Week One ... Success!

Sis doing Life of Fred math

So grateful to God for the opportunity to have a direct roll in the education of my children!  This week has a few rough spots, but all in all it has been wonderful!
We have completed book work at a decent time every day!  My house is not a disaster, but it isn't spectacular either.  I'm over that!  I refuse to try to be what I see others be.  We do not live in filth, but I don't even aspire to live in a spotless shining mansion!  Mostly because I don't want to clean one.





Crystal Palace

We are still loving Story of the World and I've decided to do one book over a 2 year period this time.  It is great to have the freedom to take a closer look at each culture and spend time getting a feel for what took place in that time period.  Today we made a primitive model of the Crystal Palace from Great Britain's "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations."  It turned out alright!


I'm hoping this isn't something short-lived, but my kids are super excited about math.  Math has never EVER been something that the kids were begging to do.  We started Life of Fred this year and the kids love it!  Now I did start them at the beginning so that they would understand the methods used so that may change.  They are each doing several lessons a day and Bub has gone through the first book and a half.  I had to make him stop to do science so we could get done today.  I hope to write more positive about this curriculum later in the year.  I went through the first several books myself, too, and they are kind of fun!

Taping the sections of the Crystal Palace together.

Ready for a great weekend!  We are headed out to do physical education, which will be running today, so I'm signing off from the best first week of school for LSA to date!

Changes

This school year began with changes in our curriculum.  We decided certainly that we wanted to continue with Story of the World, Spelling Power, and Apologia Science.  We struggled with liking the other subjects, and I had been exploring Easy Peasy All-In-One Homeschool since last school year and decided to go with it.  It is a great program and it is free!  We used it for every subject except the 3 I first mentioned.  It was the perfect choice for us to begin with.  The kids learned about self-motivation and I got a break from planning.

The longer we did Easy Peasy, the more disconnected I began to feel as a parent-teacher.  My passion for homeschool is partly a passion to teach my kids.  It was turning into the computer teaching my kids.  Let me clarify.  I think Easy Peasy is awesome and the work that Lee put into it is incredible.  I do believe that if you are not called to be a teacher, but called to homeschool, this might be a great option of curriculum for you.
The literature choices that my kids were reading are great pieces, but I did not grow up with literature because our small town didn't have a library.  If you have a local library, you are blessed!  I had never read Gulliver's Travels or Swiss Family Robinson and the further my kids got into the books, the more disconnected I felt from their work.  We were headed into Penrod and The Peterkin Papers which not only had I not read, but I had never heard of these books.  At the conclusion of one child's book and in the middle of another, I made the decision to drop Easy Peasy from our curriculum.  I still use it as a guide for our daily Bible reading and it helped me organize my education planning.  I just purchased a grammar program and a writing program that I can use with both of my children at the same time and I have chosen 4 books at each of their levels to read for the rest of the school year.  I'm going to have us read the books and have discussion with them, but we are going to enjoy reading for school.
Well that's just language arts, what about other important subjects?  Because this is my children's 3rd math program, they quickly got overwhelmed by math.  They started in Everyday Mathematics and as I went to homeschooling from Private school, I chose not to continue it because the teacher's manuals were too expensive.  I didn't care for the fact that they don't teach long division at all and really lack in math facts.  I just about went into a rant about Common Core, but I will stop with that.  I took my kids to Horizons Math with a false presumption that they were advanced in math because of the previous curriculum and didn't want to dumb it down.  Horizons may have been perfect if we had started with it, but it assumes that you've had a foundation in that style of math so there were areas that my children felt lost in.  Easy Peasy math came with many games which they liked, but there were concepts that frustrated or confused them.  BUT she, the author of Easy Peasy, recommends Xtramath to those struggling with math facts.  WE DO THIS every day.  I've seen so much growth and we haven't even gotten past addition facts yet.  For middle school, she recommends a few programs including Khan Academy.  I had heard of this before, and played with it a bit last school year as well.  I completely put my 6th grader on Khan academy about a month ago and assigned 6th grade math to him.  He works on it for 30 minutes a day and at the end of the year, he should have complete mastery of 6th grade concepts.  Currently he's mastered about 40%.  Last week I did the same for my 4th grader and she is already flying through mastering 4th grade concepts.  This is at their pace and if they cannot understand something, there are a series of videos to help.  When they are really stuck, I go through things with them.  Another fun thing with Khan is that I am doing it too so that I can know what they are working with.  I have currently mastered 100% of Early Math and about 80% of 3rd grade math.  I have chosen to start at the beginning so that there will be nothing that I can't help my kids with when they're stuck.  Yes, I love to learn as much as I love to teach.
Computer skills.  I know that these are imperative to teach and I know enough about computers to be dangerous.  I have computer common sense, and a little more, but I want my kids to know more.  It just so happens that Khan Academy has a computer programing tract as well, so I have them do a lesson and practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Easy Peasy also recommended a free typing program called Good Typing that we began to use early on.  They have to practice typing every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  How are they going to be good at computers if they can't type?
Finally, because of the author of Easy Peasy's fantastic organization, I have decided to do music on Mondays, PE/Health on Wednesdays and Art on Fridays.  We get a little of those things mixed in with other curricula, but I wanted to have a specific pattern of these things with intentional time dedicated to these subjects.  I am teaching my daughter to play the piano with some books I got on Amazon.com and my son is learning guitar through tutorials and I am learning it with him because I was hoping to do so anyhow. 
It was recommended to me not to keep changing things, but I am seeing my children thrive with each step of change that we do.  I appreciate the perspective of other seasoned homeschool moms, too, so I'm praying about each step.  This week as I wait for my new language curriculum to arrive, I've cut out Language arts except that I'm doing a read-aloud every day for them and we read the Bible together every day now.  Our classroom schooling has been done in record time this week.  My kids are happier and I'm happier.  They are excited as they are going to start A Wrinkle In Time and Meet Addy this weekend to prepare for next week's lessons.  And I'm excited because I have a great excuse to use Pinterest now!

No longer a servant

John 15:15 (NIV)  I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

Our servant day is complete and our slave day is complete.  The kids fulfilled their contracts on Wednesday and earned themselves Sonic milk shakes.  Kind of a mistake for me because that was a lot of sugar before bed.  Live and learn! 
Yesterday, the kids were slaves.  I was a kind master and only had them pick things up that I dropped a few times.  They were repulsed at the thought of touching my feet.  I would be too if they weren't attached to me, so I didn't make them give me a foot massage.  Previously, I typed out random chores on slips of paper and put them in a pencil bag.  It was from a ransom box idea I found on Pinterest, but I felt it would work for this too.  At the beginning of the day, they each had to draw 2 chores from the bag and each time they mouthed off or didn't obey quickly, they had to draw another chore.  This was fun for me and really for them too.  One child ended up with 6 chores and the other child 4.
Their chores were:

1. clean the bathroom mirror while singing (I wish I'd recorded that one)
2. clean an air vent with a toothbrush (I have a special one for cleaning only)
3. vacuum the stairs
4. wipe down a wall on the stairway
5. pull weeds for 10 minutes
6. clean out the ashes from the fireplace and clean up after yourself
7. fold 10 pairs of socks
8. wipe the table with a spray cleaner
9. clean out the cabinet under the kitchen sink
10. hand wash 3 dishes

They got no rewards for doing these chores, but they completed their tasks without complaining ... except the spray cleaner said to keep out of reach of children, so my daughter was freaking out about that one.  Once I told her not to eat the spray and she would be fine, she did her chore.

This morning at breakfast, I shared John 15:15 with the kids and we talked about slavery and how we are blessed to be free.  We also touched base on human trafficking without details about what was happening to the kids after they were taken from their families.  Even though we had our little experiment, my kids still have no idea what it would be like to be slaves and I cannot truly treat them as slaves ... not even for a day!  Hopefully some of our discussions and projects will stick with my kids so that when they're old, they appreciate freedom!

Slave vs Servant

This week we are learning the difference between indentured servitude and slavery.  Story of the World has many suggestions for extra activities following the chapters and we've chosen to do a day of servitude and a day of slavery.  The kids thought it was funny until we made contracts.  I added that they would clean the living room and dining room as well as the sink toilet of their bathroom.  They felt empowered by the right to refuse terms of a contract until I told them that I refuse to give a reward for something that already occurs on a daily basis in this home.  So only doing chores and school and behaving at church tonight was just not enough.  They became reluctant to participate until the reward was announced.  A medium milkshake at Sonic after church tipped the scale in my favor and we have signed contracts!

TOMORROW

Tomorrow, the kids get to be my slaves and I'm working on a few things that may make them squirm!  They will have no choice!  I may have a foot massage and my nails painted by my little slaves.  I might even have them make me lunch.  As punishment for disobedience, they may have to watch me eat before eating any of their own snacks!  Hahaha!  The devious plans of a homeschool mom!

I'm liking this idea so much, I may have to start doing it weekly!

Mixing it up

Hah! I typed this all up on my phone and went to load pics.  I had to change my privacy settings and didn't get it saved.  Two full rambling paragraphs and som more fluff gone.  Oh my!  So I don't know everything I was saying, but wanted to make a few points.  First of all, I feel like my home school mom confidence level increased this year.  I don't feel trapped in the subjects.  I put the history project grade in the "art" tab in my grade book today.  I have felt like we weren't getting any art in last year, but we did these projects.  Why not score them in art with a "excellent, satisfactory, needs improvement, unsatisfactory," grade rather than try to put a percentage score on it.

By the way, the wire above his head is not connected to anything.  That's another long story.

We went the extra mile on this and covered the brooch with foil, then colored it with Sharpie markers.

Another thing resulting from my confidence that gave my OCD a run for its money is I'm letting my kids do worksheets orally and skip problems in math.  We are doing discussions rather than quizzes every time in history.  Spelling isn't graded, though it is a separate subject for us.  If they've already learned something and can explain it to me effectively, it's ok to skip the lesson.  When I did a few placement tests and found my kids slightly above grade level, I relaxed a bit.  I can do this!

Well I'm sure whatever I typed before was just as random as this with more words, so that's all for now.  I hope to post more regularly this year.

Our new classroom should be ready by next week, so I hope to be able to post about it soon!

Story of the World - my take

I have heard, rather read, several negative reviews about Story of The World by Susan Wise Bauer saying that this is not a Christian curriculum and other things.  While I have only used the first year and purchased the second year and skimmed it briefly, I really feel it has been given some unfair press.

I researched the author and she is a Christian.  She claims to be a Christian and her writings outside of this curriculum suggest that she is a believer in the resurrected Son of God.  It is not mine to debate her faith, nor is at for anyone else to debate.  Her publishing company is called Peace Hill Press, feel free to explore it on your own.

The curriculum in question is not out and out Christian as some homeschool curricula.  What I mean by that is that each chapter does not contain a Bible reference, lesson or story.  Instead, each chapter is written about a different civilization or time from the perspective of someone who could have lived in that time period or culture.  The author is a story teller.  The facts are included in these stories to give a timeline and culturally significant details within a folk-tale-like lesson.

The very thing that many are opposed to is that Bible stories are treated in the same manner as other stories.  My argument against that is if we are learning the Chinese emperors and are expected to believe this is, in fact, history, we should also believe that the Bible stories are, in fact, history.  When she she shares about things like the Cyclops or other mythological beings, she clarifies the difference.  Not many world history books include Bible history as fact.  In my opinion, this alone clearly makes this series Christian.

Now, I questioned a few things in her timeline, but even Bauer acknowledges this when you look at the appendix.  "In order to keep the narrative coherent, I have occasionally told the story of one culture or country before going back in time to begin the story of another." (Page 389 SOTW Volume 2:The Middle Ages)  even the Bible itself is not in Chronological order.  There are so many philosophies about how a history book should be written so there are certainly going to be people that disagree with her approach.  She has a definite targeted audience and that audience is reached with this style.

The next argument is that she skips the flood and several key Bible teachings in this book.  Now as Christian home educators, are we really going to solely rely on anyone's history writings to teach our children the Bible?  There is an interspersing of Bible in all we do.  Not a day goes by that we do not talk about the Bible, so even if I only have 2 pieces of curriculum that mention the Bible in daily work, we are still giving them more Word than they would get at a public school.  Peace Hill Press even offers a Bible Curriculum, which I will not entertain as I have no first-hand knowledge of it and have only read reviews.  I personally do not use a Bible curriculum at all because we read our Bibles and pray and discuss things using our Bibles all the time.  My kids' Sunday School teachers tell me that my kids have the answers to most of the questions and can tell the stories along side the teachers, so I am confident that we are in the Word enough.

Now if someone wants to argue that their children don't care for it or they don't care for her style, I get that.  Not every student and not every teacher are the same.  That is why it is such a joy to homeschool and teach what works for our families.  My kids are excited about history and I can hardly keep them from reading ahead.  To me, this makes a good curriculum.  I have researched some of the things mentioned in the book and found the book to agree with other Christian and non-Christian writers.  There have been a few discrepancies, BUT in those cases, there were several theories floating about regarding that piece of history.  For instance, she describes the process of mummification.  The recipe and amount of days for each stage was different in this book than my niece's history book from a Christian school and different in a few different web sites.  Those details are not important for memorization or testing and it is not enough for me to want to throw out the book.  Especially if historians can't agree on them.

What we love is the stories.  My kids retain the information well and after reading it to themselves, they usually get most of the review questions correct.  Sometimes I do review orally and sometimes written. My son loves the map work and my daughter loves the coloring.  My son was in 4th grade last year and didn't care for the coloring pages.  They both loved the games and extra activities that are optional in the activity guide.  The tests are well formatted and give a great review of each chapter.  My second grader passed them all.

The whole curriculum is not necessary, but we did purchase it.  I opted for the hard cover text this year since we are not nice to paperbacks.  I ordered one activity book which has the activity pages at the end and review questions, additional reading, and projects, games and recipes at the beginning.  I then ordered a set of activity pages for each child.  For the cost of my ink and paper, this was a less expensive option for me.  I also chose to order a test book for each child as well.

I would say that is my 2 cents, but I think I put more in there than that. 

A picture of one of our game days.  The instructions told us to use beans and a penny.  We chose glam.