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.

My Love of Sticky Notes!

I have a bit of an obsession with Post-Its or sticky notes, depending on what people call them.  I use them so much That I buy the big blocks of them.  I buy light ones, almost always, because the dark ones make reading what is written on them difficult.

I use them a lot with Heart of Dakota planning.  They are perfect to go into the box format layout of the Teacher's Guides.  I can write out my plans for English, math, which dictation we are on, extra reading, etc.  I can write out extra stuff I want my child to do, like a cool YouTube video that goes with the lesson or reminders about a project that is almost due.

I often will write out a verse or a quote on a Post-It and place it on the fridge or where I will see it often.  My grocery list often gets out on a sticky note and stuck to the door, where I am hopeful I will see it and take it with me when I walk out said door.  

And don't forget the love-notes my husband and I stick on the door, the coffee pot, and wherever else we want to leave some love❤️. 

Yesterday, I began work on a Bible study/prayer notebook.  I like the box layout of Heart of Dakota so much that I grabbed the sticky notes and a composition notebook, and dived into my own little book.  (I'll update you if it a success.)

Post-Its.... Sticky notes... They are what works for me to keep myself organized.  I need things laid out in front of me, and this works.  

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! 

Math Notebooking and Variety

One of the benefits of homeschooling is the ability to structure the lessons for your child.  This year, notebooking has become a favorite tool of mine.  It's become such a great way to encourage art work, writing skills, and original thought.  I've incorporated notebooking assignments into reading, science, history, and even math.

My older two are doing math on the computer with Teaching Textbooks, and it is working out wonderfully.  However, my second grader was struggling right from the beginning of the school year.  

Math is not the subject that my younger children just naturally "get".  I learned a lot of lessons about math struggles with Laura.  I used several different curricula, reviewed concepts over and over, and often our lessons ended up with tears.  I finally learned to back off, keep reviewing what she did know, and reintroduce tougher concepts later.  Often just waiting a bit helped Laura.  Her brain matured, and suddenly she "got" it, the elusive concepts that just weeks earlier brought tears and frustration. 

Once I quit worrying about Laura being at a certain level, her growth was natural, with steady, slow maintaining and some spurts where she would jump quickly when ready. 

I decided to do the same thing with Megan.  The creation of the math notebook came about because I needed a place to centralize her work.  Using a "bit of this and a bit of that" can feel unorganized and overwhelming. Megan despises workbooks, but by adding a few here or there in her notebook, she actually enjoys them.  

We use a variety of materials so that her learning is varied.  I always find it interesting that we will use spelling, copywork, phonics, and a variety of readers to teach reading concepts; but think one program to teach math... One method... will be enough.  For some children, that is true.  But for others, coming at concepts from a few different ways works better. 

And... This isn't expensive (or more expensive than other programs).  I am using bits of Easy Peasy.  The videos and games are amazing for kids that learn well with visual stimuli. I don't do every thing ever day, but I add enough that it reinforces her learning.  

Last year I purchased a workbook program that contains a lot of drill and kill. Well... It was killing my daughter.  In her notebook, I now just glue a worksheet page here or there that reinforces the other work.   We also do flash cards daily.  I split up the cards by fact families, reviewing older ones that she knows well only once per week, working on newer ones or tough ones daily until she knows them well. 

Often I will look for games or activities that I can add to her math lessons that enable greater understanding. Hands-on, visual kids grasp concepts more quickly when it is more than just numbers on a page. 

Probably the greatest find has been Life of Fred. Megan LOVES her Life of Fred.  Everyday we go on a math adventure with Fred.  Her questions and answers for the "Your Turn to Play" section at the end of each chapter go into the notebook.  

Right now, this is working for us wonderfully.  Megan is learning and can be creative with her learning.  With the variety of methods, she doesn't get bored or frustrated.  In fact, she usually looks forward to math now. 

I am amazed that notebooking and math go together so wonderfully.  But, each day that I plan, I'm looking for variety in learning.  Our math time is not stressful as we do little flash card work with a computer game, maybe a skip counting video followed by a worksheet on skip counting, finishing up with a Life of Fred story and five or six questions.