Online Fun

BlueSkies in Tagxedo

Followed a friend's pin and found this wonderful site called Tagxedo.  I'm thinking there has to be some way to incorporate this into our homeschool!  Cards, posters, web images.  I think I'm going to have some fun with this!

Trust the Child

I've been homeschooling my now 7th grade son since the beginning of 4th grade.  We have our ups and our downs, but generally love our way of life.  Indeed, homeschooling has become a way of life.  Over the years we have less "school" time scheduled and have found that learning weaves it's way through our days in a more organic way.  I prefer it this way and I find AH's retention is higher when he learns this way.  But it is so very different than the way I was taught and it brings on episodes of panic now and again.  Take for instance spelling.  We began in 4th grade with two separate phonics lessons, both of which produced nothing but tears.  I then signed him up for an online spelling test weekly which produced more tears and, worse, frustration.  I then came to realize just how a right-brained learner cannot learn in these ways and found a better and more productive way for him to learn to spell.  It worked, but there was no joy, no spark, no enthusiasm and that brought me to tears.

Then I backed off.

I spelled words when my son wanted to write them.  But that was close to never. I just waited (and silently panicked).  All the books said that when a child is ready he will want to learn.

And still I waited, enduring criticism and disparaging remarks for my son's poor spelling.  But I still waited and clung to the belief that when he was ready, he would want to write and spelling would be a natural part of that.  And the criticism continued, sometimes directly at AH, but still I waited (and silently panicked).

In the meantime, with so many activities filling our calendars, we found that we wanted our son to have a cell phone to call us in emergencies (like the night he was left at church to attend confirmation when there was no confirmation scheduled that night!) or to simply call us with a question when we were all out doing our own things.  My husband ordered a phone with a full keyboard just to make texting and entering information easier for AH.    When AH got the phone he was so excited to fill it with contacts, starting with his big sister and big brother.  He texted them occasionally, but when one of his friends also got a phone, that was the beginning of his spelling education.  They sent texts back and forth furiously. I must have spelled most of the words he typed to his friend that first week.  During the second week, I wasn't asked how to spell words, but was asked if he had spelled them correctly.  And by week three, I very rarely have to spell out a word for him.

Trust the child.

As if this wasn't a breakthrough in and of itself, I opened my email one day to see a plea from a homeschool friend of AH's who was trying to start a newspaper.  He wanted it to be written by local homeschoolers.  I mentioned it to my son and heard nothing for quite a while.  One morning AH told me he was going to write movie reviews for the newspaper and wondered if we could go to a couple of movies. As if I was going to say no! We made sure we saw the two movies AH wanted to review (including big brother and dad in this activity made it a natural part of our family life) and AH followed through, with no pressure from me, on writing not only one, but two, reviews for the next issue of the Homeschool Gazette.  The words weren't always spelled correctly, but we worked on that when he asked for help.  The sentences sometimes didn't flow that way they should, but we worked on that when he asked for help. 

What was it that the books said?  Oh, yeah,...

Trust the child.

Unplanned Learning

A few months ago I signed up at C-SPAN's website to receive a free presidential poster.  It came to our house and I promptly put it in my "I'll get to this later" pile.  I completely forgot about it until I was cleaning off my desk a month later.  I opened it up and it was HUGE.  What was I going to do with this very large poster?  I was tempted to give it away. I folded it up and brought it down to the kitchen where AH was hanging out.  I showed him the poster and started unfolding it.  He was fascinated!  We laid it out on the kitchen floor and sat looking at all the information at our fingertips.  Not only did it include a list of presidents, but when they were born, other public service posts they had held, military service, what party they belonged to, America's population along the timeline, technology, supreme court rulings, constitutional amendments, and more!  We must have spent a good 45 minutes just looking and talking.  I wouldn't have considered this part of our "school day", but AH loved it so I couldn't just give this goldmine away.  It needed to be up, on display, somewhere we spend a lot of time.  Hmmmm....

The poster on our kitchen wall.

You wouldn't believe what we have done with this poster.  During dinner AH has taken to quizzing us on our presidential trivia (I am the worst!) and asking to be quizzed.  One day during breakfast he wondered just how many years of military service had been served by our presidents altogether.  He not only added all the years up, but then decided to make a chart with this information.  He found this exercise so interesting that it led to a series of charts that now grace the wall above the poster: Presidential states, birthdays, political parties, and more.

Years of military service.  No, Eisenhower did not serve the most years.

Presidential parties

Presidential birthday months

None of this has been planned.  It is AH's continuing interest in this poster and subject matter that has made learning history, social studies, and government so easy and so much fun.  He blew me away last week when he listed the first 8 presidents in order.  I asked if he could list all of them. He needed only one hint (he forgot LBJ).  I was reminded that learning occurs when you can take advantage of an interest and encourage a spark of curiosity to become a flame!

My kitchen won't win any decorating awards, but we sure have fun!

Veterans Day

Having two grandfathers who served in the military, I thought it was a good day for AH to visit two memorials in our little town in honor of Veteran's Day. 

 

 

I gave AH the camera and this is what he saw...

Changes

My son, AH,  and I entered our 4th year of homeschooling on November 1st.  I cannot believe my youngest is a 7th grader!  He is also our only child living in the house.  Lots of changes this year.  Our 19 year old, AD,  is off to college this fall and I know AH misses him.  Little brother had a hard time when his big sis, AN, moved to college and I'm seeing some of the same things this time around even though AH is 6 years older.  Dinner time is when he seemed to feel the loss of his sister the most and I'm finding this to be true this time around.  Dinner is a very different affair without AD.  I guess I never realized how AD would lead the conversation each night because we have much quieter dinners these days.  He was home a couple of weekends ago and it was wonderful to hear these words again: "So, Dad, how was your day today?" and "Mom, guess what?"
 There is a big hole in our lives.  We will figure it out, but change is tough.
 We make our way through this change by forming new traditions and looking forward to the times when big sister and big brother are here.   One such change is to watch a movie or documentary together each night.  We started out watching each of the Harry Potter movies in anticipation of the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1, but it has been so much fun that we save the documentaries we watch for school until dad gets home.  Last week it was Luther (happy belated Reformation Day!)
Another way to cope is to keep busy and we have had one of the busiest falls of our lives! It seems we are averaging 2 to 3 field trips, clubs or park days per week! Here is a sampling of our adventures so far this fall:

Got the new Lego Minotaur Game and played it A LOT

Took a class at Como Zoo: Life Through Time

A Millipede, one of the many examples of life shown to us during the 8 week Life Through Time class

Art Club

Searched for fossils at a fossil class

Found one!

Found some of Dad's childhood toys while helping Grandpa clean out storage...

AH and Dad try out the boxing gloves found.

Harvest Fest.  And that is the worlds heaviest pumpkin and it did weigh 1,820.5 lbs!

Another monster pumpkin at Harvest Fest

A Harry Potter Halloween party

Carving a pumpkin

Draco Malfoy

Celebrated Big Brother's birthday

This 'n' That

My what a week!

My older son's (AD) football team ended their season undefeated! The last game was Tuesday night and we've been resting ever since. They have a couple of weeks until their first playoff game which is nice. Congratulations to the Pony Football Players and Coaches...You Rock!

Click here to view these pictures larger

AH has been a busy bee. Last Thursday and Friday AH took a kids cooking class and had an absolute ball! He learned to make all sorts of Mexican food as well as scrumptious chocolate offerings! Saturday night was dinner by AH when he made us Quesadillas...Yummy! On Sunday, our oldest, AN, came over to dinner to celebrate her 24th birthday with us. For a birthday present to his big sis, AH made her lava cakes for dessert. They were exquisite. Big sis loved them! We also baked some bars for the football team.

On the homeschool front:
- We've been reading Lord Brocktree by Brian Jacques. He just loves this series of books!
- AH was able to figure out how to fix his electric car so that it will race down the hallway! What a great day!
- We've been studying The Mystery of the Periodic Table by Benjamin D. Wiker as an intro into the world of chemistry! We love it!
- We are plugging along in math.

- Obscurity is the name of a game we have newly discovered. It's a sort of word search game with hardly any rules!!! We don't compete, we play each card together. I think it's helped him with vocabulary and spelling, but don't tell AH that!

- He's been plugging away at Brainology, a program I signed him up for and he is not too happy about. But I believe it'll help him learn exactly what his brain needs to do to learn things.

- He pulled out our box of magnets and accesories for his little cousins this week. It was fun to watch him show them what a magnet can do!

- AH discovered an unopened Bionicle toy that he got last Christmas and started building it.

- Halloween costume design goes under arts and crafts in the homeschool, right? AH is designing his own Willy Wonka costume and is doing a great job. I'll post pictures as soon as Canon sends me a new software disc!

- Tonight our youngest is off at a sleepover at his best friends house.

Animal School

This brought tears to my eyes because I am privileged to live with a Bee:

A Spark!

Sometimes you just know you are on to something when you look into your child's eyes.

Earlier this fall, we asked AH what he wanted to be involved in outside of homeschool. Scouts? No. Football? No. We went through a list a mile long. Nothing seemed to interest him. He is a homebody, as I've said before, and it is important to us that he have some regular interaction with other people! AH asked me about an electric car "club" that I had mentioned earlier in the week. I was pretty sure it had filled up, but emailed the organizer. It was full, but she put AH on the wait list. I was sure we were out of luck, but a few days later we were in! It is called BEST. Each week we meet to work on small electric cars that the kids design and build. We will do this until after Christmas when the kids start designing and building a larger electric vehicle to compete against other teams.

We had missed a couple of weeks by joining late and I was feeling overwhelmed and lost (I know nothing of electricity or cars!!) during one of our meetings. We were trying to figure out how the motor would turn the axle. Where should we mount it, what would we use? I looked around the room at the group of kids each working with their respective parents. They seemed to know what they were doing. I was thinking that I couldn't help AH with this, and how I was a failure as a homeschool mom, when he turned to me in the middle of this problem, his eyes bright and shining and said to me, "This is so fun!" It didn't matter to him that we were stuck. In retrospect, I was probably the only one who thought that. Thank goodness I'm learning to keep my mouth shut and my opinions to myself. He eventually worked out a solution for himself with a little push in the right direction from our experts.

We worked on his car today in anticipation of our meeting tomorrow. He figured out how to attach the battery to the switch and motor. His eyes lit up again today! He's got a game plan and a list of things to buy for his car. Tomorrow will be a great day!

(I'm having computer trouble and need to install some software onto our 2nd computer in order to upload pictures to my blog. My apologies. I would do it now, but it's after midnight and I should rest. I'll upload tomorrow night. ~Barbara)

Celebrate Banned Books Week!

Celebrate our freedom of speech! This week is Banned Books Week. Pick one up and read it with your child! AH and I have read quite a few found on the list, why not one more?! We started A Wrinkle in Time. What are you reading?

Some books that have been challenged or banned:

The Holy Bible, Huckleberry Finn, Don Quixote, The Koran, Tom Sawyer, Arabian Nights, Gulliver's Travels, Canterbury Tales, Harry Potter, Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Leaves of Grass, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Les Miserables, Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, Book of Common Prayer, Grapes of Wrath, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Origin of Species, Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Farewell to Arms, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Jungle, Gone with the Wind, All Quiet on the Western Front, Sun Also Rises, Doctor Zhivago, East of Eden, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings,The Talmud, James and the Giant Peach, Little House on the Prairie, Go Tell it On the Mountain, Chocolate War, Hatchet, The Catcher in the Rye, Flowers for Algernon, A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak, Harriet the Spy, Blubber, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Where the Sidewalk Ends: Poems and Drawings, The Pigman, Lord of the Flies, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Forever, Bridge to Terabithia, Sounder, The Indian in the Cupboard, Julie of the Wolves, A Wrinkle in Time, The Giving Tree, The First Captain Underpants, The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book One), and the list goes on and on and on!

Why Do They Call It Homeschooling If We're Never Home?

AH is very happy with the t-shirt I gave him. He's folded it nicely each night and put it back on each morning. I asked him why he doesn't wear something else. "Because I thought it was a Not Back To School CAMP. You have to wear the t-shirts each day you're in camp!" I guess he told me!