Half-baked Homeschool

A new year, an new opportunity to stay on track with this blog. I've managed to stick with my flossing resolution for 6 days now, so maybe I'm ready to add something else.

I've been told that I might just want to start here, in January, and not get bogged down with playing catch up from the last 3 months. That's wise advice, I believe, but I just can't do it. As the girl who always knew the first 3 measures of every piano piece by heart due to a return there with each missed note, I must try to make it all connect with no gaps.

Still, I can't possibly do 18 Weekly Wrap-Ups today so I'll just cover the semester highlights. (I didn't even know we were on semesters.)

BIBLE
We've memorized plenty of Bible verses, and the monthly character traits have included orderliness, thankfulness and generosity. Long Story Short is still serving us well for evening devotions, but we took a break over Advent to use Ann VosKamp's Jesse Tree Advent Celebration.

HISTORY
Bearclaw has made it almost to WWI in history. We've left the 19th century behind and entered into what seems like a much less romantic period. I guess it's the proximity of the 20th century that makes it's horrors seem so much more horrible. It does give me reason to pause, though. I mean, we just loved waving our cardboard battle axes around when we studied the Celts, but I can't see us making faux mustard gas and snapping a few pics of a make-believe exposure. Not so fun.

Shortbread has finished what I refer to as the "really ancient" ancients and has just started looking at Greece. Below are some of his projects from the last couple of months.




LITERATURE
After the Abraham Lincoln biography, Bearclaw read two historical fiction books he enjoyed more: Turn Homeward, Hannalee and Sarah, Plain and Tall. Although he enjoys adventure books geared toward boys, he seems fine with these books based on fictional females (and who can blame him?- they're great reads!).

During the study of the Hannalee book, we were able to take a walking tour of the town in which Hannalee lived (and worked in a textile mill) at the beginning of the book. Although the book is a work of fiction, it is based on actual events that occurred in the mill town of Roswell, Georgia.

In Roswell, we were able to tour the area where the founders, owners, and well-to-do lived as well as the ruins of the old mill (where Hannalee would have worked) and mill housing.

This is the home of Roswell King, the city's founder and owner of the mill:


Though the mill itself was destroyed by Union forces (who then deported the workers, including women and children like our fictional Hannalee, to the north), the creek and a dam that fed it open for exploration:

After reading Sarah, Plain and Tall, Bearclaw made a diorama of the scene in which Sarah slides down a "hay dune". It didn't spark quite the enthusiasm from him that the field trip did, but it turned out to be a fun activity.




Together with mom, Shortbread read Anansi and the Magic Stick and made his own model of the stick. (He loves projects, so I just get the materials he needs, and he disappeears. I have almost no input into them, so I love to see his final product - it's always a surprise!)


Later in the semester, we read Temple Cat, which is quite a short picture book, but it's message is vitally imporant and well-expressed. It's definitely a favorite of mine now.


LANGUAGE ARTS

Bearclaw continues with Spelling Workout E, Wordly Wise, Shurley English and Easy Grammar.

The writing instruction at the humanities hybrid school he attends continues to focus on various types of writing, but they keep the length of each paper to one paragraph, which keeps Bearclaw from feeling overwhelmed. I really enjoy working with him on this as he struggles to best convey his ideas on paper.

Shortbread's reading has picked up, and he says he will no longer read any books without chapters, so that sent me scrambling to find more books for beginning readers that are longer than most of what we have in our home library. I have always wondered if Shortbread will be interested in reading the way Bearclaw is. I suppose it remains to be seen, but he's off to a great start!


MATH
This has been an emotional struggle for quite a while, and I was about ready to throw in the towel and sign Bearclaw up for an outside class or switch to a different curriculum.

Our combination of me fussing over his lack of focus and care in his math work and his frutration over mistakes and self-defeating attitude was exhausting both of us.

A change in approach has helped tremendously. I've really worked to convince him that he should not know how to do the lesson before we've gone over it, and I've allowed him to lean on me for those topics that he's struggling with. Scooting him off to "try it" was only upsetting him and getting us nowhere. At this point, he would even say, perhaps, that he is "good at math."

Shortbread and math get along wonderfully, so he's moved on to the "B" level for first grade.

SCIENCE
We've continued our nature walks, and although the boys don't journal as I'd like, we have enjoyed spending time with our friends and exploring some local park gems.



So that's it...our whole semester squished into one post. We started back to school this week, so I'll have material for more wrap-ups soon. Too soon, maybe.

Yeah! We all lived through our first week of school. There were a few scrapes, bumps and bruises, but nothing permanent.

The boys had a great first day at their one-day-a-week program (the dog didn't go):




As for the school work - it went something like this:

BIBLE:
We finally have a plan that I hope will work. We will continue to memorize the verses that our hybrid program sends home, as well as study the Christian character trait they assign each month, but we're moving our daily devotion/study to dinner time. Dh has agreed to lead; he's doing a fabulous job (he's much funnier than I am). We're using a new book called Long Story Short, and it goes through the Old Testament in very short, manageable pieces, while showing how each weekly topic points to Jesus. I was skeptical of it's claim that it only takes 10 minutes a day, but it's true. All of us are loving it!

HISTORY:
The year I've dreaded has arrived: the boys are studying completely different time periods for history. It IS more work for me, as I predicted, but it's also proving to be easier in some respects, because the discussions are a little smoother one-on-one. I guess it's like many things, and much of the outcome will depend upon my attitude.

4th grade - Bearclaw is starting the "modern" time period, from 1850 to the present. This week we looked at the huge British Empire during Queen Victoria's reign and also discussed the increasing tension over slavery in the U.S.

I began reading Courage to Run as a family read-aloud, which is based on Harriet Tubman's early years. We also listened to the beginning of Oliver Twist on audio, read by Dick Cavet. Unfortunately, he read so fast, even I had trouble following it, so we never finished it. We'll try again in a few years.

Finally, we discussed the work of George Mueller in England on behalf of poor orphans. We listened to and audio recording about him from Your Story Hour, which the children enjoyed.

1st grade - This is Shortbread's first year of narrating for history. In the past, he has followed along with our history using coloring pages, maps, and projects, but now he has his own history narration book and he'll be doing the same things he saw his brother doing over the last few years.

LITERATURE:
Bearclaw is reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln. He made the classic "milk carton log cabin" by attaching pretzels to a sawed-off half-n-half container (no school cafeteria to provide the 8-ounce milk carton) with royal icing:



1st grade -
Shortbread's first literature book is The Real Story of Creation. I do most of the reading to him, and then he narrates to me and works on the literature assignments.

LANGUAGE ARTS:
4th grade - Bearclaw is feeling pretty comfortable with language arts this year, as his spelling, vocabulary, grammar and writing curricula haven't changed since last year. He's humming right along with much less dawdling. Halleluhia!

1st grade - Shortbread has not yet started spelling, but for handwriting and phonics, his class is using Saxon Phonics. The jury is still out, I guess, but the work seems rather dry to me. Conversely, I'm a big fan of the grammar curriculum, First Language Lessons. Bearclaw and I used this in first grade, and we both enjoyed most of the lessons.

MATH:
4th grade -
Yeah! Bearclaw has moved on to Primary Mathematics 3B, which is from Singapore Math. So far, so good. Of course, it 's mostly review now. He did manage to figure out one of their methods for mental calculation that I just couldn't get. You know, old dog and all.

1st grade -
Shortbread is zipping along in Primary Mathematics 1A. He is definitely a math guy.

SCIENCE:
With Bearclaw in 4th grade and Shortbread in 1st, I'm beginning to see this year as the last year I'll have "young" children. Because of this neurosis, I have decided to chuck formal, classical science and cling to what's left of their childhoods with nature study.

We're using the "Handbook of Nature Study" blog, by Barb, who is also the Harmony Arts gal, I found out. We purchase her "getting started" packet, with the first 10 lessons and some sketch
pages. I'll try to post pics of our adventures.

Here's our first nature "walk" with some local friends:




It evolved into a sand/dirt castle building session, but we did see a black rat snake slither down the opposite bank of this creek, and then two frogs jumped into the water from the area where the snake was. Later, another snake swam down the creek a little ways from us.

We fear slightly that the next trek might be a bit of a let down. At least for them.

That's it for this week one! Only 35 left...

This is the first time I've logged onto blogger in over 3 months. When I know I'm behind on something, I tend to avoid it, which is not very helpful in terms of getting un-behind.

When I last posted, I was already doing a poor job of posting timely wrap-ups, but since my main goal in maintaining this blog was to log our homeschooling progress, I wanted to keep going...and then May hit.

I don't know if it's a good thing or not, but I've pretty much forgotten everything from the last six weeks of school about which I intended to post an update. Still, in order to avoid huge loose ends flapping wildly in the wind, I will provide a brief synopsis of (what I can remember from) those last weeks of school. :

BIBLE:
In May we focused on encouragement. Sort of. Looking back, something tells me I was probably less than really focused on it, since I'm sure I spent most of May rushing us from one event to another. I tend to "encouarage" cooperation in those times with the volume of my voice. See who needs a morning Bible revamp?

HISTORY
We finished up SOTW Volume 3, minus a few chapters. We covered such topics Mexico and the movement west in America, which includes discussions of the Alamo, the Oregon Trail and the California Gold Rush. Bearclaw enjoyed the novel, Moccasin Trail, which he finished just recently. As a family, we read The Boy in the Alamo, which we would all recommend, especially for boys. Perhaps the title makes that obvious.

LITERATURE
Bearclaw finished reading Seaman's Journal: On the Trail with Lewis and Clark as well as completing his final project for the book. The project entailed constructing a fictional dialogue between an interviewer and both Lewis and Clark. It made for a fun and relatively easy assignment, since the students were permitted to dictate their imagined dialogue to an adult, who would then type it. Any guesses as to who did most of the work on this one?

Shortbread and I really slacked off with our reading in May, which makes me sad, because it makes for such wonderful memories. I hope the busier first-grade schedule won't exclude time for reading aloud non-curriculum related books.

LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw finished up his final essay. He wrote a persuasive essay about reading as "the best pasttime". I was certainly persuaded.

Shortbread covered the rest of the "Letterbooks" for Kindergarten. I think I'm even happier than he is about that.

MATH
We did not finish Primary Mathematics 3A by the end of the year. (In fact, as of today, we're only about 3/4ths of the way through.) The remainder of the book covers those multiplication facts we have yet to learn.

Shortbread is almost finished with his kindergarten math book...time to order Primary Mathematics 1A

SCIENCE
We finished our science curriculum around week 27, so we're done with "official" science until fall. Of course, we're always involved with random nature study.

So that's it. No photos. No link to other Wrap-ups. Just a few final notes to tie up those ends before we move on.

BIBLE:
We still focusing on forgiveness, and also reading from our Jesus Storybook Bible. In the evenings, we read Amon's Adventure, which ties in with Lent, Holy Week and Easter.

HISTORY
We've conitnue our study of the U.S. in the early 19th century with a look at our country's interactions with Native Americans in this period. This includes the study of Tecumseh and the tragic "Trail of Tears". Since we are in Georgia, the study of the Cherokee and their removal is all the more interesting for us. In a couple of weeks, we'll travel to the actual New Echota Historical Site for a field trip.

LITERATURE
Bearclaw is reading Seamon's Journal: On the Trail with Lewis and Clark for literature right now and enjoying it.

Shortbread studied the letter "J" this past week; we read Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? and If Jesus Came to My House. (Which you should try to find in the original 1956 version, if you can, because of the wonderful sweet and simple illustrations.)

LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw's humanities class continues to work on their final essay of the year. It's his first multi-paragraph paper. He's writing a persuasive paper about "why reading is the best pastime". This week, we have to edit his rough draft, but we have two weeks to complete that, so we probably won't look at it for awhile.

I'm so very ready to move on from what the hybrid school is doing for kindergarten with Shortbread. They had us purchase Explode the Code, but we've hardly used it, so I think I'll start working on that with him this summer.

MATH
Primary Mathematics 3A is still focusing on reviewing addition and subtraction. Next week we pick up where we left off on the multiplication tables.

Shortbread is also working on addition and subtraction. At least I can handle both boys' math lessons for now.

SCIENCE
Since our chemistry lessons wrapped-up last week, we took a field-trip this week to a farm. We saw milking and egg collecting and got to pet some of the young animals.

Here are the boys this year (at 9 and 6 years-old) and below at the same farm three years ago (at 6 and 3). Why did I look at this!?

You all can go check out some more Weekly Wrap-Ups. I'm going to get my tissues.

BIBLE:
We started a new "Christian character trait" for April - Forgiveness. While focusing on Scripture related to forgiveness, we've also been reading The Jesus Storybook Bible. I've been struggling with offering something more structured for awhile, but for now, this will suffice. Bible is one area where something is always much better than nothing.

HISTORY
We've kicked-off our study of westward expansion in the U.S with a unit on Lewis and Clark. This is where my own history studies must have gone from poor to nonexistent. My misconceptions about Lewis and Clark are too embarrassing to mention here, but lets just say that the work "Louisiana" in "Louisiana purchase" led my images of their expedition astray. There are so many great options for reading and listening on this topic that we couldn't begin to cover them all.

Since the events took place during Thomas Jefferson's presidency, we read A Picture Book of Thomas Jefferson. How We Crossed the West was a fun summary of the Lewis and Clark journey with lots of interesting details and fun, cartoon-like illustrations. Although we haven't gotten to them yet, we plan to pick up Bold Journey and The Cabin Faced West for family read-alouds as we continue to look at the movement west.

During lunchtime, we've enjoyed listening to Jim Weiss's "Gone West" CD and "Sacagewea: Her Story" by Your Story Hour. I'd love to see the Ken Burns documentary, as well, but it might be a little slow for the kids. Maybe hubby and I will rent it ourselves...

LITERATURE
Bearclaw has a break from literature right now, but he is slowly reading his way through Stowaway, based on my "suggestion". He's also enjoying the second set of books from the Sugarcreek Gang series.

Shortbread studied the letter "Q" this past week, and I never really found a great picture book to go along with it. I think he was happy to just pick his own favorites!

LANGUAGE ARTS
Bearclaw's humanities class continues to work on their final essay of the year. It's his first multi-paragraph paper, and this week he had to finish his rough draft. Let's just say that "rough" fits for the process as well as the end result.

I've really fallen off with Shortbread's kindergarten work. We're just doing enough to get by and turn in what's due for his class. I'm bored and so is he, so I need to find something a little more challenging for summer.

MATH
Primary Mathematics 3A is still focusing on reviewing addition and subtraction, which has provided some much-needed practice for Bearclaw. I think some of his skills had gotten a little rusty, but he's humming along now.

Shortbread and I had a knock-down, drag-out, teary, screamy math lesson this week. It all started when I pulled out the unit cubes and used them to count out subtraction problems. He protested that that was what babies do and he would have none of it. So much for "hands on"; I guess he's been watching big brother focus on written math for awhile and associates that with more difficult math. We'll be going ahead to first grade math this summer.

SCIENCE
We wrapped up our Real Science 4 Kids Chemistry book this week by making bread. Our experiment involved a comparison of dough allowed to rise in a warm place and dough put in the refrigerator to rise. Although there was a marked difference between the two loaves, both were deemed edible and then fully consumed.


That's all for this week, and I'm so late publishing, I missed the Weekly Wrap-Up link. Oh well...

I've fallen behind in my summaries of last school year, and we're starting school tomorrow! The only subject that I didn't really cover so far is Bible. I know the county won't ever check on that, but I want to remember what we did all the same.

We covered Bible in the morning during breakfast. This involved memorizing a weekly verse, learning one hymn each month, and reviewing the topic we discussed on Sunday evenings during our family devotion time.

For our Sunday evenings, my husband would read a lesson from a sweet little book his mother gave to me called Little Visits with God. Both the language and the illustrations give away the 1950's publishing date, but an excellent updated version is now available. Although I enjoy the sometimes quaint, sometimes corny aspects of the vintage version, we occasionally had to change the wording so that our children could understand the point more thoroughly.

Each lesson in Little Visits centers on a Bible verse, which is illustrated in a short story. Discussion questions follow and a closing prayer is provided. We found these lessons appropriate and interesting enough to hold the attention of both our 5 year-old and 8 year-old. I think they would work for children from about 3 to 11.

During breakfast that week, the boys and I memorized the Scripture verse from our lesson and also learned a hymn. I generally organized our devotions into monthly themes, thanks to the index in Little Visits, and our monthly hymn alligned with the theme of the month.

If time allowed, we would continue to discuss the week's lesson. This was particularly true once we started on themes of Christian character, which I would emphasize with readings from The Book or Virtues by William Bennett or Everyday Graces by Karen Santorum. Both books provide stories, poems, and quotes to illustrate a variety of noble character qualities.

We also used the breakfast hour for poetry memorization, with each of the boys memorizing a poem every month. The only difficulty in that was choosing a poem; Favorite Poems Old and New provided too many options. Of all our selections, Bearclaw's rendition of Psalm 8 and Shortbread's sweet and stumbly recitation of "The Quarrel" by Eleanor Farjeon were my favorites.