summer learning: creative writing week

Last week we took a break from summer learning. It was just too busy around here to try and force any sort of summer learning projects. This week though, we’ve got plenty of time and I’ve decided the theme is creative writing. It’s a skill that all of my children need to improve. And I was excited because they were all pretty excited about it.

I recently purchased a book of writing prompts, thanks to my English teaching friend Erin. Each page in the book has a picture and then a prompt/question/theme of sorts to get the writing started. The 13yo picked a theme and went straight to work. It was of course a romantic sort of theme which is right up her alley these days. She wrote two pages, primarily dialogue with some nice description included. Her writing has improved this year. I gave her a suggestion for a stronger finish and better way to address the specific question that was asked in the prompt. She didn’t roll her eyes at me. I call it a win-win.

The 11yo who likes writing was up next. She had a dentist appointment during the assignment time so she’s not finished yet but I know she’ll have something for me in the next day or so. She let her sister pick the prompt and it also has a bit of a romantic slant – something about two hands reaching for a carton of berries at the same time. I think it would be funny to take it in the opposite direction, maybe a food fight in the produce section… but I won’t sway her and I’m sure I’ll end up with something sappy. As long as she uses good descriptions and has a strong finish I won’t complain.

The boy was up next. Obviously my standards for the 7yo are slightly lower than what I was expecting from his sisters. I originally suggested he write me another one of his books (I’m still waiting for the second installment of Dog and Bird). But J wanted to try the writing prompt book that his sisters were using. I flipped through it and told him to tell me when to stop. We landed on a page of three men at a sports arena. You couldn’t tell what sport it was and the prompt was to tell the story around the picture. His story:

These three guys are watching a baseball game. They are having fun. The End.

Okay… I have higher standards than that. I asked him if he could write more. He said no. I encouraged him and even told him I’d help by asking questions such as why are the guys together? How is the game going? Did something special just happen during the game? He said “I don’t know, you can’t tell that from the picture.” I agreed and told him that was the point of this exercise, that you had to use your imagination to make the picture mean something.

At that point, he erased his two sentences and very stubbornly told me he was done writing. I calmly told him he had a great start and he didn’t need to start over, just add to what he had. He was having none of it. So I waited him out (my children may be stubborn but they inherited it from the queen of stubborn). It didn’t take long for him to ask if he could look at the book and pick out his own prompt. I agreed. He picked the spookiest picture he could find. I made the assignment age appropriate and asked him to write a story about someone who saw this spooky ghost and how he felt about it. I told him the important thing here was to have more detail and share his character’s emotions. Here’s what I got:

There is a soldier stuck in a war. The soldier got lost from the war and he saw a ghost and he faints. He woke up and the ghost was eating his brain. And then he died.

Bet you didn’t see that zombie twist coming did you?! I asked him if he could tell me how the soldier felt when he saw the ghost. His reply, “Duh! He fainted so he must have been scared.”

I’ll take it as a partial win. He didn’t really follow the prompt but he was creative.

(Side note: This assignment has shown me that I might need to have a spelling week this summer. Yikes.)

Summer learning: science week

Each week of summer – well most weeks of summer, I don’t enforce this during vacations for goodness sake – we pick a theme of the week and I come up with two or three lessons for the kids. It keeps their minds working during these months away from school. And most of all it gives them a chance to remember that learning can also be fun. (That’s my biggest challenge – keeping the learning fun.)

We are in the midst of the first week of summer and the kids picked science as our first theme. Science is one of my favorite subjects. Did I ever tell you I was thisclose to being a chemistry major? It’s true. I love science. So (for me at least) science is easy to make fun. First up? a little lesson in liquids & solids. We made quicksand. It requires two ingredients (one of which is water), some newspaper to contain any messiness (because all good science experiments are messy), a bowl and your hands. That’s it!

Quicksand ingredients: 1/4 cup corn starch, 8 teaspoons of water.

We used paper bowls for easy clean up (just tossed it all in the trash) but any bowl will do. Feel free to double or triple the amount to make more. I placed newspaper, a spoon and a bowl in front of each kid. They mixed it together and quickly realized that there’s something up with this liquid. The secret? It reacts under pressure – which is not something normal for liquids. It’s a liquid that can act as a solid.

Important note about clean up: do NOT pour your quicksand down the sink, unless of course you want to make a call to your local plumber to unclog that hardened mess. Toss it all in the trash.

Mix up a batch and try these:

1. Put a finger into the liquid and push down, you should feel it getting hard and almost gripping your finger. Now try to quickly pull it out. It will probably pop out but not easily and sometimes the whole bowl comes with you. Put your finger in again and slowly pull it out – it comes right out with no problems whatsoever. Why? It’s all about pressure – apply pressure and this liquid acts like a solid. Keep things easy and it behaves as a liquid.

2. Now ask the kids what they think will happen if you scoop up a handful. After all, if you squeeze a handful of water you just get water dripping out of your hand. Ahhh… but squeeze a handful of quicksand and you get a handful of something hard – it’s true! Open your hand to release the pressure and watch it melt back into a liquid. This one was probably the kids favorite.

3. The splash test. If you splash a bowl of water hard, you’ll end up with very little water in the bowl but lots of water around you. Splash your bowl of quicksand – it stays in the bowl! (note: as the kids pulled their hands up some was dripping off but that’s why you put the bowls on newspaper). Go ahead and smack away – it won’t splash.

Even the skeptical teenager had fun with this experiment.

The kids also had fun dripping some on the newspaper to dry out and then picking it up and squeezing then releasing it to see if it would turn back into liquid form. It was 30 minutes of fun and I hope a lesson that will stick with them. Next up in science week? A little something that involves mentos & diet soda. 🙂

learning themes

Ask my kids what summer means and you’ll hear:
– swimming
– playing at Lake Michigan
– sleeping in
– vacations

Ask their mother what summer means and you’ll hear:
– a house full of children that make it very difficult to get any work projects or house cleaning done
– learning themes
– oh fine, and plenty of fun visits to the pool and Lake Michigan 🙂

Ah – just because it’s summer doesn’t mean the learning completely stops! I am not militant about doing school work all summer but I do insist that some education keeps happening. Some of that education happens on our trips (you know I’m always looking for a good park ranger guided tour) but most of that education happens right here at home. This summer I’ve developed learning themes for each week.

Week one (after our beach vacation, I did at least give them one week of true vacation): Writing Week – J (6yo) had to journal at least 4 times during the week. The girls had to pick a topic that was of interest to them, research it with note-taking and then write a one page paper. K wrote about Disney World. E is still taking notes but will be finishing a paper about Niagara Falls soon.

Week two: Math Week – I had worksheets that came home in summer packets and others from the Internet that reinforced skills learned over the year.

Week three: Art Week – this was a fun one for everyone! Last week’s Chicago trip was planned around a family free day at the Art Institute just for this week’s learning theme. Their assignment? Pick a favorite style or artist and then come home and create a work of art inspired by that.

E combined two of her favorites to come up with this Picasso inspired sculpture.

J was most impressed by modern art with bright colors and geometric patterns. He combined that with some of his favorite Chicago landmarks – I guess the city was inspiring 🙂

K hasn’t done this assignment yet partly because of her busy pre-teen social calendar and partly because she was getting things ready for her week away at summer camp. It’s okay, I’ll get something out of her later and she is doing arts & crafts every day this week at camp.

This is Week 4 and I’ve deemed it to be catch-up week. E and J each missed one of the daily math worksheets. E needs to finish that paper. Both kids at home will be writing letters to their big sister and hopefully K will write a letter or two home also.

The learning just never stops.