Day 50

Today turned out to be mostly unschooling. Spring is here, and it’s hard to focus on the books.

Sean did two lessons of math, which brings him up to Book 8’s review and then the test. Then he is done with Key to Algebra (there IS a book 9 and 10 but they aren’t worth doing at this time IMO since we are going to revisit Algebra later).

Kieron did a multiplication drill sheet (orally). He is doing SO much better with automatic recall. Funny how it’s new with every kid — he’s my fifth to finally get there. Sean was the only one who seemed to painlessly acquire arithmetic facts. I have no idea how he did it, but he knew them cold at a fairly early age. Kevin said he knew his time tables in Kindergarten but I think he might be exaggerating (we all do that as we get older : )).

I think in the next week or two we are going to do more of this sort of informal review and evaluation. They usually enjoy things like spelling tests and math reviews and it will give me a chance to start thinking about next year.

Clare says she ought to be finished with Jacob’s by the end of April. She plans to continue various subjects through the summer.
Aidan and Paddy had their first T-ball practice on Friday afternoon. They are SF Giants this year. We’ll see how it goes. Paddy looks so tiny out there swinging a bat and wearing a glove about the size of a winter glove. He paid attention pretty well though; Aidan on the other hand is still in a peripatetic mode (the dictionary tells me that in addition to the “travelling about” meaning, the word pertains to the school of Aristotle, and Aidan does look rather philosophical as he ambles in and out of the doings, with his hands tucked behind his back to help compensate for his uneven gait).

Next week will be eventful: Monday, Clare will be practicing with the organist for Easter mass — Tuesday, Aidan has a PT appointment; Wednesday, Liam is coming home; and then of course we move into the Triduum. I think the little ones have a practice this week, too.

Day 49

Sean:

• He did another page and a half of Algebra. He is almost done with book 8, then he gets a couple of weeks’ break from math, then we will decide what to do after that.
• Latin — read the Introduction of Henle Latin 1, then I tried to explain declensions to him, without much success. How is that, after teaching Latin for about 10 years already?
• Art Through Faith — section 2 on Christian symbols — he narrated.
• Story of the Church — Charlemagne’s last days — narrated
• Weekly housekeeping jobs.

Music this week has been:

• Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack
• Dvorak: New World Symphony.

Kieron and Paddy are still immersed in an ongoing duplo/imaginary game. So I am leaving them to it.

Aidan’s OT called sick so no occupational therapy today. Aidan did some work in his Handwriting without Tears book.
Kieron did do his reading yesterday:

• Plutarch for Young Folk (Romulus and Remus)
• Questing Knights
• My Path to Heaven. This led to a long philosophical discussion. The book is a child’s version of Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. However, some of the questions are either too ambiguous or too leading, and of course, my kids pick up on this right away — my instincts have told me this and that’s why we have had the book for years and I’ve never given it to a child. Whether this will make the book inaccessible to my kids or not, I don’t know. I will encourage Kieron to try again and maybe discuss it with me. The pictures are by Caryll Houselander and very nice, and the text isn’t too bad, so maybe we will just skip the questions or use them for discussion-starters. I am not saying the questions are bad, just that they bring out the amateur Scholastic in my kids and they start disputing “What does it mean, that only humans can love? Can’t animals love?” and so it ends up not being so much a devotional as an exercise in defining terminology and clarifying distinctions and so on.

This afternoon some of us are going to town for Aidan’s orthopedic appointment and to go to Walmart and look for fabric for pirates’ costumes, Easter dresses and the like.

Because of my eye, I have gotten out of the habit of reading out loud to my poor 4 year old and 7 year old so I want to work on that.

The weather is warming up but there is still lots of snow on the ground so there is an interim between winter and spring — no one really wants to go outside but no one really wants to focus either.

Day 48

AH, this day could have almost been a normal day, except that the house is trashed and I am sitting around more than I usually do. But I got the eye patch off and the headaches and vertigo are diminishing.

I made pancakes this morning, and then worked on math with Sean. Then he did:

• Latin Quia
• Ways of the Wood Folk
• Plutarch (Themistocles)
• History of English Literature
• Drawing
• Logic (read chapter 2)
• I asked him to write a narration on one of the readings and he did — one sentence ;-). Well, there’s the baseline, anyway. This spring is all about trying to think about high school for him, and what style of work “works” best for him. I’m going to try him in Henle and see how he does. He is a different type than my other kids. Likes concrete assignments better than the freeflowing kind. Liam was a bit that way too, but Sean is more practical while Liam was more conceptual. I think he might actually appreciate a writing rubric (Sean, that is) while Brendan and Clare would have found that simply deadening. They both are effective writers in spite of it though, and that’s what I want ultimately for Sean.

He is starting to be more invested in that for his own reasons, too, so it’s a collaborative learning type thing. But obviously he’s not that invested in eloquent nature narrations : ).

After Sean finished his work with me, I helped Clare on math. Then we all sat around and talked and talked about college. Didn’t get the house any cleaner, but I count that sort of thing, DEFINITELY, as part of our educational core.

I wrote out an assignment sheet for Kieron but I don’t think he has gotten to it. He still needs my energy to get him moving, and I don’t have energy to spare, still.

Kieron played Duplos all morning with Paddy, and wrote a few messages on his message board.

Planning Post

To plan for next year, that is.

Y’know, that was the part I missed absolutely the MOST when I was trying my total unschooling last spring. I really missed the planning This year, I realize I could have planned even as a complete total unschooler. Why not? Except that all the plans could be fun, not x number of pages in a math book, and we wouldn’t have to do the ones that we didn’t enjoy, or that got pushed out by other things. So I’m applying that insight to next years’ planning — I’ll plan, but I will try to keep the attitude that the plans are like open doors leading to spacious places, not railroad tracks we have to toil along.

Anyway, this year I have found myself in a mode that is mostly working for me and the kids. And my planning will NOT include spreadsheets with math and Latin page numbers. This year I discovered that those things are a waste of time for me to write out, because they never go the way I expect them to. And honestly, they depress me just to look at them. I do like spreadsheets and charts and things, but they don’t seem to mix with my idea of how to learn. I do better with booklists and a variety of ideas that connect with other ideas and make a kind of synergy.
All this is just to say that I’m going to start brainstorming planning for next year. I hope it does not get too boring. I like the way Faith does hers: plans for a 6th/7th grader and plans for a younger student. I like the way she considers the needs and temperament of the child, then pulls together what she has or knows about to provide a sort of guide map for next years’ approach. Something like that will be my goal too.

Day 47

Another quick, simple work day. It has snowed continuously since last night — who would’ve thought? Feels like we’re back in January! So Aidan and Paddy’s first T ball practice was cancelled, obviously, which worked out OK. My eye feels better but I still can’t walk around much and develop a headache and blurred vision as the day goes on.

Sean

• Math
• Latin Quia
• Greek
• Outlining
• copywork — write out the first five Latin sayings, then look up the translations if you need to.
• Story of the Church
• Beric of Briton

Kieron

• Math — we did timed multiplication drills and he was encouraged to see how much faster and more fluent he is than he was last spring. The other encouraging thing is that the One a Day memorization fact challenge is working and he can remember the facts we’ve worked on immediately without having to calculate.
• Reading — I gave him Flame over Tara and he is also reading Paddy the Beaver and a library book about Gila Lizards.

Aidan and Paddy:

• Matching blocks
• Duplo construction
• Drew on chalkboard (Clare was using the chalkboard to draw Euclidean propositions and diagram Latin sentences and fortunately it is a 2-sided easel so she was working on one side while they were working on the other side — cute!)
• I read: The Man who Carried the Cross for Jesus (Arch book), and a couple of Winnie the Pooh stories to them.

We watched the bits of Pirates of the Caribbean that the little ones could see (mostly the wheel fight) and Clare listened to the credit music and tried to transpose it to the keyboard and violin. We also did one of those “movies as literature” type discussions (I first read about this concept in Kathryn Stout’s column: Getting More out of Movies Part One and Part Two , but Julie Bogart also talks about it in her Bravewriter blog — anyway, this has always come naturally to our family because Kevin is such a movie aficionado and I am an English lit major).

I just got CHC’s Lesson Plans for Preschool and Kindergarten, and it just arrived today. I haven’t ever really needed preschool or kindergarten plans before and I don’t know that I do now, but I had heard good feedback from various friends about how it incorporates Catholic culture ideas into the day, and I figured that with Aidan staying in an extended kindergarten program and Paddy not yet kindergarten age but interested in doing what his brother is doing, I would get my money’s worth out of it.

Day 46

I was going to title Monday’s log “It’s my blog and I can whine if I want to: )” But I was too disheartened even to drag myself to the keyboard to whine : (. On Saturday night Paddy somehow managed to jam his thumb into my eye while I was trying to move him while he was asleep. It was pretty painful. I keep visualizing those hospital pain scales with the faces all the way from smiling (feeling great) to crying (lots of pain). I was pretty close to the crying one all Sunday and Monday. Added into that was active hay fever and a time of the month when I’m usually feeling nauseous and crampy anyway. Today I feel better — enough to complain anyway — aren’t you glad! I am wearing a patch over my eye to protect a scratched cornea but I think it is mostly better now. … down to the mildly wry face on the children’s pain scale anyway.

Yesterday I did math with Sean — fortunately it was finding slope and y-intercept which he is finding fairly easy. Then I gave him independent work: Greek, outlining, Latin, and a section from Inos Biffi’s Introduction to the Liturgical Year (since I couldn’t find his usual catechism book and can’t see well enough to hunt).

Kieron got another day off except for math and Latin drill. I spend about an hour helping Clare with math and then we had some interesting philosophical discussions.

On the bright side, the kids have all been trying to fill in for me — even the little ones have been trying to ask siblings for drinks and things rather than run to me as they usually do. Clare has been working hard to fill in the home management gaps and also get a new handle on her studies.

Last night we had a huge clattering hailstorm complete with thunder and lightning. The older kids and Kevin were getting ready to watch Pirates of the Caribbean II so the intro soundtrack was looping again and again. On top of this Clare was practicing a Gregorian chant for Easter. I was lying on the bed completely unable to open my eyes. The sounds all together along with my blindness were indescribably eerie, like the opening to some murder mystery or something. It is odd how much I don’t notice I rely on my vision to stabilize reality for me.

Day 45

Quick catch-up:

Our friends left today.

Thursday:

While Kevin and I drove to TAC to pick up the 3 prospective college students on Thursday, our middle boys stayed with their friends and watched a couple more hours of Liberty. WE got back pretty late — got to see Liam and the 3 young people talked us through their whole visit almost all the way home in the car. It sounds like it was an inspiring, fun time for them.

My friend is a scrapbooker, so I got to look at her work and ask all sorts of questions, and we checked out a couple of books from the library to look at and discuss.
Friday:

My friend and I did a lot of brainstorming and processing for our upcoming high school students. It is so nice to be able to talk through these things with someone “in real life” — though cyber-discussions definitely have their advantages too. I have consolidated some tentative big-picture ideas for Sean, and Clare and I have been discussing how she will spend her remaining year and a half of high school. We’ve mapped out a tentative strategy for her to meet her college goals. I will try to write this out sometime either on this blog or the other one.

Meanwhile the older kids had a very packed and specific plan for Friday when they would all be together. Clare made a list of all that they wanted to do, including a picnic and a belated ST Patrick’s Day dance. The boys seemed to spend half the day in buccaneer costume and making swords out of old fenceposts. It was cute to see Clare’s list get more and more crossed out as the day progressed. Our friend suggested she should keep it as a memento for a future scrapbook.

Sean did one more lesson of math on Wednesday; Kieron took the week off as far as academics went. So — lots of life learning.

This is quite scattered and vague but I know that if I don’t write down SOMETHING, I will completely forget the details.

Clare plans to work hard on her violin and she is planning some summer intensive courses for herself to get up to speed on her less-preferred areas — science and math, where we seem to have trouble avoiding the deadening effect of textbooks, but don’t quite feel comfortable designing our own course of studies.

During the car trips I got a chance to read two library books: Myth of Laziness and Time Management from the Inside OUt. I wanted to read Organizing from the Inside Out but Aidan who was sitting next to me in the car was inspired by the way the book’s chapter headings had an arrow and dotted lines surrounding the text. He got the impression that it was a reader or handwriting text, I think, so he would take over the book, solemnly pronounce the chapter number and then trace along the dotted line in the direction of the arrow. Then he would say the letters of the heading or sometimes try to sound them out. There has to be some way to follow up on that.

Days 42 - 44

This week has been different from others since we have visitors staying with us this week. Clare is visiting her older brother’s college with a couple of friends, and their family is staying with us.

Sunday we took them to the college.

Monday the kids mostly played. I had Sean do math, Latin and a few readings. We also went on a nice nature walk — 9 kids between the ages of four and 18.

Tuesday there was a sort of March lion day with rain, hail, sleet and finally snow. I took the kids out for a little while but mostly they just played. Sean did math, Latin, Greek and read his Grammar book; he and Kieron also watched 2 episodes of a DVD documentary called Liberty with our visitors.

The kids have been making great use of all our toys — isn’t it funny how visitors can revive an interest in things around the house. They played with our toy animals, did duplos, did Kieron’s Snap Circuits and yesterday played chess. Today they are making puzzles. The toy swords also get lots of use. They get these long complicated pretend games going, and they are doing pretty well with not-escalating battles and solving things verbally.

They watch movies or play video games at certain quieter times of the day but mostly have been too busy to do much of that.

It sounds like Clare and her friends are having a good time at the college. Can’t wait to hear all the details.

I will probably count this as a complete week or maybe a 4-day week because even though the academics are pretty light, they are getting a lot of irreplaceable time .

Day 41

This was basically an unschooling day, meaning that it was a day so packed with informal learning that we didn’t have time to break out the regular books.

Sean and Kieron have just recently registered on a bionicle message board where their older brother is also a member. This has led to all kinds of real life lessons, from netiquette to proper syntax to applied logic and critical thinking, not to mention family solidarity. Honestly, I feel like we just leaped ahead in some of our informal goals for the teenage transition years. I know the internet can be a wasteland for teenagers and believe me, we don’t take our responsibility to guard and guide lightly. But at the same time, transition towards responsible interaction in public cyber-places is something that we the parents are glad to have a hand in.

Kieron spent a fair amount of time on the phone talking to a friend, and then in the afternoon we had our homeschool Stations of the Cross where the kids get to meet up with their friends after the devotion. (Clare got her weekly chance to play a real piano instead of our mid-range electronic keyboard.)

I spent a part of the day on the phone too (not really typical of me) arranging details for Clare’s visit to the college of her choice with a couple of friends of hers — their family will be visiting us next week. So we are getting some quality time out there in the real world, which is nice because winter seems to find us hibernating a bit because of the snow, viruses and other factors.

Sean did some math and I think he did a couple of readings. As usual they read for a good part of the day, too. We did a lot of family dialectics. I think it was a good day.

Day 40

Sean:

• Math — rise over run clicked and now he’s zipping again.
• Latin — Quia
• A catechism worksheet on the Apostles Creed.
• Greek
• Ways of the Wood Folk
• Drew a picture of a Morganser (he was telling me that it was hard to narrate a sort of meandering natural history book like the one above and I thought he had a point, so I asked him to draw the picture of the water fowl because I thought that might help him slow down and read with full attention).
• Landscape with Dragons (he doesn’t seem to be getting too much out of this but he doesn’t mind reading it and it’s a short work so we’ll keep going as a bit of a stretch)

I think that was all?

Kieron

• Math — 2 more lessons (we’ve settled into a habit of doing 2 lessons at a time, about 3 days a week, at least until it gets a bit harder, and saving the other days for drill — I know Saxon says not to skip any of the problems but I feel comfortable about passing over the ones that are too easy or that are repetitious — long division and large multiplications — we are surveying them now and I plan to focus on his basic arithmetic operations in the summer).
• Greek
• Drawing Textbook (he loves this one)
• Seabird (up to chapter 11)
• Archimedes (chapter 2) — we are going slowly.
• He read John Bosco independently and also A City Through the Ages. He also consulted an Usborne Picture Atlas for visualization of the world Archimedes lived in (Syracuse).

We finished up right about 11:30 which is when the OT came. Sean has been writing messages on a message board and asking for my help with spelling and mechanics, but he is getting most of it right on his own. I think he has heard enough from his dad and sister on the importance of correct writing in public forums, so he wants to make sure he gets it right, which is a nice sign of maturity and lets me be consultant rather than director. He appears to have inherited my inclination to post and then read it over and correct typos since this is the second time I’ve come back to edit this for errors, and I’m sure I’m still missing a couple.

Therapy Thursday

Here are the notes for what Aidan did with the OT today:

First, I had him show her the page with the traced C’s from the Jan Brett site. This was because I had to call him down from upstairs when she came and I sensed he was going to be reluctant, so I wanted to give him a focus apart from that and turn his thoughts in a positive direction. He usually likes the sessions with her but he was watching Paddy play Mario (bad mom, bad mom). She was appropriately impressed and that affirmed his confidence.

Then she did the lotion and massage of his extremities, noticing that his left leg was particularly tight. We discussed factors in that — the cold, the mood, etc.

Then he played with some silly putty for more exercise with his hand muscles.

Then he did an exercise where he picked up little toy frogs with big tweezers. I can’t find the exact word but you know, those things you use to pick up tortillas from the fryer with a tension spring so you have to put some effort into keeping their grip steady.

Then he and Paddy did some coloring. They traced a couple of mazes and colored som troll pictures.

Then he and Paddy played a matching game with childrens’ faces. It was sort of like concentration except that once they turned the picture right side up they could leave it up. Aidan took a while to get it. There were a lot of choices, which visually overwhelm him, and he is used to playing our concentration game by having all the pieces right side up and then finding the matches. Once he got it he started doing a good job.

That was it for today. I am trying to figure out a way to write out loose “lesson plans” for the preschoolers that would include Aidan’s therapy protocol. I always let it slide a bit too much. Sometimes it is because the exercises they suggest are actually easier than some of the things he does spontaneously. And sometimes it is because I get busy with the day and plus, have to fight my public-school-honed rebel instincts which tell me to just passively resist anything that sounds like a requirement (true confessions here) . And sometimes it is because the exercises simply bore us both. Trying to get this out on the surface since I am trying to be a bit more adult about this. But anyway, if I do get some sort of running lesson plan going, I will put it in my pages on the sidebar.

Day 39

Aidan really liked these Jan Brett alphabet handwriting pages — I printed out the cat one today and he filled the whole page with traced C’s. A milestone! — he can trace all by himself and hold the pen correctly. I have to keep noticing these little progress points!

It was one of those friction days — don’t know if it was me or the boys, or both. Probably partly due to them both staying up till midnight playing Viva Pinata (sigh). Sean was at the low point of his cycle with math and couldn’t seem to get rise over run. He didn’t remember what he had read yesterday, either. He had to take a break to recover but then managed to get through the rest of the work pretty fast: Latin, Greek, Logic, and Story of the Church. He has finished Black Horses for the King, so I need to find him some more books. I have some coming from the library but they are not here yet. He gave a first-rate narration of Story of the Church — interesting because we had had some tension about not remembering the readings from yesterday. I gave him a short talking-to about it, which I HATE doing because I remember them not being very helpful to me when I was growing up; but maybe keeping it short and constructive helped. I told him that some people have trouble with retrieval because it sinks down too deep to pull up again easily (I’m one of those); and some people may not read carefully enough because they want to get through it rather than understand.

Kieron was also struggling with an issue, a life one rather than an academic one. This took up some time and emotional energy. We did chapter 60 and 61 of Saxon 65. Then he took a break. Then: Story of the Romans (about Numa Pompilius and the temples he built and his character, plus we did a bit of general review); Bible History (Joseph in Potiphar’s household); and Simply Grammar. He just finished working on Greek and I called it a day because of the emotional turmoil. He couldn’t give much of a narration of the Romans, either because it was an expository rather than narrative bit, or because the noise level in the room had suddenly gone up.

I am most of the way through reading MacBeth, and then I will listen to it on tape in the evenings while I’m making dinner. I’m also reading Parents and Children by Charlotte Mason; very interesting.

Day 38

I did not sleep well last night, after some medical blog-surfing. We had an appointment for Aidan in town. So after the discussion about transitioning this weekend, I decided that today would be an unschooling day for Kieron, and that I’d try Sean on choosing his own work to see what would happen. So he did Math, Greek, and read Our Life in the Church and Celtic Heritage Saints. That is not what I would have predicted, but it was interesting. I can see that he is close to being where he could take the reins for himself. Which is always nice to see. When they are about twelve, mine always go through a restless unenergetic stage (if you can’t imagine both at the same time, can you remember when you were 12? I can) and I fear for the future, even knowing better…. but they do seem to come through on the other side.

Sean continues to go through the Random House Dictionary in his spare moments — he keeps it next to the computer to help him with spelling. Now that he is 14 he is getting more conscious about his writing — spelling and mechanics.
Kieron has been really into writing stories and talking/reading on a bionicle message board. He is rereading the Redwall books.

I made some phone calls and did a little deep cleaning. For Lent I have been trying to get at the little hidden totally yucky places in the house. … places that no one really ever goes and that haven’t been cleaned basically since we moved in (we have a big house). It certainly is penitential.

In the afternoon we went to GI; everything is great so basically it was just a “keep in touch” type clinic. He will see them in 4 months. He was thrilled to see the familiar Canadian leaf and Indian wheel on the wall and then get his traditional Sierra Mist and Cheetos at the cafeteria and play in the playground for a while. The weather was beautiful — 84 degrees already in the valley, and by the time we got back up to our altitude the temp up here was 45. Big difference in about 2 hours!

Kevin bought Viva Pinata for the X Box so the kids are trying it out here. Up here in this indie game paradise in the Sierras, new games are “research” and a family interest… a dream environment according to our acquaintances who have teenage boys. Kevin regularly gets called by acquaintances whose teenagers want to interview him for a school project or for advice on how to make it in the gaming industry.

Aidan is calling “Can I be a crocodile?” That means that he has shampooed his hair and wants me to help him rinse it by tipping his head into the water. Better go since he has been known to come out of the bath with his hair still all plastered with shampoo.

Day 37

We slept in a bit today due to the Daylight Savings Time change yesterday.

9 am I made rolls, started a fire, and some laundry while everyone else got their morning routine done (hmm, looks like the dishwasher isn’t unloaded yet though : (). SEan started his weekly jobs. Looks like Kieron still doesn’t have his done.
10 am Sean did math and copywork while Kieron turned from reading Redwall and eating breakfast. He looked at the Veritas Press History cards and made comments and rearranged them chronologically.

Sean read his Our Life in the Church and then Legends of Chivalry. I told Sean to try mentally summarizing after each paragraph in OLITC, which inspired the question, “What is a paragraph?” I guess there is a homeschool gap there. SO a quick language lesson.

I quizzed them in Latin. It turns out that Sean hasn’t been able to load up Latin Quia and Kieron has been practicing in a different section, so we did a review of lessons 6 to 10. Sean knows them cold and was impatient with the slow pace of Kieron thinking. Kieron knows some of them pretty well and others are a blank. Soon their language paths will have to diverge, I see. I just ordered Henle for Sean since Clare is using our present copy of Henle and they are not expensive.

I read Credo I Believe to Kieron. We discussed it. He always knows what the pictures are showing (Jesus being arrested at the Garden of Gethsemane, by Giotto) which is nice, because I haven’t taught him all that much explicitly in Bible History.

He was interested in the different types of Jews (Pharisees, Zealots, Essenes etc) and compared them to modern-day Christian denominations.

Sean browsed through the VP cards.

about noon

Then they went on to finishing up their jobs. Now they are watching one of Clare’s birthday DVDs (Mr Roberts with James Cagney and Henry Fonda) I started cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom. We are having visitors from the north next week (I HOPE!! they are sick right now!) and also the bright weather is making me conscious of how dusty everything looks, which are both motivators (two motivating posts I have read recently — Oh My by Real Learning and Lenten Cleaning with Bridget by Our Magnum Opus)

Yesterday we were discussing (something?) and I made an error in my syntax which led to an ambiguous statement. Brendan told us those were called amphibolic fallacies and he got out his logic book that he had been reading and read us some more.

He has also been reading lots of history books. We are planning to start working together on his transcript — he is technically a senior in that we count this as his senior year for the records, but I graduated him last year so that he could basically be an autodidact this year. He is our very strong right-brained learner and an unconventional one, and I am learning all sorts of new things about transitioning with him that I didn’t learn when Liam was at that stage.

LEsson Prep -- Religion

Religion:– has been going pretty well
8th grade -- Our Life in the Church

• read chapter 17 — topics
• Seven Capital Sins
• Seven Holy Virtues
• Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy
• Discuss Counsels of Perfection

5th grade: Credo I Believe

• Describe the picture (it is by Giotto — his bio is in Knights of Art) –what does it show?
• review mortal vs venial sins
• Work on Apostles Creed
• John 6 “Will you also go away?”
• Judas’s betrayal compared to Joseph’s brothers –read the biblical account (next week, maybe?)

Both

• Continue Bible History — next 2 chapters.
• (Lenten Reading — ad lib)
• Start working with Christian symbols notebook.
• Gospel of Luke

Preschool/Kindergarten

• Friends of Jesus
• Prayers in a Bag
  
• Sign of the Cross in the morning

Day 36

Paddy is really changing these days. We have noticed that he and Aidan are able to play much better together nowadays. At homeschool Stations of the Cross, he can go off and play with the other little ones his age for a couple of hours without needing to come and orbit around me. All the kids in his age group at the homeschool meeting happen to be little girls, which is funny since our home life is so boy-oriented. He seems to do fine playing tea party and house though I notice that the girls occasionally close ranks and try to make him into the baby or the burglar or something like that.

Sean:

• Math went much better today — yesterday he had so much trouble conceptualizing a polynomial and graphing it that I put away the book and sent him out to shovel the top of the driveway where the logs were dumped last week, not as a punishment but as a reprieve. Today he finished the rest of the page without major difficulties.
• Latin Quia
• Greek

Oops, I don’t remember what else I gave him to do. Anyway, he read a couple of books.
Kieron

• Math — 2 chapters — he is up to chapter 60 now.
• Seabird
• Archimedes
• Latin

I was going to have him do Greek and read a couple of folk tales but ran out of time.

It’s interesting how the little kids like Hollings Clancy Hollings, not just the middle kids. I remember when I read Paddle to the Sea to Sean when he was about seven and Kieron was about four. Kieron listened to every word and eerily, could still remember large sections of it when he was seven or eight. Now I notice that every time I read the book to Kieron, Paddy zips over to listen and look at the pictures. Well, those whales are spectacular. I think I will look for whale books this weekend and also some of the Homer Winslow postcards since one of the illustrations reminded me a bit of one of his paintings. I think I could go off on a whole tack about whales… the connections are endless.

In general, it was an okay week. Nothing spectacular in the learning department with the middle set. As I mentioned, I feel the doldrum period is setting in. When I plan for next week, I’ll try to address my sense that everything is too disconnected for Sean, anyway, and really, too unchallenging for him. My problem is that I don’t want to simply pile more reading on him, but we aren’t really addressing science or geography at all. The preschoolers had a really good week.

Day 35

I wrote out a post for today and lost it… sigh. It’s Lent, I guess!
I’m not going to write the whole thing out again, just summarize…
Today was a light day as far as academics. Math and Latin were online drills. Sean finished the copywork and outlining activity he didn’t get to yesterday, and did his usual Thursday readings.

I did Roman History and Bible History with Kieron, and he narrated, and he did handwriting on his own. He worked a little more on a story. We reviewed the ASL signs and learned a couple more, and went on to a new Greek root – graph. He read a library book called Life in the Rain Forest.

We cleaned the house. The pingpong table is still up and the boys have been playing with it quite a bit.

The OT came and they did a routine pretty similar to last week’s, and I don’t have the energy to write it out. She wants Aidan to start therapy horseback riding this summer. That would be nice, but it’s a 60 mile one way trip to the ranch plus whatever the price is for the actual riding. Ouch.

I got to go for a walk with Kevin, and Aidan in the stroller. If you happen to be that man in the truck that asked for directions, please know that we did not mean to send you in the wrong direction, and we are sincerely apologetic.

Today is supposed to be planning today but I am in that dreary period that comes about three to four weeks after I start any new type of routine. I spent the planning time shuffling and reorganizing and hoping my mind would start working.

I could write out a whole litany of half-complaints. Which I won’t. But sometimes it is just plain hard being a mother. I’m usually OK with the things that confront me directly, but the little things that slowly build into big things can be tough.

Aidan got out a pen and wanted to write letters. So I gave him an old half-used CHC Letters for Little Folks. Those hollow letters really helped him and he produced some near approximations.

He asked me to change the batteries in the old V Tech electronic cash register. My older kids hate them, but those little V Tech toys have been really useful. I never bought them with the olders, but with Aidan’s motor problems he needed something that would have high reward for little effort. He has actually picked up a lot from playing with them. Anyway, he and Paddy have been playing number games all day.

A milestone for Paddy — his first short chapter book. Noddy Comes to Toyland… I read it to him about three times today. I had these when I was a kid — they are a bit silly but very child-friendly. He calls the chapters “levels” — as in, “Now we’re on level 7!”

Day 34

Sean:

• Math
• Ways of the Woodland Folk
• History of English Literature
• Landscape with Dragons (we don’t agree with all of O’Brien’s thesis about “gnosticism” and some of the books and movies that he pans are favorites of ours but the book raises interesting questions which I think are appropriate for children at the middle-school/high school age to ponder - ).
• Black Horses for the King

Still to go: Latin, copywork (Ephesians), and a book on outlining.

He has been playing bionicles with Brendan.

Kieron:

• Seabird
• Archimedes
• John Bosco (reading that one now)
• finished copywork from Monday (or at least did another line — I haven’t checked yet)
• Grammar — using Simply Grammar by Charlotte Mason
• Memory work — times tables, ASL signs (even Paddy has been signing recently)

Free Reading: rereading Scarecrow of Oz. I am going to start giving him books to read as I am doing with Sean, because he has such an appetite for reading that he keeps rereading the same ones over again.

I don’t think he’s done Latin yet and we still have to do math. Yesterday the whole day went by and so he had to do math by himself after dinner (a drill from the back of the book on multiplication). He did not enjoy that so he does want to get math done before dinnertime today.

He has started writing a bionicle story so he has gotten his language arts in for today. We talked about capitalizing sentences.

I forgot to mention that music this week has been:

• Mozart (Greatest Show on Earth)
• Beethoven Adagios
• Celtic Moon

They have both been rereading Star Wars books.

We got out the ping-pong table yesterday and have been playing impromptu games. Also, I was digging through the closet yesterday and dug out some Oriental paper balls and a toy that operates like a helicopter (you rub it together in your hands and if you do it right it doesn’t kick back and hit you in the face but soars off into the air), and some old styrofoam airplane kits. So we were doing miscellaneous experiments with air, including an adventure with a ladder when the copter thing got stuck up in our log rafters.

Today we went to the library as well and ran a couple of other short errands.

Day 33

I woke up quite a bit early today and since Aidan was up right afterwards, it gave me a chance to have some quiet time with him. This was nice because his 4yo brother is neck and neck with him developmentally and always wants to be in on what we are doing academically, and that intimidates Aidan a bit.

So what I did was spread a bunch of his books and materials on the couch and let him choose. A few years ago he wouldn’t have been able to select one – it was nearly impossible for him to deal with the choices at Early Intervention, for instance, and stressful for everybody — but he has learned a lot since then. I’ve learned too, about how to present one thing at a time and re-present it until he knows how the material or book “works”. Then I can give it to him and he knows (basically) how to treat it, though of course I still need to supervise and remind a bit. Being able to make choices is actually a recent milestone for him — of course one that I took for granted with the other kids.

So we did his choices:

• Word Cards — I rewrote them for him, which he enjoys, and he spontaneously recognized quite a few and could choose between alternatives for the rest.
• 100 Easy Lessons — yay! I put it away for a bit because he seemed to be in a rut and now he is blending much better!
• Counting (using a math game, blocking on what it is called right now — oh that’s right — BOggle — we just used the cards)
• Also, Blue Number Counting Book.
• I brought out the first communion catechism, which did not interest him — I had hoped he would like the pictures. However, we repeated the first question: Who made you? and talked a bit about it. That was successful.
• Handwriting without Tears — very informal and fast since he was getting distracted by then.

Paddy came down at some point and I had some pattern blocks ready for him, which kept him busy (with Kieron’s assistance) for quite a while, while Aidan and I finished and then Aidan helped me make scrambled eggs and bacon.

I notice that just by turning my attention to the desireability of “strewing”, and making a place for it in my schedule, I have been able to make a lot of progress in this area. The pattern block game lasted all morning — not only designing geometric shape patterns but some sort of Olympic game with wooden medallions, and so on.
Sean went right to work and finished:

• Math
• Latin
• Story of the Church — narrated, discussed
• Butler’s Lives of the Saints — about St John Ogilvie
• Ways of the Wood Folk
• Greek book 3
• Logic — still on chapter 1 — planning to do it twice a week which means it won’t be done till next year.

Kieron wanted to go outside with the littlies since there’s still lots of snow out there yet the weather is beautifully warm — nice combination.

• First I read Cottage on Bantry Bay to him (for our Ireland Tuesday study)
• Then I read him Story of the Romans and Bible History (Jacob and Esau meet again) and he looked things up on a map.
• He did some work on Greek and we did a chapter from Minimus. However, I think I will let him work on that one by himself from now on since he really enjoys reading it and it’s not so much fun for him when I am trying to “help” him figure out the language. It makes him feel slow, which seems to be my effect on my kids often — sigh!
• Then we did the next couple of ASL signs.
• We have started doing a short memory drill every day orally as I mentioned in an earlier post. It gives us a chance to review past work.

He still has to do math and finish the copywork he started yesterday.

What I would LIKE to do is more projects with him. It would be helpful for my teaching skills for the sake of the littlies, too. I must admit that being a conceptual thinker I have lots of trouble thinking in a concrete way; plus for so many years I always had babies and toddlers and didn’t have the heart to bring out the messy hands-on things that usually got ruined or scattered almost right away. Still, I can see the value in planting seeds — figuratively speaking — starting things that they can build on in their own way — again figurative, and really mixing up my metaphors too.

Lastly, that dynamic where I am the person who knows it all and they are the learners is OK in small doses, but gets old fast — just as much for me as for them. It does not really fit the way I normally do things. That’s probably why reading has been the most successful learning interaction we do around here. So designing the environment so they can learn from it (more than they already do, of course) seems like a good idea.

Kevin and Brendan are going to get their passports today — hopefully, this is the last passport intervention! Then we are set to go!

Day 32

Thinking about this article which my husband brought up last week —the DHM at the Common Room and Cindy at Dominion Family have also discussed it. I wonder what we are doing so differently nowadays from previous times? The article targets “permissiveness” but I don’t completely think so. Or rather, I think that permissiveness when it is really pernicious comes with a kind of indifference and that’s the harmful part — what Charlotte Mason calls “laissez aller” — basically, throwing all the cards up in the wind.

Friday we went to homeschool Stations of the Cross and when we got home two cords of firewood had been dumped in our driveway and the older kids who had stayed at home were already stacking it and had gotten about halfway through. We joined them, even Paddy and Aidan, and got the second half done in time for dinner. Oh, we were tired.

Saturday we went down to town to go to Confession. First time in quite a while…. it is a 120 mile round trip and since it’s only for an hour each Saturday morning it’s often difficult to get down there in the right time frame. You can make appointments of course but my shy teenagers are concerned about anonymity.

Saturday also, Clare’s interview about her cantoring was in the diocesan newspaper and Fr Geo made rather a big deal about it : ) — asked her if she would write an article because he said he heard lots of good feedback about her writing style.

Sunday, the kids were out sledding.

Today was a routine Monday Cleaning day.

Sean:

• Math pages 11-12
• Faith and Life chapter 15, then copywork
• Literature: Legends of Chivalry

Kieron

• Math Quia on computer
• Faith and Life chapter 17, which we discussed, then copywork.
• Faerie Queen –

Both

• Latin quiz on vocabulary — chapters 6-10 of LCI. It was oral and I alternated between the two of them, and between Latin and English. Both did quite well.
• Housecleaning
• They are both reading the Henry Winterfeld Detectives in Togas. These are really good — wish there were more.
• Kieron is rereading the Prydain Chronicles — he must have them memorized by now.

I have to figure out what Sean is going to do after he finishes book 8. I told him he could have a week or two off of math at that point since he will have basically met his middle school math goals, and then we will start in on high school math. I am not sure where Clare is in Jacob’s Algebra, which would be the next stage ordinarily for Sean. Maybe we can go to Geometry but I am not sure if SEan is quite ready for proofs and theorems. Another alternative would be to do a sort of rapid review of K-8 arithmetic to make sure he doesn’t have any gaps, though Key to Algebra does deal with fractions and decimals and all kinds of arithmetic concepts and he has not had any trouble. Any suggestions would be gratefully considered.

Aidan heard us talking about baseball signups and so that is the main conversational loop for him nowadays. “Are we going to play T-ball? Today?” We are talking about whether to sign up Paddy. He is only four and a bit of a young four. Probably would be better to wait but he is so eager and Aidan loves the thought of the two of them both playing and wearing “A” hats.

Day 31

I am putting a line through the things we didn’t get to (that were listed for this week) and an asterix by the things they read more than once.

Math

• Kieron worked up through lesson 55 of Saxon 65
• Sean worked up to page 10 of Key to Algebra

Sean’s Books

• Our Life in the Church
• Gospel of Luke
• Story of the Church * — up to page 150
• Celtic Heritage Saints *
• History Reading List — he read Rolf and the Viking Bow, Hakon of Rogen’s Saga and is now reading Otto and the Silver Hand.
• English Literature
• Bulfinch’s Legends of Chivalry * — he’s up to chapter 14, page 81
• Insect World -- decided to replace this with Way s of the Wood Folk
• Brendan Voyage
• Penny Candy
• Joyful Mysteries

Notes for Sean:

• I gave him the spiral to keep track of the rest of the year.
• I am going to brainstorm writing process for him as he goes into 9th grade. He is not really a reluctant writer but it isn’t his favorite thing to do either. I’d like him to gain some fluency and a toolbox of skills. Writing is something we’ve done mostly on an unschooling basis with all the kids — so far so good. Informal writing in the early grades and then some “how to” books and targeted practice in the high school years, depending on their strengths and weaknesses.

Kieron’s Books

• Credo I Believe
• Bible History *
• St John Bosco *
• Story of the Romans *
• from the Ancient History booklist read 3 more Carolyn Lawrence books
• Galen — replaced with Archimedes
• Seabird
• Faerie Queen *

Notes for Kieron:

• Needs some more work with handwriting fluency.
• Planning to start a notebook with him next week. I think it would be best to do this individually with him rather than in group with Sean since they are so different.
• Something that is working well with him is something I used to do with the olders when they were that age: Have a sort of “catchall” session where we work informally on different skills or memory work. For example, we are progressing through the ASL alphabet and some Greek and Latin roots and consolidating the times tables in this way.

Group

• Ireland — DK World Geography
• Liturgical Year — Lenten practices.

Both: In addition to daily Math and Latin

• Greek (both *)
• Drawing
  Logic (Sean)
  ASL (Kieron *)
• Latin Proverb or other
  Catechism
  Grammar
  Copywork
  History Cards
  Root Cards
  Picture Cards
  Music *(Gregorian chant, Irish folk music)
• Life Skills *(shoveling and housework)
• Outdoors/Activity * — hikes through the snow, playing in the snow.

Aidan

• focused this week on phonics and art cards.

Paddy:

• Duplo construction
• Ad lib phonics
• Reading Aloud: Favorites this week are Annie and the Wild Animals by Jan Brett, Hans in Luck by Paul Galdone, Keeper of the Gardens by (??) and Greedy Man in the Moon (Chinese folk tale).

Habits worked on this week:

• Littlies: Picking up after self and at the end of the day
• Olders: Streamlined morning routine
• Various little Lenten practices.

Planning for March

Since it is turning to a new month, I spent some time planning in “big picture” mode and also re-evaluating my systems.

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First of all, I brought out my old Sidetracked Home Executives cards. For those of you who don’t know, the SHEs were the ones who originally inspired Flylady. I read their book last year and actually found it a bit more manageable for my brain than the Flylady reminders and lists. The idea is that you get colored index cards and put the daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal jobs coded by color…. I had yellow for daily, blue for weekly, green for monthly and pink for seasonal. There is even a color for the kind of things you do to restore your balance, or sharpen the saw as Steven Covey says.

I realize now after learning more about Visual Spatial learners WHY colored index cards work better for me than lists. I had dividers for every day of the month and for each month of the year in my little card box. I had a great system, even down to a card that reminded me to re-arrange the cards in preparation for the next week.

I guess I stopped using them, well, honestly, because I got bored. This ALWAYS happens to me and just recently I’ve learned to just work WITH it rather than trying to shame myself into sticking with the old system. I realize I am actually more effective if I let myself have some freedom to change my systems, and I am pretty consistent in the general principles.

So today I made a list using the cards in sort of a Motivated Mom format, because that linear checklist style format has been working for me recently. It is basically a slight revision of my management systems posted here.
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Then I also sat down with a calendar and figured out how much time was left in this year before June. I am planning to give Sean a notebook where we write down his daily academic goals. I am getting the message from him that he wants more ownership of this process and it is completely age-appropriate since he is entering high school now and needs a better sense of the “big picture”. The other kids all got some sort of daily or weekly planbook at about this age. It helps them to see a beginning and end and how to meet the objectives. For math and subjects that he is not as fond of, he will probably appreciate knowing when he is “done for the year”.

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There were a few more things I did but this post is long enough already.

Yesterday, I also updated my other blog and spent some time playing setting things up at Google where there is a place for spreadsheets and documents. WOW. I like the idea of having things online just because they can be accessed from anyplace. Plus, they can be opened to other people so the kids could access them too. I hope to get all our homeschool stuff set up in there — booklists and so on — just in the remote eventuality that I am someday trying to manage things long-distance as I used to have to do regularly when Aidan was spending long periods of time in the hospital in various distant cities.

Day 30

Because of the snow Aidan’s OT could not get in and Kevin didn’t feel comfortable about me driving out to go to Speech at the local school. So we’re snowbound today.

Slow day today — you would think that we could get a lot of academics done but so far no go, partly because I was on the phone talking to the therapists. Also, since it is the first day of the month I have been spending extra time doing “big picture” planning (more on that in a separate post).

Sean was buried in “Rolf and the Viking Bow”. Yesterday I gave him “Hakon of Rogan’s Saga” (by the same author as Samurai’s Tale which Brendan and I loved several years ago) and he has already finished that. So the Reading YOur Way Through History is going on apace and since he did so much math yesterday I suppose it will not be too important if we don’t get to it today.
The boys did some more shovelling, and played outside with the little ones for quite a while. Now they are walking with Kevin to the Post Office.

We did our weekly housekeeping. My laminator broke while I was laminating the Stations of the Cross and some more moveable alphabet cards for Aidan and Paddy : ( so I spent some time trying to fix it and also some time online pricing them. I really like my laminator!

Aidan and Paddy with the moveable alphabet

Yesterday after I journalled, Paddy and Aidan spent a long time on the V Tech Phonics and also a long time on the moveable alphabet pieces. Aidan still knows all the letter names and sounds and was “teaching” Paddy — oh, it’s nice when you can arrange that, for both of them. Paddy can do the spelling game on V Tech. It asks for the spelling of a word which is on the board. So in effect he is doing electronic copywork. Aidan still doesn’t get that, but he can pick out the vowels which actually seems a bit harder to me. He also knows the sounds better than Paddy does. Paddy can ALMOST do the “before and after” (which letter comes after a given letter) just by looking at the board but Aidan can’t, no matter how much we try to explain it to him. I’m trying to think up some game or activity to practice “before and after” since I guess it is rather a vague concept — can refer to sequential activities but in this case refers to a linear left to right progression which is sort of strange, come to think of it.

Aidan also played with the Child Sized Masterpieces for almost an hour yesterday, along with whomever he could get interested in them. He ended up wearing himself out! He got to a point where he could hardly see or talk, and finally I told him I was putting them away for now. This is not a euphemism for “had a meltdown” either — he stayed euphoric the whole time.

Aidan learning to fit papers in a binder — good praxis