Week 13 Long, Good, and Painful

Right at this moment on a Friday morning, LB is at the park where she'll spend the day playing at a nature center all day, and CC is sleeping after being in the ER with me until the wee hours of the morning.  That is a tiny picture of our week.  Yesterday, LB was at a Waldorf co-op that we recently joined making gingerbread cookies and painting with watercolors while CC was at school taking a science test and preparing for her winter orchestra concert.  Last night, after the wonderful concert, we found out that she is allergic, very allergic, to tree nuts.  I also had my first experience jabbing her with an epipen which was no fun.  It was a long, long week.

Right now, the Waldorf co-op is providing LB and I with a tiny community to belong to.  She's getting art, music, stories, and lots of outside time with a few children instead of just working around my work schedule.

I'm back to being very afraid for CC with yet another life-threatening allergy, but  we knew right away what the reaction was and didn't underestimate it.  We reacted exactly the way we should have even though we were afraid, and we didn't panic.  She seems to get in a perfect balance in her life then her health throws it out again.  We'll fight to get  control back again.

The best thing I heard all week:
When I came home from the ER last night I peeked in LB's room to kiss her sleeping head good night.  She rolled over and sang, "Carry me home."

Week 10, Birthday, Math and Reading glasses

LB is 8

Happy Birthday, LB!  Darling LB turned 8 this week.

One of the good things about homeschooling is taking the day off for your birthday.  LB got breakfast in bed and a trip to the zoo for her birthday.  We spent the zoo trip following her around the zoo at her pace.  She also had a yummy gluten free chocolate cake with a dairy free chocolate ganache frosting.  Seven was fun, but she is happy to be eight.


CC's math project.  By all that is holy, please.  I don't have enough patience to watch a child color-code when she could be graphing.  Really.  She kills me.  I'm a monochromatic kind of person.  She's artistic.  Somebody save me from artistic people.  How on earth did this happen to me?!  Smile and breathe slowly.

She really did a great job.  She spent two weeks working on a graphing project.  She didn't just want to do something simple and easy to answer.  After a lot of effort, she chose to look at the effects of bias on surveys.  It took her a lot of time to design a question set that would demonstrate bias.  Then we spent 5 days collecting data.  The results convincingly showed that bias has an influence and negative bias has a stronger influence than positive.  (51%-49% favored dogs over cats in the unbiased question.  Only 30% chose whichever was the target of the negative bias.  59% chose the target of positive bias.)  She had to graph her data in two different ways which forced her to figure out how to account for the different sample sizes in her data set and still show her findings.  I think it was a terrific project.  She worked hard and learned how important it is to look carefully at the design of a study instead of just looking at the results.

This week her orchestra class had their first concert in morning assembly.  They were terrific.  I still think it is amazingly bold to take a whole class of sixth grade public school students and turn them into a string orchestra.  My brother always notes that the kids are self-selected into the school so they aren't the same as a class at a typical public school, but still.  This is not a group of 65 kids paying private teachers and paying for their own instruments.  It is bold to expect they can achieve this.  At the end of the year, these kids will sounds wonderful.  At the end of the 5 year orchestra program, they will be amazing.

LB's reading glasses arrived Monday.  She was very excited about them, but I think she was disappointed too.  Despite her dad and I both warning her that the glasses should make reading easier by making words bigger but that they wouldn't correct her vision problems, she was disappointed.  She spent a lot of time playing with the way things looked with her glasses during her lessons, but she eventually put them away before finishing her work without them.   I think she had hoped they would making make everything all better.  Later in the week, she brought out again to read a chapter from Mercy Watson and said that they really helped.

Between the new glasses and her birthday, she didn't do a lot of school.  She only completed three days of work this week.  She had a lot of fun, and is making progress in math and has been doing well with her science and poetry also.   Our book highlight for the week was The Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night.  It is a mix of descriptive poetry and natural history with beautiful illustrations.  It was our first poetry book by Sidman, and I think we'll read some more.

It think it is interesting how very different my kids' taste in poetry at this age has been.  In second grade, BB loved nonsense poetry by Shel Silverstein like Where the Sidewalk Ends.  CC loved dramatic poetry like "Charge of the Light Brigade" by Tennyson.  LB loves lyrical poetry like "Daffodils" by Wordsworth.

Week 8 Vision Development

A mountain in fall

This week LB had her evaluation by the developmental optometrist.  It was very interesting to watch.  I could tell that she was curious about the process and trying very hard to not have anything "wrong" with her.  After two hours of hard work, the doctor concluded that she has tracking problems and convergence insufficiency.  Essentially, when LB reads across a page, her eyes can't stay focused on the same point so words go into and out of focus as she reads, and she easily looses her vertically in the page.  It explains the way she reads, why she tires easily from reading, why words "jump around the page", and a lot of other things.  Now that I know more about how she sees, I understand a lot more about her reading, her lack of confidence about reading, and her resistance to reading despite her ability to read.  We're going to do some vision therapy starting in a couple a weeks.  Hopefully, it will help a lot.  In the mean time, she has chosen some really cute reading glasses that should make it easier to read when she has to.

LB and tiny aspen

That was LB's big accomplishment for the week.  I've spent the time since the appointment reconsidering the material we're using.  I understand why the simple, clean pages of R&S math work better for her than the other math books we've used.  I'm adding in additional read alouds for her and some daily board games.   I want some more art and less reading until we've started making progress in VT.  I'm keeping our science, poetry, copywork, and math just the way it is because it has been working well.

CC and more aspen

CC had a great week at school this week.  She wore a dust mask to orchestra to help with the rosin aggravating her asthma.  It was a huge improvement for her.  I really like that her school creates a culture of respect and kindness.  Instead of the other kids making fun of her, they expressed concern about her breathing, supported her and celebrated with her when it proved to be effective.

Family picture - I'm the tall one in the back

She had a history test this week covering Ancient Mesopotamia and did well on it (they used this book for this part of the history class).  She also had quizzes in Latin and Math and a playing test in orchestra.  She is still doing great in school and still loving it.

Or maybe I'm in red

This is what the top of the mountain looks like

Or this about 15 minutes later when the storm blows by

Will it work? A first look at an organized day

I like color coding people and times.  The Blue is CC, the Pinks and Orangey Pinks are LB, the Yellow is me, the Purple is both girls, the Green is a scheduled rest or together time. I have lots more meetings during the weeks, but they aren't as predictable as the ones I have here.  I decided that I would do a morning and an afternoon session in a "main lesson block" where we'll cover the main content, art and writing for the day.  The other scheduled times are for reading, phonics and math in their own time slots.  My idea is to weekly add in the rest of my meetings and reorganize blocks as needed.  At least it works on paper, which is a big step towards working in reality.

Plans for Sixth and Second Grade

The Framework:
Both girls will continue Judo and art lessons.  LB will continue her ps enrichment program that offers science, music, art and pe.  She'll also take tap, jazz and ballet.  CC will be taking cello at school and will continue private lessons.  Our schedule will leave lots of time for reading, crafts and play.


Second Grade:
Last year I found that it is really easy for me to give LB a stack of workbooks to work through and call it school.  That is not the kind of school I want.   I also found that with my schedule I need something planned.  I am combining the MP Second Grade Curriculum Package for skill subjects with the Oak Meadow Third Grade package for content subjects.  The emphasis will be on reading fluently and writing with content focused on ancient civilizations and life sciences.

Here is our material:
Following the MP2 schedule:
Math: R&S Math 2  -- she needs simple, non-distracting, mastery. 
Phonics and Spelling: MP spelling and SRA Phonics 3
Reading: Little House in the Big Woods, Mr. Popper's Penguins, The Courage of Sarah Noble, Tales from Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Tom Kitten, Johnny Town-Mouse)
Handwriting: New American Cursive 2
Oak Meadow 3 - Language Arts, History, Science, Art and Music
CLP Nature Reader 2 - extra reading practice + some science content .
Fluency Practice: Dancing Bears 

Sixth Grade:

This year, CC is going to a public charter school for sixth grade.  The school is based on the Paideia Program, classical homeschooling and Trinity Model schools with a foundation of Socratic methods.  They study Latin, diagram sentences, use Socratic methods, and emphasize truth, beauty and understanding.  We shadowed a couple of times last year, and CC was thrilled to see kids her age excited about learning. 

Planning Second Grade for LB

I have Oak Meadow 3 and MP 2, and I'm trying to coordinate them.  I love the way that OM integrates art into LA, history and science.  I love the straight forward plans of MP.  I sat down today with the first week of both programs with all my resources to see if my plan to combine them will work.  I know from my own experience that I work best when everything is "do the next thing" which is one of the reasons I like MP.  I'm hoping to organize OM so that it is just as easy for me to use.  Here's my first stab at it.  LB goes to an enrichment program on Tuesdays so I had to squish the five-day-a-week plans into four days.  OM provides the stories and background information in the TM.  The MP spelling list is in the back of the book on a page with room to copy the words.  I tried to stretch things out so that she wouldn't listen to 3 stories in one day then narrate 3 in one day and illustrate 3 in a day.  I plan to read the LA story on Sunday night before bed.  I'm going to try a few more weeks to see how it comes together.

2011-2012 Wrap-up and Evaluation

I spent some time reading over my reports from this past year.  It's funny how you kind of forget the details as you go along.   I started out the year with a lot of ideas and plans, but I don't really think the year turned out the way I imagined would. I think next year I need to write down my goals instead of just my plans so that it will be easier to evaluate how I did.

First Grade:

LB started out the year able to sound out words but not read because of her lingering vision problems.   Her eye doctor had said she'd outgrow it around the age 7.  He was spot on.  She recently read Blueberries for Sal and Caps for Sale.  She's currently reading Stink.  We started with the McRuffy Readers, but dropped those in favor of the reading assignments in Memorial Press Grade 1 program.  She felt much more accomplished reading real books instead of readers.  We also started reading the CLP Nature Study 1 book daily.  I like it.  It gives her some terrific reading practice along with some interesting science content.

We completed ETC3 and 4 and started 5.  She still loves the ETC books, and we plan to use the whole series.

We started the year with Saxon 2 and Math in Focus 1.  A few months ago, I realized that it really wasn't working for her.  It finally hit me the day she had completed a timed worksheet of +9's without ever seeing the pattern.  We'd worked on the pattern and talked about the pattern and demonstrated the pattern,  but she finished the worksheet without ever relating it to a pattern.  I quit doing math with her.  After a couple of weeks, we started the Life of Fred elementary series just to do some math while I figured out a direction.  After a while, I added in Monopoly (specifically Dogopoly) and decided that was enough.  She can now add the dice in her head as well as add up money and make change. Thanks to LoF, she can also tell time to 5 minutes and spell Wednesday.   I'm happy with where we are even if we dropped math.

At the beginning of the year, she started working on cursive with Jan Brett's cursive letter printouts.  Right now, she has pretty good cursive.  We're more than half way through the McRuffy First Grade cursive book.    We also added Writing With Ease 1 which she's enjoying.  Her copywork is terrific and so are her summaries.

For our history studies, we did a great job with the dinosaur unit, but kind of fizzled after that.    I've learned that I need something more structured next year.

Other things - I had started adding more memory work, but fizzled at that too.  However, while watching her practice for her dance recitals, I realized that she has an amazing memory.  She performed 3 dances this year with 2 of them being solos.  Her most recent tap dance was 3 minutes of complicated steps that she performed by herself on stage with a big smile in front of a full auditorium.  I had to admit that dance is much more complicated than the memory work I had planned.

This wasn't my first time teaching first grade.  I expected the math problems and the agonizing  pace of a new reader.  Experience made me much more patient and flexible that I had been the first time.   Reading is my biggest priority for first grade, and she exceeded my expectations in that area.

Fifth Grade:

I made great plans for CC this year which changed immensely.   She read all the books I had planned this year in the first month.  She also read the shelf of books I'd saved from when BB was in school.  It was the historical fiction from the old SL Core 6+7.  She'd done all of that before Christmas.  She read a ton more books and discovered Horrible Histories which she devoured.

We started the year writing summaries for history.  After a few weeks, she hated that.  We eventually settled on fictional news articles based on historical events.  She'd spend the first part of the week researching then a day or two writing.  It was a great way to encourage her to research and write.

She told me she didn't learn much in science this year.  I pointed out that the purpose of the science we used wasn't to teach her science, but to teach her to think through an experiment and learn to do a lab report.  She was shocked that I had used her friend and science to teach her something like that.  I had thought it was pretty clear.  She did enjoy the non-fiction reading I required her to do each week - except for the fact that I required it.

Math.  I need to talk about math.  We started the year in LoF Decimals which we quickly dropped in favor of AoPS Pre-Algebra.  It was hard, and she struggled, but it was good.  At the end of January, she was awarded a spot in a classical charter school which doesn't do "tracking."  It will be two years before she is in Pre-Algebra so we dropped AoPS.  We worked through part of RS Geometry and MM5 and a lot of pages of long division which she has loved since BB taught her how to do it years ago.  Last month, she had to take a placement test to see if she'd need summer math remediation for her new school.  She did very well once she got used to the test format.    She's hoping some of her skills get rusty so that she won't be bored when school starts in August.

I never did get around to replacing Shurley grammar when CC changed enrichment schools.  I did work with her on punctuation in  writing.  I gave her a spelling placement test that showed she could spell at a 7th grade level so I didn't even attempt to teach spelling.   With our lack of attention on grammar, I was shocked when I found out that her new school would be giving a grammar placement test.  I was more shocked when I was told that she had passed and was "well-prepared" for their 6th grade grammar program - they use Hake.

I think the biggest success of the year has to be cello.  She started last fall and loves it.  She practices everyday until her fingers are sore.  She memorizes her music.  She stretches her brain like it has never been stretched before.  She's always had an amazing memory, and this is the first thing she's done that leaves her mentally exhausted.

Her year didn't turn out at all the way I had planned; it was better.  This was my first time teaching fifth grade.  My biggest priority was research and writing.  I wanted her to learn to find information herself, summarize it and write about it.    She has exceeded my expectations in that area.

The Teacher:

This was a hard year for me.  My work changed dramatically over the year as I became much busier.  If I were being ungracious with myself, I'd say that I did a terrible job this year.  Many days, I just barely made it to the end of the day.  I didn't spend nearly enough time teaching either child.  I slacked-off with expectations, accountability and direct instruction.  I was thrown into a tail-spin by my mother's heart attack, my husband's accident and my own health challenges.   Good thing I'm not ungracious.   Homeschooling is hard, but I worked hard, and the kids succeeded.

Overall, I guess I passed this year.  At least I survived it.  Now I need a few weeks to relax and get my bearings back again.

Week 31 Yes, we still have fun

I took this picture this week to remind myself that we still have fun.  When I look at what I have planned for a week of first grade, it tends to look like workbooks, math, reading, writing, boring and no fun.  However, we get our scheduled work completed during the day with plenty of time left for free play.  I don't schedule things like building hotels with boxes from Amazon or mixing primary colors to make secondary colors or painting or finger painting, but our schedule leaves us lots of time for those things during the day.

CC has discovered that she loves caring for plants.  she started these herbs from seeds a few weeks ago.  She's been spending time everyday gently caring for them.  We picked up another seed tray and some flower seeds this time - maybe she can grow some dahlias for me.

This week for school, LB continued to stretch herself in her reading.  She reads really well, but doesn't yet have a lot of confidence.   She'll get there.  She still loves LoF for math right now.   She happily does her handwriting, phonics and WWE1 assignments everyday.  We're doing great in our groove except that she was sick Thursday.

CC is happily moving through some math, for a change.  She's also reading a lot and practicing cello for an hour a day.   We've finished all of the work I'd planned for history this year, so we started reading The Ancient Near Eastern World because we have it and haven't read it yet.  She had a formal evaluation from her cello instructor this week which was a good experience for her.  She also had her first training sessions for her summer volunteer job which looks to be as fun and educational as we'd hoped. We all went to a concert at her future school to hear the orchestra class perform.  They are amazing, and she's looking forward to being a part of the group.

We finally got together with our friends for science and did our blood typing kits.  I want a retest because it said I was A negative.  CC is O positive just like her dad and mine.

The weather is beautiful, and we're looking forward to a great weekend.

More books and things or taking a new path

I spent part of the weekend trying to get my inspiration back after our recent change of direction.  I listened to a few SWB audio lectures and read some CM.  I also spent a morning reading to LB and took both of the girls to the mountains to glory in the change of seasons.   Here is my CM inspiration:

Children can be most fitly educated on Things and Books. Things, e.g.––


• i. Natural obstacles for physical contention, climbing, swimming, walking, etc.

• ii. Material to work in––wood, leather, clay, etc.

• iii. Natural objects in situ––birds, plants, streams, stones, etc,
• v. Scientific apparatus, etc.

The value of this education by Things is receiving wide recognition, but intellectual education to be derived from Books is still for the most part to seek.
Every scholar of six years old and upwards should study with 'delight' his own, living, books on every subject in a pretty wide curriculum. Children between six and eight must for the most part have their books read to them.

I had a good talk with CC then inquired about a different enrichment program. This one is in a different district that is designed mostly for group-learning and social time (which means it is for fun not strictly educational).  We're planning to visit it in a couple of weeks, but for now, we'll work on filling in the holes left from the last one.

This morning I began school with a story for LB before her breakfast, and we all enjoyed some poetry together.  I'm happy with the new direction we're taking.

2011-2012 Week 1 of School

We had a terrific first day of school, but I was tired and feeling rundown by Wednesday (or was it Tuesday night).

This week CC
-- Completed Four lessons of Life of Fred
-- Did One chapter from The Brain by Ellen McHenry
-- Read and discussed Two chapters from Sophie's World
-- Started reading about Creation Myths from around the world
-- Finished reading Night of the Twisters and A Little Princess, started reading a big collection of Mark Twain. 
-- Summarized a chapter from SToW
-- Read and discussed the first chapter of the Story of Science
-- Did copywork from IEW poetry everyday to refresh her memory of the poems she learned last year
-- Did two pages of Shurley Grammar homework, started learning her grammar jingles, wrote a newsletter about herself, reread the first four chapters of A Secret Garden for Literature and worked on some vocabulary and word roots.
-- Reviewed the Spanish vocabulary she learned last week
-- Started working on a barn for her sister's horses
-- Made a map of an amusement park then spent two hours with her sister visiting it.
-- Did a lesson from Classiquest Biology wither her friend
-- Spent a day at her enrichment school learning language arts, Spanish, art, and music.

This week LB
-- Did 3 lessons of Saxon
-- One lesson from Singapore's Math in Focus
-- Did 6 pages of ETC3
-- Worked on cursive handwriting
-- Read the first McRuffy reader
-- Drew, colored, named, and laminated a lot of dinosaurs
-- Excavated a dinosaur skeleton
-- Taught Daddy how to pronounce dinosaur names
-- Listened to some fairy tales
-- Retold a fairy tale
-- Went to tap class and Judo
-- Started learning about our state history, learned a new song, made some art, learned a new p.e. game, and played with her friends at her enrichment school
 -- Went to the dentist

Together
-- Wow, I had always imagined that I'd be able to conveniently combine them in some subjects and spend a wonderful time learning together but at different levels.  That just isn't happening.  LB spent so much time tagging along with CC when she was younger that she doesn't want anything like that anymore.  She wants her own learning that is just hers.  I spent a lot of my time just trying to keep them from annoying each other while they were doing their work.  I decided that I'll put the effort into keeping their work separate so that when they are done with school, they'll feel like playing together.

I learned this week that I need to make sure school happens first thing in the day.  I also learned that this is HARD.  I think I should have known this by now.  In case you were wondering, Wednesday we worked on finishing CC's writing assignment until almost 10 pm; I just couldn't get all of their and my work into a normal sized day.    I am grateful that I spent so much time planning things so I can be mostly "do the next thing" in all of my subjects, or I would not have survived this week.  I am also grateful that my mom and hubby are home to help me juggle work and homeschooling, or it would never work.

2011-2012 First Day of School

Today is the first official day of the new school year.
We started at 9am talking about the September poem, what tokens we associate with September, and what September fells like to us.

LB started with handwriting.  We're working through  Jan Brett's Cursive pages before we begin the McRuffy Handwriting.  She did two pages, one for her left hand and one for her right hand (we're all working towards being able to write with both hands).  Next, she read and colored the two pages from her McRuffy reading book.  We did the first lesson of Saxon math which went pretty well.  She liked the morning meeting, and the first day didn't have any written work.  I had planned to finish all of the seat work before we did history, but I forgot to do the ETC.  She enjoyed excavating her dinosaur bones from the dinosaur kit. She had done her seatwork and found her first bone by 11am.  She worked on her dinosaurs until around noon then did her phonics.   Afterward, she ran errands with me and bought new shoes for school along with some snacks.

CC started with a cursive page for her left hand then started on a summary for history.  By 11am, she had finished her summary.  Apparently this is a skill that you can forget over the summer.  She kept getting distracted by her sister, Grandma, me, the dog, the wind.....  After she finished her summary, she took a break to help her sister dig for dino bones then dove into the first chapter of Life of Fred Decimals & Percents.  Next she read the papers from the doctor about patellofemoral pain and worked on a section of poetry copywork.  She was done with her work around 2pm.


Our first day of school went really well.  I had planned less work for this week than we will typically do so that we can ease into our full schedule.  I don't think I'd change a thing about the day.  Next, I'll have to see how it works when I'm working and trying to do all of this.  Oh well.  At least today was nice and smooth.

Last Report for summer 2011

This week CC read A Winter's Tale, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Secret Garden, Stories from Ireland, and a couple more Max Axioms.  She's having trouble with the Secret Garden because she doesn't like the main character which is new for her. She's doing math and reading daily along with using some iPad apps to play with geography and presidents.  She loved her first day of her new enrichment school.

I started reading  A Treasury of Children's Literature to LB.  She restarted her tap dancing class.  She's still doing phonics daily and enjoying lots of free play and stories.

We went to the pool, judo, mini-golf, and many nature walks.  The girls spent a hot day playing in the shade of our big tree.  LB woke up before me one morning to do her phonics (seriously, I hadn't even turned on the coffee pot yet).  We had Friday science with our friends.


Nothing really says "End of Summer" like buying those school supplies.  Picture me at 8pm on Tuesday night at Staples  trying to find the last two items on our extremely ridiculous school supply list for the one-day-a-week ps school.  I need 1 Red 1/2 inch binder with two inside pockets and 200 lined 3 1/2 x 5 inch index cards.   I start with the nearly empty school supply bins.  Where are those index cards?  I give up and move to the binders.  There are no red binders left.  None. Zero.  Zilch.  Ten minutes later, I find a 1 inch red binder with inside pockets dumped on the bottom of a clearance rack and grab it then start checking the upper shelves where they keep the extras.  I finally find a red half inch binder under a stack of tabs (I needed 8 of those too).  I choose to go with the red half inch with no inside pockets and abandon my red one inch with the inside pockets.   After 30 minutes, I am halfway done with my list.   I decide to check the other side of the store to see what's there because I am boring myself with school supplies, and there they are.  The ruled index cards.  I actually feel a momentary feeling of victory then laugh at myself and return home.  Summer must be over by now.

Where did the time go?

Exactly when did my baby get old enough to be sitting in a cafeteria waiting for school to start? And why is my youngest, homeschooled-child sitting in a cafeteria waiting for school to start?

Welcome to the world of enrichment school. There are many ways to homeschool.

CC goes on a different day than her sister, but she wanted to take her to school. On the way home, she mused about what kind of college she wants to go to and what she wants to study.

What? I'm changing plans already? I haven't even really started yet!

Working on the Tree House

Well, I'm about 17 days into the school year, and I've decided to change things a bit. Yes, I haven't actually started my planned material, but that isn't the point. I have decided to start the year with a focus on manners. Yep Manners. I have a bunch of books like Manners, Oops! and Everyday Graces that we're going to read instead of some of the other things I had planned. I've decided it would be good for all of us to start off the year with some extra consideration for the ones around us.

BB made it safely to the other side of the world. He starts back to school on Monday so we will too. We'll do some reading, some writing and some math and art. I think that will be a good official start to our year. The girls start at their enrichment school the week after that. Once we get a good rhythm with all of that, then I'll add more of our subjects at home and do the things I had planned originally.

This plus math and a story makes a school day

We are still in our summer mode of doing school lightly.  We don't traditionally start until after BB goes back to college, but we are trying to catch a couple of days a week.  Today, the girls hit it out of the park.

Art, Science, Spelling and Technology for a Kinder

LB loves animals.  She has been working on a series of animal pictures on the IPad in SketchBook Pro which I find hard to use.  She is amazing.

Art, Technology and Practical Skills for a Fourth Grader

CC made a form with all kinds of choices for pets and pet supplies, put it on the computer, printed it, asked her sister to make choices and then designed, sewed and stuffed a dog name "Jack" with all of his supplies just like her sister chose.  It is an extrordinary amount of creativity and work for one day of fourth grade.

Sometimes I really love Homeschool

Reading Green Eggs and Ham for the second time this week and
Feeding ants to carnivorous plants.

I think one of my favorite things about homeschooling is the chance for my kids to learn together and really know each other. It is such a precious thing.

Earlier this week, CC helped LB read 6 pages of Green Eggs and Ham. This morning, LB wanted to read it to her brother. She is reading the copy of Green Eggs and Ham that I had bought for him when he was just learning to read 16 years ago. They really grow up too fast.

Crawling into the new year

humph. That is how I feel about the start of school. I have the plans that I've labored over all summer. I have the books. I even have pencils, paint, paper and protractors. I'm still missing something important.

We've done three weeks of school stretched out over the last month or so. We've even gotten back to long division and phonics. Maybe it will feel more like school after we put BB on his plane to Japan which is our traditional start of school. Maybe once it quits feeling so much like summer. Maybe once the enrichment school starts and we get into our fall routine. Carpools, classes, morning walks, a real routine - that must be part of what is mising.

I'm looking forward to looking forward to school.
I'm trying to incorporate my newest Einstein quote into our school life -

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

How do you lead children to experience the mysterious? I'm still turning that one over in my mind.

Right now in my homeschool

The girls are sitting at the kitchen table with a rock identification kit for each girl. The oldest is indentifying 15 rocks based on their properties. The youngest is comparing the rocks to see which ones leave what color streaks, which ones are magnetic or reactive to acid, and washing them all with a paint brush etc.


Science, thinking, education. All happening right up there where I can see them while I am supposed to be in the family room/office working. Instead, I am distracted by how amazing they are.

A first look at Kindergarten

This is my second time teaching Kindergarten, and I'm a bit sad that I can't do it the same way for LB that I did for CC. I think, that given the limits of our time and schedule, I have still made a terrific Kindergarten plan for her.

My main focus for her is going to be reading. She has a problem with visual processing that she is supposed to outgrow sometime before she is 7 so I'm very nervously doing watchful waiting. In the meantime, we are doing Phonics Pathways. Right now we just do it a couple of times a week, but for K, we'll do it daily. She was very ready to learn to read at 4, but because of her vision, she started guessing words,struggling to keep her place in the line, and feeling that she wasn't a good reader. Being the youngest and knowing that the other two read at four, I think it is pretty tough. I've tried to relax about the reading to make sure that I'm not adding more stress to the process.

Besides reading, LB needs to write which will help the reading. I am going to use a mix of Intentional Writing (my own thing) and copy work. Once reading is easier and less of a struggle, we'll move into Writing With Ease 1. A big part of learning to write here is retelling stories, otherwise know as narration. We'll use Wisdom Tales for this.

For math, I have a variety of hands-on math things including Miquon and Right Start A which I'll add in as I can, but we'll mainly work through the rest of BJU K math then move into BJU 1 math.

For Literature, we are going to focus on Aesop at the beginning of the year. I have two or three Aesop books plus Aesop Literature Pockets. After that, we'll do Anderson Fairy Tales.

Geography is going to be covered by Around the World in 80 Tales plus a little geography workbook I found that we'll start using later in the year.

We'll continue to work through Little Labs from Thames & Kosmos for science in addition to our Nature Study.

For fine arts, we'll do O'Keeffe, Monet, and Cassatt for artist and picture study, Stevenson for our poet, recorder for music, and watercolor for our art medium. She also takes art classes at an art school

That leaves history. My favorite book for history for this age is Baldwin's 50 Famous Stories. I'm adding a book on wonders of the ancient world to that.

She will also start a once a week enrichment ps which will include French, hands-on science, art, music, p.e., lunch and recess.

Once I get the rest of the books in, I'll make weekly lesson plans so that between hubby, my mom, and me we will be able to get a little bit of school work done and read all of those terrific stories that I want her to hear.

A first look at fourth frade

For 4th grade CC wants to study like a Roman girl would have. We've made some compromises and detailed the material. I just need to get my hands on all of it and map the lessons.



Roman children need to be able to write-
She's going to keep two journals, one for her modern self and one for her Roman girl self.
We're going to do CW Homer A. Once she saw the samples, she loved it.
We're doing Spelling Workout E because she needs a spelling program, and I need something easy.

Well-educated Romans spoke Latin and learned Greek. She's continuing the barbaric language of the Gauls which she started last year which is a diplomatic language in the modern world. She's also learning a language that is far more complex that we have the benefit of a personal tutor (brother) who has been studying it for 5 years now
First Start French and Rosetta Stone French
Japanese lessons with her brother over skype once he goes back to school

Books were highly valued and difficult to obtain. They were not consumed in vast quantities. We'll be reading stories a Roman child would have read.
The Children's Homer
Black Ships before Troy
The Wanderings of Odysseus
In Search of a Homeland
We'll also listen to audio versions of the big three in a good translation
She'll be using chunks of each for memory work this year too.

History was a fairly new invention. Roman children would not have had access to history of other parts of the world, but they would have known their own history and heroes.
Famous Men of Rome

Science is where we are diverging. A Roman girl wouldn't have had science. A well-educated Roman man may study astronomy and natural philosophy, but not what we'd call science. We're at least sticking to tangible sciences.
We're doing a unit on architecture, one on physics, and one on science in Ancient Rome. We also do Nature Study.

Wealthy Roman girls would have spent a lot of time with the fine arts so we will too.
She wants to concentrate on watercolors at home, and she takes classes at an art school.

She decided she wants to play the Bassoon. She also wants to learn the Lyre. We decided to start with a recorder to learn to read music in general which I've neglected in these kids. BB played a cello and a trombone, plus the recorder in early elementary.

Fiber arts are a practical skill that would have been possible for a Roman girl to learn. She has a spinning wheel, but we're going to start at the beginning with carding wool then she'll take a class for spinning then a class for weaving.

Oh and of course she'll be doing math. Roman girls needed math for running a household. She'll continue same math that is working for us now. Good ole Saxon. She's more than halfway through 5/4, and we have 6/5 already. She also does Life of Fred, Math Perplexors, Problemoids, and the Art of Problem Solving.

Besides all of that, she's going to learn typing, AND she goes to school one day a week.