Detective Kid - Links for your own Little Sherlock

We listened to this audio story at The Friend, from January 2010. It's about a young detective who asks his mother to borrow a small mirror for his detective kit (he already has the hat, the flashlight, and the magnifying glass to look for clues, but he needs a mirror to see around corners). It slips out of his pocket and he kneels on it, accidentally breaking it. The story is about honesty and eventually he tells his mom the truth about how the mirror broke.

This story got Gilgamesh really excited about playing detective. We happen to have a magnifying glass, small children's flashlight, and cheap-o mirror for him to use. But today I realized I have no idea how to guide him in playing detective. And he needs a little guidance. He wants to play, but has no idea how to begin.

We're doing two things about this:

1. Looking up detective stories for children. 


2. Consulting the internet for home detective games:

TLC Detective Games for Kids - includes instructions for an invisible ink secret message game, periscope game, and suggests using literature to "solve" classic mysteries with a notebook, basically taking notes during a mystery.

Wiki How: How to Be a Good Detective - actually just some fun ideas for kids to get into the spirit, including wearing dark clothes and finding a fort, rallying their friends, etc.

Blue's Clues Ghost Hunt - is an online game for 4-6-year-olds. Not exactly what I had in mind, but might be fun.

PBS History Detectives Kids - a website with links to more free online games for kids, including How Old is This House and I-Spy with Magnifying Glass. And a printable detective kit.

Party Games - an exhaustive list of party games with instructions on how to play with friends! Some of these have a detective flair to them, like I-Spy and Mafia.

We'll probably end up doing treasure hunts until he's a little older. Many of the resources I found involve complicated logic tests.


We did buy The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (a kid's version) illustrated by Lucy Corvino. From reading this aloud together, he'll see the amazing deductions Holmes reaches that wow Watson all the time. :)

A note on reading aloud with a four-year-old and two-year-old: Just like I mentioned in an earlier post, children will always surprise you with what they learn when you think they aren't listening. You never know when they'll grasp onto something you're teaching. That's why repetition is so important. In reading aloud, I've already found that my wanderlusting preschooler rushes back to the couch to see the book when he hears an interesting visual described. He wants to see the picture, but what he's learning is that he can already see the picture of what I'm describing in his own mind. He's building his imagination each time I read aloud, without me having to do anything extra.

As he gets better at listening and forming these mental images, I'll make it more of a habit to ask him to narrate back to me what happened in the story, as suggested in The Well-trained Mind, the perfect segue into classic book reports. For now, I'm happy to see him running over to see if there's a picture to check against his own mental image.

Good luck with your own little detective adventures!

Pocket Chart in Action

So it was a while ago that I bought this awesome Pocket Chart at Michaels. We've been winging it with our subjects in mind for some time now. The other night, I finally put times on the cards and ordered them according to our usual day's progression.

First thing in the morning, breakfast and family prayer before Daddy goes to work

8:00am Scriptures: Yesterday we read chapter 12 in the New Testament Stories for Children and today we read chapter 13. That's the story of Jesus' first miracle (water to wine) and the story of Jesus cleansing the temple, respectively.

I found some amazing pictures to print out and laminate for next time we go over this story. That's the great thing about preschool. I'm making resources I'll use with all my children.

8:30am Writing: We used http://more.starfall.com to print out writing practice pages for Gilgamesh, but he also wrote down his own words. He prefers to do this because writing between the lines isn't as fun for him. :) We're working on that. On a tiny note card, he wrote "I love you too so much."

Writing transitions nicely into...

9:15am Art: Yesterday Gilgamesh made up his own art project of tracing his hands, counting his fingers, and coloring the palms orange. He showed me his own palm and said, "My hand is orange." Today, he colored a page full of letters, following the instructions to color the A's orange and all the other letters black (except we used purple because we couldn't find black).


10:00am Math: We did http://more.starfall.com Candy Factory, which introduces the concept of places, like the hundreds place, the tens place, and the ones place. When you count up to 9 by ones (candy canes), and try to add one more, they'll tell you it doesn't fit in the bucket and then wrap all ten candy canes with a ribbon. Then they'll try to fit the bunch into the tens bucket, where it fits nicely. Once he got 9 bunches of ten in the tens bucket, a new bucket was rolled out: the HUNDREDS bucket! After that, Gilgamesh had a blast adding candy canes until he reached 999. When he added that last candy cane to the ones bucket, we watched the candy canes bunch up, move over, bunch up again, and finally all ten bunches of 100 danced around with a giant 1000 and confetti. A very fun intro to high numbers and places. After that, I made up a quick page of random numbers like 537, 421, 201, etc. so we could practice saying them aloud. He wanted to say "five, three, seven." We worked on saying "five hundred thirty seven." He didn't master this concept today because this was just an intro, but I'm very glad we found such a fun way to practice.


11:00am Lunch


11:30am Naps


3:30pm Music: Baby Loves Jazz, Ella the Elephant Scats Like That book/CD, dancing with instruments, singing along

4:00pm Reading, Science, Social Studies: Right now, our reading overlaps with social studies and science since Gilgamesh is so interested in his body books and most of our Sonlight books include great examples of social studies, fables, and other countries. But yesterday we read A Pocket Guide to Rocks & Minerals.



page 46 has Malachite, a stunning picture of a rough green, crystalline stone that looks like this when polished:



Gilgamesh saw this and immediately wanted it. He lost some interest when I told him we weren't buying it. :) But we did learn that malachite was used from antiquity to about 1800 as a crucial element in green paint. It's also been used quite a bit in the jewelry trade, and you can find malachite boxes that are very beautiful (and expensive). It was extracted from King Solomon's Mines for over three thousand years. It isn't used in green paint anymore, but still very popular in jewelry and metaphysical healing. It's found in Russia's Ural mountains, Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Mexico, Australia, England, France, Israel, and the USA.

Then we cracked open Presidents and Prophets: The Story of America's Presidents and the LDS Church.



We read about James Monroe, who was the president from the time the prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. was eleven years old until he was nineteen. James Monroe died one year after the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Later prophets touted his Monroe Doctrine as a crucial pillar of keeping the young nation of America free from Europe's interference and allowing the young Church of Jesus Christ to be organized and (largely) protected. Even though there were mob persecutions later on, and the next president wasn't interested in going against Missouri's execution order for all Mormons (because he'd lose the Missouri vote), the Church was allowed to continue out West in spite of persecution because of the principles of freedom of religion then unique to America.

This was a great beginning for such a book, and I'm looking forward to the rest of it. It offers a unique view of Church history, one from the White House. :)

We also read a few stories from the Lion Bedtime Story Book, one about a famine-stricken land saved by a clever mouse who finds a store of wheat in an underground cellar, and one about a tiger who gets stuck trying to trick the rabbit in his own hidey-hole. Gotta love those simple stories and fables with a moral!

In between the schedule and the last evening item on the pocket chart is our memory scripture:

Gilgamesh has that down pat, including the reference. It's awesome.

And the last item is Kinect with Daddy, in the event that Daddy gets home at a decent time before bedtime and the boys have eaten dinner. Evenings are crazy at our house. (I'm sure we're not the only ones.) Last night, he didn't get to do this because we went out to eat instead, which was plenty of exercise (you try holding hands with a four-year-old and two-year-old across a busy parking lot). Hee hee. 

So it was a great day yesterday and today we're doing okay, too. We're actually having a bit of an attitude problem, but it's getting better. We said a prayer to help Mommy to have patience, and the boys to be obedient, and it's definitely getting better. 

Gilgamesh just got out the vacuum cleaner (the big one) and asked if it was time to clean the house yet. So here we go! I'm off to help Gilgamesh clean the house. (Yesterday both boys fought over helping me load the dishwasher.)

I love my family. I'm grateful for the ability to teach them at home. And the pocket chart is awesome. 

The end.

Saturday Fun

What. A. Day! It's been wild and fun and now we're chilling at home with no intention of going out for the rest of the weekend (except for Church tomorrow). The great thing about all the learning activities we did today is that we didn't have to prepare any of them. They were things I made years ago and filed away when Gilgamesh outgrew them. I just pulled them out and we played them again!

We started the day with games! Alastor sorted construction paper apples into the corresponding basket. It took a few runs to get the hang of it, but eventually he put the green apples in the green basket, etc.

Gilgamesh played Buy it Right with Daddy, practicing calculator use and identifying types of money. Alastor matched game pieces onto the square cards.

These felt apples go with the Ten Red Apples song:

Ten Red Apples

Ten red apples growing on a tree,

Five for you and five for me.

Help me shake the tree just so,

And ten red apples fall down below.

One, two , three, four, five,

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

We probably sang it ten times! Each time, the boys took one side of the 'tree' and shook it until the apples fell off. Then we counted as we put them back on. I remember playing this with Gilgamesh when he was almost three and now he's reading! Time flies. It's fun watching Alastor do the same activities that got Gilgamesh hooked on learning.

Each boy counted five apples onto his half of the tree.

Put them back up and do it again.

We did this "one more time" five extra times. How do you say no to a boy who's bouncing on his toes in excitement? Well, when he wants candy, it's easy. But when he wants to count the apples again? Can't just say no.

Dance Central on Kinect, one of Daddy's favorite workouts.

Then we headed to the park to get some sunlight and fresh air! We almost got too much of the former. Alastor's cheeks were bright red about twenty minutes later. He's not sunburned, but boy, were we hot!

Alastor played in the sand a ton. 

Daddy taught Gilgamesh how to bat and throw.

Sports are one of Gilgamesh's favorite things. He'd play them all day every day if he could. I wonder sometimes what he'll choose when he realizes they each take so much commitment. Lots of time for that, though, thank goodness.

This picture of Alastor makes me smile every time.

We brought baseball gear for him, too, but he was way more interested in exploring and climbing!

...and jumping on the bleachers.

After all that excitement, we went to Michael's and picked up a few things I need for church tomorrow (knick-knacks for the Young Women), plus some crafts and school resources. And (good news!) I found a $6 pocket chart with colorful scheduling cards for Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies, Art, etc. It's going to make me feel so much more organized, and help teach Gilgamesh about time and sequence of activities. One of my biggest fears as a homeschool mom is that my kids won't learn to organize themselves, since that's something I've always struggled with. But I firmly believe that if we start them young and keep going back to organizational principles, it will become something they want to do, to help them reach their goals. It's just a pocket chart, but it represents the beginning of that to me.

Daddy  bought some kits to do with the boys, like a bird house and a wooden plane. Very cool! Daddy-Son time is crucial to creating champion knights. Well, Alastor keeps trying to pull me away to dance to the movie credits of Cheaper by the Dozen. Gotta go!