Winter Wednesday, Week 6 Winter Weeds

Winter Weeds

I have found that my kids prefer to explore at their own pace on our walks, so I take pictures and collect what is needed for us to do lessons at home. They tend to lose enthusiasm when I want them to come look at things or try to discuss something for longer than a sentence when we are out and about, but during school time they are perfectly willing. So I took pictures of 5 different plants and collected a branch from each one in a ziploc bag. The branches naturally shed seeds in the ziploc bags so we didn't have any trouble finding the seeds. I created a page with the pictures and had the kids match the pictures with the samples. Then we taped some seeds next to each picture and tried to identify each sample. We were only able to identify 2 of our samples, and decided some of the plants I picked weren't wildflowers at all, but one is a grass and I think the other is a native shrub of some kind. But the kids had a good time.

Native shrub:

Branch collection:

Nyah's:
Austin's:

Grass:

Common Sunflower--this was a favorite with the birds. This was our first walk where we saw a lot of songbirds. Usually on our walk we catch sight of a bird-of-prey that we have yet to identify (two kids & a dog make plenty of noise for a warning to all wildlife to skedaddle), but this time he wasn't to be seen and we were able to watch the birds eating from the sunflowers. We saw a number of magpies and finches.

Woolly Mullein--My favorite because of its unique look.

Birds of Prey on Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day, we took the kids to a wonderful Kids in Nature presentation at the Timpanogos Monument Visitor's Center, done by the Skymasters Wildlife Foundation in Utah. We had a great time, even though the weather and roads were a little dreary. The park was beautiful!

Peregrin Falcon. There is a pair of these birds that nest at the entrance to Timpanogos Cave, and can be heard/seen bringing food to their young. We can't wait to see if we can hear/see them this summer.

Gyre Falcon:

Red-Tailed Hawk, one of our famliy favorites, and one we see in the wild in our area a lot.

Comparing Hawks & Falcons:

Harris Hawk, from Arizona. They did a number of flight demonstrations with this bird, standing at one end of the room and having it fly to the other end. It was fun for the kids to feel the wind created by it passing by.

Cockatiel? This bird was brought to help show/discuss the difference between birds of prey, and raptors, as it has a sharp beak and claws, but isn't considered a raptor.

Screech Owl-- the kids were able to pet this guy at the end of the presentation.

Another Hawk, I can't remember his species.

Great Horned Owl

And the highlight of the event, Golden Eagles!! This is a 3 year old female named Holly. One highlight for the kids was when she tried to take off, and because of her weight and size and strength the handler had a hard time getting her back on his arm. I'm sure it wasn't a highlight for him, but the kids really enjoyed all the flapping.

Rage, the 1 year old male golden eagle, apparently so named because he's pretty viscious. This guy was helping himself to a number of lambs at a ranch in Colorado and was going to end up shot unless someone was able to come trap him and take him away, which Skymasters was luckily able to do. At the end of the presentation the kids were able to get really close to this fellow.

This comes in the middle of our bird studies with our science book God's Design for Life: The Animal Kingdom, so it was wonderful to see first hand the beaks, talons, different feathers we have been discussing, as well as listen to the wonderful information given for each species from the handlers.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #48- Rats & Beavers

Challenge #48- Rats & Beavers

The kids and I enjoying learning about Kangaroo Rats, Muskrats, and Beavers this week. We actually spent 45 minutes talking about Beavers after watching the videos at youtube. I am still amazed at how they walk on their hind legs, using their front legs and chin/mouth to carry mud and such up their lodge while they are constructing. They had a human look to them while they did this that is just amazing. Here is a link to that video.

Austin's Notebook Page:

Nyah's Notebook Page: She prefers the rainbow variety :) She also sketched a birds-eye-view of the waterways created by a Beaver when it builds the dam, and then makes channels into the surrounding areas to get trees.

The kids also really enjoyed reading the stories in the Burgess Animal Book. In their recordings about Kangaroo Rats the both mentioned that Kangaroo Rats don't need to drink water, because they get it from their food, and that they like to kick each other when fighting. It is always fun to see what details spark their interest.

Who is Charlotte Mason?

A British educator (1842-1923) who dedicated her life to improving children's education. Mason was trained to be a teacher and taught for ten years, during which she began to develop her ideas for children's education. She was invited to teach and lecture at a college, and she compiled a book called Home Education for parents. She opened a training school for governesses and others working with young children. She wrote more books on education, and oversaw a network of school taught by her trained teachers. Her teaching methods for governesses, and for the children they worked with, have been used in developing a way of homeschooling.

Here are some of the aspects I use in my homeschool:

1. Treating children with respect.
2. Habit training--teaching children to pay attention, execute perfectly, kindness, obedience, truthfulness, and many more good habits.
3. Living books, which is popular with man types of homeschooling, but as defined by Charlotte Mason--books by one person who is passionate about the subject, written in a narrative style, that are alive and engaging. Textbooks sometimes meet this criteria, and "twaddle" are books that are dumbed down.
4. NArration--I read aloud to the kids, then they tell back what they have learned. For most of the subjects I have them draw pictures of something they remember and then they tell me a few lines from what we read and I write it down by their picture.
5. Short Lessons--Which I think is the key to covering many subjects in short amount of time. Elementary age kids' lessons should be 15-20 minutes so they are better able to pay full attention. The exception to this is when the kids are engrossed in a subject, such as spending 45 minutes learning about beavers this week. Who knew beavers were so interesting? Not me.
6. Copywork/Penmanship--Right now I use a highlighter to write down a poem or scripture in their notebooks, and they copy over them with a pencil. When they get older I won't use the highlighter anymore. Charlotte Mason's point was to use good literature and not to isolate the individual letters.
7. Dictation--similar to copywork, a child is given a passage to look at and learn very well, the passage is then removed and read aloud to the child who writes it down in their notebook. This teaches spelling, grammar and composition. We aren't doing this yet, and probably won't start until 4th grade.
8. Art and Music--studying the great works of artists and composers.
9.Learning math through manipulatives instead of pen and paper along. We use a program called Math-U-See.
10. Literature--poetry, shakespeare, living books, etc.
11. Bible-- one of the things that drew me to Charlotte Mason is that she is Christian and believed children should be taught the scriptures.
12. History--taught through living books, biographies, etc. and keeping a Book of Centuries, which is a timeline where kids can record events from all subjects.
13. Geography--again through living books, such as books on Marco Polo and following his travels on maps, etc.
14. Foreign Language-- Charlotte taught her kids French, we are doing Portuguese because it is the language Kurt speaks, but we have also done a lot of sign language in the past.

This gives a brief outline of the Charlotte Mason homeschool philosophy. As mentioned before I will be discussin each subject individually in the future.

Here are several websites with more information and curriculum outlines:
Ambleside Online
Milestone's Academy (LDS)
Simply Charlotte Mason
Penny Gardner (LDS)

And there are plenty of others if you care to search online.

Disclaimer for "Our Schedule"

This is in response to comments on my post titled Our Schedule.

The last two months have been the most consistent, most well-flowing, most satisfying time I've had homeschooling so far. We've really hit our stride. That said, the first part of the disclaimer is that we have really built up to this point over the last few years. When they were preschool age I knew we would be homeschooling so we started having organized activities a few days a week. Kindergarten age we did a few more formal lessons like math and me reading aloud about whatever subjects the kids were interested in, like dinosaurs or the solar system. Austin is now in 2nd grade and Nyah is now 1st grade, though I say that just because of their ages-- almost all of their lessons are done together. They are at different levels in math and learning to read, but everything else is the same lessons. However, they remember and learn different things for the same lessons, which is totally interesting to me. But I have been gradually developing our schedules over a number of years, and it will continue to change and grow as they do, and as the younger ones become a part of school.

The second part of the disclaimer is that we don't do everything every day. I wish we did, but we soooo don't. We do most of our schedule most of the time, but there are plenty of disruptions and cancelled lessons. We have days when we need to run errands in the mornings before the little girls take naps in the afternoon so all of our lessons don't happen. Plus we have lots and lots of interrupted lessons. I can't tell you the number of times I stopped a lesson to change a diaper, pick someone up who's bumped her head, put someone else in timeout, snuggle someone, give Olivia or Jolie some needed one-on-one time, and so on. There are days when interruptions feel constant and I reach a point of "we're done for today--go play." The other day we were able to spend 45 minutes talking about beavers, but it meant putting off another part of our science lesson, and having to catch up a little after lunch, and we'll have to catch up a little on Friday, but the kids were so interested that I let it run its course, which is one beautiful thing about homeschooling.

The third part of my disclaimer is that I am horrible at weekends, vacations, or when people are visiting. Not that I think we have to do school on these days, but I wish I kept up with the basic outline of chores, scriptures, and devotional.

So I hope no one has the idea we are a perfect homeschooling family, perfectly doing all our lessons all the time in our perfectly clean house in perfectly pressed clothes. I never iron anyways.

Our Schedule

I homeschool using the Charlotte Mason philosophy, which I will explain more about in a later post, because in this post I want to give a brief overview of our daily/weekly/quarterly schedule to answer the question from my cousin-in-law, Katie.

Each morning after breakfast my kids have chores, and I consider this part of "school" because working in the house is teaching them skills they will need for life. I also have them help plan and cook meals once in a while, be involved in more of the deep cleaning like toilets, and helping with yard work, all things they will need in the future.

Following chores (around 9am) I do a morning devotional with them, where we read scriptures, memorize scriptures, learn hymns, read church magazines, read inspirational stories, and learn church history. It lasts about 30-45 minutes, and keeps growing because we keep adding to it. While I am reading aloud the kids are free to color, but they also pay attention because they participate by narrating, answering and asking questions, and usually want me to keep reading!

Then we have what I guess is recess-- about 15 minutes of free time while I get out our school stuff for the day. School lessons usually start around 10am.

Daily School: Pledge of Allegiance, Patriotic Song we are memorizing, Phonics/Reading, Copywork/Penmanship, and Math. These are the basics that I try to do M-F no matter what else is going on.

Each day we also focus on another subject: M & W are History days-- This year we are studing the Middle Ages and American History so we do a short lesson for each.

T, TH, & F are Science/Nature Study days: I use several books: God's Design for Life: The Animal Kingdom, The Handbook of Nature Study, and Discover Nature in Winter The Animal Kingdom has lessons planned with simple activities, and I found a great blog that hosts The Outdoor Hour Challenge and Winter Wednesdays, which are nature lessons planned by this blogger using the Handbook and Discoer Nature books. Here is the link for the blog The Handbook of Nature Study.

We also do Literature each day. M, W, & F we read from a chapter books, and T & TH we read a fairy tale (like real versions of Grimm's or Oscar Wilde's, etc.) or from Tales From Shakespeare by Charles & Mary Lamb.

Fridays we do Geography is I feel we haven't talked about it much during the week. For History and Science we usually pull out a map and talk about where things happened or where animals are found, etc., but if we didn't get to it I'll pull something together on Friday. Friday is also a catch up day to get any skipped lessons done.

Quareterly we have a music composer and artist we are studying, and we do a short lesson on these once a week. Right now we are studing Antonio Vivaldi and Jackson Pollock. "Studying" makes it seem a little intense, because the real objective is to know the composer/artists work more than to know biographical information. So I have a painting posted on the fridge and we listen to selections of music. And I'm kind of wishing I had chosen ones to go along with our Middle Ages studies, but I can change that next quarter when I pick new ones.

When things run smoothly we are done with all lessons by lunchtime. Sometimes we have a couple things we need to do after lunch to finish up, and that is usually because of the little girls needed more attention in the morning. They usually nap at the same time after lunch so sometimes I save our messier activities for that time.

Once we are done with school the kids are free to do do what they want. I only let them watch tv/play video games for 1-2 hours a day, so they spend a lot of time playing outside or with their toys or reading or whatever.

As I mentioned before I will be elaborating on the Charlotte Mason way of homeschooling which explains copywork, narrating, short lessons, etc. And I plan on blogging about each subject individually to share the resources we use and how we do it.

Winter Wednesday, Week 5, Trees Part 2

The kids and I borrowed a local park to collect cones and branches from, as well as our church grounds and our neighborhood. We had a good time collecting them, but trying to identify them was a little confusing! We used the Tree Identification Guide at the Arbor Day Foundation and, as a new tree identifier, I don't feel very confident in any we've identified, so feel free to post any corrections or suggestions. But all in all we had a great time-- even if we were a little sticky when we came home

The following picture is one that was hard to identify, and still a bit of a mystery. I hope you can tell from the picture, but the color of the needles is reddish/purplish. In the guide it matches up with the spruce trees, but this specific color didn't match any of the trees in the guide. Is it new growth? sick or dying? the weather? or where its planted? or just not listed in the guide? I don't know, but we specially grabbed this one while out collecting because of its color.

We identified this as a Ponderosa Pine, but the next picture also came up as a Ponderosa, and while the branches are very similar, the cones are pretty different.

Ponderaso too?? The cones in this one are longer and more slender than the shorter, fatter ones above.

This picture and the next both came up as Colorado Pinyons. One was collected from the park and the other from our church grounds.
Colorado Pinyon? I think so, the branches are similar: both have needles in bunches of 2, the needles of both leave little knobs when pulled off, needles of both are same shape, cones are also similar. It seems safe to say they are both Colorado Pinyon.

Colorado Blue Spruce-- the easiest to identify.

Austrian Pine