Work Plans for the Week of March 24, 2014: Play

Syd spent much of last week learning how to make and break codes and edit Zoo Tycoon with Will, so whatever we didn't get to last week, I just left in place for this week!

MONDAY: Latin is one of the subjects that Will always chooses to do with Syd--somehow, those workbook pages that were such agony when required don't merit a peep of protest when they're chosen. Syd's keyboard lesson is again from Hoffman Academy, who, I am thrilled to see, has added more video lessons. I'm pretty stoked that we can learn more at home before I have to make a decision about formal classes. Syd also ADORES Mr. Hoffman and his lessons, so she loves keyboard. Will, on the other hand, hasn't picked up the recorder since the day that I stopped giving her work plans; we need to have a conversation about this, to see where she wants to go with music, because I do want her to study some instrument.

We didn't get to the skip counting board last Friday (but Syd did spend a LONG time creating and translating "secret" codes on that day, so there's her math enrichment and logic skill building), so I put it down again for Monday. I also read another Pippi book to Syd, and then had her write a letter to Pippi Longstocking, care of the theater where we saw her play a couple of weeks ago. Syd LOVED this project, and it turned out super cute, too--she asked Pippi what her real name was, told her all the things that she liked to pretend to be, described in detail her favorite part of the play (a scene that didn't actually include Pippi--oops!), and wrote the names of our three cats in every possible order for her ("My cats' names are Ballantine and Gracie and Spots or Ballantine and Spots and Gracie or Gracie and Ballantine and Spots or...). I'm curious to see if the theater passes the letter on to the actress and if she writes back--hopefully she's not *too* overwhelmed with fan mail?

Both kids also seriously worked their butts off at our volunteer gig on Monday--I have NEVER seen them work so hard! They stocked cans and granola bars and frozen meat and milk and yogurt and produce, including a ton of really heavy stuff. They helped repackage pasta (some stuff comes in giant bulk bags, and we split it into smaller portions to serve more people). They organized their bookshelf and stocked more books (someone brought in even more books last week!). Syd read to a little boy. They normally do all that, but with plenty of time spent reading quietly or coloring or playing together, but yesterday they hardly even took a break. It was wonderful to watch them so dedicated and focused, and I felt really proud of them.

TUESDAY: The kids have a playdate for this entire morning (right now they're playing hide-and-seek downstairs, with a gentleman's agreement that no one will hide in the closet where we keep the litterbox), so nothing will get accomplished until afternoon, but then we've got First Language Lessons, which both kids LOVE, and math, which Syd is fine with and Will tolerates much better these days (even though she IS spending the week doing the long-threatened Kumon multiplication drill workbook), and that documentary on natural Indiana that's been on the work plans for weeks--surprising, since the kids usually adore documentaries, and I actually want to add more of them to our days, but they've been so involved in active play and their own busy plans recently that I just don't think they want to sit down long enough to watch this. It's also snowing right now, which means that we're not going to make casts of animal tracks today, either, but on a family hike this weekend--without the supplies to make casts, of COURSE--we saw some good animal tracks, so on the first nice day this week we'll head back there, plaster of Paris in our backpacks, and finally make that project happen.

One thing that I like about homeschooling is that I get to put what are essentially chores on the schoolwork plans, instead of rushing to try to do them after school and extracurriculars, so today I also want the kids to figure out their birthday presents for a buddy's birthday party this weekend. I have kind of strict rules for birthday party presents--You can either make your friend a gift, buy your friend a gift with your own money, or give your friend something of your own--so making/buying/figuring out what to sacrifice does take enough time and effort to justify being a "work" for the day.

WEDNESDAY: Horseback riding lessons begin again! The kids couldn't be more stoked. I also *may* put Will back in aerial silks class, because she says her thumb isn't sore anymore, but I'm terrified that she'll accidentally rip off a big scab or her entire thumbnail during class and cause an "incident," so we'll see...

THURSDAY: Oh, my goodness, this last Girl Scout Birthday Week project seems like it will never get done! I may have to wave the Birthday Week patches temptingly in front of the children on this day, because I know they want them deeply. To be fair, Will worked on other Girl Scout badges for I can't even tell you how many hours last week--she's simultaneously earning her Animal Tracks, Detective, Inside Government, and Geocaching badges--and Syd worked on her Potter badge, so Girl Scouts is still leading them into some really enriching, engaging learning experiences, but I know that regular sense of completion and accomplishment goes a long way towards making it as fun as they find it to be.

Since we just had a Bible chapter in The Story of the World, and since Easter and Passover are coming up, I thought we'd spend some time in the next few weeks exploring some myths from world religions. We're reading about Creation myths this week, and then we might focus in on Jewish and Christian myths related to the upcoming holidays. I'll tell you one thing about children's religious education: it includes a LOT of crafts! Fortunately, Syd enjoys crafting, so I think this will be a lot of fun for her. Will doesn't always enjoy crafting, so I think she'll appreciate the ability to choose her own level of participation.

FRIDAY: Last Friday was a beautiful day, so the kids just played and played and we didn't get much of our formal schoolwork accomplished. This Friday may end up being just as beautiful, especially after being so chilly earlier in the week, so we'll just see what ends up getting done. I'd like us to begin Indiana history, after spending some time studying natural Indiana, so we're starting A History of US, which I'm pretty excited about. I "think" I'm going to skip around to the chapters that relate directly to Indiana, but if we like the book as much as I hope we're going to, I may just add it wholemeal to our curriculum. Anyway, on this day we begin with the Bering Land Bridge, and we'll be using a cool ipad app that allows us to see historical geography to research what the Bering Land Bridge actually must have looked like.

For our regular history, we'll be doing the mapwork in The Story of the World Activity Book for chapter seven, but we've actually spent so much time exploring Mesopotamia in earlier chapters that I'm already researching for chapter eight. Perhaps this is how we'll eventually begin to move faster through the book--we'll just, at some point, have done all the cool projects that there are to do! Math class is back this week, and the couple of leftover assignments from last Friday should finish off our day... if I can get the kids to come inside long enough to do them, which I'm not counting on.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: It's going to be a busy Saturday, with an all-day nature class for the kids followed immediately by a birthday party for a buddy. So even though I'd like to plan hiking or rock climbing or some such family adventure on Sunday, we may just goof around and play at home, with a few breaks for enforced yardwork.

Work Plans for the Week of March 17: Wild

Will's week of free schooling actually worked out wonderfully, with but a few reservations, the most important of which being her two-day tantrum when she realized bright and early on Saturday morning that the five days of math that I had been telling her would not complete themselves did not, in fact, complete themselves.

So that sucked, but the ordeal did prompt Will to ask me to remind her about her math as soon as I got up each morning so that she could do it. This morning I got up, reminded Will about her math, and glory be, she sat down and did it. Here's to four more days of that!

Will also did choose to join in on almost all of Syd's activities last week, playing multiplication games with us, taking her drawing lesson, listening to Story of the World and Pippi Longstocking, helping celebrate Girl Scout Week, etc. In turn, Syd joined in with much of Will's work--Will taught both herself and Syd how to geocache! They did that a LOT last week, and rode bikes, and played basketball, and worked on the bookshelf that they built for the food pantry where we volunteer. It was a busy and productive, happy and engaging week, and so I didn't stress when Syd and I didn't complete some assignments on her work plans--I just kept them on for this week!

MONDAY: One of my favorite podcasts, "A Way with Words," included a segment in a recent episode on the Pope's Latin tweets, so for Latin today we listened to that podcast while coloring, then looked at the tweets in Latin. Will spent much of the morning searching Zoo Tycoon forums and trying to figure out how to download and install user-created content (could this be her gateway into computer programming?), and we had a happy and useful shift at our volunteer gig, with the kids installing their bookshelf and setting up the book donations we solicited.

Currently, we're on our lunch break, during which the kids are being bottomless pits of bread and apples and oatmeal and cereal with milk, and then Syd and I (I'm betting Will won't be interested in this) are going to make a village of these cute multiplication houses, have a keyboard lesson, and write a letter to Pippi Longstocking, whose book we read AND whose play we saw last week:

I gave the kids Pippi hair before the play.

TUESDAY: We didn't get around to making the fossil casts on the couple of nice days last week, so I hope that we can do it this week. I want to take a nature hike and find real animal tracks to cast, and Will wants to organize a multi-cache geocache adventure--can we meet both of our goals at once? Time will tell.

The kids also didn't finish their Girl Scout Week activities last week (We did the movie marathon, comparing the animation of the first Toy Story to the later ones, and made cake and ice cream from scratch together, but missed most of the other required tasks), but they want that patch, so they agreed to make them up this week. We also didn't get the birdwatching session done, although we did learn to identify the black capped chickadee, but the birdfeeders around our property badly need a refill, so hopefully that will make the cut this week.

Both kids LOVE First Language Lessons. We did last week's lesson at the park; I wonder where we'll do this week's?

WEDNESDAY: We're in between horseback riding sessions, and Will crushed her thumb when a rock wall at the park partially collapsed on her, so she's out of aerial silks classes for a bit. That makes this day happily free, other than the Magic Tree House Club meeting which we MUST attend, since it's the last one of the month.

THURSDAY: The kids have a wildlife program at the library on this day--I hope they'll have some completed animal track casts to share! The nanosecond project is leftover from last week, although the pottery book is new. Math Mammoth is tooling right along--Syd's working on measurement this week, and Will's working through the last bit of multiplication that she can do before I sit her down next week and make her finish memorizing the multiplication table.

And I mean business this time. I printed out flash cards!

FRIDAY: Last Friday, we only completed math, history, and art, so those are the only new assignments here. Math class is on sabbatical for the week, so I'm looking forward to this extra hands-on math day to make something with Syd that I've been wanting for years--a skip counting board!

I did decide to just move on from the Bible story chapter in The Story of the World, so now we're onto Hammurabi. I don't know how long we'll stay here, either, since the kids already know him well--last Friday, over dinner, Will went into this long rant about Hammurabi and the whole "eye for an eye" business; she's convinced that a good judicial system has a much more nuanced system of justice than that. But this week, at least, we'll take another listen and do the quiz questions; if nothing else, we can at least do the map work on this one next week before moving on.

Drawing With Children should be fun this week; we're meant to look through magazines and catalogues and begin to develop a collection of images and graphics to copy and embellish to create our own art.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: I want to take a day trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, although we might do a fossils workshop at one of the local state parks, instead. Will has chess club. I have some shopping to do. And wouldn't it be nice to get started with the spring planting!

Work Plans for the Week of March 3: Latin and Libraries

I'm pretty well over the way that the Box widget that embeds my work plans always insists on scrolling immediately to them when my blog loads, and the way that Box has completely ignored my question about this, so at some point I'm going to have to make the time to research other document embedding systems, sigh. Until then, however...

MONDAY: While the local schoolchildren are suffering through yet another snow day here, it's business as usual for us--it looks like even our local volunteer gig will be open today, so add "De-ice the car" to my to-do list! Syd's working on her factor chart (I got the idea from an old elementary Montessori manual--I'll tell you about it another time, if it turns out well) right now, while Will, who's finished part of her reading work, is heating up some French bread for our breakfast.

We've got chapter 19 of Song School Latin today (more body parts), instrument lessons--and I am REALLY going to have to kick their butts on these, because it's been a while since they've really focused on regular practice--and we'll be able to spend a few weeks doing some regular creative writing, since our local PBS station finally got their butts in gear about the PBS Kids Writers Contest.

TUESDAY: The kids have both Math Mammoth and First Language Lessons today, which I always appreciate during lesson planning since they're so blessedly easy to schedule. A playdate and baking a king cake to celebrate Mardi Gras will use up most of the rest of the day, but we'll also be working on the kids' Girl Scout service project. They need to provide a bookshelf as part of this project, and at first I thought that we might get it donated, but the dimensions required are pretty specific to fit into a limited space, AND Will has expressed so much interest in woodworking lately, that I've finally decided that we'll just make the bookshelf. It's still a little cold for woodwork outdoors, so we may find ourselves with lumber, the portable work bench, and the circular saw in the living room, but I think it's going to be a great beginning woodworking project for the kids, and one that they're guaranteed to see in use every week at our regular volunteer gig.

WEDNESDAY: Will's big Spring Ice Show performance is this night--wish her luck!

THURSDAY: We've still got a couple of chemistry experiments centered on acids and bases to perform, but I didn't get around to getting all the materials for those yet, so I'm moving us on to the paleontology that we'll be studying off and on as we lead up to our dinosaur dig this summer. I imagine that we'll be interspersing this paleontology study with seasonal studies, like botany and animal biology, and kid-led interests, but for now, I'll be grounding the kids' understanding, and sneaking in a little more Latin!

I think the kids are also ready to start interspersing Drawing With Children lessons with other types of hands-on art, so we'll be trying out this copy of The Color Book that I was sent to review (ooh, I just saw that it hasn't been officially released yet--how fun to have it in our paint-covered little hands!)--it's focused on exploring color through a variety of activities, so it should be a fun integration into our week.

FRIDAY: We're soundly into our Indiana study, but I wasn't quite prepared to move into the next chapter of The Story of the World (nor am I quite sure, yet, how I'm going to handle that chapter, since it highlights one of the book's few flaws, Bible stories treated as history--we may end up just listening to the chapter one week and then moving on, but first I need a little more time to decide if there's anything really historically relevant there), so fortunately, there's ALWAYS something more to do with Ancient Egypt!

The kids get in moods in which they seem to forget about formerly favorite pastimes, sometimes, so this week's logic is a board game of each kid's choice, to remind them that they like to play board games! That, combined with a library program, should round out our school week on a VERY fun note.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We might go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art as a family, or we might send the kids to a pottery class and claim some grown-up time. We might go hiking, if the weather warms, or we might drag the bikes out and get them ready for a season of riding. We *might* order a couple more chicks from a local hatchery, although every time you ask me that one, my answer changes.

Work Plans for the Week of February 3, 2014: Science and Survival Kits

 MONDAY: We're still happily moving through one chapter a week in Song School Latin (I forgot to update our work plans with this week's chapters--oops!), and the kids are retaining the vocabulary well, and although *I'm* ready for them to get some grammar and conjugations/declensions in, as long as they're engaged and absorbing the material and progressing, we'll go at the textbook's pace.

The kids didn't practice their instruments as much as they should have last week, so we may have to repeat those lessons this week, but most of our time and energy today is going into rehearsal for tonight's Science Fair. Completing the re-articulation of the chicken skeleton took so much time that I'm letting the kids do much of their presentations without a written report to refer to, but this might have been a mistake, too, in that it takes, of course, much more practice to get that sort of presentation down pat.

This week, the kids are going to math class just once (I think they found the two days last week a little much), so we've got space in the schedule for a hands-on unit. Although we did pattern blocks in this space for several weeks, the kids are actively (if slowly, ahem) memorizing the multiplication tables currently, so I'll be keeping a hands-on multiplication activity there until the tables are mastered.

We already did our volunteer gig for the day, and tonight is the Science Fair!

TUESDAY: Math Mammoth and First Language Lessons Level 3 are always easy to schedule, and since I spend hours on Sundays creating these lesson plans, it's a relief to be able to have a few things that I can simply pop into place. The survival kit, however, is likely to take up quite a bit more time--the kids have to prioritize their list based on the budget I'm giving them, and then we'll actually have to go shopping for these supplies. Since I try not to run errands with the kids during the day, a mid-morning shopping trip may seem like quite the adventure!

Will still has a little work to do on her World Thinking Day badge, but Syd is finished and can choose another badge to start earning. We're also going to participate, I *think*, in the Great Backyard Bird Count, and so our science unit for a few weeks will concern birds.

WEDNESDAY: This is one of those rare weeks in which Will has to skip aerial silks entirely (although thank goodness their scheduling system is set up so that we don't have to pay for a class we're not going to attend), but both kids are going to be thrilled to learn that their LEGO club is back after its long winter hiatus.

The subject of this month's Magic Tree House Club meeting--Earthquake in the Early Morning--is well-timed with our California study, especially since I'd been considering drawing out that study a little longer to include some earthquake activities.

THURSDAY: What with ice skating with friends and having another friend over for the afternoon, this will be a short school day. We're ditching art for a couple of weeks in favor of Valentine's Day crafting, but the kids' individual studies are still continuing--I hope that Syd will start actually constructing her dress this week, and Will is going to create a manual version of one of the first computer games.

FRIDAY: The kids claim that their teacher is going to bring cookies to math class on this day, so they're pretty excited about it already. WE are not going to be having cookies here at home, but we will be scrapbooking, completing our mapwork activity for our The Story of the World chapter, and finishing that survival kit.

I'm most excited about the Olympics unit that we'll be working on throughout the Winter Olympics. I'm hoping to set up a somewhat elaborate Olympic nations pin flag work for the kids to do on this day, but that involves plenty of prep work for me this week, so it's a good thing that I always plan to be busy!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The kids have their all-day nature class this weekend, and we've also got a party at our local YMCA, chess club, and swimming with friends. But with no looming Science Fair presentations to rehearse and no chicken skeletons to re-articulate, we'll also have loads of happy downtime...

...which I need. I am going to be happy to see the backside of that chicken skeleton, I tell you what!

Work Plans for the Week of January 27, 2014: Plenty of Projects

MONDAY: For some reason, Monday was an excellent school day. The kids both know enough Latin vocabulary now that we can cobble together both fun phrases ("Do you remember when Gracie was an infans feles?") and insert Latin words into our regular speech ("I SAID stop kicking open that porta!"), which seems to have made them more invested in learning new words. This week we also learned several Christmas words (the Latin textbook that we're currently using is NOT secular, but considering Latin's long tradition in the church, and how that played a huge part in keeping Latin alive and relevant through the medieval period, I'll allow it), so I found some Christmas hymns sung in Latin for us to listen to as we worked, and the children enjoyed this greatly.

There was no protest, either, over math--Syd finds rounding easy, so she didn't throw a fit, and Will actually enjoyed creating line graphs, so she didn't throw a fit, either!--or music. Syd is still happily working through a set of free piano lessons online (I don't know, yet, what I'll do when she finishes those--find more? Enroll her in formal lessons?), and Will was much happier to learn her song when I sat her down and had her record every note of her song on a series of recorder fingering diagrams--it's like written music for a kid who can't yet read music!

The kids have been interested in survival skills since their first nature class earlier this year, and their homework for that class is to create a survival kit for the car, so we'll be working on that in the next couple of weeks. Yet another thing that I love about homeschooling is the ability to integrate the kids' homework for their extracurricular activities into their school days.

TUESDAY: Although we STILL do not have a chicken carcass to work with, both kids are working on their Science Fair project right this moment, while we listen to various versions of "Dry Bones" on Spotify. I will not worry about that chicken carcass right now. Other continuing projects for today include more work on the World Thinking Day badges (Syd finished her comparative analysis and her art project last week, but Will still needs to do her research project, and they both need to start their service project) and on the scrapbook for our California vacation.

Math is working a little differently this week--both kids wanted to attend two math classes this week, instead of one, so that plus Math Mammoth equals a whole week of math! I'm not ashamed to admit that it was a big time-saver to not have to plan out a hands-on math lesson this week, although in theory I do prefer that we have a hands-on math day at home, where I can offer enrichment on a relevant concept and evaluate their mastery of that concept. If they continue to choose to attend both classes, I may have to rethink our weekly math schedule. First Language Lessons, however, keeps tooling along just fine--it's still a little too easy for Will, but what we're doing now is at least good spelling practice for her. I have found that even though the kids are on the same chapter each week, I still need to work with them separately, so I can move faster through the material with Will and slower with Syd. So much for time-saving grammar studies!

WEDNESDAY: I'm not in love with having two extracurricular activities scheduled on the same day; next session, I'll try again, and perhaps one day I'll have a time that I actually like for horseback riding lessons.

Just recently, we've starting watching Global Wrap together every week, and if we keep enjoying it, I'll also add it to the Wednesday schedule, just so we don't forget about it.

THURSDAY: Syd and I will have some time to work on her T-shirt dress while Will explores more on Scratch; I don't think she's actually worked herself up to creating a program, although she keeps expressing interest in it, so I'll keep giving her a set time to play around with it. And I think we're all going to enjoy this week's Drawing With Children lesson, so this should be a fun day!

If we don't have a boiled down, bleached out chicken skeleton to start re-articulating by this day, I don't know what we're going to do. So much for my relaxed Science Fair prep schedule!

FRIDAY: More Science Fair prep, more California scrapbooking, more World Thinking Day badge activities, and another math class! In addition, we're *finally* starting the next chapter of The Story of the World, which means coloring pages, Jim Weiss' narration, and quiz questions.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: We've got a celebration for the Year of the Horse at the library and a radio building workshop at our local hands-on science museum, a Goodwill store-wide sale that Syd and I might be visiting to seek out green sequined formal wear, and hopefully just the very last touches to put on a Science Fair project.

Because what could be a better family bonding activity than re-articulating a chicken skeleton together?

Work Plans for the Week of December 16: It's Almost Christmas!!!

NOTE: I don't know if you'll actually be able to see the above files--Box apparently updated to a new version in the past week,  and it's acting really glitchy for me; sometimes the files will show correctly, and sometimes they want to require some sort of (non-functioning) interactive feature to make them show. I'm assuming that at some point Box will figure out the glitch, and then the embeds will self-correct.

Anyway... It's the last week before Christmas break!!! We're going to take another week and a half to two weeks off for break (depending on whether the kids drive me nuts after Matt goes back to work on January 2 and I want to put THEM to work, too, or if they play happily with their new stuff and are a pleasure to be around, etc.), so I want to get all our work done in good time this week so that we can enjoy our holiday.

MONDAY: This Christmas craft gig has been going great! So far, the kids have done Christmas cards, ornaments, painted shirts, and letters to Santa, and this week I'm hoping for present making and wrapping and another ornament or two--see how I sneak in that useful stuff that I actually NEED to get done? Mwa-ha-ha!

We've got another non-typical schedule this week in that along with that Christmas craft spot, I'm ditching other requirements (I miss you, Latin and art!) so that the kids can do chemistry every day. One of the books that we read last week for chemistry--Acids and Bases (Why Chemistry Matters)--was AMAZING; totally inspired the kids, and had ideas for tons more expansion activities, so that's what we're doing this week! The pH indicators have been super fun, but I think the kids are really, really going to love mixing stuff in search of reactions on Thursday's schedule, and dissecting a battery...carefully... on Friday's schedule. There are other books in this Why Chemistry Matters series that I've requested from the library. If they're as good as this one, we'll be including them in our science unit, too.

We're still using Communicating Mathematics with Pattern Blocks for Monday's hands-on math, and I was rushed for time last weekend--350 birthday candles to pack and ship, among other chores--so I put it again in Friday's hands-on math spot. I normally try to be very thoughtful about their hands-on enrichment, but I LIKE the ability to just plug something in that's easy to set up and easy to do!

TUESDAY: I've FINALLY got both kids going on First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 3, and we like it so far! Syd's finding the dictation work a real stretch (since we totally skipped Level 2, and therefore she's technically a year too young for this level), but the grammar is spot-on for her, so we'll stick with it, and she'll see herself improving over time. I'm hoping to keep with two lessons a week, and keep the girls together, but if needed, I can keep Will at two lessons a week, and put Syd at one lesson plus one enrichment activity.

Will's been attending a math enrichment class on Tuesdays, while I stay home with Syd, but I think that in the new year I'm going to start sending both of them. I haven't been taking math off of the Tuesday schedule even with the class, but I think that I'll start doing that, too--a shortened schedule AND extra free time for me?!? Tuesday in 2014 is going to be a GOOD day!

WEDNESDAY: Today is usually our free day, but we've decided to take Friday off to go to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and visit Santa, so we're working today, instead. I have no idea if we're going to just do Friday's work today, or Thursday's and part of Friday's--right now, the girls are working on their Christmas present to Matt, so that could be either day's Christmas craft--so I think we'll just wing it!

THURSDAY: Super short work day today, since we're going ice skating with our homeschool group, and then the girls are having a friend over for the rest of the afternoon and evening. If nobody throws a fit over their math packet (I've finally found a place in the curriculum where Will's being challenged, and she does NOT like it that she's no longer breezing through the material!), we should be able to easily get our work completed that morning. If not, I'm betting that their buddy would LOVE to help them mix chemicals and look for observable reactions!

FRIDAY: We didn't get to that papyrus papermaking kit last week, but I'm hoping that we will this week, because I'd like to move on with history in the new year, and that means more mummies and monuments, not cuneiform and papyrus.

And yeah... battery dissection. Don't ask me, because I don't know how this is going to go. I just know that Will's been asking to do it, we've seen a few tutorials, we have a book, we have old batteries, we have goggles and gloves...

... and we live pretty close to a great hospital with a great emergency room?

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!

Work Plans for the Week of November 4, 2013

MONDAY: We possibly over-extended ourselves today, since I assigned our usual amount of work even though we're not just volunteering, but sending Will to aerial silks and spending a late evening at the library, to boot. At least Monday is not normally too project-focused; neither Latin nor math (I'm really liking Communicating Mathematics with Pattern Blocks for building logic skills and mathematical thinking, so we'll be spending several Mondays with this book) nor reading (Syd's got a computer game to try for reading enrichment, and Will knows that she's welcome to read her book and write her book report over the course of a few days) nor music ("Star-Spangled Banner" for voice for one, and "It's Raining, It's Pouring" for recorder for the other) really *need* to take a long time, although you shouldn't underestimate the insanely long amount of time that my kids can drag work out into. Seriously, Syd's been doing her math for the entire time that I've been writing this post, and yes, she's technically working, but she's also drawing pictures and and eating Halloween candy and chatting her head off about everything under the sun--happy as a clam, she is, but happy as a clam spending over an hour on ten minutes of work.

TUESDAY: Math Mammoth is still going great, and I'm still really liking its content, mostly. My kids are way ahead on computational skills, but have spent less time with fractions and geometry (and the clock, which we are STILL working on mastery of, ugh!), so it's a good combination of zipping ahead with review and settling in with new content--keeps them interested, I think. The chemistry set, on the other hand, is less meaty with definitions and explanations than I'd prefer, so I'm having to spend more time than I'd anticipated in looking up terms and such to use as memory work. I'm particularly surprised that, although the girls are working with acids and bases, the set's manual hasn't actually brought up the terms "acid" or "base," instead using the demonstrations to illustrate only types of chemical reactions. I may have to plan my own lesson on acids and bases next week, just to get the vocabulary into play.

I've decided that this month our craft time will revolve around Thanksgiving crafts, and include some historical/geographical study of Thanksgiving, as well. Fortunately, we've got some cool materials from our visit to Plimoth Plantation a few years ago, and I managed to request most of the Thanksgiving-themed library materials that I wanted before the other parents got to them, so we'll have plenty of content along with our crafts.

For grammar, we're still working through a combination of the Words are CATegorical series and First Language Lessons, although every day that I work with that latter book, I cool on it even more. I think that this week I'm going to interlibrary loan the third volume of that series, and see if I just want to move both girls right into it or perhaps find something else altogether for grammar. My main requirement for a grammar curriculum is that it emphasize sentence diagramming, so good luck with that, right?

WEDNESDAY: Our field trip day was terrific last week, but we'll probably stay home this week. Syd has a friend or two that she might invite over, and they'll both have LEGO Club at the library.

THURSDAY: Someday Syd will get sick of raisin bread, I'm sure, and then we'll move on to a different recipe, but not this week! Will and I are interrupting the history part of our History of the Video Game study for a mini unit on physics, since most video games (and pinball!) rely on realistic physics.

Drawing With Children is also still going well. Will seems less frustrated with it lately, but I'm still trying to go VERY slowly to keep her feeling confident. The memory work for Drawing with Children this week is essentially a daily repetition of last week's lesson in using the shape families to draw simple realistic pictures, and for this week's lesson, instead of moving on, I'm going to have the children draw the shape families onto several of our building blocks to make "art dice," and then we'll play with them!

FRIDAY: I may have to move some of these subjects to different days next week--Friday is awfully project-based, which pretty much guarantees spillover into the weekend. Math, at least, is just another computer game--I dearly hope that they find it too easy for them, because I am OVER fussing about telling time!--and the mapwork lesson for SOTW is generally pretty cut-and-dry, but last week it was Sunday before both girls had really finished their scrapbook pages, and honestly, I think that Will *still* has to finish up last week's letter.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: A Lowe's Build-and-Grow clinic and chess club are our only scheduled activities, which will be a lovely change of pace after the multi-week craziness of Halloween festivities. We might manage a trip to the apple orchard, or the mountain biking park, or a state park to watch the leaves change...

...or we might not!

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!

Her First Language Lessons

I still don't know if I like it or not, but thanks to the public library, I HAVE been using it!

First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind goes really slowly, and it's really repetitive, which drives me nuts, and would have driven Willow nuts, too, but six-year-old Sydney loves stuff like that. She REALLY likes right answers, so she thrives on the repetition that allows her to give the right answers every day. And while the script that First Language Lessons asks the instructor to follow also makes me crazy (Seriously, why on earth would Wise insist on using the word "persons" instead of "people?" WHY?!?!?!?!?"), Sydney loves the one-on-one time, I have to admit.

So while I haven't yet decided if it's a resource that I'll want to use for the long-term, it is working well for us right now. Willow works best independently, so since I prefer that the girls do the same number of subjects daily, it lets me slot an additional math enrichment activity, extra reading, a science project, or a more in-depth assignment related to one of our unit studies into her schedule each day. It's our homemade gifted program!

And how cute is Syd's first recitation?

Excuse the chaos--one of the benefits of homeschooling is the ability to do grammar with one kid while the other kid is in her ice skating lesson.

It cracks me up, by the way, that Syd's reciting a Christina Rossetti poem; I know that Rossetti wrote religious poetry, too, but my favorite of hers is "Goblin Market," which has some SERIOUS sexual connotations. Woo-hoo!

Here's the exact text that we're using:

It's in the Present Perfect Tense!

I can't believe that my local newspaper did it again!

You use the present perfect tense to describe an action that began in the past and still continues, just as the kiddo in this article in our local paper, the Herald-Times, started singing in her choir years ago and still sings in that choir today.

To correctly form the present perfect, use the present tense of the verb "to have"--

I have.
You have.
She has. He has. It has.
We have.
You all have.
They have.

--combined with the past participle of the main verb. The past participle of "sing" is "sung," so the correct verb phrase is "has sung."

It's the Object of the Sentence!

When I taught freshman composition, my students could earn bonus points by bringing in a clipping or a photograph of a grammatical error in print, along with their explanation of the error. Here's what I found in our local newspaper this week:

When the interrogative pronoun is the object of the preposition, the correct word choice is "whom." To self-correct, pretend that you're instead using a personal pronoun--would you use "she," which designates the subject of the sentence, or "her," which designates the object?

To make it even simpler, replace the interrogative pronoun with a personal pronoun and pick the version that sounds correct:

• Vote for she? OR
• Vote for her?

If you can remember that "who" is the same as "she" and "whom" is the same as "her," then you'll know that the correct wording is--

Vote for whom?

And yes, there ARE some other grammatical issues with that particular sentence, sigh.

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.