Homeschool ~ May/June 2008

Clearly, this was a big travel segment of our ’school’ year. There are also fewer notations of things we talked about (because my record-keeping was sporadic). By the time I filled in the kids’ activities–sometimes weeks later–I was relying heavily on the activities noted on our family calendar and the ‘photo documentation’ of our downloaded digital camera files. Those conversations, concepts explained, and words defined–they’re still happening, but I have to note them almost daily to remember. My head is full these days…

• Watch high school girls’ lacrosse games
• Play with friends
• Asian Festival at the college, including Taiko drumming, Writing in Chinese (Jaja), listening to stories, and baseball with college students (Rico)
• Play at the playground: at least four different playgrounds
• Biking: two playgrounds, one park, around Skytop Lake (Rico), ocean boardwalk, gravel road, and grandparents’ paved driveway
• Define ‘Anniversary’
• Visit the Library: in two states
• Make books: write story/words and draw pictures
• Help Daddy rototill the garden
• Fill up new sandbox
• Attend birthday parties
• Talk about Border Collies and other working dogs
• Plant beans in the garden
• Read out loud
• Cut paper dominoes out of Ladybug magazine and play game
• Jump on a trampoline
• One-week trip to Florida
• Two half-days in Washington, D.C., including riding on the mall carousel, the Air and Space Museum, and the Washington memorial
• Fly a kite
• Swim: in five pools, two lakes, and the ocean
• Paddle ball on the beach
• Skim-boarding
• Visit the Tampa Sciencenter and the local Sciencenter
• Play football in the ocean (Rico)
• Shop for food and deliver it to local food shelf
• Visit art museum; exhibits include masks of Sri Lanka and the art of W. David Powell
• Finish new ‘K’ general skills workbook: 350 pages (Jaja)
• Start new ‘Grade 1′ math workbook (Jaja)
• Work on general skills workbook and ‘K’ math workbook (Rico)
• Hike to the top of a mountain with Dad: more than five miles, with an elevation gain of 1,600 feet
• Play catch and baseball
• Slip ‘n’ Slide
• Play with playdough
• Run in half-mile kids’ race
• Jump off pool diving board and swim to side unassisted
• Puzzles and Legos
• Five-day visit at grandparents’ house
• Help cook meals, including cutting vegetables and fruit
• Scooter
• Walk and train grandparents’ new puppy
• Garden and weed
• Learn how to use a pocket knife
• Measure, cut, and twine string on sticks to support growing bean plants
• Visit Mystic Aquarium, including Sea Lion show, bird exhibit, feed parakeets, and watch three Beluga whales being trained
• Go to Children’s Cheering Carpet Project
• Pick strawberries: domestic and wild
• Catch crabs
• Play guitar
• Visit friend’s farm, including cows, baby chickens and turkeys, grown chickens, and three acres of vegetables and flowers
• Learn how to use a hanging trapeze: put feet over bar and pull self to sitting (Jaja)
• Four-day trip to the Poconos to celebrate great-grandma’s ninetieth birthday
• Play with cousins
• Golf: mini-golf and putting green
• Lawn bowling
• Ping-pong
• Rock climbing: reach the top of a 40-foot wall (Jaja)
• Play kickball
• Dress up and pretend

Photo: Jaja’s playdough pig

Homeschool ~ March/April 2008

• Ice Skating, hockey (both) & figure skating (Jaja): back deck rink, 2 college rinks, rec center rinks, frozen lake
• Downhill Ski Lessons: 90 minutes x four
• Downhill Lift skiing: with friends, with Dad
• Attend friends’ birthday parties: 4
• Talk about birth and pregnancy; tell the pregnancy, birth, and adoption stories of all four kids
• Watch the movie “Arctic Story”
• At least ten (each) 60-300 piece puzzles
• Count out loud from 1-100 by 10s (Rico)
• Tell time on a digital clock
• Set the table for dinner
• Put away own laundry
• Vote with Mom/Dad in the presidential primary
• Help cook dinner
• Fill in Sudoku with Dad
• Compare and contrast the definitions of biracial and multiracial
• Discuss how you might know what color skin a baby will have before it is born
• Talk about ultrasounds and look at ultrasound photos of Jaja and Rico
• Watercolor paintings
• Start new math workbook (Jaja completed all 150 pages; Rico at page 142)
• Play in the snow & sled in the backyard
• Talk about why it is important to brush your teeth
• Help Dad dismantle back deck skating rink
• Watch women’s college hockey game
• Knit with Grandma (Jaja)
• Build with Legos
• Write numbers 1-100
• Play memory with 24 cards
• Visit with friends
• Ride on a zipline
• Play soccer in the yard
• Practice money/coins: names and values
• Scavenger hunt
• Rock climbing
• Ride bikes and scooters
• Dress up (more times than can be counted)
• Dance to music
• Go to a maple sugar house
• Work on general workbook (Jaja: 150+ pages; Rico: 125+ pages)
• Play with playdough
• Spend an afternoon at the playground
• Draw and cutout birds for a friend’s birthday party
• Cut out and assemble a bird/birdhouse mobile from Ladybug magazine
• Watch a college track & field meet
• Trip to Boston
• Visit the New England Aquarium; watch 3D dolphins & whales movie
• Swim in the hotel pool
• Visit the Boston Children’s Museum
• Play a harp and a grand piano
• Read words off the wall menu at restaurant while waiting for our lunch (Jaja)
• Read books out loud: I can read with my eyes shut tight (Jaja), I am a Tiger (Rico)
• Jaja loses second tooth and writes second self-spelled letter to tooth fairy
• Visit the midwife with Mama
• Talk about growing babies; look at the books It’s NOT the Stork & It’s So Amazing
• Visit the local Science Center
• Talk about what a ‘secret’ is and is not
• Draw and write on little chalkboards
• Dig in the garden
• Help Dad put up the new swing set; play and swing
• Attend downtown Earth Day gathering
• Play lacrosse
• Addition & Subtraction cards
• Build a sentence cards
• Jump on our babysitter’s trampoline
• Play baseball
• Play new board game (gift from friends)
• Talk about miscarriage, death, & grief

Homeschool ~ Nov/Dec

Highlights of our homeschool/unschool kindergarten curriculum: 

• Write numbers 0-30
• Define the word ‘peace’
• Talk about double entendre and words that sound the same but have two different meanings (piece/peace, bear/bare)
• Write lower case letters
• Read several ‘level 1′ easy reader books from the library out loud (Jaja)
• Ice skating/Ice hockey class (5 weeks)
• Building with large wooden blocks: castle, barn, houses
• Talk about the difference between an emergency and a crisis
• Go on multiple hikes
• Talk about what you get physically from your birthparents
• Ice skating (free skate) at the town and college rinks, and on our back deck rink
• Tempera and watercolor paintings
• Play in the snow, including sledding and shoveling
• 100 and 300 piece jigsaw puzzles, and wooden puzzles
• Talk about the ’stories’ of Thanksgiving 
• Orienteering (Jaja)
• Day trip to New York City
• Visit the American Museum of Natural History
• Yoga with Grandma
• See the play “The Christmas Bus” and talk about orphans and orphanages
• Listen to the book Ballerina Dreams and talk about physical [dis]abilities, including cerebral palsy
• Talk about the difference between bones and cartilage, and look at pictures of skeletons
• Downhill skiing with Dad
• Card wool, and talk about fleece/wool/sheep
• Talk about Jesus and crosses, and why Jesus was killed
• Make paper chains and yarn ‘puff balls’
• Talk about ‘pretend’ and ‘magic’, especially Santa and wands
• Sign name 100 times on holiday cards
• Cross-country skiing

Homeschool ~ Sept/Oct

Highlights and features from our first two months of homeschool/unschool kindergarten:

• Learn how to swim in grandparents’ pool (first week of September)
• Hatch and release Juna and Creek, two Monarch butterflies
• Ride scooters and bikes on grandparents’ “big, flat driveway” (ours is gravel)
• Say goodbye to our oldest dog; talk about death, euthanasia, disease, and grief
• Draw pictures for fall zine issue of Symony Fire
• Six weeks of pottery class
• Four weeks of soccer
• Talk about Christopher Columbus, Columbus day, and Native Americans (the original inhabitants of this piece of land we call the United States)
• Write all upper-case letters and numbers 0-9
• Build and decorate a cardboard-box castle
• Pick apples from our neighbor’s trees
• Watch college archery club practice
• Talk about the difference between being a servant and being a slave
• Listen to parents read Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Beverly Cleary books (including Ramona the Pest & Socks)
• Make apple cider with a huge hand-press
• Build with legos
• Run in a 1-mile race
• Talk about hair texture, as it relates to hair care and styling options
• Read Go Dog Go out loud with Dad (Jaja)
• Read Hop on Pop out loud with Dad (Rico)
• Make up music and lyrics, and play songs on the keyboard
• Talk about lead, PVC, vinyl, and plastic–especially in toys and dishes
• Learn name/amount/recognition of penny, nickel, dime, and quarter
• Visit Patrick Dougherty stick sculptures
• Dig “one big daddy worm and nine baby worms” out of the garden

 Up and coming homeschool/unschool attractions:

• Halloween: history of the holiday and candy negotiations (We have a friend whose father used to pay them at the door for their entire bag of candy. Another family allowed their children a few pieces after trick-or-treating, and then the ‘Halloween Fairy’ came overnight and took all their candy–and left a toy in its place.)
• Cook and can applesauce
• 100-300 piece jigsaw puzzles
• Write all lower-case letters
• Plan for a family Thanksgiving gathering with more than 14 children under the age of eight in attendance
• Talk about Thanksgiving (history, Native Americans) and focus on personal gratitude
• Six weeks of ice skating/ice hockey
• Trip to Ithaca (?)
• Create handmade holiday presents for a multitude of extended family members
• Winter Solstice/Christmas/Winter holidays

Multicultural Kindergarten Curriculum

Our state requires us to submit a general curriculum for what we plan for the kids to study in the next year. They let you keep it fairly broad, but not completely vague (you can’t say, “may include, but not limited to . . . ” which is an unschooling standby). Our curriculum as a whole contains an implied “including, but not limited to . . . ” which leaves us an open door to incorporate just about everything we do in the next ten months into our end-of-the-year report.

My husband and I talked a lot about what the curriculum should say and include, as we are both listed as their teachers. We took a two-pronged approach: (1) We included all the things we already do/discuss regularly and plan to continue, and (2) We included specific skills and projects that we’d like to accomplish this year; now that we’ve written them down in the official curriculum, we have committed to completing them.

The ‘History, Government, and Citizenship’ section is where the most explicit multicultural educational philosophy is visible. However, the curriculum in its entirety is included below for those of you also in the paper-filing process.

History, Government, and Citizenship:

• Develop a deeper understanding of family and community life, including the structure and rituals of our family and those of other families in the U.S. and the world
• Geography of our state (including some cities/towns and major bodies of water), the United States (selected states), and the world (continents and selected countries)
• Continue exploring Native American history, focusing on the Cherokee and local Native peoples
• Continue exploring African American history
• Foster awareness of environmental issues, including pollution, consumerism, global warming, and vegetarianism

Natural Sciences:

• Explore the outdoors in all seasons
• Environmental stewardship, and why it is important
• Continue to observe carefully, ask questions, and search for answers
• Perform simple science experiments demonstrating physical principals, including mass and energy
• Visit the local science center regularly to observe fish, amphibian, and reptile species, as well as quarterly special exhibits
• Insect study, including the lifecycle, care, and feeding of the monarch butterfly
• Visit a sugar house to observe the making of maple syrup
• Experiment with measurements, including length, weight, and volume
• Group objects into sets, and sort objects according to physical characteristics

Literature and Language Arts:

• Listen to reading of literature, including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry
• Will read as they are ready
• Play-act stories
• Keep a journal
• Dictate creative writing to parent
• Orally express themselves clearly
• Phonics, including the sounds of all 26 letters of the alphabet, as well as ‘sh’, ‘ch’, ‘th’, and ‘ph’
• Recognize and print upper and lower case letters of the alphabet
• Enjoy books and other reading material
• Create a quarterly zine of original pictures and mini-stories
• Create one or more original books with words, pictures, and binding by child

Math and Numbers:

• Count out loud from 1 to 100, by 1s and by 10s
• Recognize, write, and read numbers from 1 to 100
• Add and subtract numbers from 1 to10
• Know the meaning of the plus (+), minus (-), and equals (=) signs
• Identify pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollar bills
• Tell time on both a traditional clock and a digital clock

Health:

• The human body, including
  a) Names and functions of body parts
  b) The human life cycle
  c) Personal health and hygiene
  d) Personal safety
• Study the growth, preparation, and importance of healthy food, including cooking and baking simple recipes

Fine Arts:

• Music: including singing, learning songs, writing/inventing own songs, playing the piano, guitar, recorder, drums, and other musical instruments, and attending live musical performances.
• Performing Arts: Create and perform in a variety of ‘shows’ throughout the year. Attend live performance art (such as plays, dancers, puppet shows, and acrobats).
• Visual Arts: Create a variety of two-dimensional visual art using materials including crayons, markers, colored pencils, tempera paint, watercolor paint, scissors, and glue. Create three-dimensional visual art using a variety of materials. Visit art museums, and art and craft exhibits.

Physical Education:

• Continue to develop skills to improve:
  a) Coordination and strength
  b) Listening and direction-following ability
  c) Persistence
• Activities to include:
  a) Walking
  b) Hiking
  c) Running
  d) Dancing
  e) Yoga
  f) Swimming
  g) Biking
  h) Cross-country skiing
  i) Downhill skiing
  j) Ice skating
  k) Sledding
  l) Skateboarding

We have two Monarch butterflies in a container on our kitchen counter; one is already in the process of becoming a chrysalis. Sky School has begun.