How to Teach a Child to Write a Novel

This spring, I formed the Junior Secret Noveling Club, a small group of kids who wanted to learn to write novels. The kids were between ages 7 and 9, and all homeschooled, all brisk little chirpy creative spirits who were game for my games.

I developed a curriculum to teach them the nuts and bolts of writing a novel, from developing a subplot to placing significant objects in the setting, even giving their hero a tragic flaw. I introduced a lot of concepts and techniques which children wouldn't typically be exposed to, with the idea that learning the hows and whys of novel construction would make them better readers. Even if they weren't necessarily going to sit down and pen The Grapes of Wrath, they would approach their reading material with a new level of awareness.

The "club" was set up kind of like a mini-scouts, with badges to earn (conflict, villain, chapter list, etc.), a secret handshake, and an oath to begin the meetings. The students kept a notebook and filled it with their activities in class, the worksheets they did to earn badges, and their homework assignments.

We did eight weeks of progressive lessons, including a little bit of grammar and a lot of silliness and games. At the end of the session, they walked away with a detailed plan and chapter list, well prepared to launch their novel-writing. They also walked away with a new attention to the "behind the scenes" aspect of books they were reading, newly conscious of the decisions authors make and the reasons they make them. At the end of the course, they "graduated" and I authorized them all (in the silliest way possible) to go and be novelists.

This course has been updated and the new link to download is here. 

NOTE: If you do not have random picture tiles, you may download and use these PDF

grids, thoughtfully provided by reader Deanna Butler, to print on cardstock: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Do you have questions about these lessons? Email me at lydianetzer at gmail dot com. 

Follow me on Twitter: @lostcheerio

How to Make a Magic Carpet

The study of Persian rugs is an interesting way to get into Persian history and Islamic culture. Why are Persian carpets so beautiful? In a culture where iconography is immoral, a functional object like a rug is a place where art can be expressed "legally." Like calligraphy, Persian carpets are art in the guise of a necessity. Given the significance of these rugs to the culture from which they come, it's no wonder they are sometimes portrayed as magical.

Here are a few things we learned about while studying Persian rugs: symmetry, the types of designs (geometric, curvilinear, pictorial), the elements of a rug (border, central medallion, repeated motifs), child labor laws, how to value a rug based on knot count, the difference between natural fibers and manmade fibers, and more.

Project materials:

Large canvas rectangles
Crop-a-dile or other awesome hole-puncher
Lace-weight yarn/thread in different colors
Poster paint and brushes

Preparation:

Punch holes in the short sides of all the carpets, about 1/2 inch apart. You are going to need a serious, no-kidding hole punch to get through canvas. I used a Crop-a-dile.
Cut the thread into pieces about 10 inches long. Deep rich colors are best.

Step One: Fringe

Give each child a choice of thread colors and encourage them to work in patterns. They can use a simple knot to create their fringe. Make a loop in the center of the thread, push the loop through the hole, and then thread both ends through the loop. Pull tight. You can fold over the edge of the fabric as you go to create a smooth edge.

Step Two: Paint

First have the children sketch their ideas with a pencil lightly so they can erase and redo it if they're not happy with it. Make sure everyone remembers to put in a border, a central medallion, and then repeated motifs.

The kids took home some interesting work! Painting on the canvas was challenging for a few, they needed reminding to keep a lot of paint on their brushes. However, making the carpets led to some interesting discussions about what the carpets mean to the people who make them. Here is the class singing a Persian folk song while they worked. They started singing spontaneously, then of course I had to run get my camera and have them do it again!

What class is this? My elementary literature class at Norfolk's premier co-op of extreme homeschool awesomeness, Homeschool Out of the Box.

Vote for Me: Elections Unit Study: Week 5

Good morning students! This lesson involves pulling a lot of the work you've done as a candidate into one media product: Your web presence. Your slogan, your poster, and now your video ad will all be part of your web ad. I've given you a very simple HTML template to manage it all, which you can customize and expand according to your comfort and abilities with HTML. You'll need a place to host your poster image and a place to host your video - if this gives you trouble, I can definitely help. I would love to see some of your videos!

Here is the PDF for this week's lessons: Vote for Me! Week 5: Commercial Break

Media: Analyzing Different Types of Ads

We want our students to be able to hear or see a campaign commercial and really break it down into its components, understand the agenda behind it, and analyze the way its message is being formed. The goal here is to make wiser, more savvy voters who think critically about what they hear and see on the radio and on TV. When you’re watching television, watch the campaign ads and discuss. It’s not necessarily that important what’s right and wrong in the ads, but that the students are learning to think about *why* various decisions were made in the ad’s production and what effect the ads are having on them in ways they may not have noticed.

Film-making: Filming Your Campaign Ad

This should be fun, fun, fun! If the child ends up reading the speech instead of looking into the camera, fine! If they end up having a finished product that doesn’t live up to their expectations, just laugh, congratulate them on their first attempt, and move on. It’s all about the process — all the little decisions and plans and putting it all together. They’re putting themselves in the candidates’ shoes to see what it feels like to try and sell yourself to people you don’t know who will be judging you on all kinds of things like your hair and the photos on your desk.

History: Famous Political Ads Throughout TV History (Online)

Thinking: Spin Worksheet

The purpose of this worksheet is to encourage critical thinking, to help the students to see how a fact can be skewed in different directions, and to again lead them to be more savvy as they absorb messages in the media. While the facts they’ll be spinning aren’t necessarily political, they’re good practice. When you hear or see examples of spin in the media, you might want to point them out. They might also benefit from exposure to a “Crossfire” type show on television.

Computer Science: HTML Template for Online Ad

Here’s a bit of code for developing your online ads, if you’d like to do that.

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Analyzing the Ads

Filming Your Campaign Ad

Spin Worksheet

HTML Template


Previous lessons:

Week 4: A Poster You Can Believe In
Week 3: The Platform and the Stump
Week 2: Unconventional Conventions
Week 1: Let's Get This Party Started
Prelude Class: What's an Election?

Download the whole unit so far: Vote for Me

Vote for Me: Elections Unit Study: Week 4

Hi future politicians of this fine country! Is it just me or are you noticing the road sides covered with signs promoting the different candidates? Some of them just have the candidates' names, but some have slogans like "Peace, Prosperity, and Reform!" or "Yes We Can!". As we get closer and closer to Election Day, we will be seeing more and more of these posters, along with other graphics like t-shirts, bumper stickers, and campaign literature in our doorways, and we will be hearing slogans louder and louder. This week is about figuring out how these posters and slogans are made by making our own. As we notice what's happening around us, we'll be learning to analyze the messages we're receiving, and make sense of some of the visuals we encounter.

Here is the PDF for this week's lessons: Vote for Me! Week 4: A Poster You can Believe In

Graphic Design: Elements of a Good Poster
Here we examine campaign posters from various candidates to try and find the common elements and decide what makes a good poster. It is a great time to notice posters on the road side and compare and contrast the different decisions made by these various designers. Which ones can you read best? Which one on each corner draws your eye most effectively? If there’s any way you can get your hands on a wide variety of campaign material for them to examine and compare, that would really help.

Photography: Choosing a Good Image
This exercise will be lots of fun. The ultimate purpose is to have the students feel the pressure of expressing themselves through a facial expression, and understand better what the “real” candidates are going through as they pose for pictures. While it may seem superficial, a lot of time is spent on the candidate’s choices in wardrobe and hair and even the way they smile. The students will come away from this lesson with a better grasp of that.

Thinking: How Much Can You Remember?
This game demonstrates the need for slogans to be short in order to be memorable. However, the bonus section, where the students write their own gradually inflated slogans, can turn into a nice little grammar exercise too. Use all the opportunities when you see political slogans on TV or on posters around town to discuss how memorable they are, how effective they are, and what candidates they’re promoting.

Social Studies: Slogans Past and Present
Here’s a research exercise for the students, and an opportunity to develop their own slogans for their own campaigns. Whatever they come up with is great, though they should start being aware of how the slogans work as chants, how they look on a poster, whether they rhyme, and other rhetorical considerations. Again, finding real examples to look at will help.

Song: Tippecanoe and Tyler Too

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Elements of a Good Poster

What Makes a Good Image

How Much Can You Remember?

Slogans Past and Present

Song: Tippecanoe and Tyler Too

That's it! A lot to digest. Some pretty heavy thinking and writing going on, but keep it personal, keep it meaningful, and have fun with it!

Previous lessons:
Week 3: The Platform and the Stump
Week 2: Unconventional Conventions
Week 1: Let's Get This Party Started
Prelude Class: What's an Election?

Vote for Me: Elections Unit Study: Week 3

Hello candidates! Welcome to your campaign! Isn't this exciting? We have a little over fifty days left until the election, and things are rocking and rolling on the national scene. Now that we've had our conventions, it's time to hit the campaign trail. This week we'll be developing our platforms, polishing our stump speeches, and planning a five city tour of the country. If you live in an area where you can get out to see the "real" candidates doing their thing at a rally, that would be very cool! We've seen Barack Obama once, and yesterday we meet a candidate for Senate, former Virginia Governor Mark Warner. We hope to see Sarah Palin on September 18th too. I would love to have the kids see all the main candidates in person, so we'll see how that works out! I will tell you that it's worth the effort to get out and experience some of this stuff first hand -- they learn a lot just from what they absorb in the situation, and it's way easier to show them than to tell them. Have fun!

Here is the PDF for this week's lessons: Vote for Me! Week 3: The Platform and the Stump


Thinking: Building a Platform
It’s important here to accept and encourage any issues and ideas that are truly interesting and important to your student. My guess is that they will not come up with health care and foreign policy planks in their platforms. It’s important that they care about their own issues so that they can make good stump speeches.

Writing: Writing a Stump Speech
The stump speech is a very basic five paragraph essay. I don’t believe in teaching a five paragraph essay in which the first and last paragraphs are a summary of the middle three. The introduction should truly be an introduction, not just a preview. The conclusion should truly be a conclusion, not a recap. There are added considerations when writing a speech, such as writing a great opener and a great closer. The best way for students to intuitively understand how to do this is to listen to and read some great speeches, readily available online.

Public Speaking: Delivering Your Stump Speech
The students will create before/after videos (or just do before/after performances for a very local audience) and in between they’ll learn some rudimentary principles of public speaking. Remember to lead by example — exaggerate your dynamics, your gestures, and don’t be afraid to be silly in order to break the ice for shy speakers.

Social Studies: Out on the Stump
This activity could be as involved as you want it to be. You could stop with considering a great choice of five cities to visit, finding them on a map and leaving it there, or you could get as detailed as per diem food allowances and finding places to entertain VIP donors. Go wild!

Thinking: Campaign Promises
This is hard to do without bias, especially when it comes to giving examples. Use whatever you believe in your own family to illustrate this lesson. What I want the students to take away is the struggle each candidate faces between being realistic and honest and pleasing people. Whatever our politics, that dilemma is universal.

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Building a Platform Worksheet

Writing a Stump Speech

Delivering a Stump Speech

Out on the Stump: Planning a Campaign Trip

Campaign Promises

That's it! A lot to digest. Some pretty heavy thinking and writing going on, but keep it personal, keep it meaningful, and have fun with it!

Previous lessons:
Week 2: Unconventional Conventions
Week 1: Let's Get This Party Started
Prelude Class: What's an Election?

OR you can download the entire thing so far here: Vote for Me!

Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study: Week 2

Hello class members! Welcome to week 2 of our campaign! This week we are going to be learning the ins and outs of an introduction speech, the significance of the "running mate," and we're also going to be listening to and yelling political speeches and documenting our physical respones to these experiences. Getting through this material before the conventions get underway will help us understand what we're looking at when we watch the speeches on TV.

Here are some links that may be helpful as we contextualize the speeches and rituals at the conventions:

Famous Political Speeches, with text and audio.
Speeches from the Democratic National Convention, 2004.
Speeches from the Republican National Convention, 2004.

Here is the PDF for this week's lessons: Vote for Me! Week 2: Unconventional Conventions


Now that we’ve created our political parties, it’s time to throw a party. This week we’re getting ready to watch the real conventions on TV, so our purpose is to learn the vocabulary, become familiar with the different types of speeches, so that we will understand what we’re watching.

Read-Along Teach-Along Sheet: Political Conventions
There is a lot of information to pack in here and I glossed over some of the details of the nominating process in the interest of not overloading the students. When they watch the convention on TV and see each state’s delegation casting their votes, it will become more clear.

Writing and Reading: The “A Man Who” Speech
Beginning readers may not be able to wade through all of the two introductory speeches I linked to. If you are reading them aloud to your students, make sure to do it with high drama. After the students’ own introductions are written, have them practice introducing each other as well as being introduced. I purposefully made the format very short so that multiple ones could be written. Write an introductory speech for the dog. Write an introductory speech for Jack and Annie. Etc.

Science and Reading: The Physical Effects of Political Rhetoric
Here’s a miniature science project. This will be more interesting if the student delivers the speech at top volume with many gestures. Also, make sure the clapping and cheering during the listening segment is very enthusiastic and possibly even aerobic. Make sure you check your pulse and breathing rate when you're watching the keynote address in each convention. Who gets your pulse rate up higher?

Thinking Activity: Choosing a Running Mate
I had originally planned for siblings to be each other’s running mates, but I think now that it’s better if the students invent someone to fit the ticket. If your student has someone in mind that exists in real life, that would be cool too.

Art: How to Make a Duct Tape Hat
Make a tough, colorful, waterproof hat out of two rolls of duct tape! Wear it to watch the speeches on TV! This lesson is available online with how-to illustrations in the post previous to this one, or follow the link in the header.

Multimedia Assignment:
Watch the Conventions on TV!

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Readalong Teachalong: Political Conventions

Writing and Reading: The "A Man Who" Speech

Science: The Physical Effects of Political Rhetoric: What a Feeling!

Thinking Activity: Choosing a Running Mate

Benny continues to blog his assignments. I'd love to hear from you and see how you're doing. Have a great week! To see all the lessons in this unit click here.

Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study: Week 1

Welcome to the Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study week 1, in which we begin to develop our own campaigns! Last week was great. We figured out what the President does and learned a song naming all the Presidents. We learned about the reasons voting is useful, and about majority and minority. We learned about the electoral college and sang about it. We discussed voting rights and how our country's ideas of what is right have developed and changed over time. You can see last week's lesson here if you missed it. You're welcome to join in any time!

Here is the PDF for this week, containing the entire lesson:Vote for Me! Week 1: Let's Get This Party Started!

This week the fun really begins! As our students take their first steps toward defining themselves as candidates, we’ll need to be very positive and supportive of their ideas. Guide them toward understanding the process rather than focusing on specifics they’re coming up with. I guarantee that by the time they’re 35 and ready to be President, they will not still think that donuts are an important political issue.

Read-Along Teach-Along Sheet: Political Parties
It’s very hard to define the different political parties in a succinct way that’s both accurate and easily digestible by children. You may want to polish this section to suit your own tastes. My intention is to stay very positive about every candidate, every party. There are intelligent, honest, moral people in all parties. This is not a time for us to communicate our own possibly strong political opinions in a negative way, because we don’t want the children to be negative with each other when they’re campaigning. So, as hard as it may be for you to say nice things about a party to which you do not belong, suck it up!

Thinking Activity: Defining Your Issues and Priorities
A lot of the work we do during this class will involve introspection and self-analysis. We as teachers have to work with whatever comes out. If my student wants to start a bike-riding party, I’m going to have to use that to teach the ideas I want to teach him. This can become an interesting exercise, maybe the first time some of the younger kids have really asked themselves who they are and what they believe. We are not looking for “liberty” and “democracy” among their core values. We may be looking for freedom, but it may come out in the context of freedom to stay out after dark.

Creating a Political Party
Some questions to work through on page 1, and a kind of charter document to fill out on page 2.

Group Activity
This game will work best with more than one child, but can be done with one. Introduces the concept of facts vs. opinions, and gives the kids an active, non-verbal way to take a stand on issues.

Individual PDFs to download, in case you don't want the whole lesson:

Political Parties Readalong Teachalong

Defining Issues and Priorities Thinksheet

Inventing a Political Party Worksheet

The Opinions Game: Agree or Disagree?

I love hearing from students. Benny is blogging some of his efforts at his blog. Last week I particularly enjoyed hearing an MP3 of Phillip, who is five, singing himself to sleep with the Presidents song. Of course, he seems to be listing Jackson Pollack as every other president, but... it was very inspiring to hear that, nonetheless! Keep going!

This is the first week of Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study! For all classes to date, click the link.

Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study: Prelude Class

Welcome to the Vote for Me! Elections Unit Study here at Little Blue School. After a quick run to the computer store for a new monitor to save my laptop, which I apparently decided to throw on the floor at midnight last night and which now has a screen that looks like a shattered windshield, I'm ready.

Today's lesson is huge, massive, enormous! It's meant to last all week, and some of this material may not sink in or be relevant until farther on in the unit, but I want to lay some groundwork for us to get started.

To get all the materials, you will need three files:

Vote for Me! Prelude Class (PDF)

Presidents of the United States (MP3)

Who Goes to the Electoral College? (MP3)

There are five sections in this lesson. Download the PDF, have a look at it, and print out the sections that are necessary. Some of the lesson may be done without printing; some requires a pencil and paper.

Read-Along Teach-Along Sheet: Who is the President?
This is our first Read-Along Teach-Along so let me explain this technique. The first time or two through, read the sheet to your student. The next time, let the student read it. Now you read it again, but leave out a few words and let the student fill them in. The goal is to read the sheet leaving out all the bolded words and having your student supply them. It’s best to do this in a very dynamic, dramatic voice, and when you leave the words out, look energetically and expectantly toward the student, indicating you’re waiting for their response. When they respond correctly, smile and go on. If they don’t know, don’t make a big deal about it, just fill in the word and go on. It may take a few days of reading the sheet — maybe mark each repetition with a sticker on the top. This section has a song to accompany it.

Activity / Discussion: Why do we vote?
In this discussion, you’ll notice that new vocabulary words are introduced without explanation as they are connected to the students’ experiences. For example, in the first scenario they “choose” and in the second they “vote.” When you get to introducing minority and majority this way, you may need hand gestures and facial expression to give clues as to which is small and which is big.

Math: Majority and Minority. How Do We Decide?
A sheet of word problems. Some may be too hard or easy. Skip those.

Math and Geography: States and Electoral Votes
Use the map and info on page 1 to answer the questions on page 2. This section has a song to accompany it.

History: Voting Rights
A worksheet with a lot of open questions that will lead to tough discussions. How you handle these questions is up to you, but it’s best to just be honest about what happened and how you feel about it.

Questions you may have:

Is every week going to be this worksheet-intensive?

No.

Are you going to make us learn two songs a WEEK?

No.

What should we do with the completed assignments?

Anything you'd like to send me, I'll look at and respond to, whether that is a scanned image, an email with answers, a letter in the mail, or whatever. Of course since I'm not grading anything and not authorized to give you any kind of meaningful diploma or certificate or let you be President or anything, I don't *require* that anyone turn in assignments. I mean, I could require whatever I want, but you don't have to do it, right? :D I would love to see your students' work, and if my involvement would encourage them or add some level of achievement or accountability, then by all means bring it on. If you want my mailing address, email me for it.

I found a typo/broken link/mistake!

Great, thank you so much. I'm sure there are many. Please let me know so I can correct the problem right away.

Individual PDFs to download, if you don't want the whole lesson, which is above:

Who is the President? Read-along Teach-along

Presidents Song Lyrics Sheet

Why Do We Vote? Activity

Majority and Minority Math Worksheet

Electoral College Pages

Electoral College Song Lyrics Sheet

Voting Rights Pages

Note: The tune to "Who Goes to the Electoral College" is from a song called "Big Mouth" by The Muffs and is used with permission from Kim Shattuck, who wrote the song. The Muffs are one of my favorite bands of all time, and I'm thankful for Kim that she was so generous with her tune. All other materials including the lyrics to that song are created by me and owned by me. I don't have my URL or name stapled all over the pages, but if you link to them, make your link to this page, and not directly to the PDF or MP3. Please don't punish me for all this work by using these materials for your own gain.

Vote For Me! An Elections Unit Study for Young Candidates

On August 6, 2008, I began be e-teaching a class on elections via this blog. The class took each student through developing their own presidential candidacy, including creating a campaign commercial, developing a platform, and interviewing constituents. By working on our own campaigns, we learned social studies, history, math, science, music and art lessons. Here on this site each week, there were printables to download, songs, lesson plans, project ideas, bias-free encouragement, and a guideline for taking students through this experience.

The class was designed to be tailored by you to meet your child at his or her level, so the materials are flexible and can be used for a variety of ages. If you liked my Treasure Island seminar, you'll love this class. We will sing the presidents, deconstruct slogans, study the effects of political rhetoric on heart rates of the speaker, and more! The class will culminate on Election Day, with one more lesson during January showcasing the inauguration. Here's a list of what's in store, with links to classes I have already posted:

Prelude: Election Overview
What is voting and who is the president?
Why vote? Why not just agree?
Majority and Minority: How we decide
States and the Electoral College
Voting Rights

Class #1. Let’s Get This Party Started
Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians
Inventing a political party
Defining Issues
Picking a mascot
Picking a name
Posters: Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree.

Class #2. Unconventional Conventions
The “a man who” speech
Physical effects of listening to political rhetoric
Choosing a running mate
Duct Tape Convention Hats
Balancing the Ticket
Interpeting Promotional Media

Class #3. The Platform and the Stump
Prioritizing issues to write a platform
Campaign Promises
Creating a stump speech in 5 paragraphs
Pause for applause: Delivering the stump speech
Planning a campaign trip – map

Class #4. A Poster You Can Believe In
Choosing an Image
Icons and Imagery
Where can you put your poster?
Slogans Past and Present
How Much Can You Remember?

Class #5. Commercial Break
Choosing music, background, clothing
Types of ads: Negative, Warm/Fuzzy, Scare, Humor
Famous political ads through history of TV
Spin Worksheet
HTML Template for Campaign Site

This project is free and open to all students interested in current events. If you do use the materials, I would love to hear about it and see pictures!

Hidden Poetry Project

One challenge in teaching very small children to write poetry is that they don't really know what it looks like -- its literal or even imaginary shape. Children hear stories of a certain length and "shape" regularly. There are reliable forms and predictable elements that a child can make their own. Once upon a time, there was a princess. Once upon a time there was a lonely shepherd. In the end, the monster was defeated and the princess married the prince. From that jumping off place, a child can bring in the talking potatoes or the underwater bicycle or whatever they bring to the form, because they mostly know what to expect, and what is expected of them.

Poetry is different, because its forms are so varied. There are traditional pieces that look very organized and rhyme and maybe fit on a page in a sonnety way. There are more freeform pieces with different line lengths and interesting breaks and punctuation. A child encouraged to write a poem may not immediately know the scope -- two lines, twenty lines, twenty pages? This project was a way that my kindergardener could visualize her poem and get a sense of the space she was going to fill, before she wrote it.

I found this cool painting technique on Scrumdilly-Do and decided to modify it into a poetry prompt for teaching the junior class in Phi Bensa Zoe Academy. Phillip is five, Sadie is four, and they both did really well with this.

If you click on this link for the painting idea, you'll see very excellent how-to pictures, much much better than mine. The basic idea is that you fold up a big piece of paper in a staggered accordion fold. You just put little ripples in it so that when it all lies flat there is a new surface for the paper , with lots of hidden little strips folded up into it. Then you paint on this new surface:



Then you let it dry for a while and stretch it out:



This is where the poetry comes in. After the kids had these neat staggered strips of color and these white strips in between, I had them dictate a poem to me, and I wrote each line in a white strip. Very cool. They could see how many lines they needed and about how long the lines would be, so I think it looked somehow doable for them. Anyway, they did it:



Here's Sadie with her finished project. It is a poem about ballet and karate and I think the theme of it is that she really likes to leap around the house yelling and making muscles at us but that doesn't mean she can't still call herself a ballerina.



The coolest thing about this is that you can fold the paper back up, hiding the poetry, and it becomes a painting again. It's a secret poem. Possibly a magic poem. The magical properties have not yet been tested yet. If I wake up and the sink is empty of dirty dishes, I will let you know. It certainly was cool to put it back together, and unfold it, and fold it up again, etc.

Many skills involved here: folding, paper-clipping, painting in one direction (you want to paint in strokes perpendicular to the folds so you don't get any into the white strips) Sadie enjoyed herself, and so did Phillip. So, good for kindergarten. But would this exercise have value beyond the paste-craving years? An older child, or even an adult, might find this an interesting way to integrate writing and art. The pre-defined line limit could be seen as a constraint or a challenge -- kind of like making yourself write a sestina or even a haiku. Give it a try and see what you come up with. And props to Scrumdilly-do again.

We're part of the Book Arts Bash. Are you?

Treasure Island Homeschool Seminar: Literary Lesson Plans and Nautical Worksheets

It's here! The Treasure Island unit study you've been staying up nights longing for! Ready to download and use in your homeschool family, your co-op, or even your regular old classroom! Get out your eye patch and saw off your leg -- it's time to launch the Hispaniola and go search for Captain Flint's lost cache of Spanish gold! Since the book itself is so full of pirates being skewered and shot in their pursuit of financial gain, I'm giving away the lessons for free. Free is the new ARRRRRGHHHH!

This printable 35-page PDF includes twelve lessons to take you and your student through Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. You'll learn ancillary skills like boxing the compass, reading signal flags, and telling time with ship's bells. Write your own pirate story, make an oilskin treasure map, and learn the songs from the novel. Six vocabulary worksheets, one for each section of the book, introduce nautical terms like hawser and capstan along with regular old words like incongruous and dexterity. Click right here to get the PDF from Google docs. No charge.

Where do you get it? The link again: Treasure Island: A Piratey Literature Seminar for Kids

This seminar was written for use in our homeschooling co-op and classroom-tested on a group of eight 6-9 year old boys. They approved of it, especially the knot-tying, the skits, and the shouting "Yo Ho HO."

Enjoy! Send me pictures! Long John Silver awaits!

Reading Questions and Vocabulary for Boba Fett #2: Crossfire

Don't judge me. This isn't what it looks like! I have an eight-year-old son who has suddenly become deeply entranced with Star Wars. So, he is reading this Boba Fett series, alright? He doesn't like fiction as a category, and I just go with whatever captures his imagination. Right now he is building Lego Star Wars with great vigor and obsession, and he wants to read about Star Wars too. He loves this series, and I can't argue -- they are written by the Hugo and Nebula award-winning SF author Terry Bisson. So put down your eyebrows. I read them before he does, and they're good stories.

Anyway, internet, I have to tell you that instead of just letting my little boy joyfully read these books, I have written some reading comprehension questions for these Boba Fett novels. Yes, I just heard all my unschooling readers thump their heads in irritation! Benny actually asks me for questions because he's proud to be reading fiction on his own again, and it helps me know that he's following the story, not just enjoying the words "droid" and "blaster." Just in case anyone else happens to be in the same situation I'm in, and just in case anyone else needs to somehow label this as schoolwork or even just find out if the kid is really grasping what's going on as he whips through these books, I thought I'd share. Here is a question for every chapter:

1. Who taught Boba the lesson "First things first!"?
2. What are the count's two names?
3. What two things does Boba own?
4. What is special about the windows in the count's lair?
5. What is the count looking for at his archeological dig?
6. How did Boba get himself out of the mucky pond he was stuck in?
7. What happens to distract the count from questioning Boba?
8. How does Boba feel about the Jedi?
9. Why are the clone troopers so much like Janga Fett, Boba's father?
10. What is Candaserri?
11. What is a padawan learner?
12. What is special about Garr?
13. Where are Boba and Garr when they finally find the bridge?
14. After the alarm sounded, how long did Boba and Garr have to get back to the ship before the jump to hyperspace?
15. What did Boba use as a jet pack to push him back to the ship?
16. How did Boba know that the orange light was a ship and not a star?
17. Why is Aurra Sing following the Candaserri?
18. What did Glynn-Beti do on Bespin that made Boba nervous?
19. What does Aurra Sing offer Boba in Cloud city?
20. How long are the days on Bespin?
21. What does Aurra Sing think Boba did to betray her? Who really did it?
22. Who is driving the Slave I during this chapter?
23. Why does Boba need Aurra Sing to help him get Jango's treasure?

Vocabulary/spelling words: custodial, toxic, visage, provisional, salvage, noxious, revulsion, deterred, self-sufficiency, maneuver, temporary, chronos, facilities, prohibited, atmosphere, security, unbelayed, generators, industry, flotillas, solitary, identity, polyglot, muscular, scrim, exotic, amorphous, ambush, reinforcements, sentimental, unaltered.

Hey, here's a political blog you might like!

Boxing the Compass: A Printable Compass Worksheet

Welcome to the Little Blue School. In our pirate class (by which I mean our very serious literature class about Treasure Island, which happily was populated exclusively by small boys and therefore turned almost immediately into pirate class) we learned about compasses and how they work.

Did you know a compass has 32 points? Well, it does. We learned sixteen of them, and did this worksheet page to help us remember where the points fall in relation to each other.

Compass Exercise: jpg or pdf

Want more compass fun? Try playing a game like Simon Says, except call it Captain Says. In our round room, we're going to "Captain Says" to the points of the compass. As in... "Captain says tiptoe West!" "Captain says crawl East!" "Captain says march north!" Now see if you can resist blowing their minds by saying "Captain says fly South by Southwest!" Hehehe.

We had lots of fun in our pirate class based on Treasure Island. Want to visit all my other Treasure Island resources? How about the Little Blue School Idea Box which has lots of other lesson plans and fun homeschooling ideas? I'm so glad you found this site. I hope you stick around and poke some links. You are welcome here!

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Islands of Adventure: Boys Book Club Materials

UPDATE: This set of lessons is available in full now, downloadable as one PDF. Go check out the Treasure Island Seminar to check that out. :)

Hello! On this page you'll be able to do access and download all the materials your children will be receiving in class, as well as additional stuff to look at and print. I will update this page as new materials become available. Here's a short list of the materials you can find here, and below is a more detailed list, by date.

Class Summary 1: jpg or pdf
Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum: jpg or pdf
Yo Ho Yo Ho a Pirate's Life for Me: jpg or pdf

Class Summary 2: jpg or pdf
Compass Exercise: jpg or pdf

Class Summary 3: jpg or pdf

Class Summary 4: jpg or pdf
A Pirate's Life is a Wonderful Life: jpg or pdf
Vocabulary Worksheet for Part One: jpg or pdf

Class Summary 5: jpg or pdf
Pirate Story Plan: jpg or pdf

Class Summary 6: jpg or pdf

Class Summary 7: jpg or pdf
Pirate Vessels: jpg or pdf
Vocabulary Worksheet for Part Four: jpg or pdf

Class Summary 8: jpg or pdf
Ship's Bells Worksheet: jpg or pdf

Class Summary 9: jpg or pdf
Signal Flags Worksheet: jpg or pdf
Lillibullero: jpg or pdf

Class Summary 10: jpg or pdf
Coin Worksheet: jpg or pdf

Class 11 and 12 available here.

Update May 6:

This week the children really impressed me with their grasp of the salient points from these chapters. As we near the end of the book, things will start to come together, plot-wise, but this part where Jim Hawkins is in the coracle, on and off the Hispaniola, and fighting with Israel Hands, is kind of difficult to follow even for an adult. I continue to be amazed with their comprehension skills and when we sit down to discuss the story they are almost always right with me as we go through the ideas and facts I want to get across. Kudos to you guys for reading with them, and kudos to them for tackling such a challenging text.

When Jim Hawkins returns to the stockade, he is clued in to the fact that the pirates have taken over residence when he hears the parrot saying "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" We learned what this phrase means, and the answer was kind of interesting! Spanish dollars were worth 8 reals, and they were made of gold. To make change, instead of making coins with smaller denominations, they would just chop up the big gold coins into individual reals. Each "bit" was worth one real, making each quarter worth two reals, or two bits! Interesting -- I did not know that until doing research for this class.

After we discussed some of the symbolism of the images that appear on coins, how carefully the faces, buildings, animals, birds, or shapes are chosen, the students designed their own coins with interesting results. We also talked about fractions, and practiced dividing our coins into halves, quarters, eighths, but I found this was not challenging for them -- they seemed to already understand these math concepts.

Documents:

Class Summary 10: jpg or pdf

Coin Worksheet: jpg or pdf

Update April 29:

In this class we learned about signal flags and the way they were used to communicate between ships. We studied the signal flag alphabet and practiced writing our names and messages to each other in flags. Keep your eye open for flags in the harbor and also on buildings around town!

We learned a new song today. Lillibullero is an English folk song that has been used and re-used with many different lyrics at different times in history. We put Treasure Island lyrics to it -- a call and response song between the faithful and the pirates as they taunt each other over the wall of the stockade.

Lillibullero was the tune that the pirates were whistling while Dr. Livesey was making his trips with the jolly boat before the faithful took up residence in the stockade. I thought it would be neat to teach the children this song, and it *really* gets stuck in their heads. I may have assigned them to come home and drive you insane singing "Lero lero lillibullero!" Sorry about that.

Here are the documents:

Class Summary 9: jpg or pdf

Signal Flag Worksheet: jpg or pdf

Lyrics to Lillibullero: jpg or pdf

Update April 8:

The men in the stockade had to make difficult choices about what they chose to take with them from the ship, since they didn't have a lot of room in the boat. Some luxuries and even some necessities were left behind, and now they're struggling to survive with only what they have. Today in class we're going to be creating "survival packs" in class. We will determine the bare minimum that we would need to survive in a jungle island environment and pack our boxes with symbols of these provisions and tools.

We will also be learning about telling time with ship's bells, and I have a worksheet for them to use in practicing this. It would be great if throughout this week you could reinforce the "ship's bells" method a bit when you find yourself checking the time or setting a bed time or a time for dinner. :)

Class Summary 8: jpg or pdf

Ship's Bells Exercise: jpg or pdf

Update April 1:

At the beginning of our reading for today, Dr. Livesey becomes the narrator and Jim Hawkins is temporarily out of the story. Today we focused on point of view as a literary device. The point of view from which a story is told determines a lot about the story! We discussed how different Treasure Island might be if it were told from the point of view of Long John Silver. We discussed how real life situations might be seen differently from different characters involved in the action. The boys were incredibly perceptive with this stuff! Well beyond my expectations! They continue to amaze me.

We are learning about different types of pirate vessels in these chapters and the ones to come. I assigned an art worksheet for them to do, with your help, after looking up pictures of gigs, coracles, schooners, and jolly-boats on the internet. I also gave them another vocabulary worksheet -- same as the first, with "pick three to use in sentences" and then "pick three to show in a picture." As usual, how much you do of these "assignments" is up to you, but it does enrich our class time if everyone can participate fully.

Class Summary 7: jpg or pdf

Pirate Vessels: jpg or pdf

Vocabulary for part 4: jpg or pdf

Update March 11:

Chapter 13 provides us with a lot of very evocative descriptions of Treasure Island itself. This is not your fun, happy, blue-skied, diamond-beached tropical paradise! It's marshy, grey, forbidding, and scary. Today we discussed literary settings, and the three elements that make up a setting:

1. The physical objects present, including landscape elements and "things" in view.
2. The time of day. Lonely beach during the day is quite different from a lonely beach at night!
3. The weather.

Without any of these three elements, a setting is incomplete. An author gives us at least an impression of all three, to create a full picture in our minds. We also talked about including other senses besides just vision. The marsh in Treasure Island smelled bad, the heat felt oppressive, there were bird calls, etc.

To reinforce these ideas, we did watercolor paintings of the setting we had read about. This is why your child's picture might have come home looking very dreary. We talked about including the major landmarks, like Spyglass Mountain, and giving an impression of the weather and time of day.

During spring break, I'd like the boys to read the next six chapters. Also, if you're interested in participating in the Reading Rainbow contest for young writers and illustrators, that deadline is March 28. I would love to have some pirate stories entered! They could even use their watercolor painting as a cover, or one of their illustrations.

I realized when I was unpacking my things that in the excitement over giving the boys their pirate mugs (thanks, Amy Moler!) I forgot to hand out the class summary sheet for Class Six: Land Ho! Here it is:

Class Summary 6: jpg or pdf

Update March 4:

What's up pirates and pirate parents? Today we spent some time working on their pirate vocabulary and looking at their homework. I was amazed and delighted to hear them already beginning to incorporate some of these words into their discussion of the books. These children are so smart! You might look over that sheet this week and ask your child which words he remembers, to reinforce his knowledge. If you didn't do this sheet, don't worry about it -- we'll be doing more of these as the book progresses. One of the most valuable side effects of reading real literature at a young age is exposure to interesting vocabulary, so we want to maximize that! We also spent some time talking about the geography of the ocean voyage, from Bristol to the Caribbean Sea. If you have a globe handy, you might point out these places on the globe.

New project:

Storytelling: Today we started a new project! We are all going to write pirate adventure stories! In their folders you will find a worksheet I made to help them start brainstorming ideas. If your child needs help writing down his ideas, you can absolutely be a scribe for him, or he can just draw pictures in the boxes to start thinking about the main points of his tale. In class, they already began telling me how they have different ideas, ones that don't fit in the boxes -- well, of course, that's just what I would expect!! Not at all necessary to fill in the boxes or stay within the limits I've defined -- whatever your boy imagines is fantastic. I'm just trying to spark some ideas with these questions.

Reading Rainbow, a show on PBS, has an annual contest for young writers and illustrators. The contest has some very specific rules, so you will definitely want to look at their web site if you're interested in pursuing that. Check out the local rules and regs at WHRO. I think this is a great contest, and I will be doing this with Benny. I encourage you to investigate it -- not a requirement by any means though! The deadline is at the end of this month. Next week in class we'll be talking more about structuring their stories, so over the break they'll have lots of time to finish working at home.

Ongoing Projects:

Songwriting: Two of our students wrote new verses to "A Pirate's Life is a Wonderful Life" which we sang in class. I encourage everyone to do this! There are lines on your song sheet for filling in your own verse(s) that relate to Treasure Island.

Treasure Collecting: I gave the children their treasure pouches today, in which they'll be collecting coins and jewels in class. They can either keep it clipped into their class notebooks or with the rest of their treasure trove at home. They've begun negotiating with me for trading up to better coins, better "diamonds" etc. -- this is awesome! Deal-making is very piratical. So now in their treasure troves they should have their beads, their maps, and their pouches.

Music: I have made MP3 versions of the three songs we are learning in class! I'm not going to host them on my site or the list, but if you would like to have me email them to you, please email me offlist and let me know.

That's it! Keep reading!

Class Summary 5: jpg or pdf

Pirate Story Plan: jpg or pdf

Update February 26:Ahoy pirates! I hope your reading is going well. Today in class we launched two new projects:

1. I invited the students to write their own verse, or verses, for the "A Pirate's Life is a Wonderful Life" song. I'm working on getting you guys a CD with all of these songs on it, but until then if you're not sure of the tune -- it's the song from Peter Pan. There's no pressure on this -- if they don't want to do it right away or at all, that's totally fine. Some seemed excited at the prospect, some less so, so let's just make sure it stays fun!

2. We will be making a pirate's sea chest later on in the class, but for now we are starting to collect our "treasure trove." The students should now have a treasure map (in an oilskin packet) and a necklace made with beads and shells from the West Indies. Note: The shells are not actually from the West Indies and the envelope is not actually made of skin. :) They will be collecting and making more items, so they'll just need to keep them in a central location at home until we make the chest later in the semester.

The reading for this week is the next three chapters. I welcome your feedback on the speed at which we are going through the book. If three chapters per week is too fast, please let me know. Also let me know if your children are done reading the book! :)

The vocabulary worksheet that the children brought home is a "friendly" homework assignment. We will be talking about it these words in class, and it would be helpful for the students to learn their meanings. If these homework assignments are too much, just ignore them. If you're enjoying them, that's great! They're meant to enhance their understanding of the book, not to be a chore. :) If you have any questions, feel free to email me at jackets at rpsd dot com.

Class Summary 4: jpg or pdf

A Pirate's Life is a Wonderful Life: jpg or pdf

Vocabulary Worksheet: jpg or pdf

Update February 19:

Hi pirates! I hope that by now you've uncrumpled your treasure maps and rubbed them with oil. Ours turned out really old and piratey-looking, but we had a terrible tragedy in our house -- THE DOG ATE IT! The dog ate Benny's homework literally! I guess we should have used goat oil or something, because the olive oil we used was just too delicious for Leroy the Boston Terrier to resist.

If you are in the same situation, or if you just need instructions on making your pirate map because you missed class, here are the steps:

1. On a plain piece of paper, draw a pirate map with permanent marker or crayons. Don't use washable marker! Your map should include the elements we agreed on in class: a compass, labels on landmarks, and an X to mark the treasure.

2. Paint the map with tea. We used pretty weak tea in class, but you could use stronger tea for a darker color. Paint both sides.

3. When the map is good and wet, crumple it up and leave it to dry overnight while crumpled.

4. The next day, uncrumple the map and rub oil into it for a greasy old pirate map.

Note: If a lot of the crayon rubs off during the oiling process, don't worry -- part of the point is that when maps get used and abused, they get harder to read.

Here is the class summary for this week:

Class Summary 3: jpg or pdf

For next week, please read chapters 7-9. Please bring your treasure maps back to class with you so we can all admire them before we put them in their "oilskin packets." :)

Update February 12:

This update is late because almost immediately after our class on Tuesday, I went off on a trip! For those who are wondering, it went very well. For those who are wanting to download the class materials, here they are!

Class Summary 2: jpg or pdf

Compass Exercise: jpg or pdf

In class, we sang our pirate songs, and then covered the "salient points" of chapters 1-3. We learned about boxing the compass, which means reciting the thirty-two points of the compass. We learned sixteen points of the compass, and did a worksheet in class to practice putting these points where they go in relation to each other. For next week, I'd like them to be able to place N, S, E, and W on a compass. We will also work on this in class with some games on our not-quite-round rug. :)

I handed out their folders and they each got a black pencil. It would be great if they could bring these to class each week. I will have extra pencils for those that forget, and I have someone's pencil in my bag from last week, but if they could just put their pencils in the center little pocket on their folders, then they'd always have one. It is not important that they bring the actual text of the story, since we will not be using that in class.

For next week, please read chapters 4 through 6. The children all had amazing recall of the facts in the chapters they had read. You are all doing a great job supporting them as they tackle this literature! They are such bright, enthusiastic, exciting students -- I really appreciate them.


Update February 5:

I realized that I assigned the boys to research one of the piratey terms in "Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum" but did not provide them with a lyric sheet. I had to wrestle my printer into submission to get it to print out the class summary, but it stuck out its lip last night and refused to print the lyrics!

Here is the class summary, which the boys received on paper today. You'll find their chosen pirate names in the blank on the sheet they got in class. You can download this either as a JPG (image) or as a PDF (Adobe Acrobat file).

Class Summary 1: jpg or pdf

Here are the lyric sheets for the two songs we'll be learning. The boys do not need to learn *all* these lyrics, by any means! The "pirate choir" will be joining in on the repeated lines, with me singing the verses, for now. No pressure to learn these at all, but I would like them to look at one of the slang terms in "Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum" and try to figure out what it means.

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum: jpg or pdf


Yo Ho Yo Ho a Pirate's Life for Me: jpg or pdf

Have fun with the reading for this week, and don't worry about the boys understanding every little aspect of the text. This is more "grown up" literature than most of them are probably used to. It's more important to get a feel for the language and enjoy the general feeling of the book than it is to go through it paragraph by paragraph and make sure they understand every word. We will talk about the settings, the characters, and the plot points, when we meet. Next week in "pirate lore" we'll be discussing the points of the compass, and also all the other pirate lore stuff that we didn't get to this week, since we ran out of time!

Handwriting Help: Four Suggestions for Happy Letters

Handwriting is a stressful subject. Any time there is a "perfect" way to do something, and we are helping our children to try to meet that "perfect" standard, we have to be careful not to set off weird alarms in their heads -- what's wrong with me? Why can't I just do it exactly like the book has it? In math class, we can get the right answer if we figure out the correct number. In science class we can memorize the facts. It's either right or it's wrong, there's no subjectivity in most of elementary school. The truth about handwriting is that it's almost mechanically impossible to duplicate the correct answer. What we're all trying to do is to get close, and in the end most of us abandon that attempt anyway, and either type things or write in all caps (like me) or just embrace the scrawl.

Here are four ideas for helping your child navigate this shark-infested water, especially if you're already having trouble, tears, and terror.

1. It's okay to let the child write using the typewriter or computer. This lets the kid form words, express thoughts, etc. without the pain (psychological or otherwise!) of holding a pencil. Just forming the words and having them look perfect, perfect, perfect can be very satisfying! My son’s favorite computer “game” was wordpad for a long time.

2. Get rid of whatever medium is driving the child and you crazy. If pencil and paper isn’t working, ditch it. For as long as is necessary. Write with your finger in marshmallow fluff, in fingerpaint, in sand, in chalk dust. Write on a white board with scented markers. Write with mommy’s ancient lipstick on the dishwasher. Okay, maybe not that last one. Hehehe. We used a whiteboard for everything and Benny loved it – it’s a lot less frustrating to erase when you can just swipe it off, and you don’t have to scrub at a piece of paper with an eraser. Write on sidewalks, on the side of the house with a water hose, with bubbles in the tub, etc.

3. Confound the idea of “perfection” by asking her to write silly things. Write it all in curly cues. Write it in ocean waves. Write it like a mouse would write it. Write it tiny, write it huge, write it upside down. For a small child who wants to write perfect letters but physically has a hard time doing it, one of those manuscript sheets with three lines, one dotted in the middle, one red on top, can be the height of intimidation, frustration, and potential defeat. How would a mouse write it? How would an elephant write it? You be silly, start laughing, get crazy, then sigh, shake your head and say, "Okay, well, I guess we better write it like humans now..."

4. Everyone's handwriting is different. Let your child know that we all have our own ways of writing, and try looking at different people’s handwriting. Look at all the signers of the constitution. Look for handwriting samples online. Talk about signatures and how everyone's signature is *supposed* to look different and special.

Here's a sample of Benny's writing when he was 3 1/2:

Not exactly regular, uniform, perfect or textbook! While Benny wasn’t worried about perfection, I was, initially. I tried to make him hold the pencil a certain way, stay within this and that line, and think beautiful thoughts. I convinced myself, at last, that it didn’t really matter, as long as he was happily writing letters, and having fun.. If I, a brutal perfectionist, can come to that conclusion, maybe your child can too!

K is for Kapok: The South American Alphabet Project

Today, Phi Bensa Zoe Academy's junior class resumed its study of the alphabet via South America, to go along with the Spanish studies they are pursuing with Veronica.

Here are the new pages for the South America workbooks:

Junior:



Senior:



Here's our Kapok tree lesson!

1) We read these two books.



2) We painted Kapok trees with no leaves on it, but lots of animals inhabiting them! I drew the tree outlines with pencil and during the painting we concentrated on doing brush-brush-brush instead of scrubbing the brushes around. Both of them did very well filling in their areas, and we had three different watercolor shades of brown to help them get the feel for shading.



3) Cut out lots and lots of big broad leaves for the animals to hide under. Phillip did GREAT with the scissors. Sadie needs me to be her left hand, turning the paper while she operates the scissors.



4) Tape the leaves onto the trees like little flaps, so that you can lift them up and see the hidden animals inside.

What is WRONG with me that I didn't take pictures of the final products! Imagine the trees above with a whole bunch more leaves stuck all over the place.

We concentrated on learning the names of the animals in the book, and on getting that brush technique down, and on precision cutting. A good day.