Walking the Line

June 1, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

No, I am not referring to Johnny Cash.
I am talking about a nice Montessori activity that comes under the Practical Life section Control of Movement. To read about the different, traditional ways of introducing this and extending it, visit the AMI website’s description here.

The basics involve the child learning to control their body as they follow a line on the ground. It helps improve balance and control. Generally it is an ellipse, but as I was doing this at home I did the best with what I have on hand.
In this house we have a pale carpet which goes through the living areas. We have a door from the living room into the central entry hall, which also has a door into the dining room. The dining room then joins the living room through double glass sliding doors. What this means is – I could construct a long, slightly ellipse-like walk the line circuit.

So, here is a view of my home made “line”.

This is the line coming from the hallway into the dining room. It continues to the right at both ends and enters the living room from both sets of doors.
The line is simply black electrical tape so it is easily removed and should leave no residue when done with. It flexes reasonably well I’ve found, so can make slightly wonky but curved lines.

And here is Miss Oh Waily taking her first walk around on it.

We haven’t yet introduced it formally, with music and equidistant walking. I am not completely sure if Master Oh Waily could manage it and that has made me a bit tentative about doing it with the two of them together.
Still, if he doesn’t get the opportunity he won’t ever manage.

Miss Oh can happily walk the line, and is probably almost competent at the second step – heel to toe walking. The third step may be a bit hit and miss. I’m not sure if I’m ready to clean up the water spills, but I’m sure she will be able to walk with an object, or even two, in her hands. I can’t wait until we get to balancing items on her head. I must look to buy a small bean bag or two for the purpose.
Naturally you are not restricted to the extension exercises mentioned at the AMI page. Extensions to consider are altering tempo, adding turning, obstacles, taking verbal commands, “creative” walking (like an elephant, a mouse, etc), catching & throwing. If you can imagine it and it requires physical control, then it can be added in to your child’s repertoire.

So no more wimping out here. Next time we do the formal version I will write an update to let you know how we all get on.

What do you do with your children to encourage their co-ordination and control of movement?

Weaving

May 29, 2012May 28, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

About a month ago I decided to create a craft option for Miss Oh Waily to do if she wished.
I headed out onto the interweb with the intention of finding a good tutorial for making a cardboard weaving loom. I was not disappointed.
I landed at Craftstylish and used their excellent tutorial to make our own, smaller, version.
I didn’t want something too large, but I wanted it large enough that Miss Oh could hang on to it while she moved the wool back and forth.
I chose some leftover pink wool, hoping that it would assist in making it attractive, but I can’t say that it has been a huge hit. Miss Oh has managed to complete a few rows, but I think she is finding it a bit of a struggle to pull through the wool and gently nudge it up to form the row. She certainly has no problem handling the needle and doing the overs and unders.
I think the main thing is that she just needs to stick with it a bit longer and she will get all of the steps mastered. I have a feeling Miss Oh may have inherited her parents’ tendency to want to be instantly capable of doing any and all sorts of things without putting in the practice. Oh dear.

By way of encouragement to continue, I think I will also start calling it The Wizard of Oz bookmark in the hope that having a set purpose for it will encourage more regular use. In the meantime I need to find a spot where it is visible, but out of reach of a smaller member of the household. In his sticky mitts it wouldn’t last seconds.

What crafts are you doing with your children?

Changing Education Paradigms – Ken Robinson

May 27, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

I am a big fan of the TED talks over at YouTube, but sadly I don’t spend as much time watching them as I would like. Then this past week a TED talk that showed great promise popped up on my Facebook feed from a homeschool group I have recently joined.

The talk is given by Sir Ken Robinson and has been animated by the RSA. Apparently it is only twelve minutes out of an hour long talk, but it gets to the nub of the current educational situation in short order. The animation is also very funky.

The only negative is that is seems to come to a very strange halt at the end and doesn’t describe any ideas for an alternative paradigm. But I still want to share it with you because it sums up so many of the comments made by John Taylor Gatto around the institutional nature of the current school system.

Now I must go rummage around to see if the full hour long talk is also on YouTube. If I find it, I will come back and post it here as an update. I am ever hopeful that if I find the full talk it will have the missing part – how he thinks public education should look going forward.

I hope you enjoy it – it is called RSA Animation – Changing Education Paradigms.

Puzzles, cylinders and scissors

May 25, 2012May 30, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / 2 Comments

Master Oh Waily has been busy over the past few weeks. He has shown some skill gains in several areas.
His current go-to activity is jigsaw puzzles. We have a variety of puzzles in the Oh Waily household, small six and eight piece wooden puzzles with bright, cheery pictures; a cardboard Thomas the Tank Engine puzzle picked up for $6 at the supermarket one day is a big favourite as is his 30 piece, double sided giant pirate puzzle. Here he is concentrating on the small wooden puzzles.

Our set of beautiful Educo wooden puzzles.

I have also introduced Master Oh to the cylinder blocks. After initially being a little unsure, he took to the task and has mastered both of the blocks we have. His interest has made me even consider trying to get the other two in order to make up the set, just to see how he would get on.
So here he is working his way through the two blocks. As you can see, he still does not put all of the cylinders into the correct holes straight away but he does get there in the end. The beauty of self-correcting materials.

Starting out

Here we are, almost getting it, but showing some out of place cylinders.

Working through it.

And here he is with the final result. All wobbly cylinders fixed up.

All done.

As well as learning about size and dimensions, the cylinders also teach some pre-writing and pre-mathematics skills. If you are interested in learning about the cylinder blocks, you can read more about them here.

And the final skill that is coming along nicely is his scissor control. I made some strips for cutting practice using leftover stickers from Christmas and some lightweight card. The aim was for him to cut between the stickers and then place the cut piece into his bowl for use in future art and crafting. And here we see him in action.

Concentration

Yes, some days we do have our pyjamas on long after we get up and about.

And that is how Master Oh Waily’s skills are coming along.
What are your kids mastering right now?

Sleepy Little Yoga

May 23, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

The last time Miss Oh Waily and I went out to the library she spotted this on one of the shelves and said she wanted to take it home.

I was a bit surprised as this isn’t usually the sort of book that attracts her attention but she turned around and said that it was a book from Playgroup*. So home it came.

It is so sweet watching them do the “actions” as the book is read to them. It has nine very simple and easy to do poses for toddlers and pre-schoolers to do and is helped by the animal references throughout.

Since they seem to like this one so much I picked up another book on toddler and children’s yoga from the library. This one is not a story book but a way of introducing more yoga to younger children.
It is Yoga Fun for toddlers, children, & you by Juliet Pegrum.
It takes you through poses for children from 3 up to 11 years old. It covers warming up, animal poses, object poses, dynamic poses, group poses and breathing.
I’m looking forward to trying out some of the ideas and poses with the Oh Waily children. It should be a nice extension to Sleepy Little Yoga aka Yoga Baby in our house.

Once we’ve had a bit of time to try out the ideas I will let you know if, indeed, we have two Yoga Babies in the Oh Waily household.

—

* Playgroup is our name for the kids’ fantastic sessional daycare at our gym. May I recommend Kids World if you happen to be in the Lower Hutt area, both my kids love it to bits.

Quote of the Month

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

The Oh Waily’s are currently travelling away from home at the moment, so in honour of our short holiday away, here is a nice quote that speaks to a thing that is dear to my heart – learning through the experience of travel.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― Augustine of Hippo

The Importance of Play – An afterthought

May 16, 2012May 13, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / 2 Comments

After I wrote yesterday’s post I had a quiet time and an opportunity to think about what I had read, and then written here at The Patch.

It came as a surprise to me, but when I thought about my younger school days, say up to the age of 12, the dominant memories are of times of play. I had never really given it any thought until yesterday.

At primary school my memories are of playing What’s the Time Mr Wolf? when I would have been 5 or 6 and still in the junior section of the school. Playing on the jungle gym and hanging upside down with friends as I grew or with one of my best friends playing tippeny runs and soccer with the boys out on the playing fields. At Intermediate my memories involve playing bull rush behind our classroom, before it was banned in schools. We also went through a period of trying to build human pyramids during our lunch breaks.

The only other strong memories relate to aspects of school that involved personal responsibility or achievement. Taking my pocket money to school each week as a 7 or 8 year old and filling out the deposit slips as part of the Post Office Savings scheme that ran in schools here when I was a nipper; being bell monitor and using my own watch to keep track of the end of lunch breaks; being part of an advanced reading group and being able to sit under the trees outside to do this class. At Intermediate it was taking my turn as lunch monitor, collecting everyone’s order and money in the morning and then getting their lunches from the canteen at lunch.

At no point do I have any real, strong memories of the “learning” parts of school.
At least from the years before High School. Yet clearly I learned to read and write, do basic maths and such like.

If I think about my life out of school through the same time frame, then it was all about playing. The games my best friend and I played out the back of our houses in the local church’s big back parking lot. War games, cowboys and indians, The Dukes of Hazard, (okay so that not only dates me, but sounds kind of sad all these years later) and more of the same and similar. Fantasies and collaborative expressions of creativity of all sorts.

This playfulness seems to stop dead when I begin to think of my years at high school. I don’t know if this is a function of the change of attitude and more academic focus around this age, or if it is purely the result of a natural developmental progression. More reading will be required on this, I think.

How about you? What are your dominant memories of childhood?
Play. Learning. Or something completely different.

The Importance of Play

May 15, 2012May 13, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / 3 Comments

Since beginning the process of investigating the advantages and disadvantages of choosing the home schooling option I have found myself reading more and more non-fiction work around different aspects of education.

I have just recently come across The Journal of Unschooling and Alternative Learning and have started to read my way through the articles it contains. Today’s post is inspired by some interesting quotes taken from an article in the 2012 Vol. 6 Issue 12 journal.

The article is Letting the Child Work: Real Learning, Real Play in School, by Deb O’Rourke.

My interest was in the view of the importance of self-created and directed play to the growth of children and what it means to their future.

Play provides a psychological safety zone in which children can test their competence without fear of failure. (Hall, Dennis et al, 1968)

And how important is it that fear of failure is kept out of our children’s lives? In my opinion, it makes the difference between a child becoming an adventurous and creative adult and one that relies on other people for guidance and ultimately gives up control of their lives.

Play functions as the major means by which children (a) develop intrinsic interests and competencies; (b) learn how to make decisions, solve problems, exert self-control, and follow rules; (c) learn to regulate their emotions; (d) make friends and learn to get along with others as equals; and (e) experience joy. Through all of these effects, play promotes mental health. (Gray, 2011, The decline of…, p. 443)

In other words, play is intrinsic to developing essential skills for a positive integration into the community and to becoming thoughtful adults who are able to best deal with life’s lumps and bumps.

Somehow, as a society, we have come to the conclusion that to protect children from danger and to educate them, we must deprive them of the very activity that makes them happiest and place them for ever more hours in settings where they are more or less continually directed and evaluated by adults, settings almost designed to produce anxiety and depression. (Gray, 2011, p. 458)

And this sounds very much like helicopter parenting. I think we have a great deal to thank our overpowering media for with regards to the excessive doom and gloom that scares the living daylights out of us by exaggerating the inherent dangers of living in our society. (Note: I am not dismissing all dangers, simply that I believe the degree of reporting and depth of reporting gives us all to believe that behind every bush there lurks someone or something that is just waiting to prey on our children.)

Everywhere, to live in human society, people must behave in accordance with conscious, shared mental conceptions of what is appropriate; and that is what children practice constantly in their play. In play, from their own desires, children practice the art of being human. (Gray, 2008, p. 4).

Indeed, the freedom to play and integrate ideas through play, are amongst some of the stronger reasons for choosing to take the home school road. I have no doubt that my children will learn to read and write, do mathematics, understand scientific principles and still get to have a childhood absolutely chock-a-block full of self-actualizing play time. Hopefully they will be fearless and that they become the best people they can be, as well as being positive contributors to our society. Lofty goals, but as Henry David Thoreau says,
“In the long run, men only hit what they aim at.”

Quote References:
Hall, Mr. Justice E. M., Dennis, L. A., et al (1968). Living and learning: the report of the provincial committee on aims and objectives of education in the schools of Ontario. Toronto: Ontario Department of Education.

Gray, Peter (Nov. 19, 2008). The value of play I: the definition of play provides clues as to its purposes. Psychology Today online.

Gray, Peter (2011). The decline of play and the rise of psychopathology in children and adolescents. American Journal of Play, Vol. 3 No. 4, Spring 2011, pp. 443-463.

Sharing a Shell – Julia Donaldson

May 12, 2012May 30, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / 2 Comments

This week we brought home this little gem from the library in our book bag.
The Oh Wailys already own quite a few books by Julia Donaldson. More than I care to confess to here today, but naturally involve the Gruffalo and it’s child as well as the three books in The Tales from Acorn Wood.

Sharing a Shell is currently the favourite reading material for Master Oh Waily, and Miss Oh Waily will happily tag along too when it is being read.

Compared to other verse work by Ms Donaldson, I find that this one does not have her usual easy reading flow. Even after multiple readings I am failing to find a good rhythm. And although I generally rate a book by how easy and flowing the language is, even slightly more so than the illustrations, in this case I can forgive the slightly lumpy reading it provides.

I forgive it the flaws in flow because the illustrations are absolutely adorable and better yet, they have made the book a sensory experience for the children as well. There are raised areas that highlight things like waves, rain, fish scales, Blob the Anemone’s crown, parts of the Crab, the shared shell and Brush the bristleworm. So it manages to bring interaction to the reading process and we can talk about, amongst other things, just how fish scales might feel. The story itself allows an introduction, albeit at pre-schooler level, of how each of the sea creatures contributes to the improved lifestyle for the trio as a whole.

In short it is a charming story about a trio of sea creatures and their symbiotic relationship, made attractive by very nice illustrations and adding the sensory experience on top. If the language was just a touch better I would be adding it to our family wishlist for birthdays or Christmas. Still, it is a very good option if picked up from the library especially for children with an interest in nature.

Picture Tracing

May 11, 2012May 30, 2012 / Ms Oh Waily / 2 Comments

A little while ago this post from The Wonder Years crossed my feed reader.
It inspired me to try window tracing with Miss Oh Waily a couple of weeks ago.
I visited the stained glass website mentioned in the post, and printed off some nice, simple images for the purpose. And what nice simple images for colouring in they would make too.

Naturally we could not see the elephant and not choose him, so along with a slightly more complicated unicorn and a very simple butterfly, these were the images we chose for tracing.

A few pieces of sticky tape later and they were up on the windows, ready to go. It was quite the learning curve. I was worried that the regular paper we were going to use would not work unless the image was on the brightest window, so Miss Oh Waily needed her sunglasses to work on the elephant. Poor chook.

Here she is in action. As you can see she is still happily interchangeable with her hands. The vast majority of the time she uses her left, but when things get to be too awkward she switches out to her right. I hope she is able to keep this up, it will make for great versatility.

Here is the artist with her final result. As you can see it got quite wobbly at points and the felt pens we used were quite thin and didn’t give a nice rounded feel to the tracing. I also think that the elephant was too high up for her to do the entire drawing without fatigue.

And here, with foot added, are the three traced images. As you can see from butterfly, little hands wanted to take it down from the window and unfortunately managed a little tear.

The lessons learned from this first attempt were:
1. You don’t need to blind your child with bright sunlight in order to do this.
2. Use a nice thick felt pen, or similar, to help with following the lines.
3. Make sure the height works, it is tough on the arms to have to be kept up for too long. So a simple image, less lines to follow, and low down for a beginner or smaller child.

It would be nice to have a light-box and do this again, but in the comfort of a horizontal position.

What sort of new art are you trying in your home?