Oct. 17, 2009 - High School Life

I have so little time to blog these days, but things keep piling up on my "mental list of things to blog about" that I almost feel short circuited.  I don't know if I can actually get out a coherent blog entry because of the overflow of thoughts.  We'll see...

As I thought, the football-thing has been a challenge for Ben.  Darin and I wondered how he would take the added stress of the football schedule along with his other responsibilities.  We're grading him on a curve on this one since this is a new situation for him.  He's used to having plenty of time for school and chores, but now we are three weeks away from the end of the season and he seems to still have a ways to go in figuring out how to balance everything.  He keeps thinking he should have the same amount of free time he always had.  Funny.  I find myself still thinking that way sometimes.  It's just one of those lifelong struggles, isn't it?

We began World Views of the Western World I with Ben this fall.  Where we live, most sign their kids up for an outside class for this curriculum.  The author, David Quine, says that when he wrote it, he had in mind the parents and student going through it together and having conversations about it.  So Darin and I decided to go for it and we're really glad we are going through it with Ben.  Not only are we learning things we never even had inklings about, but there have been a few conversations with Ben that have really been enjoyable.  It is such a privilege to homeschool our high school boy.  I can't imagine missing all the fascinating conversations we're going to have with him over the next four years.  And those ah-ha moments don't stop after elementary school.  They're continuing, and it's so fun to see connections being made in his mind - growing up, young adult connections, that will lead to more mature thoughts and beliefs.  I am just in awe of this homeschooling thing.  I wish we were doing it perfectly, but I'm praying that God is taking care of the graded curve on this one for us.  ;-)

I have farmed out one aspect of Ben's schooling.  Writing.  I was an English major in college and got pretty good grades, but I am no writing teacher.  A friend of mine told me about Patrick Henry's Writing Mentors for High School Students.  I thought about it for a bit, then remembered that MY SISTER is a High School English teacher.  Big "duh" moment for me.  ;-)  She has always been very supportive of our homeschooling, so it was a no-brainer to ask for her help.  And so she is working with Ben and helping him to fine tune his writing skills in a way that I would have really struggled to do.  It's worked out so well that she has begun to also work with Lydia, our comma queen. 

It's a great blessing - next time our kids complain to us about their brothers and sisters, we need to remind them that they have the family they have for a reason!  Of course I know that I don't have my sister only to teach my kids writing, but I know it's part of the reason.  God knew I would need my big sis in this way one day.  :-)

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Jan. 7, 2009 - Roller Coaster Madness

I think of this scene from Parenthood all the time. I am like Steve Martin's character, but I like to think I'm like Mary Steenbergen's character.  Probably the worse type of parent there could be.  I guess the good news is that I can acknowledge my issue and work at overcoming it. 

Today I totally discouraged my two year old.  He loves to "do school."  So I've been going to Homeschool Share and downloading all the fun and free preschool lapbooks and we've been doing them together.  He LOVES it.  He wants to do it.  And he really LOVES it.

The problem is that for a little over four years I was a Home School support group leader and I spent a ton of my time telling all the first-time mommies with 3 year olds to quit trying to teach their kids to read and do math until later.  MUCH later.  I would say, "Have fun with them!  Explore, cook, make playdough, go to the park."  This advice is burned in my brain.  I believe it.  Except for my own temporary insanity with MY first, I've followed my own advice to a "T."

Because of that, I've been a little uncomfortable with Henry's fascination for creating paperwork.  There have been times when I've tried to read a book to the boy that's related to our lapbooking, but in the middle of the book, he has interupted me to request that we "do school."  WHAT?  We were reading a LIVING BOOK together.  sigh.  So in the last month or so, I've tried to skirt the whole school issue with him and have worked extra, extra hard at making sure he has been busy with crafts, blocks, going outside & etc.  He has never given up asking me to do school.  I've been side-stepping his question with "let's go outside & etc."

Today he was having nothing to do with it.  He asked me and I said, "Do you want to help me make some Chicken Pot Pie?"  No.  He didn't.  He had a recorder in his hand and threw it as hard as he could into the living room and walked away, shaking his head.

WAAAAAAH.  I ran to him and begged him to forgive me and promised that we would do school tomorrow.  Daggone it, we will!

No more white-knuckling the roller coaster car.  I've got to let go and enjoy the ride with my kids and quit trying to make them follow patterns that I think should be followed.  Sometimes they might just lead me down a fun hill.......

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Dec. 29, 2008 - A Chicken Named Heather

My second son, Jack, who is 8, loves poetry.  He actually jumps up and down and makes excited noises when it's time to read or write a poem.  I never had that issue.;-)  I'm glad he does.  Here is his latest poem:

I have a chicken named Heather.
She has a lucky feather.
It is white.
She likes to look at it at night.

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Sep. 6, 2008 - Hands-On Science

We just started using Apologia's Elementary Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day.  One of the activities is to make an ocean box.  You line a box with blue paper, and as you study a sea creature, you make it out of clay or whatever you want, and then add it to your box in the position it would go in the sea.  That would be in the Sunlit Zone, the Twilight Zone or the Midnight Zone.  I'm using this with three kids and the thought of three boxes floating around our house just totally irritated me.  I hate clutter, and yes, I would have considered those boxes clutter, rather than a teaching tool.  That's me....big clutter freak!  I'm sure I've mentioned on this blog before that I LOVE to throw things away.  ;-)

Anyway.....We actually only have Ben with us for this study for a short time.  Soon he will be off on his own, doing his own science studies.  Kinda sad for me.  He's 13 and in 8th grade now.  I figured it's time to cut the apron strings and send him off on his own history and science studies.  It's been a wonderful time schooling the oldest three together in history and science.  It's hard to believe that they're all growing up....

Back to the boxes.....my idea was to line our hallway wall with blue paper and let all three add their animals to that.  When I mentioned what I was going to do, Ben immediately wanted to take over the project.  I was good with that and I'm so glad he did it!  I would have just put blue paper up on the wall and been done with it, but he went a lot farther and made an island, the continental shelf, the sunlit zone, the continental slope, the twilight zone, the continental rise, the midnight zone AND of course, the abyssal plain.  It is so neat!  Here you can see his work.  He's so kewl.  ;-)  You can see two little angler fish down in the midnight zone.  And up top, courtesy of Finding Nemo, the E.A.C., dude.

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Apr. 22, 2008 - Little Giant Steps

This is a short article written by Jan Bedell of Little Giant Steps.  I have used the neurodevelopmental approach with some of my kid's issues, and have friends who have done the full blown program and we have all ended up with totally different kids when it was all over.  :-)

Where is all that information going that I teach my child each day?

 

     Dominance determines where information is stored in the brain and how it is retrieved.  In order to be neurologically efficient, you must be completely organized on one side of your body - one hemisphere must dominate and coordinate your entire system.  You must be right eared, right eyed, right footed and right handed.  To be right eared does not mean that you have better hearing in your right ear; it means that your right ear directs which hemisphere of the brain the information you receive is stored.  

     The determination for dominance starts with the hand.  Hand dominance is genetically predetermined and should not be encouraged one way or the other.  It should emerge by the time a child is 3 to 8 years of age.

     If your brain is neurologically organized, your dominant ear will file information it receives in your dominant hemisphere, which is where reasoning, analytical and logical thinking take place.  So, when you go to retrieve that information, it is there.  If you are neurologically disorganized (mixed dominant), your sub-dominant ear will file information it receives in your sub-dominant hemisphere, which is where music and emotion take place.  The child with mix dominance issues files the information in the wrong hemisphere and when he tries to retrieve it, this happens: "I know I put that information in a file drawer somewhere but I'm really not sure where and I can't seem to find it right now."  This is extremely frustrating!  When you have a child who is extremely frustrated day after day, you will have a child who has low self-esteem, problems with long and short-term memory, as well as emotional and behavior problems because he is living in the sub-dominant hemisphere of his brain.   

 

     Symptoms of mixed dominance include:  long-term memory problems, inability to stay on task, reading difficulties, emotionality, spelling difficulties, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, doesn't test well, and inability to retain information (knows his addition math facts one day but the next day he acts like he's never seen an addition problem in his life!)  

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Apr. 19, 2008 - My Very Own School Schedule

I am trying to become more "on purpose" with keeping up with the kid's school assignments.  For myself.  I always make an effort to read the books they are reading, but don't always succeed.  It's important for me to read what they read because we do oral narrations! 

I am also going through Polished Cornerstones and Plants Grown Up with the kids, and there is some good memory work that I feel I should be doing along with them.  Bible verses and catechism stuff.  Am I the only person in the world who used to think that the word "catechism" implied something from the Catholic church?  You'll have to forgive me, I grew up a Southern Baptist. 

Anyway, I sat down and made myself a schedule tonight.  First and Only Husband has taken the oldest three camping this weekend, so I've had a few minutes to THINK.  It's been a nice change of pace from the almost-hectic go, go, go of chores, refereeing & etc.

Here's the schedule I made for myself for this coming week:

Well, never mind.  ;-)  I tried to cut and paste it from Word, but it looks freaky when I do so, so you'll have to take my word for it.  But I'm excited about having my own school schedule.  I think it will go a long way in making me feel more ready to face each school day, rather than hurriedly reading through things as I can through the day so I can stay caught up.  I am also a check-off gal.  Having something like this schedule in front of me is going to be a major motivator.

 

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Sep. 1, 2007 - Latin

I haven't pushed learning languages on my kids because I just don't have the time to do it.  Back when First Son was in Second Grade, we started learning Greek, but the program we were using was very teacher-intensive and as the other kids started schooling I just couldn't squeeze it in. 

Imagine my stress levels as First Son, now 12, announced that he's ready to study Latin!  My first thought was, "I have no idea when I can do that with him."  But I told him I would investigate, so this afternoon I went to my favorite homeschooler's site.  Trivium Pursuit.  They recommend Artes Latinae.  I was oh-so-glad to read that it is a totally self-paced, self-learning program. There is a book version or a CD-Rom version of this program.  Knowing my son, the CD-Rom version would be the best choice.  The only thing is that it is a hefty 297 bucks on the Bluedorn's site.  Youch!!!!  So I've been searching for some feedback on this program.  I can only consider laying out that kind of cash because the likelihood of our other kids using the program is good. 

So, if you're interested, here are some links I've found that give some feedback on the program.  And if YOU are using this program with your kids, please let me know EXACTLY what you think!  :-)

Latin Programs (reviews of more than just A.L.
Learning Latin at Home with Artes Latinae
From our friends at TOS
Cathy Duffy Reviews
Homeschool Chrisitian
- - there is a broken link to a Demo of A.L. on this page.  This is the correct link.

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Aug. 26, 2007 - Cuisenaire Rod Fun

Today I'm working on lesson plans.  Can I say that I LUV working on lesson plans?  I don't know what it is about filling in the little rectangles on my kid's daily schedules that thrills me, but it does.  If only we could ALL be so easy to please.  ;-)

I want to re-visit place value with Second Son this week.  I thought it would be fun to pull out the Cuisenaire Rods again and wanted to find some activities with the rods for place value.  On to Google.  Love that, too. 

Here are some fun links I have found.  Not necessarily to do with place value, but learning with the rods in general. 

Cuisenaire Rod Math Games from Paula's Archives
Cuisenaire Rod Patterns - scroll down on this page
This is a great link! Cuisenaire Activity and Exploration Book

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Aug. 9, 2007 - Timeline Notebook, Part 3!

I'm going to chalk this whole experience up to pregnancy hormones.  After looking at what it would cost to make our own timeline notebooks and comparing it to buying one already made for us, I saw that it would be cheaper to buy the ready-made.  My brain went into overdrive and I immediately placed an order for the notebooks.  Dork that I am, I never even talked with my husband first.  So when he got home and I told him the entire saga, he said, "Can you see if you can cancel your order?  I can get you what you need through our office manager at work at wholesale cost."  Oh!  Well, okay!  ;-)  So he's investigating now.

But even without the wholesale cost for the notebook I was interested in, there are other ways that I could have made the whole project cheaper.  But ya know when you get something in your head and just can't shake it?  That was my issue.  To make it cheaper, I could have bought just regular notebooks that are cheaper and still printed out the horizontal timeline pages....we would have just had to turn our notebooks around to look at the pages horizontally.  A friend of mine is doing this with her notebooks.  I was hung up on a single, beautiful line, going all the way across the page.

Another thing I thought of as I was ruminating over this whole thing was that I don't HAVE to print the lines on the page with our printer.  I could just get a fat magic marker and a ruler and draw those babies right on there.  Not as pretty as printed pages, but good grief, it would surely do the trick! 

So who knows what we'll end up with.  I'm sure whatever it is, it will be PERFECT.  :-)

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Aug. 6, 2007 - Timeline Notebook, Part 2

Well, I'm disgusted.  I went to our office supply store today to get all the goods I needed to put together our very own timeline notebooks.  I went to two stores.  At the first store I bought a ream of card stock, printer ink and those labeling things that you can affix to the edge of things.....what are they called????  LoL  Anyway, they were 4 bucks.  A small thing.  An unrelated purchase was a white board that was marked down to 8 bucks.  The grand total for this stuff was 55 bucks!  I didn't get notebooks because they didn't have the kind that open horizontally.  I went to another store to look for those, and again, they didn't have them.  I was told to search the web.  I did, and the cheapest I could find was 25 bucks! 

So after thinking about the expense of building my own timeline notebooks (and I considered the cost of a vertical timeline notebook as well), I have had to give in and just buy them because believe it or not, it was cheaper.  I bought the Record of Time Timeline Notebook from Homeschool in the Woods.  It's so darn beautiful, and I really do prefer the horizontal timeline.  I bought three of them, and bought them at The Old Schoolhouse Store because they offer FREE SHIPPING!

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