Learning Out of the Box

A Whole New World

2011-10-17T09:46:00.000-05:00

Hello! It's been a long time since I've posted anything here. But, since The Kid and I are starting a new academic adventure together, I thought it might be a good time to ressurect the blog and keep a record.

After years of semi-classical homeschooling, we've decided to try something new. I'm cutting down the formal lesson plans to just three subjects: math, English and foreign language. Everything else will be done in an unschool-type style.

This change has been coming for a long time, I think. I have this Kid who is bright and enthusiastic and interested in so many things. But, no matter how much we tweak it, the whole concept of "school" seems to get in the way of his learning.

We had already cut back on the formal, planned school for this year, putting in place instead a list of subjects and a set of guidelines for each one. I had hoped that would be enough to spark something for him. Instead, we're still butting heads every day over whether he's "done" each subject and whether whatever he has accomplished is "enough." I'm seeing that my constant attempts to codify and control the process and his resentment of that are getting in the way of him actually learning anything.

In addition, I keep finding these wonderful opportunities out in the world, and I find myself frustrated and saddened by how often and how much "school" makes it impossible for us to enjoy and learn from those things. Instead, I am always rushing and feeling stress about the boxes we're not checking off at home and the items on my lovely, neat lesson plans that aren't getting done.

Things came to a head for me this week. I was thinking about a couple of things we have on our calendar and feeling wistful about the educational things we could do surrounding them if only we weren't slaves to those lesson plans. For example, we have tickets for the Metropolitan Opera's HD broadcast of Anna Bolena, which is coming to a local movie theatre in a couple of weeks. We also have tickets for the "field trip" day for a small, local Renaissance Faire that week. And the new movie Anonymous opens the Friday before. I was thinking how great it would be if we could just take the time between now and then and read about the Renaissance and let my son work on his costume for the faire and dig into the story of Henry VIII and Anne . . .

"But we can't," I thought, "because we're so far behind already."

And then, suddenly, I realized that was just dumb.

I know, from long experience, that The Kid will learn so much more from going and doing than he will from trudging through the reading list I carefully assembled and parsed out over my painstakingly planned year. Why, then, not do what will work? What is the point of following "the plan" rather than actually doing things from which he'll learn and retain someting?

So, after consulting with my husband and thinking it through over the weekend, I sat The Kid down for a talk this morning. Here's the new routine:

1. He is to be out of bed by 8:00.
2. We're going to continue reading aloud over breakfast.
3. Desk time starts at 9:00.
4. We will stick more or less to my existing plans for math and English.
5. He will continue the FLVS Spanish class.
6. There is no TV or computer time (except for educational purposes) until after 4:00 pm and then only if the three core subjects are done.
7. The time in between core subjects and 4:00 is to be used productively: reading, working on costumes or other projects, drawing, playing the piano, practicing for his dance or music lessons, learning lines for his current show, trying out ideas for his Lego robotics club, etc. "Productive" means pretty much anything except watching TV, playing computer games or goofing off in the backyard.

The agreement is that we'll give this a try until the holidays, the end of the first semester. At that point, we'll discuss and evaluate. If he's happy and I think he's learning, we'll continue for the remainder of the year and evaluate again.

I'm nervous. I'll admit that. I don't see, for example, how science gets done in any kind of organized way. And I'm afraid we'll still spend too much of every day arguing about whether he's doing "enough."

But, the truth is that something has to give. It's breaking my heart to see my bright, sweet, excited, interesting and interested Kid going through the motions and learning more about gaming the system for grades than about the subjects he's supposed to be studying.

So, the new adventure begins.

I'm hoping to return to the habit of doing weekly reports. I like the accountability it encourages for me, and I like having a chance to write up and read how much we actually did each week.

I'll keep you posted.
So, off the map we go.

Ugh.

2009-03-27T13:55:00.004-05:00

Hmm. What to say about this week? Actually, I think the title of this post says it all.

We’re now finishing our second week back after three weeks mostly off, and it is clear we’re still not really back in the swing. Math, especially, is simply exhausting and unpleasant.

So, here’s where we are:

Math:
Despite our (my) best intentions, RobotBoy never did very many math lessons during his semi-break. Then, last week (our first week back), he didn’t even finish a single week’s worth of lessons. So, we’re right back into six-lessons-a-week territory. And, we’re now elbow deep in quadratic equations, which is not exactly easy stuff. Add in the fact that RobotBoy is having some trouble even getting to work at a decent time in the morning, and you can see why the going has been a bit tough this week. We did trudge through all but one of the requisite number of lessons, but his grades on the daily assignments were pretty awful. The thing is that I just really can’t tell whether he honestly doesn’t get it or whether he just isn’t mentally present enough to do it. (There’s just so much going on right now. See “Other Stuff” below.) He does fine when we work through the lesson together. And he’s slow but fairly accurate for the first few questions of each assignment. But then it just spirals down into him spending inordinate amounts of time complaining and begging for help and getting wildly wrong answers because he seems to completely forget how to add. Sigh.

In other news, he has finished the first Murderous Maths book I bought for him and is now working on The Phantom X. He also did two more pages of Greek-inspired math in Can You Count in Greek?

History & Literature:
He continued reading about ancient Greece this week, and he’s especially enjoying Theras and His Town. He also read about Socrates and Plato and others in The Story of Philosopy, which he seems to find very interesting, and dipped into Terry Deary’s Top 10 Greek Legends. He watched another episode of Secrets of Ancient Empires and the “Spice Routes and Silk Roads” segment of the Story of India series. His written work this week was a History Scribe page about Phoenician culture. Oh, and he did a couple of Child’s History of the World stories, “The People Who Made Our ABC’s” and “Hard as Nails.”

English:
In English Prep we read Wordsworth’s “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge” and talked about personification. We also learned about the rules for making plurals of words ending in ‘o’ (which I don’t think I ever had explained to me, by the way) and reviewed active and passive voice. The new writing model is the story of Androcles and the Lion, which we read over and talked about a couple of times. RobotBoy also did two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
“No Joke—The Earth Is Pancake Flat!” Or so said the title of this week’s chapter of The Story of Science. Alongside that, RobotBoy is reading Science in Ancient Rome. We never got around to the project/experiment for this week, because we used most of Wednesday to catch up on desk work.

Spanish:
He just chugging along in The Learnables.

Greek:
He did a page of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker and several pages of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!

Geography:
RobotBoy spent most of this week working on his “briefing” about India for the module on South Asia. He is also supposed to be making corrections and additions to a couple of lessons on which he didn’t do very well the first time around.

Other Stuff:
He had to skip tap class this week, because it conflicted with the dress rehearsal for his recital, which is coming up this weekend. He did attend ballroom, ballet, choir and organ, though, along with two more rehearsals for the opera. We’re now gearing up for the final weekend of The King and I performances, another opera reherasal and the recital. Next week, he’ll have rehearsals Monday through Wednesday evenings for the opera, which opens that Friday. So, it may be challenging—again—to get much schoolwork done.

One thing about which I'm very pleased is that RobotBoy has done some spontaneous and serious music practice in the last couple of weeks. I haven't nagged him about it, and he's actually working on the currently assigned piece instead of just playing ones he already knows over and over. That's a good thing.

My 52-Book Challenge:
I’m managing to keep up so far, with the addition of some audiobooks for the time on the road. In the weeks since my last post here, I’ve read/listened to Larklight (Phillip Reeve), The Virgin Blue (Tracy Chevalier), Q & A (Vikas Swarup), The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) and Innocent Traitor (Allison Weir). I enjoyed Larklight, which was a family listening experience on a road trip. All the faux Victoriana was fun, and RobotBoy is clamoring for the next in the series. I have mixed feelings about The Virgin Blue. I found it very absorbing, but I knew from early on that something nasty was going to happen to a child and spent a lot of time dreading it. Q & A is the novel on which the film Slumdog Millionaire is based. I enjoyed it, although I found the writing style rather bland in many places. I’ll admit that the big reveal caught me by surprise, though. The Book Thief was lovely, just lovely. I found myself consciously memorizing phrases and descriptions to savor later. And I enjoyed Innocent Traitor much more than I expected. In fact, I was inspired to dash out and buy Weir’s other novel, The Lady Elizabeth, which I’m reading now.

So, not a terrible week, but I’m really not sure what to do with math. I guess we’ll hang on another couple of weeks until we get past the opera and then see if RobotBoy’s brain becomes functional again.

PUPPY!
Good grief, I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention the puppy! I picked her up in South Carolina on the drive to take Moonheart back to school. She’s been with us for almost three weeks, now, and is just a wonderful, sweet, adorable ball of fluff. I’ve been taking her with me for quite a few of our afternoons out, and having her in my arms makes me the most popular person in any room. We’re working on housetraining, of course, and just generally getting into a daily routine that works with a puppy. She’s just darling, though, and well worth the wait.

Here she is playing with the cats' toy today:

Weekly Not-Much-of-a-Report

2009-02-26T11:10:00.002-05:00

I planned our homeschooling schedule around Moonheart’s college calendar this year. Since her spring break starts this Friday, I figured I’d be on the road for at least a couple of days this week and, therefore, planned no new work. I figured we’d use whatever time we did have this week to catch up on anything that needed our attention.

As is turned out, we were pretty much caught up. We were gone most Monday and took Tuesday to recover, then had light days Wednesday and Thursday. And I’ll be gone Friday for yet another to-Virginia-and-back road trip. RobotBoy will be home with Dad, but I’m assuming there will be no schoolwork done.

Because Moonheart will be home and RobotBoy will be very busy with his birthday and assorted show rehearsals, I’m not planning on any heavy schoolwork next week, either.

Math:
We did the left-over lesson from last week plus one more. He’s still on quadratic equations, but is now solving by factoring, which seems to be a bit easier for him. I'm really hoping we can get through several more lessons in the next week, because that would lighten his weekly load for the remainder of the year. Currently, he needs to do about six lessons a week in order to finish the course by the end of this semester. If he could do an extra eight or nine lessons in this two-week semi-break, he could bring the number down to a more normal five per week for the rest of the year.

History & Literature:
He watched the other two short Greek myths from Jim Henson’s The Storyteller.

Geography:
He’s still working on the North America module. The current lesson has him learning about demographics and population changes.

Other Stuff:
We did a quick Virginia trip last weekend to see Moonheart in the college’s spring musical, Wonderful Town. We made it back home on Monday afternoon with just enough time for RobotBoy to get into choir uniform and head out for a concert. That went quite well, but we didn’t get home until almost 11:00 that night. RobotBoy ended up sleeping until very late on Tuesday morning. He had a make-up music lesson on Tuesday afternoon, followed by his regular tap class and a show rehearsal, which again kept him out later than usual. We finally got some schoolwork done on Wednesday before running out for organ practice, ballet and another show rehearsal. He has another long run on Thursday afternoon, with his regular weekly organ lesson followed by choir and then one more show rehearsal.

All in all, it’s a good week to have a light academic schedule.

My 52-Book Challenge:
My “official” book for the week was the audiobook we listened to on the road, Larklight by Phillip Reeve. It was a lot of fun. I particularly enjoyed the faux Victorian tone. Currently, I’m reading Q & A, the novel on which the film Slumdog Millionaire is based, and another book about dog training.

Back on Track

2009-02-20T11:45:00.002-05:00

Well, after a less-than-wonderful last week, it was lovely to be back to smooth sailing. RobotBoy took Wednesday completely off, which leaves us officially one math lesson behind. However, when I planned the year, I assumed we would do no work at all for the next two weeks to accommodate a couple of road trips to Virginia and RobotBoy’s birthday. As it turns out, we’ll miss only a few of those days. So, RobotBoy and I have decided to do a math lesson on each day we’re not doing anything else and that he will keep working on the online geography course. This means that we will not only make up that one math lesson but may be able to lighten the load for the remaining weeks of the academic year.

And, even with taking Wednesday off, he wrapped up all of his work for the week before noon on Friday.

Math:
He’s finally hit some concepts that he’s finding truly challenging. This week’s lessons were on “Introducing Quadratic Equations and Their Graphs.” There were two lessons that just took a lot of time, and he didn’t score as well on the chapter test as I would have liked. I’ve opted not to stress about it, though, since the plan is for him to work through a fun algebra program for review this summer. I’m sure he’ll be in good shape to move on the geometry in the fall. He also read some more Murderous Maths, Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits and did two pages of playing with Greek numerals from Can You Count in Greek?

History & Literature:
This week, he’s been learning about both ancient Greece and ancient India. He read more Aesop and D’Aulaire’s and watched both Clash of the Titans and two short retellings of Greek myths from Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. He read about ancient civilizations in general in Mysteries Through the Ages: Mysteries from the Past and Present Explained Through Recent Scientific Discoveries and about the Mauryan and Guptan empires in his Atlas of World History. His worksheet for the week was a fill-in-the-blank one with sentences about ancient India.

English:
In English Prep we read a poem and talked about symbolism. We also did some vocabulary and reviewed different types of sentence (simple, compound, complex). So, of course, we had to take time to sing a couple of verses of “Conjunction Junction.” We introduced a new writing model, the story of Atalanta and Hippomenes, and RobotBoy did two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
This week’s chapter of The Story of Science was about Claudius Ptolemy. RobotBoy also read the remaining three chapters of Science in Ancient Greece and did a fun project from Ancient Science: 40 Time-Traveling, World-Exploring, History-Making Activities for Kids inspired by Pythagoras’s discoveries about how the length of strings affects the pitch in musical instruments.

Spanish:
The Learnables continues to go well. This week, RobotBoy was particularly delighted to learn how to say “big feet.”

Greek:
He did a page of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker and several pages of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!

Geography:
This week, he started the module about North America. His assignment was to research either the United States or Canada and prepare an itinerary for a trip to either country. He chose to research the U.S. and to plan a trip to Virginia and New York. Conveniently, he has been to both of those places more than once, so he even had pictures to use in his report.

Other Stuff:
Both ballroom (because of the holiday) and organ (because the teacher had a scheduling conflict) were cancelled this week. And, although the original plan had been to drive up to Virginia last weekend to visit my daughter and see her current show, a variety of things came up that led to a decision to delay the trip. RobotBoy attended his first rehearsal for The King and I, and we went to church and then to see Coraline on Sunday afternoon. Otherwise, though, we stayed home. So, all in all, we ended up with more free time than usual on our hands. It was kind of nice.

Life will get busier again in the next few weeks, however, I suspect. Rehearsals for the King and I will heat up as they get closer to opening. And RobotBoy volunteered to take a non-singing, just-be-cute role in an upcoming Orlando Opera production. His ballet and character classes are also preparing for their recital, which is coming up in March.

And, of course, I am counting down the next couple of weeks until I can go pick up my new puppy.

My 52-Book Challenge:
It was another re-read for me this week, Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. I have a couple of books on my wish list for this week, but what I read depends on what comes to hand easily at the bookstore or library.

A Bit Belated

2009-02-16T22:01:00.001-05:00

Things were a little ragged last week, with RobotBoy hitting a bit of a bump trying to get back to work following the camping trip. So, we were working right down to the wire on Friday afternoon. He did finish up, but not until moments before we needed to head out for the afternoon activities. Somehow, in the rush, I never got around to writing my weekly update.

But I’ve decided to remedy that now.

Math:
Math was a bit of a chore last week. He was factoring various types of polynomials, and he got a little tangled up now and then. We got through it, though, and I feel pretty good about his grasp of the material. So, we gratefully moved on. Toss in a couple more Mayan math worksheets and another chapter of Murderous Maths, Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits, and you’ve got the whole week.

History & Literature:
RobotBoy finally wrapped up his Mesoamerica study this week. He finished reading both The Children’s Homer and The Well of Sacrifice, both of which earned thumbs up reviews. His worksheet for the week was a criss-cross with vocabulary from his history reading. He also watched a documentary about efforts to decode Mayan hieroglyphs and spent some time playing with a website about the ancient ballgame.

English:
This was a writing week. RobotBoy turned in his draft of the re-telling of the hero twins story on Tuesday, then made corrections and finished the final version on Friday. There were a few minor mistakes remaining, but I’m pleased with the effort. We did a few pages of English Prep, too, but I can’t remember what they were about right now. And RobotBoy did two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
He read the next chapter of The Story of Science and a couple of chapters of Science in Ancient Greece. We never got around to either of the projects I had on the assignment sheet, but we’ll try to make them up this week.

Spanish:
RobotBoy continued with The Learnables, learning some vocabulary for facial features and hair.

Greek:
He did a page of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker and several pages of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!

Geography:
He finally finished that assignment about the Pacific Rim , turning it in on Thursday. I was pretty irritable about how long he lingered on that one, but he got a very good score. He did the oral assessment for the module on the phone with his teacher on Friday and earned full marks on that, too. She had lots of really nice things to say about him and his work, and she assured us that the remaining two modules are much easier than the last one.

Other Stuff:
We camped with the choir last weekend. It was pretty cold for us Floridians, but RobotBoy had a wonderful time running around with his choir-mates. If I agree to go again next year, it will be because someone has bought me an air mattress with a battery-operated pump. We made it home on Sunday afternoon with enough time for me to nap for an hour, then shower and dress and drive back uptown for a ballet performance. It was a fun program of short pieces, but I so much prefer the full, story ballets.

My 52-Book Challenge:
Umm, this was not my finest week. I dragged the Henry James novel with me on the camping trip, but just could not focus. RobotBoy and I both tried reading in our tent by the light of our lantern, but I didn’t get very far. Then Moonheart got sick, which caused me some distraction and plenty of time on the phone. Eventually, since I am in the process—at long last!—of trying to adopt a puppy, I bought and read Ian Dunbar’s Before and After You Get Your Puppy. So, that’s what got counted for last week. I’m also about half-way through re-reading Oliver Twist, so that will probably be my “official” book for this week.

We're Packed

2009-02-06T14:25:00.004-05:00

Okay, I mentioned in my regular weekly report that RobotBoy and I are off to camp with his choir this weekend. What I might have failed to mention is that I drive a MINI Cooper. Now, granted, it is the "extended" Clubman model, but it's still pretty small. So, I thought it might amuse folks to see what it looks like when we pack for a camping weekend.

Not too bad from the outside:

And here are the interior views:

Note: We had to strap in the bin of cooking supplies, because my car assumes anything over a certain weight is a person and beeps at me until I put on its seatbelt.

Still, not to bad for my teeny, adorable car. It's nice to know it's practical, too!

Another Friday

2009-02-06T10:10:00.005-05:00

So, here we are again. Now, it’s not that I’m complaining. Honest! But it’s getting to be a bit challenging to come up with a cute title or introduction to these weekly reports when things are just coasting along smoothly. Of course, I’m very happy with the smooth thing, but still . . .

Math:
We had our first tiny bump in the road on Thursday with the lesson on “Factoring Polynomials: Using the Distributive Property” It was really, really tiny and may well have had something to do with the fact that RobotBoy had already completed one and a half other math lessons before we started that one. But he did get very frustrated and have to retire to his room for a few minutes to calm down. After that, all was well. Things clicked, and he got 100% on his assignment. Otherwise, things are going well. Earlier in the week, he earned 95% on a chapter test. He also played around with another Can You Count in Greek? worksheet on Mayan math and read some more of Murderous Maths, Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits.

History & Literature:
It was more Mesoamerica this week: a page from the history atlas, an article from Learning Through History: Mesoamerica and a few pages from The Maya: Life, Myth and Art (Timothy Laughton) followed by cryptogram with a message about Mayan religion:

The Mayan religion was polytheistic, meaning they worshipped many gods. The most important god was the sun god. The Mayans used large mounds and pyramids for worship.

This was his first puzzle of this sort, and he had a blast with it. He was so much enjoying The Children’s Homer and The Well of Sacrifice that he read ahead and finished his assigned reading for the week in both by sometime on Tuesday.

English:
This week, we introduced a new writing model, based on the Mayan story of the hero twins. RobotBoy knows a couple of versions of this story from his reading, and the one I chose for the model was slightly different. So, we talked about how such things develop variations over the years. In English Prep, we read and answered questions about Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) and a non-fiction piece about St, Valentine. (Pretty clever how this chapter fell at just the right time of the year, huh?) We also read the vocabulary section about forms of the word ‘martyr.’ He also did another two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
In The Story of Science, RobotBoy read about Rome. He then read the first two chapters of Science in Ancient Greece and did a project about light and parabolic reflectors from Ancient Science: 40 Time-Traveling, World-Exploring, History-Making Activities for Kids. For fun, he watched two episodes of Secrets of Ancient Empires, one about pyramids and another about obelisks.

Spanish:
RobotBoy did the next 11 pages of The Learnables. I don’t remember exactly what was covered, and I’m too lazy to go get the book and check. I do know that I chatted with him about a couple of the pages, reading the sentences in Spanish and asking him to translate, and he did just fine.

Greek:
For the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker this week, RobotBoy learned “The Dipthong Song.” He also did several pages of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek!

Geography:
He’s still working on the module about the Pacific Rim and is a little bit stuck on one assignment. He is supposed to choose three countries in the area and do a compare and contrast thing. In order to earn full points for the assignment, he is supposed to compare and contrast with seven categories, and it’s just taking a lot of time to mine the information.

Other Stuff:
The reading I mentioned for last Friday was kind of disappointing. It was billed as a re-working of The Tempest from a female point of view. Prospero became Prospera, and Calliban was played by a woman, etc. We were really looking forward to it. But it turned out to involve little more than changing of pronouns and introducing a couple of musical numbers in the second half. Sunday afternoon, we went to see a production of one of our favorite shows, The Compleat Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). So much fun. And RobotBoy talked us into letting him audition for a community theatre production of The King and I. (He starts rehearsals next week.) We spent most of Wednesday making lists and shopping and gathering gear from the garage, because RobotBoy and I will be camping with his choir this weekend. He’s very, very excited.

My 52-Book Challenge:
I have started and dropped several books lately. So, my official book for last week was Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads, by the same woman who wrote Queen Bees and Wannabes. It was okay, although I found an awful lot of the information just didn’t seem to apply to our family’s life. And I never did figure out for sure what “type” I am. I can’t seem to settle into anything for this week, either. I’ve started a novel called In the Fall, but I’m really not loving the writing style. And last night I started The Wings of the Dove, but it hasn’t really grabbed me, either. I’m sure something will click. I’ll let you know next week!

Still Holding My Breath

2009-01-30T11:37:00.007-05:00

Okay, I admit it: I’m a little stunned that we had another good week. I’m not sure what’s going on, and I have this insane compulsion to knock on wood all the time, but things are going really well. I did mention it to RobotBoy, and he said he just came back from our holiday break feeling like he wanted to do better. And so he is.

Absolutely amazing.

So, here’s how it went.

Math:
RobotBoy is keeping up very well with the faster pace in this course. He’s completing his six lessons a week with good (okay, mostly perfect) grades and nary a whimper of protest. He took the test on the introduction to polynomials and is now breezing through the unit on factoring them. He read some more of Murderous Maths, Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits and did another page of Maya-themed math from Can You Count in Greek?

History & Literature:
He’s continued to focus on Mesoamerica this week, reading from his world history atlas, Learning Through History: Mesoamerica, The Maya: Life, Myth and Art (Timothy Laughton) and Egyptians, Maya, Minoans (Susanna Matthies). This Friday’s worksheet was a fun wordseach with vocabulary from his reading. Literature-wise, he’s continuing with The Children’s Homer and has read about the first third of The Well of Sacrifice. Both are getting thumbs up reviews.

English:
RobotBoy did his writing project this week, recounting the Chinese folk tale of “Wang the Peddler.” He turned in a pretty good first draft on Tuesday (right on schedule!), which really just needed minor punctuation and spelling corrections. The “final” draft he turned in a day early on Thursday wasn’t completely clean, unfortunately. So, he made the remaining corrections and re-submitted on Friday. I did knock off half a point, but I still consider it a success.
In English Prep, we reviewed prepositions and definite/indefinite articles. Then on Friday we read the excerpt from Silas Marner and talked through the comprehension questions.

RobotBoy did two more lessons of Word Roots. I’m a little sad that he won’t be able to continue the program next year, since he’s finishing the last level that is available for the computer.

Science:
This week in The Story of Science, RobotBoy read about Eratosthenes and his attempts to measure the earth. He then finished Archimedes and the Door of Science, which also earned a thumbs up review.

Spanish:
He’s still working on the “Pronouns” section. I think his favorite thing this week was the exercise about the man being chased out of his tent by the lion. He tracked me down in the kitchen to read that one to me. I have to say, though, that I was actually pretty pleased with his pronunciation. It’s not something that gets worked on formally in The Learnables, but he seems to be picking it up, anyway.

Greek:
He’s nearing the end of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker. So, he did just two pages of that and six of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! He continues to enjoy these.

Geography:
This week, he’s started reading about the Pacific Rim. His assignment was to choose one country from that part of the world, about which he had to answer some basic factual questions and then research an imaginary trip. Given his obsession with samurai, it’s probably not a big surprise that he selected Japan to research.

Other Stuff:
It was a very busy week with extras. On Saturday, RobotBoy took the Explore exam at a local school. He said it was not so much difficult as tedious, but he was pretty tired by the time he was done. That afternoon, we had tickets to see the Metropolitan Opera HD broadcast of Orfeo ed Euridice. That was really lovely, by the way. We all enjoyed it. On Sunday afternoon, we went to see a reading of a new play about John Wilkes Booth at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre’s festival of new plays. Tuesday evening brought the Horns and Pipes concert at St. Luke’s cathedral, which RobotBoy really loved. In honor of Mendelssohn’s 200th anniversary, they played several of his pieces, including the "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On Thursday evening after choir, RobotBoy and I went to see/hear a workshop of a new opera based on George Bernard Shaw’s play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. RobotBoy enjoyed it and said it brought back memories of his own opera workshop experiences about this time last year.

We have tickets to another reading tonight (Friday) and a couple of more things over the weekend. We love PlayFest time!

My 52-Book Challenge:
I finished re-reading Sense and Sensibility this week but haven’t decided what I’ll count as my official next book. I have Utopia, which I had planned to be next, but I bought a copy of Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads on sale yesterday and started that while I was waiting for RobotBoy to come out of choir. Maybe I’ll do both.

Chugging Along

2009-01-23T12:17:00.005-05:00

Things continue to go pretty well here, which continues to pleasantly surprise me. We have reached the end of another week in which all the work got done, without undue stress and strain, and there were no incidents to report. No yelling, no complaining, no going-to-his-room-and-dragging-out-a-single-lesson-for-two-hours issues. Just chugging along.

We even managed to cope with me being under the weather for a couple of days and doing a light day on Tuesday to watch some of the inauguration coverage. And it still all got done.

Wow.

Anyway, here’s the rundown.

Math:
RobotBoy buzzed through the assigned lessons for the week, finishing “Properties of Exponents” and beginning “Monomials.” He took the exponents chapter test on Wednesday morning and earned a perfect score. He also read about prime factoring in the Murderous Maths book Fractions and Averages: The Mean and Vulgar Bits. And he made some connections with the week’s history readings, completing two pages of Maya-themed math from Can You Count in Greek?

History & Literature:
This week, RobotBoy wrapped up ancient China and started reading about Mesoamerican civilizations. He read passages from his world history atlas, Learning Through History: Mesoamerica, The Maya: Life, Myth and Art (Timothy Laughton) and Egyptians, Maya, Minoans (Susanna Matthies). On Friday, he completed the week’s worksheet based on some of his reading. For literature, he finished The Ch’I Lin Purse: A Collection of Ancient Chinese Stories and started working on The Children’s Homer.

English:
On Monday, we read the poem “Christmas” by John Betjeman, did the associated comprehension questions and talked about the role of rhyme in poetry. On Friday, we read the chapter’s non-fiction selection, “Save the Nativity Play,” did the comprehension exercise, and went over the spelling and vocabulary lessons. We also read through our new writing model, a Chinese folk tale, on both Tuesday and Thursday, focusing on grammar and punctuation. On his own, RobotBoy did the next two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
RobotBoy continued reading with The Story of Science this week, reading the “Archimedes Claw” chapter. He also read a few chapters of Archimedes and the Door of Science. On Wednesday, because he was all caught up with work and had done so well on the math test, we treated ourselves to a slightly-educational field trip to the new T-Rex Café. Lunch left a lot to be desired, but we enjoyed touring the various rooms with all of the animatronic beasties. And RobotBoy talked me into letting him buy both a geode to split in the cool machine and a bag of stuff from which he was able to pan a few tiny fossils in the outdoor sluice thoughtfully provided by the restaurant’s management. Of course, being who he is, RobotBoy spent the last 20 minutes or so at the lunch table brainstorming how he would re-do the whole restaurant to make it so much cooler.

Spanish:
He continued working on pronouns. There were no written exercises this week. Even RobotBoy is beginning to say he wishes there were a little more written work in this book, because it helps him to reinforce and remember what he’s learning. In thinking about next year, we’re considering adding some work from an old copy of Barron’s Learn Spanish the Fast and Fun Way, just to give him some additional practice.

Greek:
He did four pages each of Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! and the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker.

Geography:
RobotBoy continued learning about Latin America, with a lesson on environmental issues and the “Flow of Goods.” He also completed the chapter review.

Other Stuff:
We had a fun theatre outing on Thursday evening, going to see a preview performance of the new play Wittenberg. [Take a look here for video snippets from the show: http://www.orlandoshakes.org/CURRENT_SEASON/Wittenberg.html] It was both funny a thought-provoking, an imagined encounter/friendship between Martin Luther and Dr. Faust, with a little bit of Hamlet thrown in.

The new ballroom class did start this week, which was a lot of fun (both for him to do and for me to watch). This means he now has five dance classes distributed over four days each week, plus choir rehearsals and organ lessons. The thing that I was most pleased about this week was organ. His teacher was apparently trying to get a better feel for where RobotBoy really is with his music reading and so on. So, he was assigned to prepare three or four pieces of his choice to play in a mini-recital for the instructor at this week’s lesson. RobotBoy worked really hard on practicing this week, and the instructor seemed quite pleased. I really hope this means we may be turning a corner with this.

Something that does seem to be helping, with both the academic stuff and the dance and music practice, is going back to making a weekly planner each Monday. RobotBoy and I sit together at my desk, go over the week’s assignments and fill in a table with the specific tasks he will do in each subject each day. We opted not to create more waste paper. So, we fill in the table in a Microsoft Word document, which I then e-mail to him. We each keep a copy open on our computers throughout the day, and he turns the appropriate text red as he finishes each task. This week, we added a section with reminders for him to do music practice and some stretching exercises (since one of his challenges with dance is improving his flexibility). I still have to do a bit more nagging – er, “gentle reminding” – than I’d like. But it does seem to help.

My 52-Book Challenge:
My official book for this week was Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser, which I liked very much. I did find Carrie, herself, kind of frustrating, because she lacked depth. I’m also working on re-reading Sense and Sensibility. And I bought a book called Leaving the Saints off the Barnes & Noble bargain table, which I read cover-to-cover one night when I couldn’t sleep. So, far, I’m ahead of schedule.

Back Again

2009-01-16T14:35:00.002-05:00

Well, here we are at the end of the first week of our second semester. It’s going surprisingly well, although we had to make a sacrifice to get here.

Here’s the big confession (which I’ve already shared with my friends over at the WTM boards): We’re dropping Latin for the rest of this year.

I know. I can hear you all gasping with disbelief.

Here’s what happened: RobotBoy really enjoyed Latin as long as we were doing the reading-based curricula. Learning Latin Through Mythology was an especially big hit. We’ve pretty much exhausted the only similar materials I can find, though, that seem like a comfortable fit for him. There are more programs that take a reading approach, but they seem to kick in mostly at the high school level. And we’re just not there yet.

We like the English Prep series from Galore Park, so we thought we’d try their Latin Prep curriculum. It was not going well. RobotBoy just didn’t seem to be retaining or understanding as much as I had hoped. So, at some point, I decided to drop back and aim to finish only the first half of the book this year. Then we got very busy and dropped back into “only the basics” mode for a few weeks before the holidays. And Latin just didn’t get done at all.

Then I had some chat with my student about how things are going for him and what we could do next year to make school more interesting. And he would prefer to kick up the challenge level a bit but streamline the number of subjects. He wants to continue Spanish and Greek, so we agreed to let Latin fall away. At that point, it seemed just plain silly to worry about doing half of a book we’re not likely to finish in the future. So, Latin is off the menu for now.

The good news is that, with Latin off the planner and the FLVS art class finished, we have much more time available to catch up on the stuff that got neglected in the second half of last semester. And we just have more breathing room, which, I suppose, may be why this week has been more pleasant than I anticipated.

Math:
This is another subject in which we fell behind before the holidays. In order to finish the course as scheduled, we now have to complete six lessons each week. It’s a tall order, but RobotBoy is tackling it pretty cheerfully. This week, he did the section on Systems of Linear Inequalities (which involved lots of looking at graphs) and started working on Properties of Exponents. He continues to like the course and earn very good grades. I think this should put him in a great place to do geometry next year.

History & Literature:
This semester kicked off with another very cool field trip, The First Emperor: China’s Terra Cotta Army at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Moonheart came along for the ride, since we were taking her back to campus. She gave the exhibit thumbs up, too. The exhibit was a wonderful way to jump start the semester, since it dovetailed nice with RobotBoy’s current reading. He also watched a DVD from Netflix about the life of China’s first emperor before we went to the museum. He’s working his way through the Nature Company Discoveries book Ancient China and has read several articles from the Learning Through History issue. He also read the pages in the Atlas of World History about the Great Wall, the terracotta army, the Han Dynasty and the silk road. His literature reading for the week included selections from The Ch’I Lin Purse: A Collection of Ancient Chinese Stories and the Oxford book of Tales From China.

We’re just a touch off kilter because of the need to catch up in some areas. So, his Child’s History of the World story for this week was about the Trojan war. He followed that up with a History Scribe page about the Trojan horse. Ah well, it’ll all come together eventually, right?

English:
We are having to pick up a little slack in this subject, too. So, this week we did the pages on demonstrative and relative pronouns and reviewed comma usage. We also read an excerpt from Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree and answered the comprehension questions. Independently, RobotBoy did two lessons of Word Roots.

Science:
RobotBoy read two chapters from The Story of Science this week, which got him caught up. I thought it was cool that the chapter on Hero and Alexandria happened to fall just when we’re finishing listening to the third Bartimaeus book. (RobotBoy read them over the summer and insisted I would love them. We’ve been listening to the audio versions on road trips, and they really are a lot of fun.) He also read a chapter of Archimedes and the Door of Science and did a project from the ancient Greece chapter of Ancient Science.

Latin:
Sigh. (See above.)

Spanish:
He finished the section on plurals and moved on to pronouns this week. He did well on the ejercicios.

Greek:
In Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! RobotBoy is practicing the words he’s learned so far, going back and forth from English to Greek. He’s doing a little catch-up work in Greek Alphabet Code Cracker, reviewing the sounds of the Greek letters. Hey, Andrew! seems to be a good fit for him. We’re planning to continue with the program next year.

Geography:
The current module is about Latin America, and the week’s lessons were about “Society and Family Life” and “Land Use and Change.” RobotBoy continues to enjoy and do well in the course. I’m not sure how much he’s retaining, but it’s a start.

Other Stuff:
All of the extracurriculars have come back into play since the beginning of the month. So, we’re back into the weekly round of tap, ballet, organ, choir, ballet, character. If all goes well, he may be adding a ballroom dance class on Monday afternoons beginning later this month. I’m still frustrated with the amount of organ practice he’s not doing and kind of at my wit’s end to figure out how to fix that problem. But, all in all, things are going well.

My New Challenge:
I’ve decided to join a group of folks from the WTM boards in challenging myself to read 52 books in 52 weeks this year. That is, to be honest, not a huge number of books for me to read, but the rules say that we can’t count things we read for school. We are allowed to count things we’ve read before, as long as it hasn’t been too recent. But my own personal goal is to make the majority of the books I choose for this year classics I’ve somehow missed or things that are in some way more of a challenge for me. In other words, I don’t want to be lazy about this. We are in our third week of the challenge, and so far I’ve read Bel Canto, by Anne Patchett (because Moonheart nagged me into it), In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote (because it was on one of the Modern Library’s “best of” lists and I saw a used copy for $1) and Joy in the Morning, by Betty Smith (because I hadn’t read it since I was a teenager and I needed something more uplifting after the first two).

Of course, this challenge, combined with the B&N buy-two-get-one-free sale on their classics line, has given me an excuse to go on a small buying spree. So, waiting in the wings are Sense and Sensibility (again, a re-read, but one I haven’t done in a few years), Mansfield Park (ditto), Pygmalion and Three Other Plays, Sister Carrie, Barchester Towers and Wings of the Dove.

I haven’t yet participated, but there is a blog to which some of my fellow book-a-weekers are contributing reviews and comments: http://read52booksin52weeks.blogspot.com/ It’s fun to see the diversity of both subject matter and opinion. I’ll keep you posted on how I’m doing.

"Weekly" Report, Huh?

2008-12-26T21:04:00.006-05:00

Okay, so I haven't posted a weekly report since October. I should probably just admit I'm never going to consistently meet that goal. So here's what happened: October was very, very busy. As I wrote in my last post, RobotBoy spent a lot of hours rehearsing and performing in Don Quixote. I added it up recently and realized that he spent 23 hours at the dance school and theatre in one week. Add in the fact that we spend at least 30-45 minutes on the road each way for each rehearsal and performance and that I volunteered to supervise the kids backstage for all but one performance, and that ballet just pretty much ate our lives for a while there.

Right after that, we took off to meet up with Moonheart for her fall break. We wisked her off on a surprise trip to NYC, including an early birthday gift of tickets to see Gypsy. Let's just say that Patti LuPone is her new hero. We did some other tourist-y things, including taking RobotBoy back to Rockefeller Center for another skating session and taking a great backstage tour of Lincoln Center. And we worked in a little education for RobotBoy by visiting the Egyptian wing at the Metropolitan Museum.

We deposited Moonheart back at school and then came home to prepare for our church's Halloween party.

By the time I woke up, it was November, which brought more intensive Nutcracker rehearsals and yet more trips to Virginia. Moonheart had to be picked up and brought home for Thanksgiving and then returned after the weekend was over. Then, a week and a half later, she had to be brought home for the semester break. In the midst of it all, RobotBoy was attending lots of rehearsals for The Nutcracker and for his choir's big holiday concert, sometimes both on the same day.

I blinked again, and it was December. No sooner had we arrived home with Moonheart than she had to rehearse with her local choir. That very weekend, she rejoined the choir for their advent concert. We were also able to get our hands on copies of the new CD the choir (including our favorite alumna) recorded last summer.

The plan had been to have RobotBoy on break by the time we brought Moonheart home. Because we were so behind, though, that didn't happen. He had to keep working for about 10 days and still didn't accomplish all I had hoped. So, here we are.

All was not lost, though. We're still behind in a few subjects, but we did manage to accomplish a lot. RobotBoy danced eight performances of The Nutcracker (including two abbreviated school matinees as Fritz) and sang with his choir. He also finished his FLVS Art class and completed the first semester of FLVS Geography. He worked through most of his assigned reading for recent months in the car and continues to make good progress in Algebra. On the Virginia road trips bookending Thanksgiving, we did field trips to the "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" exhibit in Atlanta and the "Day in Pompeii" exhibit in Charlotte, NC. At the Discovery Place in Charlotte, he also had a great time exploring the Machine Shop, which tied in nicely with the reading he's been doing about ancient science.

We're now on break until about January 12. At some point before we pick back up, I'll have to sit down and figure out how to redistribute the remaining work over the second semester. I'm not terribly worried about it, though, because finishing the art class means we'll have a little more wiggle room in our daily schedule to make up the work.

Given RobotBoy's very busy schedule this holiday season, we opted not to have him participate in the children's Christmas eve concert at church. Moonheart was asked to participate, though, and reprised her popular solo of "I'll Be Home for Christmas." She sang again for the service later that evening, doing a lovely job on a song written by our church's music director. I thought you might enjoy seeing/hearing it:

Since we are on break, I'm not going to even pretend I'll be posting again until we get back to work in January. I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season!

Still Playing Catch-Up

2008-10-06T08:20:00.005-05:00

[Insert heavy sigh here.]

We might have had a chance if it hadn't been for those extra ballet rehearsals.

We started the week with just a few "leftovers" from last week. And RobotBoy had a really good attitude about getting it all done.

Then we got the e-mail telling us that the ballet company was doing full run-throughs Tuesday through Friday afternoons, starting at 2:00 each day. They asked the boys to attend at least two of those rehearsals.

Since RobotBoy has his organ lessons at 3:00 on Thursday, followed by choir practice, we decided not to have him attend the ballet rehearsal that day. That left three days to choose from, and since "at least two" was the minimum, RobotBoy felt strongly that he should go to all three. Hence, we had very short homeschool days available because we needed to leave the house by shortly after 1:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

In addition, both of the adults had eye doctor appointments on Wednesday that took far, far longer than we had anticipated. So, RobotBoy didn't have any time available on Wednesday to do any catching up.

Hence the heavy sigh indicated above.

Still, we persevered . . . until Thursday.

I assume he was tired. In addition to being extra busy, he's so excited about the upcoming shows that he's having trouble falling asleep at night. In any case, he hit a wall with math on Thursday: couldn't concentrate, wouldn't listen, had a total meltdown. I insisted that he finish the lesson without me, since he was so ungracious about accepting my help. And he completely bombed out.

He did eventually pull it together and get the day's work done, but we ended up having to re-do Thursday's math lesson on Friday. Since he had also not done a math lesson on Wednesday, we ended up two lessons behind for the week.

It'll be okay. We'll dig out of the hole. We always do. It's just disheartening to be in so deep so early in the year.

On the other hand, I suppose that means we have that many more weeks to catch up, right?

So, here's what he did accomplish.

Math: He took the chapter test left over from last week (94%). He then did the first two lessons of the next chapter, Linear and Nonlinear Equations. The Number Devil chapter for this week was about rabbits and those "Bonacci" numbers.

History: He read about early settlements and the beginnings of civilization in his history atlas. He also read the opening chapters of Walking the Bible and some articles from the Learning Through History issue about the Ancient Near East. On Friday, he wrote a History Scribe page about Mesopotamia.

Reading: He's almost finished with The Cat of Bubastes. He says it's "pretty good." He's also been enjoying putting the mini book covers on his timeline.

English: We finished up Chapter 2 of English Prep 2, working through the vocabularly exercises (words beginning with "circum-" and toponyms) and the grammar and punctuation sections (adjectives, adverbs, serial commas). RobotBoy also completed his writing project for the week, a re-telling of the Egyptian creation myth about Nut and Geb.

Science: The hands-on projects were one of the casualties of the over-scheduled week. The plan is to try and make up at least one of them this week. We'll see how that goes. He did do all of his reading, though, which was one chapter of The Story of Science and the remaining chapters of Science in Ancient Egypt.

Latin: Ug. RobotBoy started the week with the best of intentions, planning to complete the whole week's assignments by Thursday and leaving Friday just in case he needed to catch up or make corrections. But it didn't work out that way. We got through most of the text pages I had planned, but he didn't touch the workbook exercise. Again, we'll try to work the leftovers into this week.

Spanish: Bueno! In addition to the listening exercises, RobotBoy had his first written work of the year. He has almost finished the section on prepositions, learning about how to say where things are in relation to other things. He's also learning about present progressive verbs.

Greek: He's begun working on the next group of six letters in Greek Alphabet Code Cracker and is continuing to use Hey Andrew! for review.

Geography: The Geography in Action lesson encouraged him to learn about some well-known landmarks and to consider the effects humans have on the physical enviroment. One of his favorite assignments was looking at a satellite map showing light patterns and thinking about what that map indicated about human populations.

Art: He completed lessons introducing the concepts of space and color. We're having a bit of a struggle with getting him to put more effort and more of himself into these assignments. This was a class he chose to do for fun, an elective, and I admit to feeling a bit frustrated with the amount of time it takes out of each day, compared to what he seems to be getting out of it. He enjoys it, but still tries to rush through and turn in kind of sloppy, careless work. And now that he's getting dinged in the grades for that lack of effort, he's angry and upset. I kind of which we could just drop the course, but he's well past the 30-day grace period. So, if he did drop it, there would be a note on his record. Since I hope he will do some FLVS courses for high school and want to be able to use them on his transcript, I'd like his record to stay "clean." At the moment, he's getting a solid B in the class, which is fine, as long as he is content with it. But I sort of wish we hadn't started it.

Other Stuff: Other than the above, he danced. A lot. He did all of his regular classes, plus rehearsals on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. He had his second organ lesson on Thursday. So far, so good, although the teacher is having a bit of trouble tracking down appropriate lesson books. Apparently, there aren't a whole lot of young organ students, and the materials he had planned to use are out of print. I had to laugh when he told RobotBoy he was "a rare breed." Yeah, like that's news to us! We went to an organ concert on Tuesday night, which was very cool. He had his regular choir rehearsal after organ on Thursday. And he spent a very happy Saturday morning launching model rockets with dad and the other members of the local NAR club.

So, a full and productive week, all told. I can't believe we're coming up on the end of the first quarter of the year already!

Cheating

2008-09-29T11:20:00.004-05:00

Okay, alert readers will note there was no weekly report posted this past Friday.

The truth is it had been a long and challenging week, and RobotBoy still had a fair amount of work to make up over the weekend, and I really just couldn't face typing up that report.

The good news is that he was really good about getting up and getting on-task Saturday morning with almost no nagging. The less-than-great news is that he still has a couple of minor things waiting to be finished.

The good news is that he is completely good natured about accepting the lost points for turning in his work late, freely admitting that he should have gotten it done on time. The so-so news is that I no longer have any enthusiasm for going through the motions of a weekly report for a week that doesn't seem to want to get done.

So, I'm cheating.

I realized that I have not yet posted a sample of my lesson plans for this year. And, since it's one of those things that homeschooling parents never seem to tire of discussing, I figured someone, somewhere might find it helpful.

Therefore, I am posting below the official "plan" for last week, the week that won't die. And then I'll just make a few notes about it.

Okay, what's not shown on here is the leftover reading from last week, which was selections from Exodus. We did several chapters, but are still working on finishing that this week.

As of the time we left for his dance rehearsals on Saturday afternoon, RobotBoy had finished pretty much everything on the sheet, except for two pages of Greek Alphabet Code Cracker that are "mostly done," the FLVS Geography lesson that still needs a bit of polish but should be turned in today and the Birth of Civilization DVD that didn't arrive from Netflix in time.

So, it's not terrible, but obviously we need to work on the time management and planning skills. This morning, before he started on anything, we chatted about this issue and have come up with a new strategy to help keep him on track. We created a table in Word that has columns for his four regular desk work days and rows for each subject. The idea is that we'll look together at the the week's assignments and fill in how much of each thing he's aiming to do each day. Since the last thing I want to do is create more scrap paper, we've decided to try keeping it virtual for now. We filled in the sheet together, and I e-mailed a copy of the file to him. (That way, I still have the original in case it gets "lost" or something goes wrong.)

He is keeping his copy open on his computer so he can look at the plan as he goes. As he completes each task, he changes the color of the text. Sp far, as of when he took a break for lunch at 1:00, he had finished his designated chunks for today of math, history, art and geography.

He's enthusiastic so far about the new approach and is making an effort to "front load" the week, meaning he'll try to do more than one quarter of each subject each day, leaving himself room to catch up later in the week if he needs to do so. We'll see how it goes.

The other piece of news for last week is that RobotBoy had his first organ lesson. He had a great time, seems very enthusiastic and even practiced (including on the weekend) without requiring nagging. So that, as they say, is a good thing.

And that is probably enough for now.

The Tweakly Report

2008-09-19T10:53:00.007-05:00

Well, here we are again, huh?

This was our first more or less "normal" week, and it went reasonably well. RobotBoy did miscalculate his workload just a bit, knocking off early on Monday, which resulted in a long and slightly icky day on Thursday. But we got through it without major drama.

Here's the run-down:

Math - This week's lessons introduced graphing linear equations. RobotBoy did well with it. I continue to be pleasantly surprised at how quickly and easily he seems to absorb this stuff. On Friday, he read he next chapter of The Number Devil and learned all about "rutabagas" (square roots).

History - RobotBoy dived into early cultures this week, reading about "The First Europeans" and "The Rise of Agriculture" in his history atlas. He also read a National Geographic article about Stonehenge and watched the accompanying documentary on DVD. His worksheet for this week was on the same topic.

Reading - We finished reading the selections I had chosen from Genesis and moved on to Exodus. RobotBoy is familiar with the story but is finding it interesting to hear the "original" version. On his own, he read Jill Rubalcaba's A Place in the Sun. Just for fun, he watched Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

English - He started the week with the next lesson of Word Roots. Together, we did the first reading comprehension exercise in the next chapter of English Prep 2. The fiction except for this chapter was from The Lord of the Flies. RobotBoy actually had to look up some of the vocabulary, but he did very well answering the questions. He also worked on his Gilgamesh writing project, turning in a pretty good first draft on Tuesday and the final version on Friday. Now, if only he'd pay just a bit more (okay, any) attention to his spelling . . .

Science - This week, he read "Ionia? What's Ionia?" in The Story of Science and the last three chapters of Science in Ancient Mesopotamia. For his project, he chose to do the "Scrubbing Bubbles" experiment from the Ancient Science chapter on Mesopotamia. On his free day, Wednesday, he watched two episodes of Chased by Dinosaurs.

Languages - This week in Latin Prep 1 he had his first meaningful encounter with verb declensions. He did not have a particularly great time with the concept. We'll keep plugging along, though, and I'm sure it will sink in. His Spanish lessons have focused on saying the same thing in two different ways:

La banana está debajo del tazón.
La banana está bajo el tazón.

I'm sure that will come in handy someday, right? He's also chugging right along in Greek, working with the first 10 letters of the alphabet.

Geography - He finished the first module of the course this week, with lessons designed to help students understand what geography is (and isn't) and why it's important. I'm rather looking forward to him getting to the more substantive lessons.

Art - His major project for the week was completing a series of gesture drawings. He seemed to enjoy that. He started a second lesson that required drawings of common household items, but ran out of time to finish that one.

Extras- Rehearsals for both ballets continued this week, as did choir rehearsal. On Thursday evening, we enjoyed a family outing to see Kiss Me, Kate, the first production of the season at the Shakespeare Theatre. It was fun, and RobotBoy especially enjoyed the dancing.

Homework - Because RobotBoy initially underestimated his workload for the week, he hit Friday with quite a lot still to do. Having been out late on Thursday and looking forward to a longer-than-usual block of dance rehearsals and classes on Friday evening, he ended the week with a few assignments to be finished over the weekend. He could have pushed through and finsihed more on Friday afternoon, but wanted to make sure he got some rest in preparation for the evening. So, he'll be spending Saturday morning completing some Latin workbook exercises, a page of Greek and the rest of the second art lesson. It shouldn't take him too long, which is a good thing, since he's got another chunk of ballet rehearsals in the afternoon.

Oh, and by the way, I just have to give credit to vix and her comment from last week for the name of this post!

Week Three, and We're Still Here

2008-09-12T09:32:00.014-05:00

We had yet another minor scheduling upheaval this week, with friends we haven't seen in years coming into town to visit The Mouse and making time for us while they were here. So, RobotBoy very graciously agreed to switch his day off to Tuesday. We also had a bit of catching up to do on work left over from last week. All in all, we've been busy.

But we did have a great time catching up with our friends, which made it all worthwhile!

Math - RobotBoy had the chapter test from last week left over and had a bit of a rough time getting in the zone on Monday. He did manage, though, and did quite well (92%). We had a minor kerfluffle on Thursday when I insisted he show his work and ended up making a new rule that he will lose points every time he doesn't. Once that blew over, things were fine, and he did well on all of his assignments this week. We're still slightly behind, but he has agreed to do this week's test on Saturday morning, which will put us back on schedule. He also read another chapter of The Number Devil, this one about "prima donna" numbers.

History - We're wrapping up our overview of prehistory and beginning the transition to early civilizations. So, this week he read about the spread of homo sapiens in his Atlas of World History and and almost finished the book about the ice age. He also read "Fire! Fire! Fire!" from A Child's History of the World and watched two short videos about Mesopotamia. (The Schlessinger video was from their Ancient Civilizations for Kids series, and RobotBoy was, to put it mildly, unenthusiastic. He said he thought they took the "for kids" part a little too seriously and that the host talked to him like he was two years old. Hmm, I guess I'd better take the rest of the series off the agenda, huh?)

Reading - Geraldine McCaughrean's Gilgamesh the Hero has gone over very well here. I pre-read it, and I have to admit it makes so much more sense than the very literal but very fragmented version I read with Moonheart a few years ago! RobotBoy is reading that one independently, and together we are reading highlights from Genesis. We're using the New International Version, which I'm finding quite readable. We also watched the "Darmok" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (in which Picard re-tells part of Gilgamesh), just for fun. The history/literature "output" for this week was a worksheet with questions about the Tower of Babel.

English - We wrapped up the first chapter of English Prep 2, working through the vocabulary, grammar and punctuation sections. RobotBoy learned about eponyms and practiced recognizing how a single word can play different parts of speech in different sentences. We introduced his next writing model, an excerpt from a version of Gilgmesh different from the one he's reading. We talked a bit about narrative voice and decided that this excerpt is written in the third person omnicient. Finally, he did the next two lessons of Word Roots.

Science - RobotBoy read the chapter in The Story of Science about early calendars and two chapters of Science in Ancient Mesopotamia. He did a simple experiment from Ancient Science: 40 Time-Traveling, World-Exploring, History-Making Activities for Kids, which was a bit hit mostly because it gave him an excuse to use a knife on a wooden dowel. Just for fun, he watched the remaining three episodes of Prehistoric Park.

Languages - Latin Prep 1 seems to be really clicking for him. This week, he was introduced to some regular, first conjugation verbs, and he did very well translating back and forth between Latin and English. In Spanish, he did several more pages of listening exercises. He finished Unit 2 of the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker, introducing the first six letters, and did two pages of Hey Andrew to help him review. By the way, I just have to mention that the RobotBoy is having so much fun with the Code Cracker book that he insisted on making extra copies of the decoder wheel to give to a couple of friends from church so they can send each other secret messages.

Geography - RobotBoy is still in the "introduction" phase of this course. He "met" his instructor over the phone on Monday. She sounds very nice and very approachable. The lesson for this week required him to survey 10 people about their knowledge of and attitudes toward geography as a subject and to compile the and analyze the results.

Art - The lesson that lingered from last week got finished on Monday. RobotBoy had to view an online exhibit of Roy Lichtenstein works, create his own sketch of one piece and participate in an online discussion. In the primary lesson for this week, he learned some art-related vocabulary.

Other News - RobotBoy happily returned to choir rehearsal on Thursday. He came out of the choir room bouncing and singing and ready for another year. Tomorrow, he will attend his first rehearsals for both The Nutcracker and Don Quixote, which will keep him busy most of the afternoon. Sunday school classes have also begun at our church, which I suppose means the year is officially in full swing.

Today's Visitors

2008-09-11T13:13:00.002-05:00

These guys wandered into the yard early this afternoon and hung around for quite a while. RobotBoy (and our cats) had a grand time watching them graze.

The Joys of Living Next to a Conservation Area

2008-09-10T12:23:00.002-05:00

The Weekly Report

2008-09-05T09:38:00.010-05:00

This was a challenging week, schedule-wise. When I wrote my lesson plans for this year, I just divided the whole she-bang into 30 equal portions, figuring we'd adjust as necessary as we went. But, honestly, there's not a lot of wiggle room to do that adjusting, given what a compressed schedule we're working with already.

So, here we are in our second week of school, in which we have a national holiday (Labor Day) and my husband's birthday. Now, we feel free to ignore and work through legal holidays, especially since we take off so many days that school kids and office workers don't. However, we have a general policy of not doing school on days when Dad is on vacation. He had Labor Day off, and he traditionally gives himself the "gift" of a day off on his birthday.

Because RobotBoy is on a four-day schedule for desk work, we can pretty easily absorb a single day off. However, two days off in a single week presents a bit of a challenge. We went over the assignment list at the beginning of the week, and RobotBoy felt confident he could squeeze in everything he needed to do. I opted to let him try.

This led to some icky moments on Friday, when he overslept and couldn't get into gear, while I was tense about how much he had left to accomplish. Always a bad combination. Things came to a head over the first reading comprehension exercise. He normally eats these things alive, but had left all of the assignments for the week until Friday and was trying to rush through them. Our new grading plan for this year allots him 5 points for every one of these exercises he does "correctly, with good effort." So, I was able to bring things back on track by reminding him of that and telling him that he had already lost one point.

Here's a copy of the grading plan, by the way. We each have one tacked on our cork boards.

Once the smoke cleared, here's how the week looked.

Math - The lessons for this week were about absolute values and how to deal with them in equations. RobotBoy did very, very well with this, turning in perfect-on-the-first-try work for three out of four assignments. As I mentioned above, he has the chapter test still to finish sometime over the weekend. Still on his agenda (perhaps in the car going to and from dance this afternoon) is reading the second chapter of The Number Devil.

History - We're still in the prehistory phase. RobotBoy read from his atlas and a book called Exploring the Ice Age. He also did the "People Who Lived in Caves" story from A Child's History of the World and completed a handout/worksheet on "The Life of the Earliest People."

Reading - Continuing with our prehistoric theme, he read Dar and the Spearthrower.

English - We did the aforementioned reading comprehension exercise in English Prep 2, plus a few more comprehension, grammar and vocabulary exercises. RobotBoy turned in his first draft of his Genesis retelling. It needed some corrections, but he did a good job with them and turned in a nice, clean final draft on Friday. Here's his retelling side-by-side with the model from which he worked:

He also did Lesson 3 of Word Roots, earning a perfect score on his first attempt. (Woo-hoo!)

Science - The highlight of the week was probably finishing his triceratops excavation and assembling the skeleton:

He also finished reading the book that came with the kit, plus the chapter about creation myths from The Story of Science and the introductory chapter of Science in Ancient Mesopotamia. I got him the first disk of the Prehistoric Park series from Netflix, and he thoroughly enjoyed the first three episodes. Even though we'll be moving on from dinos next week, I may go ahead and bring in the second disk, just for fun.

Languages - He continues to enjoy Greek Alphabet Code Cracker, and his first assignments from Hey Andrew! earned good reviews, too. So far, he's learned the first four letters. I was very pleased at how well he got through his first "real" assignments in Latin Prep, even remembering some of the vocabulary he was familiar with from last year. He also did quite well with the first few workbook exercises. And he did several pages of listening exercises from The Learnables Spanish Grammar Enhancement, which seemed to go well.

Geography - The lesson for this week introduced the concept of the world as a village of 100 people. He watched an online presentation about the idea and then did an assignment that required him to find specific statistics. It seemed to make a big impression.

Art - RobotBoy turned in his first hands-on art projects this week. This is not an area of strength for him, so we'll see how it goes. Again, this is a course he chose to do for fun, so I just hope he has a good time learning some basics.

He still has a few tidbits to make up over the weekend, but I feel pretty good about what we accomplished in a very short and interrupted week.

Wordless Wednesday

2008-09-03T07:24:00.002-05:00

Is It Halloween Already?

2008-08-31T13:32:00.011-05:00

Well, no, but RobotBoy has been bugging me about his costume since sometime in June. So, this weekend we did some re-arranging to create a crafting space in a corner of our kitchen and got started on that project.

I think I'll save telling the specifics of what/who he will be for later. But here are some photos to pique your interest.

We started with the sheild, cutting a nice round out of cardboard and attaching straps on the back for RobotBoy's arm.

We threaded the straps through slits in the cardboard and tacked them down.

Then we went to work on the breastplate. RobotBoy did most of the cutting.

We bent it roughly to fit around his torso and used some tape to hold the shape.

The last step (for today) was applying the first layer of paper mache to both pieces and setting them out to dry.

It feels like a good start.

We Survived!

2008-08-29T08:58:00.006-05:00

Our first week of the new school year, that is.

Actually, it's gone pretty well. We kept to our routine all but one day, completed all the assigned work for the week and even managed a field trip. As I've written about before, I have been very, very nervous that we had bitten off more than we could chew this year, especially given the compressed schedule required in order to work around Moonheart's college calendar. Now, though I'm knocking on the wood of my desk as I type this, I'm beginning to feel that we might be able to pull this off.

Here's what he did:

Math - One of the things about which I was most concerned was math, especially since we would be jumping back into the midst of an algebra course he started last year. For the first time, I required no review over the summer, and I thought it very likely that he would lose a lot of ground. Instead, though, he got in there and picked up where he left off with no discernable problems. He completed the unit on Using Inequalities with little trouble and near-perfect scores. On Friday, he earned an A on his first math test of the year. He also seems to be enjoying the idea of the supplemental reading, getting through the first chapter of The Number Devil bright and early Monday morning.

History - He read sections from various books about prehistory, from dinosaurs to cave folk. He also watched the short video about Aboriginal Rock Art on the National Geographic for Kids website. He then did a review/worksheet about prehistoric art.

Reading - Tying in with the prehistoric art theme, his assigned reading this week was the novel Boy of the Painted Cave. He enjoyed it very much, although he was sad when Greybeard died.

English - We did the first reading comprhension exercise in English Prep 2 and introduced our first writing model of the year, adapted from Genesis ("In the beginning . . ."). RobotBoy also worked through the first two lessons of Word Roots B1.

Science - He read the first chapter of The Story of Science, which got thumbs up. Together, we watched the first two episodes of the Nova series Origins, which we'll finish next week. He also read the first half of the book that came with the triceratops excavation kit and starting digging into the project. On Wednesday, we took a field trip to Dinosaur World, which we've been driving past for several years but had never done before. I fully expected it to be terribly cheesy, but it was very nicely done.

While I could certainly have lived without the oppressive heat and the biting bugs, I can't blame the owners/operators for those. And, of course, the whole day might have been more pleasant had my car not quit and had to be towed to the local dealership for repairs . . . Nonetheless, RobotBoy had a good time and might even have learned a few things.

Languages - We read together through the introductory pages of Latin Prep 1. I have to admit that the pronounciation thing is likely to be my downfall, but we'll keep plugging away. On his own, RobotBoy tackled the first several exercises of The Learnables: Spanish Grammar Enhancement and the opening pages of Greek Alphabet Code Cracker. He's especially enthusiastic about the Greek.

Geography - He dug into the first lesson of the FLVS middle school World Geography course, which, as usual, was mostly about the mechanics of the course rather than actual content. The motif sounds interesting, though, and I suspect he'll enjoy this one.

Art - This is another FLVS course, with a motif that will certainly appeal: pretending to be a comic book artist. I'm not quite sure how that will play out as the course continues, but the syllabus looks pretty good. This is one that RobotBoy chose to do for fun, so I'm not worrying too much about the rigor.

That's it for schoolwork. RobotBoy also had his first full week back at dance classes, after the school had to close for Fay-related weather a couple of days last week. He seems very happy to be back. He auditioned for both The Nutcracker and Don Quixote and was cast in both ballets. It sounds like the young boys won't have a whole lot to do in Don Quixote, but RobotBoy always enjoys any opportunity to perform. We're still waiting to hear the details of his participation in The Nutcracker, but it sounds like he'll have about as much to do as last year. Fortunately, most of the rehearsals for both pieces will be scheduled on Saturday afternoons, which will at least minimize the number of car trips I'll be making for the next couple of months.

Next week, we'll add Thursday afternoon choir rehearsals to the mix. And we're waiting to hear for sure about the new tap class, which is tentatively scheduled to begin next week, also.

So, I guess we'll just see how it goes from here, but it's definitely not a bad start to the year.

Ready . . . Set . . .Really?

2008-08-24T15:44:00.006-05:00

Tomorrow is the big day. Now that Moonheart is safely settled back into her dorm and I've had a couple of days to recover, RobotBoy and I will be starting our 2008-09 academic year tomorrow.

I'm ready, right?

I keep reminding myself that I have only one child to teach and that, if things aren't going well, I have the flexibility to change them around until it's better. I have tons of resources and my lesson plans in place and our schoolroom and supplies all organized. And I've been doing this for a few years, now. So, honestly, why do I still feel nervous?

I suppose that's a mystery we may never solve. So, let's just go on to talking about the plan.

We're cycling back around to the ancients this year, and I've done my best to run that thread through all subjects and give RobotBoy the opportunity to make lots of connections.

Here are his shelves, with all the books for the year all ready to go:

History: We're going with our home-designed approach again, although I'm trying to kick things up just a notch or two from last year. I'm adding in the Parragon Atlas of World History as a spine, which RobotBoy will read alongside the first 40 stories from the Child's History of the World CD/ROM. He'll also read another 17-ish non-fiction books, magazines or articles about specific historical people, places and events. I've cut back a bit on the number of DVDs and videos from last year, but still plan to make good use of our Netflix account. I'm determined to increase his "output" for this year, but hesitant to insist on the heavy duty outlining and narration suggested in The Well-Trained Mind. So, I've collected/created worksheets and review pages for him to do each week. He may also do some hands-on projects, and we have at least three good field trips on the agenda.

Literature: I've pulled together a stack of more than 20 books the coordinate with our history study. I think RobotBoy will enjoy most of them very much. He has become fascinated with the concept of the "hero's journey" and delights in comparing various books and movies that tie in with that theme. So, we're going to spend some time chatting about Joseph Campbell and discussing those concepts as they come up in his reading for this year.

Grammar & Writing: He'll continue with Galore Park's English Prep (Book 2), but we'll skip the writing exercises in favor of trying out the progymnasmata approach as outlined in Classical Writing. I've modified the suggested schedule to fit into our routine. So, we'll be spending two weeks with each model: the first week reading and picking it apart for grammar and style, the second week doing the actual writing project. Our samples are all drawn from the literature or culture RobotBoy will be reading about in history in those weeks. We're also going to try again to get around to the next volume of Word Roots, which got dropped from our schedule last year due to computer troubles.

Science: I think he'll have fun with this, spending the year learning about science in ancient civilizations. He'll use Hakim's Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way as a spine, supplementing with the six-book Science of the Past series and Jeanne Bendick's Archimedes and the Door of Science and Galen and the Gateway to Medicine. For the hands-on component, he'll use Ancient Science: 40 Time-Travelling, World-Exploring, History-Making Activities for Kids.

Math: This is the subject about which I feel the most nervousness and ambivalence. Right now, the plan is to continue with the University of California open access algebra course he started last year. However, I have recently realized that I'm not doing a very good job of making math seem particularly interesting. So, we're going to try adding in some supplemental, "fun" math reading (The Number Devil, Murderous Maths). And, in an nod toward creating a connection to the history theme, he'll play around with the activities in Can You Count in Greek?

Languages: He's continuing with The Learnables for Spanish, doing the Grammar Enhancement package this year. For Latin, we're moving to Galore Park's Latin Prep, which I'm hoping will be as good a fit for him as is their English series. And, just for fun, he's going to do a light introduction to ancient Greek, using the Greek Alphabet Code Cracker from Classical Academic Press and Hey Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek, book 2.

Other Stuff: He's also signed up to take two classes with Florida Virtual School, World Geography and a single-semester introduction to two-dimensional art. The geography class was my idea, the art his. At this point, I consider both of them expendable if we determine that his academic load is too heavy. And, although we're not doing a formal logic program, he will be doing a couple of puzzles a week from something I found on a bargain table called The Giant Book of Mensa Critical Thinking Puzzles.

Every time I sit down and type it all out, it starts to look like an awful lot of work. And when I remember that we're planning to continue doing four-day weeks (with Wednesdays off and/or available for hands-on activities or field trips), I really have to fight down panic. But RobotBoy just looks at the list and shrugs and assures me he can handle it. So, I guess we'll see . . . bright and early tomorrow!

Let's Try This Again

2008-08-13T19:12:00.005-05:00

Well, I had the best of intentions. Honest. But those last three months of the school year just did me in, and the whole Weekly Reporter thing was one of the casualties (along with folding laundry and cooking dinner more than three nights per week).

Anyway, here we are approaching a brand new academic year. A fresh start, perhaps?

In an attempt to get myself all energized to start that new year, I've spent some time over the last couple of weeks cleaning up and re-organizing our schoolroom. I even quit practicing denial about Moonheart not schooling with us anymore and moved her desk out of the room. It made me feel a bit misty, such tangible evidence of the end of an era, but we do appreciate the extra floor space.

So, without further ado, here's what it looks like now:

This is the "nerve center" of the space, RobotBoy at his desk on the right (playing a game, truth be told) and my desk on the left. One of the things I like about the new arrangement is that I get to sit right next to the window. RobotBoy didn't like having his desk there, because he didn't like the glare of the sun on his laptop screen. But I just love the view and the natural light.

On the wall between our desks are four timelines from Milliken: Early Africa, Mesopotamia, Ancient Israel and Ancient Rome. They have lots of good graphics and information and should be helpful for quick reference during the year.

Here's the opposite wall, RobotBoy's books and curriculum for this year on the third and fourth shelves (counting from top down) on the bookcase next to the window. My stuff--including answer keys and books I might want to refer to during this year and anything reproducible--is on the shelf above his books. The other two shelves have generic supplies: printer paper, books that didn't have any other home, etc. The bookcase on the left has all of my parenting/education books, dictionaries and other reference things, projects from previous years and assorted arts and craft supplies in the plastic bins.

Here's another view of my desk (near the window!). The plastic bags on the floor are full of supplies waiting to be donated to our church's Religious Education program. One of the things of which I'm most proud is that sheet of white paper smack in the center of the corkboard over my desk: It contains my grading standards for every subject for this year. It's the first time I've ever actually sat down and worked out a logical and consistent grading plan in advance, and the hope is that seeing it there in black and white will motivate my darling son to take his work more seriously.

And, finally, a better view of RobotBoy's domain. The colorful posters are of various Greek/Roman gods and goddesses, tying in with our ancients theme for the year. I moved the world map from its ignominious position behind the door to a place of honor next to RobotBoy's desk. The green strip beneath the map is the portion of our timeline that covers the historical period we'll be studying. The plan is to add a similar strip for each of the other three eras as we get to them. Under that is a map of ancient Persia that my husband found in a recent National Geographic.

So, in terms of physical space, we're about as ready to go as we can get.

The lesson plans are pretty much done, too, but I'll chat about that in another post.

So, now all I have to do is get Moonheart through the final weekend of her current show, make sure she is packed up and ready to head back to college by this time next week, drive her there, move her into her dorm room and drive back. Yep, I should have all kinds of energy left over to start school bright and early the following Monday morning, right?

Trying to Get Back in the Swing

2008-02-23T00:28:00.001-05:00

We dived right back into our regular routine this week, with a full slate of extra-curriculars and a more-than-full slate (thanks to needing to make up the work missed over the last few weeks) of regular desk work. The whole process was made more challenging by the fact that we didn’t really take time to catch our breath before we took the leap. Our plane touched down at shortly after 9:30 on Saturday night, meaning that it was after 10:00 before we claimed our luggage and drove home. For reasons that seem slightly insane to me now, we decided to get up on Sunday and go to church. (That did not go well, mostly, I suspect, because RobotBoy was both over-tired and overwhelmed by his experiences of the last few weeks.) Then, he was scheduled to go sing a concert with his choir on Sunday afternoon.

So, Monday morning arrived all too soon.

Nonetheless, we’ve tried to forge ahead.

Math:
RobotBoy started working his way through the University of California College Prep open access Algebra One course this week. He did the first three sections of the first lesson—Real Numbers; Variables, Expressions and Equations; Number Operations—with nary a whimper or problem. He earned perfect scores on all three assignments and says he really likes the format. I’m crossing my fingers that it continues to go well.

History & Literature:
At long last, the conclusion of Great Expectations is in sight. I anticipate finishing it by about Tuesday of next week, after which we will move on to our next read-aloud, Around the World in 80 Days. RobotBoy finished The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on Tuesday and is about halfway through Treasure Island. He also read Mark Twain in Lives of the Writers: Comedies, Tragedies (and What the Neighbors Thought) and about Rutherford B. Hayes in Time for Learning: The Presidents. Through the magic of Netflix, he watched an A&E Biography about Thomas Edison.

English:
We did major league catching up in English Prep this week, since this was one of the subjects that got seriously neglected while we were running around. RobotBoy finished the remaining reading comprehension exercise for this chapter, as well as doing all the grammar and vocabulary orally and completing a writing assignment. There wasn’t as much “writing” as I would usually require, but he was so good about tackling it independently and making all the corrections I asked for that I decided to let it be enough.

Science:
He did some more reading from Human Body and Earth’s Waters, with extra helpings of each to get us back on schedule. Wednesday brought the second meeting of his chemistry class at the science center, where they did all kinds of good hands-on activities and attended a show about the many uses of liquid nitrogen.

Latin:
RobotBoy was back to Minimus Secundus, completing most of a chapter this week. He read and translated both picture stories, did an activity sheet about positive and negative imperatives and read the Roman Report about having a baby in ancient Britain. On Friday, we went through the Grasp the Grammar and Latin Roots exercises together.

Spanish:
It just happened that this week’s pages from The Learnables didn’t include any written ejercicios, and I got a bit nervous about how much attention RobotBoy was really paying. So, we sat down together on Thursday and went over all the pages for the week together, just to make sure he was staying on top of things. He did stumble a few times, but I remain impressed with how much he learns and retains from this program.

Music:
RobotBoy spent some time listening to and singing through the two excerpts from “The William Tell Overture” in Themes to Remember. He also watched a Great Composers DVD about Franz Schubert, and made some very interesting comparisons between Der Erlking and the opera in which he recently performed.

Other Stuff:
Why is it I always think that “things will calm down after the holidays?” You’d think by now I’d know that doesn’t happen. Especially when it comes to all the performance activities, it seems like things just get more hectic from February through the end of the academic year. In RobotBoy’s dance classes, they are starting to work seriously on their recital pieces, and his choir has either an extra rehearsal or a performance scheduled at least two weekends a month. Add to that the fact that his Pirates of Penzance performances will happen in late April and that he has a birthday coming up in March, and it becomes clear that there is no calm in sight. It is equally clear, however, that RobotBoy is truly happy and thriving on this routine, so I suppose it’s all worth it.

At least I'm sure I'll think it is once I get some sleep!

The New York Adventure

2008-02-18T11:57:00.006-05:00

Oh, where to begin? I feel as though we were gone for much longer than the single week.

Well, first of all, the rehearsals and “presentations” for the opera went very well. The approach to these performances was quite different from what they had done for the first two at the arts center. Here in Florida, although they had only minimal sets and props, they did much more in the way of staging and had everyone moving about the stage and really “performing” the piece. The New York performances were billed as “musical readings,” and all of the performers spent most of the time just singing or speaking into standing mics. In addition, they were recording the piece, so there was a lot more attention paid to how things sounded. So, RobotBoy had the opportunity to work closely with the music director and the composer during rehearsals, which was really cool.

They did two readings, and, as in Florida, the audience feedback was very positive. The types of comments and questions were different, with the New Yorkers much more interested in the nuts and bolts of production. However, the general feeling in both places was pretty enthusiastic. People would really like to see the full production. And there was universal praise for the whole cast, including my little guy.

By the time he was done, RobotBoy was pretty tired, but was still sad to know it was over. Fortunately, he still has the junior Pirates of Penzance production on the horizon. So he doesn’t feel completely bereft.

Although we did no formal “schoolwork” while we were away, we did manage to get in a couple of outings I can count as field trips. First on RobotBoy’s agenda, given his ongoing fascination with samurai, was the Arms and Armor exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. He was absolutely delighted to find three rooms full of Japanese armor and swords, and I was, honestly, surprised at how much he had retained from his reading and research on the subject.

We used our last free day mostly at the American Museum of Natural History, where RobotBoy spent a few hours exploring. He devoted most of his time to the Rose Center for Earth and Space. We walked the Cosmic Pathway, which traces the entire history of the universe at several million years per foot. We visited the Big Band Theater and saw the wonderful Cosmic Collisions in the Hayden Planetarium. He found out how much he would weigh on various planets, the sun and even on a neutron star.

Of course, one cannot visit this particular museum without seeing the dinosaurs. So, we also browsed the Fossil Halls before taking our leave.

In between rehearsals and performances and educational field trips, we also managed to just plain have some fun exploring Manhattan. We rode the Ferris wheel and did some shopping in the ginormous Toys R Us in Times Square. We rode many different subways from Soho to the Village to midtown and Central Park, and we tried different restaurants in “Little India” on 6th Street. RobotBoy went ice skating (in a borrowed, too-large ski jacket) at Rockefeller Center on Monday . . .

. . . and then again at Wollman Rink in Central Park on Friday:

I waited in line at TKTS while RobotBoy was in rehearsal one afternoon and scored us tickets to his see first Broadway show. We saw Curtains at the really lovely Al Hirschfeld Theater. Coincidentally, we happened to decide to go on the annual Kids on Broadway night, which meant we got a discount on dinner at the Times Square Planet Hollywood and were treated to a brief post-curtain speech from David Hyde Pierce following the show. He reminisced about being taken to see his very first Broadway show when he was nine years old, and it was just magical, like he was speaking directly to RobotBoy.

All in all, I suspect I may have done just a bit too good a job showing him around the city, since he was downright reluctant to come home! I’ve assured him I’ll be happy to move to New York with him just as soon as he gets rich and famous enough to support his dad and me in the style to which we’d like to become accustomed.

But, in the meantime, we’ll try and settle down to getting some schoolwork done.

A Whole Week of Relative Normalcy

2008-02-09T07:58:00.000-05:00

So, RobotBoy finished his two-week sojourn at the arts center. It was a wonderful experience for him, personally, and the show seemed to be very successful. Although it was technically open to the public for both presentations, they really promoted the second one. And, on that night, they had so many reservations that they had to add chairs. They got a standing ovation and lots of great audience feedback for both the show and the performers.

Sometime during week two, we got word that they wanted him to come to New York to participate in two more presentations. This possibility had been mentioned before rehearsals began, but became “real” when they bought us the plane tickets. So, next week, we’re off on that adventure. RobotBoy has never been on an airplane and hasn’t been to NYC since he was an infant in a stroller. As you can imagine, this is very big news for him.

Needless to say, I’m not planning on trying to accomplish anything academic next week. Instead, I re-wrote my lesson plans for the month to pull in the left-over assignments from last week and all of February and compacted it into the three weeks we’ll actually have. And I did my mean mommy act and cracked the whip this week to make sure we got things done while we were here.

Math:
Having finished his online math class (with a nice A, thank you very much!), he began this week reading through Painless Algebra. The idea was that it would be a gentle introduction and that he could start a full-fledged algebra class in the fall. However, somewhere around Wednesday of this week, he began telling me Painless Algebra just wasn’t interesting for him, because there was too much reading and not enough equations. So, we sat down together and looked at the University of California College Prep (UCCP) open source Algebra One online class, which I had been keeping in the back of my mind for him to do next year. He really liked the look of it, and we’ve decided to have him go ahead and start that now, moving slowly. With RobotBoy, all math plans are always subject to change, but the plan right now is for him to complete slightly less than one-third of the course this year, then spread the rest over the 2008-2009 academic year. I’ll keep you posted . . .

History & Literature:
We’re still plugging away at Great Expectations. We’re really enjoying it, but are having a tough time finding enough time to read. RobotBoy finished Dragon’s Gate during the second arts center week. He is now reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I had intended for him to finish Alice and then start Tom, but he chose to do them concurrently. He seems to be enjoying them both, especially if I will let him get comfortable in my new patio lounge chair while he reads. He watched a Modern Marvels DVD about the invention of the telephone. For fun, he’s reading Kate DiCamillo’s Tale of Despereaux.

English:
We did some reading comprehension exercises on Monday, and RobotBoy spent the rest of his time this week on that essay he owed me from before the opera. He finally got it done and wrote out his clean copy on Friday. It’s still like pulling teeth to get him to write more than a couple of sentences, but he did manage to produce something that looks a lot like an essay.

Science:
He read this week from Human Body and Earth’s Waters. The thing that seemed to make the biggest impression on him was the section about water treatment. He interrupted my lunch on Friday to show me the diagrams from the book and explicate them in great detail. (Lucky me.) Since the Marine Science books seem to be giving us the least bang for our bucks and contain lessons that are not sequential or dependent on each other, they were one of the few things I jettisoned from our compressed lesson plans to save us a little time. On Wednesday, he went to the first afternoon of the Chemistry series at the science museum. He said it was mostly review for him, since we did chemistry last year, but he had fun.

Latin:
In the name of catching up, he did two lessons in Learning Latin Through Mythology this week. He read the stories of “Diana and Acteon” and “Echo and Narcissus,” translated their accompanying picture stories, and did the worksheets. He even voluntarily did the extra activities, making a flip book of Acteon’s transformation into a stag and looking up pictures of flowers mentioned in myths. He seems to enjoy this book quite a lot.

Spanish:
More of The Learnables: Basic Structures. He hit a snag with Monday’s ejercicios and had to go back and look up a few vocabulary words, but then got back on track and breezed through the rest of the week.

Music:
This is the one thing I can think of that didn’t get done this week. He was supposed to read about and learn the snippet of the “Piano Quintet in A” from Themes to Remember, but I don’t think he got around to it. Maybe it’ll get done this weekend before we leave town?

Other Stuff:
After two weeks of hitting only the occasional outside class, RobotBoy returned to his regular schedule of activities this week. Right after we returned on Saturday, he went with his choir to sing for a wedding in a city about an hour south of us. Then he did piano on Monday afternoon, followed by a two-hour rehearsal/class for Pirates of Penzance Junior that evening. He had his boys’ class at the ballet school on Tuesday and the regular class on Wednesday after science. It’s Parent Observation week at the dance school, and I just have to mention how impressed I am with how much they have learned this year. Thursday brought his regular choir rehearsal and Friday the weekly three-class marathon at dance.

Unfortunately, RobotBoy twisted his ankle a bit in the second class, and his ballet teacher decided it was safest to send him home to rest. After a couple of hours on the couch last night with the ankle propped up and iced, there is no swelling. And he says it feels much better this morning.

More Other Stuff:
Last Sunday afternoon, I bowed out of the way to allow RobotBoy and his dad to have a "guys' only" afternoon at the ballet. They saw a dance adaptation of Pirates of Penzance, which they said was lots of fun. One of the boys from RobotBoy's dance school was having his birthday party in conjunciton with the show, so they spent some time participating in those festivities.

We also had tickets for a show at the Shakespeare Theatre on Thursday evening. It was a new play about a string quartet preparing for a major performance and was very good. (I especially noticed that there is a great part for Moonheart when she gets just a bit older.)

I ended up having to change the dates for a couple of the children’s theatre productions we signed up for at the beginning of the year because RobotBoy has conflicts with the original dates. As it turned out, the only way for us to see the production of Treasure Island was to go this week to one of the school matinees. So, we did that on Friday morning. Normally, we avoid student shows, because, frankly, the kids so often don’t behave very well and don’t have adequate supervision. And I usually demand that RobotBoy read the source material before we see a play or film version, which he hasn’t done yet. Consequently, I wasn’t entirely pleased with the whole idea. However, as it turned out, the audience was fine, and the show didn’t give away the ending of the book. So, now RobotBoy is looking forward to reading the original.

RobotBoy will take some history and literature reading with him next week. And we may take his laptop. However, I don’t really anticipate him getting a whole lot done while New York lies outside waiting to be explored. We are planning at least one museum field trip while we’re there and may do more, depending on how busy he is with rehearsals.

Next week’s report may not be posted “on schedule,” but I do promise to share our experiences in “The Big City” after we return.

And now, I’m off to pack!

Hanging in Here

2008-01-25T12:16:00.000-05:00

Well, RobotBoy continues to be absorbed by the opera project. This week, he's been in rehearsals most days from 10:00 or 11:00 until 5:30 or 6:00. We've spent a few nights in the on-site accommodations in order to cut down on the driving, but he's so busy and tired that it's been a real challenge to get him to focus on much schoolwork.

Here's what we've managed to get done this week.

Math:
He completed the exam for the last module on Tuesday (and earned a 92% -- yay!). On Wednesday, he made some corrections to previously submitted lessons and started reviewing for the semester exam. He connected with the teacher long enough to get through about half of the oral quiz during his lunch break on Thursday, and they agreed to finish up during the break on Friday. He also did a bit more exam review before rehearsals started on Friday. At this point, it looks like he'll have to do the online portion of the semester exam over the weekend.

History and Literature:
Nothing to speak of, unfortunately. He is supposed to finish Dragon's Gate this week, and I'm hopeful that will happen at some point during our driving. He's just so obsessed with that Garth Nix series, though, that it's extremely difficult to get him to read anything else. (Last time I checked, he was about half-way through Sir Thursday, the fourth book in the series.) He did spend some time with the rest of the cast looking at pictures of rural Maine in 1914. Does that count?

English:
We read the grammar notes on making adjectives from nouns and on hyphens and did the accompanying exercises.

Science:
He's slowly working his way through the rest of the Earth's Waters chapter 2 review. He read about arteries, veins and capillaries in the Human Body book and watched a Bill Nye episode about insects. We're also taking advantage of the fact that we're staying in a nature preserve by walking the trails and reading all of the signs about the flora and fauna here.

Latin:
I left the Secundus activity sheets at home, unfortunately. However, RobotBoy has otherwise prety much kept up. He translated the week's picutre story, read the Roman Report about Saturnalia and did the Latin Roots and both Grasp the Grammar exercises.

Spanish:
He's done pretty well with this, too, probably because it is so well suited to getting done in the car. He did four ejercicios over two pages and is almost caght up for the week.

I think that's about it, in terms of formal academics for the week. We did survive our camping trip last weekend and had a good time, despite rain, unusually cold temperatures (for Florida) and even a tornado warning on Saturday night. One thing to be said for camping with a choir group: The singing around the campfire is unusully good!

RobotBoy had to skip piano, drama and choir this week, and he will likely make it to only two out of his five dance classes. It seems to be worth it, though, since he says working on this project has been pretty close to "heaven."

A New Project

2008-01-18T11:37:00.000-05:00

And, no, it's not an academic project, but another theatrical experience.

RobotBoy has been cast to help "workshop" a new opera. The piece has been in development for several years, led by a team from New York. However, they are now in residence for about two and a half weeks at an arts center not too far from our home. There is a part in the piece for a nine-year-old boy, and they opted to cast someone local. They took on RobotBoy based on the recommendation of someone who knows him from other things he's done in the area.

So, here we are, in this gorgeous setting. The center is located inside a nature preserve, with facilities for pretty much every kind of creative endeavor tucked among the palmettos and wax myrtles. We have a private room set aside for us for the nights when we want to stay over or just to hang out in comfortably between rehearsals. It's peaceful and so beautiful. And RobotBoy is having an incredible experience working with professional singers and the composer and librettist of the piece.

The only downside? Well, not much school is getting done.

We did manage relatively normal days Monday and Tuesday, and I "gently encouraged" RobotBoy to do some work on what would normally have been a free Wendesday. But from Wednesday evening on, we've been either at the arts center or on the road there and back.

Actually, I'm typing this on one of their computers while waiting for RobotBoy to come out of a rehearsal. So, I'll have to rely on memory to try and recap what we did this week.

Math:
He completed four lessons this week and is now perilously close to finishing the FLVS course. All that's left are the module exam, the final oral exam and the semester exam. He has simply aced this last module, which has been about charts and graphs and probablity. I'd really like him to maintain the current grade, though. So, I've encouraged him to hold off of the tests until he's better rested and able to focus. We're hoping to finish those up by the middle of next week. After that, it's on to Painless Algebra.

History/Literature:
All I can remember him doing on this front this week is continuing to read Dragon's Gate. He has been reading quite a lot for fun in the car and in other spare moments. He zoomed through the fourth of Dorothy Hoobler's samurai novels, A Samurai Never Fears Death, and one and a half of Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series. He's also very much enjoying listening to Five Children and It (courtesty of LibriVox) on the mp3 player her got for Christmas. They all, I suppose, technically fit our modern history timeline. Right? Oh, and we did read a couple more chapters of Great Expectations. RobotBoy has gotten much more interested in the story again now that the mysterious benefactor has made himself known.

English:
Hmm. Well, he's supposed to be writing an essay about theatre this week. We did some brainstorming, and he wrote the outline, but I guess that's something else we'll have to catch up on next week.

Science:
It was another fairly low-key week for science. RobotBoy read from The Human Body and Earth's Waters, watched a couple of Bill Nye episodes and did part of the Earth's Waters Chapter 2 Review.

Latin:
It was back to Minimus Secundus this week, Chapter 6 (I think) about Saturnalia. He got as far as translating the picture story before or routine broke down.

Spanish:
I'm pretty sure he did a couple of pages of ejercios Monday and Tuesday?

I don't think he touched Themes to Remember, so poor old Schubert will have to wait in line. However, given that he's spending two or more weeks working on an opera, I guess he's not exactly "falling behind?"

He did make it to his piano lesson, during which he happily started his new Level 3 book. He also made it to ballet on Tuesday and choir rehearsal on Thursday. And on Monday evening, he attended the first rehearsal/class for the junior production of Pirates of Penzance. He will be playing Samuel, whom the director describes and the Pirate King's "second in command." He has loved Gilbert and Sullivan in general, and this show in particular, for a few years. So, I'm sure he'll have a grand time.

And you know what just occured to me? Gilbert and Sullivan fit into our modern world history era for this year. Bonus! (That's what we call a "two-fer" around here: When something fun that we'd probably do anytway just happens to justify academic credit.)

I'm sure I'd be even more excited about that were it not for the knowledge hanging over my head (like the heavy clouds in the sky) that after we finish here for the day we're off to spend the weekend camping with RobotBoy's choir. We got all kinds of camping equipment for Christmas, so we're well prepared. And RobotBoy is pretty excited. Now all we have to do is cross our fingers that the rain and thunderstorms predicted for tonight and tomorrow don't wash us and all our equipment away . . .

Or that we don't get attacked by bears . . .

Wordless Wednesday - The Samurai in My Backyard

2008-01-16T10:57:00.001-05:00

Doing the Second Semester Shuffle

2008-01-11T11:23:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are back in our first full post-holiday week! I hopeyou all had a lovely holiday season and aren't experiencing too much turbulence getting back into the regular groove.

RobotBoy did more or less keep up with math over the last three weeks or so, but that was about all the formal schoolwork we did. And, because of The Nutcracker and assorted other holiday events, we ended up a little behind by mid-December. So, I’ve spent the last couple of days doing that “second semester shuffle,” in which I figure out exactly where we really are with all subjects and then adjust the lesson plans for the remainder of the year accordingly.

I felt “done” with the process as of sometime yesterday, but haven’t actually clicked “Print” and put the new pages in my binder just yet. Somehow, doing that seems to invite crisis.

This has been surprisingly good week. I feared that, following three weeks mostly off and the usual post-holiday let-down—not to mention the fact that I was feeling tired and stressed after making yet another round-trip to Virginia to get Moonheart settled for the second semester—RobotBoy and I would have some trouble getting back into our school routine. Happily, however, he’s been really, really good about all of it. In fact, he finished his assignments early enough on Friday to have time to build one of the wooden race car models we bought earlier in the week.

So, here’s what we’ve done this week:

Math:
He’s in the final module of his online math class and doing very well. The previous module, on algebraic concepts, was more of a stretch, but this one is all about graphing and tables and charts and such, and the visual stuff is always a snap for him. He’s a bit behind pace, but on track to finish the course within a couple of weeks. I’m not sure he’s ready to move on to the full algebra course. He could certainly handle it, but I have a hunch he’d hate it. So, instead, I think we’ll spend this next semester working through Painless Algebra.

History & Literature:
We rejoined Pip and his Great Expectations this week and are making good progress. RobotBoy finished Alice Rose and Sam on Thursday and has started reading Laurence Yep’s Dragon’s Gate. He watched a DVD biography about Mark Twain and was so excited the day he figured out that Sam Clemens and Mark Twain were the same person. He also read about the Opium Wars in History of the World: Revolution and Conflict.

English:
He had two reading comprehension exercises this week, both about the New Globe Theater in London. One of the excerpts was from Susan Cooper’s King of Shadows, a book he read and enjoyed a couple of years ago. And the subject was a familiar one. So, he breezed through the exercises.

Science:
In addition to his regular allotment of reading, RobotBoy took the line self-test for Chapter Two of Earth’s Waters. He aced it. Since he did not have a science center class this week, we also took some time to do a couple of simple projects. The first, from his Marine Science book, had us each building a “sea scape” in a shoebox and then trading them so that we could do “soundings” through holes in the lids with plastic straws. We then charted our findings. It was both more fun and more meaningful than it sounded to me when I read the instructions.

We also built a model of an artesian well, following instructions from Earth’s Waters. That one was a big hit.

Basically, what happens is that you pour water slowly into the funnel and watch it bubble up through the straw.

We've recently discovered that a local cable channel is re-running the old Bill Nye the Science Guy shows. So, we've been recording the shows, and RobotBoy is happily working his way through the series as a fun supplement.

Latin:
He worked in Learning Latin Through Mythology this week, reading the myth of Daphne and Apollo. He translated the picture story based on the myth and then did the vocabulary worksheet.

Spanish:
He continues to move through The Learnables: Basic Structures on pace and with few problems. He earned perfect scores on this week’s exercises.

Music:
We’re still in Beethoven mode. Over the break, RobotBoy watched a Beethoven bio on DVD, and this week he’s working on the "Moonlight Sonata" in Themes to Remember. Next week, we move on to Schubert.

Other Stuff:
In addition to our at-home work, this was also the week in which most of his outside activities kicked back into gear. He attended his regular round of piano and choir and dance. The science center classes don’t resume until next month, but he is scheduled to begin a series of theatre classes next week and has to go in for a placement audition on Saturday morning. So, he’s been working on his song and monologue in preparation.

I know there will be the usual bumps in the road this semester. In fact, we’ve already learned about one: RobotBoy has been invited to participate in a workshop for a new musical theatre piece, which will eat up two or three weeks of our lives in the second half of this month. However, I’m looking forward to seeing those pretty, new, clean sheets of paper come out of the printer and go into my lesson plan binder. At least I’ll manage to feel organized for a few days!

Busy, Busy, Busy

2007-12-26T01:31:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm now two weeks behind in those "weekly" reports, but the truth is that we just got so busy with RobotBoy's Nutcracker performances (12 shows in 10 days) and so distracted by having Moonheart home and so wrapped up in various holiday events that we just didn't get a lot of school done in the last couple of weeks. Just so I don't feel like I completely dropped the ball, here's a quick rundown of how things have gone since my last post.

December 10 - 16: RobotBoy squeezed in four math lessons, reading a few chapters of Alice Rose and Sam, a little bit of Latin and Spanish, some science reading, watching Beethoven Lives Upstairs, a piano lesson, attending a Christmas-themed show at the Shakespeare Theatre, and one lesson of CHOW in between three Nutcracker rehearsals and four performances, the show's cast party, the end-of-semester party for his Sunday school class, plus a three-hour choir rehearsal and the choir's Christmas concert and reception.

December 17 - 23: This week was supposed to begin our official holiday break. However, because we took a week off from math last month that I did not plan for, RobotBoy had to keep working in his online class. So, he did another three math lessons and made corrections to a couple of lessons he had submitted the previous week. He spent Wednesday afternoon at the final session of his science center physics class. At the last minute, he was asked to come be in the series of three abbreviated Nutcracker they do for school groups. He then had regular shows on Thursday and throughout the weekend.

I honestly believed that he would be thoroughly sick of The Nutcracker by the time he finished this run, but it wasn't so. He was very disappointed to see it end, and even the prospect of Christmas, itself, didn't seem to help all that much.

On Christmas Eve, we headed out to church. Moonheart had volunteered to sing in the children's pageant and then was invited to sing for the later, grown-up service, too. We had decided RobotBoy would not participate in the pageant this year, because of the Nutcracker schedule, but he got recruited to sing a short solo, too. The pageant was the usual rocky experience: Right up to the very last minute, we're all sure it's going to crash and burn, but, somehow, it all comes together. Of course, my favorite moments were the ones involving my kids, but it's possible I'm not exactly an impartial observer.

I thought folks might like to hear a little sample of Moonheart's performance. I think I've finally figured out how to get the video to show up here. Cross your fingers!

Another Interrupted Week

2007-12-10T12:26:00.000-05:00

RobotBoy had his recurring “substitute teacher” again this week for two days when he stayed home with Dad while I drove to Virginia and back, bringing Moonheart home for the semester break. On the heels of his weekend “on the road” with the ballet school (during which he spent a lot of time hanging out in the dressing room with a child who spiked a 102-degree fever on the last day), he was also distinctly under the weather for a couple of days. He even more or less quit eating! (You have to know RobotBoy to understand exactly how noteworthy that is.) We forged ahead, though, having him do light days of schoolwork alternated with some extra rest.

The out-of-town ballet performances went very well, by the way. I served as a dressing room chaperone for most of the weekend. It never ceases to amaze me how many electronic devices are brought into boys’ dressing rooms, but the kids were really good and managed to remain as friendly and cheerful as a room full of kids could be expected to be when required to spend more than 20 hours of a weekend cooped up in a room smaller than most children’s bedrooms. The group my son performed with received compliments both from the show’s director/choreographer and from the mom who coordinates all the backstage stuff. And my son had a wonderful time. So, I’d say it was a good experience.

After three years of performances, he's also acquired a nice (and growing) collection of nutcrackers, which he enjoys arranging and displaying throughout the year

He had this weekend “off” (just a two-hour ballet rehearsal plus three hours of choir on Saturday morning) before heading into two more weekends of local performances.

Meanwhile, Moonheart and I made it home late on Thursday. I was a bit surprised to find actual snow on the ground in Virginia.

She had Friday at home to goof off and relax, then went to a rehearsal with her old choir on Saturday afternoon. She was preparing to make her debut as an alumna at the choir’s Sunday evening concert. When I picked her up, she told me with great joy and amusement that everybody wanted to hug her! That trend continued when she went with us to our church on Sunday morning. She reconnected with many old friends of varying ages and seemed to have a lovely time. She then went to an hour’s worth of rehearsal for the upcoming Christmas Eve pageant, for which she has volunteered to sing a short solo. After that, we had just enough time to run home, let her eat sometime and change clothes so that she could go back downtown for the choir concert.

The concert was lovely! RobotBoy will have his turn with the boychoir next weekend.

And, in the middle of it all, we’ve managed to more or less keep up with the schoolwork, too. Here’s the rundown for the week:

Math:
RobotBoy took the final for the geometry module on Monday and got himself a nice ‘A.’ He has moved on to the module in algebraic thinking, which isn’t quite such a piece of cake for him. He’s doing fine, but has to pay a bit more attention. (Not a bad thing, in my book!)

History & Literature:
We accomplished exactly no reading of Great Expectations last week. Instead, once Moonheart was home, we started reading aloud How Mrs. Clause Saved Christmas, the sequel to Jeff Guinn’s Autobiography of Santa Claus that we all enjoyed reading last year. At this point, I’m assuming we’ll have to catch up with Mr. Dickens once Moonheart is safely back at school. In independent reading, RobotBoy finished Red Badge of Courage, which got two big thumbs up, and has started reading Kathryn Lasky’s Alice Rose and Sam.

English:
It was a writing exercise week, so RobotBoy took his first stab at a photo essay about our field trip to Fort Sumter. It still needs to be refined, and once I’ve signed off on it, he’ll write out a final copy for his notebook.

Science:
He had the third of four sessions of the physics class at the museum. As homework, he researched and wrote a paragraph about catapults. The class then built a model catapult and apparently had a grand time. At home, he read from his Human Body and Earth’s Waters books. We ended up postponing the experiments about ice from the Marine Science book, because I had forgotten to prepare the necessary supplies for him. (Bad homeschool mommy! Bad!)

Latin:
This week, RobotBoy did the first half of Chapter 5 of Minimus Secundus. He got through the first picture story and well as the Grasp the Grammar and Latin Roots exercises. He also had a good time coloring and cutting out the stand-up figure of poor Duccius, the standard bearer.

Spanish:
He worked on The Learnables three times this week, earning perfect scores on all five ejercicios.

Music:
He got back to learning new pieces in Themes to Remember this week, starting with Beethoven’s Symphony #5. It’s become the height of humor around here for him to randomly sing snippets of classical pieces or to figure out how to segue smoothly from a tune from a popular song or film score to a classical piece. We also watched Amadeus with Dad as a family movie night, which was a big hit.

Oh, and he had a double piano lesson on Monday to make up for a portion of the time he’s missed over the last couple of weeks.

All in all, it’s been very busy, but we’re keeping our heads above water so far. The plan is to try and stay on track with a more or less normal schedule this week, then take off from everything except the online math class until the second week of January, after I’ve deposited Moonheart back at the dorm.

Let’s just hope I can manage to wash, dry and fold all of the dirty laundry she brought home in time to drive her back.

Hoping everyone is having a lovely (and not too stressful) holiday season so far!

Where Am I This Week?

2007-11-30T12:40:00.000-05:00

So, am I still part of the Weekly Reporters club if I miss two weeks? What about if I have a really good excuse?

Well, let’s just forge ahead, shall we?

The last couple of weeks have been very busy. I had to make two round trips to Virginia to bring Moonheart home for Thanksgiving and then deposit her back at her dorm. And RobotBoy is deep into Nutcracker rehearsals and preparations. In fact, we are spending much of today getting ourselves ready to be away for a full weekend of performances in another city. At the last minute, I decided that it was pretty crazy to bus back and forth (a three- or four-hour round trip) every day and just booked us a motel room for the weekend. When we return, I should just about have time to catch my breath before I take to the road one more time to bring Moonheart home for her holiday break.

And, of course, right in the midst of it all, we had several days of internet connection trouble.

Nonetheless, we are managing to keep making progress academically. Here’s a quick run-down of what RobotBoy has accomplished in the last couple of weeks:

Math:
He has just about finished the geometry module and continues to do very well. On the oral component of the module exam, he earned 100% of the available points. Now, he is just waiting for a few of the lessons he’s already submitted to be graded in order to be sure there is nothing else he needs to review before taking the online assessment.

History & Literature:
We have finally gotten back to regular reading of Great Expectations. We’re still behind where I had planned to be by now, but will just have to continue reading over the holiday break in order to catch up. RobotBoy finished reading Rifles for Watie just this morning, and has already started on The Red Badge of Courage. Sometime today, he will also read A Day That Changed America: Gettysburg. And, as I type, he is watching the last half hour of an A&E documentary called Abraham Lincoln: Preserving the Union.

One nice side effect of all the Virginia to-ing and from-ing is that we managed a field trip to the Fort Sumter National Monument. It was perfect timing, since RobotBoy has been reading about the Civil War. It was very interesting and well worth the 45-minute detour. RobotBoy’s writing assignment for next week will be to choose a few of the many photos I took and use them as writing prompts.

As a fun extra, we’ve been listening to the Chronicles of Narnia on CD during all of our driving. RobotBoy read the whole series a couple of years ago, but I had planned to have him re-read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe this year as a prelude to attending a stage adaptation later this year. I happened to find the full series, unabridged, on CD a few weeks ago, though, which has proven a really fun way to pass time on the road. So, I’m now pondering options to substitute for LWW later this year. Given RobotBoy’s obsession with the Barry/Pearson Peter Pan series, I’m thinking the original novel might be a nice possibility.

English:
We’re continuing to like Galore Park’s English Prep. We took last week off while we were on the road and celebrating Thanksgiving, but got back to work this week with the reading and comprehension exercises.

Science:
We rushed back from Virginia in order to make sure RobotBoy made it to the second session of the Physics class, which he’s enjoying very much. Meanwhile, he continues to read through his human body and marine science books at home.

Latin:
Since I last wrote, he has finished Chapter 4 of Minimus Secundus and did the chapter on Daudalus and Icarus in Learning Latin Through Mythology. In addition to the regular worksheets and exercises, he particularly enjoyed drawing a picture showing how he would escape from an island if he had on-hand only one wheel, a ball of string, some chewing gum and some logs harvested from a nearby forest. He even consented to write a paragraph describing his plan.

Spanish:
Yet more perfect ejercicios. He’s doing so well with this program that I floated the idea of speeding up a bit next year. However, he is pretty vocal about maintaining his current pace and making sure he has time to really learn the material.

Music:
Piano practice is happening on a somewhat more regular basis these days. Of course, between the holiday and our time on the road, he’s missed his lesson the last two weeks . . . Ah well, we’ll get back on track eventually.

Meanwhile, he’s been reviewing his Themes to Remember pieces, and I’m very pleased with how much he remembers.

Well, that’s the whirlwind version of the last couple of weeks. It’s not exciting, but I’m actually fairly pleased with how well we’re chugging along, given everything else that is going on in our lives.

And now, I’m off to finish the packing and preparations.

Almost Caught Up

2007-11-09T16:13:00.000-05:00

Okay, I admit I had to stare at the monitor and think for a few minutes to come up with a positive title for this week. Nothing is really “wrong.” I’m just having one of those weeks when my heart isn’t in it, you know? And RobotBoy is already showing signs of coming down with Holiday-it is and looking for every opportunity to slack off and get out of doing anything that looks like real work. It’s not a good combination.

Despite that, however, we did make real progress this week.

Math:
He has finally, officially caught up in his online math class. (Yay!) And, after seeing his grade drop following that one really disastrous module exam, he’s been really good about being more careful and picking up all the points on every daily assignment. It helps, too, that this module is about geometry, which comes very easily to him. He took the mid-module quiz today and earned a 90%. Combined with the good daily work, he’s now back to earning an ‘A’ for the course. (Again, yay!)

History & Literature:
Again, we slacked on Great Expectations this week. I think this mostly has to do with my making the mistake of buying RobotBoy the new Peter Pan prequel, Peter and the Secret of Rundoon. He’s absolutely bonkers about these books, reads and re-reads them, and he just resents any other reading that infringes on his attention. We got through three or four chapters, but we’re still way behind my goals for this week. If we don’t catch up before our holiday break, I guess we’ll just have to continue then.

We did read some more poetry, several short, child-friendly pieces by Christina Rosetti. And we talked about how stressed and unstressed syllables make rhythm and about rhyme schemes. He really eats this stuff with a spoon. So, I pulled an old middle school textbook off the shelf and skimmed through their poetry unit to see what other concepts we might cover this year. He also read “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in preparation for going to see a production at a local theatre this weekend. He’s supposed to be almost 1/3 of the way through Rifles for Watie, too, but as of this afternoon he was only about 70 pages into it. He says it’s picking up and getting more interesting now, so he should be able to catch up this weekend.

And, of course, he’s continuing to read from his assorted history books, and he’s watching a two-hour documentary about the California Gold Rush.

English:
It was a writing week. RobotBoy chose to write a paragraph about his impressions of “The Elephant’s Child.” He stalled the actual writing until Thursday, but blew through it and produced an acceptable paragraph on his first attempt. We also did the grammar exercises about commas in lists.

Science:
In addition to his regular reading from the assorted science books and a couple of marine science worksheets, RobotBoy went to his first meeting of the four-session physics class at the science museum. He seemed to have a good time and is looking forward to the next class.

Latin:
That leftover Secundus vocabulary finally got done over the weekend. (Yet another small yay!) And this week, he had all the vocabulary typed by Friday afternoon. He also translated the picture story and did the Grasp the Grammar page aloud with me.

Spanish:
Perfect scores on all ejercicios this week! I think that deserves a big YAY!

Music:
Piano practice is still a sore point. He goes to the piano without a whole lot of grumbling when I remind him, but it doesn’t sound like enough “practice” is getting done. He spends at least as much time calling out for me to listen and talking about what he’s doing as he devotes to actually doing it. Still, I’m trying to focus on the fact that he is playing almost every day. And he admitted that both he and his teacher could tell how much better he did at this week’s lesson just as a result of the practice he did manage. So, again, progress. (I can’t quite muster a yay for that one, though. Maybe next week.) Meanwhile, he continues to enjoy Themes to Remember. This week, he worked on Mozart’s Concerto No. 21.

Oh, and we did a musical field trip this week. The big Episcopal cathedral downtown offers a series of free lunchtime mini-concerts. I always mean to attend more of them than we do. This week, though, was a recital by the assistant organist on their enormous pipe organ, which RobotBoy just adores. So, we made the effort to get out the door for that one.

Butterfly Update:
Sad news on this front, unfortunately. We were extremely excited to find one of the butterflies hatching this afternoon. After a long struggle, though, he seems unable to free one of his wings from the chrysalis. I went against my better judgment and tried to help him along, but it doesn’t look good. We finally decided to let nature try and resolve the situation, and last time we looked, he was not where we had last seen him. I’m not sure what this means, and we’ve decided to hope for the best. I assume the other one should be ready to emerge in a few more days. We’re keeping our fingers crossed he does better.

And now, we’re off to the weekly 3.5-hour marathon at the dance school. Fortunately, I went to the craft store yesterday and acquired materials for a couple of small projects I can take on the road. So, with my craft bag and the MP3 player, it shouldn’t be too bad an evening. (Maybe just one more tiny yay?)

A Pretty Good Week

2007-11-02T11:30:00.000-05:00

We took Wednesday mostly off to celebrate Halloween. RobotBoy even consented to skip his ballet class that evening in favor of staying home and handing out treats. So, we spent the afternoon carving pumpkins and rigging the front hallway with some additional decorations and a couple of fog machines.

RobotBoy donned his samurai garb one more time and insisted on being the one to answer the door and offer our cauldron full of goodies every time the doorbell rang. We got lots of trick-or-treaters, which was cool, and several comments about how spooky our house was. In between, we snacked on freshly roasted pumpkin seeds and the fudge I felt suddenly felt inspired to make that afternoon and watched spooky movies. All in all, a very pleasant day.

And I’m actually quite pleased with how much we managed to accomplish academically given the distraction of the holiday.

Math:
We’re waiting for the instructor to finish grading RobotBoy’s latest exam, but he made great progress this week catching up in his work and bringing his grade back up into A territory. He completed five lessons on area and volume this week, earning near-perfect scores on each one, plus the module exam and the module survey. He is now less than a week’s worth of assignments behind and should be able to make up the remaining lessons next week.

History & Literature:
We didn’t cover a lot of ground in Great Expectations this week, but we had fun reading aloud some poetry. We read an extract from “Song of Hiawatha” and also “Charge of the Light Brigade,” the latter of which seems to have made the bigger impression. RobotBoy commented that the recurring use of the phrase “Rode the six hundred” reminded him of the chorus of a song. We looked up the history of the battle on Wikipedia, too, and he continued reading from his various history sources: Learning Through History: Victorian Era; Time for Learning: Presidents; History of the World: Revolution and Conflict. His independent literature reading for this week is Wisler’s novel about the Civil War, Red Cap. He’s finding it a less than stimulating read, unfortunately. (I have to admit, it was one of the ones I didn’t love when I pre-read over the summer.) On DVD, he watched one episode of a series called 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed the World. He learned about the battle of Antietam. And, just for fun (and because there was a link from his online math course), he watched a BrainPop animation about the history of Halloween.

Netflix is due to deliver Friendly Persuasion in today’s mail, and I’m looking forward to viewing it as a family movie night sometime this weekend.

We had a funny experience this week, by the way. RobotBoy takes his drum lessons with a group that holds its weekly practices at a local, very expensive private school. RobotBoy has been known to walk across the campus sighing about how nice a place it is and how he might like to go to high school there someday. Well, this week we happened to be hanging around in the hallway waiting for other drummers to arrive, and we were looking at the bulletin boards with homework assignments and class schedules posted. I was perusing the Eighth Grade Honors English information and couldn’t help laughing. Their in-class assignments for the week were to: edit the rough draft of their current writing assignment (Monday), read aloud “The Raven” (Tuesday), read aloud “The Tell-Tale Heart” (Wednesday) and watch a documentary about Edgar Allan Poe (Thursday and Friday). In other words, this very-well-thought-of, very expensive private school has their honors-level eighth graders doing exactly the same work as my 9-year-old did at home two weeks ago.

Don’t you love homeschooling?

English:
We started Chapter 3 of English Prep, reading Kipling’s story “The Elephant’s Child” and a letter to the editor about the ethical issues involved in keeping elephants in captivity. As always, RobotBoy breezed through the associated comprehension exercises.

Science:
RobotBoy read about rivers and how erosion shapes land in Earth’s Waters. He read about the major muscles in Time for Learning: Human Body and about coral reefs in Marine Science. He’s happily looking forward to starting the second series of classes at the science center next week. They’ll be doing physics this time around.

Latin:
It’s a Learning Latin Through Mythology week. RobotBoy read the myth of Cephalus and Procris and translated the associated picture story. He did two worksheets on Roman numerals, including making his own dot-to-dot for me to complete. He also finally got around to entering last week’s Secundus vocabulary into his word bank.

Spanish:
Mostly, Spanish went quite well again this week. RobotBoy did stumble and have to work a bit harder on one set of fill-in-the-blank ejercicios. He ended up having to go back and review a bit, but got everything in its correct place before he turned it in for grading.

Music:
His Themes to Remember piece for this week was Bocherini’s “Minuet,” which he liked so much that he voluntarily practiced singing through it every day. Since Netflix finally delivered the Great Composers DVD on Handel, he watched that this week, too. We’re still working together to figure out a good time when he can reliably do his instrument practice. On Friday, we decided to try having him do at least 15 minutes before lunch each day. We’ll just have to see how it goes, I guess.

Butterfly Update:
As expected, the caterpillar who was hanging in the J position last week is now cocooned. I’m always awed by how beautiful the chrysalis is:

We’ve had very windy and rainy weather a few days this week, and I’ve been very concerned about him, but he’s still hanging on. And, just to add to the fun, RobotBoy discovered a second chrysalis on the underside of one of our plastic patio chairs.

So, now we just have to wait and watch.

Forging Ahead

2007-10-26T20:44:00.000-05:00

This has been one of those weeks when I feel like I’m trying to telepathically steer the Titanic through a whole field of icebergs. We had a full week’s worth of work to do in spite of several major distractions, and it required every ounce of brain power and focus I could muster to keep us moving more or less in a forward direction. All in all, I’m pleased with how much we accomplished, but I am seriously fried from standing close enough to the fire to hold RobotBoy’s feet to it! (Hmm. I wonder how many more metaphors and clichés I could toss in here?)

The big distraction this week, of course, is preparing for our church’s annual Halloween party, which takes place this Saturday evening. You’d think with only one costume to make that I’d be coasting, but it doesn’t seem to be working that way. RobotBoy chose to dress as a samurai this year, inspired by The Demon in the Teahouse and its sequels. I decided there was no reason we couldn’t squeeze a little education out of the process, so I had him do all the research and find photos of appropriate garb and go with me to the fabric store to select materials. He’s consulted every step of the way and made all the significant decisions and done a bit of the hands-on work. I think he’ll be very happy with the results. It really is going to look cool. But it’s been a lot of work, and he is so much more interested in that process than he is in math or science or any official schoolwork that I’ve gotten a bit irritable.

Here’s what we’ve got so far:

He also took upon himself the task of decorating the house for Halloween, since neither my husband nor I seemed to have the time or the energy. Again, he’s had a blast, but I can’t help seeing every minute he spends doing that as a minute he’s not doing schoolwork. The results are pretty cool, though. He’s been quite creative about how he uses various items we’ve had around for years:

Other distractions included two days out of the house. Our local science center has had one of those Our Bodies exhibits for months, and we kept meaning to go see it. Well, after at least one extension, it is closing for sure at the end of this month. So, since RobotBoy did not have a science class this week, we decided Wednesday would be a good day for a field trip. And, after I committed to that, some friends of ours invited us to go play at a local water park on Friday. So, we were working on a compressed schedule, even before you take into account the concert we attended on Tuesday evening, the hours we lost on Tuesday taking my car in for repairs (again), or the extra dance rehearsal scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

Nonetheless, we forged ahead. Here’s what we managed to get done:

Math:
RobotBoy managed only two lessons and a quiz (on which he got a nice, solid ‘A’) during the week. He’s still working on standard and metric measurements. We’re still working on catching him up after our road trip, though, so the plan is for him to do at least one lesson over the weekend.

History & Literature:
We’re back on Great Expectations after our side trip into the gothic stuff last week. On his own, RobotBoy finally got around to reading the copy of If You Lived in Williamsburg in Colonial Days that I bought for him to read before our trip. He also read another in the same series, If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon. He tried hard to get through the abridged copy of David Copperfield I found at the close-out bookstore, but really hated it. This version is based on the one that Dickens, himself, used to read aloud during his public lectures, but it must lose something without Charles’ own personal touch, because I, too, found it incomprehensible. Since we’re already doing the unabridged Great Expectations aloud, I opted to let it go. Meanwhile, he’s also reading about the mid- to late 1800s in Revolution and Conflict, Learning Through History: The Victorian Era and Time for Learning: Presidents and watching a DVD biography on Queen Victoria.

English:
We worked through the remainder of the grammar and vocabulary exercises in this chapter of English Prep, focusing on verbs and on correct usage of their, they’re and there. RobotBoy also got his act together and wrote me two paragraphs for the assignment left over from last week. He produced a pretty good first draft about manatees, although we still have some work to do on organization and transitions. Given our compressed week, however, I’ve decided to let revisions slide until next week.

Science:
As I said, the big event of the week was our field trip to the science center. We explored the Our Bodies exhibit, which got mixed reviews from RobotBoy. He was clearly uncomfortable with the idea that we were looking at real bodies and was not able to focus as well as I would have liked on actually learning anything. We did get the audio tour, though, and he listened to most of that. And he said it was interesting to see what different parts of our bodies actually look like. So, I think some information got through. The exhibits that were of most interest to him were the ones that showed how various types of joints and muscles work together, because he could relate that to dancing. While we were there, just for fun, we also saw two IMAX films, one on dinosaurs and another on mummies. RobotBoy enjoyed both. At home, he continued reading from Time for Learning: Human Body and Earth’s Waters and completed two worksheets from his Marine Science book.

Latin:
Finishing up Chapter 3 of Minimus Secundus, he did the Latin Roots exercise, read the Roman Report about how they built roads, translated the second picture story and read the myth about the birth of Athena. He ran out of time to type the new vocabulary into his word bank, but has promised me to do that over the weekend.

Spanish:
RobotBoy did great work in Spanish this week! He did four ejercicios, earning perfect scores on all of them. I’m very pleased.

Music:
This was one of his review weeks, when I assigned no new pieces to learn and encouraged him to go back and practice all the songs he’s learned so far this year. What actually happened was that he spent most of his time working on the Surprise Symphony, because he didn’t really do much with it last week. He really likes that one, especially when I pretend to fall asleep and then get startled as he sings through it.

I think I mentioned last week that he had his debut with his choir on Sunday? Well, it went really well. The choir sounded great, and he got through the almost two-hour-long service with nary a complaint. The cathedral was hosting a choir visiting from England, and the two choirs sang a few pieces together, which was just wonderful. Even though we are not members of the cathedral (or, indeed, the denomination with which it is associated), I simply love that church. It is a gorgeous, inspiring space, and the acoustics are incredible. I feel so lucky to have a really good excuse to visit and enjoy their music program on a regular basis.

On Tuesday evening, the visiting choir gave a full concert. RobotBoy and I attended and were impressed all over again with how good the other choir was. I realized part-way through the performance that I was actually relaxed and had more or less turned off my brain. I wasn’t worrying about what I had to do when I got home or making a mental shopping list or criticizing the choir or analyzing the lyrics . . . I was just being there and enjoying the sounds washing over me. It was lovely.

Oh, and on a non-academic but really fun note: RobotBoy found two big, healthy monarch caterpillars on our patio today. One was happily munching away on one of the milkweed plants, but the other had already attached himself and gone into the ‘J’ position. Unfortunately, he chose the top rail of our guinea pigs’ play pen, instead of a plant.

So, we’ll have to be careful moving things around out there until he completes his metamorphosis. We raised some monarchs as part of our biology curriculum three years ago and have had a soft spot for them ever since. So finding these guys just outside our back door was a very exciting event!

I’ll keep you posted on any butterfly-related developments in next week’s entry.

Half-way to the Holiday Break

2007-10-20T20:44:00.000-05:00

It’s been another busy week, catching up and trying to get back into the groove following our road trip earlier this month. I’m already starting feel pressure from the approach of the holiday madness that always begins right around Halloween. But we did manage to finish almost everything on the lesson plans for this week, so I’m feeling good.

Just for the sake of mixing things up a bit, I think we’ll do a day-by-day rundown this week.

Monday:
We took a break from Great Expectations in favor of reading two Washington Irving stories and some Edgar Allan Poe. It was awfully convenient that these two authors came up chronologically just in time for Halloween, huh? We started on Monday with “Rip Van Winkle” over breakfast. RobotBoy started his desk work with a math lesson on standard and metric units of measure. We then went over the lesson in English Prep about question marks and did the first exercise together orally. He also chose a topic for his writing assignment. (More on that later.) He translated the week’s picture story in Secundus and did a couple of ejercicios in The Learnables. The rest of the day was all music. He sang through Haydn’s “Symphony #94,” then went to his piano lesson and drum practice. On the way home, we made a quick stop at the library to pick up two of the books recommended for the English writing assignment.

Tuesday:
At breakfast, we read about the first half of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” after which RobotBoy tackled another math lesson on units of measure. This one took pretty much all morning, since it involved a series of “E-M-E” activities. This is a technique that requires students to estimate the size of one item, then measure it, then use that experience to estimate the size of a second, usually larger, item. He had two of these activities each for length, area, volume, capacity and weight. And each one required him to go through the process using both standard and metric measurements. He had a lovely time making all kinds of messes in the kitchen filling various containers (and the entire kitchen sink) with water and running all over the house measuring things. And I’m sure he learned a lot. But, oh boy, it took a huge bite out of our day. Once he finally finished with that, he did started reading the book he chose to read in order to complete the English writing assignment he had selected on Monday. He also read in his Human Body book about joints and muscles (of special interest at the moment, since he’s working hard in ballet to improve his turnout). He then worked for a while on his homework for the science center class (which he neglected until the last minute again) and did some more Spanish before we had to leave for ballet class.

Wednesday:
RobotBoy was up bright and early and already at the computer typing when I got up, frantically trying to finish his science class homework. He made it, just barely, and we headed out just about on time. Only after we were too far from home to go back did we realize he had forgotten to pack his tights for that evening’s ballet class. (Sigh.) So, I got him settled in class and went to the dance supply store, reasoning that it was closer than going all the way home and he needed another pair of tights, anyway, and they had called me the week before to let me know that the shirts I ordered had arrived. This was the final week of the biology series, and they focused on the human body. After class, we scrounged for dinner at the mall food court, then went to the second ballet class of the week.

Thursday:
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” concluded over breakfast (well, just after, since we were close enough to the end that we lingered until we finished reading). The day’s math lesson was on converting measurements (within systems). RobotBoy practiced converting ounces to pounds, inches to feet, feet to yards, etc. He also practiced converting from larger to smaller metric units, and the other way around. He watched the Famous Composers: Joseph Haydn DVD over lunch. He then read Diane Stanley’s Charles Dickens: The Man Who Had Great Expectations and read the story about Dickens in Lives of the Writers. He read some more about food webs in his Marine Science workbook and did the associated worksheet. He wrapped up the day by attending choir practice that afternoon.

Friday:
Continuing our spooky literature trend of the week, we read aloud Poe’s “The Raven” over breakfast and had a lot of fun squawking “Nevermore” at each other for some time thereafter. The final math lesson of the week required him to read some articles about whether the U.S. should switch to the metric system and then do another “out-of-seat” activity. This time, he had to pull a bunch of packages out of our pantry and document whether they were marked with standard or metric measurements, or both. It turned out to be a fairly boring assignment, since everything we could find had both types of measurements. He moved on from there to finishing his Secundus assignments for the week, adding new vocabulary to his word bank and doing the Grasp the Grammar exercise with me. Then he settled onto the couch with a snack and finished his history reading: a few pages from History of the World: Revolution and Conflict about the late 1800s; entries on Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler and James Knox Polk in Time for Learning: Presidents; and three articles in Learning Through History: The Victorian Era. He seemed especially impressed by the article about Florence Nightingale. He read about musical forms of the Classical era and the symphony orchestra seating plan in Themes to Remember and practiced singing the week’s musical selection, which left us just enough time to finish the grammar exercises for the week in English Prep. He had a quick, early dinner, and we set out for his trio of dance classes.

So, did you notice what didn’t get done? Remember way back on Monday when we went to the library and then he started reading the book on Tuesday? Did you notice how I never mentioned it again? Yes. I noticed, too. See, what happened was this: I told him to choose one of the topics suggested in the book to write about. He insisted he wanted to do the one that involved reading one of the books on the “Have You Read?” list. I reminded him that the assignment was supposed to be finished within the week. He was so enthusiastic, though, that I eventually agreed he could have until the end of next week to do the actual writing, as long as he read the book this week. Well, we all know how that went. So, I have now decreed that he must choose a different topic and do the writing assignment on top of his regular assignments for next week, on penalty of losing fun TV and computer gaming. That usually does the trick.

In other news, we’re in full Halloween costume-making mode this weekend. The samurai costume is coming along nicely, although these things always turn out to be more work than I anticipate.

And tomorrow is RobotBoy’s big debut with his new choir. They are singing alongside a choir visiting from England for the service at the Cathedral tomorrow morning. I can’t wait to see him all angelic in his vestments . . . complete with neck ruff!

Two, Two, Two Weeks in One!

2007-10-13T15:01:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned, we were away for a few days visiting with Moonheart for her college’s Family Weekend. Amazingly, I actually managed to plan ahead for this when I was writing out our lessons for this year, and I decided to stretch one week’s work out over the available days before and after the trip. So, this report will cover two weeks of chronological time, but only one week’s worth of assignments.

Math:
RobotBoy has just about finished the first module of the second segment of this class. He’s been doing very well with ratios and proportions and cross-multiplying and dividing and all that stuff. The advanced lesson for this module had him outside measuring shadows and figuring out ratios that allowed him to estimate heights of buildings and trees too tall to measure directly. He had a good time with that one.

History & Literature:
Great Expectations continues to be a fun read-aloud. We’ve finished the “first stage” of Pip’s expectations (about the first third of the book) and learned a bit about the author, himself, watching an A&E Biography about Charles Dickens. RobotBoy is currently learning about significant people and historical events from the early 1800s. So, he read The Alamo from the Day That Changed America series and watched History Channel documentaries on that battle and on the development of the Transcontinental Railroad. He read about the first few U.S. presidents in his Time for Learning book, and completed story #78: “Latin America and the Caribbean Islands” on his Child’s History of the World CD. He read about Edgar Allan Poe in Lives of the Writers: Comedies, Tragedies (and What the Neighbors Thought) and watched an A&E biography DVD. We then read "The Tell-Tale Heart" together.

The high point of this two-week week, though, was our field trip to Colonial Williamsburg. Since we were in the neighborhood visiting Moonheart, we decided to tack on an extra day for some educational fun. RobotBoy had a great time and might even have learned a few things. I think his favorite sites in town were the blacksmith and cabinetmaker.

Oh, and just for fun, we listened to about the first half of an audio book version of The Fellowship of the Ring during the road trip. I’m not a big Tolkien fan, myself, but RobotBoy is really enjoying it.

English:
This was one of the subjects we took on the road with us. We started the second chapter of English Prep Book 1, reading the fiction and non-fiction excerpts and doing the comprehension exercises aloud. It was kind of fun to watch my husband be impressed at how well and quickly RobotBoy ripped through the questions.

Science:
RobotBoy had one of his twice-monthly science center classes the afternoon before we left town. They talked about plants, and he came home with a lima bean in a tiny pot ready to sprout. The class also dissected an earthworm in the last hour, but RobotBoy opted out of that one and explored a virtual worm recommended by his teacher, instead. Of course, he came home with yet another list of vocabulary words to define, so he’s been working on those a few at a time since we got home. In Earth’s Waters, he’s reading about the water cycle. He finished the first chapter of the text and took the online self-test. Time for Learning: The Human Body also went on the road with us, and he regaled us with lots of information about teeth on the way to Virginia.

Latin:
He’s back to Learning Latin Through Mythology this “week,” reading about Baucis and Philemon. He read the story in English, translated the Latin picture story version and completed the match-the-sentence-to-the-picture worksheet.

Spanish:
Nothing terribly interesting to say about Spanish this time around. RobotBoy did a nice job with the required ejercicios, but it wasn’t exciting.

Music:
He has two more Handel pieces from the Royal Fireworks Music for this week. He was supposed to watch a Great Composers DVD on Handel, too, but Netflix hasn’t delivered it just yet. So, that will have to happen next week. While visiting Moonheart, we attended a wonderful concert put on the by faculty and students. RobotBoy especially enjoyed watching the pianist and was very pleased to see pieces by both Gershwin and Tchaikovsky on the program. However, I think his favorite musical experiences of the week happened in Colonial Williamsburg, where he had the chance to hear a real glass armonica in concert and to get his hands on a reproduction harpsichord in the cabinetmaker’s shop.

Outside of official educational stuff, RobotBoy had a great time visiting with his sister. We toured the campus and the (tiny) downtown area next door. He went to the college’s Physical Activity Center with Moonheart and her roommate for a workout, then had lunch with them in the dining hall. We all went to see a performance of Love’s Labor's Lost at the local Shakespeare theatre, which was especially fun for RobotBoy since he’s currently reading Shakespeare’s Scribe.

Now, we just have to get back in the swing of normal life at home (until we have to do another road trip to bring Moonheart home for Thanksgiving . . . ).

My Accomplishment for the Week

2007-09-29T16:49:00.000-05:00

Go ahead. Laugh at me. Believe me, you won't be the first (or the last). But now that we've settled into the current academic year and things seem to be going reasonably well (knock on wood), I find my thoughts turning to planning for next year. We go through a lot of books in a year, especially now that biographies and historical fiction are serving as the backbone of RobotBoy's history studies. And, being the deep-down cheap person I am, I can't stand the idea of paying full retail price for all those books. So, I have a routine. I keep lists in my purse of all the topics I'm planning to cover in the next year or two, including titles of specific books when I can find them. Since one of my favorite pass-times is browsing bookstores, this way I can pick up books one or two at a time as I find them on sale or have coupons that would otherwise expire and slowly collect a whole year's worth of reading material for less than half of what it would cost me to buy at the cover prices.

But the first step is to figure out what I already have on hand. So, I spent most of Wednesday morning while RobotBoy was enjoying his day off from desk work unpacking the last of the book boxes left over from this summer's move. I then sorted and organized everything onto the shelves in our office/schoolroom (and even managed to put a few in the "donatables" box in the garage). I turned up a few things I remembered and had planned to use for next year but hadn't been able to find and a few things I'd forgotten we even owned. I then hit one of my favorite bargain bookstores and lucked into a couple more. I still have a long way to go to collect enough for a full year, but I feel quite pleased with the starter kit I've got sitting on the shelf already.

We'll be cycling back around to the ancients next year. Here's what I've got so far:

Learning Through History: Ancient China
Learning Through History: Ancient Egypt
Learning Through History: Mesoamerica
Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors
Egyptians, Maya, Minoans Activity Book
Ancient Rome Timeline / Activity Sheets
Discover Ancient Egypt Activity Book
Ancient Greece Activity Book
Coloring Book of Ancient Egypt
Make It Work: Roman Empire
The Maya: Life, Myth and Art
Story of Philosophy (37 pp. on Greeks)
Mysteries Through the Ages (sections on pyramids, prehistory, lost civilizations)
Top 10 Greek Legends: Zeus on the Loose, Deary
Horrible Histories: Rotten Romans, Deary
Detectives in Togas, Winterfield
Place in the Sun, Rubalcaba
The Way of Alexander the Great, Mercer
The Children's Homer, Colum

So, with that as my base, I've started building a list of things to look for in the next few months. I'd love to hear any ideas anyone might want to throw my way!

Isn't planning fun?

Week #5: Just Chugging Along

2007-09-28T14:51:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are staring down the last day of another week. It’s been okay, over all, although RobotBoy and I have had a couple of flare-ups of the same old tensions. I know I’m supposed to be the grown-up, but it just gets my goat every time he lets me know he considers me incompetent to teach him math (or anything else, but math is where it happens most frequently). This week, I decided that I will simply walk away every time he starts down that road, and today I actually got a sincere-sounding apology and a polite acknowledgement that he needed my help.

It’s a small thing, but it’s what I have to hang onto this week.

So, with that said, here’s the scoop. (I’ve decided to revert to the subject-by-subject format this week.)

Math:
RobotBoy is half-way through the first module of the second segment and doing very well. He’s been continuing to work on ratios, proportions and scaling this week. On Thursday, he earned a perfect score on his mid-module quiz! I’m starting to ponder what to do once he finishes this course, which should happen in mid-January. In theory, the next step would be algebra, but I’d prefer to have him take his time and really cement things before rushing along into high school math. FLVS offers a half-speed algebra course (spread over two years), but the description clearly states under Prerequisites that the “student should be in 9th grade or higher.” Weirdly, the regular Algebra I course requires only completion of 7th grade math. I guess a consultation with his current instructors is in order before too long.

History & Literature:
Most of his assigned reading this week has focused on events of the late 1700s and early 1800s. He’s read portions of the History of the World: Revolution and Conflict and Time for Learning: Presidents, as well as a fun bargain-bookstore find called Ultimate Field Trip: A Week in the 1800s. RobotBoy had a great time quizzing me to see whether I could recognize the objects shown in some of the pictures. (It was lots of fun to freak him out by showing that I did, in fact, know what most of them were.) He’s also finishing up the historical novel The Keeping Room, which offers a surprisingly complex perspective on the Revolutionary War. His DVD for this week is the first volume of the Ken Burns documentary, The West.

By the way, we went to see the stage adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Sunday after church. It was, I’m afraid, a bit of a disappointment. Maybe it’s just because I’m raising theatre geeks that we’re all a bit jaded, but I was less than impressed with the production as a whole and, quite specifically, with the performances of the child actors. RobotBoy enjoyed it, though.

English:
This week’s grammar was a review of types of nouns: common, proper and abstract. RobotBoy especially loved the silly caricatures representing each type. We went over the information together, after which I challenged him to name one noun for each letter of the alphabet. The catch was that he was allowed to name only fruits and vegetables, boys’ names and feelings. And he had to identify each one as a common, proper or abstract noun. He did this exercise quite cheerfully while simultaneously walking around and around the guinea pig playpen on our patio. On Thursday, we skimmed over the vocabulary and spelling page. I had planned to give him a written quiz on Friday, but just plain forgot to get it ready in time. So, he lucked out this week.

Science:
He continued reading from his three spines. In Time for Learning: The Human Body, he read about the skeleton. His Marine Science assignment this week was about the food chain, including a worksheet on which he practiced identifying “producers” and “consumers.” In Earth’s Waters, he read about states of matter and previewed an experiment he’d like to do next week that explores evaporation. In between readings, he worked on homework for his science center class, including researching information about mushrooms for the essay assignment. Just for fun, he watched an episode of Blue Planet: The Living Seas.

Latin:
He finished up Chapter 2 in Minimus Secundus, typing out his translation for the picture story. The activity sheet requiring him to draw his own pictures to illustrate the story of Odysseus and the sirens was a big hit, although I’m getting awfully tired of having to work so hard to get him to draw more carefully and include color. We also went over the Grasp the Grammar exercise on adjectives and adverbs, and he added the week’s vocabulary to his glossary.

Spanish:
I’m trying to encourage more attention being paid to the written exercises by recording grades for them. The rule is that I check his work and mark incorrect answers. I then award half credit for any corrections he makes. This seems to be working, since it gives him an incentive both for doing it right the first time and for going back to fix mistakes. He worked through three repasos and did two ejercicios, ending the week with 9/10 written in my grade book.

Music:
He continues to love Themes to Remember. This week, he’s been working on two Handel pieces: “The Messiah” and “Royal Fireworks Music.” Singing through them a few times a day has become one of his favorite activities. We’re also working hard to fit instrument practice back into his daily routine. It was better this week than it has been up to now, but he’s still getting only about 15 real minutes each day, instead of the 30 I’d prefer.

Other than that, it was the usual round of music lessons and dance classes and a choir rehearsal. Oh, and RobotBoy would be quite irritable with me if I neglected to say that he has again been cast as a one of the children in the party scene in the ballet company’s Nutcracker. So, as of this Saturday, we’ll be adding weekly rehearsals to our schedule.

Finally, I’ll mention that next week’s report will likely be either late or non-existent. We’ll be away for a few days visiting Moonheart on campus for the college’s Family Weekend. I’m not looking forward to the driving, but I can’t wait to see her.

Wishing everyone a great week!

This Just In: The Weekly Bulletin

2007-09-21T14:20:00.000-05:00

It feels like this week went by very quickly. We did well, though, accomplishing pretty much everything on my lesson plan with a minimum of fuss and bother.

Here’s the day-by-day rundown:

Monday
RobotBoy dived into the second segment of his math class with a lesson introducing ratios. We’re trying having me read over each lesson with him and do a bit more hand-holding while he works the practice problems (which basically means making sure he actually does all the practice problems) before turning him loose to do the assessment on his own. I'm hoping this will encourage him to give more time and attention to the lessons and result in better retention. It seems to be working well, and he’s off to a strong start for the second half of the course. He read a few pages of Earth’s Waters and then worked on typing definitions for his science center class coming up on Wednesday. Next, he read a short book on Benjamin Franklin’s experiments with electricity and a couple of pages in History of the World: Revolution and Conflict about the beginnings of the United States. Over lunch, he watched the first half hour of a three-hour DVD biography about Thomas Jefferson. He was appalled to find out that Mr. “All Men Are Created Equal” was a slaveowner, so we had a conversation about the necessity of evaluating every person as a product of his or her time. It was back to Minimus Secundus for Latin this week, with a reading about the Roman army. His “Theme to Remember” for this week is Handel’s Water Music (which he likes, but isn’t nearly as big a hit as Tocatta & Fugue). Then it was out the door for his piano lesson (and to drive uptown for the drum lesson we didn’t know had been cancelled).

Tuesday
We started the day with reading a chapter of Great Expectations over breakfast. Then we moved to the office/schoolroom for a math lesson about equivalent ratios and unit ratios. RobotBoy, again, did very well. After that, we tackled the first writing assignment in his new English book (which I was rather dreading, since writing so often seems to be a source of conflict and tension). We’ve decided to try letting him type out all of his rough drafts, which should make it easier for him to make corrections. Then, once I’ve approved the final draft, he will write out a good copy by hand. This is in deference to my agreement with him that I will require less handwriting this year, but that what he does write must be of high quality. Since both of this chapter’s readings were about food, he chose to write about making pasta sauce (his favorite food). We went through a couple of rounds of writing and corrections, but I was actually quite pleased with how little ink I needed to spill on his pages. He worked on some more science class definitions and did the worksheet requiring him to label the parts of a cell, then read If You Lived at the Time of the American Revolution. He practiced the Handel snipped and then finished the day by translating a picture story from Secundus before we ran out to his ballet class.

Wednesday
Despite my repeated encouragement to get them done in small chunks, RobotBoy left a long list of science vocabulary words to finish up on Wednesday morning. He got them done and printed out neatly pretty much just in time to leave for his class. They learned about plants during class time, and came home with yet more vocabulary words to define and an assigned essay on the question of whether a mushroom is a plant. We finished out the day with another ballet class, then headed for home. Inspired by the Hoobler books he read in the first couple of weeks of school, he has decided to dress as a samurai for Halloween this year. So, he spent the hour or so before bedtime searching online for pictures from which we can draw inspiration.

Thursday
RobotBoy was up bright and early and back on the computer searching for samurai before breakfast. I pulled him away to eat and listen to me read aloud the next chapter of Great Expectations. Next came the morning’s math lesson, introducing proportions. We then went over the first set of grammar and punctuation exercises in the English text orally. For Latin, he reviewed the picture story he had translated on Tuesday and typed the new vocabulary words into his glossary, then did an activity sheet about the contents of Julius’s backpack. He read a couple of pages in his Human Body book, then took a break and watched a big chunk of the Jefferson DVD. His last bit of desk work for the day was a Spanish exercise (which he had to do twice to get completely correct). Then we drove uptown (again) for choir practice.

Friday
Today in math he learned about “within” and “between” relationships in proportion and about scaling. He grasped these concepts easily and well and should end up with a near-perfect score for the week’s assignments. He decided to tackle writing out the final copy of his English assignment next, but to work on it two sentences at a time in between other work. (I told you he hates to write.)

We went over the Grasp the Grammar and Latin Roots in Secundus together orally, after which he retired to his bedroom to read from the Revolution News and Learning Through History: The French Revolution. Neither of them got read terribly carefully, apparently, and I had to send him back to re-read sections when he was unable to answer any questions about them. Eventually, though, he got through them and seemed to absorb a reasonable amount. He followed up with “America Gets Rid of Her King” from the Child’s History of the World CD, then practiced Handel’s Water Music one more time. One more Spanish ejercicio finished up the deskwork for the day (and the week). As I type this, he is watching the last 30 minutes of the Jefferson biography before we head out for his back-to-back-to-back dance classes. He is planning to finish up his reading (the first several chapters of The Keeping Room) in the car.

By the way, we’re experimenting this week with finding a place in the routine for regular instrument practice. He used to do 30 minutes per day, last thing each day, alternating piano and drum. However, we’ve found that anything he leaves until last doesn’t get done either regularly or well. So, we’re working together to find a better time. We tried having him do it in the morning while I’m making breakfast, but he’s kind of a slow starter and doesn’t really focus on anything until he has eaten. The best plan we’ve come up with so far is to have him practice in the middle of the day, after he has finished math and at least one other subject. My routine is to take our guinea pigs out to play on the patio at about 11:00 each day, so today we had him do his practice during that time. He grumbled, but did it. So, I think we’ll keep it there for now and see how it goes.

Until next week . . .

“The cat ate my homework!”

2007-09-16T19:45:00.001-05:00

You may remember that I mentioned RobotBoy spent part of Wednesday making a model of a DNA strand for his science center class? Well, he was so proud of having done it by himself, and he did a good job. He used those colored foam packing peanut things that stick together when you get them wet, with pipe cleaners holding it all together and had made a little key to show which colors represented which bases. He walked away and left it on the dining table, where it sat until sometime Friday night.

We have two cats in the house, including one not quite a year old who is still very playful. On Saturday morning, I discovered the disaster: the cat had gotten hold of his model and chewed significant portions of it to bits.

RobotBoy took it well, and decided to spend part of Saturday making a replacement to take to class on Wednesday. This time, he decided he wanted it to be more flexible, so that he could make it twist better. So, he skipped the foam parts and made his base pairs with pipe cleaners, instead. I think it turned out pretty well!

Week Three, and All Is Well . . .

2007-09-14T13:34:00.000-05:00

We have two pieces of good news this week, one academic and one not.

First of all, the thing RobotBoy is most excited about is that he is adding yet one more dance class to his weekly routine. He started tap last year and just loved it. He did well enough to be promoted to the next level for this year. Unfortunately, when it came time to register for classes, once we blocked out time for other things that were not flexible, there was no way for him to fit tap into his schedule. The class he should have been in overlapped by 30 minutes with one of his core dance classes. He was, needless to say, very upset and disappointed.

Then he was at the dance school waiting for one of his ballet classes to start when the tap teacher came over and asked why he wasn’t in her class. He explained about the scheduling problem, and she ended up moving the class half an hour earlier so that he and two other students who were in the same predicament would be able to join.

So, today will be his first day back in tap class, and he is beside himself with joy. It makes for a long evening—three and a half hours of back-to-back dance classes—but he has new laces in his tap shoes and is all ready to go!

The other piece of good news is that, having begun his current online math class over the summer, he finished the first “segment” (semester) today. He very much wanted to end the semester with an ‘A,’ and came through with flying colors, earning a 98% on his semester final.

And so, all in all, not a bad day here at the Academy.

Here’s a quick recap of the rest of our week:

Math: Most of this week was wrapping up the current module and reviewing for the semester final. He also did his oral quiz with his instructor over the phone on Wednesday.

History & Literature: He finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory toward the beginning of the week, and we’re looking forward to seeing the stage adaptation next weekend. He also read abridged versions of Robinson Crusoe (a lovely edition with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth) and Gulliver’s Travels. His history reading focused on the French Revolution, with selections from Learning Through History magazine and other resources. He’s continuing to very much enjoy our breakfast read-aloud, Great Expectations. ("Miss Havisham is sooooo creepy!") We’re doing a bit of a nautical theme this week, too. In addition to Robinson Crusoe (shipwreck), we’ve been watching the wonderful PBS miniseries Longitude with Dad in the evening, and today we read aloud the first part of the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

English: We broke open the new Galore Park book this week, and I’m just so pleased we decided to switch. The book seems to be a really good match for RobotBoy’s learning style. Beginning with Book 1 is making this a very easy transition, too. He did the first exercise on Monday, which involved reading an except from Oliver Twist and answering a series of comprehension and vocabulary questions. Of course, in our musical theatre-obsessed household, this particular reading selection meant I got to spend the rest of the day listening to RobotBoy sing “Food, Glorious Food.” It was a small price to pay, though. On Tuesday, we tackled the non-fiction selection, which went quite well, too. Next week he will have his first written assignment from this book. I’m expecting some resistance but crossing my fingers . . .

Science: He again read from all three of his science texts and on Friday did a worksheet comparing algae and other plants. As one of his Wednesday projects, he made a model of a DNA strand, which was one of his homework assignments from his science center class. He’s also been working on typing out the required definitions for that class.

Latin: In his first week with Learning Latin Through Mythology, RobotBoy read about Atalanta and Hippomenes and did a great job translating the sentences and matching them with their pictures.

Spanish: This subject didn’t get as much attention this week as it probably should have. He rather rushed through one set of exercises late on Thursday and made several mistakes. We discussed and corrected them, though, and I think he’s back on track. I continue to be very pleased with The Learnables.

Music: He moved on to the second theme from “Tocatta and Fugue” this week and also read the story about Bach from Lives of the Musicians. However, I think the biggest hit of the week was the Composers Special Bach’s Fight for Freedom. He was especially thrilled to discover that the special features on the DVD allowed him to play all of the pieces used on the soundtrack (over and over).

One other fun extra this week: We have season tickets for the local Shakespeare theatre, and went last night to see the season opener, Comedy of Errors. It is, apparently, Shakespeare’s shortest comedy, and we all agreed it is among the silliest we have seen so far. Lots of fun, though!

The Big Picture and This Week's Report

2007-09-07T14:53:00.000-05:00

I noticed in reading over my last couple of entries that I haven’t listed the year’s curricula anywhere. So, I’ll go ahead and remedy that now, before we get to this week’s report.

Math:

Florida Virtual School Math 3 (8th grade)

English:

So You Really Want to Learn English Book 1
Word Roots B1 software
Reading list coordinated with history

History:
I discussed this in a earlier post, "My Favorite Time of the Year." I neglected to mention there, though, that he is also watching two or three DVDs each week that relate to his current reading.

Science:

Prentice Hall Science Explorer: Earth’s Waters
Marine Science Books 2 & 3 from Dandy Lion
Time for Learning: The Human Body
Homeschooler classes at our local science center

Latin:

Minimus Secundus
Learning Latin Through Mythology

Spanish:

The Learnables: Basic Structures

Music:
(Note: This is the history and appreciation portion on his music study.)

Themes to Remember
Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neighbors Thought)
Composer biographies from Netflix

Geography:
It’s light this year. He’s doing the Top Secret Adventures kits from Highlights, and looking up the countries he’s reading about on his globe and/or world map.

Extras:
Piano, drum, choir and dance.
We had a minor bit of re-scheduling in order to make room for one more ballet class each week, but RobotBoy is happy as a clam with his busy schedule.

There. Now I can get on with the Weekly Report!

This was a cramped week, between Labor Day and my husband’s birthday plus the first science center session. So, RobotBoy and I have been scrambling a bit to squeeze a full week’s worth of work into two and a half days. Amazingly, we’re just about going to make it.

Math: Three lessons down, one to make up over the weekend. He’s been learning about types of numbers (rational, irrational, natural, etc.) and working on exponents and scientific notation.

History & Literature: He finished The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn several days early and voluntarily moved on to the sequel, The Demon in the Teahouse, even though I had decided not to assign it. In conjunction with that, he watched a three-hour PBS series about Japan. He’s also been reading about the French Revolution and Napoleon in various books and on the Child’s History of the World CD. Still on his to-do list is watching an A&E Biography of Napoleon. In preparation for seeing a stage production later this month, he’s begun reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and we’re continuing with Great Expectations aloud.

Science: He read a section of Earth’s Waters and a few pages in The Human Body about cells and DNA. Conveniently, this week’s science center class—the first of a four-session series about biology--was about those same topics. He also read a few pages from one of the Marine Science books and did a quick research project about animals that live in tide pools and kelp forests.

Latin: This week, he wrapped up the first chapter of Secundus and started building his personal glossary from the words introduced in the lesson. In addition to Latin vocabulary, this lesson focused on how nouns change their endings to reflect whether they are being used as subjects or objects. Next week, he’ll take a break from Secundus and tackle the first chapter of Learning Latin Through Mythology.

Spanish: We’re both happy to see how much he’s remembering from the first part of The Learnables now that he’s starting Basic Structures. He’s listened to the first few sections and done their associated ejercicios flawlessly.

Music: The Themes to Remember version of “Tocatta & Fugue in D Minor” is a huge hit with my young musician. In addition to playing the track over and over (and singing it . . . loudly), RobotBoy is having a blast picking out the tune on the piano. We’re expecting the Great Composers DVD on Bach in tomorrow’s mail and plan to have him watch that over the weekend.

Not bad for an abbreviated week, huh?

The other good news is that our copy of Galore Park’s English book arrived yesterday, meaning that we can start incorporating it into our lesson plans as of next week. I’m really happy I decided to jump to this series. I just like the layout and approach, the whole “tone” of the books, and I think RobotBoy will be much happier with them.

Until next time . . .

The First Week: Not a Disaster So Far!

2007-08-31T10:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, so that’s not the most positive title I could use, but it’s a pretty accurate reflection of how I’m feeling at the moment.

RobotBoy and I had a really rough time last year. I knew things would change quite a bit this year, with his big sister off at college. And I made a genuine effort in planning to choose materials and a schedule that would make things more palatable for him. Two of my primary goals for this year, in fact, are to work on improving our relationship and to re-ignite his enjoyment of learning.

Nonetheless, I worried as we got close to the official start of our year. I absolutely dreaded the idea that we would fall back into the unpleasant patterns from last year.

So far, though, things are going well. We’ve done away with assignment sheets entirely. I have my lesson plans for each week, and on Monday we just sat together and figured out how much of each subject he would do each day. He’s been writing out his own list of goals on his whiteboard each day and gets a big kick out of erasing things as they are finished.

He did leave a little more reading for today than would probably have been ideal, but he’s a terrific reader and enjoys curling up in a nest of blankets and pillows in the living room to read. So, it’s not the worst problem we could have.

The only moments of tension so far came on Tuesday (when I made him erase and re-write some labels on a Latin worksheet to make them neater), Wednesday (when he experienced his first “free” day and got bored until I guided him to a project—Thank goodness for Learning Through History magazine!) and today (when he was doing a quiz in his online math class, asked me for help and then got angry when he didn’t like my answers). Each of them has passed quickly, though, and ended with a spontaneous apology.

The Week in Review

So, for those that may be interested in the nuts and bolts, here’s what he accomplished this week.

Monday: Doing a math lesson, reading four pages of Prentice Hall’s Earth’s Waters, reading two pages of Minimus Secundus, reading the biographical information about Antonio Vivaldi in Themes to Remember and listening to “Spring,” reviewing the information about numbers in The Learnables Spanish: Basic Structures, working on the latest Top Secret Adventures geography kit on Greece, reading from The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn, attending his weekly drum lesson.

Tuesday: Listening to me read aloud from Great Expectations over breakfast, doing a math lesson, reading two-page spread from his Human Body book, doing a Secundus activity sheet, practicing “Spring,” reviewing the “How to do the lessons” information in The Learnables, doing some more work on the Top Secret kit, doing one story from the Child’s History of the World CD ROM, reading more of The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn, attending his piano lesson.

Wednesday: Making a Russian cloak and hat following directions from Learning Through History: Tsarist Russia. We had to go to the fabric store for supplies first, and I let him be in charge of figuring out what he needed and choosing the materials. He had a blast! He watched a couple of kid-friendly science shows we had saved on the DVR, started re-reading the 7th Harry Potter book, then attended his ballet class that evening. Two Wednesdays a month, he will be attending classes at our local science museum. On the alternate Wednesdays, assuming he is caught up with all of his schoolwork, he gets the day off to do projects and read and play and watch reasonably educational TV.

Thursday: Doing a math lesson, reading and translating the two-page picture story from Secundus, practicing “Spring,” reviewing the week’s Spanish assignments, reading a few articles from Learning Through History: Tsarist Russia, doing another Child’s History of the World story, doing one lesson of Word Roots software, reading some more Ghost in the Tokaido Inn, watching a Great Composers DVD about Antonio Vivaldi, attending choir practice.

Friday: Listening to some more Great Expectations over breakfast, doing his math quiz, reading Diane Stanley’s Peter the Great, reading some background information about Kabuki from a book about theatre history, reading some more Ghost in the Tokaido Inn, reading a few more articles from Learning Through History: Tsarist Russia and Learning Through History: The French Revolution, reading two pages from one of his Marine Science books, doing another Secundus activity sheet, reading the story about Vivaldi from Lives of the Musicians, watching an A&E biography of Peter the Great, attending ballet and jazz classes.

You will notice that there’s no grammar or writing in the mix just yet. That’s in part because I made a conscious choice to require less writing this year, since it was the cause of so much of our trouble last year. I consulted with the certified teacher who does our annual evaluations, and she agreed that it won’t do him any harm to back off a bit and let us both catch our breath. He reads constantly and consistently scores extremely well in all language arts testing (except for spelling and punctuation), so I’ve decided to just let him relax a bit this year. Also, I made a last-minute decision to switch from Voyages in English to Galore Park’s English Prep text. The book had to be ordered from England, so we’re still waiting for it to arrive.

I almost succumbed to assigning a written narration on Peter the Great today, since RobotBoy was so excited after reading about him. But I bit my tongue, both because I decided it wouldn’t be fair to toss in an extra assignment this late in the week and because the week has gone so well so far that I don’t want to blow it! The plan is to gradually add back in some more writing as the year progresses.

He seems to be pretty happy with his curriculum and with his schedule so far. He is very much enjoying both The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn and Great Expectations and is getting a big kick out of Themes to Remember. I think the Prentice Hall Science Explorer book is going to be a big hit, too.

So, all in all, a pretty good week! I’m actually starting to feel optimistic about this year.

Here’s hoping that all the other homeschoolers out there are finding their years off to a good start, too.

"How do you write your lesson plans?"

2007-07-31T08:55:00.000-05:00

This seems to be something of a hot topic on various homeschool lists and message boards this time of year. So, I thought I would post a couple of samples here.

(To see a larger, more readable version, click on the graphic.)

These are the first two weeks of my plans for RobotBoy for this coming year. The "Notes for Mom" box at the bottom is my innovation for this year. I'm hoping it will help me to be more prepared, rather than scrambling for supplies every Sunday evening!

My Favorite Time of the Year!

2007-07-27T13:16:00.000-05:00

No, I don’t mean the long, lazy days of summer. I mean time to gather resources and write lesson plans for next year!

There have been a lot of changes and adjustments taking place here at our little academy. The most significant is that we will be reducing our student enrollment by half next year. Although we had hoped to hang onto her for another couple of years, Moonheart decided to go ahead and apply for admission to the early college entrance program she’s had her eye on. She has been accepted and is due to start classes in August. So, we’ve spent a lot of time this spring and summer filling out forms and arranging finances and combing through class schedules and other information.

We’re very happy for her and very proud. (And no one would blame me if I were just a little melancholy, right?)

So, this means that I now have the freedom to tailor RobotBoy’s curriculum and schedule for next year specifically for him. I’ll get to that in a minute.

We also made a local move last month, and the new house has a spare bedroom that will allow us a real schoolroom for the first time in a few years. At the moment, the décor and furnishings still consist largely of half-unpacked cardboard boxes, but I plan to have things in much better shape by the time school rolls around in the fall.

Now, since RobotBoy is my highly social, places-to-go, people-to-see student, I’ve decided to arrange lots of outside-the-house activities for him. In previous years, I’ve had to juggle the schedules of the two kids and balance RobotBoy’s need to be out and about with Moonheart’s need to stay home in order to manage her heavy academic load and, especially, her commitments to online classes. With her away at school, though, we’ll have the freedom to do more. So far, the anticipated schedule looks like this:

Monday
Piano Lesson 4:30 – 5:00
Drum Lesson & Practice 6:15 – 8:00

Wednesday
Homeschool Class at Science Center 12:00 – 4:00 (twice a month)
Ballet Class 5:30 – 7:00

Thursday
Choir Rehearsal 4:30 – 6:30

Friday
Ballet Class 6:00 – 7:30
Jazz Dance Class 7:30 – 8:30

The other big change is that we’re going to try scheduling desk work only four days each week, allowing him Wednesdays off as long as he is caught up on his assignments for Monday and Tuesday. I noticed last year that Thursday and Friday tended to be his most productive days, and I suspect it worked that way because he knew he would be grounded or doing make-up work all weekend if he didn’t finish his assignments before dinner time on Friday. So, I’m hoping that dangling the carrot of a day off in the middle of the week will keep him motivated to work efficiently.

In terms of curriculum, we’re doing a few things differently there, too. First of all, I’ve decided to back off on the amount of writing I’m asking of him, especially for history. It was just so unpleasant last year that I’ve decided we both need a break.

We’re also going “spine free” for history. Or, perhaps, the more accurate way to put it is that I’m using his reading list as the spine. I’ve been collecting books from closeout and discount bookstores and culled anything useful from our existing collection. By the time I was done, I had a shelf full of about 6000 pages of non-fiction, biographies and historical fiction, plus several reference books and anthologies from which I wanted him to read. So, I just arranged all the readers in chronological order and broke them into chunks that would fit into the number of weeks in our academic year.

We’re a little off track from the history divisions recommended in The Well-Trained Mind, because we spent a year on American history back In 2004-05. This year, we’ll be covering “modern” history, from about 1700 forward. I’m doing this in order to round out the complete world history cycle and allow us to start over with the ancients next year.

Here’s the list:

Peter the Great, Stanley
Ghost in the Tokaido Inn, Hoobler
Robinson Crusoe: Young Reader’s Edition (Running Press)
Gulliver’s Travels (Dorling Kindersley Classics)
Benjamin Franklin’s Adventures With Electricity, Birch
If You Lived at the Time of the American Revolution
Keeping Room, Myers
Ultimate Field Trip: A Week in the 1800s
Sleepy Hollow / Rip Van Winkle, Irving
Day That Changed America: The Alamo, Tanaka
"Emperor’s New Clothes," Anderson *
"Tell-Tale Heart," Poe
Charles Dickens, Stanley
If You Traveled West in a Covered Wagon
David Copperfield (abridged by Dickens for public readings), Dickens
Great Expectations, Dickens (Aloud)
Rifles for Watie, Keith
Red Cap, Wisler
Red Badge of Courage, Crane
Day That Changed America: Gettysburg, Tanaka
Alice Rose & Sam, Lasky
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Carrol
Dragon’s Gate, Yep
Around the World in 80 Days, Verne (Aloud)
Tom Sawyer, Twain
Last Princess, Stanley
Treasure Island, Stevenson *
Sherlock Holmes stories
Immigrant Kids, Freedman
Jungle Book, Kipling
Day That Changed America: Earthquake, Tanaka
Trapped by the Ice, McCurdy
History Channel Guide: Anastasia
Gandhi, Pastan
Cheaper by the Dozen, Gilbreth
Dave at Night, Levine
Daily Life: The Great Depression, Parks
Franklin & Eleanor, Harness
My Family and Other Animals, Durrel (Aloud)
I Never Saw Another Butterfly, Volovkova *
Day That Changed America: D-Day, Tanaka
Mieko and the Fifth Treasure, Coerr
So Far From the Bamboo Grove, Watkins
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis *
Malcolm X: Fire Burning Brightly, Meyers
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl *
My Name Is America: Journal of Seamus Flaherty
Journey to Jo’burg, Naidoo
Red Scarf Girl, Ji-li Jiang

(Selections marked with an asterisk have adaptations being performed on-stage locally this year. So, I’m moving them around in the schedule to make sure that RobotBoy reads them just before we go see each show.)

I also have the following audio books, which we’ll listen to while on our way to all those afternoon activities:

Twenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny, Hawthorne
Time Machine, Wells
Defending Baltimore Against Enemy Attack, Osgood

And we’re going to include some poetry, too:

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge
Lady of Shallott, Tennyson
Pied Piper of, Browning
The Raven, Poe
Charge / Light Brigade, Tennyson
Song of Hiawatha, Longfellow
Goblin Market. Rossetti
Owl and the Pussycat, Lear
Jabberwocky, Carroll
If, Kipling
I’ve Known Rivers, Langston Hughes
In Just, cummings

In order to give the whole thing some structure and context, he’ll work his way through most of these as appropriate during the year:

Child’s History of the World CD (19 sections)
Time for Learning: Presidents
History of the World: Revolution & Conflict
Revolution News
Learning Through History: Tzarist Russia
Learning Through History: Victorian Era
Learning Through History: French Revolution
Learning Through History: Great War

Well, since this is already longer than I intended, I’ll stop there for today. Tune in tomorrow (or sometime in the next few days, anyway) for samples of my lesson plans for the year!

A Year in a Three-ring Binder

2007-06-26T10:05:00.000-05:00

It’s time to think about year-end evaluations, which means it’s time to assemble those portfolios. (Actually, for the first time this year, I have only one portfolio and evaluation to worry about, because Moonheart has opted to use her standardized test scores to satisfy the annual reporting requirement.)

I am not a scrapbooker. So, I see these annual portfolios as not only a record of my children’s academic achievements for the year, but also a keepsake for the future. We always include photos and take pains with the presentation. Normally, I really enjoy this process, but it’s something I’ve been putting off this year. I’m sure it has something to do with the big changes I know are coming in our homeschooling life (more on that in another post), but I know it also has to do with my general tiredness after a challenging educational year with RobotBoy. Nonetheless, I finally got into “the zone” and got it done last week.

In any case, I thought I’d share a little bit about how we assemble these portfolios and what goes in them. It’s something about which many new homeschoolers (and non-homeschooling family and friends) always seem to have lots of questions.

I start by going through the computer files I’ve kept during the year in which I list all the books each child has read and the educational shows they’ve watched, outside classes they’ve taken, field trips we’ve done, hands-on projects they’ve completed, etc. Then, I start sifting and teasing out that information into a “course description” for each subject. I cut and paste and type information until I have one or two pages for each subject listing all the resources used and experiences had by each child that year.

Then, I sit down, usually on the living room floor, with a big stack of each student’s workbooks and texts and the three-ring binders in which we file all the year’s loose papers. I grab a pad of sticky notes and start paging through each book, tagging all the pages I think might make good samples of the year’s work for that subject. I aim for three samples from each resource: one from the beginning of the year, one from the middle and one from the end. Sometimes, if the material itself is just not terrible exciting or we used lots of different resources for the same subject, I’ll settle for just two. And, occasionally, I can’t resist putting in more. But three is my rule of thumb.

I’m slightly obsessive about this process. So, my next step is to hit the copy center and make photocopies of all the pages I want to include in the portfolio. That way, I can use the copies of the workbook pages and leave the actual workbooks intact. (When the shelves get too full, I pack them in boxes labeled with the year and store them in the garage. Why? I’m not sure, except that I can’t bring myself to throw them away. And I’ve had one or two times when it turned out to be useful to be able to go dig them up.) For the loose-leaf pages in that year’s binder, I transfer the original to the portfolio and put the photocopy in its place. (Again, I hear you ask, “Why?” And, again, I say, “Because I like to keep things ‘complete.’”)

Then I get to the fun part: Photos. One of the best purchases we’ve made was the digital camera. I absolutely love the fact that I can take as many pictures as I want, download them to my computer, store them more or less forever, print them on demand, and never waste time or money on film. I take lots and lots of pictures during the year of the kids doing “educational” things. I take pictures of them doing history-related craft projects and taking field trips and doing science labs and at their outside activities . . . Some years, I even make up little yearbooks for them. Other years, like this one, I just include several pages of photos in the portfolio. I usually spend at least a day or two reviewing the archives, choosing and cropping photos and arranging them on pages and printing them.

I had finished all those steps by the end of last week, and I spent Saturday evening while RobotBoy was watching a movie with his dad actually assembling the portfolio. So, without further ado, here are the contents of this year’s portfolio:

Math
Florida Virtual School Course Description
Grade Report: First Semester
Grade Report: Second Semester
Sample Assignment Page
Sample Project Page

Language Arts
Resources and Reading List
Spelling and Grammar Worksheets
Copywork and Handwriting Practice Sheets

History: The Middle Ages and Renaissance
Resources and Reading List
Reports and Worksheets
Photos: History Projects
Photos: Renaissance Faire Field Trip

Science
Resources and Reading List
Outline Worksheets
Photos: Chemistry Labs

World Geography
Resources and Reading List
Geography Worksheets
Historical Maps

Foreign Language
Resources List
Latin for Children Worksheets
Minimus Worksheets

Arts & Extracurriculars
Activities List
Photos: Ballet Productions
Photos: Church Holiday Pageant
Photos: Drama Class Production
Photos: Annual Kid-run Service at Church
Attendance Certificate, Religious Education Program
Photos: Model Rocketry Club

That’s it.

So, I have to say that I still have very mixed feelings about this past year. Seeing the assembled portfolio—with its pretty colored plastic subject dividers and its neatly typed lists of resources and reading materials and the photos of RobotBoy looking happy doing interesting things—did help me to realize that the year was more productive than I feared. And there were definite bright spots: I was delighted, for example, to see just how many books RobotBoy read for pleasure this year. However, the truth is that it was a lot harder to cull through the piles of work and find a few really nice samples for each subject than it has been in previous years.

All in all, I’m very glad to be done and to have come out with a respectable finished product. But I’m even more glad that I’ve already started looking ahead to next year and identified some things to do differently.

Next time, I’ll start posting details about those plans . . .

Neglect -- And What About Summer?

2007-04-19T08:08:00.000-05:00

Well, it really has been quite a while since I posted, hasn't it? I'm sure my poor blog (and anyone who actually reads it) must be feeling terribly neglected. There's been so much going on, and yet everything feels so unsettled, that I haven't really been able to identify a coherent subject about which to write. So, I guess I'll have to settle for a few updates.

First of all, in the continuing saga of RobotBoy, I have to admit that we've had only very limited success in finding an approach to scheduling and managing his days. The card system worked reasonably well for a while, but eventually deteriorated into the same kinds of tensions we were having with the previous systems. And I began to resent all the time and effort I was expending over the weekend to parse out and set up assignments that ended up not getting done. So, we're back to the basics of having me just give him his assignments orally and one at a time.

The good news is that he did finish his online math class, and came through with flying colors. In fact, his instructors have recommended that he skip the next class in the sequence. We have put in a request for the third year class and have asked that he be allowed to begin at the earliest available start date in June, so that he doesn't go stale. Of course, that will have him finishing the next class around the end of the first semester of next year, but I guess we'll figure out the next step then.

Meanwhile, Moonheart is closing in on completing her virtual school Chemistry course. She hopes to finish this week and is absolutely joyous about seeing the light at the end of this especially long and winding and frequently uphill tunnel! She should also be wrapping up much of her home-based work within the next couple of weeks.

At this point, it looks like we'll have about three weeks at the end of our semester when both of them will be more or less done with their core assignments. So, we're thinking of using that time to do a bunch of the hands-on things that keep getting pushed aside during these busy days. I hope we'll be able to do at least a couple of chemistry set experiments and one more involved art project each of those weeks, while in between the kids tie up any remaining curriculum loose ends. I'm hoping, too, to watch at least a few of the educational DVDs that have been sitting around the top of our TV shelf in their pretty red Netflix envelopes for the last few weeks. It should be a fun way to finish out the year.

And we have the usual year-ending events--choir concerts and dance recitals and their assorted rehearsals--to break up our days.

Both kids are looking forward to their summer activities, too. And I'm looking forward to a break from teaching.

Moonheart is happily anticipating her first excursion to sleep-away camp. She's going with some friends from our church, so I'm sure they'll all have a grand time. She'll be gone for two weeks in June, and I get the honor of driving her the 9 hours each way. Then, at the end of the summer she's planning to participate in a week-long theatre day camp. In between, she'll be finishing up the virtual Spanish class she started late in the year.

RobotBoy is very excited to do his second "juinior intensive" at his ballet school. It's three weeks of half days, four hours of dance each day. He had a great time last summer and has been looking forward to returning all this year. As far as he's concerned, the only thing wrong with this camp is that it doesn't last all summer. There is no such thing as "enough dance" for this kiddo. His other big event for the summer will likely be a mini-road trip with me. He'll be in the middle of his dance camp when I make the first drive to deposit his big sister at camp, but we're planning to make a little mother and son adventure out of the second drive. We're already busy looking at fun things to see and do between here and the camp and are planning to take at least three or four days to ramble up there to collect her.

And, of course, the lease on our current rental is ending and we will be moving (locally) sometime before the end of June. So, it's shaping up to be a full summer.

I do intend to get my planning for next year done, nonetheless. At this point, I know there will be at least some changes. This year has proven to me that RobotBoy needs to do things differently, and I'm working with him to figure out what's working and what to change. There is also the possibility in the wind of changes for Moonheart, although we're not quite sure yet what those will be. We should have a better idea of what to expect within the next couple of weeks. Until her plans are firm, though, I'm holding off on putting much time and effort into thinking about next year.

So, that's where we are and a bit about where we're going in the immediate future. I'll be much happier once I can see a bit farther ahead.

So Far, So-So

2007-01-09T18:22:00.000-05:00

(A quick update on how the ride has been in the last week or so.)

We’re still struggling with finding some kind of strategy to help RobotBoy get a reasonable amount of schoolwork done each day. We’ve tried having me just tell him what to do next, but he argues every assignment and seems to dislike not seeing the big picture. And so we fought. I’ve tried giving him a checklist of all of his assignments for each day, but he resents my attempts to “control his life.” Still, we fought. Most recently, we tried defining what constitutes a “chunk” of work for each subject and how many chunks are required per day, then just giving him the list of the week’s assignments and letting him figure out how to schedule them. He just didn’t do anything at all . . . and we fought.

So, the latest idea is to give him fewer, but larger and more defined chunks, which I write out on index cards. Each day, he is required to complete one red card (mostly history and science reading/outling and Latin), one yellow card (mostly workbook pages), two green cards (Spanish, reading, logic, vocabulary) and one blue card (music practice). He has a few “wild cards” that he can use to modify a limited number of assignments. For example, today he used a red wild card to substitute making a model of a battle from the Hundred Years’ War for the written summary I had assigned. What I suspect will make the biggest difference, however, is that he is now required to show his cards and the associated work to his dad every evening.

It’s too early to tell yet whether this will work in the long run. He did do a full day’s work yesterday with less drama than usual, but that may just be the novelty factor. We’ll have to wait a few weeks to see how it really works.

Moonheart is much more relaxed than she was last semester. Of course, she’s also behind in her history, literature and philosophy reading, but I’m hoping she’ll pick up the pace once we truly get back into our regular groove. So far, the new geometry text is going well. She doesn’t love it, but seems to be getting it without an inordinate amount of stress.

All the extracurriculars are coming back online this week, too. And I’m sure that will help provide both structure in our weeks and incentive for both kids to get and keep on track.

The Awful Truth

Every now and then, a conversation about organization pops up on one of the homeschool message boards or lists that I frequent. And I’m always impressed by the ladies who can point readers to photos on their blogs or personal websites showing their beautifully clean and organized schoolrooms. Since the last move, we don’t have a spare room to set aside just for this purpose, but we got new desks and did a lot of reorganizing at the beginning of this academic year. So, I figured I’d put up some pictures, too.

Oh boy.

Both kids wanted in on this, wanted to make sure their desks were included. So, I had them take a few minutes to straighten up before I got out the camera. And I made a huge discovery:

What you see with your own eyes is quite different from what things look like on film.

It was simply amazing how much messier everything looked in the photos, compared to my impression. It’s really embarrassing, actually. However, in the name of honesty and trying to help folks get a meaningful sense of what homeschooling is really like, I’m going to go ahead and post the photos below.

This is where we stow most of the main texts, curricula, workbooks, etc. for the year. Moonheart has the top shelf, and RobotBoy uses the bottom one.

This is the “supply cabinet,” where we keep all the shared art supplies and extra paper and so on.

Here’s “my” shelf, where I keep additional reference books, educational kits, any books or materials that aren’t written into my lesson plans but that I think might come in handy and all the readers that the kids have either already finished or not started yet. (That’s Moonheart’s guitar music on the right.)

All three of our desks are lined up against one wall in the living room. In the first picture, that’s RobotBoy’s desk on the right (with his new interactive globe handy) and mine on the left.

The second photo shows Moonheart’s desk in the corner. My planning notebook and log are at the right, front edge of my desk, in front of the inboxes where I keep loose papers until I get around to filing them. The colored file folders you can see under my desk (next to the fuzzy slippers Moonheart gave me last Christmas) store information about the kids’ assorted activities: class and rehearsal schedules, registration information for the next session, etc.

So, there it is, a quick tour of our “schoolroom,” which I hope will at least serve the purpose of making other folks feel better about their own less than pristine environments.

The Second Drop

2007-01-02T11:48:00.000-05:00

It feels like a good time to reclaim my roller coaster metaphor from the beginning of the school year. You know how most roller coasters are constructed: that first huge incline and drop to get you going, a series of twists and turns until you slow down a bit, then a second big climb and drop to send you hurtling through the second half? Well, here we are at the beginning of our second semester, and I can feel it right in the pit of my stomach all over again.

I put off prepping for our return to schoolwork until the last possible second. Last night, after the kids went to bed, I finally cleared all of the accumulated stuff off my desk and made room for the new desk accessories and supplies RobotBoy gave me for Christmas. Then, I sat down to review the lesson plans I so carefully wrote last summer and update them to reflect the changes we made back in November. By the time I finally went to bed a little after 1:00 am, it was with the satisfaction of knowing a whole sheaf of freshly printed and three-hole-punched pages lay gleaming in my planning notebook. I felt all prepared and organized and as ready as a person could be.

Then I slept right through my alarm—something I almost never do—and didn’t wake up until I heard Moonheart doing her morning guitar practice.

The holiday season kept us unusually busy this year, so we more or less limped into the end of the first semester. Moonheart did manage to finish her Microeconomics course, although she had to work well into what should have been vacation time to do so. The good news is that she did well enough on her final exam to hang onto her A for the class. I don’t think it has quite sunk in for her just exactly what a big difference this is going to make in her workload and her daily schedule. She spent a week working on the new Precalculus class before we decided it was just plain more work than she was prepared to do this year. I encouraged her to drop it. And the combination of Nutcracker madness and general holiday excitement kept RobotBoy from focusing on much of anything academic from mid-November onward, meaning that he ended the semester with a backlog of work in several subjects that will have to be made up over the course of the second semester.

Since the last math class Moonheart didn’t hate was Geometry, we decided to see if we could find her an advanced geometry course/text/curriculum. We settled on a text from Key Curriculum Press called Advanced Euclidean Geometry, which integrates a lot of exercises using Geometer’s Sketchpad. It looks really promising. However, by the time both the book and software actually arrived, it didn’t seem worth getting started only to break for the holidays. So, she will be starting that today. She will also be starting her reading for the Introduction to Philosophy course I have laid out for her. And our history/literature focus will shift from the middle ages to the Renaissance. Her composition work will become more demanding, as she moves into the essay-writing section of Wordsmith Craftsman.

Changes and additions for RobotBoy this semester include slowing down his pace in Latin for Children. I’ve noticed that he seems to be struggling a bit this year and that doing his Latin has become extremely unpleasant. So, I’ve decided to stretch Primer B over two years and to aim for having him finish only the first half of the book this year. He’s also doing the translations from the accompanying Libellus de Historia, so it should be enough to keep him busy. He will be starting the Carson Dellosa World Geography workbook, moving on to Orbiting with Logic and adding a page or two of sentence diagramming to his weekly workload.

Other than that, life continues more or less as usual. We did add a new kitten to our family just before Christmas. May I just say how much “fun” it was to have a Christmas tree and gifts with all those lovely and tempting ribbons on them in the house with two young cats? I do think their favorite thing was the electric Lego train, though.

But now the lights and decorations are down. We have one more week before most of the extracurriculars get underway again. And I admit to being more than a bit relieved to have our limited living space tree- and train-free and to be sitting at a relatively clean and well-organized desk with a fresh set of lesson plans in front of me and a whole new semester in which to learn and grow along with my kids.

Wishing you all a smooth post-holiday transition and a great ride!

Note: This message was edited and approved by Bessie the guinea pig, despite the fact that she believes there are too many cats in it.

Pruning

2006-11-20T12:52:00.000-05:00

I’m not a gardener. I love seeing green things grow, but I’ve never had the knack for keeping them going. As I understand it, though, there are some plants that require the gardener to cut them back now and then to encourage more growth. Basically, you need to cut away the wimpy, unhealthy branches and the dead flowers so that all of the plant’s resources can be channeled toward supporting the healthier portions of the plant.

Well, we’ve been doing a little cutting back around here, too, especially for Moonheart. We had planned our usual very ambitious schedule for her this year, and I anticipated the usual amount of fumbling and flailing until we found a routine that worked for her. She goes through something similar in the first few weeks of most academic years, so it took me a while to see that there were certain subjects and materials this time around that just were just not going to work at all: things that required pruning.

Eventually, though, we got out the shears and went to work. For those who are keeping track, here’s what we decided to do.

She dropped German and (at least for now) Latin. She had gotten to a point in both languages at which she really needed access to and interaction with a teacher who knows more than she does, and that is not me. She already had two solid years of Latin, which is more than more people ever get and which has provided her with a wonderful base in vocabulary and grammar. We decided it was enough. German, which she had initially chosen to start studying because it was fun, had become torture.
She also dropped the distance learning statistics course. We had opted to try it as a way of giving her a little break from the traditional math sequence, but she found it boring to the point of tears.
Because she wants to make sure to have two years of verifiable, document-able foreign language on her transcript, she is starting an online Spanish 1 class. I suspect that, with two years of Latin and a year of conversational Spanish already under her belt, this will come pretty easily to her. And the plus is that I studied enough Spanish in high school and college that I may actually be able to be helpful.
She has decided to go ahead and start the online Precalculus class she was planning to put off until next year. We were afraid that her math skills would go stale if she didn’t keep moving forward. So, next year she will either go ahead with Calculus or just take a year off before resuming math at a college level.

Obviously, because she is starting these two classes so late into the year, she will need to continue working into the summer to finish them. However, by dropping three subjects and replacing only two and by substituting a first year foreign language for the second and third years of two others, I think we will greatly reduce her workload and stress level. This should allow her to concentrate much more efficiently and happily (and to get a lot more sleep!).

I guess, following my gardening metaphor through to its natural conclusion, we could consider these new classes to be seedlings?

Another source of stress has been that she fell quite far behind the required pace in Microeconomics while she was trying to juggle the previous workload. She had earned stellar grades on everything she had turned in, but was in danger of being dropped from the course because she was so far behind. We made the decision to put off having her start the two new classes by an additional week and a half so that she could devote lots of extra time and attention to catching up as much as possible in that one class. She made a deal with her instructor that I, frankly, feared was going to be more than she could manage. However, she came through like a trooper and submitted all the required lessons a whole day before the deadline. She still has some additional catching up to do, but we can both see the light at the end of the tunnel.

All in all, she’s facing this week with much more enthusiasm than she has had for schoolwork for some time now. I’m very, very glad we decided to make changes.

Meanwhile, RobotBoy is going through one of his emotional growth spurts and has been having a lot of trouble getting any schoolwork done at all. He seems to resent any attempt I make to exert what he perceives as “too much” control over his schedule and was rebelling against my carefully constructed lists of daily assignments. So, with much trepidation, we have decided to give him more flexibility and freedom.

As of last week, I have stopped providing him with his assignments in daily checklist format. Instead, he gets the list of all of his assignments for the week, along with a recommended daily schedule of how much to do of each subject. The new agreement is that he is free to deviate from my recommended schedule, with the understanding that he is still responsible for getting the full week’s work done. We have defined what qualifies as “enough” work for one day, and he is not allowed to attend extracurriculars or fun activities scheduled for any day on which he does not complete at least that much. He is also required to put in time on Saturday to make up anything left unfinished for that week.

Truthfully, it was a rough week. He missed dance classes one day and had to stay home with Dad while I took his sister to a movie on Friday night. But it was ever-so-slight an improvement over the previous three or four weeks. So, we’re forging ahead with the experiment. So far, today is going reasonably well, but I take nothing for granted.

It's funny: I know it's fall and that we're all looking forward to Thanksgiving, but around here--with the pruning and planting and sense of renewal and growth--it feels more like spring!

Making Mummies

2006-10-13T09:11:00.000-05:00

We've been very, very busy with extracurricular activities lately. Between the two kids, we are juggling rehearsals for three productions, plus the usual round of music and dance lessons. And I somehow got "volunteered" to be on the committee organizing our church's Christmas Eve pageant. This means that our daily work has become fairly uninspiring as we just try to keep up with the basics. So, I have nothing new and interesting to report, and I thought it might be fun to "pull one out of the vaults."

There have been several conversations lately on some of the classical homeschooling boards I frequent about one of those activities that is always suggested when you’re studying the ancients: mummifying a chicken. And I thought that, since it’s at least sort of seasonally relevant (Halloween . . . . mummies?), it might be fun to share our experiences with our mummification project from last year.

We’re vegans, so sacrificing an animal for this purpose was out of the question. I did some research for alternate ideas and, as usual, ended up drawing from a number of sources and putting our own spin on the idea.

The first step was figuring out what, exactly, to mummify. I ended up assembling two little “bodies” using oranges and small, new potatoes, held together with wire. I drew faces on the potatoes--one male and one female—and explained to Moonheart and RobotBoy that these were the bodies of the pharaoh and his beloved wife, tragically killed by some mysterious ancient disease.

My students were appointed the official royal embalmers and went immediately to work.

They made an incision on the side of each abdomen and used the appropriate ritual tools to remove as many of the “internal organs” as possible. (Crochet hooks of various sizes and some spoons worked pretty well for this.) They saved all the orange flesh and seeds to package up and mummify separately.

Meanwhile, I mixed up a batch of “natron,” made by combining equal parts baking soda and salt.

Once the kids got tired of pulling out gooshy bits, the bodies were ready to be cleansed and anointed with “wine.” (I poured a bit of rubbing alcohol into a pretty bottle that had once held maple syrup and added a couple of drops of red food coloring.) After that, they made little packets of natron wrapped in fabric with which to stuff the body cavities of the mummies-to-be. They inserted the packets, sprinkled on some spices (mostly cinnamon powder), then turned their attention to the “organs.” They gathered up as much of the orange flesh and seeds as possible and wrapped them up into little packets inside paper napkins. We tied off each packet with a bit of string and wrote an initial to identify which organs belonged to which body. Then, we placed both bodies and the organ packets into an aluminum foil baking dish and surrounded it all with more natron.

We let them sit for several days, until the natron got really soaked and crusty. Then I removed it and replaced it with a fresh layer, after which we let them sit there desiccating for another few weeks. In the meantime, we went to work on their funeral goods and furnishings.

First up, was the coffins. I traced an outline roughly the shape of the bodies—with plenty of extra room to accommodate their eventual wrappings—onto cardstock. In retrospect, it would have been better to go with something a bit heavier for the top and bottom, since we found the cardstock had a tendency to warp later in the process. We used a combination of tape and glue to make the sides of the coffins by attaching strips of cardstock to the bottom. The kids then covered both inside and outside, top and bottom of each coffin with papier mache. (We left the lid alone for the moment, by the way. More on that later.)

By the way, I want to make it clear that this entire process unfolded over the course of about two months. We’d work on individual projects a little at a time, one or two afternoons a week. During the same period, we were continuing our study of ancient Egypt, which provided us with lots of ideas for things to add to our royals’ funereal outfittings. We watched several videos and DVDs and did a couple of great field trips to museum exhibits of Egyptian art and artifacts, including the wonderful Tutankamen exhibit that traveled the United States last year.

When next we had a chance for a craft project afternoon, I broke out the air-drying terra cotta clay and put my apprentice embalmers to work making canopic jars, amulets and shabtis, as well as some facial features to use on the coffin lids. To streamline the process just a bit, each kiddo made a single canopic jar, instead of the traditional four, since each mummy had yielded only one packet of “organs.”

Once all the clay pieces were dry, they were painted. We chose a reasonably accurate bright blue for the amulets and shabtis, but my young artists went a bit farther afield in decorating the canopic jars and other pieces.

The kids also painted the coffins with assorted designs inspired by our reading, research and field trips. They embellished the lids of the coffins by gluing down the facial features and other materials, then doing a thin layer of papier mache over the top. As a finishing touch, they later applied gold leaf.

About six weeks after we first put them in the natron, we decided the bodies were ready to wrap. It was pretty amazing to see and feel how dehydrated they had become.

Each little “body” got a base layer of wrapping made with strips of fabric brushed with the glue-flour-water mixture we used as a stand-in for resin. Once the first layer was dry, the kids did another round of wrappings, this time tucking in the amulets they had made and painted.

Each little packet of internal organs was also wrapped

We did a few final touches, including tiny beaded necklaces and, for one of them, an aluminum foil mask.

We also provided our tiny mummies with a few neccessities for the afterlife, including loaves of (salt dough) bread and faux alabaster vessels representing assorted other foods and beverages. Finally, the wrapped organ packets were placed into their waiting canopic jars and sealed. When all was said and done, we ended up with a very impressive little display, which is now spending eternity on top of a bookcase in our living room.

This was, truly, a wondeful project, both fun and educational. I just hope I can come up with something to top it this year!

A Day in the Life, Part 2

2006-09-08T19:46:00.000-05:00

Wednesday was a fairly typical day, except that Robot Boy’s assignments were a little lighter than usual. (I had to juggle some portions of my lesson plan last week, and he ended up with a little less to do this week than usual.) However, one day a week, we aim to spend most of the day doing the “special stuff.” We inaugurated this approach about three years ago, starting each week with Art & Music Mondays. It went over so well that we’ve used some version of it every year since. The day of the week and the specific subjects we save for that day vary, but the basic idea has stuck.

This year, our day has turned out to be Thursday. We found that not doing a full day of regular academic stuff on Monday made us feel like we were losing momentum going into each week. So, we now plan our chemistry labs, drawing lessons and rhetoric—in addition to one or two of the other “together” projects for that week—for Thursdays.

We had such a good day yesterday that I decided I wanted to share it.

Both kids worked until about 10:00 on their usual morning subjects. Moonheart finally made contact with her chemistry instructor and did the oral quiz. She did really well and got a pep talk from the teacher encouraging her to go ahead and try the honors track assignments. Robot Boy did a math lesson and put a lot of energy into thinking up reasons to stall doing his science reading and summary until the afternoon.

By the time Moonheart was ready to take the guinea pigs out for their patio play time, I had gathered all the materials for the day's chemistry lab. We all moved out onto the patio and got ready to blow things up . . . I mean “do science.”

Yesterday's experiments were about combustion gases. We spent about 90 minutes playing with fire: scorching things to see the carbon, trapping carbon dioxide in a jar and using limewater to test for its presence, burning sulfur, testing for sulfur dioxide, learning about the greenhouse effect and acid rain. All went smoothly, and both kids had a great time.

We cleaned up and put away the equipment, then took a break for lunch before reconvening at about 1:00 for art at the kitchen table. Moonheart produced some really lovely pastel drawings, and Robot Boy enjoyed practicing drawing foreshortened squares. Once they had gotten to the point at which both of them were just doodling or working on their third or fourth drawing of the day, I pulled out the Art of Argument, and we read through the introduction to fallacies of relevance. They had fun trying to think of examples of all the various types.

We took another little break, then got out the globes and colored pencils and went to work on the map of the Islamic Empire. As usual, Moonheart wanted to linger over her map, coloring and shading things and labeling every visible land mass and body of water. Robot Boy finished his map much more quickly and got started on the long-delayed science assignment. He read and outlined two pages in the DK Eyewitness Chemistry book about “The First Chemists.”

About the time he finished, we were ready to leave for music lessons. We listened to the radio on the way there, and practiced trying to identify the various fallacies in the news.

Moonheart has 30 minutes each of guitar and piano, after which Robot Boy has his piano lesson. So, normally, I have to sit around alternately entertaining and shusshhhing him while we wait his turn. Yesterday, however, I realized just as we pulled up in front of the store that I had forgotten my purse at home. It was the first Thursday of the month, meaning tuition was due, so I got to spend that first hour while Moonheart was in her lessons making the round trip back home and back to the store to collect my credit card. We arrived back just in time for Robot Boy’s lesson.

I did get one piece of great news, though: Robot Boy’s piano teacher had a lesson slot open up 30 minutes earlier! This means that we can now get all three lessons into 60 minutes rather than 90 and be back home for dinner with Dad half an hour earlier.

Moonheart was happy and excited to be able to show her teachers how well she has done this week after instituting the new practice routine. She earned praise from both and more to work on this week. Robot Boy had a good lesson, too.

While Robot Boy was in his lesson, Moonheart talked me into doing a couple of Mad Libs with her. We got really into it, trying to outdo each other coming up with obscure and outlandish words—She set the bar right at the beginning with “lugubrious”--and found ourselves laughing so hard we had to wipe away tears. It was a really nice way to play with my kiddo.

We came home to a crock pot full of spaghetti sauce and the garlic bread I had prepped in advance and had a nice dinner with Dad. We watched an episode of the PBS show “History Detectives” that we had recorded earlier in the week, and I then left the three of them working on a project while I went out foraging for some much-needed groceries.

By the time I got home, it was time to send the kids off to bed. (Actually, they ended up staying up a bit late, because Dad lost track of time while I was gone. I doubt it will do them any permanent harm.)

So, there you have it, a snapshot of the other kind of “typical day.” It’s nice when it all goes well.

So, How Does It Really Work?

2006-09-06T20:34:00.000-05:00

Okay, I’ve written quite a lot about what materials we’re using this year. I thought it might be interesting now to talk about how we do it all and what our days look like.

I dub thee . . .

Before I continue, though, there has been much pleading and begging from both of my children that I quit referring to them as generic “daughter” and “son” and give them nicknames. So, with all appropriate ceremony, I hereby dub my daughter “Moonheart” (envision the traditional tapping with a sword—or maybe a giant pencil—on each shoulder) and my son “Robot Boy.”

And now, a day in the life of Tweaked Academy:

We’re making an effort to get more of a head start on our days, so Moonheart and I have agreed to try getting up by 6:30. She is at her most productive and focused early in the day. So, the theory is that this will allow her time to practice at least one instrument and eat breakfast, shower and dress and still sit down to desk work before 9:00.

Robot Boy always gets up early, but has a tendency to loll on the couch (sometimes even going back to sleep for a bit). That’s where he was when I emerged from my bedroom this morning. Moonheart had taken her guitar into her room to practice.

We’re reading aloud A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and are getting through a chapter or so a day over breakfast. However, this morning both kids started on desk work before I had breakfast ready, so we ended up puzzling out a problem from Moonheart’s economics course while they ate.

After breakfast, they took turns in the shower and getting dressed while the other one got back to work. Both usually begin the day with whatever assignments they have in their virtual school courses. Moonheart was delighted to find an e-mail from her economics instructor letting her know she got a perfect score on yesterday’s assignment. She also traded a couple of e-mails with her chemistry instructor to make an appointment for her upcoming oral quiz. Meanwhile, Robot Boy did some review for the oral math quiz he had on his agenda for the day, He re-did an assignment on order of operations on which he had gotten a less-than-wonderful score and wound up with a much better grasp of the concept and a perfect score. I wandered in and out doing dishes and laundry and checking my own e-mail.

Once everyone was cleaned up and dressed, Moonheart continued to plug away at economics for a while, while waiting for her phone appointment with the chemistry instructor. Robot Boy did his oral quiz and earned lots of praise from the teacher. I will admit to being a bit nervous on his behalf about this aspect of the course, since it required him to work problems in real time with an audience, but he did great. I was very, very proud of him.

Next on Robot Boy’s checklist for today was some reading in one of his history books. He read two pages about Alfred the Great and wrote a few sentences to outline what he read. His spelling and punctuation are still pretty shaky, so our approach to this is to have him narrate to me what he wants to say. I then either write out or type and print this, and he uses it as a template to write out a good copy. After that, he moved on to a couple of pages in Latin for Children Primer B.

By around 11:00, Moonheart had made revisions to yesterday’s composition exercise (from Wordsmith Craftsman), then went on to her own Latin assignment (So You Really Want to Learn Latin Book III). She had left two messages for her chemistry instructor, but had not yet managed to connect.

Robot Boy had a really good day today and worked very efficiently. It probably had a lot to do with knowing that he had dance classes in the evening that he would not be allowed to attend if he was behind in his schoolwork. Classes were cancelled last Wednesday in anticipation of a major tropical storm and again on Monday because of the holiday, and he is very anxious to get back. Consequently, by 11:30 he had blown through not only math, history and Latin, but also vocabulary (Word Roots A2) and Logic Liftoff. He had finished his assigned reading from Robert Nye’s Beowulf: A New Telling (which he’s enjoying), leaving only a few Latin and logic corrections to make and his 30 minutes of piano practice.

About that time, Moonheart took our guinea pigs out on the patio for their daily play time. She took her German text and study guide out there and drafted me to come work with her on this week’s assignments. (For the record, I have no background in either economics or German, but I get elected to help with them, anyway!) We made our way through a dialogue and translation exercise before I had to go in an clean the piggies’ cage.

The kids fed both fish and the cat, and all the humans who were interested had a snack, too. Since Robot Boy had finished all his independent work, I gave permission for him to watch a bit of TV. I then insisted he get some air and exercise, so he took the portable stereo and his new CD and a ball out onto the patio. (He took the cat, too, but Sir Piggers seemed more interested in checking out the lizards and insects than in playing catch.) He couldn’t stay out long, unfortunately, because it’s just so very hot today. He came in and logged his time at http://www.presidentschallenge.org/. (Both kids are working toward awards as their official PE for the year.) Then he played on the computer for a little while.

Moonheart read a few pages of Morris Bishop’s The Middle Ages and gave me a quick oral summary of what she read. She grabbed the globe and showed me how the political borders are different now from what they were then. She then put in some time with her statistics course.

Meanwhile, I tried to decide what to do with the kids during our afternoon “together learning time.” Each week, in addition to the assignments for each child, I have a list of activities and projects and DVDs and so on that I want to do with both of them together. For example, since Moonheart is currently reading selections from the Koran and both kids are covering the rise of Islam in assorted history books, yesterday we perused the gorgeous illuminated Koran at the British Library’s wonderful Turning the Pages website [ http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html ]. We also worked on their year-long project to illustrate and build their own periodic table.

Today, I’m leaning toward a virtual field trip to the Alhambra [ http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200604/ ] and either some map work on the Islamic empire or completing their History Scribe/History Scholar notebook pages on Mohammed.

I used my 45 minutes of “free time” to fold laundry and managed to get through all of it, despite the fact that the cat insisted on “helping” me. (Okay, full disclosure: There is still one load of towels in the dryer, but they aren’t dry yet. So, that doesn’t count.)

Just before 2:00, Moonheart took a break and we all went for a quick walk down the street to the mailbox. And, of course, we had to stop and admire the fairy village of mushrooms growing in a corner of the front yard. She practiced her piano pieces for the week while Robot Boy cleared his desk and I found the website I wanted them to explore.

We spent an hour or so exploring every facet of the virtual Alhambra tour, which was very cool. Then I handed out the notebook page templates and set them to work on writing about Mohammed and Islam while I threw together a quick dinner. Robot Boy is not big on writing more than necessary, so he finished up his page fairly quickly. Moonheart likes to linger over these projects, though, and particularly enjoys adding drawings and embellishments. So she packed up her encyclopedia and the box of colored pencils and brought hers on the road.

Wednesdays are Robot Boy’s long evening at the dance school. He begins with an hour of tap, then does 90 minutes of ballet and conditioning. Moonheart and I staked out a couple of chairs in a relatively quiet spot with a table, and I read while she put the finishing touches on her Mohammed page. We did duck out long enough to make a quick run to Target for a new CD player/alarm clock for her room.

By the time class was over, the weather outside was truly scary, with loud thunder and some extremely impressive lightning. We ended up hanging around in the entry way with three other families waiting for a break. We finally made it back home about 8:45, said hi to Dad, sent Robot Boy off to bed, plugged in and set Moonheart’s new clock radio . . .

And now I have all the rest of the evening to myself.

All in all, it was actually a very good day. Long, but good. And I’m now daring to think that we might be starting to find a rhythm that will see us through this year.

But we’ll have to see how it goes tomorrow, right?

Catching My Breath

2006-08-24T11:58:00.000-05:00

We’re nearing the end of week 3, and I can state with cautious optimism that we seem to be settling into a routine that has some reasonable chance of working. Both kids have had some challenges in finding their feet this year, but that’s typical. I just wish I could remember that from year to year, instead of having it always catch me by surprise.

So, I thought today I’d stop and breathe and take stock of where we are.

History and Literature are going well. Both kids enjoyed the Arthurian selections, and my son is enthusiastically gobbling up some Scandinavian myths that I substituted at the last minute for the Time Warp Trio Viking book.

The assorted languages are, on the whole, proceeding well. My daughter is outright enjoying the new Latin series: So You Really Want to Learn Latin (Published in England by Galore Park). My son is working more and more independently and consistently in Primer B of Latin for Children. He’s also enjoying The Learnables Spanish and has begun to sprinkle his new vocabulary into daily conversations.

My daughter’s German II course is turning out to be a bit more demanding than she had anticipated. I think much of the problem comes from trying to make the transition from Rosetta Stone’s “immersion” approach to the more traditional, grammar-based, textbook approach. She had done all of Rosetta Stone’s Level 1 (which is supposed to be equivalent to two years of high school foreign language) and was supplementing with an additional workbook for grammar, but she’s feeling very frustrated by encountering so much unfamiliar vocabulary in the new text. For the moment, we’ve quit trying to reach specific weekly goals for the amount of work done and are focusing on having her get into the groove of spending at least a certain amount of time each day making some progress. I’m also getting a crash course in German—with which I have almost no familiarity—as I try to help her with the lessons and exercises. I do feel like she’s turning the corner, though, and gaining some confidence. I’ve floated the idea of slowing down to as little as half speed and taking a full year to get through the half-unit course, but I suspect she’ll begin to pick up the pace within a few weeks.

Composition and grammar are flowing right along. My daughter is very much enjoying Wordsmith and seems to be keeping up nicely with the do-it-yourself approach and the assignments. My son is, as always, trying to get away with doing as little actual writing as possible in his assorted language arts workbooks, but is making big improvements in his history outlines and science summaries. He seems to be very proud of his attempts at cursive and even asks to do some of his regular work that way.

My daughter is taking Statistics by distance education as her math for this year. She’s already had Algebra I and II and Geometry and really wanted a “break” before tackling Precalculus next year. She’s gotten a bit of a slow start, but seems to be adjusting now to the format of the course and getting more enthusiastic about the subject. I think it’s still too early to tell whether this one will be a hit or a miss.My son’s math course, as I’ve already mentioned, got off to a rocky start. Things do seem to be improving after our week of concentrated hand-holding. I’m still more involved than I would like in supervising to make sure he’s paying attention to and following the directions, but it is clear that the actual math is well within his reach. He recently did well enough on one of his assignments that the instructor asked permission to use it as a sample to show other students.

Science is also turning out to be more of a challenge for my daughter than I would have expected. She’s taking Chemistry through our state’s virtual high school, which we both thought she’d love. However, she’s struggling. And I can’t quite tell whether it’s because she’s genuinely not prepared, whether she’s just not putting in the required amount of effort or whether the course isn’t especially well designed. I have noticed already that there have been a few questions on the assessments and exams that seem to require students to recall information that is pretty detailed. She’s finding the work very frustrating, and I’m not sure where we’ll go from here.My son is doing fine with his science reading, and both of them are enjoying our weekly chemistry labs.

He is also enjoying his geography work. As a sort of appetizer, he’s working through the “Global Geography” section of The Complete Book of Maps & Geography. He’ll then move on to a World Geography workbook from Carson Dellosa. And we’re tying geography to our history studies by doing an activity or two each week from Knowledge Quest’s blackline historical map set.

Another bright spot in our days has been my daughter’s virtual AP Microeconomics course. This is something she chose to do for fun, and she’s finding the coursework very interesting. She did hit a snag with the first exam, but that’s a characteristic problem for her, and I’m confident she’ll get better.

Both kids are also enjoying their logic and rhetoric studies. Since we didn’t transition to the classical approach until my daughter started high school, she had never done “logic” in any systematic way. So, she’s doing a crash course this semester using the Oxford University Press Very Short Introduction: Logic. It’s light reading and a clear, no-nonsense and friendly style.My son continues to enjoy the Orbiting with Logic books from Prufrock Press. He’ll finish the series this year, so I’m already looking around for a good next step for next year.We’re working through The Art of Argument together, mostly orally over breakfast. Both kids are doing fine with it so far, and my son, especially, is intrigued with the idea of learning to “argue like a gentleman.”

So, all in all, the year is shaping up to be exactly as full and challenging as I had anticipated. We’ve already hit a few rough patches on the road, and I’ll admit to more than a few moments of really wondering whether a given curriculum is going to work. And, as you can see from the list above, there are a couple of things that are still a bit up in the air. However, if our experiences in previous years holds true, all of this will eventually fall into place.

Now I just have to turn my energies to hoping that happens soon!

Progress? And Back to the Nitty Gritty

2006-08-16T12:35:00.000-05:00

Last week was rough, no doubt about it. So, I spent the weekend consulting with my husband and brainstorming and having a serious talk with my son. In a nutshell, here’s what we decided to try:

For this week, I will sit right with my son and help him try to find his feet in the online math course. I’ve been having him read the lesson materials aloud to me, work the practice problems in front of me and check his assignments with me before he submits the work. We’ve done two lessons so far this week, and he’s earned perfect scores (and booster shots of confidence) on both.

In addition, I’ve explained to him that, in general, there’s a new sheriff in town and that the kind of behavior we were seeing last week just won’t be tolerated. On Monday, I’m pretty sure he spent more time exiled to his bedroom than sitting at his desk. And, because his work for the day was not done when it was time to leave, he also had to stay home and miss his beloved drum lesson.

Since then, things have begun to improve. Yesterday was a long day, but it was productive, and he was sent to his room only once. Today, there’s been some dawdling, but no major incidents. And, by lunchtime, he was almost halfway done. So, not stellar, but a definite improvement. I’m trying to keep it in perspective.

So, let’s talk about something more cheerful.

Along with math, science seems to be one of those subjects that throws often homeschoolers for a loop. And I’ll admit we’ve had our ups and downs with both. I’m feeling pretty positive about our science plans for this year, though. Our focus for this year is on chemistry, although we won’t force ourselves to ignore any other interesting stuff that happens along.

My daughter is taking an online course through our state’s virtual high school. My son is using two DK Eyewitness books as his spine: Chemistry and Matter. He is reading and writing summaries of about four pages each week. My daughter’s online class includes both virtual labs and some hands-on activities. (They send students a kit.) However, the lab component looked a bit light for our science-enthusiast daughter. So, we invested in a nice, big chemistry set and are working our way through that with a few experiments each week. Needless to say, the chance to mix chemicals and flirt with danger has been a big hit. Both kids are telling everyone they meet about how I set things on fire during our first lab session.

And, of course, we can’t resist supplementing. So I have lots of fun videos and DVDs lined up. Both of my kids are big fans of the Standard Deviants and are looking forward to their Organic Chemistry series.

Other, non-science things that are going especially well so far include the map work and the History Scribe/History Scholar pages, both of which I was afraid might turn out to be tedious. As it has turned out, though, my daughter enjoys the map work so much that she actually asked me to “let her” do the whole set, even the ones I wasn’t planning to assign. We’re using the Middle Ages set of Blackline Maps of World History from Knowledge Quest, in case you want to check them out for yourself.

So, all in all, things are looking up this week, but I’m still collecting and considering fall-back options for my son’s math. I promise to keep you posted.

Well . . .

2006-08-11T16:03:00.000-05:00

It seems the roller coaster metaphor was more apt than I might have hoped. It’s been a bumpy week.

My son has been having some trouble getting himself focused on doing good quality work. He’s (just barely) doing enough to merit checking off the assignments on his log sheet. Unless I sit right with him, though, and double check every inch and enforce some reasonable level of care and quality, he takes every opportunity to slide by with sloppy and incomplete work. It is, needless to say, very frustrating.

This year is also his first attempt at a course that makes him accountable to someone other than me. We chose to enroll him in an online math class, primarily because he and I just seem to have trouble communicating about math. This is one of the subjects in which, when it is going well, he is both enthusiastic and talented. I, on the other hand, have more math talent than I was ever given credit for during my own formal education, but lack a firm foundation and enough confidence to teach it well. We got on each other's nerves an awful lot last year. So, we decided it would be best to remove me from the equation.

This, too, has proved problematic, however, since he seems to be having a great deal of trouble adjusting to the interface. And I can’t tell for sure whether it is because the course is truly too much for him or because he’s treating it with the same casual attitude he’s bringing to all of his work. Whichever it is, in this first week, he's managed to earn the equivalent of a failing grade.

It seems to me that the only way I might improve this situation would be to supervise his work more closely, but I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do. The softy-type mommy in me wants to believe that a couple of weeks of hand-holding and helping him to develop a better routine and study habits might allow him to find his feet and be successful in the course. Another, sterner voice says I might help him become stronger by getting out of the way and giving him space to either succeed or fail (or learn to ask for--and politely accept--my help) on his own. A third, very tired voice suggests that it might all be too much trouble and I should just withdraw him from the class now and buy a few workbooks. (I'm trying to ignore the voice whispering reminders about the existence of various schools public and private.)

Needless to say, my head is a crowded and noisy place today.

On the positive side, my daughter approached this first week with enthusiasm and a newfound desire to get and stay organized. She actually typed up a plan at the beginning of the week of which assignments to do each day . . . and stuck to it. Even some of the assignments I was concerned would feel tedious to her have gotten done happily and well. Let’s hope it lasts.

At this point on a Friday afternoon, I’m just happy to be stepping off the ride for the weekend.

I’ll let you know how it goes next week.

You Know That Feeling?

2006-08-06T21:37:00.000-05:00

When you’ve decided to ride the roller coaster and you’re all strapped in and the train has pulled away from the loading area and you are waiting for the first big hill . . . .

And you have that frantic urge to wave your arms and scream for them to let you out because you changed your mind?

That’s kind of how I’ve been feeling all day.

Did I mention that tomorrow is our first day of school?

And, yes, I know it will be fine, probably good and possibly even great. I know that we will accomplish a lot and have a good time and look back on the year with pride and joy at all the things the kids learned and all the great experiences we had. But right now, I’m sitting in that roller coaster vehicle feeling it crank up to the top of that incline and wondering how on earth I let myself be talked into this.

And so, in order to distract myself, I’ve decided to chat in this note about somewhat lighter fare: the arts.

We’re big-time arts lovers around here, with the kids having certain areas of shared interest and each having their specialties, too.

In terms of formal studies at home, my daughter will be focusing on art history of the medieval and Renaissance era. She’ll be more or less following the suggested approach of The Well-Trained Mind, using a portion of The Annotated Mona Lisa as a base and then building out from there. We have a huge book I found on a bargain table a few years ago called A History of Art that we use for picture study and to supplement the Mona Lisa readings. I’ve made a list of a few possible museum field trips and stocked the Netflix queue with videos and DVDs about the art and artists of the time that we’ll sprinkle throughout the year. And, just for fun, I have a paint-your-own Renaissance masterpiece kit, with postcard-sized reproductions of several famous works.

My son will participate in as much of this as strikes his fancy, mostly the videos and the hands-on projects.

Both kids also decided that this was the year they wanted to learn to draw. (Well, to be more precise, my daughter decided it was her year, and my son decided she wasn’t going to get to do anything he wasn’t allow to do, too.) My daughter chose Drawing: A Complete Course from Walch, and my son decided on Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad. We stocked up on all the supplies we’ll need for the whole year in a single expedition to Michaels, just so that we’ll never have to skip a lesson because we don’t have things on hand. At this point, the plan is to do drawing together (using their separate books but sitting across from each other at the table) on Mondays after our science lab. I’m afraid that letting it wait until later in the week will allow it to get shoved out of the way by other things that might seem more pressing.

And then there are the outside classes and activities.

We all love theater, and we’ve been taking the kids to live performances even when they had to sit in strollers. For the last few years, we’ve started with season tickets for the Shakespeare Festival as our baseline and then just added in as much as we could manage to fit into our schedule and budget. Both kids have participated in community theater, although my daughter is more involved than her little brother just yet.

My daughter is starting her third year of singing with a choir affiliated with the Royal School of Church Music. My son is returning for another year of ballet, with a total of four classes a week this year.

Both of them started piano lessons last year, and each is adding a second instrument, My daughter had her first classical guitar lesson last week – and positively glowed for hours afterward. My son is starting lessons tomorrow with a local bagpipe and drum corp, learning to play the Scottish snare drum.

It makes for a very full calendar, but keeps them both happy. Like foreign language, this is an area in which I am sometimes a little stunned at just how much each of them learns and does.

Creak, creak, creak, creak, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk . . . Do you hear it? We’re almost at the top of the hill. Guess I’d better hang on, ‘cause here we go!

Languages: Dead and Alive

2006-08-03T09:44:00.000-05:00

In the last couple of posts, I’ve told you all about the literature my students will be reading this year. But, of course, reading is only half of the “English” equation.

My older student writes very well and has been writing poetry and stories pretty much as long as she could hold a pencil. And up until now, we’ve always just treated the more formal writing as an outgrowth of her history and literature study. She would read a certain number of books, then write about what she read. When she was younger, this was in a pretty traditional book report format, which has developed over the years into longer and more complex essays. She’d turn in a draft, let me read it and suggest corrections, then take another stab at polishing it.

And it worked pretty well, except that she continues to find academic writing daunting. The product is usually very good, consistently earning her A’s even in her outside-graded courses. The problem is that getting her to actually sit down and do the writing is downright painful . . . for both of us.

So, this year we’ve decided to try a writing program called Wordsmith Craftsman. We looked at the online samples and descriptions of several different essay-writing books, and this is the one she thought looked most appealing. It’s designed for the student to do independently. I’ve helped her to figure out how to schedule the work, but the actual doing of it will be up to her. My hope is that the writing process will become much more “mechanical” (in the best sense of the word) by the end of this year and that she will build some confidence in this area.

My son has decided he likes the format and approach of the workbook series from Harcourt Family Learning. So, he will be working through three of their workbooks this year: Spelling, Language Arts and Writing. He will, of course, continue to outline his history and science reading and write book reports and narrations, too. And he’s looking forward to working on his vocabulary with the second installment of Word Roots software from Critical Thinking.

That pretty much does it for English.

Both of my kids are studying Latin. My daughter used Oxford Latin for her first couple of years, but is transitioning to the wonderful So You Really Want to Learn Latin series this year. She read through the second book over the summer to get used to the style and is ready to hit the ground running with Book III next week. She’ll be supplementing with their Latin Translations book, just for fun.

Meanwhile, my son will be working through Primer B of Latin for Children this year. He had a great experience with Primer A last year and is looking forward to continuing. He will have his own translation work to do, since the publisher’s Lilellus de Historia for Primer B coincides nicely with our historical focus for this year.

In addition to English and Latin, my daughter decided to learn German, “just for fun.” She worked through most of Rosetta Stone’s German Level 1 last year (which the publisher claims is equivalent to two years of high school language study) and did some supplemental grammar. I think this gave her a good foundation, but she feels ready to move on to a more conventional, grammar-based program. Again, after looking at several alternatives, we’ve decided to enroll her in a German 2 course offered by the University of Missouri’s distance education center.

Thank goodness for outsourcing! (More on that in a later post.)

Spanish is the modern foreign language of choice for my son. He’s dabbled in this for a couple of years with an assortment of materials off the bookstore shelf. He doesn’t seem to have retained a lot, though. So we’re making an effort this year to get serious. We’re going to give The Learnables a try, moving at approximately half the recommended speed.

I must confess that the whole area of foreign languages is one that occasionally makes me sit up and take notice. The fact is that the only one of the three foreign languages being studied in my home that I might be qualified to “teach” (at least to a beginner) is Spanish. And, although I had a few years of that language in high school and college, it’s pretty rusty these days. This is just one of the ways in which it is already clear my kids will surpass me educationally, and may already have done so. And, while I’m excited and proud that we’re able to offer them those opportunities, I do sometimes have trouble really accepting just how much they are learning and doing.

More Nitty Gritty

2006-08-01T08:53:00.000-05:00

So, once I get the older student’s plan more or less set, I start working to mirror it for the younger one. I look for resources that cover the same general ground, but at a level appropriate for him. I don’t worry about keeping them in lock step; sometimes, my older one will be studying a topic that is clearly out of reach to her little brother, while other times there will be some topic that I just know will be of special interest to him.

And, of course, there are always a few books that I just happen to have sitting on a shelf because I found them at a used book sale and that are perfect for him this year, even though they don’t have obvious parallels with his big sister’s plan.

In “big picture” terms, though, I try to keep them together as much as possible, which means he, too, will be focusing on medieval and Renaissance history and literature this year.

As spines, he will be using:

Parragon’s Encyclopedia of World History (“Middle Ages” and “Age of Discovery” sections)
History of the World: The Middle Ages, Vincent Douglas
History of the World: Renaissance and Discovery, Vincent Douglas
Art and Civilization: Medieval Times, Giovanni Di Pasquale
History of Everyday Things: Renaissance and the New World, Giovanni Caselli

He’ll be outlining some of his reading assignments and also creating a notebook using the History Scholar page templates.

Whenever it seems appropriate, he’ll join his big sister in watching the historical documentaries and other films on her list. And I have certain selections that are just for him, including the Schlessinger Media Life in the Middle Ages series.

His assigned reading for this year includes the following:

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Andrew Lang
One-Hundred-and-One Celtic Read-Aloud Myths & Legends, Joan C. Verniero (We have a few books in this series, and my son reads them independently. He will not cover all 101, just a nice selection of the stories.)
Sailor Who Captured the Sea (Lovely illustrations based on the Book of Kells), Deborah Nourse Lattimore
Viking and Liking It, Jon Scieszka
Beowulf: A New Telling, Robert Nye
Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, E. L. Konigsburg
Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest, Ann McGovern
Aladdin and Other Tales from the Arabian Nights, N. J. Dawood
Wulf the Saxon, G. A. Henty
Puffin Classics Canterbury Tales. Geraldine McCaughrean
Squire’s Tale, Gerald Morris (a comic re-working of the Gawain story)
In Freedom’s Cause, G. A. Henty
Second Mrs. Giaconda, E.L, Konigsburg
Da Wild, Da Crazy, da Vinci, Jon Scieszka
Who Was Ferdinand Magellan? S. A. Kramer
Exploration & Conquest, Betsy & Giulio Maestro
Medieval Feast, Aliki
Shakespeare Stealer, Gary Blackwood

We’ll also be reading aloud Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court during the first semester. I’m still deciding on a read-aloud selection for the Renaissance period.

As you can see, I’ve leavened the list with several comic or silly selections guaranteed to make this period fun for my young boy. He actually got very excited just digging through the shopping bag in which I was accumulating his reading material for the year. He kept pulling out books and reading the titles out loud and holding them up for me to see (as though they were his personal discoveries). Finally, he exclaimed, “Hey, a bunch of these are classics!”

It’s enough to make any homeschooling mom’s heart beat proud!

The Nitty Gritty (Part 1)

2006-07-31T11:13:00.000-05:00

I mentioned that I usually keep the kids on the same major topics, with my younger student following his big sister’s outline. And that’s how I usually begin my planning, too. I start by laying out what the older one will be doing, then look for resources and materials that parallel those subjects at a level appropriate for my son. History and literature are really the foundation of classical education in our “academy.” So, I thought I’d begin this series of posts about our 2006-07 academic year by describing my daughter’s history and literature curriculum plan.

Last year, the kids studied ancient civilizations (year 1 of The Well-Trained Mind history cycle). Therefore, this year they will move on to the middle ages and Renaissance. We’re planning to cover from about 400 to 1650 CE. My daughter’s “spines” for the year will be:

National Geographic Visual History of the World
The Middle Ages, by Morris Bishop
The Italian Renaissance, J.H. Plumb

She will also be reading from a wonderful book called The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: Eyewitness Accounts of Great Historical Moments from 2700 BC to the Present, which offers primary sources and eyewitness accounts of historical events.

She’ll be creating a record of her history studies using the History Scholar templates (the high school version) from History Scribe.

The backbone of her literature program for this year is a list of 14 “Great Books,” which she’ll read roughly in chronological order. We did a bit of rearranging for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, just because things seemed to flow better that way, we placed a book in order according to the time in which it was set, rather than when it was written. And there were a few pieces that we moved in order to have the reading coincide with some other event. For example, local theater companies are producing three of the Shakespearean plays on her list, and I wanted her to read each one right before seeing the live show.

With all of that said, here’s the list:

Le Morte D’Arthur (selections)
Koran (selections – We’re using the Dover “Selected Suras” version.)
Beowulf (the McNamara translation)
Tale of Genji, Lady Shikibu Murasaki
Arabian Nights (selections)
Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, Robert H. van Gulik
Mabinogion
King Lear
Canterbury Tales (selections)
Gawain and the Green Knight
Henry V
Richard III
Merry Wives of Windsor
Don Quixote

And we’re also planning on some more contemporary fiction and drama that relates to the era:

Anna of Byzantium, Tracy Barett
Lion in Winter, William Goldman
Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey
Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt
Anne of the Thousand Days, Maxwell Anderson
Nine Days a Queen, Anne Rinaldi

She has assorted short works on her list, including the “Gest of Robyn Hode” and selections from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain and Holinshed’s Historie of England.

I have a long list of videos and DVDs to watch from our local library and good old Netflix, including lots of documentaries and the film versions of some of the plays she’ll be reading. We’re also planning to watch episodes 15-30 of The Western Tradition series, available online at one of our favorite websites, www.learner.org.

It should keep her quite busy and engaged. I’ll admit this is one of my favorite historical periods, and I’m very much looking forward to sharing this with both kids.

Next time, I’ll outline my younger student’s plan and reading lists for the same topics.

As Good a Start as Any

2006-07-26T06:50:00.000-05:00

Today seems as good a day as any to post my first official note here. We're a little more than a week away from the first day of our new academic year; the new desks are assembled and put in place; the bookcases are empty and waiting for us to fill the shelves with the books and curricula for this year; my lesson plans are (almost) complete . . .

So what do I want to say?

Well, several people have told me lately that it is a shame that my kids are the only ones who benefit from the work and planning I put into this homeschooling thing. And I've been encouraged to find some way to share whatever small amount of "wisdom" and experience I have with others.

Also, I know that I am always interested to see what other homeschoolers are doing and how they do it. Especially when I first got started, I found all those how-to books pretty unfulfilling: They seemed mostly to be long on inspiration and pep talks and general tips, but short on the kind of detail I really wanted.

So I've decided to share those details here.

In days to come, I'll start posting specifics about the books and resources my students will be using this year. For now, I'll start with the general outline.

We loosely follow the suggestions and framework from Susan Wise Bauer's book The Well-Trainined Mind, with a lot of adaptations and substitutions to fit our family's needs. I try to keep both kids working on the same general subjects and historical eras each year, with my younger student mirroring the older one's curriculum at his own level. This year's primary topics are:

Medieval and Renaissance History and Literature
Chemistry
Statistics
Logic and Rhetoric
Latin
Art History: Medieval and Renaissance
Drawing

My older student will also study German (her second year), Philosophy and Economics. My younger one is starting Spanish.

As you can see, we have a full year ahead of us! I hope you'll come back and check in now and then to see how we're doing.