Semester Wrap-Up

We have now completed 74 days of school and are out for winter break! I am so pleased with how well our first semester of homeschooling went. I'm also glad that we decided to start the homeschooling process with only one child this year. It has been a daily learning process.

Most of the curricula we chose worked well. We particularly liked First Language Lessons, the Math Mammoth (blue series) worktexts to supplement Math in Focus (which was okay but we're not moving on with it), Story of the World history, and Getting Started with Latin. Singapore Math worked so well for Em that I've ordered the next semester of El's math through Singapore instead of MiF. Discovering Great Artists has been a great art "spine," but lately our Friday art sessions have turned into architecture sessions.

Some of our choices didn't work as well as the others. Writing with Ease never really clicked for us. El preferred the cheapo Spectrum Writing workbook and I added daily copywork or dictation. Third grade "classical education" science is supposed to be chemistry only, but we decided to do chemistry on Thursday and a standards-oriented science program through Evan-Moor on Tuesdays. That seems to work better.

In the coming semester, I would like to begin an actual vocabulary program (likely to be Vocabulary in Action from Loyola Press but I haven't yet figured out what level to put El in.) We will do more literature and we will dial a lot of the other subjects back. December was kind of rough, with three flus and an ear infection. We spent several days doing math, then doing one or two other subjects, followed by reading to each other on the couch. It was very low-key and very inspiring. I want to have more days like that. This is still grammar stage, I continually remind myself. They have so many years of education ahead of them, learning at this age should not be stressful. Especially with a kid like El, who is certainly more and studious and eager to learn than I ever was.

In summary: Homeschooling is AWESOME. That is all.

Architectural sketching practice

Friday's final sketch: Big Ben in London

It's kind of like a wrap up, I guess...

Weeks 12 and 13 were combined out of necessity. Week 12 was a 3 day wk for Em, due to parent-teacher conferences and wk. 13 was a two day wk. due to Thanksgiving break. So, for week twerteen (thirtelve?) we did the basics (math, writing, reading, etc.) Latin & art were totally neglected (sorry, culture. No time for YOU this week!) We meandered through more Minoans since I wanted to start ancient Greece after turkey day break.

Cooking happened, but I don't have pics to prove it. The kids helped out with the Thanksgiving dinner preparations for a while, until their father lured them away with a set-up and plugged in microphone and electric mandolin (which is apparently waaay more fun than slicing eggplant.)

(I totally cheated. This is Em's from last year.)

As usual, I made entirely too much food.
 
Em ended the day with a fancy-hair happy dance:

The end.

Wordless Wednesday

Science: The goopier, the better.

Let's Talk About Math: Playing Catch-Up

This post has been a few weeks in the making as this is a success story in the making. I don't feel like we're "great" in the math department yet but I do feel like we are on the way.

Where we came from:
I feel like Eliot should be very good at math. There is really nothing holding him back. His perceptual abilities have stunned me since he was little and he did, in fact, test highly gifted in that area and the "Working Memory" area. Dad is mathy. My mom tells me I was once mathy too (I think those days have passed.) Anyway, El just had a lot going for him. I divulge this information not to brag, but rather as a prelude to my caveat: What we did worked for El because he was fairly high-potential & fairly low-performance. I don't think it would work for everyone.

Where we went wrong:
I never taught him to read, he just started doing it one day. I guess I thought math would come the same way. Apparently it does not (in our case, anyway.) El's first years at public school offered little to no math instruction and I didn't do any afterschooling. I just didn't want to push anything on him.

When I began placement testing El for homeschool last summer, I had to go all the way back to the Singapore 1B test to find a test he could successfully complete. Even then, he barely passed the 1B level.

Making a Plan:

The WTM, my "everything" spine, suggested third grade should spend 50 minutes a day on math, so that's what I planned for. I purchased Math in Focus: The Singapore Approach 3A and vowed to just try to struggle through it as best we could.El would work on MiF on M, T, Th & F and on W he would work on our other math book, Primary Grade Challenge Math. I also planned to work on multiplication tables for 5 minutes a day. The first day we would count by ones, then the next day I had him fill in the ones table and the remaining days he worked on flashcards of 1X1 up to 1X12. The next week I had him skip count by twos and review the ones flashcards. The third week he would skip count by threes and do twos flashcards, and so on and so forth. This part is going pretty well.


Setbacks:
The first week of MiF was okay, but a few days in we hit "mental math" and it sent us both into a small panic. I frantically consulted my mom (teacher extraordinaire) and the entire WTM forum for help. I thought MiF 3A was too hard: We needed something different, something non-Singaporean. Everyone else disagreed. So we decided to stick it out after taking a week off of the MiF program. So, the following week we put away the MiF book and I downloaded Math Mammoth Add/Subtract 2A. I watched every math video I could find about teaching subtraction. I pulled out the manipulatives and workmats,

the base ten blocks, the Khan Academy practice map. (In the meantime, I decided Em had to do math at home. She tested easily into 1A so I purchased the Singapore textbook and workbook. I worked through some of it with El so that he could gain a better understanding of number bonds.)

He spent two weeks in a "math intensive" with no text book. Just manipulatives (and Math Mammoth worksheets, occasionally.) To keep it interesting, we did continue with the Challenge Math book and we did some problems out of another workbook, Beginning Algebra Thinking. As long as it didn't involve subtraction, he could handle it.

At some point, I heard about xtramath.org, a free math fact practice site. I had El do this 4X/wk. I found a third grade math workbook at Goodwill and used it for drills a couple of times a week.

Carry on:
We started back in with MiF and worked our way through. Some of the extra things worked beautifully and we continued on with them (xtramath) and some have been forgotten (algebra.) Once we got to multiplication, I could practically hear Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" playing in the background as we left subtraction by the side of the road. I still have El work on subtraction a couple of days each week, and he is currently working on mastering subtraction facts on xtramath, so it's not like we've totally abandoned subtraction, you know? We're just seeing other people for a little while.

What did math look like by Week 12?
4 times a week we work on MiF. Somedays we work for 25 minutes and make it through a section, easy peasy. Other days we have to spend two 60 minute days on one section. We still do Challenge Math on Wednesdays, followed by a Math Mammoth worksheet or some Khan Academy random math learning for fun.

El does xtramath 3 or 4 times a week, with each time taking 3-10 minutes (depending entirely upon how lazy he feels like being. It shouldn't really take longer than 4 or 5 minutes.) I have him practice subtraction with borrowing and multiplication with regrouping a couple of times a week. We have some second grade math games from my mom which we play a couple of times each week. We have a homemade multiplication game which we will probably play once this week. He does beestar.org math twice a week because he likes it.

So, for anyone who likes lists as much as I do:

• MiF textbook and workbook- 4x/ wk
• Zaccaro- 1x/ wk
• math games- 3x/wk
• xtramath.org math fact practice- 3-4x/wk
• worksheet practice (Math Mammoth or other)- 3x/wk
  
• beestar- 2x/wk (although I don't ask him to do this: He chooses to do it.) 
• Khan videos/ practice 1x/wk (again, he does this because he wants to. I don't require it.) 

Overall, I would say we do spend more than the WTM classical education recommended 50 minutes a day on math, but not as much as you would think. We probably average 6-7 hours each week on math when you add in all the math games and extra practice. Considering he doesn't have "homework," I think this is a very reasonable amount of time for a third grader to spend on math.

Where's the success story?
Oh, hey, I almost forgot that part. Well, prior to day 1 El struggled through placement for Singapore 1B. After working through multiplication, he now slowly but surely made his way through the 3A placement test. Fifty five days of math and he has improved his level by 3 semesters. I feel like half of the problem was confidence (for both of us) and the other half was that he needed the material presented over and over in a variety of ways. When he found a way that worked, he needed drills at least 3 or 4 times each week.

He has gone from: "Yeah, math makes me kind of nervous" to "I love math!" and, to me, that is the biggest success of all. :) 

Oh. One more thing. If you ever hear me mention my math arsenal, I'm not foolin' around, my friend.

Wrap Up: Week 11

Week 11 (hey, which I just realized contained the day 11-11-11) was birthday week for Dad. Monday morning, before school started, we made our handmade birthday cards. Tuesday we had to think of something sweet to make Dad since he's a cake-hater (I know, right? O, the audacity! The heresy!) We came up with some handheld apple pies from one of the vegetarian cookbooks I checked out from the library last week. They were GONE within an hour of being finished (We made sure Dad got 2.) So good. 

Kids' cooking project: Handheld apple pies... Mmmmmm.

Yeah, they look a little weird but they tasted awesome!

El was ecstatic when he heard Monday's history project: Build an Assyrian siege tower out of Legos. He didn't really know where to begin, but luckily I found another hs blogger working through SOTW and we looked at her kids' towers for inspiration. Here is El's finished tower:

On Friday, we had Em with us so she worked on some Singapore math pages, a GDI printing page, this math sentence practice page recommended by Math Mammoth's Maria Miller and some Tumblebooks.

Friday was also art day and our artist of the week was Henri Matisse. Matisse was a post-impressionist who loved COLOR so he fit right in at our house. The project from our art book was to create a Matisse colored paper collage similar to the art he was making in his later life.

Here's more of our week:

•  Spelling: We are still finishing up SP Level D. I have pulled out every missed word from this level and I'm going to re-test those words over the next couple of weeks. I've divided them into 4 sections and will re-test 17 or 18 words at a time. I know, this isn't SP protocol at all but I'm stalling a little bit before heading into Level E since E (roughly grade 6/7) looks to be much more difficult than D has been.

• Reading: For Ancients, we finished up Six Beautiful Stories of Life by Cynthia Rylant (of Henry and Mudge fame) and I think I can say it has been my favorite ancients book so far. El also flew through Book 4 of Mary Pope Osborne's Tales from the Odyssey series. We also continued on with our On the Banks of Plum Creek unit study. El also read stories about George Washington Carver and Pocahontas. The library was closed Friday so we actually didn't make it to the library last week. That's right, we didn't go to the library last week and the world didn't end! Amazing, huh?
• Grammar: Completed 3 FLL lessons and mastered memorization of the Thackary poem.
• Health, music, Latin, handwriting, sign language... the usual.
  
• Writing: Copywork, dictation, Spectrum pages... the usual. 

•  Math: Finished up Chapter 7 in Math in Focus. This means El heads into long division in the coming weeks. This also means I have 2 chapters left until I run out of math. I've got to decide what I'm doing next for math, since I don't have the full MiF 3B and I'm still not sure I want to stick with it. 
• Science: Chemistry- "enzymes, yeast, and fermentation" in our chem. experiment book and  "rock types and the rock cycle" in our other science book. We also watched some YouTube videos about rock types since I didn't happen to have a geology lab at my disposal.

Wordless Wednesday

Week 10: Wrap Up

It is so difficult to challenge keep up with El sometimes. When I am totally worn out, I have to remember that he spent the past year in public school not being challenged at all. Our schedule, which began with the basics (arithmetic, language arts, social studies, health, science with some experiments, the arts) has grown and grown to include fiction unit studies, Latin, chemistry, geography, ancient history, cooking,

Think I'm kidding? Last week, I actually heard the phrase: "But mom, I need more information about Hatshepsut!" Luckily, there's a PBS doc for that. Whew. Saved by Netflix, once again.

sign language, speech, art history... I don't even know. When I ask him if he wants to give up one of these things so he can spend more time focusing on the others, he inevitably answers: Cursive! Sigh. No you cannot give up cursive. Anything else? What? No! I like it all!

If the concept of classical education was made for anyone, it was made for Eliot. So we are now cramming in a traditional public-school standards education in with a classical education and plenty of child-led unschooling as well. Why? Well, I don't know. I guess because he wants to and I haven't cracked yet. I'm sure the day is coming, though.

My family is just all-around... bizarre! intense. I don't know how to describe it. Okay, here's an example: My husband came home about three weeks ago and declared that, while he loves meat, the world should not be producing meat anymore. If there is meat available in abundance, such as when an increasingly abundant population of fish threatens the survival of other native species, that meat should be consumed by humans. Otherwise, though, we should not be wasting our natural resources on meat production. (To clarify: Meat is fine to eat, we just shouldn't be purchasing as much as we do and encouraging commercial production of it.) Okay. I guess I'll just scrap the menu plan for the rest of October.
(ETA: I don't necessarily disagree. He has a point.)

Then Em- my 38 lb., increasingly superstitious 6.5-yr-old- decides the only foods worth eating are corn, plums, plain biscuits with nothing on them, ramen noodles, and the broth made by one chicken bullion cube in one cup of water. They can't be eaten at the same time, though, because then they would mix together in her stomach and that would apparently be gross. This child came home from trick-or-treating, ate half a Ring Pop, and asked for ramen. I am not even kidding. Exasperated sigh. (This isn't permanent, though. Last week it was canned carrots, almonds, and dried cranberries. Who knows what next week will be?)

Progress! I got her to put pizza sauce on the biscuits and she actually ate them.

So, yeah. We all have our quirks (in addition to our quarks, El would tell you with a grin.) And since I am tired (and quite possibly anemic again) I'm not even going to wrap up our week. Everything. We covered everything. Except for biology or zoology. Shhhhh. No one mention biology or zoology to my kid, okay? Please? Not this year, anyway.

Wrap Up: Week 9

The weeks pass by so quickly and this week was no exception!

Here is an overview of what we accomplished this week:

• Language: Two more spelling groups completed. We should be done with Spelling Power level D within the next week or two. Our grammar program introduced adverbs this week, so we have completed two lessons on that subject. We have also completed the fourth "Dictionary Skills" lesson in our grammar book. El's cursive copywork has improved since I've had him write on third grade paper rather than in standard wide-ruled composition notebooks. He completed two more Spectrum writing lessons and two days of WWE dictation. I almost wanted to give up on Latin when I saw that this week's lessons were focused on identifying the direct object in sentences so that the correct Latin word form could be used in sentences. I needn't have worried: El picked it up easily. 
• Reading: Read the books from the library and worked on the Plum Creek unit study I began last week.
• Science: Tues- 1st week of a two week study on bridge construction (focusing mainly on James B. Eads and his famous St. Louis bridge.) Thurs- two experiments with oil and water to teach about polar v. non-polar molecules. El loved this video as a supplement.
• Social Studies: Reviewed U.S. states, but mostly focused on Egypt's New Kingdom. This is a subject that practically teaches itself! I mean, really. King Tut. Hatshepsut. Mummies (right before Halloween!) Who doesn't love that stuff?
• Art: Friday's artist study was of Claude Monet. Monet liked to paint outside in the sunlight and study how light reflected off water. We went down to the river and El painted the scene we saw in the afternoon light:

• Math: Completed 3 more multiplication lessons in MiF and made a cool math game to practice multiplication facts of 6, 7, 8, and 9. Completed Beestar for the week, completed xtramath addition fact mastery and began subtraction fact mastery, more subtraction practice across 000's, and completed 3 levels of Challenge Math Ch. 9 (percents.)

Playing the multiplication game we made on Tuesday

• Health: Completed a lesson on communication and problem resolution

Wrap-Up: Wk. 8

We have completed another week, and what a chilly week it was! I had to pull out the gloves and comforters for our (technically, almost) freezing nights. It's hard to believe there will come a time in a few months when 35 degrees feels like heaven after several single digit weeks in a row.

It really was a great week. Eliot began multiplication and seems to have finally "gotten" subtraction. He is still very slow at subtracting, but I feel pretty confident xtramath.org will help him master those facts. As I stated last week, MiF (our math program) expected him to go into multiplication already knowing many multiplication facts so I didn't know how he would do with it. I didn't need to worry: He's a pro! He easily understood the concept of "6 groups of 8 is the same as 6 groups of 5 plus 6 groups of 3." Even though he has never been given the problem 6X8, he was able to use (6X3)+(6X5) to do the problem in his head. Obviously, he will eventually learn all of the multiplication facts by heart, but I'm glad to see this problem-solving mental approach to introducing a new concept. We will survive math this year. (I'm just going to keep saying that over and over.)

We will also survive writing. Today El wrote a letter to my mom, and it was a pretty good letter. Although he still doesn't remember to use punctuation at the end of sentences and capitals at the beginning of new sentences when writing a paragraph, the sentences are there. Basically, I take this to mean he is at least forming complete sentences in his head. This is a huge step forward for him. Anyway, I helped him correct the letter and he wrote a very nice final draft, addressed the envelope, and mailed the letter. I don't know if the Spectrum workbook we started using is helping him in his writing or not, but it at least gives him an opportunity to do some structured writing once or twice a week, which he wasn't getting with WWE. (My point is: WWE is good, we just needed more.)

I bought my first unit study package download today! As I have said before, my kids read all of the time so I haven't really done a formal "reading" anything so far this year. I just pick out library books that are somewhat aligned with CM & Classical programs and they read them. Sometimes I ask them what chapter they're on and I read them a couple of chapters. That's about it. El has been absolutely in love with the Little House series for the past few weeks, though, and he is currently reading my personal favorite of the series: On the Banks of Plum Creek. I really wanted to do some kind of unit on this, so I found this on CurrClick.  (I think in the future I will be able to develop my own literature unit studies, but right now I was totally willing to pay 5 bucks for someone else's hard work.)

What else is new? Oh, Beestar.org. It's okay I guess. In less than 20 minutes a week, I can verify that if I sent him back to public school he would do fine in math. I guess that's important. He liked it, so we'll do it until he gets tired of it and I won't push it after that.

Wednesday was cut short by sewage backup and an emergency plumber call, so that was fun.

Tuesday, El decided the world would absolutely END if we did not go to the apple orchard this fall, so we did that (it was one of those things on my to-do list during break week that just never happened.) It was freezing cold, but we were lost in the corn maze for most of the time we were there so the dead corn stalks protected us from the wind. We brought back apple cider doughnuts for the rest of the family.

Artsy Friday painting

El's finished product

Em enjoys a caramel apple

Wordless Wednesday

A mild winter, perhaps?

Yeah, I Think You're Doing It Wrong

Bar models are supposed to help you figure out mathematical word problems, and they should resemble this:

or maybe this:

or something similar. You get the idea.

(Are those mountains? I don't even understand what is going on here.)

I don't think my son does, though.

Wrap Up: Wk. 7 (Break Week!)

Wow. We did not get very much done this week.

Yes, I know, it was a break week. Still, I thought I could visit with my parents, deep clean Em's room and pull out her winter clothes, write a decent midterm essay, go to the apple orchard, carve pumpkins, cook tons of exciting new recipes with the kids, decorate for halloween, figure out El's costume.

Here's how it all ended up working out: "visit with my parents, deep clean Em's room and pull out her winter clothes, write a decent midterm essay, go to the apple orchard, carve pumpkins, cook tons of exciting new recipes with the kids, decorate for Halloween, figure out El's costume."

We did discover a very cool architecture website and El spent several hours designing homes on it. Em and I made Chicken Barley Chili that turned out delicious. She also made PB&J sandwich rolls, which I thought were adorable but for some reason she didn't like them (? I don't understand why. This child practically lives off of PB&J.) Lots of playing outside and making giant leaf piles with the neighbor kids (first 1/2 of the week), lots of board games (rainy second 1/2 of the week.) El had his first weekly speech session of the year so he got to visit his old public school. Em's class (she's my afterschooler, remember) walked to the fire station (and everybody had to very quickly move out of the way when they got a call. Have you ever seen 25 6-year-olds do anything very quickly in an organized manner? It's not really possible. Luckily the emergency call turned out to be no big deal.)

Also of note this week:

• What the heck is beestar.org? I don't really know, but it's free and it's math, so I signed El up. I'll let you know next week if it is worth our time. (This poor child will have math coming out of his ears by Christmas.)
• Speaking of Christmas, October is THE TIME to purchase anything that will be "hard-to-find" come Christmas season. Lego minifigures were sold out everywhere by last November, so I did make any necessary minifigure Christmas present purchases this week.
• Em wrote a story for our library's Young Author Challenge. The title of her book is "Zombie Children Mannequins." I would write a description, but I'm pretty sure the book is shorter than any description I could write, so here it is in it's entirety (at the end of each page is an illustration):

p.1 Once upon a time, there were mannequins and lightning struck them so they came alive
p.2 and they went into a haunted house and once they came out they were zombies and they were really scary.
p.3 They came out and everyone ran away from them.
p.4 But they went back to the haunted house and turned back into normal kid
p.5 and got adopted!

There was a 50 word minimum and I think she just barely eked in above that. I asked her if she was going to write "The End" at the end and she looked at me, horrified, and stated: "Mom. Real books don't say 'the end' at the end."

In a few days, our trees went from 90% full of leaves to about 5% full of leaves. It was a great week to be a kid with a rake.

Working on "Zombie Children Mannequins" for the local library's Young Author Contest. Standing in front of her is her Lego creation "Robot Mom with Awesome Big Socks."

Wrap up: Week 6

Well, we have finished up our first 1/5 of the school year and we are now going to take a week-long break. Well, El gets a break. I get to write a history midterm paper on... something. (I really need to read that assignment since it is due in, oh, seven days or so.)

Math: Following last week's test results, we decided to put away the Math in Focus book this week and focus on lots of subtraction-with-borrowing review as well as basic multiplication review.  MiF is largely a mastery program so I did not want to move on until he really had subtraction down. Also, MiF 3A begins multiplication with "multiplication and division by 6's," assuming the student completed "multiplication and division by 1-5" during the second grade year. Since this is his first year with MiF, he didn't have any multiplication or division last year so we have been working catching up to MiF 3A.

Language Arts: El still struggles with WWE (Lvl. 2) narration, so we have added a Spectrum workbook to make writing feel a little more productive. He actually really likes the writing prompts in this workbook, and it makes us both feel like we're getting somewhere in writing. I was going to give up completely on WWE, but I do really think he needs the narration practice. Maybe I need to give in and get the workbook? Not this month, anyway. Additionally, I'm pretty sure his handwriting has actually gotten worse over the last few weeks so he probably needs all the writing he can get. :/

Other than writing, El is rocking right on through language arts as usual. He has done tons of reading (his required book this week was "Tales from the Odyssey: Sirens and Sea Serpents"), 2 grammar lessons and a dictionary skills lesson, 3 more spelling groups mastered (we actually took Wed. & today off of spelling because it's just going so fast.)

Almost finished with Spelling Power level D. Here is some word work.

Our artist this week was John James Audubon

What a beautiful week to observe trees.They won't have leaves much longer, though!

Map work. This week our focus was Ancient China.

Making a clay bowl for our Ancient China studies.

I got the idea from this blog to prioritize my focuses using the acronym ART. I have it written inside my daily plans and I refer to it often when I start to get stressed about the "teaching" part of homeschooling. 

Anyway, here's the overview of the goals I set for this week with goals not met stricken:

Math:

• Rework missed math test problems and work on subtraction with borrowing daily
• Master "vocabulary of multiplication"  (factors and products)
• Do MiF intro to Ch. 6 and complete 6.1
• Challenge Math Ch. 7 Levels 1 & 2 Ch. 7 incorporates calculator use, so we skipped most of it and did Ch. 8 instead. No calculators yet, thank you!
• 30 minutes on xtramath.org and daily multiplication (1-5) review

Language Work:

• Memory work: Review Land of Nod and start memorizing list of pronouns
• 3 lessons in Spectrum workbook and 2 written paragraphs
• Writing With Ease: 2 days completed
• Spelling: Level D, 3 groups
• Latin: 3 lessons from the text, focusing mostly on subject/verb agreement
• Sign Language class with library co-op group

Social Studies:

• Story of the World, Ch. 10: Ancient China. Make page & do map work. Projects: Clay bowl and pictograms.
• SOTW, Ch. 11: Ancient Africa. Make page & do map work. Projects: Paper beads or henna hands

Science/ Health:

• Evan Moor unit on backyard habitats
• Chemistry experiment #7: Are some molecules heavier than others? (This experiment, by the way, ended as many of our experiments do; with a Crash! followed by........"Yay! Science!") =)
• Health: 2 textbook lessons on "Managing Stress" 
• Nature hike. Okay, we never took an actual hike this week, but we have spent hours outside enjoying the beautiful fall scenery.

Whole Child:

• Cooking: Homemade omelet
• Drawing: drawing things in nature
• Art: focus on John James Audubon
• Music:

aaaaannd.. Hello Burnout! We are tired. It's time for a week off!!!!!

Weekly Wrap-Up: Wk. 5

Math

• Finished Math in Focus Ch. 5, Review, Test over Ch 3-5
• Primary Grade Challenge Math Ch. 6 Levels 1-3
• Worked on multiplication of 2's, 3's, 4's, and 5's (up to X12)
• 3 days of Xtramath.org math facts practice

Language Foundations

• Completed 2 sections in First Language Lessons, as well as the first Dictionary Skills lesson
• Successful memorization of "The Land of Nod" (I am amazed by this. Five weeks ago he could barely hold a 5-word sentence in his head for dictation. We started the memorization of this poem as suggested in F.L.L., but I didn't really have a lot of hope for him. Somehow, he just... got it. Yay!)
• Spelling Power: Completed 3 more groups
• Latin vocab: "Est" & "Es" 
• Reading. I only require one book (this week, it was Because of Winn Dixie.) We also have a book which I read aloud to them, which was Kenny and the Dragon. Everything else was his choice. He is a book devourer. Luckily we live very close to the library.
• Writing: Paragraph study (main ideas & supporting sentences)

Searching for animal tracks on our nature walk

Social Studies

• 2 Chapters in SOTW
• Geography: India

Science/Health

• 1 Unit in Read & Understand Science
• 2 experiments from "Adventures with Atoms and Molecules"
• Nature walk & animal tracking

•  2 lessons of Harcourt Health

We captured some carbon dioxide during experiment time.

Other stuff

Testing his homemade tomato soup and croutons.

• Cooking: made homemade tomato soup w/ homemade croutons
• Music: studied note lengths
• Art: Painting w/ "silver leaf" (aluminum foil) like Fra Angelico

Artsy Friday

El LOVES Fridays because that is the day we set aside 2 hours to study art! This week, the artist he studied was Michelangelo. After learning a little about our artist of the day, we visited a very cool website that shows the Sistine Chapel in 3d. El gave the technique a shot and determined that it would have been very, very difficult to work like this every day for 4 years!

Sweet Career Move

After a week of stating that she was going to be an artist when she grows up, Em tonight has decided she might want to be an art teacher instead. "Because art teachers still get to do art every day, but they also get cupcakes every time anyone has a birthday."

Hiking Adventures

El: "Mom, I think that's a brain. Just keep walking."
Me: "No, it's cool. It's from a tree."
El: (seriously panicking) "AH! Mom, no, I think it just moved! Get away from it. I really think it's some kind of brain or brain plant." (?!?)
Me: "Calm down. Look. There are more hanging off that tree over there. It's okay."
El: "Oh, WHEW. Okay. Wow. I'm sure glad it's not some kind of brain."

They All Even Out in Grade 3

"We don't do any testing before third grade because most kids level off by then."
"We don't provide any gifted programs before fourth grade because most kids level off before then."

I've been wanting to write this post for a long time, but I hate to appear critical of the public school system for a couple of reasons: 1. Some public school teachers are AMAZING. My mom is one of them. Em had another one last year. They are out there, these gems, who will deal with whatever new standards and procedures you throw at them and still have time to help every single student be the best they can be.  2. It's a bit of a non-issue at this point, and always has been. We have always planned on homeschooling them when they became old enough to accept and appreciate education. We aren't homeschooling El as a reaction to something negative, we are being proactive. Em is having fun and she went into first grade working at a second or third grade level so I'm not worried about her education at all this year. First grade was similar for El. However, he went into second grade working at a fourth grade level. He left second grade working at a fourth grade level.

Let me tell you how to "level-off" a kid. It's a two-part process involving parents and schools.

Our district gives report cards 3 times a year beginning in second grade. (In K and 1, there were "I Can Do It's" but no report cards, which I find reasonable considering the material.) On his first report, El leveled into grade 4.5 in reading. His teacher said he was actually reading much higher than that but when testing comprehension, he started to miss questions at about level 4.5. Specifically, he was missing questions regarding the author's intent. She said this was understandable since this was not usually taught until the fourth grade.

Fast forward a few months to the second grading period. El leveled into grade 4.5 in reading. His teacher said he was actually reading much higher than that but when testing comprehension, he started to miss questions at about level 4.5. Specifically, he was missing questions regarding the author's intent. She said this was understandable since this was not usually taught until the fourth grade.

Wait, did that last paragraph look like a copy and paste of the one above it? Yeah, it was. I had assumed that the school would do it (part one of leveling off.) The school wasn't the slightest bit concerned about him progressing, as long as he finished second grade at least on level (part two.)

Lesson learned: It's MY duty to be responsible for my children's education. I'm not going to send him somewhere where he could spend entire months learning next to nothing. If his entire learning process is going to take place outside of school, WHY was I sending the kid there for 7+ hours a day? Social reasons? I'm not impressed. 

"What's the hurry? Why do you want him to be so far ahead?" Nope. It has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with my child sitting there day in and day out, doing busy work. I could have sent him to daycare. His writing composition did not improve. His math did not improve. He barely budged, yet no one was concerned because he had met the end of year goals for second grade. He always made straight A's, so why should anyone be concerned? (Update: He did learn cursive, so that was nice.)

Well, it's not his teacher's job to be concerned with kids like El. Her job was to get these 25 students on level by the end of the year. Hopefully she did that, and I wish her well. I was the one not doing my job, and I have learned my lesson. Within a week of receiving that second report card, we had made the decision not to postpone homeschooling any longer. He finished the school year and we then withdrew him from the district. I will probably start homeschooling Em in second grade instead of third. I have already started afterschooling her in math because she asked for it.

So, yeah, I'm sure a lot of kiddos do "level off" by third grade when left entirely to their own devices.

Homeschool Art: Lesson 1

Friday was the last day of our "trial" week in which we tried out the various subjects that we will be homeschooling beginning tomorrow. We started the day with art, which I have learned I am not nearly as prepared as I thought I would be regarding materials. The book we are using is called Discovering Great Artists and the first lesson was to be an egg wash paint in the style of Giotto. Well, of course I didn't have what I needed, so I unwrapped the neat oil pastels and looked in the index to see what lesson we could use them in.

Degas it was! I didn't really know much about him, so it was fun for both of us. We read the workbook paragraphs about Degas, then went over to smarthistory,org for a little video. Smarthistory is a great resource for high school or college students, I'm sure, but poor El was bored so we moved on over to YouTube where we found a much more entertaining presentation. We completed the lesson by using the techniques Degas used to paint our own pictures. El was so excited about how his turned out that he wanted to stop and make a video using his new DV camera, which is exactly why I'm posting. Here you go: A third grader's video about Edgar Degas.

Classical it is! (pt. II)

Language Arts... What can I say? Wow! This area is just massive. As it is, in our nightly reading sessions we read an hour or two but apparently that is nowhere near sufficient. "Language Arts" includes such childhood favorites as Spelling! Grammar! Handwriting! What?! Won't these things stifle the creativity of my aspiring little writer? All right, seriously now: My aspiring little writer is rarely able to successfully end a sentence ("and, and, and...") His handwriting and spelling are laaaazzy ("I just need to get this thout down on paper- it doesnt mater if i use corect spelling and puncuasion! I have the squiggly line to tell me when im wrong!") I'm hardly any better, so I have purchased curricula to walk us both through these basic parts of language arts.

Once again, going with the SWB on a couple of my choices here:

1. Writing. There is a nifty little book called "Writing With Ease: The Complete Writer" that covers the first four years of writing preparedness. The whole WWE series includes workbooks for each individual year but I have decided to save the Earth by not purchasing four unnecessary books when I can develop my own program from "The Complete Writer" (translation: Yeah, I'm broke.) I haven't given El the "mastery evaluations" in this book yet, but I'm pretty confident he is going to test into the "Year 2" level.

2. Grammar and then some: First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind, Level 3. (Okay, this isn't technically SWB, but it's her mom so... close enough.) I did go ahead and get the instructor's guide with this since it was really affordable and it walks you step-by-step through each lesson. This big workbook is such a great value at under $13 on Amazon. The workbook has a certain amount of review from Levels 1 & 2 so I'm hoping it won't be too difficult for El to go right into 3.

In the non-Peace Hill Press category of language arts curriculum, I'm going with Spelling Power for spelling (What? Did you see the price on that page? Yikes. No. I did not shell out $60+ for a spelling program, even if it is for several years. I found an ugly orange used 3rd ed. for a few dollars on eBay.) I love this program because the word lists are not really level-based, but rather frequency based. I also love that you pretest and then the child only works on the words that he or she missed on the pretest.

What else is there... oh, reading! Well, there is already so much reading material in this house that I can't imagine not having something to read. Additionally, we have Kindles (free downloads of most public-domain books) and live a couple of blocks from our local library. As for what to read, we will be drawing a little from our history program. We will also do some selections from the book-lists over at Ambleside covering years 1-3. I'm not really worried about forcing any reading. In fact, I need to go upstairs right now and tell them it's time to put the books down and go to sleep. :)

What are you reading, anyway?

El: Mooommmmm...
Yeah?
El: I can't sleep. I'm too afraid of all those preserved bodies in Pompeii.
Uh, Pompeii's like, on the other side of the world. If they frighten you, you can just choose to never go there I guess.
El: I know, but that doesn't help me right now.
?!?

But I love them both

Both my kids are gifted... in different ways. One has a nearly adult vocabulary. The other just asked me if she can have a "taco bun."

Those tricky silent letters

Me: What did you learn about in school today?
El: Did you know it's black history month?
Me: I did. Did you talk about some famous black Americans?
El: A little. But then I got to read this book about Rosa Parks. She did not want to stand in the bus assel just because she was black, but black people had to stand in the assels back then if white people wanted to sit in the seats.
Me: Oh, sweetie, the "s" is silent. The word is pronounced EYE-ull (aisle.)

'Cause standing in the aisle's bad enough. Hate to think of what it's like standing in the bus's assel.

Lost in Translation

Em: "King Arthur said that kids with blue eyes can even be friends with kids with brown eyes. King Arthur said that all kids can be friends, no matter what color their eyes are."

It took me a while to figure out what she meant by this, but we finally determined that she was translating this famous quote:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Martin Luther King, Jr.

So, yeah, she got the main point of it, I suppose. And that's what's important, right?

Monochromatic offenses

Em: I HATE school. (She's in full-day kindergarten.)
Me: What? Why?
Em: Because I hate BOYS. They're so mean. And RUDE. And they only use ONE COLOR when they make pictures and it's usually just scribbles.

...and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true

Ah, good old Wizard of Oz. I was thinking about writing this blog earlier today, because I am continually amazed at how completely into the L. Frank Baum "Wonderful Land of Oz" series my kids are. We are now on the fourth book, Dorothy and the Wizard, and although it was written a hundred years ago, they (and I) enjoy it as much as the other two contemporary series we are currently working our way through, Magic Tree House and Guardians of Ga'Hoole. Aaaand, the Oz series is so old that it's now public domain, meaning the Kindle downloads are all free. Woot!

Anyway, Em* loves the series so very much that she asked to be Dorothy for Halloween. After assessing the costumes commercially available, I decided just to make it for her. It didn't save me any money (partially because the pattern itself was $10-- ouch!) BUT I was able to make her a costume that fit her:



*Although I had never read the book, I loved movie when I was a teen, and actually got to play "Dorothy" in a school play. After I had named my daughter, my mom said, "I knew her name would have something to do with The Wizard of Oz." I said, "What? Which character?" and she then told me what apparently my subconscious must have known all along: "Auntie Em, of course!"