The kids then played a relay game to build the biggest pile of leaves. They broke into two teams, where one kid per team ran to the other end of the field to gather leaves, then ran to put them in a pile, and sprinted back to their team to tag the next runner to go. It is such a lovely environment for the kids surrounded by nature, and I like how the emphasis at running club is on fun and cheering on your team:

They soon told everyone to go and gather leaves all at once, in a big pile. Charge!

Once a fair-sized pile was built up, they called all the kids in for the big finale. Everyone pick up a big armful of leaves from the pile…

And…..wheeeeeeeeee!!!!

Needless to say, the kids loved this. So one more time everyone…..wheeeeeee!

The boys love this program. The people running it are friendly and helpful, and have the kids doing proper warm-up, longer runs, games, sprints, and so on. They make good use of the resources in the park, with its different pathways, playgrounds (the kids preferred cool down activity!), and nature. No running that same route over and over again here! No running endless “laps around the track”  (snore!) we all did in highschool. There’s a nice mix of ages and genders among kids and parent volunteers too. And the cost simply can’t be beat: $15 per kid for 6 weeks of running. Awesome!

I am so appreciative of these sorts of community resources that make raising kids and homeschooling that much easier. So what sorts of things do you take advantage of that are on offer in your community?

Most of them [the local people] only speak Spanish, but I can communicate by making signs with my penis.

In another story, How to Enjoy Yourself on the Beach, I ended up reading about using toboggans to play volleyball, and enjoying a lunch of hard-boiled cows. And (one for adult eyes only), in the Vacations story, we ended up with the sentence “I like to spend my time reading or screwing.” Jim and I both nearly laughed up a lung on that one.

Anyways, back to the ‘educational benefits’. This Mad Libs app suits both my boys very well right now. For Daegan, who is currently learning parts of speech in his grammar lessons, the connection is obvious. And as part of his paragraph writing lessons this year he is also working on using more descriptive language (“petrified” instead of “scared”, “enormous” instead of “big”, etc.), it is also giving him a chance to flex this ‘skill muscle’ as well. For Gareth, the grammar component is largely over his head, but the stories are giving him reading practice, and the way the app has set up the prompts is brilliant. For the vast majority of general “noun”, “verb”, “adjective”-type prompts, there is a ‘hint’ button in the top right corner that you can tap and a selection of nouns, verbs, or adjectives go floating by on banners, allowing you to choose one:

This is excellent reading practice for Gareth, and he is surprising us by some of the words he is reading—like “stadium”. Typing in the words could give a child spelling practice, and unlike the pencil and paper Mad Libs, these apps make it easy to ‘erase’ your answers and play again and again. We enjoyed the free app so much we bought one of the two paid apps currently available. At $3.99 they are expensive for an app, but that price is still cheaper than any paper version of Mad Libs we saw in the store.

The story is told by a Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, an 82-year-old eccentric woman who the children visit at the end of the story in a quest to solve a mystery involving a statue and Michelangelo—a mystery that caught their imagination while living at the museum. Mrs. Frankweiler’s unusual filing system (the ‘mixed-up files’) holds the answer to the mystery, and the children are given one hour to find the solution—if they can! Featuring strong female characters (both Claudia and Mrs. Frankweiler are as capable as any male in the book), my 9-year-old son thoroughly enjoyed this story, enhanced no doubt by his own love of museums, mysteries and learning—and the fact that Jamie was the exact same age. Oh, and just a “wee editorial” from me: unlike modern award-winning children’s books, which seem to me to often have dark themes, there is none of that in this book. Yes, Claudia feels bored and as though she is treated unfairly at home (and as the oldest of 4 kids, and the only girl, she’s probably right!). And Claudia and Jamie tease each other occasionally, and argue, as do all siblings—but that’s about it. It’s an unusual and intriguing story, and one you will not be embarrassed to read aloud with a 4-year-old toddler—or 74-year-old grandmother—in the room. Happy reading!

The boys put the model together this morning, and while it was fiddly in places, as these sorts of items tend to be, Daegan totally enjoyed himself. And thank goodness he was there; the instructions would say things like “insert the femur here” and I’m looking at the jumble of bone pieces going, “which one is the femur?” Here’s some pics of the process:

First, we headed off to buy some Pokemon cards, which Gareth decided would be his gift to Daegan. Gareth got a pack for himself too—paying for both with some allowance money he’d saved up. This is my boys’ first foray into the world of collector cards, and they were pretty excited:

Here’s Daegs showing off his favourite card he got, Aerodactyl:

Then they moved on to a Dino Dig. I draw your attention to the dirty sock and carpet vacuum head in the lower right. Don’t ya feel better knowing at least one homeschool family out there lives in a ‘clean enough’ house, not picture-perfect Little House on the Prairie? :

Here’s Daegan looking through the guide after finding all the bones. He has such patience for this sort of thing (me—I’d smash it or dump it in water to dissolve the plaster). Palaeontologist in training.

For dinner we made the Greek feast Daegan requested, with souvlaki skewers, rice, and Greek salad—and perhaps the most non-photogenic family ever.

Then came the “birthday pie” (again, Daegs’ request). Here he is getting ready to blow out the candles on the wish-a-saurus:

All that remained was cutting up the chocolate-coconut pie, and digging in.  (And yes, that’s a cluttered counter in the background; too busy living life to worry about ‘posed pictures’. C’mon other bloggers, let’s show the world how families really live. There’s a whole lotta space between Little House on the Prairie and Hoarders. )

After that Daegan opened a few gifts (having a birthday in the middle of a postal strike stinks!), and we told him our surprise gift to him (details in a future blogpost). All in all, he was a pretty content kid. Happy birthday, Daegan! You are indeed our bright, sunny day! (what the name ‘Daegan’ means)

So my very tentative, no-doubt-will-be-altered-as-we-go-along plan for Daegan’s grade 4 year is as follows: (I’d love feedback if you’ve used any of these!)

Math: Math-U-See finish Gamma (multiplication), start Delta (division). Various Critical Thinking Company (CTC) books as a supplement: Math Analogies, Balance Math, Mathematical Reasoning. Games, books, online math fun, like Tux Math. Aiming to start Life of Fred: Fractions, in the new year.

Logic: Logic Countdown. Various CTC books as supplement: Building Thinking Skills, Mind Benders. Analogy Challenges and Perplexors from Mindware.

Language Arts: All About Spelling 2 (learning along with Gareth), Growing with Grammar 3. Reading Detective and Language Smarts from CTC, along with ‘riddle/puzzle’ books like Word Benders. And a bajillion books for both solo reading and me reading aloud to the boys. Audio books too.

Languages and Etymology: English from the Roots Up cards, Word Roots software from CTC, Rummy Roots game. A smattering of French and Spanish from some introductory videos found here. Possibly a French or Spanish class as well.

Writing: Handwriting Without Tears, lots of free cursive practice (like when doing spelling words from All About Spelling). We are also going to start typing with Dance Mat Typing from the BBC (and possibly Tux Typing, a free download). 

History/Geography: Our focus will be on Canada.  I am still sorting out resources here, but so far have My First History of Canada (Dickie), Canada, My Country (Ward), Canada: A People’s History DVD series, The Kids Book of Canada, Wow Canada!: Exploring This Land from Coast to Coast to Coast, New Updated Edition, and That’s Very Canadian! Selected novels from the Dear Canada and/or Canadian Flyer series, as well as this amazing list here. Kayak magazine. We may also include some material on Ancient cultures (esp. Greece) and world geography (Geography songs).

Science: We eat, live, and breathe science in this house, and will continue our less structured approach of nature walks, educational videos, and the occasional experiment or kit. I am pulling together resources for a units on the human body and magnets, as the boys have expressed a particular interest in these topics.

Arts: drama class at Evergreen Theatre again. Simply Music program for piano. Do-it-ourselves visual arts using the Smart About Art book series (like this one here), Raimondo’s Art Explorers series of books on art styles (like this one here), and The Artist’s Specials DVD series (like this one here) as inspiration for projects. Possibly additional in-person classes/workshops as well. Attending various performances (plays, music, dance, etc.)

Physical Education / Health: karate, swimming, Xbox Kinect. Looking for options now that Daegan has outgrown Sportball (most classes in our area end at age 8). Helping shop and cook healthy foods.

Feedback welcome—and I’d love to hear about your plans for your kids next year too! 

My impish son, with a handful of worms after digging in the back garden. Hard to believe some days that this is the same boy asking for more, more, more Mom!

Let me begin by saying I am not a fan of standardized exams, for a whole variety of reasons, most of which have been articulated by writers far more talented than I, such as Alfie Kohn. That said, I have nothing against testing per se—but I think for tests to be useful they need to give you specific feedback, so as you can learn from them. And this is true whether the test is in swimming, driving a car, or algebra. So it follows that I am opposed to the way some standardized tests seems to be used: parent and child get little more than a “raw mark’” (i.e., no useful feedback to guide the student’s future learnings), and the test is used as a way to rank and compare schools / districts / countries, etc.

Daegan and I decided he would write the CAT-3 (we opted out of the provincial exams students do in grade 3 in Alberta, and could have opted out of all testing entirely), for a few reasons. First, the test was to be administered and marked by me (the answer key was included), meaning instant and specific feedback on areas of strength, weakness, and any developing ‘gaps’. Daegan was curious how he was faring compared to kids his age, and also curious what “typical grade 3 questions” looked like.

The test did give me some very useful feedback about some areas to focus on (writing conventions—i.e., punctuation—paragraph structure, spelling, and in math, subtraction with regrouping.) The subtraction with regrouping was an interesting one for me. Daegan in fact answered all 4 ‘subtraction with regrouping’ questions incorrectly, and had I not been able to see the specifics, I no doubt would have jumped to a wrong conclusion. Upon examining his answers (all multiple choice format), Daegan made the same small error each time: he “borrowed” from the larger place value to make the subtraction work for the smaller place value, but forgot to reduce that larger place value by one. So for example, 45-17 = 38 (correct answer 28), or 526-163 = 463 (correct answer 363) in Daegan’s world. A very small error, one we talked about, and a few days later during a math lesson that just happened to require some subtraction with regrouping, Daegan did it correctly. But if I hadn’t had that specific feedback, and only got a raw ‘math score” (Daegan made a total of 5 errors…but which 5???) or got somewhat more specific feedback: multiplication: 100%, addition: 100%, simple subtraction 100%, subtraction with regrouping: 0%….well, what would most of us parents do? We’d probably think the child hadn’t understood that concept AT ALL, and gone back and redone the entire unit, no doubt frustrating and boring us both.

So overall, the testing was a positive experience, other than being, in my 8-year-old’s words “TOO LONG!”. He is keen to do a test again in grade 6 (when kids here write provincial exams). He enjoyed “learning how to fill out the bubbles”, especially on the first page (his name, birthdate and so on—unnecessary for a home test, of course, but it seems to be a life skill in our culture.) We both got useful feedback on areas to focus on, as well as areas of strength, and the spread of his marks (from 59th percentile to 98th; from grade 4 to grade 11 levels) only confirmed our decision to continue to homeschool: the school system simply isn’t structured for kids like him. The spread between particular marks was also interesting and confirmed some of the challenges we have in his learning: his reading and language/vocabulary scores are several grades above his writing conventions and spelling; the same holds true between his math concepts score, which was more than 3 grade levels higher than his math ‘computation’ score. (He also—I know this from watching him on the test—is WAY faster and more confident at estimating than at calculating, which gives me ideas of how to better teach him to self-correct in math: he can use his strong estimation skills to ‘check’ that his computations are plausible).

Overall Daegan did very well on the exam, scoring above grade level in every area, and with an overall ‘combined’ score of the 94th percentile. So the exam put to bed any lingering doubts Jim or I had about not following a standard curriculum (we don’t follow the Alberta Program of Studies). We believed Daegan was thriving as a homeschooler, and saw such most every day—but it was still nice to have some external, black-and-white proof of it. Yes, even taking into account that standardized tests are poor mechanisms for assessing what many children know. For example, the standardized test didn’t capture a skill Daegs recently mastered:

After all, he’s still an 8-year-old boy.

The concert included a pair of dancers demonstrating how to waltz, tango, cancan, slavic dance, and so on. The conductor also talked about the different time signatures of the pieces: waltz is in 3/4 time, the tango in 4/4. Samba music, in 2/4 time, was incredibly lively and had lots of kids in the audience up and dancing at their seats. You can learn more about the types of music, and the dances in the curriculum guide here.

And then came the moment our family will never forget. After teaching the audience how to “wave their (imaginary) batons” to conduct in the various time signatures, the conductor asked if there was a child who would like to come on stage to conduct the orchestra during Scott Joplin’s ragtime classic, The Entertainer. Out of the hundreds (perhaps even over 1000) of kids there, who ends up on stage, hamming it up and loving every minute?:

Here’s Daegan taking his bow when done. All those drama classes prepped him to know what to do!

Again, many thanks to homeschooling Mom Jodi for setting up our HS group to go see these concerts, and snagging us such awesome seats up close.

Here’s the sea serpent:

The snake:

And the inchworm: