Week 7: The Monopolies

The highlight of this week was the addition of The Men Who Built America series.  We watched the first three episodes and covered Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Carnegie.  Even my Level 1 group enjoyed the shows!

My oldest wisely suggested we play Monopoly as a "hands-on" accompaniment to the lesson.  Oh, he knows his mother well.  Of course we can spend the afternoon playing a board game!

At our house, we constantly lose game pieces.  We have fun choosing replacements too.  The turtle is my son and the rubber fly is me.  I'm obviously visiting my child in jail.  Funny times, I tell ya.

After much luck, I showed no mercy to my children once I secured the four railroads, Park Place, and Boardwalk.  With my earnings from the railroads, I built houses and then hotels.  And won easily.  History lesson complete!

Sixth Week Slump

This is right about the time homeschoolers start to feel the slump.  Studies become routine. Routine becomes boring. The excitement of the new pencils and new books wears off.  I have the slump.  I think I got through Day 3 of Week 6 before I needed to take a break.  The straw that broke this camel's back wasn't even homeschool related: a coyote killed one of our geese. I don't even like the geese, but I know my husband does.  I took Thursday off teaching to preserve some harvest and spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday switching bedrooms around...and now we should be on Week 7, but....


....I've been way to busy with kids activities to catch up.  I lost the TV remote. My schoolroom is a mess of unfinished projects. The baby won't give me a break.  Six weeks was all it took.

BookShark Science 7: First Project, a Dancing Robot!

But never fear! The books haven't gone anywhere, the schedule is there for when I can dig myself out, and we will pick ourselves up where we left off... Besides, the local school district is having half-days for parent/teacher conferences, so this may be a good time for me to evaluate how we are doing!

Charlotte's Web

We are just starting Week 6 across all levels.  I am amazed at how well we are staying on schedule this year and I have to think it is all because of the 4-day BookShark schedules.  I've done the 5-day Sonlight schedule (and other plans), but this one seems to keeps us going. 

My 12 year old son exclaimed, "What? First you read history to us, then I read history to myself, and then you read some more history stories out loud? That's too much history!"  And that is the end of Week 5: an introduction to the Civil War, a biography on Harriet Tubman, and starting Across Five Aprils.  He'd much rather do science, not only because science is far more interesting, but having a strong background in science is far more important career-wise than a strong background in history.

Lucky for him, BookShark 7 Science came out.  I ordered it the first day, received the first five weeks of the Instructor's Guide, the books, and the science kit.  I think he has already read the robotics book, cover to cover.  I can't wait until Friday (experiment day) when he finds out he gets to build something!

Charlotte and her babies

My Level 1 group seems to need catch up on Thursday and Friday thanks to our ultra-busy activity schedule Monday through Wednesday.  We are in the midst of Charlotte's Web as our read aloud.  Most kids turn vegetarian and become animal rights activists after their first exposure to Charlotte and Wilbur.  My kids, however, have become spider rights activists and refuse to let me vacuum down the cobwebs in the corners.  They add that the cobwebs are perfect decorations for Halloween and why take down the natural webs and replace them with fake ones?  Why indeed?

Week 3: Water

This last week's best moment was the water experiment on surface tension in Science 1.  We've all been getting through our work faster than I had planned, so I had plenty of older helpers for gathering materials and managing little siblings.

After we did all the projects in the book, we headed down to our pond to see if we could find some water striders:

We've had a drought this summer, so the water level is way lower than it usually is.  We found some dragonflies, but no water striders.  Maybe they are a spring insect!

We left our science supplies unattended long enough for the little ones to turn them into a tea party.  No needles or coins were consumed ;)

Week 1 and 2

We have miraculously stayed on schedule for the first two weeks.  Well, almost.  My 5yo and 7yo are still finishing up some language arts from last year before they move on.  But, they did language arts instead of skipping!

My BKSK 8 guy is holding up.  He says his schoolwork "sucks," but he gets it all done.  He reads the chapters in the assigned history books (A History of US and Before Columbus) and writes the answers from the questions in the student guide in a spiral notebook.  I agree about the sucking part. I once had a class in high school where all we did was read the textbook and answer the questions on paper. Boring. I retained nothing. I can't even remember what that class was about.  This is where additional activities would make information stick, but unless he is willing, the projects will not be assigned.  He is also reading Guests for literature.  The main character is a 13yo boy who is coming of age and struggling to find his identity. It is an easy read. He says the book is "good."  We'll save our soul-searching discussions for a better book later in the year ;)

The BKSK 4 RH group learned about William Wilberforce. Neither one had an easy time comprehending the book as written.  I spent a lot of time paraphrasing and summarizing.  They do however understand that the whole point of learning about Wilberforce was that he managed to abolish slavery in Britain without war and it took him 18 years to do it.  We did end up just reading ahead and finishing up today so we would have something else to look forward to on Monday.

They are plugging along in BKSK 4 Science as well.  Diary of an Early American Boy is also difficult to read and we stop and look at the illustrations frequently.  The kids have enjoyed learning about how things used to be done on a farm and comparing how we do things now on our hobby farm.  We work through the activity sheets together after the reading so I know they both understand.  When we read about the mill wheel, I had to find modern day examples to help them visualize what a mill wheel was.  We started with Zelda: Ocarina of Time when Link is jumping on the mill wheel for jewels, remembered that one time Pa needed to make some money on Little House on the Prairie and dug a sluice for a guy, and ended with episodes of Pokemon where Pikachu needed more electricity. Video games and TV are finally educational! I find myself reminding them that listening to hard books is part of their education.  Trying to understand is like push ups for their brains.

My BKSK 1 group skips a day or two here, but it doesn't take more than 15-20 minutes to catch up.  And since I've been teaching my kids for so long and I know their learning styles, I know some shortcuts to make learning for them a little easier.  These Usborne books can be overwhelming and dry for little kids.  We covered food and cooking, clothing, and hair, jewelry, and makeup this week.  Food and Cooking was the assignment that needed catching up and we did it right before dinner.  The baby had been fussing all day and my husband wasn't home to help out, so dinner was a daunting task.  How fun it was to think about just skipping dinner and calling it a "hands on" lesson about starvation.  Instead we had a simple meal of corn on the cob while playing on the swing set. While learning about clothing, my 5yo wanted to run around in his underpants while the weather was still warm.  I told my husband he was experimenting with clothing and climate for a joke.  This morning, my 5yo asked me if I was going to shave my head so I could be beautiful.  This is a perfect example of assessment of learning.

Work Boxes!

With the first week of juggling three cores over, I can honestly say, "YES! You can do three cores (or levels) at once!"

Since I find myself moving all around my main living area, I have found work boxes are the only way to keep everything from getting lost.

F's (7yo) work box.  She is still finishing up workbooks from LA 1, but has moved on to reading LA 2.

My work boxes are simply cheap plastic totes from Target.  I have one for each student's math and language arts workbooks, readers, and weekly 3-ring binder with additional worksheets inside.

In addition, I have one box that holds the IGs and the scheduled books for both reading/history and science.  The box with the purple and blue tape in the lower right is for Level 1 (Intro to World History and Science 1).  Each kid got to choose a tape color to identify the box because I knew they would never agree on one color.  I can say, "F (or D) go get the blue and purple box, please," and they will know exactly which one I mean.  The box right above it holds the reading/history for Level 4.  This has been so great for our crazy, go-with-the-flow style of learning.  Not only can I send a child to fetch a box and bring it downstairs to me while I nurse the baby, we can just head outside...

William Wilberforce (Level 4 Week 1) and water experiment (Level 1 Week 1)

...and enjoy the last nice days of summer.

Line Up 2015-2016

This year, with five school aged kids, I am trying to keep things simple.  And by simple, I mean not planning anything myself.  I'm going to attempt to use my BookShark (or Sonlight in some cases) curriculum as scheduled and not deviate or do other things.  Nothing bugs me more on recipe websites than people writing a review that says, "I love this recipe! Only I added more cinnamon and less baking powder and and extra cup of chocolate chips!" because that isn't using the recipe-that is creating something else.  Which isn't bad of course, but this year I'm not going there.  For the first time ever.

I love adding extra hands-on projects and documentaries and actually had to stop myself from planning a list of extras.  I just don't need the work this year.  Now, if my kids come up with a self-directed project, I have no problem opening the craft cupboard and setting them loose.  I just don't want to put my own effort into anything.  Three kids under three is enough extra hands-on project for me!

This year, my 13yo son will be using Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2 for math, Rosetta Stone Spanish 1 and The Fallacy Detective for his electives, The Big History Project for science, and BookShark Level 8, a one year course of American history, for history and literature.  He is also taking a writing course outside our home for a classroom experience.

My 12yo son and 9 (almost 10) yo daughter will be using BookShark 4 Reading with History, the second year of the American History curriculum.  They are using their own levels of Teaching Textbooks for math (Pre-Algebra and Grade 5).  S (12yo) is using BookShark 4 for language arts, which uses readers from the reading and history.  E (9yo) is using Sonlight's language arts for 4th/5th graders.  Her readers are slightly easier than the readers that are scheduled for the reading/history course.  These two students are also working together in science.  There is not a huge difference between Sonlight's Science E and BookShark's Level 4 Science.  So we are learning from the Sonlight version, because I already bought it a long time ago, but we are using BookShark's worksheets.  S has already read most of the books simply because they have been on my shelf for four or five years, but going through the material, experiments, and worksheets will be good for his organizational and writing skills.

My 7yo daughter and 5yo son will be using Saxon 2 and 1 for math.  They will be using BookShark's Level 1 Reading with History program, which is an introduction to world history.  They will have their own language arts levels, also BookShark: F (7yo) is using Grade 2 and D (5yo) will be finishing up some kindergarten work before he starts Grade 1.  They will be using Sonlight's Core B science, again, because I already own it.  However, because I bought it seven (or more?) years ago, the books are slightly different than what is now offered.

All of my kids will be going to Homeschool PE and taekwondo at the YMCA.  The older boys are active in Boy Scouts and the girls participate in dance classes.  I've tried to focus on just the bare minimum for our activities and obligations, but I also know that I'm going to need a break from time to time, so I will be going to a MOPS meeting one time per month.

My goal this year is to just do my best...and forgive myself if I don't :)