Apr. 14, 2007 Moving blogs!
Hey all! I hope spring has come with many blessings for all of you. God is laying the foundation for many good things to come for me and PJ. A lot has happened, so much, t hat I hardly have any time to blog anywhere (I have other blogs, mostly entertainment and media related, and they are all about as neglected as this one). To make a long story short: We gave the quails away to a couple of avian enthusiasts who had hand-built two aviaries in their backyard and were looking for quails. I was initially only going to give the quail babies to them (no way was I going to have 5 noisy squawking birds in a 1BR apartment) but when they told me they had TWO aviaries, I asked them to take my beloved Lucky and Lilo too, and they did. They are very happy and well taken care of now, and I'm sure they're much better off than in those big ole guinea pig cages :)
I had a big long post written up about how great PJ is doing and how I have fallen in love with Charlotte Mason home educating and all the fun we're having nature-journaling and studying art and music and whatnot, and mentioning the time-management crisis that I had back in February where I really thought I could no longer support this family and still homeschool, but right when I was about ready to give up hope, God provided not one but ABUNDANT ways for me to do so, and permanent ones, not just little jobs here and there that would make do. It is at a point where I have to choose what ways I want to make a living, because there are just so many options for me right now. It's amazing.
Another reason I've been offline a lot is because I was extraordinarily tired and sleepy all the time, and was having various and sundry other health issues that were getting worse. I thought I had acquired a thyroid imbalance like the rest of the women in my family have, or worse, diabetes. The doctor suspected as much too, but no - this Friday, I received a completely clean bill of health!!! I even managed to avoid the high blood pressure and high cholesterol that women in my family start getting in their mid 30s. Everything is completely healthy and normal. They did an EKG and an echocardiogram and everything and all the results were great. The ONLY thing I have is mild anemia, probably from the fact that, no, we don't eat a whole lot of red meat. So, more burgers and an iron pill and I should be back to normal soon, hopefully.
As for Charlotte Mason homeschooling, it has transformed not just our homeschool, but our home. PJ's tantrums are gone - he prayed a lot about it, and we have talked a lot about them in a frank way. He is 9 now, and the blessing of his Asperger's is that he's able to think his way toward things that would normally be off-limits to him because of his disability, which I think is what he's done. CM's methods have changed me too. We are just enjoying our time together a lot more. Today we had a lovely day of an outdoor picnic at a small park nearby, some nature journaling (I cannot believe how much PJ LOVES to do to this at the moment) from both of us. I forgot how much I like to draw. Mondays we are only doing fine arts now, which he really enjoys. There is so much more to detail, really.
Anyway, the point of all of this is to say - our homeschool and home can no longer truthfully be called a haven for quails. We still have two hermit crabs, but Crab Haven Academy just doesn't have the same ring to it ;) We still haven't thought of a good name for our school yet. PJ insists it have the words "Stone" and "Academy" in it for some reason. I vote for Stepping Stones Academy, he wants Sunstone School. We'll see. In the interim, I have moved to CMinSoFla. I'll have all my posts migrated there soon. and will be adding the entire friends list there, too. Hope everyone reading this is having a joyous and blessed Sunday. |
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Feb. 1, 2007 Emphasizing the Successes
At times, as a single mother raising a child with many challenges and special needs, and being someone who was raised by a family that believed in no discipline whatsoever, I have had a hard time figuring out how to parent my own kid. My mother and grandparents, with whom I lived for my entire life, believed that children shouldn't even be scolded. Even when I had tantrums, when I talked back, when I was outright defiant and insulting and disrespectful, which I was, more often than not, it was totally tolerated. I was never spanked, grounded or even scolded. Kids will be kids, they'd say. While that may sound like a charmed life to some, it didn't do me any favors. I acted out a lot as a kid just trying to get a reaction. I grew up sometimes feeling like I had no guidance, like I had to solve all my problems on my own. After all, I was the ultimate authority and my good behavior wasn't any more recognized than my bad.
Because my family was so radically permissive with me, I have a tendency to dismiss all their ideas about parenting. They kept saying I was too hard on PJ, I was being too negative, I was harping, I was nagging, etc. After much kicking and screaming (of and by many individuals in my family!) I have decided that it's time to give in and admit that the way I deal with PJ's disability-related outbursts and meltdowns may indeed be more effective than my family's approaches (pleading, nagging, attempts at sweettalking - all of which drive a child in the middle of an autistic meltdown absolutely starkers), but it's not doing much to engender trust and love and peace and godliness in this household, which are much more my ultimate goals than "having PJ do what I say."
This week, after a very difficult weekend, we started doing a little rewards chart. I decided to work on one behavior at a time. For now, it's "doing what you're told all the way and cheerfully without contradicting." Contradicting is a huge, huge problem here. I'm not talking about basic differences of opinion; I'm talking about going against every little thing I say about anything. He gets rewarded in three ways:
1. He must now earn his "screentime" privileges. If he gets five stickers for good behavior one day, he gets a "good behavior coupon" that is his pass for screentime the next day. Screentime has its own rules as before - for every half hour spent reading, one hour of TV; no gaming before schoolwork - but
he has to earn the right to have them at all. Once earned, the coupon cannot be taken away and neither can stickers, no matter what.
2. On Saturday, I will add up how many stickers he has on the chart and give him ten cents per sticker. That's his allowance. I said it was like a salary, because it's his only "job" to be a helpful, loving, respectful little boy. He is over the moon. You should see him at the chart gleefully counting his stickers and adding up how much money it is. (He's at $1.70 right now. A small fortune LOL)
3. If he reaches 20 stickers in one week, he gets a treat on the weekends. It has to be under $20. EVen still, $20 a week is a lot of money for me, but my family has agreed to help out with this. It is of his choice - seeing a matinee movie, going to the arcade to play, going to the children's museum, buying a DVD or game, renting movies at Blockbuster, buying the latest issue of his favorite comic book.
He is working so hard to earn those stickers this last week. Outbursts have been minimal; only one meltdown, wherein he offered to give back his screentime privilege card, but I declined - he earned it the day before. I told him he could remind me if I forget to recognize a "good deed." He is very enthusiastic about doing nice things to earn stickers, but I have surprised him and praised him a lot for when he hasn't been "trying," but was being nice "just because" too. I tell him I want to help him earn the stickers,. It has made such a big difference. I am focusing on the successes and not just pointing out all the wrongdoing. I am sure there will be days or weeks ahead where the stickers will not get earned, but for now, this is helping so, so much. My goal is to help him feel more successful and approved-of. So far, so good.
And today I thought, wouldn't so many people's perspective be different if they lived their lives this way - rewarding others for their efforts and their kindnesses and de-emphasizing all the wrongs and hurts. In my own life, I could really use an emphasis on all my blessings, of which there are too many to list here, instead of all my set backs. One's world view really goes on tilt when one starts emphasizing the successes instead of the failures. |
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Jan. 27, 2007 Quail Babies, Pt 2
I got a much better digital camera! My son's dad upgraded his and gave me his perfectly good old one. I can FINALLY start my online craft business like I've wanted to. I have sooo much to update about...
We had an AWESOME vacation at DisneyWorld last weekend, about which I'll have to post later because it was really amazing. Plus, my mother took all the pictures and she hasn't posted them yet. But for now, here is an update of the three remaining quail babies. Four hatched, but the last one hatched two days after the other one, and being "runty," was pecked to death by the mother :( What a shame. He was so cute and fluffy but he was slower on the uptake. I'm told that mother quails cull the sick, lame, etc. as a way to sort of save herself the trouble of raising a baby who will not make it. Thank God people - well, most people - aren't like that!!
They spend most of their time under her butt. LOL I know that's a funny thing to say, but newborn quails require temperatures of 99 degrees farenheit, with their ability to tolerate lower temperatures increasing weekly. So they stay under her butt. it's how she keeps them warm. LOL I picked her up the other day to clean out their cage and she was really warm and her rump and belly ruddy under her feathers. I think it's increased bloodflow to enable her to keep the babies warm. How neat!
Alas, I have kept them separate from Lucky, the daddy. He was raised by himself for a long time and I think he wasn't really properly "socialized." He is very friendly with me, for example, which is actually totally abnormal quail behavior - the other ones flee in terror whenever they see me. I had to separate him from Lilo just to let her brood on her eggies in the first place. He kept chasing her off the nest. I tried to put him back in with them yesterday and he immediately went to pecking at the babies so... he is staying separate for now.
This is Lucky, who has really unusual colors and is really gorgeous and has really unusual coloring:
I am definitely getting him a bigger cage this weekend, seeing as he's all by himself right now, poor boo. He is very aggressive with other quails, since he didn't see any until he was about 5 weeks old. I had purchased 10 eggs to incubate as a science experiment, but thanks to my grandmother, messing with what she shouldn't have, we had an incubator temperature mishap and he was the only one who survived. Hence the name. :)
The babies are a little over a week old right now and still totally adorable and fluffy. Here is a picture of one - I think this one is Edison. PJ named them Sunshine (one with bright yellow head), Valentine (one with red wings - a male, I think, and hopefully with Lucky's beautiful colors - and Edison, his current favorite historical figure.
Here he is peeking out from under the little log cave that they like to play in. Just for reference's sake, the egg in the far right corner that Lilo has laid (it is almost certainly infertile - they just lay eggs all the time) is about the size of a nickel. :) |
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Jan. 13, 2007 YAY!!!! QUAIL BABIEEEES!
Three of Lilo's quail eggies hatched!!. We have three adorable nickel-sized quail chicks running around their cage now! They are SO CUTE. We've named them gernder-neutralish names since we won't know their gender for a while: Sunshine (who is bright yellow), Valentine (who has reddish fuzz) and Edison. My mother is coming over later with her digital camera to take pictures, so I'll post them later. She has a feed and farm store right by her house, so she's bringing some starter crumble for them, too. I can't believe they HATCHED! There are a bunch of eggs that didn't, unfortunately. I am cleaning the cage out today. For the moment, I have separated Lucky from the babies because the cage is a bit too small for the five of them.
I am currently looking for a bigger and taller cage so that the babies can stay with their mothers until they are at least 4 weeks old. Button quails have so often been bred in captivity that they are losing their brooding instinct as a species; bird enthusiasts and fans of the species like myself recommend allowing mothers to raise their own young as often as possible to re-introduce the brooding and mothering instincts into the species. They are often kept as a trio of females for egg-laying purposes or in a ratio of 2 females per 1 male to reduce aggression in cramped conditions but their natural family unit is a male and a female with their current brood of chicks. I intend to let them raise a many babies as they'll have.
Do I have any idea what I'm going to do with the three new birds? No. I am a sap and will likely keep another pair. They are very low-maintenance birds, if a bit noisy. It is unfortunate that there are three and not four so that they can't all be given away in pairs. I will probably give the other bird away to locals, with a little typed up and printed out handout about how to care for them, since quails aren't like other birds in that they need a lot of horizontal space instead of traditional bird cages which have a lot of vertical space. They are better off in ferret and guinea pig habitats! It is possible to resell them, I guess, but it wouldn't be very profitable. I have to think about it. :) For now I am enjoying their fluffy chirpy adorableness!
There is a downside to all of this: Lilo's feathers don't look so great. She has a bald patch on her neck and head, and BIG one on her rump that she apparently got from overly aggressive mating, poor baby. But neither patch has refeathered and it's been weeks. I am giving her another few days and if she's not better by the time I get back from Orlando/Daytona next week, I am taking her to an avian vet to see what he says.
But I am especially happy that Lucky has reproduced because his colors are SO unusual and beautiful. If you look on the header of my page, you'll see the traditional colors for a Chinese painted quail male: brown and gray mottled on the back and head, reddish gray wings, and a blue breast and belly. While Lilo's coloring looks pretty much exactly like that, Lucky is dark slate blue with pale silver tips on the back, a black head with a white ring around the neck, and a BRIGHT sienna red on the breast. His colors are so, so gorgeous. I actually think he may be some kind of new mutation. I've been Googling an can't find a picture of it. So I'll have to post mine. :) Hopefully he has at least one son today and hopefully he's as pretty as his daddy! |
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Jan. 10, 2007 2007 Educators' Calendar
My son the holiday, history and social studies trivia buff is sure to get a huge kick out of this one.
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/holidays-and-seasonal-events/printable/34621.html
The 2007 Educators' Calendar is our exclusive gift to you!
Did you know that October 5th is World Teacher's Day, or that the second week in February is Random Acts of Kindeness Week? Enjoy your FREE 2007 Educators' Calendar, full of interesting holidays, significant dates in history, and month- and week-long celebrations. It's sure to present teachable moments all year long! |
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Jan. 7, 2007 Wonderful article on conflict resolution with children
I found this article on one of my favorite Christian sites, Crosswalk.com. It is helpful for both Christian and non-Christian parents, though for Christian parents, with each "rule" it lists some corresponding Bible verses. I thought it was great, compassionate, child-friendly and very rational advice. My son is 9 and loveloveloves to argue, so I think I need to read it a few times and really let it sink in. Click on the link.
28 Rules for Resolving Conflict With Your Children
I have been absent from HSB for a while because of all their technical difficulties, however, I have decided that they're right and I need to sit down one of these days and figure out how Bloglines works. I have many friends with blogs all over the blogosphere, not just on HSB, and ultimately, it'll come in handy.
Lots has happened in the last few weeks that I'll update about soon, but AFTER I get done with my mile-long to-do list today. I hope everyone had a joyous and peaceful holiday season. We did. :) |
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Dec. 14, 2006 Gingerbread house!
I'm sorry I've been a bit absent around these parts. Right before Thanksgiving, I got hit with a very bad flu. It was my first since January, so I figured I was due. I then got better for a little under 2 weeks, and then it recurred worse than ever and I think it's turning into light bronchitis. :( I just hope I'm not sick for the holidays AGAIN like I was last year. I am improving day by day, but I am going to the doctor next week if I'm not feeling MUCH better by Monday. Fortunately PJ hasn't gotten any of it. I've been meticulous in handwashing, and keeping my germs to myself and whatnot, so I guess that's helped. Also, it appears as though my kid (praise the Lord) has an immune system made out of steel.
The downside to this is that I REALLY wanted to celebrate Advent this year, and put the emphasis on Christ this year, but I've been too BLEGGGHHH (y'all know the sentiment this describes, I'm sure) to do so. I'm going to start looking for "12 days of Christmas" Advent-ish activities or devotionals or something to do every day until Christmas, or perhaps we will do something to do with our Cuban heritage - Cubans celebrate the 12 days of Christmas from Dec 25th through January 6, the Epiphany/ "Gift of the Magi" holiday in our culture. I'll have to think on it.
Today our park playdate group had its Christmas party. It is a secular group - in fact, it is an amalgam of two local groups - but everyone there celebrates Christmas, so it worked out. We had a buffet-style lunch on the picnic table with everyone bringing something. It was delicious and the kids and grown-ups had a great time! I made a really neat blueberry gingerbread that a lot of people seemed to like. I got the recipe off of AllRecipes, which is, to me, one of the most indispensible sites on the Internet. However, the recipe called for buttermilk, and since we eschew all dairy products (for a large variety of reasons, the main one being that PJ appears to be highly intolerant of them) I substituted vanilla flavored soymilk. I think, had I used buttermilk, it would've come out a little richer. It wasn't too spicy or "gingerbready," but it was a nice rich, spicy fruit bread, I think. I'll post the recipe later on :)
Speaking of Gingerbread, at the parkdate, we had a gift exchange. Everyone had to bring one gift per child, with a monetary value of about $3. PJ chose a little air gun that launches spinners really far into the air. I wasn't sure how it'd go over, but fortunately another 8yo boy got that one. ;) The gift he drew was a pre-made gingerbread house from the local Publix bakery with everything you needed to decorate it. We got home, finished up the day's schooling, put on Nat King Cole's Christmas album, rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We had a blast decorating it... and eating it too! I helped with the icing (it was hard to squeeze out) but he decorated it all himself. Here are some pictures of the gingerbread masterpiece.
 THE SIDE - NOTE THE SANTA AND GUMDROP CHIMNEY :D
 THE BACK DOOR - with a candycane gateway!
The front door looked the same, but with a gumdrop doorknob.
 THE OTHER SIDE - those are "Christmas lights" made out of jawbreakers around the "window."
And yes, my table is, in fact, littered with Christmas tchochkes. Whatcanyado.
Hope everyone is having a great holiday season so far!
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Nov. 16, 2006 Mom, I'm FAMOUS! Kind of.
The subject line = the words my kid used to describe the fact that a field trip he went on made the papers. His picture is not in the online article (and we don't know any of the children in the picture, nor do we know the children mentioned), but we're going to look at the print version just in case. ;)
Our homeschooling group has a "Tea and Knitting Girl's Club" which is a really cute idea, but our group is also about 60% boys. So I am considering putting together a boys' club, possibly fishing? But then the little girls who enjoy fishing might feel left out. While I think it's hard to argue that a "tea and knitting club" is NOT inherently girly, and would disinterest every little boy I have ever met, I can't think of a comparable activity that is equally as inherently boyish. Woodworking? Maybe one of the Home Depot Kids Workshops, though that would require finding a Home Depot that is easily accessible by everyone. I really like the idea of the boys getting together for outdoorsy things like fishing and kayaking and canoeing - that is available at many local parks. Maybe an indoor "camp-out" at someone's house once in a while, too. Anyone have any suggestions?
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Nov. 15, 2006 Emphasis on CREEPY
Today I take PJ to this thing called the Creepy Crawly Bug Show being held at a friends' house. There will be something like 30 children there. It's by a guy who runs CoolBugStuff.com. Me, I am petrified of bugs. Just looking at the home page made me physically shudder. As far as I'm concerned, "Cool" and "Bug" in the same sentence is an oxymoron. The petrification is in direct proportion to how big and hideous the bug is. I.e., I am actually phobic of palmetto bugs. What am I doing in Florida? LOL But I bet the kids think it's awesome.
Afterwards we are going to our friend's house in the area and going on a backstage tour of the Broward County Fair, which should be a little more my style. Plus, it'll fulfill one of PJ's Bear Cub requirements for his Farm Animals elective. He's having a GREAT time with the Cub Scouts. I wasn't sure he would, but he's getting so much out of it. Yesterday they built a toolbox. PJ had never used a hammer before, but boy, did he have a good time hammering away. My thumbs are black and blue as a result, but it's a small sacrifice. ;)
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Nov. 14, 2006 Homemade truffle recipe
This is the most amazingly easy and delicious holiday dessert EVER. Makes about 36 truffles.
INGREDIENTS:
8 squares of semi-sweet chocolate
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 tub Cool Whip
powdered sugar
- Microwave the chocolate in a bowl for two minutes, stirring after 1 minute.
- Stir in the peanut butter until thorougly blended.
- Let sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes, then stir in the cool whip.
- Refrigerate one hour.
- Scoop out individual 1" balls of the mixture with a melon baller or with a spoon.
- Roll it around in your favorite topping: powdered sugar, coconut flakes, chopped pecans or almonds, powder-ground chocolate or white chocolate, jimmies, etc.
I can no longer let the neighbors know we've made this at our house. We never have enough for ourselves. ;)
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Nov. 13, 2006 Blossom and Buttercup!
Today my mother took my son and I to the mall to buy him some new winter clothes. "Winter" of course here in Miami being "the temperature drops below 75 for a few days." But still, it's cold to US! It is, in fact, below 75 right now!  So we went to the local outlet mall and she made a killing at the Old Navy outlet. I have knit him a jacket that he's dying to try out, but who knows when we'll get a chance to do that.
Anyway, my mother is VERY indulgent with my son. This has its good points and its bad points. Case in point: Today we stopped by an "international decor" store that had recently decided that hermit crab habitats are a natural merchandise tie-in for some reason. And... yup. You guessed it. My mother bought PJ two hermit crabs. They have Blossom and Buttercup from The Powerpuff Girls painted on their shells. PJ has been *dying* for some hermit crabs for ages. So he's overjoyed. I personally think the painted shells look a bit silly, and they are both quite big and will probably need bigger shells (and a bigger terrarium) soon, but I think they'll be fine for the time being.
My mother bought one of those "Critter Keepers" and it looks about 5 gallons. They do have SOME space to run around in, but not as much as they'd probably like. So, like I said, I'll probably be getting an aquarium for them soon. It did come with a big rock for them to climb and two types of foods, although hermit crabs like to eat pretty much with people do, so they'll probably get plenty of leftovers in the future. (I have already given them some mango.)
Tomorrow I'm off to buy them some StressCoat for their weekly baths (yes, you have to bathe them every week!) and possibly some silk plants - the quails could use this, too, especially over the little nest Lilo's got going - and some mealworms for both the quails and the hermies.
Do I not have the oddest collection of pets ever? Two quails and two crabs? LOL PJ is very excited about bringing them to his park playdate on Thursday; his three friends jell0 and his little brother and sister brought their pet hamster last week and it was a big hit, so he's hoping his little pet crabs will be, too!
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I cannot say enough about The Story of the World Vol 3 and its corresponding activity book. We are having SO much fun with it. What's more, PJ actually asks to "do history and geography" now. And we're reading together a lot, too. So far we are only through the first three chapters; I estimate that we will NOT finish the whole book this year doing history 3 times a week, because we started it 11 weeks into the school year. I think if we do the remaining chapters and Vol 4 next year, we should be able to finish both books in two years.
PJ has improved so much in retaining history, understanding its purpose, and oral narration in just a few weeks. Since it is difficult for him to write long passages due to his dysgraphia, and since oral narration is a new skill to him, I still have him dictate it to me, and I was amazed at the level of detail and recall he had with the last chapter (on Mary, Queen of Scots.) We're having fun doing the Book of Centuries as suggested by Simply Charlotte Mason; it's turned into our own little history scrapbook.We've been printing out small pictures of some of the people he's been studying about (Rembrandt, Mary Stewart, Vermeer) and gluing them in there while he writes the dates. I can see these needing extra pages soon. :)
What's cool is that we're using a sort of multimedia and multi-curriculum approach to history. We've been making healthy use of our library; we've discovered there is
one a mere six blocks away from our home, so I've just been going
online and ordering all the books we need from the Miami-Dade system to
be sent to that one.
For example on the first chapter about "A World of Empires," we listened to Inca music, watched The Road to El Dorado (though PJ understood that the "magical" elements of the story were not real) and the Sophia Loren/ Peter O'Toole movie, Man of La Mancha, as well as listening to some flamenco music. We are also still getting through The Secret of the Andes, which is SUCH good historical fiction! He drew the Spanish and Holy Roman Empire flags just by description, which he had a lot of fun doing, then we looked it up online to compare. The two-headed bird one wasn't at all close, but his was pretty funny. :) We also looked at some of the paintings of Don Quixote online, especially the one by El Greco, so we're getting some art history in there, too.
In the second chapter, "Protestant Rebellions," we listened to Scottish and Celtic folk music; we read The Boy Who Held Back the Sea and Katje the Windmill Cat together, which really helped bring 16th and 17th century Netherlands alive for PJ. Both those books have absolutely beautiful illustrations of the Netherlands in that time period. For art appreciation as well as fleshing out history, we flipped through Rembrandt and 17th Century Holland (WARNING: despite being intended for children, this book contains some graphic images of autopsy paintings - I ALWAYS recommend flipping through an art book first before giving it to a young child!) and learned all about Rembrandt and Vermeer and life in early 17th century Holland. It was even neat because we finally learned what a "gable" was, since that was a major part of Dutch architecture at the time. We live in a Miami-Dade municipality called "Coral Gables" so now we know why the town is called that!
Through it all, we've been looking at the different countries' pictures in the Time-Life World Atlas my dad gave us last year. I love that book. It is so child friendly and relevant and well put-together.
PJ was very saddened by the terrible tale of Mary, Queen of Scots. We got into a neat discussion about the occurrence of injustice, about how it was indeed going to be a recurring theme in history study. We talked about how we should learn from these mistakes as a society, and sticking to your guns and holding fast to your faith even in the face of adversity. Since 400+ years later no one still has any clue who killed her husband, Lord Darnley, we also got into some discussions about how there are many mysteries in history that we may never know the answer to.
Now that we are moving on to chapter three ("James, King of Two Countries") I think we will maybe start a "family tree" of the major kings and queens of Europe because it really is hard to keep track of all the Peters, Richards, Jameses, Phillips, Georges, Charleses, Elizabeths, Annes and Marys. LOL. We have checked out Kings and Queens of England and Scotland which I found very child-friendly and well-organized, too. We may be hanging onto that one for a while.
We've been reading the SOTW chapters and then the additional reading on the weekends and the days we don't do history. The SOTW chapters help put the historical fiction and the additional reading into context. With the study of James and early American colonioalism, we'll be reading a brief biography of Pocahontas and comparing it to Disney's Pocahontas (or possibly their sequel, Pocahontas II, since it is a bit more historical) in order to bring up a discussion about historical fiction vs. historical fact. I tried to get Pocahontas and the Strangers as the bio, but it wasn't available in time from my local library. When we are done with The Secret of the Andes, we'll be reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which is about early US colonialism. We'll also be reading A Lion to Guard Us, which is shorter, and also about the same time period, and Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims. Very timely study since Thanksgiving is just 2 weeks away! We'll be reading ABOUT the Pilgrims the week before, too! Finally, we will be comparing the text of the 23rd Psalm from the King James Bible and the New International Version (the version we usually read).
The best part about this is how much I'M learning about history, which has never been my strong suit. My minor in college was art history, so I'm glad to finally be able to have a medium through which I can share that with my child. We are really having a great time.
Tomorrow we head to the Miami Art Museum since they're having Free Saturday. We've never been so that should be exciting. It's right across the way from the Main Library, too, so I'll probably be abusing that. :)
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It does look like our pet quails, Lilo and Lucky, are getting along much better this time around. In fact, I set up a secluded area in the corner of the cage, and they have made a nest! Lilo is quite excited and spends all her days fussing over them. She turns them over a few times a day and she and Lucky bring over all the stray feathers they find around the cage to make the nest nice and warm. I can't tell how many eggs there are; I think there are 10, which is the largest clutch they have. I haven't been able to take a picture of her on the nest because every time I get close, she runs away. But here's the nest of eggs without her in it:
Who knows if any of them will hatch, but it's good for the breed to allow a pair to raise their own chicks. Quails are rapidly losing their nesting instincts as a species because so many are now bred in captivity. So every time a pair are allowed to hatch and raise their own chicks, they pass on their "brooding skills" via modeling to their little ones, who can then be allowed to do the same.
I don't know what I'm going to do with all those extra quails if they all hatch though!
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Nov. 2, 2006 Poor Kitties!
Before I lived in this apartment, it was inhabited by a very spritely 85 year old woman. Unfortunately, it is a tiny 1-bedroom apartment and she had - no lie - 7 cats and two dogs in it. She had a single litterbox for all of them. The floor in the apartment, like so many in older buildings in Miami, is terrazzo, meaning it stains very easily. The apartment was so filthy that they had to fumigate three times and SAND THE FLOOR DOWN to be rid of the filth when she left. It wasn't because she was old and disabled, either. You would never guess this lady was 85. She was just really, really lazy, per her own admission. :( The apartment had to be DE-FLEA'ED!
Anyway, she had had 4 of the adult cats and the 2 dogs the longest, so when she left, she took the four of them and the 2 dogs and left the three half-grown kittens behind with a promise to send bags of cat food monthly for them (which she does, intermittently). My grandmother, who lives next door, and I were flabbergasted. Those poor kitties were essentially thrown out of the only home they have ever known. Would you believe it has been a year and they haven't left our yard the whole time. This has caused us some problems because they eat all the lizards, small rodents and birds in the front yard, meaning that we have a lot of small pests in the grass that lizards would've eaten and taken care of naturally. Meaning it's SUPER hard for me to have a container garden because it becomes overrun with teeny frogs, slugs and this species of small burrowing roaches.
I wish I weren't allergic to cats because these girls are just so gorgeous and sweet. They keep trying to get into the apartment - as far as they're concerned, this is still their home. They are now all flea-ridden and cannot be brought indoors; this was a problem during Hurricane Wilma last year. My grandma and I were more worried about them than our own safety - WE weren't forced to brave the whole thing outside, after all. We put a little barricade outside of 10-gallon paintbuckets which weighed at least 50 lbs each in this little hallway nook and two of the kitties hid there the whole time, poor babies.
The three kitties are sisters. Two of the kitties are black and white - Estrellita (so named because she has a black face with a white-colored star-shaped area on her nose) and Juliet - with big green eyes, and the other one, ChaCha also has big green eyes, but is solid medium-gray with little white paws.
I should post a picture. I have tried to place them in homes, as they are fixed and housebroken, but it never panned out. So I thought recently about trying to find a home for them or possibly posting their plight on Craigslist. The landlord has decided to make our building no-pets-allowed after the trauma of having to clean out this woman's apartment when she moved out, so I can't take them in here. But they are the sweetest little things ever and if I ever get a house with a yard or something, I would de-flea them and take them with me and, um, just vacuum a lot? I'm very allergic to cats but I love them. I love all animals. I'd have all kinds of animals if I could - dogs, birds (I love my quails!!!) I used to keep an aquarium when I lived up north and would love to again, I even like reptiles.
Speaking of the quails, they have been working out really well this time around in the same cage. Lilo the hen is BROODY and has made a nest and has four little eggies that she keeps fussing over and turning over. She put them in the darkest, most private corner of the cage, meaning she considers it a real nest. Ooooh, I wonder if they'll hatch! We'll see what comes of that!
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Nov. 2, 2006 Some awesome sites
I have to add these to my blog roll. Actually, I have to organize the mess that is my blogroll. Anyway, a few cool sites I found around the web:
World Book Encyclopedia - wow. An interactive atlas, encyclopedia, and dictionary aimed at elementary and middle school kids. Who needs the Encyclopedia Britannica?
I really love their suggested course of study and curriculum standards lists for each grade, from pre-K through senior year of high school. It's not the be-all end-all of curriculum courses of study, but it's a very comprehensive template and could be very useful for homeschoolers.
My Wonderful World - an interactive kid's site for elementary and middle school students designed by The National Geographic to bolster geographical literature. My kid LOVES geography, so I can see him getting addicted to this site very easily.
The Great Space Chase - a Magic Schoolhouse tie-in game where the children look for Ms. Frizzle in the solar system by answering clues about the planets. Fun! Alas, not Firefox friendly.
Google for Educators - tools, sites, gadgets and a personalized home page for educators. Some of it is definitely geared toward a traditional classroom, but I've now set my home page to have a word of the day, bible verse of the day, the weather, a NASA photograph, a calendar, and a whole mess of other things.
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Nov. 1, 2006 THE NIGHT OF SUGAR
That's what I'm calling October 31 from now on, because that's what it was. LOL Here are pictures of pacjunior in his costume as Batman, circa Batman Beyond era. Obviously my digital camera is terrible, and I need a better one. My mom's PHONE takes better pictures! But something's something. :)
 He REALLY loved his costume. It was kind of flimsy and I ended up needing to re-sew some of the seams, but it really was cute.  Blurry, but posing. It didn't come with black gloves - we bought those separately, but they added a nice touch of authenticity :)  Here was the game played at the local Halloween get-together from our parkdate playdate. I was the one responsible for coming up with the game, and so I brought a bunch of rolls of toilet paper and played "Wrap the Mummy." The team who mummified the mummy the fastest got a small prize. It was a total riot! PJ looks very consternated there, but he's just concentrating on keeping the toilet paper on him!  Yesterday at the Party of Sugar, with all the homeschooling groups in the tri-county area. There were nearly 70 children in attendance.  Later my dad took PJ trick-or-treating in his neighborhood. My dad has a really good sense of humor. Apparently he was dressed as a gangster rapper. :)
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Oct. 27, 2006 Busy Thursday! and thoughts on Halloween.
Oh, my gosh, we are LOVING Story of the World, Vol 3. We're only a week into it, and PJ is already asking to "do history" EVERY DAY. We love standing in front of the giant map with the erasable markers and drawing all over it about the routes. He loves the activities and the mapwork because geography is his favorite subject. Best of all, I'm learning new things too. What a great, great resource. I'm just sorry we didn't start it sooner! Right now we are studying post-Columbian Spanish colonialism and the spread of the Spanish empire under Phillip II in the 16th century and its impact on the South American indigenous people. We are learning about the Aztecs as well, and tonight we'll be watching The Road to El Dorado. It's historical fiction and we have seen it before, but I really enjoyed it, and now I think he'll get a lot more out of it knowing the historical context of the story. I will also be renting Man of LaMancha since it is about the story of Don Quixote, set in that time period in Spain. We're also reading The Secret of the Andes and really enjoying that, too. History and literature are suddenly really coming together for us, and I'm getting a lot out of it too!
Yesterday we were up late doing schoolwork because we had a very full day. In the morning, we saw Once Upon a Mattress done by the Miami Children's Theatre. I have to say, I was very disappointed in the production. It was very, very racy at times. It had been directed by a young man who had just graduated from the New World School of the Arts. He emceed the production and I immediately recognized him from an AMAZING New World production of 42nd Street we saw last year. He is VERY talented and was very good in that, but the direction of Once Upon a Mattress frankly had an obvious teenag boy's sensibility. There was a lot of unnecessary innuendo that was added in for no discernible reason except to get cheap laughs; the out-of-wedlock subplot was very emphasized and explicit as well; Princess Fred got very drunk on stage; during the "Man to Man Talk" - a number which has ALWAYS been ommitted in children's theater versions of this show that I've ever seen - there was a lot of body-part grabbing and crude gestures etc. There were children as young as 3 in the audience and I know a lot of parents were not happy about this. I think they should be able to put on whatever kind of production they want, but this was a 10AM showing marketed for elementary students. I just wish they had let us know that there were so many adult themes in this production so that we had been able to make more informed choices about it. Fortunately most of it appeared to go over PJ's head, but I have been meaning to initiate a discussion about the play to see how much he understood and if we need to talk about the out of wedlock and the "It isn't a stork that makes a baby!" things. :(
Then we went to our homeschooling group's park date. We were throwing a little Halloween party for the kids and they all had SO much fun. PJ dressed as Nightwing from Batman Beyond. It looked cute... AT FIRST. I paid SO much money for that costume and it ist he flimsiest thing ever. It tore all over the place. I have to patch it up before our other Halloween party and trick or treating on Tuesday. :(
We treat Halloween as a "big dress up day," since PJ loves to dress up in costumes for ANY occasion. (This is also a big appeal of renaissance fairs and scifi conventions for him. LOL) But we do talk about how the scary occult/ supernatural aspect some people throw in to the holiday is not Christian and how fear isn't something that Christians need to experience because we can trust that God's always in charge instead. Fortunately PJ is very much NOT into the horror thing AT ALL. For example, during those awful "Fright Night At Universal Studio" commercials that they air at ALL HOURS OF THE DAY, GAHHHHH... he covers his eyes and says "Tell me when it's over!!" So we do only "harvest fest" type of decorations, pumpkins and scarecrows and autumn leaves and things like that.
I do understand the rationale behind why some Christian families object to even recognizing the holiday, but I also think that those folks often overlook how psychologically cathartic it is for human beings to deal with and confront intuitively frightening things in a controlled environment, such as with horror movies and haunted houses and "ghost stories." For many people, things like this aren't so much a celebration of the macabre as it is a way of demystifying the fear of the occult/ supernatural/ spiritual evil for themselves. Not for everyone, but for some. It's not unlike the reasons I enjoy rollercoasters, for example. Our version of Halloween is so far removed from all of that; even if it does have "pagan roots" or whatever, what WE do doesn't have any pagan roots insomuch as it has ties to silly culture-specific fairytales. It's like saying we shouldn't watch the Olympics because it's named after Greek gods and the Greek pagans did it as a religious thing zillions of years ago. Objecting to kids doing something because 1600 years ago it was tied to pagan traditions is IMHO not just unfounded, but I feel like it's almost denying that God has any power to transform something from bad to good. "He makes all things new," after all. I do respect and understand other people's different views on this subject, however, I am at peace with our decision to celebrate Halloween within a non-macabre, non-occult context.
For my kid, it's just an excuse to run around in a Batman costume in public. And what 8yo doesn't love doing that? :)
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Oct. 23, 2006 Inching toward Charlotte Mason
Today we started on The Story of the World, Vol III. and began incorporating greater literature, dictation, and started on a poem memorization. The poem is a limerick as follows, and is introduced in the introduction of SOTW3:
The Pacific is largest of all,
The Indian starts at Bengal,
The Atlantic Ocean
Is always in motion,
The Arctic and Southern are small!
He has already learned most of it. It was our dictation exercise today, as well - just the first two lines. We started the year out doing dictation, but we didn't do it very consistently and it fell by the wayside in recent weeks. So again we got out his little black composition notebook and he wrote in that, and he really did very good work - it was some of his best handwriting to date. Not one mistake!
I really liked the way I was able to incorporate an art project (coloring in a picture) and literature and memorization (the poem) and history all in one. The history and geography was what I was most excited about. The first step was to set up shop. You see, in PJ's room is a large map, I'd say 4' wide and 3' tall, of the United States. It was a two-map set that came with a world map, with the flags of the world printed below it (the US map has the flags of all 50 states). Unfortunately, we have no space on PJ's walls to hang the world map in our tiny one-bedroom apartment, so it's been sitting rolled up in a corner for about a year or so.
Well, now that we're studying world history, I decided it was just time to hang it up in the hallway. It's already got two clothes lines where we hang up art projects so it's not like I'm too proper to have a giant map of the world in the dang hallway. LOL PJ loooooves geography, so he was excited about the world map and the prospect of re-adding geography to his school day, since it has been wholly absent with 3rd grade Switched on Schoolhouse history. It was also helpful in a tactile sense, because we traced a path in order of the poem from one ocean to another on the map.
The first time we tried The Story of the World three years ago, I think he was a bit too immature and his auditory deficits too great because we found it very tedious. I loved the book FOR MYSELF, but my kid haaaaaaaaated it. I just feel like the average six-year-old child wouldn't find stories about Ur or Mesopotamia or anything like that. Asking 1st grade children to care aboug Sargon the Emperor or the inception of Egyptian irrigation and the development of the Phoenicians' cuneform, etc is a waste of everyone's time for most children I know. My kid thought it was just all one big super-boring and irrelevant fairy tale.
This is the one big backdraw to the traditionally recommended classical four-year cycle of history. IMHO I think it is a good idea to go through it in 5th through 8th and then again in 9th through 12th because it DOES make sense that it's most intuitive to go through history chronologically. But starting ancient history with a 6 year old? I just don't get why they recommend doing things this way as it seems anathema to their other ideas. The authors of The Well Trained Mind elsewhere in all other parts of the book are such huge advocates of "starting from the concrete and moving gradually into the abstract." Well, for a Miami 6yo there's not much more that's abstract than the history of Mesopotamia, you know? At that age, I think they get more out of learning about their community, their cultural traditions, why we celebrate the holidays we do, where they came from, etc. And then perhaps a survey of American history in 2nd or 3rd grade and then possibly a brief introduction to world history in 4th. It's just more child-friendly IMHO. I know there are people for whom this has not at all been the case, though, so whatever works for your kids, I guess!
Anyway, this time around, since we have already independently studied the renaissance and medeival history (he is very big into knights, dragons and castles) and we had a huge quarterly-long unit study on the greeks and romans last year, AND the fact that he's become obsessed with Liberty's Kids which is all about the American Revolution, we dove directly into Vol 3 of the series which covers it. We are doing a Book of Centuries that I downloaded a template for at http://www.simplycharlottemason.com. After we took turns reading the pages of the first section, we did the activity book's review questions orally and I was very pleasantly surprised at how much he had retained. He was also able to do an oral narration of the first chapter with a medium amount of prompting. I'm sure he'll be an old pro. He was very happy about doing real hands-on mapwork again and he loved being able to color the portrait of the king they talked about in the chapter. This time around, I think the history is finally making sense. Today we read about Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I and Phillip II of Spain; tomorrow is about Mary Boleyn, Queen of Scots. Cool!
After the narration, PJ got inspired and drew what he thought the two flags of the two empires looked like just based on their description in text. He was pretty close! I of course was pleased as punch that he was so into it.
Once a week, we are going to start working on correspondence skills. Today, he wrote out a postcard to his great-grandparents in Massachusetts. I addressed it, but he wrote them a cute little note that I'm sure they'll enjoy.
We still did Switched On Schoolhouse for math, grammar and Bible study as we'll likely contintue to do all this year. As I mentioned a couple of entries ago, I took out all the quizzes and tests in Bible Study, took out some of the review exercises and excessive quizzing in the math, and took out all the reading comprehension assignments in Language Arts. I don't imagine I'm going to be using the History curriculum at all - off to eBay it goes! - but the science curriculum does cover some of the topics I picked out for his survey of age-appropriate chemistry. So I may still use that.
Tomorrow is his PE class for homeschoolers, and then academics, then Cub Scouts. I have heard of people who devise an entire year's worth of unit studies based on that year's scouting manual. A neat idea, but a little too esoteric and ambitious for me, I think!! We are 1/4 down with the requirements for Bear cubs, so far, and there are other homeschoolers in his den, so that's been cool. Also allows me one more social outlet cause I get to sit around gabbing with the moms, too :) And I secretly love the great outdoors, and can't wait to go camping this year. Lord help us all. LOL
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Oct. 22, 2006 Quails, La Telenovela, Parte Dos
In September I left town for four days for my first vacation without PJ in nearly 4 years. It was just for five days; I left PJ and the quails in care of my mother and grandmother. When I left, I had three quails. When I got back, I had two. Lucky's mate had passed away mysteriously. To this day I don't know how she died; my grandma got all upset when I asked her. They're frail little things so who knows.
So I let Lucky by himself for a couple of days and eventually put him with Lilo, the female I had separated in with him, hoping it would help with his loss of a mate. Well, I guess the cage just isn't big enough for Lilo because she literally hen-pecked him bald headed within the span of a few days.
I've been told by experienced quail raisers that it's because the cage is too small for her. The cage is the minimum size requirement for three quails, not two, so for two it should be plenty of space, but animals are like people in that they all have their own individual tolerance levels for stress and preferences. It seems that it's big enough for the average quail, but not Lilo. Afraid that she would kill Lucky, I separated them again.
Well, this was super sad because frankly all they did was chatter at each other constantly. And the substitute cage is way too small for her. They've been apart for a couple of weeks, and I just tried putting them together again to see if things would go better this time around. I caught her pecking at him a little just now, so I don't know. :( Maybe they're just not compatible, or maybe I just need to get a bigger cage, but they cost a lot of money, so we'll see.
My dream is to eventually have a large indoor aviary, something like, say, this one, to keep the quails together down toward the bottom, and perhaps some pretty little zebra finches at the top, since they're compatible with quails, and unlike quails, they like to perch all day long. It'd be like a cool bird high-rise :)
I really hope I don't have to separate Lilo and Lucky again, though; that'd just be sad.
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Oct. 21, 2006 I'm Still Here!
Thank you Genevieve for checking in on us :D I'm still here! I've just been crazy busy this past month. I know that goes without saying and that everyone reading this will be all, "AREN'T WE ALL!" when they read that. But for about six weeks I had been dealing with some serious regression of my son's autism. I was too stressed out to do much with the blog, to be honest. Praise the Lord that his behavior has returned more or less to what it was a couple of months ago, and he hasn't had a severe tantrum/rage in several weeks. I am convinced it was diet-related. He just does so much better when I reduce his gluten intake, make him take chewable probiotics and digestive enzyme capsules, and eliminate dairy altogether.
This month I have also:
- Sought out and attained some excellent behavioral, occupational and speech therapy for my son
- Gotten emergency orthodontic surgery :( But it needed to be done.
- Gotten a CAR!
This last one is an AMAZING story. A woman at my church was just giving her car away. Seriously! It is very old and not too pretty and has a lot of miles. I do not expect to have it more than a year or so, if that. Still, it is a huge blessing to our family. And it's an SUV and in PJ's favorite color. =) It really is an answered prayer. Now I just have to get back into the practice of driving!
On the homeschooling front, I am increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the Switched On Schoolhouse curriculum. Perhaps it's because I'm just so in love with the ideas put forth in The Well Trained Mind, which focuses so much on history and literature. We are 11 weeks into the school year and I am considering changing out at least one, and possibly two, of the subjects. I really like the record-keeping aspect of the program, but I can't help but wonder if I am sacrificing too much depth and if the content isn't challenging enough. Grade level is not the problem - while much of it is a bit elementary for PJ, the next grade up doesn't look that much less cursory. Here is where we are at so far.
MATH
I very much like the content, scope and sequence of the math program. PJ is doing really well with that. Since he is dysgraphic, he enjoys the fact that he can type instead of write out the answers to the math questions. He is advancing at what I think is a very good pace and it does require that the student occasionally write things down by hand on "scratch paper." He is a bit careless when it comes to math and benefits from the immediate feedback of the program since he gets so many wrong due to carelessness. Last year when we did a traditional math program and I was always correcting him, he started getting irritated with me and started dreading math, but now he is really enjoying it and really getting a lot out of it. I will probably use SOS Math from here on out until at least high school.
BIBLE STUDIES
I like the Bible Studies program a whole lot. It teaches research and reference skills as well as presenting the topics in a personalized, accessible way. PJ enjoys it a lot. I wish there were more actual scripture reading required, but SOS is not big on making the child read real books (more on this complaint later). I dislike the fact that it is taught as just another school subject and graded accordingly. I am considering taking out the tests and quizzes for the remainder of the year, and just doing them as family devotionals together. As it stands right now, I would also like to continue using SOS for Bible studies next year in this manner.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Here's where it starts to get tricky. SOS does not have a literature component at all; about every four or five lessons it has a brief "reading comprehension" lesson that is neither related to anything else in the curriculum nor does it include any actual literature. It's usually just a paragraph-long story and PJ is asked to parrot back facts from it.
As a study in the fundamentals and mechanics of grammar, it is very good. I am pretty happy with that. However, it's not just a study on grammar. It is intended to be a complete approach to language arts. As such, they cram creative writing, reading comprehension, phonics, grammar and spelling lessons into the curriculum. I strongly dislike the way that they present the material in a really disconnected, non-sequential fashion. I am considering taking out all the reading comprehension exercises, and hacking the program a bit to make spelling and grammar two separate subjects, but that still wouldn't be much help. There is very little creative writing (though there has been some "write a paragraph story about this picture" style exercises and they were fun and well-structured. There is no penmanship at all, obviously, since it's done on a computer. But the most serious shortcoming is its total lack of a literature and reading program. They do not address poetry in any way, shape or form. They don't even offer suggestions.
As a result, I had to compile my own literature list for this year. PJ has read, on his own so far, My Teacher is An Alien (which, much to my surprise, he could not put down!) and The Story of King Arthur, the "illustrated adaptation" version (which he thought was interesting, but irrelevant). He has also gotten way into historical biographies and has so far read them about Albert Einstein ("Mom! He was HOMESCHOOLED!"), Thomas Edison, and Sacagawea. These were not on my list, but he's so into the biographies that I don't want to discourage him. Those were things he read of his own initiative! Read-aloud, we have read And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? and part of Farmer Boy. I say "part of" because, well, to be honest? We BOTH found that pretty dull. Later this year I'm going to give Little House in the Big Woods another shot, since that one is a bit livelier. We are now reading A Cricket in Times Square together (he reads some of it to me, I read some of it to him) and we are loving it so far.
For handwriting, we are using the teacher- and child-friendly program A Reason for Handwriting. This year we transition into cursive. We made it through halfway through the transition workbook last year because we progress very slowly because of PJ's fine motor skill delays. His handwriting has improved tenfold with the program and we both enjoy the fact that each week's exercise is based on a scripture verse. I'm going to continue with the Reason for... series next year for penmanship, which I only intend to do for two more years. After that, he can do everything on the computer and work on penmanship via correspondence to relatives, which I want to start incorporating too.
I will NOT be using SOS for Language Arts next year. Per The Well Trained Mind's recommendations, I will instead switch to the Rod and Staff 5th grade program instead. Sunday night I plan to heavily modify the SOS program and begin to incorporate dictation, poetry memorization and more reading/read-aloud, because, really, the content of the SOS program is pretty darn flimsy.
SCIENCE
This is where, IMHO, the SOS curriculum really starts to go belly-up. Much like a traditional school's approach, they just present a variety of subjects in no logical order, with no connection to one another, and to no great depth. The experiments are fun, I guess, and PJ did pick up a lot about the human body, but - well, last year I bought in advance all the resources I would need to teach PJ the Well Trained Mind's recommended scope and sequence for third grade chemistry, and I'm just giving up on the SOS science altogether. It's awful. Additionally, I am a Christian and welcome curriculum that incorporates mention of God's hand in creation, but I do not think that theology should comprise the majority of a science curriculum, and it does. Seriously. I think I'm going to eBay it.
HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY
This is the absolute WORST part of this curriculum. Calling it a history and geography course is, in my opinion, totally misleading and a complete misnomer. The third grade SOS program is really a United States social studies overview. Its mention of geography is incidental, such as the unit we just completed about specialized farms: the section on corn farming made brief mention of where corn is grown, and then spent four lessons talking about the process of corn farming. They might've mentioned that it used to be called "maize" by the Native Americans. Also, there are "suggested web sites" which are far above the average 8yo's ability and interest level which are suggested for "further history reading." I guess that's the "history" part. You can see the scope and sequence for the third grade program here. You can also see that the 4th and 5th grades aren't that much more comprehensive.
According to the schedule, we would be studying farms well past Thanksgiving. After we get done with specialized farms, we'll move on to animal farms. While interesting just for its own sake, I guess, it could not be more irrelevant to my goals of teaching my child about the story of human events and achievement, not to mention irrelevant to my family altogether. I live in Miami! We do not need to spend a month on soybean farms! My child has learned absolutely no history whatsoever in the last 3 months. I am very disappointed. It is a social studies overview and nothing more. That's going to eBay, too.
As for the rest of the year, I have The Story of the World, Vol 3 activity and text book just sitting there collecting dust on my bookshelf. I am dusting it off and starting that program on Monday. Ideally, I would like to make it through that book by the end of this school year, if not sooner. I have divided it up into 20 weeks, and there are 25 weeks left to the school year. Then I'd like to simply read through Vol 4 the last month of school and over the summer as a read-aloud thing. We won't be doing any math, science or anything else over the summer, so we'll just do The Story of the World, Vol 4 with some outside reading and some arts and crafts.
For next year, fifth grade, I would like to go completely Well Trained Mind
and start on the Ancients and do their four-year cycle twice, with an
emphasis on the Far East and taking a literature/ read-aloud list from
Sonlight.
IN GENERAL
My response to Switched on Schoolhouse ranges from satisfactory contentedness to outright contempt. The math program is the only one I would wholeheartedly recommend. Everything else, there are better and usually cheaper alternatives. The thing I dislike the most about the whole program is that, far from inspiring a love of satisfying one's curiosity, it really puts the child in the "get it done for the sake of finishing" frame of mind toward academics. I dislike having to sit next to PJ and do nothing while he works, but he is not yet able to work independently, so I can't leave him there while I attend to other things. Far from freeing my time up, it actually just serves to make me feel removed from my child's educational process. I need to get back to my Charlotte Mason/ Classical roots here and think about making some changes immediately before learning becomes a total and thoughtless chore.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
This year, we didn't incorporate a foreign language, nor did we buy SOS's Spanish curriculum because money was so tight. I'm not sure what use it would've been, really. We all already read, speak and write fluent Spanish, which we speak exclusively whenever possible, and when he wants some extra input on that, we just check out kids' books in Spanish from the library. So, since next year we will be focusing somewhat on the Far East with both history and literature, and we just learned that we are of Chinese heritage, my entire family has decided to learn Mandarin Chinese as a group project. My mother has agreed to purchase the (very expensive) complete homeschool set of Rosetta Stone's Mandarin program, which is apparently good enough for four to five years of study. All three of us will be learning Chinese together as a family. =) Neat, right? We are all soooo excited about that.
I am also considering starting him off very, very slowly on Latin. Haven't decided yet.
THE ARTS
PJ is progressing really well with his Kids' Guitar Course Vol 1. He has only had a few lessons and can already play a few chords and a couple of songs. We plan to finish it and go on to Vol. 2 and 3, which should take us through next year. Past that, and I'll start teaching him formal notation and scales and modalities and things like that. Now that we are starting The Story of the World, I am considering incorporating some relevant music appreciation from the three billion or so classical CDs I have. For art, we're just doing a weekly craft. Next year, I want to look into signing him up for some formal classes if I can afford it.
Anyway, that's where we are right now. Has anyone out there ever done this, just thrown out a curriculum in the middle of the year? Could you let me know how you managed it and if you thought it was worthwhile? I would really appreciate it.
Hope everyone is having a happy and blessed October so far!
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