just pick up a book and read

I have been hesitating about writing this out because it seems so... well, Captain Obvious, as the kids say. But here goes; maybe it will sound a bit neater when I actually write it! Sometimes that happens, too.

We have played several games of Robo Rally this holiday with Liam and whoever else wants to join in. Liam loves Robo Rally and would love to play the really geeky, complex versions where you put four game boards together, or have one player be a SuperRobot and the others try to take him down... etc. His mom, though, struggles just to keep her robot from falling off the edge. Still, we'll probably try at least one marathon super-game before he leaves. Maybe he'll let my robot have extra lives so I don't get bumped off too soon.

This is all lead-in. While I'm playing RR I'm facing the bookshelf of children's books. There is Enemy Brothers by Constance Savery, and Grasshopper Summer by I think Robert Newton Peck, and Johny Tremain, and so on. While the other players are setting up their next moves, I'm always staring dreamily at the books and thinking: Wouldn't it be fun to just pick one of those up and read it to Kieron and Sean and then go on "context trails" -- this is how I did it with Brendan and Clare when they were that age. It was so much fun; I miss it. It is an older version of the "Golden Thread" I am doing with Paddy.

So far this year we have been wearing a modified Catholic Ambleside/Mater Amabilis garment with classical (Latin Centered/Kolbe type) tailoring and our usual unschooling comfort-fit to it. It is working pretty well. I'm always looking for ways to improve though. One thing I've missed this year is the opportunity to interact through a literary filter. It is one of my favorite homeschooling things. It is not simply reading aloud, or simply discussing, or simply sending them on research projects, but a synthesis of all three plus more. It takes time and energy which is why I don't do it all the time.

January is a good time to try new things or bring old things out of the closet, though; if only to avoid the dreaded February crash and burn. So I think after Liam goes back to college and there is no more Robo Rally for a while (sniffle) I will go and browse through that bookshelf and find a book I would really like to "do" with my children. Doesn't have to be in chronological order, doesn't have to "fit" our academic progression -- just a book to read.

Holiday Day One

During the break I think this blog will be a place to write down notes about what to revise and improve for the New Year. Also, I will try to pay more attention to what my kids are doing informally, and support them in that. I know I always say that. It's an ongoing conversion. It is fighting against nature. By nature I am very self-absorbed.

Hey! Habits are ongoing conversions. I wonder if that carries through -- I will have to think about that today. You would have to define habits the way Charlotte Mason does, not just as your default mode. Hmm.

Focusing too much on the teaching, rather than the learning, can be an ego-trip. Charlotte Mason says that, in a much nicer way.

I am thinking I am getting a bit away from focusing on learning, so I'm glad for the time to think and re-evaluate.

Yesterday turned out to be a really nice day. A short chronological list:

Kevin and I drove down with Liam to the dentist. I did some Christmas shopping; because it was still before 10 am the store was almost empty.

The kids watched Ratatouille (they were babysitting Paddy).

Brendan and I had a long philosophical discussion about art (that was actually the evening before). Liam and I had a long philosophical discussion about government. We talked about our stories too.

I "did school" with Aidan which for him means sitting down with the Algebra book while he lectures me and questions "Is X plus 3 positive or negative?" and things like that. He is fascinated with the Algebra.

We decorated the tree and put on the lights (mostly the three younger ones and me).

Kevin took Sean to a sort of football training clinic that his uncles were running down in town. They did a bit of Christmas shopping and got some groceries.

I shovelled the deck for a loooong time (we've gotten lots of snow) while the three younger ones sledded.

I played SET with Liam and Kieron and the little ones. Then I played Mystery of the Abbey with Kieron and Paddy. Kieron won.

Liam played the classical guitar and Clare played the violin. She is practicing the Adagio in G Minor by Albinoni. They worked on their stories. Everyone likes my laptop. I have made it a game-free zone but Clare likes to listen to youtube music on it and Liam likes to write and program on it. Liam's work laptop was supposed to come yesterday but it snowed so much no delivery truck could get to our area.

Day 78

Sean:

• Greek
• Vocabulary
• Algebra 1st quarter test, first half (89 % so far)
• Screwtape Letters
• The Life that Changed the World
• Stories from Virgil

Kieron hasn't done anything yet but I will have him do math and handwriting later.

That's about it!

Day 77

Second to last day before we stop for the holidays!

Today Kieron had a pretty easy time with math; Sean did the second part of the summary of chapter 7, and seemed to have a bit easier time of it. Tomorrow he's supposed to do the test for Kolbe's first quarter, and then we are done.

He read Screwtape Letters; Church's Aeneid; and The Life That Changed the World. He did Greek and Vocabulary.

I am not sure if Kieron did any formal schoolwork besides the math.

We had to rush to get to Aidan's speech therapy. It was set for 1:30 at the local school, but there was an ice storm outside and it is supposed to turn into real snow later on. So I called the school and she asked if we could come early since she had free time.

It was a good meeting. The SLP has been worried because this is only the second therapy session all this school year. She went away for over a month and they didn't have a replacement, and then we went away for a couple of weeks. There were also some specialist appointments in town which couldn't be rescheduled, and the SLP only comes up here for one day a week. But anyway, she had printed out a spreadsheet to check off work on goals (a kindred spirit! she likes forms!) and she was also impressed by his level of work this time as compared with last time. He was restless last time in September and she was rushing his answers so she didn't get a good sense of what he was like. This time was more representative.

He has had a genuine developmental advance though. He was able to categorize things by what you do with them (things you eat, things you wear, things you play with) -- he even "discovered" the categories himself when she showed him four things like: orange juice, banana, toast, icecream.

Now the four younger boys are outside and Clare is playing the violin.

Day 76

Quick academic day today.

Sean didn't have math since he finished the chapter last week. So he did Latin, Greek, and vocabulary. He read Screwtape Letters and Church's Stories from Virgil. He narrated from both of them. Then he did his weeklies and I had him copy out another Scripture section from King of Kings.

Kieron did math (he's been distractable recently and struggling with this chapter on decimals which is pretty easy stuff -- he thinks it's because he's been staying up too late watching films and I suspect he is right). I think that is about all he did; right now we're getting ready to go to the library.

It's supposed to snow 18 inches tomorrow so we are going to get new snow shovels too.

We have had several family discussions on the various movies we have been watching so I think that counts for narration and lit analysis too.

Lookout for Christmas Break

Here are some things I'd like to do this Christmas if I get around to them:

• Update Sean's portfolio so I can send it off to Kolbe (make a list of things that are still needed so we can work on them in January).
  
• Read more of Spell to Write and Read, plus a few other curricula that I am less familiar with.
  
• Study my own Latin and Greek.
  
• Work on my story!
  Read some fiction and write some responses (particularly the books I want to give to the older kids for their academics).
  
• Make a list of topics related to the spine texts they are reading, so I can add resources and extensions if I want to.
  
• Play games with the children.
  
• Take walks in our winter forest, take pictures.
  
• Catch up on phone calls to friends and relations.
  
• Reflect on the past year and resolve for next year.
  
• Do more baking and try out some new recipes.
  
• Get a craft center together (Kevin bought me another set of shelves so I would like to have some sort of early learning center focused around it; but we shall see)
  
• Help Brendan with his college admissions stuff.
  

I guess that is probably enough for now.

Forecast for Week 16

This will only be a 3-4 day week. I'm going to pad it out with a couple extra days since I figure the kids will continue to learn informally during the break. So that ought to bring us to Day 80, which is remarkably close to the halfway point.

Most of the week will be quiet. Aidan has speech therapy, and I have to take Liam to the dentist one morning. I hope to do a bit of last minute shopping in our local area, but hooray, the online shopping is almost done (online shopping is just as stressful to me as store shopping; the key advantage is that I don't have to drive 120 miles and go from store to store with a bunch of other wild-eyed harried types).

The academic priorities for this week:

Math

• Sean ought to do some sort of review and then make out a page to send to Kolbe for the first quarter evaluation.
• For Kieron, I want to telescope through the rest of the chapter on Decimals, and then be able to do a couple of days review when we start in January.

Advent Unit:

• Work on Jesse Tree symbols
• Sean keep reading The LIfe that Changed the World (about 3 more chapters would be nice)
• Kieron could maybe read this too.
• Continue discussing Baltimore Catechism.
• Sean copy quotes from Treasures of the Vatican King of Kings; Kieron memorize part of it.
• Kieron read some of the Christmas stories at the Baldwin Project

Greek and Vocabulary --

• continue (Kieron may be able to finish Book Two so I'm trying to decide what to do with him after that)

Latin

• Review -- I need to organize all their cards a bit better -- do that today!

Progym

• Each do a written narration from reading. Sean maybe do a wider-view one on one of his books so far?

Here is the checklist I am going to try out with them. It is sort of like this one that I used last spring when we were powering down for summer.

Days 74 and 75

I guess I didn't get around to logging the day yesterday? At least, I can't find it.

Sean made it to the end of Chapter 7 in Jacob's Algebra. On Monday he gets a break from math. Tuesday and Wednesday, I want to go over chapter 7 again and do a cumulative review to send into Kolbe.

He also did:

• Greek
  
• Vocabulary
  
• The Life that Changed the World
  
• Screwtape Letters
  
• Church's Aeneid
  
• Latin declension – I had him place the flash cards first, THEN do a written test which he aced. This is the first time I've tried it that way and it seems to work.
  

 

Kieron

• For the past couple of days, has only done one lesson of math, and LOTS of reading. He is on the second book of the Archives of Anthropos which I started to read aloud to him only two days ago.
  
• Because of this, Sean's work can take a back seat next week while I focus on Kieron.
  

 

Little Ones, and family activities.

• Aidan continues to play often with his counting felts.
  
• Yesterday, the five younger kids ALL played a monster game inspired by Signs. Yes, even Clare the almost-18 year old. Ah, I love homeschooling! This is called dramatic narration and includes many other life skills as well.
  
• Paddy has gotten into the Frog and Toad books again. I love them myself. I never did this with the other kids because it felt too "teachery" but with him I have been pointing out words and letters and asking him if he can find a certain word on the page. He really has a lot of readiness skills in place but is not quite at the level where working systematically at it would be a good idea.
  

 

• Today we have homeschool Stations of the Cross, and then Liam comes via Amtrak. Hooray!
  

Week 15 in Review

Week 15

We had most of the week at home again – just the usual errands, no big time consuming trips to town for specialist appointments. I was starting to power down for the holiday so I didn't really push too hard to do things beyond the core curriculum. Yet the pace ended up quite lively even with a more relaxed feeling to the days. Next week we are going to end early in the week (Wednesday). So I'm writing this out today, a bit early.

We got snow last week and it has stuck, so the four boys have gone outside to sled every single day. They've also been pretty good resources with chores around the house – they have daily and weekly chores as a routine but I have been trying, out of necessity, to get them involved in all the "other" things around here besides the basic maintenance. So this week Kieron made brownies, for example, and they have all been helping me care for the dog, who had surgery this week and is requiring extra care.

I think I'll try this review by child rather than subject, like Aquitaine Academy, and see if I like it that way better.

Sean is 14

• In general, I am focusing on including study skills in my teaching for him. The goal of this is to teach him the "tools" to attack different types of books and materials. He can narrate and pick out main topics, etc, but I want to get him to the level where he is able to evaluate both his own understanding and the method or approach of the book he is reading. (After Christmas I am going to start him on "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler but right now I'm just finding out where he is at already and trying to give him some exposure to the concepts).
  
• For Math, he is on Chapter 7 of Jacob's Algebra, which is about Simultaneous Equations. This is more challenging and new to him than past material and we had a couple of days of struggle. I worked with him on identifying the verbs in the directions, because one of his areas of difficulty is with reading directions by himself and translating them into action. Once I explain them he is usually all right but presently he is dependent on me to translate them. Of course, in high schools and universities all over the country, teachers teach material extensively before expecting a young person to apply it, but one of the virtues of the homeschool is that you can teach them to do this as you go.
  
• He continued his reading curriculum: Book of Discovery, Stories from Virgil by A Church, Screwtape Letters – I don't think he got to Earth Science this week. I had him read a couple of chapters of the Gospel of Luke and he is on section 3 of The Life that Changed the World (about the world in Jesus's time). He wrote notes on a couple of these and did discussion/narrations with others. For free reading he read The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Elusive Pimpernel, and one I can't remember (revenge of the Pimpernel?? : )).
  
• He also watched with his siblings several Shmalayan movies they got from the library – Signs, The Village, and Sixth Sense.
  
• For Latin, we continued with Lesson 11 in the Memoria Press syllabus for Henle Latin 1. So he is on the third declension. I have him review the declension daily and then we usually pick a few items from 2 or 3 different exercises in Henle, so he is doing various things with the material during a lesson.
  
• He continued Greek and Vocabulary. He is on Lesson 67 of Vocabulary and page 98 – which is midway through Lesson 21 – in Hey Andrew Book 3. Hey Andrew moves EXTREMELY slowly but Greek is not our main area of emphasis for languages right now so this gives him something to do independently. These two subjects he does as a routine first thing in the morning, which provides a sort of warm-up for the more difficult subjects.
  
• We didn't do many memory cards this week. I'm planning to make some more this holiday and organize the ones I have so they are easier to access.
  
• I started him on the first lesson of the Yellow Composition Workshop (Sadlier). This is about the writing process. One of the peculiarities of my teaching style is that I need some book for the child to follow – so it's hard to do programs like Classical Writing, which I love, because they are written towards the teacher and I have a hard time simply teaching. My strength is in flexing or working with a book or resource which the child and I can follow together, and I can adapt. I hate most standard writing curriculums. This one is all right and simple enough for me to be able to flex it and use it as a spine or core resource. So I'm going with it.
  
• He lifted weights with his father 3 times this week and seems really internally motivated.
  

 

Kieron is 11

• In general, we are working on his fluency in handwriting. I gave him an amateur diagnosis of dysgraphia and asked Aidan's OT for suggestions. She thought he should go back to what old 19^th century penmanship books call the "Principles" – ie, the elements that make up letters. The OT recommends Handwriting without Tears and I like it too – HWT calls the principles Curves, Lines and Slides (diagonals). So all this week he has been drawing curves. M goal here is to train his muscle memory and break him of the habit of reversing letters. In all other ways he is on grade level or sometimes quite a bit above, but in handwriting he probably functions as a 2^nd grader.
  
• For Math, he is on Lesson 8 of MCP Math F. This is about decimals – place value, estimating, adding and subtracting. We had more trouble than I expected with place value; I think partly because of the holiday excitement which seems to distract him more than the older kids. But it is easy stuff, no calculating, so it hasn't taken much time to teach.
  
• He has not done much Latin and he only did Greek a couple of times this week.
  
• His reading:
  
• He has read almost all the books in the Advent basket. I only have a few left to give him.
  
• He downloaded three Thornton Burgess books from the internet and printed them and finished reading them all.
  
• He is listening to Redwall books on tape.
  
• And I am reading aloud The Sword Bearer by John White while he exercises on the bike.
  
• For science, he read a book called Weather and one called Weird Weather, from the library. He did a couple of experiments and has expressed a wish to do more. I gave him Janice van Cleave's books to look through and he was browsing through them, but I don't know if he found anything. This weekend I am going to look for more experiment books for him to look through.
  
• I have been going through the Baltimore Catechism chapter on the Incarnation with him, and discussing the concepts, hoping to get his doctrine down just a bit better.
  

 

Aidan is 8 and functions like a 5-6 year old.

• He has had so much fun with his "numbers" as he calls them – the flannelboard counting set that came in the mail a couple of days ago.
  
• He did the HWT letterforms a couple of days this week. He was able to do an A for the first time (he has trouble processing diagonals, perhaps because of midline crossing over issues).
  
• He drew some straight across lines though on some Kumon worksheets.
  
• I read him some Bible stories (at his request).
  
• He played several times with playdough, set up a "coffee shop", and helped me bake a couple of times.
  
• He had occupational therapy this week but no speech therapy because the weather prevented the SLP from coming up.
  

 

Patrick has just turned 5

• He did most of the things that Aidan did, above.
  
• I read to him for about an hour, sometimes more, a day.
  
• He can pick out some words in books and yesterday was "reading" from Frog and Toad (just reciting from memory and putting his finger on the right word).
  

 

Forecast for next week:

• Oldest son will be home so I expect I had better keep it short and simple for the academics, for various reasons. We will close down on Wednesday or Thursday (planning Wednesday for the last day, but prepared to use Thursday as a catch-up day if they are too sluggish on the other days).
  
• I'd like to have more time to play games and pay attention to the family.
  
• Phasing down/reviewing focus for those three days – not expecting to break much new ground.
  
• Focus on Advent and understanding Christmas.
  
• I am going to start a list of things I want to focus on in January when we resume. We are almost halfway through the year. Good progress for us!

Aidan and his Flannelboard

Aidan just loves these counting felts that I mentioned in the last post. He has been playing with them all day. For a child with sensory and developmental issues, the tactile (and non-plastic) nature of them, plus the bright colors and concreteness, are very attractive.



There is a simple workbook included in the package (picture below). Very simple, more for a preschooler than a kid Aidan's developmental age. But you could use them as Montessori type command cards. I can think of all sorts of things to do with the "numbers", as Aidan calls them -- color, shape, sequencing (patterns), categorization -- plus adding and subtracting.

Generally speaking, for abstracting the universal from the material. CF this cute video Elmo vs Aristotle made by some students at TAC.



I got them from the Felt Source. It would also be easy to make my own shapes (here is a handbook online and I'm sure there are all kinds of other resources). But the prices were reasonable for buying the ready-made ones, and though the felt is not all-natural, the feeling of it isn't so phoney, to me, as that of plastic or enamel-painted wood.

I told my kids that flannelboards were a staple of my years of going to Sunday School as a child from an evangelical Protestant background! But only the teachers got to handle the flannels, and the stories were usually a bit contrived.

..."Here is Joseph.... his father Jacob.... gave him a .... many-colored coat..... his brothers.... were very angry." (the ellipses are where the teacher scrambled to get the new visual on the board.

Just a bit twaddly, though it must have had an effect since I still have all those Bible stories down cold. Probably more from my mom reading aloud and my later independent readings though, than from that hour a week of crafts and stories and cute little songs.

I have some Bible story felts that I am going to introduce later when the thrill of the counting ones have worn off a bit.. But I'm going to present them rather than do the Sunday School thing. ...let the kids handle them. I imagine that the Bible figures won't be nearly as interesting to Aidan as the numbers and multiple pictures of the counting set. But we will see; now that he has fallen in love with the felt idea maybe I can use the Bible figures to introduce some of the stories he isn't developmentally ready to have read or told to him in abstract.

Day 73

 

Today was a good homeschool day, even though the kids and I have all been going to bed ridiculously late. I was up after midnight and found that they had just finished watching Signs (they are on a Shmalayan trail right now) and Kieron was listening to an audiocassette (Mossflower).

I was up at 7 am and Aidan was up too. So I gave him the small flannelboard and counting set that came in the mail yesterday. I ordered these more or less on impulse a week ago – not impulse, so much as intuition – and I was right, it was a stratospheric hit. Not only were the objects exactly the sort of thing he loves – pumpkins, kitties, snowmen, ladybugs – but the whole tactile experience and making them fit on the felt board kept him busy and happy all morning. There was a bit of tension when Paddy got up and wanted to join in, but there were enough of the manipulatives for even Kieron to have some as well as the two littlies.

It was interesting to see how differently they played. Aidan likes to arrange them on the board and count them; Paddy was categorizing them by type and making them take part in imaginary games.

Meanwhile—

Sean

• Greek
  
• Vocabulary
  
• Math (went well but took a long time – I guess an hour is about right for a highschooler)
  
• The Life that Changed the World (about Jesus and the background information)
  
• Screwtape Letters
  
• I think he read the book of Discovery too.
  
• Then for Latin, I had him try to translate in writing from Latin to English, using one of the much earlier passages in the book. Oh my, he bombed pretty badly. I did not really prepare him for the difficulties, plus he is used to working with me orally (and probably picking up on my subtle cues, as John Holt describes in his books). Anyway, the idea was great but next time I will have to approach it differently and way farther back in the book.
  
• He and Clare and Brendan talked about Signs, so that is literary analysis for today.
  
• We also got into a discussion about Tim Tebow in relation to homeschooling role models and California law, which doesn't allow homeschooled kids to play varsity. I talked a bit about the article on Tebow's past, when his mother didn't want to abort him even though she had taken some heavyduty medications for some parasitic illness she got as a missionary. Brendan was very struck by this and said, "The Boy Who Lived."
  

I am going to have him do copywork from a little book called King of Kings with italic scriptural quotes and fine art pictures from the Vatican collection.

I also want him to read the first chapter of Sadlier Composition Workshop. Not a perfect solution – here is where my logistical problems trip me up. I can't get their writing program up off the ground, so in the meantime I'm going to have him read through this book that Kolbe uses for the core of their high school composition program. It's OK – just not great. But the format may be helpful to get Sean started on some usage and compositional basics while I'm trying to get past my writing-teacher block.

Kieron

He hasn't done anything yet; I was so busy this morning and he was just playing with the boys. I forgot to mention that the other day he also made one of those tornadoes in a bottle – Aidan loves it.

I have a checklist for him which I will type out here – it's sort of loose since for him, I'm already powering down for the holiday season. So I thought we'd experiment with some variety.

Kieron's Checklist

• Choose a science book from the basket (weather and continent formation books from the library)
  
• Choose a book from the Advent basket – tell about it.
  
• Do a snow activity from the lapbook (first, survey the information at the front – then choose the minitbook that you want to try).
  
• Math – also, write backwards curves and then when you get a rhythm going, start making some 2's (he still transposes these a lot).
  
• Thinking Skills
  
• Read 2 pages of the Baltimore Catechism on the Incarnation – then discuss with Mom.
  

All four of the younger boys are outside in the snow again right now.

Day 72

Today, we had to get up early to drop Frodo, the dog, off at the vet for surgery.

Sean

• Algebra – this was the most time consuming one of the day – graphing simultaneous equations – lesson 7.4
  
• Greek
  
• Vocabulary
  
• Latin – reviewed 3^rd declension paradigm, then did bits of exercises 35 and 36. I have been having him do parts of 2 or 3 exercises, rather than simply 1 whole thing, for the sake of variety.
  

He read and narrated:

• Book of Discovery
  
• Screwtape Letters
  
• Stories from Virgil
  

 

Kieron

• Reading Thornton Burgess stories he downloaded from the internet.
  
• Math – decimals to thousandths' place.
  

Come to think of it, that's about all he's done – he is upstairs playing, so I had better bring him down again so we can finish! I will give him some of the Advent books I found yesterday, perhaps, and maybe even the Bible World book Sean has been reading.

Later today Aidan has speech therapy, so I want to review with him.

We are all a bit unmotivated about lessons – Christmas is close, Liam will be home this Friday and it is simply difficult for them to stay on task.

Learning Log

Strewing works. I got those weather books from the library and pretty soon Kieron came up with one of them and wanted to try one of the experiments. So this evening he did it (it involved making steam come out of an empty soda bottle to show how clouds formed). He had trouble at first, and Clare ended up helping him.

Paddy asked a bunch more questions tonight as we read through Bible Stories to Read Aloud.

The older kids watched The Village (Sean hadn't seen it). Earlier, Mary Poppins was on regular TV and Aidan just LOVED it; thought it was hilarious. Aidan played with playdough this afternoon; we also made a puzzle together; and he found his brace and was SO proud he kept bringing it up all evening.

Brendan has been discussing plans for the future with me and has in general been more open and communicative (and restless too). I wish I was better at this mothering thing but I don't think parents have to be perfect to raise OK kids.

Sean weightlifted with his dad. It is interesting that he actually seeks Kevin out every other day to get him to spot him. In other words, he has internal motivation for this, for whatever reason.

Just a few things I wanted to note. I am trying to pay a bit of attention to the natural things going on around here. Oh, and I keep forgetting to mention that Clare and Sean have been on a Scarlet Pimpernel trail -- we have three of the books around the house and they have been reading those, along with Clare playing the Scarlet Pimpernel musical tunes from YouTube again and again. She continues to read the Aubrey/Maturin books too and comment on them as she goes.

Winter has such a nice pace. I don't know anything nicer than being snowed in, with a fire going, lots of books around, limited travel (only simple local errands where you meet the familiar local people), and projects in various stages of completion all over the place. By spring we're ready to be a bit more active, but winter, when Aidan's not sick, is definitely a delight (so far he has stayed healthy, Deo Gratias).

Day 71

Sean

• Algebra chapter 7
• Greek
• Vocabulary
• Discovery of New World
• Stories from Virgil
• Screwtape Letters

Kieron

• Math -- decimal place value
• Writing curves -- focus on fluency
• Read Christmas Supplement in Faith and Life
• Greek
• drew a dragon from the Ralph Masiello book... with Paddy watching admiringly.

I find that Kieron has read all of the Jesse Tree, plus most of Nicholas the Wonderworker, and the Glorious Impossible and the book on How Artists View Nature. So I went and dug out some more Advent-related books and put them in a basket to pull from during the next week or so. I will try to list them some other time.

Aidan and Paddy

• Handwriting without Tears Letterforms
• Numbers games (counting, adding, subtracting puzzle cards)
• Drawing lines (from Kumon tracing workbooks)
• I read Aidan some Bible stories
• Paddy -- several books

Aidan's OT came and they did cranio sacral therapy and worked some more with the letterforms. Aidan has severe problems making diagonals and particularly, joining them. He can't make the lines go the right way even with a model in front of him, even if he gets to actually place the lines on the model. So we are working mostly on A's and N'.

The older boys went outside and sledded for a long time.

Then I took Brendan and Kieron to the library and the store. Brendan and Kieron bought a couple of things at the market, and at the library I got some books about weather and continental shifts, written for children, for Kieron's science focus this month.

Now they are upstairs playing a ball game.

I made some cards using these Advent Reflections for the Jesse Tree. I am trying to figure out a way to put them up but haven't managed yet. I have already made all the ornaments but Kieron wants to wait until we get the Christmas tree, to hang up the symbols. So for now I thought we could just have a sort of Montessori nomenclature-type activity where we match and use them as topics for discussion.

Clare got some Christmas music from the library to put together a CD for the swing dance over at the parish hall after Christmas. So we are listening to this now in the background.

Day 70

Today we woke up to snow! So the kids went out to play in it and the day took a different shape.

Clare and Sean and Kieron started playing with Legos. This was so unusual that I just had to go with it. Clare ended up making a whole stop action film with her camera and the Legos. I think the film is based on the Magnificent Seven.

The younger three kids came in and out of the house, sledding and so on.

Sean did his Greek and Vocabulary. I had him do Math which turned out to be really difficult -- subtracting simultaneous equations. When I tried to help him I ran into problems too, for some reason.

Kevin spent the morning working on his model train -- it's his pattern to have seasons of hours and hours of work (when he's finalling a product; he is a computer game designer and a couple of months ago he was working basically 70 hours a week) and then some times during the beginning of a new product when he seems not to be working much at all directly on the game.

He's watching a video about model train building, too.

We can't go to our normal Stations and homeschool meeting, because of the snow and our car isn't winter-ready yet. If I get the motivation I may do some baking this afternoon because it warms up the kitchen (which is next to the garage and usually kind of cold and draughty in the winter) and makes the house feel even cozier. We have the fire blazing and I sat in front of it with the laptop and wrote out plans and other things.

A little later I am going to have Kieron do a bit of math (I am going to try previewing a chapter and its objectives ahead of time, since the Ignatian manual says that previews help build understanding). Also I will ask him about his recent reading, and show him the Jesse Tree ornaments, which I laminated and backed, and perhaps have him look through some of the craft books for ideas of what to do.

Kieron made waffles today, and I read to Paddy.

ETA: The younger four played outside in the snow for a loooong time. Clare finished her stop-action Lego movie and we saw the premiere and trailer ;-). I did the chapter preview for math with Kieron (he LOVED the idea of doing a summary ahead of time) and then he did some oral division problems (his fluency has improved). Then I had him do some curves and diagonal lines on paper, and we also looked at the Jesse tree symbols and we both tried to figure out what they stood for (then he went to consult the MacCaughrean book and told me what he found)

Brendan helped me fix a shelf today and is keeping the hearth stocked with logs.

Week in Review

I like these Weekly Reports that many bloggers are doing, so I decided to try to do one for this blog. I haven’t been writing much on here but I miss the community when I’m away. So here goes — this is Week 14 in our homeschool but only my first week trying the report.

First of all, my three youngers are watching a Pokemon video while I type this. How sad is that? We have cut back on screen time for Advent but today was a bit of a chaotic day with lots of activity. Plus, we have a new laptop (ruby red) and my husband got a wireless LAN going today so I am typing beside the fire.

Here are charts showing our appointments for the week past and the progress charts for the “3Rs” subjects. You can see that we are staying roughly on track, but Logic is slipping. My mind obviously is telling me that formal logic isn’t quite as crucial as the rest of it.

Son, Sean, age 14
Son, Kieron, age 11

I have two other sons in grades kindergarten and special education grade 1, plus a daughter who is a senior in high school, but I’m just going to focus on the middle ones for now.

Here are the links to the individual days (honestly, I’m not expecting you to go look– but rather than write out all the little details here, it’s easier to just make the links):

Day 65
Day 66
Day 67
Day 68
Day 69

To sum it up, we got into the swing of Advent this week. Both the boys read several books to do with Bible history and the Incarnation. We tried to spend some extra time discussing doctrine and tradition and bringing out seasonal materials like this Advent Tree and a wreath.

The father of the household is involved in a new hobby — model railroad building — he spent some rebate $$$ to get some supplies. So we have a proto-railroad upstairs in the loft, which is big enough to absorb a 5 by 6 setup. To absorb it though, I did some furniture arranging and of course if you give a mom a furniture-rearranging imperative, she is going to want to vacuum out the corners and reorganize the toybox, too. Anyway, it’s been a household week, and you know, rearranging the house plus a new season of the liturgical and earth year add up to a certain glamor in the air. It makes us more excitable than usual. And oh, that’s right, a 5 year old’s birthday with all the associated cake and goodies will do that, too!

That’s it for this week. I think our especial area of progress was in including more writing in our homeschooling. We still do far more reading than writing, but writing is getting a bit more fluent and useful in our daily lives.

The weather is changing — it’s been unseasonably warm and bright recently, but now we are having rain, and snow is forecast for the near future in our corner of the California Sierras.

The Pokemon video just ended, so I think it’s time to close down. I start the new week tomorrow, not on Monday; I think it was JoVE at Tricotomania that asked why homeschoolers have to do normal school weeks, and it’s a good point. “Starting” on Friday lets me have a slightly different focus than when we “end” on Friday and start on Monday. Learning, of course, goes on all the time. I was going to try to write something about the informal learning that took place this week but this has gone on long enough already.

Week in Review

I put the summary for the Week in Review over at Every Waking Hour.

Planning for Week 15

So, as the five year old gently breathes in slumber and the hail pounds on our roof, and I sit in bed with this laptop (so cool) I am thinking I ought to plan for next week. Next week starts tomorrow, on Friday; continues throughout the weekend, though we don't do any formal academics for those days; and carries through next Thursday.

Usually I just jot down page number goals for the week, but just for variety's sake I thought I would try to do it differently this time, as a narrative. Hopefully it won't be too confusing; but if it is, we can just keep doing the basic "next thing" all next week, so it won't be too bad.

I am thinking that we have two weeks left in the term, but week 16 will gradually turn more and more into games and art and cooking and informal things because Liam will be home and we will be getting into the holiday. I would like to journal!

Math

Kieron starts chapter 8, on decimals. I want to start having him do a long division problem every day, since we skipped lightly over that chapter and it will likely come again in this chapter in some form.

Sean continues chapter 7 in Algebra. It looks like he can finish up just a bit after Liam gets home for Christmas break. So at that point I think I will do a bit of review with him and then we'll close down for the break on the 20th. Kieron's chapter on decimals will be finished at just about the same time.

That review I mentioned for Sean ought to be written out fairly so I can send it in to Kolbe.


Latin

Sean has resumed Lesson 11 in Henle. He can continue; and work on memorizing the third declension form. I am going to start Kieron on the third declension form, but go back quite a bit in the book and pick up at his easy comfort level, in order to consolidate and build confidence. Memoria Press says that it's better to go slowly, even repeating several times, than to rush through and have kids who fear and loathe the language.

I think I will use the Language Lessons to reinforce the grammar in Henle (details remain to be worked out).

Greek and Vocabulary/Spelling--

continue. Kieron is still in penmanship limbo. I was going to start him with SWR but hate to do it until the curves and lines are just a bit more fluent. Not sure exactly what to do about that. I've let the spelling tests for Sean drop. I think I need to have him do a comprehensive review of the whole lot of words; spelling and meaning; to send in to Kolbe.

Progym

Oral composition for Kieron (narration and learning to organize his thoughts in writing structure; I write down things for him).

Sean write a 3 paragraph paper from a topic of his choice, and continue notes narrations and copywork/dictation every day as the situation requires. Focus for this on writing to learn and remember. Focus for the 3 paragraph paper on structure and on expressing some sort of an argument in written form.

For me -- try to write some essays in progym form, for practice, and work on my story!!!!

Religion

Focus on Advent. Religion takes top priority this month. The Jesse Tree and story of Jesus are the main focal points. Also, the doctrine about the Incarnation. Books they are reading:

Sean-- The Life that Changed the World, Gospel of Luke.
Kieron -- The Jesse Tree, St Nicholas the Wonderworker, the Very First Christmas, sundry books from Advent shelf.

For doctrine -- Baltimore Catechism, Divinity cards, and perhaps Pocket Catechism and Baltimore Catechism explained. I had Sean copy out some of the Penny Catechism; it might be good to do this with a nicer-sounding catechism, like the St Pius X one.

I would like Sean to get up to the Incarnation in his Book of Discovery if possible. He is also continuing to read the Screwtape Letters -- not much to do with the season but he seems to be enjoying the book.

Vatican Treasures -- artwork and scripture.


I can't remember if Sean's already read the Bronze Bow?

Science

Takes a back burner for now. A couple of times a week Sean is reading Earth Science. I'm having Kieron look up topics in the Encyclopedia. I'm trying a method of having Sean memorize a few basics to do with the Earth Science topic, and having Kieron memorize the same thing too.

Geography -- I am thinking we will bring the atlases downstairs and just look through them a page at a time.

Art, Crafts and Music -- I wanted to have a lot of that this month. Realizing that, I realize I am not making that happen. I wanted to have a quieter, slower approach to our work this month, and mingle the academics with taking care of bits and pieces of our household. Little jobs like polishing one section, etc. .... concentrating on care rather than getting a whole lot done. The art approach was supposed to echo this. Actually, it's been happening a bit but I've been feeling troubled about the slowness rather than celebrating it. Hmm, something to ponder.

Also, I'd like to have some conversations about the meaning of Advent and Christmas. I will look at the Glorious Impossible and see if that has some questions to ponder together.

I guess that is it for now since it looks like my battery is running low. Still raining hard out there!

Old Exam Questions for 6th grade

I found these old exam questions, based on PUO-type exams, that I made for my 2 children who were then in 5th and 6th grade (they are now 17 and 19 years old).

I thought it was interesting to come across these just after I did exams with my present 6th grader, who was back then about 4 or 5 years old.

The other thing that was interesting is that my 19 year old saw the papers on my table and started reading them, then answering them as he went along. Some of the questions are obviously general cultural literacy. But it was surprising how he could still answer most of the history questions even after so many years. I think that is probably support for Charlotte Mason's literature-based method.

All the books mentioned were books read that first half of the year, so the kids were doing a lot of reading. Brendan still remembered almost all of the books and also could identify almost all of the quotes.

Aidan was less than 2 years old at this time and very care-intensive, G Tube fed and needing oxygen at intervals, and developmentally about 9 months old. This kind of exam took a lot of energy for me to put together back then, and I don't think I tried it again that year.


HISTORY

Choose one of these saints and tell something about his or her life work and character.

• St Dominic, St Anthony, St Edmund Campion, St Hyacinth, St Therese of Lisieux, St Joan of Arc, St Catherine of Siena, St Francis Xavier

Identify:

• Whose mother dreamed about a barking dog?
• Who travelled to Japan to be a missionary?
• Who lived during the reign of Elizabeth I?
• Who went to war to save France?

Choose one of these martyrs and tell what country and under whose rule they were killed.

• St Thomas a Becket, St Thomas More, St Edmund Campion, St Paul Miki, st Joan of Arc.

Three of these saints were contemporaries(lived at approximately the same time) while one lived later. Pick out the one who lived later.

• Dominic Guzman, Francis of Assisi, Edmund Campion, Hyacinth of Poland

Put MA by the ones who lived in the middle ages and RE by the one who lived in the Renaissance.

Put these Japanese events in order:

• civil war, period of isolation, St Francis Xavier comes to Japan

Write a sentence about three of the following.

• The Crusades, The Black Death, the Tartars, Oda Nobunaga, Richard the Lionhearted, Henry II of England, the Ring of Fire, The Saracens, the Albigensians

Choose one of the following religions or heresies and tell something about it.

• Shinto, Buddhism, Albigensianism, Islam

Identify the quotes:

1. "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?"
2. If all the swords of England were pointed at my head, you threats could not move me."
3. "The questions of a fool do not anger a wise man, but the answers of a wise man may anger a fool."
4. "The quality of mercy is not strained, but droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven."
5. "A pound of flesh."
6. "In the raging fire of the world there is no peace."

Geography

• On a map of Asia, mark Japan, the Pacific Ocean, Korea, and China plus as many other areas as you can.
• On a map of Europe, mark as many countries as you can, also the Mediterranean and the English Channel.

Readings


Choose one of the following Shakespeare plays and tell something about the story.

• Merchant of Venice, MacBeth, Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Define:

• samurai, shogun, bushido, chivalry, crusade, heresy, tsunami, kamikaze, quixotic, martyr

Choose one saint's book for a review:

• St Hyacinth, Pope John Paul II, St Dominic, St Edmund Campion, St Francis Xavier, St Anthony of Padua, Heroes of God's Church, Hunters of Souls, If all the Swords in England

Choose one other book:

• Lord of the Rings, Archives of Anthropos, Winds of Light, Bugles and Bonnets, Seven Sleepers, We Were There with Richard the Lionhearted, Knight's Castle, Time Garden

SCIENCE

• Choose one kind of snake, one kind of other reptile or mammal, and one kind of insect or spider.
• Tell what you can about it -- what you have seen yourself, if you have seen one in life or in a picture, and what you know from reading.
• Draw a picture or diagram.

,

Weekly Charts

Here is a picture of this week, which was quieter than for several weeks past.

Here also is shown the progress in the basic subjects for Year 6 and Year 9.

Language Arts – Lesson Series for Second Week

(based on ILL #200-203)

Looking more through ILL, I am seeing that it would be helpful in dealing with CW Aesop. It emphasizes a lot of the same things, but allows for some variety.

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

Lesson 1

Choose a poem to be memorized (seasonal, possibly)

• What colors would be used in painting the picture suggested in this poem?
  Describe the picture

• Memorize the poem

• Copy it out from memory.

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

Lesson 2

• Write a letter and its reply (characters from a story you have read or made up)

• OR write to one of your penpals.

This is a single activity that could fit in pretty much anywhere as a break from regular activities.

You could use the CW Aesop model story for ideas.

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

Lesson 3 Picture Study

(possibly the Angelus or a Giotto; also, currently we have checked out a book called How Artists view Nature that has a variety of paintings contained)

• Discuss what the painting is showing. What was the artist trying to show with the painting?

• What colors are most in evidence

• Look at the light and the shade. Where is the light falling? Where is it coming from? Where is the shade heaviest?

• Notice what is in the foreground. How did the artist show it as the main focus of the painting (what design decisions did he make?)

• Describe the background.

• What mood does the picture have? IE how does it make you feel?

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

Lesson 4

This lesson is about compound subjects and predicates.

• This is an easy concept. To prepare for this, make up a few sample sentences possibly based on the poem and model from earlier in the week.

• You could have had the child convert the earlier poem to prose, which is a very Ignatian exercise, and use this paraphrase to invent sentences.

• Have the child identify subject and predicate and the conjunction (joining word).

• Then have him make up a couple of his own sentences to illustrate the concept.

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

Day 69

I thought I would try to list this day chronologically rather than by child. I haven't done that for a while.

We have been getting up later than usual for some reason -- in my case I've been staying up later and the kids have been fighting colds, I guess. I also notice that if we don't have to go out of town in the afternoon, it's more tempting to let the day take its natural course. Which ought to be fine, of course! So today I got downstairs to start the day at about 8:30. Aidan was already awake so we made breakfast together and I set out some of his "work" -- pink cards and number cards, and he got out his handwriting book as well.

Kieron and Paddy got up and started to play.

I asked Kieron to move their beds which are upstairs so that I could get to the Advent and Christmas stuff. I had Kieron and Aidan clean up the toys that had fallen behind their beds and then I did some sweeping. Meanwhile Kieron rediscovered the Christmas books which he immediately sat down to with delight.

Since they were all so wrapped up in the day and I really needed to get clean I zipped off to take a quick bath. Meanwhile Sean got up and started working on his Greek and Vocabulary.

I told the guys to do their weeklies. Then I brought the wreath downstairs (I know, it's already the 6th, but we are slow!). This caused the day to go rather wrong because Aidan wanted to play with it and Clare told him not to. I was trying to start Sean on Algebra and Aidan got very upset and to put it mildly, had a meltdown. I am not sure if moving the furniture plus the wreath etc were just too many changes for him. The aftershocks of his ill mood lasted for some time and made it difficult to focus on Algebra. We did various things to try to change the situation but it wasn't until Clare put on the Clancy Brothers that Aidan was able to get a grip on himself again.

Meanwhile, I had given Kieron a checklist of things to do (easy things because of the feast day and because he finished his math chapter yesterday). He started right in reading Nicholas the Wonder Worker and read it for a long time.

After math, I had Sean do a free writing exercise. He was not too thrilled with this. I told him to free associate on paper for a few minutes and gave him the explanation that it helped to pin down ideas that he could develop later for a paper. He reluctantly did it but obviously felt his space was being a bit invaded, which indeed is a reaction that he probably came by through his family lines. He didn't mind us reading it; in fact, that was his favorite part of the whole thing. He just didn't like dumping his brain out on paper. When you're not doing it for your own personal reasons it feels like a psychotherapy session, which is what Clare compared it to.

At that point I set Kieron to writing curves and lines, while I got ready to go exchange Paddy's boots which were too small (before the rain we are getting turns to snow). Then I took Aidan, Kieron and Clare to the store. Meanwhile Brendan of his own volition was getting the deck snow-ready, and cleaning up the front yard and putting tarps on the stacked firewood.

When we got back I gave the boys verbal quizzes on Latin and Geography. They know the Latin pretty well, but we are having some trouble with geography. This hasn't really ever happened before; the older set all knew their geography since Brendan was so into it. I am not talking complicated; they still get countries and continents mixed up at present. But they know their oceans at least.

Then I left the boys to play with their Bionicles while I came upstairs to write this. Clare is trying to figure out what to sing for Christmas at the church (she was asked to do a solo). She is just a bit stressed. The boys followed me and are now wrestling/quarreling on the bed. Brendan is cleaning the bathroom.

Later on I will explain the Jesse Tree to Kieron. We haven't done one before. He loved the MacCaughrean book though and was following me around narrating it yesterday. So hopefully he will like the symbols and the explanations.

This is Thursday so I am going to try out my planning flowchart.

Our laptop came yesterday and Kevin has been spending the day rerouting our local area network. So along with the beds out of place and all the other different things, I suppose I can see why everyone is a bit on the edgy side today. Not that we're all snarling at each other; but we seem to be a bit more extroverted and volatile than we usually are. We introverts seem to need our equilibrium ;-).

Evita was good yesterday, I hear, and tonight Sean has his football awards ceremony, which he is dreading (because he was injured the whole season and didn't really play, therefore he will be humiliated to get an award and all that). He is hoping for a blizzard so we have to stay home.

Progym discussed on Writing and Living.

"I'm also pretty sold on the Progymnasmata. The writing exercises that are standard fare for every other writing program I've ever looked at (Pretend you're a reporter at the first Olympics and write a newspaper article about what you've seen.) make me want to retch.

Other writing programs also seem to have an obsession with eliminating the phrase "he said" from a child's writing forever. The child may not be able to punctuate properly, but by golly, they won't be writing "he said" anymore. Yessirreebob, when people talk they are to breathe, whisper, bellow, intone, interrogate, sigh, scream, utter, mumble, or shriek, but they better not just "say" anything."

Also Using Ancient Exercises in the Contemporary Classroom -- I've never seen this site before. This diagram is cool:

Here is the Quintilian quoted at the bottom part of the diagram.

Day 68

Oh, I am enjoying this quiet week at home. It makes such a difference in the pace of our homeschooling. This was a day of conversation in front of the fire, of laughing and a rhythm of tasks fitting in between discursions. Yesterday was much the same, with the quiet joy of Paddy's birthday thrown in (our tradition is to have quiet birthdays with only family and sometimes a friend family around).

We discussed:

• Whether religion causes more trouble to the world than non-religion? (Kevin raised that one and we kept it up after he went back to the office). We all agree on this so we don't get to hear the "other side" except by Kevin quoting someone or one of us playing "devil's advocate". So it is all permutations of the one side, but is still lively and interesting.
• Then we discussed some other similar question, but have forgotten what it was since I neglected to write it down.

Sean:

• He had no math today, so he did his Greek and Vocabulary, then read Screwtape Letters and Church's Stories from the Aeneid. Then I gave him Luke chapter 1 to read, and had him copy out part of the section on the Incarnation from the Penny Catechism.

• I did Latin with him and Kieron together -- review, declension quiz. This took quite a while and the whole family got into it with discussion of the vocative ("Et tu, Brute?" and "Ave Maria") and pronunciation, etc.

Kieron

• He did his math test, so he gets tomorrow off. I had him read the first page of the chapter on Incarnation in the Baltimore Catechism, then I asked him the questions. Then he started reading MacCaughrean's Jesse Tree, and continued for quite a long time. I had him draw curves and up to down lines.

The Little Ones:

• Mostly playing with Paddy's presents from yesterday -- Katana swords, and Candyland, and a table basketball game.

Then Brendan came out with a box of things he was getting rid off and presented them to the little ones -- we call them "Hobbit presents" after Bilbo's birthday party. This is an Advent and Lent tradition -- decluttering and gettting rid of things, passing them on to someone who can use them. We have talked about it many times through the years (because it's an issue of my own -- detaching from my "treasures" that are just clutter). Obviously Clare and Brendan have internalized it because they do it now independently.

This reminded me to tell the middle ones to try to do the same during Advent. Then this brought up all kinds of family reminiscences, including how I used to pay the older kids to throw away or give away their things. Doesn't that sound crass? but at the time I explained it as a sort of rummage sale or recycling project and tried to show them that things mobilized outwards were more valuable than things piled up around one and cluttering up the mind and heart. Brendan used to cling very ferociously to his mementos when he was young and paying him helped him make concrete the value of negation.

So I will mention it to the middlies later and perhaps help Kieron work through his store of "treasures" and junk. It is nice symbolism for clearing a space for Jesus in the heart and home, too.

So -- a nice informal day. This afternoon Sean will lift weights with his Dad and then Kevin and Clare are going to the production of "Evita" in town -- Clare is really looking forward to it.

Planning Flow Chart

Here is where I get extremely strange and post a flow chart to do with lesson planning. Honestly, I'm almost done doing this, then I will get properly into the business of just actually planning, not planning about planning (Though to be fair I've actually been really planning alongside all this meta-executive-function strategizing, and all these forms are probably a response to the way my imagination has been flooded with Ideas -- perceiving a need to categorize them somehow)

I have gotten out of the habit of lesson planning on Thursday; I think it was during these extremely busy past four weeks that I let this slip, and never picked it up again. Anyway, this is to remind myself of how to go about this.

Visuals help my right brained mind, particularly if they are colorful.

I notice it is a bit like the Getting Things Done flow chart:


I blogged about that a bit over here. Just in case anyone else reading this has a Very Interesting, even Convoluted, Brain like mine. (By the way, when I read Mother Auma's post on her husband's and her personality styles, I was curious enough to google and find this Basic Personality questionnaire (pdf) and fill it out to find I was between a Directing Thinker and a Socializing Thinker -- no big surprise there I guess).

Language Lesson -- year 6

Intermediate Language Lessons is online, I see, on the Google Reader. This is one of those books I've had around the house for years and WANTED to use, but somehow, never could.

I was looking at it today to see if it would offer an approach to a progym-like method that would rely considerably on talking rather than just writing. The book is meant for 4th to 6th graders, so I looked at the last third of the book.

Anyway, I wrote this sort of abstracted form of the first four lessons in the third section. I was thinking that if I took the "schema" and dropped the specific models, then I could fit my own models in there instead. One of the reasons I couldn't make the book work for me in the past was that it didn't seem very integrated with what we were actually doing.

Here it is:

-----------------------
Lesson One

• Read a story about someone worthy of admiration (or the contrary). For example, a parable or a legend.
• What lesson did the author intend to impart in the story?
• Read some lines that support this.
• What good qualities did the hero show? In what actions?
• What reactions did the other characters in the story have to the action?
• How did the antagonist react, and why?
• Write an outline of the story.
• Tell the story from the outline.

----------------------------------
Lesson Two: Subject and Predicate

"The moon is very beautiful."

Explain subject and predicate.

Activity:

• Complete sentences, inventing a predicate to go with the subject.
• Complete sentences by inventing a subject for the written predicate.

(This could be an exercise drawn from the model in the first lesson, so it could be a bit like a form of narration; it is also a bit like cloze activities, which are usually used to help students read for meaning )

------------------------------------
Lesson Three:

Preparation:

• Select two poetic or literary passages, perhaps connected with the model in the first lessons.

Activity:

• Compare and contrast -- style, words chosen, and so on.
• Figure out some of the poetic or literary idioms in the passages
• Write a section from dictation, or copy a favorite part.

--------------------------------------------
Lesson Four: Review

Analyze one of the models above for punctuation. Look for:

• exclamation points
• commas
• apostrophes
• quotation marks
• capitals

Discuss why they are used in this context.

Copy out a few sentences, or have a copy ready made.

• Underline the complete subject.
• Double-underline the complete predicate.

You get the picture -- one possibility would be to have the Nativity story for the lesson One model, then some Christmas poems for the second lesson. And so on.

Day 67

I spent the morning working with Sean, plus getting into a discussion with the teens about the role of literature in education; meanwhile, Kieron played with the little ones. So I'll write out what Sean DID and then what Kieron still is to do.

Sean

--Prayer-- didn't get to it -- I need to collect some kind of a prayer book or something to have handy.

1. Greek
   
2. Vocabulary
3. Math -- he did the summary and review of Jacob's Chapter 6. That means that tomorrow he gets the day off. Pretty soon I am going to get all the algebra Test Masters up till now and have him do some review and then a couple of tests to send to Kolbe since his first quarter is pretty much over.
   
4. Latin -- exercise 34 (first half) plus some vocabulary drill and warm-up declension exercises. He seems to be doing much better after those 3 weeks of review.
   
5. Memory -- order of planets in Solar System (I gave him the list to work on)
   
6. Chores -- tidy room, normal mealtime jobs.
   
7. Reading -- he wanted to read Screwtape Letters. I also gave him a book to read about Jesus's Life (I forget the title of the book; oh well, I'll type it tomorrow). He did a notes narration from it. I asked him some catechism questions about Jesus's life and he did very well.
   
8. Narration or Notes -- on Roman World at time of Incarnation. Also we discussed the simple clergyman at the preface of Screwtape who wonders that the advice in the book seems almost "diabolical" (LOL).
   
9. Free Reading
   
10. Outside or Exercise -- he is going to practice with his Dad later.
    

Kieron has to do:

• Math -- review chapter, then practice writing numbers
• WRiting -- practice writing curves
• Reading -- The First Christmas, and Faith and Life Christmas Supplement
• Latin
• Greek
• Memory: Order of Planets
• Science: Look up Planets in the Encyclopedia
• Free Reading: Book of Dragons ( he already narrated from it yesterday so we have narration covered unless he wants to talk some more)
• Optional art project -- drawing dragons, or dying coffee filters (if we get to it)

The little ones have mostly just been playing. Aidan played pretend birthday games (today is Paddy's birthday and Aidan is very excited about it).

Aidan has some GI issue going on -- he doesn't seem sick but he has been a bit restless. The OT did craniosacral work with him yesterday; also, with Kieron. (She recommended focusing on writing curves and up to down lines to retrain his motor memory so that is what we are going to do).

ETA:

Kieron did the math, Greek, and handwriting, but we did not get to the reading. He did help me wrap Paddy's presents, and has finished Book of Dragons.

Library Run

This is a group of books I got from the library today -- I just liked the way they looked together and also, wanted to make a quick list of them for future reference -- photos are great visual lists! Mostly to do with crafts, Christmas and nature; the dragon drawing book is by Ralph Masiello, a favorite author of ours for years and years, and is beautiful, if you like dragons. We also got the Book of Dragons by E Nesbit and it would have looked nice in the pile too but my 11 year old, the one who is into dragons right now, had already made off with that by the time the pic was taken.

two more forms

Related to this one

the first one is for a single student;

the second is for my crew at a glance.

Sorry about all these, I can get a bit OCD about forms.

Day 66

Today was a hectic but productive day. I think it helps that we don't have any afternoon appointments in town this week. We have several evening events and several appointments closer to the house, but those don't take such a big piece out of the day.

Sean

• Greek
• Vocabulary
• Algebra -- chapter 6 lesson 6
• Screwtape Letters -- he read chapter 8 and we discussed the big picture a bit.
• Earth Science -- read about Saturn, he did a structured narration where he found the main point of each paragraph.
• Book of Discovery -- he read chapter X about Ptolemy but no narration.
• Geography -- continents, and countries of North America.
• Latin -- exercises 31-33
• He is reading Blood Sport and the Unknown Shore for free reading.
• Weekly jobs
  

Kieron

• Catechism quiz particularly facts surrounding Incarnation. We will continue doing this throughout Advent.
• Activity Card -- 65 -- about dictionary meanings.
• Latin -- verbal and card matching drill
• Geography -- continents, and countries of North America.
• Research/Science -- looked up weather in encyclopedia, but instead found Octopuses and Squids and read/narrated.
• Wrote a couple of sentences about squids.
• Math -- dividing mixed fractions. I tried the 3 part lesson I mentioned in my earlier post and it worked pretty well. He still struggled with the writing. I will have to cut down even more on that.
• Weekly jobs.
  

Aidan and Paddy

They both went to town on their activity cards.

• HWT letterforms (Aidan)
• matching words and pictures (pink cards)
• word-building (Paddy)
• simple addition with ladybug cards (Paddy) -- Kieron got involved in this too and we even got to simple multiplication.
• matching Christmas cards (I brought a bunch of old Christmas cards downstairs planning to make some kind of Advent Box, but Aidan got a jumpstart on the idea by transferring his favorite matching activity to the duplicate cards -- hooray for natural learning!)
• writing letters and using ruler (Aidan)

Our day will continue to be lively this afternoon, with an occupational therapist visit scheduled, and a trip to the local store and library, and Paddy's birthday preparations. I wrote a list of things I want to get to this afternoon, since we actually HAVE an afternoon today (can you tell how much nicer things are on the days we don't have to drive over 100 miles???)

--------------------
Here is the checklist I gave Sean, which he seemed to appreciate following (he always likes to have it specified what he is going to do; I'm going to make it into a form later but for right now I'll simply type it out:

--Prayer--

1. Greek
2. Vocabulary
3. Math
4. Latin
5. Memory
6. Chores
7. Reading
8. Narration or Notes
9. Free Reading
10. Outside or Exercise (he alternates weight lifting with bike riding/jumproping/passing the football with his Dad)
    

About the Dysgraphia

Here is some more information, and some helps.
Here's another site.
(I don't know if Kieron actually has the underlying condition, but he certainly has the symptoms. We have worked on this through the years but it seems to be hitting particularly hard this year, partly I suppose since the gap between the cognitive and the mechanical is widening).

Some strategies listed:

1. Encourage students to outline their thoughts. It is important to get the main ideas down on paper without having to struggle with the details of spelling, punctuation, etc

2. Have students draw a picture of a thought for each paragraph.

3. Have students dictate their ideas into a tape recorder and then listen and write them down later.

4. Have them practice keyboarding skills. It may be difficult at first, but after they have learned the pattern of the keys, typing will be faster and clearer than handwriting.

5. Have a computer available for them to organize information and check spelling. Even if their keyboarding skills aren't great, a computer can help with the details.

6. Have them continue practicing handwriting. There will be times throughout a student's life that they will need to be able to write things down and maybe even share their handwriting with others. It will continue to improve as long as the student keeps working at it.

7. Encourage student to talk aloud as they write. This may provide valuable auditory feedback.

8. Allow more time for written tasks including note-taking, copying, and tests.

9. Outline the particular demands of the course assignments/continuous assessment; exams, computer literacy etc. so that likely problems can be foreseen.

10. Give and allow students to begin projects or assignments early.

I'm going to try a few of those and see how they work for him. Then I will move on to some more (there were a LOT listed).

Before I looked it up, I was thinking that I would have him do some review work every day in writing. I noticed that when the math is easy, for example, he has a lot less trouble writing (less reversals, less shaky writing, less dawdling and chewing his pencil) than when its at his level of challenge.

So I was thinking that I ought to simply switch to doing most of his work orally, then have him either:

• Do a bit of written work at an easier level (from last year's math or from earlier in this year)
• Copy out a "fair copy" of the work I've written down for him.
• Have him do math copywork.

I can do the same with spelling... use the earlier spelling words for handwriting remediation, then work with him on the more difficult words.

Same with the progym. As far as the progym goes, the dysgraphia sites say it is important to be allowed to outline and order thoughts at your level of ability rather than your level of mechanical competence. Of course, I can't STOP Kieron from ordering his thoughts all the time, whether I'm teaching this skill or not. But CM/classical methods like narration and the progym will allow easily for this.

Also, on the occupational therapy front -- the crafts will help. Fortunately, he loves crafts.

And I am going to try to have a "warm up" period before we sit down to work, where he does some of the Brain Gym type exercises.

So that is the plan for this week.

Planning Daily Things to Do

I'm going to try printing these out for the first week or so to help me stay on track.

I'll put them on a clipboard.

A lot of activities are regular from one week to another so it wouldn't take much time.

Dysgraphia

I guess Kieron's issue has a name: see Eide Neurolearning: Slow Handwriting.

Here is another article on Sensory-Motor Dysgraphia.

It looks like the coping mechanisms right now are occupational therapy to address sensory-motor issues, alongside of keyboard use to keep the child progressing in higher level skills like paragraph revising, etc.