Week Five?

I think I lost a week in there somewhere. It may have been while we were traveling because I know I didn't skip any chapters in their books. Oh well.

So, back to work. I think I'm going to do this like a Top 10 list, rather than going into a lot of detail about everything. You're welcome!

10. Learning everywhere:


Harry doing his math while hanging out at Emma's dance class. Some subjects, like math, are more "portable" than others. Art, for instance and piano are not good lessons to take places.

9. Studying hard things together.

Harry's history program this year covers the 19th and 20th centuries. Those are years full of examples of man's inhumanity toward other men. I love that I can be the one to introduce those things to the kids. Right now we are all learning about the Civil War. Sam is enjoying the maps we color and the facts. Harry is trying to really understand slavery and what it meant for people. They are both studying the same thing, but they aren't learning it the same way. And that's cool, I don't expect them to. Sam will ask the same questions Harry is when he's ready.

I can say that now, but the Holocaust is going to be really, really hard on all of us.

8. Books, books, and more books.

Our homeschool is based on books. For the most part we don't use texts, we read real books. You can go back and tell me that Singapore Math is a text and even Story of the World is. And you would be right. But the basis of our homeschool is reading books. Harry just finished Little Princess and is still reading The Fellowship of the Ring. On Monday he'll start Heidi. Sam reads faster than any other second grader that I know, so it's hard to keep him in books. He reads a variety of books--from picture books to novels. He recently finished Beowulf (and loved it). One of his assignments this week was Owl Moon and he's reading Emil by Astrid Lindgren. At bedtime we are reading Little Men. Those are our major, assigned books, but there are others popping up here and there.

I love that the kids have time to read. It also helps, though, that the kids all really like to read.

7. Trying New Things.

Harry and Sam just started piano lessons this week with the son of a friend from Church. He's been taking piano for a long time and is great with the kids. Harry also started tennis lessons from his Uncle Adam and discovered a love of the game. I'm sure the Jamba Juice Adam got him afterward helped too.

6. Finding the "perfect" Curriculum.

Harry and Sam get lumped together a lot. They aren't quite two years apart and they are both boys. So it seems pretty easy to teach them together. But they aren't the same at all. Sam loves stories and making things up. He loves drawing and creating and seems to have a natural eye for that kind of thing. Harry likes stories too, but he prefers for them to be either fantasy or completely grounded in reality.

Sam likes to get his work over and done with so he can go back to playing with his Pokemon or creating something with Playmobil. I don't spend a lot of time trying to make it super-fun, but just get him through what he needs to do and back to his "real life." That's also a function of his age--he's not going to sit and work for a long time. We do short lessons that get a lot of info into him. Writing with Ease and First Language Lessons work really well for him.

We tried WWE and FLL with Harry and it was a complete bust. He hated them and it made both of us miserable. This year I got smart and started using Michael Clay Thompson's Language Arts program. So far, it's a huge hit. We all love it. Sam perks up when he's in the room and we are reading it, Harry thinks it's just a lot of fun, and he's actually remembering what he needs to.

5. Fun Stuff.


Harry's Literature book mentioned making buns. So he did.


4. Math.

I never thought I'd say that. Ever. But when you start giggling over place value notation and estimation it gets a mention in the Top Ten.

3. Brothers and Sisters.

She's not a true student of our "school" yet, but she really likes to do what her brothers and sister do. In fact, they all kind of run as a pack. It can be a little frightening, but overall it's good.

2. Art.

The school my kids would go to doesn't offer art. There isn't enough money for it. Fortunately we do have art in our school. This week Sam read Owl Moon and did an art project to go along with it. The best part is that I got some paints out and worked right along with him. But I'm not going to show you mine. That's the difference between a seven-year-old and a thirty...-year-old.


1. Looking out the back window at our bird feeder, noticing the birds and having the kids identify them by their calls. Something you learned together several years ago.

Cool...

For today's coolest thing, you don't actually have to homeschool, but it's a nice perk.

Sam's assignment was to paint and draw in the same manner as the book Owl Moon. It's one of my favorites. The kids think it's okay, probably because it's such a calm, quiet book. Sam read the book and we have a few things to do that mirror what's in it.

I sat down and painted with both Annika and Sam. It's just a nice thing to do sometimes. Sam really gets into it though. He knows how to make things look like he wants them to. In that way he really takes after Jason.

But it's always fun to take a while in the middle of the day to paint.

Pictures to follow when I have a chance to take them and the camera batteries are charged. In other words, maybe never.

Today's Coolest Thing

So, not every homeschool day is perfect and some of them just need to be gotten through, but today... today has been a good day.

Today we...

laughed our way through Grammar Island. I never, ever thought that might happen.

giggled while talking about place values up to the ten thousands

read book after book to a boy about to get a cast on.

It's a chilly, rainy day and we're about to make buns for dinner, ala Sara Crewe in A Little Princess.

Weeks Two and Three

I won't bore you with pictures of their math work this time, but I do want to remember at least a little of what we worked on in the past couple of weeks.

The kids started their enrichment classes the week of the 13th. So we now have a much busier schedule and things are a lot crazier than the week before. On various days and at various times the boys have a sports class, an art class, Greek and Latin Roots class, and chess club. We started the week off south of our house on a fun field trip that the kids loved. I even took Annika out of school for it, thank goodness she liked it or I would never have heard the end of it.

Anyway, that about covers the fun stuff that we do, let's get down to business.

Literature/Reading:

Harry is reading Little Princess and doing some work on it. I think I've said before that Harry hates all books I recommend until he actually begins reading it. I'm trying not to let the work he's doing on the book ruin the experience of reading it so I'm having him do about half the work required.

I also let him choose his other reading. I wasn't at all sure what he'd pick, but I was willing to consider whatever it was. Actually, I wasn't. But he didn't know that. And in the end he picked The Fellowship of the Rings. Go Harry. I pretended to think it over and told him, "okay, I guess."

Sam finished Children of Noisy Village and I had to scramble to find something else for him. One downside to using the library for a lot of our literature is that it sometimes doesn't come when I expect it to. Anyway, I got an adaptation of Beowulf for him. He really loved it. I like having him read books that tie into his history lessons. I think it's so cool that he likes stories and can recount them almost verbatim. He also read Jumanji and spent some time drawing pictures of animals in his house. I asked Sam to narrate Jumanji and he spent about seven minutes on the first three pages of it. I tried to write as he narrated, but it was really hard to keep up.

Math:

Harry finished his Singapore Math book. It was 2B, so I knew he'd fly through it once we got started. The best part is that he really likes doing his work again. Math-U-See was one of the first curriculum decisions I made and it really didn't occur to me that it might be a problem. I'm so glad that eventually I was willing to reevaluate it and find something better. Harry finished the book on Wednesday, but since I didn't want to start 3A on Thursday, I printed some division worksheets off and gave them to him to work on. We'll start the new book on Monday.

Math-U-See is still working for Sam, though. I do kind of wonder if I'm going to have to switch him too and if I should do it now or wait until there is a problem. I'm leaning toward later. Last week he worked on estimation and this week skip counting by two's. He breezes through pretty much everything he does and it seems to stick, so that's good.

Grammar & Spelling:

I'll talk about Sam first. He's doing fine. He's using First Language Lessons. I went through and selected certain lessons in year one and then we'll move onto the second year. Sam has memorized a couple of poems and we've gone over our address a few times. Spelling Workout isn't exciting and it's probably a bit too easy for him, but we'll finish it and move on.

Now, for Harry. I finally got Harry's grammar books. They are part of the Michael Clay Thompson language arts program. Harry is on Grammar Island and we've read the first few pages. So far, so good. Harry likes goofiness in his lessons and likes lessons that we talk though, so it seems like a good fit. But, we're only on page 17, so I hesitate to give it a "this-is-the-best-program-ever" review. Give it time. Harry's spelling program is called Working Words in Spelling. For some reason he hated Spelling Workout and really likes this. So, we're doing this instead.

History:

Let's see. Harry has read about Japan opening to trade, the Crimean War, Italy becoming a country and The Taiping Revolution. Seriously, SOTW 4 is all over the place. But Harry likes it. He's making connections all over the place and I like that. I almost forget sometimes what he's already read about and he'll ask me questions and it'll throw me a bit. Clearly there are worst things to worry about.

Sam read Beowulf, he's learning about Justinian and Theodora, St. Augustine and the Celts. SOTW 2 at least stays somewhat the same. I still really like both programs. The biggest problem Sam has is that his teacher keeps forgetting to do the fun projects in his book. But I'm working on it. He also read Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady. I made the big mistake of asking him to write about the book. Remember when I told you that he gives these amazing narrations? He only does that if I write it. Writing is not his favorite thing. But that's okay, he's only seven.

Science

Both boys did some science last week, but somehow we skipped this week. That's okay, Singapore Science is challenging and I'm okay with taking it slow. I would however like to make more of an effort to make those all important connections between what they are reading in their books and real life.

Anyway, that's the basics. My goal for the next few weeks is to add all of the fun things in, including making pizza, illuminated letters and mosaics. Those I will take pictures of.

Today's Coolest Thing

About Homeschooling:

Talking to Harry about The Little Princess and why Captain Crewe went to India. He wanted to know why Crewe would leave his daughter behind and go into the army. Then, on his own, he made the connection between what he read in The Little Princess and his history book that talked about the Sepoy Revolt.

I did have to attempt to explain the entire social structure of 19th century Great Britain to him, but the discussion we were able to have that encompassed both his history and literature studies was pretty cool.

Why should the "real" teachers have all the fun?

Back to Second Grade

So, Sam does not have the same amount of work that Harry does, for one very good reason. He's in Second Grade, not Fourth. Although, if you are Harry you'd probably assume that it has something to do with Mom being really mean.

Overall Sam is following in Harry's footsteps, or at least he would be if Harry had stayed home for Second Grade. I pulled out the plans I had in place and changed the name. Actually, that's not entirely true. I changed a few things because even though people have a tendency to treat them as interchangeable, the really aren't. This is a brief overview of Sam's first week of Second Grade:

Math: Math-U-See Beta. I'm letting Sam zip through the first few chapters as a review. He did the first two pages of lessons one through three and took the tests in order to prove to me that he knew what he was talking about. He did and we're moving on to lesson four. I have no idea right now what it's about, but it's safe to say it'll have something to do with multiple digit addition or subtraction, just like the rest of the 30 lessons in the book.

Here's some proof that Sam knows his math:



History: I'm separating the boys for history this year. They've always done the same time period, but I want Sam to have the joy of discovering the Middle Ages when he's actually interested in them. This time period was just made for a seven-year-old to discover. This week he read about the fall of the Roman Empire. I'm definitely going to have to get our Romans out of the attic. It'll be hilarious to listen to the stories Sam comes up with.


Science: I chose to buy an actual science curriculum this year. After trying and absolutely hating NOEO Science last year, it seemed like a good idea. Sam is working on Singapore Science 3/4. The first book in the series is called Diversity. The actual textbook and activity books are pretty basic. The homework and test books require more thought and will be challenging.

This is a page from the activity book:

I'm excited about science for the first time in a couple of years. Harry is using the same program, just a different level.

Reading and Language Arts:

Sam didn't start spelling this week, he will next week. He read Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say for his literature book. It's one of my favorite picture books ever and I was excited for him to read it. Unfortunately I don't think a 7yo can really get everything this book has to offer. There are themes of family, war, fitting in and others all in this little picture book. Allen Say has just done such a good job with it. Anyway. I talked to him about these themes and he grasped that the grandfather moved and missed things from both places and that's what I was going for. Here's his response page:


He's also reading Children of Noisy Village which makes him laugh hysterically. It's so fun. Like I said, I love introducing the kids to books I love and this is no exception. Sam just sits there giggling and then spends more words than Astrid Lindgren herself describing just what was so funny.

Sam started Writing with Ease, Level Two with a narration of an Aesop's Fable. I of course didn't take a picture of it (be glad). He does well checking off lists and having a predictable routine, so I think for this year WWE will work for him.

So, there we have the basics for Sam. There are a few things he hasn't started yet. I mentioned spelling, but we'll start grammar in the next few weeks too. Sam like stories, so I'd like to read him 50 Famous Stories and a few other collections I have. He's combining with Harry for art and the other "Specials." He'll start piano and sports again. I'd like to be able to keep as much time as I can free for him to play. I'm past making the early grades time-consuming. That doesn't mean that we skimp on his education at all, but I try to have him work "efficiently." Each year gets a little harder, just ask Harry. But second grade is still a lot of drawing, coloring, and playing. At least for Sam.

See you next week.

Back to School (Harry)

So, we all started school this week. On Monday Annika got all dressed up, put on her new kindergarten shoes and backpack and headed off to regular school.

The boys and Emma, on the other hand, got dressed in their regular clothes, probably forgot to comb their hair, and sat down at the desk in the loft. I'm pretty sure Annika was much happier than the boys were about starting school. Emma was pretty devastated to have Annika gone for three hours. Fortunately Grandma was here to help Emma get through it.

You may ask: "What is a homeschool day like?" And I'll answer, "it depends." Then you'll ask, "on what." And then I'll answer, "it depends on so many things you'll get bored of seeing quotation marks way before I finish."

Then I'll just give you a brief rundown of our week, complete with pictures. But I want to warn you, pictures of the boys' work is not that exciting. Don't tell me you weren't warned.

Harry: Harry is in 4th grade this year. He is studying the modern age starting with Queen Victoria, in History, right now he's reading Little House on the Prairie, and he's just started a new math program. He's also starting a new literature program and for that he's read an adaptation of a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories, he does spelling, and some other stuff I can't think of right now and that we haven't started yet.

Would you like to see? Ok...

Math: I switched Harry from Math U See to Singapore Math. The programs are completely different and SM starts fractions much earlier than MUS does, so when I gave Harry the placement test, he tested into book 2B. So most of it's easy review, but he really likes the fraction parts. I have to say, I loooove SM. MUS is great and both boys have learned their math facts well using it, but SM is better. Harry and I were talking about math this morning. We were looking at the books and joking about the different shapes and fractions. How often does that happen? I love SM. Here are pictures of some of his work.



Literature: This is the first time I've ever used a real literature program with Harry. It was written by another homeschool Mom who used it with her children. So far we like it. My only problem is that it uses adaptations rather than the actual books. Harry reads well enough that he could read the real Little Princess, but I'm not sure if it would match up with the work we have for the book so I'm hesitant to substitute it. Harry's favorite part of the program are the Story Charts. He uses the chart to decide which part of the story is the setting, the exposition, the climax, everything. I like that he's getting used to these terms. Again, it's been really fun to talk to Harry about his work and have real discussions over whether this part is the rising action or the climax and why. Here's a picture of his completed Story Chart for the Blue Carbuncle:


History: Like I said, he's starting the Modern Age. This week he read about Queen Victoria and the Sepoy Mutiny. This is the first year he's had to read his history book to himself, in years past, I've read it out loud. He's learning how to outline the chapters and his mapwork is more difficult than in years past.



Science: Well, we didn't get Harry's science books until today, so we're going with the nature is good theory of science. Get the kid outside and have him observe for a while. Ask him what he saw and expound on that a little. There, nature studies.

And a whole bunch of miscellaneous notes:

Harry's required reading this week is Little House on the Prairie. He has an interesting way with books. If I choose it, he automatically assumes that he'll hate it. If I force him to read, by the second chapter he almost always get into the book and begin to like it. I've shown him the pattern and we laugh and he agrees that it's kind of silly and then it starts over again each and every time.

So now I just tell him to suck it up, deal, and read. So he's enjoying LHOP and it's really fun for me to hear his observations. One of the best parts of homeschooling is picking the books you liked as a child and introducing them to your kids. I know that you don't have to homeschool in order to do that, but hey I do, it's my blog and I'm saying it's cool to be a homeschool mom. Once or twice a week I have Harry write about what he read.



We do spelling, but it's not real interesting, so I'm not going to post any pictures. Although, you probably could debate whether any of the pictures were interesting, so here is a picture of Harry's spelling work:


We haven't started everything yet. Latin will come next week and once Harry's other Language Arts books get here, we'll add those in. Fourth grade is a big deal around here. There's a lot more work and more responsibility but I'm trying to balance that out with some freedom. Harry and I will talk about which books he'd like to read through the year. He'll get to pick from a list of books I've approved. (Of course, his non-school reading is his choice.) And I'm planning to do more projects with him. I also have one fun thing each day planned. At least I think it's fun. It's kind of like Specials. We'll do Shakespeare on Monday, Art on Tuesday, etc. Ending up with Beach Day Friday.

This is really long. I can promise you that future weekly posts won't be this long.

Now, off to Sam.

What works for us...

So, we're at the point when many homeschoolers start planning for the next year. We're nearing the end of the books we're currently using and on the hunt for what to use next year. I've been going through the kids books, taking stock of what we've liked and what we haven't and what works well enough that I'm not changing.

Math: Both boys use Math U See. It's not the most exciting program ever and I've never seen them jump up and down when I tell them to get their math books, but it works. It works probably because of constant repetition. I do mean constant. Sam's book this year, Alpha, only deals with single digit addition and subtraction. Harry's is only multiplication. They do enjoy the movies that "teach" the lesson--they think it's kind of funny that there are kids answering off camera. This really falls under the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" column.

The only problem I have is that the lesson books only have 30 weeks of lessons. So the boys only have about eight more weeks to go until...hmm, good question. I just don't think that letting them have that much time off of math is a good idea. So I've ordered a supplement for Harry, Singapore Brain Maths 1. It looks like logic problems, which Harry is very good at and enjoys. So he'll do this and both he and Sam will have to suffer through worksheets I print from the MUS site and other places around the web.

History: This is a tricky one for us. Both boys started the year off with Story of the World, volume 3. Up until around February, I read it out loud to them and they both did the same work. The only difference was in the supplementary books I had them read. Harry's were harder and Sam's a little bit easier, if not non-existent. Recently though, I decided that Sam should be doing something different for his history and I've been printing up pages from 50 Famous Stories for him. I'm trying to match the time period of his stories with the time period that Harry's reading about.

Our current plan is that Harry reads the SOTW text to himself. He then answers the questions I have for him and completes the map work. If there is a supplementary book, he reads that and we do any projects that come with the chapter. (Not all in one day, of course, I'm talking over the course of a week.)

Sam reads his Story and narrates it to me. I've had him draw pictures, write a sentence or two about it, or just tell me. Harry tells Sam what he's reading and he does the map work as well. Sam will read a book that relates to the subject in SOTW and joins in with the projects.

It sounds much more complicated than it really is. Remember, things are spread out and we've worked on a routine that seems to keep everyone happy. And happy is very important when you are dealing with kids who have a tendency to shut down.

Science: We are using Noeo Science Chemistry. I have to say that I do not like this science curriculum at all. Not at all. I was so excited because 'everyone' says that this is the science to use. That'll teach me to listen to 'everyone.'

There are things that I do like, I'll go into that first. I like that they schedule in biographies and that they don't use text books. And after that short list, I don't like how they have the readings broken up. There are four scheduled days each week and you might read one or two pages of a book each day and define or draw pictures of a few vocabulary works. It's very Charlotte Mason-y in the short readings, but these aren't difficult, Victorian-era books. They were written just a few years ago and they aren't that hard to understand.

Basically, it's really, really boring and we won't be using it again. But I'm stuck with it this year, so we've basically combined a week into a day or two and go about it that way. Since Jason is a scientist though, we tend to discuss scientific things anyway, so I'm not too worried that they aren't learning enough.

Spelling: Harry uses an old book that we found somewhere called Working Words in Spelling. There are newer versions of this, but I really like the old one that we have, so I don't let him write in the books, I copy them for him. (The link goes to a newer version. Ours is from 1980 so it's quite a bit different from the new ones.) Sam works with Spelling Workout. Sam says that he doesn't really like the lessons, but he does like the cover.) He does fine with it and becoming a good little speller, so I'm happy to keep with it. We do spelling every day, one day they will do the chapter and the next I quiz them on it. It seems to work well for them, they rarely forget a word and both boys, Harry especially, is really improving this year.

Grammar: We don't do grammar for either boy this year. If we did, we would use First Language Lessons, because I have them on the shelf just waiting. Maybe next year.

Writing: Harry is working on his cursive. Sam writes a lot in print. He has really nice printing.

For actually learning how to write well? Both boys use Writing With Ease by Susan Wise Bauer. Harry is in level 2 and Sam is in level 1. They both do fine with this program and like reading about new books. In fact, much of our free reading this year has been inspired by the books used in WWE. For that, I'm thankful.

On the other hand...I'm not thrilled with this program. When we were doing FLL and WWE together it was overkill. I'm happy with taking grammar (FLL) out of the equation, but I still find the basic structure of WWE kind of boring. The kids don't really enjoy it either, even though I know they are learning. This makes a tricky decision for next year. Do I stay with what they are currently doing or do I branch out and see what else is out there?

You'll have to tune in tomorrow night to find out what I plan to do. And what about Annika? Isn't she school-age soon? Hmmm....

The Black Hole of Calcutta

Guest Post by Harry

The English started the East India Company and the Persians came and took over Delhi and took all of its riches back to Persia. They also burned Delhi. The English thought the Persians were going to attack the East India Company so they built a fort called Fort Calcutta. The Indians thought the English were trying to attack the Indians so they banded with the French and they took over Fort Calcutta in four days. They threw the prisoners, 145 men and one woman, into the Black Hole of Calcutta which was the dungeon. 120 prisoners died in the night because of suffocation. They didn’t have any water or food. The English sent a big army and beat the Indians but the Indians didn’t do anything. Then Siraj, the king of the territory was killed and his Chief General, Mir Jafir, was made the king of that territory. India had fallen to the shopkeepers.

This is the project we did about the Black Hole of Calcutta.

This is me and Sam counting M&Ms. They represent the people standing in the Black Hole of Calcutta. The tape is the Black Hole.

These are all the prisoners standing in the Black Hole of Calcutta.

The peanut M&Ms are the people sitting in the Black Hole. We couldn't fit all of the sitting people, so we had to take some out and replaced them with the regular M&Ms, or the standing people.

This is the final picture. We got 120 people sitting and 46 standing in the Black Hole of Calcutta.

(Mom's note: the cheery colors of the m&ms are kind of odd, considering the topic, aren't they. Especially the Easter ones. )

How did we

go from discussing William Penn to screaming in pretend agony?

Just a few swift steps:

1. Harry read his history assignment on the founding of Pennsylvania.
2. He discovered that for many years, no building in Philadelphia could be taller than the brim of WP's hat in a sculpture on the top of the City Capitol Building.
3. Googled the statue.
4. We found the statue, it's pretty tall. In one of the pictures it shows a sculpture of Benjamin Franklin.
5. We googled that sculpture.
6. In the background, there were some blue spots that Harry discovered might be giant Monopoly pieces.
7. We googled Your Turn and discovered that it is a huge sculpture of different games in Philadelphia. We decided we'd have to go there the next time we go to Maryland.
8. Harry glanced at the bottom of the page where it said "Medium: Metal."
9. After I explained what a medium in artwork is, he pretended to play chess with giant marble pawns.
10. Which he then dropped on his foot leading to the screaming in agony.

This home education stuff is pretty great, when it's not completely painful!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, we made it. I didn't post every day and I'm okay with that. I am sorry that I said I would, I should have realized that it just isn't in the cards for me to post every day.

In saying that though, I do have some posts lined up for Christmas. I won't promise daily posts, but check back sometimes since I think I should be able to post most days. For instance, starting on Saturday I'm planning to post a couple of Advent calendars that I like a lot. You wouldn't want to miss that now, would you?

Have a fabulous Thanksgiving. Enjoy your families and your dinners (it's okay if it's not in that order of course) and I'll see you soon.

I'm a big fan

of having my kids make and wear dorky turkey hats. I got them all into the Thanksgiving spirit with this one a few years ago:

Turkey Hat

I'm now wondering what depths I will have to sink to in order to get them to make and wear new ones. Hmmm. This is what makes holidays fun!

A cornucopia

I can't wait to make this with my kids. Every year we do a cornucopia craft, usually it's edible or it falls apart, but I'm hoping no one will eat this one:

Paper Cornucopia

I think it will be to hard for the little ones to make on their own, so maybe we'll make it together. I might sketch out the shapes first and just have the kids fill it in. Or maybe I'll have Harry and Sam do their own and help the little girls do one too.

Okay Guys

I think I missed a day--I'm sorry. I had an incredibly busy day yesterday and just crashed on the couch. Since I'm still recovering from the trip, a crazy day yesterday and Scouts today, it's just a link. But it looks so dang cute. And I was thinking it would be even cuter using an upside-down flower pot painted brown.

So here you go: Paper-cup turkeys

Handprint Turkeys

I'm a big fan of handprints. I love seeing how the kids' hands have changed through the years. It's also easy and fun.

Have your child trace his or her hand. Then make a turkey out of it. The thumb is the head so give it a beak and a smile. (He doesn't know what's going to happen later.) Also give him a comb. Then color each of the fingers a different turkeyish color. Don't forget his legs. He needs some way of running.

That's it. We do this every year, so I have quite a collection of turkeys. Once I can figure out how to get my pictures up so they don't look so weird, I'll post pictures of what we've done so far.

Welcome

A few years ago I made a Welcome Banner from instructions I found in a magazine. (I told you I liked magazines.) I can't find the instructions, but it was super easy.

What You Need:
A piece of burlap--about the size of a large piece of paper
Felt cut outs of the word "Welcome" (I decided how big the letters should be and printed them out on the computer. Then I traced the letters onto the felt and cut them out.)
Felt cut-outs of some leaves in fall colors, about 5 or 6 of them (print out the clip-art from familyfun.com and trace them onto the felt, then cut them out)
Glue gun
A dowel rod or long stick, longer than the width of the burlap
A piece of rope
5 Pennies

What To Do:
1. After you have the words and leaves ready, lay them out onto the blurlap. When you like how they look, glue them on. You are going to use the top couple of inches for the stick, so place them accordingly.
2. Put the stick or dowel rod across the top, fold the burlap over it and glue the burlap down.
3. Tie the rope onto the dowel rod or stick so you can hang it.
4. Glue the pennies along the back on the bottom so that it won't fly around too much.
5. Hang and admire your craftiness!

Now, if I can only find mine...

Fun for the Whole Family

One of H's Scout electives is to make a bean bag toss game. So I think we'll do this one:

Bean Bag Toss

It is a bigger project than most, but it might be fun Sunday afternoon family project.

Good luck. I hope it's fun!

Corn on the Cob

Indian corn is always cool. I remember trying to eat it when I was little. That wasn't one of my better ideas. but this is:

Stuff You Need:
green construction paper
paint in Indian corn colors
glue
another piece of paper to glue everything else on

What to Do:
1. Cut out the shape of an ear of corn from the green paper and glue it to the other piece of paper. The green is the corn husks so leave some room between the sides for the kernels.
2. Dip your finger into one of the paint colors and use it to print a kernel between your husks. Without washing your finger off, dip it in another color and do the same thing.
3. Do this until your Indian corn is finished.
4. Let it dry.
5. Be happy!

More Leaves

Remember how I said I love fall leaves? Well, I do and I have a very cool brother-in-law who sent me some genuine colorful Virginia fall leaves. So we all have Ryan to thank for this craft, which may be a lot easier for those of you in Virginia and Utah to do than those of us in SoCal.

Stuff You Need:
paper
brown marker
glue
dried leaves

What to Do:
1. Draw the trunk of a tree on your paper.
2. Put glue on the top of the tree where the leaves would be.
3. Crush up the leaves into small pieces. You want pieces, not dust, so be careful
4. Put the leaves on the glue.
5. Admire your tree.

You could also put some on the ground around the tree to look like the leaves are falling.

Leaves

Someday when you have an hour or two, I'll have to tell you all about my love affair with fall leaves. Leaves are fine the rest of the year, but in the fall...oh my! Sadly most of the leaves around here don't change colors, so I have to live vicariously through other people. It's just one of the sacrifices you have to make when you live in southern California. Anyway, I'm so excited to make these:

Salt Dough Leaf Prints

Oh so excited. I'll tell you how they end up.

Another Apple Craft

I love easy crafts and this one just works. I'm pretty sure that even my littlest could do it pretty easily and she's 22 months right now:

Tissue Paper Apple Tree

What you need:

a piece of brown construction paper cut in the general shape of a tree trunk
a piece of green paper, in the general shape of the top of a tree
lots of small pieces of red tissue paper to be the apples
glue

Okay, follow along, this is going to be tricky:

1. Glue the trunk shape to the treetop shape in the basic apple tree shape.
2. Give your child the small pieces of red tissue paper and let him or her crumple them into small pieces. Call those the apples, but don't let your child eat them. (They aren't really apples, we're just pretending.)
3. While she's crumpling the tissue paper, either dot the glue onto the tree where you would like the apples to be or cover the entire tree with glue, allowing your child to decide where the apples go.
4. Drink some apple juice or eat an apple while it dries.
5. Exclaim over and over again in a really excited voice how cute your child's apple tree is.
6. Watch your child smile.
7. Give your child a kiss and hang the apple tree on the fridge. If you don't have a magnetic fridge, hang it somewhere else. Maybe in a museum somewhere.


That's it. If you wanted, you could probably glue the tree to another piece of paper as a background, but you don't have to. I mean really, it's already adorable as it is.

I love magazines

Which is probably not a shock if you know me at all. It's a genetic affliction (thanks, Mom). But I try really hard not to buy every magazine I see. This is not easy, because I really do love magazines. Fortunately for me, the libraries around here sell donated magazines for either 10 or 25 cents. So occasionally I'll go a little crazy and bring home every magazine ever written. Except the ones with cars on the front. Those I skip. But every other magazine. And sometimes I even get lucky and someone has donated the most recent issue of one that I like.

Take, for instance, Family Fun. I like Family Fun--it does help my family have fun with the party, craft, and food ideas. But most of the time I don't feel like buying it retail because most of the craft, party, and food ideas are also found on their website, appropriately named familyfun.com. I saw the November issue at the library a few days ago and it looked great, in fact there were a couple of craft ideas I definitely wanted to use. But I didn't buy it. Mostly because I decided that I wasn't going to buy more magazines but also, at least a little bit, because I couldn't find it.

Today I found it--at the library! Yay. And I excitedly opened it up and found the craft I was dreaming about--Turkey Luminarias. They are prettier than they sound, honest.) Oh, it was exciting! Until I found this:

Turkey Luminarias

Fine, lesson learned.

Mini Yarn Apples and Pumpkins

This is a craft that I saw here:

http://www.makeandtakes.com/little-apple-yarn-favors

I don't want to repost the craft, so just click on over and check it out. It looks adorable and fairly easy. We're planning to do this tomorrow.

Somewhere else I found that another person had made pumpkins using the same method, just orange yarn instead of red. They looked cute too and I kicked myself for not thinking of that and buying orange yarn when I got the red.

Of course, there is so much you could do with the apple theme. Go pick some, make a pie or some applesauce, or a pie (that has Jason's vote).

Here are some apple-themed books.

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World
Apple Farmer Annie
Up, Up, Up, It's Apple-Picking Time

That's just a few of the ones out there. I know you probably already have your favorites.

I hope that helps make your fall a little more creative and fun. Enjoy!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Actually I'm not talking about Christmas. I love Thanksgiving. If I had to choose, I'd pick Thanksgiving as my favorite holiday. There isn't nearly as much stress and it's all about food and being together. And giving thanks, which really, we could probably all stand to do more in our lives. (And if you don't, that's fine, please don't take offense.) And while Christmas colors and decorations are prettier than those for Thanksgiving, there's something about the season that I just like.

So, we are big into Fall and Thanksgiving crafts around here. I've spent a fair number of hours searching around for my favorites--those that I can see actually doing with the kids. And even tossing some books into the mix. I will post one each day until Thanksgiving and then begin with the Christmas/Nativity posts. And this year I actually will do it--I've figure out how to use Blogger's auto post and will write as many up as I can and set them to post by magic!

So Enjoy--I hope this makes your fall a little bit happier.

Today's Craft:

Begin our yearly "I'm Thankful For..." Craft.

We always talk about what we are thankful for in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. And usually it's a tree of some sort. Last year we had a big tree on the wall of our family room with the leaves cut out of fancy paper and hung on it. The year before I think I just traced a tree on some paper and cut the leaves out of construction paper. The goal is to have the kids think about what they are thankful for more than creating a product.

This year I am putting yarn across our fireplace (which we've never used) and just hanging the leaves onto that. Or at least I will be, once I replace the tape the kids have decided to use. And by "use" I mean "pull off long pieces and twist them together until my Mom goes insane." Just to clarify. This year I plan to cut the leaves out of coffee filters for the kids to color with washable markers. Then the kids "paint" them with water and let them dry. The water mixes the colors and the end result is cool. You have to use washable markers or it doesn't work nearly as well. Once they are dry, they write what they are thankful for.

I won't post what the kids said tonight, but suffice it to say that we get some heart-warming ones and some where we look at each other and wonder why.

That's our craft for today. I will have pictures when I can buy some tape.

Nature Outing Monday

I've decided to have a theme to the days. Monday is Nature Day, Tuesday we do Geography, Thursdays, Shakespeare and that leaves Poetry for Friday. Wednesday is our day "off" because of all of the outside activities we have, although I'd like to figure out a way to make it our art and music day. So far, I've been too tired even though I know that I'm making it seem like a much bigger deal than it probably is. Can you tell I feel a little guilty and conflicted?

Anyway, we went on our nature walk this morning to the lake. We saw ducks and a couple of geese.The kids spent a good amount of time rescuing worms--pulling them out of the drainage ditch and putting them in the nice cool dirt nearby. We took pictures of some of the things we saw and tried to make sure we spent some time being quiet so we could hear the birds and whatever was around us. It was a nice time, although I wished I had my hat since it was already getting hot.

Once we got home, the kids had a snack and drew in their nature journals while I read a chapter of The Burgess Bird Book. That might be my all-time favorite homeschooling find. It's not just for homeschoolers and it's not a text at all. I love it, the kids love it, what could be better? You should read it.

I put Emma down for a nap since it was close to 11:30 and sent the boys off to do some math. Harry did his test from chapter 9 and Sam reviewed the +9's. They were giving him a hard time last week, so I had him spend some extra time on them. That seemed to do the trick and we moved on.

We had a Dutch windmill to build, so we did that while talking more about New Amsterdam. We are so behind on Story of the World, but that's okay. We will get back to it full time once we have spent some more time talking about the colonies. As much as I believe in the trivium and studying world history from the beginning to the end, I also think the kids should know about the early Americans. My plan for history right now is to continue on with SOTW, reading a chapter each week, but really focusing on the colonies and early America.

I also did some reading with Annika. She's interesting to me and I'm not sure if what I'm doing with her is working. This is one area where I'm having a really hard time not comparing her to the boys. They were both reading fluently by this point and she can't seem to always remember which letter is which, even though we've done so much to teach them to her. She's a different person, she's still really young, she'll learn when she's ready. I know all of these things, but I want to make sure I'm giving her the attention she needs to have a chance to learn. We did a vowel page from The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading and read/looked at one of the Bob Books. We also read a nursery rhyme and did a coloring page with it.

Harry did a spelling pre-test and will do the real test later on in the week. Sam "read" Tuesday--it's a wordless book, and drew some frogs.

We ended there for the day. I still need to read to the boys. Sam and I are reading Little House in the Big Woods and Harry and I, The Jungle Book. Our bedtime book is Bill Bergson, Master Detective. We are planning to do some Mad Libs in a few minutes and that'll be our grammar for the day. I also want to get out the markers and stuff and make some Halloween cards for the cousins.

Wow, it's kind of scary that I can talk this much about one day.

One Month Review

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Math: Math U See. It’s working and I’m not changing anything that works

Science: Chemistry. Sadly this is my absolute worst science. I barely passed it in high school and am already a little confused about our lessons this year. I need to find more easy chemistry books that can explain it in a way that I can understand and explain. Then I need to read them first so that I’m not just sitting there confused when the boys ask me a question. Fortunately I'm married to a brilliant scientist who can more than make up for what I lack.

Latin: Harry loves this. Sam likes it. Which is perfectly fine. It’s been Harry’s dream to learn Latin and Sam has been along for the ride. For both of them it’s pretty much optional.

Language Arts: This is where the biggest problem is. Sam doesn’t mind Writing With Ease, but for him it’s pretty easy. He also does his grammar with very little problem, but that’s probably partly because he doesn’t have much writing to go with it. Most of it is oral.

On the other hand, Harry hates writing. He hates it with a passion. And I’m torn on what to do. On one side, he hates it and he’s only in third grade. Is it vitally important that he does a writing program yet or is it something that he can pick up as he enters middle school? Also, he is not at all fond of his grammar program. Doing both seems like overkill to me, but I’m not sure which, if either is more important. But not doing anything at all feels like walking off a plank with sharks underneath. What if I mess him up completely?

The other question this brings up, is it okay to just do formal grammar and writing with my younger child and not with my older? That seems kind of weird to me.

History: We have never had a problem with history before. At least not to the extent we are now. I made little notebooks for the boys with a sheet for each chapter so they would know what was expected of them. For each section there are a couple of questions for them to answer so I’d know if they were paying attention at all.

We do most, but not all of Sam’s work orally. He still has to write parts of it. But Harry is expected to write the answers to the two questions on his own. He’s been throwing a complete fit lately over it though. This morning he had answer one question in a complete sentence and freaked out. He finally did it after crying and worrying over it for thirty minutes. Looking back on it now, I should have told him to stop and put it away until later, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the drama.

Reading: I count this different than Language Arts because it’s just reading. Each of the boys has a book the two of us are reading together. I don’t expect a narration or any work from it because I want this to be something that we can look forward to each day.

Other stuff:

I want to add in Geography and continue with Shakespeare. I don’t ask the boys to do too much in addition to listening and talking about the what we’re reading, and it’s a lot of fun. I really look forward to that. I will eventually add geography into the mix, but it’s tough to add more in when I don’t feel confident about what we’re already doing.

Also, we’re kind of skating by with art and music by looking at a painting or two one day and then waiting a week to look at another usually by someone completely different. That’s frustrating, but again, I need to get everything else in order before I can add to what we’re already doing.

Danger, Will Robinson

or something like that!

I've spent today getting the nitty-gritty plans started for lessons that are supposed to begin next Monday. Of course that's when I pick up the books and see most of them for the very first time. So, while it would be nice to have a full day of lessons on Monday, I don't see how that will happen.

I'm finding myself in the "danger zone" of homeschooling though. I searched for some notebook pages and an easy plan for handwriting and found how one family is doing their Shakespeare studies. Well, that looks like fun. I can do that. And that led me to some nature study challenges, which led me to a neat geography program, which led me to a partridge in a pear tree.

See the problem with homeschooling, in my opinion, isn't that it's hard to teach your kids math or reading. It's more along the lines of knowing when to stop and call it enough. If you think about it, the world is full of fascinating things, most of which are interesting to study, and as a homeschooler, I get to pick which ones we study.

So while the list of subjects we are planning to study looked like this last week:

math
reading
handwriting
writing
science
history
Latin
grammar
spelling
art
music,

now it looks like this:

math
reading
handwriting
writing
science
history
Latin
grammar
spelling
art
music
Shakespeare
nature and outdoors
American geography
world geography and
Chinese (don't ask).

I need to drop a few subjects or try to fold them in with another. Or, better yet, buy The Latin-Centered Curriculum. I've heard that it streamlines language arts.

That way I could add all of the other fun stuff back in.

Getting Ready

It seems as though everyone is getting ready to go back to school in the next couple of weeks. While the kids aren't actually 'going' anywhere, I am finishing up my plans for teaching them the things they'll need to know so they aren't laughed at when they go to important dinner parties. Yes, I plan my childrens' educations so that they can fit in well at parties.

To that end, I've created a notebook for each of the boys. Harry's is green and Sam's blue so they are easy to find. Plus I'm reasonably sure that by this point they do know their colors. Annika is jealous, so I'll have to make her one too. In pink. Anyway, inside the super-cool, color-coded binders are tabs labeled with their major subject. Except Math. We are skipping Math this year so they can spend more time battling their Pokemon. (Kidding, we're skipping reading.)

Actually Math is self-contained in it's own little workbook and since I only got five of those little tab things, I left it out. The tabs are: History, Geography, Language Arts, Science, and Latin. In the front of the notebook, the boys find this:

Kids Daily

Each day I will write what they need to do--list the subject and the assignment. I'm hoping that they can work somewhat independently and they will see that the day will end at some point. Obviously I'll be right there if/when they need me, but this way they can see what they've already finished and what they still have to do. Interestingly, we have more subjects than will fit into the boxes, but I don't want to overwhelm them first thing in the morning. Life won't end if we have more to do or if we don't get everything finished, but on the whole I'll say that when the list is done, so are we.

Harry is going into third grade, so he'll be way more independent, and probably bouncier, than Sam, who is going into first. I'm anticipating that we'll spend more time in the first few weeks of school getting adjusted to things than doing serious school work. That of course, assumes that I set an actual start date. We'll see.

Oh, there's more coming. An awesome (if I do say so myself) organizer for doing Story of the World. And how I'm organizing language arts. I know, you can't wait.

To Do, 2009

I've decided that both boys are going to be home next year, so I've had to plan what to do with them. So far, I've come up with:

Harry:

• Grammar: First Language Lessons 3
• Spelling: I'm not sure yet if I want to use a specific spelling program. Harry is a natural speller and it gets tedious. Right now I'm planning to use words from his texts that are at the level he is at and go from there.
• Reading: We don't use reading texts, instead we tie his formal reading into his history work. For this he will be required to narrate what he has read and it will go into a special reading notebook.
• Writing: Writing With Ease, Level 2 or 3. I'm testing him right now to see where he is.
• Penmanship: He'll start cursive and continue to fix the mess that his writing became when he was in school. I use copywork for that--phrases from his reading or from other good books.
• Math: Math-U-See Gamma

Sam:

• Grammar: First Language Lessons, Level 1
• Spelling: We'll start with Spelling Workout A and go from there.
• Reading: Similar to Harry's work, but on his level.
• Writing: Writing With Ease, Level 1
• Penmanship: copywork to clean up his printing.
• Math: Math-U-See Alpha

Annika:

• I'll teach her to read using The Ordinary Parent's Guide.
• Playing and being crazy.

Emma:

• Eating Legos.
• Following Annika around.
• Pointing to the hamster.
  

Combined:

• History: Story of the World 3: Early Modern Times. I'm excited about this--most of our reading for the year will be based off of this time period, so SOTW is kind of the basis of what we do.
  
• Science: Classic Science, I think. It's an elementary overview, so I'm not positive. This is really the only thing that I'm not positive about. We'll also continue on our nature studies. We'll take at least one nature walk each week. The boys will have to find three things to draw and discover more about.
• Geography: I found an interesting set of lessons that I'm planning to try with the kids. It'll take them on a trip around the world.
  
• Art: We'll study artwork from the time period we're studying and try our hands at different techniques. My kids think I'm a talented artist, but I'm not really, so they will have to take outside classes for that.
  
• Music: Harry is taking piano lessons, so he'll continue that. We'll also listen to music at lunch and breakfast.

I've already realized that I forgot to add in poetry, so I'm going to figure that out. I'm sure there's more that will come to me, but for now, these are the materials that I plan to use. Now I just need to figure out exactly how to use them.

It's Over

Harry isn't going back to his school. I will call on Monday and tell them that he has started at a new school and won't be needing their services. I also need to talk to his teacher and get the work that he's done for her. He's way more excited than I am at this point. I had no intention of bringing him home until Spring Break at the earliest. I realized on Friday afternoon, though, that the school is toxic for him. And I don't say that lightly. I honestly believe that I would be shirking my parenting duties to send him back with what's happening.

So now what? I don't know. We will spend the time before Spring Break "deschooling," and getting used to being home. We will read a lot of books and spend some time catching up with each other. We will also have to work on getting rid of some of the behaviors he picked up at school. That won't be as fun as some of the other things!

I probably won't start him on anything really new for the rest of the year. We'll loosely follow the Ambleside Online reading list and work on some math facts. He told me today that he wants to learn how to do multiplication and division, so we'll work on that. I'm going to stay as far away from worksheets and meaningless things as I can. He's already done enough of that for the year.

In the fall I'll enroll him and Sam in one of the local homeschool charters and we'll start over again. But we're done with traditional school. It's just not worth it.

Myth Busters

People give many reasons for not liking the idea of homeschooling, whether they are considering it or they know someone else who is. Chief among the reasons they give is "socialization." People hate the idea that there are kids out there that aren't having the same experience as the other kids. They fear, among other things, that the kids are going to grow up not knowing how to relate to other kids, that they won't have a shared body of knowledge, and about a hundred other, made-up fears.

This is a false problem though, in my opinion. I went to school for something like 17 years. You can ask anyone who knew me in middle school, I didn't fit in at all. In fact, I still consider those the worst years of my life. But why? According to the theory that sending a kid to school, they will be socialized the same as the other kids. I should have fit in, I had the same opportunities as the other kids, the same shared school experience. But I didn't. So I spent three years crying almost every day after school because the other kids were mean.

Something happened today at Harry's school that makes me even more deeply skeptical of the socialization occurring at school. A kid said something that in any other situation would have gotten him sued for sexual harassment. But since it happened at the school, it's supposed to help Harry become properly socialized and learn to deal with people as he grows up.

Here's the thing. Harry is a normal 8-year-old kid. There is absolutely no reason for him to hear other 8-year-olds say things like he heard today. Not even so that he can be properly socialized. No reason whatsoever.

In case you were wondering...

Here are my plans for preschool this month:

March

Theme: Animals

Daily Theme Craft Letter/Craft Activity Story

Tuesday 3/3 Wild Animals: Moose	Moose	M: marble painting	Eat muffins	If you give a moose a muffin, moostache
Thursday 3/5 Wild Animals: Bears	Brown Bear craft	L: lines with rulers	Color hunt	Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see
Tuesday 3/10 Zoo Animals	Giraffe: link below	D: dot markers
Thursday 3/12 Zoo Animals	Elephant: link below	Z: zebra stripes
Tuesday 3/17 St. Patrick’s Day	Shamrock table top craft	G: glitter	Shamrock hop or make green in shaving cream
Thursday 3/19 Farm Animals	Create a farm with the kids	F: fingerpainting	Create a farm together
Tuesday 3/24 Farm Animals	Don’t forget that R loves tractors—do something with that	K: keys
Tuesday 3/26 Pets	Fish	P: purple and pink	Goldfish pick up