Sounds like quite the mouthful of edu-speak, right? Right.
Aubrey and I just started working on this unit: Mystery Disease and it is designed for use in a classroom and is billed as a Problem Based Learning unit. Which means basically that you hook the class with a problem to solve so that they are actively engaged in learning and actually enjoy learning. Well, duh! Of course, it is one of those hippy education trends that back to basics folks think take time away from doing the more important things like drills and rote learning.
But, I digress. Aubrey and I are having lots of fun with this. I’m doing my best not to read ahead, and since it isn’t a “real answer” kind of thing anyway, I’m not at a great advantage by seeing the teacher pages. We are both reading the clues and pitching ideas with eachother at each step.
AND, though I do find Problem Based Learning to be fancy eduspeak, I googled it a bit and it is a fairly cool way to jumpstart any unit study. Of course, in homeschooling, as in life, there are so many ways our kids run across their OWN “problems” and where they can create their own REAL solutions. Reading definitions of Problem Based Learning really sounds like a treatise on unschooling if you read between the lines. Still, I’m going to keep this approach in mind when we start various units. I found a few websites that offer some ideas that I thought might be fun to explore.
http://www.saltspring.com/capewest/pbl.htm
http://www.udel.edu/pbl/problems/
The company that made this book has another one, a mystery that we are going to look into next.
After hearing about it here and a few other places, I decided to try the Noeo Science Curriculum. I didn’t buy everything–decided to use the library for a lot of the resources but I did get the guide and the science kits. We tried it out for the first time yesterday and I have to say I’m in love with the science kits. As someone who always INTENDS to do lots of hands on science, it seems like there is always some obscure item that I don’t have that never gets purchased so the experiments never happen. Of course, we have already had to morph this into what works for US. We were already studying the human body, so I had to jump ahead to that section. We ended up doing about 4 of the experiments from the bones and muscles kit yesterday. I helped the kids fill out the experiment data sheet quite a bit, but they were enthusiastic about sharing their “hypothesis” and even though they weren’t always right, there was reasoning behind their projections.
My original intentions behind this kit were to provide something for my husband to do with the kids when he is off on Friday and I’m at work, but we had so much fun that I may end up hogging most of them for myself.
Of course I’m well aware that homeschoolers can get done what the public schools do in way less time than they do. Today, though I realized just how much more. Today was a very schoolish day around here. It just kind of worked out that way. We didn’t have anywhere to go and everyone was on task and pretty gung-ho.
I worked with Jordan one-on-one on the computer on the Rainbow Rock math cd and Rainforest math. Then I sat down with Jordan and Alex and they completed two pages in the HWT book. We discussed spelling words and their rule and practiced them for a while, did two pages in Explode the Code and they both worked in their math books, plus did extra addition fact review and Alex did a page in his Super 7 math supplement workbook. Then we had “couch time” and I read them a Chinese Folk tale and a book about the muscular system and we reviewed some of the poems in “Maples in the Mist” and they each picked their favorite poem which will be handwriting copy work and memorization practice another day. Then I listed to Jordan read me two chapters in a Magic Treehouse book and Alex read me a Henry and Mudge book. After a long lunch break (2 ½ hours of playing in snow, making pizzas in the easy bake oven and quiet time) Jordan and Alex wrote a one page (well, really about 5 sentences) story for writing. Then they started their Ancient China History pocket and we cut out and assembled the top half of the muscular system for a “wearable human body” from a reproducible book we’ve been using with our unit on the human body. Then Jordan decided she wanted to make a layer cake in the easy bake oven and she started working on that as well as starting to put together her own easy bake oven cookbook with the recipes I’ve found on the internet. Alex helped me make cookies with the cake mix Jordan didn’t use.
During all this time Aubrey was working fairly independently. She read the book “The Young Investor” and the book “Science Project ideas about Animal Behavior” and worked on her Rosetta Stone Spanish and did a lesson in her Geometry text as well as spending some time perusing a website on snowflakes and reading her weekly online edition of Science News for kids. I’m quite sure there was some returning emails from friends in there as well. Oh,and she played with the digital camera too.
I was feeling like we’d accomplished a full day of school, before I realized that we’d actually spent about 3 ½ hours actually doing school work. So what DO they do all day at school? I know they don’t accomplish that much or have that much recess time.
I’m a sucker for interesting sounding education stuff. I’m fairly good at assessing what will be a good fit, but of course I buy stuff that we either just never seem to find the time for or isn’t a hit…. Most of these non-used items end up being activity or workbook type stuff.
So this weekend I was clearing out some old material–some used and done with and some partially done and some untouched that I decided we were never going to use. Most of it would be considered 1st grade stuff (since I can still hope it will be used if it is beyond that).
To my surprise Jordan saw all of this as treasures and she has taken most of it and has been busily completing workbooks. Yes, most of them are pretty easy–but that is building confidence. And even though they are really “too easy”, I am seeing some concepts really starting to click. So, I’m thinking it is important to do work that is “too easy” sometimes. And, who knew, the way to get my kids to enjoy workbooks was to get ready to get rid of them and then let them keep them in their room.
We’ve not done much with spelling. Aubrey’s spelling is fairly atrocious (gee, hope I spelled that right!) but she has spell check to help. Jordan and Alex do Explode the Code which incorporates different spelling concepts, but I’ve never actually had them work on being able to spell certain words. So this week I decided to make a short list of words from their Explode the Code unit and then a few common words that they often mispell when writing (when, our, are..) Alex’s invented spelling is horrible and often I can’t figure out what he’s trying to say. So, our list was Winter, magnet, when, our, are, napkin and a couple of others that I can’t remember and am too lazy to go look up.
I haven’t quite figured out what type of learner Jordan is. The PTB (powers that be–i.e. Public School Educators) say she has a profound visual spatial deficit and math reasoning deficit and is an auditory learner. This makes sense, but she also has a lot of the characteristics of a right brained learner. She can’t tell the difference between p,b,etc. and misreads was/saw frequently. So, in working with both of them to teach strategies to remember the spellings I did some auditory reciting and then asked each of them to look at the word and then close their eyes and try to visualize it in their heads. I was thinking, actually, that this might help Alex. To my surprise, Jordan was able to spell all of the words this way. And then she went on to spell them backwards when I asked. Alex was quite perturbed and accused her of peeking. It IS difficult to have two kids doing roughly the same grade level and Alex is used to feeling like he is doing best (he is very competitive and of course I downplay all this as much as possible–to the point that they don’t do the same math curriculum or do math at the same time really because he excels at math and she struggles). So, Jordan is done with her spelling for the week because after visualizing them this way they have stuck and she wrote them all out for me. Hmmmm. Now I really don’t know what kind of learner she is.
We ended our week with a relaxing day in front of the fire, snowed (or, rather sleeted) in. These were some hits from this week.
http://www.rainforestmaths.com/ - Simple games, but very thorough. Jordan gets easily flustered by all the fluff in most educational games but she really enjoys this site.
http://edsitement.neh.gov/ My favorite site for finding information to go along with literature. Aubrey read of Mice and Men this week and a quick search brought up more than you could ever want to know about Steinbeck, The Great Depression, Migrant Workers and the story itself. One problem, lots of broken links. We don’t do the formal unit studies, but get lots of great info. It has been a great way to add a schoolish side to her reading.
Math Ad Libs - My kids love mad libs and this little book combines a short mad lib and a story problem. Shhh, they don’t even really realize that they were doing math problems. Math Ad Libs
Sitting in our hotel room at the Great Wolf Lodge (indoor water park hotel) enjoying the free wi-fi in our deeply discounted room (Sunday night in January—-not a big night for all those who go to school. Tomorrow, more water parking and then home. We went to T-Rex cafe for lunch. So, it has been a LOUD active day. The kids are now vegging in their bunk cabin watching Mythbusters.
Jordan and Alex were interested in doing more cooking and since we’ve been talking about their Korean heritage lately, I decided to try a rather ambitious Korean menu. I cook bulgogi regularly (Korean barbeque), but that was the only Korean cooking I’ve ever done.
We made Mahndu and Chap Ch’ae (Korean dumplings and noodles).
Making the mahndu…
And digging in.
They loved it and have asked that I make it every week. They haven’t developed a taste for Kimchi yet though!
Aubrey got out her new robot kit that she got for Christmas. I got a great deal on it–It was originally very pricey and it was on clearance for $19.95. I think we figured out why. Notice anything about the assembly directions?
Not one word of English. All in Japanese. I would have been lost, but Aubrey just used the pictures and didn’thave much trouble at all.
The finished robot. It can go forward, backward and spin around.
Found a link to the kit with English instructions now that I don’t need them. http://www.electronickits.com/robot/Mechamo%20Inchworm.htm They have a different one still available on clearance at Mindware that may be a birthday present.