Racism in Childrens books...

This is something I have not thought very much about until recently and probably only through my political and sociology studies have I thought about these things and the importance of reading books to the twins.

Books are a powerful tool for shaping a childs world and to me being selective over which books they read at a young age is important.

There are a number of books that I have discovered and found have racist language and undertones which actually surprised me, but really the age of the books first publication and popularity in certain eras should have been a huge indicator and when you delve in to the authors background all becomes even clearer.

I bought a box set of Dr Seuss books which are hugely popular and I had the intention of doing some fun work with the kids with them, but the first book I read  had the word 'Wog' quite early on in the book, I had to stop and re read the word, 'Wog' it took me by surprise I read on and the name refers to the 'Wog Frog' ... I stopped and thought what kind of author puts that kind of word in a childs book in this day and age. 

The word 'Wog' to me has definite negative connotations and as a child the word was particularly hurtful so obviously if there had been a trigger warning I may have been better prepared or in fact I could have avoided it altogether.

I actually stopped reading the book and took to Google where I soon found out why the word was in there he was actually a racist as you can see from these Ads he produced. 

At least my question was answered and the books went in the bin.

A similar thing happened with Enid Blyton when I fell upon a newspaper article a while back debating whether to allow her festival to go ahead or not and since then I have discovered a miriad of popular children's books and Authors that have racist undertones.

Of course I would imagine how the average person would not bat an eyelid and say I was being silly but of course they are not the ones who have had to live with being racially abused particularly as a child.

Books like this perpetuate the behaviour and give it a normality, one thing I will not do is teach my child that Racism in any form is normal, as it isn't and to me that is what shapes a society, 'normalise it and it wont be as bad', 'it will prepare them for their future' etc etc etc, all the narrow minded tripe,  sorry not my way of thinking, eradicate is my way forward.

It is something that is cut out of my life like a cancer I do not tolerate it and will not have my kids exposed to it in any way shape or form.

What I will do is not deprive them of reading these classics, they will read them when they are a lot older and able to understand the context that they should be read in, which is an indicator of the times gone past and what was once acceptable and it will be a good way to show them in a historical context the extent racism poisoned every man woman and child of this land, the attitudes that perpetuated colonialism, small indicators of how society was once shaped and why it is such a difficult thing to change when you have books like this still circulating today, rolled out across all schools despite the political and sociological consequences that no one thinks about.

There is a huge list of classics that have racist, undertones and racist language but I would be here all day and some of them have been brought into the times we live in now. 

Some you will be surprised at and probably loved yourself as a child, some I already knew where racist as it is hard to ignore even as a child some of the language used and forgetting the way it made you feel uncomfortable.

I do find it quite surprising that this issue has not really been raised in the popular press or that there has never been a campaign of any nature here in the UK, In Germany there was a campaign to get these books off the shelves after a child complained about  how it made her feel.

Although I don't think the right thing to do would be to change the books in any way, they should be left as they are and not altered, they are classics and should be respected as such.

It is only with my inquisitiveness from the Enid Blyton accidental find that I was even aware there was some kind of issue, but looking right into the topic leads me to believe this is a real issue in this day and age. Maybe not to those who are not a target but certainly for anyone that is a target in these books.

It has certainly made me think about what my kids are reading and the connotations of these books but it has also given me a great tool to teach my twins about historical racism in the UK.

Changing plans..

After my plans for a lapbook on dental health this week, the twins decided to change the plans and have insisted on doing a dinosaur lapbook instead, so it looks like we will be concentrating on dinosaurs for a while now.

This is the first time they have requested to do a lapbook and also on a topic I have no clue about so this will be a fun learning experience for all of us.

Of course I will share our results when we have finished...You can see what we actually ended up doing for the Dental Health week here

Childrens ability to question...

I love the fact that the twins are already learning to question things.

An interesting thing happened with one of the reading programs a week or so ago. 

The program was an American one, the obvious comes into question and that is the accents, the pronunciations are different.

Oliver actually picked up an error in the program and I am kicking myself now for not noting down the program and making a point of contacting them about it.

They where doing some phonics work on the computer and one of the letters was incorrect, Oliver noticed it straight away and said 'no that's not right', very sure of himself, at first I thought it was just the accent but on listening again and then a third time, it was actually incorrect, not just an accent misconception but a very different letter altogether.

I was really pleased that he had actually picked up the mistake and questioned it in the way that he did instead of just letting it pass and ignoring it.

 One thing in my own life that I had an inability to do was question things, for much of my earlier years I never questioned anything, I assumed those in authority knew all the answers and where always right, to my horror I woke up and realised well actually they are not always right and very often get it wrong, I learnt to trust my own instincts and question things and from that moment life improved dramatically.

I am hoping the twins ability to question things will shine through from an early age and certainly much sooner for them than it was for me.

We spend many a day searching for answers to things we don't fully understand and sometimes there are conflicting answers to those question, it is not always what is right and what is wrong, but the important thing is to question those things we feel are not right, and trust more in our own instincts.

My reason for doing lapbooks...

You will probably notice that as a family we do a lot of lapbooks, there are a number of reasons for this but the primary one is to put into practice what they have already learnt and to bring in new concepts for them to think about.

What I mean by this is that the style of Lapbooks we currently do, in themselves do not teach the twins much at all,  it just gives us a focus on doing something together as a family unit and for me to see where they are up to in their learning journey.

I choose activities for the lapbooks that give me an idea of what they like doing, what they know and also a chance to bring up discussions and curiosity about things they don't know.

For instance the last Lapbook we did was the Olympic games Lapbook, all around them they will have noticed the Olympic games and they are already aware of sports but it is an ideal time to bring in the notion of different times and history by bringing into the lapbook the notion of gods, this serves a few purposes in the fact that both of the twins are working out what is real and what is not real.

The superheroes they see daily are a normality for them but they are coming to the realisation of real and not real, so covering the Olympic Gods and Olympus and watching the film about the gods gives them more of a concept of what is real and not real, you can see these theories working over a few days as today Louby pointed out that father xmas is not real whilst Oliver disagreed with her because of seeing Santa on the Santa train.

Louby already has a firmer grasp of what is real and what is not real than Oliver does.

Touching on the Olympic Gods in the Lapbook in various ways also introduces them to the subject of Greek Mythology as a subject.which was my sneaky way of introducing a subject that I would like them to eventually get interested in.

To me Greek Mythology plays a very important part in our word today and I think the twins will do well to know something of the Ancient Greek mythology.

The number and letter games work for me in the lapbook as a kind of test, to see how they are coping and coming along, as neither of the twins do any formal work during the week on Maths and English apart from their own little world and on the computer under their own steam, it gives me a little look at how they are coping with the subjects of maths and English without it seeming like a pressured thing to do for them.

The map idea was really focusing on what they have learnt about the world around us and how far they have come on understanding our Globe and the notion of different countries which we have focused on with other lapbooks and activities, this reassured me that they are understanding that each country has a flag and they are learning the concept of countries.

I could go on but as you can see the lapbooks really are a focus for me to reassure myself and bring in concepts for me.

The next lapbook will focus on Dental Health, they already know about dental health and what is good and not good to eat for the benefit of the teeth and how to take care of them, and they are regular dentists goers so this will all just be brought together in one place covering a few aspects of their learning journey bringing in some concept of science. 

Science is something we haven't really touched on as far as experiments go and seeing science in action will be a new thing for them, so this will be brought in through the lapbook.

So lapbooks for me are more of a consolidation tool on their learning for me more than them, it gives me a chance to assess what they are learning.

When you are home educating it is hard to see sometimes what is actually being learnt, sometimes you think nothing is being done and forget kids are like sponges and suddenly surprise you with something you had no idea they had learnt.

An interesting article I recently read (which you can find here) confirmed my theory of their brains are like sponges, so I think just touching on subjects that they are not really ready for in a very basic way that they will hardly notice, will cement their learning later on in life.

Dental Health Week

As it's dental health week for children and we also have a dental checkup this week, we are working  on oral health and teeth.

Lots of fun with teeth will be shared soon...

We did an experiment on the effects of acids and sugar on the teeth using some eggs, coke, vinegar and water.

We left the eggs in the coke vinegar and water to show what happens to teeth if they are not brushed properly.

First they boiled some eggs

Then placed then into containers with coke, water and vinegar

Whilst we where waiting we talked about what we thought might happen to the eggs and they both came up with the eggs rotting away, "good guess" I thought!..

They then left the for 24 hours to see what happens and this is the result.

 In order of appearance we have - 

 

coke                water         and vinegar.

The Coke egg shell inevitably  dissolved

 The Vinegar egg had a stain left which they the tried to clean off with a toothbrush to no avail.

A good lesson was had on the importance of ensuring teeth are brushed properly every day.

We looked at the different parts of the teeth

We played some on-line games with teeth as the theme from the Colgate Website

 

We found some other great things to do on the homeschool share website.

Printouts and colouring pages, we also did some maths using the teeth theme.

Sochi Winter Olympic Games Lapbook

Following on from my earlier post regarding the Sochi Winter Olympic Games we did a lapbook.

In this lapbook we covered, Maths, English, History, Geography, IT, and Art

The theme was as it says on the tin Sochi Winter Olympics, we started out doing the front cover where they searched on the internet for the pictures to create our front page.

 

We talked about the Olympic rings and their colour and shape and also the picture of the map with the flag on which covered their geography as we are covering different countries they are learning the concept of maps, different countries and flags.

They did the selection by themselves and saved them to the computer and then together we uploaded and designed on Powerpoint, the kids both did their own names and helped me to pick out the correct letters for the rest of the text. They had great fun with this IT lesson.



The first flap entails a couple of games that are primarily for me to see what they know and the tasks where pretty easy.

 

  The first game named shadow matching is a game of 12 cards, 6 of which are pictures of people doing winter sports and 6 of the same picture but as a shadow, the kids had to match the correct person to the correct shadow.

The second game was a simple puzzle, four pictures of winter sports cut into 4 pieces which they have all mingled and they had to put them all together

 

The third game is a series of pictures and they have to count the picture and state which picture has more, we also covered the pictures with separate pieces of paper and removed some and counted what was revealed and then what was added, we played a few different games with this one and worked on addition and subtraction.

On the next flap we did a simple counting game of addition with the characters in the theme of the winter sports characters we have been using and we did colour and count where the instructions are to count a certain amount of pictures and reveal the answer. These are in little booklets.

We also included the letter O for Olympics which the twins where very happy with as it is their favourite letter, the kids did a great job of cutting it out and sticking it in the book after creating it on the computer in Powerpoint. They also coloured and cut out the snowboarder.

This next page consists of games and some art, we created a hands Olympics dove peace symbol, out of their hands which they then cut out and stuck to the lapbook.

 
The next flap consists of 2 more games, the first one being an addition game.

 There are a series of 12 cards with pictures of equipment the athletes would use and they had to guess between 3 answers which one was the correct mount according to the pictures, we also attempted to add up all numbers on each card.                                                                                      Beginning sound Game

The second another easy 

   big and small game

 







                                                                                                                                What's the difference game

The next page is more hands on with coluring and writing.

We then moved on to finding a map on Google and picking out the map of Russia to colour in the flag colours, they then cut this out and stuck it in to the lapbook.

We then created an Olympic God booklet with 14 Olympic Gods to colour

 We talked about each God and explored the beginning of the games, which has introduced them to the subject of Greek Mythology. 

They also watched a couple of video about the Olympic gods and the Olympics, and we also watched the film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. (this link is the trailer for the sea of monsters which is also on our to watch list).

They also did some additional pictures of the gods and the participants in the games using 

colour by number.

 All in all we had a great two weeks of all things Olympics

Learning to read..

The most important thing for me in the whole learning journey is to have the twins as good readers.

From being born they have been introduced to books having bed time stories and daily reading sessions, from silly voices and make your own stories time and just enjoying books, attending plays that have book themes and generally discovering books.

I just feel that once they can read properly as independent readers the world will be their oyster.

We use a variety of methods to encourage reading and they have good days and bad days.

Neither of them have been proficient at the alphabet, one of the first songs they learnt was the ABC song and I have always tried to use that as a guide whenever doing anything alphabet wise.

Although despite lots of reinforcement they are still struggling with the alphabet but despite that we have still moved onto phonics.

We had a moment the other day where Oliver managed to do the whole alphabet for the first time ever on his own and they are slowly coming to recognizing each letter by name independently, which is a great achievement as they have really struggled with it.

My grandson when he was two could recite numbers and letters on command, so this moment was a proud mummy moment for me, as I was beginning to worry a little, although I don't know why as when they are in the mood they can read a number of pages from a simple book by themselves. Really it's a matter of building confidence as they can do it, just not when I want them too.

Some of the computer programs we use are useful some not so useful.

Reading Eggs - My two loved reading eggs, they spend a lot of time on reading eggs and really enjoy it.

I think with most programs the kids like a variety so I have found by alternating the different reading programs not only do they get reinforcement of what they have learnt but they also get the variety so don't get as easily bored as they do with just one program.

There are some great free programs out there that offer a lot.

• Strivney - The twins haven't used this much but when they have they have been engaged especially with the printouts that accompany the course

•  Teach Your Monster to Read - Louby Particularly likes this one.

•  Starfall Reading - Louby again likes this one due to the little video shows that play at the end of each lesson.

• Reading bear - not sure about this one as the twin have only glanced at it and not really used it yet .

• Family learning - again another I have found for when they are getting it a bit more.

• Oxford Owl - the kids love reading the books on Oxford Owl, it has always been a favourite of theirs from being little. 

• Jolly Learning - again one we haven't used yet but this will come in handy as we are about to embark on more worksheet work as Oliver is a very reluctant writer and these will come in handy.

•  Get ready to read - something that is quite interactive so the twins like it.

• Reading Games - games games, always a hit with these two.

These are a few that we use. The list is far longer for free resources but I would be here all day linking them all, but we generally use a lot of them and go back to the ones they find engaging and skip the ones they don't find engaging and try them again another time, but they never get bored as there are so many to choose from.

We read a lot of books together and we generally read anything we find for instance in the doctors office we guess the words on the posters, they try to read labels, they attempt to read road side posters and always bring those leaflets that get put through the door and usually just thrown in the bin.

Reading is all around us so we generally spend a lot of time reading things, there are always reading books that are left knocking around the house as we have an abundance of books and we go to the local library to borrow books when we need something specific.

Their computer is always left out so they just boot it up whenever they please and there are generally some tabs open to the reading games and reading sites which they just get on and do without prompting, Louby can spend a good few hours on there if you let her, but when they are on together they generally fight over it so I think having something of their own each may be a better way to go.

The pride they get from having a certificate printed when they complete something is great to watch and their enthusiasm is good for reading, I just hope they can boost their confidence some more to get the full effects as when they are good they are very good.

Which reminds me of the poem 'There was a little girl'.... which I will leave you with...

UPDATE* For an update and to see why we have abandoned Phonics please see here

All things Valentines...

Today was a day of all things Valentines.

 
 

We started the day of with Hama Beads and of course a heart.

I don't know who enjoyed that more, me or the kids.. There is something very therapeutic about Hama beads .

 

Then we moved onto painting some heart pictures.

A bit of heart printing and working with the letters LOVE.

 

 Then onto the best part of the day the Cookie Baking.

Making  heart shaped cookies and Jam Tarts.

The twins where very pleased with themselves, they gathered all the ingredients together themselves and measured all the ingredients out, the only thing I did was put them in and out of the oven.

They did a great job and they where very very tasty too!..

Play based learning.. eurika moment..

I was really excited today I had evidence given to me that our approach is working.

I went to put washing away and came down to Olivia making a triangle and sequencing the books she was using to make it.

She was giving herself a maths lesson....

Maths is not something we have touched on in our structured work to any degree past shapes and basic numbers, so I was very excited to see she has picked up the concept of sequencing by herself through play.

It felt like a affirmation, one of those eurika moments when things all fall into place.

It had given me a further degree of comfort in our educational method choice.

Many home educators will tell you they often go through periods of doubt that their children are actually learning anything, today has been the proof to me that they do, they pick up things and learn new concepts without you even realising it.

So here is very apt song to leave you with  and sums up my day today...

Wax Crayons...

I love the randomness of home education.

Whilst the kids where colouring in their pictures for our Olympic themed Lapbook Oliver asked how are Wax Crayons made, so we took a quick break and watched a you tube video on how wax crayons are made, whilst the video was playing he asked how do they get the paper on, which followed on quite nicely.

This is an old video and great for the basics.

This is a modern one and goes more into depth.BBC LEARNING ZONE

I love the fact that Google and Youtube are always there if you need a demonstrable resource.

As wax crayons are one of our favourite tools to use at the minute with a lot of things we do, my nerdy personality also came out and I looked up the history of wax crayons to stick in my bank of useless bits of knowledge and this is what I came up with along with finding out that people really do actually collect wax crayons... The History Of Wax Crayons.

I may even start a section of nerdy useless bits of knowledge....

I found some good exercises for us to do in making our own wax crayons from here

Our wax crayon experiment didn't go as planned, but it was a great exercise to do it in future with the broken wax crayons, rather than throwing them away we will keep them and store them up to use instead of wasting them.

Firstly we took off all the paper.

Then we put them all into a bowl to melt them

(Which was mistake number 1, we should have put them straight into the moulds).

We then put them in the microwave to melt

Once they had melted down we poured it into the moulds.

As you can see the mixture went black, hence why I think it would be a good idea to melt them into the moulds, where they would keep their colour which they lose while pouring into the moulds.
Our other problem was we where short on moulds, so we will buy some moulds this week.

 I believe ice cube moulds of different shapes would be good for this as they would be flexible to pop out because as you can see the crayons snapped as we took them out, which could also be attributed to leaving them in the freezer too long.

All in all it was a good exercise and we will do it again to save throwing crayons away, its a great way to economise on wax crayons and hopefully next time we will have some colourful ones to do some drawing with.

But it was a good extension to our mixing colour lessons as they could see the change of colour.

Sochi Winter Olympics 2014

As its the Sochi Winter Olympics right now between 7th and 23rd February I thought we could do some Olympics themed lessons....

I found some amazing free printouts for the Winter Olympics Theme which I found here, they are amazing and plentiful and many I have taken and altered them for our own use.

We are starting with some great colouring pages introducing the twins to the Gods and how the winter Olympics came about and the history around it and I will also tie this in with our Geography and foreign language lessons, I am really excited about this project and I will keep this post updated with the things that we do and the Lapbook we create to document our Olympic themed Lessons.

You can now find our lapbook here

Water Cycle...

The kids asked me the other day about water, Louby made the observation and connected that water evaporates so I have been thinking how I can expand on what she said and Oliver's inquisitiveness on where it goes.

I found the United Utilities Education Interactive which explains how our water is collected and what happens to it when it goes down our drains.

They both watched the videos very intently and when it had finished Louby proclaimed, wow that is very amazing... (amazing being her favourite word at the minute) I asked them if they had any questions and they just said can we watch TV now...and off they toddled.....

I love that part of our education journey, they can take in what they need and off they go processing the information and out it will pop in a few weeks or months.

I will look for some ideas on expanding our Water education and find some interesting experiments using water that we can play with and a visit to a water treatment plant will be on the cards in a few years when they are a bit older.

The Education Interactive site is great and also caters for older kids so a great one to look at and get some ideas from.