Two Favorite Fall Books

Ladybug has been obsessed with Play-Doh for over a week now. It came in handy while her father and I were fighting off a bad cold this weekend. Other than occasionally demanding that a parent roll a dough ball for her, she has stayed occupied for long stretches of time with rolling, cutting, poking, and blending Play-Doh. She had air dry clay too, until we realized that she insists on eating it. She doesn't eat the Play-Doh though, so it's all good.

Did you know that when mixed, hot pink and black Play-Doh make a lovely eggplant purple color? Good times.

As usual, I have a ton of books in the house selected for the season and the concepts I'm focused on. Right now that's fall and describing words. I wanted to mention the two autumn books that Ladybug has really latched on to.

The Little Yellow Leaf is a sweet story about a leaf that isn't quite ready to fall from the tree. Not yet, not yet he keeps repeating. He hangs on even after the first snowfall. But after he makes friends with the scarlet leaf also hanging on tight, they both feel ready to let go and fly off together. It's such a gentle story for a child who is reluctant, slow to transition, and prefers to watch a little before jumping into something new. Or just to validate that it's okay to be where you are and feel how you feel. The book's theme was definitely not lost on my child. Each time she asked for the story, or even saw the cover, she repeated fervently, "He wasn't ready. Not yet." 

The other surprise favorite is Autumn Leaves, which Bug requests by name even if the book is out of sight. It's time for me to stop being surprised by my kid's preference for non-fiction science books. I married a scientist, after all. Autumn Leaves is a book of detailed close-up photographs of the leaves of thirteen different kinds of trees, along with surprisingly nuanced discussions of their variations. It talks about veins, symmetry, shine, shape, and more. Did you know that the compound leaf of the hickory tree is actually made up of five leaflets? My preschooler does, thanks to this book! As Bug would say, "Yeah, dat's right Mom!"

Math: Naming How the World Feels

We've been doing the first chapter in Count on Math, which is about attributes of materials. That's curriculum-speak for adjectives. We went to the beach and felt hot sand and cool, rumbling waves. Before the weather got cool, I set up outside water play with toys for pouring, sinking and floating. I listen as Ladybug observes that the sack of potatoes is very heavy, the food is very hot, water is very wet, and oatmeal is very sticky.

The opportunities for discussion are so numerous that I lose track. I have approached this unit with several books, a few planned activities, and a lot of listening. Bug was already excited to talk about her world, so this gave her another way to do it. She has enjoyed Spiky, Slimy, Smooth: What is Texture? and Wet Dog! We also checked out Dry or Wet by Bruce McMillan.

We've done some cooking together, usually where Bug helps me dump and mix muffin ingredients. We also took a walk and collected leaves, which went along with art (and obviously science). The leaves were brought inside and we fingerpainted them. Today we took about five minutes and played with one "hot" coin and one cold coin.

In between it all we've been seeing friends and getting out in the community. Church School began again, as well as Joyful Noise, our music class. Ladybug was overflowing with happy energy during the first music class. I'm reflecting that, much like her father, for this child music is a necessity that satisfies a very deep need.

When I mentioned to my mom that Ladybug likes poems, mom reflected that poems give words to a feeling or experience, often one that we didn't have a way to talk about before the poem. It seems that the life of a small child is all about these types of intense experiences without words. Parents of toddlers eventually figure out that naming the child's feelings can help with temper tantrums and other outbursts. It's so validating. Mom's idea was that poems are a similar kind of validation. For us, this math chapter has been in the same vein: empower the child to express how her world feels, looks, sounds, and smells.

Blueberry Unit Study

So it turns out that if you borrow every book you can with the word "blueberry" in the title, you wind up with a pretty well-rounded blueberry unit study. This is what we've been doing for the past few weeks. Blueberries are in season, and we planned a trip with friends to go blueberry picking. So I hit the library. There were several books that weren't favorites for one reason or another. Here are the ones that stuck:

Blueberries for Sal. A classic. But I guess I either didn't read this one as a kid, or I have a short memory, because I hadn't realized that Sal is a little girl, not a boy! Excellent, since I have a girl. Sal tromps around blueberry picking in overalls, with no girly pretensions like hair bows. In terms of fitting into the unit, this book is literature, with opportunity to discuss science (how people and animals save food/fat for the winter). There's also material there for social studies (family relationships) and art. I know Blueberries for Sal is a Before Five in a Row book. My copy of BFIAR is still packed away in a box somewhere though. (Um, yeah it was over a year ago that we moved). Anyway, you can't "do blueberries" without this book.

Peter in Blueberry Land is your Scandinavian, Waldorf-y fairy tale, and it's delightful. There is so much to talk about on each page. We enjoyed this book purely for the literature, but you could launch into math discussions about relative size, as protagonist Peter is shrunk down to the size of the fairies in the story and sees nature from that perspective. There are also obvious science tie-ins. I didn't go there this time, since I'm doing this unit with a very young child who is not yet 3.

Blueberries Grow on a Bush by Mari Schuh. Ladybug has surprised me before by enjoying nonfiction, and this one was no exception. It's straight science, the life cycle of the blueberry bush, including pollination and winter dormancy. The photographs are simple and beautiful. There's very little text on each page, making this great for a toddler. Bug chose to read it several times. 
 
One Little Blueberry is a simple counting book. I almost disregarded it when I saw what it was, but I'm glad I didn't because my daughter loves it. I am less than charmed by one blueberry, two red ants, three ladybugs, etc...But that doesn't mean Ladybug won't enjoy it. What saves this book from being an ordinary counting book is the little plot: the one blueberry stays in the story for the whole book, as the increasing insects chase it, all hoping to get a snack. Insects are a nice tie-in for this unit, and my Ladybug (led by her Daddy) wound up observing a wide variety of insects on our actual blueberry picking trip, including a very cool blue dragonfly. For unit purposes, check off math. We counted bugs, and Ladybug read me the numbers on each page. 

Blueberry Mouse is just plain cute. It's a rhyming story of a mouse who lives in a blueberry pie, and tells how she eats up her delicious house. For our purposes, I'm counting it as language/poetry because of the rhyming. You could take a social studies angle that talks about the houses we live in, friends, and neighborhoods. I didn't feel compelled to analyze this book, so we just enjoyed reading it. 

To me, something just as important as the unit is how it came about. My daughter is young, and I'm still feeling out our homeschooling style. Yes, I borrowed all the books and decided we could have fun learning about blueberries in a way that enriched our blueberry picking day trip. That's me planning and directing. But I borrowed a ton more books than we actually read, and I took her lead on what to really focus on. One Little Blueberry is a good example: I almost left it at the library, but I saw how Ladybug liked it, so I brought it home. And it really filled out the math part of the unit. The unit was gentle, always fun and always following Ladybug's interests. And that's the child-led part of joyful learning that is so important to me. 

Blueberry picking is my new favorite summer tradition. There are no thorns (raspberries) and no stooping over (strawberries). I highly recommend it!

Sunflowers for Summer

Last month we planted a pot of sunflower seeds, and they have since sprouted into seedlings. Ladybug has her own watering can, and we head out frequently to water them, which she refers to as flowers eating water. From the day I bought the flower seeds, I have been super excited about this project. So I'm relieved that Bug is having fun with it too.

Of course, we've been reading books about sunflowers too. Life As a Sunflower was a big hit last month. Nice photography and simple text, so that it's engaging even though it's nonfiction. Then this weekend I bought To Be Like the Sun, and I'm just in love with it. Ladybug likes it too and requested three consecutive readings today. It seems to be art meets poetry meets science meets spirituality. The text is written as a little girl addressing the sunflower seed that she is planting. She notes the white stripes on the gray seed, then tells the sunflower that although she digs the hole, the seed does the real work, sunflower work, following instructions written on its heart. Lovely.

The story takes us through the seasons, and though the words are few, each page is so rich. The girl-narrator observes that the flower bud is like hands clasped around a treasure. Ladybug and I play a hand game, making tight fists like flower buds that we open up like a blooming flower. As the flower grows, the text names the parts of the plant in a simple poetic rhythm. It encourages artistic and scientific appreciation without being didactic. Ladybug has zeroed in on the word stem when we read this page. When fall comes, leaves swirl and cardinals flock to the bird feeder stocked with sunflower seeds. So Bug talks about how cardinals love to eat sunflower seeds, and she can eat sunflower seeds too. The story ends in winter, with the little girl reflecting on the tiny seed, and how hard it worked to be like the sun. Even the end pages are fun, covered in a design of scattered sunflower seeds. Bug chose to count these, so now we've integrated math into our delightful book. I guess it has everything!

Early Spring: Puddles, Chickens, & Baby Goats

Receding snow at our nearby park

My friend said it very well today: "It's cold, but it's spring cold." Not so bitter and bone-chilling. There's more light and longer days. The two feet of snow from our blizzard has almost melted away, and when I walk outside I can smell mud and new grass. Yes!

Getting in some serious puddle time.

Last week Ladybug was in no mood to participate in farm class, which was not her fault. We'd just had a pretty miserable slog through a lot of snow, trying to walk from the train station to the farm. What was normally a ten minute walk took an hour. Yuck. So when we did get to the farm, we warmed up in a side room, reading books about insects and sheep. Then Ladybug played in puddles, and we got to see two foxes! I was more excited about the foxes than she was. Her favorite was a rabbit burrowed in a little hole. 


I mentioned in this post that I went a little overboard on winter books. This week I returned most of the forty picture books I had borrowed from the library for Valentine's and winter. I checked out a much smaller number of springtime titles. One of them is Big Fat Hen by Keith Baker. It's basically the classic "One, two, buckle my shoe" rhyme, with a little added fun at the end when all the hen's friends show up and hatch their chicks. Ladybug has also learned "Los Pollitos Dicen," a traditional Spanish children's song about a mother hen and her baby chicks.

All this reading and singing is why I was very excited that farm school this week would feature chickens! And the great part is we made it to class, with Bug in a good mood, so she got to enjoy seeing them. We even got a special peek at the "Employees Only" room where all the baby chicks live in their incubators.

    

After the visit to the poultry house, we saw three baby goats who were just days old. Ladybug explained, "The baby goats are asleep next to their mother!" Yep.

The little pile of three sleeping baby goats.

I'm so glad spring is finally here.

Winter Treats

Yesterday was fun. It was full of activity. In the morning we made pine cone bird feeders. I guess bird seed isn't poisonous, because Ladybug ate it by the fistful, with a side of peanut butter.

It had snowed in the night, but by 11:00 am the sun was strong and it was warm enough to have some fun outside. I hung up the pine cone feeders, which very quickly became squirrel food. The cones disappeared within hours! I guess there are some well-stocked nearby squirrel nests now. I'm considering looking into a permanent feeder. Ladybug knows a few birds: bluejay, cardinal, robin. It would be fun to watch more from the back window. 

Even though it would all melt soon anyway, we had fun shoveling snow together. Bug insisted on helping out.

Then in the afternoon we made chocolate cookies, heart-shaped in honor of Valentine's Day. I just got a rolling pin with special disks on the side to control the thickness of the dough. Between that and parchment paper (no more flouring countertops!) cookies are almost too easy to make now. Ladybug had a lot of trouble waiting until after they were baked to eat them!

Monday Farm School - Sheep

We had a great day on Monday. Last week, Ladybug was not feeling ready to attend her farm class. This week we arrived super early so she had plenty of time to warm up, literally and figuratively. We sat in a side room off the main classroom for about half an hour, reading books and playing with a few rocks and bits of fur in cups (the kind of touch and feel nature stuff you would find at an exhibit for kids). Although she remained fussy-sensitive for most of the class, she was able to experience it. We got to play with fleece and card the wool. Then we strung cereal on necklaces, which Bug was more skilled at than I expected. She made me laugh when I noticed she was stringing cereal and just as quickly eating it off the other end of the yarn. I do think I will look into lacing beads!

The main event was getting to feed and pet sheep. I wish I had a picture of Bug, and all the preschoolers, holding armfuls of hay as big as their little bodies, waddling in snowsuits to drop the hay in the trough. Then, because the children had helped out on the farm, they were allowed inside the pen with the sheep. Sheep really are docile, which is a good thing since we were letting at least ten 2-4 year olds run wild in their home. Ladybug was excited about the sheep, and cried when one walked away from her. We followed the whole herd outside and up a hill with a lovely view of bare winter trees against bright blue sky.

Out in the Cold

So that's a dramatic title, but I was pretty bummed yesterday, and we spent a lot of time literally outside in the cold. Yesterday was the first day of the farm class I signed us up for. So we woke a little earlier and got out of the house by 8:00am, walked twenty minutes to the train and commuted to the 'burbs. After eating a breakfast/snack at the cafe near the station, we walked ten minutes to the farm. It was very cold yesterday. And when we got there Ladybug absolutely refused to go into the warm little classroom. I'm not sure what spooked her (other than my guess that she's a die-hard introvert like her father), but I couldn't bring her into the room without her crying. No use gently coaxing or promising that she would see an animal or be with friends.

So, I gave up. I was thinking again of my blog description about my best-laid plans and what happens when my toddler has a different idea. I mean, she's two. Maybe the class was lame, I don't know. I know it wasn't worth a big fight. It is so disappointing to work that hard, commuting on foot all over the county for something you think your kid will really enjoy--only to have it rejected. Is this how homeschooling parents feel when their kid hates a curriculum they thought would be a hit?

So instead of attending the class, we sat together on the steps outside. I figured we had come all the way out to the farm, so we may as well observe some nature. I told Bug that if she watched carefully she could see birds flying around in the distant bushes. And that's what we did, sat out in the cold doing our own thing while the other children (warmly) had circle time inside. And I asked myself if this is what homeschooling will feel like, doing what's right for your child even if you're doing it alone, out in the cold. I think that's a bleaker picture than I mean to paint. But the answer is yes, sometimes. And I think she had a nice time. She talked a lot about those birds she could see in the bushes.

Just Like Stellaluna!

Frequently my husband will select an animal of the week (or month) and show Ladybug all sorts of YouTube videos featuring this animal. I think the first one was foxes, followed by polar bears. The refrain as soon as Bug saw Daddy's laptop was always the same: "How 'bout da polar bears?!" This past month's animal has been fruit bats. Ladybug fell in love with Stellaluna after she received the book as a birthday present. She hangs upside down just like Stellaluna. She eats her fruit just like Stellaluna. She flies around the house, flapping her wings just like Stellaluna.

Black Ecologists?

I was reading a lesson in Nebel's Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding about nature observation. I was struck by this quote: "On a purely aesthetic level, becoming able to recognize common plants and animals of your region is, to me, rather like getting to know and feel at home with neighbors versus forever being in a world of strangers."

And this got me to thinking about the lack of African-American ecologists. A Google search turned up a 2007 study confirming my suspicion. The abstract explains that "ecology in particular has among the lowest proportions of underrepresented students and professionals of any science." Then I found this blog post which sums up some of the rationalizations people try to give for why "black people don't like wilderness," and therefore don't become ecologists. I did find a cool post, Black & Green - The New Integration, profiling five urban ecologists. So there are some!
 
It's hard to talk about this without veering into the massive "Why are there so few minorities in science?" topic. Obviously they're related. But I want to know if teaching children to observe and appreciate nature is a cultural practice that some engage in while others don't. My father (a black man) is a land surveyor, but he's a rarity in his profession because he is not an outdoorsman. I learned to identify birds and flowers from my mother, who is a white woman. My personal experience is anecdotal, and I can't draw conclusions about entire groups of people based on it. But I will ask the question, do African-American families in general place a low value on nature observation with their children? If that were true, would it contribute to an explanation of why there are fewer black ecologists than most other sciences?

I think what I'm talking about is placing a value on nature. Going back to Nebel's quote, I think he has identified a kind of literacy. Nature literacy. Understanding the plants and animals in your area is one more way to engage with your world rather than be isolated from it. This is a valuable literacy for anyone to possess.

Science as a Skill

When I wrote the post How to Talk About What I Don't Like, I really wanted to get around to saying, "Here's what I want to do differently." I am creating a label for posts called To Do Differently. The "What I Don't Like" post is full of me understanding that schools aren't all bad, and teachers are mostly good. I guess I feel the need to put that out there before I launch a series of posts about wanting to be different from school. But, I can't shy away from the fact that I'm not planning on homeschooling for the sake of recreating a school environment at home. Wish we could call it "Whole World Learning" instead of homeschooling. So, here's my first thought about a subject to approach in a non-traditional way.

I hear people talking about the "skills" subjects, and they mean language arts and math. These build cumulatively and give you the skills you need to study other subjects. Then they talk about the "content" subjects, like history and science. The idea is that these content subjects are full of ideas to learn and explore, but you won't get too far in them if you can't read and compute.

I am taken with the idea of studying science as a set of skills that leads to understanding content. Real science, I think, is not memorizing Newton's laws, but asking why. Why do the rock and the feather fall the way that they do? What can we infer from our observations? What would prove our hypothesis wrong? This type of analysis and critical thinking is certainly a skill that grows with practice. I think it's very challenging to commit to teach this way. We can pay lip service to it, and ultimately just lead students through a rather scripted discussion that concludes where the grownups have decided it needs to. And that's not half bad, but wouldn't it be better to give the student the time and space to really find out for themselves? It seems that homeschooling is ideal for providing this luxury of intellectual freedom.

I have found a science curriculum developed with these principles called Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. The author's introduction helped me to formulate my ideas about teaching science. I look at a lot of curricula, but there are few that I buy years before I'll be needing them. In fact, this is the only elementary age curriculum I've purchased. It was just so affordable and intriguing. It consists of four strands (parentheticals are mine):
A. Nature of Matter (Chemistry)
B. Life Science (Biology)
C. Physical Science (Physics)
D. Earth and Space Science (Geology, Astronomy)

Wow. An elementary science curriculum that not only goes beyond nature study, but leads to comprehending the foundational principles of the major scientific fields. This is achieved using the scientific method, not fill-in-the-blanks and multiple choice worksheets. That's something I'd like to do differently.

Leaf Collecting

Just adding this to the "scrapbook." One of the many leaf collections Ladybug has assembled this fall.

Penguins

Long before March of the Penguins and Happy Feet, there was an ugly blue bathroom in a rental apartment. A beautiful shower curtain with a photo of penguins lined up on ice and snow came along and brought the whole bathroom together. Those penguins turned the look of the room around, making powder blue tile reminiscent of sparkling ice crystals.

I have been fond of penguins ever since. About ten years ago, when we were dating, my husband gave me a stuffed penguin. Years later, on the Mother's Day when I was pregnant with Ladybug, he gave me a stuffed mama and baby penguin to go with the original gift. Now I had a penguin family in celebration of our growing family -- adorable, right?  Ladybug found the penguin family today, and she's smitten. We got to talk about mama and papa and baby penguins. I love that this discussion isn't a total retreat from reality, since penguin fathers are involved in caring for chicks.

Tonight before bed, Ladybug picked a penguin book for me to read. We haven't done much storytime snuggling over non-fiction books, but I gave it a go. This is a book with way too much text for a young toddler, so I got to exercise my summarizing skills. We talked a lot about the mama and baby penguins. She was also thrilled with the knowledge that penguins "swim in wa-wa!" There was a drawing of a penguin skeleton, so I explained that many animals have hard bones in their bodies. I told her she has a long bone in her arm and her leg and that penguins have bones too. She said, "Penguin bones!"

How fun that we had a totally unplanned pre-preschool penguin study! Maybe I will schedule an aquarium trip soon.