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!

Earth Science - Rocks and Minerals

This was the third in the series of earth science sessions that I have put together for one of the HE groups that we go to. The first was to do with fossils and last month we looked at plate tectonics and the structure of the earth. This month we looked at rocks and minerals. I passed around a piece of granite to look at and told the children that it was a rock and got them to describe what they saw. They identified different coloured flecks in the rock, some shiny, some dull - I explained that these were minerals and that minerals were the ingredients of rocks. I told them that granite was an igneous rock, which means 'made by fire' and how igneous rocks looked different - we compared granite and pumice and talked about how the granite had cooled slowly as it was pushed to the surface, allowing the different minerals time to clump together, and that the pumice had cooled rapidly after being blown from a volcano as molten lava and so the minerals had stayed mixed together, giving the even tone.

We went to the table and I used wax crayons to explain and demonstrate the different types of rocks. There are many permutations of this idea around on the web and as I haven't used one specific plan so I haven't credited it to anyone in particular. The demonstration requires a heavy based pot with a depth of just boiled water in it and it went like this:

• Sedimentary Rocks are rocks made from layers of rock particles, dust, sand and mud that filters down through oceans and lakes to the bottom, and becomes pressed into layers. The children were familiar with this concept from the fossils session. I had a bag of grated wax crayons as the particles and pressed them into a small foil cake tin to show how they form into sedimentary rock.
• Igneous rocks - these are made when minerals are melted due to the incredible temperatures under the earth's surface - I broke crayons up and put them into another foil container and floated it on the water and left it until the crayons had completely melted (see picture above where they are partially melted).
• Metamorphic rocks - these can be made from sedimentary or igneous rocks or a mixture of both, where they are changed by the immense heat and pressure and the length of time they are exposed to these forces under the earth's surface. To do this I put some of the sedimentary rock I made, some pieces of an igneous rock I had made earlier and some crayon pieces and floated them in a foil tin on the surface. After they had partially melted, i took the tin out and pressed them down with a spoon to represent the pressure they would be under - the children could see that the crayon pieces had changed from what they were.

We then went on to investigate how minerals are told apart by minerologists - by their different properties. I set up 'investigation stations' with a poster of printed instructions (these were intended that they be done by the children with their parent to help read and guide them.

Station 1 was Moh's scale of hardness, or the scratch test.......

Station 2 was the streak test, looking at what colours were left behind by the minerals when dragged across a porous surface (AKA the back of a wall tile begged from the local tile place!).

The pyrites surprised faith as it glittered like gold but left a greeny black streak! 

Station 3 was the magnetic test - only rocks with heamatite in will show attraction to the magnet - I guess they found one!

Station 4 was an acid bath to test for the presence of calcite in various rocks - I have to apologise to the resources library for the strong smell of vinegar present in some of the returning samples!!

The session didn't work so well today as it has previously. There were more families there and therefore a lot more background noise from the children that chose not to participate which caused me to have to almost shout over it at times and distracted some of the children from concentrating on the session. I chatted about it with the group organisers and we have a couple of ideas to try next time to make it work even with a larger number of families attending the group. There are some fabulous 'foodie' demonstrations to use to illustrate how the different rocks are made - I wasn't able to use them this time due to allergies in the children coming to the group, but am saving them up for when it comes up again with my children!!

There is much more detail and a scripted plan, as well the instruction posters for the mineral investigation stations, available as googledocs to download, print and use here:

• Earth Science - rocks and minerals
• Mineral Investigation posters

Learning About the Skeletal System

We started out with this life size printable juvenile skeleton, cutting it out and piecing it back together on another life size body outline that we drew - I think we might make these into a huge book when we are done with our human body science studies. Whilst we pieced them together we chatted about the skeleton and I asked the girls what they knew about the skeleton and what they wanted to know. As usual, there were some answers that surprised me!

We talked about the functions of the skeletal system, with a few leading questions and some knowledge from our previous sessions on the cardiovascular system the girls were able to summarise that the skeletal system provides a frame, protects vital organs, manufactures red blood cells and allows movement in conjunction with the muscles.

I reminded the girls about one of the functions of blood - transporting nutrients and minerals around the body and explained that the bones were living and had a really good blood supply. Eve jumped in and asked if it was so the bones could grow..... yes, and repair themselves, I asked her if she knew what the most important  mineral was for bones and she knew it was calcium. We did a little experiment on some chicken bones to show how important calcium is. The bones were washed and dried and the girls tried bending them to see how strong they were. They put them into a jar full of vinegar and we left them for a few days. When we brought them out they were really bendy (shown above held in cling film as the girls didn't want to handle them without it!). It was amazing just HOW bendy they were without the calcium!

The next day we built a 1.2m high cardboard skeleton (I got it on offer from The Works at Christmas for a lot less) and as we did so compared and categorised the different types of bones - long bones, short bones, flat bones, irregular bones and sesamoid bones.

We moved on to looking at the function of the long bones in producing red blood cells for the body. we made a model inspired by this post on the blog 'science matters'. We started by rolling some red fabric to be the red marrow in the centre, then rolled a piece of yellow dish cloth around it to represent the fatty yellow marrow around it.......

...... we added a piece of natural sponge around that to show the honeycomb structure of the spongy bone around the yellow marrow. Lengths of red and blue embroidery floss represent the arteries and veins that bring a rich blood supply to the red marrow and remove by-products and red blood cells....

..... to finish up we wrapped white paper covered cardboard tube around the sponge to show the dense bone which is the final layer and around the outside.

As a final session, we talked about how bones and muscles work together to allow movement. There are different types of joint, we talked about the major ones of ball and socket, slightly movable such as the vertebrae in the spine (below, idea came from here)......

..... and made a model of the elbow hinge joint, with red balloons to show the muscles contracting and relaxing, instructions can be found here. We actually did most of this a few weeks ago but there was a short delay before we could complete our hinge joint after I realised that you really can't blow modelling balloons up without a pump...... and then I had to locate the infrequently used pump!! I was really pleased with how well the children remembered the information. We recap at the beginning of each session and then build on that information, linking it together and making it relevant to their own bodies, it was good to see them recalling and using the things we had learned previously.

The google docs printout of this topic with all four sessions full of all the information that we went through is available here! I hope that you find it useful!

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!