19 May 2013 8 Comments

Air Pressure Experiments

air pressure experiments wtih water and candle

Air is always pressing around everything, but we can’t see it. This week we did some experiments that helped us see air pressure in action.

Experiment 1 – Rising water

What You Need

  • shallow dish
  • tall glass
  • candle
  • clay
  • food colouring
  • matches/lighter
  • water
air pressure experiment wtih candle and water

What you do

1. Place the candle on top of the clay in the shallow dish.

air pressure experiment wtih candle and water

2. Pour in some water and add a few drops of food colouring.

air pressure experiment wtih candle and water

3. Light the candle and quickly place the inverted glass over it.

air pressure experiment with water and candle

What happens

When the candle burns out, the water level inside the glass rises.

air pressure experiment wtih candle and water

The scientific explanation

When the candle has used up the oxygen in the glass, the flame goes out. The air inside the glass cools and contracts, and water rises up into the glass to fill the gap.

Experiment 2 – Ice Water Can Crusher

What you need

  • empty drink can
  • shallow tray or dish
  • tongs
  • ice
  • water
  • stove or hot plate (and an old saucepan if, like me, you have an induction hob)
air pressure experiment - crushing can

What you do

1. Prepare a tray filled with enough ice to cover its base, and water to cover the ice.

2. Put a small amount of water into the empty can and set it on the stove until the water inside boils. (If you have an induction hob, place the can on the base of an old saucepan.)

3. Quickly pick up the can with the tongs and put it upside down into the tray of icy water so that the opening is under water.

What happens

Very soon after it enters the icy water, the can is suddenly and noisily crushed!

air pressure experiment - crushing can

The scientific explanation

When the can is placed in the cold water, the air inside it cools and contracts. The greater air pressure from outside presses on the can and crushes it.

My top tip

We had to do this twice as it didn’t work the first time.  I had put too much water in the can and didn’t heat it enough before putting it in the icy water. The second time I used less water and made sure steam was coming out before I put it in the water.

Experiment 3 – Only do this if you have a wide-necked glass bottle

We tried this one but our bottle didn’t have a wide enough opening for it to work properly.

Try to insert a (peeled) hard-boiled egg into the neck of a glass bottle. Observe that the egg is too big to go into the bottle.

air pressure experiments for kids

Don’t try and get an egg into a bottle this size!

Then drop a couple of burning matches into the bottle and try again. If your bottle neck is wide enough, after a few seconds the egg should be sucked into the bottle. This happens because when the air cools the pressure drops and the egg is sucked in to fill the gap.

Our bottle wasnt wide enough to suck in the egg, but the kids noticed that the egg changed shape because of the suction from inside the bottle. We gave it a bit of a push and the egg broke!

air pressure experiments for kids

It’s trying to get sucked in …

To get the egg back out of the bottle, turn the bottle upside down and blow hard into the bottle. This increases the air pressure and the egg pops out. (Or do what I did when I forgot these instructions, and instead light a match under the inverted bottle, which also works.)

air pressure experiments for kids

After a bit of help ;-)

Resources

All these experiments came from Science Experiments: Loads Of Explosively Fun Activities You Can Do.

Science Experiments Robert Winston

Join me at Adventures in Mommydom’s Science Sunday for more homeschool science fun.

by Lula B in Home Education, Science Tags: , , ,

17 May 2013 10 Comments

Lessons Learned – What’s Going Well This Term

homeschool planning

We’re not using any curriculum in our homeschool at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I don’t set goals for what I want us to achieve. In fact without a textbook telling us what we need to cover each week, it’s even more important for me to be clear about where we’re going.

The joy of routine

Detailed plans don’t work well for me, but I thrive on routines. A good routine offers a perfect balance of flexibility and structure. Routines allow us to spontaneously take a sunny springtime day off to play outside with friends, and then to jump back in the next day without worrying about “catching-up”. Routines can be adjusted to accommodate extra practice time for upcoming music exams, and we can make the most of the perks of homeschooling by taking term-time vacations without having to work double-time on our return to cover “missed” material.

The whiteboard in the picture above shows my big-picture planning for this term. Some subjects, like history, science and art, aren’t listed because we were already in a comfortable groove with them.  On the whiteboard I wrote new ideas and things we’d been letting slide, but which I knew I wanted to reintroduce into our regular routine.

Read aloud time

We listen to a lot of audiobooks together and individually, but there’s something special about family read-aloud time. This term I’ve prioritised getting together every day to read from a novel or non-fiction living book.  We’re finishing The Return of the Twelves at the moment (it’s good as everyone says). Sharing a novel in this way helps get us into the swing of reading aloud, so we’ve read more of all kinds of living books together this term.

Fun maths

I’ve written a lot recently about the fun we’ve been having with our new living maths routine. Definitely a success!

Copywork

I’m a big fan of copywork for teaching kids the elements of good writing. J(8) turned eight at Easter so I thought he might be ready to join C(9) doing copywork. Despite his slight dysgraphia and dyslexia, he seems to be quite enjoying it. He chooses his own book, props it up on a cookbook stand, and writes a sentence using his handiwriter pencil grip. Most of what he’s written comes from a Benny and Penny graphic novel, but that doesn’t worry me. As long as he’s practising writing, punctuation and spelling I know he’ll get there in the end (wherever “there” is).

J(8)'s copywork

J(8)’s copywork

C(9) has also been selecting her own copywork passages. She picks a book off the shelves depending on her mood. This term she’s written quotes from Magic School Bus books, Usborne science books, Homer, poems and even the back of an acrylic paint pot. Variety is a bonus!

C(9)'s copywork

C(9)’s copywork

This term I’ve been doing copywork alongside the children – an inspiring quote, a favourite poem or a great line from a novel. I enjoy it, and it reinforces the value of what the children are doing.

Project time

I love the idea of the children spending large amounts of time driving their own projects, with me as their learning mentor. After we rearranged our space to make materials more accessible, C(9) spontaneously creates much more often. I’ve been managing to have project time with each child individually a few times a week, but ideally I’d like us to spend more time doing project work.  I’m still working on where to find that time!

Freewriting

Like copywork, freewriting is something we all do together.  We set a timer for five minutes and, sometimes using Bravewriter Friday Freewrite prompts, keep writing until the beeper sounds. J(8) doesn’t follow the “rules” exactly – he prefers to tell stories using a mixture of pictures and writing (complete with his own “phonetic” spelling) – but he’s been really enthusiastic about freewriting so I’m not going to interfere in his creative process! Sometimes, in an unusual reversal of roles, C(9) gets cross because J(8) carries on writing well past the beep.

Freewriting

Freewriting

Schedule for J(8)

My final goal for this term was to provide J(8) with a daily schedule.  Whereas C(9) and I are fairly free-wheeling types, J(8) seems to work best when he knows what’s coming up, and when he’s done for the day. So for his benefit I’ve been making a daily whiteboard list of subjects which we cross off as we go along. This seems to have been working well.

Lesson-planning inspiration

Julie at Highhill Homeschool has launched a new link-up series to help homeschoolers inspire each other in lesson-planning. For the next month, the link-up theme is successes in your classroom, then beginning 4 July there’s a schedule for sharing planning different subjects across the curriculum. I hope you’ll join me there for more inspiration.

by Lula B in Home Education, Organization, Special Needs Tags: , , ,

15 May 2013 14 Comments

Fun With Tessellations

fun with tessellation

After we read about tessellations in The Great Number Rumble: A Story of Math in Surprising Places we decided to make our own artistic versions. I got the directions from Big Ideas for Small Mathematicians.

Tessellation is about regular patterns that split the plane up into lots of little tiles which fit together perfectly, without overlapping or leaving any gaps. Tessellation is fundamental to maths, because it’s all about symmetry.

We started with a cardboard square each (ours were about 5x5cm).  We talked about how we could cover a page with squares without leaving any gaps.

First we cut a piece from the bottom of our square. We were careful not to cut the corners off, and we found it easiest to cut from corner to corner (to avoid having to measure where to reattach the cut piece on the other side). We slid the cut-off piece upwards, and attached it with tape to the top edge of the square.

Tellellation square

Then we did the same on the left side of our square. We cut a piece out, slid it along to the right side, then reattached it.

Tessellating square

I asked the children if we had added any cardboard to our shapes, or taken any away (no). We agreed, then, that our shapes should take up the same total amount of space as our original squares.

maths fun with tessellations

We traced around our shape on a blank piece of paper, then carefully moved it along and traced around it again.  And again, and again until we’d covered the page.

Tessellating art

I traced over my shapes with a black Sharpie. (Do you think they look a bit like Fred from the Life of Fred books?!)

Our tessellations looked so pretty, we decided to paint them.

fun with tessellations

J(8)’s didn’t cover his paper without gaps – he was adamant he wanted to create his art his way – but he understood the idea! 

fun with tessllations2

Tessellation-inspired art ;-)

The artist M.C.Escher used tessellation to create amazing art.  This BBC video clip is excellent!

 

Mathematicians know that their subject is beautiful.  Escher shows us that it’s beautiful.

Prof. Ian Stewart, University of Warwick

For more maths ideas, visit the inspiring monthly carnival Math Teachers At Play over at my favourite maths blog, Let’s Play Math.

maths art fun with tessellations

Join me at:

Collage Friday at Homegrown Learners

Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Look What We Did at Hammock Tracks

Hobbies and Handicrafts at Highhill Homeschool

by Lula B in Art and crafts, living maths, Maths Tags: , , , ,

14 May 2013 11 Comments

The Pros And Cons Of Joining A Homeschool Co-op

 

pros and cons of joining a homeschool co-op

Photo credit: USFWS

As the popularity of homeschooling increases, so do the opportunities for getting together with other homeschoolers. One way to do this is to join a homeschool co-op.

There are advantages and disadvantages to joining a co-op.  But even if you decide that a co-op isn’t right for your family, you needn’t miss out on the benefits. A co-op doesn’t work for us right now – I’ll share below about some of the things we do instead.

What is a homeschool co-op?

Here in the UK,  a co-op is a group of homeschooling parents who get together regularly to teach their children. Each parent offers a different class and children choose which classes they want to take.

Co-ops might meet weekly, fortnightly or even monthly.  They can be quite informal, but most  groups that consider themselves co-ops rather than social groups have a bit more structure.

Benefits of joining a homeschool co-op

1. You can pool resources and leverage your talents. Your children can benefit from another mum’s artistic flair while you get to run a science course, or vice versa.

2. Variety. Your children have a larger choice of subjects than you might think to offer. Even if you do project-based or interest-led homeschooling, there are topics your children might not come across in your home environment. You never know where that might lead.

3. Exposure to different teaching styles. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that we get to know our children’s learning styles and can tailor our teaching to help them learn best. But another adult’s teaching style might be a natural match with your child’s learning style, which could be good for their confidence and help them understand tricky topics.

4. Social benefits for the children. By seeing the same people regularly, your children will have the chance to make friends with similar interests. They’ll have valuable opportunities to learn to work collaboratively. Extroverted children in particular will benefit from co-ops in this way.

5. Of course, the adults also get to make friends and mutually support each other in their homeschooling goals. When I first took my kids out of school, I was like a sponge around the experienced homeschoolers I met in real life – I was so eager to absorb every bit of the wisdom they had to offer. Joining a co-op in the early days of homeschooling provides a ready-made support network.

6. It’s inexpensive. You get the benefit of (relatively) expert teaching without paying for private tutoring. Curriculum costs can be shared, and you can save money by bulk-buying craft or science materials.

Disadvantages of joining a co-op

1. Being part of a co-op means having, to some degree, a common educational philosophy. Most homeschoolers find their homeschooling style changes over time (or with the season). We also tend to be independent and love our autonomy. Establishing shared values with all members of a co-op can be tricky, and staying in synch over time can be even more challenging!

2. Time commitment. If you have a child that already wants to do a heap of activities, you may not have a day or half day a week free to participate in a co-op.

3. Availability.  Once co-ops successfully get going, they may not accept new members.  (Then again, with more and more homeschoolers out there, you could start your own.)

4. Your children may not be a match. Even if you do find a co-op which shares your educational values and which accepts new members, your children may still not be a match to the co-op environment, particularly if they have special needs. My eight year old son, for example, has Sensory Processing Disorder and still relies on me to help with his emotional regulation.  A co-op class probably wouldn’t work for him yet.

What’s the alternative?

What if you can’t or don’t want to join a co-op but would still like to experience some of the benefits of being in one? Here are some alternatives:

1. Joining your local homeschool group will offer many of the advantages of a co-op but usually on a more casual basis. I’ll be sharing next week about our experiences with our local homeschool groups.

2. Set up or join a homeschooling parents’ support group where parents meet without children to talk about homeschooling. I’m in the process of setting up a “Homeschool Inspiration Group” with four lovely local ladies. We all have slightly different homeschooling styles, which I’m sure will benefit the group. My plan is for us to share ideas and resources, to inspire each other by talking about what’s working for us, and to support each other with any homeschool-related issues. I’m very excited about this and will share more about it with you soon. This is a good option if, like me, you have a child with special needs.

3.Tutoring, either paid or on a skill-swap basis with another parent. Tutoring in small groups may not be as expensive as doing it individually, and can provide social and teamwork opportunities. Our family extrovert, C(9), loves her group guitar lesson, and both my children used to do group French lessons with a native speaker in a group of eight.

4. Workshops and clubs. For the social and collaborative benefits of being in a co-op, you could invite other homeschoolers to join your children in a workshop (or series of workshops). Patricia Zaballos’ Workshops Work: A Parent’s Guide to Facilitating Writer’s Workshops for Kids has me excited about starting a writers’ workshop for my kids and some of their friends at some point. Denise Gaskins, author of my favourite maths book Let’s Play Math, talks about how to start a homeschool maths club here.

homeschool help series

There’s a season for everything.  Just because we’re not in a homeschool co-op right now doesn’t mean I’m ruling it out for the future. But it’s good to know that even without being in a co-op, my children and I don’t have to miss out.

For more ideas about homeschool co-ops, head over to the other Homeschool Help ladies’ blogs.

Savannah @ HammockTracks talks about The Ins and Outs of Co-Ops and asks “Why are you participating?”

Hwee @ The Tiger Chronicle shares her afterthoughts about joining a co-op in  Our Co-op Experience

Julie @ Highhill Homeschool shares three different ways to run a co-op in How does homeschool co-op work?

Nicole @ One Magnificent Obsession talks about how to evaluate if a homeschool co-op is right for your family in The Co-op Question: Yeah or Nay?

In Creating Synergy Erin @ Seven Little Australians shares how she fosters synergy in a country where co-ops are not common

Bernadette @ Barefoot Hippie Girl talks about why she looks forward to organizing or joining a co-op in the next few years in Beneficial Co-op(eration)

Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses writes about moving forward in strength when she shares the load – Together Everyone Achieves More

by Lula B in Home Education, Homeschool Help, Organization, Special Needs Tags:

11 May 2013 15 Comments

When Every Day Is Maths Playtime

living math homeschool

After I linked up our Pythagoras and the Knotted Rope activity at the Hammock Tracks Homeschool Review,  Savannah offered to interview me about our full-time living maths approach for this week’s Homeschool Review.  I jumped at the chance – I love talking about maths!

Tell me more about this full time living math approach

My children (aged eight and nine) don’t use any formal maths curriculum. Instead, we have a living maths routine.  The move away from curriculum was gradual. I’d always liked living maths – the fun my children have with it, and how it gives them a sense of maths in the real world – but in my head “real maths” was the curriculum, and living maths was an extra.  And we all know what tends to happen to “extras” in a busy homeschooling household!

Then I read Denise Gaskins’ book Let’s Play Math, which gave me the confidence to flip the balance. Let’s Play Math is one of those precious books which is both inspiring and practical – it makes you want to change, and tells you how to do it.

Here’s how our routine looks:

Monday - maths games like KenKen, Shut The Box or Yahtzee to practise arithmetic and maths facts.

Tuesday - oral story problems.  We grab a whiteboard and take turns making up problems for each other. They learn from watching me solve their (usually very convoluted!) problems, and I learn how their minds work from seeing how they approach each problem.  It’s a great opportunity for me to model, and the kids to practise, how to use notes and diagrams to solve real maths puzzles.

Wednesday - maths literature. We read aloud from a living maths book – maybe a mathematician’s biography or a maths picture book.  I allow time afterwards to play with the ideas we’ve heard about. For example, when we read What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras we knotted ropes to make our own right-triangles and proved Pythagoras’ Theorem using Lego.

Thursday - manipulatives and hands-on geometry. Recently we’ve played with pattern blocks and tangrams, made geometric shapes with toothpicks and mini-marshmallows, and used isometric graph paper to make Maori taniko designs when we were studying the history of New Zealand.

Maori taniko designs on isometric graph paper

Maori taniko designs on isometric graph paper

Friday - children’s choice of any of the above.

As I was writing this, I put the question to my nine year old daughter:”Tell us more about this full-time living math approach.” Her reply: “We do more real life maths and story problems, which are really funny because you can make up extremely crazy things.  And often we find maths in real life.”

What do you see as the benefits to this learning style?

Seeing my kids enjoy maths is very important to me, but in itself that wouldn’t be enough to satisfy me that a full-time living maths approach is right for our family. What does convince me is noticing my children beginning to think like mathematicians… Read the rest of the interview at Hammock Tracks

 

by Lula B in Home Education, living maths, Maths Tags:

11 May 2013 14 Comments

Creative Science with Ice, Salt and Colour

Science Play Ice Salt and Colour

This week we played with salt, ice and liquid watercolours.  It was one of those cool activities that combines science and creativity, and has everyone happily engaged for hours.

What You Need

  • One or more plastic containers – we used several, of different shapes and sizes. Ours had lids to make them easier to stack in the freezer.
  • Water
  • Salt
  • Liquid watercolours or food colouring
  • Plastic pipettes
  • Tray or dish to stand your melting ice in

science fun with salt ice and liquid watercolour

What We Did

I filled the containers with water and left them in the freezer for a couple of days.

We talked about the ways ice melts. The children said heat melts ice, so our ice would eventually melt if we left it out of the freezer. Or we could speed up the melting process by pouring on warm water. I asked them how we deal with icy paths in winter and they shouted “salt!”. We recalled how we added salt to ice to quickly freeze juice into a sorbet, and how that worked because the presence of an impurity (like salt) lowers the freezing point of water.

Then I handed over the salt and the liquid watercolours and let the children experiment.

They started out by sprinkling salt on the ice and noticing how the salt melted the ice where it came into contact with it. (Actually they started out by licking the ice – they do like to engage all their senses…  I made sure this happened only the once, before any salt or paint had been introduced!)

science fun with salt ice and liquid watercolour

Well it was probably good for his sensory processing!

Then C(9) had the idea of colouring her salt before sprinkling it on so she could follow its path. But she found the salt difficult to sprinkle when wet, so she decided to sprinkle and then quickly add colour. Soon she realised that she didn’t have to be so quick, because the colour always followed the path of the melting ice.

Fun with salt ice and liquid watercolour

More colours were added…

science fun with salt ice and liquid watercolour

science fun with salt ice and liquid watercolour

And great fun was had by all!

science fun with salt ice and liquid watercolour

Delicately does it

I loved seeing how differently each child interacted with their ice.  While C(9) enthused poetically about “glistening cataracts”, J(8) wore his best would-be world-dominating mad scientist expression as he attacked his with three purple pipettes at a time, shouting “I’m going to burn a hole RIGHT THROUGH THE HEART of it!”

Salty icy tunnel

Lots of creative expression, and some science too!

science fun with salt ice and liquid watercolour

Variations

Using food colouring instead of liquid watercolour - I think I added too much water to our liquid watercolours – they were a bit wishy washy (not that the children noticed). While they were busy making cataracts and chasms, I privately experimented with using gel food colours instead. These highlighted the paths of the melting ice much more clearly, but one drop went a long way so the children wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun if we’d used these – their ice would quickly have been saturated with colour. The vibrant colours make for quite a cool demonstration, though.

Gel food colour salt and ice

Gel food colour, salt & ice

Another scientific variation would be to experiment with different types of salt - rock salt, for example.

Science play ice salt and colour

Further Resources

Our arty science project was inspired by The Artful Parent.

Ice Tunnels: Bring on the summer fun! I found this after we played with our ice.

I hope you enjoy playing with colourful salty ice as much as we did!

 

Science Sunday

Collage Friday

Science Fun with salt and ice

Weekly Wrap Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

homeschoolreview at hammock tracks

 Hobbies & Handicrafts

by Lula B in Art and crafts, Home Education, Science Tags: , , , ,

07 May 2013 10 Comments

How To Make Sure Your Kids Eat Healthily When You Don’t Enjoy Cooking

making pancakes

I don’t really like cooking. Sometimes I feel guilty about this – surely taking delight in serving up delicious home-cooked meals is a natural part of being a good mum? Then I remind myself that just because my own passions happen to lie elsewhere doesn’t mean I love my kids any less.

It seems unlikely that I’m the only homeschooling mum who feels this way, so this post is for anyone else out there who’s trying to make sure their children eat a healthy, balanced diet while spending the minimum amount of time in the kitchen. I’ll share my tips, and I’d love to hear yours.

Goals

When it comes to cooking, I want:

1. To make sure my family eat regular balanced meals

2. To provide access to healthy snacks

3. To make sure we all eat the better part of our five portions of fruit or vegetables a day

4. To encourage healthy eating habits for life

5. For my children to be able to cook for themselves by the time they leave home

Cool tools

Being very absent-minded right-brained and with a slightly crazy schedule, I need all the help I can get when it comes to getting food onto the table.

Apps are life-savers for the organisationally-challenged, and one in particular - MealBoard - has made a huge difference to me when it comes to cooking for my family.  (MealBoard isn’t available for android phones, but Food Planner seems very similar.  Or you could use an offline menu-planner, if you’re organised enough to keep track of paper.)

Mealboard

I’ve used MealBoard to plan my menus and shopping lists every week for the last three years. It cuts down the amount of time I have to spend planning our meals to about ten minutes a week – yay!

You do have to invest a bit of time at the start, loading your favourite recipes onto MealBoard. You can do this manually on the phone or a computer, or you can import recipes from fifteen different websites, including AllRecipes and BBC Good Food.

Balanced meals and family favourites

You can group recipes into your own categories. I categorise by:

  • food type (poultry,  pasta …)
  • meal type (lunch,  snacks, side dishes, crockpot meals …) and
  • people  (C(9)’s favourites, J(8)’s favourites …)

This means I can easily pull together a week’s worth of balanced menus and make sure everyone gets their favourite dish from time to time. I can plan crockpot meals for days we’re home late, and meals that require more preparation for less busy days.

MealBoard Screenshot - homeschool menu planning

Shopping lists

Once you’ve loaded your recipes, MealBoard lets you create a weekly shopping list at the touch of a button.

MealBoard Screenshot - homeschool menu planning

If I notice I’m running low on something mid-week – flour, say –  I can add it manually to my MealBoard shopping list.

Recycling menus

If you’re really clever, you can use MealBoard to cut down menu-planning even more by using templates. You can save and re-use as many menu plans (each up to a month long) as you like. So you could rotate two monthly menus, or save menus by month to reflect seasonal preferences.

I don’t use this function so much, perhaps because my kids’ tastes are still changing so our menus are gradually becoming more sophisticated. (Hey, did I just use the word “sophisticated” in a post about me cooking?)

Grocery Shopping

I do almost all my food shopping online at Tesco.  This does mean I sometimes miss out on tempting seasonal produce, but it does mean less waste and saves a huge amount of time.

I create my week’s grocery list on MealBoard, add in “My Usuals” stored on the Tesco website, and make sure I schedule delivery for when everyone’s around to help put away.

Teaching the children to cook

Perhaps unsurprisingly, neither of my children has shown much interest in cooking so far, but I’m encouraging them in small ways. C(9) makes her own sandwich for lunch most days, and she can also poach, boil and scramble eggs.

J(8)’s favourite lunch is rice and peas, which he can make but only by standing on a stool to reach our microwave, so I’m waiting until he’s a bit taller to expect him to get his own lunch daily!

Learning to cook at our home education centre

Learning to cook at our home education centre

The children also cook at our weekly home education centre visits, and – strangely – their French class!

Snacks

When we switched to a low-gluten, sugar and dairy diet to help with J(8)’s sensory processing issues, pancakes (made with gluten-free flour and goats milk) became a favourite homeschool snack.

Both children enjoy making a bowl of pancake batter, and C(9) will even cook the whole stack for us to enjoy together while reading aloud. We serve our pancakes with fresh fruit, ham and sometimes a drop of agave nectar.

Muffin tin lunches

Muffin tin meals make food fun

To answer the frequent cries of “I’m hungry!” I make sure there’s always plenty of fruit available – usually apples, satsumas, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, melon and mango or pineapple.

Baking

I’m a big fan of the Brave Writer lifestyle, which involves a lot of cakes and cookies. Given my non-fondness for cooking, if it weren’t for our family’s dietary restrictions I probably wouldn’t bake our own – but even I can see that a warm home-baked cake on the table is much nicer than a shop-bought one. When I’m organised, I make a cake on a Sunday for us to enjoy over poetry teas, read-alouds and free-writes throughout the week.

poetry teatime

Poetry teatime with home-made gluten-free sugar-free  lemon cake

Our food routine

Fruit on a stick

Fruit on a stick

Breakfast – everyone gets their own (sugar-free) cereal, usually oat cereal or oatabix with goats’ milk

Mid-Morning snack – fruit or (gluten & sugar-free) pancakes

Lunch – C(9) makes her own sandwich. I make soup for myself and rice with vegetables for J(8)

Afternoon snack – fruit. If I remember, I get out the bamboo skewers. (What is it about eating  it off a stick that makes food more fun?)

Dinner – as dinner time approaches, I check MealBoard to see what’s on the menu. (I love how this makes me feel like someone else has done the planning for me.)

We eat all together at the table whenever we can. At weekends, my lovely husband (who likes cooking about as much as me) cooks a roast on Sunday and pizza, fajitas or burgers on Saturday.

Pancetta & veggies to serve with pasta - quick and nutritious - my kind of meal!

Pancetta & veggies to serve with pasta – quick and nutritious – my kind of meal!

I’d like to enjoy cooking.  I’ve tried many times over the years to inspire myself into getting better at it, but nothing seems to stick. It’s not that I dislike anything in particular about the process, it’s that there are so many other things I want to be doing instead.

During one of my attempts to enjoy cooking more,  I excitedly told my friend Diana (a mum of three, whose gorgeous meals cooked from scratch leave me in awe), “I’m learning to cook!”. She commented politely that in the twenty years she’d known me, I’d repeatedly described myself as “learning to cook”, and all the while I’d been managing to put food on the table. So perhaps I should acknowledge myself for what I do achieve!

More food for thought

Muffin Tin Monday – fun and creative meal and snack ideas

It’s Not About Nutrition - a blog about encouraging healthy eating habits. I’ve subscribed for a while and I like the message

Jamie’s Food Revolution –  A cookbook for beginners that even I can follow. (The UK edition is Jamie’s Ministry of Food)

homeschool-help-1.jpg

More from the Homeschool Help team

For more inspiration on the subject of juggling cooking and homeschooling, check out these posts from the other members of the Homeschool Help team.

Cooking Tips For The Homeschool Mom  Savannah at Hammock Tracks says “Even if you don’t enjoy cooking, there are ways to conquer the “What’s for dinner?” question without calling Dominos!”

Nutritious Meals, Quick! Hwee at The Tiger Chronicle shares 3 simple tips that have helped her prepare nutritious family meals every day

Realistic Meal Planning For Homeschool Mums Nicole at One Magnificent Obsession on how to avoid eating at Chik Fil A every night

Strategies For Cooking Healthy For A Family Julie at Highhill Homeschool shares 5 strategies for preparing healthy meals when time is an issue

Plating Up Erin at Seven Little Australians says the key for her family to successfully juggling cooking is organisation

Hippie Method: Food Philosophied Bernadette at Barefoot Hippie Girl writes about how she makes easy, delicious (relatively) healthy food from scratch – almost every day

Coming up from the Homeschool Help team

Next week the Homeschool Help team will be talking about homeschool co-ops – why? or why not?

 

 

 

by Lula B in Homeschool Help Tags: ,

04 May 2013 44 Comments

Homeschool Pond Study – Late April

homeschool pond study

The more we visit our pond, the more we enjoy it. These days, when it’s so easy to travel far and wide, it’s such a treat to spend time becoming intimately familiar with one special place. I continue to be so appreciative of Angelicscalliwags for inspiring us to to this.

Courting Swans

The swans were the stars of the show at our pond this April. Back at the start of the month we noticed that they had built a nest on the island.

The following week we witnessed some very beautiful swan rituals. C(9) said it looked like they were synchronised swimming.

Swans mating ritual homeschool pond study

There is a final photo in the series but I’ll spare your blushes and show you this preening close-up instead!

Preening swan

 

Bird Ringing Scheme

Later, one of the swans gave us an excellent view of its leg, on which it wore a metal ring. By zooming in on the photo, we could read that the ring was labelled “BTO British Museum Nat Hist London SW7″.

swan's leg - homeschool pond study

ringed swan homeschool pond study

swan ring - homeschool pond study

Example ring from the Ringing Scheme website

We looked this up when we got home, and learned about The Ringing Scheme, which allows members of the public to report sightings of ringed birds.

The rings on the Ringing Scheme website had numbers on, but we couldn’t find a number on our swan’s ring. C(9) has emailed the Ringing Scheme to find out more about this.

Nesting Coots

The coots are also nesting. They’ve picked an excellent spot, at the edge of the pond but very well concealed. I was only able to get this (very zoomed in) photo from the far side of the pond.

nesting coot - homeschool pond study

Our female coot has been sitting on her nest for the last few weeks.  The incubation period is just over three weeks so we should see coot chicks at our pond very soon! (When we were wondering about the correct name for the young coots, J(8) suggested that they should be called “cuties”. That one may stick :-) )

The male coot, meanwhile, has been much less shy.

coot - homeschool pond study

Watercolour Art

We admired how green the trees and plants around the pond have become, and brought a few small samples home to paint.

spring branch watercolours - homeschool pond study

 

Nature study homeschool art

 spring branch watercolour - homeschool pond study

braiding willow - homeschool pond study

C(9) loves to braid willow into “ropes”

Evening visit to the pond

We visited the pond at 7pm one evening as we dropped C(9) at a Cubs walk. The light was gorgeous

Testing pond temperature

Testing the pond temperature

 

Den building in the woods

Den-building in the woods by the pond

 

homeschool pond study at outdoor play

Science Sunday

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

Spring Carnival

by Lula B in field trips, Nature Study, Science Tags: , ,

01 May 2013 16 Comments

Pythagoras and the Knotted Rope

Pythagoras fun for kids 2

Now we’ve switched to a full-time living maths approach, we’re actually making time to play with some of the wonderful resources we’ve had on our shelves for years.

What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras?

Pythagoras for kidsOn Friday we read What’s Your Angle, Pythagoras, a picture book which tells the story of how the young Pythagoras learns how to make a right-angled triangle using knotted rope, and discovers how to calculate the length of its hypotenuse using square tiles.

Obviously the book is mostly fictional, and it takes some historical liberties – the boy Pythagoras visits Alexandria, for instance, several hundred years before the city was built! – but these are discussed at the back of the book in a way that made my kids laugh and was a handy review of Ancient Greece and Alexander the Great.

How to make a right-angled triangle using rope

In the book, the young Pythagoras notices what happens when buildings are constructed with less-than-accurate right-angles. On a trip to Alexandria with his father, he learns how the Egyptians use knotted rope to overcome this problem.

We tried it out for ourselves. We tied eleven knots at equal distance along our rope before joining the ends in a final knot, so that we ended up with twelve short lengths of rope between each knot.

Pythagoras knotted rope living maths

Then we used our rope to make different shaped triangles. We counted how many lengths of rope were on each side of each triangle.

To make a right-angled triangle, we found that we needed the sides to be 3 lengths, 4 lengths and 5 lengths of rope respectively.

Pythagoras for kids

(Top Tip: Take care to make the knots evenly spaced. C(9)’s rope worked perfectly for making right-angled triangles, whereas the one I helped J(8) make didn’t, oops!)

Using Lego to demonstrate the Pythagoras Theorem

While playing with floor tiles, the young Pythagoras in the story discovers that if he makes a square along each side of a right-angled triangle, the square on the longest side uses the same number of tiles as the other two sides’ squares put together.

We tried this for ourselves with 2×2 Lego bricks.

drawing a right-angled triangle

C(9) measured 3, 4 and 5 Lego bricks and drew a triangle with sides those lengths

lego proof of Pythagoras Theorem

1 side is 3 Lego bricks long …

 

lego proof of Pythagoras Theorem

another side is 4 Lego bricks long

 

lego proof of Pythagoras Theorem

Completing the squares

 

Success!

9 bricks + 16 bricks = 25 bricks

Pythagoras uses what he has learned to work out how long a ladder is needed to reach the top of a wall. He also helps his father calculate the sailing distance to Rhodes.   Both excellent demonstrations of the usefulness of maths!

lego proof of Pythagoras Theorem

C(9) annotated her Lego diagram to show the Pythagoras Theorem

I would never have thought to teach my kids the Pythagoras Theorem at the ages they are (8 and 9) – all we did was read a picture book. But that living book inspired us to play, and before we knew it we were formulating mathematical proofs.  Another living maths success!

 

I’m appreciatively linking up here:

Homeschool Review at Hammock Tracks

Collage Friday at Homegrown Learners

Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

 

by Lula B in Home Education, living maths, Maths Tags: , , ,

30 Apr 2013 13 Comments

Homeschooling And Extra-Curricular Activities – How Much Is Too Much?

Homeschool help 1

“Do you make your daughter do so many extra-curricular activities because you feel guilty about taking her out of school?” asked a rather blunt acquaintance a few weeks after I began homeschooling my seven year old.

The question took me aback. For a moment I fell into anxious self-examination.

Was the woman right? Was I enrolling C(7) to every club going out of some paranoid fear that she was missing out, now that she was home-educated?

Then I remembered why C chose to be homeschooled.

Here was a child who enthusiastically threw herself at every opportunity (the more physical the better). Who at age six, looked up local judo clubs when I (concerned about our already busy schedule) dragged my heels following her request to learn it. A child so busy trying to fit in school, homework, her many sports, her artistic activities and playdates, that I barely saw her.

And when I did see her, it was as chauffeur and personal assistant to a tired and all too often grumpy little girl. Clearly, something had to go.

After some discussion, we realised that the obvious thing to let go of was school.

Without school and homework taking up the bulk of each day, C(7) was free to throw herself into her passions, see friends, enjoy plenty of downtime,  have a relationship with her family and learn everything she would have at school in much less time.

“No. My daughter left school so that she would have time do all these ‘extra-curricular’ activities.” I told the blunt woman.

Looking back, I wonder if the woman (who was planning to homeschool her two pre-schoolers) was feeling insecure about how few activities her own children did.

But comparing ourselves with others is a sure path to an unfulfilling and unsuccessful homeschooling experience. Only we know the needs of our own family.

In our home, my challenge is to balance the needs of the introverts (my son and me), with those of my extremely extroverted daughter. While J(8) and I crave quiet time immersed in our interests at home, C(9) wants to be out trying new things and meeting new friends.

I would love to be one of those homeschoolers who manage to limit their outside activities to one per child. But to C(9), sharing a house with a couple of introverts, that would be torture.

homeschooling and extra-curricular activities

C(9) in her element at a St George’s Day parade on Sunday

Our Activities

Here’s what our extra-curricular schedule looks like this term:

C(9)’s activities

Monday – karate

Tuesday – group guitar lesson, home-ed centre, gymnastics *

Wednesday – Cub Scouts, free swimming

Thursday – climbing

Friday – Stagecoach (3 hours of singing, drama and dance)

Sunday – rugby (September – April)

*Tuesdays also involve 2 hours driving – just don’t ask me to string a sentence together after 6pm

J(8)’s activities

Tuesday - home-ed centre

Wednesday – Occupational Therapy (1-1), swimming lesson

Thursday – climbing

Balancing everyone’s needs

So how do we introverts cope?

Some of C(9)’s activities are close to home, others involve J(8) and me waiting around for her.  We use waiting time to listen to audiobooks, walk in nature with our dog, read,  write and meditate (me), and play iPad games (J). We have our own headphones and, frankly, while C(9) – we love her very much! – is off talking to other people, we enjoy a bit of peace!

Looking ahead

As C(9) gets older I know her social needs are going to continue to challenge me – but I love that I get to spend so much time with my young bundle of energy.

If homeschooling her through the years to come means organising teen clubs and writing groups, art workshops and science co-ops, I’m up for it. She won’t be at home forever, and I want to make the most of every moment.

homeschooling extra-curricular activities - horse-riding

Horse-riding at her cousins’ house

How much is too much?

How many activities should your child do? Only you and your family can answer that. If two activities a week leaves you with no energy to do what’s important to you, then two is too much, no matter how outgoing your child is.

And if someone asks why you’re “making” your child do so much, just smile and know that you’re doing what’s right for your family.

The Homeschool Help team on extra-curricular activities

This post is part of the Homeschool Help series written by six different home-educating mothers from all over the planet.  I’ve been enjoying reading the series immensely, so I’m delighted to have joined the team.

The Tiger Chronicle – Any Room For Extras? A few ways to look at extra-curricular activities.

Barefoot Hippie Girl – Just A Homebody.  Picking and choosing what’s best for your family and life season.

Every Bed of Roses – It’s All About A Science Of Relations.  It’s not about how busy, it’s about building a memory.

Highhill Homeschool – Benefits Of Extracurricular Activities. Extracurricular activities are good for kids – mostly.

Hammock Tracks – Extra Curricular Activities And Family Goals. How do you choose when and where your children (or even you) participate in extra curricular activities?

 

 

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by Lula B in Home Education, Homeschool Help, Organization Tags: ,

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