Pack Meeting Sam

He earned a bunch of Activity Pins, Belt Loops, and Pins. (Different than the activity pins.)

Money Matter Badge Work

I spent a lot of time over the last month trying to find info on the Brownie Money Matters Badge, but I really didn't find anything helpful. It could be a very dry badge to work on but since we meet right after school, I wanted to make sure the girls would move around and have a chance to talk.

First we talked about things we need and things we want. I had some pictures, and the girls decided which side of the chart they should go on. There were some lively discussions over ipods and things like that, but in the end it came down to food, shelter, and clothing as strict needs and everything else wants. I made sure though to say that wanting things is not bad, neither is having things outside of food, clothing, and shelter.

I had created three "shops" using the pictures from the Brownie binder. One was a food shop, another had school supplies, and the third was for clothing. The girls were in three groups of three and they each had a Brownie Elf to take shopping with 30 Elf dollars." I made two rules, they had to buy something at each shop and they had to agree. I gave them three minutes at each shop, then they'd come to me, the cashier, to pay for what they wanted and get their change.

In the end each group fulfilled the requirements, but it was hard. One group could not agree to save their lives on what they wanted, so a leader had to step in and help. Another group wanted to only buy the treats at the grocery store. I hadn't given them specific rules about the groceries, but they actually took it upon themselves to buy healthy food, for the most part.

We came back together and talked about what was hard and easy and why it was so hard to stay in budget. This is the beginning of a larger discussion on budgeting. Our cookie sales are over and we want to discuss our bigger projects and activities for the next year. We also have dues money that is going straight into philanthropy. So the girls have a lot to decide.

Sam's Poem

Sam's assignment was to write a poem with end rhyme and apostrophe. Apostrophe is a poetic device where the poet talks to someone imaginary or absent. Personification goes with apostrophe a lot of the time, but didn't have to be present in this poem, although it is. Oh, and it was supposed to be silly.

Taco
By Sam Potter

Get into my tummy
Taco you are so yummy
Meat comes out every bit I take
The crunchy shell, not made of snake.
My life, the rest of it
I could eat tacos like you.

Notes on a Thursday Morning

It didn't start out as a good day. I hadn't "set us up for success" the night before. I let the kids play until dark, coming in only for dinner, which sounds good until you remember that Annika has homework each night and no chores were done by anyone. We all got to bed late for no good reason, so the morning was doomed by the evening.

One didn't want to do her homework, but had to. "I don't want to do my homework now. I want to do it yesterday." The wry grin didn't help, neither did my checking her spelling and realizing that she was lost on how syllables worked. The littlest chimed in with a declaration that she was "not going to clear her bowl!" and was promptly sent to her room. There was dallying over the dishwasher and conveniently "forgetting" to get dressed.

I tried chuckling over the absurdity of it all, tried to remember what it was like to be 12, 10, 7, and 5 and have all of your days planned by someone older according to their whim, seemingly not taking into account any of yours. In the end, I sent some children to their rooms to dress or calm down, another to please for the love of all that's good, get your shoes on, and another to practice piano. Because everyone knows that angry piano practice is the cure for a grumpy morning.

And then, one off to school with hugs and kisses, all forgiven on the drive and with discussions of Power Puff Girls and her own relative strength. Home to others doing their chores (probably because they believed the threat about boarding school this time). Another dressed and ready to begin the excitement of a new day. Finally clearing her bowl from the table.

And now...one is happily doing her mathwork under the watchful eye of a teacher that isn't me. Another creating an owl she read about in a book. Two others are "exploring" the new challenges of algebra and geometry. Humming, erasing, and the occasional "argh" echo through the room. I observe and offer a hand of help to my student-children, trying to keep us all moving forward. At least through tomorrow, when we get another chance to start better.

Meet the Austins and Algebra

I have been trying to get Harry to show his math work since he started pre-algebra. He can do math in his head a lot faster than me and he knows it, so it's bugged him that I want him to write it out. Last week I made him redo an entire page of work that may or may not have been right because there were just answers. (Before you think I'm super mean, he was told before he even started to show his work.)

Anyway, our night time read aloud is Meet the Austins. It's one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it over and over again and I really wanted a read aloud that I liked. In it, Vicky (the narrator) talks about going to her friend's house to check her math. She says, "...I find if I don't check my problems I'm apt to make silly mistakes in adding or subtracting that makes the entire problem wrong even if I've been doing it the right way."

Harry sat up in bed and said. "So, is that why you want me to show my math work?"

Yes, Harry, yes it is.

 Thank you Madeleine L'Engle.

I Wish I Could Quit You

Tis the season of curriculum choices. It used to be so fun to go through all of the different choices and think, "finally, I've got it. This is the perfect book/system that will teach the children the way they need and will keep them in their seats for more than a minute at a time." It's been long enough though, that I know there is no way they're going to stay in their seats so I don't even look at what's out there.

I realized the other day though that I spent the whole day talking and giving instruction. By the end of the day I was tired. Tired of hearing my own voice and of having to explain things over and over. I was ready to ditch MCT--too much talking, AoPS--to much looking over the book and asking, "do you understand why this is?", just too much.

So I decided that next year I wasn't going to do two levels of MCT anymore. We were going to go with WWS and be done with it. (Hang on, there's a point to this story.)

Yesterday Harry and I read in his World of Poetry (MCT Voyage Level Poetry) about what MCT considers "Funny Feet." The pyrrhic foot, amphibrach, and amphimacer apparently aren't well known in English poetry but might come up sometimes, so they are in the book. (Granted that I have a MS and have never heard of them, but that's okay.) For some reason the Funny Feet just seemed hilarious. We spent about ten minutes just saying the words. We absolutely cracked ourselves up. 

Then I read a similar chapter on meter in Sam's Building Poems (MCT Town Level Poetry) and he already knew everything because he had listened into Harry and I talking about dactyls and spondee. His assignment was to write four four-line poems using four different meters that included four of the same words. And after only a little hemming and hawing he wrote his first hilariously funny poem.

Later at the grocery store Harry came up and told me, "Hey Mom, you know what would be funny, a poem made up of only spondee with phyrric foot." 

After that we decided if we ever created our own superhero, his battle cry would be "Spondee!"

So, I will go ahead and order the next levels of MCT Language Arts. And just get used to the idea that I'll continue to spend the next few years explaining, cajoling, and giggling. Because really, it's worth it. 

SPONDEE!

So, He's Doing Okay

Earlier today I wrote a post that talked about making sure Sam is confident in his work. Well, about thirty minutes later we discovered that he had a writing assignment. It said to write a paragraph about something he already knew. Since this type of assignment comes around a lot, I thought it would be a good idea to list things he could write about for future reference. I told him that and this was his response:

"whew, Mom. That's so many things."

Somehow I think he'll be okay.

Poor Neglected Blog

I don't know why I don't write more here. I want to, I think about it, but the thoughts never make it onto the page.

So, here's where we are right now.

Harry: knee deep in American history. He's reading the Joy Hakim books this year. Sometimes he does the worksheets and sometimes he just tells me what he's read. Language Arts is a combo of MCT and WWS. He's not a fan of writing--I'm pretty sure he'd rather have a root canal, if he knew what one was. But through both of those he's becoming a better writer and learning not to hate it quite so much. Science--ah, my old nemesis. We were using Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding. But...there's always a but. It wasn't getting done. So instead he's working on the science-related Boy Scout merit badges. Right now he's working on Reptiles and Amphibians and Gardening.

As for Math--he loved Math Mammoth. Unfortunately it doesn't go up through PreAlgebra. So he's been trying out different programs in the hope that something would work. We're lucky in that we use a charter school and they I'm able to check out and try some of the main programs. He tried MUS but neither of us like it. Next he'll use the Art of Problem Solving. I'm hopeful about this program. Since he's in 6th grade he has plenty of time to go through it slowly and really understand what he's doing. Until we get the AOPS books though, he's using Khan Academy. That's been interesting. I'm finding some holes that are good to get patched up and he's enjoying himself. So it's a win-win right now.

Sam: Oh Sam. The kid that doesn't realize that he's actually the smartest kid on the block. Unfortunately. So I'm still spending a lot of my time showing him that he knows more than he thinks he knows. So, for instance, he's been working on part of the whole in Math Mammoth 4. You know, what is 1/4 of 60 and problems like that. When they're presented like that, he has no problem. But when they are word problems, it gets trickier. Like I said at the beginning of the year--this is the year to build up Sam's confidence. To give him the tools he needs to know that he can do anything.

He's working on California history this year (4th grade, of course) and reading about American history. I have him doing a lot of art projects because that is what he feels like he excels at. Which is fine, but at some point our house will be declared a museum instead of a house, I think. He's doing belt loops and pins for his science, which has been very interesting. He's working on the Science pin and Astronomy pin. Language Arts is MCT. He has an aversion to writing too, but for different reasons than Harry. Sam just has too many ideas trying for space on his paper.

So...we're all fine. Things are working and we're in a groove. Annika's at school and while I have my little grousing issues, she's doing well. She's in a 2/3 combo class and it pulls the second graders up a bit. Which I think is part of my good feelings for her in school. She's being challenged every day and in a class of incredibly good kids. It's a great situation for her and makes me a bit nervous for next year.

Emma joined the charter school's Early-Admission Kindergarten program. That way she can go to classes once a week and have fun there. She has arts & crafts, math, and cooking. She's the youngest at the school but thinks she owns it since she's been tagging along with everyone for so many years. She really looks forward to her days there, and honestly so do I. Our house is so quiet. Harry, Sam, and I use that time to go in depth in math since there aren't any distractions.

Maybe I should write smaller updates more often. If you've gotten to the end here, congratulations!

School Room 2012

Last year my school room was hyper-organized. I was adding Annika to the mix and new it would only work if everything was neat, labelled, and ready to go. It also had the alternate goal of helping Annika feel like she was in school.

This year we sent Annika to school. I liked having her home but she hated being home and didn't let us forget it, while things at school aren't perfect by a long shot, she's happier and everyone is calmer.

Since we didn't need the same kind of formal schoolroom we had last year, I was able to get rid of a bunch of stuff. The biggest thing we got rid of was my big desk. And the bigger bookshelf. I put everything I am not using right now in the linen closet.

So far I like it. The room is more open, which is nice and it looks more like a room than a collection of desks.

Back to School

This is the week. Annika went to second grade at a local elementary and Harry and Sam started sixth and fourth grades at home. Emma is a K4er, something completely made up but that makes her feel better about not going to school with Annika. She so wants to be a kindergartner and completely missed the cut-off. In other news the ants have invaded as they always do this time of the year and I spent my summer planning time watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I won't say much about Annika's school. She is so far doing well but has been coming home exhausted every day. The don't use any scary math programs like Everyday Math but I'm still going to supplement after school. (She doesn't know that yet but I'm sure she'll be thrilled. (You got the sarcasm, right?))

We have a few big goals this year. Harry needs to learn to sit still and concentrate for more than thirty seconds at a time and how to problem solve and Sam needs to realize how smart he really is and have confidence in what he does. So everything we do is structured around those goals. For instance, Sam reads at a high-school level but I'm taking him back in some of his history and science readings so that he gets the content he needs and he knows he understands the work right away. Harry will be required to find a science problem/question to answer. He's interested in cells so we're going to find out all about them which will lead into biology and by January I want him to have a hypothesis he can work on for the rest of the school year.

Other than that we're pretty much continuing on with everything we did last year. I think the only big change is with Sam's math. I've moved him from Math-U-See to Math Mammoth. I can go into exactly why if anyone is interested. Just let me know.

And now for some pictures.

Whew.

Annika just came down the stairs asking, "did you know Emma is asleep on the stairs?"

I had to answer that I didn't. The last I knew of Emma, she was in her room for saying that she doesn't like me because I made her wash the chocolate Popsicle off of her face.

Annika was concerned with none of that. She was trying to get a great big box downstairs so she and her friends could color on it. Her next sentence was, "it's okay though, I got the box still."

Gotta love the one-track, six-year-old mind.

Beast Academy + Perfectionist = ?

Most of my kids are perfectionists. Learning comes fairly easily to them so they tend to be very reluctant to try new things that they might not be really good at from the get go. I don't want them growing up fearing things they perceive as difficult so I try to give them little bites of challenging topics. The most recent thing that I've found to torture, um, challenge Sam is Beast Academy, by the same people that wrote The Art of Problem Solving.

I knew he would love the comic book format and that the work would not be easy for him. He has been steadily working through Math-U-See since first grade and is really good at the straight-forward format. I also know that Sam, more than any of my other kids, shuts down if things get too hard. I need to be aware of all of these potential pitfalls and help Sam work around them without making things too easy. So how do I do it?

1. We do Beast Academy first. That way I know he's just had breakfast, a break, and sleep so any grumpiness is not from external factors. Although I have been known to send a truly struggling child to get a quick drink of water or to wash his face just to get away for a minute or two.

2. I work with Sam, or whoever is being challenged. They each have their own spots at the desk but for hard stuff they sit across from me so I can watch. Is Sam reaching the end of his rope? Is Harry fidgeting more than normal? I monitor it and either end the session or send him for a drink.

3. I give hints as appropriate. I won't give answers but after I see the child working for a few minutes (exactly how many changes with who or what they're doing) without making progress I'll ask them if they want a little hint. And I'll make sure that the hint is enough to get them going again.

4. We keep the sessions relatively short. Where I might be inclined to have the child do the entire section, I'll keep it to three or four problems. We might come back to it later in the day, but most likely the next day.

5. We keep it light. I use a lot of humor to pull Sam away from the edge if things are going bad. This goes for all of my kids and a lot of different situations we find ourselves in. If I'm trying to get them to tell me a narration on Black Beauty and I want to know where the Black rode to, I might say, "He rode to the moon, right?" It breaks the tension and helps him get the real answer out a little bit easier.

I want to challenge my kids, not torment them (although if you ask them I don't think they'd see the difference). So I set them up to succeed. It's not that different than what any parent would do, these are just things I've noticed after working with Sam for years and watching how he thinks. If I were to tell him to sit at his desk and work on the section by himself he'd sit there crying for an hour never asking for help and just thinking about how he can't do the work he needs to. This gives him a chance to grow in knowledge and confidence and really, it doesn't get much better than that.

Quick! You have One Minute...

to talk coherently about homeschooling.

What do you say?

Me? I start off with the general disclaimer, I'm a homeschooler, not all homeschoolers. I do what works for my family, it's up to you for your family.

Then I talk about structure: The continuum of unschooler to completel school-at-home(r)

Third: We don't lock our kids in basements. We're actually pretty busy (Plus we live in California, there are no basements here.)

After that? A few things that I like about homeschooling. An anecdote or two about how sweet it is to see the kids learning together. An impressive thing that happened this week (hopefully there was one). Yes, it's bragging, but only for five seconds.

Finally...I love homeschooling, I breathe homeschooling, and sometimes even dream homeschooling. So there's no way to cover the topic in one minute. Call if you have questions.


So, what glaring mistakes have I made? What did I leave out or put in? How would you do it?

Next Year: The Annika Chronicles

I've been putting this off for a bit. Curriculum has been chosen, plans are set, and things are moving along. Harry will be in 6th, Sam in 4th, and Annika in 2nd grade. Emma will be a preschooler again. (She has another year before she's eligible for school. I'm hoping she'll still be happy to be a preschooler for one more year.)

Among the regular plain-old changes that advancing a grade brings is another, bigger change. Annika went to our neighborhood school for kindergarten and loved it. And by 'loved' I mean cried-if-she-missed-a-day, begged-to-go-on-Saturday loved it. She had a blast and met a group of girls she is still friends with. To say that she wasn't super-thrilled about coming home from school is an understatement. I naively thought it would get better as the year went on and it has to an extent. She has both loved and done well at her charter school, where she goes to one day each week for fun classes. She has taken cooking, arts & crafts, Greek & Latin Roots and other fun things. She also begged to take a math class toward the end of the year and I'm pretty sure it was at least partly because it reminded her of school.

Annika is chaos embodied. She has to be doing something all hours of the day. She gets up much earlier than the rest of us and wreaks havoc early in the morning. As a consequence of that though, she generally goes to bed easily and I can breathe. I originally sent her to school to get a break from this chaos and to preserve a relationship that was, quite frankly, fraying at the edges. I didn't want that to happen at the age of five, so kindergarten came at a good time.

Partly because of the chaos and partly because of my own deficiencies, we never got into a groove this year. You know, where things go relatively smoothly and you realize that "hey, there's a lot of great learning happening here!" That's not to say that learning didn't happen, it was just more disjointed than I'm comfortable with. And next year with Harry in middle school...eek. I need the groove and organization and all of that.

So I've decided to try to put Annika back in school. The wrinkle here is that I'm not going to put her into the school she went to for kindergarten. I'm trying to put her into the school her best friend goes to. I know the principal there and some of the teachers. I think it's a decent school. Not as good as home, but that's life. If all hell breaks loose and things go poorly I know that I can pull her out, but for now the plan is for her to go to school there through elementary.

And because I made this decision and the universe is kind of cruel like that, we had an absolutely fabulous day of learning today. Nothing like that to set your mind spinning again. So, what curriculum is my second-grader going to use next year? Whatever the school has (and a bunch of stuff that I have, just don't tell Annika).

Soo...

I meant to come back and finish all of the challenges in March, but it just wasn't meant to be. I took most of the pictures though, so maybe someday I'll have a chance to post them.

Instead I bit down all of my fingernails waiting to see if Harry got into a local charter middle school. Long story short...he didn't. Everyone but him is kind of bummed. He doesn't want to go to school, but I know he'd do fine if he did.

So March was a blur trying to get work finished and trying harder not to check my email a thousand times a day. (Yes, I'm that Mom.) April has been better. We took the week after Easter for Spring Break and spent it outside. Since then I've made more of an effort to go outside for a major hike each week. Or at least if it's not a major hike, more outside than just going to the park. That's been a lot of fun and it's really helped our weeks go better. (Okay, week, since we've only been back for a week.)

Soon I'll have our curriculum picks for next year up, but that requires me to actually know what they are, so I should probably go and figure them out.

Thanks for your patience while this space veers from completely dead to lots of silly little posts.

(Emma) Jane Says:

Actual conversations I've had or overheard involving Emma:

At Costco, waiting for our tires to be rotated:

Annika: "This is taking a while."

Emma, nodding her head in agreement: "And a long time."

Looking out the window to where the tires are taken off,

"Mommy, what is that thing?"

"I don't know" (we'd been there for 2 hours & I just couldn't answer one more question.)

Figuring it out for herself, "Oh, it's a lifter upper."


Later on in the car. We were listening to NPR advertise their latest getaway to Paris.

"Mommy, we should go too!"

"mmhmm"

"Tomorrow because tonight they're closed"


And thus concludes the latest installment of "What My 4-Year-Old Is Thinking."

It's Pi Day!

Pie for dinner and dessert:

The Desk in Action

I don't make Harry sit under there, he just really likes it!

More Info

It occurred to me that I really didn't give much info to the picture challenge that I'm doing.  So, it's found here, at Home is Where You Start From. I like the challenge of taking a picture each day, even if I'm not real good at actually following through with it.

Snacks...

Sometimes it takes a little something extra to finish your math: