Are You Smarter Than A Second Grader?

On Thursday, my daughter was watching "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?" The question was, "Which of the original 13 colonies was the last to ratify the Constitution?" The adult contestant answered "Pennsylvania".

Thing 4 came running into the kitchen and said, "Oh. My. Goodness. That man thought Pennsylvania was the last colony to ratify the Constitution! Everyone knows Pennsylvania was the second to ratify it! He's not even smarter than a second grader!"

As a slightly insecure Otherwise Educating mother, I really love it when we have those moments when our decision to OE is validated. It's great when I see that my children really are learning something from me and I see that I'm not completely screwing up their lives...unless you think weird, nerdy kids who wear pajamas until noon most days and who ask to study History and read about Odysseus are screwed up. If you do, then I've totally screwed them up.I feel compelled to point out, however, that they were weird and nerdy before I started OEing them. But they didn't wear pajamas until noon. That's all my fault.

Just don't ask Thing 4 what colony was the third to ratify the Constitution. We haven't gotten that far yet. We got a little sidetracked with our study of Greek Mythology.

There's just too much to learn and not enough days in the week!

Teacher or Mom?

Otherwise Educating allows me to spend a lot time with our two youngest kiddos. A lot of time. A crazy, ridiculous amount of time. So much time that sometimes even I think I'm crazy for choosing this path. I mean, I really love my children and all, but I spend a lot of time with them.

One would think that if the children weren't sick of me by 6 p.m. every day, they would at least feel like they had received plenty of deposits into their "mommy time" account and could stand the thought of being apart from me for more than five minutes. By 6 p.m., I'm sick of me. As much as I love my children and love being with them, I admit that by 6 p.m. on most days, my "kid time" account is practically maxed out and I'm ready to make a withdrawal or two.

My daughter does not share my sentiments. The girl simply can't get enough time with me. She wants to be with me every waking moment. (And when I stop and think about that, I think, "Who could blame her?" I'm no Pioneer Woman, but I am pretty cool. )

So today on the way home from a four hour errand outing (preceded by over four hours of school with me as her teacher), she said, "Mommy, will you play a game with me when we get home?" Exhausted at this point, the thought of playing Sleeping Queens made me want to drive a stake through my kneecap. I took a deep breath and said, "No. I just can't tonight." I could see in the rearview mirror that she was teary. There was a pause and she said, "You never do anything with me." I almost ran off the road. "I never do anything with you?!? I am with you all day long. I spend hours with you every day teaching you history, math, spelling, geography, reading with you. I even played Scrambled States with you this morning. That's a game! How can you say I never do anything with you?" Then she passed teary and launched right into the ugly cry and said, "You don't understand. During the day you're just my teacher, not my mom."

Oh... Darn.

I was counting all that time as quality time together. She was just counting it as school.

I saw that time as us having mommy/daughter (and son) time. She saw that time as teacher/student time.

Hmm.

I thought about it for a minute and it made sense to me. Since I have taken responsibility for educating our children, I try to use every moment I can to squeeze in some kind of learning. The problem is, the children don't want every moment we spend together to be turned into a teachable moment. Sometimes they just want to have fun with their mom. I had combined the roles, but they don't like it that way. They love having me as their teacher, but they miss having me as their mom.

I said, "You know what? I understand what you're saying and it makes sense to me. Let's play Sleeping Queens tonight." She let out a big sigh of relief and said, "You really understand? I love you, Mommy."

For the record, I won the game.

Halloween

One of my kiddos loves artsy/crafty activities. Every now and then, I try to find some activities that nurture her love of all things creative. It's also good for my kiddo who does not particularly enjoy artsy/crafty things.

Here are some fun Halloween crafts that we did this week.

I found this idea for Salt Dough Pumpkins at CraftTown. I love the recipe for Salt Dough. We'll be using that again at Thanksgiving and Christmas! For the pumpkins, we used tempra paint instead of acrylic because it's what we had on hand. We didn't use the glitter spray because we wanted them just orange. We painted our toothpick stems rather than using colored toothpicks. The kiddos wanted brown stems instead of green the directions suggest.

I bought a Haunted Mansion decorating kit for $10 at the grocery. I didn't have very high expectations for how it would work out because it was so cheap, but I was pleasantly surprised. I think it turned out really cute!

These Footprint Ghosts are my favorite thing we did this week. I love them! I just bought black felt and white paint. I painted the bottom of each child's foot and they made a footprint on the felt. Once the paint was dry, they used a Sharpie to draw eyes and a mouth. I created a rod pocket by folding the top of the felt over a bit and securing it with fabric glue. I inserted a wooden dowel, tied some orange yarn on the dowel and, presto, we had ghost banners.

We also did a little study on the history of Halloween. The History Channel has a very good piece on the origins of the day.

Happy Halloween!

The Pumpkin Patch!

Earlier this week, a small group of Otherwise Educating friends took a very informal, last minute field trip to the Pumpkin Patch at our church.

Pastor Taud did a fun science lesson on different types of energy...

...while the children looked on.

Did the pumpkin sink or float?

Next, we had another science lesson where the children dropped different sized pumpkins in a tank and learned that all pumpkins float, regardless of size, because they are 90% water.

The kids made pumpkin snot.

Ewww...

Finally, the kiddos worked together to put a pumpkin jigsaw puzzle together. It was more difficult than we thought it would be.

The girls got a little help from Patch staff member, Ms. Corinna.


Pumpkins...ahhhh.

Recess In The Rain

I considered doing a unit study on weather but decided it was so much easier to just say yes when the kiddos asked today if they could take a break from math and go play in the rain. What better way to learn about weather than to experience it?

They learned a little about changing the course of the water's flow by placing rocks in the stream.

But mostly they just had fun.

Play

Since we began this journey of Otherwise Educating, I have noticed that the children play more. It's not just that they play more, but they also play differently. When they play, they're more likely to choose creative play...PlayDoh, clay, Legos, Lincoln Logs, etc. I'm not sure if it's because they simply have more time to play or if the way they learn allows the creative side of their brain to develop more freely. Either way, I'm loving it. I think that play is such an important part of learning for children. I really love when they incorporate what they're learning into their play.

We recently we saw a marching band performance that included a story about the Berlin Wall. (Unless you have a child in marching band, you're probably thinking, "Berlin Wall...marching band?" Marching band performances have changed a lot since I was in high school.) The story was of two sisters on different sides of The Wall. Ever curious, the children wanted to know what the Berlin Wall was, so we took a little detour from our History Timeline and studied a little about it.

A couple of days later, after much begging and pleading on the part of Thing 4, and much dreading and resisting on my part, I gave in and got out the Moon Sand. (I think whoever invented Moon Sand hates mothers.) Thing 4 called me in to look at her creation.

It's the Berlin Wall (and the sisters) in Moon Sand!

If you look closely, you can see an "E" in the above photo. She scratched "Free" on this side of the wall.

So cool. But I still hate Moon Sand.

Conjunction, Junction, What's Your Function?

Since I am a child of the 70s and early 80s, when Shurley said it was time to learn about conjunctions and interjections, you just know I had to pull out my Schoolhouse Rock! DVD.

"Hurray! I'm for the other team!"

I can hardly wait until we do our government unit!