Weekly Wrap Up 11/1 to 11/5

THE 3 READS ~

Me ~ Weapons of Mass Instruction & Pride and Prejudice
La ~ Shiloh Season
Morning Read Aloud ~ The Silver Chair

Learning & Living at Home ~
Poetry & Projects
This week we spent a lot of time reading poetry.  La always says she doesn’t like poetry which I thought was due to her lack of exposure to it. I was right. I took several books out of the library on poetry. I checked out a large variety ~ silly kids poems, Robert Frost & Edgar Allan Poe to name a few. La really liked Edgar Allan Poe!  This interest is probably because of due Halloween. The Poe book had a small biography which gave us a chance to talk about his alcoholism & how that effected his poetry. It’s amazing how insightful a 9 year old can be! Now she wants me to read her The Pit & the Pendulum & The Cask of Amontillado! I think she needs to wait a few years for those!

We also did a few projects. I had bought some flannel to make La some jammy pants. When we went to start the project, I discovered I didn’t buy enough! So we made a pillow case instead.

Isn't this the cutest flannel!

La also made & designed a cat toy. The cats loved that!

We learned about Nov. 5th being Guy Fawkes Day in Britain.  We talked about whether the men in the Gun Powder Plot were traitors or freedom fighters.  It’s a good topic for discussion! I highly recommend the movie V for Vendetta for adults & youth on the topic of tyranny & freedom. (Warning - it’s very comic book style violent, but great themes.)

Out & About ~
This past weekend was Halloween! La was a Zombie. We had 3 little girls ages 4,6 & 8 spend the weekend with us! It was a lot of fun & a great learning experience for my only child! :-)

Firefly Corps met on Monday. It was our second meeting on India. The girls presented on Indian food, Henna & traditional dress.  This club is something we look forward to with great anticipation!

My Journey ~
I have been reading Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto.  It is really challenging my assumptions about education! He relates all these biographies of people who were out in the world contributing to their families & community at very young ages. It has made me think about whether or not we are living in a homeschool bubble & how to get out of the bubble!  I am considering adding a lot more community service type activities to our lives. I am not sure the final form of this yet. My book club meeting for this book is Tuesday. I can’t wait to discuss it!

Weekly Wrap Up 10/4 to 10/8

What we are reading ~

Me ~ Weapons of Mass Instruction

La ~ Percy Jackson Series- The Lightening Thief & Finished Brewster's Courage

Chris ~ The Creature from Jekyll Island

Morning Read Aloud ~ The Horse  & His Boy

Evening Read Aloud ~ Gulliver's Travels

Around the House ~ 

This week I made my grandmother's sticky buns! Making these made me miss her. She passed away about a year and a half ago. before that she suffered from Alzheimer's Disease for many years. I do wish I had asked her to show me how to make these when I could have!

Out & About Learning ~

We had homes school class at the South Summit Aquatic & Fitness center as usual. I don't think I have been including that in my wrap-ups. It was Playground Games this week. Always a very fun & social time!

Friday we went to the Bug Brigade at the Utah Museum pf Natural History. Out study of microorganisms has led to an interest in bugs. So off we went! La held a few bugs & had a confrontation with a praying mantis. 

Study Time ~

We decided to not make a lot of plans this week and let study time flow. We still accomplished so much! 

• La made a Lunch Menu with prices & we used it at lunch time to practice counting money, making change, etc...
• La planned her project for India to be done at the next Firefly Corps meeting.
• Continued with Latin & Spelling
• Learned about the Tower of Hanoi puzzle & played it. Tough logic puzzle!
• La got curious about where yeast comes from & what it is. No doubt due to my recent fascination with baking. We looked it up which lead to thre days of learning about microorganisms.
• We watched videos about amoebas & cell division. La made a model of a cell out out of Ziploc bag, water, a marble (nucleus), pencil cushion (contractile vacuole) & an eraser (food vacuole). 
• sketched some insects. Do you know what makes an arachnid different from other insects? We do!

Afternoons ~ 

We either continued studies or La played outside. She has been catching newts. They look like small black & green salamanders & we have lots of them. La & the neighbor kids love them!

Next week we have Firefly Corps Meeting on Tuesday. Should be fun!

Weekly Wrap Up 10.1.10

What we are reading ~

Me ~ Weapons of Mass Instruction

La ~ Percy Jackson Series- The Lightening Thief & Brewster's Courage

Chris ~ The Creature from Jekyll Island

Morning Read Aloud ~ Finished Voyage of the Dawn Treader & Started The Horse  & His Boy

Evening Read Aloud ~ Chris started reading Gulliver's Travels to us.

Around the House ~ This week I made bread for the first time! it came out really good. I might make my grandmother's sticky buns next week.

I also started & am still trying to finish some onsie dresses for a birthday gift. Our pastor's granddaughter is having her first birthday party on Sunday. I will post pictures of these when I get them done.

Out & About Learning ~ Firefly Corps Meeting was Monday. We learned a lot about Greek Gods & made a Greek time line. It was fun. friday was our our Greek fieldtrip to the Olympic Cauldron Park & lunch at Yanni's Greek Express. Yum!

Study Time ~

A few less lessons this week & more organic learning. I let 2 days slip by without official study time. Mind you a lot of other learning was done, but do want to get back to 5 days a week of scheduled study time. The day just goes much smoother when we do this.

• Latin 2 days
• Sequential Spelling 2 days
• Math lesson and practice. I was pleasantly surprised that La understand place value of to one trillion. She is always surprising me with what she knows.
• La on her own
• geoboards, hook & latch, lots of reading, practiced her tin whistle
• In Momschool I  covered the following
• Peloponnesian Wars 
• Odysseus & the Cyclops
• Looked up the species of some trees on our hike

Afternoons ~ We either continued studies or La played outside. She has been collecting and chopping acorns. I love to see her spend a few hours outside everyday. Chores & errands also ate up a few afternoons this week.

See you next Friday!

Weekly Wrap Up 9.26.10

What we are reading ~

Me ~ Weapons of Mass Instruction

La ~ Percy Jackson Series- The Lightening Thief

Chris ~ The Creature from Jekyll Island

Morning Read Aloud ~ Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Around the House ~ Getting back on track for daily chores. La is starting to help me with every household job now. She doesn't like cleaning toilets! Who does? She asked me why she needs to do all this with me. I said, "Because we don't have cows." 

Out & About Learning ~ Art class at the Kimball Art Center & Homeschool PE Class.

Study Time ~

Our scheduled study time is from 9:30 until lunch. La has been wanting to do lots of lessons during this time. This is very different than from years past. In the past we mostly did whatever we felt like during this time, but now she is wanting to make plans and is sticking to them. Here is what we did this week.

• 1-2 Latin Lessons 4 days - one great thing about this Latin book I have is that is covering English grammar by talking about subjects, verbs & conjunctions, etc...
• Sequential Spelling 4 days
• A science experiment about fall leaves
• Lorelei finished 2 Greek projects 
• Olympic fact finding exercise
• Researching how Christmas is celebrated in Greece
• In Momschool I  covered the following
• Ferdinand Magellan
• First Day of Fall
• Thales - Greek mathetician
• Euripides - Greek playwright

Afternoons ~ We either continued studies or La played outside. She has been collecting and chopping acorns. I love to see her spend a few hours outside everyday.

Next week La asked me to plan Math a couple days. WOW! She is asking for math! 

I hope to do a weekly update for every week. Firefly Corps meeting tomorrow. Should be fun!!!!

Our First Official "School Week"

This week was our first week of getting back on track from Summer. In our home we are always learning, but I try to keep a more structured schedule during the traditional school year. I started out with a great schedule but had to tweak it a little bit. Here is how our days are going.

I have set aside the mornings from 9:30 until lunch to be our structured school time. We start this with prayer & read aloud, then start our studies. La makes a goal list for each week. So far we have been studying spelling & Latin everyday, math a couple times a week, a study of Greece almost daily, one science project per week & This Day in History. La is reading Persy Jackson & the Lightening Thief. She has learned so much about Greek mythology from this book!

We have had great weather & been doing a lot of reading on the back porch!

I am pretty happy with the way things are going.  La is actually choosing to do things that look like "school" this year. I think she is realizing there are things she does need to learn & is enjoying it. I am so glad we never forced academics on her at a younger age!

This week's Day in History has some great stuff! The first day of Autumn, birthday of Euripides & Ferdinand Magellan.  Sometimes I think I am having more fun than La!

Gearing Up & Planning for the New Year

Now is the time of planning! La & I have made our list of goals for the coming school year. Books have been ordered and on their way.  School supplies have been bought. We ordered Sequential Spelling this year. La is so excited about this that we started it already.  She was so proud today when she spelled "beginning" correctly on the first try!

I have worked out a schedule that I think will work well for us. I have attempted to embed it below.

Weekly Schedule

You will see a lot of study ideas & topics. That is my study schedule, not La's. They are the things I want to learn about this year. La has her own goals. She will be working on these after our Momschool time until lunch and then in the afternoons.  Each week she will be making some goals based on her yearly goals. Here are her yearly goals for this school year.

• Win 1 ski race on Park City's Farm Team
• Do 2 math lessons a week & memorize all +, - & x facts
• Read at least 10 books over 200 pages each
• Do one science experiment a week- Chemistry & Physics
• Prepare one Firelfy Corps Presentation per month (history, geography or culture) and study more about the countries at home as wished
• Journal writing everyday
• Sequential Spelling every school day
• Continue to study Architecture History with Dad
• Do yoga daily

I was pretty impressed with this list for a 9 year old. These are all her own goals. She will be busy!

I feel really good about this year. I am hoping I will meet some major goals myself!

Right now I am reading "Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens". I am really enjoying it. I realize that my own stage of education somewhere between LOL & Scholar ~ moving back & forth between the two. I want to add all the 13 year old books that I haven't read yet to my reading list this year. 

It's gonna be a BIG, FUN year!

Spring Purge

It has been over a month since I have written. My goal when I started this blog was to write weekly on Thursdays. Well, today is Thursday & I hope to keep this up weekly.

The last month or so I have been going through a Spring Purge of sorts and I am still in the midst of it. After doing the 7 Keys Inventory, I realized just how important it is that I pursue my own studying. I came to the realization that our success in homeschooling depends on it. It’s an upward spiral that goes something like this.

 ~ I study daily, La sees this example, La gets curious about what I am studying, La gets inspired to study herself, I have more time to study because La is studying, which in turn inspires her to keep studying ~

TIME PURGE
So my first purge was a time purge. I redid our schedule in order to give us consistent study time daily. This is what it looks like after living it for a few weeks.

I get up between 6:30 & 7:00 ~ Do my Bible Study and prayer, check email
La gets up between 7:30 & 8:00 ~ We have breakfast
We do our individual chores, get dressed, then we do our Team Chores together ~ this is things like dusting, bathrooms, etc.. getting the whole house clean on a rotating basis.
By 9:30 or 10:00 we are reading to start Study Time. I always begin with reading aloud for about 30 to 45 minutes. Then we each make a list of what we are going to do with this time. I assist La as needed, but La is independent for good portion of this time. Almost anything goes during this time except TV & computer games ~ art, board games, dolls, sewing, math games, reading, etc... are all acceptable activities.
Lunch around Noon.
In the afternoon we either continue study time, do errands once a week, outside classes, fieldtrips, hiking, play dates, etc...
After dinner I am trying to limit the TV as well. I try to have games, or other activities to make TV less attractive.

With this schedule we are getting anywhere from 2 to 4 hours of study time in a day. But there is so much more going on with this. I purposely have work before studying so that we are learning that work comes first & that taking care of the home is an act of love towards your family & good stewardship of what The Lord has provided for you.  Even on the days when we only study from 10 to noon we are getting so much accomplished in the afternoon. Fieldtrips inspire & inform. Going grocery shopping is a life skill and provides lots of math practice. Hiking is nature study. Afternoon classes have ranged from art to PE.  All of this I count as learning time. 

I feel really good about this schedule. I feel like my days are in line with my core principles. My goal is to develop a lifestyle of learning & growing.  Academics are not separate from life, they are a part of life.

STUFF PURGE
My second purge has been a stuff purge. I have been going through each room getting rid of stuff. Now, I am not a pack rat by any means. I love to clean stuff out. It makes me feel renewed! I have gotten ride of soooo many books.  Curriculum and guides I thought I would use but never have. Some things that La has even outgrown before I could use them.  Most of it has gone to the local library. Hopefully others can benefit from them. In doing this I feel like I have gotten ride of the last vestiges of the Conveyor Belt thinking. I have de-schooled our homeschool once and for all. I have vowed to stay away from curriculum until La is in scholar phase and is asking for one of her own choosing.

I still need to go through La’s stuff, and when I say stuff I mean toys. I know she has way too much and that they can be a distraction to her. This brings me to our next purge topic ~ Distractions.

DISTRACTION PURGE
I am just starting to think about this area of purging. I feel the need to get rid of things that distract our family from our goals of being a family that lives & learns together. Right now I am just starting to make a mental list of these things. This list will include all things that distract me as well ~ not just La. This will be the most painful part because it will involve dealing with habits & maybe even addictions.  Part of me is scared to do it and part of me wants to take the TV outback and shoot it!

OK, I am exaggerating. We are not Puritans. We all need a little entertainment, but finding the balance is hard. Once I have these distractions identified, my goal will be to develop a plan to either eliminate or manage these distractions. But that is for a later post. If you are so inclined, pray for me that God will make these distractions apparent to me & guide me in developing these strategies.

7 Keys of Great Teaching Inventory

The heart of Leadership Education is based on the 7 Keys of Great Teaching. These 7 Keys are principles that can be applied to many education methods.

1. Mentors NOT Professors
2. Classics NOT Textbooks
3. Quality NOT Conformity
4. Inspire NOT Require
5. Structure Time NOT Content
6. Simple NOT Complex
7. You NOT Them

Keys 4-5 apply most readily apply to the Love of Learning Phase. This is the phase that La is in right now. Key 7 applies to me. Every so often I like to take an inventory of how I am applying these ~ so here it goes.

4. Inspire NOT Require

So I do a pretty good job of NOT Require. I try to not put academic demands on La and let her set her own academic goals. Right now she loves reading which makes the "productive mama" in me very happy. This is not easy for me. I LOVE worksheets & projects with defined parameters. La's brain works in just the opposite way, so it a challenge for me to let her go about her own way. But it is paying off ~ she has discovered she loves reading, history & art. I have a tougher time with Inspire. Most of what I do to inspire is interpreted by La as trying to control content. As soon as I see that glazed-over look I can tell she is shutting down to the idea and I know I need to change gears. The last thing I want is for her to develop a "hate of learning" by being is bored and uninterested. So I have found this next Key to be The Key to Inspiring.

7. You NOT Them

This Key is based in the idea that your children will rise to the level of education of the parents. It's about setting an example of a life long learner and getting a great Leadership Education yourself. When I do this I find La getting inspired. When I am setting goals, striving towards those goals, reading, writing, working on memorization, and developing skills, La becomes interested in what I am doing and dapples in it herself. The problem is the When. I am great at structuring this on paper, but mediocre at follow through. It seems there is always something happening ~ a broken washing machine, visitors, field trips, planning our history club~ that I let get in the way of my studying. It's a matter of discipline. I know it! Something to continue to work on.

5. Structure Time NOT Content

I have down NOT Structuring Content. This took a couple years to completely give up, but I have finally done it. I would go back and forth with one foot on the Conveyor Belt. I have stopped looking at State Standards and anything that tries to tell me what La "should" be learning. This has been a very freeing decision. I am with her everyday. I see her work. I know were she is ~ exactly were she should be ~ on her own individual academic and development schedule. Now, Structure Time has been a challenge. Again, I am great about writing out a schedule ~ but not so great in following it. When I do, we have great days. When I don't, our days are fair to worse. Not giving into the urgent, keeping our mornings at home consistent, disciplining myself to follow a schedule when I don't feel like it are challenges for me. It's not that everyday has to follow the same schedule. There are field trips, ski days, days we watch other children for friends, etc.. All of these things have great value and including them in our lives is a big reason why we homeschool. Still, there needs to be a balance between outside opportunities and regular home time. I would be happy with 3 consistent weekdays per week at home on a schedule. I would say this happens in spurts of a couple months at a time and then we get off kilter with something and need to fight our way back.

6. Simple NOT Complex

this Key is to say that learning should be simple. I have this one down. Our studying includes 3 methods.

1. Reading great books ~ together & independently
   
2. Me asking La what she wants to learn about and then we go about learning it through more books, the internet, games and projects which can take many forms
   
3. La coming along side me in what I am studying

I don't think it can get more simple than that.

So, at the end of my inventory I come to two conclusions. You NOT Them is the key to Inspiring and in order to accomplish this, I need to develop more disciple and follow through with Structuring Time. This has been a life long challenge for me. I am so thankful I am not in it alone!

"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline."
2 Timothy 1:7

If You Give a Moose a Muffin

Today our day reminded me of that children's book titled If You Give a Moose a Muffin. We started off study time planning what to do.

• La (my 8 year old) wants to set up her own blog after seeing mine. We do this together and she gets some experience using blogger, photoshop, and dealing with how frustrating computer can be.
• Then she is done and wants to make something with clay. She asks for some aluminum foil to use as structure for the thicker pieces.
  
• She asks if aluminum is a metal. We do a little research on metals, alloys & minerals
• She looks at our Great Scientists book.
  
• Then she gets out her renaissance costume and plays in that for a while after being inspired by the people in pictures we saw about the Bronze Age.
• After this she plays outside for a while.
• Then she comes in and decides it's time to work on her blog. She writes a one sentence post which presents the opportunity for me to guide her in using our Spelling Dictionary, tell her about root words and remind her about plurals.
• Then we are off to make a practice birthday cake. She wants a cake for her birthday next week that is rainbow colored inside. She reads the directions and follows through. I am their for questions and guidance.

So goes a day in a TJEd Leadership Education home with one Love of Learner. Interests running hot and cold and changing by the minute. Sound familiar?