B&RSchool

S2W8: Dad's Spring Break, a.k.a. an Unschooling Week

2012-03-03T09:34:00.002-08:00

To Do (some choices subject to weather):

*make use of Catawba Science Center membership by visiting Catawba Science Center, Schiele Museum, and anything else nearby that's in this membership network (good indoor alternatives if weather is nasty). Possibilities include Western North Carolina Nature Center (Asheville), SciWorks (Winston-Salem), Roper Mountain Science Center (Greenville, SC), Spartanburg Science Center (Spartanburg, SC)

*visit the Old Salem village in Winston-Salem

*Kings Mountain/Cowpens Revolutionary War battlefields

*Crowders Mountain State Park

*South Mountain State Park

Read-alouds:
The Mitchells: Five for Victory

Couch basket available, with reading, "History Search" books, timeline book, etc. We might shift some informal couch time to the evening, if possible with dinner prep, etc.

S2W7

2012-02-27T07:56:00.002-08:00

To Do:

Daily Mass + Morning or Evening Prayer (prayed after Mass at church)

Morning Prayer at home when Mass is in the evening or at noon (children read psalms aloud, alternating verses -- actually, the three of us take turns)

Combined School Odd-Week Reading (substituting F.J. Gould's The Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Greeks for Eva March Tappan's The Story of the Greek People. Tappan's chapters are a bit long and expository for my listeners right now; Gould is a bit livelier, being focused on characters in Greek history. Today we read and narrated about Aristides)

Note: for Friday's science reading, substitute Archimedes and the Door of Science weekly until finished.

Lenten hymn for the week: "Jesu, Dulcis Memoria"

Lenten reading: Wednesday and Friday, My Path to Heaven (Bliss & Houselander)

One lesson daily in Draw Write Now (child's choice), cursive workbook, math skills workbook

Science: one hands-on experiment in Magic Schoolbus Human Body kit

Independent reading:
R: The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse; The Mitchells: Five for Victory
B: Rolf and the Viking Bow

Bedtime reading: Through the Looking Glass

Compline

NB: Read-aloud queue for the rest of the year:
The Luck of Troy (Roger Lancelyn Green)
Nacar the White Deer (Elizabeth Borton de Trevino)

S2W6

2012-02-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

To Do:

Combined School Even Week Reading (we've substituted Among the Forest People for Parables From Nature, and we continue to use Hurlbut's Story of the Bible for our Tuesday Old-Testament reading)

One page a day in math-skills and cursive workbooks; R is taking a math chapter test today (Tuesday). Working on self-direction for everyone.

One Draw Write Now lesson daily; child's choice of books and exercises

One experiment from the Magic Schoolbus human-body science kit

independent reading:
R: The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse
B: Greek myths

Bedtime reading: Miss Happiness and Miss Flower

Lunchtime reading: I haven't been alternating books so much at lunch. Right now, because we're interested in Japan via Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, we're also reading The Japanese Twins by Lucy Fitch Perkins. Counting this as World Geography

Other activities:

cooking (B & R like making cookies and have gotten good at it)

garden: observing blooming bulbs and other things starting to grow

PE: running, trampolining at friends' houses, bicycling

Scouts: R is beginning work on a creative writing badge at American Heritage Girls, where we'll be doing a lesson on poetry writing Thursday night

housekeeping/cleaning/chores/life skills

limiting screen time right now, after a vacation week of virtually nothing but television two weeks ago. I have allowed a little Starfall, plus play on some of our educational apps (like frog dissection -- the virtual frog is a big favorite), but only in tiny doses when every other avenue of amusement has been exhausted for several days running.

Planning for Lent:

We will continue Marigold Hunt's A Life of Our Lord for Children and Saint Patrick's Summer; to this and our Old Testament reading I am adding Fr. Geoffrey Bliss's My Path to Heaven, with the wonderful Caryll Houselander illustrations, on Mondays and Thursdays.

I don't make the children give up things for Lent, though they usually choose some sacrifice -- more reliably as they get older. As a family we become more austere all around, foregoing treats at meals, using our purple tablecloth, observing Lenten changes to the Daily Office, which we pray as part of our day (Morning Prayer and Compline, typically). We've been singing "Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones" as our office hymn this week (for the alleluias); tomorrow we will begin a regimen of Lenten Hymns, beginning with "Forty Days and Forty Nights." We attend the Friday Stations of the Cross in our parish.

Other Lenten hymns to use for the Office:

"Attende Domine"
"Ah, Holy Jesus"
"My Song is Love Unknown" (long but worth it)
"Glory Be to Jesus"
"Lord Jesus, Think on Me"
"Ride On, Ride On, in Majesty" (Palm Sunday)

If we do one hymn a week for daily Morning Prayer throughout Lent, we'll have learned a nice body of excellent hymnody for the season.

S2W5

2012-02-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

To Do:

Morning Prayer & Compline daily, with reading aloud & sung hymns
Combined School Odd-Week reading
Grammar-land
Map work with light box: trace map of Greece & find Sparta, Athens, etc (or trace USA map)
Draw Write Now daily
daily cursive exercise
daily math workbook exercise
Magic Schoolbus hands-on science: human body
2 exercises in science workbooks
Thursday or Friday: field trip to either Catawba Science Center or Schiele Museum

Tuesday a.m. update: Work on newspaper! B began saying last fall that he wanted to publish a homeschooling newspaper, and so far two friends have gone to the trouble of contributing something for it, so perhaps we should get cranking. We read their pieces last night for inspiration, and today I'll give both kids some computer time for writing. Composition writing, that is -- they still have to do their handwriting as usual.

finished Captains Courageous as bedtime reading. Now for the next book, whatever it may be . . . time to search the shelves . . .

Wednesday: read about Filippino Lippi today in Knights of Art. Now, we happen to have a little gold-framed copy of that beautiful Madonna of his with the diaphanous headdress and a sort of rocky desert in the background, and currently (it's 11 a.m. right now) the kids are searching the house for her. She's not hidden; she's where she always was, but now they'll notice her and know who painted her original.

S2 W4

2012-01-30T08:41:00.000-08:00

To Do:

Combined School Even-Week Reading
Math: MEP + pages in skills workbooks daily
READ GRAMMAR-LAND THIS WEEK (I keep forgetting)
Science: continue Magic Schoolbus Human Body kit (fun & recommended)

Note about U.S. History Read-Alouds --
Slow down in our "spine" reading to read some historical fiction. Trying James Otis's Peter of Amsterdam, which coincides with what we just read about Henry Hudson, the Dutch West India Company, and the colonizing of New York. If this goes well, might backtrack to read Richard of Jamestown and other titles by this author.

Enrichment apps to use this week:

Schoolzone Math 3 and Spelling 1-2
Bubbling Math
Adding Apples
Subtracting Sardines
Frog Dissection
Solar Walk

Bedtime Read-Aloud: Captains Courageous

S2 W3

2012-01-23T06:34:00.000-08:00

To Do:

Morning Prayer. I haven't been putting this on the to-do list, because I just forget, but this semester I have been focusing on the Daily Office for our prayers together: either we go to 8 a.m. Mass, after which we always say Morning Prayer as a congregation, or we say MP at home. At bedtime we read Compline. For MP, I have the kids take turns reading the psalm verses aloud, which gives everyone some extra reading practice even as we're doing our devotions.

Combined School even-week reading

Draw-Write-Now: one drawing/copywork lesson daily

ELP Cursive Simplified: one-half to one page daily

Math: either MEP or workbook math, depending on inclinations. I don't want to abandon MEP, but people are enjoying the fresh workbooks, and the skills-based practice doesn't hurt. So I'm letting this be free-choice.

Science: pages in ELP Simple&Fun Science workbooks. I need to look and see what materials we need for the activities, so we're not caught out. R did a "cup-and-string telephone" activity last night which had been in her Friday work -- we had to go out and get string.

Reading:

R is reading The Winter of Red Snow, essentially one diary entry a day. I've been making her read for 10 minutes, but it's a bit of a stretch, as some of the story is above her head (she tried to draw me a "narration" picture last week which revealed that she hadn't understood what a "chamber pot" was, so hadn't gotten that the women were washing the soldiers' shirts in urine to make them whiter)

(mid-week note: she's changed to The Adventures of Danny Meadow Mouse, which is a heck of a lot easier going)

B is reading The Boy Scientist and Encyclopedia Brown

Our night-time read-aloud right now is The Wind in the Willows -- we have to reread it every 18 months or so, or we go into withdrawal.

Notes:

*We elected this week to open our Magic Schoolbus Human Body science kit for a change of pace. That's been fun: you get a big poster illustrating the systems of the human body; stickers representing the different systems, which you put on the poster at the correct spots in the human body; and a book of experiments. Entertaining midwinter study.

S2 Week 2

2012-01-14T05:14:00.000-08:00

To Do:

Writing: Continue Draw Write Now, one lesson/day, + one-half cursive page/day

Math: Trying something new: a split lesson, with a page or partial page (like a row of addition problems) each from their new skills workbooks, followed by other work, followed by a page of MEP

Reading: Combined School even-week reading, plus independent reading

Science: begin week w/ ice-cream-making exercise from B's ELP science workbook. Need to review upcoming pages to make sure we have materials on hand for activities. I'm liking short daily science -- oddly enough, there's something kind of CM-ish about these workbooks, especially as they encourage active hands-on learning in short lessons.

Daily Routine with Split Math Lesson (a proposal):

1. Prayers
2. Read-aloud (10-20 min)
3. Brief portion of skills-based math lesson/page (5 minutes-ish)
4. Draw Write Now + cursive lesson (20-30 min)
5. MEP page (10-20 min)
6. Science (5-30 min, depending on lesson)

Notes:

*OK, NOT splitting the math lesson. Instead, we're doing multiple pages and alternating days

*B's Mobius ring experiment thingy for science was hard to follow, and I'm not sure he got the point. Oh, well. He enjoyed it . . .

*I love number puzzles in MEP.

*Everyone's writing continuing to improve with new pencils/grips, DWN, & cursive exercises. All of this is really helping and is worth the time off from "beautiful" copywork (poems, Bible verses, etc).

*Listening to lots of classical music during school via iTunes radio. The station we listen to tends to replay the same things -- Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, a movement from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Smetana's The Moldau (one of my personal favorite pieces of music, so no complaints), etc. Still, we enjoy it, and the kids are starting to have favorites.

*On Tuesday we were ON TIME for 8 a.m. Mass.

*Enjoying Hurlbut's Story of the Bible for our Old Testament reading on Tuesdays.

*B working on a report about England for Scouts

*R made a "Welcome to the Neighborhood" card for the lady who has just moved in behind us. We went to give it to her -- her car was in the drive -- but she didn't answer the door. Possibly she thought we wanted to talk to her about her plans for the afterlife. Left card in newspaper rack below mailbox & hope she gets it.

New Year, New Semester, New Week 1

2012-01-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

All righty, it's ducks-in-a-row time, and not a moment too soon.

To Do:

Handwriting: This is a biggie this semester. After informally working on cursive last semester, I've broken down and bought ELP "simplified" cursive workbooks. This is cursive without so many curlicues. The approach looks sane and do-able. A page a day, on top of short copywork, won't kill us.

Also: We have three Draw Write Now books, the idea being that people can pick something to work on and do the drawing and copywork exercises on more or less a free-choice basis. We may work on sentence-combining as well, as the copywork selections are syntactically rather basic. Maybe that's age-appropriate, but B & R certainly speak and think in more complex syntax by now, so it would be nice to see how we can make writing mirror that spoken state of affairs.

Use "claw" grips and/or "Twist&Write" pencils to work on better pencil grip. Draw with triangular colored pencils and beeswax crayons. Wish I had bought these about three years ago, but better late than never. (I bought a "Twist&Write"-style pen for my 8th grader, too)

Math: MEP Lessons 81-85 (ish), plus at least one "math lab" day using Khan Academy videos and practice exercises.

Science: Depends on what people want to do. We can either work in our new ELP Simple & Fun Science Simplified (as if "simple & fun" weren't "simple" enough already, I guess) workbooks, which feature both written exercises and hands-on experiments -- thank you, now I don't have to think up things any more -- or start our Magic Schoolbus Human Body science kit.

Independent reading:

R began a Dear America book last week, so maybe I'll slot that in for her to work on daily.

B: Rolf and the Viking Bow, or . . . ? Maybe he can read The Boy Scientist, which he got for Christmas.

PLUS:

Odd-week Combined-School reading as before. We set our reading schedule aside in favor of special Advent/Christmas stories; amazing how much I'm dying to get back to the old routine. One begins to starve for want of those stories.

We also still have our Head of the Class custom curricula set up, with heavy emphasis on science and geography "multimedia presentations," a.k.a. narrated slide shows. Those are fun for a change of pace, or when I need someone to be busy while I work with someone else.

Spanish? Well, our Epiphany party/program at church yesterday was totally bilingual . . . We were also reminded that if you get Baby Jesus in your piece of King Cake, you have to make tamales.

Note: Even over break, we've done a good bit of informal "school:" reading, listening to audiobooks (More Paddington, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), working on drawing, coloring, writing, and craft projects, nature walks, etc. But we're ready for some routine again . . .

Log for the week (wish I did this more often):

* So far, the science workbooks (ELP's Science Simplified series) are good. R's had her do the game where you look for one minute at a tray with ten items on it, then after the tray is covered up you write down what you remember of its contents. B's had him sit outside for five minutes and notice things and notice which senses he was using to notice. And write that down, of course. I had felt sort of badly about relying on workbooks, because they're so twaddly and not as good as hands-on learning, but actually . . .

*Cursive workbooks are also good. Much better than my trying to invent a daily cursive program. My hope is that we can focus on handwriting issues this way and come out with better, clearer, more serviceable penmanship, which is what I care about far more than whether my kids can write in cursive.

*Pencil-grip issues: twist-and-write pencils from Draw Your World are the bomb, but I don't know how to keep B's pencil lead from falling out. The "claw" pencil grip isn't bad, though getting all your fingers into the right cups, and the pencil in the right place, makes writing horrifically fiddly and drags lessons out longer than they already had been dragged by wool-gathering and other manifestations of distractability.

*A goal: for people to be able to segue seamlessly from one activity to the next. When you finish your Draw Write Now, you pick up your cursive lesson, and when you finish that, you move to science. Trying to wean people gradually from the need to be directed.

*Draw Write Now is good, too. B produced a very creditable drawing of a biplane today, though he was frustrated because it didn't look just like the one in the book. R drew a polar bear and a walrus and did the copywork for both lessons.

*Friday notes:

We are loving DWR. B's handwriting has improved noticeably in the course of the week as he's used the Twist-n-Write pencil and/or the claw pencil grips to keep his fingers in the tripod position. I'm seeing increased fluidity in both children's cursive, too, with both the new pencils and the new ELP cursive workbook. Lots of good drawing going on, too. I continue to love our Mead Primary Journals, with a space for drawing at the top of each primary-ruled writing page. These seem tailor-made for DWR.

Math has gone smoothly -- until today. MEP is working well for us, but with standardized tests looming at the end of the year, I still feel the need to keep us somewhat on the map of standard grade-level scope and sequence. We've been using a mix of online resources, chiefly Khan Academy (which I really do love) and IXL.com, which I think is expensive for what it is, but the kids like it. The problem with both these programs is to keep people moving steadily forward while covering a wide range of skills, as well as offering enough practice in each skill before declaring "mastery."

Why do I feel the need for a skills-based program? People at the MEP homeschoolers yahoo group have assured me that with MEP, children gain enough conceptual ability to be able to figure out "standard" kinds of math problems, even if they haven't been confronted with them before. And it's not that I don't believe them, but . . . I guess I'm leery of leaving that kind of foundation too late. I want the lively, interesting, conceptual, "let's think in math" stuff, but I also want my kids to know how to add multi-digit numbers with regrouping, because they're going to be asked to do that . . .

Anyway, today I just went out and bought second- and third-grade skills workbooks. The second-grade one is your standard "extra practice" kind of workbook, while the third grade one -- I wish they'd had a second-grade edition of this -- uses news of the weird from the Guinness Book of World Records as a springboard for a variety of mathematical exercises. Somehow this seems up B's alley. Anyway, now I'm trying to figure out how to merge this stuff into the MEP schedule. Math math math math . . .

New Semester Thoughts and Goals

2011-12-31T10:03:00.000-08:00

Just dashing off some quick notes by way of reflection on the year so far and looking forward to the spring term . . .

Major accomplishments thus far

One word: math. We've devoted a lot of our learning time this year to the development of conceptual understanding as well as mathematical skills, and it's paying off huge dividends. R, particularly, who had struggled to remember the simplest addition facts, has made great strides in both confidence and competence. By the end of last term we were doing a combination of activities: conceptual exercises in MEP's Year One program, plus videos and practice problems from the always-excellent Khan Academy as a way of sharpening our essential grade-level skills. Each of these approaches seems to reinforce the other, and my plan is to continue in this mode through the spring, with a liberal sprinkling of math literature as well.

Well, okay, another few words: Combined School Reading. I can't adequately express how helpful it's been to have our read-aloud selections scheduled as I've done here -- it seems so simple, but having the readings laid out on a rotating basis (odd and even weeks, day by day), has kept us on track with core subjects like history and enabled us to have lots of books going at once, without gorging ourselves on any particular one. We're pretty eclectic overall, but here's where we're at our most Charlotte Mason, sustaining retention of learned material (if you last heard your Greek history two weeks ago, then you've got to cast your mind back that far to pick up where you left off) and offering a generous and varied buffet of ideas for digestion.

In general our daily rhythm of prayers, read-aloud, table work (math, handwriting), and independent curl-up-with-a-good-book reading has served us well. Here's how I plan to tweak for the new semester:

First of all, here are some new/refined goals:

* To continue our Combined-School reading schedule, covering history, literature, geography, and science/nature. This is our core, and it's ever-varied and interesting, while holding us to certain themes and sequences of ideas.

* To continue our current successful trajectory in math

*To develop better handwriting habits which will serve everyone in later life

To date I've relied heavily on copywork for all our language-arts needs, and it's served us well. I don't plan to discontinue it. At the same time, we need to focus seriously on some less-than-optimal writing habits, chiefly to do with pencil grip, and to work on improved fluency in handwriting (this mostly pertains to B, but R is not immune). To this end, I've invested in some new materials for the spring: several of the Draw Write Now books, to improve fine motor and perception skills as well as encourage more artistic endeavors around here; "claw"-style pencil grips to encourage the "tripod" grip; triangular colored pencils and beeswax crayons, again to encourage good habits in pencil grip.

So for the foreseeable future, the "handwriting" segment of our day will involve a Draw Write Now lesson, including the daily copywork selection. The sentences in these books are very, very simple, and I can imagine combining them to make the prose a little less monotonous. So I'm anticipating that Draw Write Now can be a pretty rich language-arts experience. We may also pull spelling words from these sentences and write our own.

We'll also be working in an Essential Learning Program cursive workbook, because I can't seem to make us make headway without something like this. Once we're more comfortable in cursive, I'll add in our Greece and Rome volume of Draw and Write Through History, with its cursive copywork, so that B can draw some Spartans and hoplites and be happy.

* Meanwhile, speaking of spelling, which is something else we need to remediate a bit.

Not that it's not improving. R's spelling, which was comically phonetic for the longest time, is gradually correcting itself as she reads and writes more. She's adopted our copy of the Oxford Spell-It-Yourself for her own personal use; she likes to write, and she's increasingly aware that people laugh at her creative spelling, and she dislikes that. What person wanting to be taken seriously wouldn't dislike being laughed at? So I'm grateful for her self-motivation in that department. It's also true that just writing, writing, writing helps more than anything else. Still, for both children, my goal is to put more words at their fingertips for their own independent use, because this way lies confidence. I'm still dithering over whether we need spelling workbooks or not . . . Mostly I think not, though I am tempted by the thought of having lessons, with word lists, all prepared and at our fingertips. What I wonder, though, is whether the returns would be worth the investment.

*Science . . .

We've been doing quite a bit of science reading and casual observation/experimentation with various things, but I thought a little hands-on science would liven up our inevitable midwinter doldrums. So I've invested in a couple of kits -- an owl-pellet dissection kit, plus a Magic Schoolbus kit about the human body (both kids love Magic Schoolbus, so I figured the outside of the box would, in itself, be a winner) -- plus two Essential Learning Products science workbooks with hands-on activities included, so that the children don't always have to work together, but can peck away at their own independent projects. Here's where I'm not so Charlotte-Masony: I don't mind letting a workbook pull together questions and exercises and activities that I couldn't come up with on my own, and I don't mind letting children sit quietly at a table filling in blanks, especially when the weather's blah outside, and we're all out of steam.

*Self-teaching . . .

See above, sort of. While I like working intensively with the two younger children, and with children so close in age it makes sense most of the time, I also want to begin to encourage them to work alone, independently, with me as advisor rather than teacher. It'll be another few years before this really takes off, but this is where workbooks can have their place: they give children a way to work alone, without needing a huge amount of adult guidance, and they do lay down a foundation of information which, one hopes, will spark further interest in a given subject. By middle school my aim is for all of us to be working on our own projects side-by-side, with confidence and steady forward momentum -- here's where I begin to be all Robinson-Curriculum, I guess. Not that Dr. Robinson approves of workbooks, but again . . . I think they do fill a certain instructional need. But why the heck am I apologizing for using workbooks, anyway?

This sums up where we are right now. We still have a week of Christmas break, because it's Christmas all the way through the Feast of the Epiphany, but I'm getting antsy already. This coming week, my packages will be arriving and I can be lining everything up for the following Monday (and steeling myself against the inevitable howls of protest that holidays ever have to end).

Week 13: Advent 2

2011-12-06T07:28:00.001-08:00

To Do:

Prayers: St. Andrew Novena

Advent Observances: St. Nicholas (shoe gifts, Santa figurines out), St. Ambrose, Immaculate Conception (read Mary, Mother of God)

Math: the next few MEP lessons + some Khan Academy videos & practice
for B: Level 2 Addition (multi-digit w/regrouping) for review
for R: the same, as an introduction to regrouping

I love how you can watch an instructional video, then click on a set of practice problems with a scratch pad. The skills exposure and practice via Khan seems like a good counterpoint to the highly conceptual MEP. B does better at working through procedures and plugging in answers, so MEP stretches him usefully. R is rather the opposite, so the two approaches both build her confidence and stretch her abilities. This seems like a good routine to keep up through Advent.

Read aloud: This Way to Christmas

Spanish: work on Our Father & Noche de Paz

Writing: cursive: using cursive A, B, C, introducing D

Reading:

B: The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow
R: B is For Betsy

P.S. We had a Week 14 in our first semester -- we didn't break for Christmas until Dec. 16. Our read-alouds were all Christmas-themed -- This Way to Christmas, Why the Chimes Rang, Good Stories for Great Holidays, etc -- and we maintained a light schedule of math, handwriting, and independent reading.

Week 12: Advent 1

2011-11-28T05:13:00.001-08:00

To Do #1: School:

Read Aloud:

Combined School history & science reading as usual

A Life of Our Lord for Children
Begin Advent calendar book
Tall Book of Christmas

Math: next 5 lessons in MEP

Spanish: continue work on Our Father; begin learning a Spanish carol ("Noche de Paz")

Independent Reading:
R: B Is For Betsy
B: Narnia Chronicles

To Do #2: Advent:

M: Put out Advent candles
M: Begin Advent table blessing
M: Put out Nativity puzzle (sans Baby Jesus)
T: put candles in windows
W: Advent Church: daily gifts for Baby Jesus
Th: make Christmas cards
F: Make house smell like Christmas: mulled cider

PS: House painting starts Wednesday, so we'll have a week or ten days of "working around painters" as they move from room to room (and "giving thanks that I am not painting all this myself," too). Real Advent preparations will begin once the painting is finished -- hopefully it'll be done in plenty of time to put out candles for Saint Lucy. Our Santas who come out for the Feast of St. Nicholas will likely be delayed in their appearing.

Week 11

2011-11-18T13:39:00.001-08:00

To Do

Short Week: Thanksgiving

Mon/Tues odd-week reading
Math games: place value, IXL quizzes
Spanish: continue work on Our Father
Writing: make up, copy, and write from memory sentences using spelling words; practice cursive

Week 10

2011-11-14T08:57:00.001-08:00

To Do:

Combined School even-week reading (history, literature, science/nature, geography)

copywork: various selections: poems from The Harp and the Laurel Wreath, psalm verses from the Daily Office which grab me. B has also been writing pocketknife safety rules for copywork this week, per instructions from his Cub leaders.

MEP lessons 66-70, plus at least one IXL session per child, covering at least one skill

Spanish: review vocabulary, begin learning Our Father in Spanish (see YouTube link in sidebar)

Grammar-land: Chapter VII

Reading:
R: Paddy the Beaver
B: Pippi in the South Seas

Me: Keep temper

Also, begin looking ahead to Advent calendar of events.

note to self: use Spelling Wisdom approach with our own copywork selections. I don't necessarily want their selections, but I can use their method to help us improve our spelling.

other note to self: continue using copybook space for cursive practice. Otherwise it won't get done.

Week 9

2011-11-09T06:16:00.000-08:00

To Do:

Combined-School odd-week reading

Grammar-land: "Mr. Adjective Tried for Stealing"

Coffee Break Spanish Lesson 3 + vocabulary on flashcard app

MEP Lessons 61-65
at least one round of IXL math (covering one skill)

copywork:

B: passages from E. Nesbit's The Book of Dragons (working on fluency in writing, not agonizing over every letter)

R: "The Whole Duty of Children" + a prose passage (tba)

Reading:

R: Paddy the Beaver, one chapter daily, narrated

B: also reading P the B

Bedtime reading: The Book of Dragons

Parish Sacred Heart Mission Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday nights

Week of Oct. 31-Nov 4: Mostly Holiday

2011-11-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

We always take off All Saints and All Souls (also big brother J's birthday), and after the 8 a.m. Mass on Monday, Halloween was pretty much a wash as well: we worked on costumes, played around, and got ready to trick-or-treat. Went to Mass on both All Saints and All Souls evenings; spent All Souls Day hiking in the mountains, per the request of the birthday boy, who does not always want to celebrate in cemeteries. It's raining today, but hopefully we'll get out soon to do some grave rubbings and prayers in local graveyards -- we do have all month!

Finished Lightfoot the Deer for bedtime reading and have been reading classic tales: "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," plus fairy tales from Andrew Lang.

Did math and copywork during our homeschool day at church on Thursday, and R worked on her "Living in the U.S.A." badge for AHG by making paper dolls wearing clothing appropriate to our state's climate. Boys went with Dad to their historical society meeting, but nobody else showed up.

Will do more or less a full school day today (Friday), though for math we may wait until Monday to begin the next set of five lessons in MEP, and just do IXL quizzes today.

Essentially I'm writing off this week as a non-week on our school calendar and will call next week "Week 9."

Week 8

2011-10-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

To Do:

Read-Aloud: Combined School even-week reading (covering history, literature, geography, science/nature)

Math: slowing down a bit in MEP, as the going has been hard lately. Goal is to complete Y1 Lessons 56-60 this week. Have also re-subscribed to IXL Math; working on conventional grade-level skills as complement to the more wide-open conceptual approach of MEP. Spending a lot of time on math, generally in two separate doses of a half-hour and then ten minutes.

finished MEP through Lesson 59 -- 60 is a review lesson which we may use to start next week, or else just skip.

R: Work on skip-counting by 2, 3, 4.

Independent reading:
B: Guns for General Washington (finished; moved on to Paddy the Beaver to keep R company)
R: Paddy the Beaver (Wednesday: read entire chapter independently and narrated)

Copywork:
B: finish selection from Benet's "Christopher Columbus;" psalm selections from Daily Office
R: psalm selections from Daily Office
Also lifted sentences from the story passage from Tuesday's reading of "Mr. Adjective" to use as copywork. Before copying, had children circle adjectives and connect them to the nouns they modify.

Grammar-land: Ch. V ("Mr. Adjective")

Spanish: Coffee Break Spanish 2; review of previous weeks' vocabulary; introduce colors vocabulary

Other stuff:

Wild Kratts
Starfall

Wednesday: R making an "Indian wigwam" in the study out of blankets and "living" in it.

R: working on "Living in the USA" badge for AHG. Has made a booklet about our state flag, flower, bird, tree, motto, nickname, etc. This week will present booklet at our troop meeting. Still need to fulfill the state license plate and quarter requirements for the badge, plus one elective (making a paper doll with clothes which reflect our climate).

B: Cubs. Is one requirement short of finishing his Bear level. Pack meeting Tuesday night; attending football game on Friday

Friday: day trip to the mountains!

Week 7

2011-10-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

To Do:

Combined School odd-week reading (history/geography, literature, science/nature, saints), but substitute Famous Men of Greece: Agamemnon for Eva March Tappan this week. Plan to spend time on the Heroes of the Trojan War before moving on to Sparta in the Tappan book.

Baltimore Catechism Lesson 4; How Aaron Made a Golden Calf and What Became of It;
Saint Patrick's Summer: "Cecilia's Blackbirds"

MEP Math, first eight lessons in last segment of Y1a (Wed: slowing down a little this week. We accomplished 2 lessons on Monday, but only one on Tuesday. Planning to concentrate on one today).

R reading: Paddy the Beaver
B reading: Guns for General Washington, Greek myths, King of the Wind

Grammar-land: "Sergeant Parsing Visits Schoolroom-Shire"(left undone last week)

copywork: passages from The Lord of the Rings (B) and The Courage of Sarah Noble (R). Continue to look for examples of nouns, pronouns, and articles, per our Grammar-land chapters thus far.

Spanish: review expressions, numbers to ten, days of the week, months of the year. Introduce seasons (short list -- only 4 words). Listen to Coffee Break Spanish Lesson 2.

Thursday field trip: undetermined destination, but close enough to get back in time for R's AHG meeting at 7pm.

Enrichment stuff: Starfall.com's math and phonics activities, plus songs (we love their math, nursery-rhyme, and American folk songs -- kids have done lots of singing since we discovered this new "More Starfall" feature). Possibly Head of the Class, though the spelling activities have started to seem like overkill, and everyone's a little bored with the same-old, same-old. Nice to have Starfall and CoolMath to vary things up in the "nifty online learning" department. Kids are enjoying Wild Kratts games at PBSKids.org this week, too. Inspired by a deep-sea Wild Kratts game, R and I spent an evening reading and watching video footage of blue whales, while the boys were at Scouts.

Daily Mass, when available. Fr. out of town from Wed-Sat.

PS: Children started their week early (on Sunday night) by watching a video on the architecture of medieval cathedrals with their father in the dining room.

Six-Week Well-Homeschool Checkup

2011-10-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

Six (and a half) weeks into our official school year, how are we doing, and what have we accomplished?

Math: We've worked through the first two sections of the MEP math Year 1a practice book and lesson plans. This means we're 2/3 of the way through the first half of Year 1. We're moving quickly, generally covering two lessons a day, because the numbers we're working with are so basic; at the same time, the concepts are surprisingly challenging, and B, in 3rd grade, frequently remarks that math is "hard," even though so far we haven't worked with a number greater than 5.

Concepts covered include equations vs. inequalities, sums with missing numbers (2+?=5; ?-2=3), ordinal numbers, Roman numerals, shapes, ways to make a given number, patterns (both shapes and numbers), skip counting by 2, 3, 4, 5, working with number lines, negative numbers (briefly).

Both children are becoming far more proficient at figuring out what's going on in a given problem (ie analytical problem-solving skills, I guess!). R, who has struggled to remember the most basic addition and subtraction facts, has improved amazingly in this area without a lot of drill.

We have also read "living math" books: Greg Tang's Math Appeal, The Grapes of Math, and Math-terpieces. We have also played math games at CoolMath.com.

Literacy: What the English schools call our Language Arts. I like the idea of concepts' being divided so cleanly into Literacy and Numeracy -- between them, those two categories cover a lot of territory (besides implying two essential areas of "language" development). Anywhooooo . . .

We have been working a good bit on handwriting, which comes easily to R, not so much to B, who breaks down in frustration if I ask for more than two lines a day. I am trying to push him gently to write more without taking all day, but it's slow going, with the perfect ever the enemy of the good.

At the same time, his handwriting is clear, if still laborious, and both children so far have worked on a nice range of poetry and prose pieces, paying careful attention to line breaks/rhymes in poetry and to spelling, grammar, and punctuation overall. We have applied our learning from the first three chapters of Grammar-land by identifying nouns, pronouns, and articles in copywork passages.

B reads to himself fluently, and is well able to narrate what he reads, if he is interested in it. Lately he has been reading Guns for General Washington and claiming to dislike it; his narrations are correspondingly fairly sketchy. However, as he initially resists pretty much any book of my choosing (this is routine with bedtime reading), I think it's worth it to persevere, especially as it's a short book and not that difficult going. Meanwhile, on his own he reads so much (mainly Star Wars novels, but also Horrible Histories, Greek myths, etc) that I can't keep up with what exactly he's reading.

R and I are still working together on her reading fluency. She has been reading a chapter of Thornton Burgess's Paddy the Beaver aloud to me daily -- some days she reads the entire chapter, and some days she reads for a bit, gets tired, and wants me to take over. She reads well, though she still has a tendency to want to rush through, glancing at the beginnings of words and guessing what they are, rather than taking the time to read the whole word. This habit means that what she's reading sometimes doesn't make sense, even to her, which I think makes her hesitate to take on more independent reading -- she thinks she can't do it because it won't make sense to her. Gradually, though, her fluency is increasing, and buddy-reading is a good way to encourage the habit of reading carefully for meaning, word by word. I tend to think that copywork is a good reinforcement for her reading as well -- she has always been a very hand-to-mind sort of child.

Bedtime Reading (a subset of "Literacy"): At the Back of the North Wind, The Enchanted Castle, Johnny Tremaine, The Black Stallion

History: We are pursuing two strands of history this year: ancient Greece and U.S. history, reading Eva March Tappan's The Story of the Greek People and Eggleston's A First Book in American History as "spines" for the two strands. We alternate weeks: Greek history happens on odd weeks; U.S. history on even. This is seeming to work quite well -- nobody has a chance to get too bored by one strand of history or the other. Covered so far: Greek myths and everyday life in the earliest days of ancient Greece, plus Columbus and the discovery of America.

Science: We have been focusing mostly on nature study in an unschooly way (by playing and walking outdoors, gardening, birdwatching, etc), but have also been reading on two themes: nature, as in Among the Forest People and Parables From Nature; but also on more formal concepts of science (chemical vs. physical changes, states of matter) via The Fairy-land of Science. Though we will do some hands-on experiments as the year progresses, I find that what really helps us is to hone our ability to observe naturally-occurring demonstrations of scientific truths (evaporation, for example, as when we're boiling the tea kettle or drying a cast-iron skillet on the stovetop). Through Head of the Class, both children have also been introduced to dinosaurs, the solar system, birds, and systems of the human body, in such a way as to make them want to find out more.

Foreign Language: Spanish! We've been having fun with this. Our typical MO thus far has been to pull up a weekly list of vocabulary words on our Macbook Spanish Flashcards app: expressions like hello and goodbye; numbers to ten; days of the week; months of the year. The flashcard app offers a variety of activities: listening and repeating while looking at the meaning in English; translating from English to Spanish and Spanish to English; hearing the word in Spanish and identifying the correct English meaning. We run through all these together, both for the new list of the week and as a review of previously-learned words. Then I have the kids quiz themselves. We also listen to and read conversations on another Macbook app, Plaza Lingua, to acquire further vocabulary and acquaint ourselves with how conversations in Spanish work. Finally, we've been listening to a Coffee Break Spanish lesson on Fridays to give us more conversational practice (so far we can greet each other, ask how the other person is doing, and respond in a variety of ways).

Religion: We have done the first three lessons in the Baltimore Catechism (Mondays); are still with Moses and the Israelites in the desert (Tuesdays); have read four chapters of Saints and Friendly Beasts; and finished the first four chapters of Saint Patrick's Summer. We have attended Daily Mass and our diocesan Eucharistic Congress and made weekly Holy Hours. For the feast of the Holy Rosary, we made a rosary out of bread dough. B serves at the altar every Sunday and at least once during the week; R is participating in my First Holy Communion class in the parish in addition to her preparation at home.

Extracurricular Stuff: Cub Scouts for B; American Heritage Girls for R.

Six weeks in, writing all of this up is a good exercise for me. I can see areas needing improvement, particularly in basic writing/reading proficiencies, but overall it seems to me that we are covering a lot of ground, and that the children are making steady progress. MEP math stands out to me as the single best thing we've chosen to do this year: I had my doubts about taking both children back to such a basic level, but the kind of conceptual workout they both get from it seems well worth that move, while at the same time we're working quickly enough that I think we'll soon "catch up" with the right grade levels. The improvement in R's math ability and confidence has been remarkable, and the fact that B has had to work much harder than he ever has before is telling, too. He breezed through a regular third-grade workbook-based math curriculum last year, yet still has to wrestle with the concepts in MEP's Year 1 . . . I really believe that in the long run he'll be so much more able in math, having done more than simply memorize and apply procedures.

My second-favorite thing so far is our rotation of Combined-School reading, with odd and even weeks. We are reading a wide range of excellent literature covering the spectrum of academic subjects, and although everyone has favorites and not-so-favorites, on the whole I think we're all enjoying our moderately-paced literary feast. I've been surprised by how much both children like Grammar-land and how readily they can apply what they hear in that story to passages they encounter in their reading and copywork. In general, it was so easy to schedule reading this way -- just a list of titles for each day in an odd or even week -- and it's so easy to stay on track with things I want us to pursue (because we're mostly using The Baldwin Project, and I'm reading aloud right from the website, I can't even lose books any more!).

So far, so good.

Week 6

2011-10-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

To Do:

Combined school even-week reading

Copywork: poems this week ("Pussy-Cat Mew for R; "Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite" for B), with some sentences as time allows. Work on letter formation (esp. m,n, & h for B), careful spelling (R), and identification of nouns and pronouns in copied texts.

Grammar: Grammar-land: Sergeant Parsing's Visit to Schoolroom-Shire

Math: Finish lessons through p. 50 in the student practice book. Continue working on concepts of equation vs. inequality, addition and subtraction, finding missing addends/minuends, different ways of making numbers through 6. We are mostly concentrating on exercises in the practice book for now, to shorten lessons, though we are doing some mental math.

Spanish: review expressions, numbers to ten, days of the week, months of the year; also "plaza" and "cafe" vocabulary and conversations. Tuesday: both children took "meaning" quizzes covering vocabulary so far.

Reading:
B: Guns for General Washington
R: Paddy the Beaver (buddy-reading with me)

Enrichment/free-time learning: Head of the Class, Starfall (we have just subscribed to the new "More Starfall," which seems cheap at less than $3/month and has some terrific content in not only phonics/reading/spelling, but also math and music), Greg Tang and other books "strewn" for free-reading pleasure.

Week 5

2011-10-02T17:53:00.000-07:00

To Do:

Combined School odd week reading (I am really liking this alternating of weeks -- we have so many good books going, and the read-alouds always seem fresh and interesting)

Math: MEP Lessons 36-42-ish. We have been managing two lessons a day as a norm; the work is still simple enough, though some of the concepts are becoming more demanding, that we can move fairly fast at this level. My hope is to finish Y1 this semester and Y2 next semester, but we shall see. Whenever the Greg Tang books come, we'll slot them in for some math read-aloud lessons.

Reading: R is reading alternately from CHC's Bigger Stories for Little Folks, Paddy the Beaver, and whatever else strikes her fancy. I have scheduled B's readings from The Baldwin Project into his Head of the Class schedule, so that they come up while he's on the computer. Readings are flexible, but my aim is to cover literature, science/nature, and history/geography in each child's own readings as well as our combined read-alouds. On their own time, they are both also perusing the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History and reading Greek myths.

Writing: copywork, prose passages pulled from this week's readings. Not sure what yet, but will fill in this blank once I've decided. (see Spanish notes below).

Spanish: continue to work on days of the week, plus previous weeks' vocabulary. Practice simple conversations. Use Spanish phrases for copywork -- perhaps begin learning the Hail Mary in Spanish, since they hear it so much during the rosary at Holy Hour every week? (ended up listening to vocabulary and phrases on PlazaLingua Spanish app).

Wednesday: Sick day. Mine. Did Lesson 40 in MEP Y1 & copywork; listened to The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright and colored and cut American Revolutionary and Ancient Greek paperdolls for a frieze on the wall.

Thursday: Still sick. Prayed the Rosary, read Greg Tang books for math, listened to a chapter of Grammar-land and a big chunk of Black Ships Before Troy as audiobooks. Found a PBS Ancient Greece: Crucible of Civilization special on YouTube and watched that together.

Friday: not as sick. Printer out of ink. Planning to pray the Rosary (it is the feast, after all!), read our daily Combined School reading, do copywork (a sentence using commas in a list, pulled from our chapter of Home Geography), do lessons 41 and 42 in MEP orally and using small whiteboards. Maybe we'll also do some Spanish, which we've neglected the last two days -- I might just let them play around on PlazaLingua.

What we actually did: made a rosary out of bread dough for the feast of the Holy Rosary. Read our Combined School reading. Did copywork. Played math games at the new subscription-access More Starfall -- at $35 a year (less than $3/month) for more of what we love already, this seemed like a bargain. The math games are really good: simple, but they actually teach concepts like place value, rather than just testing them. What the kids really love, though (besides all the reading stuff), are the songs. Starfall has always had uncannily good music resources for a kiddie website, and now they have a whole library of classic children's songs, nicely performed, which B & R listened to and sang along with and then came and sang to me.

So, not bad for a Friday. R also cleaned her room unbidden.

More Starfall

Week 4

2011-09-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

Week 4 To-Do:

Combined School "even week" reading

Finish MEP Y1a lessons and begin Y1b (really)
(we have done Lessons 28-34 this week)
Begin reading Greg Tang books (still haven't come)

continue to practice cursive letters A, B, C
Grammar-land

new copywork this week:
B: Little Things
R: Time to Rise
(finished this quickly and also copied sentences from Bigger Stories for Little Folks and Paddy the Beaver)

reading:
B:
"The Story of Persephone"
continue "A Cry in the Night"
The Secret of Everyday Things: Soap
Robinson Crusoe: "I Undertake a New Venture"

R: Bigger Stories for Little Folks

Spanish: expressions, counting to ten, days of the week
daily Mass

On Friday we did our read-alouds and math, then spent a good chunk of the day at our local science museum and planetarium. Saw sharks and rays get fed, dammed a creek, stargazed, etc.

Week 3

2011-09-18T04:11:00.000-07:00

Big Week 3 To-Do:

Combined School "odd week" reading
Finish MEP Y1a practice book and lessons
Review addition facts via flashcards, Number Monster, and Yardstick Addition
Review how subtraction works, more Yardstick Arithmetic, and Number Monster
Get to "C" in cursive writing
2 lines of copywork per day to finish poems
Remember to read Grammar-land
"strew" ancient-Greece-themed books and materials
put out art materials for free-time use
play CoolMath games during free time
start selling Scout popcorn
old socks/tights for puppetmaking at AHG on Thursday
read Johnny Tremain at bedtime
Daily Mass really daily this week

*******

Monday:

Religion: Baltimore Catechism 2B

Read-aloud History: The Story of the Greek People 2

Math: MEP: Work on together on selected exercises in practice book pp. 18-21. Lessons 22/23; addition facts practice (either Flash-to-Pass or games at CoolMath.com)

Copywork: poems from last week

Grammar/Writing: cursive A/B; nouns via Grammar-land

Spanish : practice last week's vocabulary (expressions); add new list

Independent Reading:
R: Peter Rabbit
B: The Secret of Everyday Things: Vinegar (he thought this was "boring." Hm)

Head of the Class: spelling, more math, geography, science, etc.

Lunchtime Reading: The Aesop for Children

Tuesday:

Religion: Bible: Golden Bible p. 126 (or, "More About Manna")

Literature Read -Aloud: Fifty Famous Stories

Math: MEP: continue where we left off, with the goal of finishing the first Y1 practice book/lessons by the end of this week. Review subtraction via CoolMath. Practice addition and subtraction facts, with and without yardstick. (we didn't review subtraction -- everyone got a bit bogged down/frustrated by the idea of writing our own number sentences -- equations and inequalities -- as inspired by pictures of dominoes.)

Copywork: as above

Grammar/Writing: More nouns. Practice writing singular and plural nouns. Cursive A, B, C.

Spanish: work on new list. Draw cartoons with people saying, "Hello," "Goodbye," "How are you," etc. (Counted to ten as well as reviewing expressions from last week)

Independent Reading:
R: "The Fairy in the Mirror"
B: "The Good Shepherd" (B still needs to do this reading)

Lunchtime Reading: Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

Wednesday:

Religion: Life of Our Lord for Children

Read-Aloud: Knights of Art: Fra Angelico

Math: MEP: timed sets of problems, including "fill in the missing number" in the equation (an addend or minuend). I don't know why these kinds of problems seem so hard to my kids, but they do, even though the numbers we're using right now are small and simple.(More major, vocal frustration today. We are dealing with the numbers 0, 1, &2 right now, so you'd think this would be easy-peasy, but people are absolutely unhorsed by problems written like this: 1=____ - 1. Even when I laid it out with manipulatives -- a Matchbox car, a popsicle stick for an "equals; ie, the things on each side have to be the same in number", and experimenting with other cars on the other side until we had the equal number of cars on both sides -- this gave B. fits -- a third grader, who can do multi-digit addition in his head. Tomorrow we'll take a break and do basic drills, then return to MEP on Friday. Also, I've ordered several Greg Tang math-literature books, so we can add in some "living math," for another way in at the conceptual level of things).

Copywork: as above. The goal is to finish, um, last week's poems by the end of this week.

Writing: More cursive practice, probably A & B. I think I'll have them copy letters in their copybooks as well as tracing.

Grammar: Grammar-land, by request (I am amazed by how much B loves this book; we read the chapter on nouns today)

Spanish: review counting to ten, plus expressions

Independent reading:
R: The Songs of Birds (from Birds of the Air)
B: "A Cry in the Night," pp 1-3 (from School of the Woods)

Lunchtime Reading: Heroes Every Child Should Know

Thursday:

Latin Mass/all-day-at-church-with-friends day, so before we leave home we'll:
1. Read "Saint Keneth of the Gulls" from The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts
2. Take turns doing rounds of "Flash-to-Pass" math flashcards for addition and subtraction drill
3. Finish any unfinished reading from MTW

Friday:

Religion: Saint Patrick's Summer ch. 3

Read-aloud: Home Geography

Math: Work with balances to understand how equations work. Make a balance using a coat hanger with plastic bags at either end, and put in and take out marbles. Use copymaster p. 22 to review how to solve an equation with an addend or minuend missing. Do Lesson 28, ex 2, 3, 5, 6 (obviously we aren't going to finish the first book of Y1 this week after all, but as we're having high frustration at the moment, I think it's better to slow down. Even B, who's been quite good at "typical" second/third-grade math finds this way of thinking about equations difficult, so it's worth it to take our time and relax into things. Looking forward to arrival of Greg Tang books next week).

Copywork: continue work on poems. Practice cursive A and B at back of copybook.

Spanish: review all vocabulary to date

Independent Reading:
B: Robinson Crusoe
R: Bigger Stories for Little Folks

Lunchtime Reading: Just-So Stories

Week 2: Sept. 12-16 (in progress)

2011-09-12T05:57:00.000-07:00

Monday:

Religion:

Baltimore Catechism Lesson 2A

History Read-aloud:

A First Book in American History: "The Early Life of Columbus"

Reading:

R: "Seasons," from Kindergarten Gems
B: "Appleseed John," from For the Children's Hour

Copywork:

R: "White Sheep," from A Child's Own Book of Verse, Book 1
B: "The Arrow and the Song" (begun last week), from Poems Every Child Should Know

Math:

Lessons 11-12 in MEP Y1a, plus practice in single-, double-, and triple-digit addition without regrouping (problems on screen, worked on whiteboards)

Writing & Grammar:

cursive practice, reviewing A and introducing B

identifying nouns and proper nouns (oral)

Head of the Class:

online practice in spelling, math, music, geography, science/nature

Lunchtime Reading:

The Spartan Twins

Except for math, which takes roughly a half hour, each lesson lasts approximately 10 minutes. I haven't listed subjects in the order in which we do them; the day will look like this:

1. prayers
2. catechism
3. history reading
4. math
5. copywork
6. handwriting practice
7. grammar
8. B reads his independent-reading book while R reads her reading lesson and does Head of the Class
9. R is then finished, while B reads his reading lesson and does Head of the Class

Lunchtime reading on Monday wound up being The Polite Pupil, from the Brothers of Mary. It was that kind of morning . . .

Tuesday plan:

Religion: Bible: Manna from Heaven

Read-aloud: Parables From Nature

Math: MEP Lesson 13: number ladder, ex 7; Lesson 14: exercises 1, 2, 4, 6; do one two-digit addition problem and one three-digit addition problem; let each child do one round of Flash-to-Pass math flashcard app during individual time

Writing & Grammar: continue poems from Monday; practice cursive A & B

Spanish: listen to and copy from flashcard app to make own sets of flashcards; listen and speak vocabulary words

Reading: R: "The Fairy in the Mirror," from Kindergarten Gems; B: "What the Fawns Must Know," from School of the Woods

finish with Head of the Class, taking turns

Lunchtime reading: The Princess and the Goblin

Tuesday Notes: B&R both unwell today: headaches/sore throats/some fever. A read-aloud day (Bible, Parables From Nature), plus we did two rounds of oral Math-to-Pass flashcards (addition levels 1&2) for mental math. Listening to A Child's Introduction to the Orchestra now. R playing with her old Boggle Jr. game (spelling practice). B reading. Might listen to Black Ships Before Troy on audiobook later. Will save writing, independent reading for R till tomorrow. Sick days are when homeschooling really comes into its own -- no need to miss school entirely just because we're lying on the couch.

Wednesday plan, assuming people feel better:

Religion: A Life of Our Lord for Children

Read-Aloud: I think I'll switch our schooltime and lunchtime readings and do Among the Forest People as nature study for school, and the Andrew Lang Blue Fairy Book as lunchtime reading.

Math: Tuesday's MEP lesson, plus flashcard drill

Writing & Grammar: Tuesday's lesson plus, if time permits, a look at plural nouns/how to make nouns plural via a .pdf worksheet "zoomed" on my computer screen, so we can do the exercise orally. Then we can observe the principle in our copywork and reading.

Spanish: review of "expressions" vocabulary using Spanish flashcard/quiz app (a free app; fun because it includes audio and various kinds of quiz. When we run out of words on the free app, I'll upgrade to the "full" model)

Reading: Tuesday's reading which we didn't do while people were sick

Head of the Class

Wednesday Notes: R still sick with a fever/headache. Did religion, read-aloud nature, math (three MEP group mental-math activities plus three rounds of addition flashcards, trying to beat our previous times), and Spanish (quizzes on our Spanish flashcards app), and grammar/writing more or less as scheduled. B did Head of the Class activities; R did not. B has done independent reading for the day; R may do hers later. R went outside briefly and picked pecan leaves to press in our flower press. Will read Blue Fairy Book at lunch. Maybe we'll have a tea this p.m. and read The Spartan Twins, since we didn't do that on Monday.

We have also been playing board games like National Geographic's Geo Bee and Scrabble in the afternoons. B says geography is his favorite subject.

Thursday plans:

No Latin Mass or church day, so a regular school day at home.

Religion: Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts

Read-Aloud: The Princess and the Goblin (didn't do for lunch on Tuesday)

Math: MEP: Lessons 19-21; 3 rounds of Flash-to-Pass

Writing/Grammar: copywork as assigned; work on cursive B/b

Spanish: each child does quizzes on this week's vocabulary individually

Independent reading: as assigned

Head of the Class

Friday Plan:

R still running a 102F fever, so our plan to attend the historical re-enactment day at Allison Woods near Statesville, NC, is out. Maybe we'll just have a read-aloud day instead.

Plans for Week .5: UPDATED

2011-08-31T05:01:00.000-07:00

Our school year "officially" begins next week, but we're back from taking their older sister to college, and kids are ready to do something -- anything! -- now.

Ideas:

1. Ease into routine by beginning with chores, rosary, and daily read-aloud.
2. Math? If we feel like it this week. Otherwise, next week.
3. Writing: letters to A. at college
4. Latin Mass and afternoon with friends
5. General organizational stuff: what is all this in my binder? what am I going to do with it? where is my rosary? &c.
6. Play with Macbook apps
7. Try out some Head of the Class activities

Hits this week:

1. Read-alouds: "Perseus," from Heroes Every Child Should Know; "Saint Bridget and the King's Wolf," from The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts

2. MEP math, Year 1: we're doing two lessons at a go right now, and both children are interested and engaged

3. Head of the Class: fun and also engaging. Their spelling program, which has children work through a number of exercises as they memorize a list of words, seems especially strong. B wants more science and geography. R has enjoyed several math activities as well as spelling. This is looking like a good addition to our daily routine.

Week 1 and Binders! UPDATED

2011-08-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Last week was Week .5; now it's Week 1 for real. Here's the plan:

Reading aloud (history, literature, geography, science/nature): as scheduled for combined school/odd weeks. We took Labor Day off, so I'm going to do Monday's reading for Tuesday.

Math: MEP Y1a, Lessons 6-14. This is easy and fun, and we're breezing through 2 or more lessons a day in roughly half an hour. Kids are enjoying it, and even for B., the review and play with basic concepts is useful. Both children are also doing online math exercises via Head of the Class.

Grammar, Spelling, Handwriting: worksheets and online exercises from Head of the Class. Additional cursive handwriting practice in journals, plus copywork for the week as scheduled below.

Spanish: hello, counting to three, how are you, I am fine, goodbye. Use printed word cards to begin a vocabulary lapbook (glue Spanish card onto file folder as a flap; beneath the flap, write the word in English). Listen to audio via Plaza Lingua and Spanish flashcards app.

Geography: begin a geography lapbook with cut-out continent cards

Science: B: human body/the skeletal system (Head of the Class; individual reading)
R: birds (Head of the Class; individual reading)

Art: Head of the Class video: making finger puppets to act out a story

Enrichment: Head of the Class presentations for music, geography, careers

I really kind of wanted not to love Head of the Class; I'm not a worksheety person myself, and I hate the idea of education as merely a series of skills to be mastered (filling a bucket instead of lighting a fire).

Still, there's no getting around the fact that skills do have to be mastered, and although I see the value in not buying too heavily into the idea that every child MUST be doing X in Grade Y, at the same time, if they *can* be doing what their schoolgoing friends are doing in terms of certain competencies, then I don't see any reason not to aim in that direction.

What I do like about HOC's program is that at its strongest, it really does offer easy, fun ways to master basic skills like spelling, via a varied series of exercises which repeat the use of a list of words. I see this as a tool more than anything else, a way to give my kids more to work with when they write, as R. certainly wants to do all the time.

I'm still of two minds about formal spelling programs: A., who memorizes easily, used to ace all her spelling tests at school but still could not spell her way to the corner. J, who has never had a formal spelling lesson in his life but did extensive copywork for years and years, is an almost-perfect speller as well as a strong writer. With B., it's just hard to tell at this point, as he doesn't write independently unless absolutely forced to (neither did J at this age, for that matter). R., meanwhile, wants to write: letters, stories, captions for pictures, signs and directives, you name it. She has never let spelling interfere with what she wanted to say, but lately she cares more about spelling things correctly. I still suspect that the real way to spell is to write, and to get help spelling things correctly so that you don't get the wrong spelling stuck in your head, but I figure that a little formal spelling practice can't possibly hurt, especially if it also counts as writing and reading.

Also, the kids just think Head of the Class is fun. I save it for the end, after we've done all our other work together, and they take turns, R doing her series of activities while B reads to himself, then B taking his turn once R is finished for the day. Alternatively, I might have B do his activities first while R and I work on her reading together, then let her do HOC while B reads. We'll see which works better.

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It's not actually Week 1 yet; we probably won't start until after Labor Day, or at least not till after we get back from taking A. to college. But I'm filling school binders in preparation for our first week.

Our binders: they were cheaper than this at Wal-Mart, and worth every penny, I'm thinking. I think of these as "zipped-up school-on-the-go." They have a large, sturdy 3-ring binder; a zippered case for pencils, erasers, magnifying glasses, index cards, etc; a pocket for a journal; a set of built-in folders with plastic divider tabs; a carrying handle and a strap to turn the binder into a cool messenger bag. They're also a good size for a handy lap desk.

What's in them right now?

For Week 1:

B:

Copywork: The Arrow and the Song

Reading selections:
The Ant and the Grasshopper
On the Way to School (pp 1-3)
The Year and Its Seasons
Robinson Crusoe: I Wish to Be a Sailor

Math:
MEP Y1-a: Practice Book pp. 1-10 (taking the advice of the MEP yahoo group and starting everyone in Y1 together. We can probably cover a couple of lessons in a day, even given the different grade levels)

Cursive Writing Practice: worksheets (printed from Head of the Class) for letters A, B, & C

Grammar (2 short lessons/week): noun and verb identification sheets from Head of the Class

Geography: cut-outs (also printed from Head of the Class): continents, flags of European countries. I put these in the folder part of the binder, with a note instructing B to start a lapbook by making lift-the-flaps on a manila file folder, to help him learn to identify the continents on a map or globe and to recognize the flags of different European nations

Spanish: spiral-bound index cards for copying vocabulary. This week: greetings.

Add: instructions to play FlashtoPass Math Flashcard app, easiest level addition facts for review, plus listen to Plaza Lingua In the Plaza vocabulary: greetings and farewells

R:

Copywork: Little Wind

Reading Selections:
Prayer
The Shower of Gold
Burgess Animal Book: Jenny Wren Gives Peter Rabbit an Idea
Birds of the Air: Birds We Know

Math:
MEP Y1a, Practice Book pp 1-10

Cursive Writing Practice: Worksheets for letters A, B, & C, as above

Grammar: 2 short lessons/week using Language of God Book A

Spanish: spiral index cards, as above

Add: instructions to play FlashtoPass Math Flashcards app, easiest level addition facts, to listen to Plaza Lingua "In the Plaza" vocabulary: greetings and farewells, and to play a level of the Montessori Crosswords app for spelling and phonics.

Other history, science, geography, religion, and general literature to be covered in Combined School, as scheduled.

Other items in binders:

Notebook-sized laminated U.S. and world maps
$1 magnifying glasses for science: owl pellet dissection, nature walks, etc.
Mead Primary Journal books for copywork

Other little surprises to stick in folders:

Usborne cards:
100 Things to Spot in the Night Sky
50 Things to Paint and Draw

50 American States info cards

Impressionist Art Go-Fish cards for picture study

Learning Palette cards, to put on the Learning Palette and play

Sentence-builder tiles in a baggie

Word-searches and crosswords for history, geography, Spanish, etc.

Games for Faith Formation

Lapbook materials

Notebooking pages

Printable math and phonics games

Historical and saints paper dolls

and whatever else I can think of.

Other activities for Week 1:
Play a round of our Notes! Learn to Read Music app
Picture Study: Claude Monet, A Bend of the Epte, Giverny

Hopefully having made this list will mean that I'll actually remember all these things beyond the first two weeks of the school year . . .

Math

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Mathematics Enhancement Programme (.pdf practice books/lesson plans are on Evernote)
Head of the Class math applications in each custom curriculum

R's Booklist: Second Grade

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Copywork: A Child's Own Book of Verse, Book One

Kindergarten Gems
Burgess Animal Book for Children
Birds of the Air
Understood Betsy
Boys and Girls of Colonial Days

B's Booklist: Third Grade

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Copywork selections: Poems Every Child Should Know

For the Children's Hour
School of the Woods
The Secret of Everyday Things
Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children
Boy's Book of Sea Fights
Great Inventors and Their Inventions
Book of Saints and Heroes
The Bears of Blue River
Boys and Girls of Colonial Days

November Saints' Stories:
Our Island Saints

Stories During Advent, Preparing for Christmas:
This Way to Christmas
Good Stories for Great Holidays
Why the Chimes Rang

Lenten/Holy Week Reading:
When the King Came

Reading List: Second and Third Grade Combined School

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Daily Schedule:

Holy Mass/Prayers
Breakfast/Chores

Combined School Time:
Religion
Music
Read-alouds for history, literature, geography or science/nature

Individual Lesson Time:
copywork (currently, Draw Write Now)
daily lessons in cursive writing and math skills workbooks
independent reading

Odd Weeks:

Monday:
Baltimore Catechism
The Story of the Greek People
The Aesop for Children (lunchtime reading)

Tuesday:
Holy Bible/Old Testament
Fifty Famous Stories Retold
Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (lunchtime reading)

Wednesday:
A Life of Our Lord for Children
Knights of Art
Heroes Every Child Should Know (lunchtime reading)

Thursday:
The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts
Latin Mass
afternoon play/study time

Friday:
Saint Patrick's Summer
Home Geography
Just-So Stories (lunchtime reading)

Even Weeks:

Monday:
Baltimore Catechism
A First Book in American History
The Belgian Twins, The Dutch Twins, The Eskimo Twins, The French Twins, The Japanese Twins, The Mexican Twins, The Scotch Twins, The Spartan Twins (lunchtime reading, as many as we can get through in a school year)

Tuesday:
Holy Bible/Old Testament
Parables From Nature
The Princess and the Goblin (lunchtime reading)

Wednesday:
A Life of Our Lord for Children
Blue Fairy Book
Among the Forest People, Among the Meadow People, Among the Pond People, Among the Night People (Lunchtime reading, as many as we can get through this year)

Thursday:
The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts
Latin Mass
afternoon study/play

Friday:
Saint Patrick's Summer
The Fairy-Land of Science
The Chaucer Story Book, Children of the Dawn, Famous Indian Chiefs I Have Known (lunchtime reading; when one is finished, begin another)

Liturgical Year Reading:

Advent (to prepare for Christmas):
Christ Legends
Christmas in Legend and Story
The Story of the Posadas/de Paola
The Legend of the Poisettia/de Paola
Mary the Mother of Jesus/de Paola (Immaculate Conception)

Lent:
My Path to Heaven/Bliss & Houselander