Our Schooling Journey in Rotorua, New Zealand - Homeschool Blogger

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Sun, 1 Nov 2009 02:14:00 -0600

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What a week!

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:15:00 -0600

Now that we've made it to the weekend and can relax I'll try to record a few [schooling] moments because although we experienced many interruptions, we did manage to accomplish some things.

♥♥♥♥♥

Firstly, Math-U-See. As you know, Tama 1 is working through Gamma. We're steadily working through Lesson 25 at present and we're making tremendous progress.

A Big Thumbs up for Steve Demme's method

Honestly, it is just wicked! Once I sat down and figured out how to do it myself, it was incredibly simple to implement. In a matter of minutes I understood the workings of it and I have only word to describe it - awesome! Yes indeed, for my little non-mathematical brain to have understood it is jolly impressive.

(double-click to enlarge)

[When you see how tidy he is in his approach to writing things out you can see why we're only doing one page per day at the minute.

I realise that in the new manuals, MUS have printed on both sides of the pages to cut down on the bulkiness and cut down on paper wastage. Speaking for ourselves, we actually prefer these older-style manuals because the kids do all their workings out on the left-hand side. But that's just something we will have to adjust to. I guess it won't much matter now that Tama 1 is actually working on larger equations because there's not enough room in the manuals to do his workings out anyway.]

In all fairness, I can say that Tama 1 understands both the 'traditional' method and the 'Math U See' method, so he's flexible enough to move between the two if need be, ie recognise different methods. The problem last week had nothing to do with using the traditional method, but rather, it was the fact that he had bigger multiplications to do, ie not just single or double digit numbers. Now that he's advancing into triple digits and upward thereof, he was simply daunted by the amount of work to do; or more to the point, the amount of work to do on his own. When I sat with him (acting as nothing more than his study-buddy) he managed the equations all on his own because simply by having me nearby he was able to relax. I can relate to that. I can remember being quite frightened being wrong in front of my fellow students and teacher when I was his age because it was at the multiplication stage of my short enjoyment-in-life-of-math that everything went pear-shape for me. In my case "embarrassment equalled failure."

Returning to last week again, I figured out quick-smart that one of the problems for Tama 1 when doing the bigger multiplication problems, is the fact that there's no columns or ruled lines across to act as an aide for the child. As soon as I drew lines down and across, hey presto!, he mastered each equation. Once he's run out of room in the manual, he moves to writing on a pad of paper [... hence the photo included above]. Tama 1 takes pride in his presentation, which I freely accept he gets from me! lol. In order to keep his workings out with the manual, I think I'll trim the sides to fit and glue along the top of the workings page then pop it in the manual that way. He prefers to draw the lines as opposed to mum printing out the grid pages and that's fine by me. Whatever makes it more enjoyable and understable for the kids then that's the way we'll do it.

The main thing is, Tama 1 is doing fine with his multiplications. It's still rather intimidating to look at more numbers for him and I know he is daunted at the prospect of working on even bigger equations (having glanced further along in Gamma). However, I know we have worked out a way to assist him and if I'm honest, I'm actually quite keen for him to do more than one page per day so we can get to those bigger equations already!!!! (tsk tsk mum! So much for learning some patience, lol).

♥♥♥♥♥

Saturday, 8 o'clock at night

Tama 1 takes a pad of paper to whaiāipo and says, "I think this is how many hours there are in a year ... and this is how many in a leap year." He was absolutely correct on both accounts.

Then he decides to calcuate how many minutes there are in a year! Now THAT was a big equation so I helped him out just a little, ie indicating it was a two-part equation and explaining he'd need to add an extra zero when calculating as he would be multiplying by three digits. (There's probably a technical term to explain this, but I'm sure you'll understand what I'm saying. I know it's to do with place value, but if there's a special term I apologise, but I can't think of it right at this time.)

There's 60 minutes in one hour and there are 24 hours in a day. He multiplied 60 x 24 without a problem. Total = 1440
Now for the biggie - 1440 x 365. That's where I needed to teach him to add an extra zero:

Now, if you aren't familiar with MUS's method or you haven't reached Gamma yet, you may or may not understand how this works. It's a neat way of carrying over your figures. You write them in the body of the equation as opposed to placing them at the top of the equation. Such a simple yet very effective method!!

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SOTW Volume 1

It's been an eternity since we did any History studies and I feel dreadful about that.

If I had an excuse as to why we haven't done SOTW for so long, well, I would probably say it's because I've allowed the children to actively pursue their interest in other areas. For example, Tama 1 loves engineering so for weeks now he's devoured the books at home here on engineering structures, machines and such like. He has drawn so many inventive plans of buildings, aeroplanes, ships and goodness-knows-what-else that I've not for a moment felt he's fallen behind with studies. Considering History is chock-a-block full of inventors, who's to say our son won't be in the history books himself one day?

(double-click to enlarge)

But anyway, this week I dragged out SOTW Volume 1 and the above photo is what we worked on this week. We discussed Hammurabi and the Babylonians. I asked him if (next week) he'd like to type out his notes (1) for his typing practice, and (2) as an alternative method of note-taking. He likes that idea, so I'll be sure to include a photo of him working on that next week. One point he enjoyed learning about the Babylonians is the fact that they were the first people to divide a year into 12 months, divide a day into 24 hours, and an hour into 60 minutes.

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Tamāhine 1 has been working well this week on all areas of her schooling. There is one area though that I have neglected a little and that's her handwriting practice. I got a little lax about practicing daily, so over the past few weeks I have made a more committed effort to re-establish it into our routine. I'm sorry the photo below isn't as clear as I wish it could be, but I was trying to provide an example of how she's come back to it like a duck to water. It took her a lot longer to produce her work, but once I reminded her to sit straight and relax her arm, she found it easier. The tendency to lean onto the forearm initially certainly exhausted her so I sat with her and with subtle yet encouraging reminders of what to do, she soon found her feet again and as the days passed, all aspects improved.

(double-click to enlarge)

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Tama 1 and Tamāhine 1 worked together during the week to learn US currency. So far we have learnt about American coins:

Penny = 1¢ - Abe Lincoln on the front, Lincoln Memorial on the back
Nickel = 5¢ - Thomas Jefferson on the front, his home of Monticello on the back*

Dime = 10¢ - Franklin Roosevelt on the front, torch on the back
Quarter = 25¢ - George Washington on the front, Eagle on the back*
Half-Dollar = 50¢ - John Kennedy on the front, Presidential Seal on the back

* For us to distinguish between the two we noted that Jefferson had a wig with no curl and Washington has a wig with curl.

We had a lot of fun learning the coins and adding up with the American currency. Okay, so it's not quite so relevant living all the way over on the other side of the world for us, but at least we'll be prepared if we ever get the chance to travel over there, lol.

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And finally, just a quick reminder to any whānau members checking in. Hopefully you have sent in or voted online (like I did).

I thought it was pretty flash to receive the form with secret code to vote online. Tumeke alright.

I cast my vote on receipt of the form on Friday rather than wait because (1) of the ease of convenience to vote online; (2) even though I have until 10 December, I already knew who I would vote for; and (3) we have a busy few weeks ahead what with two birthdays within six days of each other and getting myself organised with baby clothes etc for our new baby arrival. Besides, it's a good feeling knowing I've got another task out of the way (albeit small).

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So there's a quick wrap-up of our week. I've tried to include everything that was achieved and hopefully I haven't left anything out. Time to get a coffee me thinks! and get outside with the kids and whaiāipo.

Thanks for dropping by
ka kite ano

Plans are all very well and good, but ...

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 19:29:00 -0600

... experience teaches me that things won't always go according to plan.

Monday

As I stood at the kitchen making breakfast I looked across at tamāhine 1 and thought to myself how much I take for granted not having to rush the kids off to school. It's 8 o'clock in the morning, and tamāhine 1's relaxing with a good read of her choice. Mum's not saying, "quick, into the car kids or you'll be late for school!!"

~~ooOoo~~

Today I sat down with tama 2 while tama 1 worked on Gamma Math-U-See Lesson 24 and tamāhine 1 did online MUS exercises. [Tamāhine 1 completed Beta on Friday 30 October, but I won't be moving her into Gamma just yet as I want to practice certain math facts for a while longer, hence online practice.]

Unfortunately it didn't go well with either boys. Tama 2 became hoha about reading, so I ended up letting him step away and play after less than 20 minutes because I knew he wasn't going to cooperate. I just wish I'd been quicker about letting tama 2 go because I probably would've avoided a little meltdown from tama 1.

Being the intelligent, deep-thinking and probably over-analysing son that he is, tama 1 can easily become upset when he gets something wrong.

Experience has taught me how to manage these moments, but today no amount of coaxing, cajoling, inveigling was going to work. So, I ended up sending the kids outside to play and said we'd come back to school after a long break. [Again, that's experience with our kids talking.]

I knew it meant a two hour plus break. During this period I too could take a breather and figure out what the underlying problem was. After much thought, I realised:

One problem: They could all be tired. I suddenly remembered tama 1 went to sleep at a very, very late hour last night. No wonder he couldn't focus. Of all days to try moving him into bigger multipication equations. Nope, today was possibly not the best day to have him work on it.

Another (possible) problem: I was teaching tama 1 to do the equation in the traditional method of multiplying, and not the Steve Demme way. I now blame myself that I hadn't used the new method; after all, I have followed the philosophy of Math-U-See all along, but I was uncomfortable changing the method to multiply simply to suit myself! I don't like to use the expression, 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks,' but it kind of rings true for me at this juncture. My head swirled trying to change to the MUS method, so I stuck to what I knew.

If you're familiar with Gamma Lesson 24 then you'll know what I'm talking about. I wasn't taught to do multiplication this way at all and yet, my reasoning to use the traditional method is because whaiāipo and I have used our method in front of, and with the children, on many occasions, yet I made the terrible mistake of thinking tama 1 was comfortable with this method.

Once I left tama 1 to it, he got himself bamboozled. I'm sure his mind would've been swirling with questions like ...

Do I add this carry-over number to that digit?

Do I multiply the totals? ...

When he did the first few examples with me, he was fine, but he obviously wasn't ready to move on alone. Throw into the mix a double-dose of tiredness and a big dollop of "I don't like to get things wrong" and voilà you have the perfect recipe to become upset.

Needless to say, when we did finally return to school work, we left maths and did other subjects instead. Everybody was a lot happier and able to concentrate.

Phew!!!

~~ooOoo~~

I started the day with a photo of tamāhine 1. I'll end with a photo of her as well. Our beautiful 6 year old lost her third tooth as she cleaned her teeth getting ready for bed tonight! No, she's not singing ... I had to ask her to open her mouth for the photo because when she smiled you couldn't see where she'd lost her tooth, lol.

~~ooOoo~~

Tuesday

Today we had success with Lesson 24 multiplications. I was happy enough for Tama 1 to complete one page, but said if he wanted to try two pages then we could give it a try. We took our time and I sat back watching him work. He needed the occasional guidance but overall it was all him. We will take our time and if tomorrow he doesn't do so well, then that's okay. Patience is one of the greatest gifts I am learning as a homeschooling mother. That's not to say I've perfected the art of patience by any stretch of the imagination! but I have at least learned how to read the signals from each of the children when to stop, slow down or pull back altogether.

Tama 1 used the following website for his spelling.

{Actually, there are quite a few good teaching tools disguised as games aren't there?}

Yesterday the bulk of my attention was centred around the boys. I tried to move across to tamāhine 1 and help her also, but it was more in the form of sitting at one end of the desk and asking, "are you doing okay tamāhine 1?" and that sort of line of questioning. When I did finally get to sit with her, I could see she was doing fine, and I just thought "that-a girl!!!"

Today it was important I did something with her, so while tama 1 had fun practicing his spelling on Wordcentral I sat with tamāhine 1 as she worked on her math lesson. She'd already completed the Venn Diagram lesson by the time I sat with her, so I made sure I was there as she worked on Patterns.

One of my aims with tamāhine 1 at the moment is to improve her spelling. Phonetically, yes, she's fine. By building her love of reading I know she will pick up many words so it's a two-fold process. Keep the reading up and build the spelling. Tamāhine 1 probably has more language arts in her daily work than she may like, but at least I'm finding different things for her to use to keep her interested. Two of the library books she read today were:

It's always nice to have a 'real' book to read, as opposed to reading from the computer, nē rā?!

She made a good job of reading these books. Words she found difficult:

mosquito
swatter
pimple
alfalfa
Emperor
Attack
Brie
fromage de vache ... any surprise there? ... hardly
musk
Juanita del Zorro - I pointed out Juanita is my friend's second name
Dolores del Zorro
Mildred
Elsie

~~ooOoo~~

Thanks for dropping by
ka kite ano

Free Reads this week

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:41:00 -0500

This week's free reading from

Holidays

Tamāhine 1 read the above book. She only had trouble with the words:

Chinese (she may recognise China, but not Chinese)
wear
Cinco de Mayo (when I asked her what the word for five in Spanish was, she said cinco, so was then able to identify the rest of it, lol)
Native (well, she didn't really have a problem, just stumbled/hesitated)
carve
July (kept saying Julie ... a name she has read a few times in books recently, so I think she was simply getting confused over the two)

~~ooOoo~~

Edgar, Allan & Poe

Tama 1 read the above. I explained to him that Edgar Allan Poe was a famous American writer and that the author of this book has been ingenius in her use of Poe's name.

Thanks for dropping by
ka kite ano

There's just something to be said about ...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:40:00 -0500

... seeing your child sit down with a dictionary to find a word/phrase.

Tama 1 didn't even ask for help to look up the word. We'd been talking about adaptations and he wanted to figure out what physical adaptation meant without interrupting me as I worked with his younger siblings. It took quite a while before I realised he was engrossed in the book so I took this photo without him even realising it!

For me, this was a powerful moment. Although he's looked up the dictionaries and encyclopaedia for a while now, this was really quite a big deal for me because he had gone off to figure it out without me being aware. It's kind of on a par with him no longer needing me to read with him. It's a rare moment indeed that he reads a book to me anymore. He simply finds a book and reads.

The title of this post should probably have been "They grow up so fast" eh?!!!!

Thanks for dropping by
ka kite ano

Continued with learning about deserts today

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:25:00 -0500

This website is a great resource. We followed this link as part of tama 1's Lesson Pathways Science programme.

I scrolled down and found a section "Habitats: Desert and Forest." So, we started on that after our MUS lessons. We learned more about what types of cacti are located in different deserts and how they retain water. Interesting to learn that the Saguaro Cactus has a large net of roots which extend far away from its trunk. It has a pleated expandable stem, so water keeps the saguaro alive until the next rain.

We read about many different animals in deserts all around the world. My least favourite so far is called the Thorny Devil from Australia. To quote from the website "the grotesque thorny devil is the only species in its genus and one of the strangest of lizards."

Grotesque is right!!!

Thanks for dropping by
ka kite ano

(Mostly) Deserts and (a little about) wetlands

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:51:00 -0500

We didn't achieve as much school work as I would have thought today, however, I'll share some of what we did discuss during our science lesson from this afternoon.

[NB: The bulk of our lesson covered
Deserts although we did touch on Wetlands also.]

I have more notes on deserts because I don't know much about deserts. Considering we only have Rangipo Desert (known more affectionately as Desert Road), it is the closest NZ has to a desert but that's only because of the poor soil quality and drying winds.

One of the first things I [we] learned about was something called a "Rain Shadow". Some deserts are made from what's called the rain shadow effect. When warm moist air rises over the mountains, its water vapour condenses into rain or snow. The mountains catch all the moisture so the air reaching the other side is dry as a desert.

The next thing we learned were some of the animals found in a desert. Okay, I've at least heard of Roadrunners and Jack Rabbits but I didn't know why the Jack Rabbit has such big ears!!! Well ...

You know how a car radiator cools off hot water from the engine? Some desert animals have big ears which do the same thing. When the warm blood moves through their big ears it gets cooled off in the same way...

Some of the animals I've never heard of before are Collared Lizards, Gila Monster or a Horned Lizard. I admit also that I didn't even realise there was such a thing as a Desert Tortoise!!! I couldn't see how a tortoise could handle the heat ... Hello!!!! They have an underground shelter (yes, a tortoise burrow). How clever's that?! Here's me thinking they only live near water!!!!

I did at least know that when the sun goes down the desert totally changes, ie different animals appear.

Oh, here's another animal I hadn't heard of ... Peccary - a desert relative of a pig!!! I think they come out at night? Could be wrong about that, but hey, it's okay to be wrong ... like I tell the kids all the time ... we learn from our mistakes.

So we learned that animals learn to run fast, or have spikes to avoid being eaten. Put another way ... Everything in the desert has adaptations to help cope with life in the desert.

And of course, we talked about the fact that although it may not rain often in the desert, it does receives some water at some point in time. One of the most prominent plants we would ever associate with a desert is cacti. We learned that it retains the water and has a waxy exterior to help keep that moisture in.

Really clever how the plants and animals adapted to meet their requirements. It's all a case of survival.

~~ooOoo~~

So, okay, like I said at the beginning, the bulk of our lesson we spent on deserts because there was a lot to learn. Wetlands we are somewhat more familiar with, and the vital role they have for many species of wildlife. Without their wetland environment, they simply wouldn't survive. Plus the plants themselves have an important role, eg cleaning the water that passes through to streams and rivers etc.

~~ooOoo~~

Anyway, we may not have spent a great deal of our day doing formal 'classroom' type activities, but I will happily say we did actually learn "something".

Gosh, I know I did at least!!!

Thanks for dropping by
ka kite ano

My weekend playing Mauri Ora catch-up

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 03:12:00 -0500

Te Wānangao Aotearoa

I managed to bowl over kete 3 in less than two days. I'm absolutely stoked!

~~ooOoo~~

I thought I would share some of the websites I used to do my research on my chosen Maori leader. If anyone is interested in learning something about our culture, heritage and leaders of the past, then you may find the following websites of interest, and good starting points. I chose Sir Maui Pomare because he was our first Māori doctor. Well, that's pretty much my main reason. That and the simple fact I felt he was an important enough character in our history.

~~ooOoo~~

The first website is an interview with his great grand-daughter. I like reading first-hand personal accounts. They bring the character to life and you read things you wouldn't find with other write-ups eh?

Puke Ariki
NZ History
Te Ara

Dictionary of NZ Biography

~~ooOoo~~

The plan was to work on the kete all weekend, but Nana Nancy rang Saturday morning to say she and Maureen were coming over for a visit. Of course I wasn't going to be rude enough to study while they came, so my plans were changed. This meant I couldn't start on the kete until 5ish that afternoon. In my typical fashion, it became "head down bum up". I stopped at 8.30 and decided to get stuck in straight after breakfast on Sunday. And that's exactly what I did.

With all the breaks I took I'm surprised I finished it at all, lol. But by 8.30 Sunday night it was done.

~~ooOoo~~

I received the final kete last week so I opened it up this morning and I have to say I'm at a loss as to how to work on this assignment. It's absolutely nothing like the previous kete but I have to reserve my initial comments until I've really looked over it in more depth. Knowing me, I've misread or misunderstood the instructions. It's probably easier than I think, but it's a bit of a headscratcher at the minute.

~~ooOoo~~

But anyway, I wanted to share the above to encourage any kiwi who happens to pass by this blog, to sign up for this free one year course. I hope like anything it does make it into the school system because the history of our country was presented poorly when I was at school. I had to go to university to learn it properly. In saying that, I perhaps didn't need to do this course, but I am truly grateful I did. Not only is the entire course free, with FANTASTIC free resources, a kaitiaki to help guide you when needed who will also pick up and drop off your assignments!!!!, but also the satisfaction of gaining a better understanding of our country's history. Considering we're still a very young country, it's surprising how little of our TRUE history is being taught in the school system. Luckily, as homeschoolers, our children will learn the real history without having to wait until they're a young adult!!!!!

So all you New Zealanders, I present you with this challenge ... sign up with the Mauri Ora programme and learn your history. The journey you will experience will not only benefit yourself, but your family AND anyone you feel brave enough to broach the subject with.

Thanks for dropping by
ka kite ano

Working with Temperatures

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 02:10:00 -0500

Working with Temperatures

We had fun creating this thermometer and practising how to read in Celsius and Fahrenheit. We watched the weather report last night to see what they said the temperature would be for today and noted their prediction of 16°C. Using our thermometer print-out, we worked out that would be 60°F. Then we [tried] to check the real thermometer around lunch time to see if it did in fact reach 16°C.

We kind of missed the best time to check because whaiāipo came home around 12-12.30pm. He had a fall during work hours and had concussion. So, school went on the backburner for a while eh?! When we did check the thermometer however, it read 14°C-15°C, so that was close enough. We'll try again for tomorrow but there's a high probability whaiāipo will be home tomorrow to rest from his ordeal. He has quite a lump on his head and a saw jaw from where he knocked himself.

Because he was home, the children were allowed to finish work a little earlier than I planned because I wanted to keep an eye on whaiāipo as best as I could.

~~ooOoo~~

The children revised some math facts this morning. As much as I might say it was a waste of time what we covered, I would also say it is important to cover even the simplest of facts as often as possible to ensure the children haven't forgotten such basic skills. If there's one thing I have learned - it doesn't take much to forget certain facts once you move on to new facts.

~~ooOoo~~

In the afternoon we moved into Language Arts and Social Studies. We learned a little bit about Alaskan Inuit. I didn't even know that Inuit = "the People" or the "Real People", so I learned something immediately!!! We touched a little bit on what physical characteristics means and why they live near the sea (for hunting and fishing).

~~ooOoo~~

I will leave the post here as I am keeping an eye on whaiāipo. Whether he goes to work tomorrow or not, I am unsure - hopefully he doesn't for his own sake eh?!

Thanks for dropping by
ka kite ano

Our Schooling Journey in Rotorua, New Zealand - Homeschool Blogger

Free TOS Digital Holiday Magazine

What a week!

Plans are all very well and good, but ...

More reading

Free Reads this week

There's just something to be said about ...

Continued with learning about deserts today

(Mostly) Deserts and (a little about) wetlands

My weekend playing Mauri Ora catch-up

Working with Temperatures