workshop report...

Sigh... I have to admit defeat on this one. This was the workshop I referred to earlier in the week with my post about "it doesn't hurt to ask". Apparently, I need to ask more questions.

The workshop was titled Navigating the Underground Railroad... so silly me, I assumed that this would be an educational workshop on the history of the Underground Railroad. Ummm... no... it was a two hour workshop on diversity and accepting others (with a little section on African American inventors). Which is a great message but it was not what I expected from the workshop. The people that ran it put a huge amount of effort into the planning and running of the workshop... it just wasn't what the title said it was... if you know what I mean.

That said... Alex and Clara seemed to enjoy it.

Here they are working on their first project...



a diversity flower... showing all of the different colors that come together to make a flower...

(they were supposed to match their skin tone as closely as they could to color their petals which they passed out to other members of the workshop... as you can tell... they were short on markers so some kids got a little creative with their colors)

Next they made a nap sack to take on their journey and keep all of their papers in....


This really was a cute idea. It was just a flat shopping bag with holes punched around the edges. The kids laced yarn through the holes, starting at the bottom middle. Then they tied the ends back down to the corners to make backpack straps.

After this they traveled to several different rooms in the building to hear different story books or play games. Like I said, my two seemed to enjoy it but for the adults it wasn't what we thought it would be about and some of the information was just plain confusing.

Oh well... live and learn!

"schoolish" school

How's that for a title? LOL!

We usually don't do a lot of worksheets, just because as homeschoolers with a class size of two students... we tend to answer questions orally. Well, the teachers guides that came with the set of books we checked out from the Nature Museum have worksheets you can photocopy in the back. I asked the kids if they were interested in doing them and they enthusiastically began jumping up and down! So, for each book we read, I hand them the worksheets that go with it to work on. I'm letting them work together and without my help (although I am within earshot so I can hear to make sure that Alex isn't completely taking over and doing it all). They love doing them!

Here are just a few that we've done so far....

We've only got a couple more books to go before we finish the set. I guess I'll be checking another bag out when I return this one.

it doesn't hurt to ask

That's my new homeschooling mantra! LOL!

Well... seriously, what's the worst that could happen? They could say "no", right? But that's not too bad... especially when you consider that part of the time they say "yes".

Here's what we learned by asking this week (well... one thing I asked about a few weeks ago but it is happening this week).

1. Monday at the Notebaert Nature Museum we learned by asking that homeschoolers are welcome in the Teacher Resource Room. We also learned that we are welcome to materials on their freebie shelf and we are able to check out their theme bags and boxes. The boxes look super cool... but I didn't feel like dragging one home on the bus that day. So instead I checked out a literature theme bag...
filled with this....
They have a bunch of different themes on several different reading levels.

2. Yesterday at the Art Institute, by asking in the Teacher Resource Center, I got an Educator's Pass that gives me free general admission to the museum.

3. And finally, a few weeks ago I got an email newsletter from a business here in Chicago. They were running an educational workshop on a Saturday. I asked if they would consider running an additional workshop during the week for our homeschool group. They said "yes" and we go on Friday to see their presentation and participate in the activities they've lined up.

Have you asked for any cool homeschool stuff?

a little bit of art...

... in the afternoon.

Yesterday we decided to have a little art appreciation adventure with another family in our homeschool group. We were to meet by the bean (actually called Cloud Gate) in Millennium Park.

On our way to meet them, we decided to walk down the Chase Promenade instead of walking on the sidewalk along Michigan Avenue. It was walking down this promenade that we discovered the Mark di Suvero sculptures. The kids thought the sculpture Yoga was cool even if it showered us with wet melty snow as it turned in the wind. Their favorite had to be Shang, which had a swing they could play on...


(the red sculpture behind Shang is called Rust Angel)

After this short diversion, we met up with our friends and saw what we made the trip for... Paintings Below Zero by Gordon Halloran...


The kids thought it was cool.... but only studied it briefly before moving on to other things.

After warming up at a coffee shop, we decided to head to the Art Institute since it has free admission for the month of February and was close by.

We went straight downstairs to the kids area, miniatures room, touch gallery and children's library and stayed until it closed at 5pm.

Here are some pictures of Alex and Clara doing brass rubbings....



We had a great day full of unexpected adventures... but boy were we tired when we got home!

StartWrite

Jessica asked me about StartWrite, so I thought I would just answer it here as a blog post.

First of all... let me just say that I just bought this program this school year but I wish I would have purchased it two years ago when I first started school with Alex. It would have saved us a lot of frustration with handwriting.

Overview: StartWrite is a computer program (mac or pc) that allows you to create your own handwriting worksheets. It includes a nice selection of handwriting fonts to choose from. It can include arrows on the letters to show which way and order to make the strokes and it can include the lines like regular handwriting paper. Lots of customizing options.

Now... this doesn't sound terribly exciting, does it? Well... it really is! See, Alex HATED handwriting and would cry when assigned handwriting worksheets. I finally wimped out and let him go it alone.... but it made me crazy that his handwriting was so bad. Now, enter Clara, who had major trouble forming letters. Due to her issues, we decided to go with Handwriting Without Tears for her.... but it is not your typical handwriting font so there were no additional worksheets for it (like all of those printables on the internet).

Then finally this year I broke down and ordered StartWrite. What a difference it has made! Alex's handwriting is finally becoming somewhat presentable (well... at least he's not starting his b's and e's at the bottom anymore... lol). The main reason why is that he doesn't hate handwriting assignments anymore... in fact he looks forward to them! Alex loves jokes and riddles, so I type out the joke using StartWrite, leaving a blank line for the answer (I also leave some open space at the bottom of the page). I started with the arrows, but now I don't have to use them. He traces the joke neatly, and then guesses at the answer to the joke/riddle. I give him the answer which he writes neatly on his own on the blank line. He uses the space at the bottom to illustrate the joke. After that we three hole punch it and put it in binder which is his own personal joke book! We went from crying over handwriting assignments to begging to do them.... what a great change!

For Clara we just do the typical stuff since she likes her handwriting workbooks. But we use StartWrite any time she wants to write something more. For example, I typed out all of the Thank You notes from her birthday party for her to "write". She "writes" letters to the grandparents too. Can you believe that for Alex I hand dotted all of the letters when he wanted to write something? What was I thinking?

And like I posted yesterday, I will use StartWrite to type up my own worksheets for the kids. I can use their own fonts (Alex just uses the basic manuscript font and Clara uses Handwriting Without Tears) and customize the font size to their level as well. I sneak in more handwriting practice this way since I have them trace the question before answering it. And instead of just a blank line to answer like a typical worksheet, the ones I make have the three lines.

The options with StartWrite seem to be endless. Besides jokes, thank you notes, letters and worksheets, you could also do journal pages or text for a book they want to write. I seem to find a new use for it all of the time.

Okay... I've rambled on enough about it! LOL! If you use StartWrite and have any cool ideas that you have used it for, I would love to know!

(oh... totally unrelated... but Jessica, Homeschoolestore is an online store where everything is in a downloadable format. I get lapbooks from them. They also have great weekly freebies... so sign up for their newsletter.)

we have mushers! :-)

It took us several days of research (mostly looking for the cutest dogs... I must admit) but we have finally picked our mushers to follow during this year's Iditarod. We picked three but officially we have one musher for our family that we listed on the eIditarod site.

Here are the kids with their info sheet about our musher, Hugh Neff...

Here's Alex with his sheet about his musher, Gerry Willomitzer...
And finally, Clara with her sheet about her musher, Jennifer Freking....
(how do you like Clara's vacant stare in this photo? lol!)

I found some musher bio sheets on the internet but they weren't geared for current mushers. It had places to list death information and other stuff that didn't apply. It became too much to modify so I just typed up a quick sheet using StartWrite so they would trace the questions and have blanks to fill in their answers which they found on the bio pages I linked to above and had printed out for them (whew... that was quite the run-on sentence).

With our musher bios complete... we sat down to read...
L is for Last Frontier: An Alaska Alphabet

We had checked it out at the library a few weeks ago and had never read it, so we decided today was as good a day as any! We've read a few of the other books from this series and enjoyed them. This was a nice light overview of the state with more details in the margins for when we wanted to know more.

We also did a little more work on our Sled Dog Lapbook that we had gotten from Homeschoolestore. Today we learned about the actual sled team and the different positions within the team. I thought our sled team mobile from a few weeks ago was just for fun... but today it was a handy visual aid! We were able to identify most of the positions from our little team. The kids have also added a little lego musher on the sled. :-)

We're getting very excited about the beginning of the race!

shameless copy and paste job...

... from my other blog, but I thought it applied here as well.

Here's what the kids and I were watching tonight...
Yep... it's Lunar Eclipse night! This is one of those wonderful things about having kids and homeschooling (not that you have to have/do those two things to enjoy this sort of stuff... but without them, in combination, I am completely oblivious to this stuff). I don't believe I have EVER seen a lunar eclipse before. I didn't know about it until one of our homeschool friends emailed me about it this morning. We looked it up in our books and did a little online research too. Then after dinner, the stalking of the moon began. Every 15 minutes or so we would don our coats and trek down the block a bit to a break in the trees. I would have felt too silly to do this on my own, there's something about having kids with you that helps you look not quite so insane... LOL!

****
Additional bonus rambling not on other post... LOL!

You should have seen how absolutely crazy we looked! Me and two kids out after 9pm standing on the sidewalk... Clara had her yellow binoculars and Alex had this big long yellow plastic telescope that wouldn't focus worth a darn! Needless to say, people avoided making eye contact with us! LOL!

Oh... the things we do in the name of homeschooling! :-)