The Value of Projects, and Why We Don't Have "Grade Levels" Anymore...

We tend to be a fairly project oriented family as it is, but as part of their "secondary level" learning, I want the kids to each complete a long-term project. A quick search on the web says this about project-based learning:

The core idea of project-based learning is that real-world problems capture students' interest and provoke serious thinking as the students acquire and apply new knowledge in a problem-solving context. The teacher plays the role of facilitator, working with students to frame worthwhile questions, structuring meaningful tasks, coaching both knowledge development and social skills, and carefully assessing what students have learned from the experience. Advocates assert that project-based learning helps prepare students for the thinking and collaboration skills required in the workplace.
 
I think it also teaches follow-through, and allows varying methods of approaching varying topics. For my kids at least, hands-on learning is as important as book-based learning, and their projects will/do reflect that.

The Boy is already at work on his... the restoration of a 1940 Ford step-side pickup. He is essentially an apprentice: working under the tutelage of someone with vastly more experience; learning each part of what it takes to entirely rebuild an older vehicle from the smallest to the largest parts. It feeds his greatest passion as well, working with automobiles, and he knows it will provide him with valuable skills for his future. His plans for the immediate future, outlined further below, reflect his knowledge that this is what he wants to do.

As for The Girl, it seems likely, at the moment, that turning our yards, back and front, into a wildlife habitat will be her project (with my assistance/mentorship). But, she doesn't have to decide right this moment, as she has a few years left ahead of her as far as really homeschooling goes.

So...grade levels. I've pretty much abolished them as I think they are unnecessary for us. Instead, I'm coming up with a checklist of what each kid needs to complete to graduate, since as a private school, we set our own graduation requirements. Mine are as follows, though they are still a work in progress:

Language Arts: Be able to write effectively, and communicate orally with ease. This means they can write strong essays with different approaches, communicate properly with mail and email, and enjoy a discussion of literature, along with discussing other topics. My goal is to get them into an upper entry level English class at the junior college without trouble or remediation.

Math: They need to work up through Algebra 2, mostly if not all at home, and then do a semester of personal finance (or in The Boy's case, for his certificate program/associate's degree, Business Math). Each will also take an upper math class at the junior college, toward transfer credit (The Girl), or an associate's degree (The Boy).

History and Science: Historical and scientific literacy is my goal here. We delve more deeply when needed, and skim other topics as desired. They don't need to know everything about every field of science, or every point in history, but need to be familiar with how things work, and how they fit together.

Project-Based Learning: They will each complete a major project (see above).

Volunteer Work: Each will complete a minimum of 100 hours community service, which is actually pretty easy to do, since they already have numerous hours with food banks, puppy petting, and bicycle repair.

As I said, this is a work in progress, so we'll see what I come up with!

The Boy is in a period of transition. While he will continue some learning at home, he is getting ready to shift toward more junior college classes, moving forward toward an associate's degree in automotive technology. He'll be sixteen in the spring, and is, I think, mature enough to handle this challenge and period of change.

On the flip side, The Girl says she will not be ready to start at the junior college until she is about sixteen, which is fine. She'll be (as far as we know) doing her undergrad work there, before transferring to the local university for biology/wildlife studies.

I have come to really feel comfortable with this hybrid approach as they get older. They are no longer dependent on only my instruction, which is definitely a transition, but a good one.

Fall Is On Its Way...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unconcerned...

I use to worry about gaps in my children's educations, as if they were somehow in danger of falling into the abyss if they weren't exposed to everything; as if they were dependent on a vast knowledge of every historical event, every scientific principle; as if without a certain kind of education, they would be in danger of losing their grip on the world.

image courtesy of sellinginteriordesign.com

Certainly I read comforting articles like this one, and this one. But still I worried. Was I failing the children because I didn't make them memorize the kings and queens of England? Or the weight of each element?

My worry has definitely faded over the years as I have watched my children become capable of finding needed information themselves, of supporting their own interests. For example, The Girl loves animals. She searched out David Attenborough documentaries, found books at the library, delved into all of it and taught herself more about mammals, dinosaurs, and sea creatures, by the age of 13, than even I know at the advanced age of 43. The Boy knows cars from a distance—old and new—just from their silhouette. As for history and science, we have watched documentaries, read books, talked through the scientific method. We've studied art casually hung on the door of the fridge, listened to music that spans centuries, and enjoyed many period films.

I've seen over the years that if you teach a child to read [and do math] and you model for them how to find information, they become capable of doing just that, finding the information they need.

As for knowing every detail, I can honestly say that never in my life, since childhood, has anyone quizzed me about which president served when, or the order of the the periodic table of elements. To function, as a teacher at the college level mind you, I don't need to know who Marie Antoinette's sisters and brothers were, or in what year a specific battle took place.

I do think children, and adults, should be aware of the general flow of history and the basic tenets of science. They should have a basic familiarity with names, countries, events, and such. They should know who Napoleon was, or Hitler, and why we celebrate every July 4th. They should know where major countries are, how weather and seasons work, the basics of physics, and how plants grow. 

There are so many things overlooked when we focus on strictly an academic approach. As well as being able to write a decent essay and understand geometric proofs, they should be able to balance a checkbook, change a tire, cook a meal, sew on a button, do their own laundry. They should be able to follow their interests, and above all, learn how to find information. I'm not advocating a hands-off approach with learning, rather that perhaps priorities need to be reviewed and shifted on an occasional basis.

If my children graduate able to communicate easily both verbally and in writing, able to understand higher math (at least to a certain point, that being whatever level it is they need), can generally take care of themselves (life skills), and are able to search out the next pieces they need, I think I'll be comfortable. Learning doesn't stop when I stop explicitly teaching them. They will continue learning throughout their lifetimes, and surely that will allow them to fill in some "gaps". They'll leap, with my support and the support of others, across any abyss, or chasm.

image courtesy of apsalar.com

Compiling a 2016-2017 List of Books...

Some read-aloud ideas for summer and beyond!

Fiction (Literature)

Our focus for the year is stories referenced in the TV series Once Upon a Time, plus a few other books just because
Journey to the Center of the Earth (currently reading this!)

Around the World in 80 Days

The Twenty-One Balloons 

The Phantom Tollbooth (we quite possibly may listen to this excellent audiobook version in the car again)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Through the Looking Glass
Grimm's Fairy Tales (selected stories)
The Red Fairy Book & The Blue Fairy book (selected stories)

The Odyssey
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

And for audiobooks, we're looking at:
 The Hobbit
and The Lord of the Rings books one, two, and three
[I think I would enjoy listening to these as much as the kids would!]

Geographical books
One of the options for high school social studies in California is a year of world geography/cultures. So I'm looking at vintage books (listed first), and the more modern ones... Maybe we'll mix and match!
The Royal Road to Romance
The Glorious Adventure
The Flying Carpet
Seven League Boots

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe 
Notes from a Small Island 
A Walk in the Woods
In A Sunburned Country

I'll post more later, as I still have nature and science to cover!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We're not doing a lot to celebrate the day, though we do have a fair bit of Irish in our bloodline, but we are definitely all wearing green!

M asked that I make corned beef and cabbage, with carrots and red potatoes, so I am throwing that in the crockpot at lunch time. We don't drink, so no Guinness!

We'll listen to The Chieftains (partly because I love their music anyway), and I'm planning to make green smoothies for the kids before their sports tonight.

We're also looking forward to the Spring Equinox (Ostara)! I'm on vacation next week (woo hooo!!!), so the kids and I have plans to go hiking, and gather some wildflowers for pressing. I'd like us each to plant a small pot of flowers for our front steps too (I'm thinking pansies, geraniums, and cheerful flowers along those lines), and I have great hopes that I will be out in the garden much of the day, after making some lemon-lavender muffins for breakfast.

Dinner that day will be a frittata, with veggies to be determined, and a salad full of baby spring greens and sunflower sprouts on the side.

Now, while I will be vacationing from my jobs, and school, the kids are not on Spring Break. We inadvertantly did that the week of The Girl's birthday. So we'll be hitting the books every day — I'm looking forward to having that less-interrupted time with them.

And we'll be doing yard work (lots of weeds to pull), and housework (maybe I'll rent that steam-cleaner at last!). It will be a week of caring for our home, our garden, and our learning.

Enjoy your St Paddy's Day!

Narration...

image courtesy of hearinghealthmatters.org

One of my favorite Charlotte Mason "tools" is the art of narration. Simply put, narration is "narration is retelling in your own words", allowing a child to tell you what they have learned. Narrations can be verbal, written, acted out, drawn/painted... so many options!

Narration is something I have used all along, and still use, even with teenagers. For example, I leave the kids notes every morning that I work. Today's note asked them to each read or watch something to do with science, and that I will expect them to tell me something about it later. That's a very simplistic approach to narration, one of the most basic. It is certainly easy to implement!

Sometimes I ask for more involved narrations, usually written. They can write a story, or a summary. The Girl writes a lot of short stories, and illustrates them. She's spontaneously made art projects that go with what she learned, such as a 3D frog life cycle collage. The Boy tends to be more straightforward in his approach—he'll write a summary, or an outline of facts. Sometimes though, he'll render an image of something he studied in Blender, and he has notebooks full of diagrams, conversion charts, and things of that nature.

Why use narration?

First of all, it naturally teaches the kids to summarize... at least a little, though as anyone who has listened to kids talk about their interests know, they can really give a lot of detail!

Secondly, telling back what they have learned cements it more firmly in their minds.

Thirdly, it is a form of feedback that can be expressed in so many ways. Tests don't generally allow as many creative approaches! And narration lets kids add in more of what they do know, even from ideas/readings/other things that may at first seem unrelated. Tests don't have that flexibility.

I'm eager to hear about what my kids learned this morning!

This, That, and the Other Thing...

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

The weather has been all over the place. Monday had a high of nearly 90 degrees! And today it is pouring. We did take advantage of the gorgeous weather earlier in the week to walk and bicycle...

And of course there has been some homeschooling. We've been enjoying reading about Rasputin and his strange ways (The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia)...

I even caught M listening in from the other room, when he said "I didn't hear that last part. Can you read louder?"

The kids have changed math up a bit again. The Girl was bored with just Math Mammoth/Math Essentials ("Can't math be at all fun?"), so we added in Life of Fred Fractions. I think a general Life of Fred/Math Essentials combo is fantastic, with Math Mammoth for any weak spots. The Boy was having issues with the explanations in Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1, so we're trying out TabletClass Algebra 1 (I think we should have gone with TC in the first place). TT works for a lot of kids, just not mine so much. Yes, switching now means a longer amount of time spent on Algebra 1, but we're okay with that.

Speaking of The Boy, he's developed a fascination with black holes. All week, he's been spouting off information about gravity, the collapse of stars, event horizons, etc. So I turned to my trusty library for some supplemental reading for him. Titles for him to browse through include:

A Briefer History of Time, Stephen Hawking 

Black Holes: A Very Short Introduction, Katherine Blundell

 and

Black Holes: A Traveler's Guide, Clifford Pickover

There are, of course, plenty of other titles on the subject, but I don't want to overwhelm him. And while I was searching through those, I found this title: 

 Death By Black Hole: and Other Cosmic Quandaries, Neil deGrasse Tyson

This last title looks fascinating for the whole family, though I may have to fight The Boy for it! Despite the title, it's really about a plethora of information on cosmology as a whole.

And thanks to a Kindle game, The Girl has followed in her brother's footsteps and is now fascinated with disease, so we'll be reading

Outbreak!: Plagues That Changed History

From there, maybe we could go into DNA, or ??? I had intended reading to the kids from this particular title (the Plagues one) anyhow, in regards to the Spanish Flu (and our Downton History).

I also found this gorgeous book at the library, just to thumb through for entertainment...


And we were given this amazingly awesome book by a friend...

...Besides Homeschooling and Exercise...

We're prepping for The Girl's THIRTEENTH birthday! Yes, soon I will have only teenagers. Geez, it goes fast!

I'm getting better with meal planning and prepping. I was very proud of myself for preparing components ahead of time for yesterday's crockpot turkey-three-bean chili!

The Girl and I will be heading off, in a couple of weeks, to the first baby shower she's ever attended. My cousin (10 years younger than me) is expecting her first child in April.

I entered a twelve week fitness challenge that starts the same day as the baby shower. I'm nervous, but excited!

Work is going well overall. I love working with students, and am looking forward to some possible changes in the fall (more on that later).

The Boy is really enjoying his auto internship. They spent the last two workdays sanding various parts, and taking things apart to sand them. Next week, I think they get to start putting things back together again!

And there is a new litter of puppies ready for some petting, so The Girl and I will have to head off and do that!

And there's derby practice, and fencing practice of course.

And I know I wrote a big post on scheduling, but I really, really love this schedule best (with longer time frames for math these days). Maybe, just maybe, I could create a mishmash of the two?

So that's what we're up to, and what we've been doing. I'll leave you with some wisdom I got yesterday from a simple tea bag...

Using What I Have...

A while back, I sent for a bunch of free dvds from HHMI... excellent resource, by the way! However, we never really got around to using them, and they are just gathering dust. Then today, I remembered seeing a free downloadable science project somewhere that looked really, really good ... did a lot of digging, and found it. It turns out that it is from HHMI, and goes with a dvd we already have!

The activity is focused on microbial ecology, and takes 6-8 weeks. There are student and teacher handouts, and it looks relatively easy to set up. Record keeping includes taking notes/making observations, comparing experimental columns to a control column, photographing changes, and sketching changes.

It goes with the lecture series Changing Planet: Past, Present, Future.

They've got a plethora of other videos, and lots of activities (some do look better than others).

I think we're going to give this one a try!

A New Book That I Really Like...

I've been looking for a book like this for Cassia for a long time—a book that gives instruction in a clear way, while engaging her, and allowing for free writing.

Well, I think I have found it!

This book is intended for year 4 over there, as you can see from the cover, but with her dyslexia, The Girl is a bit behind. I actually think, in looking through this book, that we will get through book two in half a year, and then we can tackle book three, so she'll be "catching up". 

We got it in the mail from the UK yesterday, and she was eager to give it a try. I read the introduction out loud, and she laughed, which is a good sign, right? I then moved on to lesson one, in which we read the beginning of Snow White, and then she was to answer comprehension questions (which you can see here if you click on Sample Pages). She did very well with that, though we did the work verbally rather than writing answers. She was thrown for a bit of a loop though, when the book asked what she thought the story would be like if the beginning was set in summer! We thought perhaps the queen would have had to have asked for a daughter with hair as gold as sunshine, eyes as blue as the summer sky, and skin as white as rose petals.

The final task for the day was to use a dictionary to look up several words. I have a children's dictionary, but we decided to use our regular, though rather elderly, one. The Girl hasn't used a dictionary before—I know, I know, but we were focused on reading—but she very quickly got the hang of it, and found all the words needed, reading the definitions aloud.

Today we'll be learning some interesting facts about snow, and then next week she gets to launch into some creative writing. They have four writing prompts, out of which I have selected three, which will keep her writing all week: continuing the story either in the traditional fashion, or coming up with her own story line; writing a short description of a beautiful place; and writing an acrostic poem using the word "snowflake". She loves poetry, so I think the last especially will be a big hit.

Upcoming exercises in Lesson 1 include a lesson on nouns, spelling, sentence ordering, more creative writing, copywork, and so forth. It seems to be (as I looked through the whole book last night) varied enough to really keep her interested!

I'll be updating my review later in the year, as we get a chance to go through more of it, but so far, so good!  

A Timely Nudge...

Read this post: Usher in Your Life, by my friend Jessica, before you finish reading mine.

So I've been writing posts like this one, this one, and this one, all agonizing over what exactly to do for seventh and ninth grades. I worried endlessly, made notes and plans, came up with new ideas and threw away older ones... or as Jessica put it:

I wasted an entire summer collecting resources to which someone else had assigned educational value.

Then, I read her post (linked above), and I stopped.

I watched my children. I talked to them, not about "do you want to do this curriculum, or this one?" but more along the lines of "what really interests you right now?" and "how did you like x in the past?" Then, I watched them some more, just living, and exploring the world around them. I listened when they told me what they're working on and why it was/is exciting.

So, to make a long story short, I am not planning science, history, art, geography...though I am still considering a semi-organized-interest-led approach, as I detailed here. Math and writing? Yes, we'll continue with those. Afternoon basket? Yes, the kids have asked for that to be reinstated. Other than that, they have many, many interests to explore...

The Boy will shortly be taking two classes at the local junior college. He's teaching himself Anglo-Saxon runes, which has led to an interest in the Middle Ages. He's intrigued by astronomy and geology. He's still building in Blender (computer animation program), and is learning to write code. He works on soft body physics, draws, makes lists of conversions and car models, reads voraciously.



The Girl creates in Minecraft, makes clay sculptures and dresses for her dolls, helps me cook. She loves old fairy tales and is passionate about studying animals. She writes little stories, and draws complimentary illustrations for them. She's fascinated by Queen Elizabeth I, and American pioneers. She reads Gary Larson, and shares the ones she finds the most funny.


Why on earth do I keep wanting to interfere with all that learning?

In the meantime, here's what we've been up to...

Lazy park days with friends

Bodyboarding at a local beach

Watching movies that range from classics to action/adventure sorts

Playing board and card games

Planning a better and beautiful backyard

Watching birds and insects

Spent a gorgeous day at a park with my mom for her birthday, in which we ate delicious food, explored a creek and some fallen trees, climbed redwood tree stumps, spotted birds and flowers, and enjoyed being occasionally silly

Oh, the Agony...

I wish high school had not gotten here so quickly. I am in a quandary with planning for The Boy. On the one hand, I feel maybe he needs to have a full plan, a "real" high school line-up, and on the other, I would love to see him continue his exploration of the world. I am set on math and English... everything is fine there. But, once I move past the "skills", the "content" areas befuddle me (see here for content subjects/areas versus skill subjects/areas). I worry about not giving him enough, versus overloading him.

He too vacillates a bit between the two. "Mom, I should do all the regular high school subjects, just in case", or "Mom, I really feel I do better when we unschool some stuff."

It doesn't help that there isn't a lot out there, that I can find, about unschooling the high school years. It seems that many unschooling families do a 180 when they reach ninth grade (How to Stop Unschooling Attrition), or at least I've seen that in more than one case. Of course, I have read about studies like this one: How do Unschoolers Turn Out?, and I've heard of unschoolers heading off merrily to college, like the Colfax family, I still worry.

What if I turn my wonderfully curious son into the class dunce?

I don't know yet if I have the courage it seems it will take to make this jump, this leap of faith.

Any words of wisdom out there?

Organized Unschooling (okay, interest-led schooling)...

image courtesy of ri-ir.org

I know, that sounds like a bit of a contradiction, doesn't it?

But, in thinking, and thinking, and thinking, about where I don't quite succeed in homeschooling (yes, I am admitting to some failure), I believe I have figured out where the problem lies, and that is in follow-through. Yes, I am very good at coming up with lists, and plans, and all kinds of grandiose ideas, some of which include unschooling, but then we tend to more or less skim by, getting just the basics done, and sometimes a little more.

image courtesy of eebrinker.wordpress.com

image courtesy of mewarnai.us

Not what I picture when I think about what I really want in homeschooling. I quoted Elizabeth Goudge once: "Education is a mosaic of beauty. The various colored fragments are interrelated" (Linnets & Valerians), and that's what I want... interconnectedness, the fragments coming together to make something more than the sum of the parts.

Now the remedy I plan to try is very simple... actually planning, and yes that includes the unschooling -- or more properly stated -- interest-led aspects. So yes, I will plan out math and language arts, because they need that strong foundation. And I will ask them to complete a certain amount of other studies... for example, half an hour daily of free reading, or choosing a documentary to watch, an online course to complete. They are already immersing themselves in some project-based learning. I will ask them to set goals with me in regards to history, music, art, science, and then we will work together to break those goals down into manageable chunks.



Mostly, I want these ideas they have, and I have, to go somewhere. If they lead to more rabbit trails, fine. If they peter out before we even get going, well... that's what I want to start avoiding. Too often, around my house, I hear "I want to learn this and this", but then in reality, that's pretty much as far as it goes. As if the road we're about to follow ends before we even really get started.

image courtesy of nalzgraphics

So for next week, and the four weeks after that (what's left in our school year), I plan to plan. I have old "assignment sheets" that I made ages ago and I am updating them (maybe I'll share them later!). I am asking The Boy to dedicate those few weeks to an actual science/computer science study (he likes the looks of this one, which yes, he started once and never finished...and this one), OR he can read a whole science-related book, start-to-finish. I want The Girl to finish her choice of Prentice Hall Science Explorer texts for the year (last chapter of Animals, and all of From Bacteria to Plants... it is pretty short, so that should be doable). I want them to each chose one novel to read start to finish. Together, we will finish our interesting study of California, and our read-alouds. And in exchange for asking them to do more, I will incorporate what they want... book choices, time periods, The Girl's unending requests to actually dissect our owl pellets and frog specimens, more art, some summer excursions/field trips.  And this whole thing will be a practice run for fall.

image courtesy of charide.wordpress.com

I think of this plan as steps up a mountain, each one leading to the next, until we find another trail to explore, or a vista to enjoy, before returning to the climb. I can't see the top yet, but I know we are heading somewhere!

Yes, I know it is not really unschooling, as I am setting boundaries and such. It is interest/child-led, and parent-led, which I think will prove a good balance.

Derby Days...

The Girl attended her first roller derby tournament over the last weekend! We spent two nights, two days, in Bakersfield. While they did not come home victorious, our girls played hard, and played clean games. They lost the first bout, won the second, and lost the third. While I did take some photos of my own, there were professional photographers on the scene too, so here are a few pictures of The Girl from day 1...

I wish there was a better picture of her from day 2, but at least she can be seen in this one...

The nice thing is that they get another chance -- next month they are playing the team from day 2, the Bakersfield Juniors, but at a home game.

It was a good weekend in many ways. First, the girls spent all their time together, so it helped the team bond a bit more. Secondly, The Girl has never been away from me for the night before, so spending two nights, plus travel time there and back, with her coaches and teammates was an interesting experience for her, one that I think helped cement that she's growing up. I also got that lovely thing I have so rarely... alone time. I read all of The Other Boleyn Girl in my hotel room! And now I'd like to see the film adaptation. And, I rode down and back with a longtime derby skater/derby mom, so I learned a lot more about the game, and the players and players' families, in the six hours each direction.

Other than that, what have we been up to?

Math -- The Girl is burning through Life of Fred Cats, and The Boy loves Life of Fred Prealgebra with Biology. They are enjoying it enough that they agreed to continue with the books over summer, just a lesson (The Boy) or two (The Girl) a day.

Writing -- The Boy is working on an essay outline, and spends some of his time working on his story plot. The Girl is practicing sentence structure and spelling. She learned to text over the long weekend.

Self-taught -- The Boy is working hard on computer coding. He regularly chats with a computer science major at fencing, who helps him figure out what codes to tackle. The Boy has also set a goal, with his coaches, of moving up to competitive level fencing by fall, starting with smaller, local tournaments, and going from there.

The Girl has the next derby game to get ready for. She's been working on her sewing skills lately, altering a stuffed animal into something resembling a cat version of L. Frank Baum's "Patchwork Girl" (of Oz). She also learned how to use my vintage sewing machine, and made a purse for one of her dolls.

We're getting back into our regular routine bit by bit this week, and should be back in the full swing of things by next week! Hope your week is going well!

Turns Out the Joke's On Me...

Okay, not a joke really, but it turns out when you expose kids to a lifestyle of learning, in which they get input into subject matter, textbooks and non-textbook choices, learning approaches, etc....

They come to expect that will continue.

image courtesy of danijohnson.com

 We had our annual planning meeting yesterday. I met with each kid, went over ideas for next fall (and the rest of this year), and yes, as always, I had a plethora of what-ifs to share!

I had choices for math, for languages, for potential history and science programs, etc., etc., etc.

And we ended up right back where we are now. Yes, we do math and language arts at least 4 times a week. Yes, the kids read daily. And yes, they both love science. But outside those, they don't want to be tied down to a particular program.

And so 2015-2016 has math (no changes there since they like their math programs), writing (just a step up), and science of their choice. Everything else will continue to be interest-led.

And The Boy will be taking his first college course starting in late August. I think he's settled on Drawing and Composition I for fall, to be followed, possibly, by sculpture the next spring, or maybe something with computer science, or engineering. The world is his oyster!

I am truly thankful at the moment that we have a local junior/community college that offers [free] concurrent enrollment, and that is very highly regarded, for a couple of reasons...

One. I know the kids can continue to build on the foundation we have given them, and explore all kinds of classes, from anthropology, to comparative mythology, world history, engineering, mechanics... and much, much more.

And two (a little more selfish), if they do undergrad/concurrent work there, I don't have to do transcripts, or a "traditional" high school sequence. So there.

Good Geography Find!

I found this book at the library, when I was searching for a general overview of Europe...

And I have to say I am very pleased with it! (You can see a bit of the book here.) I wish we had known about this series when we were studying Africa. It is clearly written, not so long that we don't have room for anything additional, fairly well up to date, etc. Anyhow, I then discovered that there were more in the series, so I plan to use the following titles as well...

Then, I found out that in addition to Wild China, Wild Africa, and Wild South America, there are a number of other titles that will fit in with our studies! Wild India - Land of the Tiger (unfortunately not available at the moment), Wild Caribbean, and Wild Pacific/South Pacific are among the titles I'd love to add to our watchlist. Maybe through interlibrary loan?