Nature Study Monday: Introducing ChewLeaf the Caterpillar (and other musings)

Sorry for the silence around here lately. I’m still trying to figure out where blog-posting fits into the rhythm of our days and weeks (combined with a somewhat erratic internet connection). I do have lots to share with you all when I can snag a moment here and there, however. =) Thanks for your patience with my inconsistency.

One thing we've really been enjoying as we've gotten back into our school routine here is the endless possibilities we have for nature study and exploration. One little project we have going at the moment is this little guy:

 

 

The kids have affectionately named him ChewLeaf, since, well, that's what he does. Michelle and her friend found him on a bush a couple of weeks ago and we've been having a great time observing and watching him grow. We're hoping we'll be able to watch him go through all the stages of his metamorphosis. One of those little projects I've always wanted to do, but never got around to orchestrating. But maybe it's better this way? That it was Michelle's find, Michelle's idea to keep him to observe, rather than mine? All of the kids are completely enthralled by him.

 

 

I've been reading the book Poetic Knowledge by James Taylor. It is dense and meaty - definitely a book that will take a while to comprehend and digest. From what I understand, though, the idea of "poetic knowledge" is knowing something intimately - really knowing it as opposed to knowing about it. And it is a type of knowledge that lays the foundation for "scientific", factual knowledge. As I watched all three kids completely fascinated by their caterpillar friend after changing his leaves this morning, I couldn't help but thinking that this is what we are doing. We could read a book about caterpillars and butterflies and make a cute little cut-and-paste chart of his life cycle, and then we'd be able to say we know about caterpillars and butterflies. But by doing this, they are observing and learning for themselves. Assuming our experiment is successful, they will know - really know - the life-cycle of a caterpillar. They will have experienced it for themselves.

 

One of the common questions about Charlotte Mason education is "Is nature study and living books really 'enough' science in the elementary school years?" I've asked that question too. I think I'm finally beginning to understand that not only is it enough - it is vital. Once we really know something in the 'poetic' (intimate, personal) sense, then we can understand it in a 'scientific' (factual) sense. Don't know about you, but that certainly gives me the motivation I need to continue on making nature study a priority in our family.

 

Something New To Us This Year: Notebooking

Last year I did a series of posts on “how we do” most of our school subjects.  (I never did get around to math or French…maybe because math isn’t that exciting since we mostly stick to our curriculum and French I still haven’t really found a groove for? Anyhow…)   A lot of that information still applies.  But there are a few things we are approaching differently this year, and I look forward to sharing some of those things with you.   One of those things is that we’ve added in some notebooking.

 

Oral narration is still a staple around here – we still orally narrate all of our school readings.   At the end of each “week” (as per the AO schedule) we take some time to add any new historical figures to our timeline book (that’s new too…post forthcoming) and she chooses whatever reading was most interesting to her that week to do a notebook page about.   She has really taken to this!   I only asked her to draw a picture and write a 1 sentence caption, and she ended up writing a whole paragraph!   

 

A recent notebook page from an installment of Dangerous Journey

 

We are collecting her notebook pages into her school record binder, so by the end of the year we should have a really lovely record of some of the highlights of our reading for this year.   We are using a very generic template for simplicity (I printed off a supply of two different styles for her to choose from), although if you get really in to notebooking there are TONS of resources (both paid and free) to choose from online.   We may eventually divide out into more subject-specific notebooks, but I didn’t feel that was necessary if we are only producing 1 page each week.

 

Normally, Charlotte Mason didn’t recommend asking children to produce written narrations (of which notebooking is a form) before the age of about 9 or so.  The thinking behind this is that the child first must feel comfortable with the mechanics of handwriting as well as have developed the ability to narrate orally (organizing and expressing thoughts in one’s head and then verbally) before melding these two skills together.   Michelle, a 7 year old first-ish/second grader, is very comfortable with these two skills separately and often chooses to write on her own (letters, lists, stories)…so I felt it was time to start gently nudging her in this direction.    If your child is not ready to do write on their own (meaning that the physical act of handwriting and/or the process of organizing one's thoughts through oral narration is still laborious for them), but the idea of notebooking intrigues you can always be a scribe for your child and take down an occasional oral narration for your child to illustrate if they so desire.  We did that some last year and I found it very motivating for Michelle when I took down what she said.  And as you can see we are starting very small – 1 page per week on a topic of her choosing.  Eventually we’ll work up to 2 pages per week, and then 3 until eventually she is producing some type of written work daily – probably a mix of topics of her choosing and topics of mine.

 

So do you use notebooking in your homeschool?  Please share if you do – I’d love to see how you do it!

 

 

 

What We've Learned - March 5, 2013

Now that we’ve been back-to-homeschool for 2 weeks, it’s time to get back into the swing of sharing some of what we’ve learned…

 

Michelle (Age 7)

1. I have been reading about Pocahontas. (Pocahontas by Ingri and Edgar d’Aulaire).   She dives for her bath.
2. I read about the missing cupcakes in Part 2 of “The Mystery”  (in my reader, Climbing Higher).
3. I have been doing subtraction in my math.  (We are almost finished with Math U See Alpha).
4. We are learning to spell –er words like other.

 

James (Age 4.5)

1. I learned to read out of my “jam book”.  (We are using the All About Reading Level 1 readers for extra phonics practice.  The very first story we read in book one was about jam, and the book has been dubbed “The Jam Book” ever since!!)
2. I learned to read words that have 4 letters in them.
3. I played the math game that is like Skipbo with Mama.
4. We read a story called “The Peaches” (from Kindergarten Gems)

 

 

Elizabeth (Age Almost 3)

Currently unavailable for comment, as she has worn herself out and is taking a nap as I type. =)  She loves doing cut-and-paste type things, however.  She begs for this regularly.  She also thinks that she was a princess in a movie.   Not sure where she got that idea from – we’ve never been that into the whole princess fad thing in our house!

 

 

Mama (because you should never stop learning no matter how old you are…)

1. It is OK that I am not a crafty mama.  Why do I say this?  Because if I don’t direct the crafts the kids will make them up for themselves.  Case in point: Michelle drew her own ant to cut out and paste together.   She even examined the drawing in a book about insects to make she that her ant was anatomically correct!!
2. You can make amazingly delicious ice cream without a fancy ice cream maker machine with nothing more than a can of sweetened condensed milk, 2 cups of cream (which you then whip to double or so the volume), some vanilla, and some cocoa powder.   The only equipment you need is something to whip the cream with.  A-MAZ-ING.  (Thankfully, a liter of cream here costs about $7 and I had to use half of it in this recipe…so that will help me keep it as a special treat instead of eating it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack!)
3. The  English language has a fascinating history – just finished reading King Alfred’s English which was a highly readable narrative history of the English language.  (Y’all already knew I was a nerd, right?! If not, you can add it to your list of things you learned this week! ;-))
4. God is good and faithful to provide encouragement when we need it: Last week I was feeling lonely and out of place and discouraged since finding out some friends of ours who we thought were coming to serve here with us now aren’t.  Since then He brought an impromptu visit from a sweet Cameroonian friend, an encouraging conversation with a veteran missionary lady, and an evening out with a couple of other homeschooling mamas.  Isn’t He good? 

Family Reading #7

James reading with his Grandma during our last week in France.
 

In honor of my brand new wall-lining bookcase, I thought it was time for a new books post....

 

Picture Book Highlights

For some reason, we ended up with several cowboy books on our last library trip (namely Cowboy Andy and Harry the Wild West Horse).  These have become the favorites in this pile.  Who knew my kids liked cowboys?  (Speaking of library, we are blessed to have a wonderful library and resource center for homeschooling missionary families less than 10 minutes walk from where we are living right now.  It’s fantastic.)

 

Michelle’s Reading (Age 7)

Michelle has been devouring the Boxcar Children series (many volumes available in aforementioned library).   I had heard that volumes 1-19 were the only ones penned by the original author and all the ones after that have been ghost written for mass production (and are therefore not as good).  We’ve found this to be true – while there’s nothing particularly bad about volumes 20+, the storylines in the earlier books have been much more engaging for her.

 

Featured School Book

We’ve just started AO Year 1, and week 1 went well.   Michelle loved James Baldwin’s 30 More Famous Stories last year, so she was really excited to see his 50 Famous Stories on the AO Year 1 reading list.  She chose to do her notebook page for week 1 on “The Sword of Damocles” which was from this book, so I take that as an indication that she’s enjoying it.

 

Bedtime Read-Aloud

We are almost finished with The Tanglewood’s Secret by Patricia St John.  I like the way that these stories weave spiritual truths into plausible storylines.   Given that this is the second Patricia St John book that Michelle has chosen in the past couple of months, I’d venture to guess that she is enjoying them too.

 

On Mama’s Nightstand

So many books, so little time.   I did recently finish a James Herriot trilogy (All Things Bright and Beautiful, All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Wise and Wonderful) and really enjoyed them.  I had never thought to read these books before since they are stories about a vet, and I’ve never cared all that much for animal stories…but these were actually really good.   Far more about the people he met and lessons learned in the course of his life as a vet in 1930’s rural England.  And funny.  (Although, beware of some profanity.)    I am also working steadily through Charlotte Mason’s Philosophy of Education (Volume 6).   Wonderful insights here.  Hoping to blog my way through these at some point.  

 

So tell me...have you read anything especially good lately?   I'd love to hear about it!

Monthly Nature Notebook - and Our New Tree Study

We are so happy to be getting back into a homeschooling groove again after the past couple of months of transition. It just feels good to be doing something that feels “normal” to us, if you know what I mean.
 
One thing that we really love about living in Africa so far is the immense number of possibilities for nature study here. So many new and interesting things to discover. That’s one of my goals for nature study for the coming year – to familiarize ourselves with the flora and fauna to be found in our area. As a tie in to “science”, I also want to guide the children towards discovery of the characteristics that distinguish plants from animals.
 

 
One new thing for us this year is our monthly nature journal. I’ve seen on many blogs the idea of keeping a “book of firsts” or a seasonal nature journal of sorts. I’ve always sort of thought that we couldn’t do this because we live in the tropics and don’t have 4 distinct seasons per se. (That and we’ve moved 4 times in the last 4 years, which makes keeping an ongoing record and seeking to notice patterns over time a bit difficult.) But I was inspired by Amy over at Fisher Academy that there are variations to be had even in the tropics and decided to go for it.
 

 

Our monthly nature journal is a binder with a tab for each month of the year. Behind each divider there are three pages right now: a weather chart, a ‘monthly nature journal’ chart, and a notebook page to record our tree study for the month.  The weather chart is pretty straightforward. The ‘monthly nature journal’ is a way to make brief observations of things we noticed about plants, flowers, weather patterns or whatever more frequently than we do a full nature study and journaling event, with an eye towards eventually getting an idea for what is typical in our area in various times of the year. (Inspired by this Monthly Nature Journal ).  And since we had such good success with our tree study last year, we decided to do a new tree study this year. 
 

 
We selected the mango tree in our front yard. It may not turn colors and drop leaves in autumn, but it will be interesting to note the stages and cycle of fruit production over the course of a year. And it’s a little hard to miss, so follow up should be easy.
 

 

 
James has decided that he wants to keep a nature journal this year too. Here is his first entry. Not too shabby for a little guy, is it? =)
 

 
Looking forward to sharing our new discoveries as we make them!

PS - Our seasonal tree studies have been inspired by The Year Long Tree Study challenge over at The Handbook of Nature Study.  Be sure to check out this blog for lots of wonderful nature study inspiration!  

 

 

 

Our School Experience

For the past 5 weeks, we put homeschooling on hold while my husband and I took our mission’s field orientation course.  During this time, Michelle went to school with the other MKs.   This was with a bit of fear and trepidation – we’ve homeschooled from day 1 so she’s never been in school before.  And  the Charlotte Mason methods that we normally use are quite different from traditional school methods, so I wasn’t sure how that would go over for her either.    Before we get back to homeschooling next week (I am so excited to be starting Ambleside Online Year 1!), I thought I would write a little bit about our school experience. 

Thankfully, this is a very small school – she was one of five students in a first-second grade combination class, and her teacher was a very sweet lady.   All of the other children are also missionary children – therefore coming from committed Christian families.  The school day finished at 2pm, so not too terribly long. (One reason we opted not to send her to school in France was that their school day lasted until 4:30!)  So, in my mind, this was really the ideal environment to have her first school experience. 

One thing I realized during the past 5 weeks was that our family really functions better when we have the flexibility to set our own schedule.    Getting everyone out the door by 8am was really hard for us.    Thankfully, Michelle was able to walk home with the other kids, but for the first week we picked her up in the afternoon which was a huge interruption to the flow of our day as well.   I am far more stressed out by having to organize my life around someone else’s timetable than I am by having my kids home with me all day.   I also realized that homeschooling helps me to be a much more intentional parent.   This isn’t to say that homeschooling is the only way as I know many wonderful, committed, intentional parents who have chosen the traditional school route for their families.   But for myself personally, I found that we really slipped in some of the ‘grounding practices’ that have naturally become part of our family life as a result of homeschooling – such as Scripture memory, family read-alouds, and the like.    Mornings were rushed, and evenings found everyone too tired.     And of course as a Charlotte Mason homeschooler with very particular tastes when it comes to curriculum choice,  I wasn’t terribly impressed with the textbooks and fill-in-the-blank worksheets that Michelle brought home with her.

On the positive side, however, having her in someone else’s classroom for the past 5 weeks has been very enlightening as far as how Michelle is progressing and how the Charlotte Mason method is working for us.   I was really pleased with what I saw.   Michelle was the only first grader in her first-second combination class, but because she is a strong reader the teacher just combined her with the other second graders for every subject but math – and she held her own just fine.    The teacher commented to me about her high comprehension level as well, which I chalk up to the quality literature we’ve been reading for the past 2 or 3 years since discovering CM.   And while I don’t usually do a lot of workbook-y kinds of things in our homeschool, I was happy to see that she could do these kind of exercises without difficulty.   This gives me confidence that she’ll do just fine when she encounters this kind of thing on standardized tests (which we get to do for the first time this year, lucky us!).    The fact that she did as well as she did in this more “traditional” school environment  helped me to feel more confident that the “non-traditional” methods we use in our homeschool are still preparing her well for life after homeschooling.    She is learning and doing well – excelling – despite the fact that we don’t do things the same way as many people.

And on her part?  She loved going to school.   She loved being with the other kids all of the time.   She loved her teacher.   That said, this evening when we were talking together about it she said to me that she’s “tired of being tired after such long days at school.”   I think she’ll be glad to go back to our normal rhythm of getting our schoolwork done in the morning (and no homework!), having rest time in the early afternoon, and the freedom to play with all her new friends when they get home later.    She’ll also get to keep participating in the after school sports and music clubs as well as the special ‘joint learning sessions’ when all of the homeschooling missionary families from all over Cameroon come together twice a year to do group learning activities and special projects.    So really, she’s getting the best of both worlds.

Now that our orientation time is done, I'm looking forward to popping in here for a chat a little more often.  Stay tuned!

Daybook: The First One from Africa

I wouldn't say I'm quite ready to start posting on a regular basis again JUST YET...but thought that I would pop in and say hello from Africa where we have survived our first week and a half or so.  =)

Outside my window:: A mango tree on one side of the house, and a banana tree on the other.  And the 'neighborhood playground' where all of the other MK's (missionary kids) living on our compound play.   After living in a 4th floor apartment in France, and only being able to get together with friends on occasion, my kids are ecstatic.

The tree in the foreground is our mango tree - I'm thinking that this may be the tree we adopt for our year-long tree study this year!

Listening to:: Chris Tomlin's And if Our God is For Us.   I don't know about you, but I have certain albums that I associate with certain pivotal, key times in my life.   This is the one that I often listened to in the car during our furlough in 2011, when we were working through the decision to leave Papua New Guinea and come to Cameroon.    And I find that now that we are here and living through the [not very fun] transition period, I need to be reminded of the things that the Lord spoke to me during that decision making process.   He is still for us.   He is still faithful.   We can still choose to trust and follow wherever He leads.

Giving Thanks::  That we are here, safely, with all our luggage.   That people have been helpful, friendly, and hospitable as we've gotten settled.  For familiar faces - friends from our time of language study in France.   For fans.   And real butter.   And hot water in the shower. (Yes, I still appreciate a hot shower, even though we are once again living in the tropics!)

Pondering::  "Expect nothing of yourself and everything of God."   Not sure who she was quoting, but someone shared it this morning in our orientation class in the context of a discussion on how to maintain one's spiritual health in this new and challenging cultural context.   I will admit that I am overwhelmed by all the new and different things we've encountered in this place, and while I am surviving, I have difficulty imagining how I will ever learn to find my place and thrive here.   And on my own, I can't.   But He has brought us this far, and I need to trust that He isn't going to drop us now.

Living the Educational Life:: We are on a [very temporary] hiatus right now...Michelle is attending the small MK elementary school here, and the two little ones are in daycare, for the 5 weeks we are doing our orientation class.  It is going OK, but I will admit that I am counting the days until we can get back into our homeschooling groove again, and realizing once again why homeschooling is such a great fit for our family.  (Hmm...sounds like a post all of its own!)  The bonus though...when I went to pick her up on the first day, her teacher's comment was "Boy, can she read - she even knows what all those words mean!"   Thank you, Charlotte Mason, for infusing our home with fantastic and challenging literature!

What I am Loving About Africa (so far):: The early mornings.  Cool(er), quiet, peaceful.  Amazing (and cheap) market produce.  The aforementioned playground.   The fact that my kids think that power outages are cool.

What I am Not Loving About Africa (so far):: The dirt.  Keeping the floor clean is a losing battle.

Finding Rhythm:: What's that??!!  HA!  Haven't gotten that far yet.  Ask me again in a couple months. ;-)

Praying:: For patience and wisdom and grace as we transition. That we would be open and receptive to new ideas in a new culture. For the strength to nurture well, even when I myself am feeling stretched and drained.

Planning the Week Ahead::  Continuing with our orientation course and getting ourselves settled and organized.  Learning how to take a taxi.  And probably visiting an African church for the first time this coming Sunday.

Capturing a Moment::

View from my front porch.