Day 105, and Week 25

I am a bit bored with just listing what we did on a given day, especially since it's just duplicating what I type out in a Word document. It seems to me that it would be better to save this space for actual notes, though.

If you look at the gif you can see what we got to this week and what we didn't get to. Or you can look at it in doc form.

What we didn't get to on Friday, we usually carry over to Monday which is a light day if everything else is up to date.

Day 104

Kieron

• Bible & Creed Creed in Slow Motion, started chapter 11
• Poetry: Tennyson
• Math chapter 15.1 – negative numbers
• Language Arts Latin p 58
• Artist study wanderer above the mists
• History: This Country of Ours chapter 54 – war in Canada -- narrated and discussed
  
• Exercise or play with guys
• Johny Tremain -- didn't do that because I had phone calls to make, he read GWW and narrated instead
• 2-15 min clean
• Literature: Robinson Crusoe chapter 5 -- narrated
• outdoors went out for a few minutes with siblings

Didn't get to:

• Science: Lab or Research
• recorder

(the day was already feeling a bit packed -- and he did science stuff earlier in the week when he did some magnet projects Brendan decluttered from his closet).

He did quite well on the narrations today and seems to accept the value... so far... I have been having him compare his retention of the readings he DOES narrate, compared with the ones he doesn't.

The first Art Study went well -- I like this artist's mountain pictures, they remind me of Albert Bierstadt's. We looked at it for a bit and he commented spontaneously. He seems to have the kind of mind that does well "dwelling" on something. A more contemplative mindset? I have been trying to narrate after readings myself and I have trouble, so I understand why he finds it difficult.

Paddy

• We are reading Lightfoot the Deer now, having finished Jimmy Skunk.
• I had him draw BIG S's tracing over mine, on construction paper with markers -- this he did much better.

Aidan

• typed and printed out some numbers
• worked on word cards a bit.
• He's going to a PT/OT eval later today.

Day 103

Kieron

• Bible & Creed --remainder of chapter 10 -- discussed
• Poetry: Tennyson --
• Math --Chapter 14.4
• Language Arts --Latin -- adjectives
• Science:The Boy Scientist --did lab instead – magnets
• Ways of the Wood Folk---Merganser Duck -- narrated a portion
• George Washington's World -- Phillis Wheatley, and George and Mary Washington
• Exercised while listening to Johny Tremain
• 2-15 min clean
• Literature: Robinson Crusoe -- chapter 4 -- narrated a portion
• In addition, we read chapter 53 of This Country of Ours, on Bunker Hill, and discussed and narrated.

What we didn't get to (I'm going to start mentioning that because it seems to help me think):

• Outdoors -- didn't get outside -- icy and miserable out there. Maybe I should have us just go out for 10 minutes -- start small just to breathe the air and get a feeling for the weather? (but that will mean I can't be a wimp!)
  
• piano -- didn't get to that

He narrated George Washington's World but not very well. On the other hand his narration of Bunker Hill was pretty good. Obviously we're still adjusting. We talked a bit about retention strategies, like making a visual image in the mind, and also reflecting a bit while reading to check one's attention status (these are things I got from reading that book about the Right Brained Learner -- I don't remember the exact title -- and also there is a list of reading strategies here, and these in PDF and a list of others). He has been very agreeable, not arguing, but sometimes making excuses for not paying much attention. I have become more aware of the natural noise level around here -- it's true, it is challenging for him to focus with everything going on around him.

Paddy --

I read him Cincinnatus from 50 Famous Stories. I asked him to tell what it was about and he said, "He was a king for 16 days" (which was the last sentence of the story). Other than that, he was fairly vague. That was a tough choice for a beginner narration though, since it was 3 or 4 pages long.

We finished reading Jimmy Skunk. He certainly loves to listen to stories and brings a book every time I sit down.

I read a couple of poems from A Child's Garden of Verses. I found a more general anthology of poetry for young children and am going to use that sometimes since I have to admit I am not particularly fond of RLS's Child's Garden. I am very sure it is me and not him, but it's hard for me to read them to Paddy when I don't really care much for reading them. Right now I've started just skipping through the book and having him look at the pictures and then listen to the ones I prefer of the lot.

We worked a bit on math. He can add two 2-digit numbers in his head. And he likes picture stories with his math.

We tried to do "S's" in HWT but he had a lot of trouble. If anything he seems to be worse than he used to be.

Aidan

We worked a bit on adding and recognizing larger numbers. He listened in to some of Jimmy Skunk. Maybe by the time we get to Year 1 with him it will already have a bit of familiarity -- that would be nice.

Day 102

We didn't get to history or religion today. I was talking to the older kids and the younger boys were enraptured by all the things Brendan brought out of his closet and handed off to them (every Lent he goes through his old treasures and discards what he can bear to part with, and this year it was some old Star Wars lego sets and some Lord of the Ring figurines). So I had Kieron do his independent work -- Math, Latin, Poetry, Science, Bulfinch's Mythology.

He took photos of Brendan's old treasures so I could have them as a keepsake (seeing the old things makes me feel sad remembering the days when he was that young) and also kept the little ones entertained while I worked on decluttering.

Paddy and I finished reading Old Man Coyote and started reading Jimmy Skunk together.

Day 101

If you look on the sidebar you can see Kieron's weekly schedule. Monday's a light day -- we save it for catch-up and for errand running and housecleaning. So besides cleaning and going to the library, he did most everything on there.

• Chores (dishwasher, room)
• Poetry: Tennyson --In Memoriam (part), and one other
• Math (computer) ---That Quiz -- place value
• Language Arts --talked about narration; copywork
• Nature Study --listened to coyote, loon and fox on youtube
• History: GWW --Frederick the Great, George III -- narrated
• Weekly House --Pick up, wipe
• Library and market

With Paddy, over the weekend I read How the Whale Got His Throat (from the Just So Stories), plus a bunch of stories from the Collier Junior Classics. We finished Mrs Peter Rabbit and are now started on Old Man Coyote.

Aidan did a few more "reading lessons" with his Spell to Read and Write cards and with me writing down a story he told. Aidan also did a bit of math from a first grade workbook.

I forgot to mention last week that we played a lot of card games -- UNO and Go Fish and a few hands of poker. ... the three younger boys and me.

The main habits we've been working on are using nice voices and picking up/cleaning up after selves. Still a ways to go.

Day 99 -- time with Paddy

I didn't log yesterday but Kieron completed pretty much everything on his list. Paddy didn't do any academics yesterday -- but today we had a nice little learning time together.

First he did a bit of handwriting and read some of the pages (from Handwriting without Tears). Then he asked to do math. We worked on several pages -- he chose the 100's. He made up a game to do with the robots illustrating the page -- the numbers were their scores so he rated them from weakest to strongest. Basically he is pretty much able to do anything in the MCP Math A book so when we take it out it's just a matter of choosing the ones he wants to do and talking about what it is about.

Then I brought out the Parables from Nature -- a Lesson of Faith. I had been dreading reading this. I first printed out the Parables several years ago during one of my earlier essays into Ambleside, but I'd always skimmed through it and been put off by the rather feminine and Victorian tone of the writing. I thought it would put my bionicle- and -Sonic- aficianado boys off and that it would be embarrassing to read aloud. But I read it and he got that hush that he gets when he is deeply interested. So my skills at predicting what will absorb my kids are not that great -- which is one of my weaknesses when I am trying to unschool. (but on the other hand, it was unschooling that taught me to try things and not be overly invested in whether they "took" or not).

He didn't narrate, but we were talking as we read and I realized he didn't know much about the caterpillar to butterfly process. Then I remembered that I had a caterpillar book in the Stopwatch series I have been reading to him. Butterfly and Caterpillar. To my delight, it is about the exact same cabbage butterfly that was in the parable. So we read it and made comparisons between the facts in the parable and the science in the actual book. Later I found the book beside his empty plate which means he was rereading it while he ate. I thought that was cool -- a natural little mini-unit. And I'm delighted that he was so interested in the little parable.

This is what I'm finding nice about Ambleside. It suits the way we tend to approach things around here. When I do a unit it takes a lot of planning, which I'm not that good at because of my difficulty in decision-making and frameworking, and sometimes I lose interest along the way, or the kids do. And I usually overdo it by gathering too much and then get stressed about deciding between them. But these spontaneous connections and the minimum of good quality readings are just delightful. So, a nice day. I am sure they won't all be like that but when there are some it usually means we are doing someething right!

Day 97

Kieron

• Another page of Plutarch -- Romulus
• 1 chapter of Johny Tremain while exercising
• George Washington's World
• Tennyson -- Sea Fairies
• Tales from Shakespeare -- Winter's Tale
• Math on Computer (Algebra)
• Weekly Jobs
• We discussed Romulus, and he narrated GWW and AWT

Paddy

• Reading (Henry and Mudge go to the Sea, other incidental reading)
• MCP Math A -- I was going to have him do a page of addition but instead he did a whole bunch of pages through the book -- I'm not really sure if there's much in there he doesn't know.
• Computer Addition -- a fishing game -- he made it through all three levels with only a bit of help from Kieron.
• Island Story -- chapter 2, Coming of the Romans -- he was a bit distracted.
• Bible Story -- Tower of Babel -- read and discussed.
• Paddle to the Sea -- 3 chapters since we were at an exciting part
• 2 more Aesop's Fables

Aidan

• all this weekend and today he has been working on the SWR flash cards I made for him and has actually mastered several of them. He really enjoys doing these.
• He worked on the orange Miquon Math book
• He had a "reading lesson" where I wrote out a story and we read it.
• Aidan and Paddy both worked on typing in all the words from the VTech phonics board and I printed out their accomplishment.

Today we went to the library and got "Babe". I was telling Paddy about it after we read about Moses the Kitten and how he was brought up by pigs. So Kieron said our little library had it and he had never watched it, so they are watching it now since it is rainy and slushy outside.

Also, I did a lot of reading aloud to Paddy this weekend:

• Toads and Diamonds by Charles Perrault
• The Swan Maiden by Howard Pyle
• Snow White and Rose Red by the Grimm Brothers
• Adventures of Pinocchio (an excerpt)
• A Bird Came Downt he Walk (by Emily Dickinson)
• Bingo has an Enemy (a short poem)
• The Blind Men and the Elephant (the version in rhyme)
• The Thief of Cathay
• A child's book of Old Testaments stories
• Nursery rhymes
• Sylvester and the Magic Pebbles
• Let's Talk About.... Disobeying (I've read this to him several times).

Day 96

Kieron

• Tennyson poem
• George Washington's World -- pages 30 -45
• Robinson Crusoe chapter 2
• He is going to do math
• He drew a bird for nature study.
• He made cookies
  

He has been riding on the stationary bike for exercise so I am going to read Johny Tremain and another page of Plutarch to him then.

Paddy

• First half of Tale of Prickly Porky -- about 12 chapters
• a couple of Henry and Mudge books from the library
• a book called Chicken and Egg -- photos and simple descriptions. Not very glitzy but he has asked me to read it several times -- he's seen chickens at his friends' house and I told him they are getting some more chicks soon so I think that raised his interest level.
• He tried to write his name
  
• He read the first 20 words in SWR -- but he couldn't really spell them.

Aidan

• I wrote out the first 20 SWR words on cards and we have gone through them a few times. I thought maybe I can have him memorize them and then go on to the next set, etc, until he has a few more words basically memorized. He seems to enjoy this.
• He wrote QUIET (with my hand guidance).

Day 95

Kieron

• Creed in Slow Motion -- we finished Chapter VIII , reviewed and discussed
• Math -- MEP Year 7 13.2 -- he got 3 wrong and corrected
• Boy Scientist -- finished chapter on Newton's Three Laws
• This Country of Ours -- The Rebellion of Pontiac, narrated
• Johny Tremain -- finished Chapter 2 and started Chapter 3
• Robinson Crusoe -- started this today and read chapter 1

Paddy

Some of this is from Wednesday.

Wednesday

• 2 Aesop's Tales (easy reader version) -- we "round robin" read them.
• 2 more Aesop's Tales from Milo Winter -- I read them to him.
• A storybook of parables.
• My Father's Dragon (we read the whole book again at bedtime)

Thursday

• 2 poems from Child's Garden of Verses
• James Herriot Treasury -- Moses the Kitten
• Fifty Famous Stories -- King Alfred and the Beggar

Aidan

• Went to clinic and was quiet but responsive with the "team"
• Went to labs -- coped great as usual.
• Helped with fire
• listened to stories I was reading to other people, a bit.
• I wrote another story with him while we were waiting for labs.
• He spelled "cooler" with a little phonetic prompting from me.
  

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)

Day 93

Kieron

• This Country of Ours chapter 49
• Johny Tremain
• weekly chores
• The rest of Midsummer Night's Dream from Tales of Shakespear
• The Eagle by Tennyson

Aidan and Paddy

• Literature Primer (trying to read bits of it with Aidan, and then Paddy read some of it for himself)
  
• Worked with occupational therapist -- she brought a concentration game with faces of children from different countries and Paddy and I discussed what countries they were from.

Sometime during the past few days I read Dragons of Blueland to Paddy, The Story of Ferdinand, and The Drinking Gourd. Drinking Gourd bothered him a bit because he didn't find out if the slaves had escaped or not.

We went to the library and market, and Clare found the lost box of old photos so all the kids have been looking through them.

Day 92, and schedule for next week for Year 7

I made a weekly schedule for Kieron -- based loosely on a sample schedule in the Ambleside group files.

I uploaded it in 2 doc forms:

Microsoft 2007
Microsoft 1997 -2003

• Today Kieron read up to page 14 in George Washington's World.
• He also read several pages of the Introduction to Bulfinch.
• He read a Tennyson poem.
• He did math (angles -- he had surprising difficulty -- usually everything is easy for him).
• I read him another page of Romulus.

Still light days as you see but next week we'll be close to full schedule (the jpg shows the details).


Paddy:

• Sleeping Beauty
• The Elephant's Child
• Gingham Dog and Calico Cat
• Macavity
• The Fairy Who Didn't Believe in Children

(all from some sort of anthology of good childrens' stories -- we also read a section of My Father's Dragon which inspired Paddy to go dig out the complete versions by Ruth Gannet that we have around here -- so now he wants me to read those).

Paddy knows how to "add ten" --- and I had him do a bit of spelling from SWR.

Aidan

• Wrote numbers with my help.
• A "together story" -- at the doctor's office -- write and reread.

Day 91

Kieron had the inspiration to do his (still minimal) schoolwork last night instead of this morning. So he did computer math, then read and narrated chapter 48 in This Country of Ours, then read the rest of the first chapter of Johny Tremain. He is also reading The Lost World on his own. This is still very light but it's going to be hard to be on a full schedule while Sean's still home. It feels like the holidays.

Kieron has a habit of narrating by making a general statement then supporting it. Like "Hey, X was really brave" then listing the details. I remember Sean doing precisely that at this age. So I am wondering if it is a natural tendency for kids, when they get to that more analytical age, to start narrating that way. .... more in the form of topic sentence, then support.

I played chess with Sean this morning. He was on the defensive for almost the whole game and then when my spatial sense got too overloaded by all the positions, he checkmated me in a single move. Sigh.

Sean played the Brain Game and Word Challenge and GeoChallenge at Facebook. While he's on vacation he is trying to move in on other family members' high scores in the various games. But I guess all those have a learning component too, so I'm noting it down.

(Yesterday I told him that he didn't have to worry about his mental ability since he can beat almost everyone in the family in chess. He said, "Why did you say that?" and I said, "Just in case you ever doubted." and he said, "I'm not the kind of person who has much doubt about my abilities." Just thought it was funny).

I finished reading Reddy Fox to Paddy. He will be good at chess someday, I think.... he suddenly asked me, "What happened to the chicken that Reddy stole from Farmer Brown's boy? Did he get to eat it before he got shot?" That took place near the beginning of the book, which we started reading several days ago.... and he stumped me. Actually now that I think of it I believe the chicken-stealing episode took place a bit before the shooting episode, but still, I am always surprised when a child is following so closely with a story and trying to solve plot difficulties. Maybe I am raising a little English Literature scholar LOL.

I'm trying to pace out the Thornton Burgess books at a rate of about one per week for him. We're waiting for the Burgess Bird Book which is recommended for Ambleside Year 1. I thought it would be more delightful if he already was acquainted with the characters of the Green Forest and Green Meadow before we started. All my kids have loved Burgess's books. I love them too.

Aidan has the coolers playing chess. He keeps asking me who will win. I vote for the little cooler. His money is on the big one.



Now I wanted to write out the way Kieron and I decided to do narration yesterday so I can remember it.

• We talked a bit beforehand "placing" the next reading in context of the last one.
  
• He read and commented aloud to me as he read..... this is really entertaining for me, hearing about US history from a 13 year old perspective.
  
• Then I told him to try to give the whole picture and he did.
• Then we discussed it a bit.

I am trying to make a habit of spending a bit of time talking about the last reading before starting a new reading, with Paddy. I haven't started asking for narration with Paddy yet -- I want to work into it gradually. I think he will like it though, because he is more extroverted than my older kids and his thoughts don't sink deep down into his brain where it is a real struggle and almost a trespass to try to dredge them back up.

Day 90

Today seemed so much like a holiday, with the snow outside and Sean in full energy mode after a few days off from school. So mostly I just let the day flow. There was a lot of running around playing football together and also a computer game together and bionicles.... nothing very highbrow but all good in the way of brotherly rebonding.

Kieron and I had a talk about video time this morning and though it sort of stopped without coming to a resolution, I think some of it sunk in because tonight he was asking to have his work laid out for him tomorrow "so he would know what to expect". He probably has a point that we've been kind of inconsistent and that probably detracts from his focus. If I can manage it, I'm going to lay out all the work left (12 more weeks) and then give it to him so he has a concrete sense of beginning, middle and end.

(this bugs me, incidentally, and I'm not exactly sure why. I don't think I like the thought of "schola" being basically on the level of chores. Sigh. In this very thoughtful post on Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Brandy quotes Douglas Wilson who says:

One result of fallenness seen in children is the aversion to work, and natural curiosity is not sufficient to overcome that aversion..... Another problem with home schooling is a common, but mistaken, assumption about human nature...[T]here seems to be a prejudice among some home schoolers against "forced learning," and the prejudice appears to be based on an overly optimistic view of the child's innate love of learning...I am afraid there is more than a little sentimentalism here, with the nature and power of sin being overlooked. Many children need to be disciplined in an intellectual way early. If they are not, then the opportunity is lost; a mental laziness is already habitual.

.... however, I can't quite totally buy that. If I could it would make life easier in so many ways. I buy it partially, in that I can easily accuse myself with some justice of sentimentality, but I still dislike the thought of "forced learning" and I think my dislike is grounded on something more than touchy-feely mom softness)

But anyway, this is not force. Kieron's willing to meet the requirements, he's just not thrilled.

Didn't mean to get so far off the day's log. Anyway, Kieron did math today and his work around the house. And he got a workout playing indoor football and wrestling with Sean and Paddy, and he and Sean played chess. Aidan spent the day totally going all out on puzzles and manipulatives. He must have dug out every manipulative in the green brassbound trunk where I keep that stuff. His competency in looking for and getting out the materials in his environment is getting quite impressive, and he is getting slightly, very slightly better at picking up things after he uses them. A long way to go still on that though.

• He made a World Map puzzles (with Brendan's help)
• A Pond puzzle (with a bit of help from me and Paddy)
• His fire engine puzzle.
• He played dice games.
• He set up the chess board that Sean and Kieron later used.
• He set up some words with the Scrabble set of wooden letters.
• He came to the Post Office with his dad and me.
• He helped me make cookies (and eat them).
• He helped me make dinner.
• He helped build a fire.
• He did some laundry.

So a very busy, constructive day for Aidan!

Paddy wants a bedtime snack and story so I'd better stop now!

Day 89

I printed out these two quick charts on one piece of paper and have been using them as a sort of cheat sheet like the nurses used to have on the pediatric floor. I keep it in my pocket and check things off as we do them and scribble quick notes on them.

It looks like we have about two more days before we finish the first week of reading. We've done a couple of the "weekly" things but not really started back into the "dailies" like math and language.

So far so good, still. The reading schedule feels less cluttered than it did last term when I was adding things right and left. We'll see what happens as we move back up to full schedule.

Year 7

• A bit more of Johny Tremain -- almost through with chapter 1 (which is 25 pages long).
• Finished chapter 47 in This Country of Ours -- narration.
• 1 page of Romulus from Plutarch -- he "prenarrated" since he already knew the story.
• He read a few pages from Midsummer Night's Dream (in Tales from Shakespeare)
• He read the preface of Ways of the Wood Folk (the edition we have belonged to his great-uncle who died at age 19 in World World II).

Year 1

• Sang folk songs with his older sister.
• Listened to first 10 chapters of Reddy Fox.
• We read the preface and first chapter of An Island Story (Albion and Brutus)
• Two Aesop's Fables (Wolf and the Kid, and The Crab and His Mother -- we skipped the Turtle because he's on the sensitive side and I wasn't sure if it would bother him when the Turtle dropped to the rocks).

Day 88: Getting College Things Done

Nothing in the way of academics today. We had to go down the mountain early in the morning to bring Clare for a physical exam -- for her college admissions. I dropped Sean off at his school and then we went to the grocery store and to the bank to open a bank account for Clare. That's something we have been planning to do for quite a while so that was good to get done.

When we got out it was snowing, which is quite rare so far down in elevation! We started back up towards our home but the weather was SO bad -- snow flying, fog, cars off the road everywhere -- that I started worrying about Sean taking the bus home that afternoon. So I dropped by his school and picked him up -- along with a bunch of other parents who had the same idea. We took forever getting up the mountain in the blizzard but finally made it home about noon.

Kieron had bought a Superman game with his birthday money and was expecting it to arrive from Amazon today. But when we got the package it turned out that it had broken through at the bottom and the game was gone. So he was pretty disappointed. I emailed Amazon and they answered right away saying they were sending out another one.

I sat by the fire for a bit reading with my husband. Later I went upstairs and IMed back and forth with Paddy. This is his new favorite thing to do -- I'm on my laptop and he's on the computer in the other room. He has a little notebook with various phrases so he can copy them out like "How are you?" and "A monster is coming" and so on. So we did that for a while.

Then I had to get Paddy into trouble --sigh. I told him he had to stay off the computer for the rest of the day. Then he ripped all the pages out of his cute little notebook. BIG sigh.

Aidan is now playing with Duplos -- and Paddy is now putting leads back in a pencil. From the archaelogical evidence on the floor, Aidan constructed the dinosaur puzzle and Paddy played with his stuffed animals while I was gone.

Sean is SO happy to get an unexpected half day off of school. He tells me his language arts teacher read part of his paper out loud in class.

So now we have piles of snow outside our window -- 2-3 feet of new snow piled on the old, looks like. Except for the tragedy with the package, everything is going pretty well.

But at least we got those errands done and we're all safely here at home. It was a nice adventure to drive through the blizzard and "rescue" Sean from his school prison -- me and my daughter. Sort of a role reversal I guess! : ).

Edited to Add:

• I read the whole of The Adventures of Bobby Raccoon to Paddy.
• Later he said, "We didn't finish the story of the water and the boat!" (he was talking about Paddle to the Sea).

Day 87: Back to Ambleside

For us, Ambleside seems to work better on an at-home day when we aren't expecting to go somewhere or do something that interferes with attention. Just a note for my future self!
: ).

So today was one of those days when we had no real plans for anything outside the home.

While Paddy was eating breakfast I read the Golden Bible to him (recommended by Laura Berquist as a good retelling for children because it uses Biblical language, and it is quite profusely illustrated and though I don't totally love the illustrations, I haven't found a better version). We skipped the Creation story -- just talked about it from the pictures. I read about the Garden of Eden and the snake, and Paddy wanted very much to continue, so we read about Cain and Abel too. Then we looked through the rest of the book for a little while.

Then I read him two chapters of Paddle to the Sea. Aidan was getting antsy by then (putting his hand over the page) so I am not sure if Paddy got very much of it.

Then Kieron came to eat breakfast after checking his mail. I read part of Chapter 47 from This Country of Ours, about the Mississippi Bubble, and we talked about "bubbles" in history and about the problems with manufacturing paper money too freely.

Then we read some more of Johny Tremain. Aidan and Paddy listened in.

Paddy and Aidan somehow discovered the chalk board easel that they have mostly ignored for the past several years. They started working on it with sidewalk chalk.

Meanwhile I assigned Kieron the preface of George Washington's World and the preface of Bullfinch's Fables. He read those while I helped the little ones who wanted to (1) draw numbers (2) draw maps.

Now Paddy is IMing me on Facebook. It's taken me half an hour to write this along with answering to "HI" and "YES" and "how do you do". Kevin says he's about to unfriend him since he's always getting messages from Paddy while he's trying to work : ).

Aidan is playing with the Age of Imperialism board game... he likes the wheels on the cannons, which are detachable.

I was intending to ramble a bit more but this has taken me a long time so now I'd better go.

Day 86

Outdoor Life, Domestic Life

No Ambleside today. ... there was a lot of snow, so Kieron and Aidan went outside for a couple of hours; then we drove to the library and market; then Kieron made cookies. I did print out and bind some more books and arrange them so they look pretty (!).

Literacy

1. Paddy did a spelling game online. ... not really a game, more just like, well, spelling without having to write. I wanted to get him thinking about forming words because I thought that might be the way to get him more phonics conscious. I sat with him and coached him on sounding out things.

2. Aidan and Paddy both did word puzzle cards -- it's a game their grandma gave them.

The words that fit together are rhymes (not a very good picture but you get the idea). That gave us a chance to discuss rhyming, a concept that still eludes both of them.

3. Paddy found out how to IM on Facebook and spent the day thrilled about being able to IM his father, me, his brother, his grandma and everyone else on his very small family list on Facebook. In the process he learned to spell several more words out of necessity. I will also count that as reading practice since he can usually read what people write to him if they keep it simple; and copying/typing practice since he would ask me how to say things and then type it out for himself from my writing.

4. Aidan has found my SWR phonogram cards and has laid them out on the floor. Ignore the rest of the clutter, please.... his mattress is next to him because I bring it down at night so he can sleep there.












Reading (Religion)

I read Aidan an Arch Book -- The Man Who Carried the Cross for Jesus.

Science

Paddy and his dad took note of the status of the water in the cup which has been slowly evaporating for the past week and a half.

I read Magic School Bus in the Bee Hive to Paddy.


High School

Every couple of months Sean has to write an argumentative essay and then type it into the library computer at school and get it scored by this Holt Computer Essay scoring system. There's a blog post about it here with links to more information. This pretty much says close to what I would say about it, so I don't have to try to write it out. I like Sean's Language Arts class and what his teacher is doing with it under the weight of public school requirements; but this Holt thing seems to be part of a school-wide and probably state-wide effort to improve student writings, and well, read the links. John Holt actually probably predicted this sort of thing.

The part I'll focus on here is that this time the language arts teacher gave Sean a bunch of different sample essays from the last essay attempt two months ago, with 2, 3, and 4 scores (the goal is to get a 4 by junior year, the way the counsellor explained it to me). So Sean, using a few strategies that don't really have much to do with real writing but have a lot to do with suiting the way the computer looks at the papers, was able to get a 3 score this time, whereas last time with basically the same level of writing he got a 2. He was the only kid in his class to get as high as a 3 which is equivalent to an A in his class grade for the essay, so he was quite happy about that. And he also was happy this time not to get trashed by the computer with talk about his "poor logic" and "inadequate syntax", which burned him a bit the first time through (I looked his first paper over before he brought it to school to type in, and it had no significant syntactical errors or logical problems. That is, if you trust me more than you trust the computer scoring system -- after all, I'm only MOM, even if I do have an English degree!).

Day 85: Stepping towards Ambleside

Quick note -- our first step back into Ambleside went pretty well.

I read to Kieron from This Country Of Ours by Henriette Marshall. I started on Chapter 46, because chapter 45 was about La Salle and the exploration of the Mississippi and we already read about that in Our Country in Story. So the transition went pretty smoothly.

Then I read him the first chapter of Johny Tremain, which is one of the free reading selections. I was going to have him read the rest on his own but now I don't know if I can give up reading it myself : ).

Paddy and Aidan listened.

Then I started Paddy on 50 Famous Stories by James Baldwin.... King Alfred and the Cakes. (Kieron and Aidan listened; Kieron remembered hearing the story before, of course).

So so far, so good. Very light work today, no extras. I've been slowly gathering all the books I can find that are on the booklist.

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.