4-H Cloverbuds – Pets

We finished up our second theme with Cloverbuds today.

We began our Pet unit two weeks ago with a field trip to a local Petco.  None of the pet stores in our area do guided tours anymore but Petco provides materials on their website for self-guided and virtual field trips. 

As we looked at the various animals I emphasized what would make an animal a good pet versus a bad pet and why some may be good pets but not right for a given family.   Some examples would be the space needed for large dogs or large reptiles (iguanas can be 6 feet nose to tip of the tail when full grown), the longevity of an animal (some parrots and reptiles can live 50 years or longer) and being able to provide the proper food (live crickets or mice for some reptiles) and atmosphere (heat lamps needed for many fish, reptiles and amphibians). It was a good tour.  The hamsters were running on their wheels, the ferrets were awake and curious, the birds were chirping.   This particular store had mostly canaries and parakeets but did have some cockatiels as well.



One of the employees took out a ball python for the kids to get a closer look.



The kids all loved the tropical fish and were surprised that you could have a shark in a fish tank.

Today we held the business portion of our meeting.  As always we started with the Pledge of Allegiance and the 4-H Pledge (which I still don’t know and really need to memorize).   At our last meeting I felt like some of the kids were disappointed that they weren’t picked for their turn quickly enough so I decided to stop the raising hands for turns.  I put each kids name on a popsicle stick and put them in an opaque cup.  I picked the first kid, then each kid picked the next one as they finished up their turn.

The kids were all asked to bring in a stuffed animal that would represent a good pet and be prepared to tell the group about it and why it made a good pet.  Alternatively, they could bring in an animal that would make a bad pet and tell why.  We had a mix of good and bad pets but the kids were very good about telling the group the proper information.  We definitely have some kids who LOVE speaking in front of a group and some that are more hesitant but everyone did a great job.

After the kids did their presentations we talked a little bit more about whether certain animals would make good pets or not.  We discussed a few unusual situations – like that pet turtles in NJ need a permit and cannot be wild caught.

The first of our active games was Rover Says.  We played it just like Simon Says but all the activities were things animals would do like roll over, beg like a dog, purr like a cat, hop like a bunny, slither like a snake, jump like a frog, climb like a lizard, etc.   The kids were really good at this and it took me a few tries to catch them.

We then played freeze dance but using animal movements.  Some chose to dance with their stuffed animals, or make them dance.  I used my I-Touch with animal themed songs on it like Walk the Dinosaur, Diggity Dog, Itsy Bitsy Spider (a very peppy upbeat version), Tiki Tiki Tiki Room, Ladybug Picnic, Scooby Doo (a hip-hop version of the theme song), and Purple People Eater (I know, not exactly a pet).

After the kids had the chance to work out the wiggles, we set up for our crafts.  They had the choice to make a paper bag puppet or a paper plate mask of a pet.  Or both.   We had some wonderful pets made.



A few of the boys weren’t interested in anything termed a “craft” so I may need to think of some alternative activities for future meetings.  Many of the girls, on the other hand, made multiple and varied projects.

We meet in the library so there is some limitation to what we can do for crafts.  No paint, no loose glitter, nothing that will cause a major mess.  Fifteen kids can make a pretty good mess anyway but the materials we use have to be easy to just pick up, nothing that needs to be scrubbed out of the floor.  The worst I had to deal with this time was loose feathers and a couple of blobs of glue on the tables.

In two weeks we will be taking a field trip to the Bug Museum of New Jersey for our Creepy Crawly unit.

Weekly Wrap-up

We jumped back into school this week with some fun and challenging additions to our workload. 

I signed up for Reading Eggs using some discount codes that were circulating a few weeks ago.  Vicki has continued to struggle with blending but insists she wants to learn to read.  She’s not as into the computer as Georgie is but she did enjoy Reading Eggs and completed the first 4 lessons this week.  She played at the table wearing headphones while I worked with Georgie on his work.

Georgie, on the other hand, LOVES the computer and really enjoyed Reading Eggs.  He started at Lesson 70, which seemed to be slightly lower than his true reading level but there were still some things that were new to him.  In three days, he played enough to move up to Lesson 107.  He did this completely in his free time after we finished the rest of school.  As long as he continues to enjoy Reading Eggs and progresses well, I’m going to stop OPGTR but continue Explode the Code.  He should be starting ETC 4 next week.

As part of school this week, I did the San Diego Quick Assessment of Reading Ability with Georgie.  I didn’t present is as a test, I just replaced the sheet we would normally do for OPGTR with the list of words from the Assessment.   One error indicates Independent level, two errors Instructional level.  Reading level is the highest level where 8 or more were read correctly.  Georgie read all the words through the 1st grade level, had one wrong each in 2nd grade and 3rd grade.  In 4th grade, he had only 4 correct but on the 5th grade list he had 6 correct.  Which appears to place him at a 3rd grade reading level.

Georgie seems to prefer reading non-fiction encyclopedia-type books when picking his own selections.  This week he spent a lot of time looking through our First Field Guide to Mammals.   We have four or five similar field guides and probably a couple dozen encyclopedias, so he has lots to keep his interest if he continues to prefer reading these.

Vicki didn’t do much else in the way of school this week.   We did another two pages in The Reading Lesson but are still working at the beginning of Lesson 1.   She did two pages in HWT, a couple pages from Get Ready for the Code, which she insisted in doing with a pen, and a decent tracing of her name for the first time.  The rest of the time she played with her wipe-off boards, the unifix blocks or the Tag maps.   She will be finished with GRC and moving on to Get Set for the Code in the next couple of weeks.

Georgie did Lesson 20 of All About Spelling this week.  I let him do the words on the Magna Doodle and after the first couple of words, he realized they all ended with –ng, so he began erasing only the beginning of the word and leaving the –ng.  At that point, I switched to having him write some of the phrases so he would have to actually think about how to spell the words.  We will be starting AAS 2 shortly.

I’m continuing to have him alternate copywork with pages in his Handwriting without Tears book in order to give him more practice before trying the 2nd grade book with smaller lines.  This week he did '”Look before you leap” and “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”.  I’m picking the quotes from the kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade levels of What your x grader needs to know books.  Whenever he does this copywork, I also have him write his full name and the date.

We are continuing with Math Mammoth 2 doing 3 to 4 pages each day.  Georgie likes math so at the last Scholastic Dollar Days I picked up some books with various math puzzles in them.   We added in some from Algebra Readiness Made Easy: Grade 2 this week.  These were logic puzzles where clues are given to determine the ages of 4 different animals.  I was planning to go through the first one with him but he found it while I was still working with Vicki so I waited to see what he would do.  He had no problem figuring out the solution and enjoyed doing it so I will continue to add them to his independent work each day.

Through Pinterest I found a link to an addition game that I thought Georgie would like and would serve as a way to drill on math facts.   The original was set up to use with a regular 6-sided die.  Since Georgie is past that point in addition, I made up my own board that had addition and subtraction problems with answers up to 12, and used a 12-sided die to play.  Each player rolls the die and then moves forward to the next equation that has that number as a solution.  Georgie basically had to solve every problem on the board to find the correct ones.  I uploaded my file to Google Docs here if anyone is interested in trying it out.

Georgie is still working out of his binder with a few things that can be done independently coming first (usually HWT or copywork, ETC, Reading Comprehension and his Algebra readiness) which he does while I work with Vicki.  Previously, If he finished before Vicki and I did, I felt like he wound up wasting time and if he slipped away to the computer it was very hard to get him back.  So, a new addition this week was this page:

 

Next to him on the kitchen nook bench were a few books for him to chose from -a few Level 2 or 3 readers and one harder chapter book he can try if he wants to, his Draw Write Now books with paper, and a small white board with a set of magnetic words that I printed off months ago.    This gives him something productive to do while keeping him close by.  This week he mostly played around with the magnetic words.  He took them off the board and played with them on the table.  At least he did until Vicki joined him while I made lunch and put a bunch of them in the cracks between the nook benches.

Even though I didn’t put it on his list, I did have his Mad Libs Jr. book available as well and that was his second choice this week.  (You can see the magnetic words in the background.  They are color coded by part of speech.)

Thursday was a gorgeous Spring-like day.  Very unusual for NJ in March, so the kids and I took a walk to the mailboxes.  In order to convince Georgie that a walk was a good idea, I printed off a Nature Scavenger Hunt list for them to check-off.  Since it was early in the year and I knew they wouldn’t find some things (no dandelions or butterflies right now) I only made one sheet and told them we would just do it for fun.  Each of them had their own crayon and my insistence that it wasn’t contest didn’t stop Georgie from periodically announcing that he was winning.  I taped the list to a clipboard since it was very windy outside and we started right in our backyard where we found a purple flower (crocuses that are confused by the weather), tree bark, pine needles and pine cones.

Other things that were on our list that we found were acorns, a y-shaped stick, smooth and jagged edged leaves, round and triangular shaped rocks and birds.  We weren’t able to find clovers, dandelions or a spider web.  I was also very surprised that we saw no squirrels or chipmunks – both of which are usually very prolific around here.

There are many versions of nature hunts around the web.  I made up my own to make it more relevant to what is around here but it looks like I may need to make them seasonal as well.

Next week we have a 4-H Cloverbud meeting with the topic of discussion being pets.  We will also start US History with a study of Native Americans and/or Science with Rocks and Minerals.  We have out of the house activities four afternoons next week (YIKES!!) so it may be a light week otherwise.

Mardi Gras!!

George Sr., Steph and I spent most of last week visiting with friends in Mississippi and taking trips over to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.   It was crazy and fascinating at the same time.  We saw some great parades, including one where Steph caught beads thrown by Mariska Hargitay (star of L&O:SVU).  Cyndi Lauper, Harry Connick Jr. and Hillary Swank were also riding in the parade.

We visited the St. Louis Cemetery Number One.  It was like a little city with all the above ground crypts.  The history was fascinating with some graves from the early 1800’s.

 

The grave of Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen of New Orleans.

We had some wonderful meals while we were there, including lunch at Bubba Gump’s.  Steph and I spent a lot of our time shopping at the French Market and all the little shops.  Steph loved the elaborate masks and bought a few to start a collection.

  

Pirates Alley was really cool and slightly creepy after dark.

Everyone thought I was weird to want to take a ride on a riverboat so I settled for a ride on a streetcar.

It was a great trip and I hope to go back again sometime.

4-H Cloverbuds – Weather

We had the first theme-based meeting for our new club – the Curious Cloverbuds.  Cloverbuds is for kids who are too young for traditional 4-H.  Instead of the long-term projects in specific areas (sewing/quilting, gardening, raising small animals, breeding livestock, shooting, etc.), Cloverbuds uses activities to introduce kids in Kindergarten through 3rd grade to a variety of a topics.  We are a homeschool group so grades are a little more flexible then they might be otherwise.   We have 4 to 9 year olds in our group.  Which does offer some challenges with finding appropriate activities but I think I have a pretty good plan going.  (More information on Cloverbuds can be found here.)

We meet in a local library’s meeting room which offers some limitations on what we can do, especially when it comes to experiments, cooking and crafts.   My plan for each topic is to have a library meeting which will include a discussion/demonstration, an active game and a craft; and on a different date, a field trip appropriate to the topic.  I was unable to arrange a field trip for our weather theme so we only have the library meeting for this particular topic.

Each meeting starts with the Pledge of Allegiance and the 4-H pledge, led by one of the kids (with assistance).

We started our Weather meeting with some discussion questions. 

“Who knows what today’s weather is?” 
(cold, cloudy and windy)
“How do you know?”
(we went outside)
”What is another way to tell what the weather is or to see what the weather is going to be later today or tomorrow?”
(look at a weather report, online or on television).

At this point we looked at a print-out of the day’s weather report, discussed the various components, and decided whether our earlier assessment (cold, cloudy and windy) was correct and where that information could be found on the weather report.  We discussed the terminology used (humidity, wind speed, high temperature, low temperature, etc.)

We continued with a discussion of the people who study weather to make predictions (meteorologists) and some of the tools used (satellites, thermometers, hygrometers, barometers, anemometers, etc.).

We discussed how one of the reasons it is important to know what the weather is going to be is to avoid unsafe situations.  We played a game called Safe/Unsafe, that I found here.  I read different scenarios to the kids -
Putting on sunscreen before going outside.
Playing in deep puddles or streams after rainstorms.
Staying away from downed power lines after a storm.

If the described scenario is Safe, the kids stood up.  If it was Unsafe, they sat down.  We would then discuss why.

Rather than haul a bunch of items to the library, I printed out cards with various pictures on them to play part of the “Weather Mystery Bag” game.  Each kid drew a card showing an item associated with a different kind of weather (umbrella, sunglasses, mittens, swimsuit, etc.).  They then took turns coming up and telling everyone about their item and what kind of weather it would be used for.

 

At this point I told the kids we were going to play a game in honor of the weather we ALMOST had that day (snow).  I pulled out pom-pom “snowballs” and let the kids have a brief snowball fight with them.   I made 15 yarn pom-poms for this activity.  The first two I made using two cardboard donuts wrapped with yarn and cut apart.   I used a popsicle stick to keep control of the yarn while threading it through the hole.

After I managed to stab my hand with the seam ripper I was using to cut the yarn (and realized that it was taking forever) I decided to change tactics.  I made the rest of the pom-poms by wrapping the yarn around a small book, tying off the middle and cutting the loops.  Turns out the kids actually preferred these floppier “snowballs”.

I had the kids line up with a snowball each and we did some fun relays.  They would see how far they could walk holding the snowballs different ways (under the chin, on head, bent over with it on their back, on toes walking on heels – thank you to my Facebook group for suggestions :-D). I let the kids suggest a few ideas and let them play until things deteriorated into another snowball fight.

For our next activity, we talked briefly about wind and then the kids were each given a straw.  I scattered cotton ball “clouds” on the floor and the kids blew them around using the straws.

We finished up with a craft.  Since our meeting was on Valentine’s day, I brought construction paper and foam Valentine’s stickers and let the kids make pictures. 

Our next topic is Pets and includes a field trip to a local Petco store.

Weekly Update: 2/6/12 – 2/10/12

We had a great week!   Lots of visible progress with both kids.  

First for the fun stuff.  I lied when I said we’d be starting our new Science, History and Geography this week.  I decided to hold off for a few weeks since Steph, Daddy and I are going to visit friends in Mississippi and take in a few Mardi Gras festivities in neighboring New Orleans, while the little guys enjoy some time with their grandparents. 

We decided to have some Valentine’s Day fun instead.  We participated in a Valentine exchange through the Secular Homeschool forums.  The kids were very excited as their Valentines came in the mail and eagerly looked for the right state (and one from Canada) to mark on our map.

Georgie made Valentine cards for his special cousin Jade and some other friends, while Vicki just made decorations to put up all over the house.

Vicki had a real break-through this week.  I’ve been periodically trying different phonics reading programs with her including Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, the sample pages from All About Reading Level 1 and Progressive Phonics.  But she just hasn’t been ready for blending.  She knows all her letter sounds (thanks to Leap Frog videos) but she’s been working on the pre-level book Get Ready for the Code for extra reinforcement (and because she wanted to “do school”).  We are almost ready to move on to Get Set for the Code and she’s been doing very well and enjoys the work.   This past week I pulled out an old copy of The Reading Lesson which was the first thing I bought for Georgie to homeschool with when he was 4.  He hated it but Vicki loves it and it worked!  She was able to do the blends in one of the initial lessons (a t, c a, c o, t a, s a) without any problems. 

 

She has been continuing along with Handwriting without Tears and has shown more willingness to carefully trace the letters and taking her time coloring the pictures.   She hasn’t wanted to do the name tracing pages I prepared for her but I continue to bring it out everyday and just put it away if she doesn’t want to do it.

Georgie spent a lot of time this week reading a couple of the encyclopedias we have.  He says he likes reading the books with “lots of different little informations in them”.   His favorite was A Scholastic Kid’s Encyclopedia: Science but he also enjoyed the Little Kid’s First Big Book of Why.   He had no trouble with the vocabulary in either of these and just started at the beginning and read them through in order.

 

I’m continuing to alternate Georgie’s Handwriting without Tears with some short copywork.  I made the mistake one day of putting his HWT workbook out at the same time as his binder.  He ended up writing a word in HWT, then doing a problem in the binder, then back to his HWT workbook, then back to his binder.  Probably not the most efficient way for him to be working.

He has almost completed Explode the Code Book 3.  Many people recommend postponing Book 4 since it is a big jump in difficulty.  We will probably start with Book 4 and if it proves too difficult, switch to Book 5.

Georgie is also almost finished with Math Mammoth 1st grade.  We will be working completely within 2A and 2B by the end of next week.  He still enjoys being able to mix up topics.

He’s continuing with the free Scholastic GUM and McMillian/McGraw Treasures Grammar.  We are currently working on adjectives and Georgie loves making things more complicated than they need to be.  He had to pick an adjective for the sentence “The sheep ran down the _________ hill.”  He had to think about this for a few minutes and then stated “well, sheep aren’t very good climbers so I’m going to go with small for the hill”.   He also had to write other answers to fit the word – “red” was written in red, “pink” in pink, “big” was written BIG and “pretty” had to be written in pink and purple because “they are pretty colors even though I don’t like them”.  Once we finish the first grade level of these we will be switching to Spectrum Grade 2 workbooks.

He is also almost finished with Level 1 All About Spelling.  I’m taking some time to review all the past lessons to make sure everything has been mastered up to this point before we move to Level 2.

Next week we have 4-H Cloverbuds on Tuesday (topic for the day is Weather), Homeschool Bowling on Wednesday and Homeschool Gymnastics on Friday so we’re going to concentrate on our core subjects along with some more Valentine’s Day activities.

A couple weeks update

After a really good start getting back to school right after the holidays, things pretty much fell apart.   Between continuing improvement projects around the house, the resumption of homeschool bowling and gymnastics, the start of our 4-H Cloverbud club, and some absolutely gorgeous weather – formal schooling has taken a bit of a backseat. 

It looks like we are going to have a great group for our 4-H Cloverbud Club.   15 children were enrolled ranging from 4 to 8 years old.  I’m very excited at the possibilities for field trips and group activities.  Vicki spent some time studying our Pledge of Allegiance and 4-H Pledge board, although she seemed to think it was a story about aliens and monsters.

The kids had fun playing grocery store with the cash register they received for Christmas.  According to Georgie, the hat (from an old dance costume of Steph’s) is completely necessary for the cashier to be official.

We spent one day without power and without a car, thanks to a large tree falling across the road and on power lines.  The kids spend the day camping in front of the fire and setting up tents all over the house.

We enjoyed some of the absolutely gorgeous, Spring-like weather outside preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse with the Nerf guns the kids also got for Christmas.   Those bright orange darts showed up real well against the blue sky.  I drew a target on a large box with chalk so they would have something to aim for and I wouldn’t have to spend so much time searching for darts in the neighbor’s yard.

 

Both kids did progress a little bit in their regular school work.  Vicki insisted on doing “the duck page” in her Handwriting without Tears book so we ended up jumping ahead by about 10 pages. 

After she worked in some of her wipe-off books while I worked with Georgie, which included coloring her toe nails blue and some face painting.

Next week we will be back to full days of school.  We will be alternating topics in History (US starting with Native Americans), Geography (US starting with our home state of New Jersey) and Science (rocks and minerals).