Silver Moon Learning

Oct. 8, 2009

Uh, I meant, montly update. Yeah, that's it.

I always intend to update more frequently. Sigh.   We're moving along splendidly with regards to school. The new organizers have proved invaluable. (If you plan on making one, I suggest stapling the velcro pieces to the plastic sleeves instead of gluing them. This is how half of ours are fastened by now.) The memory boxes have been a perfect fit. I don't know how I managed to keep all that straight without them. They're well on their way to being filled with stuff like poetry, prepositions, presidents, nursery rhymes, speeches from history, pronouns, and Latin lists. Kidlet by kidlet: Faith, aka Squeaky   This kid is a riot. Lately she tells us every letter and number she can find is an "A" and dances with excitement at her cleverness. I'm pretty sure it's from similar things each kid has, with an initial on it for easily discovering who's metal water bottle was left in the middle of the floor and thus spilled everywhere. Faith will help herself to any bottle left in her reach. Which causes a sib to take it from her, point to the letter, and help her find the one with an "A" instead. (Her first name begins with an "A")   She's also learned how to call her biggest brother a booger. He encourages this. While waiting for our food at In-N-Out Burger last week she was gleefully yelling, "Boogah-boogah-boogah-boogah-boogah," for all the restaurant to hear. The brother was quite pleased. Grace   Grace can't get enough school. She just barely turned four! She's a fluent short vowel reader now, and is branching into long vowel words with increasing confidence. She can legibly write any letter of the alphabet, count to fifty with ease, and loves workpages. I mean, really, really, loves, workpages. She's using a kindy level Comprehensive Curriculum workbook right now. It doesn't always move fast enough for her, but her love of workbooky activities keeps her moving through it.   She picked a Robert Louis Stevenson collection of children's poetry from the library this week. She's absolutely mezmorized by him. (Note to self: Put this book on the Christmas shopping list.)   History stories really strike a chord with her too. The Liberty's Kids episodes completely captures her attention. It's a really great series put out by PBS, you follow a few kids through the Revolutionary times.   She's more than a little miffed that she can't join scouts herself until next fall. She does get her fill of scouts going to her three older siblings meetings and occasional leader meetings with me too. Honor   This little guy is soaring academically. His reading has taken off like a rocket, his pencil-phobia has disappeared, he loves his spelling book and thinks First Language Lessons is a blast. Math has always been a favorite of his, and comes very naturally, but he's been unimpressed with it lately. He's playing around with place value and measuring for now. I hid the addition book for now to keep him from burning himself out on it.   He's a Tiger Scout now and has had a few meetings so far. He has a great pack that I'm thrilled to be a part of. They're organized, approachable, and focus on the boys' involvement. He still practically swoons all over himself when he gets a chance to hang out with "the guys" in big brother's troop. Joy   This girl is a very motivated learner. She'll start her school as soon as her brekkie is done, and fuss at me if I didn't get my part of the preparation done ahead of time. She is flying through First Language Lessons 3 now. At her present speed and comprehension I think we'll skip FLL4, and put her in the more rigorous grade 5 book that Justice used when she's done with FLL3. I asked Justice his opinion of how she'd handle that book and he agreed with me.   She begins Classical Writing: Aesop this week and is looking forward to it. It will roll all her dictation, narration practice, outlining, and composition writing into one program, as well as pull in vocabulary and review bits of grammar. I think she'll do great. She's spent the first month of school working on those skills individually, straight from a book of Aesop fables. The first few lessons from CW will have her working with fables from Aesop as well, which ought to help her transition.   She's also beginning typing, using the Dance Mat Typing game.   In her scout news she's a Junior Girl Scout this year. She's had a few meetings and been to Build a Bear with a bazillion other Girl Scouts in the area. I haven't made it too many of her meetings to be a part of them, unfortunately. Her meetings were moved to the same night as Justice's, and start a half hour before his. That translates to me seeing her first twenty minutes before I have to take a boy to their meeting. Justice     This guy is flying through the academics, as is his trademark approach. He breathes history some days. Well, between Spiderman and Batman. Or whichever Marvel character is the kewlest of the week.   He's racing through English From the Roots Up, and could probably move even faster than he is. There is a prize at the end (we told him we'd buy a full Latin course for him when it's done), but he really does enjoy that book.   He's very strong in grammar, and loves busting adults with it. His stories in Classical Writing are increasingly more interesting and creative. The grammar and vocab have been a walk in the park for him, so he moves through it faster than intended.   The spelling series he's in this year really makes him work with the spelling rule. I can see him applying it all across the board in other subjects. He'll *tell* you that he doesn't really like spelling, then brag that his highest marks are in spelling in his next breath. (I refrain from mentioning only three of his subjects are even markable. )   Math is still his nemesis for the most part. Life of Fred has changed that to a point. I -love- that five year old Fred. Those books are written with a quirky sense of humor, right up Justice's alley. He still does his regular math text on the side and is struggling with it a bit this year. He's making strides though.   His scouts hasn't changed. We all went on the last campout with them. That was fun. In a tortured sort of way (I'm not a camping fan). He really enjoys his meetings and has made some great relationships there. Of course he learns the usual, lashing, knots, flag folding, first aid, etc. They made water balloon catapults using nothing but wood and ropes awhile ago. By the time we left I was having to defend Girl Scotus to *Joy*! "Well, yeah, they DO do fun stuff. But they DON'T make CATAPULTS!" *stomp*

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Sep. 2, 2009

First week down. :)

I'm a couple days late, but you should be used to that by now. I'm used to it. Week one already!! That f.l.e.w. The kids all did great, every one of them. It's taking us awhile to "get it all done," but our time is dwindling already as they learn new books and get in the groove. I'm so very glad I wrote those lesson maps in pencil. We're still in the adjustment phase, here a tweak, there a tweak, everywhere a tweak, tweak. The new organizers are working out great!! The kids get a visual of exactly what's left. Taking a moment to stuff a card in a pocket and check the next one seems to help them shift gears for the next subject more readily. It takes me no more than five minutes in the evening or early morning to get them all back out again and ready for the new day. the first few days I was having to reglue one or two velcro tabs back onto the plastic sleeves. By the fifth day I just grabbed the stapler when one came off. Apparently the rest of the lot just had to see how serious I was and they've caused no problems since. Little to big? Faith's day hasn't changed much. She gleefully chases the sib not currently involved in a lesson wherever they'll go. And occasionally tries climbing between a sib and the book they're reading, much like a cat. Grace is blossoming at a rapid rate. She'll finish the first of our four kindy level readers this week. She's starting to chunk her reading, picks up new sight words in the story within one or two lessons, and will literally do a happy dance when she can read a word from a sign when we're in town. Her Comprehensive Curriculum preschool workbook is just about eaten up. She's up to letter "Ss" and number nine. (I have the kindy one in the same series waiting for her, in hopes of sparing my printer ink!) Honor's workload has increased somewhat. Grammar and spelling being added in are the major differences. His first spelling test is today, he's looking forward to it! He absolutely loved every part of his spelling unit, front to back. I think it's been his favorite all week. In First Language Lessons he's learning the definition of a noun, and can already recite his first poetry assignment from it. The Caterpillar by Christina G. Rossetti. The big two had a hard time restraining themselves and not saying it along with Honor. They both loved their time in the first FLL book. Joy *loves* the new organizers. I thought she would. She's successfully diagrammed sentences like "A Boy Scout troop made a monkey bridge," read at least two books on the Revolutionary War period and another fictional history of George Washington's childhood, been charmed by Aesop (narration practice), jumped into MindBenders with glee, nearly memorized I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth in three days, and taught the younger two a few crafts from her own library book. She's a very self-motivated learner that tends to have two independent lessons done before I have one cup of coffee in my circulation. Justice has impressed me at how well his week has gone. His week has consisted of possessive plurals, irregular verbs, outlining up to three points, rewriting an Aesop fable after thoroughly dissecting it, finishing up his last MindBender book (7-12 grade level!), learned five Latin roots, nearly memorized America For Me by Henry Van Dyke, read at least four chapter books and a couple Marvel Heroes books on the side, and started his new math book (first chapter is all review so far). The only challenge of our week is trying to map the individual days out for the best of everyone. Starting all three bigs at the same time and tag teaming between them worked, but had us constantly crashing each other. Then I tried starting earlier with Justice, which had Joy starting her independent lessons on her own accord. That landed them both at needing their most mom intensive subjects at the same time, which was when Honor was ready to start too. Needless to say, that didn't work. Today I tried getting the bulk of Lawyer's mom intensive subjects done while keeping Rj busy with a craft so she didn't jump in on her own. Then when I had him down to just readings and math left I pulled her in. Once they went their own ways with reading to do Grace had gone to bed, and I had a perfect window for Honor and I to be one on one. I think this is going to work out well, but I don't know how to tell Joy she can't do school until Justice hits his halfway point. LOL  Maybe we can make mornings craft time? Joy could "teach" the Honor and Grace some animal science then? Hm...

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Aug. 27, 2009

Justice's school plans for the year.

Aug. 27, 2009

Joy's school plans for the year.

I really did have these finished before Tuesday morning. I just procrastinated blogging it. Joy's school stuff looks like: Grammar: First Language Lessons 3, five days a week, at this pace she'll have 3 and 4 finished by the start of fifth grade Spelling: Spelling Wisdom book one, five days a week, one lesson a week Writing: To start with, she's doing narrations and outlines of Aesop fables. About a month from now she'll move into Classical Writing: Aesop. Reading: lots and lots of real books Logic: She's starting Mind Benders, beginning book 2, doing about 2-3 puzzles a week. Vocabulary: English From the Roots Up, just one new word a week right now, will slowly increase to 3 a week as we adjust to the new school load Memory work: Daily practice. We're using the little boxes explained on Simply Charlotte Mason. She gets a fair amount of poetry, but leans toward pieces from history. She just recited the last paragraph of Patrick Henry's famous speech, The War Inevitable, this week. Penmanship: Just cursive practice, once or twice a week. Math: 4 days a week. MCP workbook right now. She'll munch it up in no time, she's been in it since spring. There's a random textbook waiting for her, and plenty of supplements on the web. History: Daily, every other week. Story of the World volume 1 will be her spine. Oodles of library and internet resources to flesh it out. Science: Daily, every other week, opposite history. She's in a bird book right now. It's written to her, like a living book, and is absolutely loaded with biology. She notebooks through it for the most part. When she finishes it's off to insects. Art: She really likes the Rod and Staff Artpacs. They're perfect rainy day activities and get her creative juices flowing every time. I want to get her something that teaches parts to whole with the masters, she has an interest in painting that I can't guide. I hadn't planned on adding logic and root vocab to her load just yet. She's familiar with those books because of her older brother using them, and begged for them by name. That's why they're such a light load too. She'd like me to increase them. After we've gone this way for awhile we'll reevaluate increasing those two.

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Aug. 20, 2009

Oh yeah, the preschooler!

Aug. 20, 2009

The first grade plans.

I'm not too far behind on finalizing plans. I mean, I can still procrastinate until Tuesday. Here's the plan Honor will be starting out with. I fully expect it to morph constantly as he grows. Everything is written in pencil for just that reason! Daily: memory work (poetry mostly) spelling reading lesson (reading primers, dr suess, etc. to me) grammar and copywork will stagger with each other math science or history (weekly rotation) For history and science I've put him on Joy's week. Joy and Justice stagger weeks with those two subjects. They move at such different speeds that keeping them in the same lesson was driving me mad. Then we ran into problems with shared resources being needed by both on the same day. I think Honor will handle Joy's speed just fine. Joy will have similar notebooking and extra reading assignments, just on a higher level obviously. Knowing Joy, she'll love "mentoring" him (mothering him? lol) on these subjects. I'm banking on that to help improve her own narration skills, but that's a story for the post on her plans. History. Once the big two finish up the remainders of the American history stuff we have, we'll roll history around to the ancients again. That ought to take a couple/few weeks still. When the rollover hits we'll put Honor into the mix (he's absorbing tons of the American history as it is). Science: Joy is in the middle of our bird book right now, I don't want to start Honor in the middle. I've got a pile of living books stocked up for him on all sorts of animals, and one on plants too. Honor, Grace and I will do read alouds with those until Joy is in a better place to slip him in.

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Aug. 15, 2009

Now for the lesson organizer

My inspiration for this project is from this blog ~ Life in the Garden. I borrowed her main idea and put my own spin on it. First big difference is mine is fabric, I just couldn't see paper strips being durable enough to last very long. Then I put my index cards in page protector sleeves, instead of laminating each card, and hot glued a bit of velcro to the back. They're still dry erasable, but dry erase markers smudge off too easy. I wanted to be able to write directly on the card, and we change our routines/minds so frequently I didn't want to have to relaminate another set two months from now. The big two have 12 cards, the little two have 8 cards. They don't have that many lessons! Stuff like "clean a hot spot in the living room" or "play a video game for thirty minutes" will be added. It'll be fun to surprise them with rewards between the work. They each picked their own fabric, which is in their typical color choice. They're slowly color coding themselves, which comes in handy at times! So here you have our variation of someone else's workbox variation. Yes, I realize the baby won't realize what on earth it's for, but this way I won't have to reverse engineer another set two years from now. From left to right it's biggest kid to littlest kid. I'll stick Faith's name or something up on hers so she doesn't feel totally left out. This is an example from Honor's so you can see how it works. When whatever is on the card is finished, it goes in the pocket. When his strip is void of cards, he's done for the day. Here are Joy's and Honor's without any cards slipped in.

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Aug. 15, 2009

I went organization crazy.

First up, our new memory boxes. The idea was completely swiped from Simply Charlotte Mason. We do a lot of poetry. Each kid has vastly different interests and thus learns different poems. Now picture one mom trying to remember which poems to help each kid practice and which old ones to review. See where this is going? Ours are a smidgeon different from the SCM version. We have daily section for the currently working on poem, odd, even, Monday through Friday, then four groups of numbered days. When the current poem is learned well enough to recite to Dad (our gracious audience), it goes to the odd or even section. The poem that gets bumped from the odd or even section goes to a day of the week section. When those are full enough to bump one out they go to the numbered section. SCM has numbered sections for every day of the month. These were the best index card holders I could find and didn't have enough dividers for that. I think this will work fine, and be very helpful keeping it all straight! Pink is Grace's, blue is Joy's, black is Honor's, green is Justice's. I figure they'll probably be dead and need replaced by the time Faith needs one, so I didn't bother picking one up to keep her matchy.

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Jul. 30, 2009

What we've been up to. Quite random.

What we haven't been up to may be easier. Have you ever read over a great books list for your kids, and realized you haven't read half of them yourself? Sad, isn't it? With that in mind, I just finished Little Men this week. Loved it!  Somehow my life feels richer for having met all those boys. I did read our Little Women first, but it's abridged. After finishing it I was more disappointed than enlightened, knowing full well what the original author was capable of. My kids are doing a fun sports camp thing in the evenings this week. Even Grace is in on it. She's taking cheerleading. The boys are doing soccer, and Joy is doing basketball. (I wanted to try cup stacking but they said I'm too old.) Faith chases along wherever she can, but she loves tagging with the soccer kids best. You see, balls and balloons are her favorite things, and that group of children is more likely to leave balls laying about for her to discover. When she spots one she takes off running just as fast as her wee legs will carry her, yelling "Ball! Ball! Ball!" on the way, as if she can will it to come to her. When she thinks she's safe from anyone taking it from her, she'll throw it a short distance and chase it down, over and over again. Another thing we're doing this week is working on common manners. After last week I was doubting that I'd ever taught my children appropriate manners. It was one of those weeks. Right now we're slowly going over George Washington's Rules of Civility together. Some are pretty funny to picture in today's customs, but the older two are taking some to heart. They both admire Mr. Washington. To help us remember more common courtesies we've been pretending to treat each other as royalty.This has been quite fun for all of us.  The little girls have taken being treated as princesses straight to heart. Today they are in their best dresses, pretty tights and shiny shoes. Their hair has been fixed up by their big sister, who is evidently too big to join the merriment by dressing up as royalty herself, but has thoroughly enjoyed doting over the wee princesses.  (Note to self: We should do a princess tea party for Grace's fourth birthday.)  The boys would rather be pirates, alternating rescueing with capturing the princesses, than be princes themselves. It is absolutely adorable to watch them dote on the little princesses. In homeschool news we're doing great. We made a "lesson map" in a light summer pace and posted it on the school wall. It has Monday through Friday across the top, subjects down the side, room for three chidlren, with Grace drawn in at the bottom. Please don't ask where I got the form, I haven't a clue. If I had to guess I'd say Donna Young. A circle aligning science with Thursday means today you need to get the science book out and do what's next. Since Joy and Justice are in totally different places in the same history and science books I filled out an index card for each of them, with exact page number assignments in the bite size they each require. They only need find their index card that lives in the science book, see which pages they're to do next, read them, do any experiments or projects and narrate to me, then mark off those pages on the index card. I'm likely to do this when we ramp it up a notch in a month or so, I like how pick up and go it's made it for two very different children. Speaking of when we ramp it up a notch in a month or so. I'm attempting to streamline wherever I can, and I'm going to try a new lesson organization tactic. With Honor joining the ranks as a first grader this fall, and Grace hot on his heels, I want to cut down on prep work wherever possible, without losing our flexible, following wild rabbit trails as we please ways. I'm trying to nudge Justice towards working independently wherever I can find a window to do so. He's not terribly fond of this. He's such a social, people person, that working on grammar without having mom right there to chat with the entire time isn't appealing to him in the slightest. Nevermind he can coax anyone into breaking our well established "don't mess with a sib doing a lesson" rule. There are days I swear I'm raising Tom Sawyer. At least we still have a month (or so) to work on it. I had so much in my brain that I intended to blog when I found myself on this page. I think half of it has fallen out. But I really do need to get off this box and get the day rolling in the right direction. The middle princess is ready for her reading lesson, the eldest one is already in the middle of her science lesson, and the littlest wants more cereal. It's been grand chatting with all two of you! If I get some more time to sit here later on I have some pictures to get resized and uploaded. We'll see.

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Jun. 17, 2009

Wordless Wednesday

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Jun. 15, 2009

Sewing pants for my tween boy.

Jun. 10, 2009

Bird Whisperer?

Justice has become quite the birder this year. We used a science book that was mainly about birds for awhile. He learned tons, biology, reproduction, habitats, different types of nests. Words like mandible, tarsus, cormorant, and retrices became daily vocabulary for awhile. When we see a new one he'll start calling something like, "Tall crest, dark nape... did you see the color of his throat?" When we get home it's straight to the Usborne bird guide. Last time we went camping he busted his dad on a jay. Hub said, "Blue Jay." Justice said, "I'm not so sure, Dad." When we got home it was, "Ah ha! That was no Blue Jay. Blue Jays don't have crests. What we saw was a STELLER JAY." All that rambling to get to today. My window as open to the backyard. When I stopped to really listen to the sounds I was hearing, Justice was chatting with a bird. The bird would tweet. Justice would whistle. The bird would tweet back. Justice would tweet high and shrill. The bird tweeted higher. Justice whistled normal. The bird simply tweeted back. Justice made a loud, low caw sort of call. Bird, no joke, matched his tone, and called back to him. This went on for a good ten minutes. I stepped outside to see a smiling Justice nudge towards the neighbor's roof. At the top of the roof sat a small, plain looking bird. Brown or gray, slim body. No good identifying marks could be seen from that distance. I went back in and called Joy out to see the bird conversation, she's going through that bird book now. Honor overheard me telling her what was going on and rushed outside too. Soon all of us were outside watching. Bird didn't seem to mind and kept right on chatting with Justice. It didn't end until Justice tired of chatting. Later this evening the same bird sat on another neighbor's roof, looking down into our backyard and singing. Justice and I heard him about the same time. Justice popped his head out of the backdoor and nodded, "Yup, that's him."

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Jun. 10, 2009

An amazing date.

I had a lovely date last night. A little blue eyed blonde with wild, end-of-the-day hair framing her face, shoes on the wrong feet, in a pink frilly top, kissable cheeks and the sweetest laugh that's impossible to keep from smiling at. She's a charmer. Everywhere we go she can make someone smile, if not swoon. We started out by going to the post office. On the way there she chatted, and chatted, and chatted some more. Her eyes were sparkling and she had a smile tugging at the corners of her lips the whole time. "I'm your only kid today, teehee!" She proudly carried our package out to the van, threw it into my seat while giggling at her cleverness, and scampered through the van to her carseat. Then we went to Starbucks. Those blue eyes shined. I sat her wee tush on the counter and pointed to the words "gluten free" on a small basket near the cash register. The basket was full of individually wrapped Valencia orange cakes. She gasped, grabbed one and squealed with glee! We'd been there for two minutes, and already the staff was smitten. She ordered a child size hot chocolate, with extra whip of course. I ordered a java chip Frappuccino. Grace slowly meandered through the table area looking for just the right one, peeking behind that wall, then around the wide post in the middle. "Hmm.... I think.... THIS ONE!"  She chose a two seater table, right under the window facing the street. I pushed her chair in and opened her orange cake. Those blue eyes were dancing with joy. She had me entranced. When her hot chocolate was ready she ran to the counter, her fists and elbows swinging. On the way back she strolled with an ear to ear grin. Soon mine was ready too. We both popped our tops off to eat the cream with chocolate sauce on it first. She looked at me sideways, then swiped some of my cream with her straw. (Yes, I know java chips aren't GF. I made sure her straw didn't go too deep.) After the lids went back on we chatted about whatever her little heart desired. We read words on the cups, pointed out favorite things through the windows, wondered at what was in the package from the PO, and just enjoyed being together. As we climbed back into the van to head home she was so excited to tell her siblings that she had coffee with mom, and what would Justice think when he heard they had gluten free cake! When we walked in the front door Faith came running while yelling, "Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!" Then she spotted the bit of cake left in Grace's hands. You could practically hear the brakes screech. "Bite? Bite?" Grace excitedly shared, then ran to tell the other kids of her adventures. Could that have been any sweeter?? If you made it through the whole date, you should probably go brush your teeth now.

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Jun. 9, 2009

Getting our hands dirty.

In an effort to clean up the backyard, I'm paying kids for weeding. Very clear boundaries that even the 3yo can follow. Don't touch anything in Momma's flower bed, even if it is a weed. The rest of the yard is fair game If it's not a piece of grass, pull it. Put all the weeds you pulled into one pile. When you're done weeding for the day, show mom your pile. You'll get paid based on the size of your weed pile. After getting your pile evaluated by a parent, you have to take it to the huge weed pile before getting paid. If you pull three weeds, and your sibling pulls twenty-five weeds, don't act surprised/horrified/upset or otherwise throw yourself into a pity party when you aren't paid as handsomely as that sibling. Wash your hands when you come in, please. Three kids are having a weed pulling good time. I'm going to be less a few dollars by the end of the day, but my yard will be cleaner. In more dirt news, Joy and I found nearly three dozen mushrooms growing in our yard. Ew. We pulled every one we could find, then buried them in the weed pile so Faith wouldn't be tempted to sample them. She'll taste anything at least once. We found slugs in our yard this year too. I like them better than the mushrooms. Slugs and mushrooms are things I just didn't expect to see living in the desert. Allegedly the water table is very high in our neighborhood, but it's still a desert, yano?

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Jun. 8, 2009

Grace's assessment update.

She did corner me about the reading test later in the day. She scored at .7 for a mid-kindy grade level. The words she missed had long vowels. She'll turn four in September.

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Jun. 8, 2009

End of the year assessments!

We had our traditional end of the year assessments this morning. My kids have done amazing this year, across the board. Today's family meeting was easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I got all my forms printed out last night, some I've had downloaded for ages and some new ones from www.donnayoung.org (LOVE that website). A reading assessment, an individual evaluation, a course of study (list of intended schoolbooks for the new grade), a blank week lesson plan page for what we call lesson maps, and the typical course of study list from www.worldbook.com were assembled for Justice, Joy and Honor. For the first time ever I printed out some grade keeping forms. For Justice. I've had it recommended from more seasoned homeschoolers that now is the best time to start grading. It will be a learning experience for Justice and I, but by the time it's needed for high school transcripts we'll both be comfy with it. Stuff like spelling and math I can handle. Not one bloody clue how to grade the way we do science and history. On to the kid updates/bragging! I started with Joy, for no other reason than she was the handiest kid to pluck from playtime. Her reading level was 1.2 grades ahead of the grade she's in. She was quite pleased with herself!  On the individual evaluation she said her strengths were grammar and memorizing, and her weakness is narration. Her goals are to get better at cursive and to kick narration's butt. I'm quite pleased with how well she did that evaluation. Then she aced the math and language arts sections of the worldbook lists. The only blips were in science and history, which we do quite differently from the traditional model. I'll grab some resources for the ones I think are worthwhile for her to read this week. First evaluation - check! Honor happened to be playing near when I sent Joy on her merry way. He wasn't terribly thrilled but he humored me well. He scored a 1.5 grade level, not bad for a boy who wouldn't be old enough to start a traditional kindy until this fall! He doesn't understand grade levels and just said, "Ok. That was easy." *snort* For the individual evaluation he said his strength was math, he didn't have weaknesses, and his goal is to read a LOT of books.   The few things I couldn't check on his worldbook kindy list were math things that seem poorly placed. Stuff like calendar, clock, money denominations, chart and graph concepts. Considering he's soaring through a first grade math book, I'm not concerned in the slightest. He's doing great and will have no problems with first grade material in the fall. Somewhere in the middle of Honor's assessment Grace figured out there wasn't a packet of forms on my desk for her. I sheepishly printed off a preschool course of study and reading assessment for her. I mean, how dare I leave the three year old out of this! We went down the preschool course of study, checking off absolutely everything except for reciting phone number and address. The kindy list would have served her better, but I was leery of stepping on Honor's toes.   That was enough assessment for her and she ran off on her merry way. I'll keep the reading list handy, lest she call me on it later. LOL Then I shooed all but Justice outside to play. Doing the reading assessment the right way he scored 2.5 grade levels above his current grade. Counting all the words on the list he could do correctly (the test says to stop when they get X wrong on one particular list), he scored 3.6 grade levels ahead.  For the individual evaluation he said logic and reading were his strengths, math was his weekness, and his goals were to get better at dictation and start learning Latin. Fine choices in my opinion. I showed him the grading forms I chose, explained how they'd work, and told him this would be a joint effort as I'd be learning this as we go. He thought that was kewl. I did explain that the grades wouldn't change his lessons at all, and a bit about high school transcripts. Then we hit the worldbook list. Some of the history was way off, and just a couple science topics. I had to explain a traditional school model on those two subjects to help him understand why we weren't lining up. He aced the language arts section, excluding bibliographies. A quick explanation and example fixed that. A couple math things couldn't be checked, and I knew that would happen. He's right on the cusp of moving into that section and will have it done this summer so we're not targeting them. Then we get to the health and safety section. "Preparing for puberty" started it all. "Remember talking about that?" "Uh... not really?" "You know, that's when your body starts changing to be more like a man's, instead of a child's." "Oh yeah, I do remember that." So we went over the basics, voice changing (already starting, eep.), shoulders broadening, hair growing in new places. One thing led to another and testicles came up, which led to testicles making sperm. He knows the sperm and egg story. Then he says it. "So how does the sperm get into the woman's body?" "When a man and a woman have sex the ***** goes into the ******." "That's absolutely gross." A couple more timid questions, with answers as simple as I could keep them, and he declared he was all done talking about that now. Poor guy looked a little green. Like a might toss your cookies shade of green. I quickly turned the topic back to the Life of Fred math curriculum and how we planned to implement it between the math course he's in now and the one we have for the next grade. When his color restored I declared the meeting done, "You're brilliantly smart. Doing great. Looking forward to another great year teaching you. Go play already." "Oh thankyou!" I even got a hug out of the deal. That assessment was a little more than I'd expected!

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Apr. 1, 2009

What a day!

Feb. 2, 2009

What's up with school this week.

History ~ George Washington. Well, they say all the presidents, but we'll do them in order. The first George Dubya it is.  Today we talked about how we know his profile picture so well and why, then made profile drawings of each other. Can you hear the laughter with that one? One kid staring at the wall with a flashlight aimed as his/her noggin, another kid with a paper on the wall trying to trace the profile shadow. another giggly kid holding the flashlight. Some of the profile tracings had so much giggling involved they caused more bouts of giggling. Tomorrow we'll learn more about his life before the presidency. Justice ~Math is adding and subtracting mixed fractions, pretty sure I pulled the pages from www.math-drills.com. I pulled some writing from the free Scott Foresman stuff,  Just the wirting pages in the grade 6 section, their grammar isn't thick enough to warrent pulling him off Daily Grams for it. Today he worked on qualities of a personal narrative, then wrote his own about meeting Bionicles on a previously boring stroll through a swamp. We did that page orally until it came time to create his own personal narrative though. Too bloody much writing if I expect him to actually like original writing. He's reading a book about a kidnapped orangutan. Joy ~ She started Spelling Wisdom today. So far, one really easy lesson in, she's giving it two thumbs up. I think we're really going to enjoy spelling this way. Very untraditional and kid paced. (I am SO ordering the next level up for Justice this fall.)  In First Language Lessons she made some silly sentences with subjects, state of being verbs and some fun adjectives. Then I read The Camel's Nose to her. Afterwords she gave the best story narration she's ever done. I nearly fell out of my chair! Included the important detials, in order, didn't back up, just needed nudges at the very beginning. She's come a long way this year. Honor ~ He raced through his list of twenty words in Phonics Pathways, nearly always saying the word before I can say "Now put the sounds together."  A few counting pages later he raced off to the backyard. He's so proud of his accomplishments lately. Stinkin' adorable. Grace ~ She also did her lesson in Phonics Pathways, blending L with the vowels. She asked for it just before nap and was kinda off balance, but did pretty good in spite of being tired. Her workpages had patterns on them today, she was pretty confused as to what they were asking at first, but had started puttiing it all into place by the end. Faith ~ Can't leave the baby out! She's over her fear of the step to the backyard. Did I mention there's concrete at the bottom?    We used to have to make sure she had long pants and leather baby shoes on before she'd tolerate being put on the grass at all. Now she barrels across the backyard barefoot, lol.

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Feb. 2, 2009

First park day of the year

It was warm enough for a romp at the park yesterday! My kids spent so much time outdoors. Have I mentioned little kids that smell like the backyard is one of my favorite scents? Consequently they were ALL sound asleep by 8:30. That's practically unheard of. Cute kid pictures ahead!  This is Honor and Faith in the tunnel. Grace and her amazing blue eyes. Justice Joy in the tunnel Honor (MAN does he look huge lately..) We had the loveliest Sunday! Didn't watch a scrap of football, lol.

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Jan. 29, 2009

Today was a nearly perfect homeschool day.

Did you fall out of your chair with that title? I said the homeschool part was perfect, not the rest of it! There was very little arguing, eye rolling and sass. The bigs answered questions like "What's the purpose of government?" and "Why did we rebel against the king?"  They thought about their answers and made good ones. It was warm enough for even desert rats to play outside for a little while Small people that smell like the backyard is one of my favorite things. I got a small scrap of sewing in this morning. The house is relatively clean. The dishes are done. Put away too. We had a pleasant outing to the post office. Spelling Wisdom came in the mail! After looking through it together Joy and I are both pretty excited to dig into it. I think we'll really like it. The baby took two real naps today, and both of them were on the bed (read: not my lap). The mediums ate up their school pages and did amazing in their reading lessons. Honor is over his 13, 14, 15 wall. I taught him to say threeteen, fourteen, and fiveteen about a week ago, suddenly it's clicked and he's not fumbling them now. Otherwise the boy can count to fifty and beyond, lol.  Joy made three minor mistakes on her oral spelling quiz of twenty-one words. Though she was bummed when I told her we'd save Spelling Wisdom for Monday. Justice had a major lightbulb in his fractions work. I piddled around the web looking for president resources for next week and found a few good ones. Barely had any interruptions. Oh yeah! Both bigs said we should do the presidents next since our Declaration of Independence stuff has wrapped up (took us two weeks to use up that rabbit trail..). Did you see that word "both?" They agreed with no prompting. Ok. Now for the not so picturistic stuff. I didn't get nearly as much sewing done as I wanted to. The bathroom didn't get scrubbed. The diapers didn't get washed. The entryway looks like a tornado hit it. I didn't exercise or drink enough water. The good stuff FAR outweighs all the bad stuff. I'm really shocked! Thursdays are well known for being long, tiring, downright icky days at our house. We start out grumpy because we were out late the night before, but get up at the same times anyway. The day drags on forever. The mediums need naps but fight them. The big two are argumentative. The baby doesn't nap well because she's behind on sleep (yeah, figure that one out). Hub doesn't get home until kidlet bedtime. When hub does get home HE'S worn out and just wants food and bed. He gets up extra early on Fridays too, so I go to bed knowing I won't see him again until lunchtime the next day. That's the typical Thursday. This Thursday though? Seems extraordinary.

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