CTG: Week 3; AHL Week 8

Okay, so with the boys liking pulling the paper strips out of the jar, I thought I'd make something a little more durable. I wrote all their subjects on craft sticks. (On the back side of some of them is what the other one is doing if it is a one-on-one subject.) I also lined the jar with black construction paper so they can't see the writing on the sticks. I only put in the subjects in the jar that are to be done that day.

At the beginning of the week, when I see a feast day coming up, I always get a bit nervous. But, I am determined not to let these feasts get the best of me. These are to glorify God, not stress me out.

Monday really seemed to be a long day. Then Tuesday I figured it out: we had a bunch of writing on Monday. There was a notebooking page in History, a notebooking page in Science, and writing out their Vocabulary. Tigger writes most of his stuff, but sometimes I scribe for him. And then I scribe for Pooh for most everything, so that made it take long. Plus there was the map work. 

Tuesday went much quicker, and the boys really liked the subjects on craft sticks. They worked pretty diligently and got done.

The rest of the week went smoothly. I took pictures of our timelines. Here are the ones on cardstock that we fold up and put in the front pocket of their history binders:

And then here is the start of the timeline on the wall. I am reusing our timeline figures from the first time, so some of the images are different than what is in the student packet.

Friday night we did our Rosh Hashanah feast. It was lovely. Here is our table setting:

The boys made the crown and we made 4 shofar horns - one for me, and one for each of the kids. We just put the one on the table. I just used packing paper because I didn't have a grocery bag to use. The ladder on the bread is a Lego ladder from the boys. Dad has been great this year in reading his parts for the feasts. It is really neat how they all point us to Christ. I missed lighting the candles, but that was okay because the crown kept falling off. The boys wouldn't try the apples dipped in honey, but the rest of us did. And the loaf of bread is just from our local Kroger store - it is called a sheepherder's loaf. It was very tasty.

With AHL, I started the week behind in the Old Testament Challenge and ended behind. But, I love how what we're doing in AHL can tie into CTG.  We're in Leviticus where Aaron's sons are killed for offering a foreign fire to the Lord. And the note in my study Bible compares it to Ananias and Saphira being killed for lying about the money they offered. Anyway, the conclusion of the note said that the people needed to know that the community existed for God, not vice versa. And that got me to thinking about the feasts. I often look at them as burdens. But God did not intend for them to be looked on that way. They are to bring Him glory. To remind us that we exist for Him. And it reminded me of a line from The West Wing (a TV show about the president of the U.S.): "I serve at the pleasure of the President." Just change "President" to Lord, God, Jesus Christ, or Holy Spirit and I think that is to be our attitude. Now, I'm not saying I have to do 100% of what the TM prescribes to do for these feasts, but I do think I need to have an attitude check and make sure I'm serving at the pleasure of God.

Adding in Biology made Monday go until 5:00pm. Whew, a little long. It has made for very long days all this week.

Rabbit is getting the literature subjects, but I've told her she needs to give more detailed answers in the Ancient History and Literature Supplement. Sometimes she just barely describes a person or situation instead of naming it. 

We've been going over her work daily. I skim through the books and ask questions of things I see, and then go over her answers to questions if she has any. She's doing pretty well.

CTG: Week 2; AHL: Week 7

This week we continued drawing subjects out of the jar. The boys really like it. It really mixes up the days.

This week I decided to add in Life of Fred Fractions and alternate it with Singapore 4A. The boys love Life of Fred. Fractions in Singapore have been a big challenge for them. I think they will get it, but it is going to take time.

We are pretty well enjoying Bible and History. I keep on forgetting to read the Victor Journey Through the Bible pages. My remedy is to put the book out on the coffee table as a reminder. They like the Dinosaurs of Eden book, too. Much of it repeats what we are reading in Bible time, but that's okay. I didn't read any other creation myths. I did tell them that there are several books in the book basket that have other creation stories, and that they should think about how the compare to what the Bible says. One of our projects for history was to go outside and measure the length of the ark. I remember when we did this with Rabbit. Here's our picture from this time:

Now, you can see our street is quite curved, so you'd have to follow the curve of the street to get 450 feet. I circled where Pooh is standing. You can't see it in this reduced-size picture, but there was also a hazard cone right next to him. The 450 feet went all the way to where Tigger is standing up close here. We are only about 10 to 15 yards from the other end of the street. That would be huge!

We started The Easy Spanish this week. We are doing it together, which I think they like better than doing it with Rabbit. I'm keeping it light - my main goal is for them to hear it pronounced and get comfortable with some of the words. I know they'll start to get the hang of it soon.

Art was not a favorite this week. Tigger really got frustrated with drawing ellipses. I told him it didn't have to be perfect, but he still wasn't happy about it.

And, of course, our number one subject is Science. They love Science in the beginning. We did lessons 3-5 this week. We were able to get lessons 3 and 4 experiments to work fine. For lesson 4, we just placed the plastic out on the patio since we don't have any south-facing windows. We were not able to get lesson 5 to work. Someone on the Facebook Creation to the Greeks group said she couldn't get it to work with printer paper, but she did with newsprint. I will have to try that. My guess is our magnifying glass doesn't make a small enough pinlight. The glass is kind of warped in the middle - it's some cheap magnifying glass that came with some toy kit or another.

The read aloud is a great book and we even read one day ahead on Friday.

For AHL, well, we didn't follow the lesson plans exactly (shhh! don't tell!). The lesson plans suggested that for the Exploring World History project we pick one of the two writing assignments. Well, Rabbit didn't understand that when she read the assignment, and so she picked one of the other projects: make an electronic display of pictures (like a PowerPoint slide show) that shows the influence of ancient mathematicians on today's world. (I knew by her expressions that she would be really, really upset if she had to do one of the writing assignments - she was already getting ideas for doing the other one.) So, I let her do it. But, I told her she had to do the presentation for Dad - since he has to give PowerPoint presentations all the time, I thought he should be the one to grade it. He gave her an A. Anyway, from now on I am going to read the lesson plans ahead on Friday to make sure we don't run into something like this again.

She is doing great with Spanish, and keeping up with Logic, so not much to report there. She got a couple of Spanish books from the library and is trying to read them. 

Math is her biggest challenge. She needs me to do it with her, but we can't work on it until after lunch since I am working with the boys in the morning. We're trying to do it right after Spelling - and Spelling isn't usually happening until after lunch, so it is 2:30 or 3:00 before we tackle it. 

Next week I'm going to have her start reading the Biology book. Our co-op starts the week after that. I haven't received any e-mails from the teacher, but I don't want her to be behind.

CTG Week 1 with Sabbath; AHL Week 6

So, for Week 1, Days 3 and 4 we continued with the drawing of subjects out of a jar. Tigger really likes doing school that way. They don't like it when they draw the Spelling cycle, though. And our days went great with this method. Finishing by noon both days.

On Friday it was Sabbath preparation day. We did do a little bit of academics: Math, book basket, and memory verse review (verses I am having them memorize until AWANA starts). The boys helped make the bread. We didn't make the official challah from the book. I made my usual Italian bread, and we braided it to look like challah.

The boys also made a spice box. The Book of Jewish Holidays said most spice boxes were made like a castle, and they had a craft you could do to make a castle-like spice box. I had also saved our tin Altoids box from the last time we did CTG. We never did the closing of Sabbath last time, so we never used it. The boys chose the option to decorate the Altoids box. They kept it simple:

Once the had the paper glued on and it dried, I took a small nail and a hammer and punched the holes. It was really easy. Then we just put in some cloves and a couple of broken-up cinnamon sticks.

It was a pretty intense afternoon y of cleaning, shopping, and meal preparation. The boys helped a little, but not much. And Rabbit had a dance class in the late afternoon that I had to run her over to. And Dad got home later than usual. But, the table was ready when he got home:

So once Dad was here, we grilled fish (we don't like to bake fish as it smells up the house), had a salad, and also sweet potato fries and waffle fries. Not very traditional, but a meal we all enjoyed.

It was different doing the Sabbath with older children this time. The last time there were a little more "oh's" and "ah's." This time it was a bit lighter. We didn't do everything in the book, but we did the essentials. But it was special. We talked about the good from the week. We laughed and enjoyed each other's company.

Saturday evening we concluded the Sabbath. We went out for dinner (I know, not the recommended course of action). When we got home it was pretty close to the end of the day, so we lit the Havdalah candle (just a regular candle), said the prayers, and then the boys dipped the candle in the overflow of the grape juice. Rabbit was in charge of the spice box (she is just a little pyrophobic). 

I think, if we were to do a Sabbath again, I would do it Saturday night through Sunday night. It seems to me that fits better with what we already do. From reading in our Jewish Holidays books, we learn that the Jewish people usually go to synagogue on Saturday mornings, and then spend the day with family, friends and God. That sounds just like our Sunday.

Overall, I think the first week of "full" school went really well. Next week we add in Foreign Language and the Read Aloud...

*****

As far as AHL with Rabbit goes. . . She finished up her Exploring World History project. She wrote about how life would be different if we were nomads. I really like how she concluded with reminding us that God says we should live as if this earth is not our home.

We finally finished up her Math lesson and did the next test. She got a B on her test. There is one thing she struggles on that I need to go back and review with her. It has to do with exponents on variables when you have a substitution for the variable. She'll get it eventually, but we need to go back and review.

I finally figured out what was bothering her about The Fallacy Detective and  Exploring World History  with regards to checking her own answers: she doesn't like having to figure out why she was wrong. She doesn't mind discussing her answers with me, but I think she just doesn't like doing it by herself. That's fine. We'll continue meeting daily, anyway, for Math, so I can check those other things too.

Rabbit is doing great with Rosetta Stone. She's been working through a verb workbook I got from Barnes and Noble in order to get more time in. We haven't figured out our "real life" activities. But, we got an e-mail that the Spanish version of the You Version Kid's Bible app is available. So maybe we'll do something with that - listen to it and try to use it.

CTG: Week 1, Day 2 and AHL Week 6, Day 2

Okay, well, today was better because we finished at 4:00, rather than 4:30.

I tried something a little different today. I printed all our subjects from Creation to the Greeks onto strips of paper, folded the paper strips up, and stuck them into a jar. Then I had the boys take turn pulling strips to decide what to do next. That didn't work very well because they didn't want to do spelling. I thought it might be fun, but they didn't buy into it. Tonight I talked to them about what order they would like to do things. Of course, they didn't agree. I think I will come up with an order that considers what they want a little, though.

The boys are loving the Science in the Beginning, even if I am making them do notebook pages. I had to hunt down colored pencils so they could draw their rainbows, and help them with the wording for the explanation. But, I do think it will be very memorable and they will retain what they learn from doing the notebooks. We will do science first on the days I have it scheduled, since they love it so much.

Math was a long Review in the workbook, so I decided to break that up over two days. They are more than halfway through the Singapore 4A book, so it's not a big deal if we do this every now and then.

The Bible and History really go together quite a bit this year, so I really think we will do those two subject together. The boys think it is funny that I'm taking notes on what they say when I ask, "What do we learn about God in this passage?" 

I still haven't heard from either library on my book basket books. A friend of my husbands from his work gave us a book called The Book of Jewish Holidays by Ruthe Lurie Kozodoy. I read a section of it to the boys about the Sabbath. It is interesting reading about the holiday from a more Jewish perspective. I really liked this line from the book, "Our tradition teaches us to stop working on the seventh day too. As God did, we look at what we have done to see if it is good." I really like that idea: looking back at your week honestly and just seeing if what you did was good.

Of course we did the other subjects too: English, Reading, Vocabulary, Handwriting, and Spelling. In Spelling, Pooh finished the All About Spelling Level 2 book! Has he mastered it? Not perfectly. But I just don't feel like I can keep him at the same level any longer. He has to move forward. We've been through the material twice. I will continue drilling him and pray he makes progress.

As we were finishing up school after lunch, Rabbit started on her Spanish. While she was working on that, I assigned the boys to work on making the challah covering. I had bought a blank handkerchief and fabric paints last week. Then we looked at the design in the Celebrating the Biblical Feast books and did a google search of images of challah coverings. I told them to design one that would be nice and honor God. They did a terrific job all by themselves.

Rabbit is having a pretty easy time in Spanish. She's done the Rosetta Stone level 1 enough that she is pretty familiar with it. So, I had her listen to the Spanish phonograms tracks from The Easy Spanish CD to start learning those. And, I had her read the introduction to a chapter on Spanish verbs in a workbook I picked up from Barnes and Noble. I am truly amazed that she has been able to learn Spanish, given her dyslexia. But, we did start when she was 5 with Power Glide, so she's been exposed to it for a long time.

Next, I went over her AHL work - checked her answers, skimmed her books. She has been doing a good job getting it done. Then we did math for an hour. We still didn't complete the lesson, but she did a good job on the problems with the new concept. She needed a little refresher on one of the previous lessons, though. Hopefully we finish it tomorrow. 

She typed up her Exploring World History project this morning, so I looked that over. When we ran the spell check, it said she had a 9.3 grade level. After a little editing, it went down to an 8.6 grade level. I think it was because we took some of her long-worded sentences that were a little confusing and made them two sentences. The shorter sentences knocked down the grade level. I told her for tomorrow, she needs to work on eliminating the word "probably" - she used it too much. She definitely has the word count, and seems to have thought through her essay.

MFW CTG: Day 1, The Second Time

Wow! I am glad today is over. It was a good day. I had no tears from Pooh and Tigger, and Rabbit only had a couple of tears.

We started at about 8:20, and of course, started with the first day of school pictures. This time, I included myself, too.

Rabbit went off to work on her stuff (and she was a little disappointed not to be joining us) while I started with the boys. We basically went down the grid in order, except spelling.

So, we did Bible, vocabulary, handwriting, English, math, history, science, reading before lunch. After lunch we did the spelling cycle and art. For Bible, I remembered to get a notebook and write, "What do we learn about God from this passage?" That provoked some good discussion for a couple of fifth graders. 

For the vocabulary card, I found our Greek roots cards from last time, and got those out, and then the boys drew a picture of the word and wrote the definition on my special notebook page. They also wrote three derivatives down. Well, I scribed for Pooh. 

It took a while for Tigger to write down everything for his vocabulary page, so I went ahead and started with Pooh on his handwriting page in his Handwriting Without Tears book. I am finally starting to see some carry-over into spelling. Then Tigger worked on his page, and they both finished about the same time.

We did English as a group today. It was a passage study, so working together on the couch was fine. I probably won't do tomorrow's dictation - they get dictation in spelling, and there is no way Pooh could do that much dictation. Tigger would probably be okay, but we might skip it (shhhh!).

Math was more on adding and subtracting fractions with improper fraction results and such. Pooh decided to stay with Tigger and me to do the workbook. There wasn't much space in the workbook to do the problems, so they would tell me what to write on the whiteboard, and then they copied hte final answers into their workbooks.

History was great. Tigger got bummed that we didn't read more in the Dinosaurs of Eden book. And Pooh had some good insights on things. I had them do their notebook page for the day, and then we set up their History notebooks. That took extra time that we probably won't spend tomorrow. Their History notebooks have the history section in the front, and a Vocabulary section in the back. For their timelines, I taped cardstock together end to end for them to each have their own copy. Then I copied the timeline pieces onto sticky label paper. I saved all the timeline pieces from last time through, so I just made our wall timeline like this:

The timeline itself is just blue Mavalus tape. On the left is the very first piece, right next to the clock on top of the bookshelf. We will just add pieces and year markers as we come to them so we don't have to predict the space we need. I think, based on the first time we did it, it will take up to about 2/3rds of the line for the first year. (Eventually, we had to add a second line when we did this the first time around.)

I forgot to place requests for book basket books until last night, so they didn't do book basket today. But, as soon as I get my e-mail notices I'll be picking up the books.

The boys were anticipating science all day. We started Science in the Beginning. I think they enjoyed it, and it didn't really take all that long to do the experiment and notebooking page. (I, along with someone else on the Facebook Creation to the Greeks group, made some pages in Word to use as notebook pages.) So, we also had to take some time to get their science notebooks setup. Pooh wanted to use a copy of the cover of the book for his cover page. We'll have to see about that.

And then we did reading. I went ahead and just jumped to the 5th grade Pathway reader. We didn't finish all the Abeka 4th grade readers last year, but I felt like we need to just be 5th graders. They both did fine. Pooh still reads a little slower than Tigger, but he is reading fine. After we finish this book, we'll jump into the Abeka 5th grade readers. Tigger actually wanted to finish the story on his own to find out what happened.

All that took us to lunch time. We took an hour break for lunch. After lunch I started the spelling cycle. I started with Rabbit. When she was done, she wanted to tackle Spanish, so that took a few minutes to get Rosetta Stone setup again for her and go over the lesson plan book. Next I worked with Tigger, and then Pooh. Tigger and Pooh work on memorizing verses and doing math drill while I work on spelling with each one. It works kind of like this, spending 15 minutes on each bullet point:

• Rabbit does Spelling with me, Tigger does math drill, Pooh studies verses
• Rabbit can move onto whatever she needs, Tigger does Spelling with me, Pooh does math drill
• Rabbit works on whatever she needs, Tigger studies verses, Pooh does Spelling with me

This generally works really well for us. I moved this to right after lunch so as not to interrupt Rabbit in the middle of something she was working on.

And then finally, we did God and the History of Art and the infamous first lesson - drawing with your mouth:

Neither was successful, and gave up rather quickly, but I think they will appreciate how much work goes into any art.

After this, it was time to work with Rabbit on her stuff. We started with going over all of last week stuff, since we didn't do either daily or weekly meeting. Her paper was very good. We had to go over the lessons in the English Literature Supplement. She had a moment of tears with one thing about find the subject in a sentence. But we shook that off and moved on. I looked over all her history, and as usual she missed about one question per lesson. She started her Exploring World History Project. She chose to write about how her life would change if she was a nomad. It was pretty good. She needs to type it up and everything, but it was a very good start.

And finally, we did the dreaded Math. We're on lesson 44 in Algebra 1. It took a while to work through the explanation, so we only got through question 6 in the problem set. Hopefully we can finish it tomorrow. She was really fried by then. That was 4:30. She still needed to read the Cat of Bubastes reading.

Then at 5:00, Rabbit had piano lesson. 

Like I said, a very looooong day. But overall, successful.

AHL: Week 5

Rabbit had another essay this week. They expected the student to write the essay on day one. This was pretty challenging for her - it took her two days to get an essay ready. And then all the Ancient Literature Supplement work was to work with the essay! So, we've been kind of a day behind on this one. 

Her biggest challenge was turning the suggested topics into a thesis. She finally decided that her thesis would be "Gilgamesh is not god-like at all." Her three reasons: he is not loving, not slow to anger, and not a savior. She did a good job with supporting quotes from the Epic of Gilgamesh. I helped her find quotes from the Bible to show God's character.

I think it is really a challenge being the mom and the teacher. I remember my mom helping me with my essays and papers in high school, but she wasn't my teacher. Now, I'm helping Rabbit, but I'm also the teacher, so I know how I'm going to grade it. Sometimes it is hard to wrap my head around it. I ended up giving her a 9.2 out of 10 on it.

She got behind in Logic this week. But, we had a lot of appointments and other things going on this week.

Math was also a challenge, but we got two lessons done. We're going to shoot for 3 days next week. 

She did good in History, only missing a couple of questions. She is still not checking the review questions herself in the History book. But, if I go over it with her, it can give us good discussions.

She has also been keeping up in Bible - answering in complete sentences and everything.

Overall, not a bad week. Next we start Creation to the Greeks with the boys, and Rabbit will add in Spanish. I need to look over Rabbit's work everyday to make sure it is completed and she's been thorough.

MFW CTG: Preparations

Okay, so trying to be a good homeschool mom and get ready for the upcoming year. This week I've read the introduction in English from the Roots Up, and the introduction and chapter on the Sabbath in Celebrating the Biblical Feasts. I also remembered I hadn't cleaned out their notebooks from last year. It was a good thing I did, as both boys need new three-ring binders for this next year. I didn't realize the binders were in such bad shape. So, yet another run to a big-box store somewhere.

I have saved all our vocabulary cards from the first time we did Creation to the Greeks (CTG), so that part will be easy. I had to read the TM and the English from the Roots Up book to remind myself how to implement that. I have my notebooking pages from last time, so we will probably go with that. I may need to get another dictionary, as Rabbit seems to have absconded with our regular one. I will probably end up scribing for Pooh. His handwriting and spelling are still really bad, and he can't type fast enough to make it worth our while. 

I also saw an idea on the Facebook page where a teacher posted a tree with the root word at the bottom, and then derivative words on the branches. I found a tree with no leaves to use, and then I may post them on the wall. I haven't decided for sure on that, since we school in our living room, which is the first thing you see when you walk into our house.

Reading through Celebrating the Biblical Feasts reminded me that we needed a challah covering. So, I went to a craft store and bought a blank handkerchief and some fabric paints. I'm going to let the boys design one. I still have our Altoids tin from last time, too, so I'll probably use it and let them paint it or glue stuff to it or something. I'm really working on thinking about how to let them do it and not trying to be in control of everything.

We're going to do The Easy Spanish this year. Pooh has really had trouble with Rosetta Stone, so I am hoping it will help him more. I read through the first lesson and printed out the worksheets we will need.

We've continued Singapore Math (we are already about halfway through 4A), All About Spelling, and Handwriting without Tears through the summer. So, there is no prep work to do there.

I did get our walls cleaned up for CTG. I took down our USA map, took down some posters and art work, and put up a strip of blue Mavalus tape for our timeline.

My plan is to essentially treat the boys as one small class. I will work with them together on everything except reading (they will each read aloud to me for 10 minutes), spelling, typing, math drill, and AWANA. They will do typing while the other one is reading to me, and they will do math drill and study their AWANA verses while I'm working with each one (including Rabbit) on spelling.

Oh my goodness, at 4:00 in the morning the other day, I realized I hadn't sent in our Notice of Intent to homeschool! Whew! Maybe that is why I couldn't get back to sleep!