Eye on the Ball, Please! Part 5

This is the fifth part of a series of my termly plans from now until Easter (April 2014).  The first three parts are:

1. Ball #1: Language Arts
2. Ball #2: Mandarin
3. Ball #3: Mathematics
4. Ball #4: Science, Nature Study, and Geography

Ball #5: History and the Arts
British History
It seems that we have been studying Medieval England for ever and ever.  The short stint with Chinese culture over the two weeks of Chinese New Year has rekindled my interest in exploring world history through the trading route of Marco Polo.

The last time I looked, we were still studying the Plantagenets with Edward I and his trebuchet.  There are two more Edwards who ascended the throne immediately after him, so I thought it would be a good idea to round up the next two Edwards before we take a break from British History.

Therefore, in the next two months our focus will be on various significant topics that happened during the reign from Edward I to Edward III, specifically:

• Medieval food
• Medieval queens
• Medieval jobs
• Medieval medicine
• The Black Death

Being the out-and-abouters that we are, there will definitely be plenty of field trips and workshops to supplement our study at home.  Now, if only I can get myself organised to make them happen...

At the same time, because of Tiger's interest and involvement in the Young Archaeologists' Club, we will also be working through the Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets course this term.


The Arts
Visual Art
I have been wondering for some time now why our artist study has taken a back seat this year.  The answer seems to point to the new (and positive) focus that we have been taking in Tiger's Chinese study.  The time and energy required to establish a strong foundation in the Chinese language makes it difficult to carve out extra time in our week to do proper indepth study of any artist's style.   Nonetheless, I am still very fond of going to art galleries and exhibitions, so we shall strive to bring artist study back, now that we have established some routine and method in how we study Chinese.

From now until Easter, I plan for us to study the following artists:

1. Gustav Klimt
2. Paul Klee
3. Vincent van Gogh

In addition, there will be many opportunities in our history study to create crafts so we will be spending time on that as well.


Theatre
As a supplement to his drama sessions, Tiger and I will be learning about another aspect of theatre, physical actor training, from the course here.


Music
Music has been terribly neglected since September, apart from Tiger playing around with the electronic music software by himself and experimeneting with different sounds.  In this respect, he is not inclined to have instructions, at least for now, so I intend to let him just play around with it until he finds his own gaps and feels the need for further assistance.

I haven't found an approach to composer study that I like, but this term we will endeaver to start the process by focusing on one composer -- Beethoven.  There is no particular reason for choosing to study Beethoven over any other composer.  The choice is made simply because:

1. Klimt made a famous Beethoven Frieze that gave us the connection between visual arts and music; and 
2. there is a course on Exporing Beethoven's Piano Sonatas being offered.  This course will be more relevant to me than to Tiger, but attending the course will help me make better contributions to our study and overall discussion about Beethoven and his work.

Eye on the Ball, Please! Part 4

This is the fourth part of a series of my termly plans from now until Easter (April 2014).  The first three parts are:

1. Ball #1: Language Arts
2. Ball #2: Mandarin
3. Ball #3: Mathematics

Ball #4: Science, Nature Study, and Geography
Weather
Before we took two weeks off from our normal schedule to celebrate Chinese New Year, we had spent some time studying the erratic weather in the UK this winter.  It appears that the flood is not letting up at all, so we shall resume our weather study next week.

Since we have studied about the rain (through the water cycle), which is the most obvious cause of the flood, the next topics to follow on from that will to be:

1. storm
2. wind (hurricane, tornado)
3. blizzard

I am looking to using the following book as the main source of ideas for projects and experiments but I shall also be using other resources online to support our study.

Our decision to study the weather is borne out of its immediate relevance to the current state of our environment.  Not only does studying the weather allow us to understand better the environmental crisis that is unfolding around us, the issues involve spans across multiple subject areas such as nature study, earth science, and geography, thus enables us to better appreciate the importance of looking at things from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Eye on the Ball, Please! Part 3

This is the third part of a series of my termly plans.  The first two parts are:

1. Ball #1: Language Arts
2. Ball #2: Mandarin

Ball #3: Mathematics - Addition and Area
The way that we have been learning mathematics here seems to be increasingly topic- or themed-based rather than curriculum-based, which suits us fine.  We started off following a maths curriculum, which worked very well, but was starting to get a little tedious for Tiger.  Once we started experimenting with learning-what-we-want-to-learn-when-we-want-to in maths, the approach feels a lot more logical and natural to us and is what we do now.

This term we are going to focus on two topics:

1. addition
2. area

What About Gaps?
It seems that many homeschoolers are uncomfortable with the idea of not following a curriculum in maths.  Usually their biggest concern is gaps in their children's maths skills or knowledge.  Following an established curriculum certainly gives some people -- notably adult and children who are naturally predisposed to a systematic, highly organised way of learning -- a sense of security that they have "covered everything" that a child of a certain age/level needs to know.

The way that I handle the question of gaps is very simple:  I make a mental note of it when I notice it, then I find an opportune time to introduce it.  The next question then is, what is an opportune time?  Well, my definition of an opportune time is:

• when I have gathered the necessary teaching materials/resources; or
• when the topic ties in with another area that we are studying, e.g. there are many cross-curricula opportunities to be created around the topic of geometry, symmetry, tessallations, Islamic art, etc; or
• immediately - we are prepared to drop everything else if it is a matter of urgency to learn a certain topic.  So far, we haven't come across any situation that requires us to adress our mathematical deficiencies immediately.

My confidence in our approach comes from the realisation that:

1. Time is on our side.  Tiger is only nine years old so he still has quite a few years to go before he has to worry about standardised tests or entrance exams.  I might start panicking if we were still on the topic of addition when he is 19 years old.
2. Tiger is capable of buckling down to do the work when it becomes necessary.

Once I got over my initial fear of gaps (yes, I experienced much doubts and fears in the early days as well), I have come to view the learning of mathematics to be more than the acquisition of multiple sets of facts, short-cuts, and formulae.  It is a language of its own.  As soon as I realised that mathematics is a language, I decided that, as with any language-learning, establishing a strong foundation is very important.  Just as a strong language user needs to have a contextual base to understanding and mastering the subtlties of any language, a strong maths user needs to have be able to apply mathematical skills and knowledge for them to become meaningful.  Merely memorising mathematical formulae without the experience of applying them to solve real problems (as opposed to clinically designed textbook problems) is akin to memorising English idioms without knowing how to use them in the right context.


What About Practice and Mastery?
Having explained (I hope) above why I'm ok with Tiger's maths progress not following exactly in the same order or at the same pace as determined by any curriculum, you can see why I can tolerate us dwelling on any topic -- addition comes to mind immediately -- forever.  However, the time that we spend on any one topic is not used on repetitive drills or learning the same set of skills at the same level over and over.  An example is the latest addition game that we played.   Different maths skills were used at the same time to solve that set of problems -- addition, long multiplication, counting, number sense.  When we play maths games or riddles like the example that I have just referred to, both Tiger and I can easily and clearly determine whether he has any gaps in his knowledge (in which case we will work at closing those) or where his gaps are (so that we can direct our effort more effectively)

A tool that I find to be effective for practice is the Khan Academy's maths section.  I've mentioned before our sporadic use of the website whenever we feel Tiger needs to have more focused practice on any topic.  Most recently, we discovered a new feature on the website called Mastery Challenge, which is very similar to a series of short composite tests on various maths topics.  Tiger doesn't mind working on a few rounds of these each day.

To me, it works in the same way as what we have been doing at home to identify gaps and areas of improvement. For example, one of the recent challenges shows that Tiger needs more work on the long division (which we had touched upon briefly in November but not formally worked on yet).  With this information, Tiger watched the two-digit division video:

and worked through the example alongside the video, before attempting several rounds of two-digit divisions on the site.  Working on these exercises enables Tiger to solve a recent maths challenge, but it is not the way in which I would like him to learn long division (even though he certainly can do them mechanically now), so we will spend some time later in the year to learn division in a more visual, hands-on way.

I don't claim that our method of learning maths is superior to any other method, but it is one that suits Tiger's need for variety, applicability, and minimal repetition.

Eye on the Ball, Please! Part 2

This is the second part of a series of my termly plans.  The first part is Ball #1: Language Arts.

Ball #2: Mandarin - Language and Culture
Language
Tiger's Chinese class is working out very well for him.  He has been able to keep up with the speed of the lessons (by putting in a fair bit of hard work) and it is paying off.  His interest and confidence in learning the language has increased substantially because: (1) he feels encouraged and recognised by his teacher when she gave him a classroom assistant role to teach the rest of the class a small part of the new lessons, and (2) he is motivated to maintain his recent exam success.

We are all encouraged by Tiger's positive experience at the Chinese school so he will continue with the course there.  Staying on top of the weekly homework and revisions will be our focus -- there is very little time or need for us to do much else in terms of studying Mandarin at home. 

Our commitment to learning Mandarin also means that we will have to forego Latin.  Boo.  Sed valefaciens, et lingua decora!


Culture
Learning a language is best supplemented by an understanding of its culture of origin.  Getting to know a culture makes the language come alive, so while the Chinese school is now taking on the bulk of language training for Tiger, we are supplementing his learning and experience by watching a few cultural-related clips online.

We find the individual lessons at Growing up with Chinese to be very lively and interesting.  Each lesson focuses on a certain aspect of social engagement, as well as a few tips on understanding the Chinese characters, all set within a story.

For a more contemporary understanding of modern China, we are currently watching the 10-part BBC TV series, Real Chinese:

After we have watched the series above, I plan to continue with our armchair cultural immersion by working our way through the documentaries here.

A new project that I'd like to take on this year is to spend two weeks focusing on Chinese New Year.  It will be very similar to how we usually spend the month of December focusing on Christmas-related activities.  I am getting a lot of ideas for Chinese New Year from Marie's Pastiche, which has a whole year's worth of China-related ideas and activities to learn from.


This post is linked up to Chinese Activities Link Up.

Eye on the Ball, Please! Part 1

This is a bit of a planning post for this term, mainly to help me keep our focus for the new few months.  I realise that it is now near the end of January 2014, but a few of Tiger's classes have not settled until very recently so it is until now that I have a better idea of what our term will look like from now until the Easter holidays in mid April.  Over the next few days, I will be posting up the rest of our plan for this term.

Ball #1: Language Arts - Poetry and Shakespeare
Poetry
This term our focus for language arts is poetry.  This is driven primarily by the happy coincidence that both his drama teachers, without knowledge of what the other is doing, want to focus on poetry.  Tiger has two drama teachers -- one focusing primarily on literary analysis and acting skills, the other focusing on speech and recitation.  Since such a serendipity doesn't happen all the time, I shall take my cue from it and use our time at home to brush up on our poetry skills through our weekly poetry tea where we shall continue to bake and read to each other.  Nobody here will object to more tea and cakes!

I hope to add a little bit more meat to our weekly tea sessions by using the Arrow Poetry Guide, and to focus on two specific poems:

1. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
2. The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

Literature
Somehow this is turning out to be a rather Shakespearean term for us.  To begin with, his drama/literary analysis class will be doing five sessions of The Winter's Tale.

In addition, I found out about a MOOC looking at Shakespeare's Hamlet, which I am personally very interested to attend since I have not read Hamlet before.  I asked Tiger whether he would be interested to study this particular play with me and he said yes, so we are attending this MOOC together while working at our own levels.

Shortly after this course ends is the start of another Shakepearean course -- Shakespeare and His World, which Tiger and I will again attend together.


Grammar, Spelling, Writing
Handwriting will continue to be practised, because I think it is important to have beautiful handwriting. We will start with a review of print handwriting, followed by cursive handwriting.

Most of writing will be covered through our study in poetry and literature, as well as the monthly book club which has a creative writing component in addition to book discussion.

At home, we will change our strategy with regards to grammar study.  Instead of a touch-and-go approach to the different parts of speech, we will focus on just one or two aspects of it so that Tiger can have a good understanding of the different components of grammar.  As such, this term we will focus solely on studying nouns.

For spelling, we will resume where we had left off with All About Spelling level 2.



This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 1/21/14 
2. Entertaining and Educational - Hasty Pudding
3. Collage Friday: The Key to Successful Homeschool
4. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with the Love Languages, Too Much Castle, and New Curriculum
5. Homeschool Mother's Journal {January 25, 2014}