European playgrounds

Hanging out in Nuernberg, DE

It's true-my family does view all of Europe as our own "private" playground, but the real European playgrounds are for the kids! As a prior Waldorf School employee, I've long admired the European playground. They are designed to be used in a multitude of ways, allow some risk (and responsibility on the part of the parents), and don't dictate the ways in which children must use the equipment.

Amazing playspace with a view, Mellau, Austria

Many of the playgrounds include rope-related equipment, that requires the children to use balance and core muscle strength. You see rope-based equipment frequently in German playground, and it really does demonstrate the German idea of "survival of the fittest"!

Swingin'-Nuernberg, DE

You will also find balancing logs and platforms, teepees, basket-style swings and water features. I know that many communities in the U.S. have fabulous playgrounds, but having living a sort of off-the-beaten path, peripatetic lifestyle, it wasn't until we arrived in Germany that we actually found these creative play places for children. Watching our risk-adverse child scale a rope web or jump off of pylons is a delight, and as parents, we appreciate the child-centered design of the playgrounds in Europe. Also, there is little plastic in the equipment, which provides a certain aesthetic quality to their spielplatzes.

A gigantic fairy house in a playground near our village.

The best feature in any European playground? The food and drink! One of my favorite playgrounds in our area includes a huge water pump with a drainage system and an adjacent biergarten. The shot below is from the Gartenshau Kaiserslautern where, in the fall, you can enjoy kurbis (pumpkin) wine and pumpkin soup. Playtime doesn't get any better than this:

Kurbis delight with JillyBoo playing in the background.

Citizens of the World

 



One way that you can tell that I'm a teacher is that I go through long periods of quiet on my afterschooling blog! Since my last blog entry, we visited Portugal, Regensburg, Germany, Colmar, France, and Mellau, Austria. Visiting other countries is a unique opportunity for employed expats with only one child, and we take advantage of this as frequently as possible.


When we visited Malta, we learned that JillyBoo needs down time, even on short vacations. Repeatedly dragging her through fields of megalithic ruins makes for a miserable trip for our entire family. For our Portugal trip, JillyBoo's daddy made a creative itinerary that satisfied both our need for some adventure and culture, and her need to have a homebase away from home.


We stayed in Afife, a small town north of Viana do Castelo in an apartment that we found on HomeAway. The bonus of setting up camp in an apartment, besides the price, is that you can purchase groceries and save on meals. Also, we like the fact that we don't have to schlep our bags around, taking a chance on losing our personal items to opportunistic locals.

 

Afife is not glamorous, not set up for tourists, and features miles of gorgeous beaches that are only lightly used in the spring. For us, it was paradise! We had unseasonably warm weather, and planned our week around alternate days of exploring and lazing about on the beach. Among the towns we visited were: Soajo, Guimares, and Viana do Castelo.



So what makes this trip afterschooling blog-worthy? The entire cultural experience! You might expect that a country that is part of the EU and is just south and west of Spain might seem more civilized. We were pleasantly surprised to find that on many times on the trip, we were the only light-haired people around for miles. For a little blondie, it was astonishing for JillyBoo to realize that, at times, she was very much the minority. And if those people weren't speaking German or English, what the heck language were they speaking?

Also, the food, so new, so salty, so much fish, such excellent bread and pastries. Bacalhau, a salty, dried cod laid out on palettes in the supermarkets, covered with flies, tomatoes that taste like tomatoes, soft white cheeses and pesto slathered onto crusty Portugese bread, the food was divine.



Equally beautiful in form and fashion were the people. They were helpful, curious, helpful, did I say helpful? They accepted our Spanish when Portugese failed. They pointed us in the right direction when our GPS was less than directional. The talked to us at length about their country, their port wine, their food (again, did I mention the food?).



Any time we travel, we try to instill into our 5-year-old the idea that she is on a world journey, on a life journey. She is a citizen of the world, and as such needs to experience, respect, and learn from the people of these cultures. Luckily, JillyBoo likes to try new things...especially if they are covered in chocolate or take place at the beach!

Incentives

I hate, and I mean hate, bribing children to learn. I attempt to eliminate silly rewards in my classroom-no toys, candy or dog and pony shows to

This all fell apart as we started serious Suzuki twinkling on the violin. Suddenly, we have a bean jar, AND a sticker chart. When the bean jar fills up, I have to scramble to find a decent kids' movie playing at the theatre (and they're always terrible!). Luckily, it's a huge jar. When the sticker chart fills up, JillyBoo will get an ice cream date with me and her teacher (She's at 53!).


So far, the two incentive machines have produced great results. But even the best bribes break down at times. This week, we slowed down on practicing in anticipation of a week-long violin-free trip. Today, attempting to squeeze in a long enough practice to count as a real practice and a make-up, mean mommy teacher actually removed two beans.

No practicing can happen when JillyBoo is balancing her bow ("Bowie") between her toes, but she also can't practice when she's in tears. Bad mommy teacher. It's an interesting phenomenon about JillyBoo that sometimes after a break, she actually comes back playing better than before.

I've struggled with the violin-free trips, and have found some great ways to keep her on task. First, we bring her Theory Time book to keep reading and talking about octave scales. Jilly Boo already reads A-E on the octave scale and can play and read whole, half, quarter and eighth notes using her I Can Read Music book, so it definitely makes a difference to keep talking about theory on vaca. For this week, her teacher also recommended that we bring our rhythm sticks to tap out new twinkles that we invent, as well as practice fingering on the sticks.

As an aside, it was interesting to watch JillyBoo attempt to invent a twinkle at lessons last week. She HATED it. JillyBoo has always wanted to be good at something without having to work at a skill. Her stubborness in this area ("I don't want to practice tying my shoes, I'll just do it when I know how.") is one reason that I insist that for at least the first year, we practice almost daily. I am not willing to have her involved in 4 or 5 different sports/dance/art activities, I'd rather have her work hard at something challenging, and then see how playing violin is easier when you break down a problem into managable parts.

For now, we're looking forward to a relaxing vacation in Portugal, and hope to meaningfully work learning into our trip!

The Fine Art of Fasching

Fasching is a wonderful, but totally incomprehensible, German holiday. It starts in November, rolls to February, coming to a head around Mardi Gras season. Fasching seems to be mainly marked by a larger-than-life presence of totally inappropriate adult "costume" wear just adjacent to the children's toys in Globus (German Target). The children even get to participate in Fasching at school, which involves eating remarkable amounts of candy and kuchen at school, whilst your parents, dressed as pirates, etc, drink champagne and eat appetizers. Sounds perfect, right?

Customize your own slideshow design

A few months prior to our school's weekend and weekday Fasching activities, the kinders started a unit on...pirates. The extra bonus of this unit of study is that JillyBoo started dressing up like Keith Richards, and we read a lot of wonderful books, such as Peter Pan and the Eyewitness Pirates book. The latter elicited the response, "Uh, mom, aren't there any nice pirates?" No, not so much. I did learn that Blackbeard used to make himself primitive beard extensions that he lit on fire, resulting in a frightening smoking effect. He was punk before punk was cool.

Overall, Fasching seems to be an opportunity for the locals to let loose before lent. It is refreshing to be part of a community that allows people to have fun and be raucous...with in reason, of course!

Inspiration

We've been so busy lately that even sitting down to listen to JillyBoo read has been a seemingly overly exhausting task. Finally, this weekend, things slowed down enough for us to do some laundry and consider what topics inspire us to learn. For the last 3 weeks, JillyBoo has not been inspired by her achievements in violin, groaning when I even mention a Twinkle.

After a long weekend on the island of Malta, we were relaxed, but our house was in chaos. While visiting the Mediterranean island nation, we had the totally unexpected opportunity to explore a site described in Homer's Odyssey. Really? I couldn't believe it!! I've often lamented that I didn't attend a public high school good enough to present senior with the Iliad and the Odyssey. I do appreciate, as an adult, that I can earn the education that I feel I didn't receive in my youth, and that my enthusiasm for learning can serve as a springboard for my daughter's education.

On one of the Maltese islands, Gozo, there is a site called, "Calypso's Cave." Calypso was a goddess so entranced with Odysseus that she socked him away in a cave for 7 years, only letting him go after Hermes informed her that Zeus was not too thrilled with their living arrangements. The word cave makes you think of a, you know, cave, so it would surprise you to know that the Gozitan cave, one of the six possible sites for the location of Calypso's cave, is more like a hole in the ground!

Good Posting

I really enjoyed this commentary on cuts to education spending: Spending Cuts: You Get What you Pay For

Money and Children

I remember riding my bike to the Sprouse-Ritz to buy my first tape-Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell." I was never great at saving up for a desired item, and would generally reserve my shopping interests to items that I could afford that day. JillyBoo's dad and I are bound and determined to raise a money-savvy child, and as such, we opened a savings account for her roughly the day after she was born. This was a brilliant idea, however, we have yet to find this account a useful tool in helping her understand money. "Hey, JillyBoo, you have some imaginary money in a bank that only exists online. Woo hoo!"

During a recent sick-day at home with JillyBoo, I realized that I had nothing to read (read that last line with dramatic flair). JillyBoo's dad had left a copy of SmartMoney magazine on the table, and so I decided, with a sigh, to flip non-committally through its pages. What a great magazine, even though I understood only 1/10th of it's articles!

By far the most impactful article was called Financial Literacy for Kids. It offered tips for teaching kids about money, which for me, tied in well to my recent desire to teach JillyBoo about the value of individual coins. I followed a few of the links from the article, and was pleasantly surprised by what they had to offer. First, I found ThreeJars Allowance tracker. I was introduced to the "three jars" concept in Arizona by some wonderful friends. JillyBoo already had "three jars," however, they had no connection to financial education or a plan. I decided to pay the $30 yearly fee to try out the ThreeJars website, which they only charge after you've been a member for the first month.

JillyBoo loved that she gets her own page on the site, and quickly designed a background and personal logo that only Prince could love. Really, how is it that five-year-olds have the same taste as circa 1970s pimps? Together, we picked a reasonable distribution for her weekly allowance-Save $1, Spend $0.80 and Share $0.20. I appreciated that the website let you input an initial "deposit" to the jars, as I was not anxious to calculate how we would divvy up the money that JillyBoo already had amongst the three jars.

The website, as near as I can tell, is worth every cent. It includes video clips from the "Today Show" financial advisor, Jean Chatsky, who shares advice from the point-of-view of a mom. I also love that you can assign tasks to your child, or that he/she can email the parent and say, "Hey, mom, can I do the dishes for a few extra dollars this week?"

Also, they recommend places for kids to donate their money. Inexplicably, JillyBoo decided that she would like every "sharing" cent to benefit dolphins, "Because I love dolphins, mom." Okay, can't argue with that. After a little research, and some reflections on the horrors of the movie, "The Cove," mommy has decided to help JillyBoo direct her money to http://www.savejapandolphins.org/.

As JillyBoo grows, I realize that the routines that we institute when she is younger seem to be the ones that stick. Just as this afterschooling website keeps me honest, so to speak, I also find that using threejars.com will keep us on track as a family in helping educate JillyBoo about smart spending.

Here are some other sites they recommended in the article:
Secret Millionaires' Club Entertaining cartoon clips of enterpreneurial children receiving advice from Warren Buffett (yes, that Warren Buffett)
FamZoo Another family savings site, somewhat like threejars.com
For older kids: WallStreet Survivor
Here's the original article from SmartMoney.com:

Squirlers

There was something about just saying, "I'm afterschooling," that made me much more attentive to the learning that was already happening in our house prior to starting this blog. JillyBoo is the daughter of two scientists. The girl doesn't have a chance-she's a geek born to two geeks! She is full of questions and observations, and will gleefully point out the many innovations that engineers have contributed to our lives.

I am a firm believer that children are naturally programmed to love animals, and that starting with animal behavior and structure as studies in early science learning makes for a natural hook to science.  Having wanted to be both a veterinarian and a firefighter as a child, I can understand JillyBoo's intense joy in watching a "fat little bird" land on our rose bushes, or a fox darting across the fields of our German village, the flash of red burning a trail in the verdant green fields.

Last weekend, as we anxiously awaited the arrival of favorite friends from the States, JillyBoo spied a ChickMunk from the window. "A chickmunk," I commented. "Hmmm....look at that tail!" "Oh, mama, that's maybe a squirler." Besides 'skabetty,' 'squirler' may be the number one word I hope she keeps in her vocab into perpetuity. 'Chickmunk' also makes the top ten. As I dusted the furniture and vacuumed, I encouraged her to get a picture of the squirler in her learning log. Off she darted to draw our yard and the squirler's "dream;" a yard full of acorns floating all around.



Squirlers and acorns in our yard, RP, Deutschland



After her drawing, I encouraged her to write about her observations. She embellished (a little), but came up with: "I saw a squirrel on a branch. There were five squirrels and they were cute in Germany." Oh, that damn schwa. Ger-mu-ny. 

JillyBoo's commentary about the squirlers that she observed

We are working on multi-letter phonograms right now, such as "aw" and "igh," and she's really starting to see how frequently these phonograms occur in words. We continue to read science readers, as I believe that they introduce challenging, but important words, to learn by repetition. It occurred to me today that she would benefit from a trip back to some BOB readers, as we sometimes need to see those sight words many times, too. Maybe this week?

Land Ahoy!



JillyBoo's Piratenchef

 In a recent newsletter from JillyBoo's German Kindergarten, the teachers shared that for their current unit, they are studying pirates! Arg! I talked to one of JillyBoo's teachers about the unit, as I tried to translate the portions that made any sense to me, and she stated that the kids will study the elements as they study pirates, too. They are working on understanding water and the things that water does, and also animals and plants that live in the water.

This information about their new unit of study really excited me, as up to now, their studies seemed random and only related to German holidays. Don't get me wrong-learning about German holidays from Germans themselves whilst living in Germany-that's academic! JillyBoo attends a Catholic Kindergarten (they are all Catholic or Evangelische), and therefore JillyBoo has been introduced to many new concepts. "Uh, mom, am I allowed to go in the church?" We consider world religions an important part of her education, however, we were also wanting to see some more academic content.

While pirates may not seem very academic, the idea that they are studying the elements brought a little joy to my teacher-heart. Friday morning when we arrived at school, the teachers had set up a Playmobil pirate ship for the kids to enjoy. I was in awe of the toy with all of its details and grandeur. Prior to living in Germany, Playmobil seemed like another junky plastic toy company. I now know that Playmobil toys are excellent imaginative play toys, and I love that they offer kids the opportunity to use the toys flexibly. For example, JillyBoo has a set from the Magic Castle line that includes princesses with interchangeable hair, etc, to make the princess into Rapunzel, a fairy, or even a queen.

JillyBoo was very excited to go to school on Friday, as she was able to see a movie....at school! She couldn't believe her luck. On Thursday, the students watched part of one of the Pippi Langstrumf movies, and JillyBoo was dazzled by Pippi's horse carrying abilities. We had actually read the first Pippi book together, however, she acted as if she didn't remember any of the book! JillyBoo loved the fact that there were pirates in the movie, and wanted to meet one immediately. As usual, she didn't trust her dad when he told her that pirates still exist, but that they aren't the same sort of pirates in the movie.

On a side note, we purchased JillyBoo some movies that are both in German and English at Globus a few weekends ago, but had not attempted to watch them yet. First, we learned that DVDs have different regions (totally didn't know that!) and that they will only play on devices set for a certain region. The U.S., it seems, is set to region 1 and European DVDs are region 2. You are only allowed to change your laptop's region code 5 or so times in its life, but we thought it was worth it to change it so that JillyBoo could continue her ability to understand German even when we move away.

Besides watchinig movies, JillyBoo created an awesome pirate ship, complete with a Jolly Rogers' flag. (pic will be added soon!). We've learned that "skull and crossbones" in Deutsch is "totenkopf," and JillyBoo wrote a "Captin's Song" (sic) about pirates! (I would also add that, but it was lost somewhere in the house cleaning yesterday!) I'm in the market for at-home extensions of the pirate activities, so if you have any, please share!

Here are some links I have already encountered:
Pirates at familyfun.com  (Check out that boat cake? Do I offer to try and make it for the school?)
Kaboose Pirate games and crafts
Pirate Treasure Map

Wandering violinist enrages Deutsch music store owner...news at 11.

Just before winter break, we were informed that Jezebel Sweetpea, JillyBoo's beautiful violin, had a warped bridge. Let me tell you, trying to convince a German woman at a music store to swap out a warped bridge is futile. She was irate that the manufacturers had put a bridge of incorrect size on the violin in the first place. Inconceivable! Since our communication barrier and her state of agitation made it impossible to make headway, we ended up sending the old Jez back and received, relatively pain-free and totally $ free (thanks, Shar Music! You're awesome!), this new Jez:

The New Jez. Not-so-pretty, but she sounds very nice!

She actually looks less blurry than this picture would indicate! My first comment (in my own head, of course), was, "God, she's ugly!" I mean, the last Jez, an identical make and model (Hoffmann Maestro, 1/8 size) was gasp-worthy in beauty. The New Jez is growing on me, and I even think she sounds great, even if she is homely.

The "practice" jar

JillyBoo's violin teacher made her a great little suggestion jar for Christmas! You pull out a slip, which might say, "Play in three different rooms," or "walk around as you play." They're fun, and they keep the lesson fresh.  

Wandering busker (clearly homeless-look at that outfit!)
  

In other Suzuki news, I finished reading, To Learn with Love, which was inspirational beyond measure. I love how balanced and real the Starrs are, and how great and timely their suggestions are for teachers. One of my favorite, and most useful, tips was to say after each Twinkle (or whatev), "Good! Now, can you do better?" Our first try with this technique was that JillyBoo, playing violin in the bathroom, of course, played twinkles for over 30 minutes!

In terms of twinkle progress, we're finally, finally, finally playing the notes of the twinkles, but only the bread parts (the first and last notes). It's fun! JillyBoo naturally holds the violin well and fingers well. Unfortunately, her "open/close" technique with her bowing arm ain't so grand still.

A wonderful addition to our practice (we never call it practice, but I'll do it here!) time has been playing the rhythm and pitch lessons from the book, I Can Read Music. At first, I had no clue as to what to do with the book. Now that we are fingering, however, I love guiding Kiley through the lessons which instruct her on how to play different notes and different patterns. Busting out the music stand, which we had ordered months ago but had never opened, really inspired her to play her music theory lessons. So far, so okay with the music theory. She either bows really rapidly and then grinds to a halt, or is all over the place!

The best part of all of this is having a fun, structured way to be her at home teacher. I'm enjoying violin as much as she is, and really embrace this opportunity to learn an instrument as an adult!

Carnival of Homeschooling Jan 25 2011

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling was called, "The World School Edition." All of the blogs were either international, or on the topic of international studies. Read all about it at HomeschoolBytes.

Weekend Activities

Prior to our move to Europe, we were avid campers and backpackers. Backpacking is illegal in most places in Germany, and camping is an event that includes you and 100 of your closest friends "sleeping" on a field. Camping was always our go-to weekend activity in the States, and in Europe, we generally try to get a day trip going, at the least. Some weekends, however, we're left recovering from the aftermath (laundry and messy house) or reeling from the cost of last week's excursion. This was one of those weekends!

So, what to do? No lazy Saturday would be complete without a needless trip to Globus, Germany's version of Target. For afterschooling, I was able to pick up some red, green and blue felt to create a Montessori place-value work. JillyBoo had actually gotten quite good at adding large numbers in the thousands prior to our move overseas, and I wanted to help her get back to her "gooder" math (see previous post!). We also picked up a fab find-a German, illuminated globe for 11 euro! It was a find.

This summer, I read a great article on the National Council for the Teachers of Mathematics site, "Building Blocks of Early Childhood Mathematics." (I'm pretty sure that you have to be a member to read this article). I was working on my capstone course for my graduate class, and kept stumbling upon articles that had meaning in my afterschooling life. The authors of this article state that the play and conversation that accompany block-play builds early mathematical thinking and reasoning skills.  JillyBoo, Therefore, received Legos and K'nex from Santa this year!

This weekend, she was working on Lego cars, and her frustration level increased the more that the little man was knocked out of her car. Adding, moving and removing some side rails on her car made her mad! We helped her to move through her frustration without fixing the problem for her entirely. I have a chronic problem with breaking my Lego creations as I work, so I was able to model a little patient building, as well.

JillyBoo builds (and rebuilds) and awesome Lego auto, Jan 2011

Next up was baking! This was my second attempt at making banana bread over the last two weeks, with some prior bananas making it to the trash bin before we could bake them. For a myriad of reasons, baking was a tense and irritation-filled event, which just goes to show that sticking around the house excessively can make for a rough weekend.




Mashing up the banana

Despite our baking drama, the bread was delicious and was perfect for late-night kitchen raids! JillyBoo also played some new stuff on violin on Sunday, but I'll share about that in an upcoming blog. 

In two straight lines they broke their bread

If you read our family travel blog, this posting will likely be redundant, but I wanted to add it because we used our trip to Paris as a very enriching afterschooling experience!

The Eiffel Tower at night. Sparkly and amazing!

As Americans living in Europe, we have the benefit of actually seeing sites that many kids can only dream of when they crack open their history books. Unfortunately, JillyBoo, at 5-years-old, isn't at the ideal age for explaining many of the more complicated issues of European history, but we try our best to help her to understand at an age-appropriate level.

Me and JillyBoo, standing in front of one of Paris' main displays of power and narcissism.

For example, how do you explain power, crazed and insane dictators, holocaust, invasions, the overwhelming presence of violence that accompanied religious fervor? Many of the ideas are, of course, way over JillyBoo's head, and likely, she'll never be old enough to visit these sites or really appreciate European history until after we leave Europe.

For now, we look for the opportunity to tie-in her learning to literary references. On a recent trip to Paris over the MLK, Jr. holiday, we were able to connect the stories of the spunky and precocious Madeline to the iconic sites of the City of Lights. JillyBoo is lucky enough to have 3 awesome grandmas, who enrich her life with visits, letters, phone calls and, of course, presents! This year, JillyBoo received an enormous collection of Madeline books, dolls and clothes. Perfect timing for our Paris trip!

We were able to score a cabin for our trip into Paris on the ICE train, a super-fast train that makes minimal stops, therefore allowing you to arrive at your destination in a timely manner. the train was moving, at times, at 300 km/hr!! Yikes! The cabin made it easy for us to listen to a little Jack Johnson on the iPad while working on reading, writing and playing on the table. We also viewed many of the flooded parts of the French/German border, the result of an unbelievably snowy winter.

In our cabin on the ICE train en route to Paris!!

A huge bonus of a trip to Paris is the easy-to-use transportation system. Looking at the metro map provided opportunities to discuss mapping, directions, and relative locations. The map is easy enough for even mommy to read, and JillyBoo seemed to get the idea of an underground train-they are underground to save space for vehicle transportation.

On our first day, I was able to pull out our Madeline book on our visit to the Eiffel Tower. What an incredible piece of engineering! We talked a little about the World Fair, about Eiffel, the man, and his persistence and vision. From the Tower, you can see many of the Madeline sites, which have little context from that height unless you have the Madeline book with you. Luckily, Ludwig Bemelmans thought to put a handy listing of the sites featured in the illustrations in the back of the book (thank you, author!). I was able to point out Les Invalides' shiny golden dome, the Tuileries Garden and La Place de la Concorde. For some fun an inexplicable (to me, anyways) reason, there is a room with pink windows on one of the lower levels, so we had to check out Paris in pink!

La Vie en Rose. Live from the pink room on the Eiffel Tower

Besides La Tour Eiffel, we visited the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and all of its outstanding historical artifacts and Notre Dame cathedral. As much as I'd like to elaborate on those educational sites, a short, blonde JillyBoo is clamboring for my attention!

Gooder Math

Above: Video of JillyBoo doing transferring activities. She's maybe 2ish in the video?? Or 1.5?

A few nights ago, my daughter interrupted her sleep to cry out, "My old school was gooder because we had math!" Her old school was terrific, and she was very academically engaged on a daily basis. So much so, that I didn't even consider afterschooling JillyBoo too much. After all, she was pretty intellectually exhausted by the time she left school, and we could be the fun, game-playing, let's-go-on-a-walk parents.

Her new school, as I've indicated, is totally non-academic, if you don't count the fact that it's entirely a German immersion for JillyBoo. She reminded me recently that she was good at math, and if you believe you're good at something, you need a chance to prove yourself, to be challenged, to do real work at it!

Not many books at my intermediate school (3rd and 4th grades) are written at the right level for JillyBoo, but I took a leap and scoured the math section for some kids books. I found some GREAT selections, including: Count Your Chickens and Money Math. They are both published by Capstone Press, and show children of kindergarten ages doing math. I always appreciate books that show children from diverse ethnic backgrounds, and these two don't disappoint. The books lend themselves well to hands-on extensions, such as, "If a girl has two nickels and one penny, how much money does she have."

As silly as it sounds, I really haven't pushed money studies prior to now. What's tough is that we live in two worlds: Dollars on base and Euros on the European economy. We were way to early for violin lessons a few nights ago, and I realized that I could do a great skip-counting lessons with nickels and dimes. So I pulled out some change, and we reviewed the names and value of each coin. JillyBoo commented, "Mama, Euros are easier." So true! They actually include the value of the coin right on the money!

Looking at money also allows for a great history lessons-who are these old guys, anyway? I have since pulled out a pile of change when I was "stuck" waiting, which proves to me that I don't need all of those fancy gadgets (like I think I do!) do afterschool at the drop of a hat. It's enough to just look for the opportunity and to be the mother with inventive ideas!

National Science Teacher Association

As a past (okay, current) science geek, science with kids comes easy to me. I have a B.S. in Chemistry, which qualifies me for running tests on expensive machines repeatedly until I die with boredom. More importantly, having a science background has helped me to do academic research in all disciplines, including education. Science can be intimidating for many teachers, though I have worked with many excellent teachers who didn't have science backgrounds and who taught some of the most enriching and educational science lessons I've seen.


Science after school is not a new endeavor for our family. My husband is an engineer, and will lecture JillyBoo endlessly about the contributions that engineers make to society. "JillyBoo, who do you think made this road?" "Engineers!" JillyBoo will exclaim. At JillyBoo's Montessori school last year, she was fortunate to learn under the tutelage of Ms. Kelly, who brought so many great ideas and experiments to the classroom. JillyBoo would talk about prisms, the Earth's elliptical orbit and how to tell a mammal from an amphibian at the dinner table-and she was only 3 1/2!

Here, a three-year-old JillyBoo waits for mommy to swirl our homemade lava lamp!

For preschoolers, observations of the natural world, animal studies and cooking are three great areas to concentrate your homeschooling efforts. You can't beat camping for great nature studies, such as collecting branches, pinecones, comparing rocks and waterways. It's also great for building doll beds and structures! (see video below)

A great resource for homeschooling parents and for teachers is membership in the National Science Teachers Association. I am a member, and emailed the membership department for clarification of which membership option would be best for homeschooling parents. They stated that homeschoolers would do a one-year, $75 Individual Membership, which includes access to ALL NSTA journals online and one in print. I'm currently subscribing to Science & Children and find myself frequently inspired by the awesome ideas and pedagogy discussed in the journal. I have also purchased many e-Books in pdf format from the website, which includes a discount for NSTA members. If anyone has great science ideas, please share!

Another Carnival of Homeschooling

There great thing about blogging is that you have the opportunity to read about the experiences of other folks who share your interests. Blog Carnivals list a host of blogs on any topic, and I have been lucky enough to participate in one Homeschooling Carnival already. If you go to the link, it will take you to a listing, with a brief synopsis, of many blogs on the topic of homeschooling. It's fun to peruse the other blogs to borrow ideas for great educational activities with your own kids!

Updates on Previous Posts

I wish I had a picture of this, but it turns out that JillyBoo decided to use her St. Martin's lantern holder (which looks like a plastic fishing rod with a small, battery powered light at the end) to put on a fire show, a la Triberg fire falls show for a large group of small stuffed and plastic animals. She brought the lantern holder to dad, with an order to "fix it!" He fixed the bulb, asking, "Is this broken bulb the result of crazy dancing or thrashing about?" To which she replied, "I was doing a show for my animals!" Well, that explains it. This just goes to show that her initial three questions to start of our homeschooling year are enduring!

(The picture to the left is a random shot of one of our good ideas-Alaskan Sled Dog as German sled puller. It's a great gig-you get treats!!)

Next up, I ended up using my fave bookseller, ABE Books, to purchase a used copy of the Kindergarten version of Handwriting Without Tears, which also goes by, "Letters and Numbers for Me," if you're searching for it on eBay or your fave bookseller. I found it for abot $6 on abebooks, vs. 2 copies for $18 on eBay. To buy the book from the HWT website, it was $7.50 for the workbook, and an additional $7.50 to ship to an APO, which is outrageous!

On a Suzuki note, we had a great practice today and JillyBoo was very self-motivated to play. I find it challenging to determine the difference between a motivated and an unmotivated day, as she usually gets so much positive attention on either type of day! Her teacher has informed us that JillyBoo will actually get to start fingering (FINALLY! YEY!) after months of playing open strings. Her next lesson is Weds, so I can't wait to see what new and challenging exercises we have before us for the next month or so!

Mapping Skills and Geographic Terms

My new afterschooling practice is reminding me that homeschooling activities need not be, "Okay, JillyBoo, leave your fun, imaginitive activity and sit down for some boring work!" This morning, I used her role-playing sailing-on-a-boat activity as an anchor activity (pun intended!) for using some rudimentary mapping skills.

She had loaded up a sleeping mat with all of her favorite animals for the ride of a lifetime! JillyBoo picked out a pair of old gift wrap rolls for oars and I threw her learning log and pencil box on the ship. Then we were off!





We are on our way to "The Other Side of the Island," a dark place where we really can't see anything. This was my first introduction of the idea of Map Key, which is an essential early skill in geography studies. We had to determine the difference between an ocean and a river, graphically speaking, and JillyBoo didn't quite grasp the "less is more" idea in regards to map key icons. I was secretly pleased that she added three roots to each tree-why not?

I worked in my "Learning Log" simultaneously, taking notes and also modeling the journal. She showed me how to draw the map, she picked the geographic icons, and I demonstrated the spelling. She commented that, "It's easier to draw the pictures so that you don't have to write on the map." I didn't want to burst her bubble-the drawing was so cute, how could we mar her work with place names? Maybe next time!

Another bonus of this activity is that as we wrote, I reinforced the phonograms needed for the words, and she copied my penmanship, which was helpful. JillyBoo is truly lacking in the manuscript department, and I'm considering ordering the Handwriting without Tears program. I'm hopeful that activities such as this will help us avoid pain when she enters American school for the first time.

I really enjoyed playing with JillyBoo as we learned, and am going to search for more authentic opportunities for extending our play into educational pursuits.

From Other Pens

While searching for some sister (and brother) sites to add to my blog and my reading list, I found the blog story below. I'm definitely adding this product to my must-have list! JillyBoo's handwriting is atrocious!

Home School Dad: A strange request for a day off.: "We took yesterday off school as is our custom on a child's birthday. We spent the morning at my folks house where I am helping my him wit..."

Moving on from Early Readers

Making letter pretzels, ca. 2008 (age 2 1/2)

Teachers and parents know that early reading starts prior to letter recognition. Hearing a language spoken repeatedly, being read to, hearing letter sounds and using baby-sign are all appropriate reading activities for infants and toddlers. JillyBoo lives in a print-rich household, stocked with textbooks of all shapes and sizes (mostly extra-large), board books, maps, cookbooks, etc.

One of JillyBoo's early writing samples, Summer 2007 (approx. 20 months)

With me as a mom, JillyBoo couldn't avoid being introduced to phonograms at an early age. "Mama, that's and A!" Me: "Um-hmm...what sounds does it make?" We were thrilled to enroll her in a fab Montessori School that supported her early literacy efforts. She blossomed from an engrossed picture-reader to an actual reader within 3 months of attending. Her first readers were the fantastic BOB books series.

The BOB series are wonderful first readers for many reasons. First, they start off with simple, one-letter phonograms that are easy to read and don't take too much stamina. The books progress to more digrams and more complicated sentence structures, gradually introducing new punctuation, such as quotation marks, commas, and question marks. The books are fun, and have simple illustrations. In many pictures, the illustration itself does not give away the meaning or words on the page, which is helpful in determining if a child is truly reading, or if he/she is just decoding the picture. That said, the text is easy to memorize, so many parents cover the pictures with a piece of folded construction paper to deter kids from memorizing the order of the text.

While I do love BOB books, during our move to Europe this summer, we experienced a period of reading burn out. I couldn't convince or cajole her to read a BOB book, or any other book for that matter. I was having a difficult time finding alternate readers for her at the library. All were too difficult, had funky words, or lacked that gradual increase in difficulty level that I noted in the BOB books.

Our school instituted a new reading series this year, Reading Street, and I was able to take a look at the Kindergarten version of the series. As a teacher, I love this series because it is thorough, addresses many learning styles, integrates "Strategies that Work" and other important reading strategies in one neat, fun, hands-on package. For kinders, two great book series that are included in the Reading Street program stuck out to me.

First, the "Living in a Biome" series from Capstone Press. I used my favorite used bookseller, abebooks.com, to order many of the Reading Street readers, and Living in an Ocean arrived first. Words like ocean and animal can be difficult for an emergent reader, but the authors repeat the words frequently enough for the child to read them independently by the end of the book. The photographs are colorful and enticing, and I love that they are non-fiction readers, but are not dry. I have at least 4 more of the books from this series on order right now.

The other non-fiction reader series that I recommend is the Animal Babies series from Kingfisher Press. These are fun and somewhat easy readers for upper-emergent readers. My 5-year-old needs assistance on some of the words, but for the most part, she can read a few pages a night easily on her own. We aren't reading these in one sitting, as the pages are lengthy, but the text makes kids want to read at least two pages in a row. This book also includes some colorful and ridiculously adorable pics of baby animals, but I appreciate that they aren't all cows and ducks! You can use the books as an anchor lesson for differences in biomes and animal habitats, which is a great cross-curricular tie-in. Other parents agree that these books have a fun format with great illustrations.

Happy reading!

Twinkling Suzuki Style

After years of watching my friend's daughters work hard and achieve at Suzuki violin, I finally moved to an area where a trained Suzuki teacher lives. JillyBoo fell in love with her her violin, Jezebel Sweetpea, from the first day that we opened her case.

That day was the culmination of many years of research, reading, desire and preparation on my part. Generally speaking, I am not a pushy stage mom. We definitely follow our child in our household. When JillyBoo was a baby, a friend gave me two of Shinichi Suzuki's books: Ability Development from Age Zero and Nurtured by Love. I was inspired by the hardships that Suzuki faced and his ideas regarding growth and development. The idea that children are able to learn their mother tongue with practice and repetition rang true to me in terms of child development.

Early in my teaching experiences, I used woefully little repetition, or spiraling in my teaching. I found that to have enduring learning experiences, my students needed multiple encounters with material in various ways. Suzuki supports this, too, in suggesting that students hear beautiful music, play beautiful music multiple times to really internalize it.

JillyBoo has, for the most part, embraced the Suzuki method whole-heartedly. The look on her face when she is playing well is priceless. That one look, that, nobody-needs-to-tell-me-I'm-doing-a-good-job-I-know-I-am, is proof to me that building self-esteem only comes from honest work.

I am rereading both Suzuki books 4 years after my initial read, and find that Suzuki's stories are complimentary to the process, as would make sense. During this second read, I picked up on one of Suzuki's big ideas: Act when you think. There is a somewhat hilarious passage that Suzuki relays in which his sister says that she thought that maybe she should invite a hungry man to dinner. Suzuki chides her for not acting immediately. I do appreciate the meaning behind the message, but if my brother were so condescending, I would get a little hot around the collar!

That said, I'm trying to act when I think, and it's giving me tremendous ADD. I'm doing laundry-hey-where is that birthday wrapping paper I need for the party? Drop laundry, run to closet, find paper, set on table-hey! I should put these books away! Books away-uh, why can't I hear the dryer running? Oh yes, I didn't start it yet.

The amazing part is, I'm actually able to get more done, but I think that this method doesn't allow for prioritizing. Gift wrap is not as important as having clean chonies, after all!

Lapbooking-an idea to try!

Through the Carnival Of Homeschooling, I found the blog, "LifeonCanterburyLane," which included a great post on using lapbooking for geography lessons. Perfect for a 5 year old, who only has the attention span to work on parts of a project over time. I can imagine using these for just about anything, but the lapbook does seem to lend itself to geography studies. Since we live in central Europe and travel frequently, it would be fun to chronicle some of these travels with a lapbook!
I found the video below on youtube.com:



I also found this very simple description of lapbooking at the Lapbooking 101 blog.

After posting this a few minutes ago, I also found a link to Lapbook Lessons Templates. They are the folks that posted the above video on youtube.com, and they have great video clips that outline how to make the different lapbook components.

Carnival of Homeschooling

I'm a new blogger and would love to be interacting with other afterschooling and homeschooling bloggers, so I've entered a Carnival of Homeschooling. It's a great way to find out about other blogs on particular topics. I love to read about and explore the ways that awesome parents are educating and encouraging their children, and hope that I will be chosen to be a part of this carnival!

Migrating butterflies

No, not in Germany in winter! Piggybacking off of our butterfly questions about eyes and ears, etc., I pulled out yet another of our butterfly books-this one on monarch butterfly migration in North America. I am pretty sure than 75% of our science books have some sort of butterfly theme! National Geographic has their great new series, Great Migrations, on t.v. (well, probably some places, but not on AFN!), and we ordered a Scholastic pack that included books for elephants and whales.

I printed out a map of North America in anticipation of a super-great and enriching map lesson, which would naturally include labeling the North American countries. JillyBoo decided that coloring the map-without migration labels-would be best. I was able to convince her to label Alaska, "AK,"at which time she unceremoniously turned the map over to make her own map. (Prominently displayed in technicolor on the right)

This move was likely inspired by dad, who is trying to plan a trip to Malta. He used a wall map to show JillyBoo the relative locations of Malta and our home in Central Europe. Her new map included "all of the places we've lived," including a little 'x' in a circle, marking each place that we have lived. So, where have we lived? Alaska, America (Umericu-phonetic spelling) and our country in Europe. She plans to color on the map more, and I used her sort of trance-like coloring time as an opportunity to read to her from the Great Migrations book. I also assigned her homework-written on a Post-It, naturally: Draw a picture of a butterfly migrating. So that will be her learning log entry for tomorrow.

Prior to butterfly studies, I tried to trick JillyBoo into reading a book from a great set of science readers that I found, the PebblePlus, "Life in a..." biome series. We now own Life in a: Forest, Desert, Pond and Ocean. These books are terrific for early readers who have mastered many single and simple-double letter phonemes. They are highly repetitious with more difficult words, and today she became acquainted with area, forest, animals and warm as new words. In order to trick her in to reading, I played a game that she loves but we loathe: Mountain lions! Usually this game involves us crawling around on our nearly-40-year-old knees whilst roaring and pawing at stuff aimlessly. Instead, I played an older child mountain lion who helped baby mountain lion with her reading. I encouraged her to read about 4 pages, and then we shelved the book for later. More mountain lions and butterflies to follow, I'm sure.