I really liked how he got the kids making the birdhouses themselves. Over the course of the next hour or so, the boys used a hammer, a saw, a file (to smooth the rough edges) and even a power drill!

Gareth found it easiest when Jim would get the nails started:

The Birdman had boards sawn about halfway for the lids. It was the kids’ jobs—with parental help—to finish the sawing. I think this is the first time either of my kids has used a real saw. They did great; all fingers and toes still accounted for!

Here’s the finished product:

And the boys labelled and decorated it afterwards. Gareth even drew a cardinal:

While there were enough supplies to build one birdhouse per kid, Daegan and Gareth decided out family should just build one joint house—and it’s not like we’re lacking for birding gear in our backyard. This also gave Jim a chance to help two other young boys who were there sans parents; he actually helped build 3 birdhouses that afternoon. “What a guy!” (said in best Red Dwarf voice).

All in all, a wonderful way for our family to participate in Arts Days. Many thanks to Birdman Andrew Stiles, as well as the Calgary Public Library.

Daegan started with a rough draft of his thank you letter, and after he and I corrected a few spelling errors and discussed proper format for letters, he did this final copy which we will send. There’s been much improvement in his printing over the past year, but as you can see, while he reads at a grade 9 level (details here), the rest of his language arts skills are solidly grade 3:

He also started a drawing to send along, copying a book cover. He’s quite keen on block lettering right now:

Gareth spent most of his time working on his drawing, which turned out wonderfully. So good, in fact, that Gareth has decided he doesn’t want to send it in the mail at all—he wants to keep it. Thank goodness for scanners and photocopiers!

Gareth wrote the “Dear Grandma” and “Love Gareth” parts of his letter himself, and dictated the rest to me. I do find it amusing how different the boys are. Daegan’s letter was very blunt and to the point, and I had to suggest a few ways to expand it. But Gareth? When I suggested the opening line, “Thank you for the Easter card”, he decided it wasn’t quite right: “Thank you for the lovely Easter card,” he dictated, with emphasis. Quite the socially adept one.

Thank you notes are a great way to have kids get some writing practice that is far more practical and ‘real world meaningful’ than pages of “A A a a ant aardvard apple”. I only wish I were better and remembering to do this. Anyone else suffer from great intentions, but weak follow through?

The boys have also had a few firsts recently. Yesterday, Daegan blew his first reasonable-sized bubblegum bubble (i.e., not a teeny pea-sized pocket with a bit of air in), and was right proud of himself:

And I found this drawing in Gareth’s room. As far as I know, this is his first understandable-to-others printed sentence (I have oodles of pages of loops and scratches ‘pretend writing’, as well as sentences made of random combinations of letters). This is a new stage of Gareth’s literacy skill development:

The sentence, for those not fluent in Gareth, is “My dinosaur is powerful T rex.”

Oh, and the sun shone pretty much all day, the temps climbed above freezing, and I heard my first chickadee “fee bee / spring’s here” call. February days don’t get much better than this!

It’s quite an easy puzzle to do, despite the 30 pieces, as you first find the numbers (1, 2, 3…) then the corresponding month (Jan, Feb, Mar…) and then a piece showing the typical weather and activities for that month (Northern Hemisphere only!) Gareth set to work, getting some reading practice too as he had to look for clues (first letter, last letter) to figure out which month went next:

With Daegan I worked on learning how many days in each month, something he did not know. I showed him two methods. First, the traditional rhyme many of us learned somewhere along the way:

Thirty days has September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one
Save February…

We couldn’t remember how the rhyme ended, so our family came up with the following memorable mnemonic:

All the rest have thirty-one
Save February…cuz he’s a bum!

I also taught Daegan the knuckle method of remembering which months have more or fewer days. This lesser-known method is great for kids who learn by moving their bodies. You can see the details at the bottom of this page here, but the gist of the method is to make your hands into fists, and then name off the months as you touch your knuckles. When you are on a ‘peak’, the month has 31 days; when in a valley, the month has less than 31 days. It’s pretty easy to remember that most of these valley months have 30 days, save February with 28 (or 29). Here’s Daegan demonstrating this method:

Anyone out there have some kid-friendly resources on why the months have the names they do?

Well, here’s part of our solution…:

…giving each boy 12 buckets to fill with workbooks, games and so on. The buckets are easy to insert and remove, and can be taken out completely if a child wants to take his materials to work in another room—or outside, as we did today, with crazy warm 22C (72F) weather in November! It’s part of the Trofast system from IKEA, intended for children’s toys, but I think a great solution for homeschoolers, or anyone looking for a storage system kids can use themselves. We’re going to live with this for a bit and then see if we need a few more shelves and bins.

I’d love to hear what works for you in your homeschooling to help keep things organized.

So what ideas do you use to encourage kids and other family members to help around the house?

But it’s Daegan, who is going on 8, that I am most surprised by. As a younger child Daegan was extremely resistant to change or trying new things—something I can sympathize with, actually, as my “wiring” leans in a similar direction. But something changed about a year ago. The child who didn’t want to try drama classes (which he ended up loving), and who I thought at one point during his toddler years was going to live on nothing but noodles, is suddenly wanting to try new things. A lot. Practically ALL THE TIME. He wants to learn to play different instruments, try new classes, travel all over the world, and even EAT NEW FOODS. At the one grocery store we go to which carries a wide variety of produce, Daegan has picked a new fruit to try almost every week. This week it was the pummelo, the ancestor of the grapefruit.

We weren’t sure how to eat it, so I ended up cutting it like I do a pink grapefruit, which Daegan also enjoys. He thought it was quite good, and found it to be “like a cross between a grapefruit and a lemon.”

So there’s some proof for those of you dealing with younger kids that some things are simply developmental. We kept offering new foods and experiences, and even pushed once or twice (I pushed with drama as I very strongly believed it would suit his high energy, wiggly, playful, non-competitive personality….and I was right), and did our best to model being open to new things ourselves. And when Daegan was ready and felt safe to choose new things, he did so. Let’s hope his younger brother, firmly mired in the “Ick! That’s new! I won’t like it!” stage follows suit.

Oh, and it should go without saying, when one of my kids finds a new healthy food in the store and says “Can we buy this and try one?”, I don’t even look at the price. I just pop it into the cart. And later turn it into a homeschool activity—Shall we look up where it grows? Let’s find that on the map. And I wonder what it’s related to? And how you cook or serve it…

Anyways, this is a precursor to the main point of this blogpost. I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about things and have decided not to blog on Sundays anymore (see you Monday!), as I will be spending my time elsewhere. After ranting at the family a few weeks ago (I was running myself ragged, the house was a disaster, etc.) I started reading about the idea of the Sabbath—both religious and non-religious materials—and came across this Sabbath Manifesto. It so impressed me that I am formulating a slightly adapted 10 principles to guide my day of rest:

1 – Avoid Technology of escape, distraction, or isolation (also see 2 below)

2 – Connect with Loved Ones (since many of my relatives and friends live elsewhere, I often employ technology to catch up with them)

3 – Nurture Your Health (eat healthy whole foods, exercise, nap)

4 – Get Outside (nature walks, gardening, birding, fly a kite, kick a ball around, bike ride, etc.)

5 – Avoid Commerce (I am old enough to remember when stores were closed on Sundays)

6 – Plan or Try something new (a nature walk in a new area, a new board game with the family, a new festival or show (like tomorrow we may try the Calgary Rock and Fossil show, which we’ve never been to), listen to new music, make a new dish, etc. This is influenced by Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project who has convincingly shown that happiness depends on growth and challenge (trying new things) as well as routine and predictability.

7 – Have a leisurely, candle-lit meal with the family

8 – Bake Bread (or other baked goods, or cook some comfort food, like soup or a casserole)

9 – Find Silence (spent some time alone, meditate, putter among the flowers and birds in the garden)

10 – Give Beauty (smile at others, be cheerful for the day, send flowers, tend the garden)

Anyone want to join me? What would your Sabbath Manifesto look like?

We met up with the large group at the picnic tables, and then were made to divide into two equal groups and line up neatly. It was an interesting introduction to school life for the boys and no doubt others. Homeschooled kids don’t get much practice in lining up neatly outside to march single file into the classroom!

The kids settled onto foam mats on the classroom floor.

The instructor gave a short presentation about safety, including showing various street signs (Stop, Playground Zone, etc.) and traffic signals / lights. There were a few funny moments, like when she asked the class about safe and unsafe places to play. “Parks, playgrounds and backyards” were the predictable answers to the former, but she was clearly taken aback when one child yelled out “Jungles!” for unsafe places (amid roads, railway tracks and the like).

She then taught the kids a variation of the “pause, point, proceed” method of crossing the street, emphasizing that by pointing their hand they made themselves bigger and more visible to drivers. Here’s Gareth demonstrating:

Then came the part the vast majority of the kids were waiting for, and why they were wearing their helmets: to the trikes! Half the kids pretended to be cars and practiced road safety (drive on right, stop for pedestrians and a stop signs, etc.) while the other half practiced crossing safely, then they switched.  This was BY FAR my boys’ favourite part of the afternoon:

It was then back to the classroom to watch a short video about crossing the street safely, featuring Jiminy Cricket (who Gareth LOVES) and Pinocchio.

The boys said they enjoyed the Safety City Field trip, and would like to do more outings with homeschoolers. Okey, dokey!

The art teacher gave us a hand-out on the final day listing some of the topics covered. They include colour (warm, cool, monochromatic) and colour-mixing (hues, tints and tones); composition (where to place things on the picture plane and what makes a piece interesting), perspective (2D planning to 3D composition in both clay and paper-mache masks), self-portraits and facial dimensions, as well as line, pattern , texture and balance. A far cry from the sort of thing I did in grade 2 at age 7!

Here’s some of what Daegan learned and made in winter session:

One of the main things worked on in their art portfolios was facial dimensions, which they used in creating an “underwater self-portrait”:

Here’s his finished product, which he was very proud of—you can see him beaming in this picture:

This project took a lot of work. After learning about facial dimensions, the kids drew plain self-portraits. They then designed and pasted in all the “underwater” bits—the creatures, goggles, snorkel, seaweed, etc.—and then painted the portrait. I think we will get this one framed as Daegan wants it up in his room. And it did lead to one funny moment when Daegan said to me, about his final class, “Oh right. I need to finish the sea creatures for my self-portrait.” I had no idea he was doing a self-portrait, much less an underwater one, and just gave him a look of utter confusion.

The kids also did some drawing exercises:

and had a place to plan out their projects before doing the final copy. Here is Daegan’s rough drawing of the emperor penguin, the final version of which can be found here:

The kids also made paper-mache masks. Daegan began his project with a side view, but the teacher wanted them to practice front-on perspective, and Daegan was able to completely change gears. Here is his completed front-view stegosaurus mask:

And lastly, we have Daegan’s favourite medium: clay. The assignment was to create an alien in an alien landscape. Daegan’s alien naturally resembles a dinosaur and the plant the sort you’d find in the Jurassic, but no matter. I like the detail he put into the creature with the spikes as well as the paint job—and all the more so as Daegan did this project during "found” time as it was the one class we missed due to a conflict with the one-off Mad Science presentation:

What a difference a year and a bit makes! Daegan took Homeschool Art for the first time in September of 2008, shortly after turning 6 (this class is for 6-8 year olds), and he found it a tough go. He still struggles with getting frustrated with himself and his own sense of perfectionism—as does his 39-year-old mother, to be honest!—but we’ve seen huge strides here too. And this time when we were filling in the evaluation form together on the final day, Daegan went right over to the teacher and said “I LOVED THIS CLASS!” He also invited her to see him perform as the caterpillar in the bit of Alice in Wonderland his drama class will be doing in a few weeks. For my eldest son, for whom the social graces do not come easily or naturally, this class led to gains in life skills as much as art skills.