Nurturing virtue: The Adventures of Mali and Keela

I know it has been a while since I did a Nurturing Virtue post. There are two reasons for this, one is that I am working on a rather large project related to our virtue studies, which I will eventually share as a whole on this blog, and you will understand where my energies have been going (I just don’t have time at this point to duplicate my efforts into the project I am working on and posting it here too, but it will eventually be available to all of you in its completed form).

The second reason is that we have been taking a little break from our usual routine to work through the book Mali & Keela: A Virtues Book for Children.

It is a chapter book filled with stories about the adventures of these two friends. Each chapter/story incorporates four virtues. At the end of each chapter there are review pages where you can read the definitions of the virtues used in the story, reflect on how/when they were used in the story, and then questions which foster further discussion of the virtues and how we use them or what they look like in our own lives.

The book was not written by the authors of the The Family Virtues Guide, but it is based on this program and can definitely be used in conjunction with the Virtues Project cards and books.

We read a chapter once every 2-3 days, then spend the time in between chapters going through the review section and thoroughly discussing each topic and learning quotations related to these virtues (this part I have added myself).

This book provides another enjoyable way in which you can discuss and share virtue learning with your children. There are also many fun activities you could do with your children, building on the stories and discussion.

On a side note: for those of you who do not follow this blog on Facebook, I shared a link to an interview on Oprah with Linda Kavelin Popov, the co-founder of The Virtues Project. So, if you are interested in seeing that, hop over to my Facebook page.

Happy weekending to you all! We will be out enjoying the first wonderful signs of spring and celebrating the Baha’i New Year (March 21st) which completes our 19 day fasting period and ushers in the new year and new season…a change I have never experienced quite this acutely, spring here is really like a re-birth after a long, cold winter. It is truly a celebration!

Preschool fun: review of our letter C week

• We started the week reading our Baha’i Alphabet Book in which the letter C was for courtesy, so we spent our virtue time for the week learning about courtesy. For ideas on teaching courtesy, see this post.
  
• We made the letter C using our new Haba peg board which Grandma gave to Damian recently (both boys love this peg board).

• We went through the C items in our alphabet box. We practiced the phonetic sound of the letter C using the song from Leap Frog’s Letter Factory DVD.
  
• We completed many of the “C is for caterpillar” activities from the Letter of Week curriculum by Confession of a Homeschooler.
  
• I printed 2 copies of the Do-A-Dot sheet from the “C is for Caterpillar” post and made up this activity to add some pincer grip exercise: I put a glue dot into each of the dots on the sheet, provided Damian with chopsticks and container of pompoms, then asked him to tweeze the pompoms and stick them onto each glue dot.
  
• We practiced writing Cs in rice. Damian loves this activity, so when he is finished I just leave him with the tray of rice and he draws and plays for while.
  
• Damian sorted these little pompoms by color.
• He watched the scholastic DVD version of “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom”.
  
• We did the “C for caterpillar” exercise from Yoga for Kids, Vol. 2: ABCs.
  
• We wrote Cs on magic scratch paper. I bought our pack of scratch paper from a local store, but I found this on amazon too.
  
• I gave Damian this matching upper and lower case letters sheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler to complete (it is laminated, so that we can re-use it).
  
• We read Farfallina and Marcel going with the caterpillar theme.
  
• We completed the week with our ceremonial reading of “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” and added our Cs to the palm tree.
  

This has been added to Preschool Corner & 5K too.

A tour of our school room

Since this is the first time we have had a dedicated school room, I wanted to share it with you. When I first started homeschooling my intent was to never have a school room, because in the many books and blogs I read, school rooms were often equated with “compartmentalizing” learning in one’s home.

However, as time went on I realized where we study really makes no difference to our mindset, because learning has become a very natural part of our daily rhythm whether we are at home, in the car, the grocery store, or at afternoon activities. I also realized that if I want to give my boys an organized, inspiring, and engaging work space that they can really make their own, we needed to have a dedicated room, otherwise the daily set up for me took time away from learning and our main living space was always piled with books, papers, and projects.

In Hawaii I split our office space with a school space, now in our new home we have a full room to ourselves. It has been great fun putting it together and now it is one of our favorite rooms in the house, because it is colorful, flooded with sunlight, and we have such a great time learning together.

We also use the dining area for art projects, the kitchen for science experiments, the play room for imaginative play, the reading room for story time…you see where I am going, having a school room has not prevented learning from happening elsewhere, it has simply allowed us to be more organized and use a lot of visual learning aids on the walls. So now, on with the tour…

Our Animals of the World map (bought at Costco), continental map for our geography studies, elements of drawing chart for Drawing with Children, writing chart for letters and numbers, Damian’s alphabet and number charts, our Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom palm tree with our two main alphabet books at the bottom of it.

Next to this area is a book case that holds supplies, reference books, work folders, and manipulatives. We also have a two door built in cupboard that has shelves for more storage.

Our school song, as decorated by my two boys. This is next to our circle time area, since we sing our school song every morning.

Calendar and weather portion of our circle time area, beneath this, which I forgot to take a photo of, is a rug and big floor cushions for us to sit on while we say prayers, do our virtue learning, sing our school song, and go through the calendar/weather activities. I am in the process of re-working our virtue learning poster which is usually in this area of our classroom, I will share it when it is completed.

Our white board, which we use for all kinds of things. I keep it at ground level so it is easy for the boys to work on too.

Our electronic globe which is still a favorite.

Our feature study area – whether it is a science, history, or geography unit we are working on – we keep all the books, posters, and manipulatives in this area, so that while we are studying the subject, the boys can easily come and do further investigation or re-use the manipulatives.

Our activity and work boxes – I did away with workboxes for Damian, since he and I work together through all of his work now, and converted them into activity boxes (I will do a full post on these soon, because they have proven to be very popular with the boys and helpful to me in teaching two students doing very different levels of work). The workboxes are Rylan’s and he works through them in the mornings after our circle time, while I am focused on working one-on-one with Damian.

My area labels as seen above were all done on my computer, laminated and I glued on the wood deco animals (or a castle, which you can see on our “reading nook” sign below), which I purchased from Michaels for 25c each.

“Education is the indispensible foundation of all human excellence”. A banner I made across the school room wall from a quotation from the Writings of Baha’u’llah. A reminder of why we work so hard to learn! I will change this quotation banner a few times during the course of the year, re-using the same letters.

Our Baha’i Holy Places and Houses of Worship wall which we are adding to as we study the continents in geography.

The Golden Rule poster – a quotation or verse from all the major world religions referring to the golden rule of treating others the way we would wish to be treated.

Our reading nook – this is just a small reading corner in our school room, we also have a reading/library room downstairs next to the play room.

And that is a peek into our school space!

This has been added to Preschool Corner & 5K too.

Our “school song”

I thought it would be nice to have a school song that we could put up on our classroom wall and sing every morning during our circle time. We wanted it to be something meaningful, something to guide our behavior and motivations. We chose this quotation from the Baha’i Writings:

“Strive that your actions day by day may be beautiful prayers. Turn towards God, and seek always to do that which is right and noble. Enrich the poor, raise the fallen, comfort the sorrowful, bring healing to the sick, reassure the fearful, rescue the oppressed, bring hope to the hopeless, shelter the destitute!”

- ‘Abdu'l-Baha

I printed and laminated the quotation, and put it up on the wall in our circle time area, but in the next couple of week, the kids are going to be decorating a larger version of it for our wall. I will share this with you when it is completed.

Nurturing virtue: “The Good in Me from A to Z by Dottie”

I apologize, I know it is not good form to say I am back and then disappear for a week! BUT the kids and I were hit with a nasty bug that has kept us home and in bed for a whole week! So, we really haven’t been up to much this past week, but I wanted to share something we did together the week before.

We spent several mornings during circle time reading through the book “The Good in Me from A to Z” and working on the accompanying workbook. It is a sweet little book, easy to read and understand. We read through the book once, then we went back to the beginning and discussed in detail the virtue each page was describing. I also asked them for examples on how they used that virtue in their own lives.

The next morning I pulled the book out again and read through it. This time I gave each of them a copy of the page at the back of the book, which asks them to write or draw the good in them. I asked them to tell me about one of their good qualities. Damian said the “good in me is my heart” and Rylan said “the good in me is that I love to read and learn”. These are the pictures they drew to illustrate these qualities.

“The Good in Me from A to Z” has a workbook that goes along a with it too. We used several of the activity sheets during the course of the week, and I am sure I will use them again as we continue to work through specific virtues in more detail.

Learning about children around the world

We took things slowly this past week, to ease ourselves back into the school day rhythm. I planned some themed activities, that both my boys could comfortably participate in together. We dedicated the greater part of one day to learning about children around the world. With a focus on our similarities, despite outward differences – unity in diversity.

We read several books, spread out in-between the different activities I had lined up for the boys on the theme. Here is our book list for the day:

In addition to the books, we put together this Melissa and Doug “Children of the World” puzzle.

We made paper people, the idea for which I got from Counting Coconuts. You could also make a paper doll chain and color them to look international.

While we worked we listened to a mix of international music with our Putumayo world music.

The boys completed a worksheet from The Baha’i Children’s Workbook about the oneness of humanity.

Then I pulled out a set of international play figures that I had purchased at the Lakeshore Learning Centre. The boys loved this set. After we discussed where the different children came from, and used them for a couple of formal activities, they took them all downstairs to the play room, built a city for them out of blocks and played together for a couple of hours.

This has been added to Preschool Corner & 5K too.

Nurturing virtue: Learning about compassion

Part of learning how and when to show compassion is learning how to understand and read other people’s emotions. When we recently spent a week studying compassion, I made a stack of “emotion cards” for the boys (examples in the image below).

I laid them out and taking turns I would ask them to “please pick up a card that shows someone who is excited”, or angry, sad, happy, confused, worried, etc.

Some of the images lead to discussions about why or how the person ended up feeling that way, and how we could show compassion to someone in that situation.

Several times during that week Damian chose to pull out these cards again and work with them, sorting them, and asking me questions about them. Boys especially need to be encouraged to understand emotions at a deeper level, as society rarely affords them this opportunity (actually often the exact opposite, they are encouraged not to feel or show emotion!).

Nurturing virtue: cleanliness concentration game (printable)

This past week the boys and I have been learning about the virtue of cleanliness. There are so many great activities to do with this virtue, we have had a lot of fun. This morning we played a cleanliness concentration game that I made for them over the weekend.

Below are some sample cards from the game (cards are 4x6 size).

There are more cards included in the download. I printed them out on cardstock and then laminated them using 4x6 sized laminating pouches, so they last through a lot of use.

My boys loved this game! Rylan helped Damian find sets and he told me at the end that it felt really good to work as a team instead of trying to win (mommy smiled inside BIG TIME)!

You can also use these cards as flashcards, to make a cleanliness flip book, to play a “go fish” card game, to play a matching game (like concentration, but with the cards facing up, so it is easier for younger children). There are probably lots of other ways to use them too!

You can download the cleanliness concentration game here. Have fun!

Added to Preschool Corner and 5K too.

Our 2010-2011 curriculum

Over the last week I have been doing a lot of research, sifting through catalogues, books, and websites; and have finally settled on an outline for our upcoming year. I ordered everything we did not already have yesterday, and both Rylan and I are eagerly awaiting their arrival (yes, I know we are total nerds! ;) ).
Here is Rylan’s 1st grade curriculum (oh my gosh, I have a first grader!?! Where did the time go?) Although I have this outline to follow, everything is subject to revision if it doesn’t work for us:
Reading: I purchased Rocket Phonics last year, and we worked through the first few lessons. Although I like what I have seen so far in the program, and we may continue to work through some of it, Rylan has by in large taken learning to read into his own hands and doing very well, so we will see if is is necessary to add this into our days. Either way, I don’t mind having purchased the program because I will use it for Damian eventually.
English language and writing skills: we will be starting with First Language Lessons this year. As well as using The Complete Writer: Level 1 Workbook for Writing with Ease.
Math: we will continue working through the Math-U-See program. I will also incorporate math work into other areas of study, as I have before, because Rylan does tire of working on math only through the workbook.
Handwriting: We will continue with Handwriting Without Tears, this year using My Printing Book.Spiritual/religious: We will continue with our virtue lessons as a part of our daily circle time, as well as learning new prayers. In addition, we will continue reading through "Children’s Stories From The Dawn-Breakers" and Rylan will also be working through the Baha’i Children’s Workbook.Spelling: We will be starting with All About Spelling using Level 1 of the program. I am very excited about this program because I have heard a lot of great things about it from many people.
History: I just ordered The Story of the World and its activity book.
Geography: For now we will continue moving through the continents as a general introduction to world geography.
Science: I read through Rebecca Rupp’s Home Learning Year by Year as a general guide for what should be covered for science in first grade, and to be honest Rylan has already covered most of the areas, since he has such a passionate love of science related subjects, especially animal and nature studies. So, I am not investing in a science curriculum of any kind. We are going to stick with interest led learning here, although I think I will plan a unit on the human body at some stage during the year.
Spanish: I just ordered Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America) Homeschool Edition Level 1. And I am going to do it too! :)
Art: We will continue working through Drawing With Children. I am also looking into using Discovering Great Artists to incorporate some art appreciation (thank you Jolanthe for pointing out this book!).Music: Music appreciation with Ramtin on weekends, focusing on classical music.
PE: Rylan will continue with swimming lessons and gymnastics during the year.
Damian at 2 1/2 will have no set curriculum, of course, just lots of play and reading time! He will, however, participate in much of what we do, like virtue learning, prayers, circle time, and so on and so forth. As he gets older and I see the need for more focused learning I will incorporate it into his days, but what is most important for him now is to learn through play and to continue to develop a love of reading, so that will be our focus.
And I think that is a wrap! I am super excited about this year and cannot wait to get started! I am aiming to start in about two weeks, we have to wait for the materials I just ordered to arrive and for me to get a look through them and a feel for how to use them. I also need to fix up the school area. Over our unplanned (but much enjoyed) summer break our school area has become a storehouse for various items I have piled up to go be sold on craigslist or go to charities. I need to actually get those things out the door so we have a nice, organized space to work in again!

My first post over at The Homeschool Classroom!

A couple of months ago I was invited to become a contributing writer for The Homeschool Classroom by its founder Angie, which I have been very excited about ever since (it has been hard to keep it under wraps)! The Homeschool Classroom is an excellent resource on all topics related to homeschooling and I have been a subscriber since the day I found it many moons ago. I feel very honored to be a part of the great team of authors that write for the site.

Today my first post was published, entitled “Creating a Culture of Virtue Learning in Your Home” and I would love it if you went over there to take a read! It is all about one of my favorite topics – virtue education!

Nurturing virtue: prayer book (printable)

Again I am sharing a particular project, rather than a week in review. Praying together is an important part of our family life, in the mornings it is how the boys and I start our learning time together, and in the evenings our whole family prays together before the boys go to bed. I wanted to make the boys their own personal prayer books, filled with the prayers that they have memorized. Actually we have made many different prayers books in the past together that have been well used and loved, but I felt it was time to make them something new and special. As they learn more prayers off by heart, we will continue to add them to the book.

This is what the completed prayer book looks like.

For Rylan's, I had him write his own name on the cover. But he has not seen the rest of the book, I am going to wrap them and give them to the boys as gifts during our next circle time.

If you would like to download the prayer book that I have put together, you can do so here. PLEASE NOTE, however, that some of the images I used in my boy's personal copies were photographs that have been shared with me personally, but I could not include them for general downloading for copyright reasons, so there are a few blank pages for which you would need to include some of your own images to go next to the corresponding prayer. Below are some samples of the pages and images that are included in the download. The pages are size 8"x8".