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.

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.

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. 

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!).

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.

Grandma Jane and Inspiration

21 February 2012

Computer day. Ah... the day I get to sleep in and recover from staying up until 1:00 a.m. every night and waking up at 7:30 a.m. every morning.  I set up the computers for the kids and went back to bed until about 9:00 a.m. when Em woke up and I laid down on the floor while she played on and around me and I dozed. I made breakfast for myself around 9:45 a.m.

I didn't even look at my planner today because as I was finishing breakfast Grandma Jane called and asked if we could come over for a visit today. It was a nice break as she let me leave the kids with her for an hour or so while I ran some errands. Bliss. The kids helped Grandma Jane bake cupcakes and painted pictures, played Candyland and a Fishing (a board game). They played with wooden blocks and had all sorts of fun.

At home the kids went right back onto the computers and I replaced the tail light blinker in the car (the things us women have to do when the hubby works out of town!) and looked for some of my art supplies because I was asked if I would be interested in illustrating a cover for a client of a friend of mine. Of course by the time I actually found my art supplies it was time to get ready for bed.

We read four chapters in Genesis of the KJV Bible and three chapters in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Just three more chapters and we are done with this book. I am going to set up a Skype conversation with Grandma Lori who lives five hours away so Raven can discuss the book with her! It will be fun.

After the kids were in bed I did my usual research on homeschooling. I am still trying to figure this all out and find out what works and what I could be doing better etc. In my research I found a few things I am going to try.

First, when Ra gets up in the morning I am going to ask her "What do you want to learn today?" and "How long would you like your lessons to be? One hour? Two hours? or Three hours?) instead of trying to fit in what I want to teach that day. I will give myself an hour or so to prepare (if needed) to teach what she is interested in. I realize that this is practically throwing out the planning I spent so much time on preparing for this week, but if this works better I definitely wont complain about loosing the time this week to gain it from here on out!

If Ra does not want to have her lessons be an hour or more than I know that I have not sufficiently "inspired" her yet. Which I am bracing myself for because it is entirely possible since "inspiring" isn't something that comes naturally for me. This thought led me to more research of course.

I came up with a basic starting point for "inspiring". The guidelines where not meant for homeschooling application, but I figure if I can apply these principles to each subject to be taught then I will be set. I found that I have already started doing this with learning German.

-Stick with what you love about the subject. (if you don't love it, work on that first!)
-Think Big and Noble. (aim to be the best and know the most)
-Be Expressive with your students/children. (share with them your findings and excitements)
-Practice What You Preach. (don't ask them to do anything you aren't willing to do yourself)
-Keep an Open Door. (be willing to stop what you are doing to assist them with questions and concerns)
-Offer a Guiding Hand. (when they show interest offer to help them progress and give guidance)
-Be Consistent. (if it isn't important to you why should it be for them?)
-Stay Positive. (don't criticize your kids for shortcomings or inhibitions they have in achieving goals)

I know these things have been explained in the TJEd books and websites, but it is nice to step back and get a different wording and view of the same concept to make the puzzle fit together a little bit better. All in all, I need to focus on educating myself and by putting myself in that mindset I will better see the opportunities I have to share that knowledge with my children.

As for learning to reading, writing and arithmetic for the boys, I need to pay more attention to the things they do on their own and look for learning opportunities there instead of requiring them to sit down and do math with me or writing etc. If I implement more activities where these things are present as well, like writing letters to people, they will learn to do them in a natural setting. 

P.S. I also did some more German lessons of LiveMocha. I am getting better than my husband, granted he only took two years of German in high school and doesn't remember a whole lot because he hasn't used it.

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!

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.

Valentine Mathematical Symmetry

11 February 2012

Today we made our Valentine's card. It was a fun and super messy but easy to clean up. I started out with having Ra help me figure out if we had enough paper doilies for how many cards we wanted to make. We wrote a list of all the cousins and friends and grandparents we would be making cards for. We agreed that each cousin would only get one card from all four of the kids, the friends would get one card as well. The grandparents however would get one card from each of the kids that could make them on their own, (leaving Em out of the count). The initial count left us with 32 cousins, 6 friends, and 8 grandparents. So our equation looks something like this (32 + 6) + (8 x 3) = 62 . SIXTY TWO! Boy I sure am glad we aren't adding another 60 cards to that with school classes for Ra and El!

I showed Ra the packages of doilies. I had one package of red, one of white and one of pink. There were 16 doilies per package. I asked her to figure out how many doilies we had to make cards with. She added 16 + 16 + 16 and I explained that this was the same thing as 16 x 3. I then asked her if we had enough doilies to use one for every card. She said no, that 48 < 62. I then had her figure out how many more doilies we would need to be able to have one for each card. With an answer of 14 I asked her how many more packages we would need. She answered with one package. We went to the store to get the last needed package.

Finally beginning, we used construction paper, scissors, glue and the doilies to make the cards. I showed the kids how to make a heart by folding the paper in half and cutting half a heart shape around the fold. I used this as an opportunity to explain symmetry. We had fun coming up with other shapes and patterns to cut out using symmetry.  We made hearts, diamonds, rectangles, accordion people, and flowers just to name a few.

We continued the observation of symmetrical objects into dinner time and I plan on continuing to point it out whenever we see it throughout the year.    

Tonight we read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett again. And hey, I even got some reading in of Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter.

German Bibles and Cinnamon

10 February 2012

Payday. Best day of the week. HA! We cleaned the house this morning and went to the bank and to a couple stores to pick up some resources I have wanted to have around the house. I picked up an illustrated Old Testament Stories, a Bible in German, some posterboard to make sewing cards, accounting ledger notebook, graph paper, and some posters and pamphlets which our faith releases.

After our errands we went out to eat since we weren't close to home. Elisa invited us to her house because her daughters wanted to do the Cinnamon Challenge and wanted us to watch and they were going to post it on YouTube. We stayed there and played for a couple hours before coming home to make dinner and do some studying and research.

We read some more of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett before bedtime. I did a bunch of reading about TJEd and more homeschooling ideas. I was so engrossed with it I didn't get in my reading of Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter. Hopefully I will get in at least a chapter tomorrow!

The Wise Man and the Foolish Man

9 February 2012

My kids and I spent the night at my sister's house last night and so there is not a whole lot on the agenda today. My mom had asked to be involved with the homeschooling I am doing as so I asked her if she would mind doing a singing time with the kids.

We decided on the song "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" from the Children's Songbook of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. My mom prepared a whole lesson around this song that started with the scripture passage the song is about and an explanation and discussion with the kids about what the sand and the rock and the house represents. Then she put a pile of dirt and a rock in her bathtub, each with a plastic cup balanced on top. She turned on "the rain" and we watched the effects of the water on the earth. We sang the song several times and watched some YouTube videos people had made with the song. It was very fun and the kids enjoyed it a lot.

I finally finished The Chosen by Chaim Potok. A very good book with an extremely meaningful ending. The remainder of the day was spent playing with cousins until 6:30pm when we drove home. We read two more chapters in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and then I settled the kids in bed and soaked in a much deserved hot shower. I am now going to settle down for the night and start reading Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton Porter.

The Wild Garden

8 February 2012

Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday! I always (or nearly always) forget to take our garbage dumpster out to the curb on Wednesday! Good thing we have two dumpsters or perhaps that is a bad thing. Maybe if we only had one dumpster remembering to take it to the curb would climb higher on my priority "to remember" list.

We ran a few errands in the morning. I had to take Em in to get some of her immunizations and since we were across the street from the used bookstore I stopped in and bought a few more books.

My sister-in-law's sister asked me if I could give her a ride to a friends house so she could go searching for a car with him. She offered to pay my gas money and so I consented and also decided that since I had been planning on driving that direction tomorrow anyways I called my sister to see if we could just spend the night. I am very accustomed to the hour drive down there, but I will avoid it if I can. She said that would be fine so long as I helped her maintain the younger kids because she had some teenage girls coming over for a cupcake decorating activity. Before going to her house I stopped by the local thrift store to see what books they had and I was able to get a dozen books I have on my list at $0.50 a piece!

When the activity started I herded the kids downstairs (four of mine and three of hers). I knew there wasn't a whole lot for such rambunctious kids to do down there so I came prepared with The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I told them all that they could play and didn't have to listen to the story, but it would be nice if they could keep quiet so those who did want to listen would be able to hear. At the end on the first chapter I had asked everyone to be quieter a few dozen times. By the end of the second chapter I was essentially reading to myself so I stopped reading and just maintained the kids from getting into things they weren't allowed in. Ten minutes after I stopped reading A couple of the kids asked why I stopped. I explained that no one was listening and a few of them defended themselves saying that they had been listening. Perhaps I should have picked up the book again and continued reading at the chance that someone would actually have sat down and enjoyed it, but I felt I had been thoroughly ignored so I didn't.

After the girls left the younger kids were allowed upstairs to decorate the leftover cupcakes with the leftover frosting. We cleaned up and my kids helped my sister's kids with their homework. (I know! I was surprised too!) Usually I worry about my kids being a distraction to their cousins but my sister commented that tonight it was easier to get them to sit down and do their work than it regularly was. After they were caught up with their homework we all sat to read scriptures and have a family prayer.

I read my kids The Secret Garden, from the beginning. When they were all asleep I talked with my brother a bit about homeschooling. He loves to hear about it and wishes his wife would be willing to homeschool but she does not feel adequate to be able to teach them herself. He did buy A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver DeMille in e-book format while we were talking. Maybe then my sister-in-law will be a little bit more comfortable with the idea. Maybe not. Who but God knows?

P.S. I didn't have a chance all day to read The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I didn't finish it last night but I only have a few chapters left! Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

Religious Devotion

7 February 2012

I started reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok this morning and by the end of the day I was nearly all the way through it. Of course, that meant I didn't do anything else all day.  It was computer day for the kids and they were happy that I didn't restrict the amount of time they were allowed to play. Ah well, I will finish the book tomorrow and get the house fully cleaned then.

Usually my kids go a little wild when I spend the day reading (or listening to an audio book as it has been in the past), but this time they were well behaved. There was not fighting or arguing to speak of and the house was pretty well still intact by the end of the day. My little Em crawled around and played by my side while I read. She had a little bit of a fever and a runny nose; I'm pretty sure she is starting to cut her first teeth. The poor baby.

I am already looking forward to re-reading The Chosen as well and looking up all of the Hebrew and Yiddish words and phrases to find their meanings. The devotion the characters in this book have to their religious studies is astounding and impressive. I am going to try to incorporate at least ten minutes of scripture reading into our hour of reading time before bed. It will be a good thing not only for the kids, but for myself as well.