They tumble downstairs in their pjs and hunker down in front of the computer, asking to watch the news. Hubby and I have enjoyed and encouraged this, but … we’ve found ourselves becoming on edge with each newscast, unsure if the topics or images will be too disturbing for young children. Hubby has had to regularly skip stories (sometimes more than one in a newscast) containing disturbing content: videos of gunfire; dead bodies; graphic car accidents involving toddlers.

Today we discovered CNN Student News, and we think this may be the solution to our Saturday morning dilemma. We watched a 10-minute, commercial-free segment and were impressed. The newscasting and journalism were professionally done. The segment included a top international story, some youth-interest American stories, and a just-for-fun story at the end. None of the stories were selected for their scandal value.

The international story was particularly impressive, providing reaction from international leaders and an understandable backstory.

The storytelling was excellent, and it was accomplished without the disturbing content we’ve noticed in mainstream news. The video clips, for example, didn’t highlight gunfire in action or dead bodies. (Gunfire was later portrayed using still photos.) Opinion interviews in this newscast were conducted with articulate teens.

When I checked out the rest of the site, I saw that there were related maps available for me to download and, should I be so inclined, discussion questions. Did I mention that this is all completely ad-free?

I’m delighted to have found this. However, I am a bit sad that Canada doesn’t produce something comparable for our students. Or that our mainstream news can’t provide us with information without inundating us with graphic images that no one needs to see.

A few years ago, my husband and I picked up the Take-Along Guide Caterpillars, Bugs & Butterflies. (As an aside, this is a wonderful book for children and adults who want to learn about common insects.) One of the included projects, titled “Capture a ‘Bear’ for the Winter,” directs young naturalists in capturing a wooly bear caterpillar and keeping it over the winter. We’ve all been intrigued with the idea that we might be able to watch a caterpillar hibernate, spin a cocoon, and then emerge as a moth.

We had been waiting until October to start the project, as starting any earlier would result in us trying to keep alive a caterpillar that was nowhere near to hibernating. (In other words, certain death for the caterpillar, which isn’t the intended lesson in all of this.) Last week, the first week of October, we encountered a wooly bear in the wild and finally felt that we could attempt the project with some hope of success. Charlotte carefully carried him home for us, and we’ve set up what we hope will be a successful winter home.

The theory is that he will eat grass for a few days, go to sleep for the winter, and then wake up in the spring to eat and spin a cocoon. We’ll see ..

I thought I’d share some of our lessons learned with Miquon here, hoping that they might help someone else who is launching it with their students. Because Miquon is so difficult to define (is it a program? an approach? a methodology?), I’ll begin by sharing how we’ve come to understand Miquon in our home.

What is Miquon Math?

I think of Miquon as an individualized program or as a methodology — either concept fits. Initiated in the 1960s for children from Gr. 1 to Gr. 3, Miquon aims to develop a strong understanding of fundamental mathematics. It emphasizes concrete math first, so children spend a lot of time working with manipulatives. (Cusenaire rods are the staple manipulative of the program.) It also seeks to foster a “lab approach” to math, where children ask their own math questions and test them out. This means that students end up creating a highly individualized program where they are directing a large part of their learning.

Student books are assigned colours rather than grade levels. Orange and Red roughly correspond to Gr. 1; Blue and Green to Gr. 2; and Yellow and Purple to Gr. 3.

The pages in student books have a homemade look to them. This was done intentionally to encourage instructors to make more of their own lab sheets for their students. Because the books are simple, instructors don’t feel pressured to create slick supplementary worksheets.

The pages have a simple, homemade look to them.

Before You Start: Recommended Reads

I’d recommend reading Liping Ma’s Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics before beginning Miquon (or any other math program, for that matter). That, more than any other book, has helped me re-think how I understand fundamental mathematics and how I would like my children to learn math. Since reading it, I’ve been better able to work with the Miquon approach and flex it to suit my students.

I’d also suggest that you read Miquon’s First Grade Diary. This isn’t a typical teacher’s manual with lesson plans. Rather, it’s a story of how an intstructor used the methodology to create customized learning for the students in her class. I find I refer to it regularly to get ideas for introducing concepts to my girls.

Before You Start: What To Buy

The Lab Sheet Annotations are extremely helpful for the instructor. They give recommended lead-in activities to labs, plus samples of completed answers.

If you can, get all 6 student workbooks at once; if not, get at least the first two (orange and red). Students are expected to start at the orange level on any given math topic (for example, addition). Once they’ve done the orange-level lab pages on that topic, they could then decide to go to a different orange-level topic (such as subtraction), or move on to the addition labs in the red level. In summary: students will hop around the workbooks, and it’s easier to accomodate that if you’ve got at least a few workbooks handy for them.

Cuisenaire rods are a must. Get the small group set with about 155 rods. (I found the 74-rod introductory set way too small to work with even one child, let alone two.) I now have a small group set for each child.The plastic rods are actually better quality than the wooden ones, which surprised me. (I have both here. Don’t ask.) Avoid the connecting cuisenaire rods.

You may find it helpful to have a Base 10 set, but it’s not at all necessary.

If your student is not yet in Gr. 1, then the free Cuisenaire Discovery Book will be a wonderful way to start.

Start Without the Lab Sheets

With some false starts, the following steps seemed to give us the best progression into using the lab sheets. Take as many periods on each step as needed. A 4 year-old will probably need to spend a couple of periods on each step, while a 6 year-old may easily complete a step or more in a single period.

Step 1: No matter the age or level of your student, the first period or more should be spent playing with the rods. Just dump them out and start playing.

Step 2: Play with the rods for a few minutes. Then ask if your students can build a staircase starting with the smallest rod and going to the largest one. Once it’s done, you may want to help students discover that each step is equivalent to one white rod.

Step 3: Play with the rods. Make a staircase. Then ask questions to help students discover that all of the light green rods are the same length; all of the red rods are the same; etc. (For example, “Put two green rods side by side. Are they the same length? Do you think that two red rods are the same length? Can you proove it?”)

Step 4: Play. Make a staircase. Help your students discover how many white rods make up each coloured rod.

Step 5: Play. Make a staircase. Distribute number cards. Have students match the number cards with the correct rods in their staircases. Practice counting with the rods and the number cards, forwards and backwards.

Get Ready to Use the Lab Sheets

Flip through the appropriate book for your student and rip out 6 – 10 pages that you think are at her level or just beyond. Put them in a folder; she will choose sheets from this folder during the math lab. (Alternatively you can have your student flip through the book to select pages to work on, but I found that with my young students, that took way too much time.)

Glance at the Lab Annotations for the sheets that are in her folder. Flip through The First Grade Diary to get ideas for presenting a relevant math topic or puzzle.

Start Your Miquon Labs

A typical Miquon lab period in our home look something like this …

• Warm-up: We count to 100, count by 2s, count backwards — whatever strikes our fancy that day.
• Lesson: I deliver a lesson based on the First Grade Diary lessons, and designed to introduce ideas that are coming up in their main math program. Lessons usually last about 3 – 5 minutes and involve my students working with the cuisenaire rods along with me.
• Puzzle: This is really part of the lesson. I try to set up a puzzle for us to solve together, again drawing heavily on the ideas from the First Grade Diary. For example, “If I put three yellow rods side by side, is there a different colour of rods that we could put on top of them to cover the same area?”
• Lab: I hand the girls their lab folders, and they pick a sheet that interests them. Usually there’s some discussion about how to do it, and an impromptu lesson may need to be delivered. Initially the girls, who weren’t comfortable writing their numbers, could either use rods or number cards to show their answers.

Students who aren't writing numbers consistently can use rods to show their answers.

Enjoy the Adventure

After the first couple of weeks, I saw how individualized Miquon was for each of my students. Lab days do have an adventurous feel to them, as I don’t really know what questions to expect (“Mom, what’s a polygon?”) or what topics will appeal to them. (Lately Tasha has been all about fractions.) It is a favourite time of the week, however, and I can see the girls transferring concepts from our labs to other areas.

Miquon has been a great discovery for our home.

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For my fellow Canadians, you can find Miquon at The Learning House.

He had a (mostly) quiet breakfast in bed. (That is a huge feat in this household, as Tasha and Charlotte are itching to play with him as soon as he wakes up!)

For lunch, we made one of his favourite meals: Ball Park Franks. Lemon cake with pink sprinkles (carefully selected by Tasha and Charlotte) was the dessert.

The highlight of the afternoon was listening to the baseball game on Daddy’s iPhone. Hubby decided to seize a teachable moment and familiarize the girls with the rudiments of baseball. In lieu of a trip to the Dome, he had them model the game using teddy bears.

Lining the Jays up to bat.

Baseball will never be the same.

Happy birthday, honey. I love you.

Draw Write Now

Draw Write Now was designed by a teacher who empathized with the frustration that her Gr. 2 students experienced both when trying to draw and with seemingly endless handwriting drills. Recognizing that drawing and handwriting use many of the same skills, she developed lessons that combined the two.

The result is a simple, gorgeous book that helps children see how they might go about drawing something from life. Here’s a sample page:

A full-colour sample drawing is presented with informative copywork. Then the main feature of the drawing is broken down in to simple drawing steps.

In our home, we’re using the books to learn about seeing shapes and drawing them. (The girls are learning italic handwriting, so the handwriting element in the Draw Write Now series isn’t that relevant for us.)

We’ve combined Draw Write Now with our science program, which we’re conducting along the lines of The Well Trained Mind recommendations. For the next 3-4 months, we’re studying animals. On science days, we read about an animal in a children’s animal encyclopedia. The girls then tell me one to three things that they’ve learned about the animal while I scribe their summaries on a notebook page for them. Then they get to draw the animal, which is where Draw Write Now fits in.

When we first selected animals to study, I chose ones that I thought would be interesting to learn about. It turns out, however, that it’s not that easy for a child to draw, say, a scorpion from an encyclopedia picture. It quickly became apparent that the girls had way, way more fun when the animal we studied was also one that they could look up in Draw Write Now.

This is science on a day when Mommy figured out that it was a good idea to learn about animals that were also in Draw Write Now.

It’s wonderful to see how this book seems to free them to become better observers. They are becoming meticulous about matching and blending colours; they love seeing the shapes in an animal (“Look! His nose is like a triangle!”); and they are very proud to produce recognizable animals in their notebooks.

I need to point out that Charlotte is trying to use two pencils simultaneously to get just the right tawny shade for her lion.

Today Tasha took it to a whole new level, tucking a Draw Write Now under her arm as she headed off to her room for quiet time. She emerged an hour later with this:

Tasha's drawing inspired by Draw Write Now

The drawing is wonderful. I am concerned, however, that the mother hen is in the middle of her chatty chicks and is yelling, “Stop!” I’m sure that there are some psychological implications that I just don’t want to explore right now.

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For my fellow Canadians …the full series of Draw Write Now is available at Blue Mantle and The Learning House.

I’ve spent hours looking for a Canadian supplier of Henle’s Latin, for example. (Blue Mantle carries it, in case that’s been really bothering you, too.) I’ve shipped resources to my brother and sister-in-law in New Jersey, who have then had to lug them to me on their next trip home. Sometimes I’ve just shipped them from the States, and then been aghast at the customs charges I face.

To save my sanity, I’ve started to collect a list of homeschool suppliers and other resources that cater to us Canadians. I’m posting them here: that way I won’t lose them in my horribly unorganized bookmarks folder, and I can also share the list with anyone else who might be searching for something similar.

Nope. Not unrealistic. Story of the World is great.

We’re using the Activity Guide that accompanies the Story of the World text. The text by itself is a beautifully readable book and makes a terrific read-aloud. On its own it’s a good, enjoyable introduction to history.

Add in the Activity Guide, and that “good, enjoyable introduction” becomes something magical. The guide includes lists of suggested books for reading more about each topic; review questions for each section in the text to guide discussion or summaries; maps; colouring pages; and projects. Inspiring, interactive projects that make history come alive.

I thought I’d share some of the project highlights here …

Week 1: Archaeological Dig

Our first history project was an archaeological dig in the sandbox. Hubby buried items a couple of days ahead, wet the sand, and then marked the site off into a grid. The girls had to carefully dig for items, brush them off, label them, and create a master map of the dig.

Week 2: Cave Painting

Next up was cave painting. First the girls did this on crumpled-up paper using charcoal for outlining the figures. The idea was to use rustic colours inside of the figures, but they were having none of that: we ended up with bold, beautiful cave paintings.

Then Hubby took them under the porch and had them use chalk to create cave paintings on our house’s stone foundation. This was not in the Activity Guide, but it seemed appropriate.

Week 3: Model of the Nile

Then we constructed a model of the Nile River that was flooded …

… and grew crops!

Week 4: Early Writing

And our latest project revolved around early writing. The girls created cuneiform tablets …

… and hieroglyphic scrolls.

History is definitely a favourite subject in this household — we’re all having fun and learning lots!

And our next project? Mummifying a chicken. I’ll let you know how it goes …

Back in April of this year, I decided to make some changes to our math program. Tasha (Gr. 1) is now using Singapore 1A as her main program with Miquon math labs once a week.

One of the reasons I had made the switch was my fear that she was starting to dread math. Grade 1 math just shouldn’t be dreadful!

This past weekend confirmed that the switch was a Good Thing. We had started our school year in early August, and thought that Labour Day would be a good day off for all of us. When Tasha woke up in the morning, she asked what our schedule would be like for the day, and we thought we’d make her day by telling her it was a holiday.

She was appalled. “What?!! No MATH today?”

We back-pedalled. Of course … we could do some math games if she really wanted.

“Mom, math games are fine and we can do those. But can I also do a page of my Singapore Math and at least one word problem?”

So our Labour Day holiday was spent doing math problems …

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For those homeschoolers who like details like I do … We’re using Singapore Standards Edition with the Home Instructor’s Guide. Tasha works from the textbook and workbook. We use the Challenging Word Problems about 3 units behind where we are in the text, and once she starts 1B we will use the Intensive Practice a half-level behind.

Tasha and Charlotte decided that they would like to see the plans for the day, which I thought was fair. I made cards for each subject and stuck them to the door so that we can take them down as we progress through the day.

But when I finished and stepped back to admire my handiwork, I must admit I had second thoughts:

Um, do you think it’s a bit much for JK and Gr. 1?

Tasha was shaking and had tears in her eyes as she witnessed this. (Later she told us that she imagined the porcupine was “frolicking around, daydreaming about candies” when his life came to a sudden end.)

And our tiny little Charlotte? She examined the dead animal closely and then wondered if we could barbecue it.

Nature studies should be interesting with these two girls …