an absorbing experiment
December 9, 2011
The science experiments that go over the best around here are ones that double as art projects. Our MSC love them. Who am I kidding? So do I.
Our science studies lately have been about absorbency. We made these super fun (and pretty neat looking) experiments the other day.
Each child got a colorful piece of scrapbooking paper. Using a bottle of Elmer’s glue, they “scribbled” abstract designs and lines all over the page. While the glue was still wet, we set the pieces of paper onto cookie sheets. Then, we shook salt straight from the big container all over the glue lines until they were covered. The each child lifted up their paper and let the extra salt fall off onto the cookie sheet.
While the glue was still wet (although I’m sure this would still have worked even if you waited until it was dry), we used straws, covering our thumbs over the top, to drop little bits of food coloring onto the salt lines.
The color spread quickly along the salt, and we talked about absorbency. The dried experiments are now hanging in our living room. Yup, I just taped them up with masking tape. I’m classy like that! We tested out the absorbency of other household items. Is the table absorbent? No! Is the sponge? Yes! Then I had our MSC list as many absorbent and non-absorbent things they could think of. The best answer? As to something that is not absorbent, Nuggey offered, “Grandpa!”
No, I guess he isn’t!
I fantasize about the school bus driver.
November 3, 2011
Sometimes, I fantasize about the bus driver.
I mean, not about any bus driver in particular. I don’t even know any school bus drivers. But I fantasize about the bus driver anyway. You know, the one who pulls up in his long yellow ride and scoops my happy, eager to learn students up and takes them away for a few hours, bringing them back smarter than they were before.
What’s that you say? I decided to be a homeschooling mom, so what am I fantasizing about that for!?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s one of those grass is always greener things. Or maybe it’s just me. But there are some days, some moments of some days rather, when I honestly do daydream about the bus driver. I am fairly certain that if our children were in a brick and mortar school that I’d fantasize about homeschooling. But as it currently stands, I from time to time I actually wonder what on earth we were thinking when we decided to homeschool.
After all, the entire burden of building our children’s educational foundation is upon us. Some of the time, I feel as if I’m doing my bigs an educational disservice because of the time I spend with my littles, and other times I feel as if I’m doing my littles an educational disservice because of the time I spend teaching my bigs. And then other times I feel overwhelmed by how much work it takes to teach my children well.
But, for the most part, having our family always together is brilliant. We love it, this crazy chaos of always having five kids around, nary a school bus in sight to take them away. The work I put in it definitely worth it, as is the extreme lack of me time in my life. Being able to teach my children at home has it’s difficulties, but the thankfulness I have at knowing I can meet them where they are at, accommodate their learning styles, be intimately involved in their education and be there for all of their aha! moments makes up for the difficulties. Yup, not having to rush to get out the door each morning, getting to eat lunch with my children each day at noon…
…and being able to encourage their natural talents and innate interests totally makes homeschooling the choice for us.
And I feel really, really good about homeschooling our children. Most of the time.
During the other times, I fantasize about the school bus driver.
History books, Schmistory books.
April 15, 2011
I mean, really, who needs history books!? Okay, fine. I jest. Sort of. Books are great. Awesome. Spectacular resources and excellent means of information transfer. Still, history books aren’t our thing.
Maybe that’s because our children are all ages six and under. Hitting the books isn’t exactly what school is about for us at this point. While I’m sure someday it will be to some extent, I still have a feeling we’re going to continue to be more of a “the world is our classroom” kind of a family.
Yes, this is our classroom. The big, wide world. (And, yes, those are our four oldest, running free like their parents encourage them to do.) In case you didn’t know, my husband and I homeschool our children. So do you, you know, even if your kiddos go to a brick and mortar school. We all teach our children every moment we are with them, through the examples and experiences we provide them with. Our family has simply decided to forgo “regular school” for our clan at this point, preferring instead to teach them at home.
Or, not at home as the case may be.
Homeschooling is kind of a funny word for how we are teaching our MSC* at the moment. Road schooling is more like it. We also believe in museum schooling, un schooling, church schooling, National Park schooling, history center schooling and backyard schooling.
(*Many Small Children)
We have been on the road in an RV for almost three weeks now. I’ve been working, we’ve been driving, and we’ve had plenty of time to sample boiled peanuts, see the ocean, sing bedtime songs, take baths in Rubbermaid tubs, laugh around the campfire, get (lots of) dirt under our fingernails and learn history.
Learn it without books, that is.
We try to stop at as many historic locations along our journey as we can, pulling Happy Wheels into spots where our kids can reenact parts of the Civil War, learn about life during the Colonial times, feel the tools used by early Americans and taste traditional food.
Indeed, there is nothing like learning about nature from nature, about history from history, about relationships by building closer ones with each other, and about bugs from the very bugs themselves.
Yes, I find myself thinking lately, “History books, Schmistory books. Who needs ‘em!?”
Maybe our brood will eventually. But for right now?
We are huffing and puffing, tasting and sipping, feeling and touching, listening and learning, all while on the road, using little to no books. Well, except for the Beginning Readers and Boxcar Children we read in the RV.
The world is our classroom, these are our students. And life is our teacher.
If Dr. Seuss wrote about Big Mac and homeschooling…
February 2, 2011
If Dr. Seuss wrote a book about Big Mac and homeschooling, I’d totally read it. But he didn’t. So I’ll have to write one myself. You’re welcome.
Homeschooling.
Big Mac can do it in a box. He can do with a fox. He can do it in our house. He can do it with a mouse. He can learn by dawn’s first light. He can learn so late at night.
Big Mac can learn both here and there. He can learn most anywhere!
HeCanLearnMostAnywhere from Jennifer McKinney on Vimeo.
Even in Mom and Dad’s bed. Yes, the other night, our firstborn and I decided to forgo his math lesson at the kitchen table, instead moving venues to my bed, since his lesson for that day was just a review in his workbook. That’s what all homeschoolers do, right? Well, at any rate, we do! And he does. And I love him. And we love homeschooling. And bedschooling. And eating popcorn while pajama schooling.
With a lox, fox, box or not. All I know is that he can learn most anywhere. Even while I wash my hair. Or as I’m folding underwear.
Okay, I’ll stop. You’re welcome.
waste not, want not…and every parent is a homeschooling parent
January 13, 2011
If you are a parent, the chances are very good that you’re a homeschooling parent. What? Your children go to public school, perhaps? Yes, but you still teach them at home, even if they also go to a brick and mortar school.
From the time our children are very young, we are teaching them everything they need to know about how to communicate, eat, move around and sleep. We teach some things by example and our children follow our lead. Other things are perhaps taught in more structured ways, be it learning numbers with flashcards, sitting down and reading a book together or teaching math concepts with Cheerios, adding them together before eating them.
Oh yes, or learning to write letters in flour and rice.
Sure, you could use a drawing app on your iPhone or iPad, and those are fun, too! But for young children, who usually learn so well through touch and manipulation, using very tactile techniques for learning has worked well as I teach our young ones.
Even our MSC who are old enough to hold a pencil and practice forming letters on paper still enjoy our messy letter writing activities. The other day, I gave each child a cookie sheet with flour all over it. I would make a letter, either in the flour or on a piece of paper, and they would all try making it with their finger in the flour. A simple shake of the cookie sheet after each letter created a smooth, clean slate!
Think Etch-a-Sketch or Magnadoodle. But lots more primitive.
We tried rice, too, but that wasn’t as easy to make letters in, as the rice would cave in on what you just wrote.
It is easier for young children to make letters with their fingers when they are first learning. Plus, a messy activity like this is fun for them, and I’ve found that they stay engaged in learning letters longer this way than when I try to use pencil and paper.
With how digital things are becoming in our world, I’m determined not to let handwriting become a lost art with our children. So, flour on cookie sheets it is for our little ones now. And when we were done with the flour, we added water and made our paper mache!
Waste not, want not, I always say.
Actually, I never really say that. But I should start.
See Big Mac read.
November 16, 2010
Hear his Mama proud.
See Big Mac read.
Read, Big Mac. Read!
romanticizing the olden days
September 3, 2010
It can be easy, for me at least, to romanticize the olden days. Well, I didn’t always used to be this way, thinking about how quaint it would be to grind one’s own grain and make meals for the men folk to eat when they came in from the fields.
But as the years have passed since I was a nose ring wearing, hot pink hair sporting single gal who ate Taco Bell two times a week and microwaved the rest of her meals in plastic containers, I’ve started to fancy myself a little more, how shall I say, crunchy.
Don’t get me wrong, I want nothing to do with the plain frocks of the days of yore. I’ll boil beans and learn to darn socks and maybe even develop an interest in pickling and canning, but I still want my brightly colored clothing and central vac. I’m a bit of a bandwagon granola chick, I will agree. But still. I’m pretty earthy and I would like to move our family’s ways even more and more towards how things were in the olden days.
Or, should I say, that’s what I used to want. After the super fun outing super educational homeschool field trip I took our MSC on the other day, I’m singing a slightly different tune.
My new tune goes something like, “I romaaaanticize the olden days, but now just a liiiiiiittle. I want to be natural and make lots of my own stuuuuuuuuuuff, but now I also realize how haaaaaaaaaard that would be.” Sung to the tune of, er, I didn’t really figure that out. Sorry. I think I’ll not quit my day job.
I mean, for the love of Pete, in the olden days, farmers had to use oxen like these to plow their fields! Uffda. How do I know that? Well, our children and I learned all about what farm life was like in our state gobs of years ago when we visited a working 1850′s farm the other day.
And by working, I do mean working. Upon entering the farm, we were put to work. Well, thankfully the workers at the farm, all dressed in period clothing, recognized that me being there with five young children, one of whom wanted to nurse rather frequently, was work in and of itself. So, instead, our children worked.
Gathering eggs from the chicken coop, sorting beans for the next day’s dinner, helping with the laundry (Goodness sakes alive, never in my entire 33 years of life have I ever been so thankful for my washer and dryer!), assisting the farmhands and gathering hay were among our MSC’s conquests that day.
Thankfully, we were given frequent breaks.
When we nibbled on strawberries.
And snoozed.
And drank some lemonade and strolled down by the river while I thanked my lucky stars that I was never granted my wish to be able to live the simple life like in the olden days.
Don’t get me wrong. I still love living naturally and think we busy Americans can learn a lot from the people back in the day who lived without being connected to their iPhones, ate whole foods and knew the power of hard work.
But sweet pickles and homemade honey, I won’t ever have the same view of the folks who came before us as I did before. Man, those people must have been hard workers, I tell ya! I was so thankful to be able to take our children there (And thankful as well to be able to “count” that outing as our school lesson for the day, or maybe the week.). They had an absolute blast and really soaked in a lot of learning. And spilled a lot of beans on the kitchen floor, not naming any names (Cough, Stellan.).
While I watched our children help a farmer fix his broken (Wooden!) equipment, I was also struck by how hard these pretend old fashioned people worked. I mean, this place is open nearly all week. And they really, really do everything (That I saw, at least.) the old fashioned way. The farm is a totally working one and, although I completely understood that before taking our MSC there, seeing it in action was totally different.
The kids were in awe of the place. It was completely gorgeous there! Can you see Nuggey forging ahead, holding his “map” in this picture? They guided me all around the homestead and farm, letting me know where they wanted to work next.
Besides the new appreciation I got for the families who lived and worked like this, we also all got a really fun experience.
I’m pretty sure our kids wished that they lived there. I’ll try not to burst their bubbles just yet. I’ll let them swim around in the sea of romanticizing the olden days for a while. It really does seem like a beautiful, peaceful time. Just with, you know, lots and lots (And lots!) of hard work. Next time, I’m totally smuggling in some frozen Snickers bars to pass out on the sly to the workers. Like, totally.
In the meantime, they’ll just be nibbling on this soon to be pickled vegetable (Or was it a fruit?) that had the name “melon” in its name, but wasn’t really a melon. And I forgot the whole name. And washing it down with the homemade ketchup (In the clay jar.) that the gal in the kitchen made while we were there. Oh, and no screens equal lots of flies, in case you were wondering.
MckFlurry napped almost the entire time we were there when he was not nursing. Really, the outing with all of them wasn’t too hard at all. Children ages 5 and under are free, so that was a major score for the home team. And Flurry got to nap on the farmer’s bed in the main house. The bedroom was right off the kitchen! Crazy. Although, I lived in a rented, old house like that when I was a teacher. My bedroom was off the kitchen. It always smelled like, well, food in there. Which I didn’t care for. But it did have super tall ceilings, and thick, white crown moulding. I painted my bedroom a sunshine yellow and had a huge mosquito net from Pier I hanging above my bed. But I digress.
And once, when I was nursing in the rocking chair in the kitchen, watching a few of my children collect wood, I asked the others to see if they could search the house for the refrigerator. It bought me about eight minutes, so that was nice. And then I told them why they couldn’t find one. They were in awe. And then they wanted to explore the cellar and find the kittens again.
We went out to the barn and helped feed hay (That the big boys had helped the field workers gather into the wagon earlier.) to the animals. Our baby boy had a really rough go of it that day, as you can see.
Stellan was utterly enamored with the horses, Nuggey with the cats.
We watched men make gigantic (And I do mean gigantic!!) piles of hay, heard a farmhand ask my kids if they were farm kids (And later told me he was very impressed, for non farm kids, with their knowledge of straw and hay and various types of bales to which I responded that they didn’t get that from me!) and swept the barn. I mean, my kids swept. Not me. I just pushed the stroller, made sure no one ran into a field with animals and took pictures. But I guess you probably gathered most of that already.
Small Fry and Stellan really loved the hay loft.
And exploring the shed.
As for me, as I said, I enjoyed the new appreciation I gained for the folks whose lives I used to think were mostly lovely and simple.
I enjoyed being with my children as much as ever, the strawberries we brought, the time spent looking at the river and our strolls through the woods.
And, in case I haven’t mentioned it, MckFlurry enjoyed lots of milk and lots of sleep.
And then we said goodbye to the farm and went back to our lives full of technology and modern conveniences.
But all six of us are better for the experience. And we can’t wait to go back again!
