Weekly Report: Science, Books, & Kites...

Wow! What a good, solid week we had! It just goes to show that when we set the time aside, turn of the computer, television set, etc.,  we can get a lot done without feeling stressed.

Language Arts:

We did a little more work in The Complete Writer this week, with narrations/summaries, and some copy work. Both kids are continuing to enjoy this program, so I think it is safe to say, we have found a winner! I am much more confident in my language arts/writing plans for fall now.

The Girl finished up chapter one, and started chapter two, in Reading Horizons. She actually just did the Skill Check for the first lesson in chapter two, and scored 100%! She's looking forward to trying the skill check for the next lesson as well. She is, I think and hope, beginning to believe me when I tell her she has better reading skills than she realizes!

Literature:

We've been enjoying the story of Perseus in A Wonder Book for Girls & Boys, reading a section each day. Hawthorne's language use in this book is marvelous--not too challenging for the kids, yet not at all dumbed down. The kids laugh every time we get to "Medusa with the snaky locks", because we all find it funny that he nearly always refers to her that way, only very rarely simply saying "Medusa"!

We're also enjoying Linnets & Valerians. Yesterday, I started introducing literary elements with this book, explaining foreshadowing to the kids. They immediately picked up on it, citing examples from other books, like The Titan's Curse (another chapter or two of this in the car this week as well), and The Sea of Monsters. They are looking forward to see what the foreshadowing in Linnets & Valerians is hinting at.

The Girl and I are just over halfway through Ramona the Pest, and The Boy is probably two-thirds of the way through The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. And we started reading Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone at bedtime.

Science:

Science has been a blast this week! I started off the week meaning to cover energy (BFSU), but instead we read another chapter from You Are the Earth, and then everything flowed from there! The chapter was technically on soil, but we also learned a bit about nutrition, fungi, bacteria, rocks, and more! We watched a Bill Nye video to go with it, on Rocks & Soil, and started not one but three science projects! Here's two of them, and I'll take pictures later of the third...

First, we're sprouting peas, to try this project/experiment

And these are bread samples for growing mold. One dampened piece and one dry piece per kid, sealed up nice and tight!

Our third project comes from You Are the Earth. We took a few of the peas we had soaked overnight, and the kids planted one each in topsoil and subsoil. They are keeping them damp, and will be watching for growth.

While we didn't do exactly what I had planned for the week in science, I realized we did cover/are covering threads B-4, B-10, B-11, A-10, D-10 and B-12 in BFSU! [Plant and earth sciences]. I plan to continue in this next week, since we're enjoying it so much, with my copy of Life in a Bucket of Soil, and Bill Nye: Plants, as well as a project involving epsom salts from this week's Bill Nye video, and/or the fairly similar Epsom Salts crystal garden project here (BFSU A-9). And of course, we'll be continuing the projects above!

History:

History was good this week, though not nearly as exciting as science! We read another chapter in the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, all about Cheops and the Great Pyramid, and we read You Wouldn't Want to be an Egyptian Mummy! We've decided to spend one more week on Egypt. I'd like to finish up Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, and there are a couple of documentaries we'd like to watch. Plus, I have Pyramid on hand, and we'd like to enjoy that as well!

Math:

The Girl took a break from Saxon this week, as we felt she needed some review with telling time, so I pulled out some Math Mammoth worksheets and our practice clock. The Boy started testing through Saxon Math 6/5, and was able, so far, to skip 6 lessons, as he scored 97% on the test he took.

Other Stuff:

We worked in the garden some more, transplanting broccoli this week. Our apple and cherry trees are in full bloom, and the limequat has little white buds all over. The Girl cut a sprig off the apple tree and is seeing if she can get it to root in a small pot of dirt.

The kids are building popsicle-stick houses at my mom's, in addition to all the other crafts they do with her.

And we wrapped up the week by taking advantage of the wind and gorgeous weather!

Kite-flying is always a lot of fun! (In the bottom picture, that is The Boy to the right.. I had to back up quite far to get both him and the kite in the picture!)

Hope you all had a good week too! And enjoy the weekend, before we have to start all over again.

Weekly Report: Kicking Myself...

image courtesy of mobilebeat

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

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

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

As to the rest of the week...

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

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

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

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

photo courtesy of Adrian Limani

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

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

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

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

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

BFSU Volume III

I made up my flow chart for BFSU Volume III today, and thought I would share! You can find all my flowchart links here.

Putting it Together: Science

There are so many resources I love, and I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how to put them all together. I think I might be on to something here, at long last!

1. I am working on a giant checklist, using Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, all three volumes. As we go through everything else, I can use this checklist to make sure we cover plenty of scientific territory. And I can always add in a trade book or two if we miss something!

2. I am working on compiling a list of books I would love to read for science. Some of those titles are:

• Dr. Art's Guide to Science
• You Are the Earth
• Dinosaur Bone War
• The Magic of Reality
• Breakthroughs in Science
• A Briefer History of Time
• Swampwalker's Journal
• Science Matters
• An Inconvenient Truth
• The Omnivore's Dilemma

3. Then I can use the Prentice Hall Science Explorer textbooks I bought for support. These have units on a myriad of subjects, along with cross-curricular activities and hands-on experiments.

4. And of course, there is always a place in our hearts for documentaries!

I think this might work because it balances my unschooly AND schooly desires, AND I can let the kids choose which book/subject we study next! We can cover a large number of topics this way, read some really good books, and still not have a formal curriculum that spells out each day's activities.

Next on the agenda: Putting it Together: History. And I'm working on a list of mathy books to add to the Afternoon Basket. I'd love to finish String, Straightedge & Shadow one of these days!

It's Friday!!!

Photo courtesy of inspiredbycharm.com

I am glad the weekend is almost here, although it promises to be a busy one--I have papers to grade and a three-four page paper to finish writing. Add that to housework, cooking, grocery shopping, etc., and yes, I will be well occupied over the next few days.

So lately M has been feeding an addiction, literally. He cannot stop eating Bush's Baked Beans, which I swear must be some of the priciest beans out there. In interest of keeping on budget, I am attempting to replicate (or better) those beans in the crockpot today. I googled recipes, and found a couple that claimed to be "better than Bush's", amalgamated those recipes, and now they are simmering away. Wish me luck! If this turns out well, I can get an entire big pot of beans cooked up for nearly the same price as one 28-ounce can. And mine are organic! With M unemployed, we are having to be careful with our grocery dollars. I am finding that it is true - the more you cook from scratch, the more you can save, and the better your food can be. For example, I bought a 4 pound chicken last week. We had roasted chicken and veggies one night, then pesto-drenched pasta with chicken and veggies (I made mine with spaghetti squash and it was delicious!), and finally I made a big pot of chicken-barley-veggie soup that lasted through one dinner, and several lunches. Not bad!

A Few Homeschooling Highlights From the Week

Zaccaro Primary Challenge Math is fantastic! You can read more about this week's experience with it here.

We had fun watching Fantasia and talking about music... I was [pleasantly] surprised that The Girl could identify which Nutcracker Suite pieces were used in the film! We also discussed animation methods, as that greatly interests The Boy. He was impressed at the quality of animation pre-digital age, and we talked about inks, paints, transparent layering, and more. He then spent a lot of time drawing this week.

Speaking of The Boy, my once-scared-of-writing boy asked if he could have a prompt from Unjournaling this week! I think by next year he'll be ready for NaNoWriMo!

Other highlights include: The Girl's work on long vowels; plenty of good reading from A Picture Perfect Childhood and The Graveyard Book; playing with Emily (The Girl's mouse) and Athena (The Boy's water dragon); and The Boy's as always silly sentences in Writing Skills.

And of course there was plenty of political talk--we discussed previous presidents and the current candidates (please note that while I did not care for one of the candidates, I was very careful to not speak negatively of him in front of the kids). We also talked about the electoral college, the popular vote, amendments, and propositions.

We also "traveled", through the words of travel writer Richard Halliburton, to Fort Jefferson, reading the unfortunate story of Dr. Samuel Mudd.Was he innocent or guilty of conspiring with John Wlkes Booth? I suppose we'll never really know. Anyhow, we enjoyed reading about the fort, and as always the plethora of [black and white] photographs really added to the story, as did the letter published in the book. It was written to Mr. Halliburton by an elderly woman who as a child had actually lived at the fort with her soldier father!

Where We Could Improve for Next Week

Getting around to schoolwork! I had plans aplenty for this week, which didn't happen. One afternoon it was because I spent a lot of time dealing with car repairs... again. Another afternoon my mother-in-law showed up four hours early for dinner. Yes, FOUR hours. All of the time I had planned for homeschooling.

I was re-reading Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. I think if I rearrange my flow charts a little, I could totally make this work for us in conjunction with the fabulous Reader's Digest How _____ Works books and Janice VanCleave's _______ For Every Kid series. Add in some Bill Nye videos, and I'll have two happy science-y kids! I do really want this program to work for us, as with all three volumes it is one of the most thorough science programs I have ever come across.

Plans For Upcoming Bits and Pieces

I plan to read about Veteran's Day to the kids this weekend. I'll be picking up this library book on the way home from work today...

This weekend, I also hope to tackle art with The National Gallery of Art: Activity Book. And we'll finish watching NOVA's Becoming Human. The Boy has expressed interest in watching documentaries related to the universe/astronomy, so we'll watch one of those too.

Other homeschooling goals for the upcoming week:
~ get through chapter two in The Magic of Reality
~ read a few chapters in The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
~ read another 2-4 chapters in The Early Human World and add to the Books of Centuries we're working on
~ finish listening to The Lightning Thief and start book 2 in the Percy Jackson series
~ 2 lessons from each Life of Fred and Primary Challenge Math
~ A couple of lessons each from Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons
~ Getting around to the science project that M gathered all the supplies for, and that we didn't do (thank you MIL!)

Finally, personal goals for the upcoming week:
~ more exercise!
~ planning next week's menu and shopping appropriately
~ getting through at least a few chapters from one of the book's I am writing my long (seminar) paper on this semester
~ getting caught up, again, on laundry!

Hope you all have a good weekend!

Tuesday Tidbits...

We are now in our sixth week of homeschooling for the year. There have been, and continue to be, some adjustments as always. Some things are working very well, others need some work.

What IS Working...

We have definitely found a way of doing history that makes it work for us. Our two spine books - one on world history and one on American - are lovely read alouds, and the kids are really enjoying putting together their Books of Centuries. In fact, every time they add to them, they rush off to proudly show their dad what they learned about this time! After all the stress I had about history, I am so glad this is going well!

For The Girl the combination of Explode the Code and Reading Pathways (Dolores Hiskes) is marvelous. These two resources work very well together, and she is gaining confidence daily. I no longer have to lead her through each page of Explode the Code... instead she does it on her own and then shows it to me for any corrections, of which there has only been one recently, on the word "glass", which she spelled originally with only one "s", certainly an easy mistake to make.

The Boy loves a couple of his language arts resources: Soaring with Spelling & Vocabulary because it has fun activities, and Unjournaling (writing prompts) because they (the prompts) are both hilarious and challenging. I do need to work with him on drilling the spelling words, but that is a simple adjustment. I also really want to get him working on a Writing Project each month.

There are other parts of language arts that are working well - i.e. Grammar Land - and then things we need to get to, like poetry. I think what we'll start doing is alternating Mondays on grammar and poetry.

Math is both working and not working, or rather I should say parts of it work better than others. Once again, as was the case last year, while Teaching Textbooks is nice in many ways, The Boy and I miss that time together. I have next to no involvement in his math with Teaching Textbooks. So working through Life of Fred and some complimentary Math Mammoth has been refreshing this week. Of course, The Girl instantly wanted to know why she isn't doing any Life of Fred, which subsequently resulted in my ordering another copy of LOF Apples so that she and I can work through the elementary series together, alternating it with Math Mammoth! I firmly believe that after the prealgebra stage, LOF is very complete, especially with the Home Companion books, so if my kids enjoy and learn from Life of Fred now, they may be able to use it all the way through their homeschooling journey!

We're actually getting in a lot more nature walks this year! Instead of scheduling them for "school time", we're approaching them as a family late afternoon/early evening treat a couple of times a week, and then sometimes as a special trip on the weekend. I'm really enjoying this family time together, and we are all benefiting from the fresh air and exercise.

What is NOT Working and/or I Would Like to Adjust...

Our Afternoon Basket: While I love and am determined to use this idea, I need to adjust it. We're just not making the most of it! I have decided to add back in some books from the 12 month guideline in A Picture Perfect Childhood, and I may add in our Narnia study books after all. I like the cohesiveness of the lit plan I came up with, and there are many books on that list I would love my children to have some exposure to. Right now we're just kind of going here, there, and everywhere with books, which can be fun, but doesn't seem enough.

Science is very definitely a work in progress. Much as I love and adore Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, I'm struggling with implementation. I think for the remainder of this month at least, I will revert to my old plan: a documentary of their choice once a week; work from a living book once or twice a week; and something nature related the other day(s). Throw in a few experiments from books like The Irresponsible Book of Science, and reading from books like The Magic of Reality, The Story of Science, etc.,  and I think we'll be good to go!

Art and music need work as well, since we just are not getting to them. I did get a copy of a fantastic book called The National Gallery of Art: Activity Book, and I think this will really help! It has pictures to investigate, with a list of questions and prompts to work from, as well as hands-on activities. I have looked through it several times since getting it a few days ago, and am very happy with it. As for music, I think we may start utilizing the Composer of the Month again, with additional music from my own collection and the library. Nice and simple! We could read about the composer at the beginning of each month, and then listen to their music while working on art.

And finally, implementation of everything! I need to actually set aside "school time" as sacred each day, and keep the TV and computers OFF.

So now that we are getting well into the new academic year, what is working and not working in your homeschool?

Week 3... A So-So Sort of Week...

You can tell just from the title that this was just a getting along sort of week!

We started out strong!
Read about New York City in Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels
Read some Greek myths, Celtic fairy tales, and a bit about ancient Greek history
Read about the invention of the printing press with this lovely book (this tied in with our Wright Brothers book)...

The Boy aced his quiz #2 in Teaching Textbooks. The Girl happily returned to Math Mammoth for a review of place value. The Boy worked on spelling, alliteration, and journaling, while The Girl flew through a number of pages in Explode the Code. We read through chapter one of Grammar-Land, and did an exercise in listing nouns.

But, I have been feeling vaguely dissatisfied with science and history. I feel like we're just not doing enough with either. So I've decided that we really need to step it up a notch, and I have come up with two options for each that I need to consider over the weekend, so that we can start up fresh next week!  

AND HERE IS WHAT WE DECIDED

HISTORY

Option 1...
Use The History of US as a basic, daily reading (i.e. "spine")
Then, follow the rabbit trails AS DESIRED with:

Some good  historical fiction

Topical books from the library

Movies, documentaries, etc.

Hands-on activities from a variety of books, & from Time Travelers

Option 2...
Continue with books from Landmark and similar series, following the kids' interests

Add in short (picture) topical books on interrelated subjects (examples for Wright Brothers include kites, the printing press, bicycles, and more)


Add in notebooking/lapboooking, related projects, and more!

Read once a week from a history spine, so that the kids will have more topics to explore!

Then, Science

Option 1...

Use Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding as a base/spine


Add in topical books, readings from the Kingfisher Science Encyclopedia, and videos from Bill Nye, etc.


Plenty of hands-on, and some notebooking with printable pages from Noeo

Option 2...

Keep going with topical books, like The World in a Drop of Water, following the kids' interests

Add in scientist biographies, topical books on interrelated subjects, and plenty of hands-on

Documentaries and science shows (Bill Nye again!)

Lab reports/notebooking (see Noeo link above)




This gives me a lot to think about, and discuss with M, over the weekend. Hopefully, by next week, I'll have some resolution one way or the other!

If you made it this far, I hope your week went well! Have a good weekend!

Week Two... We're Getting There...

This week, I worked on making some adjustments. Even though we had a great week one, I felt overwhelmed by some of my own choices for the year, and so I decided to readjust a bit.

What Worked This Week

Math

Math is still going well. The Boy is moving right along in Teaching Textbooks, and The Girl loves her MCP Math, as do I. I think I found the perfect math workbook for a girl who really wanted a math workbook this year! The Boy worked on estimating, rounding, adding, and subtracting with three digit numbers this week, while The Girl finished a review of addition and subtraction, finishing up with two pages of word problems, which she seemed to enjoy!

Language Arts

A definite highlight was reading Ruth Heller's beautiful book Merry-Go-Round: A Book About Nouns. We did not get to Latin this week (not that I am hugely worried about that), but The Boy did work on spelling, and started a unit in Word Roots regarding suffixes. The Girl made great progress this week! I've noticed that she is writing a lot more too... she's constantly asking me how to spell this or that, and she's proud that her handwriting is improving. I think for now we will continue with our mix of Explode the Code and Reading Pathways.

Science and History

In science this week, we studied a bit about energy (BFSU) - how it transfers from one thing to another, how it is created/where it comes from. We smashed one Hot Wheels car into another to show the transfer of energy. We discussed solar power, wind turbines, and so forth. We played around with both microscopes some more. We read a bit in Moon of the Deer, and spent time examining bug, rocks, and more in our backyard.

In history, we continued reading through The Wright Brothers. We learned about the construction of a printing press by Wilbur and Orville, which got the kids interested in the history of printing. I have a book for us to read today called Breaking Into Print: Before and After the Printing Press. This is what I am trying to encourage... following the rabbit trails that pop up from somewhere else! We also read a section in Builders of the Old World after watching Night at the Museum. We may or may not continue with Builders next week, since The Girl still wants to follow the Wright Brothers with Sacajawea!

I still find myself trying to cram us into a box a bit with history. I know, I know... I said I would let the kids follow their interests this year, and am really trying to do that! I will learn to let go a bit!

And finally, Literature

We dropped a lot of the books from A Picture Perfect Childhood this week. While I love the idea, the practicality of it for me just isn't there. Instead, we moved forward with our Narnia literature study! We read The Aunt and Amabel, a short story by E. Nesbit in which a girl,  sent to "Coventry" in the Spare Room finds a magical world inside a big Wardrobe. Sound familiar? It was from this story that C.S. Lewis drew his inspiration for the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. We also started reading The Snow Queen.

We read about Claude Monet, and discussed his art, using the Artchive to look up a few pieces.

Other books for the week included continued reading from In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World, a few short stories from Grandmothers' Tales, and more of The Lightning Thief in the car. The Girl and I enjoyed beautiful versions of The Tale of the Firebird and King Midas after her reading lessons. I think I ill continue to read a short story/fairy tale to her after each lesson. I found this book that looks like it will work well for this, and am waiting for it to arrive at the library. Until then, we have a stack of other, gorgeously illustrated fairy tale books on hand.

We also finished up The Marvelous Land of Oz as a bedtime book. Next up: we decided to go with Pippi Longstocking since I think both kids will enjoy it!

What I'd Like To Work On Next Week

With The Boy: I'd like to start reading through Breakthroughs in Science with him. I'd like him to do a little more writing next week as well - we didn't really get around to it this week.

With The Girl: I can't think of anything we need to change right now, except making sure that I read her a story after her reading work!

With both: Art project(s) definitely. Finish The Wright Brothers. Start some poetry work with Pizza, Pigs & Poetry. Continue the Narnia study. Listen to some beautiful music. Bring in Greek myths (to replace creation myths), and some Celtic fairy tales to replace Grandmothers' Stories.

Hope everyone else had a good week! Next week I'll get some pictures in my recap as well!

Week One... Such a Good Week!

A glorious sunset

 In all my years of homeschooling (this is the seventh already!), I don't think I have ever had such an easy transition from summer to school-time. It has been such a good week, and I feel that we got a lot done... we're off to a very smooth start for the year.

A mere sampling of our books this week

Books

Books themselves are now the backbone of our homeschooling efforts. And our books vary widely in topic! I'm using the 12 Month book guidelines from A Picture Perfect Childhood, along with various selections from the Core Knowledge trade books list. And so every day we sit down on the couch together, and I read. We have read books this week about everything from gravity (our BFSU topic of the week), to Queen Elizabeth I, to slavery, Native Americans, civil rights, microscopes, creation stories, apples, and more! When I sit down with a stack of books each day after lunch, the kids are eager to sit down too, and see the books (ah, the benefits of illustrated books!), to hear about what we'll be learning today, and I love it!

We're also about two thirds of the way through The Marvelous Land of Oz as bedtime reading. I decided that though we are loving the Oz series, we will switch gears a little when we finish this book, and read The Trumpet of the Swan, after which we may read the next Oz book, or perhaps something else entirely!

In the car, we're making good progress through The Lightning Thief. The Girl and The Boy are constantly comparing the book to the movie, and The Boy, having read the entire series, just keeps telling The Girl "Just wait!", or "You'll love this part!", or "They left this part out of the movie, so you really want to listen!"

The Basics

Math is going extremely well for both kids right now - neither has had a single complaint about their choice of math texts. The Boy skipped the first 7 lessons in Teaching Textbooks, but did take the first quiz, scoring 91%. He then decided to start with the next lesson after reviewing the second quiz, and hasn't scored anything under 95% the remainder of the week. He's working on carrying, estimating, and so forth. The Girl loves MCP Math. She does every problem on the front side of each page/lesson, and about half or more of the problems on the back--this was my choice since there are quite a few problems on the back of each page! She's worked on a review of addition and subtraction this week.

We also started reading through The History of Counting, and had a lot of fun playing around with body counting! We pretended to bargain for various items using this method.

The Boy worked on spelling this week, and will be taking a spelling test today. He also worked on several pages of word roots, and started Latin. He wrote a short story as well, and is thinking about topics for an essay we'll work on over the next month or so. The Girl has enjoyed MCP Plaid Phonics this week, mostly review work, and read several pages from Reading Pathways, and a couple of Nora Gaydos books. Next week I am hoping to get into poetry with them both!

Reading his favorite science encyclopedia

History & Science

We read another few chapters in The Wright Brothers this week, and several entries from The Dangerous Book for Boys Yearbook, which we now refer to simply as The Yearbook, as The Girl thought it was not fair that it says "For Boys", not "For Boys and Girls". Several of our picture books (see Books above) also gave us some historical insight.

In science, we read about gravity, microscopes, and Anton van Leeuwenhoek. We explored slides with our new microscope, and I taught the kids how to prepare slides, comparing water from the dog bowl (after our large dog drank some), the well, our faucet, and from a bucket that had been sitting a while. Today we're going for a late afternoon hike/nature walk, and I hope to collect some pond water for further comparison. We also watched documentaries-- The Incredible Human Machine, and Disney's Oceans. The kids noticed that some of the life forms we observed in our microscope work, and this book, were quite similar to deep sea life in the documentary... a great connection! There were a few episodes of Mythbusters as well, and we checked out NASA footage of a recent solar flare too.

Sorting some fabric squares for a doll's quilt she is planning

All the Odds and Ends

The Girl and I read The Talking Pot together, and then cooked the Danish Apple Pudding (more like cake) recipe from the back of the book. I am trying to make sure that each week at least one of our library books has a recipe for her and I to try out. We have a lot of fun with this - The Girl loves stories, and cooking, and we enjoy spending the time together! We generally do this on a Saturday or Sunday, when we have more time. The Danish Apple Pudding, with a healthy dollop of vanilla yogurt, made a fantastic breakfast, by the way!

The Boy worked on movie making and computer animation this week too. He loves to take videos and edit them, using iMovie or Windows MovieMaker, depending on which computer he is using. He's always talking editing terms these days, or soft body physics. He read a lot too, going back and forth between Spyology (he's big into codes and ciphers too) and Aliens on Vacation.

In art, we worked on a project based off this work, but we haven't quite finished... oops! Maybe today? I'm hoping these projects will turn out well enough to scan and include in our calendars, which will be gifts from the kids to all the relatives at Christmas.

Oh, and I almost forgot! The Boy started cross-country track this week. We met the coach, who we both immediately liked, and walked with everyone --parents and kids-- over the trails we'll be using for training. Mondays he'll be working on speed sprints (with M tagging along), Wednesdays are hill training, and Saturday mornings are distance training. I get to tag along on Wednesdays and Saturdays, since the coach highly encourages parents to participate alongside their kids. The Boy and I ran about half the distance this week, and he loved it!

All in all, an excellent week. There were a couple of things I would have liked to have gotten done, but after all, it was only the first week back, and I am very pleased with what we accomplished! Next week's goals: start the Narnia literature study (I've got two versions of the Snow Queen to choose from), and start our Book of Centuries. Other than that, I'm not making any changes, or adding anything else!

Weekly Report...2/27 -3/2...

We had another "relaxed" week, although my checklist shows a lot going on!

What We Did

History

We read about ancient Egyptians. I put a few supplementary books on hold at the library in case they want to explore this topic some more. The jury is still out on which, if either, book they prefer.

Mythical Creatures
Read from a lovely book called A Cavalcade of Sea Legends while the kids colored pictures of mermaids (Cricket) and dragons (Bug). These colored pictures will be incorporated onto the covers of the lapbooks they're working on. And we watched a couple of movies, continuing our creatures of the deep theme...



Science (BFSU, Thread A-2)
Read about states of matter - Solids, Liquids & Gases, and Liquid to Gas and Back Again
We took ice cubes, melted them, heated them up, and watched them evaporate. Then we did it again with a glass lid over the pot, so we could see condensation. This all led to a discussion of the water cycle, and I was delighted that my kids remembered words like "precipitation"!

Math


I had totally forgotten I had this book! It is very colorful, and for a math book, fun. Cricket did 6 pages in just one sitting! Bug continued working in Math Mammoth for the most part, more division, although he did "take a break" by doing some math puzzles.



Next week my goal is to add in some Life of Fred Apples, for fun math reading.

Language Arts
Cricket continued to work in Explode the Code, doing a review lesson, which seemed really easy for her (yaay!) She told me a short story about her daddy, which I wrote down, and then had her copy to give to him. She read a couple of Nora Gaydos books, much more fluently than before.

Bug worked on another lesson in spelling, this week focusing on suffixes. I was going to have him (finally) work on his essay again, but instead he began writing a story. I read a post from a friend some time back, about how much her kids picked up simply from good books, and it is true! I haven't taught Bug everything about punctuation--such as quotation marks, etc.-- but he is using them! He says he learned from reading! He also played around with some Mad Libs.

Maybe next week I'll work in some more from The Sentence Family, which we were really enjoying before it got set aside.

Literature


We finished one book.



And read a few stories from another.



Bug has almost finished this book, and is eager to read the second one.

We're also really enjoying The Phantom Tollbooth (audio book). David Hyde Pierce is the perfect reader for this book, and we have so many interesting discussions that it is taking us a while to listen to it all!

Other
Bug continues to amaze me with his art and computer animation. He has diligently practiced his piano pieces this week, and has in fact memorized at least one of them.

Cricket spent a fair amount of time practicing her freestyle playing on the piano. Some of it is pretty good! She's also looking forward to her ninth birthday on Sunday! We took cupcakes to today's park day to share with friends.

We were also profiled in our local homeschool association's newsletter, which is cool.

It has been a good week. Relaxed seems to be the way to go! Drop by...

Weekly Wrap-Up... 2/20-2/24...

A fairly quiet and moderately productive week!

Monday

I had the day off from work, so I gave the kids a quasi-holiday. It was Presidents Day, so we did read a couple of books...

We really enjoyed these books. I think the D'Aulaire books are deceptively simple--they really have quite a lot of information, plus we always enjoy illustrations. We also continued listening to The Phantom Tollbooth, and read more from Magic By the Lake. I am constantly amazed at what the kids retain from The Phantom Tollbooth -- this week they were acting out being in the Doldrums, which was several chapters ago. They also asked if we could make letter cookies in honor of the edible letters in the story. I think that will make a good weekend project!

Tuesday

At my mom's house, the kids had a blast playing with her new computer. It has a built-in webcam, so they made several short films with Photo Booth. Some were hilarious, with distortions that included bug-eyes, chipmunk cheeks, stretchy heads and more! Mainly the basics. Cricket worked on phonics, and had a breakthrough. Bug worked on more spelling with plurals, and we talked about words where the ending is changed, such as octopus/octopi, antenna/antennae, and his favorite: platypus/playtypi. Most people simply pluralize these words by adding "es", which is perfectly acceptable, but we have fun saying them with the "i" endings! (Yes, we are strange that way).

Bug worked on some division problems, approaching division this time as repeated subtraction. I really like Math Mammoth for this--the author uses multiple approaches to a concept so that kids get an idea of various ways to approach problems.

We read the prologue and chapter one in:

It is interesting to me that the first time, and second, that I tried to read this book to the kids, they didn't care for it. Now they seem to really enjoy it! We're not particularly focused on history right now, but are doing this as just a read aloud. The kids are talking about maybe doing a study of medieval times soon, since we have done quite a lot of ancient history, but have never gotten past ancient Rome! So I think reading through this, several chapters a week, would prep us quite nicely for volume two, if that is the route we end up going.

Wednesday

Bug had his piano lesson shortly after I got off of work, which gave me the perfect opportunity to finish reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, while Cricket got in some great playtime outside with a friend. I started reading this book because there was such an uproar over it! I did find it interesting, and felt sorry for both the mother and her children. I know a lot of people looked at it as a book that was saying that Western ways are totally inferior to Eastern/Chinese ways, but I didn't get that feeling from it.

After piano, we walked home - the weather here this week is amazingly warm and gorgeous. We decided in homeschooling to start off with the "extras", so we began the educational part of our day with Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, starting with the thread A-1/B-1. Yes, we are using this program at long last! I'll write another post soon about how I am adapting it for my kids, especially Bug (since the book is labeled "K-2" on the front!) We talked about the ways people organize and categorize things. Bug cited the library as an example, and Cricket talked about grocery stores. We then settled down and read:

We also read parts of:

We moved on to a couple of worksheets on categorizing animals into groups: reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and birds. Bug's was all written, and I made Cricket matching worksheets with clip art so that they could work together. We'll be adding these pages, and future ones, to our science notebooks, which I have divided into 4 sections, one for each of the BFSU threads. And then we wrapped it up by looking at the way scientists classify animals and plants in one of our favorite reference books:

Cricket worked on some more phonics--Explode the Code, and reading from a leveled reader. She also played with our old Alphabet Apple, spelling out words. It is interesting... people (that I know in real life) kept telling me that at some point, Cricket would get it (reading that is). Suddenly, she is taking off with it and really trying! Beetle wrote in his journal while Cricket played with words. They watched Turtle: The Incredible Journey, and we read another chapter in Story of the World. The evening was finished up with a quick game of Sum Swamp, this time played a little differently, as I had Bug do multiplication rather than addition, and division rather than subtraction.

Thursday

I took a day off from work for a special event with my kids: a community matinee at the San Francisco Ballet! They showcased parts of three ballets, and explained a bit about what goes on behind the scenes. Both my kids liked the bits from Le Carnaval des Animaux, while I very much enjoyed a more modern piece (I can't remember the name!) It was a great experience, and we get to go again later in the spring!

On the way there and back, we listened to more of The Phantom Tollbooth. Back at home, we had a quick lunch, then headed out to the library, and I finally have almost everything ready to start our study of mythical creatures next week! I'm looking forward to doing this study.

We also watched a documentary our favorite librarian told Bug he "had to see" after she helped him check out a bunch of books on origami...

I highly recommend this video. It was absolutely fascinating, and inspiring! We learned about masters of origami, different techniques, using computer models to design new origami, how it is connected to art and math, and about an origami theorist, the youngest professor ever at MIT, who went to college at the age of 12, had a PhD by 20, and, guess what? He was homeschooled until college! Anyhow, the origami in this video is insanely intense and beautiful. The kids then passed the rest of the evening folding paper, while I read another chapter of Magic by the Lake aloud.

Friday

We're taking it easy today... Park Day, and reading - maybe some Magic of Reality, and/or Story of the World. Definitely more of Magic by the Lake. I'm going to finish getting ready for our mythical creatures unit over the weekend, so on Monday we can jump right in!

Hope you all have a good weekend!