Learning Log 5 for Fox Lover: Anansi and West Africa

Monday, April 27, 2015

We Played:

• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• 10 Days in Africa  (Geography, Strategic Thinking) We played 3 times.
• Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

We Read: Since we read about Africa in Story of the World, including an Anansi story, We read some books on West Africa. (Geography, History, Mythology)

• Ogbo: Sharing Life in an African Village by  Ifeoma Onyefulu -- I found it fascinating how each villager, ages 10 and up, contributes to the village and knows his her or place in the community. I often think this sense of knowing ones role in the family and community -- and making tangible contributions -- is lacking in our culture. That's one reason so many kids and teens are adrift.
• Anansi and the Talking Melon by Eric Kimmel, illustrated by Janet Stevens -- We both enjoyed this trickster tale.
• Anansi's Party Time by Eric Kimmel, illustrated by Janet Stevens -- This was a bit too juvenile for an 11-year-old, but it was still fun.

We talked a bit about how Anansi tales spread throughout the "New World," especially the Caribbean, due to the slave trade and cultural variations on Anasi stories (including modern picture book versions created by contemporary authors.

From Wikipedia:

Anansi tales are some of the best-known amongst the Asante people of Ghana.[1] The stories made up an exclusively oral tradition, and indeed Anansi himself was synonymous with skill and wisdom in speech.[2] It was as remembered and told tales that they crossed to the Caribbean and other parts of the New World with captives via the Atlantic slave trade.[3] In the Caribbean Anansi is often celebrated as a symbol of slave resistance and survival. Anansi is able to turn the table on his powerful oppressors using his cunning and trickery, a model of behaviour utilised by slaves to gain the upper-hand within the confines of the plantation power structure. Anansi is also believed to have played a multi-functional role in slaves’ lives, as well as inspiring strategies of resistance the tales enabled slaves to establish a sense of continuity with their African past and offered them the means to transform and assert their identity within the boundaries of captivity. As historian Lawrence W. Levine argues in Black Culture and Consciousness, slaves in the New World devoted “the structure and message of their tales to the compulsions and needs of their present situation” (1977, 90).[4] 

Stories of Anansi became such a prominent and familiar part of Ashanti oral culture that the word Anansesem—"spider tales"—came to embrace all kinds of fables. One of the few studies that examines the role of Anansi folktales among the Ashanti of Ghana is R.S. Rattray’s Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales (1930). The tales in Rattray’s collection were recorded directly from Ashanti oral storytelling sessions and published in both English and Twi.[4]Peggy Appiah, who collected Anansi tales in Ghana and published many books of his stories, wrote: "So well known is he that he has given his name to the whole rich tradition of tales on which so many Ghanaian children are brought up – anansesem – or spider tales."[5] Elsewhere they have other names, for instance Ananse-Tori in Suriname, Nansi in Guyana, and Kuent'i Nanzi in Curaçao. 

For Africans in the diaspora, the Jamaican versions of these stories are the most well preserved, because Jamaica had the largest concentration of Asante as slaves in the Americas. All Anansi stories in Jamaica have a proverb at the end.[6] At the end of the story Anansi and Brah Dead, there is a proverb that suggests even in times of slavery, Anansi was referred to as his Akan original name: Kwaku Anansi or simply as Kwaku interchangeably with Anansi. The proverb is: If yuh cyaan ketch Kwaku, yuh ketch him shut.,[7] which refers to when Brah Dead (brother death or drybones), a personification of Death, was chasing Anansi to kill him. Meaning: The target of revenge and destruction even killing will be anyone very close to the intended such as loved ones and family members. 

Bru Nansi (Virgin Islands)
Annancy or Anancy (Jamaica, Grenada, Costa Rica, Colombia, Nicaragua)
Anansi (Trinidad and Tobago)
Anansi Drew (The Bahamas)
Aunt Nancy (South Carolina)
Cha Nanzi (Aruba)
Kompa Nanzi (Curaçao, Bonaire)
Kwaku Anansi (Akanland)
Ba Anansi (Suriname)

Learning Log 4 for Fox Lover

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Le Pont de l'Europe (The Europe Bridge) by Gustave Caillebotte

We Played:

• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• 10 Days in Africa  (Geography, Strategic Thinking) We played 3 times.
• Impressionist Art Game -- We also read pages 66-72 of the accompanying book; we read about Gustave Caillebotte (Art Appreciation)
• Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

We Read:

• Fox Lover has been asking questions like "what makes wind blow," so we read DK Eye Wonder Weather  (Physical Science)
• Chapter 11 ("Ancient Africa") in Story of the World, Volume 1 by Susan Wise Bauer (History)

Learning Log 3 for Fox Lover

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

She Went:

to several co-op classes: Nature Journaling, The Amazing Body, Tinker Time/STEM. They have made catapults and paper airplanes in STEM. (Art, Biology, Physical Science)

We Played:

10 Days in Asia  (Geography, Strategic Thinking)

Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

Rummy Roots (English: Vocabulary)

Sequela -- (Math: Computation; Patterns & Algebra)

We Read:

these 2 books, related to our last chapter in Story of the World. (History; Mythology)

Other: She has also been playing soccer.  (Physical Education)

Fox Lover's Artwork -- Learning Log 2 for Fox Lover

Monday, April 20, 2015

She Recently Drew These Fox Kits:

How awesome is that? (Art)

We Played:

• Art Memo -- We identified most of the works of art, by title and artist, as we went along. When setting up the game, we talked about factoring (how many ways can you makes rows and columns out of 72 cards?) (Visual Memory; Art Appreciation; Math: Patterns & Algebra)
• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• Prime Pak -- This game was originally recommended by my friend Jo as a way to prepare for algebra. It reinforces the multiplication facts, factoring, and prime numbers. We also talked about the associative and commutative properties, since this game provided a natural opportunity to do so, and we talked about the difference between factoring and prime factoring. We also reviewed square and cubic numbers. (Math: Patterns & Algebra; Computation)
• 10 Days in the USA (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• Mancala (Strategic Thinking)
• Double Shutter -- During game play, this reinforces basic addition (sums of up to 12) and mental math techniques (quickly choosing numbers with sums of 10). When adding up points and scores, it also reinforces addition of many numbers and multi-digit addition (with or without regrouping). Fox Lover has become proficient at doing all these things mentally, grouping numbers into sums of 10 to add many numbers quickly and efficiently.  (Math: Number Sense; Computation; Strategic Thinking)
• Impressionist Art Game -- We also read pages 50-57 of the accompanying book; we read about Renoir. I love Sister Wendy's art books. (Art Appreciation)

This is Fox Lover's favorite Renoir painting:

Two Young Girls At the Piano 

We Read:

Chapters 7-8 ("Hammurabi & the Babylonians," "The Assyrians") in Story of the World, Volume 1 by Susan Wise Bauer (History)

Board Game Schooling (Of Course!): Telepathy -- Learning Log 1 for Fox Lover

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

I love the fact that Fox Lover begs to "do school!" She's the only one of my kids who has basically unschooled since birth and the only one who never learned to steer clear of me when I approached them with educational opportunities. :-P I am thankful for local friends who encouraged me on this path, early in the game, including Adesa H., and Gleamer S.

Right now, Fox Lover's favorite board game is Telepathy. It's a deductive reasoning game that's a bit like Mastermind and a bit like Battleship.  Each player chooses a “secret square” and records the coordinates, color and symbol on a game card. Then players take turns guessing coordinates to locate their opponent‘s secret square. When asked about a particular square, the player responds with either a “yes,” meaning that the square guessed shares at least one characteristic with their secret square (symbol, color, row or column), or a “no,” meaning no characteristics are shared. As players take turns making guesses, and ruling out possibilities ("It isn't red, a circle, in Row B, or Column 7" ), they hone in on the identity of the secret square.

Today we played it 3 times. I noticed that she's becoming more flexible in her strategy and is articulating her strategies. (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

This provided a natural opportunity to discuss some basic scientific concepts, including the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. In this game, you might observe that you're getting a lot of "yes"es from your opponent on red squares, which might lead you to guess the correct answer is red (inductive reasoning). This is a hypothesis that you can systematically test. The overall gist of the game, discovering the answer through eliminating all other possibilities, is deductive reasoning. We also touched on confirmation bias, the danger of jumping to conclusions about a correct answer too quickly. (Logic; Scientific Process)

We also talked a bit about probability -- if you've narrowed it down to 2 possibilities, what is the probability that you'll get it right on your next guess? (Math: Probability & Statistics)

We expanded our discussion of probability through coin tosses and rolling dice. We made it as far as explaining the pattern (e.g. tossing a coin once yields 2 possibilities, or 2 to the 1st power, tossing it twice yields 4 possibilities, or 2 to the 2nd power, tossing it 3 times yields 8 possibilities, or 2 to the 3rd power, and so forth), but Fox Lover started to get confused and lose interest. Oh well. I didn't see this kind of math until I was a senior in high school.

Other Games We Played:

• Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• 10 Days in Europe (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• 10 Days in Asia  (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• Pig This is a dice game often used to introduce the concept of probability. (Math: Probability & Statistics)
• Sequela -- Although Fox Lover is successfully delving into more "advanced" math concepts, like factoring and probability, she is still learning multiplication and division. It sounds backwards, but with a strong conceptual foundation, it often works that way. Fox Lover and I agreed that she needs to learn her multiplication facts, which is what Sequela is intended for. It also gives us a chance to build a multiplication table, with colorful cards, and discuss patterns in the table. For example, we've used it, along with math cubes, to review the concept of square and cubic numbers. (Math: Computation; Patterns & Algebra)

We also read Chapters 4-6 in Story of the World, Volume 1 by Susan Wise Bauer ("The Old Kingdom of Egypt," "The First Sumerian Dictator," and "The Jewish People.") We recently agreed that she really needs to get some history under her belt, and she likes the engaging style of this book. (History)









On her own, Fox Lover has been spending a lot of time writing stories, and she is becoming a stronger writer. Our dogs are often featured in her wildly imaginative tales. :-) (English: Writing)

She has also been playing an insane amount of Sims. I don't know what it is about this video game that appeals to her so much, right now, but she never gets tired of it. (Computer Technology)

She is also playing soccer, which involves two practices and one game per week. (Physical Education)