I’m found inside pillows,
I help keep birds dry;
I’m soft to the touch,
Birds need me to fly.

What am I?____________________________ (answer: feathers)

We’ve used these playful riddle books to practice penmanship (printing, upper and now lower cases), spelling, and careful reading (and reading comprehension), along with the obvious critical / creative thinking (riddle-solving). By having Daegan date his work, even he can clearly see progress. Here’s his printing from about a year and a half ago, in September 2008:

You can see that he was printing all in capitals, unevenly—letters squished together, above and below the line, lighter and darker lettering—and that he had to correct his spelling of ‘face’ (from the phonetic ‘fase’). Here is his work from a few days ago:

Quite the difference, eh?

There are several books in the Dr. Dooriddles series, of varying complexity—and I believe you can buy a computer version of the series instead if you prefer. We’ve finished books A1 and A2, and will be moving on to the “Spelling Dooriddles” next, which are somewhat more difficult, as each solution involves two words. Here’s a typical example:

I am a fluffy grain,
We eat it at our house;
With M replacing R,
I mean more than one mouse.

What am I? __________________________________ (answer: rice / mice)

Here are Daegan’s (age 7, soon to be 8 ) comments on Dr. Dooriddles:

I like it [the Dr. Dooriddles series] because it doesn’t tell you the answers. It makes you think. Some are fairly easy, but some are hard. And some answers are funny or surprising. I think most kids would like this series, because riddles are fun. 

Two resources Daegan and I are currently working with are Logic Links and Analogy Challenges, both from MindWare. Logic Links uses punch-out paper chips that are to be arranged according to various clues. It’s probably easiest to explain in pictures:

There are several things I like about this resource. I like that it uses paper chips—no writing (and erasing, and writing, and erasing…). I like that it is simple enough for Daegan to use on his own, as it lists the chips to be used in each puzzle first, and then the clues. We don’t do these every day by any means, but from time to time they are a fun way to break up other work, or to occupy Daegan while I work one-on-one with Gareth for a few minutes. The boys (ages 7 and 5) have also done the puzzles together, with Daegan reading the clues aloud to Gareth. These puzzles are challenging enough for my older child, yet because they involve moving concrete physical objects, simple enough for my younger to participate and determine if an answer is right or wrong.

The second resource we’ve been using is Analogy Challenges. We’re working through the Beginner Level, which includes a mix of pictorial and word puzzles:

The first half of the book is pictorial, the second uses words. We got to the halfway point today, which had one page of each type:

Here’s a close-up of some picture analogies:

And I liked how the word analogies involve a bonus analogy to “unscramble”. Daegan thought that was really cool!:

Again, we don’t work from this book every day, but as something playful and different it’s been great. If you know of similar resources—books, websites, computer games, whatever—please leave me a comment. Thanks!

A few weeks back I came across a printable for  these very simple exercise cards, which I then cut out and pasted on index cards. They give one simple movement for each letter of the alphabet:

Unfortunately, I have since lost the link (Amendment! You can find the Exercise ABCs printable here), but these cards and the general idea are simple enough to create on your own. We use them to “get the sillies out” when we need a break from our seatwork, or during a transition from one activity to another. They are also helpful during that last hour before dinner when everyone’s nerves are frayed. They’ve led to lots of laughter, especially since Mom (and Dad if he’s around) take part too. I’ll let you create your own mental visual of me “Y y Moving Like a Yo-yo!”

To use, we simply pick a (face down) card (or 2, or 3, or….) at random. But you could easily have your kids verbally suggest a movement for each letter of the alphabet in turn (hint: Q might be “Quickly walk in place”), or have them design their own exercise cards with handmade drawings or clip art to help non-readers—the sillier the better. Have fun bringing more movement and laughter into your homeschool!

The series we are using is Word Family Stories and Activities; we’re currently about halfway through Level A (Canada) (US). Each word family contains various simple exercises (matching words to pictures, fill in the blank, etc.) and a short story, and they are pitched at just the right level for Gareth at this time:

Gareth’s favourite part, though, is the cut-out word slider included at the end of each word family. At this level, most of the 10 or so words on the slider are C-V-C (consonant-vowel-consonant), but a few blends or unusual words (e.g., knit) are sometimes included:

Here’s the sliders from all the word families we’ve done so far. Gareth is soooo pleased with himself with all the words he can now read. He likes to read them to Dad in the evening:

Do I think this is necessary to teach Gareth to read? No, not really. There are many ways to learn to read, and I think the most important part is being read to regularly, a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction, so as to instil a love of books and reading. But I see no harm in this activity. He is freely choosing to do it; he loves having some seatwork for homeschool “just like Daegan”; and it is helping him see patterns in words—and I am a huge fan of seeing patterns in things (words, math, science, art, nature, etc). Here, we “offer, but don’t force” learning opportunities on our kids. IMNSHO, there is no point in “forcing” him to learn to read, but him hating the process and hence hating to read. That’s winning the battle but losing the war.

Do you think he’s feeling good about himself and this activity?

In the story, the man protects the rooster from the fox, and the rooster then tells him he is a special rooster that can grant wishes. The man thinks of things to wish for, including this teapot:

The book ends by grandfather pushing the tangram pieces to his granddaughter and asking her to decide what to wish for. I did the same with the boys, who enjoyed building their own freeform shapes. You’ll never guess what they’d wish for! Here’s Gareth’s creation:

I asked Gareth what it was, and he told me, in a rather excited tone, “A T Rex! Funny that it doesn’t use the square…” (which you can see in his hand below):

Then Gareth came up with how to incorporate the square into his picture. “I know! I’ll open his mouth, and the square can be a a lawyer!” (Yes, he’s watched Jurassic Park several times—LOL):

Then it was Daegan’s turn to create:

Almost done. Where can I put the other large triangle?:

Daegan added the final piece to the body, and informed me that he had made something called an Echinodon:

Gareth then played with the tangram pieces for a while, and came to get to me show me his “funny wish."  Here’s what I saw:

I asked him what his funny wish was, and he told me “a toilet! See, here’s the lid…” (that’s what he’s pointing to in the pic above.) The kid is quite the comedian, eh?

This turned out to be a fun way to combine math, reading and art…and a bit of social studies (tangrams are Chinese in origin) to boot! If you find another good tangram book, or website, etc.. please pass it along in the comments as the boys are keen to do more.

Daegan spent much of the day snuggled under blankets, watching some new science DVDs we received in the mail from HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute). They are a philanthropic organization that sends science materials out for free—even to Canada! You can find their DVD catalog here and their main catalog here. I ordered Daegan both Evolution DVDs.

I asked him what interesting facts or stories he remembered from the DVDs. “Well, I learned about a new creature, from a nearly complete fossil skeleton found in Jamaica, like a manatee with legs. And looking at the pelvis of a manatee, it’s triangle-shaped and has a femur socket, which shows that it evolved from animals that had back legs. Oh, and there was this experiment with fruit flies, where they got them to grow eye bits on their legs, but I don’t really remember the details. And there was this island made of cooled lava, and at first only white mice made their way to the island in people’s stuff, but then later black mice came, and even though there was only a few of them, eventually most of the mice on the island were black. That’s because they camouflaged better on the lava rocks and so had more babies. Oh, and inside a chrysalis, on the caterpillar which starts developing wings, there’s these green spots, and they become the very middle white part of the eye-spot on a butterfly’s wing.”

When he paused for breath I asked him what age these videos were for. I had seen bits and they looked like taped university lectures. “There were shots of the audience watching the prof talking—were they kids, teens or adults?”

“Adults.” Daegan replied.

“So these DVDs are aimed at late high school or university age then?”

Daegan: “I guess so—but I still find them VERY interesting. Can we get more in the series? Do they have any on entomology? Or palaeontology?”

So much for “taking a day off” from learning, eh?

The usefulness of mathematics in everyday life is undeniable, but overemphasized. “What if literacy were taught only by means of parking tickets, job applications, tax forms, and other material that people will need to read? That would be an accurate analogy to much of the traditional curriculum in mathematics.” Thus mathematician Dr. Neil Koblitz and computer scientist Dr. Michael Fellows argue for including entertaining, enticing math topics in primary grades.

   -page 8 of Patricia Clark Kenschaft’s Math Power: How to Help Your Child Love Math, Even if You Don ‘t  (Canada) (US)

Here is Daegan just getting started:

And here he the puzzle partway through. If you look at the top left corner, you’ll see how kakuro puzzles work. When he started the puzzle, just the 1 was filled in in the corner square. Daegan then was able to solve the square below the 1, as that column adds to 3. So he plunked down a 2. He was also able to solve across from the 1, as the sum is 6, so in went the 5. Working across from the 2, he was able to figure out that a 9 was needed (2+9=11), and now he had enough information to solve the column of three squares that sum to 20. (5+9=14, 20-14=6).

Now look again at the picture above and notice the top right-hand corner. I asked Daegan which square he wanted to solve next, and at first he wanted to continue on under the 6-7-1 and solve the three digits that sum to 14. He quickly realized this would be too difficult, and looked for another area of the puzzle to work on. He pointed to a square in the top right, and then solved it:

He went on to solve the entire puzzle without too much difficulty—start to finish he took about 10 minutes—and I asked him what he thought of  kakuro puzzles. Daegan said, “This was funner because it was more challenging and took longer to solve (than Math-U-See).” When asked how it compared with magic squares, he said, “I liked it about the same as magic squares.” We’ll be doing more of both!

One of Gareth’s favourite parts of this DVD is the “volcano pose.” Here he is getting ready, and concentrating hard:

Time for the lava to erupt! I like that the instructor talks about feelings with this pose, and I have heard Gareth say to himself when angry, “I need to go do some volcano poses!”

There are a few different DVDs in this series. I think our favourite is the ABC’s one, which does a pose (often animal-inspired) for each letter of the alphabet. We’ve borrowed all three in the series many times from the library.

Do you have a favourite exercise DVD your kids love? Please share!

We started by watching a couple fun videos on the elements: They Might Be Giants’ “Meet the Elements” and Tom Lehrer’s classic “Elements Song.”  There a multiple versions of both on youtube; the two we liked best were these:

Another great source of videos—one for each element—can be found here. We didn’t watch any as Daegan wanted to get on to the puzzle sheet. We talked very briefly about how the periodic table is arranged (by atomic number, or number of protons in the nucleus—for a basic overview, I relied on wikipedia), and then made sure our printed periodic table was at hand.

Daegan got down to work on on the place name puzzles. Unfortunately, we found a couple typos:

On the sheet, 75 should be 57 (in answers Poland, Netherlands, and Finland) and 16 should be 99 (at the end of Wales). I added a trick question at the bottom.

After Daegan had done a few of the puzzles, the activity was extended in a most natural way. “Mom, I know Spain and Poland are in Europe. But where’s Athens?” So off we went to the hallway, where we have kid-level maps hanging:

We found Athens on the map, noting that it was the capital of Greece. For all the other answers, which were all countries, I had Daegan go find the country on a map, and come back and tell me the capital of that country (which are on our map, so that way I knew he had located the country). He quite enjoyed this (kinesthetic learning!), particularly learning how to correctly pronounce Buenos Aires (capital of Argentina), as well as its meaning (‘good air”). The only difficulty we encountered was not having Wales on the map separate from the United Kingdom as a whole.

While Daegan worked on his puzzles and consulted the maps, I played around making a few more puzzles of simple words. We’re going to try these another day:

20  7  66 (a sweet treat)

16  8  6  6  68 (fun to play in summer)

15  18  53  16 (Capital of France)

5  8  39  16 (what you and Gareth are)

6  8  86 (delicious popped, or on the cob)

6  13  31 R-Y (where we live—note: you may find you have to add some letters to get your city to work)

94  6  19 (you need this to play hockey)

56  90 (you might take one before bed)

Have fun playing around with this idea; it’s very flexible. To incorporate math, for example, you could give simple math problems (8+8) or more challenging ones (4 squared), or math riddles (how old you will be in 9 years), instead of simply giving the number (16). And if you come up with more riddle words of elements, particularly place names, please share. Thanks!