scenes from our house (Laundry)

First, let me show you our "sleeping beauty"- J. Poor girl, she's running a temperature and has been sleeping on and off, but mostly just zapped out.



Then, there is my other little cutie, Prime. I don't know what exactly he was doing with the Popsicle sticks, but he was enjoying playing with them. He calls it "workshop".


This is a boy who is naturally funny. Even something as mundane as laundry, he make it look so much fun.

1st load, made it up stairs with the whole load; having a celebration as he got it upstairs all by himself. :)

more fun, balancing a folded towel; going for the 2nd load; sliding across the floor; up the stairs again

He is a pro at folding our towels.

I couldn't resist snapping a picture of his cute feet while he was folding towel; all done for now.

Thoughts on Charlotte Mason

Even before I read about Charlotte Mason, I know I will like her. One of the main thing was because she loves God and that is a wonderful thing. Of course, I also like the fact she likes nature. After all, God created nature and it's always a pleasure to study God's creations. I knew she favored "living books" instead of textbooks, and I'm all for "living books".

Anyway, I read parts of "A Charlotte Mason Education: A homeschooling How to Manual" by Catherine Levison. Immediately, what jumped out to me in the introduction was ".... CM method does not involve the purchasing of a curriculum and once understood, could be done solely through the library at no cost." Really? That sounds too good to be true. Has anyone actually done that?

Then also in the book, she wrote in 1862, " Truly, parents are happy people- to have God's children lent to them... I love my children dearly." My sentiment exactly.

Because I'm interested in how different school teach math, I skipped to the math section. Short lesson is mentioned and that is pretty much exactly what we are doing. We probably spend about 10-15 minutes/day on different subjects. Not intentional, but that's how it turned out. One thing I have not done, but I plan to incorporate, is what CM suggested, "let them (children) tell you what they know about a concept they have studied." I think that is important in any subject but I'm glad it was mentioned in the math section. My dad was always able to summarize a book- looking just at the table of contents. No wonder, he was such a tip-top student. Unfortunately, I did not inherit that from my father.

One thing CM stresses is "let children study the concrete before the abstract no matter how old they are (even when approaching algebra and geometry). This will avoid "when will we ever need this???" whining. That is how I felt in math, esp. in higher level math. I was always told by my father (also common Chinese belief) that studying math trains the mind, especially logic. So whether math was actually useful or not was irrelevant. Anyway, I like CM's idea on this.

Here is something else I know my children will just love, "They have all afternoon and evening free to enjoy being a child, to pursue hobbies and to read." Lessons are done in the morning in short varied lessons. That is kind of what we do, except my kids seem to need some nudge to read by themselves in the afternoon. Once they get going, however, they read for a long time. But if I don't nudge them, they will happily play with themselves and entertain themselves for a long, long time. Luckily, J seem to be getting into the habit of reading herself in the afternoon as she knows I will remind her if she doesn't do it herself. Prime also knows not to ask for any TV time until he did some reading himself. Maybe I will try a week w/o saying anything and see what they do.

I also like CM's motto for children, "I am, I can, I ought, I will".
I am because they are a child of God.
I can stands for having the power God has given to us to do a thing.
I ought has to do with duty.
I will is different from I want.

She also reminded me again how important it is for even young children to "deal directly with books." Levionson goes on to write, " That's why what you choose to read to them is so important. Cm wants them exposed to the best in literature, poetry, music, and art. She most definitely does not want them in what we call "dumbed-down" books." This idea is also supported by Enki education and classical education.

Henrietta Franklin is quoted to say, "We shall not lightly abandon this custom of reading aloud to children, even they are grown boys and girls." That is the assurance I needed to continue to read-aloud my children even when they get older.

Anyway, I like CM and think we already incorporate quite a bit of what she recommends. Perhaps I will have another post later about some of the other stuff (music, art, science geography).

shortest birthday party attended

J had a little cough this morning, I gave her the Organic Throat tea- Just for kids by Traditional Medicinals, Inc and she was better. I ask her if she is well enough to go to a birthday party. She says, yes. (I probably should have known better but honestly she did not look sick at the time) So we drive over an hour to our good friend's party. But alas, her coughing gets worse while in the car. Then minutes after we arrive at the bowling alley, daddy says we got to go because J is now running a temperature. Daddy says, this is the shortest birthday party we ever attended.

Alright, time to rest up. Luckily, Prime is not sick and took a little nap in the car. I'm knocking on wood this time that he will stay that way.

Hope you all have a wonderful and healthy weekend. :-)

Interview surprises!

I got this idea from another mom ("Interview with Ethan") and thought it would be fun to ask my kids.

Share with you some surprising answers:

J pretty much had no surprises except 2 questions:

Q:What is your favorite smell?
A: Primrose
Me: We have never actually seen Primrose, how do you know you like the smell?
A: Yes, I have
Me: Where?
A: On the computer, in a blog!

Q: What is your favorite sound?
A: Prime's snoring sound
Later, "no, music" !

But my Prime, well, here is a boy with surprises.

Q: what is your favorite color?
A: Purple

Q: what is your favorite smell?
A: permanent marker

Q: what is your favorite drink?
A: What I normally drink.
Me: What do you normally drink? milk/juice?
A: A kind of juice. (opens the refrigerator, then says,) V8 splash

Q:What is your favorite animal?
A: You guess!
Me: bear, lamb, fox, hamster?
A: No, KungFu Panda!!

Q: Where is your favorite place to go?
A: Home!

Some same answers from both kids was "What is your favorite movie?"
A: Turtles.

Lemonade Award

I'm doing some catching up.... Ladybug and Dandelion has nominated me for the Lemonade Award few days ago. Shucks, Thank you, L and D.

Here are the rules:
1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude
3. Link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link this post to the person from whom you received your award.



And I nominate,

Julie from Daniel's Progress

Erin from The Olive Tree Community

Chris from Just a girl

Harvest Moon from Along the Crooked Path

The Hood's from Se7en

I don't think I would follow anyone's blog who doesn't have a great attitude/ gratitude. :) So, thank you for sharing your great attitude and gratitude!

Exploring

Today was a day of exploring. We experimented make froth (brought the instrument yesterday) and that was fun but little messy. See the picture of spattered milk? We will have try again tomorrow and see if we can do it w/o being such a mess. :)



Next we played with bean bag, good tactile experience for the kids. (We brought bean bags first then later made our own using corduroy and beans). This idea is from Enki education and I was surprised to find that walking and counting by 2's and tossing a bean bag from one hand to another is not as easy as it looks. ha-ha.

Finally, certainly not the least, we did take a look at the tea leaves. I had 6 kinds for the kids to smell and feel and explore. Pure Chamomile, Romance (apple bits, Hibiscus blossoms, rose hips, elderberries, raspberry pieces, strawberry pieces/leaves, vanilla pieces) and Chrysanthemum tea. We also had Aveda tea (licorice root, peppermint leaf, sweet fennel, basil), pure peppermint tea, and wood betony tea (good for headaches).

After all this, the kids were ready for some tea themselves. J chose Aveda tea, and Prime chose the Giraffe which is the Organic kids tea (for throat). I told him that tea is for when your throat hurts and after little while, he comes to me and says, mommy, my throat hurts. ;-)

Tea junkie

Another mom (Lisa) had a post of called "herbal tea junkie!!!" so I decided to copy the idea and say I'm for sure one too. :)

Now my kids are not much tea drinkers yet, but they still have a favorite: it is Chinese "milk tea". Many Chinatown have those kinds of milk tea, many flavors and many people love them. This 3:15 break tea also comes in other flavors. But my kids especially love the strawberry and original. You can also find them in Chinese grocery stores.
Here is the kids' favorite, but they also like those in 2nd picture, esp. J. She really likes the Aveda tea. In fact, our whole family really likes that one. I don't think my kids tried those "Just for Kids" herbal tea as they have not really been sick for probably 1 1/2 years (Praise the Lord!) but I have been drinking those when I don't feel well. :)

Maybe tomorrow I will try what Lisa did with her children; study the herbs and tea leaves using our 5 senses. What a great idea that is. I use to do that with my kids when they were younger, similar to what they do in Montessori schools. Sort of forgot. So Lisa, thank you for the wonderful idea.

Much to share (math,book, discussion)

Is it me or I just like to share? I have to believe that other moms also do lots of things with their kids but just not sharing a lot or not sharing as much detail as me?

Anyway, I like to write and share. :)

Today, we looked at this wonderful and very fun math book. This was actually a book listed in the resource section of The Unschooling Handbook: How to use the whole world as your child's classroom. Anyway, it say, "This is not a mathematics book in its usual sense; it is a book about thinking. It is about perspective, and about abstracting to look at things in a new way." Both my kids enjoyed this book and learned quite a bit, I think. They discovered for themselves that in order to compare liquids, the container must be the same or it is not easy to tell which has more. And some times, if the container is similar, you would need to pour them in to 2 containers which you know that are exactly the same. It was interesting for me to see how the kid's logic worked. First, both kids said, they can tell which is more or less based on the amount of white space. (i.e less water have more white space, and vice versa)

They also have Annon's Math Game III. Great fun!

We read Pandora recommended by The well-trained mind and it was excellent (we actually read another version of the same story but this one is so much better especially the language- almost poetic). Beautiful picture, beautiful language, and just beautifully written. I am usually kind of cheap when it comes to books (some of you will surely gasp) but we tend to read a lot, and I don't like accumulating books, believe it or not. I usually try to borrow the book and if it really strikes my fancy, then I'd buy it, preferably used if it is substantially cheaper and in good condition.

I wasn't crazy about the cover, but this is one of those books that I have to say, "Don't judge a book by its cover." I did buy this book and am glad I did since I wasn't able to borrow it from anywhere else.

The last thing I wanted to share was J and I were looking up words she didn't know and not sure how the topic came up about the different meaning of "smart", "knowledge", "wisdom" and "understanding".

Here is what I came up so J can differentiate these meanings,

1. smart- can you learn? how fast can you learn?
Ex If I explain it to you, and you get it very quickly then I might say, oh, you are smart.

2. Knowledge- knowing facts, experience
Ex. If I tell you a fact :11*11=121 and you say, okay, now I know the answer to this problem. You have gained specific knowledge or a fact. (assuming mommy is right).

3. Understanding- can you explain it (especially in language arts)?can you do similar problems (in math)? Generally higher level than knowledge
Ex. But if I ask you what is 12*12? And you don't know. Then I know its because you don't have the understanding of multiplying 2 digit #s. (sometimes, knowledge of certain things will also help you with the understanding of certain things)

4. Wisdom- discernment, being able to tell truth from lies.
Ex. King Solomon having wisdom and be able to tell who is real mother of the child. That is we ask God often for wisdom to help us in dealing with people, and in dealing with life.

Labor of love: no-sew blanket

I had originally wanted to send my friend a no-sew blanket for her new born baby as a gift. Finally, I had a little time yesterday and brought the materials. Of course, J and Prime wanted to make one for themselves. So since the little ones (pillow blanket) are 1/2 off, I brought each of them one. Last night, we experimented with Prime's Pooh bear blanket and he just loved it and has been carrying around with him ever since. My kids love, love blankets. I think that comes from a natural extension of living in a state that has a cold winter.

Anyway, J wanted to make her blanket today and so we did. I tell you, it was a lot of work and their blanket is a really small one! I think it is much easier to just buy a blanket. But it was a good learning experience for the kids.

J had trouble cutting the fleece in the beginning as it is not easy to cut the fabric. Plus, I think my scissors are not the best but after some practice on scraps, she was able to cut and did cut. Prime worked on knotting the blankets. So that was good thing for him. Those fine motor skills!


The kids working hard on the blanket. Prime wanted to help too! He is tying the knots.

J with her new no-sew blanket. Prime making good use of the scraps. He says TMNT have a headband just like that so he put it on too. He did that all by himself. J was surprised the scrap stretched that long. :) I was surprised he knotted it himself.

Experiementing making play-dough

We were busy today, lots of phone calls for mommy plus mommy finally got her haircut today. :) But one thing fun we did was making our play-dough. It was kind of like a science experiment for us. The longer the heat was on, our mixture got harder and harder until viola, play dough. Then we experimented with adding food coloring to our play dough and we all found that we needed more food coloring to make the color sink into all of the play dough. Anyway, I enjoyed making our own play-dough and look forward to playing our own dough. :)


It was easy stirring in the beginning. Prime and J having fun. Toward the end, not so easy. :)

Almost ready. Kneading into balls. Experimenting with color.
Final product. Tutorial here.
In case you are wondering, the kids are wearing hats because a piece of hair was found in the mixture and I told them, that's why chefs wear a hat to keep their hair from falling into the food. As soon as I said that, both kids made a bee line for their hats. :)

Update on Prime homeschool

I figured if I do an update on J, it would only be fair to do an update on what Prime has been doing as well.

Prime spent a great deal of time playing. I told him once when he was 4, his "job" is to "play" and he really took that to heart. LOL! He is very imaginative and can play creatively with his "guys" and any other things that appeals to him. He has been playing with a bare roll left over when the wrapping paper is used up a lot recently. (I'm not sure what to call that). He is very protective of his little stuffed animal and loves to bring them everywhere and gets very upset if he can't find them. He also cuts, tapes and just recently made an arm/leg band for himself using paper/tape.

He is also making great progress on reading. A book he read today is called "Yes Please, No Thank you" and he read it all by himself correctly. I highly recommend this book as it asks the child a question, and child responds with either "yes, please" or "no, thank you." J also love this book and has been much better with saying, "yes, please," and "no thank you."


On the 2nd picture, Prime always says, "no thank you." to this page. He does like the cold. :)

Prime also practices reading using Bob Book Pals. He really relishes the fact he can read these little books all by himself. But we also borrow other simple books for him to try. He is technically not in kindergarten yet as his birthday falls in January and past the cutoff if he was in public school. I'm planning on formally teaching him phonics in the fall. For now, he just read aloud for fun.

He also does a little writing here and there. Sometime, he will try to do "school" and write when he sees J writing. But I don't make him. I have discussed with Beth Sutton, founder of Enki education about they way Prime holds his pencil. After eliminating many possibilities, Beth tells me to watch his shoulder, elbow, and wrist. At Prime's stage of development, Beth feels it might be just a habit and needs to be corrected. So I will observe and correct him as the opportunities arises.

He has also been doing Enki K and some 1st grade movements, which has mid line crossing, naval radiation, finger play, vestibular and proprioceptive activities. He doesn't have any problems with them and enjoys doing them.

Daddy has been teaching Prime little math. He loves doing math and will ask to do more. *shock* Even when he was younger (3 -4 years), I remember his Montessori teacher telling me Prime likes and is good at math. At the time, I didn't pay much attention and wasn't sure how she knows that. I think they worked with him on one-to-one correspondence and on tonging beads into bowls and matching up with the numerical number.

Prime also loves to sing and learned many songs from Enki. He loves to perform and wants me or daddy to record him. But he is shy on the stage.

He is currently taking a karate class, the class is once a week and one hour long. He doesn't like it much and tells me it is too long. He doesn't like to practice the moves his sensei teachs him but rather likes to do karate his own way; kicking, punching, leaping, spinning, and falling down. :-)

As part of his practical life, he continues to work on folding blankets, putting daddy's clothes away (rolling socks, hanging sweater, folding pants, etc), spraying bathtub, cleaning my sink using a brush, knowing the date of week; knowing month/day/year. We also work on month of the year and learning to notice the cycles of the seasons.

For the most part, Prime follows J and is always interested in what she is doing. I think that is a natural extention of having a sibling very close in age. J and Prime are almost exactly 1 1/2 years apart.

I have just started having J teach Prime Chinese. Both kids love to watch my Chinese drama with me and my hope is at least they hear some Chinese and see that it is useful. (ha-ha) They always ask me, what did the actors say, and I tell them, if you know your Chinese, you will understand. But I try to fill them in a little bit what the drama is about. It's so funny that they are as absorbed in it as me. :) And they like to discuss the episode with me.

Fairy Cooking- #1

I borrowed this book from the library. What a fun cook book! The first recipe we tried is "Fairy muffins" since J said she wanted to make this first. We made everything from scratch, down to the icing. I have come really a long way, if I do say so myself. Before, my idea of baking is adding in egg, water, and oil and bake. This is what love do to you, I tell you.


Here is the book. Here is Prime cutting butter and J oiling the muffin holes. (they loved this activity; they call it painting because of the brush) Both kids did these activities.

J cracking the egg. The most fun part: tasting different ingredients; They loved the powdered sugar. Here are my happy fairies. I accidentally said J is boy fairy and that made the kids laugh really hard for a while. ;-)
Can some real fairies join us? We have more of these. The candle is how it was shown in the book. We plan on trying out some other recipes.

Update on J's home school

J has been enjoying Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo for her leisure reading currently. She finishes them fast so I know she enjoys them. We also had fun with a book of riddles. Daddy knew a lot of the answers and J enjoyed quizzing daddy. :) For her core language arts, she switches between doing copy work and writing journal.

We are reading 1 chapter a day from Psalms from the Bible. She reads aloud from her bible few times herself after I read it. Words she doesn't know the meaning of, she looks up in the dictionary with my help and I write down a brief definition for her and also a sentence to help her put the word in context. We review these words and I ask her how to spell them until she know them. I'm relaxed about it as we are sort of experimenting with this and she has been learning quite a few new words. We are still doing grammar and J really enjoys those as they are super short.

We still read fairytales and math stories from Enki and those has been great. She is reading 1st grade fairy tale now but I make a point to choose ones that are shorter. We do recall on those and also some type of artistic digestions on those (that might be cooking, painting, drawing, using beeswax, using wooden dolls, or creating scenes from using wool on our felt board). Sometimes J creates a play with Prime or incorporate it in her free play with Prime. She tells me the story (shortened version) and I write it down for her and then I read it back to her. She has been doing better with her "and" but sometimes her summary still does not connect. The interesting thing is she almost always feel her summary are fine and don't see the need to change anything at all even after I ask her about some of the major points she just skipped over in her summary. I know Enki says as long as the sequence is right, don't correct them at this level. And the point is to do them casually and not let it be so restrictive and perfect. So for now, I am just that, relaxed.

She has also been working on crossing out dates on her calendar and memorizing our phone numbers. I ask her to write dates whenver she writes.

For math, we have been using more manipulative. Pattern blocks, cuisinare rods and practicing both one digit and two digits additions and subtractions daily. J does the ones she have trouble with the help of cuisinare rods. She has been able to visualize better after she uses cuisinare rods. She is also doing 1 page (front and back) from THINKMATH/ day. (She use to do 2 pages) We have also looked at a few other math books for fun (like card games, dots, etc) and I try to show her math is truly everywhere.

For history, we are reading The Story of the World, and she just listens and then we have a comparison on how we do thing vs. how the people did things in the old days. We also read some of the books recommended from THE WELL-TRAINED MIND.

For science, we having been reading Enki Nature stories. I like how they are very descriptive and really give the children a sense of wonder and sense of magic. We have also borrow some books from our library, like shadows since both kids love playing with flash light. They have actually been experimenting with science through their creative play; making guesses and testing them out themselves like what objects floats and what objects sinks, etc.

Music is the one area I feel ever since J has been home, I have neglected to do much. Mostly because J does have choir class every week but we have not been singing nor learning as many Enki songs as we use to. Oh, I haven't got my act together to teach J any recorder yet.

Art is another area I feel the same as music. I might look into getting some good quality and fun art books for the kids and see where that takes them. Though the kids have been having fun making different things using pipe cleaners. J made a flower and candy cane, etc.

Gym.... this is another that's been neglected ever since J came home with us. We haven't had much time to do Enki movements/circle. But when we do them, the kids enjoys them tremendously. Luckily, the kids do swim every Friday and J takes dance class every week. And she just love to bounce on her ball and does it daily. I'm hoping we'll be able to be more active and go outside more once the weather gets warmer.

I find when I writes these update, they help me to know which area needs some change.

That's about it. Here are few nature pictures we took today:

We saw those animal footprints and J followed it for a ways, then she say, it goes to the "snake pit" and she stopped. What is she talking about?

Doesn't the 2nd picture looks like someone put icing on my brick paves? I thought that was neat.