Bookish Thoughts...

We finally finished A Wrinkle In Time, and of course, the first thought to cross our minds was, what do we read next? The obvious answer for now is A Wind in the Door, since Wrinkle was so thoroughly liked by all.

But then, what about after that?

This morning, on my way to work, I saw a couple of hot air balloons, and immediately decided that after our adventures with the Murry family (I think the 3rd in the series, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, is more enjoyable for older kids even than mine), we should revisit one of my all-time favorite books... The Twenty-One Balloons. My husband then said, "After that, you should read Around the World in 80 Days. They'd love that book!"

So I think we're in for a summer of adventurous travel (yes, we keep up with read-alouds all year)!

Other titles that then came to mind include:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Time Machine
and The Phantom Tollbooth.

I know there are plenty more of this genre out there, but I am only looking at summer!

This will actually transition very nicely into our fall lit plans—books/stories referenced to in the series Once Upon a Time.

I think we'll start with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, as that also fits with adventure travel, and then (shown here in no particular order), I hope to read:

Grimm's Fairy Tales (selected stories)
The Red Fairy Book, and The Blue Fairy book (selected stories)
Pinocchio
Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales (selected stories)
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (selected stories)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Peter Pan
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Through the Looking Glass
The Lady of Shallot 
The Story of Mulan 
Beowulf: A New Telling
King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table  
Rip Van Winkle

I think that's at least sufficient to start with! 

I love book planning.

And of course, there is our own reading that is always going on...

I am currently reading The Help, on our librarian's recommendation, while waiting for The Boy to finish The Martian. The Girl is three quarters of the way through Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone! She still reads a little slowly, but hey, she reads! We're also reading The Cloud Collector's Handbook (me); Spaceflight: A Smithsonian Guide and Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide (The Boy); and Eyewitness: Mammal and Slither & Crawl (The Girl).

Other books we're thinking about, for the Afternoon Basket, include:
Frost Hollows & Other Microclimates
The Plant Hunters: True Stories of Their Daring Adventures to the Far Corners of the Earth
DNA
Random titles (and to-be-added titles) from our selection of Intriguing/Unusual History Books, such as one we have on hand right now: Outbreak! Plagues That Changed History
Death by Black Hole & Other Cosmic Quandaries 
Coville's version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which we plan to see on stage in May!

I'm sure I'll come up with more... more is never the problem when it comes to me and books!

Wrapping Up Another Week...

image courtesy of empower-u-academy.com

Seriously, where did the week go?

At the same time though, I'm glad it is Friday, and while I don't get to sleep in tomorrow (have to drive M to work), I still get a day to catch up on some stuff... housework, marking essays, puppy petting, etc., etc., etc. I won't be sleeping in Sunday either, nor will anyone else in the house, because we'll be doing a mud run! And then, I'll have an afternoon to receiver, and finish catching up on stuff... and homeschool.


I can't really say, in all honesty, that we did a lot of formal homeschooling this week, but the kids certainly continued learning a lot on their own!

The Girl...

• Volunteer work (puppy petting)
• Sewed two dresses, by hand, for dolls
• Learned to propagate hens & chicks succulents (M taught her), and then she's been out in the greenhouse each morning, checking the plants and watering as needed
• Read more of Harry Potter
• Read an interesting article with me about another possible reason for the demise of the dinosaurs
• Started watching Anne Frank: The Whole Story with The Boy and I—she's been asking to watch this for a while; and we watched some Downton Abbey, plus the first episode of Mercy Street
• Helped my mom with a church baking project
• Derby practice, worked out with me several times 
• Created a few new pieces of art

The Boy...

• Worked on the 1940s Ford he is helping restore—this week, they took out the engine, and the drive shaft for rebuilding
• Designed a rocket in a physics game he's been playing on the computer... he also worked on a few cars in a mechanic simulation game
• Spent happy hours devouring The Martian, which I'll be reading when he's done
• Read more about black holes and other space phenomena, including several articles I sent to him
• Watched Anne Frank, Downton Abbey, and Mercy Street with The Girl and I
• Attended another parkour class
• Worked on a few sketches, this time of buildings that had been long abandoned
• Worked on his notebook, into which he enters conversions, runic alphabets, and any other tidbits that interest him

Goals for Next Week...
I'm all about keeping it simple for next week, and only have three homeschooling goals:

•  Math, 4-5 lessons each
• Language Arts, 4-5 lessons/work sessions each
• Afternoon Basket (which I'll update later today)

And that's really about it for now! Have a great weekend!

linked up over at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

Thinking, Planning, Choices to be Made... UPDATED

We're thinking about fall. A few choices have been made, but there are still some to go.

For The Boy, we know he will be:

• taking art and basic welding this fall (spring 2016 still to be decided) at the local junior college. Art is for enjoyment, and the basic welding is part of the automotive repair training certificate program. The Boy has decided that he intends to complete the automotive repair certificate program, and take all applicable tests to become a fully certified mechanic by the age of 17 or 18.
• doing an overview of world history with the Big History Project  World History: Our Human Story, as per California state graduation requirements. Not that he has to follow those, as we are a private school, but he wants to "just in case", and this seemed the easiest route.  Plus, we like the K12 books! I think he'll just be reading through it for a "survey" approach.
• reading a lot. I'm putting together a list of suggested books, mostly dystopian or sci fi, but will leave it up to him as to what he actually reads off the list, aiming for at least one book per month. He'll be listening in on family read alouds as well.
• algebra. Which program to use? He and I are looking at and comparing: Life of Fred Beginning Algebra, Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1, TabletClass Algebra, and ChalkDust Algebra. This is proving to be a difficult decision! We do like Fred, but I worry that it isn't enough.... and video lectures might be helpful. I just don't know right now.  Update: He ended up choosing Teaching Textbooks as he wants the step-by-step instruction at this point.
• he will probably be finishing off reading the roughly 3/4 of Conceptual Physics that he neglected this last year. Or ????  Science will be integrated with his history program, using additional readings and documentaries, maybe lectures from The Joy of Science if I can get it.

Then, still up in the air:

• writing. I have The Lively Art of Writing on hand, as well as Fairview's Guide to Composition & Essay Writing, and both are quite solid, but then I love Brave Writer, and Help for High School is supposed to be fantastic. He might also be doing Excavating English, or using something like English From the Roots Up, or Word Roots.

For The Girl, we know she will be:

• for science, literature, and some light history (see below too), I'm putting together a plan based off of the Scientists in the Field series, adding in either literature or biographies with each title we cover. She'll be doing hands-on science through nature studies.
• doing some light history this year, mainly through books like Girls Who Looked Under Rocks, Girls Think of Everything,  and Girls Who Rocked the World. We'll just read through a profile each week, and she might keep a notebook/timeline of some sort. I decided that since she'll be hitting high school in another couple of years, and will do world then American history at that point, we could go "light" this year.
• spelling. Her invented spelling is very, very interesting, but hard for anyone besides me to actually read. I think I've settled on Spelling Works, though I am also considering Spelling Workout, or Megawords. I'm also looking at Apples & Pears, as it is supposed to be very good for dyslexic students.
• and plenty of reading. She is finding books she really enjoys, though I will continue making suggestions, and I will be reading aloud to her, both from family read aloud books, and books she would love, but that are above her current reading capabilities.

And up in the air:

• math. Math Mammoth? Life of Fred Fractions, then Decimals & Percents (both after some fall multiplication/division review with Math Mammoth)? Saxon 7/6? She says no to Teaching Textbooks. And thank you Erin, for mentioning Math Essentials. This looks like it might be right up Cassia's alley!
• and writing. Again, it comes down to Brave Writer (the author suggested Partnership Writing to begin as The Girl has not done a lot of writing), or a more "standard" approach, with something like Jump In (although I might have to do a fair amount to "secularize" that one), or maybe Evan Moor's Writing Fabulous Sentences & Paragraphs , or something like Core Skills Writing 6?

And for both, I know we will be:

• using the old Great Books academy schedule (no longer available on their website!) of math, writing, science, and literature 4 days a week, then a 5th day with history, geography, the arts, and maybe philosophy or logic (I'm leaning toward The Fallacy Detective). Of course, our time frames will likely differ from what they have listed, example: The Boy may well spend an hour 4 days a week doing math, not 30 minutes!
• using our Afternoon Basket, though I haven't decided quite how yet. I know we want to read good books together, and enjoy some more of Richard Halliburton's travels (geography), etc., but I have to put it together.

Reading...

 "The whole world opened to me when I learned to read." 

Mary McLeod Bethune 

For The Boy, it was Diary of a Wimpy Kid... the book that hooked him indefinitely on reading. The Girl has at last found her hook, The Time Cat. She reads aloud to me little snippets that she finds especially beautiful, and when not reading, talks eagerly of returning to her book. She carries it with her wherever she goes, in case there is a "moment to read".

Wordy Wednesday...Review!

Quite a while back, I shared my first review of Reading Horizons, on Orton-Gillingham based intensive phonics program, especially for kids that struggle with reading. This program came highly recommended by a friend I absolutely trust with such things. So I had to check it out, as The Girl was really struggling with reading.

While I have never officially had her tested, showed nearly every sign of dyslexia in every online assessment I could find. Seriously. Of course, it took me ages to get around to figuring out that this might be the issue. Until that time, we had tried the "normal" processes of learning to read, the ones that worked with her older brother. We worked on the alphabet, half of which she forgot again nearly every day after "learning" it. We worked on letter sounds, with little progress. I tried Explode the Code, Reading Pathways, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, The Reading Lesson, Reading Eggs... you name it, it probably found its way into our home at some point.

And still, she wasn't reading beyond cvc words, and a few sight words, with very little fluency.

Then Jessica found Reading Horizons, and told me about it. Actually, she told me about it a few times before I gave in and tried it out, all the while thinking in the back of my mind, "Oh geez, another program that won't work." So I talked (via email) to the people at Reading Horizons, and first, I will say they were very helpful, friendly, and not pushy. I appreciate that! I was given a trial of the interactive software program (for ages 10 and up) for The Girl to work through, and as you read in my first review of Reading Horizons, I saw progress almost right away, though "At first, truthfully, The Girl was a little reluctant to use it. She thought the first few lessons were "just dumb. I know what a bag is!", but, we persevered (at my insistence), and she soon changed her tune as the lessons ramped up."

She went on to finish most of the program (I'd love to have her finish it someday). And what do I think now? I think that this program gave my daughter the confidence and skills she needed to finally decode words. Put it this way, she went from Bob Books being a pain, to currently reading The Hunger Games. I know, its not "fine" literature, but she's reading, and enjoying it!

How does it work?

Each lesson both introduces new sounds/reading skills, while at the same time reviewing and building on those previously covered. The instructions are all verbal, which was fantastic for my struggling reader -- she liked that she could do the lessons herself. This alone gave her a sense of accomplishment she had been lacking before. The program also constantly reviewed high frequency words...you know, those that we see a lot in text, such as the, you, not, that, of, if, and so forth. Each lesson also includes vocabulary practice, which further builds on the skills introduced in the lesson. Having to mark words actually made her slow down, and think about what sounds each letter makes, which definitely helped with her decoding. And, when students make enough progress, the library is unlocked, and they can work on reading a variety of passages based on their current reading level! And each passage also has an introductory page, with "challenge" words that appear in the reading. If they struggle with any of these words, they can click on them to hear them read aloud. Along the way, grammar and punctuation, as well as keyboarding skills, are all part of the lessons.

Parents can set the threshold at which the student passes, and so I set it at 85%... anything below that and she had to repeat that section of the lesson. There's also a dashboard which shows clearly how many attempts were made at various skills/lesson sections, and how much time was spent on the lesson. This helped me see exactly where she was struggling, so I could help her through it.

We did take a long break in there from using it, as she began to develop her reading skills and wanted to try them out "in the real world". Long enough really that when we went back to use the program, because we were both anxious to see more skills developed, my subscription had expired. But, that turned out to not be a problem, as the folks at Reading Horizons quickly set me up with the Elevate program, for kids (and adults!) 10 and up.

I am delighted, and amazed, at how much this program helped my daughter. She was at an age where she was starting to feel ashamed of not being able to read well, when she could see that all her friends were fine with it. Some days, she's told me, she just felt stupid, which is never how I would want my kids to feel! So, thank you!!!! By the way, she also reads all the common, day-to-day things, like movie descriptions, labels on packages at the store, street signs, and so on, and so on, plus she's writing short stories, all of which she did not do before.

Doing a Happy Dance...

Yes, I was literally doing a happy dance in the kitchen yesterday, albeit a quiet one so I didn't disturb the wonderful activity going on in another room. And why was I doing this happy dance? I'll give you a hint...

This is something I was despairing of ever getting to see. If you remember back, we have been through endless frustrations with reading, including that she just did not want to read (here, and here) -- zip, zero, zilch interest in reading -- an attitude that has been plaguing me for some time, as you can see from the dates of the linked posts. I realize now of course that much of that attitude was wrapped up in her dyslexia, something that made her feel she couldn't read.

Anyhow, I digress from the happiness! Yesterday, she asked me if she could read a book to herself (I won't name it because she's embarrassed it is "such a little kid book"... her words, not mine). She read for about half an hour. And then she came out to the kitchen and told me "Reading is more fun than I thought it was. What can I read next? Can I read Charlotte's Web soon? I want something a little easier first though."

So I was casting around in my mind for something "a little easier", something to get her hooked on chapter books, and I realized that out in the garage, I have a rather large collection of Magic Treehouse books from The Boy's early childhood. I'm pulling them out today, as The Girl is excited by the title of the first one -- Dinosaurs Before Dark. She does love dinosaurs!

We talked in the car on the way to pick The Boy up from fencing last night, and she's also looking forward to reading the Pippi Longstocking books, and the original Oz series. And no, I am not going to push this on her. I will give her the time and the books, but I don't want to shove reading down her throat. This is a fragile new state we're finding ourselves in, and I want her to enjoy reading, not feel pushed into it.

For now, I am totally satisfied, beyond satisfied (maybe ecstatic is a better word?) with the words  

"Reading is more fun than I thought it was. What can I read next?"

Week One Down...

Phew!

Actually, the week, as far as homeschooling, went very well. Better than I expected our first week to go! We changed a few things around, but that's to be expected. We had some big hits, and no misses (yet anyway).

A slightly old picture, with her pal Emily

THE GIRL

The Girl tackled Saxon Math 6/5 this week, as well as a few lessons from Reading Horizons. The math was, this early in the year, mostly review work... a lot of pattern/skip counting, which I explained to her is a great way to practice multiplication. She finally noticed the pattern the 9 times table makes, and was very excited to share her discovery with me-- "Mom, the 10's go up, and the 1's go down, and then halfway through, you just turn the numbers around, and if you add the 10's and the 1's...they always add up to 9!" I remember too when The Boy made that discovery a few years back, and it made that part of multiplication so much easier. In reading, she worked on common words, "ed" endings, and silent e words. We also started reading Dr. Dolittle's Puddleby Adventures, which she very much enjoys. We read from A Child's Story of the Animal World (our "new" science/zoology "textbook") about the animal kingdom, and small creatures, such as the amoeba. And she watched a couple of episodes of Blue Planet. How we love David Attenborough! The Girl says "his voice is soothing and he knows SO much about animals!"

We did not get to our writing plan this week, but will add that in next week. I also hope she'll apply her reading lessons more next week to actual reading. I picked up a few library books for her, and we've been writing each other notes, plus I leave her a note every morning when I go to work and she's still sleeping. And I need to pick out some projects for her to do from The Amateur Zoologist.

Another slightly old picture

THE BOY

Something has happened with The Boy. Somehow over the summer, my boy really started growing up. He took all responsibility for his own work this week, and did everything I gave him to do without complaint. Not only without complaint, but happily!

This week he tackled his first lessons in The Art of Problem Solving. Now, if you have never seen this math series, it's pretty tough. It is what is called "discovery based", meaning that they give him several problems to solve at the beginning of the lesson, and then explain ways to approach them. This fosters a different sense of understanding than math he has done in the past, and so far he absolutely loves it. I had him sit down yesterday and read, a second time, through their solutions, and he kept saying "I never thought of it this way, but they make it easier". He did manage to get nearly every problem correct this week, so I think we're off on the right foot. He also read a chapter in Conceptual Physics, defined the key terms, and answered a couple of the comprehension questions, in addition to watching a lesson from How Things Work, which involved fairly copious note-taking. And he watched an episode of Into the Universe, wrote an informative paragraph on the uses and benefits of nylon, and read several chapters in The Phantom Tollbooth. He also worked, on his own, on a few drawing projects from Drawing: The Complete Course. And he did lesson one in German, from Duolingo.

I realized yesterday that next year, he will be the same age I was when I started summer art classes at the local junior college as a concurrent high school student. He is very excited about the idea of trying out college that way next fall! He figures he'll start with an art class, then maybe add in German, and then start taking placement tests for math and English. In a nutshell, that means we have another two years, more or less, to finish building a really strong language arts and math base. YIKES!

Next week I want him to continue working with Write Source 2000, to develop other types of paragraphs, and to brainstorm a writing project. And I think I might add in readings/projects/videos from The New Way Things Work, since the Conceptual Physics readings don't take him long.

I asked him point blank if he noticed I ramped up his workload this year. His response was "Yeah, I noticed, but I like it."

And a really old picture!

 TOGETHER

We did an art project (Drawing Upside Down) together that turned out to be tougher than I anticipated. We watched an episode of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, all about what music really means. We started our logic/arguement course, which, as it had Monty Python clips, was a huge hit. The Girl even insisted we take the quiz at the end of the section we did, so I let them answer the questions, getting 9 out of 10 right. We read about Crete in The Book of the Ancient Greeks (as well as a chapter in The Human Odyssey, but the kids and I prefer the Mills' book), learned about the origins of the English alphabet with The Word Snoop, analyzed some denotations and connotations with Figuratively Speaking, made progress through The Twenty-One Balloons, and started The Marvelous Land of the Snergs just last night (our bedtime reading), which so far is just absolutely delightful. We also started our Sunday geography studies, using DK's Geography of the World and outline maps from National Geographic.

Next week we'll add in grammar and poetry, and I plan to read from Tales of Troy and Greece, especially the stories of the Minotaur, and of Daedalus and Icarus, since those were specifically mentioned in our history readings. We'll tackle our geography reading with The Glorious Adventure, nature reading with Swampwalker's Journal, listen to some more Bach (the composer of the month)... and I am still planning our art project.

Looking at everything here, it has been a good and full first week! I am very pleased with what we're attempting, and how well it has started out. Now only 35 weeks to go!

Language Arts Lineup...

We're getting ready to start a new academic year at the end of the month, and are taking a mishmash approach to language arts. It blends the Brave Writer Lifestyle with some great tools I have compiled, and I think it will work well for us.

So, here's the WRITING plan...


Each day (Monday through Thursday anyway), we'll start with a rotating focus, with both kids and I working together (a lot of this will be oral work, a little more so than written).

Mondays (our short day due to my college schedule) will be for poetry. Now, I have not quite decided yet if I want to use a poetry teaching resource (Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?, or Knock at a Star: A Child's Introduction to Poetry, or ???) OR if I simply want to introduce the kids to poets and go for the full poetry teatime experience. Hmmm. This will be followed by free writing for both (just 10-15 minutes). The Boy will be using Unjournaling for ideas when needed, while The Girl and I are embarking on a year-long adventure (see below).

Tuesdays will have a grammar focus. We're going to try out The Giggly Guide to Grammar, which is described as "Shel Silverstein meets Strunk and White and the results are both hilarious and instructive." Then the kids will split up for other work (see below).

Wednesdays will be all about literary elements, with Figuratively Speaking, again followed by independent work.

And on Thursdays, we'll explore the history of our language, and its oddities, word roots, and more, with The Word Snoop. This will also be another day of more independent work for each, though sometimes I am sure we'll take a break from the "work" of writing to play language games.

As far as independent work, The Boy will be working on more academic writing -- essays and the like. We've decided that he will finish working through Thinking in Threes, which is really thorough for basic essay writing. After that, he'll move into BWL writing projects and written history/science narrations, creative writing, etc.

For The Girl, we (she and I together) decided to really foster creativity and just get her more at ease with writing. So on Mondays and Tuesdays, she'll be working on free writing -- short stories, or longer ones if she chooses. Tuesday evenings, I can correct spelling, etc., and then on Wednesday and Thursday, she can work on copying (copywork!) the story out and illustrating it. Sometimes we may work in other ideas/activities, and leave the "rough drafts" as is. At the end of the year though, the hope is her spelling will improve in context, AND she'll have a whole book of her own illustrated writings!

As fa as the READING plan, The Girl will continue to work through the Reading Horizons program, then I'm hoping she'll move into active reading. After reading my friend Jessica's posts on this series, I think The Girl may enjoy many of the titles. And she's been talking about wanting to read the original Oz series, which we are lucky enough to own in its entirety. And of course, I will continue reading aloud to her -- you can see the list of hopefuls here.

I also plan on actually assigning some reading to The Boy, just one book per "block" of scheduled study. He's interested mainly in dystopian/Steampunk/sci-fi literature right now, so his list of assigned books (bottom of the post) reflects that. I will re-read/skim them alongside him, so we can discuss the books, something we enjoyed doing with The Hunger Games trilogy. I am certain he will continue his fairly heavy load of free reading as well!

Can't wait to see how it all works! And if you have any recommendations on the poetry bit, I would love to hear them!

What We're Up To These Days...

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but we've been busy living!

Last week:

Swimming at the river, where we ran into friends, sat in the sun, splashed around looking for intriguing rocks, explored the river banks, skipped stones (The Boy is best at this), and enjoyed an active but lazy-feeling afternoon.

Gelatin-printing workshop at the library, part of their free Events for Teens. It was an okay workshop, but the kids said the instructor was not super enthusiastic, and there wasn't a whole lot of instruction.

Park day of course, which is always fun! I am glad to see The Girl, who has always hung back on the edges (gee, I wonder where she gets that from?) participating more in games with the other kids. And she adores climbing trees these days!

Bike rides, fencing practice, roller derby practice, grilling, long mornings in the garden weeding and watering.


This week:

Umm, not so good. We had planned on an afternoon at the river, but The Boy came down with something on Sunday, which unfortunately and painfully involved stomach cramps and vomiting.

He seemed better, but still shaky on Monday, so no fencing practice. Then, out of the blue Monday night, The Girl and I came down with the same thing. I swear, one minute I was fine, and the next, stomach cramps, and a night of vomiting.

Yesterday we laid around the house, dozing off and on. I did manage to stay awake for my telephone unemployment interview, which went fine -- they thought I worked for an actual school and might be on summer vacation, so I quickly rectified that situation, and my unemployment, pitiful though it is, has been approved. While we had rescheduled the river visit for this day, it obviously did not work out.

Today, the poor Girl is still sick. The Boy is still sleeping at the moment. I feel much better, but not at all hungry, and my usual morning coffee did not taste good, so I'm back to herbal tea. I am hoping that The Boy will have recovered sufficiently for today's library event, which is a cartooning class that comes very highly recommended. And maybe fencing. The Girl is sorry, a little, to miss the class, but a) doesn't want to get anyone else sick which is very thoughtful of her, and b) is much more interested in the henna art workshop coming up.

We were supposed to go to a pool with friends tomorrow, but I am calling that off (well, our participation in it anyway), and The Girl won't attend derby practice either. She wants to recover fully for derby boot camp which start next week, and goes for 2 hours a night, 3 nights a week, for 2 weeks! And both kids want to recover for park day.

The Girl has also agreed to start up Reading Pathways   Reading Horizons   (or ???... she needs practice/fluency work) again next week, and finish it (maybe 3-4 weeks of good, solid work). That was supposed to be this week, but I am hardly going to make a puking kid sit there  reading aloud  doing computer-based work. And my attempts at establishing a morning yoga routine will wait until I feel all better too.

So how is YOUR summer going?

Officially Irritated... and Confused...

If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you have probably realized that we've has issues with The Girl and reading for ages now. She is still working on reading. She seems to be making good progress (we're using Reading Pathways right now for fluency), but I have noticed something over the past year that really irritates me.

She can read. And she says she can't. What I mean is that she'll tell me what something says without really thinking about it, and then she'll say "I was just guessing." It is like she wants to deny being able to read. And I am not the only one that has noticed this. Even The Boy has commented on it ("Mom, do you think she really looked at that paragraph, and picked out the word bicycle by guessing it?"). She also searches for things on my sister's iPad, indicating that she's spelling out words she claims she cannot read. And she'll sit for an hour looking intently at a book, tell me what it is about (which indicates comprehension, right?), and then say "I was just looking at the pictures."

WHY is she telling everyone she can't do it if she can? Nerves maybe? (And no, I do not have money for more testing, or tutors right now).

Thanks for letting me vent! I'm just going to keep going on the path we're on until she does read, or at least until she admits she can. And I think I'll maybe give her the Sonlight reading test and add in readers just below whatever level she scores at as well. Or maybe it is just time to get back into Reading Horizons.

On a brighter note, she's moving up from junior-junior roller derby practices to regular junior roller derby practices! Instead of skating with 7-10 year olds, no contact, she'll be doing full contact with 10-17 year olds! And she is super excited! We don't expect her to make the team roster (they try to rotate) any time soon, since our schedule limits us to one practice a week at this time, but at least she'll be raising her skill level, and she won't be bored at practice any more!

And On the Agenda...
The Girl will finish Life of Fred Farming today, and then go into Goldfish, although she's been talking about Saxon again. I think I should probably give her the placement test for that first and see where she really is now. And she decided she needs to learn cursive writing, right now, so I wrote out all the letters for her, and she's been working on it ever since!

The Boy has his first struggle with a Bridge (i.e. test) in Life of Fred, but did well enough on the second attempt to pass. I may have him do a third Bridge though, because I really don't want him moving ahead if he's not getting it. And he's trying out some writing work with Thinking in Threes this week. I have come to the conclusion that as good as Writing With Skill and Writing With Ease are,  that being the curriculum-tweaker I am, I prefer to use them as tools, not necessarily as written.

We watched some more of Mankind: The History of Us All yesterday, and read from Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery, as well as Black Ships Before Troy. I'm going to read to The Girl from A Child's Story of the Animal World about salamanders and millipedes, both of which she found in the backyard this week. The Boy has some more physics videos to watch, and some studying for the National Mythology Exam.

I'd like to work in some nature studies again, but we'll just see how the week plays out!

Week 1, 2014... A Light But Good Week

We're easing back in after having December off from formal homeschooling, and I have to say that for a whole month (plus) off, it seemed to disappear in the twinkle of an eye! Regardless, we got back to work this week, and it was good!

We started out the week with a trip to the coast. The weather was so warm, we were down to t-shirts and tank tops for over an hour before it began to cool off again!

There was some splashing around...

Lovely views...

Wet sand to play with... 

Shells and shell bits to collect...

Some general watching of the waves...

 Some good father-daughter time...

A glorious sunset...

 

Then tranquility...

And finally, time to say goodbye to the ocean...

In math, we have set Saxon aside, at least for the moment. The Boy picked back up with Life of Fred Fractions, and tried out some Zaccaro Challenge Math, which being about astronomy/light years/etc., required calculator use, something he is not used to. It is a skill I think he should learn, so we worked on that together. The Girl tried out Zaccaro Primary Challenge Math, going through levels one and two for the first couple of chapters. We started on division (with 10s) as part of this, and so we'll be working on that skill more next week. Next week I would like to work in a day of math games/activities, perhaps something from the Family Math books I have, or from The Book of Perfectly Perilous Math!

In language arts, The Girl worked through a review of short vowel words in Reading Pathways. Truthfully, much of the book is review work at this point, but she needs the work in fluency. She did some free writing on her own. The Boy read a couple of passages from A Christmas Carol in Write With the Best, and then used Write Source 2000 to review parts of speech. Next week, I'll add back in Hot Fudge Monday and perhaps some Brave Writer exercises.

From the Afternoon Basket, we started learning about philosophy with Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery, and a lot about Pompeii with The Complete Book of Marvels. We also read about the periodic table, atomic weight, and more, in The Magic of Reality. The kids were so fascinated with Pompeii that we ended up watching a documentary -- Pompeii, Back From the Dead -- as well (I recommend it!), and then last night discussion about atomic weight led to a great conversation about early alchemists! Hopefully, next week we'll add in mathematical reading, with The Man Who Counted.

For our Block Study, we read a couple of chapters from The Ancient Greek World, and started reading through the D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. Next week, we'll add in Black Ships Before Troy, which is waiting for me at the library! We might add in some documentaries, and maybe a movie or two as well. I'd like to do some art, and a project or two during the next few weeks. And, I would like to get through more of The Ancient Greek World next week.

As for art, I did post a couple of Matisse's pieces on the fridge, but we didn't do any art projects, so that is a definite "must" for the upcoming Sunday. I did put a copy of the sound recording of Peter and the Wolf on hold at the library, for our music studies. Naturally, the kids have heard it before, and seen the film version, but it is always fun to listen to!

As for everything else, the kids continue to enjoy their Christmas gifts of bicycles and scooters. They biked down to the local park this week, and rode around for a while (I walked). Today, they are off to their park day with friends, and scooters. The Boy returned to fencing this week, and has his first "senior" in-house tournament tomorrow. The Girl is on the fence about an activity at the moment... she's not sure if she wants to return to roller derby right now, nor is she sure about karate, so we've put that on the back burner for the moment. I start back to school on Monday Thursday evening, with a class in British American lit/feminist theory, and M has a job interview next week as well (keep your fingers crossed!), so we have a lot going on! As far as independent studies, The Girl and I read about life in Siberia in Faces Magazine, and she watched a documentary on sea creatures. The Boy read a bit about aircraft history in Flight, and I've "assigned" him the task of watching one episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos each week. There was quite a lot of building with Keva planks this week (one of last year's Christmas gifts!), plenty of drawing, and a good bit of Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, as well as the last bit of Percy Jackson & the Battle of the Labyrinth, which reminds me, I need to put the next [audio] book in that series on hold. Next week, I hope to get in some more of A Wrinkle in Time as well.

I hope you all had a good week, and that you have a great weekend!

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast....

Slow down, you move too fast. 

You got to make the morning last. 

Just kicking down the cobble stones. 

Looking for fun and feelin' groovy.

(Simon & Garfunkel)

I've had this song running through my head for a few days now, so I'm slowing things down. On purpose. Aiming for much more Tortoise, and much less Hare. First and foremost, The Girl and Reading Horizons. We've been doing the lessons nearly every day, and while she's making progress, I think we'd do better if we slowed down a little. My awesome friend Jessica has offered to send me some of her teaching materials for the program, which, as we're doing just the online version, I don't have. I am looking forward to seeing if we can go more in-depth with this!

Which means, yes, she'll still be working through the program in the fall. But, the further we get into it, the more okay I am with that. In addition to basic reading skills, she's learning spelling, grammar, and all that!

With both kids, I decided we're not quite ready for the Kilgallon materials I listed in this post. With further research, I realized that the Kilgallons assume a basic familiarity with the parts of speech, with clauses, and so on. I'd like to take some time to build that up a little more first, so back to my original plan of using Grammar-Land: Grammar in Fun for the Children of Schoolroom-Shire. This lovely book introduces all the parts of speech and how they work together through a humorous story. Another blogger made free worksheets for it, which we may or may not use.

We're not rushing through history now, or reading, or anything else. We're taking time to enoy the journey!

We are having great success so far though with Right Brained Multiplication & Division! The kids are easily multiplying and dividing by 0, 1, 10 and 11. I think we tackle two's next. And The Boy has finally, with the help of Khan Academy, and yours truly, paper and pencil in hand, figured out how division works. He kept trying to do all the problems in his head, so I made him sit down with me, and go through the process five or six times, on paper. And now he says he "gets how it works"!

He's also very excited about the idea of using Jousting Armadillos! We sat down together and looked through the book online. And  I have to say, they have amazing customer service, and I haven't even ordered anything yet! I did email the author with a couple of questions, and he not only got back to me very quickly, and thoroughly, but then another teacher from the private school that put these books out also emailed me, to answer another part of the questions I asked! The Boy is thinking he'll be doing a Life of Fred/Armadillos combo in the fall, which I think would work well.

So, slow down! Enjoy the journey instead of rushing for the finish line! Stepping off my soapbox now!

Smooth Sailing... Mostly...

We had a good week, overall. We didn't do quite as much as I hoped, but we made some good progress!

The Boy

I've temporarily, through the end of our school year, dropped writing for him, to give him more time to concentrate on math. He worked through a few lessons in his Saxon book, and we've noticed, he only makes mistakes when he doesn't write the problem out and/or show his work. I always check his work right after he finishes, and then we go over what went wrong, and I have him correct his work.

He's continuing his reading through the Hitchhiker's Guide series, especially since we got him this book for his birthday...

He also worked on several projects this week: he's started a very intricate model car; worked on a film project; built various Lego Star Wars aircraft; watched a few episodes of Top Gear (all about cars!); and helped his dad move a bunch of rocks out in the backyard, leftover from one of my brother-in-law's unfinished projects.

The Girl

She's taking a break from math right now to focus more on reading. She worked through another few lessons in Reading Horizons, and read to me from her Elson Reader. She's still enjoying

And I have a small stack of "early/easy readers" for her to start working through. At first, when we started with Reading Horizons, she refused to do any additional reading with me, but now that her confidence is soaring, she's perfectly willing to try!

And we're both really enjoying Emi and the Rhino Scientist, from the Scientists in the Field series. If you haven't read any of these books, I highly recommend them! We also loved re-reading this version of Rapunzel - absolutely gorgeous illustrations...


She has helped with cooking this week, and weeding in the front yard. She's working on sewing projects at my mom's, and enjoying an episode here and there of Sabrina: The Teenage Witch. She enjoyed Melissa Joan Hart in Clarissa Explains It All, and was thrilled to find another series with the same actress (and believe me, I'd rather her watch these than a lot of the garbage marketed at "tweens" these days!)

All of Us

We're really enjoying reading through these books...

We read, in them, about early humans, the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, early astronomy, language and writing, mathematics in ancient India, and the inventions of gunpowder and paper in China, among other topics. The kids had some interesting questions and observations, such as "Why do we use some Roman names in the days of the week [Sunday, Monday, Saturday], and then Germanic names for the rest?", and "Why don't we still base the months on moon cycles?", and "Do you think gunpowder was an accidental invention?" We talked about the concepts of yin and yang, multiple gods, Ayurveda and other ancient forms of practicing medicine, and probably a lot more I can't remember at the moment! Reading about ancient India in A Little History of Science led us to watch the first episode of The Story of India.

This all really makes me happy - the kids are engaged, we're following those enchanting rabbit trails, and having really good discussions! This is what I want in our homeschooling!

We're more than halfway through with both our daytime and bedtime read-alouds at the moment, those being The Trumpet of the Swan and Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone (and The Boy wants to know why they changed the name from Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone before publishing it in the U.S.?) In the evenings, we're also enjoying a few TV series, among them Once Upon a Time, and Eureka, so twisted fairy tales and [theoretical] science make up a good portion of conversation on those evenings!

Other Stuff

For P.E., we've been heading down to the local elementary school after hours, to use the playground, shoot some hoops, run short races, and so on. For art, there was a lot of sidewalk chalk drawing/painting going on, and The Girl has been designing dresses all week, after watching some Downton Abbey with me. We've been cooking dinner on the grill a lot, since the weather has been really nice lately... upper 70's, some low to mid 80's, and crystal clear. This afternoon, we're off to our usual park day, this time with lemon mini-cupcakes in tow for a celebration-with-friends of The Boy's recent birthday. And then this weekend, the kids will be participating in their first political protest, the March Against Monsanto. We all feel really strongly about this issue, and I think they're old enough to become more politically aware.

Hope you all had a good week too!

Review #1: Reading Horizons

Reading Horizons is a fairly intensive program, aimed at helping struggling readers. As I have one of those, I decided it would definitely be worth a try. We're using the interactive software for ages 10-adult.

At first, truthfully, Cassia was a little reluctant to use it. She thought the first few lessons were "just dumb. I know what a bag is!", but, we persevered (at my insistence), and she soon changed her tune as the lessons ramped up! Each lesson presents a sound/set of sounds, and has the student complete a variety of exercises to really cement the concepts. They work in lessons on grammar, punctuation, and more, along the way. There are also built-in reviews of "Most Common Words", words such as "the", "you", "people", etc. Many of the lessons have a secondary part, which is vocabulary review of the concepts just learned, as well as those from previous lessons.

The first chapter/unit went by pretty quickly, as a lot of it was review work for her. We're in the second chapter/unit now, and while there's still some review, it is definitely getting more challenging for her!

What I like about this program is that I can see her developing confidence. It used to be that when I asked her to read to me (outside the constraints of the program), she would really resist, I think mainly from a feeling that she couldn't do it, or would at least struggle in the process. While she's still not a fluent reader, yet, she is now willing to try, and she's doing pretty well! I like that there is a lot of review built in--this is something that works well with her (like the spiral approach in Saxon Math). And that I can set a passing percentage for the lessons... I have it set at 85% as a minimum for moving on, though she hasn't scored anything under 90% so far.

Let's just say that yesterday, I caught her reading a story in the Teacher's Guide to her Elson Reader! She said "It's pretty hard, but I did read some of it." And believe me, that is a HUGE step up for the girl who claimed she would never be able to read!

Disclaimer: I did receive a free copy of the interactive software in return for reviews.

Weekly Report: Kicking Myself...

image courtesy of mobilebeat

I've written about language arts, specifically writing, here, here, and probably in a few other places. My original plan was to keep it fun and loose, but at the same time, panic was setting in... would my kids be prepared to actually write well in the future? I bought a secondhand copy of The Complete Writer a while back--on the shelf it went, and on the shelf it stayed, until this week. This week, I pulled it out and started using level 1 with The Girl and level 3 with The Boy.

And now I am kicking myself! The kids are giving me these fantastic narrations/summaries! They love the copywork, and next week I'll be starting dictation with The Boy as well, using the approach recommended in The Writer's Jungle (a little at a time, in other words). I was worried that WWE/WWS would be too repetitive and too restrictive for them, but they are really enjoying language arts right now.

We'll definitely be continuing with this program. I am not sure yet if I will buy the workbook for WWE (The Girl), or if we will use our own sources. My husband really likes the looks of WWS for The Boy in the fall as well.

As to the rest of the week...

Saxon Math is still a big hit. We did take a day off from formal math to play beanbag toss/skip counting/multiplication in the backyard, working through 3's, 4's, 5's... up to 10's. I finally got the tests for Saxon 6/5 so that we can begin jumping The Boy ahead a little, since what he's doing now is not much of a challenge.

Science was all about nature this week. We read about frogs, metal ore, and swallows. We planted our tomatoes and peppers, and some heather in the front yard. I showed the kids how to divide lamb's ear, with which we are making a border along the flower beds that border the small lawn in the front yard. We hunted through the yard to find some of the mantises we released recently, and found quite a number of them! The Girl found 8 or 9 on the lemon balm alone!

In history, we read a few of the You Wouldn't Want to be books (we're using this awesome chronological list of the titles) - always a big hit here! Next week, we'll be finishing up the Egyptians, then on to ancient China and India! Maybe we'll finally watch this whole series.

We read about Iguaza Falls in Richard Halliburton's book; started the story of Perseus in A Wonder Book for Girls & Boys (we're only reading the actual Greek mythology stories in this, not the Tanglewood bits), and decided that once we finish The Road to Oz, we'll start reading through the Harry Potter series at bedtime. We also read the story of Hamlet, which I chose since I am reading the play itself for my Shakespeare class.

photo courtesy of Adrian Limani

I am happy to report that The Girl got past her mental block with Reading Horizons. She's definitely making progress with this program, and I am over the moon excited about that!

She's even starting to make a list of books she wants to read herself. Among them: the Ramona series; the All of a Kind Family series; Diary of a Wimpy Kid; and a few others I can't think of offhand. She has never made a list of books to read before, unless it was a list of books she wanted me to read to her.

Believe me when I say this is a huge breakthrough!!!

So overall, it has been a good week! Next week, we'll continue with Saxon and the Complete Writer. We'll get back to K12's History Odyssey, and BFSU. Yes, back to Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding! What can I say, other than that with all three volumes, it is perhaps the most comprehensive science program for kids I have come across! We'll be starting volume 2 in the fall, with topics like Brownian motion, atomic motion, parallel circuits, and convection currents. This means wrapping up volume 1 at long last! I figure it'll give me a chance to work in some units/chapters from the Prentice Hall Science Explorer texts I bought too.

Hope you all had a good week! Enjoy your weekend too! Ours will be busy with an in-house fencing tournament, and a skate-a-thon.