From the Children's Museum

No agenda here, no story to tell, no particular message to deliver, just some small but important moments from our winter visits to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis:

Syd is in love with this DIY paleontologist Ken. See the field jacketed fossil? See his hands covered in plaster?!?

This Chihuly installation isn't often cleaned, so it was a treat to see it happening!

the installation from below

Syd is a scuba diver measuring some cannons that have just been discovered in the Caribbean--could they have been a part of Captain Kidd's ship?

Here you can watch real artifacts undergoing electrolytic reduction to remove their concretions. One cannon was recently removed after completing the process that we had observed throughout approximately four YEARS of visits!

 I feel a little poignancy sometimes at this museum, because I know that Will, in particular, is really beginning to push the maximum age for their target audience. As for Will herself, however--she'd never notice. She knows more about electrolytic reduction and edmontosaurs than most of the other small visitors, sure, but she still happily scoops and shovels rubber rocks in the construction site with them, and sends boats down the long and elaborate canal system should-to shoulder with the smaller kids, adding ever more to her intrinsic understanding of the maths and sciences as she does.

Subtraction with Borrowing across Zeroes using Base Ten Blocks

With an exciting title like that, how could this activity NOT be fun?!?

Last week Syd faced a review worksheet of subtraction with borrowing across zeroes with such hysteria that it was as if she'd never seen problems like that before. She has, of course, completely learned how to subtract with borrowing across zeroes before, but never mind--one of the many good things about homeschooling is that there's plenty of room to pause one's math journey to relearn subtraction across zeroes.

Here's how to do that:

If you don't own Base Ten blocks, get them. I don't know how I'd manage without them. Get extra thousand cubes, so that you've got at least nine of them, and preferably more than ten. Same with the hundred flats--you need at least ten. Get as many of the ten bars and unit cubes as you can stand, but remember that those will also work interchangeably with the Cuisenaire rods, which you should also own.

Anyway, get out your Base Ten blocks, and make up a sheet of subtraction problems, all the way up to the thousands, if you want. Make them look really hard, because then your kid will see how easy this method is.

Set all your supplies up in a large space--the blocks, a big piece of butcher paper, the subtraction problems, and a pencil. I'm probably alone in this, but every time I ask the children to get a pencil, I have to say, "Go get a sharp pencil with a good eraser." If I don't say these exact words, I swear to you that the child will every single time come back with a pencil with a broken lead and a non-existent eraser. Every. Single. Time!

Now, your kid should already be quite comfortable using Base Ten blocks, including the key feature, the fact that units are units, tens come in ten bars, hundreds come in hundred flats, and thousands come in thousand cubes; if they want to make 20, for instance, they should automatically go for two ten bars, and not for 20 unit cubes. If this doesn't come automatically, no problem--set them up building big numbers with Base Ten blocks for a couple of lessons, and then carry on.

Have the kid read the first subtraction problem, and then build the minuend out of Base Ten blocks, labeling each place value, as well. In this problem, for instance, Syd is writing a 1 above the thousand cube, an 8 above the hundred flats, and so on:

The subtrahend, of course, is what is to be subtracted from the blocks that make up the minuend. If your kid is really a beginner at this, let her do it however she likes, but encourage her to keep the place values in their separate spots so that she can more easily see what she's doing, and also encourage her to continually notate her process, also so that she can more easily see what she's doing.

If you let her do that over the course of several lessons, then she'll either come up with the traditional method on her own (or a better one!) or, after a while, you can say something like, "Hey, interested in seeing a kind of shortcut?" and introduce her in that way to the following method:

Moving from units on up, physically take the subtrahend away from the minuend. If there isn't enough of one place value--unit cubes, say--to physically take away the number of units called for in the subtrahend, then take a piece from a higher place value, break it up, and move it down. Notate what you've done. For instance, in the following example, Syd was clearly required to subtract something from the ones place, but had zero ones. She took a ten bar from the tens place, broke it into units, put it into the ones place, and recorded what she had done:

Now she has some units to subtract!

She can do the same, of course, if it's tens or hundreds that she's needing, each time physically removing a block from the higher place value, physically breaking it down, physically putting it into the lower place value, and recording her work:

If there's a zero in the next higher place value then you have to keep going, of course. You've got to break a hundred into tens, for instance, so that you have a ten to break into units: 

Notice how the notations that the kid makes are exactly the notations that she'll make when she's doing this problem only with pencil and paper.

My younger kid REALLY likes manipulatives, and really likes repeating something once she feels that she's good at it, so I like to let her keep doing her subtraction this way for as long as she likes, but this method also takes a REALLY long time, and after the first couple of lessons, I don't reduce the number of problems that she has to complete. Once she's faced with 30 problems, it doesn't take her long to take me up on my offer to teach her a "shortcut" that doesn't require the blocks. That shortcut, of course, is the subtraction with borrowing algorithm, and as I show her, I point out how it looks exactly the same as the notations that she made while physically subtracting using the blocks. That's because it IS the same!

Now since Syd is doing this same lesson for the second time in twelve months, it clearly didn't stick with her the first time. However, every time you relearn something, the process gets quicker and easier. I barely had to show Syd how to subtract using the blocks this time before she was off and doing it, and I know that last time, she spent several lessons getting comfortable with the process.

The other trick with Syd is that she LOVES repeating things when they're easy for her, so I have to let her stick with a concept until she's reluctant to move on. When I suggest starting fractions, and she protests, then I know that she's totally mastered subtraction with borrowing... again.

Work Plans for the Week of January 12, 2015: Personal Narrative, Minecraft Homeschool, and Girl Scout Cookies

Our first week back to a full schedule went well, I thought. I'm usually pretty insistent that the children finish their work plans each day, but I made a point to be more relaxed about that last week, and indeed, Syd did not complete her endangered species project, and neither kid completed her grammar or attended Magic Tree House Club. They worked hard, however, Syd got oriented to her Minecraft Homeschool class, they spent a lot of time working on Girl Scout badges, they spent a lot of time playing with friends, and it was overall a very successful week.

My plan is to try to stay that relaxed throughout the next couple of weeks, as the children's extracurriculars gradually ramp back up to their full schedule. If there are any more permanent changes that need to be made, hopefully I'll be able to more easily spot them that way.

MONDAY: The children enjoy their daily book assignment--more so, I think, because the selection often isn't relevant to their current studies, but is just a book that I thought they should read or that should be interesting to them. I'll continue that this week; in fact, I have today's books sitting next to me on my desk right now, waiting for the children to wake up, eat breakfast, and then come ask for them. Will has this chaptered biography--Franklin Delano Roosevelt: A National Hero--and Syd has this non-fiction picture book: Secrets of the Seasons: Orbiting the Sun in Our Backyard.

Will's next couple of Math Mammoth lessons on area should come quite easily to her, and so I'm sending her on ahead, but I discovered last week during a Math Mammoth review that Syd has completely forgotten how to subtract multi-digit numbers when borrowing across zeroes is required. I spent a math lesson last week reviewing this with Syd using actual Base Ten blocks, and today I'll have her review again using this subtraction tool online. I'll be asking her to complete the algorithm on paper as she works the problems with the online manipulatives, and hopefully that will be enough reinforcement that she can successfully complete a review worksheet tomorrow. Oh, how our Syd loves to be successful!

The kids had a lot of fun working on Girl Scout badges last week--Syd made some recipes for her Snacks badge, and Will completed several activities for her Cookie CEO badge. She also asked me how she could tour a small business, also for her Cookie CEO badge, so I set up a field trip in February for her and some of our other Girl Scout friends to a business owned by a couple of friends of mine. The children would like to learn about accounting, and marketing, and customer service, and I think it's going to be fabulous.

Would The Green Nursery also like to have Girl Scouts sell cookies outside their store sometime in February? We'll see!

The children's Hoffman Academy lessons continue this week. They enjoy them, they do them, they practice--yay!

Now that Will has some ideas about the topic of the personal narrative that I'd like her to write, I plan to spend some time today talking with the children about personal narratives in general. Yesterday, when I dropped the children off at the library to attend a program on Japanese music, I handed them this list of mentor texts and asked them to bring home to me as many as they could find--they brought six, so today we'll be reading a couple of those out loud together. We'll be talking about the tendency of a personal narrative to have a Big Idea as a lens through which the narrative is written, and the children will assist me as I fill out this worksheet on theme. Next, we'll talk about the way that characters are fleshed out in narrative, and the children will assist me as I fill out this worksheet on characterization. Finally, I'll have the children fill out worksheets of their own--Will about her own personal narrative, to help her in its planning, and Syd about another one of the mentor texts that she can choose.

Oh, and we've got our weekly volunteer gig today! I should get dressed for that sometime! On the way home, we're going to stop by a florist and see if I can wrangle up some white carnations that Will's wanting for an activity for her Flowers badge.

TUESDAY: Free day! Syd will want to get started on her Minecraft Homeschool class (if she doesn't start it today), and the kids may have a friend over, but otherwise, their time is their own.

WEDNESDAY: Song School Spanish remains a good vocabulary study. Ideally, the children should be learning a second language from a native speaker, but as I've had many conversations with local friends about the shocking inaccessibility of children's language classes in this university town, my problem is at least not an isolated one.

Will should write the outline for her personal narrative today. I imagine that we'll butt heads about this, as I imagine that she'll want her outline to read something like "Pappa took me fishing. I caught a fish. The end," and I'll want her to unpack her narrative into a longer, more detailed sequence of events that expands this small moment, but she promised me last week that she would not throw a[nother] fit about writing this personal narrative. We'll see...

Horseback riding starts back up today, and I'll probably sign the kids up for an aerial silks class on this day, as well. Making the crystallizing watercolors is just a fun little science-y project that can be deleted if we're too busy, but that I think everyone will enjoy, based on how much fun the kids had doing the other sensory and art projects from this book.

THURSDAY: Will hasn't had as much prior experience with volume as she has with area and perimeter, so this project, using the basic technique that makes these newspaper constructions, will be a useful one--and I think it'll be fun!

Since we had so much trouble getting grammar and science done last Thursday, I'll be especially watchful with how it goes this Thursday--should I move some subjects around? Make Thursday a shorter day or a free day? We'll see!

Will's hatred of the fine motor skill of handwriting is such a detriment to her that I permit her to dictate her essays to me. I did, however, check out several typing instruction software programs from the library, and I've already blocked out some time next week for the children to install them and experiment.

FRIDAY: The editing and revising of Will's personal narrative will probably take the entire weekend, as I'll be asking her to read it out loud to a few people--grandparents, perhaps?--and make edits after each, and, of course, I'll be showing her how essays are best left to sit for a while, so that you can come back to them to revise and edit with fresh eyes.

Dyeing beans is just a fun little activity that can be deleted if the kids need more time with Girl Scouts, Minecraft Homeschool, or personal narrative. They also do really enjoy sensory play still, so it also might be just the thing to help them wind down from the week.

We're continuing our Georgie O'Keeffe study this week by reading biographies and reporting on them. There are several to choose from, so I may just lay them all out and let the children select. Field trips to Indy are always weather-dependent this time of year, but I'm anticipating a visit to the Indianapolis Museum of Art for their Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition sooner rather than later!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY/MONDAY: The children have a Girl Scout workshop on Saturday and a couple of events on Monday to celebrate MLK Day, but otherwise we're free to play. Should we go to the art museum? Watch Krrish 3? Go swimming?

We'll see!

My Latest: Drawstring Backpacks, Slime and Sidewalk Paint, a Double-Sided T-Shirt Quilt, and Much, Much MORE!

It's been quite a while since I've updated you on my paid writing, and that's because I've had so much of it!

I substituted as site director for Crafting a Green World over the holidays (and yes, of COURSE Matt had to call me Director Finn), which means that for a while, I was writing five times a week, sometimes literally with a piece of pumpkin pie at my elbow. Fortunately, this was the best time to have the extra work, since Matt was on his vacation, as well, and with him playing with the kids, it wasn't too stressful to sneak off regularly and get these posts up:

a round-up of crafts and recipes related to coffee

a tutorial to make drawstring backpacks

You cannot have too many of these, by the way. They make organizing for extracurricular activities so much easier.

a Top Posts of 2014 round-up

a round-up of holiday upcycling options

a review of 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids (the kids made slime and sidewalk paint)

Giving the slime a haircut is always fun.

a round-up of chia seed crafts and recipes

a tutorial for making a double-sided T-shirt quilt

 a crafty recipe round-up

a round-up of altered container projects

a melted crayon ornament tutorial

 and, finally, an essay on the future of computer learning and the service industry

That was a lot of writing, right? Congratulations to me! 

Anyway, the other day, Will was pitching a fit about having to brainstorm topics for a personal narrative that I'll be requiring her to write next week. She didn't want to brainstorm topics; she WANTED to play half an hour of LEGO Marvel, but she wasn't allowed her last half-hour of screen time until after she'd finished her schoolwork. The only thing left on her work plans, however?

Brainstorm topics for a personal narrative.

After the huge temper blow-up, which thankfully took place in her father's company, not mine, she appeared in front of me, teary-eyed but belligerent, and I pulled her into my lap to quietly chill out for a while. After some chilling, she again expressed her desire to have her half-hour of screen time; I assured her that she had only one assignment left to complete before she could do that. She expressed her desire to NOT write a personal narrative; I assured her that she did not have to write a personal narrative today. Rather, she needed only to brainstorm a topic for a personal narrative to be written in the future. She asked why she had to write a personal narrative at all; I explained that much practice in composition is required before it comes easily, and that she will want it to come easily, so that she can focus on all that she wants to communicate one day. She said something along the lines of "how/why/what do you know about it, anyway?"

I looked at her in bewilderment, amusement battling with a bit of horror, and said, "Child, do you not know that your MOTHER is a writer?!? This is what I do all day when I'm not actively engaging with you. Writing is my JOB! Not even to mention--I used to TEACH writing, to COLLEGE STUDENTS! And you used to come with me sometimes! To my WRITING WORKSHOPS! Did you never wonder what was going on there, all the 18-year-olds in a classroom, me at the front of it talking to them, them asking me questions, me answering them? I was teaching them HOW TO WRITE!!!"

Once I had successfully made the child understand that I am a reliable authority in the field of composition and its instruction (mental note: must get my diplomas framed and hung to point out to them when they're acting belligerent about academics), the conversation resolved, the child finished her brainstorming, I praised it, and she actually promised me that she would not throw a fit at all next week about any part of the process of writing and editing a personal narrative.

I should have made her write that down and sign it, because I can guarantee you that she will throw a fit, likely at every single step of the writing and editing processes, but there was no time...

After all, the kid had a half-hour of LEGO Marvel to play!

Fleece and Footwear

As you can see, not only do I sew the children warm fleece pants to wear during our freezing winters, but I even patch those pants with more fleece when the children wear holes in them:

So why, when the temperature is definitely below zero outside, and the kid is wearing fleece pants, a coat, and gloves, is she also wearing CROCS?!?

I swear, I have to get after both of them every single time we get in the car--"No, you may not wear Crocs!" "YES, you have to wear socks?!?" "Will, I swear, at least bring the coat WITH you in case we have car trouble or there's a fire drill at the library!"

The other night, Matt picked the kids up from the library, and asked them to meet him upstairs after they'd collected their things. Will arrived without her coat, admitted that yes, she'd left it downstairs in the children's department, and then suggested, "Let's just leave it. We can come back tomorrow and get it."

Seriously, if it was twenty degrees warmer, which would still be VERY cold, I wouldn't care. If they want to be uncomfortable, that's not my concern. I must insist, however, that the children NOT suffer from frostbite in their extremities while under my care.

So this morning, as part of getting ready to head out for math class, I reminded both children to brush their teeth and hair, walked Will around the house to find her hairbrush after she tearfully insisted that she "can't find it!" (it was in clear view on the playroom floor, next to a teaspoon and a roll of masking tape), reminded Syd again to brush her teeth and hair, reminded both children that they must wear socks and shoes, reminded them again to bring breakfast along for the car ride (Will didn't; Syd did, but handed it to me, uneaten, at the door of the classroom), and then flat-out screamed at Will in the car, sigh, as she successfully turned ten minutes of memory work into ten minutes of power struggle by mumbling her answers so quietly that I couldn't hear her, then declaring at my protests--in, I might add, a much louder volume--that THIS is her normal volume and she ALWAYS speaks just like this and she doesn't understand WHY I keep making her speak more loudly!

Of course, then, as we're climbing the stairs to their classroom, and I'm following behind Will and instructing her to please be more respectful to Mr. Phil than she was to her mother this morning (I know, I know...), I of COURSE notice that the child is, yes, wearing close-toed shoes, but no, she is not wearing socks.

Did I mention that it's eleven degrees outside?

I'm seriously considering showing her a Google Image search entitled "frostbitten toes." That's seriously where I'm at right now with this whole socks business.

Junior Civil War Historians: Pea Ridge National Military Park

How fortunate for us that two of the participating national parks required for the children to earn their Junior Civil War Historian patches were both right there on our holiday road trip!

I've long been wanting to visit Prairie Grove Battlefield, because that's where my great-great-grandfather fought (on the side of the Confederacy, sigh), but Pea Ridge National Military Park is the one that's included in the Junior Civil War Historian program, which only runs through this year, AND it's covered under our national park pass, which expires in July, so that's the one that we detoured to on our way home from Christmas with my family.

Guess we'll just have to review the Civil War and visit Prairie Grove on another trip down south!

The Battle of Pea Ridge has too much back-and-forthing for me to summarize here; suffice to say that northwest Arkansas was a tactically advantageous location to control, so the Union drove down into it, the Confederacy attempted to counter-attack, and the battle? Well, there was a whole lot of fleeing on both sides, if you ask me. A whole lot of getting lost in the woods. A whole lot of bad decision-making. Most of the bad decisions--soldiers being force-marched away from their back-up wagons with no rest and few supplies; a commander shot dead, his second-in-command choosing not to share this with the troops so that when he, too, is shot dead, the soldiers are left without a commander but they don't know this, and so hang around all day in the woods waiting for orders--were made by the Confederate side, and so they're the ones who lost the battle.

Nevertheless, the Union side made a lot of bad decisions, too. I imagine that this is a great battle to replay on the tabletop gaming circuit.

The children studiously plugged away on their Junior Ranger books, which were, I was pleased to see, very academically rigorous (especially Will's--even the Ranger had to fetch the answer key to help her with the couple of answers that she couldn't find!), although less cross-curricular than some other Junior Ranger programs that they've completed:

This display played re-enactments of the various engagements, while highlighting the location of each one on the map below. It was great.

I shouldn't let the kids write over the displays, but it's hard to enforce that rule when there are no other writing surfaces around. 

Fortunately, the car audio tour that we'd purchased also spent time discussing the area's geology and geography and flora and fauna, so we came away with a thorough introduction to Pea Ridge.

Another Trail of Tears site! This one belongs to a different forced emigration route than the one that we visited in Ft. Smith.

This is the site of a former town, one that was actually still in existence during the battle. Here in winter, with the ground covered in leaves, it's impossible to see the footprints of any structures--

--except for this one small grave:

Look at us not climbing on the cannons anymore! Yay, Us!

Here's the place where the Confederate Commander McCulloch was killed. He just kind of wandered out from those trees to check the lay of the land, and the Union soldiers who happened to be hanging around right here shot him. If his second in command McIntosh had just TOLD the soldiers what had happened, then an entire contingent wouldn't have spent the whole day just hanging around in the woods, waiting for McCulloch to magically appear again and give them orders after McIntosh, too, was killed.

Below this plateau, which looks out onto much of the battlefield, a bunch of soldiers got pinned down on the rocky cliffs and slaughtered.

Will recounts it all in great detail:

As per usual, the unlucky inhabitants of this tavern got caught up in the middle of the battle, and then had to deal with its aftermath:

We did this entire tour in the sleet, by the way. Those are the weird little shapes that you keep seeing in the photos. It was unpleasant, yes, but you know how we feel about having a place all to ourselves!

Great was the joy that the children felt when they turned in their books and earned their Junior Ranger badges for Pea Ridge, and then even greater was their joy when they also turned in their completed Underground Railroad books and also earned their Junior Civil War Historian patches!

So great was this joy, apparently, that a few days ago, when an adult asked Will how her Christmas vacation was, she replied, "Great! I earned two new Junior Ranger badges!"

There were also Christmas presents and feasting and family, of course, but Junior Ranger badges?

Nothing can compare to that.