Nature Crowns

With today's post, my hope is to illustrate just how simple learning from home can be. It doesn't take much preparation or planning in the early years to create meaningful learning opportunities. Not only that, but when a parent follows the child's cues and capitalizes on their interests, the learning becomes that much richer.

Today we made nature crowns. 

Early this morning, my daughter said she wanted to make some nature jewelry. After cleaning her room (a task that needlessly took ALL morning, but perhaps that's a post for another day), we went outside. With us, I brought a sheet to sit on, a single hole punch, a pair of safety scissors, a roll of masking tape, and some yarn. And my coffee, since I drink that stuff all day long.

Since my son was with us and I wanted to get him interested in this game, I suggested making crowns and they were both all for it. 

Task one: collect some leaves. Daniel ended up collecting all the brown ones that had already fallen. At first I discouraged this because I wasn't sure if they would hold up to a hole punch. But we discovered that they worked well and he went for it. Natalie stuck with mostly live, green leaves. 

Task two: punch some holes in those leaves. 

After I took this picture, I suggested punching two holes in each leaf so that they would lay flat on the crown.

They were both able to punch their own holes, which is excellent for developing fine motor skills.

This part also took some time to complete, requiring persistence and patience (several of the leaves tore during the punching process). 

Task three: string the leaves in the same way that you'd string beads. I wrapped one end of the yarn with a short piece of masking tape to prevent it from fraying. Then I tied one leaf onto the other end and gave each child their string.

Along with leaves, they each dug up one of our pesky ferns (those things are crazy hard to get rid of) in order to find the seed and I helped them tie the seed onto their crowns. 

Natalie also collected several small flowers to poke into the punched holes in her leaves. Daniel chose to poke in a little fern. I love how they were presented with the same project and came up with very different results. 

Daniel's kind of reminds me of Lord of the Flies. The fact that he took off his shirt really only adds to the whole image in me head. (On a side note, I cannot believe how warm it's been here lately. Yes, these pictures were actually taken today, December 19.)

Such a cutie!

And Natalie's was just so sweet with her greenery and yellow flowers.

Very fitting for a sweet girl.

After they finished with their crowns, they went off to play "king" and "queen" for a little while. It fills me with happiness to watch this kind of play go down...creating something and then using that creation in their pretend world. So, so good. 


How does this fit with a Charlotte Mason education? Not only was this activity a complete game for my youngsters, but while playing, they were observing and identifying nature. We found several different types of plants and named them, and we discovered which plants were hardier and which were more fragile. 

Not only that, but the kids were working on simple skills (hole punching and stringing leaves) which will lead to the development of more complex skills (and more involved handicrafts) as they grow.  

And they loved it. They had a lot of fun. That's not specifically Charlotte Mason, but I think we can all agree that when kids are having fun learning it's nothing but a good thing. 

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Creating a Model and Reenacting the story of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff"

Preschoolers love role play. And I do mean love. 

Give them a costume, give them a puppet, get involved in a story with them, and they're off and running. They cannot get enough of pretend play. Which is why reenacting a story is such a natural way to draw preschoolers into narration.

The catch here is the getting-involved-in-the-story-yourself part. I have found that it doesn't take much to get my kids into reenactment, but it does take something. They need an example to follow. But once you give them that example, then they've got it - and it's so much fun!

This week, we're reading "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," loosely connecting it to letter B week. We've read this story so many times (and it's only Wednesday), and it's such a simple story, that it makes for a pretty great start to this kind of narration. 

I decided to start small, letting the kids reenact the story with character cards. Any kind of puppet would do. I found this awesome idea to recreate the setting of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" over at this website. But instead of cutting the pieces out of colored card stock, I wanted Daniel to actually paint the pieces of his model. 

Creating a Model and Reenacting the story of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff"

Materials:

2 pieces of white card stock

scissors

paint brush

tempera paints (we used blues, greens, yellows, oranges, and black)

black marker

glue

character cards (I printed ours out from this website)

Process:

Before the project, cut out two wide strips from one of the pieces of card stock. One strip should be slightly wavy (this is the stream under the bridge). The other strip will end of being the wooden bridge. Look below for pictures to help explain.

Daniel started by painting the grass for the pastures. We didn't do this (hind sight is 20/20!), but afterwards I thought that a great extension for this project would be to go outside to do the painting. How fun would it be to go out and observe the colors of grass, water, and actual wooden bridges?

We just talked about those colors. Ah well. 

Here's Daniel working on the grass. Since this is a bird's eye view model, Daniel painted the entire page green.

After the grass, Daniel wanted to paint his bridge piece. We discussed the fact that it was probably a wooden bridge. I asked Daniel what color he thought it should be, and when he replied that it should be brown, we discovered that we had no brown paint in our stash! 

Time to mix some up. We tried yellow and orange first, but it was too light. Then I squirted in a little black, and that seemed to do the trick. Daniel had a lot of fun stirring it up! And painting, of course. 

Once painted, we set it aside and Daniel painted the stream. As before, we talked about the colors of water. 

We tried to come up with some things that you might find in the water that aren't blue, things like river grass and mud. We talked about what those colors might be.

Then it was time to let all the pieces dry.

Patience. We picked Natalie up from school. We ate lunch. They took a nap. Well, they had quiet time anyway. There was hardly any sleeping going on back there. 

After nap, it was time. 

Daniel glued the stream down first:

Then the bridge. Before we glued it down, I let Daniel use a Sharpie to mark off the wooden planks:

Gluing it down was tricky, and required some help from me. I folded each end under about half an inch, squirted some glue on the folded pieces and Daniel put them down.

Then it was time to play! By this time, Natalie was a full participant (so much so that after this, she wanted to make her own model, which she promptly did), and had also heard the story many times this week, so she was able to reenact with Daniel.

Here's a little Instagram action:

Before reenacting, I read the story to them. Then I closed the book and put it aside. I will say that they both looked at me, a little unsure of what to do first. So I played the part of Little Billy Goat Gruff. I acted out the part, saying things like,

"Oh, I would really like to cross that bridge and eat some juicy green grass! I wonder if that fearful troll is at home. Oh well, guess I'll just cross the bridge and see...trip trap, trip trap."

It didn't take long for the kids to get as into it as I was. Using all the different voices, they retold the story, in their own words, without the aid of the pictures in the book. Being such a simple story really helped. If you try this with your kiddos, I would encourage you to choose a very simple classic with a lot of repetition (Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs, etc.). 

And have fun with it! Learning at this age should be mostly fun. If you have fun with all the different voices, your kids are likely to get into it, too ;)

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Preschool Narration Ideas

Well.

I've been a bit MIA lately. Blogging, I've discovered, is like a snowball. In the beginning, you have all this momentum because you're excited about whatever it is that you want to say. Then you build even more as things go along. You get your first comment and it makes you hungry for more. So you write another post and another and check things obsessively to see if anyone's left you another comment. It's kind of amazing that people read your stuff and even more amazing that some of you liked it enough to say something about it. Everyone loves a little validation. 

And then...you reach a plateau. Things stop building as quickly. You lose some of that initial excitement. Before you know it, you're only publishing two posts a week, and then only one. And then...none. It's like a snowball going in reverse. Then you don't even want to check the stats at all because you know you've only had 12 page views. And you also know that you didn't do the work to earn more. Ah, who cares? Anyone want to play a game of Scrabble?

So, anyway, this is my shame-faced apology. I am sorry that I've been so MIA. I do have a couple of reasonable excuses, besides the reverse-snowball effect.

1. I've been working really hard with Daniel. We started his school year last month, and things have been going along pretty well. So well, in fact, that I'm exhausted. Most afternoons during nap time, I just want to take a nap right along with the kids. And if I don't do that, then I try to use that time to clean the house. It's a little difficult, I've discovered, to juggle homeschool, daily chores, and blogging. How do you masters do it all?? I'm sort of at a loss.

2. I'm in the process of rethinking the blog a little bit. Up to this point, the ol' blog has been a little bit of a smorgasbord. A little of this, a little of that, and a personal story to spice things up. To be honest, I'm not really sure what kind of a blogger I am. I love art and I definitely want to keep Friday's Art Smarts going. And I'm getting so excited about the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling that I'm leaning toward taking this blog in that direction. I'll probably still throw in those personal reflections because it's a great outlet for me, but... I do think I want to bring some focus to the blog. Anyway, stay tuned. Things are in the works.

And, in the spirit of Charlotte Mason, I've got a few ideas for you moms of the preschool set. 

How About Narration?

Charlotte Mason was a big fan of narration, or (as I understand it) retelling a story or piece of information in your own words. Having been a teacher, I can tell you that narration is nothing new to mainstream education, either. It's everywhere, and for good reason. If you can narrate a story that you've heard, it shows that you've gained at least a basic understanding of it. If you can narrate a passage from a non-fiction book, it shows you've grasped the concepts, at least a little.   

According to Charlotte Mason, younger students shouldn't have to be so concerned with written narration, and instead should focus on retelling a story orally. 

Narration, with preschoolers, can happen almost without them realizing it if you choose the right kind of stories. Preschoolers love rhymes and repetition - use that! Preschoolers love to tell the story with you - encourage that! Find books chock full of rhymes and repetition and let them finish your sentences. Look for stories with a certain amount of predictability (counting stories are great for this). Before you know it, they'll be telling you the story! 

Preschoolers are also (usually) very visual and very concrete. They love props. It never hurts to add a few props to help preschool narration along. Here are a couple ideas.

Story Sticks (aka, puppets)

This doesn't have to be fancy, folks. I made these story sticks to go along with "The Very Busy Spider" in an hour. After reading the story once to Daniel, I brought out the sticks, and boy, was he excited!

We read the story a second time.

Sorry for the picture quality here...we were in the dining room to keep the story sticks out of the baby's reach and the lighting was terrible!

With the introduction of each new animal, Daniel grabbed the appropriate stick and "acted" out the part.

He made the animal sound, and by the end of the third reading, he was retelling some of the other parts as well (especially catching on to the repetition). 

And he wanted to do it over and over again. I'd call that a win.

The Felt Board

Do any of you guys own this fantabulous toy from Felt Creations? It's basically a felt board, but you can buy all sorts of story pieces to make your own scenes. We've got a couple of different sets, and the kids love to break it out every now and then and create these elaborate story scenes. What a great toy. 

But even if you don't own a felt board from Felt Creations, you could totally make your own. Hot glue a large piece of felt to a large piece of cardboard and you're in business. And you've got a whole world of possibilities. 

This week, Daniel and I are working on the letter L. To go along with that letter we're reading a story called "The Very Lazy Ladybug". This is a great book - very predictable and lends itself well to preschool narration. Last night I grabbed my basket of felt scraps and went through the book to recreate the main characters in the story:

This took me 30 minutes to an hour. Not too bad, especially since I did it while drinking coffee and listening to music. Not a bad way to end the evening. Later this week, after we've read the story once or twice, I'll let Daniel use the pieces to retell it (looking at the pages in the book if he needs help knowing what comes next). 

I've done this already with a couple of different stories and the kids love it. Something about creating scenes on a felt board, man. They're all over it. If you wanted to get really into it, you could also make plants and trees and rivers so the kids could go all out. 

I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you are shaking your head and saying to yourself that you could never draw all those animals. Well...I like to draw. And I freely admit it. But I also know that young kids are terribly forgiving. I've drawn some pretty horrible stuff (I'm thinking about a certain Tinkerbell) and they think it's the most amazing thing ever. Don't let that stop you - they'll love it!

All right. That's it. I'll be back on Friday with this week's installment of Friday's Art Smarts, I promise. Until then, thanks for reading and I hope you leave with some new ideas :)

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My Florida

My Florida

I've lived here my whole life. Sometimes when you grow up in a place and you still live there...and you see it everyday, you start to miss it. You start to not see it. 

You get so caught up in traffic lights and Target that you miss the beauty all around you.

At least I do. I'm constantly running through my to-do list. I'm constantly feeling just a little (and sometimes a lot) behind.

It can be awfully refreshing to put that all on a shelf for a morning and just take a walk.

To some place new and quiet. Some place peaceful.

To be a child.

It's amazing to see your home through your child's eyes. I remember when everything seemed so big and wild.

I remember believing that it was all just waiting for me. 

It's an exciting feeling.

And now it's all just waiting for my kids.

What an invitation.

I don't want to miss it.

I don't want them to miss it.

Because this is their home.

This is their Florida.

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Creating an Ant Buffet and Homemade Ant Farm

Today's post is twofold, and both of the parts were completely spur of the moment. This, by the way, is one of the things I love about homeschool. As a teacher in a traditional school, there's a lot less room for spur of the moment ideas and activities. You can, of course, do some of that, and some teachers do. But I am really loving the freedom of learning and teaching at home. 

"Ah. You wanna see what ants like to eat? Sure. Let's look in the fridge."

"Oh, you want to make an ant farm like the one in our story? Well...I think I have some vases up here. Let's look." 

Since we're at home, everything we need is already here. It is nice to have a plan, but it's also nice to add things in...because we can. 

Anyway, on to the fun stuff. As we've been talking about ants, one of the questions that came up was, "What do ants like to eat?" Our story basically answered that question already: other insects, sugar, and honey. But I thought it would be so much fun to make an ant buffet to test out a bunch of different foods. So after nap, we did.

I cut out a piece of cardstock to look like an artist's palette (You know...a palette of food instead of colors. Is that cheesy? Maybe that's a little cheesy.). Then I raided our fridge to come up with a bunch of different kinds of foods for the ants to sample. It doesn't take much. Ants don't need a lot.

Here's what we came up with:

That's (from left to right): cheese, ham, sugar, honey, carrots, crackers, raisins.

Before we let the ants have a go at the buffet, I asked each child what they thought the ants would really go for. Natalie hypothesized that the ants would love the sugar and the honey. Daniel thought that they would go for everything. And my personal hypothesis (though I kept this to myself) was that the ants would be all over that pile of sugar. 

We searched for a few minutes for a good, active ant hill, and then set up camp. Within a few minutes, we had some action:

Bam! First surprise. The cheese (with this particular species of ant) was by far the most popular.

But the crackers and the raisins weren't far behind:

Whoa! They were all like, "Oh no. This is coming with us."

And after they'd explored those things, they found the honey:

Aren't they kind of cute? They kept reminding me of horses drinking at a trough.

They didn't touch the pile of sugar. In fact, I set this down at three different colonies, and none of them gave it a second glance. Interesting. 

I gave the kids their hypothesis pages (on which I wrote their hypothesis down for them) and instructed them to each draw what they were observing.

Natalie is drawing her ant here in yellow:

And Daniel chose orange for his ant. He was so cute - he was thinking out loud as he drew, and I could hear him say, "And this is the thooorax."

Okay, it was at this point that I remembered the kids wanted to make an ant farm. And here we had a bunch of worker ants ready to go.

The problem was, though, it wasn't set up yet. So I hurried inside and grabbed a few supplies. 

One large clear glass vase

One smaller vase or bottle. When we fit our bottle inside the larger vase, there was about a quarter inch of space all around.

sieve

spade

cloth

rubber band

Process:

I carefully turned the bottle upside down and placed it inside the larger vase.

Then I gave Daniel the spade and instructed him to dig up some dirt near the ant hill (not on top of the ant hill, though) and put it into the sieve. After that I sifted the dirt into the vase. Most of it landed on top of the bottle and then I brushed it down into the sides. Sifting the dirt first makes it easier for the ants to dig their tunnels.

Not gonna lie. This was a tedious process. In the end though, It only took about 20 minutes to get all the dirt we needed.

Unfortunately, by that time the little black sugar ants had had their fill of our buffet and were all back inside their ant hill.

Er. So we picked up the buffet and went in search of a different colony. We found these little guys:

Who didn't touch the cheese at all. In fact, they were mostly excited about that ham and the honey.

But really, they didn't come out in droves like the ants at the last colony. So we picked up our buffet and went in search of another one. I did end up finding some pretty enthusiastic little ants by the sidewalk in our back yard, and we collected some of them, but they were bright red. Fire ants. 

Oh. You're probably wondering what that cloth was for. It's to keep those little guys inside:

Although I'm not really sure that it worked because when I checked on them this morning, I found a couple very lethargic ants and...nothing else. Where did the rest of them go? Could they have escaped??

Good thing I opted to keep that farm on the porch. The last thing we need is a bunch of angry fire ants running around our house. 

So. Back to the drawing board. 

Maybe it's a good thing that our ant collecting didn't go so well yesterday. Because, without a queen, an ant farm won't last for very long anyway. Not only that, but you won't be able to witness a true colony in action since the workers won't have much to do but dig. This kind of farm is useful and fun for watching the ants dig their underground city, but it isn't nearly as educational. After yesterday's unsuccessful attempt to gather some ants, I think I'll be reworking our technique, and will try to capture a queen. Either that, or we'll just send off for some ants. 

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