Saturday, March 16, 2024

Lines of Symmetry

After sorting all the Board Games, the next task has been to declutter my Art Room and the Math & Science Room, where things tend to pile up.

I was extremely fortunate a few months ago to receive a very large donation of math curriculum materials from the estate of Dr. Ann Karmos. She held a PhD in Educational Psychology and she spent 33 years at SIU teaching Math Teacher Preparation in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.

During my Spring Break I finally had time to sort through all of the bins. They are a treasure trove. Two things for Symmetry were totally new to me. One was Mirror Cards (I have both the inital 1965 trial edition that they sent to a few teachers to get feedback and the 1967 edition that was published and distributed more broadly). The child holds up a mirror at different angles and sees which designs can be replicated (have a line of symmetry) and which cannot. Very cool.

She also had a massive stash of wax paper sheets and at first I couldn't figure out why. We use them in Art, underneath our gelatin printing plates, but I didn't know why a math teacher would have them. Then I found an example.

Draw the design and then fold it to find the line of symmetry. Because it's wax paper you can see through it to the design on the other side. So clever!

Thank you to Ms. Marion for recommending our school for this donation. It's amazing. I will bring duplicate materials (including duplicate Mirror Cards, Cuisenaire rods, and more) to the April meeting of Homeschool Without Borders for anyone who would like them for their homeschool math stash.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Fun with Board Games

Today is the first day of my Spring Break and I'm using it to sort through all the board games we haven't played yet this year. I'm making three piles: give away for sure, keep for sure, and test.

Overall, I'm looking to see which ones go in the Board Game closet, which are antique or sentimental or I want to just be for me and Zac, which ones I want to give away, and which games I should take apart but keep the pieces. I have a big stash of extra board games pieces for when we do "Invent Your Own Board Game," which we usually do once a year.

I will also often keep the pieces but change the rules of a board game to make it work better for a classroom setting. Some games are just duds and they don't make them anymore. That's the case with FitzIt by Gamewright (it's also the case sometimes that GREAT games go out of print, and we have some good ones here which can no longer be found).

I really like the pieces to FitzIt. I just didn't like the game play. So here's how we changed it to be The Noun Game. I would use this when we are learning about concrete vs. abstract nouns.

Decide in advance how many rounds you would like to play. Children will take turns being the person who chooses the noun. One noun per round.

To start the round every player is dealt three facedown mystery cards from the deck. It's important that you don't know what they say.

Then the person states a concrete noun. In this example, I said "T. rex."

Each child in the circle (including the person who chooses the noun for that round) turns over and reads aloud the three mystery cards in front of them. If the card describes a T. rex, it is a keeper. If not, set that card aside. The reading aloud is often very funny, as the descriptive cards may be a perfect fit or may have nothing at all to do with the noun in question.

T. rex

In this example, my cards said

    Usually unwanted - yes

    Existed over 100 years ago - yes

    Made with wood - no


So I have two "keepers" that match the noun. Zac then turned over and read his cards. One of his cards said "has wings" which gave us a good laugh. Another said "would explode in a microwave." That was hilarious!

All the cards that match the noun for that round go in the center of the circle. Whoever had the most "keepers" that round wins them all!

(As with other games of this type, if there's a tie those cards would remain in the center of the circle and the person who wins the next round would get the whole kitty.)

The cards you win at the end of the round stay by you, because you'll get a point for each, and the cards that weren't a fit can go back in the box. Pass out three facedown cards to each person and the next noun is announced. At the end of all the rounds, the person with the most cards wins!

This is a just-for-fun game, with the emphasis being on learning what a concrete noun is and practicing reading aloud. There's no strategy involved whatsoever. It's silly and we loved it!



Sometimes we have board games without the original rules. Here are some rules I've been looking up lately:

Nim (PDF)

Towers of Hanoi (PDF)

"Lucky Catch" by Gamewright

"Fairy Queen" by eeBoo

Twixt by 3M

Quartett: Tree, Flower, Fruit, Seed by Senta Stein

how to play Backgammon (video)

how to play Backgammon (PDF)
includes a very interesting probability table

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Art History - Dame Zaha Hadid

In my Art History 2023-2024 blog post, I decided March would be Dame Zaha Hadid. Here are some resources and my planning notes:

Zaha Hadid
1950 - 2016


also

The Legend of the Persian Carpet by Tomie dePaola

Building Zaha: The Story of Architect Zaha Hadid by Victoria Tentler-Krylov

Architecture for Kids: Skill-Building Activities for Future Architects by Mark Moreno & Seina Moreno

lesson plans from Art History Kids, June 2023

lesson plans from National Portrait Gallery UK

    Under 5s / Dens
    6-8 years / Imaginary Buildings
    9-11 years / Paper Towns
    12 years+ / Through the Window


week of Feb 26

Sat


week of Mar 4

Mon


Sat

    read The Town of Turtle by Michelle Cuevas

    do Paper Towns activity from National Portrait Gallery
    (work in pairs; give each team a roll of calculator paper, a tape dispenser, two pairs of scissors, and a little plastic turtle; if desired, our collection of wooden animals can also come to visit turtle)


week of Mar 18


week of Mar 25


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Friday, March 1, 2024

Happy Leap Day!

Thursday Feb 29 was an exciting and busy day.

#1 - The children presented their Early Human reports to parents and grandparents during Living History Day. It was a wonderful event!

#2 - We had snack (including tasting all the Hunter-Gatherer foods) and played a round of Poetry for Neandertals.

#3 - We recalled the biography that we read Wednesday for our final figure from the Harlem Renaissance (Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston by Alicia D. Williams) and how much Zora loved storytelling even as a young child. We discussed the figures she would create out of household objects to be characters in her stories, including Reverend Door-Knob, Miss Corn-Shuck, and Mr. Sweet Smell.

Mr. Sweet Smell was carved out of a bar of "do-not-touch Pears soap," and I happen to have a vintage bar of Pears soap with its unmistakable scent. The original recipe for Pears soap is no longer being made. After all the children got to smell the wonderful soap, they did their own soap carving project!

#4 - At lunch we read a Brer Rabbit story. Jump at the Sun referred to these stories many times, but the children were completely unfamiliar with them. We read an early reader version called All Stuck Up and looked at a jar of Brer Rabbit molasses.

The children asked to hear more folktales -- which Zora Neale Hurston collected as her final anthropology report in college -- so our next lunchtime read aloud book will be Jump on Over! The Adventures of Brer Rabbit and His Family retold by Van Dyke Parks and illustrated by Barry Moser.

#5 - After recess, we did an SWI lesson on the < -ling > suffix. See more below!

#6 - The children all went outside to check on the results of their Archaeology Experiment, started on the first day of our Early Humans block.

#7 - Finally, we ended the day with sewing. Everyone finished up their Story Quilts for our Art History study of Faith Ringgold. Children who needed more time took their sewing boxes home with all the supplies they would need.


So, what is the < -ling > suffix?

To begin this lesson, which was inspired by an email I got a few days ago from Fiona Hamilton, we read Lucky Ducklings: A True Rescue Story by Eva Moore. Then I explained to the class that a person born on Leap Day is called a < leapling >. < -ling > is a little-used suffix, so we spent some time looking for other words that have it, like < duckling >.

Here's their list. Can you think of others? Leave a comment!

    leapling

    duckling

    darling

    yearling

    sapling

    stripling

    nestling

    fledgeling

    gosling

    starling

    darkling

    changeling


This morning I woke up and thought, < spiderling >!

It is so interesting to look at the word sums of these words. We realized that < darling > is built on dear and < gosling > is built on goose. I had to look up < starling > and < darkling > (a kind of beetle) to see if they were really part of this pattern, and they are!

We also looked at all of the words we had compiled and tried to see if the suffix < -ling > brings an additional sense to the word. They hypothesized that it means smaller or younger. Yes! It's a diminutive suffix.

This suffix is now obsolete but we could still create words with it and have people understand them, which is what is so fun about morphemes (word parts). We recalled the story we read at lunch on Wednesday (The Secret Cave: Discovering Lascaux by Emily Arnold McCully). If I told you I found a < caveling >, would you know that I meant a teeny tiny cave?

The children also came up with some words that did NOT have the < - ling > suffix. In these words, the < l > is actually part of the base word. I drew a box around the base so that they could see it more clearly.


I introduced Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) in January as part of the "Story of English" block that the older children did. It really helps children with their reading -- as well as their spelling -- to understand how words are built!


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Silkworm Field Trip

A fabulous addition to our study of Sister Mary Corita Kent in Art History!
We got a behind-the-scenes tour with the owner and each of the children got to silkscreen their own shirt!

Make Meatballs Sing: The Life and Art of Corita Kent
by Matthew Burgess

Bob starts by introducing us to the graphic designers

we visit offices, storage spaces, and equipment rooms

he explains the process of screen printing

a design with four colors

he prepares the equipment we are going to use

and gives a demonstration

each child gets a turn to make a shirt

after printing the shirts go through a big dryer
so that they are ready to wear right away

finally, Bob shows us how simple screen printing can really be

he draws a design freehand that he will turn into a printed piece

to do this he creates a resist that will be placed on top of this blank screen
so the ink only goes through the screen where you want it to

Bob also explained that for each of the colors in Corita Kent's designs,
she had to create a different resist

it's time to see his drawing transferred to a piece of fabric

Bob gave us this piece to keep as well


The trip was such a wonderful experience. I wanted the children to better understand the process she used to make her art. And now they do!


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!