(a june zing follows a may zing, of course.)
quoting my best woman: “blog binging is so my jam. when it comes to babes like you and mq.” (that’s mighty quinn!) thus encouraged, here is the next installment in the binge session.
the time period for this post represents the height of my neglect of my child during wedding preparations, and it is accordingly brief concerning the documentation of his learning at the time. it also corresponds to the end of his fourth grade school year, the beginning of summer vacation, and there may have been fewer things documented because the “deschooling” period can sometimes be harder to point to and say, “learning,” though i would argue it is super important down time.
hummingbird feeder filling technician has been keeping busy this time of year.
nothing like a little stilt walking to work on gross motor coordination. if he isn’t going to ride a bike, there are other ways to practice balance and getting all of one’s limbs to work together.
for their final field trip of the year, our kids went to a minor league baseball game. it was lots of fun!
an invention!
in the final days of school, the fourth grade egg drop was carried out, and the school principal dropped each kid’s design off the school roof. quinn’s egg received a minor crack, but did not smash, and his design involving a tissue paper parachute was very well put together and worked exactly how he wanted it to. it was fun to watch it float slowly to the ground. he was proud both because of the results and because other kids had liked his idea and gone with similar designs (he had even requested i give him more tissue paper to bring to school to share with others). the other approach we saw was more about having excess padding inside a closed container, but i definitely think style points go to the parachutes. he decided if he were to do anything differently to improve it, he would add a little bit more padding in the bottom of the cup in which the egg was riding.
end of the school year writing/reflection exercise. and i always liked this “ways writers keep going” sign his teacher had up, so i figured i’d document it as well, in case we want to refer back to its helpful suggestions in the future.
writing assessment for fourth grade – about his fishing pole
poetry unit “owl quinn” acrostic poem.
spirit animals fan fiction! this series of images is from his journal, which his dad wanted to hang onto, and so i documented it all before sending it to his house.
quinn comics series; i know he spent much of his free-write time creating this series.
map of his special place – his bedroom at home!
his journal also contained writing about albert einstein, ralph waldo emerson, and ghandi.
deschooling involved some free time on the laptop. we had further discussions about the site “cool math games,” which in times past i had more openness (not much, but more than now) for him playing, but when i walked over to see ads for “the laci peterson case. the untold story” and motor oil, i felt that i had reached my limit of tolerance for this travesty of a website. as much as he may enjoy some of the games, i have seen very little in the way of learning, much in the way of games that seem to promote compulsive mouse clicking, difficulties with letting go of screen time while playing them, issues with the site crashing my computer, and far too much advertising, including completely inappropriate ads for children to be seeing.
instead, i encouraged minecraft play, the game prodigy (which is math practice and he used in his classroom in fourth grade, and likes to play), and looking up things he wanted to learn or listen to with you tube. he listened to some ok go songs (and watched their amazing music videos) and looked up how to draw mandala tutorials, creating several beautiful ones while pausing and following along step by step with the videos.
in case this isn’t obvious to everyone in the world, this is how quinn keeps track of his favorite path through a choose-your-own-adventure novel. (but everyone does that, right?)
and this is how he reads calvin and hobbes. he stays up late into the night reading by head lamp, and this is how i find him some mornings. yay for summer vacation and sleeping in!
other fun tidbits: water play with koala; checking out his new polaroid camera, obtained for $1 at a thrift store. he hasn’t even tried it with film yet, but he’s already very much in love with looking through it.
we wound up this month with a karate sleepover! the kids stayed up and watched movies (moana and lego batman i think) and spent the night in sleeping bags on the mat. i did, too, but crept out early in the morning to go work at farmer’s market. my kiddo stayed for the saturday morning activities, including rock panting and tie-dying t-shirts, and he tie-dyed a shirt for me as well!
hip hip hooray for blog bingeing and best women!!!! it was fun to see what was going on over the summer!!!