What IS Living Maths and How Can I Use it?

Living maths is attributed to Charlotte Mason as she referred often to 'living' books. She actually termed it the 'living teaching' of maths and it has morphed into living maths along the way. I'm really interested in it as a concept for teaching maths at home as the other CM aspects that I've adopted have worked so beautifully well. Recently I've been researching quite a bit about living maths, what that means and how to go about it and this post is a round-up of the information that I've found out and some thoughts about that!

How I came to be here.......
I've been dabbling in it for the last year and have gone on a bit of a journey.... I started out buying a stack of maths story books that I found from the living maths book list written by Mama Jenn that tallied with the maths skills outlined in the National Curriculum. I put together a few activities for each book and we read it every day and did a different activity that illustrated the maths concept in the book. The girls really enjoyed it and it was very effective for concepts such as symmetry and even place value but when I came up against multiplication, I got stuck!! That prompted me to buy a book for teachers to explain to ME what children needed to learn about maths and how they best understood it. That was a good move and I felt much more confident but it lead me on to realising that I couldn't 'teach' some of the concepts in one session and expect it to sink in. Some skills had to be practised over and over like reading does and that meant daily maths........

............which brought me back full circle to where I'd started, wondering how to do that without resorting to a dry boring workbook based curriculum that could completely turn the girls off maths. My age-old curriculum issues arose again as I looked around - they jumped here, there and everywhere - in the name of daily practise but without any seeming logic or continuity, they didn't have explanations, and they all went about it in a different order. Some used manipulatives which I was keen on but didn't fit with my philosophy on how I want the girls to experience learning. Most of them relied on the memorisation and retention of 'maths facts', Eve finds this kind of rote learning nigh on impossible which rules that route out!

I came to a few conclusions about my thinking on maths and where we are now:

• We can't 'do it all' just like we can't with science and history either but I also don't want there to be glaring gaps that will hamper later maths for the girls.
• The girls have very good practical maths skills using time, weighing and measuring, handling money etc.
• They learn by themselves - I know this as they come running in to tell me that 3x4 is 12 or that 70-20 is 50..... but they aren't sure of the terminology and what written symbols mean.
• The living maths that we have done so far has sunk in and been retained and used, most notably place value.
• I believe that expertise builds up and stems from truly understanding the subject and seeing it's links to other aspects of life and how it can be used.
• I want the security of feeling like we have a logical sequence and I'm not just attacking random subject matter and from our literacy approach I know that little and often builds nicely into confidence and understanding.
• I want the flexibility to scoot ahead or to stop and expand on things that confuse or enthuse the girls.

What I found out about Living Maths........

With all this in mind I launched into my research determined to find the perfect fit once and for all! Some useful resources that I found on the way were the Living Maths Yahoo group, Living Learning Lists from the blog 'everyday snapshots', a fantastic article on squidoo entitled Charlotte Mason on Math, another by the same author called Transitioning to Living Maths and a vast amount of thought provoking information here. Because 'living books' has become a term synonymous with a Charlotte Mason style education, it seems natural to assume that 'living maths' means that maths is taught purely from books alone. Having dabbled in this method myself I am strongly questioning whether it is enough as after all, she didn't advocate teaching children the mechanics of reading by simply reading to them, although very very important, so how can we teach the mechanics of maths by reading about it to them? There must be more to it!

Charlotte Mason didn't use the term 'Living Maths', rather she referred to the 'Living Teaching' of maths. This suggests to me that she believed that maths should be brought alive for the children, and she didn't rule out any particular ways of doing that. Her recommendations followed a pattern of using manipulative materials followed by visualising those materials and methods with mental arithmetic and then moving onto written maths problems once mental arithmetic was secure. Problems should challenge the child without overwhelming them, this is important when doing maths from a CM perspective as she placed importance on accuracy and getting things right first time without retrying it, it will be up to me to ensure that I pitch things at the right level for them. Charlotte Mason believed in a solid foundation of the basics, she disapproved of a child bashing through sums and problems without a true grasp of what they were trying to do. My favourite principle of a CM maths program is that you shouldn't 'overteach', she didn't want parents to get in the way of a child's learning, this is fantastic because it gives me confidence that a well chosen pathway and well-chosen materials will do the job nicely without me having to battle my own maths insecurities to facilitate it! 

How I am approaching Living Maths.....

I found that Charlotte Mason's approach to maths wasn't that far removed from what I thought it would be and how I am planning on approaching it already. I have chosen a four fold approach this year influenced by where the girls are in their maths development, what has worked previously and what I think I can manage with a newborn and a toddler!:

1. I have chosen The Dyscalculia Toolkit by Ronit Bird as our main spine. It is designed for children aged 7-14 and is aimed at supporting children with learning difficulties in maths..... HOWEVER I think it is a brilliant scheme for all children and it fits really well with Charlotte Mason's explanation of the living teaching of maths as it focuses on maths facts but without a heavy reliance on memorisation - it shows logical ways to get there by reasoning rather than rote learning. It also places an emphasis on understanding backed up with concrete experience of using manipulatives before moving on to mental working out and then written problems. From my personal wish list, it ticks the boxes of providing a logical sequence of small incremental steps that can be tackled at a rate that suits my children. It isn't designed to be a curriculum, but rather a 'pick and choose' selection of activities and games but as I want to ensure that the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are secure by the end of this year, I am going to use it as a curriculum, set-up in much the same way as I use The Reading Reflex. I will post more about how I'm doing that another time! 
2. I have purchased the first book in the Life of Fred series and will be trying this out with the girls, I've read a range of reviews on it but think we need to try it out to see how it suits us. It will fit nicely into our book basket but I'm unsure of whether the 'jump about' nature of the stories will be sufficient as a standalone curriculum in the long term, although it does follow it's own sequential course building up to high school level. The tone of the stories isn't my cup of tea and there doesn't seem to be much material to allow practise and repetition which over the next year might not suit ME as I don't want to be having to prep extra things to go along with it!!
3. The third and final aspect that I'm really looking forwards to from a personal interest point of view are living books on maths. I was inspired by this living math through history curriculum and very nearly bought it if it wasn't for a review that praised it highly but said it was pretty much a series of book lists and you needed to do many hours of prep and organisation yourself to utilise it. As they are kind enough to make their book lists freely available I chose instead to trawl through them and choose some interesting books that will tie maths to the history and science that we are doing this year, making it 'live' in terms of linking all the subjects together as a whole, which was another of my personal requirements. I am particularly looking forwards to these as my maths experience in school was limited to formulae and processes with very little enjoyment! I'm going to intersperse these with some of the living maths books that we already own, utilising the method we've found successful before of tying practical activities to them to teach concepts such as time, fractions, measurement and more.
4. Be mindful of taking advantage of opportunities to measure, weigh, tell the time, use calendars etc on an informal, real-life basis

I haven't worked out yet how I will fit these different aspects in and there is much more to say on the subject of living maths books and the Dyscalculia resource book, but they will have to wait for another post or two, especially as I am so spoiled for choice with the book lists that I can't decide what to get! There are things I would like to bring into our maths that I simply don't have the time and capacity to achieve at the moment. I keep reminding myself that I can't do it all and neither do I have to..... we can try new things another year and I think what we have for this year is rich and varied enough! In the meantime, you can browse through my Charlotte Mason Pinterest board and my Maths Musings Pinterest board for more ideas and inspiration on teaching maths in a CM way!

Building and Maintaining Homeschooling Momentum

If you are anything like me, then building and maintaining a momentum with education at home is something you will have to work at! It is all too easy to start out really enthusiastic about an idea, book, or curriculum, only for the first flush of interest to subside and for another potentially great opportunity to fade into the cupboard to gather dust! So why is is hard to build and maintain momentum? What are the pitfalls to avoid and what tips and techniques can help you to succeed? I'll start with where I went wrong and what I do now to build and maintain a happy flow to our schooling!

Why is the flow hard to start and harder to keep going sometimes?
Part of my problem is that I want to DO everything........ I want to teach them to play the piano, teach them to draw and paint, bring in a foreign language, facilitate sporting and social activities, do lots of hands on science experiments, as well as make sure the basics are really thoroughly covered in a way that they will truly understand and gain lasting benefit from rather than just going through the motions...... this is the perfectionist in me showing her colours!

Over the last few years though I have realised that if I try to do it all, then it isn't all done well, with enthusiasm and passion and enjoyment, and the more I try to plan, the less actually happens. Also, in the UK, we have no minimum hours of teaching/attendance to record and no statutory subjects to cover; whilst I embrace this freedom with joy and gratefulness as it allows me to tailor the children's education to their own needs and interests, it is a double edged sword as there is then no-one outside the home to be accountable to and I work quite well with deadlines and requirements to meet!!

So how can you BUILD momentum?

• Make it a HABIT! I often read articles about schedules versus routines and which might be a better fit for your family but it suddenly clicked recently upon reading a series of blog posts about schooling multiple ages that for us it is neither schedules nor routines, but HABITS that make the difference! This was a eureka moment for me..... I am planning to go back to this series (scroll down for the list) and read them properly to see what could be useful to adopt within our family. Forming habits isn't just for habits of doing lessons, but for things like quiet time, or when to fit in the myriad of other things that vie for your time and attention, like blogging (ahem) or paperwork, cooking, cleaning, gardening, and so the list goes on!
• Do it YOUR WAY! It is easy to feel overwhelmed when you read of the mountains of subjects that other homeschooling mothers manage to shoehorn into their day and to feel that you too should be doing that, or writing your own curriculum or teaching it in a spectacularly well organised schoolroom, or all of the above...... well DON'T!! Look at how your family works and fit it to that, store it all in a plastic box in the garage to pull out once a day, curl up in an armchair to do it, take it to the beach with a picnic, do it in the evening or weekends if that's when you work best, write your own or buy it in if that suits you better - whatever you do, make sure you have chosen that way for YOUR reasons and not because ti looks glossy on someone else's blog...... you are far more likely to stick with it if it is designed around your family and therefore fits well.....
• It won't all fit well so DITCH IT if it doesn't work and try something else! Knowing that you can ditch a misfit will make you feel more relaxed about trying something new.
• MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TIME...... multiplication songs in the car, audio stories on during lunch, reading and narration with a cuppa and a snack, have one child read to you during another's swimming lesson, be creative! This leaves you time to enjoy each other's company or for you to have a well-earned cuppa whilst the children are busy playing after a fulfilling and enjoyable morning..... there I go mentioning a cuppa again, can you tell how I like to relax for ten minutes??!!
• Build in ONE THING AT A TIME........ jumping in with a really full-on week of scheduled lessons and work to complete can be exhausting and demoralising. Pick your priority subjects and introduce one or two things at a time, get to grips with them, then add in other things as the weeks go by.

And how can you MAINTAIN that momentum?

I believe that building momentum is the most important part. If you have built it well, then even when the unexpected comes along to disrupt your homeschooling plans, you will continue with your core priorities as they are part of daily life and slot in easily. In our house the core subject that carries us through is phonics and reading. Come rain or shine we slot them in, and I have taken some lessons from how I set up the phonics programme when considering how I will build and maintain a different looking momentum this Autumn with a new baby and a toddler livening up the environment! 

• Make CAREFUL CHOICES of curriculum that will fit pleasantly rather than jar with your children's learning styles, interests and your family circumstances. I have written about planning your own curriculum here and here, with a third post to follow soon.
• READ IT THROUGH from start to finish before you begin so that you are familiar with it and know where you are headed through the year.
• GATHER SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT before you start and have everything on hand and easy to grab. If you have to go searching around for materials each time you want to use them, you are more likely to let it slip, rather than just grabbing them and getting on with it when the time is ripe.
• Know when to TAKE A BREAK or leave it for the day..... if your children are getting frustrated, or everyone is tired, there is a virus working round family members that is pulling everyone down, then leave off the lessons for a few weeks until the time is right to pick it back up! A few weeks break from  just one subject can bring amazing leaps and bounds in understanding and capability, without having done anything on it in the meantime! I have experienced this in my children, previous learning seems to consolidate in the break that you take. I am right now taking a break from phonics with my youngest daughter. She is becoming fidgety and frustrated with the activities but really enjoying reading books to me as well as being read to so backing off is in both our interests.
• Just as importantly, know when to GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK! Drop a few of the balls you juggle constantly by putting some convenience foods on the menu for a week or so, or saying 'no' to a commitment outside the home. Making one or two temporary changes can create just a bit of space that means that your priorities can keep taking the top spot and keep that momentum rolling on!
• Finally, WRITE GOALS for yourself. I don't write goals for my children as I want them to learn at their own pace and to their own rhythm. I do write goals for myself though, to keep myself on track with the things that I need to provide and facilitate. I learned a particularly effective way of goal-setting last year at a seminar I attended and I'm going to try it out on home education goals this coming year!

I haven't yet perfected the art of building and maintaining momentum, but I hope that by sharing what I have learned so far, it will help some of you to find an educational rhythm to help you flourish! I add to my ideas on my homeschooling pinterest board, if you are after any further inspiration!

Curriculum Planning Made Easy Part 3

In part 1 I talked about why it was so great to write your own curriculum and in part 2 I went into the nuts and bolts of how to go about putting one together. In this third post on curriculum planning, I'm going to show you what I have gathered for my own children for the coming year, with a few explanations of my choices along the way.

A big passion of Eve's is sewing and I wanted to expand on this for her. I decided to look for some books about UK cotton mills and a story about sewing also with a view to building up some knowledge of different stitches. As we will be reading these going into the Winter, handcrafts are always a useful addition! I have:

• Mill Girl - A Victorian Girl's Diary 1842-1843 by Sue Reid - We haven't read a diary format before.
• Look Inside A Victorian Mill by Brian Moses - This has photographs, drawings and short sections of text that can expand on concepts that come up in the Mill Girl Diary
• Victorian Fashions - A Dover Colouring book by Tom Tierney covering the period 1837-1877. I often include some high quality colouring pages as the girls enjoy colouring whilst they listen to me reading, it also shows what the fabrics being produced by the mills were used to make.
• The Mary Frances Sewing Book by Jane Eayre Fryer - This is a reprint of an early 1900's book, so towards the end of the Victorian era. I think Eve will love it, it is charmingly written with tools from the sewing basket telling the story through text and poetry, with sewing tuition in each chapter from basic stitches up to hand sewing doll clothing. Eve has a beloved rag doll named Jemima that was mine as a child (although I didn't love her as Eve does!) and she will love making her some clothes.

Another strong interest of Eve's is designing and making things. She is quite the little engineer without really knowing it. Faith too has begun to come up with ingenious solutions to building problems. To further this interest I have:

• Amazing Leonardo da Vinci Inventions You can Build Yourself by Maxine Anderson. It is available for free download from here although I had to be patient to get it through my oversensitive firewall and then persuade my printer to print it!! It's a delightful book, part biography, part 'how-to' instructions based on the detailed notebooks that Da Vinci kept throughout his life. It is split into five main sections  each representing a collection of ideas and inventions that Leonardo was fascinated by.
• Bridges! Amazing Structures to Design, Build and Test by Carol Johmann and Elizabeth Rieth - This is a great book covering science, technology, important figures and construction challenges. 
• 13 Buildings Children Should Know by Anette Roeder.
• From Mud Huts to Skyscrapers, Architecture for Children by Christine Paxmann.
• The Story of Architecture, 3000BC -Gothic Period by Hillyer and Huey - This is a golden oldie (and smells it too!), it ties the architecture studies really nicely to the history programme that we are using.
• I'd like to add something in here on a British architect/engineer or a female one also.

Faith has asked some searching questions over the last year and I have some books telling the story of evolution:

• Born With a Bang by Jennifer Morgan
• From Lava to Life by Jennifer Morgan
• Mammals who morph by Jennifer Morgan
• The Tree That Time Built, a celebration of nature, science and imagination selected by mary Ann Hoberman and Linda Winston - this is a book of poetry covering nature, science and evolution with Darwin's diaries made into poetry form.  
• Who Was Charles Darwin? by Deborah Hopkinson
• What Mr. Darwin saw by Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom
• Island, A Story of the Galapagos by Jason Chin - A truly stunning book putting evolution into a living context so simply and beautifully with illustrations and text. My parents have spent time sailing around The Galapagos and have photos and first hand accounts to complement this book - exciting!

Building on the evolution idea and feeding faith's passion for all things natural, I have collected a few books on birds. I chose birds as they have some obvious adaptations within the species to notice and discuss such as different beaks, types of feathers and feet. I am anticipating that this list will grow throughout the year so it isn't yet complete:

• Seabird by Hollings Clancy Hollings
• Owl Puke by Jane Hammerslough - this contains an owl pellet to dissect and I plan to get another so there is one for each girl!
• The Boy Who Drew Birds, A Story of John James Audobon by Jacqueline Davies
• Just Ducks by Nicola Davies
• I am researching adding a novel by Michael Morpurgo here. They often tackle ecological and ethical subjects with accurate historical and geographical detail and a good dollop of human traits thrown in but the content isn't always suitable for younger readers so I want to be sure before I pick one!

An interest in Kings and Queens has resurfaced after the recent discovery of Richard III's remains in a carpark! I have books collected last year to feed this interest, they are:

• Our Island Story by HE Marshall
• My Amazing Book of Kings and Queens by igloo books
• The Ladybird book of Kings and Queens by Louise Jones
• The Usborne Kings and Queens Sticker Book by Sarah Courtauld and Kate Davies
• I-spy Kings and Queens

My Mum sourced the majority of the monarchy books after the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, but we didn't get around to using them as the other projects we had going rolled on. I am planning to use these to dip in and out of as we come across the 'characters' in Our Island Story, and build some visits into it as we have such a rich heritage of amazing places all around us! 

Our Island Story is the only 'classic' Charlotte Mason curriculum book that has made it on to the list this year. I say 'classic' as it appears on most of the online curricula that you can access. Charlotte Mason herself encouraged the use of new and fresh books though so I have embraced that within my planning, making the books relevant to the girls and the times that we live in. I think I have managed to cover a good range of genres and to interweave the subjects that I want to cover. I learned from last year's book lists what worked well and what didn't and have incorporated that knowledge into this years but I'm sure there's much to learn still!

I read 'chapter' books separately to the girls at bedtime as they have different tastes and really enjoy the one-one attention this gives them. Faith likes animal stories, so I have 'The animals of Farthing Wood' by Colin Firth and James Herriots treasury lined up, whereas Eve likes historical novels with a strong female character, so we have enjoyed What Katy Did and Heidi over the last year and are currently reading 'The Secret Garden'. I'm not sure yet what we will move onto!

We do a fair bit of science and up to now I have planned and written the lessons as things came up that sparked an interest (see my science page at the top of the blog for some of the things we have done). This is wonderful but time consuming and with a new baby on the horizon, I know that I'm not going to be able to do that for some time. With that in mind I am busy making Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding into an 'off the peg' curriculum by bagging up the materials needed for each lesson ready to grab and go in the rare times that both toddler and baby will allow it! We have covered a lot of the material already but it will be good to fill in the gaps and tie understanding together. We tend to read books related to the science that we are doing as we go, so those titles will get added in throughout the year also. Some examples of the science living books we have read are 'The Pebble in my Pocket' by Meredith Hooper and Cracking Up: The Story of Erosion (Science Works) by Jacqui Bailey and Matthew Lilly.

I am using The Reading Reflex for phonics progression still which is showing results and is pleasant to work with for all of us so worth continuing with!

I have been dabbling in using Living Maths as a way of teaching maths concepts but have stalled a little (OK a lot!) over the last few months as other ways of enjoying maths have come up. I am still really interested in using living books to teach maths but as I'm currently reading a lot about it and researching books to use and thinking how we will go about it - scheduled or spontaneous? through the history of maths or topic by topic? Insisting on learning maths facts or focusing on keeping them excited and interested? There is still a way to go before I make those decisions so maths for now is a 'watch this space' item on the curriculum list!!

We are also going to be teaming up with another family to do Story of the World together once a week which again is still in the discussion stages but I'm looking forwards to teaming up to do it as the girls really enjoyed it when we started it (and then unfortunately abandoned it) before!

In the next and final part I will sum up some of the things that I have learned about writing your own curriculum, as well as some of the questions that I still have and write about how we incorporate the books into our days and how we use them - I have some new ideas to try to make the most of the times when the girls are eager to do something!

Curriculum Planning Made Easy Part 2

In Part One I talked about why it was great to write your own curriculum and the areas to think about before you started. In this post I will discuss the nuts and bolts of how I go about actually putting a curriculum together for a year, from conception to 'finished product'. In reality I don't view it as a finished product as I leave room for it to grow with us through the year! I have been strongly influenced by the philosophy of Charlotte Mason in that the basis for our curriculum is books, wonderful, captivating, living books!

Halfway through the 'academic' year, around March time, I start looking ahead to what we will cover over the following year. Usually I wonder what on earth I'm going to plan - didn't I already use up all the good ideas for this year? And what is my youngest daughter actually interested in anyway? After a brief blank period some ideas begin to form and it all comes together in the end!! When I come to a brick wall I tuck my lists away for a few weeks and leave my subconscious brain to mull it over until I have a flash of inspiration or stumble upon an idea that kick starts my creative juices once again! It is definitely an organic process for me that grows over time, it isn't something I sit down and bash out in a few hours.

Where to Begin....
So where do the ideas come from to use as a foundation for building the curriculum on? I start with what fascinates my children. I go for the enduring passions rather than passing interests as the material won't be used for a few months. Sudden interests can be accommodated as they come up as they can't be foreseen! My eldest daughter loves to sew and create, and my youngest daughter loves animals. Below is a tidied up version of the part spider diagram part flow chart that begins the process:

Sewing:

• Stitches - make a book like Granny did as a child? x-stitch project? sampler?
• Patterns - making and following a pattern? Actual clothes? Doll clothes? Hand sewing or machine?
• Machines - history of, domestic and commercial machines, weaving/looms..... mills?
• History of cotton mills - life of the workers?
• Fabrics - where come from? What used for? cotton/tweed/tartan - UK fabrics? How made? sample books?
• Threads - cotton/wool/nylon - how made and properties - raw materials.... trade routes? Transport methods and systems?
• Fashion - history of, designers, process?
• Tie to time line?

As you can see, there is way more than we could possibly cover in a year, even if we wanted to! Allowing the ideas to flow means that even when you start with a tremendously broad topic such as 'sewing', or ones that are too advanced or unworkable (like getting the sewing machine out with a toddler and new baby in the vicinity!), these can evolve into the perfect solution.  As an example, some of the ideas here are conceptually a little advanced for now such as looking at the composition, properties and uses of various threads and fabrics but are well worth keeping in mind for future years though as sewing is an enduring passion of Eve's.

Fleshing it Out.....

Having narrowed down my ideas to one or two strong veins that I want to go with, I start looking for books that bring the subject alive. I aim to build a selection that covers many different genres of books such as autobiographies/biographies, historical fiction, factual books, poetry and so on. I was inspired by 'The Book Whisperer', written by Donalyn Miller to do this. Although aimed at teachers guiding older children through literature classes, it is a motivational read! 

Within the genres I look for titles that cover a wide range of subject matter, for example:

• History
• Geography
• Human Factors such as personality traits, relationships, decision-making etc
• Ecological Issues
• Important historical figures such as composers, artists, inventors and leaders.

I don't try and cover all genres and subjects for every topic I am building a book list for. The idea is that I cover all these genres and subjects over the course of a year, giving the children a broad range of ideas and styles of literature to feast on! Sometimes the important figures are not who you would expect them to be. When I researched books to bring Robert Scott's race to the South Pole to life last year, I discovered a most amazing, inspirational man named Tom Crean who possessed seemingly herculean strength and endurance, and with compassion, humility, ingenuity and lashings of courage! I'd never heard of him before but he saved many lives on several expeditions and was a bonafide Irish hero, his biography was the lynch pin that held our studies together! These figures should ideally be contemporaries of the time period you are roughly covering, or linked in some way for example a story of Tchaikovsky's early career to complement a study of ballet.

I find book suggestions using two main avenues to get me started:

• A Google search will yield plenty of results, but you will have to play around with your search terms, refining the words and phrases until you begin to come up with the sort of material that matches what you are after. This can be a useful way of finding ideas for a topic in the first place, or you may go back and add to or change the ideas you jotted down in the first planning phase. As well as directly leading you to books, Google may throw up websites, blogs and book lists that are valuable mines of information and book ideas!
• An Amazon search - after you have hit on one good book, the site will bring up similar books that others searching the same topic have looked at. This often has a snowball effect and you gather a number of books pretty quickly. I always look inside the books if the option is available and read reviews, or look for reviews on the net to decide if they are of the type and quality that I want, and to find a suggested age-group if it isn't clear. I check out authors and series that we have enjoyed before also.

Filling the Gaps.....

I let the books sit in my amazon basket for a while before I order them.... a cool off period if you like! I buy books rather than use the library for two reasons - our local library tends not to have many of the titles leading to frustrated searches and time poorly spent, and I want to build up a library of wonderful books both for the younger children to tap into and for us to have to go back to and build upon in the future.

Once I order the books I look them to over to make sure they are what I expected and consider the growing collection of books as a whole before adding more. I look at where there are gaps and how they could be filled. For example, there might be five or six books for our sewing topic, but only one or two for building and architecture, therefore I will focus on finding another one or two for building and architecture. Alternatively I might note that there are a few great historical fiction books but no biographies or poetry, nudging me to focus on those genres to build on what is already there. I often return to a search engine to research the areas I am focusing on before looking for specific books about those people, ideas or subject matters.

A Few Final Pointers.....

• You don't have to do it all at once, remember the mantra of 'less is more' and 'quality over quantity'!
• Don't be afraid to explore complex issues and ideas, but at the child's current level of understanding.
• Don't be afraid to try something new - if it doesn't work out then learn from it and move on!
• Go for about 20-30 books over a year - my list is on the lower end of this which leaves room for other avenues of inquiry that pop up through the year!

I hope that you find this useful and that it inspires you to be creative with your curriculum writing. The final post I will write will be a round-up of the book choices I have made for the coming year, along with a few explanatory notes of how they all tie together and how we will use them!

Curriculum Planning Made Easy! (Part One)

Writing your own curriculum from scratch can seem a daunting prospect initially but it needn't be that complicated! It can be a fun and rewarding process that causes you to really think about your children's interests and needs and what works for you as a family. Even if the plans go belly up the first time you try, you will have learned from the experience and be better prepared to do it next time!  I used to think I couldn't possibly write one as all the self-built curricula I saw around the net were planned out to the hour for a full twelve months with the number of pages to be completed each day set out and worksheets to back everything up, and covering about twelve subjects - they scared the pants off me!!! I realised slowly though that all a curriculum really is, is a plan and that plan can be as detailed or as light as you feel comfortable with!

Planning it yourself is the perfect solution as it will really meet YOUR family circumstances and needs. Think about your children and your circumstances and brainstorm all the things you need and want out of a curriculum, are you expecting a baby soon (my hand going up here!) so need a flexible lighter option, do you have an older 'high school' aged child that is beginning to focus on exams? Do you have a child with particular educational needs (my hand up here as well, I have a dyslexic learner)? Do you have a toddler needing lots of attention? The things I decided that I needed out of a curriculum were:

• I want to teach the girls together as much as possible, adapting the material on the spot to differing levels of understanding and reasoning powers.
• I want to integrate subjects, and make it relevant and alive, showing how things relate to each other, creating links and understanding rather than lists of names and dates.
• I want it to be flexible to their developmental levels, maturity, learning needs and preferred styles of learning. We are lucky in the UK in that we don't have standardised testing or prescribed content, so removing the pressure of getting children 'up to grade level'.
• It has to be able to be a 'take out' curriculum that I can mostly pack in a bag and take out for the day to the woods etc in nice weather.
• It has to be flexible enough to allow us to take a break when needed, make use of opportunities that come up through the year, and adaptable as their needs change.
• Most of all I want them to LOVE it, and be ENTHUSIASTIC and ENGAGED!

Personally I found that pre-packaged curricula were unsuitable for a variety of reasons. I have looked at many over the last few years, from boxed National Curriculum costing hundreds of pounds a year, to free on line plans. I either found them too prescriptive (either with scripts I was supposed to read out, or content the children were supposed to cover), too pricey, too basic (I find that my children are a little behind their school peers in literacy and maths but way ahead in their understanding of science, technology and history for example), or too American (No offence intended, I have seen some fantastic plans made by US Mum's but the books they use relate to presidents, American Indians, US geographical features such as the Grand Canyon and so on, so I must build UK friendly book lists from scratch!).

I do advocate reading a wide variety of curriculum plans through as they all have their areas of value and even if you only gain a strong idea of what you don't want to do, you have gained useful information! In the past I have gained ideas for books, topics, websites, found links to different methods and approaches and have picked and chosen the best fits for us! As a home educating parent I am continually learning and developing my knowledge and skills, coming across ideas new to me as well as different ways of incorporating well-known philosophies (see my Charlotte Mason Pinterest board for my current research focus!) and resources that are an excellent fit for us such as the Reading Reflex. 

Children also develop and change throughout the year, they may have difficulties with something and want to take more time over it, or fly ahead with something they click with. It is great if your plans are flexible enough to go with this! We also school 'year round' without following the terms and holidays that the schools take. They sometimes coincide (as did the last two weeks as we were all unwell and then were spending time with relatives so we took a couple of weeks out). I tend to continue through the summer months as I find we are all motivated and life is easy in the warm weather, but we usually take an extended break through December and into January to enjoy the festive season and give ourselves a break when the damp cold weather is dragging us down!

I feel blessed to be able to accommodate our daughter's education at home. In school by now, our eldest daughter would be expected to do a large part of lessons through reading and writing. Being dyslexic, it would take her so much energy and time to do the reading and writing part that much of the interesting materials and learning would be lost and frustration and disillusionment could set in. At home we can work on her reading and writing where she is right now and I can read wonderful books to her, provide audio recordings and documentaries and explain things at the higher level she is at with science, history etc. The issue of accessing information just isn't an issue at home but it is an important aspect that moulds the curriculum plans that I create!

Next week I will post details of the actual 'how to' of creating your own curriculum, along with the draft plans I am working on for September! 

Living Maths Curriculum - Multiplication

I am so glad that I bought the Mathematics explained book to help me understand how children learn maths and what they need to know to help them make connections between ideas! I had a simplistic view of multiplication before I began reading but a much better understanding now!! I used the information I read to put together some activities and ideas to bring multiplication to life for the girls and make it understandable, non-threatening and fun! Here goes the theory bit; 

If children know a range of ways to tackle multiplication increases the ability of a child to handle multiplication problems. There are two ways to approach it:

• Repeated aggregation structure - language used is "so many sets of/lots of" and "How many altogether". An important use of aggregation is in shopping, for example buying 8 tins of tomatoes at 31p each, how much does it cost altogether?
• Scaling Structure - increasing a quantity by a scale factor, language used is "doubling", "trebling", "so many times bigger/longer than", "so many times as much as/as many as". Comparisons are important in scaling operations, for example I paid 50p for my drink, Daddy paid three times as much, how much did he pay?

Commutative Law can be used to make problems easier if children understand it. The law says that a x b is the same as b x a so in practise, 5 x 14 is the same as 14 x 5. As children are usually more able to handle multiples of 5 than multiples of 14, working out 14 lots of five is easier for them than the daunting prospect of five lots of fourteen.

Many children find it helpful to hand ideas on an image to help with remembering and understanding them. Multiplication can be associated with the 'rectangular array' which means that 3 x 4 can be represented visually on graph paper as three squares up and four squares along. This leads naturally on to using multiplication to find out the area of a rectangle in the future!

Children need to have concrete, hands on working of multiplication secure before they move onto mental arithmetic techniques.

With all this in mind I put together a few ideas to try alongside our living maths book called 'Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar'

We played a game from Peggy Kaye's book 'Games for Maths' which comes under the 'repeated aggregation' format of multiplying. This game was popular, and quick using scrap paper, pens and a dice. You roll it once and draw that many circles then roll it again and draw that number of dots inside each circle. The player with the highest number of dots wins.

This game was also from her book and was useful for introducing the 'commutative law' idea as the dice roll this time gave two side of a rectangle which was completed using the squared paper then the area was calculated by multiplying the sides. It showed the commutative law idea as I pointed out to Eve that is was easier to count in two's which she knew confidently, than struggle with counting in fours and get it wrong!

 The skip counting in this lead to us making a skip counting bracelet with flower beads and pipe cleaners for practising counting in threes. Having the bracelet on prompted them to count in threes quite often and progress was made in learning them. We also used colouring sheets from 'The Multiplication Tables Colouring Book' which the girls enjoyed as colouring the numbers in a pattern that were multiples of two for example, revealed a picture of something, such as a mouse. There is a multiplication table which asks them to colour in the multiples of two to reveal the pattern of numbers that are multiples of that number. This was the first time they had come across the idea of 'multiples of' and the language associated with that and it caused a false start or two but was generally successful. 

It was in reading about multiplication and researching activities to support this book that I realised just what a huge topic multiplication is and how it needs to be tackled regularly in small chunks rather than one dose, like the symmetry could be for instance. The girls enjoy multiplying and often come and tell me little snippets such as 'what four threes are' and so on. The idea of using cuisenaire rods popped up several times and that led me to another maths book which has added in a new dimension to our maths, it has also derailed my 'living maths' planning for a while as we swerved to one side to accommodate a new direction. I have got my head around it now though so will hopefully be back to posting a few more living maths explorations!!

Learning About the Water Cycle and Water Filtration

We started out by reading the book 'A Drop in the Ocean, the story of water' and then demonstrated a couple of the rain cycle processes to illustrate what happens.

The set-up above is very simple and examples can be found all over the net so I have not attributed it to any one source. It consists of having warm water in a jar/jug, and placing a plate/bowl of ice cubes at the top, then waiting a little. What you see happening is water vapour that has evaporated from the warm water condenses onto the cooler sides of the jug and then runs down the sides into the water at the bottom (this represents precipitation!). I found a cool idea on the net for making this in a ziploc bag with the cycle drawn on the bag with permanent marker pen

Next we made clouds in a bottle using instructions from this great website and the children were amazed by this. You have to roll the bottle between every try to get rid of the condensation and look carefully as you release your grip on the bottle. What you see is a faint cloud very definitely forming as the pressure drops inside the bottle. What a fantastic way of showing the conditions needed to form clouds!

Next we played a water cycle game, which was inspired by an idea I saw (and now can't find again) where bowls of different coloured beads were placed around the room and the children rolled a dice at each station to see where their water droplet went next. They wrote a story about their water droplet at the end. I thought it was a neat way of showing that the water cycle is more complex than simply cloud-rain-lake-evaporation-cloud. I thought about it but couldn't make it work for a group of three children so adapted it by making several sets of cards using clipart and laminating them before cutting them out and shuffling them. I drew a basic cloud line and ground line on a large A2 sized piece of paper and the children took turns choosing a card from the pile and placing it on the paper where they thought it went. As the game went along we added a house, rocks as we talked about groundwater, a well drawing on the groundwater, a drainage system, and lots of arrows showing the potential movements of water from one area of the board to another. I had considered that I was under prepared for this part of the session as I didn't have a pretty pre-drawn game board all well thought out in advance. As it happened it was the best way to do it as the children TOLD ME the links and showed me where the arrows should point as we went along and it was a really good learning exercise for them.

After all the cards were used up, we talked about groundwater some more and linked it to drinking water and what our water looked like from a tap and how we thought it ended up so clean. The children thought that the water from a well would be muddy and not safe to drink. We talked around that a little with me asking them what was the point of digging wells if the water was going to be dirty and undrinkable? I lead them on to thinking about the layers of the ground that the water went through before it was drawn up in a well. They identified plants roots, mud, sand and stones as possibilities. Then I introduced the bags of materials I had collected (sand, stones, mud and some cotton wool pads as a control.

The girls were eager to get stuck in and split the tasks up between themselves to set up the filtration stations. I had prepared a bottle of muddy mucky water full of bits and they shared it between the filters. We eagerly watched to see what would happen, the girls made predictions, one thought the sand would filter the water the best and another thought the stones would. Disappointingly all of the filters produced filtered water of the same colour......

....... so we brainstormed what might have happened - what was different between the filter stations? What was the same? They realised that each filter station also had a coffee filter in the bottom (to stop the materials falling out of the milk bottle lid hole), and wondered if that may be very good at filtering and be the reason why the water samples all looked the same was because the filters were there?

We had a quick think about the problem to be solved..... we needed something in the bottom to stop the materials falling through but not affect the water being filtered. I suggested the fruit nets that were in the bin from the shopping yesterday and off we went to reclaim them! They plugged the holes nicely and the girls carefully scooped out the materials from the coffee filters and put them inside the new filters. We made some more mucky water to filter and off we went again. This time the sand did produce the cleanest water, not completely clean but not bad and the girls noticed that the particles that came through sank to the bottom so Faith decided that she would try it and just be careful so she didn't drink the bits..... erm no, maybe not Faith but full points for bravely offering your services! I prompted the girls to look at the filters and see what had changed about them and what was the same, they noticed that the water had made holes in them and that the stones now had big pieces of muck in it, like grass and twigs.

Enthused by their success the girls wanted to try layering the materials to see if all of them together produced cleaner water than individually. They set this up independently but in the end it produced filthy water as there was a sudden 'whoosh' and the net plugging the pouring hole gave way under the weight, leaving a hole through the materials. The girls were intrigued by this hole...... and chatted about how and why the water had gone through in that particular place.

All in all, although I felt under-prepared, and hadn't thought through the effect that the coffee filters would have on the experiment, it was the perfect set-up as it posed natural problems for the girls to think about and solve. It high lighted the importance of the design of an experiment and the planning, and that a failure doesn't mean disaster, it means thinking and adapting and testing again. The experiment was flexible enough that the girls could take it in the direction that they were interested in so was great for allowing them to take the lead instead of being narrow and one-directional. The happy occurrence of a bit of water erosion on the combined filter at the end could lead nicely onto other topics! 

Slump Over with...... Mojo relocated......

...... somewhere between a hot bath and a bag of compost! Well that's just how it rolls when you homeschool, you find your MOtivation, EnerJy and Optimism (MOJO - geddit??) in the most unlikely places and at the most unexpected of times. After being slightly grumpy about having to clean and wash the car, clean the guinea-pig out (in the singular as one was buried this morning.... yes it had died first, it wasn't just another experiment!) and various other chores, I found that we had a really lovely afternoon!

I am so enjoying the girl's company this week, they are such funny, intelligent, quirky people, full of ideas and fun and surprising conversation! Even Idris who doesn't have a huge repertoire of responses, is fun to converse with, he seems to know when to say yes or no, and when to not comment, reminds me of Dewi sometimes, perhaps it is a man thing??!! He has developed a fascination with keys this week which can be a little painful as he is so very insistent on someone sitting by the front door whilst he tries EVERY key in the door..... come back shoe fetish, all is forgiven!!!!

We have done very little in the way of organised activities this week. I started out Monday with a plan but felt like I was wading through treacle (I wasn't well at the weekend), and as the girls seemed happy in each others company and happy to play, I decided I was happy to let them and allowed myself to take it a little easy where I could. I struggle to do that a little as I feel frustrated by what we aren't getting done out of the list of things we all WANT to do. It always amazes me though how a week like this ends up in positive energy and seeming to achieve things so easily instead of battling through them. I have had a clarity of vision today on how all the plans the girls and I have will slot together over the next week or two and am excited and enthusiastic about them again. Hurray!

We are going to Wales to stay with family for a few days and will be spending time down on the beach and walking by the cliffs. I'm hoping that we'll see erosion in action to illustrate the book we have read together. It will be a great follow-on to the water experiments that we did last week.  I found an overwhelmingly huge Montessori blog today after the owner left me a lovely comment...... her pinterest boards are brilliant and helped me out with a quandary I've been having over our Living Maths curriculum. I've got some ideas now about how to tackle the measurement book that the girls love, and how it will tie in so nicely with measuring up the new veg bed ready to plan our planting schedule for the summer for the RHS Benchmark scheme we are getting involved with. I've rough planned the next human body unit for the girl's science to start in a week's time - the digestive system this time.

Earth Science - Structure of the Earth and Plate Tectonics

Read the Meredith Hooper Book 'The Island That Moved' - this is a little long winded for younger listeners, you can shorten the story a bit by paraphrasing it onto post-it notes ready to read to them. Then we sat around together and I reminded the children about the end of our last session when we made a fossil sandwich.....

Do you remember the last time when we talked about fossils and how they were buried under the earth? Do you remember the fossil sandwich that we made? How do you think that those fossils made their way to the surface of the earth to be collected by palaeontologists? Fossils of sea creatures have been found up mountains, what happened to get them up there? (talk about the children’s answers and work towards the earth moving. The story starts way below us at the centre of the earth……  Here is a model of the earth; I’m going to cut it open for us to see what’s inside! (show the play dough model of the earth and cut it open in front of the children for them to see the layers).

There are four layers to the earth:

·        This is the inner core (yellow), it is made of solid metal and it is super-hot.

·        The outer core (orange) is liquid metal and is also very very hot, it is under immense pressure, being squeezed and pressed by the weight above it.

·        The mantle (red) is cooler and more solid than the outer core, but it is liquid enough to be slowly moving all the time, like thick cake mix being stirred through by a wooden spoon, (speaking of cake mix, I made some earth cakes for you to try, break them in half and see if you can identify the layers of the earth).

·        The crust around the outside is made from jigsaw-like plates of rock called tectonic plates that move around very slowly on the mantle and bump into each other. Scientists think that millions of years ago, all of the earth’s continents belonged to one super-continent called Pangaea (show the children the globe with the continents on it, and then give them the felt continents to try and piece together on the zigzag construction paper. Once they have pieced them together then slowly pull the construction paper flat to show the continents moving apart from each other again)
 

As the tectonic plates move around on the slow-moving magma below (show the map of the tectonic plates), they bump into each other and different things happen (ask the children what they think might happen). From that, four different types of mountains can be formed:

·        Fold mountains occur when two plates collide head on and push against each other. The huge forces involved push the rock up and it folds and creases as it goes (show the children the demonstration with the towels).

·        Block mountains form when two plates rubbing together suddenly shift, they may have been caught for a long time then the rock suddenly gives way and the plates jump past each other. This often leaves a huge block of rock pushed up or one side of the fault jutting up. The shock waves from the sudden jump cause an earthquake (show the children the card moving in the jar of rice layers)

 

·        Dome mountains are pushed up  by magma, the molten rock is pushing at the solid plate from below and causes an enormous bulge to form in the earth (blow up a balloon covered by a towel with a piece of pipe, a bulge will form in the towel).

·        Volcanic mountains form when molten magma from the outer core and the bottom of the mantle forces its way up through the mantle and through a weakness in the tectonic plate(show the children the volcano model and demonstrate the reaction – remind to put goggles on). It either explodes out of the top with huge force, or trickles out gently and continually. Either way, the magma cools once on the surface and new layers of rock are now present. Under the ocean where oceanic plates move apart from each other, magma moves up into the gap and forms new ocean floor (demonstrate this with the crackers and the red jelly layer).

 The children were all keen to have a go at the practical models, and with their parents sitting around the table helping them out and talking about it with them, there was lots of great chatter and review of important concepts and words. Even the toddlers enjoyed the cracker 'plates' on jelly 'magma' (although they did end up eating most of it!)

 Predictably, the volcano was the most popular activity, and it did get awash with foamy magma after a while and the concrete mix that made the sides of the volcano slid off and ended up in the bin!!

 If I ever see another pan of play dough again I might cry but it was worth all the effort of making bags ful of different colours as the families all made their own play dough earth to take home and the children were really pleased with it! Once again I sourced ideas from various books and websites, adapting some of them. I used ideas from The Homeschool Den, the book 'How the Earth Works' and various pinterest sources which can be found on my pinterest science board (some ideas like the play dough earth have been done in so many ways that the original source is impossible to say!). I have saved the scripted session as a google document for you to use, to access it, you need a gmail address/google account - you don't have to use the gmail, just sign up to be able to access my documents! It was a more effective way of sharing with you than saving PDFs to a remote location!

 

Reflections on a Week of Home Schooling

Idris found lots to entertain himself this week around the house whilst I was busy with Eve and Faith - I have occasionally dreamed of the day when this would happen! It was only for 5-10 minutes at a time but it was enough to explain something and get the girls going, and he was so pleased with himself! None of it was contrived, I just went with what he showed an interest in, so potatoes and plant pots started the week.....

Followed by a fascination with a syringe.....

...... and with his tummy and the sensation of a brush on his skin.....

He happily joined in with some model making with a few bits and pieces of his own to fiddle with.

Another day a pot full of paper clips took his fancy......

..... as well chatting to the recorded message on the phone telling him to hang up and try again!!

He enjoyed listening to Eve read her book......

And spent a fantastic 20 minutes getting to grips with scissors and cutting play dough.....

....before whizzing around the lounge on his block trolley being pushed by Faith!

He is still waking up between 4.30 and 5.30 am which is wearing, although the positive effect from it is that the girls are getting up much earlier too and we are busy by 7 many mornings! Idris then sleeps from about 10.30 so I can continue the flow doing the things that need more quiet and concentration when he is asleep!

I have a sneaking suspicion that I took on more than I should have done this week. I hadn't planned on having a cold last weekend which is when I normally organise everything for the coming week so played catch up all week trying to pull things together at the last minute. I have pretty much managed it although there are a few things that still need doing for tomorrow's science session at the HE group. I'm procrastinating about it by blogging instead!! I've just got so many ideas and there are so many things that the girls are interested in, and I'm aware that the pace of life will slow in the summer when we have a newborn to nurture so I'm trying to make the most of the time that we have!

Hands-on Science Downloads

At the enthusiastic request of "can we do bones next?" from my girls, I have spent some time this weekend researching and putting together some material on the skeletal system. Whilst looking for information, I came across a number of 'unit studies' of the skeletal system, but all were heavily paper based with worksheets and folders to complete and didn't match what I was looking for. I wanted good solid information, and some practical activities to hang it on and bring it alive for the children. I'm not sure if my style of hands-on science is what other people are looking for, but having put in the effort, I'm going to make them more easily available for others to use if they want to.

To do this I'm going to collect them all together on one 'page' of the blog to make them easier to find and choose from. If you look along the top of the page under the big header photograph, you will see the page headings there, click on 'hands-on' science and it will open the page with the science that I have blogged about collected in one place. I've used a picture from each 'unit' and the heading below is linked directly to the post.

As the cardiovascular unit we did seemed to fall naturally into four sessions spread over two weeks, I've deliberately grouped the information into four sections this time, each with one or two practical activities. I have worked out a format for how I like to record the information to make it easy and useful for me, and then added some extra details to make it easy and useful for you, including links, resources and materials needed!! Please note though that the downloads will only be in this format from the skeletal system onwards as I've only just begun to write them this way!  The science units are available as a Google Document that you can download and print.  Can I just say how very pleased I am with myself for working this out???!!!

If you're wondering what age group or year group they are aimed at, I can't give you an exact answer. My girls are currently rising 6 and 8 years old and would be in years 1 and 3 if they were in school, but I haven't related the content to the National Curriculum - I have based it purely on the level I know that they are at. I picked up an idea last week to start with asking what the children know, what they want to know, and how they think they can find out, it is a great way to start a new topic. I refer to the children's ideas all the way through and flex everything to answer their questions and explore their ideas. Encouraging the girls to think through a problem and come up with their own answers by linking together what they already know is a brilliant way for scientific understanding to really sink in and stick with them.

Take a look at the Hands-on Science page and leave me any comments - this is the first time I've made things available and I'm still learning!! Blogger has dictated the order they appear on the page so it may jig around a bit as I add more onto it! I hope you find it useful and enjoyable!