Leaving Antarctica

It was about a month ago that Calvin finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins and set out to find more information on the coldest continent. We did our usual and headed to library first, where we loaded our arms with books on Penguins, ice, ice bergs, glaciers, and Antarctica itself. But then I did something I'd never done before and bought an actual unit study curriculum. It wasn't that I thought we couldn't explore the continent on our own, but it's nice to have a map sometimes. We didn't use it as a means of information gathering, but as a source of questions and suggestions so that we had some direction in our book reading and research. That's a unit study use I can get behind, and actually I really enjoyed having at least the table of contents as a sort of road map to generally follow, or to come back to after some side trail meanderings.

The down side to studying Antarctica is that a majority of the animals are almost entirely black and white. Illustrating that continent did not provide the same thrill as illustrating Africa.

What brought the exploration to an end this week was really a waning interest. I am sure there are more ice experiments to be found, and there is always more that can be learned on any subject, but we've touched on all the subjects in the unit study anyhow, and Calvin's head is turned more these days by prehistoric beasts than it is by ice-locked mountains. So I made the final printouts this morning and we dallied over a word search and a crossword, and we played a trivia game a few times. Tomorrow we'll assemble all the various parts of a month's worth of exploration and reminisce before putting them away in a folder, which will likely be decorated with a (mostly black and white) illustration of a penguin.

I am posting a review of the unit study we used, and a comprehensive list of our resources and activities for exploring Antarctica on Live and Learn.

Discovery

A gray tree frog, only not so gray. He'd been hanging out in the lillies by our front path, and he changed his suit accordingly. I had not known they did that, but this very well could be the same little guy we've seen repeatedly on our back deck.

Elsewhere in life, we spent the afternoon with the homeschooling group again. I've always needed certain points of navigation in life and having Fridays for gathering is lovely. The group has been meeting in area parks and Calvin has really enjoyed the activity as well as the chance to interact with other kids. For me, aside from meeting some great moms, the social time is an affirmation and also a resource.

Everyone travels through life on their own path and, even when we all end up in the same room, not only did we get there differently, we bring with us a colorful variety of experiences. I sit and chat and soak up all the suggestions and helpful hints I can, and sometimes I even feel like I have something I can share. To hear that other moms go through similar rough spots and frustrations is reassuring, and to be able to get and offer advice can be sanity saving.

Officially missed

Today was the day. Some time this morning the neighborhood children boarded a bus and went off to school. Some time much later in the day I realized, remembered, that we had missed it. With the suddenly cooler weather the house has been closed up to the oustide world, and we missed the bus completely. And then we went on with the rest of the day just as we would any other.

Legos

Reading about penguins

Reading about giraffes

Drawing krill

More Legos

Exercise and books

Lunch and music

Piano

More Legos again

Drawing maps

Writing about Antarctica

Practicing addition

Art and puzzles

More and more Legos

Bike to the park

Dinner, and reading before bed

Just another day

Counting to 1,000

Chicago may have been a short trip, but it includes a time change and that always throws me off, plus I seem to have found a summer cold while I was unpacking and being under the weather never helps.

Today wasn't exciting, and that was exciting. Sometimes I just need to revel in the ordinary. Calvin is going to town on the workboxes and I think our version of the method is going to be a good fit for us. They might be just the right balance of my suggestions and his control. Today he moved seamlessly from piano assignments given by Jon, to practicing handwriting, to making maps, to playing a game with me over lunch, all things that were suggestions in his boxes. Later he did some math practice, drew some pictures, made a map of Antarctica using his blanket and his new penguins, played with tangrams and then read to me while I rested on the couch at the very end of the day.

If I was to pick one stand-out moment for today, and maybe every day should have at least one of these lest I forget how beautiful every day is, it would be the moment at dinner when Calvin confidently declared that he was going to count to one thousand. And I'd have to include the moment when I'm sure both Jon and I thought briefly of saying "that will take too long" and instead let him just go to it. He successfully reached two hundred and decided that he would continue the count tomorrow. I enjoyed that moment all the way to the park and back, and clearly I am still enjoying it now. That, I think, is the power of any moment to make a whole day magical.

A bicycle built for two

In the wake of my sudden fear induced paralysis of the planning mind (too much guidance? Too little?) I've decided to try a modified workbox system. To be fair, I'm fully aware that some person has produced a how-to book on workboxing and that she is the definitive voice on the subject, so when I say "we're trying the workbox system" I can't really mean it because I've never read said book. The idea is simple enough, though—one box or drawer each for a variety of subjects or projects so that the child has a choice of what to work on at any given moment, and also has a space to keep work that was begun but is not yet finished. We already do this to some extent by keeping our current thematic study materials in a Wonder File so that we can easily tote them to the library when we go, but the workbox system will allow us to have multiple projects going at once, and will allow me to give suggestions of things to do or to plan certain activities in advance.

For this week I filled the boxes with a multitude of choices in each subject, many of them being variations on something to do with Antarctica, his most recent love, others being completely off that topic. Some of the choices are worksheets, others are books to read, still others are notecards suggesting that we play a game or go outside. This morning Calvin pulled out the science box, selected a book of experiments with the page of glacier experiments already marked, and beat me to the kitchen even before I had finished my crossword and coffee. So today we melted ice, we refroze the water, did some all around discussing of the states of matter, and there are two miniature glaciers hanging out in the freezer right now that will be a lot of fun if it doesn't rain tomorrow.

As projects are completed they are taken out of the drawers and placed in a folder on top of the unit. So far I think the system is working, but this being only day two I'll reserve judgement just yet. We didn't do science or Antarctica for all of the day, though. He did some math sheets at one point, and practiced the piano, and he read his book out loud to me while we were in the car running an errand.

And that special errand was another big part of our day. Calvin loves to ride his bike. He rides it to the mailbox, to the park, around the cul de sac. It's such a healthy activity, and lately I'd been wondering about getting back into our habit of biking into town for the library or other events (like ice cream!) instead of driving, or of hitting the paved paths in nearby parks, only he's too big for the trailer and too little to ride his own bike the whole way. I did a little research and found some great options for turning a standard adult bike into a tandem with child, only they were expensive, so I put a request out on Freecycle just on the off-chance...

I know I've mentioned how much I love our local Freecycle chapter, but this really takes the cake. Within a couple of days of submitting a "wanted" post asking if a family happened to have one of these bike attachments that maybe their children had outgrown and they had no use for anymore, I was driving the half hour to a nearby city to pick one up. And tonight we tried it out with a child who was nervous and apprehensive until the second time around the block, and by the third was impossible to pry off it.