Thinking Ahead to 2nd Grade

This isn't really a post intended for public consumption, I'm just thinking in blog form here. As I stated last week, Em will likely be homeschooled next year for second grade. It will be my first year of homeschooling both of them, and Em's first year home. I'm trying to plan a very gentle second grade year, so I have been looking at Ambleside and other Charlotte Mason suggestions. I also checked out the Core Knowledge sequence (this is different from Common Core: CK is a curriculum, CC is a set of standards) for second grade, and I'm thinking of using library books to gently cover the topics suggested in What Your Second Grader Needs to Know (by "gently," I mean introducing the topics, and reading grade-appropriate material about them. No testing involved.) As I make changes/additions to next year's curricula choices, I will edit this post.

Daily lessons in: 

• Handwriting- possibly New American Cursive
• Math- definitely stick with Singapore Primary Math, Standards Edition. She's about to start 1B, so second grade will probably include finishing up 1B, completing 2A, and beginning 2B. For this program, I need the Home Instructor's Guides, Textbooks, and Workbooks. I don't know about any additional Singapore books though.
• Language Arts- probably Primary Language Lessons (PLL) by Emma Serl, 1911 

For literature, we will just keep doing what we're doing. Everything else will be pieced together from Core Knowledge recommendations, library books, and whatever her brother is working on at the time.  Overall, I want to start out easy. If she wants more, I can add more.

Other thoughts:
I might want a teacherfilebox.com subscription for daily paragraph editing, geography, science, health, etc. for both kids.

Wrap up: Semester 2 Wk. 2

Another cold January week completed! We finished 4 math lessons, 2 grammar lessons, 2 writing lessons, some journaling and cursive practice (which I mentioned in yesterday's post.) In history we read about the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars.  We finally finished Wildwood, a huge, vocab-rich, complicated read-aloud that took 8 weeks and was worth every minute. I was going to move on to Tolkien next, but The Hobbit was checked out so we are now beginning Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret as our next read-aloud.

In our Friday architecture discussion, we learned about the difference between tension and compression and how both forces work together to support a cantilever beam. We looked at pictures of cantilever balconies and bridges and, of course, we talked about Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. We also watched two helpful YouTube videos: Physics of Life- Cantilevers, and Cantilever Project.

The exercises in our Latin program are strictly Latin to English translation. El flies through these exercises as they are, but I think I finally figured out a way to make Latin challenging for him. After he learned the new word, I had him look at the answers to the exercises and translate the English to Latin. It made a big difference and I was able to see that he isn't even really looking at subject-verb agreement when he translates actions verbs. Needless to say, he greatly prefers Latin to English translations so we will probably only do the reverse translations once a week.

Having done just about everything we could do with Adventures with Atoms and Molecules, we began a new science unit from Intellego: Chemistry I for grades 3-5. This was the first Intellego unit I've tried and, after downloading it, I wasn't sure I was going to like it. The first 20 pages are unnecessary, in my opinion. However, it finally gets into the "meat" of the unit around page 20 and the lessons are pretty good. We completed 1.1. and 1.2.

We had a little snow but it was so bitterly cold that only a tiny snowman was built. However, I'm not sure who that ninja is or why he is standing over the tiny snowman... =)

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but we have dropped spelling down to twice a week since El is flying through level E of Spelling Power. Pretest, write any missed words correctly, and then he gets them right on the post-test and on any subsequent review tests. Spelling is just not really an issue for him.  We did start keeping a word journal though, and he is writing down any unfamiliar words we come across in reading, in addition to writing his weekly vocab words there. Each day he spends about 5-10 minutes looking up and jotting down short definitions to any unfamiliar words.

We also discovered that there is, in fact, a limit to how many library books we can have checked out at once (you can see what we have checked out under the "What We're Reading" tab at the top.) That limit is 20. I think it is time to get El his own library card.

This Week in Writing

Em's completed Ravensburger unicorn puzzle

This week I began requiring 15 minutes of daily journal writing, despite Susan Wise Bauer's permission to avoid journaling with journal-phobic kids. I need a way to assess writing growth, spelling and vocabulary usage skills, and even handwriting in El's unstructured (notice how I avoided the word creative?) writing. El needs a place to write naturally, without fear of criticism (however constructive it may be, it is still criticism.) He will pick up a pencil and "draw" stories every day, but he is not inclined to write sentences unless it is required for school. Thus, he hasn't done much independent writing. We'll see how it goes. I am okay with changing the time requirement as needed or giving prompts if requested but, so far, neither action has been necessary.

I also began requiring one all-cursive day per week. I put five days (M-F) into a jar and let El choose a random day. His cursive day this week was Tuesday, so on Tuesday everything he wrote had to be in cursive. I've been warning him that this day was coming. (Next semester he will have to choose two days out of the jar.) I don't know exactly how the public schools do it but I do know that, by fifth grade, everything I wrote had to be in cursive. My husband thinks I'm crazy to require cursive at all since everything is typed in our modern world. I gently remind him that he speaking to a classical homeschooler: "That's outdated!" does not compute. ;-)

Speaking of classical education, I think we are going to make the leap and bring Em home next year for school. I've worried since day one that the classical model wouldn't work for Em, and that worry has not gone away after teaching El for the past five months. He thrives on schedule and rigorous academic standards. She requires a generally predictable environment with laissez-faire academics. I just don't see a way to use WTM-style grammar stage curricula with my independent little "please give me food occasionally and let me do my own thing" bird. I feel like I'm back to homeschooling square one. I just don't know how to teach this child. Of course, I will figure it out and she will be taught the required subjects, but it's the methodology and the process of "getting there" that have me feeling bewildered right now.

A rare glimpse of the "please give me food occasionally and let me do my own thing" bird, seen here in her native habitat, perched atop the art supply cabinet with dry-erase board in hand.

Wrap Up: (Sem. 2) Wk 1

We have just completed our first full week back after our awesome two (three?) week break. We jumped right in on Monday, with a full day of work. What is changing this semester? We began our new math program, Singapore Primary Math (Stds. Ed.) 3A which is going great so far. (El just took the Unit 1 test this morning and got 100% correct, so that was encouraging!) We began a basic vocabulary workbook and an intro to architecture/engineering book written for specifically for elementary kids. Both of these are a huge hit! We also began a geography workbook which is just okay. I guess it's a great value since there are 352 pages and I think I paid $7 for it, but it is really easy stuff. Looking at the Evan Moor Daily Geography Practice preview, I probably should have spent the extra 12 bucks and gone that route. Oh, well. Live and learn.

Red-Breasted Nuthatch: We have been visited by a few of these little guys lately. El drew this picture inspired by the picture in our bird guidebook.

El's drawing of the Parthenon. We voted: We prefer Athens over Sparta, 3-0.

Here are two more drawings inspired by Ames's fantastic Draw 50 Buildings book (El's Parthenon drawing above was also inspired by this book.)

Overall, we had a ton of work to do but El flew through all of it. Writing is the only subject he absolutely fights me on (handwriting, copywork, dictation, structured/creative writing.) Gah! Things like punctuation and writing on lined paper are torture to that child. He will write a few words and then switch to a comic-book style of writing with mostly pictures and some phrases written in captions, to just talking: "And then let me tell you how it ends..."

Me: "No. Write it. Please!" 

Him: "AAAaahrhhrrekggh! Fine!" (and then he draws a picture.) 

Sigh.

Handmade Holiday

Sometimes I have a life beyond homeschooling (rarely). And sometimes I blog about that life (even more rarely). Here is a post (with pics, of course!) about the cute handmade gifts I made this holiday season. Enjoy!

Here's a preview...

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.