Sculpture Photographs ~ Pit House & Cliff Dwelling

I like posting pictures here at Indie Teach as a way to preserve our work and time together. Over the past two weeks we have begun our section on Native American Cultures. So far we have talked about the Mogollon People and the Anasazi. Those both of these peoples lived in different sorts of dwellings throughout the span of their time. We have chosen one representation to recreate in sculptural form.

Pit House



Cliff Dwelling

We created the Pit House while discussing the Mogollon People. It was a great way to review what we learned. "What kind of food might be in their house?" "Tools?" You get the idea. The Cliff Dwelling served the same purpose in our education about the Anasazi. We have quite a few more cultures on our list. For each one we will erect a home and in the end, they will come together to be a village of Native American Peoples and a visual reminder of all that we have learned.

By the way, in the interest of sharing, here is a link to a wonderful YouTube video of the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park.

Parent/Teacher Conference

I titled this post Parent/Teacher Conference because that's what today is at my son's junior high school. Since Wes and I follow the same schedule, we are also enjoying a shorter school day and I joked that I would have long talk with myself this afternoon.

What I really what to talk about today is Mind Mapping. I'm about to climb up on my soapbox so run while you can! When I started this blog as a teachers log, I thought I'd vent more often. As it turns out, I'm far too busy with teaching and my small business to take the time for such self-satisfying rants. However, with today being a short day, I'm going to purge onto this blog one of the aggravations of public school that makes me crazy. It's not one of those things that will make or break a students educational career. Rather, it just one of those little concepts which has been completely removed from its mark. In an effort to actually do something good and appeal to the visual learner, teachers have utterly blown it when it comes to the idea of mind mapping.

So let me start off by giving you Wikipedia's definition: A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing. They even include a diagram:


Wiki gets it, so why don't teachers? How many of you have had something like this come home from school?



These make me crazy!!! This is what the mind map has become and I just can't stand it! Now, rather than allowing the free flow of thoughts and then looking for the connections and organizing them in the way the best suits specific needs, children are forced to fill in more circles. This is not visual learning. This is not free thinking. This is not mind mapping! What's worse is that these diagrams often come with instructions for use. Your story title needs to go in the center and you must have three characters in one circle, a conflict in another, a setting in the third and so on. When my sons have brought these home from school, I have literally fed them the information that I know the teacher wants to see and then we set the sheet aside and start to really talk about the writing assignment.

One of the things I love about homeschooling and that I know I'll miss when Wes goes back to public school, is the opportunity to right these egregious wrongs. This week Wes and I are working on a creative writing project. Wes is writing a fable. The first thing we did was sit down with a flip chart and I had Wes just throw out ideas. I scribbled them down changing colors as new things were introduced. In the end, we had something exactly like this:


From this we were able to easily generate an informal outline of events:


To make this process even more creative and visual, Wes next made a quick story board or drawing of each point on the list. Once he has written the story, we will incorporate these drawings as the illustrations. Our next step will be to begin writing, but Wes will be writing with his thoughts in front of him, organized and visualized, all from his mind.

Mind Mapping should never ever be about filling in circles with specific information. Maybe such diagrams can find a use somewhere, but don't call them mind maps! The mind is a beautiful, chaotic and independent treasure that needs to be set free for real creativity to flow.

Week 4 (2009/2010)

It's the middle of our 4th week of the school year. Wes finished his paper on Prehistoric Peoples. He's still learning about introductions and conclusions, but it's his first real paper. It represents mind mapping, outlining, drafting, writing and editing.
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Prehistoric Peoples

by Westen

This paper is about prehistoric people. You’ll learn about eight different groups. It will go from Hominids to Civilization.

Hominids are the first people discovered. Hominids are primates that walk on two legs. They were three to five feet tall. Leaves, fruits, and dead animals are what they ate. All of them lived in Africa 3.5 million years ago.

The next people that have been discovered were Homo Habilis. They had larger brains than the Hominids. They were the first to create and use tools. They were the first handy people. Homo Habilis lived 2.5 million years ago.

Homo Erectus were the third people discovered. They’re people who stand erect. They were gatherers at first but then became hunters. They developed tools such as clubs to hunt. They lived in Europe, Asia, and Africa 1.5 million years ago.

Neanderthals were next. Neanderthals had strong and muscular bodies. They were five to six feet tall. They used tools for special purposes. They lived in Africa 200,000 years ago.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens are the fifth people discovered. They were the first modern humans. They started in Africa, and then they moved to Europe and Asia. They wiped out the Neanderthals. They lived 100,000 years ago.

Cromagnons were the next people discovered. They’re named after the location of their discovery in France, but they lived in Europe, Asia, and Africa too. Many Cromagnon fossils and artifacts have been found. They used sticks and berries to draw in caves. They had better tools than the Neanderthals.

The Cromagnons became Hunter Gatherers. They hunt, kill, and collect the food. They used arrows, clubs, and other kinds of tools to kill the food. A gatherer collects berries, leaves, and other kinds of food that grows. They lived 15,000 years ago in Asia.

People became civilized 5,000 years ago. Farming allowed people to build villages along rivers. They also domesticated animals to feed them. People lived together in houses and the population grew. The first village may have been in Mesopotamia.

We have just learned about prehistoric peoples. The eight different groups were Hominids, Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, Cromagnons, Hunter Gatherers, and Civilization. These groups have changed over time by getting smarter.

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So now we have moved on and are beginning study on Native American Cultures beginning with the Mogollon. In Science we are still studying processes of the earth. We just covered Hurricanes and Earthquakes. In Vocab we just finished up Homographs and a review of the first section. Now we move on to prefixes. In math we are studying multi-digit multiplying with regrouping. We are on lesson 3 in our fluency studies and chapter six of our fiction reading. I guess that's it in a nutshell.

Week 3 (2009/2010)

Here are the first pictures of the new school year! In social studies we have been studying prehistoric peoples. For each group, Wes has made a stick figure and written a paragraph. Today Wes is finishing up his last paragraph and we decided to mark the occasion with a couple pictures. After I took this picture of Wes with his prehistoric peoples, he noticed that I had two of them mixed up. "Mom, the Neanderthals came before the Homo Sapiens Sapiens." I had to fix my order and take another picture. I guess he learned his lessons!


From left to right: Hominid, Homo Habalis, Homo Erectus, Neanderthal, Homo Sapien Sapien, Cromagnon, Hunter Gatherer, and Civiliation

Weeks 1 & 2 (2009/2010)

Well the first week of school is behind us and the second is about to begin. It's always a good feeling to get past that first week. It takes time for our bodies and minds to adjust to the new expectations.

I feel terrific about our start this year. We've really jumped in with both feet and have covered a lot of good ground. I've been really pleased with our fluency practice. (I listed our resource materials in the last post.) I noticed a great deal of improvement in Wes just from Monday to friday using the program. I think he's going to get a lot out of it.

History was our biggest emotional struggle. I'm definitely pushing Wes to think harder and be more independent. He's not sure how he feels about this yet, I can tell. He's so capable and I'm not asking anything of him that he cannot reasonably do. I'm really emphasizing research. When he doesn't know what a word means, I hand him a dictionary. We have spent our first week learning about 8 prehistoric groups of peoples, and this week we will be turning our research into a paragraph about each one.

I've also added religious studies one day a week. I decided this after Wes asked me, "What does B.C. stand for?" We are going to be studying so many different civilizations this year, that it only makes sense to understand their beliefs and how they influenced their actions. So I've picked up one more book: The Kids Book of World Religions by Jennifer Glossop. You can find it on Amazon. It has a world map showing the dominant religions in each region. It discusses 15 major religions and also includes indigenous groups. I think it will help us greatly in our study of different cultures.

This week we will be moving forward with all of our studies. Math is still reviewing 4th grade concepts. I predict we'll be moving on to 5th grade by mid second quarter. In Science we are studying the environment and world processes. This week we will do a project using recycled materials that we've been saving. As a matter of fact. All of our art this year will be made from recycled materials!

This week in Vocab we'll be reviewing homophones. We will also be talking about major and minor characters as we read our fiction. I guess I haven't shared what we are reading. It's actually The Complete Tales of Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne. This might sound young, but as a video game player, one of Wes's favorite games is Kingdom Hearts. This game features characters from Disney. This has reignited an interest in the Hundred Acre Woods. The stories, as written in their original form, are a good age appropriate read. It's even a bit challenging at times since the language is less modern and the phrasing unfamiliar. It's also interestingly written in an omniscient point of view with the reader becoming Christopher Robin and the narrator speaking directly to the reader. After we read, we put on the old Disney videos and watch what we have just read. This has been very fun and Wes has already started wanting to ready further each day so he can watch the video longer. When you have a child that has not always liked reading, it's pretty awesome when they start asking, "Can I read just one more page?"

So I guess this teacher is ready for the week ahead and ready to call it a night!

2009/2010 Schedule and Resources

Well it's day 3 of the new school year and we've jumped right into the learning. I've already revised my schedule once and it will probably happen again, but here it is as it now stands. The times are loosely set. A guide more than a hard fast rule, however we do try to stick to a good schedule.

9:00-9:15 Following Directions ~ This is a warm-up activity using a publication by Creative Teaching Press. The book is called Following Directions and it is written for 3rd and 4th grade. I think following written and oral directions while doing fun activities is a good way to warm up the brain and begin to focus on the day.

9:15-9:30 Reading Fluency ~ This is a reading activity where the focus is on fluency. The text includes an audio CD and 20 lessons. We are spending about 1.5 weeks per lesson to really work on our fluency. I think this is a good morning activity as well. It's very independent and it also helps to warm up the brain for a day of learning. The program is published by Shell Education and is called Increasing Fluency With High Frequency Word Phrases.

9:30-10:30 (M,T,W & F) History and Social Studies ~ There's a lot in the curriculum this year, everything from learning about your home state to prehistoric peoples and early civilization. (Thurs) We will study religion as it is pretty hard to study civilization without it. This will not be about what we believe as a family, but religious studies in general and how it relates to the groups of people we study.

10:30-10:45 Snack Time

10:45-11:00 Fiction Reading

11:00-11:30 Math ~ We covered nearly all of the 4th grade concepts last year. We are using Total Math published by American Education Publishing to review and then we will move on to 5th grade math.

11:30-12:00 Vocabulary ~ We are using Sylvan's Vocabulary Success for 4th grade to increase our vocabulary and study word concepts and grammer.

12:00-1:00 Lunch and Play Time

1:00-1:30 (M,T,W) Science (TH) Literary Elements ~ main idea, plot, conflict, etc. (F) Review ~ We will spend this time going over all of what we have covered during the week.

If you are wondering where writing comes in, we will be using our history topics and our fiction reading to work on our note taking and writing. For example, right now we are studying prehistoric peoples. We have created a time line and are using two sources to gather facts about the different groups. From there I'll have Wes write one paragraph about each group. Then we will write an introduction and conclusion. Then we'll type it into the computer and then edit it before printing a final draft. Wes won't even realize it until he's almost finished that he's written his first big paper. Then we can go back and discuss all of the steps we went through. We will explore other forms of writing as well using similar strategies.

We also have some new resources in the classroom. A gorgeous laminated timeline that begins 5,000 yrs BC and goes all the way to present day. I found it at Learning Through History. We also have a new Scholastic Encyclopedia, The New Way Things Work, The Clear and Simple Thesaurus Dictionary (love this!) and One Million Things - A Visual Encyclopedia

Welcome to the 4th Grade!

The first day of 4th grade is almost here! We start Monday to be exact. Today is meet the teacher day at our little homeschool. Of course Westen and I have already met, but I have a lot of new things to show him. The classroom is all set up and waiting. Today we'll take a tour of the class and talk a little about our schedule and some of the things we'll be covering this year in school.


If you just happened upon this blog, this is my teacher's log. I keep a record of what me and my 9 year old son are up to. I also do my best to honestly share our experience. For us homeschooling is temporary. We started in the middle of the year last year and will do all of 4th grade at home. The plan is to go back into public school for 5th grade. For that reason and because it's just kind of our style, we keep our school time pretty structured. It would be hard to integrate back in if we were loose and wild with the schedule. I also stick to the curriculum of the school district we attend. Sometimes we do more than it suggests, but we cover everything!

In my picture are my little motivators for good behavior. My philosophy is that if there is a lot of whining and complaining, we do more and not less. It's amazing how many kids think they can whine their way out of things. That's where my shoe box of worksheets comes in. On the top it says, "You must not have enough to do so let's review!" I find it a very effective motivator to give a little extra task when the behavior isn't up to snuff. Of course Wes knows this about me, so all I usually have to do is hint at the consequence and he gets right back to work.

Lest you think me a cruel teacher/mom, I believe more than anything in positive reinforcement. Wes gets to hear all day how bright and talented he is and he truly is! This year I've designed a "Passport to Half Day Town". As a reward for his good efforts, he'll get a half day off school after he collects 100 stickers.

That's all for now. I'll be back with our schedule, some of the resources I'm using this year and what we'll be doing in the first few weeks of school.