Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Pumpkin
Pumpkin, the homeschooled cat, has been at it again.
A little light reading.
Relaxing in a bin of art supplies.
Comforting Princess Sassy-Pants when she was sick.
You are an odd cat, Pumpkin, but we love you!
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Week of December 12
We are wrapping up another week, surrounded by twinkling lights and the smell of evergreen. Despite the excitement of what is to come, everyone is working hard.
Math: J-Straco has been working on solving for the unknown. Farm Boy has been working on a review of multi-digit addition and subtraction, and will move into multi-digit multiplication. I have been skipping around a lot with him, as he is so 'mathy' and has yet to be challenged by fourth grade math.
Grammar: We have not completed much grammar this week. We took one day to cover a review of nouns and verbs, which is all I felt necessary- as we have a lot of grammar in our Latin curriculum.
Latin: Still declining and conjugating. We had a new list of vocabulary words to memorize. I downloaded them onto my I-Pod so we can listen to them when in the van.
Spelling: Both boys are still working through their respective workbooks. J-Straco has only a few lessons left in his book. Fortunately, I have the next 4 books already on my bookshelf.
Science: The boys are trying to grow algae. So far, no luck. I think we need run out to Grandma's house and see if we can find some pond water that is not frozen. Our well water doesn't seem to be cutting it.
Programming: They learned how to write a small program which prompts you to enter your name. It then replies, "Nice to meet you, __________"
Keyboarding: J-Straco is doing very well, as this is his second year doing the Dance Mat Typing. Farm Boy just started last week and is working on the home row.
History/Bible: We finally finished Tirzah! We all REALLY enjoyed the book, and read coordinating chapters from The Egermeier Story Bible. We finished the chapters on The Ark of the Covenant, and Joshua, Jericho and Rahab. What an amazing story! We dove deep and all learned so much about the Exodus. Next we move on to Nefertiti, Amenhotep, and Tutankhamen.
Writing: The boys have been free-writing in their notebooks. I feel so free since we have moved away from a 'traditional' writing curriculum and started using ideas from BraveWriter. J-Straco has a long, involved story involving an army of snowmen who protect Santa's Workshop. His goal is to finish and re-write by Christmas so he can give it to Ima (grandma) as a Christmas gift. I'll post it here when he finishes. It is truly a wonderfully creative story.
Art: We are still using online drawing lessons. Our recent projects include a koala and a fish. Farm Boy is really surprising me with his drawing talent. Santa may bring him a new art kit.
We also were inspired one day, to make a flurry of paper snowflakes. We laminated them and will hang them in the entryway.
Music: We have been studying the work of Vivaldi using the fabulous resources created by Dawn Keckly, a fellow WTM boardie. The boys loved reading I, Vivaldi, and Orphan Singer. We also checked out a fun computer game from the library: Alice in Vivaldi's Four Seasons. It includes games like finding the instruments of the orchestra by sound, and identifying the movements from The Four Seasons. I downloaded this MP3 album, Seasons' Greetings from Vivaldi which is another fun listen while in the van.
The boys were so inspired by this study that they have decided to learn the Violin. We went and rented two violins last night, and will start lessons in January. J-Straco picked up his violin and figured out how to play "Twinkle, Twinkle" in about 5 minutes flat.
We also recorded The New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker. We watched the first act, and The Princess went in her room and put on every tutu she owns (6), all at the same time and proceeded to twirl around the room. Farm Boy and The Princess loved it, J-Straco wasn't quite as impressed. I ordered a book for us to read on The Nutcracker, before we watch the rest. Hopefully The Princess will be old enough next year that we can go see a live performance.
Both boys have been practicing Christmas songs on their instruments. J-Straco's guitar teacher is amazed by how quickly J-Straco can do his pentatonic scale. He is almost down to 3 seconds, and his teacher said he's only ever had 3 students who could do it in 3 seconds.
Farm Boy flew through his new Christmas Music book, and we frequently hear "Jingle Bells" or "We 3 Kings" throughout the day.
After the Holidays, we will be gearing up for our Church Talent show which is in March. We need to pick a song and figure out who will play what instrument and who will sing. We so look forward to our family performance, the novices that we are.
In addition, all three kids have been working on their lines for the church Christmas Pageant. The boys are narrators, and Princess is a baby chick. I can't wait to see it, from helping with the practices it looks to be absolutely precious!
Math: J-Straco has been working on solving for the unknown. Farm Boy has been working on a review of multi-digit addition and subtraction, and will move into multi-digit multiplication. I have been skipping around a lot with him, as he is so 'mathy' and has yet to be challenged by fourth grade math.
Grammar: We have not completed much grammar this week. We took one day to cover a review of nouns and verbs, which is all I felt necessary- as we have a lot of grammar in our Latin curriculum.
Latin: Still declining and conjugating. We had a new list of vocabulary words to memorize. I downloaded them onto my I-Pod so we can listen to them when in the van.
Spelling: Both boys are still working through their respective workbooks. J-Straco has only a few lessons left in his book. Fortunately, I have the next 4 books already on my bookshelf.
Science: The boys are trying to grow algae. So far, no luck. I think we need run out to Grandma's house and see if we can find some pond water that is not frozen. Our well water doesn't seem to be cutting it.
Programming: They learned how to write a small program which prompts you to enter your name. It then replies, "Nice to meet you, __________"
Keyboarding: J-Straco is doing very well, as this is his second year doing the Dance Mat Typing. Farm Boy just started last week and is working on the home row.
History/Bible: We finally finished Tirzah! We all REALLY enjoyed the book, and read coordinating chapters from The Egermeier Story Bible. We finished the chapters on The Ark of the Covenant, and Joshua, Jericho and Rahab. What an amazing story! We dove deep and all learned so much about the Exodus. Next we move on to Nefertiti, Amenhotep, and Tutankhamen.
Writing: The boys have been free-writing in their notebooks. I feel so free since we have moved away from a 'traditional' writing curriculum and started using ideas from BraveWriter. J-Straco has a long, involved story involving an army of snowmen who protect Santa's Workshop. His goal is to finish and re-write by Christmas so he can give it to Ima (grandma) as a Christmas gift. I'll post it here when he finishes. It is truly a wonderfully creative story.
Art: We are still using online drawing lessons. Our recent projects include a koala and a fish. Farm Boy is really surprising me with his drawing talent. Santa may bring him a new art kit.
We also were inspired one day, to make a flurry of paper snowflakes. We laminated them and will hang them in the entryway.
Music: We have been studying the work of Vivaldi using the fabulous resources created by Dawn Keckly, a fellow WTM boardie. The boys loved reading I, Vivaldi, and Orphan Singer. We also checked out a fun computer game from the library: Alice in Vivaldi's Four Seasons. It includes games like finding the instruments of the orchestra by sound, and identifying the movements from The Four Seasons. I downloaded this MP3 album, Seasons' Greetings from Vivaldi which is another fun listen while in the van.
The boys were so inspired by this study that they have decided to learn the Violin. We went and rented two violins last night, and will start lessons in January. J-Straco picked up his violin and figured out how to play "Twinkle, Twinkle" in about 5 minutes flat.
We also recorded The New York City Ballet's The Nutcracker. We watched the first act, and The Princess went in her room and put on every tutu she owns (6), all at the same time and proceeded to twirl around the room. Farm Boy and The Princess loved it, J-Straco wasn't quite as impressed. I ordered a book for us to read on The Nutcracker, before we watch the rest. Hopefully The Princess will be old enough next year that we can go see a live performance.
Both boys have been practicing Christmas songs on their instruments. J-Straco's guitar teacher is amazed by how quickly J-Straco can do his pentatonic scale. He is almost down to 3 seconds, and his teacher said he's only ever had 3 students who could do it in 3 seconds.
Farm Boy flew through his new Christmas Music book, and we frequently hear "Jingle Bells" or "We 3 Kings" throughout the day.
After the Holidays, we will be gearing up for our Church Talent show which is in March. We need to pick a song and figure out who will play what instrument and who will sing. We so look forward to our family performance, the novices that we are.
In addition, all three kids have been working on their lines for the church Christmas Pageant. The boys are narrators, and Princess is a baby chick. I can't wait to see it, from helping with the practices it looks to be absolutely precious!
Friday, December 2, 2011
Weekly Summary
This has been an exciting week for me as a teacher. My kiddos seemed to have matured greatly overnight and put forth more effort than I thought possible of them. I have been on a math kick -reading a lot of books and articles about how math is taught in other (higher scoring) countries. Based on my research, I decided to mix things up a little. Two days a week we now do a math lesson from Dr. Wright's Kitchen Table Math, and the boys work cooperatively on a lesson from MEP. I have now demanded of them: team work, communication, and the ability of one to argue/justify their answer to the other. They did amazing! The other days they are working in their Math Mammoth books.
J- Straco's Math- Solving for the unknown
In Latin we worked on conjugating verbs:
We have been discussing the Exodus in History-
Here is a map the boys completed of The 12 Tribes of Israel
The boys started online art lessons which they LOVE!
The Princess had a busy week with the arrival of her new Rod & Staff Preschool curriculum.
We also printed off a Nativity Activity Packet from 1plus1equals1.com.
Rod & Staff Work:
Here are the Nativity Printables:
The point of this activity is to arrange the nativities from smallest to largest. The Princess completed this quickly and said, "That's not very exciting". We made a game out of it by numbering the nativities and when she closed her eyes I would remove one. She would have to tell me what number was missing. She LOVED this game.
"Number 2 is missing"
To make it more challenging we mixed up the nativities making it harder for her to figure out which was missing.
Here is a pattern activity:
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
A Few in Review
This week was to be our first full week back since returning home from vacation. Unfortunately, Farm Boy got sick Monday night, and the Princess and I have had a touch of it as well this week. Despite our overall feelings of crumminess, we managed to get a full week in. How? It must be that Scandinavian blood coursing through my veins. That, or looking at the calendar upon returning home, I realized we are a few weeks behind where I wanted to be at this point in the year. Sigh. I must remember those famous words spoken by a wise woman (my mom), "How can you be behind, dear, it's YOUR school."
This is true, but each year that passes, more air is exposed to my 'lumps of clay', making them less flexible and malleable. Is it every mom who feels increasing pressure as her students grow closer to Junior High, and High School? I'm hoping they will soon show me signs of what their greatest passions and interests are, so I can guide them down a path to a related career. Yet, there is time.....
Here is what happened at Aspiring Oaks Academy over the past month:
Math: Both boys are working through Math Mammoth. J-Straco is currently working on multi-digit division. Farm Boy has been doing some graphing this week. I think I am going to have him skip a few chapters, since thus far, there has been no challenge for him. We will be adding MEP once I remember to buy printer paper and print off the lessons.
The Princess has recently discovered our unifix cubes, and enjoys making towers and patterns.
Grammar: Both boys have been diagramming the four kinds of sentences, and doing an amazing job! I thought that the understood 'you' in a command might prove a little complicated, but they had no trouble with it. They are expert diagrammers, and J-Straco proably won't admit it, but I do believe diagramming sentences is his favorite part of school.
Reading: Both Boys have been reading a lot of Greek Myths. Their favorite is this book by Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire. We listened to a couple of the Percy Jackson audio books on our way to and from Florida. J-Straco's current read is: It's So Amazing!: A Book about Eggs, Sp*rm, Birth, Babies, and Families. Farm Boy has been reading Blood and Guts. The Princess has been obsessed with The Poky Little Puppy. (I'm about ready to hide that book!) We had to scan, print and laminate her favorite pages from the book so she can retell the story on her magnet board.
Our current read-aloud is Tirzah, which fits in nicely with our history unit on The Exodus.
Below is J-Straco reading his book to The Princess. He was explaining the purpose of an umbilical cord. It was such a cute moment because both boys were present when The Princess was born, (at home) and Farm Boy cut her unbilical cord.
This is what I overheard today after J-Straco finished his reading time:
To Princess: "Remember when you were in mommy's tummy? You kicked her and hiccuped."
To Farm Boy: "Remember when you were a sp*rm? Remember Fred? Poor old Fred, he really wanted to become a human."
Should I be worried, or proud???
(* inserted to keep unsavory traffic from my blog)
We have also been gifted with some amazing old books my dad found in storage. They were the school books used by my great-uncle and great-grandma. The boys love "The Three Golden Apples" book from Hawthorne, since it is a story from Greek Mythology. They have been doing their read-aloud-to-mom from these books.
I have been reading, Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education, Nurture Shock, New Thinking About Children, and the Principal and I have been fighting over this book on my Kindle: Outliers: The Story of Success.
I highly recommend all three books.
Spelling: Both boys are working through their workbooks. I need to give J-Straco another placement test, because since he has perfected his lowercase letters, I know he will be able to skip ahead. On a related note, he graduated from Vision Therapy, a month ahead of schedule. His therapist was very pleased with his progress. He goes back for a re-check next week, then if things still look good (and his eyes are not over-converging again) we will go down to once a year vision checks. He was rewared with MANY new Lego sets while we were at LegoLand.
Writing: Finding a writing curriculum has been my biggest challenge this year. The boys have finished WWE, but are still not ready for WWS. I've downloaded and been reading "The Writer's Jungle" and decided to use that as our curriculum this year. What a wealth of information! They boys surprised me by really getting into our 'free writing'. I was also very pleasantly surprised at their editing skills. This may work!
History/Bible: This is our first year using Mystery of History I, and I cannot reccomend this enough! It merges ancient history with Old Testament History so we can see exactly how Jacob, Joseph, Moses, etc, fit in with Stonehenge, The Great Pyramid, and King Tut. It cements the fact that, yes, the events in the Bible ARE history and did really happen.
Here are some activities we did along side our history lessons:
This is true, but each year that passes, more air is exposed to my 'lumps of clay', making them less flexible and malleable. Is it every mom who feels increasing pressure as her students grow closer to Junior High, and High School? I'm hoping they will soon show me signs of what their greatest passions and interests are, so I can guide them down a path to a related career. Yet, there is time.....
Here is what happened at Aspiring Oaks Academy over the past month:
Math: Both boys are working through Math Mammoth. J-Straco is currently working on multi-digit division. Farm Boy has been doing some graphing this week. I think I am going to have him skip a few chapters, since thus far, there has been no challenge for him. We will be adding MEP once I remember to buy printer paper and print off the lessons.
The Princess has recently discovered our unifix cubes, and enjoys making towers and patterns.
Grammar: Both boys have been diagramming the four kinds of sentences, and doing an amazing job! I thought that the understood 'you' in a command might prove a little complicated, but they had no trouble with it. They are expert diagrammers, and J-Straco proably won't admit it, but I do believe diagramming sentences is his favorite part of school.
Reading: Both Boys have been reading a lot of Greek Myths. Their favorite is this book by Ingri and Edgar D'Aulaire. We listened to a couple of the Percy Jackson audio books on our way to and from Florida. J-Straco's current read is: It's So Amazing!: A Book about Eggs, Sp*rm, Birth, Babies, and Families. Farm Boy has been reading Blood and Guts. The Princess has been obsessed with The Poky Little Puppy. (I'm about ready to hide that book!) We had to scan, print and laminate her favorite pages from the book so she can retell the story on her magnet board.
Our current read-aloud is Tirzah, which fits in nicely with our history unit on The Exodus.
Below is J-Straco reading his book to The Princess. He was explaining the purpose of an umbilical cord. It was such a cute moment because both boys were present when The Princess was born, (at home) and Farm Boy cut her unbilical cord.
This is what I overheard today after J-Straco finished his reading time:
To Princess: "Remember when you were in mommy's tummy? You kicked her and hiccuped."
To Farm Boy: "Remember when you were a sp*rm? Remember Fred? Poor old Fred, he really wanted to become a human."
Should I be worried, or proud???
(* inserted to keep unsavory traffic from my blog)
We have also been gifted with some amazing old books my dad found in storage. They were the school books used by my great-uncle and great-grandma. The boys love "The Three Golden Apples" book from Hawthorne, since it is a story from Greek Mythology. They have been doing their read-aloud-to-mom from these books.
I have been reading, Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education, Nurture Shock, New Thinking About Children, and the Principal and I have been fighting over this book on my Kindle: Outliers: The Story of Success.
I highly recommend all three books.
Spelling: Both boys are working through their workbooks. I need to give J-Straco another placement test, because since he has perfected his lowercase letters, I know he will be able to skip ahead. On a related note, he graduated from Vision Therapy, a month ahead of schedule. His therapist was very pleased with his progress. He goes back for a re-check next week, then if things still look good (and his eyes are not over-converging again) we will go down to once a year vision checks. He was rewared with MANY new Lego sets while we were at LegoLand.
Writing: Finding a writing curriculum has been my biggest challenge this year. The boys have finished WWE, but are still not ready for WWS. I've downloaded and been reading "The Writer's Jungle" and decided to use that as our curriculum this year. What a wealth of information! They boys surprised me by really getting into our 'free writing'. I was also very pleasantly surprised at their editing skills. This may work!
History/Bible: This is our first year using Mystery of History I, and I cannot reccomend this enough! It merges ancient history with Old Testament History so we can see exactly how Jacob, Joseph, Moses, etc, fit in with Stonehenge, The Great Pyramid, and King Tut. It cements the fact that, yes, the events in the Bible ARE history and did really happen.
Here are some activities we did along side our history lessons:
We visited the Geology Museum during Creation Week.
The kids really enjoyed the exhibits, especially the dinosaurs, minerals and gems, and meteorites.
This was my favorite exhibit. Fossils of Jellyfish found in Wisconsin. Our chapter on The Flood discussed that finding jellyfish fossils in Wisconsin is great proof of a world-wide flood.
Below the boys are making cuineform tablets while studying Sumeria:
Science: They boys have been doing Science with their dad in the evenings. They finished a unit on habitats and are moving on to mold. Fun!
Fine Arts: The boys are both still taking lessons, J-Straco in guitar, and Farm Boy on piano. They are also in the junior choir at church, which they love. We try to attend musical events whenever we can, to expose them to different styles of music. We attended "Seussical; The Musical" last weekend, and will try to catch another play before Christmas.
Seussical was the first play we have taken The Princess to, and she really enjoyed it!
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Winter Weather Advisory
Enjoying the first snow of the season!
A Boy and His Chicken (Farm Boy and Amica)
The Princess and Fluffly
Chickens First Experience With Snow
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Field Trip!
Stop One: Chattanooga Aquarium
Stop 2: Siesta Key, Fla
First Impressions:
Siesta Key-Bay Side- Spotted Dolphins and a Manatee, Deep-Sea Fishing
Stop #3- Venice Beach, Venice, FLA
Swimming and Searching for Shark Teeth
Activities at our Resort
Happy Birthday Daddy!
Lego Land, Florida!
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