A sporty summer

This summer has been a truly relaxed one as far as we're concerned.  I, for one, have felt very rested and am now ready to face starting our new academic year in September.  This summer has been very different from last summer, which I am surprised by yet am grateful for.  Routines can become rather dull.

While I rested, Tiger has been very active.   He passed his grading in karate and is now a blue belt.

He has also been introduced to the new sports of kendo, which is the Japanese swords fighting.  After a few sessions of training, Tiger is very keen to continue with it whenever his karate sensei next arranges for it.

The rest of the summer was dotted with tennis, badminton, tramplining, and archery.

The latest sport to have taken root is off-road cycling.  Tiger has been going out on rides with Tortoise almost every day.  Thanks to the longer daylight hours, they have been able to cycle for one to two hours each time and cover increasingly longer distances and more challenge terrains.

It's not summer for us without having been on the beach, so we did.  I relaxed on the picnic rug reading and sketching, 

 

while the boys dug, swam, and mostly just played.

This post is linked up to:

1) Hip Homeschool Hop - 8/28/12

2) All Year Round Blog Carnival: Summer

3) Collage Friday - All About the Haircut

Summer with Fred

There has been much interest in various homeschooling circles, both in the UK and in the USA, about the Life of Fred math series.  I decided to take a look at the sample pages and liked how the author has interwoven important math concepts into the story, while introducing broader philosophical and historical concepts in a conversational style.

We used the first book, Life of Fred: Apples, last summer and Tiger loved the quirky character, Fred.  We didn't pursue the series further in the year until we found time again this summer, so I ordered the rest of the elementary series , and Tiger read them several times by himself at the start of the summer.

There are rave reviews for the series.  While Tiger loves the series and I think it is an interesting and broad way to introduce some very complex maths concepts to children, I am not sure I would use it solely as our main math curriculum, even though I know of homeschoolers who swear by it.  I get the sense that this series is very successful with children who fear or hate maths, as the series is written in a humourous way to grab children's attention while exposing them to the applicability of mathematics in real life situations via the adventures of Fred.  For a child who already enjoys maths (e.g. Tiger) this series is useful to the extent of exposing him to concepts that he would otherwise come across much later, and to use them as jump-off points to investigate certain areas further.

Having said that, Tiger enjoyed the series so much that I decided to sit with him in August to work through all the end-of-chapter questions to make sure that he did not gloss over the parts that he did not understand.

Things began to become more interesting for us in the sixth book, Life of Fred: Farming, where concepts such as sets and factorials (amongst a host of many other non-mathematical concepts) are introduced in a straightforward way.  I like the way the author is commited to introducing seemingly complex mathematical ideas in a straightforward manner.  Nowadays, many subjects have been made confusing and complex to the learner due to poor quality teaching and/or unnecessarily complicated explanation.  Mathematics, when explained in a straightforward way, should not be an intimidating subject to anyone.

We have completed the series up to Life of Fred: Goldfish.  There are 3 more books in the elementary series, so it looks like we'll be seeing Fred again next summer!

**Note: I am not affliated with the publishing company or the author of this curriculum.  Neither am I paid in any way to say anything about it.  This review is done purely out of interest to share our experience with using this curriculum.


This post is linked up to:
1) Homeschool Mother's Journal: August 24, 2012
2) Collage Friday - All about the Haircut
3) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the First Week Off
4) Favourite Resources: August 24, 2012
5) Enchanted Thursday Blog Hop #28
6) Math Monday Blog Hop #64
7) All Year Round Blog Carnival: Summer

Arriving at the castles

The Normans were the first ones to introduce the concept of castles to England.  Prior to this, the Anglo Saxons had lived in wooden or straw houses.  According to many historians, having the stone castles was one of the main ways that the Normans were able to subdue and control the Anglo Saxons, despite the latter outnumbering the former by a ratio of 3:1.

Interestingly, the very first castles were made out of wood which naturally none survived for us to visit, except for a well reconstructered one at Mountfitchet Castle.  Soon after, the Normans figured out that stone castles would stand a better chance against attacks and fire.

While we had the opportunity, we visited Castle Rising Castle, which is one of the largest and best preserved keeps in England, dating back from the 12th Century.

We have found the documenary on castles to be extremely informative and detailed.  Watching the documentary became more of an involved experience when we recognised and remembered being at a few of the places featured in it:

We have visited and learned about castles a few times before.  To see all castle-related posts, please go here. This post is linked to: 1) Weekly Wrap-Up 2) Homeschool Mother's Journal 3) Collage Friday

Dress them up!

The second workshop that we attended at the National Theatre was a costume making workshop led by the main costume designer there.  The workshop started out with a brief introduction of how costume designers and makers at the National Theatre work, where they get their ideas from, and how they go from having an idea to making the actual costume.

We were then put into groups of four or five to brainstorme ideas on what we have understood so far about costume designing:

Each group was given a well-known fictional character to create the costume for, using scissors, markers, cellotape, and brown papers.   There was much discussing, drawing, cutting, measuring, and sticking together pieces of paper.  One thing I really appreciate about workshops like this is the exposure to group dynamics -- e.g. collaborating, sharing ideas, adapting to others' working styles -- for Tiger.
 

The character we were assigned to was The Cat in the Hat.

Here is a sample of the various costumes created within the 45 minutes we were given:

Once again, we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.  Now, I am on the lookout for suitable theatre/drama classes for Tiger.

A new way to move

We were fortunate enough to be able to take two very professionally run workshop at the National Theatre, which seem to help cement Tiger's interest in drama and theatre work.

The first was a movement workshop whereby participants were treated to some of the exercises that professional actors at the theatre do, for example moving at different speeds in a comfined space in gradations from 1 to 5, or improvising movements to convey a scene or a feeling.  The main project we had to do for at the workshop was to work in groups of fives to create a scene that we were given.  It was a lot of fun and we were most impressed with the professionalism of the workshop leader who also happens to be an acting coach there.

I was so engrossed in participating in the workshop that I did not take photographs of it, but we watched the following performance just outside the venue, which I think would give you an idea of what the workshop was about:

The drama of it all

Pretend play has been, and still is, a big part of Tiger's play most of the time.  I think it's marks the growth of imagination, from starting with him pretending to be a certain character from 2 years old (we have gone through phases whereby Tiger was a Native American Indian chief, to being Bob the Builder, to being certain animals) to increasingly sophisticated one-man reenactments of battle scenes completed with strategies, war plans, self-made weaponry, and armour.

While I have been observing all of these developments with amusement and participation, I have been wondering when and whether to introduce Tiger to drama will be useful.   Personally, I think drama, when delievered in its most sincere way, is a highly sophisticated and creative performaning art form.  For example, I have great respect for actors such as Anthony Hopkins, Patrick Stewart, and Colin Firth.  However, I have not been too eager to send Tiger to the drama schools around here because their focus on children's classes are too much inclined towards the "cool" factors of being on stage (along the lines of Hannah Montana).  I don't share that ethos so classes with such a focus is not suitable for us.

At the same time, I am aware of the short window of opportunity to expose Tiger to the idea of self-expression through drama, with it being an extension of his existing pretend play but with guidance towards sophisticated techniques, before he reaches an age where he becomes overly self-conscious.  Therefore, when a short taster course for children came up at a professional theatre some distance away, I signed Tiger up for it, despite his initial misgivings and doubts about whether he would enjoy such an activity.  I was taking a slight risk here, given Tiger's previous very brief encounter with drama didn't go very well.

To my surprise, Tiger enjoyed the taster course so much that he has expressed his enthusiasm for more.  That's good news.  I attended a short performance held on the last day, which was a way for parents to see what the children had learned during the 4-day course: improvising, moving, creating melodrama, making costumes, making posters, and remembering lines.

While Tiger enjoyed the course, I got a glimpse of the pop culture tendency in the performance and techniques, which makes long-term commitment to the classes offered there unsuitable for us.  Nonetheless, the short course served its purpose to open Tiger to the possibilities of taking drama classes in the future.

The need for flexibility in education

As I'm still in the process of planning Tiger's Year 3, I am finding this particular 3-part video of a recent interview with Sir Ken Robinson to be very interesting.

I am not particularly impressed by the teenage interviewers as they are clearly reading from a script, which really doesn't cut it for me, especially since the topic of school should be their primary concern and I'd expect them to fire questions at Sir Ken Robinson off the top of their heads.  Given that they got to interview Sir Ken as a group, I assume this is some kind of class project reserved for the top students in a public/private school.  I am comforted by the fact that I have personally witnessed primary-aged (7-11 years old) homeschooled children in England conduct more spontaneous, unscripted, lively, intelligent exchange with university professors and other professionals in various fields.... Skip the final 2 minutes of part 3, if you like, it's utterly moronic and cringe-worthy.

Luckily, Sir Ken's response provides interesting food for thought in terms of the need for flexibility in the delivery of education, which can be quickly and easily implemented in a homeschool environment, rather than having to jump through bureaucratic hoops of public/private school.