Week in Review: Achoo!

Of all the great weeks with the great projects that I didn't take the time to write about, it's the week where a cold kicked our butts that I'm blogging about.

We limped through this week.

On the plus side, Sweetling has a new weekly schedule that seems to be working really well for her.

Last week she got everything done, including the first art lesson from her Artistic Pursuits curriculum, something that hasn't happened yet this school year.

(This week, not so much, but I'm counting the new schedule as a win.)

For Toa of Boy, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Minecraft is the best thing that has happened to Toa of Boy's education. Usually, he flies through his schoolwork so that he can get on Skype with his Minecraft buddies. Again, this week, not as much. This week both Toa and I struggled to function through sinus congestion. We skipped fractions altogether. We spent extra time just reading.

But, since it's been a while since I've blogged, let me take this chance to do a quick update on one change we made to Toa's curriculum that I really like.

A few weeks ago, we started using the book Spelling Power.

It promises spelling in just 15 minutes a day (which was my selling point to get Toa of Boy on board). It doesn't lie.

We start with a quick pre-test of spelling words. We set a timer for 5 minutes. I read the word from the awesomely organized word lists. Toa repeats it (so I can check his pronunciation. If he doesn't pronounce it correctly, he won't have much of a chance of spelling it correctly.) Then he writes it, and we check his spelling. If he can spell it correctly, we move on to the next word. If he can't, we immediately spell it correctly in the 'words to learn' column. We get through a good amount of words in just five minutes. When the timer goes off, we are done with that section.

Generally, Toa only has a couple of words in his "words to learn" column, so we don't do the 10-step study sheet every day. (That's not how the program is designed, but Toa feels rewarded by not having to do the middle section every day.) So, when Toa has accumulated at least five words in his "words to learn" column, we take 5 minutes and do the 10-step study sheet. It's fast; it's simple; and it's effective.

Lastly, I write his 'words to learn' on small cards that accumulate in a little plastic box. (I take 3x5 index cards and cut them in quarters.) He picks an activity card (lots of different hands on activities) and spends five minutes practicing a few of his word cards. Each time he practices a word card, I mark it with a little penciled x. When he has practiced a word card three different times I clip it in a 'completed' stack. When he has about 15 or so 'completed' cards, we retest those words during the first 5 minute spelling block. If he spells them correctly on that second go round, I throw the card in the garbage. (Again, this is a little different than how the program prescribes. The program suggests retesting the words to learn the very next day. I find that delaying a few days really helps to guarantee that Toa has mastered the word.)

Toa likes using a timer. He likes knowing that each section of spelling only takes five minutes. He likes that he is only spending time studying and practicing words that he needs to learn. This is by far the most successful spelling program we have tried. It has been so successful, that Toa of Boy (whose most hated subject for years was spelling) has come to me and requested words to be added to his spelling list because he wants to learn how to spell them. That, my dear friends, is a successful spelling program.

Despite limping through the school work, this week ended on a spectacular note. Every year, the Jedi spends some of his unused vacation days (those that won't roll into the next year). He manages to take every Friday off in December, and many Fridays off in November. This week was the first of those....so from here until 2014....we have three day weekends!

To kick off our holidays, we packed today with fun activities. We went to an 11 o'clock showing of Thor: The Dark World in 3d! That was awesome!

After the movie, we came home for 'specialty' sandwiches. I make a habit of grabbing yummy loaves of flavored bakery bread off the discounted day-old bread rack at the stores. We slice them and load them with ham and turkey and cheese (and veggies for those who want it). Then I slather them with butter and grill them and serve them with a side of fresh fruit. It's like a gourmet deli sandwich.

The Jedi got a little yard work done and I got some co-op emails done. We had time for a nap. Then we had spaghetti for dinner and went to see Despicable Me 2 at Danbarry dollar saver theater.

We capped off the night with dessert at BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse. (Delicious pizookies and strawberry beignets.) Back at home, everyone wound down by spending time on their own computer activities. (Toa played Minecraft; Sweetling is probably on some forums chatting about Thor; the Jedi is leveling up a rp character; and I blogged.)

Perfect, perfect start to the holiday season!

Weekly Wrap-Up: Unicorn Logic

Last spring, at the Midwest Homeschool Convention, Sweetling decided she wanted to learn formal logic. We checked out this awesome series from Memoria Press.

I came home and told the Jedi we were planning on including logic is Sweetling's curriculum for the upcoming school year.

The Jedi, wisely, asked, "Who's going to teach logic?"

I replied that we had found this great curriculum. We were going to order the books, and then read and work through them together.

The Jedi, even more wisely, said, "Ah."

The books came. They are well written and each chapter is followed by lesson plans for which sections to read on which day as well as review and comprehension questions for each section.

We dug in.

Sweetling is doing great. She understands the material readily and is able to answer all the questions with no trouble.

Mommy is struggling. Mommy reads a section and gets confused. Mommy tries using hand gestures to make sense of the sections.

Each day, Sweetling asks me if I understand what I'm reading. I answer by singing a happy song. This is Sweetling's cue that the lesson is quickly going south. Sweetling then re-explains the section using examples often involving unicorns.

I understand unicorns. Unicorns are my friends.

On days that are particularly challenging, Sweelting brings me my Webkinz unicorn and pegasus so that I can cling to my tangible representatives of my fantasy world while I wrestle my way through formal logic.

On days when I grasp the material the first time round, she brings me a large stuffed blue bunny to hold as a reward. I call that the Blue Bunny Award for Effort. I like receiving the blue bunny award.

Often the section review exercises prompt the learner to write their own examples of various types of statements. This is both Sweetling and my favorite part of the logic lessons.

Here are our samples by section. (Because I love them and want to be able to re-read them later.)

Statements (propositions....whatever the proper term is. I don't remember, Sweetling isn't here to ask, and I don't have the book with me.)

Sweetling:

Mommy is funny.
Milk is delicious.
The TARDIS is bigger on the inside.

Mommy:

I am a fairy princess.
Squirrels are good minions.
Ducky Mo-Mo is oblivious to his surroundings.

Not propositions:

Sweetling:

Hey, where's Perry?
Don't blink!
Nang nang nang nang....
Curse you, Perry the Platypus!

Mommy:

Avengers, assemble!
That's it? That's your tragic backstory?
Fish sticks and custard.
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?

Affirmative propositions:

Sweetling:

Ferb is British.
Some days are Saturdays.
Phineas's head is a triangle.
Everything's better with Perry.
Some birds are penguins.

Mommy:

Some pens are green.
All chocolate is Mommy's.
Some unicorns are on Saturn.
All bunnies are adorable.
Some squirrels are casing Mrs. Angie's house. (I play fast and loose with my copluas.)
All Pastor Andy's game nights are crazy.

Negative propositions:

Sweetling:

Perry is a not a cuperberra.
Sweetling is not food.
What we're doing isn't cooking at all.
I'm not exactly surprised.

Mommy:

Some leaves are not an autumn color.
Some schoolwork is not interesting.
No daleks are nice.
The statue of liberty is not a weeping angel.
No chores are exciting.
Some forest spirits are not small.

Universal propositions:

Sweetling:

All DVDs are discs.
No unicorns are living on Saturn.
All eagles are birds.
All oookas are tasty.
No kisses are zerburts.

Mommy:

All toes are piggies.
No chipmunks are evil.
All unicorns are real.
No rainbows are ugly.
All penguins like fish. (fast and loose copula)

Particular propositions:

Sweetling:

Some kisses are for Eswin.
Some hats are fedoras.
Some animals are platypuses.
Some blankets are not penguin blankets.
Some hugs are Mommy hugs.

Mommy:

Some toes are wiggly.
Some chipmunks are not in favor of hats.
Some unicorns like pepperoni pizza. (another fast and loose copula)
Some rainbows are not in the sky.
Some penguins are secret agents.

Contradictory propositions:

Sweetling:

No pairs of pigtails are connected. Some pairs of pigtails are connected.
All platypi are secret agents. Some platypi are not secret agents.
No whales are space whales. Some whales are space whales.
All lumas are Rebecca Schmorange. Some lumas are not Rebecca Schmorange.
No earthbenders are metalbenders. Some earthbenders are metalbenders.

Mommy:

All unicorns are loved by Mommy. Some unicorns are not loved by Mommy.
All fairy houses are built by children. Some fairy houses are not built by children.
All gnomes are garden gnomes. Some gnomes are not garden gnomes.
All chipmunks are awesome. Some chipmunks are not awesome.
All penguins should be snuggled. Some penguins should not be snuggled.
No Mommy's should be made to do logic. Some Mommy's should be made to do logic.

Contrary propositions:

Sweetling:

All oookas are for tickling. No oookas are for tickling.
All self-destruct buttons are necessary. No self-destruct buttons are necessary.
All Mommies are fairies. No Mommies are fairies.
All backstories are tragic. No backstories are tragic.
All random hand gestures are helpful. No random hand gestures are helpful.

Mommy:

All slipppers are fuzzy. No slippers are fuzzy.
Mommy is awesome. Mommy is not awesome.
No fairies are good at logic. All fairies are good at logic.
All hot chocolate is delicious. No hot chocolate is delicious.
Everything is fixed by kisses. Nothing is fixed by kisses.

Subcontrary propositions:

Sweetling:

Some vegetables are leeks. Some vegetables are not leeks.
Some otamatones are jumbo otamatones. Some otamatones are not jumbo otamatones.
Some Mokanas are black Mokanas. Some Mokanas are not black Mokanas.
Some towns are fun towns. Some towns are not fun towns.

Mommy:

Some otomatones are pink. Some otomatones are not pink.
Some Mikos are astrotroopers. Some Mikos are not astrotroopers.
Some bananas are for cereal. Some bananas are not for cereal.
Some music is from Zelda. Some music in not from Zelda.
Some oookas are pokemon trainers. Some oookas are not pokemon trainers.

Subalternate propositions:

Sweetling:

All troopers are astro troopers. Some troopers are astro troopers.
All pigtails are teal pigtails. Some pigtails are teal pigtails.
No platypi are platypi that do much. Some platypi are not platypi that do much.
All pigtails are connected. Some pigtails are connected.
No rides from outspace are "street legal." Some rides from outer space are not "street legal".

Mommy:

All your base are belong to us. Some bases are belong to us.
No Sweetlings like pink. Some Sweetlings like pink.
All timelords have two hearts. Some timelords have two hearts. (Sweetling complained again about my copula not being a form of '"to be". Sweetling doesn't get that Mommy is a rebel.)
All statues are weeping angels. Some statues are weeping angels.
No cosplay is bizarre. Some cosplay is not bizarre.

Weekly Wrap-up: The Sweetest Vocabulary

My last two homeschooling posts were about Toa's curriculum.

Today, I started to put a snippet about Sweetling's vocabulary lesson on Facebook. Instead, I decided to put a couple of snippets about vocabulary together to make a blog post.

 

Snippet Number One

This scenario isn't atypical of a Sweetling school time. No Sweetlings were harmed during the making of this anecdote. Unless you count the therapy she might need later in life.

Me (singing): Ignominy, do doo do do do. Ignominy, do do di do.
 [pause]
Me: You know, I wasn't like this when I was in school.
Sweetling: Really? What were you like?
Me: When I was in school I was quiet and studious and serious.
[pause]
Me: So, maybe when you get older....you'll become like me.
Sweetling: NOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Snippet Number Two

This is Sweetling's list of challenge words for this section of her vocabulary book. We read through the challenge words and take a guess at them if either of us think we know what they mean. If we aren't sure, or if, as is often the case, we have no earthly idea, we make a mark by them and then look them up.

Here was the list so far:

• literalism (knew it)
• litarati (marked it)
• transliterate (knew it)
• scriptorium (think we know it, marked it to double-check ourselves)
• serif (knew it)
• shrive (could take a wild guess, but we marked it rather than go with Mommy's wild guesses)
• superscription (knew it)

Then we got to eponymous.

"Oh, I know that one," says Sweetling.
"What? How do you know that one? I don't know that one," says me.

Then Sweetling proceeds to give me a definition of eponymous and uses it in a sentence. I was still incredulous, so she looked it up to prove that she was right; and that I was less right. Really? What young teen has "eponymous" as part of her working vocabulary?

Sweetling does, that's who.

(The rest of the challenge list was euonymus, metonymy, paronomasia, agnomen, cognomen, nominalism, nominative, and praenomen....just in case you were wondering.)

Our curriculum:

This year, we returned to Vocabulary for Classical Roots.
 
 Last year, we took a year off of a formal vocabulary program. As you can see, Sweetling isn't lacking for an awesome vocabulary, so a year off wasn't going to hurt her.

But now, we're looking at PSATs in a year, followed by SATs in another couple of years. So, I felt a return to a formal vocabulary program was in order.

The book itself is divided into 16 "lessons". (We work through one "lesson" every other week.) I love the way the text groups words around central concepts. Lesson 5, which is the one we're currently in, and lesson 6 together form a section titled "Reading and Writing". Each lesson uses four or so classical roots, teaching the classical root, its meaning, and its spelling. From those few roots, the lesson focuses on learning fifteen vocabulary words.

I find this approach to be a much more effective and sensible method to acquire language than a list of words that seem to be randomly selected with little in common.

I purchased two workbooks, one for Sweetling and one for me. We sit together to work on our vocabulary. After the various exercises, we compare our answers with each other. When we differ, we discuss our reasoning for each of our selections and decide together which response is the best choice. (I won't say which of us is often less right than the other. I'm trying to get through this school year with some of my dignity still intact.)

The engaging discussion during the lesson and the unofficial challenge for us each to try to use the vocabulary words throughout the week increases the long-term retention and use of new vocabulary. Plus, it's FUN.

(And what teenage girl doesn't welcome the opportunity to prove that she knows more than her mother?)

Check out what others are doing this week on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap Up: Bad Day and Good Math

I had all the photos taken to include in a post about how much we like our new math curriculum. And then we had...

A Day.

One of THOSE days.

One of those maybe-the-yellow-school-bus-isn't-such-a-bad-option-after-all days.

I'll spare you the details. They aren't pretty. Highlights included Toa of Boy dumping his uneaten lunch in the garbage in an act of defiance and then going hungry for the afternoon while he sat at the kitchen table doing worksheets I printed off the internet (in my own fit of frustration and defiance.)

Like I said, not a pretty day.

But, Toa crafted and apology in Legos (the two r's aren't quite visible in the photo). I made his favorite dinner that evening. So, hopefully things will be back on track now.

And, despite our horrible, no-good, very-rotten day, both Toa and I do like the math curriculum, so I'm going to share about it anyway.

Everyday Mathematics was recommended to us by a good friend. I visited the website and watched a video of a classroom lesson. Then I looked at the prices and had a sticker shock moment. But, I was able to find the two student journals I need on ebay, used, but not written in.

(I skipped buying the Student Resource book that was supposed to go along with the curriculum. Even on ebay, it was out of the budget and it didn't seem like we absolutely needed it.)

Each lesson includes a page of "math boxes" that are a collection of very short review work. Normally, Toa of Boy hates the review section of math lessons, but the math boxes are different enough that he hasn't realized they are meant to keep skills fresh. (Shhhh---don't tell him they're review work!) I am NOT a fan of 'busy work' or generic worksheets....despite my breakdown this week. But the math boxes have a wide enough variety of skills to keep his mind engaged.

Sadly, the one random Math Boxes I happened to snap a picture of has a section of simple addition/subtraction problems which is pretty rare. I thought about cropping them out of the picture before I loaded it to my blog, but I thought I'd leave it. There are the occasional computation reviews. Still, they are rare enough that the math box page doesn't become a drudgery.

(You can click on the image, or any of the images, if you'd like to see a slightly larger version of it.)

 The lessons are set up so that the math boxes are supposed to come at the end of the lesson, however, we do the math boxes first. For the most part, Toa of Boy can complete the math box page independently, with only an occasional question or two. There are a few times, like today, when he completes the math boxes when I'm not even around, and then I check them and we do the teaching section later.

We don't have a teacher's manual for the teaching sections, but for the most part we haven't needed one. In part, we don't need one because I'm comfortable enough looking at a lesson on multiplication arrays and coming up with a spur of the moment hands-on activity.

But, mostly, we don't need a teacher guide because the lessons have clear student instructions for unique and engaging math activities.

Here are a couple of Toa's favorites.

This lesson involved measuring how many steps you took to cross a large room, measuring the room, and then finding an approximate length of a step. Then you time how long it took you to take so many steps...and somewhere in there it lead you through approximating a walking speed. We skipped some of this process, because Toa looked at me and told me that it takes him and Grandma about 30 minutes to walk the big block of our neighborhood and that he asked the Jedi drive their walking route to measure it's distance with the car's odometer. From this, Toa told me it takes him about half and hour to walk ________.

Next, the lesson asked us to pick a destination in a different city. Toa had to measure the distance to the city, and then figure out how long it would take him to walk there if he walked continuously with no stops for rest or food. Then he had to figure out, realistically, what stops he would need to take and how long the stops would take, and what a more realistic arrival time would be.

His other favorite, so far, has been a lesson on data collection and examining data to find the mean, the mode, the median, and so forth. Not too exciting....unless the data you are examining is first collected in a cool 'reaction time' process. First, the 'reaction time' strip was cut out of his workbook. Then I held the strip, and he kept his thumb and pointer finger open around the bottom edge of the strip. With no verbal warning, I dropped the strip, and he had to quick pinch to catch it. The strip had a gauge to measure his reaction time according to where his thumb landed on the strip.

Now, if I, or some textbook, had just given Toa of Boy a set of random numbers and asked him to do some landmarking and computation with them....getting the lesson done would have been like pulling teeth. But test his own reaction time and then crunch those numbers to learn which hand had the quicker reflexes? Oh yeah. Bought and sold, baby.

I also was blessed with several fun and interesting learning books at a used curriculum sale last spring. I had a nice stack of 50 cent to 1 dollar books in my hand, and the sweet mom running the booth told me I could just have them. "Be blessed," she said. And I was and am!

One of those books was logic links.

We aim for doing a few logic puzzles about once a week or so.

Another book we were blessed with is a math card game book. It's SO MUCH BETTER THAN FLASHCARDS for practicing multiplication and division skills!

Here's a sample game, taking from a side view of course, so as to be totally confusing. Each of two players is dealt three cards (the columns on the left and right of the photo.) Then two cards are flipped over in the middle. They are multiplied to find the "target number" for that round. Each player gets a point for each of the cards in their hand of three which can be divided evenly into the target number. (We kept track of our scores with tally marks on a separate piece of paper.) Then all the cards are discarded and new cards dealt out for the next round.

(And, just because I'm me, this post was actually written at the beginning of  September. Then it sat unfinished waiting for me to resize photos so that they would load easier and not take up so much of the space blogger allocates for saved photos. BUT, it's still a good overview of how math is working for us this year!)

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Weekly Wrap-up: We Love Spelling!

See this?

It's a handful of homemade cards each written in crayon on half an index card, a paper bag, and a cheap timer from the dollar store.

Know what it is?

Would you guess an awesome spelling game that Toa of Boy asked to play twice?

The game, called Rotten Egg, came from this book...

Which is a part of this Logic of English curriculum...

which is a combined spelling/grammar/handwriting program. Which we are loving!

(The nerf guns didn't come with the curriculum. We had to purchase those separately....but we are using them with the curriculum!)

If you're curious, the book is divided into 40 lessons, each with three parts. We generally do one lesson part a day. (Or at least that's the goal.)

The first part of each lesson introduces three new phonemes with all their sounds. Did you know "ea" is used to spell three sounds? There are some nice speech and sound exploration exercises. We spend a bit more time than other families might on the speech component, since there are still come sounds Toa struggles to produce clearly. The teacher guide has really neat tips on being aware of tongue placement in the mouth and what exactly the mouth is doing to form the different sounds. I know many parents might not need this info, but it's been gold for us!

Also included in the first section is the introduction of at least spelling rule....which I swear is NOT the same useless, more exceptions than regular spellings, type rules I remember from school! First, their is a section in the workbook of words that follow the rule. The student reads the words and tries to deduce what they might have in common. There are some teacher prompts to guide them through this process. THEN, after they have pretty much figured out the rule for themselves, then they are given the rule. The rule for the lesson we are currently working on says, "We often double F, L, and S after a single vowel at the end of a base word. Occasionally other letters are also doubled."

Now, at first, that seems not so useful. It doesn't have a catchy little rhyme for one thing. But, after having been LIED to all my life with 'rules' such as, "When two vowels go a-walking, the first one does the talking, and it says its name," I'll take honesty over inane jingles any day.

The second part of the lesson is the introduction of the 15 word spelling list. It's pretty sweet and straightforward. We like short and sweet. Each spelling word has a brief list of related vocabulary words which we read aloud, discuss, and sometimes act out. (Cliff, with cliffs and cliffhanger, was part of this lesson's list. You know those had to be acted out. It was practically a boy mandate.)


The third part of the lesson has grammar, dictation, and a brief composition exercise.

And of course, fun, fast past game options and other review options are included in each portion of each lesson.

That's it! No useless, repetitive worksheets. No mindless busy work.

Last week, we did a review and assessment over the first four lessons. That's 60 words. Want to know how many Toa marked for review? Four. And, get this, he *voluntarily* marked those four words for review. We didn't sit down and give him a 60 word spelling test. He might have ran away and joined the circus if I tried that. We just did a brief dictation exercise of 15 short two or three word phrases that very cleverly and sneakily happened to use almost every spelling word once. He had NO problems with the dictation exercise. The few misspellings he made as he was writing, he noticed on his own and self corrected. (Ok, with the exception of that sneaky 'ea' in 'clean'. That one needed pointed out to him.)

But, when presented with a list of the sixty spelling words, he was able to read the list and self-identify the words he had trouble with. How many 9 year olds are given the opportunity to do that?

Oh, and we practiced those 4 words the next day by laying side by side on our backs on the living room floor, crossing one leg over one knee so that one foot was suspended in the air and then sky-writing the word with our toes. 

Source: http://www.sxc.hu/

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Weekly Wrap-Up: Going for the Gold

I missed my opportunity to link this to the weekly wrap up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers, but I'm going to blog about it anyway. Go me!

 (After I had my post written, it got delayed in actually being published to my blog because I don't know how to get photos from the camera to the computer. So, this post is now written about events that took place two and three weeks ago. Don't be confused about the first sentence. We aren't STILL watching the Olympics.)

The last two weeks of school can be summed up in a question Toa of Boy asked. "Mommy," he said, "why did you make us start school early if we were just going to stop and watch Olympics?"

Good question. It has a perfectly reasonable answer. Poor planning.

Moving on....here's what we DID do.

I printed out a metal tracker worksheet from education.com.  I had to sign up to have access to the worksheet, but it was a pretty painless sign up process. Toa of Boy and Sweetling were both really excited about it!

We watched the opening ceremonies together. During the parade of nations, each of the kids had an inflatable globe. They raced to find the nation marching in before the next nation was announced. Nice geography lesson!

Each day, we checked on which events had awarded metals and wrote down which country got the gold, silver, and bronze for that event. This was a nice daily spelling lesson for Toa of Boy. And, since the webpage only showed the flag of each country who had medalled, Sweetling got to impress us all with her flag recognition skills. (Hovering the computer cursor over the flag brought up the athlete's name and the country's three letter Olympic abbreviation.)

We recorded the events every day, all twelve or so hours. Then I'd fast forward through most of it, and we'd watch a few things that were of interest....spots about London, stories of athletes, a sampling of the different events.

And of course, despite Toa of Boy's claim, we did do some regular school....just not nearly as much. We managed to squeeze in a couple of lessons for each child each day. (Except the days after the women's team and women's all-around gymnastic finals. No school happened those days. Only gymnastics viewing did.)

Check out the cool cell diagram Toa of Boy made out of wikisticks--

Weekly Wrap-Up: Nerf Guns and Apple Mummies

Last week was our first week of school.

(This week was spent battling a stomach bug. I'm not writing about it. Sue me.)

Monday and Tuesday was spent almost exclusively with Sweetling. Toa of Boy joined us for Bible in the morning, and then was free. He spent two days almost exclusively on Lego Designer....which is a fun, free, Lego CAD program.

Sweetling has a very ambitious first year of high school. Her courses this year include--

• Matthew-Acts
• The Rise and Fall of Rome
• Foundations in Romans
• Algebra 2 and Trigonometry
• The One Year Adventure Novel
• American History to 1865
• American Literature
• German 1
• Spanish 3
• ASL 1
• Basic Japanese
• Formal Logic
• Vocabulary from Classical Roots
• General Science
• Drawing 1
• Shakespeare

Two days to work exclusively with her and to get her rolling on her courses was absolutely needed.  I really like the balance in her school this year. She has several subjects she's doing with me, a few with her father, a few at co-op, and a few that are independent. (For a more complete breakdown of courses and resources for both children, check out our curriculum page.)

On Wednesday, I brought Toa of Boy into the mix.

My goal in choosing curriculum for Toa of Boy this year was to find resources and programs which let him learn in the mode God created him to operate....hands-on, creative, and active!

On Wednesday alone,

we made modeling clay tablets to simulate the wax writing tablets of ancient Rome;

we began are review of multiplication and introduced factors by creating rectangular arrays with glass craft pebbles on a wipe-off mat;

we shot a nerf gun at phonogram cards (no action shot of this--I stood safely around a corner and held up the card to be shot);

and we created a mummification mixture for an innocent apple. (The yummy apple on the left is the control apple after 10 days. The mummified apple is in its baking soda/salt dessication mixture.)

Yes, there was still reading and writing and workbook pages to complete...but they were the side dish that rounded out our plate of learning, not the entree!

Check out what others did this week on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap-Up: Craters, Chickens, and Tin-Foil

You know those graphics that are hot on Facebook right now, the ones that name a profession or hobby and have six photos---'what my friends think I do', 'what the public thinks I do,' etc--those ones? The ones that always conclude with 'what I actually do'?

Here's my "What I actually do" photo for the week:

This was, of course, a spelling lesson. I mean, really, isn't that obvious?

A few minutes before the spelling lesson reached this photo worthy state, the lesson included me running from the kitchen to the living room yelling, "I've got the Squeaker! I've got the Squeaker!" while Toa of Boy was chasing after me, trying to retrieve the round furry plush toy I was victoriously waving over my head.

That's not an atypical instance for us. I don't know how we transitioned from steal the Squeaker (who's real name is Speedy, thank you), to Toa of Boy and Mama (not me, my mother) wearing aluminum foil hats, but there you go.

Spelling got finished. (So did grammar, despite that last sentence.) It just had a few diversions along the way.

For the sake of my dignity, I briefly considered claiming that Toa of Boy's learning style is best activated when a few spurts of excitement and physical activity punctuate the school day. I would say that, but here's a Facebook post about Sweetling's geometry lesson from earlier in the week:

Today's geometry lesson ended with Mommy standing on the kitchen table doing a shake your bootie dance while Sweetling, though fits of laughter, kept exclaiming, "Don't draw dinosaurs on the ceiling! Do NOT draw dinosaurs on the ceiling!"

I am forced to conclude the common denominator is me.

Other fun stuff for the week--

We continue to love our new Apologia Exploring Creation through Astronomy book. It's chock full of hands-on projects about the solar system. We like hands-on.

Here's Toa of Boy making craters. The pan is full of a half inch or more of flour, dusted with a layer of cocoa. Pebbles of assorted sizes are dropped from above to resemble the formation of craters.

Yes, it got a little messy. All good school projects do. Toa of Boy cleaned it all up on his own.

And, because I don't think I've officially put this on my blog yet, Sweetling is officially a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

She tested for her black belt at the end of January. She broke all her boards on the first try. Crack, crack, crack, crack, crack. We celebrated by going out for grilled cheese donuts at Tom & Chee. (Sweetling's pick.) The Jedi had pre-ordered a black t-shirt for her which read, "Warning: Shirt comes with a matching belt." She proudly wore it to co-op the Monday after testing. She had to wait a couple weeks for the actual black belt to arrive at the dojo, since they come custom embroidered with the pupil's name in both English and Korean. (Her name is blocked out here for privacy.)


Toa of Boy is due to test for his high blue belt soon as well. In the mean time, here's a photographic portrayal of why Toa of Boy loves our Tae Kwon Do school.

This is self defense training of course.


Last, but certainly not least, I bring you....

........chickens.

Why?

Because that's how our homeschool rolls.

Click the link!  Check out what others are doing this week!

Weekly Wrap Up: A stitch in time

(Confession time--this is actually from a few weeks ago. I've kept this in my 'drafts' box till I got around to getting the photos in. All two of them. BUT, I'm sharing it NOW, and that's what's important.)

We have been sewing and unschooling this week. All week.


I'm a little nervous about this.

I don't know why.

LOTS of learning has been taking place. Sweetling is making something from a purchased pattern for the first time. So, she's learning to interpret the weird wording found only in sewing pattern instructions into actual "oh, so that's what they mean" steps. She's used a seam gauge, dress maker's pencil, and stitch ripper (cause mistakes do happen.) She's threaded the machine, wound the bobbin, machine basted, and reinforced selected edges. She's learned to slip-stich by hand and learned what fusible interfacing is and why its used.

Meanwhile, Toa of Boy, not one to be left out, has learned how to thread a needle and knot the thread on the end. He's learned sew on a bead (for a turtle eye of course) and how to repair a seam on a stuffed animal. (There was a small discussion when he first started trying to sew and was getting a little frustrated. He demanded to know why boys had to learn how to sew. My answer was that everyone needed some basic sewing skills to be able to do simple clothing repair or replace a missing button. He said he could get someone else to do that for him. I asked if he really wanted to pay someone $10 to replace a button when he could do it himself in half a minute. He said he'd get a friend or relative to do it. I asked what if he was by himself on a business trip to Japan and the button popped off his dress shirt right before an important meeting. He conceded to me the argument.) He then raided my scrap basket and is now sewing his own stuffed Kirby doll.

Toa of Boy also kicked my butt in chess. He's gotten much better at his end game. But truthfully, I was in trouble very early in the game. Look at this box he has put me in. What move could I make, as black, that would help dig me out of this trap? (Click on the photo for a larger, clearer picture.)

Now, we've done a little bit of our regular academics. Toa did three pages of math by himself on Wednesday and Sweelting taught Toa all his regular subjects on Thursday while I was babysitting. (That's part of our regular Thursday arrangement.) And we've started out each day with our Bible Truth curriculum.

But mostly we've unschooled this week.

I think I like unschooling for a specific length of time (this week), to accomplish a specific student selected goal (learning to sew from a pattern.). But I don't think I'm ready to jump fully on the unschooling band wagon just yet. 

I'm not worried about "falling behind" or not learning. I think I'm just worried that without just a little structure, days and weeks will go by....and we'll have done some housework, a couple baking projects, and just goofed off. I think I'm worried that we won't have the motivation to tackle anything that seems like too much work. Sweetling's sewing project happened because she wanted to make a costume for an anime con. But that's the exception to the rule.

I think my question to the unschoolers, because I do like the concept a whole lot....my question would be how do you stay motivated to attempt challenging projects?

So, that's us.

 Check out what others have done on Weird, Unsocialized Unschoolers.

Jesse Owens

I've just realized I've been avoiding posting on the "week in review" because our history projects this year haven't been as photogenic as our projects last year. We've still been learning, and I really like Homeschool in the Woods. All the same, Sweetling's main project has been writing articles for a newspaper (which doesn't lend itself to a photograph....unless I get her to dress up as an intrepid reporter). Likewise, Toa of Boy has been working on the components of a lap book, again, not the most exciting thing to photograph.

And without photos, just saying "this week we learned about some of the famous people who became between 1870 and the break out of WW2," just doesn't make for an interesting blog post.

But, it does when I tell it in a story like this.

Our lesson last week was a huge smattering of famous Americans from the Industrial Revolution through the Great Depression. As always, I popped the Time Traveler disc into the Media Center PC which is hooked up to the big flat screen in the living room. We read the lesson, and as we were reading, we'd pause and do google searches on the people and topics we were reading about. We pulled up photos of P.T. Barnum, of Jumbo, and Tom Thumb. We pulled up photos of Buffalo Bill and Anne Oakley.  We listened to "The Entertainer", to "Stars and Stripes Forever", and to a few famous hymn written during this time. We watched the Fantasia 2000 segment of Rhapsody in Blue as well as a silent film of Harry Houdini performing a rope escape. We read about Helen Keller, Jesse Owens, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart--people who did what others claimed couldn't be done.

The next day, Sweetling churned out another page of newspaper articles and Toa of Boy put together a fan book of many of these famous people. The day after that, Toa of Boy added five fact cards to his 100 cool things about America, choosing 5 of these famous people to highlight. Sweetling added an advertisement for The Greatest Show on Earth to her newspaper.

And I didn't write up a week in review because I didn't have any pictures to make our learning look interesting. And somehow, I thought we weren't doing as many cool projects and learning activities as we had done last year.

Then Sunday night at church, the kids were asked to name some people who were truly great. The nearly all boys group came up with Michael Jordan and another basketball player whose name I'd butcher if I tried to recall it.

And then Toa of Boy raised his hand and said, "Jesse Owens." And then he proceeded to give a brief reason of why Jesse Owens was truly great.

I had this "aha" moment where I realized, wow, we really are learning cool things this year after all!

Yeah, I know, I'm slow like that.

Jesse Owens, I am not.

Weekly Wrap-Up: In With the New!

I don't think I've written a week in review since August. But, to quote Flylady, "....just jump in where you are."

This week. I'm just going to focus on this week, and not go into a lengthy explanation of how I got so far off track.

This week started with taking down the Christmas tree. That's always a bittersweet thing. I like the Christmas tree, and yet, I'm also ready to get back to a routine. (Well, I'm a little ready to get back to a routine.) In our family, each year we take turns deciding how the tree will be decorated. This year, it was Mama's turn. (My mama, my mama lives with us now.) She decided we were each going to make heart shaped paper ornaments and write our favorite Scripture verses about Jesus on the ornaments. It was lovely.

Since the tree was all decorate in red and pink hearts, I considered petitioning leaving it up until mid-February for Valentine's Day. But, in the end, the tree needed to come down so that we could get back to the business of school.

So, by Tuesday, we had gotten back into the swing of things. We're using Homeschool in the Woods' Time Traveler series for our history curriculum, and our timelines are coming along so well, we need the entire living room floor to spread them out.

Art led us to a cool pop up of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters (part of our Time Traveler's pack). AND, to a neat cardinal in winter art project, courtesy of Deep Space Sparkle.

Showcased behind the cardinal is some bare winter tree branches. We took our camera outside and snapped some pictures of branches highlighted against the blue sky. We each took turns with the camera and zoomed in on the section of branches we wanted to photograph. Of course, it was a warm, beautiful, sunny day....so this turned into an excuse to take a walk around the neighborhood.

Back inside, we pulled the photos up on the computer, talked about the negative space in between the branches, and used our photographs to inspire us when we drew the branches behind our cardinal.

Then we followed Deep Space Sparkle's directions to complete our art. We painted the sky using blue metallic acrylic paint. We painted in the cardinal and the branches and used a thin black brush to add details.

We haven't done the final step of using a Qtip dipped in white paint to add snowflakes. We're waiting for the rest of the paint to dry first.

Sweetling's science has been on hold since October. Her November subjects got paired to the bone in order to free her up to participate in NaNoWriMo. This week, she got back to her amazing glider. Check him out...I put a folding yardstick by him for a scale.

His wings are covered in this cool plastic which she shrunk to a perfect fit using a hair dryer. Supplies and directions were all part of her Education Exploration science curriculum.

Toa of Boy is more than ready to move on in science, and he wants to study space next. So, Apologia's Exploring Creation through Astronomy has been ordered and is being shipped. In the meantime, Chapter Two is available as sample pages on Apologia's home page. Chapter Two is all about the sun, so we read about the sun, got a soccerball and a peppercorn to compare the size of the sun with the size of the earth. (It was supposed to be a basketball, but we don't have a basketball, so we did our best.)

And, most importantly, Toa of Boy got to witness a small fraction of the awesome energy of the sun by using a magnafying glass to burn a hole in a leaf outside. (We tried a piece of paper first, but wound up using a dried leaf.)

Not bad for a first week back in a long time!

To read what other homeschoolers are doing this week, hop on over to Weird Unscocialized Homeschoolers.