the ELLA echo

field trip: cookeville children's museum

 

 

whenever possible, ella and i go with rudi when he has business out of town. one of our favorite trips is when he goes to cookeville, TN, which is only about 90 minutes from nashville, and where we recently discovered the marvelous cookeville children's museum.  on first seeing the website i was a little dubious, but i was completely won over on our visit.

the permanent section of the museum is an area devoted to imaginative play in various occupations, such as farming, veterinary care, homemaking, even the circus!  everything is so well thought out--for example, there is an apple tree where a child can really "pick" apples, and a garden where the child can harvest carrots, corn, etc.  there is a farm with chickens on nests that have eggs the children can collect, and there is a check out stand for the farmer's market.  

 

on the day we were there, the revolving section of the museum had all sorts of activities relating to the theme of "communication".  there was a typewriter the kids could really type on--a typesetting area where they could set up a page to print--a morse code table where two people could sit across from each other and send messages with real telegraph equipment--a mail sorting station where kids could learn how to properly address an envelope--even a video station where kids could learn american sign language.  

 

  

every surface of this small but delightful place is appealing to the senses and invites touching and playing and experimenting.  even the walls were interesting, with mounted tic-tac-toe boards and magnetic marble runs and images of ART.  and there are plenty of materials scattered everywhere that the children are free to use as they wish.

the only part we didn't get to experience was the outdoor center--there was snow on the ground!--but we expect to visit this little place many times in the future, and i even dream that one day something similar could be available in nashville.  it was far more interesting and engaging that the usual indoor activites we have here (if i never see another jump/bounce gym, i will be eternally thankful).

field trip: cathedral of the incarnation

 

the cathedral of the incarnation was our third stop on our tour of nashville's major houses of worship and for the first time we were on home turf.  LOL  it happened that our field trip date fell on the first friday of lent so ella and i went to mass and then stayed to do the stations of the cross before the tour began. this was the first time i'd ever taken her to do stations--i'd only ever done them at home with her--so i wasn't sure what to expect but she was right there with us all the way.  i was very proud and so happy to have made our first journey together.

anyway, the tour was lead by either a sacristan or some other minister because she knew her building and she knew her stuff.  she told us she was born just a few blocks from the cathedral, raised all her children there, and now helps with her grandchildren's formation.  

this church is really very lovely to look at and is so full of symbolism on every surface that you could easily spend an entire day just decoding the architecture.  one of the most remarkable features is the ceiling which is like a catholic I-spy, with the south end of the nave devoted to symbols of christ's birth as the incarnation of god and the north end devoted to symbols of his death and resurrection.  

every surface of the interior is intended to remind the worshiper of the history of the church and of jesus' message of salvation.  the tour guide also let the kids put their hands on all kinds of church gear, like chalices and vestments and was very agreeable to answering any and all questions without a hint of irony.  that is a gift.

in the excitement i forgot to take pictures--in the only place that would have had no problem with me taking as many pictures as i wish.  LOL

while this is not my parish of choice--ella and i both prefer smaller, quieter churches--for sheer catholic majesty the cathedral cannot be beat.  if you want the full experience, do attend a mass and if you are there on a friday during lent stay for the stations--even the homeschoolers who had never been to a catholic church commented on how prayerful and reverent and healing it was.

field trip: islamic center of nashville

the second stop on our tour of nashville's major houses of worship was the islamic center of nashville.  this turned out to not be an actual tour, but instead we got to meet a young muslim woman named sophia who gave us a brief and very interesting history of islam and explained things like the five pillars.  she was very patient with all our questions, and seemed to genuinely appreciate our willingness to learn.  she spoke very movingly of how her faith informs her interactions with the greater community and taught us much about welcoming the human dignity of each person.

something i learned about the local islamic worship community is that there are more than one mosque in nashville.  i had no idea!   i'm hoping we'll get a chance to visit the others sometime.

again we were not allowed to take pictures inside.  i was surprised at how plain the interior of the worship space was--i guess without knowing it i was expecting something like the alhambra.  however, in the area that is under the pointy part of the building there hangs a beautiful elaborate chandelier that made rainbows all over the room.  :)

i wish i had more to report about this visit--it was very quiet, and for whatever reason we were not invited or allowed into other parts of the center.  however, the chance to speak with a woman who clearly loves her faith and who views herself as part of the world community was worth the time.

field trip: sri ganesah temple in nashville

 

during february we were privileged to enjoy several field trips to local houses of worship in nashville, beginning with one that i have always been curious about: the gorgeous sri ganesha hindu temple in west nashville.

we were welcomed by our tour guide who began by giving us a brief history of hinduism and a moving description of how her faith informs her life.  from there we got to visit the prayer hall upstairs where she gave us an overview of what each monument represents and the various ways in which believers worship.  we were surprised to learn that worship is an individual event, rather than communal, and that anyone is invited to pray there.  we were fortunate to be present during the chanting of the 1000 names of vishnu and to also see ganesha after he was ritually bathed and dressed.

there are no photos or videos allowed in the prayer hall, but i did get a shot of ella with a relief of the animal that ella believes is her spirit guide, the elephant, just outside the entrance to the temple.

 

when the tour was over we were invited to spend as much time as we wished to further study the monuments, so ella and i took the opportunity to do so.  we also found a bowl of something that looked a bit like popcorn balls.  i wish i could tell you what these were called, they are made from some kind of grain (no, not rice, not barley, not quinoa, the word told to us was unknown to me and the attendant did not know the translation), honey, raisins, and nuts--the balls are made from offerings left by worshipers and are available for purchase by visitors.  we learned from the tour that food offerings are to be consumed, as they are believed to confer on the eater the blessings of the deity to whom they are offered.  naturally we bought one to share with rudi since he hardly ever gets to go on field trips with us.  we all took just a tiny bite--and agreed that the flavor of incense is probably an acquired taste.  :)

 

due in part to ella's visit to this temple she was inspired to create her own royal indian palace, and naturally she needed a sari and a royal walkway.

 

when the tour guide asked at the end of the tour if we had any questions, i said, "oh, about 1,000."  but one thing i did learn from this trip is this:  i believe it is possible that i am a catholic hindu.

how we homeschool: what i do instead of phonics

 if my husband or my friend were learning spanish (which i speak more or less fluently), and asked me what a word meant or how to pronounce it, i would not insult or demean him by trying to make him sound it out, or forcing him to guess the meaning or the origin of the word. i would simply tell him what it means, how to say it, and maybe even give an example of how the word is used if that seemed useful.

that is the same approach i use with ella as she learns to read english and expands her vocabulary.  if she asks for more help with the word we look it up in the biggest book she's ever seen, my beloved random house dictionary. and if she doesn't ask for help, i don't offer it.  force doesn't seem to be as good a motivator as desire.

the vocabulary she picks up this way is "out of order" from the way most scope and sequence lists suggest, but i don't know of a good reason to limit her learning.

by this method she was able to read this without my help:

the above is from a video game called "paws & claws: pet vet 2" which the dollies gave ella for three kings day.  i'll do a review of it in a future post.  suffice it to say: she loves play this game, and that pleasure prompts her to work hard to learn to read the instructions, figure out her necessary inventory, do all the purchasing, banking, and contracting, to run a veterinary practice that she has built from the ground up.  

like i said:  desire is a good motivator.

how we homeschool: why i don't teach phonics

 

Dearest creature in creation, study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy, make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word, sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you with such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery, daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar, solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral, kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind, scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet, bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food, nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad, toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK when you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour and enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger, neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does.
Now first say finger, and then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very, nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little, we say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate; dull, bull, and George ate late.

Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven, rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed, people, leopard, towed, but vowed.

Mark the differences, moreover, between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable, principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal, wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.

Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area, psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian, dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye, eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever, neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even, hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits, writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight, housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough –
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to just give up!!!

--from "the tough coughs as he ploughs the dough"  by Dr. Seuss, aka Theodor Seuss Geisel

how we homeschool: meeting a paleoanthropologist

yesterday ella and i had the good fortune to spend part of the day with jun ebersole, the collections manager of the mcwane science center in birmingham alabama!  he is a paleoanthropologist which is the technical term for "one of the top 10 coolest jobs ever".

mr. ebersole showed us around the dinosaur exhibit, very patiently answering all our questions no matter how far fetched or naive they must have seemed to him--and then he spent a great deal of time showing us how they recover and prepare an actual fossil for exhibit!  he showed us the machine they use to carve out replicas of bones, showed us a cool 3D PRINTER--you heard me, IT PRINTS OUT OBJECTS--and we got to see some eggs they are preparing for the upcoming new exhibit called "naturescope, which sounds like it will be exceptionally cool just like the rest of the museum is.

we didn't get to take any pictures in the lab (and truthfully we were so excited and asking so many questions that we didn't even think much about pictures--for that matter, i got so excited about looking at things and picking his brain that i forgot my purse on a table in the exhibit area!), but next time we visit he's going to take us to the back area where they store the stuff that is not on display, like their mosasaur skeletons, the fourth-largest such collection in the world!

 

this was our third visit to the mcwane science center, and every time we have hours of fun and we find something new that we missed before. the entire basement is devoted to marine life, with a shark and ray touch tank and a quiet little nook where you can meditate on the mystery of life under the sea--and there is an entire floor we haven't even visited yet, i have no idea what is up there.  :D  each area of the center is so engaging that you simply can't see and do everything on a single trip, which is great because it gives us something to look forward to for the next time.  on this trip we stumbled upon the fox 6 weather lab, where ella got to do and then watch a recording of herself doing one of her favorite things:  the weather report.  

 

my advice to homeschooling parents it is this:  take a chance, pick up the phone and ask somebody cool if you can spend some time with them.  i've never been turned down, and i've never been disappointed. even the top-10 cool job havers seem really happy to share a little of their passion with an eager audience.  and you might make a new friend.

 

ps--about an hour from birmingham we had a flat tire.  :(  rudi managed to change it in record time, on the side of the interstate highway in the rain while wearing his good clothes (he was dressed for a meeting), and then we limped on the spare to a little town called hanceville where the very nice people at college tire put on a replacement and got us back on the road.  they even had a lego play table for us to enjoy while we waited--proof positive that they care about their customers and realize that sometime parents have their children with them.  

 

we were a full hour-and-a-half late getting to the mcwane science center and mr. ebersole STILL took time out of his day to indulge our dinosaur interests.  everybody we met all day was just wonderful to us and the next time we go we're bringing them all cupcakes.

how we homeschool: game schooling

 

one of the biggest reasons i wanted to homeschool ella is so that "school" would not be awful for her.  :D she has always loved to learn, and i didn't want that love to disappear in a sea of worksheets and textbooks.   i know that most schoolteachers work really hard to make learning fun but what i think what they often miss is that FUN, in and of itself, can actually be educational on it's own.

that is why i lean more and more toward what i call "game schooling".  basically, we play games, and from those games we learn something. :D  but the point has to be the game itself--if there is even a hint of "school" involved, the fun gets sucked right out of it.

these are the games that we've been playing this week:

• shut-the-box (arithmetic, logic, strategy)--thank you lala!
• madlibs (vocabulary, parts of speech)
• scrabble (spelling)--ella got the apple package during our apple study unit
• marbulous (science)--ella calls this "the contraption maker"
• color explosion sheets (art)
• wii fit and wii sports resort (physical fitness)
• view-master cards (reading)

we also make up our own games, such as when we adopt laura but live in her time (history, social studies), or when we rewrite nursery rhymes or fairytales so they include a pie (literature, composition).

there are so many great games to choose from that i truly believe a child could do almost nothing but play games and have fun and still learn just as much, perhaps more, than by doing just "school" alone. that's worth at least 10 bonus points right there.

we're always on the look-out for more games to play so please leave a comment with your suggestions!  

how we homeschool: ella sewed her first dress

for christmas i gave ella this fantastically pink and very wonderful vintage sears kenmore sewing machine that i found on craigslist last fall.  i had to learn how to wind and thread a long bobbin, but once i got it all threaded up it ran like a dream.

ella was thrilled with it!  she immediately started planning what she would make first, and she decided she wanted to make a dress.

she drafted and printed the pattern herself, with my guidance, using the child's play patternmaking program by wild ginger software, she assembled and taped the pattern together with my help (i forgot to get pictures of that part--i was too excited!)--then i cut the pattern out for her. she laid out the patterns on fabric, weighted them, i cut.  she did all the sewing herself.  she even pressed the seams herself. the only part i sewed was the neck placket in back, which is fiddly even for an adult. 

 

 

 

she was so excited to put it on that she wouldn't stop to let me press out the folds in the fabric.  she was too eager to go down the runway (AKA nordictrack C2200, which seems very appropriate for a runway).

the edges are raw, the seam allowances and hems are all different sizes, but no seamstress has ever been happier with her own creation than ella is with this dress.

 

oh, about the homeschooling:  subjects covered on the day she made her dress include: mathematics (measuring her body, calculating the amount of fabric needed);  geometry (drafting the pattern, assembling the printed pattern pieces, laying out the pattern pieces on the fabric, assembling the pieces in the correct order and orientation);  reading and writing (navigating the program, reading the parts of the pattern, recording her measurements, reading the pattern pieces);  mechanics (threading and running the machine);  science (the affects of heat on the fabric and thread fibers, interaction of the thread with the fabric for stable seams);  art (determining a design for the dress, selecting a fabric that worked harmoniously with the dress design).  probably some other things too, but those are the biggies.

she's already picked out her next project, and it involves:  stretch velvet.  LOL  i'm glad my singer walking foot fits this machine.

taking it slow, so we can all enjoy the ride

 

in a bit of shameless self-promotion, i'd like to point out the new button on the left sidebar.  i'm now a member of the sprout for parents band of bloggers!

i know what you're thinking:  ella's not a preschooler.  

you're right, she is a registered first grade homeschooler.

so why did i want to become a blogger for a TV channel that is aimed at preschoolers???

it's because the sprout channel, and by extension the sprout online website, helps reinforce so many of the principles rudi and i embrace as parents.

we believe in ella's innate desire to do good, to be a help to those around her, to contribute to her community--ideals she can see modeled on the sprout channel in the likes of the ever-vigilant fireman sam and sweet, loving caillou.

we trust in her intrinsic motivation and ability to learn from all her experiences, including the dreaded "screen time"--and sprout helps us by offering shows like the whacky zoboomafoo, the entertaining mama mirabelle's home movies, and the truly delightful franny's feet.

but most importantly, we cherish our child's innocence.  i'm not talking about naivete--ella knows that all living things die, that nobody can get everything they want, that not everything will go her way.  no, what i'm talking about are the things that make childhood so special.  we love that she still stands to cheer when thomas the train does the right thing.  we are thrilled when she reminds fifi and the flowertots that "you are never too small to help a friend".  and yes, we really do love that she still believes you can visit another world just by believing you can--after all, that is the exact same message most professional educators deliver about the importance of a good book.

on top of all that, we can turn on the sprout channel at any time of day or night and know that ella will never see a child roll her eyes at someone, never hear a child whip out some snappy dialog to put down someone else, will never be exposed to the notion that being cool means making other people feel bad about themselves.

that's right:  we are sheltering her from the popular culture.  :)  and we're proud of it.  and i'm proud that even though we don't have a "preschooler", sprout for parents has allowed me to be part of the team.  i welcome all the new readers who have clicked thru from the band of bloggers website and i hope some of what i have to offer will prove useful or encouraging for you.

ps:  ok, i'll admit it--i don't love every show on sprout. :D  in ella's very early formative years we conditioned her to believe that barney is a scary, scary monster.  hey, when it comes to her own sanity, a mom has to do what a mom has to do to do.