We Live Here

This is you at 3 years 8 months. I let you have ice cream for lunch.

Today is Saturday, so I didn't have to work. Yesterday it rained, but today was glorious. That always happens. Rainy weekdays and clear skies for the tourists on Saturdays. We walked to the beach and it was too warm for the sweatshirt I'd dressed you in, so I ended up holding it for four hours.

You like walking on this wall, being up high.

We stopped at the grassy area where the acro-yogis practice, and you tried to do what they were doing. Daddy hadn't known we were going to the beach when he left on his bike ride, so when he rode up, it was a surprise.

You made friends with an acro-yogi named Jason.

You wanted to play at the playground, so you did. You see the swings? We swung on those together. I was on the left, and you were on the right. You're learning to pump your legs. This is you on the balance beam. You have excellent balance.

 

The aquarium didn't open until 12:30, so we rode the carousel...

...and ate ice cream. I had chocolate-dipped strawberry and you chose vanilla. I was surprised. You usually choose chocolate.

 

After our ice cream lunch, we went downstairs to the aquarium and we took turns kissing a sea cucumber. The volunteer said it gives you seven years of good luck. That's not why I did it. I've never kissed a sea cucumber. That's why I did it. And after I had done it without any hesitation, you did too.

 

The volunteer also said that sea cucumbers defend themselves by shooting their internal organs out of their bottoms. They grow back. Here's what they look like...

We spent two hours in the aquarium. You sat up close for storytime. You were concerned because water was dripping off the live sea animals onto the rug.

 

Here you are looking at a lobster shell with the camera magnifier.

When you saw this picture, you said, "There I am being a scientist."

Preschool Theme: Spain

This week, my daughter's home(pre)school group learned about Spain. (The theme this month is Around the World.) They watched Ferdinand (the Disney short based on the book by Munro Leaf), ate churros, located Spain on a world map, added Spanish flags to their "passports," made the above matador craft, and ended the lesson by throwing tomatoes (at a target, not at each other like Spaniards do at the tomato-throwing festival La Tomatina).

What She Made in Church Mice This Week

Preschool Piano Lesson

My husband recently started teaching our three year old to play piano. Lessons are short - five minutes. Here she is in her third lesson, playing "2 black keys" and "3 black keys." He's using the Alfred's Basic Piano Prep (Level A), which can be used with little hands.

Handicrafts: Hootiful Owl Sewing Kit

I love this kit. It's made for ages 6 to 10, but I bought it for my 3 year old to do with my help. It has a plastic needle - which I think is awesome! No risk of poking tiny fingers. Plus, the eye of the needle is HUGE, so it's easy to thread. Another plus - the owl has pre-punched holes, so it's similar to a sewing card. The only things this kit doesn't come with are scissors and batting (to fill the owl). We have both, so that was no problem. We've had two sewing sessions (we sewed on the tummy, and the wings), and I anticipate we will need another two to complete our hootiful friend.

Teach Your Child to Read: Have You Seen My Cat?

I'm using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons with my 3 year-old daughter. When we got to Lesson 96, I ordered Eric Carle's Have You Seen My Cat?, the first book on the list of books to use when you finish the 100th lesson. The book came two days later, and my daughter wanted to read it right away.

So, she did.

This book can be read before completing the Teach Your Child program. According to Scholastic Book Wizard, this book has a 1.1 grade equivalent, which means that a child who can read this book reads at (or above) a 1st grade 1st month of school level. It only has 9 words. They are: have, you, seen, my, cat, this, is, not, where. I was surprised that this was the first book on the list because, after completing Teach Your Child, your child can read hundreds of words and has gotten used to reading multi-paragraph stories. Truthfully, I was a little perturbed that I had spent $7 on this book. There are so many good books out there! Have You Seen My Cat? is just too easy.

The plot is simple: A boy looks for his cat, he encounters various cats (jaguar, tiger, bobcat, etc.), none of which are his cat, and finally finds his own cat has hidden to have kittens. The illustrations, as with all Eric Carle books, are great.

My assumption is that the authors made this Book #1 to teach your child the process that will be used for the other "kid" books you choose to use with your child.

The Teach Your Child process is this:

1. Read the book to your child. Talk about the pictures. Talk about the meanings of any words your child doesn't know. (Essentially, do what you naturally do when reading a story to your child.)
2. Teach your child the words that are new to him or her. This process is similar to how new words are taught in the Teach Your Child book. Make a list on a piece of paper. You read the list. Your child reads the list.
3. Your child reads the book. You gently correct mistakes. You check for comprehension by asking questions in a gentle way, similar to the "Second Reading" comprehension checks in the Teach Your Child book.
4. Encourage your child to read the book aloud multiple times (to Daddy, other family members, etc.).

My daughter has now read Have You Seen My Cat? five times, to me, to Daddy, to Grandma (via Facetime), to Grandpa (via Google Video Chat), and to our friend Julia.

I decided that we would skip Book #2 (Look What I Can Do) and Book #3 (We Hide, You Seek), and I ordered Book #4 (I Love You, Dear Dragon). Look What I Can Do is so easy that it doesn't even have a grade level equivalent. It's Guided Reading level (a letter system from A to Z, A being the easiest and Z being the most challenging) is A. (The Guided Reading level of Have You Seen My Cat? is B, which means that Book #1 is "harder" than Book #2.) We Hide, You Seek has a grade level equivalent of 1.7, but Scholastic Book Wizard didn't list any other scale by which to measure it. I Love You, Dear Dragon has a grade level equivalent of 1.2, but a Guided Reading level of E. (Of all the reading scales, I prefer Guided Reading. Maybe the reason why is another post later on down the road.)

I was happy to find I Love You, Dear Dragon here, including - if you scroll to the last "page" - a list of the words in the book. New words that need to be taught (Step 2 in the Teach Your Child process) are: work, who, pretty, one, make, guess, father, dragon, dear. The book looks sweet, not classic literature, but sweet. From what I could tell from the preview, it's about Valentine's Day, the boy makes a gift for his mother, and he tells his friend/dragon that he loves him.

Teach Your Child recommends reading 10 books from the list, any 10, in the order they're listed. Maybe we'll go down to Book #7 (Hop on Pop) after I Love You, Dear Dragon. Hop on Pop has a 1.1 grade equivalent, but its Guided Reading level is J. (You've got to love the way these scales don't line up with each other.)

More later. Right now it's bath time, and the bedroom floor is strewn with foam blocks, play food, and dinosaurs...

Short Lessons

Brandy Vencel, author of Afterthoughts, wrote a great post about Charlotte Mason and her use of short lessons. Short lessons is one of the many reasons I'm attracted to Charlotte Mason methodology. As a public school teacher, I come at this topic from a different angle. I see the detriment of long lessons, a norm in public school.

In California, the "recommendation" for math instructional minutes is 50 to 60 minutes daily, and the "recommendation" for language arts (in grades 4 through 8) is two hours per day. Districts and schools can (and do) turn these "recommendations" into mandates, and go so far as to mandate these minutes be grouped together in uninterrupted blocks.

I loved Brandy's idea about breaking up her son's 30 minutes of math into two 15 minute periods. As a homeschooler, she can make this decision. 

In addition to the math and language arts requirements, I am required to spend 45 minutes daily on E.L.D. (English Language Development). This must be a block of 45 minutes, and can not be broken up into smaller periods of time (for example: two blocks of 20 and 25 minutes, or three blocks of 15 minutes).  E.L.D. includes things like writing with correct capitalization, punctuation, and spelling; grammar; multiple meaning words; idioms; etc. (Wait, you say, aren't those things part of "language arts"? Yes.)

One of my favorite movie quotes comes from O Brother Where Art Thou: "It's a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." I would have to alter that to:

It's a fool who looks for logic 

in the chambers of the human heart... 

or in the public school system.

Brandy pointed out that in Class II (9 to 11 year olds, the age group I teach), math lessons were 30 minutes. You can get a lot done in 30 minutes... if you're not trying to get through an unreasonable amount of content before a district assessment or the high-stakes end-of-year Common Core test... or if you're teaching a child material that is accessible to him or her... or if you don't have 30 students with 30 different problems, some of them not mathematical, some of them emotional (anger or sadness about a situation at home or a situation with another student), some of them physical (lack of sleep, hunger, thirst, needing to use the restroom).

Today we spent an hour and a half on math. I was teaching students how to change a mixed number into an improper fraction. We reviewed the homework. Then I taught new material, including vocabulary (mixed number, improper fraction). Next I introduced them to MAdd Face and explained that MAdd Face is always MAdd because he's always squeezed in between a whole number and a fraction. Fourth graders totally relate to this; they do things like divide their desks in half with tape so their desk partners don't get into their space. Then, we worked some problems together, and finally, I explained tonight's homework.

An hour and a half.

But we have to get through this material. They're going to be tested on fractions the second week in February, and we are behind.

We're always behind.

It's never a celebration of what they do know, or what they can do. It's always a question of how many points away were they from "proficient."

And why do they fall short of proficient? Because long lessons don't actually work. If they did, all of my students would be able to change mixed numbers to improper fractions, however a handful of them still can't. Why? Well, that handful never memorized the multiplication facts. And now, because of pacing plans, and because multiplication facts aren't of personal importance to them, some of my students never will.

Brandy also pointed out that writing in 4th grade was 10 minutes! Ten minutes, not an hour, which is what teachers in my district and districts across America have been told to allot by programs like Lucy Calkins' Writing Workshop. Ten minutes is developmentally appropriate, and longer than that at 9 years old is unnecessary to the long term goal of producing a person who can write effectively.

Living in L.A., one does all sorts of L.A. things. One very L.A. thing I did once was to take a screenwriting class. In it, we learned that movies are broken up into sequences of 10-15 minutes. (A screenplay outline has 8 sequences, and you use this formula when writing an outline for a screenplay.) Something integral to the plot has to happen (approximately) every 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes is the moment when our attention wanes, we shift in our seat, and we need something exciting to happen to re-engage us.

We need art. We need a nature walk. We need music...