What did we learn at the end of the day?

Today was one of those days that I wondered if anyone had learned anything. It seemed like everyone had a case of the not-wanting-to-do-anything disease. Does Mrs. Piggle Wiggle have a cure for that one? But, at the end of the day as I gathered their papers I realized that they must at least have one thing in their heads.
In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
They each had copied this to their varying abilities: Kate in cursive, Brynn printing, and Adrie trying to get the letters in order.
In honor of Columbus Day we talked a bit about his life and watched a clip from the History Channel. The girls also had to copy a few more lines to add to the above.
He discovered America.
The world is not flat. It is round.
Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

Copying seems to serve a lot of purposes: spelling, grammar, punctuation, and of course whatever info they are copying is sinking into their heads. Last week the girls each chose a poem to learn. Each day they copied a stanza and just by doing that, they have them nearly memorized. Next week we might have to get out some famous quotes and scriptures. Think of the fun we could have with a list of "Mom's rules!"

Thought for the Week

If you want your kids to read, create places in the home where they will want to read.

I found Kate in my bedroom on my bed curled up and reading Roald Dahl's Matilda. When she saw that I was surprised to find her there she explained, "This was the only clean place in the house."

Dumb Dirt

We have the perfect backyard for a lesson about DIRT. We live on exactly 1/3 acre of the red silty stuff and have been for 3 summers now. I have been known to shout, "I HATE DIRT!" when picking up my muddy specimen of a toddler and hauling him away to be hosed off....again. I don't care if anyone hears me. In fact I can now say that I LOATH dirt--can't wait to bed it down with some plants and grass.

I hope my attitude has improved a little today because of our science lesson on "appreciating SOIL." Soil is just a nice name for dirt. While the girls played in it, we learned it's made up of

• air


• water


• minerals


• humus (HYOOMUS) (things that were once living)

Here is what Kate regurgitated from the lesson and I wrote it down in her notebook.

Humus is made of dead stuff. It makes dirt black. There are 3 types of soil. We have CLAY soil in our yard. If we add humus to it, it will make our plants grow better. That kind of soil is called LOAM. Next week we will be at the beach. It will have SANDY soil.

This afternoon we went to our local Home store or what Brynn calls the "boringest store ever" and bought some LOAM, a spade, and some daylily's. We are excited to add some more dead stuff to our dirt. It's time we put our dirt to work and try to beautify the yard-- if only a lily at a time.

p.s. While at the Home store I got a consult for installing a sprinkler system. We're only a simple irrigation system away from getting rid of the dirt problem forever. Ha ha. I'm wringing my hands with delight.

A Very Bad Horrible No Good Day

Sending kids to public school is so very tempting on days like yesterday. Was I in a bad mood and it rubbed off on everyone else or were they in a bad mood and it rubbed off on me? Either way we all had a bad attitude. I would give an assigment followed by complain, complain. Some days I can manage to divert a little complaining but yesterday seemed to be unmanageable. We got our work done BUT IT WASN'T PRETTY. Time for me to refresh my Love and Logic parenting skills or something. Eventually I put myself on time out. Meditation and prayer work miracles...we ended up with a good afternoon.

I LOVE this new book we got from the library, The Shape Game by Anthony Browne. It has a fresh perspective on Fine Art and an idea for a fun game at the end. Here's how it goes: someone draws a silly free form shape. The other person has to make a picture out if it. Our girls had a lot of laughs and used about 20 sheets of paper. Here is my favorite sample:

Today was much better , we invited a friend over and had a geography/history lesson about Africa. We learned about the gold of Ghana and the merchants who traded it through the Sahara desert with their trusty camels. It acually kind of turned into a science lesson when we watched a National Geographic clip about camels, talked about Dromedary and Bactrian camels and made our own out of egg cartons and pipe cleaners.

If anyone is interested in some cool spelling software there will be a free trial offer and giveaway Friday Sept. 4 on this website. www.SpellQuizzer.com/community

Self-Portraits

The finished products after a lesson on creating "realistic" self-portraits. I knew the lesson had sunk in when later in the day and Adrie and I were playing a get-to-know you game. One of the questions I picked for her was, "Describe how you look."

She answered, "I have football shaped eyes that are in the middle of my face--not the top-- and I have a nose with 3 curves."

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and Dad Save the Day

So we are two weeks into schooling and I feel like a chicken running around with its' head cut off. Or maybe like a busy mother hen who ends the day in happy exhaustion. We now have two kids doing school, one preschooler, and a 18 month old monster toddler. I have to say that I really ADMIRE mothers who school multiple children at home. It's a challenge and I hope I'm up for a year of it!
Week 2 is going much better than week 1 because Dad came up with an idea. Each school day the girls can earn a quarter IF THEY HAVE A GOOD ATTITUDE. We have 4 school days (Friday is for Art, baking, cleaning) That amounts to a couple dollars a week for kids with a good attitude. Priceless for me! We are on day 2 and it is working wonderfully. Attitude is everything.
Week 2 is also way more organized. We spent one school day going over the curriculum and expectations of each kids school year then made up a chart with the DAILY "have-to's for school.

Kate's (3rd grade) school chart has seven things: SPELLING, GRAMMAR, COMPOSITION, LITERATURE, MATH, CURSIVE HANDWRITING, VOCABULARY.
This doesn't actually look to fun does it? Luckily we have some great curriculum books sent to us by our k12 program that address each one in a fun way. Today for example Kate read a story about Lewis and Clark to learn about subjects and predicates. For Literature she read aloud (using her karaoke microphone--future rockstar here) a fable from India, "The Tiger, Brahman, and Jackal." She practiced her cursive. She added adjectives to make her composition about Hannah Montana even more exciting.
Dad is going to be taking over the teaching of her math--phew!

Brynn's (1st grade) school chart has 4 things: MATH, PHONICS, LANGUAGE ARTS, HANDWRITING. So far she thinks homeschool is the best thing ever. I heard her tell her friend the other day, "I Loooooove it." Dad calls this a honeymoon period and to enjoy it while we can. Today she finished all her lessons and cleanup by noon and was asking who she could play with. She was shocked to learn that all her friends were still in school for another 3 hours. "Doesn't anyone else do homeschool????" Today she learned about even and odd numbers and patterns using the colored counting rods. She worked on handwriting and we read the first chapter of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.

The inspiration in this book has already proved VERY handy. Today, for example, I was nagging 4 year old Adrie to clean her room before she could watch a show. (She always seems to end up with a sore leg when it's clean up time) After lots of whining and flailing on the floor I realized my attempts were futile. Then I remembered Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. Pretty soon Adrie was made into a "toy elf." She had to pick up all the toys in her room and put them in the "sleigh" so Santa could take them to all the children in the world. If she didn't get them in the sleigh in time, not only would little girls in India and little boys in China be heartbroken but Santa would fire her. She would have to live with polar bears and swim in icy cold water and eat raw fish for dinner. I told her to yell "ho ho ho" when the toys were ready for Santa. She sang as she worked and finally I heard the signal and went in draped in a crimson blanket from the closet." Santa was very proud of her and Kate suggested she be promoted to "Elf of the Year." Thank You Mrs. Piggle Wiggle!

Amidst all of this we have an 18 month old boy who gets into everthing. Today he climbed on the table and ripped pages out of Brynn's math workbook. He sucked on the math counting rods. He escaped outside and ran into the road wearing only a diaper--at least a diaper. Thankfully it is now naptime!

The year is looking good so far...I just need a little more energy and a lot more patience.

Did we really learn anything this year?

Today is State Testing Day for Kate. I told her this would be her "last day" of the school-year which sounds very exciting to her. Really, it means that we will take off the month of May (she does have to catch up to finish 80% of math though.) I am looking forward to a month of no lesson plans. There is something wickedly delicious about getting out earlier than the other kids in the neighborhood! It's just one of the sneaky ways I like to make homeschooling "way more fun" than regular school. We will still have some chores and reading time in the afternoons but our mornings will be freed up for field trips, or shopping, or spring cleaning, or how about just doing nothing!
I plan to do some history and science through the summer and we'll still keep our Fridays for Art day. So, as this year draws to a close I wonder-- what have we all learned from this year's at-home schooling experience?

1. CONFIDENCE--I no longer am embarrassed to admit what we do. In fact, I'm proud of it. If you ask me about homeschool I just might get way too excited and talk your ear off.
And as for Kate? She is more confident with adults and is comfortable playing with kids of all ages (one of the BIG benefits of homeschooling.) She participated without local homeschool group in a spelling bee and poetry festival and I could see that even though it it was very hard to overcome her nerves, she did it. It was exciting to see her confidence grow through those experiences.

2. LIFE SKILLS--Maybe we didn't memorize all the world capitals but we sure have enjoyed dozens of home-baked cookies. Kate has been whipping up batches of good things, peanut butter, chocolate chip, shortbread cookies.--what a great way to learn the fractions from measuring. I didn't know how to cook until I was married! She knows how to take care of her younger siblings, and whip up and serve a batch of Ramen noodles for lunch. Kate is also a super shopper. She is always on the lookout for the lowest prices. The other day when I asked her which of 2 boxes of cereal we should get she said, "get the cheapest one!"

3. POWER of AGENCY--Each morning on our dry-erase board I wrote the date and the lessons that needed to completed. Kate would choose which one she wanted to do and in what order. ..Something about letting her choose made her so much easier for her to get her work done. Contrast that with our first year "It's time for spelling NOW."

4. PASSION--If you've read a Thomas Jefferson Education you'll know that kids learn through their passions. I asked Kate what her passions were earlier this year. Her answers? mermaids, fairies, magic, rocks, and rock-stars, soccer, and cooking. Okay, I was slightly worried at first but I think in the end we made it work...Kate practiced handwriting by copying down her favorite rock songs off of lyrics.com and memorizing them.
She read everything our library had to offer about mermaids and fairies. She learned perspective in ART by drawing mermaids diving, mermaids sitting brushing their hair, mermaids swimming backwards and upside down. She spent many good days collecting rocks and sorting them. We learned all about igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks along the way. And of course, we covered MATH with the cooking. I guess whatI'm saying is , "There is hope for ANY passion"... and if anyone has a question about fairies we have a world-class expert in our family. She shuns anyone at the dinnertable who eats meat now, "fairies wouldn't like that."

5. LEARNING IS FUN! We read Peter Pan together and used the blank pages on the back of our calendar to design our own Neverlands. We learned the parts of speech by playing Mad Libs. We learned directions by creating treasure hunts with clues. We ran obstacle courses between math problems. We had pretend spelling bees. We dressed up as Romans and argued over who got to wear the royal purple. We acted out the life cylce of a butterfly from egg to adult. We made chocolate lavas and watched National Geographic online videos of erupting volcanoes. We learned about the Middle Ages and designed our own castles. We celebrated any and every little holiday including, "Dr. Seuss Day." Kate's friends had been busy reading because of something at school called, "Beat the Teach." We had our own version. We started last Wednesday and had a race to see who could read more: Me or the girls. Yesterday was the deadline and they beat me by far! They each get to pick out something for their new rooms in the basement. (Kate got a fuzzy rug) We love to read! It took me until age 31 to learn that. Luckily the girls have it now.

6. WHAT'S WORTH KNOWING? Good manners, right from wrong, life skills, true heroes overcome their fears, love of reading, expressing oneself through art, speaking, writing, building, whatever.
Adjectives, pronouns, and past participles? Who cares! Don't sue me. Even if you graduate with a Doctorate in English do you really need to know those??? (We still learned them but I'm not really sure why?)

6. And most importantly, RELATIONSHIPS--except for the issue of piano practicing I would say that Kate and I have a great relationship. I love watching her learn. I am amazed by the things she says, her insights, her creativity. One parent responded when they found out I homeschooled, "I can't imagine being with my kids ALL day." Well, I can't imagine anybody I'd rather be with all day than my kids. They're wonderful. We have a great time and I could honestly say that if they or I were to die tomorrow, we would have spent enough quality time together.

No regrets. (If only I could figure out the whole piano practicing thing) We've had a great year and we're excited for Brynn our 1st grader to be joining us for next year's homeschool adventure!