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.

Monday Musings Flyby....

I'm short on time at the moment, but thought I'd quickly post so that it doesn't seem we have fallen off the face of the earth!

What have we been up to? Well.....

This boy went and turned FIFTEEN on Saturday. FIFTEEN. We took him, along with his best buddy, to a classic car show, and out for burgers, so it was a good day! 

I am in constant disbelief that it's been that many years already. I mean, it seems like this was just yesterday...

Anyhow, here's this week's super quick agenda:

Math -- chapter four in Algebra for The Boy

Prodigy for The Girl (I adore this program!)

Some writing/spelling

More of A Wind in the Door

More Downton (we're on season 5 now!)

I have to finish grading essays

Working out

Housework

I hope you all have a great week!

 

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!

Upgrading the Afternoon Basket...

Our use of our Afternoon Basket seems to be waning a bit lately--it feels almost a bit stale since we've been focusing much of it outside the range I wanted to focus on this year (i.e. too many add-ons to history and science, not enough good literature).

I have plans now to refresh it, to change it up a bit to more closely align with what I am trying to impart to the kids, and to simplify. I want to rotate books through it a little better as well, so with that said, here is what I am thinking:

Sundays
Geographical explorations with Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels

Mondays
Shakespeare with Tales From Shakespeare (I have a bit more time for everything on Mondays, and these stories are a little on the longer side, and more complex)

Tuesdays
Nature reading, which for now will be My Life with the Chimpanzees

Wednesdays
Fairy tales -- we're reading through The Scottish Fairy Tale Book at the moment

Thursdays
Poetry with The Barefoot Book of Classic Poems and (because we have more time on Thusdays) Greek mythology with Hawthorne's A Wonder Book for Boys & Girls in preparation for next fall's lit studies.

So, each day we'll start with a reading from the Afternoon Basket, and then we'll move into our basics studies, then read about history, finish off basics, and wrap it all up with science:

History: Sundays - a chapter from K12's Human Odyssey; Monday through Thursday - a chapter from a good book or a short story to go with our current historical focus

Science:
Monday - reading from You Are the Earth; Tuesday - a secondary reading to go with Monday, or an appropriate documentary; Wednesday - reading from Dr. Art's Guide to Science; Thursday - supplemental reading for Wednesday's work and a hands-on project to go with one or the other of our main source books.After doing some soul searching and reading of old threads (homeschool forum), I think we're going to take a break from formal science to do some simple nature studies and gardening. I have The Handbook of Nature Study, and we can continue watching the Life series. Additionally, I really want to do the bean sprouting project! We may still do some reading from You Are the Earth since the next chapter is about soil, and has a good sprouting project as well, OR we may read a chapter each day from The Storybook of Science, since we never finished it, but I think we'll skip the rest of what I had listed above for now.

Enjoy your weekend!

A Little Late to the Game...

But better late than never, right? So I am joining in on

From Pam's blog, "Over the next two weeks we will be laying out some of our biggest trouble areas, attempting to make some changes, and reporting back on how things are going."

Here goes nothing!

My area to change first is consistency. We're inconsistent with homeschooling (and housework). So, my goal is to sit down and hit the books at least 4 days each week, and spend part of my afternoon time on housework, with the kids pitching in each day, starting today, and staying on target for at least the next two weeks.

Normally today would be about prepping for the week ahead. Instead, today I am focused on writing my rhetorical précis for class, and then the above. Nice to occasionally have a three day weekend!

I also have olives to brine/cure, since we picked many of the ripe ones yesterday. This batch will be done with a traditional liquid cure, while the next batch will be a more experimental dry salt cure. This picture represents maybe a third of the olives on our tree... there are a lot of still unripe ones to be picked soon!



On today's agenda:
~ Work on my paper
~ Homeschooling: Math; spelling/phonics; Primary/Intermediate Language Lessons; geography; science; a history documentary; and reading: The Wall, and The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe.
~ Get the olives curing
~ Dishes and laundry!!!
~ Cooking dinner--tonight we're having roast beef with carrots, parsnips, onion, and brussels sprouts... yum!
~ Watching Shrek the Third! We watched the first one Friday night, and the second one last night. It's fun to re-watch movies we haven't seen in a while. Next on the agenda, Shrek Forever After.

I do have a little accomplishment to sort of brag about... I had written that I wanted to reorganize my BFSU flow charts, and figure out how to implement it in our homeschooling. Instead, I looked at the flow charts I had already developed, and researched higher level supplemental reading to go with it. And I lined up some videos, mostly Bill Nye and How Things Work, along with the Disney Imagineering series. It'll be another week before we can actually use my new plans, since I have to wait on some library books, but I am really very excited about this! I adore BFSU, all three books, and if we actually use them, I think my kids will be very well prepared for higher level science.

I'll finish this up with a photo that I think is appropriate for today...

Monday Musings... Blogging Blues...

I was just reading a post by a friend, and it got me thinking. Am I a total flake? I know we jump all over the place with what we're using/studying/learning about. And looking over my own blog for the year, yes, I feel flaky.

I think I need to change things up a bit here... no more "I think we're going to try this, or use that" posts. And for a while, I don't think I'll bother with end of the week reports, which have been a drag to write lately anyhow, since they seem so mundane and somewhat repetitive. Instead I think I'll focus on what we are doing, what we are accomplishing... the things we're having fun with, and of course, the occasional struggle.

So, that said, here are some highlights from yesterday's homeschooling!

I bumped The Girl up another book in the Explode the Code series, even though we are nowhere near done with the last one. Why? Because at this point, it was all review, and she needs to keep moving forward. More than that, she is ready to move forward, so we are, at long, looooong last, tackling long vowel sounds. Phew!

Image courtesy of City Talk morning paper

We loved reading about the similarities in chimpanzees and humans in The Early Human World. The Girl says this is her "favorite history book ever!" and The Boy loves many things about it: it explains the roots of words like anthropology, paleontology, and much more; the sidebar bits about people like Jane Goodall and Charles Darwin; and he says he is "learning a lot!"


We also had fun with Life of Fred, both Apples and Fractions. The Boy only missed 4 out of 16 words in his spelling pre-test, and then he wrote some very silly sentences for nouns in Writing Skills.

And some other highlights from the day:

image courtesy of cookinggodsway.com

The Girl helped me make some delicious whole-grain blueberry-banana muffins for today's breakfast. She is getting very confident with measuring! M said they are so good that they don't even need butter, and from him, that's a huge compliment, considering he would butter everything if he could... which reminds me of a Simpsons clip...

image courtesy of google images

  "You butter that bacon, boy!" (as ordered by Homer Simpson)

We also spent a good hour or so working out in the front yard, deadheading all the plants now that fall is really here, prepping for the winter. We need to start picking our olives soon too - there are many ripe ones already! We're going to use a regular Greek brining technique for half, and do a dry salt cure with the rest. The Girl picked all the last of the French lavender for sachets, and The Boy hauled the wheelbarrow full of chopped-down plants back and forth to the compost heap.

I also made roasted eggplant for soup (and plan to finish making the soup today), and got a chicken bone broth going in the crockpot for tonight's chicken-barley-veggie soup. Definitely soup/stew/chili season here!

image courtesy of allseasoncyclists

The Boy is designing a scooter for himself, with a little input from M. They have plans afoot to head off to the recycle station at the county dump for parts. They're also working on rebuilding a bike that someone gave us, as The Boy (now 5' 3 1/2"!!!) has outgrown his old bicycle.

So all in all, it was a good and productive day. Hoping for a few more of those this week!

Week 8... Busy with Halloween...

Week 8 was, for the most part, a good one. We didn't get to everything I had hoped, but we did do a lot!

~* Sunday *~

Cooking lesson for The Girl - we made lentil soup with celery, onion, carrots, bay leaves, and mustard greens - delicious!

We read You're on Your Way, Teddy Roosevelt!... all about this president's childhood (did you know he was homeschooled for much of his childhood?)

And we read The Ghost of Nicholas Greebe.. a nice, ghostly tale for October!

I introduced The Boy to multiplying with decimals with a printout from Math Mammoth.

The Girl and I went through another chapter in Life of Fred Apples (review work), and did a Math Mammoth lesson on adding whole 10's. 

We read more of The Graveyard Book at bedtime.

~* Monday *~

We read a lot: Mozart Tonight; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow from a ghost story collection; a story from Tales of Little Grey Rabbit (mostly for The Girl, but I noticed The Boy listening in); and more of The Graveyard Book.

The Boy continued working on multiplying with decimals. He seems to be getting the hang of it quickly!

The Boy worked on a couple of pages on nouns in Writing Skills; did a picture study from Intermediate Language Lessons; and studied his spelling words.

The Girl read to me from Reading Pathways, and then did a picture study lesson from Primary Language Lessons. I had her dictate all her answers to me, and asked for complete sentences - she did very well with this!

We read about cells, and started an experiment on osmosis, using potatoes, from How Nature Works. 

We watched part two of NOVA's Becoming Human.

~* Tuesday *~

 A light day...

The Boy returned to fencing after missing two weeks due to illnesses in the house (first he was sick with a cold, then I got an ear infection). He had a blast and hopes not to miss any more classes!

We read Ghost Ship and Wicked Jack, as well as Mummy Math -- I really recommend Cindy Neuschwander's math storybooks... they are very child friendly, educational, and just plain fun!

The kids carved their Jack O' Lanterns.

We watched The Corpse Bride for the first time, and enjoyed it very much!

We put the finishing touches on Halloween costumes.

~* Wednesday *~

HALLOWEEN!

The kids spent the entire day in costume. I had to work, but turned into a witch as soon as I got home!

We read from The Graveyard Book. While this book only has, I think, 8 chapters, it is still taking us a while to get through, as each of those 8 chapters is quite long - we never make it through a whole one in a single sitting!

We went trick-or-treating in the rain. We visited Petaluma because they have an awesome downtown store trick-or-treating program, and then we went to D Street - a street lined with mansions, almost all of which were decorated insanely for the holiday! So we got soaked, but still had a blast!

We came home, had pizza, and read a couple of Samhain stories from Circle Round.

~* Thursday *~

We started the day with reading Spirit of Tio Fernando: A Day of the Dead Story.

We ran errands: dropping of ballots at the drive-through drop-off office; getting milk from a friend's farm, where the kids played walnut wars with her kid, pet the goats, chased a few chickens, and so forth; and we paid a visit to the police station to clear up a traffic ticket (expired tags... oops!); and we finished up with a visit to the pet/pet supply store for meal worms and we bought The Girl a little brown and white mouse as a personal pet. She named it Emily.

The Boy further reviewed his spelling words, and made a bubble chart for a book he wants to write.

The Girl read aloud from Reading Pathways, and then a few pages of Little Bear's Friend. She then proceeded to watch a couple of episodes of Little Bear, and spent some time comparing the book and TV show.

The Boy cleaned out his water dragon's (Athena) terrarium. The Girl set up her mouse's new home, and laughed hysterically when Emily (the mouse) ran so fast on her wheel that she flipped over and fell off!

The Boy discovered the TV show Smash Lab. It now ties with Mythbusters as his choice of entertainment!

We finished up the evening with a little more of The Graveyard Book.

~* Friday *~

On today's agenda...

National Lampoon's Vacation (Fridays are now our "official movie night"!)

Park day, after I drop M off at a local lake for some fishing.

More of The Graveyard Book, and we're going to read The Carnival of the Animals.

~* Saturday *~

On the agenda...

Fall housecleaning - it is time to start getting prepared for all the upcoming holidays!

Perhaps some local hiking, maybe among the redwoods.

Some fun reading.

~* Bits & Pieces *~

The Boy is about 3/4 of the way done with The Headless Cupid. He's also reading David Macaulay's Built to Last and is eagerly awaiting a copy of Unbuilding. He uses these books to help with his computer-based construction programs. He is rereading Dog Days as well.

We're almost done with The Lightning Thief at long last - so close in fact, that I went ahead and picked up the second book on audio cd!

I have finally caught up on my reading!

Hope everyone else had a good week! Enjoy your weekend as well!

Awesome Giveaway....

Freely Educate (one of my favorite sites by the way) is hosting an amazing giveaway for All About Spelling. All About Spelling is truthfully a program I would love to own, but it always been a bit out of reach, price-wise.

Anyhow, click on the picture below to find out how to enter the contest!