Forging Ahead

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

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!

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

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

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

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!”

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 . . .

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

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!

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?"

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!

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

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?

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

(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

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

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.

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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.
   
4. 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!