Learning Through Life

New Location

2011-07-24T09:20:00.000-07:00

I have made the decision to condense all of my blogs into one place. If you would like to continue to follow us, find us here

Another short week....

2010-01-25T18:23:00.001-08:00

We had yet another short week this week thanks to the public school kids being off Monday for MLK day and then Friday for the end of the semester in service day. Of course this meant extra children in the house, which means NO schooling got done.

We continued learning the 6 principle parts of Latin verbs and reviewing of our vocabulary. We also continued our LA review of nouns, singular, plural, irregular plural, etc. We received our new math curriculum (Math U See) so we did a few little lessons and the kids are really enjoying it, despite the fact that a lot of it is review. We are looking forward to seeing more of the lessons with it.

We also learned about Van Gogh, studied a few of his more famous paintings, and learned of his life.

Kyley worked on more researching of elements as Dawson worked through the Cretaceous Period with his dinosaur unit study. Kyley also finished up her research report and just needs to edit it.

We also went over exactly what caring meant to us and ways that we can show people that we care. We came up with ideas that we can implement to show the people around us that we do care for them

But like I said it was a pretty short week so not too much was accomplished.

Homeschooling isn't always rainbows and sunshine....

2010-01-20T16:47:00.001-08:00

.....sometimes it is the thunder and rain that it takes to get to that rainbow.

I found a similar post like this on another home schooling mama's blog and I thought I would post one of my own.

There will certainly be days ....

when you are out and every well meaning adult that you run into asks if you have the day off of school

when you tell the aforementioned adult above that no you are indeed "home schooling" and they promptly roll their eyes so far back in their head that you really debate on whether or not to smack them

when again that same adult mentioned above asks if you are worried about socialization and you debate on going into a full on lecture about the lack of "socialization" of your children's public school peers and then just opt to say no not at all, they can always find mail order spouses if the need arises.

when your children declare that they hate you and wish to return to "real school" and based on the day you actually debate on sending them.

when your children are bouncing off the walls and you debate pulling out the duct tape to keep them still for at least 10 minutes of lessons

when your children say that they HATE their classmates and refuse to be in the same room as them, so you can forget about that amazingly cool science experiment you had planned

when you really, REALLY don't feel like teaching

when you really, REALLY don't feel like parenting either

when you give up after an especially trying day and say I'M DONE! SERIOUSLY DONE! You guys are going to SCHOOL!

Despite the fact that home schooling can be rough and very trying, it also has amazing perks that I could have ever even imagined. There are days that I want to quit, but then there are days that I wouldn't change the way things are going for the world.

Our week in review.....

2010-01-17T19:43:00.001-08:00

This week we had an unexpected shortened week of lessons, but it went fairly well.

We worked out with our Wii Fit Plus, doing some yoga and strength training, then we did a little origami and tangrams on our daily calendars. We have also been working on some character training by learning about the types of people that we are on the inside and what we would like to do in order to change or better ourselves.

We have been learning about latin verbs with our Lively Latin course, that we absolutely LOVE! We also did a lot of review of our vocabulary utilizing our HyperDash game. We also have HyperBlast and I am almost certain that we will be using that game to work through vocabulary as well.

Dawson and I have been doing a unit study on dinosaurs, utilizing The Magic Tree House book Dinosaurs Before Dark, as well as a pocket book center from Evan Moor about dinosaurs. We went to the library to get some books about dinosaurs and found a cool series (Scholastic News Books) that will allow him to read and research a bit on his own. We have also spent some time playing this game and making a diorama. We have found a few other links here that we will utilize.

Dawson making his dinosaur lapbook

Kyley is not doing this unit study with us, instead she is working on a research report on dance.

Here she is doing some research.

We also reviewed a lot of math concepts while we wait for our new math curriculum to come. With Dawson we reviewed telling time and Kyley was reviewing factoring and multiples and square roots.

We have been tying in a lot of our language arts with our unit studies/research reports so this week Dawson worked on cause and effect while Kyley worked on writing outlines and bibliographies.

We found a new art program that we are starting considering that we have pulled Dawson from his cyber school (k12 based) and we used their art program for our basis in what we did for Kyley in art. So this week we created our portfolios and watched a preview of artists that we will be learning about with this wonderful art program.

We also reviewed and did a little more in depth research on Greek Gods and important people in Greek history.

Plus a lot of free play time.....before our snow melted.

Work Box Wednesday.....a little late.

2010-01-15T12:19:00.001-08:00

I had every intention of blogging this on Wednesday but got home a little late and was feeling pretty under the weather...and then yesterday I didn't get onto the computer at ALL because I was again under the weather. So here is our workbox post for the week.

Our schedule for the day was a short one due to the fact that our local public school kids had a half day for teacher enrichment so I had a bunch of extra children @ 12p.

They do boxes 1-2: Wii Fit Routine (yoga or strength training) and then Daily Calendar (I got these great calendars at 5 below for $3....and the kids love them)

Dawson (8)

Tangram daily calendar

Kyley (11)

Origami calendar...(I didn't get a pic of her calendar in her box because she rushes down every morning to fold her next one)

Then our morning meeting in which we were discussing our character muscles and determining what types of people we are. We went over our strengths as well as what we think we should work on. Then we did our weather report, our menu for the day as well as individual schedules.

Then we covered Latin verbs with Lively Latin.

They had a snack while completely boxes 3-6

Dawson's (8)

We are doing a dinosaur unit study using Magic Tree House Book #1 Dinosaurs Before Dark and then Evan Moor Dinosaur Pocket Book from teacherfilebox.com as well as a few library books and other resources.

Reading 1 chapter and then completing a comprehension/grammar/vocab worksheet from the book

Evan Moor Pocket Book Triceratops today

Starting a diorama of Cretaceous Period.

Typing using Typing Instructor.

Kyley (11)

Spelling words from acbteach.com (winter weather words)

Her research report this quarter (Dance)

reading an article

Engraving art from Michael's.

Then we had lunch and then did boxes 7-10

Dawson (8)

Using foam clock and then time flash cards that I created and laminated to learn quarter till/after, half past etc. (For some reason this was a concept that he was struggling with)

Sight words

Cause and Effect worksheet

Building Legos

Kyley (11)

Chemistry Lapbook...research 4 elements

Square Roots

Review of Book Titles/Quotations Grammar

Read a book

Then they had to write in their journals. I found a monthly journal on abcteach that gives special days throughout the month and things to write about. Apparently this week was Pizza Week so they wrote about their favorite pizza toppings and why.

Like I said this was a shortened day for us, so their work boxes weren't very intensive and we didn't do history or fine arts.

Props to Hyper Dash game....

2010-01-12T16:37:00.001-08:00

....for making a great game that inspired me to do something fun and exciting for our Latin vocabulary review today. I randomly placed the targets around the room and then set up words under the numbers 1-5 and the kids had to race around the room finding the appropriate number called out then come up to the white board and recite the word and give the definition under the number of the target that they had just hit then move on to find their next target to see how many words they could answer correctly before their time was up. The kids had a BLAST working through the vocabulary this way...and you would be surprised at how many they remembered while keeping active. :) I think this will be something that we do quite often to continue reviewing our vocabulary.

It gave our school day a wonderful start. The rest of our day went fairly well.....with a minor mishap at our McDs playdate. I ended up getting into it with another mom there because she didn't think her 4 yo old son punching lil man in the face was reason for discipline, and then went on to say that lil man deserved it because he probably antagonized the situation because he was a "freak homeschooler." UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Though I find it funny that my "freak homeschooler" was able to maintain composure and not retaliate with violence but rather his words. *sigh...some people

Day 1....of OUR new year...

2010-01-11T17:13:00.001-08:00

Well this was our 1st official day back to schooling since the start of the new year and it went fairly well. I set up a new system, yet again, and it seemed to work well.

I picked up a dry erase schedule strip at the dollar spot at Target way back and I just added some velcro dots to that and the back of some schedule cards and we have a loose schedule that looks something like this.

Today:

Boxes 1-2 (which are Wii Fit or their daily calendars)

Morning Meeting (which includes going over our calendar, anything interesting that somebody would like to share, we cover our menu for the day and discuss the food pyramid and determine if our meals are healthy choices, then our character training)

Latin (2 days a week worksheets, 3 days a week just vocab/chant review)

Boxes 3-6 (while having a snack)

Lunch

History (which will alternate with religion)

Handwriting (which will alternate with art, music, photography, or computer skills)

Boxes 7-10

and lastly journal

I will do a more detailed post on Wednesday for our workbox wednesday post.

I am pleased to say that today went fairly well though and I feel like I am MOTIVATED again.

I am ready to start the week....

2010-01-10T16:24:00.001-08:00

I spent the day planning our next 2 weeks of lessons. Woohooo! Nothing like an entire day spent planning out lessons to get ya motivated. :) We are ready to start back to lessons after just about a month long break from "academics." We did a fun unit about Christmas around the world and that was pretty much all we have done since before Thanksgiving, so we are ready to start fresh.

I am pretty excited about starting fresh and new for 2010. We are going to give schooling a different feel so hopefully it will work out a little better. I am pretty certain that it will all be good. I need to buy a new math curriculum and possibly a new language arts then we will be completely good to go.

A Great Way to Homeschool For Less

2010-01-09T20:27:00.001-08:00

The Homeschool Buyer Co-op is a free homeschooling organization for both new and veteran homeschoolers. Co-op membership is free and confidential, and entitles homeschooling families to discounts from over a hundred educational suppliers. They also sponsor "Group Buys" for curriculum packages that save homerschooling families lots of money. On the site you'll find lots of free information, such as databases of free curriculum, field trips, and educational contests and scholarships. Highly recommended. Click here for more information.

School Room Set Up

2010-01-09T18:28:00.001-08:00

I have spent the past week reorganizing our school room and trying to decide on a schedule for the remainder of the year. We have kind of been enjoying the week of unschooling, but I know that we have to get back into some sort of routine, but I plan on taking a more unschooling-ish approach for the remainder of the year. I have made the decision to withdraw the little man from the cyber school that he is in to just go at it on our own.

I will work on the skills that he needs to work on using my own style that is more suitable for him. I know that it may be a little bit of a struggle but it's something that we have to get through. I have been feeling that our schooling has been lacking in fun lately so it was time to revamp our style.

But for now here is our set up.....

BEFORE: (wide angle)

AFTER: (wide angle)

We cleared up a lot of space by more all of our shelving into a walk-in closet that was being used for storage. (said closet recently flooded so we had to move everything out to tear down the cedar board and carpeting that was in there so we just left the items stored in our laundry room and it freed up a lot of space for us)

The table is now where the kids will do their work rather than at the bar top. The primary storage bins are our "school store" and on top of those are our worksheet/To Do cards turn in boxes.

Here are a few more pics of our schooling area:

Our workboxes are still in the same spot, but we ave added some very cool new calendars into our routine that I found at 5 Below for just $3...I will be sure to take close ups of them for our workbox Wednesday post.

This is our morning meeting/poster center. I have 3 trifold display boards, one with our morning meeting items, then another that is our writing center, and the last is our poster center...I will rotate posters on there that coordinate with our units. Above our display boards is our "behaviour stop light" as a visual for the kids, mainly Dawson and then our rules.

My teaching area....the white board and a magnetic board from IKEA then posters for Dawson to see how all the letters and numbers are formed. (He is dyslexic and this helps tremendously as we are working on self correction.) Then to the left are some of our books.

Our new storage area

The kids and I each have a cubby in these shelves for work that does not go into our workboxes because it is our "together" work. Then a lot of our paper/notebooks are stored here for now.

Here are the shelves were we store all of our science tools, math manipulatives, crayons, markers and other art supplies. Some of our games are on these shelves as well. I feel like I need more room already. (:

Right now our computer is still stored here but it probably won't be for long. I think we are going to use this bar top for our art and science experiments. There is a bathroom and our laundry for clean up close.

Here is our play/TV area which is on the other side of our school room.

Snow day....

2010-01-08T19:55:00.001-08:00

....yep I said it. We had a snow day! The kids played outside in the 1* windchill for about 3 hours, then came in to some cocoa and played the wii fit. While they were playing I completely revamped the school room, again. I think that this is how it is going to stay. I will take pics and have them posted over the weekend.

I hope that everybody enjoys their weekend, I plan to work on our lesson plans. :)

Another week off...

2010-01-07T19:10:00.001-08:00

....I feel like we haven't done much in terms of education this week, but really we have. Just more unschooling, fly by the seat of our pants kind of education....and ya know what...WE LOVED IT!

It's amazing that when left to their own accord the kids will actually choose to learn something. This morning Kyley was researching surgeries (why I have no clue) and found this pretty cool site and did a few virtual surgeries on there. Dawson ended up logging in as well on the other computer and had a great time. Then they did some silly story writing (completely on their own) and a little "store play." So....all in all a decent day.

Kyley then had her auditions for Honk, which will continue through next week, then went to karate. Dawson is still feeling under the weather so he and I stayed home and hung out, watching a little TV/playing DS and cuddling. Of course there was Wii time as well. Wii Fit Plus has become an all time favorite thing to do right now. :)

Day 6.....so much for that...

2010-01-06T18:31:00.001-08:00

......well I had every intention of starting back to schooling this week....and today....and tomorrow as well, but who I am kidding I am not going to. Friday we have co-op so....why start tomorrow.....so looks like Monday is going to be our BTS after the holiday break day. Which is fine....an extra week off is like nothing, right?

So today our learning was....um......some puzzle time, Ky read her script for auditions tomorrow, we played Sorry, umm.....and Wii fit time. Sounds like a decent day right?

Day 5.....all about science

2010-01-05T18:41:00.001-08:00

Well today the boy child was feeling a little better so we decided to venture out because it was his birthday and we did have plans. So we went off to the science center and spent the better part of the day there enjoying their new exhibit.

We were able to take a virtual tour/simulator through the human body, which was pretty cool, learned about physics via the You-Y0 (Human Yo-Yo), along with many other cool things. So we chalked today up to a science day. :)

Here are a few pics of our adventures.

I will have a few more tomorrow, my camera is acting up (the pocket camera) and won't finish uploading the photos. *sigh....

Day 4.....

2010-01-04T18:10:00.001-08:00

......included a trip to the doctor for the Little Man and I, then back home for a "sick day." Everybody in the house is under the weather with the exception of myself, I am hoping that a good night's sleep will do everybody well because tomorrow is Little Man's birthday and we were supposed to hit Sportsworks with some friends, who are skipping school (public school) to join us in our little celebration. :)

So....in terms of learning....more scribblenauts, we played finish the story in the car on our ride to and from the doctor, then had some quality cuddling. :)

No schooling tomorrow....but back to the grind on Wed...maybe ;)

Day 3

2010-01-03T20:16:00.001-08:00

Day 3 of 365....was.....eventful to say the least but alas not much learning took place. This morning we did a bit of Wii fit , then watched our boys (Steelers) play, then we proceeded to do a little cleaning and reorganizing of the toys while listening to the Baltimore/Raiders game. *sigh....What a disappointment! Oh well there is always next year right. We revamped our Morning Meeting circle time board and then we discussed a new schedule to attempt to make our learning more fun and less school like than it has been. But....we will see how it works. It is my intention to do a lot more learning via gaming/hands on learning/experiments and LOADS of reading and discussions. This week I have decided to implement some character units...using What Do You Stand For?

Anyway onto the "excitement" of our day, like I said yesterday Brittany informed me that she wanted to cyber school so I told her that she had to propose it with her father, who I co-parent with, and then we could all discuss it. Well immediately he threw it off the table without even listening to a concern from Brittany, which is par for the course. He has a habit of not listening to ANYBODY'S concerns, feelings, or emotions. After screaming at her on the phone about how ridiculous the idea of cyber schooling was because of the lack of face to face contact that is necessary to succeed, according to him. He went on and on about how book smarts isn't anything compared to having social skills. We after he finished screaming, yes screaming...not talking, at her he wanted to talk to me about it. Well before I even said anything to him, he flipped and said...ABSOLUTELY NOT! I do not agree with cyber schooling at ALL! She is not cyber schooling because she needs to realize that there are things that you don't want to do in life and getting up and going to high school is one of them. He went on and on bashing me and my "hippie parenting" claiming that he has made the better/best parenting decisions for her. Claiming that he was the "real parent" where as I was just her friend and that a 16yo shouldn't "rule the roost." While I agree that she shouldn't have the final say, I do think that now at 16 yrs old she should have some say. As the conversation went on, he escalated talking about how she would be a loser because only people who go to cyber schools are losers, and if she ended up cybering he would write her off and not see a dime for college from him. (Mind you he does a lot of pompous ranting....OVER everything) Then as I continued to make points that he had no rebuttal for, he threatened to kill me. He has bullied Britt for the past few years always holding over her the fact that he has money...and she can have anything she wants as long as she goes along with his game plan, which just happens to be doing everything he says without complaint, never questioning him because he is ALWAYS right, and never showing

This is a topic that I have researched in depth and feel that Britt would probably prosper. She is gifted and picks up on things rather easily and cyber schooling would allow her to move at her own pace and graduate early. To which he replied....she doesn't need to grad. early, there is a sequence to how things need to be done. Mind you as it is right now, she will be 18.5 when she graduates, why not make it one year earlier? As it stands now I told Britt to prepare for this to end up in court because he is going to be a complete and total ass about it. Mind you he has NOTHING to do with her education right now anyway...I am the one that deals with homework, grades, talking with teachers, fighting with them about grade changes due to clerical errors etc. It's not him. We will see what tomorrow brings with this situation to determine if his threats were empty or not.

Day 2 ....

2010-01-02T21:22:00.001-08:00

....was all about electronics today. We played the Wii (phys. ed), then played some Scribblenauts on the DS (spelling, critical thinking, creativity), then a little Brain Age. Not much to really report since all 3 kids are sick now and just kind of in veg mode. We will start back to full on schooling Monday (maybe) if not definitely for sure on Wednesday.

My oldest came to me today and told me how much she HATED the mindless routine of high school, she is a 10th grader at the local high school, and that she wanted to come home for the rest of her education. I told her that she would have to bring it up with her father (we co-parent) and he is completely against it. *sigh....I am all for her being at home. She HATES the fact that she is in all honors courses and the kids aren't all that smart (according to her). SO we will see where this will lead us. I may have another at home here SOON!

It was actually funny listening to her rant on about how her life has become so routine and mindless, wake up, go to school, not learn anything, come home, do homework, eat dinner, play a few games and do it all over again. She feels as if she is not living life and I can't say that I blame her. So...here's to hoping. :)

Day 1

2010-01-01T21:27:00.001-08:00

Today we didn't formally do any schooling but we did purge a lot of our old supplies and discuss what we would like to see happen in the year to come. After we went through what we didn't want to keep we pulled out the items that we wanted to see more of and reorganized our room. We are not finished but we are getting there. I am hoping to finish it up for tomorrow and snap a few pics. This is only our 3rd reorganize since Sept. :)

365 days of learning

2010-01-01T21:24:00.001-08:00

I keep a personal blog and I am attempting to blog every day throughout the rest of the year, so I figured since we are always learning something why not post about our day learning here. I think it will be great to go back and see exactly how far we have come since the beginning.

Merry Christmas...a little late

2009-12-30T19:34:00.001-08:00

This year we, well I, tried something a little different. I ordered a lot more things from Mindware, Young Explorers and Hearthsong than I thought and I was having trouble deciding which child's name I should place on the tag. We do have a standing rule on our house that any board games, video games, or movies are communal even if they have your name on the tag. With the things I ordered I was really unsure of who should get what, so rather than making the decision, I wrapped everything up and placed them in an oversized gift bag and placed a tag on it that said To: Learning Through Life Homeschool. Problem solved....and it worked out wonderfully, the kids were pretty excited about all the new "school supplies" that they had. Now just to get it all put away. lol

Starting Fresh

2009-12-30T19:25:00.001-08:00

The past month or so I have been trying to decide whether or not to keep Dawson (nearly 8) enrolled in the cyber school that he is enrolled in for the services that he is receiving as well as the co-op that our particular cyber offers has been pretty amazing this year. Another downfall is that we are actually semi pleased with the curriculum (k12) that we are using with our cyber. I have been researching curriculum in my spare time and have decided that I think I am ready to just take the leap, and the start of the new year seems to be a GREAT time to do it. I think that we are going to take it kind of easy for the rest of the year...not buying any "new" curriculum, just kind of using resources that we already have and the library.

I have been feeling burnt out by the fact that I have "somebody" to answer to in regards to our schooling and I think it has been making our journey not as enjoyable as it could be. So, we are going to fall into a little unschooling journey for the time being and just kind of flying by the seat of our pants. Sounds fun doesn't it? :)

I have a few tweaks to our system that I am working on and hope to start them as of Monday. I will post some pics of our new set-up after I get things all back into place. Hopefully I will have a new workbox Wednesday post ready to go.

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List....

2009-12-06T06:53:00.001-08:00

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List

by Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling, Issue #1, Fall 2007

1 Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2 Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.

3 Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

4 Don't assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

5 If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.

6 Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.

7 We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

8 Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

9 Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

10 We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

11 Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.

12 If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.

13 Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.

14 Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

15 Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.

16 Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

17 Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.

18 If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

19 Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.

20 Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.

21 Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she's homeschooled.

22 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.

23 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.

24 Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

25 Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!

Way behind....

2009-12-04T20:18:00.001-08:00

Well I haven't posted in a few weeks because we decided to take the week of Thanksgiving off of any actual schooling. We finished up our Thanksgiving unit and then just kind of hung out.

Our holiday was actually one of the best that we have had in a really long time. Typically we run around visiting both sides of the family or else I host dinner here, this year we opted to just be "us" and I have to say it was the BEST decision that I have ever made. We took the opportunity to watch some movies together, starting Wed night, then I prepped dinner in the morning while listening to some music, watched a few more movies, played some board games and card games, had dinner together.....and then watched a few more movies and played a few more games. There was no running around worrying about seeing everybody or making sure that we were being a good host. It was actually SO relaxing.

This last week has actually been a little crazy so we didn't technically get in much "education." There were no work boxes filled at all for the last 2 weeks. I was trying to handle some family issues so I was a little tied up. We are hoping to start back into full swing come Monday. I was able to create a unit study for our Holidays Around the World Unit that we are going to do this entire month. I had intended on starting it on Monday however like I said I was a little busy, but it's ok we will work through the 1st couple lessons rather quickly and then be right back on track.

Workbox Wednesday

2009-11-18T05:09:00.001-08:00

Our week....

Box 1-Latin/Religion

This week we are focusing on learning 6 new latin nouns, 6 verbs, another declension, and a lot more work on declining nouns. Religion is being combined with our History this week because we are covering Greek gods/goddesses.

Box 2-Fine Arts

Art-we are covering more symmetry. Photography we are covering the rule of thirds (composition) and Music is still beats and rhythm.

Box 3-History

We are going to focus on Greek gods and goddesses and philosophers this week and it should wrap up our Ancient Greece unit if we get through it all. I know that Ancient Egyptian gods/goddesses ended up being a topic that we spent a lot of time on.

Box 4-Fun Theme Unit

We are still covering Thanksgiving. Each day they write something that they are thankful for on a feather that fills in their turkey. (I will take pics when they are done) We are also talking about the 1st Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, Wampanoag Indians, and a lot of farming.

D's boxes

Box 5-Therapy/Tutoring/Electives Box

OT back up this week with a new therapist...she actually starts today. Then today we also have a play date at the local Bounce U. Tomorrow we are meeting up with family to go see A Christmas Carol at the theaters (as kind of a kick off to our next fun unit, Winter Holidays, which will start the Monday after Thanksgiving) This box also has his library books to read for the week. This week was all about Lizards.

Box 6-Creative Writing

This week he is doing rice writing. I have a bunch of letter beads (from Dollar Tree) in a bin full of rice. He has to pick out 5 letters and then come up with 5 words about a topic that I choose. This week is Winter. He then has to use those words in a paragraph still relating to winter. He also had his Scholastic News in there....which this week was Meeting a Pilgrim Child and an Indian Child.

Box 7- Science

Still magnets, though he is planning on sitting in on K's chemical reactions experiments. This week's magnets lesson is creating 5 different structures with the Magnetix.

Box 8- Language Skills/Literature

Adjective review, comparing and contrasting review and then onto working on Problems and Solutions in literature. We are reading Harry and the Lady Next Door.

Box 9-Phonics

Working on long e this week

Box 10-Math

more multiplication prep.

K's boxes.

Box 5-Electives

kind of the same as D's box....minus the therapy. In place of the therapy card she has computer time.

Box 6-Writing, Vocab, Spelling

NaNoWriMo, spelling city, and same vocab

Box 7- Literature

She chose Who is Stealing the 12days of Christmas? to read this week. So...she will read that, and then do a small report on it.

Box 8- Grammar

Verb review

Box 9-Math

yet more equations....

Box 10-Science

This week is more periodic table and hopefully onto chemical reactions.

Line Photography

2009-11-12T13:40:00.001-08:00

Being that I am a photographer and my children have taken an interest in photography, I thought it would be fun to teach them about it. We started with the basic of photography, they both have composition down fairly well, so we started in with different types of cameras, shutter speed and aperture. We also are going to cover film speeds, depth of field and will probably cover angles and composition a little more in depth.

Their first assignment a few weeks ago was lines.....here are a few samples of their work. They were assigned to take pictures of 5 different kinds/types of lines.

2 samples of D's work

2 samples of K's work

A little organization in here...

2009-11-12T06:48:00.001-08:00

I just though that I would post sort of how I organize things in the attempt to keep our resources in order.

Here is the 3 ring binder that I keep our time cards, our task cards, lesson plans, lessons printed out for upcoming weeks, etc

Time cards-We use these for how long they are allotted for certain tasks that they are to complete.

Subject Task cards-

Physical Activity Cards-

Electronic Task Cards

Field Trips/Elective Task Cards

Free time/Fun activity Task Cards

All of these are printed out on cardstock, laminated and then placed into card holder sheets.

I also keep our fun theme unit lessons in sheet protectors in here, as well as any theme unit that I think we may use in the future. Any mini books that I pre-print for our history or science lapbooks go into sheet protectors as well in their coordinating section.

There are their totes that they carry with them that should have almost everything they need to complete tasks. Pencils, highlighter, dry erase marker, calculator, timer, a fidget ball, plus their index card holder that has their extra To Do cards and help cards. Also they story their school store money in here.

So as you see we make a very valid attempt at being completely organized but somehow it doesn't always seem to work out that way.

Workbox Wednesday

2009-11-12T05:28:00.001-08:00

It's time for another glimpse into what we have going on for the week, though this week will be without pictures.

Our together boxes:

Box 1- Latin/Religion

We are learning a new set of Latin nouns, a few verbs, and another declension. This box also covers our religion, where we are learning about ancient polytheistic religions....We have gone back to touch base on Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses. We won't spend much time on these because we covered them in depth last year for our Ancient Egypt Study.

Box 2- Fine Arts

This week in Art we are covering symmetry. So we are making a few symmetric paintings. For photography, we are finishing up our shapes from last week (editing and things), and then moving onto finding symmetry in the world and capturing them on film. Music is more beats/rhythm. K will also be attending her drama classes.

Box 3-Fun Theme-Thanksgiving

I created turkeys for them to show what they are thankful for. They have a body to which they attach a feather to that has something that they are thankful for. We will continue this for the remainder of this week and through next week. We are also reading a lot about Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, farming, and things that coordinate with Thanksgiving.

Box 4-History

Still using SOTW, and covering Ancient Greeks. We are expanding on the Olympics that we covered last week with some Olympic competitions. (though due to illness that has kind of been put on hold)

This is where they split into individual boxes

D's (7yr) boxes

Box 5-Therapy/Tutoring Box/Extras

This week we do not actually have any therapies scheduled because we are in the midst of switching OTs and it was an off week for speech. We did do some reading tutoring, then included reading a book of his choosing, "Spiders", which we will discuss. We have a co-op on Friday, the became a part of this box. We were supposed to visit a local museum on Wed, however due to illness this did not happen, then he has a Free Time card in there as well.

Box 6-Creative Writing

Comparing and Contrasting and Fiction vs Non Fiction. He read a a non fictional article on Bears as well as Goldilocks and compared and contrasted the stories. He also wrote 2 fictional and 2 non-fictional sentences about bears. This box also included 2 other leaflets from Scholastic News that he read and we discussed.

Box 7-Science

more magnets

Box 8-Language Skills/Literature

We covered adjectives this week, he read through an article picking out all of the adjectives within it, then telling me the noun that they described. We did a lot of talking about how adjectives can really help paint a picture of what you are trying to describe. Finally he wrote a brief descriptive paragraph about his favorite adult.

Box 9- Phonics

Vowel blends that make the long O sound

Box 10- Math

This week we are priming for multiplication, practicing a lot of skip counting by 3s, 4s. We also practiced place values to 1000 and rounding to the nearest 10 or 100.

K's (11yr) Boxes

Box 5-Electives

This week she was given cards to complete some new fashion designs, practice her typing, edit her photos, blog and work on our family newsletter. Her blog topic this week is her novel.

Box 6-Writing/Vocab/Spelling

She is still working on writing her novel for NaNoWriMo, she is up to @ 7000 words right now. Her vocab is coming from Vocabulary from classical roots and spelling we are utilizing the 6th grade spelling bee list of 800 words, this week she will be using spellingcity with 20 new words.

Box 7-Literature

We are heading to the library on Thur for her to pick out a new book, and she has some editing and her final draft of her report for Begging for Change.

Box 8- Grammar

Prepositions, prepositional phrases and articles

Box 9- Math

More equations and inequalities.

Box 10- Science

The Periodic Table. We are using Chemistry Matters from our local library and then a few other books to read up about the periodic table. I printed off a FF game to go along with this as well.

Our wait boxes this week include Scrabble Slap, Computer Time, Mad Libs, a picture frame craft, tangrams, geoboards, and then puzzles.

Workbox Wednesday....

2009-11-04T08:02:00.001-08:00

We have begun a new adventure in our home education that we are pretty pleased with, despite the fact that we are still sort of tweaking it. We are using a variation of Sue Patrick's Workbox System. When we started the system I was filling boxes every night and it was taking about 2 hours each evening to get everything all together and the previous day's work checked. Now, what I have done is on Sunday I fill all of the boxes with what I would like to get done throughout the week, and it takes me about 3-4 hours total to get them all planned out and filled and then I am done for the week, aside from checking the work, which often times I check while they are working independently, so...we are liking this way much better. The kids are having to take more responsibility for completing their work and I feel like I have more time in the evenings to have fun with the kids.

Boxes 1-4 are completed together:

Box 1: Latin/Religion

Latin~we use the Lively Latin program and have been learning about the 1st declension

Religion~we just started using Usborne World Religions and have covered what religion entails. We will be moving onto studying all about the ancient polytheistic religions.

Box 2: Fine Arts

Art~we just learned about Piet Mondrian and his use of lines/shapes in his art work. We are working on making a grid style piece of art that resembles his style.

Photography~well being that I am a freelance photographer, I have decided to teach the kids about the basics of photography. We are making a lapbook that covers the basics, ie....types of cameras, composition of a photograph, film speeds, shutter speed, and aperture. We are just finishing up a little bit of landscape photography and now are moving onto shapes. I will have to do another post of their photography assignments.

Music~K attends a theater group so right now we are counting that as a lot of her music hours, however we are also learning the guitar (slowly). D is just learning how to play guitar and follow beats and rhythm.

Box 3: Our "fun" theme (no photo here because I haven't started creating the lapbooks yet...sorry)

This box we are going to put together lapbooks on subjects that we want to learn about that don't really fit into our "curriculum" so we call them our FUN THEME lessons. In September we did a lot with apples....apple poetry, cooking with apples, reading about Johnny Appleseed, etc, the 1st two weeks of October we covered Gray Wolves-because we chose a gray wolf from BAB as our "class pet." The last 2 weeks of Oct. we covered Halloween. This month we are going to be covering Thanksgiving and Autumn. The plan is to learn about the Autumnal Equinox, Pilgrims, Thanksgiving, and do a little character building with learning about being thankful for what we have and things like that.

Box 4: History

We are covering Ancient Greece. This week we will be covering Sparta and Athens, along with the 1st Olympics. We may make it to covering Greek gods and goddesses but I am not sure at this point.

This is where we go to individual boxes, these boxes are allowed to be done in any order that the kids choose, however everything must be completed by Friday or they have to finish it up over the weekend.

D (7yrs old) has the following boxes:

Box 5: Therapy/Tutoring Box

D has been diagnosed with PDD-NOS (an autism spectrum disorder), along with ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, SID (sensory integration disorder) and CAPD (central auditory processing disorder). Therefore he receives speech and occupational therapy, reading tutoring, and he attends a social skills group. So in this box we put all of his therapy/tutoring sessions in there, along with some "fun" things to do....ie this week is 30mins of free time and reading this book about spiders.

Box 6: Creative Writing

Depending on the week we either use our rice bin or some scholastic news articles for his writing. This week is scholastic news articles. He is expected to read these and then write 2 sentences about the article on his own.

Box 7: Science

This week in science is all about magnets. We have everything for our experiments and lessons in this box.

Box 8: Language Skills/Literature

We are completing our unit on Weather poetry, reading Elves and the Shoemaker, and learning about contractions and compound words.

Box 9: Phonics

We use k12 phonics and are working through the last quarter of our grade 1 phonics. This week is learning about letters that make long I sounds.

Box 10: Math

In math this week we are covering place value up to 1000, adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers using regrouping, and working on some money word problems, and reviewing time. (which is still a concept that he struggles with)

K's boxes 5-10

Box 5: Electives

Every week this contains a topic to blog about and typically an art subject that she is interested in...this week that is jewelry making, then a computer skills subject (typing, photo editing, creating things in paint, power points, etc) then this week is some free time.

Box 6: Writing/Vocabulary/Spelling

For all of November K and I are doing the NaNoWriMo challenge, which is to write a 50K word novel by the end of the month, so she has a To Do chart with how many words I expect her to have completed by the end of the the week. Along with vocabulary and a To Do card with instructions to complete her spelling words on spellingcity.com for the week.

Box 7: Literature

This week she is reading Begging For Change and writing a 1 page book report on the book, and then reading a magazine article and writing a short essay about what she read.

Box 8: Grammar

Right now we are reviewing parts of speech, adjectives and adverbs this week, then sentence order and diagramming sentences.

Box 9: Math

K is working through some algebra at the moment, so this week we are working through basic equations.

Box 10: Science

Chemistry is what we are covering in science with K, we are doing a lapbook for chemistry basics. This week we are covering parts of an atom.

Our 4 additional boxes are travel/wait time boxes, they often take these in the car when we are dropping off the boy I care for at preschool, or to appointments, or in the car when we are running errands. There are activities for each child in each one of the boxes. These boxes are wonderfully portable and self contained.

This week we have:

Dreamcatchers to make, along with a puzzle book for each child.

ThinkFun Puzzle Building Bricks and Travel Tangrams basically

Geoboards and Math Dice

Then a logic puzzle and a fun game, Farkle.

So hopefully everything we need to accomplish this week will get done as we are still recovering from some lingering illness (on mom's part) and teaching is still a struggle thanks to the loss of voice.

School Room

2009-11-03T10:05:00.001-08:00

As rather eclectic home educators, we also have a rather eclectic "school room" set up. We have converted what used to be our basement/game room into our "school room"....which mind you that does not mean that we are banished to the basement all day long, that is just where we basically keep all of our supplies. Some days schooling takes place down there, some days it takes place in the living room or dining room, sometimes it takes place in the kitchen or even outside or in the car.

Here is our basic set up though...

This is the general feel of our area, the swing hanging is for both children to use to read or take a break in. Unfortunately our white board fell off the wall to the right and I need to rehang that. The red wall in the back is where our centers are set up, our morning circle time center gets set up there, along with out writing/reading center. There is a bean bag that goes in that corner along with an exercise ball that they can utilize.

This is where we store some of our games, puzzles and books that we use more frequently for schooling purposes. Excuse the new stack of books on the floor from this past weekends library book sale. :)

This is where I store a lot of our "workbox" activities. There are a lot of brain teasers, some "physics" type games, along with some craft items, our rice bin and our bean bin.

On the shelf on the left is where we store all of our art supplies, scissors, paper, etc....to the right is where our science tools/experiments and math manipulatives, etc. The primary colored bins on the far left is where we store our "school store" items. The long table is my work station where we keep all of our pencils, push pins, brads, paper clips, etc. along with our turn in boxes at the end.

These are our newest addition to our school year, workboxes and our completed work strips. I fill these for the entire week, so they have packets of work that is expected to be completed by Friday's. There are 10 boxes per child for core/elective subjects and 2 travel boxes that get filled with craft items or logic puzzles.

I will elaborate more on the items that we put in our workboxes on a weekly basis. For now we are enjoying how they are working for us.

The Beginning.....

2009-10-14T16:44:00.001-07:00

The start of this new blog is certainly not the beginning of our home education adventure, nor is it the beginning of my blogging adventure. However, I have decided that it is time that I document our ongoing adventures electronically.

I supposed I should give a little background on "us." I am mom....(obviously), and I am an outspoken, granola loving, homeopathic using, natural / green living, attachment parenting, home educating, liberal, self-employed photographer mama of 3, and part time caregiver of 2, who is "living in sin" with my domestic partner (despite the fact that it sometimes feels like I am doing it alone). Mr. Jack-of-All-Trades is a hard working, heavy equipment operator in his daytime life and an avid outdoorsman in his 2nd life. My crew of 3 consists of D AKA Boy Child AKA Little Man, a very intense, determined, argumentative, yet respectful, caring 7yo who has recently achieved his black belt in Tang Soo Do and loves every creature that walks the face of the Earth. He aspires to be a marine biologist and move to Australia to study. The 2nd member of our crew is K AKA Fashion Girl AKA Artsy Boheme Chic, a laid back, easy going, fashion loving, creative, inventive, kid loving, motherly 11yo who is a blue belt in Tang Soo Do and loves to create just about anything. She aspires to be a model/actress or fashion designer/freelance photographer living in Hollywood. Our last member of the crew is B AKA Drama Queen AKA Baby B, a very outgoing, intelligent, outspoken, fun loving, playful 15yo who is getting ready to DRIVE in the very near future. She is only joining us part time in our educational adventure due to the fact that she is a 10th grader in all AP classes at the local public high school. Her father, not Mr. Jack, and I co-parent her respectfully and he feels that she needs to experience life in public school (which I compromised on due to the fact that she has been schooled publicly for her entire educational career and has flourished.)

We have begun "urban farming" in our quaint little suburban neighborhood, despite a little resistance from our neighbors. We are looking forward to the spring when we plan to incubate eggs. We are also looking forward to the spring when we intend to add in a goat or 2 to our crew. Currently we have a decent sized veggie garden which we would LOVE to expand, but sadly don't really have the space for it. We are looking for the opportunity to buy some land and build in the very near future.

I am looking forward to sharing our adventures...and sharing ideas with other families.