Movin' on

Why do I wait until late at night to blog? I'm tired!

We finally finished The Story of the World: Ancient World, by Susan Wise Bauer. It spanned a couple of years, mostly because we stopped about 10 chapters early and did some other things. Like workbooks.

Imagine three children saying, "Boring!" Yup, that would be my three.

Added to that, my son kept waving the second volume (Middle Ages) under my nose saying, "When are we going to do this?" (I bought it two years ago.)

When my daughter started asking when we could do the silk road on p. 120, I knew we needed to hustle. So we abandoned Genevieve Foster which my sons hated and daughter enjoyed, and reverted to Bauer's book.

Last week we finished Ancient World and began Middle Ages, starting with Chapter 2 and Britain. We'd had enough of Rome. (Chapter 1 recapped the end of Rome that we covered thoroughly between the two books.)

Now we have studied the Celts as thoroughly as we are probably going to. In college terms, this is a survey course. In college, however, we would have covered the entire book in exactly one quarter rather than 2 years.

BTW, Usborne's Ancient World Encyclopedia does a great job of shielding kids from nudity. The Celts fought naked, and the internet is replete with those images. I decided to forego those. It was enough to read how they decorated themselves. We did get a chuckle out of remembering John Bytheway's quip in his talk, Righteous Warriors, Lessons from the War Chapters in the Book of Mormon, about how the Lamanites came out to battle: "Let's see, we're going to battle with lots of long pointy things. Yup, I think I'll wear the loincloth." (I didn't check that, and I don't have a photographic memory, and my kids who do are asleep, so this will have to be close enough.)

Now I'm wandering so I'll head off to bed.

Thanks for the visit!

Monday

So far today, the kids have all practiced the piano, we have learned a little Bible history, and the kids have made "art constructions." Dragon and Monkey are earning their Artist badge, and this was a requirement.

Dragon has also drawn an outdoor scene for his Artist badge. Monkey is working on his. Dog Lover did one, but she drew it on another picture's page so she is redoing hers. (We're going to frame these pictures so they need their own page.) We'll make frames tomorrow for Craftsman. I think we'll turn it into a measuring activity so it will count for math.

Tonight, Jim went over the blueprint for his company's new offices with the kids and explained each page of it to them. They were fascinated and had a lot of questions. Then he reviewed occupational options for various types of engineers and architects. That satisfied our Science element and also accomplished two more goals in the Engineer requirements for Webelos. He used to be an architectural draftsman so he was qualified to do it for the Webelos badge.

Today's happenings, tomorrow's plans

Today we got back into The History of the World and have begun learning about Ancient Africa. I just learned that my sister is going to be using that next year, starting with the Medieval History volume. I am most eager to be able to join her on that even though we are half a country apart.

My children thoroughly enjoyed the stories about Anansi the Spider. We read the one with Anansi and the Turtle where Anansi grudgingly offers dinner to his friend, Turtle, but makes it impossible for him to have any. The other one is about him setting out to get food for his village, finding some, and bypassing village after village because he wanted something better. He finally reaches his home and faints from lack of food. The kids' favorite was Anansi and the Turtle. I think they understood that one better. It has a moral, but it's a good stand-alone story too. We'll be reading both again and talking about them more.

I was pleased to find that the local library has most of the recommended books on hand for the Ancient Africa unit. This is the first time they have had the books although they had more of the storybooks than the non-fiction ones. I was able to find one of the non-fiction ones on desert animals so I put that on reserve. I think they are all available so I should have them in a couple of days.

Happily, too, I re-found a Goode's atlas that I had forgotten I had, and we were able to look at the average rainfall in Africa today vs. here in the United States. It has quite a few maps: 15 or more just for Africa. I guess I had forgotten how much weather diversity that continent has!

Tomorrow we will be doing some more geography, such as learning about the land form called an isthmus. One is the Isthmus of Panama. I have personally been learning quite a lot. For example, I didn't know what an archipelago was, and it was fun to locate so many different straits. (Thanks to the map of Africa, I was reminded where the Atlas Mountains were. I think the myth of Atlas would be a good read for the Africa unit too.)

For Math, they will be doing several more pages in their workbooks.

In Language Arts, we are preparing to test on punctuation, capitalization, and possessives. You know, we English speakers really know how to confuse kids! We spend 2 years teaching them to make a plural noun by adding an s, and then tell them to make a singular noun possessive by adding 's. Dragon is pretty decent speller, and he is all mixed up over this! Monkey, who struggles with the whole concept of English in its written form, often quietly blinks back tears because it's so hard. I need ideas to make this more concrete to him. He is a very concrete learner, and also a very creative boy so these "rules" tie him up in knots. I would absolutely love a good writing curriculum that is kinetically oriented.

We'll be having a spelling test tomorrow too. We had a spelling bee yesterday that went very well. All three kids missed one word apiece. We might have another bee instead and push off the test a few days.

In Science, I think we'll be doing rockets. I have a cool experiment my mother-in-law sent me that I think we will try. It uses antacids which I don't have, but I do have some Airborne. Hopefully it will work.

Music time will be piano practicing time. We missed today; shame on me. Monkey practiced off and on all day today. A couple of years ago, a friend tried to teach a "Music" class that was okay, but the concepts didn't mean anything to them. Now, the idea of quarter notes, quarter rests, time signatures, grand staff, etc. mean something to them. It's important now.

Hello!

I'm a homeschooling mom, and I'm looking for a spot to post anonymously. Promise, it's all clean. We've been homeschooling for five years, and we've had rough spots and smooth sailing in all that time. I wish I had all the "answers" that you're supposed to figure out along the way, but all I know for sure is that I don't know anything for sure. I am very grateful to be blessed with solutions along the way.

I originally started homeschooling because my husband traveled quite a lot for his job, and I wanted a way to be able to go with him. But since schools frown on pulling your kids out of school so often, I turned to homeschooling. We've been at it ever since.

The first year was basically a de-tox year, where we got public schooling out of our awareness and just got on with living. The second year we got back to educating. The third year, two of my children began to read willingly. The fourth year, things went smoothly. The fifth year, my third child is learning to read. All in all, readers are far easier to homeschool. My third reader is also much the same style of learner as I am so it has been much simpler. Another point of jubilation is that I've finally found a math program that works for my children *and* works for me!!!

We are now using Singapore Math, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is visual, but it also comes with a decent workbook with enough practice for my kids. This translates to being able to say, "Go do your math, and I'll check it for you." This is very important to me, because sometimes I am just not on top of my game. We are also working very hard on other things, and I just cannot have everything be "mom-dependent".

We are also using Abeka Language workbooks, which I'm not sure I'll continue with. I need to do something different with them, because my kids are hating them. It is an excellent program though! I have had to supplement a lot though because my children haven't done well on the tests in the past without plenty of extra practice. I graduated in English though, and that's a blessing because coming up with more practice is not difficult. My boys have a more difficult time with the written word though. We are working on the comprehension!

I've recently abandoned our Science curriculum with disgust. Too much cut and paste and not enough active learning. For now, the library has some wonderful resources!

We are also using History of the World with forays into "other materials", and that has gone well although we would all like more in each country/time frame. My boys have gotten into the Civil War pretty deeply, and love Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. Interesting twist, but I have to agree. Both were great men, confronted with difficult circumstances. (BTW, I did not want to even like General Lee, let along respect him, so that opinion switch required some in depth reading. Now I'm not a bit upset that they want to be like him. He was a good, moral man who worked with the circumstances he was handed and made the best of them.)

We are also active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and include gospel and scripture study in our day. Okay, I've slipped in the last month so the gospel study hasn't been as regular. Since it is such a big part of our lives, it is daily though. Just not in a "formal" sense. I am grateful for the direction that has given our lives.

That is enough of a post for one day. Have a great day!