Work Plans for the Week of February 17, 2014: Birds, Biathlons, and a Biography

Right now, it's 47 minutes past the time that I intended to start school for the day, but the kids are wildly romping together so happily--I believe that one of them is a dog trainer and the other is a disobedient dog--that there's no way I'm going to disturb them. One of the main reasons why I started homeschooling, after all, is that I realized one day, years ago, that even though my kids' Montessori boasted three-year classrooms, so that my kindergartner and my youngest grouper could go to school together every day, the next year would mean that not only would my older kid move up to SEVEN hours of school a day, but also my kids would be in separate classrooms for the next two years.

My six-year-old didn't need seven hours of school every day.

My six-year-old and four-year-old didn't need to spend the majority of every day apart from each other.

I pulled the kids out of private school and into homeschooling for many academic and social and political reasons, but I never let myself forget that among those reasons is the opportunity for these sisters to be together, and so when they're playing together (and miraculously not screaming at or kicking each other!), I let them play.

So here's what we WILL do when they're tired out and their game is through, or when they start screaming at or kicking each other, which is as good a time as any to pause play:

MONDAY: The kids and their father participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count yesterday, and had a marvelous time, so for today they'll be filling out one of these journal pages for a more in-depth study of one of the birds that they spotted. We haven't studied birds (other than chickens, of course!) in a lot of detail yet, so I'm curious to see if the kids would like to learn more. Bird watching is such a rewarding hobby that I'd be happy to see the kids develop a love of it.

The kiddos are still progressing at a rate of one unit a day, three days a week, in Math Mammoth, but I noticed this weekend that Syd seemed to have trouble remembering how to subtract with borrowing, so we'll be playing Clear the Mat for our hands-on math enrichment activity this week. Syd loves to play games over and over and over again, so I foresee plenty of reinforcement in her future!

Will's reluctance to learn her current song prompted me to ask her if she'd lost interest in the recorder, but her replies that she LOOOOOVES the recorder were loud and fervent, so perhaps that will inspire her to finally get that darn song learned! Syd really loves her Youtube keyboard lessons, so much so that figuring out how to progress after they're finished is a constant worry. A piano plus piano lessons is too much of an investment for our budget this year (dinosaur digs and horseback riding lessons are pricey, alas...), so I'll need to figure out a way to soldier on without. Unfortunately, Matt, who is the only one of us who actually took piano lessons as a child, is claiming 100% ignorance and refusing to be of any help whatsoever (Thanks, Matt!), so you may find me teaching myself keyboard so that I can teach my kid. Don't worry, though--I do stuff like that a lot.

The kids are bringing their chicken skeleton into our weekly volunteer gig today, because they're pretty sure that everyone who stops by is really going to want to see it. Will plans to station herself next to the skeleton on display so that she can answer all those eager questions that are sure to come her way. We even did some role-playing, with me playing the curious person asking questions, and Will answering them in her best pedantic tone (She used to come with me sometimes to my classes when I taught freshman comp at the university, and I REALLY hope that she did not pick up that tone from me!). How I hope that someone is genuinely interested and wants to ask her questions!

TUESDAY: We're back to our volunteer gig on this day, since the girls have an actual "meeting" about their Girl Scout service project. I can't wait to see how this is going to go.

We've been casually enjoying the Olympics, mostly watching it streaming online as we go about our daily business, but the Olympic athlete profile and Olympic nation profile in this Olympics unit study will let the kids focus in on it academically one more time before it's over. There's so much curriculum material available that you really could study nothing but the Olympics for the entire two weeks, but I tried to zero in on the activities that required the kids to practice the concrete academic skills that I'm wanting them to practice right now (here, research methods!), and otherwise we're just spectators.

There are a few children's academic contests going on this time of year. Some, such as a local playwriting contest and a poster-making contest, I passed over for this year (although I did start researching and writing a History of the Theater unit study...), but others, such as a local contest asking for a biography of an African-American inventor, and the PBS Kids writer's contest, I'm definitely going to have them enter. Academic research and creative writing? You bet!

WEDNESDAY: I'm a little afraid, especially with that meeting in the morning, that there might be too much work scheduled for Tuesday, so I'm planning that we can finish any leftovers on Wednesday, along with horseback riding class and aerial silks. Otherwise, there's plenty of time for playing dog trainer and disobedient dog!

THURSDAY: I think the kids will be pleased to discover, on the other hand, that this day is light even for a light day! They're going to enjoy their endangered species art project (part of another contest), which will also segue nicely into the beginning of our study of Indiana, since the endangered animal must be local. I wish, now, though, that I'd put this project off for a couple of weeks--I deleted the kids' independent studies from the schedule to accommodate it, but Syd and I actually really need to keep working on her fashion show garment! This is the last week that we can keep goofing around with thrift stores, and then we have GOT to get sewing, whether Syd finds the perfect green sequined fabric or not.

FRIDAY: We've studied Indiana before, but we're going to refresh our memories about our home state, and add some more context (state history, probably, and definitely Native Americans) before we move on to Arkansas and then the west.

We mostly listen to podcasts just for fun, but since Syd often asks to listen to fairy tales or audiobooks while we work on projects, I finally got the idea to pull up a relevant podcast for us to listen to while we work on a  project. The particular podcast that we'll be listening to while the kids make Sumerian seals (we saw some of these at the Rosicrucian Museum, and I am excited to have the kids try their hands at making their own) is from What You Missed in History Class. It only mentions necrophilia obliquely.

I think the kids will enjoy this winter sports sudoku, and they're eager to write to their grandmother, if perhaps only because they want her to send them more film for the cameras that she gave them for Christmas.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: This weekend is going to be a busy one! There's a Girl Scout event each day, and Will has both chess club and rehearsal for her Spring Ice Show. But IF the weather warms up like it's supposed to, it should be a wonderful weekend for shuttling kids around and otherwise playing outside in the sun!

Homeschool Geography: Montessori Pin Flag Map of the Olympic Nations

Our Olympics unit study has been a huge hit with the kids, and has led to so many enriching academic experiences so far, from looking up historical footage of Olympic games on Youtube, to Will choosing to research Iran and North Korea after listening to comments that Matt and I made about them during the Olympics Opening Ceremonies, to watching live coverage of all kinds of sports the kids had never before seen.

One of the most rewarding activities so far, and one of the most enjoyable for Will, especially, to complete, has been this Montessori pin flag map that I set up for the 2014 Winter Olympic nations:

The materials for this activity are, in my cheapskate opinion, pricey, but you can re-use these pin flags and maps over the entire course of your children's educations--we've already used them enough to make them money well-spent.

For the pin flags, I culled the appropriate flags from my complete collection of Montessori pin flags. When the flat-headed sewing pins got too expensive, I switched to using steel-head pins, instead. These are less desireable, because they're more difficult for the children to push into the cork or foam board, but they're easily replaced, and it's good for developing grace and focus (not to mention strengthening those handwriting muscles, something that Will, in particular, can always benefit from).

I also now use a different storage system than I planned for in that post, but I'll go on and on about that another time.

The map keys are another resource from Montessori Print Shop. I have them laminated, with the labeled map on one side and the blank map on the other, and keep them with our set of Montessori puzzle maps.

The multi-page world map is a print-out from Megamaps--I use them ALL the freakin' time (our US map in the kitchen is also a Megamaps print-out). I printed the world map in a two-by-two page format--although bigger would be better (you'll see, in a minute, how crowded Europe inevitably is, sigh), this is the largest size that fits the big piece of foamcore board that we use, now, instead of corkboard for these maps.

I was surprised that Syd wasn't more interested in this project, since she's usually our biggest puzzle lover, but Will ADORED placing these pin flags. Seriously, she loved it. She had to be manhandled away from it when we absolutely needed her attention elsewhere. Mind you, at least for a nine-year-old, this is not a project that can be completed by the kid while you're in another room, happily minding your own business, and for that, it's not very "Montessori," but since Will isn't in a three-year classroom with a 12-year-old to help her, I played reference librarian and helped her with the research, usually giving her the continent where a particular country could be found, but also looking up anything that she was curious about. We looked up a LOT of pronunciations! We also did a lot of looking up of places on Google Earth so Will could see them in real life (I am a big proponent of having Google Earth in one hand anytime you have a paper map in the other), and plenty of talking about country borders, the Soviet Union, what happened to Hong Kong and Taiwan, and how politics works in India and Russia.

Heady stuff! My nerd heart was practically bursting with happiness.

Will spread this pin flag map work out over several days, coming back to it and focusing in for a while, abandoning it, but then being inexorably drawn back to it a little later:

Often, while watching the Olympics, a kid would recognize a flag that had been placed and go fetch it.

This pin flag map was clearly such fun to put together that I have to say that it's just bonus points that the result is so gorgeous:

We'll leave the completed map out until the Olympics Closing Ceremonies so that the kids can refer to it as needed, but then I'll spend a tedious couple of hours putting the flags back into place in their storage binder, untape the map from the foamcore board and store it back behind the bookshelf, and that's everything ready for another day!

Although perhaps I should prepare another pin flag map invitation for Will right away, since she liked this one so much. A US pin flag map *would* fit in nicely with our geography studies...

Work Plans for the Week of January 13, 2014: So Much Science!

MONDAY: Our homeschool Science Fair is in three weeks, so it is time to get cracking! Ideally, I'd like the kids to get most of their research done this week (hence all the research and reports on the work plans), and their big project done next week, leaving that last week for them to have plenty of time to finish up their work and prepare their oral presentation and display board.

So science will be a big part of three days this week--fortunately, our other work for today is fairly cut-and-dry. The kids LOVED Roll 'n Multiply (and don't tell them, but I *may* let them play it for their multiplication table memory work this week, instead of the plain old tedious study that I made them do last week), Will once again balked at learning one more new line in "It's Raining, It's Pouring" but found it simple to do once she focused (when she begins to have the self-awareness to realize this pattern and cease it, I swear I will buy her a present!), and we are all eagerly anticipating heading back to our weekly volunteer gig in an hour or so, after our long holiday hiatus (as was exclaimed over breakfast this morning, "We haven't been to the Hub since LAST YEAR!!!).

TUESDAY: For their Science Fair project, the kids need to research paleontology, the skeletal system, and chicken anatomy, so on this day they're going to use our human skeleton model kit to create a plaster of Paris model of the human skeleton, glue it to a cardboard base, then use paint or embroidery thread--we'll see what they prefer--to key its bones to the identical bones on a diagram of a chicken skeleton. Both humans and chickens have mandibles, and femurs, and clavicles, etc.

That big project, plus a continuation of the work for the Girl Scout World Thinking Day badge (Will still needs to research another country's educational system, Syd still needs to watch a couple of international Sesame Street episodes and compare them to the US version, and they both need to begin their big service project), should intersperse nicely with the book work that they've got for math, grammar, and logic, leading to a pretty nice, if full, school day.

WEDNESDAY: Finally, we're horseback riding again! The kids are so excited to get back on their horses. I'm sure Cody and Lola have missed them terribly, too!

THURSDAY: We're going to move ahead to the next chapter of The Story of the World next week (mental note to ME to request library books and get the prep work done for that!), so we're working on the last two mummy and pyramids projects that I wanted us to complete first. For this day, there are SO many great interactive games about Ancient Egypt online, and the kids are going to think it's a real treat to get to explore them all for school. On the next day, they're going to transform Mason jars into canopic jars--I'm really eager to see how that project turns out!

Last week, Will loved using Scratch to play Spacewar, and spent more time goofing around on Scratch afterwards, even finding some games based on some of her favorite books (she's a big fangirl over the Warriors series, just so you know). She mentioned that she might like to try programming something of her own, but then never got around to it, so I put it on her schoolwork as encouragement. Syd also had a blast planning her fashion show design last week, and claims that she's going to sew it completely by herself this year (YES!!!), so I may have her sew a muslin of a shirt pattern that I think will be easy enough for her to use. Of course, I thought I had a pants pattern that was easy enough for her to use, but I sewed the muslin for her myself, and she didn't care for the style, so it's back to research for me! Maybe if she has to sew her own muslins she won't be so picky...

As a side note, Syd plans to use the following types of fabric for her garment:

• orange jersey knit--We're talking orange T-shirts here, or orange graphics on T-shirts, or even orange notions to embellish the garment.
• green formal fabric with sequins--Wish me major luck here, because who on earth would have a formal gown made out of green sequined fabric?!?
• green bottomweight--I'm tacking this one on myself, because I plan to STRONGLY encourage Syd to piece the inner thigh portion of the green sequined pants that she's planning on making with a regular green bottomweight fabric. I mean, walking the runway with sequins between your thighs--can you imagine?

So if you have any orange T-shirts, green curtains, or green sequined prom gowns that you're dying to get rid of, send them over to our house! 

FRIDAY: This may end up being more work than we can do on this day--I'm still playing with how to incorporate the kids' math class into their schedule--but if everyone can get focused, we *should* be able to create lapbooks based on G is for Golden: A California Alphabet (I LOVE the Discover America State-by-State series, as well as the lesson plans that go with the books), sculpt canopic jars, make some progress on the World Thinking Day badges, and write a report on chickens, chicken anatomy, and the life cycle of the chicken. I'm curious to see how these reports go, actually--I'm going to ask the kiddos to collaborate on each of their reports this week, instead of writing two separate reports. Will they realize that this makes the project much quicker and easier to complete, or will they fight the whole time and make it take ten times longer?

We'll see!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY/MONDAY: Here's to another holiday, another long weekend, and another short work week to come! I'm pretty excited that we have NOTHING scheduled for Saturday or Sunday; I hope the weather will allow us to take a long hike or go mountain biking. On Monday, I'll be doing our regular volunteer gig by myself while Matt takes the girls and some friends to a different volunteer gig with the Girl Scouts.

Also in the plans: yeah, they'll probably be boiling down a whole chicken carcass, bleaching the bones, and then beginning to re-articulate the skeleton.

Yay, science!

California Field Trip #5: California State Capitol Building

Well, we're driving right through Sacramento, so we might as well stop and see the capitol building!

Of COURSE there's a redwood growing on the capitol grounds!

Such a balmy capitol building--the Indy one is covered in a foot of snow right now!

Sure, it was just a short field trip--more of a detour, really--but now the kids have a memory to go with their answer to "What is the capital of California?"

P.S. Here's an interactive kids' web site for the capitol building, to add even more context.

California Field Trip #1: Mission Santa Clara

I have many opinions about the California missions, and it's definitely one concrete case of the victors writing the history books, but nevertheless, missions are a notable feature of the state of California, and so explore one, we did:

Will and I talked about the generalities of missionaries, religious faith and superstition, the destruction and conversion of native peoples, etc., without going into the sordid details of the public floggings, work crews, mule stealing (and eating!), and a priest/prophet that typify the history of the Mission Santa Clara de Asis, but we also all took the time to explore, absorb, and study the architecture and design of the building and grounds:

Look, a reliquary and relic! As a former medieval scholar, I had MUCH to say about this, as well.

 

hole in the wall

 

This visit turned out to have been quite a successful one when, the next day, as we were driving around town, Will pointed out the window at a school (Matt's former high school, I do believe) and declared, "Hey! That looks like the mission!"

Yep, mission-style. We got it down.

P.S. Here are some of the resources on the California missions and Catholic saints that we've been using:


Saints and Angels offers an interesting tangent to the mission study, since the saints that the missions are named after have fascinating (and often fascinatingly gruesome!) stories of their own. Life in a California Mission is as close to a children's living history as I could get--it discusses the daily life of the people involved, at least. And The Birth of a State: California Missions DOES include the very problematic conversion activities of the missionaries, but in matter-of-fact, declarative sentences that make it a little easier to stomach.

To-do in California

We have a ton of things to get done BEFORE our Thanksgiving trip to California. We need to fix up the chicken yard, and set it all up to make it easy for our chicken sitter to manage while we're gone. We need to pack all our stuff into backpacks so we don't have to pay to check a bag on the plane. Will needs to finish memorizing "The Gettysburg Address," since she wants to recite it for Matt's family's talent show the night of Thanksgiving (...don't ask). We need to request the tons of digital library books that will keep Will's and my heads from exploding during the trip, and figure out the complicated system of who gets to read them/listen to audiobooks/watch movies/play games on the ipad/ipods/laptop without an epic battle for dominance. I need to go shopping for black jeans and a hoodie without a logo on it--the essentials, you know.

My to-do list FOR California is even longer, but fortunately the stuff to get done is much more appealing. Museums to visit. Tidepools to explore. Sourdough to eat.

The essentials, you know.

1. Golden Gate Bridge: Matt's driven me across this bridge several times in his dad's convertible with the top down, and only once did he almost get us killed on the turnaround just past it, the one with the one-way tunnel that you're NOT supposed to drive down when the light is red, Matt! One day, probably not on this trip, I want to walk across it, but for this trip, I'd just like the girls to see it again. The best spot to see the bridge without crossing it is from Crissy Field.
2. San Francisco Zoo: All the years we've spent visiting San Francisco, and I can't believe that we've never been to the zoo! If the weather's nice it'll be a nice outdoor activity, and a wonderful addition to our Year of Zoos. The zoo is also near another of our favorite beaches, Ocean Beach--got to get those beach visits in when you can!
3. Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum: It's not related to our California study, but it is VERY relevant to our Ancient Egypt study! We've been very fortunate to be able to travel to several museums that have excellent Ancient Egypt artifacts over the past couple of years, but this collection will be by far the most superior.
4. Pebble Beach: Formally known as Bean Hollow State Beach, this beach is the girls' favorite place on earth. It's a bit of a drive from Matt's parents house, so we weren't able to go last year, but the girls began their campaign to get us there this year weeks ago.
5. Pacific Pinball Museum: An entire museum of vintage pinball machines, all on free play?!? And we're actually STUDYING pinball machines right now!
6. House of Air: An indoor trampoline park isn't *exactly* a California-centric must-do, but doesn't it sound super freakin' fun?!? AND it's within walking distance from Crissy Field!
7. Charles M. Schultz Museum: Both girls love comics and comic strips, and they LOVE Peanuts. I think they would probably happily go here and read every single comic strip in every single exhibit in this entire museum.
8. The Tech Museum: We went to the Tech last year, and three of us loved it! It made for a good Thanksgiving eve trip, in between airport runs and while the rest of the family was baking pies.
9. The Randall Museum: It's not really a must-do, but our ASTC Passport membership through our local hands-on science museum does get us free admission there, and I like to make use of THAT particular benefit whenever I can!
10. Lawrence Hall of Science: Another ASTC Passport participant! And it's in Berkeley, where I enjoy tooling around, anyway.
11. Happy Hollow Park and Zoo: And ANOTHER ASTC Passport participant! We've visited this park once when the girls were toddlers, and I was really impressed that they have a capybara.
12. California Missions: I thought about taking the girls to a mission as part of our California study, but unless we happen right past one on our adventures, I'll probably wait until they're older. The gift shops attached to the missions are good places to buy Christmas presents for my Catholic relatives.
13. Winchester Mystery House: I think Will, especially, would LOVE this tour, but it's another place that can wait until they're older.

And yes, that is WAY more than one family can do in one week, much less one week with Thanksgiving smack in the middle. 

The first five, though? We'll give it our best shot...

Work Plans for the Week of November 18

It's the last full week of schoolwork before Thanksgiving vacation!
MONDAY: For a change, after Project Week and just before our Thanksgiving vacation, we don't have a bookshelf bursting with library materials, so I had to think for a bit before assigning reading enrichment. Eventually, I settled on some realistic fiction for Will to read and write about (she normally chooses fantasy), and an early reading Mad Libs activity for Syd. I am already looking forward to getting rid of all of our early reading/phonics materials--I doubt we'll still need them by Spring!

Pattern blocks are still a hit--the girls are actually doing their pattern block activity right now, as we sit at the table together after dinner, since they preferred to play this afternoon after our volunteer gig instead of settling back down with schoolwork--and we're still all tooling along with Latin, and Will with the recorder. Syd's got the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner" down, but not the melody (JEESH, not the melody!), so I gave her a research project for this week's music, and we'll keep practicing the song for this week's memory work.

TUESDAY: This week's chemistry involves long-handled matches! The girls are already SUPER excited. Their math packets are taken from Math Mammoth--Will gets the cumulative reviews, and then a unit if she doesn't do well on the review, but Syd just gets a unit a day. Pretests for her are disastrous, because she hates being wrong more than anything else.

Syd and I are still doing First Language Lessons, but both girls are also memorizing the parts of speech, and we're going to do something different for grammar after Christmas. If I have to keep using the first two volumes of First Languages Lessons until we're done, I think my brain will die.

And yes, we ARE finally going to carve our pumpkins! Just, you know, for Thanksgiving, not Christmas.

WEDNESDAY: I am already looking forward to this free day, as I have some huge etsy orders to make. Gotta earn Christmas money, doncha know!

THURSDAY: I might rearrange Thursdays for a few weeks by shifting one of its assignments to Tuesday, since Tuesday horseback riding ends this week and won't resume until January. Our Thursdays are pretty light, but still overscheduled--sometimes we meet up with one of our homeschool groups, sometimes we go ice skating with them, and this week we're going bowling with them after a lunchtime playdate with another family. It's hard to work the formal learning into such a fun day!

Until then, however, Thursday means math, and grammar, and our next lesson in Drawing with Children, and the girls' special subjects--Syd is making more raisin bread, lord help us, and Will is researching and then playing with pendulums. I'm really excited about that last activity, because there are a lot of cool activities that you can do with pendulums, but some of them--the paint, the sand, etc.--may need to wait until next Spring.

FRIDAY: We're going to combine our study of math with our study of ancient history here, by reading about and then constructing geometric solids. I've had these Zome tools for almost a year now, and although we've done some cool projects with them, I'm going to make it my business to really learn this material and find more ways to incorporate it into our work.

A couple of Friday's assignments are secretly prep work for our big California trip next week. I'm going to show the girls how to make a scrap paper travel journal with pockets in it, and then making writing in it daily one of their work assignments during our trip, and we're going to start with the big facts about California, record them on our big kitchen map and start memorizing them, so that we can make a larger study of California when we return.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: There are a couple of fun activities on the schedule--chess club for Will, and the new Doctor Who episode for me--but mostly I'm going to be working my young ones all weekend. We're trying to avoid checking a bag on this flight so that we can save the checked bag fee (I'd rather have $40 in my pocket than a full week's wardrobe in California!), so there will be plenty of VERY careful packing, some house cleaning, chicken yard winterizing, chicken sitter briefing, maybe a little clothes shopping, etc.

And then we fly!

Story of the World Map Work

I feel like we have to listen to each chapter of Story of the World a few times before everyone has really mastered all of the information. One of the many nice things about our audio version of Story of the World is that this repetition is painless--simply find some busywork, press play, and have a seat! Usually the busywork consists of coloring pages related to the chapter; these have the added benefit of encouraging even more content mastery later, since the girls usually show Matt their pictures later, and he'll ask them questions about it. For instance, this morning we got to tell him the story of Set and Osiris and the coffin, as he admired a picture that Syd had colored of a scene from that story.

So usually each Story of the World chapter goes like this:

• WEEK ONE: Listen to the chapter (and a couple of later ones) as the girls color, then introduce the quiz questions. I copy these onto index cards and they become part of our history memory work forever.
• WEEK TWO: Listen to the chapter as the girls color, then do the chapter's map work.
• WEEK THREE: Listen to the chapter as the girls color, then add in the new timeline cards. These timeline card are switched off and on with the quiz questions for history memory work.
• WEEKS FOUR UNTIL WE MOVE ON: Watch a documentary or read a non-fiction or living history book, then do a hands-on enrichment activity centered on the chapter's content.

This past week, it was map work day for our chapter, so the girls colored, and then we got out the Prismacolors, photocopied the map, pulled up Google Earth on the computer, found the globe, and got to work!

I like to arrange Google Earth so that what you see on the screen is almost exactly what the paper map shows, and then when we discuss the placement of various items on the paper map, I can zoom Google Earth in to look at the real item, such as the Sphinx or the Nile Delta or the mountains of Upper Egypt, close-up.

I also like context, and a lot of it, so much of our conversation goes like, "The geographic area of Sumer is called Iraq now. Iraq was who the US fought against in the Persian Gulf War. Right, there's the Persian Gulf! Your Uncle Dickie fought in that war. He worked with these crazy-looking planes called AWACs. Want to see what they looked like?" etc., etc.

Also good for context? A great big globe!

There are some more involved map projects that we also like, and that we've done already for Egypt--the salt dough maps of Egypt turned out great, but NOTHING beats a cookie map!

I might actually consider doing that cookie map again, because we last did it a while ago, but yesterday we JUST made cake clocks.

There's only so much deliciousness that one school week can handle!

Work Plans for the Week of October 28, 2013

Our break was good for mind and soul, but I'm also very happy to be back in business. We've got so many exciting things to learn and do and see and explore!

Here are Syd's work plans for the week.
Here are Will's work plans for the week.

MONDAY: I'm trying out a new method of getting the memory work practiced regularly. It's a learning curve, though, since Will and Syd both found the concept of checking off the correct assignment on the correct day on this chart absolutely baffling at first. It's funny what random things kids don't know!

I'm trying to strike a balance between hands-on math and computation skills, so both girls are testing out a different pattern blocks skills book today (I didn't like the one we tested the other week, sigh). I'm also trying to incorporate more living books and movies into our days, since the girls always seem to remember that content so well, so I'm adding that to subjects throughout the week whenever it seems relevant. I've been downloading videos from Discovery Education Streaming and creating themed DVDs for various units--the recorder, Ancient Egypt, our 50 states study, etc.--and this makes having the kids access those videos a LOT more handy!

You might notice that Syd no longer has Reading as a daily subject! She's at about a Level 2 reader, so instead of making it a curriculum subject, I'm including in her other daily subjects something that she can read to me, and something that I can read to her.

In Latin we've moved on to commands, and in music Will is still reviewing some of her recorder songs that she forgot over our hiatus from the instrument, while I'm trying out having Syd, who has no interest in learning an instrument but who does enjoy singing, learn and practice a song this week.

TUESDAY: Over the weekend, we went to the Physics, Geology, and Chemistry open houses on campus--always a BIG hit!!!--and so I wasn't super surprised when Will said that she'd rather study chemistry now than continue with human biology. We hadn't gone far into human biology, fortunately, and have finished our animal biology unit, AND own a really nice chemistry set that comes with a series of graduated experiments and demonstrations, so I'm actually pretty excited to make the shift. It will release me from a TON of prep work, too!

I've still got Craft as a subject for Tuesdays, since it's great for fine motor and problem solving skills, and although Syd's pretty crafty in her free time, Will rarely chooses such activities. I've still got Will doing some grammar, too--although my long-term plan is to put her into the third level of First Language Lessons with Syd later this year, Will already has such an excellent inherent grasp of English grammar that it's easy for her to memorize parts of speech.

We have to remember to bring gloves to horseback riding this week. It's getting cold!!!

WEDNESDAY: I've given up on "fun school," keeping just memory work and the math packet in what's otherwise a free day. We've gotten out of the habit of doing big day trips during the week, but aerial silks, our usual Wednesday activity, is actually easy to shift to another day, so there might be a field trip renaissance in our future. First up: the girls are making noise about visiting the Children's Museum of Indianapolis' Haunted House. Do we dare?

THURSDAY: Yes, I really did schedule a full day's work on Halloween. What was I thinking? Actually, it may storm on Halloween, so it's a good thing that we did all those trick-or-treating events and parties all weekend, even though they made me miserable. Otherwise, the girls are continuing their special units, with Syd making more raisin bread (I'm trying to choose recipes that she can potentially memorize, and definitely master) and Will working more on a real-live working pinball game. I bought a clock kit, and I'm really excited to set them up with the supplies to make their own clock--you can't not know how to tell time after doing THAT!--and there will also be our homeschool group's play group, perhaps ice skating with friends, perhaps dinner with friends, perhaps trick-or-treating with friends...

It can't REALLY storm on Halloween, right?!?

FRIDAY: Math with Math Mammoth is still going great. Will's still zipping through the cumulative reviews, stopping occasionally to complete the odd unit, but Syd's found a good place to settle midway through the second grade level. She's still moving very quickly, though, so I won't be surprised if she eventually reaches the point where she can't complete a unit a day.

Scrapbooking our summer vacation is also a BIG hit. I'll share the girls' scrapbooks with you some other time, but they're having a ball gluing down photos and souvenirs and writing captions, and the scrapbooks are going to be lovely mementos for them when they're done. I'm curious to see if the papyrus paintings that we'll be doing for history will also turn out cute--it's the last project before we move on to the mummy chapter!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Oh, let's see... There's our university's homecoming parade. Evening activities at our local hands-on science museum. Read to a Dog at the library. A hockey skills workshop. Some work that needs to be done on the chicken coop. Maybe mountain biking?

I think we'll stay busy!

Work Plans for the Week of October 7, 2013

It's a miscellaneous project week!


MONDAY: Our homeschool group's Biography Fair is next week, and although both girls have been conducting a lot of research work into their subjects (Harry Potter for Syd, and Jules Verne for Will), it's time to get their butts in gear and get their displays and presentations set up, so we're going to be working on that every day this week. We're also going to be doing the suggested Drawing With Children warm-up exercises every day, in lieu of a lesson this week--I thought it might be nice to get some extra practice in before we moved on. And we are definitely, DEFINITELY finishing our Latin review this week! Even the kids are ready to move on, and they don't tend to be enthusiastic about Latin, so that's saying a lot.

TUESDAY: Will has been putting off memorizing the last two sentences of "The Gettysburg Address," but that is going to happen this week. She's also *finally* working daily on memorizing the multiplication table, which I am no longer treating as a mathematical concept, but just a memory work. I feel bad about giving them SO much pencil-and-paper math work for the past month, but have I mentioned that our bathroom contractor is the slowest-working human on the planet? He is still not done, for Pete's sake, and I don't want to set up any super-involved, heavy-thinking, at-home mathy projects until he's done. At least the kids are zipping through the lower grades of Math Mammoth, zooming in to master the odd topic that we haven't covered (details of time-telling and change-making, mostly), and then zipping off again. Hopefully, the other Tuesday works won't take much time, and we can spend most of our school day finishing up the girls' animal biology portfolios; the emphasis has been off of them for a while, since we did most of our major work with them over the summer, and I'm worried that if we don't just buckle down and get them done, they'll stay 90% complete forever. There are also a few random educational library materials that are due, so I turned those into a checklist to get the girls at least looking through those materials and seeing if they want to explore anything further.

WEDNESDAY: No field trip, no Magic Tree House club, no LEGO club today! The kiddos got to explore their "fun school" assignments finally last week, and LOVED them, and each at some point last week (Syd before Will, but Will eventually) buckled down specifically to finish all their responsibilities, and then each commented on how great that felt, so hopefully this week will have even less fuss about keeping up and catching up.

THURSDAY: I'm trying not to let the girls' special projects fall by the wayside even with this bathroom remodeling nonsense going on, so Syd and I are going to get her meringue cookie recipe written up and illustrated for her cookbook, and Will and I are going to get a more sophisticated PLINKO game created, or possibly start work on our DIY pinball game. The girls are also going to try out a set of pattern block extensions that I checked out from the IU School of Education Library, just for fun, while I examine it to see if there are good extensions that I can use with future concepts. Since we sometimes spend four or five hours at our homeschool playgroup on Thursdays, I try to make the majority of our schoolwork fun, project-based stuff on that day, so that it's not a chore if we need to make it up on the weekend.

FRIDAY: Finally, we're back on geography! I'd like the girls to scrapbook (with lots of informative captions, mwa-ha-ha!) our summer vacation to Pennsylvania and Connecticut as part of our study of those states, to be bound with the lapbooks and reports and state fact coloring pages that we've also been working on, so it will take longer to get through these states than it will the ones that we have no future prospect of visiting, but think of how much more we'll all know! On the other hand, I'm actually starting to doubt if I want to undertake a great composer study right now--I may want to concentrate on have the kids learning an instrument or two, first--so I may just have the girls explore the library materials that we already have on the composers, and then focus Will back in on the recorder next week. We're also starting the season in which I like to have the girls do holiday crafts as part of school (Problem-solving! Fine motor skills! Practical Life!), so I'm not going to cry about temporarily dropping a subject.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We STILL haven't made it to the apple orchard, and we're not going to go this weekend! The girls have their first horse show on Saturday, after their Saturday Science class, and there's a family-friendly something-or-other at the IU Art Museum on Sunday afternoon that we'll hopefully bike over to. Other than that, there are no plans: Matt's at a conference for several days around then, so keeping all children/chickens/cats fed and watered and not too wild will be the main focus of the experience.

Next week is crazy again--doctors and dentists and library programs and the Biography Fair!

Adventures in Letterboxing

I understand that geocaching is the big thing now, but my kiddos and I are pretty old-school.

We like letterboxing.

It's like searching for pirate's treasure, this following of clues to find the letterbox cache. And it's really kid-friendly! The girls each have their own hand-carved stamp--

Willow's stamp

Syd's stamp

 --and once I get them to the correct starting location, they can follow all the clues independently.

Of course, since letterboxing is old and somewhat out of style by now, not all the letterboxes are current. The girls were REALLY disappointed, for instance, when the letterbox for The Bridge behind the Child simply wasn't there anymore, and they kept coming back to the spot over and over, searching again and again just in case they'd missed it the last time. Fortunately, all our local letterboxes are in pretty great spots, and often in places where we've never been before, so even though they didn't get to find a letterbox here, they did get to stalk deer--

This is Willow, stalking a deer.

--and do some creek stomping--

--and play on a playground:

It's even more exciting, though, when the letterbox pans out, and after following all the clues and a bit of searching--

--you find one!

You have to carry your own ink pad for the stamps, and a pen or pencil to write the date and a short message in the logbook:

The girls stamp the letterbox's stamp into their nature journals, and add a few sentences about the adventure while I look through the logbook and check out everyone else's stamps--

the founder of this letterbox

--and then we sneakily hide the letterbox again in the same spot, and surreptitiously make our way back to the well-trodden path.

I considered letterboxing on our recent road trip, but a friend who also tends to take long road trips said that she and her kids used to geocache on their trips, and it turned into a huge time suck for them--they'd think they were stopping for fifteen minutes to check out a quick geocache, but then that would turn into forty minutes, and then there'd be another cool-looking geocache just right near by that they might as well check out since they were in the area, and all of a sudden that fifteen-minute break to stretch their legs while finding a geocache had turned into half the day, and there was no way they were making it to their camping site that night.

That sounds SO like something that I would do, especially considering that one of our fifteen-minute local letterboxes can easily take half the day, what with climbing trees, following interesting-looking ants, playing on a strange playground, eating a snack on the grass, drawing dragons in the nature journals, grubbing in the dirt, etc.

That's a productive day for a couple of homeschooling kids, but a letterboxing road trip is probably out of the question.

For now...