Algebra, here we come!

We certainly did a shortened day, but since we missed so much time with the baby we have to be diligent.

We did have an amazing, wonderful thing happen today. Miss Green has always been math phobic to say the least. She has resisted my teaching on anything related to math. I had decided though to switch her to Teaching Textbooks next year, since its something the younger ones will be able to use as well unlike Aleks which is a subscription. I printed out the 7th grade placement test last week, and to my great surprise she said it was too easy. She asked to have the next test to take. So, I printed the Pre-Algebra test. She did great on it! She missed a few questions, but was still passing. So, she wanted the Algebra test. That was more challenging, but after I had her do 2 sample lessons of Algebra, I made the executive decision to order Algebra 1 for her. I can not believe how excited she is about it. She called Grammy to share how thrilled she was. So, it looks like I'll be placing a Timberdoodle order soon.

Miss Pink this year, 3rd grade or so, wrote in her binder today "gnirob si htam." I think she's tired of working on clocks and time. I'll have to fast forward her to the next lesson in Math Mammoth 3A. So, here's her work for this year.

The aforementioned Math Mammoth. I don't think I've mentioned that I bought all levels of Math Mammoth when Homeschool Buyer's Co-op had it offered. It was one of my best purchases yet. It's really nice to be able to print out remedial things for any of them to complement their other math programs. Just this year we've switched over to using it as our core instead of a supplement.

First Language Lessons 3

I just can't say enough good about this program. My kids especially love the poetry memorization. I love it even more that I've got the pdf for the workbook. It makes it so easy to file.

Writing With Ease 2

This one we may skip part of to move up to 3. I'm still undecided. She's doing quite well with it so far. I have the pdf for the student pages on this one too. It makes it super easy to replace anything that goes missing in the course of the week.

So, that's her core. She also has the subjects we do as a group, which will come later.

Another successful day notebooking

Today we did our basics and finished up with silent reading of history books. Everyone was reading about FDR today. Afterwards, they each drew a picture and captioned it. They knew they would be notebooking their books, and I believe paid better attention to it than as per usual. So, I think we're going to stick with narration for the foreseeable future.

So Mr. Blue's (age 12) plans for now and the coming year are as follows:

MindBenders- B series I think this is his favorite subject. He pulls out extra to do. He likes me to sit with him while he does it and talk him through it. It's lots of fun for both of us. We may move on to the C Series if he completes this before the end of the school year.

Math Mammoth 5 & 6

He's getting a better grasp on math this year. He's actually enjoying long division. He likes to have competitions with his older sister to see who can work a problem faster.

First Language Lessons 4

I really like this program. I'm adding one small thing this year for all of mine using it, copywork for the grammar rules and definitions. He's a champion at diagramming.

Writing With Ease 4

This is another love of mine. I've found that all of mine who have used this program are able to narrate quite well. They're also better at summarizing than the oldest, who never used WWE. I really appreciated watching Susan Wise Bauer teach her son out of this book.

Of course he also has group subjects, which we'll discuss later. I need to add in handwriting for him, as his italics need a little work.

Major breakthrough!

I'm reading The Well-Trained Mind yet again, but I was forced to take a break when it fell apart. I've since rubber cemented it, and am waiting, ever so patiently to crack it back open. While I was reading the science section for the elementary grades, I once again was motivated to "do narrations." After reading from the Apologia Anatomy book I had each one tell me what they remembered. Then we pulled out the paper and they drew something to go along with it. I wrote their narrations all on one page for them to copy, but they all ended up writing a lot more to go with their illustrations. I really can see how much more they learned using the narration method. They also made sure to pull them out to show Daddy when he got home. They don't usually want to share what they've done and only will under duress. For them to be anxious to share is a huge accomplishment. I'm looking forward to doing more for history and science.

Filing has worked surprisingly well for us. Every Sunday evening we pull out the file and put our papers in our respective binders. I've been slowing adding things to the files as we go, and we've abandoned some things that I to put in their own special file for a later date.

So, for Miss Green, now an 8th grader, we've got a short line-up. I'm still tweaking what she needs, and while we do that we're keeping it simple.

English in Blue and White.

She really, really likes this one, and insists its the best grammar program she's ever done. It was written by two 8th grade teacher's to make sure their students knew what they needed for high school.

Vocabulary From Classical Roots C

She completed the A book rather reluctantly, but after about a month off has attacked this one voraciously. I think she's realized that its fun to learn finally.

Vocabulary Cartoons

This one is quite enjoyable to flip through. I've learned a few new words.

Aleks

This is one of the few maths she's like thus far. I'm not sure what she likes about it, but she's learning, enjoying learning, and gaining confidence.

Writing With Skill

We just started this today, but I can already tell we're going to adore it. She never did Writing With Ease, but I've loved it with the younger ones.

Filing part two

So, as promised here's what we do once a week. I pull out the hole punch and the file for the week on Sunday evening. The kids pull out their binders and I pull out my binder. Then we go through and pull everything out, completed or not. We sort out what we'll save,(history, science, writing, and copywork) and what we won't (math and handwriting.) They file away the papers to save in a file with their name on it and shred everything else. It's hard for them to just throw away papers, so the shredding is kind of a fun way to do it. The shreds go into the garden in the summer and to Daddy in the winter for restarting the outdoor furnace.

Now that their binders are empty, we can refill them. They have a divider for each day of the week, which we made ourselves. I printed out a checklist of school work and chores for each day on cardstock and slid it in a page protector. Then I applied the NoteTabs shown above. That way they can check off assignments and chores as they're completed. I let them break things up the way they'd like, unless its a subject I do with them. In that case, they have to do one assignment per day.

In my binder I have a divider for each child and one extra for the subjects we combine. Behind each divider is anything I have to do with that child for the week. This makes our school work extremely portable, which is a necessity for our swimming schedule. We do a lot of school in the car and at the pool, since we're there 4 nights a week in the winter and 5 mornings a week in the summer.

I am such a follower...

I tried really hard to stay away from the posts about filing everything for the year, but once I started thinking about it I realized how well it would work for me. Basically you print out everything you're going to use, rip apart all your workbooks, and file it by week. I've taken it a step further and taken apart my teacher's manuals, put the pages in page protectors, and filed them by week as well. Everything we need for any given week of the school year is in the file. It should make life a lot easier once the baby comes. We usually take an extended break, but I think having everything ready to go will make a huge difference. The other benefit is how portable school is now! Many of the filers have dated their folders, but mine are simply labeled Week 1, Week 2, etc.

This will save me from having to relabel things next year, but also allows us to take a break whenever we need one without messing up the system.

Without further ado, here's what I've done. Each weekly hanging folder has 9 folders inside it as follows:

Dark Green: History (SOTW done together) All of our supplemental history books also have green stickers on the spine, so we can see at a glance which shelf they belong on. I'm also including a state study coloring page in this box and I may add a presidential coloring page as well.

Yellow: Science (Apologia Elementary Anatomy this year) Once again the supplemental books have yellow stickers on the spine. I've purchased a lapbook to go along with the Anatomy text and have a few coloring books as well, which are what is filed, the Apologia book is not ripped apart, it stays in my box to use.

Orange: Language (First Start French, Latina Christiana, and Greek Code Cracker) Once again supplements have orange stickers on the spines

Manila: This one is my folder. I put everything in here that goes in my binder. Teacher's manuals, scripted texts, SOTW Activity Guide pages, etc.

Light Green: Miss Green's work, ie. Math Mammoth, Wordsmith, Growing With Grammar, Vocabulary From Classical Roots, copy work, and Checkbook Math

Light Blue: Mr. Blue's work; Math U See Delta, Checkbook Math, First Language Lessons 4, copy work,and Writing With Ease 3

Light Pink: Miss Pink's (are you noticing the pattern here?) pages including Math U See Beta/Gamma, First Language Lessons 2,copy work, and Writing With Ease 2.

Light Purple: Miss Purple's Kindergarten work, i.e. Handwriting Without Tears, Explode the Code, and Math U See Alpha

Light Yellow: Mr. Yellow's busy work, which includes Patternables, extra maps from history, and shapes.

Tomorrow: how we organize each week into days...

Reading the Well-Trained Mind again

About once a year I pull out The Well-Trained Mind to see where we should heading for the year, and this past week I've had it with me constantly at swimming practice. I'm a planner. I function best when I'm planning something, so since the house remodel is planned (now waiting on the general contractor AKA dh to accomplish the monster long list) I've moved on to homeschooling. I haven't allowed myself to read the Well-Trained Mind forums, browse the Rainbow Resource catalog, or do anything else homeschool research related, because I knew I didn't have time or money to devote to it. It has been so nice to get back into the swing of things schooling though. When I plan, we actually do school because I'm excited about it again. The kids are excited about the vast quantity of Dover coloring books we've gotten in the mail this past week. I'm trying to get lots of those to make up for The Story of the World Volume 4 not having much for the younger crowd.

I ended up having to buy a duplicate copy of the Activity Guide, since ours is still packed who knows where, along with All About Spelling, our history and language arts binders, and all of the Writing With Ease student pages. Poor Mr. Blue and Miss Pink have been stuck using Spelling Workout instead of AAS. I also bought duplicate copies of the Writing With Ease student pages. I'm happy about those though, because I got the pdfs. Now I can just print out the page we need on the laser printer. While I was at it, I bought the pdf for the Story of the World student pages too. Then I backed them all up to my external hard drive. I need pdfs of all our books! It's a lot easier to search a computer than boxes.

Oh man, it has been way too long...

and not just since I posted. It's been too long we've gone without doing school regularly. We've been on an unschooling regimen since we moved into our new house 5 months ago. We've been doing a lot of remodeling, and I put off doing school until I had a school room to unpack the many, many school boxes into. I unpacked about 5 boxes last fall into what I thought would be the school room. Fast forward 5 month and that is now the laundry room. We obviously can't do school in the laundry room, so I made plans to make our garage the school room. That's a great idea, but we're so busy remodeling the rest of the house, we don't have time to heat and carpet the garage, even though we did have a crew come in a replace the garage door with a sliding glass door. 2 weeks ago, I finally got the much-delayed idea to turn half of our looonnnggg living room into a school room. So, we now have a functional school room, where the kids can sit at a table and do school work and I can sit on a couch and read to them. Have I mentioned how important a couch in the school room is? The kids love to pile up around while we read.

On Thursday we were reading our history lesson in the evening, learning about the Republic of Texas. DH actually had to stop reading his books to listen to me read the Story of the World. On Wednesday we discovered it was the anniversary of the day William Barrett Travis sent his letter out to his fellow Texans and the world. It was the exact day we were reading about the Alamo for history, so it was very real to the kids and I. I actually had to stop reading the letter, as I got quite choked up. Try reading this letter aloud with feeling and not get choked up. I dare you!

To the People of Texas &
all Americans in the world------

Fellow citizens & compatriots------

I am besieged, by a thousand
or more of the Mexicans under
Santa Anna ----- I have sustained
a continual Bombardment &
cannonade for 24 hours & have
not lost a man ----- The enemy
has demanded a Surrender at
discretion, otherwise, the garrison
are to be put to the sword, if
the fort is taken ----- I have answered
the demand with a cannon
shot, & our flag still waves
proudly from the wall ----- I
shall never Surrender or retreat

Then, I call on you in the
name of Liberty, of patriotism &
every thing dear to the American
character, to come to our aid,

with an dispatch ----- The enemy is

receiving reinforcements daily &

will no doubt increase to three or
four thousand in four or five days.
If this can is neglected, I am deter
mined to sustain myself as long as
possible & die like a soldier
who never forgets what is due to
his own honor & that of his
country ----- Victory or Death

William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Comdt