A day late, but they say...

Better late than never!



FOR TODAY... from Peggy's Daybook


Outside my window... grey skies that endlessly drizzle

I am thinking... I would love to see the sun again, for more than a few minutes

I am thankful for... homeschooling, and not having to call my daughter in sick to anyone

I am wearing... black yoga pants, black socks, a dark blue t-shirt, and a purple sweater

I am remembering... other rainy days when my kids had rainboots that fit so they could splash outside. I think we need to go to the 2nd hand stores!

I am going... to be teaching my kids about Roman history & architecture today

I am currently reading... Financial Peace (Dave Ramsey), A Circle of Quiet (Madeline L'Engle), and A Charlotte Mason Education (Catherine Levison)

I am hoping... to get the laundry all folded and put away today

On my mind... telling the charter school (especially our great resource teacher) that we won't be back next year

Noticing that... the couple of kittens we kept are not kittens anymore

Pondering these words... ummmmmmm

From the kitchen... hot coffee (one of the best aromas in the world), toast & cinnamon

Around the house... lots of miscellaneous cleaning to do

One of my favorite things... good morning hugs

From my picture journal...

As you can see...

I have added a third column to my blog. I also decided I was tired of having two blogs (this one and Side Notes), so I combined them.

You may remember from an earlier post that I want to be more organized this year, and believe me, I am trying. On the homeschool front, I have been doing a bit of research for next year, which you can read more about here. I am having a lot of fun playing around with ideas, potential plans, projects, and more. I also got my lesson plans done for the next three weeks! Despite trying both a teacher's planning book and various internet/downloadable versions, I find I do best with Open Office and a simple spreadsheet.

Now, household organization... I am doing a bit better, but not as much as I'd like, so I have decided to try FlyLady once more. Wish me luck! I am also menu planning, which helps keep me on (or under) budget. I find I like knowing ahead of time what we will be eating, and how much cooking I will be doing. I think we eat more healthfully this way too.

In other news, M is returning to school in the fall. He has decided, I think in part by seeing that I am working toward a career, that he wants a career too. Right now he works as a warehouse manager for a small company, and to him, that's a job, not a career. I won't tell you yet what field he is going into, but I am really proud that he's taking the first steps, researching programs (he has got one in mind now!), completing his FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid - I do this myself every year, and grants re getting me through college, along with small federal student loans), looking at potential classes. I hope I can be as supportive of him in this journey as he has been for me.

Wrapping up the week...

It has been a decent week, though very wet - rain for days on end and it is starting to make the kids cranky. Right now they're okay as they are building a town out of cardboard... they used a huge sheet to draw roads, and now they're making houses, and driving Hot Wheels all over it.

Language Arts
Elf is continuing to read The Magician's Boy. He did all his work in Writing Tales this week too. Next week I plan to start cursive writing with him, probably using Happy Scribe copybooks. I bought their package deal sometime back, so I have dozens of topics to choose from! He also re-read Punctuation Takes a Vacation, and did a few pages in G.U.M. on predicates.

Fairy is doggedly going through Phonics Pathways. She is trying to read more, and spent some time on Starfall yesterday, working on the little books instead of the letter pages. Her handwriting is developing nicely, although she tends to do some letters the reverse of the way Handwriting Without Tears says to. Maybe it is the left-handedness? For example, she does small "e" from the bottom up. I'm not really too picky about this. If her handwriting is legible, I'm happy!

We are still reading The Tale of Desperaux at night (when I'm not at work!), and are very much enjoying it. I think our next read-aloud will be The Phantom Tollbooth.

Math
We are on a break from Saxon. Elf is working on times tables and Fairy is working on number families in addition and subtraction. I make my own worksheets, or find them online. Fairy did a few pages in Houghton Mifflin's MathSteps this week too, since units 5-8 focus on various number families.

History
We are in Ancient Rome! We spent maybe an hour yesterday looking at Rome in Spectacular Cross-Section. My kids love that type of book, so it made for a good, quiet time with both of them sitting in the big chair. They also watched the Rome episode of Time Warp Trio. Next week we'll launch into SOTW, map work, and all that.

On a side note, here are pictures of their Greek Vase project from last week:





Science
This week the kids followed their own interests in science. Elf took apart and re-built both his microscope and telescope, successfully. He spent a lot of time examining rain water, puddle water, tap water, etc. under the microscope, and shared his findings with Fairy. They also watched a few episodes of Magic School Bus this week, since we can't go outside much!

Other
Elf has gotten into stop-motion photography/filming (hence the bend-a-roos on the wall in the above pictures). I'm trying to figure out how to make the uploaded pictures into a film, maybe PhotoBucket? Anyhow, once I get one done, I'll post it.

Both kids spent time playing guitars this week, and their drums. They've played board games, and gone to tap (Elf) and tap/ballet (Fairy) classes. We might go to homeschool gymnastics in an hour if I can find Elf's sweatpants!

Ready for Rome....

We decided a library visit would be just the thing on a rainy, rainy day (4th or 5th one in a row). Since we are just starting on Rome in Story of the World, we browsed around and found these...

The kids are excited about starting something new, and having watched an episode of the Time Warp Trio called "See You Later, Gladiator" they are convinced Ancient Rome will be "really cool!" I think with SOTW and the above, we have plenty on hand to get started with.

Other than that, we are taking a break from Saxon Math while Elf learns his times tables (and the division that goes with them), and Fairy will work on number families in a book called MathSteps. I found all kinds of websites for multiplication, and I like the way MathSteps lays out the number families, both of which I would like the kids to have a rock-solid understanding of before we move on in math. I am also considering other options for next year's math, maybe Teaching Textbooks? From what I have read, and from the samples on their website, we could skip both kids ahead with no problem. I guess until pre-algebra, Teaching Textbooks is a year "behind"... it looks like TT4 covers a lot of what Elf already knows. But, we may stick with Saxon as it has worked well for us so far, and it does go all the way up through high school math.

Now off to actually educate my kids!

Jumping off a cliff (with a parachute)...

After nearly 4 years, and lots and lots of discussion, it is official. M and I are not registering the kids with a charter school next fall. We will instead file as a private school for the first time! I admit, I am really excited about this. I have a great friend who is helping me navigate the paperwork side of things, so I'm not worried about any of it anymore. The kids, M and I discussed this last night. I explained to them what it meant, and they said "fine". Then I told them that for our own school, we would use the name Elf came up with 4 years ago, and they could even choose "school" colors and a mascot. They loved that idea. So, as of fall, we will officially be OakLeaf Academy; an owl mascot; the colors red, green and gold; and even a school motto, part of my blog title - "Learning from the roots up".

Why the change? Well, this year has really been a disappointing one with the charter school. Until now, the benefits have always outweighed the problems, but not so anymore. I don't know exactly why it has changed, except that it has about doubled in size in the last couple of years, but the classes for younger kids (like mine) are not as good - one of Fairy's has simply become a playtime for K-2nd. The prep work for testing is starting a month earlier this year, and one of the reasons I wanted homeschooling for my kids was to avoid teaching to the test. I also don't think that Fairy has a learning disability, and I don't want her labeled with one. Finally, as they are getting older, I am expected to follow state standards more and more in what I teach, which doesn't align well with educational plans I have for them. In essence, it is becoming more school-at-home than homeschool.

I was a bit nervous about telling my mom. She is currently one of my staunchest supporters in homeschooling (she loves the extra time with my kids), so I didn't want to lose that. However, I decided to just be completely honest with her, and I told her how I feel, and what we plan to do. Instantly, she told me she had been having many of the same feelings about the charter school! So, she's all for us becoming a private school instead.

Now I just have to clear the hurdle of telling the kids' resource teacher, who has been fantastic, but has to maintain her school's standards. Iwould just avoid telling her and then not register next year, but really she has been such a great help the last few years that I don't want to do that. I think one of the problems right now is that her load is full, and that puts stress on her. So, maybe in a twisted way it would be good for her for us to leave? I have asked the kids not to say anything until I have figured out how I want to approach it, so we'll see.

Anyhow, I now feel free to just do Medieval history next year, to study history across the flow of time, to study sciences in whatever order we please, to rewrite our school calendar, to let Fairy take a little longer to learn to read and Elf a little longer to love writing. And that makes me smile!

Why a Charlotte Mason approach works well for us...

As we go through the years of homeschooling and trying differing approaches, I keep coming back to Charlotte Mason, a turn-of-the-last-century British educator. Why? Because her methods suit us to a tee.

First, living books. NOT textbooks. Not dry, dull books, but books that engage my children and draw them in. We love reading, and the kids especially love being read to, but I doubt most textbooks would keep their attention for long.

Second, short lessons. There are two parts to this that work for us. To begin with, my kids are still young, and don't have the world's longest attention spans, so short lessons are brief enough to keep their attention. The second part of this is that Charlotte Mason recommended switching it up - sandwiching math, for example, between poetry and picture study, so as to engage different parts of the mind. I try to switch back and forth between written and oral work, so a morning might look like this:
calendar/weather charting (half oral, half written)
copy work (written)
poetry (oral)
math (written)
history or science read aloud and narration/Q&A (oral)
phonics/writing (written)
hands-on projects/exeriments/crafts (not really oral or written, but falls under C handicrafts to a degree)

Third, outdoor time. I try to make sure my kids are outdoors for part of the day nearly every day, unless the weather is really bad.

Fourth, art and music appreciation, as well as an appreciation for nature, are worked in through picture studies, listening to classical music, nature journaling, etc. As we enjoy nature, music and art, having these as a part of our curriculum is important. Resources I have found useful include Famous Paintings, Handbook of Nature Study/Outdoor Hour Challenges, and Composer of the Month from Classics for Kids.

Fifth, variety of studies. A Charlotte Mason education is rich in variety. Some families study as many as 21 subjects per week, NOT all on the same day. We don't do that many, but since we study a fair number, including two paths through history simultaneously (as do many followers of CMmethods, including Ambleside Online, a free online version of CM), the flexibility of CM works well. I love the idea of what is essentially a liberal arts education for my children - the exposure to good writing, art, music, history, nature, and more is very appealing.

What I also like is that I can easily combine Charlotte Mason with my other favorite approach to homeschooling, Classical education via The Well Trained Mind. The two are easy to blend since they emphasize so many of the same points, as written here in a review by Susan Wise Bauer, though there are some small differences.

So there, in a nutshell, is why I appreciate CM methods so much, and plan to implement them further in our home education. Having tried unit studies, (accidental) unschooling, Waldorf methods and more, Charlotte Mason feels like home.

Weekly progress report....

Not a bad week altogether, although we didn't get everything done that I wanted to (i.e. the Greek vases are now a Saturday project).

Elf
Got through math well enough this week, but I think I need to find supplemental times tables stuff, maybe Times Tales or Times Tales the Fun Way. This is the first downfall I have really found with Saxon - I don't think they cover times tables very well. I could alwys just print out a bunch of blanks and have him work on it from there, as we did in school when I was a kid.... Other than that, he's good with measurements, figuring out missing numbers, and so forth.

In language arts, he has started to read The Magician's Boy, which is by one of my alltime favorite authors, Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising). We were casting about for a new "assigned" book for him, and the librarian suggested this one. So far, he's really enjoying it! We also completed almost all of lesson 15 in Writing Tales. While Writing Tales is working pretty well, Elf gets a bit bored doing the same thing over and over every two weeks - read a story, do copywork, vocabulary, rough draft, etc. - so I've been doing a little research here and there, and came across a great workbook version of Intermediate Language Lessons! I showed Elf the sample pages, and he liked the flexibility and variety it offers. I love the workbook format as it is easier to set up each day. Plus, they have them for grades 4-6, so I'd be covered for the next three years, and they're quite inexpensive. We're definately dropping ETC for him next year. I think he's gotten what he can from it, though we'll finish up planned books this year.

Fairy
She is good at math. Still a few issues on number identification, but she gets that math - addition, subtraction, etc. - really well. She loves to apply it to daily life too, asking me to let her know if she's adding things correctly, or giving her prices to add up...

In language arts, she is definately making progress. Phonics Pathways in conjunction with early readers seems to be doing the trick, along with Explode the Code. She's showing more dedication to learning to read as well, which really helps! If I can get her ready for it by then, the same company that makes the great ILL mentioned above is putting out two workbooks for Primary Language Lessons in the next few weeks. I have an old copy of PLL, but not having to copy things out would make it so much easier!

Both
We read about Cyrus the Great this week. Both kids liked the fact that he allowed people to follow their own paths even after he conquered their lands. They thought that was really fair of him. Both have been busy coloring away in the Greek coloring books I have too - Elf loves Life in Ancient Greece and Fairy adores Greek Gods & Goddesses.

In science, we've been a little lax, but we'll make up for that today!

And there, in brief, is our first week back after winter break!