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.