Manipulatives

The more I work with math and my children, the more I “get” why manipulatives work as well as they do. G just added 4332 and 2464 without even having the slightest idea when she sat down that she could do that. She sort of resisted at first, because although I presented the place value stampers as a game, she saw bigantous numbers and knew I was up to mischief. I am sure me telling her she was going to tell me the sum of those numbers didn’t help, but I was going for the shock value of her success. Well, mischief managed. She swiftly took over the stamping and told me the sum. Then she smiled.

I’ve read about children in Montessori environments doing advanced calculations swiftly and accurately, but I never really understood how that works– they’re just beads– until I began to show my own kids how it works. It’s a little unnerving to go into the unknown, but so satisfying when it works. And oh, how it works! I’ve not wanted to make / purchase the beads because I have felt that storing them in a home situation would be too unwieldy. Today, working with stamps of a similar design, I changed my mind. This was fabulous, and fast.

I didn’t spend a lot of time with manipulatives when I was a child, and math became a source of extreme difficulty for me. If you miss one small kernel of understanding, you lose the option of understanding most of what comes after. It makes me happy to see my kids not only just soak it up, but hold “math” in a sort of cavalier regard.

Lots of things to blog about

But blogging is just not happening until this wave of tummy-crankiness passes.

(and aside, I look forward to being a grup again, someone who would never utter, much less publish, the words “tummy crankiness”)

OK– one thing will make it in. We’ve gotten about half the school room re-installed. Actually, that’s less than accurate, because I have a great many new materials the children haven’t seen yet. Yesterday, P-daddy took the doppelgangers out while ~N~ and I stayed home with our weak constitutions. We used that time to great advantage, really enjoying being together. He and I worked together in the school room for at least an hour, with me introducing some cool Montessori math stuff, among other things. (I love it when 5 year olds truly understand the quantity of, say, 4322. It trips me out.)

I don’t know what happened while they were gone, or whether D-person just misses me from being laid out all week, but he came home to be a very affectionate tyke. He let me carry him about and just squeezed me really hard before explaining to me that “You my teeeeech-ah. You my teeeech-ah, Mommy!”

So, I have lost eleven pounds this week and had our daughter explain to us out of the blue that the sun glows bright because hydrogen is converted into helium. My P-daddy has taken exquisite care of his infirm family without reverting to testiness. We spent the evening yesterday rolling about in the living room as a family, laughing. It’s been a balanced, pleasant week.

Literacy is Good….and Funny

~G~ has really been feeling her oats lately with writing. She writes us notes all the time, knowing how much we love to read them. We get many of them at bedtime, asking us to sleep with her, or to let her stay up, etc etc. That’s what I thought this one was going to be.

P-daddy had installed the new shelves in the school room and ~G~ was helping em put the supplies back up. We’d gone along at a steady clip when I realized it was way past her bedtime, and I sent her on, telling her I knew how tired SHE was because I was about to drop myself. We had a solstice gathering the next day and I knew we’d all be exhausted; she needed to sleep.

About ten minutes after I sent her to bed, in comes this note, careening to the floor:

I want to be with you. You’ll never make it without me.

I burst out laughing, and told her “You know, you’re right. But we’re both still going to bed.”

Seymour Salmon Day

The fabulous marine science classroom, complete with touch tanks.
This is about 1/5 of the class, which was one of two groups we homeschoolers were split into today. We are privileged to know a lot of homeschoolers.

Marine animals, with a little Northwest Rat tossed in.

Yes we are amusing. You may laugh at us now.

We hiked to a tidal creek where we were privileged to watch Chum Salmon spawning. Our little monkeys, imminently comfortable in the woods, took to the tree for a better look. Imagine their surprise when our Naturalist asked them to climb down!

On our way home, we stopped by Minter Creek because we knew the salmon were also running there. They were thick and still in the water, and you could clearly watch them spawn and then wander about after they were done, just waiting for the cycle to be over. (Do click– it’s impressive, even this late in the season.)

Hearth-and-home day

The Christmas tree is sparkling, the fire is going in the hearth and I have pumpkins roasting in the oven.

We’ve spent the week enjoying both the season and the break from some of our classes.

We enjoyed Santa’s early visit to our neighborhood, where he gave the kids candy canes and took G’s letter. We’ve made cookies, and we decorated the house inside last Thursday, before meeting some friends for playtime at the human habitrail. Unfortunately, despite my repeated admonitions otherwise, G kissed her crab beneath the mistletoe and spent a day and a half puking from the couch. She rallied from that in time to go find a tree at a neighborhood tree farm, where me met this really awesome woman. I won’t bore anyone with all of their commonalities to our family, but let’s just we were saddened to see the big giant for-sale sign in their yard.

I went out alone to enjoy that evening with a woman’s night out at a friend’s house. She had real food, real wine, real coffee and we had a gift exchange. It was almost jarring to just be ~L~ for a while, and to use my beadwork. I even regifted the ball-warmer purse I have been holding on to for two years. I stayed out until after midnight, which is freakishly unusual for me. That definitely supports the idea that I need that! Much fun! Yet it didn’t stop! The very next day G had a party for a friend of hers at the Y. It was so exciting for G to have a girls-only event, and the little girl actually liked G’s present, so I was happy too. It could have gone either way, as G made a felt doll out of Popsicle sticks! (One of her gifts for Christmas is going to be a huge supply of her bendy dolls materials, because she’s completely out.)

Today I had planned as an inside-laundry-let’s be quiet-and-recuperate-day. Alas I am out of oatmeal and dishtabs. I am tired of a week of handwashing our dishes. Spoiled ~L~ is taking on Costco after the pumpkins are done.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

We had two other families over and the children all ate like racehorses. P-daddy had a bonfire in the back yard and let them look at the craters on the moon through his telescope. It definitely felt like family, and was easily one of my favorite Thanksgivings.

The gravy is the end of it

A pretty, sunny day for friends

A simple setting for a casual Thanksgiving

We didn’t plan a kids table, but we ended up with a Mommy’s table. Oh, darn.

This what happens when you interrupt feasting children to ask them to say “Happy Thanksgiving!” They had me laughing so hard the pictures are hopeless.

Another "fruitful" day

Diffendoofer is definitely in session, as are it’s affiliate schools in Fall City, Puyallup and Tacoma. Every Momma I talked to today is marveling at how focussed the kids are this week with their manipulatives and studies. It’s so much fun to watch, and I am thrilled to finally have peers right here in the experience with me.

Today the children worked mostly without me, studying music and reading. We did some math. The project of note today though, is that we planted a “European Herb Garden Kit” from Jiffy. The kids and I love to garden, and it’s horribly out of season, but that in and of itself can be the lesson, can’t it? So now Diffendoofer has a windowsill garden, just as every good classroom should.

The bigger note for me is that the D-meister is becoming, as Montessori would put it, “more peaceful.” Up until now he has been the “not yet peaceful child,” but he’s been allowed that as part of the privilege of being a toddler. I have been really satisfied watching him fold into the family in this new way. Grateful, actually!

Parts of a computer

Long ago my computer “Spot” died. I had two computers networked together so that ostensibly, P-daddy and I could spank each other in Age of Empires. All that ended up happening, however, was that Dalicious and I would sit side by side in my office and chat online with our friends. And sometimes each other. It was sad, yes, but hey we still all love one another.

Anyway, I digress. Spot died. Fido lives. Unfortunately, Spot had two hard drives and the master froze, keeping all my important journals to the kids inside it. Fours years later, I still have Spot’s corpse, and any intentions I had of rebuilding it have gone the way of the Dodo. We live in Puget Sound, home of Microsoft and Boeing. I can pick up a desktop at a surplus sale for 25.00 that outsizes, outthinks, out-everythings this old machine.

So what does a proper homeschool Mom do?

She gives it to the kids. “Here’s a screwdriver. Want to see what’s inside?”

Here’s a link to the words list I am using for their follow up: http://resources.kaboose.com/brain/comp-les2.html

Montessori and Gatto

Over and again I refer to these guys– as well as John Holt– as some of my best influences regarding educational theory. A blogger I read who also espouses Montessori at home has a nice entry on this today:

Montessori for Everyone

It’s not your degree, it’s your involvement

The Fraser Institute: Home Schooling Improves Academic Performance and Reduces Impact of Socio-Economic Factors

TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Oct. 4, 2007) – Home schooling appears to improve the academic performance of children from families with low levels of education, according to a report on home schooling released today by independent research organization The Fraser Institute.

“The evidence is particularly interesting for students who traditionally fall through the cracks in the public system,” said Claudia Hepburn, co-author of Home Schooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream, 2nd edition and Director of Education Policy with The Fraser Institute.

“Poorly educated parents who choose to teach their children at home produce better academic results for their children than public schools do. One study we reviewed found that students taught at home by mothers who never finished high school scored a full 55 percentage points higher than public school students from families with comparable education levels.”

The peer-reviewed report, co-written with Patrick Basham and John Merrifield, builds on a 2001 study with new research and data. It examines the educational phenomenon of home schooling in Canada and the United States, its regulation, history, growth, and the characteristics of practitioners, before reviewing the findings on the academic and social effects of home schooling. The full report is available at www.fraserinstitute.org.

Hepburn said evidence clearly demonstrates that home education may help reduce the negative effects of some background factors that many educators believe affects a child’s ability to learn, such as low family income, low parental educational attainment, parents not having formal training as teachers, race or ethnicity of the student, gender of the student, not having a computer in the home, and infrequent usage of public libraries.

“The research shows that the level of education of a child’s parents, gender of the child, and income of family has less to do with a child’s academic achievement than it does in public schools.”

The study also reports that students educated at home outperform their peers on most academic tests and are involved in a broad mix of social activities outside the home.

Research shows that almost 25 per cent of home schooled students in the United States perform one or more grades above their age-level peers in public and private schools. Grades 1 to 4 home school students perform one grade level higher than their public- and private-school peers. By Grade 8, the average home schooled student performs four grade levels above the national average.

Hepburn said a growing body of new research also calls into question the belief that home schooled children are not adequately socialized.

“The average Canadian home schooled student is regularly involved in eight social activities outside the home. Canadian home schooled children watch less television than other children, and they show significantly fewer problems than public school children when observed in free play,” she said.

The report concludes that home schooling is not only a viable educational choice for parents, but can also be provided at a much lower cost than public schooling. The report notes that in the U.S., home schooling families spend less than $4,000 per year on home schooling while public schooling in the U.S. costs about $9,600 per child.

“Canadian and American policymakers should recognize the ability of parents to meet the educational needs of their children at home, without government involvement,” Hepburn said.

“While home schooling may be impractical for many families, it has proven to be a successful and relatively inexpensive educational alternative. It merits the respect of policy makers, the attention of researchers, and the consideration of parents.”

The complete report, Home Schooling: From the Extreme to the Mainstream 2nd edition is available in PDF format at www.fraserinstitute.org.

The Fraser Institute is an independent research and educational organization based in Canada. Its mission is to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government intervention on the welfare of individuals. To protect the Institute’s independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org.