Down in the Bayou

 To start our tour of the Southeastern U.S. we went next door to Louisiana. We began by drawing items we would want to pack in a suitcase, specific to each state. This time we packed a pot (for cooking gumbo) a saxophone (for playing jazz) and rain boots (for navigating the waterways). I had them draw each item but let them discover along the week why they actually packed them.

 We sewed a little trail into Louisiana and will keep this up for all the state studies.

 We examined Louisiana's vast amount of waterways and compared it to the road map. We discussed routes we might take driving to Baton Rouge and New Orleans. This was a good brush up on using a compass and knowing directions.

 We talked about deltas and how they came to be. We used an old drain pipe and scooped up some dirt to pour in. Then we let the hose run through the "river."

 The kids got to see how the water washed away, but the sediment was left over. I was pretty proud of coming up with this on my own although it's probably been done a hundred times. We of course learned about the indigenous plants and animals. Who doesn't love reading books about alligators? We also read a poignant book about Hurricane Katrina.

 It's tough to get too in-depth about the history of a place with young kids who understand history as "last week" or "last Christmas" so I focus more on the migration of people to show how New Orleans in particular developed such diversity. I used our world map and little figures. We moved them around the board and talked loosely about who came from France, Germany, England, and Africa.

 We read several books about jazz musicians and Hannah has mentioned  Louis Armstrong a couple of times since then. I even found a picture book/cd set in the library about "Duck" Ellington they liked a lot. Of course their dad loves jazz and tried some jamming with them.

 In general I gave Hannah more written work this time around. She filled out chain reaction charts and wrote about all of Louisiana's unique characteristics. Once again, I learned quite a bit myself, which always keeps me motivated.

 To help Hannah practice counting money, I put up some items for sale and she put down the correct amount.

 I found a great dry erase chart for discussing elements of a story. We read Harold and the Purple Crayon and talked about all sorts of things from character traits to comparing settings, and discussing problem solving. I probably harped a bit too much on how Harold was amazing at solving his own problems without bothering an adult! : )

 Eating most of our lunches at home means the kids miss out on sack lunches, which they think are really special. They asked for a sack lunch the other day and had a great time seeing what I packed. Seems a bit elementary for something to get worked up about, but I tell myself I'll miss all that innocence later.

 Hannah needed some good hands-on math time this week.

She completed her 1st grade Horizon Math books! 

 This past week we focused on our new badges and read a few books about camping before our trip. I particularly loved these three. The Last Badge had a surprise ending and even brought me to tears! Because Your Mommy Loves You really spoke to the kids because it showed how although a mom can certainly step in and help you do a lot of things, she shows love by letting you figure things out on your own. Are We There Yet was a surprising culmination of many things we've been learning. This family took a road trip around the Australian continent amongst other things, so the kids were familiar with many of the landmarks, following a map, and of course looking forward to camping.

 We're also working on Love and Kindness badges. Chloe loved The Kindness Quilt so much, she raced to make one of her own. I'm a little confused as to why these badges have been particularly difficult for the kids. Of course they are loving and kind kids (most of the time) but to apply the concepts in a meaningful way doesn't seem to be grabbing their attention. And a couple of the requirements are outside their box as far as speaking to people they don't know well and thinking consciously about performing kind acts and keeping a chart. It seems strange to them to write it all down.

 Chloe and Hannah have been writing their own books lately. Hannah wrote one each for Dax and me to read specifically before we go to bed each night. Chloe wrote books for her teachers as an end of year gift. She also wrote cards for each classmate. She was upset to find she had forgotten someone when she passed them out so she went straight home and mailed him his card.

 Chloe had her final program at school and they sang lots of cute songs.

 We're so proud of all her work this year! Time to start Kindergarten very soon!

 We're also so proud of Hannah who gave a beautiful performance of Clementi's Sonatina No.1, Mvts. 1 and 2 at her piano recital.

 She had some proud siblings, too.

 Kit Kat piano!

 We had an awesome time on our first camping trip. The kids had to help set up and break down in order to count for their badge. We also learned about First Aid before they went, which was good because we had to use the kit twice.

We joined our good friends, the Benton Family and challenged each other to make a family crest- mainly because Megan and I were joking around. This turned out to be a great learning opportunity. We looked up all sorts of emblems and coats of arms. They voted very democratically on what would be included and what colors we would use. The symbols they chose were pretty funny- basically their favorite foods and a pair of dice, which looks like we like to gamble, but it's really that we like boardgames. : ) I love that they got creative with the animals, too. The chose black, orange, and rainbow as our signature colors. They helped draw and color and I think it turned out great- we plan on using it for all our future camping trips!

This week is our last week of school. We'll probably wind down with a lot of reading and some review of skills while finished up the last badge requirements. On Friday I'm "planning" on a family fun day with some outdoor activities and Saturday they'll have an Achievement Banquet with the church co-op.

Birding and the Outback

 Since I've last posted, we've based school around 2 books and a lot of other activities. We read Albert, the story of a man too afraid to go outside. He puts his hand out his window each day to check the weather, but one day a cardinal begins building a nest there and he's got to stay there for weeks until the babies fly off. In the meantime, he looks out his window and discovers the world is not as scary as he thought. I thought it was a really sweet book. We took the opportunity to focus on birds. We've studied owls but not birds in general. We took a field trip to a local park and the girls drew various things in their nature journals while we looked for birds- rather unsuccessfully.

It was a beautiful walk nonetheless, and the kids since then have really noticed many birds and nests than they ever did before.  Hannah and I also began reading from the Burgess Book of Birds- tales of Peter Rabbit and all the birds that inhabit the orchard where he lives. Through the stories we've learned so far about the wren and various sparrows. I don't have a picture yet, but Hannah goes straight to a nice coloring book of birds we have and finds the appropriate bird for the day. She follows the correct color patterns and does her very best to keep it all her nicest work. She's done a great job so far.

 Here is an illustration from Albert. I saw pictures of other kids' artwork using yarn collage, so we did our own.

 

First they traced their hands and glued them to dark paper. 

I cut out a cardinal shape for them. They colored in the black areas, made eggs, and formed nests from yarn to recreate the illustration.

Besides reading many books on birds, watching videos on how their wings work, and Hannah's great love of reading about state birds, we visited the museum. We mainly went for the new dinosaur exhibit, but this was also the first time we could visit the bird exhibit when it wasn't crowded and the kids grasped a bit more than before. They all tried the bird flight simulator and picking up objects with different shaped "beaks." Overall, on a subject I wasn't sure they would be interested in, we learned quite a bit and had fun. 

Chloe's school had their spring program. She was a sweet as ever singing her songs. 

The kids' art was posted in the hallways. Here is the Chloe Collection using all different mediums. Preschool is almost up for Chloe and I think it will be harder for her to give up than Hannah. Chloe is a social butterfly- from what I can tell on the playground- and she needs to be around lots of kids. She enjoys gymnastics and her church friends, but she will very much miss all the kids at school. Thankfully another little girl in her class will also be homeschooling so hopefully they can continue their friendship. Other than that, I'll need to look for opportunities for Chloe to be involved with new groups of kids. Hannah has spoken a lot about being in plays, so maybe this summer I'll find a workshop for them both.

We took a bit of a break around the Easter holidays, but a few projects kept us busy. I went through all my Pinterest ideas and made a list of things we could do pretty easily. 

 One idea I saw was to write the alphabet on the back of a paper plate all the way around like a clock. The kids went around the house looking for letters and would fold back the letter on the plate when they found it. My own addition was a lion face on the back, so when they completed their letters, they would have a lion's mane!

 Colin worked on some bean counting. Yes, those beans end up all over the floor every time. All those pictures you see of children neatly playing with sensory objects in a little bin simply are not true. 

Another project I found used magazine collage and stencil. The kids covered small canvases with magazine strips. We picked the brightest colors and patterns we could. This took quite a long time. Then they each chose a shape to feature and we looked through Google images for pictures that would make a nice silhouette. We cute those out, lightly glued them in place and they painted around it. Then we removed the "stencil." I think they turned out well. We might go back with a second coat of paint to make it really stand out. This was Hannah's Chloe's is a purse, and Colin's was Ironman. : )

Here we made little car washes out of shoeboxes.  It only took a few minutes. The kids cut and placed the crepe paper and I made windows out of plastic wrap. They've played with these more than many other toys- and they're actually not broken yet.

Church co-op was light around Lent, but we got together a couple of times.  Here they assembled school bags for International Orthodox Christian Charities.

On another day, they had a play date at a local creek. The kids were thrilled with this. It was a great hidden area in town I'd never heard of, so I'm hoping we can go back.

Our next book was called The Pumpkin Runner, based on the true story of a man who ran an Australian marathon. He was quite the underdog, never having formally trained (he ran around on his sheep farm) in his 60's, and wearing overalls and work boots! He won the race and divided up his winnings amongst the other finishers. There was so much to gain from this story, it was almost hard to choose. First of all we focused on his generosity and gumption as well as his willingness not to listen to the dissent of others. We looked up the original story and watched a video of him. Hannah's assignment was to choose a local newspaper article and write her own little fiction story based on it. She picked a story about a man traveling the country eating hotdogs at all the major ballparks. The result was such a surprise I had to post it on Facebook.

I had to laugh out loud-  and then of course be a little concerned that this was what popped into her head. But Hannah's always been a little off the beaten path in life, so I'll count it toward creativity : )

We were excited to add Australia to our world map of studies this year. And of course that country has a lot to offer. We learned about continents, Hannah navigated around Google Earth to zoom in on neighborhoods in Sydney and Perth. We learned and read many books about marsupials. They colored pictures of the animals and Hannah wrote facts about the platypus, some of which I was surprised to learn. She had asked me if they were poisonous. I told her we would find out, but secretly kind of chuckled since it hardly looks like it would be in any way. However, we read it has a poisonous back leg and even uses it in fights! 

In completely unplanned, serendipitous timing, I happened to be playing a concert during the week we studied Australia. The entire concert was music by Percy Grainger, and Australian composer. Hannah fell in love with some of his music while listening in the car and was thrilled to hear it live. It's such a fun thing to have her come. And it somewhat explains where I run off to sometimes. I asked her if she saw any interesting instruments she liked (we did have a bass saxophone and various bassoons) and she said, "Yes, piano."  In between pieces, they played audio of Grainger playing piano, so it was a treat.

Begin a music family, we couldn't skip the Sydney opera house. Hannah watched videos about Aborigines and saw several play the didgeridoo. One was even a professional performance in the opera house. We also watched their native artwork, which largely included painting in dots and patterns. Taking a Pinterest idea of using paper plates for the building, I changed the original glitter fireworks to dot painting the fireworks. I think it was a nice combination! We also used tissue paper for the bay. For fun, we planned on watching Finding Nemo since it's locale is Australia, but right now nothing beats Frozen in this house.

 Hannah is still trucking along in piano. She has a recital coming up in a few weeks but has been less than excited about learning her piece. She had spent the last few weeks working on it, but had moved on to new things. Now returning to it, she's frustrated she has to rework much of it. I wasn't convinced it had to be that hard, so I played my famous house game with her, now with Skittles as rewards for making it home. Within 10 minutes, she played the entire first page flawlessly, and even better than she had before!

 My days are quite long and admittedly lonely. After a day of homeschooling (or preschool, piano, and co-op) I run off to teach even more until 9pm- so my contact with adults is pretty much at a minimum unless I'm going to a rehearsal. These kids make it easy- most of the time : ) They are few in number, but we make up for that with quality, I think. I teach at their homes, so I get to know their families as well, and can stretch a lesson out a bit if we're really on a roll. I'm always very proud to hear them in concert, and they are really sweet students.

Now I do have a disclaimer with this blog. If something seems like a fairy tale or it all came out perfect in the end, I'm here to say it certainly did not. It's a rough road for sure.With every day comes messes, repeated directions, grumbling, tears, and some frustration and discipline. It comes with the territory just like in a classroom or a regular day at home with children. My biggest challenge is to keep an activity positive and not let it end in a downward spiral! It can happen in a matter of seconds!  I have to remember their attention spans, their ages and abilities, and most of all that they are just kids- not perfect little robots. But in the end, all the smiles in the pictures are real, and they accomplish wonderful things right in front of my eyes.  I couldn't ask for better kids to spend my time with.

Next, we'll be leaving on the first leg of our pretend road trip around the United States. We'll visit the Southeast. This topic is another idea from my head, so it's been a little harder to put together. I can't wait to see how it all turns out.