The Two Cars and a hunt for more

Calvin has an inquisitive mind and, like most kids, an innate and insatiable hunger for knowledge. That's why, when we took him to the North American International Auto Show last year, I was sure he'd be awed, intrigued, rapt. I failed to realize, though, that the completely unknown is not automatically interesting, that our interest has to be piqued, that being surrounded by so many saturating stimulants—the people, the lighting, the colors, the sounds—can make concentration near impossible and can push our senses to a point of exhaustion, and that can make one very crabby. Calvin wasn't really crabby last year, and the trip wasn't a colossal failure, but he certainly wasn't rapt. So this year I prepared ahead. Since we'd rowed our first FIAR book the week before I decided to use that method as a template and found a great book about cars.

The story in The Two Cars, by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire, is the tortoise and the hare, only with two cars, and the art is typical d'Aulaire wonderful. We spent a week reading and talking about the book, exploring the art and the writing, and also exploring cars. The personified cars in the story conversationally mention the crankshaft, the pistons, the springs, and their white walled tires. Calvin loved it. We drew cars, we made a road and drove mini cars, we counted by tens on a speedometer, we checked out an Eye Witness book about cars from our library and drew our own diagrams of their inner workings. I think the best part, though, the project that worked the most magic come auto show time in Detroit, was the scavenger hunt we spent a day together creating and putting into booklet form for use on the day of the show. Calvin was determined to look for oddities like pink or orange cars, motor specifics like an in-line, a V, and a flat crankshaft engine, and book specifics like those white walled tires. Amazingly the only thing we weren't able to find was a pink car.

Lapbooking our way (less busy work, more collection of projects)

Diagrams, art, vocabulary, learning tools, all in one folder:

Inside the Auto show booklet, which we assembled using a sheet of cardboard for a cover and braiding floss for the binding (and to which we attached a pencil for use at the show). We had a sheet of things to see, oddities to find, activities to do, and, at Calvin's insistence, blank space for drawing logos and other interesting things.

He made all his finds except for the pink car (bummer!) and he drew several logos. Recognize Toyota, Tesla, and Corvette on this page?

Ferrari, Maybach, Mercedes, Cadillac, Mazda, and Audi, and a picture of an electric car plugged in, too. He had no qualms about sitting down and sketching the logos when he liked them.

Inside and outside diagrams and a speedometer for counting by tens, plus a list of new words and the prized ticket from the Auto Show itself.

Calvin's own imaginative view of a motor (which he asked me to label the way I'd had him label my print outs, and I needed quite a bit of help with this one!)

Trying his hand at blending with colored pencils.

And we built a road for acting out the story, practicing with cardinal directions, and just plain having fun.

Math anyone?

Why yes, we think we will. A bit of Hi Ho Cherry-O, a few other board games, some Go Fish on the side, a bit of Chess, playing with money (and Monopoly), trying our hand at a 100s chart, a rare game on the iPad, and, of course, learning piano. Is there anything better for math than rhythm?

The Bob Books

Reading is something we've done an extra lot of as of late. Of course we always read a lot, but the difference is that now about half of that reading is being done by Calvin himself. At this point he is now reading a variety of books we have in the house, mostly the easy readers of yesteryear, like Hop on Pop, by Dr. Suess, or Snow, by P.D. Eastman, but before he started working his way through the longer books we started with books intended to teach reading and phonics. It was on a trip to the library a couple of weeks ago that he first asked to bring home a set of phonics books and I spent some times perusing the collection there, only to be disappointed by the number of books more interested in selling a branded character (like Clifford, Bob the Builder, or Thomas) than teaching the skill of reading, but there was one collection that was entirely devoid of that commercial culture so we brought it home. Turns out we were pretty happy with that selection. The Bob Books we had (and clearly we didn't try all of them) were a good workout for the new reader and even had somewhat interesting stories. I'm sure I was slightly drugged by the joy of watching my son discover reading, but these books were actually enjoyable for both Calvin and for me. Win win.

Reading

I have long been opposed to teaching reading at young ages. I think I have previously expounded the virtues of waiting to teach that skill, and my goal was to have Calvin reading around the age of six. I should know by now, however, that my son has his own ideas about learning (I still remember carefully researching all the important theories on potty training only to have him wake up one day completely potty trained all by himself). So I guess I can't say I'm surprised that at the library last week Calvin asked to check out a collection of phonics books, then at home proceeded to work his way through them methodically and voraciously, with little help from me. In the short span of a weekend he mastered all the words in the first set of Bob phonics books we brought home and is proudly asking for more.  Homeschooling is nothing if not exciting, being full of misdirections, u-turns, and somtimes complete transportations. I may have intended to save reading for another couple of years, but Calvin had other ideas.

Science in the bathtub

We are in the middle of reading James and the Giant Peach and if you've ever read it you'll understand how that book led us to doing a "sinks or floats" experiment in our bathtub. We didn't have a giant peach, or even a peach of standard size, to test in the tub, but we did find a myriad of other items to sink or float, like spoons, spatulas, toys, and even underwear and socks. It was a fun, and slightly wet, experience.