Illustrating Oz (spoilers included)

We are now reading the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. If you are anything like me you will read that title and think "what? seriously? at age 4?" because I know that's what went through my head when I found it on a list of read aloud books for grades k-3. The real problem is that I had only ever seen the movie, which is definitely not for grade k, maybe not even for grade 3, but the book is a completely different animal. Sure there have been deaths I had to explain (most notably that of the wicked witch of the east) and some other bizarre conversations that have taken place (evil is a difficult thing to define) but on a whole the book is really kid friendly and is much longer and more involved than the two youth books we'd read previously, which is a really good thing.

It is going to take us nearly two weeks to get through the wonderful Oz, and in order to enhance comprehension and immersion in the book Calvin has been illustrating the events as they happen. I'm looking forward to the picture book we'll have when we are done.

Aunt Em's house (complete with portriats of Dorothy, Uncle Henry, Aunt Em, and Toto), and the house being carried away by the cyclone (as it is called in the book).

The house in Munchkinland, and the three munchkins who come to thank Dorothy for freeing them from the Wicked Witch of the East.

The scarecrow does have a body, but it's yellow so it's hard to see here.

If you haven't read the book the Kalidahs will be as unknown to you as they were to me, but Calvin (and Mr. Baum) would describe them as having bear bodies and tiger heads and they are a momentary terror to our five familiar travelers. Where Calvin and Mr. Baum would disagree is the smiles, but Calvin gives all creatures smiles in his illustrations—his world, after all, is a completely happy place.

We'll get back to you when we finish the book later this week.

Piano

Being unschoolers at heart the idea of having a lesson based learning program is not top on our list of things to do, so I was a little sceptical back in March when Jon's bosses wanted to have Calvin on board for the piloting of their still in development preschool piano program. The program included weekly private lessons as well as weekly group lessons. It was of utmost importance to me that Calvin not feel pressured but self motivated to play the piano, and how can we assure that when we're carting him to lessons twice a week at night quite four years old?

We put our concerns aside, however, agreeing to the proposal, and at the same time started taking some measures at home to help it along. It's Rousseau who advocated that the teacher (in a one on one context) should learn, or at least pretend to learn, each subject along with the student. I can't get entirely on board with that—not only is it just not feasible all the time, I don't believe in lying to him to achieve an effect—but there are times when the genral principle makes sense to me, and since I really don't know anything about playing the piano I decided to take it up as a hobby right along with my son. It can be a little daunting to pick up a completely new subject at an older age, especially when sharing the learning process with someone so much younger, someone who most certainly will show you up, but we've had fun "arguing" over who gets to practice now.

My years of musical training are the only thing saving me right now from utter embarrassment. Well, that and the well written adult lesson books Jon brought home for me. I'm making progress and enjoying the evolution of a skill I have long coveted, but it is nothing compared to the leaps and bounds Calvin has made over the past months. In March he knew what the piano was and seemed to show an ability to keep a beat. By June he could play a multitude of his lesson songs from memory with one finger, keeping a steady beat and singing right along with them. By August he'd learned the names of all the keys on the piano and could play using all ten of his fingers, reading note names from a book. Now in October he is he reading music on the grand staff and playing two handed piano and is quite the accomplished sight reader—Im sure a video will be coming soon.

So how does this fit into our unschooling "method"? A common misconception is that unschooling is synonymous with unlearning, or that it means completely avoiding the process of learning by specific method. In fact, some unschoolers might agree with you, but for the most part unschooling just means letting the learner lead the way and fitting the process to the student instead of the other way around. Calvin has shown a remarkable interest in learning the piano. He enjoys practicing and doing the workbook exercises, and he is always hungry for more. In fact, while the original method is spread over a several month period, Calvin showed such eagerness to learn that he swept through it in half the time, something we did not slow down or discourage. That meant that he moved into the next book much sooner than expected, graduated into the next book just as ridiculously fast, and is now on his fourth. Since he is mastering the skills before he moves on we are remaining true to our student instead of to the lesson plan. That has meant being a little inventive along the way, but thankfully his teacher, Jon's boss, has been very flexible in working with him (and just as eager to teach him as he has been to learn from her, which makes the pairing work). It is his eagerness and his work that has made this a success, and that is what unschooling is all about.

The Water Horse, by Dick King-Smith

No we didn't watch the movie (I'm sure you know us better than that) but our youth librarian recommended the book for after Charlotte's Web. The book is no longer than Charlotte's Web and has some of the same vocabulary stretching tendencies, and we had a great time imagining up a water horse. We flew through this one as quickly as we flew through Charlotte, broken up by some side activities again. This time we did a lot of map perusing, getting a handle on Scotland and its many lochs. We also talked about Scottish culture and about the time period in which the book was written. Overall I didn't love this one as much as Charlotte, but they can't all be favorites and Calvin enjoyed it immensely.

Calvin gives the book two thumbs up, and my only real disappointment with it is the edition—I'd rather have found one without full page color ensembles of pictures from the movie. Here is Calvin's own summary, and a picture of the water horse rising up out of the water. It is a cute story.

Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White (our reviews)

Calvin is a good reader. That's not to say that he is reading yet, but that he loves to be read to, and both his attention span and his comprehension are top notch, so when I came across my old copy of Charlotte's Web earlier this week I decided to experiment with the great world of youth novels, or chapter books. I have been itching to delve into that world for some time now but wasn't exactly sure when the right time was. Apparently that time is now, or at least the moment has come and gone, because our week spent reading Charlotte's Web was an enormous success with the one person to whom it should matter (and I don't mean myself).

I had forgotten what a fantastic book Charlotte is—a beautiful meld of fantasy and the natural world, of childish fancy and mature language, of joy and poignancy. There's also a healthy dose of vocabulary building and even science buried right in the middle of a truly engaging story. I figured it would take us about a week to get through the book but as it turns out we could have finished it in just a couple of days, he was that excited about the story.

To check his comprehension I had him summarize the day's reading for his dad in the evening, and to make the book last a little longer I came up with a few side activities, like painting illustrations for the book, reading some books on spiders, and creating a color coded diagram of a standard spider, the latter being Calvin's favorite activity of the week, I think.

And I don't even have to type out Calvin's impressions and review on this book because his journaling has really grown by leaps and bounds. But I'll tell you what it says in case it's hard to read:

Charlotte's Webb
She saved Wilbur. Charlotte dies. Her babies are born.

The picture is a map of the fair, straight out of Calvin's imagination. The pink thing is a pig, Wilbur, and also visible are the spider, Charlotte, the little girl, Fern, and the brown shape is the loud speaker they use at the fair.

Journaling

I haven't blogged about our general activities in a while, but that's not to say that we haven't been busy. I am dedicated to a life of routine, though equally as dedicated to breaking out of it. It's both comforting and pacing to have at least a few landmarks along our daily road; there isn't a day of the week that we don't read and play the piano, for instance. And there are other things that I am careful to squeeze in at least a  minimum of times over any given week, and this month we've added journaling to that list.

Honestly I've never been very good at keeping a journal. I love to write and am continually thinking in terms of journaling, but rarely do my thoughts ever make it onto paper. I believe that writing is an empowering activity, though, and it has always been our plan to involve Calvin in the blog as soon as he grasps the art of reading and writing. With the advent of school for everyone else, and months of cold, indoor days upon us, I decided to get us started on actually keeping journals.

The rule is that we write at least three days a week. I am keeping a reading journal, writing about the books I am reading, and Calvin is keeping more of a daily activity journal recorded in a combination of writing and drawing/coloring. I think he's pretty excited about the endeavor and his writing (both the actual writing and his ability to sound out words) is already maturing with the increased practice. And maybe, just maybe, as a team we'll be able to stick to this writing resolution. It's something I've always wanted to do.