Learning Snippets

This is a recreation of the post I lost the other night…I had the boys re-tell their stories, which they thoroughly enjoyed. The idea was to record some of the small snippets of learning that happened throughout the day. These kind of exchanges happen all the time and help reassure me that the boys are learning constantly.

Kyle And Math

As we were getting ready to go to the Nova Unschoolers park day (why do they always do this when we are trying to get somewhere?) I had this conversation with Kyle:

Kyle: 5 is not an equal number, is it? Me: (guessing because I am not sure exactly what he is talking about) Do you mean, even? Kyle: Yeah Me: You're right. 5 is not an even number. Kyle: What is an even number? Me: It is a number that can be evenly divided by 2 (or in half) with nothing left over. Kyle: You mean like 20? Me: Yes, just like 20.

And then I grabbed some pennies and showed him how if you lined the pennies up in 2 columns, the even numbers lined up evenly and the odd numbers had an "odd" penny left over. Since then he has occasionally come up and verified if various numbers are even or odd.

Jason And Government

We are currently listening to the Children of the Lamp series and really enjoying it. One of the story lines led to a great discussion of the difference between a president and a judge and how our government is set up (three branches, checks and balances etc). Don't ask how we actually got there, but we did! And Jason was really interested.

Storytelling

I have to remember to do this more often as both boys really enjoy it and it is good practice at organizing one's thought. Jason seems to really go for subtleness…he put a bit of thought into his stories and really choose the words carefully believe it or not. He also wanted to play around with the capitalization of the letters. We have been talking about what gets capitalized and what does not lately. He remembered in one of his books seeing the capital letters all over the place and wanted to see what that would look like. He decided that it made it harder to read, but he still liked it.

Once you get Kyle's mind going, you can't stop him. He actually had about 6 different variations of this story that he wanted to tell. I had to stop him after 3 as we had to get going.

One of the hardest things is to stop Jason from editing Kyle's stories. He is always giving plot suggestions and correcting Kyle's verb tenses. I have to remind him that this is Kyle's story and it is up to him to decide how it goes.

A Short and Dumb Story by Jason

OnCe UPoN a TiMe ThErE wAs a GuY. He gOt SquIsHeD By a bOuLdeR.
THe EnD

A Little Bit of a Longer Short and Dumb Story by Jason

Once upon a time there was a guy. He looked up and saw a boulder. It squished him.
The End.

Rock by Kyle

Once upon a time, there was a rock.
The End

Run Away From Big Boulder With Eyes by Kyle

Once upon a time, there was a guy. He saw a big boulder with eyes. The man saw the boulder going after him.
The man turned. The rock turned.
And then the man was so tired that he hide behind a bush.
Since the boulder was so big, he could see the man.
And then the boulder squished the man.
The End.

Run Away From Rock With Eyes by Kyle

Once upon time, there was a rock. A man saw the rock that had eyes. The man runned and the rock ran after the man.
And then the man turned and then the rock turned. And then the man was tired. So he hid behind a bush.
Since the rock was so thin he couldn't see the man behind the bushes.
Then the rock keep on running. Then the man hopped on the rock and then the rock felt the man on his back.
And then the rock flipped over and squished the man.
The End.