This week went by pretty quickly, as we seemed to have a lot going on. That’s why I didn’t post daily after January 1 and decided to do a recap in one post, instead. This week was a fun week for Ethan and we’ve also realized how much he enjoys challenges.
January 2 – Cousins came over
Ethan’s cousins came over and Ethan had lots of fun with them. They’re two and four years older than Ethan and Ethan has always liked playing with them. The three of them worked on a cardboard house for most of the day, which was a good way to practice cooperation and learning to build a structure.
We took a bit of a break to pick up Ethan’s new glasses. He was pretty excited and happy to finally be able to see clearly.
The kids then played Monopoly for most of the afternoon.
The girls are quite keen on baking, as they do it at home, so all the kids helped to make some vegan muffins and brownies.
They also managed to finish the cardboard house. Ethan slept in the house and got a pretty restful night’s sleep.
Finally, we had a nice dinner of Vietnamese salad rolls.
January 3 – The Cousins Came Again
The kids had such a great time that we invited the girls to come over again and have a sleepover. We asked the girls to bring over any school work they might have and they all did some homework before playing.
The girls are in ELL, so we printed out some worksheets for all of them to practice prepositions, suffixes and prefixes. Ethan also worked on some division problems.
And what they wanted to play was to expand the size of the cardboard house they made yesterday so they could all sleep in it. This turned out to be major project.
Also, Ethan’s best friend Eldon came over that afternoon, which was nice for Ethan because he hasn’t seen Eldon since we’ve been back from the road trip.
The kids also had fun playing ping pong. The girls were incredibly patient with Ethan and Eldon.
And they finally finished the house! What an awesome achievement. They tried to sleep in it, but it was too hot so they had to abandon it and sleep in Ethan’s room. It was still a cool project, nonetheless.
January 4 – More cousins and a dinner party
The girls stayed for pretty much the whole day until we had to go to a dinner party. So it was three full days of playing together and they all had a great time.
We were invited to dinner by a neighbour, so it was a good time for Ethan to practice his manners when visiting someone’s home and being around other people. He passed with flying colours.
What was also nice was that he played very well with the other kid there, who is a few years older than Ethan.
It was a full day for Ethan, so we needed to take it a bit easy.
January 5 – Math Day
Ethan has always loved math and lately, he’s been practicing division and multiplication. But what he’s been wanting to do is practice with large numbers. And by large, I mean anything over seven digits. So he made up some math problems to solve and loved the challenge.
He also had to practice some poetry writing in his English workbook and came up with these two poems to demonstrate aa/bb rhyming:
The first was called “I love birds”:
Birds fly high above the trees.
Some of them are friends with bees.
Birds fly high in the sky.
And they need a big sigh.
The second was “The animals”:
Animals are free, some in the sea.
I wish they will come and see me.
Some are caged, some are free.
Buy they all love a tree.
Ethan made thank you cards for the people that helped him fund the purchase of a new laptop.
And in the evening, Ethan was a bit hungry so he cooked his own eggs and toast.
After eating, Ethan made time for some more multi-digit division. He loves challenging himself to improve and do everything better.
January 6 – Cleaning up
We’re trying to get Ethan into the habit of doing his language arts or math first thing in the morning. This week, he has remembered to do his work more often than not and hasn’t needed many reminders. He seems to like it, as he realizes he will have free time for the rest of the day.
After breakfast, he had to clean up the cardboard house he built with his cousins and he had fun crushing it down. Afterwards, he did a great job helping to clean up the balcony and his room, too.
Chess was also back in focus today, as Ethan borrowed a kids chess book from the library and was devouring the contents. He’s borrowed this book before but he quite likes it and he finds it helpful. Mainly, he’d like to regularly beat me at chess! I’m not that good, but I don’t take it easy on him because we feel it’s good to learn from making mistakes, failing and continuing to improve.
For dinner, we didn’t feel like cooking so it was a take home pizza along with an avocado and spinach salad that Dong Eun prepared. Ethan gets to slice the pizza and enjoys figuring out how many cuts he needs to make and how many slices there will be.
To wrap up the evening, Ethan did some more math work. We put back the desk under his loft bed and he loved having his own private work space.
So that was the first week of 2018 and our home learning for the past five days. This week was more about building things, but Ethan also spent time each day working on his grammar and math. He definitely likes to challenge himself with difficult math problems, so perhaps we can extend the challenge to reading and writing. We’ll see.
Thank you for writing such a wonderful reflection full of incredible photo documentation. I really get a sense of all the new things Ethan is learning in just one week!
He is challenging himself to harder math problems, new cooking recipes, following his curiosity, expanding his cardboard structures, collaborating with his cousins, negotiating and problem solving.
I encourage you to try some other poetry with Ethan. maybe try some Haikus
Haiku Poems
This ancient form of poem writing is renowned for its small size as well as the precise punctuation and syllables needed on its three lines. It is of ancient Japanese origin. It contains 17 syllables in 3 lines of five, seven, five. Haiku poems are typically about nature and usually about a specific season. Writing a haiku requires intense effort but the poem is well worth it. It is easy to feel a sense of perfection when viewing a perfectly formed Haiku.
Haiku is probably the most well-known form of traditional Japanese poetry. Its short structure and aphorism-like nature has inspired countless people to put their pen on the paper – or their fingers on the keyboard. A well-written haiku is a great example of the art of conveying much while saying very little. Therefore, writing haiku is very good exercise to all aspiring poets; even those who rather stick to their sonnets or free verse.
What is haiku?
Haiku is a Japanese poetry form. A haiku uses just a few words to capture a moment and create a picture in the reader’s mind. It is like a tiny window into a scene much larger than itself.
Traditionally, haiku is written in three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line.
Haiku examples
Here’s a haiku poem written by a poetry student:
The last winter leaves
Clinging to the black branches
Explode into birds.
You can find haiku examples by our visitors at the bottom of this page.
Characteristics of haiku
The following are typical of haiku:
- A focus on nature.
- A “season word” such as “snow” which tells the reader what time of year it is.
- A division somewhere in the poem, which focuses first on one thing, than on another. The relationship between these two parts is sometimes surprising.
- Instead of saying how a scene makes him or her feel, the poet shows the details that caused that emotion. If the sight of an empty winter sky made the poet feel lonely, describing that sky can give the same feeling to the reader.
Below, you’ll find some ideas for writing haiku. If you’re interested in other kinds of poetry, you might also like our online writing course, Essentials of Poetry Writing.
I suggest looking back at some of the lovely photos of nature you have from your trip and writing some Haikus to go along with them!
I appreciate how Self Design is much less concerned with content over the process and “learning how to learn” no matter the subject as we all know life is much more interconnected than individual subjects.
Here are some resources I found for interesting literacy curriculum and ideas. There is a lot here, so maybe let me know what sort of direction Ethan is heading in and I can make specific suggestions and extensions for his learning and projects.
Lots of good graphs/ideas
Curriculum resources for teachers: https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/research-assistance/subject/education/pdp/lesson-plans#english-language-arts
http://www.canteach.ca/elementary/englangarts.html
Great resource of units, filtering ability: read write think
http://www.readwritethink.org/search/?grade=12&resource_type=6
Maybe Ethan can try this experiment..
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