1000 Posts.... Looking Back....

I made it to ONE THOUSAND posts!

A look back over the years...

When Something Doesn't Fit...

I'm stubborn. I hate to admit when I've made a mistake, or chosen the wrong path, or gone barking up the wrong tree, though all of it happens all too often. Even with years of homeschooling under my belt now, I still make mistakes. I still make mistakes even when I have help in choosing things to learn with.

So before this school year began, The Boy and I spent hours looking at math program samples. Literally hours. We printed out samples, checked out FAQs, and so forth, and so on. And we thought The Art of Problem Solving Prealgebra was it, the one and only. We loved the idea of a discovery based approach, and the challenges it presented.

Now I am not saying that AoPS is not a good program -- it really is a very good one, but it doesn't seem to be quite the right fit for us. The Boy has spent six weeks on chapter one...SIX. And he worked hard, often more than an hour a day. The problem for us is that there seems to be a slight tendency to just throw something into the mix, something that wasn't really introduced properly, even in the problem solutions. And then the solutions/explanations themselves are a bit difficult to navigate. Yes, I realize it is very much supposed to be a challenging program, and I respect that, but there is a difference between challenging and frustrating.

Enter Jacobs Elementary Algebra, which we obtained for the next three weeks through an inter-library loan. While it is not technically prealgebra, the first third to half of the book does cover all the same topics, then the second part is more like an Algebra 1 course. It is a more standard approach to algebra, with clear explanations followed by problem sets, though the author's writing style, as well as the cartoons, quotes, etc. he sprinkles throughout the book, is much more reader friendly than many texts I've seen.

We're going to therefore give AoPS a break. I may sell it down the line if we decide not to return to it after giving a couple of weeks or so to Jacobs. We'll see. Part of me really doesn't want to give up. And part of The Boy doesn't want to give up either. But at this rate, we'd take years to finish a single book. And his daily frustration with it is just hard to get through. The other option I am considering is taking a week or two to cement some more concepts with Math Mammoth (exponents, for chapter two in AoPS), and then head back into AoPS itself. Arrgghhhh. Sometimes I hate decision making!

When do you give up on something? Or do you not give up?

Another Monday...

A picture of the sunrise from last week

The last Monday of the month is my longest... staff meeting, followed by a committee meeting, followed by my class... and then off to meet The Girl at The Boy's fencing lesson (my mom will drive them there). Thank goodness M is cooking dinner after he gets off work tonight!

Happenings This Week...
The Girl's derby season has come to an end, so no practices until January's Derby Boot Camp! I have promised to take her to some afternoon skating sessions in the meantime so she doesn't lose any skills. The Boy's fencing continues year-round, so he doesn't have that worry. I'm meeting with a high school student tomorrow afternoon, to tutor her in writing, focusing first on a research paper. I am a little apprehensive about this, as she suffers from anxiety, so I need to tread carefully.

In Our Homeschool...
The Boy will be trying a different math approach this week, with Jacobs Elementary Algebra, which we got on an inter-library loan for three weeks, to try it out. Our main issue with AoPS at this point is that the explanations tend toward the confusing side, and so there is a lot of resultant frustration. Jacobs seems a nice compromise between the discovery approach of AoPS and a more traditional text. The first half of the book is basically prealgebra, so I don't mind him jumping in to this new (to us) book. The Boy took some time to look through it yesterday, and did set I of the exercises from chapter 1, with no complaints. He likes the cartoons and quotes the author tied in as well!

The Boy will also be finishing his essay this week, final draft and all.

The Girl is continuing on her steady learning path at the moment. She does a lesson twice weekly from Reading Horizons, each one followed by the vocabulary work the next day. Math Mammoth is still working well for her. We're about halfway through our multiplication studies, and then she'll move into division work, followed by place value work. We'll also be tackling some fractions, measurement, and geometry this year.

What We're Reading & Watching...
Our family movie this week was Hocus Pocus, which was pretty fun. The Boy is enjoying The Maze Runner, and has just about finished up Dandelion Fire. The Girl is making slow but steady progress with Charlotte's Web, though we failed to get back to The Girl Who Could Fly last week. We're still enjoying The Marvellous Land of the Snergs! I still need to pick up The Paris Wife from the library as well, since I really want to read it! We also failed to get to most of our documentary watching last week, so I am just putting that on this week's agenda, though we did watch some Wild Africa, and Families of the World: Ghana.

Cooking...
The Girl and I did make the ndole, and served it with millet. It was pretty tasty! I've been reading books (Whole, by T. Colin Campbell, Forks Over Knives, The Jungle Effect) and watching documentaries (Forks Over Knives for example) on plant based diets, so am trying to work even more produce into our daily diets (not that we'd go vegan, ever, because, well... bacon for one thing). We're making one of our favorite lunch time soups -- roasted eggplant & tomato -- this week. We made gluten-free and grain-free brownies for a bake sale to benefit junior roller derby. And M is making his amazing mac & cheese tonight.

Odds & Ends...
The Boy has taken apart, cleaned, and rebuilt a two-stroke engine (rototiller) over the last week. Now he's taking apart, cleaning, and rebuilding a larger engine for a go-cart. He's been studying tutorials on changing oil, so he can give our car an oil change. And yesterday he checked the brake fluid, the brake lines, etc.

The Girl is working on the creation of a couple of board games. This involves a lot of cutting, pasting, writing, drawing, and so forth. She also wants to work on making some how-to crafting videos for you tube.

Have a good week!

Monday Musings... Here Comes the Rain Again...

Outside My Window...
Finally, it feels like fall! Cool weather (70s for the most part), rainy days and nights, bits of sunshine here and there. The trees are changing color, and I am hoping that things won't look quite so parched for much longer.

Around the House & Kitchen...
I caught up on some housework during our week off from homeschooling. I am thinking about rearranging the family room, since I am happy with the rearrangement I did in the living room a couple of weeks back.

As far as food, I am so glad it is soup weather. Tonight, at The Boy's request, we having many-bean vegetable soup with kielbasa, and I may bake up some cornbread to go on the side. The Girl has requested meatloaf for this week, and I might make ndole later in the week as part of our African studies.

In Our Homeschooling...
Back to the grind this week! Actually, I am looking forward to it, though truthfully I a still debating... should we drop history altogether right now except for the odd documentary here and there? I think we might well do that after we finish up Poop Happened, as the geography studies are probably enough by themselves!

So this week we're back to a full load of our "basics" (math, language arts, sciences), and then we'll fit in the "extras" (geography, art, etc.) as we go.

Reading & Watching...
We'll be reading more of the Marvellous Land of the Snergs this week. Such a fun book, and you can definitely see how it would have inspired Hobbits! The Girl will continue with reading Charlotte's Web and listening to The Girl Who Could Fly, while The Boy is balancing The Maze Runner (currently, and temporarily, taking place of The Lord of the Flies) and Dandelion Fire. I am going to start The Paris Wife this week -- a novel based on the real life adventures of Ernest Hemingway's wife. I saw this book on display at the library, and it just looked intriguing!

We're finishing up season 2 of Once Upon a Time, and season 3 of Eureka. We have a few more episodes of Wild Africa to go as well. I want The Boy to re-watch episode one of Cosmos this week, and for The Girl I have planned Creatures of the Deep, from the Life miniseries. We really enjoyed The Corpse Bride and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! over the weekend.

Making & Crafting...
I am two-thirds of the way done with both The Girl's scarf and my own, after leaving my knitting bag at roller derby, and having it lost in the Lost & Found for a week. Next, I would like to learn to knit a hat. The kids are both hard at work crafting their own Halloween costumes. The Girl has been working on coloring damp tissue paper with pens, and watching the ink spread... I'm not sure what she's making there exactly, but it is pretty! And The Boy is rebuilding a stereo system in his room out of old semi-functioning components -- so far, so good.

Other Plans for the Week...
We 're heading to a birthday party this week for a friend who is turning the big 4-0. It's catered, and there is a pool for the kids to play in, so it should be a nice event. I am trying to finish getting over this cold first, as are the kids. There is fencing, if The Boy is feeling well enough, and derby, if The Girl feels well enough. We went, briefly, to a harvest festival yesterday, where The Girl enjoyed seeing, and touching, reptiles, and had a great conversation with a man belonging to a local branch of an antique tractor association. The rest of the festival was so-so, much of it being oriented to small children. Next year, I hope to take the kids on a pre-Halloween field trip to the Winchester Mystery House instead!

Hope your week is off to a good start! Here's a picture of the kids and a snake from yesterday for your viewing pleasure (wish I had gotten more of The Girl in there!)

Our Week "Off"...

With a week off from homeschooling as such, what did we do?

Both kids had colds, though they seem to be better now, or at least better than they were.

I made a pot of soup, with bone broth, that everyone loved. I also had time to make butternut squash orange soup, butternut squash risotto, and homemade hibiscus-raspberry-elderberry popsicles for the sick kids.

We had time to read more of this book...

And we enjoyed a poetry "teatime", at long last, with hot apple cider, pumpkin bars (aka pumpkin blondies), and Mr. Poe... I think we're going to have to have a poetry teatime at least once a month!

There was derby practice...

Fencing practice...

And then a free library catapult workshop...

Today we're off to the park as always on a Friday. I'm feeling refreshed, and ready to tackle next week!

Monday Musings...

Outside My Window...
It is still hot here. Most days are in the upper 80s/low 90s by afternoon, though the nights are getting chilly enough that I need to get extra blankets out of the closet soon for everyone's beds. It has been clear, and dry -- all the hills and open spaces I see are a dried-out, crispy brown. However., there is some rain in the forecast! And cooler daytime temperatures too!

In the Kitchen...
The Girl made blondies yesterday from scratch, and they are good! She wants to make her cake soon too. Her baking serves two purposes--one, I always have something on hand for the kids for dessert, and two, it is a fun way to work on fractions. Dinner plans this week include a potato-gruyere frittata; roast chicken; chicken soft tacos (leftover repurposing); and Ful Medames, the last as part of our geographical studies (currently Africa).

Around the House...
Still purging stuff. I'm taking a box of books to the library every week for donation, and need to drop some more clothes off. The Girl and The Boy both need to go through their clothes too, and see what fits and doesn't fit.

I rearranged the living room last week, and really like the new flow! I'd like to redo the curtains at some point, and finish taking the carpet up, then maybe get a rug like this one, or this one. I haven't decided which I like better! The room itself in a light sand color, with one deep red accent wall.

In the Garden...
We spent part of Saturday trimming back rosemary bushes in the front yard, and puling out a bunch of wild-seeded red valerian and California poppies that had both seen better days. We also took out the gates, since they are never used. I still want to do some rearranging during the winter months, and put gravel in. I'm thinking of edging the gravel area with larger river rocks (sort of a wide border, maybe varying from 12"-18"), then using something like this gravel to fill it in. We're still trying to decide exactly what to do with the backyard.

Olive harvesting is coming up soon, and it looks like we have a bumper crop!

In Our Homeschooling...
We're cutting the Afternoon Basket out this week, for the most part. We have too many books going, and would rather just focus on a couple of good ones than spread ourselves so thin. We'll keep going with our history read aloud, but are dropping the science/nature and mathematics titles. And with the kids each studying science of their choice, the science read aloud seems a bit redundant.

Saving the below for the following week!
The Boy plans to finish his essay this week (we're doing one good writing project per month, a la Brave Writer), work through chapter four in Conceptual Physics, and finish up chapter one in his prealgebra book. Yes, you read that correctly... chapter one. AoPS is pretty dense going, but he's hanging in there! We've heard chapter two is the toughest in the book, so it's a little nerve wracking to be almost there. He's also decided to review all the German he has studied so far over the next two-three weeks, before moving any further in the lessons.

The Girl will be completing two more lessons in Reading Horizons doing the main lesson one day, and the vocabulary work the next. She's writing another story, and will copy out the "corrected" version later in the week. Still loving her Math Mammoth!

What We're Reading & Watching...
Our family movie over the weekend was The Mighty Ducks. Cassia and I are starting season 3 of Call the Midwife tonight, and she and The Boy are back to watching Sliders. I need to find more (good) ocean documentary material for The Girl, while we finish up our study of sponges, jellyfish, cnidarians, etc., and The Boy has decided to re-watch Cosmos, one episode per week.

Reading-wise, we're halfway through Poop Happened, and still enjoying our time in The Marvelous Land of the Snergs. We'll likely keep reading a story a day from The Girl Who Married a Lion, as the stories are quite short and a nice way to get the learning session going. I need to read more of The Girl Who Could Fly to The Girl, and she's still reading Charlotte's Web quite happily. The Maze Runner came in at the library, so I am going to offer The Boy the chance to set aside Lord of the Flies for a few weeks, while he reads this book. He is enjoying Lord of the Flies though, so I may have to get The Maze Runner at another time... we'll see. And he's almost done with Dandelion Fire, so he'll be starting the third book in that trilogy soon. See what I mean about too many books?

Everything Else...
M is working evenings this week, which is different. I can't say I am looking forward to picking him up between 11 pm and midnight... the joys of having only one car. The kids and I are going to a catapult building workshop at the library later in the week, and they have fencing and derby practice as always. I am hoping that at Thursday's derby practice, I will find my bag of knitting in the office! I left it behind last week, and it has two half-finished projects in it.

 I'll leave you with some pictures from the VikingFest, which, truth be told, was not very exciting. We did learn that the helmets are quite heavy, and we did have a good talk with one of the re-enactors, so it wasn't a total loss.

Have a good week!

A Wrap-Up of Week 6...

It is hard to believe how fast this school year is going! You can see some highlights from the past few weeks here.

What Went Well This Week....

The Girl did a great job with both reading and math this week. Math Mammoth seems the ideal program for her at this point. I am thankful that Maria Miller has added prealgebra, since I think we'll be sticking with this math program for some time! As far as reading, she has been enjoying Charlotte's Web quite a bit, though it was slow going at first. She is reading a bit faster every day as she gets more practice. She also completed another two lessons of Reading Horizons, which we agree will only help to continue building her reading skills. I did offer her an "easier" book (Boxcar Children), but she is determined to make it through Charlotte's Web! She also wrote a short story about a very fat cat that went on to pop, literally. She finished up watching season one of Ocean Mysteries, and we read about sponges in Sponges, Jellyfish, & Other Simple Animals.

The Boy worked on his Ford Mustang essay this week, and I really like what he's written so far, with the exception that he needs to make sure he's always writing in full sentences! Math... well, he both loves and dislikes the Art of Problem Solving Prealgebra. He loves that it is challenging, and finds it satisfying when he gets things right, but sometimes the explanations are hard to follow. We're going to be borrowing Life of Fred's prelagebra books from a friend to see if he'd prefer one over the other (though I have a gut feeling he'll stick with AoPS). He worked a lot on his German this week with Duolingo.

As a family, we used the instructions from Mapping the World With Art to draw Africa, which was a bit difficult, but fun! Even M drew a map. We watched the episode of A Cook's Tour set in Morocco, and read a few more stories from The Girl Who Married a Lion. This week's movie was XMen, which I hadn't realized we hadn't watched together!


What Needs Work...

The Boy needs to get back to his science work! We need to read more from the Afternoon Basket next week, and I need to be more consistent in having The Girl write. More consistency in general would be good. I need to use the weekly planners I made so that The Boy can manage his workload and so that The Girl and I don't miss anything! I also really want to spend some time on art next week!


Having Fun...

It was hot this week -- upper 80s to low 90s -- so we headed out to the river for some swimming and general fun-in-the-sun, complete with appropriate pith helmet of course....

Tomorrow we are off to a VikingFest, and then on Sunday I think we might head to a pumpkin patch. Do you have any fun plans for the weekend?

Catching Up... Bits & Pieces...

I haven't been very good about posting everything that is going on around here, so I'll play catch-up!

What We Did Last Week (and the Week Before, and maybe more before that)

There was studying. 

The Boy worked on an essay, did some integer review work with Math Mammoth, finished up a chapter in Conceptual Physics, read from Dandelion Fire, and did extensive research on why Ford is better than Dodge, which also involved a lot of note-taking. He also started planning "the ultimate American road trip", so he's spent a lot of time with his head buried in an atlas.

The Girl worked on multiplication and place value, with Math Mammoth and some other resources I had lying about. She wrote a short story after trying Writing Strands and deciding she did not care for it, did some Reading Horizons work, and dropped Magic Treehouse: Dinosaurs Before Dark in favor of Charlotte's Web. She cooked dinner one night, helped make muffins, and baked a cake at my mom's house.

We read some more of Poop Happens: A History of the World From the Bottom Up, The Marvelous Land of the Snergs, and watched an episode of Wild Africa, learning about desert life as part of our geographic studies.

There was also...

 Miniature model building

Giant tower building

Roller skating in a parade to help promote roller derby

An in-house fencing tournament, complete with bronze medal!

A trip to the coast (yesterday) with sand castle/home building

And a stop at a cemetery to check out very old tombstones and such

We (I) never realized before that in this graveyard, there was a separate section for Asian people.

And this little side stop ended up being more of an adventure than we planned, as the car would not start afterwards. I called my sister, who tried to jump start it, but no luck. She then drove me to a store to get a new battery, which she, The Boy, and M then installed. The car is now running fine, but The Boy missed fencing practice last night.

Anyhow, now you are all caught up, and I hope your week is off to a good start!