Wild Idea Wednesday - Cars Alphabet Book

Noah finished his cars alphabet a few weeks ago, and I finally got it all Photoshopped together and uploaded to Shutterfly. While I have to wait a week or so to see the final book, you can take a sneak peek with this slide show.

Click here to view this photo book

He's really enjoyed studying cars all year long, and I don't think that will go away just because our unit is officially over!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Odyssey of the Mind

Today we celebrated a fantastic Odyssey of the Mind season with a pool party and cupcakes. I couldn't be more proud of our team! Four of our six team members were participating in Odyssey for the first time, and it was really fun to see them develop both individually and as a team throughout the year.

The theme for this year's Primary (K-2) problem was Money Maker, which required the team to come up with and perform a humorous eight-minute skit about a money maker character that has all kinds of wild ideas for making money. They must present four wild ideas (three unsuccessful and one successful) and one real-life wild idea, and the skit must include a commercial, a customer and a character that encourages the money maker. Ours also included a hungry pony, a professional news reporter and an adorable police officer.

Since Odyssey is all about creative problem solving and thinking outside the box, we were excited when the team came up with a unique twist on the problem. We'd recently completed a co-op on the history of money, and instead of coming up with wild ideas for earning money, they chose to focus on a more literal interpretation of "making" money.

What I love most about Odyssey - and what's also the biggest challenge, especially for a homeschooling parent - is that the kids have to do everything themselves, from picking a concept, developing characters and writing the script to making props, creating costumes and setting it all up on tournament day.

The team originally performed their skit at the regional tournament in February but was selected to again present their solution at the state tournament this past weekend. It was fun to see how relaxed they were having performed it once already, and they really got to focus on just having fun.

This was Noah's second season doing Odyssey and Ava's first. They both just love it, and we're all looking forward to many great seasons to come!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Take it Outside

We've been doing this for a few months now, but I didn't want to share while so much of the country was still blanketed in snow. But now that spring is officially here, it's time to share some thoughts about taking school outside.

Keep in mind that here in Florida, our "outdoor season" is limited . . . three months from now, we won't want to be outside much unless it involves a pool. But these days, it's way too gorgeous to be cooped up inside, and merely opening the windows just isn't enough. Instead, we've been finding ways to take our schoolwork outside.

From something as simple to reading on the back patio to a nature walk at the park to collect rocks and twigs (bonus if I'm ambitious enough to use them in an art project), we've really been enjoying our time outside. Several times, we've enjoyed lunch at one of our favorite restaurants (Dandelion Communitea Cafe) followed by an hour outside in their garden doing schoolwork. Next up is Noah's idea of headed up to the "beach" area in our neighborhood to do some landscape sketching.

Is the weather beautiful where you are, too? What's your favorite way to "take it outside"???

Wild Idea Wednesday - More Lego Architecture

Noah is taking off this this one and having a blast. Here's his Lego version of the Eiffel Tower.

Wild Idea Wednesday - LEGO Architecture

Wednesday is normally LEGO day, but our Lego League meeting was canceled today. Instead, I decided to catch up on some schoolwork, including breaking out some of our new books.

I'd recently ordered some DK Readers for our upcoming Great Inventors unit, and Amazon was running a buy 3, get the 4th free deal. I'm a sucker for world landmarks, and Noah has a huge interest in building and architecture, so I decided on Amazing Buildings for our fourth book.

Today, we read the book, and Noah picked one of the famous buildings to replicate with LEGOs. He chose St. Basil's Cathedral, and we worked on building it together. He's gotten so independent these days - and we've all gotten so busy - that I can't remember the last time we sat down together to build with LEGOs. I can tell he really enjoyed it - and I did, too! We'll definitely be incorporating LEGO building into our curriculum more often from now on.

Noah had so much fun with the activity that he also created a miniature Washington DC, adding (from right to left) Capitol Hill, the Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial and Lincoln Memorial to his (already completed) White House.

Wild Idea Wednesday - Our Capitol Flag

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

Okay, this one gets a big photo because it's the big excitement in our house today. I'm putting it under Wild Idea Wednesday because, hey, it's Wednesday and also because it was a pretty wild idea to march up the steps of Capitol Hill at midnight with my four-year-old so she could ask the guard with the really big gun all about her favorite DC landmark.

For some reason, visiting the Capitol building was Ava's only request for our visit in DC, and there was no way she was leaving without seeing it. Her unwavering determination fueled our late-night adventure through the streets of the city.

Though she was disappointed to learn that she couldn't go inside and "see the bills" at this late hour, we did discover that with proper planning you can in fact tour the Capitol - and we plan to do this on our next visit. The guard also tipped us off that you can contact your state representative to request an actual U.S. flag that has been flown over the Capitol building - they fly a new flag each day.

Fast forward two months, and a Capitol flag is the newest addition to our homeschool classroom. Ava was so excited when it arrived this past weekend, along with a certificate bearing her name. It stated that this flag had been flown over the Capitol on October 14, 2010 for Ava Marin Long!

Of course we are happy to have a nice flag for our classroom, but more importantly, it will always remind me of my determined little girl and our amazing adventure together.

Wild Idea Wednesday - Free Homeschool Seminar at SPARK

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

Thinking about homeschooling but don't know where to start? Already homeschooling and looking for some new ideas to incorporate into your classroom?

Jan Zeiger - educational consultant, certified teacher and homeschooling mom - is presenting her Homeschooling 101 seminar at SPARK Enrichment Center on Saturday, October 16th from 11AM - 12:30PM.

Jan, who is also a homeschool evaluator, shared some great, new ideas with me during our evaluation this summer and putting them into practice has really enhanced our learning experience.

There is no cost for the seminar, but you must register in advance by calling or e-mailing SPARK.

Wild Idea Wednesday - Playing Catch Up

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

I'm sure you're familiar with this scenario . . . the homeschool schedule looks PERFECT on paper. There's plenty of time to complete curriculum, work on special projects, read library books, make art projects, go on field trips and conduct science experiments. But when it's time to put the plan into action - HA!

So here we are, a month into our school year - feeling hopelessly behind. Curriculum is going great since that's what we tend to focus on first, but library books are piling up on the shelf, the classroom walls are devoid of new masterpieces and the kids are dismayed we haven't made anything explode yet. The fabulous projects we had planned are still mostly hypothetical, and our afternoon outdoor playtime . . . well, we're struggling to make sure we get the dog walked every day.

Over the weekend, I decided that we needed a catch up week - and that's exactly what we're doing. This week, we haven't done a bit of curriculum. Instead, we're catching up on our reading (which takes a while since Noah usually opts for very lengthy, non-fiction books), painting, doing some money-related science experiments, learning Photoshop (for Noah's cars photo book project) and making lapbooks.

Yesterday, we saw a production of Pippi Longstockings at the Orlando Rep and afterwards, the kids ran around Loch Haven Park. Today, we had lunch outside and read library books in the garden. It's been a nice week. So nice, in fact that I'm going to make "catching up" a monthly event around here!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Asking for Help

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

When my kids come up with questions I can't answer, I'm never shy about asking for help. And whether that means visiting the bank so Noah can ask his questions about money or traipsing up the steps to Capital Hill at midnight so Ava could ask the guard with the really huge gun how she could go inside to "see the bills", I'm always the first to tell them I don't know everything and help them find someone who can.

Our current unit on cars is no different. It's almost laughable actually that I'm even teaching a unit on cars, considering how little I know about them. But when it came time to work on our graph of car prices, going straight to the source seemed much more fun than finding the info online. And that's how today's field trip ended up being at Carmax. I figured that would be easier than driving around to different dealerships so Noah could compare prices on different makes and models.

Fortunately, the folks at Carmax were happy to oblige and turned us loose on the lot, offering to answer any questions as needed. During our visit, Noah learned how to look for the year, make and model and practiced rounding the prices up to the nearest thousand. Later this week, we'll chart them on the bar graph in the lapbook. He's also doing an alphabet photo book featuring different makes of cars, so he was able to get at least half the letters covered in just one stop.

I just pulled his photos off the camera to snag one for this post, but over the next week or so, I'm going to show him how to edit them in Photoshop. In glancing at them briefly, my favorite part is how you can see his reflection in every one!

Wild Idea Wednesday - (Vita)Mixing Up Some Art

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

Somehow, the start of the school year has me ready for new routines and that includes new recipes. I've been in a cooking rut for a while, so I've been re-reading favorite cookbooks for inspiration. Who knew I would find a fun school idea that involved my Vitamix???

While looking for recipes, I discovered two recipes in the kids section - one for play dough and one for finger paint. It was a tough choice, but the kids voted to try finger paint first. I was hoping to get to it today, but the cars lapbook - hot off the press - won out. Hopefully we'll get to try it later this week. 

Finger Paint 

½ cup (120 ml) cornstarch

3 tablespoons sugar

2 cups (480 ml) cold water

Food coloring

Place the first three ingredients into the container. Secure lid. Select VARIABLE speed #1. Turn on machine and quickly increase speed to #10; then to HIGH. Run machine for 4 to 5 minutes or until thickened. Divide into 4 equal portions and mix in food coloring by hand. Store in 4 small jars.

Play Dough 

2 cups (480 ml) all-purpose flour

2 tsp. cream of tartar

½ cup (120ml) salt

2 tbs. oil

2 cups (480 ml) water

Food coloring

Place all ingredients in the container. Secure lid. Select VARIABLE speed #1. Turn on the machine and quickly increase speed to #10; then to HIGH. Run machine for 4 or 5 minutes or until the blades spin free. Remove dough quickly as it thickens fast.

My plan is to let them each do some of the measuring then experiment with mixing different colors to make the paint. When it's all ready, I'll tape up some paper in the shower and turn them loose to create their masterpieces!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Ditching the Schedule (and Watching YouTube Instead)

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I'm a planner. I love having a schedule, even if we rarely stick to it . . . although too often I find myself adapting our day to the schedule rather than the other way around.

Today though, my wild idea was to throw the schedule out the window. Our first activity in the classroom this morning (and I used the term "morning" very loosely since I worked until 4AM) was a brand new workbook from the Critical Thinking Company called Balance Benders. As explained to me at the FPEA convention by the woman in their booth, it's the beginnings of very basic algebra. To me, it just looked like something Noah would totally love - and he did. So much so, in fact, that he asked if he could complete the entire book today.

My first reaction of course, was to tell him that I'd planned to do only 10 pages of Balance Benders, then move on to handwriting and Singapore Math. Fortunately, I saw the lunacy in the plan and decided to follow him down his chosen path rather than dragging him down mine.

Seeing him all lit up by math inspired me to look up info on "The Human Calculator", a man named Scott Flansburg who my friend Regina had just told me about yesterday. So after Noah had his fill of Balance Benders (no, he didn't finish the whole book), we sat and watched YouTube videos of this man solving complex math problems in his head in less time than it took the host to punch the numbers into a calculator.

I'm so glad I followed his path, because I like where it led. And to remind myself of this important lesson, I posted a note in classroom . . . Lead less, follow more.

Wild Idea Wednesday - Classroom Organization

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

During our recent move, we cleaned out a lot of the kids' old toys (shhhh . . . don't tell!), which left us with a surprising excess of storage space. This unit from IKEA was going unused in the playroom, so I commandeered it for the classroom instead.

We are fortunate to have a very well-stocked library - so well-stocked that I feel that books often get a bit lost. In our new classroom, it's been reorganized (Noah's reading books, Ava's reading books, learning books, curriculum, etc.) to make it easier to find what I'm looking for . . . but I still wanted a way to make it easy for the kids to go grab and book and start reading (and get it back in the proper spot when they're done).

This unit worked perfectly to house books and other learning tools for the four main topics we're studying this fall. From top to bottom, they are cars, oceans, money and the USA. Larger books fit nicely in the big green bins, and smaller books, flashcards, software and CD's work well in the small white ones.

I'm really happy with how it worked out, and I like having what we're most likely to use separated from the rest of the library and easily accessible. My last step will be to label each bin with the name and picture of the topic so that both kids can find the proper spot to return each item!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Personal Dictionary

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

So the language arts ideas are still flowing, thanks in part to our recent evaluation with Jan Zeiger. One of her specific ideas for making our language arts learning more hands on was to have Noah create a personal dictionary.

The idea behind a personal dictionary is that each time your child asks you how to spell a word, you help them spell it (or help them find the spelling on their own) then have them copy it into their personal dictionary. Not only does it reinforce the learning, but it also provides them with a tool they can refer back to in the future.

In asking around about personal dictionaries, I found that everything from regular notebooks and binders to business card holders and recipe card boxes are being used for this purpose. After weighing the merits of each, I liked the recipe card box idea the best since it lent itself to rearranging the words most easily (to maintain alphabetical order when new words were added). Unfortunately, finding the perfect box - with blank cards and alphabetical tabs - proved more challenging than I'd imagined.

I was still wrestling with the idea trying to figure out how to make it work when it dawned on me to try a Rolodex. So Noah and I marched down to Staples, picked one up and we now have a personal dictionary to house his first 500 words . . . I'd say that will keep us busy for a while!

I plan to seal a stash of them up in a plastic baggie and keep them in my purse; when we're out and about, he can just fill in a card and at it to the dictionary once we're home. You never know where you'll be when the quest for knowledge strikes!

Wild Idea Wednesday - Little Authors

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

For some reason, I've been overflowing with fun language arts ideas since our homeschool evaluation last month. Jan, our evaluator, suggested using more "authentic" language arts activities and made me realize that many of the projects Noah came up with on his own were great opportunities for teaching on this topic. Already, I've found myself picking up on opportunities I otherwise would have overlooked and also coming up with ideas for projects I know that Noah will enjoy.

So when my friend Jill e-mailed me a link about a student publishing service called Student Treasures, it launched me down yet another path. Although their website doesn't explain exactly how the process works, Student Treasures seems to facilitate book publishing for students and classrooms. From what I can tell, they send out blank templates for students to write and draw in to tell their story, then you send them back to be bound into books. For orders of 20 or more, the price is only $6.95 plus $1.95 shipping and handling, making it a great idea for a homeschool group or co-op. A single book costs more in the $20 range - still pretty reasonable, in my opinion.

However, since I have a knack for reinventing the wheel, I realized how easy it would be to use Shutterfly for this same purpose. After browsing the interactive gallery at Student Treasures for ideas, Noah and I decided on making a cars alphabet book. For each letter, he'll pick a car-related term, draw a picture and write a short paragraph about it. I'll scan and upload each page as a graphic file into Shutterfly and teach him how to make the book. I like that this is a project he can tackle one letter at a time and still end up with a wonderful project at the end of the year.

Have you used book making in your homeschooling before? If so, I'd love to hear your ideas for incorporating learning with self-published books.

Wild Idea Wednesday - Living Language Arts

Need some new ideas for keeping learning fun? I’ll be sharing our favorites each week on Wednesday. To be honest, the thought of committing myself to having one great idea every week is stress-inducing, so I’m going to put it out there in advance that I will probably borrow heavily from all my wise mama friends.

So I have to admit that I'm not feeling particularly creative or full of "wild ideas" today. On top of the fact that we're not really in school mode yet, I had work come in from three clients all at once. Please forgive me that homeschooling is not at the forefront of my mind today, but I really did want to take a stab at my first Wild Idea Wednesday.

Fortunately, I got some great inspiration from Jan Zeiger at our recent homeschool evaluation. After reviewing Noah's portfolio, she suggested incorporating more authentic language arts experiences rather than relying on just workbooks. Since Noah's not big on repetition or writing just for the sake of practicing, her suggestions really struck a chord. In fact, I could think of so many things he'd done on his own that would have made great language arts projects - I just never thought to consider them part of "school". For example, when he was really interested in hamsters and we checked out several books from the library, he created his own book about hamsters - wrote a page on each topic, drew pictures and staples it all together - all while I was busy doing who knows what.

She gave me plenty of great suggestions - have him write the grocery list, find a penpal, etc., but I also wanted to find what would be of most interest to him. One day a few weeks later, he shared a joke he'd made up and told me it might be in a joke book one day . . . so I asked if he wanted to write one (and of course, he does). In addition to writing about something that interests him, I like that it's something we can work on over the course of the year, adding a little at a time as the mood strikes.