Star Wars Movie 7

December 4, 2015

I'm excited about Star Wars Movie Seven because it's my favorite movie. Also the Clone Wars is my favorite movie and show, too, but my mom doesn't let me watch it. I like it because I like the lightsabers.

-Archer

My Christmas List

December 4, 2015

Dear Santa,

Can I please have a Nintendo PD14? And a Super Smash Brothers for my PD14?

May I have a Lego set, too? Like Ninjago or Star Wars. Also, may I have a Calico Critters motorcycle and side car?


Love,
Henry

Week of November 13

A: I had Little House on the Prairie Week last week.  And when I grow up I am going to be a SWAT. I want to be a SWAT because they stop crimes.




H: My favorite college football team is the BYU. For a couple years Taysom Hill was their best player. Taysom Hill was quarterback. But in his first game this season he broke his foot. They had to put in Tanner Mangum. Tanner Mangum is now their best player. In the last quarter in their first game this season, BYU was losing by one with one second left on the clock. Mangum acted quick. Just as he was tackled, he passed it to a wide receiver who was surrounded by red guys. He caught the ball and fell into the end zone for the winning touchdown. BYU's colors are white and blue.
[BYU stands for Brigham Young University.]

L: My feeling is sad. Because we didn't bring back those toys.

Little House Week

We had to cook with something very very different from ovens. And one day we had to use no lights for the whole day. We used candles to see. We used a camp stove. I liked the tart. The end.

AD

Goalkeeper in Charge by Matt Christopher

The main characters are Tina and Meg. Their soccer practices start in about a week. At the end of their first practice, their coach said that Tina should be a goalkeeper. They had lots of scrimmages and Tina and Andrea had special goalie drills and one of them was lying down on your back and throwing the ball up and getting up and trying to catch it before it touches the ground. After a couple practices it was their first game. They played hard and scored two goals and the other team scored two goals in the first game. Cindy got in front of Tina when she had the ball and yelled, "why didn't you pass the ball to me?"A couple weeks ago she apologized. The end.

HD

Week of September 21

Highlights:

- Mercer Museum 

- Making caramel apples (including picking the apples!)

Devotional Topic: Aim for the Best

(Good, better, best; using time wisely; touched on pornography)

Things we changed:

- After an embarrassingly frustrating CC day, I decided that we needed to shift Circle Time to also be practice for classroom etiquette. Making that a priority has already helped with behavior.

-This week we did full math lessons again (although I often skip the "meeting," only doing some of the problems quickly. Neither of us has the patience for setting a bunch of supplies up for easy review questions!)

- We started experimenting again with copy work. This next week we will jump in with it. I ordered Writing with Ease, and think it will be a great fit for Henry. 

- We also tried practicing our memory work while we were outside playing soccer.

Things to work on next:

- I'd love to give some more focus to practicing soccer or other sports. The boys love them. We could do memory work with it again and just make it a little more engaging.

- Continue working on classroom etiquette and attitude.

- This week we will start implementing Writing with Ease, doing copy work twice a week and dictation with handwriting pages the other two days.

Week of September 14 - CC begins!

This week we jumped right back into the swing of things! We added full math lessons back, which has gone really well this time. We had backed off to just doing the worksheet for the day, but now instead of being stressful, the lesson is actually some really nice one on one time. We still have just done a page from Handwriting Without Tears each day, but next week we will get into more actual writing.

We did try doing a math lesson at the library this week, which was kind of a fun change of scenery! The biggest news this week was that Henry made flyers for their caramel apple sale and we started getting orders in. One lady at Jimmy's work might want them for her wedding! If these boys are willing to put in some work, they can make a ton of money! Plus we went and picked some preliminary apples, which was wonderful, of course. For the flyer, I "drove" in Publisher and Henry told me what to say and where to put things. He was the artistic designer. We will work up to him doing it all on his own!

The other fun event this week was Henry and his friend started our mummified chicken! Not as gross as I thought it would be, and it hasn't started smelling too bad yet!

Oh! I almost forgot! We started our co-op, Classical Conversations on Tuesday! The kids did great. It was a really horribly long day, but they learned a lot and got to be with friends and do presentations and have a great time. The memory work is crazy. It is just incredible how fast they pick things up! Henry and Archer already know the classifications of living things and the Latin noun cases, among other things! And it seems easy for them!

Week 2: let's simplify!

The first week had some good moments, but getting H to do his work was becoming a Herculean task, and after Monday I was ready to pull my hair out. I met a friend at a park and she recommended pulling back more - keeping it fun and easing in a little more slowly. I immediately knew what I needed to do. The rest of the week I have dropped structured math completely, and we have focused most of our school day on project time. We still have circle time first thing, and H still has to do a handwriting page and practice math facts, but it has been so much more fun and he is engaged and working hard. I know we will have to add math back in soon, but it has been a great week and we are all just enjoying learning so much now!

Here are some high points:

One morning during circle time, I gave them their sketch/project books and they had a blast decorating them and doing some leaf rubbings and sketches inside. It was then that I heard Henry (my anti-perfectionist, anti-handwriting boy) say, "I am going to make a perfect 'A' too!" After his brother had been working really hard on his "A."

(Notice the flowers on the table. We did some watercolors one day, too, the goal being to sketch and paint them, but I didn't get pics of that.)

H's big project he is working on right now is a head-to-toe costume of a Clone Trooper that he will wear for Halloween. Right now we are working on cutting templates out of paper before we use cardboard. He is doing lots of measuring and cutting and problem solving with that! 

One of the best perks of homeschooling is taking 5 minute bike breaks!

We also have time for lots of other fun things:

Board games 

Lego creations (AT-AT Walker)

Impromptu STEM challenges (experimenting with zip lines)

And of course stalking rabbits in the back yard.

Probably the most gratifying experience this week wasn't even part of the school day. H was practicing piano - or that's what he was supposed to be doing. Instead he came up with a little song he liked. He kept playing it, and since I was in a schooling mentality, I asked if he wanted to write it down. He worked really hard and figured out how to write the notes on the lines (he hasn't learned where actual notes are yet, just intervals and relative motion). It really helped with his music theory, though, since he had to figure out where measure lines went, how many counts each note got, and how to explain where your hand went. We tested it by having Dad play it when he got downstairs. 

So that was our week! And just in case you think I have forgotten I have other children, here are some good pics of their cute faces!

Let the adventure begin!

We have just finished our first official week of homeschool. And everyone is alive. And, although completely exhausted, I am still sane - or as sane as I ever was. Hurrah!

It was an exciting week. Jimmy was out of town, we started homeschool, we even drove through a flash flood and had massive thunderstorms! Here is one day's synopsis that I texted Jimmy:

Highlight: morning routine and circle time are going great. Smooth and everyone is happy.

Lowlight: Archer deciding to ride down the big hill for the first time at 7:30 in the morning and totally eating it at the bottom. I am pretty sure we woke up the neighborhood.

Highlight: successfully doing a piano-doctor-Costco combo to fill the morning

 Lowlight: [2 potty trained children] both pooping in their pants AT THE SAME TIME!! 

Highlight: After figuring out I needed to separate everyone for quiet time, Henry and I got through his lesson material, albeit with some struggle.

Lowlight: After packing everyone up to go swimming, even making pasta salad so we could just stay and eat there until bedtime, it started pouring as soon as we got there and couldn't swim.

Highlight: We crashed at [a friend's house] instead. That took us pretty much to bedtime.

For anyone who is interested in the nuts and bolts of how school started, here it is.

The focus this week was simply establishing routine and expectations (you know, helping your kids figure out that there, unfortunately, is more to life than playing with Legos). For the past few weeks (all summer, really), I have really been honing in on routines at home - chores, cleaning up after meals, scripture study, etc. - so that this homeschool journey won't be so overwhelming. The more the house runs itself, the more I can focus on what I care about.

So this week I really only focused on 3 things: morning routine (which we have really established over the past few months), school routine (just writing, math, and reading this week), and home routines. Everything else I forced myself not to care about. I tried to keep my schedule clear except for swimming and other physical activity outside, mostly to wear the kids out so bedtime would be easy!

Our morning routine is firmly established now. When the kids wake up, around 7, they get dressed, brush teeth, say prayers, and do a simple chore that they are used to (wipe a toilet or sink, pick up diapers, clean their room, etc.). At this time I put in a load of laundry and do what I can to tidy up, mostly upstairs. We eat breakfast at about 8:00 or 8:30.

At 9:00 sharp, we gather around the table in the homeschool room and begin our day. Circle time has become my favorite thing! We open with a song or two and a prayer. I usually put a coloring page or blank paper out for the kids to occupy their hands while we do circle time. After prayer we do devotional - a thought or story or short video about the topic of the week. This week was courage, since our theme for the year is "Be strong and of a good courage."

After devotional we do our Spanish practice. It's just a phrase or two we work on per week - this week was please, thank you, yes, and no. Then we do a manners/social skills thought - we covered please and thank you, apologizing, and how to address adults. All of the circle time takes about 15-20 minutes.

Then the real work begins. The little ones play (I'll do a post about our rotation system later) or work on some "school work" while I work with Henry. He does copywork (a sentence or two that should be copied perfectly - quality not quantity here), a handwriting lesson (Handwriting Without Tears), and a free writing topic, plus his Saxon math lesson. If he is focused (which, so far, is about half the time) he can finish this by 10:30 and have a snack. Then the idea is to have project time from then to lunch, although we have been going swimming and to the library and other things lately that have cut into that.

After lunch Henry can finish up anything he has left (he also has to do 20 minutes of silent reading and 10 minutes of reading out loud, plus piano), or keep doing project time, or play. I am reading Stuart Little out loud, and will read that at some point. The afternoon is also when we will do things like art, history, and science projects as they come up.

So there it is! That's our schedule so far! It is intense, but not nearly as draining and exhausting as I had anticipated. Stay tuned for more!

Homeschool: jumping into the unknown!

Well, we are going to bite the bullet and take the plunge. Next year Henry will be homeschooled. Archer will go to kindergarten at the school, but will basically be homeschooled, also, since it's only half-day. I'm going to write a number of posts with my thoughts about how we are going to be doing things, and they may not be very exciting, but I just want to have a place to put down some of my thoughts in a more narrative form than all the lists I am making in OneNote! You know, for the record :) Yeehaw! 

Right now I am being inspired by this wonderful book by Lori Pickert - "Project Based Homeschooling." I have heard that the key to homeschooling successfully is truly knowing yourself and your kids. As soon as I started researching this method, everything just clicked in my head. THIS is how my kids learn! It is how they operate, and if we set it up right it can provide me with the structure I need to stay sane! 

Basically Project-Based Homeschooling is a Reggio-inspired method where you provide a lovely learning, encouraging environment and become a mentor for your child to learn through doing his own projects. Very child-led and open-ended. I love it!

We will still use a math curriculum (Saxon), and do handwriting and writing work, plus we will have read-alouds, a history curriculum (which we will use loosely), and we will attend Classical Conversations, a Christian co-op that is one day a week. 

The plan right now is that the mornings will be dedicated (read: I will be dedicated) to "school." He will get his math and writing done first (roughly an hour or so), and then we will have a couple hours devoted to projects we are working on. Any of the kids can have projects. Then the afternoon will be relaxed - down time, maybe some science or art projects, or a history lesson. The frequency of those, and how structured they will be, remains to be seen. 

That's my overall plan in a nutshell! 

Meet the authors

I was trying to get some one-on-one time with the little boys, now that Levi has stopped napping, and the best way I could think of to do so peaceably was to have one do ipad time and the other work with me. I also wanted to work with them on reading and writing, since both of them are right on the verge of reading and are showing a lot of interest. After doing a math worksheet with Archer, we started writing these books (he drew pictures, I wrote the words), and it was so perfect! Levi even quit games early to come join us, and we've been working on them for an hour now. Some days this would definitely NOT happen as smoothly, but today we needed it!