Sophie's World

Yesterday wasn't a good homeschooling day. I was in such a state about Emily's growth issues that I wasn't much fun to be around.

Today was nice, though. Yesterday Sophs read a Magic Tree House book about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake - it was very cute to see how fascinated she was, she kept reading bits aloud to me, the way Bobby and I do when we get to really good bit of whatever we're reading and just have to share - so today we went to the library to find out some more about earthquakes. We read a whole bunch of books, and then we did this activity. It's not that great of a learning activity actually, but both girls enjoyed making the jello and repeatedly constructing and destroying sugar-cube buildings. Oh, and she also used the word "earthquake" to write an acrostic.

Then we played a bunch of math games : the fraction game, countdown - and I can see progress here, she's starting to try to divide and multiply instead of just adding and subtrating - and the dino math game.

And we read more of the Whangdoodle book. I am currently so tired, I'm embarrassed to admit that I actually fell asleep while I was reading aloud to Sophie. In mid-sentence. Who knew that was possible?? She was most indignant. I had to make coffee to get myself back into action.

I enjoyed today, it had a nice feel to it, even though nothing particularly exciting happened.

When we were climbing last night, Sophie got a bit unnerved by how fast her heart was beating after she'd done a challenging route, and wanted to know why that happened. So, today we read about how hearts work. She was intrigued by the idea of a muscle that never stops working, (we contrasted the way the heart muscle functions with the way other muscles function by seeing how long it took for her hand to get tired when she repeatedly opened and closed it) and we experimented with pulse taking. She found her pulse at her wrist, neck, and abdomen - she really enjoyed the process.

Here's the link we used to find out where to take pulses.

Then she measured her pulse during various activities. Not surprisingly, it was fastest after five minutes of star jumps. One of our experiments really grossed Bobby out. You take a tiny dab of playdough, and embed a toothpick in it. Find your pulse at your wrist. Then use the playdough to hold the toothpick in place on your pulse. And you'll see that the toothpick moves in time with your pulse. Sophie found Bobby's revulsion hilarious.

A description of the toothpick experiment is here.

She also finished her second Magic Treehouse book : Hour of the Olympics. She likes to read aloud to me - she's very good at it, and uses tons of expression. I enjoyed having the freedom to let her continue reading till she was done, rather than having to quit after an arbitrary space of time.

Then it was my turn to read to her: several more chapters from The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles. At one stage, the book mentioned sponge cake, and Sophs wanted to know why it was called sponge cake. I hazarded a guess that it was because the cake is very light and airy, because you incorporate a lot of air into it when you bake it. She asked if we could make one, so we did. It was not, in the event, particularly airy - she hasn't really got the hang of folding whipped egg whites in - but she was very pleased to be able to offer the big kids hot sponge cake when they got home. The cake making was good hands on math : I asked her to divide the cups into quarters etc, and she liked the challenge.

Here she is, beating the egg whites. She is a bit scary with the mixer.



This afternoon, we went to school-age storytime at the library - a good one today, it was "Slimy Science", and they showed the kids how to make various oozy messy things, including silly putty and slime.

And then both girls had gymnastics this evening.

I liked today : I feel like Sophie learned lots, and I enjoyed the fact that she initiated it all.

Yesterday was pretty much taken up by the homeschool group's celebration of the Chinese New Year and the potluck that followed. We joined a subset of the group after lunch who're starting a Waldorf-inspired co-op. They're (we're) going to meet weekly for six or eight weeks, starting in March. When they asked if I was interested, I said I liked much of the Waldorf ethos, but I didn't know if it'd really be right for us, since we are pretty keen on technology. But they said that they weren't going to be too purist about it, and that in fact a few people had left because they weren't pure enough. So it might work out really well for Sophie.

Today, we went to the Scholastic warehouse customer appreciation sale. We picked up six books, for a dollar apiece - two for each child. Sophie got a Magic Treehouse" book, and she's almost completed it already. It's the first one she's read from the series, and, while it most definitely isn't great literature, she really needs books that she can read alone easily. Otherwise reading will just feel frustrating for her. So, if she likes this series, it'll be great, since there are about a million of the books.

Her other book was a book of easy, fun science experiments involving the body. So today, we painted various parts of her body with green food colouring, and waited to see which bits faded first. The point of the experiment was to see which parts of the epidermis are shed most rapidly. Sophie predicted that the splodge on her nose would fade fastest. However, the splodges on the soles of her feet were fastest, followed by the palms of her hands. It was very cool to see her figuring out why that happened.

Right now, she and Ems are both drawing pictures of Whangdoodles. Everyone is peaceful and happy ... it's a pleasant evening here.

Well, I showed her how to "carry", and she got it instantly. So I guess she was ready to learn that! Pretty cool that she truly understands what she's doing; I didn't, when I was taught to add and subtract. She did math for a good chunk of the morning.

We also read her copy of Spider - she got a subscription for Christmas, played Uno (she added up our scores very competently) and started our book.

Storytime at the library was interesting : they were talking about the physics of sport. Most of it went over Sophie's head, but I suspect it'll lead to questions being asked over the next few days. Oh, and at one stage this morning she wanted to know about blood types and blood transfusions, so we looked that information up ...

Sophie's loving math at the moment. We've been working on figuring out place values, and she seems to fully understand them. She asked to learn how to add "like big kids" do - with the numbers in columns - so I showed her this morning, and she had a blast. Tomorrow I'll show her how to "carry over". I have a feeling that that's very old-fashioned, but she understands the concepts behind it, and she wants harder problems ... we'll see how it goes. I hope she continues to enjoy math; by the end of first grade, I disliked it, which was sad.

Oddly, she seems to have completely gone off writing. She used to love writing in her journal, and making up stories, but all of a sudden she says she hates writing of all kinds. I'm not pushing it just yet, but I hope she starts wanting to write again pretty soon.

We've finished Peter Pan (which she enjoyed, she was intrigued by how much darker it was than the Disney version), and we're starting a new book : The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles. It's quite long, so I'm not sure it's the best choice - she might lose interest before we're done - but we'll give it a bash.

It's Michael Bond's birthday today, so we went to the library to find some Paddington books. Sophie read one to me, and I read two to her. We both enjoyed it. When we got home, she made a Paddington puppet. Yes, it looks suspiciously like a decorated toilet roll, but she had a lot of fun painting it and then acting out little plays with it.

We finished up with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory yesterday - gosh she loved that book! I wish there was a sequel about the factory itself, she's not at all keen to read the one where the elevator goes up into space. She's chosen Peter Pan for her next book - I still have my childhood copy, so it's nice to share that with her. She read the first three chapters today. They mentioned skeleton leaves at some stage, so we're going to find out how to skeletonise leaves tomorrow. Guess we can count that as science.

Math - she's pretty much got the "place" thing sorted I think, she's quite reliable about figuring out how many 100's, 10's and 1's are in any given number. I ordered a board game that deals with that concept; not sure it's necessary but she does love games so it won't do any harm. The homeschool group is running a course on "The History of Math" - an hour a week, and it sounds intriguing - so we'll find out about that on Thursday. Not sure which age/ability kids it's being targeted at ...

This week went really well. We seemed to do so much stuff! Hope I can keep it up.

Here Sophs is below, doing a science experiment which shows that air expands when it's warmed. She really loves this stuff - just look at her face. Quite different to how I was a child. I was always more bookish.



She also really enjoys math at the moment. We played the fraction game some more, and I've tracked down a few more fun fraction activities for next week. And we did a whole lot more of the math library book - it's fun, it skips from activity to activity so she doesn't get bored.

And we're almost finished with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That's something I enjoying about homeschooling : if she's enjoying something, we can just keep on going. We don't have to stop when the bell rings. And if something piques her interest, we can find out more about it then and there. Today, for instance, when we got to the "chocolate-television-room" chapter, she wanted to know if Willy Wonka's explanation of how TV works is really accurate. So we looked it up in the "What Happens When book. And then she got intrigued by the pages on mailing letters, so we read that. And then we went back to the book.

Other activities today : we played Thinkamajink - which is draughts with a twist. You have to answer a question correctly before you can jump your opponent's piece. It's probably really bad for her draughts game, as I tend to set up jumps for her. She loves this game, I find it a little too contrived. And then she read me several of her picture books, including Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse. We're going to see a play of this book next month with the homeschool group - should be fun.

# posted by Annalise @ 3:22 PM

I find myself feeling vaguely guilty when Sophie and I are out and about during the school day - I feel like people are looking at us and wondering why we aren't in school, or at least doing school-like things. I'm ignoring the feeling, though, because I'm confident that she's learning a lot more than she was at school. She is so interested and eager about everything, it's a delight to watch her learn.

We're shooting through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - she's loving it, and it's good and cliff-hanger-y, so it keeps her attention. It's also a good book for sparking off creative activities. For instance, today she came up with a few creative candies that she'd like to see Willy Wonka invent. Her favourite was a chocolate bar that would unwrap itself ("because often I can't get the wrappers off, mom!") and would then throw its own wrapper in the trash. (Yes, this is a girl who has a slight problem with picking up after herself ...) She drew a picture of each candy and wrote a little about each one. Her spelling is still highly idiosyncratic, to say the least. "Unickspecktid", for example, is Sophie for "unexpected". I like the way she doesn't worry if she doesn't know a work - she just goes for it. I do make sure that she learns to spell a few more words correctly each day, though.

And she's reading Ramona the Pest as well. That one's not as gripping, it's her "nothing else to do" book, for times when she's stuck in the car etc.

She's having fun playing with numbers at the moment. I took a math book out of the library yesterday while she was at storytime, and we worked through half of it today. And Aunti Pasta's Fraction Game arrived this morning (thanks to Mani for mentioning it) - so we played that several times. She loved it! Real-life math this evening - we are in the throes of selling those accursed Girl Scout cookies, so she needed to add up the number of boxes sold, and figure out how many more she needs to sell before she meets the troop-imposed goal. Which is, I might tell you, sixty boxes per girl. Sixty!! SIXTY!!! All very well and fine for those Brownies whose mommies and daddies will sell lots at work, or who have kindly relatives close at hand, but a bit grim for those of us who don't have those resources. But I digress.

What else? Lots of time playing outside. We went for a long bike ride at Blanchard Park - the weather is perfect. It's cooled down a bit from the unseasonally-hot mid-eighties we were experiencing a few days ago, and is now brisk and fresh and gorgeous.



And storytime at the library, and gymnastics, and Brownies. And lots of painting and drawing. Today she made a collage to commemorate our recent trip to NYC (as did Emily). They used brochures, theatre, movie and plane tickets, as well as photographs they'd taken. We'll take the collages in and get them laminated tomorrow, they'll be nice reminders of our holiday, as the girls will be able to use them as placemats.

We got back into the swing of things today after our winter break. It was a good day.

It's the anniversary of Carl Sandburg's birthday today, so we read "Fog", talked about metaphor, and then Sophs painted a picture of fog. And then we did an experiment to create fog. The experiment was courtesy of a science activity journal which I bought at the Scholastic warehouse sale last month; they're having another sale at the end of this month and I think I'll probably go.

Picture of the scientist at work:





The reason I knew it was Carl Sandburg's birthday was that a few months ago I bought a book called Doing the Days - it has interesting prompts and activities for each day of the year. I really like it.

We also started reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This is another of the books that Sophie missed out on, being the third child : I think she wasn't yet born when I read it to Steve and Ems. She is absolutely entranced by the story; literally on the edge of her seat during the bits where Charlie is opening the chocolates to see if the Golden Ticket is inside. I think we'll watch the video when we're done, and she can see where the book and the movie differ.

I found this site which gives ideas for activities around the book, and we used one of the ideas today - namely, estimating the number of each colour m&m in a little bag. Sophie's estimates were really accurate. I was surprised, specially considering how way-off she usually is on the estimating questions when we play Cranium Conga. After she'd estimated, and compared her estimates to the actual number, she made a graph, and then ate the m&m's. Pretty stupid activity for me to suggest, since I am trying to lose some holiday-induced pounds (curse that Starbucks peppermint hot chocolate) but I am proud to say that I did actually manage to resist the lure of chocolate.