We learn so much more and faster when we learn through play. If I can think of a way to turn a task into a delightful activity I do. This week's homeschooling highlights included:
- Painting pottery in our pajamas (I asked MsE to change out of hers, because she had her fancy Elsa pjs on).
Usually I would wait till the afternoon for art, but the girls were eager to get to the pots they had made last week when we studied the Neolithic Era. After about 5 days the air dry clay was thoroughly dry. We probably could have painted them a few days before, but for our first try I wanted to be sure. We used acrylic paint as these pots are just going to be for show.
MsC is well versed in colour theory, but MsE and MsI had fun discovering how the primary colours mixed together. I loved it when MsE marvelled, "Did you know when you add white to purple, you get light purple?" I asked her what she thought would happen if she'd added black instead, and she totally got it.
She painted her whole pot dark purple (which she had mixed from blue and red) and then added a white line around. I imagine this lead to her realization, because she finished off her pot with a strip around the top of light purple that she had mixed in her pallet. It's nice how acrylic dries so fast that you can add even lighter colours on top of dark without the colours bleeding through.
2. Watercolour painting our colouring page.
I give the girls a copy of an illustration from the book to colour, while I read aloud from our History Quest text. It's nice having a photocopier in the house.
We're starting Early Civilizations this week. Part of me isn't ready to leave the Neolithic. I may look for some other stories and examples of other Neolithic peoples across the world before we go much farther.
Anyhow, I usually provide pencil crayons for our colouring. But, I noticed the MsE was only getting her picture part way coloured and that it really bothered her, so I handed out paints one day.
MsE loved it and carefully painted the whole picture in. We had already used up most of the colours in our pallets, which kept the colours simple, and we ended up with surprising lovely little pictures to glue into our notebooks.
3. Map Making with Air Dry Clay.
We're on a bit of a dragon kick. MsC has been listening to the entire series of How to Train Your Dragon," by Cressida Cowell through audible. She up to book 9, often listening to the entire novel in one day. These books are usually 3 - 5 hours of listening time. I'm making her "buy" her audiobooks with a one page book report on the book she's finished, because she's used up all my free credits and now I'm paying actual cash. She's not concerned about tidy printing, she's literally trying to complete it in as few of seconds as possible so I'll download the next book and she can carry on listening that instant.
The rest of us can't put in the amount of listening time MsC wants to, so instead I'm reading aloud "My Father's Dragon by Ruth S. Gannett to all of us. There are 3 books in this novel series, written in the late 40's.
We decided to use the air dry clay to build the setting and the animals in the book. I suppose we're actually building a "play-set" rather than just a map. We put our island in a plastic bin with a lid so it will be easy to put away and keep the pieces together. We'll paint the paper (the ocean) and the clay (the island and the animals) once it's dry.
If I do this again I would put the clay on cardboard though. The paper has been warping from the damp clay, which is making the clay crack a bit. I'm trying to keep it weighted down.
MsE and MsI made the characters from the book with clay too. It's a good assortment of animals. We'll keep adding new characters as they come up. The girls used our Play Dough cutters and prints to make the animals.
Although, MsE made the alligator without anything to help her. It's the very wide alligator - top left of the animals. It took all of my willpower not to suggest she narrow out her alligator.
All those read aloud and now you're probably wondering if MsC does any reading herself. Yes, she does lots of daily reading on her own. Enough to cash in her book log monthly, which means she reads a minimum of 10 novels a month (not huge ones, but the typical age 8 to 12 size). She also likes to read aloud to her sisters and even with me, when we do our nightly bedtime reading of a novel above her reading level.
Honestly, MsC does most of her reading without prompting. I overhead this conversation at the playground between MsC and her friend's mom.
MsC: "Auntie, what does [friend who shall remain anonymous] do in her spare time?"
Auntie: "She doesn't have any spare time."
MsC: "Oh! Well... I like to read books."
We have a lot more spare time than typical kids in Singapore, and so we do seem to get up to a lot of fun.