Category Archives: Homeschool

Children’s Readers

Homeschool

As you know I am smack dab in the middle of teaching James and Joel to read well and love reading. For a Literacy Specialist, this is a little bit like being a kid in a candy store! James doesn’t really need any more teaching – just vocabulary, spelling and grammar instruction. Joel is starting to really pick up steam as he moves from sounding out every letter to remembering more and more sight words. It’s fun to see him growing and loving it!

Six months ago I blogged here a bit about books I love to read aloud to the kids during snacktime, and yesterday I had a lovely surprise of being contacted by the author’s grandson himself! You can find his comment listed below that post, or I can just fill you in here:

“I was happy to read your mention of The Happy Hollisters. My grandfather was Andrew Svenson, who wrote the series under the pseudonym Jerry West. The Hollister children were patterned on the real-life Svenson children: my father, aunts, and uncle. I know my grandfather would be delighted to know that his former fans still appreciate the Hollisters’ wholesome adventures and are now introducing their own children to the books. I know he would also be fascinated with your family’s travel adventures, since he loved to travel and incorporate his adventures into the books.

“I thought you might be interested to learn that we have just republished the first volume in the series — now in paperback, but otherwise identical to the original. If you like, you can read more about the project at our website (and see a photo of the family that inspired the books)“

Here I thought I was enjoying some rare children’s book from the 50’s! In the summer after the third grade my family moved (which is big for a family that doesn’t. ever. move.), and my Mom found me 3 copies of different Happy Hollister stories to read over the summer. I think I read each one 2-3 times! Over the years I always kept an eye out for other copies of books in the series, and never found any. This year it’s James who’s reading them over and over! And I was thrilled to hear there are 30 titles in all! I hope they all get republished… =)

Off to start a school day!

Back to School: The Students

Anthropology, Family, Homeschool


Our homeschool tradition is that the first hour of our first day of the year is spent taking the obligatory school pictures. Hair gel, chairs, collared shirts and all. You all would laugh with us if you saw that the fancy clothes lasted all of 20 minutes and all three were barefoot during the whole photo shoot! The backdrop is Kent’s Costco fleece napping blanket over the front porch grill. Given all that, I’m happy with this year’s school pictures. I took seven or eight of each kid and got at least one serious and one guffaw from each of them.

(His Uncle John face…)


Tears of resistance, despite the blue blalarina dress
(yes, the same one she’s been wearing since she was 2!)
But brothers with funny faces saved the day:

Then we all had to make funny faces, and the results are some of the best photos ever!
You can enjoy them now in the margin at right. =)

Back to School: The Setting

Anthropology, Family, Homeschool

As stressed as I felt to get everything done earlier than usual this month, God graciously reminded me that last year I was flat on my back the month before school. And when we finally started the school year, the kids’ desks and chairs weren’t finished yet! We made it through just fine (and they were built within a week or two). So this year is so calm in comparison! Here is a peek at our schoolroom ready for our big First Day of School!

There may be random holes in the concrete walls. The cupboard may be slightly leaning to the left as the wood continues warping. The sign with Deut. 11:1 is hung with tooth floss and the letter Ww has disappeared, but we are ready for school. And all this wacky place is mine, and I am so blessed to have a space to call my own. Not borrowed. Not on loan. Our schoolroom.

We have three languages to get learning. The kids already speak some Swahili with the neighborhood kids and with our helpers at home, and now that James and Joel are reading in English we will begin French lessons. It is our grand experiment to see that all those language development theories and research are right (or not) that a child succeeds further in a second language when he/she is grounded and reading in the first language first. Should be interesting to see how close we can all get to trilingualism.

So we are diving in (to Second Grade and First Grade and 3-yr Preschool, that is).

Room to Romp

Family, Homeschool
About a YEAR ago some of you asked to see how we painted the boys’ room…
Well, better late than never, right?


For the artsy types, here’s the scoop:

I saw some really cute Dr. Seuss rooms online, and we are major fans and own every single book and read them often and have half of them memorized… So we all agreed on water and their room had originally been painted in water-based aquamarine like the rest of the house. I had someone slop up at least one layer of thin whitewash because we all looked seasick with blue/green walls everywhere. And the result was a kind of splotchy sky color. We decided to keep it with the whole water and sky theme and I think it works (and was less work!)

Just before we moved in, I visited the paint store and from their pallet of 20 colors brought home a few for the purpose of mixing. I had seen this denim blue color I liked on a pottery barn bedroom, so I went to mixing black into royal blue oil-based paint. The fumes are pretty bad, but the walls can be washed! Might come in handy in a boys’ room… It wasn’t quite as dark as I was going for, but works fine. My painting implements were a falling-apart brush and a few Q-tips. Yes, I freehand paint with Q-tips. Didn’t have a lot of other options.

We had raised bunk beds made (which you don’t see because the boys didn’t make their beds and it’s summertime…) covered in a special-order floor-to-ceiling long mosquito net. I sewed the first one from two nets myself, but will try to pay a tailor from now on!

Then we needed closet space. We used Action Packers for a long time, then upgraded to a borrowed bookshelf, and finally built custom shelves to fit our needs. The mahogany here is a gorgeous color and this stuff had beautiful grain (you can almost see in the last picture).


Handy PVC pipe for a rod and voila: closet! It is a larger, more complex version of the one we built in Anna’s room if you remember. Anyway, the boys decorate with occasional sea creatures or road maps – you know, to make it feel like home.


So there is the view from the doorway (with beds to the left). For curtains I added a strip of Congolese kitenge to expand on the secondhand Martha Stewart Living white linen tabbed panel curtain that wasn’t quite big enough. It is looped over a length of rebar painted black. Only the fancy stuff for us! =) The orange fish are only construction paper and won’t last forever, but may outlast the boys’ interest anyway. The only last thing we haven’t finished is the glow-in-the-dark constellations on the ceiling from the Seavers and planet vinyls from Missa Lobba! =) It’s a mini-Dr-Seuss-ecosystem! (if you exclude the rebar and PVC pipe…) =)

They have a gray cement floor, like most of our house. I think a few years back it had a dark green cement veneer, but that has worn off in most places. They have their preschool cars and trains map/carpet on the floor until we choose a more ‘sophisticated’ carpet next time we leave the country…

It works well and the boys like it and that’s really what matters!



Back to School

Anthropology, Family, Homeschool

I’m sure you are hearing this popular marketing phrase all the time, but over here we are not. I’m just finally packing up last year’s mess of work to unpack the new books for 2010-2011. James will cruise through Second Grade. He thrives on learning and if we can’t find him we’ve stopped asking, ‘James, where are you?’ and starting asking, ‘James, what are you reading?‘

Joel will move from Kindergarten into ‘real school’. At his age I was bawling my eyes out in fear over having to stay at school the whole day and actually EAT there! It’s totally different for him. I suppose that’s almost always true from one generation to the next.

Anyway, thinking about this new school year has me battling fear again. This time I’m not so scared of eating with strangers, or even how to organize myself to teach a classroom of 30 busy little people, but rather how I’ll crack the code. What code? The secret code to teaching Joel more effectively. What could be worse than a Literacy Specialist and Certified Teacher who can’t teach her kid to read? He is a tactile/kinesthetic learner and that is like a foreign language to me. My one tactile habit in life is touching all the fabrics in a fabric store, but apart from those few minutes I often feel stuck in trying to help something ‘click’ for Joel.

Anyone out there with tactile/kinesthetic experience – do share!
So far we have done lots of:
arranging things on the carpet (alphabet in order, numbers 0-100, forming complete sentences, etc.),
jumping on or touching these cards,
dramatic reenactments,
jumping jacks after each page read or each math fact said.
One thing our homeschool manual suggested he thought was lots of fun.
‘Fishing for facts’
(with his lovely assistant of course).



A ruler for a fishing rod, yarn for line, and a sticky magnet for a hook make this easy for anyone to create. In this case Joel was reviewing his colors and shapes. He would fish for them from couch to carpet (I tagged each one with a paperclip so it would cling to the ‘hook’) and once he caught one he had to name it!

Cheese!
… I mean, blue triangle.

Did I say he loved it?

Now, if only I could get him this excited about handwriting or books!

P.S. I know some of his hesitancy is due to being young for his class, and that part of learning to read involves individual development as well as pedagogy.

Day Finale of Critters: Misc.

Congo + Culture, Homeschool

I love the word ‘Misc.’
Miscellaneous.
Junk drawer.
Leftovers.
Conglomerate. It’s fun to say.
I used to have a folder of documents labeled ‘Misc’.
Drove Kent crazy.
Still have ‘Misc shortcuts’ on my desktop.
Love ‘Misc.’
Something that doesn’t fit in a category? Just throw it in Misc.
Well, here is my Critters: Misc. =)

We have ants of every shape and size, but I bet you do too.



So big you think they’re roaches in the kitchen.

So small you can’t feel them walking up your arm.


Flies.

Geckos too.

We have dark brown field crickets who, for some bizarre reason, get into our shower drain pipe and occasionally come for a visit. I still have NO idea how they can fit through the small drain holes… Not my fave.

And possibly the most random thing in this ‘Misc.’ folder:


Can you guess?

It’s not technically a ‘critter’.

We came upon it in a national park in the rainforest.

Small elephant skull.
The boys don’t look too impressed.
There was great debate about whether it was a young elephant skull or an adult pygmy elephant, but his teeth weren’t all in.
It’s all in the dental records.
The rangers have a ‘no shoot’ policy until a wild animal puts a human life in danger. Apparently a few weeks earlier this little one had charged people several times, so they finally had to do it.
It’s a huge skull!

OH – CAW – PEA

Family, Holidays, Homeschool, Travels

Our adventure to solve Daisy’s Dilemma (see previous post)
began by 4×4 driving 90 minutes south of here to a small grass airstrip. (One of our tires rolled off into the bush part-way through the trip, but I’ll write about that another day!) We flew out into the jungle in a very small prop plane and landed at Epulu in the heart of the Ituri Rainforest where there is a small population of the only-known relative of the giraffe: the okapi!


The towering trees all struggle for sunlight and the canopy of trees is some 200 feet above us. This picture of one okapi eating his leafy breakfast gives you an idea of just how tall those trees look from the bottom of the jungle floor!


Due to its remote location, most people don’t know the okapi is very elusive. They are not quite ‘endangered’, but are still frequently poached for food. This was a Center on the Okapi Reserve dedicated to helping the species survive. They have sent okapis to zoos all over the world! These pictures are taken of okapis in captivity at the Center, and even then they would run away if we coughed. We had to stand very still and very silent to see if they would approach us. Somehow anticipation always makes the prize more valuable, and finally getting to see the okapi live in person was amazing! They are majestic. That’s the only word that came to mind. Pictures don’t do it justice. Their dark brown/black/blue coat plays off the light so beautifully…

So back to our continuing saga…


We finally located Daisy’s cousin!
Tatu is her name (which means ‘three’ in Swahili).
There is not a whole lot of family resemblance other than long, slow strides, big ears and beautiful dark brown eyes.
She was very shy about meeting with us, but very attentive to our news!

She was very excited for her cousin Daisy and has a 4-yr-old boy herself!

And we got a great vacation out of the deal! =)

Back to School

Family, Homeschool

We actually started September 8, when these were taken.

Anna was running errands with Dad so school would start ‘on the right foot’,
so she missed picture day, but she’ll get her turn soon enough.


By traditional measurements James is in First grade this year and Joel is starting Kindergarten (James still has 3″ on him… for now). My, how time flies!

So here’s the ‘outtakes’ of their school pictures
(don’t worry, Grandma got the good ones – Email me if you want them too)…

…and a glimpse into our school room!

Let the learning begin!