A Mouse’s Guide to Latin

Minimus is a mouse with a mighty task – to facilitate an elementary course in Latin!  These books are rated for the 9-12 year old, but ‘much’ older students would enjoy the introduction, too – we adults stand to learn something here!

A grasp of Latin is the key to fully understanding not only the English language but many others.  It is foundational stuff.  Minimus presents lessons in a non-overwhelming manner; his cute little face encourages us to give it a try.  The caricature drawings in the book are light and friendly, drawn in cartoon fashion.  The lessons are not difficult and  dispersed throughout the book are interesting tidbits about Roman Britain’s history.

No need to fear the pronunciation monster!  An audio CD is available to complement the text, as is a teacher’s guide to help us over the humps (seems like the CD is a good purchase since there is no other pronunciation guide offered.)

You’re not a geek if you study Latin.  Rather, you are incredibly intuitive to realize that looking at the fundamentals of our language can serve a person well throughout a lifetime.  Invite Minimus into your home and read him together!

Click on the books for more information:

Minimus Pupil’s Book:  Starting out in Latin by Barbara Bell

Teacher’s Resource Guide

The audio CD for the first book; sounds like (no pun intended!) is quite helpful since a pronunciation guide is not included.  Well, rats.  Sorry, Minimus.

Minimus Secundus Pupil’s Book:  Moving on in Latin

The teacher’s resource for Minimus Secundus

The audio CD for the second book

Now, one thing I did notice and do not like is that the teacher’s books are exorbitantly pricey at near $70 a piece!  What’s that about?  The other texts are in the $15 range at this writing.  Maybe you could go in on the teacher’s guides with another family or two and pass the course around?  Or better yet, maybe these are available at the good ol’ library.  Let’s hope.

Exploratopia: Kid-Friendly Experiments and Explorations

The word ‘experiment’ seems important to Max. He often says that he wants to do experiments. The lure of discovery and play is what I think gets him every time, probably more play than discovery, but the two work well together.  I was beginning to scrape some experiments together that we could do when I ran across this fantastic tome brimming with ideas that would satisfy any child’s need to explore.  It has only just arrived and I’ve paged through it, looking for our starting point.  There is more than enough material here to keep him happily occupied for a long time!

Exploratopia:  More than 400 Kid-Friendly Experiments and Explorations for Curious Minds

It’s divided into three big parts.  Part 1 is titled “Exploring Yourself” and contains creative experiments designed to help kids understand the human body and how it works.  We’ll save this first part for a unit study on the human body, maybe next year (Max is kind of squeamish, so he says he’s not ready for that unit study anytime soon!)

Part 2 is titled “Exploring Interesting Places” and involves experiments around the kitchen, backyard, bathroom, playground and beach.

Part 3 is titled “Exploring Interesting Stuff” and this is where we’ll likely start.  Language, math, money, paper, light, color, optical illusions, sound and electricity are a few of the topics sprinkled in this section.

Looks like a fantastic used purchase, one that we’ll play with for a while.  I’m relieved to have a good resource to turn to when he says he wants to start experimenting!

More Great Geography Games

Our planet is really very small. Over time it’s not hard to gradually introduce our kids to the wonders of various locations across the globe. Gradually is the operative word here, I think. Rather than drill work (ack – let’s all slump over and express our collective distaste), GAMES are a much more palatable option. We’ve been playing The Amazing Mammoth Hunt game and have gradually (there’s that word again – see how important it is?) been ingesting more information about where things are on Planet Earth. Next year, in ‘fifth’ grade, we’ll tackle the intricacies of locations in the United States more closely, I think. For now we’re looking at the whole big wide world. And I’m finally getting the Eastern Block countries sorted out, not to mention the wonderful puzzle of Africa’s countries and how they all fit together.

Here are some geography games, world and otherwise, targeted to this particular learning venture. I did a separate post about The Amazing Mammoth Hunt game, so I’ll just place a picture of the game here in this listing.  As always, click on the pictures to link to more information about the games.  They’re all awesome!

Excellent quality besides being a fun game to play.  I’m impressed with the sturdiness.  Learn world geography.

Six games on six levels of play offer players of all ages a complete up-to-date tour of world geography. Learn the names, locations and vital facts of all 196 countries! Players will learn facts about every country in the world including; country name, continent, flag, capital, population, rank in size, literacy rate, monetary unit, languages, religions, imports, exports and seacoasts.Game includes 6 region maps (Africa, Asia, Europe, North American, South America and Oceania), 196 country cards, 6 wild cards, 1 spinner, 1 bodies of water reference board, 120 playing pieces and instructions.For 2 – 6 players, ages 8 and up.

Now there’s a question one could ponder over…….do I know where I am?  Lots of levels of meaning there.  This game sports 3,000 questions and delves not only into location, but events, culture, history, sports and natural wonders.  There is also a handicapping system to help newbie geographers compete with a person who has traveled the globe extensively.  For ages 10 and up, which is so subjective.

Out of the Box Ten Days in Europe.  You get to spend 10 days in Europe and plan your travels, trying to outwit other travelers by strategizing your plans.  This game is one of a series from Out of the Box Publishing.  You can also spend 10 days in Asia, Africa, and the USA.

Brain Box is just so catchy, so it gets extra points.  This is a memory game!  Each player gets 10 seconds to look at a card to memorize details, then must turn it over.  The other players get to quiz about details on the cards and see how much the person remembers about a country.  The game is made from recycled materials, so it gets even more bonus points!  Those clever Mindware folks are a-okay.  A Brain Box about the USA is available, too.

Mindware Atlas Adventure is the exciting world discovery game where players have to build a world map. But beware! Continents or oceans may have to be traded with other players. Advanced players have to answer challenging multiple-choice questions. Level 1 is for ages 7+ and Level 2 is for ages 12+. By using the different levels, all the family can play the game together.

Players move around the map game board and answer questions about cities,
states, lakes, rivers, oceans, national parks, crops, industries, and more.
When they answer a question correctly, they’ll earn that state’s flag.
The first player to collect 6 state flags, wins the game.

The subject matter looks to be a little more simplified, but the concept is a great one – use your entire body to learn!  Recommended for ages 7 and up.

I could search and search and come up with board games that at their heart, have the same format.  The above are listed to get you searching for, pondering over, and hopefully choosing a great geographical game!  Best wishes in your hunt and may you have lots and lots of fun exploring our little piece of the solar system.

Learning with the Adventures of Riley

These books are written for a slightly younger set (ages 4-8), but we remain intrigued with them, even though Max is ten.  There is much valuable information to be gleaned from each book and applied to whatever subject you might be covering at the moment.  We used the Dolphins in Danger book during the unit study on Cetacea.

Riley follows his uncle Max, a research scientist, around the world.  Riley gets around!  Here are a few examples from the series.  Click on each book for a link to Amazon:

There are many more subjects in this series and I bet they are accessible at the library.  Have fun exploring with Riley and his uncle Max!

Real Life Geography – An Idea

Back in first grade Max’s class made elves out of fabric, stuffed them, dressed them and named them (the whole process was a huge undertaking for the teacher, let me tell you) with the intent of sending them with someone they knew who was traveling anywhere, even if it was to the next town over.  The kids made a journal to send along with the elves and the person traveling was supposed to make notes in the journal of where the elf had visited, or take pictures if the person was particularly motivated to help your kiddo out.

Max’s elf traveled to Spain and a few places around the US.  The idea was, at the end of the travels, to send the elf and journal/pictures back to the child so he or she could trace the elf’s exploits into foreign territory.  Great idea in theory!  More than half of Max’s class never got their elves back, which was kind of a let down after all that work and excitement went into them.

You could attempt something along these lines and ask the traveler to send periodic emails to your child instead of completing a journal.  The digital age makes this sort of endeavor much less cumbersome these days.  So there’s an idea!  When you get the emails, it’s off to the map or globe you go to locate where your wanderlust ‘elf’ has landed!

We are trying to pay attention to where friends and family members are traveling.  Recently a Haitian friend flew to the Dominican Republic to grab a bus to earthquake-devastated Port Au Prince.  His trip is taking him to Santo Domingo and then cross-country to PAP.  We are following his adventure on our map (he is there to deliver supplies to an orphanage and to check on family members).  Another friend is in the armed services stationed somewhere in Somalia, so that information took us to the world map on the wall, too.  It helps to have a personal connection for information to sink in a little further than it normally would.

Take advantage of these events.  Get your kids interested in where others are going.  You might be surprised how much geography you learn together!

Biographies with a Twist

I picked up a copy of a biography (for me to read) about Nelson Mandela from the DK Biography series (of which there are numerous biographies available), and subsequently did a search to see what other types of biographies for kids are available.

Bingo!  Although the DK series appears to be adequate, they are rather standard fare.  The biographies highlighted below have a little something more to offer as far as creativity:

Ben and Me:  An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos

Apparently a not-so-humble mouse played an important role in American history! An Amazon review states, “In A New and Astonishing Life Of Benjamin Franklin As Written by His Good Mouse AMOS, young readers will discover that while the good Mr. Franklin got considerable credit, many of his most important contributions really originated with Amos, a less-than-humble rodent. Oh sure, his manuscript was found by author-editor Robert Lawson and published first in 1939, but discerning readers ever since have figured that it’s the mouse who’s the fellow with the … tale.”

Mr. Revere and I:  Being an Account of Certain Episodes in the Career of Paul Revere, Esq. as Revealed by His Horse.  Paul Revere’s mare, Sheherazade, tells this tale.

I Discover Columbus:  A True Chronicle of the Great Admiral and His Finding of the New World. The parrot Aurelio traveled with Columbus to America. This is the bird’s story of how the penniless mapmaker was granted an audience with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and how Columbus had to be bamboozled into his own flagship.

Robert Lawson is the author of these ‘biographies’; he is also known as an illustrator of books for children.

Silly Reading to Entice Reluctant Readers

Especially if those reluctant readers happen to be boys around the ages of 8 to 11!

Max brought me up to date this morning during breakfast about his current foray into this first book.  Judging from the words tumbling from him, he is having a great time reading.  It’s sheer silliness from an author who likes to have fun and illicit giggles galore from his readers.

On the back of the book it states:  “Rated G for ‘Gross’.  Contains immature material not suitable for adults.”  If you are comfortable saying the word ‘butt’ in your household, you might find these books to be acceptable.

It’s innocent stuff, though.  I understand if you think this type  of reading is inappropriate.  I decided to let Max have a go at it and he’s kicking some royal reading butt!  The author is clever and careful in his use of terminology – he clearly has a grasp of what makes kids laugh.  Thank you, Andy Griffiths, for providing some unusual entertainment and an incentive to keep reading!  Mr. Griffiths is an Australian author, so the original title of this first book is The Day My Bum Went Psycho.

Based on a true story?  That alone is funny.  It’s about a young boy whose bum decides to go rogue and try to conquer the world.  A butt-fighting team forms to try and stop the madness and from here on out the terminology gets very zany.

Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger. Author Kevin Bolger keeps the humor rolling with his series of books about the Kingdom of Armpit in which a hapless knight must try to save good from evil.  He’s said to be a very potent knight!

Sir Fartsalot Meets the Booger

There may be a few other books in the Fartsalot series, but I’m unable to find pictures of them.  One may be called Sir Fartsalot Cuts the Cheese?

Again, my apologies if this type of material offends you!  Dare I even tag this one under the literature category?

The Very Beginnings of our Outer Space Unit Study (to be continued)

This one is going to take awhile to pull together because there are vast possibilities available for materials.  I’m a little daunted by not only the vastness of our universe, but by how to best present that vastness for Max so he has a framework to explore within.  Even though we won’t be technically starting this unit study for a while, I’ve already been mulling and researching, gradually gathering supplies and ideas.

Well, I found a terrific place to at least start.  I bought these with the intention of saving them for the unit study, but Max saw them and asked if we could read them.   You bet!  So, here we are reading them in the midst of the Whales and Dolphin unit study, but it’s all good.  Everything is connected, after all.  We are having a super time following George in his space adventures.  Along the way we are learning about space from non other than Stephen Hawking, the preeminent mind in theoretical physics.  This kind of book sums up what this blog is about – the best current available information wrapped up in an engaging children’s story.  These are the kinds of things I search for and I get very happy when I find them (and pass them along to you!)

Mr. Hawking wrote this with his daughter, Lucy.  It’s terrific!  I could not be more pleased.  We read 8-10 chapters a day and finished it asap.  It’s packed with information about the planets and their moons, comets, and black holes.  Lots of full-color pictures, too, to supplement the wow factor of space beyond our atmosphere.  The illustrations in the book are very good; I like the illustrator’s style very much.

The second book of which we’ve read the prologue.

Hope you weren’t expecting a big long list of resources about outer space – that will come, I promise.  I was so enamoured with these that they had to be posted early to get the outer space unit party started.  Check them out if you can!  They are full of jumping-off points for further study and exploration!

The Children’s Map of the Solar System has been on the wall for several months now and today I learned just how much detail Max has been paying attention to, just by walking down the hall near it day after day.  It’s colorful, humorous and accurate – some of the best things in life!  This will be a big part of the unit study since visuals offer so much more than just the written word.  It’s big (54″ x 37″), so plan accordingly!  You can see better graphics if you click on the maps below or on the blue link above.

Learning about the International Space Station’s (ISS) current adventures in real-time is a good pass-time, too.  You can check out what the astronauts are doing, how they live, eat and sleep on the ISS, and where they are located in relation to Earth at any given moment.  Construction on the ISS began in 1998; it’s fun to see how it’s being used to study both outer space and humans IN outer space.  Check out the ISS at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Science is in the Cards

I’ve put up several posts about science topics lately because there’s been a run of interesting items popping up while searching the corners of the world for entertaining and educational materials.  As they say, when it rains it pours!

Here are some playing cards with a science theme that looked interesting; therefore, criteria one has been met.  The item at large must at least look interesting!  These probably lend themselves more toward passive rather than active learning, but kids and grownups might find them quite likeable.

Click on the pictures for more information:

These are ‘regular’ playing cards embellished with a tad more information – all of the bones in the human body.  You can play any game you like.  The information on the cards might slow down play a little, but maybe that’s the point.  Available in English, French and Spanish, so you could technically work on two subjects at once!

Same concept here.  Every element is listed.

You can also find cards that illustrate guitar scales, chess moves and some self defense techniques.

Grand Central Homeschooling

Last week I set out on a project to move all of our homeschooling materials into a spare bedroom and turn it into a resource center of sorts.  I’ve been sorting, stacking, filing, piling, and generally engaging in mess-making mayhem.  It’s great!  I love to mess things up; unfortunate, though, because my follow-through lacks a certain joie de vivre.  Rats!  Why can’t I just be a complete package?  The room is dutifully adhering to the rule that before anything gets neater, it gets WAY messier first.  I’m beginning to see spots of the carpet shining through, so that must be a good sign.  When it’s done it will serve as ‘one-stop grabbing’, a central place where I can go to grab whatever we are using for the given day.  Prior to last week’s cleaning binge,  our books, games, papers and materials were spread willy nilly throughout the house in piles, driving me fruit.  Already I can feel a sense of peace about at least having everything in one room – equipped with a door we can shut to block the clutter!  Nothing better than a clutter blocker.

In my head I live this glorious vision of organization, of on-top-of-it existence, everything in its place, stuff at my fingertips when I need it, control of my environment – you know…..the unattainable perfect life!  Outside my head, well, it’s a heavy dose of reality that I sometimes just have to face.  Januaries are usually the impetus to get me rolling in a direction of some sort, whether it be regular exercise (again), becoming a vegetarian (27 days and counting!), or just getting my act together.  Impossible.  Curse the Januaries!  No, just kidding.  It’s good to start out the new year with goals and changes in mind.

The homeschooling room is coming along.  There are posters about volcanoes, art, local geology, museum exhibits (all freebies from a teacher’s conference), book shelves that are gradually filling up.  There’s even a twin bed shoved (gently and aligned correctly) into the corner that serves as a makeshift couch if we want to curl up and read there.  Now I’m on the hunt for a table and chairs that we can sit at occasionally, something inexpensive or better yet – free!  I’ll be checking Craigslist and Freecycle for said item shortly.  The intent is not to lock ourselves in that room during the hours Max is working on learning – hardly.  The intention is to put everything in a central location and try hard to keep it from wandering all over the house.

I am very diligent about recording what we do on a daily basis and keep file folders for each subject covered.  I also  keep a narrative going about the concepts we’re covering and how Max reacts to ideas, projects or experiments.  It’s a diary that I imagine will be pleasurable to read one day when he’s fifty and I’m really old (maybe I should type it in BIG PRINT.)  It’s also something helpful to keep on hand should laws in our state change and we need to come clean about the homeschooling done behind our closed doors.  May it never happen!  I love the freedom of being able to teach Max in whatever direction he wants to go.

So, bubbling with excitement about the lack of piles in the main part of our living space.  Also burbling about the change to vegetarianism.  You seriously wouldn’t believe how good some of this food is!  Stressing a little about those piles that have moved to the homeschooling room, behind that clutter blocker of a door.  Knowing that it’s still January and I can get the job done.