Winter activities

Now that the weather is getting colder, the little buddies often get a little restless. Here are some fun inside activities that we enjoy:

Ring around the rosies

Indoor balloon volleyball

Hide 'n' seek

Hokey pokey

Relay races

Hula hoops, jumpropes, mini-trampoline

Hopscotch

And, around here, we always have a lot of indoor football...all day long.

If you comment (please do!), we'd love to hear some other good ideas.

We still try to get outside as much as possible. I think fresh air and any bit of sunshine we can get are so important. Usually the little ones declare that they don't want to go outside, but once we bundle them up and they get out there, they end up loving it. Every child should experience snowball fights, snow forts, and snow angels.

Being a "no refined sugars" family, what do we warm up with when they come inside? Postum or pero, sweetened with honey, warm apple cider, or sometimes, honey sweetened hot chocolate.

How to Raise a Genius

Here are a couple of interesting articles:
http://www.thequiethour.org/resources/health/genius.php
http://www.worldcongress.org/wcf2_spkrs/wcf2_moore.htm

Science

This year in science we're doing Sonlight's Science level 4: "Electricity & Magnetism", and Aliysa is doing Apologia's Physical Science. We usually read from our science text during lunch, then do any experiments after we clean up from lunch. These pictures are from some of our magnetism experiments.

Each of the children write up the experiments that we do. I let them decide how they want to record it, but it must follow certain guidelines. The guidelines I use are from The Well Trained Mind. For the early grades, write a "what we did" page that inclues: What We Used, What We Did, What Happened, What We Learned.

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In the "Logic Stage" (approximately 5th-8th grade), they record their experiments on a page with these guidelines: What question am I trying to answer? (state the question); What could the answer be? (Form a hypothesis); How will I test this answer? (the steps of the experiment); What result did I get?; Does this agree with the answer I thought I would get? If not, what answer should I give instead?

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Anyway, as you can see, as they get older, they progress to more detailed explanations and records. They can decide whether they write it, draw pictures, etc. It is interesting to see how their records become more detailed as they get older.

This picture doesn't show it really well, but we had iron filings on this piece of paper, and when we would hold a magnet under it, we could see the different patterns from the magnetic fields.

Mallory made a fun discovery, how to magnetize an object.

Behavioral Learning

I just have been reading about behavioral learning in children, and I thought this was interesting:

"...Consider what happened when psychologists gave nursery-school children the chance to draw with felt-tip pens. The children already liked this activity and readily took it up during free play.
First, the researchers recorded how long each child spontaneously played with the pens. Then they told some of the children that if they would draw with felt -tip pens for a man who had com "to see what kinds of pictures boys and girls like to draw with Magic Markers," they would get a prize, a "Good Player Award" complete with gold seal and ribbon. After drawing for six minutes, each child got the award, as promised. Other children did not expect a reward and were not given one.

A week later, the researchers again observed the children's free play. Those children who had expected and received a reward were spending much less time with the pens than they had before the start of the experiment. In contrast, children who were not given an award continued to show as much interest in the activity as they had shown initially...Similar results occurred when older children were or were not rewarded for working on academic tasks."

We know a psychology professor at BYU-Idaho who has decided, with his wife, to never use the "Skinnerian" method with their children (rewards for good behavior, punishments for bad). They do have consequences for their actions, but their children are free to choose. After hearing him talk about this, I've noticed just how much our society gives external rewards and punishments for behaviors. Children are not lab rats, and we must assume that they have the capacity to do good just for the intrinsic reward of doing what is right.

Public school, of course, has to operate on the behaviorist principles, and give out grades, tests, quizzes, and rewards for learning. It isn't the best way to inspire children to learn.
Again, from the book I'm reading:

"The fact that schools rely heavily on grades and other extrinsic incentives may explain why the average college graduate reads few books. Like all extrinsic rewards, grades induce temporary compliance but not necessarily a lifelong disposition to learn"

"Extrinsic rewards do not always weaken the impact of intrinsic ones. If you get money, a high grade, or a trophy for doing a task well, rather than just for doing it, your intrinsic motivation is not likely to suffer..."

If we do use extrinsic rewards, the book says, we should use them sparingly.

"As one mother once wrote in a Newsweek essay, children need to discover for themselves "the pleasure of health and strength from exercise, the joy of music from songs, the power of mathematics from counting and all of human wisdom from reading"

Interesting to think about. Now you'll notice this happening all the time.

A Typical Day

I always have numerous requests for an explanation of our school schedule. I've been reluctant to do this, because I really feel that every day is different, and most days I wish we would have accomplished more. However, I hope that this explanation will be interesting and a bit helpful.
It will include more than just our school items, because when you are homeschooling, you really are balancing home management along with school.

Our day starts with morning chores. Usually these are accomplished before breakfast, but if we wake up late, we eat breakfast whenever it is prepared, and then continue with these chores until they are done:
1. Bath & dressed
2. Hair done & teeth brushed
3. Scripture study & prayer
4. Make bed & tidy bedroom
5. Empty trash & hamper, & gather hangers
6. Tidy upstairs zone (A-Bathroom, J-Farm chores, C-Guest room, S-Bathroom, M-Hall)
7. Help your 'buddy' do their chores

After breakfast, each child has a kitchen assignment. The three oldest children rotate:
1. Dishes (do all dishes & put clean dishes away)
2. Surfaces (clear & wash all countertops & table, put leftovers away)
3. Floors (Put all clutter away & sweep. After lunch-mop, and vacuum the dining room)
Spencer-Clears the table
Mallory-Washes the chairs
Zach-Shakes the rugs

Our first part of school is devotional. We do this altogether. Usually a few of the older children will have finished their morning jobs before devotional, and started on their schoolwork.

Each of the children rotate a task for devotional:
Conducting
Song leader & opening prayer
Pianist
Lead us in pledge & patriotic song
School theme
Testimony
Memorization

Order/schedule:
1. We have our opening song (hymn or primary song), & opening prayer
2. We recite the pledge of allegiance, & sing a patriotic song
3. One child leads us in our school theme
4. Scripture recitation (every child takes a turn reciting our weekly scripture)
5. One child shares their testimony with us (I instruct them on the things that constitute an appropriate testimony, and I don't let them start with "I'd like to bear my testimony")
6. Memorization (child gets to recite whatever they are currently memorizing-quotes, poems, etc.)(if a child has a primary talk, program part, or scripture, we have them practice it during this time, each day, so they will be ready by Sunday)
7. Next, we recite a paragraph of our family motto, or another thing we are trying to memorize as a family.
8. I (Mom) usually take some time to share a spiritual thought, or something that I want to share with the children (manners, family relations, etc.)
9. Then we have "storied scripture" time. I have printed off Penny Gardener's "storied scriptures". I read a scripture passage, and the children draw a picture of what we are reading about. This is an excellent way to help them remember what we read in the scriptures. They write the title and today's date at the top of their picture.

They usually want to take a while to finish their pictures, so I often will read our history lesson to them at this time. Other days I will read it to them at lunch, or while we fold laundry.

That is how we start our school day. Then we go into our lesson time. The four oldest children do this rotation on their lessons:
1. Gospel study & journal (They do this by themselves)
2. Math (They do 'Teaching Textbooks' math on the computer. I help them if they need it.)
3. Language Arts & spelling (They do this at the dining room table with my help)
4. Preschool with the little ones (They take the three little ones-M, Z, & A, and do 'preschool time' with them for about 20-30 minutes)

The preschool activities are:
1) Cooking (they prepare a snack for the family),
2) Nature study (they all go outside and learn about something in nature)
3) Reading (They read from a scripture story book, then one of the children's read-aloud books, they also have a list of nursery rhymes & songs to do with the little ones)
4) Learning games/Activities (They have a list of different learning activities to do, puzzles, learning games, etc.)
During preschool time, they know that they are responsible for teaching the little ones to clean up after themselves, get along, etc.

Other lessons that the children are assigned to do are: Workbooks, Readers, Math drill sheet, handwriting sheet.

We do science and history together as a family. That will be the subject for a future post.

In the afternoon, the children have the following housework assignments:
1. Make sure all upstairs & downstairs zones are clean
2. Do your weekly job (M & Th-Bathrooms, T-Detail vacuum, W-Windows, F-Organize, S-Wash walls)
3. Do a job in the current family zone (ask Mom)
4. Straighten your shoe shelf
5. Laundry (Each child does their own laundry, plus: Aliysa-Mom & Dad's, Jace-all bedding, towels, etc., Courtney-Zach & Andrew's, Mallory-Abby's)

So, that is the way our housework and schoolwork are organized. It might sound flawless, but each day really is different. We have this plan so that everyone knows what they should be doing, but it isn't as though the children just automatically do these jobs on their own. It takes a lot of supervision and prodding at times.

There are many days that we don't do any schoolwork, and some days that we focus on schoolwork & let the housework slide a bit. It is amazing how little time it really takes to have children up-to-speed on academic subjects. I don't know what takes so long for them to do the basic subjects in public school. I'm not saying that to bash public school families, I just really find it astounding that children have to be gone six hours a day, five days a week, just to accomplish the basics, and then they even have homework sometimes! I don't know how parents are able to spend enough time teaching and nurturing their children when they are gone at school all day. It would be tough.

If I feel like the children are getting behind on anything, we just focus on that for a while. For instance, when we realized that none of the children were proficient with their multiplication facts, Bob called off school for a week, and told them we would be watching the Narnia movie (which they hadn't seen yet) on Saturday evening. Anyone who wanted to watch it would need to have passed off all their times tables. That was all they were supposed to focus on in school that week (of course, they still read books and did other unstructured learning on their own). The four oldest children all mastered them, and we watched the movie together after putting the little ones down to bed. Lately, I've noticed some of them are getting a little rusty on the times tables again, so I printed off a worksheet with all the multiplication facts on it, and I'm going to have them do it each day.

I'll do another post sometime that shows what our evening & bedtime routine are.

You might observe that I didn't write what times we do these things. I, with my 'schedule-everything-down-to-the-minute' personality, would love to say we do these things on a certain schedule, but it just doesn't happen. No matter how hard we try, there are inevitably things that keep us up late at night, and we sleep in. On those days, we focus on getting the basics done. Some people have remarked that that is the beauty of homeschooling, that it is so flexible. I love homeschooling. I am convinced that it is the best atmosphere for children. I am so happy that we can be together each day, and I can spend time answering their questions using the gospel.