Day 25

Read from Book of Virtues to Kieron and the younger boys:

• Dust Under the Rug (kind of scruple-inducing!). We compared to Snow White and Goldilocks.
  
• The Darning Needle by HC Andersen -- Kieron said it was like an Oscar Wilde tale he had read. I think it was this one. Discussed conceit and denial.
  

With Me

• Math -- graphing to convert -- eg C to F temperatures, kg to lbs, km to miles -- so he got a bit of exposure to conversions as well as the graphing. We also worked a bit more on graphing polygons.
  
• Creed in Slow Motion -- we are almost finished with chapter 3.
• Logic ex 6 -- One Basic Verb. He liked that.

Then for independent study:

• Finish the graphing
• Read Edmund Campion
• Read part of Chapter Two of the BOy Scientist, on Galileo
• Some division problems.

I read Meno to Brendan.... about whether virtue really is knowledge.

Discussed persuasion with Clare -- she is reading How to Speak and Listen by Mortimer Adler -- also Literary Converts by J Pearce, and Old Thunder. J Pearce and M Adler both have those more "blunt" styles and we discussed that, too. Talked about whether priests need to tell jokes as a lead-in for their homily, and the difference between political, judicial, and instructional discourse.

Aidan

review Montessori pink cards with him -- asked him to read the words, and say the first letter of what the picture represented.

Paddy

Listened to Aliki's Manners, and Usborne Tournament.

Now we are off for a week -- some of us are going on a journey -- will pick up with Day 26, and Week 7, Term 2, next Friday.

Planning Form for History Theme

This is the Term Topic Checklist (doc) that I just made to try to help me through planning. One thing I have trouble with in using other peoples' planners is that I am often trying to do the planning as I go. This is just the way I operate. I also do a lot of thinking ahead of time.

So, acknowledging this, I divided this one up into Preparation/Action/Conclusion. Preparation is for the "pre-thinking" I seem to have to do. Action is for right before or DURING the actual term. Conclusion is my chance to wrap it up, to list extensions and things we didn't get to, and to reflect on what was learned both in the approach and in the content.

Clear as mud? : ).

I fear it will look overwhelming. I seem to have to walk myself through everything, but not everyone is like me. Anyway, if it looks stressful, then you are probably one of those people who does this all intuitively.

Or like me, one of those people who doesn't really do units. This isn't exactly a unit. It's more like my attempt at integration.

Lene Mahler Jaqua put a "how to" plan a history study over at the Classical Homeschooling Newsletter quite a long time ago -- I used some of her ideas.

More History Wrap-Up -- Year 7

Renaissance Overview (pdf)
This is the semi-complete big picture of the first term's main theme.

I have been thinking about how this term went now that it is almost over and it just occurred to me that what it's evolved into is a sort of Main Lesson format. Except that we've been thin on the output, which is rather typical of me, but I think Kieron would like having some projects to do.... so I'll have to think more about that type of thing next term.

I think it's funny that I didn't "get" the main lesson idea at ALL last year and now I've basically backed into it.



Also, a reading list (pdf). The gif is below. These are mostly books and articles that Kieron read this September -- the ones that aren't checked off are ones that I thought he might still read sometime this year, but that he hasn't read yet.

They are the ones that have to do with history, so it is a bit redundant next to the first one. I have another literature list that is basically his "free reading" -- what he has read in his free time that is NOT Tintin or Choose Your Own Adventure or something like that, worthy as those are.

Day 24

Easy day today.... Kieron

• math online (graphing at thatquiz.org)
• the Latin review worksheet.... did great!
• started reading Edmund Campion,
• and an old science workbook on matter (it is grade 6 but I thought it might help him get started on some of those more general concepts that middle schoolers usually learn).

Paddy

• Read from the Literature Primer (Harriette Treadwell)
• Addition (1s and 2s -- he is getting it pretty well).
• Yesterday, read one of Aidan's stories.
• I read Brave Irene, Tournament and one other story to him, besides Tintins.
  

Aidan

• Went on walk with us.
• Reading practice.
• Counted and browsed through math book.
• Found a large multiplication chart and has been matching the numbers to the squares.
  

Day 23

Usually today is our "easy day" but Kieron decided to save it for tomorrow so I had to scramble a bit to get together his work for today, since I seem to really only detail-plan a day in advance.

Reading Aloud:

• Plutarch -- a couple more pages of Theseus..... about the various robbers he tackled on the way to see his father the king, and how he wanted to emulate Hercules. The sentences are quite long and complicated, and the little ones hovering around make it hard to see how much Kieron is getting of this. I think a narration might be in order.
• Creed in Slow Motion, continuing chapter 3 -- about the concept of "fatherhood" and the Roman pater potestas, vs the modern father paying out for the cinema 3 times a week. Knox called the spoilt children that can result "purple potatoes", the kind you discard when sorting, which made Aidan laugh. And this was the 40's! : ) You mean everyone wasn't raising perfect children back then, either? (it makes me laugh because Clare and I were just talking about over-idealizing times past, the other day).
• Then math together -- about plotting polygons on a graph, so some geometry came into this. He learned to do something that Sean has only just learned at school-- plot a square that is on a diagonal.
• Then he worked a bit on math by himself, plotting more polygons.
• Greek -- the vocabulary sheet #1. He was fine on it. I found a typo.
• Latin -- description of self, a sort of silly exercise. "Ego sum...." and then you pick from various adjectives. Well, Sean had a whole Spanish homework assignment devoted to making a chart -- Me gusta and Me non gusta... so I guess a little silliness is all right.

Finally, on his own:

• Maps, Charts and Graphs Lesson 2 -- on Scale Drawings.
• Reading -- Usborne Book of Discovery page 99, with a discussion question for tomorrow.
• Finished He Went with Vasco de Gama.

-------------------------
Aidan and Paddy:

• The OT came and they did puzzles and a stomping game, and colored shapes.
• We will probably do a bit of math and phonics later.
  

Renaissance

I found this Renaissance Connection with lesson plans in pdf.
And this Art History Resources site with some Renaissance art.
One more site with links to more resources and activities.

Catholic Encyclopedia on The Renaissance.

Two books set in Renaissance times, that I am thinking of having Kieron read, both with quite a few online study guides (just two random samples here)

• Cue for Treason
• Shakespeare Stealer

Redwood Core Knowledge worksheets

For several years I lost this site: Redwood Games.

It was one of the first sites I bookmarked when I first got online, uh, ten years ago? It has free worksheets/study guides for the 4th to 6th grade Core Knowledge books. For example:

• Geography Grade 5
• World History Grade 5
• Fine Arts Grade 5

I have found them useful several times for verbal discussion, an occasional writing assignment and just to have around. As you probably know we use the Core Knowledge as sort of unit-study starters or reference books -- I like the way they are organized. So I'm glad I found the site again. ... I was just in the process of typing out my own study guides but that would have been hard work.

There are also some game downloads and math worksheets on the Redwood site, and some homeschooling tips and links.

Great Room Cleaning Checklist

Greek Vocabulary Review #1

Boys' Bedrooms Cleaning Checklist

Term 1 Progress --summary

I thought this might be the clearest way to show where we are on Year 7 compared to where I planned.

I put checks where we met or exceeded the goals, and highlighted where we didn't.

Now -- during the years of homeschooling I've often thought that these page number goals are pretty much meaningless. They are based sheerly on page numbers, not on what was retained. In theory, I could sit down today and get all this done in a few hours -- only not very thoroughly.

However, I have found that this kind of thing helps me in a limited way, to keep track and not get muddled. It was useful to me in that way last year, so I am doing it again this year.

Now a sort of Term Report. This may be repetitive to those who follow my blog regularly, but I wanted to sum it all up.



Math

MEP 7 is going great. Kieron can't believe it is really math. I supplement it with online quizzes, and with review sheets like these division ones.

Religion

I love the Creed in Slow Motion. I read it slowly, a bit a day, and we discuss. I am also having him read Bible History, and once or twice a week we pick up the Family Apostolate Catechism. He is also copying and memorizing prayers and quotes at a slow pace. We were going to read a gospel together -- for now, this has gone by the wayside. Perhaps I can have him read independently later in the year.

He has been reading through Vision saints books and has read five or six already.

Latin

We decided to use Traupman's Latin is Fun rather than Latina Christiana II. Traupman uses an inductive approach. I used this book a bit with Liam and it was successful in giving him an intellectual interest in Latin which carried through to the present day. After reading some articles about the virtues of the deductive approach, I went to LC1 for the next set of kids. However, this approach has not worked well with any of my kids -- their retention has been minimal. I am coming to realize there is a linear-sequential-learner bias to the deductive approach, and I can't see that it is necessarily more "classical" really. Liam called it "Cartesian" when I talked to him on the phone last week ;D. Anyway, all that is to say that Traupman is our friend right now. I know way more Latin now than I did when I used it with Liam (hooray for Mother's Learning) and so I can give him background grammar information and review that makes the presentation a bit more thorough. The little ones like looking through the pictures, and I think induction develops some intellectual skills that are not fostered by strict "top down" memorization of grammar and vocabulary. Whew, this turned into quite a ramble. Anyway, those are my (not expert, and not very humble either) opinions.

Now onto

New Testament Greek

We are using Basic Greek in 30 Minutes a Day. Now I don't have much Greek at all myself, so I hoped to improve my own learning by helping him with this. This book has limited goals; it's not meant to be a thorough approach like, say, Mounce's Bible Greek. It is supposed to be for familiarity and a bit of general knowledge. This is our "slow" language. We are only going to make it through the first couple of parts this year. I just found out how to download and utilize a Greek font so I can write my own reinforcement worksheets now.

Logic

Introductory Logic. We have a very old version. This is another one of the books I used with Liam. This year is all about nostalgia in the trivium, I guess! It's just meant to open up the subject of logical thinking with a year 7 student. This subject ties in with the Progym (below) but we haven't done much of the progym yet.

Literature and History:

As I mentioned I am integrating literature, history, science and religion into Humanitas. This is too big a subject to go into in what is already a long post. I will try to get that organized in my head so I can write it out some other time. It is going really well but in a free-floating Right-Brained Learner way right now. The core texts are Shakespeare's plays, and Plutarch's Lives, which we just started reading last week, so we haven't made a lot of progress. But there are tons of others and I want to keep those a bit free-flowing.

Now, for things that aren't really happening right now:

Progymnasmata.

Hmm. This comprises word analysis, grammar/syntax, oral narration and discussion, copywork, dictation and actual composition; also literary analysis. None of this is really happening except for discussion and literary analysis (in my book, a large term that basically at this age is mostly concerned with exposure to and interaction with a large variety of literature). The kid has done a bit of copywork (definite progress in neatness) and is writing on his own (cartooning, and definite progress in sentence structure and effectiveness). I always seem to end up unschooling composition and it always seems to work out pretty well in that I raise pretty good writers. Maybe I need to just face that and deal with it. But I keep dreaming progymnasmata.

Modern Language

Also, I had hoped to do some German or Spanish. One possibility is to teach Spanish orally to all three of the children -- very easy level for Kieron and just fun exposure for Paddy and Aidan. I don't really have a good accent but I know enough Spanish to get us through a primary level year. ASL is another possibility.

Others

Not much art or drawing or nature study or science..... sigh. That reminds me -- the last class in addition to my Humanitas was something I call in my head Localitas. This is another Right Brained Learner type project that was supposed to concern itself with things in our immediate area and of topical or current concern. So nature study and life skills and civics/character formation and political or natural events were supposed to fit in here, as well as community life. We have done a bit with this -- I had him read Smoke Jumpers & Fire Fighters since we live in a wildfire zone, and Seward's Folly because of my Alaskan background and because of Sarah Palin as the Republican VP pick -- and so on. We are also desultorily following the 100 Species Challenge. And of course, with Localitas things are always happening just because that's the nature of the thing. But I meant to expand more consciously on these things, and that has gone by the wayside. Now that I've written it out maybe I can plan it more intentionally ;-).

Sorry about this endless post. At least it cleared my head!

Revision of Year 7

I realized that I am hardly using ANY of the key resources I planned for over the summer, so I did a revision sheet. Revisions for Year 7 (pdf)

It goes with this.

I find that besides these "core" lessons, I am doing history/science/religion/literature/geography in sort of an integrated way with him, using more of a unit study format. That's probably not a very useful description -- I'll try to go into more details some other time.

Since it's almost the end of the first term, I wanted to try and see where we were compared to where I wanted to be to meet yearly goals. That was when I realized I didn't really have the new resources written out. Now that I have written this out, I find we are pretty close to where we ought to be.

In one way that doesn't matter -- because obviously, I'm designing my own curriculum and all learning is learning, etc. In another way it does matter, because I hate getting to the end of a year or semester and realizing we've completely missed out on covering something I really wanted to do.


Also I've noticed that this isn't very informative -- just page numbers right now. When I plan out next term it will be more detailed. Plus there are some details in the main syllabus I linked to above.

Next, this weekend, I'm hoping to describe where we are in each subject -- a sort of Term Report ;-0). Right now I have to get some little ones ready for Mass.

Day 22

So I am starting Week 6 and this was Day 22. That means we've been averaging slightly more than 4 days a week, which is not too bad.

I made chocolate applesauce bread this morning; it is definitely getting cooler during the days here. I was also digging through our coat closet for the seasonal changes and catching up on laundry after our brief spell without a washer, so we didn't get started until after 10 am. Meanwhile Kieron read Philip of the Joyful Heart.

Then for our rudimentary Morning Time:

• Archimedes and the King's Crown
• The Last Lesson by Alphonse Daudet, followed by a brief discussion on tyranny's usual first step of taking over children's education when it wants to oppress a people.
• Then Sail On! Sail On!

Then I went and found Through the Looking Glass for Kieron which he had been asking me about.

• Math: MEP 3.3 -- Negative Numbers.
• Started Chapter 3 of Creed in Slow Motion -- about God the Father Almighty
• Julius Caesar, part of Scene 2 Act 1 -- Cassius is expressing that Caesar is no better than anyone else, giving examples of how he had to help Caesar through a fever and a swimming expedition.
• Greek vocabulary -- went over the words again.

Assigned

• Dancing Horses of Acoma
• He Went With Vasco de Gama
• Latin Review -- I gave him the Latin 1 sheet and told him to mark them according to whether he knew them, thought he knew them or knew he didn't know them.
• Negative #s a few exercises. He seems to get this just fine.

Paddy

• was balky about his minimal academics.
• Read another page of the Living My Religion primer
• 3 pages of math (he seemed to enjoy that -- it is transitioning him to adding).
• rhyming words -- rimes (at, cat, hat, type thing).
• I read him Anansi and the Tiger.

Aidan

• read a few words
• browsed through Math book.
• Too restless to do much more -- we'll work a bit later. He did sit through the Morning Time and actually seemed to be listening to the stories, though he seemed to think THe Last Lesson was supposed to be humorous ;-).

Tonight is Sean's second football game!
(Sean had a geometry chapter test and a Spanish chapter test today -- we'll see how he does considering his nervousness!)

I read some more of Meno to Brendan -- about reincarnation and geometry, very interesting.

Day 21

Can't believe we are on the end of Week 5 already.

Today was sort of a different day. The washing machine broke down so it was a priority to get it fixed, and the firewood guy called to say this was the day he was going to be up in our area. Since they were coming in the afternoon, Kevin and I rescheduled our semi-daily walk for the morning. And then Liam called, as well.

So we had our morning reading -- The Story of Scarface from Book of Virtues, and then Bruce and the Spider (a poetic version).

Then I set Kieron to do his independent reading while we walked:

• Bible History
• Dancing Horses of Acoma
• He Went with Vasco de Gama
• Usborne Book of Discovery pp 134-5 on Magellan and circumnavigation.
• Later in the afternoon, we did some more graphing and a few division problems for math.
• Then Greek -- reading vocabulary words that I found over here. Even though they are for Mounce and we aren't using it, there is a certain amount of overlap because all the koine Greek programs draw from a similar vocabulary for obvious reasons.

For Paddy and Aidan we did a sort of educational floor time. Aidan had found some 2-part puzzles with rhyming words and pictures that his grandma gave him for Christmas. Like, "bell/shell", "pen/hen", etc. So Paddy and Aidan and I did that and then Aidan and Paddy spent a long time spelling words on the V-Tech phonic board. Aidan can now "copy"words which is new -- the spelling words that the V-tech board gives him are all on the board, so if I prompt him a bit he can spell them by looking at the word. It sounds easy and indeed Paddy has been able to do this since he was four but it does require visual tracking and sequencing which are difficult for Aidan. He was so proud since he has been playing this game for years and this is the first time he's been able to succeed in this with minimal help.

Paddy is starting to voluntarily try to read things that he comes across in his environment.

Next week is review week and then a break for our family reunion. Can't believe we are already almost 1/6 through the school year.

Logic Review for Lessons 1-6

Logic Review List 1 (PDF)

Latin Study Sheet 1-B

Latin Review 1b (pdf)

An adjective exercise and review.

Occupational Therapy plans and follow-up 2008

A summary of what Aidan's OT and I talked about in planning for this upcoming year..... basically just for my records.

Renaissance Wrap-Up

I made a simple study guide for All Ye Lands chapter 9 about the Renaissance. It is sort of the spine of what we are studying for history. Renaissance (PDF).

I forgot to include the link to Galileo's letter, which is very good. It is here: Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess.

Since we are basically finishing this unit already, hopefully the reading and study guide will be sort of a review and tie-together. I don't plan to make him walk through every question, but I find it easier to interact with him in the narrations /extend the lesson if I've done a bit of background work.

In future I think I'll do the guide BEFORE I start the unit. That way it will be a bit more integrated, and I can add things as I go.

Study Guide 1 -- Latin

A partial review for Unit 1 in Latin is Fun.

I will probably make up sentences with him (the only verbs so far are: est/sunt and habet/habent)

There are a bunch of adjectives in the book but I didn't write these out this time. Next time I guess.

After he studies this I will have him do a short quiz.

Day 20

Today went a bit differently because I worked with the little ones first while Kieron read, and we didn't get to our morning time reading.

Paddy:

3 pages MCP Phonics B (finding the word to match the picture) -- short "u".

Heath Mathematics Chapter 1 Checkup (counting, larger and smaller, more or fewer).

Living My Religion primer -- he read the first lesson. Those "sight readers" beloved of the 50's and earlier are perfect for him because he knows so many sight words.

Aidan

Counting (from Heath Mathematics)

1/2 page MCP Phonics B.

Kieron

Meanwhile, Kieron read up to chapter 14 of He Went with Vasco de Gama. He finished Benedict (Vision Book) and started Philip of the Joyful Heart.
He read all of chapter 8 in All Ye Lands -- review of the Middle Ages. I can't vouch for how much he got out of it since that was a packed 30 pages, but it was review, after all. We discussed why no English king was called John after the first one. For the chapter on the Renaissance I shall make some sort of study guide.

Then, together:

• MEP Unit 3, section 3.1 on Scatter Graphs
• Logic -- disagreements in sentences -- Real, Apparent, Verbal -- ex 5.
• Latin -- he finished the first unit in Latin is Fun. Time for a review.
• Then some more work on his division drill sheet.... together, and independently.

Once a month, Sean's high school has a teacher "Development Day" where the school closes a bit early so I guess they can do some administrative stuff. This is a practice I shall adopt but I will choose my day of the month according to circumstances. Today I was a bit sick so I got through things quickly and am going to try to do some office/recordkeeping/planning work while they have a bit of time on the other computer.