Mr. Blue and His 7th Grade Year

Mr. Blue is probably my most challenging child academically. He's incredibly bright, but also lacks concentration skills. I've discovered that I can't leave him to do his work independently. I used to think parents who said that had a lack of discipline in their homes. I'm learning differently. Isn't it great what homeschooling teaches us as parents? I'm hoping that if I can stay on top of him, he will gradually develop a slightly longer attention span. We'll see.

Math: We have done 2 things this year. I started with the Art of Problem Solving Pre-Algebra. I really like this curriculum. I like that its challenging, but the challenge is more in thinking about the math than actually doing a difficult problem. This is the kind of curriculum that would have been perfect for me as a kid and will probably be perfect for Mr. Yellow when he gets to that stage. However, it didn't quite cut it for Mr. Blue, so we switched to Teaching Textbooks Prealgebra. This is working perfectly for him. He especially loves getting graded on every lesson, go figure. He has quite the competitive streak and likes to find out how he did versus his sisters scores for the day.

Language Arts: He's doing Following the Plan with Miss Pink. It's going really, really well. Rod and Staff is quite challenging, so even though its 2 years behind where he is grade-wise, I don't feel too bad about it. The important thing to me is that he's learning new things. For spelling, I have him now doing Sequential Spelling on dvd. He really didn't learn anything the years he did Spelling Workout, and Sequential Spelling seems to be helping. I'm going to look at their apps next and see if they'll be a good match for him.

History: Story of the World Ancients as a spine, with added reading.

Science: This is my first time using Apologia's General Science. I have found that the audio CD is worth its weight in gold for Mr. Blue. Oddly enough, he's resisting doing the experiments. Since his retention seems fine, I'm not going to force the issue. I see they have a new notebook, which looks intriguing, but not for the $33 price tag. I have him taking the tests at our science co-op with another family doing the same curriculum. It helps him tremendously to have that accountability.

Latin: First Form Latin with Miss Pink and Miss Green

Art: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in our art co-op.

Not Filing This Year

I really liked having my whole year planned out, but I discovered that different kids worked at different levels than I expected. So, I was constantly having one work on a week or two ahead, another 2 weeks behind, and our together stuff could be anywhere. There were some things that consistently didn't get done, so I ended up starting a file for each book that I ripped apart to put them back together eventually (still haven't got that done.)

The other problem I had was the teacher's manuals. It was a pain to have to put things back into binders at the end of the week and I ended up having months to do at one time.
I think filing is awesome, and if I didn't have so many kids to homeschool I would continue to file our year at one time. This year though, I'm going electronic! My tablet will replace my instructor's binder. It should make my bag a lot lighter to carry around.

I love that Peace Hill Press offers almost all of their curricula electronically. I am purchasing the instructor's manuals to put on my tablet. We also buy the mp3s of Story of the World to put on our iPods and my iPhone. I can't put everything on there (Rod and Staff I don't think will ever go electronic,) but I will put everything I can find in that format on my tablet.

Our Math Mammoth is pdf based, so I have put that on there. I'm still printing Miss Purple's papers, but at least I can view what she's doing.  I haven't put the Sequential Spelling dvd on, but I think I could. I just wish Teaching Textbooks had an app of some sort.

Finally settling in.

Why does it take so long to adjust to a new home? We've lived in our new house for 2 months now, and I'm just now starting to see a routine take shape. I really think that adding the outside activities is what has helped. Right now we have added piano 2 days a week for the 3 oldest, swimming on those same 2 days for my 3 year old, and art lessons on another day for all of them. Knowing we have to leave the house at a certain time makes us get the schoolwork done instead of putting it off.

I've also found that typing in the Story of the World recommended resources has helped me tremendously! I have a spreadsheet with the title, author, book #, chapter #, and which library its at. I think I need to go through now and add the call numbers as well, since I'm having to look those up weekly. I still don't have my printer set up, but once I do that I'll print this list and keep it in my binder (still to be assembled) at all times. I believe I'm also going to copy some of the pages from the Homeschooler's Book of Lists and add that to my binder for Goodwill and book sales.

This week we've read several of the books correlating to SOTW 3 Chapter 2, and I've noticed a big difference in retention, especially for 9 year old Mr. Blue. We managed to add in one of the activities as well, and that was a big hit with that same son and his 8 year old cousin. The 6/7 year old girls didn't like it quite as well and gave up.

In the mail this week we got the Story of Classical Music. The same afore-mentioned 9 year old loves it. He told his sister, "Don't you wish you were like one of those kings who could listen to this music any time you wanted?" We also listened to the Themes to Remember version of Beethoven's 9th symphony and read in TTR about him. I have library books to go along with that, and said son is learning Ode to Joy in piano this week, so I feel very connected! I told a friend if I get ambitious I'll correlate SOTW to the Story of Classical Music, but we'll see if that ever happens!