1850MOD Day 2

Well, not sure things were any better than yesterday, but I'm much calmer about it all :) .

Let's see. We started with Bible, and that went fine (except me crying through half the story). Then we split off. Rabbit went to do her independent work, and I went to work with the boys. We got through Spelling and English (Rosetta Stone and Math Drill were their independent work while I worked with each boy). We finished all that by 9:30. I used a timer today for a 10 minute snack break, and that was definitely a good idea. Then we did Reading time. The boys each read to me for 10 minutes, while the other one played on the typing software.

Next was History. We played the song some more and worked on the states. The kids really enjoyed playing state rummy. I think I'm going to see if they can name states again tomorrow before going on to the Southern states. I had a dentist appointment, so we took a break next. Rabbit is old enough to babysit, so it was not a problem.

After lunch and a quick visit from a friend, we started back up. We did Science first. Now that took a while - about an hour. But, we read the books, and talked about the science notebook, and then we did the two experiments. The first was an experiment with milk. My tip on that one: put in the food coloring BEFORE the vinegar. Here's our results:

It doesn't show up well here, but the blue wasn't well distributed, so it was more white and blue, almost marble-like. We ended up not letting them set up because they were making my kitchen smell. The second thing was to make meringue cookies. It worked pretty well. I have a Kitchen Aide mixer, so that made it pretty easy. I should have whipped the egg-whites a little longer.

They aren't super tasty, but we broke one apart and looked at the air-bubbles. (Next time I make these, I'm going to add cocoa powder and make them yummy.) Both of these experiments were to show how you can change molecule chains. The boys drew pictures in their notebooks. While we were cooking the meringues, I did Math and Handwriting with the boys. They did better today about not saying their answers out loud. And of course, Pooh did the second page first, and Tigger did the first page first, so they were on different problems as they worked through the workbook. I got out the Math-U-See blocks to work the problems, and that kept things going. For handwriting, I showed them how to do the lowercase f, and then I went to work with Rabbit on Science and Math. We finished up the first module in the General Science book. I think we'll spend the next two days reviewing science for the test, and taking the test on Thursday. I have a link to a class that has study cards online and I'm hoping to convince Rabbit to use them. In Math, we didn't finish the lesson before Rabbit had to get ready for dance class, so we'll just do it tomorrow.

Like I said, we didn't get everything done. And the boys didn't exactly get the states memorized, yet (they'll repeat this in 8th grade). But, I don't feel as stressed about the day, even though I forgot to turn the crock pot on this morning, and didn't realize it until 2:00 or so. We had pizza and salad instead.

I am thinking about tweaking the schedule. Last year we did Bible, then all the 3-R's type stuff, then History, Science, and the rest. I'm trying to decide between that, or doing Bible, History, and Science first, then devoting the rest of the time to 3-R's. Then doing Music/Art as the last thing. I did that when we did ECC, and it worked pretty well. I just feel like spreading the 3-R's through-out the day disrupts our rhythm. 

1850MOD First Day

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good: we were done about 2:30p.m. with everything for the day. That's about when we would finish last year. That's even with me helping Rabbit with Science and Math. Rabbit did good working on her independent work. I am proud of her. 

The bad: History took way too long. The kids didn't really learn the song, even after playing it 10+ times. Looking at maps, sorting cards, labeling, and coloring the blank map did not seem to help. Rabbit did okay, but the boys did not. Sigh.

The ugly: transitions! Can 2 boys be more challenging to keep on track and moving to the next thing. My goodness! They know they'll get in trouble for running off, and yet they still do it. They are out of sync with school starting back up, maybe.

Really, it wasn't too bad. It was just a lot of work for one day, plus we needed to be done at a specific time today. We did most subjects, and even got a few extras in. 

Starting Tomorrow!

Well, I decided we will start school tomorrow. We took last week off due to a camping trip. It was fun, but it is time to get down to business. We'll kind of ease into a rather hectic year. This week the boys' hip hop dance class starts, and Rabbit's ballet classes start. P.E., Piano lessons, worship dance, and musical theater class don't start until September.

Am I ready to start tomorrow? I'm not sure. I've read through the first week a couple of times. I have all my student sheets pulled out. I've come up with a tentative schedule to start with. It looks something like this:

Bible (w/ Mom) - 30 minutes
Rosetta Stone	Spelling (w/ Mom) - 15 minutes	Math Drill
English	Math Drill	Spelling (w/ Mom) - 15 minutes
Spelling	English (w/ Mom) - 10 to 15 minutes	Rosetta Stone
AWANA	Rosetta Stone	English (w/ Mom) - 10 to 15 minutes
Reading	Reading (w/ Mom) - 10 minutes	AWANA
	AWANA	Reading (w/ Mom) - 10 minutes
History (w/ Mom) - any together stuff
History  (w/ Mom) - 35 minutes	Book Basket	Book Basket
Book Basket	Science (w/ Mom)
Music/Art
Stretching and finish any independent work	Math
	Handwriting
Math (w/ Mom) - 1 hour	Piano	Wii Fit (15 minutes)
Science (w/ Mom) - 30-45 minutes	Wii Fit (15 minutes)	Piano
Piano

The pink column is Rabbit, the orange column is Pooh, and the blue column is Tigger. Anything in white is "together time." There are a few things missing from the chart. I missed typing on there, so I'll have to figure out how to work that in. And of course, the times don't line up. Plus, Writing Strands is missing for Rabbit. I'm only having her do All-in-One English 2 days a week. I figured it would cover the whole year if we did it that way, and then do Writing Strands the other two days. That way we don't have Writing Strands on our light and independent days.

Hopefully, tomorrow will go well. Rabbit says our goal is to start by 8:30 sharp! My goal is probably 8:15, but we'll see how it goes. Maybe getting the kids up 15 minutes earlier would make a difference.

Science and Math with Rabbit

Okay, so after posting over at the MFW board with my troubles (meaning the amount of time Math was taking), some people recommended just reading the math text and doing it with her. That works much better. It also allows us to skip problems I know she can do. Sometimes I just have her tell me how she would solve them without going into the actual solving of the problem. Yeah, I know, being able to do the actual math is part of the battle, but this is taking us 50 minutes to an hour, which feels much better than 1.5 hours. Yesterday, for example, we just did all the problems on the white board. Today, we did them in the notebook.

We've started on Apologia's General Science, too - we're on lesson 3. Today a friend over at the MFW board let me know about a notebook it looks like Apologia will sell to go with General Science. It looks pricey ($33), but if it helps Rabbit take notes and such, I think it would be worth it. They have the first module as a sample, so I printed that out and we used that today, except for the science experiment. 

 

After we boiled the water, I saved the left over in an ice cube tray. I read about that on Donna Young's web site - to save time in the future.

I made a video of today's science experiment - at least the results:

It was certainly fun.

Rabbit is having dance camp in the mornings this week, so I've been doing handwriting and math with the boys. I'm doing it together, and so far that is working well. It is like a mini-class. It is a little difficult when one finishes before the other, but it usually doesn't take too long.

The difference of a day!

Oh, Rabbit did so much better today on the timed Test A: she completed all but 4 problems in the 5 minutes, and only missed 2! And the two she missed: one was a number reversal (wrote 65 instead of 56), and the other she added instead of multiplied. This second lesson was long, and then the DIVE video didn't explain about using a formula to find the terms in a sequence, so we had to go back to the book and look at the example, and then I had to explain it to her using a couple of other examples. We finished up the practice set and will do the Mixed Problem set tomorrow. I do like that the DIVE video uses different words and explains things in a little bit different way than the book, but he doesn't always go over everything that the book covers, and we have to go back and look for how to solve at least one of the practice set or mixed problem set. I hope that isn't a regular  occurrence. I mean, right now I'm sitting with her through the whole lesson, giving her hints of when to pause and write and such, hoping that eventually she'll only need me for the warm up. But, if he regularly skips something, then I'm going to need to be more familiar with the lessons.


Things went opposite for Pooh. He struggled with Math today. He kept rocking in the chair instead of doing math. Ended up in tears twice! But, I brought the Math-U-See blocks to piano lessons and sat on the floor with him to do the Singapore lesson, and it went better. Like Rabbit at this age, he needs me to sit with him and walk him through each problem. He loved doing cursive with Tigger, and I even taught them an extra letter so they could write a real word: cat. They thought that was very cool.


Tigger just plows through stuff. If he misses a problem, he goes back and fixes it. He gets a little frustrated, but he wants to get it done so he can be off. 

Gradually starting

So yesterday I started with Rabbit on Saxon 8/7. The first few lessons are quite long, so after we finished the practice set, I let her stop for the day. Then today we finished up the first lesson. She did pretty well with it, but it is basic review right now. Today she also did the first page of the pre-test in All-in-One English.

For Pooh and Tigger, today we started our Handwriting Without Tears Cursive book and Singapore 2A. That went well. I taught them together, but for math, I had them do their math pages separately. 


I think I've got 98% of my lesson plans entered into Homeschool Tracker Plus. I haven't put in dance, P.E., AWANA, or Writing Strands. And I haven't figured out how I'm going to do the Progeny Press stuff with Rabbit, either. I'm still stressing a little bit about how to schedule it all. I have a lesson plan for Rabbit, and then another for the boys since there is quite a bit of difference. For the Apologia Science, Saxon, and Singapore I just have "Lesson x" and then the notes say to refer to the lesson plan book from MFW. The nice thing is I have my Primary Language Lesson plans from back when Rabbit was in 3rd grade to use with the boys. 

Done with EXP1850

I've been such a slacker! Okay, we finished our required days/hours several weeks ago. We didn't get to the state study, though. I ordered Colorado from statehistory.net and plan on having Rabbit at least read through it this summer. Plus she's checked out a few books on Colorado from the library.


I'm very proud of Rabbit! She finished Singapore 5B on the last day of "official" school! She has worked so hard to get caught up.


Pooh is making progress in his reading. Slow and steady, it is coming along. He still has a hard time with the math facts. We're doing xtramath.com and some math drill stuff from Little Giant Steps. It is expensive, but it has helped some. I'm not seeing the progress I would like. He can do math during math time, he just has a terrible time with the speed drills.


Tigger is doing great. He's reading at grade level, doing math well, getting his math facts down, all of that. His temper is short, and he gets passionate about things, but he is easy to teach.


I really want to keep my blog up to date for 1850 to Modern Times. I'll certainly try.