Work Plans for the Week of September 29, 2014: Out and About

I got to feeling burned out with homeschooling last week, and thought that I might make this week either a "Project Week" or simply a math, cursive, and journal week, but then I actually looked at my planner, and saw how many outside activities the kids are going to be engaged in--homeschooling around those made lesson planning dead simple this weekend, and should make for a school week that gives us all lots of breaks between the work for extracurriculars.

MONDAY: Right now, for instance, the kiddos are downstairs at one of our community centers having a folk dancing class; this is part of our Girl Scout co-op, and will count towards Syd's Dancer badge. Yay, PE! After their workshop, we'll read and play board games here for a bit, and then go straight over to our volunteer gig. Then there's more horse breed and horse breed geography research (the kids use this Smithsonian horse encyclopedia and CultureGrams for this research, and then we search Youtube together for relevant videos), and for cursive, spelling word copywork. I'd wanted to delete spelling as a discrete subject and move it to our daily memory work, but I almost immediately discovered that memory work works best in the car, and so that dang cursive is back. If the spelling word copywork works well, however, perhaps I can at least combine spelling/cursive into the same slot.

Lapbooks have never worked well for us, but I've been wanting, for a while now, to introduce the idea of a math notebook that the kids would make themselves and then could consult for reference about, say, Roman numerals, or how exactly one borrows across zeros when subtracting. This weekend, looking for a way to have Will review simple division and Syd review simple multiplication, I found lapbooks for both multiplication and division. I copied them and set them aside, with blank notebooks, into their Monday drawer, and voila! We have math notebooks!

TUESDAY: The kids have a horse show next month, so preparation for that is occupying much of their weekly horseback riding lessons. We'll do more spiral form drawing for art, and this week's Math Mammoth is more simple multiplication for Syd and more long division for Will, so no review day needed--I'm sure we'll have to go back to review days after Will moves on to the next unit, though, so they're not gone for good.

Choosing a Junior Ranger badge to earn is one subject that just did not happen last week--that was the day, I think, that both kids piddled around contentedly at the table and made half an hour of math take more like three hours; seriously, I lost my patience with schoolwork that day loooong before they did. We'll try it this week, instead, because I do think that they're going to like it, and it's going to be a valuable way to study geography.

Will has Robotics Workshop on alternate Tuesdays (they're using LEGO Mindstorms, which I'm pretty sure that someone needs to buy ME to play with, too!), so I planned to have Syd and I do a special craft project together during that time; she sometimes has a playdate then, but if so, this marshmallow pop project will be easy to move to our free day, or even the weekend.

WEDNESDAY: A field trip to a local farm that hosts a children's farm festival will occupy this day until mid-afternoon; there should be lots of active, outdoor free play during that time, so I don't feel *too* badly about the kids going home and then having their online Magic Tree House Club meeting just a couple of hours later, and then being fed dinner and shipped off to their LEGO Club meeting.

THURSDAY: I only managed to schedule one First Language Lessons unit this week, but we continue our study of Ancient China through the lens of its artifacts by watching Chinese folktales, and then practicing the four-character Chinese idioms based on those tales. I'd like the kids to be able to recreate one idiom from memory, and I'll be adding some significant dates for Ancient China's development of their writing system to our daily memory work.

Will is ready to start a new Girl Scout badge (I've got a few extra things that I'd like her to do relating to her Inside Government badge, but I didn't want to start them this week--we just don't have enough at-home time for an extensive seat-work project), but I've planned for Syd to hike around the woods behind our house and complete a "bug census" on the woods' inhabitants.

FRIDAY: Free day!!!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Syd has ballet, and then Matt will be taking both kids directly from there to Indianapolis, where they have an afternoon Girl Scout workshop about aircraft engineering; they're going to get some hands-on experience with small planes at the actual airport, culminating in an actual flight! I am really, really, really excited for them.

Our weekdays were already so busy that I moved the kids' aerial silks class to Sunday, which means that Matt will get to take them and actually watch their class for a change; I think he's going to be quite impressed!

Now, next week is another week busy with activities--it's the public schools' fall break, so there's lots of school-age programming at the library, and a day camp, etc.--so that week might actually BE a math, journal, and cursive week. I'm already looking forward to it!

My Latest: Button-Making and Badly-Written Bug Out Plans

a round-up of DIY 3D projects

a round-up of pumpkin recipes

an essay on poor decision-making in Godzilla

a tutorial for making your own custom buttons with sugru

I've been getting a little stressed around here lately--still so much to unpack, fall clothes to make for Will, somehow I've forgotten how to make dinner for my family every night, all my writing projects, kitting my etsy shop out for the big holiday season that I'd like to have, and, of course, lesson plans every week and a full day of schoolwork every day. Today alone I've got to make those lesson plans again for next week, unpack the homeschool closet that Matt emptied out into our bathroom so that he could build shelves for me, write a tute for CAGW, and the only thing that I actually *want* to do is make Will several pairs of flannel pants with reinforced knees.

So obviously, I'm about to go and do that first, and then just stress about the rest of it later.

Work Plans for the Week of September 22, 2014: Belated and Badges

It occurred to me last night that I'd neglected to share our work plans at the beginning of this week, and, surely coincidentally, this week we've had a lot of trouble completing each day's plans in a timely manner. Surely coincidentally, but nevertheles...

MONDAY: I was going to move the kids' hands-on math day to Tuesdays while we're still having a day of review every week, but I had a (boring, tedious, miserable) appointment this Tuesday, necessitating the kids doing some of their school at their father's office, so I kept the review worksheets for Tuesday, and instead Syd reviewed multiplication arrays using dot markers--so easy and fun!--and Will watched this division video and then created her own stop-motion video on the ipad to illustrated a division problem--she used books, of COURSE. Syd then took the ipad from her and created a million stop-motion toy dinosaur movies, taping over her sister's movie in the process. Of COURSE.

Horseback riding lessons have commenced again for the fall session, and therefore so has the kids' weekly homework to research and report on a horse breed for their riding instructor. They use these horse/geography forms to record their research, and they switch tasks each week, with one kid researching the horse breed, the other researching the horse's geography, and then each kid teaching the other what she knows. We also usually do a Youtube search so that we can see the horse in action; this is a good one for this week's horse, the fell pony:

I gave Syd another Horse Diaries book to read this week, and I asked Will to read the rest of the ecosystem books for her Girl Scout Junior Animal Habitats badge, then write me one-sentence definitions of the ecosystems discussed in each book. She's happy to do pretty much anything that involves reading, even if it also involves writing!

At our volunteer gig, the kids did some gardening, did some playing, and then helped me run the meat counter. When the supply is low enough that I can move all of the meat to the shelves that are easy for them to reach, the kids can actually handle this counter independently--greeting shoppers, asking them their preferences, showing them their options, etc. I won't leave them alone while they do this, because I feel like meat shopping doesn't always bring out the best in people and so I want to supervise their encounters, but I do stand back and let them be in charge, and you can tell that they feel like Very Important People to have such a big responsibility.

Even though First Language Lessons Level 3 was great for a while, I'm back to feeling like it's moving too slowly. It's good enough that we won't ditch it, but we won't be moving on to Level 4 afterwards.

I'd planned on setting aside some time for memory work each day this week, and so I took cursive and states and capitals memorization off our regular schedule, assuming we'd do it during memory work time. I immediately discovered, however, that memory work is ideally done when riding in the car--the kids are contained then, and they can't escape my drills! But while this is excellent for spelling words, math facts, poetry recitation, and states and capitals, it's obviously impossible for cursive. That will have to go back on the schedule next week.

TUESDAY: Math review worksheets went really well this week, and now I'm torn between continuing to offer a day of extra practice in word problems and previously-acquired skill sets (multi-digit addition and subtraction for Syd; multi-digit multiplication and easy division for Will), which is great for building confidence and getting those feelings of mastery, or again using that day to advance in their Math Mammoth curriculum. Dang it, I want to do both! For now I'll keep deciding week by week, I guess...

For form drawing this week, we're working on the spiral, with the goals of making the flowing line steady and even and controlled (hear that, Will? CONTROLLED!).

Short story writing is still a success. Syd makes whole books out of her stories, with detailed illustrations on every page. Will's stories are still VERY short, but she does work on them with focus, and she's clearly quite proud of them when she's finished, so I'm saying nothing about it but praise.

I *think* I've now got everything unpacked that I need for us to start prepping our dino dig fossils, so I asked the kids to finish up the work for their Junior Paleontology badges this week; we'll mail them in, and they'll send the kids badges and certificates!

WEDNESDAY: I liked having Friday as our free day so much last week that I'm doing it again, which means that Wednesday was a regular work day.

The kids' Math Mammoth this week is more beginning multiplication for Syd, and more division for Will. Syd is breezing through her multiplication, since she already has most of her facts memorized, and division is slowly but steadily being driven into Will's brain, so every day it does become, thankfully, ever so slightly less miserable for her. LOTS of drill, though. LOTS of mastery experiences.

The kids love earning Junior Ranger badges so much that I've turned it into their geography study. They get to pick a National Park online (ideally one that we're unlikely to visit), print out that park's Junior Ranger badge book, and then they do all the activities at home, using the computer for research as needed. Just like with the Junior Paleontologist badge, when they're finished, we can mail the book to the park, and they'll send back the kids' badges and certificates. We can also request documentaries and books from the library to enrich each study.

Our Artifacts of Ancient China study is going well. We're revisiting the terracotta warriors this week (helps get those timeline dates stuck in the head!) by making terracotta warrior paper dolls; now that the kids know how the real terracotta warriors were painted, I think that they'll have a lot of fun making these paper doll versions really cute! I also like to have the kids watch these Crash Course World History videos, but screen them for your own kids, first, because they can be a little blue.

I'm sure you wouldn't have been able to guess it at all (ahem...) but the Minecraft lesson was by far the most popular part of Wednesday's curriculum. Syd doesn't really play computer games, and had never touched Minecraft before, but there's a mod-building workshop for Minecraft at the public library in a few weeks that I want her to take along with her sister, so I've given Will the job of teaching Syd how to play Minecraft before that date.

THURSDAY: Today is our last day of school for the week, and I am STOKED! I always stack Thursday with our quickest subjects, because our homeschool group's Park Day takes up most of the afternoon.

The kids lost touch with their pen pals over our summer hiatus, AND we moved, so I've got them renewing their correspondence today. And after some *gentle* nudging to finish things up last week, both kids are ready to choose new Girl Scout badges to start earning today--yay!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet, chess club, and a photography workshop for both kids, which means that Matt and I will get an afternoon for ourselves! I also feel like there's a laser tag certificate sitting around somewhere that might expire at the end of the month, AND an ice cream certificate that's also about to expire...

Sounds like a fine weekend to me!

Homeschool Field Trip: Conner Prairie

Living history museums are WAY more fun now that my children will consent to speak to other humans. Now they love the play-acting and joining into the spirit of the conceit that's required for one to really experience what a living history museum can offer, and they had a fabulous day at Conner Prairie.

I was the most excited for the children to experience Prairie Town, a recreation of an 1836 small Indiana town, because I considered it the culmination of our pioneer unit study. The kids had worked hard learning about Western Expansion and pioneer life, and thus had the context to make their experience here even more fun. Seriously, they inspected this covered wagon like the trail-hardened wagon engineers that they are:

I took them by the Outfitters Cart to choose a profession--Cook--and it was the best thing that we could possibly have done there, especially as our first stop. Many of the tasks that the profession card held required the kids to engage with the actors, which got them comfortable with doing so and for the rest of the day, they were able to run right up to anyone in period dress and jump right in with questions or thoughts or "help" with whatever that actor was doing:

Even though it was actively raining, like, right then, this gardener was still grateful to have some help at the pump!

carding wool for the hotel owner

and helping her spin some wool

The Cook card also required the kids to practice close observation--they had to find things in the kitchens like this book of recipes--

 --and the prices for various staple goods, including salt, sugar, and baking soda:

Note that this sign doesn't have "baking soda" on it. Can YOU find it?

I also required the kids to ask one "good" question every place we went, and this led to them learning interesting facts such as where the salt is stored, why the doctor's wife doesn't have a butter churn (the doctor gets paid in so much barter that they don't need to keep their own animals), and how much a tin cup costs at the trading post (the trader said that if the younger kid brought him a raccoon skin, he'd give her TWO tin cups!).

The only place that really disappointed me was the Lenape Indian Camp. There was a wetu and a skin drying and a bark boat--

--and a couple of children's games set out, but there were no Lenape. Instead, there was the trading post and another settler-type house, and when the younger kid asked, the trader's wife said that the place was a "trading camp"--not even a real Native American town, then! NOT a good representation of Native American life, especially considering that Indiana has a rich Native American history, some of which we actually do know.

Oh, well. We'll be visiting Prophetstown and Battle Ground later this year, and I can do my own fangirly historical interpretation there myself, if I need to. 

One of the things that I had to continually encourage the kids to do, even after all their practice at Prairetown, was to ask the actors and other historical interpreters their questions. The younger kid would absolutely pepper me with questions, but when I would tell her to ask this or that person instead, she'd be reluctant. The older kid would also have questions, but would then immediately come up with her own guesses at the answers, and be satisfied with that. I absolutely required them, however, if there was a docent in sight, to refer their question to that person, and thankfully, every single docent was always interesting and engaging, and always had an answer (that was always different from the older kid's guesses!). 

The kids have been interested in pottery ever since the younger kid's work on her Girl Scout Brownie Potter badge, and I've been toying with the idea of what at-home pottery we can do (pottery studio memberships aren't super pricey here, honestly, but the kids' classes always overlap extracurriculars that my kids are already involved in). I don't think that we could recreate THIS kiln, necessarily--

 --but this potter--

--was making some pretty great things on a kick wheel just like this one!

There was also map reading--

--and chicken observation-- 

--and over lunch a Come to Jesus entitled "If You Continue to Pitch This Fit, I Will Leave Your Sister with One of My Friends and Drive You Home and You Will Reimburse Me $5 for Your Admission to This Place," inspired by the fact that the older kid had packed only a ton of yogurt and fruit for her own lunch (and no spoon), and couldn't stand the fact that the younger kid had packed a giant, carefully-prepared lunch for herself. The younger kid even let her borrow her plastic spoon when I asked her to, before she'd even used it herself for her own yogurt, so the older kid ate her own yogurt with the spoon, and then THREW THE SPOON AWAY. The younger kid had to spoon up her yogurt with the lid, getting it all over herself in the process, but don't worry--the older kid had ALSO THROWN AWAY THE LAST WET WIPE. 

Lunch was followed by Go Play on the Playground and Don't Talk to Me for a While. Everyone cheered up at the tour of the historical home and garden, however-- 

--and the older kid redeemed herself by asking a million nerdy questions of the weaver, and chasing squirrels out by the cornfield and making her sister laugh.

It was almost the end of the day by the time we reached the Civil War--

--but the kids still got to muster, and witness an encounter between Confederate soldiers and some townspeople, and then we wandered into the field hospital.

It was just the three of us in the field hospital, along with the field medic, but he was stoked to set up shop and show us all of his tools and how he used them. Using the younger kid as his model, he described in great detail what a gunshot to the arm would look like--what it would tear, what it would shatter, how much blood would be spilled, what the level of pain would look like. He pulled out each tool that would be used and explained exactly what each one would do--this one to hold the skin flaps open, this one to clamp onto the lead bullet, this one to cut away excess tissue. He was just describing how the surgeons would simply wipe off the saw before using it to sever another limb, when the younger kid suddenly began to make this loud, high-pitched whining noise. We both turned to look at her, the field medic still holding her arm, just as she started to stagger in his grasp and fall over.

"Oh, no!" I said. "She's going to faint! Is there somewhere she can sit?" The field medic ran outside, where there were a couple of Union soldiers killing time on the porch, and got them to drag a chair up to the porch, which I hauled the younger kid over to and sat her on. One of the soldiers then went inside to grab some of the field bandages to make a cold, wet compress for the younger kid's forehead, while I made her put her head between her knees and the poor field medic just kept apologizing to her, over and over, pausing only to declare that this had never happened to him before.

While the rest of us were distracted with the younger kid, the second Union soldier turned to the older kid, who was just standing there, and asked her, "Are YOU okay?"

"No," I heard her say, and then she started to fall over, too! I ditched the younger kid with the field medic (still patting her and apologizing), and the second Union soldier and I sort of dragged the older kid over to a grassy area next to the porch. I laid her down on the grass, and she immediately rolled over onto her face and just lay there, moaning.

The first Union soldier then reappeared, dripping wet linen bandages in his hands, observed the scene, and said, "NOW what happened?" We were all like, "Ummm... I don't know?" so he said, "Right, I'm calling the medic."

The younger kid was still woozy, so the field medic and the second Union soldier brought her over to the grass, too, and then I found myself, standing on a lawn, my two kids lying moaning at my feet, three grown men in Civil War garb standing facing me, looking absolutely horrified.

Thankfully, it took just a couple of minutes for the medic--the REAL medic--to roll up in his cart. He stepped out, asked what happened, and then the poor field medic started right in about how he was just demonstrating field surgery, and they were really interested, and this had never happened to him before, and so the medic cut him off with "What did you DO to them?"

I explained that the kids both just suddenly felt faint, and the medic, who'd clearly seemed to be expecting chloroform poisoning or something, relaxed into taking the kids' vitals and getting them to sit up, etc.

The younger kid's check was normal and she was feeling a little better, so I left her in the care of the first Union soldier while the second Union soldier and I helped the medic examine the older kid. She wasn't feeling well, of course, and strangers were looking at her and talking to her, which she does NOT like, and even though we were pretty isolated where we were, she knew for a fact that many of her friends were also at Conner Prairie that day, and who knew but that they might also be looking at her. Ten-year-old's worst nightmare, right? So let's just say that she was being... combative. The medic asked her if she was okay.

"NO!" she said.

"Okay, then how do you feel?"

"BORED!" she said.

"Can I check your pulse?"

"NO!" she said.

"What's your name?"

"NO!"

The medic looked up at me in concern, and I know he was thinking that she had an altered mental state, but he asked me, "This is unusual for her, right?"

And I said, "Well...". I didn't really know how to respond, actually. Does my kid *usually* act like an asshole? Mostly not. Is acting like an asshole totally out of character for her? No. Could she be acting like an asshole for absolutely no medical reason right now? Probably, but who wants to admit to a medical professional that their kid is simply just acting like an asshole? Finally, I said, "I think that she's, um, angry right now. This isn't the ideal way she wanted to spend her time in Civil War Town."

Fortunately, her vitals read as okay. No neuro consult needed!

Meanwhile, I could half hear the younger kid having a lovely moment with the first Union soldier. He shared with her his REAL NAME. Wonderful guy.

The medic told the kids that they needed to drink a big glass of water, eat a big dinner, and go to bed early that night, and then he offered us a ride anywhere we wanted to go. It was almost closing time, though, so I asked if he could just take us to our car.

Reader, he could.

The Union soldiers helped get us settled into the medic's buggy, the field medic came over one more time to hug each of the children and tell them that he was sorry (Geez, poor guy!), and then as we motored off, they all waved and hollered "Bye!" at us.

The kids did, indeed drink a ton more water on the way home, they did, indeed eat a big dinner, and you can bet that I did, indeed send them to bed early that night.

Later, as Matt and I hung out and ate our own dinners and watched a movie, I like to think that the field medic and I, cities apart as we were, were both self-medicating ourselves with much hard cider in solidarity from our afternoon.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

My Latest: Colored Cellophane and a Junior Ranger Vest

a tutorial for copying an existing piece of clothing, using this Junior Ranger vest I'm making for Will

I used her Girl Scout vest as a template.

a tutorial for the 3D glasses that Will made, also as a Girl Scout project

and a tutorial for these color viewers that I made, inspired by the 3D glasses

I was worried these color viewers would be a little baby-ish for my two, as they're usually used for sensory play for preschoolers, but oh, my gosh, they LOVE them, and they're a useful addition to our science enrichment supplies. 

I've got a couple of etsy orders to make early this week, but other project goals include sanding and varnishing one last bookshelf from the old general store; sorting, cataloging, and scanning a whole box of World War II correspondence that I found in our attic on Saturday before I call our home's former owners and tell them what a treasure I found (and sorted, and cataloged. I might stay quiet about the scanning...) for them; chipping old cement off of marble slabs that used to be bathroom counters in some fancy bathroom at the university, but that I would like to be wall shelves here; and lengthening some pants for Will, because it's getting cold here, and the poor kid has stretched out of all of her pants!

I know I should do that last project first, on account of cold weather, but yeah, I'm probably going to play with my World War II letters all week instead.

Dragons and Light

I know that light tables are a BIG thing with the preschool set nowadays, but my big kids also seem to find plenty of ways to play with ours. The other day, while listening to the Story of the World chapters on Ancient China, I dragged our big light table out so that they could color Asian dragons from their stained glass coloring book:

Big kids love color, too!

Spots Came Home

We grieved for this cat for two months. We put flyers all over town. We drove to neighborhoods where people told us they'd seen cats like her and shouted her name (sometimes people yelled at us because, you know, shouting). We paid for newspaper ads. We talked to strangers. We put a big yard sign up by our mailbox. We visited the animal shelter weekly to look at strays. I gave up hope, frankly, but we still continued to do these things.

And friends and strangers--they put up flyers, too. Total strangers put flyers up all over town. Total strangers drove to neighborhoods where people told them that they'd seen cats like her and shouted her name. More than once, total strangers caught and confined cats and called us to come over and look at them (the cutest time was when some college women renting a house near our old neighborhood called Matt on a Friday night. They had seen a cat that they just knew was Spots, caught her, and put her in, like, a gerbil cage on top of their kitchen table. They were SUPER sad when Matt told them that the cat wasn't Spots, but then one of them turned to the others and said, "Does this mean that we just abducted someone's cat?").

Friends contacted me all the time with good wishes and helpful advice. They called people they knew who worked in vets' offices and asked them to keep a lookout. They shared our flyers with all their friends on Facebook.

Yesterday, someone who'd seen our yard sign called to say that a cat like Spots had been hanging around his street for the past couple of weeks. Matt and I drove over there, like we always do, I got out of the car, like I always do, and I called her name, like I always do.

Before I'd even finished shouting her name one time, Spots burst out of the bushes to my right, just a few feet in front of me.

She didn't run to me, but ran across the street in front of me, and into another field, but when I called her name again she stopped, and although she still didn't come to me, she meowed when I spoke to her and let me creep over to her and pick her up.

I wasn't 100% sure that it WAS Spots, to be frank. It looked an awful lot like her, yes, but maybe her brown parts were too brown? And she didn't *really* act like she knew me, in the way that my Spots knew me and came running every time I called her. Her pupils were giant and she was wild-looking and didn't want me to hold her and carry her. Matt and I actually drove her to a vet to get her microchip scanned, but the vet didn't have a contract with this particular microchip company and so couldn't get a reading.

So we brought her home, and kept an eye on her as she roamed and explored and sniffed the other cats and then settled in for a nap, and as soon as I saw her on the sofa, curled up the way she has a billion times before, I thought, "That's probably Spots." And when she finally came over to me and let me pick her up, and she settled against my shoulder like a baby the way she also has a billion times before, I thought, "This is my Spots!"

She'd been missing for more than two months. We found her less than a mile from our house. There's not a scratch on her. She doesn't seem to have lost any weight. We're taking her to the vet for a check-up soon, but she seems... fine, actually. She seems great.

I am joyful. I am thrilled. I am really, really, really lucky. I am thankful to everyone who passed out flyers, shared info, kept a lookout, and sent hopeful thoughts my way.

And tonight, we are having a kitty party in Spots' honor! There will be canned cat food, and catnip mice, and Matt swears that he'll bring home a cake for the humans that reads "Welcome Home, Spots. You're Purrfect."

And if an adult will willingly give that message to a baker, then you KNOW how much we'd been missing her!

Literally Walk through Long Division

Although Will seems to understand the concept behind long division just fine (we'll nevertheless still continue to go over it amply, rest assured), she just can't seem to keep the steps in her head, so I thought we'd mix it up a bit and get that whole body learning going by moving the lesson outside.

I wrote a GIANT long division problem on our driveway, and then literally walked Will through it. Will started by standing on the divisor, and then walked across the dividend until she reached a place where the divisor would fit. Then she walked straight up to write down that portion of the quotient, walked back to the divisor to multiply, then walked down to write the product. Then she subtracted to find the remainder:

She walked up again to find the next digit of the dividend to bring down, and so on:

Most kids would probably think that this was a fun activity (Syd watched the whole thing eagerly, practically vibrating as she tried to figure out a way that she could participate), but Will haaaaaaated it! It took too long, required too much effort, she had to bend down to write, etc. etc. Before she'd finished the above problem, in fact, her grousing reached such a level that I gave her the official verdict of Bad Attitude.

You may already know, but in our family, if you complete your entire day's schoolwork with a Good Attitude, you earn yourself a solid hour of screen time afterwards. If, instead, you display a Bad Attitude, you earn no screen time, and I tell your father when he gets home from work and he frowns at you and gives you the same lecture over again. You do not like it.

Anyway, this was Monday, and during yesterday's math, which was supposed to be an easy review of some stuff she learned last week, I saw that Will was having an awful lot of trouble with the "find the missing factor" part of division. She'd be presented with an easy division problem, say 84/9, and would just start wildly guessing what factor multiplied by nine would come the closest to 84 without going over. Three? Seven? 

So today, instead of our regularly scheduled Math Mammoth, we're going to have multiplication boot camp, reviewing the multiplication facts and reviewing them again when presented as missing factor problems. 

If only you could literally beat the multiplication tables into someone's head, sigh. I know you can't, so I won't try, and also that would be wrong, but if only...

Work Plans for the Week of September 15, 2014: Extracurriculars and Extra Badges

MONDAY: I just realized that this day is stacked with our quickest, easiest subjects; if I'd noticed as I was planning yesterday, I would have switched one of these subjects with Wednesday's history assignment, but oh, well--more time for chores today, then!

First Language Lessons continues. The kids are memorizing William Makepeace Thackeray's "A Tragic Story" as part of their current lessons; it's not my favorite poem, but they like it.

The kids are also still working on states and capitals memorization, and reading L is for Lincoln just for fun. I'm eager to have this memorization accomplished, because I've finally figured out what I'd really like the kids to do for geography next, and I'm excited to present it to them! I think that next week I'll revisit daily "memory work"; it got out of hand when we last had it regularly scheduled, so this time I'll likely also institute a time limit.

Matt sat both the kids down last week and actually made them study their spelling words instead of just goofing around on Spelling City (another reason for a daily memory work time), so they both aced their tests and have all new lists this week! I give Will 20 words at a time, and Syd 15; as they memorize words, I'll take them off of their lists, and when they're down to five or fewer words, I restock their list. I've still got the kids using Spelling City, however, goofing around or not; perhaps when we're doing daily memory work, I'll delete spelling as a discrete subject and simply have spelling words as part of the memory work.

Will is still working on division in Math Mammoth, and still fighting all the computation involved in long division, so later I'm going to take her out to the driveway, write long division problems in huge script on our driveway, and then literally walk her through them. Syd is starting multiplication in her Math Mammoth, a unit that should go well since I had her memorize facts along with Will last year; today we'll review them while playing Roll-n-Multiply--she LOVES this game!

I've started recording the kids' hours that we spend volunteering at the food pantry on Mondays; apparently, the mayor's office offers a service award to children, evaluated solely on volunteer hours, that the children will certainly be eligible for at the end of my twelve-month recording period.

TUESDAY: Lately, Math Mammoth has been moving both kids along a little too quickly, which means that not only do they not get to feel a sense of mastery over any particular math concept, but they also feel frustrated at daily having to slog through a new concept, and not remembering how to deal with previously-taught concepts. This day's math, then, is a review of the previous week, using worksheets found online and in our Kumon drill books. Syd has Roman numerals, the order of operations, and graphs, and Will has word problems, multi-digit multiplication, and division. If they need review again next week, I'll switch this to Monday and put the hands-on enrichment for the coming week on Tuesday.

Every week I tell myself that next week I should push cursive more. Every week I have more interesting things that I want to schedule instead.

Although I usually give the kids free reign over their Girl Scout badges, I'm going to encourage Syd to tackle the reading list for her Bugs badge (because those books are going to be due back at the library soon) and Will to make 3D glasses with me (because I want to write the project up as a tute for CAGW). We'll see how this goes over!

Horseback riding lessons start again this week, and the kids are SO excited to get back to their horses! The fall show is coming up next month, so I imagine they'll be doing a lot of work on the drill team performance that they'd like to perform at the show.

Will also has a robotics workshop that she attends on alternate Tuesdays; the kids are learning to program and problem-solve using LEGO Mindstorms. I'm planning an at-home robotics unit to accompany these sessions, but don't have it prepared yet.

Because Syd's not old enough for the robotics workshop, she has reading as her final school slot on this day. I'm asking her to read me the first chapter of Island Horse, then to finish reading it on her own this week.

WEDNESDAY: This is usually our weekly free day, but I'm experimenting with moving the free day around to take advantage of days when we don't have scheduled extracurriculars; this week, that's Friday! I'm playing around with how I want to go about scheduling weekly writing, so since last week I had the kids write essays, and book reports the week before, on this day I'm asking them to write a short story.

The kids are looking forward to starting the Great Wall of China diorama that I've assigned them on this day. I've got enough styrofoam blocks for one diorama, so I'll have them work together; hopefully, there won't be too much conflict between Syd's perfectionism and Will's disdain for creating visual art. We're exploring Ancient China through the lens of its artifacts, so there will be a lot of these projects involved in our study.

I've discovered that there are also Junior Ranger badges that are focused on subject, rather than the parks, and this Junior Paleontologist badge is one of them. I need to order some more supplies before I can get the kids to work preparing and displaying their own fossils from the dino dig, so hopefully this self-directed unit will buy me the time that I need.

Will is getting frustrated because she thinks she's advancing too slowly at aerial silks (mind you, the classes were on hiatus this summer, and the first day back was necessarily a review, but Will doesn't want to perfect skills that she's already learned--she wants to learn NEW skills!), and asked me to sign her up for two classes this week, so I signed both kids up for two out of convenience.

THURSDAY: I added a book to this day's math, just for fun. I like to have a book or video as part of each day's schoolwork, because the kids enjoy them and because they seem to absorb information well from those outlets.

Grammar and spelling are repeats from Monday. I would have liked to have a second slot for cursive this week, and a slot for art, but the kids have an unusual amount of extracurriculars this week. I count extracurriculars as slots in our school day to make sure that I'm leaving enough free time in the children's schedules. I know that most kids who go to school have extracurriculars on top of school and then homework on top of that, but my kids' free time is precious to them--and to me!--and it's really important to me that it be preserved.

That being said, the kids have two scheduled activities on this day, which I also try not to do. At least one of the activities, our homeschool group's Park Day, is just free play.

FRIDAY: Free day! The kids have a buddy coming over to play in the afternoon, and there's a craft project that I'd like to interest them in, but otherwise, their time is their own.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: This weekend is unusually scheduled, as well. Not only does Syd have her regular ballet class on Saturday morning, but in the afternoon she has an audition for the university's yearly production of The Nutcracker. On Sunday, Matt's taking the kids to the Hoosier Outdoor Experience while I stay at home and work my butt off.

Surely by the end of the weekend, my study will be unpacked? That would certainly be a sanity-booster!

My Latest: Making Repairs and Playing with Food

a round-up of easy repair tutes

another round-up of projects that get kids playing with food

and a tutorial for mending a torn knit dress using a T-shirt

Look how cute it turned out!

I'll pretend that I'm showing you the following pictures just to illustrate to you how well the dress drapes, but really you know that I just want to show off my adorable kid:

In some ways, this project might seem a little odd: the dress itself is from Old Navy, which is known for its cheap, easily-replaced garments, and this particular dress, actually, was free, a hand-me-down from a friend who warned me, when she gave it to me, that it had a hole in the tushy. 

Why bother repairing, you might ask, when I could probably walk into Old Navy today and buy an identical one for four bucks?

Well, because even though it's from Old Navy (I've had bad luck with some of their clothes), it's a good-quality garment, it's roomy enough to fit Syd well through next summer, it's comfortable and she likes it so it will get a lot of wear, and it's so easy to repair that I couldn't have gone to Old Navy and back in the time that it took me to mend this dress. 

Even so, yeah, it did take me about an hour to mend a $4 dress, which wouldn't be worth it to a lot of people. But it's worth it to me, because I prefer to use what we have rather than buy new, even if it's cheap, and I like to see my kids wearing clothes that I've sewed for them, and I to see my kids in interesting, unexpected clothes, when I have the time to make them for them. 

So I had a little extra free time this Wednesday to repair a comfy dress using an interesting detail, and it made me happy, and it made Syd happy, so yay.

And then, of course, we woke up the next morning to see that the weather turned, and it's now freezing here. And now I'm extra glad that I lengthened the dress so that Syd can wear it next summer, too!

Will Demonstrates Centrifugal Force

Here's another activity from the Girl Scout Entertainment Technology Junior badge that Will has technically earned probably thrice over by now, but that has such enjoyable activities that she just keeps coming back to it:

(Note of oddness: Lately, my videos haven't been playing with Youtube's Safety Mode on, although I assure you that they are all quite appropriate for all audiences! If you're logged into Youtube, you may have to scroll down to the bottom of any page, where you'll find the Language and Safety Mode menus, then turn Safety Mode off.)

I think I've mentioned before that I create a list of additional activities (I have a whole Girl Scout pinboard!) and a reading list to go with each badge that the children want to earn, and I leave at least one schoolwork slot each week solely for work on these badges, on top of the work that the kids do on them by choice in their free time. I've often wanted to push the kids to finish the last couple of lingering activities that make up a badge, just because I like to be organized and structured that way, but so far I've resisted the impulse by trying to remember that, even if they pick and choose among sixty random activities for twenty disparate badges, working on something totally different every time, the self-directed activity that they're engaged in is still useful, academic (mostly. Some of the Brownie badge activities are a little soft), and enriching.

And I hadn't otherwise planned on having Will study physics this week, so there's that!

Oregon Trail Books for Elementary Kids

Here's the rough draft of Syd's book report on A My America: A Perfect Place: Joshua's Oregon Trail Diary, Book Two:

After Syd had finished, she read it to me sentence by sentence and watched me rewrite it by hand, standardizing the spelling, grammar, and punctuation and putting it into paragraphs as I wrote. We didn't work through any more edits than that, as I was so pleased with the detail in her plot summary. She and I can talk through writing an introduction and contextualizing her information another time.

This week spells the end of our pioneer unit study. With some unit studies, I've had trouble finding enough resources to suit (History of Video Games and History of Drama unit studies, I'm looking at you!), but there were loads and loads and LOADS of resources to use in studying frontier and pioneer history. Here are some of our favorites:


I should note that while Syd read the first two fictional trail diaries and the picture books, and listened to the Jim Weiss recording and the Little House books, Will read ALL of these independently. Assigned reading is an especially effective way for Will to learn, since she's such an avid reader, and having her read these "extra" books is one of my favorite ways of leveling the same subject for two different grades.

One flaw, however, that I have just noticed as I'm recording what we read, is that our list is very, very historical fiction-heavy. The problem is that there are just so many wonderful titles in historical fiction concerning frontier history and the Oregon trail that whenever I was faced with the choice of giving a child a non-fiction book or one of these living histories, I always chose the living history.

Ah, well. There will be plenty time for fact-based research the next time our interests cycle around to the pioneers.

On a related note, I have pre-ordered this book--


--and I could not be more excited to read it in November! I hear it's going to be quite dishy...