Nanowrimo Young Writers Program

This year, we are taking a real run at doing Nanowrimo. (For those who haven't heard of it, it is short for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to bang out a full length novel in 30 days. Of course, the word count target for kids depends on their age/grade level. For Mikro's level, we chose 400 words as a target, and I think he may substantially exceed it. Old fogies like me are supposed to do 55,000 words... Gulp.)

Or at least, Mikro is well on track to finish. I haven't done a thing on my own novel yet, not even an outline, because I am highly involved in helping him with his. I may content myself with that this year.

The ideas and the words are his, but I am acting as scribe a great deal of the time, and also asking questions to try to help him think through plot and character development. I am really impressed with what he's come up with so far!

Last year, I didn't even think about Nano till Thanksgiving, if I remember correctly. I tried to get him to come up with a story, without much success, because he really resisted thinking things through. He had some stock fairy tale characters in mind, but no real plot, at least, nothing that made a great deal of sense.

This year, it is a total pleasure to watch him think about motivation and conflict and come up with really interesting ideas. His story is fantasy/science fiction and involves dragons, magical creatures of his own invention, evolution and time travel.

And my kid with handwriting and fine motor issues is cheerfully drawing pictures of his characters and captioning them. Hurray!

Homeschooling Update

Lots of Math:

Mikro loves Math Start books, and he's now able to skip count by twos and tens. He understands place value (tens and ones) most of the time, and is starting to get it so far as the hundreds go... He's pretty good at adding by regrouping into tens, and his subtraction is improving. We've been reading about sorting and classifying into sets, geometric solids, subtraction, possible combinations, finding unknowns, place value to the hundreds, collecting data, percentages, and reading a schedule.







We had our last 2 Mad Science classes before the summer break. The first was about the atmosphere and life support, the second was about building telescopes and testing soil for evidence that it could support life.




And, of course, we've done some science reading:









And some history:



And some just plain fun reading:







And we looked at some poetry writing how tos and wrote some acrostic poems and some haiku. I taught Mikro to count syllables by humming...



Kevin showed the boy how to make fire using a lens and the sun. We also worked in the garden, and practiced spelling (a lot-- he is suddenly fascinated with it!) and handwriting (both with crayons and with sidewalk chalk...) and did some drawing. More days than not, we've done our learning out in the yard, soaking up the spring sunshine...

Homeschooling Update

What we've been up to lately...

April is National Poetry Month, so we have been indulging our love of poetry.








We also love visiting long-time favorite poet Jack Prelutsky's website.

Ancient history continues, as we pick up books on Greece and Egypt as they trickle in on Interlibrary loan, and move along to Rome. I'm trying to work some math and science in by covering some history of science and mathematics, and by picking books like Mummy Math that fit in with our ancients focus...











We practiced handrwriting on ancient history words, using sidewalk chalk:



And I traced Mikro and turned him into Pharoah Mikeanaten...



And we've done some math concept books:






And visited the New York Hall of Science, and their Math Midway (separate post coming whenever I get the photos edited..)

We keep reading about Native Americans:








We saw A Year With Frog and Toad:



We have watched wildlife cams and taken nature walks, and read about animal behavior.





Mikro just started a new series of Mad Science "NASA Science" classes about space.

Last but not least, we organized a storage pod full of books and homeschooling stuff, and Kev built shelves to house it all in the garage... Now if we could get to the clutter of books, DVDs and such *in* the house, we'd really be getting somewhere!