Bears, Bears, Bears!

Little Miss turned three in June, so this Fall I decided to try to do a bit or "formal" school work with her every day. She's been asking for school work, so I guess it is time.

I decided to start with a theme: Bears (I first want to admit that I have a bit of a problem with collecting books and school related materials. I have an insane amount of manipulatives, flannel board pieces and other assorted necessities. In my own defense, a lot of this was collected during my days of classroom teaching.) So I pulled out everything "bear" that I could find and we proceeded to "play school".

Nomenclature cards 

I started with good old Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? I downloaded a really cute Brown Bear, Brown Bear early learning pack from 1+1+1=1 I laminated the things that I knew we would work with multiple times.  On the right are some of the Nomenclature cards from the pack that go with the story. You can find more Nomenclature printables on the Montessori Printables page on 1+1+1=1.

Little Miss playing with the Brown Bear, Brown Bear Nomenclature cards.

Here she is enjoying some of the activities from the early learning pack.

Putting together some puzzle cards.

What would a bears unit be without a bunch of bear counters! There are so many things you can do with these little guys: counting, patterns, sorting, colors, matching. I think the bears were a good investment because I know we can use them for several years. Right now we can practice counting, colors, and sorting. Later we can do addition and subtraction, more complex patterns, even multiplication and division.

Colored Bear Counters and sorting bowls

I start by giving her lots of time to just play and explore with the materials. She had several chances to play with the bears and the bowls before I started to suggests activities with them. Sometimes I would suggest things, other times I would play along side her and model something I wanted her to try, like putting the bears into the bowls according to their color.

Patterns with bears.

One day I pulled out these pattern strips and started matching bears to the pattern, and saying my pattern out loud, "red-yellow-red-yellow..." She did not seem to be paying much attention to me and was placing her own bears on cards without matching the colors. Suddenly she looked down at her card and noticed that a green bear was on a yellow square. "That one doesn't go here!" she said. She took the green bear off and replaced it with a yellow one.

We also have a color bear bingo set hat you can use the bears with. It comes with these little paw markers. Little Miss really liked to match a bear to each colored paw.

Bear to paw color matching.

When we finished playing the bears were usually all over the room. Little Miss really likes to throw things. She is learning not to, but we are still working on it. While she is often a good helper at clean up time, when she is feeling reluctant going on a "bear rescue" will often get her into action.

 A bears unit is not complete without reading a few different versions of The Three Bears.

The Three Bears flannel board.

After reading the story we got out the Three Bears flannel board story. We had fun retelling the story (along with using all of the different voices for the different bears). She liked to match up the bears with their correct chairs. Sometimes she did not want me to tell the story and just wanted to play with the characters.

Another bear activity I got out was the dress up bear puzzle. She loves to make all of the different bears. Her favorite part is the faces, each with a different expression. She likes to talk about the sad bear, the happy bear, and the angry bear.

Finally, there was the workbook. Just kidding! No workbooks as I think in general they are far less educational than learning through exploration and play. Another problem is that there is usually only one right way to do a workbook page. I'd like to put that off as long as possible. At three years old we are building a foundation for future learning, and so far we are having fun doing it!

Workboxes and Power Struggles

I've blogged in the past about how workboxes work for us, and have several posts about workboxes. I have found yet another way to use them. One of my favorite things about workboxes is how using them significantly decreases power struggles. The, "I don't want to do it" is all but gone.

Scootch has Aspergers/ADHD. He is so smart, and learns so quickly, but some things are really hard for him. Writing is at the top of the "hard" list. Right around the time we started homeschooling he was struggling with anxiety. He easily became frustrated to the point of a complete melt down. He'd rather cut off his right arm than do a worksheet. As a result, I really backed off on forcing him to do work that involved putting pencil to paper. That was fine for a few years. Now he is almost 11 and in the 6th grade. He has also made huge progress in regulating his emotions and behavior. I decided it was time to give him a bit of a push. I was starting to feel like some of the accommodations we had put in place to help were starting to enable and actually hold him back. I knew I was signing myself up for a power struggle with the veritable gold medal winner of power struggles. I realized  it would be faced with resistance and intense reactions, but I was ready.

I got the intense reactions alright! There were times when he would throw a fit over writing down a math problem (he would beg me to write it for him-let the power struggle begin). I usually work hard to avoid power struggles in the first place and now I had set things up so that it would happen. I told him that the fit was unacceptable, but he needed more inspiration than a few words from me to stop, and I knew he had it in him to stop. That is when a parent goes for the holy grail: What is important to him? What does he want?

There is one thing he wants: free computer time. We already had a system in place where the kids need to finish their school work (workboxes) and their chores (clean up room etc.) before they can have free computer time. This system takes away a lot of stress and nagging on my part. No power struggles. I don't need to tell them to clean their room, I hear one call to the other, "Let's go clean our room!". With workboxes they can take as long as they like to finish their school work. They can choose to peck away at it bit by bit, and take all day, or they can sit down and finish it all before lunch. No power struggles of me telling them to do an assignment, they get to choose when they do it. They just can't go on the computer until it is finished.

However, now we were dealing with those fits. How could I re-order the system to prevent the power struggles? At first I changed it to "finish school nicely" to get the computer time, but that was a bit vague. We needed to break it down into smaller chunks. What if he did great on all workboxes but one? That is when I decided to put a time token on each workbox. Instead of earning a flat 2 hours of computer time when work was finished, now he earned time for each workbox completed "nicely".

I don't always give the kids the same number of workboxes. They may get as few as 4 or as many as 8 on a given day. I made up a bunch of tokens (laminated them and put velcro dots on the back) with a variety of times on them, 15, 20, 30 minutes. I put them on the workboxes so that they total 2 hours each day. If he finishes the workbox with a good attitude, then he get the token. If he is not working appropriately, then I can take the token.

We spent a lot of time talking about appropriate and inappropriate behavior. A good attitude can include saying that you don't like something, or don't want to do it. I'm even willing to negotiate and will sometimes change an assignment if it is discussed in a calm manner. It is inappropriate, however, to throw the chair over, or crumple up the paper, or scream.

A sample of workboxes with time tokens

We also reviewed ways that he can calm himself down. He has a variety of things that he knows he can do when he is starting to feel stressed, and he knows he has permission to do those things whenever he needs to.

Holding his snake is very calming. We often do lessons with help from the snake.

I really hate using a token economy, it is not the style of parenting I would choose. I must say though that it is working beautifully. It was over a week before he lost a token. He was so upset by it that he has been working really hard to stay calm, and do what he needs to do.

I am now having fun watching him learn and grow! A month ago we could not get through a math lesson without multiple break downs. Now, he does his math, writes out all of his problems like it is no big deal. Success!

Another article: Why workboxes can work for your autistic homeschooler

The Best Week of School, When the Kids Learned Nothing

A couple of weeks ago Papa took the boys backpacking in Yosemite for the week. We pointed out to them that this was their school assignment for the week. They left on Monday and came home on Friday.

The trip plan from Tenaya Lake to Happy Isles (red), with side trip to Half Dome (blue)

After spending the night in Yosemite Valley on Monday night, they were up early on Tuesday catch the shuttle bus that would take them to the trail head. From Tuesday through Friday they hiked almost 22 miles with a total elevation gain of about 13,000 feet. They summited both Cloud's Rest and Half Dome along the way.

The first day on the trail

They came home full of excitement. They'd had a great time!

Back at the car, before getting a shower

I was pretty disappointed to hear, that in the rush to get to the shuttle bus on time, the camera had been left behind in the car. I was really feeling jealous of their adventures (while I stayed home with Little Miss, age 2) and was eager to relive their trek with them through the pictures they had taken. As luck would have it, they met a nice couple on the same route who took some photos of them along the way and e-mailed them to us!

A view from Cloud's Rest towards Half Dome and Yosemite Valley

A couple of days after the trip Curly announced, "That was the best week of school, EVER!"

"Great!", I responded. "What did you learn?"

"Nothing."

I just laughed. I wasn't about to argue with him, and ruin his perfect week of school. I know how much time Papa has spent with them, teaching them to read topographic maps, using a map and compass, learning how to read a trail map, how to start a fire (about 10 different ways), how to pack for a trip, how to write out and leave an outing plan, how to calculate the right weight of your backpack based on your own body weight, and just about everything else there is to know about backpacking, hiking, rock climbing, and camping.

About to get on the cables on Half Dome

The boys told me all about a movie they saw their first night, camping in Yosemite Valley and things they had learned (oops!) about the history of the park. They know, and I'm sure learned more, about the local rocks, fora and fauna than most people. They told me that they saw one marmot. They did not see any pika, but apparently there were some pretty cool pika finger puppets in a the camp store.

Heading up the cables (not learning anything)

At the top of Half Dome with Clouds Rest behind them

I'm feeling pretty good about the nothing they learned that week with their dad!

World Geography

My kids often come up with much better lessons than I plan for them. This "World Geography Lesson" is one of many examples. 

The best geography lesson I never came up with.

Now, if was at the point where I was ready to 100% embrace unschooling, this is what school would be like all of the time. I've talked about toying with unschooling in some of my previous posts, ( Homeschool Changes and (F)unschooling), but is not something we do 100% of the time. From what I've learned, you are not really unschooling unless you do it 100%. I'll be honest here, this annoys me a little bit. I, like so many homeschoolers, have a very eclectic approach. I like to take the parts of things that I like.


According to Carol Edson,

“Unschooling to me means learning what one wants, when one wants, in the way one wants, where one wants, for one’s own reasons. The learning is learner-directed; advisors or facilitators are sought out as desired by the learner. There are no curricula, lesson plans, schedules, or agendas. Most of the learning is quiet, even invisible, as there is not a focus on creating a lot of ‘products.’”

Mary Griffith defines it more precisely as needing these three factors:
From On Unschooling

1. An Environment Conducive to Exploration and Experimentation.
2. Adults as Models and Facilitators
3. Trust That the Child Will Learn.


I do really well with "rules" 1 and 2. I kind of agree with number three, but I'm unable to completely "let-go" and not guide my child's learning in some way. I DO give "assignments". We use the Workboxes System which is, by its nature, parent directed. The assignments I give, and put into the workboxes, are based on my kids and how well I know them. Scootch told me, at the end of the summer, that he wanted to study geometry and physics. So, when I give him math and science assignments, they are in these areas. I ask him to pick out experiments he wants to try from the book on physics experiments. I put books and magazines in their boxes that I think they would want to read. I assign them lego projects from Lego Quest.

We only spend a couple of hours a day (if even that, and rarely 5 days a week) on assignments I give them. The rest of the time they have available to get creative and come up with their own great learning activities (although they think they are just playing!).  The majority of their time is spent with lots of "1 and 2". I don't want to spend any more time than that on math lessons I think they need to learn. In the words of Mark Twain, I don't want their schooling to get in the way of their education.

Last week they came up with a great World Geography lesson. They asked if they could take down the large world map that is on the wall. They often use this map while doing another great learning activity they came up with: One child is on the computer on Google Earth, and the other child stands at the map. The child at the computer "flies" around the world, and the one at the map charts the course, and gives directions as needed. I'll hear things like, "NO! You need to go North of France!" and "Don't go that way, you'll end up in the Arctic Ocean!" When Scootch found that I had put a Google Earth App on the ipad he was so excited!

I allowed the removal of the wall map, although at first I was a bit skeptical, as I often am about their plans. They took it into their room and proceeded to play a game where they had Lego guys and vehicles that were going around the world claiming territories (kind of their own version of Risk, a board game they have never seen). They had very detailed rules about how you moved, how you could claim or take over countries. I'm pretty sure I heard, "That's not fair! I'm stuck over here in Australia!" The next day they took the game to the next level by inventing and creating their own world map using construction paper taped together, with made up land forms. I think that counts for both art and social studies!


The next day they took the game to the next level by inventing and creating their own world map using construction paper taped together, with made up land forms. I think that counts for both art and social studies!

A whole new world!

If nothing else, at least they know their geography! 

Different Ways to use Workboxes

When we started using Workboxes I began by setting them up like I had seen on different websites and blogs. Each child had his own set of workboxes on his part of the shelves. I posted last fall How Workboxes Work in Our House.

My first big innovation was to create "sister" boxes. This is where the older kids have a workbox that has a "sister" tag on it (kind of like a "mom" tag that means take this box and work with mom, only it is take this box and work with your little sister).


I have two boys ages 9 & 10. There are a lot of things for school that I like to to together: Read aloud, Social Studies, Science, a board game, to name a few. I found that if I didn't put something into a workbox, it often didn't get done! I'd tell myself "When they finish their other work we will play a game of Scrabble." When the time came around and they had finished all of their other boxes I'd tell myself, never mind, I'm too tired. Also, when it is in a box the kids seem to go along with it without complaint for some reason. When I have a book I want to read to both of them, whose box do I put it into?

Most of the workboxes have two velcro dots on them, room for two tags . I was very proud of myself to decide to put 3 velcro dots on a few of the boxes. This gives me a place to put a number tag for each boy, plus a "mom" tag. It would be easy to add a couple more dots (though you will start to run out of room!) for more kids. This is a box for the three of us to do together.:


Now the boys have some shelves with their individual workboxes:


On a separate shelf we have a few "group" workboxes. With their toddler sister running around, what usually works for us is to do these boxes when little sister takes her nap. Meanwhile, the boys can work on their individual boxes.

I use these tags (and created a sister tag to match):


Download your copy at http://www.spelloutloud.com/2009/08/cassies-workbox-graphics.html

Get Creative!

I try to get creative and put a variety of things into the kids Workboxes. I've been in a bit of a rut lately and I broke it by getting a bunch of "junk" out of the art cabinet. I have lots of odds and ends, many of which are in this jar:



I find I have collected lots of little things that might be good for a project at some point, so you can't throw them away! I filled a workbox for each of the boys with some glue, cardboard, and assorted odds and ends: tongue depressors, corks, toothpicks, popsicle sticks, clothes pins, wooden shapes, magnets, and more. The assignment: Get creative.



It is really Scootch who thrives on this kind of assignment. He is an outside-of-the-box-creative kind of guy. Living with Aspergers, ADHD and anxiety, he has a hard time sometimes, and an open ended, hands on activity like this is very calming for him. He ended up creating two airplanes and a tank:






Scootch spent a lot of time on his projects. He was focused, and patient, even though the creations kept falling apart. By the time he was finished, in addition to his three creations, there was about 1/2 a bottle of glue on the kitchen table. Fortunately, glue is cheap and pretty easy to clean up.

The next day he asked for a similar assignment. The way he responded reminds me that I need to provide this kind of activity for him more often. Even if it is just to put playdough or clay into one of his boxes, every day. The more I think about it, I wounder what effect it might have on his behavior to make sure and include something like this on a daily basis. I know what that means for me: Get creative!

Chemistry!

I asked my 8 year old what he wanted to study in Science next. "Chemistry!", was his response. A quick shopping trip on amazon.com got us one kit, and 3 books on chemistry, and we were on our way to becoming mad scientists!

Wow! 30 experiments in one kit, and real glass test tubes!



A few reading assignments for the next couple of weeks, check.





I have also assigned some time on a favorite website, ptable.com. What is not to love about a dynamic periodic table of the elements?

The hardest part is waiting for the baby to take her nap so that we can uninterrupted "lab time". Here are my little scientists hard at work: