Week 1: September 21 to 24

We had two and a half days of school today after returning from our trip Tuesday and starting BSF on Wednesday.

It seems like the way to be a happy homeschooler (for me, at least), is to start small, with the basics, and add things on as we go, so that is what we did.

A has her own math to do now as it is going swimmingly. We play lots of games and do half of a lesson per day. I started her off in RightStart A, but soon found out she had learned too much from listening in to J's lessons for that to be a good fit. RightStart B works well as long as I don't drag out the lessons.

Additionally, A worked hard building some swooping patterns.

Her hard work paid off with a beautiful bridge pattern of her own design.

M set up her own working, sorting the colored pieces from a Montessori trinomial cube.

J had plenty to do as we quizzed the first sixty or so works from The Writing Road to Reading and continued in RightStart C. We finally started the geometric drawing portion, which was the part that convinced me not to switch to Singapore. As expected, he loves it.

Friday morning, as I started A's math lesson, I told J it was free play time.

"Can I please do the next math page? Please?" he begged. I gave in. Who can resist such a request?

We ended our week with the first day, for us, of German school, and we're geared up and excited about speaking more German at home again after a lot of laziness on my part over the summer.

Home from the Tetons, starting a new school year

We just got back from our family trip to Grand Tetons National Park.

Our reward for driving off at 8 am: a stunning Tetons view.

I've seen a lot of parks, but this was my first time there. We had a home base at Jackson Lake Lodge due to Dan's work but the kids and I were able to play everyday while Dan was at his conference. My favorite part of the week was seeing a moose for the first time in my life. We prayed to see one and were given one eating right next to the street! We started keeping Nature Journals during our trip and tried to draw bisons. Apparently, a "still" bison actually moves a lot, so we resorted to drawing flowers and grasses.

Now that we're back, and learning isn't getting in the way of homeschooling, we're getting back into gear with respect to homeschooling. We're going to give KONOS a month's trial since I really want to use a curriculum that facilitates my children learning together. We'll also read through the Mr. Q Science book as a science spine. Otherwise, our curriculum isn't much changed from last year, with The Writing Road to Reading replacing it's knock-off, Spell to Write and Read and Anna doing her own math this year. 

A real morning in nature

We went to the forest with J's independent study program today! It was lovely. We didn't go to the main part, with precisely fenced trails and signs every fifty feet, but to the back part, where we went off the trails and spent a couple hours playing games in a relatively open part of the redwood forest.

The kids played on a nature playground (made with fallen tree limbs and ropes, including two swings), played sardines (wow, that game helps you notice nature while you're looking for the hidden people), eagle eyes (ditto sardines), and built a house using tree limbs and leaf litter. The last was A's favorite part. Finally, at the end, we took down the playground, packed up the ropes, and it was just another clearing.

The morning was magical. I don't think I've looked at redwoods as closely as when I was looking for the hidden people, at least not in a long time. I never noticed how many huge stumps there were for whole groups of people to hide behind before. We all had a great time. I hope we can go back next week.

(And I hope I can take my nieces in the summer.)

Final Silent E Page - We did it!

While I was waiting for my sister's labor to really start, I read The Writing Road to Reading and had my eyes opened.

Now, I wasn't unfamiliar with this approach. Actually, we've technically been "using" Spell to Write and Read (which is based on it) off and on since October. However, the opinions she wrote into her book really put me off, such that I had a hard time reading it. Additionally, what she writes a very long book about is only the first chapter of The Writing Road to Reading because WRR is just so much more succinct. 

Suddenly, I caught the vision. THIS was what I was trying to do. It really wasn't so hard after all. Sanseri's book had just overwhelmed me.

We're back on track now, reviewing all phonograms visually everyday and writing eight to ten from dictation everyday. We've reviewed the first three sections from the WISE guide, which we did during the fall, and today started covering new ground.

We did the Silent Final E page. Wow. It wasn't hard. We just had to do it.

Quizzing, which I felt so opposed to before, isn't hard. It is just a different form of practice. Of course John has never gotten a bad spelling test back before (and won't be this year, either). I'll just put a dot over the wrong word, let him fix it, and then put on a star sticker to cover the dot. Then, we'll review it in future weeks.

Amazing - I'm going to be following two programs almost to the letter. We're all happier that way.

Schooling by the book

A few weeks ago, I gave myself a challenge: follow RightStart B to the word for four weeks and then decide if I didn't like it.

I don't know how long I've been doing this "challenge", but it has been wonderful.

I love RightStart B. It is easy to teach. If John clearly knows how to do a section, we do a few problems and move on. He loves the games. If we just do it consistently (which we have, recently), he'll be "accelerated" even though the text goes deeply into concepts. I don't need to speed things up.

Next up: four weeks of "by the book" Spell to Write and Read. Then I can decide if I really can't handle it.

The trouble with message boards

I used to love message boards, but I promised my hubby I'd go message board free for six months if we bought a certain curriculum. I made the promise for a few reasons. First, the point of a curriculum, for me, is to save time, so if I spend hours figuring out ways to tweak it, I shouldn't be paying lots of money for it. Second, I knew that I'd quickly become dissatisfied with any curriculum if I saw all the opinions people gave about it on a message board.

So, as with some time removed from message boards, I can see how discontent I become when I read them. The board is gossip central, with everyone talking about their new and exciting curriculum. Everyone has a brilliant child (or, at least, the outspoken people are ones with brilliant children, or, minimally, children who happened to have a brilliant five minutes that morning) and is eager to share how this that or the other curriculum was too simple/boring/slow for their child. Well, I want my children to show signs of brilliance and then start looking for that same curriculum to fail for my child, or I may just pine for that new, more perfect curriculum that will effortlessly teach my child how to spell/write/speak Spanish/train elephants/etc.

Our math curriculum is a victim of the message boards. I loved Right Start A. It was perfect. Everyday was exhilarating. Even though we haven't consistently RSed since October, I can see my son's ability to understand the math I teach him stemming directly from the great RS foundation he has.

However, comments on the boards talked about how "slow" RS is (another word for slow could be "thorough" or "careful")  and about how their children were "bored" (it is somewhat scripted, but one doesn't have to spend a lot of time on each section). Then, I, wanting to turn against it, started agreeing.

We're going back to RS tomorrow. It deserves a chance. It is exceptionally thorough and teaches concepts from multiple viewpoints. It will help prevent "holes" - which really can exist! My son is dangerous because he can figure things out, which I could do, too. The danger is that you figure out the motions to go through without actually understanding. I don't think RS will allow that!

Here's my commitment:
- four weeks
- four days per week
- 20-25 minutes per day
- do all sections
- continue to next section without extra review if seems appropriate

I'll update with my new opinion of RS in mid-February.

What is the point of games?

We live on the California coast. We are surrounded by hippies and unschoolers who use games to (essentially) trick their children into learning. Some abhor curricula and believe that games and life experience will provide their children's foundational skills.

I'm not an unschooler. I'm constantly shocked by the things my children learn on their own, but direct instruction is at the heart of our homeschool (and life). From things like, "We say please if we want someone to do something for us," to "You must apologize to your sister if you cause her harm," to "G may say /j/ when followed by E, I, or Y," we utilize direct instruction all the time.

So I find myself asking myself why I play games with my children. Of course we love math games for reinforcing skills, but games are more fundamental to our school than that. We play math games that cover skills we've never learned and we play physics games that demonstrate ideas that I remember from college. Why?

It's fun, of course, but there's more than that. By playing games, my children are gently introduced to concepts before they are taught them. When I teach the concepts, they come much more naturally because they have become intuitive. They will think these subjects are easy and consider themselves good at them, and will be more likely to like them.

Of course, any subject worth studying eventually becomes hard. But hopefully curiosity and adventure will take over by then.