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.