I checked out several secret code books from the library.  For the most part, they were all the same, just from different eras and with slight variations.  We found Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing by Paul B. Janeczko to be the most useful.  I liked that there were anecdotes from history about secret codes, several of which we read aloud.  We also found some good extensions for the project in here for once we finished all the suggested avenues in Partnership Writing.

We did two that I thought were worth sharing.  First, I left the kids a message in cipher for them to find in the morning, along with several clues on how to solve it.  It told them where to find special strawberry muffins.  Since this was basically a cryptoquote, I left the book open to a page with this information about the most common letters, short words, double letters and so forth in English.  It took them a long time, but they did decipher it.  I was really proud of their persistence.  And while it was a tough activity and not for every kid at this stage of writing, I thought it involved a lot of good language thinking.  Enough that we might try it again with another baked good and a new hiding place at some point.

Next, after doing a book cipher that was suggested in Partnership Writing, we took it to another level by writing the plain text ourselves.  Mushroom and BalletBoy each came up with a message to hide in a letter.  They wrote the letters and scattered the words for the secret message inside them.  I helped them edit for spelling, then we typed them up.  Then, they carefully cut out a special key for reading the letter.  When you lay the key on top of the letter, it reveals the secret message with carefully cut out holes.

To create the key, I printed two copies of the letter in a nice, large type.  The first one was set aside.  The second one was taped to a sheet of blank paper that would become the key.  We used an x-acto knife to cut out the words of the message from the letter.  When we separated the letter copy from the blank paper, the blank paper became the key and the cut up letter went to the recycle bin.

We never do anything quite the way it’s proscribed, so we didn’t follow the routine in Partnership Writing to the letter.  However, we had a blast.  We’ll take a week or so off and just continue our routine of dictations, poetry teas, narrations, and reading then dive into the next project.

Sometimes my morning work instructions are silly. This was for a secret code extension to our Brave Writer Partnership Writing Project.

When we first started this school routine several months ago, I posted about our new “morning work.”  I wanted to come back and talk about it again since it has been such a huge success for us that I know it will continue for the foreseeable future.

In our house, the kids inevitably rise first.  I struggle out of bed around 7:30 or so (“so” being me struggling out of bed at 8:30 sometimes) and join them, but since they’ve already been up and at it for a little while, sometimes they were deeply involved in something else and starting school was a problem.  I know for some families that having your kids playing happily together is so beautiful that you wouldn’t want to interrupt, but Mushroom and BalletBoy play so well together every moment of the day that I really had to interrupt or we would only do school once a week or so.

So I devised “Morning Work.”  Every night before bed, I leave out something for the kids to do when they get up.  They get their cereal and settle in a bit, then they do the morning work.

Sometimes, this is an “art challenge” and I leave out art supplies and art idea books.  Sometimes it’s a math drill worksheet.  Sometimes, it’s a logic page.  Sometimes it’s a more “fun” math page to review something.  Sometimes, it’s a geography review sheet.  I put out a variety of things.  When I get up, by and large, they’re finishing it up or already finished, but not so deeply embroiled in a game that they can’t move on.  The school day has begun and they know it.  It gets them focused.

There have been some bonuses as well.  It is a truly independent thing they do every day.  They have to do it without fussing or whinging because there’s no one to fuss to.  Also, while I don’t want to have a homeschool that’s focused on worksheet-based learning, this lets us do a few here and there on various topics without it feeling like a heavy-weight of worksheets all the time.

Some resources I’ve found useful for our morning work routine:

• Those Scholastic E-books.  I haven’t gone as crazy as some people when Scholastic has their dollar days sales, but I admit that I have several pdf Scholastic books sitting on my computer.  This has been a good use for them.  I especially like Fairy Tale Proofreading and Math Line Designs, which is one of those worksheet sets where you color by math problem answer.
• Tin Man Press Books.  Wakeruppers was made to be morning work!  It’s the perfect get thinking thing for me to give the kids.  Other Tin Man Press books work well for this time too.
• Usborne Wipe-Off Cards.  We have several sets of these, including one of Brain Games and another of Math Puzzles.  I spread them on the table and make the morning work, “Do 2/3/4 cards you’ve never done before.”
• WorkSheetWorks.  This website has a nice array of practice pages, including nifty pentamino puzzles and handwriting worksheets.  We’ve especially used the math pages as drill sheets.
• The Usborne Big Book of Things to Draw.  We have used other good art idea books, but this one has been useful to simply leave out with some materials and say, “try this.”  We’ve also had some Mark Kistler books out from the library and found they work well for this too.
• Books.  Sometimes, I just leave something short out for the kids to read.  So, as in all things, the library serves us well.

We have recently discovered the Scientists in the Field series and have been loving them.  This is a relatively recent children’s book series written in partnership with the Smithsonian.  The books are very detailed and meaty.  Most have several chapters and more than fifty pages of small text with beautiful color photos.  They’re too detailed for most early elementary readers and are perfect for upper elementary and middle school.  They cover topics in every major branch of science, but like every aspect of children’s books, there are vastly more about the life sciences than anything else, which is part of why I didn’t know this series until someone mentioned it online.

Once I looked it up, I realized I had seen several of the titles already, including one about oceans and waves and another about Mars that I deemed cool, but too complex for the kids way back in first grade.  We had also read one, the book Hidden Worlds, about microscopy.  I raved about how excellent Hidden Worlds was here back in the fall and it’s still one of my favorites of the ones we’ve read.  I was thrilled to discover that there were dozens more like it out there!

Unlike so many science books for kids, the goal of these books is not to introduce vocabulary and concepts about a topic, though they may do that too.  Instead, the books follow a scientist or a group of scientists and use that as a jumping off point to tell a story.  Some books talk about a specific project or expedition.  Others talk about a scientist’s life and work.  I love how detailed the books are not just about scientific theories and methods, but the practical parts of being a scientist.  In Quest for the Tree Kangaroo, the expedition’s packing list is included to give you an idea of what it’s really like to do field work (don’t forget the 48 rolls of toilet paper!).  In Project Seahorse, we learn about the life of a fisherman whose livelihood is impacted by the scientists’ work.  

It’s also great that each book shows different types of scientists at different points in their careers.  In The Bat Scientists, one of the scientists is the founder of a worldwide group and one of the foremost experts in his field, but others are field scientists doing different jobs and with different backgrounds.  In other books, we meet students and interns.  All of this is a great way to show kids all the different types of careers and paths there are in science.

It’s intended for kids age 9-10, but I found that my still 8 year-olds are the perfect stage for the projects.  The first half of the book covers some familiar ground to anyone who has already read The Writer’s Jungle.  It explains narrations, poetry teas, movie times and other Brave Writer lifestyle ideas.  The second half lays out ten writing projects.  Some of them involve very light writing, like this first one, but others are more involved.  All of them are creative and fun.

We had just finished a letter writing project, so we were ready for something new and started up on the secret codes project right away and have done several activities with it.  This also allowed us to pull out a fun resource we hadn’t used in a long time: Secret Code cards from Usborne.  These are really fun and have dozens of different types of secret codes for kids to decipher that range from easy to very difficult.

BalletBoy writes a treasure hunt in secret code.

So far, our favorite part of the secret codes project has been making a treasure hunt in a cipher.  Here’s one of those activities that’s made for twins, as BalletBoy and Mushroom made hunts for each other.  Clue treasure hunts have been a learning staple of our household for a long time.  When the boys were small, we used them as a way to practice reading, then as they got older and could write them, we used them as a way of practicing writing.  We moved from reading clues like, “tub” and “hat” to clues like “look inside the coldest place in the house.”  Doing a hunt in a secret code was a new twist though.

Mushroom decodes the treasure hunt.

We’re looking forward to tackling the rest of these projects as well.  Earlier in the year, I had said the writing project was the Brave Writer piece that was the most uneven for us.  We got much better about it by using opportunities like letter writing, local essay contests, and stories the kids have started as our projects, but I’m glad to have a set of easy, fun projects for us to do.

And now that “school year” commitments are almost over, we have time for picking 16 pounds of strawberries and going tree climbing at the Adventure Park.  See, us city kids like the outdoors too.

PS – I don’t know why both these photos only feature Mushroom.  I promise that BalletBoy was there too.

Playing BFG in the basement (now dry!)

We happened to catch a little bit of Studio 360 a couple of weeks ago. (Finding the balance of when to turn on NPR in the car so we can hear and discuss unexpected things in a time where bombings and violence dominate the news is a whole other tangent.  Suffice it to say that I’ve been having trouble with it lately, but I hate missing moments like these.)  The kids perked up their ears for this story about imaginary friends.  When the introduced the idea of paracosms, both my boys especially lit up.  ”We have a paracosm!”

In case you don’t know, a paracosm is an imaginary world.  As it explains in the story, we don’t know a lot about kids with imaginary friends and imaginary worlds.  Do they become more creative adults?  Do they become the innovators and artists of the future?  It would seem to make sense, but we don’t actually have the answers.  I love things like this, research being done in the moment.  What does make some kids have imaginary friends?  It wouldn’t be the same as the study in the radio story, but what if we asked successful inventors and artists and designers if they had imaginary friends and paracosms as children?  Would they be more likely than a random sample of adults to say yes?

Sometimes I feel like life at the rowhouse is ruled by paracosm.  I’ve posted here about the BFG (Big Friendly Good Company) and all its various exploits.  It’s the imaginary corporation that Mushroom and BalletBoy have been collectively inventing for years.  I’ve also posted about BalletBoy’s deep fears that growing up will mean leaving their paracosm behind.

One of the things I love about having twins is exact type of interplay.  They collectively create, imagine and negotiate with more ease than many other kids.  There is a sort of magic in seeing them work out this completely nonsensical world that is so insulated that they can’t even really explain it very well to outsiders.  It spawns signs, tickets, maps, and lots of fake credit cards.  There are heroes and villains and ongoing storylines so complex I never understand them very well.  They can play it together for hours upon hours.  Speaking of studies, someone should do a study of joint twin imaginary friends and paracosms.

I wish they would write it all down, but I think every time I ask them to try, it chafes their sense of ownership.

In the last week, I’ve spent much of the week down in the basement trying to stem the tide of water from leaky pipes and then trying to get the moisture up out of the industrial carpet once they fixed the pipes.  It didn’t help that it was rainy at the start of the week.  Or that my entire front yard was dug up and that the grit in the new pipes busted the upstairs toilet.  All fixed now, but it feels like putting out fires.  Oh, or mopping up water.

We did get a little school in.  Here’s a math problem I made the kids do on Monday morning:  If the tank of the wet vac holds 2 and a half gallons of water and I’ve filled it nine times since yesterday, then how many gallons of water have I taken out of the basement?

Mushroom’s method: 9 x 2 = 18  and 9 x ½ = 4 ½ and 18 + 4 ½ = 22 ½

Very simple, very straightforward.  And very Miquon.  He got it quickly.

BalletBoy’s method: 2 and ½ is like $2.50 and that’s like 250.  So 9 x 250.  Hmm…  Oh, 10 x 250 = 2500 and 2500 – 250 = 2250.  Okay, so 2250?  No, that’s too big.

It was slow going.  I talked him through what he had done when he moved the decimal the first time and he moved it back and got the right answer.  Totally different method.  Totally good math reasoning.  Just missing some pieces.  And made it too complex.

The Boston Children’s Museum Activity Books
I know I sound hyperbolic, but I firmly believe that these are the best science activity books for children ever written.  They focus mostly on physics and are good for upper elementary and middle school.  Where many science experiment books lay out a proscribed set of steps and a predicted outcome, these books show you how to build equipment to let you actually play with concepts and test out and explore the science on your own.  We dabbled with them back in first grade, doing a few activities out of several of them.  Part of me can’t wait for fifth grade when we get back to physics so we can use them again.

Brave Writer
Yes, you all know, I’m a Brave Writer devotee.  When I first heard Julie Bogart speak, it was like a revelation.  She reminded me of all the things I had learned about teaching writing when I was a school teacher, but she had somehow made it add up with the things I was learning about teaching younger children, particularly about the value of copywork and other old-fashioned writing teaching methods.  To me, Brave Writer is the most positive and flexible approach to writing I’ve seen.

Tin Man Press
These workbooks are so much fun and so whimsical that I fell in love with them the moment I saw them.  They do for logic and writing what the Anti-Coloring Book series does for coloring books.  They’re like anti-worksheets.  We’re especially big fans of Wakeruppers, but I have a few things from them and look forward to getting more.  Nothing I’ve gotten has been a dud.

Miquon Math
We started slow with Miquon, just trying out some of the Orange Book, but not really finding it fit us.  However, when Mushroom became math anxious at the end of first grade, we had to throw out all the math curriculum we had been using.  Eventually, we went back to Miquon, finishing the Red Book, then the Blue, Green, and Yellow volumes as well.  I learned to really use the Annotations and to refer to Rosie’s videos at Education Unboxed when I needed some inspiration.  To me, Miquon is the most flexible, in depth, deep thinking math program there is out there.  I thoroughly love it.  I have delayed us finishing Purple by bringing it down to just a very little bit every day, but it will be at an end before the school year is through.  If only there was a Miquon Mauve and a Miquon Black and a Miquon Navy!

Those are my homeschool obsessions.  What are yours?

For the first time this year, we decided to have a go at “standardized testing.”  I chose not to bother with a “real” test.  We are fortunate to live in a place where we don’t have to test, so for this year, I just gave them a practice third grade test from a cheap test prep book.

When I first got into education, before I had kids, I went in with a total animosity towards nearly all forms of standardized testing.  Teaching history in a public school in Virginia under the SOL tests didn’t dissuade me from it either.  The tests were over-emphasized and poorly written.  It was hard not to want to rail against them.

Since then, I’ve come around about testing.  In context, I think it’s a good thing.  The problem as I see it is that these standardized tests have become the whole, overarching focus of public schooling when, in reality, they are one small measurement.  I often say that they are the thermometer of education.  Useful, but not a complete picture of health.  For that, you need x-rays, blood panels, swabs of various sorts, weight and height, and so on and so forth.  Well, I already know my kids’ weight and height and so forth, so I decided that third grade was a decent time to take a practice temperature reading.

My main goal was simply to introduce the idea of testing.  They learned to bubble in, which was an amusing skill they lacked (they initially wanted to circle the answers).  To make them feel at ease, we had muffins and fruit and classical music during the testing.  It mostly worked, though Mushroom had a very rough morning on one of the days and had to take a long break from the math test in order to calm himself down.

I don’t know that I learned much about them.  They both did extremely well on the reading section, respectably on the math section, and poorly (though in totally different ways) on the language section.  The language section of the practice test we used wanted them to be able to find a lot of errors and spell words with a lot of difficult spelling rules.  I’m sure most third graders have memorized them instead of learning the spelling rules and that they have a lot more of these sort of “find the error” lessons, which we’ve done a few of, but not that many.  It also asked them to alphabetize things, a skill we haven’t ever practiced and they didn’t quite get since they use electronic dictionaries more than the old-fashioned one.  Most amusingly, it asked where you would find the phone number of a restaurant.  The right answer, said Mushroom, should have been, “the restaurant dot com.”  The test mistakenly thought it was “a telephone directory.”  Silly test makers.

Next year, maybe we’ll give a “real” test and see how they stack up against other kids instead of just how they did on their scores overall.