April Titles

The themes for this month are:

Easter: 

Fabulas: Coelinho que nao era de Pascoa, Coelinho sem orelhas, Coelinho branuinho, Dona galinha e o ovo da Pascoa
Cancoes: Coelinho da Pascoa e o coelinho da Galinha Pintadinha.


The kids did great with these and many other stories and songs in Portuguese.

Plants and the Environment:

 We are going to go through the entire book and do all of the observations and experiments. It is useful to start thinking about the world and our role in it. We will tie this to conservation and global problems, for which we also have corresponding books in Portuguese.
We will demonstrate, for instance, how the salt water turns into fresh, consumable by people water, through the process of evaporation. We will take pictures and make a lot of observations.

These two books we have already read in previous year and we just finished reading again. This year we will follow the instructions and construct the experiments and record our observations as a team, as a group. We will take photos and do a poster or a mini book, in order to remember what we have observed and what we have learned.
There are two experiments: 1) observe how the plant grows each day, what changes from day to day and 2) observe how the plant's growth is affected by missing essential components.

Ice Cream:

 We already made ice-cream for the science fair this year. I think what we will do next is go visit a real ice-cream factory. These books are good because they do outline well, in different ways, the process of making ice-cream.

These books we have already read. They were well received.

Homes, Houses, Buildings:

This is a topic which I have liked for a long time. We have been reading on and off about houses and buildings, and we are due for a more systematic review-the package the learning type of review.

So, I would like my kids to start thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of city/suburban/village life; the needs and the wants that each requires. We also have a lot of materials in Portuguese to tie to this topic which makes is especially attractive to me.

The Universe, The Stars and The Planets:

Recently, my daughter has been asking about the stars and the planets and the universe. So, we are starting slow. I think that these introductions will lead us to explore constellations, the ancient myths associated with astrology and astronomy, the process of learning the truth about the cosmos and the challenges of human thought, and of course the tools the navigators used to move across the continents and the oceans. This is the beginning of a very long journey.
My son is having difficulty with the concept that one day, billions of years from now, the sun will be no more, it will become a red giant and will vanish. He cannot understand that this is no imminent concern since we will not be alive anyway.


Overall, April has been an ad-hoc kind of month. We have been mainly reading off the shelf without a set plan, per say. The kids were on spring break and I chose to allow them to enjoy the break. We spent quite a lot of time going through books we did not like and reading also many Lego first reader books. I am quite fine with reading books we don't like. It is good to create a sense of what one finds interesting in a reading material and what not; what is a well written book and what is not. Overall, I am quite satisfied with the progress this month despite the apparent chaos and easy, content-poor readings.

April Books

This will be a random/ad-hoc book month because we will be travelling away from base camp. In the past few weeks we have read a few books which lead to great themes but we have not explored the themes in depth. So while the foundation is laid out, we will build upon it in the next few months.

This month if we weren't traveling we would have been reading about Spring, Easter and Evolution. My recommendations for the themes for my kids' age groups are below.

SPRING

The Curious Garden is a wonderful book to discuss 1) cycles in nature (seasons) 2) how human activities impact nature 3) discuss ideas of how we can help reverse what humans have done to our environment 4) discuss that small actions by single people can have profound effect on many people and the environment 5) discuss how to care for plants 6) discuss how plants survive without being taken care of by people. This is a book we will be referring to a lot in the future.

How a plant grows and How a seed grows are beginner science books. We will read them, learn about the parts of the plants. In May we will apply and test what we have learned in these two books, by growing our own plants from seeds and observing their developmental stages.

We will also read the Vegetables we eat, Farming and Early people to connect how people came about growing their own foods, and how people have learned to selectively modify the plants they grow.Update 7/25/2014: We did not read these books






As a humerus addition I would also include  the Magic Finger by Roald Dahl, it does mention how birds build their nests and how people don't think of animals as equals.  As a self-read, related to birds and nature I would also include the Best Nest which will also open up the doors for discussion about 'home'. (Кокло мило колко сладко е при мама и при татко, Птичка в кафез, Стара спретната къщурка, Облаче ле бяло). I found Flap your wings to be a perfect and humorous self-read addition to the theme.

                            

EASTER

Since it's Easter month we will also read about rabbits and eggs. We will read Peter Rabbit, First come the egg, The goose and the golden egg and Green Eggs and Ham.Update 7/25/2014: We did not read these books

 

EVOLUTION

Evolution we started with One Cool Friend. We read about how volcanic islands are created and die (Island, a story of the Galapagos). We talked about the Galapagos Penguins and how they are thought to have arrived at the Galapagos Islands (Galapagos Penguins). From there we will move to Charles Darwin's voyage (Darwin's Beagle) and the process of arriving at the theory of evolution which explains his observations (Evolution and Early people).

UPDATE 4/24/2014

SO WHAT DID WE READ IN APRIL?

We read The Curious Garden, One Cool Friend, The Best Nest, Flap Your Wings, Switch on-Switch off, The shocking truth about energy, Pinocchio, Гатанки, various Bulgarian folk stories. We just started reading

. I read it during my trip to New Jersey and I think this is a book adults should read and discuss with their children of all ages. This book touches on a fundamental problem of human societies and history-humankind has been held back centuries by prejudices and irrational, unmotivated fear. Yes, there is brutal death in this book but don't allow that to deter you. What you can teach and learn is that death is inevitable and that one can be smart (Ragweed is very smart and asks the right questions) but one carefree, bold decision is all it takes to ruin your life (we have in-house real-life examples of that). I love the language (even if I am translating it), I love the descriptions, I love the suspense, the tension, the adventure, the drama, the ever-present generation gap.

I read this book last week. It contains elements of each of the following titles: Pipi Longstockings, the Hunger Games, Huck Finn and Карсон които живее на покрива. This is a very quick-read story and it can really let the reader's imagination run wild. I enjoyed it tremendously. I did not like the ending as much, so when reading it aloud I will add the ending that I would find satisfying. I think we will read this book after we finish Poppy. We will take a small break in between.

I think it is important to read about ordinary girls who even when frightened and faced with a a challenge do their best and persevere. Our girls need to strive for knowledge because knowledge will come handy when you need it and also and most importantly when you least expect it.


 SCIENCE FAIR

The kids' school had a science fair this month. I received the formal guidelines and I found them too rigid, too conformist, and too dry. Science fair is supposed to inspire-kids are to ask and seek answers to any question that intrigues them. For little kids (elementary school kids) no question and no answer is impossible. This and the rigidity of the guidelines were clearly in conflict. Science in its core is a story, a logical story about observable phenomena based on physical observations. So, if science is a story, why cannot we present our projects in this format, as a story.

What are our favorite characters-Piggie and Elephant. Thus, we came up with the characters who will tell the story.

What was the question-how the electricity comes to our house? What we did-we built an ultra-simple electricity generator following the guidelines presented  here. Building it was not a piece of cake. First it helps to know that I wound the wire the only wrong way possible. When I unwound, the wire twisted, tore and I was plain miserable. Finally, I resolved to obtain a second wire and repeat. Still not results. I had tried building the structure from Legos rather than cardboard too, but that did not make the generator light the bulb. Then I had the sudden idea, the aha-moment, to try and measure the presence of current. I connected the generator to a AMP-meter and yes the arrow moved! I had produced current.  Finally, I connected the ends of the light bulb to the ends of the coil via alligator clips, and then the light did light. The generator, the moving (rotating) magnet, did induce electric current in the coils. I was content.

Ballet girl told a good story during her presentation. She was very excited about this project. And yes, she did win the kindergarten science fair.

What are my take aways:

1. Science is not a school subject. Science is a word that summarizes our human endeavors to seek answers to questions we have about all around us. Since we are making observations and looking for answers, we might as well do that. We must be engaged with what we have a question about. We must observe and we must ask questions and we must record not only our observations but also our questions, always.
2. When answering a question we might as well answer in the form of a story to make it natural to the audience who is supposed to learn something from our investigation.
3. Since the question is about something we investigate, we might as well get our hands dirty, and make mistakes and acknowledge them. Aha-moments, the best moments in the world, the light at the end of the tunnel moments, can only be achieved if we have made mistakes, if we have been frustrated, exhausted, disappointed, almost given-up. We have to try, strive persevere, keep on going. We have to learn patience. We have to learn humility and the immensity of science teaches us this.