Back to School 2012

It is time to start school again and I have been earnestly praying, pondering and searching for how I should be doing education for my children in a way I can handle and they will love. I feel fairly confidant that the methods I am putting to the test this year will hold strong and true.

It all started with TJEd and Charlotte Mason. I found so many wonderful things in their philosophies that I had a hard time figuring out how to implement it all. I gave trial runs all through the summer with different parts of the philosophies and found out how most work and how some just don't for our family. After a summer full of trial and error, this is what I came up with as our curriculum for the year.

Our subjects for my two whom I am actively teaching this year are Scripture Study, Reading, Writing, Math, Science, History, Spanish, Health, Music, Art, and Physical Training. At first glance this seems like a ton of work for a 1st and a 3rd grader. However let me explain what we are doing with each subject.

I have decided to start with the self as much as possible in each subject. For Scripture Study we will be focusing on personal conduct, which is of course most of what God teaches us about, and so we will also explore why God focuses on personal growth so much. In Reading I will read to the kids The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain as it is written in first-person perspective. (I will go into detail about how I am teaching my boy to read further down.) Writing will be copywork. For my 1st grader he will only be copying letters and single words until his aptitude with fluently writing letters and numbers increases. My 3rd grader will be copying the Articles of Faith from our religion and when she is done with those (as we are already 1/2 way through) she will be doing scripture verses from our morning Scripture Study. Math will focus on fluency with addition, subtraction, multiplication and beginning division. We will also be doing classification via size, shape, color, weight, etc. and time. For Science we will be learning about the Human Body, inside and out. History is going to start with Personal History, then move into Parental History and the Histories of their grandparents etc until we get into Family History. By doing this I hope to give them a greater appreciation for how history affects them, thus making them more interested in it, (Inspire not Require!). For Spanish we will learn one phrase, one color and one number per week. Health will be about how what we eat and what we do physically affects our bodies. Music and Art will be tied in with one or more of the other subjects and Physical Training will be Kenpo, which my husband will teach them.  



I am using Charlotte Mason's idea that lessons should be ten minutes to a quarter-hour. So, if we spent the max of fifteen minutes on each lesson we would have lessons for three and three-quarters hours. That in and of its self is a reasonable goal in light of the amount of time spent in the public schools. However, I will also be combining subjects when appropriate.

For example: Science this season is going to be about the human dody and Health is about our lifestyle's affect on the human body, so these can be easily combined. There are also many songs about the human body and healthy habits, so music fits in there as well. Kenpo is an activity which is good for the body, so that fits also. Our religious scripture has what is known as the Word of Wisdom which talks about what things we should and should not eat, that slips in their too! So as you can see, I can quickly condense a lot of these subjects into a shorter amount of time. And that saved time can be spent on pursuing the children's interests and promoting our upstart home based business and teaching the kids work ethic, cleanliness, discipline, love of God, and charity through service. All of which are at least equally important as scholastic learning, if not more so.

As for teaching my 6-year-old boy to read, I am using Charlotte Mason's philosophy. I am not teaching him to read words by sounding them out as I did with my older daughter, because too often that doesn't work. This way of teaching was developed by Friedrich Frobel who is the inventor of Kindergarten. If you couldn't guess by his name or the name of his invention, he is German. Deutsch (German) is a phonetic language. English is not. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of words in English, that if spelled phonetically would look suspiciously like Deutsch. So instead I am teaching the words as a symbol for the sound of the word we say. I look at it as more akin to the Chinese writing or hieroglyphs. This collection of letters in this pattern means this word. It is a fairly simple concept as children have such wonderful visual memories. I take a phrase, either from a nursery rhyme, or children's song, or the scriptures and have the words individually separated and teach them one by one, making sure they simply aren't memorizing some unintentional pattern of how I am showing them. Then as they know each word individually, I put them together in the phrase or sentence and they can read it through without pause. This is an average of 10 words each day. This is so much easier on the children than trying to remember the "I before E except after C or when followed by a G" type of exceptions to phonetic rules that our language is crawling with.

What kind of Monkey are You?

I know it has been a while since I have posted on here and I apologize for the absence. I have been struggling to get my feet underneath me firmly in the homeschooling department. There are some days when I feel like I am on top of the world and we are doing so great and my kids will be so much better for my efforts, and then there are other days when I feel like I am so deep in the ocean that I can't find my way to the surface and I know that surely my children would be learning more in public school. But see, even typing that makes my skin crawl because no matter how poorly the starting of this goes, in the long run there will be no comparison for the benefit of teaching my kids at home.

Well, while in the car today I found myself listening to talk radio. When I listen to talk radio it is usually the "conservative station", but when my husband is in the car he listens to the "liberal station". I enjoy listening to both, though there are times with both when I will turn them off with disgust. However, that is off topic.

The story we were listening to was about the findings in a recent study on monkeys and their problem solving and goal oriented thinking. One striking thing they found was that even though both monkeys achieved their goals, they did it in entirely different ways. One monkey was obviously patient and the other impatient. When given a goal, the patient monkey would wait until all of the "obstacles" were known before coming up with a plan to reach the goal. The impatient monkey would go for the goal as soon as it was visible and would have to deal with the "obstacles" as they arose.

So I posed the question to myself, "Which kind of monkey am I?" I have never been good at goal setting and very rarely achieve goals that I set and it has been a constant frustration for me. I don't know what I am doing wrong and it despairs me quite often. After hearing of this study, I finally realized what (hopefully?) my problem is. I am impatient monkey.

I see the goal and scramble to get there, bruising myself here, and scraping myself there, until I finally trip over something that I had seen as small and inconsequential in my mad dash, (if, of course, I had even seen it at all) and I knock myself out cold. Down for the count. When I finally come to and begin dusting myself off all I see is the beginning again and the goal way off in the distance, not understanding what it was, exactly, that prevented me from reaching that goal. So I start off again, renewed vigor, albeit a bit more wary of the obstacle that tripped me last time. But alas, my folly is not in the last piece of straw that has settled onto my back that collapsed me, it is the multitude of others hindrances that have piled up without my even being aware of them.

I have always been aware that I have a problem with follow-through. I just haven't ever figured out why. I pray to my Father in Heaven that this may be the key to solving my puzzle. I have been looking at the picture on the box and wondering why all these little pieces don't look like that yet. I hadn't been able to find a method for sorting it all out in a way that makes sense. Actually, I don't think I had even tried sorting.

There is another good saying here that fits. "You can't see the forest for the trees" Which generally means you are so focused on the small things that you can't see the big picture. I am backwards. For me the statement is more accurate when it reads "You can't see the trees for the forest". I have been so overwhelmed by the daunting forest that I haven't been looking at the trees. There is so much to be missed when you ignore the details. (Come to think of it, I had discovered this problem in my drawings nearly 15 years ago, so sad it took me this long to correlate that with my everyday life.)

To resolve this problem I am going to take a good hard look at the trees. I am in the process of doing this so I can't tell you yet what the outcome will be or what all the steps are. I will tell you that I started with a question. "Why do I always fail to stick to a schedule?" Instead of answering this question directly, I answered it with another question. "What is it that I am trying to schedule?" I wrote a list of everything that goes on in my life in a daily or weekly capacity that I need to fit into the schedule. Then I took each of these and wrote the specific details of what, in those items, fails, that makes it hard to stick with the schedule. For example, under the topic "Being awake at a certain time in the morning" was the fatal "going to bed late" and for me, the worse "Not feeling any pressing reason to get out of bed". After weeks of discussion with my sister on that particular topic I have come to the fact that this is a lack of willpower, but I had not yet found a way to make it less of a willpower struggle than it is. (I am currently testing a theory on a fix to this though.) 

So now I am addressing the trees. I want to be the patient monkey and see the whole picture before I start cramming the puzzle pieces together and collapsing from the weight of one tiny length of straw. I can over come this. It will all be better in the end. I just need to strategically map my course before I go diving into my personal no-mans-land.

Today is a New Day

27 March 2012

Today was a new day! I got myself out of bed by 8:00 am, which is average for me, but I got dressed, had breakfast, helped the kids clean their rooms and started on schoolwork! We were done with school at about 11:00am! The rest of the day I kept looking at the clock and saying to myself, "Is it really only 12:30?", "Is it really only 1:45?", etc., etc.

With Ra and El we worked on math and handwriting mostly. With Ca I tried showing him how to write his name again and how to properly hold a writing utensil (which he absolutely does not care to do). We are using Glenn Kimber's book Principles of Numeration, which is quite a good, simple guideline and definitely not a grab-and-go curriculum. I am thinking about buying the Math Masters book to accompany it as well.

For the rest of the day I worked on the audio book I am recording. I fiddled with the sound, the timing, the white noise and whatnot trying to figure out how the controls work in Adobe Soundbooth. Rather interesting. I also got myself an account on Lynda.com which has excellent tutorials on just about every software out there that needs explaining.

At the end of the day we went for a drive as a family and the hubby and I discussed many points about homeschooling as well as a few other topics, but mostly we talked about homeschooling. To my delight it would seem that the hubby is actually on the bandwagon with me about homeschool, finally! Though our reasons may differ slightly, we both definitely agree that our children need to be taught in the home.

Creative Scholastic Scalding

21-26 March 2012

Sorry it has been a crazy week (as it usually is when the hubby is in town) and I haven't made the time to blog! Ah well, when you fall off the horse you get right back up on it! In the last week we have done several things. The ones of note that I can remember off the top of my head are:

Place an order with Scholastic Books via Grandma Jane and adopted Grandma B. They gave me their teacher points to spend so it is not costing a thing! How cool is that!

And I burnt my hand in a sink full of water I had *just* strained from the noodles I had boiled. Don't ask, just don't ask. It was one of those stupid embarrassing I-cant-believe-I-just-did-that moments. After twenty minutes in ice water and a trip to Urgent Care everything turned out fine the next day.

I acquired the Adobe CS5 Creative Suite and have been having a ton of fun fiddling with the new programs. I also bought a Podcast setup to start recording some audio books. Voice acting, oh ya this will be fun if I can get the house quiet enough to do it!

I will get back on track with this tomorrow! Sorry for the absence!

The Sword of Senack and the Co-op

20 March 2012

Today EC Stilson my good friend released her first YA Fantasy book today. It is called The Sword of Senack. I read her first draft of the book and am anxious to read the final! It is about pirates and mermaids and witches and all sorts of fun underwater magic. Ra absolutely loved the first draft and I am going to read the kids the published final as soon as it arrives. When we have read it I will post my annotations of it in a link at the top of the page.

Wayman Publishing, the publisher of EC's books is holding a Writing and Art Contest to celebrate the book. They are also doing a raffle give-away of a Kindle Fire! I am going to go over there right now and enter. How neat would that be! For information on all these awesome goings on visit her blog at the link below. 




I had the kids help me pick up the house before computer's were allowed to come on today. While they piddled around on the computer I cleaned and got ready for our day out of the house. I had to run some errands down in the south end of Salt Lake County today and so I also planned to visit some family while we were there.

My nephew, Sk broke his leg while jumping on the trampoline over the weekend and so we decided to stop by there and visit him. He is Ra's age and both Ra and El enjoy playing with him. They all played Wii for a bit and the kids rotated playing outside and playing on the Wii with Sk. I told my sister about a LEARN group that was to be meeting tonight in Farmington that I wanted to go to but I didn't have anyone to watch the kids for me. She offered to watch them for me which was extremely nice of her.(u c wut i did thar?)

At the LEARN (Learning Enrichment And Resource Network) meeting I met some new people. We talked generally about some of the things each of us has been struggling with and we brainstormed ideas for each other. It was a really good way to get to know each other because you could tell what their passions and interests were based on their ideas and response. I met several mom's with children the same age as mine and I hope to get to know them better.

The biggest thing I took away from the meeting was that I am going to start a co-op. I have been looking for one to join but they are all full, or not the things I am interested in or the segregate, only allowing certain ages of children.

So my project for the next couple of weeks is to come up with a structure for the co-op and a basic premises-model to build each meeting off of. I would like to have it a twice-a-week affair. I would also like to try and get about other families involved. I feel I would be comfortable hosting about twenty kids, so long as I had other mothers/fathers willing to participate in the teaching efforts!

I will probably separate the kids into a few different groups depending on skills, abilities and interests. There is a ton of brainstorming I need to do on this idea so it will probably be a few weeks in the making before I even try and approach others with the idea and an invitation.

Multiply by Love

19 March 2012

I was up most of the night with stomach cramps. Maybe that dinner wasn't as healthy as I thought! I still don't have any idea what it was that caused the cramping but it is miserable. I still can't move around much without the cramps coming on again. Unfortunately I did need to get out of the house and run a few errands today. Talk about miserable!

The kids were good to me today and cleaned up the house a bit and attempted to load the dishwasher. Ra sat with me on the couch for a while and we did some oral quizzing on multiplication facts. Now mind you I have not done any formal teaching on multiplication, at least not in the same way I did with K12 and adding and subtracting.

We have gone over the basics of multiplication however. The fact that one number is how many are in a group and the other number is how many of those groups there are. I have previously explained to her that any number multiplied by zero is zero. After all if you have no groups of ten you have nothing and if you have ten groups of nothing you still have nothing.

I have also explained to her that knowing her skip counting will help her in all other areas of math. She requested that I begin asking her multiplication questions based in what she already knows of skip counting. She can skip count by 2's, 3's, 5's, 10's and 11's to 100.  I asked her multiplication questions that involve these increments. She did very well! I am so proud of her.

At bed time Ra read Fancy Nancy Pajama Day and I read Stinkers and Stingers.

Cribbage

18 March 2012

Today we attended church, (a little late I admit but we made it!) and spent some time relaxing at home. We had such a busy week last week that we decided to take it easy today. Around 1:00p.m. my mother called and asked her and my father could stop by for a visit. They were up in the area for a missionary farewell for one of my cousins.

The kids were extremely excited as usual when we have company. We live about an hour away from most of our family so we don't get visitors often. The kids had so much fun showing off all they have been doing and learning in our homeschool efforts and Grandma Debbie and Grandpa Mike enjoyed hearing all about it. Ra showed off her skip counting prowess, beautiful cursive and all of the fun crafts we did for the various holidays.

When we were in Hurricane Papa Glen and Nana Lori showed the hubby and I how to play cribbage. It is so chalk full of math that I decided to use it at home. I have heard that card games, dice games and board games are some of the best ways to learn math, so why not give it a try.

I asked my parents if they have ever played cribbage and they said no. So I decided to use that moment to not only show my parents how to play, but Ra as well. Ra loved it and though Grandpa Mike was a little distracted by Puss in Boots on the TV, I think my parents enjoyed it too. Grandpa Mike told me that he is really good at math, something I have probably always taken for granted in my father until now. He said that the only thing that messes him up in math is a calculator! Ha! See! That is how proficient I want my kids to be, and myself of course, because I am no where near that.

After a healthy dinner we read some of the Old Testament Stories before I shooed the kids off to bed.

Happy St Patrick's Day

17 March 2012

Happy St Patrick's Day! The kids woke up this morning to their traps all tripped and little gold nuggets (butterscotch chip candies) spread all about their traps. Also there were little green footprints everywhere and the leprechaun left us a note that read: "A valiant effort! Thee did well! But no box can keep me under its spell! -Mr. Shamrock" The kids were thrilled.

I made eggs for breakfast and while I wasn't looking the sneaky leprechaun magically turned the eggs green! When I poured the milk from the gallon it was white as can be but when I set the cups down on the table the milk had all turned green too!

After breakfast I began making the rainbow jello oranges. I cut the cuties I bought yesterday in half and scooped out the middles with a spoon. I had twenty-three cuties and so I ended up with forty-six halves. I placed them in muffin tins with a little sand at the bottom to keep the rinds from rolling over. I made the jello one color at a time and filled up 7 cutie halves with each color. For the remainder of the jello I found various containers to place it in to set up in the fridge.

While the jello was setting up we cleaned up the house and played for a bit. At three o'clock the jello was set and we took it over to our friends house to play. I cut the cutie halves into quarters and they were so convenient for the kids. They didn't need any utensils or plates to eat them, just quite a few napkins afterwards for the littler kids. We had a capital time.

We stayed pretty late as I helped my friend redesign her company website and we just had a blast visiting like always. Again it was too late to read any stories when we were done.

The Tempest

16 March 2012

We went to Walmart to get some supplies for St Patrick's Day. We purchased some tacky glue (for our traps), cutie tangerines, six jellos (one for each color of the rainbow), and a few other miscellaneous things. Tomorrow we are going to make some fun jello using the cutie peels. I will tell you about it in more detail then.

Those sneaky little leprechauns wont be able to escape our sturdy traps! We used popsicle sticks to make boxes to trap the leprechauns under. We painted the top (or bottom depending on which way you look at it) of the box in the colors of the rainbow and decorated them with clovers from our yard to entice the leprechauns in.

While waiting for the traps to dry we went to Bountiful to see the play The Tempest. I found out about it through one of the Yahoo! homeschool groups. It was performed by kids ages 4 to 14 and was really well done. Ra absolutely loved it. El and Ca sat through most of it but when I got up to take care of Em, Ca followed me out. It was a really fun experience.

When we got home the kids set up their leprechaun traps in hopes of catching those ever elusive little Irish men. Good luck to them!

It was too late in the evening to expect the kids to stay awake for a book so it was straight to bed with them. I can't wait for tomorrow! The kids have their green clothes all picked out so they don't get pinched. 

Fortune Telling Fun

7 March 2012

I couldn't sleep and so I got up at 2:30 this morning and worked on the blog. I reformatted it and added a new blog. You can get to it from the Ah-Ha tab. It is for my personal Ah-Ha moments in my self education and researching home school and parenting. 

My mother, Grandma Debbie came over to do Singing Time today. We reviewed the songs we already learned, The Wise Man and the Foolish Man and Nephi's Courage. We talked about the different kinds of boats and the difference between rowing and paddling. Then we learned the song, Row Your Boat. We even practiced singing it in rounds. It wasn't terribly successful, but we were getting better! Next time I think will go very well.

We were supposed to work in the yard today, but since it snowed all evening it was far too cold, and snow covered to be outside. So we spent our day inside. We cleaned a little bit and played mostly. I made some oragami fortune tellers and wrote some fun activities on the insides. The activities I used were fun and simple. Make a play using a picture book for the script, complete with costumes; Count to 99 by 3's; Draw a picture of the scariest thing you can think of; Pretend you are a pirate searching for a hidden treasure; Make up a dance to a song; Play in a secret hideout; Recite the colors of the rainbow in English and German, and one more I can't remember right now.

The kids made some of their own fortune tellers as well and spent the rest of the day walking around asking people to "pick-a-number" and telling them their fortunes. After several hours of dancing and playing pirates and whatnot I had to take a nap.

At dinner we had some more deliciously nutritious food I made from Rill's Menu (which I now have a tab for at the top of the page). The hubby put on some YouTube clips of Proximity Flying because Ra has been telling me that she wishes she could fly. It looks amazing, though extremely dangerous. Something I may have to put on my bucket list. Just watching it gives me a rush!





For Story time I read Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr Seuss and Ra read some of Mickey and Minnie Look At Paintings. It is so fun to see Ra want to read! I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Snowy Interruptions

6 March 2012

Being computer day I worked on the budget and did some research stuff while the kids played games whatnot. I watched several videos on education and got caught up on my blog reading. I talked with my sister a little about the recipes from her blog I have been trying and how freaking awesome they are. Healthy and tasty! No better combination.

Yesterday the hubby told me it was supposed to be nice weather all week. Well, he was wrong. It was overcast, gloomy and cold today and by dinner time it was snowing and blowing. After lunch I made an attempt to work in the yard, and let the kids play outside. We were successful for all of a half an hour before my arms complained about all the raking and weed pulling I did yesterday and my face began freezing.

After surrendering to the house we called a friend to see if we could come over and play. We stayed there and played until the hubby texted me that he was home. We went home and cleaned the house, made dinner and watched another episode of Top Gear.

For story time we read some more from Mosiah in the Book of Mormon but I was so beat we called it there.

I have set up a new blog, linked from this one on the tab "My Ah-Ha's". This is the place where I will be keeping track of my Ah-Ha moments in my homeschool and parenting research so you can get to know the method behind the madness, (or lack thereof!).

Industry

29 February 2012

First thing this morning Ra and El had eye doctors appointments. Ra has an astigmatism forming and needs a stronger prescription but El's eyes are fine, he might even be slightly far-sighted. The doc told me to just keep an eye on him (no pun intended) and keep that in mind when he is reading if he starts struggling with the smaller print. We went home and had a snack and the kids watched some videos on how eyes work and how light makes colors.

We had to run some errands down around the south side of the Salt Lake Valley so when we were done we went to visit my sister and her kids at their new house. I helped her unpack and clean up a bit and the kids had a fun time playing and exploring the new house with their cousins.

It was cold and overcast but I thought nothing of it until I was on the freeway heading home for my usually hour drive. As soon as I got onto the freeway the snow storm hit and we crawled along at 35 mph all the way home. It took us two hours. We listened to Little Women by Louisa May Alcott during the drive, though the kids were asleep for a good part of it. 

After we arrived home safely and had dinner Ra and El asked if we could buy Ca his birthday presents. We asked them how much money they had in their piggy banks and how much they would want to spend on their little brother. Ra said she would spend all of it because she could always earn more. That was not the kind of answer my hubby and I liked and we had a long discussion with Ra about saving and being industrious and (looking to the girls in Little Women for examples) setting moral goals to be a better person. We encouraged Ra to write an entry in her notebook every day and not just write one thing she learned that day, but write about everything she learned that day. And to have fun with it and draw and create on the pages as well.

For story time Ra decided she wanted to read Pixie Hollow Tales: Beck's Bunny Secret  by Tennant Redbank and The Fairy Berry Bake-Off by Daisy Alberto on her own. She read aloud to us. That is the most I have heard her read on her own in one sitting. While we listened to her read my hubby decided to start making a family website. A place for us to keep a digital record of what we do and our goals etc. We still have a lot of work to do on it but it will be fun and I hope my hubby now feels an little bit more involved in our homeschool efforts.

Gamification

27 February 2012

Clean, clean, clean. I feel like all we did today was clean. That's not entirely true though. After we had most of the cleaning out of the way we practiced skip counting by 3's. Ra has 3-30 down pretty well but seems reluctant to want to learn the rest up to 99. Eldon is hardly interested at all. I need to figure out funner ways to teach them. I have been using a video from Have Fun Teaching for the skip counting but it counts too fast and the kids loose interest because they can't keep up. We will keep working on it. I broke out in bouts of counting by threes throughout the day to try and spark the interest in it again, but each time the kids asked me to stop ofter counting to 30 for the third time.

After our initial skip counting session we watched some science videos on YouTube. They were interesting enough to keep the kids attention but because they were kind of random subjects I'm not sure it really did any good. They much prefer the hands-on science activities like we did with electricity the other day.

After the science videos we bundled up and went for a walk around the neighborhood. I reviewed with Ra that house numbers on one side of the street are even and on the other side they are odd. We looked at several house numbers along our way to see if the right side was even or odd and so on. We also had fun naming the colors of things we saw on our way in German. They are getting pretty good with their colors!

After our walk we had some hot chocolate to warm up and within the hour the hubby was home and we left to take care of some errands. While we were out our fan belt on our vehicle shredded and we had it towed in to the shop and obtained a rental car for a day or so until it is fixed. The kids where practically beside themselves with excitement at watching the tow truck load the vehicle and then being able to ride in the tow truck to get our rental. They thought nothing better could have happened to them today.

By the time we got home the kids had all fallen asleep in the car so no story time again tonight, though they did spend quite a bit of time listening to the audio version of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

After the kids were in bed I found this fun, new background for my blog for St Patrick's Day coming up then browsed around on Pinterest. I found a video about "gamification" and it's affects on kids and adults alike. It was very intriguing and though I understand what he is saying, I don't think I agree with it completely.

I don't doubt that we can learn immense amounts through video games, however, having been a gamer for nearly ten years I have experienced the effects that the studies can't possibly test. I lost myself in the games. I wanted to be there more than in my real life. The dopamine affects can be just as hazardous to our well being as any other dopamine based addiction. Games can not possibly replace the one-on-one time with your kids.

They may learn skills and information from games, but they can not learn about tact, right and wrong, love, honor, etc. Those things are taught in the home, by the parents. And the acquisition of these character traits is most important to me. I do believe my kids need to be taught as much as they can learn, but not at the expense of their moral character.

Electrical Gardens

25 February 2012

This morning we had breakfast then went (with the keys this time!) to get my husbands paycheck and we ran a few other errands on the way home. Ra listened to and read along with the read-along books we checked out from the library. I went over some of the facts of George Washington's life while we were in the car as well. I read them a few poems about George Washington that I had found online as well. I also started introducing the kids the the colors in German. Rot, orange, gelb, grun, blau, lila, schwarz, weiss, braun, silbern, and golden. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white, brown, silver, and gold.) Time in the car has been greatly under-utilized by me and I hope to remedy that with exciting discussions and topics and books to listen to and memorization drills.

We had lunch and cleaned house a bit when we arrived home and after lunch the hubby pulled out an electricity science project kit we had bought for our kids a while ago but had not opened yet. I thoroughly enjoyed myself as I sat back and listened to the hubby explain what a "circuit" was to the kids and how electricity works. I put in my two cents now and again when I felt I had an insight I could share or another way of explaining something that the kids might be able to understand easier. We all had a good time with it.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon planning my garden and doing research on how much to grow and where to grow certain plants in relation to other plants. I decided which plants I want to start with this year, instead of jumping headlong into a large variety garden my first year doing one on my own. While graphing out my garden on graph paper I explained to Ra what a Ratio was. I told her that for every two squares on my graph paper that showed one foot in actual garden. I told her we do this most often to scale down things into workable sizes. I couldn't very well draw out the garden on a piece of paper as big as the garden because then I may as well just do it in the garden itself. I still have a lot of planning to do, but this is a good start.

After a very good dinner the kids played around and Ra helped tend Em while the hubby and I set up my computer with Call of Duty 4 so that I could play it with him for a bit. It was fun to just chill and take a bit of time to relax from the studies I have been involving myself in during my spare time. Unfortunately the play time ran over and we didn't have time to read our kids a story before bedtime. But I was able to get in some valuable leisure time which I have been needing, but having been allowing myself. 

The kids and I also finished the Log Cabin out of twigs we started yesterday. I will post pictures of it soon. I absolutely love how it turned out.

Log Twig Cabin

24 February 2012

This morning we played around the house and cleaned up a bit until about 10:30 a.m. when I piled the kids in the car to drive the half hour to pick up my husband's paycheck from The Yard. When I got to The Yard the paychecks hadn't arrived yet so I drove down the street to a local park and let the kids play for about 45 minutes then drove back to The Yard. When I pulled up I found that it had been locked up and everyone was gone. This usually isn't a problem because I have a key to the office door, but I had left it at home. So, I took the kids to lunch since they were hungry, we weren't close to home and it was lunch time.

After lunch we went home and did our President's Day/George Washington's Birthday crafts. The first ones we did were George Washington and Abraham Lincoln finger puppets. They were so easy to make and they are so cute. It cost me one $1.04 to make four of them since I had construction paper, glue and scissors already and we needed a quarter for each George Washington and a penny for each Abe Lincoln.

The next craft was far more involved. I had cut out the shapes for the 4 walls, roof and floor of Lincoln's cabin and I had the kids go outside and collect me some sticks. We have an enormous willow tree in our back yard so the lawn was covered in easy pickings. I showed them how to do a rough measuring of the length the sticks needed to be and how to break them where they wanted. They glued the "logs" onto the construction paper and we let it dry all day. We will actually assemble the building (Gebäude in German) tomorrow.

After we were done gluing on sticks the kids wanted to go for another walk/bike ride. I called Grandma Jane because she said she might stop by our house and I wanted to make sure we weren't going to miss her if we left. She said she was still at the school (she teaches 4th grade at the public school my kids would be going to) setting up her classroom and getting ready to go back On-Track (the elementary schools here do a "track" system with A, B, C, and D tracks, all taking breaks at different times to be able to accommodate the large number of students). The school isn't much farther than where we were planning on going for our walk so I told her we would walk up there instead and help her finish setting up her room.

The walk/bike ride was quite stressful as we walked on a major road. My kids aren't yet familiar with all of the rules and whatnot of riding a bike near such traffic. They did good though. At the school we helped Grandma Jane put text books out on her kids desks and sharpen pencils and organize and decorate a board. While we were there my husband arrived back from work and drove the car over to the school to meet us. He conned his mother into watching the kids for us and we went on a much needed date. Grandma Jane put the kids to bed for us and she read some of the abbreviated children's version of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson to the kids.

Schedules, Hats, and German

20 February 2012

I managed to get my week planned out at about 1:30 a.m. last night/this morning. It includes basic ideas and guidelines for each of my three older kids in each subject, (reading, history, math, writing, science, art/music, German). This was no small task. I hope this gets easier as time goes on because it took me nearly all day yesterday to get this figured out and written up. It is well worth the effort, but I just hope it isn't always going to be such an enormous task.

Our day today was planned as such:

Ra-
Reading- A book of choice (read by self or by momma)
Writing- Notebook entry; penmanship
Arithmetic- Principles of Numeration #2
History- Ask Ra what history she wants to know.
Science- Review the Scientific Method.
Art/Music- Drawing with momma.
German- Review "nein, ja, bitte, etc."

El-
Reading- I See Sam book 9
Writing- Notebook entry
Arithmetic- Count to 100. Principles of Numeration #2 (with Ra)
History- Ask El what history he wants to know.

Science- Introduce the Scientific Method.
Art/Music- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
German- Review "nein, ja"

Ca-
Reading- "A, a"
Writing-Learn to hold a pencil; write name in capitals
Arithmetic- Counting to 10.
Art/Music- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

This morning we ran out the door at 9:00 a.m. thinking we had some things to take care of at the bank this morning and as we pulled up we had to bury our faces in our hands and say "What is all our planning worth if we don't remember holidays!?" Being Presidents Day the bank was of course, closed.

We had another errand to run which required us to drive an hour to get there and an hour to get back. Ra had brought a book with her that she had started reading while we were getting ready to leave. The book was Do You Have a Hat? by Eileen Spinelli. She almost finished it but had to stop because she was getting motion sick.

 I did not ask her to read a book and so this is a new development for her. I have only been reading to her and haven't been asking her to read anything. The reason for this is that she had been told too often that she is a slow reader in public school and so she hates reading. I have been reading stories to her though, and not just simple kids books.I read her chapter books so she can understand why a person would want to read such a long book by experiencing it without having to go through the effort herself. This will hopefully spark that desire to know what is on the next page. I believe the fruits of this effort are beginning to show forth by this act of reading a book on her own today. I am so excited!

While Ra was recovering from her motion sickness I used the time to ask her and El if there is anything in history that they are interested in or want to know more about. El isn't familiar with most any history at the moment but Ra said she wants to learn about the Statue of Liberty, Abraham Lincoln, Johnny Appleseed, and China. Since Ra is getting into the Love of Learning phase I think I will just have El listen in on our discussion and what not so that he can start to pick up on things he will be interested in pursuing in a couple years.

We reviewed skip counting by 5's and 10's while in the car as well, but mostly my husband and I talked while the boys teased each other in the back seat and Ra kept asking us to turn up the German music we had in the CD player.

After we returned home not much was done by way of the kids education until my husband left at 3:30 p.m. But while he was there I introduced him to LiveMocha, a language learning website that I found. I am going to use it as a primary resource for learning German. We told the kids that when they learn German well enough to hold a conversation we would take them to Germany. Of course, that means we need to learn it too! I think this is an excellent example for the kids of self driven learning. If you want to know something, search it out, don't wait for a teacher to hand it to you covered in worksheets and quizzes. 

For about an hour after the hubby left I let the kids watch some of the learning song/videos from Have Fun Teaching. They spent the rest of the day as they liked while I made dinner and took care of Em until 7:00p.m. when we read in Genesis of the KJV Bible and we read 3 chapters in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. We are 6 chapters from the end and have made a goal to read 3 chapters a night so we can be finished in 2 days to be able to have a discussion about the book with Nana Lori via Skype.

So I didn't get to everything on my schedule today, but tomorrow is another day and hopefully with less distractions. It is computer day, and I have at least planned for that and planned my "lessons" around this event!

Addle Brained

17, 18, 19 February 2012

My husband came home Friday night and I have neglected to update my blog post. I now do not remember what I did on Friday before my husband came home, save for cleaning house. Ah well. That will teach me for not staying on top of it! As for Saturday we ran a few errands and lazed about the house. Weekends when my husband is home tend to be lazy as far as school work is concerned. I am making an effort to change that but he isn't entirely on board with me for the homeschooling yet.

For Valentine's Day my husband bought me an electric blanket! I am so thrilled because I absolutely hate being cold! I took a nice nap with it Saturday night but I awoke with slight body aches and a sore throat. I still have my wisdom teeth and every time they start moving I get a massive headache, body aches, sore throat and aching jaw. It finally went away this afternoon though my jaw still has a lingering mild ache. Needless to say between that and my kids coughing up a storm we didn't attend church today.

Instead we drove around Antelope Island and did some wildlife watching. We saw coyotes and antelope today! Two more species to cross off our list! So far we have seen: Bison, Mule Deer, Crow, Hawks, Jack Rabbit, Pronghorn Antelope, Coyote, Field Mice, Finches (at least that is what they look like to me), and California Seagulls. That is nearly all of the major species of the island. Only large mammal we haven't seen yet is the Big Horn Sheep and Bobcats.

I had my husband go over some points about the kids education with me today. We went over each child's needs and wants individually and came up with some ideas as to how to best approach their education based on our observations etc. It took a long time but was well worth it and should become faster as we gain familiarity with the process. 

Before bed we watched some NOVA shows with the kids. It meant we didn't do our nightly reading for the first time in almost a month. The kids enjoyed them though and they were good shows so I have no problem with the miss of our reading tonight (especially since my jaw is sore still!

Overall not a bad weekend! Hope yours was well!

Notebooking and Numerals

16 February 2012

Being computer day today I spent some time conversing with my mother and my sister and cleaning up the house while the kids played on the computers. After lunch I put on some education flash game sites for the kids. I meander down to see how they were doing about an hour later and found Ca (who is only almost 4 mind you) doing a fractions game! I don't think he knew exactly what he was doing but it was amusing to see how invested he was in it!

Most of my time was spent figuring out my plan of attack for the next little while. I came across Notebooking and Classical method of education and I believe I am going to incorporate each of them as best I can in their own appropriate places. I had already done some Notebooking and so the idea of doing more of it comes natural and is appealing. I was going to teach my kids German as their first foreign language but I have changed my mind and I am now going to do Latin. After all, if they learn Latin well enough most other languages should come easier and it will help the kids know and understand our language better. They will also be able to understand the terminology used in sciences and mathematics.

Towards the end of the day I did a quick lesson using Principles of Numeration: Learning to Think and Self-Govern with Numbers by Glenn and Julianne Kimber. We went over Principle 1 which is "Numbers can be written in more than one way and still have the same meaning." The kids drew examples of this principle in their Notebooking notebooks I had for them already. I went a little further in my explanation of this principle by suggesting that numbers are an idea and the symbols or words we use are simply our way of expressing that idea. Ra caught on to that quickly and told me it is the same way with words. She is a bright cookie! I am going to enjoy teaching her so much.

After our little lesson we read a chapter from Genesis in the KJV Bible and a chapter from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was a good day even if it doesn't look like it was particularly productive.

P.S. Our Jar of Good Works had been added to a little each day! We are keeping on track with it. It was a great way to keep El's spirits up today since he got in trouble and had his computer privledges taken away. I found things for him to do and he found things to do that would earn him beans. Every time I put a bean in the jar for him his face would be bright as the sun! And speaking in similies, we watched a movie on similies yesterday and Ra has been making up her own. For example, she went to brush her teeth and she knew we were waiting for her so we could begin reading and she said, "I'm going to be as fast as a horse!" Kids crack me up! But in all sincerity, she knows what it is and she is using it! That is what makes homeschooling so neat!

Valentine's Day Driving

14 February 2012

Happy Valentine's Day! It was computer day today so I let the kids play for a couple hours after breakfast while I prepared to be driving around all day. I made lunches and snacks, collected all of the cards we would be delivering and phoning relatives for address to mail some of the Valentine's cards to.

From 11:00 am until 4:00 pm we were out delivering cards and spending some time with the cousins. After 4 I took the kids to Denny's as their Valentine's treat. Unfortunately that meant we drove the normally one hour drive home in peak traffic time so it took us nearly twice as long to get there. While in the car we have been listening to the audio recording of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Ra absolutely loves it and has insisted on listening to it instead of music.

Once at home we read from Genesis in the KJV Bible and a few chapters of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read more of The Original Homeschooling Series Volume 1 - Home Education by Charlotte Mason. It is one of those books that hits you over the head with the "Ah ha!" bat just about every other paragraph. It is going to take me quite some time to get through this book and the other five in the series, but it will definitely be worth it.

The Best Laid Scheme o' Mice an' Men . . .

13 February 2012

Often go awry. I had my whole schedule for the day planned out. It was going to be epic! There would be cheering in the streets and many fawning and gasps of wonder. The children would be inspired and love their mother more than one could imagine. However, Ra woke up last night several times with bouts of the flu. Then El for the rest of the day spent his time running to the bathroom.

So instead of joyous celebration of what a wonderful mentor I had become over night, I spent my day scrubbing carpets, washing sheets and trying my best to keep the level of mayhem down to a minimum. By evening all the kids were well enough to keep dinner down and we spent some time watching some educational song-videos I found on Pinterest.

Source: havefunteaching.com via Candiss on Pinterest

We ended our night with three chapters of Genesis in the KJV Bible and two chapters of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I am so tired tonight I do not think I will get much, if any reading in of my own book, Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter. A shame because it is a most delightful book.