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I am finding it very difficult to keep posting, although I really want to succeed at this for my children's sakes. We had Monday off for MLK Jr. Day. This week has gone relatively uneventfully, although I have to admit that our long days are pretty wearying by the time we're done. Our short days are too frenetic to post.
Next week, we will take Tuesday afternoon off to volunteer at the Capital Area Food Bank with our field trip co-op that we've newly joined. I may decide to just take the whole day off and take the kids to the Wildflower Center before free admission in January ends. We've got some botany activities to do, and what better place could we go to? (Oh, there's also Zilker Botanical Garden, I guess. We haven't been there in years.)
I had also purchased a voucher for 3 individual entries to Wazoo's bounce house that expires in February, so I've got to take the kiddos. The voucher only lets in one pre-paid, and additional kids are $8 each. I know they'd like to have their friends go, but we'd have to ask their parents to send money with them. It would be too expensive for us to cover the cost of additional kids.
I suppose I could also take the kids to Pizza Hut for lunch on Tuesday while we're out and redeem their certificates for December. That would be a full day taking advantage of opportunities and using up vouchers and free admission and working alongside other homeschoolers. Do we end our Tuesday by going to Wazoo's? Well, the Engineer has basketball practice that evening, so he can't be completely worn out or he'll goof off during practice. What to do? ;^)
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Week 1 of School in January
Wednesday
~~~~~~~~
Okay. So I didn't have a chance to post anything yesterday. With its being a half day and trying to get the kids to P.E. on time, I thought posting on the blog of lesser priority. After I dropped them off, my day was no less hectic. I go grocery shopping while they're in class and got home just in time to put the groceries away and get on a scheduled phone call with a client. That meeting went a little long, and I had to excuse myself from my meeting so that I could go pick up the kids. Then I listened to the audio lesson that we would be discussing at home group that evening, had dinner with the family, and then headed to home group to discuss Revelation. Then it was back home and work on editing until bedtime.
************************
Thursday
~~~~~~~
It is now 1:27pm, and we just got back from lunch. We were on time all morning, which was amazing, until the last assignment in science. That took awhile (instead of gathering shoes to practice taxonomy, I printed out three pages of shoe images for us to cut and classify), putting us 25 minutes behind schedule. (sigh) I don't think we're meant to end school on time and to complete each subject that day. That's okay. That's what homeschooling is about, right?
My son has Cub Scouts tonight. They are planning their camp-out for this weekend with the Boy Scouts, but rain is forecasted for the weekend. My husband is not excited about going with bad weather, especially since his hip hurts quite a bit in inclement weather. The Engineer, however, wants to go really bad, especially since he couldn't go in December. He also got a lot of new camping gear for Christmas that he wants to try out. I don't blame him. If I didn't have work, I wouldn't mind going with him, but all the other parents will be fathers, and they tend to frown on moms accompanying the boys. I've also been told that I wouldn't find much fellowship there. Whatever. But I do have work to do and my daughter for whom to make time working on her new Sock Bunny gift and her sewing machine, both from Christmas.
Right now the Engineer has gone missing. He is supposed to be working on his exercise in Spelling Wisdom. The Artist is working steadily at her cursive copywork. I didn't push the Engineer to practice his cursive long enough after learning it, and he has forgotten all of it. I've decided to push the Artist to increase her chances of remembering and using it. I may go back to training the boy in cursive again, but maybe not. He has learned to keyboard, but I know he still finger-pecks when I'm not looking. The girl too. (sigh again)
I have to have faith that the kids will pursue subjects as they develop interest in them when they're older. In the meantime, my role is to introduce them and offer them the opportunity to practice those skills and perhaps master them if they are motivated. But I can't push them all the time. They will never learn self-motivation and self-discipline if I make them do everything and remind them to do everything all the time, right? Am I wrong? I have self-discipline, and I admit I was pushed to do things throughout my childhood and never given much leeway to make my own decisions. Perhaps that is why I have self-discipline. But others have tried to push their children and end up having the opposite result. I'm thinking it's a temperament thing. My girl is naturally much more motivated than my boy to pursue school-type subjects. My boy, on the other hand, is much more motivated to goof off and have fun. They will each have their strengths and weaknesses as adults. I don't take the world onto my shoulders, but I do worry that I'm not training them in the way they should go.
************************
It is 4:47pm, and we finished over an hour ago. But I had to finish copying poetry for their Level 2 poetry memorization program, which I just completed. I'm about to go prepare dinner so that the boy and his father can leave for Cub Scouts on time, but I wanted to check in and finish this post because I'm being so good about posting! :^)
The rest of our studies went pretty well. We mostly caught up on our schedule, and the kids have their friends over now. Because tomorrow is another half day, I don't know that I'll manage to post then, so it may not be until Monday that I can add anything else. We will have AHG Monday afternoon, so I may be too busy preparing for that to writing anything then either. We'll see.
~~~~~~~~
Okay. So I didn't have a chance to post anything yesterday. With its being a half day and trying to get the kids to P.E. on time, I thought posting on the blog of lesser priority. After I dropped them off, my day was no less hectic. I go grocery shopping while they're in class and got home just in time to put the groceries away and get on a scheduled phone call with a client. That meeting went a little long, and I had to excuse myself from my meeting so that I could go pick up the kids. Then I listened to the audio lesson that we would be discussing at home group that evening, had dinner with the family, and then headed to home group to discuss Revelation. Then it was back home and work on editing until bedtime.
************************
Thursday
~~~~~~~
It is now 1:27pm, and we just got back from lunch. We were on time all morning, which was amazing, until the last assignment in science. That took awhile (instead of gathering shoes to practice taxonomy, I printed out three pages of shoe images for us to cut and classify), putting us 25 minutes behind schedule. (sigh) I don't think we're meant to end school on time and to complete each subject that day. That's okay. That's what homeschooling is about, right?
My son has Cub Scouts tonight. They are planning their camp-out for this weekend with the Boy Scouts, but rain is forecasted for the weekend. My husband is not excited about going with bad weather, especially since his hip hurts quite a bit in inclement weather. The Engineer, however, wants to go really bad, especially since he couldn't go in December. He also got a lot of new camping gear for Christmas that he wants to try out. I don't blame him. If I didn't have work, I wouldn't mind going with him, but all the other parents will be fathers, and they tend to frown on moms accompanying the boys. I've also been told that I wouldn't find much fellowship there. Whatever. But I do have work to do and my daughter for whom to make time working on her new Sock Bunny gift and her sewing machine, both from Christmas.
Right now the Engineer has gone missing. He is supposed to be working on his exercise in Spelling Wisdom. The Artist is working steadily at her cursive copywork. I didn't push the Engineer to practice his cursive long enough after learning it, and he has forgotten all of it. I've decided to push the Artist to increase her chances of remembering and using it. I may go back to training the boy in cursive again, but maybe not. He has learned to keyboard, but I know he still finger-pecks when I'm not looking. The girl too. (sigh again)
I have to have faith that the kids will pursue subjects as they develop interest in them when they're older. In the meantime, my role is to introduce them and offer them the opportunity to practice those skills and perhaps master them if they are motivated. But I can't push them all the time. They will never learn self-motivation and self-discipline if I make them do everything and remind them to do everything all the time, right? Am I wrong? I have self-discipline, and I admit I was pushed to do things throughout my childhood and never given much leeway to make my own decisions. Perhaps that is why I have self-discipline. But others have tried to push their children and end up having the opposite result. I'm thinking it's a temperament thing. My girl is naturally much more motivated than my boy to pursue school-type subjects. My boy, on the other hand, is much more motivated to goof off and have fun. They will each have their strengths and weaknesses as adults. I don't take the world onto my shoulders, but I do worry that I'm not training them in the way they should go.
************************
It is 4:47pm, and we finished over an hour ago. But I had to finish copying poetry for their Level 2 poetry memorization program, which I just completed. I'm about to go prepare dinner so that the boy and his father can leave for Cub Scouts on time, but I wanted to check in and finish this post because I'm being so good about posting! :^)
The rest of our studies went pretty well. We mostly caught up on our schedule, and the kids have their friends over now. Because tomorrow is another half day, I don't know that I'll manage to post then, so it may not be until Monday that I can add anything else. We will have AHG Monday afternoon, so I may be too busy preparing for that to writing anything then either. We'll see.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
New Year's Resolution 2013: Posting Regularly
Trying again. I've got a new plan, which is to open up a new post each school day and write in those brief spaces when my children are occupied with their work. We'll see how it works out.
It is 12:40pm, and I've just released the kids to lunch. They get 40 minutes. We started school yesterday after a 2-1/2 week winter break. It went well, for the most part. We had cut out language arts to catch up on our time. History went a little long, but I thought the extra time was worth it.
Today we are covering each subject as scheduled, but we are behind time-wise. We started about 15 minutes late today but somehow ended up 30 minutes behind by mid-morning. ?? We are currently 20 minutes behind, but that is partly due to cutting our morning recess down by half to 5 minutes. Hey, I've got to make up the time wherever I can get it! I have learned, however, not to cut out recess entirely because that generally leads to unhappy children.
We've been working on Volume III of The Mystery of History, supplemented with Christian Heroes, Trial and Triumph, and A Child's History of the World. I elected to cover American history concurrently this year so that the kids would get a better idea of the context of our history. As a child, I was always confused as to how American events fit into the larger picture of world events. Unfortunately I have been unable to fit the two curricula neatly together because I'm trying to finish this school year out at the end of the world history book and the end of the first volume of the American history books (America the Beautiful).
Before Christmas break, we finally finished up Exploring Creation with Swimming Creatures. Yesterday I introduced the kids to Exploring Creation with Botany, which we continued today and just put away before lunch. I am planning to alternate the botany study with Exploring Creation with Land Animals. I want to make sure the kids don't get bored with studying plants, particularly the Artist, who finds animals much more interesting.
I'd changed the approach I was taking in supplemental literature and history and other books from the library. I had been going through the Sonlight readers for my kids to use as their readers but found that we were spending an enormous amount of time on school, so I combined their readers with the free and supplemental reading. They now choose from books in a basket or from a list of e-books every morning and read silently for 20 minutes. Then I have them come and narrate to me a bit about what they read so that I can ensure that they did indeed focus on their reading. This has saved us some time from our school day, but it has also allowed me a little room to take care of last-minute things (like feeding the fish or watering plants) before joining the kids for school.
We've also gone back to Scripture memorization this year. I had neglected this aspect of the children's studies and finally implemented the Simply Charlotte Mason Scripture memorization program. We don't do the weekends because we just never remember to, but otherwise we've done pretty well, I think. We are also using the memorization system with poetry. The length of the poems has necessitated the use of a binder in place of an index card file, however. This has been working very well for us.
It is an overcast, drizzly day here in Austin. The forecast calls for more rain this evening into tomorrow. That's all fine, but the Engineer has basketball practice tonight, so I hope that doesn't create problems for transportation. The unfortunate thing about practice is that it is from 7:30-8:30pm on Tuesdays. I'm glad it was changed from the original 8-9pm slot, but it's not much better. He's got a really good coach, and his team won their first game on Saturday! I know the Engineer was so glad. It was very difficult for the boys on his team last year not winning a single game all season.
I don't remember if we were working the Bible Study Guide for All Ages when I was posting regularly, but we had left that curriculum for a number of years and went back to it last year. The kids aren't super excited about it, but I think it's a comprehensive and thorough program for their level. When they've grown out of the worksheet levels, we'll reconsider our Bible study. We do BSGFAA once a week, doing as much of a worksheet as we can in a 20-minute period. Other days we work on character training (reading from a book called Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends, written by a homeschooling family), Henrietta's Mears's book What the Bible Is All About for Young Explorers, and a devotional for each child.
I'm a bit distracted right now because I'm doing dictation with the Engineer on his Spelling Wisdom exercise. Not sure how much his spelling has improved since implementing this program, but I do see improvement. I wasn't seeing much joy in other attempts at spelling that we'd done, which wasn't too many, really, because of CM's insistence that children can learn all they need to know about composition and writing through copywork and dictation. I have started formal grammar work with the Engineer this year. We are using a program called Junior Analytical Grammar. Once we finish this book, we will continue with Junior Analytical Grammar: Mechanics. It has been a good program so far. I've been improving my sentence diagramming skills quite a bit as well. The Artist will not begin any spelling until next year and will begin grammar in two years.
We've also begun a program called Institute of Excellence in Writing. It is very teacher-preparation heavy and very expensive, but we've been making pretty good progress with a structured, formal writing program. Again, I had been relying on CM methods to improve my children's writing, but I think the very direct nature of this course, which very specifically has the kids include certain aspects of writing in the manner of doing sports drills, has been a good trainer for me in terms of learning to teach writing. I am hoping that by going through this with my kids, I will be able to develop my own methods for helping older people learn to write. As I go through the program, I have some objections to the use of certain elements (like the heavy use of -ly adverbs), but I understand the creator's reasons for including such elements, and I'm okay with incorporating it into the program for now. Eventually, we will streamline and develop good writing skills. I will liken the heavy use of adverbs to crawling. It's not what we aspire to, but it is necessary to the development of the brain and the eventual coordinated function of the body.
************
We're done now at 4pm. Tuesdays are our long days because we have half days on Wednesdays and Fridays. Mondays and Thursdays we end around 3:30pm. Wednesdays the kids are in a homeschool P.E. program, and they attend classes on Friday afternoons. The Engineer is taking Engineering I and Introduction to Robotics, and the Artist is taking Exploring Art Mediums.
Our language arts went reasonably well today, although we just kept getting later and later in our schedule. After language arts was literature reading, which I cut down to about a third of the usual time to make up for being so far behind. It worked out though because we only had a reading from Pilgrim's Progress to do. I had originally started with the original version last year, but it was very difficult to read and to understand, even for me. So this year we are going through it again but with a modernized version. The archaic quality is still there but the difficult words have been updated to modern equivalents. Anyway, it is much easier to understand and try to appreciate. Then we had our poetry recitations and poetry reading, the kids did their math (the Engineer is working through A Key to...Series, currently Measurement, and the Artist is working through The Life of Fred elementary series, currently Edgewood), and then we finished up with art. They had been doing a "Van Gogh still life" with chalk, which we finally finished up today.
I need to go make dinner in a moment, but I wanted to finish jotting down my thoughts. I was thinking that I would create links to the above resources before publishing, but I don't have time to do that right now. Just after school was over for the day, the Artist wanted me to help her unpack her new sewing machine, which she received for Christmas, courtesy of Gran and Grandad. It is a Sew Pretty, Sew Perfect Hello Kitty sewing machine by Janome. It is green and so cute! Anyway, I'm glad to see that she is very excited about it. I need to refresh my own sewing machine skills in order to help her figure out her new machine.
On a quick side note, I had been thinking that we would be done with American Heritage Girls after this school year because the Artist and I had talked about that. Well, I just brought it up and she wants to continue doing it! I told her I might not serve as a Unit Leader anymore because it takes up so much of my time. She reluctantly agreed that I didn't have to be Unit Leader anymore but that she wouldn't continue anymore either. She doesn't want to do it if I'm not her Unit Leader. So now I'm rethinking quitting. I had thought that perhaps we could quit for a year and see how that was working out. But I don't want to take that away from her either. I had envisioned a future with more time to do more fun things, but I don't know if that will be the case now.
Well, time to make dinner.
************
Well, it's 10:48pm now, and I never got the opportunity to put in those links that I wanted to do. I suppose I could go back at a future date and put in the links for anyone who wants to check back.
It is 12:40pm, and I've just released the kids to lunch. They get 40 minutes. We started school yesterday after a 2-1/2 week winter break. It went well, for the most part. We had cut out language arts to catch up on our time. History went a little long, but I thought the extra time was worth it.
Today we are covering each subject as scheduled, but we are behind time-wise. We started about 15 minutes late today but somehow ended up 30 minutes behind by mid-morning. ?? We are currently 20 minutes behind, but that is partly due to cutting our morning recess down by half to 5 minutes. Hey, I've got to make up the time wherever I can get it! I have learned, however, not to cut out recess entirely because that generally leads to unhappy children.
We've been working on Volume III of The Mystery of History, supplemented with Christian Heroes, Trial and Triumph, and A Child's History of the World. I elected to cover American history concurrently this year so that the kids would get a better idea of the context of our history. As a child, I was always confused as to how American events fit into the larger picture of world events. Unfortunately I have been unable to fit the two curricula neatly together because I'm trying to finish this school year out at the end of the world history book and the end of the first volume of the American history books (America the Beautiful).
Before Christmas break, we finally finished up Exploring Creation with Swimming Creatures. Yesterday I introduced the kids to Exploring Creation with Botany, which we continued today and just put away before lunch. I am planning to alternate the botany study with Exploring Creation with Land Animals. I want to make sure the kids don't get bored with studying plants, particularly the Artist, who finds animals much more interesting.
I'd changed the approach I was taking in supplemental literature and history and other books from the library. I had been going through the Sonlight readers for my kids to use as their readers but found that we were spending an enormous amount of time on school, so I combined their readers with the free and supplemental reading. They now choose from books in a basket or from a list of e-books every morning and read silently for 20 minutes. Then I have them come and narrate to me a bit about what they read so that I can ensure that they did indeed focus on their reading. This has saved us some time from our school day, but it has also allowed me a little room to take care of last-minute things (like feeding the fish or watering plants) before joining the kids for school.
We've also gone back to Scripture memorization this year. I had neglected this aspect of the children's studies and finally implemented the Simply Charlotte Mason Scripture memorization program. We don't do the weekends because we just never remember to, but otherwise we've done pretty well, I think. We are also using the memorization system with poetry. The length of the poems has necessitated the use of a binder in place of an index card file, however. This has been working very well for us.
It is an overcast, drizzly day here in Austin. The forecast calls for more rain this evening into tomorrow. That's all fine, but the Engineer has basketball practice tonight, so I hope that doesn't create problems for transportation. The unfortunate thing about practice is that it is from 7:30-8:30pm on Tuesdays. I'm glad it was changed from the original 8-9pm slot, but it's not much better. He's got a really good coach, and his team won their first game on Saturday! I know the Engineer was so glad. It was very difficult for the boys on his team last year not winning a single game all season.
I don't remember if we were working the Bible Study Guide for All Ages when I was posting regularly, but we had left that curriculum for a number of years and went back to it last year. The kids aren't super excited about it, but I think it's a comprehensive and thorough program for their level. When they've grown out of the worksheet levels, we'll reconsider our Bible study. We do BSGFAA once a week, doing as much of a worksheet as we can in a 20-minute period. Other days we work on character training (reading from a book called Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends, written by a homeschooling family), Henrietta's Mears's book What the Bible Is All About for Young Explorers, and a devotional for each child.
I'm a bit distracted right now because I'm doing dictation with the Engineer on his Spelling Wisdom exercise. Not sure how much his spelling has improved since implementing this program, but I do see improvement. I wasn't seeing much joy in other attempts at spelling that we'd done, which wasn't too many, really, because of CM's insistence that children can learn all they need to know about composition and writing through copywork and dictation. I have started formal grammar work with the Engineer this year. We are using a program called Junior Analytical Grammar. Once we finish this book, we will continue with Junior Analytical Grammar: Mechanics. It has been a good program so far. I've been improving my sentence diagramming skills quite a bit as well. The Artist will not begin any spelling until next year and will begin grammar in two years.
We've also begun a program called Institute of Excellence in Writing. It is very teacher-preparation heavy and very expensive, but we've been making pretty good progress with a structured, formal writing program. Again, I had been relying on CM methods to improve my children's writing, but I think the very direct nature of this course, which very specifically has the kids include certain aspects of writing in the manner of doing sports drills, has been a good trainer for me in terms of learning to teach writing. I am hoping that by going through this with my kids, I will be able to develop my own methods for helping older people learn to write. As I go through the program, I have some objections to the use of certain elements (like the heavy use of -ly adverbs), but I understand the creator's reasons for including such elements, and I'm okay with incorporating it into the program for now. Eventually, we will streamline and develop good writing skills. I will liken the heavy use of adverbs to crawling. It's not what we aspire to, but it is necessary to the development of the brain and the eventual coordinated function of the body.
************
We're done now at 4pm. Tuesdays are our long days because we have half days on Wednesdays and Fridays. Mondays and Thursdays we end around 3:30pm. Wednesdays the kids are in a homeschool P.E. program, and they attend classes on Friday afternoons. The Engineer is taking Engineering I and Introduction to Robotics, and the Artist is taking Exploring Art Mediums.
Our language arts went reasonably well today, although we just kept getting later and later in our schedule. After language arts was literature reading, which I cut down to about a third of the usual time to make up for being so far behind. It worked out though because we only had a reading from Pilgrim's Progress to do. I had originally started with the original version last year, but it was very difficult to read and to understand, even for me. So this year we are going through it again but with a modernized version. The archaic quality is still there but the difficult words have been updated to modern equivalents. Anyway, it is much easier to understand and try to appreciate. Then we had our poetry recitations and poetry reading, the kids did their math (the Engineer is working through A Key to...Series, currently Measurement, and the Artist is working through The Life of Fred elementary series, currently Edgewood), and then we finished up with art. They had been doing a "Van Gogh still life" with chalk, which we finally finished up today.
I need to go make dinner in a moment, but I wanted to finish jotting down my thoughts. I was thinking that I would create links to the above resources before publishing, but I don't have time to do that right now. Just after school was over for the day, the Artist wanted me to help her unpack her new sewing machine, which she received for Christmas, courtesy of Gran and Grandad. It is a Sew Pretty, Sew Perfect Hello Kitty sewing machine by Janome. It is green and so cute! Anyway, I'm glad to see that she is very excited about it. I need to refresh my own sewing machine skills in order to help her figure out her new machine.
On a quick side note, I had been thinking that we would be done with American Heritage Girls after this school year because the Artist and I had talked about that. Well, I just brought it up and she wants to continue doing it! I told her I might not serve as a Unit Leader anymore because it takes up so much of my time. She reluctantly agreed that I didn't have to be Unit Leader anymore but that she wouldn't continue anymore either.
Well, time to make dinner.
************
Well, it's 10:48pm now, and I never got the opportunity to put in those links that I wanted to do. I suppose I could go back at a future date and put in the links for anyone who wants to check back.
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