An overdue post

I have been meaning to post a detailed "Year In Review" post but I just can't seem to get around to it. Here's the Reader's Digest version of what I learned this year.

1.  Oak Meadow is perfect for us. The upper elementary (we were in year 5) is much more involved than I had anticipated, and some weeks we had difficulty covering everything completely, mostly because I didn't use only Oak Meadow. I had too many other things in our schedule.
2. Sometimes less is more. (See #1)
3. Swinging helps Thing 4 concentrate. I started noticing that if she was having difficulty focusing on, say...Math, she would ask if she could go swing. When she came back in, her concentration was better. (Everything is relative.) I've talked to other moms who have kids with attention issues who are especially creative, and they have noticed this, too. Interesting. 
4. MCT Language Arts is fabulous, especially the Caesar's English portion.  (Thanks, Melanie).
5. Life of Fred...also a fabulous curriculum. We use this to supplement Singapore Math. It is great for developing higher level thinking skills. 
6. Singapore Math is perfect for Thing 3, not so much for Thing 4. We are switching to Oak Meadow Math for her next year. 
7. It's great to be able to tailor instruction and expectations to each child's learning style, personality and activity level. (See #3 and #6.)
8. As Latin goes, Lively Latin is a really good curriculum.  It's a nice mix of the basics of Latin combined with history, games, art history and puzzles. The online resource is very good, also. That said, we are dropping Latin next year. (See #2.)
9. Rosetta Stone is a great way to learn a foreign language.
10. It's worth paying for a good art class. 
11. We should have planned more field trips and done less "school". Thing 3 was verging on burn-out by the end of the year. (See #2.)
12. CiCi's pizza is over-priced and under-good. We go there anyway.  
13.  Otherwise Educating is great. Summer is greater. 

Learning about Bernoulli's Principle And Flight

Have I mentioned that I really love Oak Meadow? The enrichment activities are so great. Take our lesson on Bernoulli's Principle and the Principles of Flight, for example. We had a textbook lesson that explained Bernoulli's Principle and its relation to flight, and then OM had Thing 3 experimenting with paper airplanes to gain a concrete understanding. He told me today that it was one of the best days he's had this year. But then, who doesn't love playing with paper airplanes?

Canaanite Mask

Last week in Oak Meadow 3 Social Studies, Thing 4 studied Phonecia and the Canaanites and how they used different types of resources to create and trade goods. We talked about natural, human and capital resources and how they interrelate. She was really interested in this, and I was really happy (again) to be using OM, because I would never have thought to teach her this at this point in her learning.

To go along with the lesson, she created a Canaanite ceremonial mask out of Sculpey clay. Cool!

Edible Cell

In Oak Meadow 5, we've moved on to Life Science. On Friday, we studied cells and made an edible cell. This was a really cool activity that made learning the parts of a cell a little less intimidating.

We started by gathering items from the kitchen to represent the organelles. We used a blueberry for the nucleus, a strip of fruit roll-up for the microtubles, Mike and Ikes for mitochondria, and rock candy for vacuoles. Not surprisingly, the candy didn't hold up too well in the Jell-o, but we worked with what we had because we were sort of snowed in.




Jell-o was our cytoplasm.


We poured the Jell-o in a quart-sized Zip-Loc bag (which was the cell membrane) and added the "organelles". As we added each item, we talked again about what it does. I don't have a photo of us actually creating the cell, because we had a slight mishap just as I was going to shoot the picture. Let's just say that cytoplasm on the floor, cabinets and Oak Meadow Science book makes for a sticky situation.

Here is our finished cell, which no one will eat because it looks too gross.



It's even worse than those nasty congealed salads that people of a certain generation like to bring to our church pot-luck dinners. All of our organelles, except for the nucleus, either dissolved completely or look really anemic. Oh well, it wouldn't be an Otherwise Educating science project if it worked well. The cell may not be edible, as the book suggested, but Thing 3 does have a really firm grasp on how the main parts of a cell work together. He also learned that rock candy completely disappears if you let it sit in Jell-o too long. Where else is he going to learn that?

Benjamin Franklin

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” - Benjamin Franklin

In OM 5 History, we are studying Benjamin Franklin. What an interesting man he was. Early in his adult life, he was a soap and candle maker. We attempted to make candles the way Ben did, by dipping wicks in melted wax, then in cold water, then back in the wax, repeat, repeat, repeat.




We were supposed to keep this up until our candles were the diameter we wanted. After about 20 minutes of dipping, our wick looked only marginally different, and we concluded that Benjamin Franklin had much more patience than we do. (No wonder he moved on to bigger things like becoming an inventor, scientist, writer, along with that Founding Father gig.)

We ditched the Oak Meadow suggestion and re-purposed our Subway cups from dinner, using them as candle molds. I showed the kids how my sisters and I used to make ice cube candles when I was a kid.




I'm no Ben Franklin, but my children were impressed.

Today we wrote with a quill and ink, just like Ben Franklin did. It really gave the kids an appreciation for our current day writing instruments...not to mention the eraser.


Thing 4 had a lot of fun pretending she was writing the Declaration of Independence.



Did you know that, except for two years of formal education from age 8 to age 10, Benjamin Franklin was home schooled and self-taught?

Fool-Proof Science Experiment

Our first semester of Oak Meadow 5th Grade Science has focused on Environmental Science. A few weeks ago, we were studying pollution, recycling and composting. We did a very easy experiment where we buried five different types of trash.



Four weeks later, we went out to dig up the trash in order to make observations about how quickly the different types of trash decomposed. Now that's an experiment that even I can't mess up!




Oh wait. Yes I can. Unbelievably, we couldn't find the trash. We even called in reinforcements. Still, no trash.



Through some kind of gypsy magic, the trash disappeared! Either that, or someone is trying to drive me insane like Adam did to Dixie all those years ago. (And let me tell you, that's a pretty short trip!) Or maybe we gave up too soon. It was very windy and chilly that day. Perhaps we'll find it when we plant our garden in the spring...if I'm not in a treatment facility by then.

Learning With Oak Meadow

Learning is natural, school is optional.

I came across that quotation on an Oak Meadow board the other day. I don't know who said it first, but it really resonates with me. If I had a true homeschool room instead of dining room that the homeschool tsunami struck, I'd have that quotation painted on our wall.

Humans have an innate desire to learn. If you don't believe it, just spend some time with some boys who play Yu Gi Oh, Bakugan, or Pokemon. My boys have played or are currently playing all of these games. They can talk to you about the minutiae of the games until your eyes glaze over and your brain goes numb. At one point, my older boys knew the names and evolved states of all 200+ Pokemon. Seriously. They never took a class. They learned the details because they were interested and excited Pokemon, so learning about it was natural. (I should confess that during our Pokemon phase, which seemed to last years longer than it actually did, I often commented that I wished the children would put as much time and effort into memorizing, oh I don't know, something like the Periodic Table as they did into memorizing Pokemon.)

If you don't believe that learning is natural, just step into my kitchen right now and watch my daughter trying to teach herself how to use chopsticks. She's been at it for 15 minutes. There is no teacher standing over her and there will be no test. She got chopsticks on a field trip last week and she wants to learn to use them. It's that simple.

While the idea of unschooling appeals to me on some level, I have never bought into it completely. I think that people (and kids are people, too) need to be exposed to lots of different ideas and activities to find out where their interests lie. I also think there is value in learning about some things that one does not find particularly interesting at the outset. When my children ask, "Why do we have to learn about that?", I like to tell them, "Because knowing things like this makes you a more interesting, well-rounded person." (It sounds so much nicer than, "Because I said so", doesn't it?)

Oak Meadow does such a great job of building on a child's natural desire to learn while gently guiding them through a fabulous, well-designed curriculum and exposing them to lots of interesting subjects and ideas. I see it as a homeschool curriculum with an unschool-y feel. Both of my children have studied topics this year that they probably would not have chosen to study had they never been exposed to them, and they have been excited about them. The OE Dad even commented again last night that we are having so many more, "Hey Mom! Listen to what I just read!" moments this year. I "blame" Oak Meadow.

Instead of asking a child to list 5 animals that live in the ocean, Oak Meadow asks them to, "Go to your library and check out a book about the ocean biome. Learn about ocean life. Describe 5 animals that live in the ocean and draw one of them." In response to that question, Thing 3 said, "I need to get a book on rare ocean life. I already know about dolphins, sharks and whales. I want to learn about ocean animals people don't know about." In fact, several times in the last few weeks, Thing 3 has gone beyond what was required in his research. Success!

When you take the "schooliness" out of school, as Oak Meadow does, learning is not confined to a certain time or place. It becomes natural again and can happen anytime, anywhere.

Learning is natural, school is optional.

Artsy Craftsy

Oak Meadow provides a lot...a whole lot...of enrichment activities to go along with what we are studying. I'm thrilled to have the activities planned for me. That makes it so easy. Here are a few things we've done recently.

Thing 4 has been studying Native American cultures, so we made corn husk dolls and dream catchers. We invited our sweet friends to do these crafts with us.











Thing 3 has been studying Colonial America, so we made pinch pots and we're in the process of doing a little needlework. The needlework thing has made Thing 3 thankful that he was not born a female in Colonial times.










In our Animal Habitat study, we learned about ways we can improve the habitat for some animals. We made bird feeders.



Whew! I'm about ready for some worksheets!

Science

Oak Meadow Science is very hands-on. The kids and I really appreciate that. Science is so much more meaningful when you can see and touch it.

Here are just a few photos of some of our science activities from the past few weeks.

The kiddos are gathering pond water for our observation of bacteria growth. We put tap water, pool water and pond water in petri dishes with agar to see which would grow the most bacteria. The children's hypothesis was that the pond water would grow more bacteria. They were right, of course. You'll have to take my word for it because I forgot to take pictures of the bacteria growth.

Since I had extra petri dishes and agar, we decided to swab some things around the house to see what kind of bacteria we could grow. We swabbed the toilet seat, the door handle in the bathroom, the coffee maker handle, the computer keyboard, Thing 4's bear that she has slept with (and chewed on) since she was 6 months old (aptly named "Yucky Bear Bear" by her brothers), and Thing 3, who had a bad cold at the time, coughed in one of the dishes. Ick.

Here, the kiddos are looking at Thing 4's blood. She made good use of the nasty scrapes she had on her knees after having a bad fall on her skates.

Science rocks!

Today in Oak Meadow Science

This week in third grade, we are studying plants and our relationship with them. We learned about the plant oxygen and food cycles yesterday, and today we learned that in addition to food and clean air, plants provide us with beauty. The assignment for today was to find ten flowers/plants in our immediate environment and draw them in the Main Lesson Book.



In fifth grade, we are studying the envrironment and our ecosystem. We talked about living and non-living things in our environment. Here, Thing 3 is making a mural of a forest scene and including both living and non-living things in his drawing.


When we have a busy day (like we have today), it's tempting to skip the more artsy aspects of our lessons and get on with Math, Latin and more "school-y" things. I'm trying to resist that temptation and remember that taking time to observe and draw a flower is important, too.

Main Lesson Books

Oak Meadow, being a Waldorf-inspired curriculum, makes use of Main Lesson Books in the Third Grade curriculum (as well as in the younger grades). The Main Lesson Book (MLB) is simply an artistic and creative record of lessons we have completed. It might include drawings, copy work, stories, etc. The MLB serves as a beautiful textbook that the child creates herself. It is also a wonderful keepsake.

We are still getting used to the idea of creating these Main Lesson Books, and it gets easier with every lesson. Any Waldorf purists who happen upon this post will surely realize how woefully inadequate our MLBs are, but I'm hoping they get better over time. Don't judge me.

Here, after hearing and re-telling the story of Rapunzel, Thing 4 drew a scene to represent the story. She added the happy witch later. And yes, I realize she misspelled Rapunzel one time, but I'm torn between the Charlotte Mason idea that you never leave a word misspelled and the fact that I love looking back at my older kids' early work that has those kinds of sweet mistakes. I went with sentimental this time. Don't judge me.







Her entry about the Kush civilization:


She told me the other day, "You know, I learn so well this way. I hear a lesson, then I tell it back to you, then I write about it and then I draw a picture about it. That really helps me remember it." Success! Go ahead and judge me on this one.

Today's Science lesson about the plant food cycle:




While Thing 3's lesson plans do not call for the use of MLBs, I like them so much that I'm going to start using them with him next week.

Watercolor Painting a la Oak Meadow

I'm learning that Oak Meadow is not a curriculum to be rushed. Everything we do in OM is very "intentional" with a real and well-thought out purpose. In addition, everything is a process. In fact, for Third Grade, I have a Home Teacher's Process Manual that covers everything from Guidelines for Recorder Playing to Crayon Drawing.

Today we worked on Watercolor Painting. There are four pages in the Teacher Process Manual devoted to teaching Watercolor Painting. Who knew painting with watercolors was so complex?

With Oak Meadow, there is no using those nasty watercolors that come in the plastic box...the ones that all turn black after a couple of uses because all the colors get mixed up, but then it doesn't matter anyway because they crack when they dry out and you have to buy new ones. No, we used high quality paints and a good paint brush.

We used just the three primary colors. Sometimes less is more. At first, Thing 4 balked at the lack of choice, but she quickly figured out that mixing colors to create other colors is fun! With this technique, you mix the colors on the paper as you paint, not in a dish.

Oak Meadow encourages a "wet paper" method of watercolor painting. When the paper is wet, the colors blend more easily, and it allows more movement of the paint lines. I thought it was a strange concept until we tried it. If you're going to use the wet paper method, it's important to use high quality watercolor paper. All of my high quality supplies came in the art kit I ordered from OM, but you could find them at a craft store.

Today she really enjoyed just experimenting with the colors and seeing them blend.

It's not exactly a Monet, but she had fun! There's no going back to those nasty watercolors in the plastic box.

Bake Like A Phoenician

Thing 4 has been studying ancient Hebrew and Phoenician cultures over the past few weeks. Today, we made flat bread, which was most likely a staple in the diets of people of both cultures.

(How's that for product placement? It was purely accidental. I'm really not getting paid by the Gold Medal people.)

One thing I really appreciate about Oak Meadow is that they give me a lesson to teach and then give me two or three activities to reinforce that lesson. It's working so well for us.

She thought it was kind of magical the way they ballooned in the oven:

And then flattened out as they cooled:

This was her favorite part: