Eye openings... and new ideas

Well, we all learnt something new about Gordy yesterday... it seems, like Karl and I, he learns better by reading the books himself than having them read to him. As we're studying "Jason and The Argonauts" for "History" at the moment, I thought I'd get started on reading the story to him from the book we borrowed from the library. Well, we'd barely even started when I noticed the signs that although he was listening, he wasn't really taking it on board. Now this is quite a common thing with Gordy... acting like he's listening, but not. So that when you go and ask him what we said, half the time (not THAT long ago it would have been closer to 9 times out of 10... so at least there's improvement there *s*) he can't remember, even though we've only just told him! Definite cause for the frustration levels to soar upward! Knowing, though, that he was pretty tired after a couple of really busy days (like helping a friend move house, plus having had swimming yesterday) with rather late nights, I decided to send him to bed early, but Karl suggested giving him half an hour reading as a wind down, with the "Jason and the Argonauts" book as the reading material. Half an hour passed, and we went in to say goodnight... which is when we asked him what he remembered of what he'd read so far. Now, when I'd been reading it to him before, I'd asked him the name of one of the characters from the story (Ino, step mother of Helle and Phrixus), which had been mentioned about half a dozen times in the last couple of pages. He spent half an hour trying to remember, with tears and every excuse under the sun why he couldn't remember it. How could one small word be soooooo easy to forget, especially after being mentioned so many times?? *sigh* So when we asked him what he remembered after reading it himself, I fully expected him to have not remembered much at all. But... he proved that he had actually paid attention to what he'd read. Karl then asked him if he remembered things easier when he read the book, or when he had books read to him, something I'd never even thought to check. DOH! Gordy's answer - much easier to remember it when he read the book himself! Well, at least we've learnt that now, so that if I want him to actually register what's written, it would be better to get him to read it.
This has just made me realise just how easy it is to stay painfully unaware of even the basic things about your own child when they're off at school all day, then come home tired and grumpy, so not really wanting too much of the "deep and meaningful" kind of interaction with the parent-folk. Guess that with switching to homeschooling, at least now we'll actually get to know our son properly!! Definitely a MAJOR plus in my books!!
So, lesson learnt, and now adaptions can be made to our learning/teaching style!

After a rather slow, bumpy, yet cruisy start to this whole homeschooling thing last week, I decided yesterday that we really should get started on things properly. So I was trying to figure out just how I could teach Gordy about the Sun, which is his chosen topic for Science, and make it interesting for him. With him being very much a "hands-on" kinda lad, I knew science experiments would definitely go down a treat, so that was when I came up with the following "experiment".
*Find 3 pots of the same size/style etc.
*Pick a type of plant (vege or flower probably the easiest sort to use for this) ... in this case we're using tomato plants (thanks Tania for that suggestion *s*)
*Plant the same number of seeds in each pot (how many of course depends on how big a pot you're using, but we're just going to use yoghurt pots, so about 3 seeds per pot, since quite often you get at least one seed per pot that doesn't want to "take")
*Then place one pot outside where it has access to full sunlight, one pot in a place where it doesn't get much sunlight at all, and the 3rd pot somewhere that gets NO sunlight (for this one, we're putting it in the garage).
*Each day, give all 3 pots the same amount of water (want to try and keep as many "variables" controled as possible for this experiment to get the best and most accurate results).
*Keep a daily journal of the results, noting differences in colour, the size of the resulting seedlings, IF there's any seedlings (We also plan to do another experiment, almost the same, but where we'll get the seeds going first til we have good sized seedlings, then place them in different locations), the way they grow, and any other differences you can think of.
This way, Gordy will get to see for himself how the sun affects plantlife etc. So once we have enough yoghurt pots (oh yummy... a really good excuse to eat more yoghurt!! LOL!! Not a problem since Gordy and I both love the stuff!), we'll plant our seeds and see how things go.

The other day, I came up with another idea as well (ok, coming up with the ideas seems to be the easy part so far... it's the putting them into action and keeping Gordy's interest that we need to work on, LOL!). With so many "special" days and events during the year, I've noticed how a lot of people (myself included *blush*) don't actually know the origins of many of them. This was quite clearly brought to light for me when discussing good ol' Halloween the other day with a friend. Here was me, feeling quite confident in the (supposed) knowledge that Halloween was originally an American tradition. Errr..... WRONG!! I have now learned that it originally came from IRELAND!!! Consider me corrected! LOL! But that's what got me starting to think of just how many holidays, sayings, etc that are out there that have lost their original meaning and are now just thrown about, willy-nilly, without any real knowledge about where it came from, and just what it was supposed to be for! So I've decided that in the "lead-up" to each special day/event, Gordy and I will research the origins for each one, and make something that relates to it. I'm hoping this will be a good way to provoke interesting conversation, an interest in research, a lot of fun crafty/arty stuff, and an enthusiasm for History! With Halloween only a few days away, that, of course, will be our starting point. Anyone got any pumpkins to spare?? Hehehe!
Ok, time for brekkie (yummy!! Yoghurt!!) and to see where Gordy's up to with "Jason and the Argonauts (just really glad he actually ENJOYS reading! Makes this kinda thing soooo much easier! *g*).
Laters!