A Rube Goldberg Challenge ~ Turn the Light Off

Looks like we were timely to explore Rube Goldberg as our Thinker of the Month.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Our time spent during "school" has mostly been spent outside of home, so we haven't really scratched the surface of exploring our Thinker yet. Our trip to the library confirmed that yes, Rube Goldberg was someone who is deifintely worth learning more about.

                                                                                   

When I saw this activity set up I was so thankful. This was the most perfect way to get the kids charged up about Rube again, it was so well organized too. I got a lot of ideas of how to pull this type of thing off at home.

                                                                                     

The Rube Goldberg challenge was to turn the light off. The clip is very short, but you can still see that this activity had DJ thinking. DJ and Ken both were successful at accomplishing this challenge, and of course the camera never works when your ready to record that great moment :)

Reading Like a Historian

It took me some time to realize that Ken and DJ needed more challenging work. They needed work that moved beyond there already mastered skills in research work. I found a perfect history program for them for FREE. Reading Like a Historian is geared toward 6-8th grade. This program can be used as a stand alone or as a supplement. You can use any history book you want, it covers US History and World History. There is another progam for highschool, Historical Thinking Matters which I think is awesome too, and I am excited to know what direction we are going as far as how we are approaching history. It is what I was looking for in a history program all of my life as a homescholing mama of middle schoolers! :) 

If you get a chance I would browse through it and see how it may work for your family or classroom. I believe that it enhances the Montessori child's education as well. If we look beyond the materials and stay focused on the Montessori Philosophy we can see how purposeful it is to be able to Read like a Historian. Also I see plenty of opportunities to incorporate those true Montessori Materials in a very natural approach. 

                                                                         

We are going back to our first book in the History of US series by Joy Hakim as we have decided to really tackle US History. This has given us a chance to do the introduction lessons that are included in the program. 

                                                                         

These are the concepts that we have covered so far. History in our home is always met with great anticipation, it is requested to be done often. We laugh and really get our debate on. This is another great way that you can encourage your child to speak up, and challenge in an appropiate way. Yes! Children challenge us adults, because that is how they learn.

"The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded." - Dr. Marie Montessori from Childhood to Adolescence

   

Friday Freewrite

On Fridays we make sure we incorporate Freewrite into our day. For reading and writing we have pretty much dumped all other language arts programs, in favor of Brave Writer. We have always read a book daily together and using this philosophy just makes sense for us. This time around I read individually with each of the kids instead of all of us reading the same books. They love to read and write, this program feels so natural. Some day we will bust out our Sentence Analysis work, but really First Language Lessons did a great job of teaching sentence diagramming. We left off of First Language Lessons more than halfway through, we will pick it back up again when their need for worksheets arises again.

                                                                     

This was their writing prompt today. Can I say I have some kids full of imagination? DJ wrote a story about "If You Give a Rat a..... " and Ken wrote about how candy is marketed to kids based on "holidays", and  how Gummy Rats make for a good treat in someone's trick or treat bag.

Keep them Writing!

Note Taking and A Coloring Book

A few books have been getting a lot of attention from DJ and Ken.

Ken absolutely loves the writing style and pictures that are inside the Student Atlas. Kennede decided that she would like to learn about note taking and uses this book everyday to practice that skill.

                     

                                                                               

 Ken loves to change colors while she is note taking. What I like most is how she is attracted to note taking, it wasn't any where in my lesson plans to teach this skill. I love following the child!                                                                               

                                                                            

DJ has been enjoyng his new coloring book. This book takes learning about zoology to another level. Although it is written for a college audience he is understanding quite well. Let's just say the student has surpassed the teacher in this subject area :)

                                                                             

He loves his highlighters, I just think this was such an awesome idea of how he incorporated that into his work.

All is well!

Thinker of the Month

This month we are starting a Thinker of the Month. Well, I will try to introduce a new Thinker each month, but if the kids are highly interested in our current Thinker past the month we will continue until more inspiration is needed.

                                                                             

Since we will be also learning about simple Physics/Electronics using Basic Foundations of Scientific Understanding, I thought Rube Goldberg would be the perfect Thinker to explore.

I got a lot of  recycled materials handy and a surprise kick off project in a bag. We have a lot of busyness going on this week so I most likely will pass off their bag of inspiration over to them this Sunday.

                                                                      

                                                                               

3D Printing Machine

This week is Lansing Maker Week. Today we visited the East Lansing Public Library's Pop up Makerspace.

                                                                             

                                                                               

They were so excited to learn about and make things with the 3D printer and so was I. This Makerspace is available three days a week and on Saturdays for FREE for the next six months. I think this  place is going to be a valuable resource to us. 

Do you have a Makerspace in your area?

Observational Drawing

Back in July I enrolled in Lori Pickert's Free Observational Drawing Class. The class was set up with a forum for those who wanted to share and learn more from Lori's wisdom on Project Based Homeschooling. The lessons were delivered straight to your email. I really enjoyed taking the class on my own pace and being able to go back to the lessons after the classes ended, this class was for seven days. Lori included lots of tips and resources which is really helping me to feel more poised at given instruction in art. 

We did the first lesson today that introduced Blind Contoured Drawing.

                                                                       

 They really liked using the paper plate to blind them of their drawing while using their eyes to really focus on what they were drawing. Just so you know I decided to have them use a permanent marker so that once the activity was over they wouldn't want to "fix it". Also the first lesson given by Lori has the student'drawing their own hand. I know these two kiddos too well to know that drawing their hand wasn't going to be well received on our first go at observational drawing.

Plus it was such a beautiful Fall day and you couldn't help but notice the leaves.

I think it was a successful activity, expecially since they have continued to draw all day.