Bright Minds ... Loving Hearts ... Capable Hands

Fractions

2012-01-25T15:13:00.000-08:00

Yes, we are still working on fractions.

I want to write this post for all the people out there who think that their grade 6 or grade 7 student should know fractions by now. It's not that easy. We holistic home learners can be so flexible when it comes to when a child learns to read and so very inflexible when it comes to math skills.

We did fractions in grade 4, the very gentle introduction that Live Education brings to the student. We did about half of Life of Fred: Fractions in grade 5. Technically we worked with fractions before grade 4 when we were using the Miquon Math Lab materials. And here we are still doing fractions.

I want to tell you something about teaching fractions: they will expose your child's weaknesses with other math skills. It's okay to have weaknesses and it is really good when you can find them, because it means you can strengthen those skills.

Today my boys were reducing fractions. Yes, we've done this before, but we are reviewing the early fraction work so that they can become Fraction Ninjas (thanks to Papa for the label, because they boys are really into the idea). I can tell you right away that J-Baby still struggles with knowing his multiplication facts inside out and backwards, because his answers are wrong when he doesn't remember his multiplication facts. T-Guy, on the other hand, makes mistakes because he doesn't reduce enough. Part of his problems is taking directions literally (so if the instructions don't say to reduce again if necessary he doesn't), but the other issue is not finding the greatest common factor.

In a nutshell: J-Baby can easily find the greatest common factor but sometimes does the math wrong, T-Guy does the math correctly but doesn't always find the greatest common factor.

(Can you imagine how this would play out in a classroom? I am one teacher with two students and they each have a different weakness. My guess is that there are other things that could be going wrong and that it must be hard for a teacher to address the needs of 30 students.)

I realize that math and writing skills are the most important things we need to be working on this year. Soon I will determine just exactly what our goals will be and I will imprint them in my brain. Grade two was place value and reading at the Frog and Toad level; in terms of skills everything else was gravy. I'm inclined to think that grade 6 is going to be all about having a solid understanding of fractions, decimals, and percents and the ability to write a five paragraph essay.

I didn't fully realize before that the story content of the Waldorf curriculum is the easy part. I'd bring stories to the boys, we'd draw (or paint or model), we'd summarize, and we'd write a little bit. They know so much about history and science and have been exposed to a great deal of children's literature (all of these things being partly what we've brought to them and partly what they have sought on their own). They've been to museums, plays, and concerts. Well-rounded describes their content learning, but their skills aren't exactly where we want them to be. Which isn't exactly where everyone else is (hence my reminding everyone that all skills come in their own time), but isn't where they are right now either.

This is where I stumble. Do I trust in unschooling, in their inherent desire to learn and the belief that sometime soon they will set goals for themselves and dive into math and writing? Or do I acknowledge that I am not going to harm them with skills work and make it a part of everyday life, something that they simply must develop the discipline to do? (I do pause for a moment and realize that this is exactly who I am, a person who had difficulty choosing between two options when both have something going for them.) Is requiring skills work a fear response on my part (how will they get into college?) or simply requiring them to develop the skills they need (yep, buddy, everyone has to learn fractions)?

Homeschooling can be fraught with questions we don't ask ourselves otherwise. I don't wonder if I am pushing my children to learn to do the dishes or vacuum the house. I don't think that having them fold their own laundry is pushing them. I don't consider myself unfair because they must care for the dogs. I make them suck it up and eat kale when they don't want to. I do all these things because I believe they are good for them, that they help develop them into caring, responsible, healthy people.

So maybe, for now, we push forward with skills work and see where it takes us.

More Keva

2011-12-19T17:41:00.000-08:00

By request, here are several more shots of Keva structures done by the boys:

A basic tower in a very messy bedroom. I'm so glad we decluttered again!

Baseball stadium, which they had room to build because we got rid of so much junk in the bedroom.

An earlier baseball stadium (2009).

A locomotive (2007).

Their earliest towers (2007).

A Major Battlement (2008).

Side View of Battlement (2008).

Aerial Shot of Battlement (2008).

Castle Towers and Entrance Gate (2008).

Tall Tower (2008).

Other Buildings (2010)

Fun With Keva

2011-12-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

I take photos of KEVA structures on a regular basis, but most of them stay on my phone until there isn't room or the boys say they can be deleted, as often we are just taking a photo to show Papa. However, since Shelley of Along the Crooked Path posted some KEVA photos I thought I'd look on my computer and see what I could find.

This is a fairly recent structure as T-Guy is in his own (somewhat messy) bedroom. His face is so much leaner here than in the final photo; it isn't weight loss since he is perpetually skinny. It's just part of the process of becoming a young man.

This is a coliseum of sorts, with a Lego Mini Figure battle taking place. I believe that is a homebuilt Lego dragon up top.

This is a tower that the homeschool group kids built; they were going for height. The photos was taken almost exactly one year ago, and wow, all three of these boys have grown since then. T-Guy is so much taller and is face is far more angular now.

Thanks for the inspiration, Shelley!

Popping In ...

2011-12-12T20:00:00.000-08:00

I really didn't intend my blog silence to go on this long, but my laptop stopped working so I couldn't post.

We really haven't been doing much that is exciting in terms of lesson work. For math we are doing a fraction review block. We've also started with the Vimala alphabet, and we're fitting in crafting when we can. We have one more week of PE before the winter break.

December is a great month for experiencing performing arts. So far we've seen The Nutcracker, a holiday choral concert, and a dramatic reading (with music and sound effects) of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory.

Saturday I took the boys to the San Diego Natural History Museum; we watched a movie about prehistoric marine animals (Sea-Rex) and took in many of the permanent exhibits; however, our main focus was a limited time exhibition of All That Glitters: The Splendor and Science of Gems and Minerals. It was a wonderful exhibit of both cut gems and gems and minerals in their natural state, and touched on crystal forms, hardness, mining, and even semi-precious "gems" that come from living matter such as pearls, jet, amber, and coral. Some of the jewelry pieces were breathtaking!

J-Baby was beyond delighted to touch a real iron meteorite, something he said he never thought he'd ever do. I didn't realize he'd ever thought about it.

So mostly this month is pretty relaxed, which is often when the best learning occurs. We don't get to the math or handwriting everyday, but we do do something each day that brings learning.

Blog Silence

2011-12-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

I'm giving myself a break, a real break. I don't plan to blog the rest of this block or through the holidays. I'm not saying that I won't post, but it won't be my focus. I'd like to slow down and turn inward as we approach the solstice and the return of the sun. I'm actually planning a bit of a computer break as well; there are a few books that I have been meaning/wanting to read that I haven't gotten to. So other than keeping up with people that I know via Facebook or email and moderating over at Homespun Waldorf I am going to make a real effort to turn off the computer.

An End and a Beginning

2011-11-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

So I did it, I blogged everyday this month. Honestly, I didn't love doing it and I'm glad that it's over. I much prefer posting when I feel like it.

We started the reboot of Waldorf homeschool grade 6 today. I'm not going to allow myself to assess how it's going until we finish this block. First days tend to go well for us with plenty of enthusiasm on both sides; it's one to two weeks into a block that I have a good sense of how it is going.

It went slowly, but after a simple circle (candle lighting, singing, and beginning to learn a new verse) we started with our basics: Daily Grammar and a math fact sheet from Making Math Meaningful. We spent some time reviewing parts of speech (as we'll soon be incorporating Waldorf grammar into our mornings), then we had our math main lesson. And that was it. We won't start independent lesson time until next week. Today was PE so we didn't have a traditional afternoon lesson.

More on Math

2011-11-29T20:00:00.001-08:00

Today I went through some of the skills charts to evaluate where the boys are in terms of their math learning. I decided to leave off the higher math learning that they have out of sequence, such as multiplying in other number bases or solving algebra word problems and to simply find out where they are in terms of the their solid (rather than Swiss cheese) math knowledge.

I'd put them squarely in grade 5; they have grade 4 down and are working on some grade 5 and grade 6 skills. It helps to know where they are; I suppose this is why teachers and schools assess students. It feels a little unfair to leave out their higher math skills/knowledge, but I need to focus on the basics.

So my goal is to get them completely solid in all Waldorf math through grade 6 by the end of our homeschool year.

I've written before about the boys' love of Life of Fred and how they seem to be gaining skills but can't demonstrate them when it comes time to do the bridge problems. I'm thinking now that moving away from Waldorf math main lessons took away their opportunity to really connect with the math and take it to a deeper level of understanding. They get the Life of Fred math when we do it, but it isn't grounded and so they've mostly forgotten it by the time we get to the bridge.

I'm kind of bummed; I really thought that Life of Fred was a great program and had planned to use it with them through high school. Maybe it will be something that we can return to when the boys have more skills. In the meantime, I am going to suggest that they continue with it on their own during independent lesson time and we'll see how that goes.

We're moving directly into a math block using A Little Garden Flower; we're going to do the a grade 5 main lesson block from Melisa's book, A Journey Through Waldorf Math. That's right, we are going back and doing a grade 5 fractions block. I actually find that it is material that we have previously covered with Life of Fred, but it needs grounding.

We'll have two more Waldorf math main lesson blocks this homeschool year: Geometrical Drawing (Using Nature, Number, and Geometry from Live Education) and Business Math/Decimals and Percents using Making Math Meaningful. We'll also have daily math practice as well as a weekly math lesson using Making Math Meaningful to review math concepts from grades 4 and 5 and to bring in a lot of the other grade 6 math concepts such as casting out nines, ratios, statistics, graphing, etc.

I am reminded of how simple my goals were for Enki grade 2: reading at a Frog and Toad level and understanding place value. Whenever we got off track I simply reminded myself that those were the big goals for the year. This year it will be catching up to grade level in Waldorf math and learning the steps to write a basic research paper (research, outlining, summarizing, introductory sentences, sentence structure, conclusions, paragraph structure). Everything else is just along for the ride ...

Still Planning

2011-11-28T20:00:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning still uncertain as to how to proceed with our homeschool year, and thus spent the morning pouring over all the resources I have trying to puzzle it out.

Here are some of our main issues:

Live Education is at times uninspiring and very geared to the classroom vs. homeschool. I thought the boys would love the Mineralogy block because they love rocks and the things that make rocks such as volcanoes. But the block was mostly drawing and writing and they've hated what we've done so far.

The boys know a lot of ancient Greek history, leaving me uncertain as to whether or not we should do the second half of the block. Comparing a variety of Waldorf curricula it seems that Live Education is the only one that includes Greece in grade 6.

Roman History: my boys also know a lot of Roman History, having gone through When the World was Rome with Papa. I'm thinking of shortening the block and making it very experiential to help the seeds that have already been planted grow.

Math: how to proceed, how to fill in the holes in their math education, how to build math confidence.

Writing: same issues as with math.

So ... I think I have a new plan:

We won't finish Mineralogy as a block; we'll continue to explore the subject more organically. We have several great books and guides plus a plethora of rock samples.

We won't do the second block on Ancient Greece.

We will combine both Roman History blocks into one block, placing a focus on experiential learning vs. typical classroom learning.

We'll do a math main lesson block for the next 2 - 3 weeks (using Making Math Meaningful), then move new math learning to Thursday afternoons (taking the time slot previously allotted to completing any unfinished lesson work). Math practice will still happen daily, and the boys will use Life of Fred on their own. We'll keep the Geometrical Drawing block but will move it to February.

We'll keep the Physics, Astronomy, and Middle Ages blocks as planned. However, I need to evaluate what to do with the astronomy block as again, my boys (J-Baby in particular) have spent countless hours reading about astronomy, watching astronomy documentaries (okay, not countless hours there, but more than one or two), and looking at the night sky.

We'll add in a World Geography block as most of the other resources I have suggest this in grade 6, although Live Education doesn't.

Our Tuesday Literature lesson will have a stronger focus on writing; I will decrease the main lesson writing accordingly. In addition, the boys will resume daily journal writing (which I will not correct, but will use as a tool to help me see where more writing instruction is needed).

We'll see how it all goes. This is generally the time of year that they really want a more relaxed homeschooling / unschooling experience so I am going against their rhythm a bit, but I think I can draw them in.

What To Do Tomorrow

2011-11-27T20:00:00.000-08:00

Tonight I am pondering whether we should finish our Mineralogy block or start our second Ancient Greece block. I hate the idea of pushing everything back and am leaning toward starting Ancient Greece and weaving the rest of Mineralogy into the afternoons.

I'm also trying to figure out a new approach to math. I am thinking that Life of Fred is going to be something that the boys do on their own and I will bring math to them using Making Math Meaningful. They are so caught up on the importance of the bridges in Life of Fred and I can't tell if they make mistakes because it is a big scary test or if they truly don't know the material. Talking to them they can demonstrate that they do know it, so I am at a loss.

I don't want to abandon Life of Fred completely; it actually is the best math curriculum we've used in terms of holding the boys' attention and helping them want to do math. They love everything about it except those pesky bridges. I do think that in part it is test anxiety and in part it is that they do so much of their learning orally and they need to learn to do math from written exercises that they read rather than have read to them. I'm learning the there is a difference in terms of how they process the information. Since I have to assume that there won't always be someone there to read their word problems to them I need to help them learn to take in the information through reading it themselves.

I'm also going to bring in more Waldorf grammar using Earthschooling. I miss the grammar we did with Oak Meadow G4 (probably one of the best thing we did using that curriculum for those few months). Daily Grammar works, but it isn't that fun. The boys will continue with Daily Grammar on their own to increase their skills and understanding of grammar.

I think the biggest change may be that I will be giving the boys more work to do on their own; I am thinking of it as preparation for the high school years when I do expect them to take on more responsibility for their own learning. I am planning 45 - 60 minutes in the afternoon for them to do this work; it's kind of like homework for homeschooling. I'm not exactly for homework as it is given out now to publicly-schooled children, however, I do know that some basic study skills are needed for college. Anyway, we'll give it a try.

A Gluten Free Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T20:00:00.000-08:00

This year I decided to make our entire Thanksgiving meal gluten free; our entire family (Papa, the boys, and I) all eat gluten free and my SIL and BIL are amenable to it. I wasn't sure how my MIL and her boyfriend would take it, but she doesn't usually complain and since Papa didn't put up a fight I decided to do it my way. My SIL did bring a traditional pumpkin pie that the non-GF folks ate.

There are plenty of ways to have a gluten free Thanksgiving. Many dishes traditionally served at Thanksgiving are naturally gluten free; the turkey, the ham (unless you buy a Honey-Baked Ham in California), mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, salad, and vegetables are easy. Gravy can be made gluten free by using potato or corn starch as a thickener instead of wheat flour. Cornbread stuffing can be made with gluten free cornbread, and depending where you live you might not have to make the cornbread from scratch (I chose to).

Rolls and desserts are the hardest; pie is the most traditional Thanksgiving dessert there is, and what is a feast without rolls?

For the rolls I went with Chebe rolls; they are a naturally gluten free roll that comes from Brazil. They aren't what you think of when you think of that quintessentially tender, yeasty dinner roll, but they worked. Other than the kids most of our family limits their carb intake anyway.

But the pie -- how to make pie? The easiest thing to do is to make a cookie crumb crust; gingersnap crust has been my go to for the past 5 years. This year I went all out with a gluten free pastry crust and it was ... meh. I'll have to work more on a recipe as the one I pulled from the internet didn't work. It looked beautiful, was okay (not terrific) to work with, but only tasted so-so. The sweet potato pie with gingersnap crust was far superior.

Other desserts ideas are pumpkin or sweet potato custard without the crust, gluten free fruit crisps, and even gluten free cakes made with fall fruits; I made a pear cake as J-Baby doesn't like pie. In the end we had too much dessert, but that is a post for another day.

Buy Nothing Day

2011-11-25T20:00:00.000-08:00

I try to observe Buy Nothing Day, I really do. I've done so since 1997 when it was first brought to the U.S. I plan for us to eat at home and spend time in nature, and mostly it works. Every now and then, however, Papa decides that shopping must be done. I've learned to go with it. Luckily this year nothing has grabbed his fancy.

I'd love to claim some higher ideal in not going shopping on Black Friday, but really, I'm lazy. There is no way that I'd wake up before dawn or wait in line to get into a store, just to buy something. I don't want to save money that badly. There is nothing that I need or want so much that I'd suffer the cold or a lack of sleep.

And really, I like to make gifts. They don't always go over as well as I'd like, but neither do store bought gifts. So the list of what I need to buy for the holidays each year is rather short.

My boys? There is nothing they need to buy either and luckily for my they don't like crowds either. They don't even really like shopping. However, if they have cash and if the comic book store is offering a store wide discount for Black Friday there isn't anything I ~~can~~ will do to stop them from buying something. I am the keeper of my own conscience only.

So today I am reading, walking, knitting, eating, and relaxing. On the best Buy Nothing Day my car never leaves the driveway, and that is exactly how I like it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T20:00:00.001-08:00

A gremlin ate my Thanksgiving post ~ I swear I saw it here yesterday, complete with a photo of a cute gnome. Oh well, if you celebrate Thanksgiving I hope yours was fantastic.

Too Busy ..

2011-11-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

... or really, just enough busy and I don't want to add anything more to my list. So, the photos from yesterday won't be getting posted unless I find myself with some free time that I don't want to fill any other way. I'll get them up this weekend, I hope.

Today the boys are hanging out with a friend. They walked to their friend's house, walked to the comic book store, and then walked here. Right now they are playing Yu-Gi-Oh in T-Guy's room.

In the past I would have said that the day before Thanksgiving is far too busy and stressful to add in visiting with a friend, but I was wrong. The boys are happy and I have some space to get what I need to do done.

It was an easy morning; we took it slow and I even made time for a long hot bath. I made an unexpected run to the store for saline solution and it wasn't as crowded as I thought it might be. So now I have saline solution and I don't have to worry about going out this weekend.

So, today/tonight I baked and prepped. Tomorrow I cook and then we feast. If there is time after our meal (I don't want to rush anyone out of here) we'll pile into the car and drive to my dad's house for dessert. I'm not mentioning that to the boys though, because they'd be making not so subtle hints that people at our house my want to hit the road. Not that they don't like the people visiting here; it's just that there won't be any other children at our celebration (our nephews on this side of the family live in Belgium and are nearly adults, a mind boggling thing to contemplate). The boys are all about cousins and my sister and one of my brother's will be at my dad's house with their children.

I'm calm. It feels a little weird not to be stressed and worrying; I know I have accepted that things don't have to be perfect and I have paced what I am doing, but still, I'm not accustomed to the lack of cortisol coursing through my body the day before a big holiday. I hope the feeling of calm lasts!

Thankful For Crafting

2011-11-22T20:00:00.000-08:00

{picture fail ... which makes this post nearly worthless but I don't want to miss posting ... hopefully I can add them in tomorrow}

For me, part of keeping the focus on people at the holidays is taking the time to craft with the boys. I enjoy it, they enjoy it, and we end up with lovely things to gift to others and decorate our home. It's easy for me to get so busy with cooking, baking, and other prep that the craft projects that we've dreamed about fall by the wayside; slowing down and keeping my mind on the true meaning of the holidays (the true meaning for me, anyway) helps me remember that to these boys taking the time to craft with them is every bit as important as making green beans.

I found this printable banner at DimplePrints via MoneySavingMom. I was really excited because this year we purchased a color laser printer to use as our AirPrint printer (we still use the b/w laser printer for most of our printing). I grabbed a ream of high quality laser paper and was so impressed with how the pages printed.

To make the banner we cut out each triangle, mounted it to metallic card stock (really subtle sheen), and then cut it out again (we were able to use a paper cutter for some of the cutting). I used a repositionable glue dot runner to adhere the triangles to the card stock, which was a good thing as at some point the triangles got moved and we did a couple of them incorrectly and had to redo them.

J-Baby and I then used a hole punch in the corners and connected the triangles with brads. I had thought to maybe use clothes pins to clip them to twine, but this thing is long -- about 12 feet!

We also made a few signs and the boys cut out little thankful flags for our guests to write on and hang in the tree.

Overall I spent nothing to make the banner other than what I had already spent in the past (toner, card stock, glue runner, and brads). We'd actually bought the pack of card stock just to get the silver (for a robot J-Baby created), so that was a total bonus.

Thanksgiving Lessons

2011-11-21T20:00:00.000-08:00

Thinking about the lessons I learned growing up, Thanksgiving was definitely one with mixed messages. My parents were happy to open their home to friends and family; no one without someplace to go was ever turned away. My mother glowed with happiness to be surrounded by the people she loved.

Still, the days leading up to the holiday were fraught with stress, strife, and sniping. My dad would do the shopping; my mother would complain that he bought the wrong foods or spent too much money. We spent the morning of cleaning the house in a way that was reserved for those few times a year that we had a large crowd. As a child I didn't understand why all of a sudden things had to be better than they usually were.

I was inevitably ill on Thanksgiving day, before the first guest ever arrived. How I managed to eat dinner every year I don't exactly know. I do know that there was a running bet as to what time I would make it to before I tossed my cookies. I wasn't the only one not feeling my best; my dad was the one tasked with getting cup at 5 a.m. to put the turkey in the oven (I am so glad that I use a smaller bird and faster cooking method). He was usually near to falling over by the time we'd finished dessert.

It always seemed like so much work for so little reward. The first time I hosted a big, real Thanksgiving (including turkey) I came to understand the why behind it all. My mother had passed away that October and we were gathering for the first time without her. I wanted to shower my family with love and warmth; that is where the satisfaction lies.

I find it so easy to fall into the same patterns when the holidays arrive. I understand better the desire to clean the fingerprints off the doorways and sweep the front porch; they are things that we always want to do for ourselves but rarely make the time for. I can't, however, put my children through that crazy cleaning. We did our regular cleaning Saturday, after a thorough fall cleaning three weeks ago. We have daily chores and those are all that will be done on Thanksgiving Day.

We shopped today; I made a list of every ingredient needed and formed the grocery list from that.

Tomorrow we'll work on a couple of crafts (more on that tomorrow). We'll choose our table linens and make sure that the dishes and flatware that we want to use are clean and ready to go (and likely we'll use our everyday dishes anyway).

Wednesday I begin food prep; I try to split the work between two days because I absolutely understand that it is work and that if I try to cram it all into Thursday I am the one who will be inviting stress, strife, and sniping into my home.

I have to be the one to make it simple. To mind my tongue when I feel like sniping, to do what I can to reduce the stress (for all of us), to understand that the strife does none of us any good. To change the lessons that my boys will learn as they go through life, emphasizing the warmth and love while reminding them that they are always good enough, that what we do is uniquely ours and that it is enough, whatever it is.

On Being a Team

2011-11-20T20:00:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that I never thought that this is how family life would be. I mean that in the very best way; the family we have created is very different that the family that I grew up in.

There is togetherness. A family movie night; the adults might not always be 100% interested in seeing a children's movie and yet we enjoy it. We sit together, four on the couch, and snuggle with our feet up on the ottoman. We pause to grab the homemade pizza from the kitchen and break the rules to eat the in the living room.

There are shared interests. We are all passionate about trains both big and small. We like to walk and hike together, especially in nature where we can enjoy the beauty and pick up acorns and pine cones. We're all crazy about German Shepherd dogs (and our own in particular). We play games together (especially games that involve trains).

There is shared work. I wrote last night about us cleaning house together. Growing up, once the children were old enough to clean the house the adults were excused from doing so. We simmered with resentment. Working together not only gets everything done more quickly but it creates a sense of shared satisfaction. We share big chores together as well; cleaning out the garage, doing yard work, etc.

There is shared learning. We are all involved in home learning; Papa is not excluded. We bring things to the boys, but they bring things to us as well. We are all learning new things everyday.

There is such a sense of us. Of us being together in this life, at this moment, as a team. Of supporting each other and cheering each other on. Of helping each other when things are hard and laughing together when things are funny. Of knowing that each of us has times when we are the weakest member, but also times when we are the strongest.

We Papa and I married our vows were not the typical in sickness and in health, etc. They were beautiful in their Scottish simplicity: I promise to be a loving, loyal, and faithful wife/husband to you, for as long as we both shall live. So few words, yet so encompassing. No matter the situation (sickness, health, richer, poorer, joy, sorrow) etc. we're covered. There are no loopholes; if we encounter an unknown foe we can't say that it wasn't in the vows. And without our ever saying so I know that we have extended these vows to our children. To be loving, even though we don't always feel it (but mostly we do). To be loyal (such a Scottish thing to have in vows!), unswerving in our dedication to them, our belief in them, and our support (emotional) of them. And to be faithful as parents, to see the bond with our children as unbreakable and our marriage worthy of constant tending so that we always provide these children with a family to grow in that includes both parents. I know that it is our goal to uphold these vows not only to each other but to our children. I can't predict the future, but I can know our true intent.

I'm Starting to Really Like Cleaning the House

2011-11-19T20:00:00.000-08:00

There are parts of homekeeping that I love, some that I enjoy, and some that I tolerate. I generally love cooking and baking and enjoy the daily tasks of keeping a home: tidying, doing laundry, making the bed, etc. But I can't say that I have ever really enjoyed the weekly house cleaning. Either we did it quickly and I was unhappy with the results or we did it properly and it took a full day from our weekend.

That is beginning to change however, now that they boys are pitching in and we've done yet another round of decluttering and we changed the rooms around.

Now in 2 - 3 hours we can get the house really clean. It isn't a full spring or fall cleaning of course, but I do have time to tackle a few of the chores that used to get missed sometimes, such as cleaning ceiling fans, dusting baseboards, polishing furniture (vs. simply dusting it), etc.

I really didn't know that raising children could be like this. We are a real team (more on that tomorrow); we work together to the house clean and none of us has to feel that we are doing more than our fair share. Well, it's possible that a certain 11YO would still rather not clean, but he's getting better about it. The boys are learning skills and habits that will serve them well in their adult years. They may choose to live as total slobs as young adults, but they will know how to remedy the situation if they need too (like when Mama is coming over, lol).

Community

2011-11-18T20:00:00.000-08:00

(Something tells me that isn't the first post I've given this title to.)

I love our homeschool group. Like big pink puffy heart love everyone in it. These are relationships that go back a decade an more, since I first met one member online 11 years ago. It was a couple more years before we connected in real life and she is one of my best friends. It has been 8 years since I met the first family (not that first family) in person and I've known everyone for at least 3 years now. We're settled, we're comfortable with each other, and our kids are fantastic friends.

Today was our annual Thanksgiving potluck. I'll admit that I didn't take a single photo; I imagine if I had tried to get one of the kids it would have been a blur. My boys are going to sleep well tonight! I helped cooked, enjoyed my meal, and sat and gabbed with my friends for hours. Seriously, we were at the potluck for more than 6 hours!

I can't imagine homeschooling without this group of friends. My boys would be lonely and so would I!

Chasing Trains

2011-11-17T16:53:00.001-08:00

This really isn't a post just about today; chasing trains is something we have done as a family for years. We go to train museums, go on train excursions, watch train videos, model trains, etc.

Today the Union Pacific was running their 4-8-4 steam locomotive, the 844. We waiting all morning for the tweet to tell us when she was getting close to our house. Papa came home and after lunch we headed out to watch her ... and waited. She had stopped somewhere near Palm Springs.

We got back into the car to drive Papa to work when another tweet came through; she was moving again! We had been following the tracks so we stopped at another good viewing point (with many other rail fans present). I got a really good video of her:

That wasn't all! Papa headed back to work and the boys and I drove to the location where the 844 is going to spend the night ... and we waited. She was stopped again, and then coming through the Colton Yard she had to wait for clearance before she could make her way to the siding. There was a very large crowd waiting to see her. It was rather anticlimactic, however, and the boys were ready to head home so we did. The railroad is supposed to have public display tomorrow so maybe we'll be able to fit that into our very busy day.

This kind of day is one reason we homeschool. The railroad is such a huge part of the history and building of this country and these day it can be hard to see steam engines in motion. I didn't have to take my kids out of school for them to be able to witness this; we were able to devote the better part of the day to this particular field trip.

A Relaxed Week

2011-11-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

This time I really did forget! I started this post and then left it in the drafts folder, forgetting to come back and post it after adding a few more details about our day.)

Having lost the first two days of this week due to illness and helping out a friend, and knowing that Friday is the big Thanksgiving potluck with our homeschool group I decided to get creative for the next couple of days. In some cases, literally.

This morning the boys watched a public television drawing lesson and then spent some time doing drawing of their own. I loved how they each applied some of the lesson to what they drew even if it was very different.

We had lunch and then PE; it's kickball this session, a new sport for my boys. They loved it!

I don't exactly recall our late afternoon. There was a lot of piano playing and some game playing.

After dinner we took the dogs on a long walk; it's been awhile since we've done that and it was really nice.

So there you go; it was rather calm and boring which is very much how I like things.

I Nearly Forgot!

2011-11-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

We spent today visiting with friends and celebrating a birthday. There was game playing, impromptu math, typing, and more. At this point mineralogy is probably on hold until after Thanksgiving, but that's how it rolls sometimes. I'll bring back math and the other basics tomorrow.

Mineralogy Day 7

2011-11-14T20:00:00.000-08:00

We took a total break from focused lessons today. Mama wasn't feeling well and took a long nap this morning. The boys read and played games. This afternoon they watched the fencing company install our new ornamental ironwork and gate. They found out that drilling into a column that then pours out water means there is a leak in the recently repaired roof. They may have figured out that while they thought it was cool, Mama was not happy. They are going to watch football tonight. Go Pack Go!

Standing Firm

2011-11-13T20:00:00.000-08:00

We are the only Waldorf home learners within our local homeschool community, and while I know a few people with younger children who are interested in Waldorf education I have never met someone locally who actively uses Waldorf. I knew one local family that chose to buy and use Enki after seeing my materials, but they weren't really interested in creating a Waldorf home.

We know one other slow living homeschooling family. It's interesting to me that we both came to this place organically, not because it started becoming trendy (a very small trend). It is who we are. Limited outside activities, lots of free time, placing a premium on being together as a family, and always asking if something we might want to do is integrating and supportive of our family goals if it is disintegrating and unsupportive.

Sometimes it is hard to be different. At first there are people who have opinions about the decision not to hit hard academics at age 5. There are family members who are worried when a child is reading fluently at 6 years old. There are other homeschoolers who question your decision not to join outside academic classes. There is the chiropractor who wonders (out loud, of course) if your children get enough socialization. It goes on and on.

In the midst of this I imagine myself as a boulder in the river, the safe place for my children to rest and experience the world as the mainstream goes rushing past them at breakneck speed. They are in the spring of their lives and the waters are fast and furious. Ahead of us and behind us are more boulders, more people who have chosen to go against the mainstream (although we certainly dip our toes in from time to time). We offer each other support and safe harbor, affirmation that the lives we lead are not completely different from every other person we know.

The children will grow, the waters will slow, and there will come a time when they jump in feet first and give the mainstream a try (because they are ready). Perhaps that will work for them or perhaps they too will become boulders in the river, making the decision to stand firm in the face of family and societal pressures. Perhaps their children too will grow up wonderfully different, shining individuals in a river full of sameness. Perhaps I will still be a boulder in the river, offering support and safe shelter to that next generation, standing firm.

Opportunities All Around

2011-11-12T20:00:00.000-08:00

Most of the homeschoolers I know choose to use a charter school to guide their homeschooling (thus participating in the public school system), in part because they receive government monies to pay for things such as classes, field trips, curricula, and other books. Some say they like having the guidance of a teacher to choose materials and to assess progress, some make this choice to receive special education services from the government, some have a spouse or ex-spouse who will only go along with homeschooling if they choose a charter, and some say they do it because they can't provide their children with the same opportunities otherwise. All are valid reasons and I've learned not to let my preferences lead me to judge others.

I do chafe, just a little, at the idea that only well-off families can afford to choose independent homeschooling. I know families who do it on incomes that are decidedly middle class (even bordering on working class, and just for the record, I hate the idea of a class system and am referring to economic class here, using the Gilbert system). Indeed, most of the people I know who fall into the capitalist class or upper middle class choose private schooling for their children, not homeschooling.

But I digress. My point is that in many areas there are resources available for low or no cost. Public libraries offer books, of course, but also music, movies, and computer programs that can be borrowed and computer workstations for use. Beyond this they offer story times and crafts for younger children, games and crafts for older children, book clubs, anime clubs, and often performances. For older teens some libraries offer classes on local history.

Universities are another resources, and not only public universities. There are often recitals given at no cost and concerts and plays priced very affordably. They may have art exhibits, cultural festivals, Earth Day celebrations, and more. Our local private college hosted a Harry Potter exhibit and offered classes including and absolutely fabulous one on "Potions" which of course was chemistry. My boys loved it. Some universities offer lending privileges for the public. We live close enough to our alma mater to take advantage of not only the library, but also free admission to sporting events (many universities offer some sporting events for free to anyone).

Small theaters often have special performances for children as well as group rates. An often over-looked resource for exposing children to plays and musicals are local high schools; most of what they perform will be suitable for older children and some offer theater festivals for young children. They also offer dance and music performances.

Many cities offer free concerts in the park during the summer (in Our Town we have the longest running outdoor summer music festival in the country). They may also sponsor art walks, art in the park, and more. Our Town has musicians performing in the downtown area every Friday evening.

Independent coffee shops can't be left out! They may host live musical performances (singer-songwriters and jazz seem to be very popular) as well as poetry readings.

Bookstores are becoming harder to find, but even chain bookstores host many events such as story times, book readings, book clubs, musical performances, poetry readings, and more. Our local children's bookstore brings authors in regularly, to read and sign their books. They also bring in illustrators and the walls are decorated with drawings done by these illustrators.

County museums can be another resource; ours allows teachers (and homeschoolers) to check out educational materials. An annual membership is very reasonable (usually under $50) and most hold free days throughout the year.

We seek out little museums wherever we can find them, and they aren't hard to find, plus they are usually free. Along the same vein, many small businesses offer tours; you many be able to see how cheese is made or how olives are cured and packed.

There are many more things I can think of, but I think this post is full enough for now!

Mineralogy Day 6

2011-11-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

(The post where I can't win for trying.)

I thought today would be better. I decided to start with main lesson work and save Life of Fred for after, however we never got to Life of Fred. While the boys were excited to talk about the Pangea and the Ring of Fire, J-Baby stumbled and stalled over copying the list of prominent volcanoes into his MLB. He didn't even finish his work, he just put it away when Papa came home from work.

I'm at a bit of a loss. He isn't globally unhappy or unhelpful. He did show me (very excitedly) that his twelve year molars are just starting to break through, and he has never been an easy teether; he was quite a bear when his six year molars came in.

So we'll take the weekend to regroup and I'll see what I can bring them on Monday.

Mineralogy Day 5

2011-11-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

Curse those darned bridges! The boys had a Life of Fred bridge and I asked each of them to do it on their own. Let's just say that neither of them crossed the bridge on this first try; there must have been a math troll hindering their progress.

I really don't know what it is. Test anxiety? Not paying close attention when we aren't working as a group? Whatever it is, I don't like it! We had tears from both boys; I understand that tears are good, that they are a release of tension, but I don't want so much tension to begin with.

Anyway, today they did the bridge, no grammar and no math facts. Then we did our main lesson (volcanoes), but honestly I had lost them by then. Luckily they know a lot about volcanos, especially Mt. Vesuvius and Mt. St. Helens. They drew a picture in their MLBs and we called it a morning.

Our afternoon lesson was cooking; the boys peeled 10 pounds of potatoes and we made mashed potatoes for dinner and also for the freezer (using a freezer recipe). We also mixed up a raw ice cream base and made a triple batch of tapioca pudding.

Papa and T-Guy spent part of the evening putting together their model trains for their monthly trip to volunteer at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum. The boys take turns going with Papa; J-Baby went last month. Volunteering has been wonderful education for the boys; they've learned quite a bit about electricity (train layouts have lots of electrical components) and the San Diego area (they run on a layout that depicts San Diego), and also have learned manners and social skills working with the other members of the railroad club as well as talking to museum visitors. J-Baby often acts as an unofficial docent when he is there, taking visitors to see some of the other layouts in the museum.

Mineralogy Day 4

2011-11-09T20:00:00.000-08:00

Today we learned about glass, and the boys were surprised to find that glass has far more applications than even semiconductors and integrated circuit chips. They realized that almost everyone in the world probably uses glass in some form or another. Drinking glasses, window glass, cell phone glass, TV glass, computer glass, windshield glass, fiber optics, bottles and jars, eyeglasses, street lamps, signal lenses, etc. Of course we talked about Pyrex just a little bit, as it is one of my favorite kinds of glass.

We watched a couple of YouTube videos showing glass being made and they also watched a little segment on how eyeglasses are made. It's very un-Waldorf (we were instructed to look up glass making in the encyclopedia), but we don't have a glass factory nearby and seeing glass being made was much more informational than just reading about it.

We, as usual, did a Fast Fact sheet (J-Baby is getting faster!), Daily Grammar (subordinate conjunctions), and Life of Fred. The boys are making huge dents in Inheritance; they may finish before I get started. This afternoon we have PE.

Mineralogy Day 3

2011-11-08T20:00:00.000-08:00

Today our study of rocks took us to the practical applications of quartz and silica. We talked about semi-conductors and integrated circuit chips; as is pretty common the boys were several steps ahead of me. There really is no reason to doubt natural learning in the slightest. Still, they happily helped me compile of list of some things that have integrated circuit chips in them and then copied it into their MLBs and drew a picture (one chose a television, the other chose an iPad).

We also did a Fast Fact sheet, Daily Grammar (comparative conjunctions), and another Life of Fred lesson. Our afternoon lesson for Tuesdays is Literature and the boys started a new book today: Inheritance by Christopher Paolini. They have been looking forward to the publication of this book for years. To avoid squabbling we bought it in hardcover (for T-Guy's collection) and on Kindle so that everyone can read it at once.

J-Baby was inspired by our lesson and pulled out his Snap Circuits to build a solar powered LED light.

Mineralogy Day 2

2011-11-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I am reminded why I should use curricula as a guide, not a manual. Today I read an essay by Goethe to the boys, a lesson from Live Education's Mineralogy book. Um, no. They didn't love it and they didn't connect with it. I am finding that I am really going to have to tweak a lot of these lessons and create blocks that are fun and educational for my boys.

They did each do a drawing of mountains and copy a quote from the essay, one that I thought would resonate most deeply (the suggested excerpt was rather religious).

In such a mood I approach you, the most ancient, the most exalted monuments of the ages. Sitting on a high, bare summit and surveying the wide landscape, I may so to myself: Here you are resting directly on a foundation which reaches down to the deepest layers of the earth. (Goethe)

J-Baby offered no resistance to doing his copywork; I decided to allow him to use a graphite pencil with an eraser rather than the usual Lyra colored pencil. He just gets so discouraged when he makes a mistake and he hates cross outs. I have to admit that I completely understand; I ~~was~~ am the kind of person who will start an entire new sheet of paper if I make a mistake (or even if I don't like how my hand writing looks). It was a rather big hindrance when I was a student. Even now I have to work really hard not to allow myself to start over when I am making something like a list.

On the Homespun Waldorf forum I have read several posts that have encouraged me to stop holding the main lesson book as the end-all, be-all in Waldorf education. Really, why I am following the main lesson book rules when they don't necessarily work for my children? And what purpose does the main lesson book serve? If it is simply output, there are many ways we can do that. If it is a record for the parent to see at the end of the term, that is completely unnecessary. If it is, as I have read, a record for the child, then I have to figure out if that is something my children need. My boys don't actually have a major problem with MLBs so much as I have ideas about how they should look, and I need to let that go (or make my own MLB, which I used to do when the boys were younger).

We also did grammar, a fast fact sheet, and a Life of Fred lesson. I was so happy to see that a two week sleep with our math work really worked well for the boys.

Family Fun ... on the Cheap

2011-11-06T20:00:00.000-08:00

(Oops, I left this in my drafts instead of queuing it up for the weekend. I didn't really mean to miss a post for NaBloPoMo.)

This afternoon we went to see our beloved CSUSB Coyotes play basketball against UCLA. We're Division II, they are Division I (and ranked 17th nationally). We lost, but it didn't matter; we gave them a game to remember. It wasn't a blow out, we held the lead several times, and they had to actually play against us.

Watching CSUSB basketball is one of the things we do as family each year; we are able to do so because we've chosen to live a slower life, keeping our weeknights open during basketball season. I love the ease of it; we eat dinner at home, drive to the arena, grab our seats on the bleachers, and watch. I always knit. Each year we get to know the new players and we say goodbye to the graduating seniors. There are giveaways, awards nights for local schools, staff appreciation nights, and more.

It's frugal too; as members of the alumni association Papa and I each receive one free admission for ourselves and one for a guest, so all we pay for is parking (some nights it is free). (The big UCLA game was an exception; we paid good money to see them play at a regional arena.) We take our own water bottles and snacks, too.

Come summer our boys go to basketball camp at CSUSB, learning skills from the same players they've watched play all season, deepening the connection they have with this team,

Let's go 'Yotes!

Life Skills: Housekeeping

2011-11-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

(Oops, I left this in my drafts instead of queuing it up for the weekend. I didn't really mean to miss a post for NaBloPoMo.)

This morning we cleaned the house together. All of us, boys included, and the boys are now in a place where their contributions are extremely helpful. They cleaned two of the three bathrooms and vacuumed all of the wood floors plus the Persian rug (along with their own rooms). Papa cleaned the master bathroom and the kitchen (and mopped all the bathrooms). I dusted all the living areas and my bedroom, polished furniture and some of the wood trim, cleaned a door that had been missed last weekend, touched up the windows, wiped everything in the laundry room, and vacuumed my bedroom. We were done in a little over two hours.

Last weekend we did a fall cleaning and the boys were incredibly helpful. They helped with everything; in addition to their regular weekly housecleaning chores (see above) they deep cleaned the breakfast nook, helped scrub walls and baseboards, and helped me clean up outside, including scrubbing all the outdoor furniture.

I had to clean house when I was a child, and yet until the last year or so my boys did very few chores. Oh, when they were little they might follow along in imitation, dusting and wiping here and there, but it didn't lighten the work load for the adults in the household. Off and on we've hired house cleaners, depending on my health. When I started feeling better a couple of years ago (and got unhappy with yet another cleaning service) Papa and I decided that we would clean the house together as a family and that the boys would learn how to do it. At first they did little more than clean their own rooms, but over time they have learned a lot of new tasks and I am so proud of them for stepping up and doing a good job.

They also help with the daily house maintenance, doing quick wipe downs of two of the bathrooms each day and vacuuming all of the public areas of the house each day. They take turns with dinner dishes, wipe the table after each meal, set the table for dinner, take out the garbage, and do all of the dog chores. And really, they rarely grumble about any of it, which tells me that they understand that this is simply something that has to be done. The bigger lesson is that we do what we have to do and that having a cheerful attitude makes it more pleasant.

Mineralogy Day 1

2011-11-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

We did it! The boys are feeling somewhat better and we managed to squeeze a main lesson into our rather busy day. I don't have pictures; we mostly looked at pieces of granite as well as mica and quartz and talked about the composition of granite and how it is formed.

Earlier this year I picked up a complete classroom sampler of 50 rocks and minerals at the thrift store. It seemed spendy at $15 (we later found it online at $29 + s/h so we did rather well), but my rock hound really wanted it and I thought it might come in handy for this block, and already on day one it has. After hearing that the Romans used mica (Muscovite) as window glass they boys held up our specimens to the light and were able to see that they definitely were transparent and would serve that purpose well. The piece of granite in the sampler also showed the mica, quartz, and feldspar components better than the pieces of granite we had chosen from our own collection.

I decided that the boys were feeling well enough to attend park day, however the weather wasn't cooperating so a few of our park day friends came to visit us at our home. All three families already had children with the same cold as the children were all together on Halloween. We had a really nice visit and could hardly believe that it was Friday already; the week flew by!

Stalled

2011-11-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

I had planned for us to be take a break the week of Thanksgiving, but I certainly hadn't planned on losing nearly a week of lessons to Halloween and illness. This morning I still had one child in bed (awake, but not ready to get up) and both of them were still sniffling and coughing and generally not feeling well. This illness leaves them feeling heavy and lethargic and very much in their bodies; it isn't the time for head work.

The thing is, we were excited about this block, or at least J-Baby and I were excited and T-Guy was at least looking forward to the change of subject material. Trying to kick it off when the boys aren't feeling well will only lead to losing the block in the very beginning. I'm hoping we can start it tomorrow and I am planning to use the first two days of Thanksgiving week so that we have enough time for the block.

In the classroom lessons go on whether or not the student attends; the student must make it up at some point. But in the homeschool we must stop when the students aren't capable of being present; not that learning ceases to happen (for instance, today we had lessons in making herbal tea, the healing properties of various herbs, the benefits of local honey, how to cook scrambled eggs, why we have rain gutters, and few more), but the main lesson and heavy academic work has to wait. Thus we have to find a way to be flexible otherwise we'll never finish out the homeschool year having completed the lessons we intended.

NaBloPoMo

2011-11-02T20:00:00.000-07:00

We had a sick day today, which means we took it easy and still haven't started our Mineralogy block. The boys mostly read, interspersed with sniffling, coughing, and moaning. We did spent a few minutes talking about palindromes (today is 11-02-2011, or 2011-11-02 if you prefer international standard notation). I have no pictures, however.

Still, it is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) and I figure I can slam dunk it here on this blog (we won't talk about my other blogs), whereas I know NaNoWriMo simply isn't going to happen. Indeed, after completing NaNoWriMo in 2007 (after great tragedy) I seem to have invited mishap (or more) every timeIi say I'm going to do it. So I'm not doing it this year.

Hopefully this will post; last night I lost a post I had written for another blog. I'm using my iPad as my MacBookPro is currently undergoing experimental surgery; removal of old hard drive to be replaced with a solid state drive as well as starting completely over (we migrated my account to the iMac first). Which is another reason I can't post a photo – Blogger really should have an iPad app!

Hmm, I learned that can't post from an iPad at all. Quick copy and paste here on the iMac and we are good to go. Thank goodness for iCloud and the syncing of email! I thought to copy to the post before I tried to publish it on the iPad so when it failed I didn't lose anything (see, I learn from my mistakes). I emailed it to myself and here we are, back in business.

Oh Wait, I Said I Would Come Back, Didn't I?

2011-11-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

Busy busy busy. Well, I wasn't busy at the beginning of my blog break, I was at the beach. Every fall we head to the coast for a week to reconnect with nature. I'd like to think that we are always connected, and we are, but this is different: with a focus on relaxation as well as being away from our normal responsibilities we feel the connection more deeply. Plus there is just something about the ocean, a primal connection that grounds us

For us this is also our annual class trip, a time to have a week of science and nature learning that a week in the homeschool classroom simply can't give.

We went to Legoland; they have great prices for homeschoolers on Mondays during the school year. They've opened the new Star Wars area of Miniland which was a hit with this family.

This year there is a brand new Mindstorms class called Dr. Heartbeat which the boys really enjoyed.We decided to check out the SeaLife Aquarium for the first time. It was well worth the extra $1 per person we paid. J-Baby thought the jelly fish were exceedingly cool.

Tuesday the weather was mostly cloudy so we went to the Bolsa Chica Reserve. We hadn't been since the boys were much younger. To say that it was a wow experience would be understating it. This is a Great Egret (yellow bill, black feet) in flight.

We also got up close and personal with a California Brown Pelican. T-Guy has loved pelicans from his very first beach visit.

Bordering the Reserve is a fence and just on the other side were coyotes. They aren't fenced in and on display, but they are frequent visitors. Here you can see how close they get to civilization. We truly live with coyotes and other wildlife around us everyday.

Here is a close up of one coyote. We were literally 25 feet from her, shooting through the fence.

Wednesday we had sun! We spent an hour or so at the Environmental Nature Center in Newport Beach. We mostly enjoyed walking the trails, but J-Baby did ask to have his photo taken grinding acorns.

This being our beach vacation we spent a lot of time at the beach. With the new moon came several nice minus tides that occurred in the late afternoon which meant that tide-pooling was on our agenda.

Hermit Crabs

A Big Crab

The first sea star we have seen in the wild in Southern California. We've seen them on exhibit many times and also in Northern California and Oregon, but never here before. Unfortunately it was impossible to get a full photo as the sea star was vertical on the tide pool rocks.

We came home and that is when the busy began. Every year we host a Halloween party for our homeschool group; it is one of the highlights of the year for us. Of course, between vacationing and home remodeling we were woefully unprepared to host a gathering and so we busted our tails off getting the house ready. Something about a freshly painted exterior made us decide to clean the windows inside and out. The loss of the family room (in the reshuffling) meant we needed a clean outdoor space so the boys and I cleaned the patio/carport and all the furniture (which is good as we are once again in the kind of weather that we enjoy eating outdoors in). For reasons completely unknown I decided that we should wash the walls in our hall (they were grungy both because of child fingerprints and dogs rubbing along them). We cleaned the house from top to bottom as we haven't had a good go at it for a couple of months. We shopped, we cooked, and in the end, we partied! Only this morning did I realize that we didn't take a single picture, which makes me kind of sad. I'll have to see if anyone else got a photo of my boys in costume.

A Tiny Little Blog Break

2011-10-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

I'm ready for the change of block.

I think it was back in grade 1 that Donna Simmons of Christopherus recommended short one week science blocks. While we now have longer science blocks as is appropriate to the boys' ages, I still like these short little science blocks, especially when I plan them as outdoors blocks. We let our academic practice work slide for a week and spend hours outside everyday. In southern California autumn is a glorious time to be outdoors.

We'll read, spend time outside interacting with nature, and do a little math review. That's it. Yet the block will incorporate language arts, math, science, social studies (geography), and physical education (hiking). I wouldn't be surprised if J-Baby decided to add in fine arts by drawing pictures.

I don't plan to blog our next block; the point is to be outside and to unplug. At least, I don't plan to write any words, although I may post a few photos. I can tell from this last week of blog posts that I definitely am feeling tired and stressed and I think a little blog break will be just what I need to return to this space renewed and refreshed.

A Kitchen Day

2011-10-20T20:00:00.000-07:00

We are between blocks. We finished Ancient Greece I yesterday and will start a short science block next week.

It felt like a good day to spend in the kitchen. J-Baby was my main helper with T-Guy handling some of the clean up and garbage duties. We got a lot accomplished!

*We ground beef and froze it in one pound packages.

*We ground pork and mixed in herbs and spices to make bulk sausage, which we then froze in logs.

*We roasted meaty beef bones and made beef stock.

*We roasted bone-in chicken breasts, shredded the meat, and froze it in one pound packages. (We saved the drippings and bones for making stock another day.)

*We made pulled pork and froze it in one pound packages.

*We made a quadruple batch of topping for fruit crisps.

*We shredded cheese to have on hand for lunches.

*We made beef noodle soup and chebe cheese rolls for dinner.

Kitchen days are fantastic for natural learning. Not only do we do a lot a math, but we also observe and discuss the physics of cooking and baking. In addition, this kind of work falls under both health and vocational education, two of the subjects I am required to offer as a private school. For example, we spent time discussing safe food handling as it pertains to handling and grinding raw meat, which was a health lesson. Cooking in general is vocational arts.

Kitchen days also help make the rest of our homeschool days go a little easier because some of our meal preparation is already done. I only wish we'd had time to make freezer mashed potatoes!

Ancient Greece I Day 18

2011-10-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

We finished our first Ancient Greek History block today with a review of what we had learned thus far. I was unprepared for just how much my boys already knew about Greek history; this has happened to me before. They really like history and have listened to The Story of the World volumes 1, 2, and 3 multiple times, plus T-Guy chooses historical documentaries when they are allowed to watch educational programs (J-Baby chooses science documentaries so it balances out). I'm starting to feel a little nervous about the amount of time I have planned for Roman history as the spent close to a year reading the book When the World Was Rome with Papa.

Still, I know it isn't about learning facts. What they will take away from this first block on Ancient Greece are the activities, especially creating a labyrinth and "bull" jumping. Hopefully J-Baby will forget the writing fiasco. I think they enjoyed the work we did with Pythagorean mathematics. Most of all we settled back into the rhythm of focused lessons.

Ancient Greece I Day 17

2011-10-18T20:00:00.000-07:00

We had another very relaxed day. We spent some time talking about the Battle of Marathon. The boys built with LEGO, listened to their audiobook, practiced their instruments, helped with cooking (learning about grinding meat), watched the house painters, played Colosseum, and much more. They worked with numbers and did some more business math.

Tomorrow will likely be more of the same, plus PE. We're going to wrap up our Ancient Greece block as we prepare for a short block on Coastal Geography.

Ancient Greece I Day 16

2011-10-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

We had an unstructured day today. I'm still working on revamping my approach to writing and we had a major issue with the house painters today. It was noon before I came up for air.

Luckily, a new book had arrived early this morning: The LEGO Ideas Book. The boys spent the morning sorting and categorizing LEGO bricks as well as trying to figure out how to build some of the models in the book (the book has ideas, not instructions, which is exactly what I wanted). LEGO is a great toy for teaching a lot of different skills. The boys have now asked for small plastic bins so they can sort into more categories of bricks.

They also read books, listened to an audiobook, played outside, drew pictures, and practiced their instruments. The LEGO catalog arrived and they wrote out wish lists for their grandfather (who does his LEGO holiday shopping in October to get double VIP points), so that was penmanship practice, and they totaled the prices of what they wanted for a little math. J-Baby played with numbers a bit as well; I heard him telling T-Guy that he was "casting out nines".

Losing the morning (in part because I wanted to think about teaching writing, but mostly because of the painting debacle) made me realize that I really need to get on the ball with the boys' lesson binders. Even with a break from the main lesson writing they could have done penmanship, grammar, math practice, and spelling. The lesson binders help the boys be a little more independent in the mornings. If I have time this evening I will plan out tomorrow for them just in case we have issues again. I really hope we don't; I'd rather teach my boys when things are rough than deal with the house painters anyday!

Ancient Greece I Day 15

2011-10-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

It has to be easier than this.

We began the morning with a grammar quiz on conjunctions, followed that with a math speed sheet, and worked in Life of Fred.

After that we worked on polishing the rough drafts the boys had written Wednesday. I could tell that J-Baby was upset with being edited, but didn't realize how upset he was. After all, I had told him how very well he had done and mostly corrected spelling and punctuation. However, he had lapsed into a Percy Jackson style of narration in one sentence and I told him it had to be changed as it didn't convey information relevant to the topic. We worked together to make the changes.

He went to his room and wrote one sentence for each paragraph he had previously written. He gave it to me knowing it wasn't enough and started crying.

Of course, I have no pictures of this morning. Of a boy lying in his bed sobbing and a mom curled up against him trying to make it alright and failing miserably. I wanted to cry too.

It makes me question the decision to hold back on writing when the boys were so resistant to it; maybe if I had always expected it I wouldn't be getting this. But forcing them to do things isn't who I am. Encouraging them, yes. Expecting it of them, yes. But not forcing.

I feel like I am back at square one trying to figure this out. How do I teach writing in a way that is engaging? How do I help them see how important it is to be able to express ideas in written form? How do I connect with something that I don't understand? I was a nature born writer. I would practice penmanship for fun (penmanship isn't writing of course). I journaled, I wrote stories, and I loved essay assignments. I even headed our high school writing team. I started college thinking I would pursue print journalism before changing schools and switching to and English Literature and Composition major. Not literature alone; I wanted to write.

How do I reach deeper and see that this child felt attacked, felt that he wasn't good enough? How do I overcome the desire to only do things that he is naturally gifted in? How do I get all of those wonderful words and ideas out of his head and onto paper?

I have ideas and I will work at it. I don't see this as his failing, but as mine. I am the one who must do better. Still, it is a sad way to start a weekend.

Ancient Greece I Day 14

2011-10-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

Today we had a play date instead of a main lesson. Practicing social skills is just as important as any other skills we learn and we had the opportunity to help a friend.

The boys set to work designing their own Pokemon cards; that's unschooling in action. We went to PE (a makeup session) and then came home and they worked on the cards again.

The boys sang, J-Baby did his piano practice, they played ball and frisbee outside, they listened to an audiobook, they helped cook, T-Guy poured over box scores, and we did a little freestyle math in the evening.

Ancient Greece I Day 13

2011-10-12T17:05:00.000-07:00

We had an interesting morning - no singing, no grammar, no math.

I had assigned some reading to the boys yesterday, which they completed, and added one more section to read this morning. I had also told the boys what we would be doing for our main lesson this morning. Well, J-Baby did his reading and started in on his writing assignment right away. I decided not to interrupt his work and set T-Guy to his writing as well. These were rough drafts; we'll clean them up and rewrite them tomorrow afternoon.

I thought we'd get to our other subjects after the writing, however, our house was being pressure washed in preparation for exterior painting. We could hardly think with the noise! Then we found water had splashed in around several windows (after seeing it come in around the door and startle the big dog) so we had to grab towels and clean up the wet and at times muddy mess.

We did have PE, and the boys are going to do some more work this evening so that they can skip tomorrow's main lesson and share a project with a friend.

Ancient Greece I Day 12

2011-10-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

We sang, we did grammar, we did math.

Math, math, math. I am realizing now how much we need to focus on math; it feels even more important than our main lesson material. We did a speed sheet and a Life of Fred lesson. I am seeing that J-Baby learns math concepts more rapidly than T-Guy and retains steps more easily, however T-Guy is faster with math facts and very good at memorizing them. I'm wondering if how we did math in the past was not the best way for T-guy; he loved the stories but he seems to be doing much better with me doing work on the big white board. He's more visual, whereas J-Baby is more auditory.

Our main lesson was about Athens and Sparta, and do my boys ever have a favorite. They detest the Spartans. But still we compared laws and culture and came away with a good discussion of the two societies.

Ancient Greece I Day 11 / The Pumpkin Patch

2011-10-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

We made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch with our homeschool support group. This wonderful group of families has been together for seven years now and it has been wonderful to watch these children grow and also to grow in friendship with their mamas.

The funny thing about a field trip like this is that it is no longer about the field trip itself; it's about the ritual of the trip. The children already know all about bees, they've rolled countless beeswax candles, and they are much taller than the hay maze. The children are much bigger and the pumpkins seem smaller. But still we go.

J-Baby feeding goats.

T-Guy with our pumpkin haul.

J-Baby with his warty pumpkin.

Most of the kids. This is the "outtake", but I really like it.

Still Working With This Injury

2011-10-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I wanted to post today, but typing with this wrist brace is a tad difficult. I did get my pictures uploaded, so maybe tomorrow.

I actually don't know what is wrong with my wrist. A hairline fracture isn't evident but hasn't been ruled out. One doctor is leaning toward the idea that it is a fracture. The orthopedist thinks it more likely is some type of tendon or ligament injury as evidenced by a separation between the scaphoid and lunate bones in my right wrist. Either way, it hurts, and I am supposed to wear a brace for the next month. If it improves, great, if not, we move to an MRI.

In relation to homeschooling, my boys are going to be getting some serious cooking lessons. My favorite pots and pans are all heavy cast iron, and I'm not exactly wielding a chef's knife right now.

See, even my sauce pans are cast iron. This vintage Descoware pot was my Grandfather's.

(BTW, I typed this without my brace. Don't tell on me.)

Sorry, No Post Tonight

2011-10-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Between a dead camera battery and adjusting to typing with my wrist in a brace (the jury is still out on whether I have a hairline fracture or a soft tissue injury, but at least it is unlikely that it is repetitive stress) I am going to give myself a reprieve on today's blog post. I'll see you tomorrow!

Honoring Our Rhythm

2011-10-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

I've written before about my family's natural rhythm and how that clashes a bit with homeschooling in the morning. So far we've found a routine that is working with our rhythm and I thought I would share it.

Here is a graphic that shows the routine; you can pretty much ignore the times listed as they give me a basic idea but we don't truly live by the clock.

We're waking a little later that we had been; putting the Puppy Girl in the living room to sleep stopped her from waking us way too early. It isn't unkind to her; she has completely adjusted her waking and no longer whines for us to come take her out. While I'd like to see us waking earlier I am aware that the time change is in six weeks so I'm not worrying about it. The chart shows my early waking time which is an ideal and has fallen off recently. My goal is to be back to it by the time daylight savings time ends.

Papa showers. We wake the boys and get started on breakfast. While the boys had been eager to play together on waking now that J-Baby has been bitten by the fiction bug he often wants to read instead. We have breakfast and the boys do their morning hygiene and chores. Then they have a 30 minute break which is more time for them to reconnect.

We're getting started with homeschooling around 10 a.m. Right now the boys are really into it; we'll have to see if that sticks once they want to be doing something other than lesson work. We start with whatever constitutes our organic circle that morning, do grammar and math practice, and then have a math lesson before beginning our main lesson work for the day. Around 11:30 - 11:45 we wrap up the main lesson work and the boys do their spelling.

We get two hours of homeschooling done in the morning. My goal is a minimum of three hours daily; this isn't a strict requirement per our state's educational code, but we do operate as a full time day school. Since the law allows the compulsory attendance requirements to be met by three hours of tutoring per weekday I figure it is a good minimum number for our homeschooling.

We plan an hour of homeschooling in the afternoon. This might be our secondary lesson, our literature class, P.E., make-up time, or park day. We also do other things throughout the week, month, or year that count toward homeschooling time, such as music lessons and practice, field trips, nature walks and hikes, attending concerts and plays, etc. For example, in October we will visit an apple orchard and will take an educational class at Legoland.

After our morning lessons we have lunch and quiet time. Quiet time used to be listening to audio books, but now that the boys are older they will most likely read or hang out quietly in their bedrooms (separate bedrooms is brand new in our home). After quiet time is when we have our afternoon lessons, which takes about an hour (as I wrote above). We then have a nice period of unplanned "free" time.

By late afternoon it is time for me to work on any final dinner preparations; this is when the boys do their music practice. J-Baby is in the dining room playing the piano so I am able to hear him and make corrections and reminders as necessary. T-Guy practices guitar in his bedroom at the back of the house.

Papa comes home from work and we eat dinner and then clean up. Usually we have some free time in the evenings, although some evenings we work on physics with Papa (more homeschooling hours) and once a week we go to the farmer's market. At 11 and 12 years of age the boys go to bed at 8:30 and are allowed to read quietly for 30 minutes. It is pretty early compared to their peers but I believe it is what they need, and going into the teen years children often need more sleep, not less.

After that there is a little time for Papa and I to reconnect and decompress before heading to bed ourselves.

How I Plan

2011-10-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

The question of planning came up at the Homespun Waldorf forum and I decided to do a post here since I really don't know how to post photos there without using a hosting service such as Flickr.

Anyway, I sit down with my materials and a calendar and plan out the year. Not what we are going to do each day, but the block progression and how long each block will be. This is the chart I did for this year:

This gives me a basic plan to go from. You'll notice that we have a different lesson each afternoon; this is new for us this year. Previously we had an afternoon/secondary lesson that we did four afternoons a week for two to four weeks; lessons such as cooking, knitting, painting, weaving, sewing, modeling, etc. While I love that format I've found that this year we need the afternoon time for other things such as our PE class. So now we do a themed afternoon lesson on Mondays; I didn't want to lose handwork so we do that some evenings in a relaxed manner. We're trying it out; if it doesn't work we will go back to doing literature during our mornings and we will devote three days a week to the afternoon lesson.

I also outline each block at the beginning of the year. Since we are using Live Education I just refer to the lessons I have chosen from their materials. Here is the lesson block for Ancient Greece I:

These block outlines are really important for me. I mark days that we have special celebrations and days that Papa has off. Since we aren't doing every single lesson in the Live Education materials I can't just go in order without a plan. Also, if a lesson is taking less time than expected I can decide whether or not to move ahead, and if it takes longer I can decide which remaining lesson we can skip.

We do have to have some flexibility. For example, I planned the above block and since I did that our homeschool group planned our annual trip to the pumpkin patch for this coming Monday. Looking at the lessons I saw that I could combine Topic 5: Lessons 1 and 2 on Tuesday so that is how we will manage the field trip. Practice work, grammar, and new math learning can be skipped for one day; I won't be so rigid that we miss out on doing things. But I can think like an unschooler as well, practicing math facts or grammar skills in the car on the way to the pumpkin patch, or even just singing seasonal songs.

Typically I sit down on the weekend and look over the week's lessons in-depth (using the outline shown above). I'd like to do this for the month but it hasn't worked out that way yet. I make a note of any supplies that I need to gather or purchase and decide which source books we'll use for each lesson, marking the passages I need to read. If I am going to do a chalkboard drawing for the block I try to get it started before the first day of the block. I also determine if I am going to do any crayon drawings ahead of time and whether I need to look for images or other sources on the computer so that I can print them out ahead of time.

For grammar I print out the sheets from the Daily Grammar ebook we are using; we just go in order so I print about one month's worth at a time. I have the Making Math Meaningful speed sheets printed already. We go through Life of Fred in order so that doesn't take much planning, and I don't write it out as I can't know how many times the boys will need to attempt a bridge before they are ready to move on. Sometimes they nail it with one bridge and sometimes they need to do all five.

For literature we choose one book per month; it doesn't follow our block schedule. I think I may have written before that I am working with the boys on developing a literature class to teach, and since most classes run monthly that is how we are doing it. This month the are reading Rick Riordan's The Son of Neptune. The idea is to teach classic literature, but I hadn't chosen a book to start with and this one arrived so we went with it.

Other than doing my chart and outlines on the computer I don't actually plan on the computer. Having it on paper works for me. I have a teacher's plan book and in it I keep track of what we are doing by subject. I enter planned lesson work as well as things that simply come up (the way an unschooler might record learning). If there is a project I would like us to do I put it on a sticky note and then I move it to the week that I will need to get supplies. Then I move it to the day I might need to do prep work, and finally to the day I expect to do the project. I use sticky notes to remind me of field trips we might want to do, etc.

I used to plan a formal circle, but the boys hated formal circle time. So we switched to a more organic circle. I asked myself, what is the heart of circle? To me a large part of it is the coming together after the separation of sleep. So we eat breakfast together as a family. We send Papa off to work and do our chores. Then as the three of us come together for lesson work we do a few more relaxed activities that bring us into the frame of mind for lessons. We might walk if the weather is good, working on verses we are memorizing as well as reviewing oral math facts. Or we might stay in the house and sing, working on rounds and harmonies.

I do think that a huge benefit if homeschooling is adapting day-to-day. If a lesson is falling flat I will improvise. I've been known to jettison an entire block if it just isn't working for us. I also refuse to worry; it isn't the end of the world if we don't get something done.

My planning takes a lot less time than it looks like from this post. I put in a couple days before the homeschool year begins and then I prep for an hour or so each week.

Ancient Greece I Day 10

2011-10-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot to get this post up -- oops!

We started this morning with ... singing! You were expecting grammar and math, weren't you? We got to that after the singing. We sang a few seasonal songs and then worked on rounds using Row Row Row Your Boat. Wow, we haven't sung in rounds in awhile, and we're rusty.

Next up were Daily Grammar and a Making Math Meaningful Fast Fact Sheet. J-Baby can't finish the fact sheets in five minutes (nor in six minutes, which is what I gave them) and he was a little discouraged today. All I could do is tell him that it will come in time.

We did Life of Fred math using the white board again; today the boys got to come up and do problems on it. They were so excited. We breezed through the bridge and I feel confident that we have done enough review to start new material next week.

J-Baby works on long division. Papa has asked me if all homeschoolers wear tie-dye.

We finished up our study of Pythagoras by doing a drawing of pebble squares as our book told us the Pythagoreans had done. Not that they had drawn, that they had made number squares out of pebbles on the sand.

T-Guy's drawing. Yes, he is twelve. No, he really doesn't love drawing.

J-Baby's drawing. Yes, the 5 is backward. No, he won't use crayons in his drawings.

I One might wonder how after five years of the Waldorf grades (or Enki -- the focus on drawing is the same) my boys drawings haven't evolved into the masterpieces one sees in books and on blogs. I don't really know. The boys put more effort into their drawings in the early grades than they do now. It's okay though; now isn't the time for me to start caring what other think.

We had a great week; we're all settled into the new homeschool year and it's going really well.

Ancient Greece I Day 9

2011-10-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

We started the morning with - you guessed it - grammar and math. However, today we got to use our shiny new white board during our math lesson. Or rather, math review, as we were working on a Life of Fred bridge.

Hanging the white board was difficult. There might have been swearing involved, and there most certainly was complaining, along with huffing, puffing, and grunting. We had to drill though metal, people, with a drill bit that wasn't fully up to the task. But it is installed, it's level, and I'm certain that it isn't going to fall down.

Here it is in all beauty:

Normally I wouldn't leave a poster up, but I was so excited that the board came with two paper holders so that we can use it as an easel!

I want to cover it when it isn't in use, so I am brainstorming ideas for that. I thought maybe we could make a flannel cover so that we can also use it as a felt board (I have a lovely piece of hand-dyed flannel that we could use), but that would have to come up and down daily. Stiffening a piece of attractive fabric and attaching it with magnets might work best. Or we could do a large water-color painting or two and hang those. There is no real rush to get it covered, but I'd like to have it done before our Halloween gathering. Hmmm ... maybe we can do seasonal coverings.

Today's lesson in our Ancient Greek History block was squaring numbers (something the Pythagoreans did). There are actually two lessons given in the materials; one is having the children memorize the squares and draw them, and the other is having them make them with manipulatives. For reasons unknown to me, the directions were to draw them first. I didn't like that, so today we talked about what a squared number is, drilled the squares up to 12x12 (they know them backward and forward), and used our Cuisinaire rods to visualize the squares and then to build pyramids.

Clearly this was standing work. They started with the 1cm cubes and then moved to rods.

J-Baby had made the Lego pyramid earlier this week and wanted it to be part of the photo shoot.

The shadow was pretty cool once the afternoon sun started shining in.

Cuisinaire rods have been part of our homeschool since grade 1. A few times I have thought to get rid of them and I even boxed them up once, but we always find a use for them.

During our afternoon makeup time we worked on the golden ratio form again, and struggled, again. T-Guy huffed and puffed (I wonder who he gets that from) threw down his pencil, whined, and declared it impossible. I set him to practicing making circles with the compass while J-Baby and I continued our work. The frustrated sounds continued. Finally I told T-Guy that he could be excused as his frustration had gotten the better of him and I thought he could use a break. He looked at me, grabbed his compass and some 1" graph paper, and tried really hard to do the drawing. It wasn't perfect, but he did it. I wish I could bottle that magic but I don't really know what I did other than give him permission not to do it.

Ancient Greece I Day 8

2011-10-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

We woke up to winter. Seriously, cold temps, overcast days, and rain are what we usually get in winter, not fall. Fall is generally warm, dry, and sunny. But we are happy to have the rain while it lasts. We started our homeschool morning with a Java Log in the fireplace and candles lit on the mantel.

We did grammar and math. I'm starting to feel like a broken record. In general, every one of our homeschooling days begins with grammar and math. It's something we took away from those two months at the beginning of our last homeschool year; grammar and math happening every morning works best for us.

Our main lesson was drawing Pythagoras's Golden Ratio in the form of a star and pentagon. To keep it real, we struggled. It seemed so much easier looking at it in the book and I realize now that I should have practiced on my own before the lesson. It's okay though; it can be good to model staying calm when things aren't quite going as planned.

The reality is that working with rulers and compasses on plain paper is a little tricky. Marking off one inch intervals on a line isn't exactly precise when using a #2 pencil. Compasses move when you use them. My second attempt was much better, although I plan to redo it.

I ended up printing out 1" graph paper for the boys to work with, to make the measuring easier. The boys didn't want the drawings they did today to go into the blog; they are going to redo them Thursday afternoon during our make-up time.

P.E. was cancelled because of the rain, but none of us minded all that much. It gave us the opportunity to have a quiet afternoon. T-Guy's long awaited copy of Rick Riordan's The Son of Neptune (Book 2 in The Heroes of Olympus series) arrived this morning and J-Baby settled in with a wonderful iPad app based on Richard Dawkin's new book, The Magic of Reality. It is full of really cool science!

I've found that I am very much missing singing from Mary Thienes-Schunemann's Naturally You Can Sing Sing a Song of Seasons, so I placed an order for another copy and it should be here tomorrow. I remember some of the songs and have been singing those, but others have slipped away from my memory. I also think J-Baby might enjoy playing some of the tunes on the piano.

Ancient Greece I Day 7

2011-10-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

Another smooth, easy-peasy day. Of course, it helps that the boys already know a lot about Pythagoras. I forgot that they covered him last year when they did The Story of Science. Well, I filled them in a bit on the Pythagoreans and some of Pythagoras's views on the transmigration of souls and why he and his followers were vegetarian. It was interesting to learn that Pythagoras allowed women to study and was considered one of the first to advocate equality for the sexes (within reason, I'm sure). And while he wasn't explicitly against slavery he didn't condone hitting slaves. He and his followers held themselves to a very high standard (believing this was how they could reach enlightenment and no longer reincarnate).

We did grammar (Conjunction-Junction, What's Your Function?), a MMM speed sheet, and the main lesson. Spelling was out as there was something odd going on with the computer. (Note: We learned about conjunctions using Daily Grammar. My reference to Schoolhouse Rock while writing the blog post reminded me of the video and we watched it then. No, I don't use TV to teach grammar.)

No photo today, but you might enjoy this. We certainly did!

Ancient Greece I Day 6

2011-10-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

A new week, a new attitude.

Hoemschooling today was fantastic. Yes, T-Guy still got frustrated with adding fractions (review work), but I stayed calm and patient and remembered that my job is to teach. If he needs more review, he needs more review. If he forgets the steps we go over them again. If he gets upset we slow down. It isn't his fault that he doesn't understand fractions they way I did as a child or the way J-Baby does. Plenty of people struggle with fractions. It's okay.

We had a grammar quiz and T-Guy was happy to say goodbye to prepositions for now (J-Baby really likes grammar).

The boys did the Making Math Meaningful speed sheet and we did another bridge test in Life of Fred (where the above frustration occurred).

All this week we'll be learning about Pythagoras as part of our Ancient Greek History block. Today we drew circles:

J-Baby has success with his circles on the first attempt.

T-Guy and I had to sit side-by-side and redo his circles. Here he is coloring them in.

Here is his second attempt - much better!

The boys did their spelling and we were done! The morning really sped by and we all enjoyed it. I hope there rest of this week is as successful.

Our Learning Space

2011-10-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

I am so incredibly happy with how well our learning space is working out for us, and how nice it looks. I guess I always worried that this room wouldn't look "right" if it didn't have formal furniture in it; I am rather pleased to have been proven wrong.

Anyway, it is a work in progress. But here is what we have so far:

The piano, which used to be in the living room. This was given to us by Papa's step-brother. We're planning to put up a large world map in place of the watercolor painting.

One of our black boards, mounted vertically. With nothing on it, because I haven't gotten around to doing a drawing yet. Sometimes I write an inspirational phrase instead. The board is mounted with Velcro tape so I can take it down to draw. It works beautifully.

The armoire, which now houses our computer. It was a hand-me-down from a friend. The black board has been mounted to it for some time now, and it has been placed in three different rooms.

A close-up of the painting my great-aunt did for my grandmother. I put here mostly to remind me that I can't be perfect, but it also reminds me that the boys can't be either.

The table, viewed from the living room side. It's just perfect. Because we bought it used it already has some paint splatters and indentations on the surface, so I don't have to obsess over ruining it.

The typewriter corner with the library basket and the boys' portfolios. The typewriter and stand were thrift store finds.

The table, looking toward the hall and living room. I made the centerpiece with a piece of vintage thrifted Pyrex, some river rock, and tea light candles.

Our Trofast units, which move all over the house as needed. Three were hand-me-downs and the others in the house we purchased. The plastic bins hold art supplies; they aren't pretty but it is far easier to grab a bin of paints or modeling beeswax than to pull them off a shelf. This wall is where we will be installing the white board.

The corner is where we store our art clipboards, painting boards, black boards, etc.

I love this little table top easel! Before I had black boards I would post my crayon drawings on it for the boys, and also their copy work, so that they could practice looking up, holding information in their minds, and copying it.

One last shot with the table, armoire, and typewriter. The room isn't very big, but the coziness is nice.

This room just works! We have home schooled all over the house and no room has worked as well as this one. The breakfast nook is too small and we had to clear our things at lunch time even if we weren't finished. The back bedroom felt cave-like, and the master-bedroom-turned-family-room (and now returned to master bedroom) was an uninspiring, ugly mess. Here we have the beauty of the wood trim, the redwood trees through the windows (yes, my property has coast redwoods and palm trees), the gleaming wood floors, the coved ceiling, the gorgeous light, and is centrally located in the house. As a bonus it is still a great room to share a meal in even if we can't seat more than six people at the table.

Ancient Greece I Day 5

2011-09-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

The end of our first full week of homeschool - yay! I'll admit that it is rather exhausting to homeschool on top of my normal household chores, errands, and house remodeling. I'll adapt and it will get easier, but this week was hard!

This morning we did our Daily Grammar and then a speed sheet from the Making Math Meaningful website. Then we talked about the Minoans and what we know about them, plus what we thought they might have done with their boats. Instead of creating a summary for the boys to write I assigned copy work in their penmanship notebooks (from Paper Scissors Stone). I love these little notebooks and have used them for a few years now. I had noticed T-Guy floating his letters in his main lesson book and wanted him to work on writing them on the baseline, and I also noticed some numeral reversals in J-Baby's work (still, even though he doesn't have any signs of a learning disability) so I assigned writing numerals to him.

J-Baby worked on finishing some math work from earlier in the week and both boys did their spelling. It was an easy morning but in general we do keep Fridays easier and lighter. It used to be our free day but now I find that I can't get in all the main lesson blocks if I don't plan lessons on Friday as well.

J-Baby had piano and I tutored my friend's daughter. Then we headed to the park for our weekly gathering with homeschool friends. The weather was nice, warm but not unbearably hot.

I didn't take a picture today! Instead I offer this (un-retouched) photo of the Greek food we were able to find at Trader Joe's on Wednesday. I'm sure they had baklava as well, but as it isn't gluten free we didn't buy any.

We had some of the olives and cheese last night with dinner. Yum!

Ancient Greece I Day 4

2011-09-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a kind of ugh moment. As in, ugh, why did I plan for us to do a lesson from Live Education that involves painting ceramic bowls? I don't have the supplies, don't want to go out to get them, and if I had been thinking about it would have realized that the project more properly belongs in the afternoon lessons will be having during our second Ancient Greece block, where we'll be studying the arts and crafts of Ancient Greece.

Moving the lesson made the most sense, so I was left trying to figure out what to teach this morning. Should I start Friday's lesson early, giving us more time for the planned drawing? Could I find a program on Ancient Greece to stream? I puzzled over it for awhile.

My boys already have a pretty deep knowledge of the myths and history/culture of Ancient Greece. I knew this going into the block and still chose to go with it because most of what they know is head knowledge. This week they've drawn an olive tree, created a labyrinth on paper, and jumped over an ottoman bull; these are the things I want them to do to bring the knowledge into understanding. It can be very hard to create a sense of us (versus other), but that is the goal. The ancient Greeks aren't just a people who lived a long time ago; they are humans, they are US. Their stories and history are ours.

Thinking about this I ditched the idea of streaming a program on Ancient Greece for the boys; it isn't Waldorf and more head knowledge isn't what they need. I decided that we would move forward with the next lesson in Live Education. After grammar and math we did some writing and we learned about Minoan sailing vessels.

T-Guy doesn't particularly like to draw, but he made a good effort. Neither boy is fully back into drawing Waldorf-style, hence the hanging suns vs. diffuse light.

J-Baby does like to draw, but he was not in the mood to give me good work today. He clearly enjoyed drawing the rigging, however, and tried to be very accurate.

Because I like to keep it real I'll point out that we had some resistance, once again, to the idea of doing one's best work. J-Baby's letters float, they change size, and he has a hard time remembering to space the words. It isn't a case of not being able to; he just wants to rush through and be done. He can write very neatly, in straight lines with nice spaces, when he wants to.

Sometimes I feel like he is doing this to spite me, to show me how unimportant he thinks it is. It is writing that I assign, not writing that he chooses. I don't really know what to do other than to persevere, to keep the expectations high, and to help him understand why. I'm also going to bring in form drawing again on a weekly basis during practice time. I love that forms need to be done a certain way and look wrong if we don't do our best work. They teach discipline.

Some might advise shifting more toward unschooling, but it isn't right for these children. While they do well with filling the abundant free time that they do have they need lessons to anchor their day. When we don't honor the rhythm and their need for structure things tend to fall apart. Summer break can be rough for us and I need to make sure that we don't fall into unstructured days. It has always been this was for J-Baby; I have written about it before and even tried creating structure without it involving lesson work. But T-Guy loves lesson work; he has a lot of his mama in him.

I split the lesson; tomorrow we'll talk about why the Minoans might have wanted to sail, but it will still leave the morning a little light since they did their drawing today. We can use the time; I'll give a longer writing assignment (they will help me with the summary) and we need to finish up a little earlier on Fridays anyway since J-Baby has piano lessons and I do tutoring with a friend's daughter.

Thursday afternoons are scheduled as "make-up" time to give the boys a chance to finish any drawings or writing that they didn't have time for during the week. We were mostly caught up, however, so we ended a little early in the morning and used the afternoon hour for spelling and other learning games. J-Baby also decorated his writing pages which he often attempts to skip (simple borders and coloring the background).

It was a lower key day overall; Papa had asked me last night how I was going to top jumping over furniture in the front yard. The truth is that not every day can be as exciting as that, but it's okay. Lower key, meat-and-potatoes learning days are just fine.

Speaking of meat and potatoes, we had a semi-Greek meal for dinner. Braised leg of lamb, potatoes, Kalamata olives, and Greek feta. We should have had a vegetable but what I encountered in the produce bin wasn't lovely. The potatoes are New World and not something that would have been eaten in Ancient Greece, but in this house lamb and potatoes go together, lol.

Ancient Greece I Day 3

2011-09-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

Oh my, was today fun!

Our morning began, as usual, with grammar and math. T-Guy was struggling with the concept of combining sentences and using prepositional phrases but then it clicked and he got it. Knowing that I had planned some writing for later in the morning we did the grammar lessons orally; I find that it works just as well and allows us to do more examples. Math was more practice on long division and long multiplication.

As we've been settling into our morning routine I hadn't asked the boys to do any writing Monday or Tuesday, so today they wrote simple summaries in their main lesson books. I told them that since they are both now middle schoolers that I expect more writing from them. There was some complaining, but I expected and ignored it. The writing was far from perfect but this is only day 4 of our homeschool year.

We started the main lesson by talking about frescoes (which they already knew all about) and looking at one specific fresco, The Toreador, which is a Minoan work from 1550 -1450 BCE. It depicts bull jumping, which is believed to have been a sport or religious ritual from the ancient Minoan culture. That led us to the real fun of the day: bull jumping. Okay, ottoman jumping, but it is really fun when Mama lets you carry the ottoman outside and jump over it. We had:

Leapfrogging

Missed take offs

Bad landings

Cartwheels

Somersaults

... and several other attempts to leap the bull, all of which were very fun. The boys spent at least 20 minutes on this activity and returned to the house huffing and puffing, but very happy. We were able to talk about modern gymnastics and how the vault is similar to bull jumping (minus the live, moving bull, of course).

We finished out the morning with Spelling City on the big computer and multiplication fact drills on the iPad (a sneaky way to get in extra math practice). This afternoon the boys have their PE class; this session is flag football which has been fun so far.

Ancient Greece I Day 2

2011-09-27T20:00:00.000-07:00

This morning we started with grammar and then some math review. My boys seemed to have lost some of their long division skills over the summer and T-Guy asked for multiplication review as well. Perhaps we will resume Life of Fred math next week. I also want to take a look at our Making Math Meaningful curriculum and bring that into our lessons. But today was simply worksheets.

When I planned our block I almost skipped the Live Education lesson for today; the boys know the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur inside out and backwards. I think we borrowed The Hero and the Minotaur from the library 25 or more times over several years; it was one of J-Baby's absolute favorites. However, the activity of drawing a labyrinth looked so fun that I decided we would do it. The boys worked on drawing labyrinths while I read them the version of the myth from Gods and Heroes, the book recommended by Live Ed.

Tuesday is going to be our literature day (afternoon lesson) but I've decided to read our books based on the month, not the block schedule. I'm working with my own boys for the next few months as a trial for teaching a literature class to other home-schooled children. So instead of literature we had a long play date with good friends.

The picture gives a glimpse into our new homeschool space; I'll plan a full tour for another post. It's working out really well for us, even better than I imagined. We're still working on making sure it is neat and tidy after lessons, but we'll get there.

Ancient Greece I Day 1

2011-09-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

We began the morning with grammar and math; I realized right off why public schools always start the year with math review because clearly we need some review on math facts and the four processes. Our grammar unit is on prepositional phrases, which I have always found easy so I hope it goes well for my boys.

Our main lesson assignment was to draw a map of ancient Greece. I knew that wasn't going to go over well this early in the year so we compromised and I printed a nice map for them to color (which they haven't yet). We moved on to learning about olive trees and the importance of olives in ancient Greece. The boys drew olive trees in the main lesson books.

J-Baby put some care into his drawing but still really doesn't buy into the idea of doing his best work in his main lesson book, at least not when it comes to writing. One of my goals this year is too significantly improve the boys penmanship through daily practice as well as higher expectations on my part. It is no longer enough for me to know that they are at least trying to write; now that I know they can we have to work on making it neater and straighter.

Our "afternoon" lesson for this block is cooking/eating the foods of ancient Greece. Having not gotten to the store we couldn't actually cook anything, but we used olive oil at lunch and had Kalamata olives at dinner. Later this week we'll buy some Greek yogurt, some honey, some feta cheese, and the like.

And we're off ...

2011-09-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for not getting these posts up earlier. I have a bad habit of starting posts, getting busy with something else, and leaving the posts to languish as drafts for weeks or even months.

Friday was our first day of homeschool and it went really well. We didn't walk, say a verse, or have circle, but that is okay. These are big kids we are talking about, middle schoolers, and they are transitioning past some of these things. Not the walk, of course, but that is always going to be catch as catch can.

We oriented ourselves to the homeschool area, learning where the lesson books and art supplies are, etc., talked about our plans and goals for the year, and then we got to baking. Yes, our first lesson of the new homeschool year was baking fruit crisps for our afternoon autumnal equinox celebration at the park. A friend took a photo of how they turned out, which was just beautiful. There were delicious too.

Photo Courtesy of D. Joseph

We reviewed kitchen hygiene, preparing our space and ingredients, working the steps in order, and patience (waiting for the crisps to bake). But we also learned about the satisfaction of hard work and the joy that comes from giving of ourselves to our friends. By including the morning's baking work in our homeschooling I was also able to model time management and I reduced my stress significantly as I wasn't trying to do two things at once.

Our celebration was wonderful; the weather was warm but not stifling and the trees in the park were starting to turn color. We enjoyed eating good food and spending time with good friends as we reflected on the unity of the equinox and the turning of the season.

Preparing

2011-09-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

We begin our homeschool year this Friday; we're all getting really excited!

I always plan the first day to be very easy and fun. This year I think we will take a short walk, light our candle and say our opening verse, possibly have a short circle, orient ourselves to the new learning space and talk about keeping it clean and tidy (it is now in a main living area of the house), go over our plans for the year, and decorate our nature table (fireplace mantel). The afternoon will be spent celebrating the autumnal equinox with our homeschooling community.

Our new learning space is nearly finished; we still need a map for one wall and a magnetic whiteboard for the other. Whiteboards are generally frowned upon in Waldorf education as they are not natural or aesthetically pleasing, however, Papa detests blackboards and insists that we not be creating chalk dust in the same room as the computer. As a person who has worked with computers since he as a child I trust his judgement. I do my chalkboard drawings in another room.

Still, I don't feel ready. Our house is still in upheaval and I haven't done much reading in preparation for our first block. ~~I am supposed to choose and order our source books for Ancient Greek History and have only a few days to do so.~~ (I stopped writing this blog post long enough to order our source books.) I try to be relaxed about our homeschooling and I know that whatever I choose will be fine, but still I wish I had spent more time with the books I borrowed from the library.

But sometimes that is the reality of homeschooling. We are knee deep in home remodeling and renovation and most days I feel like I am chasing my own tail. At least now that we are so many years into homeschooling I feel like I have the philosophy and method down well and that I know my children and how they learn. I don't start each year from scratch (and I think that is one reason that traditional Waldorf education is brilliant, having the teacher move up each year with the class rather than having the students and teachers start over each year) and we can learn as we go along. So I breathe and remind myself that it will be fine. It will be.

Math Fear

2011-09-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

If there was only one thing I could give to myself and every other homeschooling parent I know it would be the banishment of fear. Most of us come from the public school system (or private schooling, another institutionalized form of education) and that is what we know. Most of the people we associate have children in public or private schools, and so that is what we hear about. The media screams the idea that schools and children are failing and that the only cure is more. More drills, more tests, more homework, along with earlier introductions of everything.

Today I would like to talk about math fear.

My public elementary school didn't teach multiplication or fractions in 2nd grade. Multiplication, even single digit, was taught in 3rd grade. Fractions were taught in 4th grade. I was tested and identified as gifted in the 2nd grade and bumped into a 3rd grade math class, so I did learn some things earlier, but I can tell you that what I remember from that class is learning to write supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in cursive. In 3rd grade I was in a combined 3rd/4th clustered gifted class and I don't remember the academics at all; my memories are of playing Super Friends on the playground (Wonder Twin powers, activate!) and of the two sisters who weren't allowed to participate in learning the Virginia Reel during P.E. In 4th grade I went to a school that clustered 4th/5th/6th graders and divided us out according to ability (I have since learned how unique this was) so I took 6th grade math, I remember doing simple geometry and more complex fraction work.

In 5th grade I was forced to take 5th grade math as the 6th graders were no longer at our school and I'd taken 6th grade math already. In 6th grade I went to middle school and got to take 6th grade math again, with the same teacher I'd taken it from in 4th grade. The point of this is explain that while I may have been allowed to work ahead early on, I then got to spend two years learning nothing new in math.

7th grade was pre-algebra. 8th grade was algebra, taught only to the gifted students and counted toward our high school graduation requirements. I took two math classes in high school, geometry and advanced algebra. If anyone had been paying attention to my math aptitude I would have been encouraged (or even required) to take trigonometry and calculus, but my parents left those choices to me, so I did things like took an extra period of band and worked as a teaching assistant for several teachers (my parents approved and considered it akin to an unpaid internship). My mother was math phobic and my dad thought I should pursue a teaching degree; math just wasn't important to them. It didn't end up mattering; I majored in English and the hardest math class I was required to take at university was college algebra.

My point it, my parents weren't afraid that I wasn't taking enough math. They didn't do anything during 5th and 6th grade when I was bored out of my mind and they didn't freak out when I didn't take four years of high school math (or effectively, five years). Likewise, they didn't worry in kindergarten that math meant coloring shapes and learning numbers, or that 1st grade was basic addition and subtraction. I was young, after all.

Papa has a college degree in computer science with a minor concentration in mathematics. He took more high school math than I did; he took four years but only ended up with one more year of high school math because of the algebra I took in junior high. At no point during his elementary or secondary public education did he work ahead in math. He didn't have to know place value in 1st grade or long division in 3rd grade. He learned decimals and percents in 6th grade, didn't take pre-algebra until 8th grade, and took algebra in 9th grade. This was considered advanced for a student. It has served him well and he didn't miss out getting into college because of what math classes he took.

That's the thing: you get to college (if you go to college) and you take a math placement test and they figure out where you should start. I moved right into college algebra, my mother-in-law (who was attending college at the same time Papa and I were) started with remedial math. She took what she needed to and still got her college degree and teaching credential. I never took a math class in college past that college algebra. I too received a degree. Papa took a lot more math classes because he wanted to pursue a degree and career that required a lot of math. We all got where we wanted to go. We all have differing math skills and yet we all function as adults in this society.

These days though, oh my! The math starts early and hits harder. More and earlier are the battle cries of school administrators and government representatives. When I look at it from the outside it seems to me that they can't figure out how to help children understand math so they have moved to dumping it on the students early and often with the hopes that something will stick. Americans have pinned their hopes on the math skills of children under the age of 7.

What I encounter are children who are absolutely math phobic, and I don't only mean children who attend brick and mortar schools. There are plenty of math phobic homeschoolers as well; they take the standardized test if they are charter school students, get a result that the teachers don't like, the teachers use scare tactics with the parents (improve these scores or sign your child up for special education), and the parents freak out and put more pressure on the kids.

What I see happening is too much math taught way too early and an entire generation growing up afraid of math because the educational system refuses to wait until their brains are developmentally ready to learn more than basic counting and shape identification.

Growing up it was okay not to like math, but you did it anyway and no one really worried and we didn't have to be afraid that our test scores wouldn't be good enough. Tutoring centers for elementary school children didn't exist in my world. We didn't have math homework until junior high school, and then it was something that took less than 30 minutes to complete (or was completed in class).

I didn't prep for the SAT, meaning I didn't pay someone to teach me how to take it. I took it once my junior year, was pleased as punch with my scores; they were well above average for both males and females but they didn't earn me a mention in the newspaper. My math score beat out Papa's even though he'd had more math than me. I didn't try to improve my score by taking the test again my senior year; it didn't matter to me that I had friends who had scored better and my score were good enough to get me into the college I wanted to attend.

I had to deal with some math fear from my own children, a fear that I didn't instill in them. No, children's books and movies, even the gentle ones, are full of math phobia. They also have math phobic friends. One day, in grade 4 I believe, I heard the dreaded words I HATE MATH. Oh-my-flipping-no-you-don't was what ran through my brain, but I stayed calm and talked to the child in question and realized that he had no idea what he was talking about. He loves math, he is even math-gifted; what he hates are math practice worksheets. It makes sense with this child; in general he hates work of almost any kind. And when math comes easily math worksheets can seem pointless. But he makes errors on them, so sometimes we still do them. That is a self-discipline issue and a topic for another blog post, but also something that I am going to research so I can bring practice work to the boys in a way that doesn't created hatred.

I don't worry about where my boys are with their math skills. Sometimes J-Baby will say that he is behind where he should be in math and I don't even know where he gets that from. Has he been introduced to every math topic that a 5th grader in public school has been introduced to? I'm sure he hasn't. Have they done complex algebra and worked intuitively with other number bases? Maybe. Does the math that those children have been introduced to having meaning? I doubt it. Do a lot of those children hate math? I can guarantee it.

We don't like things we are afraid of, plain and simple. So like I started with, I wish I could gift parents and children with the absence of fear. I wish them the knowledge that it all works out in the end and that they really don't need to worry and fret and try to overcome the fear by heaping on more of whatever they are afraid of. Because it is a strategy that doesn't work. Plain and simple.

Finding Our True Rhythm

2011-09-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about what we mean when we talk about rhythm. Grace wrote a great blog piece about it here and I am completely in agreement with her. I think of rhythm as being the living, breathing part of our days, weeks, months, and years.

Rhythm is the big pieces ~ waking, eating, bathing, activity, rest. It is also the turning of the seasons and the special days that punctuate the year. We don't choose the beating of our hearts, and while we can impose structure to our breathing with conscious effort, as we get caught up again in daily life it will quickly fall back into its own rhythm. We don't choose the weather each day or when spring arrives. We are not in charge of when the leaves turn color or the first snow falls. We can ignore hunger or fatigue but they always arrive and need to be sated.

But rhythm is not the same thing as routine or schedule. Gathering for the evening meal is rhythm; serving chicken soup each Tuesday is routine. Waking each day is rhythm, setting the alarm clock is imposing schedule on the rhythm. It isn't bad to impose schedule or routine; indeed, many of us need it. For me, routine creates the space and calm I need to function as a human being.

When we first started homeschooling I thought we needed a very strict routine and I attempted to create that and impose it on our rather relaxed, yet solid rhythm. They didn't mesh well at all.

This is what happened. For grade one I started with the idea that our homeschool day needed to look just like Donna Simmons describes in her books. I was absolutely convinced that we had to do our work in the morning because the syllabus said that was when we were freshest for learning. I imposed a schedule on our morning: wake, eat, dress, walk, circle, lessons. I tried this consistently, was met with resistance, and had kids that fell apart in the afternoon.

Why wasn't it working? Other experts and books all said the same thing: we should do lessons (or head work) in the mornings. But Enki also suggested that we begin by staying home and observing our natural rhythm. So we did; I observed and saw what was happening. After the long separation of sleep my boys wanted to play with each other. They might stop to eat breakfast, but play was necessary for them. After an hour or two things would start to get contentious and that was a good time for me to bring in structured activity (a walk, a short lesson, reading out loud, crafts, etc.). Then we'd have lunch and quiet time (quiet time evolved so nicely from napping that I think of it as part of our overall rhythm) and settle into lesson work. It worked beautifully.

Can you believe I jettisoned the easy rhythm and routine again later, starting once again in the morning thinking that the experienced educators must be right and that I must be wrong? And that I tried to tell myself that it was working? My boys are older now, and I can make a morning crammed with lessons work, but it is usually at the expense of harmony. It is far better to allow our days to flow around our natural rhythm and to give up the idea that anyone else knows what is best for our family.

I think finding our true rhythm is a big part of successful family living. Knowing whether someone is an early riser or a night owl. Knowing when hunger arrives, when the need for sleep arrives, when we require quiet or activity. Sometimes I will talk to a mom who says "we have no rhythm at all" and I gently suggest that yes, they do. They wake, they eat, they sleep. Note when that happens (or needs to happen) and fill in from there. What time does each family wake and how does each person meet the new day? Are people hungry immediately upon waking or do they need to wait a little while? When do the children play harmoniously and when do they need direction? When are the parents at their most overwhelmed and when are they at their best ? What home chores are done daily and are they happening in a way that makes sense for the family?

Observation is a gift. When we pay attention we see the reasons behind behavior and are more likely to approach our children with compassion. Just today after lunch T-Guy fell apart while washing the dishes. He touched a hot pan (he wasn't burned, just surprised) and it was just enough to let the flood gates open "I don't know how to do this!" (He does, and it would have been more accurate for him to say that he didn't remember how.) I had been observing all morning and had noted that he was tired and a bit lethargic. Papa himself came down with a cold yesterday evening. Putting it all together I guided him to his room to lie down, telling him that I would help him with the pan later when it cooled. I offered empathy and a solution (rest). An hour later he was much better, happier, and more resilient. He got dressed and noted that he had probably been dressed too warmly for such a hot day. We washed the pan together, the incident fully behind us. He wasn't simmering and thinking that I had been unfair and I wasn't worrying that I had a recalcitrant child.

Close observation helps us discover our true rhythm. It's there, pulsing underneath everything that we attempt to pile on top of it, waiting for us to acknowledge its course and work with it rather than against it. Our homeschool year will start soon, and I will remember that my children need to connect in the morning before I require lesson work from them. We will wake, and eat, do our morning chores, play, and then move into our lessons and practice, knowing that some of it will happen after our noon meal and quiet time, and not worrying that anyone thinks we are doing it wrong.

Mama in the Mornings

2011-08-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not exactly a morning person. If I lived alone it is likely that I would stay up late each night and sleep in each morning. This is my natural tendency, one that showed itself even when I was a child. Sleep has never come easily, I sleep lightly, and I need a gentle transition to the new day. J-Baby is much like me, whereas T-Guy falls asleep easily, sleeps soundly, and is an early riser. Not a wide-awake-at-dawn early riser (for which I am thankful), but a chipper child who is fully awake by 7 AM, eager to meet each day.

I am experienced enough in parenting, and in Waldorf parenting in particular, to understand the importance of my role in the home. I say this not as an anti-feminist (because I am a feminist) or because I espouse traditional values (valuing children is traditional but I believe it can be done in many ways and not all of them involve a stay-at-home-mother), but because I have experienced it in my life and know it to be true. If I am sad, my children are sad. If I am grieving, they grieve. They are anxious when anxiety rules my behavior, and cranky when I allow myself to be cranky. My children are mirrors of my emotions and of my self, both at its best and worst.

I set the tone in my home. It is as simple as that. I choose whether we are stressed or calm, irritable or happy. Not 100% of course; my boys and Papa have emotions and moods of their own that express themselves, but I am the one who has the power to tame those emotions and moods or let them take over our home. When I hear discord I can ignore it, allow it to escalate, and then attempt to diffuse it with my own frustration, or I can monitor it (different than ignoring), determine if my assistance is needed, and step in before we are all frustrated.

Accepting this role in my home means that I have to be present. There is no other option; I must listen, observe, weigh options, and intervene. I must set the example. I can't let my own little frustrations escalate. I can't allow anger to fall from my lips. I must calm myself when stress threatens to take over. I must show gratitude. I must get up in the morning ...

Oh, that is the hardest one! I can't be present if I am asleep. I can't start the day ten steps behind, either, because when I do I am frustrated, irritated, stressed, and certainly not setting the example I want to set.

Fact #1: I'm not really a morning person. I have forced myself to function as one in the past but it is not my natural inclination.

Fact #2: My children need me to be awake in the morning, awake not only with them but before them, ready to guide them into each day.

Fact #3: Wishing something was different doesn't make it so. I'm not talking about my not being a morning person, because that is something that can be altered. My children needing me simply can't be changed.

For 21 mornings I have been been awake and out of bed by 7:15 AM at the latest, and that was only two mornings. I am averaging 6:30, which might not sound very early to the larks out there but for me it is, especially as when I started this I was still not falling asleep before 2 AM. Some days I am up at 6 AM. Getting up earlier hasn't guaranteed that I will fall asleep earlier than the wee hours of the morning that I seem to be hardwired for, but most nights now I do fall asleep before midnight. Not before 11 PM, but before midnight, and that is progress.

I'm tired. There is no sugar coating it. I do my best at staying present and chipper during the day and sometimes I fall apart when Papa comes home and I can't be nice any longer and I take it out on him. That's the reality. I'm not going to lie and pretend that I set my mind to this (which I did) and that it all came up roses (it hasn't). It's getting easier, but I am still incredibly tired and emotionally thin in spots and I can hardly wait until my boys are in bed.

I have walked down this path before, but I have never been this successful. A few months ago I started realizing that for me, getting up at 6:30 AM is easier than getting up at 7:30 AM. It sounds counterintuitive, but I believe that somewhere in me is another diurnal pattern. I also noticed that I was consistently exhausted around 8 PM. I suspect that my natural wake time may be more like 5:30 AM and my sleep time around 9 - 9:30 PM. My life doesn't allow for that right now, but I do intend to give it a try. I think I am more successful this time around because I am trying to get up even earlier than before. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it is working.

I am also, for the first time in my life, allowing myself to be tired. If you know how an exhausted toddler will fight being tired then you know how I have lived my life. I simply stopped letting myself even think I was tired, and so I believed it. Being tired was being weak, and not being tired was part of who I was. So now I am acknowledging my exhaustion ~ out loud even. I am letting myself feel it and I am telling myself that I feel it and I am going to sleep based on that (except when I am exhausted at 8 PM because that just doesn't work). It doesn't always work; I can admit that I am tired, turn off the lights, and lie there not sleeping even though I am tired. But I'm trying not to stress about it. Only once in the past three weeks have I been awake until 2 AM (and later, but I didn't look). Six weeks ago falling asleep around 2 AM was my normal ~ I'm making progress.

Anyway, this is long, but it is part of my being accountable to myself and also sharing the journey with those who my struggle with mornings as I have. I'm tired, but I am going to keep trying.

Update 9/8/2011: Getting up earlier has gotten easier, but we've also gotten a little lax with it. I'm awake before 7:30 every morning whether I set the alarm or not. I'm mostly waking by 7 but not leaving the bed until 7:30. My evening sleep time has been creeping forward which is something I need to work on. But overall it is so much better; I'm not nearly so exhausted any longer.

Busy Busy Busy

2011-08-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

I had thought that I would start posting daily in anticipation of the upcoming homeschool year. Instead I have been getting estimates, budgeting, coordinating tradespeople (I don't know why I bother to be gender neutral ~ they have all been men), picking colors, supervising work, choosing light fixtures, prepping for extermination, and managing dogs as people are in and out of the front door and gate.

In the meantime I am stuck on our learning space as I haven't been able to move out the old dining room table and start changing things up. I know what I see in my mind and want to make that happen, but imagination isn't reality and I need to actually get in there and set things up. Looking at the walls I don't think I'll have space to hang a blackboard or even to have one on a rolling stand, so we will probably have to stick with our current blackboard and place it on an easel. That can have its advantages, as I often like to do chalkboard drawings with the board on the floor or in my lap. I am committed to doing more drawing this year!

I'm also spending some time looking through the Making Math Meaningful middle grades curriculum; part of me knows that we don't need more math and part of me wants to have another resource to well, make it more meaningful.

I'm working on our fall rhythm as well. While the afternoon tea and late dinner is working well for the boys and I, Papa comes home each evening ravenous and ready for dinner. I could move the snack a little earlier (making it less formal) and serve dinner earlier as well, but with an early dinner the boys always want a snack before bed. Plus baseball is starting and it is hard to have an early dinner when T-Guy is still at practice. Oh, what to do? Let it sit and see what happens, I suppose.

I actually do have some time to write, knit, or read, but I am so very tired (that will be my next post) that I have little motivation or energy to do anything.

I Am So Very Honored ...

2011-08-16T18:52:00.000-07:00

... to have a post on mothering shared on Carrie's blog, The Parenting Passageway. Carrie's blog has been such an inspiration to me and my mothering; I have been reading it from the beginning and I am still inspired regularly. It is the first blog I think of when recommending a gentle parenting or Waldorf blog. Go check it out, and be gentle if you read my piece and want to leave feedback. I should have spent some time editing, lol.

Protecting the Blank Spaces

2011-08-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

I think I've mentioned that I like planning. I mean, really like planning. I make calendars and schedules and meal plans and gift lists and well, you get the idea. It's just the kind of brain I have.

During the summer I plan our upcoming homeschool year. In general, we aim for lessons in the morning and leave the afternoons free for quiet time, activities, and outings. But I hate to see a really full calendar or schedule; we need breathing room.

Now that we outsource PE that is something we have to go to each week; it is worth it because the boys are learning team sports and because they thrive in the class. In general I think you can teach just about anything yourself, but team sports are hard because you need other children to be on a team. Two children cannot a soccer match make, or something like that.

We also have a weekly park day, a time to get together with our local homeschool community. We do this on Friday afternoons and it works out so well ~ everyone is ready to relax and let the week slip into the past.

This year we may or may not have our first outside of the home weekly class. A friend is planning to teach a science class based on Harry Potter and I am going to tutor her daughter in reading in trade for having my boys attend the class. The plans are slightly up in the air now, but if it works out that is yet another afternoon away from home (or partial afternoon, but out is out).

Those three afternoons leave us only two free, and one of the free afternoons was our weekly library outing. Eeeks! I'll have to switch that to another day that we are already out if I want to make sure we have two full at home days each week.

Why do I try so hard to have empty spaces on my calendar? Why not fill up every available time slot as so many of our friends do? Because we do it differently. We need free time and days that we don't leave home and I notice the difference when we don't get it. The boys are cranky, I'm cranky, and our lives are less pleasant. I don't have a more-is-better philosophy when it comes to activities for children. I have a more time at home is better philosophy. A more family time, more quiet time, more free time philosophy.

In truth, the Harry Potter class may not work out for us. It may be that leaving home only two days per week will work best. It creates less stress for me, and less for the boys as well even though they would say how much they love going places. And that is the problem; they do love going out but sometimes it is too much and it is my job to figure out where the balance lies.

Fun things can be stressful. Important, fantastic things can be stressful, which is why getting married or having a baby are considered major life stressors. Anticipation and excitement cause cortisol to run through our bodies just as fear and frustration do. When my boys are waiting for something like leaving for a birthday party or waiting for cousins to arrive they are impatient and antsy. They pace, they look out the window repeatedly, the fret over the clock. It's stressful.

But they are kids, and they can't figure this out on their own. That's my job, and that is why I protect the blank spaces.

On Following Our Own Course

2011-08-14T13:53:00.000-07:00

Over the years we've tried a couple of different times to start our homeschool year; by far my favorite has been starting with the fall equinox. It gives us a natural celebration to begin the homeschool year with and the seasonal change helps us feel like it is time to shift gears.

The transition between seasons here is subtle; we don't have a sudden cold snap or leaves bursting out in bright colors. Some years we even begin fall with a heat wave. But we feel the change; the cool of evening doesn't envelop us gently as it does in summer, no, it is sudden and sharp. The light is different. The produce we find at the farmer's market changes.

Two years ago I decided that we would follow the schedule set by the charter school that most of our friends use, beginning in August and finishing in May. That spring the boys had been a little unhappy at the thought of doing lessons when their friends were already on summer break; we'd had an easy grade 3 year anyway so we ended when they did.

When I started my homeschool planning earlier this summer I considered going with a September 23rd start because it feels right, but then when I thought about June lessons I changed it to an August start and I did all my block planning based on that. It is true that we are all ready for a break by the time late spring rolls around.

But a question on the Homespun Waldorf message boards asked how people mark the first day of homeschool and I felt a longing for the way we did it before, the way that had meaning for us. I also considered how rushed I would feel to be starting in a little over a week. It didn't feel right, and so I went through my planning block by block and moved us back to the September start. Then I let out a big sigh of relief.

I want to enjoy the last month of summer without having filled it with lessons. I want us to find our rhythm, something that we have struggled with this summer. I really don't want to jump from our summer-that-felt-like-it-wasn't into a homeschool year that feels like we-have-to-but-we-don't-really-want-to. Besides, we're still waiting for it to get really hot; summer has plenty of life in her yet.

We don't have to do what everyone else is doing. Following the charter schedule doesn't give us any more credibility. It doesn't matter what strangers thing when they ask us if we've started school and we say no. Choosing to start when it makes sense for us and when we can infuse it with meaning is the right thing for us. Ending after our friends do just takes a little more discipline, but we can also look forward to our final festival of the homeschool year, the summer solstice.

Our Festival Year

2011-08-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

Festivals play a large role in the Waldorf school year and we try to infuse that into our little Waldorf-inspired homeschool. However, grafting many of the Waldorf festivals into our lives simply didn't work for me, so I considered the special days that we do celebrate and built our festival year around those. As home learners we don't have to skip the really big holidays because we already celebrate those together as a family.

September: The Autumnal Equinox. While we may not have the flashy fall that some climates do, the arrival of autumn is just as heralded in our home. It brings with it the breaking of the heat and some of our best outdoor months. As we come into the time of balance between day and night we also seek balance and give up some of the hedonistic pleasures of summer for the discipline of lessons.

October: October brings us Freethought Day as well as Halloween. Halloween is one of our favorite holidays, not because it is a candy fest but because it is a time for us to be with our homeschool community. We gather together for a potluck meal, take the children out, and then return home to share the rest of the evening. The children look forward to Halloween more than any other festival, planning costumes months in advance and admiring what everyone has done.

November: Thanksgiving is our harvest festival. We cook nearly every year and open our home to friends and family; if we miss a year it simply feels wrong.

December: We celebrate Christmas as our big December holiday, spending the month in preparation by crafting, baking, and cooking. Each year I create an Advent calendar for us that is filled with activities large and small. But we also create meaning and ritual around the Winter Solstice. I feel a deep connection with all of humanity, past and present, as we observe the natural phenomenon of the solstice and share the jubilation at the return of the sun. As the year comes to a close we celebrate its end together as a family.

January: We begin by celebrating the arrival of the New Year. Then, one of us completes a trip around the sun. Growing up nothing was more important than my own sun day and I honor the excitement my children have by creating a festival just for each of them.

February: February is a month of quiet celebration for us; I do think that it makes what can be a wet and dreary month more tolerable. We have Imbolc or St. Brigid's Day, Darwin Day, and Valentine's Day (another celebration with our homeschool community). We also celebrate Pancake Day either this month or next, which is one of the only festivals I pulled from a Waldorf book that took root in my family.

March: March brings us the Spring Equinox, another time of balance.

April: Two of us complete our annual trips around the sun this month. One is celebrated with great fanfare, the other a little more quietly. We also celebrate Earth Day, and Easter if it occurs this month.

May: We have a tradition of surprising friends with little anonymous treats on May Day, something I remember from my own youth. We also celebrate the National Day of Reason.

June: Another trip around the sun for a special someone, and then we celebrate the Summer Solstice in all its glory.

I wanted to post this because I think that Waldorf homeschoolers sometimes feel that they are simply too busy with blocks and home life to bring in all the Waldorf festivals. To me, the point of the festivals isn't to add in things which make more work for you, but to find the things that add sparkle to your year and allow those times to build, peak, and ebb away. It has served as a way for my boys to feel the fullness of the year, and to understand the difference between commonplace and special. All-you-can-eat candy for one evening of the year (Halloween) is very special, but if we were to have candy daily or even weekly it would become ordinary and our festival would have less meaning.

The Bright and Shiny Grade 6 Plan

2011-08-11T21:08:00.000-07:00

I love planning! Planning trips, planning a party, and especially planning our homeschooling. I've learned that it's a map I'm making, but that I might not necessarily follow the planned route exactly, and that's okay. I work with real children who have ideas and ambitions of their own and I can't force my plan on them; they have to come along willingly. And that is enough metaphor for one paragraph.

I have the year mapped out with blocks and secondary lessons and breaks. It is a fairly traditional Waldorf grade 6 year with some of our not-so-traditional resources thrown in. We aren't giving up Life of Fred and you can't make us! Here is the block rotation:

Ancient Greek History I

Mineralogy

Coastal Ecology (class trip)

Ancient Greek History II

Nature, Number, and Geometry

Ancient Roman History I

Introduction to Physics

Ancient Roman History II

Astronomy

The Middle Ages

Our secondary lessons are mostly connected to our main lessons. In some cases we simply do art and music from the historical period we are studying in our main lesson (Fine Arts). We have a couple of cooking secondary lessons planned; one ties in with Ancient Greek history and the other with Physics (cooking is Vocational Education which I am required to offer beginning in jr. high) . December is always our month for holiday crafting (Applied Arts). We have two Health lessons planned: one on nutrition to tie in with Mineralogy and one on public and personal sanitation to tie in with Ancient Rome. (Aren't I clever ~ take that state of California and your required subjects, because I can make health tie in with Waldorf no problem.) We'll also have a sewing block, which doesn't really tie into Astronomy but what can I do? The boys want to learn to sew on machines this year.

Papa is going to expand on our Physics and Astronomy blocks by working with the boys all year using two books: Galileo: His Life and Ideas (25 Activities For Kids) and Isaac Newton and Physic For Kids: His Life and Ideas with 21 Activities.

I outsource Physical Education; we have a great company that comes into town and offers PE classes to home-schooled children once a week. My boys love it.

In addition to main and secondary lessons we will continue to work with (as I said before) Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents (kind of sort of business math, don't you think?), Daily Grammar (simple, easy to use, and they like it), and Spelling City (they love it and seem to be learning some spelling). Oh, assigning novels last year worked so well that we are going to do it this year as well. I'm looking at Newberry Award winners and Honor Books again.

The only thing that is really up in the air is foreign language. I am required to offer foreign language, but my students aren't required to take it and so far they aren't interested. We bring in Spanish in a fairly organic manner but at some point they need to choose a language. Maybe we'll try Mango Languages this year since it is free. I keep telling them that they had better pick up some Dutch as I am thinking about sending them to their uncle in Belgium as "foreign exchange students" in a couple of years.

There is is, pretty as a new copper penny!

Learning Journal ~ Postal Museum

2011-08-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

Homeschool isn't officially in session yet, but this year we are going to document our more organic learning experiences here on the blog. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me today and didn't even think about the fact that my phone has a camera.

Today we:

Explored the postal museum and noted that the clerks had more protection/separation from the public in the past, but that it made it harder to handle packages. We also saw the postmaster's desk, talked about old phones, and looked at how the mail carrier caps have changed over the years. The boys gently touched the antique scale and old hand-cranked cancellation machine and we talked about what stamp cancellation is. It would be great to set up a tour at a modern facility. (History)

Went to the public library and chose new books. (Reading)

Boiled potatoes for shepherd's pie and discussed the boiling point of water, what boiling looks like, why water boils, and how starch in water changes boiling. (Science)

Played Risk. (Geography, Math, social skills)

Really Knowing

2011-04-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite aspects of home education is having the opportunity to really know our children's friends. Not just their friends, but the families of these friends. We know the people, their homes, their values, their struggles, their hopes. We know that we are all different, but very alike in our desire to do the best we can for our children. We trust each other.

Oh, to know these kids! We remember when the younger siblings were babies and toddlers. We celebrated new babies being born. We hear the first words of the little ones and remember when they needed to be pushed on swings and caught at the bottom of slides. We look back to when so many of the children were turning six years old and what a magical year that was (and how worried we all were about reading); now that group of kids are all turning twelve (and they read, each of them getting there at their own time and in their own way). Twelve! We watch them grow physically, but also emotionally. We see the maturation of the oldest kids as they become teenagers, young men and women.

We go to birthday parties and feel comfortable with the adults and stay too long because the kids don't want to be parted, even if they will see each other again in just a few days. We promise them extra play dates just to get them out the door. We feel renewed and exhausted at the same time.

I pick up a child for a play date and know that my friend will get an hour or two of peace and quiet while her little one naps. I send the children back by having them walk the 3/4 mile and see the joy on their faces at the independence they have earned. I get some peace as well, even if I don't get any quiet; the sound of laughter is a reward as well.

An Easy Week

2011-04-15T15:30:00.001-07:00

So, J-Baby and I both came down with T-Guy's cold. J-Baby has only had a couple of colds over the years and isn't accustomed to being congested; he moan and groaned all day Tuesday like he was dying. All he could really do is listen to audiobooks and watch science and nature specials.

We made it to PE on Wednesday; it was nice to get a dose of sunshine and fresh air. I had just started with a sore throat at that point; yesterday and today I've felt downright cruddy so we've continued with "educational television" schooling this week. The boys have read, listened to audiobooks, listened to music (loving Beethoven's Wig), watched a science/nature program daily (I'm still me and can't plug them into a screen for more than an hour daily). drawn pictures, designed a new baseball game involving Pokemon cards, gone to Rain (I was heavily medicated, lol), and of course talked to us about everything they are doing.

Perfect Attendance

2011-04-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

J-Baby and I were sitting waiting for a children's concert to begin (put on by the local symphony orchestra) and the girl next to me asked J-Baby where he goes to school. He can never remember the official name of our school (because it simply isn't important) so he told her her was homeschooled. She said she had perfect attendance this year and he said he did too, because there is "no way to be absent from home". She gave him a funny look so I just said that there is always something to be learned and he felt validated.

Today T-Guy is feeling under the weather. I could mark it as an absence because we aren't doing focused lesson work, but that doesn't mean that learning isn't happening. The boys read The Last Quest of Gilgamesh and started on Gilgamesh the Hero. J-Baby finished Space Cadet by Robert Heinlein, telling Mike this morning that he was almost finished with it and wished he wasn't. T-Guy started re-reading the Lloyd Alexander Chronicles of Prydain series, beginning with The Book of Three. A vintage Dataman calculator game I had ordered online arrived and J-Baby explored its math games. They watched an episode of Cyberchase. We're only in the afternoon now; I am sure more learning will happen later today.

The house is strewn with books (literally). There are the aforementioned novels, a mantel covered in books about Gilgamesh and Mespotamia, math concept books, books about pronouns, and the handful of Scholastic books that Abuela gave J-Baby for his birthday.

The piano has been tinkered with, pictures have been drawn, Lincoln Log homes designed, and Keva Plank towers constructed. We talked about strangers and acquaintances and who you can accept a ride home from if you are walking, including discussing the fine line between trust and caution.

So yes, they have perfect attendance ~ I love that they have no desire to be absent from life!

Is it Friday Again?

2011-04-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

Wow, the week went by quickly and I didn't even think about posting. I wonder how that happened?

Let's see; J-Baby celebrated his eleventh trip around the sun, we had baseball Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, we had PE class, we went to the library and natural foods market, Abuela visited, and oh yeah, there were all the other normal weekly things we do at home.

Focused lessons are humming along, and the boys are loving them. I find myself wishing that I had either 1) a Waldorf resource for teaching Gilgamesh and Ancient Mesopotamia, or 2) researched this months ago and had art projects, verses, food, etc. planned out. I'm kind of kicking myself for having sold our copy of Live Education Grade 5. My biggest hurdle is that the boys are already very well acquainted with the Gilgamesh myth, something I didn't realize.

This has shortened our morning lesson time, but it is working out just fine. The short mornings are just what the boys need to feel that they've done something without feeling that they've done nothing but lesson work.

Math is becoming one of T-Guy's favorite subjects, something I didn't expect. My boys have been determined to sort themselves into categories even if a school wasn't doing it for them. It's as if they made an agreement; J-Baby would take math and science and T-Guy would take literature and history. But lately J-baby's been reading science fiction (the Heinlein juveniles) and T-Guy has been digging into math and I am doing a super secret happy dance.

Weekly Recap

2011-04-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

I won't lie and say that this week has been a breeze. My boys are typical children who seek rhythm only to naturally chafe against it.

Thursday morning was particularly rough, and I have to wonder what exactly caused it. I got up and made breakfast. T-Guy was up already as the Puppy Girl (she's nearly 2 now, but she is still the Puppy Girl) consistently wakes by 7:15 and he cares for her in the morning. J-Baby was sleeping at 8:30 and that may be a clue. Either he slept in because he is coming down with something, it's allergy season, or because he slept poorly the night before. As a child who had difficulty sleeping myself I can relate. He was just grumpy, and kept glaring at his scrambled eggs even though Wednesday he told me that two pieces of toast was a small breakfast and that he needed more.

He was off track all morning and wasn't motivated to do his chores. His grumpiness spilled over to T-Guy, who felt that J-Baby wasn't doing his fair share of tidying their bedroom. So then I had too grumpy boys and a mama who was starting to feel grumpy herself.

We pulled it together and saved the day, but J-Baby was still off all afternoon.

One thing that I think homeschooling illuminates is the very humanness of our children and ourselves. We all have days when we feel slow, or sensitive, or restless, and so do our children. Homeschooling gives us the freedom to adjust; to have a lazy morning when someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed or to go on a morning adventure walk when the children are buzzing with energy. We don't have to fit into a mold, to accomplish that day's activities no matter what.

Oops, I Lied

2011-03-31T16:32:00.000-07:00

I meant to come back and post our resources for Gilgamesh, but then I got busy. It's really hard to be an at-home homeschooling parent, especially one who does things like bakes her own bread and makes her own chicken broth. Kitchen tasks can be very time consuming. Rewarding (chocolate frosted gluten-free yellow layer cake, anyone?), but time consuming. Sometimes I think my life isn't all that busy because I don't generally run around everyday, but I tend to discount the time spent in the kitchen, doing chores, etc.

So, resources. I'm a huge fan of picture books, even for older children. In the beginning with Enki and Waldorf I was told how important it is for a child to hear a story before they see pictures, and I can see how wonderful that is, but picture books are great too, especially for children who read on their own. What we do is read a book together and then move it to our fireplace mantel where the boys are free to pull it down and read it on their own. Which they do, especially J-Baby, because they like looking at the pictures.

Gilgamesh the King, The Revenge of Ishtar, and The Last Quest of Gilgamesh, retold and illustrated by Ludmila Zeman.

Gilgamesh the Hero by Geraldine McCaughrean and David Parkins

I also reserved just about every children's book on ancient Mesopotamia that the county system had. We haven't read them all so I will just list the outstanding books as we get to them.

The boys are already familiar with some of the Gilgamesh legend, but Gilgamesh the King was a little different from what they knew. Good. I like them to know that legends and history can be told in different ways.

Back in the Groove

2011-03-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

This morning's lessons went really well. Amazingly, we accomplished breakfast and our morning chores before starting lessons right on time at 10:00 a.m. This is how the morning went:

Wake up
Breakfast
Morning Chores (including getting dressed and brushing teeth)
Assigned Reading (our Newberry Honor book this month is Justin Morgan Had a Horse)
Daily Grammar
Life of Fred Math
Technology (using iPads as slates)
Main Lesson: Mesopotamia/ Gilgamesh (today was an intake day)
Spelling City

We had lunch with Papa, then quiet time. The boys did a couple more chores and then watched an episode of Cyberchase. They played outside for awhile and just finished playing video games on the iPads. They each have the opportunity to earn 30 minutes of game time based on their chores the day before. So far this really works for us; chores get done, video games are allowed (a big thing for them at ages 12 and nearly 11), and the video game time is limited (still a big thing for me).

Monday is my kitchen day: I have chicken stock simmering on the stove, a crock pot full of pinto beans that will be tonight's dinner (and also will be part of two more lunch/dinner meals), a small loaf of artisan bread cooling (the last of the dough I made last Monday), I mixed up a double batch of artisan dough and now have a larger loaf doing a second rise. Looking at the granola jar there isn't enough for the week, so I will get started on a batch of that as soon as I finish baking the bigger loaf of bread for sandwiches.

Staying home on Monday has always been important to us in terms of regrouping after the weekend and getting a good start to the week, and I can't say that I am disappointed that the park day switch to Monday didn't work out for the group. I would have made it work so that we could see our friends, but being home on Monday is so much better for us. A good Monday sets the tone for a good week.

T-Guy has baseball practice this evening, and I think J-Baby and I will work on paper crafting his robot character, Little Johnny. J-Baby loves crafts and is often bored when T-Guy is gone, and he really enjoys having some alone time crafting with me. We bought some silver metallic paper that he has been wanting to use.

Later this evening they will have a science lesson with Papa. When we are in a focused lesson cycle we try to hit the main four subject areas (Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies/History, and Science) each weekday and then have weekly lessons in Technology, Spanish, Health, Physical Education (along with daily activity), Music, and Art.

Tomorrow I will list some of our resources for our Mesopotamia/Gilgamesh block.

We're Still Here ...

2011-03-14T18:52:00.000-07:00

I haven't been writing because honestly, we've just been living and learning. We haven't picked up a textbook or worksheet, logged into a spelling lesson, or done a block lesson since last December. We've been seeing amazing results during this last unstructured period as the boys explore topics they are interested in and integrate that learning with all that has come before.

I love life learning. I love watching my boys fill their days with what interests them and listening to them play wild games of imagination. I trust life learning as an educational model because I believe that it is the environment we learn in naturally. For those of us who go to school, life learning is what happens before that first day we are handed over to a teacher, what happens when we aren't at school or doing homework, and the main method we return to when we have finished with institutionalized schooling. (Don't get your panties in a wad because I used the word institutionalized with schooling. Schools are institutions. Get over it).

However, just when I think that we have completely embraced life learning my boys start clamoring for more focused work. This is the boomerang that is part of learning at the Living Oak Academy. We start the year focused. It trails off a little and the boys grab the freedom and start to run away from lesson work. They speed farther away, flying. And then, they turn back, and the start wanting a little more direction, and soon enough they are back at my side, asking for a Waldorf block and planned math lessons.

I have learned to just go with it. I don't get to live with a definitive label hanging over us, such as Waldorf homeschoolers or unschoolers, or even the often used eclectic, which doesn't mean much of anything anyway, but I can handle the lack of definition. We find that we don't fit in with specific groups of home learners either. Waldorf homeschoolers will always be aghast at our periods of unstructured life learning (environment, rhythm, health!), and unschoolers will be more than aghast at our periods of structured learning (meaning that I may be ruining my children for life by choosing what they will learn for a given time period).

It doesn't matter to me. If my boys want lessons, I will provide lessons. Previous trips on this path have taught me that after two blocks they will start wandering again, so I will give them Ancient Mesopotamia in April (with Gilgamesh as the literature focus) and Ancient Geometry in May. By then they will be ready for the expansiveness of summer. Come September it will be time to draw back in and begin our boomerang cycle once again.

It's Never Too Early ...

2010-12-27T22:07:00.000-08:00

Each year at the end of December I start our school planning for the next year. Part of that is taking the temperature of our homeschool thus far and deciding what to tweak in January, but I also look ahead to the fall. Now that we are knee deep in our grade 5 Waldorf year (we use the grade 5 story curriculum ~ I don't bother to keep track of what "grade" we are in for skills) and very happy to be back to using Waldorf methods I decided to take a look at what Live Education offers for grade 6, and wow, does it seem to be right up J-Baby's alley! Astronomy, Physics, Mineralogy, The Middle Ages, Ancient Greek and Roman History, and more Geometry? Sign us up! Or rather, I'll be saving my pennies for the books.

For the near term, I have our books for our first North American Geography block checked out from the library and have placed them on hold with T-Guy's account so we can have them through the end of January. I ordered the book that we need for February as it wasn't available from our city library or the county system.

J-Baby is excited to be starting lesson work again after our light month and holiday break. He is just old enough now to be worrying that he is perhaps a bit behind other kids when it comes to some of his skills, but talking him through it he realized that he is far ahead in many areas, especially science and history, and he really understands the why of things rather than just the what. The child is a deep thinker.

T-Guy, on the other hand, lives so much in the moment that he hasn't mentioned starting our lessons again. Right now his life revolves around playing with his new toys and trying to talk Papa (who is home all week) into playing Wii, or at the very least letting him and J-Baby play Wii. He's also thinking about his birthday which is in just a couple of weeks, and baseball, which starts gearing up in January with a two day camp, evaluations, and catching school (that is still a surprise); perhaps that is why he isn't thinking about school work.

As for me, I still have to fine tune our schedule for January. We are going to switch our "lite" day to Mondays, which seems counter-intuitive but we always struggle to get back in the groove on Mondays anyway, and that is when most of the homeschool group is able to meet. So we will do skills work in the morning, go to park day, then to the library, and finally do any necessary errands (health food store and banking).

And In the End ...

2010-12-17T14:54:00.000-08:00

I decided to spend the past several weeks taking it easy. Not on break, but not doing a main lesson block or introducing new math material. We did history (The Story of the World), science (The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way), lots of reading, some math (applied math as well as review and story problems) and spelling, and of course health, PE, and lots of art/music.

And today was the last of it, and we are on break for three weeks (same as our local school district rather than what our charter school friends are doing). Of course, we're never really on break and certainly we'll do history, science, reading, PE, and art/music over the next three weeks, but I won't be thinking about it or worrying how and when we'll do it.

So coming up in January: more Life of Fred, a North American Geography block, more science, spelling, reading, literature, grammar, writing, PE, health, art, music, and whatever else we come up with!

Depleted

2010-12-06T14:11:00.000-08:00

Way back when we were just starting the homeschooling journey one of the many benefits of homeschooling commonly touted by the veterans was how flexible homeschooling could be when life pitched you curve balls. Back then I couldn't imagine that I would need this flexibility, but in 2006 I faced a serious health crisis and a diagnosis of a chronic disease, in early 2007 my grandfather passed away, and in fall 2007 my mother died after a couple of months of hospitalization.

It was about that time that rhythmic homeschooling fell by the wayside in our home and we started to go with the flow of unschooling. It certainly has its benefits but I have written time and time again about the importance of rhythm to my family. We finally tamed all the chaos and got ourselves back into a solid homeschooling rhythm.

But last month another curve ball came our way. My grandmother had a (second) massive stroke and we made the decision to move her to my sister's for hospice care. Needless to say we weren't thinking about homeschooling. My grandmother passed away peacefully eight days later, and then there were plans to make and a trip to her old hometown so that she could be buried with my grandfather. Then I came home, but the work was only just starting. Only today was I even able to contemplate getting back on track with focused lesson work.

It hasn't been all play and no work for the boys; they have kept up reading, had their science lessons with Papa, attended a performance of The Tempest, watched several episodes of The Cosmos, practiced singing Christmas carols, played geography board games, knit a little, listened to audiobooks, worked on baseball skills, drawn, done some writing, discussed the most recent findings about the building blocks of life, and more. It is truly amazing how well unschooling works. Indeed, I find that it works really well for just about everything, excepting math and that rock solid rhythm that I like for us to have.

It is true that the flexibility of homeschooling can be a benefit in these cases; I was able to take my boys with me out of town without worrying about them missing school or keeping up with homework. But it also creates issues. My boys lost their daily rhythm and I had a hard time choosing between my responsibilities to them, giving the necessary help needed to my sister, and caring for myself. And as we all know, we tend to put ourselves last and that certainly happened with me.

So here I am with two weeks to go in what was planned as a short block to begin with. We lost the last week of our November Ancient Cultures block (but that was a four week block so we managed fine), had a week that was planned off anyway, and lost the first week of our first North American Geography block. I sat down today to do some planning and realized just how very depleted I am. All weekend was spent catching up on housework that hadn't been done while I was away as well as driving to my grandmother's storage unit and moving all of that to my house (five hours in the car yesterday after very little sleep). This morning I went for groceries, came home, and realized that I have nothing to go on.

For next couple of months I will be juggling being a full time homemaker, a homeschooling mother, a wife, and the executor of a living trust. Not taking care of myself isn't going to be an option; what sort of works in the very short term won't work at all with the added responsibility and stress I will have until my job is finished. I have to find a way to make it all work.

So now I have to decide what to do for the next two weeks. Get back into a basic rhythm but give up on the first geography block for now, rearranging our schedule to add an extra three weeks to our school year? Drop the Ancient Geometry block planned for January and move the geography block there? We've done some of it already and geometry will be thoroughly covered using Life of Fred, but this block looked fun(!). Keep Ancient Geometry but drop one Botany block since we did so much with it during the 2008-2009 school year? Go on full holiday now and start everything again in January, or get this next month of mathematics in?

Reading all those choices (which I just came up with as I was typing) I think the best choice may be to condense Botany into one block (knowing we've done some of it and that it will come up again in biology), giving me space to move the first North American Geography block to January and the Ancient Geometry block into February. We can spend the rest of this month reestablishing our morning rhythm with holiday crafting in place of the main lesson. That gets us back on track with daily math and spelling. I can breathe a bit and take my time planning the geography block rather than doing it by the seat of my pants, which is good because breath is what I need right now.

A Successful Week

2010-10-29T18:26:00.000-07:00

Wow. We made it through a whole week of lessons, and no one melted down (I'm pretty proud of myself for that) and no one got bored or unmotivated. That is my definition of success.

This seems to be a pretty good combination of Waldorf and other more traditional methods of teaching. We all love doing main lesson blocks and I guess it was a mistake to toss those when the boys asked for more math and science. This week we learned the story of Divaali and the boys were entranced.

So far I really like our resources. I am seeing regular improvement using Daily Grammar and Spelling City, especially with spelling. It may be that the boys were just finally developmentally ready to learn spelling, but I think it also helps that there are games and that I am not the one giving a "test". I removed myself from the equation completely and stopped being vested in whether or not they are good spellers.

Life of Fred is even better for our math than I thought it would be, and I love that it is so simple. There aren't manipulatives to keep track of or separate worksheets, just the one book and our math notebooks. I also think that it is teaching math in a way that is meaningful and long lasting. We took our time this week, working all of the bridge exercises, and then today I separated them for their final bridge (test) and they were both less stressed. We talked about why they felt stressed and how they don't have to do everything a book says they have to do.

It all feels so simple and right ~ basic academics mixed with humanities and the arts. I feel more patient because I am more in tune with my purpose, which is to expose my children to new ideas and skills but not to force information into them. We have good rhythm to the mornings and time in the afternoons to explore or just relax. I'm not killing myself planning out every detail, either, since we are mostly just working in sequence.

Balance, that's what it is. Simplicity and balance. It feels good.

Happy Happy!

2010-10-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, we're only two days into this new block and this new way of combining block learning with traditional lessons, but so far so good!

I've changed where we are learning, isn't that funny. We have a huge desk set up in the family/learning room that we usually use for lessons, but this week we've been in the breakfast nook. There is very little going on in the breakfast nook (fewer distractions) and it is always ready to go since we clear and wipe the table after every meal. Plus we have to tidy up after morning lessons so that we can eat lunch. So far it is working.

As the main lesson mostly consists of presenting new material this week we've had time for some baking and Halloween crafting, which we are all enjoying. Once we get our projects completed I'll post photos.

I Miss Waldorf

2010-10-23T20:53:00.000-07:00

We're two months into the school year an I am kicking myself for having sold our copy of Live Education Grade 5. I don't need all of it, but I have decided to add more Waldorf back into our learning and now I am scrambling for resources and having to put blocks together on my own.

What we were doing wasn't bad, and we'll still be doing most of it, including keeping the math as a daily lesson rather than teaching it in main lesson blocks. Spelling City is still a hit. Actually, there was nothing wrong with what we were doing so much as it was kind of boring and not nearly as experiential as we are accustomed to.

So, these are the blocks we are going to do this year:

Ancient Cultures: India and Persia (timed to coincide with Diwali)
North American Geography I
Geometry (a hands-on block using String, Straightedge, and Shadow)
Botany I (time to coincide with planting the early spring garden)
North American Geography II
Ancient Cultures: Mesopotamia and Egypt
Botany II

We're still going to read Newberry Honor books during each block and will incorporate some of those into our secondary lessons. We're switching our foreign language from French to Spanish; I found it to hard to try to teach the boys a language I don't know, and it is looking like we won't go to Belgium next fall anyway.

Anyway, I am knee-deep in planning the next block because we are planning to start Monday!

Grade 5/6, Fall Term, Week 2, Day 3

2010-09-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

Academics: Assigned Reading, Literature, Math, Grammar, Spelling, Writing, US History, Free Reading

So far Spelling City seems like the best spelling program ever invented. Daily my boys are jumping up and down excited to get their spelling time on the computer. This is the first year we have ever not fought over "spelling", since early Waldorf-style "spelling" didn't require any testing.

The real test, of course, will be whether or not their spelling actually improves. Right now they are breezing through easy Dolch word lists, but that is the only way I can evaluate where they are in their spelling, and eventually we will get to harder words. I did sign up for the premium version so that I can see how they are doing.

I don't feel too badly that they are doing their spelling on the computer; a friend told me that her 3rd grader also types in spelling words during testing, and that their local school doesn't focus on penmanship at all. It's a school with good funding, I surmise, as my MIL's school doesn't have these devices. I still haven't found out exactly what they are called; they have no monitors only a small display that shows the words typed. This Calcuscribe might be it, or maybe the Neo2 from AlphaSmart.

Grade 5/6, Fall Term, Week 2, Day 2

2010-08-31T17:00:00.000-07:00

Acadmics: Assigned Reading, Literature, California History, Grammar, Science, Spelling, Free Reading, US History

I am wiped out today, and my house is littered with books: books we own, books we are borrowing, school books, etc. There are 9 books on the coffee table at present, and I have no energy to put them all where they belong. I call this homeschool decorating, as there is little doubt that this is a home where education is happening.

We didn't manage our art lesson today as it turns out that I didn't have a bottle of black tempera paint up in the art cabinet. Indeed, all I had was watercolor paints and those aren't going to adhere to aluminum foil. We'll have to finish the art lesson later this week.

Grade 5/6, Fall Term, Week 2, Day 1

2010-08-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

Academics: Assigned Reading, Literature, Grammar, Math, Spelling, Free Reading, History, Health

We are falling into rhythm very easily this school year. It is still difficult for me to get myself up at 7 a.m. each morning, but not as difficult as it was two weeks ago. Papa is getting up with me, which means I can make the bed while he takes a shower. Then we wake the boys and eat breakfast together. I'm not even as grumpy as I was at first (mornings have never been my best time of the day).

So, if you didn't deduce it from last week's blog posts, we were away for a long weekend. We did abbreviated lesson work Thursday morning and headed to the coast; Papa and I actually left the boys with their grandparents and had an anniversary weekend away. I am so thankful for grandparents who think that parents getting away is a great idea and who are more than willing to spend a weekend doing education activities with the boys. Not only did they visit the coast and ocean, go on a long nature hike, and tour Mission San Juan Capistrano, they also went to Medieval Times for a dinner jousting show and they took a private tour of the local landfill. That is the equivalent of five field trips right there!

There was still time left over for reading, singing, cooking, swimming, and more. Clearly my in-laws are super grandparents!

Grade 5/6, Fall Term, Week 1, Day 5

2010-08-27T17:00:00.000-07:00

Academics Today: Free Reading, California History, Spelling, Science

Since we are studying California History more in-depth this year we decided to take a field trip to Mission San Juan Capistrano today and also to explore some the other adobe buildings in SJC. Mission history can be hard to teach now that we know how the native people were exploited and abused, often being forced to convert to Christianity just to provide food for their families, but it is a story worth telling and worth hearing because truth brings understanding.

Last year was technically J-Baby's 4th grade and year and that is when mission history is taught in the California public schools, but I knew that he was still too sensitive to explore it fully, so we waited. This is our first mission field trip of the year but we hope to explore most of the missions in Southern California. Who knows, maybe this year they will construct a model of a mission, just as I did in the 4th grade and the 4th grade students in California still do today.

Grade 5/6, Fall Term, Week 1, Day 4

2010-08-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

Academics Today: Assigned Reading, Literature, California History, Grammar, Spelling, Free Reading

We went light on the academics today so we could do a field trip and explore ocean and coastal habitats. It has been so hot, and since Grandma and Grandpa live at the beach we thought we could escape the heat and do some hands-on learning. We went on a hike, swam at the beach, and played in the sand. We also practiced singing folk songs and playing instruments.

It does feel a bit odd to not be teaching in the block format of Waldorf and Enki this year, but our math program (Life of Fred) is meant to be used daily and Papa was already reading history with the boys daily, plus J-Baby requested that we do science more often, and so I have abandoned the block format of teaching as well as using long cultural blocks throughout the year. We will be reading one work of literature each month and will bring in some of the culture of each book, but it won't be interdisciplinary. This month we are reading The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate so we'll explore southern culture via songs, games, and food. We've also decided to tack on going through the Little House books again so we'll be exploring pioneer culture ~ we even have a friend who is going to demonstrate making bullets for us!

Grade 5/6, Fall Term, Week 1, Day 3

2010-08-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

Academic Work Today: Assigned Reading, Literature, Grammar, Math, Music, Science, Spelling, Free Reading, U.S. History

We had a smooth, successful morning, which reinforces my observation that J-Baby responds best to academic work in the morning.

Just how are we managing to get so much done in the mornings? We're waking up early, which is new for us and somewhat unusual among the homeschoolers that we know. I don't really love getting up early but I do love how I feel when I have accomplished so much by noon, and I enjoy my afternoon quiet time more when I don't have any major tasks pulling at me.

Our Focus Lesson/Project today was introducing the boys to their Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way Quest Guides and creating a science time line for our family/learning room. Happily the time line started to draw J-Baby into what we are doing, as yesterday he expressed his disappointment that our science book isn't full of one experiment after the other. We made the time line out of old dot matrix continuous feed printer paper (Grandma gave us a big box when she broke up housekeeping) and will add our events using small sticky notes.

I also took a quote from our book and made a poster from it, and we talked about what it means and how we might say the same thing today:

Yes, it's Waldorfy, but it doesn't really have a pink background ~ that was the lighting. And I cut off the picture, lol. I should have pulled out the real camera and not used a camera phone, but hey, it's better than nothing.

Both boys misspelled yellow on their spelling tests, despite our having had color name flip books in this house for years. Go figure.

Grade 5/6, Fall Term, Week 1, Day 2

2010-08-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

Academic Work Today: Assigned Reading, Literature, California History, Science, Spelling, Art, Free Reading, U.S. History.

I wasn't thinking ahead when I made the syllabus for our fall term and had us begin this week. Today was the last day of our summer movies series, so I had to shift some of our lesson work to the afternoon. I find that this doesn't work well for J-Baby, who generally wants to do his own thing in the afternoon. We had more friction than I wanted, but muddled through. Last year we didn't buy tickets for the final movie of the series to avoid this situation.

Our focus lesson/project today was completing a lesson out of the book Discovering Great Artists. We read about Giotto and looked at several of his paintings on the iPad (it's a handy little homeschool tool ~ I'll give it its own post someday). Our project was to finely crush chalk with round stones and mix them with egg yolk (beaten with water) to create egg tempera, which is the kind of paint Giotto used. Then we painted pictures and J-Baby also painted a rock. It was an easy project and I had all the materials on hand, although I must say I cringed just a little at sacrificing two egg yolks from our wonderful locally and humanely-produced eggs. I did save the whites and will toss them into a scrambled egg breakfast Thursday.

Another lesson learned? Put the paintings where the dogs can't get to them: the Brat Dog thought my egg tempera painting was a tasty snack.

And So It Begins ~ Grade 5/6, Fall Term, Week 1, Day 1

2010-08-23T17:00:00.000-07:00

Academic Work Today: Assigned Reading, Literature, Grammar, Math, Health, Spelling, Free Reading, U.S. History

We had a wonderful first day of lessons! This is our morning rhythm:

Awaken early and eat breakfast
Hygiene and chores
Assigned reading
Daily Grammar
Guided lesson work
Focus lesson or project
Computer lessons

We eat breakfast together as a family; this is our gathering circle after the separation of sleep. In general this is a meal that I prepare and serve, although there are times that it is as simple as homemade granola and milk. Today we had toast and fruit.

We begin our "school" day with assigned reading because it allows me an extra 45 minutes to devote to homekeeping chores such as vacuuming and laundry. I find this very important as living in a clean and tidy home is nourishing to us. If I had younger children I would begin the day with a more structured activity such as a formal circle time or nature adventure walk and would shift the homekeeping chores later in the day. Indeed, we'll resume talking nature walks in the morning once it cools down around here, perhaps in October (we hope!)

Today the boys read the first two chapters in The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and also read the first two chapters in Life of Fred: Fractions. The math reading takes very little time but I can see that we need another copy of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and have put one on reserve at the library.

Daily Grammar is an online resource that can be done completely free of charge, or you can order a hard copy or e-book copy. I ordered the e-book and printed out our pages for the week. Oddly, the answers for each lesson are right there at the bottom of the page, so I covered those with sticky notes. Our plan is to spend 5 - 10 minutes on grammar daily. Today the boys enjoyed it so much that we did lessons 1 - 3.

Our guided lesson time (which includes the above-mentioned grammar work) is the period of the morning that I spend working with the boys on their basic academics such as math and science. Today we did the problems for Life of Fred: Fractions chapters 1 and 2. We're still using grid paper lesson books from Paper Scissors Stone, which is good since we found ourselves reviewing long multiplication. The grids really helps students keep their numbers in tidy columns.

Each day we will also have what I am referring to as a "Focus Project" or "Focus Lesson". This could be weekly lessons such as health, music, or art, or it could be a project based on one of our academic subjects such as science or literature. Today we began our study of human development and sexuality using It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health. We could go through the book fairly quickly but my goal is to open a dialog about these topics and create an environment of honest communication about puberty and sexuality, free from embarrassment or shame.

This year we will be using the computer for spelling lessons and testing and also for French lessons. I paid for a premium account at Spelling City; as a program it reminds me a lot of Phonetic Zoo except it removes the physical writing of words (spelling test answers are typed in) and it keeps records for me so I can see where the boys are excelling and where they need help. For example, I know that today they both got 100% on their pretests and should be tested on the next list. I can also see what games they played to help them learn their spelling words. If they do miss words on a test I can see exactly what words they missed and whether or not they passed them on a retest.

Our goal is to spend about 3 hours homeschooling in the mornings, focusing on our state-required subjects: English/Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies/History, Health, Fine Arts, and Physical Education. I wondered what exactly the state/school district would consider a "full time private day school" and I figured if the tutoring option requires 3 hours then that is what we would aim for. This leaves our afternoons free for park day gatherings, free play, and other enrichments activities such as listening to audiobooks, going on field trips, etc. U.S. History is done in the evenings with Papa.

When the boys were younger this would have been spread out more over the day, with perhaps only 90 minutes of "school" in the morning, and practice work and projects done after quiet time in the afternoon.

After eating lunch together as a family the boys and I headed over to the park for our annual Not Back to School Celebration with our homeschool friends. It was 105°F (!) out there but supposedly only felt like 98°F. Whatever, it was hot! The moms sat in the shade and tried not to move while the kids created a fantastic tree limb fort.

Gearing Up For Grade 5/6

2010-08-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

It's planning time here at the Living Oak Academy. This year we aren't going to use any Waldorf or Enki resources (although we will still use some of their methods!) so I've been doing research, gathering materials, and making an outline for the year. I'll be honest ~ I love the planning! I love homeschooling and teaching and in a perfect world I'd probably open a small private school in my home.

This past year I learned a lot about my boys and myself. T-Guy thrives on schedules, likes for me to plan what he is learning, and loves the output portion of learning. J-Baby needs rhythm but fights against it, likes to follow his own interests, and wants nothing to do with output. So this year the challenge is to find a middle ground where both of their needs are being met and I'm not going insane!

Things we have planned:

Literature: Our plan is to read one Newberry Medal or Honor book each month/block, beginning with The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (which we did not manage to read over the summer, it having been abandoned for science fiction). As always, I'll read this first book of the year to them (or we will listen on audio). My hope is to be able to have some friends read the same books as us this year and have a book club for the children.

Language Arts: We'll be using Daily Grammar and Spelling City (a computer website) and we will continue with expository and creative writing.

History/Social Studies: We've had a great time with A History of US so there is no need to change that. This year our goal is to complete books 4 and 5. If we finish those early we'll spend some time with Oh, California. I'll also be looking for field trips and A/V materials to support our learning, and the boys are planning to listen to The Story of the World Volumes 1, 2, and 3 again.

Science: We've loved A History of US so much that we are going to use Joy Hakim's The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way as our science spine this year. Add to that plenty of hands-on science led by Papa, science and nature-based field trips, numerous science books from the library, online science resources, and of course science videos such as Nature and NOVA.

Mathematics: We will review and expand our knowledge of fractions with Life of Fred: Fractions and then we will study Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents. The plan is to complete both of these in preparation for pre-algebra 1&2 next year.

Foreign Language: We will be studying French in preparation for a trip to Belgium and France next year. We can use a free online language program for French through the library, but we might choose to purchase the Rosetta Stone French language program.

Health: In addition to the natural learning of health principles through family living we plan to tackle the subject of puberty using It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health.

Visual and Performing Arts: I had thought we might use the Draw Write Now series since we already own books 1 - 8, but then I remembered how very long it took us to do even one lesson last year. Instead I've borrowed Discovering Great Artists from the library and we're going to give it a try. If we like the projects I'll purchase a copy.

Physical Education: The boys will receive continuing instruction in mountain biking, baseball, basketball, yoga, and general physical fitness.

Summer

2010-06-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

It's June, which means we are officially on summer break (although that doesn't mean that we stop learning!). The weather has been nice so far but is heating up rapidly. Unlike some families who can spend all day out-of-doors in the summer, we find ourselves limited by the extreme heat, so I like to plan things for us to do indoors during the hot afternoons. I also like to keep a rhythm to our days; they're more relaxed and somewhat fluid, but having place markers helps keep the days from stretching into an endless bore.

We generally try to get outside on all but the hottest mornings. We walk the dogs, eat breakfast outside, and tend the garden. The boys will play basketball or paint.

One thing I like to do each summer is read a novel to the boys. This year we've chosen The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, a 2010 Newberry Honor Winner that looks to be smashing. I like to bring T-Guy away from his rather narrow interest in fantasy novels and I think that a novel that has a science focus will be right up J-Baby's alley.

Each summer we bring a stronger focus on arts and crafts; I'll admit that I find it far easier to have the boys paint outside and deal with the mess out there. We already have the easel set up under the porte-cochere and jars of diluted (1:1) Liquid Watercolors stand at the ready for painting inspiration, along with our makeshift drying line and a wash station. This summer we're going to focus on hand-sewing skills as our craft, perhaps branching out to the machines by summer's end. I now have a Singer Featherweight 221 for each boy, although they both needs some maintenance/repair (I have a Featherweight 222 for myself ~ how lucky am I?).

The boys are old enough now to really learn about maintaining a clean home so we'll be teaching them the basics of dusting, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, etc. It sounds boring but I think it is important to teach life skills to children and help them see the value of keeping a clean and tidy home. We've decided as a family that we will no longer hire housecleaners for a job that we are capable of doing ourselves (and I am so grateful that my health has improved to a place where we can do this).

Both boys have a real interest in cooking, so once a week I'll be bringing one of them into the kitchen to learn the basics of cooking a healthy, delicious dinner. They are definitely behind where I was at their age, as at age 10 I could put the entire meal on the table, but the way I cook now is far different than how I was taught (opening cans, boxes, and freezer containers). Still I think they are ready for learning to cook simple meals such as baked chicken, brown rice, and sauteed zucchini. They can also pitch in on my weekly big kitchen day.

The pool becomes a big focus for us in the summer, as we go for a couple of hours most afternoons, either before it is time to prepare dinner or after an early dinner so that Papa can come with us.

We have many activities to mark our week; farmers markets on Thursdays and Saturdays, the summer music series on Tuesdays and Fridays, weekly gathering with our homeschooled friends, play dates, a weekly kids' movie series, and our weekly library trips (including twice monthly board game days). It sounds busy but none of these activities take long, they are spread out, and all of them are optional.

Reviewing the Year: 2009 - 2010 Edition

2010-06-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

Long time no blog, eh?

We sort of had a learning meltdown near the end of April, and since then we have completely revamped. We spent our final month of the "school year" back in a really relaxed manner, exploring Shakespeare and mostly just pursuing whatever interests the boys had.

2009 - 2010 was an interesting year for us. We all learned a lot. We did an impromptu 10 minute fraction lesson yesterday and I have no doubt that the basics of fractions have taken hold. Common denominators and reducing fractions are no longer foreign concepts, and more importantly the boys have a strong sense of fractions being parts of wholes.

J-Baby moved from competent reader to someone who enjoys reading. He still mostly chooses non-fiction for himself, but he does enjoy fiction. I learned that the hardest part for him is choosing a work of fiction; it isn't as simple as knowing that you want to read about neutron stars or volcanoes. He actually appreciates it when I am the one who does the weeding for him and find books that I think will appeal to him. I mostly stick to the classic books for his developmental stage.

T-Guy really jumped ahead in his math skills, easily memorizing his multiplication facts and quickly getting a strong grasp on long division. It's kind of funny that both of my boys find long division far simpler than long multiplication. He read hundreds of books and easily listened to 50 more. He's moved into creative writing and wanting to write more in general.

Last year I did a year in review and I really enjoyed looking back later and seeing how much we had done, so I am going to do it again. It is impossible to cover everything we did/learned so I will list the more traditionally academic learning.

History/Social Studies: This year our focus was on American History. Using the A History of Us series by Joy Hakim we finished Vol. 2 Making Thirteen Colonies, did Vol. 3 From Colonies to Country, and got started on Vol. 4 The New Nation. The boys viewed the entire Liberty's Kids series. While American history was our focus we also studies some Viking/Norse history during our Norse Mythology block, and the boys watched various PBS programs on subjects that interest, such as ancient Egypt. T-Guy says History is his favorite subject and we really love watching him and J-Baby make connections between historical and current events.

Reading: I stopped trying to keep up with everything T-Guy read this year. He reread many favorites, discovered some new books such as the Children of the Lamp series by P.B. Kerr, the Hardy Boys, and the new series by Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan, The Kane Chronicles, the first book out being The Red Pyramid. J-Baby checked out and read hundreds of science books, some aimed at children and some aimed at adults. Both boys enjoyed their assigned reading, including The Search For Delicious, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan, The Earth Dragon Awakes, and the many books I found to support our blocks studies on Norse mythology and Beowulf. The boys did projects for Stuart Little and The Search For Delicious. This year the boys both participated in their first book club at the library. Part of the club was reading out loud at each session and both boys did really well with this; Thomas in particular improved his fluency and inflection when reading out loud (J-Baby is rather dramatic and already had this down). They also participated in book-related discussion, games, quizzes, and art projects.

Language Arts: This year we studied grammar with an emphasis on parts of speech. The boys learned the basics about nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs; plus prepositional phrases, interjections, conjunctions, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms and homophones. They learned verb tenses, sentence and paragraph construction, and creative writing. Each boy wrote his own heroic epic and a short essay. The boys developed spelling skills as I worked with them on their phonics skills and spelling rules. Recently the boys have been watching The Electric Company and this has also helped with developing spelling skills.

Science: J-Baby lives and breathes science! There isn't a day that goes by that he doesn't have his nose in a science book or that he isn't explaining some sort of scientific theory to me. We continued with science experiments this year, some simple exploration with books and some more elaborate experiments with kits. There was a lot of work with electricity, including parallel and series circuits. We grew crystals and explored basic chemistry. We continued to spend time in nature learning our local flora and fauna and went deeper into research using books. Each boy did research on a local animal, writing an essay and drawing pictures of the animal, it's habitat, home, and food. We started a garden again this year and revisited our learning on seeds and plants. One thing we focused on was recording observations and the boys took notes on their experiments, making predictions and recording outcomes.

Math: Grade 4 was focused on two main subject areas in math, long division and fractions, and we made amazing progress in both. We also practiced skills in addition and subtracting with regrouping, long multiplication, and multiplication facts. We informally explored numbers systems and basic algebra. We observed geometric shapes in nature and described objects in nature with both objective and subjective adjectives.

Foreign Language: I'd love to be able to say that we moved forward with Spanish this year, but the boys still don't have any real interest in speaking another language. Informally we spent time talking about word origins and I still use basic Spanish with them, which they understand more and more. We also explored the culture of Mexico and Mexican-Americans through music, food, and holiday celebrations.

Health: This was the big year for learning the basics of human reproduction. We also continued to focus on nutrition, exercise, food chemicals, and more. We talked about emotions in ourselves and others, personal safety, and exercise/sports safety.

Fine Arts: Both boys improved in their drawing skills, in part due to natural developmental progress and also our work with drawing using OM4 and Draw Write Now. We did a basic guitar course and worked on singing in parts. Both boys really got the hang of knitting and they also did weaving work. We also continued to attend plays and musical performances.

Physical Education: This was the year of baseball skills! Both boys worked on hitting, running, and catching, and T-Guy played his first year in Pony Baseball, which brought a deeper knowledge of baseball rules and strategy. The boys also worked on learning new mountain biking skills. Throughout the year we walked, hiked, and swam, with the boys learning three swim strokes (freestyle, butterfly, and breast) and also egg-beater style water treading.

Grade 4, Spring Term, Beowulf Week 3, Day 3 ~ When It's Not Working

2010-04-21T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'm starting this post in the morning, which should tell you (or me) something right there.

We are off course. Now, in general I don't mind being slightly off course; I know where we want to go and I trust that we will get there. But today? Today is the perfect of example of what happens when a rhythm falls apart and the parent isn't holding the space and leading by example.

It's nearly 10:30. The boys are playing ~ I can hear them. I've stopped at their door several times this morning, reminding them to get started on their chores. They reluctantly stop what they are doing and start on my directives, only to lose focus within minutes and return to their world of make-believe.

I've had a stop/start/stop morning myself. I am in my pajamas and my bed isn't made. I've fed everyone breakfast. I've tidied the kitchen, putting away the clean dishes and preparing the breakfast dishes so that T-Guy can wash them. I scrubbed the exterior of the Vitamix base. I've also looked at every blog I find inspiring and have looked at several news websites. I've checked in with facebook more than once.

I know that the situation today is my responsibility. I didn't cause the environment to fall apart on us, but things are less tidy than usual especially in the family/learning room. I didn't follow through on making sure that it was ready for us, whether that meant tidying it myself or having the boys clean up after themselves. I told them to clean their room several times yesterday and yet I still allowed them to watch basketball last night and go to bed with a messy room.

Plenty of homeschoolers (and other parents) would tell me to loosen up and not worry about the mess, especially in the bedroom. All I can say is, you're not me and you don't live my life with my children. We need the calm that comes from a tidy, uncluttered space. We need the discipline that comes from caring for our home spaces. As soon as we see mess we feel chaotic and unmoored. Now, I'm not talking epic mess and clutter; after all, the entire house was perfectly clean and tidy just last Friday. Just enough chaos to throw us off our rhythm.

I hide from clutter and chaos. I retreat to my chair in the living room, which I can count on to be relatively tidy at all times. I retreat and I get absorbed in other things (the computer, a book) and I stop leading.

****************

So we gathered ourselves, spent some time restoring our environment, and did our homeschooling. I feel better; I don't know about the boys.

Lessons today: long division, pronouns, multiplication tables, American history, Beowulf.

Grade 4, Spring Term, Beowulf Week 3, Day 2 ~ Frustration

2010-04-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the hardest thing about homeschooling is remembering that when the boys are having difficulty it means that we need to fix something. It is so easy for me to get into the mindset of I already taught you that. More than once. What's the problem?

Of course, there is a problem, or more than one. Sometimes the problem is that I forget that there is a long road between practice and mastery. Sometimes I have changed the format of the lesson slightly. Sometimes I over-estimate how much the boys can do at one sitting.

Sometimes it is all of these things.

Not quite recalling the order of steps in long multiplication. Switching from working on graph/grid paper to a more traditional worksheet. One that had too many problems and not enough room to work the problems.

Sigh.

We homeschool to be together, to learn in a relaxed manner, and to tailor the philosophy and methods to the child. We homeschool for freedom and for fun. We homeschool so that our children are not subjected to a one-size fits all education.

Sometimes I forget that. I focus on the little goals and fight little battles and start losing perspective and the war.

All I can say is, problems noted. Steps are being taken to remedy the situation. I'm sorry.

Lesson work today: long multiplication, pronouns, multiplication table drill, Beowulf, drawing, free reading, assigned reading, American history, science. Oh, and a hefty lesson on why we do this and how I can be the one who gets in the way of it.

Grade 4, Spring Term, Beowulf Week 3, Day 1 ~ The Best Laid Plans

2010-04-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

Listening to Beowulf with Papa simply didn't work, and the boys and I lost most of a week of main lesson work because of it. Our evenings are just a little too tight to fit in another time commitment.

So this week we start again with our regular routine of doing all of our main lesson work in the mornings. I'm a little disappointed that Papa won't be sharing this with us, but actually planning when we will get the main lesson work done is more effective than hoping that we'll have time for it.

I worked very hard yesterday, planning our practice work for the next (and final!) six weeks of our school year and gathering the necessary materials for math skills practice, grammar practice, and multiplication table practice/drills. I now have everything I need to fill the boys' lesson binders each week through the end of our school year.

I made a decision to stop copy work for the rest of the school year; the grammar practice involves a good amount of writing and I know that J-Baby will balk at it if he is already tired from having done his copywork.

In addition to our main lesson work on Beowulf the boys and I will be preparing for our town's annual Shakespeare Festival by familiarizing the boys with the three plays that will be presented this year: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Hamlet. Can you imagine a better line-up? This isn't meant to be an in-depth study; the goal is for the boys to be able to follow the plot lines as they watch the plays. T-Guy is familiar with some of Shakespeare's works via the Lamb collection, however J-Baby really hasn't had any interest as of yet. I'm on the hunt for good picture books and will probably get the Jim Weiss Shakespeare For Children and Romeo and Juliet CDs.

Today's lesson work: long division practice, pronouns, timed multiplication drill, Beowulf, assigned reading (The Earth Dragon Awakes), free reading, and American history, with a long lunchtime discussion of binary and decimal (base 10) number systems.