Starting to plan the progym

Short learning log note:

• Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare must have "worked" for Sean, because he has been reading it all this weekend.
  
• Kieron heard me reading Tigger is Unbounced to Paddy and this inspired him to get out Complete Winnie the Pooh Tales which he is now rereading. He wants me to read it to Paddy -- well, it's certainly something to think about.
• I got out Childrens' Book of Virtues and Moral Compass because I do think Paddy's about at that stage.

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Now about planning:

I have gotten out all my progym and writer's books. This is Aphthonius's Progymnasmata, which is actually a nice summary -- it's the one I used for my older set since none of the progym books were out yet at that time. More about that later.

Also, here is Melissa Wiley about Bravewriter
and Mother Crone: Praise for Bravewriter

I don't have Julie's Bravewriter program, but I do like her Lifestyle principles.

I stumbled upon similar ones by trial and error with my older set. When they were younger, the only writing programs out there for homeschoolers were ones that I did not like. They all seemed artificial to me. Bravewriter was obviously not out back then. I tried a couple of highly recommended composition programs with my oldest, Liam, who is now 21. He was not very impressed, and since he was usually quite fair-minded about his academics, that was a signal to me to drop them quickly. I'm very glad in retrospect I trusted my instincts on this.

I didn't even try any of these standard curricula with Brendan or Clare, who are now 19 and 17. By that time I'd heard of Charlotte Mason and her methods seemed much more compatible with how I wanted to do things.

I had learned to write by copywork and storywriting and little nature writings I did in the summers when I was very young. I liked to make little books which I sewed or stapled together and decorated. When I was very little, my mom read to me a lot and traced out letters for me to copy until I could write on my own. So that's basically how I did it with my kids. They narrated -- not much, but a bit. They did copywork; again, not much, but a bit. They made maps and scrawled little stories on index cards, or sometimes rolled papers and drawings up into scrolls. They played pretend games by the hour and sometimes audiotaped or videotaped their plays.

I wrote down their stories or journals, sometimes, or labeled their pictures, and collected their work into binders. Brendan and Clare gained fluency in reading by telling me stories that I would type, then have them read back to me. As they got older, they kept their own notebooks and labeled their own pictures. All this never seemed like "enough", but somehow, all my older kids became effective writers.

At some point Brendan seemed "stuck" in his writing. He was at a perfectionist age and had just transitioned from all-caps to a legible italics, but he wasn't yet fluent. Liam had become more interested in serious academics, and was writing a few papers for his "studies", but was no longer doing much creative writing. So I started a daily "free writing" -- we'd all gather for 20 minutes before lunch, and the pre-readers could draw. Even I had to write during this time. It was time that was difficult for me to spare, since Aidan was a medically high needs toddler and I was pregnant with Paddy, but I thought it was important to be there too, participating, not skipping down the hall to fold the laundry.

I also had several "writer" type books around the house from my college days. I strewed these and the kids picked them up and read them, at least some of them. The feedback I got back later was that they often disagreed with the writer's advice, but still, these books gave the kids a chance to "converse" mentally with a writing teacher, and pick and choose what they wanted to try out. The authors who write these "writer's manuals" do have their peculiarities and flaws like everyone else of course, but they don't patronize the young writer quite as much as the standard children's textbook on how to write. I don't think it's necessary to read any of these types of books, and authors like Flannery O'Connor will tell you it could be dangerous, but at least the kids have the freedom to pick and choose their "teachers" here.

Eventually, the free writing period was dropped because it was no longer necessary. From there, all the kids embarked on abundant writing -- opinion pieces, journalling, stories, and creative "newspapers". They haven't looked back. All have their own "style" and their own particular strengths.

It was right after this "free writing" interim in our lives that I started experimenting with the progym. I am sketching out all the things that came before, because I do think the progym ought to rest upon a base similar to the Bravewriter one -- upon experience in creative playing, lots of reading and sharing stories, and some fluency and joy in expression (both written and oral). So I am writing this out partly in order to remind myself -- because whenever I start poring through curricula, I get a queasy, discouraged feeling -- probably another reason I'm interested in classical/CM/unschooling, because teacher's manuals are less necessary when you are learning from real books, real pen and paper, and real life.

So my goal is to use the curricula as a resource, not let it take over my life. When I get that queasy feeling, it's time to do something different for a while!

(Paddy's next to me, poring over the "Tour of the Summa", asking me to read chapter titles like "The Equality of the Three Divine Persons", then making up elaborate stories within the book -- I heard mention of alligators being found -- ST Thomas would probably be surprised to know what could be read from the pages of his work!)

Day 24 -- Weekly Update

Here is a visual of Sean and Kieron's progress-- I'm going to try to update it at least every couple of weeks or month. Their book log is here. (I had to guess at some of the time frames for the books read -- the highlighted check marks indicate that the book is finished)

Sean, 14:

• up to Chapter 3 Lesson 1 in Jacob's Algebra (Integers)
• Lesson 8 in Henle (Memoria Press syllabus)
• Page 59 in Hey Andrew Book 3
• Lesson 24 in Stanford Vocabulary

• He read Plutarch (Theseus) today and
• Lamb's Midsummer Night's Dream

Kieron, 11:

• up to Chapter 3 part 2 in MCP Math F (estimating large numbers for multiplying)
• Lesson 5 in Henle
• Page 57 in Hey Andrew 2 (???)
• page 3 in Handwriting

• I am having him look through Geography A to Z in preparation to drawing some landforms.
• He also drew quite a bit from Tallarico -- Drawing Mythical and Magical Creatures.

Aidan:

• Worked on HWT letterforms
• HWT kindergarten book
• 100EZ lessons
• a bit of word-building with moveable alphabet.
• Blew bubbles (oral motor therapy).
  
• Also, yesterday I read him a couple of stories and he "narrated" one (which he does by word substitutions -- Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs a Long Time Ago becomes "Teddy bears, teddy bears a little while ago.")
  

I set up the easel with paper on it for trying to do some writing based on the Drawing World I linked to here, but we didn't get to it. Grandma came by for a bit.

Paddy did a bit with the moveable alphabet but mostly played with Duplos and with styrofoam swords.

The kids have their weekly jobs to do, and this afternoon is Homeschool Stations of the Cross.

So a pretty full day. Kieron is back to re-reading old Star Wars. I notice they read a burst of "good stuff" and then go back to the easier reads for a while. I remember doing rather the same thing as a child so I try to go with it and just have things prepared and assign a minimum of "good stuff" until the next surge.

Learning Log -- Miscellaneous

No formal academics today. So tomorrow will be Day 24, which throws off my nice series of fives.

Lots of errands.

• --dealing with labs (Aidan)
• --older siblings being responsible for younger ones
• -- Sean, Kieron and Clare respectively working out on exercycle (Kieron went 4 miles and Sean is doing rehab programs that his dad makes up for him).

Football practice tonight.

My Reading:

• Marva Collins' Way -- finished this. It's a remarkable book, very inspiring. Lamb's Shakespeare Tales for 4-6 years old. She set the bar quite high! I wish there was more about how she did it!
• Less than Words Can Say -- interesting to read alongside MC's Way since it's about the stupidity of the educational (and other) bureaucrats, or else their evil genius for obscurantism, and how the denseness of their prose cloaks or reveals the lack of substance in their ideas.
• The Giver by Lois Lowry. I had heard about this for a long time. It certainly was a thought-provoking read. Suitable for middle schoolers. There are all kinds of study questions and activities designed around it available online, so apparently it is a popular literature selection among teachers in schools.

I found The Giver for a quarter at Salvation Army, and also, in the same price range, a book on Knowledge by Cardinal Newman, The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, The Literacy Club by Frank Smith (author of The Book of LEarning and Forgetting), an Eyewitness Explorer hardcover book on Flowers, and Mocassin Trail by Eloise McGraw. How cool! But really, the pickings are usually pretty slim in our corner of California -- I lucked out this time, and even then had to wade between earnest books on the Rapture, and torrid romances, and really banal self-help books. Not to mention the Babysitter Club and Dora the Explorer type twaddle in the kids section, and horridly boring community college textbooks. I always miss our university town in Oregon where I could pick up all kinds of first rate books any time I walked into a thrift store. Well, God provides generously; I really can't complain today!

Oh, and also, a German reader. Hooray for used books!

Home Speech Therapy

Speech Therapy ideas for home
Online Ideas
This looks like a good overview by an SLP

There is more here: HomeBased Speech Therapy Plan.

More about designing your own home therapy program.

Mommy Speech Therapy -- a blog.

Aidan's school SLP is going to be out of town for over a month so I am continuing his therapy at home. She gave me a whole bunch of handouts, mostly on thinking skills type things for kindergarteners.... like facial features, shapes, prepositions.

I was thinking of doing it as themes, but can't find anything online specifically targeted to themes.... but maybe I can work the concepts into other things we are doing.

Here's a Kindergarten Curriculum Plan though, at Kinder Themes.
Themes arranged by Month.
Some by Alphabetical Order
Some ideas here --DLTK

Grammar at Linguisystems
has list of objectives suitable for where he is, so that might be helpful.

Linking Odds and Ends

I just re-discovered this Avilian notebooking method by an old friend of mine and wanted to make a note of it. Also, her Grammar Stage Catholic page.

Charlotte Mason and Dictation -- with links to online resources.

Draw Your World
--authors of Draw Write Now series.
-- also instructions for holding your pencil correctly.
--and ideas for fitting drawing into your day.
--scope and sequence for unit studies connected with Draw Write Now.

Also some tips for helping with dyspraxia, which more and more seems to be coming out as a cause for Aidan's difficulties. I printed these ones out.

Day 23-- Lessons in Pictures

Today went like this.

Yes, so the kids have figured out how to extend the schoolday -- not quite the way I was planning.

(really, though, unschooling for a year taught me the preciousness of the off-beat or Very Odd moments -- things do eventually get done)


In addition to our normal "dailies" of Math, Latin, Greek, vocabulary/handwriting, which you probably are familiar with by now, we had styrofoam and box battles, styrofoam stacking, and played with/worked out on the exercise bike.



I did phonics with Aidan and Paddy again. This really slows down the momentum of the schoolday -- perhaps a good thing for now, but I will know what to rearrange if the lessons start going on too long.

Our routine is to read a Bob book or some other book, pick out some of the words, then go to pad and pencil and write little phonograms, words and stories with Aidan and Paddy in them. They like this. We'll see how it does in the effectiveness department. Another extension might be what we did last week -- painting words in watercolors -- or what we did a bit of last year -- associating the ASL signs with the letters. I am also looking through A Writing Road to Reading since one weakness of our literacy program in the past was that the kids all got miles ahead in reading compared to writing. It takes till about junior high or early high school for the gap to start narrowing, and then the kids become accomplished writers. This might just be normal for our family, but I do think I would feel a bit more comfortable if the writing kept better pace with the reading.

Since the boys have their Bionicles out and the littlies are happily pestering them right now, I have time to upload some pictures. Here is our continent matching game -- (I wish I had taken a better picture of the contents of the baggie, but it is labels for the continents and major oceans, plus some cut-outs of the shapes of the individual continents along with their size in square miles). Now that they are labelling with ease, I am having them assemble the continents sort of like a puzzle, and for a place value exercise I had Kieron put the continents in order of size.



Here is our Latin matching:

I am making similar ones for the noun declensions. I needed something like Quia that we could do for grammar, since they are at the point where it's harder to improvise your way through the sentences in Henle.

Here is Kieron's daily checklist -- I don't write them out every day anymore, just when life is crazy enough that I can't get him through the routine with verbal directions.

Monday is the day he reads a new chapter in Faith and Life, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday I go through the quiz with him -- he answers the questions he knows, and then I have him look up the ones he didn't know. Then according to how he does, I make religious lesson plans for the rest of the week -- for example, this week he was fuzzy on the mysteries for the Rosary (he used to know them but we lapsed family rosaries recently....sigh) so I am brainstorming ways to present these for him.

Here is the math for boys who quickly get tired of using a pencil.

The red and blue cards are for the top numbers in the problem, you know, the addends and all those terms I can never remember. The green bar is for the equation bar. The beige numbers are for the answer. The orange cards are to carry ones and twos and so on. There are some tiny green cards which have dots to represent the decimal points, and so on.

He does addition and subtraction this way (as a warm-up and introduction, not usually for the entire lesson) -- dealing with 5 digit numbers and with column addition. Now I am using them to review multiplying large numbers. I wrote some 0's on some more orange cards to help him with place value concepts in multiplying. You can also use them for estimating and for constructing biiig numbers up to the trillions. Of course, this is not really hands on. We are not really working with manipulatives at his age. He gets the concepts fine, but because of his fine motor control he has trouble lining up columns and he gets very sloooww. So we can buzz through problems quickly using the cards and then I send him off with a few easier ones to write out and work on his own.

Tomorrow is an errand running day. So I have to figure out whether we'll just let it be a Life Learning Day, or whether to plan something that they can do independently in spare corners of the day.

Oh! One more thing. Another little projected change in the rhythm of the day... take the "babies" outdoors after the older kids' lessons. By that time they usually need the attention, though I personally long to go off by myself and type this, then take a bath and rest a bit. So I'm considering that.








The snake Kieron found last Friday.

Day 22

We are still finishing up, but I ought to get this log typed up now while Aidan is occupied in helping his Dad set up the exercise book (Haha, I meant to type "Bike", I guess that's a significant typo), and before I zip off to speech therapy at the school with him.

Here is the most recent (September) booklist for the two middle boys -- 14 and 11.

Now that the exercise bike is here, my husband Kevin has lots of plans not only for physical conditioning for the family, but for applied geography -- he's trying to get a "race across the United States" going for the kids.

Sean:

• Stanford Vocabulary
• Greek bk 3
• Latin -- review grammar lesson on predicate nominative, plus assignment to learn the irregular declension "sum" etc.
• Algebra -- inverse variations -- a mental workout!
• He is now reading Creator and Creation, and Earth Science (Prentice Hall).
• Still working on Lord of the World
• Geography labelling continents
• He watched some of The War yesterday with his dad and older siblings.

Kieron

• Hands -On Math -- (I'll try to upload a picture) -- he did a few addition problems, and one subtraction.
• Handwriting
• Since I was busy with Sean, I had him color in his History of Swords book and Reptile/amphibian field guide.
• Now he's playing with Bionicles, but I'm going to have him do Quia for math and Latin drill, plus continent labelling, and read Aliki: Shakespeare and the Globe. Also play the "SUM, es, est." flashcard drill I made just now.

Paddy

What slowed down the morning was spending quite a lot of time with Aidan and Paddy on reading. We reread the BOB book about Polly the parrot. The littlies think it's funny. Then I wrote out some rimes in my notebook, which is how Charlotte Mason recommended starting reading. .... using the Starfall rimes for inspiration. (these Rimes and Rhymes use a nursery-rhyme schematic a bit like hers, though more schooly, and I may check those out again because the nursery rhymes don't irritate my twaddle-detector as much as the BOB books!)

Paddy just loved this and wanted to write more words, try writing himself and then tell a story for me to write down. Then we ended up drawing a football game -- actually three. This took forever and Aidan wandered off, but this was a pretty easy and natural way to do some reading instruction. I may check out the What Your Kindergartener needs to Know again since I remember it having some ideas for lowkey phonics instruction.

(I've always used 100EZ Lessons with my kids with great success but on this fifth and sixth run-through of beginning reading, I need some variety -- and am trying to explore a more unschooly, organic, rambling way of learning to read)

Aidan:

In addition to the phonics practice, Aidan is helping his Dad, has speech therapy later, and was promised a Nature Walk this afternoon if Mom isn't too wiped out by then.
He also scrubbed the bathroom floor yesterday, very contemplatively and thoroughly, and I will try to buiild on that since it looked like it filled a need. Also, helped me make pizza and cinnamon rolls.
I also intend to get out the HWT letterforms and figure out a simple math game for the two of them to teach addition. I have a list of Montessori-type materials to prepare but just haven't gotten around to it.

What I have written down on my Preparation list:

• Cut out Greek flashcards (get Kieron to help)
  
• Dig out beeswax -- a nice metaphor there but means that I have to sort through my craft closet to find it)
  
• Find Chemistry text for Clare (we just can't stand Apologia anymore)
• Review dividing fractions with Sean.
• Look for Giotto materials (reproductions, Glorious Impossible, other art books)
• Plan a morning time for the older kids (I know, I always say that) -- I'll start with Kieron then try to think of ways to include Sean for devotions, at least. Memo: Keep it Super Simple!
• Start roughing out the progym curriculum (I have made progress -- found all my CW materials and had some ideas just before I went to sleep last night).
• Type out activity list for the littlies (take pictures?) Also perhaps an activity list for olders since juggling all the materials is getting confusing.
  
• Plan a weekly sheet for the kids in a sort of Natural Structure style -- where they have choices in some of the subject areas -- I used to do it this way with Liam and his study skills turned out exemplary.

Thinking About:

• Monthly "Examen" -- Where We've Come From/Where We'd Like to Go from Here/Kids' Input
• Marva Collins' Way -- interesting book! I like the way she starts praising and then works with the kids on the areas for improvement. "If you can't make a mistake you can't make anything."
• This post by Donna Marie -- I have been trying this way to do things and it works great for me -- I used to do classical homeschooling this way but stopped during the incredibly hectic years of Aidan and Paddy the medically fragile youngsters. (here is a post about Montessori Folder on Europe)
• A monthly "location" focus for our general Geography theme -- covering places of family significance -- Scotland, Holland, Alaska, California, and so on. I already have the subthemes for Poland and Japan that I did with Brendan -- I have to dig them out of my old files though. And maybe one on the Middle East. It really is coming together, though slowly.
  

Day 21

Sean, age 14:

• Algebra -- Linear Functions
• Latin -- pretty intense review. I'm trying to think of varied ways to approach the review so it covers all bases -- so much to remember with these declensions.
• Greek
• Vocabulary l. 22 -- also did spelling test based on last 10 Lessons, only missed one -- apparently I have never taught either of my middle boys that Q is always followed by U in the English language.
• Then he read a bit of Mere Christianity and surveyed the Introduction to Traditional Logic (we started it last year but will have to review).

Kieron, 11:

• Latin -- review -- composing sentences with a S/DO/V construction, and Quia,
• Handwriting -- Italics F
• Math -- for this I wrote numbers on small squares of cardstock, and we used these to do addition with large numbers, so the writing part doesn't get in the way for now. It varied the pace a bit, and Aidan really liked the little squares too.
  
• Read: First section of Discovery of New Worlds. Enjoyed it and made connections spontaneously.
• Continent labelling.... goal is to get where he can ID them spontaneously.... see 3 Period lesson.
  

Paddy

• I tried him with a Bob book. Middling success. I am experimenting with teaching reading just by reading. Wouldn't it be lovely!
  

Aidan and Paddy together:

• Starfall -- played for quite a while, first with me then with Kieron.
• Occupational Therapy visit--
• They painted stripes, then cut them out.
• Also worked with her and the HWT letterforms -- very good progress.
• Scooted on scooters.
  

Then we went to the library, post office and market.... literary discussions and reminiscences about books read and loved in the past. Oh yes, and everyone did their weekly chores, and I gave Sean some on-the-job training on bathroom cleaning (his chore routine was set when he was about seven -- )

So quite a full day -- I am tired!

Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples arrived today! We had the Neville Commager version but not the whole set.

Weekend Learning Log

Sean -- reading Lord of the World (a bit slower going than some of the other recent reads)

Kieron -- read King Arthur, and also found GK Chesterton's Favorite Father Brown Stories which he asked if he could read. Well, he's a bit young to get full value, isn't he? But if he's like his older siblings, he'll reread them again and again. He has been watching some of the TV series version at night with the older set. He also worked on his "epic" (but he needs to learn something about punctuation and mechanics).

Brendan still reading huge tome about the Communist Revolution.

Clare got Pope Benedict's book about Jesus from the library.

Music:

• Mozart from the library (Violin Sonatas, also concerto for Claviers), Joshua Bell: Voice of the Violin, and Beethoven: Missa Solemnis, op 123. Also Clancy Brothers ballads.
• Clare and I played Irish folk songs together from the Clancy Brothers songbook, she on violin and me on guitar.

Family:

• Kevin is watching The War by Ken Burns and the older set watched it with him, though I think Sean fell asleep.
  

Nature:

• Snow last night; rainy in general. Aidan wants to be outside all the time; with his umbrella. CM would love his attitude! We brought the scooters out once.

Me;

• Looking through Ambleside booklists for Sean. I think we are going with Year 8 after all, adapted to Catholics with some Mater Amabilis. It was AO year 7 that we did a fair bit of last year, which works out great. And year 8 covers the exact time period I wanted to focus on. That's settled, anyway. Don't you like the way I get this figured out about a month after we start! But when I used to get it all planned in spring, it had lost the fun by this time anyway.
• Practiced classical guitar -- I'd like to say it was inspiring for the kids, but I doubt if it was since it's been such a long time since I've played. (and now I'm remembering why -- all the little helper musicians raise my blood pressure -- what kind of a mom am I!)
  

Paddy and His Books

I used to keep a daily record of Paddy's reading. In a perfect world I would like to keep it up, but in the real world, I can only keep SOME records at a given time. So it dropped.. but I'm thinking maybe I could start it up again more sporadically, as inclusive samples, rather than a comprehensive list of everything I read to him.

I'd like to have Aidan on the list, too, but he is hard to read to. For one thing, reading to him always pulls Paddy in, and then Aidan runs away!

But anyway, here is Paddy's booklist -- I'm putting it on the sidebar along with the other forms I am using.

Main Lesson Pondering

More on the Waldorf line -- Elizabeth: Little Nuggets of Wisdom. She includes a link to some samples of Main Lesson books. They're nice because they are attractive, but not so stunning I could never imagine my kids doing anything like that. And topics like Geography and Roman History are included.

Here's some more on Main Lessons.
My Waldorf Method (not mine-- someone else's!)
A sort of overview.
Here's a middle school with a Waldorf focus.

Why am I interested in this? Well, we seem to be heading towards more of a "Theme" approach in our homeschool..... so I want to visualize how it might work. I never could do unit studies per se, but I've always done well with a general umbrella theme -- not necessarily the Waldorfian ones, but some age-appropriate concept like one year, "Heroes and Saints" in 5th/6th grade..... then things can be referred in varying ways to the bigger concepts.

Day 20!! and progress

Sean, age 14, didn't do Latin today. He is on exercise 23 of Henle.
He did Jacob's Algebra chapter 2 lesson 4 which brings him up to direct variations -- a bit slow today because of pain due to activity level yesterday.
He did Greek and Vocabulary. I told him there would be a quiz on Monday for vocabulary/spelling.
I gave him Lord of the World by Msr Benson, Mere Christianity by CS Lewis, and Lamb's Shakespeare to start reading.

Earlier this week he read some of the Earth Science text and Creator and Creation. It is still a light schedule but covered most of the bases.
-------------

Kieron, age 11, did Latin -- up to exercise 13, the second declension. Did well.
Hasn't done math yet since yesterday. I also want him to do some more of his Italics handwriting.
He has finished reading: Amazing Poisonous Animals, Lost Wreck of the Isis, and More Once Upon a Time Saints. Does he retain it by reading so fast? This is an open question, but I do think kids get some below-the-surface retention and understanding when they are reading a book that's digestible enough to be interesting to them -- and he was interested, because I did not assign him that much reading.

I gave him Howard Pyle's King Arthur.
------------

This afternoon we have Homeschool Stations of the Cross -- Aidan has a cold and apparently doesn't want to go -- at least, so he keeps telling me. I haven't done much academic work with the littlies today but they did have a full, rich day yesterday and Paddy is playing productively today.

Sean is going to the JV and varsity football with his Dad this evening.

-----------------

We're a "month" through! In light of that, next week I'm going to try to incorporate just a bit of review and variety in Latin, especially, and perhaps in Math and Greek. The humanities are already pretty varied and not too challenging. I do want to start a sheet of things to review and reinforce for their reading -- either by finding a similar book to read, or by a notebook page, or by index cards..... that's on my list of things to think about this weekend.

I would like to introduce copywork and composition next week, and continue presenting materials for the younger ones to work on, and also introduce some religion and liturgical year stuff for the preschoolers. There is this homemade book for prayers and this religious scrapbook for little children.

Also, Aidan loves flags so much I'm going to look for some nice flag flashcards for him.

CTB's account of the Pirate Day.

Aidan just said, "I'm sneezing to Beetlevan!" (I think he meant "to beat the band!" LOL)

Latin Link, and Weekly Summaries

The Minimus website.

HT: A Bit of Bubbly.

Her weekly update also had some math games linked.... possibly nice for Kieron.

And I liked the weekly update format -- I used to do weekly summaries at Every Waking Hour last year and would like to get back to it pretty soon.

It looks like some classical-type homeschoolers are doing a kind of Weekly Report meme-type-thing -- here is Trivium Academy's and here is the list of those who are participating. It will be interesting to browse through next time I have an extra bit of time online, which may not be for a few days, since I just overspent my time budget surfing tonight.

Thinking Aloud

By the way, thanks to you readers who leave comments on this play by play blog of mine. It is always fun to read the responses and to see what others are doing. You probably have noticed that my other blogs are standing mostly deserted. I am really enjoying this detailed log of what we do in a day,.... plus it helps me keep track of things I might not even notice otherwise. Since I'm trying to limit my internet time, that seems to be all the blogging I have time for. Those of you who comment on here, I regularly read your blogs --motivating to read other moms' homeschooling notes.

Now for the overview, since tomorrow is Day 20. I realize that most of what we have been doing all this time is review, really. Certainly we haven't come to any new territory in Math yet. In Latin, however, I am thinking we are getting a bit bogged down by all the half-memorized declensions, and may need to slow down a bit. I have this review sheet which I add to as we come to new parts.

Greek has a lot of review built-in -- it moves sloowwly. And we've barely gotten off the ground yet on Humanities, though Kieron is picking up steam now. Sean is moving more slowly, partly because of his chronic pain issues. I want him to really get the Algebra down well, and the Latin. He is not giving off the discovery-oriented ambience that Kieron is.... probably the difference in ages, plus temperament. Sean has always liked to engage very practically, and if he doesn't get to do that, he rushes through the material and remembers little of it, so I am trying to find a style that suits him and slows him down. Plus he is transitioning into the high school years, which means more of a focus on method and independent work. So anyway, we haven't gotten to full speed with his work yet.

Looking through various resources today, I finally decided to use Discovery of New Worlds by MB Synge for Kieron as a sort of history spine. The other book I'd like to go through slowly during the year, CM -style, is Knights of Art: Stories of the Italian Painters. And finally, Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare (unless I decide it is really too lightweight for his age and go to Lamb's Shakespeare -- but I had intended to use that one for Sean as an intro to reading some of the actual plays). All of these seem to tie together with our movement from the Romans to the Renaissance, and of course they will be expanded with other resources.

The last one is English Literature for Boys and Girls. This may take two years. At Ambleside it's used for middle and early high school but to me it has a youthful tone. Sean read some of it last year but I don't think he will continue it this year.

These are all printed-out books -- not as pretty as real bound books, but less expensive and you can write on them with less guilt. I have a comb binder so with some colored duct tape for the spine I end up with something reasonably solid and readable. Not as nice as a beautiful hardcover, but not too much worse than a mass market paperback.

Kierons' science ---- related to our geography --- biomes, habitats, weather, physical geography, and a variety of projects and field studies and nature drawings-- he enjoys everything along those lines.

I'd like to have Sean's work mesh with this somewhat -- but I truthfully haven't pinned this down yet. For both of them, I want to focus on British literature. There are so many authors who represent literary history in themselves and have also covered history in their retellings and novels. Charlotte Yonge, Rudyard Kipling, Howard Pyle, Charles Kingsley, Sir Walter Scott, Andrew Lang, Roger Lancelyn Green, Padraic Colum, Tolkien (translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), CS Lewis, Ian Serraillier who retold Beowulf which Sean reread last year ----- not to mention the Lambs and E Nesbit -- the list just goes on and on. And that's just the prose, and not even mentioning Shakespeare, and the artists who painted historical or classical or mythological scenes. The poets are a whole other area.

So the literature will be a matter of selection -- so many possibilities.

It's Sean's subject "spines" that are the problem. Maybe an almost high schooler could use primary sources only, and a timeline and historical encyclopedia. But that seems like a lot of work for me to plan, and he mentally discards information when he doesn't see where it's going. So an overview would be helpful. Hmm, still thinking. Since he did a version of Ambleside 8 last year, maybe he can pick up with a Catholicized version of AO -9 this year. ..right now I don't seem to have the perfect solution in all these books we already have around the house. Or maybe compile the House of Education geography resources and biographies and primary sources, and just get by with that.

The older boys focused on Ancient History at this age, and Clare took US History. I wonder why I am reinventing the wheel... but Sean, I think, would get more out of the ancient classics if we waited a year. Still thinking this through... but at least science is set, and the 3Rs.

As for the little ones -- no formal science or history, yet. Religion, literature and music and art and very basic 3Rs. These things also lighten the atmosphere here and seem to make life more interesting for Kieron, too.

Day 19

The routine didn't go quite as usual today. This seems to happen just about 2 or 3 weeks into a term, and I am trying to plan for it and have some different activities ready so that we don't get that "horse in a mill" feeling.

I gave Kieron some more of the Eyewitness books to choose from and he wanted to read them all, so he started with Amazing Poisonous Animals, which again inspired quite a lot of factoid-sharing. He also asked me, "When are you going to assign the second Once Upon a Time Saints?" so of course, I didn't object to him starting it now.

He did the continent labeling, and we worked on addition for a few minutes -- he is rusty and needs some review, so we will progress through that slowly. We worked on Latin but I don't think he got to Greek or anything else. Still, it seemed like an active learning day.

Sean did Greek and Vocabulary, the continent IDing, and started reading an Earth Science text. Since he may go to school next year, I want him to learn a few text-type study skills and so we will do about half the book, skipping the more speculative stuff about paleontology and how to help our ecology. The rest of his science will be MODG's Natural History.

(By the way, I have enrolled him with Kolbe Academy so he will have a more official-looking transcript next year -- just to streamline things a bit if it's necessary. Kolbe lets you design your own program if you want, so it's pretty compatible with how we do things).

I did some phonics with Aidan and Paddy from 100EZ lessons and Little Angel Readers. My plan for today was to bring out the watercolors for them, and I did it! hooray! (this homeschooling mom would rather spend an hour tutoring algebra than collect and supervise an artistic event for preschoolers --sigh). They had so much fun, and for once I didn't get a headache. They drew letters on their pages and had fun mixing colors.

I was also making a cake and so Aidan, as is his habit nowadays, wanted me to mix up a flour and water dough so he could "make a cake" too.

Note: (the Waldorf articles Elizabeth linked to here were really interesting -- still thinking about immersion as opposed to scattering all over the curriculum, which frustrated me a bit last year with a more pure Charlotte Mason style. When I have more time -- read, when Aidan is not trying to turn off my monitor -- I want to Google "Main Lesson Book" for Images -- and maybe "Waldorf Good Books" because one of the articles called them this).

Then we went to the beach. We are celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day ( a day late because Sean had to go to the doctor yesterday) and so Clare wanted to take some photos of all the pirates in the house. Fortunately no one else was at the beach, or they would have wondered, I'm sure. The cake is for Pirates Day -- Clare frosted it and put a skull and crossbones in M&Ms on it. I am sure she will be uploading pics on her blog soon and so I'll provide a link later).

I put some pictures here.

The weather was great for a nature visit to the beach -- Aidan was distraught at first because he didn't understand why we can't swim when it's 55 degrees and almost raining. But there are rocks to clamber over and they ended up having a lot of fun.

Sean's initial rehab involves stretching many times a day and he has been reluctant -- still feeling lots of pain. But the muscle tear is healed, thank God. He was demonstrating a hamstring pull with a rubber band ;-).

Kieron andPaddy are playing a Dragon and Bionicle game, and Aidan has learned to use his little scooter (bilateral motor skills!) and keeps coming up to me saying, "HII!!! I really missed you while I was in Alaska!!"

Thinking about British Literature.... and History Spine

Sonlight Level 530
and Level 200

Story of Britain -- by Antonia Fraser's daughter (list of AF's books included in that link)

History of the English Speaking Peoples

British Literature -- Faith's sidebar

English Literature -- Catholic Encyclopedia
(there are some articles about English history there, too)

English Literature for Boys and Girls

Calculations

Hey! I'm 10 % through the academic year! (see sidebar). That went fast.

I made out this little chart to satisfy my OCD tendencies:

• 5 days = 1 week
• 20 days = 1 month
• 3 months = 1 semester
• 3 semesters = 1 academic year.
• 9 months = 36 weeks = 180 days = 1 academic year

I am sure most people don't spend their free time doing these rather useless little calculations, but for me, they are comforting.

The reason I did this is because I was rereading the Kolbe booklet -- Implementation of Ignatian Education in the Home -- probably my all time most thumbed through homeschool book. This year is taking a more Ignatian turn than the past couple of years. Anyway, IIEH discusses review -- this is a very important concept in Ignatian education, and not to be confused with mere kill n drill. There should be a review after each lesson introduction (covering the most crucial concepts), a review of the independent study (reading, working), a review each week, a monthly review which is sort of a "step back and look at the big picture" and then a term-end cumulative review that is associated with exams. You can see some of this in Charlotte Mason's method, too.

Again, the reviews are not meant to be just rote drills -- they are meant to broaden connections, look at the picture from a new angle, consolidate, reinforce.

So I made my little schedule because I want to eventually have a routine for these reviews -- I did this years ago but not with this same set of kids, and not with the materials I am using now. If I get one completed, I will upload it to my sidebar.

(There are some articles I wrote about the Ignatian method over here). ... there are two about repetition.

By the way, there is a nice article on Ignatian classical education here -- including some information on teaching a language arts course that is quite compatible with the progymnasmata. )

In my most recent Lesson Planner, (PDF) I have a space to jot down things that I want to remember to review -- that's something that always used to slip by).

Day 18

Sean:

• Labelled the continents and major oceans on the world map.
• Algebra -- graphing (review for him)
• Latin
• Greek
• Vocabulary
• Drawing
• Creator and Creation
• Chores

He has a doctor's appointment this afternoon for his leg; is presently playing Madden Football 2008
His Free Reading is Starship Troopers.

Kieron

• Chores
• Math (Place Value Pirates since he is on place value in his book and it is National Talk Like a Pirate Day today)
• Latin -- up to second declension.
• Labelling continent map
• I started him on Italics F -- the Portland university program.
• He read the next section of Lost Wreck of the Isis.

I'm not sure what he has been reading for fun recently.

Paddy and Aidan

• Letter forms.
• Informal talking and activity.

Paddy listened to Strega Nona yesterday as well as several other stories...probably about an hour total of reading. I showed him how to pick out the words in Are You My Mother? which he pretty much knows by heart now.

Aidan "read" his MCP Math A book and played with his V Tech phonics board.

All Ye Heavenly Hosts, pray for us!

I like the way Faith processes her goals for the week in writing. Also, her Waldorf conference notes gave me a clearer picture of what Waldorf is about. Both of her blogs are quite inspiring to me since we tend to pick the same types of resources. ... but she is more creative and spontaneous than I am.

Also, last night I was exploring Leslie at Knotty Pine's Teacher's Room and I love her learning centers and the orderly way she approaches unit studies.... how neat!

Finally, last night when I was staying up way too late, I mean having a cyber-teacher's -inservice evening, I found a few more Classical blogs to add to my smallish classical blogroll. They are on the sidebar of my Spacious Place blog. If you know of any more, please let me know.

Every year, I informally dedicate the school year to a saint. Thinking back:

• 2004 was dedicated to St Thomas Aquinas (my oldest son was in his senior year and applying to TAC)
• 2005 was dedicated to St Therese of Lisieux (I read Homeschooling with Gentleness and went on an "unschooling sabbatical", trying to find a littler, more humble and personal way to homeschool).
• 2006 was dedicated to St John of Bosco and his "discipline of the heart" -- I was trying to find a blend between unschooling and some kind of direction and focus in the homeschool.

I'm thinking of dedicating this year to St Ignatius -- or perhaps St Francis de Sales. My computer is named De Sales : ).

I think 2000 was St Ignatius, and 2001 was the Archangels.

As for Our Lady, I dedicated our whole homeschool to her way back in 1994 when we first started homeschooling and I knew, knew, KNEW that I couldn't do this without divine intervention.

Day 17

Today was a bit of a different day. Sean had his MRI scheduled, so he only did Greek and Vocabulary, since I had to take Aidan to the local school for his first speech therapy session.

Kieron got a late start since I was gone, but he accomplished quite a bit.

• Labelling a continent map. (there are lots of these online -- I just made little labels so he could attach them -- later he can label and color his own map).
• Greek
• Math (rounding off, and we played a place value game which was fun for him and the little kids could play too).
• A quiz for the first chapter of Our Life in Christ (I found the quizzes here) -- the ones he didn't know, he looked up in the book. This led to an extended discussion about the Fifth Commandment, abortion, Dumbledore and Snape, etc.
• He finished reading Amazing Snakes (and has been narrating to me all throughout the day) and finished Once Upon a Time Saints.
• He drew a picture of a snake in his field notebook.
• His Young Scientists' Club #7 arrived so he looked through that.... It's on Minerals.
• He is playing now with his dad's old Erector set from childhood.
• He also babysat Paddy while I was at speech with Aidan (for a dollar : )).

I assigned him Midsummer Night's Dream to read from Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare. We will see how this goes. I have Shakespeare and the Globe by Aliki and there are Shakespeare unit studies at Core Knowledge, and some other library resources. We want to work on it slowly and integrate it with the Geography unit if we can.

I made little assignment books for Sean and Kieron. Many days we don't seem to need these -- but some days I wish I had some place to write down a checklist, and so the books are for those times. I also made a new weekly lesson plan format, but I can't upload them from this computer. Here's Kieron's Henle Help sheet though -- I am planning to add to it as the year goes on.

Later today I hope to take the younger set for a Nature Walk... the weather is beautiful out there ...cool and sunny .... and we haven't been on a walk or to the beach for over a week because there was an armed fugitive loose up here. I don't know if he has been captured yet, but we can't stay indoors forever.....

I have been thinking about immersion studies.... because of what Rosie said here and what real learning folks said here. It fits in with things that have been on my mind recently.... mainly, that I notice if I plan in detail for one broad "Main Lesson" type unit, it seems to end up growing anyway to encompass the whole universe. So why plan several subjects and end up with way too much to connect all together? not that I do this anyway, but I usually feel the temptation.

Clare has been listening to Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense and has borrowed the Father Brown series from the library .... so the family is watching those in the evenings.

Aidan and Paddy played with their Math books and played with the HWT letterforms..... Aidan had cranio sacral therapy yesterday for OT and speech today went pretty well -- getting used to a new speech therapist, but she seems to be in tune with how we do things.

I gave Paddy a new spiral notebook, and drew some more pictures with him.

Day 16 -- Monday

Because we went to see Liam yesterday and it was a very extended day (woke up at 4:30 and didn't get back until 10 pm) we had a lowkey day of school today.

Sean

• For Sean's math, we started the new chapter which described functions and graphs (familiar to him from last year) but didn't do any of the exercises. We are ending the 3rd section of the first part of Henle -- so did a review (ex 21) which went pretty well. I made him a chart isolating the accusative cases of the first 2 declensions. Making mini-charts is an idea I got from Clare teaching Kieron. The student COULD write out his own and in fact, I will probably have him write out a set of his own for review in future lessons.
• Then Sean did Greek and Vocabulary and Drawing.
• Read Creator and Creation
• I gave him an informal geography quiz/review about the continents. The younger set aren't nearly as keyed into geography as the older set were. Brendan was fascinated by maps and geography and I think that rubbed off on the siblings in his age group. Not so with the younger set, so I'm glad we're focusing on it this year.

Kieron

I did something new for this year (we've done it in the past) -- gave him a written out sheet of tasks to do. It was divided into two sections: To Read and To Do. I typed it out here as a prototype for future, similar lists. I'll paste it too:

Kieron's Monday Checklist (sample)

To Read:

• Amazing Snakes ( DK Eyewitness book)
• Lost Wreck of the Isis (Robert Ballard)
• Once Upon a Time Saints

To Do

• Weekly Housekeeping rotation
• Greek
• Latin Quia
• Coloring -- Peterson Field Guide -- Reptiles and Amphibians
• Calculator Math (on computer)
• Review first chapter of Faith and Life -- for discussion on Tuesday

Events for the Day:

Go to Library and Market
Free Day? (computer time when work is finished)
Aidan's OT coming

Free Reading

Wind in the Willows
Time Navigators Series by Gilbert Morris
Tintins (the whole household has been on a Tintin revisitation)

Right now he is reading the Snake book in between playing with his Bionicles -- but with the computer and library motivator, I am confident he will make efforts to get through the list. Also, as far as life skills, he and Aidan set up a fire in the woodstove today -- that is, they arranged it, and I supervised the lighting part.

Progress Notes -- Paddy, Aidan

Sometimes a child takes a cognitive leap, seemingly overnight, though it probably only seems that way. (Remember the Frog and Toad story about Toad planting a garden and how frustrated he got waiting for his seeds to sprout?)

In the past couple of days Paddy seems to have had a bunch of mental seeds sprout.

At Mass, he was trying to read the Responsorial Psalm -- it helped that it is one line which we sing slowly over and over -- he got to where he was following the words and whispering them on his own. He tried to follow the hymns too, but with less success because they move faster and the verse schematic is difficult to follow.

He drew several books -- he can draw a human shape, rudimentarily, now. He had me staple them together so now he has about 3 books of action scenes. We drew several together so they could "fight".

Today he made several little post-it notes with letters drawn on them, which he asked me to "read" -- then he had me staple them together, too. He's been carrying the book around asking people to "read" them.

His attention span for read-alouds seems endless -- it is a matter of me finding the time (which I need to make into a priority) rather than him getting bored.

As for Aidan -- I have been putting out the HWT letterforms daily -- which he enjoys -- and also we invented a game where he chants the months of the year and counts them off on his fingers -- he LOVES this -- loves the sounds of the words. He also can recite his whole name, where he lives, and phone number, which is a good skill for this age --at least, they always made a big push to teach this at the primary level in the older kids' parochial school years.

Rhythm for the Day

Thoughts on Lesson Planning -- how timely.

That's what I have been trying to do all weekend.

I THINK I am making progress. We will see on Monday. That's when I either realize I am prepared or that I have been fooling myself.

Anyway, I wrote a proposed Rhythm for the day. (I am putting it in the sidebar). We are not there yet. We do the early morning stuff and then basically move straight to the afternoon. I'd like to have some sort of second wave in the morning so my task this week will be to try to work that in and/OR figure out if it is practicable right now.

The other thing I did was to cut up some colored cardstock into 3.5 X 2 inch rectangles. On them I wrote all the different things I could think of that I wanted to do sometime during a week. My plan is to shuffle them and randomly draw some number of them per day for the week. I wrote about something like this before: Grab Bag and Grab Bag II.

Tomorrow some of us are travelling south to visit Liam at TAC -- so I'll probably be spending the car time thinking more about planning.

Resource Collecting -- Geography

• Geography (and Architecture) from Love2Learn Blog.
• Geosense -- an online geography game -- try out
• Internet links for Hollings Clancy Hollings geography books.
• Core Knowledge units (they are written in educationalese and for use with large groups, but I like to browse through them and look at the worksheets for ideas)
• Also the History Links -- general unit.
• All Ye Lands and CHC activities.
• My Giotto plans.

(What do those have to do with Geography (besides both starting with "G"?) . Well, I want the geography unit to interact with the Renaissance/Exploration theme. )

• I have the plans I used for Brendan in 6th grade based on the Real Learning booklist for Year 6.
• It would be nice to do some California geography -- along with our natural history.
• Elizabeth linked to some state units.
• There are some links to geography resources here.
• School Geography Notebook requirements here(it's a doc)
• Fifty States Literature List
  

More

• Lifelong Learning --geography

In Which Clare Designs her own Classes

(and some for her young brother, too)

JH Fabre

She has also got a really nice Literature course going in which she reads books by Chesterton about famous folks, and then reads works by them. So she is reading GKC's book about George Bernard Shaw, and then reading GBS's plays (she's already read Pygmalion). Then she intends to read Chesterton's St Francis of Assisi. She is slowly watching her way through Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense.

She's reading When Character was King, about Reagan, by Peggy Noonan. Not really a biography -- more like a personal retrospective.

There are a lot more books on her list.

She still runs an informal music apprenticeship for her two littlest brothers, and of course, sews, and practices violin, classical guitar, piano, and voice.

Tomorrow she is going to a Marian retreat; Marian and retreat, good; Life Teen element, not so good. But I hope the good side outweighs the not so good, anyway.

Her main problem seems to be finding enough time (and sometimes enough energy) to fit in everything she would like to do.

Day 15

I'm starting to record in the learning log the evening before since a lot of times, the little ones seem to do a lot more in the afternoon and evening than they do in the mornings (at least, that I notice).

Aidan

• Practiced in 100 Ez lessons (review)
• Played with HWT letterforms and made letter shapes
• Drew in his preschool shape book

Paddy

• Played with HWT forms
• Listened to a lot of stories (several times, yesterday)

Both

• Played outside
• Listened to music and sang with Clare (Irish folk ballads)
• Looked through their math books and tried to draw numbers and talk "math language"

Sean

• Greek and Vocabulary
• Algebra (chapter review)
• Latin (review exercise 20 -- I had him write some of them-- I think I will do this every Friday)
• (He was a bit slow today -- in pain from leg)
• Finished Starswarm -- discussed abrupt ending with me.

I think I'm going to give him The Family that Overtook Christ and Lord of the World

Kieron
(actually got his work done before Sean today -- he wrote a Bionicle "epic" yesterday and wanted to finish it up today).

• Math -- place value
• Latin -- Quia
• Greek
• Geoegraphy -- we discussed the questions at the end of the chapter.
• I gave him Wind in the Willows to read.
• He is talking on the phone with a friend right now, and later I am taking the younger kids to Homeschool group. He also was mostly responsible for making a fire this morning.

I have been reading the TJE Home Companion. It is not really my type of book. But I liked the idea of designing Home Skills "courses" -- really pretty much like the CHC Pilgrims of the Holy Family. ...only customized to the family. I can see doing something like that since home skills don't come naturally to me and I'd like the kids to be more up to speed on that than I was.

I am looking over Progym stuff trying to get the writing curriculum off the ground for this year.

Ecology of Homeschooling

I love this classical homeschooling blog I found on Ragamuffin Rosie's sidebar. It is a combination of LCC and Ambleside, and she designs beautiful forms. I just love beautiful forms. And she looks very orderly. I love order.

This year looks like it's shaping up to be more on the classical side of our continuum and less on the unschooling, learning as we go side. It's interesting how our balance seems to change from year to year, though of course, there is a continuity as well. I used to think this was a weakness, but now I see it as a longterm strength -- like the way our forest ecology outside will shift, well, naturally, according to the severity of the winter or the dryness of the spring or various other factors. One year we'll have lots of wildflowers, another year an abundance of squirrels. Natural things adjust and adapt. It's only industrial type things that maintain a sterile, uniform pace.

I don't think it's a contradiction to love order and also appreciate variety. God's Creation has both, and so does the liturgical year and family life and so many other things.

Well, that's probably enough posts on here for one day. The kids are still outside filming and the house is rarely and strangely quiet right now.

Homeschool Going Too Slow or Too Fast?

This started off as an answer to US!'s comment on an earlier post:
--------------------------

"Willa, it is so funny that your kids zooming through things is what you are figuring out how to fix. Mine are the opposite. It seems like the more I streamline and the less I give them, the longer it seems to take. Even with just math, latin and a little reading we are pushing the morning hours. SIGH! I find that we as a whole (esp. the littles) are so much happier if the bulk is in the morning. But how to do this? I think the first key for us is in waking up! Mine are slow risers. I am thinking of starting to gradually wake them up earlier. We will see if that does it! Are yours early risers?"

------------------------------

My reply got so long that I'm putting it as a post -- hope it helps and if it raises any other questions, please ask : ).

My kids get up around 8 am, so no, we aren't really morning people. We usually don't get started till 9 am, though I am trying to set up some preschool activities by about 8:30 so I can spend a little time with the little ones before I start, hem, benignly neglecting them in favor of the older ones.

I fix a solid breakfast, and the kids do their morning chores and sort of play around until I'm ready to start.

I actually do remember pushing the morning hours when mine were all pretty little. Everything went so slooowlly, even when I tried "short lessons". I am not sure what has changed. Perhaps little ones just take longer to gather and settle down, and there are more interruptions. Do you think that is part of it? When I had babies, everything took longer and was physically more complicated. I had to make sure the baby was happy and the toddler wasn't wreaking havoc. That is just part of the joy that I miss of having a crew of young ones. Seriously. We learned so much and our homeschool was so freshened by the presence of the little tiny ones. I didn't always appreciate it at the time, but it was really part of our curriculum, and a significant part too.

One thing that occurred to me - my crew tend to do a lot of work separately since my kids are so far apart in ages. If you do a lot of multi-level teaching, it slows things down in a way because there are more group dynamics and it takes more time to get everything and everyone all together. At least, this has been my experience. It sounds counter-intuitive, but I've noticed it and Laura Berquist mentions it in one of her articles too. I do try to group the *content* of what they're doing -- for example, the two littlest ones might work at the same activities, but at different times during the day.

So one way to speed things up is to tutor one child at a time for a few minutes, giving them a start on some independent work like copywork or drawing or reading or whatever you have going on, and then move to the next one. Then perhaps have the group time just before lunch, when the basics are done.

I don't know if this helps.... Some of my older kids, when they were young, really hated starting off the morning with math and that kind of thing. They woke up slowly and they wanted to play or cuddle, not sit down to arithmetic. So I pretty much had to work in gradually by reading aloud and letting them draw and talk a bit before we started the seatwork, and then it would be lunchtime when we finished. This did have benefits -- they still remember those read alouds and leisurely morning times, and I miss that with the younger set who seem to prefer to get the 3Rs out of the way as fast as possible. Thus, my problem with "too fast".

I'm with you about no serious academics in the afternoon for little ones-- it's never worked well at all for us either. I am too tired, honestly, and they don't want to concentrate. Now, older highschoolers seem to need a couple of hours in the afternoon. Mine would work in the morning, then take a longish lunch break, then do some more work in the middle to late afternoon. This would be in junior and senior years, usually, for my set.

Now that I'm thinking about this, to solve my "too fast" problem, I may try to have some group activities to extend our morning hours -- some equivalent to a "circle time". Maybe gather all together about 11 am and do some freewriting, or reading aloud. ... a Morning Time.

My personal homeschool ideal would be to have a productive 3 hours in the morning (some independent work and some together time) and then start them off, plant seeds for some more leisurely, constructive activities that could occupy them in the afternoon. Then some outside activities or errands later on. Today they are engaged in filming a play -- that is the kind of thing I feel good about. I also feel good when they spend the afternoon outside, or following up on books started in the morning hours, or writing stories or doing handicrafts. Sometimes they finish their academics rapidly and are then at loose ends and squabbling, which frustrates me. Those are the days that I wish I had more planned to round out the day. Realizing this, maybe I ought to have some sort of Plan B -- some kind of flexible project planned for days when the kids aren't inspired to come up with anything on their own. Hmm....

This first month always does seem to be a time to break in gradually and recognize what habits need work and what good things we can build on for that particular year. So one other suggestion I have is to go through your morning with a pencil and notebook handy and make a note of all the glitches -- what's taking long, why, and if it can be readjusted. This seems to help me when I'm stuck.

Day 14

Sean goes off to his room in the mornings and works at his Greek and vocabulary. Then he comes out to do his algebra and Latin with me; by that time I'm usually done with making breakfast and having my cup of coffee.

Today I was reading to Paddy.

Sean went on to read Creator and Creation (which he narrated) and Drawing.

After that Kieron did Greek, Math (place value), Latin (more on accusative case, which he understood better today). He has almost finished reading Once upon a Time Saints, so I'm counting that as religion for today, too -- and he narrated bits spontaneously. One thing about "assigning" reading is that they seem to feel a link between me and the book and themselves, and are likely to enter on a dialogue about the book to me.

(I forgot to mention yesterday that Kieron also read a cute book called Return of the Dragon about a dragon that gets converted by an Irish saint and then returns to his Welsh homeland to try to make up for his past evil deeds. I do not think Michael O'Brien would like this book).

For Paddy and Aidan, since we've had restless moments in the past few days, I brought out Horizon Maths and what Aidan calls "Quia" (Kieron's MCP math). This kept them busy for some time. (here is an interesting article about older siblings keeping younger ones occupied productively)

Clare had the idea of starting a pirate movie for Nat'l Talk Like a Pirate Day next week, so a good energy filled the air as everyone ran around getting dressed in costume. Aidan was thrilled, but now seems to have had a backlash and is wandering around restlessly. The others are still happily engaged though.

I have been working behind the scenes on planning past the basic 3Rs plus classic languages. Rereading Latin Centered Curriculum and will probably try to read more of the Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion.

Afternoon Learning Log -- day 13

We did go to the library and playground. The Direct TV guys didn't come, but we had a nice musical evening with Mozart, My Fair Lady and Louis Armstrong (eclectic!).

Kieron read the Usborne Drawing Spaceships and Drawing Aliens and Robots books, and is looking forward to trying them out for art tomorrow(which is always nice). Clare got into the Murder on the Midnight Plane book and tried to solve the puzzles. Then Paddy got into the Drawing Aliens book.

He made another beanie baby battle "movie".

I read him several stories -- he is spending a lot of time poring over books on his own -- nearly 40 minutes on a Tintin comic yesterday.

Brendan is reading a book about the Greek and Roman world and we had an interesting political, civic and historical discussion. He is also rereading several of his tree books (inspired by the visit to Alaska)

Narration

The Thrifty Homeschooler has some posts going up about a Charlotte Mason education and frugality.

This is an interesting one about narration.

I experimented quite a bit with narration last year -- of course, we've done it through the years but I was always hesitant and ambivalent about "required narrations". I think last year helped me get past that block, or perhaps my present set of kids are more OK about narrating. But this year I'm thinking of just forming a habit of narrating one or two more steep and challenging books, rather than trying to do all of them.

One of my goals for Aidan is to start him on the process of narrating, and I imagine Paddy will be following right along -- he already spontaneously narrates his favorite read-alouds, which none of my other kids really did.

Prelection

This is a form I made back in 2003 -- a template for planning based on the book Implementation of Ignatian Education in the Home.

Day 13

Aidan

• HWT letter forms before Paddy woke up
• Helped to make breakfast cookies -- imaginary play and life skills
• Played with waffle blocks -- motor processing

Paddy

• Listened to My Father's Dragon and Heroes (Bible stories). Wanted to listen to them again when he woke up this morning.
• Played with letter forms
• Played with clay.
• Played with piggy bank.

Kieron

• Greek
• Latin (up to accusative case, which was a puzzler for him -- might need to do some grammar review)
• Math (chapter test)
• Read Once Upon a Time Saints
• Coloring in Reptile and Ambhibian Field Guide
• Murder on the Midnight Plane (Usborne puzzle book -- for fun thinking skills)
  
• Free Reading recently: Robin Hood, Scarecrow of Oz, James and the Giant Peach
• I assigned him the task of tidying the area around his bed -- which was discouraging to him -- so I told him to do as much as he could in five minutes, which seemed to work.
  

Sean

• Algebra (order of operations with parentheses) -- he told me the doctor exempted him from exercises : ).... nice try.
• Latin -- exercise 16 and part of 17, reviewed 2nd declension neuter.
• Greek
• Vocabulary lesson 12
• Spelling test on vocabulary words -- aced it.
• Read next section on Maps and Globes (Civ of the Past).

• Clare is sewing; Sean, Clare and I had a funny discussion about college life.
• Incidental current events via their father.

This afternoon, the Direct TV guys are coming, so this morning I cleaned up the relevant area. I am also doing pretty well keeping up with morning chores and staying off the computer.

This afternoon we intend to go to the library and local market, and maybe to the playground. And Sean has football practice.

I would like to start a habit of reading to Kieron in the mornings -- to solve the problem of getting through everything too fast. I remember that's how I extended things in the am with the older kids -- before we got so busy with life that I needed to cut time corners.

Day 12

It went pretty well today -- we are definitely building a rhythm. I have a tendency to neglect the little ones' academics in favor of the older ones, but today I brought out the HWT letterforms, and the Audobon bird cards, and some colored foam shapes for them to sort. They played with the Duplos and waffle blocks. They got a bit tense over the bird cards -- not sure why, but Paddy kept wanting to crumple them up in high spirits, which scared Aidan.

Sean: Algebra, Greek, Latin, Drawing and Vocabulary.

Kieron: Math, Greek (started partway through book 2), Latin,

Both read a section of Civilizations of the Past (a textbook) about maps and globes. I'm going to have a geography focus this year, partly because Kieron couldn't pick out Chicago as the only city in a group of states in one of his thinking skills questions! But also, 6th grade's customarily been our time to focus on world cultures; and serendipitously, some of my favorite homeschool blogs are talking about geography this year (or living it!).

Paddy wants to "make a movie" (he wants me to take stop-action pics of his duplo or stuffie warfare, and then he knows how to make them into a slideshow).

We had our first day of "no computer till afternoon" and it went pretty well -- the kids seemed to play more productively and creatively.

The main glitch in how things are going homeschoolwise are the times in the morning when the littlies want my attention and don't get it immediately because I am with the olders...... and also, how FAST we get through what I've assigned. Sigh..... I am trying to think of a solution for that which doesn't involve busywork or bogging them down with loads o work. Partly I suppose it's because I haven't really gotten more than the basic "short lessons" off the ground.

Organization of a Sort

Last night when I was devising forms, I came up with a version of the 43 Folders which I hope will work for collecting all the things I would like to remember in a timely manner.

There are 28 folders in my version --

• 6 for days of the week (M-F and one called "Weekend")
• 12 labelled for the months of the year
• 4 (colored) -- one for each season
• 5 weekly ones -- one for the weeks of the month, and one colored one called Transition that spans the week when the months are changing.
• 1 called General that spans the whole academic year. I will put IEPs and portfolio checklists and things like that in there.
  

Here is what they look like:



How it works:

I put the present day, week and month in the front of the relevant pile -- so for example, Monday is the first folder of the 6 "Day" folders, Week Two is in the front of the "Week" folders, and "September" is in the front of the "Month" folders. The colored folders for seasons help me maneuver through more quickly, and I may put some sort of visual for the other folders to help me find them more quickly.

As I get through that day, week, or month, I put that folder in the back of the group.

I did this with index cards and the Sidetracked Home Executive chore system, once, and it seemed to work pretty well until I had the routine down well enough that I no longer really needed to consult the cards. But this system applied to our busy life and homeschool might help me keep better track of the local events, liturgical year and other seasonal things that seem to slip by too often right now.

I covered a printer paper box with contact paper to put them in. Since there was a lot of room in the box until the folders get bulkier, I put several reference-type books -- my Mother of Divine Grace Syllabi, my Catholic Mosaic, and a couple of high school guidance books -- in behind them.


My corner next to the kitchen is getting to look like every place where I spend a lot of time -- the paper and book piles and box-decor : ).

My homeschool forms bound into little comb bound books.


Aidan wanted to be part of it, so I let him cut up the backing of the contact paper.

I hope the system will be simple enough to actually work, and useful since I can drop things into the relevant file in a hurry and then browse through when I come to the new day, week or month.


Working Lunch!