Rumphius Romp

Write with Primary Terms

2009-12-14T22:50:00.000-08:00

Michael Clay Thompson is the author of a fabulous but unconventional Language Arts program. He made a few interesting points in this video on vocabulary and writing.

I have always taught my boys to add adjectives and adverbs to their sentences when writing. So what Thompson had to say about these was quite a revelation to me... Well, can you tell I am not a language expert at all?!

Here are some of his points I have extracted from this particular video.

1. Plan A to writing and editing is to choose precise NOUNS and VERBS.
Don't try to rescue weak nouns and verbs with adjectives and adverbs.
If you aren't happy with your nouns, change your nouns. Not add an adjective.

If you see an adjective, kill it.
- Mark Twain

The adverb is not your friend.
- Stephen King

2. Wordiness is usually a modifier problem.
Modifiers add syllable counts and noise to a sentence; diluting interest level.

This kind of succinct writing reminds me of that advocated by William Strunk in The Elements of Style.

The Classics

2009-12-14T18:26:00.000-08:00

Have you ever thought about reading the classics (either yourself or to your children) but shoved the idea because of the possible encounters with "old" words or expressions? Here is a list of classical words that you may want to be familiar with before taking the plunge.

I hope to work through these... somehow... ... ...

History : Patricians and Plebeians

2009-10-28T23:30:00.001-07:00

I have Charlotte Mason to thank for being able to integrate reading, comprehension, writing, spelling, vocabulary and grammar into history and social studies. I rolled all that in within an hour of read aloud, discussion and written narration!

Well, this is just what we do regularly. Unconventional?... I know. But it works for us.

We are in the middle of our study of ancient Rome, using The Story of the Romans by H. A. Guerber as our spine. We covered the period of the Roman Monarchy (750-500 BC) and are now into the period of the Roman Republic ( 500 BC-0). I interspersed our readings with commentaries from our Truthquest guide. These commentaries put us into perspective regarding how all these history go in line with biblical principles.

Here is my boys' narration of the two chapters we read today:

The Wrongs of the Poor

The poor plebeians were ill-treated by the rich patricians. When the plebeians had not enough money to pay their taxes, they had to borrow from the patricians. When the plebeians had not enough money to pay the patricians, the patricians were allowed to take their land and even sell them as slaves or put them in prison.

When the people from another city, the Volscians, attacked them, the plebeians were forced to go to battle. They didn’t want to fight for the patricians because the patricians were ill-treating them. The patricians promised the plebeians that when they come back from fighting, rules will be changed so that they will not be ill-treated anymore. When they came back, the patricians didn’t change any rules.

The Fable of the Stomach

Since the patricians didn’t keep their promise, the plebeians ran away to a mountain known as Sacred Mountain. Both the patricians and the plebeians suffered. The patricians had no farmers to till their land, no market men to buy food from and no merchants to buy articles from. The plebeians had only brought a bit of food with them, so they were starving. Yet the patricians couldn’t persuade them to come back. So they sent a wise man named Menenius to try convince them to come back.

Menenius observed that the plebeians didn’t understand the patricians’ long speeches. He decided to tell them a simple fable to show the plebeians what the situation is. The fable was about body parts. All the body parts didn’t want to work for the stomach, so the stomach ended up weak. The other parts of the body soon grew weak too. When the plebeians heard this story, they understood that they were the other parts of the body and the patricians were the stomach. So they all went back to Rome.

After that, new rules were made that pleased the plebeians. Officers were appointed to take care of the needs of the plebeians. They were called the Tribunes. The Tribunes can veto any law that is not fair to the plebeians. That means the Tribunes could disagree and stop the passing of any law that is ill-treating the plebeians.

Art : Oil Pastel Layering

2009-10-26T05:49:00.000-07:00

[This project was done MANY months ago... ;-p]

Jan Van Eyck was known to be the first to experiment with oil paints and brought it to "perfection". Oils, unlike egg tempera (a common medium before van Eyck's time), gives paintings a certain kind of shine and lustre. Colours are thick and rich. Some of the characteristics of oil paints can be achieved using oil pastels. We experimented with more blending with oil pastels. In this series of pieces, I was trying to demonstrate the effect of layering.

All the pieces here are done on small postcard-sized paper. The adventage of small sized paper is that you try out techniques and complete a piece in a short time. Each took about 50 minutes to complete; a comfortable duration for my active 8 year olds.

This is one of my demo pieces... I was trying to show how putting a yellow under a green could give some interesting effect...

Boys gave it a try with many pieces from imagination. Here is one by B. He did manage to mix a few colours but have not really work one colour into another... Nevertheless a start in the right direction :-)

D attempted a beach scene. He was able to mash the colours more thoroughly in the sky and sun (pink?!) ...

For more practice, we googled for images using words like "sunset", "mountains" and "sky". (not much inspiring scenary here in Singapore I'm afraid) I preselected pictures that have some interesting colours but that are not too complicated. I was hoping to give my boys more practice in "getting the colour" with oil pastels.

[I have included the links to the photographs we used so you can make the comparison if you so want.]

This is D's country road winding through a scenic field in the Tuscany, Italy

B's picture of another country road.

I am always captivated by sunsets, so here's my attempt of Lake Audy in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, Canada. This little exercise was really quite a challenge even for me ...

Boys are slowly getting the hang of it. I was pleasantly surprised one day when B suggested we capture a beautiful scenary on paper when we saw one. :-)

Here is a related website, an interactive landscape adventure - it is effective in bringing one to an awareness of how artists can create different moods and weather in a landscape.

There is more technical information on oil pastels here: How to use Oil Pastels

Typing in Chinese

2009-09-22T00:39:00.000-07:00

I realized that many people are not aware that their Microsoft Word allows them to type Chinese characters. I have been asked numerous times how I do it so I thought it would be nice to just post the instructions here.

This was how I turned on the Chinese Language mode in my Microsoft Word...
(I am using windows XP):
You have to add on Chinese as one of the Language options by going to

Control Panel
Regional and Language Options
Languages
Details...
Add - Chinese PRC(Chinese simplified)

After that, there should be a little icon at the right hand bottom of the screen that says EN or CH. Left click on that and you should be able to choose between EN(English) or CH (Chinese).

If you are using Vista, refer to this site for instructions.

Once you can type in Chinese characters, you can make your own flashcards and worksheets. Also useful when you want to search for Chinese book titles online.

Light (part 2)

2009-09-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

Here are two optical instruments we made while we were on the topic of "Light".

This is our periscope made by cutting and re-shaping a cereal box. It was painted white so it will camouflage with our white walls. ;-)

I found a place that sold little pieces of mirror quite by accident! God's providence! The periscope turned out to be a wonderful toy for play and my boys are now begging to make another extremely long one so they could spy on each other when they are on different decks of their bunk bed. What a practical application?!

This is our second instrument; a pin-hole camera made from a cream cracker tin. We wrapped blue paper around it and decorated it with gold stars to give it a whimsical look.

This is an example of what we looked at.

And the inverted image on the screen (made of tracing paper).

Here are some pointers if you want to make a pin-hole camera too:

Use a big tin if possible
Line the interior of the tin with black paper
Pin-sized hole will produce quite a dim image; a toothpick-sized hole worked better for us. (the bigger the hole, the larger your camera has to be)
Design a way to move your screen in or out so that you can get the image in focus
Image will appear clearer if your eyes are cupped.

Light

2009-09-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

First we read a 2-page spread from a book I have selected. Next, boys do a notebook page. Whenever possible, we try out an activity that demonstrates what was covered in our reading.

Here are a few picture-worthy activities we did...

We learned that light could come from various sources. Looked at how light was produced in a glowing hot wire. Read about how an incandescent bulb works. Set up a simple circuit to see the bulb light up. (You wouldn't believe it, but this is the only incandescent bulb I have at home!)

We read about the various behaviours of light through and on various material. Played with flashlights mirrors and such. (Oooh... lots of excitement here!) After experimenting with lens, we took a look at the physics behind the eye. Here is an interactive site that explains the workings of the eye and how lens can help correct eye defects. (ignore the registration request by clicking on "maybe later")

We tested to see how light travel in a straight line...

See how the angle of reflection is the same as the angle of incident ray...

We split white light into its rainbow colours using our home-made prism (made by taping 3 pieces of microscope slides together, using a plastacine base and filling it with water).

Observed this same phenomenon right in our aquarium that day and wowed at it. Later, we discovered that we get this treat everyday! (Lot of good information on rainbows here.)

We made our own coloured lights to see how colours mix. This was achieved using coloured cellophane papers (red, blue and green), kitchen towel cardboard cores and 2 torches.

Red + Blue = Magenta...

Blue + Green = Cyan...

Red + Green = Yellow...

The tough part about this experiment was that our torches were of different brightness. The "correct" secondary colours would only show up well when the two coloured lights were of about the same intensity. The colours were more obvious when we shine them on a white surface at a very close range. However, my camera could not capture these. The coloured spots turned out overexposed. :-( I decided to post the pictures that had less obvious secondary colours. These were taken with the lights shone from further away. (I am not a professional photographer!)

I was at first tempted to not try this experiment ourselves (and a few other activities also...). Instead, just settle for watching a video clip of a similar experiment done very professionally (or simply reading about them). Then somehow, somewhere, this quote jumped at me as I was deliberating:

"Accept no substitute for fun!"

It was like a wake-up call! I was resolved to not short-change my little guys. Well, ... it is fun for me too. ;-) I am making this our motto for Science from now on!

Space Rocks at Breakneck Speed

2009-09-09T04:16:00.000-07:00

We completed one whole chapter in our Exploring Creations in Astronomy book in record-breaking time! It was the lesson on Space Rocks. All done in one afternoon! Why? Because we wanted to catch the meteor shower - Perseids. (That was the second week of August)

We and another homeschooling family headed to the Lim Chu Kang cemetry (at almost mid-night) to have an unobstructed view of the night sky. The peace of God was with us... so it was not spooky at all ;-) Unfortunately, we were not able to see anything exciting; no shooting stars. We were mentally prepared for that. Well, at least we tried...

Why the long silence?

2009-09-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

I have been having a lot of trouble with blogger for the pass few months. Every time, it is a different problem.

First, my edit page was all messed up so that I could not "see" my draft. After that several other page formats gone all wrong as well. It took me time to search through the Internet to get the problem fixed. Even then, it was a temporary fix as the same problems keep resurfacing. Later, on some days, I could not upload pictures. Many times blogger would just hang on me! Much frustration has caused me to leave blogging for a while.

That did free me to do other things (so that is good)... and after that, I kind of lost momentum... ... ... ;-b

Surprisingly, I am not pressured to keep posting. As I know that even when I haven't had any new posts lately, the my old posts are still read by many. Thanks to those who took the trouble to email and encourage me. Just wanted you all to know that I am in the process of getting things ironed out. :-)

I do have quite a number of drafts; mostly waiting for pictures to be added. A backlog of about more than a month worth of posts would take quite a while for me to sort out!

Simplifying

2009-08-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

While working on our Miquon labsheets ... ... ...

Me: Er... three-sixth? Can that be simplified?
B: Hmm... oh yes! One tooth!
Me: Ha?
B: I mean half.

It's All About Readiness

2009-08-17T21:58:00.000-07:00

Six month ago, I started a math problem solving assessment book with my boys. Somehow, my boys had difficulty drawing the models. I know that they understood the problems because they could tell me the answers to the question. They saw the whole model drawing process very tiresome and complicated; they couldn't see the need to go through all that trouble to solve what could be solved mentally. So each session was met with a lot of resistance.

My assessment of the situation? Laziness, ill-disciplined, blah blah blah... everything negative :-(

I finally decided that this is not a battle I want to fight. Math had been one of their favourite subjects. I don't want to change that. We put the book aside and have been working happily on our Miquon labsheets since then.

Just this week, I blew the dust off those books and tried them out again. They completed what would have taken 30 minutes previously in just TEN! Boy! Was I surprised?! What shocked me more was when B said, "Can we do more?" :-o

What happened?!

I am slowly beginning to believe what I read. Some homeschool parents have assured that it is perfectly okay to start formal math at age 10. The Moores and Bluedornes come to mind. Their take is that less effort is required for learning when a child is developmentally ready. I am not that "brave" to take it to THAT extreme. But it is a good reminder that I don't need to get frustrated if they don't "get it" NOW... ... ... They will "get it" ... one day.

Art: Skies

2009-07-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

I am always spellbound by the beauty of God's art work. Just look at how he paints the sky! This picture is taken from our window.

Here are my boys' attempt at capturing some of such brilliance.

We used a mixtures of 3 different techniques:

1. Sunset

Wet wash and blending

2. Cumulus Clouds

Clouds are white and left unpainted.
Cloud rounded on the top and flatten underneath. Clouds nearer the horizon are thinner.
Layering by adding raw sienna onto the base of the clouds while paint is still wet.

3. Stratus Cumulus / Cirrus Clouds

Wet wash and blotting damp wash with dry brush or crumpled tissue.

This little exercise was a side projects in our Jan Van Eyck study. He was known to be very observant of his surroundings and so our little artists were challenged to paint something of their own surroundings!

Chinese Booklist

2009-07-12T00:05:00.000-07:00

I benefited from the Chinese book list posted by a fellow homeschooling mother in her blog. I had checked out some of her books and really liked them. So I thought it would be useful to list here, some of the Chinese picture books we have enjoyed recently. They might not be hot from the press, just what caught our eyes: [library reference code]

五个小怪物 [JP DYE] -
在森林里[JP ETS] - translated from In The Forrest by Marie Hall Ets
爷爷的天使 - my personal favourite
布朗家的天才宝宝 - comical
布朗家的超级明星
岩石上的小蝌蚪 [JP XEH]
鲸鱼 [JP GOM] - reminds us of the Nazca drawings we read about in our history
两个好朋友 [J ESC]
两个好朋友的争吵 [J ESC]
院子里的小岛
我不想生气 [JP MOR] - short book about anger management (will want to look at others in the series)

I just want to make special note that we really love 爷爷的天使. It is a living book due to its wonderfully thougth-provoking illustrations. This book is about a grandfather's reflection of his whole life on his death bed. He spoke with pride about his bravery when he was young and how nothing terrible seem to ever happen to him; even through the war years. But as you read, you see pictures of his guardian angel protecting him time and time again. Then you will realize that he really had nothing to boast about at all.

Here is a picture of him falling down a tree but was not hurt because he was cushioned by his angel...

Other pages showed him boasting about how he dared to walk along dangerous deserted paths. At a corner, his guardian angel puts her hands over the eyes of his potential attacker...

This book brings to light how we often take God for granted.

My boys love to scrutinize the drawings. It became especially relevant one day. Their grandparents brought them to cycle so that I could have a "break". It was an exceptionally challenging trip for them. They cycled along the park connectors from Bedok to Changi AND BACK! Well, that is not all that impressive...

Along the way, D lost control and cycled into a HUGE drain. It was so deep, if Grandma had not been cycling behind him, nobody would have known where he had gone. His bike and him just disappeared completed. He was eventually fished out of the drain with minimal scratches! I was told, the drain was DRY and had LOTS of dried leaves in there to cushion his fall. This is clearly God's hand of protection!

Chemistry Week - Laboratory Experience

2009-06-24T00:09:00.000-07:00

We attended a series of laboratory sessions at the Singapore Science Centre during their Chemistry Week. Most of the workshops used concepts in Chemistry learnt at the Secondary 3/4 level. Of course, my 8 year-olds don't get it all! But they had fun just "playing" with the apparatus. ;-)

For the sake of future reference, I will go ahead with noting down the specifics of what was done.

Workshop 1 - Sulfur Dioxide and its Role in Preserving Food

What we did :- We tested for the presences of SO2. Hydrogen peroxide was added to food samples (preserved mango, dried sour plum, preserved papaya, raisins, potato chips, fruit juice). This causes SO2 to be oxidised to form sulphates. This sulphate will precipitate out as barium sulphate when barium chloride is added.

My observation :- Boys got the droppers all mixed up and in the process contaminated the solutions!

Workshop 2 - Recycle Paper - Transform Newspaper to New Paper

What we did :- We blended newspaper shreds in a blender with some water. The resultant pulp was gently laid on a mesh that is submerged in a tray of water. The pulp is spread evenly to dry.

Some dried flowers were sprinkled throughout.

We had some leftover pulp, so we made a smaller circular shaped paper.

My observation :- This is the most straight forward of all the workshops. The boys needed to learn that "more doesn't mean better"... I had to remove most of the dried flower they "dumped" onto the paper.

Workshop 3 - Hydrogen Fuel Cell

What we did :- We produced hydrogen gas by reacting magnesium with hydrochloric acid. Hydrogen gas was tested using a glowing splinter.

Too slow in preparing the glowing splint. Ops... fingers too small to stopper over test-tube opening, so most of the hydrogen escaped! ... Managed to get a soft "pop"sound (positive test for hydrogen). Phew!

The set up here was used to electrolyse water.

Green solution of Universal Indicator was added into the water. We observe that the colours at the two graphite electrodes were different. The indicator cahnged to orange (acidic) on the anode (left arm) and violet on the cathode (right arm).

The electrode reactions are as follows:
at the anode:
2H2O(l) → O2(g) + 4H+(aq) + 4e–
at the cathode:
4H2O(l) + 4e– → 2H2(g) + 4OH–(aq)
Overall:
2H2O(l) → O2(g) + 2H2(g)

The aim of showing the children the electrolysis of water is to show the working principles of a hydrogen fuel cell. The electron gradient produced can be be channelled through an electrical circuit.

Workshop 4 - Green Chemistry - Balance with Nature

What we did :- We investigated the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide. Two identical set up like this was set up.

Carbon dioxide was put in one of the boxes. The thermometer poked into the box allowed temperature in there to be taken over a period of 8 minutes after the lamp above it has been switched on. The temperature gradient was significantly higher in the box with carbon dioxide.

This was another experiment where we investigated on the effects of various solution on shells. You can see that there is a hole in the middle of the shell on the left. That is the result of submerging it in hydrochloric acid. This experiment aims to show the effect of acid rain.

Conclusion : I realized that my boys had a lot to learn about basic laboratory skills! These include measuring, planning and general apparatus handling. I found a simple lab sheet on Laboratory Safety and Measuremen t that we can work through at home. Alright, more hands-on session at home from now on...

Horse Unit Study (part 5) - Drawing Horses

2009-06-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

For Art, we were broke away from our usual and galloped off on horses! Let me explain...

We were in the mood to draw horses since we have been reading so much about them. But horses aren't exactly the easiest animal to draw. So I pulled out some of my art books to see what I could put together. I read from How to Draw Animals by Jack Hamm. This book is published in the 1960s but yet the clarity of its instructions far surpasses that of more recent how-to books on the same subject.

What started out as a simple copying of horses unfolded into many successive sessions on animal drawing!

We started working from the beginning of the book where we learned about the shapes found in a generalized animal. We then learn how to put those basic shapes together when we look at an animal.

Here are some outlines we copied from the book. Notice the shoulder muscles, hip muscles and rib cage. These outlines are supposed to help in later shading and rendering of other surface details.

Shading of a generalized animal body was the emphasis for the next few sessions. It really gives the drawing depth and perspective.

Here's an attempt at applying the above concepts. I let my boys try outlining the animals from looking at photographs of animals. I wanted to see if they understood the concept. This is what they produced. Here is my boy's drawing of the basic outline of a donkey. He looked at a photograph in our Apologia Zoology 3 book.

The later part of Hamm's book focuses on different animal types and the usual challenges of drawing these animals. We jumped ahead to the section on Horses. (Couldn't wait!) We copied some of the horse drawings in that section.

Then each of us selected a picture of a horse from one of our other books to copy. Here are my boy's outlines. This was B's sketch from James Herriot's Treasury for Children.

This is D's mustang sketched from Album of Horses by Marguerite Henry.

Drawing and colouring are two separate skills. In the past, I noticed that my boys will be very discouraged when their colouring "ruined" their nicely drawn pictures. This time, I decided to make photocopies of their drawing for them to colour on. This is so that credit can be given to the drawing as well as the colouring; and each having something to show for. We used oil pastels. I joined in the fun too using my boys' drawings.

Drawing animals is indeed very challenging. A mistake in proportion can make a deer look like a dog, or a horse like a cow! For a long time, I myself have shied away from drawing animals. I am now glad I overcome my own phobia and gave it a try because I am pleasantly surprised at my boys' enthusiasm. I guess children just have a natural affinity for animals. I now wished I had done this little off tangent project sooner when we still had our zoo membership!

Science :Botany - Ferns

2009-06-17T00:04:00.000-07:00

I found it difficult to complete this chapter on ferns without mentioning the concept of the alternation of generations in plants. In the end, I decided to introduce it to my boys. These are some useful sites:

an definition of terms used in the alternation of generations
a worksheet that could be used with some modification
clear diagram relating to the alternation of generations in ferns.
a simple review game of the life cycle of ferns.

My objective is to expose them to the concept. I didn't want to overload them with technical terms.

I found a good diagram in one of my old Biology books called Botany: An Introduction to Plant Biology by Mauseth. (Here is another good diagram.) It shows the haploid and diploid parts of the fern in its life cycle. I found the easiest way to get my boys to understand this complex concept was to let them colour the diagram; using yellow colour to indicate the parts that are haploid (with one set of genes) and green colour for the diploid(with two sets of genes) parts. The "ah-ha" moment came as they were colouring.

From there, I could then further make a comparison between the spores of the ferns and the seed of flowering plants. They are not quite analogous. The spore is haploid while the seed is diploid, the result of a fertilization process.

We collected sporangium from our fern to view under our Brock Magiscope (mag:200x). I managed to capture it on my camera just by positioning the camera directly over the eyepiece!

You can see the thin side walls of the sporangium and the very faint outlines of the spores within. The cells surrounding have jointed rings (annulus) that will strighten hygroscopically to break the thin side walls, throwing out the numerous spores within. We left the whole set up as is to continue with our other activities for school. Three hours later, this was what we saw. The sporangium opened!

Visit Rumphius Science Webpage to learn more about how we approach Science in our homeschool.

Science : Botany - Gymnosperms

2009-06-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

We learned about the different types of gymnosperms. Those that bear pollen cones or seed cones are the conifers. Those that bear berry-like cones are like junipers and yews. Then there are special ones that don't really bear cones but still have "naked" seeds, as is the characteristics of all gymnosperm. They are the ginkos and cycads.

One section focused on Softwood versus Hardwood. I proceeded to read a picture book called Woodlore by Cameron Miller and Dominique Falla. I picked this book up years ago in a garage sale. I was naturally attracted to its contents as my home has always been stocked with wood of all types. It starts out like this:

Yew trees grown throughout the ages,
Have the wood the bowyers favors.
Maple and spruce are always kings
For makers of lutes and violins.

This book is written in poetic form telling which types of wood are best for what purposes. Interesting!

The Elementary Apologia Science books have sections called Creation Confirmation. I love these as they are so important in building up our faith. Here's my boys narration for one of such sections in this chapter:

The world-wide Flood happened about 4700 years ago. We know that by counting the generations of people in the Bible. All trees will die in the world-wide flood. Seeds will still survive. All trees alive now must have grown after the Flood. The oldest living tree is 4700 years old. That is a good evidence that the Flood took place at about 4700 years ago.

Visit Rumphius Science Webpage to learn more about how we approach Science in our homeschool.

History of China... Preliminary Plans

2009-06-15T03:22:00.000-07:00

We visited the Asian Civilizations Museum three weekends ago to view the Kangxi Emperor Exhibition: Treasures from the Forbidden City. It was International Museum day and that meant the public could enter the museum for free!

My personal favourite object in the exhibition is a painting (on hand-scroll) that is 22 metres in length, depicting Kangxi emperor on his second inspection tour. We had fun studying the details of the painting and trying to spy where the emperor was. It's a pity we were not allowed to take pictures in the exhibition...

We spend some time musing at the not-so-ordinary family tree- what with 50 wives and 55 children!

Our interest in the History of China was sparked off and I am now researching to see how I can incorporate Chinese history into our History curriculum. That was my original plan anyway. I just haven't sat down to seriously do my research.

There is a spatter of Chinese history in Story of the World, but in my opinion, too superficial. Being Chinese, we ought to know more. It is a pity our command of the Chinese language isn't good enough for us to use Chinese history books (or any primary sources), we would have to resort to those in English instead.

Here are some things I've managed to find so far...

An Amazon Listmania provided me with a list of books I could use to explore deeper. Two books stood out from the rest; The Story of Ancient China (from Neolithic times through the Tang Dynasty) and its sequel China's Later Dynasties (mainly on China's last four dynasties - the Song, the Yuan, the Ming, and the Qing) both by Suzanne Strauss Art. They are written for middle school students (ages 10-14 yrs old) and look like wonderful spine books I could use for our study on the History of China!

Here are some websites with important information that is geared for children (I will add on to this list if I find more useful sites):

History of China
Timeline of Chinese History (with great links)
Timeline of Chinese History (with short description of significant events)
Dynasties in Chinese History
Portraits of Chinese Emperors (possible cliparts we could use for timeline figures)
Historical Maps of China: maps 1, maps 2, maps 3
Ancient China unit study Squido page by Jimmie (I believe every possible related link is here!)
Ancient China unit Study II by Easy Fun School (more links and suggestions)

Post update on 12 July:
I found a unit study called Ancient China: To the Great Wall and Beyond by Judy Wilcox. This is a twelve-week study that brings you through eleven key dynasties through reading and project work. One interesting point brought up in reviews (1 & 2) was the fact that the student is challenged to research and make biblical contrast. Efforts were even made to relate historical events in China to the biblical timeline for context. This looks really promising!

Post update on 14 July:
Here are 2 books available as etext on Chinese History:
1. China's History by William E. Griffis
2. The Story of China by R. Van Bergen

Science : Botany - Trees

2009-06-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

This post highlights snippets of what we did for the chapter on Trees apart from our usual read aloud and narration of our Botany book.

We wanted to find out more about heartwood and sapwood. We found this site (Wood Magic) with very clear explanation. In fact we completed a notebook page based on our read alouds through these pages.

I made a set of 3-part cards for Twig Anatomy while my boys made theirs on the new vocabulary for this chapter. I just could not find the time to prepare these before hand. I have decided to keep it simple; no fancy coloured borders, no printed words, no lamination. I just coloured the respective parts of the twig and wrote the name of the parts down!

We reviewed our old 3-part cards for flower anatomy because my boys have forgotten that. I needed them to know because this chapter introduced the concept of "imperfect flower". Cannot expect them to know what is an imperfect flower if they don't first know what is a perfect one. Just love these 3-part cards. They are so convenient to pull out for reviews whenever we need it.

I decided to teach my boys the shapes of tree crowns. Different websites use different terminologies so I thought I'd just introduced them all. (They can be seen mainly in these two pictures: 1 and 2)

1. round/spherical
2. oval
3. V-shaped/vase/funnel
4. cone/pyramidal
5. columnar/tube
6. spreading/umbrella
7. weeping
8. irregular

This post is long overdue. I had initially wanted to follow this chapter up with an Adopt a Tree project that would continue for at least a year. However, some circumstantial changes at home has caused me to think we might not be living here for that long. This has caused me to procrastinate for quite some time; and was tempted to abort the plan altogether.

My original plan was to observe an adopted tree (within our neighbourhood) regularly over at least a year to see if we can observe any growth change or patterns. I noticed that some trees flower only at certain times of the year and some even shed their leaves almost completely. I am not sure these cycles follow a strict time period, so I thought it would be nice to investigate.

I later decided to allow my boys to make their observations anyway. This would serve to review many of the concepts covered in previous chapters. The following observations were made of their adopted tree. These will also be the guidelines for any of our future tree study:
1. tree - shape, height, branching patterns, height of lowest branch,
2. trunk - girth, bark texture
3. leaf - shape, size, margins, venation
4. flower - colour, growth pattern, petal arrangement, predict pollinator
5. fruit - colour, type, predict dispersal mode

Visit Rumphius Science Webpage to learn more about how we approach Science in our homeschool.

Horse Unit Study (part 4) - Horse Breeds

2009-05-25T00:40:00.000-07:00

We are slowly soaking up all we can from our readings and making minibooks for our Horse lapbook as we are gathering new information.

We have been reading about various horse breeds in Album of Horses by Marguerite Henry. The history of the more common breeds are described in well-written prose. The language used is a little too sophisticated for my eight-year-olds. Even I am unfamiliar with many words that were used :-b But the information given is just too fascinating to miss. So I tried to get round the language problem by reading just a paragraph or two, then stop to discuss about what we can gather from that section. Many inferences had to be made and this skill has yet to be honed. Only after the discussion did I get my boys to narrate (just that section) while I type it out. It was a very slow process but I think it was good training.

Here is what we gathered about the Arabs:

Type of Horse: Riding Horse

Country of Origin : Arabian Desert

Size: 14.2 – 15h

Colour : The Arab horses can be any colour but must have black skin underneath so that it can protect them from the sun’s ray.

Interesting Facts:

Arabian horses can survive on very little food. If there isn’t grass to graze on, they can eat dead locusts, bruised dates and dry herbs. Arabs are used for war. The Arabian fighters ride only the mares and they call them “Daughters of the Wind”.

The owners will always make sure that the mares mate with the best Arabian stallions so that the colt will be the best. The owners will let the horses drink camel milk even before their own family drinks. This is how well they treated their horses. The colts are given camel as stepmothers to nurse on.

There are two famous people who rode on Arabian horses. George Washington rode on an Arabian horse called Magnolia and Napoleon rode on one called Marengo.

Arabian horses have arched necks and high flung tails. Their bodies are slender. They are the oldest domesticated horse species in the world.

More of these little write-ups will be added into out lapbook as we continue to read about the other breeds. Although my boys wanted to read about ALL the breeds, I insisted that we at least first cover the Thoroughbreds, Shire, Lipizzan, Mustang, Appaloosa, Quarter Horse and Shetland Pony.

Art : Jan van Eyck : Read Aloud

2009-05-12T00:02:00.000-07:00

We are currently reading through Looking at Pictures : An Introduction to Art for Young People by Joy Richardson . My plan is let the chapter on "Hidden Meanings" coincide with our picture study of Jan van Eyck's painting "The Arnolfini Portrait".

This particular painting is also featured in Art Fraud Detective by Anna Nilsen. This book will be next in line in my boys' assigned reading list to heighten interest. Readers are supposed to pretend to be detectives to find out who painted the fakes in a gallery of paintings and hopefully learn a thing or two. Looks like fun to me!

Visit Rumphius Webpage Art to find out about how we approach Art in our homeschool.

I Wish I Were a Fish (a poem)

2009-05-06T00:15:00.000-07:00

We read a few poems with this form: AAB, CCB ... and liked it. A well-known one is the poem At the Seaside by Robert Louis Stevenson. We composed a poem using this form; drawing inspiration from the guppies in our aquarium.

I Wish I Were a Fish

How wonderful it is to be a fish
To always be free to swim and swish
My delicate rainbow tail.

I can sleep whenever I'm tired
And have lots of peace and quiet
No noisy siblings with tiresome tales.

I can play hide-and-seek all day
On pastures of green algae
Or chase and dance with pretty ladies.

No use crying if my friend dies
Just nibble him up! Isn’t that nice?
A fish's life is filled with jollies!

Horse Unit Study (part 3) - Horse Poetry Book

2009-05-06T00:04:00.000-07:00

We found an anthology of poems on Horses called A Classic Illustrated Treasury: Horses at the library.

There was even one poem by William Shakespeare!

Round hooft, short jointed, fetlocks shag, and long,
Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostril wide,
High crest, short ears, straight legs, & passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide:
Look what a Horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

I was a little amused at how Shakespeare used pairs of adjective-nouns in this poem. That was somewhat similar to what we'd started out with when we first drafted our poem on the Centipede!

Another poem stood out from the rest.

My Pony
by "A."

How charming it would be to rear,
And have hind legs to balance on;
Of hay and oats within a year
To leisurely devour a ton;
To stoop my head and quench my drought
With water in a lovely pail;
To wear a snaffle in my mouth,
Fling back my ears, and slash my tail!

This poem gave me an idea for our next writing assignment! In my following post, I will share our poem on how wonderful it is to be a fish. :-)

Horse Unit Study (part 2) - Picture Book Study

2009-05-05T00:21:00.000-07:00

We did a Five-in-a-Row styled book study of a picture book Mrs. Mack by Patricia Polacco.

I chanced upon this book while I was searching for free lapbook templates on horses. I got all my teaching ideas from this page in homeschool share. I used most of the suggestions there and we learned loads! (More lessons plans for other books in this site! A treasure trove! We used most of the lapbook templates from the links on this page. I will post more about that in a separate post.)

I think this story is not one that will appeal to all readers. The subject matter is a serious one but written from the heart. It is an autobiography of the author's first experience learning how to ride a horse and the special relationship she shared with a horse, her riding coach and her riding friends. We read this book with great interest because our first riding experience was still fresh in our minds. I remembered being told to "keep my hands soft" and "don't hang on to the saddle horn!"- familiar words Mrs. Mack reiterated.

Changes for English

2009-04-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

I found the First Language Lessons (FLL) by Jessie Wise a wee bit tiresome due to constant repetitions. And since I am already reading poems and requiring narrations, I found those lessons with these elements quite unnecessary. I have been wanting to discontinue FLL for some time.

So when a friend recommended Grammar Land by E. Nesbit, we immediately got hooked on it. This book is a very refreshing way to "study" grammar. It basically introduces the different parts of speech. It does so with a very engaging story. My boys will surely not forget rich Mr Noun and shy little Article, or how Adjective was tried for stealing from Mr. Noun.

I have just started out Rod and Staff English 3 (R&S), a book I was planning to use after FLL. Other aspects of Grammar (other than parts of speech) is covered here that I felt I still needed to address. I guess having come out from a system where grammar was "taught", I still cannot let go and trust that read aloud/copywork/dictation alone can do the trick.

Lessons in R&S English are short and manageable. I try to do most of the exercises that follow orally instead of assigning them as written work. That should help save some time.

Learning the Constellations (Part 2)

2009-04-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

After the excitement of spotting the Southern Cross, I decided it would be nice to be more familiar with all the other constellations. It has always been my dream that we can know the skies like some "wise men of the east". And hey! There just happen to be three of us! Hahaha...

I have been thinking of how we can systematically learn the constellations. Here is my plan.

I have chosen to use Stars: A New Way to See Them by Rey as our text and reference constellation chart. The lines he drew makes up a picture that better depicts the object that the constellations were named after (Rey tells you in English what those constellation names are.). This makes more sense than many other versions I have come across. You can have a feel of connecting the constellations using Rey's scheme here (These are not as detailed as those found in the book).

Another good point about Rey's charts is that they show the magnitude of the stars. This helps a lot in identifying a constellation. The relative brightness of the stars can help with differentiating say the Southern Cross from the False Cross.

There are 17 detailed constellation charts in the book. I figured that if we can familiarize ourselves with one to three charts a month (that is about the range that is visible in Singapore, right overhead, in a month) we will be able to cover most of them in a year or so.

I thought of a 3- stepped method:

Step 1 - Copy

Using the idea of copywork, I have asked my boys to copy the constellation I have chosen (based on what is visible during this time of the year) on our whiteboard. Brighter stars were represented with magnets.

This is my boy's version of the Centaur and Southern Cross.

Step 2 - Identify

I made quiz cards by punching holes on black paper to see if my boys (and I) could spot the constellation they have just learnt. These are replicates of chart 11 (Virgin, The Scales, Crow), 12 (Serpent Holder, Scorpion) and 17 (Southern Cross, Centaur, Wolf) from Rey's Star. Each chart is about 15 cm wide.

They look like real stars when held up against the light! I wanted these quiz cards to be circular so that one would have to figure out where north is. This is to me a very necessary life skill! See if you can spot the Southern Cross and the Centaur on any of these.

How did I make these?
I made a photocopy of the constellation chart from the book, place the copy on top of a piece of black paper and push pins on where the stars are supposed to be (making sure that the pins go through the copy as well as the black paper). I use pins for faint stars, a bicycle spoke (satay stick would do too) for brighter stars and a whole series of hole punchers with varying diameters for the very bright stars.

If this sounds too complicated, here is another idea that I have been toying with. It uses film canisters. (canister constellation template found here)

Step 3 - Star gaze

Obviously, the best way to acquaint oneself with the night sky is to gaze at it more often. We have started with the constellation we have learnt. It is interesting to see how the two-dimensional sky charts translates out into the vast night sky. We are not good at the real thing at all but I am hoping that we will improve with practice. :-b

The light pollution and the often overcast skies have been our main problems. Living in the heart of a densely populated estate also means we don't have one single location where we get an unobstructed view of the whole night sky. We have a relatively good view of the southern sky from our balcony, a not so satisfactory view of the northern sky from the staircase on the top floor of a neighbouring block of flats (corridor lights are really hampering our efforts) and a reasonable view of the sky right overhead from in the middle of the field in front of our block.

We go star gazing with our star charts (Rey's and one from Astroviewer that shows where the planets are too!), red flashlight (so we can look at your star chart without spoiling our vision for the stars) and a mat (to prevent neck aches!). I would love to have a green laser pointer (more information here) except that I found out that one costs a whopping S$400!!!

Here are some other tidbits I have found:

I recently bought a book published by the Singapore Science Centre called A Sky Book for the Tropics by Heong Kam Khow and Kamaria bte Abdul Ghani. It has the monthly star maps for the evening and predawn sky in Singapore.
This interactive site can be useful. It allows you to "see less stars", meaning that they reveal only the brighter stars. This gives a more realistic picture of what you are likely to see in a light-polluted sky like Singapore's. Constellation lines and names can also be switched on and off according to your preference.
My boys enjoyed another interactive site that gives an introduction to Orion and the Big Dipper. You read, look at the picture, click "next", follow instructions to spot constellation and so on.
Notebooking pages on the 27 constellations.
Cute song about the constellations.
Ebook/etext The Stars and Their Stories by A. M. M. Griffith.

Caterpillars

2009-04-24T00:54:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, we were at a park and found a flowering plant that was infested with caterpillars. My boys were exhilarated!

We had many close encounters with caterpillars previously. We have so far managed to morph just one caterpillar but missed observing the crucial processes. Since then, we have been on a lookout for caterpillars. On most occasions, the one miserable caterpillar that we managed to find will die on us because we do not have the correct leaves to feed them.

This time, my boys made sure they harvested plenty of the leaves (and even flowers!) from the plant that they found the caterpillars on. They wanted to be sure we were successful this time so they harvested about 5 caterpillars!

These five hungry caterpillars ate up ALL the plant material we collected in less than a day! I wasn't too optimistic that these will survive. They were tiny and so would need a lot more food to fatten up before they are ready to weave their cocoons. It wasn't practical for us to go back to the park everyday to harvest fresh leaves for our caterpillars, so I did the most convenient thing; I plucked some leaves from one of my plants in my balcony. These were leaves that have yellowed and were those I would remove anyway so I didn't mind. To our delight, the caterpillars devoured these leaves!

We are left with three caterpillars. Two have escaped. We noticed that the smaller ones were able to squeeze through the tiny holes on the plastic aquarium we put them in. In fact, on the first few days, we found escaped caterpillars crawling on the floor. We have since transferred them to another more secure container.

A week has passed and the caterpillars are still alive, eating and growing. We are waiting and keeping a close watch ...

Drawing Trees

2009-04-23T00:38:00.000-07:00

In order that my boys could appreciate shapes of tree crowns, I decided to teach them some basic techniques of drawing trees. I used an exercise shown in The Usborne Book of Art Skills. We used oil pastels to draw many possible types of trees from imagination.

Oil pastels allows layering of colours and this makes the trees looks more realistic. The green of the leaves on a tree is seldom one green but made up of many shades of greens and even blues, greys, red or yellows.

Some time ago, I bought a small set of oil pastels (Cray-pas) that were recommended by Artistic Pursuits for each of my boys. Those were a set of 16 colours. We found that the colours were very limited. There were only two greens and they were unnaturally bright :-( We ended up pulling out my antique set of oil pastels that I used when I was seven! That was a pack of 48 pastels. Some were a little hardened but applying pressure revealed the softer pastel within. These worked fine!

We tried using dots, short strokes and squiggles to achieve the effects of leaves seen from afar. Looking out of windows, we talked about which of the different techniques will give a better representation of each of the trees we see.

The next step would be to try these techniques out on one of our nature walks.

A Poem : Centipede

2009-04-22T00:02:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, the easiest way to learn to write is to see and hear the thoughts of a writer in the act of writing. As such, I see a lot of value in collaborative writing. When writing together, I can talk out how I choose words or phrases, and the "whys" and "how-tos" of editing and revising.

I expect that initially, the end product may tend to sound more like me than like them. To me, this is acceptable. It is my hope that gradually, they would internalize some of these methods I am using in my writing. Hopefully with time and practice, their own personal styles would emerge.

Here's our attempt at team composition:

I thought it would be interesting to write a poem about the centipede since we have a living specimen to observe. We brainstormed for adjectives that can be used to describe a centipede and for action verbs that centipedes normally engaged in. With this list of words, and with active looking out for rhyming words, we composed this poem.

Centipede

I am slimy.
I am tiny.
I'm a burrower.
I’m a wriggler.
I’m a segmented, many-legged,
Shiny armoured, mighty stinger.

People hate me.
Want me dead!
Stamp their feet
And hit my head.
So I scare them with a bite,
From my poison claws all right!

Learning the Constellations

2009-04-19T00:34:00.000-07:00

We made it to the Singapore Science Centre Star gazing night on the night of Good Friday (10 April). The brief talk on constellations highlighted those that were visible this month and the next. Orion is in the middle of our field of view about 9ish at night. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky(belonging to the constellation Big Dog) can also be seen. We were told of the rising of the Southern Cross later at about 10ish and subsequently shown on a simulator how it would look like (more like a kite than a cross).

We had to queue to see Saturn on the big telescope. The ring appeared just to be a line across the planet because this year, Earth and Saturn happened to be on the same plane. We were told that next year, a more distinct ring can be seen because we would be viewing Saturn somewhat "from above". I must admit, Saturn was disappointingly small.

The moon through the smaller free-standing telescopes that were set up looked more impressive in comparison. We were amazed at how fast the moon was moving across the sky; so fast that it kept going out of view on the telescope. Through the telescope, I could actually see the moon creeping!

The overcast sky that night did not allow us to see much more. Even Orion was hidden.

Volunteers at the centre were armed with a green laser pointer to show where the stars were. I made a mental note to try out my red laser pointer I have at home. (I later found out that red ones don't show up well in the sky - read more here) I have seen nature guides use this dandy tool to point at far off points of interest when I go for guided walks and have always wanted to bring it along with me when we go for our nature walks. (But there just seem to be so many things to bring I always forget.:-1

A few nights later as I was enjoying our aquarium in the balcony, I looked up at the sky and saw the distinct kite shape of the Southern Cross! I wasn't sure I identified it correctly so I pulled out our book Stars: A New Way to See Them by Rey (my favourite book on the constellations) to check. True enough, it really was the Southern Cross! I verified by checking the other stars around that constellation. Two other bright stars Alpha Centauri and Beta Centauri , belonging to the constellation Centaur, could be seen a little south-east of the Cross. That led me to find more of the stars belonging to Centaur.

I could not contain my excitement any longer. So off I went to dig my boys up from their beds to show them my "discovery"!

Walking in the Water

2009-04-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

We were planning to go for our Nature Walk around our estate one day when it poured. The boys were disappointed. From our windows we observed that there were many birds on the field in front of our block. We made a hypothesis about why this is so. We thought that the birds might be after earthworms or other yummy stuff. Animals that burrow underground would be forced to surface when the field became water-logged.

Despite the rain, we decided to check it out. Armed with umbrellas, buckets, shovels and nets, we headed to the flooded field. We didn't find any earthworms but found a few centipedes instead. We caught these and brought them home to observe and draw.

We counted and found that the centipede has 20 segments. Each segment has a pair of appendages.

We explored around a bit and found a great big "river" and "waterfall". That's where slippers and buckets got intentionally washed away amidst much splashing. We have the "commendable" drainage system to thank for the fun we had!

Science - BFSU : D1 Gravity

2009-04-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

Building Foundation of Scientific Understanding has lessons in four separate pathways; these will normally be put in different branches of Sciences. The lessons are roughly arranged into these threads -
A:Nature of Matter
B:Life Science
C:Physical
D:Earth and Space Science.

But because these different branches are in fact very much interrelated, Dr Nebel, the author suggests covering across all branches instead of focusing on just one. Each lesson has its prerequisite lessons so that takes care of continuity and progression.

As such, you will notice that my BFSU posts may seem a little unrelated because of how I will be moving from one branch to another. The link is rather apparent when I read the content of each lesson. This approach appears to be the exact opposite of that taken by Jeanie Fulbright of Apologia. I see advantages in both these approaches. As it is now, I am enjoying the variety that these two curriculum is giving us!

We are now in the Earth Science branch (D).

D1- Part 1 - Gravity

We have previously read books on gravity so this is not a new topic for my boys. The additional information for them is how gravity acts on all matter and always acts downwards but yet when two objects put together, one has to consider relative density. The example given is how helium floats up in air, or how oil floats on water. The children were also asked why birds or airplanes can fly up. They are made aware that a greater force in the upward direction must be generated to overcome the gravitational force that is downward. This will relate to the lessons on forces later.

This simple "talking-it-out" and demonstration (to see how a droplet of oil falls down in air but floats in water) lesson culminated with the making of a minibook of the concepts that were discussed.

I like minibooks as compared to a worksheet or a blank A4 size paper for notebooking. A simple long-reach stapler and a few sheets of A5 size paper got the book ready to be filled in. The small size makes it less daunting for the children. Each page takes about 2 to 3 sentences or a small labeled diagram to fill. It gives my boys a tremendous sense of accomplishment and all with little effort. I get a record of what we do with little resistance as well. Retention of information is also high. A win-win situation.

Sometime ago we read a library book called Forces Make Things Move by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. This happen to be a correlated book listed in BSFU. We liked it so much that we made minibooks on the topics. These are our orphaned minibooks (doesn't quite belong in any of our current lapbooks). The concepts in these were relevant for this topic on gravity so we used our minibooks to do a review.

The top minibook says " What is Gravity?". It was written in pencil so it doesn't quite show up in the picture.

D1- Part 2 - Vertical and Horizontal

This section appeared rather trivial to me at first sight but when I started reading and conducting the lesson, I was rather surprised by how the children were made to see vertical as relating to gravitational pull. And how this fundamental concept is a building block in understanding forces acting on objects that are not vertical, leading on to the importance of ascertaining true vertical.

Horizontal was explained as being level. After a series of thinking questions, the children were led to the conclusion that still water is a measure of exact horizontal.

We built a crude version of a surveyors gadget and a plumb line. I got the idea from 300 Science and History Projects by Oxlade, Halstead and Reid.

We made another minibook.

The assigned reading after this lesson was How to Build a House by Gail Gibbons. And just for fun, I also read 我来盖房子, a book in our Chinese Science Picture Book Series that I've got.

D1 - Part 3 - Gravity and the Orbits of Heavenly Bodies and Satellites

We talked about the forces that act on Earth that keeps it in orbit around the sun. There are two forces at play; namely gravitational pull of Earth on the sun (and vice versa) and the forward motion of Earth.

Visit Rumphius Science Webpage to learn more about how we approach Science in our homeschool.

New Memorization Technique???

2009-04-12T01:06:00.000-07:00

Memorizing anything has always been a challenged for me. It can be bible verses, bible references, poems, telephone numbers etc. I had always thought that is because I am a more visual rather than auditory person. For example, I cannot figure out how to pronounce a word if you were to just tell me how it's spelled. I need to write it out and look at the word. I don't know if this is an excuse and the fact is that my brains are just too lazy to process the audio information. Haha...

Anyway, I recently came across a new theory. Well, at least it is new to me!

It centers around the use of your dominant ear. The reasoning goes like this....

If you are right-handed, you should be right-eared. And if you are right-eared, you retain information better if you only listen with your right ear!!! This is because when you are listening with your dominant ear, you then process the information in your dominant side of the brain, which is supposed to be more efficient. The sub-dominant brain is seen to be "messing" up the information... at least that's how I understand it.

It carries on to say that memorization set to music, no doubt effective, actually forces you to use your sub-dominant brain. Have you ever memorized something with music and realized that you cannot recite that same information without the music? Well, the music is very much tagged along with the information whether you like it or not. So it appears that this is a rather "inefficient" method.

So what is the final take? Well, it basically recommends that you record information you want your child to memorize on tapes and just let them listen through one ear!! Sounds ridiculous isn't it?

I don't always agree with" right-brain/left-brain" type theory. However, I do see some truths in some of their reasoning. For example, I do see value in the exercises presented in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. I don't necessary think that different information is processed on different sides of the brain but I do think they could possibly be processed by different parts of the brain. If at all, we should be mindful to give equal training to all parts of our brains and aim to be an all-rounder!

But my curiosity is getting the better of me! I am off to do some experiments... ;-)

Tell me if this works for you.

You can read the full explanation here.

Rock Climbing

2009-04-09T00:26:00.000-07:00

Two Fridays ago, D and B had a 4 hour session of rock climbing at Safra, Toa Payoh with their homeschool friends. I initially thought they wouldn't be able to last for more that 2 hours. They proved me wrong! The children were all still wanting to scale the walls even after the safety ropes were removed at the end of the session! Needless to say, they enjoyed themselves thoroughly! (Thanks J for organizing!)

Here are their triumphant moments...

After a few days , D very excitedly told me that he knew how it must have felt for Dudwin, a character in a book he was reading called Little Giant - Big Trouble by Kate McMullan (Dragon Slayers' Academy). According to D, Dudwin likes to climb things and pick up stones wherever he goes. Once, he had to climb a giant stair that was made of small rocks packed together. He had to find holes to put his feet in and pull himself up. That was exactly like what they had to do when they rock climbed!

Non-Fiction Assigned Readings

2009-04-08T00:05:00.000-07:00

I have started collecting good reference books on various subjects when I first decided on homeschooling. Some are encyclopedic or gives snippets of information as in Dorling Kindersley (DK) style and are not books that children will naturally pick up to browse. However, they do contain a lot of information and most have gorgeous pictures. All I need to do is tempt my boys with a few pages and that will normally set them reading through more pages.

I have recently started giving my boys assigned readings. This is partly to free up read aloud times. I am starting out with short reads of say a two pages spread of our Kingfisher History Encyclopedia (corresponding to the chapter of Story of the World we are reading) or DK Horse (in line with our Horse Unit study) book a day.

I use a lined index card to write down any assigned reading I want my boys to read. They initial next to the assignment when they have completed it. This card is displayed in a highly visible location. They have to complete this assignment within the day in their own free time. Ideally, I will ask for an oral narration after that but on some days, this gets slipped off.

Start of Horse Unit Study

2009-04-06T01:14:00.000-07:00

My boys have developed an interest in horses and I thought I should take this opportunity to do a Horse Unit Study. We don't normally do Unit Studies but I think doing it once in a while, maximizing on current interests, can be a nice break from our usual routine.

I have just started the Unit Study with a chapter book The White Stallions of Lipizza by Marguerite Henry (a Sonlight selection). In the second chapter of the book, we learned about the names of the Lipizzaner ballet routine. Here they are :
(We found video clips of each to better understand the moves.)

1. piaffe
2. levade
3. coubette
4. capriole

The complete Lipizzaner routine.

Here is our narration/description of these different stunts in poem form:

The Lipizzaner Routines

The white stallions of Lipizza
Will always bring shouts of "Bravo!"
They are trained to perform piaffes,
Levades, courbettes and caprioles.

A piaffe is a move,
In which the horse will trot
And never go forward
But stay on the spot.

If you see a horse on two legs,
You are looking at a levade.
The show horse is still.
Horses do this in a parade.

See the horse rear up
And hop on its hind legs.
A horse doing a courbette
Is like a horse dancing a ballet.

A leap! A kick
Of the hind legs in the air.
With all four legs off the ground,
The capriole is an act that is rare.

The white stallions of Lipizza
Will always bring shouts of "Bravo!"
They are trained to perform piaffes,
Levades, courbettes and caprioles.

Credits:
Second stanza on piaffe by B.
Third stanza on levade by D.
Fifth stanza on capriole collaboration between B and I.

As I am typing this, my boys are having a ball of a time on all fours, pretending to be horses and attempting these four moves... and yes it's even more fun with a rider on the back shouting out commands!

Wednesdays in March

2009-03-31T07:59:00.000-07:00

March has turned out to be an activity-packed month. So much so I am finding myself not being able to keep up with updating my blog!

We don't normally head out on Wednesdays but in the month of March, we have been out consistently every Wednesday.

First Wed

An NTU lunch time concert gave the boys the opportunity to listen to an ancient instrument, the lute. This instrument is quite frequently used in the medieval period. Now, it is more often associated with middle eastern music.

Second Wed

We were at the Singapore Science Centre more often than usual this pass month to maximize on our membership which was soon expiring. (We did that for our Zoo membership too... in Feb.) Here is a picture of my boys attempting for the nth time to beat the record for the longest distance flown by a paper airplane. Their maximum distance was about 12 m.

Third Wed

Our homeschool group organized a trip to the Road Safety Park. It was more a fun time for the children to ride on the go-karts rather than learning traffic regulations. :-b

After that was playtime at East Coast beach; beach soccer, water polo, shell-picking... for the boys. I enjoyed the glaring sun and warm sea breeze...

Forth Wed

The last Wednesday in March, we participated in the Homeschool Curriculum Fair. This is an annual event where homschool mothers set up tables to share their resources and expertise with other homeschoolers. I benefited from the talks and sharing of the other homeschooling mothers in the fairs that I have attended in previous years. I am glad to be able to "give back" to the homeschool community this year. I set a table to "show-and-tell" what I do for our homeschool for Mathematics, History, Science and Art.

Despite being busy with my sharing, I caught glimpses of what my other friends were doing. I wished I had more time to look around. I am now inspired to try my hands on some bookbinding and making. (Thanks Y! for your detailed explanation!) Y's children authored their very own books and these were "professionally" bound up (they sewed the pages up themselves) to look like a regular hardcover book. (I should have taken a picture of her books!) I am sure my boys will be thrilled to make one because they have always asked me how they can make a "real" book that others can read from... Hmmm... time to think of what to put in the book. Haha...

Horse Riding Lessons - Our First!!!

2009-03-30T06:35:00.000-07:00

Our kind friends invited us to join them in their day trip to Kulai Riders Lodge for some horse riding. It was a timely trip as we are currently in the medieval mood and horse riding is certainly an activity popular during that period. What's more?! That day happened to be my boys' birthday! I decided the horse riding lessons will be my birthday present to them.

We each took up horse riding lessons! Yes, I joined in the fun too. Horse riding has been one of those things on my "To-do" list so I wouldn't want to miss this opportunity.

We tried to read up as much as we could about horses and horse riding in general. We were thankful for the chapter on ungulates in our Apologia Zoology 3 book. We especially appreciated the section on the different gaits of the horses. In fact, we have gathered quite a lot of information thus far and might just make a lapbook on horses later, just for fun.

In the horse riding lessons, we learned to get the horse to walk, turn and stop. We were also taught the sit/stand position that is required during a trot. Trotting is challenging. Initially, I could not feel the rhythm of the horse's trot and just got bumped up and down. Ouch!!! I did get a better feel for it nearing the end of the exercise.

My boys loved the whole experience so much they immediately asked if they could have more lessons. Ops! Did I just asked for trouble?! :-b These lessons were expensive and is certainly not something we could do on a regular basis. I told them to pray about it and we will see if God opens up any doors...

Medieval Birthday Celebration

2009-03-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

Preparation for the Medieval Party started about two weeks before the event. Invitation cards were sent out and details were planned. Actual gathering of material and making of things took place a week before. It was a nice departure from our usual school routine. This happened to coincide with the one week school holidays so we had "lighter" school days then.

Costume

We wanted a costume party but did not expect our guests to come with the appropriate costumes. In any case, we don't have costumes either. We figured we could make very simple ones. This is what I did. I used gray coloured cotton fabric, cut them into rectangular sheets and use a safety pin to pin the back and front flaps at the shoulders. I had initially wanted to sew / hem these but time did not permit that. I was glad the fabric we chose lasted one wear with rather minimal fraying.

D and B designed their own coat of arms. We read the book Coat of Arms by Catherine Daly-Weir. This book comes with templates so that made it easier. The symbols and animal designs were drawn or traced onto coloured papers and then cut out. These cut-outs were then glued with white glue on a shield shaped flannel. The completed crest was in turned glued onto the gray armour. (I am beginning to discover how useful white glue is!) This method required no sewing at all!!! What a time saver?!

Coat of Arms gives detailed explanation on the significance of the colours and symbols that are often used. These are my boys' final products. They each made crests for all the members in their group for the Dragon Hunt.

Welcome Table / Decoration

I found idea of giving fictitious names to our little guests from this site. We came out with ridiculous sounding names that are food related (Straw of Berry, Gin of Ger, Guard of Lick, Man of Gostin etc...) These names were written on ice-cream sticks that were decorated to look like mini swords. The idea was to let our guest draw a "sword" out from the "rock" like King Aurthur style. The illuminated letters we made were put to good use in a little poem I composed to explain what to do.

Music

What is a party without music?! I hunted long for these and asked at forums to finally find a site that allows for download of MP3s! Gregorian Chants and other such church music (which are what most people know of music of that period) were much to solemn so I chose Medieval Dances instead. Here is a site of Medieval Dances. I selected the album from Anstrorran Dance Symposium for our "banquet".

Craft 1 - Glorious Goblets

I wanted to occupy the children while they waited for the food to be ready. I got the idea of decorating plastic wine goblets with sequins from this site. These are some that were decorated by the children.

These goblets were then used during the party for drinks. No problem with mixed-up cups ;-)

Archery

We have two wooden bows we bought long ago at Daiso. D and B love to play with these; shooting chopsticks along our corridor. We experimented and found that these bows could actually be used to shoot chopsticks into cardboard boxes!

D and B were excited to let their friends try their hands on some archery too. However, we were worried the bows might give way if they were pulled too hard so we decided to add a toilet roll core on our target board as the bull's eye instead. Accurate shots, regardless of the power of the shot, would lodge the arrow into the tube; the arrow should sit comfortably in the tube even if it doesn't pierce the cardboard. This set up worked pretty well :-) I think the children enjoyed this quite a bit.

Craft 2 - Medieval Arrows

Chopsticks as arrows don't look very pretty. We decided to dress our arrows up! I found how to make a medieval arrow from this video clip. I simplify the steps a little and tried to teach this to the kids. This craft required some fine motor skills so mothers were roped in to help. This project didn't turn out too well but I hope some interest was generated :-b

Dragon Hunt

I sent the children on a wild-goose-chase kind of Dragon Hunt. Each clue was written in a poem that played around with words. I composed these poems one day while my boys stayed over at their grandparent's place. I enjoyed myself thoroughly and in the process renewed my interest in poetry! The children had to decipher the clues. There was just a lot of scrambling around from place to place - all around my estate. :-D

I originally intended them to find the dragon and throw tennis balls into the eye of the dragon. But because we were running late, the final Dragon thrashing was skipped. :-(

Food

We had medieval potash with bread. Traditionally, potash was marshy soup with potatoes, beans and various spices. I concocted one without the more unfamiliar stuff. I decided to have pizza as a supplement just in case people are not used to medieval food.

It has become a "tradition" for me to bake apple pies instead of birthday cakes for my boys. (They are two of those weird kids who dislike cakes.) So I did bake two apple pies. Unfortunately, I didn't time myself properly so the baking time extended into the time for preparation of the other party food. As a result, my poor guests had to wait patiently for their lunch.

My dear husband was such a great help in the kitchen that day with assembling the pizzas while I got the children organized and prepared the other stuff. In our original plan, he was supposed to be the jester - juggling and entertaining... haha. Well, thankfully we don't have grumpy guests to cheer up and the children were left to entertain themselves most of the time.

All in all...

We all had fun!! Fun during the preparation as well as during the party itself. I am just super exhausted after that! I truly think it was well worth it though.

I kind of like this sort of themed party. May consider doing a Greek /Roman themed party next time... but without the food. Haha... Cooking is really not my forte :-)

Cinquains

2009-03-24T00:03:00.000-07:00

Most of the poems we read are in two of these usual forms:
1. couplets (aabb)
2. quatrain (abab)

My boys obviously enjoy poems that rhyme. They will always "complain" when we read a poem that doesn't rhyme. But recently, we came across a few that we rather liked. They were from a poem book called Butterfly Eyes and Other Secret of the Meadow by Joyce Sidman. (Thanks tjm! for the recommendation!) Quite a number of the poems are free form, and one particular one uses the cinquain form (unrhymed: 1 word, 2 words, 3 words, 4 words, 1 word... or 2 syllables, 4 syllables, 6 syllables, 8 syllables, 2 syllables... I found several definitions!). Sidman's poem were also all in riddles. That made it even more interesting for the young ones!

We thought this form sounded fun. My boys were inspired and subsequently came up with a few poems of their own using this form. Here is one by B (not strictly cinquain).

A ball.
A ball rolls.
A ball rolls into water.
A ball rolls into water and floats away.
Whoa!
Where did it go?

This one by B is a more strict syllablic cinquain.

Horses
Walk, trot, canter
And gallop. These are gaits.
They are different ways horses move
About.

More on B's blog :-)

Art : Limbourg Brothers III - Illuminated Letter

2009-03-23T00:31:00.000-07:00

Our latest Picture Study was Psalms XXVI of the Les Tres Riches Heures.

Upon the death of the Limbourg brothers, Jean Colombe was commissioned to complete their works. He intentionally retain the style of the Limbourg brothers. In this manuscript page, Colombe illuminated the verse and beautifully illustrated it. We followed this Picture Study up with delving into illuminated letters.

We flipped through a book about illuminations called the Illuminated Alphabet by Patricia Seligman and Timothy Noad. I bought this book at a book sale many years ago. (I am now thankful I did!) I was attracted to illuminated manuscripts in general after visiting the British Museum where I was spell-bound by all the richly illustrated and decorated manuscripts. The pictures and words just seem to jump up at you!

This book takes you through the history of the illuminated alphabet and has projects that exemplify various styles of illumination. We browsed through to get ideas for our own letter designs.

Since we were preparing for the boys' medieval birthday party, I decided we would make illuminated letters as decorations for the instructions to our Dragon Hunt (a game we were planning to have in the party). These are the letters we decorated.

Credits :
"D" and "S" by D
"I" and "H" by B
"T" by me :-)

We tried to design the letters with the text in mind. I will be posting pictures of how these were used in a later post.

Visit Rumphius Webpage Art to find out about how we approach Art in our homeschool.

Getting into the Medieval Mood

2009-03-22T00:02:00.000-07:00

This pass week was a mad week for us. We were in the thick of preparing for my boys' 8th birthday celebration.

Knights and castles. Swords and armour. Bows and arrows. Horses and dragons. My boys just LOVE everything about the middle ages.

So when I agreed to have their first ever birthday party, I decided we'll have a medieval themed one. (I have always heard about or read about people having themed parties but have never had or attended one! And they sounded so fun. I just have to try one!). I was at first a bit hung up about not timing it with our History studies. Should I do it next year instead? That's the perfectionist in me speaking. But I decided to be spontaneous about it. I just want to let my boys have fun!!!

We have shied away from having any parties previously because I wasn't sure I could handle the logistics of one. How to feed so many people? What to do with the children? Oh no! Have to plan games? How to entertain everybody?! ... So much work!!!

Then recently, I read about the wonderful birthday party a good friend of mine planned for her son. I was amazed at her dedication and creativity! I was really put to shame. Haha... in a good sense because I was all inspired after that. She spoke about making memories for her children and that set me thinking... It is just this few years really, may be between the ages of 6 to 12. I don't think a teenager would fancy one at all. It would be too "childish" for them then.

So here I am, going to give it a try ... starting really small with inviting only 3 families. Just don't think I could cope with more... :-b (Have already exceeded the rule of "number of friends to invite equals age of child" rule.)

I hope to do a crash course on History in the Middle Ages (just for this two weeks) ... just a bit of this and that. This would serve as an introduction for later studies. I just couldn't resist it. :-b

In order to get the boys into the mood (Like they needed help!?), I chose a book that is set in the middle ages for our read aloud. It is King of Ireland's Son by Padraic Colum. Reviews of the book revealed that some clever story-telling is exhibited in the weaving of stories within a story. I have been saving this book for when we are "there" for History, but have decided now is good enough! This book has been a page-turner so far. More a fun and fantasy type book rather than one that gives detailed introduction to that period in history. Nevertheless an enjoyable read.

These were the books I assigned for independent reading this week:
Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges
The Kitchen Knight by Margaret Hodges
A Medieval Feast by Aliki
If You Live in the Days of the Knights by Ann McGoverit

There are many more of such books. I just chose those I could get my hands on.

Poem Fever

2009-03-16T00:05:00.000-07:00

My boys simply love poems. Every time I finish reading one, they will be begging for more. So we can seldom just read ONE poem (as recommended by Ambleside Online).

I have to confess that I have not been reading poems as regularly as planned. But I think not much "harm" was done. We will take it from wherever we are and start from there! I am now resolved to read at least 2 before our chapter book read alouds. This is just to ensure it doesn't get forgotten :-b

So here is what we are reading now. A wonderful book of poems arranged by subjects called Read-Aloud Poems for Young People: Readings from the Worlds Best Loved Verses by Glorya Hale. (Similar to the better known Favorite Poems Old and New by Helen Ferris.) I appreciated the extra biographical sketches provided about the poets which often heightened interest somewhat.

In fact, my boys have recently took to liking poetry so much that they have even started composing some themselves. They unabashedly claim to be "poets". (Well, if you write, you are a writer. If you draw, you are an artist. So in the same line of reasoning, since they write poems, they are poets! :-D I decided I didn't want to "burst their bubble"...)

I sometimes speak to them in rhymes just to show them that it really isn't that difficult to compose rhyming verses off the top of our heads. They are always very tickled whenever I do that and would be challenged to respond in similar rhyming verses! Sometimes we may end up with something nonsensical and have a good laugh.

I see value simply in their wanting to compose. In my efforts to encourage them, I felt I needed them to know that there is a place for nonsensical poems. This is where I found our collection of Edward Lear's Nonsense Poems useful. Read-Aloud Poems for Young People also has a section called Laughing Lyrics that my boys especially enjoy.

Do you have any poetry books to recommend?

I think this "poem" fever
is here to stay.
And will get hotter
and hotter each day! :-)

Why "Rumphius"?

2009-03-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

“Rumphius” is actually just a name. But it is a name that is significant to me on several levels ...

Before I had children, I had dreams and ambitions like any starry-eyed youth. One of my dreams is to travel and see the world. Another is to live somewhere I can have the sea as my front porch and the mountains as my backyard.

Sounds familiar? Well, this happened to be part of the plot of a story out of a picture book as well. It is titled Miss Rumphius. For this reason, I could relate very well with the character in the story when I first read it to my boys. (You'll have to read the book to understand.)

Miss Rumphius however was also challenged to make the world a more beautiful place. She eventually chanced on a way to achieve this by throwing lupine seeds everywhere. That resulted in beautiful "wild" lupines growing at every street corner the next spring.

After reading this book, I was intrigued by this idea. The more I thought about it, the more I feel I want to do the same. I absolutely love flowers and lupines at every street corner sounded like my kind of paradise! I thus made another connection with Miss Rumphius.

As I ponder about it, God has shown me that I could make the world a more beautiful place in many other ways! (I will leave you to figure this out for yourself.) One of the most obvious way for me now is to work towards bringing up "beautiful" children ;-) , who in turn can make the world more beautiful in their own God-given ways! The effect could be exponential!

On another level, I was drawn to the name "Rumphius" because of another silly dream of mine.

I have always admired early naturalists; how they single-mindedly hike through unknown terrains to journal the wildlife they observe. I later got to know about the works of one such great man by the name of Georg Eberhard Rumphius. He authored a book called Herbarium Amboinensis. It became a reference catalogue of plants of the Indonesian Islands. His work was later used by Carl Linnaeus for the development of the now well-known binomial system of classification in the botanical field.

It is my dream to do what Georg Rumphius did. I know such work will not be needed in this time and age, but I still hope to relive those exciting moments of discovery and learning based on personal observations.

So in these ways, the name “Rumphius” very simply encapsulates some of my ideals.

Art : Limbourg Brothers II - Book of Hours

2009-03-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

One of the Limbourg brother's most famous work is the Book of Hours (Tres Riches Hueres) commissioned by the Duke of Berry. This book of prayer has prayers for certain times of the year, month, day or hour. The Limbourg brothers were responsible for richly illustrating the book. In it is a calender that had 12 pictures depicting various events within the year occurring in and around the Duke of Berry's castle vicinity.

I chose to conduct detailed Picture Study for the months of January, March, May and August in the Book of Hours. We viewed the rest of the paintings of the other months in this site just for fun.

These studies were followed by a creation of our own "Book of Hours". Basically, I just told my boys to draw a picture that is a representative event of the month of January or February this year. We added the semicircular outline on the top of our paintings to mimic the template used by the Limbourg brothers.

Here is B's January.

He wanted to remember the day when we went visiting during Chinese New Year. He brought our Rubik's cube along and was playing with it. He had then already been able to solve the cube without referring to the solution sheet. (Memorized the solution. I didn't think anybody could do that.) An uncle of mine was impressed and insisted on timing him. B solved the Rubik's cube within a staggering time of 1 minute 30 seconds!!! (D's best time was 1 minute 37 seconds.)

Here is D's February.

He wanted to remember the fun he had at the zoo when we first visited Kidzworld. This picture is of him pulling the rope on the raft.

I want to make a note here that my boys had really come a long way with respect to their painting. They still have lots of room for improvement, of course! I am just glad that they have more control of the brush now so at least they can get most of the paint within the lines. I attribute this improvement solely to the natural development of their fine motor skills. I have seen other little girls being able to colour or paint neatly at a younger age, and have always wondered why my boys can't seem to do that! :-( I have to constantly remind myself that every child is unique and they all have different developmental clocks.

I am also glad to see that they have applied what they have learnt from the lessons in Draw Squad to their drawing.:-) See the 3D cube and raft!

As an aside, ... ... ...

In the preschool years, I had tended to plan my lessons thematically. It worked then, but is a little too tedious for me at this stage when I have more specific topics to cover. However, selecting a few related poems or books was no trouble at all.

This is my attempt at riding on the theme of Calenders/Seasons.

We revisited the poem A Calendar by Sara Coleridge. This is a lovely poem that we seem to not get sick of relearning every year! We have a few versions of this poem in some of our poetry books but our favourite is from this book Eloise Wilkin's Poems to Read to the Very Young. This is a board book that I read to my boys since they were toddlers. The illustrations are lovely. In fact I caught my boys devouring it all over again during their free time.

For Chinese, I selected the book 春天的兔子 for our read aloud. The story tells of a rabbit's impatient wait for the arrival of his little siblings through the different seasons. A rare Chinese Living Book :-)

Visit Rumphius Webpage Art to learn more about how we approach Art in our homeschool.

Free Lunchtime Concert Near Us

2009-03-06T03:58:00.000-08:00

After my post Wild Hour 1, two ladies who live in the west of Singapore have commented that they were glad to know of such a gem of a place that is near them.

I think they will be delighted to know that I have just discovered another advantage of living in Jurong. :-)

A friend who lived in the NTU hostel had kindly informed me of a free weekly lunchtime concert there. So this Wednesday, we headed there to attend one by the NTU string orchestra. They played Concerto Grasso in C Major by Handel, Divertimento I by Mozart and Simple Symphony by Benjamin Britten. I have introduced Handel and Mozart by way of our Composer Study so my boys kind of grinned at me when they saw the program sheet.

The program next week looks interesting too; a jazz percussion performance! Looks like we will be attending these lunchtime concerts regularly. Especially since it is so nearby our place (less than 30 min by bus!).

I am hoping that my boys can be exposed to different genre of music through these concerts. I am thankful that such an opportunity is opened to us!

Revamp of House Management System On The Way

2009-03-04T00:03:00.000-08:00

I know I am getting a call from God to do a bit of reorganizing in terms of household chores. Here is why I am quite certain:

Call 1
Happened to "chance" on a library book titled Chores Without Wars; Turning Dad and Kids from Reluctant Stick-in-the-Muds to Enthusiastic Team Players.
Borrowed it and am in the process of reading it. Picked up a couple of ideas that I would want to implement.

Call 2
Have been getting a nudging feeling to re-look into some of F lyLady routines. (sixth sense?!)
Have benefited from it some years ago and think I can use more of their suggestions now! ... And re-instate some that have died a natural death:-b ... Really worth browsing through their site for some housekeeping tips.

Call 3
The Homeschool Freebies of the Day on 3 March was a free e-book "Mama's Saving Grace Homeschool Planner"!
Contains mainly planner type blank pages but had a few pages on common chores to do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. A good list to start with.

Call 4
Curriculum at a Click's free product of the week is an ebook "School and Chore Charts"!
Some of the cute colourful chore cliparts might come in handy later...

I am getting the goose bumps!!!

Time for a revamp!!

PS: I have added new links on my side panel! This is actually for my own convenience :-) Check under My Favourite Links for all the websites where homeschool mothers share their resources.

An UPDATE on 5 March
I just got CALL 5!!!
One of the blogs that I keep up with just posted this: House Cleaning the Easy Way.

I hear Him loud and clear! And He sure knows what I need.

Hippocrates and the Caduceus

2009-03-03T00:01:00.000-08:00

At the moment, I am using Story of the World (SOTW) vol. 1 as my core text book for history. I also have in mind to cover some well-known people as listed and recommended in The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Buer Wise and Jessie Wise. So whenever those people are not mentioned in SOTW, I would have to research and find material to work on myself.

I found a new History curriculum called Mystery of History (MOH) by Linda Lacour Hobar. The first volume in this series is titled Creation to the Resurrection. I was attracted to this curriculum because it attempts to weave Bible History into World History. The sample pages showed a wide coverage. I know because I saw that MOH included many of the extras that I added into my History curriculum. I was thrilled so I went ahead to get MOH.

This is where I am now. Having already started on SOTW, with the boys enjoying it. Yet attracted to another curriculum that is sequenced quite differently. I am torn between the two!!

I haven't yet decided what to do. My plan for now is to continue with SOTW as my core and use only those lessons from MOH as and when I need them. This will give me some time to try MOH out and hopefully I will get a better idea of what I should do next.

The next Great Men of Greece that is on my list was Hippocrates. We learned about his contribution to society by first drafting out the Hippocratic oath that is now still taken by every practicing physician. I read the relevant lesson from MOH and let my boys narrate the passage. They begged to make the Caduceus, another craft project they saw in Spend the Day in Ancient Greece by Linda Honan. I was not too keen initially, but have not the heart to object especially since they were so eager. Because this was quite unplanned, I did not have much information about the Caduceus to share with my boys. My boys are now getting the hang of searching for information from the Internet, so that is what we did!

Visit Rumphius History Webpage to find out more about how we approach History in our homeschool.

Creepy Crawly Crabs and more

2009-03-01T00:55:00.000-08:00

I have always hoped that my boys will not squeak or squirm when they handle insects or other small creatures. I don't. So I don't think that it is very "manly" to. Sometimes, they "disappoint" me by screaming when an ant crawl on them. Sometimes they surprise me.

That is my "brave" boy showing off his catch; a crab.

We went to East Coast Park with a few friends about 2 weeks ago. One of them knew of a particular part of the beach that has discharged pipes forming tidal pools during low tide. It was extremely slippery on the cemented surfaces due to algae growth. Despite falling and getting some bloody cuts, some of the children still persisted on continuing their hunt for crabs and other creatures.

This is a huge crab (about the size of my palm) that was hiding safely in its hole, out of our reach.

I was totally amused when my boys led out all their crabs when we got home. The crabs were crawling all over the place!!! My boys attempted to train the crabs, like how one would a dog!! It was hilarious to hear them shout commands like "Flip!", "Go!", "Stop!", "Stay still!", and even "Go forward!". Yes! We actually discovered that the crabs could crawl forward!! ... May be it was groggy after the manhandling. Haha!

Art : Limbourg Brothers I - Clay Animal Figurines

2009-02-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

After reading another fellow homeschoolers blog on their artist study, I was inspired to restart ours. For the next few weeks we will be studying the life and works of the Limbourg Brothers. They are three Dutch brothers Herman, Paul and Jean. They were well-known for their richly illuminated Book of Hours.

A short description of the Limbourg brother can be found here. I was very attracted to this site because it has little fun puzzles and worksheets corresponding to various artists. My boys enjoyed solving and filling up these during their free time. I will be filing these sheets up in their art file together with their brief outline about the artists and whatever related drawings or paintings they did during our study of the Limbourg Brothers.

One of the projects in our Artistic Pursuit book was to make animal figurines of possible animals that the Limbourg brothers would see in their patron's (Duke de Berry) castle. We thumbed through the books we have that had clear photographs of animals. We each chose an animal to replicate. B wanted to look at our Neon Tetras in our aquarium instead. D chose a seal and I, an owl.

We started a new pack of clay. This time I bought a small pack of clay (500g) so that we can finish the whole pack in one sitting (solves the problem of having to keep the unused clay properly so that it won't harden). We managed to make another owl, a grizzly bear, a frog and that last little bit of clay was conveniently transformed into a snake. Every bit of the clay was used up. I liked it this way and would probably do the same next time.

It took us 2 sessions to complete our figurines. One session of two hours to mould and another session of slightly less to paint them.

After completing the animals, we sat down to constructively evaluate our work.

D didn't like his seal. We all agreed that the shape was not right. I however praised him for his effort in mixing just the right colour for the seal (He used up SO much of our paint in the process!! Ok... never mind about that ;-)). He was proud of his bear :-)
(I have taken pictures of our clay models together with the photographs we copied from.)

B wanted to make another owl after seeing me complete mine. But he wanted his owl to turn its head to face the back. He have read that owls can turn their heads almost 180 degrees to the back. After realizing that this might look funny, he decided it will turn its head to the side instead.

I joined in the fun too! Here are my sea turtle and frog.

We all enjoyed ourselves so much!!! We unanimously agreed that we need to have more regular clay model-making sessions. I am not sure how realistic this plan is though :-b

Visit Rumphius Webpage Art to learn more about how we approach Art in our homeschool.

Science - BFSU : A4 Particulate Nature of Matter

2009-02-23T00:08:00.000-08:00

We continued with learning more about the properties of matter. We had previously learned that
1. Matter takes up space.
2. Matter has mass.
This time, we learned the particulate nature of matter.

Part 1 of the lesson involves showing that all matter are made of particles. Specific examples and experiments were given to show the children that matter whether solid, liquid or gas are actually made up of particles. We broke several types of material down to smaller bits and talked about the most fundamental particle that is still the same material. I thought the concept was very clearly demonstrated with all the examples given. I love the systematic methodology and thinking questions in BFSU.

Part 2 of the lesson aims to show the effect of temperature on particles. Discussion also led to the understanding of how particles are packed in the different states of matter.

In the above picture, the children get to see that particles move faster at a higher temperature. The glass jar on the extreme left had cold water, the one in the centre had lukewarm water and the extreme right one had hot water. It was obvious that when we release a small amount of food colouring at the bottom of the jar, the food colouring in hot water dispersed a lot faster.

One of the activities involves us pretending to be particles. Moving about whether holding hands with arms locked (as in solids) or loosely held (as in liquids) , or bouncing in straight lines off each other or off whatever that is in our way (as in gases). We had fun! So much so that the boys continued that game as we made our way to the supermarket; walking in straight lines and bouncing off walls. LOL!!!

A chance to "test" their understanding came when we were talking about the difference between melting sugar and burning sugar. I am glad to announce that they passed the test. :-)

Visit Rumphius Science Webpage to learn more about how we approach Science in our homeschool.

Chinese Recitation

2009-02-19T00:20:00.000-08:00

In the Well-Trained Mind, Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer recommended memorization and recitation at the Grammar Stage. "...It exercises the child's memory, stores beautiful language in his mind, and gives him practice in speaking aloud..."

Having this in mind, I have thus added another component into our Chinese curriculum. The Charlotte Mason method that we are using has read-alouds, narration and dictation as its main components. At the moment, I have decided to omit dictation because we are barely coping with the word lists given in the Singapore Textbook. Dictation is now replaced with recitation.

My target for now is to let my boys memorize a few sentences that are picked from our read aloud books. In the evenings when Daddy gets home, they will recite their sentences to him. If Daddy understands them and feels that they are proficient enough, they get rewarded for their efforts.

I like this arrangement so far for 3 reasons.
1. They get an independent evaluator (Sometimes I feel that my boys think I am overly critical about their intonation. I need somebody else to tell them their mistakes!)
2. Daddy gets to know more of where our boys are for Chinese. (So he will start speaking to them in Chinese!!! Before this, he thinks they wouldn't understand him at all!)
3. Boys get a chance to build up their public-speaking skills (which is FAR from good *sigh*)

I am a little excited because the random sentences that I have picked from various books we have seem to be some how related, progressive and in line with the theme of the week or even day. Let me show you what I mean.

I have started an engaging chapter book called 一年级的小蜜瓜. This is the sentence I picked from the chapter 装满秘蜜的树洞 I was reading that day. Just one sentence for a start.
小蜜瓜烦恼了一阵子，最后还是决定给啦啦戴上一副口罩，提醒它千万要记得保守秘密。

I know that Daddy (or you) would not understand the context of this sentence so I made the boys give a narration of what happened in the story leading up to this sentence. Aren't I brilliant??!! :-)

This sentence introduces the phrase 保守秘密.

The next day, we read from 蚯蚓的日记. This time I decided to let my boys choose the sentences they wanted to memorize. They chose this passage:
我长大以后想当秘密情报员。蜘蛛说我得非常小心，因为忠统可能一不小心就会踩到我。“这个工作很危险，”我告诉他，“但是总得有人去做。”

The term 秘密 is used again! So that sort of build up from the previous day's work! Moreover, we were starting the topic of growing up and ambitions in our Chinese textbook (chapter on 长大后) What a coincidence!

The next day, we read 忙忙碌碌镇. This book is a translated version of Richard Scarry's Busy Town. We liked the English version. I thought this was a good book to introduce some specific terms relating to different professions. From the chapter 每个人都要工作, I chose 3 sentences that turned out to be quite a challenge for them.
农夫种了各种粮食和蔬菜，其中一些是留下来给自己家吃的。其余的呢，就卖给了杂货店的杂货猫，换回一些钱。杂货猫再把这些商品卖给忙忙碌碌镇上的其他人。

The boys struggled with this one. :-( We had a tough time getting this right. We were feeling quite defeated at the end of it. It is funny how sometimes when I have something all planned out, it ended up not turning out as well as I hope. But when I let "nature takes its course", everything just seem to fall in place. Anyway, I decided to lighten up for the next passage.

The next day we read 可爱的宝宝 (a book from the Chinese Science series that I have mentioned here before). I allowed the boys to choose their sentences again this time. (Learnt my lesson!) Thankfully, they have forgotten the bad experience the day before and were very eager. This is what they chose:
在世界上的每一个地方，都有小宝宝在出生。你是在一个温暖的房间里出生的。如果你是一只北极熊，那么你会是在雪洞里出生的。

I thought it was quite a good choice because that day happened to be my birthday! 世界was also a term that was introduced in the current chapter in the textbook! They had lots of fun learning this one and even chose another paragraph from the same book, insisting that they learn it the next day! Wow! I am so happy to see such enthusiasm!!!

So you see... I am just amazed that the unplanned passages we have selected somehow just fitted the occasion. SOMEONE up there must have already done the planning for me ;-) It is liberating to know that somebody is there to take over the steering wheel. What's more?! He is likely to have a better idea of where we should be heading!!

Wild Hour #1

2009-02-18T00:02:00.000-08:00

This is the first (and I hope of many more) of our Wild Hour report. We plan to work through the Outdoor Challenges laid out by Harmony-Art Mom at her blog site Handbook of Nature Study. (Read my previous post on Rethinking Nature Study to understand why and what I am doing)

Our task, in brief, for Outdoor Challenge #1 are as follows:
1. I am to read p1-8 of Handbook of Nature Study(HSN) and underline points that I agree with or is helpful to me.
2. Take a nature walk (10-15 min). Enjoy being outdoors. Come inside, sit the children down and ask them what they SAW. Examine whatever they have picked.
3. After the discussion, come up with 2 things to investigate further.
4. Refer to HNS myself on the items the children were interested in. Relate any interesting facts to the children sometime during the week.
5. Post an entry on my blog!

1. I am to read p1-8 of Handbook of Nature Study(HSN) and underline points that I agree with or is helpful to me.

Here are some phrases that struck a chord in me:

When we no longer care about anything except our own interests, we are then old, it matters not whether our years be twenty of eighty....

Nature study does not start out with the classification given in books, but in the end it builds up in the child's mind a classification which is based on fundamental knowledge; it is a classification like that evolved by the first naturalists, because it is built on careful personal observation of both form and life...

... it is safe to assume that the pupil's lack of interest in nature study is owing to a fault in the teacher's method. She may be trying to fill the child's mind with facts when she should be leading him to observe these for himself, which is a most entertaining occupation for the child...

It might be better to give it a regular period in the day, for there is strength and sureness in regularity...

The nature study lesson should be short and sharp... should not be repeated...

2. Take a nature walk (10-15 min). Enjoy being outdoors. Come inside, sit the children down and ask them what they SAW. Examine whatever they have picked.

We headed to Jurong Lake Park for our first "official" Wild Hour. I brought everything we needed to do bible devotion at the park as well. We were seated on a bench working through a day's worth of discussion in Our 24 Family Ways by Clay Clarkson. We had a hard time concentrating because we could catch glimpses of things waiting to be discovered! Nevertheless, we had a very fruitful Devotion Time before we tramp around the area.

Here is our little naturalist, perched triumphantly above the remains of a fallen tree. He was tracking an army of ants prior to this shot.

We were excited to see a monitor lizard, ...

... disgusted by this carcass of a dead fish ... (obviously a bottom dweller- Boys were making up all sort of hypothesis as to how this fish got out of the water and remained relatively intact...)

... intrigued to find a section of a bee hive (Smelled of honey!!! Collected this home of course!), ...

and amazed to spot quite a number of birds (more than what we saw at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve!). Amongst those we saw were the cattle egret, common iora, and I think this one below seen circling above us is a type of kite.

While we were sitting on a bench discussing, B suddenly shrieked and said something wet just hit him on his head. On examining him closely, I realized that a bird has just pooped on his head! And that led him to ask with all sincerity the question, "Why don't birds wear underwear?!" :-D

We have surely been rewarded with lots to see! The irony of it all is that the boys ended up collecting two items that we couldn't identify!

We have already started the habit of drawing in our nature journal so we did that. We were not sure what it was. It looks like a pod to me. We have looked around and couldn't find another pod nearby. We have no idea which tree it fell from.

Here are my boys' drawings. (See my post on the StinkingToe for how I used this as an art lesson on watercolour pencil technique.)

3. After the discussion, come up with 2 things to investigate further.

We decided to find out the identity of the two fruits the boys collected. I was a little nervous about this as I was not sure I could identify them!!

I flipped through all my little Science Centre guidebooks and found a fruit that vaguely looks like one of the fruits we collected. It is from the West Indian Locust Tree. On researching more, I found other interesting bits of information about this tree and its fruit. (mostly from these two sites 1 and 2).

I will give my boys the pleasure of telling you what we found out. You may visit D's blog and B's blog for that. :-)

We will definitely want to look harder for the tree that bore this fruit the next time we go to the park. Thankfully, I found a good description of the rest of the tree.

We could not identify or investigate on the second fruit we collected. :-(

4. Refer to HNS myself on the items the children were interested in. Relate any interesting facts to the children sometime during the week.

I used the index in HNS and found and conducted Lesson 100 on The Honeycomb.

5. Post an entry on my blog!

Just did!

Art : Watercolour Pencil Demonstration Using the Stinking Toe

2009-02-17T00:15:00.000-08:00

I wanted to introduce , my boys to watercolour pencils as a painting medium for their nature drawing. I have been looking out for an opportunity to show them step by step how it can be done.

When we picked up the pod of the West Indian Locust Tree aka Stinking Toes during our Wild Hour, I knew I have a good subject to use. I have taken care to take a picture of each step of the way so I could post here. I wanted a subject that has a simple outline and one that also does not have too much colours (colours can be very distracting).

Step 1

Sketch the general shape with a pencil.
Colour using watercolour pencil the area with intense colour.
This is what you will end up with. (I know it looks funny at this point.)

Step 2

Wet a brush in clean water.
Lightly brush over the coloured areas. Use deliberate strokes. If brush is loaded with more colour than needed, wash brush before brushing light washes over other areas.
When most areas have been lightly brushed, wash the brush again.
This time, blend in colours where needed. This is the time to push colour around (but take care not to over do it otherwise you will end up with an even hue all throughout).
This is what you will end up with.
Let the painting dry.

Step 3

This step can only be done when the painting has dried COMPLETELY.
Use a black ink pen to stipple and shade where needed.
You may add in additional colour to change the tone a little (Here, I lightly coloured a brown over the painting.)
DONE!!!

Science : Botany - Stem

2009-02-14T00:20:00.000-08:00

We finally found the time to do Science in the third week of January.

The boys learned about woody versus herbaceous stems, xylem, phloem, cambium, auxin, phototropism etc. Since there were quite a number of new terms being introduced, I asked them to make their own 3-part vocabulary cards for these new terms. These cards were then stored in an envelope (the black envelope in the picture below) that is attached to the rest of their lapbook pages for this chapter. D and B were always very eager to match these cards whenever we started our Science session for this chapter. (For some strange reasons, I could not get the picture in the right orientation!)

We also learned about phototropism and the role of auxin from our Botany book. Here is our lapbook page on phototropism:

The sun in this page can be moved while the retractable straw "stem" follows it because it is stapled on the transparency sheet below. They all rotate on eyelets. I had purchased a set of eyelet setters from a scrapbooking supply store but had no idea how to use them. I learned how to set the eyelets by watching this videoclip. I used the eyelets to hole two pieces of paper together. It acts as the axis in which I can rotate the papers. We were VERY satisfied with this page we created!!! My hope is of course that the boys can remember the role of auxin in phototropism.

I must admit that creating our own lapbook pages is taking up more time than I would like. I am looking forward to completing Botany soon (was suppose to be finished by 2008 :-b) so we can start on either Astronomy or Zoology 1. There are free lapbook pages created by other homeschooling mums for these other books so I am hoping our study can move a little faster then...

We performed the suggested activity in our Botany book.

After about 3 hours, the leaves of the celery stick in the orange water was more orange in colour. The most obvious were the orange tips (which isn't in focus in this picture).

This picture shows the cross section of the celery sticks clearly showing the xylem (stained orange) in the celery stick on the right. The one on the left is the control.

Visit Rumphius Science Webpage to learn more about how we approach Science in our homeschool.

Our Winged Visitor

2009-02-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the help of my little gardeners, who have been faithfully watering my plants in the balcony, my flowering plants are blooming lusciously! I LOVE to peer out at our mini-garden from our "school-room".

Sometimes when we are hard at work, we would hear the familiar twittering sounds of our winged visitors. We would abandon our work and creep noiselessly toward the glass door to observe their nectar-collecting sessions.

They are the Olive-backed sunbirds. These sunbirds have been visiting our flowers but this is the first time I manage to take a picture of one. Still, it isn't as clear as I would have liked. Since we live in a concrete jungle, these surprise visits are moments that we get excited about.

Boy! Am I glad I have a balcony?! Wished I had a garden. I'd plant vegetables, fruit trees and of course lots of flowering plants that I can harvest for the table and for floral bouquets. Here I go dreaming again... ... ...

Aristophanes and Greek Writing

2009-02-10T00:30:00.000-08:00

One of the the great Greek figures we read about as part of our History studies was Aristophanes. A little paragraph in the book The Librarian Who Measured the Earth by Kathryn Lasky has a short paragraph that tells of his contribution to mankind. He was apparently the one who introduced spaces between words. What a clever guy!

I wished Chinese sentences also have spaces in between words. I often have to pre-read Chinese story books not just to make sure I know how to read the words, but also to draw brackets around names and terms. It gets very confusing reading especially when the names are translated from another language and each name can be 3 or 4 or 5 characters long! I really don't know, at first glance, where the name starts and where the name ends. Or maybe I am the only person who have this difficulty!!

A book that I found in the library called Spend the Day in Ancient Greece by Linda Honan has very interesting projects. I like the short informative write-ups before each project. We have attempted quite a number of the projects from this book. This time, we decided to try some calligraphy in Greek! First, my boys had to figure out some Greek names. They were thrilled to see the characters in The Illiad appearing here in Greek. They then wrote their own names in Greek. With the phonetic chart provided, they formed English words using Greek letters. You can take a look at the their end products in D's and B's blogs respectively.

Visit Rumphius History Webpage to find out more about how we approach History in our homeschool.

Draw Squad Lesson 4

2009-02-08T00:19:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my boys' drawings for lesson 4. The key drawing word for this lesson is SHADOW.

I just read a blog post that gave me some new ideas to work on... Harmony Art Mom shared about how we can relate what is learnt in Draw Squad (the lesson on Foreshortening) to Picture Study. Neat!! (I will not explain it here. Read her post directly!) I am going to try it with my boys when we come across a suitable masterpiece!!

Visit Rumphius Webpage Art to learn more about how we approach Art in our homeschool.

My Blogging Secrets... ... ... Revealed

2009-02-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted much in the last week. I feel sorry for not posting but in the overall picture of my life, this blog is not my top priority. Having said that, I am still committed to updating it. And it continues to serve as a record of what we have done for school. Most importantly, I enjoy blogging!

I noticed, since this is not a personal blog, few readers are actually concerned with the "newness" of my posts. Most are here purely to get information and it really doesn't matter to them whether what I wrote was done/happened yesterday or a month ago. So with this knowledge, I am not pressured to report our latest endeavours!

What a load off my shoulders! It is a good thing I didn't start out giving a weekly school report. I really take my hats off those who are doing that. For me, it will bring back those bad memories of my own teaching days in school... filling up the Teacher's Record Book for the Principal to check... Errrhh!! :-D

I thought I would share here how I approach blogging in general.

I write as and when ideas come to me. As such, I always have a few drafts going at any one time. I post when any of them is completed.

For example, at the moment, I am working on a post on our chapter on Stem/Trees for our Botany lessons. But it takes us more than 5 sessions to complete the topic. Every time we do something on this topic, I will record it in my draft for Stem/Trees. I am not posting yet because I have not found the time to put the pictures in... and I think I need one or two more sessions to wrap the chapter up...

There are also times when I have a few posts ready to be published. I don't like posting more than one post a day. So what I do is I schedule them to be published at a later date. Blogger automatically publishes these posts. So when you see a new post being published at a particular time, it really doesn't mean I am sitting at my computer blogging at that time!

There are times when I do post some more personal stuff and those are as recent as I can manage.

Ha!... I have just revealed some of my blogging secrets! I hope this will serve to encourage more homeschooling mothers to blog and share their homeschool days. It really isn't that tough!!! Own time own target... ... ... ;-)

Lessons From and On the Harvestman

2009-02-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

One of our read aloud chapter this week was The Cheerful Harvestman from Among the Meadow People by Clara Dillingham. I really love how Dillingham weaves in moral issues in each of her chapters that also gives accurate information about the animal she is writing about. Her a"not-so-modern" phrases are a delight to my ears.

In this chapter on the harvestman, we learned the benefits of being good-natured even when teased by other, not to look down on others, how clever it is to "look dull" when others are gossiping, and be cheerful despite misfortune. The harvestman is really MY kind of guy!

For our "English lesson", this read aloud was followed by an oral narration and copywork.

And since we haven't any idea what a harvestman was, we went on the Internet to check it out. We learned that a harvestman is also known as a "Daddy-Long-Legs". Many people mistakenly consider them to be spiders. They are in fact not true spiders. Their head, thorax and abdomen are grown together; having no "waist". They are not venomous. They neither spin webs nor build nests. Instead, they lay their eggs in the soil or under rotting wood. Unlike spiders, they can feed on dead or living prey. Vegetable matter and even juices are also part of their natural diet.

I found a website that gave information that is simple enough for my boys to understand. (Many others had too many scientific jargon.) We read this webpage together and created a table that shows the differences between a harvestman and a spider.

Tabulating information from a given narrative is in my humble opinion a very important and necessary study skill to hone. As such, this little exercise, although quite unrelated to our other studies (We have not gone into zoology yet!), was nevertheless a valuable one.

At the very least, we SHOULD be able to tell a harvestman from a spider... IF we ever encounter one in the future.

Penyabong Beach

2009-01-29T22:18:00.000-08:00

Dear husband, together with a group of Christian bikers formed a group called The Lightriders. They have been visiting and organizing various activities for the orphans at Berkat Children's Home in Johore Bahru. On the third day of the Chinese New Year week, they brought the children to Penyabong beach for an outing. This beach was "discovered" by a fellow biker, who was drawn to the sandy beaches and the wide expanse of exposed sandbars during low tide.

After some tricky arrangement with transportation, my boys and I managed to join them in this outing. Penyabong is situated some 20 min drive north of Mersing. It was a bus ride of about 2 hours from JB.

D and B had a fun time playing with the children. Here is a shot of the children being organized to play some group games.

The children had more fun frolicking in the water...

building sand castles, burying their friends in the sand...

and playing soccer on the beach.

While my boys were absorbed in their soccer game, I took the chance to explore the beach to have my nature walk.

When we first arrived at the beach, we saw many balls of sand on the sand slopes just outside of a tiny holes. I squatted quietly to watch these holes and was rewarded with a good peek at the inhabitants of these burrows and the makers of those cute little sand balls.

(You can hear the children's happy romps in the background)

These crabs are Sand Bubbler crabs. They feed on the detritus on the surface of the sand granules. The processed sand are then deposited outside their holes.

The children found it fun and challenging to catch these sand bubblers. They did managed to catch some and we even smuggled one home! D chose to draw it and find out more about it the next day.

Interspersed between the sand bubblers burrows were precarious little tubes protruding out of the sand. These are the tubes of tubeworms.

Many pieces of driftwood on the beach had some interesting creatures stuck on them. I really didn't know what they were then. They clustered in an interesting pattern that make them look like shells strung together.

I saw that these creatures had a muscular foot that was used to attach it onto a substratum. Occasionally, the whole shell of the animal were swung gently from side to side. Little claw-like structures would also extend out of a slit on this "shell" to sweep in a unidirectional motion.

I later found out that these are called Gooseneck barnacles (or goose barnacles). They are free swimming when young. But as adults, they perch themselves on a solid surface and would not move off for the rest of their lives. The claw-like structures that I saw were their specialized limbs that help to gather food for the creature.

B decided to make a journal entry on the gooseneck barnacle in his nature journal using a photograph we have taken. This was done the next day, in the comfort of home. It would have been better if they could draw at the beach. But with all the children playing, who could have concentrated. I figured this will be the next best solution.

I decided to do the same.

Back at the beach, I then haven't yet noticed the Gooseneck barnacle's muscular foot, had thought perhaps these were hermit crabs. I searched the beach for something long and thin in which I could poke into the slit on the shell to agitate the prisoner within; in the hope of luring it out. I found a short stick which suited my use but was more surprised to find it studded with puny snails!

As the sun continued to beat on the beach, the receding tide unveiled more hidden beauties. Look at the tiny sand dunes formed by waves.

And I couldn't resist taking a shot of this angular weathered rock.

Such rocks created numerous pockets of water that form micro habitats for more animals. I spied many water snails that were very well camouflaged. Can you spot the snail gliding ever so slowly in this video?

By now, I had walked quite far away from where our party was settled. The sandbars turned rocky as we ambled further off shore. The little island that we saw during high tide, was now reachable on foot.

By then, unfortunately (or fortunately) my camera battery went flat. I found a crab lying exposed on a rock. The only way I could document it was to draw it. And that was what I did. Good thing I had my nature journal with me then.

I didn't do justice to the crab. The scorching sun was burning my back throughout the whole time I was drawing and that was awfully distracting. The glare from the sun also blinded me somewhat. I couldn't differentiate the colours on my watercolour pans. I mistook the red for a dark brown and blotted too much red on my drawing. The carapace was more of a reddish brown colour.

I was trying to draw really fast too, fearing that the crab would scramble off before I could complete my drawing. It however, kept so still for so long that I half suspected that it might be dead. Moreover, I noticed that it had two legs on one side and four on the other. One limb must have broken off.

Based on the markings on the carapace and the general outline of the crab, I am guessing that the crab I drew was a Porcelain crab. The Porcelain crab is known to shed its limbs in times of danger. A new limb will grow back in place of the one that is lost but is often smaller than the original. If I have correctly identified this crab, then the crab I drew could possibly be alive.

At the end of the day, the children were overcome with exhaustion. I was overcome with excitement over all the wonderful things I saw. I made a mental note to find out more about some of those mysterious creatures. I am also resolute to search out for more places with such treasures and be more diligent in documenting as much of God's marvelous creation as I can.

It is funny how God gave me a "Wild Day" after I have kind of given up hope on having one. It would be so nice to have more of such days.

Rethinking Nature Study

2009-01-22T00:20:00.000-08:00

I was inspired to start Wild Days (nature study days) after reading the book Wild Days by Karen Skidmore Rackliffe some years back. However, with the demands of school; trying to keep our core subjects on track... we have been neglecting nature study.

For a long time, our occasional outings with our friends were passed off as our Wild Day. Deep inside me, I know I am deceiving myself! Worst still "cheating" my boys of the benefits of nature study.

After some evaluation, I decided to restart nature study by taking smaller steps. Scaling down our former Wild Day to a Wild Hour seems like a more realistic goal.

For sometime, I have been perusing this site by a homeschooling mother, Barb-Harmony Art Mom. She started this blog to challenge homeschoolers to start nature study, as described by Charlotte Mason, using the book Nature Study Handbook by Anna Botsford Comstork. (eText available here.)

I had this books for years. It is a thick book of about 2 and a half inches. It was written in the 1930s by the founder of the Department of Nature Studies at Cornell University. It aims to provide possible observational points for those who are attempting nature studies. One can tell by thumbing through that this can be a very useful book. But the big question, at least for me, is "HOW do I use it?". This is where Barb-Harmony Art Mom comes into the picture. She has kindly provided a framework to use this book. It is the kind of "guide you by the hand" help I need now.

Enough said. I will begin by following her weekly Outdoor Challenges starting from Outdoor Challenge #1 which was posted in February last year. (Her latest is #45!) I will try to follow through the challenges as closely as is possible. At least until I am comfortable enough to stray off and use HNS confidently on my own.

I like it that she even provided a way for people like us to blog about what we did for the respective Challenges and link it back on her site. This not only serves to make me accountable, but also gives me a chance to take a peek at what others are doing. She is simply ingenious! (We really need more of such helpful homeschooling mothers!)

I am so excited! Can't wait to start!!

Visit Rumphius Wild Days Webpage to get an idea of what my original plan for Wild Days was.

Starting a Fresh Water Aquarium

2009-01-19T00:13:00.000-08:00

We were blessed with a free fish tank and all the add-ons needed to start a fresh water aquarium. I have put off setting it up for almost 3 months! This is due to hesitation on my part. I just wasn't sure I could cope with one more commitment. And all this time my boys have been begging me to buy fishes.

We finally did buy. 22 to be exact. That looked like quite many at first, but when we emptied them into our large tank, they hardly filled the tank!

Excitement was in the air. During the first few days, we spent many hours watching our fishes. I was glad we bought a variety of fishes as they each had their own characteristics and thus interesting to observe. They were rather therapeutic to watch.

We bought guppies, Neon Tetras, Mollies, and some others unknown fishes. The aquatic plants I chose without thought turned out to be rather hardy water plants. They are the Java Fern and Malayan Aqua Fern.

Within 2 weeks of setting up the tank, we discovered that our female guppy delivered 6 guppy fry. B described our experience in his blog. I read up more about pregnant female guppies here and gathered some other information for D to read and answer a few pertinent questions. He documented his "findings" in his blog too.

We learned about the gravid spot in females. This is a dark spot on the rear end of the abdomen of female guppies. The gravid spots are actually the eyes of the baby fry! Nearing delivery time, this spot becomes very dark. In the photograph above, you can see the distinct gravid spot of the female guppy below as compared to none observable in the female guppies above (although they were all obviously pregnant).

Our guppy fish fry were at first about 0.6mm long. They were almost transparent except for their large black eyes. They knew well enough to hide safely under rocks and amongst the leaves of the water plants in the tank.

Now after almost 3 weeks, they have grown to about 1.2 cm and have turned opaque and more brown. They have become bolder and were spied swimming fearlessly with the larger fishes.

It was not all well and good. We had many casualties to the point that my boys were making guesses as to which fish will die next! We found guppies rather vulnerable in general. However, thankfully, of the 6 guppy fry we discovered, 5 are still alive today. I hope we can be able to at least see ONE of them through to adulthood.

Chinese Lanterns

2009-01-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year is approaching. We had our share of some festive fun this Friday with a lantern-making session at Jurong Lake Park. Look how focused the children were ...

And what happy faces after all that hard work!

Ops... not all here. Some still at it...

My Plan for Chinese

2009-01-15T00:19:00.000-08:00

These are the two main branches of my plan for Chinese this year. After these are set on track, I may add other minor elements to the mix.

1. Local Curriculum

I plan to follow the local Chinese textbook for Chinese. Make sure my boys know the words they are to know how to recognize and write. Unlike English, sadly in the case of Chinese, copying the words (or terms or sentences) alone didn't guarantee retention. I have found that flash cards used in a variety of ways, allowed me to increase their encounters with these "must-know" words, thus increasing retention.

Here is D arranging and matching word cards to make meaningful terms. These are the ones listed in the hao peng you magazine. The example sentences in there are also useful. I intend to refer to the hao peng you magazine more closely this year in this respect. There are 38 copies of this in a year, so if I complete one copy a week, I should be on schedule.

When they have mastered the "must-know" words, they would complete the topical exercise from an assessment book I bought from the local bookshop.

2.Charlotte Mason Approach

I have found that the Charlotte Mason method works for Chinese too. We read from picture books. I require my boys to give a narration of what we have read. They are still not good at expressing themselves well in Chinese. So I have to provide them with a lot of help here. Sometimes these narration turn out to be more an oral comprehension, whereby I ask them questions and they answer. Progress is slow but observable. I believe if I stick on with this, their fluency will improve with time.

I also select a sentence or two for copywork. I make them recite those sentences so that they would be familiar with the various sentence structure. I found that recitation is very effective in empowering them in their spoken language; which is my main concern now.

There are times I would go one step further by making them learn to write these sentences. (I am monitoring this closely as I feel sometimes I may be pushing them a little too hard here:-b) I would make flash cards for the words in these sentences so as to help them learn to recognize these words before I give them a dictation.

English Vocabulary

2009-01-14T00:09:00.000-08:00

Last week, being the first week of school, was a rather hectic week for us ; new routines, new schedules and even some new approaches. Lots of re-evaluation and re-adjustments and re- scheduling at the end of each day.

My reason for doing this is that I have learned not to over-plan (still not very good at that!) and not to plan too far ahead.

My aim last week was to concentrate on the core subjects; English, Chinese and Mathematics. Get these going, then start adding other subjects into our day gradually.

The new element we added into our English is a vocabulary component.

There are times when we read a book and some words just baffle us. It would be just such a waste if we pass them by and never really learn what they mean. Of course there are times when we could guess the meanings of words from contextual clues but it is always nice to know exactly what those words mean and how they else they can be used.

As such, I have decided to include a vocabulary section to our English "curriculum". If you have been reading my blog, you would have noticed I have already done that previously. Just that I wasn't very organized about it :-b

Last week, one of our read aloud chapters was a chapter on Hermes from D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. After an oral narration, a paragraph from page 54 was selected for copywork and dictation.

I selected this list for our Vocabulary List 1 :
wit
loft
lofty
precocious
toddle
grove
herald
glib
cairn
fond
(The following words were added into the list from our holiday readings!)
snug
schooner
scuttle
bunk
galley

I plan to continue to pick words from our read aloud chapters. 10 to 15 per week is nice to start with. I let my boys copy and paste from an online dictionary to a word document. I then print this sheet out for them to study from. I use the online matching game maker that I have found to create a matching game to test my boys after they have studied their words.

Here is our Vocabulary 1 Matching Game. This is a matching game for my boys' review. This is really easy to make since I just copy and paste from the word document that my boys have made.

This week, one of our read aloud chapter came from Skylar by Mary Cuffe-Perz.
Here is our Vocabulary List 2. Shorter this time ;-) :
preen
rouse
baffle
bray
ravenous
intimidate
reserve
rollicking
replenish
audible

This is their review game for this list:
Vocabulary 2 Matching Game

Note that this little vocabulary exercise is done on top of our usual read aloud, narration, copywork and dictation.

I have added all the online games I created in my link section on the side panel. In future, I will just add the links to new games there. This will makes it easier for me to just tell my boys to "Go play the vocab game!"

Visit Rumphius English Webpage to find out more about how we approach English in our homeschool.

The Mystery of Genes

2009-01-07T22:09:00.000-08:00

My twins look like a carbon copy of their Daddy...

D: Do I have more of Daddy than you?
Me: No, you have the same number of genes from Daddy as from me?
D: But I look more like Daddy...
Me: That's because Daddy's genes are stronger.
D: How do you make your genes stronger?
B: Do you exercise more?
Me: LOL ... No...
D: Do you put on jeans more often?
Me: LOL (in knots!)

Ops... I really haven't gone much into THIS part of Science yet...

Thanksgiving

2009-01-06T05:19:00.000-08:00

I would want to devote my first post of the year to giving God the glory for the many blessings he has showered upon us last year. Here are some homeschool related ones:

We were led to the joys of lapbooking in a talk by a fellow homeschooling mother at the Homeschool Curriculum Fair in February. Her passion and enthusiasm was infectious! I am very glad I plucked up enough courage to try it and am gradually feeling our way about this new and exciting approach.
I also just discovered the effectiveness of the Charlotte Mason method for the learning of Chinese. I see improvement in my boys' speaking (at least they are less resistant to speaking Mandarin now) and am encouraged.
My boys have started blogging and are now thoroughly enjoying it because their friends are blogging too! No need for me to worry about "composition" now.
God has miraculously provided the funds for my boys' two "co-curriculum activities", music class at Yamaha and gymnastics class, for the pass 2 years. He opened up an opportunity for me to give private tuition to a student for that exact two years that was needed to complete the music course! Talk about perfect timing!
The boys had the chance to participate in an inter-club gymnastics competition and even won some medals (that really came as a surprise for me but a pleasant one no doubt). A very eye-opening experience for them.
I have been teaching my boys how to swim. And after much perseverance in this upriver task, they can finally swim! I specially want to thank God for this training in PATIENCE!
There are two facilities that I would like to thank God for:- 1. A well stocked library just 10 min walk from home. (No way we can homeschool without a good library nearby) 2. A swimming pool complete with water playground, lazy river, slides, training pool and competition pool. All this just 10 min walk from home also. (I am beginning to sound like a property agent. lol... but I know I must not take these things for granted.)
We were introduced to my current Friday homeschool playgroup in March last year and have faithfully attended most meetings. The friends we made here are priceless! And the time we spent together unforgettable.
I am so thankful for friends who organized or told us of interesting enrichment activities that I would otherwise not initiate or know about. The activities include the Naturalist camp at Sungei Buloh, Forrest Adventure course, Robotics at Science Centre, Chinese Speech and Drama Camp, Mozart Exhibition at the museum and various other plays and concerts.

Although I have only just briefly listed my thanksgiving items here, each one has had a great impact on us. God is GOOD!!!

HTML : Happily Talking about My Learning

2008-12-31T06:07:00.000-08:00

I am learning new things this week so I thought I'd better jot them down before I forget.

As you know I have started a blog for each of my two boys. Recently, I discovered a wonderful site that has great free blog templates. D was quick to pick one that he liked. But B was just super picky. He didn't like any of the 500 or so templates! He just is crazy about blue and wants something that is in line with his blog theme; which was sea, sky, bay or beach.

For a while, his blog was more plain as compared to his brother's. I decided to serve the net to find out if I could find something to spruce up his blog. I had in mind a water and sand background and I found the exact textures I wanted on this website that has an extremely wide range of textures.

I learnt how to create a background with pictures using the instructions from these site. (arranged in order of usefulness to me)

I learnt how to meddle with transparency of backgrounds from this site.

http://www.blogdoctor.me/2007/10/transparent-background-for-blogs.html

B is very happy with his water and sand background. So am I! I feel a tremendous sense of achievement to be able to create THAT from having no knowledge in html to begin with.

I am now in the process of figuring out how to add little ornaments (like some starfish or shells...) on the background. I have been running into problems with resizing when I upload my pictures and also with transparency/positioning.

If I can just figure ALL these out then maybe one day I might just start designing my own templates! Hahaha... Well, it is good to dream...

Creating My Own Interactive Matching Games

2008-12-29T00:42:00.000-08:00

In my post, The Kumon Method: How I Can Use It, I shared that I would want to find a free online site that allows me to type in my own matching games. I want to use this to administer Kumon style tests for the vocabulary lists we have in our English book.

These are the criterion I had for the game maker:
1. Have a pair and match format
2. Timed quizzes (nice to have but ok without)
3. Provide feedback to the learner.
4. Scramble question AND answer order each time the learner takes the same test.
5. Web-based
6. FREE

I had just found a site that meets 5 out of 6 of my criterion! Hooray!!!

The site is called "Create Your Own Interactive Games". I like the user interface here. It is easy to use and visually attractive. I have already created a game based on the study lists I have assigned my boys. You can try my Synonyms-1 Matching Game and my Places-1 Matching Game. I chose to enter 15 matching pairs but each games will only randomly select 8 pairs to test. That means you can play the same game repeatedly and they will not be exactly the same.

However, there are limitations. The fonts used in this site are big and cannot be changed. Thus, I could not type in longer idioms and proverbs. It still has its usefulness though for synonyms, antonyms, similes, vocabulary etc.

I continued my search....

And found a free down loadable program that is called "Matching Game Maker"
This program solved the font size problem. So I can now add in tests for idioms and proverbs. Yeah!! The game is saved on my computer so unfortunately I wouldn't be able to share it with you!

This game is also easy to set up. Although it is not as attractive as the former, it has the advantage of more words in each option, even allows for audio matches, AND allows Chinese characters! I will surely be tinkering around with this more...

I am quite please with these 2 matching game makers and they should meet my needs for now.

Christmas Cookies

2008-12-27T05:21:00.000-08:00

We baked more cookies this Christmas week. This time we tried out Auntie E's recipe (Thanks E!). Because of our relative inexperience, we took 3 whole afternoons to do it! One to make the dough (then chill it overnight), the next afternoon to shape them and bake them, and the last, to decorate them with icing.

I think they look quite pretty and temptingly delicious. I left them in two bowls with plastic wraps around them before we packed them on Christmas Day, to be given away...

B: Why do you have to wrap the bowls?
Me: Well, we don't want uninvited guests, like ants and other insects to nibble on them...
B: AND cookie monsters?
(All eyes turned to Daddy)
Me: Yes, AND cookie monsters :-)

This lot was given away to relatives and neighbours... ... ...Well, to be honest, we did have a few "nibbles" ourselves. Just couldn't resist it.

Watching Daddy Gouge

2008-12-23T00:16:00.000-08:00

My boys got to see Daddy at work these few days. He has just started out making a new violin. This is him using his gouge to do a rough arching of the back plate. The boys can't help poking their noses in his workroom every now and then. How could anybody not be curious to find out what all that noise is?!

Lots of planning goes into the making. Sometimes Daddy has to design his own tools to work with. That is part of the fun for him. This picture shows a special violin plate rest that holds the plate down while he gouges. It is his very brand new invention! And he is extremely satisfied with it...

Boys cannot resist playing with the wood chips left on his workbench. Look. They make interesting rings ;-)

Chinese Science Picture Books

2008-12-22T01:32:00.000-08:00

I just discovered a set of Chinese Science picture books that is just right for my boys. I like the illustrations that are done in watercolor. Sentences are not too long. And all the facts are weaved into a cohesive narrative that reminds me very much of the English Science picture book series I love, Let-Read-And-Find-Out Science. There are snippets of interesting facts here and there, like in Osborne books. A perfect way to introduce Science terminologies (in Chinese) in a gentle way.
This set is recommended for children aged 2 and above. But don't be deceived, they are advanced even for my 7- year-olds! :-p

Here is the link for this set. You can search the titles of all 8 books to view the sample pages.

This is another set that is recommended for children 4 and above. Here is the link.
(I am somehow more attracted to the former.)

I was delighted to find them ALL available at our public library. :-) Go check them out!

However, I may just buy them anyway because I will need to check the dictionary to know how to read many of the words :-p and I can't possibly write all that hanyupinyin on the library books. Can I?... ... ...Excuses!... Imho, these books are keepers.

Visit Rumphius Chinese Webpage to see more Chinese book recommendations.

Poem : At the Park

2008-12-21T00:09:00.000-08:00

My little fellow decided he wanted to blog about our Friday outing at the park too (See my post Sunshine Rain and Friends).

I casually suggested that he try writing a poem instead of the usual narrative form. I gave him the first line and told him to find something that rhymes with "park". We brainstormed all the words that rhyme and then I asked him to come up with a logical continuing line. Subsequently, I asked him what else he wanted to write about, made him come up with a rhythmic sentence and then brainstormed again for rhyming words. We worked two lines at a time in this manner.

I was pleasantly surprised that the rest of the poem rolled out quite painlessly! (I helped with the second paragraph a little more ;-) because his syntax wasn't right at first.)

I must admit that I really like his poem a lot :-D. In the first place, it actually sounds like a poem. lol. And mainly because it really tells of the games he played at the park.

Here it is. Enjoy.

At the Park

My day at the park,
Climbing trees and peeling bark.
Playing golf,
With sticks and balls.

Bowling using sticks as pins,
Doing our best to see who wins.
Soccer was played by kicking balls,
Between goal-posts of trees so tall.

Running about,
Shouting so loud.
Stopping the games,
Only because it rained.

Sunshine, Rain and Friends

2008-12-20T22:33:00.000-08:00

We wilded our time away at the Botanic Garden yesterday. We met up with our usual homeschool friends. Every Friday, we meet at a different location and do different things.

It is a time for the children to make friends, play together and have fun. It is also a time for us mothers to share our homeschooling experiences and other issues, a time for learning from each other, and (for me) an avenue for "out loading". Honestly, there aren't other sensible grown-ups, who can understand my unique situation, willing to listen, share the same ups and downs, and able to give constructive comments. Thank you friends!

The children were left to feed the swan and fish, run around, climb trees, dig holes, watch a mouse scampering into its hole, observe plants and birds, pick up sticks and stones, play their own version of bowling, golf and football... ... ... There are just endless ways they could entertain themselves. Out there with the huge garden as their playground, the children exercised creativity and learn to enjoy nature the good old-fashion way.

This particular shot below was taken some months back. The children climb trees every time we go to the park that we have stopped taking pictures of them doing that. lol But I thought it will be nice to include this shot here to give you a feel of what fun they can have. A pity I don't have a shot of the girls climbing...

Nap time for the younger lot means mothers pushing strollers round the park to lull them to sleep. Look at this outdoor nursery...

We were thankful for the fine weather.

The rain did eventually come. When it did, we had to dash to the nearest shelter. After some waiting, an ingenious mum offered her picnic mat to be used to shelter all the strollers and children. We managed to "parade" our way out of the park!

Can you imagine four mothers holding the four corners of a picnic tarp, with three strollers and four giggly girls underneath? (The boys had their own umbrellas.) We must have made quite a hilarious sight. Too bad we couldn't capture this moment on picture...

Later when the pouring rain became just a drizzle, the boys had a chance to share their umbrellas with the girls. Isn't that sweet?

We thank God for sunshine, rain and friends. :-)

Last JMC Class Concert

2008-12-19T23:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the last of 4 class concerts. Each child had a chance to perform a song item, and play several solo numbers on the piano. It was a time of gift exchanging and farewells too.

The boys received their results and certificates of completion of the Fundamental Survey Skill Test. They have learnt much during this 2 years. This marks the close of one chapter and the beginning of another...

Baking Cookies

2008-12-19T00:17:00.000-08:00

I had always wanted to bake cookies to give away. What better time than this Christmas season to do just that!

We tried out Auntie D's chocolate cookies recipe. (Thanks D!) These were packed with a souvenir bookmark and given as farewell gifts to our friends and teacher at the boys' Yamaha Music class.

My boys are happily rolling the dough and flattening them on the pan here. Super easy and very suitable for children...

Here are my boys, sitting right beside the oven, warmed by the heat, peering in and sniffing the aroma of baking cookies.... mmmmm... ... ... They can't wait to sink their teeth in one of those...

School or No School?

2008-12-18T01:01:00.000-08:00

Every other kid is having and enjoying their school holidays. So the most frequently asked question I get this month is, "Are you giving your boys a holiday?"

I really don't know how to answer that :-p

Are we doing any "schoolwork"? Sure we are. Like I have said in my sidepanel, it is my aim to make education a life, a discipline and an atmosphere. I actually borrowed this quote from Charlotte Mason. Learning has become very much a part and parcel of our life. It feels odd to not do our Miquon lab sheets for example. My boys will miss them and even BEG me to let them do it! And what about our reading of the Illiad, we HAVE to read-on because we just WANT to know what's going to happen next. And wouldn't it be fun to find out just one more thing about Alexander.

Are we doing "school"? You bet we are!

OK. Confession time. We have fewer hours of "structured" activity. More days out for our very own "Wild Days" at the zoo and parks. Why?

Because I haven't been doing enough nature study and feel a need to play catch-up.

Because holiday is IN THE AIR. We feel it tickle us; prodding us to just GET OUT THERE.

And well, also because we are just PLAIN CRAZY wanting to rush out together with the loads of other holidaying children! It is crowds, crowds and crowds of screaming children EVERYWHERE!! Madness really! lol

The next 2 weeks will be even less structured because Daddy will be home and how can we do ANY work when Daddy is home! My boys are "programmed" that way; Daddy at home is a clear indication of a holiday and most importantly PLAY! My plan during this 2 weeks is to catch up on my planning and preparation for the coming year and start (and hopefully complete) a much needed spring-cleaning at home.

So I foresee a slight slant in my next few posts... just thought I should sound you out :-)

Mathematics : Volume in Imperial System of Measurement

2008-12-17T05:04:00.000-08:00

Alright. I know this is not relevant in the Singapore context. So why am I teaching this? Ops, I mean... why am I learning this?

Reason 1
Our Miquon Lab sheets (from the US) has about 10 pages that teaches the US Imperial System for measuring volume. What a waste not to use them?!!

Reason 2
I myself do not know these units and their conversions. So doing the Lab sheets with my boys will give me a chance to learn! (I love Miquon for this quality... No need to have anybody teach you. You discover the concept by just doing the Lab sheets!) I was quite blur when we were living in the US and everything on the supermarket shelves were in gallons and quarts and pints and cups!

Reason 3
No harm done if we should know it, right? I won't be concentrating on these later (of course I will be teaching the metric units), so an introduction would allow my boys to see that there are other units of measurement, other than millilitres and litres, for volume.

Reason 4
Conversion from gallons to quarts to pints to cups can be challenging. The boys had to put their knowledge of fractions to good use.

Try These...
These are some sums in our Miquon Lab sheets. Try them!

one pint = _____ gallons = _____ quart = _____ cups

or

3 pt. = 1 qt. + ____ pt.

or

3 c. + 4 c. = ____ c. = _____ pt + 1 c.

It's funny that D commented, "Hey, but some cups are bigger and some cups are smaller!" :-D
I was glad he made this interesting observation. This confusion comes with using such a common terminology as "cup". I had to explain to them that we are refering to a particular standard cup.

However, I later learnt from dear hubby that a US gallon is actually different from a UK gallon. Hur??!!!

Ok, I won't keep you in suspense... here are the solutions to the sums above:
1/8, 1/2, 2
1
4, 1 1/2
Did you get them? :-)

Visit Rumphius Mathematics Webpage to find out more about how we approach Mathematics in our homeschool.

English - Copywork & Dictation : Skylar

2008-12-15T00:54:00.000-08:00

I found an interesting book that would have tied in nicely with a unit study on birds (or read with Zoology 1 of the Apologia Series) ....accept that I am not currently having a unit study on birds. :-1 Oh well! A good book is always welcomed.

The book is Skylar by Mary Cuffe-Perez. This book is hot from the press; released in 2008! It is about a small group of pond geese who have never migrated before, watching wild Canada geese making their migration journey southward. By some chanced event, they were challenged to make their first attempt. The rest of the story tells the engaing tale of their adventure.

The style of writing reminds me of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web. Simply captivating.

Here is the paragraph I have selected for copywork:

Skylar, looking like a plump, feathered general, marched up and down in front of his small flock, inspecting, nodding and making curious clucking sounds. The announcement has been made: Skylar would lead the heron to Lost Pond, and he expected the four pond geese, as his flock, to follow. Now he waited for the excuses, complaints, refusal, which he was sure would come. He stared hard at each goose as if he meant to find a weakness and expose it.

These are the words my boys were to check the meanings of:
1. urban
2. peril
3. flamboyant
4. flouder
5. commotion
6. lurch
7. plummet
8. glower
9. flail
10. strode
11. intently
12. careen
13. strut

I used to let my boys check our big fat dictionary and copy the definitions. To save time, I am now trying out letting them cut and paste from an online dictionary, then print these vocabulary words out for them to study from. I found one at this site which suited my purpose.

Visit Rumphius English Webpage to find out more about how we approach English in our homeschool.

History : Mapping Out Alexander's Invasions

2008-12-12T00:26:00.000-08:00

My boys were intrigued with Alexander and his invasions and conquests. We have decided to map out the main points of his conquest. The book You Wouldn't Want To Be In Alexander the Great's Army! by Antram and Morley was the book that first sparked this idea off.

We found the etext of The Story of Greece by Mary Macgregor in the Baldwin Project website. This book has a few chapters regarding Alexander the Great. This together with a few other library books were the main source of our latest project.

We presented everything in a 3-fold lapbook. The boys sieved through all the books and webpages to pick out key points at each location of Alexanders journey. They typed these down in a Word document. They also googled to find pictures to correspond with their write-ups. Grandad helped with printing them on his colour printer. I helped with the layout.

Here is what we have gathered and put together.

These are the events we zoomed in on:
1. The Battle of Granicus
2. The Battle of Issus
3. The Battle of Tyre
4. The Conquest of Egypt
5. The Battle of Gaugamela
6. The Battle of Persepolis
7. The Battle at Hydraspes River
8. The Death of Alexander in Babylon

Can you tell how crazy my boys are about Alexander? :-)

Visit Rumphius History Webpage to find out more about how we approach History in our homeschool.

The Kumon Method: How I Can Use It

2008-12-11T03:03:00.000-08:00

I was browsing through the library shelves and came across this book "Every Child An Achiever: A Parent's Guide to the Kumon Method" by David W. Russell.

Reading this book has renewed my interest somewhat in the Kumon Method and its possibilities. It led me to rethink how I can use this method to my advantage.

Here's my plan to add a dash of Kumon in the 3 core subjects: Mathematics, English and Chinese. Essentially, I am looking at say 5 to 10 min a day per subject. This sessions will be perfect for much needed individual work during the times when I am busy preparing meals in the kitchen.

Mathematics

I am currently using a Math worksheet that already employs the Kumon method. Calculadders uses progressive math drill sheets that the learners have to complete. Each worksheet needs to be completed and their time taken to complete is jotted down. Learners can only move on to the next level when mastery has be attained. Mastery is indicated by completion of the worksheet in a specified time.

So far, I am quite happy with how the boys are progressing with Calculadders. I do find a big jump in some levels and intend to generate my own mid level worksheets to bridge the gaps. This, I felt were necessary to maintain high confidence levels.

My boys have reached the level of single digit multiplication (after completing 4 digit addition and subtraction). I have not really insisted on them memorizing their multiplication tables since I found that they can remember them just from repetition by attempting many of such sums. Skip counting has also eased the process.

Most of the multiplication sums goes like this (You can use the sums on this site if you do not have Calculadders.) :

3 x 5 =

3 x 8 =

I will want to add sums such as:

3 x ___ = 15

___ x 8 = 24

I know these are essentially using the concept of division. But I think it is important to make the link between the two right from the start.

I am encouraged that the founder of the Kumon method, Toru Kumon started out setting his own daily Mathematics sheets for his son. If he can do it, so can I! ;-) ... or anybody else for that matter!

English

At this lower primary level, I am mainly using the Charlotte Mason Method to teach English. However, I do see the need to supplement this method with more drills and even memorization. Let me explain.

[Be forewarned. If you are a Charlotte Mason purist. Don't read on! Because what I am about to describe would probably make you cringe.Hahaha...]

I was not an avid reader when I was in school. So, much of the vocabulary I learnt were learnt from lists that I was made to "study". (Did I hear you gasps?!... ) Do I believe in such an out-dated method? Well, the truth is that it has worked for me. I learnt the meaning of words (or idioms, proverbs etc. ) first, before I meet them in context when I did eventually pick up on my reading. I don't think my love for the English Language was smothered in any way.

I have an English grammar book published by Cosco. I like the lists of synonyms, antonyms, idiom, proverbs and such at the back of the book. I intend to let my boys systematically study these lists. I will attempt to make a series of worksheets that correspond to their assigned study list. They will have to score a perfect score on a worksheet (perhaps within in a specified time) before they move on to learn more.

I have been thinking how best I can administer these worksheets. I could do it the old-fashion pen and paper way. I found an online testmaker called Easy Test Maker that can help speed up my time in generating worksheets. There is a choice of multiple choice, fill in the blanks and matching.

I could also try to make Montessori 3-part cards. But this will be time consuming as well as of high material cost.

Alternatively, I could make online quizzes that can give instant feedback. I am now currently fiddling with a few websites that allow me to create my own test. ClassMaker is one that I have tried, but I am not fully satisfied. There is only multiple choice format. Thinking up plausible distracting choices is too much work for me on a regular basis. I was thinking a pair-and-match format would be more useful to me.

The ideal quiz maker would have these criterion:
1. Have a pair and match format
2. Timed quizzes (nice to have but ok without)
3. Provide feedback to the learner.
4. Scramble question AND answer order each time the learner takes the same test.
5. Web-based
6. FREE
I will post an update when I have found the perfect free online quiz maker. Please do drop me a note if you have one to recommend.

Chinese

I had a fellow homeschool mother who shared with me how her sons were fairing in a Kumon Chinese enrichment class. She patiently described how the class was run and this has helped give me some ideas to work on. (Thanks K!)

Repetition is one of the key to the success of the Kumon method. Say for reading and comprehension, Kumon students are given an audio recording of the passage they are to learn. Thereafter, they are expected to read the passage aloud. I guess (correct me if I am wrong) if the child cannot read fluently, he will listen to the audio recording again, repeating this process until he can master it.

Of course I could be the "recorder" to read to my boys. But recently, I found a resource that could help spare me that agony of repeated readings. ETutor, the people behind the popular hao peng you magazine, created a series of CD-roms. The plus point about this company is that their products always follows closely to the syllabus set out by MOE. Thus, the difficulty level is just right. One of the CD-roms focuses on comprehension. A reader with perfect diction reads a given passage. Passages are short and very manageable. (The text are highlighted like in kara-ok style.) Eureka! Problem solved!

(As a side note, I would also recommend their CD-rom on listening comprehension and composition. They are just what I need to expose my boys to more spoken Chinese.)

Another possibility is to use the readers that I have that comes with audio CDs!

My views on the Kumon method

I don't buy much into the idea put forth by David Russell that the Kumon method is a gentle, child-centered and child-respecting approach. His description even sounds vaguely as "noble" as the Montessori Method! I am not fully convinced.

I only agree that if the method is used with discretion, careful thought and sensitivity, it can instill a sense of "pride, satisfaction and confidence that comes with studying something difficult and then mastering it".

On the other hand, if it is administered thoughtlessly (and ruthlessly), it may backfire and lead to frustration, discouragement, low self-esteem and such negative effects.

Taking all these into account, I feel that the method does still have a role to play in my curriculum, albeit a minor one.

Visit Rumphius Mathematics Webpage , English Webpage or Chinese Webpage to find out more about how we approach Mathematics, English or Chinese in our homeschool.

History : Alexander the Great

2008-12-06T01:00:00.000-08:00

Our history readings brought us to the times of Alexander the Great. Story of the World vol 1 (SOTW) describes briefly some important facts about this great man. It was a little of an anti-climax because my boys, having read on their own a few books about Alexander, knows more about him than was covered in SOTW! As such, their narrations were "adulterated" with information from those other books. However, I welcomed those "extra" information.

I am reminded and assured that my children's learning don't always depend on my teaching them. They are perfectly capable of discovering and learning themselves. Don't we parents worry too much about that sometimes!!

As we were searching for images to accompany their narration, we came across an interesting etext of James Balwin's Thirty More Famous Stories Retold. Baldwin is no stranger to me as I already have his other book Fifty Famous Stories Retold. I was thus pleasantly surprise to find this. Baldwin's version of the Gordian Knot was different somewhat from what we read in SOTW.

Below is my boys' narration of the Gordian Knot as told in SOTW. Read the two versions yourself and see the difference.

When his father died, Alexander took over his throne. He went across the Aegean Sea toward the Persian Empire. He found a chariot tied up with a knot that was bigger than a man’s head. No one could untie this enormous knot. He was curious so he asked a stranger about it. The stranger told him that there is a legend that says that whoever can loosen this Gordian knot can take the chariot and will rule the whole of Asia.

Alexander used his sword to cut the knot into half and loosened it. Nobody thought of this method before.

Alexander eventually became king of the Persian Empire. He marched his army down to Egypt and was crowned Pharaoh. He also conquered Mesopotamia.

Alexander’s empire was the biggest empire that the world had ever seen. He was known as Alexander the Great!"

It brings to light some important points. History is NOT an exact Science. History is written by people. Different people see and interpret events differently. People may also embellish their writings with interesting details that may not be accurate.

This gives me a chance to point out to my boys that as a reader, we must not always believe what we read (or hear or see...). We should always refer to different sources, so that we can see the bigger picture, and also be in a better position to evaluate a piece of information.

Visit Rumphius History Webpage to find out more about how we approach History in our homeschool.

Music: Yamaha JMC - FSS

2008-12-01T01:19:00.000-08:00

My boys had been attending the Junior Music Course(JMC) at Yamaha Music School for the past 2 years. The course is coming to an end this year. This week, they will be having their first music examination. Its called the Fundamental Skills Survey(FSS).

This test, though not at all a recognized test, as compared to the ABRSM examination, turns out to be quite a challenge. It tests not just on the playing skill but encompasses a more holistic approach. Musicality, voice projection, coordination, improvisation, pitch recognition, knowledge of musical notation are some of the more unusual aspects tested.

In the test, the child has to play 3 solo pieces (one of which he has to "fill in" the bass notes himself), sing one of the songs learnt during the course (to be sung with action, dynamics and expression all of which will be assessed), sing one song in solphege (of about 16 memory songs), identify chords played and read or explain musical notations.

As such, we have pulled up our socks and attempted to have more intensive practices this past few weeks. Normally, each boy practices about 30 min a day. Now, we stepped that up to an hour at least. I had to play an active role here because I had to "test" them on their 16 memory songs, "test" them on their chord singing and recognition by hearing, and coach them on their singing item.

I found it necessary to practice with one boy at a time. So all in all, it is 2 hours a day just on music for me! Obviously, school time was reduced to accommodate this. We just had our "Year-End examination" anyway so that gives us a good excuse to cool off a bit. Even then, I am still exhausted!

It is heartwarming to see them improve through the practices. I just wish I had the energy (after 4 to 5 hours of school) to keep up with their music at this pace ALL THE TIME. But the truth is, I can't. I had prayed hard that Daddy will take over this aspect of our boys' education soon! This, he has graciously agreed. Hooray!!!

Piano lessons with Daddy will officially start January 2009!

Daddy has taught piano playing before so this is not new to him. I have discussed with him and of the two popular curriculum, Alfred and Bastian, he prefers Bastian. That will provide a basic framework to teach piano playing. We felt that more have to be done but haven't made any concrete plans so far. We would like to continue to train the boys in their hearing skills (which currently has lots of room for improvement). I will likely be borrowing the methods used in Yamaha.

I am expecting lots of trial and error in the months ahead...

Year-End Exam Fever

2008-11-24T21:32:00.000-08:00

The time has come for me to administer our Semestral Examination for the purpose of updating the Ministry of Education on the progress of my boys. The grades of three subjects are to be submitted. They are English Language, Mathematics and Chinese Language.

I have decided to allocate 50% of their scores for each subject to Continual Assessment done under test conditions. These are either self-designed work that I set or exercises taken from store-bought assessment books.

The other 50% comes from the the boys' scores on the Semestral Examination papers of well-known local schools that I obtain from this site.

I spent a week to concentrate on drills, reviews and generally more seat-work assignments in preparation for the actual papers I intend to give them under test conditions. This is not exactly the most fun part of school but necessary nonetheless. Aren't we glad its over now?!

Science : Roots

2008-11-20T01:21:00.000-08:00

We started out our study of roots by reading from Exploring Creations with Botany. After that, it was intensive work producing mini books and notebook pages for this chapter. Look at our work zone...

Here are some notebook pages that we added into our botany file. This page shows a flap book where the boys narrated what they have learnt about roots; their functions, development and morphology.

Our attempts in trying to make a mini tab book on geophytes (as mentioned in our Botany book) led us to google search for pictures. We found useful diagrams for our geophyte mini book here.

We chanced on a wonderful blog that has an interesting root word search that the boys insisted on doing. There were terms in this word search that were unfamiliar to us. This led us to google search for what these terms mean. In the process we learned about adventitious roots and the various types of adventitious roots. (Good information on adventitious roots can be found here.) We decided to make a notebook page on adventitious roots.

This site clearly explains how a fig tree starts off having aerial roots and how it gradually takes over its host with its strangling roots.

As we read up more on adventitious roots, we noticed that mangrove trees have specialized roots to adapt to their unique environment. This site has some good information on this.

At this point, I was getting excited because in a few days' time, the boys will be attending a Naturalist Camp in Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve (a mangrove area). All these readings about mangrove trees will serve to gear them up for the camp. What perfect timing!

Visit Rumphius Science Webpage to learn more about how we approach Science in our homeschool.

History / Mathematics : Parthenon and the Golden Rectangle

2008-11-19T01:26:00.000-08:00

We first read about the Parthenon in our Histroy core book Story of the World vol. 1 by Susan Wise Bauer. Subsequently, we learnt more about this ancient ruins from the travels of Richard Halliburton in his Complete Book of Marvels. Two paragraphs were used for copywork and dictation. (See my post on Parthenon for copywork)

We started making a model of the Parthenon when we first read about it. It took us several session of cutting and pasting to complete the model. It actually took us almost 10 hours to complete it! With 14 internal and 46 external columns to roll and glue, I don't think the boys (and I) will ever forget the Parthenon!

Here is D cutting away... look at the tray of columns ready for gluing.

Here is B with the half completed temple beside him...

We had to weigh the columns down with books while we let the glue set.

Here is the completed model. Impressive? (I'll have to arm-twist you to say YES in any case!! :-o)

This project is about the most labour intensive one we have ever embarked on. Of course we didn't know it will be like this when we started. I kept spirits high throughout by setting small achievable goals at each session. So some sessions were not more than an hour long. We enjoyed ourselves in the process. I am just not sure we will try something similar again though ;-)

In a related reading from Penrose the Mathematical Cat by Theoni Pappas, we learned about the golden rectangle and its fascinating characteristics. The golden ratio was mentioned but what was more obvious to my two boys was the ability to draw in infinite number of squares within the golden rectangle.

We were intrigued that the golden rectangle can be seen in many natural things around us like the butterfly or dragonfly. And if you draw aches within the squares, you get equiangular spirals that were supposed to be similar to that found in some snails.

Many a man-made objects also have the golden rectangle eg. credit cards and the Parthenon! Apparently, artist and architects incorporate the Golden Rectangle in their art works. You can read more about the obsession with the Golden Ratio at this site.

My original plan was to just read through the chapter on the Golden Rectangle, but just when we finished my boys enthusiastically asked if we could construct a Golden Rectangle (Penrose showed us how to do it - This site has a similar approach). Before I even had time to answer, they were off the sofa running to fetch paper and pencil.

We did try to construct Golden Rectangles. Then it daunted on us that we need to know a way to check if a rectangle was "golden". We managed to figure that out after some thinking. So we tried to check if my credit cards were Golden Rectangles. To our disappointment, it was not! Oh well... it just goes to show we mustn't always believe what we read. Ha ha... It was enlightening nonetheless.

Visit Rumphius Mathematics Webpage or History Webpage to find out more about how we approach Mathematics or History in our homeschool.

Preparation for Young Naturalist Camp

2008-11-15T08:43:00.000-08:00

I registered my boys up for a Young Naturalist Camp at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve where they will get to earn badges after accomplishing specific tasks. In preparation for this camp, here are a few things I plan to do:

1. Read One Small Square: Swamp by Donald M. Silver (Pictures are very well-drawn. I am inspired to do the suggested activities!)

2. Read the mangrove chapter in our Chek Jawa Guidebook by Ria Tang and Alan Yeo. (Has detailed photographs with annotations.)

3. Read The Sea, the Storm and the Mangrove Tangle by Lynne Cherry. (Living picture book about the mangrove. We always read this book before we go Sungei Buloh. I am thankful it is always available at the library.)

4. Review the names of shore birds and other common birds that would possibly be seen at Sungei Buloh by matching our bird cards. Here is a file of the birds sighted at Sungei Buloh. We don't have all of these on our bird cards. I am in the process of making more to cover at least the common species found.

5. Browse through A Guide to the Mangrove of Singapore (published by the Singapore Science Centre).

Visit Rumphius Wild Days Webpage to learn more about how we approach Nature Study in our homeschool.

Draw Squad Lesson 3 / Geometry Session 4

2008-11-14T22:00:00.000-08:00

How did he get from this ...

To this?...

Can you spot the difference?

This was one of D's Draw Squad drawing this week. In the book, each lesson explains the concept to be grasped and the concept is demonstrated as one copies the drawings in the lesson.

Copying is a skill that requires a great deal of one's power of observation. And power of observation has to be honed. Notice the first attempt at drawing the house has lines tilting in the wrong directions. Of course the lines were right in the book but were copied incorrectly.

I noticed that my boys do not employ reasoning and logical thinking when they draw. I decided to help them by introducing 2 concepts: parallel and perpendicular lines, and vanishing point in perspective drawing.

The time was ripe for me to introduce parallel and perpendicular lines in the context of our Mathematics / Geometry sessions (See my post on our Geometry Sessions 1, 2 and 3). After a short review of how to construct an equilateral triangle, I taught my boys how to construct perpendicular lines using the compass and ruler.

We then constructed parallel lines with a ruler and square.

I gave my boys time to construct as many perpendicular and parallel lines as they wanted.

I proceeded to teach them alternate and corresponding angles as described in this site.

This site has a helpful mnemonic system.

The letter X can help us find opposite angles.
The letter F can help us find corresponding angles.
The letter Z can help us find alternate angles.

This is when I brought out the book The Librarian Who Measured the Earth by Kathryn Lasky again. We have read it some time ago (See my post on Erathosthenes). I started this series of Geometry session just so I can explain what we have read in this book. Now I could finally wrap everything up. My boys FINALLY understood how Erathosthenes measured the circumference of the Earth. (See my post on Geometry Session 1) Their reaction was a jaw-dropping, "Wow! Erathostenes was SO clever!"

Now back to D's Draw Squad drawing... Perpendicular and parallel lines are just all around us. We cannot escape these when we draw. We talked about these lines in real life (corners of walls, windows, boxes, tables etc.). We talked about what things really are and what we perceieve them to be. That is to say lines that are in fact parallel may not appear to be so because of perspective.

This is where I showed them the "magic" of the vanishing point in 3 dimensional drawing with a simple rough sketch of a street scene on our white board. B was excited when he saw this. He was inspired and drew his own street scene. Here it is...

With all this information, I then asked D to correct his first sketch of a house.

What a BIG detour we took?! Nonetheless a necessary one.

Homer's The Iliad

2008-11-09T03:13:00.000-08:00

We have read about Homer and his two famous works The Iliad and The Odyssey. I had planned to read a retelling of these two stories. We own the book Children's Homer by Padraic Colum so it just seemed natural to start with that. However, I was disappointed that my boys couldn't quite understand it as it was pitched at a higher reading level. I decided to put the book aside for now and try another. I checked my classical book lists and selected another retelling called Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff.

I was glad to see several copied of this book in the library. This is helpful because we usually read a chapter or two a week and will normally take longer than 3 weeks (that's the library loan period) to complete the book. In this case, we can borrow the other copies when our first loan period expires.

Black Ships Before Troy is our current "on-the-go" book. That means I bring it wherever we go and read to my boys whenever we have time. This normally happens during our commute in trains or when we are early for classes and have some time to kill (I hate to say that especially when I always feel I am so short on time!).

We are enjoying it thoroughly. My boys are always begging for more. In fact, I like it so much I might consider reading The Wanderings of Odysseus by the same author at a later date. This is a re-telling of The Odyssey by Homer.

I am not sure if this is an overkill since my boys have just started reading a series about The Odyssey by their favourite author Mary Pope Osborne (author of the Magic Tree House Series). We'll see...

Visit Rumphius English Webpage and History Webpage to find out more about how we approach English and History in our homeschool.

Kings of the Divided Kingdom

2008-11-08T06:05:00.000-08:00

We are reading through The Child's Story Bible by Catherine Vos. Our read aloud chapter today was Chapters 88. We are getting a bit overwhelmed and confused with the many kings that we are reading about. (P is the son of ??? and Q is the king of ??? and R is the king of ??? who killed S the king of ??? and is S a bad or good king? and is Q the one who reigned for only one year? ... ARHHH!) I should have charted them somehow when we started reading about them.

Well, better late than never. This week, I decided to do something about it. I set an assignment for the boys. They were to read a chapter at a time from chapter 78 (that is at the point of Solomon's death). Their task was to make an index card for each king, indicating whether they were king of Judah or Israel and whether they were good or bad kings. They were also to include any interesting facts about that king that can help jog our memories.

We decided on a colour code for the cards so that some information can be obtained at a glance:
Green left margin for King of Judah
Blue margin for Kings of Israel
Red right margin for bad kings
Blue right margin for good kings.

B's entry for King Asa went like this:

Green left margin = King of Judah
King Asa
- He destroyed all the idols he could find.
- He prayed to God when enemies came.
Blue right margin = Good King

This is what B came up with so far... more to come. (Sorry for the blur picture. Just to give you a rough idea of what I am talking about.)

I hope that this will help them remember the stories better. The cards can also be used for reviews and to arrange in chronological order if we ever get that proficient(!).

MY "homework" would then be to make timeline cards for each of these kings (or at least the more well-known ones ;-)) for our wall timeline.

Do you have any suggestions as to how to better tackle the historical aspect of this part of the Bible? I will be glad to hear them :-)

Visit Rumphius Bible Webpage and History Webpage to learn more about how we approach Bible and History in our homeschool.