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Tiny Talk Tuesday – Real or Make-Believe

• Me: Do you think that Little House in the Big Woods is a real story or a make-believe story?
• Anna: Make-believe.
• Me: Why?
• Anna: Because Laura and Mary had so many chores. I don’t have so many chores, so it’s make-believe.
• Me (after reading yet another version of Goldilocks and Three Bears): Of course, Anna, you would have never done what Goldilocks did?
• Anna: Of course not! I wouldn’t go into the forest all by myself, because we don’t have any forests where we live.

To share what your young children are saying, visit Tiny Talk Tuesday on Not Before 7.

We Play With Counting Blocks

Sometime ago I picked up three sets of counting manipulatives in Target $1 spots – cubes, triangles and cylinders. I haven’t seen any counting with them yet, but plenty of playing. Those colorful manipulatives were food supplies for her castle, various ingredients in pretend cooking, weapons, books, chairs, mini-houses and hospital beds. I overheard Anna talking about one of her hospital patients: He is very sick. His throat hurts, he swallowed the hamburger, and it went to his leg, his heart is not beating, and he has an earache. Seriously sick indeed, but nothing that 103 cups of medicine cannot fix.

Come and play at Childhood 101.

Computer Math Or Genie Who Was Let Out of the Bottle

There are only two things that my daughter reliably wants to do every day. She wants to read books and she wants to play on the computer. Oh wait – there is the third one – she wants to play on my iPod too. The pull of the computer appears to be irresistible for her. I never tried to see how long she would play without limits – we do limit her computer play to about 30 minutes a day. These minutes grew quickly to 9 hours spent on Dreambox in the last 3 weeks when she promptly flew through K games (to be exact, she is about 75% done with K-level games and started on some of 1st grade games). I wrote my first review of Dreambox a couple of weeks ago and want to take some of what I said back. We loved the game then, but we both love it even more now. If you read my prior reviews, you know that I don’t say it lightly about anything i review. We did sign up for Dreambox membership despite the cost, because Anna literally begged us to keep playing this game, and I was amazed to see how her math skills exploded in the last 3 weeks. I didn’t like reward part of the game at first, but she loves earning tokens and completing the missions now. Then she spends those tokens in the arcade – she loves the “sticker studio” game. I also see now that the game is truly adaptive. The desire to give wrong answers “for fun” was extinguished very quickly, since she wants to complete each game as fast as possible. It’s also interesting to see how the game sometimes “kicks her out” of an activity after a certain number of mistakes and then reintroduces the same game later. Of course, daughter also adapts and tries to avoid “numbergram games” where she doesn’t do as well, but sometimes she has no choice but to accept a “numbergram mission” and slowly improves there as well. It’s pretty amazing for me to see her effortlessly building number lines and manipulating higher numbers – one activity that I tried to introduce to her with magnetic numbers and met mighty resistance. For whatever reason computer drills seem infinitely more interesting to her than the same drills on paper and even with real manipulatives. It might have something to do with a visual feedback on every successful answer and knowing that she is working towards the goal that is meaningful to her (like rescuing a kitty :)).

Do those skills translate to “real life”? Absolutely! She effortlessly counts to 100 and higher just for fun, without any prompting on my part. She makes and solves her own little addition and subtraction problems and breaks numbers into addends. Most importantly, her feeling that she “is not that good” at math was replaced by the same feeling of competency that she has in reading. I am extremely excited about the program, but I want to make several cautionary comments to anyone who wants to try it out:

• Start with PreK level – K level will take your child too far into fairly advanced games. We started with PreK, and my daughter is fairly strong in math, but some of the activities proved to be rather challenging for her level, at least in the beginning.
• I think that your child has to master 1:1 correspondence and number sense (knowing at least 0-9) to start playing without being frustrated.
• Do not help your child. What I like about the game is that you cannot just “stumble through”. It’s better if they try a lot of entry level games and gain mastery than move beyond their comfort zone and get frustrated.
• Again, this is not a replacement for math curriculum. We completed all K-level math before through games, books and manipulatives. DreamBox builds proficiency and mastery, but the foundation has to be laid before starting to play this game.

I am linking this post to Math Links at Joyful Learner.

Too Much Too Soon?

I admit it – I am guilty of “too much too soon” mentality quite often. I had my child late in life. Before I got married for the second time, I had a career, traveled the world, tasted delicious food, saw great works of art and famous science exhibits “for real” and read books about many different things. I also earn enough and save some, so we don’t have to think twice about going on a trip or paying for a museum ticket. It’s very hard sometimes to “pace myself” and remind  myself that my daughter is not even 4 yet. Fortunately, sometimes reality kicks in like it did during our “staycation”. We had a very “optimistic” schedule of going somewhere every day – driving all the way to Sacramento, then going to the lighthouse the next day, etc. We were following our plan until Tuesday when we took Anna to Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Don’t get me wrong – this is a very fine and world-known aquarium. The exhibits are extremely fascinating… for adults and older kids. Anna was not complaining, but… she was not interested in live exhibits much and couldn’t get out of darkened aquarium rooms fast enough . Instead she touched every lever and pushed every button in the “kids’ rooms”. Unfortunately, I felt that these rooms are designed to accommodate kids from 2 to 12, which meant that her understanding of what she was doing was rather low. After spending about 15 minutes on ocean-themed mini-playground my husband said in frustration that we could just as well save time and money if we took our daughter to the new playground in an area where we live. I had to agree with him, and we quickly scratched Sacramento and Lighthouse from our schedule. Instead we stayed home, played inside and outside and gave her what she needs most – attention of both parents. Of course, we will visit all those great places, but I have to have faith in the future – we have many years together and we will still experience the joy of discovery whether our daughter will be 4 or 14 when we go to some of our landmarks for the very first time.

Have you ever had the feeling that you are doing “too much too soon” with any of your kids. What did you do to “rebalance”?

For science with young kids, visit Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.

What My Child Is Reading – August 28, 2010

It was a vacation week, but we still read a lot of good books. Here are some of our favorites.

Beaver’s Lodge is another fiction book about beavers. It’s translated with German, and I was a little surprised to see how in the beginning of the book beaver gets injured and the picture on the page was showing blood flowing from his wounds. His friends then take over and build him a new home while he recovers. We try to impress on our daughter that it helps to plan what she wants to do first and prepare for her project, and this book has a nice lesson in planning. It inspired Anna to draw several elaborate “floor plans” on her magnetic board.

Ruby Bakes a Cake was Anna’s favorite for independent reading this week. She also made both me and my husband read this book to her, because she finds it hilarious. In the book Ruby the Raccoon plans to bake a cake and asks her various animal friends for ingredients. She also invites them all to share it when the cake is ready. Was the cake with carrot tops, worms, flies, snails and nuts tasty? Well, Ruby’s friends found something to praise giving a lesson in graciousness and good manners.

Anna got The Mermaid’s Purse as a present from JC when they met on Monday. She also got a very beautiful picture. Both presents were placed on her night shelf, and I found both the book and the picture in her bed several time this week. It’s a clever counting book, and Anna particularly liked all the reasons the oyster was rejecting Mermaid’s offers. There is also an interesting “bonus page” talking about imaginary and real fish with funny names (for example, angel fish). It was pretty interesting to see some of those fish live in Monterey Aquarium this week. 

Panda & Polar Bear is a delightful fictional story about two bears that are separated by a big cliff. Eventually a polar bear up on a cliff gets too curious and falls down into a panda bear’s land. It’s a story of friendship and of finding solutions to difficult problems. Anna asked me if China is really that close to the North Pole, and I had to explain to her that the story is “make-believe”. We also used an opportunity to talk about the similarities and differences between those bears.

  My “”honorable mention” book this week is On the Same Day in March. Anna liked it OK, but didn’t read it as much as I expected her to and didn’t ask me to reread it to her. It’s a pretty clever introduction of different weather patterns on the same day in March (a spring equinox day) in different parts of the world. The pictures are nice, but the text is uneven. It almost looks like an author planned to make it a rhymed text in the beginning, but changed her mind pretty quickly. Still it is a good read for “world geography” unit.

What are your children reading this week. Link up and share – the linky is open all week.

Week In Review – August 27, 2010

This was a vacation week for all of us which explains why I am not commenting much on my favorite blogs. It also happened to be the hottest week of this summer so far. We spent a lot of time out of the house – meeting JC and her mom in our Egyptian Museum on Monday, driving all the way to Monterey Aquarium on Tuesday, spending a relaxed morning at the pool on Wednesday and as I prepare this post on Thursday morning while family is asleep, we plan to drive to San Francisco. It was a lot of fun to spend so much time together as a family with just the three of us. As always, we read books, Anna did small projects, and we tried to answer her various questions to the best of our ability. I think now daughter needs a bit of time to absorb all the new things she experienced this week – at the moment she seems to have a little bit “too much of a good thing”. Hopefully she will slide back to the routine as easily as she did after our previous vacations. I will come back to work and will start getting up early enough to blog and comment next week too :)

Come and share your preschool weeks in review at Preschool Corner hosted by Homeschool Creations.

StArt - Mr Seahorse

Mr Seahorse is one of our most favorite books by Eric Carle. We took it from the library multiple times and enjoyed both the story and the illustrations. Since Anna’s Dad works from home and takes care of her most of the time, she was fascinated with the story of dedicated fathers in the animal world. When we read the book for the first time, a lot of information was new for me too. We took this book out again this week, since we were visiting Monterey Bay Aquarium which has a great exhibit right now called The Secret Lives of Seahorses.

Anna said that Seahorses was her favorite part of the aquarium – probably because there wasn’t as many buttons to push and levers to pull, which forced her to concentrate on actual animals. It is really a fascinating exhibit – I wish we could spend more time there that attention span of a three year old allowed us. We saw some of the seahorse relatives too which are even more exotic looking. When we came home, I pulled out seahorse stickers that I bought last year, and Anna made a collage. She used sticky back felt for seaweed, corrugated cardboard for coral and stuck seahorses around. She kept playing with her collage the next day moving seahorses around and eventually moved them all out to smaller “aquariums” (notepad pieces with some felt seaweed).

Come and share your books and story stretchers at StArt hosted by A Mommy Adventures.

Geography Track – Egypt “Almost for Real”

How far did we have to travel to visit ancient Egypt? We just needed to drive for less than 30 minutes to see “the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on exhibit in western North America” in San Jose Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum & Planetarium. To prepare for the visit, we read I Wonder Why Pyramids Were Built that went a lot further than Mummies in the Morning to give Anna an idea about life in ancient Egypt. We never finished Mummies in the Morning, since Anna deemed it “too scary”. In fact, she almost refused to go since I foolishly mentioned to her the night before that there will be a mummy in the museum. I had to promise to her that she won’t have to go to a mummy room. Actually, I didn’t keep the promise, since the only mummy (unwrapped) is very visible from an entrance. Even though Anna was not thrilled, she was very interested in other parts of the museum. The  best part  of the trip was meeting a new friend – none other than JC from Joyful Learner and her very creative mommy. Both girls really enjoyed exploring the gorgeous grounds of the museum. It is surrounded by a beautiful park with a lot of tropical plants. It also has “A Peace Garden” where they could see a lot of common fruits and vegetables happily ripening for the fall – melons and watermelons, squash, and even  pomegranates. JC was a lot braver inside the museum and went exploring “inside the dark cave” which had a video about excavations in Egypt. Anna preferred to stay outside of the dark cave. Both girl enjoyed a small “treasure hunt” and getting stamps at a couple of place in the museum. The only complaint that I have is that many displays are not designed for young kids. Display windows started over  their heads, so the girls had to be carried sometimes to be able to see the exhibits. One very enjoyable touch was an outdoor giant version of an ancient Egyptian game called senet. It’s a “travel the board game” with relatively simple rules, and the big foam dice was a big hit. Unfortunately, it was too hot to really get them to play the game, but I am thinking that at least our family can easily come back for a tour of the grounds – the entrance to the park and even the parking are free.

Come and share your adventures in time and space at History/Geography linky hosted by Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.

Geography Track and Tiny Talk – Retelling for Hoover Dam

 

 

 

 

I wonder sometimes what Anna remembers from our geography studies, so now I decided to have her tell me stories about the places that we visit virtually visit every week. I write them down, so I can type them in and add to our landmark pages. Here is one from the last week (the first time we did it):

• Me: Anna, what can you tell me about Hoover Dam?
• Anna: Why are you writing in this book? You were writing in a different book before!
• Me: See, I tried to find the other book, but I can’t remember where I put it. So… Hoover Dam?
• Anna: Yes. It was built in the forties.
• Me (thinking that I didn’t hear her right). It was built in the forties?
• Anna: No, wait… In the thirties? One of the guys who built the dam got very sick, because he was working all day in the heat. (there was something about poor working conditions in the porton of the Hoover Dam movie that we watched together). Dam keeps water out of land and then… Mama, what does it mean “provide”?
• Me: It means “give”. And then?
• Anna: And then it gives water to people who need it and to farmers.
• Me: What else does dam do?
• Anna: I don’t know.
• Me: Remember, there are machines inside of the dam? What do they do?
• Anna: Oh! They give electricity. I knew it, but I just wanted to keep it a secret.
• Me: Do you remember what dam is made of?
• Anna: No.
• Me: Is it made out of wood?
• Anna: Yes. And also out of sticks, mud and flower petals.
• Me: This would make it a beaver dam or a pixie dam.
• Anna: Pixies are not real. Our dam was out of rocks and sand, and it was leaking water. (Giggles).

I am linking this post to Tiny Talk Tuesday at Not Before 7 and to Geography/History Exchange at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.

We Play More Castles

A few weeks ago I made daughter a quick cardboard box castle. My husband smirked and started thinking. After some quick cardboard prototyping he started to spend his evenings in the garage building this very special castle for his Little Mouse. We joke that it’s by far most expensive toy she has considering how many hours he spent building and perfecting this castle, but I think it turned out great.

Obviously, Anna thought so too, except one of her first questions was, But why doesn’t it have a drawbridge? I predicted this question considering that we read several books about castles and all of them had drawbridges and moats. The good thing is that the castle can be expanded eventually to include a drawbridge. Anna’s favorite parts were the moveable flags and the door that locks from inside. 

Soon she was fully engaged in her pretend world. The castle was filled up with “food”, “weapons” and Playmobil people who were bravely fighting off the intruders and putting them to jail. I had to cool the game a bit when “brave Annie” (one of Playmobil Children) tried to take the eyes of the dragon out, then everyone made up and had “a feast”.

And the best part is that the castle can be easily disassembled and moved once the game is over. Not that it is over by any means – Anna was very upset with me when I opened the wall to show how the castle is constructed and demanded to put it back together at once. I am sure her playdate friends (especially boys) will love playing with it too.

Come and play at Childhood 101.

Curriculum Clean Out Giveaway – Kitchen Table Play and Learn

I am excited to be participating again in the Curriculum Clean-Out at Homeschool Creations. I am offering a one lucky winner Kitchen Table Play & Learn – a great book with themed activities for preschoolers. The giveaway is open to US and Canada residents and will conclude on Aug 30.

To enter:

1. Tell me why you want to win this book.

2. For an extra entry, follow my blog publically via GFC (leave me a comment if you already follow me).

Science Sunday – Forces of Nature

Since we were talking about Hoover Dam as our geography landmark, we spent a lot of time talking about forces of nature and how we feel them and use them. We tried to build a dam in our water and sand table without much success, but Anna also had two field trips that helped her see some of the things we were talking about in action. She has visited Palo Alto Junior Museum that went “whoosh” over her head. All she could tell me afterwards is that she saw machines and they give us energy. My husband said that the museum is not really suited for preschoolers, and the zoo that also belongs to it was overcrowded. She was a lot more interested in interactive exhibits of Children’s Museum of San Jose. Waterways is an amazing exhibit showing the power of both water and wind. There is also an interesting permanent exhibit called Power of Circles. That’s when Anna could operate a real pulley – she wanted to do it so badly after watching Sid the Science Kid episode about a pulley probably 10 times or more. She could also see how it’s much easier to pull heavy load on wheels and compare it to trying to push the same load along on the wooden floor. My favorite exhibit was a vertical blowhole that supported several light balls dancing in the air – it was fun to throw balls into it and seeing how the gravity seems to have no effect, cancelled by the power of wind.

Come and share your science ideas for young kids at Science Sunday hosted by Adventures in Mommydom.

“Afterschooling”

It’s a fun time of the year. Even though I have time to read only a handful of blogs, I have a lot more in my Reader. About 90% of them are written by Homeschoolers. There are a lot of posts about curriculum choices, organizing for a new school year, planning “non back-to-school” parties, etc.

Life is different in “afterschooling” land, especially since we have a “year round” school. On September 1st the new year will start in Anna’s preschool. She is moving up to the last step before “real school” and will start a PreK program. I am not buying new books, and I am not organizing our shelves. Well, it’s not entirely true. I did organize them somewhat, but since we don’t have a dedicated playroom/workroom, Anna didn’t even notice this change. We are not following any curriculums at home, but we read a lot of books and build a lot of activities around wherever our geography studies take us. I try to give her a lead as much as possible later in what we are going to do and when, and more often than not we run around playing “shark in the house” – a game of Anna’s design which involves a lot of hiding from an imaginary shark and squealing in delight.

I won’t deny that I do have learning goals, and I “guide” some of our activities to make sure those goals are met. My goals are aligned more with Anna’s age than with a new school year. I was focusing on phonics and reading between ages 2-3, and this year has seen a lot more math. When Anna turns 4 in October, I want to focus a lot more on fostering independence and competence – in dressing herself, setting up and cleaning up her work and play space, completing activities that she started. I will also focus more on prewriting and writing. We will continue to “gallop the globe” (I like the name even though I am not using “Galloping the Globe” curriculum).  The most important thing for me is to foster her love of learning and her curiosity, to encourage her to ask questions and to seek answers.

As time goes on, I hope to meet more “afterschoolers” in the blog world. It bothers me that there are all kinds of “gathering places” for homeschoolers, but I am not aware for any “week in review” memes for the rest of us. When we outgrow kindergarten next year, I just might start one.

Are you an “afterschooler”? If so, drop me a comment, and I will come and visit your blog :)

What My Child Is Reading – August 21, 2010

We had time to stop in the library on Saturday and get some new books. For whatever reason Anna chose two of Easter books – I hope they will be as readily available during Easter time. One book that is still going very strong from our previous weeks is I Live in Tokyo along with Little Travelers Japan DVD. Anna refuses to return both of them to the library, and I renewed them to keep for longer.

Emily’s First 100 Days of School was a hands-down winner for the week. This book would be a good candidate for some sort of unit study, since it has so many ideas worth developing further – music, geography, charity, baking, etc. Anna was entertained to see a minor reference to Felix from another series by Rosemary Wells – Felix Feels Better was another one of her favorite books lately. I admit that I only got through the book once from start to finish, since it is very long and better suited for several reading sessions.

Our study on Hoover Dam yielded one great fiction book on beavers called Get Busy, Beaver! Both Anna and I enjoyed the story of a dreamy beaver that is focusing on beautiful things in his life and eventually create some of the beauty on his own. I also think that the book contains an important message for both children and adults – the desire to “build-build-build fast-fast-fast” sometimes makes us miss the beauty of the moment. We all need to stop and smell the roses once in a while.

I was somewhat surprised that Anna developed quite a liking for Which Shoes Would You Choose?. It’s very colorful, but more appropriate both in text and in subject matter (choosing proper shoes for different activities) for a younger audience. However, it’s not the first time when she chooses “a comfort book” for independent reading – she usually studies them in great detail and (I hope) also learns how to spell certain words.

Our opinions were split on Hugging Hour. I didn’t like that the main character was feeling “orphaned” because she is left overnight with grandma. I sort of understand her feelings seeing how she is mostly left to her own devices with a chicken for company. On the other hand, Anna liked the book, because grandmother cooks yummy treats for the girl and then her parents come back. Well, she is going to have her personal hugging hour (or rather hugging days) with her own grandma and grandpa pretty soon too.

What are your children reading this week? Link up and share – linky is open all week.

Week In Review – August 20, 2010

Anna is  3 years 10 months old

This was a vacation week for Anna, and my husband promptly booked her mornings with playdates. They explored a new playground, visited Palo Alto Junior Museum and had a play date with Anna’s best friend. On Wednesday I took a day off, since my work friend and I planned to take the kids to Exploratorium in San Francisco. Unfortunately, this did not happen, because her son got sick, so I went with “Plan B” and took Anna to San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum. I haven’t been there since Anna was a baby (she visited several times with her father), and it was fun to see that she knew very well where she wanted to go.

Reading. Both non-fiction and fiction books were popular this week. She got back her reading light and returned to her ritual of reading a couple of books before falling asleep. One book from our own library that is back in favor is Cars, Trucks and Things That Go – apparently, daughter is a big Richard Scarry fan.

Math. Daughter loves DreamBox and plays it every day with great enthusiasm. I continue to be impressed with how well thought out this math game is. I can definitely see marked improvement in attitude and also in understanding of some math concepts that for some reason didn’t click before. A lot of “I get it now” moments happened this week, so I am pretty excited. Maybe I finally found our “Progressive Phonics” for math – something that can be done in 15 minutes a day, be interesting to my daughter and lead to a remarkable leap.

Field Trips. For the first time in the last year I forgot my camera at home, and that was for my trip to San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum! Grrr! I took some pictures with my horrible cell phone camera, but they don’t quite capture what a wonderland this place is for kids. Waterways (in this picture) and temporary Bob the Builder exhibit were her favorites. Bob the Builder is definitely any budding builder’s paradise – with toy trucks to climb into, various building tools, dress up and construction toys. We spent total of four hours in the museum without any meltdowns – sight previously unseen.

Fine Motor Skills and Crafts. Anna had very little interest in crafting this week except painting paper dolls for our StArt project. She got something new for writing that held her interest for a little – a small dry erase board. Talking to her about writing words, it looks to me that her problem is not as much technical skills required as confidence and motivation. I think I am still going to wait for a couple of months to see if some of those missing pieces will fall in place.

 Other. A lot of vacation time was spent playing outside. The favorite place appears to be a dirt pile which makes for a lot of laundry. We also attended a baby shower, and Anna entertained everyone by winning the nursery rhymes game. It surprised me that she could recognize the nursery rhyme from the random line in the middle of the rhyme. She was faster than me and knew more. Soon I won’t be able to keep up with her in other areas too :)

Come and share your week of learning and discovery in Preschool Corner hosted by Homeschool Creations.