Day 94

Kieron

• Johny Tremain.
• Creed in Slow Motion "conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary" -- first half of chapter.
• George Washington's World, up to page 28, narrated
• Ways of the Wood Folk, first half of Fox-Ways, commented.
• The Boy Scientist, first 6 pages of Newton's Laws of Motion (chapter 4), commented. This book may run into next year.
• Tennyson, poem #3.
• I'm setting up his math now.

Paddy

• Golden Bible, Noah -- the ark, and the flood
• Paddle to the Sea, chapters 3 and 4.
• 3 poems from Child's Garden of Verses
• He told me about a birthday toy and I wrote it down and had him read it back.

Aidan

• He talked about his Dad going off to town and I wrote it down (3 sentences) and then we went over it a couple of times using phonetic principles.
• He's in a mood -- doesn't like Daddy being gone.

Music (background)

• Mick Malone and Robbie O'Connell -- Irish folk songs.

Year 1 schedule modified from one in the Ambleside files.
Year 1 Schedule (MS Word 2007)

Results of Ambleside Thoughts

I took the Ambleside plans and made a sort of weekly checklist that I am going to use for now.

I couldn't figure out how to approach it with my Year 7 son because we are in early American history and I didn't want to skip ahead. So I put him in the second part of Year 5 at Ambleside. Hopefully it won't seem too easy for him; many of the books are quite suitable for a middle schooler.

There are a couple of places that I changed things from the AO curriculum. In "history tales" there is supposed to be "Trial and Triumph", which isn't a Catholic book. Since Kieron read SO many saints bios last term I think he is all right on church history for now.

Then I added Current Events because we already do that a bit and I want to do more of it; a Year 7 child needs to know something about topical issues.

For Paddy, I'm going to be very slow with the Year 1 material. I figure it can easily take us a year and a half to go through the Year 1 material, so there will be time and space to keep up the literature trails we like to do together.


I put forms for Year 1 and Year 7 up in doc. The Year 7 pages are on the left in jpg so you can see what they look like.

You know, there really isn't all that much reading required.... I'm wondering if I assign too much reading when left on my own. Last term got sort of confusing because I was juggling so much material.... why do I do that? Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this goes.

About Downloadables.

On my sidebar I noticed that Simply Charlotte Mason has a free download called Masterly Inactivity. I don't know if the offer is just for today, but I thought I would mention it!

Also, I wanted to mention that I know some people come to this site for downloads, I think from the Montessori Mom, site. I'm going to try to rearrange this page a bit to make it easier to find the forms.... hopefully soon! There are a lot of excellent free Montessori downloads over at the link there. Probably most of you know about them already, but just in case!

Continent Cards

I made some continent cards (pdf). You can see them on the left.

Here they are as half -sheets, but I didn't like 'em as much that way.

North and South America
Europe and Asia
Africa and Australia
World Map for control, and Labels

(I am afraid the colors aren't consistent and I don't think they match the Montessori color scale either)

They seem a bit bland, but I don't like using too much color toner and this way I figured I could print them out in greyscale and color, if I wanted to.

A few links:

A bit of this and a bit of that has cards for the continent folder.

Continents and Oceans flashcards

Welcome to My World! -- continent lesson plans for 2nd graders



Continent activity for small ones at Montessori at Home.

Some activities to do with the continent folder.

These are fun to look at and so are these.

Outline Maps and a flag theme page

Game Cards for File Folders

I was researching file folder games yesterday -- and made these two very simple board game cards, just to get the hang of it:

Travel-theme Game Board (pdf)
New World Discovery Theme Game Board (pdf)

The way I understand it, from this site, you can just get a set of cards for things you want the child to remember -- vocabulary, etc. -- a die, markers and then go.

Here are a couple of sets of cards I've made for geography and discovery:

Vocabulary for Empires of the Americas
Geography Cards (pdf)



Enchanted Learning has file folder games, and they seem to be popular for use with autistic children.

a couple more things

A couple more forms:

The "unit summary" (blank black and white one in PDF) is an At a Glance form to help me in recording credits for my Year 7 child. I don't really do these by term, except for perhaps the history one. Rather, they are more like "strands" that we pick up and drop during the year.

Also, an assignment chart for my student -- I'm going to try putting these in his binder. So far I've just been writing the daily sheets down on little pieces of paper, which works OK, but I am thinking of transitiioning it over to him a bit more, so I thought he could start getting used to a "homework-log" type format.

Study Log in black and white PDF.

Reading Checklists for History

I made a couple of reading checklists. I am thinking it will be a bit easier to keep track of the things we are reading over a longer time, if I have a checklist filed away in my binder.

For Christ the King, Lord of History (by Anne Carroll) I only used/am using 3 chapters.

Christ the King checklist (pdf)
Usborne "Scientists" (from Book of Discovery) (PDF)

More History Pages

Civilization Page (doc)
Meso-American Page (doc)

I made these to use as outlines when we get to pre-explorer America, probably next term.

The docs include maps and some links to further sources.

They are roughly middle-school level -- I based the questions on California standards for 5th and 7th grade.

History Pages

I made some"pages" for use in review, notebooking, etc.

Explorer Page (pdf)
Event Page (pdf)
Famous Person Page (pdf)


They are much the same except for the questions, so I only put the event page up as a gif.

On the gif, the timeline is fixed at 1500-1700 since that's the period we are studying, but the pdfs have blank timelines.

Sean did something a bit like this when I was starting him off writing short research papers. He would use the worksheet for a starter and then pull out the information to write a simple 1-2 paragraph paper. So I thought I would try something that like with Kieron occasionally.

Week 9 Checklist for Year 1

I made a similar checklist for the younger two, but left it mostly blank because we don't really do many things in order, and I use lots of different books. Here is a doc form in greyscale.

Downstairs Bathroom Checklist

Downstairs Bathroom Cleaning Checklist (doc)

Hallway Cleaning Checklist

Hallway Cleaning Checklist (doc)

This was my house cleaning task for yesterday.

By the way, I wanted to mention that there is some cool vintage clipart at Clipart Etc. I usually look there first for graphics.

Daily Road Map

This turned out a bit blurry on the gif, but it's a sort of daily scheduling worksheet (here in doc).

I am not quite happy with it yet, but thought I'd use it for a bit and then revise it.

Things like Morning Routine are associated with another list which wouldn't fit on this page. I pretty much remember most of the things I do in the morning so I don't usually have to glance at the Morning Routine but it is written out for reference.

Sometimes I wonder if I am making simple things too complicated -- I wonder if my predecessors needed notebooks and the like to keep their lives on track. I guess the answer is yes.

Here's one I found online (pdf).

Reading Lesson Planning Sheet

Reading Rescue Reading Plan for Level 1 (pdf)

I just got the book Reading Rescue 1-2-3 from the library. I am not sure what I think of the reading philosophy yet, but I like some of the ideas very much. They are similar to what I've been doing with Aidan.

The book has different "levels" of readers based on a pre-test. Aidan scored in the early B stage of Level 1 (meaning that he knows all the alphabet sounds and names, but can't really read words yet) and Paddy was at the high C level (he could read the sample quite easily, but made a few mistakes).

This is a slightly changed version of the "Worksheet" which you use to plan or record lessons with the child. I like the way it's organized, though I probably would not ever manage to get either of my boys to sit and learn to read for 30 minutes! But I may use it as a sort of outline or record of what we do over time.

Laundry Room Cleaning Checklist

Schoolroom Cleaning Checklist

Loft Schoolroom (pdf)

Checklist for Curriculum Closet/ Home Office Area

Master Closet and Office Area checklist (doc).

Cleaning Checklist for Master Bathroom

Master Bathroom in PDF.

Getting Aidan's IEP materials up to speed for the year

A partial list of goals for Aidan. Yesterday I finally forced myself to go through all the paperwork from his IEP last spring (was it really that long ago?). Basically, I just looked through the listed goals, rewrote them a bit to make them more like my own, then typed them onto a form where there is room to write notes on HOW to work on the goals (as you see, haven't done that part yet).

Here is a blank goal form in doc. Also, these gifs with Aidan's goals, in docx too.

Also, I rather liked these sample IEP goals. ...the format, I mean, the way the problem is stated and then possible solutions listed, along with improvements made.

I have to write out occupational and physical therapy regimen, too. It is too easy for me to let those things slip, so writing them out gives me ownership and helps shortcircuit my rebellious instincts.

Prequel-- Year 7

I hope this is readable -- you can click on the gif to make it bigger. Also, it's here as a doc.

From the notes:

When I told Kieron we were starting school on Monday, he said something about a “nightmare”. So I started asking him for specific reactions to various things we had done last year, to get an idea of what the “nightmarish” part was for him. I divided it up into columns and then asked about his ideas for making the “nightmare” subject (math) into a better experience….. given that he needed to learn enough math to get by and build on, HOW he thought it would be best to learn it. Then I talked a bit about the “new things” that we didn’t really do last year, but that I planned for this year.

Next time we talk, I will try to give him a preview of what to expect in each subject, and ask for feedback in specific areas.


This worked because Kieron likes talking sessions -- not all of my kids like to analyze things verbally the way he does. Anyway, this is useful to me because I can use it to tailor his work, and I can ask him to look it over and give further feedback later in the year.

Though he didn't say this, I imagine he also is not too thrilled with the *constraint* part of the homeschooling. That is, having one's time locked up to some extent is not generally a favorite thing for kids that age. I am hoping that since he is the oldest homeschooler now and in some ways the format can be looser, that this will suit his more easy-going interactive pace.

I am not counting this as "Day One" because Monday is our official start date.