Summer Stuff...

A run-down of what we've been up to, and a few pictures...

The kids won a month's free skating, so they've been skating once or twice a week.

We fixed all the bicycles, so there's been a lot of that too.

My bicycle

I've been working out 3-4 days a week, plus doing steep hill walks with my sister, and regular walks with The Girl and her dog.

We spent a lovely afternoon out at the coast...

The "creek" that runs out into the ocean

Dunes, beach grass, cypress, and waves

A giant dune that we scrambled up a dozen times, and rolled and jumped and slid and ran back down

Sandcastle in progress

You can see how pretty and sunny it was, and then we drove 45 minutes home into a thunder-and-hail storm. Just crazy!

We've been reading The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and really, really enjoying it. We watched part one of Peter Jackson's movie version, and we all agreed... while we do love the LoTR movies, we just don't feel the same love for The Hobbit films. There was just far too much extra stuff added. ONE movie, that followed the book, would have been so much better.

Documentary watching has been half hit, half miss. We're enjoying our history selections, but haven't started science ones yet. That's okay. We will get there, and we've basically come to accept that we are year-round homeschoolers anyway.

Math is going pretty well. The Boy likes his Great Courses algebra lectures quite a lot. The Girl is making great progress through the Prodigy math game, where I set up problems several times a week to match her textbook.

The kids have taken to biking to the teen club, which saves me time... and gas. They visit it once or twice a week, and spend almost all their time in the art room. The Boy might be doing a job training program there soon, and they both want to take barista training.

I'm taking a very intensive Spanish course at the moment.... online. One semester of Spanish covered in only six weeks. So far, I've kept up. The Boy is teaching himself computer coding (I think javascript at the moment), and The Girl is working on her butterfly identification skills.

I'm also on the hunt for a job, as my position at the junior college has been frozen due to decreased revenue. I was supposed to start back next week, but that is not to be so at this time. I don't know about fall yet, though I am still hopeful. I may fall back on my grocery experience for the summer. Thankfully M is working a gazillion hours, so we're scraping by.

We're hoping to get out to the coast, and the river, soon. We have FOUR boogie boards now, so that will be fun! I plan on teaching the kids to grill -- they've been taking turns once a week to cook a dinner start to finish, and grilling in this weather would be nice.

And there's housework, decluttering, a recent return to fencing (The Boy), and gardening. I have tomatoes, squash, lemon cucumbers, peppers, and loads of herbs going now!

Hope anyone who reads this is having a lovely summer so far! Here are a couple of random pictures to wrap things up, then I'm off to make breakfast.

The local lake during my early morning trail run last week

A two hat kind of day

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.

Happy October!

October is my favorite month of the year. Something about the weather (we had rain today!!!), the pumpkins and squash, the leaves changing color, and of course, Halloween, all together make me feel very content.

What We're Up To...
We just started, last night, watching our Halloween-related/spooky movies, with Sleepy Hollow. Also on the list are Hocus Pocus, Practical Magic, The Addams Family, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and, quite likely, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, among others. Perhaps Phantom of the Opera as well this year? We watched Dracula last year, so maybe Frankenstein should be considered. We have been watching Penny Dreadful, and it has been intriguing to watch characters from classic horror films/novels unfold.

Math is going along well for both kids, and we're getting going slowly with language arts. We've begun reading The Giver, and that's been found to be very thought provoking so far. We do plan to watch the movie after we finish the book, for comparison. This is the first novel we have chosen for a plunge into dystopian society, at the request of both kids.

The Boy is doing very well in his astronomy class, with a high A average at the moment. He's also been back at work on his truck restoration project after a couple of weeks off. And he's been visiting car shows/air shows, and has made videos for both. The Girl spends a lot of time lately sculpting again, and we're working on our wildlife habitat. She reads a lot on her Kindle lately, both in games, and about games, and animals. She set up a fishbowl in her room for a Betta fish, painting the backside of the fishbowl with a tropical underwater scene, so that her new fish, named Pearl, would "not be bored in there." We do need to get going on the Big History Project though, which The Girl has decided she will participate in, albeit somewhat loosely.

Other Tidbits...
I love my jobs teaching/working with students. I am far more content these days than with all of last year's crazy hectic scheduling, even though we have a little less money.

It's also soup season, and that makes me happy! Last week, I made a giant pot of taco bean soup, and right now I'm also craving butternut squash-orange soup (I spice it up with smoked paprika, ginger, cumin, and a little chili powder), and The Girl wants this eggplant one.

I spent time today at the hardware store drooling over bulbs. My favorites are grape hyacinths, crocus, crocosmia, daffodils, and paperwhite narcissus, so I think there might be a bulb-purchase-and-planting day coming up soon! Other yard-based tasks to be done include harvesting olives in another month or so, clearing ground for raised beds at last, and strengthening the chicken hutch before winter gets here. I also really want to get/make a Halloween wreath for the front door by next weekend!

Enjoy your October!

Wrapping Up Another Week...

image courtesy of empower-u-academy.com

Seriously, where did the week go?

At the same time though, I'm glad it is Friday, and while I don't get to sleep in tomorrow (have to drive M to work), I still get a day to catch up on some stuff... housework, marking essays, puppy petting, etc., etc., etc. I won't be sleeping in Sunday either, nor will anyone else in the house, because we'll be doing a mud run! And then, I'll have an afternoon to receiver, and finish catching up on stuff... and homeschool.


I can't really say, in all honesty, that we did a lot of formal homeschooling this week, but the kids certainly continued learning a lot on their own!

The Girl...

• Volunteer work (puppy petting)
• Sewed two dresses, by hand, for dolls
• Learned to propagate hens & chicks succulents (M taught her), and then she's been out in the greenhouse each morning, checking the plants and watering as needed
• Read more of Harry Potter
• Read an interesting article with me about another possible reason for the demise of the dinosaurs
• Started watching Anne Frank: The Whole Story with The Boy and I—she's been asking to watch this for a while; and we watched some Downton Abbey, plus the first episode of Mercy Street
• Helped my mom with a church baking project
• Derby practice, worked out with me several times 
• Created a few new pieces of art

The Boy...

• Worked on the 1940s Ford he is helping restore—this week, they took out the engine, and the drive shaft for rebuilding
• Designed a rocket in a physics game he's been playing on the computer... he also worked on a few cars in a mechanic simulation game
• Spent happy hours devouring The Martian, which I'll be reading when he's done
• Read more about black holes and other space phenomena, including several articles I sent to him
• Watched Anne Frank, Downton Abbey, and Mercy Street with The Girl and I
• Attended another parkour class
• Worked on a few sketches, this time of buildings that had been long abandoned
• Worked on his notebook, into which he enters conversions, runic alphabets, and any other tidbits that interest him

Goals for Next Week...
I'm all about keeping it simple for next week, and only have three homeschooling goals:

•  Math, 4-5 lessons each
• Language Arts, 4-5 lessons/work sessions each
• Afternoon Basket (which I'll update later today)

And that's really about it for now! Have a great weekend!

linked up over at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers!

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

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!

Another Week Down...

Another week has come and gone! We're getting ready today for two nights of camping, which we are all very much looking forward to. Here's a little glance of what we've been up to...

What We've Done This Week

The Boy

Worked on some review problems in Jacobs Elementary Algebra. He is doing quite well with this book, judging by the results of his efforts. Because we started this relatively late in the year, we won't get through the whole book by any means, and I think it will take him most, if not all, of ninth grade to complete it.

He completed some more work in his online course, on Scratch programming, and spent some time working with Blender on a new animation project.

Plenty of time was spent: drawing, reading, a little writing, playing some computer games, watching a little TV, helping in the yard, cleaning his room, and packing for camping.

The Girl

We took a math break this week, and will start fresh next week (see below), although she did play some Circles & Stars, and lots of dice/card games.

She wrote in her journal, thumbed through books she got for her birthday, worked a bit in Writing Skills on classifying nouns, read some of Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic, and a bunch of Mother Goose rhymes, helped cook, cleaned her room of her own accord, watched some TV, and helped pack fro camping.

And Plans for Next Week

Truthfully, I am a little disappointed in my own efforts in the homeschooling and housekeeping realms as of late. So I've come up with a plan of attack for the remaining weeks of March...

My plans for homeschooling will consist only of math, writing, and finishing The Hobbit as a read aloud. We're really enjoying the book (The Hobbit), but it keeps getting set aside! I am not going to worry about science, history, geography, etc., until April. The intent here is two-fold -- I need the extra time for the below, and I want to see what the kids manage to do with this, as they are certainly welcome to pursue their other interests on their own as desired.

The time we would have spent in homeschooling pursuits will be spent organizing our home. I again have a two-fold reason for this, one being the sleepover the kids want at the end of the month, the other being that it needs to be done. I do have a great plan for keeping it organized and tidy once we get there, but we have to get there first!

And we're adding in/changing a couple of things when we start back up with our very minimalistic plans: The Boy will go ahead and start The Lively Art of Writing, which I was originally saving for "high school", and The Girl will be working through the Life of Fred elementary books at a much accelerated rate, probably 3-4 lessons daily until it gets more challenging. If she needs anything extra, I have Math Mammoth readily at hand.

And Now

A weekend out in nature! No computers, no cell phones (except for picture taking, and if there should be an emergency, knock on wood). The Boy and I are taking sketching materials. We're bringing two decks of cards, binoculars, and not much else, unless I can locate The Hobbit!

Have a good weekend!

Last Monday of the Month Already?

I can't believe March is just about here already. I need to get prepared for a birthday next week!

...Outside My Window...
Sunny, clear, and colder this week, though not as cold by far as my Back East friends. We're looking forward to some more rain in early-mid March. My rosemary and the dwarf peach are blooming like crazy, but nothing else in the yard is showing any signs of blossoming, though the apple and cherry both have leaf buds!

...In My Home and Kitchen...
I am very, very inspired by Kim's meal planning! I printed out a chart for March, and tacked on the last week of February to get things moving in the right direction. I'm also trying out a recipe for slow cooker cilantro lime chicken that she linked, making a big batch for two dinners (nachos this week, then a taco casserole next week). Our house is getting a great spring cleaning, thanks to plans for a late March sleepover (2 friends for The Girl as a late birthday thing, and 1 for The Boy just because). I am finding that the kids are capable of a lot more than I've been assuming!

...In My Garden...
I am thinking of trying to convince the husband to try straw bale gardening. I am having a hard time choosing between that and raised beds. I think we might put in the raised beds, and then try the straw bale technique as a supplement... I don't know. Does anyone have experience with this?

...In Our Homeschooling...
The Girl has suddenly taken off with unschooling her science. I haven't been giving her assignments lately, but on her own she's made a frog life cycle chart, a 3D butterfly life cycle art project,etc. She's also decided that she'd love to study both frogs and dinosaurs (she loves those dinosaurs!) so I have put some documentaries on hold at the library for her, along with a book on frogs, and we're looking at a Coursera class on dinosaur paleobiology. She also wants to raise a few tadpoles! And The Boy is continuing this week with learning Scratch programming -- he's doing well so far in his online course. Both kids have math on their agendas, along with writing, and plenty of reading.

...Reading & Watching...
The Girl is continuing with Little House in the Big Woods, as well as The Secret History of Mermaids and The Secret History of Hobgoblins. She's also reading and memorizing Mother Goose rhymes, all on her own. I might try reading The Dragon in the Cliff to her, as part of her dinosaur studies/history. The Boy is still reading about Greek mythology and history in his vintage find, and is almost done with re-reading The Maze Runner. I'm reading aloud most days from An Everyday History of Somewhere as well, and we're still enjoying The Hobbit. As far as watching, The Girl loves any and all nature/animal documentaries, and The Boy has been searching out shows on automotive history. We're all avidly involved in the world of Downton Abbey.

...Bits & Pieces...
The Girl had her first derby bout of the season on Saturday. They lost, but the results are being questioned, as their competitors may have broken their contract for the game! She was in the first half of the game a lot, which was supposed to be positional, not contact, which is wasn't (something else they are reviewing). She got knocked down a few times, but always got back up! The second half of the game was brutal, so I was truthfully thankful she stayed on the bench for that.

Right in the middle of the pack!

The Boy and M enjoyed some mountain biking yesterday. We recently got The Boy a "new" bicycle from the local community bike shop, as he had outgrown his old one.

...On the Agenda...
A very busy week... too busy really. I have meetings today at work, so it is my long day of the month. Tomorrow, I drive my dad to his tax appointment, then Wednesday to his doctor. Thursday morning the kids and I are off to see some poetry being performed, and then Friday morning it is doctor appointment number 2 for my dad, followed by park day. And of course there is derby practice, fencing lessons, my class, etc. Aaaarggghhhh!

Have a good week!

Weekly Report... The Almost Unschooling Balance...

If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you've seen my off and on struggles with the idea of unschooling/interest-led schooling (interest-led sets off less alarms with anti-unschooling people, I don't know why). I wrote numerous posts about it, including my What If post in 2010 (yes, that long ago, and truthfully even longer ago than that), and more posts about it since then. I have struggled with the notion that unschooling can really work, despite the fact that I live in a very unschool-y area, and have seen numerous successes, and honestly, very few failures.

So, as you can see in the post linked above, I debated what I considered a more balanced approach, with certain subjects being non-negotiable (besides what book/approach we were using), and everything else being up for grabs, with a healthy dose of life skills tucked in there. And despite all attempts over the years in between to assign book lists, return to a more "classical" approach, etc., we keep drifting back to almost unschooling.

So what does that look like in practice?

This week, The Boy:

• Did two more lessons in Jacobs Elementary Algebra (non-negotiable subject, but he chose the book). He had a few struggles with multi-part problems, so we sat down and worked a few together, and then I saw the lightbulb go on!
• Made some new vocabulary lists for his German studies (interest-led, language studies), and worked on endings for plural words.
• Completed an exercise in Thinking in Threes (non-negotiable subject) that had him come up with his own three word advice tips, based off familiar phrases such as "Act your age", or "Knock on wood". He said he really enjoyed this exercise! Next week, in the same book, he'll be working on writing a strong thesis, which is great, because one of his goals over 8th-9th grades is to be able to write solid essays (yes, I am glad this coincides with my goal for the same for him).
• Worked on some soft body dynamics with Blender (interest-led, computer science). At his fencing club, there is a 22 year old computer science major that also uses Blender, and frequently gives The Boy advice on how to apply new elements of the program. This week, The Boy learned to make fire!
• Read another few chapters of The Maze Runner, and spent hours pouring over his "new" antique book (interest-led, though I do ask the kids to read a minimum of 30 minutes daily).
• Wrote in his journal most evenings (interest-led, writing).
• Watched another episode of Big History with Cassia and me (somewhere between interest-led and non-negotiable, as I put it on, but he loved it). We never realized how much influence the horse had over the development of human history!
• Helped with some weeding in the garden; learned how to start the barbeque; and how to roast a chicken (life skills).
• Skipped fencing this week, since he had a cold and didn't feel well enough, nor did he want to pass it on to anyone at the club (normally this would be physical education).

And The Girl:

• Worked through some multiplication, word problems, missing subtrahends, and number lines in Saxon 6/5 (non-negotiable subject, her choice of text). She is really enjoying the mixture of problems she gets to tackle each day, versus other programs we have used in the past that focus on one type of problem at a time (spiral versus mastery).
• Is enjoying her Writing Skills book (non-negotiable subject)! She categorized nouns this week, and copied sentences with corrections. I like that she never resists doing her work in this book!
• Started working on her Valentine's cards for our annual homeschool Valentine's Day "party" (interest-led, writing/art).
• Made a number of sculptures centering around food, Valentines, animals, and so forth, before mashing them all back up, since she didn't create anything she wanted baked hard/permanent (interest-led, art).
• Read from The Hunger Games and some of the comics she picked up recently (interest-led, part of her 30 minutes a day).
• Watched Big History with avid fascination, since she loves horses (see above, history). She also watched an episode of Life of Mammals -- she loves David Attenborough! (interest-led, science)
• Helped my mom finish sewing a skirt; helped me clip the chickens' flight feathers; assisted with making roasted veggies to go with the roasted chicken; cleaned and rearranged her guinea pig's cage; and helped pull weeds (life skills).
• Roller skated in the kitchen and dining room, since she got new (and good!) skates this week, in preparation for derby next week! (physical education)

And yes, they also watched some "regular" TV; we played Clue again; we headed out to the coast for a few hours; I read to them from The Hobbit and My Book House (literature); they spent some time looking at slides under the microscope (more science!); played catch in the front yard; and today we are going for a hike, as our closest park day friends are ill at the moment. And my kids probably did a half dozen or so things I am currently unaware of!

What I'm Planning for Next Week:
Math and language arts will continue as is, though I am looking through all my Brave Writer Daily Tip emails to find a fun, one day exercise for both kids.

We might finally try reading aloud from An Everyday History of Somewhere. Maybe.I know we'll watch some more Big History.

The Boy starts his first edX online course, in Scratch programming, so I need to clean out files, unused programs, etc. from our dinosaur of a computer. Speaking of which, any recommendations for a good family computer that can smoothly stream video, allow for some computer programming lessons, and maybe some gaming? And that won't cost us a fortune? He also wants to get back into reading his Conceptual Physics book, and I put two books on hold for him at the library (The Wizard of Quarks and The Art of the Catapult), for a different approach to physics.

The Girl, as part of her bird studies, might dissect an owl pellet, and she wants to study feathers under one of our microscopes. She also wants to get back to daily readings from All About Birds. And she is finally back to derby practice next week!

I'll wrap this up with two of my favorite pictures from our beach trip this week...

 Have a good weekend!

{linked up over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers' Weekly Wrap-Up}

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.

Weekly Report... Time Keeps Slipping Away...

Where did the week go? I can't believe it is Friday again already. This has been a week of some stress, and some adjustment. M just started the second half of his semester, so his schedule has changed.. he's now learning all about baking and pastry three days a week, and he's a Teaching Assistant another afternoon, which theoretically gives me more time to focus on homeschooling with the kids... maybe next week!

Side note: My mom is much better by the way! The new medications really helped. So thanks for the kind thoughts, which I am sure helped too!

So what did we do all week?

The Boy...
Read a car encyclopedia cover to cover, then made a list of every type of car he found in the book, and then made a list of all the cars he found in the book that don't appear to be made anymore.

He worked on a few more videos.

He started reading one of my old books from way back in my high school days - Quozl. He's misplaced The Dark is Rising, so this other book is filler material until he finds it again.

He worked through some physics games on the computer; watched a bunch of Top Gear episodes; drafted a new plan for a project he and a friend are working on (they are designing the ultimate caravan for themselves); and made a duct tape pouch.

He enjoyed his fencing class, and happily signed up for the Fencing Fun Night tomorrow! The kids spend four hours eating pizza, fencing, watching a movie with fencing, and playing games. There is a girl in his class that I think has a wee crush on him. She kept asking him to "please come to the fun night so I can hang out with you... PLEASE!!!" And poor The Boy was blushing the whole time.

The Girl...
Wound two balls of yarn with which to start her first knitting project - a scarf. She worked on crocheting at my mom's house, and did a very nice job with it! I'll start her with casting on tomorrow during The Boy's morning fencing lesson.

Her shows this week have alternated between animal/nature shows, and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. She also picked up a few books on animals and such at the library, along with a fantastic book called One Million Things: A Visual Encyclopedia, which has occupied a lot of her time since.

She helped make dinner twice, and helped make a batch of apple spice muffins, which took a lot of measuring. She helped my mom with cooking as well, since they are there four mornings a week right now.

And we started reading Caddie Woodlawn (well, technically, I am reading it to her), and she really likes it! I loved that book at her age too. We continued The Story of Dr. Dolittle, and read a couple of chapters from The Rainbow Book of American History, which she has settled on as "her history book" for now.

And she's looking forward to some time without her brother tomorrow. I think we'll watch some "girlier" movies, perhaps Freaky Friday (the older one), or Troop Beverley Hills.

Together...
They walked the dog at my mom's house; played catch in the front yard; watched Once Upon a Time and Eureka; listened to the last chapter of Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets; and explored the beach on Saturday, where it was gorgeous and surprisingly warm!

Oh, and because they are at my mom's house on Thursday mornings now, they will be helping organize the food pantry at the church my mom goes to--I am glad to see them doing volunteer work! 

Me...
I got a bunch of yarn off eBay, and will be starting a scarf for M tomorrow. I made the butter chicken, which has a much longer prep time than stated (just a warning), but is oh so good! Everyone loved it, so I think the recipe is a keeper. For tonight, I've got a delicious butternut squash soup going. I went to a poetry reading in place of class on Tuesday, and really, really wish I could say I enjoyed it. M and I watched The Fountain, which is a beautiful film, though definitely strange.

I got most of the kids' costumes together this week, and we had the Santa talk, which frankly went far better than I anticipated, as they had already pretty much figured it out.

Coming Up...
I plan to continue The Rainbow Book of American History with The Girl next week, and start The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way with The Boy. We'll also start the third Harry Potter book at bedtime, and hopefully get around to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow! We plan to watch The Corpse Bride soon, and other movies coming up will naturally include both the Addams Family films, and It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! I decided to back off on some of the [over] planning I've been doing again lately, and will stick to my what-if plans since we always seem to accomplish a lot more that way!

Hope everyone had a good week! I am sure there are many things we all did that I left out of this post, but honestly the week went by so quickly it is almost a blur!

Enjoy your weekend!

Finding Our Groove...

I haven't been too good lately with the weekly reports, have I? Never fear though, we are keeping quite busy over here in our little corner of the world! And I'm posting this week's "review" a whole day early! Things are falling ever so nicely into place right now.... (we're almost unschooling... shhhh)

And here's what we're up to these days!

Math

On Monday, we played several rounds of Pizza Fraction Fun, and then I had The Girl work on writing down equivalent fractions while The Boy  worked in his Zaccaro Challenge Math book. The Girl loved figuring out all the combinations that could equal a whole, a half, a third, a quarter, and so on. She's been practicing verbally ever since! 

On Tuesday, we watched Donald in Mathmagic Land. It has been quite a while since we watched this, and we really enjoyed it. The kids asked if we could explore some of the ideas in it in more depth, so I'm getting a copy of String, Straight-edge & Shadow: The Story of Geometry, and we're going to have Geometry Thursdays. I may add in Janice VanCleave's Geometry for Every Kid for practical application.

On Wednesday, Life of Fred Fractions arrived in the mail, and The Boy settled right down to work in it! We read it aloud, together, and The Girl asked if she could "do some Fred too", so I've ordered Farming for her. In the meantime, she had more fun with fractions.

And today, I plan on working through a lesson or two in Waldorf geometric drawings. I have a guide a friend passed on, so we'll try that out! I think I might have the kids work in Fred and Zaccaro a little too, just one problem set apiece, or something along those lines. I'll try to remember to post some pictures if we make anything good!

Reading & Writing

On Monday, we did some work from Hot Fudge Monday, this time working with nouns. I've basically decided that we'll rotate through the chapters in the book by doing an exercise from verbs one week, nouns the next, prepositions the week after that, and so on. In this lesson, the kids each had to take three short, boring sentences with very general nouns, and make them much more specific. The Girl read out loud to me as well.

On Tuesday, the kids chose to do some free writing. The Girl wrote a story about a frog in a pond full of lily pads, and The Boy wrote some lines of dialog for two completely silly robots. The Girl read to me again too - I am so glad to see her building more confidence in this area!

On Wednesday, we played You've Been Sentenced! Then, during The Boy's fencing lesson, The Girl played Thread Words on my Kindle, and wrote a very short story in "Notes" on my phone. She's getting quite familiar with the typical keyboard layout already!

Today I plan to have The Boy work in Write With the Best, and I think I'll have The Girl work in a lesson from Emma Serl's Language Lessons.

History

We decided to backtrack a little, so we're reading through The Early Human World - I really do love this series, so am happy to read a volume aloud! I think we'll add in a re-viewing of Walking with Cavemen, and as we work through the book, I am sure other applicable documentaries will pop up. We're lucky too that there is an active archeological dig site not too far from here, and I'd love to get the kids out there to see it!

Science

The Boy is reading his way through The New Way Things Work, keeping a notebook too in which he is sketching and labeling diagrams from the book. I need to remind him that the videos are on you tube!

The Girl has been watching animal documentaries all week, mainly David Attenborough ones.

Today's plan is to watch The Greatest Places, and to start reading through The World in a Bucket of Soil with The Girl, then work on some applicable hands-on.

Literature & Everything Else

We're almost done with Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets at bedtime. I'm not sure if we'll go on to the third book in the series right away, or pick something else from my gigantic list. The Girl and I are very much enjoying The Story of Dr. Doolittle, and will probably follow that up with The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle. The Boy is really liking the Dark is Rising Sequence, and, during The Girl's derby practice this week, he read all of The Son of Sobek (which combines two of his favorite book characters!) on my Kindle. Since it is October, I plan to start working in some good Halloween literature: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Tales of Terror & Fantasy (Poe).

Our movie of the week, so far, was the classic version of The Miracle Worker. The kids were amazed that Patty Duke was not really blind or deaf, and they were impressed by the whole story. I'm slowly working on a list of movies I would like to watch with them - some happy, some sad, some musicals, some drama, historical pieces, comedies, etc. Interesting connection the kids made with this one - the terrible place that Annie Sullivan grew up has similarities to the poor houses and such that Dickens railed against in so many of his works.

And in art, The Girl spent Tuesday applying paper mache strips to an old coffee can from Trader Joe's. On Wednesday, she painted it, and now has a new pencil holder for her desk! The Boy worked on many diagrams (see Science above), and is currently working on a pen-and-ink car drawing.

Also, on Saturday, The Boy participated in another in-house fencing tournament. This one was a team tournament, which he hadn't done before. On his first round, he managed to narrow the gap between teams down to only 2 points, scoring 6 points himself. Unfortunately, they got behind again shortly thereafter, and ended up losing, but he still had a blast!

So that's what we're up to! Of course there's baking, cooking, derby and fencing, playing at the park, watching TV shows together, and more! I'm satisfied at the moment with what we're doing, and how they are learning.

Two Post Tuesday: Hodgepodge...

image courtesy of mrwallpaper

Isn't "hodgepodge" a great word? Always makes me think of hedgehogs for some reason. And then I think of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle...

Anyhow, I have decided for the moment that hodgepodge (i.e. mixture, mishmash, heterogeneous mixture, patchwork) best describes our homeschooling. Too many people use "eclectic" now!

So yesterday, I read Wendy's post on her current interest-led experimentation. I then printed out a list of all the Landmark and World Landmark books (here's a handy-dandy pdf, with all the tiles in chronological order!), printed out a list of all Bill Nye's videos, and headed home to look for a book I've been promising The Boy we would read, someday. Someday became yesterday, as we read the first two chapters of The Early Days of Automobiles! And I ordered a book on Africa for The Girl (which I'll bet The Boy will listen to as well). I told the kids they can take turns picking books and videos, and we can go from there.

image courtesy of carolinefontenot

Yes, I am throwing all caution to the wind! Take that, chronological history and orderly science! At least for the rest of this year! We'll still hit the basics (you know, the "three R's") everyday, but art, music, science, history, are on the what-if spectrum.

I bet I'll learn just as much as my kids do from this!

A Good Interview...

From an unschooler...

Meet Kate Fridkis, Who Skipped K-12 and Is Neither Weird nor Homeless

Happiness is...

Sunshine breaking over the tree tops in the morning. I water the garden before work while sipping coffee! It is a lovely time of day, very fresh, all the birds singing...

Finally being happy with loosely knit plans for the upcoming year!

The chickens clucking away in their hutch/yard. We've gotten 5 eggs so far, and Cassia is truly delighted her chicken lays turquoise eggs! Some Ameracaunas lay ivory eggs instead. Sometimes we just stand by the fence and watch them peck about... a friend of mine last night compared it to the simple pleasure of just watching a newborn, and I could instantly connect with that idea!

Checking the garden each day for new surprises. We have baby squash and tomatoes everywhere! My epazote has doubled in size, the corn is getting very tall, and the cantaloupe plant is blooming like crazy.

Watching Cassia at roller derby practice. She is gaining confidence and skill every week!

Reading. The kids and I are enjoying our plethora of books (see my sidebar). I re-read The Relaxed Homeschool by Mary Hood, and felt... well, relaxed! I read and really liked The Girl Who Chased the Moon. Of course I have this list to read through still, but there is plenty of time for that.

Relaxed afternoons - no lessons to hurry through, few places to go. We've been watching movies, enjoying the hatching of a couple of caterpillars we collected, playing with the microscope, playing board games, and so forth. Today we'll be checking out the transit of Venus! We have a telescope (to be used for projecting, not viewing through with this), and a homemade pinhole projector.

Hugs, giggles, tickling, laughing together.

A Smattering of Saturday Thoughts...

We semi-unschooled again this last week, not by choice, but by circumstance. Somehow the whole week just vanished... poof! We did enjoy a Friday birthday celebration at the park... good people, good food, good times...

They did watch a few more nature related shows at my mom's; Cyrus had his piano lesson and made a few more films, with special effects (again, at my mom's); we used applied math in cooking and at the grocery store; and Cassia found her new favorite activity... ROLLER DERBY! She had her first training on Monday, and loved every moment of the 90 minutes on the rink.

And we read: several more chapters in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; plus Chanticleer and the Fox; Molly Limbo; Bug read most of The Basilisk's Lair; and we listened to more of Peter Pan. We want to watch both movies again... the cartoon Disney version, and the 2003 live action version.

Peter Pan has actually spawned a great interest in pirates! So we're going to move away from American history as our focus for the moment, and spend the last six weeks of our "school" year enjoying piracy!

On the agenda for the upcoming week...

Reading - lots of good books, mainly pirate-related, but not all
Math - Another few chapters in Life of Fred Apples, plus we're starting a unit on geometry!
Language Arts - more copywork, spelling, and phonics. Cyrus will write in his journal. And I may lead him through writing an essay on pirates!
History - another episode or two of America: The Story of US (I am determined to finish this series!); a documentary or two on pirates perhaps. We might read another few chapters in Early Human World as well, since we're enjoying that book.
Science - Starting up BFSU again. This week we'll study Air (thread A3)
Other - some geography of some sort, art, music appreciation/a composer study (now to choose which composer!); probably the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and so forth.

Have a good weekend and week!

Weekly Wrap-up of Sorts: 12/12-12/16...

It has been a lovely week. Each day we are up early, since I work mornings, and so we get to see amazing sunrises like the one in this picture from my phone. I feel blessed to live in such a beautiful area! It has also been a cold week--frosty ground; icy car; kids layered up in mittens, scarves, and jackets for their morning car ride to their Nonna's house.

What have we been up to this week? Well, Bug has been reading away. He's now reading Redwall, which I think he'll really enjoy, and he is about to start The Early Human World, which I think we'll read together. He was looking through an old book of my dad's about prehistory, and I remembered we had The Early Human World tucked away in the bookcase, so I think it is time to bring it out! I know he'll be excited about his upcoming gift books: The Throne of Fire for Yule, and the Percy Jackson set for Christmas. Yes, we celebrate both holidays... the more the merrier!

Cricket and I are enjoying her books as well. We read some more in Erik and Britta, we read Peter and Lotta's Christmas, and we read a very interesting and clever book of poetry, Mirror Mirror. Each poem is read twice, once from beginning to end, then with all the lines reversed.

Together at bedtime, we have been very much enjoying this book...

It is well written (naturally... I mean look at who the author is!), and full of loveliness and goodness without being saccharine. I am sorry we're almost done, especially since I haven't yet chosen our next book, although I'm thinking maybe The Squire's Tale? Any suggestions?

Besides all the reading, we're getting ready for the holidays. I did most of the shopping already, primarily online, though tonight M and I are going out, sans children, to pick up a few last gifts. The kids made their gifts for their dad and I this week... tie dye shirts! We have an awesome friend that set up a park tie day afternoon. I'll have to post pictures. The kids did a shirt each for themselves, and then did a shirt each for us. We also need to finish cleaning the house, which, being that we're home so much and using everything, always looks cluttered. And we want to make gingerbread cookies. We're watching Christmassy movies and things, like The Simpsons Christmas Special, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (the Boris Karloff version), a few versions of The Christmas Carol with this one being the favorite, and more. Beetle had another piano lesson this week, and is on the last two songs in his third book! He has gotten a lot better about practicing lately too.

I feel really good about my decision to drop any formal science and history studies. I'd rather read to the kids, or have them watch a documentary on a topic they're really interested in than try to have them follow someone else's dictates. This week, they've been watching a series of science videos that's pretty fun: The Science of Disney Imagineering. And we're learning a lot about the Victorian age, gearing up for this weekend's trip to the Dickens Faire - very exciting! I remember loving it as a child, and am hoping they'll enjoy it as much as I did. Both are dressing up for it, so I'll be sure to get some good pictures.

Let me see, what else did we do? Well, Cricket read another reader to me, the last one at this level and then she moves up. I am having her read them each 4-5 times during the week to build fluency. We did some math-- hands-on measuring after reading Measuring Penny, and a bunch of pages in their Developmental Math books. The kids basically have four points each to hit daily... Bug needs to read (never a problem!), do some math, write, and practice piano. Cricket has phonics work, reading, handwriting, and math. Everything else, and there's a lot of everything else, is gravy! We haven't made much progress with our Spiral Scouts projects lately, so I am planning to really ramp that up after the holidays. We're also planning a New Year's camping trip with a friend. It'll be very cold, but what better way to start a new year than on a mountain, outdoors?

Hope you all had a good week too!