The Week Ahead

November 18, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

I’m rather looking forward to this week.

On Tuesday, approximately, we should be getting our new shoes from Amazon. Then on Thursday, courier-willing, we should get our shipment of Singapore Maths books from Singapore.
At the end of this week our new bookshelf should also be in the country and shortly on its way to us.

All in all, a busy time for small things here at the Patch.

I’m especially excited and interested to see just what the Singaporean textbooks are actually like. I feel rather like Christmas has come a few weeks early, for me at least. I’ll let you know if and when everything arrives (partly the evil that is NaBloPoMo post inspiration failure, and partly genuine excitement), and what I think of it.

We also have our regular Tuesday swimming slot, and perhaps I shall see about getting some decent video off my phone to show you how the Miss is progressing in this department.

Other than that, it is looking to be a quiet week around our place.

What’s happening at your place this week?

Conscience prodders

November 17, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

As I’ve written on our About page, we’re pretty eclectic in our approach to homeschooling. There are many aspects of a variety of philosophies and approaches that appeal. Naturally homeschooling is something of an extension to parenting and it is not a simple matter of divorcing your parenting style from your homeschooling style.

So every now and then, when I read something new or, like today, listen to a different perspective on how things can be my conscience gets a bit of a pricking. It makes me question my assumptions and my choices. This is totally uncomfortable and unpleasant. In a good way.

Once pricked, I spend time assessing why I feel uncomfortable and thinking about what it is that is doing all that prodding. Sometimes it is a no-brainer and I take on board the ideas I have read or heard. Other times I partially agree, but can’t quite see how it would work in real life (in my home). And then there are times where I may think an idea has merit but I can’t (yet) overcome my existing prejudices or set way of thinking and experiencing to embrace it.

Today I watched an interview (sort of) with Radical Unschooler, Dayna Martin. It made me uncomfortable and prodded me in all sorts of places and ways. I’m not really an unschooler, despite wishing to follow my children’s interests in order that the learning experience is self-motivated and fulfilling for them. I want them to be intrinsically motivated to learn. That was one of my initial motivations for choosing this lifestyle.

But like many people, I am taking a path that is new to me, and opposite to the way I was brought up and schooled. It takes quite a bit of work on myself to stay even slightly near my parenting & schooling style goals. Some days I feel something akin to a human metronome, swaying from my traditional upbringing and the prevailing bog standard parenting culture over to something closer to the attachment parenting/humanist world view that, when I stop and think about the sort of parent (and person) I want to be, is my preference.

I just wish that I could find someone to read or follow who has chosen a different path from their own upbringing, and doesn’t make the change sound like one day they woke up and were miraculously the sort of parent and teacher they wanted to be.

How about you? Do you follow the conventional wisdom, or do you question it? Are you your parent reincarnated, or have you consciously morphed into another type of parent? (And was it easy, hard or still a work in progress?)

The Magazine Files

November 16, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

Today, as I mentioned over at Oh Waily earlier, I took a further step in creating some sort of order out my homeschool things. Although at this stage of proceedings there isn’t an awful lot of “things” to organise.

At the age of five and a tiny bit, our main focus is on fun and play, with a bit of reading, mathematics, art and science thrown in for good measure. Following my new monthly topic format many other areas will be integrated as we go, including a smidgen of history and geography when and where it fits well.

So I purchased these cheap and cheerful magazine files today with the intent of using them to store the books from the library that I use to help me come up with activities, or for reading to the kids. They are pretty much on-subject, so only Master Oh Waily seems interested in looking through them. He’s obviously the non-fiction child in this house. And he insists that we do every activity in one of the measurement books I brought back, so there ought to be a few posts for you right there. But he has also tired of looking at them recently, so instead of having a towering pile of books on the kids’ table, I thought it best if I found an alternative. Here they are:

Along with library books I will also be storing printables, worksheets and anything else that I will need for the activities I plan to do each week. At this point I am presuming that they will hold most things, or at least the list of items required if they have homes elsewhere.

Both Miss Oh and Master Oh now have a file each – in pink and blue – that I have put to each side of the desk. It is where the work they are currently doing will be stored, or where items will go before filing. Miss Oh Waily’s now houses a new maths exercise book that we will put to good use making graphs and area measurements amongst other things, and also her pink writing journal which it seems might show signs of being a success.

This was the scene shortly after the cover was decorated with a smiling heart.

And once again Brave starts to take shape. I’ll let you know if it continues or was a one-off wonder.

The subject magazine files are currently stored on our unit in the dining room, but only because we are waiting for the arrival of an Expedit bookshelf from Myflatpack. This one, in fact. It will be installed in the hallway directly opposite the “front” doorway in to our living room. I shall re-home all of the kids books on this and set aside some of the cubes for organisational use. Well, that’s the plan as it stands at the moment. I’m slightly scared that it won’t have enough space for everything, but perhaps it is just my imagination that we have way too many books*.

I’ll see how it goes. The bookshelf should be here in a couple of weeks and when I’m done sorting it into its first incarnation I will post some pictures so you can see where the heart of Oh Waily kids reading will be.

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* I know it is not possible to have too many books, but that perhaps to have too many books out on view will make choice harder.

The BFG

November 15, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / 1 Comment

Miss Oh Waily’s current bed time story of choice is The BFG by Roald Dahl. She begs me to read as many chapters as I can, and then asks for more. As I didn’t read this as a child, which is sacrilege I know, I’m having a good time doing it. There was absolutely no Dahl in my life except Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in movie form. Can you say Gene Wilder anyone?

I am quite enjoying getting to know the wacky worlds of Dahl’s imagination in their written incarnation. And The BFG is full of fabulously ridiculous mish-mashing of words as well as the wild imaginative creations of the giants’ world.

I mean how can I resist words like snozzcumbers, whizzpoppers*, as well as the fact that unbeknownst to me before now that Wellington appears in the story.

‘Wellington?’ Sophie said. ‘Where is Wellington?’
‘Your head is full of squashed flies,’ the Giant said. ‘Wellington is in New Zealand. The human beans in Wellington has an especially scrumdiddlyumptious taste, so says the Welly-eating Giant.’

It was all going so well at this point, but by this time in the chapter, I knew what was coming and it wasn’t complimentary.

‘What do the people of Wellington taste of?’ Sophie asked.
‘Boots,’ the Giant said.
‘Of course,’ Sophie said. ‘I should have known.’

I will forgive Roald for conspiring to say that I taste of boots, because he came up with words like hippodumplings, crockadowndillies, fizzwiggler, humplecrimp, wraprascal, crumpscoddle, disgusterous, sickable, rotsome, rommytot, glubbage, dogswoggler, frobscottle and many, many more besides.

Tonight I met my first proper tongue-twister and had to have three attempts to get it right. Oh my brain may ache by the time I finish this one. See how you go reading this aloud:

‘Catasterous!’ cried the BFG. ‘Upgoing bubbles is a catasterous disastrophe!’

Oh, and the only slightly disturbing feature I have found reading this book, and I’d appreciate other folks’ experiences here…

I find myself morphing into some sort of weird, mixed up part-Cockney, part-Devonian hybrid accent while I’m speaking as the BFG. I just can’t seem to stop myself doing this.

Please tell me I’m not alone in this. Please.

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* just don’t you whizzpop around me, alright !?!

Mental Maths

November 14, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

Just who is mental about maths?
Or is that a condemnation of a whole section of humankind’s scientific endeavours?

No.

It is the sound of a mum very happy to see her daughter manage to do her first (probably second or third, in reality) batch of mental maths. Mental subtraction, to be precise.

Miss Oh Waily has been able to do abstract, in the head, simple addition for some time. We hadn’t been working on the subtraction side verbally as much though. Then a short while ago, as I mentioned earlier, we started to use Khan Academy to give her some confidence and regular practice at basic maths.

She felt very wobbly about the subtraction equations so I used a combination of the solid (our ladybugs) and the pictorial (a number line) to help her get the hang of doing subtraction equations. At first she grizzled about having to do it, but today when I saw how fast she did the set of equations and asked her what she was doing, she was as proud as punch when she showed me that she could do them without the number line to help now.

Naturally I was rather chuffed for her. It’s a great mental leap from using your fingers to ‘knowing’ the answer automatically. In less than a couple of weeks, I’d say. Fantastic effort Miss Oh !!

She didn’t even complain too much when I suggested we watch the double digit addition video, so she must have been very pleased with herself and brimming with confidence.

I will also confess to being a little gushy when I saw what she was doing. Poor thing, smooshed with hugs and kisses. Who’d have a mother, eh? So now I will try to prod her (very gently, of course) on to the next stage and see how she goes with slightly larger numbers.

When did you notice your kids starting to do mental arithmetic? And what did you do to help them get there?

Gollum

November 13, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

Tonight’s post is brought to you by a girl’s night out, and very little writing done during the day. It is a cross-post to both The Pukeko Patch and Oh Waily Waily.
Apologies in advance to those who have subscribed to both.

As I mentioned yesterday, I had planned to share some photographs of the hideous, but lovable creature we all know as Gollum. Well here he is.

As you can see, he is at his handsome best, while my photography wasn’t. Give me some leeway for the fact that they are terrible. It is at the airport, it was quite busy, there are huge glass windows directly behind and below him. I was in sole charge of two small people waiting to collect their Dad. I really wasn’t having my best framing, and camera setting moment. If you search the interweb there will be dozens of (hopefully better) photographs of him on his fishing expedition. Every traveller going seemed to be whipping out their phone (and occasionally an actual camera) and snapping shots of him.

Here are some more photographs to give you some perspective.

This last shot was the most popular position to take images from as the shoulder to shoulder folk would attest.

Not long until the movie, my preciouses. Not long.

To be or not to be

November 12, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

that is the question surrounding tonight’s post.

I was looking forward to bringing you a nice bloggy piece about Gollum tonight.
As you may know, many of us who live in Middle Earth, are particularly fond of this creature and others of his stature. We are, in fact, getting rather manic about the upcoming movie being shown in it’s home town. To that end I wished to share with you at least one manifestation of this festive attitude, and tell you all about the Oh Waily children’s reaction to it.

Unfortunately my computer has decided to have a panic attack about some random thing and may have completely ruined my photo albums. I am not a happy camper about that, I can tell you. So I am patiently waiting to see if I am going to need to cry into my keyboard, and therefore will be heading off to a computer doctor tomorrow, or if it can right itself and return my images to me.

Please keep your fingers crossed for me.

Two peas in a pod

November 11, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

Like many young children, the Oh Waily kids are not that fond of green veges. This is especially true of the humble pea. So you should have seen the wrinkled up noses on our gardening day when I said that the seeds I had for planting out were peas.

Here is what we started out with:

The two halves of coke bottles are leftovers from another unrelated craft project that will eventually turn up here at the Patch. But while I was browsing gardening and nature ideas on Pinterest it occurred to me that they would be a perfect solution to see-through containers for this little experiment.

So our first step was to fill the containers with the potting mix.

Then we placed three peas in each container, as close to the side and as unobstructed by potting mix as possible.

After they were covered over with another few centimetres of potting mix we watered them and set them up on a window ledge in our living room.

We then went on to spread a bunch of daisy seeds into another, larger container. This time I did the hard work of filling the container and the kids finished off with sprinkling seed and watering them with a small spray bottle.

Tiny little seeds they were, especially when compared to the peas we had just planted.

Then both the littlies took turns in spraying the tiny seeds to get them started.

And finally, they all came to rest on our window ledge.

I’ll post a follow-up on the growth of our little plants a bit later in the week.

Night writer

November 10, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / 2 Comments

Every now and then Miss Oh Waily gets so tired during the day that she ends up taking a nap. This isn’t ideal because it naturally pushes out the other end of the day with a child who should be in bed and sleeping at her usual time not being the least bit tired.

A while back I succumbed to Miss Oh Waily’s solution to this problem. She asked for pen and paper and the side light on. She proceeded to sit in bed and draw until she became tired enough to put it aside and fall asleep. This was fine, she’s in bed, quiet and I get some end-of-day personal time. Mostly.

So a few weeks back this happened again, but she asked for the “special” pens rather than the usual pen I had been giving her. I was a bit dubious, but thought that it would be a good test to see if she could take care of very fine tipped markers. I gave her the pens. The next day she showed me some of what she had done and asked to do it again that night.

The end result, which you will see below, took her several days of half an hour (or so) sessions. She instigated it. I did not help her in any way. She had decided that she wanted to make it for her very favourite teacher at our daycare and was determined to finish it. The only influence I had was in suggesting that she draw the cover page. Here is Brave as copied out by Miss Oh Waily.

She insisted that it be laid out on her blankie, so please excuse the background. I also had to take a series of quick photographs as she wanted it made up to take to her teacher that day. Which we did.

The cover page:

The First Two pages:

Remember, she is writing on scrap paper as I was expecting her to be drawing and doodling. So not a line in sight for her to keep her words and sentences (not too much punctuation going on, as you can see) level.

The Last page:

The Little Writer

Turns out when she has a goal, she’s a stubborn little madam. Even though I have been teaching her the rounded a, she wanted to copy the book’s ‘a’, and the same with the ‘g’. She had to do it like the book.

I have no idea why she decided to do this, but I’m all for anything that will get her interested in writing some more. A lovely surprise from my very lovely little girl.

Flexibility

November 9, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

No, we are not talking about me. That would be the last adjective I would apply to myself.

What it does apply to is the beauty of home education. Today was a glorious day in Wellington. Bright sunshine, light winds and the promise of summer. What that meant for the Oh Waily children was an impromptu beach visit.

For them it involves buckets and spades, sand, waves and picnics. For me I slip in discussions about our five senses (which is my planned topic for November) and what we see, feel, hear, smell and, their favourite, taste.

Today we watched a tern* diving into the surf for its lunch, repeatedly. We also saw a regular gull dropping a shell of some sort on the beach, repeatedly. I guess his lunch was taking a bit more effort to get. Lots of wildlife on the go today. We watched and were able to see, close up, the skill of the seagulls as they hovered and came to a landing spot next to our picnic table, repeatedly. Such control and hovering and glide. Even if they are pushy and greedy, it was lovely to watch.

We talked about the colour of the ocean and why it is dark in some parts and light in others. We saw the different colours of the ocean and discussed why we shouldn’t take the “short cut” to the beach through the plants and possibly the penguin nesting areas. We learned to balance on the rocks that make up the protection along the roadside edge of the beach and we enjoyed some time in a park refining our climbing, balancing and swinging skills.

To cap it all off we indulged in a little taste therapy before heading home. There isn’t anything quite like hokey pokey ice cream. Yummo.

Here’s to the flexibility to get out and enjoy nature, when nature is happy and welcoming. And thanks to the local birdlife for putting on a brief, but interesting show for us today. It was great fun.

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* probably one of this variety