Work Plans for the Week of March 10, 2014: Sydney School

Just as we finally hashed out in our Family Meeting on Sunday, this week I only wrote lesson plans for Syd. Will has a math packet with a full five days of math, and she is welcome to join in with whatever lessons Syd and I are doing, but otherwise she has no requirements beyond our everyday outside activities and chores.

Will has always regularly protested her schoolwork, no matter how much I change my methods to suit her. And considering that this is a kid who reads nearly constantly, who watches documentaries for fun, who, for computer time, usually chooses something from my Educational Links page, and who is a precocious, quick learner, I'm willing to try out letting her manage her own education, to an extent. Syd, on the other hand, has no limit to her capacity for soaking in my attention, and thrives with my lessons and hands-on activities.

If this week is a success, I would like to put a little more structure into Will's studies, such as giving her book lists on specific subjects, having her write summaries of the books that she reads, guiding her to regularly write those research reports that I'm so fond of, and to complete the odd project. I also expect her to join in with most of the lessons that I do with Syd, knowing that quite a bit of her pig-headedness Independent Thinker with Leadership Potential-ness has to do with her automatic rejection of anything that anyone in authority would like her to do, and being invited and welcomed is a whole different animal from being required.

So with that preface, here's what Syd and I (and sometimes Will) are up to this week:

MONDAY: This is Birthday Week for the Girl Scouts, with Wednesday marking the organization's 102nd anniversary. Every day includes a special activity that a girl can complete in order to earn the Birthday Week patch. In our council, most of these activities this year focus on computers and animation--an odd focus, if you ask me, but we've got to sneak in those STEM skills, I guess! Yesterday, both Syd and Will worked for over an hour on that day's activity, that of creating a Google Doodle for the Doodle4Google contest. I can't help but add that Will was focused on her work and thoughtful with her design, simply after being invited to work with me and Syd. If I'd required it, there's the strong chance that she would have thrown a fit, then put in the minimum amount of effort required to meet my most minimal standards.

Syd worked on her keyboard lessons, we spent a furiously busy two hours at our weekly volunteer gig (some of the other volunteers didn't show up, so I was run off my feet--yay for good healthy activity!), there was a multiplication game and a Latin unit, and just like that, fuss-free, the kids were able to spend the rest of the day in play, and the day was actually nice enough that we could all head to the park after dinner, the kids to run around like maniacs (the wall that partly fell on Will yesterday, crushing her thumb, was now completely fallen down. I felt sick when I saw it, and wished that I'd had Matt pull it down in the first place; it could DEFINITELY have killed a kid) and Matt and I to unashamedly play bad basketball on the courts.

TUESDAY: We're eating apple pie oatmeal and leftover quiche right now, listening to "Morning Edition" while Will plays Minecraft on the computer, but in exactly three minutes, Syd and I are going to work through her Math Mammoth packet, read Pippi Longstocking out loud together, complete her next grammar unit, and get ready for a season full of bird watching (I plan to use my salary from last month for Indiana and US guidebooks for plants and animals--we're going to be naturalists this year!). I bet the kids will get into a big fight while learning how to play Pong together, but it's also another gorgeous day for playing outside, and later this afternoon Matt is taking them and a couple of their friends to something called a Girl Scout Songfest.

WEDNESDAY: I'm already worried about this horseback riding class that can't be rescheduled--Will's thumb is still awfully gory and swollen--but that's something that her instructors are just going to have to figure out. We're also going to watch a children's theatre production of Pippi Longstocking, and Syd's going to read Stage Fright on a Summer Night--all by herself!--so that both kids can attend Magic Tree House Club that afternoon.

We are also, although I haven't told the children this on account of I do not want them hysterical with excitement all freakin' day, going to make cake and ice cream from scratch in order to celebrate the 102nd anniversary of the Girl Scouts.

THURSDAY: I'd like to go on a nature walk and find animal tracks to make our plaster of Paris casts from, but it's supposed to snow again on Wednesday, so if all else fails, there's always clay and cats and seashells. There's an excellent, kid-friendly pottery book that we're going to look through together as part of Syd's Potter badge, and then there's an interesting nanosecond project to complete.

And if it *doesn't* snow, maybe our homeschool group will be able to have our first Park Day of the year. I will be SO happy to get out of that dang gymnasium!

Friday: We'll be doing some natural history of Indiana, before we starting learning about the Native Americans. There's a great video to watch, and those guidebooks that I'm going to purchase, and we'll have the whole weekend for our nice, long nature hike.

I finally decided that we'll listen to the Bible chapter of SOTW, and do the mapwork, and color in a Bible coloring book to get a little better of a handle on the stories. I've also made a mental note to introduce some interesting stories from other religions at a later time.

The kids' drawing skills have been improving just a ton lately, so I'm excited for us to do the next lesson in Drawing With Children, and a word ladder should quickly finish up the day with a little logical thinking.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: I think I will send the kids to that drop-in pottery class this weekend--Syd's Potter badge isn't going to earn itself!--and we have a giant, three-movie Toy Story marathon to enjoy to round off Girl Scout Birthday Week. We might go rock climbing. We might take another hike. We need to build a better gate into the chicken yard. We need to have a Family Meeting to figure out if we're going to buy those couple of Easter Egger chicks that Will wants.

AND, speaking of Family Meetings, we'll need to see if Will's school week went well, or if it's back to the drawing board for that.

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 14

It's a week busy with non-school stuff, and so a more boring, but nevertheless productive, school week:


MONDAY: Nothing too new in memory work this week--the girls are on H/I in cursive, spelling will continue through our homeschool group's Spelling Bee (after which I might drop it for a few months, since we're pushing it so hard now), they've just begun to memorize the multiplication tables, and last week's Drawing with Children work was so frustrating for Will that we're going to keep doing that same work this week instead of moving on with the next lesson. But we're starting back up with the Song School Latin book this week, at least, with a review of the previous chapters that we've studied--next week we get a new chapter!

I've got a lot of useful, fun hands-on math activities planned, but this week is SO hectic that I'm not doing them; instead, the kiddos are just going to plug away at their Math Mammoth, a work that they can do here at home, or at the library (where we'll be at least three times this week), or at the doctor's office (once), or at the dentist (once). Well, instead of Math Mammoth on Monday, Syd's got a cute clock book to put together--maximizing those early reading skills, doncha know?--but other than that, it's away they plug! At least they'll be plugging away when they're not at a public library nature craft program or our weekly volunteer gig, both of which we'll also be doing on Monday.

TUESDAY: Not only do we have a hectic week planned, but Matt was gone for about half a week at some sort of conference for graphic designers at university alumni magazines (Hunh, that sounds totally fake now that I'm writing it down...), so we've been a little off kilter and stressed for a few days now, and to alleviate that the girls and I have done a TON of craft projects! Seriously, we've rolled beeswax candles, and cut Halloween decorations out of kite paper, and painted glass jar luminaries, and decoupaged tissue paper squares onto more glass jars, and colored, and sketched onto scratch paper, and that's just like a day and a half worth of projects. So for one of our Tuesday schoolworks, I'm going to hand off to the girls a cool book that I was given to review, half journal and half paper crafts book, to see if anything strikes their fancy. Actually, Will might learn a magic trick instead of working with this book, since she asked me if she could do magic for school this week but I forgot to put it on the schedule, so just consider this spot the place for some hands-on extra-curricular activity.

Science is staying on track, however. We're finally ready to start human biology, and we're beginning with our traditional starting point--a sketch and an order of classification.

WEDNESDAY: I've planned for the girls to spend most of the day with a friend, mostly to score some free babysitting so I can get to the dentist for a cleaning and check-up, so it's just math, memory work, a couple of fun things, and aerial silks for Will.

THURSDAY: Thursday seems to be the day we've settled on as good for our ongoing projects--Will's History of Video Games unit study, Syd's cookbook project, etc. The girls just spent the past several Saturdays at a fabulous science program run by the IU School of Education, and I'd like to incorporate some more enrichment in the subjects that they studied into our week. Will's class studied light and sound, which is why we've been playing with pinhole cameras and doing 3D drawings; hopefully next week I'll also be able to incorporate some activities from Syd's classroom studies of the earth and sky.

That will have to be the morning's work, however; Thursday afternoons belong to our homeschool group's park playgroup, and Thursday evening is the long-anticipated, much prepared for Biography Fair. I'm sure the girls' presentations on Jules Verne and Harry Potter will be just masterful.

FRIDAY: The girls have some correspondence to catch up on, which is always good for practicing their handwriting and composition skills, and they've also got some scrapbooking to do, this time of our trip to The Crayola Experience in Easton, Pennsylvania. We'll listen again to the audio chapters that we've covered in Story of the World, and go over the quiz questions again, hopefully to start a new chapter next week.

Will caught a peek at my Halloween Pinterest board, and is VERY interested in making the candy corn cake that she saw there, so we'll set aside some time on Friday to make a few different Halloween-themed treats, all measured and mixed and baked by the girls. Nothing like baked goods as a bribe to master fractions!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: I am going to REST next weekend, after working my butt off without Matt around THIS weekend! I am definitely sending him and the girls to Read to a Dog and chess club without me, and at this rate, I may send them to the apple orchard without me as well. They can spend the day there and take pictures and play on the hay bales and bring me my bushel of apples and the kids' Jack-o-lanterns and the pie pumpkins without me, and I just may stay in the bath all day, a hard cider in one hand and a Doctor Who novel in the other.

Work Plans for the Week of September 30, 2013

It's the week of field trips!

MONDAY: The girls discovered that they did not enjoy completing unfinished work from Thursday and Friday on Sunday, so yesterday found them both to be busy little bees who did all their schoolwork and chores without fuss and had plenty of time leftover to play the day away. At this pace, we should be able to finish our Song School Latin review next week, and be able to start new material the week after. Good thing, too, because I've been interlibrary loaning Latin curricula to follow! Whee!

The only snag in the day was Will's reading assignment. Although she's previously zipped through Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, and Around the World in 80 Days, The Mysterious Island is a whole other critter--Will made it through thirteen chapters but then admitted defeat, so we've instead turned the book into our evening read-aloud, which is fine, because we'd been needing a new one of those.

TUESDAY: The girls are SUPER psyched about their horseback riding lesson later today, and I promised Syd that we could go to the bookstore afterwards, where I will sneakily bring along any pencil-and-paper work that they've yet to finish by then. Syd may not have anything to bring, as she's sitting at the table happily right now, listening to fairy tales off of the ipad and working through her cursive. She most enjoys that type of "packet" work that she can bust through and be done with; she's less enamored of work like her animal biology portfolio, which is project-oriented. Willow, of COURSE, has to be exactly the opposite.

WEDNESDAY: Field trip day! Math and memory work never take a holiday, but hopefully the kiddos DO finish their Tuesday work in a timely manner, because Wednesday is going to be too busy to deal with schoolwork boot camp--I didn't even schedule Will's regular aerial silks class for this Wednesday, because we have plenty do do without it.

THURSDAY: The girls didn't quite finish their history assignment last week, so they're going to finish it this week. I don't *like* to do that, but, as I mentioned, this past Sunday's make-up day was an ultimate fail, so the repeated work is a reminder to me to be more proactive about encouraging the kiddos to stay on top of their schedule. Happily, though, this is DEFINITELY the last week for that Sight Word Caterpillar! I'll be glad to have that extra time to figure out some more creative ways to get Syd through her spelling words without fits; she's about as good at rote memorization as Will, but has zero tolerance for getting an incorrect answer. This makes spelling practice something akin to emotional torture for the poor kid. I must find a way to teach her spelling that doesn't give her panic attacks!

FRIDAY: Another field trip day! It hurt me not to assign geography, a typical Friday work, since that was the other assignment that didn't get finished last week. This 50 states study is slow as molasses! I swear, we are STILL working on the states that we visited this summer, and then I'd like to revisit Indiana, and then I'd like to study the states that we'll be visiting next summer, and then I'd like to study the rest of the states! I'd also like to finish this before the children graduate high school, sigh.

SATURDAY and SUNDAY: The kiddos didn't get a chance to do any of their "fun" school assignments last weekend, but if I can make sure that they stay caught up the rest of this week, then they can explore some new educational games and documentaries as well as go to chess club and Saturday Science class and an interesting-looking family mountain biking event and goof around with toys and swim at the Y and play with friends.

And perhaps an afternoon at the apple orchard, hmmm?

Work Plans for the Week of September 23, 2013

After spending much of the summer with work hours, and the last few weeks with a daily checklist, I am EXCITED to get back to weekly work plans!

Here's what the girls have got going on this week:


Work hours and daily checklists are more flexible than weekly work plans, but Will's been feeling rather bossed around lately, I think, and weekly work plans are VERY empowering for the independent-minded child. She likes to do what she wants when she wants, and she doesn't mind chores and other responsibilities, but she doesn't want them to interfere with her big plans for the day, all of which consist of reading books in various spots around the house, yard, local park, and library.

So unlike work hours, during which I'm chaining her to her responsibilities for two hours, or even daily checklists, which must be completed even if one is feeling quite unmotivated, or has just come home with a giant stack of new library books that day, a weekly checklist lets a kiddo read for half the day, and work for half, or read all day, and work extra-hard the next day, and still complete all her responsibilities. Wednesday and the weekends are "relaxed" homeschool days, there for a kid to catch up on any procrastinated work or to spend her time as she chooses if she's kept up. These are the days that I also entice a kid into trying out the latest educational video game that I've checked out of the library, or watching a documentary that I think she might like, by adding it to her checklist.

This week, in particular, should be a good one. We had bathroom remodeling all last week, and we'll have two giant field trips next week, but hopefully, HOPEFULLY, the bathroom will be finished on Tuesday this week, letting us have some chaos-free at-home time for the rest of those days. I'm gambling on it, too, since I put some more intensive, hands-on activities into our schedule--the kids have been great about park school and library school and Barnes & Noble school, but they're ready to put the pencil down and get their hands dirty!

I think the kids will also like that chance to earn some extra cash that I snuck in there--normally I ask them to pick up after themselves in the bathroom, as well (so many wet towels and dirty clothes abandoned on the floor, so many bath toys...), but since we don't really *have* a bathroom right now, they can instead earn some candy money in that chore spot and I can get some extra chores done. Still won't get us completely caught up on chores or result in a sparkling house inside of which a nourishing dinner has been prepared, but I might get them to clean the deck. Or scrub the downstairs bathroom. Who knows what someone will do for a quarter?

Monday: I'm trying to get us back into Latin, which we skivved off of for the summer, so we'll be reviewing for a couple more weeks, I think. Math Mammoth is still going great, so both girls will keep working through their material every day this week, but hopefully next week this bathroom will absolutely be finished so I can put some hands-on activities that reinforce their Math Mammoth material into the work plan, as well. Will's scissors skills are deplorable, bless her poor left-handed heart, so she's going to have to start really practicing that every week now, which is going to result in a flurry of gripes, I know, but the fact that we'll be biking over to the public library first thing in the morning for her to do some research on her biography fair subject, as well as to see if there are any other books on dragons that she *hasn't* read yet (there aren't), should cheer her up. The girls will probably be working on their school later into the afternoon than we usually do, because our volunteer shift takes up two full hours in the middle of the day, but I've got the supplies to make pizza, and I'm sure there's something on Netflix that we can turn into a family pizza + movie night afterwards.

Tuesday: Syd might be done with the whole Sight Word Caterpillar business by the end of October; her reading exploded this summer, and since we work on it every day, I think it's safe to say she could be through the third grade sight words--which is where our caterpillar is going to end--by then. Spelling, now... wow, if you want to watch a perfectionist child throw a fit, give them a spelling word that they don't know. Syd's still doing Spelling City every day for her spelling list, because it's all fun and games (literally), but Will's participating in the Scripps Spelling Bee this year, and has a LOT more words to get through to be competitive, so we've been mixing up her spelling memory work some--some Spelling City, some drills, some videotaping herself, etc. First Language Lessons is still taking FOREVER to get through, because although the lessons are short, Syd refuses to complete more than one per day, so I'm trying to work that into more days, because I'd like to have both girls together in Level 3 of that program by summer. The animal biology portfolios are also still incomplete, mostly because we've been so uprooted by this bathroom remodeling project that we simply haven't had the time to sit and stare at critters under the microscope, or research hamster birth, etc., lately, but at this rate, with all the time that we've spent on them, they are going to be absolutely stunning when completed.

Wednesday: In the afternoon, Will has a meeting with the Magic Tree House Club, and then I take her to aerial silks class so I can gossip with my friends there while Syd spends the last hour or so of Matt's work day with him. Before that, though, I'm eager to see what documentary the girls will choose and what computer game or ipad app they'll want to play--and if they'll let me, play, too!

Thursday: We nearly always have leftover work to make up from this day, because sometimes our Park Day meet-up with friends really does take all day, but it's almost always stuff that's fun for the girls to do with Matt on the weekends, if it comes to that, so it's not really a chore. We finally got around to taking our Drawing With Children diagnostics and I'm looking forward to incorporating these lessons into our week and hoping that they go well--Syd was NOT happy with the diagnostic, but since its purpose is to contain elements that are too difficult, in order to determine your correct starting point, it's understandable. Here's hoping for a tantrum-free Lesson 1! I want to get back into our regular Story of the World study, which we took a break from for the entire summer so that we could study the Civil War instead, so we're working through the couple of random Ancient Egypt library books that we've still got on our bookshelves to get us focused back on the time period. Will's non-systematic, games and puzzles logic study is still going REALLY well; she came home complaining that her lesson at chess club this afternoon was "boring and easy", so we're doing chess as our logic this week to maybe boost her confidence enough for her to ask her coach if she can attend the advanced lesson at the next chess club, instead of the one for little kids.

Friday: I *might* cancel most of the work on this day and take the girls to the apple orchard if the weather is nice. If it's gross out, though, it'll still be great weather inside for continuing our slow-as-molasses states study, and for doing some music enrichment. Will and I are going to get back into studying the recorder pretty soon, and I'll try to persuade Syd into joining us, so I'm not sure if I'll continue this musician study, but if the girls like it, then it'll be a keeper.

Saturday and Sunday: I DO require that the girls do some schoolwork even on the weekends, and they've got a Saturday morning science enrichment program that they love, but other plans include watching rugby, attending a picnic hosted by the food pantry where we volunteer, baking carrot cake for Matt's do-over birthday (long story), and possibly getting dragged to the loathsome indoor inflatables place that the girls adore and we hate.

And then they'll head off to campus to watch football on the campus cable TVs, and I'll make another week's lesson plans!

Memory Work is WORK!

Memory work is useful, yes, but easy it is absolutely NOT! As I've added more memory work to our weekly schedule, I've found that it's really necessary to keep finding different ways to review the same material every day. Too many flashcards, and too much straight copywork, and the kiddos' brains just tune out. They'll be able to quickly give the correct response in that same format, but ask them the same question in a different way, and they suddenly can't remember a single Latin word that they've been reviewing daily for a month, sigh.

Therefore, mostly for my own reference, but for yours, too, if you care about such things, I've compiled below my list of all the varied ways that I can think of to review memory work, everything from spelling words to math facts, timeline dates to state capitals, poetry to sight words, vocabulary to Latin translations...you get the idea:

Copy in alphabetical order. This works for spelling/vocabulary words and the kids' Latin words--it's regular old copywork, but you have to use your brain a bit more, and it makes sure that you're not studying the words in the same order every time.

Write it on the window with dry erase markers or the sidewalk with chalk. The kiddos ALWAYS like to do this, but it does take a ton of time, since if you've given them dry erase markers or chalk and fun things to draw on, you've obviously got to let them draw:

Speed race! This would give Sydney a heart attack, but it's been working really well with Willow and multiplication. Simply memorizing her multiplication table is a fail, because she can calculate so quickly that she can work any fact out in her head in a few seconds, and then you're left wondering, "Is she trying to remember, or counting by eights in her head?". I've been using these multiplication matching puzzles, however, timing Willow as she races to complete them, and encouraging her to beat the previous day's time. If it looks like she's starting to memorize the positions of the answers as well as the answers, I skip to different tables for a few days, and then go back to the earlier ones for a fresh look and a review.

Songs. Will is our star at memorizing facts through song (her recitation of all the countries of Africa still gives me pridey feelings inside), but Syd is quickly catching her up, with her love of the Song School Latin CD. It takes a lot of curating, though, because many educational songs are crap. I use my free Spotify app to search for and then stream songs for just about every subject--they're not all for memorizing, of course (the girls always want to listen to the state song of whatever state they're studying, for instance), but you'd be surprised how happily you can bop along to the multiplication table when it's sung by a good voice to a catchy tune. Our favorite, by FAR, is Victor Johnson's Multiplication and Skip Counting Songs, although there's also a super annoying song ("The Pi Song," by Bryant Oden) that I'm using to memorize pi:

"They said 'Would you like some pi?' I said, 'Yes, I would!' I forgot they majored in math. I would undo it if I could! They said, '3.1415926535897932384626433.'" Yep, that's from memory! Don't all congratulate me at once.

DIY Dry Erase. The girls actually DON'T like this too much, because it takes a lot more elbow grease to erase than a conventional dry erase board, but for things like parts labeling or their spelling words, I like to laminate the document to use as a dry erase:

I've also heard that page protectors and CD cases work well as dry erase boards, but I haven't tried them yet. One more thing for my to-do list!

Tape yourself. The girls love doing this for poetry and spelling words. Not only does the taping require a lot of thoughtful interaction with their memory work, but it also really encourages repetition--I think they just like to listen to themselves! I let them record these on my ipod, which they're allowed to use, too--

--but if a certain little someone receives an ipod touch for her birthday (assuming that Craigslist/local pawn shops cooperate), then they can start recording on that, instead. 

DIY flash cards. They like their flash cards better if they help me make them. This works especially well for Latin, since we use these coloring pages that correspond to all the vocabulary in Song School Latin. I print them four to a page, the girls color them, then (sloppily) cut them out and (even more sloppily) laminate them, all by themselves. Big fun, and impossible for them to say that they hate later on.

So that's what I've got so far. I need WAY more ideas, though! I'd like to have twenty or so possibilities, to support a full month of memory work without repetition. But I also need ideas that don't require a ton of prep work--I do NOT want to be creating a Montessori-style three-part card for every subject every week, for instance--or use a ton of expensive or disposable materials. 

Help?

Singing along to Song School Latin

Willow's been studying Latin for a while now. We started off with Minimus, which Willow LOVES, but after the first couple of chapters it quickly grew too difficult, requiring far too much contextual knowledge and inferences to understand the Latin for even my highly literate seven-year-old. I then created a Latin study just for Willow, and while that was perfectly at her level, and she liked it, it was a lot of work to put together every week. Mind you, I do love creating my own curricula, but I've discovered that creating my own curriculum for EVERY subject is too much work for me!

I'd previously dismissed Song School Latin as too young for Willow, but when Sydney said that she, too, wanted to learn Latin, I checked it out again from the public library and decided that it actually would probably do just fine for the both of them. Yes, it is a little young, and no, it's not a companion to a formal grammar study, but it is an excellent introduction to the language, and a huge self-confidence builder for a future formal study.

So setting aside conjugations and declensions for a while, Willow and Sydney are both deep into the playful songs, conversational vocabulary, and tiny bit of cognate recognition of Song School Latin:


We cover one chapter a week (with a week every now and then devoted to review), with the girls adding that chapter's vocabulary to the memory work that they practice daily. Sometimes we simply drill the vocabulary, sometimes they choose to sing along with the chapter's songs for their vocabulary drill, and sometimes they just like to color in the current chapter's coloring pages while listening to songs from the entire CD.

And while they've been doing that, I've been scouring the Latin textbooks on Google Books. Because even though there isn't a wide variety of children's Latin textbooks NOW, well, children used to ALL study Latin, and there used to be lots of textbooks to teach them! And if there's one thing that I can tell you for sure, it is that the Latin language has not evolved between 1877 and now.

So although I'll probably move Sydney to a similar study of another language after we finish Song School Latin, I'm hoping that I can find an old-timey textbook with which to create a non-Momma-made formal Latin study for Willow to continue with afterwards.

Beginning Grammar in English and Latin

In the two months that Willow has been studying grammar, she really hasn't moved beyond noun/subject, verb, and complete sentence identification and labeling. She'd gotten the hang of it, and then we moved on to doing Mad Libs for a couple of weeks (per the child's request), and when we came back to it and I set her a review of subject/verb identification she had a LOT of trouble, which means that she might have gotten the hang of it in the short term, but the concept is certainly not internalized.

This is okay, of course. First of all, the child is barely eight years old--she's got ample time to learn her grammar. But second of all, I have the feeling that once Willow REALLY understands the concept of subjects and verbs, and what they are and how to spot them, it will be the key to unlocking grammar for her, and I don't think it will be such a struggle, then, to understand the concept of the adjective, the preposition, the conjunction, etc.

To keep the process from becoming tedious, to deepen Willow's understanding of the concepts, and, of course, to further her foreign language study, we've switched over more or less from using Minimus for Latin (Minimus is fun, and we still do it occasionally, but I want a more systematic, academic study) to duplicating Will's study of English grammar with Latin.

It goes like this:

1. As part of Will's study of nouns and verbs, I taught her how to conjugate verbs in the present tense in English, including recognizing the tense and voice:



Notice the Southern translation of second person plural, much to be preferred on account of its specificity.

NOTE: I taught her "to be" in English, because it's critical for verb identification, but not yet in Latin (although we'll do that before we start Latin nouns, I think).

2. I taught her how to conjugate a-verbs in Latin in the present tense. She's memorized two so far ("amare" and "laborare"), and once she's memorized a third, I'll show her the pattern that will enable her to conjugate any a-verb.

Verb translation is good to start with, since you can translate a complete sentence with just one verb:

3. When Will's got the conjugation of a-verbs down pat, it's back to English we go! I think this will be a good time to use KISS Grammar, and whatever other resources I can come up with to supplement it, to learn all the uses of nouns, so that Willow can decline a noun, with understanding, in English.

As she learns the uses for nouns, I'll also teach her how to diagram them.

4. When Will can decline nouns in English, I'll teach her first declension nouns in Latin, the same way that I taught her to conjugate a-verbs.

And that sounds about like third grade grammar!

After that there are so many ways to go, of course. There are adjectives and adverbs, in English and Latin, and prepositions and conjunctions, and then Latin and English will eventually have to deviate, so that Willow can study more conjugations and declensions, and learn more vocabulary, etc., while she moves to different subjects in English grammar.

And perhaps then Willow will want additional languages, as well--Spanish? Greek? French? Middle Welsh?

I really, REALLY hope that my child becomes an even bigger language nerd than me.

Willow Sum

Matt accused me of homeschooling solely for the moment that occurred last week, when I turned around in my seat in the car and asked my daughter, "Quis es?"

"Willow sum," she promptly replied, and Matt is, of course, perfectly correct.

I am a Latin nerd.

With Will's permission, I've added Latin (and typing, but that's a different post) to her list of daily responsibilities. So far she's really enjoying it, mostly because her textbook, Minimus, is so ridiculously super-cute. Witness:



Later that day, I explained to her that the cat's name, literal translation something like "Vibrate to the Utmost," was probably due to the fact that the Romans might have thought of cat's purring as vibrating (which it is), and thus the cat's name could be more accurately translated, then, as Purrsy or some such.

The child was thrilled. And that's Latin!