides english) there are two different verbs for knowledge:

In biblical Hebrew, the word know refers primarily to experiential learning… In English, we read about “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” but the Hebrew might be better translated as, “the tree of experience of good and evil.” Adam and Eve are forbidden to eat from that tree. They are forbidden the experience of evil.

I’m reading the chapter on how boys fare in school, he speaks of how children need hands on knowledge and references the nature deficit book to reiterate that ALL children need experiential knowledge and they’re not getting that in the current classroom setting, which is starting at younger and younger ages. The author has another book called Girls on the Edge I’ll try to get next.

Books like this are fascinating to me as a mother with girls and boys but also intriguing to me because I did a lot of my undergrad & graduate focus on sociology of gender.

(Thank you, Jess, for the link!)

Bumping this back up because I just started reading Ken Robinson’s book The Element and I’m really enjoying it so far!

Okay, going to have to take notes on this one…

Our five “common” senses – sight, taste, touch, hearing, smell. Other crucial senses (that I didn’t learn much about until discovering we had kids with sensory processing issues/sensory integration) – thermoception (sense of temperature), nociception (sense of pain), vestibular sense (balance & acceleration) & kinesthetic/proprioceptive (where our body is in space.) PLUS that extra sense of intuition that isn’t officially recognized by most physiologists (says the author.)

One myth is that only special people are creative. This is not true. Everyone is born with tremendous capacities for creativity. The trick is to develop these capacities. Creativity is very much like literacy. We take for granted that nearly everybody can learn to read and and write. if a person can’t read or write, you don’t assume that person is incapable of it, just that he or she hasn’t learned how to do it yet… Another myth is that creativity is about special activities. It’s about “creative domains” like the arts, design, or advertising. These often do involve a high level of creativity. But so can science, math, engineering, running a business, being an athlete, or getting in or out of a relationship. The fact is you can be creative at anything at all – anything that involves your intelligence.

And more…

As soon as we have the power to release our minds from the immediate here and now, in a sense we are free. We are free to revisit the past, free to reframe the present, and free to anticipate a whole range of possible futures. Imagination is the foundation of everything that is uniquely and distinctively human.

What activities just flow for you? When you feel in “the zone” and time seems to stand still?

Mind map vs. bullet points.

I’m 21 weeks along this weekend, meaning Olivia should be about 10 inches long and 12 ounces. (Bennett arrived two weeks from today at 12 1/4″ long and 22 ounces, but he was measuring big – he was a little chunk for 23 weeks gestation.) Yesterday I noticed two contractions, which I’ve had throughout this pregnancy but yesterday they were strong enough to make me stop and take notice and I’m having some today. Nothing alarming (beyond every single contraction being alarming for someone in our situation) but it’s a not so subtle reminder that it’s only going to get more serious from here on out and we need to plan accordingly.

We have some trips planned to various field trips and activities here and there. We’ll be starting our therapies back up again (speech soon, PE in July) and our co-op is done but we’ve joined another homeschool service group. If it works out we’ll be doing a dance class with some friends as well but that will be at our place (in the sunroom, after we move furniture around.) I’m trying to make sure we only do one big activity a week and never more than one small outing a day… probably switch that to every other day. I’m noticing increasing discomfort if I walk or am on my feet too much so we’ll be mindful of that. Though at the same time I’m also trying to increase our exercise/walking/yoga time because I know we all need the benefits. It’s a fine line to walk!

We’re also entering our summer weather (100 degrees in the forecast) so our outside stuff needs to be early in the morning or seriously shaded/by the pool.

We’re doing well with our book stuff – C’s finishing up his third grade grammar, both kids are doing great with a big review of their math facts (multiplication for C, addition/subtraction for Mo) and their cursive. We got our new art book in the mail and they’re enjoying just looking through it. I’m doing better at consistent piano lessons and C’s starting to learn some simplified primary songs (just the right hand so far.) I have hope we can maintain a good summer scheduling before things go into maternity leave/survival mode this fall.

But I am being reminded, through these contractions, that Miss Olivia will have increasing demands on my energy and mobility in the next few months.

I wish there was a better format file to include all of them but I’m not finding it. C is working on earning some belt loops & pins and here’s the requirements for geography:

Belt Loop

Complete these three requirements:

Draw a map of your neighborhood. Show natural and manmade features. Include a key or legend of map symbols.
Learn about the physical geography of your community. Identify the major landforms within 100 miles. Discuss with an adult what you learned.
Use a world globe or map to locate the continents, the oceans, the equator, and the northern and southern hemispheres. Learn how longitude and latitude lines are used to locate a site.
Academics Pin

Earn the Geography belt loop, and complete five of the following requirements:

Make a three-dimensional model of an imaginary place. Include five different landforms, such as mountains, valleys, lakes, deltas, rivers, buttes, plateaus, basins, and plains.
List 10 cities around the world. Calculate the time it is in each city when it is noon in your town.
Find the company’s location on the wrapper or label of 10 products used in your home, such as food, clothing, toys, and appliances. Use a world map or atlas to find each location.
On a map, trace the routes of some famous explorers. Show the map to your den or family.
On a United States or world map, mark where your family members and ancestors were born.
Keep a map record of the travels of your favorite professional sports team for one month.
Read a book (fiction or nonfiction) in which geography plays an important part.
Take part in a geography bee or fair in your pack, school, or community.
Choose a country in the world and make a travel poster for it.
Play a geography-based board game or computer game. Tell an adult some facts you learned about a place that was part of the game.
Draw or make a map of your state. Include rivers, mountain ranges, state parks, and cities. Include a key or legend of map symbols.

Here’s the main site.