Weekly Check-Up: September 17-21

It was a busy week, with experiments and drawing and a lot of reading.  We even had a cool experience in meeting a local children's author!

On Thursday evening we went to our local library and got to meet Shannon Anderson, a local teacher and author.  Megan thought meeting an actual author was cool, even if her books are for a younger target audience.  We love books, so it is cool to meet someone published!

We got a lot done this week, even with a couple days where we were delayed in getting started.

History:

Megan began learning about Jonah and Ninevah.  She began to delve into Babylon, Jeremiah's prophecies, and Nebuchadnezzar.  She read the book of Jonah in the Bible and is continuing in the book, Within the Palace Gates, which is a story about Nehemiah.

Bible:

In Bible, Megan read about Ninevah and Judah.  In New Testament, Megan learned more about Paul's letter to Colosse.

Science:

Megan worked on her science experiment, which included soaking a raw egg in vinegar for three days.  She is currently soaking that same egg in Corn Syrup for an additional three days.  This is teaching her about eggs and how baby birds survive and grow before hatching.  She also began studying baby pigeons and sketched some local birds.

Poetry:

This week, Megan studied Robert Frost's poem, Dust of the Snow, and began to paint a snowy landscape.

McGuffey:

In McGuffey, Megan read and learned about turtles, writing facts about turtles and sketching one in her notebook.  She then began reading a story called "The Quarrelsome Roosters."

Language Lessons:

Megan reviewed subjects and predicates as well as complete and incomplete sentences.

Literature:

Megan finished reading My Father's Dragon.  She then began to read The Bridge.  She also learned about the character traits Love, Compassion, and Tolerance.  She touched on emotions displayed in My Father's Dragon.  When she began The Bridge, she studied the setting and began to evaluate the moods displayed in the book.  In her independent reading, she is reading the mystery, The Scripture Sleuth.

Read Aloud:

In our read aloud time, we are still making our way through The Penderwicks at Last.  

Dictation:

Megan only passed one dictation.  We have slowed down in our progress, as the passages begin to progress in difficulty and length.  I am allowing for two days copywork for each passage before we do the day of dictation.

Math:

Megan continued to review in Ace Math.  She will soon be jumping into new concepts, but I have noticed that the review is helping her so much.  Her error rate has dropped drastically.  Often, she doesn't miss any.  This is building her confidence greatly and helping mathematical thinking to come to her more naturally.

In Life of Fred: Goldfish, Megan finished chapters 9, 10, and 11.  She continued to learn about review, sequencing, and algebraic expressions.  She reviewed some multiplication and geometry problems, with real-life examples.   She also worked on some word problems involving money and measurement.  I love that Life of Fred, while funny and fantastical, also uses a lot of scenarios that require the student to think about the math they are doing.  It isn't all by rote. 

Piano:

Megan began piano once again, already getting assigned a Christmas song for the recital in December... a Chimpmunk's Christmas Song.

Weekly Checkup - September 10-14, 2018

 Weekly Checkup

September 10-14, 2018

This week went quickly.  We didn't do school on Monday as there were appointments.  But, that didn't stop my daughter from being such a good help with her nephew while we were in the waiting room.

On Tuesday, we dove back into our studies... both of us.  My college classes continue, and I work steadily beside my girl. It is working well for us so far this year.


Here's a breakdown of my Meggy's week:

History:  

Megan is continuing to record the prophecies and fulfillments of Christ.  This week was about Christ coming out of Galilee. She is also reading about Assyria and the Assyrian King, Sennacherib.  She finished the book, God King, and began to read the book of Jonah in the Bible.  She continued to read the book, Palace Gates.

Bible:

This week Megan read about Hezekiah and Josiah in The Illustrated Family Bible.  In her New Testament study, she also read about Paul writing to the churches of Ephesus and Colosse. 

Science:

Megan is studying the book Birds of the Air in science.  This week she learned about how birds sing and the different types of nests they build.     Last week, she began a book where she will draw different kinds of birds over the next few weeks.

Poetry:

Megan is studying the poem Once by the Pacific by Robert Frost.  This week she painted an ocean with whitecaps.  (I didn't get a picture.)

McGuffey:

Megan is studying the 48th lesson in the Second McGuffey Reader (original), Stories About the Monkey.   She researched facts about monkeys, drew a monkey picture, answered questions, looked up vocabulary words from the story, and wrote original sentences.

Language Lessons:

In Megan's Language Lessons this week, she first reviewed Capitalization.  She reviewed syllables. Then she dived in to learning about Haiku.  She loves using Language Lessons, because it isn't drill and kill and she gets to write more. 

Literature:

In the beginning of the week, Megan finished up a book project over the book Five Smooth Stones.  She then dived into the next genre, Fantasy.  She will be reading My Father's Dragon and The Bridge for this genre.  She began My Father's Dragon on Wednesday. Her study has her searching out different moods in the book as well as differentiating between realistic and unrealistic aspects in the story.

Having a literature focus, I have assigned extra reading every day. She also finished up Penguin Puzzle in her extra reading and began Scripture Sleuth.

Read Aloud:

We finished up Penderwicks in Spring, which broke our hearts.  It was the best one so far.  We began The Penderwicks at Last.

Dictation:

Megan has been completing her dictation as copywork for a day or two before we do the actual dictation.  I like this pattern as she learns the passage much better and has less repeating due to less errors.  The dictation passages are listed in the back of the Heart of Dakota guide and are taken from Dictation Day by Day: Book One by Kate Van Wagenen.  Megan is on Level 4, passage thirty nine. 

Math:

Megan is using two different math curriculum at this time.  She is using ACE Math and Life of Fred at this time.  I really want to strengthen her skills.  We are still doing some review, making sure the skills are strong before we dive into new material. 

In Life of Fred Goldfish, Meg read chapters 7 and 8, which covered sequencing, algebraic concepts, polygons, and perimeter.

In Ace Math, she practiced place value, multiplication and division concepts, expanded form, and fractions.  She complained at first about going to a "drill and kill" program, but she is changing her attitude.  She is understanding so much better and her confidence is growing as she does well on the problems.

Piano:

Megan has practiced a few times.  Her lessons begin again next Monday. 

This was our homeschool week.  Sometimes I wonder if we are doing enough, especially when she completes her entire day in a few hours.  As I go back through the week and actually type all that she has accomplished, I am surprised.  It is definitely a full schedule with a lot of variety in her learning. 

Weaving Through Our Year

Last Spring, when I ordered my homeschooling materials, I made a decision.  I decided that, while I love a couple different curriculum, I just couldn't afford to spend the kind of money each year that I had so often spent.  Financially, my husband and I needed to cut back and streamline a lot of things.

My Weaver Volumes and Supplements

I LOVE literature-based, Charlotte Mason-style curriculum. I had spent hundreds each year buying these types of curriculum.  (I still use bits of them.) The benefit is that most of it is reusable.  I needed to purchase two years of curriculum so that, with any other funds, we could get back on our feet. The costs of two years of the literature-based programs for three students would have added up to over two thousand dollars! 

These programs, though expensive, gave me a safety net.  Planned out completely for me, I didn't have the fears plaguing me about whether we had done enough. I could just trust the curriculum.  Not everything worked well, but I would make do or adjust things.  Occasionally, however, I would get frustrated by books that I didn't like and had paid big bucks to buy.  I was livid that a writing program that came with my materials was BORING, had cost me a small fortune, and my child hated every assignment to the point that I quit using it a few weeks in. Since part of it was consumable, I couldn't sell it for what I paid. 

I needed a program with more flexibility.  I needed to be able to use the library or pick up materials used at resale shops.  I needed to be able to customize the materials a bit more for each child. 

So, despite feeling sad that I couldn't afford the program I had been using, I took a leap of faith and ordered programs that met my needs better.  They may require more planning on my part, but that actually has been a blessing. 

I don't look for that "perfect" curriculum any longer.  Instead, I look for resources and materials that I can use with multi-levels.  Ironically, I use workbooks for some subjects.  They may be consumable, but they are time savers in certain subjects, like math and grammar. Most cover concepts in a systematic way that reviews and builds precept upon precept. I love using Language Lessons by Queens because this is more than just a "find the noun, find the verb" grammar program, but is still gentle.

This year I delved into notebooking, which has been amazing for my visual learners. 

One investment I made last Spring was in the Weaver curriculum. Weaver is a unit study curriculum published by Alpha Omega.  I had played with Volume 1 off and on for a couple years.  Each time I used it, I loved it.  However, I just didn't have the confidence to jump in all the way. I would go through the massive guides and fear that I could never put it all together for three children.  Then I would be so stressed trying to do three children in three different grades with three different complete lesson plans. The expense was not making things more simple.

Weaver bases everything around the Bible.  History and Science are Bible-based, stemming from the Bible lessons. I love that!  I could make Weaver my own.  

Let me say that jumping into Weaver with two in high school was a bit scary.  But I'm watching my girls develop extraordinary research skills.  When they have to look up things and write about what they are learning, they remember the concepts so much more than when they simply read about them.  However, they still do a LOT of reading. 

I can now build a library of more than just books someone else chose.  I can add in Christian materials from multiple publishers.  I can buy books from the resale shops for pennies, or check out stacks of books for free from my library.  

I can decide how to cover certain topics. For instance, we are working on maps in Social Studies.  My older girls have done a lot of map work, so I have them reading about China as they read a novel set there.  However my seven year old has only a little experience with maps.  My copier is broke, making using the resource pages in the back of the Weaver guide difficult.  So I ordered an Ace Pace about maps from their third grade Social Studies program.  Megan is going through it and learning all about the objectives listed in the Weaver volume, for around three dollars.

For science, we are studying weather at the moment.  The older girls are reading about advanced weather prediction techniques while my second grader is going through the beginner sections of Our Weather and Water, filling out a calendar of the weather daily, and even watching a Magic School Bus episode about air pressure on Netflix. 

For our Bible time, I have found the Christian Light Bible goes perfectly with the Weaver lessons.  Occasionally one or the other will be more info-depth, but the levels I'm using blend well.  We are using Volume 4 of Weaver because that is where we were in our Old Testament studies.  We are studying David, using CLE grade two for my seven year old and grade six for my high schoolers. I am very impressed with CLE's Bible. I decided to not use the high school levels because the fifth and sixth grade levels were so detailed, with a lot of cultural explanations and maps of the times.  Mixed with the Weaver Bible lessons, I am continually blessed by the incredibly deep and detailed lessons.  The CLE guides often give writing assignments, discussion starters, and even visual suggestions.  The Weaver adds a lot of depth, such as the added Psalm study we are going through now as the girls read about David.  Our adventures as spies (field trip) added some amazing real life lessons when we studied the spies sent into the Promise Land.  Weaver helped our lessons come to life!

I see a lot of homeschooling moms out there that tried Weaver and left because it was too hard to plan or too hard to find the books.  I don't use the books listed most of the time.  I will invest in some of the biographies occasionally, but most of the time I look for age appropriate books by topic.  I purchased the Answers in Genesis God's Design curriculum for my elementary and middle school students.  I often use these for my high schoolers too, because they give a great starting point before more in-depth research. 

Weaver seems to complement the Adhd in my home.  The Objectives that catch our interest, we can delve into deeply.  The ones that we don't like as well, we can do our best and move on.  I can make it hands-on if I need to.  I can make it as literature rich as I want.  I can add in a workbook if I'm not confident in my abilities in an area.  I can add in Notebooking to engage my learners that learn best with this method.  I can throw in documentaries for my daughter that is very visual.  I can use the books from my literature collections or use books from Goodwill.  I can raid the library and it won't cost me a dime.  I can choose whatever read-alouds I want to read, and not the ones chosen by someone else that I may find objectionable or my child find boring.  

More work?  Yes... In planning.  But so far it has been so worth it! 

Language Lessons for the Very Young

My seven year old is progressing quickly in her reading.  I bought her a traditional English program for this year, which included spelling and grammar.  After a week, I put it up.  She was in tears from all the workbooks.

I decided to take a more Charlotte Mason approach to school.  The short, focused lessons are perfect for my ADD children.  I bought Language Lessons for the Very Young from Queen's Homeschool.
 

Queen's Homeschool Language Lessons

I actually downloaded the entire year's worth of curriculum and was able to print out the book.  I figure printing costs were about what shipping would have been, and I didn't have to wait a week for the mail to deliver.

Queen's Website has the following description of this level of Language Lessons for the Very Young:

 This delightful introduction to the language arts is the answer to what our Charlotte Mason style customers have been asking for! Introduces a student who has mastered the art of learning to read to the skills of picture study, narration, copywork, poetry, grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and more - all with a gentle, twaddle free approach. Full-color fine art throughout makes this consumable book for grades 2 - 3 a delight for the eyes as well as the ears.

 A varied approach gives the student something different each day, alleviating the boredom that often comes with those repetitive, dry grammar books you'll find elsewhere. Perfect-bound paperback workbook offers 180 daily lessons - one for each day of the school year.

Megan loves the work, and has been doing so wonderfully!  The last couple of days she has been reviewing capitalization rules.  Her assignment today was to write the names of her family members with correct capitalization.  What a great way to personalize her lesson!  She added her four sisters and parents.  Then she wanted to add her aunts and cousins.   She would have added a lot more if she would have had the lines.  Needless to say, the concept has been learned. 

(Blurred last names for safety)

Over the next few lessons she'll learn about capitalizing in paragraphs, capitalizing the days of the week and months of the year, and learn a poem. 

Later in the year she'll learn about subjects and predicates, whether a sentence is complete, singular and plurals, vowels, using 'A' or 'An', nouns, verbs, and punctuation.  Instead of traditional formats, she'll learn all this while practicing copywork, doing narrations, picture studies, and creative writing.  It's all gentle and yet so comprehensive!

No longer are there tears.  My daughter is doing some amazing work and enjoying it immensely!

I compared this program to the traditional English that I had purchased.  This covers the same grammatical concepts, but without the endless workbook pages and the drill and kill lessons.  Plus, it adds so much more depth with the Charlotte Mason extras.  

Math Tears to Math Cheers

This year began a bit rough, but slowly we are finding a rhythm.  I changed many things, a little at a time, and am still tweaking.

Megan's math was torture for her.  After years of watching my older daughter struggle and develop a intense math hatred, I knew I didn't want that same path for my younger daughter.  

My 14 year old is at level, and I can honestly state that it is because I picked the curriculum that reviewed a lot and just took it day by day.  But the math-resistance is there, ingrained since the days of drill and kill multiplication worksheets.  I think she still has nightmares. 

My seven year old was developing that same resistance.  I was repetitively hearing, "I'm not good at math."  When the sight of math workbooks brings a child to tears, I knew it was time to find a new direction. I immediately stopped all workbook work in math. 

Megan working on Easy Peasy Math

I first hopped on Easy Peasy Homeschool. I back-tracked to Math 1 and found where I believed was a good spot for review but not be too simplistic.  Easy Peasy is wonderful with all the math games and videos.  My seven year old asks to do Easy Peasy math first before other subjects.  That is wonderful after hearing, "I don't like math" for weeks! 

Next I pulled out her flash cards. I put them into fact families and split the easy ones up so we are reviewing those less often.  Then, from the +3s and up, we are learning a new fact family every couple days, reviewing daily the ones we learned more recently.  I printed out a couple fact family worksheets from the internet that I have her fill out.  This all takes about five to ten minutes.  So far, my Megan is liking the new process. 

Life Of Fred, Lesson 1

My next step was to cater to her learning style, reading. My daughter lives reading and is advancing quickly in her reading skills.  I decided to purchase the first Life of Fred, Apples, and see how that went over.  She loved it!  Again, the lessons are short.  Life of Fred is also funny. 

Megan's Life of Fred work

My next step will be to scale back just a but on the computer games and do some hands-on, living math.  I've been impressed with the samples of Math Lessons for a Living Education by Queen's Homeschool.  I am planning to start Megan in book 2 after she masters a few more of her fact families. 

Megan working out the Your Turn to Play Section

I see my daughter not only learning math, but enjoying math.  To me, this is a breath of fresh air after her tears and dread and complaining.  I just wish I been brave enough to branch out more with my older daughter.

Affording the Homeschool Life... Curriculum

Affording the Homeschool Life:  The Curriculum

The decision to homeschool children can be a tough one.  When I first felt led to homeschool my children, I began a research campaign to learn all I could about how to homeschool.  I had many questions.

One of my biggest concerns was the cost of homeschooling.  My husband and I live on a pretty tight budget.  When I first began homeschooling, we had five children ranging from 18 months to 17 years old.  Four of my children were in public school. 

My husband agreed that we would "give it a year".  We would homeschool our third grader, since it seemed impossible to homeschool the other ones. I began researching curriculum.  I had an idea in my head of the way I wanted to homeschool, lots of great books and some workbooks.  I was searching for something that would meet my needs.  I was surprised at how expensive things were.  I quickly purchased a bunch of materials that kind of resembled the public school, except the materials were Christian and we had Bible as a subject. This is the way most start.

I must have tried a bit of twenty different curricula those first few years. I spent SO MUCH money!  Truthfully, it was a learning process that I pray can help teach others.  Homeschooling doesn't HAVE to cost a bunch of money!  

I still purchase different curriculum, but my standards aren't the same as they were ten years ago.  I've learned to invest in quality Christian books that are unlikely to be found local libraries.  I believe in investing in quality math programs.  I invest in materials, but I also know that amazing free materials are available online.

It doesn't take more than an internet connection to access a wide world of free curricula.  I've found amazing sites offering a plethora of amazing free lessons.  Some sites go through all or nearly all the years of schooling!

My favorite free sites include Ambleside online, Old Fashioned Education, and Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool.  With little more than an internet connection, a printer, and an Ereader (Nook, Kindle, Tablet); these sites can give your child a top quality, private-school education. No... I'm not joking. 

There are many blogs out there also that are amazing at leading parents to free or cheap homeschool options.  Large Family Mothering, Budget Homeschool, and on and on.  Just Google "free or cheap homeschool" and you'll get a huge list. Hop on Pinterest, search "free homeschool" and bask in all the amazing ideas and links and websites for every subject under the sun!  The development of sites like Khan Academy have made upper levels of math and science now suddenly doable... for free!  Colleges are filming lectures.  Youtube has lessons on everything from music to math demonstrations to biology dissections. Reading about Martin Luther King?  Watch his "I Have A Dream" speech online.  There are no limits for what can be learned with an internet connection, a library card, and some basic school supplies.

Composition Notebooks are awesome tools!

My new favorite homeschool tool is composition notebooks. I use them for nearly everything!  They make great books for copywork.  Glue key pages from workbooks in them to cut out busy work, focus on the essentials, and create a cute portfolio of their work at the same time.  We've been doing a lot a lot of notebooking this year, and composition books are perfect for that!  Sometimes we make our notebooks with the composition books; and sometimes we put our pages in sheet protectors in binders. Composition notebooks are cheap, already bound, and perfect for things that won't be removed. 

Notebooking page for poetry. (yes, she has a couple errors)

My seven year old has come to despise workbook pages.  However, sometimes they are useful.  I have managed to take a couple workbooks, and use the information in them to create lessons with most of the busy work cut out.  This has worked wonderfully, since I already own the workbooks.  However, this is a great way to take some of the thousands of free workbook printables online and add them to what you are studying.

Using random workbook pages to cut our excess busywork.

If you have considered homeschooling your child, but feel that you can't afford the materials, I wish to encourage you.  It doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg.  I can easily spend hundreds on materials, and there have been years where I have.  There have also been years where I didn't because I didn't have the funds or because I didn't see the need.  I have found that, sad to say, the programs that have cost me the most financially were the ones my children tolerated, and often learned little.  There are exceptions, like Teaching Textbooks, but the children learn the most when they can be creative with their lessons! 

I love Charlotte Mason methods because they are effective and cheap.  It costs little more than the cost of a pencil and paper to teach a child to narrate.  It actually costs nothing for them to narrate verbally.  Why have endless curriculum testing for comprehension when you can have the child actually use higher level skills and retell what they read or had read to them?  Writing is a very efficient means of processing information and helping with retention.  It certainly works better than filling in the blanks or endless multiple choice questions.  Talk about a cost savings!

There are companies and curricula that I have found to be worth the expense of the materials.  I tend to buy many of my homeschooling supplies through Christianbook or private homeschool sellers.  I have loved Heart of Dakota at different times.  As I strive to get away from spending the hundreds for the upper levels per year, I find myself drawn to materials that guide, but give me lots of room to be creative.  I am finding that with Queen's Homeschool Supplies.  I also find that older materials, McGuffey Readers and public domain books, which are free online, are so much better than a lot of our modern materials.  The depth of the reading, the large vocabulary, the Christian principles that were such a part of the lives then; this is quality that is hard to duplicate in this day and age.  Many homeschooling companies take these older works and use them in their lessons because they are so wonderful!  Queen's Homeschool has taken multiple older works and revised them or created amazing  studies into science or history!

Don't let expense of materials keep you from homeschooling.  There are so many options in this day and age that it can actually be overwhelming.  Hop on the computer, research away, talk to other homeschoolers, read some books from the local library.  Don't be afraid that your child will not receive a quality education at home because of expense.  That excuse no longer works very well.  Homeschooling can be expensive if you think that is the only way to give your child a good education; or it can be as cheap as you need if you take some time and effort... and get a little creative.  And, if you do choose to invest in some quality materials, know that you are investing in your child.  It is never wasted.

Ready, Set, Start Over

After a rough start, I am starting our school year over.  Not every subject is a wash or needs a reboot, but a few need a clean slate.  A couple others just need a different approach or a little jazzing up.  Luckily, I homeschool.  If something needs to change, I'm not bound to things that aren't working for me.  As embarrassing as it is to admit, I really messed up the beginning of our year.  All I can do is claim temporary insanity due to stress.  We moved.  I  spent a summer with a very sick daughter in the ICU.  Life threw us obstacles that led to me ordering things that, had I been truly thinking clearly, I would have known were not the right choices for us.

English is one of those subjects where I did well in school.  I received great grades.  I loved reading.  Though grammar was a bit of a pain, I managed to excel because I loved to write.

Teaching grammar is a whole different ball game from when I was the student, but my older girls seem to know their grammar fairly well.  They can diagram a sentence perfectly.  However, I have noticed that those awesome grammar skills don't always carry over into their writing.  It makes me a bit sad because one of my daughters is an excellent writer.  She loves writing stories, filling up notebooks with chapter after chapter of her imagination taking her on adventures.  This year, I discovered she is an amazing poet too.  A simple assignment turned into days of her writing poetry that was deep and thought provoking.

I knew that they didn't really need any more drilling in grammar.  They needed help to improve using that grammar effectively in their writing.  So, in the third week of school, I stopped their "traditional" English lessons.  I went back to what I had used a few years earlier, Queen's Language Lessons.

A few years ago I was trying my hand at some Charlotte Mason work.  I was working with my daughter on a history study on Benjamin Franklin that I had purchased through Queen's Homeschool Supplies.  It was a unique way to learn, and I was a little unsure if it was for us.  However, I was curious about the gentle way Queen's Homeschool stated that they taught Language Arts.  I used it for one glorious year, and then switched to the program that the curriculum I was using recommended.  I regret that, because my daughter loved that program so much!  We had used Language Lessons for the Elementary Child, and I still remember my daughter laughing at coming up with an acrostic for her name as a lesson.  She ended up coming up with acrostics for every member of our home!  Talk about creativity!

I stayed with mostly Charlotte Mason techniques until I got permission to homeschool my step-daughter.  Then, I switched back to more traditional with children so that they were all doing similar curriculum.  Another Big Mistake!  By the end of one semester, I had switched to Charlotte Mason for the younger two.  By the following school year, I began using a lot of Charlotte Mason techniques with the step-daughter.  The results were mostly good, though it was a huge adjustment for her.  Since then, I've been eclectic in my approach.  But when I drifted to more traditional materials, I could see my children were losing the love they had of learning.  It was become drudgery for them.  Even if my children do all the pages in their workbooks  and get correct answers, I find their retention rate suffers.  I don't mind an occasional workbook, but I've learned my children need creativity and a mixture of activities to keep their motivation in high gear.

This has become quite obvious with my littlest pupil.  At seven, Megan is a bundle of energy that is smart, and easily bored.  I cut almost all of the busy work and workbooks out except her Explode the Code and Literature and Creative Writing.  Instead, I am replacing them with things that make her eyes sparkle.  Even math is going to be changed up from workbook drill and kill to math games, living math, Life of Fred, and some flashcards.  I am using Heart of Dakota for history, poetry (though the Language Lessons also has poetry), Bible, Storytime, and Reading.  I love the Emerging Readers that Megan is reading through!  Heart of Dakota is also Charlotte Mason based.

I am most excited that my second grader and I are beginning our first nature study this week as we read through Little House on the Prairie!

My older children will be using Misty of Chincoteague for a nature study, in addition to their chemistry work.  I started them off with an easier book because neither of them have much nature study experience.  For history, as an add-on to our US History study, I have added the book and history study, Streams to the River, River to the Sea.  I have approached history gently, with lots of living books and movies.  I wanted to inspire a love of history, especially in my oldest.  She was in public school for most of her education and developed an intense dislike for history due to how it was taught. Slowly, she has begun to find history more interesting as she has read stories and biographies instead of dry texts.

I am excited about our journey this year, though a couple of weeks ago I was in a very different place.  I have been refreshed.  I took some time to reevaluate and pray.  Last Spring, when I ordered curriculum, I was getting ready to move and was very stressed.  I ordered what I thought would work so that I wouldn't have to worry about it later.  Well... some of the materials will work.  Others, not so much.  Oh well, I can sell it.  I'm not going to stress and leave myself all upset.  The only thing to do is move forward.

The Growth Mindset

I have been really delving into how kids learn. I have been reading and studying how children learn, and why some methods work better than others. This is fascinating to me because my children, in school, would have been or have been labeled "learning disabled".  At home, they may struggle occasionally, but overall, they thrive.

Dad, helping Laura with her new Language Lessons

Some of the materials I have used in the last seven years of homeschooling show my progression of learning how my children learn.  I have went from traditional to literature-based to Charlotte Mason to eclectic and then back to mostly Charlotte Mason.  Truthfully, I find that when my children use traditional materials, they only remember enough to pass the tests.  Then, they forget most of what they learned, or can't apply it to real life.  All their knowledge is disjointed and separated.

This came to light for me in my oldest child still at home.  She has mostly used traditional grammar and language arts texts her entire schooling life.  The exception is when her old tutor used Winston Grammar to help her really see the parts of speech.  My daughter was in public school until ninth grade.  She spent years in tutoring.  She excelled, when we brought her home to be homeschooled, in grammar studies.  She can diagram a sentence so well that it is like a game to her.  However, it doesn't carry over to her writing.  She can pass the tests, but it isn't a practical skill for her.

 I found myself inspired over the last couple of days by an English book.  I purchased Queen's Homeschool Language Lessons for the Secondary Child Volume 2 for my middle child.     My creative, talented, loves to write daughter needed something besides her "traditional" program that we had used for a couple of years.  I had her write some poetry, and discovered that she is very talented.  She had always focused on stories.  I had used Queen's Language Lessons with her before, and she loved it.  I had switched form it in the past, afraid that she wasn't getting enough grammar instruction.  How silly of me.  This gentle approach, with all the writing and copywork, is perfect for her. I switched her back to what worked for her before.  This program, used years ago, sparked a fire in my daughter to write.  She wrote stories to go with her picture studies.  She then moved on to writing longer stories in composition books, and hasn't stopped in years.

My oldest student flipped through her sister's Language Lesson's book.  Her eyes lit up.  "Mom," she pleaded, "Can I do something like this?"

I thought about it as I was planning the lessons.  As I flipped through the book I knew that my oldest student actually needed more practice writing.  For years she had done a traditional English and Language Arts program.  She could diagram a sentence with ease, but her writing didn't show it.  What good is diagramming if she can't apply it to her own writing?  Could the copywork that is in the Language Lessons help?  I decided it was worth a shot.  I looked at the high school levels and decided, since my daughter had struggled so much in English with writing and reading comprehension, that I would have her do the same level as her sister.  

I added a bit of extra work, though.  The copywork in Language Lessons for the Secondary Child volume 2 contains great American speeches, such as the Gettysburg Address.  However, I doubted that the girls understood it or many of the other speeches contained in the book.  They have read it before, but I doubt they ever went through and actually read it for understanding.  So, I decided that they would do the copywork twice.  The first time wouldn't be an exact copy of what was written, but would be written with the words and phrases they didn't understand replaced with definitions of those words.  Wow!  What a difference!

Suddenly the passages came to life.  The girls began with a poem for copywork.  As they looked up the words, the meaning of the poem became so very impacting.  They then would copy the original, but instead of it being just words on a page, it held so much more in the passages. Both girls were a little upset that I was making them look up the meanings.  But, how amazing that it works so well!  The girls will do two lessons a day of shorter passages and grammar portions of Language Lessons so that they can move through the lessons and get to the high school levels.  Grammar has been emphasized for many years.  They both have great knowledge of grammar, but just don't seem to use it well in their writing.  Queen's Language Lessons teaches how to apply that grammar knowledge into their writing.

Last week my youngest daughter, age seven, just melted down.  I had ordered the worst curriculum for her I possibly could.  Why?  Well, all I can say was that when I ordered curriculum, we were in the process of packing up to move.  I was stressed and wanted easy.  So... I ordered easy.  Within two weeks I knew that I had made a HUGE mistake.  I quickly packed up those workbooks that I KNEW were a dumb purchase.  I grabbed out some old curriculum that I had saved.  I then looked into what else I could do that wouldn't break the bank.

My youngest is a tough one.  She LOVES to read!  In fact, when we began this year's phonics, she soared through a semester of work in a week.  We had spent all summer reading so that she wouldn't lose any skills.  Instead, she gained. She reads constantly, reading books in the car and before bed and during dinner.  I speed to the second semester phonics work, and then wondered what to do for English, since her skills were beyond the area where we left off.  The workbooks that I thought she would use became a nightmare with three different books with a couple pages a day per book, all for one subject.  Spelling, reading, and grammar are all separated in traditional programs.  My daughter, who is reading way ahead of her level, broke at all the workbook pages.

Isn't there a way to do these together?  I decided to try. Could Charlotte Mason work as well for my youngest little girl?  Could the Language Lessons series, which my older daughter enjoys so much, work for my little reader? I ordered and downloaded Language Lessons for the Very Young, Volume One.  I was thrilled that I didn't have to wait for the mail to deliver this book, since it was available as an ebook.   We've worked in it for over a week now, and her tears have stopped.  She loves it just as much.

My next challenge is teaching my little one math.  My older daughters have settled into Teaching Textbooks for the upper levels of math.  I'm proud of the fact that they are doing well, because math is NOT my favorite subject to teach.  I've used at least four different programs with my middle daughter in the seven years we've homeschooled.  Most would work for awhile, and then the effectiveness would fade.  She's not a kid that enjoys math.  I finally, last year, had her working through Khan Academy lessons and CLE math.  I was petrified that she wasn't going to be ready for Algebra because math has always been such a struggle for her.  I was actually SHOCKED that she has gotten very good grades with Teaching Textbooks Algebra.  I assumed that I would end up having to find the money for the pre-Algebra program or hope that she could grasp enough from Khan Academy because she wasn't ready.  I guess all that bouncing and all the differing methods wasn't as damaging as I feared. 

I was sent an email by Sal Khan of Khan Academy. It linked to a video entitled You Can Do Anything.

 http://youtu.be/wh0OS4MrN3E



Viewing the brain as a muscle, one that can grow and learn, is fundamentally important. God didn't create us to be stagnant, unable to move beyond what we believe are barriers in our lives. He created us to learn and grow, so that we may use our skills and knowledge for His glory! How wonderful it is to know this is true! How sad to realize that your children don't believe it.

My middle daughter spent years struggling with math.  She struggled to retain the facts, to remember how to do certain skills from one year to the next.  In that struggle, I feared that she was never going to "get it".  I feared that she would always be slower to grasp math concepts.  But, according to Sal Khan, maybe it was that very struggle that helped to grow her brain in such a way where something that isn't a "natural" ability can still be formed and developed.

I see the same struggle in my youngest daughter in math.  However, I don't want to go through four different curricula, hoping to find that "magic" one.  While I don't mind seeing her struggle to figure out tough concepts, I don't want her to develop that intense dislike of math.  The drill and kill method isn't working for her.  Right now I am going over flashcards once a day.  I am going through a fact family every day or two and adding those to the flashcards we review.  Other than that, for now, she is playing math games on the computer.  I want more, and am researching my options.  I like the look of a couple of different curricula.  I am very curious if the story style of Life of Fred will benefit her since she loves reading so much.  I also am curious, if in keeping with a more Charlotte Mason style that has worked so well with my children, if I shouldn't look into Math Lessons for a Living Education.  For now, we are going to keep working on what we are doing until we have the extra money to purchase these things.

One lesson I have learned is to not push.  Often children will grow bit by bit, and then stop for awhile.  Then, all of a sudden, they will grow really fast.  They learn the same way, in spurts.  I am excited about what God is doing in my homeschool, in my children.  We have had a slow and a bit of a rough start to our year.  Of course, we have had a rough year anyway, with moving and my oldest two grown daughters having such severe health issues.  I am sure that I can be forgiven for making some purchasing errors under stress.  God will provide.