Tough times

We've been struggling for structure (have I written this before?) because it's been such an off year. The last few weeks have been challenging but productive. We're starting out every day with math & reading, followed by a break, then Story of the World (SOTW) or Five in a Row (FIAR). Whenever anything gets challenging Mane claims she's tired or she doesn't understand and wants to quit. These few weeks have been practice in perseverance. I'm insisting that she either go take a nap if she's that tired OR finish the work. I'm trying hard to avoid "school at home," monotonous drudgery of workbooks and assignments, but I do insist that math & reading practice need to happen. She doesn't balk at SOTW or FIAR...unless I try to get her to write something down or have a conversation with me. She wants me to read her stories and expect nothing of her. We've been doing that. Now I need to step it up. She's so proud of her school notebook when she actually puts work into it, but it's been like pulling teeth to get the work to happen. She's been in a slump. But, I guess, I have been, too...or, rather, one after another since November.

So, as I said, it's been tough but productive. It's been bumpy, but I'm seeing a trend toward more willingness to work, to have a Socratic conversation here and there, to look things up and write things down. I think we're seeing the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. We've both needed to dig our way through.

What have we been doing? Well, Mane will be moving on to lesson 21 in math by the end of the week. She's finishing up the 2nd Hooked on Phonics chapter book. (There are 2 chapter books in the middle of the 2nd grade level.) She's very proud of her reading and actually told me a few days ago that reading goes better for her if she practices every day. AND she announced that she can't wait to read big chapter books on her own. This is a huge increase in motivation. I've been trying to pace her carefully to keep her from tiring and continue her feelings of success.

We've been reading The Gullywasher for FIAR. We found some National Geographics about Mexican cowboys and U.S. cowboys and looked at the pictures. One article about Mexican cowboys told of a pilgrimage that many hundreds of Mexican cowboys make to a statue of Jesus in the mountains each year for Epiphany. So, Mane & I asked Vespera & Niteo if they'd heard of this pilgrimage. They both had, AND Niteo ended up telling us about a bicycle pilgrimage that he made to a sanctuary with a statue of Mary in Juquila, Mexico. He told us about the journey and the other people that went, and he looked up youtube movies for us to watch about it. Then Mane took a picture with Niteo, and she wrote a little paragraph about talking with him in her school notebook.

Later we read a book about cowboys in the "Wild West" and listened to cowboy/cowgirl songs. Mane printed some pictures that she liked from google images for her notebook, and she drew the 4 major trails on a U.S. map that the cowboys(girls) followed to bring the cattle to market each year.

We dug out this timeline that I printed a long time ago for our history studies and marked several key events from SOTW that we've studied this year. We looked at where the Greeks fall on the timeline and began talking about the beginning of the Olympics.

Yesterday we watched footage of the torch relay for this year's Olympics. We watched the torch lighting in Olympia and talked about how the torch is lit using a mirror and the sun's light. Then we found Greece and Canada on the map. We found Vancouver, along with several other places where the torch has been.

The plan is to pick some Olympic athletes to follow and learn some things about them before the games begin. We'll record the opening ceremony tomorrow night (because we're going to be our with friends) and watch some on Saturday.

Classification

So, we rounded out last week talking about sheep! We looked at pictures of wild sheep and domesticated sheep and talked about the difference between sheep & goats. Then we took a look at how sheep are classified (yes, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species...remember?). Mane thought that was so fascinating that we made another page in her school notebook for classifying people. I think this is something we'll continue to do as we encounter animals in Five in a Row and Story of the World.

We finished the chapter on ancient Africa in Story of the World, and it looks like we'll be moving into more chapters on Egypt. My plan is to spend less time on these since we spent SO MUCH time on Egypt last year. Depending on how it goes, I might try to get us to ancient Greece by the time the 2010 Olympics begin.

Well Socialized

No worries about an unsocialized homeschooler here in the last week...

Swim lesson last Thursday,
Playdate on Friday,
Played with friends at Vespera's soccer games Saturday & Sunday,
Homeschool group on Tuesday,
Bible Study on Wednesday,
Playdate today...

Onion Skin Dye

Weaving

We found a lovely book about weaving at the library called Kids Weaving by Sarah Swett. Mane completed her first weaving project - weaving a card for Mango - after we read the first portion of the book. The book includes some history of weaving and weaving terminology - a perfect guide for kids AND adults!!



Mane has been writing common nouns, proper nouns, and verbs from A New Coat For Anna, as we have continued to row this book. I reviewed the book with her using the comprehension questions from the Five in a Row book and was AMAZED that she could remember what Anna's mother traded for each step in the process of making the coat after only reading the book twice. (I didn't ask her the questions after the first reading...hmmm, makes you wonder!)

Here's Mane's intro to the section in her notebook on A New Coat For Anna:

Today Mane is writing her own story with the steps for making applesauce...in the same manner as the steps to Anna's new coat.

We've been spending a lot of time with the Making Words book lately - practicing spelling and organizing words according to rhyming. Lately we've been using words that look more alike, and Mane has needed to really attend to letter order. She has a tendency to guess what word she's reading based on the first few letters. Today we did a much longer lesson because she just wanted to keep going. She took out her magnet letters & her little magnet board and used those rather than the letter cards. It's a nice, colorful change from the letter cards, and the magnets are more three dimensional.

We're on to lesson 17 in Math U See...rounding to the nearest thousand and ten thousand. We spent a long time with the math blocks this morning clarifying the concept of rounding and estimating. For some reason, the leap into ten thousands and hundred thousands is more difficult...perhaps because we've moved more into the realm of the abstract. I can't "show" her a hundred thousand math blocks. ;)

A Podcast about A New Coat for Anna

Warmth, Waiting & Woolly Friends: A New Coat for Anna

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A New Coat for Anna

After a Christmas wedding, a car accident, and some medical crisis, we're back to some more academic type schooling this week. Mane is working through lesson 16 of MUS, and she's nearly halfway through the 2nd grade Hooked on Phonics. She's been painting most days with a daily watercolor calendar we bought at Barnes and Noble after Christmas. The calendar features famous watercolors and some helpful tips for trying your own similar painting.

Today we read A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Ziefert. We'll be rowing this book for the next few weeks. It's about a little girl who needs a new coat after World War II. Her family has no money. So, her mother barters for wool, then for the spinning, then for the weaving, and, finally, for the tailor to make the coat. It takes a year for Anna to get a new coat, but, in the end, she has a new coat and several new friends. Today Mane drew a picture in her school notebook to begin our pages on A New Coat for Anna.

Today we also continued our studies of early and ancient China. We read about the Great Wall of China in You Wouldn't Want to Work on the Great Wall of China! by Jacqueline Morley, and we looked at pictures of the terracotta army in The Emporer's Silent Army by Jane O'Conner. We talked about how being so terribly afraid of everything is what made the emporer Qin so cruel and ruthless and how we don't need to live our own lives in fear. Both books mentions some of the advantages of having an organized empire (standardized weights & measures, standardized money, better roads, better protection from invaders). We talked about how those things are good, but they would be better if the emporer had cared more about the people who were doing all the work to make those things happen. We did some comparing to the early rulers of Mesopotamia, as opposed to Hammurabi.

Plans I just need to write down for next week before I forget:
- Demonstrate how non-standardized measurements are a problem
- Talk more about acting out of fear vs. acting out of care and concern for people
- Learn more about weaving - maybe make our own weaving loom
- learn about making dyes (Anna's mother dyes the wool red with lingonberries in the book)

Odds & Ends

Mane is halfway through her math book for the year. So, we're taking the next few weeks to play with math. She has always preferred verbal math over doing math worksheets. So, today we reviewed some of her math facts verbally, and she thought it was great fun. (It helped that Novio was around & listening. She always loves to show off a bit.) I told her she'd be learning multiplication later this year, and she got all worried. I told her that multiplication was the same as skip-counting, which she already does by 10's, 5's & 2's. In that case, she decided to learn some of the 3's today, too. ;)

I looked over the book What Your Second Grader Needs to Know, and I must admit to feeling very much at ease regarding the things we've covered this year and what we have left. We read a portion out of the history section today just to reinforce what we've already covered about India & China this year.

We went to the orchestra again last week for a fantastic performance of Hansel & Gretel!

We've been reading Advent stories each evening, and Mane continues to learn The Lord's Prayer.

Last week we read through The Care and Keeping of You, which fascinated Mane and led to many fascinating discussions!

And Mane has been playing outside lots in the snow & cold!

I have very little time to keep up with blogging right now. So, though this blog looks scarce, we've been busy...perhaps that's the way it ought to be.

A fresh start

Well, we seem to finally be back on our feet. Mango was terribly sick the week of Thanksgiving, and I've spent the month recovering from surgery. Mane has been learning lots just by living life and talking with us, but today we had a "real" day of homeschool...one that resembles the structure we started with this year.

Mane reviewed Psalm 23 after breakfast. Then we worked on adding a new portion of The Lord's Prayer. We read about the Maccabees again and about the significance of the menorah for Hannukah. We listened to Michael W. Smith's song of The Lord's Prayer, and then Mane listened to a story about the Maccabees that we found on the internet. I have a DVD from the library about Hannukah that we'll be watching this week, as well.

After that we did a Hooked on Phonics lesson and a lesson from Making Words.

We dug out the Human book and looked at the eye. Mane drew a picture of an eye - with the optic nerve, lens, cornea, and muscles. We talked more about optical illusions. Then we turned the page in the Human book and reviewed how our ears help us balance.

We began the next chapter of Story of the World about ancient China. We looked at the map and discussed why the Mesopotamian people referred to China as the Far East. Mane traced the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers on a map for her history binder, and we talked about the kinds of food grown in the Yellow River Valley. We read the story of how the first emporer's wife supposedly discovered silk, and Mane retold the story in her own words. Then she copied down some ancient Chinese pictograms from the Story of the World text.

When Mane got up this morning she was asking when it was going to snow. So, we looked at the 10-day forecast on the internet. Then we discussed whether the forecast was likely to be right or not, and we decided to keep a log of it for the next ten days. This led to a discussion of the scientific method, and we wrote out the method we'll be using to find out if the forecast is more often right or wrong.

Mane finished out the day by taking test 13 in Math U See. We'll be moving on to a section on measurement next!

A Blur

The last two weeks have gone by in a blur...not full of activity, but full of sleep and recovery. I had my appendix out Novemeber 4th. I was sick for the two days prior to that. So, today marks 2 weeks since this whole thing started. I am still tired beyond belief, and homeschooling takes a great deal of energy. So, we're going slow...doing a lot of incidental learning and reading books.

So, on Novemeber 2nd, Mane and I began rowing Mirette on the High Wire. We read both Mirette on the High Wire and Starring Mirette and Bellini. We watched a bunch of youtube videos about the Wallenda family (famous for their high wire walking and seven-person pyramid) and other real life high wire walkers. Mane drew a picture of Mirette walking the high wire for her school notebook. My mom ended up coming over on Tuesday to help me out, and she read Mirette and Bellini Cross Niagara Falls and The Man Who Walked Between the Towers to Mane.

Tuesday night, Mango taught Mane about how the fluid of the inner ear helps people to balance. I think later this week I'll have her draw some pictures, maybe a picture explanation of how balance works.

For several days after I had my appendix out we talked about the appendix and the digestive system and laparoscopic surgery.

Mane played "store" with Mango and practiced reading and counting money. She continues to do a great deal of incidental reading on her own. Over the weekend, Mango worked with Mane on a business venture they'd like to start together, and they spend many hours busily creating a website. Mane did a great deal of the typing and spelling herself.

We continued reading The Hobbit together...

Today we read Mirette on the High Wire again. I printed a map for Mane's school notebook, and she circled all the places mentioned in the book. I wrote out all the places we've talked about (and several others that I already know that Mane knows) on index cards. Then I had her draw cards and find the places on the map. I asked her if each place we a continent, country, or city, and we talked again about the distinction between those things. Whenever she could find a place, she got to keep the card. I think we'll keep using this stack of cards and adding new places as we study them in Five in a Row and Story of the World.

We read The Painted Circus, which has a circus theme (to go with high wire walking) and is full of optical illusions. Then Mane showed them all to Vespera & Novio, who happened to be hanging around the house this morning. :)

As I was typing Mane, began lesson 12 in MUS...adding money. Tomorrow she'll take the test, as this is exactly the same as the addition she's been doing - only with a decimal point and a dollar sign. She had no trouble with the practice page.