Schola et Studium

A Note

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:32:00 +0000

I'm leaving this blog up as a resource since several sites link to the forms and materials on here, but it will no longer be updated since I am trying to consolidate everything that used to go on three blogs to one blog --

Quotidian.

So that's where I'll continue to update on planning and record-keeping and that kind of thing. Just so you all know!

What's Left -- Year 7

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:35:00 +0000

8 lessons of MEP Year 7.
61 pages of the Boy Scientist.
70 pages of Robinson Crusoe.
100 pages of George Washington's World
about 100 pages of Ways of the Wood Folk
10 more chapters of The Reb and the Redcoats.

I estimate this will take 2-3 weeks for the math and about 6 weeks for everything else, though obviously we could zip through faster if we wanted to go at hyperspeed. But I don't think we do. This "slow read" pace is working for us.

We finished the relevant part of This Country of Ours, and we're putting Bulfinch's Mythology on hold because Kieron is spending lots of time reading old Junior Classics and My Book House anthologies, which cover the same ground.

Everything else is basically on inert status till next fall..... Shakespeare, Plutarch, grammar, Latin, art and music study. I will probably have some sort of summer curriculum -- not sure of the details yet. The Year 1 students will continue through the summer because their curriculum is so close to what I want them to do in their regular lives, anyway.

Paddy listens to all of the Year 7 readings except The Boy Scientist. He calls Robinson Crusoe "the savage".

I am really enjoying The Boy Scientist. I have a lot of summer readings for ME planned out. Liam gave me Einstein's "Relativity" to read, I have a bio about Michael Faraday, and an Asimov book about physics. Liam also gave me a book about Aquinas's division of the sciences, which is a commentary on a writing by Boethius. So many books, so little brain power and time ;-).

more planning to plan and catch-up

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:31:00 +0000

I wrote a post on prayer and planning over here. Now that I wrote it, I actually want to DO it. So that's next on the list, besides helping Kieron get through the last part of Year 7.

Some more posts on planning, from 2007.

We slowed to a stop on Holy Week and are just picking up again now. .... everyone got sick and I was doing some house-sorting so we didn't stay on much of a schedule.

Kieron has been reading My Book House series, Winds of Light series, and something else I can't remember. Oh, yes, a "time" story by Andre Norton -- can't remember the title.

I read some of Pinocchio to Paddy -- I'm not sure how he liked it except that he kept saying, "Keep Reading!" I had never read the real story before and was surprised by the satiric tone, sort of like Cervantes, it seemed. Good Books always surprise me with their voice.

Paddy's also having me go through Winnie the Pooh again. We also read Dinosaurs before Dark... a Magic Tree House story. That is, he read it to himself and then I read it to him.

Aidan has been "reading" Are you my Mother? and Ten Apples up on Top! to me and then having me read them to him. By looking around the floor I can see the archaeological trail of puzzles he has been doing.

Today I hope to have an actual academic day even if it's somewhat slow.

I have it pretty well decided what we're going to do next year as I wrote here. But I think we are missing out a bit on interests. It's something I don't really know what to do about right now but I'm putting it here for consideration.

Also, since I was just whining about being sick and letting homeschooling slide I thought this was great timing. So how's homeschooling going?.... (you're still doing better than Miss S)

Triduum

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:32:00 +0000

Because I had told Paddy so firmly all the minutiae of good behavior at Easter mass, including a prohibition against asking questions, I thought it would be good to pay attention to preparing him beforehand about what Easter meant. So he wouldn't have any important questions left to ask during the service itself.

So I read him the Good Friday Bible story on Good Friday. It was surprisingly hard to read the story of Our Lord's arrest, trial and crucifixion to a 6 year old. He knows it generally but the actual story is so horrible in the details. Something in me wants to protect him against something so shocking happening to someone he has learned to love through the Christmas stories and the stories of his miracles. Besides, I was afraid I would start to cry, which would embarrass him.

However, it went off all right. He was very interested. And when we got to Easter mass, very early because his older brothers were altar serving, some serendipity came in because the bulletin had a line drawing of Jesus emerging from the tomb. Paddy said with delight "There's Jesus!" and I explained about the stone rolling aside and the angel and the women (reminding him because we have talked about this story before).

Then the bulletin also talked about how we go to mass on Sundays because we are re-celebrating Easter... how the Jews celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday but the custom was changed from the earliest days of the Church. So I paraphrased that for him because one of his recent questions has been "WHY do we have to go to church every Sunday?" I have been telling him about how much God does for us every second of every day and how little he really requires in return so this was another way to present it.

Also, on Friday we finished reading The Law of Authority and Obedience. Parables from Nature has been a stumbling block for me for years. Every time I looked at Ambleside, I would see this book and glance through the text and hesitate. I just couldn't bring myself to read it to my children. However, Paddy's my last (though Aidan will be the last chronologically to go through Year 1, I guess) and so I wanted to give the whole Ambleside curriculum a fair try. To my surprise these stories suit him well. He gets all fired up with enthusiasm -- the Big Questions put his mind in high gear. The older kids were listening sub rosa and after I finished we had an interesting discussion about roles, etc. I'm glad however that there are only a few of these stories for Year 1 because "just a little is enough" -- I can see that it would be a strain on his mind and heart to have a steady diet of these stories, which is probably why I instinctively hesitated in the past.

He was pretty good at Mass. That is the main habit we're working on right now. He tends to get so restless that he almost closes off his mind and senses. I'm thinking of having him practice during the week. At home he CAN sit still for long times when I'm reading to him, but it's harder for him when his mind isn't fully engaged. So I need to teach him to be able to reflect and take in what's around him when there's no "narrative" so to speak. Picture study and composer study might help a bit.... just thinking this through?

We are still on vacation -- resume studies tomorrow. I wanted to use this blog as a place to jot down teaching notes rather than just list what we did. And sometimes learning happens on the off days, too.

A List of Things To Focus On One at a Time

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:51:00 +0000

I'm sorry, this blog will probably be even more boring than usual for a little while, unless you like twig by twig details of an ADD homeschooler's planning process.

On my sidebar I have put some of the things I wanted to start developing as habits, or extending:

January

Notebooking

February
Narrations

March
Century Books

April
Poetry/Poet Study

May
Nature Study
Hymns and Folk Songs

June
Living Geography and Travel
Health/Therapy/Fitness

July
Scripture and other Recitation (Memory)
Sports/Games/ Physical Training

August
Handicrafts and Practical Life

September
Copywork/Dictation/Composition

October
Plutarch and Shakespeare

November
Art Study
Composer Study

December
Domestic Church

Retrospective of Year 7

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:05:00 +0000

Looking at last year, I see I was on Week 28 this time last year, too. ... and just starting to plan.

Did I do ANYTHING that I had tentatively planned for Year 7 back then? I don't think so. We did follow a US History chronology and we have worked a bit with KISS Grammar, but that's about all.

Did we still have a good year? Yep, I don't think it went too badly.

Logic We only finished half of Introductory Logic, but if he does the next half next year we will be in good shape to tackle Traditional Logic I and II in high school.

Math He was horribly burned out on math, and so we went to MEP Year 7. This is a year behind where he should be, but because he could use the review and it also extended some things into high school concepts, I think it was appropriate. Math isn't his favorite subject, but he did engage a lot more this year than previously. I think we'll probably go on to Year 8.

Latin -- we did a lateral. We didn't touch Latina Christiana -- instead went to Latin is Fun, which is actually my oldest Latin resource -- I used it with Liam when we were enrolled with Kolbe. I didn't know enough Latin then to use it well and we fizzled out after a few chapters. This year we actually made it through the whole first section -- OK, at that rate we'd take six years to make it through the book but I am still pretty happy since we stuck at it faithfully. Here is a vocabulary database where you can do vocab quizzes related to the book. I don't think there's a homeschooler in the world besides me who uses Latin is Fun which probably means it has something wrong with it -- probably the more inductive approach or perhaps that as I mentioned it seems to require a bit of background knowledge. But he's actually learned more grammar than he learned last year using Latina Christiana 1.

Grammar -- basically once a week he takes one of the KISS worksheets and analyzes. Very lowkey. We talk about it. My goal is for him to work from his own understanding towards the analytic knowledge.

Religion -- Creed in Slow Motion was our core. I think it was very helpful, and am wondering what we will do to replace this next year. He also read pretty much all the Vision Saints books we had in the house -- 20 or more. I think maybe he's ready for some of our apologetic-focused books and for some CS Lewis.

History and Literature. We progressed over the course of the year from the Renaissance to American Revolution. It would make this post too bulky to list all the resources we used, so maybe a separate post. This was probably the core of the year and I think we met expectations at least. Next year is modern history -- Civil War through -- and Story of the World IV will probably be the spine.

Science -- A history of science approach integrated with history and literature, with some nature study readings. Right now he is reading The Boy Scientist and Ways of Wood Folk. I promised my kids I'd never use Apologia Science again, so I'm looking for a replacement. Main resource will probably be MacBeth's High School Science. Kieron votes for some of those cool Discovery Channel science programs that Kevin watches at night. Those could be starters for further research. Also, we never got to Chemical History of a Candle and I loved that book, so it might be a good resource for next year.

Geography -- worked on this during the first term, but have let it drop since.

Things to work on informally during the summer:

Art
Music
Nature Study
Composition (story writing)

Dragons in the Flower Bed linked to these TAKS standards tests so maybe I will have him do a bit of that during the last part of the year to see if there are any areas that needed shoring up.

Paddy's Narration

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:53:00 +0000

Paddy did his first "formal" narration today. Of course, we've been "talking about books" since he was old enough to talk, and a couple of times since we started Year 1 I've been asking him what he remembers about a story. (he usually says the last thing that happened in the story).

Today I told him to tell me back the story (A Bundle of STicks from Aesop's Fables) and that I would write it down for him. He talked to me too fast for me to write it down exactly but this is what I got down:

The father gave the sons a bundle of sticks, and they tried to break it, but they couldn't.

Then he gave the sticks to them one by one and they broke them easily.

He said, "My sons, if you agree with each other, the enemy won't be able to injure you --

if you're bad and don't agree with each other, then you won't be any stronger than those sticks."

Cute, huh? I really didn't want to mess up narration for this young one. I want to be able to rely on it as a learning tool, since I am commited to literature as a force for education but want to do everything I can to foster attentiveness in dealing with it. I always have had trouble with narration before. IT didn't seem natural to ME. But trying to narrate the books I read to myself (I've actually been trying to narrate Kieron's Year 4 material) made me both more respectful of the way it helps retention AND the difficulty of it. So from that base I have been able to persevere better in asking for narration. Kieron doesn't really like to do it but he is seeing the point in it and does well.

When I asked about starting narration on the Ambleside list with my six year old, several people suggested that we start off slowly with Aesop's Fables and other simple tales, and then build from there.

Aidan's narrations right now are still about events of daily life. I've been working with him on accurate observation. But when he's more ready to listen to stories I think the narration process will help him, too.

Planning to Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:21:00 +0000

Brandy at Afterthoughts has a post up about planning for Summer Term. I was just starting to do that a bit in my head, too... but hadn't gotten my thoughts into any kind of order yet, so it was helpful to read her post.

I talked to Kieron today about the things on our weekly schedule (see sidebar) that we haven't been getting to consistently. He is pretty good about getting the "checking-off" things done -- Latin, math, language arts. He's been letting some of the independent readings slide, though, and I have to take the blame for the fall-throughs on the things like Art Study, drawing, piano. When you can't just go on to the next page, I tend to get lost in the details.

Kieron suggested that maybe we should address the more arty-musicy things during the summer. We'll have more time. It won't seem so much like slogging through to get everything done. I thought maybe that was a good idea. I'm hoping that once we build up a habit, it will seem more like a part of normal life and not so much one more thing on the school checklist.

I'll do this with the younger ones, too. By fall it will feel to them like they've always done picture study and music. That's the nice thing about little kids.

I do intend to start informal nature study this spring though -- ie as soon as the snow finishes melting. That's a tradition of ours so it will come easily.

What else? I'd like to get Kieron more off the ground with handwriting. I've written before about his dysgraphia. I have seen progress just since Christmas, though. His older brother was almost exactly that age when he started improving with his writing.

Again, a similar goal with the younger ones. We'll keep working on the handwriting.

One more thing I'd like to start off is a Memory Time.

This summer I'd like to have a loose routine of some sort. This isn't so much for the children as for ME. I drift way too much off into my own world if I don't have temporal anchors. And they suffer from the lack of mom-focus. Today was a bit like that, in fact.

I am not stopping Aidan's reading practice -- we'll keep up with that. And I'll try to find time to make him some more Montessori type games since he enjoys that so much. Recently I have been hands-off and he's been still cycling through the various activities, but I ought to be more involved in the whole thing than I am at present.

That's all I can think of for now. If we start getting ready to move, I vow to try to get them involved. Once again, this is a discipline for ME -- I tend to prefer doing things on my own, but I know they would rather be involved if I would draw them in.

A Quote and a History of a Scientist

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:16:00 +0000

"The object of my school is to is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing."

-- G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

Nice quote, huh? I stole it from Dr Thursday's blogg.

Also, Dr Thursday blogged about Antoine Lavoisier and the importance of his discovery that respiration is a burning process. (If I am getting that correct).

We just got past Lavoisier in the Boy Scientist so I'm bookmarking this as a connection.

Another quote:

Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, went to the guillotine, crucifix in hand, a fervent child of the Church, at the bidding of ... the friends of "Reason" who declared, "Nous n'avons plus besoin de chimistes."

Or, "we no longer have need of chemists".

Nice, huh? more, here, if you can read French (mine is rusty)

Year 7 -- last lap

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:53:00 +0000

Year 7 Term III (word 2007)

Kieron and I have been dealing with fuzziness. It used to work for him to have me do a few things along with him and then jot down the rest on a piece of paper. Recently, though, that hasn't been enough. He gets lost in the day.... and so do I.

I decided to write out all that I want him to cover before summer break (subject to minor revisions). I gave him the whole thing on a clipboard and last week it seemed to be helpful. He still has his weekly Timetable (pictured on the sidebar) to refer to.

So over on the left side in gif form is this week's work. I have a section to "Carry Over" whatever he didn't get to the week before.

Above is linked the doc for the whole 9 weeks. If he keeps up he will finish in the first month of June. We'll see how it goes.

Next year he is going to do some type of Pre-Year 7.

Day 108 -- dice, Little House,

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:38:00 +0000

A few things going on recently:

Paddy loves Little House in the Big Woods. He's actually the first child I've read this aloud to. I think I started to read it to Clare but it went too slowly. With Paddy, I don't know if he's listening to every word but he keeps begging for another chapter. We are already on chapter 10. It is fun for me to read the detailed descriptions of elegant, effective pioneering.

It might have helped that we had the "first Little House" picture books around the house and have read them over and over through the years, so he already knew the general outline of the situation and liked the characters.

Kieron seems to have spring in the blood.... on the bright side, he has been taking the little ones outside to sled for hours (yes, we still have lots of very mushy snow). And he just zipped through three collections of Grimm's and Jacob's folk tales, and telling me about them spontaneously. On the down side, he isn't keeping up with his Ambleside reading, saying he doesn't mind reading through the summer if he doesn't stick on schedule.... hmmm...

Yesterday I decided to start Aidan on dice addition. He likes rolling dice a lot and we have dice all over the house. And I've been trying to figure out a way to illustrate addition that isn't quite as static as worksheets. He likes worksheets but he likes the ones with the BIG numbers, not boring 3 + 3. So I got two dice and rolled them and showed him how you can count the dots to get the sum. Eventually I will start writing down addition sums so he can see in symbols what I am now telling him verbally. Well, he liked the game and even did it spontaneously so that seems to be going well.

A bonus: Paddy liked the game too. He has no trouble adding any two dice quickly and so it's just practice for him. But this afternoon he was trying to stump me with six dice and that gave me a chance to show him how I group tens and therefore can find the sums quickly. Then I helped him do it and he thought that was neat. Dice can be beginning multiplicands too. Lots of possibilities. Something simple that we already have around seems to work much better for us than something elaborate and costly that is difficult to use.

Aidan regularly asks me for a "reading lesson" after dinner. Usually he tells me something about the day and I write it down. Then he practices writing words from my model. The third component is a review of the Spell to Read and Write cards (I use the Wise Spelling program because I have it, but any phonics program could be used in a similar way. What I like about this one is that it is high frequency words that have immediate impact -- not like the weird words he has never heard, like you find in some basic phonics programs -- he just doesn't have the verbal context to have any interest in deciphering long strings of odd CVC words).

The weather has been very springlike, and right now the three older kids are outside talking -- Sean came home early today.

Beginning Narration Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:39:00 +0000

I haven't really tried to have Paddy narrate yet. When we pick up one of the stories from Ambleside that we haven't read for a while, I try to jostle his memory a bit... "remember how Paddle was in the beaver pond..." and then he fills in with whatever he wants to say. Then I keep reading. I am trying to focus on reading as a more contemplative thing with a beginning, middle and end, and try to let that develop into a narration and then discussion pattern naturally. I don't want to embarrass him as I am afraid I did when I experimented clumsily with narration when my older kids are younger.

So today, I said something like, "So what happened there?" I've done this a couple of times and he says something about the last thing that happened. In future I may slow down even more and ask him between short episodes or passages.

I've been narrating myself and it's not easy. There is something in my mind that balks at it, at being forced into the track of "what comes next". In "Blink" I read that there are two kinds of memory -- a huge visual-associative "right brained" bank and then the verbal/linguistic/sequential side. In the book, he says that the verbal memory can actually override the associative side and so some witnesses to crimes, for example, are LESS able to visually identify a suspect, say in a lineup, AFTER they have given a point by point description than BEFORE. Very interesting and may explain why the silent pond in my right brain resists being filtered through.

I find though that when I DO narrate or make that effort, it is easier to dredge the actual thing out of my mental pond later on. Charlotte Mason compares it to links in a chain. You make verbal associations with the visual, intuitional memories and that allows you to access them instead of having them lurk down underneath forever.

Some people have their beginners draw a picture about a story and then ask them to explain what is happening in the picture. Another method in Laura Berquist's book is for ME to draw the picture at his direction. That gives me an idea of what he sees.

Another thing I am considering, now that Aidan is in the habit of dictating journals for me to write down, is to ask Paddy to dictate journals and stories and then narrations. He would probably enjoy this since he sees me doing it with Aidan.

Some Early Learning Things

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:48:00 +0000

These are a couple of things suggested in Aidan's OT consult yesterday.

Cornmeal tray -- I made this a long time ago but just found it in the pantry today so I brought it out and put it with their word cards from Spell to Read and Write.

I wrote a word in the cornmeal and then Aidan and Paddy both traced over it. This was easier for them than handling a pen.

Later, in the evening, Aidan read one of the journals that we had written together a couple of weeks earlier. He did really well, actually, is recognizing far more words. Then he wanted to make another journal. I wrote it and we read it back.

Then he asked to write some words himself. Below is what the OT recommended because he tends to lose control of his pen and sprawl his letters all over the page. She thought his pencil grip, control and everything were fairly good and that he was ready to work on writing smaller and within spaces. So she made boxes and this seemed really helpful for him.

The words here are his choices. These are some of his favorite words:

After we had written them out in the book, he wanted to cut them out.

Here is a game he made for himself with a lid and marbles. He loves to roll them back and forth and this is actually good bilateral control because he is hemiplegic (his left side doesn't work so well after a stroke in infancy).

Brendan brought the beautiful wooden USA puzzle out of his room and Aidan tried to do it today. Of course it was too difficult for him but he did all right. Please pay no attention to the crumbs all over the rug. That is life around here!

Day 105, and Week 25

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:30:00 +0000

I am a bit bored with just listing what we did on a given day, especially since it's just duplicating what I type out in a Word document. It seems to me that it would be better to save this space for actual notes, though.

If you look at the gif you can see what we got to this week and what we didn't get to. Or you can look at it in doc form.

What we didn't get to on Friday, we usually carry over to Monday which is a light day if everything else is up to date.

Day 104

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:24:00 +0000

Kieron

Bible & Creed Creed in Slow Motion, started chapter 11
Poetry: Tennyson
Math chapter 15.1 – negative numbers
Language Arts Latin p 58
Artist study wanderer above the mists
History: This Country of Ours chapter 54 – war in Canada -- narrated and discussed
Exercise or play with guys
Johny Tremain -- didn't do that because I had phone calls to make, he read GWW and narrated instead
2-15 min clean
Literature: Robinson Crusoe chapter 5 -- narrated
outdoors went out for a few minutes with siblings

Didn't get to:

Science: Lab or Research
recorder

(the day was already feeling a bit packed -- and he did science stuff earlier in the week when he did some magnet projects Brendan decluttered from his closet).

He did quite well on the narrations today and seems to accept the value... so far... I have been having him compare his retention of the readings he DOES narrate, compared with the ones he doesn't.

The first Art Study went well -- I like this artist's mountain pictures, they remind me of Albert Bierstadt's. We looked at it for a bit and he commented spontaneously. He seems to have the kind of mind that does well "dwelling" on something. A more contemplative mindset? I have been trying to narrate after readings myself and I have trouble, so I understand why he finds it difficult.

Paddy

We are reading Lightfoot the Deer now, having finished Jimmy Skunk.
I had him draw BIG S's tracing over mine, on construction paper with markers -- this he did much better.

Aidan

typed and printed out some numbers
worked on word cards a bit.
He's going to a PT/OT eval later today.

Day 103

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:06:00 +0000

Kieron

Bible & Creed --remainder of chapter 10 -- discussed
Poetry: Tennyson --
Math --Chapter 14.4
Language Arts --Latin -- adjectives
Science:The Boy Scientist --did lab instead – magnets
Ways of the Wood Folk---Merganser Duck -- narrated a portion
George Washington's World -- Phillis Wheatley, and George and Mary Washington
Exercised while listening to Johny Tremain
2-15 min clean
Literature: Robinson Crusoe -- chapter 4 -- narrated a portion
In addition, we read chapter 53 of This Country of Ours, on Bunker Hill, and discussed and narrated.

What we didn't get to (I'm going to start mentioning that because it seems to help me think):

Outdoors -- didn't get outside -- icy and miserable out there. Maybe I should have us just go out for 10 minutes -- start small just to breathe the air and get a feeling for the weather? (but that will mean I can't be a wimp!)
piano -- didn't get to that

He narrated George Washington's World but not very well. On the other hand his narration of Bunker Hill was pretty good. Obviously we're still adjusting. We talked a bit about retention strategies, like making a visual image in the mind, and also reflecting a bit while reading to check one's attention status (these are things I got from reading that book about the Right Brained Learner -- I don't remember the exact title -- and also there is a list of reading strategies here, and these in PDF and a list of others). He has been very agreeable, not arguing, but sometimes making excuses for not paying much attention. I have become more aware of the natural noise level around here -- it's true, it is challenging for him to focus with everything going on around him.

Paddy --

I read him Cincinnatus from 50 Famous Stories. I asked him to tell what it was about and he said, "He was a king for 16 days" (which was the last sentence of the story). Other than that, he was fairly vague. That was a tough choice for a beginner narration though, since it was 3 or 4 pages long.

We finished reading Jimmy Skunk. He certainly loves to listen to stories and brings a book every time I sit down.

I read a couple of poems from A Child's Garden of Verses. I found a more general anthology of poetry for young children and am going to use that sometimes since I have to admit I am not particularly fond of RLS's Child's Garden. I am very sure it is me and not him, but it's hard for me to read them to Paddy when I don't really care much for reading them. Right now I've started just skipping through the book and having him look at the pictures and then listen to the ones I prefer of the lot.

We worked a bit on math. He can add two 2-digit numbers in his head. And he likes picture stories with his math.

We tried to do "S's" in HWT but he had a lot of trouble. If anything he seems to be worse than he used to be.

Aidan

We worked a bit on adding and recognizing larger numbers. He listened in to some of Jimmy Skunk. Maybe by the time we get to Year 1 with him it will already have a bit of familiarity -- that would be nice.

Day 102

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 02:56:00 +0000

We didn't get to history or religion today. I was talking to the older kids and the younger boys were enraptured by all the things Brendan brought out of his closet and handed off to them (every Lent he goes through his old treasures and discards what he can bear to part with, and this year it was some old Star Wars lego sets and some Lord of the Ring figurines). So I had Kieron do his independent work -- Math, Latin, Poetry, Science, Bulfinch's Mythology.

He took photos of Brendan's old treasures so I could have them as a keepsake (seeing the old things makes me feel sad remembering the days when he was that young) and also kept the little ones entertained while I worked on decluttering.

Paddy and I finished reading Old Man Coyote and started reading Jimmy Skunk together.

Day 101

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:29:00 +0000

If you look on the sidebar you can see Kieron's weekly schedule. Monday's a light day -- we save it for catch-up and for errand running and housecleaning. So besides cleaning and going to the library, he did most everything on there.

Chores (dishwasher, room)
Poetry: Tennyson --In Memoriam (part), and one other
Math (computer) ---That Quiz -- place value
Language Arts --talked about narration; copywork
Nature Study --listened to coyote, loon and fox on youtube
History: GWW --Frederick the Great, George III -- narrated
Weekly House --Pick up, wipe
Library and market

With Paddy, over the weekend I read How the Whale Got His Throat (from the Just So Stories), plus a bunch of stories from the Collier Junior Classics. We finished Mrs Peter Rabbit and are now started on Old Man Coyote.

Aidan did a few more "reading lessons" with his Spell to Read and Write cards and with me writing down a story he told. Aidan also did a bit of math from a first grade workbook.

I forgot to mention last week that we played a lot of card games -- UNO and Go Fish and a few hands of poker. ... the three younger boys and me.

The main habits we've been working on are using nice voices and picking up/cleaning up after selves. Still a ways to go.

Week 24 in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:57:00 +0000

This is how Week 24 went for Kieron. You can click on the jpg to make it larger if you want, or view it in doc form (Microsoft 2007)

We're still working on getting up to full speed -- the ones that don't have checkmarks are things we didn't get to this week.

There are some posts detailing Week 24 over at Schola et Studium. With Paddy I pretty much kept up a light version of Ambleside Year 1. It has been working very well for us so far. With Aidan, the big thing this week was that I wrote out the first 30 words from Spell to Read and Write. He loves arranging these and trying to read them and has done it several times a day during the week. We also worked a bit on math with both the little ones.

This weekend, I want to focus on what narration is about particularly for older children, so I printed out these documents:

Day 99 -- time with Paddy

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:07:00 +0000

I didn't log yesterday but Kieron completed pretty much everything on his list. Paddy didn't do any academics yesterday -- but today we had a nice little learning time together.

First he did a bit of handwriting and read some of the pages (from Handwriting without Tears). Then he asked to do math. We worked on several pages -- he chose the 100's. He made up a game to do with the robots illustrating the page -- the numbers were their scores so he rated them from weakest to strongest. Basically he is pretty much able to do anything in the MCP Math A book so when we take it out it's just a matter of choosing the ones he wants to do and talking about what it is about.

Then I brought out the Parables from Nature -- a Lesson of Faith. I had been dreading reading this. I first printed out the Parables several years ago during one of my earlier essays into Ambleside, but I'd always skimmed through it and been put off by the rather feminine and Victorian tone of the writing. I thought it would put my bionicle- and -Sonic- aficianado boys off and that it would be embarrassing to read aloud. But I read it and he got that hush that he gets when he is deeply interested. So my skills at predicting what will absorb my kids are not that great -- which is one of my weaknesses when I am trying to unschool. (but on the other hand, it was unschooling that taught me to try things and not be overly invested in whether they "took" or not).

He didn't narrate, but we were talking as we read and I realized he didn't know much about the caterpillar to butterfly process. Then I remembered that I had a caterpillar book in the Stopwatch series I have been reading to him. Butterfly and Caterpillar. To my delight, it is about the exact same cabbage butterfly that was in the parable. So we read it and made comparisons between the facts in the parable and the science in the actual book. Later I found the book beside his empty plate which means he was rereading it while he ate. I thought that was cool -- a natural little mini-unit. And I'm delighted that he was so interested in the little parable.

This is what I'm finding nice about Ambleside. It suits the way we tend to approach things around here. When I do a unit it takes a lot of planning, which I'm not that good at because of my difficulty in decision-making and frameworking, and sometimes I lose interest along the way, or the kids do. And I usually overdo it by gathering too much and then get stressed about deciding between them. But these spontaneous connections and the minimum of good quality readings are just delightful. So, a nice day. I am sure they won't all be like that but when there are some it usually means we are doing someething right!

Day 97

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:45:00 +0000

Kieron

Another page of Plutarch -- Romulus
1 chapter of Johny Tremain while exercising
George Washington's World
Tennyson -- Sea Fairies
Tales from Shakespeare -- Winter's Tale
Math on Computer (Algebra)
Weekly Jobs
We discussed Romulus, and he narrated GWW and AWT

Paddy

Reading (Henry and Mudge go to the Sea, other incidental reading)
MCP Math A -- I was going to have him do a page of addition but instead he did a whole bunch of pages through the book -- I'm not really sure if there's much in there he doesn't know.
Computer Addition -- a fishing game -- he made it through all three levels with only a bit of help from Kieron.
Island Story -- chapter 2, Coming of the Romans -- he was a bit distracted.
Bible Story -- Tower of Babel -- read and discussed.
Paddle to the Sea -- 3 chapters since we were at an exciting part
2 more Aesop's Fables

Aidan

all this weekend and today he has been working on the SWR flash cards I made for him and has actually mastered several of them. He really enjoys doing these.
He worked on the orange Miquon Math book
He had a "reading lesson" where I wrote out a story and we read it.
Aidan and Paddy both worked on typing in all the words from the VTech phonics board and I printed out their accomplishment.

Today we went to the library and got "Babe". I was telling Paddy about it after we read about Moses the Kitten and how he was brought up by pigs. So Kieron said our little library had it and he had never watched it, so they are watching it now since it is rainy and slushy outside.

Also, I did a lot of reading aloud to Paddy this weekend:

Toads and Diamonds by Charles Perrault
The Swan Maiden by Howard Pyle
Snow White and Rose Red by the Grimm Brothers
Adventures of Pinocchio (an excerpt)
A Bird Came Downt he Walk (by Emily Dickinson)
Bingo has an Enemy (a short poem)
The Blind Men and the Elephant (the version in rhyme)
The Thief of Cathay
A child's book of Old Testaments stories
Nursery rhymes
Sylvester and the Magic Pebbles
Let's Talk About.... Disobeying (I've read this to him several times).

Day 96

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:09:00 +0000

Kieron

Tennyson poem
George Washington's World -- pages 30 -45
Robinson Crusoe chapter 2
He is going to do math
He drew a bird for nature study.
He made cookies

He has been riding on the stationary bike for exercise so I am going to read Johny Tremain and another page of Plutarch to him then.

Paddy

First half of Tale of Prickly Porky -- about 12 chapters
a couple of Henry and Mudge books from the library
a book called Chicken and Egg -- photos and simple descriptions. Not very glitzy but he has asked me to read it several times -- he's seen chickens at his friends' house and I told him they are getting some more chicks soon so I think that raised his interest level.
He tried to write his name
He read the first 20 words in SWR -- but he couldn't really spell them.

Aidan

I wrote out the first 20 SWR words on cards and we have gone through them a few times. I thought maybe I can have him memorize them and then go on to the next set, etc, until he has a few more words basically memorized. He seems to enjoy this.
He wrote QUIET (with my hand guidance).

Day 95

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:04:00 +0000

Kieron

Creed in Slow Motion -- we finished Chapter VIII , reviewed and discussed
Math -- MEP Year 7 13.2 -- he got 3 wrong and corrected
Boy Scientist -- finished chapter on Newton's Three Laws
This Country of Ours -- The Rebellion of Pontiac, narrated
Johny Tremain -- finished Chapter 2 and started Chapter 3
Robinson Crusoe -- started this today and read chapter 1

Paddy

Some of this is from Wednesday.

Wednesday

2 Aesop's Tales (easy reader version) -- we "round robin" read them.
2 more Aesop's Tales from Milo Winter -- I read them to him.
A storybook of parables.
My Father's Dragon (we read the whole book again at bedtime)

Thursday

2 poems from Child's Garden of Verses
James Herriot Treasury -- Moses the Kitten
Fifty Famous Stories -- King Alfred and the Beggar

Aidan

Went to clinic and was quiet but responsive with the "team"
Went to labs -- coped great as usual.
Helped with fire
listened to stories I was reading to other people, a bit.
I wrote another story with him while we were waiting for labs.
He spelled "cooler" with a little phonetic prompting from me.

Day 94

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:39:00 +0000

Kieron

Johny Tremain.
Creed in Slow Motion "conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" -- first half of chapter.
George Washington's World, up to page 28, narrated
Ways of the Wood Folk, first half of Fox-Ways, commented.
The Boy Scientist, first 6 pages of Newton's Laws of Motion (chapter 4), commented. This book may run into next year.
Tennyson, poem #3.
I'm setting up his math now.

Paddy

Golden Bible, Noah -- the ark, and the flood
Paddle to the Sea, chapters 3 and 4.
3 poems from Child's Garden of Verses
He told me about a birthday toy and I wrote it down and had him read it back.

Aidan

He talked about his Dad going off to town and I wrote it down (3 sentences) and then we went over it a couple of times using phonetic principles.
He's in a mood -- doesn't like Daddy being gone.

Music (background)

Mick Malone and Robbie O'Connell -- Irish folk songs.

Year 1 schedule modified from one in the Ambleside files.
Year 1 Schedule (MS Word 2007)

Day 93

noreply@blogger.com (Willa) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:10:00 +0000

Kieron

This Country of Ours chapter 49
Johny Tremain
weekly chores
The rest of Midsummer Night's Dream from Tales of Shakespear
The Eagle by Tennyson

Aidan and Paddy

Literature Primer (trying to read bits of it with Aidan, and then Paddy read some of it for himself)
Worked with occupational therapist -- she brought a concentration game with faces of children from different countries and Paddy and I discussed what countries they were from.

Sometime during the past few days I read Dragons of Blueland to Paddy, The Story of Ferdinand, and The Drinking Gourd. Drinking Gourd bothered him a bit because he didn't find out if the slaves had escaped or not.

We went to the library and market, and Clare found the lost box of old photos so all the kids have been looking through them.