Jovi'Oval Time... or whatever you wanna call it.

Here we are, happily engaged in a French lesson...  Can you just envision a new baby thrown into that mix?! Heheheh! Makes me laugh!
Many people call it 'Circle Time'. Others call it Morning Time. Whatever you call it, it's that glowing hour of the day when mothers demurely call their children to begin their studies. These come skipping hand-in-hand cheerfully, having finished their respective duties, as they are in the habit of always doing something helpful or productive. They then gather eagerly around their mother with fresh and radiant faces all set to profit from every word that proceeds from her sweetly up-turned lips.

It's almost exactly like that in my house every 23rd day or so. :)

Problem is, similar to Cindy's (aka: the Morning Time Master) sage words in one of her extremely helpful MT posts, if I call it and think of it as Morning Time and it doesn't happen in the morning, 3 out of 5 times I'd probably end up skipping it altogether. Which is in fact, exactly what has occurred MANY times.

Hmph.

Then there's the perfectionist in me that still slightly quails at the prospect of circles. They're so perfect. Do you remember, as a child, learning to draw a circle? Have you tried to free hand a perfect circle lately? Try it. How'd you do? Perfectly round? Right.

All of these are reasons why, this year, I've come to call our together time Jovi'Oval Time. Who doesn't need a little joviality every single day? Well, that and 'cause we're just not circle perfect people, ya know? Obviously, this is not meant as judgment on those who DO choose to call it Circle Time. This just how it IS with us. Besides, Circle Time people probably are perfect... ;)

The label 'Jovi'Oval Time' may be, in part, a recognition of just how much grace we require around here! In our diversified and dynamic lifestyle, Jovi'Oval Time has become a way to keep us oriented, get a lot of learning done, and build togetherness. It's become a pretty important part of our everyday. A liturgy of sorts, as Cindy might say.

The name 'Jovi'Oval Time' is new as of this school year, so during this month of Newness I'm gonna share a little about what we do. Hopefully, you'll be encouraged by our experiences and will feel free to share your own!

If you'd like to SHARE your Circle, Morning, Together Time posts, I'd be happy to collect the links in a linky here in this post! Do you have an older post on what y'all do? Are you just formulating your thoughts and plans? Whatever. Share your posts below if you feel so inspired... I'm sure we can all learn from each other!

:)

Keeping a Math Notebook.

This link, via this blog post by my friend Mama Squirrel, has got me thinking about math notebooks. I hadn't even really thought about how what we have already been doing is so awesome! We already use a notebook for math! ...and it's all 'cause of MEP math.

Don't you love it when that happens?!


Now, when we used other math curriculums, we printed out pages or the kids filled in a workbook. I'm guessing that's probably the road most traveled when it comes to math.

But thanks to MEP, we use a workbook, called a 'practice book' AND a notebook, called an 'exercise book'. The practice book has all the problems printed out which are then to be worked out in the exercise book (we use a notebook w/ graph paper). But lots of times, there's stuff that needs to be remembered. That all goes in the exercise book too.

Take today for instance. In our math lesson today, we talked about the square root of numbers and calculated the surface areas of a cuboid, a square-based cuboid and a cube.

We looked at some in real life cuboids, looked at some diagrams (via the copy masters!), worked it all out, and summed up the ensuing formulas. The square roots and the formulas were then copied into their notebooks (exercise books).

Last week, my year 2 student, learned about the calendar, how many days are in each month, etc. After her lesson, she copied down the months of the year into her math exercise book! It's now there for reference. I love this.

Because the math lesson usually takes about 20-40min per student, they do their math 'copywork', if there is any, directly following the lesson, and then later return to do the math page in their practice books.  It works really well.



Other things to record in a math notebook:
Names and descriptions of shapes.
Formulas for calculating area & volume.
Days of the week.
Months of the year with number of days per month.
Multiplication facts.
Addition facts.
Conversion charts - Metric to Imperial
Meter -> centimeter -> millimeter.
etc.

Nature Study Monday: Multi-level

In application, nature study is one of those studies that evolves over time. In one sense, on the outside, nature study can look much the same with little persons as it does with bigger persons; observation, delight, being outdoors, etc. But particularly as pertains to the study, the research and record keeping aspects, results will vary greatly according to developing interest and skill. I can clearly see this variance among my own kids as there is a ten year span between oldest and youngest.

Nature journals especially will reflect the age/skill difference as should be the case. I appreciate Lindafay's recent blog post: The First Stage of Nature Journaling. She outlines practical things to think about and several aspects to concentrate on when getting started. My older kids' journal entries (including those I require of them) are very different to what my younger set choose to record in their journals. This difference is good.

To a certain extent the difference is due to the fact that I have distinct goals for each when it comes to their journals. For the younger set, the goal of nature study (and journaling) is to increase interest and nurture natural delight, as well as to teach by modeling careful observation and attention. These skills developed, the goals for the older set might be to continue to develop a habit of observing and recording nature findings in the keeping of a regular journal as well the maintaining of a potentially lifelong source of delight.

Here are a few of my ideas and current practice as pertains to nature journal entries at different levels:

Weekly (all ages, myself included):
Nature Walk - This is time spent seeing. We generally look for things we've never seen before or things that have changed since last time. Occasionally, this gets relegated to time in the backyard (definitely not our favorite) or in extreme circumstances an extended viewing from the window, but ideally not, because we ALL need our time outside in great quantities whether we realize it or not.
Sketch - includes watercolor (goal: to replicate size and color of object). Sometimes this is from some item we pick up along our walk, very rarely do we take our colors out with us... too complicated with littles, though I'd LOVE to do this more often.


Daily (AOy6+, I would love to make time daily for myself too someday soon):
Note: Daily is an ideal, it is not a hard fast rule. In reality, I think it happens about 3x/week.
2-3 sentences and/or sketch - may be a sketch or text only.
May include any of the following:
Add to Bird list*
Add to Animal list*
Add to Plant list*
Note Moon phases
Observe clouds/weather
Observe/record 5 senses
Etc.



I found this gem on the floor next to my bed.
Yep, that's right where I found him.



Hello!



If you can get over the heeby-jeebies, this bug can in fact be a source of delight. What, you don't believe me? Just look at that shiny, smooth armored covering and the legs that move in a ripple... incredible. really.



This is how big. :)

*The Bird, Animal and Plant lists are lists that are maintained on a yearly or lifelong basis. The object must be observed, identified and then listed with the date observed. The list might be kept in a notebook dedicated to the subject or on the last pages of the nature journal. It's a pretty simple matter and doesn't require much thought to begin.

Link up:
Feel free to link up your nature study posts here in the comments!
Please snag a button and include it and a link in your post if you don't mind... that way more people can find us and join us here. :)