FOCI - Minnesota Center for Glass Arts

 A couple of weeks ago, AH and I were lucky enough to make a visit to a local glass blowing studio and watch a demonstration of this ancient art.  We learned a little physics along the way, too!

AH and a friend holding a small glass thread.

We watched while our host made a glass horse in 2 minutes.  After it had cooled, the kids got to handle it.

We watched a wine glass being made.

AH holding colored glass.

We also watched them make a vase.

Here they are adding polka dots to the vase.

The vase is removed from the rod.

Watt Munisota

Tucked away in a small farming community about 45 minutes south of Minneapolis-St. Paul is a beautiful Buddhist temple, Watt Munisota.  I was told it is the third largest Buddhist temple in the U.S.  Last Saturday they were celebrating the Cambodian New Year so Doug, AH and I had planned on attending the festival.  We woke up Saturday morning to a cold, biting wind and quite a bit of snow on the ground!  We debated whether we wanted to spend the morning outside, but decided that we are tough Minnesotans and up for the challenge!  After a few wrong turns along the way, we finally found the temple sitting at the top of a large hill.  It is breath-taking and unexpected in the middle of all that farmland.  We parked our car and made our way on foot up the long driveway.  The grounds were filled with smiling, welcoming people.  After finding our friend, he immediately took us over to a food vendor, a friend of his, and bought us what looked like beef satays.  There were quite a few food vendors selling traditional foods.  We tried the beef and it was seasoned and cooked deliciously! In addition to the beef, Doug and I tried stuffed chicken wings.  Those were also delicious!  AH was happy to find a bubble tea vendor since it is one of his favorite beverages.  If you have never tried one, think smoothie with large black "bubbles" floating in it.  The bubbles are large tapioca pearls.  Despite the cold conditions, there was quite a line for the cold drink!  After eating and drinking we made our way up the hill to the temple.  When we got inside we were asked to remove hats and shoes.  Families were sitting together on the floor speaking quietly, others were in front of the statue of the Buddha, and still others were in the middle of the room giving rice as an offering.  All along the walls, above the windows, are painted panels depicting stories about the Buddha.

Doug and AH are at the top of the steps of the temple.

AH and I inside the temple with Buddha behind us.  Notice the beautiful paintings?

A close up of the Buddha statues.

We spent the rest of the time taking in the sights and sounds: music, languages and traditionally costumed women.  It was a wonderful morning spent together!

I loved this basketball backstop. This was one of the festival games!

A close up of the detail of one of the pillars

It Worked!

AH and I have usually have very bad luck when it comes to science experiments: they usually don't work for us.  Today we tried one I've read about in quite a few books and blogs.  Since Easter is right around the corner we thought it was fitting to try an experiment that included an egg.  AH is learning to use our video camera, so I asked him to record the experiment for the blog.

 

What we did:

In the microwave we heated water until it was boiling.  I poured the boiling water into the bottle and let it heat for a moment, then emptied the bottle (an adults job!) and immediately put the cold, peeled, hard-boiled egg on top.  Then all you do is watch and wait! 

The hot air inside the jug is less dense than the colder outside air.  This creates suction which pulls the egg into the bottle.  Have some fun and try it!  If it worked for us, it'll work for you!!

National Homeschool Book Award

 I'm so excited about this opportunity!  A group of homeschool moms here in Minnesota have organized a National Homeschool Book Award.  Here is how they describe it on their website:

The NHBA is a readers' choice book award designed to recognize and celebrate current juvenile fiction that explores learning experiences occurring outside the traditional classroom setting and that resonates with homeschool readers.

The group has nominated four books for their inaugural award:

Alabama Moon by Watt Key
Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
The Remarkable & Very True Story of Lucy & Snowcap by H.M. Bouwman
Savvy by Ingrid Law

Homeschoolers are asked to read these four books and in October vote for their favorite.  The winner will be announced in November.  During this time their website will offer activities based on these books.  It costs nothing to participate in this award.

The website offers summaries of each nominee and explains the process in depth. They also have a facebook page!  Check it out!

Now you know what AH and I will be reading for the next few months!

Car-Schooling

AD, our college student son, needed some important items brought to his apartment at the University of Minnesota last week.  AH, our homeschooler, needed to memorize the books of the new testament for confirmation, review some math facts, and do some independent reading.  What's a mom to do?  Take school on the road, of course!

We are about 35 - 45 minutes away from the University of Minnesota, so I packed up our iPod Touch, the flashcards I made up for AH to learn the new testament books, his bible, and the book he has been reading independently. As we backed out of the driveway, AH went right to work on memorizing the New Testament Books.  He took the flashcards and worked on placing the books in order and memorizing them.  He really wanted to learn all of them by confirmation on Wednesday evening.  I believe there was a reward or prize at stake here.  After we dropped off the forgotten items to big brother, AH worked on his math review by playing a game on the iPod, and then finished his independent reading.  We were able to get most of our "schooling" done by the time we pulled into the parking lot for swimming lessons.

All too often these days, we find ourselves in our car traveling to museums, classes, clubs, gym, and field trips.  Instead of writing off those times as wasted, we try to use them so  that we have more time to play, learn and read together outside of the car!  Our history spine, The Story of the World, is available as an audiobook - MP3 downloadable version and that is what we order.  We get it immediately and we have it loaded on each of our laptops and our iPod Touch.

One of the most popular homeschool helps, Netflix, is now offering streaming video to computers, iPads, iPods, and game consoles.  We have often used this feature to watch documentaries about subjects we are studying.  This way there is no waiting for a disc to arrive.  When AH expresses an interest to explore a topic more, we jump on our Netflix site and find a movie or documentary!  While he's watching, sometimes I'm on another device finding supporting sites and reserving books from our local library.

There are many wonderful iPod apps available (a lot for free).  One of our favorites is WW Capitals by Mulishani which is available in the iTunes app store for free! It is a clever app that has flash cards with a country name, flag and capital.  The flash cards can either be scrolled or looked at individually.  Our favorite feature of this app is the quiz.  It is NOT easy!  But AH loves this app and often plays it while waiting for performances or classes to start.  He has become so good at knowing the flags and capitals of many countries that he can beat his 25 year old sister at it (and remember, she is a geography major!) The same company also has similar apps that cover state capitals and the US Presidents.

Besides the apps stores available on your mobile devices how does one find these apps?  One of the best resources for finding cool educational apps is the Apps-School website.  They also have a facebook page and that is where I found a fun fractions review game for AH.  Motion Math ($ .99) is fairly basic, but it makes a fun review of fractions, decimals and percentages.  Beats a worksheet any day! Since it is a visual representation of fractions, decimals and percentages it made everything click with my right-brained learner.

Some of my most memorable and interesting conversations with AH have occurred in the car.  I don't want to lose that, so we don't always pack our gadgets when we are out on the road.  But I am very thankful for the wonderful technology available and will take advantage of it if it enhances our learning.  Gotta go now, AH is waiting to read an old-fashioned paper book on the couch this afternoon!

Out and About

Wow.  What a whirlwind month January was!  February is beginning to look like it'll be a busy month, too.  Generally, AH and I love our time at home together, but there have been so many opportunities lately, that we couldn't say no.  Here are just a few pictures of our exploits this January:

Science Museum of Minnesota: Geometry Playground

We visited the U of M Chemistry Dept. for a Chemistry Demo and Hands on experiments!

We love watching things go up in flames!

Hard to see, but there is a flying pop bottle launched with a chemical reaction

My scientist

An afternoon of free rides at Nick Universe at the Mall of America

Nickelodeon Universe

 

 

Homeschool Gym

Tour of KSTP TV station

Celebrated our friend Michael's birthday!

Add to this swimming lessons, art club, a comedy show for homeschoolers, and a trip to the Omni Theater and that adds up to a busy month!

Trust the Child

I've been homeschooling my now 7th grade son since the beginning of 4th grade.  We have our ups and our downs, but generally love our way of life.  Indeed, homeschooling has become a way of life.  Over the years we have less "school" time scheduled and have found that learning weaves it's way through our days in a more organic way.  I prefer it this way and I find AH's retention is higher when he learns this way.  But it is so very different than the way I was taught and it brings on episodes of panic now and again.  Take for instance spelling.  We began in 4th grade with two separate phonics lessons, both of which produced nothing but tears.  I then signed him up for an online spelling test weekly which produced more tears and, worse, frustration.  I then came to realize just how a right-brained learner cannot learn in these ways and found a better and more productive way for him to learn to spell.  It worked, but there was no joy, no spark, no enthusiasm and that brought me to tears.

Then I backed off.

I spelled words when my son wanted to write them.  But that was close to never. I just waited (and silently panicked).  All the books said that when a child is ready he will want to learn.

And still I waited, enduring criticism and disparaging remarks for my son's poor spelling.  But I still waited and clung to the belief that when he was ready, he would want to write and spelling would be a natural part of that.  And the criticism continued, sometimes directly at AH, but still I waited (and silently panicked).

In the meantime, with so many activities filling our calendars, we found that we wanted our son to have a cell phone to call us in emergencies (like the night he was left at church to attend confirmation when there was no confirmation scheduled that night!) or to simply call us with a question when we were all out doing our own things.  My husband ordered a phone with a full keyboard just to make texting and entering information easier for AH.    When AH got the phone he was so excited to fill it with contacts, starting with his big sister and big brother.  He texted them occasionally, but when one of his friends also got a phone, that was the beginning of his spelling education.  They sent texts back and forth furiously. I must have spelled most of the words he typed to his friend that first week.  During the second week, I wasn't asked how to spell words, but was asked if he had spelled them correctly.  And by week three, I very rarely have to spell out a word for him.

Trust the child.

As if this wasn't a breakthrough in and of itself, I opened my email one day to see a plea from a homeschool friend of AH's who was trying to start a newspaper.  He wanted it to be written by local homeschoolers.  I mentioned it to my son and heard nothing for quite a while.  One morning AH told me he was going to write movie reviews for the newspaper and wondered if we could go to a couple of movies. As if I was going to say no! We made sure we saw the two movies AH wanted to review (including big brother and dad in this activity made it a natural part of our family life) and AH followed through, with no pressure from me, on writing not only one, but two, reviews for the next issue of the Homeschool Gazette.  The words weren't always spelled correctly, but we worked on that when he asked for help.  The sentences sometimes didn't flow that way they should, but we worked on that when he asked for help. 

What was it that the books said?  Oh, yeah,...

Trust the child.