This week we went to the fabulous Monterey Bay Aquarium on one of their “Homeschool Days”.  It was a great family day learning about the sea animals.  As with each field trips we take, my second-grader completes a Field Trip Evaluation sheet that I had developed.  The the purpose of this was to help him think a little bit of all the things he’s seen and learned.  This is a simple form where I ask the following questions:

• Date of the field trip
• Location of the field trip
• What did you see or do there?
• What was one thing you learned?

I make sure my child completes the questions in complete sentences.  Upon completion I filed it away in his Second Grade School Record portfolio.  For our home school, the goal is to go on one field trip per month, and this also includes family vacations.

Here is the photo journal of our day:

Learning about jellyfish and plastic pollution in our oceans in the Discovery Lab:

Here are the Leafy Sea Dragon seahorses at the new seahorse exhibit.  Notice how they look like leaves — this is how they camouflage and avoid getting eaten.

Baby seahorses.  Did you know that in the entire animal kingdom, only seahorses have babies through the father and not the mother?  Interesting, isn’t it?  I love learning along with my children.

After a long day of fun and learning, we finished it off with yummy ice cream sundaes at the Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop on Cannery Row.  It was a wonderful and delicious way of ending the field trip:

I love it when I can combine school and fun.  Recently I discovered a new twist to a game of War.  This is a game for two where each person turns over a card, and whoever has the higher card keeps both of the cards.  You keep repeating until all your cards are gone. It think this is an excellent game for the little ones because it teaches them which number is higher.  However, my 7.5 year old is way beyond this game.  To make it more exciting and challenging, I have each player turn over TWO cards and multiple the two numbers.  Whoever has the higher number gets to keep all the cards.  We keep playing until we run out of our initial pile of cards.

To keep it even more interesting, we count up all the cards.  This is great because he now gets to do addition.  I have my boy lay all of his cards on the table, face up.  He is to look for cards that have sums of 10 or 20.  Once he locates a set, we can quickly add the numbers together.  After he adds up his pile of cards, he gets to help me add up my pile.  We then record the score on a piece of paper.

To keep the game going, we go for another round or two or three or till we drop.  After round two, we add the second round score to the first round to get a new total.  Next, we go for another round and then add the new score to our previous sum.  We keep repeating this process until we reached a previously agreed number of rounds.  Now, whoever gets the higher number after all the rounds WINS!  My kid loves this game and so do I.

I love the fact that he gets to do multiplication and addition (both double and triple digit addition) at the same time.

We use all the cards except the Joker card.  Ace is equal to one, Jack is 11, Queen and King are both 12.

Our “artist in residence” takes great pleasure when his math worksheets tell him to draw out a word problem.

For most of us, if given a problem such as “Jimmy has an apple, Annie has an apple, how many apples do they have?” and then asked to draw it out, we’d come up with a picture of two apples with maybe a plus symbol between them.

Not so with our 5.5yo boy, who can take 10 minutes not simply to depict the math, but the entire scene:

After he drew the above, I asked him, “Where are the dimes?!!”

He simply pointed at the very small little rectangles (3 on “Weston’s” table, and 2 in his sister’s hand).

Hilarious.

I think sometimes we expect kids to know how to do tasks without properly training them.  We expect them to know how to sweep or vacuum the floor, clean the toilet, cook simple meals, wipe down the counter, do laundry, etc. when they reach a certain age.  After all, they’ve been watching us do these tasks day in and day out.  They really should know how to do all these things by now!!!

When I was working in the corporate world some years ago, we always talked about a high learning curve when a person starts a new job.  The idea is that when you first start a new job, you really don’t know what you’re doing.  You have to learn how the company operates, what’s the proper channel of personnel, specific tasks or job descriptions related to your project, and a new set of corporate jargon to be learned.   A new hire usually attends an orientation or a training session.  Typically for the first month or two, a new hire really isn’t an asset to the company.  It isn’t until he learns how everything works that he begins to contribute to the company.

Taking the corporate example, we have to have the same mindset when training our children to help out in the house or simply learn a new skill.  Remember, in the beginning there’s a high learning curve and it’s going to take time for your child to learn and perfect the skill.  I think there is a three-step approach to this.

Step 1: Observe and learn

Quite simply, the student is to observe how a task is done.  As a teacher, we need to be sure to talk through each step and explain it thoroughly.  When we perform a task over and over again ad infinitum, we simply do it without thinking about it because the task is so deeply ingrained.  Too often we expect our student to possess the same skill to the same degree without thinking that this may very well be their first time ever performing the task.  It is imperative that we keep on talking and explaining the specifics.

My husband adds this insight: how a person observes from a standing height of 4 ft. or less is drastically different from what they might see at an adult’s height.  So he recommends getting down to your child’s height to get a sense of what they are actually seeing, and how you might better teach and show them the task more effectively.

Step 2: Perform the task with supervision

After they’ve successfully observed and learned the new task, they are to do it with your supervision.  When it comes to actually doing the task, it is quite different from just observing it.  I find myself forgetting steps when I do a new task even though I thought I knew or remembered all the steps.  Having a supervisor to guide the student through each step is helpful.  When he errs, the mistake can be quickly corrected.  As a trainer, we need to be patient.  I know sometimes I’d rather take over and finish the task because it’d be lot faster and efficient.  If I do this, I wouldn’t have properly trained my child to do the task. Resist the temptation to take over, rather, instruct the child through each step.

Step 3: Perform the task without supervision

Having observed and performed the task successfully, the child is now ready to do the task without supervision.  Depending on the task and the child, steps 1 and 2 may be repeated several times before being able to do the task on his own.  Don’t have the expectation of only going through the steps once and expect the child to already know how to do the task on his own.

Honestly, these three steps aren’t rocket science nor are they an ancient secret.  These three steps came about as I interacted with my children on a daily basis.  I think it is important to note these steps because we often forget them and set improper expectations for our children.  So, next time you start getting frustrated over your children’s lack of progress, consider the aforementioned steps and evaluate whether you’ve properly led them through all the steps.

In my previous School: Sitting is Optional post, I talked about making sitting during school as optional due to my boys’ active nature.  Thus far we still hold true to this sitting option.  Here’s the proof from yesterday:

The older one decided to work UNDER the table while the younger one decided to stand.  We still have the chairs, but they don’t get used often.  Unless you count draping blankets and forming tents during playtime.   I’m still holding out hope for the girls to use them.

In our recent history lessons we talked about creation and how everything came into being.  We are a Christian family and we believe in creation and that God is the creator of all things.  After talk about the six days of creation, I went on to explain a little about evolutionary theory.  While in mid-sentence of explaining that some people believe we come from the pond scum, my oldest burst out laughing.  It was absolutely incredulous for him.  Pond scum?  Huh?  How bizarre.  He thought I was kidding and I had to pause and persuade him that real people out there do believe in naturalistic evolution.

What’s interesting to me is that many of us were educated in the public school system where the theory of evolution is taught as the ultimate truth.  As such, Christians often wrestle with “reconciling” what they are taught in government/secular schools against what the Bible teaches.  My son, on the other hand, didn’t have this challenge.  Having a clean slate, so to speak, the clarity of his mind was able to comprehend the absurdity of evolution.  This is fascinating to me.  A child can comprehend the impossibility and the incredulous nature of evolution whereas far more educated and “mature” people can’t (or won’t).

In the subsequent lesson we learned about dinosaurs.  We believe that dinosaurs once roamed the earth with humans, meaning dinosaurs and humans coexisted.  This is contrary to the popular and prominent understanding that dinosaurs were the only creatures on land and that they did not coexist with humans.  The Bible said that God created the sea, air, and land animals on fifth and sixth day of creation, wouldn’t the dinosaurs be included?  Man was created on the sixth day so this means both dinosaurs and man coexisted.  This is another fascinating truth.  Again, I explained that many scientists believe that dinosaurs existed by themselves and not with humans.

My oldest piped up and said, “Yeah, I know.  That’s what all my dinosaur books say.”

Then I posed the question, “If your dinosaur books said one thing and the Bible said another, what are we to believe?”

He promptly said, “The Bible is the only true book in the whole world so the Bible is right.”

I was so proud!  Even though I had expected him to tell me that the Bible was right, I certainly didn’t expect him to say that the Bible is the one true book in the whole world.  Ain’t this the truth?!!

I know some Christian parents are afraid to teach evolution or even have books with evolution idea in their home.  Even though I don’t subscribe to evolutionary theory, I believe we should teach our kids about it (as much as we should warn them about other false beliefs of the world around us).  We shouldn’t hide this from them because to do so, it’d be very shocking to their system should they learn it from somewhere else.  We shouldn’t be afraid of teaching or mentioning evolution because when we are diligent and faithful in teaching our children the ultimate truth, i.e., the Bible, they will see that anything that goes contrary to the truth in the Bible is not true.  We need not be afraid that we’ll have to “defend” the Bible — it can do a great job of it by itself.

I’m very glad to have such discussions with my children in our home school, and I hope to have more discussions of this sort in the future.

Our home school is in full swing since last Monday and the children are enjoying the new schedule and the new curriculum.  One of the not-so-new things we’ve implemented is circle time.  I first learned about circle time from Kendra’s site Preschoolers and Peace and immediately I took to it though I took the time to slowly implement it.  Currently Kendra is running a post that’s all about circle time and if you leave a comment, you just might win a copy of her Circle Time e-book.

Circle Time is simply a time where we gather in a circle (more like a convoluted circle or oval) to start school.  Obviously, you don’t need to sit in a circle, but you should sit in a way that all the kids can see mom.  During this time, you go through various subjects that you’d like to cover with all the kids (baby to 8 years old in our case).

For this school year, our Circle Time is as follows:

Start off with a hymn

We select a hymn of the week and sing the same song every morning.  Currently we’re singing “On Christ the Solid Rock.”  I play the hymn on the piano and the children are gathered around me to sing.  Those who can read are given a hymnal to sing along.  The non-readers just sit and hum the tune.

For those who can’t play the piano or other instruments, you can certainly sing in a cappella.  If you have trouble following a tune, you can use Susan Beisner’s Listen While We Sing CDs as your piano accompaniment.   Most familiar hymns are on those CDs, and the arrangements are consistent with the Trinity Hymnal.  We’ve found Ms. Beisner’s CDs to be a wonderful resource for family worship, background music, or home school use.

Memorize Bible Verses

Next, we read a chapter from Susan Hunt’s ABC Bible Verses and memorize the Bible verse from that chapter.  After the verse is mastered, we go back and review all the previously memorized verses.  The method I’ve employed in memorizing the verses with the children is to say the verse to them once and have them repeat after me.  Then I work with the oldest one to master the verse, followed by the next oldest, and so forth.  The baby is exempt in this case (for now!).  This method works well because my oldest can readily memorize a verse while the younger ones aren’t as skilled.  So, by the time I work with the youngest, she has already heard the verse many times.  Often she’s able to recite the verse back to me as soon as I call on her name.

Prayer

I pray with the children using a prayer box.  In this box I keep a deck of index cards.  Each day we pick two people to pray for.  I write the person’s name on one side of the card and in the back I write a specific prayer concern and date.  We are currently working through a big list of people.  Eventually we’ll cycle through all the people in our prayer box.

Chinese

We’re using “Chinese Made Easy for Kids” for our Chinese curriculum.  I go through about one lesson per day.  Everyone is to practice saying the words, and only the oldest one is required to learn how to write.  I typically work with the oldest one after Circle Time to write his Chinese characters.

History Lesson

We use Mystery of History (Volume 1) by going through a lesson each day.  Everyone listens and asks questions.  After the lesson, only the oldest one is required to write a summary of the lesson on an index card, which is filed in a index card binder for later review.

Our Circle Time lasts about one hour, which is just the right time for our kids.  Any longer would make the children antsy.

After Circle Time, I work with the two oldest on math, reading, writing, grammar, and spelling.  The younger ones are free to play in the meantime.

This system seems to work well for us.  We’re pretty flexible with our schedule which is why there’s no specific time associated with each subject.