Summer Stuff...

A run-down of what we've been up to, and a few pictures...

The kids won a month's free skating, so they've been skating once or twice a week.

We fixed all the bicycles, so there's been a lot of that too.

My bicycle

I've been working out 3-4 days a week, plus doing steep hill walks with my sister, and regular walks with The Girl and her dog.

We spent a lovely afternoon out at the coast...

The "creek" that runs out into the ocean

Dunes, beach grass, cypress, and waves

A giant dune that we scrambled up a dozen times, and rolled and jumped and slid and ran back down

Sandcastle in progress

You can see how pretty and sunny it was, and then we drove 45 minutes home into a thunder-and-hail storm. Just crazy!

We've been reading The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and really, really enjoying it. We watched part one of Peter Jackson's movie version, and we all agreed... while we do love the LoTR movies, we just don't feel the same love for The Hobbit films. There was just far too much extra stuff added. ONE movie, that followed the book, would have been so much better.

Documentary watching has been half hit, half miss. We're enjoying our history selections, but haven't started science ones yet. That's okay. We will get there, and we've basically come to accept that we are year-round homeschoolers anyway.

Math is going pretty well. The Boy likes his Great Courses algebra lectures quite a lot. The Girl is making great progress through the Prodigy math game, where I set up problems several times a week to match her textbook.

The kids have taken to biking to the teen club, which saves me time... and gas. They visit it once or twice a week, and spend almost all their time in the art room. The Boy might be doing a job training program there soon, and they both want to take barista training.

I'm taking a very intensive Spanish course at the moment.... online. One semester of Spanish covered in only six weeks. So far, I've kept up. The Boy is teaching himself computer coding (I think javascript at the moment), and The Girl is working on her butterfly identification skills.

I'm also on the hunt for a job, as my position at the junior college has been frozen due to decreased revenue. I was supposed to start back next week, but that is not to be so at this time. I don't know about fall yet, though I am still hopeful. I may fall back on my grocery experience for the summer. Thankfully M is working a gazillion hours, so we're scraping by.

We're hoping to get out to the coast, and the river, soon. We have FOUR boogie boards now, so that will be fun! I plan on teaching the kids to grill -- they've been taking turns once a week to cook a dinner start to finish, and grilling in this weather would be nice.

And there's housework, decluttering, a recent return to fencing (The Boy), and gardening. I have tomatoes, squash, lemon cucumbers, peppers, and loads of herbs going now!

Hope anyone who reads this is having a lovely summer so far! Here are a couple of random pictures to wrap things up, then I'm off to make breakfast.

The local lake during my early morning trail run last week

A two hat kind of day

[Bitter]Sweet Sixteen and Summer Schooling...

From newborn to sixteen

The Boy turned SIXTEEN this month! I am still amazed daily, even after sixteen years, that I get to be his mom. And it is bittersweet because it is going by so quickly. In only two years, he'll be, legally, an adult.

We've had a few homeschooling changes since I last posted, and we decided, together, on summer schooling this year, as life got in the way far too often over the spring. We don't want to fall further behind, so we'll be tackling math, literature, writing, biology, and a survey of world history over the next twelve weeks (we started yesterday). Here's a run-down of our summer plans:

Math:
The Boy is using a combo of the Great Courses Algebra 1 and Jacobs Elementary Algebra

The Girl is using a combination of Prodigy and Basic Math Skills

Literature:
We are reading this beautiful edition of The Hobbit, to be followed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy

Writing:
The Boy is using bits and pieces from Writing with Skill, and he's started a car blog.

The Girl is using Junior English and free-writing.

Biology:
We're using a combination of documentaries (Life, for example); nature observations; and biology experiments. We'll be doing this microbial ecology experiment at last, which we will be using with the lecture series Changing Planet: Past, Present, Future!

World History:
We are keeping it very simple, and are watching Mankind: The Story of All of Us (I might use at least some ideas from this study guide), alongside the Big History episodes, and a few select movies.

In addition:
The kids skate once a week (roller derby is over for the season), and The Boy fences occasionally. We'll be heading to the beach when it's a tad warmer, and we plan to ride bikes a lot. The kids continue to visit the local teen club once or twice each week. We have gardening, decluttering, pets to care for, and so on. Plus, we have a new dog! Her name is Fiona, she's about three, and she's a pitbull-mix.

Hope everyone else is off to a good start to summer!

Hey There!

...What We've Been Up To...

The Girl started working with the wildlife rescue center. These are her foster babies:

They are, of course, opossums, four of them. We actually interact with them as little as possible, so that they remain relatively feral. They'll be released back into the wild once they're larger. The Girl learned to tube feed them (they can't suckle), but thankfully we are past that stage now, and they just eat foods (mice, sardines, fruit). They live in a very large tub in the bathroom for now!


The Boy is soon to wrap up his figure drawing class. His skills just continue to blow me away!

Some of his work has been hung in the student art center, and he's thinking of entering some in the local fair this year.

As far as homeschooling, it's been spotty, which is something we really need to address. The kids have already agree we need to work through the summer. Math, writing, literature, and more documentaries have all made the summer to-do list!

Speaking of literature, we watched the movie League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the kids loved it! So we decided to read through all the books mentioned in the movie (a list I am still working on). Here is their first pick...

We have agreed to check out this movie version when we are done with the book.

We started watching Bill Nye Saves the World, which I think is okay, and they seem to like. I'm thinking American Experience, and/or maybe actually finishing Mankind: the Story of All of Us, and America: The Story of Us. We also have a few unwatched episodes of Big History. And there are plenty of biographies, etc. I also need to find some more science documentaries! We finished up all three seasons of The 100 that are currently available, and can't wait for season 4 to come to Netflix in June. If you haven't checked it out, you should. Totally engrossing!

Besides all that, I'm wrapping up my year of teaching at the university. I am planning to continue my teaching assistant position at the junior college for another year, but beyond that, I am not sure at the moment. I've applied for a couple of very part-time things, so we'll see what works out!

Hope all is well in everyone else's corners of the world!

It Can't Really Be April Already!

I absolutely can't believe it is April already, and that I missed March on this blog entirely.

What We've Been Up To:

The Girl turned 14!!!

The Boy is enjoying the Big History Project. This will take us through the next year as well, since I'm adding in science, and it took us a while to get off the ground with it.

I've decided to apply for a Roots & Shoots mini-grant to help The Girl and I with our front-yard-turned-wildlife-habitat project.

The weather has finally gotten much nicer, so The Boy will be returning to his truck project.

Again, since the rains have (mostly) stopped, we can get a veggie garden going! I decided we would start relatively small this year, and add to it regularly, rather than overwhelming ourselves with another giant project at the moment.

Homeschooling on the whole is good these days! Math is going well for both, we're working on writing projects, we're reading The Golden Compass, and we discuss a lot of politics/political science.

We've also been enjoying sunny park days with friends; the kids go roller skating every week; they also visit a local teen club twice a week (most weeks) for arts, crafts, and more; and The Boy is loving his figure drawing class!

So instead of rambling on and on, here are some pictures from recent days, in no particular order...

The Girl got clay for her birthday, and is making mini sculptures

The cat loves his boy

Minecraft flower mini-sculpture by The Girl

Drawing from The Boy's art class

The view from an uphill walk I try to do at least twice a week

I love seeing hot air balloons when I drive my husband to work in the morning

Another drawing from The Boy's art class

I always see such pretty flowers when I'm out walking!

Have a great weekend and week! I'll try to check back in more regularly!

A Belated Happy Valentine's Day!

Again, it has been a while since I updated this blog! I keep meaning to, but life has been very busy lately.

What has changed?

• We got a new (to us) vehicle last weekend after a string of incidents, starting with the unfortunate demise of Clarabelle, the 30 year old Honda Civic passed on to us by my dad. Around the same time that died, my mom's Acura broke down on our street, and then lived in our driveway for a month while The Boy rebuilt the cooling system. My mom and I then shared her 15 passenger "church" van, until that blew a spark plug. So we had to get something, and we happily settled on a 2003 Nissan XTerra in excellent condition. The downside? 20 months of payments. :(
• The Boy dropped the mythology class early on in the semester. It turned out that it was very fast paced and highly academic, and he does not feel ready for that. BUT, he's loving figure drawing, and his sketches are amazing! Here's an example: 

• My second semester teaching is flying by! I love, love, love it. We're reading a memoir and a novel this semester, and have actually just about finished up the memoir -- A Place to Stand. My students seem to be loving it! We're about to do a service project with first graders, and then will be jumping into The Book Thief. Last semester, our theme was how we identify ourselves by social binaries and concepts, and this semester is all about how words can shape identity.
• I might shift up my employment again a bit in the fall. I want to teach another year while I write my Master's thesis, but I think instead of the junior college job, I may work in the writing center at one of the two campuses. I haven't been getting as many students in these days to my tutoring hours, and I hate feeling that I am wasting the college's time. Writing center experience would also just be excellent, both for my own development, and for my cv as I prepare to actually enter the world of teaching in another year plus. I haven't decided for sure though.
• Homeschooling is moving right along. We're reading a lot... A Little History of the World; All About Cats; Son; and Exploring the Way Life Works: The Science of Biology... watching Z: The Beginning of Everything, and Mankind: The Story of All of Us... working on algebra and prealgebra... and writing, largely essay practice, though both kids are doing some creative writing on the side!
• We're mostly enjoying the rain, though I know the flooding has been difficult for many in California. What's that saying about flood to famine, or vice versa? I complained a lot about the drought in the past, but we seem to be well past that now! Though it hasn't stopped us from going outside! As you can see, we were so wet by this point that The Girl gave in to her puddle stomping instincts!

Hope all is well in everyone else's homeschooling world!

Nose to the Grindstone...

image courtesy of Saxton Studio

My winter break has come to an end. Today, the junior college starts back up, and next week, the university. So I am prepping like crazy for classes next week! I have almost finished my syllabus and a reading schedule for the first few weeks, so I just need to polish those up. This week, I am visiting the classes I work with as an instructional assistant, and next week, I will be teaching and studying. This semester, I am teaching the same students as last semester, moving them from English 100A to English 100B. The class I am taking is in composition theory/application and rhetoric... a practical class for a college instructor!

The Boy is also gearing up for classes, which for him start tomorrow. He's taking Figure Drawing and Comparative Mythology. The mythology class will likely be the most academic class he's taken so far, but I am pretty sure he can handle it. It will provide us with a great opportunity to practice his essay skills!

We started homeschooling again last week, so here is a brief run-down:

Math: Both used their "new" textbooks to do review work, which went well. We're using Jacobs Elementary Algebra (The Boy) and AGS Basic Math Skills (The Girl).

History: We started reading A Little History of the World (3 chapters), and watched the first episode of Mankind: The Story of Us, which lined up very nicely.

Literature: We read 3 or 4 more chapters in The Messenger, which we'll probably finish up in the next week or two. We'll most likely then read the fourth book, Son, before moving on to something else.

I also found our science book for spring! It seems very readable, I love the illustrations (as do the kids), and I love how it presents everything in an interconnected fashion. We'll start reading from it this week, and I'll weave in a few hands on projects here and there, though the bulk of our hands-on work will be gardening and nature observation.

 

I hope things continue to go as smoothly for the rest of the spring! I still have writing to work in as well, and spelling for The Girl, but we'll get there.

January Tidbits...

I always find Kim's monthly planning posts so inspirational, so here are some January plans of my own, mixed with some Monday musings!

New Year's Eve Cat's Cradle fun

January 1st: New Year's Day
We enjoyed a relaxed day, mostly at home. I made the kids some great pancakes for breakfast, and we checked out a new neighborhood park.

January 6th: Twelfth Night
We'll take down the Christmas tree, and I'd like to experiment with some Three Kings Bread (though this recipe for an orange bread looks really good too!), or we'll make The Girl's Applesauce Honey Cake. Maybe board games by the fireplace!

January 12th: Full Moon
I'd really like us to start paying more attention to the Full Moons, starting with this one, the Wolf Moon.

January 16th: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
We'll read or watch his "I Have a Dream" speech.

January 28th: Chinese New Year
We will celebrate the Year of the Rooster with a Chinese inspired dinner, probably something with long noodles (healthy Chow Mein?), fish, and other good-luck goodies (dumplings, etc.). Maybe we'll try making fortune cookies again, and/or Chinese lanterns.

Plans This Week
We're starting our Minimalism overhaul. Actually, The Boy started yesterday, of his own free will, in his bedroom. Like his dad, he collects odds and ends for projects that rarely happen. Unlike his dad, he's willing to get rid of some of it. I haven't asked the kids to go through their rooms, just to help with the rest of the house, so this is impressive! I'm starting today with the living room. We've discussed what to do with everything too: clothes will go to Goodwill and a local women's and children's day shelter; books to the library bookstore and the shelter; toys to the shelter.

I'm also going to start work on my syllabus for the spring semester!

Homeschool Thoughts
We're leaving TabletClass behind, and are returning to Jacobs' Elementary Algebra for The Boy. It is not that TabletClass was bad -- on the contrary, it is very good, but Jacobs is just a better fit. And The Girl will start using AGS Basic Math Skills alongside the Key To Math series. The Boy is also gearing up for two classes at the junior college this semester: figure drawing and comparative mythology. We plan to start back up officially in a week or two (depending on the arrival of The Boy's math books), though we're still reading from the Afternoon Basket in the meantime (which I need to update!).

Lovely recent afternoon walk

Around the House, Kitchen, and Garden
We've got nothing but rain in the forecast for the next week or week and a half, after a gorgeous two weeks of icy cold sunshine, so no yard work really.

I'm making plenty of veggie-heavy soup these days, as this is definitely soup weather. Meal planning is going well these days!

Rainy days will be focused on housework, reading aloud, and planning (as detailed above), maybe watching some documentaries and movies.

Have a great first week of January!

What We're Doing These Days...

  ...It's a beautiful fall so far... 
lots of rain, followed by the leaves changing, and morning fog...

...We enjoyed Halloween... 
(costume pictures still to come)
We spent the afternoon with friends, then the evening Trick or Treating my mom's neighborhood

This is how you pick pumpkins from the pumpkin bin

The Girl's handiwork

And The Boy's

...We've Been Reading...

 We really enjoyed this book, and it led to so many interesting conversations about human rights versus a seemingly utopian society, memories, emotions, and much, much more. The movie, on the other hand? Ummm, no thanks. We did not care for it.

  But we did move on to the second book in the quartet, and although it seems very different in someways, it is just as gripping so far.

We're delving into Victorian Times after watching Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 

And we're reading about universal matters...

...And There Has Also Been...

Math (going well, but not nearly often enough)

Language arts games here and there, and now we're diving headfirst in to writing projects for both kids

Lazy afternoons either at the park with friends, or watching movies (we watched a lot of pre-Halloween films!)

Many rounds of Clue and Chess

The Boy loves, loves, loves his astronomy class, and is planning on taking sculpture in the spring

And cooking... soups, chili, casseroles, and, courtesy of The Girl, a lovely pear and chocolate upside-down cake...

Happy October!

October is my favorite month of the year. Something about the weather (we had rain today!!!), the pumpkins and squash, the leaves changing color, and of course, Halloween, all together make me feel very content.

What We're Up To...
We just started, last night, watching our Halloween-related/spooky movies, with Sleepy Hollow. Also on the list are Hocus Pocus, Practical Magic, The Addams Family, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and, quite likely, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, among others. Perhaps Phantom of the Opera as well this year? We watched Dracula last year, so maybe Frankenstein should be considered. We have been watching Penny Dreadful, and it has been intriguing to watch characters from classic horror films/novels unfold.

Math is going along well for both kids, and we're getting going slowly with language arts. We've begun reading The Giver, and that's been found to be very thought provoking so far. We do plan to watch the movie after we finish the book, for comparison. This is the first novel we have chosen for a plunge into dystopian society, at the request of both kids.

The Boy is doing very well in his astronomy class, with a high A average at the moment. He's also been back at work on his truck restoration project after a couple of weeks off. And he's been visiting car shows/air shows, and has made videos for both. The Girl spends a lot of time lately sculpting again, and we're working on our wildlife habitat. She reads a lot on her Kindle lately, both in games, and about games, and animals. She set up a fishbowl in her room for a Betta fish, painting the backside of the fishbowl with a tropical underwater scene, so that her new fish, named Pearl, would "not be bored in there." We do need to get going on the Big History Project though, which The Girl has decided she will participate in, albeit somewhat loosely.

Other Tidbits...
I love my jobs teaching/working with students. I am far more content these days than with all of last year's crazy hectic scheduling, even though we have a little less money.

It's also soup season, and that makes me happy! Last week, I made a giant pot of taco bean soup, and right now I'm also craving butternut squash-orange soup (I spice it up with smoked paprika, ginger, cumin, and a little chili powder), and The Girl wants this eggplant one.

I spent time today at the hardware store drooling over bulbs. My favorites are grape hyacinths, crocus, crocosmia, daffodils, and paperwhite narcissus, so I think there might be a bulb-purchase-and-planting day coming up soon! Other yard-based tasks to be done include harvesting olives in another month or so, clearing ground for raised beds at last, and strengthening the chicken hutch before winter gets here. I also really want to get/make a Halloween wreath for the front door by next weekend!

Enjoy your October!

Settling In...

Homeschooling this fall has been more about getting settled in, than it has been about starting a new academic year. I've made some more changes to my Learning page to more accurately reflect what we're up to, most noticeably, that I'm not doing formal spelling with The Girl after all, but I'll talk about that in a minute!

What We're Up To...
The Boy is well entrenched in another semester at the junior college. He's taking, and seriously enjoying, stellar astronomy. After each class, he comes to me with stories of his teacher, and what was learned, and I am thrilled it is going so well! In the spring, he hopes to take sculpture, and perhaps German.

As for The Girl's spelling, I am approaching it in much the same way I did with The Boy, which was correcting it as we go. Instead, I am having both of them participate in writing projects, even some collaborative pieces. The Girl is reading SO well now, and she's picking up some spelling just from reading, so I think this laid back approach could work.

Math is going well too. The Boy is continuing with TabletClass (algebra), and The Girl is zipping through the first book of Key to Fractions.

Still To Add In...
The Boy will be studying Big History this year, as we find it meshes extremely well with his science choices (astronomy this fall, biology at home in the spring). I haven't quite decided if The Girl will do this with him, but I think it is more likely she will have a year of naturalists and animal scientist biographies.

The Girl completed her first orientation at the Wildlife Rescue Center. She has two more trainings to go before she can start fostering young wild animals in the spring. She may also volunteer for some classroom visits with the education team.

And read-alouds... I have a list of dystopian literature at the request of the kids, so we just need to get to it! I'm also gathering a few books on various topics to rotate through the Afternoon Basket during fall.

Everything Else...
Roller derby is back in full session, so The Girl has practice twice a week. The Boy is still working on his truck rebuilding project once a week. I only work four days a week now, and love my jobs, despite the need for more penny pinching. I do a bootcamp workout three mornings a week, TRX once a week, and I run a couple of times a week too, so I feel better than I ever have! The Girl is going to train for her first 5k with me, one that involves chocolate, definitely a big motivation!

We lost one of our two dogs last week. She started sleeping endlessly, and stopped eating, so we knew she was going (she was 13 or 14). She died peacefully in our family room on the 12th, and we held a lovely funeral for her. We also gained a chicken, when a friend found one wandering down her street, and thought of us!

Hope everyone's fall is off to as good a start as ours, though maybe not as slow!

Fall Is On Its Way...

I love this time of year! Fall is, without a doubt, my favorite season. Crisp days, cool nights, the changing colors, pumpkins, holidays on the way....

The Boy has started back to school, and has just wrapped up his second week. He's taking stellar astronomy at the local junior college, with a fantastic teacher, so he's excited to go to class each week, and excited when he finishes class too, and gets to tell me everything he's learned!

His class is during my office hours on the same campus, which makes it easy to coordinate driving!

My teaching position is also going well! The first class was stressful... I won't lie. I actually finished it up (early) wondering if I had made a big mistake. Fast forward to today, and the class went very well! Discussions are happening, there's lots of writing going on, and I have my first set of essays to grade over the weekend!

Next week, we'll be starting back up with all our other school activities. The Boy says he's ready to work on more algebra and writing, and The Girl is definitely ready for some math. She's asked for something computer-based for spelling though, so maybe Spelling City, or ???

Other September plans...
-- Celebrating my brother's birthday today!
-- Finish stripping the front yard down... deadheading, removing the last of the dead weeds/grass.
-- Enjoying the first day of fall!
-- The Girl and I will be attending an orientation for the wildlife rescue center volunteer work she wants to do this year. Puppy petting is fun, but it just petting young puppies, and she's ready for something more.
-- Bake an apple pie for Johnny Appleseed Day
-- Make some applesauce and apple butter (to freeze) from our backyard apple tree.

How is your fall shaping up? Anything exciting, like special days/plans? Starting back to school?

Catching Up & Moving Along...

Summer has flown by so quickly! Next week, we'll be back in the thick of things, though we did manage to have a lot of fun the last couple of months.

Catching Up...

There's been fishing, hanging out in scenic spots, and -- for me -- trail running:

And a day at the local fair, thanks to a set of free tickets I won from the bank! We went on some rides, ate funnel cakes, gazed at the amazing flower show, and visited the animals!

I even have a classroom now! There's been continued truck work, and some random fun moments along the way.

Moving Along...

The Boy starts a stellar astronomy class next week, so we're shelving chemistry for now. The Girl has a new volunteer orientation coming up at the local wildlife rescue center, so fall will be spent studying and rehabilitating animals.

I start my new career next week! I have my first day planned, my syllabus written, and a few writing assignments designed/under design. And I start my own classes.

We'll start our full-on homeschooling after Labor Day. Our first read-aloud for literature will be Watership Down. For animal studies, The Girl will be reading various selections from our collection of vintage books, alongside numerous library books, and I think she and I will enjoy The Tarantula in My Purse and 172 Other Wild Pets. She and I will also work on turning our habitat plans into reality.

Hope your summers have been going well!

Remediation...

This is a somewhat difficult post for me to write. It is not easy to admit...well, not failure, but...maybe a lack of success. 

Ever the "Doubting Thomas"

My daughter is very smart. There's no doubting that. She knows so much more about animals than I could imagine knowing. She can figure out technology, apps, etc. She is creative, funny, and very passionate. She's also dyslexic, and has some processing issues.

But, when it comes to certain basics—namely math and, even more so, spelling—she lags behind where I'd like her to be. So I've come to the conclusion that eighth grade will be a Year of Remediation for her, before we reach high school.

I am trying to choose materials that I believe will work for her, and that will not make her feel "dumb" or "behind". Reading Horizons worked wonders for her reading skills. The fact that she's deep in the world of Harry Potter never fails to thrill me! She reads a lot of nonfiction too, hence much of the animal knowledge.

So what to do? What to choose? For spelling, I'm sticking with the approach that taught her to read... Orton-Gillingham. To make it simple for myself, I decided on All About Spelling, which is based on OT, and is a multisensory program (multisensory = good for my daughter).

As for math, I have a few options I am considering, with the current forerunner being AGS Basic Math Skills, which covers middle school math using 3rd-4th grade reading levels. While that is below her current reading level, I think it would make it all that much easier. I also like the layout, which is pretty uncluttered. If she didn't dislike it so much, I'd return to Saxon. Other options include CLE, or maybe Lial's Basic College Math, but would the last be overwhelming? I'm even considering Math-U-See, but really don't know that much about it yet (and there is the cost). I do think the hands-on nature of Math-U-See would work well for her though...

Anyhow, it is a journey we will undertake over the next year. Do I wish we had started sooner? Yes, but really, there is little to be gained from regret. Additionally, I think she is ready for this level of dedication at this time.