Getting to Know Dickens

After spending two Christmases of reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, we finally have arrived at the Victorian period in our history study to justify spending more time learning about the man and his novels that serve as very strong social commentaries of what life was like in the Victorian times for the poor.

One of the Museum of London's workshops, Dickens in context, serves as the perfect tool for us to combine the study of both history and literature in the same session.

The workshop started with a drama session where 'Charles Dickens' was in one of his press conferences, with the children participating as reporters who asked him questions (prepared by the museum beforehand) that were designed to weave together his life story, the novels that he had written, and the Victorian society in general.

The session was cleverly designed to engage the children, so that everyone could get a really good idea of the context of Dickens' novels and characters even if they have not read all his work.  Another point of interest is that we met Lucinda and her daughter at the workshop, who are both as lovely in person as they are on her blog.

The group then had a good hour to explore the People's City gallery, which showcase many artefacts that trace the rapid economic and social changes that took place in London from the Victorian times to the beginning of the Second World War.

The rest of the day was spent in an object-handling session where the group was shown real Victorian objects that they were to guess/identify the items and what they were used for, as well as the socio-economic class that those objects would have belonged to.  The class divide was very pronounced in the Victorian times -- people today are still as obsessed about it although most have learnt to be more discreet -- so it was not difficult to figure out that the chimney broom and the shoe-shine box belonged to the working class while the hand mirror and the jewelry box belonged to the mid-to-upper middle class.

All the work done by the group that morning, i.e. the drama session, gallery viewing, object handling, culminated in a final, creative writing session where the children were given a short excerpt of one of Dickens' novels (each group had a different excerpt) and a visual representation of a Victorian scene (again, each group had a different picture), and they had to do a simple analysis of his literary techniques before attempting to write their own version of a descriptive paragraph in the Dickensian style in 10 minutes.

The group was of mixed ages (the children were 10 to 14 years old) and mixed abilities (some children are natural writers, while one or two struggle with putting words on paper), as is typical of homeschooling groups, so this final exercise was quite challenging for a few in the room but everyone attempted it in good spirits and was happy to share their individual writing with one another at the end.  I was very impressed with the positive attitude of everyone in the room, and even more with the quality of the paragraphs each one wrote in the short time.

The Greatest Detective

A Sherlock Holmes pantomine kicked off our interest in the most famous detective who was invented in Victorian England.

We had never watched a pantomine before (because they can be too silly for our taste) so I took a risk by taking Tiger to see this outdoor show since it could potentially turn him off the whole idea of Sherlock Holmes before we even got started.  Luckily Tiger found this production to be quite funny (his own humour is quite quirky so it is often hard to tell which way things would go) so that was a good start.

Tiger then worked his way through the numerous related books (fiction and non-fiction)

that are related to the Sherlock Holmes exhibition at the Museum of London.

The exhibition is a must for fans of the great detective, of which Tiger is one.  It contains many of the memorabilia of the characters in the story, the background of the story (i.e. Victorian England), and some facts about Arthur Conan Doyle.

While we were there, Tiger also attended a creative writing workshop, which started with the workshop leader sharing his method of writing fiction with the children, highlighting techniques such as characterisation and plot development.  The children then spent some time in the People's City gallery, specifically the Victorian Walk, where they would experience the sights and sounds of a replica Victorian quarter, in order to get some inspiration for their writing exercise when they returned to the workshop room.

Tiger learnt a few tricks for writing fiction, and told me that he enjoyed the session but what he has been enjoying the most is reading all the adventures of Sherlock's younger years.

Hello? Hello!

The Victorian era was a time of rapid social change, not least due to the Industrial Revolution which carried with it much scientific innovation and inventions.

One of the inventors from this period is Alexander Graham Bell, who is most famous for his invention of the modern telephone.

Surprisingly, I cannot not find a suitably interesting documentary about Bell, but we did manage to hear a recording of his voice when it was transmitted successfully over the first telephone.

Tiger then read another biography of Bell's and I had him write a short narration of what he has read, which he completed dutifully (meaning: he was less than keen at the idea but did it anyway).  On hindsight, I am not sure that making Tiger write a report proves anything other than that the action created a paper trail of what we did; I am not even sure that it shows evidence of real learning!   I suppose it provided me with some comfort to know that Tiger can write a short report when it is required of him.

We then moved quickly onto the more fun, hands-on part of making paper-cup phones by joining two cups with a piece of string.  Tiger was amused at the result when we were able to communicate to each other from different rooms through our homemade "cup-phones", and he soon forgot the pain of having been made to write a report to allay his mother's momentary, unfounded anxiety with regards to his writing ability.

We are also very lucky in our learning environment to be able to attend a sound workshop with fellow homeschoolers,

where we were treated not only to a wide variety of learning opportunities, from the history of broadcasting to the basics of how sound translates to hearing,

the workshop leader was also very engaging with the children and she was able to demonstrate the basic principles of sound variations using equipment that would be slightly challenging to find at home, such as the one below which demonstrates the relationship between the frequency of sound and vibration:

What the children enjoyed most was being able to get their hands on the numerous exploratory equipment that helped them discover the principles of sound in action.

Even though many of the basic principles of sound can be demonstrated successfully at home with simpler homemade apparatus, I still appreciate opportunities like this where Tiger is exposed to more sophisticated equipment.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/24/15
2. Finishing Strong #48
3. History and Geography Meme: What You Have Been Doing This March
4. Collage Friday: Some Homeschool Weeks (Years?) Are Just Like That
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with all the review
6. My Week in Review #30
7. Science Sunday: Experimenting with Model Rockets, part 3

Getting a Little Help From Mr. Tolkien

"Mum, may I use your computer to do some research on an aircraft?  I'm writing a mini essay and I need to know a specific detail about this aircraft,"  Tiger asked me a few days ago.

Wow, the boy wants to write an essay?!  Under such unbelievable circumstance, of course I let him use the computer for as long as he liked.  It turned out that he only needed five minutes.

I saw Tiger scribbling down some notes as he said to me, "Writing notes in the margins is a really good idea!"

We have not done as much formal writing as I would like to have so I was curious about where Tiger has learnt that idea from.

"I learnt it from Mr. Tolkien," was his reply.

"Which Mr. Tolkien?"  I pursued.

Tiger said very matter-of-factly, "J.R.R. Tolkien who wrote The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and all the rest of the books I've been reading."

Seeing that I still had a puzzled look on my face, Tiger pointed to a book on the bookshelf and explained, "I finished reading this book last week, and it explains Tolkien's writing process.  He wrote a lot of notes in margins."

I see.

Later that evening, Tiger showed me what he has written on the A4 page.  I am not at liberty to show that piece of writing here so I can only describe it: it is a short paragraph explaining the history of the Hawker Hunter, complete with hand-drawn illustrations showing the plane at various angles, both front view and side view.

I am not surprised at the illustrations since Tiger has been practising his drawing.

I am somewhat surprised at the coherence of his writing, as well as the motivation and tips that he has picked up from his reading of Tolkien's work.  For a boy who strongly prefers to direct his own learning, it is absolutely within expectation for Tiger to pick his own teacher.  I am very glad to see that his years of reading good books have helped to form his ability to identify excellence and beauty in writing.  I can't think of anyone who is more qualified for the job of a writing mentor than Mr. Tolkien is, can you?

A Few Surprises, Literally

The week started with a creative writing workshop at the British Library.

Tiger and I attended the workshop with much interest.  While Tiger was just generally happy to be out and about and seeing other children, I was curious to see how he fared at a writing activity as we have not done very much formal writing in the past.  I was pleasantly surprised to see Tiger being really engaged throughout the workshop and participating eagerly in the various writing games and exercises, even to the extent of reading aloud his draft towards the end of the session.

The next day Tiger went to the first of a series of creative writing classes held in a homeschooled friend's kitchen.  The class is made up of six homeschooled children, ages 9 to 13, and a tutor who guides them through discussions and techniques.  Tiger says he loves this class for its intimate atmosphere where everyone sat around the small dining table and had plenty of opportunities to discuss their ideas and respond to one anothers' writing.  It also helps that the creative writing tutor is the same man who also teaches Tiger drama at another location, so they are already familiar and comfortable with each other's teaching-learning styles.

The class has obviously been a success, as Tiger came home inspired to write three different drafts followed by two different short stories.  I don't think I've ever seen him write so much and for such a long time at one go.

The good start to the week led to more positive things.  The boy who resisted playing the piano and who hadn't done so for two years suddenly sat and played a few tunes one day.  Seizing the moment, I asked Tiger whether he would like to learn to play new pieces, and he said yes!  So I taught him two more pieces whereby I was amazed at his newfound patience to persevere through the difficult sections to practise over and over again until he mastered them.  Compared to his typical response two years ago whenever we came upon a new, unlearned part ("This is too hard!  I've had enough!"), his sudden willingness to keep trying really took me by surprise.  Needless to say, I am over the moon about this.  I continued to feel really pleased when Tiger practised the new pieces on his own, without needing to be prompted, and couldn't wait to show Tortoise in the evening what he has learned.

Tortoise is of course very happy to see Tiger's renewed interest in playing the piano, so the two of them have been spending some time in the evenings doing improvisations at the piano. 

We also did a bit of maths -- looking at patterns and square numbers.

The irony about having such a seemingly 'great' (i.e. productive) week at the start is that it leaves this mother thinking, "Why can't we be so productive every day?"  Success breeds success, doesn't it?  I was all geared up to give Tiger a tonne of work when I stumbled upon this article that made me say to Tiger, "You know what?  The days are getting shorter and the weather is cooling down.  Wouldn't you rather be in your 'fortress' right now while the sun is out?"

Tiger's "anti-wind, anti-rain, structural fortress".

With that, Tiger spent an entire afternoon and a few more hours afterwards playing in the "fortress" that Tortoise helped him put up at the weekend.  My decision to let Tiger play outside in the middle of what seemed like a terrific week almost certainly disqualifies me to be upheld as the epitome of discipline, I am at peace with it because I am keenly aware that Tiger's childhood is quickly passing by.  I don't recall any of the formal lessons I had as a child but I remember the sights and smells of my childhood playtime.  I doubt very much that Tiger will remember any of the superb maths lessons that I give him or the delightful vocabularly pages that he has to fill in, but hopefully he will have fond memories of hours spent under a big blue sheet of tarpulin on a warm, sunny day.

Still, there are ways to combine fun and learning if one looks hard enough.

At Shakespeare's Globe, again!

This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 9/23/14
2. Finishing Strong #30
3. Collage Friday - Improve Your Homeschool: Know Your Child's Love Language
4. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one with the hair, the clay pots, and the guitar solo
5. Home Education Blog Link Up #17
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (9/27/14)

Focus on Crocus

We decided to extend our nature study from our nature walks by focusing on a few of the spring flowers.  We started with the crocus since it bloomed only for a very short time compared to some of the other flowers.

We followed the suggested observation points listed in the Handbook of Nature Study, pages 547-549.  This book is a very good place to start being closely engaged in nature observation as it provides much detailed background information on the topic/plant in question, as well as excellent questions and suggestions for study that we hadn't even thought to do before.  For example, prior to using the book, we had not thought to count the number of leaves of the crocus plant.  As it turned out, a crocus plant usually has four or eight leaves each.

After our outdoor observations, we brought one flower indoor to study it further.  We looked at the flower closely from different angles, looked at its various parts, measured its style, and cut it open to see what's inside.

I then asked Tiger to make an entry in his nature journal.  The crocus flower is a very simple design which makes it ideal for observational drawing.  After a slight protest, and seeing that I was making my own journal entry, Tiger got on with the task.

After Tiger has completed the first drawing, I asked him to draw a cross-section of the flower by copying the diagram from page 548 of the Handbook of Nature Study:

In my effort to get the most out of this unit, I made a pre-cursive handwriting worksheet by typing out an excerpt of the poem, The Crocus, by Harriet E.H. King (also found in the Handbook of Nature Study) and gave it to Tiger to practise his handwriting:

I know there are many points of view about the importance of handwriting.  It is fashionable nowadays to argue that in the digital age, handwriting or penmanship has become an obsolete practice.  My view is that handwriting is important for developing neuro-pathways, the process of which cannot be totally replaced by the act of typing.

I did not push too hard on handwriting while Tiger was little and was developing his fine motor skills, but as he gets older I expect him to write legibly and tidily, if not beautifully.  This is why I am insisting upon good handwriting from him from now on, with plenty of practice using the handwriting worksheets that I will be printing out for his copywork.

To show my support for Tiger's effort at journaling, I made an entry alongside him.  Somehow, having mum work alongside him makes the tasks of drawing and writing more tolerable.

This is part of our flower study series, otherwise known as:

This post is linked up to:

1. Nature Study Monday: It's March! NSM! Link Up!
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/25/14
3. Virtual Refrigerator - Obey
4. Entertaining and Educational - Science of Light
5. Collage Friday - Great Homeschool Convention Recap
6. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with the Crazy March Snow
7. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (3/29/14)
8. Science Sunday: Science Activities for Kids

 

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}

Be Sociable!

With the exam out of the way, Tiger and I started to look for recipes to make foodie gifts for people.  We haven't set out to do it this way, but this year our Christmas theme seems to be "simple", especially if we were to compare it with our efforts last year.

This year we made Coconut and White Chocolate Snowballs.

It is so easy to make that we made two batches of them to give to everyone.

Next, Tiger made cards to accompany the foodie gifts.  Again, this year's cards are very straightforward to make.

The material list:

• foam Christmas tree template
• green and red ink pads
• alphabet stamps
• strong craft cards
• Christmas-theme craft papers
• sequins
• glue and scissors

To make the card:

1. Choose a Christmas-theme craft paper and trace the tree template.
2. Cut of the tree shape.
3. Paste it on the front of the card.  Decorate the card with sequins.
4. Stamp the words "Merry Christmas" inside the card using the alphabet stamps.  Tiger alternated the red and green inks for his words.

Once we've made our gifts, it was time to socialise with friends again.

I spent a day at a drawing workshop with my artist friends.  Tiger tagged along and did a few drawings as well, but mostly he was enjoying himself by being a social butterfly during break times.

Tiger knew about half the people there, but by the end of the class he has made friends with everyone in the workshop, engaging each person or a small group in turn with various topics.  I sat in a corner of the studio and talked with my own friends but all the while keeping half an eye on Tiger as he exercised his socialising prowess around the room.  Some of the topics that I managed to overhear him talk to the adults about were:

• the two world wars
• making paper aeroplanes
• military blunders
• drawing, art, collage, Matisse
• homeschooling, what he is learning at home

At the end of the workshop, a few people whom we met for the first time there came up to me to tell me how delighted they were to meet Tiger and how impressed they have been by his overall demeanour.  I thanked them for their kind words, and was pleased that Tiger has contributed to some positive P.R. towards the overall impression people have of home-educated children.  A few people there had never met a homeschooled child before.  Now that they have met and talked with one in real life, I hope they will be able to rely on this experience and apply their critical thinking ability (assuming it is still intact) to avoid being duped into believing the ridiculous myths about homeschooling children.

There is certainly no shortage of opportunities to socialise this week!

We topped our reading of A Christmas Carol by spending a day at a homeschool creative writing/book club.  The book club is led by a homeschooling mum-of-six who used to be an English teacher.  The format of the club is such that the children spend the morning discussing the book as a group, noting several points of interests, such as the author's writing style, or use of descriptive techniques.  This is followed by a short creative writing exercise where the children will work in groups of two to five to get their drafts in before lunch.

Lunch there is a highly sociable, community event.  Each mum brings a dish to share at lunch so food is always plentiful and delicious.  This week being our last meeting before Christmas, lunch is especially scrumptious and in abundance, which is a truly wonderful way to enjoy the festivity.  The children usually wolf down their lunch and run outside to play for an hour or so while the adults stay indoors to tidy up and chat.

In the afternoon, the children present their work to the group.  Previous presentations include an adaptation of a novel into a play, a short paragraph written in the style of an author, and descriptive writing.  On this occasion, the children were tasked with writing their own Christmas carol based on the structure and storyline of Dicken's story.  I have been constantly impressed by the children's creativity and by the quality of their work, individual ones as well as group projects.  Above all, I am grateful for the opportunity to be in the company of these parents who are contributing so much to creating the most suitable educational environment for their children.



This post is linked up to:

1. Entertaining and Educational - Christmas
2. Collage Friday - Remembering Ecuador
3. Weekly Wrap Up: The One that will be Hard to Top for a While
4. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {December 21, 2013}
5. Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/24/2013

By Invitation Only

Something happened recently that has caught me off guard: Tiger invited me to do some shared writing with him!

I know some children are natural writers who are born with a pen in their hands and who just seem to churn out page after page of novels.  Not my boy.  Although he can talk non-stop for hours on end, Tiger has never been one to put more than a few words or a single sentence on paper.  That's why this particular invitation to write, coming from Tiger, is such a big deal to me.

In the summer, I bought him a creative writing book targeted at boys and he seems to have fallen in love with it.  He asked to keep the book by his bedside so that he can work on it little by little, and he doesn't want anybody to see what he is writing.  I think that's his way of protecting his creative muse from Mum's criticism, which is very wise indeed.

Tiger has been working in the book by himself for a few months, only updating me occasionally of his progress.  Each time I asked him whether he wanted me to take a look at what he has done, he said, "No, thanks.  I'm doing fine."  With that, I left him to it as I didn't want to spoil his fun by making the process overly structured, as often happens when this Mum takes over.  However, last week he suddenly invited me to work with him on one of his stories (apparently he is working on three different stories concurrently).  Yay, partnership writing minus the instigation on Mum's part!

While I have a copy of Partnership Writing that is full of great ideas to be used to help children in the writing process, the let's-sit-down-and-write-something approach has never worked with Tiger.  He's not even keen about Friday Freewrite as an introduction to writing.

Regardless of how interesting an activity is, if it is assigned by Mum, Tiger instantly sees it as a task, i.e. something to be completed that he hasn't necessarily chosen to do for and by himself.  Most of the time he does well to complete the tasks diligently but being dutiful is not the same as being on fire.

“When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.”

  -- John Taylor Gatto

When Tiger extended the invitation to me last week, I almost couldn't believe it.   I'm not exaggerating when I say it feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (to me).  What do you do when the opportunity of a lifetime comes around?  I drop everything else and run with it.

We were out last week so we didn't get to sit at our desk until yesterday.  When Tiger reminded me that he wanted us to write together, I let go of the one million other homeschooling tasks I had planned for us to do.  Instead, I let Tiger take charge by asking him to share how he envisages our partnership writing to work.  He had a few good ideas, so we brainstormed for a bit and bounced our ideas back and forth before deciding that we would work together by writing one sentence each in an alternating manner.

The story prompt that Tiger chose was about tarantulas escaping from a tarantula farm (remember, the book is meant for boys).  There was a lot of laughter as we passed the book to each other, taking turns to write the next sentence.   Since the writing was done in a very relaxed manner -- laughter is a great relaxant -- Tiger even asked me for suggestions to improve his sentence structures and the way he conveys his ideas.  Under normal circumstances, he would have been too defensive to even listen.  It just goes to show that children learn best when they are happy and relaxed.

It took us a good part of yesterday to complete our three-page story and Tiger is keen to write the next story in a similar way.  Even though we did not get much else done yesterday apart from writing, I'd say that it has been a successful day.


This post is linked up to:

1. Look What We Did 
2. Hip Homeschool Hop - 10/22/2013
3. Collage Friday - A Productive Week
4. Entertaining and Educational - Learning with Music
5. Weekly Wrap-up: The One with the Battle Against Illness
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {October 26, 2013}

Just Messing About on the River

We started our study of The Wind in the Willows by having shared reading sessions between Tiger and I of the original, unabridged version of the book.  This is part of our language arts lesson using a corresponding back issue of The Arrow to help us get deeper into our reading.  So far so good.  Our first session went on easily enough, with a surprise in store for me as I dictated two fairly long sentences taken from the first chapter of the book for Tiger to write.  I was half expecting Tiger to encounter some difficulty at this point since we did not do any dictation or spelling last year.  Furthermore, Tiger has never been too keen on writing more than a few words on paper.

Maybe it is the summer, or perhaps Tiger found the new format intriguing.  Anyhow he managed to write the entire dictation passage down without making any mistake in spelling or punctuation, and he wrote it in cursive handwriting!

I suspect this sudden improvement in Tiger's ability to write neatly and to spell accurately has to do with a few things:

1. A gradual and natural maturation over time that helps with his fine motor skills - I had tried to enforce daily practice of cursive handwriting at the beginning of the year but that soon fell by the wayside because Tiger has never been keen on repetitive tasks.
2. Reading voraciously.  I'd really like to claim credit for Tiger's spelling ability, but without having done any spelling activity in the previous year, Tiger's ability to spell accurately can only be attributed to his exposure to words from reading many good quality books. 

We then watched a short clip that gave us some background to the book:

The following book gave a more detailed description to the background of Kenneth Grahame, his life, and the motivation behind the story:

This post is linked up to:

1. Hobbies and Handicrafts - August 23
2. Collage Friday - Week 1 of The Big Change!
3. TGIF Linky Party #91
4. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where Our First Break Week Sped By
5. Homeschool Review - with a Science and History Focus
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {August 24, 2013}
7. Hip Homeschool Hop - 8/27/13