Paul Klee was a Swiss painter who spent most of his life living in Germany. He was a talented musician as well, and often tried to capture the feeling of musical rhythm and movement in his paintings, especially his abstract color studies. Klee explored balance, geometry and color, and the warm red, yellow and orange colors he experienced on a trip to Tunisia show up in much of his work.

The first work we'll explore is Cat and Bird. This is a great example of balance versus symmetry in art. The cat's face is not symmetrical (exactly the same on either side), but it is balanced. If you divide the composition into thirds, either horizontally or vertically, you can see that there is a point, counter point or weight to balance the planes. This could definitely lead to some math work in symmetry or fractions, homeschool moms!

I have a guest post today about planning for the school year over at the Waldorf Essentials blog. Please pop over and check it out!

I spent an afternoon binge listening to the NPR TED Radio Hour podcast while I sorted through our bookshelves and homeschooling supplies recently.  If you've never heard them, you must subscribe; seriously, do it right now. You won't regret it. For the podcast, they pick a theme, then play portions of TED talks which relate to that theme, and also interview the presenters. A talk, 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do, caught my attention. Granted, the notion that you should allow your children to take risks or try activities that might not be approved by the AAP is not a new idea, but this talk sparked a little more reflection than usual on my part. The older kids were spending a week with their grandparents, and during a FaceTime call my son showed us the sewing machine he had just made a project on. My first reaction was surprise and a little thrill, since he really enjoyed sewing (hooray!). My husband's first reaction was something like, "Wow, be careful using that." He saw danger. I did not.

The next day my father in law called to ask how to cook the allergy friendly mac and cheese I sent up. After talking him through the steps I mentioned that Madeline could help, since she had made it before at home. He noted his concern about boiling water. He saw danger. I did not.

While camping, my husband taught Max how to make a camp fire. He let him build it, feed it and stoke it. It was a pretty big fire. I saw danger. He did not.

Upon reflection, I realized how intimately connected the risk we allow our kids is intertwined with our own feeling of expertise. My mother in law and myself are completely comfortable with kids using a sewing machine because we both sew. I sewed on machines at ten years old. I started cooking around that age, too. Baking actually - from scratch, the whole nine yards. So I feel comfortable with teaching my kids to use the stove and oven. My father in law, and my husband for that matter, see the risk, because they are not comfortable in the kitchen. Just as I saw the risk with the camp fire, which is not part of my responsibilities when we camp.

Of course, now the question becomes how do we get comfortable with risks that are outside our areas of expertise? Oh, that is the catch, isn't it? How did my mother feel comfortable with me using the oven when she'd never made a cookie from scratch in her life? While I'm pretty good at letting my kids use tools and appliances to create what they wish, I'm much more protective with physical risks. Climb that towering tree? Jump off of high places? That's much harder for me to approve. And yet we know that's exactly what we should be doing, within reason. We should be allowing for wings to expand, for space to explore, for challenges that just might cause injury, but definitely will cause pride and a sense of accomplishment.

It's still an open question for me. I am making more of a conscious effort this year to allow more risks in areas I feel comfortable with (more sewing!!!) but also encouraging my husband to expose the kids   to things he feels confident in (power tools, anyone?). And those dangerous things that scare me? Well, for now, once in awhile, I will try to smile and say, "sure, but be careful." Try.

Do you allow your kids to do "dangerous things"?

Well, it's that time of year again, when we homeschoolers don't go back to school.  We started our day with a walk to the park, and unfortunately, the timing was just wrong on this shot so I didn't capture their sweet hand in hand stride.

Circles from rectangular building blocks? Am I crazy? No, I did not give the kids the task of creating circles from Legos, but we did create tools from Legos to make circles! The bricks pictured above are the ones we found in our collection that worked the best, but sort through yours and see what you can find.

Math is not a favorite subject for either of my children, even though it comes so easily to Max. I am always looking for a way to make it more fun, more appealing, and nothing is more appealing to my kids than Legos. So, when we started a geometry unit, I thought it would be a perfect pairing. I sorted through the Lego baskets and pulled pieces that would work well with line segments and angles, our first lessons. I mostly selected the thin, single row Legos you see above, in different lengths. I introduced the concept of lines and line segments using the pieces, then we made parallel and perpendicular lines using the bricks.

Taking those line segments and perpendicular lines, we snapped them together (or pivoted them, in the case of perpendicular lines) to create angles. We opened them to different widths to show acute, right and obtuse angles.


We traced them in our math journals and labeled the three different kinds of angles. You need to trace the inside of the angle, not the outside. It also helps if someone holds it, because they have a tendency to shift on you while you are tracing!
                             
                            

The next day I told the kids to create five different angles and trace them in their notebooks. I expected that they would make five individual angles, but they both surprised me with their approach. Max made one angle, then just pivoted it to create different degrees. Madeline took the right brain approach and created the structure on the right, then laid it in her notebook and traced the different angles it creates. I love their creative problem solving!

In our homeschool, games are a regular part of the curriculum. With an ADD daughter and a son who dreads math worksheets, games are a fun way to liven up a sometimes dull subject. I was inspired by this marble arch game on Pinterest, but made a few changes to make it more versatile.

I used a whole box, minus the lid, so the marbles wouldn't run everywhere. The top and sides are covered with scrapbook paper, because I'm lazy and didn't want to wait for two or three coats of paint to dry. I painted the front with chalkboard paint (sigh, how I love chalkboard paint!), so I can change the numbers depending on what each child is working on. For the example above, you shoot two marbles through the arches and then multiply the numbers. Of course you could add, subtract, or divide the same way. But why stick with whole numbers? You could use fractions, decimals, or negative numbers. You could play with fraction bars, so the child collects the corresponding fraction bars until they have made a whole. You could use pattern blocks to practice geometry and/or cover a pattern block card with a design. You could use coin amounts and have the child collect the corresponding coins until they reach a dollar (or other specified amount). I love having wipe-off games that I can customize to whatever skill is needed!

We don't eat much Halloween candy around here. First of all, Max can't eat any of it, and since I don't usually buy candy, the kids usually forget about eating it after Halloween. Instead, we do science projects with it. Last year, we made models of molecules, and this year we had two days of experiment mania. Most of our ideas came from the Candy Experiments website. We messed around with density (a huge hit), looking for the floating "s" from Skittles, tested for acid, and melted lots of different candies in the toaster oven.
Before we broke out the beakers I had the kids sort their candies and record the data, then decide on broader categories to put them in and graph the results. Who knew you could get so many lessons from Halloween treats?

We have several museum trips coming up, thanks to free and reduced homeschool days, and I love using scavenger hunts to help focus the kids' energy when we are there. However, I do not love carrying a clipboard around, or trying to write against a wall or knee, or searching through the backpack for a pen. My solution? A book! I printed pre-made scavenger hunts from the Monterey Bay Aquarium website (many museums have them listed under the teacher resources, or you could make them yourself from pictures from the website) and bound them in a sturdy chipboard book, sort of following Angry Chicken's directions here. Instead of stapling the pages together, I folded each page in half and glued them back to back. Then I glued the first and last pages to the covers which made end pages and at the same time, secures all of the pages to the book.
This allowed the whole page to fold down for viewing, and the floating spine enables you to fold the whole book backwards. The hard chipboard covers (I took mine from the back of a sketchpad) provide a perfect surface for writing.
To keep track of the elusive pen, I added an elastic loop between the back page and the cover. To add extra hold insurance, I glued it down and then covered the edge with gaffer's tape.
That's all there is to it! Now I have a pint sized book of fun to focus our attention and our energy, and maybe discover something we hadn't noticed before. Now if I could only make our lunch bags and water bottles pint sized...

My new comprehension tool - the mystery box. This is slightly different from the learning kits I have been putting together, as you can change this one from day to day.
I used an old Math U See box and painted the top with chalkboard paint.
I filled the inside with items related to the Phoenicians, the section we were about to read in our history book. I had the kids inspect the items, and told them they needed to figure out how they related to the Phoenicians. This made them listen closely to the chapter, then use their critical thinking skills to figure out how the items were connected to the passage. It also helped my visual learner process the information in the book. The best part is that I can erase the title, fill it with something else, and use it again tomorrow!