Week 1: 2008-9

We started our new school year this week!  My plan is to have 10 months of school to go with the 10 Christian Light Education (CLE) LightUnit workbooks.

The first 5 month semester of 2008 is as follows:

1. June/July

2. August

3. September

4. October

5. November/December

The second 5 month semester in 2oo9 will simply be January - May.

I printed out a monthly assignment sheet for each child, 2 weeks on the front & 2 on the back.  That way, when the assignment sheet is complete, the month is done and you're on vacation.

8th Grade

Amazingly, Ginger was done with everything from "Week 1" by Wednesday and has done some of next week's work already!  Apparently an independent workbook approach is what she needs now...this was not the case for her in 1st grade and I've been trying to stay away from workbooks ever since.

She is using CLE for Language Arts, Reading, Math & Social Studies.  In math she has passed 6 pre-tests (meaning she doesn't have to do the lesson).  At some point she'll get to new material but this is encouraging for both of us!  And yesterday I gave her the first section spelling test in Language Arts -- she got them all right.  That has never, ever happened before. 

For science she is using Total Health and for writing, Wordsmith.  So far, so good on both of those!  In fact, she stayed up until 11pm last night working on this coming Monday's Wordsmith assignment with Momo!

6th Grade

Momo only has 4 subjects right now as I haven't been able to order the rest (waiting for the next billing cycle!).  She is using CLE for Language Arts, Reading and Science.  Yesterday as a part of the science lesson she had to make 10 observations about a tree using as many senses as she could.  I never thought that kind of lesson would be in a workbook.  I'm learning new stuff this week myself! :) 

Momo is also using Famous Men of the Middle Ages with the excellent Student Book and reading Story of the World 2.  I still have to order Lively Latin 2, Sentence Composing for Middle School and a few other things to complete her year.

3rd Grade

My 8yo (he needs a new "name") started Minimus for Latin and is loving that.  His CLE subjects are Language Arts & Reading -- I'm making him (and his older sisters) write everything in the workbooks in cursive.  I can't believe the improvement in all of their cursive in a few short days!  He's done a review pages from each MUS Delta chapter he did last year and will start Lesson 5 on Monday.  For SOTW we only read, no projects.  I still need to buy his My Pals are Here 3 for science and Writing Tales 1.

Our afternoons have been take up with a daily 2 hour chess class!  8yo & Momo both want to join the chess club in the fall.  Ginger is enjoying the class but isn't interested in the club.  I told her we'd find her something else that involves people.  Our family has a serious lack of social interaction and I'm looking to change that in a positive way.  We do volunteer weekly at a local dairy.  Ginger with the petting zoo animals and I in the organic garden, with the other kids helping us both as we're able.  But often it is just our family working alone...which, while pleasant & easy, doesn't develop the ability to interact with others!

Kindergarten

My 5yo (who also needs a new "name") is using The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and doing excellently.  We've just gotten to blending 2 - 3 letter words and he has to work at it.  But work he is and I am being 100% positive.  No tears over learning to read allowed in this house ever again!  Still, it is hard not to compare him to my 8yo who taught himself to read at 4.  5yo is also using Earlybird Math 2A (he did 1A/1B last year) and HWT My Printing Book.  His printing is actually quite nice, even though he isn't able to read anything he writes!  In August we'll start Five in a Row with 3 other families.  I'm very pleased with what I've chosen for his school year.  Technically, he would be eligible for 1st grade (late July birthday) this fall but I know I've got great materials for right where he is developmentally!

3 year old

Beanie is just kind of hanging out, nothing formal scheduled for him...yet!  He is a talker & a drawer though...he likes to do his "homework" and "reads" to his stuffed animals.   This week he and 5yo played a lot of Playmobil together.

He also likes to "play" chess.  The other day we had the board set up and were playing...well, I was reading something and occasionally moving one of my pieces.  At one point I looked up and all my pawns were lying down on the board.  I asked him what happened.  He said, "Your pawns got offended and they all died. I win!"  

I'm mentally gearing up to potty train him, but keep saying "I'll do it next week."  

All in all, it was a relaxed, great start to the new year.  And we still have 5 more weeks to complete month 1!  Now, I've just got to order the rest of the schoolbooks...

Charlotte Mason & the Well-Trained Mind: hours compared

Tonight, I decided to do a little chart to compare the hourly recommendations for 8th grade age in Susan Wise Bauer's The Well-Trained Mind's to those in A Charlotte Mason Education by Catherine Levison. This little chart doesn't include Logic (only mentioned in the WTM), music, art, or nature study. I found it interesting that at this level, the time involved was almost identical.
It is possible that my figures are slightly off -- adding such big numbers in my head is challenging.

EDITED TO ADD: Thank you, Tami, for supplying me with an online version of Charlotte Mason's Parents Union School schedules located on the Ambleside Online site! These are identical to the schedules in the back of Levison's book. Although she calls Class III 7th-9th grades, I believe (the book is upstairs). When I was making my calculations, I eliminated the "10.20 - 10.50" period, which seems to serve as a break period and didn't fit neatly in my chart. I put Euclid as math and Old & New Testament as history. Another side note is CM's schools met Monday through Saturday...oh, yes, and the hours listed on my chart are weekly totals!

Peaceful, pajama morning in our homeschool

Time: 8:30am
Location: Family Room floor
Sound: melodious Yanni's Dare to Dream
Scene: Seated inside the Duplo railroad track he built with his 2yo brother, my dark-haired 8yo works a crossword puzzle in The Elements: Ingredients of the Universe. Already completed in this morning's 2nd grade: an egg-boiling experiment in Singapore Start-up Science, the final page in MUS Gamma, the conjugation of celo (I hide) in the future tense in Lively Latin...and breakfast.

Oh, if only the whole day were to be so serene...

Homeschooling Only One

Yesterday, three of my four school-aged children were sick. Ginger, the oldest, was in day three of the flu, having missed getting it when the rest of us did, the week before. Tullius and Zamakee, in 2nd grade and kindergarten respectively, both had fevers. Not sure if it was a relapse, a repeat or something new... So my 5th grader Momo got to be an only student.

MATH Math-U-See Zeta, Lesson 21, Practice B Long division with decimals, rounding patterns, remainders as fractions, etc. Boring. Easy. 100% A+.

LATIN Lively Latin, Lesson 11.3 Forming the Future Tense I love Latin, so we did this together. Interesting. Easy. 100% A+.

LOGIC Building Thinking Skills 2, Chapter 10 Verbal Analogies A page of such things as marble:stone :: diamond:jewel. Not sure if it was easy or not, but she got them all right, as usual.

GRAMMAR Straight Forward English Series Verbs, p 13, Spelling Rules for Tense. Adding -s or -es to some verbs and then making sentences with them. Here are some of her sentences:
The eyrie tosses the yooyu ball to the jubjub.
The hissi drinks the morphing potion and changes into a cybunny.
Ah, good old Neopia! Easy. All correct...

CHEMISTRY The Elements: Ingredients of the Universe, Chapter 3 Activity #5 & #6 This involved finding the number of protons in 25 or so different elements and looking at a cool website called Dave's Wizzy Periodic Table This takes awhile to load, but is worth it for looking at how many electrons are in which S & P orbitals. I have a slightly difficult time understanding about the orbitals, but she doesn't. Chemistry really is fascinating! Maybe Momo will be a chemist.

HISTORY Tapestry of Grace Year 1, Week 24 Sigh. We could be doing SO MUCH...but we're not. Her reading is a 2 page spread in The Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of the Ancient World. Called "Battles and Battle Formations," it looks really unmemorable so I suggest we read it together. Everyone else is either sleeping or quietly playing.

We read the second page on formations first. Several times she mentions having "read about that" and goes back to find the page. Tomorrow, if everyone is well enough to go outside, we'll model the battle positions. We certainly have enough shields and sticks! Then we look at the list of battles on the first page. We decide to try to find them on our fold-out National Geographic Map of "The Historic Mediterranean 800 BC to AD 1500" that is on the kitchen table under the plastic table cloth.

The descriptions are short and not very specific, such as:
CHAERONEA A town in Central Greece, the site of Philip II of Macedon's decisive victory over the Greek cities in 338 BC. We struggle with the vagueness, but have fun trying to locate them. Not all are on the map.


And that was the school day. Not perfect, but peaceful and productive. I wish I could spend such time with her everyday. I wish I could spend such time with each of my children everyday.

Rest of the year: 5th grade & 2nd grade

Here is the rest of Momo's year. She's in 5th grade, using mostly the same curriculum as Ginger. The only differences are that she is in Math-U-See Epislon and is using Building Thinking Skills 2 instead of a formal spelling program. She does do spelling by using Tapestry of Grace's Vocabulary. I should post about that one day... I bought a poetry workbook and a test prep book for Momo, I just haven't started them with her yet.

I decided to edit this post & add 2nd grade since I just finished the sheet. This is for Tullius, who just turned 8. He really needs to be challenged...I just haven't found anything that does. Even multiplying a 3 digit by 4 digit number only confused him for a week or so. Oh, and he wrote down our milage on January 31st: 66,032 miles.

Thanks for the kind comments about my last spreadsheet. If you don't use/like Excel, a table in Word can be used to accomplish the same thing. I have to say that I did not come up with the idea on my own!! I've seen it on lovely blogs like Narrow Gate Academy and Trivium Academy.

Assessing where we are, so I can see where we're going...

When I drive some place new, I generally get lost the first few times. I think it might be a gap in my education, since my dad can still remember how to get places he went to years and years ago.

So, speaking of going places, and gaps, and education...I really need to assess where each child is at in their school year. And look ahead to the end of the year. And next year. And then...HIGH SCHOOL.

This 2007-2008 year, I have:

Ginger 7th grade
Momo 5th grade
Tullius 2nd grade
Zamakee Kindergarten

This is week 22 of 36 for us.

Today, while holding my feverish 2yo, I finally started making the colorful Excel spreadsheets that I've been meaning to do for weeks! Here is Gingers:

Clicking on it makes it huge, but readable.

I must buy something new for her for math, I didn't realize how close she was to being done with Key to Decimals! Math is definitely a difficult subject for her. Which makes it difficult for me.

And writing. I've really got to get something for writing. TOG's Writing Aids started out good for us, but I rearranged some things, dropped it for a month during NaNo, then we had 6 weeks off for Winter Break and I can't get back into Writing Aids. I've tried each week, and it has been a flop each time. I need something prepared, precise, and preferably written to the student. Maybe Jump Into Writing...

Week 13 Report -- Back-to-School

Last week was Back-to-School after a week off for Ginger's surgery/recovery. She still couldn't read on Monday, so I did all our TOG reading aloud -- Black Ships Before Troy, Story of the Greeks, Encyclopedia of the Ancient World, D'Alaure's Greek Myths, Spend the Day in Ancient Greece, and Classical Kids. By Wednesday she was wearing her glasses and reading Black Ships Before Troy on her own. I'm glad. Somehow I expected the book to be...happier. But no, not those Greeks and their gods!

By Wednesday, Ginger was able to do her own math -- nothing like attempting to describe a decimal addition problem orally! She is on Book 2 of Key to Decimals. Momo & Tullius continue through MUS Zeta and Gamma respectively. Zamakee continues to be left out. Although he now able to count/recognize/read numbers in the 20's and 30's. This is though no effort on my part, I'm still trying to remember to do the 1-5 pages in his Kumon Numbers book!

We are almost done with God's Design Science Plants! The kids are now reading and narrating the lessons to me. No one wanted to wait for me to do "class." I don't think I'll use the GDS Chemistry books in the spring. Now I'm thinking perhaps Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry would be a better choice. But maybe not...they like reading about science better then they like doing it with me, apparently.

Let's see, anything else of note last week? In Latin we skipped the history readings in Lively Latin -- I decided that we'd just save the "How the Roman Government Works" for when we study the Romans in the spring. My own Latin, using Latin Made Simple continues to go well, although I really need to make myself some flash cards. Its just there are so many words! Which is why I need the flash cards in the first place.

We did several projects -- Ginger made a dolphin Minoan Fresco, Tullius and Zamakee made Greek Stone Pendants and everyone made an Athena clay owl. Even me! I just couldn't keep my hands off the kids clay, so I did one of my own. Speaking of owls, Zamakee recognized that OWL and LOW have the same letters, just in a different order. Hooray! Oh, and he made up some sentences (pictured above), I dictated them to him one letter at a time and he wrote them down. That was during our poetry study of similes, another thing I'd already forgotten about already.

I really must write weekly reports the week they occur, not half way through the follow week! Oh, one last thing -- on Friday we went to a local dairy farm that has an open house/fair every fall. There was lots to see and do, including camel & pony rides and darling baby alpacas. I think I want this one!

Week 12 Report & more Neopian Fables

We are one third of our way through 2nd quarter! We'll be taking next week off school -- Ginger (12) has eye surgery on Tuesday. In fact, I have decided to take the entire week off the internet. That way I'll be focused on being mom and nurse. I do plan to dedicate some time moving all my "stuff" from my old eMac to a newer, faster, better Mac...I think it is a G5. So, see you all in a week!

This week we finally mastered the days of the week in Latin! We all made flash cards. Ginger's are first with elves on every card, then mine, then Tullius's, then Momo's in pink -- written both in Dragon and in Latin.


And we studied the Ancient Maya people. They believed the world was flat with a giant tree growing in the middle. The root of the tree went into the underworld. Four jaguars in the four courners of the earth held up the sky. Ginger had fun creating this representation of their "compass." The white jaguar is in the north corner.


Our last week of re-writing Aesop's Neopian Fables! I tried to convice the kids they could use a different theme, but no...Neopia it is!
The Skree and the Bracelet, by Ginger (12)


The Lupe and the Miamouse, by Momo (10)


The Fighting Whoots and the Horus, by Tullius (7)


A few other notes for the record: Ginger finished Book 1 of Key to Decimals! She'll do Books 2 & 3 in the next 6 school weeks, Book 4 in January and then the Key to Percents series. We did not get to the cool leaf project I had planned from Masterpiece Art Instruction. Maybe tomorrow!

Hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week! Let the countdown to NaNoWriMo begin!

Week 11 Report & more Neopian Fables

Ah, the weekly report...the belated weekly report. I love the idea, but I'd rather read about what everyone else has been doing that write up my own.

Look at this great check box Local Homeschooler taught me!! Actually, it looks cute in Safari but not in Firefox. I'm not sure what it looks like in Internet Explorer.

Several of you have asked about the blender. It still works. It never occured to me that it might be ruined or the blades dulled. My blender doesn't get much use -- making bread crumbs, creaming cooked broccoli & potatoes to make my delicious broccoli soup, mixing bananas and a can of pineapple to freeze for popsicles...this is not strenuous use of a blender. But perhaps we won't make more paper until we come back to TOG Yr 1 again!

So what did we do last week...well, we studied Ancient China and um, did school, and the kids wrote their next fables. Click on them to see the text larger!
The Eizzil and the Turtum, by Momo (10):

The Beakadoodle and the Veespa, by Ginger (12):

Two Petpets and Balthazar, by Tullius (7):


Can you guess what the original fable for each of these was? Last weeks winners were: Lisa at Koninonia Academy and The Genie Bottle! I wish I had a prize for you...ummm, I could draw you a picture! :)

To see the kids first attempt at Fable writings, check out the previous blog entry: Aesop's Neopian Fables

Aesop's Neopian Fables

Ever been to Neopets.com ? My kids love it! I even have an account...although I can't say I've played recently.

Writing this past week was done progymnasmata-style: Read a fable, write 3 or so key words per sentence and then re-write the fable in your own words. The kids all enjoyed this, especially the "own words" part. All the illustrations and the names too are Copyright 2000-2007 Neopets, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission.

Click on each story to read it! Can you guess what each original fable was called?

Illusen & the Xweetok, by Ginger

The Weewoo & the Vase, by Momo

The Gnorbu & the Load of Salt, by Tullius


I can't wait to see what they write this week!

Holy Day Slideshows

A few weeks ago, when we studied the Ancient Israelites with Tapestry of Grace, we learned about some of their Holy Days.

The kids made slideshows using Mac's awesome Keynote program.

Ginger's Passover slide show:





Momo's Feast of Tabernacles slideshow:




Tullius' Day of Atonement slideshow:

Week 10 Report & Pictures

Last week, our September break, didn't prove as restful or as productive as I had hoped! Still, onward!

Here is a page of MY schoolwork for the week! I started Latin Made Simple, making notes and doing the exercises. My goal is one handwritten page a day, which is is far less than a page of the book a day! This is my Martis dies (Tuesday) page.
We are studying flowers this week in God's Design Science Plants. Here is Momo's labelled diagram:

The kids made flowers from the pattern in GDS Plants. The sepals, leaves and petals are paper, the stem (and root) is a straw, the pistel and stamens are pipe cleaners, and the pollen is cornmeal. Behind the flowers are a bit of our Eygptian burial chamber, the My Book House series, and on the wall some elements of design from TOG that we worked on last quarter.

I found a Kumon workbook three pack at Costco with Numbers 1-30, Uppercase Letters, and Cutting. Zamakee already completed that last book and is working on Pasting, but I'll save Cutting for Beanie. This is from Numbers 1-30...I said each number in Latin and then Zamakee drew the connecting line. He does shout "Decem!" at the end every time.

Ginger & Momo started a once a month homeschool art class. Their first assignment was to make an oil pastel drawing showing "things that needed each other." Momo drew a mother bird & her babies and Ginger drew an elf & dragon (friendship).


***EDITED TO ADD*** A page from Tullius' Lively Latin! The dominus is Dr. Sloth and the servus is a pink meepit from his army...apparently, he's learning Latin Neopets-style!


For Tapestry of Grace we have been in the Indus Valley -- I hope to have some project pictures of that soon.

The winner of the week was writing! Instead of doing the TOG assignments, I had the kids re-write fables a la the progymnasmata. They are turning out SO cute. Of course, you probably have to be a Neopets fan to appreciate them fully, but I'll be posting them as they finish typing them up. We're going to re-write fables for three weeks, study/write poetry for three weeks and then all assigned writing (and grammar) will cease & desist for November while we participate in NaNoWriMo! See the left sidebar icon for a link!

Week 7/8 Report

We just finished week 7/8...next week will be 8/9 and then we're done with First Quarter/TOG Unit 1! This was a rather unusual week because Dad was home all week. Not because he was sick, not because we had a family vacation planned, not even because we wanted to do some around the house projects...no, this was to get his World of Warcraft character to level 70. And he's *almost* there, as of the wee hours of Saturday morning (while I'm typing this up).

See kids, what you can do with a little dedication & perseverance? Reach the level cap in an MMORPG! Actually, Ginger, Momo & Tullius all have characters about level 45 themselves. But I digress...

So, between having dh home and Ginger's eye doctor appointment and trying to fit 1.5 weeks worth of learning in, we had less time and more work...but it's all good.

7th grade~Ginger's studied dictation sheet. We go over the sentences on Monday and then she gets to doodle on it the rest of the week. On Friday I dictate it to her. This has been going well, I'm very pleased...much better then copywork ever did!~

5th grade~Momo's diagram of the Hebrew Tabernacle (from TOG). She can write so neat when she wants to!~


2nd grade~A page from Tullius's Lively Latin (I'm using it for all 3 older kids). I'd say he is doing very well with this. I want to make Latin more fun though, more real, more immersion, more like I read about people doing with, say French at Trivium Academy!~

Kindergarten~Zamakee finished THREE of his workbooks this week! Two were from Critical Thinking Press: Visual Perceptual Skill Building PreK-2 and Can You Find Me? PreK-K, the other was a Dover dot-to-dot of cars and trucks. This is his calendar of the Jewish Year from Old Testament Days. Sometimes he likes to color and sometimes he doesn't!~


~Beanie needs more intentional time from me. Twice this week I've read recent blog entries on this very topic: The Magic School House and Livingstone School...hopefully I'll be able to talk about it soon too! Ginger & Momo made Beanie this baby animal matching game from Kidz Club several weeks ago. We got it out again this week & he can do it all by himself! Oh, and I found a schedule that he could actually follow here: Fanning the Flame


And how am I doing this week? Did I learn anything? Yes, I learned I could stay up until 2-3am every night with my dh & still get up a 6am when the boys do! I think I could go back to college! Seriously, I have been doing a lot of thinking about our weeks & our learning...still searching for the richness!

And you? What did you learn this week?

Week 6 Report & Pictures

This hasn't been the most exciting of weeks at Stonewall Academy. Actually, it has been rather dull. I think the main reason is that the teacher (that would be me) hasn't been engaged with the material.

After deciding that we will indeed compress the next 3 weeks into 2 (see earlier post!) and then take a week off has given me a bit of enthusiasum.

Click the pictures to see the pages!

~Ginger (7th grade) is using Apples for spelling this year. I'm very glad to have found this independent, daily workbook and so is she!~


~Journey Through Grammar Land is Momo's (5th grade) first formal grammar since using First Language Lessons in 1st & 2nd grade.~


~For their Tapestry of Grace project this week, Ginger & Momo are making a "Patriarch Family Tree" -- it is still in process. No names yet, and the children of Jacob & Leah, including Judah who is the ancestor of Jesus, need to be moved up a bit & have their lines added. It is a rather complex family tree and seeing it on the wall has helped us all see who's who! When it is completed, I'll add a picture of it to our History Project Pictures page.~


~Tullius (2nd grade) wanted 7 spelling words, since he is 7. This picking words from Tapestry of Grace's vocabulary list and then studying them has gone well. I wish I had something more colorful to show for him! There is always next week.~


~Zamakee (K) wants to be able to read Garfield comic books and Erin Hunter's Warriors series. He has been doing great memorizing the sounds letters make and recognizing them in different fonts. Below is a picture of an activity we did. First, I laid out the sand paper cursive letters (Morning Star Learning) and then we went through the little cream cards (Stairway to Reading) with me saying them and him repeating. Next, he took the card and matched it to the cursive letter. Finally, he read the large white Spell to Write & Read phonogram cards himself and matched them up.~



I don't have a single thing to post that Beanie made, I'm still not doing Before Five in a Row with Zamakee, we didn't study our "element of design," and there just didn't seem to be any richness to the week. But it is over, the kids ARE learning, and...and...well, that is going to have to be enough!!

Leave a link to what you've been doing this week -- I need inspiration!!

Week 5 Report & Pictures

Inspired by Jessica at Trivium Academy to post a "weekly report," I give you a single page created by each of my children this past week. To type out what they did would take hours...and I need those hours to create assignement sheet for tomorrow morning!

~A page from Ginger's Botany Coloring Book~


~Momo's Spelling Test of Tapestry of Grace Vocabulary Words~


~One of Tullius's pages from Singapore's Challenging Word Problems 2~


~Zamakee's cut and paste page from his Kumon Book of Pasting~


~Beanie's Dragon picture, the labeling & flame were done by Momo~


There it is -- WEEK 5 of 36! Actually, if you want to see this week's hands on projects of the Ziggurat at Ur, a small Sumerian chariot, and a Babylonian Tile Mosaic, check out our History Project Picture page!

If you stop by, say hi! I want to see your blog too!