Week 3 -- Writing Problems

CC books completed: The Wee Free Men, Behind the Lines, The War Within, I, Juan de Pareja, Zenda and the Gazing Ball

LB - books received: How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight, Judy Moody The Doctor Is In, The Three Little Dassies, Purplicious, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Kitten's First Full Moon, Rapunzel

LB working on a newspaper

CC starting her day's work with left hand practice

Kids grinding corn during LB's field trip

LB making her way into an Anasazi cliff dwelling

CC's work this week -
Cello, Math, poetry, handwriting (left hand), poetry copywork, The Story of Science, Sophie's World, Creation myths, Every Bone Tells a Story, The Brain, ClassiQuest Biology, Shurley Grammar, 3 writing prompts, Spanish, vocabulary, Greek Roots, Story of the World written summaries, a dozen pages from Logic Liftoff, a one page paper on a topic of choice.

LB's work this week:
Tap, Gymnastics, Saxon Math, Math in Focus, ETC, a McRuffy reader, Logic Liftoff, cursive handwriting practice for both hands, Jan Brett coloring pages, a field trip to a local historical site, and cave painting.

Challenges:
We have a writing problem.  CC is working on a new story which is turning out to be beautiful.  She spends long hours researching, writing, revising, planning, and writing some more.  She has over a thousand words for this story so far.

Now, you might wonder what my problem is.  It is writing assignments from her enrichment school such as,  "Write an 8 sentence accordion paragraph about your favorite tv show."  She spent a lot of time this week balking at this writing prompt and ended up very dissatisfied with the results of her work although her paragraph was interesting and well-written.  That type of writing makes her feel like a failure.  How do I get her to be more comfortable with this type of writing?  My best argument so far involves something that amounts to learning to write well withing constraints or learn to conform.  I'm not even convinced by my own arguments.  Is this type of writing important? I have specifically avoided writing programs that try to teach that stuff so why am I inflicting it her now?

We added cello lessons and pottery to CC's schedule this week.  She's had trouble keeping up with everything she had scheduled for herself with the additional activities and the burden of the dreaded writing assignments.  However, by the end of the week she had completed her self-assigned work.

As for challenges with LB,  I just need more time.  I chose the Saxon math with it's long  "math meeting" just so that I would not resort to having her only do workbook pages for math.  There are times when I regret that I made that choice.  She loves the time we spend together with the math, but I often feel like I don't have enough time to spare for it.  We normally spend 45 minutes to an hour doing math, but this is a subject that I don't want to hurry.  For her age, reading and math are most important to me so I'm trying to make sure that that is where I spend the most time and energy.

Good Points.
I really like Ellen McHenry's The Brain.  CC is learning and excited about what she's learned.  She's asked to do another unit from her once she's done with this one.  We'll probably do the chemistry units next.

LB finished ETC3 this week, and it has consistently been a terrific part of our school day. We'll start book 4 next week.

This Book is All Phonics!

We picked up Dr. Suess's Hop on Pop this week at the local used book store. Hubby gave it to LB to "read" in bed since her sister gets to read in bed after bedtime stories. She brought the book down to the living room about a 15 minutes later with a giant grin on her little face exclaiming that she could read it.

Then she curled up in my lap with the book to demonstrate her newly discovered skill. As she was sounding out the words and reading the pages, she realized, "This book is all phonics." I tried to tell her that reading is actually all about phonics, but she wasn't convinced.

The previous night she had been getting distracted while I read Go, Dog, Go to her because she kept reading the words unintentionally.

Week 9 - It must be fall.

This week went by in a whirlwind with days of unending wind and our first frost. I managed to have 3, yes 3 migraines this week. Somehow everything still rolled on.

It was a hot August morning. The sun was already sweltering, and it was only 9 am. I stopped in the shade at the Penny Arcade when I heard a loud bang and a scream over the ruckus. I ran to investigate and found a disturbing scene then called for back up.

The clerk from Navajo Joeʼs was lying on the floor, dead. I secured the area and looked around.

Everything in the store seemed untouched except the storage room door was lying on the floor with the hinges broken. It looked like it had been pushed from the inside. I noticed an unattended truck backed up to the loading dock.

While the crime scene investigators were doing their thing, I went for a walk to see what I could find and talk to witnesses. The first witness, a lady in her late fifties, told me that she had seen a stout man running from the store towards the river so I headed that way.

That is the beginning of CC's latest mystery. She wrote a two-page mystery that included a red herring. She is extremely proud of her story. She also wrote in her fictional journal most days and decided to write a report on komodo dragons (she's researching more but already has a paragraph written). I'm not sure what has gotten into that child, but I like it.

The other big news is that LB is almost finished with ETC 1. She enjoys it, and her reading is leaping forward.

This week, my summary is a daily list.
Monday:
CC - math, finished Black Ships before Troy, journal,  started reading Giants, Monsters and Dragons, fencing.
LB - ETC, Visual Perceptual Skill Building, Mother Goose, did her Student of the Week poster for the enrichment school.

Tuesday:
CC - orthodontist, math, a windy day balloon chase with dad, pottery class, typed first draft of mystery, cutout the pattern for her gown, read more in Giants, Monsters and Dragons.
LB - at school.

Wednesday:
CC - math, sewed gown, read Wanderings of Odysseus, finished mystery story read more in Giants, Monsters and Dragons.
LB - ETC, painted, staged a double wedding with stuffed animals, ballet.

Thursday:
CC - school, read more of Eight Cousins, journal
LB - ETC, painted pictures of houses for everyone then drew them with chalk in the cul-de-sac, Rumpelstiltskin,  nature walk.

Friday:
CC - finished her Saxon math book!, finished Eight Cousins, journal, afternoon at park with friends, Rosetta Stone.
LB - ETC, park with friends, Rapunzel, handwriting, Rosetta Stone.

The chill in the air makes me want bread - I wonder if I have enough spelt for a big loaf.

We have completed 54 days of school.

WR3 - Of Castles and Nursery Rhymes

150, 150, 150, 150... All my angles match.  My castle is symmetrical!  Inspired by finding Castle at our favorite local used bookstore, CC has spent a good part of the week designing a castle which she is building with a bucket of centimeter cubes.  As of this moment, she's sitting in the sunshine at the end of my desk working on the third row of blocks in the wall.  Some moments in homeschooling and parenting are truly priceless.

We've had a really good week this week, harried but good.  I was trying to remember what we added to our schedule this week new for school and thought I had forgotten to add something, but I remembered CC and I were reading Fagles's Aeneid.  She's working on memorizing her first set of lines and understanding the first dozen pages.   I think that must count as the new subject for the week - classics.


I borrowed a handwriting program from another mom to evaluate this week as a way to increase her speed.  It worked amazingly well.  I borrowed it on Tuesday; Wednesday; CC finished her writing in record time.   We are right on track with daily math and writing.  She's still loving fencing and her enrichment school is as terrific as ever.  We might even go to the park with friends today.

On Monday, I did reading with LB before I went to the office.  I have paused in Phonics Pathways to do some work in the Pyramid book so that she can work on the same sounds but reading sentences.  She was very proud of her work.   I found out from my mom that at 6 I had a mid-line jump just like LB does which I outgrew at 7.  I didn't do letter flips and reversals like she does, but I had the jump.   That news makes me feel tons better.  The jump was the part that worried me the most.

She has also been working through a book of nursery rhyme dot-to-dots.  She's been loving those for the nursery rhymes as much as the dot-to-dots.  Seems like #3 didn't get as much time listening to nursery rhymes as her siblings did.  LB and I have also been enjoying a Winnie-the-Pooh book that she found at the bookstore this week.  It was my favorite as a child, and I still love the stories.

Right now, schoolwork is done; the kids are playing Clue with Grandma; muffins are in the oven; we have plans for the park right after lunch. At this point, I barely remember the whining and fussing and procrastination that brought us to this point in the week. We made it through another week with style. Thirty-three days down.

Week 31 - I think we have a working plan, again

This counts as science right - maybe nature studies? We found and released a spider from my office which inspired a morning of reading about bugs and an art project. This is made with tape and string.

I've been a little lost since I changed from working weekends to working at home during the week. I needed to refocus. I talked last weekend with CC about what was important in school and reread sections from The Latin Centered Curriculum and The Well Trained Mind, and browsed through several homeschool catalogs I have. We decided that that reading better books more slowly is better for us that speeding through simple books. We reconfirmed that grammar is boring (no matter how much you pay for a grammar program) when you just study grammar. So we are really back to where we started.


I made a new weekly sheet divided into daily work. We managed to get all of the work done as planned except that we skipped school on Thursday due to an unplanned lesson in instinct and behavior - the dog finally got into the poultry pen, and we had a tragic death.

Here is how the rest week was planned and executed. First Start French everyday covers what we were trying to get from grammar programs so she did Lesson 1 this week. A Japanese lesson everyday stretches the brain in some important ways so that is what was planned and what has happened.


Math is back to a full Saxon lesson every day plus work from the Problemoids or the Math Perplexors to provide challenge and logical thinking in addition to computational mastery.


We planned for her to build a project from her invention box every week and explain to me how it works. This week's project was a generator. She and BB were excited to build it together, and she did a terrific job explaining how it worked. She also does nonfiction reading of her choice before breakfast which for this week was from various history books plus a bug encyclopedia.

She had fun with some art and completed her intentional writing project.


LB spent the week playing and doing art. Like her motorcycle?




One thing they did together besides Japanese was to listen to wisdom tales from other cultures then retell them to me. CC is a great storyteller, and LB is learning. It is a wonderful exercise for the memory, and it helps them to learn to pick important and interesting details and order their thoughts. Next week, I plan to have them retell the story they told this week in addition to telling a new one.

Week 30 -

This week, the kids played mini-golf and went swimming with their brother and went bowling with daddy. Math and Japanese were accomplished daily. Writing is still the struggle it has been all year, but I added a new type of assignment that was terrific. Grammar, science, history,art and engineering somehow were completed. Reading and literature are the easy subjects. I delegated less this week, but felt the strain more and seriously questioned how this can work, but it is important to us all so it will work because it has too.

Here some are pictures of our work this week including the new writing.


This writing assignment pretty well summarizes what CC wanted to do this week. It was hard to get her motivated to do anything else.




Friends and dodge ball are CC's favorite things about her weekly enrichment school.


She also kept a good science notebook.



LB did some intentional writing this week. She decided what she wanted to do, dictated it to me then drew a picture of herself doing it. She spent an hour or more working towards her goal. I really like this assignment and plan to try to put it in the daily schedule.





In addition to normal math this week in which CC rocked division and was rescued in exponents by BB, she learned about surface area and volume with some building. LB followed the directions on the cards to make letters and a dog from the blocks.

Week 24 - The Grand Adventure

Remember - Life isn't confusing. It is a Grand Adventure.
Yes. That is corn growing in out of the trap in my nice, clean sink.
It has been a long week. Wait. No. It was a grand adventure.


On Monday, I had the brilliant idea to use fraction circles to help explain common denominators, again. Of course if you give my kids scissors, markers and circles, you will get paper pizzas not math. I did know enough to do this after doing Saxon. I retreated to the shower after the pizza defeat. We made it through our read aloud, writing and French before the phone rang. While I was on the phone, they made address labels and labeled the backyard then delivered their pizzas. There was only a little sleet and then some graupel - no reason to stay indoors. We finished the day with warm, homemade vanilla milk and The Royal Diaries on video.

Tuesday for fractions, we did a sample mini lesson from Plato then CC played a fraction game. She tried really hard to get all of the answers wrong in the game which she thought was hilarious. After that, she did the Impossible Fraction lesson from Fred and had no trouble adding mixed fractions. Somethings just need a little time and extra practice. She had learned fractions with the idea of parts of circles and had to switch to a more abstract way of thinking about them in order to do actual math with mixed fractions.

I won't trudge through the details of the whole week, but here are a few standout details. I tried to teach CC to multiply two digits by one digit, but she taught me to multiply two digits in my head instead. One morning we woke to sunshine and warmth with looming snow clouds so I rushed the girls to dress, and we enjoyed our breakfast outside daydreaming of summer gardens and a new tree house before the north wind forced us back inside to our normal day. Don't read Shakespearean tragedies to five year old girls. LB cried inconsolably when Juliet died.

CC wrote two letters this week which LB had to be a part of so she dictated a letter to GMa to me and then copied it with no backwards or upside-down letters. The girls were making pumpkin chocolate chip cookies when I left for work. LB called to tell me they were good, and CC asked how to empty the dust pan.

After CC cried for Laurie's broken heart when Jo rejected his proposal, she has decided that the last few chapters of Little Women need to wait until she is older so she has switched to Eight Cousins and wants to read "all of those classic orphan stories." Anybody know and classic orphan stories? The only ones I know are by Dickens, and she isn't ready for those.

Third Grade Writing overhaul week 2

After horrible resistance to increasing the amount of writing last week, this week has been much better.


We are using the Rules of Civility booklet from the Donna Young site for copywork this week. It is giving us a glimpse into the life in colonial America in addition to providing good sentences for copying. Each night we have been trying to find ways to use the rules. Last night we worked really hard to keep our feet on the floor - I didn't realize how much I cross my legs or sit on one leg instead of sitting straight.

We have also done some other good writing exercises this week.

The girls are both working on lapbooks for the Roman gods which is a big hit because not only is it CC's favorite topic in history, it sneaks writing into an art project.

Today, CC made her history short answer assignment more interesting by using her invisible ink pen.

And the big win for the week so far is CC announcing that cursive is getting easier for her again since she started practicing more.

I've been having LB do a copywork or writing assignment everyday too. I'm trying to apply my lesson learned from one child to the next so hopefully LB won't ever have a time when she is a reluctant writer. However, I am old enough to know that instead of having no problems, she will just have different ones.

Week 16 mid-winter blues

I think I really miss green and summer and sunshine and warmth. This week I bought some palm trees and spent an afternoon defrosting frozen potting soil and repotting palm trees (who would have thought that dirt actually freezes solid like that?). The girls planted box gardens complete with soon-to-be bean stalks - they traded paper cows for beans to plant of course. This morning when I went to work, they were trumpeter swans and golden eagles sitting on their eggs and watching French sing-a-long songs on the computer because CC decided that she couldn't do Rosetta Stone French today since she had to sit on her eggs.



CC used her free-write day to start writing the "Twelve Days of Spring". She spent a lot of time researching spring flowers to figure out what order they should bloom in so that her song has the correct order. Writing improved through the week and became easier after our Day 2 Standoff. Our assignments went like this: copywork was painful, short answers for history were more painful but informative, free write was awesome even if it took a long time, and today's lesson was to create sentences using homophones. She loved that and created a comic strip panel for it.

For grammar this week, we covered pronouns and homophones. If you ever need to teach pronouns, it is fun to just stop using them and see if your kids catch on and figure out what you are doing. The girls joined in the fun and decided that if you leave out pronouns and helping and being verbs that you sound like a caveman. It was a hilarious lesson and is becoming a new game.

In math, we are plugging through Saxon lessons without much protest. CC also got all the answers right on her Life of Fred bridge so she is happily moving on instead of doing more bridges. Today she actually told me that she needs to learn her multiplication tables faster so that division is easier for her! I fought really hard to not jump up and down cheering.

LB got the pleasure of phonics lessons everyday this week. I'll write more about it later, but we are doing lessons on the white board, and it is going great. It is now called "Mommy Phonics," and I think it is helping her reading. She even started picking out words on her own in Boggle last night. I went back to having her practice writing numbers and making sure that the numbers are all correctly formed and in the right direction. We've been working through a book on Visual Perception that makes me feel like I am doing something positive to help her instead of just waiting to see if she outgrows her visual processing issues.

I also actually cracked open SoTW3. I gave LB a copy of the map and a copy of the Charles V picture from the Activity Guide to color while CC was trying to not write her assignment. I read the section on Tuesday then did the follow up on Wednesday. LB started Wednesday by telling me she didn't remember me reading any history to her, but when I asked her what she remembered about Charles, she actually remember how old he was when he inherited his first crown and how many countries he was king of. I thought that was terrific. She colored him with a lovely pink shirt which looked terrific on him. We discussed the map and I pointed out the countries to her and had her color the ocean.

CC told me that she wasn't paying attention when I had read the story the day before and asked that I please reread it. I politely declined and informed her that being able to find information in a text is an important skill. Ahem.... maybe that is part of the reason that the writing was tortuous - she had started out unhappy about the assignment and then went downhill from there.

It probably didn't help that LB tried to help her by telling her which countries he ruled. We've always done history together in the past, but it has been optional for LB. She used to just listen to the stories and do any crafts with her. Now that I am including her in the lessons I need to work on the logistics a bit, but I am sure this is going to be terrific.

The weather was unseasonably warm this week and stirred a longing for southern latitudes. I don't know that I can face months more of brown and cold. I'm still working to find that right balance in our schooling so that the kids keep progressing in every area. It seems that whenever I focus on one thing, the rest slip. At some point I hope to feel like I am teaching my kids instead of just rotating between subjects that aren't working.

Operation Writing - Day 2

Today was another tough day for writing. I knew that it would be, but I am glad its over. The plan of attack I settled on was to force different types of writing but to not give in and make sure the required writing was complete each day. So far, we have completed each assignment, but each one took more than an hour.

Monday was a copywork assignment. After about an hour, I gave in and let CC choose the passage - my caveat was that it had to have several pronouns since that was the focus of our grammar lesson for the day - by the way I have a terrific way of teaching pronouns. :) CC finally finished the copywork. We talked about how I complete the passage quickly by keeping a whole phrase in my mind instead of copying word by word. She realized that she has trouble keeping the picture of a whole word in her head. I think I will count the copywork as a win - she did the work and learned something about her writing at the same time. Painful but complete.

Today's assignment was writing short answers for history questions. Ouch. If I thought Monday was painful, it was just the beginning. Today was worse. Eventually, she wrote her answers, and they were terrific. If I admitted that it took in excess of two hours to get three short answer paragraphs, would that be sad? It seems the main problem that she had besides being stubborn was that she had trouble shortening her answers into the space provided. She had a lot more detail to add than would fit into five or six lines on a page. I had worried that she would have trouble making good sentences or organizing her thoughts or something, but given a specific topic such as how Charles V came to rule so much land, she has even more to say than SWB put in SoTW.


Tomorrow, we will do a free write. She has already started thinking about what she wants to write. Maybe it will be better. I am hoping that once we get over the stubbornness and both understand what the writing issues are that it won't be so hard.

Third Grade LA is not going well

I sat down yesterday to plan the LA for next week and began to have serious doubts about the direction third grade LA has been going. I think CC writes less than she did at the beginning of the year, and I am pretty sure her handwriting has been taking a downhill slide.

I've been so focused on moving math from being the hated subject to at least a workable subject that I have let many other subjects go. I think it was a great choice. By focusing, I was able to put our time and energy into what I felt was the most important need at the time. However, now I need to look at writing and grammar.

I really thought the SL LA3+4 was going to work for us, but I don't think the books will work. They are so far below her reading level that I'm not happy having her spending time reading these instead of what is on her own list of books to read. She told me this morning what she wants to read after Little Women - Pinocchio, Black Beauty, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Peter Pan, and Treasure Island. I spent a good deal of time today trying to see how SL LA would work without the reading assignments, and I think I can make it work but I'd be losing the integration that I was looking for when I switched to it. Maybe we should continue it as is?

I've been looking at writing programs that integrate writing with informal grammar instruction because I still don't like grammar in isolation. My top three choices right now are Write with the Best, which appeals to me because it uses models based on classical literature, and two more conventional writing programs - Wordsmith Apprentice and Writing Strands.

For an emergency measure, I am going to restart Writing with Ease 3, but that is not going to fix everything we need. I was thinking of getting a really nice notebook for her to start copying poetry and quotes to work on her handwriting. I've also been thinking about doing notebooking like Daisy does to add content area writing. Where can I find really good notebooking pages for early modern history, geography and science?

Can't I just skip writing? My kid reads well and loves math and French. Isn't that enough already?

What is antagonize? It is a good opportunity.

This morning after cleaning a raspberry soda explosion off the wall, I finally settled down for a my cup of coffee. LB started setting up her little toy kitchen, and CC starting to try to see how quickly she could get her sister to go from a whine to an outburst. I asked to please not antagonize her sister.

CC: "What is antagonize?"
Me: "It's a good opportunity."

So I got up and dug out the student Thesaurus (note to self, I really do need a Dictionary). I showed CC how to look up words in the dictionary/thesaurus using the guide words. I also pointed out that it shows the parts of speech to help her with Mad Libs. She spent the next half hour reading the thesaurus. I remember doing that when I was a kid. Now she wants a dictionary for her birthday - a big one.

We were expecting thunderstorms for the afternoon so I packed up the Ray's math books and lunch and spent the next couple of hours at the park.

Right now they are trying to learn to Flamenco dance from an animated character on Kid Pix. Is that music, art or computer time? Does it matter? Probably not. Life around here just seems like a good opportunity to learn.

Tales from the first week of third grade

Wailing and gnashing of teeth that phrase was in my mind while CC was doing her school work this week.

I think my daughter enjoys drama, and I might be classified as an enabler, because I don't let it bother me. When she tried her first passage of copywork for the week, she howled and collapsed onto the floor exclaiming that she couldn't do cursive anymore. When she reached the quotation marks, she broke down hysterically declaring that she has never understood how you can use quotations in fiction because nobody SAID anything really. Thanks to the great support from the WTM forum, I was able to explain the next day that they are like the speech bubble in comics. CC being a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan lit up - that was the explanation that she needed.

Also next time I let a month or more pass with out cracking a math book, please somebody kick me. Lets see - we started with some four digit addition and subtraction. Again drama, again - she can't do it; oops, she added that problem instead of subtracting; she carried instead of borrowing?? Slow and steady - we are making it back to being quick at math again. Right now all that we have been doing is word problems from the SIngapore CWP book 3. It forces her to reason through the problem, figure out what operations need to be done on which numbers and then do the calculations. I wonder if we could just do CWPs as our only math?

It is Thursday , and we are finally getting into more subjects. Right now, she is working with Latin in Minimus. It leverages her love of Rome and secret codes. Lively Latin is the Latin program I have planed, but I thought that starting with Minimus would be great for her. Of course somewhere downstairs I also have a high school Latin program that is all translation, maybe we'll do that next instead.



Overall, I am glad that I planned to ease back into the school routine.

Friday Summary Week 30 - The Return of the Brother and the Big Performance

Can you spell JetLag? Poor BB, left Tokyo Monday at 5:30 pm and returned home at 3:30pm. His body is a full 16 hours off from our life, and he lost a day in the Pacific. He fell asleep at his sister's art class at 5pm only to be wide awake at 11 when I was going to bed. He looks like he has lost twenty pounds off his tall, thin frame. But it is good to see him and know that he is okay. I just want to tuck him into bed and feed him and keep him home. Except, he's 19 and scheduled to go back to school in two weeks. He told his sisters to not grow up too fast because being an adult is hard.Can I reverse time back to when he was little and do it all again more slowly?

Speaking of doing it all over again more slowly - LB is growing up too fast. Since she is the youngest, I am finding that I have to make sure I let her take turns to lead when we hike and explore. She loves to play with a younger friend so that she gets to be the older one for a change. This week she brought me a piece of paper with a hangman drawn on it and wanted to play with me and BB. She had a lot of fun being the one to write the words and letters. Now that she can spell a few words, she's excited to be able to play this with us. We used to play with BB when he was little, and we went out to eat, and now its her turn to play.

CC's once-a-week school had a talent show this week. As soon as she heard about it, she wanted to perform Jabberwocky. She already knew the poem; she just had to get over being nervous saying it aloud. We practiced several times this week with her standing in conspicuous places, and us doing silly things to try to distract her. Here is her performance, a bit shakey - yes, at least a unipod next time for the camera.






She was awesome!

We did some actual school this week, and

MEP is the best math program ever. Okay, at least I am still loving it. One of the problems she did this week was ___ x 7 - 12 = 4 x 4 I was prepared to explain and give some hints per the teacher notes, but she looked at it and said that was easy since she just needed to see what times 7 is 28. What? Wait, I was ready to help, but she said it was easy and went on 16 / 4 + 1 = ___ / 3 . Where has this math been all my life? She hates doing a page of multiplication and division facts, but eats this stuff up.

Other than that, we read history through the Aztecs and Incas, did dictation, spelling, art, and went on a lovely nature walk. She also read daily, recited Jabberwocky, and learned a new acronym - R.I.C.E - rest, ice, compression, elevation. I love our family doctor. He took the time to explain to her how to care for her injured, bruised hand (thanks to playing London Bridge with a friend too close to a bookshelf).

The poor dear has a terrible, deep purple bruise on the carpal bones in her hand - the doctor also named all the bones and described the functioning of the hand, small bones, tendons, and muscles. If she hasn't improved significantly by Monday, we might start lessons in writing with her alternate hand.

I think I'll spend next week trying to convince myself that my youngest isn't growing up too fast, my oldest isn't leaving too soon, and my middle isn't going to leave me someday too.

WR29 - Earth day

This week we went to one of our favorite parks with our friends. the lake has finally thawed and the kids enjoyed the sun, water, and just being outside.

Here is CC working on a slide for her playground she is building for her toys.

And LB is making beautiful playdough cookies.

I finally finished the second hole for my second apple tree and planted them (almost). I'll take lovely pictures when I have them all mulched. In the meantime, the kids had a great time with all of the intermediate steps of hole digging. This one was a boat, an island with buried treasure, and a castle with a moat. Notice CC is rigging the boat, and LB is chasing chickens with the would-be sails.

We did school this week too - but not on Monday. We have officially canceled Monday school. We just spend the day enjoying each other, and catching up on house work, gardening, or playing in the sunshine and not at work. That leaves us with 40 more days of our 180 to finish in 4 day weeks. I think school will last a while longer.

We found a new way to do grammar.


I give CC a dictation sentence that exemplifies a grammar or punctuation rule, and she rolls her eyes and explains how she already knows that rule. Isn't that fun? Well, instead of letting it get to me, I have embraced it (only not the eye rolling part). I looked at the next dictation sentence (from WWE workbook 2), told her what the rule is going to be and asked her to look for examples in her reading. Then when I give her the dictation sentence next week, I'll have her explain the rule back to me. It will accomplish the same thing, but with more style and hopefully less eye rolling.

For writing this week, we did dictation one day, copywork one day, and she worked on a story she is writing two days. She worked on her cursive with the dictation and the copywork.

For math, we have finished up through lesson 112 in MEP. This week, she told me that she loves math.

For history, she learned about the Great Dust Bowl at her cottage school, read about Roman homes and villas on her own, and we read up through the Moghul empire in Story of the World.

In spelling, she finished the Group 2 words. LB decided to join us at spelling so I started her on the List A, group 1. I call the words just like I do for her sister, but then I spell them for her and she write them down. Later in the car, the girls were quizzing hubby on spelling words, she told him to ask her how to spell MAN. He asked her, and she spelled it, "MAN. M-A-N. MAN. Daddy, you are a man." Now, guess what sentence I used when I dictated man. She actually wrote about 8 words that during that spelling lesson.

All four of us went to see Earth on Earth Day. It was a terrific movie. The girls would have happily skipped the scary scene at the watering hole at night, but the rest of the movie was amazing. We were the people in the back of the theater talking through most of the movie, but we really couldn't help it. There were too many reasons to say 'Wow.'

We read a beautifully illustrated version of Ivanhoe this week. At the end, CC declared that she wants to grow up to be like Rebecca, and before she went to sleep, LB was wishing she could be like "the princess" Rowena.

And that was our week.

WR27 - Sand in the house?

What you see pictured here is a real look at my school table. I didn't clean it up for the picture. The little one is still in her pj's, and the middle one is supposed to be writing her spelling word (yeah word) in the sand. Doesn't writing spelling words in sand sound like a nice, multi-sensory activity? It does. Now quit laughing. My hubby even laughed - he asked who on earth suggested giving sand to kids? It was of course the end of school. It wasn't the planned end of school, but I couldn't get anyone's attention back after somebody found a tiny seashell in the sand left over from last time we used it for a craft. So I just gave in, brought out my box of ocean-themed stuff and poured myself a cup of coffee. A long, hot shower helped too. The girls had fun then we cleaned up. Most of the sand really stayed on the plates - I was surprised.


We started last week in MEP math at lesson 84, this week we finished lesson 99. I am still loving it. We had a minor victory Wednesday when CC had to figure out what number times 3 plus 18 equals 75. Once she got the answer she was a little disappointed because it was "just like easy math but with bigger numbers." She was very proud of her work this week.

She started her new art class. Its another pottery class - she loves pottery and is waiting to be old enough to use the wheels. She also took a field trip to a local pioneer center. Her favorite parts were scrubbing clothes on a washboard, drawing water from the well, making corn bread, and panning for gold. She loves history that she can see and touch.

All that and we took Monday off because we needed a day off, went to the park on Tuesday after we finished our work, found two tiny, baby bunnies in our back yard, spent over an hour at the library reading the first chapters of books looking for a good mystery for CC, had a great day on Wednesday at the park with our friends, and colored eggs today.

LB is starting to get very independent. At the library this week, while I was looking for books for CC, she was supposed to be looking at books or playing in the children's area. I turned to check on her and she was gone. I looked behind me and there she was walking back from the water fountain with a big smile. She had been thirsty and gone for a drink. "Mommy, this is a small library and I walked right by you to get the water. I know the way there and I could see you, but thanks for looking for me." Why did my 4 year-old give me such a good defense of her water fountain trip? Maybe, she is bigger than I thought she was, and the reason I leave her in the children's area while I look in the bigger kids area has a lot to do with the size and layout of the library. She's my little devious child. She had anticipated my objections and had an answer for them.

The sun came out and we took a spelling test

After a blizzard and several days of blowing snow and cold, the sun came back so our short morning walk ended up at the park with an added nature walk. I love our parks and trails.

CC took the first step of the placement tests for Spelling Power today. She enjoyed the process.


She has been wanting to become a better a speller, and I have been struggling to accommodate that since she is a great speller and still very young. She scored a 25 on her placement test, which puts her current spelling level around grade 5.5. It also explains why I've been having trouble finding challenging material for her at a second or third grade level. Hopefully, This will be the spelling program for us.

Today she also happily worked through two lessons of MEP math. I still love this stuff. Now she's watching the funny part of Home Alone and eating a late lunch before we go out to run errands. I think we've all gotten a little out of shape this winter - a simple two hour romp in the woods and half mile run to and from the park shouldn't wear out such young kids. :) I love spring time and fresh air and exercise and sunshine and sunshine and fresh air.

In Which They Go on a Hike

The Following Trip Story was written by CC and has not yet been edited by me. I think I like it just the way it is. She thinks it doesn't have enough details, but it was just intended to be a summary.

Trip Story

It was the first hike of the season at UVP and Coco LB and Jac were going on it . With Coco leading the way she knew she could not get them lost.

But the others were worried, she took them through the most skinny rocky and bumpy terrain. They followed creeks, paths and Coco.

Finally they reached their destination.

And Jac took them home, on the way Coco and LB started playing Iditarod and LB won...

THE END.

as told by Coco, leader of the pack.

British Lit. has lots of poetry

BB and I have been toiling through Medieval British Lit. this term. It seems like everything was poetic and very dense. This morning after my shower I came downstairs to find BB reading the Tolkien translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to CC. It was really cute. He just emailed me his assignment for this week and I had to share. He was assigned to retell the story. I was assuming he would chose to tell it in prose but was surprised by poetry. Here is my senior son's poetic retelling of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Take a chair and you will hear,

The tale of a contest,

Not far from here.

Starting the day before new year.

At the feast of that famous table round,

The footsteps of hooves trod the ground.

Upon it, a knight so obscene,

From his head to his toes all dressed in green.

A burly beard and an axe made of steel,

Bellowing for the strongest foe,

That a deal may be made to strike a blow.

'Come out and face a man that is real!

I come here not for battle or war,

But someone to strike me a blow with my axe,

Thats all I, you will hear from me no more.

Except a year from now I will strike you back,

Is anyone here man enough for that?”

With that calling rose the noblest of kings,

Grey and wise, but large with strength.

Accepting the challenge, the giver of rings,

From the table a voice spoke, short of length.

'Your majesty, If I may, I have no noble deeds,

Allow me to strike this blow,

If not for honor then for the need,

Lust for blood, and death of this foe.'

With that, the king stood down,

The man, sir gawain, grabbed the weapon

And readied the blade to hit the ground.

Then the green knight's head went off and down.

But to everyones surprise the body in green

Grabbed his head and turned away,

'Remember the deal we made sir gawain,

Come find me in a year and a day.'

A year followed and sir gawain set off.

He was going to keep his promise,

He left without sneer or scoff.

Stopping at a manor with intent to rest,

Inquired of the knight in green.

The lord of the house saying without jest,

'The man you seek lies across the stream,

A two mile ride, it would seem.

If what you tell me is true,

You have three days before your day is due.

In this house, stay with me and my wife too,

We are happy to accommodate you.

But shall we, strike a deal, for fun if nothing more,

Every morning I'll hunt, until sleepy is the sun.

And you will stay within my door.

At night we shall exchange the goods we get bar none.'

To this said sir Gawain,

'My lord i shall play this game.'

The next morning the lord's wife came,

With offerings of love and seduction.

But nay, what a flawless speaker Sir Gawain was,

Meeting every parley with a true explanation.

Resisting temptation of bliss,

But the woman before leaving, stole a kiss.

That night the lord gave sir gawain Venison,

A kiss gave Sir Gawain to the lord in return.

The second day two kisses for a boar,

But the third produced something more.

The lady offered Sir Gawain a belt,

Immortality, she said, leaving through the door.

That night the lord came with a fox,

Sir Gawain gave three kisses,

But not the girdle in the box.

The day after that he set off to find,

The knight in green to settle the deal.

Hearing the sharpening of blades, he made up his mind.

With girdle on his waist he waited to feel,

The green knight's blow when he would keel.

The green knight raised the axe and feigned twice,

On the third blood struck

Sir gawain's neck trickled slowly.

Sir Gawain called shenanigans, which wasn't nice,

The green knight just laughed, and gave a look.

Revealing himself to be the lord of the house,

Knew of the belt, of which he took.

To this he said, as quiet as a mouse,

'You broke the rules, now go back to your nook.

Go back to your town, you cheating thief,

Live in shame you lowlife crook.'