Groundhog at Evergreen Road, by Susan Korman (our review)

A couple of months ago I happened to spot a post on Craig's List for a nearby garage sale being held by a retiring early childhood teacher selling many of her books and other learning tools. I got there just as the sale was opening and could have spent all morning—there were boxes upon boxes of beautiful, practically new books; we came home with over 50 new books, a couple of puppets, and a small stuffed elephant, all for less than $20. Groundhog at Evergreen Road, by Susan Korman, was one of those books (you'll be seeing a lot of them in the next few months) and is a real treasure: the pictures are delightful and the story informative yet fun. We used this book Five-in-a-Row style (more on that later), so we read it at least once every day for a week focusing on a new part of the story each time: one day we read it then took a walk looking for things that made us think of the groundhog; another day we used our kitchen scale to measure out dried beans in the weight of a baby groundhog versus an adult; we colored and drew groundhogs and mapped out dens; we planned menus, we practiced new words, we talked about predators and prey. It's amazing to me the paths that one short story can set you upon.

But before I overlook it, here's Calvin's commentary on the book:

His summary of the book: "It's a book about groundhog. It's about groundhog going in his den and making a den and eating green beans. It is a pretend story but it could actually happen in real life. It is true that a hawk or a coyote would eat a groundhog like that."

He likes the book because "I like the groundhog when he scurries into his plunge hole."

He couldn't pick a favorite part because he likes the whole book and would recommend it to others "for sure."

Any final comments? "I love this book! It's my favorite book." (this week, that is).

I call a mulligan

Obviously time has gotten away from me. There have been so many things that I have wanted to write about here over the past few months and somehow either the time or the words have elluded. Since last I posted here we have continued to read and have begun a flirtation with the Five in a Row curriculum, Calvin and I have both started taking piano lessons, and the fresh season has brought with a myriad of learning opportunities, not the least of which has been planting and growing. I am calling a mulligan, a restart for this portion of the site, in hopes that a slight redirection or redefinition of the space will help me to keep up with content. From here on out I will probably be talking more about the books that we are reading at any given time since, as homeschoolers leaning towards unschooling with a splash of classical education, reading is one of our main and most favorite activities. There will be other topics as well, but the crafting posts were feeling a little bit contrived, if not all together hokie, to me, and I'm feeling the need to relax the schedule a bit more. We are, after all, mostly unschoolers for a reason.

Crafting—St. Patrick's Day decor

Holidays provide such great craft fodder. It was entirely Calvin's idea to make a shamrock craft for this week's holiday. Again, I think he just likes to use the Cricut, and maybe the glue stick. Actually, come to think of it, he's pretty keen on painting as well. In any case, here we are, getting ready for the greenest of holidays.

St. Patrick's Day art

Four hearts and a lower case "t" cut on the Cricut. Calvin removed the cross on the "t" with his little scissors and glued all the pieces together. It was boring by iteslf, so he decided to raid my button collection (which is, thankfully, rather extensive), and we used Glue Dots to adhere them to the shamrock. He wrote "Lucky" just for a final touch, and when we couldn't find a frame in the right color? He painted one.

St. Patrick's Day door wreath

I was never a wreath person before, but I've since changed my mind—I really like having something cheerful and welcoming on the door. When the Valentine's wreath came down, a week or so later than proper, of course, Calvin and I went in search of a replacement. A pre-made spring wreath runs upwards of $30 at the craft stores, and the wreath forms themselves are upwards of $10, not to mention the cost of additional materials, so instead we visited our PTO Thrift shop, which is quickly becoming one of our favorite shopping stops.

At the trhift shop we found a very country (not our style) door wreath for $2, relatively boring fake flowers in a happy yellow color for $1, and two rolls of green and shamrock ribbon for $1. A few quick snips freed the wreath base, and about three minutes later we had a spring worthy front door wreath for all of $5.

Extra spring in our steps

The spring brings with it so many wonderful things to do! Though I'm still convinced that we will have at least one more snow fall before the month is out (and maybe even after), that didn't stop us from enjoying the beautiful weather this past week by spending much of it out of doors.

Already this season we have found emerging tulips and buds on tree limbs. On our walks we have enjoyed a lot of bird sightings, including cardinals, purple finches, yellow finches, sparrows, jays, blue birds, ducks, geese, and, just a few days ago, we were lucky enough to spot the beautiful Sandhill Cranes returning to their nesting ground, which just happens to be right next door.

Also on walks we've splashed in puddles, played in the final remaining mounds of snow, and studied the melt water run-off patterns (he got a real kick out of that).

We've even pulled out some of the summer toys for their first uses in the new year. He was particularly eager about the sand box and the sidewalk chalk.

Concrete operations

Two years ago, when we were first exploring long term education options and were looking to absorb as much information as possible, I read two books by David Elkind—The Power of Play and Miseducation, Preschoolers at Risk. Of all the books I've read on child development I believe these are two of my favorites; They ended up being the final push we needed to embrace our growing opposition to today's style of preschool (the kind that replaces imaginative play with the formal learning and computer time), and ultimately the first of many steps down a road that led us to choose homeschooling.

Though parts of both books deal specifically with discipline and the kinds of "stages" that all mothers abhor, they come back to my mind often for their information on Piaget's developmental theory. I believe it was while reading Miseducation that my knowledge of Piaget went from college text book memorization of his theory on stages to a real life grasp of its application. Piaget held that children must achieve certain cognitive abilities before they can learn certain skills, and watching Calvin grow and change these stages have been pretty marked, and having the means to recognize them has been pretty rewarding.

Why am I spouting all this information so suddenly? Because yesterday I experienced one of those "Aha!" moments, a real light bulb going off in my brain while watching Calvin put together a floor puzzle. Several months ago, the last time we had the puzzles out actually, I sat on the floor in much the same position, watching him do the same three puzzles, and experiencing a certain amount of frustration and anxiety. Calvin himself was having a fine time, but watching him repeatedly try to fit together pieces that could not possibly have connected (i.e. hole to hole, peg to peg, or straight edge in the middle) was a bit like nails on a chalkboard for me. Calvin's only real concern with the puzzle pieces was to put the pictures together without any consideration given to shape or orientation. Several times I tried to gently lead him to recognizing the importance of the shapes, but to no real avail.

Yesterday, however, was like a new dawn. After months without even opening the puzzles he flew through the two easiest ones in minutes and attacked the harder puzzle with an actual plan by pulling out the edge pieces and connecting them first, beginning in the sky and moving towards the ground. He was sorting pieces based on both color and shape. I was astounded. I was pleased. I was also greatly relieved and found myself enjoying the activity for once. Later I thought about all the various leaps he's made in the past couple of months—his newfound understanding of familial relations (Gram is your mother, isn't she?), his sudden interest in and aptitude for learning to read and write, and now his ability to sort puzzle shapes in multiple ways—and that's when the little light bulb went off in my brain. Those leaps and bounds were predictably related and were the signs of his starting to move into the concrete operational stage, when children become able to properly classify and order objects based on one or many factors. It is upon reaching this stage that children are able to recognize simultaneously two different aspects of a single object's existence (the puzzle piece can be the head of a brown dinosaur, and can also be a top edge piece in a puzzle) and successful movement into this stage is necessary before true reading (not memorized recognition of words by sight) can be taught since a child must be able to recognize that a letter can make multiple sounds, and can be not only a letter, but also a sound, or also part of a word.

I made note of my little light bulb moment, like putting the final piece in my own puzzle, in the journal I have begun keeping on our homeschooling journey. Just writing down the discovery made me realize what an exciting moment it really was for me. I think I rank it right up there with first steps, or first foods, only really this one is even more exciting because it is so much more interactive and so much more complex.