Learning Log 8 for Fox Lover

Wednesday, May 6

We Played: 

• Telepathy several times. (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• North American Wildlife Memory Game -- My awesome father gave this to us many years ago, and we have gotten a LOT of mileage out of it. I was so disappointed when I couldn't find any more games made by this company. I'd hoped there was one for every continent. :-) (Biology; Visual Memory)





This time we divided the animals in the set by class and sorted the mammals by order, including ungulates, rodents, lagomorphs, carnivores, and sirenia. We also watched a powerpoint presentation on orders of mammals. (Biology: Animal Classification)

• 10 Days in the USA (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• Stratego (Strategic Thinking)

Ice Cream Math and More Board Game Schooling -- Learning Log 7 for Fox Lover

May 4, 2015

We Played:

• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• 20 Days Around the World several times. (Geography, Strategic Thinking) 
• Sherlock (Visual Memory)
• Constellations Memory Game -- We read about all the constellations included with the game, in the accompanying booklet, and read about Draco and Pegasus. (Astronomy; Visual Memory)
• North American Wildlife Memory Game -- We also read the descriptions of all 50 animals included in the game, in the accompanying leaflet, and discussed nocturnal/diurnal animals, camouflage, and other physical and behavioral adaptations. (Biology; Visual Memory)
• Sequela (Math: Computation; Math Sense)
• Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

We Read:

Story of the World, Volume 1 -- Chapters 14-15: The Phoenicians & The Israelites Leave Egypt (History)

Ice Cream Math: (Math: Computation; Math Sense; Patterns & Algebra; Probability & Statistics)

I bought 3 kinds of ice cream and 3 toppings and presented several problems. For example:

If you have 1 kind of ice cream and 1 kind of topping
(Peanut Butter Chocolate Ice Cream & Hot Fudge)
and you're allowed one scoop plus one topping,
how many choices do you have?

1
(PBC & Hot Fudge)

If you have 2 kinds of ice cream and 2 kinds of topping
(Peanut Butter Chocolate or Mint Ice Cream & Hot Fudge or Nuts)
and you're allowed one scoop plus one topping,
how many choices do you have?

4
(PBC & Hot Fudge; PBC & Nuts;
Mint & Hot Fudge; Mint & Nuts)

If you have 3 kinds of ice cream and 3 kinds of topping
(Peanut Butter Chocolate, Mint, or Vanilla Ice Cream & Hot Fudge, Nuts, or Caramel)
and you're allowed one scoop plus one topping,
how many choices do you have?

9
 (PBC & Hot Fudge; PBC & Nuts; PBC & Caramel;
Mint & Hot Fudge; Mint & Nuts; Mint & Caramel
Vanilla & Hot Fudge; Vanilla & Nuts; Vanilla & Caramel)

and so forth ... how many choices would you have if we had 10 kinds of ice cream and 10 toppings?

We worked this out with a simple tree diagram, and she quickly figured out the pattern and solved the problem:

1, 4, 9, 16, 25 ... 100

She didn't realize this was a sequence of square numbers until I pointed it out. She had worked out the pattern this way:

1 + 3 = 4

4 + 5 = 9 (5 is 2 more than 3)

9 + 7 = 16 (7 is 2 more than 5)

16 + 9 = 25 (9 is 2 more than 7)

and so forth.

I am always looking for "natural" ways to reinforce probability, patterns, and so forth, and this was a fun way to go about it. I love the fact that we packed so many concepts into a quick and simple activity, not to mention that eating ice cream was involved.

Banana Bread, Anasi, Mummies, Art Journaling, and a Trip Around the World -- Learning Log 6 for Foxlover

Friday, May 1, 2015

We Baked:

banana bread. We tripled the recipe because we had so many aging bananas to use up.(1-1/2 cups of flour becomes 4-1/2 cups of flour, and so forth) Fox Lover already knows how to halve or double recipes using intuition and basic math.

I used this as an opportunity to show Fox Lover, in a real-life context, how formal addition, subtraction, and multiplication of fractions works. This reminds me a bit of Gleamer's cooking classes. (Cooking, Math: Computation)

 

We Played:

• Impressionist Art Game -- We also read pages 58-65 of the accompanying book; we read about Mary Cassatt. (Art Appreciation) 
• Telepathy (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)
• 10 Days in Africa  (Geography, Strategic Thinking)
• 20 Days Around the World several times. (Geography, Strategic Thinking) We love these 10 Days In ... games! Now I've downloaded instructions for a trip around the world.
• Prime Pak -- This game reinforces multiplication facts, factoring, prime factoring, and prime and composite numbers. Trisha mastered prime factoring super fast. We are working on multiplication and preparing for algebra simultaneously. (Math: Patterns & Algebra; Computation)
• She invented a different version of the dice game Pig which involves practicing multiplication. (Math: Computation)
• Stratego  (Strategic Thinking)
• Ultimate Mastermind (Deductive Logic, Strategic Thinking)

We Read:

• Since we just read about the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt, we read You Wouldn't Want to be an Egyptian Mummy!: Disgusting Things You'd Rather Not Know by David Stewart (History)
• First Palm Trees: An Anancy Spiderman Story by James Berry, illustrated by Greg Couch This is part of our discussion of West Africa and cultural variations of Anansi stories. (History; Mythology)
• Anansi and the Magic Stick by Eric Kimmel, illustrated by Janet Stevens (History; Mythology)
• She and her sister have been reading The Wizard Children of Finn by Mary Tannen. (Literature; Mythology)

Also:

• We practiced division and mult-digit mulitplication using base 10 blocks. (Math: Computation)
• She has been playing soccer.  (Physical Education)
• We've been art journaling. These are some of our mandalas and other circle designs. (Art) 

This is Fox Lover's. She learned this technique from Alena, who teaches math and art.

These are Fox Lover's too. (The second one isn't finished):

 

 

 

Some of my art journal pages (in progress):

 

 

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)