A Beautiful Girlhood

Well we just reach week 5 in our meanderings through our Resurrection to Reformation curriculum. So this isn't a week in review but I can't wait any longer.  Were only on page 27 of A Beautiful Girlhood, but I love love love this book. Carrie always picks bible study books that focus on character. I do find the book to be a bit dated in it's wording but when I read aloud I just update the language on the fly (bad me I know).  Yet the questions it asks us to discuss are wonderful.  I found we have to set the timer or we just sit and talk about the study for an hour.  The questions really help my kiddos to examine what motivates them and why they are behaving the way they do. It's funny I have a phrase I say a lot "You can wait impatiently and angry or you can wait patiently and happy, but in the end you are going to wait."  The books brings up the same principle all the time.  Our character is an out-pouring of our heart and choices we make.

I gave the girls a scenario, if they could make a skirt any color, any style what would it look like? They both described short skirts one knee length blue and frilly, one mid thigh and covered in animal prints. I then asked them if either of these skirts would be acceptable in say a Amish household? They blanched "No Mom they couldn't wear either of these!" Ok how bout here at home?  Well one was not acceptable here either... Why? Discussion about chocolate cake ensued. It all led back to our choices and how we see ourselves. Why does one of my girls think super short skirts are an option anyway? I have a funny feeling it's the hormones that have been turned on in her brain,  while her prefrontal cortex has not yet caught up.  I keep thinking this too shall pass.

Res to Ref Units 2-3

Were taking it slow but were still having "issues" or should I just say problems and be upfront and real about it... Most of the problems are with attitudes and complaining about the work load... and were going  half speed here folks... We are also doing Logic of English which is sucking up time! but teaching my kiddos things about words they really need to know. esp since they are ESL speakers. I'm learning neat things too  like the ay/ ai sounds isn't just for Fonzi...  and who knew that the "ay" is always at the end, in english words anyway.

Math Practice #3 in the textbook was our math today. I reviewed how to do each problem, and they did all these problems well for the past few days as we have been studying them. Yet when confronted with a whole page Sweet Potato lost it... I had made plans for her to be overwhelmed by the textbook approach... and had written them all down for her in a worksheet format with plenty of lines and spaces. So they were not to overwhelming... it was as if all I reviewed got mixed up. She treated division like multiplication, crossing off zeros where she should be retaining them, and  keeping zeros where she should be crossing them off because they are superfluous.  I think the crowning (ironic) glory is I'm typing this while Little Miss Sunshine  is scrambling to finish her math ( I gave her the same worksheet format) she's been waiting on her sister for a good 30 minutes. (Looking a wee bit smug too! ) the ol' I finished before you did "look."  When I went to grade the papers she had missed a whole page of problems. Part of me finds this highly amusing. We are now waiting for her to finish.  She's got that oopsie I fell from grace look and is in that mad scramble to finish quickly.  

I find it so odd that they got all mixed up on the easy problems and then did just fine on the 300-15/3x2 =?
doing all the operations in the correct order its just 15/3 followed by 1500/30 leading to 15000/3000 these types lead you down the garden path! yet they are having the most trouble with them. Oy vey! Hey Kids! just because it has a bunch of zeros doesn't mean you need to add extra.

The note books are looking good and I'm loving how were touching on Shakespeare not so much they are getting overwhelmed, just enough to get them interested.  The science has been fun and they seem pretty interested in Mercury.  I was dying laughing  reading Sweet Potatoes answer to why Mercury has craters, apparently she thought the sun burned holes in it.  The experiment corrected her thinking.

Discovering Music is really interesting although it does add about an hour to our day I like having a format to introduce music to my children.  My Knight in Shining Armor is a musician but like how the shoemaker's kids never having any shoes, Hubby too never seems to have time for lessons. I would love for him to discover a love for music in his children as well! It's fun to do the listening time and hear a cross section of 200 years worth of music in an hour or two.

They are now happily moving on to making music posters for our school room.

So far we have had school start on time, and finish on time!! and amazingly my dawdler has been finishing within the allotted time and working alone though the independant time.  *happy dance* I hope it lasts for a good long time.

Res to Ref Unit one

We are taking this year at half speed so the workload isn't overwhelming Sweet Potato. Monday  was an eight hour school day (and we're talking half speed with additions of piano and Hindi practice added for one extra hour of school max time at the slowest pace should have been 4 hours).  Yes it really took her 8 hours to finish. I even said I would straighten her hair if she was done by 7pm. I'm not above bribery. I asked her at dinner how much of the delay was "confusion" and how much was "I don't want to do school in the summer even tho I get 3 extra weeks off in October and November." "Um... Both mom." was the reply.  "How much was confusion?" I ask. She holds out her hands 3/4 of an inch apart. "Ok How much was I don't want to?" She hold her hands 10 inches apart. *sigh*

A discussion ensues about how much time she spent delaying, 4 hours worth, and how much time she had to play a grand total of 10 minutes.  She promised to do better tomorrow the scene from Princess Bride where the Miracle Max's wife runs out from behind the curtain comes to mind.  I wonder what will happen if I say Humperdink Humperdink! ...  at least it was not 8 hours the next day, it was only 7 so Yes an improvement. Wednesday is chore day but I think I'll be springing school upon them, maybe half of Thursday's because of the Declare Conference, Friday will be a wash and we need 4 days of school this week if they are going to be "Off" when I we head to foreign parts later this year.  

Here are their notebooks from the first week. 

We decided to type our responses they look really nice that way. It cracks me up when Little Miss Sunshine says "Do I have to write more than 8 sentences?"  and she proceeds to write for pages and pages, where as Sweet Potato was sent back 3 times to finish answering all the questions and I had to help her arrange the story to get it to flow properly.  Finally after 2 weeks of school Unit one is complete. Whew!

I like blogging about My kids work because I find things like this... Uh guys... you were supposed to paint this!!!! Yes we cheated and used crayola modeling clay.  I wasn't sure how gluten free flour would do to make the air dry clay so we used up some of our stash of cool packaged clay. Considering the cost of gluten free flour mix I'm sure the clay is cheaper.

We decided to make the Big planets out of paper, looking back I think we should have done the centimeter ones. they would have been way smaller.  I helped out making Uranus and Neptune using my handy dandy pinky and opposable thumb to make a Compass out of my hand. You turn the paper its pretty fun! if everything goes right it all works out! 

Here is the mighty Jupiter! We worked together to make Jupiter, we used a string and a pencil... not perfect but it made a HUGE impression on the kids as to how small our planet is in contrast.

Oh well I know Sweet Potato hates change and all this dawdling and infighting will cease next week when we go back on vacation for a week or 2. I think I'll try to get one school day done next week by spreading it out over the whole week. I keep thinking every school day we accomplish now is one we do not have to do later! 

Looking Forward to a New Year

So here is my school for next year all ready for us, on the shelf. We are going half speed through Heart of Dakota's Resurrection to Reformation. If I have done my math right that should place my youngest on track for High School without a gap year. It will also give my oldest more time to develop and hopefully we will hit a few jumps this year.

I really like it when she jumps. Jumping is when she appears stalled on a skill but in reality her brain is actually working away behind the scenes. One day she is unable and the next she is able, and she stays able 90% of the time. I have noticed she jumps instead of growing bit by bit.  She often appears to stall out completely but if we persist in our pursuit of her best, she will suddenly jump to the next level.  I'm hoping to see some jumping this year.

I thought I'd bring out some of the things we will be doing differently than just the "as written" curriculum.  One I'm enraptures over the Logic Of English and I confess I want to do it with my children to learn alongside them as we go.  I recall Mrs. Simmons she despaired of ever teaching me proper grammar and I couldn't tell a adverb from an adjective when I hit college. If it hadn't been for my so awesome roommate  I wonder if I would have ever made deans list that last year. So I bit the bullet and paid out the big bucks for the Logic Of English.  I went with the PDF version and discovered I need 2 sets of phonics cards... But I think I'll have my kids make their own as I'm out of money for school books atm.  I'm looking forward to learning all those rules I just read through by heart this year.

  We also will be adding in this Middle-school music history program  Discovering Music 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Arts, History and Culture on the side. It adds more writing but also covers much of the same time periods as Resurrection to Reformation I haven't lined the dates up all nicely but I have managed to schedule it almost daily. Some days all the kids do is listen to music, or do vocab work or research a variety of topics. Other days they watch a lecture by the author. My husband and I previewed these.  They were addictive! We kept looking at the clock and each other and saying ok just one more lecture then we will go to bed!  I love how she dissects history through music. I think it will be great for Daddy and the kids to have something near and dear to his heart to talk about together. I am also hoping it will reinforce the history they are learning. I Love it when I can find VISUAL things for Sweet Potato to watch. She keeps turning her visual activity of reading into an audio activity by reading it out loud. This also slows her school down tremendously.  So anyway we can use movies to get information into her brain! I'm all for it.

As I was unpacking I got so excited to see this book. It looks soooooo yummy! I have yet to sit down and devour it but I can't wait.  One of my favorite things to do is Really LOOK at pictures. I call it listening to pictures.

I remember about 4 years ago going to a museum with my sister and her family. My nephew was kind of bored. I could tell he was exercising his good behavior muscles. I drew him aside and made him "listen" to the painting I was standing in front of.  I can recall it vividly it was a painting of a tavern, there were card players, serving wenches, a baby in a basket crying, a troubadour playing, a spilled jug of beer. It was a loud painting. As I made him look really look and imagine the sounds, the place, the smells, he got so excited he dragged me from painting to painting to listen to them with me. We got so caught up in reading the paintings my sister had to backtrack to find us.  I hope to instill that kind of love of art in my children this next year.

On another note Little Miss Sunshine has started a blog. I found this Kidblog site (I can lock down real tight if I need to.)  I find it so funny if I asked her to write a paragraph a day she would be griping about all the work,  but she pestered me daily to blog. Ha ha ha ha Check it out. :-) and please forgive the spelling and grammar. 

http://kidblog.org/SluberskisHomeschool/baf4a895-1e23-4440-90fc-85cbd91113c9/scarves-of-scrapes/