Ancient Mesopotamia

Woody and I have a 45 minute commute to and from school everyday.  To help make the commute more interesting, I purchased Story of the World Vol 1 by Susan Wise Bauer as an audiobook.  We listen to this on the way to and from school (except for the times when he wants to listen to Brad Paisley!).

This has been so entertaining and Woody started to ask me questions about Mesopotamia.   I did a quick search on Amazon and I ordered the Encyclopedia of World History by Jane Bingham.  I chose this is because they already provide easy access to dozens of interesting websites of rich content!  The book actually starts with prehistoric time and so I debated whether I wanted to start him off with that but decided in the end that since Mesopotamia is what he asked about, we will start with that and then work our way back if we need to.

I was trying to think about a project that I could do with him that would be fun and I came across a wonderful blog created by a homeschooling mom called Funschooling.net that talked about a timeline project that they had worked on and that gave me the idea for a poster.  Thanks Suji!

So initially, I thought we would create a poster but there was way too much info that was interesting and we have decided to take this slow and start a book of sorts. We currently have a whole bunch of pages that I will ultimately bind/staple together.

Here are some sites we are using:

This History, Our History: This site created by the University of Chicago is a rich rich source for all things Mesopotamia.

Oriental Institute: Another good site from the University of Chicago.

History Interactive:  Contains basic overview info that is targeted at 1st graders

Mr. Donn’s Mesopotamia:  Really great site with lots of info on Mesopotamia. Organized into simple categories and targeted at kids. This site has a wealth of information on all Ancient History.

The British Museum Mesopotamia:  Great site with a lot of resources.  But I had trouble loading some of the images and text.

Kidipede:  Good site for all sorts of history; targeted at kids.

Kids Konnect: Another site with history targeted kids; many links don’t work though.

Internet Ancient History Sourcebook:  This site from Fordham University contains extensive links to other Mesopotamia and Ancient History sources.

The BBC Ancient History Site:  A decent site from our friends at the BBC.

National Geographic:  Has a short video clip of Mesopotamia

A Taste Through History:  Interesting idea but I have to say there are no recipes here that the kids found tempting!

UPenn Write Like a Babylonian:  This was a bit hit with the boys. We got to write their names in cuneiform!

Mysteries of Catal Hoyuk:  Awesome site that looks at the digs at this site in Turkey.

Quiz on Mesopotamia:  Look like some fun quizzes

There are so many different and wonderful sites out there with great information.  A big thank you to everyone that I have linked to above.

Also here are some related books and DVDs we will likely be checking out:

Will post a photo on the final product when we are done!

Mom, how do toilets work?

My oldest, Woody is at home today because he tends to get car sick and his class is headed on a field trip that involves a long bus ride up a steep and windy hill.  His teacher and I felt that it was best for all if he skipped this trip!

With both of them home, I was really hoping that we/I would get to sleep in for another half-hour but woke up to the sound of the toilet flushing and a bright, alert voice asking me “Mommy, how do toilets work?” I mumbled incoherently about pushing the lever down, water coming down and then voila the gross stuff getting cleared away.  And then the annoyingly alert voice said “Yes, but how does it really work?”

After I had fortified myself with a strong cup of coffee, I proceeded to Google this question and I guess I should not have been surprised to find many many answers to this very question — 12.3 million responses to be exact.  That’s a lot of thought spent on a question I had never thought to ask and certainly a question I had never expected to have an answer to.  Here are some links with explanations that worked well with the boys:

How Stuff Works:  I now know to reference this site for other such questions that might come up.  They have a good explanation for how toilets work complete with a diagram of the parts of the toilet.

Home Tips:  Another site with a decent explanation.

Of course, learning is never complete without a hands-on demonstration. This hands-on part the little one Buzz loved.  We opened up the water tank, looked closely at the filler valve, filler float, overflow tubes (parts that had previously been labelled “flush thingies” in my brain) and of course at the green slimy stuff in the tank that I have now vowed to eradicate.  At the end of this, I get a follow-up question about how the sewage system works and I find myself wishing that their dad would hurry home from his business trip to take over toilet/sewage guru duties!

Supplemental Math

I love the school that my older son attends – it is warm, loving and nurturing and he loves his current Kindergarten teachers.  He is not the most social of kids but I sense that he feels very safe and loved at the school.  As an aside, he is surprising very very social in settings with adults but doesn’t seem at all comfortable with his peers. Go figure!

However, the past few months he has been complaining of being bored with the math in class.  There are kids at various levels in the class with some kids just learning their numbers and others like my son who love complex addition and subtraction and are starting to get into multiplication and division.  He has always been a very analytical and numbers driven kid and so I have started to look for ways in which I can augment math at home. Here are some of the things I am exploring and I would love to get thoughts on what else I should look into:

Kumon: I personally love the discipline of these classes but have a gut feeling that my son would hate it.  He masters concepts pretty quickly and it would be soul killing for him to have to sit and finish 200 very similar problems in a timed setting.   I am planning to talking to other Kumon parents to see what they think and I would love input!

Singapore Math:    You have to assume that a country that has been ranked #1 for many years on TIMSS has gotten something right in their math curriculum!  We just ordered and got the Mathematics 2A workbook and it looks like a lot of fun.  More on what we think after we try some of this.

Center for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching:  This organization offers free curriculum material from Kindergarten all the way through the British A-Levels.  I have been using Practice Book 2a with our oldest.  Some of the early pages are way to easy for him but I suspect that it will get tougher as we move on in the book.

Khan Academy:  A friend of mine sent me the link to this site a while ago and it is great for self driven kids who are visual learners and love computers — which describes my oldest to the t.  Kudos to Mr. Khan for creating this completely free website that covers all basic mathematical concepts.

NumberNut:  This look like a great site and has a self paced quiz which I suspect my son will love!

Fun Math for Kids:  This is part of a site called Big Learning and there are a lot of really fun ideas here for teaching kids math.  Certainly way more fun that the rote and dry method that I remember from my school days.

BBC Schools:  Great site with a link to some Bite Sized fun.

As I started to look for other websites, I came across a wonderful site that has been put together by a homeschooling mom. The site is called Library of Books, Links and More.  Check out the math and science links on this site — pretty fantastic resource containing links to many many wonderful sites. Can’t wait to try some of these.

To date, the way that I have been approaching augmenting his math is by having him occasionally work on some of these after school and also on weekends when he has some time.  I suspect that as homework from school increases, I will likely have a tougher time slipping these in.  What I am planning to do is talk to his teacher next year to see if she can have him work on some of these higher level math worksheets in class.

Human Anatomy

My oldest son, who just turned 6, appears to be developing a new interest in the human body.  Like all his other interests, I am pretty sure that he will want to dive deep into the topic.  The last time I took a biology class was a very long time ago (in my freshman year in college!) and so to try and keep up with him, I checked out some resources that we are hoping to explore in some detail. 

One book that I would highly recommend is The Way We Work by David Macaulay. You may be familiar with his Way Things Work book which is just great.  We really liked this book as well and thought it was a really good first step in introducing the human body to kids.  It is very visual (like most of his books) and we especially liked the way the book was organized from atoms to cells and onwards.  

Here are some links are we are planning to look at:

Human Anatomy Online :  This is a great site that allows you to choose a system, click through and then explore the system.  We will be starting with the skeletal system since that is what he is most interested in at the moment and then proceed from there.

Grays:  This is a well known reference site and given how dry the content is, it is likely that this will be more of a reference site for me.

Get Body Smart: This looks like a fantastic site and the best part about it is that you can first view the parts of the human body with the labels on and then take the labels off to see what we can remember.

Visible Body:  This is a really cool site that allows you to view the human body in 3D.  Looks like sign-up is free which makes it an even better site

BBC Human Body: Like all things BBC, this is a great site as is this other size from BBC Bitesize. 

Medtropolis:  Another neat site that has the brain, the skeleton, the heart and the digestive tract.  Also allows you to build your own skeleton.  

A Look Inside the Human Body:  This cool site has been prepared for a 4th Grade class and contains lots of good info.  Especially like the amazing facts about each of the systems. 

The little one, who is now 3, wants to do everything his older brother is doing.  Since we don’t want him to feel left out, we are going to be reading a couple of books on the human body to him as well.  Here are some books that we will be reading to also get him interested:

My Own Human Body:  This is a fun book that my mom got us.

Magic Schoolbus: Inside the Human Body:  This is a fun series for little ones and I will likely get this from the library today.

How the Body Works:  Both boys liked this site but the little one especially liked the movies on this site.

The Yukiest Site on the Internet:  Well with a name like that, it has got to be a cool site for boys and it is!  Buzz loved learning about “belches and gas” and “snots and boogers”

Map Obsession

Just in case there are other parents out there with map obsessed kids, I thought I would post some interesting geography links that we have enjoyed over the years.  My oldest son has LOVED maps since he was 3 years old.  I still remember clearly the look of joy on his face at 3 when we pulled out some old maps from the closet.  From there he quickly progressed to Google Map and Earth and could spend hours “traveling” around the United States and the world.

Google Maps:  My son loves this site and even now will sometimes go back to it and travel the world. It’s almost like he has Google Maps in his head and he will be able to give you directions from Point A to Point B with very little effort. Even better is Google Earth.  There is also this cool site called Google Lit Maps that teaches literature in a whole new way and allows you to track where different stories take place.

Map Games:  This part of the site is fun for little kids and it helps them very quickly learn the countries and their capitals as well as the US States and their capitals.

National Geographic Standards:  National Geographic in my mind is synonymous with all things geography and so I was really happy to find this site and have used some (actually 2) of these lesson plans but I should take more advantage of this resource.

Outline Maps: These blank maps were fun to print and color/label

USA Games:  This site from Sheppard Software is also fun.  My son spent a lot of time playing these games.

Fun Brain:  This site also had a US Geography game that he played often (though not as often as Google or the USA Games above)

US Map Test:  Along the same lines as the site above but with slightly different graphics.

IKnowThat: This site has a bunch of other stuff but this link takes you to the map puzzles that are really neat.

World of Maps:  Pretty cool site from National Geographic

I hope this is of some use to other map obsessed kids!