Finishing up the year

Everyone wound up catching the stomach bug Milo had last week, so instead of finishing up the year in a blaze of productive glory as planned, we're kind of taking it easy this week.  Ari should finish Singapore 4a, though, and Milo should finish Explode the Code 3.  And I'm trying to finish up our current read-alouds in history, so we don't stop halfway through those for two weeks.  

We're also doing some fun stuff that we don't usually do, like tea time. Tea time is an idea from the Bravewriter website; I've written about it before, because we used to do it with some regularity.  Basically, you make your table all pretty, have some tea, and read.  Periodically, the kids ask when we're going to do tea time again.  And the truth is, tea time is easy and good for us and everyone likes it, so why haven't we been doing it?  I don't know.  But we did it on Monday, and we'll try to keep it up. 

We used to always do hot chocolate, but this time both Ari and Milo wanted actual tea and even drank some of it (after putting a good bit of sugar in it).  We pulled down the sugar dish, even!  And place mats!

I have a fair-sized collection of poetry anthologies for kids that I've picked up here and there, so I pulled out a few, and Ari picked Where the Sidewalk Ends, and we started to read.  I think I actually did a pretty good job of talking about the poems on the fly.  We just learned about similes and metaphors in book club awhile back, so we found lots of those. Think what we could accomplish if I actually read the poems in advance!  We talked about how one of my professors in college told us you should read a poem 100 times (and then we talked about what hyperbole is) and how every word is important in a poem.  We read Ted Hughes' "Roger the Dog," which I'd never read before and found charming.  Anyway, it was good stuff.  Being comfortable with poetry is one of those homeschooling goals for the kids I always have in the back of my head.  I had a really fabulous English teacher my last three years of high school (same teacher all three years), and I felt very prepared for college lit classes; even in grad school, I always felt like I was more comfortable with and had a better background in poetry than a lot of the other students...it's so neglected in high school classes, even generally good ones.  And then people avoid it in college.  Also, I just like poetry, and the kids (Ari in particular) seem to as well.

 

 

There is much blathering to do about future plans--both for next year and for the rest of this year.  But I'll save that for later.  Did you know that Roger the Dog is so lazy that "he only wakes to scratch his fleas?"  It's true.  In high school, I always disliked Ted Hughes because my friend Angie was very into Sylvia Plath, and she told me he was a jerk.

November 30-December 4....and BEYOND!

Filing!  I really should be filing instead of blogging.  I got behind on filing (school) stuff around the time we went to Disneyland and, much like my e-mail inbox, it has now spiraled completely out of control.  Well, not exactly like my e-mail inbox.  I doubt there are more than 13,000 unfiled papers in there.  I keep resolving to spend 10 minutes filing every night, and then I keep not doing it.  Sigh.  We have a two week break coming up, so maybe it will get done then.  Because there's nothing else to do during Christmas break, right?

Aside from growing more behind on filing, we had a good week.  We took most of  Thanksgiving week off, since Dave was off work and his parents were in town.  But then we hopped right back in the next week and made a good bit of progress toward my goal of being more or less halfway done by Christmas so that we can relax and enjoy our break.  All of our classes are over until after New Year's; we had the last meeting of book club until January and discussed James and the Giant Peach.  Choice quote from one of  the kids (likely one of MY kids) about what Roald Dahl was telling us: "if you don't share, you'll DIE!"  Yes, indeed.  Well, not usually.

Ari had a mini-crisis about Writing with Ease; there was much crying and angry growling.  I posted on the WTM boards about it and got some good ideas.  I think part of the problem is just that he doesn't like history all that much and was on his second week of reading about Paul Revere. He'd read the passage and then not remember anything about it (which I understand, since I've certainly experienced needing to read the same paragraph three times when it's mind-numbingly boring).  This week (jumping ahead, which is what happens when you don't update your blog until Wednesday) I tried some new things, AND we finally finished Paul Revere (and moved on to Homer Price), and things went much more smoothly.  We talked about the passage informally after he read it (instead of using the scripted questions in WWE), and I had him write his narration down himself instead of dictating it to me.  And it was fine!  He did a great job and didn't cry at all.  But he still hates narrations, he tells me.  Of course.

Milo is reading the first Magic Tree House book!  He's doing really well with it, often wanting to keep reading after I tell him he can stop. 

Ari is reading the sixth Harry Potter and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles (by Julie Andrews!  I love Julie Andrews!)  I'm toying with the idea of throwing in some independent history reading for him (right now I read everything aloud to all three (or two, depending on Gus' mood)), but there's no way we'll get through all the books that way.  And Ari can zip through in a couple of days of reading sessions a book it might take me at least a week to read out loud.  I think I'll keep it light this year, though, as I don't want to replace the time he spends reading from the books to read before you're 13 list.  I sent him up with a biography of Helen Keller today just to read for a few minutes.  I suspect his Scholastic Helen Keller biography doesn't talk a lot about socialism...I should go read it and see and then brush up on my Lies My Teacher Told Me.  Because I don't want to be one of those lying teachers.

Our science kits came!  I love science kits.  We're working on the Science in a Nutshell vision and hearing kit right now (we mostly finished the human body in REAL science, so I thought this would be a fun thing to wrap that up with before we move on to plants and animals).  It's so complete it's almost ridiculous.  I mean, seriously, even I could dig up an index card somewhere.  But thanks to Science in a Nutshell, I don't have to!  I think I did have to provide my own plain white paper last week, but I handled it fine.  So I have that and then the Thames and Kosmos genetics and DNA kit to do.  The Thames and Kosmos kit might be a little over Milo's head; we'll see. 

The vision and hearing kit was $39 and comes with an activity guide, 3 activity journals (how convenient...guess I'd better not have any more kids), and all the materials for the 11 activities in the guide.  Most of the activities take around 20-30 minutes.  My plan is to do the activities maybe 2 days a week and then read related books from the library (or our bookshelf) another day.  But plans and I don't always get along so well....

My beautiful science kit:

Today we did the third activity--blind spots.  First Ari put two (included) stickers 7-8 centimeters apart on the (included) index card:

Then he covered his left eye and moved the card forward and backwards, focusing on the left butterfly (the right butterfly disappears at a certain point):

Next, he kept both eyes open and did the same thing...no blind spot!

 

 

And finally, he answered questions about the results in his journal:

Still in pajamas, you'll note.  Milo is sick today, so they're all watching Elf and letting me finish this entry finally!

Through November 20

I'm not one to sit down before a school year starts and map out exactly what pages we'll be doing week by week or anything like that.  I spend a good bit of time researching and putting materials together, but when it comes to the execution my planning method is more like: "finish Singapore 4 this year."  But then it seems like a good idea every now and then to take a look at where we are and whether we're making adequate progress toward these very broad sorts of goals.  The past couple of weeks I've been paying attention to where we are in our different subjects, and I'm pleased to report that we're not as hopelessly behind as I sort of felt like we were.  The halfway point for Dave's school year is the beginning of his Christmas break, and we're on track to be very close to halfway through with most all of our subjects.  This pleases me, as I was sure we were going to be trying desperately to finish up in July.  We made need a week or two past when Dave finishes, but not more than that.  History might be the exception...I bought a whole bunch of books last year, put them in chronological order on the shelf, and we've just been reading through them.  There are a lot of them left.  But that's okay, because they're enjoying the books, and that was the whole point of this year of history.

Tuesday was our last day of co-op classes until after the New Year.  Ari's chorus class had a little concert for the parents, during which they sang "Walk Like and Egyptian" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday."  I would post a picture of this, except blogger is not letting me post my pictures.  For reasons unknown.  I am frustrated.  Wait!  I figured it out!

This means I am all finished doing board game club!  Board game club was fine, but it was a little crazy and overwhelming at times. Lots of 4-6 year old boys and game pieces flying everywhere.  Next session, my friend Kristi and I are teaching a class on Caldecott winners for four to seven year olds.  We'll read and talk about the story the first half of the class, then do a craft relating to it the second half.  I saw the preliminary class offerings for the next session, and it looks like there will be a lot of good stuff.  I showed the list to Ari, and he took it off with him and rated each class based on how interesting it sounded to him, using OWL grades from Harry Potter.  Interestingly, creative writing (which he didn't take this session, but which I spent a lot of time talking up to him in anticipation of next session) got the highest grade.

We've been very diligent about our morning schooling, which is math and writing and reading and all that stuff.  Somewhat less so with history and science.  Ari just finished reading Afternoon of the Elves from his books you have to read before you're 13 list.  Somewhere around here I have The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles for him to start on next.  He's also finished with his self-imposed Harry Potter break and is well into book 6 now.  

Milo finished "Mouse Soup" and started Amelia Bedelia.  But then we misplaced Amelia Bedelia for a few days, so I pulled "In a Dark, Dark Room" (another "I Can Read" book, of silly-ish ghost stories) off our shelf for him. Ari read this to him a couple of years ago, so he was immediately intrigued.  And then an amazing thing happened.  He read me one of the stories during his school time and then, later that day, asked me to listen to him read another one!  And THEN he read yet another one, to himself, later that same day!  This has never happened before.  We're all very excited, and a little worried that he's finished the whole book now (I think--there may be one more story).  I found another book of stories by the same author at the library, so we'll hope that holds his interest, too.  His reading is coming along so well.  I've always had to fight off worry, because Ari was just such an early, strong reader that it was tough not to compare them.  But I looked up the reading level of Mouse Soup and the other level 2 I Can Read books the other day, and they're listed as 2nd grade. "Oh!" I said, "so he's FINE!"  He is.  He'd be a young first grader this year.  Yay Milo.

Gus is already reading tons of words without any instruction whatsoever--both sight words and sounding out simple words.  He read "jac" off the bag of Bil-Jac dog food (which, btw, we only have because that's what we're supposed to use for treats for Gable's obedience class) the other day. Now that I'm no longer worried he's going to pass Milo, I might start a reading program with him after Christmas.  If he wants to do it.  I feel perpetually guilty about not spending enough one on one time with him, and something scheduled helps with that. It was easier when we were doing the Sonlight pre-K thing last year.

Milo's really enjoying Right Start.  He's been working on the other side of the abacus the past couple of lessons. I might get Level A for Gus, too.  I think we already have all the materials; I'd just need to buy the book.  But I'm also a little panicky at the thought of doing 2 kids at the same time with Right Start.  How does anyone do it?

 

Ari just finished up a section on fractions in Singapore. He and Dave haven't been getting to Life of Fred too much lately, but now that they've finished Ari's big K'nex project, maybe there will be more time.  I've been slack about giving him his multiplication drill every day.  He's getting much faster with the multiplication tables, and it's helped a lot in cutting down his frustration level with things like long division.

We started Writing With Ease 3!  Finally!  Ari's been getting very frustrated with the narrations, but I'm not sure why.  They don't seem substantially different from what he was doing at the end of level 2, so I think it's him more than the material. I'm hoping that will get better next week.

We read a book about the Statue of Liberty and started a biography about Thomas Edison in history, and both were big hits.

Science...ah, science.  We're almost finished with the "try it before you buy it" from Real Science Odyssey...and I'm not sure I'm going to buy it after all.  It's not them; it's me.  I've never wanted to admit to being the sort of person who can't get the materials together to do science, but...I think I might be one of those people who can't get the materials together to do science.  Sigh.  I'm thinking of buying several experiments kits, materials included, for the rest of the year, and doing those plus a lot of reading from the library/our shelves.  I've been looking at the Science in a Nutshell kits.  Thank goodness for co-op; at least my kids are getting SOME organized science, even if it's not from me.  Of course, when I look at what they know, it's clear they're managing to pick up quite a bit of knowledge and understanding about science, despite my scatter-shot approach.  It's the last subject I haven't settled into at all....I have something I'm happy with for pretty much everything else.

We'll do a very light week this coming week (in fact, I doubt will do anything after Monday) because Dave is off and my in-laws are getting into town tomorrow evening.

November 2-6, 2009

Okay--back on track!  Hooray for me.  Next week, I might even take some pictures!

Odyssey of the Mind is no more, and we're probably not doing Spanish class anymore, at least not until after the first of the year (longish story, and not interesting), so our Mondays are mostly open now (except for book club once a month).  This is good because I've been feeling kind of rushed and behind, and we can definitely use another morning home.  And bad because I kind of liked not having to rush around Sunday night getting things ready for Monday morning.  Sunday night is, after all, usually when I'm finally getting around to updating my blog.  Oh well.

Ari:
WWE: we've finally done it!  We are FINISHED with WWE 2!  I just need to get WWE 3 now.  I've decided to buy the e-book, so I need to go do that after I finish here. 

Reading: after a failed attempt at having Ari read  Roger Caras' Yankee: Inside Story of a Champion Bloodhound (which I LOVED as a kid, but maybe a kid a little older than Ari) and a failed attempt at Turn Homeward Hannalee, I pulled out my copy of How to Get Your Child to Love Reading and showed him the list of books you must read before you're 13.  He's read several of them and liked them all, so I figured maybe the author is sort of on Ari's wavelength as far as good books go.  We have a couple of the books on there that he hasn't read yet, so I let him pick one of those and he chose The House with a Clock in its Walls.  He's reading that with no complaining thus far.  I know eventually he's going to need to read things that aren't his very favorites, but for now I'm good with him just reading lots of well-written books that he enjoys.  He's funny--he was an early reader, and he's a very strong reader, but he's never been one of those kids who always has his nose in a book.  He has to really like something.

Milo:
Reading: he's almost finished with Mouse Soup, and I checked Amelia Bedelia out of the library for him to start on next.

Math: Milo can finally remember how much pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters are worth!  I remember despairing of him ever learning it last year when he was doing Singapore EB, but turns out he just needed to be six.

Together:
History: more pioneers!  We, uhh, tried making sourdough starter last week, but it didn't turn out so well. I had Ari do a narration page about a chapter in Caddie Woodlawn, and he did a great job.

Science: we're nearly finished with the "Try it before you buy it" part of REAL Science Odyssey, so there's another e-book I need to buy soon.  We learned about the digestive system this week.

Other stuff: co-op's going well.  Milo's liking his science class, and Ari loves all of his classes.  They're learning "Walk Like an Egyptian" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday" in chorus, and Ari came home on Tuesday and made tape recordings of himself singing both of them.  Only another 2 or 3 weeks this semester and then we're finished until after the new year.  I'm probably going to actually teach a class next session--exciting and nerve-wracking--more details to follow :)

So there are the highlights!

Behind again!

Yes, I skipped a few weeks.  We went to Disneyland, you see.  It's true, we didn't go to Disneyland for an entire month (though that might have been fun), but I get kind of thrown off by big trips and upsets to my routine.  I am much like a toddler that way.  Anyway.  Disneyland was fun!  To prove I have been documenting our lives somewhere, here is a link to my trip report (almost finished!) on the Disboards:

Disneyland 2009

We're just over a quarter of the way through our school year (well, with some luck. We may spill into the summer a bit, and that is okay.  That's my mantra: and that is okay), so I thought I'd do a catch-up/where we are right now kind of post.

Ari:
Ari's just about halfway through Singapore 4A....he just finished up a section on fractions, and is doing a review now.  He's been working through the Life of Fred fractions book with his Dad at night, so the fractions section of Singpore was really easy for him.  I'm having him drill multiplications facts for 5 minutes or so every day as a warm-up, and I think he'll finally get those down soon.

We're STILL almost finished with Writing With Ease 2.  We tend to forget about it some days, which I think is a problem with how I have the morning scheduled....I try to come back to it after he does all his independent work and I'm finished with Milo and Gus, but by then my mind's often on lunch and the afternoon already.  I think we need to start doing it first thing.  Narrations are coming easier to him; I'm having him do them in other subjects a couple of times a week, and I think he actually does better writing them out than doing them orally with me.  Of course, on his own, he does things like write Harry Potter fan fiction, so I'm not overly worried about his writing, despite his mental block when it comes to narration.  He's chugging along with First Language Lessons 4--no problems there.

He just finished reading the 5th Harry Potter book.  I think he's going to take a break before tackling the 6th one, which means we'll spend a lot of time trying to find something he likes to read at bedtime. For school time reading, he's just started Turn Homeward, Hannalee.

Ari's moving slowly but steadily through Lively Latin.  He's in Lesson 3.  I don't really care if we take a couple of years to get through the first book there--I'm just trying to have him do 20 minutes or so, 3 times a week.  I need to catch up with him and learn the chants!

Milo:
Milo's on lesson 34, I think, of Right Start Math, so pretty much where we need to be.  He's enjoying it a lot and it's pretty clearly working well for him.  I'm glad we did it!  I might get level A for Gus and go ahead and start him on that after Christmas, as I think he'd enjoy it.

Reading is coming along.  He's about 2/3 of the way through Explode the Code 3, and he's doing it on his own pretty easily, if with some careless errors.  He's reading Mouse Soup aloud to me right now.  We're moving through First Language Lessons and Writing with Ease at a decent pace, too.  I'm amazed at how much his handwriting has improved this year!

All together:
We finished up the Civil War a couple of weeks ago (and topped it off with a weekend hike up Kennesaw Mountain, after I forced them to sit through the (boring, I admit it) movie at the visitor's center) and are now doing some reading about pioneers and westward expansion and all that.  I'll have to update the sidebar with our history reading. 

We're working through Real Science Odyssey, and are still on the human body.  Ari and Milo are also taking a science class at our homeschool co-op, so that takes a bit of pressure off of me.

Other stuff:
Odyssey of the Mind kind of imploded, so we're not doing that anymore this year. This is too bad, but it does free up my Mondays, so that's a nice side effect.

And I'll end with that....I've been putting off updating forever, because it felt overwhelming.  I'm hoping that now that the catch-up post is finished, I'll be able to handle weekly updating again!

August 31-September 4, 2009

Right now Dave is at the big Creekview v. Sequoyah football game with all the boys (he teaches at Creekview.  I, on the other hand, graduated from Sequoyah...so I'm just not sure who to root for), so I'm taking advantage of the time alone to update here and then get ready for our mini-vacation to the hot air balloon festival at Calloway Gardens.

Monday was the first meeting of my kids' book club...discussing From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  It went fairly well, at least for a first meeting.  I was a little overzealous in my planning and wound up really rushed for time at the end.  As a consequence, I think the nifty point-of-view chart I handed out went way over their heads.  But I'll know for next time.  Less is more. The last few minutes, we taped paper to the bottoms of the tables so they could draw above their heads like Michelangelo, and that was a very big hit.

On Tuesday, Milo did NOT have to be dragged out of his science class at all!  Success!  He had a good time, as did Ari in all of his classes.  Board game club was a little less hectic this week, I think.  I tried to bring some games we could all do as a group, but the kids were not particularly interested in the "as a group" concept.  But another mother stayed the whole time and helped out, and we survived the hour.

Ari stuff:
--he's really liking First Language Lessons 4.  Too bad we took that detour into Growing with Grammar last year.  He's memorizing "Ozymandias" right now, which makes me happy.  I've always liked "Ozymandias."  When he encountered a new line in the diagrams the other day, he exclaimed excitedly, "ooh--something new!"  The boy enjoys a good sentence diagram, what can I say? 
--We're not doing a great job, on the other hand, of fitting in our Michael Clay Thompson stuff.  It may just be too much.  But I'd really like to do it. 
--Looks like our timing is excellent with Writing With Ease 2.  We have about 5 more weeks to go, so we should finish up right around when the next workbook comes out.
--The new Singapore is going very smoothly so far.  He did factoring this week, and I was a little worried about my ability to explain it and then about his tolerance level for the amount of division it required, but we had no problems.  He's also doing Life of Fred: Fractions in the evenings with Dave:

 

He alternates between loving it and hating it depending on how he's done on the latest "Bridge" (the test sections at the end of the chapters).  The deal is you have to get 9 out of 10 problems right to move on, but they give you 6 chances (6 different tests) to try.  Except that Ari is not happy unless he gets all 10 questions right on the first try.  Missing 3 questions on one test will send him into a week long period of intense anger at Fred and everything he stands for.  Sigh.  Perfectionist children.  I think I have three.  I keep trying to acquaint them with  "the perfect is the enemy of the good," but they don't believe me.  But this week he LOVES Life of Fred.  So that's something.

Milo stuff: 

--I had forgotten how lovely First Language Lessons 1 is.  Five or ten easy minutes and we're done, no one has cried or complained, and yet Milo (and Gus, I think) has the definition of a noun and "The Caterpillar" memorized.  Hooray!

--I'm liking Writing with Ease a lot with him, too.  He is, predictably, not a fan of the copywork, but he gets through it, and the narrations are going well.

--"All About Spelling," on the other hand, drives me crazy.  I thought about stopping it and I felt this immediate sense of relief just at the idea of not doing it anymore.  So I'm going with that for now.  I tried out Spelling City this week instead, using a list of first grade words I found online, and he did great with it.  So I think I'm going to try that and see how it goes.  I can always go back to AAS if I HAVE to.  Ugh.

--but we still love Right Start Math!  Milo learned about odds and evens this week. Here he is matching up dots with "odd" and "even" cards:

 

 

And what else?  We learned about muscles in science and made some arms:

 

And in history we read more about the Civil War and then made landscape pictures out of torn pieces of paper.  Papercrafts=very big in Civil War days. So says our book.  My pictures did not turn out so well, though, so you'll have to take my word for it.

August 24-28, 2009

I've discovered that I've been using the old editor for blogspot, so I've switched it to the new one in hopes of putting an end to my photo-posting frustrations.  Fingers crossed!

It's been a crazy week.  I think they might all be crazy this year, though, so I'll try to get used to it.  The first meeting of the kids' book club I'm running is on Monday, and I'm not at all prepared (though I have at least finished the book!)  We're reading From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and I really need to get to work coming up with some topics and questions for discussion.  I'm going to have to kind of get in there and see how things go before I really can figure out how guided the discussion should be, though, I think.  I'm kind of nervous.  Mostly I'm afraid the kids will be bored.  Maybe I should bring snacks.  Nothing is boring when there are snacks, right?

Our new co-op started on Tuesday.  The kids' classes didn't start until one, but we got there early for recess.  There were a TON of kids there, and the playground was sort of insane.  The kids found their friends L and M, though, and had a great time.  Then they went off to science class (Ari was signed up for geography, but he decided to switch at the last minute).  Halfway through science, someone had to come and get me because Milo had gotten frustrated about something or other and was under the table screaming.  Good times.  He actually doesn't melt down particularly often, but when he does melt down he doesn't hold back.  Sigh.  I'm hoping next week will go more smoothly.  After science Ari went off to his filmmaking class while Milo and I set up for the board game club I'm running.  I was thinking this would be a fairly easy thing to do, running a board game club, but it was a lot more chaotic than I expected.  I had mostly a bunch of 4 to 6 year old boys, so there was a lot of running from kid to kid trying to explain game rules.  Next week I'm going with simple games and/or games most kids already know the rules to.  And maybe a couple more active games to break things up; an hour is a long time for five year old boys to play board games.  At one point one of the kids told me, "I wish there was a TV in here."  "I don't think many parents would sign their kids up for a TV club," I explained.  But, yeah, I was kind of wishing it was a TV club by the end, too.  Ari had chorus after filmmaking, and he really enjoyed all of his classes.  His friend L is taking the same classes he is, but is also taking an art class and a creative writing class in the mornings, both of which I think he'd also enjoy.  We might do classes all day there next session; might depend on whether I sign them up for Spanish again or not.

Now let me try to post pictures and see what happens!

 

Okay, so far so good.  This is Ari doing his multiplication wrap-ups.  This kid has an incredibly good memory for most everything, but for some reason we seem to be spending three years working on the multiplication tables.  So I'm having him do these for five minutes every day in hopes we can get it over with once and for all.  He just started Singapore 4 maybe two weeks ago?  I can't remember.  At any rate, he did rounding and estimating this week in that.

 

And some scenes from Milo's Right Start math.  This was the "Handshaking Game."  Each of the dolls and stuffed animals got a number and then they had to shake hands with whoever had the number that went with their number to make ten.  Does that make sense?  I.e. if Polar Bear's card said 4, Milo would have to look around and see that Cookie Monster had the card that said 6 and then have Cookie Monster and Polar Bear shake hands....

...like this!  It was all about making 10s this week in Right Start.

 

  

We kept working on our human body books in science.  We went to Michaels, and everyone picked out a sheet of 12 by 12 scrapbooking paper for the covers.  Then we came home, finished the covers, and assembled skeletons.

 

...and it just so happens that one of the books Milo is reading this week is about bones!

We finally made Pennsylvania pages for our state notebook.  I am impressed with Milo's liberty bell (up at the top).  I'm also impressed with Ari's narrations for history this year.  They're not terribly long, but he does them all on his own, which for the state pages means he looks back over the books we've read and picks out a couple of different facts to include.  Open-ended stuff like that often gives him trouble (he likes for there to be one right answer), so it's a good thing.  Of course, on his own he is currently writing the third volume in his series of Dragon books--very, very long stories involving a lot of action and dialogue--so his fear of open-ended writing ends as soon as our schoolwork does.

No projects this week in history, owing to all the craziness, but we started some Civil War books, including If You Lived at the Time of the Civil War and Ghosts of the Civil War.  I think we may find a shorter Lincoln biography and stop reading the photobiography one.  The kids are not super into it, and my goal for history this year is to get them more interested in it, even if they never become quite as into history as they are into science.  Ghosts of the Civil War is looking like a hit so far, though.

 

We leave for Disneyland three weeks from tomorrow!  They had these travel journals at Michaels for $3, so I got one for each kid.  Mostly I'm hoping it will give them something to do on the plane.

August 17-21, 2009

We brought the chickens (who usually stay in the backyard) into the front yard for a field trip last weekend. They were completely freaked out to find themselves on grass. Eek! Grass! (the chickens said to themselves). The backyard is completely wooded and nothing much grows there (well, except trees). Our chickens are not very adventurous. Flannery and Nedcy are pictured above. Mostly I just put a picture up there because of my continuing difficulties dealing with pictures here. I can't figure out how to post a picture and then type above the first one.

So anyway. The week! I have little photo documentation of it, but we had a pretty good week. On Monday we succeeded in doing some school before leaving for big out of the house day. Then we took off for Spanish, had the very long break, and then our second Odyssey of the Mind meeting. My assistant coach job is doing the spontaneous problem practice every week, so this was my first try at that. It went pretty well. We did two verbal problems (naming different kinds of trees and then thinking of a special ability and saying why they would want it). Then for the hands-on problem I gave them a few things (play-doh, a washcloth, toothpicks, shoelaces, and pennies), and they had to work together to come up with an invention and then tell what it was, how it worked, and how it would help the world. As soon as I described the problem, L said excitedly, "a world-helping dragon!" and that's what they wound up with. It was a frost dragon who helped the world by freezing intruders, if I remember right. Right now the kids are off working on their homework for OOTM--they're supposed to bring in some kind of aircraft that they make themselves. I think someone's working on a parachute and someone's working on a paper airplane.

We're settling into something resembling a routine for schoolwork. We do "circle time" all together, which usually consists of a page from Are They Thinking?, 2 words from an Evan Moor vocabulary book, a Bible story (often with a drawing and narration page), and then some combination of our states study, folklore that goes along with our history, or some poems.

After that we split up...what I've been doing is letting Gus and Milo play while I do Latin with Ari and set him up with his math. Then he does math and independent reading while I do whatever's on the agenda for the day with Milo and Gus . Gus follows along with whatever Milo's doing, and I try to make sure there are a few minutes left to do something special just for him. Then when Ari finishes reading I do writing and grammar with him. By then it's usually almost lunchtime, because we never really start as early as I mean to unless we have a lot of outside the house plans that day. If the weather's nice, I shove them outside for awhile while I check e-mail and make lunch. And then, depending on what afternoon plans we have, we either go right to work on history and/or science or we take a break for awhile first and play or get some housework done or whatever.

I've just complicated things further, however, by signing the kids up for more classes. There's a new homeschool co-op starting up near us on Tuesday. I tried to resist, but then I looked at the class descriptions and caved. What did me in was the filmmaking class; Ari's been very interested in making movies for the past month or so, so the timing was perfect. The deal is that as long as a parent volunteers in some way or other, kids can take as many classes as they want for $149 for a 12 week semester. The kids' friend L is going to classes all day, but I decided we'd better start with just the afternoon so we could actually get stuff done at home in the morning. So Ari's taking chorus and geography in addition to filmmaking. The only class for Milo's age in the afternoon is a science class, so I signed him up for that and then volunteered to run a board game club for the time slot after that class. There's also a preK class that Gus can go to while I do the board game class if he wants to. Gus keeps asking what class he can take, but he doesn't like the sound of anything that's actually appropriate for 3 year olds. I think he wants to take stuff like geography and science instead. Poor littlest brother. Anyway, I'm hoping things go well with this co-op; it seems like it will be a great resource to have around going forward.
Here are the narration pages the kids made for Delaware. Ari's is a map with assorted Delaware...stuff around the sides. Both Milo and Gus were most interested in the fact that the first log cabins in America were built in Delaware. Gus' drawing doesn't exactly look like a log cabin, but, apparently, it is. Now that all my books are here, we'll finally move on to the next two states (New Jersey and Georgia) next week.
Here Ari is working on our history project for the week, with Gus looking on. We made a lantern out of a soup can, hammering out a design for the light to show through. This was from The Last Safe House--a lantern like houses on the Underground Railroad might put in their windows as a signal. We finished that book this week and are almost finished with If You Lived When There was Slavery in America... so we'll be starting on the Civil War next week and continuing with our Lincoln biography.
These are the covers for our human body books in science. I still need to go to Michaels and get some nice paper to glue these on to finish up. Ari didn't like the preprinted cover, so he made up his own.

And those are the highlights of the week. Ari finished up the first lesson in Lively Latin, so I need to print out more of that. He was NOT HAPPY at the idea of doing his own history of Rome book, so I'm letting him skip that. He's doing really well with narrations this year, which is a first, so I'm not going to push it. He's still enjoying the Latin a lot. We're being very relaxed about Song School Latin with Milo and Gus. I haven't been doing any of the written exercises in the book with them--just going over things orally. We have been listening to the CD over and over and OVER again, though, so they're definitely picking things up.

Milo's reading is really taking off; I'm very excited at the prospect that soon he'll be able to go off and read chapter books by himself, too. I think the Right Start math is a great fit for him. We learned about pennies and nickels this week. Last year when we tried to do money in Singapore, he completely didn't get it. But he's totally catching on now. There was one part where I was supposed to give him some pennies and nickels and ask him to make 10 cents. The idea was he would find one way and then I would prompt him, "is there another way?" and then again. But as soon as I asked him to make 10 cents he looked at the coins for a second and said, "Oh! there are 3 different ways I can do it!" And he did them all no problem.

I've been having enormous amounts of trouble getting pictures to do what I want them to here, so I'm trying something new this week. We had a very funky week--friends visiting from out of town, classes starting up, meetings--so it was an abbreviated week as far as homeschooling goes. Ari and Milo started Spanish at LEO, a homeschooling center near us, on Monday. We're doing our Odyssey of the Mind meetings there this year, too. Spanish is at 10, then we have a 2 hour break before OOTM from 1 to 2:30. My plan is to do about an hour and a half of school in the mornings before we leave, but I decided not to try that this week since getting out of the house by 9:30 would be enough of a challenge for the first class. Spanish seems to have gone well. They have a few friends in the class, so Ari wasn't nervous at all about going. It's always a dangerous thing putting Milo together with his brother (or, actually, with pretty much anyone he knows), and sure enough, their friend Lula reported back that "Milo goofed off a lot." The teacher didn't say anything to me, though, so maybe he wasn't TOO bad. Lula's mom, Kristi, and her 4 1/2 year old, Marcos, hung out with me and Gus during the class, and then we all went to Chick-fil-A together to eat and play on the playground before OOTM. I'll have to make sure to plan ahead and pack lunches or we'll wind up eating out every week. I need to look into some parks in the area, too, since 2 hours is a bit long for just lunch.


The first two pictures are from Odyssey of the Mind. The grown-up is my friend Di Linh, who coaches the team. I volunteered to be the assistant coach this year, so I'm going to be doing the practice for spontaneous problems (the OOTM competition has two parts: a "long term problem" that the kids prepare for all year and then a "spontaneous problem" that they don't get until the day of the competition. So we practice example problems all year to get ready). The team has seven kids this year. Five of them were on the team last year and two are new this year . The first meeting went really well, I think. They seem to have matured over the summer and toned down last year's wild goofiness a bit (although it's early; we'll see). They did some get to know eachother/teambuilding sorts of activities and then sat down to decide on a long term problem. There are 5 different problems to choose from; the kids make up some kind of skit for each of them, but some of them focus more on dramatics and some focus more on building something. They wound up choosing "Return to the Gift of Flight:"

Teams will make and operate a series of aircraft that will complete a variety of flight plans. The flight plans include flying straight, making a target spin, traveling slowly, dropping something into a target, touching down and taking off, and a mass launch of multiple aircraft. The aircraft in the solution will be made of a variety of materials and will have a variety of power sources. The testing of the aircraft will be presented in a team-created performance that will include a character that serves as a creative "air traffic controller."

This sounds really...hard. Kristi and I were sort of hoping they would pick any one EXCEPT that one, but oh well. I'm sure it will work out okay. So, all in all, first long Monday full of activities was a success. Now we'll see how successful that whole doing schoolwork before we leave part is ;).

Science: We made a plant cell out of Jell-o, grapes, and a strawberry! My kids have actually never had Jell-o before, so this was an interesting experience in several ways. I meant to put the picture of the lab sheet together with the picture of the kids putting in the grape/chloroplasts, but I'm scared to move the pictures around, so I'll just leave it where it is.
The books I was waiting for for our state study all arrived this week. The Time book and Kids Learn America (plus the little 50 states card deck thing) I already had, but I wasn't thrilled with them, so I ordered a few more. I think we're all set now. We're doing the states in the order they became states, so we did Delaware and Pennsylvania this week. And because our week was not Jell-o intensive enough already, we made....Jellaware! This was a suggestion from Kids Learn America. Because Jell-o was first made in Delaware, you see. Kids Learn America is full of randomness. They have sort of insane suggestions for how to remember all the capitals. Like this one for Pennsyvania:

Make a movie in your mind. You're a cartoonist, and you're drawing some cartoon character hairy hamburgers with your yellow pencil. When you think of Pennsylvania think of a pencil, and when you think of the weird hairy burgers, you can remember Harrisburg which is the capital of Pennsylvania.

Alrighty, then! The kids think they're hilarious, but I'm not sure if they actually find them helpful.

Dave did the first official piano lesson of the year with Ari on Monday afternoon. Ari, as is his way, gets frustrated whenever something is hard, so he and Dave were both a little out of sorts by the end of the lesson. But I haven't had to remind him to practice at all this week, so I think he's enjoying it.
Gus insists on doing copywork whenever Milo does any, and this week he insisted on lined paper as well. So I pulled out a pad and gave him something to copy. His handwriting is at least as good as Milo's, I think.
The aforementioned lab sheet re: Jello cells. We were supposed to make a round animal cell, too, but I didn't read carefully enough and didn't buy enough Jello.
Here's the form Dave made for me to keep a record of everything. Not much on it this week except for Wednesday and Thursday.

And we finished up the week with a long trip to the new "Sprayground" at a park in Roswell with friends on Friday.

Hey, I'm back! One of my new homeschool year resolutions is to update a bit (or a lot) more regularly. Dave and I have even worked out a plan where he'll cook with the kids on Friday evenings while I update here. We'll see how that all goes...

Anyway, we're back in school mode around here, since Dave started back to work last week. I can report accurately on what we do from week to week because Dave made me a handy little spreadsheet in Excel that I can print out and pencil in what we do in each subject. And I've been doing it! I was a bit worried about this year and how much stuff I had planned, but so far it's been going pretty well. The kids are enjoying everything, and I have a giant stack of papers in front of me waiting to be filed away in various binders that seems to indicate we've been doing quite a bit. Of course, we're still easing back in to high gear...Ari's new Singapore books just came today, so he hasn't been doing a lot of math yet. Our outside classes start next week, so that will make things a bit more hectic...but overall, I'm pleased so far.

I'll update the sidebars later, but the rundown:

Ari
Math: Singapore 4 with some Life of Fred and Penrose thrown in here and there
Writing: Writing with Ease...he's finishing up the second workbook (well, he's about 3/4 of the way through) and then we'll do the third
Grammar: First Language Lessons 4. We tried Growing with Grammar last year, but it was not a hit with Ari. So back we go to FLL! And Michael Clay Thompson--still working our way through Grammar Island
Latin: Lively Latin. Going very well so far. He pulled out his flashcards today just for fun.

...and then he's doing lots of reading, BBC's Dance Mat Typing, and he should be starting up piano lessons with Daddy next week. We finally got the piano tuned after a lapse of about 10 years, during which it was moved to different houses twice.

Milo
Math: Right Start B. While I sometimes wonder what I was thinking taking on something that seems so much more involved than Singapore, I also sometimes think, "wow! he's really getting this stuff!" And most of the time it doesn't take too long, really. He's enjoying it.
Language Arts: First Language Lessons, Writing with Ease 1, All About Spelling, Explode the Code 3, and various readers. I know I keep saying the same thing, but his reading continues to improve little by little. He'll get there!
Latin: Song School Latin...he and Gus are both doing this. So far so good.

Gus
Whatever Milo's doing, he insists on doing. Also, lots of library books and some workbooks...he just insisted I buy him the first Explode the Code, so I did, but I'm not sure he'll really be interested in it.

Together
History: We're doing American History since 1850--books I picked out, notebook pages (from History Scribe, though I suspect we might wind up using mostly the blank ones), and we're trying to do one craft or project a week. Also doing a state study, though I'm waiting on some books to get here to really start that. I'm hoping the Friday night cooking will tie in with that--regional recipes from wherever we're studying.

Science: We're doing the REAL Science Odyssey from Pandia Press Try it Before you Buy It thing for life science. We've done 3 of the labs so far, and it's gone well, so I think we'll likely stick with it. It'd be nice if one year I could stick with a science plan for the whole year!

...and then a bunch of other stuff--poetry, Bible stories (they're VERY into the Bible Scribe notebook pages right now, especially Gus), Puertas Abiertas for Spanish, Are They Thinking?...

I'm being very scattered, I realize. I'm sleepy, and I have a ton to update about. Soon I'm going to drink a beer, too, which won't help my organizational skills. Anyway.

I'm attempting to limit our outside of the house obligations this year. So as of right now we'll be gone much of the day Mondays doing Spanish class at our homeschool center and Odyssey of the Mind. And then I volunteered to run a book club once a month, too, on Mondays right after Spanish. Other than that our only set plan is lunch on Wednesdays with my grandmother and playgroup on Fridays. Ari wants to take a computer animation class that's offered near us, but I told him we should hold off on that until after our Disneyland trip in September, since he'd need to miss a week for that. Also, we bought bikes for the whole family (a complicated assortment of bikes and trailer bikes), so we're hoping to do a lot of biking. Like tomorrow!

Okay, so next week a more standard update, but for now a few pictures from our first two weeks:

Here are a few of the kids making a papier mache bowl. Umm, like they did during the Civil War. Or at least that's what our Civil War Days book tells us. It was all the rage--papier mache. We used a regular bowl slathered with petroleum jelly as a mold, and I was certain that it was never going to come off the mold in one piece...but it did, more or less! Hooray!

...and here's Milo making some hardtack. I'm not sure this project really drove home the idea that it really sucked to be a soldier or sailor because of all the tasteless hardtack...because my kids sort of thought it was awesome. The book suggested jam or honey, but they also liked it fine plain. Of course, Milo and Gus regularly beg to lick the spoon when I make regular old loaves of bread, so perhaps it's not too surprising.







And here are the history books we've been reading. I'll do a sidebar about these, too. But, yeah, basically we're starting with slavery and the Underground Railroad. The Last Safe House is a nice one--it's a fictionalized story about the Underground Railroad, interspersed with factual information about different related topics and also a few projects. The People Could Fly is a collection of African American folktales that we're reading here and there. Despite my collection of boys, I bought a few different American Girls books for the year--the one here is Addy's World--it's a series about growing up in various time periods, with lots of pictures and detailed drawings (house cutaways and that sort of thing--a bit Usborne reminiscent) about different aspects of everyday life. That's sort of the angle I'm trying to focus on this year, so I picked up a few books from this series. It doesn't seem particularly girl-intensive so far--there is a background story about whatever American girl is featured, but it's fairly subtle (and my boys have no issues with female protagonists, anyway).




The last few are the kids working on science. Ari's taking notes from our plot study in the first one. In the last two, we're doing a cell study, looking at an egg.

Second week in a row--look at me go!

We had a little meeting after co-op on Monday to talk about the rest of this year and plans for next year. Somehow I volunteered to run a book club for the kids during co-op next year. So okay then! I am thinking sort of Deconstructing Penguins-esque, except that there is a lot about Deconstructing Penguins that I don't like...so, you know, not those parts. I need the next Writing With Ease workbook to come out, so I can pick the books from the ones used for excerpts in that.

What else this week? It didn't snow. It was supposed to snow on Sunday, and it snowed in many places SOUTH of here, but not here. So Monday proceeded as usual, with no snow frolicking to speak of. This was a terrible disappointment, but we persevered.

I ordered a bunch of stuff from the Critical Thinking Co. that got here this week, and all the kids were loving it. Ari worked a lot on Building Thinking Skills 2. Milo's already been doing Building Thinking Skills 1, but I bought some attribute blocks for him, so he had a great time playing around with those. And I bought several preschool books for Gus, thinking they would get him through next year and that they, along with lots of picture books, would be a good preschool program for him. I don't think the books are going to last a month at the rate we're going though--he ADORES them. I think he's probably done 20 or 30 pages of the preK Building Thinking Skills over the last couple of days.

Milo's getting more enthusiastic about school lately. He was never resistant to any of it, but the past couple of weeks he's been saying more like, "oh--I love math!" et. al. My kids are all kinda geeky. I need to figure out a spelling program for him for next year; we stopped doing formal spelling with Ari awhile back since he's such a natural speller. But I strongly suspect Milo will be different. Other highlights from Milo's week: Singapore was all about 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. this week--putting things in order. Explode the Code and his little readers are going well. Next week I'll post some pictures of what they're doing, but tonight the battery in my camera is dead. Alas.

I had Ari work on his Intensive Practice book for Singapore this week--it was all about mental addition and subtraction strategies. He's getting more and more confident about the narrations in Writing With Ease; we're actually starting to have a bit of an issue with him saying too much--wanting to put in too much detail--which is the opposite problem from the one we used to have. We're going slowly through Grammar Island, and he's pretty interested (it's all mostly review for him, since he's done a lot of grammar already, but things are presented in a different way, so I think it's good). I'm still not quite sure how it's all going to look when we add in the other books in the fall.

More fall thoughts: I ordered Spanish for Children and Lively Latin for Ari for next year (I may start Latin earlier; not sure yet). And then I ordered Song School Latin for Milo, and I think I'm going to get Puertas Abiertas for everyone to use together. I also happened across a Muzzy Spanish set at Goodwill the other day, so the kids are watching that now. I need to sit down at some point and think about scheduling a little more; I fear it's going to be more complicated next year than it is now.

We had a lot of extra stuff going on this week, so history and science fell by the wayside a bit. For one thing, we had to finish the kids' costumes for Odyssey of the Mind on Thursday. The competition is coming up in 2 weeks, and it's unclear whether it's going to be a complete disaster or not. The kids are sorta completely nuts during the practices; they all get along well and have a great, but very, very goofy, time together. Either they'll pull it all together and rise to the occasion when they have a real audience...or they won't.



And then Friday it was really, really nice out so we had to go to the park for 4 hours :-)


The kids spend a lot of time working on their "Dragon Club." There are membership cards and everything. And Gus swings: