Balance Part Three...

A poster on the homeschooling board I frequent most often asked about living books for science, then another for history and math. As a result, I went through all my bookmarks, which are chock full of links to great book lists, lists that I daydream about but fail to really use. All of this naturally got me thinking about Charlotte Mason education again, and I remembered I had purchased and downloaded, but never actually read, the secular version of Penny Gardner's Charlotte Mason Study Guide. I would highly recommend this - it is only $5 and I wish I had read through it sooner!

Just some quick background as to what constitutes a living book: "...living books contain living ideas from great minds. Instead of presenting dry facts, these books are written in conversational, literary language." (Penny Gardner)

So, in seeking balance in my homeschooling efforts (see Balance and Balance Part Two), I thought I would look at science, history, and even some math from a living books point of view. And, because it is an approach that works with my children, a hands-on point of view. What does this change? Well, for example... science. Instead of spending $x on a "curriculum", I can put together a thoughtful list of books we will all enjoy together, and then compliment those books with hands-on experiments. Currently, we're interested in insects. This is what I have come up with so far:

Books:
Creepy Crawlies & the Scientific Method
Insect Life (an old classic)
The Insect Folk (another old classic)
The Snail's Spell
Where Butterflies Grow
A Girl of the Limberlost (one of my personal all-time favorites)
Simon and Schuster Children's Guide to Insects and Spiders
Peterson's First Field Guide to Insects (Cyrus loves field guides)
Insect Soup: Bug Poems

Hands-On:
LadyBug Land
Praying Mantis Pagoda
An ant farm
the compost heap (loads of worms)
How to Draw Insects
Insects: Make it Work
The kids have pet snails (apparently they are "racing" snails)
And of course, magnifying glasses and nature journals!

We also may watch (for the zillionth time) Microcosmos, which is an excellent film. I am also doing research on living books for chemistry and physics, to start reading aloud in the fall. Biographies will work, and I am reading through The Wonder Book of Chemistry over at the Baldwin Project to see if it might work. Any suggestions? I am also skimming through The Storybook of Science, also on the Baldwin Project, to see if it might work as general science for us.

So, back to the balance bit... I have catalogs from quite a few homeschool curriculum companies, and while I gather many ideas from these sources, I notice that they tend to fall into one of three categories: a) lots of reading and not much else, b) lots of hands-on, or c) more schoolish than not. I need something in between these, which is where Charlotte Mason comes into the picture. Good books, plenty of activity, handicrafts, outdoor time, nature studies... this all sounds pretty ideal to me.

It is funny - we have "officially" been homeschooling for 5 years now, and I still feel like I am just learning how to do it! I was talking to another mom at our Indian potluck yesterday, a mom who is newer to homeschooling, yet I find we have many of the same frustrations and feelings despite the amount of time put in so far. I think we're finding our own pace now that we're not associated with the charter school anymore. I find we're getting more work done on a more regular basis than we did when I had to report each month, and turn in work samples. I think this year so far has been a chance for us to find our footing and our learning path.

Now I want to do more research on living books for math and other approaches there. I am toying with the idea of having Wednesdays as free math days, with games and good books rather than math pages. And I think Life of Fred will fit the bill nicely when Cyrus is ready. I still really like Math Mammoth, and in fact just purchased the entire Blue series from the Homeschool Buyers Co-op, but I'd like that balanced (that magical word again) with more hands-on and varied approaches. In history, I plan to keep using Homeschool in the Wood's Time Travelers as the bare bones, but will shift our reading to more books and less of the text.

Balance is, according to dictionary dot com, "to arrange, adjust, or proportion the parts of symmetrically; composition or placement of elements [of design] in such a manner as to produce an aesthetically pleasing or harmoniously integrated whole." I love the idea of a "harmoniously integrated whole"!

(Mostly) Wordless Wednesday... Happiness is...

Spring

Swinging

Jumping

Having an Indian potluck at the park with homeschooling friends

More swinging

Some creekside exploration

More jumping!

This week...

I have high hopes for this week, including getting my computer back, in working condition. Yesterday I turned it on, to research science projects for my class on Tuesday. It started up with no problem, I left the room to grab a cup of coffee, and came back to the dreaded white crash screen. Luckily I have a friend who is a computer whiz, and he came over a couple of hours later to strip the hard drive. He managed, we think, to get all my files downloaded to an external hard drive... I hope, and has taken my computer home with him to repair. In the meantime, at least I have M's laptop! Lesson learned? I really should back up everything - photos onto disks, files onto disks, and all my homeschooling e-books either to disk or Google Docs.

Luckily, I had spent part of Saturday prepping everything for homeschooling this week. I am hoping we will:

• Get through all the language arts/phonics I have assigned for the week
• Finish another section of multiplication (Cyrus) and revisit addition (Cassia).
• Do lessons 2 and 3 in Colonial Life, and watch a video as a supplement - I am also picking up some library books today to broaden our studies.
• Start a unit from Mr. Q's Classical Science on rocks and fossils. In addition, we'll be building our own weather station equipment for my 4H Science class.
• Read some more in The Four Story Mistake and The Phantom Tollbooth. Cyrus is really looking forward to starting the fourth Percy Jackson book, and Cassia and I hope to finish Little House in the Big Woods.
• I think we might have 4H Nature Crafts too?
  
  

Meanwhile, the sun is shining, really shining, for the first time in over a week, so I hope to get outside, maybe for a creekside walk. And we are eagerly awaiting various habitats in the mail - we're going to raise ladybugs and praying mantises. Maybe butterflies a bit later when the weather is warmer. We now have a real ant farm too... just waiting for ants in the mail. I have been meaning to buy these kits for years, and finally got around to it because Amazon was nice enough to give me great credit for a used textbook!

I hope you all have a good week too... AND

HAPPY SPRING!!!

Looking ahead to the fall...

I am starting, naturally, to really think about where we'll be going with homeschooling in the fall. I studied my choices, considered alternatives, and have narrowed it down pretty well. These choices may change a bit between now and then!

For Cyrus
Language Arts:
I'm ditching the writing programs and will have him write across the curriculum.
Winston Grammar.
A combo of The Natural Speller and Spelling City.
Lots of reading.

Math:
Life of Fred Fractions, with the Math Mammoth Blue series as a supplement (we'll use the Key To... series for supplementation after LOF Decimals) OR Teaching Textbooks 5.

Logic:
I am thinking about starting in on this subject with Cyrus. So far I am considering Mindbenders and Harry Stottlemeier's Discovery.

Other:
We hope to continue with 4H. Cyrus will continue with piano lessons, and he may try Tae Kwon Do. Hopefully, the monthly potluck-around-the-world group will continue, and we'll loosely study a country a month.

For Cassia
Language Arts:
Primary Language Lessons part 1 and maybe into part 2.
Elson Readers.
Explode the Code 2-4 to bolster phonics.
Handwriting Without Tears.

Math:
Math Mammoth Blue series. I looked at the Light Blue series which is the "complete curriculum" but she's on different levels in different topics, and I like mixing and matching topics. OR I may start her in Teaching Textbooks 3.

Other:
Again, more 4H. She would like to try TKD as well. And the around-the-world studies/potluck.

For Both Children
History & Science
We're tying this all together, and starting at the beginning. I plan to use Gombrich's Little History of the World, alongside the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia, as [a] spine(s) to organize everything, and then we'll be adding in great living books, hands-on activities, and more. We'll start with geology as the earth forms, then address evolution, dinosaurs, and so on into the history of people. As soon as we reach that point in history, we'll add in The Story of Science series.

The Arts:
Artists and music/composers through the passage of time, plus The Phonics of Drawing for actual art instruction.

And I think that's it! We'll see if these plans change significantly or not by fall!

A Weekly Review...

Overall it has been a good week. As usual, I changed a few things, we tried a couple of new things, and so forth. But I think the changes I made were good ones, and that we can stick with them a while.

Language Arts
Cyrus has dropped Writing Tales. While we love the simplicity of the grammar portions, re-writing their stories week after week was a drag for him. It made him reluctant to even start writing. Instead, we are trying a combination of Intermediate Language Lessons and free writing (with prompts). When Scholastic had their great $1 download sale, I picked up a bunch of writing prompt books and so I am using some of those. For example, there is a comic strip one. Cyrus had to read the Peanuts comic strip at the top, which involved Lucy making quite an excuse for missing a catch, and then come up with 10 more excuses. He loved this exercise, as he got to be very creative. Maybe I'll write a second post and give you his excuses! ILL has been working well too. The assignments are more varied than Writing Tales - he did a picture study, made a rule for capital letters for proper nouns, read and copied a poem (and is working on memorization), and is working on a story. He also worked on ie/ei words on Spelling City. I never have trouble getting him to do his spelling now!

Cassia... well, I wrote a short time ago about the struggle we are having with reading, and now I feel absolutely terrible. I think a large part of it is my fault, the inconsistancy OR maybe it is just that she is finally ready to learn this stuff. My mom and I have been drilling her with flash cards, having her do ClickNKids lessons (we started back at lesson 1), and reviewing the ClickNKids letters on Starfall, and guess what? In one week, she has gone from knowing about 8 letters of the alphabet to knowing, yesterday, 21 of the 26. Seriously. So we've dropped ETC for now, and The Reading Lesson. I did add in Primary Language Lessons though, which she is mainly doing by narration. This week she did a picture study, read and copied a poem, and we discussed proper use of "is" and"are". I like the gentlness of this program.

Math
Cyrus focused on multiplication this week, mainly three's, six's, and nine's. He is surprised at how quickly he is learning the entire table! I had him fill out as much of a blank one as he could, and he was pleasantly shocked at how little he has left to memorize. After he gets this down, we'll move onto geometry for a while and then we'll tackle division, after which we'll finish up our school year with double digit multiplication and division, all in preparation for Life of Fred in the fall. He has looked at the sample pages on Polka Dot Publishing several times, and is very excited about Fred! I think I have decided to use the Key To... series to supplement this.

Cassia has spent the week working on a unit in place value. She does her workpages very quickly when she wants to! Next week we'll cycle back into addition facts, followed by subtraction facts, and finally a unit on money. Listening to Cyrus work through his times tables seems to be rubbing off too... I think by the time she gets there, she'll have no trouble with these! I'm just trying right now to have her develop a good, strong base for future math. We'll probably stick with Math Mammoth in the fall, although I am trying to decide between the Blue and Light Blue series.

History
We started the week with episode 1 of America: The Story of US. I know a lot of people had complaints about this series (too many "famous" people voicing their opinions, the series moves too fast, etc.), but for us it works! The kids love the graphics - houses building themselves, etc. - and it provides a great introduction to a lot of American history... I even learned some things they never taught me in school, way back in the day. It definately got the kids extremely interested in colonial times! I also started printing out and prepping Colonial Life lessons from Homeschool in the Woods. This unit looks much more interesting than New World Explorers turned out to be (which essentially was 23 explorer profiles with a few games and crafts thrown in... sorry, not trying to be harsh). The colonial one has dioramas, pop-up houses, cooking, sewing, and much, much more. It covers all the kinds of things I always wanted to know in history; not just the famous people/events, but the day-to-day life of everyday people. You can read a little more about our history this week here. They also watched the first episode of Liberty's Kids... gotta love streaming Netflix!

Science
We didn't get to much of this! Since I already have it downloaded, I am thinking of having Cyrus use Mr. Q's Earth and Space science for a while. It is written in a really humorous fashion, which I know he enjoys. For Cassia, we are waiting on her ladybug kit, which she is really, really looking forward to. M also got an ant farm - we're just waiting on ants. Oh, and Cyrus's wolf spider turned out to be a female and this week she made her egg sack. Both kids reported that it is just like seeing Charlotte's web come to life!

Other
Cyrus continues to blaze his way through the How to Train Your Dragon series. He is now on book six. He is also making himself a tiny dictionary of "Dragonese" from the books. He's also looking forward to book 4 in the Percy Jackson series.

Cassia and I went through another couple of chapters in both Ramona the Brave and Little House in the Big Woods. I need to check on the shipping of my Amazon order since we're anxious to get our Little House paper dolls and activity book. I put the cookbook on hold at the library.

Together, we read from both Stuart Little and The Phantom Tollbooth this week. I read two chapters from the second at my mom's house yesterday, and she gave me quite a compliment, telling me that I read aloud very well and it is a pleasure to listen to!

In social studies, we watched Little Buddha this week. Cassia loved the scenes in India, and Cyrus loved the entire film. He is intrigued by Buddhists, reincarnation, and so on. Next week we have our international potluck, which this month is focused on India. I wonder what next month will be? We also got another postcard from another state yesterday, which has renewed our interest in exchanging postcards across the country (a fun form of geography).

Wow, all this and we took a day off yesterday! It has been a good week, hopefully next week will be too! Today, we have on the agenda math, ILL/PLL, phonics, and a book about the spring equinox. Nice and simple work on a very rainy day.

It figures...

Seriously. I drop formal history, casually put on an episode of America: The Story of US, and wham! All the kids can talk about is American history, especially colonial times, Pilgrims, etc. So, I immediately end up turning back to Time Travelers, this time Colonial Life, and the variety of activity books I have managed to collect, and there we go! Cyrus got especially excited about the paper 3D model of Jamestown from this book (you can see the finished project on the book's cover):



He started it as soon as I had the printouts for him, and finished it this morning at my mom's. As soon as I can find my camera, I'll have to get a picture of him with it! In the meantime, Cassia keeps asking me questions about Colonial children, what they wore, did they go to school, what did they eat, etc., so I am putting a few books on hold at the library that might help: Sarah Morton's Day, Samuel Eaton's Day, and Tapenum's Day. She's also very curious about Native Americans during that time period, so I'll be searching out some good books for that.

I know this sudden interest may wane as quickly as it started, so I figure I had better ride the wave while I can! Let's see if this spreads to science as well....

Homeschool Mother's Journal March 14th...

Click the picture above to check out the link!

In my life this week...
Just another week! I pulled together some resources for the kids' particular interests, and we need to visit the library to pick up a few more. I have bookmarked some great-looking websites, printed out some fun crafts, and made a day-by-day "assignment" sheet, which is helpful since my mom (their Nonna) helps with the homeschooling twice a week while I am in school. I am writing a paper on a moment/event that helped shape my life, and catching up on a bit of homework I got behind on while very sick the week before last.

In our homeschool this week...
We're exploring Vikings, early American history, Little House in the Big Woods, ladybugs, the solar system, and more! We're also starting lessons from Intermediate Language Lessons and Primary Language Lessons, with this great printable format that I downloaded (very inexpensively) from Cynce's Place.

Places we're going and people we're seeing...
Well, we'll be going to the library, and there are piano and ballet lessons, and Park Day (weather permitting). I'm actually trying to whittle down our out-of-home time this week! Oh, we will see the kids' grandpa, as we have to take him to the pharmacy to pick up refills.

My favorite thing this week was...
Watching the kids getting excited about having their interests included in this week's assignments

What's working/not working for us...
I think our new approach to studies will work... I hope. The time change is not working for us right now - none of us were up before 10 except M, who had to go to work.

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have...
I'm thinking ahead to next fall, a bit. We're not really following the traditional school schedule at this point, and are instead choosing to basically school year round for more flexibility. We'll still take a summer break, but it'll be shorter than the public school break, and will still involve learning, just in a less formal format. I'm not planning on using anything much new, except we'll probably change math for Cyrus - I really want to use Life of Fred with him, so am looking at both Math Mammoth's Blue Series and the Key to... Series as possible supplements. With language arts, we'll just continue through ILL and PLL (if they work well for us) until we finish each level. This also makes homeschooling more affordable, since I won't be buying a whole bunch of new things at any given time! I may start reading from The History of US soon too, aiming roughly to finish the series by the summer/fall of 2012... we'll see.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share...
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. William Butler Yeats. This is exactly how I am trying to view my children's education right now!

Balance part two...

So, I think I have found my balance point, between schooling and unschooling. We are dropping formal history and science studies, and integrating more of the kids' own interests. Their paths are diverging - Cyrus is interested in Vikings, dragons, and the universe, while Cassia is fascinated by the Little House on the Prairie series, mermaids, and ladybugs. I remember posting in the fall how great it was to watch them expanding their own worlds, following their interests, and building upon them, and I would like to see more of that again. We'll stick with the three "R's" as I have them, and then everything is more free form. I do plan to sit down and watch an episode of The Story of US with them once a week for an American history overview, but it doesn't have to be the only focal point. I may show them Liberty's Kids as well, and read occasional good stories to further explore things, but a lot of what we'll be focusing on is what they are passionate about.

In place of formal geography studies, we're integrating social studies and geography. A fellow homeschooler has set up a once-a-month potluck which will be focused on various world cuisines. The first month, March, is focused on India. So we're reading some Indian fairy tales, watching the Story of India, and trying out various recipes, tonight's being butter chicken.

Speaking of cooking, Cyrus (who makes the best sloppy joes in the world) has decided he wants to expand his cooking repetoire, so I am giving him a cooking lesson once a week. This week, he learned to make beef stew from scratch. He did all the chopping, peeling, cutting and everything else himself, while I simply guided him through it. The results were delicious! He wants to learn to make omelets and chocolate chip cookies (from scratch) next. He's also got The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook from the library, and is trying to choose a recipe from that to test out. I plan to have him make his own grocery list for whichever recipe he tries, and shop for it himself. I also want to see how he does reading and following a recipe on his own! Of course, I'll be right there is he needs me.

And speaking of sloppy joes, that was Cassia's birthday dinner last week. Can you believe she's EIGHT already? Where is the time going? Since I was still in recovery from strep gone bad, we kept it very simple this year, with cupcakes at the park, her favorite dinner with extended family, and of course plenty of gifts!

Now, speaking of Cassia, I have some concerns. She still can't remember more than a handful of letters/letter sounds. I am thinking I may need to bite the bullet and have her tested for some sort of learning issue(s). I am giving it one more month, and then will make my decision. To me, it always seems like it is simply that she doesn't pay attention, but what if it is more than that? I keep reading all these unschooling books, blogs, etc., that talk about kids suddenly picking up reading, but I am not so sure that is going to happen. Have any of you, my readers, been down this road? I will admit, it scares me.

Well, we have a library trip in the works, a piano lesson later, and then a ballet lesson, so I must be off!

Wednesday of Many Pictures, & a Few Words...

We're on break this week. But here are some pictures from the last two weeks to enjoy!

Holding a dream pillow she made in 4H, filled with flax seed, lavender, rosemary, chamomile and other soothing herbs. It smells fantastic! Cyrus made one too.

Cyrus with a brain hat and ear accordian

Sliding eye, more of the brain hat and ear accordian

A cell mobile (and yes, that is Cyrus's shoeprint on the ceiling. That's what I get for helping build a loft bed)

At the local museum checking out the Mad Science show a second time before it left town

Shifting layers of tiny glass beads and water

Fun in the snow

A chilly little girl

A great snowman - the first my kids have ever gotten to make!

Loves the snowman!

Making his first snow angel