For your 8 - 15yr old ? Youngzine has an article that seems to be reasonably balanced - in other words, it isn't calling for Assange to be executed for treason...if your child registers ( for free ) they can join in a moderated discussion on the topic.
I haven't had a chance to browse the rest of the site yet, but on first glance, it looks good. Like they say though, all care, no responsibility!
And by the by, who knew that an Emily Dickinson poem could cause 3 followers to cease following ? Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Secular Thursday tag was the culprit. Come back! Secular humanists don't bite...really!
Showing posts with label secular thursday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label secular thursday. Show all posts
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Nature Study for City Kids
This post from The Scientific Homeschooler had me thinking about our science program again. I'd been put off by a difficulty in finding a secular science curriculum and it's been pretty non-existent this year as far as formal study goes, although we're starting to get back into it, with Lucy beginning biology and Arwen expressing an interest in learning about astronomy.
As far as informal study goes, something that's worked well for us since our Charlotte Mason years ( yes! there are secular CM'ers, though you have to do some quite nimble mental jumps to get over the religious content ), is the habit of nature study. When I first began reading about the importance of nature study in CM ideas, it had me panicked. We're a suburban family - no woods or ponds or commons nearby - and we don't even have a huge garden, like the one I grew up with in the outer suburbs, because we're in the tightly packed inner suburbs... a lot of houses, little green space.
Charlotte suggests a 20 minute bus trip into the countryside. That just about gets us half way to the nearest large park. Out of necessity, we started looking closer to home.
It's incidental, the way we look. There's no set time - it might be at the park, on a walk to the shops, playing in the yard or looking out the window at night. Yesterday we were out in the garden and Lucy pointed out a St Andrews Cross spider to Snowy. We watch the way our crepe myrtle tree breaks into leaf and then into purple bloom; we watch it becoming bare when the weather cools. On a walk to the cafe, we see ant swarms everywhere and notice the ants are all swarming around a particular kind of moth. For several weeks we listen to a pair of bats who become raucous as soon as evening settles. Coming home from the shops, past the tennis courts, we see a bird we don't know the name of, come home and look it up. One night we opened the curtains wide and instead of going to sleep, watched an electrical storm crack and break across the sky. We keep an eye on the moon and the stars. We see the eucalypts flower, hear the drone of bees and take care to wear shoes in the yard.
When the girls were younger and I was more diligent - or perhaps we were home more and had the time - the girls recorded what they saw in a nature journal. We also did some easy nature study activities, like these:
Your child might like to search outside for interesting leaves or pods, then bring them back inside to sketch. Encourage your child to observe and include as much detail as possible. Unopened pods can be taken home and put in a paper bag to open.
Younger children might like to make a leaf or bark rubbing. Place leaf or bark under a sheet of paper and rub across with a crayon until the imprint appears. You can make bark rubbings ‘in the field’ by placing a sheet of paper on a tree trunk. It’s interesting to compare the patterns made by different trees and leaves.
Your child might like to settle down outside to sketch a tree or plant or insect she has noticed. Again, encourage detail, as this will make her sketch more interesting to look at later.
If your child doesn’t want to draw, he can be a nature explorer by using the cardboard frames. Hold them up to the sky, down on the ground, over a leaf, and encourage your child to really look at and describe what he sees. Framing an area in this way helps develop close observation skills.
Perhaps you have a child who loves to collect! She could make a nature collection at the park to take home and display. Any interesting leaves she collects can be put between 2 sheets of waxed paper (waxed sides facing in) and the paper ironed together – leaves can then be taped to the window for an attractive nature display.
I don't do that so much with Snowy, but his observations of the natural world become either topics for further questions and investigations or a context in which other information - books, museums, science shows - become linked to real life as he has experienced it. I hope the years the girls spent observing and keeping their nature journals gives them a context for their new studies too. It may not be exploring the wonder of God's creation for us but it's still a wondrous exploration of another kind.
As far as informal study goes, something that's worked well for us since our Charlotte Mason years ( yes! there are secular CM'ers, though you have to do some quite nimble mental jumps to get over the religious content ), is the habit of nature study. When I first began reading about the importance of nature study in CM ideas, it had me panicked. We're a suburban family - no woods or ponds or commons nearby - and we don't even have a huge garden, like the one I grew up with in the outer suburbs, because we're in the tightly packed inner suburbs... a lot of houses, little green space.
Charlotte suggests a 20 minute bus trip into the countryside. That just about gets us half way to the nearest large park. Out of necessity, we started looking closer to home.
It's incidental, the way we look. There's no set time - it might be at the park, on a walk to the shops, playing in the yard or looking out the window at night. Yesterday we were out in the garden and Lucy pointed out a St Andrews Cross spider to Snowy. We watch the way our crepe myrtle tree breaks into leaf and then into purple bloom; we watch it becoming bare when the weather cools. On a walk to the cafe, we see ant swarms everywhere and notice the ants are all swarming around a particular kind of moth. For several weeks we listen to a pair of bats who become raucous as soon as evening settles. Coming home from the shops, past the tennis courts, we see a bird we don't know the name of, come home and look it up. One night we opened the curtains wide and instead of going to sleep, watched an electrical storm crack and break across the sky. We keep an eye on the moon and the stars. We see the eucalypts flower, hear the drone of bees and take care to wear shoes in the yard.
When the girls were younger and I was more diligent - or perhaps we were home more and had the time - the girls recorded what they saw in a nature journal. We also did some easy nature study activities, like these:
Your child might like to search outside for interesting leaves or pods, then bring them back inside to sketch. Encourage your child to observe and include as much detail as possible. Unopened pods can be taken home and put in a paper bag to open.
Younger children might like to make a leaf or bark rubbing. Place leaf or bark under a sheet of paper and rub across with a crayon until the imprint appears. You can make bark rubbings ‘in the field’ by placing a sheet of paper on a tree trunk. It’s interesting to compare the patterns made by different trees and leaves.
Your child might like to settle down outside to sketch a tree or plant or insect she has noticed. Again, encourage detail, as this will make her sketch more interesting to look at later.
If your child doesn’t want to draw, he can be a nature explorer by using the cardboard frames. Hold them up to the sky, down on the ground, over a leaf, and encourage your child to really look at and describe what he sees. Framing an area in this way helps develop close observation skills.
Perhaps you have a child who loves to collect! She could make a nature collection at the park to take home and display. Any interesting leaves she collects can be put between 2 sheets of waxed paper (waxed sides facing in) and the paper ironed together – leaves can then be taped to the window for an attractive nature display.
I don't do that so much with Snowy, but his observations of the natural world become either topics for further questions and investigations or a context in which other information - books, museums, science shows - become linked to real life as he has experienced it. I hope the years the girls spent observing and keeping their nature journals gives them a context for their new studies too. It may not be exploring the wonder of God's creation for us but it's still a wondrous exploration of another kind.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Deck The Halls - The Summer Version
It's true that December brings out my inner Grinch, but after a good whinge on a discussion at SecularHomeschool - and, more shamefully, making my 6 year old cry when I declared that I did not like Christmas - I decided to get my festive act together.
It was Nigella who made it possible. It suddenly occurred to me that Christmas was possibly the only time of year I could justify cooking her rather bizarre Ham cooked in Cherry Coke. And just the idea of cooking a new Nigella recipe, especially an odd one, made me so happy that I immediately sat down to think of all the other festive hoo-hah.
The problem I have with Christmas is that, for a secular family living in the southern hemisphere, the celebration and traditions make no sense from either a spiritual or a seasonal perspective. It must have been the Coke, because my brain suddenly went into overdrive as I realised that all I needed to do was change the name. Christmas - bah, humbug - became our Summer Festival. (And no, celebrating the summer solstice isn't the same thing at all. For one thing, it's always a few days before Christmas, which means you end up celebrating solstice and Christmas, meaning double the work.)
And once I had a Summer Festival in mind, all became easy. Instead of making snowmen and Santas, this year we'll make suncatchers. We won't be joining the queues to visit Santa's cave but we will make time to visit the beach. Perhaps we'll make our own summer calendar with surprises behind the windows - things like make home-made icecream and jelly or spend the day at the pool or movie of your choice or build a stick house in the yard.
Lucy is planning a summer nature table to make with Snowy. I'm planning on making fruit print wrapping paper with him as well. And instead of battling to make a gingerbread house in humid, 30 degree heat, we'll try making marzipan fruit instead.
True, I haven't solved either the Christmas tree or the Santa thing yet. And I haven't even thought about presents. Family size 30 plus sunscreen anyone ? It's a joke, kids.
Don't forget to visit SmrtLernins for links to more Secular Thursday posts.
It was Nigella who made it possible. It suddenly occurred to me that Christmas was possibly the only time of year I could justify cooking her rather bizarre Ham cooked in Cherry Coke. And just the idea of cooking a new Nigella recipe, especially an odd one, made me so happy that I immediately sat down to think of all the other festive hoo-hah.
The problem I have with Christmas is that, for a secular family living in the southern hemisphere, the celebration and traditions make no sense from either a spiritual or a seasonal perspective. It must have been the Coke, because my brain suddenly went into overdrive as I realised that all I needed to do was change the name. Christmas - bah, humbug - became our Summer Festival. (And no, celebrating the summer solstice isn't the same thing at all. For one thing, it's always a few days before Christmas, which means you end up celebrating solstice and Christmas, meaning double the work.)
And once I had a Summer Festival in mind, all became easy. Instead of making snowmen and Santas, this year we'll make suncatchers. We won't be joining the queues to visit Santa's cave but we will make time to visit the beach. Perhaps we'll make our own summer calendar with surprises behind the windows - things like make home-made icecream and jelly or spend the day at the pool or movie of your choice or build a stick house in the yard.
Lucy is planning a summer nature table to make with Snowy. I'm planning on making fruit print wrapping paper with him as well. And instead of battling to make a gingerbread house in humid, 30 degree heat, we'll try making marzipan fruit instead.
True, I haven't solved either the Christmas tree or the Santa thing yet. And I haven't even thought about presents. Family size 30 plus sunscreen anyone ? It's a joke, kids.
Don't forget to visit SmrtLernins for links to more Secular Thursday posts.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Books Without Bias - A Secular Thursday Post
Which is impossible, but some books hit you over the head with it more than others. Usborne History Pockets - Ancient Civilizations wears its bias lightly and approaches history with an an anthropological style, presenting information rather than story and putting roughly equal emphasis on East/West civilizations.
That isn't why I bought it. It was a desperation purchase, when I found that my second child, at the age of six or seven, refused to listen to Story Of the World for a single second of her homeschooling life. The basic idea is that children use the information and the templates in the book to explore six major ancient civilizations in a hands-on, project based way.
Not those kind of projects! Not the kind that take a whole day's trek to find supplies for, another day to make, another day to clean up and a fourth day to recover - there's 'school' gone for the week! - no, the kind that need a pair of scissors, a glue stick and some crayons at most.
The 'pocket' bit refers to a fancy folder you're supposed to make to store all the projects in, which I did diligently with #2 and ignored with #3. A manila folder works fine. Then there's a words to know activity, a postcard project, some puppets dressed in the clothing of the culture and a variety of other paper-based tasks to complete. For example, Snowy, who is studying Ancient Rome, made this laurel wreath crown, and posed for you as Julius Ceasar ( yes, in a Toy Story 3 t-shirt - you didn't think I was going to mess around with togas, did you ? )
It's fairly high-interest for little kids, you don't have to grapple with bible stories, it doesn't require a lot of pre-planning, it's inexpensive and it's something you can show off to sceptical relatives or use as a memory jogger over time.
The bad bits ? You absolutely have to supplement. There are info pages for 'teachers' included but it's not enough on its own. Snowy and I have been reading a book set in Ancient Rome ( Miranda the Great by Eleanor Estes ) and an Usborne Beginners Romans book to flesh out the Pocket. And if you or your child detests project work, you'll be throwing this across the room shortly after opening it.
If what you're after though, is a taste of history on your child's metaphorical plate ( the same way you might put a tiny bit of zucchini on his real plate, just to try ) the History Pockets are worth a look.
As is the smrtlernins blog for links to more Secular Thursday posts.
That isn't why I bought it. It was a desperation purchase, when I found that my second child, at the age of six or seven, refused to listen to Story Of the World for a single second of her homeschooling life. The basic idea is that children use the information and the templates in the book to explore six major ancient civilizations in a hands-on, project based way.
Not those kind of projects! Not the kind that take a whole day's trek to find supplies for, another day to make, another day to clean up and a fourth day to recover - there's 'school' gone for the week! - no, the kind that need a pair of scissors, a glue stick and some crayons at most.
The 'pocket' bit refers to a fancy folder you're supposed to make to store all the projects in, which I did diligently with #2 and ignored with #3. A manila folder works fine. Then there's a words to know activity, a postcard project, some puppets dressed in the clothing of the culture and a variety of other paper-based tasks to complete. For example, Snowy, who is studying Ancient Rome, made this laurel wreath crown, and posed for you as Julius Ceasar ( yes, in a Toy Story 3 t-shirt - you didn't think I was going to mess around with togas, did you ? )
 |
| He's so cute... |
It's fairly high-interest for little kids, you don't have to grapple with bible stories, it doesn't require a lot of pre-planning, it's inexpensive and it's something you can show off to sceptical relatives or use as a memory jogger over time.
The bad bits ? You absolutely have to supplement. There are info pages for 'teachers' included but it's not enough on its own. Snowy and I have been reading a book set in Ancient Rome ( Miranda the Great by Eleanor Estes ) and an Usborne Beginners Romans book to flesh out the Pocket. And if you or your child detests project work, you'll be throwing this across the room shortly after opening it.
If what you're after though, is a taste of history on your child's metaphorical plate ( the same way you might put a tiny bit of zucchini on his real plate, just to try ) the History Pockets are worth a look.
As is the smrtlernins blog for links to more Secular Thursday posts.
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