Becca – Page 7 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Math – Made Fun with Food Pouch Lids!

Welcome to another STEAM Thursday! Not sure what STEAM is? Check out my STEAM page here, and peruse through all of my previous STEAM posts! Today’s topic is Math – specifically adding, subtracting, counting by 2s and 10s, geometry, and patterning. But, as usual, we have also squeezed some engineering in too… we seem to find a way to do that with everything these days!

Last fall, I shared some ideas for what to do with all those extra food pouch lids you might have sitting around your house… and today I wanted to expound on those ideas a bit. I briefly mentioned making patterns in my previous post, but Becca has been interested in making more complex patterns, so today we tried a really hard one – peach, pink, pink, pink, peach, peach, pink, pink, pink, peach. She continued the pattern correctly – pink, pink, pink, peach, peach, pink, pink, pink, pink, peach. (I didn’t get a picture).

In the process of stacking them up to make the pattern, we ended up building pyramids and cubes as well. Then we discovered that simply stacking them on top of each other makes a cylinder!

Our main focus, however, was adding and subtracting. Just like you might use a ten grid to add and subtract with counters, I simply took some scrap paper from our recycle pile and drew ten rectangles on it that we used for our pouch lids. We started out with basic equations to remind her how the ten grid works (it’s been a while since she’s seen one), but then we got more complex by adding her ten grid to mine to see how many pouch lids we both had combined, or subtracting hers from mine to see how many more I had, or reverse.

I was able to show her the physical ability of the pouch lids to cancel each other out to subtract and find the difference more quickly.

We practiced counting by twos to put the lids into groups of tens, and then counted by tens to see how many lids we have. We compared the groups to see which color we had more of, and which color had less. Then we subtracted by canceling out the groups of ten to find out how many more pinks we had than the peaches.

If you saw my post on Monday, you know that Becca considers math “kind of schoolish” and not really “summer fun…” however, she stayed so engaged with this activity that when I said, “So, did you enjoy doing math today?” She said, “If all math was like that, I’d love it every day!” HA! So, now I’m on a mission to make math much more hands on and fun for her! And you can bet that we’ll be doing a lot more with these food pouch lids in the future!!!

If you have kids who like applesauce (or anything else) in a pouch, SAVE THE LIDS!!! There are just so many fabulous things you can do with them. The possibilities are endless! Please share – what are some ways you reuse your food pouch lids?

Building Duplo Sentences and Pronoun Matching

I saw this idea from Allison McDonald, over at No Time For Flash Cards, and I thought it was really cool… but wasn’t sure how to relate it to Becca. Then one day it hit me. Sentences. Becca is always wanting to write. But due to her very asynchronous development paired with her perfectionism… she is unable to write in a manner that looks correct to her, so she doesn’t enjoy writing. She gets very frustrated. But this way… this way the world is opened to her.

I started by taking the Duplos that she already had and writing a bunch of words on them. We did the activity and then we discovered I had inadvertently forgotten to make any prepositions. And we needed color words. And adverbs. And… and… and… she thought of more words than I had ever dreamed of. SO, since we needed to go to Toys R Us that afternoon anyway, we got another set of Duplos. Because truly, we can’t ever get enough of them around here.

As of today, she has 169 words and punctuation marks. (And that includes three blocks with ” ‘s ” written on them.) She keeps thinking of more words she wants. I told her that she’ll need to wait a while because we aren’t going to buy any more Duplos right now. She wants me to write words on all of her brother’s Duplos too… which I have also held off doing because his go to specific sets.

I love the tenacity with which she approaches building her sentences. Sometimes she likes to build silly sentences just by putting words together that don’t make sense. Sometimes I think of sentences and have her hunt through all the blocks to find the words that are in the sentence. And sometimes she comes up with things on her own that just blow me away. When she wrote “I love my Mommy,” I couldn’t help but smile.

She has discovered that she can also build sentences vertically, and she loves sorting the words by type (which I made easy for her by matching the colors – all the verbs are yellow, food nouns are light blue, pronouns are red, etc.) It’s a great way to talk about types of words, appropriate punctuation marks, sentence structure. She can write stories by building them vertically, or by making them wrap around the table. It’s also a great way to practice sight words if you have some words your child is struggling to remember.

I love the flexibility that comes with this activity, and that she still has the ability to use her engineering skills to build fun towers as well. For example, yesterday I told her to forget there were words on the blocks, and just build something cool. Then after she was done building, we read all the words in order and giggled at the silly nonsensical story she had written!

I also made male and female word sets to reinforce male and female pronouns, and that can be an activity in and of itself sorting them into the correct stack.

We have a bunch of flat Duplos that I haven’t been sure what to do with… and I think I’m going to use them for math facts. Whatever I decide to do with them, you can be sure I’ll share. What ideas do you have for fun ways to use Duplos?

This post was not sponsored in any way by Lego Duplo… we’re just a family who loves Legos and Duplos and has an overabundance!

Involving Your Student in the Planning Process

So I was getting a little stressed out. I never planned to be homeschooling. In any form. When I found out that we had to “qualify” for pre-k here in Texas, and that we wouldn’t qualify, I thought, ok well, I can teach pre-k. It’s not like I don’t have the experience. Or we could just put our kids in a private pre-k. But that was before. Before either of our kids was born.

The journey we’ve taken the last three years with Becca has been incredible. We never expected all the challenges that come with being her parents. But we wouldn’t change a thing. Even the homeschooling first, second, and third grade curriculum at age three in the middle of the summer because she doesn’t ever want to shut down or take a break from learning. I wouldn’t change it, but it is definitely enough to stress ya out. Believe me, ya’ll. I was about to lose it.

And then I saw a post from one of my favorite bloggers, Colleen (from Raising Lifelong Learners), about this class called Bloom. It’s made for homeschooling moms and actually says in the title that it’ll help me find my SANITY. And boy. I kept seeing her post that Alicia from Vibrant Homeschooling was doing this Bloom registration for her class, and I kept seeing the word SANITY. But I kept telling myself I’m not homeschooling. Not really. I mean I call it unschooling, but seriously, I’m NOT a homeschooler. I was fighting it tooth and nail. Not the homeschooling itself, but the title. The “stigma.” The looks. The comments from, well, everyone who isn’t a homeschooler.

But then I gave in. And realized that whatever label I put on it, I am teaching school at home. And I realized I was flailing around out there in an ocean, looking for a life raft. So I decided to grab the next one that floated by, and I joined the Bloom class. After only completing two classes (of eight) so far, I’m already breathing sighs of relief. Sanity is possible!!! Talking with the other ladies in the group, watching the videos, getting encouragement, all of it has really started making an impact on how I focus on teaching.

And, I realized that I know some things about Becca. She does NOT thrive on specific curriculum guidance. She needs to have the flexibility to follow any little rabbit trail she comes across. A daily lesson plan might be much more comforting to me as a former public school teacher, but for her, it would never work. Because she sees a random cardboard box, and that makes her want to research how cardboard boxes are made. And we might spend all day on that. Or we might see the moon in the daytime and spend the rest of the week learning more (and more, and more, and more) about the moon! I seriously know more than any mom of a 3 year old should ever know about the moon, ya’ll. It’s kinda scary. But, I guess if my daughter is “someday gonna put a Texas flag up there on it,” I should know all this stuff. (Her words,not mine!) I also know that she is very opinionated. Once she feels like she knows everything she wants to know about a topic, she is done with it. And I best not bring it back up. Not because she’ll misbehave or throw a fit, but because it’ll be pointless – her mind will be somewhere else and I’ll be wasting my breath.

Realizing these things about her was a huge breakthrough for me. I knew these things, but somehow sitting down and thinking about them not as flaws but as character traits that impact the way she learns has made a huge impact on the way I approach teaching her. So I decided to sit down and make some lists of things that she might want to learn about this coming school year. (If you follow my Facebook page, you’ve seen a preview of this a few days ago – here’s the backstory behind the photo I shared.) I made a list of items from various subjects that I felt she might be interested in… but I wasn’t sure. So I decided I’d just ask her, and then we could sort of go through the lists little by little and cover those topics.

I’m always so fascinated to see how her brain works. When I went to talk to her about the theme topics, we were in her bedroom, and I sat on the floor. She was all over the room all the time. As she got more excited about the topics she wanted to learn about, she moved faster and faster. She was eventually spinning in circles next to me. (Enter her Proprioceptive need for input…aka Sensory Processing Disorder or SPD) She read the lists aloud over my shoulder and would say “yes, I want to learn ___” or “no, I know enough already about ____.” When we were talking about science topics, she kept going. “I want to learn about ____ and I want to learn about ____ and about _____ and then what about _____?” We ended up with an amazing set of lists of theme topics she wants to learn about, art projects she wants to create, and some physical stuff she wants to try, too.

It was a super productive meeting time, and she and I both left the room really excited about what all we’re going to learn about together in the coming school year. Then she hit me with a curveball. She basically asked me if we could start “tomorrow.” We talked about it, and agreed that this summer we will definitely do some things on her lists, but we’ll wait and pick up on the more “schoolish” things (math, according to her is “kind of schoolish”) this fall. I’m totally fine with that. Until such time as she’s actually behind in a skill for her age, I will totally let her determine what she wants to learn, and when she wants to learn (which of course is everything / every minute of every day).

I honestly don’t know how long this homeschooling thing will be right for us. I hope and pray that we can get her IQ tested next year and then advocate for the school district we are in to advance her to the appropriate grade level for her skills once she hits age 5 and should start kindergarten. But that may not happen. And it may be that we need to continue some form or combination of home, private or charter education to ensure that all of her needs are met.

We have to take each day at a time, and I have to be ok with the flexibility of all of it. This isn’t something that I can really plan ahead. I have to learn to roll with the punches. (Which is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done thus far…) But here’s the SANITY portion of this!!!!: By letting her select and tell me things she is interested in learning, my curriculum won’t fail. And I won’t spend tons of money on themes she isn’t interested in!!! I know I’m guaranteed to have a happy, intent student who is eager to learn about the selected topic.

I would highly encourage other moms (homeschooling or not) to talk to your kids about what they want to learn. Don’t just assume they are interested. Ask them open-ended questions. Start the discussion by simply saying – what do you want to learn? And then sit back and be ready to listen. REALLY listen. And then be prepared to follow through!

Share some feedback – I’d love to hear from you! How do you involve your kids in their learning process? Do they get to help select their curriculum if you are homeschooling? Do they get to select topics of extracurricular study/activity if they are in another school setting and learning additionally at home? What works for you? I’m always eager to learn from others and get new ideas!! This was a first for us, and happened to be very successful, so I wanted to share.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!

Well, sweet girl, the day is here. You are once again celebrating a birthday. Three years ago today, I held you in my arms and you made me a Mommy. I was so overwhelmed by you that the nurse had to take you back when I blacked out momentarily. The last three years have been such an amazing journey, that I can only imagine what lies ahead.

I never dreamed that I would have a three year old who would read the title aloud of each item she received at her party. You have begun to read literally everything in sight just in the past couple of weeks, and the power of your brain simply blows me away. You love to add and subtract. You’re interested in learning about money and telling time and comparing fractions. You’re interested in the Solar System, and tell me frequently that you are going to live on Mars some day. You’re gonna plant a Texas flag on the moon. You say you’re gonna be a great scientist. And who knows? Maybe you will be! You’ve got a brain in your head that is unlike any I’ve ever encountered and I’m so extremely proud of you.

I love that you are who you are, and while it might not always be easy to be you, you do it with such flair and such confidence that I can’t help but smile. You love to dance and twirl in dresses and tutus, and you love to lay on the floor on your tummy and play with matchbox cars and build train tracks. You’re fascinated by marble runs and Duplos and Legos and anything you can build. You love puzzles and have a voracious need to work as many puzzles as possible.

You love to spend time on your Kindle – working puzzles, reading, and playing math games. You love to watch TV, and your favorite show at this moment is definitely Peep and the Big Wide World – which you act out in real life frequently. Your favorite food is peanut butter, and your favorite meal is bean burritos. Your favorite restaurant is Chick-fil-a (“Chicken-fil-a”). Your best friends are Evan and Verity (and their siblings) and Tirzah and Abby and Kate. You love many of the teenagers from our youth group and want to be just like them. Your favorite colors are purple, green, orange, pink, turquoise, and red. (YES, you list each of them as your favorite.)

You love rainbows. You do not love thunderstorms. You are fascinated by bugs that crawl, but aren’t fond of bugs that fly. (I’m totally with you on this one!) You LOVE to play in the water outside – in your little pool, and in your water table – and you love love love with everything in you your kitty cat, Toodles. You love to swing in your swing that Daddy built for you, and you love to go walk on our nature trail. You enjoy gardening with me in the flower bed, and are very caring for the birds – always wanting to fill up the bird feeders we made from milk cartons. If you could live outside, you would.

You have a sweet and caring heart for your Baby Brother, and you usually get along really well with him. You are learning to be gentle even when you are frustrated with him, and he’s starting to actually be able to play with you some. You love to make him laugh, which makes my heart so happy.

You are a fabulous helper in our family – you love your recycling job, and you are quick to help clean up toys and books and make a “nice clean room” wherever you are. You set the table frequently, can make your own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and you are great about clearing away trash after a meal.

You love to paint – anything and everything that can be painted. You are highly interested in art, and love to create art with lots of different mediums.

You are fascinated with animals and life cycles and the food chain and pretty much anything science you can get your hands on. You are learning to love history and geography, and greatly enjoy our story times each day when we read Magic Tree House books together.

You are simply amazing. You struggle with noises that are too loud, and don’t always like to be touched, but your love for Brother is helping you overcome many of those issues because he cries and squeals a lot, and often messes with your feet or your hair. He is helping you become a stronger person, and you are doing an awesome job at learning to control your feelings of discomfort – and overcome them with love.

We as parents are learning how to help you get the sensory input you need, and you simply adore pulling all the pillows and cushions off of the couch onto the floor and hopping around on them like a frog on a pond full of lily pads. You love to run and spin our round swirly chair, and you love to sit in the chair and be spun around really fast. You love to listen to classical music, and your sound machine is always turned on to the crickets/outdoor sounds when you are in your room.

You have let us know that your nose doesn’t work like ours, and we are working toward helping you understand what smells are like in the world around you, even if you yourself will never experience that sense. You are fascinated to hear what things have good and bad scents, and are trying to memorize that information so that you can be more understanding of the world around you. Your interest and care for your world and the people in it is just incredible. You are probably the most thoughtful, deep, intense person I know.

You are the most amazing, adorable, beautiful little girl I’ve ever seen. I love you more every single day. Lots of days I get frustrated with you, and you might feel like I don’t love you as much on those days, but I promise – I love you more every single day. I love that you have a strong mind and know how to articulate your desires. I love that you verbalize your thoughts – even if they are bold and brazen. I love your creativity, even if I get frustrated because it causes a mess. I’m human. Sometimes the intensity that you so boldly display drives me crazy. But I ALWAYS love you. And those moments before nap time and bedtime when you look me in the eye, and your eyes go all mushy and you say “one more kiss?”… in those moments, my heart melts. When you tell me you love me, it melts all over again.

You always have and always will be my little princess, my angel, my butterfly, my lil ducky, my Boo, my daughter, my Love. I love you with more intensity than you will ever have in your body, and I always will.

I love you sweet girl.

Love,

Mommy.

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Nature Photography Art

Today’s Theme: Science, Tech, Art, Math
(yup, 4 for the price of 1… and technically, you could say it’s Engineering too if you use your items collected to build something…!)

With my life as crazy busy as it has been lately, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you that we’ve been doing a lot of super free, unplanned play. Like watching a lot of Sesame Street. And Creative Galaxy. And Super Why. And building train sets. And marble runs. And working puzzles. And coloring in coloring books and on plain paper. Ya know, the ordinary, unexciting activities that make up MOST of our normal lives. Not a whole lot worth blogging about and saying “wow, isn’t this fantastic? Don’t you want to do this with YOUR kids?” HA! But, I know that one of the things my readers comment on the most is how they feel inspired by what I share. And honestly, that is humbling. And it helps hold me to a higher standard for my own kids. And I appreciate that. Maybe it’s something about turning 31 today (really? 31? I remember when 30 seemed ancient… and now 50 doesn’t sound that old…), or maybe it’s just because my life has been so crazy that I’ve had to think about hitting the “reset” button on our school time… but for whatever reason, I came up with a super fun, EASY activity to do with Becca this past week that she absolutely loved. And hopefully your kids will too! (And hopefully I can come up with some more fun ideas very soon! Might be time to pull out my Raising Creative Kids book again and snag some more ideas from Colleen!! Have you gotten her book yet? OMG. You need it. You really do. The link is on the right hand side of this page… or at the bottom if you’re on a mobile device. And yes, it’s an affiliate link, so I make some dough from your purchase – THANK YOU!)

Wow. That might well have been the longest run-on paragraph I’ve ever written here on my blog. Thank ya’ll for sticking with me through that! HA!

And now to the nitty gritty – Nature Photography Art!

Becca LOVES to get out in our yard and explore. We are so blessed to have some amazing land for her to roam around on, and even more blessed that we’re on the edge of Texas Hill Country, so our wildflowers each Spring are just simply incredible. With zero work on our part. God just paints our land every single year for us, and we are so blessed! Cody and I both love to take nature photos – it’s one of the things that we first found that we had in common when we met. So our kids see us take pictures of flowers and trees and butterflies and random rock formations ALL. THE. TIME. And Becca often asks me if she can take the picture. But I hesitate to let her hold my phone outside – especially on a day like the one when we did this activity – because the ground was moist and there are random rocks… ya know, my luck I’d hand her my iPhone 6 Plus and she’d drop it face down into a mud puddle with rocks at the bottom (I know Apple Care is great, but…)! So I came up with this idea to get her involved, let her take nature photos, and yet do it in a structured environment.

I took this photo in our front yard while we were working on collecting our flowers for this project. The butterflies were fluttering EVERYWHERE, and the Indian Blankets are just gorgeous!

Here’s what you’ll need to do this activity:
A bucket or basket of some sort
A source of wildflowers, leaves, grass, or rocks
A sheet of white butcher paper
A good lamp
A magnifying glass
A digital camera of some sort that you are willing to let your child use
Optional extension: A computer with internet for photo editing (I use PicMonkey.com)

So just take your bucket to your source of nature, and collect objects. It can be ANYTHING. Any small piece of nature can be a fabulous source for photography. Keep in mind that live objects such as caterpillars are harder to photograph – especially for kids – because they are a moving target. So encourage your child to select STILL LIFE objects. You can explain that still life is a type of art that depicts objects that are alive, but not moving. Flowers don’t get up and walk away. Nor do rocks or grass. So they work great for this project. Try to pull an entire wildflower plant up – root and all – to examine with your child. If that’s not possible, no worries, but it certainly extended our conversation GREATLY to have a couple full plants. We talked about the parts of the plant while out there in the yard, and also again once we got into the house – a fabulous science lesson. You can totally do this with rocks as well, and get into discussing and sorting the features of the rocks, and create a rock collection box.

Once your basket or bucket is full, head inside and lay out your white butcher paper. Set up your lamp and grab your magnifying glass and camera – the fun is about to begin! Start laying out your objects on the paper. You can talk about their shadows, their colors, examine them close up, and watch the paper closely with your magnifying glass as lots of teeny tiny little bugs will crawl off of the flowers and begin to explore your paper. This is a fabulous time to talk about the features of the camera with your child – especially how to make it focus. If your little one has shaky hands and you’re using a phone for your photos, work as a team – you hold the phone, let your little one select where on the screen to focus, and push the shutter button to snap the picture (that’s what we did).

Try laying your objects out in all different ways – you can get as creative as your child wants. You could spell nature words with your objects, you could spell your child’s name, you could build something with your rocks, or you could just do random grouping nature shots. Encourage your child to try holding the camera closer to an object and farther away to see the difference in the two shots. How does the shadow look on the screen? Can you move your camera to a different location to make the shadow longer or shorter? Etc. The possibilities with this activity are ENDLESS. And totally repeatable!! Just collect different objects each time, and you can do this activity over and over and over.

If you want to extend the activity further in the tech area and your child is really into it, you can easily upload your photos to your computer and check out www.picmonkey.com (totally not an affiliate link, I just love them so much and use their site for everything!). Try making a collage of your photos together, or even play around with their favorite photo to make a sign for their bedroom door, an inspirational saying for their bathroom mirror, or add text to several of the photos to create a book that you can print out and stick in a 3 ring binder for them. You could also do this activity throughout the seasons and use these photos instead of paintings for your 2016 calendar! You could also add some math to this activity by measuring each flower and sorting them by length! The possibilities of where you can go with this activity are truly limitless, and think of the OWNERSHIP your child will have in this project – and the fabulous opportunity to do something one on one with your child. (I know I’m frequently looking for something special I can do with JUST Becca so that she feels special and grown up. We did this while Grayson was napping. If your younger child doesn’t nap anymore, you can easily have them go on the hunt with you and collect their own items in a separate basket, then give them white paper as well and let them play with the objects. They could draw ovals around them with crayons, count their objects, and sort by color, just to give you a few ideas.)

Here are some of the beautiful pieces we came up with together:

I am truly so excited about this activity, and I can’t wait to do it with her again with other objects and different flowers!! I especially loved her root picture (she wasn’t that fond of it, but she loved examining the roots and playing with the shadows!)

I hope that you will try this activity with your kids, and that you’ll SHARE your results on my Facebook page!!! I would love to see what you are doing!!! Check back next week – I’m hoping to get more posts up before then for the start of our next new month!!