Spring Break

Spring hit NYC big time this week. So with the outdoors calling and the time change making us a bunch of laggards, it seemed like a good idea to take the week off from our kindergarten routine. Isn't part of homeschooling's appeal, after all, that it allows you the flexibility to make -- and change -- your schedule at will?

We'd just had ten incredible consecutive weeks. Something shifted over the winter holidays and with the advent of the New Year, it was clear that Nini and Desmond were eager to tackle new challenges. Having learned how to write the upper-case alphabet properly over the course of the fall, they wanted to master the lower-case alphabet in much less time. They were curious about math in a new way, more interested in drawing, and just generally itchy to learn.

The amount of time we spent on formal kindergarten didn't change much -- it was still only about an hour -- but they were much more focused than they had been in the fall. It blew me away to watch them enthusiastically puzzling out how to spell a list of three-letter words, the gears in their little brains turning almost visibly. Their foreheads would wrinkle as they worked out new problems, and you could see their sense of pride when they suddenly understood something that had stumped them before. They'd get all excited when I pulled out a new game to play -- say, using cards to make silly sentences once they knew what nouns, verbs, and adjectives were -- and having learned something one week, would happily pronounce it easy the next. We covered an enormous amount of ground in a very short time.

Then, this Monday, it was as if a switch had been tripped. Our schedule was thrown off by the time shift and they were all foot-draggy and bleary, so we skipped kindergarten on Monday for the first time in months. A spell of gorgeous weather began on Tuesday, and they began spending their mornings in the back yard, making "bunny cakes" for our pet rabbits and digging in the dirt. We tried doing outdoor kindergarten on Tuesday, but I could tell their hearts weren't really in it.

I'd like to report that we went on to have a blissful week playing in the sunshine, reveling in the lazy and structureless days. But I can't. There were some lovely moments in the week: making milk carton boats and sailing them in an enormous puddle, encountering crocuses and basking pond turtles and other harbingers of spring, meeting up with friends to explore and play.

But this week was also awfully bumpy, with more conflict than we've had in a while. It wasn't at all like a proper vacation, when Andrew is with us and either the four of us are adventuring together or I'm getting some actual time off. It was just a kind of kicking-around week -- not terrible, but not really satisfying either.

I'm not entirely sure what went wrong this week, but I suspect the sudden lack of routine had a fair amount to do with it. The time the kids and I spend together around the kindergarten table each weekday morning anchors our day; it's highly focused togetherness that seems to fill up their tanks emotionally, often making them more resilient and independent throughout the later parts of the day. So maybe this week should have been Game Week, where we spent that daily hour playing games together, or Do Art Projects in the Sunshine Week, or some other something that respected their need for a break but retained enough of our routine to keep us all from feeling off-kilter.

It's supposed to be gloomy and rainy on Monday, and I've told the kids that the puppets miss them and we'll resume kindergarten then. I don't know if they'll be as gung-ho as they were in the dead of winter, and if not, I'm prepared to shift our kindergarten activities accordingly. And the next time we take a spontaneous break, I'll just need to, well, plan it better.

Ode to Coloursoft

With kids' art supplies, as with tools of all sorts, I've often heard the mantra, "Get the best you can afford." I always assumed that meant you should, say, buy the name-brand crayons instead of the dollar-store ones, the latter being so crappy that they're not even worth the buck you spend on them.

I'd been noticing all last fall that Nini and Desmond didn't have the hand strength to make firm marks with regular colored pencils. We used crayons for a while, but they make such wide lines that they weren't that useful for the kids' developing interest in drawing.

Then I wandered into an art story one day and discovered the miracle of Derwent Coloursoft pencils. Not having had any art training to speak of, I had no idea that pencils could be so extraordinary. The silky lines! The vivid colors! The rich tones!

The pencil set at the art store was jaw-droppingly expensive, but after hunting around on eBay I eventually found one for less than $20 and gave it to the kids for Christmas. The effect was almost instantaneous: Nini and Desmond drew more and better pictures, had more stamina for drawing, and seemed to be getting far more pleasure out of the whole experience.

Three months later, they draw on their own nearly every day. Their hands are much stronger; when they pick up a regular pencil, be it a #2 writing pencil or a regular drawing pencil, they make nice strong impressions on the paper. They've loved the pencils so much that many of them are already worn way down. Funny how simple things can make you happy: When I look at that well-used tin of pencils, I break into a smile.

Kindergarten on the Cusp of Spring, or Trike-Schooling

Big News in Finland!

Well, not really big news. But I'm tickled to report that Finland's largest newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, has just published a piece on homeschooling featuring me, Nini, and Desmond, by journalist Anu Partanen.

Apparently, homeschooling is almost unheard of in Finland, so readers were intrigued to hear about this growing practice in the United States. I tried running the piece through Google Translator but, alas, it was a bit much for their algorithm to handle.

The Puppet Pantheon

I wrote earlier about how hand puppets were helping my kids, especially Nini, tackle handwriting.

As we've worked our way first through the upper-case and then the lower-case alphabet, the cast of the daily puppet show has steadily increased, to the point where I'd need to be an octopus to handle them all.

First there was the Magic C Bunny, inspired by the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. She helps kids not just with the letter c, but with any letter involving a c stroke, like lower-case s or d.

Then there was Hop Frog, who assists with all those letters where you make an initial pencil stroke and then hop up to complete the letter, like capital P and R.

Next came Line Lion, a general purpose sort of puppet, who helps with everything from holding the pencil correctly to making simple letters like L or t. He was joined first by Pointy V, a loud sort of a monster guy with a sharp beak, who assists with v and w and k and so forth, letters where you have to stop your pencil completely and then start again in order to get a nice sharp point. After that came Sneaky J, another monster fellow, who tries his best to trick children with the letters j and q, and the numbers 6 and 9. Finally, there's Diving Dolphin, who helps with lower-case n and m and r -- although he really hates r, because it leaves him hanging in mid-air.

So, to have the kids write something like, say, "Our pet rabbits are named Patches and Snufkin," I have to juggle all six puppets in rapid succession. Nini barks out orders like a cranky stage manager -- "Oh Mommy, we need Hop Frog ..." -- but we usually end up all giggling, with Magic C and Pointy V squabbling over whether round or sharp is more lovable, while Sneaky J comes and tries to eat all the pencils.

It's often raucous and sometimes draining, but it's been really effective. And while we've just finished learning all the letters, I've promised Nini and Desmond that the puppets will stick around our home school for as long as they like.

Counting by 10s

We've started skip counting recently, and I found that our bin of battered, miscellaneous Hot Wheels made the perfect teaching tool.

The technique was easy as pie: Put stickers on the cars, and give them to the kids to play with. In this case, I labeled the cars by 10s. I gave the kids a jumbled pile and asked them to sort them out in order. Then I'd take a car or two out of the line-up and ask them what was missing. Finally, I'd pull out a car or two and ask them what car would come before or after if they were counting by 10s.

They caught on very quickly, and not surprisingly, were soon playing these simple games on their own. When they're ready, I'm planning to do the same for counting by 5s, this time using the plastic counting bears.

Egypt (Meet the Ancient World 5)

Ah, Ancient Egypt ... what a delight! Pyramids, mummies, stunning art and captivating mythology: The material is so rich that you may want to linger on this unit for a good long time -- and return to the topic often.

There are also tons and tons of great resources for introducing Ancient Egypt to young kids. I've only listed our favorites.

Reading

Both Story of the World and the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia (discussed in previous units) contain useful introductions to this topic. You could fill whole shelves with children's books about Ancient Egypt -- just find the appropriate section at your local library and you're sure to turn up something good. This short list highlights those that worked best for us.

Henry Barker, Egyptian Gods and Goddesses
This early reader provides a clear, well-illustrated introduction to Ancient Egyptian mythology, with a lovely account of the soul's journey to the afterlife. It was a huge hit with my kids, who must have acted out the Weighing of the Heart a dozen times. Highly recommended.

Leonard Everett Fisher, The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt

Twelve Egyptian dieties are introduced in this volume, which is sadly out of print but not super difficult to find. The bright, bold illustrations are eye-catching and appealing.

Jacqueline Morley, Egyptian Myths
Wonderful compilation of Egyptian myths, also out of print, alas. The haunting, ancient tales of Osiris, Isis, Set, Horus, and more are presented through compelling text. Some of these stories are violent and may disturb particularly sensitive children, but the stories are so marvelous and make such a wonderful introduction to ancient mythology that I strongly recommend tracking it down.

Shirley Climo and Ruth Heller, The Egyptian Cinderella
This picture book retells the original Cinderella tale, first written down in first century B.C. Greece by the historian Strabo. In it, a young Greek girl named Rhodopis is kidnapped and made a slave in Egypt; because of her talent as a dancer, her master gives her a beautiful pair of dainty slippers, and the story proceeds from there.

Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen, Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Ancient Egypt
Ms. Frizzle of Magic School Bus fame joins a tour group on a trip to modern-day Egypt, and with the help of her magic time machine, leads the group back to ancient times. The goofy premise and cartoon-style illustrations have great kid appeal.

Miles Harvey, Look What Came from Egypt
Colorful guide for children to the many inventions and innovations of the ancient Egyptians.

Film

Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Egypt

Another video from the Schlessinger ancient history for kids series I discussed in the Mesopotamia unit, featuring faux-archeologist Arizona Smith. The film is short and the VHS format antiquated, but this series works well for young kids, so it's worth trying inter-library loan if you can't find it locally.

Reading Rainbow: Mummies Made in Egypt

Sorry -- it's another tricky-to-track-down VHS, this time from the beloved 1980s/1990s kids' TV series Reading Rainbow.

National Geographic's Mysteries of Egypt

Yep -- yet another one on VHS. But it's Omar Sharif! Sitting at the base of a pyramid and opining majestically about Ancient Egypt to an ersatz granddaughter! The camp value for grown-ups is reason enough to seek this one out; the story-told-to-a-sweet-moppet framing appeals to young kids. (Please, dear readers, if you know of good films for kids about Ancient Egypt that are actually available on DVD, post a comment below.)

Play

As with any of these ancient history studies, you can encourage Egypt-themed play at little or no cost. We mummified a little man cut from a potato, wrapped the kids' baby dolls in toilet paper, built a pyramid from a cardboard box, and made a scale of justice using a coat hanger and two small plastic cups. (Yes, that's Desmond as the goddess Maat, holding the Feather of Truth.) There are a couple of different books of Egypt activities for kids that can give you more ideas and detailed instructions.

But if you're going to make one purchase for this unit, I strongly encourage you to get a set of little Egyptian play figures. The easiest-to-find is the Ancient Egypt Toob from Safari, which includes Anubis, Thoth, Isis, and a Bastet cat -- many toy stores carry it.

If your budget allows, there are all sorts of other wonderful Egypt-themed playthings, including a wide array of excavation kits and a full line of fabulous toys from Playmobil, like the really cool pharaoh's temple my sister gave the kids last Christmas. There are card games and flash cards and puzzles and even a modern-day version of the ancient game of Senet that's easy enough for five-year-olds to play. Our oh-so-worth-it splurge was the awesome wooden pyramid-building set from Haba, which functions both as a construction puzzle and as a backdrop for play.

With all the great Egypt material available, I'm sure I've missed something I shouldn't have. Please share your favorite resources and activities in the comments section below.

Our Fall Semester

The new year is upon us, and I'm thinking back about how our kindergarten fall went, and forward to what our spring will be.

We developed a consistent, relaxed rhythm to our days all fall. Each weekday morning, at sometime between 10:00 and 11:00, we'd "do kindergarten." Despite my early qualms about labeling the brief structured part of our day that way, the phrasing stuck, and that was okay.

We'd spend somewhere around an hour -- usually a bit less, occasionally a bit more -- sitting at a table together. We'd start with a piece of story paper. First, the kids would practice handwriting, as we slowly worked our way through the upper-case alphabet, and then they'd draw a picture of their choosing. At first, I had them using #2 pencils and ordinary colored pencils, but I realized quickly that they didn't have the hand strength yet to make firm impressions with them, so we switched to crayons.

Next we'd often do something gently mathematical, like one or two Mind Benders puzzles or an activity with pattern blocks. Many days, we'd tackle a small art project, like painting the horizon, and we'd usually do some musical activity -- playing rhythm sticks or singing along to my guitar, that sort of thing. That was it.

Well, that wasn't it at all: They spent hours and hours playing, both with friends and on their own. We read mountains of books. We made lots of trips to the library and the zoos and museums. We hiked in the country and explored in the city.

But that brief time each morning was the extent of our formal, structured schooling. And with just a couple months of it, I've noticed changes in several areas. They weren't much for drawing before -- I think they felt unsure of themselves -- but little by little, they've been gaining both confidence and skill. Now they love bringing little sketchbooks along when we go on outings. Their hand strength and handwriting have improved tremendously, and they're ready to move on to lower-case letters.

There's a less tangible but more important shift, too, that's not that easy to articulate. We've chosen to homeschool our kids in significant part because we want them to have many more opportunities for free play and informal learning than they would in the foolishly academicized setting of many kindergartens today. And yet, there's something about these small but consistent doses of more formal learning that has given them a new sense of themselves as active, focused learners. As people who have worked steadily on something they found challenging and felt themselves progress.

It would be so easy to overdo. I watch carefully for when they seem tired or drained, when the activity we're tackling seems like too much, and I back off. For now, at least, they answer with an enthusiastic yes every time I ask them, "Hey guys, do you want to do kindergarten?"

Mesopotamia (Meet the Ancient World 4)

After dinosaurs, woolly mammoths, and cave people, you may find Mesopotamia a bit of a challenge. There aren't nearly as many materials available that are suitable for young children, and it will take a little more effort and enthusiasm on your part to convey what's fascinating and marvelous about the ancient cultures of the Fertile Crescent, the first true civilizations on earth.

Yeah, you could just skip forward to Egypt. But then you'd miss ziggurats, the invention of the wheel, and the first cities, all of which are captivating to kids. And you wouldn't have They Might Be Giants echoing in your head: "We're the Mesotopamians! Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Gilgamesh ...."

Reading

The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History, pp. 110-113, 132
More solid, basic overview material from the good folks of Usborne.

"Chapter 7: Hammurabi and the Babylonians," in Susan Wise Bauer, The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, Volume 1: Ancient Times
Any child's sense of justice will be offended by an account of Hammurabi's code, and the discussion it provokes about rules and fairness can lead you in all sorts of marvelous directions.

DK Eyewitness Books: Mesopotamia
This is one of those sturdy Dorling Kindersley volumes you've certainly encountered already, those big books that cover every conceivable topic from robots to pirates to planets. I must admit that I find them informative but uninspiring (I can't tell whether my kids share my opinion or have been infected by my disdain). But these books invariably have great photos and illustrations, so when you're dealing with a topic like this one, where resources are scarce, the DK Eyewitness is well worth tracking down.

Marie Neurath, They Lived Like This in Ancient Mesopotamia
This out-of-print volume is worth tracking down. Most of he lovely line illustrations are derived from Mesopotamian cylinder seals, the intricately carved stones that were used as identifying marks on everything from clay tablets to jars of olive oil.

Peter Chrisp, Mesopotamia: Iraq in Ancient Times
This book is a bit advanced for this age group, but it has a nice mix of illustrations: color drawings imagining life in ancient Mesopotamia are presented alongside photographs of key artifacts.

Film

Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Mesopotamia
Back in the 1990s, Schlessinger Media produced a whole series of short films for children about ancient civilizations. They're officially pegged for grades 3-7, but my five-year-olds watched them with interest. Sure, a whole bunch of the material went right over their heads, but were fascinated by the visual imagery -- and liked the hokey faux-archeologist-narrator Arizona Smith. Many library systems have at least some of the films in this series; with effort, you can also find reasonably priced copies through Amazon Marketplace or eBay.

They Might Be Giants, "The Mesopotamians"
In truth, your kids are more likely to be perplexed than enlightened by this catchy video by the brilliant indie-turned-kiddie rock band They Might Be Giants. They won't possibly be able to puzzle out the premise -- Sargon, Hammurabi, et al. are skeletal members of an obscure musical group traveling by Econoline van -- but they might be amused.

Play

The play part of our Mesopotamia unit was an utter and complete delight. We started with some good basic activities. Ziggurats, or simple step pyramids, are easy and engaging for kids to build. We used Duplos, but blocks or playdough would work well, too. We used some slabs of self-hardening clay to etch our own versions of cuneiform text, and we made some basic flatbread, talking about the challenges involved in making it back in the days of Sumer. I found an activity book that showed how to make your own shaduf, but that seemed too complicated, and I thought about having them try out a pottery wheel but never quite got around to it.

The revelations came one day when I took the kids out to a big muddy expanse at our neighborhood park and told them that their job was to create the world's first city. Like the ancient Mesopotamians, they had to either build with mud or find some way to exchange what they had in their mud flat for other materials they might need. Well, before you knew it, they had dug a Tigris and Euphrates River, excavated some precious metals (bottle caps and the like), and set up trade relations throughout the region, most notably with a nearby mulch pile. And suddenly they had a vivid, concrete grasp of such advanced concepts as the importance of raw materials and transportation in development.

Other Resources

"Gifts of Ancient Mesopotamia" poster, part of an Ancient Civilization Chart Pack from Creative Teaching Press. I purchased the entire series, and put the relevant poster up for each unit we covered.

For New Yorkers

After spending some time on this material, a visit to the Metropolitan Museum's Ancient Near Eastern galleries will make your jaw drop. If you've watched the Schlessinger video on Ancient Mesopotamia, be sure to point out the gold and lapis lazuli headdresses from the royal tomb at Ur. And definitely don't miss the panel from Babylon's Ishtar Gate (half a dozen other museums in the United States boast such panels, too -- Nebuchadnezzar's riches have traveled far). Children will be most impressed by some of the humblest artifacts: the envelopes, fashioned of clay, containing the clay correspondence of the time.

The American Museum of Natural History, meanwhile, has a reproduction of the stele containing Hammurabi's code of law in the wonderfully bizarre mishmash that is its Asian Peoples exhibit.

Know other great resources for teaching young children about Ancient Mesopotamia, or have experiences to share? Please post in the comments section ...

The Earliest People, Farming, and Domestication (Meet the Ancient World 3)

For young kids, even a very brief introduction to early humans can have a powerful effect. We started not by looking at books but by sitting together in a park and imagining life without: without electricity, machines, road, buildings, you name it. We talked at great length about the basic requirements for human survival, and how one might fashion tools, clothing, and shelter out of the materials at hand. This discussion captured their imagination so thoroughly that they were well primed to continue exploring the material in more detail with the resources below.

Reading

"Chapter 1: The Earliest People," in Susan Wise Bauer, The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, Volume 1: Ancient Times

A very accessible introduction to the nomadic life of early humans, and the advent of agriculture.

The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History, pp. 82-93, 96-101, 108-109.

Concise, richly illustrated overviews of key topics like the discovery of fire, ice age hunting techniques, and cave art.

Jan Brett, The First Dog
The famed children's book author and illustrator Jan Brett imagines how the first wolf might have been tamed, through the tale of a young cave boy named Kip. My kids loved this one.

Jane Chisholm, Living in Prehistoric Times (Usborne First History)
OK, this 1982 book is dated, and a little hokey. But it seemed more accessible to the very young than much of what I could find at my local library. Prehistoric life is largely presented here through children's experiences, which holds an obvious appeal.

Aliki, Wild and Woolly Mammoths
This wonderful book from Aliki about prehistoric pachyderms describes in detail how early humans derived food, shelter, and clothing from woolly mammoths. The hunt scene is a little gory, but if your child isn't bothered by such things, this is a fascinating look at life in the Stone Age.

Play

Tool-Making
You don't need to teach a five-year-old actual flint-knapping: Just point them in the direction of some sticks and stones and you ought to get some pretty creative tool-making. This no-budget activity can keep your kids engaged for hours; decide for yourself whether just to leave them to their own devices or help them think about what tools might be required for different tasks.

Cave Painting
All you need is a big cardboard box and some magic markers to get your own little cave artists launched. I taped our box to the dining room table and covered it all with a big tablecloth to make the cave deeper and more mysterious, and gave the kids a fire (e.g., flashlight) to help them see.

For New Yorkers

If you live within striking distance of New York City, I highly recommend a field trip to the Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History. The mammoth-bone house alone is magical to see.

Are there great resources or activity ideas I missed? Please share in the comments section...

Dinosaurs & Evolution (Meet the Ancient World 2)

Most kids are fascinated by dinosaurs, and dinosaur-themed books, activities, and toys abound. The point of introducing dinosaurs here, however, is to set the stage for a basic introduction to evolution, and this presents the parent of small children with a big problem: There are shockingly few good resources available to explain evolution to the younger set.

Memo to the children's book authors of the world: Please, please put your talents to work creating evolution-themed books for small kids!

Reading

This list contains a few books on dinosaurs that worked well for us, but really, you can just go to the relevant section in your local library and pick out a few good volumes. You won't, by the way, find the Magic Treehouse books on this or any of my reading lists, although many kids and parents love them and they do introduce a wide range of historical topics that are relevant here. This is a matter of personal taste: I don't like the writing style, and I can't stand the whole girl-led-by-her-heart-boy-led-by-his-brain shtick.

The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History

This book is a great resource to have around, mainly for its marvelously detailed illustrations, which can spark all kinds of discussions about whatever topic is at hand. Some of the text is too dry or technical for small children, but that doesn't matter -- pick and choose. Over the course of several sittings, the first 80 or so pages of this book can provide a basic overview of evolution on earth from the beginnings of life to the advent of Homo sapiens.

Aliki, Digging Up Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs Are Different, and My Visit to the Dinosaurs

Children's book author and illustrator Aliki has published several good introductory books on dinosaurs, all within the excellent "Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science" series.

Natalie Lunis, A T. Rex Named Sue: Sue Hendrickson's Huge Discovery

A fossil with a name and story attached to it holds extra appeal for small children. Book publishers know this: There's a whole mini-industry of books about the famous dinosaur named Sue. This is simply the one we found at our library and liked. Scholastic's biography of Sue Hendrickson, My Life As An Explorer, has an appealing angle for homeschoolers and unschoolers, as it portrays a fascinating and successful career made possible by Hendrickson's decision to drop out of high school. (Scholastic, not surprisingly, made sure to shoehorn in a pious passage about the importance of staying in school, to try to prevent kids from being inspired by Hendrickson's example.)

Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld and Lucia Washburn, Dinosaur Babies

The title says it all.

Lisa Westberg Peters and Lauren Stringer, Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story

This was the closest I could find to an age-appropriate book about evolution. (Steven Jenkin's Life on Earth seemed too advanced, and I haven't yet tracked down a copy of Ellen Jackson's The Tree of Life -- let me know, readers, if you've found it worth buying.) It's written in a hushed, awed voice that I found too ponderous, but it does cover the basics in a kid-friendly way.

Film

Prehistoric Planet: The Complete Dino Dynasty

Extra-sensitive kids might find this BBC series too scary; my kids (who were freaked out by an old tape we found at a garage sale of The Land Before Time) loved it. Go figure.

Play

This one's a no-brainer; if you don't already have an array of little plastic dinosaurs in your house, they are easily and inexpensively acquired. Many different companies sell little dinosaur excavation kits, which my kids loved. Some children's and science museums have full-size faux dinosaur digs for kids -- ask around in your area.

Have other books or activities to recommend? Tips based on your own experience? Please share...

Learning About the Past (Meet the Ancient World 1)

The marvelous thing about introducing small children to the world's history is that it's all new to them -- but, especially when beginning, it's worth reminding yourself frequently that it's really and truly all new to them. They may not have any sense that the world was different in the past than it is today, much less that the world they see around them was shaped in significant part by things that happened long ago.

So it's worth taking a little time to talk in general terms about the past and how we learn about it. This unit can be fairly brief; we spent perhaps a week on it.

One note: I've included Amazon links to make it easy for you to learn more about the books I'm recommending, but given the mountain of books you'll be reading if you follow this curriculum all the way through, you'll definitely want to search your local library system first.

Reading

"Introduction: How Do We Know What Happened?" from Susan Wise Bauer, The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, Volume 1: Ancient Times

Story of the World is a series of four introductory world history books that are very popular among homeschoolers. The author is Christian, and her worldview seeps through at points, but overall it is well-regarded among secular homeschoolers. The writing is clear and generally engaging, but it's intended as a grade-school curriculum, and covers too much material too quickly for 4-6 year olds to absorb: If you try to sit down and read it straight through to your younger child, I'm guessing you'll have at best a very fidgety audience. At worst, you'll make the whole study of history seem dry from the get-go. So I recommend using it selectively; I'll list the chapters we found most useful, which include this introductory chapter, which succinctly introduces the concepts of history and archeology.

Kate Duke, Archaeologists Dig for Clues

A group of children accompany their archaeologist friend on a dig at the site of a prehistoric village. Well-written overview of how archaeologists work, and how they use information from the tiniest artifacts to piece together theories about long-ago worlds. From the "Let's-Read-and-Find-Out-About Science" series.

Aliki, Fossils Tell of Long Ago

Solid, informative introduction to fossils by the great children's book writer and illustrator Aliki. While the writing in this book may not be as fluid or elegant as in some of her other books, she does a good job of conveying the information to a young audience.

Play

If just being read these books doesn't send your kid out to dig in the nearest available patch of dirt, a gentle suggestion should be all that's required. If the ground is frozen, or you'd just like to have an indoor digging activity, you can make your own cornstarch tar pit. You don't need a recipe: Mix cornstarch with water and black washable tempera paint until the mixture seems appropriately is roughly what you might imagine would fill a tar pit. Sink small objects in the glop -- seashells, bottle caps, little plastic dinosaurs, whatever -- and provide a spoon or other tool with which to excavate. Yes, it will be gooey and messy, and also very fun.

Have other books or activities to recommend? Tips based on your own experience? Please share...

Vocabulary Lesson

Cute and Sneaky

My daughter does not take well to being corrected. Today I pointed out, nicely, that she had put her pants on backwards; she howled. A gentle suggestion that she, say, try holding her pencil differently can bring forth whimpers and tears.

Now, she used to draw her capital Rs the way some people might start drawing a little chick, by making a little circle with two lines coming down from it. Sweet, but illegible, unless you wanted to give it a beak and feathers and communicate through pictographs. Meanwhile, she was reversing so many other of her letters than I started looking up whether she might be showing signs of dyslexia.

So one day this summer, hoping it might help, I copied a few capital R handwriting worksheets and casually gave them to her. She's no dummy. She knew I was implicitly correcting her little-critter Rs, and she first grumbled, then sniffled, then melted into a puddle of tears.

Various homeschooling friends suggested, ever so gently, that perhaps I should just chill out and not worry about whether she was making her Rs correctly. She'd figure it out eventually. Their advice made a lot of sense, but I didn't want to give up.

An online friend generously passed along some Handwriting Without Tears materials, and reading through them, I found a brilliant technique for preventing or correcting reversals, on letters that included capital R. They call them "frog jump capitals": letters where you first make a top-to-bottom vertical line, then jump back up to continue. Get your child to make those initial moves correctly, and voila: no more reversals (or weird critters)!

Nini loves anything cute, especially cute animals. They already suggested using a "Magic C Bunny" puppet for letters that begin with a C stroke. So I dug out a frog puppet, told the kids his name was Hop Frog, and had him lead them in doing "hop frog letters" every day.

I made a point of keeping it brief and easy. Froggy would ask them to draw a line, hop up, and then make a D or an E. That is, some letter that had never made Nini sob.

After quite a few days of this, Froggy oh-so-casually suggested first a P, then an R. Happily and cheerfully, Nini drew lovely letters, with no memory of the summer's tears.

OK, I know I'm patting myself on the back here for tricking a 5-year-old. But it worked. Both kids look forward to their brief handwriting practice each day, and both are showing real improvement. And I'm reminding myself: keep it fun, keep it cute, and, if necessary, make it sneaky.

Meet the Ancient World: A Curriculum for the Very Young

One day last winter, when my twins were 4 1/2, they were fighting back exasperation as they explained to their obviously dense mother the differences between Radiator Springs McQueen and Cruising McQueen, two die-cast metal toy figures from the movie Cars. They could describe in great detail the different paint jobs and features each boasted, and could go on at length about when each appeared in the film.

Like many kids their age, Desmond and Nini had developed a fascination with the world of the Piston Cup and Radiator Springs. They had an encyclopedic knowledge of the movie's characters and personal histories and had developed the discernment to pick out small differences between the many diecast versions of each. The characters loomed large in their imagination and play life.

Well, I thought, if they can have this complex connection to Lightning McQueen, Doc Hudson, and Tow Mater, why not to Isis, Osiris, and Anubis? Or Zeus, Athena, and Aphrodite? At a time when they were so clearly eager to learn about the world around them, might it be possible to introduce them to its history in an age-appropriate and systematic way?

Over the weeks to come, I stayed up late nearly every night researching what resources were available to teach ancient history to the very young and sorting out what kind of approach I wanted to take. And over the months to come, as Nini and Desmond enthusiastically moved from one topic to the next -- dinosaurs, evolution, early humans, Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, the Old Testament, Ancient Greece -- I developed not just a great bibliography and set of resource lists, but also an approach that seemed to work extremely well for their age.

My research sample is of course tiny and unrepresentative -- early on, my friend Joanne Rendell and her son Benny decided to do the curriculum in tandem with us, meaning exactly three kids have tested it out. But I'm sharing it here in the hope that some of you will want to try it as well, and will post here about your experiences as you do, sharing new insights and resources.

Small children have no preconceptions about ancient history, no notion that it might be dry or remote or inaccessible. They also, however, have no real conception of time -- certainly not of millenia or centuries or even decades. Dates are meaningless to them, and all but the very vaguest chronologies impossible to grasp. Teaching ancient history to small children, in my experience, involves not trying to explain historical causation or even spending much time discussing historical change: It's a matter, instead, of making introductions to the marvelous, beautiful, and fascinating civilizations of long ago.

With each topic we explored, I read the kids piles of books, favoring well-illustrated picture books, and leaning less toward non-fiction than toward fiction -- either fictionalized accounts of the past such as, say, Jan Brett's The First Dog, or kids' versions of the myths and stories of a given civilization. We often found good films to watch in tandem with our reading and, living in New York City, we have been able to take marvelous field trips to institutions like the American Museum of Natural History or the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I will detail these resources in each topic I address.

Early on, it became clear to me that the key element in the whole learning process was play -- lots and lots of open-ended, imaginative play. I could always tell that the material was sinking in when it came alive in their play. Where possible and practical, I acquired toys that tied into what we were studying: little plastic figures of Egyptian gods and goddesses, for instance, and architectural unit blocks for recreating Ancient Greece or Rome. Often, though, the kids repurposed existing toys to fit the theme: their assortment of vintage Fisher-Price Little People became the Greek gods and goddesses, while one of those plastic Barrels of Monkeys enabled them to build the monkey bridge to Lanka described in the Ancient Indian epic The Ramayana. Other times, we created toys or props for their play out of simple materials, as when they "excavated" a tar pit for "fossils"; or they made the world around them into their ancient-history stage, as when they built a mud Mesopotamia in the local park or transformed one three-foot-tall rock there into Mount Olympus.

As much as possible, we've followed this course of study with our friends Benny and Jo; it has greatly enriched the experience for all of us to have a history-themed get-together one or more times a week. Jo reports that Benny, who is a single child, engages in ancient history play much more avidly after these encounters.

Our pace has been quite leisurely; we stay on a topic until it feels right to move on, usually not until three to six weeks have passed. There are no worksheets, quizzes, or anything else that would add stress or drudgery to this study. The central goal here, above all, is the same as you might want from a social introduction: to leave a positive impression, to have the kids come away with a sense that these civilizations they are meeting are fascinating, that learning about them is fun.

If you achieve that, you'll meet another goal as well: helping your kids acquire a kind of basic, broad cultural literacy that will help them understand and navigate the world around them. Most people in my generation didn't get this kind of education; I certainly didn't, even though I attended excellent schools and read avidly throughout my life. No one thinks that your child will remember all she learned about the ancient world at age five when she reaches adulthood. But by acquainting her at an early age with cultural figures from Thoth to Moses to Ganesh, imparting a familiarity with Buddhism, the Bible, and Babylon, you'll soon see her finding references to these cultural basics everywhere and delighting in the experience.

Finally: We began this curriculum nearly a year ago, and I'm just now getting around to writing some of it down. Homeschooling twins often leaves me exhausted at the end of the day, with little time or energy to write. So it may be a while before I get it all down, and I will almost certainly jump back and forth between what we're doing now and earlier material. I hope you'll be inspired to give it a try -- it's been extraordinary fun, and I've learned at least as much as my kids have in the process.