Fall 2018 Roundup

Tweaking the routine

This fall we tried something a little different with our schedule.  We have blocked out Monday through Thursday mornings for our academic work. Except for occasional daytime doctor appointments, I try really hard to keep our mornings reserved for be-at-home school work.  We are usually done with most things by lunch time, though the older kids may still have a bit of work left for after lunch.  Afternoons are for piano practice and free time (after any leftover school work is completed).

Fridays are reserved for horse riding lessons, grocery shopping, and house cleaning.  This has proved less stressful for me, rather than trying to cram in bits of school work before we leave for riding lessons on Friday morning or taking up part of Saturday cleaning (or not getting the house clean at all). 

Another tweak for this fall’s schedule is that I dedicate the morning hours to working with my three youngest students (8, 6, and 5) and don’t allow my older ones to interrupt me (except for pressing questions if they get really stuck).  My three youngest need my attention to guide them with their work and to keep them from getting distracted.  My three oldest have plenty of work they can do independently; I check their work later in the afternoon or evening so they can make corrections later. 

They have all settled into this routine nicely and it proved invaluable in December when I got sick with a bad chest cold and stayed in bed for 2 or 3 days.  My husband was home from work with a cough, working at home on his laptop in the living room.  The older ones continued on with the school work I had prepared for the week and I was able to spend a few minutes each day with the younger ones doing their math and handwriting.  What a blessing not to lose a week of school just because mom got sick! 😊

Scheduling

Early this year I learned about HomeschoolManager.com.  It allows me to create schedules and assignment pages for each child, (plus I create one for family activities).  I have quite a few assignments that are duplicated for multiple children.  I just have to type the assignment in once, then click on the names of the students who need to do that assignment.  You can copy or move assignments from one day to another or from one week to another.  After I created all the assignments for the week, I just printed out each student’s page and stuck it in their binder.  Then they have all their assignments for the week, and they can work at their own pace.  Sometimes they even do some of the next day’s assignments.  As long as it all gets done within in the week, I don’t complain!

Here’s a sample of what a completed schedule looks like:

It costs $39 a year, and it did save me a lot of time compared to my previous ways of doing it.  I do really like the one-page format with all the assignments listed out for the whole week.

Some downsides:   There was a bit of a learning curve, partly complicated by some bugs in the program (sometimes you enter things and then they disappear and you have to enter them again).  They do not have a feature to  duplicate a student’s entire week; you have to copy individual assignments.  And when you create a new school year (or term), you have to type in each subject for each student all over again.  You can’t just duplicate from one term to the next or from one student to another.

Because of these two issues, I have begun to try out another program (www.homeschooltracker.com)  which costs a little more but looks a WHOLE LOT more flexible and powerful.  It’s got a learning curve too, but so far it looks promising.  I’ll give an update after I’ve used it for a while.

Now, subject by subject (roughly), here’s what we’ve been doing this fall:

Bible

We’ve been reading through Who is God? which is the first book in Apologia’s worldview curriculum series.  Like their other curricula, they provide optional notebooking journals.  I opted not to do those this time, since my kids have plenty of writing to do in their other subjects and they are not crazy about notebooking activities anyway.  We’ve just been reading through the book a few pages at a time and discussing them.

We spent quite a few weeks working on memorizing Exodus 20:1-17, as well as parts of Psalm 25, and selected key verses from Matthew.  (Our pastor was teaching through Psalm 25 on Wednesday nights and began a new series in Matthew on Sunday mornings.)

 Poetry

We started working our way through the poems in IEW’s Linguistic Development through Poetry Memorization.  At the end of the summer, they had an offer to get the student e-book free, so I decided we might as well try it. So far, we have made it through the first 5 poems.  I think the favorite, by far, was “Ooey Gooey”.  Even the 4 year old picked up on it very quickly and loves to recite it to anyone who will listen.

Since we’ve been learning about parts of speech in grammar, I chose another poem about all the different parts of speech to work on next.  That’s a longer one, so it’s been taking us a while.

Spanish

The three older kids have been learning Spanish through a free on-line program called Duolingo.  Two of the younger ones tried it a few times, but it proved too difficult for them (too much typing).  The older ones seem to be enjoying it, but we need to find way for them to practice speaking with real live people.

History and Geography

We have been learning about each of the states, beginning in the northeast, spending about a week on each one.  We have used a variety of resources to learn basic facts about each state such as location, abbreviation, motto, nickname, state flower, state bird, flag, etc.  We usually watch a couple of short videos from YouTube about each state and the older ones do some map work.  The older ones also skim through a couple of library books on each state (one focusing on interesting places and people and one focusing on the history of the state from its founding through the American Revolution).  I create fill-in-the blank worksheets to guide them through the books and make sure that their eyes at least land on most of the pages, even if they don’t thoroughly read them. 😊 I’ve been using a series of books by Ann Heinrichs for the geography part, and another series by Kevin Cunningham for the history part.  The geography study has dove-tailed nicely with our history studies, even though I didn’t necessarily plan it that way. 

For history, we have been studying United States History.  We’ve been listening to The Story of the 13 Colonies by H.A. Guerber (available at Librivox.com).  I also have the book, revised by Christine Miller, but it’s been easier for us to listen in the van while we drive here and there.

The three older kids have been working through IEW’s U.S History-Based Writing Lessons.  I’ve really pleased with this, as it covers two subjects at once : writing and history.  I’ve tried to time the readings from Guerber’s book with the writing assignments.  They (we) get to hear about the same events more than once, from slightly different perspectives.  This, along with the history we get from the geography books, is helping to cement the facts about American history, especially the beginnings of the war for independence.

Read-Alouds

To make some of the historical events more real, we’ve also read or listened to some historical fiction books.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.  This is the story of a young girl transplanted from Barbados to her Puritan relatives in Connecticut.  She has difficulty understanding and adjusting to their strict ways   They, in turn, are suspicious of her because she is so different from them.  This is set in a backdrop of growing resentment against the control of England’s king and the superstitions that led to the Salem witch trials hysteria.  There is no actual witch or witchcraft in the story, merely the accusation of such because some folks have different beliefs.  I was skeptical of the book at first, but after I actually read it I was impressed with the powerful story and writing.  We listened to the audio version as we drove to San Antonio in November.  Again, by a skilled narrator.  The kids picked up on some actual historical events alluded to in the story, as well as the description of the “dame school” and “hornbook” that they had read about in our geography studies.

And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? by Jean Fritz is a fairly short book describing the life of Paul Revere and his involvement in the American Revolution.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes.  A classic story of a young silversmith apprentice in Boston who becomes involved in the various historical events such as the Boston Tea Party and meets historical characters such as Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Sam Adams.  We started listening to the audio version during the Christmas holidays during several long drives to visit family.

Other books that we’ve read aloud this fall include:

 Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter.  Skip the movie (especially the Disney version) and read the book!!  It is just sooooo good!!!  Pollyanna has a bad rap for being overly and blindly optimistic.  But that is not the way the book portrays her.  Her father has taught her, through most difficult circumstances, to find something to be glad about in every situation.  He called this the “glad game” and based it on searching the Bible for all the texts that command us to “rejoice and be glad”.  We listened to a recording from LIbrivox.org.  The man who recorded it did such an awesome job of reading it and putting in the inflection and emotion and voice changes to make the characters really come alive.

Life of Fred : Cats  and Life of Fred: Dogs by Stanley Schmidt. This has been mainly for my 6 and 8 year olds, but the older kids like to listen to.  These books teach math through the story of this 5 year old boy who is a math professor at a university.  It is silly and unrealistic, but it’s a fun and relatively painless way to learn and practice math.

Little House on Rocky Ridge by Roger Lea MacBride.  This is a sequel to the Little House on the Prairie series, told from the viewpoint of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter Rose.  It tells how they move from the Dakotas to Missouri because of drought and debt.

Science

We have been going through Apologia’s Zoology 2 : Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day.  We listen to the audio CD of the author reading the chapter (usually while driving somewhere).  Then, I create some worksheets or notebooking pages for the older kids to fill in as they read back through the chapter on their own.  Sometimes the younger kids are able to do the worksheets as well, or I give them some coloring pages.  I often also try to find some documentary to watch on the given topic, so we can put some pictures to the words and concepts we heard.  We do science about every other week.

We also watched a lot of Texas Parks and Wildlife videos which cover both science (nature and conservation) and history.  We often watch these during lunch and if we skip a few days, they kids are asking to watch them again.  The videos are well done and we’ve learned a lot.  Again, painless education!

Math

 We have continued to use and enjoy Math-U-See.  The kids work at mostly independently and with no tears or fussing.  The older ones have also continued to work through Grids for Kids (logic puzzles).

Grammar & Vocabulary

 The three older kids have continued to work through IEW’s FixIt Grammar series.  We finished the first book, “The Nose Tree”, and began working on the second book “Robin Hood.”  They learn grammar concepts through editing a story, marking things like subjects & verbs, clauses, etc.  And since they are getting a story one sentence at a time, it keeps them engaged as they come back each day to find out what happens next.  My oldest child likes to illustrate each sentence, and I usually get a smile or laugh when I see his drawings as I check his work.

This grammar series also includes a vocabulary word for each day.  The kids have to use a dictionary to look up the bold word in each sentence and write the definition in their notebook.  To reinforce these vocabulary words, I started using some on-line games at Spelling City.  I assign a couple of vocabulary games each day so they can practice the words they’ve learned so far.  I also use Spelling City to help them learn and practice vocabulary words from our science book.

Spelling

I continue to search for a spelling program that suits us.  I’ve tried using Words Their Way and All About Spelling with mixed results.  Kind of like math used to be, I get groans, rolling eyes, and dragging feet when it’s time to do spelling.  And we tend to put it off, so if we run out of time it gets dropped of the schedule.  I’m sure lack of consistency hasn’t helped.  But when I find that even I don’t look forward to it, maybe it’s time for a change.  So, this fall we started trying out Spell to Read and Write.  The jury’s still out on this one.  It’s not particularly exciting, and we have some disagreements with the author over some of the sounds certain phonograms make, but I have learned some things that make spelling certain words make sense.  To give the kids more practice in a more interesting way, I’ve been assigning spelling games from SpellingCity.com.  The younger kids look forward to this, and the older kids haven’t complained.

Programming

My oldest worked through the KidCoder Series Game Programming, gaining more experience in Visual Basic.  I worked through the lessons with him, staying just one step ahead of him.  He is now ready to go on to explore more of Visual Basic on his own, implementing programs of his own invention.  So I got him a VB programmer’s reference manual and he’s already been experimenting with his own programs.

My second oldest continued working through Coding Games in Scratch and my third oldest tried going through Coding Projects in Python.  He has found that a bit too challenging, so he took a break for a while and will go back to the Scratch games for a while.

Extra-curricular Activities

The oldest 5 have enthusiastically continued piano lessons with the most fun teacher ever.  They have all been learning some hymns in addition to their regular lesson songs.  Several have played for the offertory in the Sunday morning worship time and have accompanied our Sunday night group as well.  They all performed excellently at their recital in December.  The boys especially have enjoyed learning and playing various ragtime pieces.

We continue to take horse riding lessons weekly.  It is the highlight of the week for some of us.  Three of the boys entertain themselves quite nicely while the other four of us ride.  My oldest daughter is the most accomplished of us all and has gotten the opportunity to try out many different horses as our instructor tries to figure out which ones she wants to keep as lesson horses.  She also participated in a “play day” in December in which she competed in several events (racing around barrels in various patterns).

The three older kids have been feeding their love for drama through weekly, Monday-evening classes at Drama Kids International.  They have had a couple of years of “speech and theater” classes that emphasized speech more than theater.  Those classes definitely helped them, but they really wanted to get more involved in acting.  The Drama Kids classes seem to be fitting the bill.  

And it was the only thing I could find that wasn’t focused on big Disney/Broadway style productions and/or didn’t cost way too much or involve too much driving.  This one is close, affordable, and just what we were looking for.  The teachers have plenty of energy and enthusiasm.  I was a bit skeptical about whether the Monday evening schedule would work for us as a family, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well it has worked.  We have to eat supper early (4:30) in order to make it to the 5:30 class, but we’re home before 8 and in bed at the regular time.  It is also good motivation for the kids to get their school work done during the day so they don’t have to work on it while they are waiting for their sibling(s)’ class.  Usually I take them to class and read or work on school prep, but sometimes my husband will take them while I stay home with the younger ones.

We have enjoyed numerous events at Kleb Woods Nature Preserve.  They have programs for school-age children twice a month on Thursday mornings, as well as several Saturday festivals.  These count as both science and history.  This fall, we attended the Hummingbird Festival in September and the Digging Old Stuff history Festival in November. We learned about chimney swifts, dragon flies, Texas state symbols, osage orange trees, cotton gins, and Elmer Kleb (former owner of the land where the nature preserve is).  We missed a few events due to being sick or out of town.