Exactly the Same!

Harry: "The Vikings were just like Little House in the Big Woods!"

Me: "Really?!"

Harry: "Yea, they both had food storage in the outside!"

Me: "Yep, I think you're right!"

Hmmm...methinks something is working!

Coming Up in February

This is a short month, so I'm going to try to cram all of this into it.

1. History: Ancient Egypt. We plan to do projects, read history books, fiction books, look at maps. All kinds of things about Egypt. It's fun for me because I get to show Harry our pictures and for Harry because really, what kid doesn't get into Egypt?!

2. Reading: Allen Say. I'm really excited about this. I love his books--he has a wonderful style of writing, sort of calm and collected but it makes you want more. Also he is an amazing artist. Even though his books are in the childrens' section, I firmly believe everyone should read them. Along with this we'll talk about and study Japan. Adam also sent Harry and Sam beautiful calligraphy sets from Japan so we'll use those too.

3. Math: We'll just continue along how we've been going.

4. Science: We'll continue talking about leaves and plants. The boys have lima beans (yay) growing in our windowsill so we've been talking about beans and growing things too. Also, this is a big month for the garden. Jason and Harry have already planted the our peas so he'll check on those too.

5. Art and Music: We'll mostly try to get into a good rhythm with those.

I think next I'll try to post what we will be using for our Allen Say and Egypt studies.

So, how's it going?

Okay, I'm getting my thinking together about what works and what doesn't.

1. Reading: We love the picture books. I love snuggling and reading to the kids. It's not easy with Annika , but it's fun. The Charlotte Mason idea of Narration is great, it really does work. The only issue I have is what should Harry be reading on his own? He's past the easy readers except for content. He read the Henry and Mudge book in 30 minutes and understood it well (see below). Maybe he should be reading Stuart Little to me...I need to think (even more) on that.

2. Math: Math U See is great. Harry loves it. He can finish a lesson in only 15 minutes. I'm becoming a big believer in the 15-minute lessons Charlotte Mason advocated. It's enough time for him to do what he needs to do without getting bored or antsy. The plan is for him to work steadily for that 15 minutes and not dawdle so we can move on.

3. History: Love it. We are having fun. We did the cave paintings the other day which was a big hit. I also checked out the gross food book called: It was Gross and We Ate It. We have several big fans here.

4. Science/Nature Studies: mmmm...This one seems to be the hardest to do consistently. It's been raining and coldish here this week, so no one has wanted to go out and do anything. Including me. Next week, back on track. I have some ideas, I just need to implement them. (Ai, there's the rub.) (I promise to never do that again.)

5. Music/Art: I got a new book for art the other day and we looked through it yesterday. Harry really liked it, so I think we'll kind of go through the artists in there and supplement a little. I don't really know. Music--I've been turning classical on in the morning, but I tend to get a bit tired of it on all day, so we're working on that too.

Overall we're getting into a rhythm I think. Although it's so tenuous almost anything messes with it. It's a process...yeah that's the ticket.

More tomorrow. I'll also try to add some pictures of our cave paintings so it's not all just text.

What, and How, We Read

I put a bunch of new books into the "Harry's Readings" column just now and it occurred to me that most of them could have been put in the "Family Read-alouds" too because we read them together. I do not send Harry off to his room to read a book and then come back and report on it! I don't particularly want to kill his desire to read.

Most likely when we read the books Harry's column, we were sitting on the red couch, Harry on one side, Sam on the other, both of them trying to get more space on my lap than the other. Annika was probably either on my lap trying to get off to play or playing and suddenly realizing that she wasn't on my lap and needed to be! Our read-alouds are family affairs because they have to be. We are all together, we all like snuggling, and hey, I'm pretty good at reading books out loud. We enjoy it.

The main difference between the Harry column and the Family column is why we read the book. If it was for a lesson I put the books in Harry's column. If we were just reading, it goes into the Family column.

Also, if Harry picked the book out at the library for himself, then it goes in his column (ie, Hush, Little Alien--definitely not for a lesson). Sam's column is shortest because he's almost always involved anyway in both the lesson and the fun read-alouds. I only put the books that I read specifically to him in his column.

How's that for long-winded?!

Henry and Mudge

and Annie's Good Move

by Harry

Henry is a boy who was a cousin with a girl named Annie and she was going to move. Her cousin helped he pack. Then she was nervous and she went under the blankets with Henry's dog Mudge. She got some spots because she was nervous. Then they were all ready to go to the new house. Some of her spots went away. Then Henry's Dad lit a candle and all of her spots went away.

The End!

Thursday already?!

Well, after the excitement of Pie Day everything is all downhill.

We've had a busy couple of days. Sam's follow-up IEP meeting for speech therapy was yesterday, along with the migraine from hell. So I don't remember much about what we did, but I know we did something.

Today though, we've been busy working. Although it hasn't felt like that too much. So far I've read to all of the kids. We read another chapter of Story of the World, talked about and looked up pictures of cave paintings, painted our very own cave paintings. We've discussed why people would live in villages instead of always been nomads. HArry and I tried to answer the question, "what if we were the ones making the cave paintings in the books?" That would have been easier if I believed in reincarnation.

Harry did some math, but it took a long time since it required him to write the numbers 1-100. No small feat when you are six.

We did a lesson on aunts and uncles from First Language Lessons.

We took an Annika Walk. I really think we need to do that every day. Today we brought a little box with us too collect things that we saw. We ended up with a bunch of leaves and sticks. When we got home, we got out our nature notebooks and pasted the leaves into it. Then we made lines to the different parts of the leaves. For instance, the big line up the middle is called the "midrib." Who knew?

And that was before lunch. While we were doing something earlier, Annika grabbed the bag of beans for 15 bean soup and put some into a cup with water. We decided that we would see which one opened up first, so we got our notebooks out and glued dry beans into it. Then we predicted which we thought would open first and last. We'll keep checking on them and put the results in our chart.

This afternoon we'll talk some more about shearing sheep and A New Coat for Anna and be done with the schooling portion of the day! I love this.

Happy Pie Day

We did things other than make and think about pie. Really. I swear.

For instance, Harry amazed everyone (especially himself) with his stunning intelligence. He did four math lessons in one day. At this point it's all review, but the faster he can get through some of this, the faster we can move on to the hardest of all hard math concepts when you are six--Subtraction. (I think he just shuttered in his sleep.)

Anyway, today was his first day of co-op classes. He was signed up for an art class and something called "Kid's Club." He also had the option of staying for lunch. Once we got there he decided that there was no way in the world he was staying. It took a lot of doing, but he stayed for art and once he got halfway through that he thought maybe Kid's Club might be okay. So he stayed for both of those, but that was enough for one day and he came home for lunch.

He did great and really enjoyed himself. I liked going to the store with only two kids and actually getting complimented on how well-behaved they are/were, whatever. Anyway, at the time, they were very well behaved and it was quite nice. I think I bought more than I meant to since I was totally enjoying the quiet.

We picked Harry up, had lunch and the Pie Day Festivities began!

Now they are over and I'm tired, so good night.

monday, so far

Okay, I'm feeling pretty good today. So far we've...

Read A New Coat for Anna. Harry narrated it with amazing detail. I loved listening to him tell me of the "delicious" cake or the "beautiful" yarn. He then drew a picture of Anna wearing her new coat. Right now he is really into drawing the sky and clouds, so he spent about 20 minutes on that. Of course it's sea green. As apparently everything in the world should be!

He played with Sam after that for a while and I introduced some Story of the World. I read about archaeology while he played and then I asked him some questions. He got every single one. I also left a book on the table called Early Humans for him to find. He did and was completely amazed that it was "exactly what we've been talking about!" We looked through the book for a while and found a page on food, so I got some of the spices out that were in the book and we smelled them and wondered what the Stone Age people would use them for. We also spent a good amount of time looking a the weaponry. It's hard for him to grasp that the weapons weren't for fun or just interesting, but a part of a very dangerous life. He also wants to know why the people are all hairy.

We then went for an "Annika Walk." We go at her pace and all try to find things to show her that she would like. We found leaves and different types of grass and sticks and flowers. We tried to teach her to pat the flowers and not pick them, we'll see if the lesson sticks.

On the way home we picked a couple of leaves from our kumquat and tangerine plants to compare and contrast. This was actually the trickiest part of the day. Harry wants everything to look exactly right, so he has little confidence in his drawing. So we broke it up into very small pieces and got him to draw the tangerine leaf. He'll work on the kumquat later. He also wrote 3 things that were the same and one that was different.

Then lunch. Oh yeah, we had put some brownies in the oven before our walk, so we each had small pieces when we got back.

Now I have to do a little math with him and maybe First Language Lessons. But I'm not holding my breath. We did a lot this morning already.

quickie

Jason is going under the laser today, so I have a couple of minutes before we leave to say I'm okay. We have the rest of the curriculum and I have to say that I think I was right about spelling and handwriting. Adding another workbook/curriculum to what we are already doing would be too much. I don't want to have workbooks all over the house for every subject.

So, things are back on track. I will never be one of the Amazing Homeschool Moms. Right now I'm shooting for Pretty to Very Good.

major doubts

This is strange. Last week I was all fired up and ready to go! We were off on an adventure and nothing could stop us.

Right now, though, I'm at a standstill. I'm, to put it bluntly, freaking out. There are so many good things and important things to do, how do I do them? How do I fit them into my day while taking care of my home, my other two children, everything? How in the world can I "get outside as much as humanly possible" and still teach Harry what he needs and we want him to know? How do I get past this paralyzing fear I'm feeling?

I read blogs from these Amazing Homeschooling Moms and I want to move in with them! It's exactly the family life I want for my kids, just apparently impossible for me to duplicate in my own home. Maybe blogs from Amazing Homeschool Moms should have warning labels--"Professional Mom, Do Not Try at Home"?

I highly doubt anyone is reading this, and considering that I know all seven of you who know this site, I know none of you are homeschooling, but if you know anyone who does, or have any advice for me at all, let me know? Please. I need to get past this--for Harry's sake as well as my own.

Whooo Whooo

Owl Moon is a fantastic book. It's lovely that I get to read these books to my kids. We don't just read them though, we use them. Harry wasn't so into the book the first time we went through it. It's a slow, 'soft' book and it just didn't catch his eye. But I persevered. I had him tell me the story back (narrate) which he did. I had to get him started a little with some questions, but once he started going, he really knew what he was talking about.

One if the questions I asked him was, "are there lots of people in the story or just a few?" I expected him to say a few--a dad and daughter. But he told me there were lots. I wasn't real sure we had read the same book, so I had him tell me more. He told me that there were two in the woods--a grandpa and his granddaughter and the rest of the family was in the house.

We also talked about similies and metaphors. In the book Jane Yolen uses several similies, including one that says something like "the snow was as white as milk in a cereal bowl." We tried to come up with how we would tell someone about the ocean if they had never seen it. It didn't go perfectly, but it did plant a seed.

(This is getting long, I know, but bear with me, please.)

Finally I brought home a couple of owl books from the library and we figured out that the owl in the book is a Great Horned Owl. So we looked up where they live and what they eat and all of that stuff. We ended this by being Great Horned Owls hopping from branch to branch and eating mice off of the ground.

We got a lot in, but didn't beat the story into the ground.

Looking ahead

This week Jason is having the surgeries, so we'll be spending hours with him at the eye doctors. However, they've seen the one kids movie playing there, so we'll be using the time to do work. (I can already hear the "aww, Moms.")

Anyway, we'll be starting our composer and artist study this week. I'm going with Monet for art and Mozart for music. Somewhat trite choices I realize, but I already have what I need for those. I've realized that I tend to overthink things and have too much to actually do, so I'm trying to work on that. Also the Getty Museum is only a couple of hours away and we can go see some of the artwork we'll be studying. I'm not sure there is a great Mozart concert happening anytime soon, but oh well.

I should be getting the rest of the curriculum I want (keep your fingers crossed) and I'll start on those as soon as I can.

The rest is going okay. We do need to get out more. But honestly, it's been cold here the last couple of days and no one likes to go out. Before you start laughing, it's been in the 30's and 40's. So there. I can't take a baby out in that for any length of time.

I'm pretty pleased at how things are going so far. The libraries might ban me from checking anymore books out for a while, but that's okay. I have a stack to return so I'll do some trading. Other than that, I must go...

The First Week...

We were going to Start Homeschooling this week--get out all of the books, have amazing lessons and really get into all of it...then life happened. The kitchen and fireplace tile work that was supposed to be last week was this week. Add that to my eye surgeries and the week took on a decidedly "unschooly" flavor. I am also still waiting on the MathUSee curriculum, so our math has been with books I already had. I'm also waiting for Story of the World, so history is what we've always done--read books about history (novel idea, eh?). But I'm tired of waiting and want to get on with life.

So, in our abbreviated, crazy week, what did we do?

Wild Animal Park. Harry wrote the names of the animals we saw and was supposed to draw one, but it became a power struggle and he won. I didn't want the whole process to start with a grumpy "me against Harry" attitude. We've done a couple of lessons in First Language Lessons, read Owl Moon (a really great book), done a couple of pages of a math workbook, listened to Little House in the Big Woods, started a nature journal, cooked some stuff (pancakes), and played a lot.

With Owl Moon, we talked about the illustrations--how the illustrator used blue to make it look cold and still. Harry narrated the story for me. We talked about metaphors and repeating text and how the story is really a poem. We also talked about how the author used things that we are familiar with to help us see what she was talking about.

It's amazing what you can get from one picture book.

So that's the official stuff from the week. It's been good, but next week will be better. I'll keep adding to our learning until I feel we are where we need to be as far as information and rhythm. Also I'll post a picture of a painting Harry did showing his interpretation of Owl Moon.

Well, I did it!

I called the school and told them that Harry isn't coming back. It was surprisingly anti-climatic. I guess since I haven't told them my reasons yet.

So we went to the Wild Animal Park for a while this afternoon. That was "Animal School." :)

We'll see what happens tomorrow...

spelling and reading thoughts

I'm thinking about ditching the spelling text for now and just working on spelling actual words. I'm not sure, but looking at what I want to do and the way I want to structure our day, that just might work better. Plus Harry spends most of his day spelling words, so I'm not too worried that he'll fall behind.

Also, he reads on a second to third grade level now, but his comprehension isn't that high. I know we need to read more books and talk about what the words mean, but I don't know what books to read with him or that he should be reading.

basic schedule version 1

This is primarily me thinking about things, but here goes:

Monday:
Sam speech 8:15-8:45
home/lessons (Annika nap?)
picnic lunch & outing

Tuesday:
Sam speech 8:15-8:45
home/lessons
Harry classes 10-1:30 (?)

Wednesday
Outing AM
Back for lunch/naps
Lessons in PM

Thursday:
Sam speech 8:15-8:45
Harry class 9:30-10:30 (?)
lessons

Friday:
Lessons
Fun & play


To add in somewhere:
library
Soda

Also:
Lesson order and days

Still so much to think about...

Daily Schedule

Our schedule is tied to Sam's speech classes--MTTh from 8:15-8:45. Also since I plan to enroll Harry in some classes, I need to figure out when those will be. I'm struggling with coming up with a schedule for those reasons. There are things I know I need/want to incorporate in our lives, so I need to enter those in first and use them as a framework for everything else.

I know Harry's classes will be Tuesday and/or Thursday depending which school I go through.

I want school to primarily be in the morning so we can have the afternoons to do fun things. But at the same time, Annika naps in the afternoon, so maybe that would be better...

I want to go see Soda at least twice a month for at least half a day

I want to get outside as much as humanly possible. We live in such a neat area where we can be outside comfortably most of the year, so I need to take advantage of that.


I'm sure there's more, but I'll have to think about it in the morning.

The Specifics

In an attempt to organize my own thinking, this is what I plan to use in my home school for the remainder of the year:

Math: Math U See Alpha
Grammar/Copywork/Dictation: First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind
Reading: "real" books; some he picks, some I pick. I plan to have a book list drawn up by Wednesday.
History: Story of the World Vol. 1
Geography: Harry's cool new globe and driven mostly by his interests
Art: Pick an artist per month and study one work per week
Music: Similar to art, just with composers
Science: I'm not real sure. I plan to have him start a nature notebook and go outside as much as possible. But as far as actual curriculum choice, I don't know.

So, that's it in a nutshell. It's not real specific for a couple of reasons, one being that I'm just not ready yet. I have most of my ideas floating around and this will be where I organize everything.

Edited to Add: Spelling: Spelling Workout A
Writing: Handwriting Without Tears Level? (I can't figure out if he should be in Kindergarten or First Grade)

Just how do you think you'll be able to...

teach your child at home?

I've given a lot of thought to that question. I've spent many hours reading books, looking up websites, organizing things...all the things that you are supposed to do when you begin to home educate.

I was first attracted by The Well-Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. It's a complete curriculum in a book--everything is laid out for you and really all you need to do is buy or check out the products they mention. That part is great. Along with that is a conviction that we should not use textbooks for history and reading, but go to the sources. I totally agree with that and love the idea. But the hallmark of the classical education as they set it out are Latin and the Trivium. They write that everyone should study Latin before any other language. The Trivium is a way of studying history--start at the beginning and work your way to the end. (novel idea, I know). History goes in four year cycles, so ideally you would study the history of the world three times, progressing in thinking each time. That makes so much sense to me.

There are some problems I see though. Wise and Wise Bauer really want little kids to sit down and get to work at an early age. And although this is homeschooling, the schedules they present in their book have children sitting and working for hours on end. Which isn't why I want to keep Harry home. Also, I do not see the need for everyone to know and be fluent in Latin. It may be important to know the endings, but the language, not unless our kids are interested. Harry isn't, he really wants to learn Swedish.

That's one theory or method I've investigated. The other way of teaching is sort of diametrically opposed to The Well-Trained Mind. But at the same time, it can be adapted to work with it. In the 1800s a lady named Charlotte Mason opened a school in England. She advocated short lessons, narrations, and lots of time outside. She also didn't believe in textbooks, but in what she called, "living books." Living Books are those written by one person--so for example, instead of reading a text on how pioneers lived in the 1800s, you would read books written by people who were pioneers in the 1800s. Make sense? It does to me too.

In the end, there are parts of both methods I like. It think The Well-Trained Mind is too rigid and Charlotte Mason can be too loose, so I plan to use a combination of the two. And most of all have a really good time with my kids.

Why?

So, you ask why, after all of this time am I taking Harry out of school? Well, there are a multitude of reasons:

1. He's not learning ANYTHING there.
2. He has two teachers, one who is there MT and every other W and the other who is there ThF and the other W. Neither of them want to be there and it shows. I can't help but think "hey, you work 2 maybe 3 days a week, act like you're happy."
3. One of his teachers is out on maternity leave and the sub is a complete dingbat. I was thinking idiot, but I don't think she's malicious. Just not all there.
4. More than half his class are ESOL learners.
5. The accomodations they deigned to make for Harry already being able to read are a joke. They sit him at a table by himself to to more work. He hates it. Plus with the new teacher there, nothing is happening.
6. He gets completely stressed out if he is at school for an entire week. He thinks it's fun to see his friends and will be unhappy when I tell him he's not going back, but in the long run it'll be better.


In the end, we are the parents and get to make the hard decisions for our kids. In this case it means no more school for now. I don't know about first grade, for now we're taking it one day at a time.