Kinda Thinking & Planning for the Fall....

Well, today, you get two posts for Monday...

Have been working on planning for the fall and have been toying with how we are going to do things this year and also because tomorrow, I have another blog post ready (am going to announce some award winners, so please be sure to check back tomorrow)...
We have play dates scheduled for Wednesday and Friday, and have to get some errands done on Thursday, so if I didn't give you a two for one day today, I would have had to have held off and posted this post over the weekend...

Well, if you read this and have any input / ideas / suggestions, would just love to hear from you!
Well, to get things kick started for the fall, I asked the boys to tell me what they would like to learn about, as well as any questions, ideas, or themes they would like to explore...
they are used to doing this, as it is something we have done since the very beginning...I actively involve them in the process of what we could / should study...sometimes, we do the good ole' standby, KW L...

What I Know, What I Want to Know, and then, What I Learned...

For the purposes of trying to flesh out what we could do starting in the fall, I had them focus primarily on what they Want to know...

Big Bro:
Have been working on putting things together for Big Bro..he wants to learn about the following:

"Chemistry...I like to do experiments with liquids."

"The Presidents...about the ones who were in when we have had wars and what they decided to do about them."

"The future...about robots and if we will use them and how things will work with more machines"

"Inventions...about all of them, actually...but we need to come up with one that works to clean up the oil spill. I want to come up with one..."

"Machines...from little ones to big ones...what is the smallest machine that can do the biggest job"?

"Native Americans...their homes, their weapons, and where they lived and how they got there...and what life is like on a reservation now versus way back, when they first went to one...and what life was like before reservations."

"Animal homes...how they build them and which ones are predators and which ones are prey."
"The Rainforest...who lives there...what grows there...how long ago did they start making poison darts from poison dart frogs..."

"Italian, Chinese, French, and Spanish...how to say some things in these languages and more about the countries and why other countries have people who also speak these languages."

Little Bro:
Little Bro wants to learn about all kinds of things, too...luckily, some of his interests cross over with Big Bro's interests...

"Frogs"

"Snow cones"

"Polar Bears"

"Penguins"

"How you make toys"

"Stuff in the sea"

"Shells"

"Dogs and the ones that help people"

"What's inside your brain"

"How you make glass and Legos"

"What's inside a wheel and how it works"

"How you make chocolate"

"How you get hot and sweaty from the sun"

"How you make a rainbow"

"How do you find gold"?

"What is inside a turtle"?

"Who lives in a barn"?"

"How does poop work...how does food know to turn into poop...how does it know to go through your body and end up that way..."

"How does your body know which tube things should go in...how does the air go in the right place and what you eat or drink go in the right place and how does your body use the food and the drinks and how does your body use air"?

Now, the poop thing threw me at first, but then, the more he talked, the more I realized that he wants to really learn more about the digestive system...
We will cover the systems of the body and will start with digestion when we do systems.

He is also curious about blood, and this is because he has Von Willebrand's.
Little Bro will have to undergo some additional blood tests soon, so we will discuss how blood flows through the body and a little more about the details of his blood disorder.

Have been working on putting things together to kind of tie in with all of their interests, where possible, as well as what our region has to offer, as far as field trips and other sorts of experiential learning opportunities that would tie in with these concepts...

Am most likely going to do:

Fall / Harvest / Farm
 
Body Systems

Polar Animals - will do both poles, but am going to separate them out, as doing them together makes it confusing for kids...

Will discuss Inuit / Eskimo, dog sledding while we do the Arctic Circle...will tie in French and Inuit language for Big Bro for this...

Rainforest - will tie in chocolate and frogs to this...will tie in Spanish, mostly for Big Bro, with this...will also tie in the future of the Rainforest...we had started this earlier this summer, but have not really done it in depth, as we have had lots of company and have taken off some time to have a more laid back sort of summer schedule...

Sea Life - will tie in beach glass, the future of the Gulf, machines to clean up the oil spill, how sea animals are being treated for Big Bro when we do sea life....

Will tie in snow cones and how toys are made with inventions and simple machines...

Will tie in working dogs ( Sheep Dogs, Border Collies) with Farm

Space - Neither one mentioned space when we were discussing this coming school year, which was almost a shocker, as they both LOVE learning about space...but I will ask them at some point in the future if they don't mention it anytime soon...am sure that we will be doing something about space, but just not sure when or what we will be doing for sure...

That is how far I have gotten...
Am sure that they will have other interests as the year goes on, but this is what they gave me for starters...the key is for me now to flesh out the "Essential Questions" that tie in with what they Want to know so that it ties in well with what they Need to know...for this, I use some materials by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, the creators of the concept of Understanding by Design...here is a pdf that highlights their work.

The exciting news is that friends of ours are also interested in doing some hands-on learning projects with us...
We are going to get together to plan and to try to loosely map out some field trips and other enrichment opportunities...

Friends who live here and are part of our co-op, as well as dear family friends who live in Canada...with them, we will share via Skype, email, phone calls, and photos...so it should be neat to be able to share in different ways...

Am getting geared up to make some hands on materials to tie in with these concepts.
We are going to focus on utilizing a bigger light table this year, too, as the boys liked the very tiny and portable one we had, but a bigger one will give us much more of an opportunity...

Both boys love making shadow puppets.
Both love working with translucent and transparent objects. Both also love working with color, light, and texture, so we will be bringing these into our day to day even more this year.

We used an atilierista (artist / art teacher) this past year, not consistently but for some of the major themes. We will do the same again this year.

Miss Laurie is going to do a end of the summer camp for us, and plans to explore the books and the artwork of Eric Carle, so I anticipate that we will be doing many hands on projects involving collage...can't wait, as I love Eric Carle's books and his artwork!

Laurie is a talented artist in her own right, but thought that doing a themed camp would really pull children into the art...so that is the plan.

Both Big Bro and Little Bro love Eric Carle, so it is going to be fun learning for all!

Well, hope that you all had a happy Monday!

Again, if anyone has some suggestions to go with any of these concepts  / essential questions / themes, would love to hear from you!

Fun with Friends and A Little Bit about Planning & Themes

Recently, some wonderful friends came to visit us.  
We all had a terrific time, if I do say so myself...

This was their first time to Florida so we tried to show them the sites and sounds of the Sunshine State.
From Orlando to Clearwater, from Disney princesses to Florida Aquarium fishes, from splash parks to fireworks, we covered a lot in a little over a week.
We had a great time, but would you believe that it was warmer in Canada than it was here for most of their visit???

Manitoba was warmer than Florida...for real!!!

The cooler temps made it more possible to do more, as heat was not really an issue here...just trying to dodge some storms here and there.
We had an awesome time together, as the kids got to hang out and be kids, the daddies got to play some golf, and the mommies got to get in some time shopping and drinking coffee drinks. Both families had a ball checking out what Disney has to offer, as well as watching some great 4th of July sky shows that made it worth the rain delay. 

In addition, we actually got to work a bit on some plans for next school year...

We both decided that in a home setting, whether a family is homeschooling or doing a smaller in-home preschool program, that themes help with organizing the materials.

Realistically, in a home, you only have so much space to have materials...you cannot possibly have out everything unless you either have a huge space or very limited materials.

Since my dear friend and I have both accumulated many resources (we both feel very blessed by the materials we have for our children), we both decided that using a theme approach would help with organization.

Much has been written about themes in early childhood and elementary school programs, as well as the stand that different philosophies of education seem to take either for or against using themes. 
But for homeschooling families, regardless of a family's educational philosophy, organizing by theme can make the load lighter when it comes to having an orderly, functional, home learning environment.

Where things get tricky is the concept of who drives the theme...the adult or the child....I am going to dive into this a little more in-depth over the next few days, but for now, here are a few thoughts:

With Reggio Emilia, it is the classroom community as a whole that drives the theme.
Things are much more spontaneous and not as much advance time is spent planning themes, although far more time is spent observing. Themes do pop up in a Reggio Emilia inspired program...more on this soon...


With Montessori, some who fully embrace the Montessori philosophy will argue that it is not theme based...I say yes and no to that...it is not all cutesy themes but realistically, if you are learning about parts of the frog, you are going to want to bring in some books to your room about frogs, along with having works out on the shelves like frogs three part cards, nomenclature cards, frog puzzles, and some other frog items, such as maybe a model of a frog skeleton. The same would apply if you are learning about the parts of a bird, horse, flower, apple, fish, etc. so maybe the themes are not as overt, but you most likely will see some logical connections (I say themes) in Montessori classrooms.

With Charlotte Mason, to me, from what I understand about Charlotte Mason education, themes tied in with nature make sense, as do those with themes tied in with virtues. So, if a child is doing a nature study and is interested in the birds or wildflowers seen while spending time outdoors, then it would make sense to then tie these in as themes into the homeschooling day, right?
Living books with themes that relate with a child's nature study and copywork...seems to work well together...

With Unschooling, generally, a family ideally is following the child's interests, passions, and pursuits, so in these homeschooling situations, there very well might be themes if the child is absorbed by a certain topic of study. The underlying idea is that everyone in the family is held as an equal and that it is a very democratic, loosely flowing sort of way to learn, where the passions drive not the curriculum...
In public schools, there was a popular silent reading program that went by the acronym "DEAR", which stood for "Drop Everything And Read."
I always think of Unschooling more as "Drop Everything And Do", although that comes out with the not-so-nice sounding acronym!
But for those who actually take Unschooling to its purest form and really follow the child's lead, and embrace whatever it is that the child is most passionate about at the moment as what is the course of study, then this is what they do...the only thing is that for me, if we actually were 100% Unschoolers and actually did "Drop Everything And Do" each and every time Little Bro or Big Bro wants to explore something new and different, the acronym might prove to be reality, as I think that I would drop of exhaustion trying to run out every day to just be able to go with the flow and come up with totally awesome experiences that tie in with ALL of their interests day to day....

With Classical Education, themes are global and rotate on a multi-year cycle. The focus is on ancient times so you have to make some sense of this massive timeline and having a theme for the year becomes a necessity.

With Waldorf, from what I have been told and have read, you follow the natural rhythms, so in a sense, there will be themes tied in with the seasons.

So, in one way or another, the concept of organizing by theme could feasibly work in most homeschool settings...now, to make sense of how to do that and to decide who and what drive the themes, well more on that soon...