Cities of the World

Last year, Lu worked on an independent research project on fifteen of the world's most influential cities. He worked on it over several months. He had many technical difficulties: his computer breaking down, realizing that he had only downloaded the thumbnails of the hundreds of images he'd found for his presentation, and losing information several times. He continued working over the Christmas break and finally gave his presentation. It worked out nicely because grandma, aunts and uncle were visiting, so Lu had a good audience.

Old Books, Big Cities, Free Flow, and a Rock Star

 Our school year runs from Jan-Nov,

so these are the last few months of 6th grade for us.

After finishing the first two books of the "Chronicles of Ancient Darkness" series, and not having the third, Lu pulled "Black Beauty" off of my childhood bookshelf and is reading it mostly from a lack of a better book, aka We Need More Books. 

Morning reading time is VERY important around here 

(specifically for mami's quiet coffee time).

Creative writing has always been a struggle for Lu, so we let it go for a while, but recently we bust out a notebook and started 

"Free Flow Writing/Doodling Time" and it's been a HUGE success!!!

 

The first half of our year was very science-heavy with lots of documentaries, including the complete "Through the Wormhole" series with Morgan Freeman (the only man I'd leave my husband for, I luuuuuv Morgan). Now Lu is just chilling with some reading on deep space from another book from my childhood, this Nat Geo "Our Universe" book that my great-grandfather gave me when I turned five, 35 years ago:

For history we're reading about the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Guatemala. It's a very old book written by a Spanish soldier. We take turns reading aloud in a Spanish that is old and difficult to read. We're slowly working through the over 800 pages, but it's worth it because the story is truly fascinating.

As a final 6th grade research project, Lu is putting together a slideshow presentation of ten major cities of the world. He's having a great time with it. He'll come running to ask "Did you know there's no toilet paper in Tokyo, because the toilets wipe your butt for you?!" or "Did you know that pinball machines have been illegal in New York since the year...?!" Some of his findings are questionable, but it's so much fun to see what he gets excited about. lol

 We recently participated in an artistic photo shoot 

for a make-up artist friend.

 Lu had a blast getting made up and posing.

Here's one of my favorites: The Rock Star

The Ancient Maya, a history project

Before our mid-year break,

Lu had two weeks to focus on a history project

about the Ancient Maya.

At least once a year,

Lu works on an independent project

that involves research, a deadline, and a presentation.

I only helped with the final editing,

and double checking historical dates.

Lu planned out his project with a timeline

and checklists, and worked several hours a day,

with short breaks in between

for puppy time

and guitar practice.

 

  

Once he was done with the research,

he printed and organized his information and images.

It's hard for me to not get involved sometimes,

so I left him at the stationary shop with generous funding,

to choose his materials. 

And then came the putting-together part!

I was only allowed in the room to take some pics.

But after this one, 

I was informed that it was the last time I could come in 

until he was ready to give his presentation.

On the Friday before our break (the deadline)

Lu was finished with his project at 8:30pm.

Throughout the project, Lu mentioned several times

how "professional" this kind of work made him feel,

and that he really enjoyed it :)

Great job, Lu!!!

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Now we're on a three-week break,

just chillin' with friends and taking it easy

after six months of hard work and loads of learning.

 

Greek Mythology Wrap-Up

A while back I wrote about the start of our Greek Mythology project.

We started in September, working on one story a week,
and just finished up a few days ago.

It was always the highlight of our week -
cuddling up together on the day bed to read,
drawing together, writing, editing, and typing.

Our first story -
He would write the summary, we'd edit together,
I'd dictate the final draft while he typed.

He did some of the drawings on his own,
but I'd usually help out with an initial pencil sketch.

I love how this one came out:

This one was my favorite story when I read the book at his age:

This was our last story.
We were both kind of sad for it to be over.

This was one of my favorites from the summaries:

And here they all are together:
19 stories in 16 weeks.
It was a great project for 3rd grade,
but I don't think we'll have as much time next year for quite so much drawing.
Each session (between reading, drawing, writing and typing) took around 3.5 hours.
A less time consuming alternative could be to do mini-drawings and/or skip the summaries.
We plan to bind them together in a book,
a treasure from our first year of homeschool.

I love that the stories are so obvious in how they are trying to explain nature and life.
This will help in understanding religions, when we start studying them.
For next year, we have a book of Myths and Legends from around the world!

Independent October, final week

This was the third and last week of independent projects.
He choreographed a whole 3 minute routine, did a 3 page illustrated report on the Saber Tooth Tiger and finished all the lessons in his "How to Draw Cartoons" book.

The initial reasons for Independent October were to give ourselves a bit of a break from each other, to give me some time to catch up on my work, and to get a taste of some unschooling.

The most important findings have been: full-time unschooling is not for us right now, but we do need to try to keep a few hours a week for self-directed learning so that he can continue to practice coming up with his own ideas, learning to do independent research, and developing confidence in doing things by himself (without mom).

We had some great breakthroughs getting through the stuck points. Several times, when he got frustrated and came to me with lines like "tell me what to do, I don't know how to continue, I don't have any more ideas...", I really had to stick to my guns and just say "Do it yourself, or drop it and find something else to do, but I am not going to tell you how to do your own project." He would leave in a huff, but return to his project and find a solution. A few times he even mentioned how proud he felt of his work, and what a good feeling it is. For this alone, the experiment was totally worthwhile. It was also a great exercise in letting go for me - slightly ControlFreak mom.

I was able to take some time to really think about how we're going to do this. We were thrown into homeschooling so suddenly that I never really had time to get organized. Now I have a much clearer picture of the amount of time we have, what we need to get done and the resources we need to do it.

Next week he'll have a bit of finishing-up of the projects, and it's his birthday week (9!), so we'll probably be taking it easy and eating the last jocotes from our trees (picture above).

Independent October

We've been working really hard for the last six months,

so we decided to take October as Independent Projects Month.
He chose three projects to work on alone - zero mom interference.
This was our first week and it's gone great.

He chose a drawing project using a "How to draw cartoons" book.
Here are some of my favorites:

He also chose to work on choreographing his own dance piece.His third project is a research report on the Saber Tooth Tiger,
inspired by this Saber Tooth fossil given to him by an uncle.I found some sites for him to get information.
He'll be putting a book together with his findings.

This week, we also:
found a scary spider in our kitchenpicked lots of jocotes - a fruit specific to Central America (I think)
There are Jocote Trees everywhere here, and the kids go crazy for them in October.First, you gotta get your pole ready.
You need to smooth it with a machete and fix the end to catch the jocote.
You stick the pole way up in the tree and try to get the fruit into the catch.
It takes patience and aim to manage this, but he's a pro.

With the extra time that Independent Projects Month is giving me,
I get to spend more time with my other kids -
This is the youth group that trains at our art center in the mornings.
They haven't seen much of me since we started homeschooling,
even though they're just downstairs.

This is a project that I started 10yrs ago and have been full-time directing since.
This year, the project is being run by one of our graduated students.
It's been hard to let go and delegate, but it's allowed me to homeschool,
and he's doing a great job as junior director.

Solar System Mobile

We finally finished our Unit Study on the Solar System.

We studied each planet and decided to make a mobile for our final project. During our research, we were very impressed by the size comparison of the planets. So, for our mobile, we decided to focus more on size.

Most mobiles make the planets to the wrong proportions, because doing it to scale would make the smaller planets too tiny to really see, or the larger planets too big to fit in a room. We wanted to show the amazing differences in size, so it didn´t matter that our Mercury is only half a centimeter in diameter.

We looked for rocks to represent the planets,
and didn't worry about them being round or not.
For Neptune we found a rock with a quartz patch,
that looks like a face.
For Saturn we found a yellowish rock.
For Earth we used a blue marble, which served as reference for the sizes of the other planets, and is the only round planet in our mobile.
Dad helped us cut wire to make spirals for the orbits, after I nearly pinched a piece of flesh off my hand with the wire cutters.
We used very thin wire to wrap around each rock
and then hung them from the thicker wire we used for the orbits.


Finally, we hung our solar system around an extra-large light bulb that represents the sun.
It's quite an abstract representation,
but I love how original it looks.
And as it hangs from my son's ceiling, I know he will often look up and reflect on just how huge the universe is.




For the research part of our project we watched Space School Videos.
You can find them all on this YouTube Page.
We're also working with these Worksheets on the Planets.
This Video on star size comparison is a must see!
The whole project cost us less than $2 (for the wire).

When we come back from our Summer break, we plan to stage a Solar System play - Pluto's Monologue. We'll learn about the Roman gods (and one Greek one) and practice memorization, speech and theatrical expression. We had planned to start a third Unit Study on the Human Body, but there's time for that next year and we're so fascinated by the Solar System. After all, that's what it's all about - finding a passion and flying with it!