adventures in homeschooling

changes here too... (maybe)

2010-09-02T12:13:00.001-07:00

I posted on my other blog that I am considering password protecting my blogs.... I'm not entirely sure that I will password protect my homeschool one but I am for sure going to password protect my other one. What are your thoughts on this? I'm thinking this one will be okay as a public blog as long as I stick to the topic of homeschooling (which was supposed to be the whole point of having this blog :-). It might not be very exciting though... it's just me and the boy this year, as the girl is off to give school a try.

break out the catalogs....

2010-05-27T11:24:00.000-07:00

The letter arrived today... there were no spaces available for Alex's grade! Fate has spoken! I'm off to read catalogs and make list after list after list! :-)

He took it really well when I told him. I asked him what he wanted to do, since our neighborhood school is still an option.... he said he would rather homeschool another year while researching schools so he can reapply for the next fall. I can live with that.

confession time

2010-05-18T08:42:00.001-07:00

So, my friend pointed out to me the other day that I haven't blogged here since February. I thought it was finally time to come clean on the reason why.

I'm not sure we are as dedicated to homeschooling as we are to making the right educational choices for our children. Homeschooling was the right choice for Alex. Clara, however, has always just been along for the ride. I have questioned for years if homeschooling was the right option for her. Not necessarily academically, but socially. She thrives in group settings, she missed her preschool experience in a way that Alex never did. Jeff and I started discussing this seriously after the first of the year.

By the first of March, we had decided to look into school as an option for Clara. We found a school that is a performing arts magnet school and went on a tour. It looked like it could be a good fit for Clara. She did not know why we went on the tour. When she questioned us later, I simply told her that the school had a tour day, open to the community, and that her dad and I had just gone to check it out to be informed community members. She started asking details about the school and what we saw... I stuck to facts. She disappeared for a little while and then reappeared. She told me that although she liked being homeschooled, this school sounded like a good fit for her and she wanted to know if we would let her try it. She was so excited! I know she doesn't fully grasp the reality which is school, but she was truly excited about giving it a try. I told her that if it was something she wanted to try, she was more than welcome to (each year we always ask the kids what they would like to do the following year... they've just always said "homeschool" in the past).

The more Clara talked about it and asked questions, the more excited she got. That's when my worst homeschooling nightmare happened.... Alex got caught up in it all. He decided that if Clara was going to try it.... so would he! I was ill at this point. This wasn't supposed to happen. The school that we saw for Clara was not a good option for Alex even to try.... and we had already missed the lotteries for other schools. We informed him of this and told him that his only real option was the school Clara liked (we're within their boundaries so they have to take the kids). He was fine with this, but I wasn't. Alex is my kid who gets up and has his schoolwork done by 9:00am, who watches the history channel for the fun of it and randomly picks subjects then checks out and reads all of the library books available on that subject. He crafts his own educational experience much better than I can at times.

But... we moved forward and I scheduled another school tour and this time the kids were going along with me (this was about two weeks ago). Clara loved it all.... the dance studio, the fact that her grade was mostly girls, the fact they have musicals and dance performances.... we got to meet with a reading specialist who went through exactly were Clara should be coming out of 2nd grade and was pleasantly surprised to see that she was at or above where she should be (this had worried me since I really only had Alex to compare her with). As much as Clara loved it, Alex didn't love it. They were lacking in his favorite subjects and most of the material they would cover in 5th grade was what Alex did this year at home in 4th. And all of the stuff Clara was so excited about... dance, performances, etc... were things that Alex was just so-so about (he loves performing, but he's been doing enough professional theater lately that doing it at school doesn't appeal to him).

He came back from that tour in a horrible, horrible mood. He had in his mind that he really, really wanted to try school next year but was not sure this is where he wanted to be even just to try. We had a big talk later. I asked him why he wanted to go to school. He said that almost everyone he knows either goes to or has gone to school and he just needs to know for himself what it's like. I really couldn't argue with that. As a friend pointed out, to him, it's like another one of his research projects.... he needs to gather his own data.... this is an experiment. I had to respect that. However, I knew that the school Clara was going to go to was not the right place for him even to try (oh... don't think I didn't consider it for the selfish reason that I was pretty darn sure he wouldn't like it and would return to homeschooling ASAP). I talked to him about staying home another year. During that year we would research and tour possible schools for him. I decided to do some poking around on the school website and found that a few schools were having a second late lottery. I did some research and asked around about the schools on the list. I found one that looked like it could be a good option for Alex. We sent in the form and now we wait.

So, there you are. I may not be a homeschooling mom come next fall. One is going to give school a try for sure. One is waiting to see what fate decides. This time of year I'm usually reading homeschooling catalogs like crazy.... making list after list... reading message boards for suggestions and recommendations, etc. This year, I'm just here. My catalogs are stacked and ready (unread) waiting to be called into action if Alex doesn't get in to the school.

We're still doing school, but it's more school prep these days... which is why I haven't been blogging about what we've been doing. I wasn't sure I was ready to come clean about it all. Not because I'm embarrassed about any of it.... but just because it was all so up in the air (and actually still is a bit).

My thoughts are that our educational philosophy isn't going to change because they both may be in school. We try curriculum all of the time. We try things at one time and find it's not a good fit, only to try it again a couple years later and it really clicks! This is no different... they're just trying school. We've also let them make choices (or at least have a say) in their education over the years.... again, this is no different. Friends asked the other night what we would do if they both went and hated it. If that happens and they have given it a fair shot, they are free to come back home again at a break.

So right now I'm busy collecting and organizing books so they will have a good reference library at home (I always need a reason to buy more books). We're in the midst of our end of the year testing. And after they get back from camp, we'll continue with school prep. And it will all be okay :-)

the opera....

2010-02-18T06:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the kids and I got the opportunity to attend the dress rehearsal of the Lyric Opera's production of The Damnation of Faust. Amazing, simply amazing.

I'm not saying that we really understood much of what was going on... but the music and the staging was wonderful. The kids were mesmerized... especially Alex. He knew more of the story and was totally into seeing it come together on stage.

There was quite a bit that was not exactly kid appropriate, but they didn't catch most of it (especially since it was in French and I know, Clara at least, stopped reading the subtitles at some point).

It is such an amazing experience for me as a mom and a homeschooler, when I sit back and realize that the kids and I spent the bus ride home (and part of the evening) discussing opera! Not Spongebob, or Hannah Montana... but opera! (don't get me wrong... we do have those discussions too) Apparently, we all had a lot of questions about what was going on and why things were acted out the way they were. We discussed our theories as to what we thought was happening. We checked the descriptions of the acts in the program to see what we may have missed. And then we fell into the our typical discussion of "what was your favorite part and least favorite part and why".

I know I say this often here... but we are so fortunate to be able to homeschool here in Chicago. What an incredible number of amazing opportunities we have available to us here!

RECESS!!

2010-02-15T07:09:00.001-08:00

One of the kids' favorite things about their lit and poetry classes on Wednesdays is that they get to have a bit of recess with friends after class.

Due to the snowstorm that hit on Tuesday, they brought their snow gear and played outside after class... building a snow fort....

They had a blast!

Alex's books

2010-02-10T08:30:00.000-08:00

For School:
Meet George Washington (Landmark Books)
What's The Big Idea, Ben Franklin?
Phoebe the Spy
all of these are part of his Sonlight curriculum

Listened to on audiobook:
Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
This was for a lit class that he and Clara are taking. I LOVE that I can download audiobooks from the library directly to my ipod (for free!!). This was our first real test of that feature and it went really well.

Read Aloud:
The Meanest Doll in the World

Read for Fun:
Dandelion Fire: Book 2 of the 100 Cupboards
A friend introduced him to this series and now he's hooked. He'll be excited to know that I just found that there's a book 3!

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

2010-02-03T13:37:00.001-08:00

On Wednesdays the kids have a poetry class with some of their friends. For the past few weeks they've been working on the Jabberwocky as a performance piece.

Today we finally got to see the show...

Ugh... apparently I have issues with uploading videos... I kid you not... it has taken me about 10 tries already! All five kids are in my video, but for some reason photobucket cuts off one whole side of my video! I'll have to try to figure it out... sigh.

Ooooohh... I think I got it this time!

MINDSTORMS!!!

2010-02-01T08:50:00.001-08:00

The Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kit has arrived at our house!!

Alex saved his money and finally had enough to place his order. It arrived on Thursday night just as we were heading out for the evening. It nearly killed him to leave it, but he was so excited that he actually had it that it was okay.

That night, before bed, he unpacked and repacked the box of parts so he would be ready in the morning. He then took the manual to bed with him and read it all so he would be REALLY ready :-)

In anticipation of the arrival of the box, he had worked ahead in his schoolwork so he could have Friday off.

The boy built and programmed ALL day....

He loved his first little bot... but alas, that love was short lived and it was quickly disassembled in order to build something else.

(demonstrating the jaws of the gator-bot he was building)

He built several of the examples from the kit over the course of the day. By Saturday afternoon, he thought he was ready to branch out into his own design. This really excited me. I must admit that I had a fear that he might build the examples and then be done... either from loss of interest or from it being more difficult than he had thought. I was glad to see that he was willing to give his own creation a shot even before he finished the sample projects.

So, Saturday night he built a gondola-bot that travels across his room on a piece of yarn suspended between his desk chair and closet door knob. He keeps tweaking the program, but right now it travels to the closet with a green light shining. When the touch sensor hits the door, it pauses, says "have a nice day", turns its light to red and travels back to the chair. When it hits the chair it again pauses, says "have a nice day", turns its light back to green and travels again to the closet. He's pretty proud of this so it goes on for quite a while! :-)

I can't wait to see what he builds next!!

what Alex has read...

2010-01-27T19:34:00.000-08:00

... so far this year.... unless I missed some (which is entirely possible).

I really enjoy the books lists that Jocelyn posts on her blog, so I thought I would try to do something similar for Alex this year.

I'm going to try to do this each week. I took this photo on library day since we would be returning one of the books in the pile.
For School:
Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia
Mr. Revere and I: Being an Account of certain Episodes in the Career of Paul Revere,Esq. as Revealed by his Horse
Both of these are part of his Sonlight curriculum this year.

For Fun:
The Disappearing Floor (Hardy Boys, Book 19)
Alex loves the Hardy Boys mysteries... he always grabs one when he wants a quick read.
Peter and the Starcatchers
Alex LOVED this book. It was part of our family book club this year. I'm the only one who hasn't finished reading it, I got distracted by an old favorite (found a Trixie Belden mystery at the library... I loved those as a kid). Anyway, I'm trying to talk Alex into writing a review of the book for the blog, but so far, no dice.

Thank You!

2010-01-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

(random photo since I have an aversion to photo-less posts)

I just wanted to jot a quick note to say thank you for all of the advice and encouragement you all have given me, either in person, via email or by commenting here after my post about Clara.

I have decided to loosen up the structure with her. I'm toying with an eclectic mix of Charlotte Mason, Montessori and maybe a little unschoolishness (how's that for a word?) thrown in. I'm still working it all out, so nothing is really underway yet. She's still working through Horizons Math, but I've added more living math books to our day. She's still working her way through Click 'n Spell but I'm thinking about adding some of these from Montessori for Everyone and continue using All About Spelling to explain the spelling rules. I'm having her read more to me from various books, not just a "reader". I've also started adding in a bit of copywork. She needs more writing practice to go along with the work she has been doing with her handwriting tutor so why not be copying rich texts from great books versus the simple sentences given in her handwriting book.

Like I said, I have a lot to work out still but I think I'm on the right track.

Thanks again!

homeschool swim

2010-01-21T07:24:00.001-08:00

We're pretty fortunate here in the city that so many different people and organizations are willing to work with homeschooling families to form classes during the day. The place where the kids take swim classes is one of those great organizations. There are only four kids in the class but they're totally okay with that and the run the lessons anyway. The kids get great individualized instruction and they have a lot of fun with each other and their instructor.

Their favorite thing has to be the diving board though. They usually each get one turn off the low board at the end of class...

The boys got to have extra turns the other day while the girls changed clothes...

How do you solve a problem like...

2010-01-12T19:19:00.000-08:00

... Clara?

Sigh... time for my biannual homeschooling meltdown in regards to this child.

So, here's where we are right now...

1. Math - we're actually doing decent here.... not great but decent. I have her plugging away through Horizons for my own piece of mind. However, where she's really doing well is with the living math approach. We've added more living math books and we're playing more games again.

2. Handwriting - still a struggle but we're making some headway... finally. We have a handwriting tutor (an occupational therapist) who comes to the house once a week to work with her. She still really struggles, which makes me sad, but like I said, she is finally making progress. And thankfully, she's made enough progress that she can get more practice at it because she's able to do written work in all of her subjects.

3. Language Arts - we're finally doing more work with this now. I have tried working on LA with her at different times but it was just more frustrating than it was worth for either of us. Uppercase and lowercase letters were all the same to her... capitalizing the first letter of a sentence meant nothing to her since she tended to write in all caps anyway. Now that handwriting is beginning to click with her, simple grammar rules are making sense too.

4. Reading - she's moving along in reading. She's finally graduated to reading easy chapter books. She has a friend who is an avid reader and it's pushing her to push herself with the level of books that she is reading. I still have her do quite a bit of reading aloud to me so we can work on issues together.

5. Spelling - not great but we're slowly but surely making progress. She's doing an online spelling program at the moment, but I need to get back to something more hands on.

6. History, Science, etc. - to be honest, these have not been at the top of my priority list for her this year. We have had so many other, more pressing issues to work on after her learning assessment that I haven't been doing anything terribly formal for her.

So, here's where I'm at... where do we go from here? What is the best overall approach to take with her? I need a plan. I know that both of my children have different learning styles and completely different interests. I know that what works for Alex will not work for Clara. Alex is thriving with Sonlight this year... it's been really exciting to see. However, as much as I would love to have two Sonlight kids and be able to pass curriculum down, I'm just not sure that it's the right fit for Clara. Sonlight is so literature rich which is right up Alex's alley... he could lose himself in books all day long. Clara always has to be doing something. Things click better with her when she actually sees how they work, when she gets to touch and feel it.

Right now she's doing well with and has a keen interest in music. She's been playing violin for over a year now with moderate success, but now that her teacher has been showing her the same pieces on the piano as well as the violin, her playing has really taken off. Given her interest in piano, she will be starting lessons next week. She's also doing well with dance. She loves it dearly and it really seems to be the one activity where she can truly focus.

I've been re-reading the descriptions of all of the different homeschooling approaches. Would Charlotte Mason be a good fit for her? Would a more Montessori based approach be better? Would we just be better off focusing just on a few things and taking a more unschooling approach for the rest? I'm doing lots of research right now trying to figure out what would be a good fit. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them! In the meantime, I'll be dragging out all of my books and catalogs again! :-)

what we're loving...

2010-01-12T15:12:00.001-08:00

... right now.

I have decided that I need to qualify all statements like that with something like "right now" or "at this moment"... because, quite frankly, things change.

This is a recent find from the library...

How High Can a Dinosaur Count?: ...and Other Math Mysteries

I'm trying to incorporate more "living math" into Clara's day so I picked up some random books at the library last week. This one has been a huge hit. There's a little word problem for each picture and several bonus questions listed in the back. She loves working with this book.

Alex just started this book last week...

Practice Island by Michael Clay Thompson

We had finally finished up Grammar Island, so when we started Sentence Island, we started this book as well. Who would have thought that Alex would enjoy "four level analysis" of sentences? We do these together and work through them aloud as he writes. I really thought he would balk at doing this book when it came time, but it has really surprised me!

And then there's this book...

Life of Fred Fractions

We're still loving this book... although I will admit that Alex ummm... strongly dislikes the "bridge" portions. He loves the rest of the book though and has really gotten a lot out of it. Because of the humor and continuing story line, he can't wait to keep working his way through the book. I'm excited to see that there are enough books in the series to keep us busy for years.

location #5

2010-01-05T18:22:00.001-08:00

Okay... since one of my New Year's resolutions is to be a better blogger, I decided that perhaps I ought to finish up this series of posts which I started... oh... what... two and a half months ago? :-)

This was our final location of the day....

The Tribune Tower

This is definitely one of those buildings that I totally took for granted. Sure, it's a cool looking building and yes, I've been past it a million times (in fact, I once had a temp assignment in the building next door years and years ago) BUT I had never actually looked at the building.

If I had, I surely would have noticed the numerous stones set into the building...
The one above is from a Revolutionary Battlefield in New Jersey.

And the one below (also from NJ) from where Washington landed after crossing the Delaware...

Then there's this brick from Holland from the house the Pilgrims used as a church before making their voyage...
Also, if you look really hard...
... you'll notice that the carvings aren't typical carvings.... there are dogs with glasses, alligators, monkeys and who knows what all else. These all have meanings and thankfully a lot of them are outlined in the book we bought at the gift shop.

The whole building is like a huge game of I Spy...
You'll be amazed at what you will find there.

locations 3 & 4

2009-11-18T09:54:00.001-08:00

Once we crossed Michigan Avenue... we headed for this Chicago landmark...

Cloud Gate aka "the bean"

We never get tired of going to the bean... to see the city reflected in it is just amazing...

(can you spot us in the photo above?)

After that we started across the bridge to the brand new...

Modern Wing at the Art Institute

I took just one additional photo here...
... the troops were rebelling as it was getting dangerously close to lunch time.

However, our last location made them forget all about lunch (at least for a little while).

Location #2

2009-11-17T08:43:00.001-08:00

Here is the photo from the original post...

Did you guess that he was at the Chicago Cultural Center?

Well... that was where we were. We trekked across the loop to get there. Can you believe that I have never, in all of my years of living here, been inside the Cultural Center? We walk past it all of the time, but have never been inside.

I really wish we would have had more time.... especially now when I realize that we didn't actually see the Tiffany glass dome we went there to see... sigh.
What we actually saw was the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Dome.

Oh well... we'll just have to go back!

Here are the kids in the GAR Memorial Hall...
The next stop was just a quick trip across Michigan Avenue!

Location #1

2009-11-16T08:17:00.001-08:00

So, remember a month ago when I wrote the post "Where in Chicago is Alex?"... yeah... I had forgotten about it too. But perhaps that was partially due to the fact that I had a little contest for people to guess the locations and nobody played along... sigh. :-)

Since I've been slacking with taking new photos, I have decided to share some more of the photos we took that day and reveal their locations.

Location #1....

The James R. Thompson Center

Many years ago I used to work near this building. There's a food court on the lower level and I used to go there for lunch with coworkers. I can honestly say that I never really looked at the building before the day the kids and I went for Alex's poetry class.

We sat in the main area and just took it all in...
curves and angles...
... all of the glass and reflective surfaces.

One of Alex's favorite things was the elevators.... he loved that you could see all (most?) of the mechanics of them and was fascinated by watching it all work.

Alex wrote down several adjectives to describe the building and then we were off to find location #2.

here's something...

2009-11-13T08:49:00.001-08:00

... that the kids have really been enjoying lately....

riddles!

A couple of years ago at Christmas, my sister-in-law ordered Clara a bunch of coloring books from Mindware. This book (Handful of Riddles, Geoscapes) came with her order. She gave it to Clara and I tucked it away with our school stuff. I wasn't sure what to do with it.

Now I've figured it out! :-)

Since we have defined downstairs as our school area now, I dragged out our old white board and put it in the hall. About once a week I put up a new riddle... the frequency depends on how busy we are and how long it takes the kids to figure out the riddle. I used to draw the little picture they show in the book with each riddle but it made some of them too easy. After that, I started drawing a big question mark. And most recently, I've just been leaving the bottom half of the board blank and the kids have been filling in that area with an illustration of the answer once they've figured out the riddle. This last option has been their favorite.

I wanted to order some more riddle books because they've been enjoying this activity so much. However, when I went on the Mindware site, I couldn't find any more Handful of Riddles books nor even the one that I already have. If anyone has any suggestions for good riddle books, I would love to hear them!

masks and spiders and wool... oh my!

2009-10-29T10:12:00.001-07:00

On Tuesday the kids continued their mask project by covering their plaster casts with paper mache.

That was supposed to be their whole project for that day... however, they can be speedy little things when they want to be and they had come up with another project they wanted to try... basket spiders.

Their wonderful teacher went looking through her supplies and found black reeds and weavers.

Then the project began...

And then she got out some wool that they could use to decorate their spiders... and a bit of silliness broke out...

Here's Clara's undecorated spider...
And Alex decorating his...
Clara named hers "sweater legs" and it is really cute... she's almost done with it so I'll have to take a photo of the finished product.

After the spiders were finished... it was time to get silly with the duct tape...

I'm not sure any of this was really a good idea...
... but they did it to themselves... and they survived! :-)

it happened...

2009-10-28T06:51:00.001-07:00

I had been interested in the literature rich approach of Sonlight for years... I loved reading the stories about kids who just couldn't put down their readers because they loved the stories that much. But at the same time, I worried that it just wouldn't work that way for us. Alex is a voracious reader at times but he also likes to read what he wants to read and has stacks of started then abandoned books in his room.

Well... it has happened... the begging of "mom, can I please read more than is assigned"... "mom, is it okay if I just finish the book".... "please, it's really getting good". I LOVE it!!! I know it won't be this way with every Sonlight book (and it hasn't been... although he has finished every book so far without complaint) but it just warms my heart so when it does. He loves history and has a better relationship with it since it's coming through literature versus a text book.

I'm so glad that it has happened for us!

the rabbit trail continues...

2009-10-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

Alex has now added this....
... to his school work.

The rabbit trail started by him reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series continues. The characters in the books can read ancient Greek naturally because they are demi-gods. Alex thought it would be cool to be able to read Greek writing too. So, I wandered around the internet and placed an order for the Hey Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! series. I ended up ordering Level 2 since Level 1 was basically the Greek alphabet and the Level 2 book includes lots of review of that before moving on to new material.

As for the reason why I chose this particular program... well, there's really no big reason why. If I was to pinpoint the main reason, I would have to say... cost. This decision to study Greek was totally driven by Alex. I am not pushing it, so when he says he's done studying Greek, he's done. I didn't want to sink a huge amount of money into something he may not stick with for very long. The other reason I decided on this program had to do with the positive reviews I read online.

He's not very far into the program yet, but he's really enjoying it so far. We'll see how long it lasts!

the mask...

2009-10-20T19:09:00.001-07:00

Okay... since it isn't a post about our Tuesday art class without a photo of Alex in a silly hat....

here you go....
Today we started our "life mask" project.

The kids started out by pairing up... the boys worked together and the girls worked together. After that, the first person to have their mask made coated their face with vaseline. Then it was time to add the wet plaster gauze strips....

They kept working until their faces were nearly completely covered....
Then once it was dry.... it was time to remove the mask!

Here's Alex checking out plaster Alex....
While they were working the instructor showed them photos of Lincoln and Washington's life masks. They were all pretty excited about them.

Their instructor is going to fill the masks with plaster this week so they'll be dry by our next class. Next week they'll paint them! I can't wait to see the finished product!

a contest... just for Tracy :-)

2009-10-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

Send me an email (link is on the right) with the names of the locations in the post below. All entries received by noon central time on Friday October 23rd will be entered into a drawing for a $10 amazon.com gift certificate.

Where in Chicago is Alex?

2009-10-19T13:23:00.001-07:00

Alex is taking a homeschool poetry writing class with the theme of "building poems". They had a homework assignment recently... to solve several clues to identify several Chicago landmarks and then go and visit them. We're running a bit behind on this assignment but managed to get out this morning to visit the landmarks....

#1

(no clue why he posed like that)

#2
#3
#4
#5
There was one more on our list, but Alex visited that one with his grandfather over the weekend. They visited the Hancock Building but those photos are on my point and shoot and I'm too lazy at the moment to download them.

Anyway... we had a great time and it was a BEAUTIFUL day out... I just wished we had had more time to explore... oh well... we'll just have to go back!

I'll have the answers later!

a tisket... a tasket....

2009-10-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

... an almost finished basket....
(yes... that's my basket there in the front, next to my ever-present phone)

Four the past four Tuesdays we've been taking a homeschool weaving class with some friends. The first week we worked with back strap looms. I would post photos of our projects but in order to do that Alex, Clara and I would have to actually finish our projects. At this point I'm afraid that they may be so hopelessly tangled that we may just have to happy with the weaving we completed in class.

Back to the baskets.... the first week of working on our baskets we wove the bottom. Last week we did the sides... this week we finished the top and painted or stained our baskets.

Here's Alex working on the top of his basket...
Look... his finished "hatsket"...
Fashionable, no?
Here's Clara working on hers...
Then it was time to paint...
and paint...
and then paint some more....
I stained mine. Alex painted the rim and stained the rest.

Clara painted the whole thing...
I really need to take photos of our finished baskets! I'm so proud of them! The kids did really well with the weaving and their painting. It was so much fun and I'm very grateful to my friend who arranged the class for us!

one would think...

2009-10-02T08:21:00.001-07:00

...we were studying ancient Greece based on the books I've found lying around the house...
... but we're not. We're actually studying early American history this year. So, why all of the Greek mythology?

Here's why...

The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series

Okay... so since we're not studying this in school, why am I posting about this on my homeschooling blog? Well... because homeschooling has allowed Alex to become completely obsessed with Greek mythology.... it has allowed him to follow this "rabbit trail" as far as he wants it to take him. Homeschooling has allowed me to let go a bit and let him read late at night until he can't keep his eyes open any longer (this week he's been reading until around midnight). He loves this book series and loves to read.... how can you not let him run with this enthusiasm?

The stack of books shown above is last week's set of books, he checked out (and has already read) a stack equally as big this week. He knows the stories by heart now and talks about them constantly. I'm also reading the book series and I am just on the book ahead of him. When I finish a book and give it to him to read, he always asks me which myths are referenced so he can read up on them first. I know I couldn't "assign" this stuff to him and expect the same results. Jeff is also reading the series and is on Book 2. Alex LOVES to quiz his dad about what's going on in the book and the myths referenced. It's become a real family affair (oh... I should also mention that Alex and Clara are considering being Perseus and Medusa for Halloween).

Anyway... I just thought I would share our experience with this book series and how it has overtaken our lives :-)

On another note.... I'm sorry about the posting gap again. This time we had illnesses and doctor visits consuming my free time (Alex had another bout of MRSA and now needs to see a specialist next week). We've also had a couple of auditions that we're keeping our fingers crossed about. I did get emails from a couple of you and I'm working on emailing you back by the end of the weekend!

Happy Friday!

some of the reasons...

2009-09-18T17:49:00.001-07:00

we homeschool are...

so we can take part in amazing events...
witness enchanting cultural dances...
and slide down a Picasso....
:-)

games for math

2009-09-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine let me borrow one of her books the other day...

Games for M ath

It is such a cool little book! I have acquired quite a collection of math game books but haven't really loved any of them. Then my friend let me borrow this one. First of all, it does not require a collection of fancy materials to make the games work. And for the most part, there is no prep.

I decided to try out our first game yesterday. Clara and I played in the morning and she enjoyed it so much that she wanted to teach Alex how to play that afternoon.

Basically, each child rolled the die twice. On the first roll, they made that many big circles on their card. On their second roll, they made that many items inside each big circle.

Then we wrote out the problem two ways...
First as an addition problem, then as a multiplication problem.

So, in the case of Clara's pink card at the bottom...on her first roll she got a six, so she made six big circles. Her second roll, she got a two, so she made two little circles inside each big circle.

Since we were only concerned about the little circles, her addition equation looked like this:

2+2+2+2+2+2=12

and her multiplication equation looked like this:

2x6=12

She didn't actual "do" the multiplication. We worked more on the concept of how to set up the equation and seeing the relationship between it and the addition equation.

Oh... back to the game... whoever had the highest answer on their card got to keep both cards. In the end, the person with the most cards won. I'm not sure if that was how it was outlined in the book but that's how it ended up at our house. The kids love to play war so they just treated it like a different version of that game.

I can't wait to try more of the games from this book!

language arts

2009-09-15T14:36:00.001-07:00

That pile above is what we have for language arts this year. I'm very excited about what we're using this year... and that says quite a bit given I generally "strongly dislike" language arts.

First we'll start with the core of our language arts this year...

Michael Clay Thompson's Level I from Royal Fireworks Press

On top is Grammar Island. That's the book we're currently working our way through. It is a totally different approach to grammar than we have ever used before. It actually scared me a bit when I got it. I didn't know what to do with it! It wasn't the typical workbook format that we've had in the past. That said, I joined the yahoo group and got a general idea as to how people used the curriculum and off we went. We're not terribly far into but I have to say that the kids love it. Yes, I said "kids". This was supposed to be for just Alex but one day Clara was hanging out just outside of Alex's door while we were working in Grammar Island. She wandered in, loved listening along and has insisted on being part of Grammar Island time ever since. Now, she doesn't do the actual work with the book that Alex does, but if she loves listening in and is getting anything at all from it, that's a nice bonus. In a couple of years, when she's ready, we'll go through the book for real with her, but for now, the exposure is great.

The other books in the stack are Sentence Island, Practice Island, Building Language, and Music of the Hemispheres.

For variety and work with punctuation, spelling, capitalization, etc., I got this...

Last year I got a proofreading book for Alex. He enjoyed it somewhat, but didn't love it and I wasn't completely sold on it. So, as I went paging through my great big Rainbow Resource catalog, I found The Great Editing Adventure books and thought I would give one a try.

So far I've been very pleased with the book. It is a series of short little "lessons" that go together to form a funny little story. I bought only the teacher's manual. In a classroom setting I'm assuming you would write the "lessons" on the board, but I decided to just type the lessons up with my handy dandy StartWrite software (I love that program... I use it all of the time).

Above is an example of one of the lessons. I sit down and type a bunch up at once and then put them, one at a time, into one of Alex's file folders throughout the week.

In order to do some of the lessons, he needs these...

Merriam-Webster Children's Dictionary and The American Heritage Children's Thesaurus

If a word is circled, he's to look it up in the dictionary and be able to tell me the definition. If it is underlined, he needs to look it up in the thesaurus and substitute a new word in place of the underlined word.

He makes editing marks to make corrections on the part I that I had typed out. He brings it to me once he thinks he's found everything. We go over the answers and then he rewrites the lesson, with corrections, on the blank lines below.

He doesn't exactly love it yet and maybe he never will, but it's a pretty low key way to work on his proofreading skills and I like that he has to actually rewrite the lesson versus just make editing marks.

As for Clara, we're taking a much more low key approach with her this year. She has struggled with school in the past and needed to learn to love school again. I thought these would be fun for her for grammar....

Grammar Tales Box Set: A Rib-Tickling Collection of Read-Aloud Books That Teach 10 Essential Rules of Usage and Mechanics

She is so enjoying the one on one time with me this year. We're doing so much more reading, discovering and discussing when it comes to school. These books have been so great for that. We curl up on her bed together and read... discussing the little prompts in the book along the way. There is a whole teachers guide that came with the set, but I haven't really used it yet. It has these cute little reproducible mini books inside, but our copier is out of ink so I haven't done anything with them yet. I really think I want to get the Punctuation Tales set too, but I haven't completely justified placing yet another amazon order (yet).

Finally, I also have these in the mix...
Clara enjoys watching the Grammar Rock portion of School House Rock. So we work it in when we can.

I have no opinion on the Standard Deviants' Enormous English DVD pack but NOT ONE SINGLE DVD in the ENTIRE set works. Thankfully I purchased the set from Rainbow Resource and they have an amazing customer service department. They contacted the manufacturer and they are sending me a new set directly. I'm anxious to get it so I can check it out and see what it's like.

back to the box

2009-09-08T14:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, we have returned to Sonlight.

We did Core K Alex's first grade year and Core 1 Alex's second grade year. My theory was to split the difference between my two kids and do the core that fell between them. It didn't go as well as planned.

I'm not sure how else to do this, so here goes...

Why we stopped using Sonlight...

1. To be honest, the amount I had to read aloud was too much for me. I seriously began to dread it. I didn't always want to do it and the kids didn't always want to sit for it. Not a good combo.

2. The schedule. I loved the idea of having a schedule but it frustrated me as well. I always felt behind. I insisted on ordering the 5 day curriculum each time which just made matters worse, because it didn't leave much wiggle room. With the kids and I not always wanting to do the reading aloud, it was so easy to get off track... once I got off track it would spiral out of control.

3. Cores K and 1 felt too random to me. I know it shouldn't matter, but the kids had no answer to the "so what are you studying in school?" question. Science was a random topic each day... how an oven works, what makes bread rise, how a camera works... etc. I didn't feel like we had time to explore any of these topics because the next day we were scheduled to read about something else entirely. I found myself creating/participating in unit studies so the kids could be "studying" something.

So... I made the decision to drop Sonlight last year and go out on my own using Story of the World as our spine. We honestly had a really fun year with it. However, it was a lot of work.

Why we went back to Sonlight...

1. We were ready for Core 3. Core 3 is the first core that really seems to tie everything together. History, Readers and Read Alouds all cover the same time period. The science has focus. The randomness I had disliked in the earlier cores was gone.

2. Alex is now a strong reader. And because of this, I feel like I can turn him loose on his own with a lot of the reading. Which solved issue #1 above.

3. I decided that given the issues we were having with Clara (we had full scale learning assessments done over the summer and got the results last week - but that's another post for later) combining the two kids was not the best route right now. Clara needs space to be her own person in school and not in Alex's shadow. Once Clara is a stronger reader, I do believe I could have them both working on the same Core, however, I don't think I will ever really "combine" them again. In order to simplify things, Clara is covering the same time period as Alex using other materials. I may post more on that later too.

4. The schedule. Ah... see, what was once an issue for me is more welcome this time around. First of all, I ordered the 4 day curriculum not the 5 day. I had to get over "missing out" on some of the great books. If we get ahead of schedule, I can always add them in at some point (especially since the instructor's guide includes both the 4 day and 5 day schedules). With my new system, having an instructor's guide with reading assignments broken down into daily bites has been wonderful.

5. The books. I have always loved the Sonlight books. I love getting the great big box full of all of the books I need for the year. I did love going to the library and discovering new books last year... however, it wore me out! Since many of them were random finds, I felt like I needed to at least skim them first which meant I had to find time for that, then break the book down into a reading schedule, assign it to Alex and hope that he got it read before it was due again. We had so many books in our house that just came home and lived in the library bag for three weeks because I just never got to them. Last year one of their classes was right by the library so it was convenient to go weekly... this fall none of our classes are near the library which means getting there would be an extra trip (which means it wouldn't always happen).

Anyway... those are some of the basic reasons we left Sonlight and are now back again. I'm sure I have more reasons and maybe I'll add to this post at some point.

Hmmm... which subject should I post about next?

a weekend away...

2009-09-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

***shoot... I thought I was posting this on my other blog when I typed this up. Oh well... I'll leave it here and copy and paste it to the other one***

We decided to take a last minute weekend trip to our favorite place... Crystal Mountain Resort in Michigan.

We left mid-day on Thursday and got there just in time to have dinner and head to bed. We had to get a good night's sleep because we had a big day planned for Friday.

Friday morning we got up and drove out to the dune climb at Sleeping Bear Dunes. The kids love it there and insist that we go each time we're at Crystal Mountain.

Here they are climbing up the dune....
From this point... Alex and Jeff continued on across the dunes to get a view of Lake Michigan (they took photos with the point and shoot but I haven't downloaded them yet).

Clara took off running down the big dune...
I followed her a ways down. Then she climbed back up to the top so she could run down again.

Here she goes....
(apparently "jazz hands" are necessary for dune running)

she decided to take a running jump into the sand...

We then went back down to the bottom to wait for the boys...
Then, before long, here came the boy running down the dune....
After that we loaded up and headed for our next destination. We stopped at a little sandwich place for lunch along the way.

Then it was time to play in the Platte River...
This really is a nice place for the kids to play... nice little river with a gentle current that empties into Lake Michigan just a minute or two walk from where we set up shop. The rocks here are amazing... the kids could play with them all day. Lots and lots of perfect skipping stones, smooth rounded rocks, and the occasional fossil. They really didn't want to leave but we had a surprised planned for them later that night that we had to get ready for.

We went back to our cottage and got cleaned up for the surprise.

While we waited for it to be time for us to leave, the kids went frog hunting behind the cottage...

They didn't catch any, but they did spot a couple of them.

Hey... look at this....
... a "real" smile!

And more "real" smiles...
The trick? Having them recite tongue twisters! The downside... they we were rarely looking my direction when they were laughing.

One last set...
color

or

black and white?
That's as far as I've edited today... hopefully I'll get to the "surprise" photos tomorrow!

first things first...

2009-09-02T05:28:00.000-07:00

Due to the responses to my last post, I will start posting about some of the new stuff we're using. But before I started with that, I thought I would post about my attempt at getting organized this year.

Okay... I'll just start by saying that this is an area that I really, really struggle with. I'm not a terribly organized person. To those of you who know me, this comes as no surprise. :-)

So, I've been reading everywhere on the net about workboxes. I really liked the concept, however, I knew there was no way that we would have the space for the system for one child, let alone two. After reading about workboxes, I began reading about the different variations people were doing. Then I stopped reading and tried to figure out what would make sense for us.

And here's what we're trying...
... a modified workbox system using hanging file folder bins.

Each child's bin has twelve folders in it that I fill the night before or first thing in the morning. I then leave their box outside of their room (they each have desks in their rooms now, so we're trying that instead of having stuff all over the dining room table all of the time). They start with folder one... once done, they bring their folder to me to check and put the folder in an empty bin in my office (that bin becomes the next day's full bin, and the empty one from that day goes to my office to receive finished work).

So far, so good.... but we have only used it two days (starting day three). I have found that it makes me batty to fill the files.... I avoid it and then stress out while filling them.... BUT the difference is that this lasts only an hour tops versus the all day stress I would feel in previous years. I fill the files with a good mix of subjects and a variety of activity types (and usually try to have something fun/reward-ish near the end). Once the files are set for the day, I'm done stressing, I stop running around like a crazy woman and just focus on working with the kids as they go through their schoolwork for the day.

Here's an example of one of Alex's folders from yesterday...
(oh... backing up a bit... I made a whole stack of no-frills bookmarks the other day. Each one has five lines with checkboxes. I just write what to do each day on each line and they know to do the first unchecked line. On some of the bookmarks, I fill out all of the lines at once, so I'm done making assignments until we finish all five lines.)

He was supposed to practice his multiplication using our new Wrap-Ups. So, when I went into his room to check on him, this is what he was doing...
I love that the kids are transitioning rather seamlessly from one activity to another. We spent way too much time last year waiting for me to determine what we were doing next and where all of the stuff was that we needed.

Please ignore the chaos of stuff that is all around Clara in the photo below (no matter what, her room always returns to this state within half an hour of cleaning it).

This has been another perk so far...
... music practice. We struggled with finding practice time before... I'm not sure why, but we did. Now I have made a bookmark that says "practice violin" or "practice guitar" and write a time increment on the assignment line. When they get to that folder they grab their instrument and my phone to use as a timer and practice away! Since we just started back to lessons this week I just have them play whatever, but at some point I may write actual songs or exercises as their assignments (mainly because Clara plays Bile 'em Cabbage Down for the ENTIRE fifteen minutes straight... ugh).

So, that's the plan (for now) and I'm happy with it and it's potential. I hope it makes sense, if it doesn't, let me know!

And I'll leave you with a photo that has nothing to do with the rest of the post....
... the girl with a bad case of stripes! :-)

it's that time of year again....

2009-08-31T18:24:00.001-07:00

It's back to school time!

Clara is officially a 2nd grader and Alex is officially in 4th grade. They were so excited to start school this morning that they got up early, showered, ate breakfast and then asked if they could start school a half an hour before I had planned to start!

I'm really hoping to have a great year. We have new curriculum, a new organizational system and soon will have new insight into the way Clara learns. I have a good feeling about this year.

Even though we started today, I still have one more school supply order on it's way... the last of the bunch. I held out on ordering our "fun stuff" until the last moment while I figured out where we were in our homeschool budget. In the end... we just HAD to get the fun stuff regardless! :-) Thankfully it shipped out today so we should have it soon. Woo hoo... just tracked the package and it should be here tomorrow!!! The kids will be so excited! (and I will admit to being pretty excited too)

We're trying out so many new things this year... I'm trying to decide whether to post about them now or wait until we've actually used them a while first.
Anyway... we're underway for the 2009-10 school year so I hope to be back to posting here as well since I pretty much abandoned this poor blog all summer!

science fair

2009-07-03T07:01:00.001-07:00

I just realized that I never posted anything further about Alex's science fair project after my initial post. Life got crazy and we barely got the thing done and presented before he left for camp.

Because he was going to be at camp during the actual science fair, the museum was very kind in letting him present early. So, a couple days before we left to take him to camp, he gave his presentation...
His experiment went well. It was really interesting to see how things turned out. Alex's hypothesis was that salt would make the best desiccant... but according to his experiment, the natron mixture did indeed make the best desiccant. I have quite a few photos of the end of the experiment but I'm being lazy at the moment.

Alex's presentation also went well. He was excited and knowledgeable about his subject.

What didn't go well was his paper. A couple of things were working against him here.... one, he hasn't done a lot of writing (something to work on for next year) and two, he was already mentally at camp when he set down to write the report. Oh well.

So, needless to say, Alex did not place at the science fair.... but he had a great time doing his project and learned a great deal from it. He's excited to work on a project for next year's science fair. Hopefully he'll take what he learned from this year's science fair and apply it to his new project.

testing, testing.... 1.2.3....

2009-05-21T18:14:00.001-07:00

It was testing week in our house. In Illinois we're not required to do testing, but I do it just for our own records each year. We use the CAT/5 test... just because (I really don't have a good reason). :-)

I really wonder some times why I do this each year. I'm not exactly sure how much stock I put in a standardized test as a measure of what my children know. But I feel compelled to do this every spring.... something that will give me some form of "official documentation" that we're doing okay. It is incredibly exciting and extremely frustrating to administer these tests. You sit there and watch them get questions right that you expected them to miss and miss some you expected them to get. It's hard to keep quiet... but I do. I even managed to complete the crossword puzzle from the Trib the other day... something I hadn't done in months!

We finished today. I just have to mark my back-up answer sheet and send it off tomorrow.

It's funny to see how the general school population's scope and sequence for science and history/social studies varies from what we have covered. Even Alex's test was mainly about the community, with the only history really being the pilgrims, Christopher Columbus (which he's not so sure about after reading a book he just got at the library) and George Washington. The science seemed to have a lot about good nutrition and pollution/environmental issues. It's just interesting.

I've been saving this part until the last because I wasn't sure if I was even going to blog about it. But, in the interest of being open and honest, I will.

Taking this test brought to light some issues with this one...
... that have been plaguing me for a while. She's different... she's an "unconventional learner". She has flashes of brilliance that will utterly amaze you at times.... and then other times she'll be completely stumped by the simplest of concepts.

On her subtraction portion of her test today she aced it.... however I cannot make heads or tails out of HOW she got her answers. I watched her work on her scratch paper and what she did makes no sense to me.... but somehow it does for her.

She learned to write and read early.... but has completely stalled out. I'm not sure either is any better than it was this time last year. Although, last year she was ahead of her peers, this year she's on par.

I have to tell you, after we spent entirely too much time arguing about what it means to "fill in the circle" and what they meant by "dark" in regards to the marks she was supposed to make.... I found it rather therapeutic to spend the rest of the day researching schools to send her to next year. It was eyeopening.

I came to the conclusion that she will not be going to school next year. She doesn't want to go, she wants to be homeschooled and each spring we give them each the choice about the upcoming school year. I also can't send the message to her that "the good child" gets to stay home with me all day, while I'm sending her, "the problem child" away. I need to do this the right way.

So armed with the cost of the private school we would most likely send her to (if we were to send her)... I started researching tutors. Right off the bat, I began communicating with an occupational therapist who is a handwriting specialist. Clara will have an evaluation with her in about two weeks, then we'll go from there. I'm also looking to have a learning assessment done. I have heard that we can have this done through the neighborhood school, even if we are not enrolled in the public school system. If not, I have found another place that will do it and they take our insurance. Pricing out tutors and such, we can still come in well under what the private school tuition would be, still allowing her to be home with us but getting the help she needs.

It's been an emotional week... but after hitting the bottom, I've bounced back and I'm excited that we have a plan.... a plan that's on the path to figuring out what makes her tick and will help her unlock her potential (that sounded a little cheesy didn't it... but you know what I mean).

pond study

2009-05-13T06:49:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we went on a really great field trip with some friends (big thank you to Jennifer for hauling us out there!).

We went out to the Environmental Learning Center in Mokena, IL. The kids had a great time, I think mainly because they left to explore and make discoveries on their own.

Here are the girls bringing up their net....
and checking out what they found...
After they had a nice collection of specimens in their buckets, everyone went to the lab to get a better look at what they had caught....

They had guide books and identification sheets lying around for the kids to use.... but again they left them to make their own discoveries instead of it being an over structured "educational experience". The kids really seemed to delight in figuring it out themselves and then excitedly showing the other kids.

Next was lunch. It's funny.... whenever a group of homeschoolers get together we joke about their lack of social skills since they're not in school (since that seems to be a main concern to random people we all come across). Immediately after eating, the kids (most of whom had never met each other before) came together to play tag... running and laughing around the picnic area. It really is too bad that they don't know how to interact with others :-)

After lunch they went animal tracking through the woods. They were to keep their eyes open for any signs of animals. Once we started to look we saw all kinds of signs... tracks, scat, gnawed off trees, woodpecker holes, etc. We also learned how to identify quite a few native plants along the way (and the kids even sampled a few of the edible ones).

It was a beautiful day to spend outdoors!!

a cool birthday present....

2009-05-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Alex decided to get back out the science kit he had gotten as a birthday present...
We had already played with the glass prism and hung up our prism chain in the window. But yesterday they wanted to play with the UV activated beads. The beads start out a frosted white color (or a very, very pale pastel color) and then turn bright colors in sunlight.

They started out by setting them up on our window sill (please, please ignore my dirty windows)...
then they sorted them by color once they changed color...
The kit came with a square of clear plastic. They then put a small sample of sunscreen on the square and put it over a set of beads that had not be exposed to the sun to see if they would change color. They washed off the sunscreen and tried again with different SPF's. It was a pretty cool exercise for them. Of course the SPF 50 we had worked the best :-)

ancient china

2009-04-30T14:56:00.001-07:00

As I have mentioned before... we're taking our own sweet time working our way through Story of the World Volume 1. This week we spent some time studying Ancient China.

We watched a couple of Netflix movies.

The first one was...

China - The Panda Adventure (IMAX)

This was had no real tie to Ancient China other than the movie was set in China. We had watched it years before when we studied China when we used Galloping the Globe. As soon as the kids heard we were studying China, they requested that I get this movie again. It's a good movie in the sense that it has amazing footage of the beauty of natural China and the rivers mentioned in Story of the World. The panda bears are pretty cute too (Clara's favorite part). But the basic story is that of a race between a woman (whose husband died in China while studying pandas) and a hunter set on killing pandas. One cub will go missing and the hunter kills the mother panda (Clara was traumatized... briefly). But in the end the woman adopts the remaining cub and takes it back to the US. Footage of the adorable cub cheered Clara up again.

The second movie we got was...

Ancient China: A Journey Back in Time (Lost Treasures of the Ancient World)

Hmmmm.... what to say about this one. It has good information... but, it was DULL! At least to me. I really wanted to like it, but I couldn't. The kids lasted all of the way through it but maybe that had more to do with the fact that they rarely watch TV and they weren't going to give up the opportunity easily than it did with actually liking the thing.

We didn't do so good with movies this go around but we did get some cool books at the library.

Two favorites were....

The Warlord's Puzzle
and
Grandfather Tang's Story

We started out by reading The Warlord's Puzzle. I mistakenly thought that our shapes tub had tangram pieces in it so I dumped them all out in the floor before I realized that it didn't. I ended up tracing the tangram pieces in the back of the book and cutting a set out for each child. They really enjoyed the book and constantly recite the boy's story about the fish in order to make the pieces into the tile again.

But, I have to say, that the favorite of the two books was Grandfather Tang's Story. The story was about two fox fairies who could change shape.

Here are the two foxes at the beginning of the book...
(side note: this book is great for two kids as there are two foxes who change shape... each child can be one of the characters and rearrange their tangram pieces to make the shape of the animal their fox changes into)

Here is Clara's fox changing into a squirrel (I think)....

Midway through the story, Clara remembered that we had tangrams in our Classic Tangoesgame.... so she got those out so they could use those instead....
Crazy thing is, that night while Clara was at swim, Alex and I walked to the thrift store nearby and found this....

The Fun with Tangrams Kit

We got it, two other math books and an I Spy computer game for $2.40 (you've got to love thrift stores!). It even had the punch out tangram pieces still in the book... however, we just used our plastic ones from the game again.

They've been playing with the book quite a bit.

Here's their favorite one so far....

... I'm not sure who exactly it is supposed to be (since it's just under the heading "faces") but the kids have decided that it looks like Abraham Lincoln and I couldn't agree more.

We read one other library book aloud... The Warlord's Messengers. The kids really enjoyed that book. To be technical, this book is set quite a while after the time period covered in SOTW but it was still a good read. We're going to read The Warlord's Alarmtomorrow.

I checked out a few other library books for the kids to choose from for free reading.

Here are those books:
The Jade Stone: A Chinese Folktale
The Emperor and the Kite
The Sons of the Dragon King: A Chinese Legend
See Inside an Ancient Chinese Town

All About Spelling

2009-04-23T05:45:00.000-07:00

Okay... I think I'm finally ready to type up my thoughts on All About Spelling. :-)

For the past month or so, we've been using All About Spelling Level 1....
After our track record with other spelling programs I was both reluctant and desperate to start something new. At least now I had a better idea about what worked for us and what didn't work. I thought AAS was a good way to go because it seemed to use the basic concepts that I liked about Spell to Write and Read but in a much more user friendly manner (at least for me). I really liked the emphasis on learning the phonograms first and the fact that you actually learn spelling rules along the way.

Okay... Alex is in third grade but I decided to start him on Level 1 anyway. I figured that if this was the right program for us, it would benefit us to start at the beginning (especially with the emphasis on phonograms and rules). Also AAS is written in a way that makes it EXTREMELY easy to go at your own pace. Clara will sometimes take a few days per lesson, while Alex will do more than one a day. I'm finding it very easy to modify for each child. Finally, Alex was not a strong speller (at grade level according to the test in the back of Spell to Write and Read) and needed to build some confidence with spelling... breezing through Level 1 has really helped his confidence level. I'm not planning on retesting him after this book as I don't really expect that his spelling level has increased. What he has gained from this level is a good solid foundation to build on and a boost to his confidence level and I don't think those will translate to a higher spelling score (yet).

Now, on to the program. I ordered one level one packet (teacher's manual and student material packet) plus one extra student packet. I did this because I am using this program with both kids at the same time. Nothing in this level is consumable (except for the progress chart) so you could use one set for multiple kids if you were not using the same level at the same time. The set really has everything and I was so impressed by the quality of the items!

Here is a look at Clara's card set....
I can tell this set is Clara's because she imediately tried to shut the lid of the box and mashed her first tab. Every set of cards is divided into three sections - Review, Mastered, and Future Lessons. For someone like me who is organizationally challenged... this has been wonderful! With each kid having their own box of cards, I never have to think about where Alex is versus Clara.... I just pull out the cards from the Review section of their box and start with the lesson. I love that the program has lots of review built in.... but that review is customized according to your child's own needs.

Oh... back to the cards themselves.... they are made from bright, heavy paper and came perforated (very well perforated I might add). No cutting or anything so getting started was very easy.

To get started, we practiced the basic phonograms over and over. I sometimes didn't even say we were doing "spelling", it was a game we played at meal times (the cards seem to always be on the dining room table). I also purchased the Phonogram CD-ROM so I could make sure we were pronouncing the sounds correctly. We have used this some, but not that much.... we'll see if we use it more in the future.

Once we got going good on the phonogram cards, we moved on to the sound cards. With these I would say the sounds a letter made and they would have to write down the appropriate letter. Clara really struggles with her fine motor skills and needs extra help with her handwriting so I just typed up the alphabet in StartWrite and let her find the appropriate letter to trace.
Now moving on to the parts that really sold me on this program... the "hands on" parts. Writing is the last step if you do the program as outlined which is great for Clara. With the concentration it takes for her to write, it frustrates her to be learning spelling at the same time. With this program she really knows the word by the time it comes to writing it and she can focus on the writing and not as much on spelling.

First of all, they use tokens to separate each word out into the sounds in the word. They pull a token down for each sound....
This sets the stage for the next step, using the letter tiles....
They start by putting the letters in order and then when given a word, they pull the letters down by sound, the same way they did with the tokens. We do this a lot with Clara. Alex, not so much. Clara needs the "hands on" plus she's just now really learning to spell. Alex doesn't need the hands on as much plus he already knows these words. I just let him go straight to writing the words on paper which is why we can go through a couple of lessons at one sitting. We do, however, get out the tiles with Alex for any new concepts and to illustrate the spelling rules. I love, love, love that this program has the spelling rules. I know it sounds crazy... but I was practically giddy the other day when we learned when to use c and when to use k when the /k/ sound is at the beginning of a word. Not one single program we had used in the past had explained that! (okay... Spell to Write and Read would have explained it if I had been able to figure it out)

Another note about the letter tiles - they are made of a laminated cardstock and are of a really nice quality. You do have to cut them out yourself, but that's not a big deal. They give you the option of ordering magnet backing to put on each tile, but we didn't get the magnets.

So, since I was pleased with Level 1, I placed another order the other day...
I got Level 2 for Alex and the Beehive Reader Level 1 for Clara. Alex hasn't started Level 2 yet (almost done with Level 1) but Clara has started with the reader. Clara is a good reader... she's been reading since she was 4 BUT she has always been a sight reader (she can be very competitive at times and started "reading" Dick and Jane books in order to keep up with Alex who was beginning to read at the time). I thought a good basic phonetic reader would be good for her... especially one that went along with our spelling program. She immediately took it to her room and read it in bed at night. I am, however, having her read it aloud to me. Most of it comes very easy to her but when she does stumble, it has been a good way to show her that the sounds and rules she is learning through spelling apply to reading as well. Since she is a good reader, she really doesn't need a separate reading program.... but this is a really nice supplement to our spelling program that helps her read better. Does that make sense?

Okay, to sum this all up....

I have found All About Spelling to be a good fit for us. The price is reasonable, the materials are reusuable, and the materials are of really good quality for the price. The program makes sense (to me) as far as the word lists and the progression of the program (many of the other programs seemed random to me). The teacher's manual is extremely easy to follow and requires no prep work on my part... I just open it up and get going at spelling time. The program is very easy to modify to your child's individual needs.... spelling with AAS looks very different for each of mine at this point - Clara does lots of tile work with little writing and Alex does very little tile work but lots of writing. It is also easy to choose your own pace without feeling "behind". I can't really tell that it is set up to be a school year program, if you know what I mean.

The biggest downside seems to be that it requires total "teacher" involvement. I will be honest here... I would love a program that I could just hand to my child in workbook form and have them work quietly on their own and then magically know how to spell without any tears! That's just not going to happen... we need this type of program. It really does not take up that much time (actually less time than our old workbook programs when you count in the time I spent dealing with meltdowns...sigh). I was scared about all of the review built in - phonogram cards, sound cards, key cards, word cards. But then I realized the point of the "review" and "mastered" dividers. We were only reviewing what we needed to review each time.... not the whole stack of cards.

Okay.... I think I'm done rambling! I hope that helps and let me know if you have any questions!

favorite thing - globes

2009-04-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

I will start off by saying that I stink at geography... but I am getting better! :-)

Perhaps because I stink at geography, I have an obsession with collecting globes. One is always within a few feet for a quick check when I need to know where something is.

Almost every globe in our collection was purchased at a antique store for around $20 or less. At first I was concerned about having "out of date" globes in our house when using them for school, but it actually has been a plus.

For example... today Alex wanted to know about the USSR versus today's Russia (he got the Beatles white album yesterday for his birthday and had been listening to Back in the USSR)... we talked about it a bit and then went to the globes to look at the geographical differences.

This particular globe (which sits on top of my desk cabinet) is from the period of the USSR...
We got it down and took a look.

We then took a look at this globe, which was after the break-up of the USSR....
We played a little game of "spot the difference".

That globe above is my favorite. I almost didn't buy it. It was the last globe I purchased. It wobbles a bit and the stand wasn't a favorite.... I wasn't sure what I would do with a globe on such a tall stand... but it was a globe and it was only $25. Now it sits near the dining room table where we do our school work and eat our meals. We refer to this globes multiple times a week.... either because of something in our school work, something we've read in the paper over breakfast, something from our read aloud or just out of curiosity.

In addition to the two globes above, we have several more sprinkled around the house.

This little metal globe bank is tucked away on a shelf by the kitchen....
(it's twin is waiting to find a home in my new office.... if we ever get it done)

This is our one modern globe...
Alex got it as a Christmas present from his aunt and uncle one year. It's especially cool because when you plug it in... you see all of the constellations. This one usually lives in Alex's room, I'm not sure why he brought it upstairs, but he did and it's still here.

This is yet another globe in Alex's room...

I have the itch now to acquire more :-)

Oh.... I found a site one time that gave you the info to date your globes based on country borders and names. I need to find that again... I think that would be a fun "school" activity one day.

And yes.... the rest of my spelling ramblings is coming soon.

****

Kez - The inflatable globe!!! I totally forgot about that one! We have one bouncing around here someplace too! And yes... the little tin globe is a piggy bank. I think they're adorable... you should see if you still have yours!

spelling - where we've been

2009-04-17T05:47:00.001-07:00

Oh wow.... I hadn't really thought about all of the money we had spent on spelling programs until I started to put this post together.... it's a bit ridiculous! Anyway.... homeschooling is a journey and sometimes you read the map wrong and take a wrong turn or two (or three or four)... sigh.

Okay... I mentioned here the other day that we were now using All About Spelling and Jocelyne asked what I thought of it so far. Well... when thinking about that post, I got to thinking about all of the curriculum we have tried so far. I did this mainly to temper my opinion of AAS. I remember being excited about each of the programs below when we started them. I was sure I found the right thing for us each time. I wanted to really think about what didn't work (for us) with the previous programs and see if there was a pattern. Well.... there is a bit of one. One that I wish I could have stepped back and seen before making yet another purchase. Oh well... live and learn, right?

This was our first real spelling program....

A Reason for Spelling

This was a bit of an impulse buy at Mardel one day. Since this was our first spelling program, I didn't think much about the purchase. I thought a spelling program was just a spelling program... not much to think about. So, I bought it and we started using it. This program seemed to teach spelling by giving a list of words and you were to learn to spell them by just writing them over and over filling in worksheets during the week. You had a spelling test on Friday. Alex actually did okay with this... specifically the weekly stuff. But when it came to the review sections, he had retained very little of the older words, just the most recent stuff. This program didn't seem to teach spelling rules either.... just learning to spell through repetition. Spelling does not come naturally to Alex, we needed something more. Spelling became painful and brought on a flood of tears each time so we gave this one up after almost completing the first book.

Next up.....

Spell to Write and Read

So, the next time around I went a complete 180 and bought Spell to Write and Read and all of it's various parts. It was going to be the answer to my prayers... a program that actually taught you to spell using spelling rules and learning the parts before the whole.

However, I'm apparently not bright enough to figure this one out. I tried, seriously I did. Perhaps I'm just too easily overwhelmed and this one seriously overwhelmed me. We tried to use it. We worked on the phonogram cards and attempted the special journals. Eventually I got frustrated and gave up. I have heard from other people who absolutely love this program... I wanted to love it... I just couldn't get a handle on how to use it.

So for third grade, I decided to try this...

Sequential Spelling

Again, I was sure I had found the answer. Sequential Spelling takes one root word and then builds on it to form other words. You do a new list every day. Unless I read things wrong, you don't review words, just give them the list of words, making spelling corrections immediately after they spell the word. This started out good... but quickly went downhill. It was supposed to be for grades K-6 (I think) so I started both kids with it. Not a good idea.... Alex naturally was able to spell better given that he is two grade above Clara... this frustrated Clara. I discontinued the program for her. Alex and I plugged on. He eventually got overwhelmed. He never felt like he mastered anything... it just kept moving forward. We made modificiations.... two days per list, one practice day... one "real" day. But it still didn't work out. Again this one had lists of words with no real explanation of the spelling rules. I love the idea of it.... and after a couple of books of AAS we may come back to it in some form... but it wasn't working to "teach" spelling for us. It might be great to "build" on our spelling vocabulary for us later.

For Clara we've tried...

McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book

This is one that I did not end up spending money on, it was a free download from the Project Gutenberg site. Clara was bound and determined to have her own spelling program, so since I didn't have time to research something for her, I downloaded this and got started. Again, we started out pretty good and then stalled out. We hit a stumbling block with her spelling and this book and it included no guidance on how to move past it.

The last attempt was this...

Spectrum Spelling

Poor Clara... I tend to put so much more thought into Alex's curriculum than hers at times. Perhaps because he's older and I always feel like I still have time with her. Anyway.... one day I was impulse shopping my way through a homeschool e-book site and decided to purchase this for Clara. I was so worked up about Alex's spelling (and our trail of failed programs) that I just wanted to give Clara a workbook to do on her own while I focused on him. This one was over before it even began. There was some glitch in the formatting of the download that made the pages a mess.... nothing lined up and about a third of the page was cut off. The e-book company was fabulous and tried to work with the publisher to get it corrected. When they could not, my money was refunded. We tried to work with the messed up pages, but it was frustrating. I could have bought the real book but I could already see that this was not the right program for us either. A hands off workbook approach was not the right route for us.

So, what did I learn from all of this?

1) Workbooks are not the answer for us.

2) We need something interactive and hands on.

3) We need spelling rules and I need clear explanations for the "whys" of spelling.

4) I need something structured but not so structured that it is laid out with a plan that ends with a spelling test each Friday. We need to be able to go at our own pace without pressure. The ones with the 5 day plans gave me anxiety and the feeling of always being behind.

I'm sure there may be more that I think of and if I do, I'll add to this post.

Next post will be (hopefully) be my review of All About Spelling so far.

DISCLAIMER: This post is just about what works/doesn't work for me and my family. I'm sure these are all good solid programs and work fabulously for other people. My reason for posting this because when I was researching programs I wish I would have looked more closely at that details of the reviews rather than just weighing good versus bad reviews. Sometimes the main reason someone gave a program a bad review is the key element that makes things work for your family and would be a positive for you.

and so it begins...

2009-04-14T07:24:00.001-07:00

We FINALLY began Alex's science fair project yesterday. The fair is at a local museum and isn't until mid-June but since Alex will be at camp most of the month of June, he has to have it done early (the wonderful people at the museum are letting him present to the judges before he leaves for camp). June seemed so far off until I started counting up the weeks yesterday... yikes! We're going to have to work hard and fast to pull this off!

Alex became fascinated with the mummifying techniques used by the Ancient Egyptians after we mummified our royal fruit family a while back. He became intrigued by what would happen if we used different substances to dry out the "bodies". This became the basis for his science fair project. Our original "natron" mix was half salt and half baking soda. He wanted to see what would happen if we used only salt and only baking soda.

The project has changed a bit since he originally wrote it up for approval. He was originally going to use hollowed out oranges like we did for our fruit family... but we thought that those wouldn't leave us enough bulk to weigh and see a significant difference. Next we thought about apples.... but I imagined whole swarm of fruit flies taking up residence in our kitchen. So... last minute, we decided to use potatoes.

Also in his original proposal, he wanted to use sand as one of the drying agents like the Egyptians did for their first mummies. But, we never managed to acquire any sand and we needed to get started.

So, we got started. Here Alex is weighing potatoes to make sure each pan had approximately the same weight in potatoes...
Once we separated the potatoes into 5 pans worth of potatoes weighing about 8 oz each, Alex cut each potato in half to increase the surface area...
Here are the five pans waiting for their drying substances...
We determined that three cups of the substance was needed to properly cover the potatoes, so Alex measured them all out and filled the pans...
So, here's the view of our lab (formerly my kitchen)....
From left to right we've got kitty litter, the control (just potatoes), salt only, baking soda only, and 50/50 salt and baking soda mix.

We weighed all of the filled pans as well.

I typed up a few quick charts for Alex to fill out so he could keep track of his data. He also has a journal that he took notes in while we worked. This is really going to be an interesting experience for all of us!

what we're reading now

2009-04-02T18:11:00.001-07:00

The Giant Rat of Sumatra: or Pirates Galore

Don't you love it when I don't post for a week or so and then post multiple posts in one day? I'm not sure why I do that sometimes, but I do. I have one more in the works (a review of what we think of All About Spelling so far)... but I'm not sure when I'll get to it.

Anyway... back to our read aloud. :-)

We are currently reading The Giant Rat of Sumatra by Sid Fleischman. It is the book club book at the library for April. I am so glad that Alex decided to participate in the book club.... we have discovered so many good books through the club. Alex started out with reading the books himself... but one came up that interested Clara so I read it aloud. Clara so enjoyed participating in the book club discussions too that we're now doing the book club books as read alouds.

We started this book on Tuesday.... the kids are LOVING it. They kept begging for just one more chapter so we read SIX chapters on Tuesday alone. I think we read another five today. The book has the added bonus for them of being set in Mexico. It is actually set in the San Diego area before it was part of the United States. It is set during the war between the US and Mexico which Alex had read about when we did our short little study of Mexico before our trip. The book has adventure, drama and comedy as well.... combined with short cliff hanger like chapters... a great combination for us.

Anyway... so far so good on this one.... I can't wait to see where it's going!

growing back into picture books

2009-04-02T14:08:00.001-07:00

I can't tell you how excited I am to be back in the picture book section of the library again! I LOVE the picture book section. I thought we had left it behind... Alex was now into chapter books and Clara had her readers.... our read alouds were chapter books now too.... we had no use for picture books.... or so I thought! Then I started reading more and more about the benefits of using "living books" in homeschooling and things started to change.

A few months back I blogged about how I was compiling a reading list for Clara each week and in those lists were several picture books. Well.... that idea snowballed. Not only did Clara read all of the books but so did Alex. So now I no longer make a reading list for Clara. I pick a topic (based on Story of the World, a science interest, season, holiday, upcoming trips... whatever) and collect a stack of picture books from the library on that particular subject.

The kids LOVE this! The main reason I no longer make a reading list for Clara is that she will select a stack of books from our library basket to read in bed each night completely on her own.... Alex does the same. Alex will still read his chapter books at bedtime, but will have a little picture book "appetizer" before diving into his main course :-)

Here's a partial stack of what we checked out this week...
Given that it's spring now... we have quite a few books on flowers and seeds.

Zinnia's Flower Garden

Looks like your typical picture book, right? Well... take a look inside...
There is all kinds of great information inside this colorful little book from the "kiddie" section! Parts of a flower... life cycle of a butterfly.... stages of germination... types of clouds... and so much more all along with the story of a girl and her garden. And to think I thought I had no use for picture books anymore!

Flip, Float, Fly!: Seeds on the Move

A beautifully illustrated book with simple text about the different methods of seed dispersal...

(please forgive the slightly out of focus photo above)

I thought the illustrations in this book were gorgeous....

A Seed Is Sleepy

It includes lots of great information as well.... my problem with it?

A lot of the text is in cursive...
Which poses a problem.... mainly for Clara.

Our next topic in Story of the World is Ancient India. So I visited the folktale section as well and picked up several retellings of Indian folktales...

Seven Blind Mice

I have no requirements in regards to the picture books. They're free to read them or not read them whenever they want. They don't think of them as "school" at all. I also have to try to not think of them as "school" too much or I tend to get upset when they don't choose to read a certain book (if it's a book I feel strongly about, I will commit to reading it during school time). However, they usually work their way through about 80% of what we bring home. They do oral narrations of most books without knowing it. Usually from me saying "oooh... that looks like a cool book... what's it about?". :-)

Another reason I love the picture book section... it's been a great way to get Clara to read more challenging text without forcing longer chapter books on her. She's ready for harder text... but she's not ready for a longer story that will take her several days to read. These books have more difficult words in them, but also have good picture clues and good definition clues in the text since they're written for a younger audience.

Anyway.... sorry about the long rambling post... I'm just had to share my excitement! :-)

Chichen Itza

2009-03-26T17:54:00.001-07:00

On our last full day in Mexico, we traveled by bus to Chichen Itza...
(the kids in front of "El Castillo")

I have to say that it was amazing to see. You truly are just in awe of this civilization that established this city around 1,000 years ago.

Here is a shot of one of the hoops from the ball court...
another part of the ball court....
In the information about the ball court that I linked to above, it mentions how sound travels through the court. Our tour group tried it.... and it works. Simply amazing.

Here's Alex in front of something (perhaps a time where a shallow depth of field was not a good idea :-) ....
The observatory....
(the information above references that you can go into most of the ruins.... this is no longer true)

The nunnery...
Aren't the carvings amazing?

The backside of the ball court....
The temple of the warriors (back) and the snake on El Castillo (front right)....
The top of El Castillo....
El Castillo was pretty amazing itself. Did you know that it has exactly 365 steps? 91 on each side and one more into the doorway at the top.

Also.... if you clap in front of the pyramid...

the echo comes back as a birdlike noise. Alex was obsessed with this and tried it a bunch of times.

The place was absolutely incredible. I just wish that we hadn't been so hot and tired so we could have seen more of it. Perhaps being back here in Chicago has turned me into a heat wimp! :-)

Oh... before we left for the trip I had checked out a bunch of books about the Mayas from the library. I had intended to read them together for school.... but we ran out of time. Alex ended up reading most of them himself at bedtime so he was well prepped for the trip. Also, we were on the upgraded tour so our bus had tv screens.... on the way to the site they showed us a National Geographic special about the Mayas which was great.... it wasn't specifically about Chichen Itza but it had lots of good background information. Alex used his spending money to purchase a book about the Mayas and read it cover to cover in a couple of days. It was a comic book style book.... I'll have to look through it myself.

Educational Cancun?

2009-03-24T10:51:00.001-07:00

You know.... I honestly wasn't expecting much in way of educational value out of our trip to Cancun. I thought of it more as a spring break beach destination rather than a place with any substance or depth. We had studied about Mexico in general before the trip... but to me Cancun was more beach town rather than real Mexico. However, I was pleasantly surprised!

First of all... because it is a very touristy area, most of the people you come in contact with do speak English. This took the pressure of us to speak Spanish to survive.... but rather to have fun and explore the language. Most people there spoke to us first in English but Alex would generally answer in Spanish if he could... the person he was speaking to would usually smile and then gently lead him and Clara through some basic conversation in Spanish (name, age, etc.). It was fun for them without being frustrating.

Second... even though we were at a resort, there was quite a bit of wildlife about.... birds, iguanas and coati mundi.

Third.... I was pleasantly surprised by our outing to Xcaret (it was included in our travel package). I honestly was expecting it to be cheesy but it really wasn't.

Here are the kids on the Jungle Trail...
Winding our way through the park we ended up in their aquarium which was a nice small aquarium. One the features that the kids enjoyed were the magnifying glasses for you to look through at each of the tanks. There was also a touch tank inside.

Once we were back outside we found our favorite part of the park, the sea turtles...
We all fell in love with the babies... I personally could have stared at them all day :-)

And then we were amazed by the size of the adult turtles...

After lunch we decided to snorkel down the underground river...
That was cool... but not as cool as I had hoped. We all enjoyed it though and it was neat to see the rock formations.

After reaching the end of the river, we only had a little bit of time left for the kids to play on the beach (maybe 30 minutes) before we needed to get our stuff out of our locker and head to our bus. We missed so much of the park.... there was quite a bit more to do that we just didn't get to.

The most amazing educational part of our trip was by far the Mayan ruins.... but I'll save that for it's own post! :-)

Hola!

2009-03-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

We're taking a little break from Story of the World right now to do a little mini unit on Mexico. Later this month we're taking a family trip to Cancun so we thought it would be fun to learn some things about Mexico before we went. Last year when we took a trip to Hawaii, I was really prepared and did a lot of research regarding our unit on Hawaii... this year, I'm not so organized. Thankfully I had some things on hand that are helping bring things together very quickly.

The key element? La Clase Divertida (specifically Level 1)....
I had bought this a couple of years ago at a homeschool conference. We worked our way through it for a while, but we moved back here to Chicago mid-year and Spanish got lost in the shuffle. The kids really enjoyed it but I just wasn't sure how to get back into it... so it sat in a cabinet for the past couple of years.

I decided to bring it out now because what is so fabulous about this program is that it is not just a foreign language program but it is a cultural program as well. This level is specifically about Mexico. Yesterday we watched the first language lesson which the kids really enjoyed (and seemed to enjoy it more now that they're a little older than they did when we tried it a couple of years ago). That lesson was followed with a puppet show segment on the story and meaning behind the elements on the Mexican flag. The kit includes all of the craft supplies for two kids, but since we had started this program a couple of years ago, we had used up the flag making supplies. I went online and found a coloring sheet to print out for them to color while they watched the story.

Here's Alex's flag...
and here is Clara's...
I'm excited to be using this program again! This time I'm able to really see its value as cultural study program as well as a foreign language program. I can't wait to do more! (and the kids can't wait either!)

it takes a village :-)

2009-03-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

Today was one of those blissful homeschooling days.... a day where you sit back at the end of it and really realize just how lucky/blessed you are. We truly are. We no longer belong to any formal homeschooling group but we have this good solid circle of homeschooling friends that surrounds us. A group that gets along well... both parents and children. A group where each individual member is active in either coming with field trip ideas, organizing outings or teaching classes. There's no pressure to do it all... just opportunities available.

Today was the capper... but it had been a really good week. Tuesday was our last day of a science class series at a local museum. The older kids really truly loved the class and really had a great time together. Clara and her friend (the younger sister of one of Alex's friends from class) had a great time hanging out together each week during class time. They explored the museum, played the play area, collected sticks outside or sometimes just sat at their own table in the cafe and talked girl talk. All the while, her mom and I got to have some much needed adult conversation. It was good for everyone.

So... on to today. One of the families from our circle I mentioned earlier, invited us over for a science class. The dad had picked up a box of supplies from the Adler Planetarium and wanted to teach a class on space for the kids. How cool is that? The kids and I went over to their house this morning for the class. The kids all went off to the kitchen with the dad for the class while the moms hung out in the other room and chatted. It was wonderful!

The kids had such a great time and really seemed to learn a lot. Their favorite time of the class though was rocket time :-)

Here's Clara waiting to launch her rocket...
ready for liftoff...
The "class" ready for a group launch....
(the mom of the girl on the right didn't want her daughter's photo posted, I hated to crop her out since she was part of this group.... so I covered her with a cute little flower by Emily Merritt)

I love this series... just look at their expressions as the rockets go off (click on the photos to see them larger)...

After the class, the girls went inside the play and the boys stayed outside to continue launching film canisters into space!

A wonderful homeschooling day! :-)

I have more stuff to ramble on about.... but I'm tired and this post has taken me longer than it should have so I'll try to catch up next week!

a fun little find from the library

2009-02-25T09:26:00.001-08:00

Last night at the library was one of those nights where I was frustrated. I like to have stacks of library books to strew around the house for the kids to pick up and read. I usually pick up books related to our history study... but right now our history topic doesn't have many books available.

So... I wandered around aimlessly, pulling random books off of the shelves and putting them into our library bag. This book was one of the random books I brought home...

Stories to Solve

I brought it out at dinner to look it over and quickly discovered what a gem it is. It is a whole book of folk tales for the kids to figure out! The kids asked me to read the first one aloud while we ate and the next thing I knew were totally hooked! They loved trying to figure out the answer to each story... it really got them thinking! I don't think that they've figured one out without hints yet, but even when I have to give them the answer, they have really enjoyed going back through and seeing how that answer works. They begged to do some more at breakfast this morning!

Anyway... I just thought I would share this find since so far we're really enjoying it!

setting up shop

2009-02-20T17:45:00.001-08:00

So, the other day I mentioned that I had ordered some new homeschool stuff.... in that stack was this...

Simply Charlotte Mason
Your Business Math Series - Pet Store

We've only been at it this week but my goodness has it been a hit so far! The grade range on this product is listed as grades 3-6... but I'm using it with my two which are 1st and 3rd grade.

They are so incredibly into it. We spent a couple of days deciding what inventory we needed to open our store. It was slow going... but Alex got lots of practice with multiplication as he extended the costs.

Then we had to make our price tags. They worked as a team. Alex did the mark-up calculations and Clara recorded them in the book....
Alex got an introduction to division through this exercise. And through our initial exercise of extending the costs, we even eased Clara into some multiplication... she's very proud of herself since she's doing multiplication too (it doesn't matter to her that the questions that we ask her help on are multiplying by 0's or 1's.... since she's good at skip counting by 5's we've been having her "help" us on those as well). It's been a very easy program to adapt to each kid's individual ability. They each have their main role.... Alex will be working more with figuring orders and Clara will be keeping track of inventory. It's so amazing to me how easily they grasp new concepts when there is an actual purpose to what they're learning.

Once the prices were figured... they excitedly asked if they could actually make a pet store. Why not? So, they've been working feverishly at setting up their shop.... they even worked on it until bedtime tonight (school on a Friday night???) :-)

Here's the progress so far....
They've taken over an old secretary that's currently hanging out in what will, at some point, be my office. On top you have some finished pet food bags (those yet to be colored are on the bottom there)..... the rest is hard to see... but the bigger wads of yarn are leashes and the smaller ones are collars.

Here's Alex showing off a newly finished dog food bag...
some dogs who are waiting for a new home....
and the cats...
After I took these photos they went digging through their stuffed animals looking for birds and rabbits to add to their store.

They absolutely cannot wait to have their first customers! I love seeing them so excited about math... I can't wait to see what else they have in mind for their store!

Egyptian Art

2009-02-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

The kids and I decided to take a little field trip yesterday. We always make several trips a year to the Art Institute and given that admission is free in February... we thought it would be a perfect destination yesterday.

We didn't have a whole lot of time.... just a couple of hours before we had to head to Clara's dance class, so we had to pick a few priorities to hit.

To go along with Story of the World Volume 1, we decided to visit the ancient Egypt section first...

Head of an Official...

Coffin and Mummy of Paankhenamun....Canopic Jar of Amunhotep, Chief Builder of Amun...
Statue of Osiris...
Mummy Head Cover...

No matter how many times we visit this exhibit, we find something new... or we've read something more so the items have even more meaning for us. I love that we have the opportunity to visit these items over and over.

I have more pics and more rambling to do but given that I have a cold that has decided to take up residence in my head... I'm going to save the rest for later and join the kids in the floor (they're working on their pet store!).

oooooh.... new stuff!

2009-02-18T06:28:00.000-08:00

Right after Christmas each year I get the itch to mix things up a bit with our homeschooling. So, this year I finally made my decisions and placed my orders the last of January. Everything is in now and as of yesterday, we've used it all at least once....

Simply Charlotte Mason Your Business Math Series - Pet Store
All About Spelling
English from the Roots Up Flashcards, Vol. 1
ThinkFun Math Dice
Kids Across, Parents Down: Crazy Critters

I'll write more about these later as we have more time to use them and see what we truly think of them. So far, so good though! We're really enjoying everything... but we'll have to see what the staying power ends up to be.

Sorry I've not posted for a while. It's funny. Prior to this year, the majority of the kids' friends were homeschooled. We were fairly oblivious to the schedules of the schools around us. We just did school.... not realizing that it might be a day off for the schools. Well... this year we've greatly upped our number of non-homeschooled friends and now we're very aware of the various holidays and breaks. Last week and this week have fallen victim to this somewhat. Last week the public schools here were off for Lincoln's Birthday.... so we went off with a friend of mine (a public school teacher) and her daughter to a local waterpark hotel for the night. Then Sunday night Alex was invited to spend the night at a friend's house since Monday was a holiday (they homeschool too... but the sister was having a sleepover that night since her friend would not have school on Monday... so the boys had one too), Monday night Clara stayed extra late (didn't get home until nearly 9pm) at her regular after dance playdate since her friend's private school is on break this whole week.... the list goes on.

It doesn't bother me in the least... I'm so glad my kids have so many friends and that they're not limited to just "classmates".... however, it cracks me up that there are so many holidays and breaks that I was not aware of! We've been back here over two years and this is the first time I've realized that a lot of the private schools here have February breaks!

Anyway... between the holidays and breaks this week and last... plus the fact that we've had workers in our house since last Thursday.... school has been a bit sporadic. Hopefully I'll be back to regular postings again soon!

one more Egypt dvd...

2009-02-06T09:30:00.000-08:00

I had forgotten about having this one in my Netflix queue until it showed up on Wednesday. We almost didn't watch it because we had watched several different documentaries about the pyramids already.... but the kids seemed interested in it so I put it in yesterday.

Building the Great Pyramid

I'm glad that I did. It was a completely different DVD than what we had previously watched. This was a fictionalized account of the life of one of the workers on the Great Pyramid. It followed him from the time when he was called from his small village into the service of the Pharaoh until the completion of the pyramid. Reviewers on Amazon appear to either love it or hate it. Perhaps those that hate it were expecting a more traditional documentary. That's what I was expecting... however, was very pleasantly surprised by this different view of the same information. The kids liked it too... of course, Alex more than Clara, but I wouldn't have expected anything different. :-)

I know what you mean, Angel... I tend to forget about Netflix too. Those other two movies I mentioned earlier this week had been sitting on our end table since before Christmas... sigh. I'm trying to get better about utilizing it... especially since the DVDs we've gotten from the library lately have been scratched to the point that they were unwatchable.

Juliet Dove, Queen of Love

2009-02-06T06:23:00.001-08:00

Juliet Dove, Queen of Love: A Magic Shop Book

We finished reading this book yesterday. I have to say... surprisingly, we all really enjoyed it.

This book is this month's selection for the library's book club Alex attends. None of us were very sure about it. Alex wasn't sure about reading a book about "love". And I wasn't sure about how appropriate it would be... given that it's a book about love that centers around middle school aged kids. That's how it became our read aloud.

The basic premise of the book is that Juliet is given a magic necklace (once it's on, she can't take it off) that makes boys fall in love with her. The book is about her adventures in trying to free herself from the necklace.

The kids really enjoyed it! They thought the boys following Juliet around were really funny. It helped that Juliet wasn't too impressed with having all of these boys in love with her (she's extremely shy). She gets help on her adventure from two talking rats which the kids enjoyed. She also has help from her younger brother, Byron (who happens to be Alex's age), her little sister, her little sister's imaginary friend and several Greek goddesses. All of this made it very amusing to my two.

However, this book wasn't without some concerns. The first chapter starts out with some "mean girl" stuff. I was a little disheartened, figuring that if it was in the first chapter it would continue throughout the whole book. Thankfully, the "mean girl" stuff was very limited. The other thing is a one line reference nearer the end of the book. One of the girls, jealous of all of the attention Juliet is getting from the boys, makes this comment...

"Well, Killer, you must be giving the boys everything they want!"

This line made my cringe.... but my two had no clue what was referenced. Later in the dialog Juliet asks if everyone thinks she's kissing the boys.

It was a surprisingly good read! I can't wait to see what the next book club book is!

educational decorating :-)

2009-02-04T09:42:00.000-08:00

We're in the process of doing some redecorating... actually, we're in the process of decorating since we've lived here a couple years now and haven't done a thing to the bedroom area of the house.

So, we needed to find a new shower curtain for the kids' bathroom (because we needed to pick a paint color). I loved their old shower curtain. It was an inexpensive clear shower curtain from Target that had a map of the world on it. It was amazing how much geography they absorbed just from being around that map daily. Clara came to me just yesterday and told me that she had been looking at the map while brushing her teeth and our flight to Mexico next month would be much shorter if we still lived in Texas. A while back Alex became interested in the South Sandwich Islands after seeing them on the map. But it is time to retire the map shower curtain as several of the holes have ripped through (more than likely... due to Clara... sigh).

So... I was on a hunt for a shower curtain... any shower curtain that was kid-friendly, yet not too kiddish.... not too boyish, not too girlish and not too dark since it's a windowless room. I wasn't necessarily looking for an educational shower curtain... but that would have been a bonus.

Well.... I found what I was looking for.... plus the educational bonus!!! I actually found two. Which of course, led to a little disagreement between the kids.

Alex loved this one...

Weather

And Clara became attached to this one...

Metamorphosis

So.... given that I was in love with them both and the colors were the same on both of them... we ordered them both. We figure we can switch them out occasionally. We ordered them from Uncommon Goods... and they arrived within a couple of days. They are so cool! We don't have them up yet since the bathroom isn't painted yet.... but we're thinking we might do a shade of orange in there.... but there's always a chance that we might chicken out and go with a blue or green.

Anyway... I just wanted to share my cool find!

a couple of egypt dvds

2009-02-03T07:55:00.001-08:00

We have watched a couple DVDs on Ancient Egypt lately. We got both of them from Netflix.

The first one we watched was...

Pyramid

This one was based on the book by the same name by David Macaulay. We had checked out the book from the library as well.

Alex really liked this movie. I was a little let down, but I think it was because I was expecting something different. I think we'll continue to get the movies from this series as we work our way through Story of the World.

The second one we watched was this one...

The History Channel Presents Egypt - Engineering an Empire

I thought this one was amazing. Alex and Clara both got into it... Alex especially. There was a lot about the "hows" and "whys" of the ancient Egyptian structures. It was amazing to see just how some of the things were constructed.

My only word of caution is that during the section on Queen Hatshepsut they document the queen's relationship with Senenmut by showing ancient lewd graffiti that had been found... they do blur out the worst parts.... but it was a subject I wasn't expecting to see in this program.

Anyway... I finally remembered to mail in our Netflix movies, so by the end of the week we'll have one more Egypt DVD to watch.

fractions...

2009-02-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

Alex has hit a point with his math that he just needs to take a bit of a break. I love that with homeschooling we are able to do this. Even though he's taking a break from his math curriculum, we still "do math".

Last week I got out these two books, although we only got partway through the top one, Fractions are Parts of Things. I took the photo before we sat down to work on them and I thought we would go through them faster than we did.

To be honest, we only got through a small portion of the Fractions book (a mere fraction of it... I amuse myself sometimes).

We would have gotten through more of the book had Alex not become so obsessed with finding halves of things....

We looked around the house at windows and furniture. We built some items ourselves from their geometry tool kits and our bucket of shapes. We even photocopied some of the trickier ones out of the book and cut up the copies in order to really see the halves.

While Alex got carried away with finding halves, Clara made this....
...a flower in a vase.

So, again... not exactly what I had in mind. I had in mind that we would breeze through two books... happily absorbing some of the material and moving on. I imagined that we would work on these books together... start to finish.

Instead...

Alex didn't get exposure to all of the different fractions... but he understands half really well. He knows now that "half" isn't always obvious and that it can be found different ways.

Clara didn't stay engaged long... but she too learned quite a bit more about halves than she would have if we had gotten through the entire book in one sitting. She also explored geometric designs using our shape blocks.... creating a beautiful, intricate, symmetrical design in the base of her vase.

Sometimes the way things turn out is not just different.... but sometimes better.

help wanted

2009-01-28T08:29:00.001-08:00

Lately the lines between between "school" and "home" have become blurred... one begins to flow seamlessly into the other... there is no clear distinction.

One recent example of this is our "Help Wanted" board. My husband and I decided that the kids needed to work on their money management skills and Clara needed more experience with recognizing and counting coins. So, instead of buying a curriculum, we set up the "Help Wanted" board.

Please forgive how messy my writing is... if you could only see the position I had to be in in order to reach the white board, you would understand. :-)

I don't know how else to write this so I'm going to do it in bullet points:

1. The kids have specific assigned chores that are not on the board.

These are required each day and if done every day, they receive their base pay of $1. If not done everyday, payment for all other chores is forfeited (more on this later).

2. "Help Wanted" chores are completely optional.

We assigned the things that MUST be done (feed the dog, fill the dog's water dish, making beds, etc.). Everything on our list is optional... all things that would be really nice if they happened, but no big deal if they didn't. Or they are things that I was doing anyway... so them doing the item lessened my work, but didn't increase it if they didn't chose that item.

3. All chores pay less than $.50.

We did this because we wanted the kids to be able to reasonably SAVE for the things they wanted... not outright BUY whatever they wanted. We wanted them to really think about what they would use their money for once they had enough.

4. They may only have one chore selected at a time.

When they see a chore they would like to do, they put their initial next to the line. Once it is done, I check it and they may select another chore. This avoids the first one to the board selecting all of the choice jobs, before the other one has a chance.

We're a few weeks into this and so far so good. We had a glitch last week where near the end of the week they both missed a morning of their required chores. By the rules they were to forfeit all of their money earned that week. We quickly saw that this would not work since their motivation to do any chores (even their required ones) waned since they weren't earning anything any more. So, we told them that if it remained just that one time, we would assign them an extra non-paying task during the weekend that would "erase" the missed chore morning. So, one afternoon last weekend they folded and put away all of their clean clothes (which was usually one of the higher paying chores on the board).

Alex is saving his money for a new video game. He has been searching different sites seeing where he would get the best deal. He's thinking about whether he should buy it a) from the Lego store, with the highest price and shipping but he could use a Lego gift card that he has, b) order it from WalMart who has the lowest price but has shipping costs or c) order from Amazon with a slightly higher price but free shipping. I like seeing that he's really thinking about his purchase and what is the best deal for his money.

Clara saw a Webkinz in a store last Tuesday that she HAD to have.. it was the last one and she was afraid that they would be sold out by the time she had enough money saved. So, since she had enough money to pay 1/4 of the cost, I purchased the Webkinz and set up a layaway plan at home. The toy stays on my desk and she is not allowed to play with it until it is paid off. We each have little receipts to keep track of her payments and so she can see how much she still owes. She just made her second payment yesterday and is halfway to owning her toy.

Sunday is pay day here at our house. The kids both dump out their coins and can group them into dollars that can be exchanged for paper dollars. It's good to see them look for different coin combinations to make their dollars.

Oh... totally forgot to mention that as they complete their chores I drop the proper coin payments into their jars that sit on the counter by the "Help Wanted" board. They will count up their money in their jars multiple times a week.

I'm pretty pleased with this experiment so far. I'm hoping that we can add to it as we get further into it... adding things like savings and earning interest. But for now we're just taking it slow... one step at a time.

fun with language arts..

2009-01-27T06:36:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we decided to have a little fun with language arts. It was inspired by an impulse purchase I had made last week at a little local toy store...

Mad Libs

We started out by watching the grammar rock section of our Schoolhouse Rock DVD. We specifically concentrated on the ones about Verbs, Nouns, Adjectives and Adverbs.

After that we started doing our Mad Libs. They loved them! I just switched off between the kids at each blank. By the time we were done, even Clara had a pretty good grasp on what an adverb and adjective was. Clara discovered that the more outrageous the word she gave, the more outrageous the story became. We were laughing so hard at some of the stories. I think we did at least four stories before hunger won out and we stopped for lunch.

It was just such a fun little "lesson" that I know they'll be begging to do again!

math doesn't wait for monday

2009-01-25T08:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday while cleaning out a closet where I keep a bunch of homeschooling supplies (we're getting ready to do a big room switcharoo) Alex found these little boxes I had bought at Target back in September. They are little geometry boxes with a compass, protractor, ruler and such inside. I had bought them because they were cheap and I might need them someday. :-)

Anyway... Alex found the box and took a look inside. He was pretty intrigued by what he saw. He wanted to know what everything was and what they were for. Here I began to struggle...

2008 Me: Those are really cool geometry tools Alex. Give me some time and I'll pull some stuff together and we'll do a little unit on them this next week.

2009 Me: Here, let me tell you what they are and what they're used for. And by the way, see that K'NEX Geometry Set on the shelf? You can get that out too.

Which one do you think won out?

I stuck to my new plan, but let me tell you that it was both sooo hard and extremely easy at the same time.
The Hard Part:
It killed me to not have prepared for this. My fingers were itching... I could see the teacher's manual CD in the K'nex kit materials and it was all I could do to keep from telling him to stop everything until I could go upstairs and print stuff off. I kept seeing all we "could" do with this if I just could prepare. I eventually had to walk away.

The Easy Part:
We sprawled out in the floor together and I showed him how to make a circle with the compass and how to measure and draw angles with the protractor. No frills... nice and simple. He then got out the K'nex kit and I walked away. He came running upstairs a while later to show me what he had been doing. Using K'nex, he had made a line, line segment and a ray. He had also made various angles out of K'nex, traced them onto his paper (ack! one angle per sheet of paper... but I let that slide) and then measured them. From there we had a little discussion about acute, right and obtuse angles. We also talked about what is meant by at 180 degree turn and a 360 degree turn. He was excited and engaged! He learned more about geometry in that half and hour than he would have if I would gone the 2008 route (because, let's be honest, something else would have come up and I wouldn't have gotten around to planning the little lesson I promised).

Shortly after this, he abandoned the whole pile of stuff and was off playing with Clara. It was all he personally needed to know at that moment so he was done. Even if I would have gotten my act together, there's a really good chance his enthusiasm for geometry would have waned by the time we worked on it "during school". I might have prepared more (notice I said "might") but he wouldn't necessarily have gotten more out of it.

spoiled rotten

2009-01-25T08:36:00.001-08:00

You know... as homeschoolers here in Chicago we really run the risk of becoming COMPLETELY spoiled rotten, don't you think?

I mean, seriously, we have so many fabulous opportunities here. We took part in one on Friday.

We went on a "musical journey"...
... with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to Russia...
It was part of their Very Special Promenade field trip series.

For $10 a seat, we were in a box in the Symphony Center... the box smack dab in the middle! We were watching and listening to the CSO... AND watching dancers from the Joffrey perform selections from Swan Lake and the Nutcracker! The conductor was wonderful... engaged with the kids and educational. It was truly amazing!! Add to all of this that we were sharing the box with our homeschooling friends.

We're spoiled I tell you... totally spoiled :-)

(I had to make due with program photos today, as no photography was allowed)

testing the waters...

2009-01-22T15:35:00.000-08:00

So, I finally wrote out my big homeschooling epiphany the other.... now it is time to put it into practice.

In my newly (self) defined role of "facilitator", I tried out something Tuesday night at the library. While Alex was in book club I roamed the stacks... looking for inspiration. So, while browsing the paperbacks I found a Magic School Bus Chapter book and I just went from there. I ended up picking up the following three books...

Amazing Magnetism (Magic School Bus Chapter Book)
What Makes a Magnet?
Batteries, Bulbs, and Wires (Young Discoverers: Science Facts and Experiments)

I told Alex about them and his eyes lit up... he insisted on taking to bed with him so he could look at them. This was exactly what I hoped would happen.

What I did not expect was for him to emerge from his room at 10:15 to tell me that he had read all three books. He then started spewing out all kinds of information about magnets and circuits. It was amazing to witness... he was so fired up!

He had marked the experiments he wanted to try with kleenex (yes, clean ones) and couldn't wait until today to try them out.

Many of them were almost like magic tricks which made them even more exciting. He passed this excitement on to Clara who signed up to be his "lovely assistant". :-) He set up his "tricks" and started the show!

Here he is making the compass spin...
and here's Clara, the "control", not making the compass spin...
See... nothing up my sleeve...
.. hey WAIT... is that....
a MAGNET I see???
Yep, it was. He then took great pride in telling me why each trick worked out the way it did. They did a bunch more that I don't have photos of.... I'll tell you this though, I think they ended up magnetizing all of my butter knives in the process of setting up some of the tricks. :-)

Then, I dug out some science supply kits we had that went with a curriculum we didn't end up using and in the kits, he found enough stuff to do some of the experiments from the Batteries book.

Here he is making an electromagnet and seeing how many paperclips he could pick up...
This afternoon we made a solenoid as well.

It was a wildly successful experiment for me... I guided but did not push. He picked it up and totally ran with it.... taking Clara along for the ride. Alex read information, comprehended it and was able to explain it, in his own words, back to me. And this was all done with such excitement and wonder.

I'm realistic enough to know that this will not happen every time... but if it is only half of the time, I think that's good enough for me.

The Doll People

2009-01-21T12:02:00.001-08:00

The Doll People

We just finished reading The Doll People yesterday. I have to say that we LOVED this book. This was Alex's book for the book club he participates in at the library. He usually reads the books himself, but this month he was deep into Inkheart, lacking motivation to read something called "The Doll People" and then add in there that Clara expressed an interest in the book. So, it because our read aloud.

It was so much fun! Alex loved it every bit as much as Clara (in fact he gave it a 5 out of 5 star rating at book club last night). It has a bit of adventure and mystery.... strong female main characters and a great story about dolls who are alive. I always hesitate when doing book reviews since I don't want to give too much away.... so this will be brief. :-)

The kids got into this book so much that one night they created the Doll family and the Funcraft family out of Clara's dolls (and what the Clara didn't have, Alex made out of Legos). They even rounded up some animals so they could have "rancher family". This book truly captured their imaginations.

Anyway... now Clara wants me to track down the other books in the series since she loved The Doll People so much. Clara sits through most read aloud books but this one was the first that she really, really got into... she has proclaimed that it was her most favorite read aloud ever.

Now on to our next read aloud! :-)

Trust

2009-01-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

(the photo above has nothing really to do with this post... I just feel all posts should have a photo)

That's my word for 2009 for our homeschooling journey.... TRUST. This all has to do with the epiphany I alluded to in an earlier post.

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and here's where I'm at right now...

I need to TRUST my children more on this journey.

I need to TRUST that when they balk at certain things and struggle with others, it is not (always) because they're being difficult and don't want to work that day... but because whatever we were doing doesn't work for them. It doesn't fit their interests, their learning style or the pace they need to work at. I have been extremely guilty of trying to cram Clara into Alex's mold and getting frustrated when it doesn't work. I need to see that it is not always defiance at work, but her need for something different.

I need to TRUST that left to their own devices at times they actually come up better "educational experiences" than I could have ever have thought up for them. Plus there's the added bonus of their enthusiasm for those projects they devise themselves.

I need to rethink my TRUST in "curriculum". Okay... that sounds odd... I'm not saying that I don't trust curriculum.... but I'm talking more about my thinking that somewhere out there is the perfect curriculum that will solve ALL of my homeschooling problems.

I need to TRUST myself in my thought that the way I learned in school is not the only way to learn. There is no one right way to learn, different things work for different people.

I need to TRUST myself as the facilitator of my children's educations. Notice that I did not say "teacher".... I am the facilitator. We will learn together, I will provide educational opportunities, I will gather materials, I will say "oh, I didn't know that... tell me more".... my job is not really to teach them anything, but to help them learn.

I may have more to add to this but at least I've got the start of it written down.

Funny thing is... this whole thing came from a freak out I had about spelling. I kept looking for that one "perfect" curriculum that would magically teach my children to spell. Then I thought about school spelling programs a moment.... they don't exactly teach a child to spell (stay with me here)... they give them word lists, spelling rules, some worksheets and tests... just like almost every curriculum I had looked at and/or purchased (I have quite a collection). Where the child truly learns to spell is outside of this curriculum either through activities created by the teacher or at home with their parents... through a myriad of ways... drills, flashcards, writing out the words, spelling games, computer games, etc. The list goes on and on... but it all comes down to what works best for that particular child. I needed to stop looking for a curriculum to solve my problem for me, I need to trust my children when things didn't work and I needed to trust that I could come up with ways that would help facilitate the learning to spell process.

So, here we are at the beginning of 2009 with a fresh outlook on our homeschooling journey... let's see where it leads.

extra credit?

2009-01-19T08:08:00.001-08:00

It's funny.... since we've adopted a new attitude in regards to school lately, "school" never seems to stop. It just becomes part of our lives.... a part that isn't packed up and put away for the weekend and after 3:00 on weekdays. It's amazing to witness.

So, back this past summer, I was telling a friend of mine that we were going to be working our way through The Story of the World Volume 1this year. Knowing Alex the way she does, she suggested that we get this book she had seen on Amazon....

The Art of the Catapult: Build Greek Ballistae, Roman Onagers, English Trebuchets, and More Ancient Artillery

It was a very good call! Alex loves this book! He has studied it over and over and has picked a project to start on with his dad. They went to the hardware store last weekend to get their supplies (Jeff said that they got some strange looks from the staff as they kept consulting the book as they selected their supplies). That was another thing that excited me about this book. I do so much of the school work with the kids and this was a cool way to get Jeff involved with what we're up to.

Anyway... while waiting for time to start the construction on their catapult.... Alex decided the he would attempt building a trebuchet out of Legos.

He had been working on it alone for a few days... constantly peppering us with questions about its construction. Finally on Sunday, he had the basic structure done and from there it became a several hour family project. It was so much fun lying in the floor together... testing, analyzing, rethinking, retesting, etc.

Here's Jeff getting ready to fire the trebuchet...
(yes, the ammo is an "enemy head" as Alex had read in the book... sigh)

Making some modifications...
Ready.... aim....
FIRE.....
Here are a couple of (poorly shot) videos of a couple of firing attempts...

one not so successful one...

and one successful one...

Please ignore the various color casts of the photos... I have color cast issues :-) And, I was also having video issues this morning so one video was uploaded via blogger and another via photobucket... let's hope they work!

Thank you!

2009-01-19T07:50:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to write a quick note of thanks to those of you who have commented on my blog posts recently! I rarely EVER get comments so this past week has been quite a treat!

I know to some, three comments is no big deal but for me it's HUGE.... so thank you Audrey, Alycia and Jules!

You all made my day! :-)

diagramming sentences = fun?

2009-01-14T09:23:00.001-08:00

I never thought so... and quite frankly, neither did Alex. That is, until yesterday.

I typed a bunch of sentences out and printed them. I then handed him scissors and hand drawn sentence diagrams for him to use.

He then went to town cutting up his sentences and diagramming them...
It was pretty cool to watch. He actually got really into it! He kept yelling out all kinds of revelations he was having as he diagrammed. He actually could see relationships and really "get" the concepts when the grudge work of actually writing everything out was removed. I'm not saying that he's never going to have to write things out again.... but removing that element, especially when learning new concepts really helps with Alex.

I'm not sure why I couldn't see this before. I think it is possibly because I get caught up in the way I learned in school.... so many work sheets and so much writing.... all individual work with little interaction with the teacher (or the actual material for that matter). This all goes along with my homeschooling epiphany I referenced the other day.... I must get around to writing that post.

experimenting...

2009-01-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

Our homeschool is an ever evolving beast. :-)

I had a homeschooling epiphany the other day (which I'll expand on later) so we're trying some new stuff this week.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.... I struggle with language arts (LA). It was never my strength growing up.... I was more into math and science. Anyway, because of this I have been all over the board with language arts... I have completely ignored it (not the best solution), bought workbooks and curriculum to do it for me and now I'm finally trying a mix - using curriculum in our own way. We're taking the books and going off road. :-)

So, Clara has really been struggling with LA because she struggles with handwriting. She also isn't particularly the sit at the table and do a workbook type (well, at least not for too long). So, I decided over the weekend that I would try typing up and printing out some of the exercises from their LA books. I decided to try this because I really felt that she did get more of the concepts than it appeared when she had to write things out.

So, here's day one...
I decided to use the grade 2 Rod and Staff grammar book I had bought for Alex last year. To start I just typed out some sentences from the book, cut the words apart and let her arrange them back into sentences.... looking for clues to help (capital letters and punctuation). She really enjoyed that. The next section was about sentences versus phrases.... so I typed up their list of each along with the headings "sentence" and "phrase", cut them out and let her put them in the proper columns. Again... fun and quick. Finally, so she can keep working on her handwriting, I typed out a few of the sentences in StartWrite for her to trace and then copy.

Here's Alex's...
He's working in book 3. We haven't gotten very far into it. We stopped for a while when he got into his daily paragraph editing work sheets. Thankfully though, we had stopped right before a review section.

Here he is sorting sentences into columns of "commanding", "telling" and "asking" sentences...
Now, he's cutting up those same sentences in order to separate them into columns of "subjects" and "predicates"....
He had always tolerated his Rod and Staff grammar (once we stopped writing everything out)... but this was the first time that he really got into it and seemed to enjoy it. Figuring he could always use some extra handwriting practice... I did the same for him as I had done for Clara.

After our LA work, it was time for a spelling game...

Snap It Up! Phonics and Reading Card Game, Word Families

I was the referee and the official middle card turner over person. It was a good learning game for Clara and a good review game for Alex. They enjoyed it enough that they think we should get the Snap It Up gamesin all varieties. :-)

I also wanted to show off this little beauty...

My very own Automatic Playing Card Shuffler!! I'm terrible at shuffling cards and so many of the kids' games involve shuffling cards.... I actually used to avoid playing card games with them... but NO MORE!!! :-)

After the traditional round of Snap It Up, we split the ending cards between the two of them and also split the beginning cards.... they then tried to be the first one done with forming words with all of their endings...
It was a good experiment!! However, since it's a little more labor intensive for me, I'm hoping I can keep at it.

let the games begin!

2009-01-09T06:45:00.000-08:00

One of my goals for the new year is to get back to playing more games for school. I used to be so good about this with Alex, but I fell off the wagon a bit when it came to Clara.

Since Clara can always use some extra help with spelling, we got out this game yesterday....

What's Gnu?

It was fun.... but I learned quickly that we couldn't play it the traditional way (2 player).... Alex was just too fast. So for the second round, Clara went alone...
and she got different points for her words depending on the level of help she needed. Alex kept track of it all on the easel. We had a really good time playing together and I look forward to making games a bigger part of our school.

mummies

2009-01-08T06:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was SO MUCH FUN!!! I love it when a project becomes something that we're really into instead of "just school".... if you know what I mean. The kids were into this project anyway... but given that they had been reading some ancient Egypt books on their own, they had their own ideas on how we should do things.

The Story of the World activity book has you mummifying a chicken... I just couldn't do that... it just icks me out just thinking about it. So I went searching around the web looking for alternatives. I found these instructions on the Tweaked Academy blog. They were just what I was looking for!

In the meantime... the kids had been reading these two books....

You Wouldn't Want to Be an Egyptian Mummy!

Ancient Egyptians (History Dudes)
(thanks for letting us borrow this Jennifer, Alex loves it!)

... and had some ideas of their own.

Namely, the addition of Anubis...

Or the priest who acted as the chief embalmer who wore the mask of Anubis (god of embalming). I didn't know about this because I was so focused on the actual embalming that I didn't pay much attention to the ritual of embalming. The kids rushed down to Alex's room to make him an Anubis mask which we then taped to his ski mask.

The chief embalmer marks the line on the left side of the bodies for the "slicer" to cut along...
Here is a shot of our dearly departed royal family and the elements needed for their proper burial...
I got to be the "slicer".... which had the added bonus of being chased from the room and having "stones" thrown at you by the other embalmers since "his bloody work insults the gods". I had them make paper stones so I got to run from kitchen (I did put the knife down first) while being pelted with paper wads! Good times! Honestly... the kids LOVED it!

Here they are removing the "organs"...
and anointing the bodies with wine (rubbing alcohol and red food coloring in a Dr. Pepper bottle...lol... how's that for fancy?)....
The little packets above are the "organs", we're embalming them too.

Then we mixed up our "natron"... and started covering the bodies...
I think I ended up using three and a half boxes of baking soda and two and a half canisters of salt. I just mixed it up in equal proportions until the bodies were covered. I have some extra so I can replace the natron when needed.

Oh... and last night the kids used the hieroglyph stamps from their kit to make name labels for the mummies. On Monday we had watched a special about the Screaming Man on the National Geographic Channel and they kept stressing how important it was for mummies to be buried with their names.... a nameless mummy could not get into the afterlife. So, they had to have names... however, for now they are mom, dad and Tut. :-)

So... that was our day yesterday! Hopefully today will be as fun but without the mess! lol!

it's electrifyin'

2009-01-07T09:03:00.001-08:00

This is all the result of yet another rabbit trail :-)

The other day, Alex became obsessed with the idea that he wanted to build a working hot air balloon with Legos and other materials. Well... since we wouldn't let him use actual fire to make the hot air (mean parents aren't we?) he had to come up with other alternatives to make his balloon float. He was making us a little mental so I ended up pulling a stack of science experiment books off the shelf and told him that perhaps he might find something in them. My hope was that he would find an alternative or he would become distracted by other experiments. He was distracted by other experiments... because about an hour later, he brought me one of the books with half the pages dog eared (wasn't totally thrilled that he did that... but oh well).

Here's one of the first ones he worked on... the static charge detector...

It's hard to see since our glass isn't smooth, but the pieces of foil repelled each other when something with a static charge was place by the nail at the top of the glass. They have kept the detector in tact and periodically check different things throughout the day.

The experiment came from here...

101 Great Science Experiments

hieroglyphs

2009-01-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

Wow... I haven't posted here in a while. We have been working on stuff... honest, we have! :-)

This week we're officially back at it so I'll have lots of new stuff to post plus I'll probably eventually get around to posting some of the other stuff we've done in the past month (maybe).

We're back to working our way through The Story of the World: Volume 1. This week's topic is the ancient writing styles of the Egyptians and Sumerians.

I meant to have clay on hand so they could play around with cuneiform writing, but I didn't. So, I brought out this fun thing I had bought this summer....

Ancient Egypt Treasure Chest

It has all kinds of fun goodies inside....

Yesterday they played with the hieroglyph stamp set....
Here's Clara's name (backwards, since she's going to stamp it)....
You never know with these little kits how they'll work out. The hieroglyph stamp set worked perfectly EXCEPT the ink pad was dried out. I would have been surprised if it wasn't dried out though. Thankfully I have quite a few ink pads lying around so it was no big deal...
The little round thing was a hieroglyphs decoder. And it also came with a little roll of papyrus to stamp on. The kids wanted to practice on paper first and I think they got too into that and completely forgot about their papyrus.

Fun stuff!

the rabbit trail continued

2008-12-15T15:40:00.000-08:00

After reading my last post, a friend of mine sent me an email about another fun resource...

The Kid Who Named Pluto

(It is currently a free download at CurrClick)

I downloaded it today and looked over the stories included in it. She had specifically mentioned a chapter titled "The High Schooler Who Created an Incredible Secret Code". I printed this today and Alex and I read it aloud with Clara listening. It was definitely an inspiring story, I can't wait to read others in the book. I think it is really cool for kids to read about other kids who have done amazing things... especially in the world of academics.

Anyway... just wanted to share this free resource!

rabbit trails

2008-12-15T09:29:00.000-08:00

I know I always talk about my "favorite" thing about homeschooling... and with every post it's something different. Well... today one of my favorite things about homeschooling is the freedom to follow "rabbit trails".

I decided to document one of Alex's recent trips down a rabbit trail.

It started with this book...

The Mysterious Benedict Society

It was given to us by a friend.... totally random book to read. After reading the book, Alex came to me to tell me that it was cool... in the book the kids communicated by Morse Code. He thought this was a made-up code for the book, so when I told him it was real, he got very excited. I found a key for the code online and printed it out for him.

The next thing I knew, he was a note writing machine...

He was busy writing notes for me, Jeff, Clara and his friends. He loved writing them and decoding the notes we wrote back.

On my next trip to the library, I picked up a couple of books for him...Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing

and another book I can't find right now (but I hope I do before it's due!).

In these books they give examples of many different secret codes and brief histories of these codes. In the book I can't find, it mentioned a special code that was part of an old radio show called The Shadow. He wanted to know what I knew about it.... which happened to be very little.

So, we went snooping around the internet and found that the episodes where available as free downloads from iTunes...

So now, we've had exposure to an old time radio drama!

The trail continues though. He was looking for a new book to read and chose this one...

Wright 3

Codes played a role in the first book of this series (Chasing Vermeer) so that piqued his interest to start this one. I have a feeling that this book will take us down a path that includes looking at books of Frank Lloyd Wright's work and perhaps a trip to the Robie House for the Wright 3 tour.

It's been a fabulous learning adventure... an adventure started by one random book but lead us down a path that benefited us in so many ways.... history, spelling, grammar, logic, math, etc. And it was all done with passion and excitement... not just skimming the surface... but diving down deep. I can't even imagine what the difference would have been had I assigned him a report on the topic of Morse Code instead.

Now this rabbit trail is leading me to add more books to my Amazon wish list.... sigh.

Here's my most recent addition...

The Cryptoclub: Using Mathematics to Make and Break Secret Codes

We aren't at the end of this trail yet... I can't wait to see where else we have to go! :-)

a new read aloud

2008-12-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

We have been rocketing through read alouds lately! We ended up reading the Kit book I mentioned before in one sitting yesterday. We're still working on the lapbook though.

So, we were once again out of read alouds. Thankfully yesterday was library day. I know I'm a little slow, but I just realized that the chapter books also have holiday stickers on the spine. I have known that the picture books had these for years... but yesterday was the first day I had noticed them on the chapter books. This was a HUGE help in my search. The first book I pulled out with the Christmas Candy Cane sticker on the spine was this...

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus

I had never heard of this book before. The book is GORGEOUS! The illustrations are just incredible. I had no idea that L. Frank Baum (the author of The Wizard of Oz books) had written a story about Santa Claus.

We're only about four chapters into the book but so far the kids are completely entralled by the story. Who wouldn't be though? It's a fabulous fairy tale set in a forest no mortal has ever entered, complete with wood nymphs, fairies and other mythical creatures.

I have to admit that I was a bit reluctant to read a book about the life of Santa at first. But after starting this book, I have no problem with it. It truly is written like a fairy tale where although it captures your imagination and you want, in your heart, for it to be true... it is just a little too fanciful for you to accept that it could be true. Does that make sense? I hope it does, at least a little :-)

We'll see how the rest of it goes, but so far we're loving it.

crisis averted

2008-12-10T06:23:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we were on the verge of a total math meltdown. Alex has just started 3 digit x 2 digit multiplication in his math curriculum. He started working in his book and after several mistakes and attempts at erasing said mistakes on the first problem he was ready to quit. His page was now too messy for him to think straight when making another attempt at the problem. We were about to see tears.

Then, I had an idea... every night at dinner Alex had been asking us to give him 2 digit x 2 digit problems for him to work on for fun... he had been working these out on his white board.... so, why not let him work these new problems out on his white board?

He was receptive to this idea and started to work...
During this time, Clara was working through issues of her own...
... hair issues, that is. She was having a very bad hair day :-)

Suddenly, a hint of a smile returned...
It relaxed him so much to be working on his white board. He could write larger and mistakes completely disappeared when erased. Since his work would be gone when he moved on to the next problem, we checked each answer as he finished the problem. That way he could still look at his work and see where the mistake was before it was gone.

Once he reached the correct answer, he wrote it in his workbook...
Yesterday was another one of those days where I really appreciate the fact that we homeschool. He was so close to hating math and feeling like 3 digit x 2 digit multiplication was beyond him yesterday... but with one little change (working on a white board instead of paper) he happily breezed through the rest of his assignment.

December Read Alouds

2008-12-08T07:54:00.000-08:00

I know I have Farmer Boy listed on the right, but the kids voted to "pause" the book for the month and read Christmas books instead.

First of all... I got the bright idea to read A Christmas Carol aloud to the kids. See... Clara had chosen the Barbie Christmas Carol movie for her movie pick last weekend. Although I thought it was a well done movie, it was not quite the same story. The kids said that they would like to hear the real story, so I found our copy of the book and the shelf and started reading. Ugh.... the language was too much for them. Their eyes glazed over a page or two into the book.... so we abandoned the book. So they at least get some exposure to the actual story, I downloaded an audio recording of the story from Kiddie Records.

So, now I was without a Christmas book. On my next trip to the library I started looking around for a new read aloud. I ended up with two. First off is this book...

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

So far, so good on this one. Although the kids in the book are so out of control that it gets to Alex a bit. It's a short book so I'm hoping we'll be getting to the "best" part of the Christmas Pageant so Alex can relax some.

The second book I picked up is this...

Kit's Surprise: A Christmas Story, 1934

We'll probably use the lapbook kit I got from CurrClick as we read the book. Needless to say, Clara is very excited about this read aloud.

The Nut Tapper

2008-12-08T07:46:00.001-08:00

I mentioned last week that we were doing a Christmas/Nutcracker theme for this month...and that one of the things we had planned on seeing was The Nut Tapper (the field trip version). Well... we went last Thursday and had a fabulous time.

It wasn't like we had expected (somehow we had expected people tap dancing to the original ballet score) but we thoroughly enjoyed it. The show was bright and exciting with fabulous dancing, beautiful singing and infectious energy!

They followed the basic story of the Nutcracker.
With a battle between the Nut Tapper and the mouse king...
But they incorporated many different styles of dance... including Mexican Folk Dance...
and Flamenco...
The kids had a really great time.

another (free!) nutcracker resource...

2008-12-03T08:01:00.001-08:00

The Nutcracker Suite for Children

I meant to post this yesterday but forgot all about. Okay... I didn't forget ALL about it, I thought about it and then couldn't remember where I had tucked it away on my hard drive after a fit of downloading a few months ago. Today I found it!

If you would like to download it too... I got it from Kiddie Records, it's week 50 of their 2006 list.

If anyone else out there is doing a Nutcracker study this month, I would love to see/read what you're doing as well!

a theme study for December

2008-12-01T05:59:00.001-08:00

Okay... I wasn't going to do it. We were on a good roll with everything we were doing with school. The plan was to just keep on rolling with the norm through December. Well... that was before the tree went up and all of the Christmas stuff came out! We are going to keep going with our normal stuff (scaling back a bit on SOTW though) but we're going to be doing a special theme for the month. Since today is December first and this obsession just came to me on Saturday, it had to be something easy, something that I had resources for already so we could hit the ground running today.

After some brainstorming, I had an idea! See... this summer I got this "brilliant" idea (that was sarcastic) to create a ballet themed year long study for Clara since she LOVES ballet. It's easy finding curriculum ideas for Alex that goes along with what he loves since he loves building and engineering. Clara was tougher so I thought I would try a ballet theme. Well... I began acquiring materials but quickly realized once school started, that I didn't have enough stuff to do what I wanted.... so it was just sitting on a shelf labeled "Clara"... sigh.

BUT.... now, here I was looking for a theme for December... what better use of that stuff on the shelf than a Nutcracker study???

So, here are some of the resources we already had...

DK Read & Listen: Illustrated Book of Ballet Stories

This is a beautiful little book that includes all of the stories on CD. It includes several famous ballets, including the Nutcracker.

Favorite Ballets Coloring Book

Clara loves to color pages in this book as we do our read alouds... but thankfully, she had not gotten to the Nutcracker pages yet.

Nutcracker: The Music Game

We haven't played this yet... but I thought it could be fun.

And, so we don't overdo the ballet thing for Alex, we will add in some composer study...

Tchaikovsky Discovers America

This is another resource I had already purchased.... and now get to put to use!

Now on to other resources...

Again... to not overdo the ballet stuff for Alex, I thought we would expand this a bit and do a little "Christmas Around the World" by reading some about Christmas in Russia. I have these two books to pick up at the library...

Baboushka and the Three Kings

Christmas in Russia

Another motivation for this study is that over Thanksgiving we saw a preview of what looks like a beautiful production of the Nutcracker that is going to be on PBS HD.... Great Performances: Dance In America: San Francisco Ballet's Nutcracker. I couldn't find more info on it... but while looking through the Great Performances site, I found this which looks like fun....

Build and Color Your Own Nutcracker Stage Production

Add to all of this that we're going to see the Nut Tapper this week and the dance school that Clara goes to is putting on their own mini production of the Nutcracker... I think we'll be all Nutcrackered out by the end of December! :-)

one of my favorite things...

2008-11-30T12:43:00.000-08:00

... about starting our nature study for school this year, is that it has become a way of life for us now. It's just something that we automatically do, without even thinking, without even labeling it as "school".

We were in Missouri last week for Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving Day, the kids and I took a little nature walk around my parents' place.

They found this guy...
... and named him Henry. They're determined to look him up in our field guides to find out what he is.

We saw lots of little red berries to identify...

We took a moment to appreciate just how beautiful plants can be, even if they're not green and blooming...

We gathered a few tiny acorns for Henry's (temporary) home...
And saw a bird's nest that had been hidden in the leaves on our last visit...
Alex also got a very hands-on look at seed dispersal methods after he came out of the woods with his shirt covered with little tiny burrs. :-)

I really want to put together a nature study backpack for us. I meant to use an old backpack of Alex's but he's found a new use for it. It would be really nice to have one stocked and ready to go for our random nature walks. Hmmm.... maybe that will be something that I will work on for Christmas.