Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Quote of the Day
We've all been excited to watch the 2010 Olympics, and most nights this week we've tuned in to see how the athletes are doing. Last night Aiden told us "I'd like to be in the Olympics someday." After a short pause he told us, "the oldest person is 36. I'm already 7. I better get started now." After we had a discussion about how much practice goes into being an athlete of that caliber, he decided he'd rather watch. Either way it made me giggle.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Final Projects
This week is final projects week for the units. The kids put together a presentation pretending they were paleontologists needing funding for an expedition. They did a great job explaining fossils, what can be learned from them, and discussing how to test rocks and minerals to discover what kind they are. We had one minor mishap with the computer and a lost file, but they persevered, redid the presentation, and were able to move past the upset.
They both finished Holes last week, and we watched the movie last night. It was fun discussing the differences between the book and the movie. We felt like overall, they did a good job with the movie. Their final project for this is to design a camp that might actually help boys in trouble. It was very interesting to see their extremely different approaches! Aiden decided that if he made things so terrible, the boys would never want to come back, and would stop doing bad things. Zoë felt like most of the boys just needed to have some fun and a structured routine.
The neatest thing about the Holes final project to me was being able to discuss what motivates people to do good. I was able to ask lots of questions about why people choose to make good decisions, and how there are always more than one perspective on stories. I enjoyed watching and listening to Aiden work through his thoughts about the camp he was designing. In the end he decided that he needed a mixture of reward and punishment included in his camp. It was an excellent opportunity to discuss how best to motivate people to make good choices while trying to understand the grayness of perspective. And they thought they were just reading a good book...
They both finished Holes last week, and we watched the movie last night. It was fun discussing the differences between the book and the movie. We felt like overall, they did a good job with the movie. Their final project for this is to design a camp that might actually help boys in trouble. It was very interesting to see their extremely different approaches! Aiden decided that if he made things so terrible, the boys would never want to come back, and would stop doing bad things. Zoë felt like most of the boys just needed to have some fun and a structured routine.
The neatest thing about the Holes final project to me was being able to discuss what motivates people to do good. I was able to ask lots of questions about why people choose to make good decisions, and how there are always more than one perspective on stories. I enjoyed watching and listening to Aiden work through his thoughts about the camp he was designing. In the end he decided that he needed a mixture of reward and punishment included in his camp. It was an excellent opportunity to discuss how best to motivate people to make good choices while trying to understand the grayness of perspective. And they thought they were just reading a good book...
Friday, February 5, 2010
Poetry
After giving Zoë a hard time about writing several acrostic poems during her assignments this week, she came to me with this diddy. I love her sense of humor!
A I am not
Cvery good
Rat acrostic
Opoems.
Severy letter
There, well most
Ievery letter,
Cwhatever.
Pthey never
Omatch. So
Ematch is omatch
Mand and is mand.
A I am not
Cvery good
Rat acrostic
Opoems.
Severy letter
There, well most
Ievery letter,
Cwhatever.
Pthey never
Omatch. So
Ematch is omatch
Mand and is mand.
Crystals, short stories, and sickness
This week has flown by. Zoë was sick Monday and still not feeling well on Tuesday, and I was sick Thursday. Somehow we still managed to complete everything on their agendas.
Since Zoë was sick I spent most of the week being able to do lessons separately with the kids. I think Aiden got a lot more out of literature knowing that he couldn't rely upon Zoë's answers to get him through. Either that or his reading comprehension has dramatically improved. I'm guessing it's some of both.
Both of the kids have been excited to write their own short stories, so I've changed our writing assignments to having them work on their stories. Tom has agreed to teach them editing skills. They seem really excited about this.
Another change I'm introducing this week is for Zoë with her math. She has been continuing to struggle with the idea that her math is getting more difficult, but she really has little problem doing it. Lately, she's been spending more time lamenting the problems than actually doing them. So I made an agreement with her that she can either master 5 different types of problems per day or spend an hour doing math (whichever comes first). Yesterday, we finally had a breakthrough and she finished math in 25 minutes.
The beginning of the week we did a rock hunt and then spent time doing tests on each rock to try to figure out what kind they were. The curriculum just had them do the tests and stop there. Aiden was bothered that he didn't actually know what kind of rocks he had, so we went to the library and checked out a field guide and he looked his rocks up. He couldn't understand why anyone would spend all that time doing the tests, and then not know what rocks they really had. Since then he's been reading the field guide and learning all he can about igneous rocks.
Yesterday, despite me having the stomach flu, we managed to complete 6 different science experiments with crystals. Now my kitchen window sill is filled with glasses growing crystals including rock candy. We also got to break open a geode and do some painting with "crystals."
Finally, I knew it was going to happen (though I didn't think this early), but Aiden was working on some math that I could not remember how to do. Fortunately, after one explanation problem it came back to me. He was making a line graph of an algebraic equation and I just couldn't remember how to do that. So together we clicked on explain and after I read it over it came back. Needless to say I have very little reason to remember how to graph things like y = 4x + 2. I know this is just the beginning of these issues, and sooner or later I'm not even going to be able to remember how to do the problems!
Since Zoë was sick I spent most of the week being able to do lessons separately with the kids. I think Aiden got a lot more out of literature knowing that he couldn't rely upon Zoë's answers to get him through. Either that or his reading comprehension has dramatically improved. I'm guessing it's some of both.
Both of the kids have been excited to write their own short stories, so I've changed our writing assignments to having them work on their stories. Tom has agreed to teach them editing skills. They seem really excited about this.
Another change I'm introducing this week is for Zoë with her math. She has been continuing to struggle with the idea that her math is getting more difficult, but she really has little problem doing it. Lately, she's been spending more time lamenting the problems than actually doing them. So I made an agreement with her that she can either master 5 different types of problems per day or spend an hour doing math (whichever comes first). Yesterday, we finally had a breakthrough and she finished math in 25 minutes.
The beginning of the week we did a rock hunt and then spent time doing tests on each rock to try to figure out what kind they were. The curriculum just had them do the tests and stop there. Aiden was bothered that he didn't actually know what kind of rocks he had, so we went to the library and checked out a field guide and he looked his rocks up. He couldn't understand why anyone would spend all that time doing the tests, and then not know what rocks they really had. Since then he's been reading the field guide and learning all he can about igneous rocks.
Yesterday, despite me having the stomach flu, we managed to complete 6 different science experiments with crystals. Now my kitchen window sill is filled with glasses growing crystals including rock candy. We also got to break open a geode and do some painting with "crystals."
Finally, I knew it was going to happen (though I didn't think this early), but Aiden was working on some math that I could not remember how to do. Fortunately, after one explanation problem it came back to me. He was making a line graph of an algebraic equation and I just couldn't remember how to do that. So together we clicked on explain and after I read it over it came back. Needless to say I have very little reason to remember how to graph things like y = 4x + 2. I know this is just the beginning of these issues, and sooner or later I'm not even going to be able to remember how to do the problems!
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