Little Blue School

Jungle Book Week 10

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:38:00 +0000

Namaste.

Quiz:

The quiz this week required students to correctly identify ten map elements: The Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges River, Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Pakistan, China, Nepal, and Bangladesh. They did pretty well! Good job studying that at home. :)

After the quiz, we talked about the names Mumbai/Bombay and Kolkata/Calcutta. India became independent from England in 1947, but kept the Anglicized versions of their city names until 1996, when they changed them to more authentic transliterations. We discussed how we used to be colonies of England too, and how many of our place names are based on places in England or English monarchs, etc. Particularly here in Norfolk/Suffolk/Portsmouth/Hampton/Etc this is pretty relevant. I resisted the urge to teach the children the song "Istanbul was Constantinople." However, if you wanted to listen to it at home, here's the link. Yeah, it's a video from MTV's 120 Minutes. Remember that show? :)

Story: For this week, we read the story "Kaa's Hunting." We had a great discussion about how Kipling describes an animal world ruled by strict laws and long-established customs, contrasted with the "banderlog" -- the monkey people who have no laws and live by chaos. Baloo and Bagheera have nothing but contempt for the monkeys, and most of this contempt is based on their unstructured culture. We talked about what this means in the context of the British occupation of India. Often an invading civilization sees themselves as having better laws, organization, government. The British saw Indian life as inferior and messy, so they were "helping" the Indian people by taking over their country and making them follow the British way of doing things. Of course you can read this in different ways, depending on where you draw the lines of the analogy. I didn't really take it farther than just pointing out this theme in the story, and discussing the fact that Kipling was showing a culture that seemed lawless and chaotic (the jungle) as in fact very organized and lawful.

The children were *really* excellent listeners today. We had a great discussion and they had lots of interesting ideas and a lot of patience for delving into these abstractions. Kudos to the kids -- if you have a boy in my academic class (like I do) you should give that boy a pat on the back, because the attention span and respectfulness was really great. Not that it's normally bad, but today it was really good.

Henna: Today we learned about the henna plant, how henna dye is made, and how artists decorate people's hands and feet with intricate designs and motifs. We took a look at some pattern and design books and then each designed our own henna tattoos by tracing our hands onto paper and then decorating them. I face-painted this "practice" henna tattoo with washable face paint. The one they get next week will not be as big or complicated as the one they got this week.

Song and Dance: We sang our usual songs and danced our usual dances. The enrichment class kids are really coming along on their memorization. The academic class kids should be working on all of "If" and "Mandalay" and the enrichment class kids should work on the first two stanzas of each. "The Beaches of Lukannon" does not need to be memorized. It's not a famous poem or anything, just fun to sing and it comes from the story "The White Seal."

Assignment: The fast facts are about henna. The story for next week is "Tiger! Tiger!" We are going to be doing real actual henna in class next week. Please let me know if it is okay to henna your child. We will be doing a small tattoo on the back of one hand. It is a semi-permanent tattoo -- it will flake off with the stained skin cells, so how long it lasts depends on how much and how vigorously you wash your hands. So, if you have an event coming up for which they need untattooed hands, you can tell us to put it somewhere less noticeable. The henna paste will dry on the skin, and needs to stay on for as long as possible. It will feel like a dry scab and the kids will just brush it off when they don't want to wait any more.

I need your permission to use henna stain on your child -- if I don't hear from you that it's okay, we will do them with face paint again. I have two special guests coming to help me henna: Sarah's big sister Ashleigh and Miranda's mom Ms Deva. Should be fun!

Note: The children and I were disappointed that the Bhangra dancers did not make it to class to do their demo. I had an email when I got home from the troup leader's girlfriend saying he had gotten in a car accident that morning on the way to class, and was in the hospital. Please keep them in your thoughts and I will keep you updated as to how he is doing!

Latin Club Week 10

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:53:00 +0000

This is a class report for week 10 of my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A from Classical Academic Press.

Meet and greet. I collected homework and we took the quiz.

Songs. We sang our usual songs and all of Adeste Fideles. We are going to learn one more song, next week. We took a vote on whether we should learn another song in Latin like Dona Nobis Pacem or another song about Latin, like She Will Be Latin and Ballad of the Latin Verbs. Interestingly, all of the boys voted for learning another song about Latin and all of the verbs voted to learn another song in Latin. I found that fascinating! We may have to learn two new songs. :)

Translation: We have been working on translating Adeste Fideles, and while a few virtuous children had done the assignment, there were many who had not. We realized that every single person in the class had participated in the science fair the day before, so we forgave ourselves and took the same assignment for next week.

Here's the breakdown again:

Ben: En grege relicto, humiles ad cunas
Nicholas: Vocati pastores approperant:
Stephen: Et nos ovanti gradu festinemus.

Benny: Aeterni Parentis splendorem aeternum
Sarah: Velatum sub carne videbimus:
Shira: Deum infantem pannis involutum.

Stamp: Today's stamp was the second declension neuter noun endings, and in spite of the excitement over the science fair and everyone's heavy weekend of glue-sticking and graph-preparing, everybody got it perfectly again! These children are becoming excellent at performing under pressure!

Virgil: This week, those who could correctly perform the first two lines of the Aeneid with the proper posture and expression got their first memorization sticker. Surprise! It was everybody! We do not recite Virgil as if it is a grocery list or instructions on how to fold pants. We sit up straight, shoulders back, and define our right to rule the world. We were in Troy and we were AWESOME. Now we're in Lavinia and we're AWESOME. We're Romans and we have every right to be here, to rule you, and we take no crap. That's our posture and delivery on the Aeneid and I will accept nothing less than truly stentorian diction.

Homework: Chapter 10 is a review chapter so there will be no quiz. There *will* be a surprise chant. I told the children that I was determined to keep it an absolute surprise, but that it started with S and rhymed with "room." So, they came to their own conclusions and I'm sure I will shock the shoes off them next week with the "sum" chant. Be ready. The assignment I want to collect next week is the huge, enormous, monstrous, insane crossword in the activity book for chapter 10. If they can get on the outside of that, we will play Hot Seat all day long.

Jungle Book Week 9

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:09:00 +0000

Namaste.

Quiz:

Here is the quiz for this week. Which statements are true?

Himalaya Quiz
Circle the numbers that are true.

1. The word Himalaya means “Home of Snow.”
2. The Himalayan mountain range is contained entirely in the country of Nepal.
3. The Himalayas are the highest mountain range in the world, containing Mt. Rainier and Mt. Olympus.
4. The Himalayas are still growing higher.
5. The Himalayas are forbidden for Hindus because they are so cold, and all rivers go there to die.
6. Roman roads and now modern highways make it easy to travel the Himalayas and share culture and news across the mountains.
7. Renunciation means giving up all your material possessions, and your thoughts and desires in this world.
8. The goal of renunciation is enlightenment and liberation.
9. A sunnyasi spends half his time meditating, and half his time working the soil to grow food.
10. Char Dham is a group of holy sites where Indian people go to pray and receive salvation.

Story: For this week, we read the story "Mowgli's Brothers." In the enrichment class we spent some time talking about the plot points of the story so I could make sure the kids were understanding it and following along. They are doing great! Several mentioned they are supplementing with the pop-up book that I recommended. I was very impressed with how the little ones are picking up the details and subtler points of the story -- good job moms and dads reading at home!

Pen Pal:

As a class, we are going to be communicating with a pen pal in India. His name is Ved, he's seven years old, and his mother and I are friends via an internet list. I want the kids to get a sense of what things in India are similar to their own lives, but also appreciate the differences. Today we wrote letters and drew pictures for Ved. Some of the kids were at a loss for what to say -- I told them to ask questions, tell about themselves and about Virginia, etc. It was interesting what they came up with!

Song and Dance: This week we had more time to work on the songs and we were able to spend time on all of them. We will be learning one more India song next week, for a total of five. Some of the children have all of "Mandalay" and "If" memorized and that's awesome! I still like them to look at the words when we sing in class. I talked this week about how our brains work to memorize material -- hearing it, seeing it, and saying it at the same time is a powerful and effective combination. So, watching the words as we sing and hear each other sing, we're engaging our brains on many levels.

Assignment: The fast facts for next week involves identifying locations on a map of India. On your child's map you will find the following: New Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges River, Pakistan, Nepal, China, and Bangladesh. The story for next week is "Kaa's Hunting."

Latin Club Week 9

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:27:00 +0000

This is a class report for week 9 of my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A from Classical Academic Press.

Meet and greet. I collected homework and we took the quiz.

Songs. We sang our usual songs.

Translation: This week we worked on the third verse of Adeste Fideles. We discussed some of the difficulties of translating poetry -- this explains why our English verses do not match up to our Latin verses. The kids divided up the lines and are going to work on translating specific sections of the song. I'm not sure if they know which lines are assigned to which children, and honestly I'm not sure I do either. Here's the breakdown as I recall it:

Ben: En grege relicto, humiles ad cunas
Nicholas: Vocati pastores approperant:
Stephen: Et nos ovanti gradu festinemus.

Benny: Aeterni Parentis splendorem aeternum
Sarah: Velatum sub carne videbimus:
Shira: Deum infantem pannis involutum.

I'd like them to figure out what the words are, and whether they're nouns, verbs, adjectives etc based on the endings, if possible.

Stamp: Today's stamp was the second declension neuter nouns, the donum chant. Everybody got it perfectly! Very exciting!

Hot Seat: We had a hot seat upset today! One of our hot seat champions was incinerated in a surprise burst of flame, and was caught by his sister in the race for who can acquire the most hot seat survival stickers. What will happen next week?!?

Virgil: We practiced the first two lines of Virgil with correct pronunciations. We also discussed and practice the extreme importance of reciting Virgil with the appropriate tone of voice. We do not recite the Aeneid while slouching and thinking about our birthdays. We recite the Aeneid as if we intent to found a civilization. The assignment is to memorize the first two lines for next week.

Homework: Please do chapter 9 in the primer and activity book and be ready for that second declension neuter noun endings chant!

Latin Club Week 8

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:19:00 +0000

This is a class report for week 8 of my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A from Classical Academic Press.

Meet and greet. I collected homework and we took the quiz.

Songs. We sang our usual songs. We missed Travis this week with his solid baritone.

Translation: This week we worked on the second verse of Adeste Fideles. We ran into some trouble working out the correlation between Latin and English so Ben volunteered to look up some of the words for us! We'll tackle verse 3 next week.

Stamp: Today's stamp was the second declension noun endings: us, i, o, um, o, i, orum, is, os, is. Most of the kids nailed it. A few need to review it.

Hot Seat: Our favorite game did not disappoint.

Homework: Please do chapter 8 in the primer and activity book and be ready for that second declension neuter noun ending chant: donum! I predict next week we will get into the Virgil. That is my firm prediction.

Jungle Book: Week 8: Meditation for Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:45:00 +0000

Namaste.

Meditation Exercises:

Today we were joined by local writer and yoga teacher Grace Tazewell for some practice in meditating. First we discussed the story, "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," and I introduced the Himalaya and Sunnyasi fast facts. Then Grace took us through several different short meditations. The first was a listening meditation, where we made ourselves very quiet and then paid attention to all sounds, far and near. Mostly, we heard the sounds of the co-op, but we also heard cars outside, seagulls, an airplane, and a little bit of our own sounds -- heartbeat, tummy rumbling, etc. The second meditation was about sensations we were feeling -- we paid attention to our clothes, to the floor under us, to our hair, the air in the room, anything we could feel with our bodies. Then it was time to examine our thoughts, as we tried to focus on what we were feeling and thinking inside.

It was very interesting to listen as the children shared their experiences with this. The older children in the academic class spent a lot of time considering what they were supposed to be thinking, while the younger kids in the enrichment class were less self-aware. All of them came up with some really interesting thoughts though! The final meditation involved holding a grape in your mouth and then eating it very very very slowly, paying attention to each sensation, change in taste and feeling in your mouth. That was very cool! Grace spent some time answering the kids' questions about meditation too. In the end, we got a very small taste of what it was like for Purun Bhagat to spend so many years in quiet contemplation, doing nothing but thinking.

Song and Dance: We also sang our songs and managed to squeeze in a brief India Dance Party.

New Stuff: This week I'm going to tell the kids that any child who wants to choreograph a brief Bhangra dance either individually or with a group of friends can have time on the last day of class to perform it for the parents. We are also going to be taking on a collective "pen pal" in India, and this week we'll be writing an introductory letter to him.

Assignment: Study the fast facts and be ready for a quiz! Read "Mowgli's Brothers."

Latin Club Week 7

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:07:00 +0000

This is a class report for week 7 of my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A from Classial Academic Press.

Meet and greet. I collected homework and we took the quiz. I speculated that maybe by week eleventeen the children might be accustomed to putting their names on things when they hand them in. I am holding onto that hope, anyway! Hehehe.

Songs. We sang our usual songs, with special emphasis on the second verse of "She Will Be Latin" which contains the second declension masculine verbs that we have been working on so diligently this week.

Translation: I gave the kids copies of Adeste Fideles. You'll notice that the English translation is below the Latin. We sang it in English, gave it a bash in Latin, and then we spent some time figuring out what the Latin words meant and how they corresponded with the English words. We got through the first verse, and the kids were AMAZING at doing this translation work. They were able to identify which words were nouns, which were verbs, and were able to work out the meanings of most of the words, either by using what they knew of Latin already, or by identifying the familiar roots, or by guessing. It was really fantastic. We're going to do the next verse next week.

Stamp: Today's stamp was the second declension noun, ludus, and most of the kids nailed it. A few need to review it. Things are starting to get pretty intense now that we have two different kids of nouns to work on, and our vocabularies are expanding each week. Latin for Children has published a set of supplemental activities -- quizzes, tests, worksheets, etc. that you can find here: Latin worksheets. It's a PDF. I suggest using those in conjunction with the workbooks to help the kids really nail this material.

Hot Seat: From the time they entered the room I was hearing clamors for "Hot Seat" so we played it! Several people were incinerated by the relentless flames of the hot seat, and several people managed to survive and get new hot seat stickers on their folders. Very exciting game. Much laughing. I'm impressed by the bravery of these kids -- they are all willing to take the hot seat every week, even though they are not wearing flame-resistant pants.

Homework: Moving on to Chapter 7! Please do all activities in the workbook and activity book and be ready to take the quiz. If you want to look over the Adeste Fideles sheet and the Aeneid sheet and try picking out some words they know, that would be awesome. Be very very positive over whatever they identify and translate. I am likening it to knowing a secret code; they seem to like that.

Jungle Book Week 7: How to Make a Sari for a Doll

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:36:00 +0000

Namaste.

Today we got right down to business because we had so much fun stuff to do with our Sharpie Saris. However, in the academic track class, we made the time to take our Punjab region quiz:

Quiz: Which one of the following statements are true?

1. The word Punjab comes from the Latin and means “The Eleven Diapers.”
2. The Indus Valley Civilization is largely a mystery because we don't understand their writing.
3. When Aryan people migrated to India and practiced an early version of the Hindu religion, that was the Vedic Civilization.
4. The most important idea for Punjabi people is peace and harmony for all.
5. The Punjab has been invaded by a lot of civilizations, like Greeks, Mongols, and the British.
6. Sikhism is a religion that was started in the Punjab and is still practiced there today.
7. The British Empire was never able to conquer the Punjab region, so they finally gave up and went home.
8. The Punjab is now fully contained in the modern country of Pakistan. None of it is left as part of India.
9. Bhangra dance is a folk dance from the Punjab.
10. Punjabi is the language of the Punjab.

Project: Sharpie Saris

Materials:
Each child needs a doll or stuffed animal.
Sharpies in all colors. Blue and red spread the best -- the "old school" blue and red colors, not the newfangled ones. Of course, we had a rainbow of newfangled colors on hand too.
Stretch poplin cut to fit different sized dolls and animals. The fabric I chose had a small percentage of spandex in it -- this really helps with the pleating and tucking and wrapping. Each piece should be long enough to reach from armpit to floor, and long enough to go around five times. More if you're going to do pleats at the waist. Some of the girls did American Girl saris, and for these I used 44 inches of fabric, the full width of the fabric on the bolt. The width of the strip was about 10 inches. For a Groovy Girls size doll or a Webkinz, you need about half as much length, 2/3 as much width.
Safety pins for pinning the sari at the back.
Rubbing alcohol.
A squirt bottle or spray bottle, or an eye dropper. Fill this with the alcohol.

Instructions:
Find a place outside on the sidewalk or inside with lots of ventilation and a protected surface.
First, decorate your blank sari with the Sharpies. You can do whatever designs you like, but try using some of the motifs we learned about in class -- tear drops, half-moons, stars. You could even decorate your sari with mandalas like this:

Or you could do stripes like this:

Next, making sure you're on a protected surface or one you can ruin, spray the alcohol all over your design. The colors will start to bleed together:

When you've doused it with alcohol, let it dry. Running around waving it in the sunshine is a good way to execute this part of the plan!

When it's dry, wrap the sari on your doll according to the instructions on this video:

Now your doll has a sari:

Here are some pictures from our sari making!

For more pictures, visit our Jungle Book Flickr photo set.

Homework: Because we were upstairs, downstairs, outside, and all around, I'm not sure everyone got the Himalaya and Sannyasi fast facts, or if they got them, I'm not sure they made it into the folders. For this reason, and also because we have a special guest coming next week, we will push the quiz on the Himalayas to the following week. So, there is no quiz this week, there is no reading assignment for this week, and on Tuesday I will make sure everyone has the facts. Also on Tuesday, we will start the Mowgli stories! Hooray!

Latin Club Week 6

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:27:00 +0000

This is a class report for week 6 of my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A from Classial Academic Press.

Meet and greet. I collected homework.

Chants. We took turns leading the chants from chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3, and chapter 4.

Songs. We sang Ballad of the Latin Verbs, She Will be Latin, and Dona Nobis Pacem. With extra time, we were able to work on Dona Nobis Pacem as a round. Here are a few video links that the kids can check out, to help them understand how the parts work together: Dona Nobis Pacem on ocarinas. A kids' choir singing it Dona Nobis Pacem.

Games. Today since there was no quiz, we played many games.

Around the room: We sit in a circle, and take turns each saying one part of the noun declension, sending the noun around the room. This is surprisingly difficult as we get to nouns that we haven't heard declined out loud. Also as we go faster.

Stepping Up with Verbs: Person A sits on the floor, person B sits on a chair beside her, person C stands next to him, person D stands on a chair. So there's a graduated height as the four students are all standing in a line. Then we start saying the principle parts of the verbs -- person A whispers the present, person B says the infinitive, person C loudly declares the past, and person D hollers the passive participle as loudly as decorum will allow. That was pretty hilarious, especially when Travis was standing on the chair.

Strangely, we did not have time to play Hot Seat or work with our flashcards. I don't know where the time goes once you start shoveling up the nouns and verbs.

Stamps. We had a surprise stamp today which everyone got: identify the principle parts of any verb.

Assignments. Please do chapter six in the primer and activity book and review all vocab! We will do the quiz from chapter 6, and the stamp chant will be the "ludus" chant: second declension masculine noun endings: ludus, ludi, ludo, ludum, ludo, ludi, ludorum, ludis, ludos, ludis. See you Tuesday!

Jungle Book Week 6

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:56:00 +0000

Namaste.

We may have started the enrichment track class with an India dance party. We may have also ended it that way. The academic class, however, started with a very serious quiz. And ended with an Indian dance party. Rawr!

Quiz: Which one of the following statements are true?

1. The word “mandala” comes from the Sanskrit word for “circle.”
2. A circle shape only appears in manmade forms like dinner plates and bike tires.
3. People look at mandalas to give them great ideas for wallpaper designs.
4. People make mandalas to release their inner creativity.
5. Ether is a mixture of the other four elements.
6. Fire is represented by a droplet shape.
7. After making a sand mandala, the artists sweep it all away.
8. Concentric circles share a center.
9. A motif is a small, pear-flavored pastry found in bakeries in Lahore.
10. A symmetrical design is the same on both sides.

Bonus #1: Name one place where a circle with a radiating design appears in nature.

Bonus #2: Draw the shapes that represent water, air and ether.

Presentations: Ben presented on wolves, and Shira presented on horses. Both gave short talks, included jokes, held everyone's attention well, and used props. Ben showed a picture of red wolves, and Shira had some grooming brushes to show. Great job to both!

Songs: We worked on all four of our songs. I am asking the academic class to help me rearrange the verses of the "Beaches of Lukannon" song so they can feel they have a little ownership in the way the song is put together. The younger group is not going to be working on that song for now -- I may bring it back in when we have the other three more solid.

Punjab Region: The story "The Undertakers" takes place in the Punjab. It was very very hard to reduce the history and culture of this region to ten "fast facts" for the quiz! The most important thing is that I want the students to get a sense of how complicated and multi-textured the culture of the region is. This is a product of all of the invasions and the many times the region has been conquered by different empires. One of these empires was the Sassanid Empire (remember them, Arabian Nights parents?) and one was the Mughal Empire, which we are reading about in the Salman Rushdie novel. So, in some ways the region is a mad pastiche of many different cultures, but it has also developed a strong identity of its own -- its own religion, its own language, art, dance. Next week we'll be moving across the North of the country from the Punjab toward the Himalayas in "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat."

Sari: I demonstrated draping a sari with a piece of fabric I brought, to give them the idea of what one might look like. Next week we will be making saris for dolls or stuffed animals. I will bring the sari fabric and the decorating materials. Your child should bring a doll or stuffed animal to dress. American Girl dolls would be perfect, regular size WebKinz would be perfect. It would be more difficult to drape a sari on a stuffed dolphin or worm or something without shoulders or arms, but we will work with whatever you bring! I mentioned to the girls that if they have enough yardage at home to make a sari for themselves, they can bring that, but this is not mandatory or expected. It takes at least three yards. Want to practice at home? Here is a helpful video:

Little Babaji: The enrichment track heard the story Little Babaji. This is a folk tale from India that you might have heard long ago as "Little Black Sambo." When I was little we used to go to a restaurant in Detroit that was named after this story. This title was a racist way to label what is essentially an Indian story. The British referred to Indian people as "blacks" and "Sambo" was an insultingly reductive name -- obviously not a name that originated in India. The story itself is charming, though, and has been retold by Helen Bannerman with proper Indian names. They really enjoyed it and the illustrations showed some examples of native dress which worked well with our sari discussion.

Bhangra Dance: Bhangra began as the folk dance of the Punjab region, then became pop, blended with some elements of hip hop, reggae, and became more mainstream. Some has a faster, more pop beat:

Some is more comparable to reggae. I'll be making some music tracks available to those who are enrolled in the class. Ask your kids to show them some of their moves! We're excited to be visited by the Bhangra Maniacs from ODU sometime in November, but for now they're stuck with me!

Bonus links for next week:

Bhangra dancers on stage. Note the Sikh headgear.

Kids doing a Bhangra dance. You can find tons more Bhangra videos including how to, demos, and even a Bhangra exercise video.

A few barasingha deer with their huge antlers, like Purun Bhagat befriended in the story.

Purun Dass becomes a Hindu monk, a Sunnyasin, as seen here. Here's a Hindu monk meditating, with a begging cup.

Here is a mountaintop shrine to Kali. Another smaller shrine.

Some pictures from the Indian Himalayas: 1. 2. Lots of Indian Himalaya pictures. More Himalayan pictures.

A village built on a hill in the Himalayas. A village building after a mudslide.

Jungle Book Week 5

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:56:00 +0000

Namaste.

Today we had so much to do that we immediately launched into the quiz. The quiz was a blank version of the Fast Facts map, which the children had to fill in, matching the name with the ten locations we learned from Kotick's travels.

Quiz: Do you know these places?

1. St. Paul's Island
2. Juan Fernandez Islands
3. Kerguelen Island
4. Galapagos Islands
5. Georgia Islands
6. Orkney Islands
7. Cape of Good Hope
8. Emerald Island
9. Gough's Island
10. Pacific Ocean

Songs: After the quiz, we sang our songs. We now have four: Mandalay, If, The Beaches of Lukannon, and Jungle Book TV Theme Song. We are getting Mandalay and If memorized, holla! Almost everyone has the first verse down, most people have the second verse down too, and we're working on the third verses now.

Story: I didn't have a whole lot to say about the story this week. Its main purpose was to show the seal hunting from the other side of the harpoon, to illustrate the need that the Aleut people had for seals, and to think about the fact that Kipling could show both sides of this killing with such dispassionate detail.

Mandalas: We learned about the five elements in Indian art: earth, air, fire, water, and ether. We learned how they are represented by motifs: square, half-moon, triangle, circle, and teardrop. Ether is the most interesting element -- ask your child what it is! Ether is the empty space wherein all the other elements exist -- it's coldness, absence, space, openness. We learned how people make mandalas as a mental exercise, and how they focus on mandalas during meditation to help them clear their minds. We also talked about how mandalas are transient. I described sand mandalas to them, but it would really be helpful if they could see a few videos:

Project:

Materials: thick watercolor paper with black circles outlined in Sharpie. Liquid watercolors in gold, silver, black, and a variety of other colors. Paint brushes, plastic egg cartons for colors and mixing. Have plenty of extra "blanks" in case some children want to start over or make multiple mandalas. Plan to have 3 sheets of watercolor paper per child at least.

Directions: First, quiet your mind and look at your mandala. It is not empty! It is full of ether. This means it holds infinite possibilities. Try and let your mandala tell you what it wants in it before you begin to paint. Then paint whatever you like. There is no wrong way to do it, and no right way to do it. Whatever is in your mind can come out in your mandala. (In the academic class, Evan led us in a few "om" chants while we were gazing at our mandalas that were full of possibilities).

Assignment: The story for next week is The Undertakers. We are going to be learning about the Punjab region this week. The story is a little rough to get through, a lot of dialogue and not a lot of action. Skipping ahead a bit for the little ones is perfectly fine. Here are some links for them to look at regarding crocodiles, the Punjab region, and adjutant cranes:

A page about Indian crocodiles.

Photo of a big old Indian crocodile.

Video footage of the Adjutant crane (stork).

Video of local people feeding wild jackals in India.

Latin Club Week 5

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:02:00 +0000

This is a class report for week 4 of my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A.

In class:

Meet and greet. I collected homework and we took the quiz.

Chants. We took turns leading the chants from chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3, and chapter 4.

Songs. We sang Ballad of the Latin Verbs, She Will be Latin, and Dona Nobis Pacem.

Stamps. Great news! Everyone got their stamp today, and the missing stamps from last week were filled in joyously and successfully. There is no stamp for next week, because next week is chapter 5 and chapter 5 is review. There is no quiz either. The children voted to have it be a fun week of games and review and hijinks. So that's what it will be! I am, however, planning to surprise them with an "extra" review stamp, which will be to give the four principle parts of any verb. They should all be able to knock out that one easily.

Games. We played a new game today called Hot Seat. One person sat in the hot seat and we called out nouns for them to decline. If they correctly declined the noun, they got to stay in the seat. If not, the flames consumed them and they were dramatically incinerated. Good times! If one person stayed in the hot seat for five nouns they were liberated and received a hot seat sticker on their folders. This game was very fun!

Memory Work. I found this neat video to help us learn our memory work from the beginning of the Aeneid. This covers the first seven lines. Because we're going to have some time on Tuesday, we're going to work on this assignment a lot, so please have them watch this video.

Assignments. Please do chapter five in the primer and activity book and review all vocab! See you Tuesday!

Latin Club Week 4

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:20:00 +0000

This is a class report for week 4 of my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A.

In class:

Meet and greet. I collected homework and we took the quiz.

Chants. We took turns leading the chants from chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3.

Songs. We worked on our song "She Will Be Latin." This song was particularly relevant today because our chant for a stamp was the mensa chant, our favorite first declension noun.

Games: We played a game where we sent the first declension noun "mensa" around the room, with each person saying one form of the noun. This was very challenging! We're going to continue working on this until we get it very very fast and automatic. Having a person "be" the ablative singular, or "be" the accusative plural, helps us visualize the information and also .

Stamps. Today was the first time anyone had difficulty with the assigned chant, and several children did. If your child feels unprepared on any given day, it's fine to opt out of trying for the stamp. The way I present it is to say "Would anyone like to try for the stamp today?" If at any point you find yourself falling behind in the book, please don't stress. The most important things are the chants. If you listen to the CD a lot, play games with the chants, and repeat them every day, they should be fine!

Memory Work: I passed out copies of the opening to the Aeneid, the invocation to the Muse, in Latin and English. The chapter maxim for chapter 3 is the first three words, and now we have the first dozen lines. The work we're doing is very rules and lists oriented, and I would like them to see some Latin "in action" in the context of this epic poem. Please do not stress about memorizing this at home; we will play with it in class.

Assignments. Great job on the assignments and quizzes! Please remember to send a page to turn in with your kids each week, either from the activity book or the primer. Of course, there is no penalty for not turning in homework.

Thanks!

Jungle Book Week 4

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:38:00 +0000

Namaste.

Today to warm up, we practiced our Johar greeting. We're getting fast, but I know we can be faster. I attribute our slowness to extreme giggling caused by people calling each other the wrong name. Which never fails to amuse.

Quiz:

1. Hindus believe in one god, which means they are polytheists.

2. The Greeks had a pantheon, the Romans had a pantheon, and the Hindus have a pantheon.

3. A trinity is a type of drink popular in Goa, a coastal city of Southern India.

4. Brahma is the creator, Ganesha is the preserver, and Zeus is the destroyer.

5. Even though there are many gods in the pantheon, many Hindus believe they are all different manifestations of the same idea of god.

6. An avatar is a divine incarnation, which means a part of god that appears on earth.

7. Devas are people who think they are very important to a religion, and act bossy and rude, mostly found in New York and Los Angeles.

8. Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of overcoming obstacles, is one of the most popular gods in the pantheon.

9. Mother goddesses are important to Hindus. Some major ones are Lakshmi, Parvati, and Kali.

10. There is only one version of Hindu. Anyone practicing a variation has to be reincarnated as a pickle.

If you want the answers, ask your child. I'll give you a hint: The pickle one is FALSE.

Songs: After the quiz, we sang our songs, "If," "Mandalay," and "Jungle Book TV Theme." The enrichment class boogied like it was their job.

The White Seal: We had three teaching points today.

1. Point of view. The White Seal is in the point of view of the animals again, like Rikki Tikki Tavi. I asked the children why Kipling chose to write from this perspective, and we talked about how the story illuminates this secret world of seals, which could never have been narrated from the perspective of humans. I introduced the idea that will become much more important later in the Mowgli stories, that Kipling adds layers of law and order over a "society" that is generally seen as lawless and therefore inferior. So where we see a bunch of unruly seals rolling around on the beach, Kipling sees these rich relationships full of culture and tradition. This will relate later to imperialist attitudes toward native populations.

I asked the kids whether the Aleuts who killed the seals were wrong to do it. They all said yes. Then I asked them to imagine the same scene told from the perspective of the humans. For the younger class, I started to tell a story about a boy living in the harsh environment of this Alaskan island, fighting for survival, trying to get clothes, blankets, and tents for his family, oil to burn in their lamps, food to eat, life from these seals. Would that boy be wrong to kill seals to save his family? So, it gets murky. One child asked, "Why can't they just kill and eat the fish?" I asked if they could imagine a story told from the point of view of fish, that would make a reader think that killing fish was wrong. They said no, but I pointed out Finding Nemo and reminded them of the scene at the end with the fishing boat and the "Swim down together!" They started to get my point!

2. The power of fiction. The lesson of The White Seal is not so much about seals and Aleuts and saving your people and arctic adventure and more about how fiction works to make us *feel* about an issue, rather than thinking about it. I asked the children to tell me how the seal killing made them feel: sad, bad, worried, afraid, etc. Creating feelings in a reader by telling the story of a character the reader cares about can be a much more direct route to a reader's opinion than a non-fiction essay that invites argument. We talked about different works of fiction that were written to make a point, and one child brought up Misty of Chincoteague, which is a great example of changing readers' minds with fiction on a massive scale that could never be accomplished (in my opinion) without a character and a narrative.

3. Is killing seals wrong? We talked around the question for a while, and different children talked about their different levels of vegetarianism or veganism. For me, as usual, it's less about the issue and more about the literary artifice, and teaching the children how changing the point of view can radically affect the story's message, and how authors make these decisions based on what they want to make the reader feel. Identifying and evaluating the point of view is one of the first steps in becoming a conscious reader. Have you guessed that our next story is about seal hunting from the point of view of an Aleutian boy?

New Song: We learned "Lukannon," which Kipling says is the seal national anthem. It's a sad, angry song... this will be the last poem we memorize this semester.

Assignment: The fast facts for this week are all over a map of the world. I made a map of ten of the places Kotick travelled in his search for the island without men. On the map your child brought home, you'll see ten locations labelled, which we went over in class. Next week's quiz will be a blank map, and they'll fill in the numbers for me. The reading assignment for next week is "Quiquern."

Links:

A map of the Aleutian Islands.

A cool volcano in the Aleutian Islands.

A picture of Aleut clothing.

Aleuts in a kayak hunting whale.

Dog sled pictures: 1. 2. 3.

Jungle Book Week 3

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:35:00 +0000

Namaste.

Decorated Elephants Art Project. Because our project was so involved and I wanted the children to have the maximum amount of time possible to work on it, we started right away.

Each student started with a blank elephant outlined on a half sheet of black posterboard in gel marker:

Materials:

Blank elephants on black posterboard
Gel markers
Chalk
Colored rhinestones
Fabric flowers
Shimmery shapes
Wooden tiles
Cardboard tiles
Sequins of all shapes and sizes
Bottles of Tacky glue

The only instructions: Outline with markers. Color with chalk. Use glue in dots only. No big piles of glue, no glue lines, no puddles, no glops. Dots only. Demonstrate. Dots of glue is the secret of success with this project!

Here are some examples of our finished work:

Here is a link to tons more images of my adorable students and their work.

Songs. While we did our projects, we sang our songs, and many of the students have memorized the first verse of If and the first verse of Mandalay. This is exciting! We moved on to working on the second verses.

Quiz. Here it is -- see how you do! Which of these statements are true?

1. The white man in charge of the elephant capture operation is called a mahout.

2. An elephant works with many mahouts in the course of his life, because it’s dangerous for an animal to become attached to one person.

3. A mahout can communicate orders to an elephant with a word or a touch.

4. The difficult terrain in Northeast India makes it necessary to use elephants for work.

5. Elephants cannot be used to carry guns because they have a strong pacifist ethic and will not move forward carrying weapons.

6. If you were a king or a celebrity in India, you would probably ride an elephant in a parade.

7. Elephants in parades are decorated with black shawls, black yarn wigs, and coal dust, to remind everyone of night.

8. During a khedda capture, elephants are driven into large pools of warm milk, which makes them sleepy and easy to work with.

9. Tame elephants are used to calm down wild elephants that are being captured to tame.

10. Ganesha is a Hindu god with an elephant head.

If you want the answers, ask your child.

Toomai of the Elephants: We had three teaching points today.

1. Point of view. The story "Rikki Tikki Tavi" was in the point of view of the animals, and we could hear the animals talking and see the world from their perspective. "Toomai of the Elephants" is in the point of view of the humans, and we see the elephants from the outside. I asked the students why they thought this might be, and they came up with some interesting thoughts. For example, Sarah pointed out that if we heard from the elephants POV, we would know that the dance was real from the beginning. I asked them why they thought Kala Nag came back to the camp, after the dance was over. To me, this is one of the big mysteries of the story, and one of the most important elements. If we heard from Kala Nag, if we could hear him talk, we would know the answer definitively, but without that perspective, we have to guess. Several of the children thought Kala Nag might be coming back to return Little Toomai -- I thought that was interesting. Others suggested that he was afraid to be free in the forest after being a tame elephant all his life.

2. I asked the students if they could think of ways that Toomai and Kala Nag were similar. The answer I was looking for was the fact that they both drummed to express themselves and communicate with the world -- Toomai on his tom-tom and Kala Nag in the elephant dance. They did give me that answer, but Abigail also pointed out that Toomai and Kala Nag were both kind of caught in their circumstances, servants and enslaved -- the elephant in his ropes and pickets and Toomai by his station in life. I thought this was very insightful and it was exactly what I was getting to with my line of questioning.

3. I told the children that there were was a line in the story that bothered me: "Native children have no nerves to speak of." We discussed what that line might mean, and I told them I found it wrong and sad: All children have nerves. We talked about the fact that in colonizing another country, the dominant culture has to define the dominated culture as less important, less valuable than themselves, to allow themselves to use them and oppress them. We looked at this line as an example of the British "Sahib" making it possible to treat these children poorly. We can absolutely see this as wrong, but we have to ask where this sentiment is coming from. Is it the character's sentiment or is it the author's sentiment? I told them that I wasn't sure whether this was Kipling's idea or Sahib Petersen's idea, and that this was a question we would look into further as we went deeper into the book.

Assignment: The fast facts for this week cover the Hindu pantheon. The reading assignment for next week is "The White Seal."

Links:

A fur seal rookery.

A northern fur seal, showing its sharp teeth.

In case anyone is interested in some serious information about fur seals, here is some.

Fur seals on Enchanted Learning.

More fur seals with a big bull in the front and center.

Video of a female seal finding her pup in a group, just like Kotick and his mom.

Baby fur seal and his mom.

The White Seal animated movie (by Chuck Jones) Part I
The White Seal animated movie Part II
The White Seal animated movie Part III

Warning: Do NOT let your child search around on YouTube or Google for fur seal links without you. There are extremely disturbing images and videos of seal culls, and the fur trade. Not appropriate for children AT ALL. Like, nightmares for life type stuff.

Latin Club Week 3

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:15:00 +0000

This is a class report for week 2 of my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A.

In class:

Meet and greet. I collected homework and we took the quiz. Everyone was faster this week -- much faster! Great job.

Chants. We took turns leading the chants from chapter 1 and chapter 2.

Songs. We worked on "Ballad of the Latin Verbs," "She Will Be Latin," and "Dona Nobis Pacem." I passed out the sheet music for "Dona Nobis Pacem" and encouraged those who play instruments to try it out at home. We have some strong singers in the group! I think we are going to be able to do this one as a round.

Games: In our first game, the leader would say the first part of the noun chant (aqua, aquae) and the group would say the second part (water, water). The trick was to mix us up and take the words out of order so we had to translate instantly without knowing what was next. It was challenging for the group to come up with the right definition, and challenging for the leaders to keep the nouns coming in the right rhythm, without pausing to think.

Our second game involved verbs. I called out a verb, and the students had to stand up for singular, sit down for plural. We stayed with the five verbs in the first chapter, but listening to the different endings and figuring out the number was a challenge. Sometimes they knew right away, and all agreed. Sometimes they didn't agree. It was interesting! We talked about different ways that we memorize these endings -- some remember visually by imagining the chart and what it looks like. Some remember aurally, by reciting the chants silently in their brains. Figuring out the way you learn is a great way to use study time more efficiently, so they should be thinking about this question: How do I remember?

Stamps. We all successfully got our -o/-s/-t/-mus/-tis/-nt stamp, although some of us had left folders at home and got a stamp on the hand instead. Next week's stamp is the first declension noun chant, with the noun mensa. This one is a little harder than the last one and will take some practice.

Assignments. Great job on the assignments! I returned the quizzes and homework this week with some comments and stickers to encourage them to press on in the book. Please have your children ready to turn in a page from the chapter 3 material, either the Primer or the Activity Book. Any page, or a photocopy, is going to work.

Thanks!

The children are the future. Let them worry about it.

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:52:00 +0000

I am not worried about my children's future. There. I've said it. Sure, I worry about whether they'll find nice people to marry, or if they'll be fulfilled in their jobs, be happy in their choices. But I am not worried about the future of this world. I won't be one of those gloomy old whiners who says, "I've got a daughter! I've got a son! It's her money you're spending! It's his earth you're destroying!"

You know what? I have a son and a daughter, and if they find themselves 37 years old in a world without polar bears and social security, I expect them to figure it out. My adoptive mother used to say "You're big enough and old enough and ugly enough to handle this." Of course, she also used to say "You're free, white, and 21..." and attach the same optimistic sentiment. But we won't go there. She lived to be 92.

Both the right and the left invoke their children's futures to drive home a point, trotting out the next generation like some kind of diapered trump card guaranteed to end all disputes. "I don't want my children to live in a world without rain forests, a world of socialized medicine, a world where gays can marry, or NYC is underwater." It's a convenient argument. I may even have heard it coming out my own mouth. But guess what? It doesn't matter what kind of world you or I want them to live in. They're going to live in whatever world this one has become by the time they get around to living.

And there's nothing you can really do about it. Nor should you try. You can be responsible. You can do what's right. You can teach your children to understand your beliefs and work to make their lives great. But every generation has its own challenges and problems. Did your parents anticipate 9/11? The collapse of the mortgage industry? Internet stalkers? If they had blustered and fussed more, would those menaces have been avoided? No.

If you think you're going to fix the world for your children, forget it. The world refuses to be fixed. The good news is that we continue to deal with it, daughter after mother, son after father, since the beginning of time. We invent styrofoam, then we quit eating off it, we invent the internet, but we don't let our kids publish their phone numbers, we start wars, we pull back, we finish wars. We're big enough, old enough, and ugly enough to manage whatever the next thing is too.

Do you turn around and blame your parents for global warming? For nukes in Pakistan? For autism? Of course not -- how could they have prevented such things? The world is such a different place than it was 30 years ago, and in 30 years I'm betting it will be practically unrecognizable again. We'll be begging for our I-pods back while our children's contemporaries will be yelling that they don't want their children growing up in a world where the uploading port is wired to their brains and not their ear canals.

I think one of the reasons that the show "Mad Men" is so popular is that in watching that show we can see how far we've come. With an unflinching view of the 60s, and all the things about these people's lives that we find foreign (calling people "negros," not using car seats, slapping women's asses at work, drugging themselves through childbirth, etc) it's impossible not to wonder... what were these people worried about, for their children? What kind of a world did they not want their kids to grow up in? These were our parents. My biological mother was born in the 40s. What could she have wanted, hoped, or feared for me? What does it matter?

Protest. Work. Change. Do what you think is right, and fight for what you believe in right now. But don't drag out your children to make me feel guilty, as if they will be, 50 years from now, the helpless victims of my current whims. They'll do what they have to do, just like my kids will. They'll face problems we cannot imagine, until the debates of 2009 seem as antiquated as rules about driving a horse in Manhattan. Let the future take care of the future -- convince me that what you want me to believe is good for you today.

Latin Club Week 2

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0000

This is a class report for week 2 of my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A.

In class:

Meet and greet. I collected homework and we took the quiz. We discovered that not only do we have two different versions of Latin for Children, we have *three* different versions. So, there were extra questions on the new edition's quiz, and that was a problem. What's going to work best for those who are using books purchased last year or before is to photocopy your own quizzes or leave them blank when possible. For today, the kids collaborated and we got through it. Turning in homework was also complicated due to the difference in pagination and the fact that the "Derivative Worksheet" seems to be a new feature.

Chants. We took turns leading the chants from chapter 1.

Songs. We worked on "Ballad of the Latin Verbs" and "She Will Be Latin" and also learned the first section of Dona Nobis Pacem. We discussed ecclesiastical pronunciation in the context of the word "pacem" and contemplated the nature of the soft C.

Stamps. We all successfully got our amo/amas/amat/amamis/amatis/amant chant right and received our very first stamps. We practiced the chant for next week: -o/-s/-t/-mus/-tis/-nt. We said it like mice, like bears, like princesses, like opera singers, like wind. We went around the room and each had a chance to say the new chant in a different strange voice. This was hilarious, especially Martina and Travis doing the voice of Stitch. We all roared and laughed and I, perhaps ill-advisedly, vowed to learn the Stitch voice. The kids could practice their chants in silly voices at home -- I'm hoping someone will do a good Donald Duck. Doing silly voices takes the focus off perfection and encourages them to make the memory work more automatic, less stressful.

Flash Cards. We showed some of the flash cards we have made and guessed the meanings. The students should make five more, verbs or nouns or whatever, and we worked on them in class a bit.

Assignments. Because of the confusion with the different editions, and because I don't want anyone to have to tear pages out of their books that might have important stuff on the back, I'm going to leave it up to you to decide what page you can turn in next week. You can turn in a page from the Primer or the Activity Book, whichever is easier. If you want to turn in a photocopy, that's fine too. I would like each child to turn in something each week -- exactly what you decide to turn in is up to you.

Jungle Book Week 2

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:17:00 +0000

Namaste.

Johar greeting. We tried to go faster than last week. Maybe by the end of the semester we will just be zooming around the room. With the enrichment track class we just did the girls today; we will do the boys next week. We had so much exciting stuff to get to, we didn't want to take up too much time.

Bindis. We are always going to wear bindis, until the bindis run out.

Quiz. Here it is -- see how you do! Which of these statements are true?

1. Rudyard Kipling was an Indian author, but he was born in London, England.

2. During Kipling’s life, India was colonized by England, and ruled by England.

3. Kipling was named after the Rudyard Potato, the most delicious potato his parents had ever eaten.

4. Kipling’s father was a professor of sculpture at the School of Art and Industry in Bombay.

5. As a little child in Bombay, Kipling spoke native Indian languages as well as English, and had a Hindu nanny and caretaker.

6. When he was six years old, Kipling went every day to an Indian school, where he learned about Indian culture and the Indian languages.

7. Kipling became a writer for the Civil and Military Gazette, a newspaper in Lahore, India, and then a bigger newspaper, The Pioneer, in Allahabad.

8. When he was 24, Kipling signed on to the crew of a boat to become a deep sea diver and search for the elusive Indian elephant whale.

9. Kipling became a writer most famous for novels, essays, and cookbooks.

10. Kipling won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but refused to be knighted and refused to be the poet laureate of England.

If you want the answers, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Hindi phrase practice. Here are the phrases we learned today:

Hello - Namaste

Goodbye - Alvida

How are you? - Aap kaise hain?

I am fine. - Mai achchha hoon.

Rikki Tikki Tavi: We had two teaching points here. The first was about the setting. We discussed how these are English people, living in India on a military compound. Their lifestyle is definitely British and they bring a lot of their world with them from England. This will come back later when we talk about the Gond tribe in the Mowgli stories.

The second point touches on the way Kipling writes about animals. Rather than personifying his animal characters, making them behave as humans, Kipling's mongoose and cobra and other animals behave as animals -- they stay true to their natures. So even though they have language and we can understand their communications, they aren't making human choices and facing human conflicts. This is why Rikki Tikki Tavi goes right into the cobra hole without considering whether or not it's a good idea. We compared this type of animal story to something like Finding Nemo, where the animals (or fish in this case) are very human in their worldviews.

Songs and Poems. We sang Mandalay and If, and learned the Jungle Book TV Theme Song, from a 1970s animated series that was popular in India. The interesting thing about this song is that it was written, way back when, by the same songwriter whose song "Jai Ho" was recently featured in "Slumdog Millionaire." Here is a link to a video of the song. Warning: It will get stuck in your head.

Toomai of the Elephants preview: We read over the Working Elephant Fast Facts and discussed the role of elephants in Indian culture. In the enrichment class we talked about the following vocabulary words:

Mortar
Insubordinate
Ankus
Sahib
Fodder
Mahout
Galls
Quinine

Bonus Links:

Here's a really cool video that shows decorated elephants working with their mahouts, getting all decked out for a temple ceremony. Cool detail: the elephant helps the mahout climb up by raising its back leg.

Something to listen to: A mantra to Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god. After you get through the images of the singer's other CDs, there are lots of cool still images of Ganesha depicted in art. Here's another mantra to Ganesh, with a beat you can dance to. Disclaimer: I don't know what any of the words mean.

An elephant outside a temple, giving a blessing to people.

Elephants being made to lie down and take a rest by their mahouts. You can see one guy gently using an ankus.

Here's an elephant lifting a log and piling it up... like "elephints a'pilin' teak" in the poem.

WARNING: The use of elephants for work, festivals, or domestic purposes is by no means uncomplicated and beautiful. If you click around and look, you'll find horror stories and terrible pictures. So don't. Several of the "elephants at work" videos are a little disturbing, at least in my opinion; the animals look stressed and you can see rope marks, etc. The ones above are okay.

Next week we're going to make decorated elephant heads, so it would be great if they could look at a lot of pictures of elephant headdresses:

Latin Club Week 1

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:52:00 +0000

This is a class report for my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op. Our textbook is Latin for Children Level A.

In class:

Meet and greet. We all Latin-ized our names, so Benny became Bennimus, Stephen became Stephanus, etc. Fortunately for me, I got to stay "Lydia." Already Latin enough.

We talked about the different reasons we want to learn Latin. The kids mentioned that learning Latin makes it easier to learn other languages (Shira), that Latin is like a secret language (Stephen), and that Latin is just fun to learn (Ben).

Down to business. We went over the syllabus and talked about the book, the quizzes, the stamps.

Grammar: We discussed verbs and how they have number and person. We played a game where I said a pronoun and they had to tell me the number or the person or both. Then we talked about the verb endings in chapter 1, and how in Latin instead of adding a pronoun to signify person and number, the actual verb itself changes.

Chants: We did the amo/amas/amat chant, the verb chant with principle parts, and the noun vocab chant, and the kids took turns leading the chants.

Songs: I introduced the songs "She Will Be Latin" and "Ballad of the Latin Verbs." In the next few days I'll be posting more about these songs. with some audio to listen to, and the lyrics.

Flashcards: I handed out five blank cards to each student, and with markers and other writing utensils, they got started on making their cards. I handed out their pouches to keep the cards in, and that was it!

Assignments: This week the children should complete pages 5 and 6 in the Primer to tear out and turn in. Of course, I recommend completing all the work in the Primer and Activity Book for chapter 1. We will be taking the quiz in chapter 1 in class. Not only can they preview the questions in advance, but they can use the book to help them as they take the quiz in class. Ideally, they won't need to!

Jungle Book Week 1

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:48:00 +0000

CLASS SUMMARY:

Discuss the meaning of the word "Namaste." Practice saying "Namaste" to each other.

Do a "johar" greeting. In every child exchanges name with every child. So, the child whose turn it is says each of the other children's names around the circle, and each child responds by saying the first child's name back. This is a tradition in the Gond tribe, the tribe of Mowgli, at the ghotul, or youth dormitory. It's a great way for the children to learn each other's names, and it's also fun and leads to some silliness.

Put on your bindi. Talk about the Hindu concept of the chakra and the third eye. We looked through "magic eye" viewers that showed rainbows around everyday objects -- thanks to Miss Ginny for providing these! You could use a kaleidoscope or maybe rose-colored glasses to illustrate the idea of seeing differently than with your regular two eyes. Rather than get deeply into the meanings and variations of the bindi, I decided to go the silly route, so we had lots of different stickers for the kids to use: peace signs, soccer balls, donuts, and sparkly Mickey Mouse heads, as well as jewels and glitz for the girls. Here's a picture of one particularly glamorous bindi, taken during lunch hour:

And two little girl bindis:

I bought lots of different sticky jewels, but the ones that worked the best were these:

and these:

I cut them apart into individual bindis. If you like, you can also order sticker bindis from online stores.

Talk about Kipling himself. In the academic class we went through the fast facts one by one and talked about them, and in the younger class we just chatted about him and his life.

Introduce the two poems we will be memorizing as songs. The academic class worked on each song in full, and the enrichment class worked on the first verses. If you're in the academic class, those poems, "Mandalay" and "If" came home in your child's binder. I will post more about the songs later, including some audio files for listening at home.

List some vocabulary words to notice in "Rikki Tikki Tavi": cantonment, bungalow, veranda, fledgling, sluice, bantam, and brood.

READING ASSIGNMENT (to be read by 9/15): Rikki Tikki Tavi

QUIZ MATERIAL (for Academic Track): Rudyard Kipling Fast Facts

BONUS LINKS

Video of a mongoose fighting a cobra

Video of a mongoose fighting a cobra II

Video of a guy working with a 14 ft King Cobra out in the jungle

Rikki Tikki Tavi, the animated movie, was made in 1975. It’s a cartoon, but a lot of the words are quite true to the story:

Rikki Tikki Tavi Part I

Rikki Tikki Tavi Part II

Rikki Tikki Tavi Part III

A good picture of a cute Indian mongoose

A good picture of a cobra’s markings

Latin for Children Syllabus

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:41:00 +0000

This is a syllabus for my Latin class at Homeschool Out of the Box co-op.

Assignments:

We will be tackling one chapter per week in the Latin for Children Primer, with accompanying exercises in the Activity Book. I will be assigning pages which I will collect and grade. We will mark the assigned pages in class so your child will always know which pages will be collected. Week 1's assignment will come from Chapter 1, and be collected in Week 2, and so on. Assignments will come back with positive comments.

Quizzes:

Each week we will take the quiz in the Primer. If you do not have a blank quiz sheet, don't worry -- I will make copies of my blanks. The children can study the quiz sheet during the week, use their books to help them take the quiz, and even collaborate.

Stamps:

Your child will come home from Day 1 with a special purple folder and fifteen blank stickers. Each of these represents a stamp he or she will earn during the semester. Here is a list of the stamps to earn:

First conjugation verb (amo)
Present tense verb endings
Verb principle parts (any verb)
Sum chant
1st declension noun (mensa)
1st declension noun endings
2nd declension noun (ludo)
2nd declension noun endings
2nd declension neuter noun (donum)
2nd declension neuter noun endings
Adjective endings
1st and 2nd declension adjective
2nd conjugation verb
Imperfect verb endings
Sentence pattern chant

Everyone can work at their own pace, but this will take us through half the book in this first semester.

Flash Cards

We will be making our own flash cards with some of the vocabulary words that can be visually represented. The children can use whatever graphic reminds them of the word. We will be spending some time in class on this, but if they don't finish, they can finish at home. Any visual that reminds them of the word is fine. What's important is that we don't use the English translation on the card. I'd like them to go straight from the idea of the word to the Latin word without transitioning through English. The children will come home on the first day with a pouch to hold their cards.

Jungle Book Class Syllabus

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:48:00 +0000

Text: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, unabdridged edition.

Reading Assignments:

Week 1: Rikki Tikki Tavi
Week 2: Toomai of the Elephants
Week 3: The White Seal
Week 4: Quiquem
Week 5: The Undertakers
Week 6: The Miracle of Purun Bhagat
Week 7: Mowgli’s Brothers
Week 8: Kaa’s Hunting
Week 9: Tiger! Tiger!
Week 10: How Fear Came
Week 11: Letting in the Jungle
Week 12: The King’s Ankus
Week 13: Red Dog
Week 14: The Spring Running
Week 15: Last Class, No Assignment

Special Events:

We will be hosting guests from the community to teach us about Bhangra dancing and meditation. We will also be making samosas and saris. Stay tuned!

The following elements of the class apply only to the academic track. The enrichment track will be paperless. No need to carry a binder.

Quizzes:

Every week you will receive ten Fast Facts, and every following week you will take a ten question true/false quiz on these facts. Quizzes are not graded and collaboration is allowed.

Memory Work:

“If” by Rudyard Kipling
“Mandalay” by Rudyard Kipling

Presentation:

Each student will prepare a five minute presentation for the class about any one of the animals in the Jungle Book. Here are some ideas for animals you might pick: wolf, bear, panther, crocodile, tiger, elephant, seal, wild dog, mongoose, monkey, etc. You can do anything you like in your presentation. You can prepare a handout, give a talk, ask questions, show pictures, play a game, or whatever you like! It’s your five minutes! Use it!

Presentations will take place in weeks 5-14. Sign up for your preferred date soon.

Obama's Address to School Children: Reality Check!

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:17:00 +0000

REALITY: From the Department of Education:

At 12:00 p.m., Eastern Time (ET), September 8, 2009, President Barack Obama will deliver a national address to the students of America. (Please note that this is a change from the originally scheduled time.) During this special address, the president will speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.

MYTHOLOGY: From Jim Greer, Chair of Republican Committee in Florida:

As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.

Greer goes on to project that children will be forced to agree with Obama's initiaties, or else be "ostracized by their teachers and classmates."

Unbelievable. If Obama rescued a kitten from a tree, Republicans would wail that he was defying the traditions of gravity, and that the kitten had pooped on the lawn of the Pentagon, thereby defiling the troops. When they screech at innocuous "initiatives" like giving kids a pep talk at the start of the school year, it really deflates the impact of their quibbles on more significant issues.

Fiddle Fever Summer Camp 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Lostcheerio) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 03:46:00 +0000

This year Benny and I tried something completely different, the Fiddle Fever camp hosted by the Academy of Music. The camp is taught by local music star Carol Thomas Downing, director of the Virginia Children's Chorus, Suzuki teacher, and fiddler!

Because of Benny's tendency to be an active participant, his constant need to express himself verbally and also by bow-jousting and playing his instrument out of turn, and because I too have really loved fiddling, in my day, I decided to be a student of the camp also.

It was a fantastic experience! Carol Downing is an incredibly gifted teacher -- fun, inspiring, and creative. She had a whole room full of children, aged 7 to 17 (and then me, age 107), some of whom could barely read a note of sheet music and some of whom were accomplished violinists, all on the same page, at the same tempo, with the same twinkle in their eyes. I was impressed and then amazed, watching her technique.

Benny had a fantastic time, constantly busy, happy with his instrument, and really learning not only new songs but new techniques and ornaments, a whole new feeling of playing the violin. For this child who has been working hard on Suzuki repertoire for many years, the fiddling tunes were a delightful break. No less beautiful, but more whimsical, more emotional, more fun! And he could go as fast as he wanted, in practice, I told him. This made it easier for him to tone it down during the performances.

I highly recommend Carol Thomas Downing's Fiddle Fever Camp. We will definitely be there next year -- maybe we'll see you too!

Here are a few pictures from our final performance at Conklin's Irish Rover, an Irish pub in Virginia Beach that hosts live Irish music every first and third Sunday. For more pictures and video, check out my Flickr set for our summer violin camps. The fiddle tunes/pictures are the first nine entries.

Morrison's Jig:

Fiddlers, youngest in front, including Amy Ferebee on guitar:

Other guest musicians included Martha Giles on hammer dulcimer player and singer Marsha Wallace:

The experience was great for Benny and for me too. We have been playing our fiddle tunes all summer, and I'm even working on polishing my tin whistle skills again. A good reminder that having fun with music is the best motivator, as we approach Suzuki Book 6 and all the hours of scales and arpeggios that implies.