Field Trip: L.A. Zoo

Today at the zoo we got to see a baby joey moving around in its mommy's pouch! A man standing at the fence said he'd been watching for half an hour and hadn't seen the joey come out, but he'd gotten to see what you'll see in this video - which I think is so cool - the joey sticking its leg out, pulling it in, and sticking it out again. Then the mama gets up and you can see how big and heavy her baby is; look at her pouch.

We also got to see a baby hippo!

Mommy hippo and baby hippo

Piranhas

Meerkats

An armadillo up-close

We also got to see an armadillo. It was so cute. I didn't know until today that an armadillo walks on its claws! It looks like an insect the way that it walks. It was fascinating...

Movie Review: Paddington

After reading aloud A Bear Called Paddington in November and December, my 3 1/2 year old and I were very much looking forward to the movie. Saturday morning, we walked to a theater on the Promenade for the first show.

The movie stars Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) as Mr. Brown, Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky and Blue Jasmine) as Mrs. Brown, and Nicole Kidman as Millicent Clyde - the villain.

The what? Villain? There's a villain in Michael Bond's A Bear Called Paddington? No, but evidently a bear joining a human family doesn't provide enough conflict. Having never brought a bear home to live with me, I don't know. Maybe it's an easy adjustment. Like getting a dog. But somehow I don't think it would be.

In the book, Paddington is a lot like having a three year old. He makes messes, doesn't understand everything adults mean which leads to problems, and repeatedly gets into situations where he needs help. But movies have a specific structure. The main character must not be passive, with conflict happening to him. He must be active, the maker of his own destiny. So the Paddington in the movie needs a mission. A journey.

The writers of Paddington created a plot in which Paddington is searching for the British explorer who discovered his species, taught them English, and told them they were welcome in London.

They also added Natural History Museum director/taxidermist Millicent Clyde (Kidman) to the story. Let me repeat that. Taxidermist. As in, someone who wants to kill Paddington. Kidman's character is Cruella DeVille meets Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. If your child can handle 101 Dalmatians - in which Cruella is out to do the same thing (ie. kill the main characters) - he or she can handle Paddington.

The movie starts in black and white, in Darkest Peru. We learn that this is a film made by British explorer Montgomery Clyde, a member of the Geographers' Guild. We also learn - but not right away, because it would be a really morbid way to start a children's movie - that Montgomery went to Darkest Peru to discover an undiscovered animal species, bring it back to London, and have it killed, stuffed, and mounted, and make a name for himself by putting the animal on display in London's Natural History Museum.

Montgomery discovers a couple of bears he names Lucy (Aunt Lucy) and Pastuzo. Montgomery has carried an excess of his British belongings into the rainforest, including marmalade, a grandfather clock, his red hat, a record player, and a record giving conversation lessons for someone wishing to visit London. This is to explain how a bear learned to speak, and why he speaks with a British accent.

I guess one of my problems with this movie is that I don't need an explanation. When I opened the book to its first page, I was able to suspend disbelief and let author Michael Bond take me into his London. I didn't need to know why Paddington left Peru, or why he liked marmalade, or why he was polite.

Fast forward forty years. We are still in Darkest Peru, in the rain forest, vivid green foliage. Paddington, an orphan, lives with Aunt Lucy and Uncle Pastuzo in their treehouse, Rube Goldberg orange marmalade-making (because it wouldn't be a children's movie without multiple Rube Goldberg machines), and listening to the English conversation record. While I didn't like that the writers added back-story, I thought the scenes in Darkest Peru were done very well and definitely hooked the viewer. Bears talking and having human facial expressions has been done before, but bears that look like bears, now that's amazing. The special effects are excellent.

So there they are in their treehouse when - all of a sudden - there's an earthquake. The bears hurry to safety in their underground shelter. It's like the twister scene in The Wizard of Oz with everyone running for the cellar. Aunt Lucy and Paddington make it, but Uncle Pastuzo does not.

Explorer looking for animal to kill. Dead Uncle Pastuzo. Paddington explaining that his parents died and that he was raised by his aunt and uncle. A scene in which a man brings Kidman's character a monkey to kill and stuff, to - you know - show that Millicent is a two-dimensional meanie who kills innocent creatures. Kidman's character's primary objective: killing Paddington. That's just a whole lotta death for a kid's movie.

None of this is in the book. If it had been, I most definitely wouldn't have read it to my preschooler. (In fact, I read it to my preschooler because A Bear Called Paddington is sweet; there's not a bit of snark.)

After the earthquake, Aunt Lucy and Paddington come up out of the shelter to see that - and I had a problem with this - the earthquake had somehow leveled the forest. Huh?

My husband and I have a line we use for moments like this: And that's the part you don't believe? You went to see a movie about a bear who talks, emigrates from Peru to England by stowing away on a ship, and then is adopted into a human family, and the part you don't believe is how his home was destroyed? Yes. But I digress...

Aunt Lucy decides it's time for Paddington to go to London, so they canoe down the Amazon, and Aunt Lucy hides Paddington in a covered lifeboat on a ship carrying cargo to England. This scene made me a little teary eyed. Aunt Lucy, voiced by Imelda Staunton, puts a tag - the tag ("Please look after this bear. Thank you.") - around Paddington's neck and tells him about the child evacuees during World War II. She tells Paddington that the children wore tags like this, and waited in the train station, and families took them home. It's Imelda Staunton's voice. The way she assures Paddington that a family will take him home. It's more than telling him that someone will shelter him. It's that someone will love him. But it's coupled with her telling Paddington that she will be okay and that she's going to The Home For Retired Bears, but that he's too young to retire. There is something in the way she says it that made me believe there was no Home. And then I worried. About a fictional bear. I was sad because I thought she was lying to Paddington, and that she was really going to leave him and go somewhere to die. (But she didn't. *Sigh of relief.*)

Paddington makes his way to the Paddington Train Station, where he is found by the Brown family. Mr. Brown tells them to keep walking, but Mrs. Brown can't leave Paddington all alone. 

And now I have to rave about Sally Hawkins. She plays quirky and whimsical so well because under the quirk and whimsy, there's love, and under the love there's longing. The character she plays in Paddington is Mrs. Brown, an illustrator for adventure stories, who is currently illustrating a book set in the London sewers (not in the book, but integral to the plot of the movie).

The relationship between Mr. Brown and Mrs. Brown is one of the subplots of the movie. Again, not in the book. But I really liked the way this subplot was resolved. Loved it actually.

Hugh Bonneville was, as always, wonderful. He plays a risk analyst. In the book, Mr. Brown's career is never mentioned, but risk analyst is the perfect profession for this character. My favorite line of Bonneville's was - if memory serves me correctly - "Thirty-three percent of all accidents that happen before breakfast involve banisters." I laughed out loud.

A couple of parts that I did not need in the movie were 1)the flirtation of the nosy neighbor with Kidman's character, and 2)the flirtation of the guard at the Geographers' Guild with Mr. Brown disguised as a Mrs. Doubtfire-esque cleaning lady. The guard at the Geographers' Guild needed to be older to make that bit work for me, and I'm pretty sure he called the disguised Mr. Brown "sexy," which is a vocabulary word I don't want my preschooler going around saying. It went over her head, thankfully, but if that's the case, why put it in there at all? Movie-makers, when you make the sequel, leave stuff like that out; it doesn't add to the story-line.

Because the book is appropriate for preschoolers, one would assume the movie would also be appropriate for preschoolers. If you're trying to decide whether to take your preschooler to this movie, I would have to say that it really depends on your child. Are they easily scared? Can they sit through a full-length live-action film?

The book has an independent reading level of 5.7, meaning that 5th graders should be able to read the book. Scholastic Book Wizard lists the interest level as 3rd through 5th grades, which I think is silly. And sad. Because people blindly trust Scholastic Book Wizard when they shouldn't. Little ones WILL be interested in this book. Scholastic Book Wizard also lists some horror and supernatural books at the same independent reading level, and I can tell you, as a public school teacher, that 5th graders who can read at a 5.7 will not reach for Paddington. They will reach for Ghosts I Have Been.

My point in all of that is: The movie seems to have been made for 3rd to 5th graders, the interest level listed by the Book Wizard.

I was really curious as to what Michael Bond, the book's author, thought about the movie. He did approve of the film and actually made a cameo in the movie. When Paddington first arrives in London, and the Brown's are taking a taxi home, Paddington is looking out the window. He sees a man sitting at a table, drinking a glass of red wine, and the man raises his glass to Paddington.

My daughter and her three-year-old friend were both scared in parts, but not so scared that they cried or asked to leave.

One scary scene was when Kidman's character lowers herself - with her tranquilizer gun - into the Brown's house while Paddington is home alone. Paddington runs into the kitchen, accidentally turns on the gas on the stove, and then HIDES IN THE REFRIGERATOR. (Inside I was screaming: Movie-makers, do not suggest to children that this is a hiding place!) And then, predictably, when Nicole Kidman enters the kitchen and is looking for Paddington, and she opens the oven, an explosion blows her out of the kitchen and into the entryway. Seriously? In Paddington? An explosion? People shooting guns? Ugh.

In the final battle - SPOILER ALERT - Paddington crawls up an incinerator's chimney. I'm cringing writing this. An incinerator. Fire. More fire. Ugh. Paddington uses two Dustbusters to crawl up the chimney. And then Kidman's character lights the incinerator. One Dustbuster goes dead. "It's okay, honey," I whispered. "It's okay. Don't worry. The Browns are going to save him. Movies always have happy endings." Then the other Dustbuster starts to lose power. Of course it does. So Paddington jumps. And just as you think he's going to grab the top and be able to climb out, he doesn't. He falls backwards toward the flames. In screenwriting, this is known as the "all is lost" moment. In motherhood, this is known as the "why did I bring my three year old to this movie to traumatize her with fear that her friend is going to die a grisly death" moment. And then the Brown's grab his feet. *Sigh.*

I have such mixed feelings about this movie. Is it a classic? A must-see? A DVD I must own? No. And I'm bummed about that. It had the potential to be such. But the screenwriters turned it into a video game. The book has mystery, and mystery is an invitation to imagination. All that said, I didn't hate it. I am disappointed that, once again, a classic book has been changed into a story that only tips its (red) hat at the original.

*image from Wikipedia

 

Fractions in Simplest Form

Do your math backwards: A math hack for teaching fractions.

Here's how I taught today's math lesson...

First of all, I hate the way Fractions in Simplest Form is presented in the math textbook my school uses (Envision for 4th grade). Here's why: the banner problem (a.k.a. the example) is reduce 4/12 to simplest form. The banner problem tells students that because 4 and 12 are even you can divide both the numerator and denominator by 2, get 2/6, then divide 2/6 by 2 again.

If students aren't ready to learn how to find all the factors of a number so they can then find the greatest common factor, we shouldn't be teaching this concept yet. We should teach student how to reduce fractions to their simplest forms when students are ready to find the GCF.

Instead of teaching students the book's way, I reviewed the meanings of Factor, Product, and Greatest Common Factor. Then I reviewed how to find the factors of a number. I say "reviewed" because I've informally showed them this before, just for fun, for students who were ready for the concept. Then we found the factors of 24 (I like 24 as an example). But then-

And this was the part of the lesson that got me really excited. It was so simple, but I had never done it this way. I hadn't been taught to do it this way, and I haven't seen other teachers explicitly teach it this way (I'm sure some must!).

I had students fold their papers hot dog (lengthwise). I explained that the problems would go in the right column, but the factors (the show-your-work part) would go in the left column.

Doing it this way is backwards to the way students instinctively go about writing math problems. We write left to right, but I told them to write on the right and then the left. Backwards.

We did the first problem together and the students oohed and said  how it made so much sense.

Stuff making sense. Little victories. Yay!

8 Thoughts on Thursday

1. Last week, I let my daughter watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (with Gene Wilder - perfection). My daughter was completely engaged, asking why certain characters were doing what they were doing. She was especially interested in Veruca Salt being a bad egg, and since then has been talking about bad eggs and "the girl in the movie" in connection with real-life scenarios and PBS Kids TV shows. So, I ordered a hard-cover copy of the book, and we started reading it two days ago.
2. Yesterday morning, I read the beginning of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory about Charlie Bucket. (We'd read the first two pages the night before, and these just introduce the characters). Roald Dahl was such an amazing writer. I almost started crying reading this part because it describes how hungry Charlie is, and how his parents give up their lunches so that Charlie can have more food.
3. Yesterday in my 4th grade class, I read the part in Robinson Crusoe about the earthquake and hurricane. "All this while I had not the least serious religious thought; nothing but the common, 'Lord have mercy upon me!' and when it was over that went away too." This is one of my - many - favorite passages in the book. Robinson admits to not being thankful for having been kept safe after the storm. It's a reflex to cry out for help in dangerous situations, but giving thanks requires effort. After reading Robinson Crusoe the first time over a year ago, I remember thinking, I need to pray thank you that my child was kept safe all day today, and not just please keep her safe. And I've made that part of our bedtime prayers ever since.
4. We finished A Bear Called Paddington last week, and are looking forward to this weekend's release of the movie!
5. My daughter is in the middle of Lesson 93 in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We split the lessons in half. I don't know if I've ever posted that. We do the first reading on Day 1, and the second reading on Day 2 along with the comprehension questions and the Picture Comprehension.
6. She only has 19 pages to go in her kindergarten math book! Then we'll be moving on to Mathematical Reasoning Level B. I'm continually amazed by the concepts she picks up. She loved learning about symmetry, and one day over my winter vacation, she opened a book and ran her finger down the middle and said, "Look Mom, the line of symmetry, because this side is the same size as this side." 
7. She is also really into a few of the presidents because of a Rock 'n' Learn DVD we have about money. (She also learned to skip count by 5s and 10s from the video, so I give it a thumbs up.) While she was playing the other day, I heard her say "John F. Kennedy." No clue why. But, her favorite president right now is, of course, George Washington. Another movie we have watched together was Mr. Peabody and Sherman. (The educational value of this movie is questionable.) In the movie, Sherman tells his class at school that George Washington did not cut down a cherry tree (he knows this from first-hand experience). But when GW comes up in conversation, my daughter reminds me that he did not cut down a cherry tree. She's also told me - in song and dance - that he crossed the Delaware River, because evidently there is a Peg + Cat episode guest-starring GW. Did you know GW did not have any biological children with Martha? Fun fact.
8. I decided I wanted to have some structure to our foreign language learning. So we started this month with a focus on numbers in Spanish. Next month we will learn the ABCs. (This video is slow and clear. Once she learns how to pronounce the letters, we can learn a song.)

Minecraft Mission

Over Winter Break, I had my students build California missions. One of my students built his mission - not out of styrofoam, but - out of pixels!

He gave the class a tour, taking us inside the church, the courtyard, the friar's bedroom, the animal pens, the orchard, and the cemetery. Minecraft - which I've never played, but now understand why it has become a phenomenon - is like Legos; everything must be built one block at a time. The pews in the church, the altar, etc.

I was so impressed, and I couldn't help but think of all of the possible structures a child could build using this game. Narration in a digital world...

Write What You Know

In less than a month, my 9 year olds must take a district writing assessment in which they write informative essays about habitats. You go ahead and do that. Right now. Write me an informative essay about habitats.

Why? What does this prove? If you want to measure how well someone can write, let them write what they know. What they feel deeply about.

At nine years old, this skill is inappropriate and unnecessary. Charlotte Mason thought so. Children should write what they know. Their daily lives. Narrations of books. Narratives and summaries. Not persuasive arguments and not essays. Not at nine.

Today, I gave my 4th graders a short writing assignment to ease them back into school after our three week vacation. I told them to think about their vacations, the absolute best thing that happened, or the most memorable. I explained that sometimes the most memorable moment isn't the best; it's the worst. And they could write about that if they wanted. I've found that students - elementary through adult - need permission to deviate from a prompt. I've also found that students are often asked to write about pleasant things, and seldom invited to write about moments they were sad, worst moments.  (One girl today wrote about her sister having a seizure; thankfully, her sister is okay.)

I told them I would answer no questions, and that if they didn't know how to spell a word, they should spell it the way it sounded and then circle or underline. (Some teachers prefer that all students do something one way, all students circle, or all students underline. But I don't like being told what to do, so I assume others don't either, so I give students the option to do what works for them. Maybe it's highlighting? Maybe they want to draw triangles around their words?)

I set the timer for 15 minutes. Most students wrote the entire time. Some wrote a lot and fast and felt like they were finished saying what needed to be said, and I told them to read silently, but the truth is, as long as they had produced and weren't preventing the other writers from writing, I didn't care if they stared at the ceiling.

Students will produce more if it's low stakes, if they know that their teacher will help them spell words they don't know, as opposed to expecting them to correctly spell all the words they choose. If you expect students to spell every word correctly, you'll get really poor content. Students will limit themselves to words they know how to spell, and if you have low readers, you'll really be in trouble. However, if you let students know that they can write what they want, and that you'll help them, not tell them to look up words in a dictionary, their voices will come through in their writing.

After 15 minutes, the fun began. "Go," I said. Hands flew into the air.

"How do you spell Ferris wheel?"

I wrote the words on the board. "But make sure you capitalize Ferris, because it was the name of the inventor. Oh! Cool story, you guys: so this Mr. Ferris got the idea for his ride after looking at a carousel and imaging it on its side."

"How do you spell nauseous?"

"What's the sentence?"

"I felt nauseous."

"You felt n-a-u-s-e-a-t-e-d. Felt nauseated. Smelled nauseous. Something that's nauseous makes you nauseated. The smell of rotten egg was nauseous."

"Sour milk smells nauseous!" "Stinky feet smell nauseous!"

"Next?"

"Friend."

"Okay, silly way that I used to remember it: girls, you know the necklaces that say BEST FRIENDS? One side of the heart says BE FRI," I drew a picture on the board, "and the other says ST (street) ENDS? Well, I always visualized the two pieces of the heart and remembered FRI-END."

We did this for a while, talked about phonics rules and Latin roots and Spanish cognates, and fixed their misspellings.

But spelling is just part of it.

There is such a lot to learn about writing from writing what they know.

Our Rainy Day Reading List

It rained ALL day today. Here is what we read:

• Opuestos by Cynthia Weil. A bilingual Spanish/English book about opposites. The illustrations are photos of Oaxacan wood sculptures of animals - Magnifico!
• Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson. Classic. Love the deserving porcupine. My daughter told me what all nine pies were. One was strawberry blueberry banana. Another was Lagoon Pie. "Yes, mermaids LOVE Lagoon Pie." Sorry, she did not give me the recipe for Lagoon Pie, but I think it should involve blue raspberry jello and whipped cream.
• Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin. Cute. And you learn stuff. Like worms aerate soil, eat paper, and don't have teeth...FYI: The worm narrator tells his sister that her face looks just like her rear end - which is true - and it thankfully went over my daughter's head, but my fourth graders would probably die laughing.
• Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs by Judi Barrett. I have LOVED this book since I was in elementary school. It's the illustrations. The illustrations are magic.
• Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Seuss - I have a love/hate relationship with this book. My 3 1/2 year old loves it. Every page has a specified number of "wacky" things to find (a stroller without wheels, a girl standing on a boy's head, a boy walking an alligator on a leash, etc.). I am not a fan of the text. The rhythm is a little clunky - not one of Seuss' best works. Also, we don't say "gee," not because I don't want my child sounding like Beaver Cleaver, but because I was raised not saying it, and I have a hard enough time with her using the filler words "like you know." Oh California. Also, one character says, "Don't be a fool," and I had to explain that, like stupid, we don't call people fools.
• Azak Learns to Read by Jean Chaffee. This book was written by the wife of the former zoo director in my hometown. It's the true story about an orangutan who was taught to communicate using letter magnets. X stood for Azak, W meant water, H meant brush, G meant Gary (the teacher), etc. One day, her teacher Gary brought in orange juice, and Azak didn't know how to communicate that she wanted it. Finally, she put OW for orange water on the board. Azak lived her whole life in the Chaffee Zoo. It's a sweet book, and Jean Chaffee signed it for my daughter, so it's extra special.