Blah

I wonder if there is such a thing as the spring blahs. Maybe that's why they invented Spring Break. Hmm...I'll have to think about it a bit more.

I'm a bit frustrated this week, so I haven't posted. I had a great week planned out--full of work and fun and maybe the beach. But none of it has worked. On Monday Annika  opened the filter to our 100 gallon fish tank and dumped between 15 and 20 gallons of water onto the new carpet in the playroom. Yep. She did. Then she lied to me about doing it. On the other hand, she told me only a couple of minutes after the water started gushing out so I was able to stop the water pretty quickly and it looks like the permanent damage will be minimal. I hope.

So, things haven't gone as planned. But then I started asking myself when they ever go as planned. Do I ever have a week where someone isn't sick or a class isn't canceled or something like that? Nothing major, but something that is enough to throw a wrench in the works. I really don't. Last week Emma was busy throwing up (on me) every other day. No fever, no other symptoms, but throw-up every other day. It was weird. The week before Jason didn't feel great so he took some days off of work and while that's fine, having Daddy home definitely throws things off.

The question is what do I do with the changes? Do I throw up my hands and declare a mistrial? Do I get anxious and frantic that we won't complete what we've started? Do I do both? Or do I just go one doing the best I can and trying to catch up whatever I can the next day or week?

I think I probably do a lot of the first two questions and not enough of the last. My goal this week is to rework the schedule to absorb the missing work from this week and at the same time make sure that I'm not trying to pack too many things into a small amount of time or sanity.

Because that small amount of sanity is all I've got left.

Plotting and Planning

It's Sunday night here and I'm about to go to bed. About this time every Sunday I sit and think about my plans for the week. It helps me plan out meals, figure out who is probably going to be tired on what day and generally organize my week. I don't write much down, but the ten or so minutes I spend thinking about things really helps me get ready for the craziness.

Big Stuff:
Annika's Spring Break starts on Thursday. I think. I thought it was later in April, you know, around Easter, but someone told me that it starts this week.
Sam's speech therapy was moved this week. Just have to remember.
Annika's school has a Literature Parade sometime this week, I'm assuming before Thursday. She mentioned something last week about needing gray clothes. We have no gray clothes for her (she's a 5yo little girl for goodness sake) so I might be making a quick run to WalMart for sweats.

Regular Stuff (in no particular order and with no dates or times attached):
Harry's classes: 3 hours of freeish time for me
Sam's classes: 3 hours of freeish time again
Annika's dance
Emma's dance
Chess Club
Annika Daisy Scouts
Sam Scouts (I'm the leader, so it's mine too)
Harry Scouts (not the leader, thank goodness)
Piano lessons
Sports class

I think that's about it. It looks like a lot more than it really is. A lot of the kids' stuff is packed into just a couple of days so I'm not driving crazily hither and thither too much. Also, we host as many classes here as I can just because I'm lazy on the days I can be.

I've also realized in the last few months that trying to cook a full meal every night is impossible. I end up being cranky and irritable and just wanting the kids to go somewhere else while I cook in peace. So, I'm not cooking the full fancy meal every night. I'm still making dinner, but I want to enjoy the hours between 5 and 7 rather than dread them. I'm doing as much prep as I can in the morning, using my crock pot and I've vowed not to open  a cook book most nights. I need to make dinners that are easy to make and easy to clean up instead of the perfect osso bucco Martha Stewart recommends in the latest issue of Whole Living.

Now I'm making things like spaghetti and stir fry and saving the cool, fancy dinners for the weekends. It really makes a lot of sense. Something had to give before my sanity did and dinner is the only thing that worked. And it's not that I'm not feeding my family good food in the evenings, I'm just trying to do it quicker and easier.

Wow, justify much?!

Week Number: I have no idea, but we're not finished yet

So I'm never quite sure how to format these reports. Do I do it by child or by subject? Should I just post quick bullet points or talk about what we did? Pictures or no? Ack...so much stress. It's amazing I ever post at all.

The kids found the Lite Brite set this week. I thought this one is funny, it's Peppermint Patty Taking a Test.

There are tadpoles in there. The kids found them in the vacant lot below our house.

Last week I started with Emma and she's only 3 and not a "student" of our school yet, so this week I'll begin with Harry. He's 10 and is most definitely a student.

Annika is READING to Emma!

 Harry this week:

Language Arts: He wrote a poem about Stalin, finished The Impossible Journey, narrated it, did some spelling, a Sentence Island assignment where he wrote sentences with subject/verb disagreement and then fixed them, read about the prefix "super" and wrote a "super" poem.
Math: You know how people ask you how you are going to possibly teach math to your first grader and you laugh because you are pretty sure you can handle first grade math? Well, I can no longer laugh. Thank goodness it's fourth grade, not first grade, but it came a lot earlier than I thought it would. Harry's working on pounds and ounces right now and figuring out how to subtract them was trickier than I thought. I did get it and taught Harry, but it was a little touch and go for a while there. That's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I don't usually subtract pounds and ounces; if I'm using them I'm cooking and adding more to it (ie: butter for cookies).
Moving on...
History: The Russian Revolution still (see above Stalin poem) and the Communist Revolution in China. Harry read a book on the Long March and today we'll be using paperclips to show it visually, ala SOTW Activity Book.
Science: Electricity still. He read the next chapter in Singapore Science, and spent time playing with Snap Circuits--one of the best kits ever invented. I also really love the chapters on electricity more than some of the others. But I'm not sure why.

Other Stuff: Harry had Improv, Art and Music (they are practicing to put on an opera), and Greek and Latin Roots. We had to cancel Chess Club because Emma was sick. He made it to Webelos but Volleyball is canceled today for rain. Oh, and he's frantically working on his piano theory because his lesson is in about three minutes.

Sam:

Language Arts: Let's see, he's reading and narrating Little House on the Highlands still, he read The Mysterious Howling after I refused to finish reading it to them (I really didn't like it), he's working on his chapter in Writing With Ease 2 and his lessons in First Language Lessons 2. I know he also read a bunch of books on the Medieval period, which I am too lazy to go find. He did some spelling, I think two lessons this week.
Math: Subtraction with Regrouping three numbers. Can you hear the Jaws theme? That proved fairly tricky, but we printed out a couple of worksheets from the MUS site for more practice and I think he's okay. It's just another reminder to stay on top of what he's doing.
History: The Jewish Diaspora. He did the mapwork and coloring page from the SOTW 2 Activity Guide.
Science: The Singapore Science chapter on materials. He's been wandering around the house telling me what everything is made of. It's kind of funny.
Other Stuff: Cooking class, Arts and Crafts and Word Factory. We had to cancel his Wolf Scouts because it's at our house and Emma was sick. Sports is canceled and he's doing piano right now.

She's fine, just enjoying the warmth after a week of rain and cold.

Exciting Thing for the Week: We did art! Both boys take an art class, at least for another week, but I'm not at all happy with the instruction. This week I decided to pull out our art stuff and see what we can do. It turned out pretty well, I think: Van Gogh Afternoon.

We were invaded by armies of small ABAB patterned bears thanks to Emma.

"Super" Persian Ninja Zombies

Another four-line poem assignment, this time using "super."

Persian ninja zombies: superior to
Superman going to a supermarket through
a supersonic supernova while
eating a supersaturated sandwich.

again, by Harry

My Mythical Kids

Yesterday I cleaned the kitchen while listening to a couple of Susan Wise Bauer's convention talks. I love that I can do this. I have Well-Trained Mind and read it at least once a year, but there is just something about having the author talk about how she does things or exactly what she meant that really makes homeschooling this way seem possible. (Wow, now that's a run-on sentence.)

So yesterday I listened to her talks on using the Great Books to teach history and how to teach writing to middle graders. I listened and nodded and cleaned and thought, "wow, this makes so much sense. I'm going to make sure I start this with the kids tomorrow." It's not that we haven't been doing what she says, well, except for the whole middle-grader thing, since Harry is only in fourth grade, but it's always good to have a reminder or a kick in the pants. So that was yesterday.

This morning Harry read the last of The Impossible Journey and Sam read a couple chapters of Little House in the Highlands. Harry came back to the desk and told me a couple of things about the book, we talked a little and I was about to tell him to grab his science stuff and all of the sudden it occurred to me that this is when I ask him about who he identified with or some of the other questions from the talk. And then I panicked because I couldn't remember them. And I let the moment go by. I tried with Sam, but he just clammed up and wouldn't say anything, so that didn't work.

It was then that I realized. I want to do these things and I know they are important for the kids' educations, but rarely do I ever put them into practice in real life. But while I am listening to the talks or reading the books and blogs I ask the questions and do the memory work. I do all of these things though with my imaginary kids--the ones that pay attention all of the time, do their work without jumping up and down 500 times and don't eat all of the treats out of the pantry. Last night I could just picture the kids sitting down to discuss things and we had a fabulous night of serious intellectual pursuits. But then Emma threw up again and I was back into my real life with my fabulous but very real kids. And since I'm not going to trade them for the mythical ones, I need to come up with a plan to implement all of these wonderful ideas in the here and now.

Harry's Poem About Stalin

By way of explanation...we have been studying the Russian Revolution and reading books about the time right after when Stalin came into power. So, it's fresh on his mind. Also, this wasn't the first thing he thought of. Originally Harry's poem was going to be on Roman Gladiators, but we couldn't think of a good metaphor. Then he thought of birds and planes, but lost the paper he was writing his ideas down on. When I talked to him again he said he wanted to write a poem about Stalin and compare him to an iron fist.

The assignment was to write a poem using a metaphor. There could be other poetic devices, but metaphor was the primary goal.

Without further ado...

Stalin is an Iron Fist
by Harry

Flowers and trees bloom and pop,
Sun rises and doesn't stop.
Birds are noisy, eating seeds,
But in the garden there are weeds.

Russia turns cold.
Birds flee, gardens die.
Iron first comes and closes,
Stalin takes power, no more roses.

The iron fist grabs and crushes
changing life, people to mush.
Stalin has power, no one against him,
The iron fist will always win.

I think...

that a "good day" should really include a little of this:

The painters' workshop

 We bought The Children's Book of Art and The Usborne Art Treasury. I'm embarrassed to say how long it's been since we've opened either one. The Art Treasury book has actual projects in it--so you read about an artist and then do a project in the same style. I know I've looked at it a few times, but I've never actually done one. I know, I know.

But that all changed today. The kids actually stayed in different rooms for quiet time (only coming out six or seven times), Emma took a good nap, and the stars all aligned so that I could paint with the older ones. We read the quick biographies about Vincent Van Gogh, looked at the project, and...actually did it!

Here are the results:

Harry's before he painted the blue sky in.

Sam's. The red thing in the middle is a bird.

Mine. I know, I'm shameless.

Annika's. The large pink thing in the middle? A tree.

Emma's. She woke up as we were finishing and decided to paint too.

So, I don't know that we can do this weekly. But I will definitely try harder, it was a lot of fun. It's kind of nice now that most of the kids are past the "let's dump paint everywhere just to see what will happen" stage.

And I liked hearing that I'm the "greatest artist in the world." All the incentive I need!

Just plugging along...

 

This week Emma decided that she wanted to learn to read. I've been making a real effort to read to her this last little while, so I think she just got inspired. So we sat down with OPGTR and turned to lesson one--the short-A sound. We went through it and repeated the poem and had a grand old time looking for the A's. And when we finished she looked at me and said, "thanks Mom, for teaching me to read." Then she climbed off my lap, went running through the house yelling, "Annika, Annika, I know how to read too!" Thankfully Annika didn't burst her bubble. (Aside: she's not really ready for formal reading instruction like OPGTR she just likes having lessons like everyone else.)



Annika though is reading amazingly well. She's really taken off with it! I turned to the last lesson we did in OPGTR and started again with the next one. She read it and the next five lessons. I knew she was reading--she hasn't kept that a mystery, but it was fun to have her on my lap zooming through the book. Annika also grabbed on of the math workbooks we have and went through seven or eight pages in that. I kind of lost track and she just kept going. We got her report card this week which said something like "she's about to start reading and is doing well in class." It really annoys me that her teacher doesn't know that she's reading, but that's why she's not going to first grade there next year.



Sam is doing well, plugging along with his work. He actually finished two lessons in MUS Beta this week. They were easy and he's ready to be finished with the book. He's started to read Little House in the Highlands also, so I'm getting a bunch of questions about "bairns" and "lairds." History was about King Richard, King John and Robin Hood, so I think we'll have to have a viewing of Robin Hood tonight. (Viewing sounds way more educational than watching, doesn't it?) FLL and WWE are going well, just plugging along in them. I don't think anything exciting happened with them this week. Oh...I had a great idea this week. I usually listen to the kids' narrations and try to write them down while they are talking which leads to me saying, "wait a sec" and them forgetting what they wanted to say. So I decided to have them speak into the microphone on my iphone. That way they can talk for as long as they want and I can transcribe it later. The only problem is that the iphone is a fascinating toy so they talk for a long time just to get to use it.




Harry, let's see. He finished The Time Machine and is still (right now) reading The Impossible Journey. We are so far behind on his reading it's not funny. If a SOTW lesson is to take a week and they should do all of the other reading, how do people keep on track? I have never been able to figure that out. So, he'll keep doing readings that are a few weeks behind where we are and I'll keep feeling guilty that I can't keep it together and we'll both go on like we have been. Practice Island was better this week. I had him review direct and indirect objects and I'm keeping a closer eye on him while he does his assignments. Last week Harry decided to write his metaphor poem about Roman gladiators but he couldn't think of any metaphors for it so he switched to birds and planes. I'm hoping to get some of it written today. Math--kilograms and grams. He's doing well in Singapore Math. The best part is that I can see how he thinks about math changing. He's better able to solve problems in his head and way more confident in his math abilities. Yay! Latin was a review week, SOTW was the lead up to WWII. It's one of my favorite time periods and I get to use some of my old teaching stuff. I love it.

Lots of text, I know. I'll try to take more pictures next week. This week the only ones I took are from our Scout Den Meeting and they have lots of other kids in them, so I can't post them here.

Good Day

A few years ago on some of the blogs I used to read people asked "what makes a good day of school/learning?" At the time Harry was in kindergarten or first grade and I only had three kids instead of the four I have now. (Let me tell you, adding the fourth was both fabulous and crazy.) A good day of learning was when I read to Harry and Sam from one of our 5,043 read-alouds, we did a little addition and colored a lot. A really good day of learning was when I kept Annika from eating our math manipulatives. But there was also this intangible something that you could feel--connections made and understanding achieved. It was something that you couldn't put on a list but you kind of knew it when it happened.

Now that life is more complicated with running kids hither and thither and keeping track of what they are all learning and what they've had to eat during the day and oh my goodness, everything else a mom of four does I decided to revisit the idea of what makes a good day of learning.

For me, right now, a good day of learning involves staying home more than going out. We live in a place where the kids can go outside and play pretty much any day of the year, so outside play is important. Reading to the kids is important, whether it's a "school" book or just a story book. I need to make time for Emma every day. She gets her own read-aloud time and special books, but so often it's easy to just tell her to wait and then it never happens. Of course we have our formal lessons, those are important in any day. But I'd like for the kids to take what they are learning in one subject and make the connection with another. That may be the intangible part of what makes a good learning day. The importance of connections is also why I love doing classical education the way it's set up in The Well-Trained Mind. If we study a time period and talk about a author from that period and also study an artist from that period it really cements what that time period is about.

I'm sure there's more and I'll probably think of it as soon as I hit post, but for now, this is what makes a good day of learning.

Oh Joy...

Reading at dance class.

Apparently this week was a bust too. I just graded a bunch of Harry's work (and by grade I mean looked at it) and he had a bunch wrong in Latin, math, and grammar. And when I went to find Sam's I couldn't. It's either gone or I just imagined that we worked this week. I'm actually leaning toward imagining it.


Where do I go from here? I think a couple of lessons on following directions are in order--Harry's actual Latin was pretty much okay, he just didn't fill in sections of the charts. It wasn't that he didn't know the words, he just didn't finish the chart itself--so we don't know if the are singular or plural or male or female. I'll have him fix it on Monday and stay closer to him next week.

I will do a little review of grammar and math on Monday morning before we start anything else. Math shouldn't be a problem, he started Singapore 3B this week. The first lessons are on measurements--kilometers, meters, feet, and inches. It looks like he thought that a kilometer is one hundred meters rather than a thousand. So we'll go over that on Monday morning, he'll redo what he missed and we'll go on our merry way. Grammar is going to be tougher. He has been getting the same things wrong for a week or so now. Indirect and direct objects are his nemesis. So we'll reread the part in Grammar Island that talks about objects, I'll try not to pull my hair out and we'll go on our merry way. (I hope.)

Other things were better. Harry is reading an adaptation of The Time Machine (Classical House of Learning Literature) and The Impossible Journey to go along with history. We had a long discussion of Joseph Stalin which worked well with everything we've been hearing about Libya lately (I have got to stop listening to NPR in the car.). He finished his poem for "spec" in Building Language. I'll post it later. And best of all...we did science this week!!! I decided that doing everything every day wasn't working and now we have history on Tuesday and science on Wednesday. It actually worked. As did the science topic--electrical circuits. So Harry got out his snap circuits and we played after he did his work.

Jason brought home some dry ice this week. We had a blast (literally--they put it in bottles with hot water, closed the bottles and tossed them into the backyard.) It's nice to have a scientist for a Dad.

Sam read and read and read. He also kept going in MUS Beta--lesson 23. He actually used the MUS blocks to work out how to regroup in subtraction. But by the end of the week he had it and could work without the blocks. Emma was happy to see the blocks out and decided to do some regrouping herself, usually with the blocks Sam needed. Of course. We kept going in WWE--The Pied Piper. He has really good writing but spent more time decorating the paper than doing his work. First Language Lessons is going going going. He's on linking verbs and if I could find those packages of index cards I lost we would be moving merrily along. Where, oh, where can you be index cards.

Scary Annika

History is so fun when you are in second grade --Knights and the Crusades. I got a little worried when he kept playing Muslims vs. Christians though. The MUS blocks, the pattern blocks, the games outside were all the Crusades. But at least I knew he understood what he read. We did the maps and the coloring page too. Someday we'll get to all of the other fun activities. Science was playing with Snap Circuits with Harry and inspecting all of our batteries. He also recharged all of our rechargeable batteries.

That's about it for the week. Oh, and just for kicks, someone asked me if I'm having a boy or a girl.

I'm not.

I forgot to mention...

At least one of us was sick every day this week and aside from reading and a couple of days of math (not consecutive even), we didn't do much school work this week. I probably shouldn't post this, but in an effort to "keep it real" I'll put that out there. I eventually called off school for the week, called it Spring Break ('cause I can do that) and went around cleaning every surface in our house with lysol, bleach, and vinegar. But not at the same time, I promise. We're fine.

It'll be back to real life next week though. mwahahahaha. (aimed at the kids who think this week was just so fun.)

Books of the Week

I've posted the books that I've been reading to Emma this last little while. It's been fun to pay more attention to what I read to her and to make more of a point to read to her. It's hard when you get to be the fourth child and everyone else is so busy...sometimes you've got to remind your Mama that you may be her fourth child, but you are still her first Emma. Anyway, posting the books I read to her is a good incentive for me to read. It has me paying more attention to Emma and what she wants which is always good.

I read the book Room this week. I would love for someone who's read it to tell me so we can discuss it. Until then I'm going to keep my mouth pretty shut about the story. Having said that, it's an incredibly awful subject treated in an interesting and respectful way. Although I'm not at all sure respectful is the word I'm looking for. Someone just read the book please so we can talk freely, please.

Harry is on quite the reading spurt this week. Along with his school assignments he read The Penderwicks, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street and The Strictest School. All of those are well worth the time. In fact, there is another Penderwicks book coming out in May and Harry told me that a new Strictest School book will be out soon too. We're all excited to read them. He also read and narrated The Happy Prince by Oacar Wilde. He enjoyed the story and I enjoyed hearing him tell me about the story

Sam is in the Middle Ages right now in almost all of his reading. He's read about 8 books this week on the Crusades and Jerusalem and knights. It's perfect reading for him and Harry is right there just waiting for Sam to finish so he can have a turn too. Annika's class had a special reading day today so she took her pillow pet, blanket and three books. She took Knuffle Bunny, Each Peach Pear Plum and Panda Bear, Panda Bear What Do You See. Her teacher read Knuffle Bunny for a special treat. Other than that it's been all about Madeline Visits the White House. Not my favorite Madeline, but it's annika's and a special present from Grandma Hamilton so I'll read it whenever she wants. Mostly.

That's about it. I'm going to see if I can find the next stories in our series that we have going and find some new picture nooks for the girls. Oh and make sure I have the next set if Bob Books so that I'm ready when Annika decides she wants to become a real reader!

Other books I've seen the boys read at some point this week:
The Making of a Knight (Sam)
Crusades: The Struggle for the Holy Lands (Sam)
Castle Diary (Sam)
Harold the Herald (Sam)
Chanticleer the Fox (Sam)
The Golden City: Jerusalem's 3,000 Years (Sam)
In the Time of Knights (Sam)
The Time Machine (Harry)
The Reluctant Dragon (Harry)
The Russian People in 1914 (Harry)
Going to War in WWI (Harry)
Gandhi (Harry)

It doesn't mean that all of them are finished. It's entirely possible that they picked up the books, read a chapter and put it down thinking that they hate them. But at some point these books were in their hands. Or beds. I am always finding books in their covers. Hmmm, I wonder where that trait came from.

Homeschooling is Easier Than...

1. Getting everyone ready for school. It is so much easier to have breakfast and get dressed at a relatively easy pace than hurry, hurry, hurry everyone out the door. The kids have chores and things to do before we begin lessons but it's still easier than getting out the door.

2. Parenting. Granted that I only have ten years experience and there's a lot to come, but I feel pretty confident in saying that explaining 1+1=2 and the causes of WWI is a lot easier than trying to explain the inner workings of girls to a love-struck boy or how to put away toys for the fiftieth time.

3. Climbing Mount Everest.

4. Homework. Oh my goodness. The amount of homework Harry had as a second grader was ridiculous. He was pretty good about doing it, but it was still a pain in the neck and took way too long.


Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of homeschooling that is difficult. It's hard to know if I'm doing the best thing possible for each child. I have to find outside classes to teach what I don't know and the best curriculum to use for what I am teaching. I have to be "on" all day, every day.

But overall, for us right now, homeschooling is the best, "easiest" choice.

I Love MCT

Tonight at dinner Jason told us that a scientist at his work tried to rewrite some marketing briefs and the marketing people were not happy. He said that he scientist tried to make the marketing info more concise so it just said what it needed to.

A few minutes later Harry came to me and said something like, that's what I'm doing in my writing. I'm trying to use as few words as possible to get my point across. I knew he was listening when we went over his work in Sentence Island yesterday--we joked and talked about it like usual, but this was the first time I've really bad him make the connections between what we're reading and real life. Actually ha's not entirely true. I would hope that he would make more than one connection in the last six months. And he has, this is just one of the more recent examples and one that was totally outside of "school." He's made connections between his grammar and Latin and with poetry before.

I really do love the MCT Island level materials. I was thinking last week that I could probably use First Language Lessons for grammar and the MCT for everything else. I'm sure I could and Harry would have an excellent education. But I don't want to. It's fun reading grammar wih Harry. And honestly, "fun" is not a word I ever thought I'd use for grammar. I think I'll stick with MCT long term.