The Call of the Wild Rainforest

Apparently, the internet is teeming with resources about the rainforest. There are so many directions to go, vines on which to swing, and giant Amazon lily pads to jump off that we're just going to dive right in and see what happens.

I've plucked a number of rainforesty books from our local library including:

image from www.bookapex.com

image from www.yourbooksworld.com

image from www.imaginechildhood.com

Search "The Great Kapok Tree" itself and you'll find tons of go-along lesson plans, like the one at Homeschool Share.

We also picked up a fun video about rainforest animals, plus I have some cartoon movie back-ups in case I get desperate:

1. Fern Gully
2. Rio

My mind is going blank. Can anyone think of any more?

My plan for today is to go grocery shopping in the rainforest (insert dramatic music).

Okay, not really. But we are going to take a list of foods (mostly fruits) naturally found in the rainforests and make a Rainforest Fruit Salad when we get back home. I constructed my list with the help of this site.

I've also read other blogs where daring parents replicate the rainforest biome using moist foods like buttered bread, celery, along with ground-up Oreos. Yum indeed.

We'll swing from that vine when we get to it, I suppose.

Feed Your Face

So I cannot afford the high-end wrinkle-reducing comes-in-the-tiniest-container-ever-made face cream or the cancer that might possibly go with it. I must improvise.

By improvise, I mean using stuff from my kitchen that will go to waste if I don't find some use for it now!

Whenever that happens, I make an avocado conconction. Basically, I mash up one whole avocado until it is a bowlful of creamy goodness. Depending on my mood (or the availability of resources), I add one or more of the following:

• a drizzle of honey
• a spoonful of olive oil
• a pinch of sugar (for exfoliation)
• warm water
• a squirt of lemon juice
• egg yolk, or
• half a banana that is quickly ripening to the point of no return

After opening my pores with a couple splashes of warm water, I slather the gunk all over my face.

Education, then, comes in at least two forms:

1. Chasing Aidyn around the house as a zombie, thereby teaching him about special effects make-up and acting.

     2. Answering his question, "why are you doing that?" as he's covering his mouth in absolute disgust, with "avocadoes have vitamins in them, which are good for your skin. Vitamins like E, A, K...Ya know, you don't only get yer vitamins from eating them."

I apologize that no picture with accompany this post. Use your imagination (or try it yourself!).

How Do Ya Bubble in Riding Bikes and Scaling Fences on This Here Standardized Test?

Anyone who has decided to homeschool has, as a result, tormented themselves with weighing the pros and cons, scouring books upon books on the subject, confessing to  friends and family, and bashing themselves over the head just wishing they could prognosticate the outcome.

It wasn't an overnight whim, in other words.

After prechool-homeschooling Aidyn, we sent him to public school kindergarten (mostly because I was full-time at my uni and working), but we kept a running dialogue about returning to homeschooling.

Ever since deciding (as in not signing him up for first grade at his previous school and instead enlisting at a home-based charter school), I've let some outside concerns trickle in.

The most common is what about socialization?

He did build a good circle of six-year-old pals there, and I worried about whether he'd be exposed to as many social situations.

But, as I've been worrying, he has spent his time (on most days from about noon  until we force him inside  to 8 o'clock) playing with the neighborhood kids, riding bikes and scooters, winding toy trains through self-paved dirt paths, "playing school" with the two little girls that frequent the area, having dance-offs, and bursting in the house every other hour for help solving a social gaffe.

And I feel silly.

Even the other day at work, someone asked about the ins and outs of this here charter school and the field trips they organize.

This coworker offered, "Well, at least he can socialize with other kids once in a while."

Yeah.

I think I've taught more social ettiquette in these few weeks of summer break than ever before, but it's a slippery slope. I don't want to be the orge of social reform. I want Aidyn to learn to handle squabbles and cooperative play on his own.

Around 4pm on many days, I see the abandoned chapter books on our coffee table and debate whether or not to call Aidyn in to read.

(As an aside, no one ever says, but what about ed-u-CA-tion?)

But I realize that, through play, he is learning so many things that I cannot quantify, measure, or bubble in on a standardized test. Through the course of these summer days, I see him learning about friendship, building common bonds, the development of physical skills (like scaling the fence and giving his mother a heart attach. I'm better now), negotiation, and delving into a land of make-believe.

I've also learned that, most importantly, I need to just chill out.

Magic Dan and Dreaming Big

Yesterday, Aidyn and I visited our local library to see Magic Dan. As he does every year, Magic Dan wowed the crowd with his magic tricks and fast-paced punchlines. I saw delight in Aidyn's eyes as Magic Dan pulled a six-foot wand from his tiny, tiny hat. But what I most loved about Magic Dan's performance was his ability to encourage every child to wave their little magic wand-fingers and say, "I am special."

The theme of his show and the library's reading program this summer is Dream Big.

from 123rf.com

The freedom of summer and the theme of dreaming big is pervasive in homeschooling. In the summer, children spend much of their time outdoors, playing with the neighborhood children (who are all ages and come from many backgrounds), discovering ladybugs and other fauna, cracking open random books they found on a shelf, walking through the library aisles, and coming up with inventive ways to spend their time. Homeschoolers gravitate toward this same attitude all year round. We use the world to school our children because we have big dreams for them. We want more than imprisonment in a brick-and-mortar building, seated at desks, and learning what will be most useful for passing a state standardized test.

No.

We want them to trust their curiosities and follow them. Experiment with the world. Notice the intricacies of the planet with awe and wonderment. Go ahead and squish your hands into the mud so long as you share what it feels like. Follow a single question through books, an internet search, interviews of family members and experts, documentaries, and personal reasoning until you quench that query. We want them to think of learning as all-around-us, hidden in books on our shelves and waiting wide open in the big wide world.

from squidoo.com/raining

That's why when I hear a naysayer quipping, "but then they're stuck in the house all day with no socialization," I try very hard not to laugh.

Game day; or, How I Snuck in Education Today

Yesterday morning, we hosted a little alphabet scavenger hunt for Aidyn and his neighborhood pals.

First, I wrote out one letter per index card. Next, I wrote the names of items one could find out-of-doors, like air conditioning unit, bush, cement, and so on. Things got tricky around letters I, Q, and V, but I used some of my son's outdoor toys. For Q, I found a quadrilateral block, for instance.

We then handed out the alphabet cards with just the letters. Then each child hunted for their specific letters. I was pleased to see them helping each other.

"I found one! It's a hole! Does anyone have an "H"?"

The whole hunt was a success, and the kids had a ball learning.

Later that day we tweaked the game (mostly because we couldn't think of 26 more outdoor items that would fit each letter). This time we used only the alphabet cards and challenged them to find things outside that start with A, B, C, and so on.

That's when I saw them flexing some creative muscle. For instance (totally on his own!), when we got to Q, Aidyn stormed off and said, pseudo-dramatically, "I quit!"

To which the other kids shouted, "He's quiting! Quiting starts with Q!"

I really don't think they'll ever forget that "quit" starts with a Q.

During a quiet part of the day, when Aidyn's pals went out shopping, we sat at the table and played some M&M math. I had printed out an M&M worksheet earlier that day and drew some M&Ms on the back in a one-to-one order to play around with greater than or less than signs.

Before we cracked open two fun size packets of the colorful candy, Aidyn estimated how much of each color were in the bags. We then dumped them out on the table, and, one color at a time, counted them and graphed them.

Along the way, we made observations about how much more this color had than another, which had the most, and which had the least.

After graphing them, Aidyn filled out the greater than or less than signs and made sure to give each one teeth.

Of course, after M&M math, we gobbled them up.

Continuing our learning about explorers (even pint-sized ones), we watched the sequel to An American Tail, entitled Fievel Goes West.

We talked about western exploration at the time, the pursuit for a better life, a new frontier, and the prospect of gold. We also did nothing at all but laugh at Tiger's  silly antics.

And finally, later that day, Aidyn and his friend K played with Google Earth. I heard them "go to Mars" and look for aliens before asking if I could zoom in on our neighborhood back on Earth. They played with it at street-level and explored the streets, saying "I recognize that house! There's Mama's favorite restaurant!" etc.

Overall, it was a fun, learning-filled day (and the kids never suspected!)

Yes, We Want to Be Explorers

As a way to clue in my dancing-in-the-freedom-of-Summer son that we have entered a new fun unit study, we read So You Want to Be an Explorer by Judith St. George and David Small, while tucked away in his tent (I think he's trying to tell me he wants to go camping).

Anyway, the book exposed us to a long list of explorers and their respective character traits: their pluck, their bravery, their thrill for adventure... (insert elbow-nudging here). Okay, eventually he realized we're focusing on Adventureland this month. We talked about it awhile, and I asked him to help me collect some of his Adventureland-related movies (movies about "the wild" and/or movies where a character goes exploring or enters a new world).

We made a huge pile, but he held up An American Tail and, in the sweetest voice, asked if we could cuddle up and watch it now (even though I had completely created on my own  prepared a "Am I in The Lion King or What Animals Live in Africa? worksheet). I couldn't turn down that face.

As we watched, we talked all the way through it. We commented on the snowflakes falling in the opening scene.

"Why do snowflakes melt when they fall on my hand?" he asked, remembering our trip to Lake Tahoe.

We proceeded to talk about body heat.

"Why do some people like to catch snowflakes on their tongues?" he asked, remembering Lucy from the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

We proceeded to talk about yummy shaved ice and how Gramma used to suck on ice cubes.

When the town is beseiged by people setting fire to it, Aidyn asked, "Why are they doing that?"

"I dunno. Let me Google it," I answered, followed by an age-appropriate explanation of the persecution of Jews in 1885 Russia.

We watched the rest of the movie, sharing in this way, and consulting his map to trace their journey. At the end, he asked, "Why is the Statue of Liberty brown in this movie but now it's green?" I consulted the website for the Statue of Liberty (he also asked if we could live there), and explained that copper rusts to green when exposed to the elements long enough. I suggested we pluck a penny from his savings jar and let it sit outside for awhile and see what happens.

After the film, we played all the games that were so lovingly included on the DVD. We counted with Digit, sung off-key with Fievel and Tanya, and found "duos" with Tiger and Fievel. We then sung this song that still makes me cry.

Fine way to start off Adventureland.

Swinging into Adventureland

Image not mine.

This summer month, we will swing into Adventureland, largely to learn about exploration. Adventureland was designed the capture the curiosities of "unfamiliar" landscapes and echoes the true spirit of exploration through the Indiana Jones Ride through treacherous caves and the tour guide-led boats on the Jungle Cruise.

The last time we studied Adventureland when Aidyn was three, we focused mostly on the animals found in the savanna and the rainforests.  This time he's big enough to tackle a globe making activity I have in mind and get a grasp on latitude and longitude. Mostly, my aim for Adventureland month to is capture the spirit of exploration.

We'll also revisit:

animals that live in the savanna
animals that live in the rainforests
where in the world are the rainforests