Well, two weeks down, seven more to go until we move back to the US. Wow. Well, seven more school weeks; we have a vacation in there too.
The new schedule is working really well. Really, really well.
We're rather unconventional in that we stay up late, the kids go to bed at the same time as the grown-ups, and we let them sleep until they wake up. As such, the oldest boy gets started with his classes around 11 every day, and works until whenever he's done, often six-ish or so. He likes this plan.
I didn't think he would. I thought he'd balk at not having any free time between the end of school and his dad getting home from work. I was wrong. He much prefers this to starting school the minute he wakes up. Fine by me; he works hard, gets his stuff done, and is succeeding in his classes thus far. One of the biggest reasons we homeschool, and why we chose this online program over others, is for the flexibility, so I consider this a win-win.
He starts off with Algebra II, which is going remarkably well thus far. There's a bit of review of Algebra I, which he's doing pretty good with, and so far the new curriculum is fantastic. I'll do a review on that once we're a bit farther in; as he's only finished one week of Algebra II thus far, I feel it's still to early to give the glowing report I'd like to at this point.
After Algebra II, the most revolutionary thing --- Chemistry via Skype. My husband The Chemist calls The Writer and they video-chat over the reading for that day. The Chemist answers any questions and uses an online, interactive white board app on his iPad to write examples and things. Then they go through the homework assignments together; The Writer gives his answers and if he's wrong, The Chemist helps him find the right answer. If he's correct the first time, great! The Writer takes all quizzes on his own, and they do labs in the evenings & on weekends. I am so so so grateful I'm married to a scientist; I cannot imagine trying to do Chemistry completely and utterly alone at home. The Chemist uses his lunch hour at work to do this, so it's on "his time" not work's, and he enjoys it so much he's thinking of teaching all the boys science in this manner.
After Chemistry and lunch, everyone else gets started and the day goes along relatively smoothly, much like any other homeschool around the world. I work with The Adventurer immediately after lunch, and then he has quite a bit of free time between when he finishes and when his brother's finish. As such I'm introducing a new tweak today --- scheduled breaks for both The Adventurer & The Artist, where they will stop and play a quick board game, stop and walk the dogs, stop and do art, etc. The Writer can break with them if he wants to, though it will slow his day down considerably if he does. I think and hope that the breaks will help The Adventurer to feel like he's not just left alone all afternoon to wallow in boredom. We shall see.
If you have a younger child who relies on older siblings to be his playmate, how do you help him fill the hours that the siblings are otherwise occupied? I'm open to any & all ideas!
Showing posts with label home school routine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home school routine. Show all posts
Monday, October 14, 2013
Friday, September 20, 2013
Already changing the schedule.....
Much discussion ensued at my house yesterday, as I prepped the schedule pages for the kids.
A certain teen is really bemoaning the fact I want him to get up early, and says he much prefers to start later even if it means ending later as well. Compromise has been reached in that he will not have to start school until 11, but then will have to work until 6 or 7; if he is not finishing school by the time The Chemist gets home from work, we will begin having him start earlier. He claims that he only needs a 30 minute break to eat lunch, as he prefers to walk the dogs in the afternoon when he's done. And he is pretty sure he won't need a full hour per subject as I had envisioned. We shall see......
The Chemist is going to, fittingly, help The Writer with chemistry during the day; he's even found an on-line white board that can be used so that he (the Chemist) can draw equations and notes so our son will hopefully understand a bit better. Put with Skype calls, this should be a huge help, and is something they can do even when The Chemist has to travel for work. I'm so glad I married a scientist.
The Adventurer and The Artist then will also start later, but meals and snacks will stay at their given times; The Adventurer requires frequent feeding or he gets cranky. And by cranky I mean downright unmanageable. Not fun.
I discovered I can drop a few of the therapy items from his rotation, too. We did some work on sequencing yesterday, just for the fun of it, and he put every set of cards in order in record time, even building double sets from similar-themed cards. For example, one set showed a woman knitting a scarf. Another set showed the same woman knitting a cap. He first assembled each set on its own, then turned them into one long string, wherein the woman first knit the cap, then the scarf. I think we've got sequencing down well enough to drop it from our work.
I plan to spend some time next week printing up worksheets and puzzles for him, so that I'm ready. He needs to do hidden pictures, word finds, code games, pattern games, and the like, but those require printing. Which I stink at, printing the day of. So I thought I'd print a few weeks' worth all at once, and have them on hand.
I did threaten the boys that if they can't get along, we definitely can start school early. They're meant to have off until October 1st, but yesterday was a grouchy day, due to boredom levels. School would be a perfect remedy there.....
What does your school year look like? Anything new on the horizon?
A certain teen is really bemoaning the fact I want him to get up early, and says he much prefers to start later even if it means ending later as well. Compromise has been reached in that he will not have to start school until 11, but then will have to work until 6 or 7; if he is not finishing school by the time The Chemist gets home from work, we will begin having him start earlier. He claims that he only needs a 30 minute break to eat lunch, as he prefers to walk the dogs in the afternoon when he's done. And he is pretty sure he won't need a full hour per subject as I had envisioned. We shall see......
The Chemist is going to, fittingly, help The Writer with chemistry during the day; he's even found an on-line white board that can be used so that he (the Chemist) can draw equations and notes so our son will hopefully understand a bit better. Put with Skype calls, this should be a huge help, and is something they can do even when The Chemist has to travel for work. I'm so glad I married a scientist.
The Adventurer and The Artist then will also start later, but meals and snacks will stay at their given times; The Adventurer requires frequent feeding or he gets cranky. And by cranky I mean downright unmanageable. Not fun.
I discovered I can drop a few of the therapy items from his rotation, too. We did some work on sequencing yesterday, just for the fun of it, and he put every set of cards in order in record time, even building double sets from similar-themed cards. For example, one set showed a woman knitting a scarf. Another set showed the same woman knitting a cap. He first assembled each set on its own, then turned them into one long string, wherein the woman first knit the cap, then the scarf. I think we've got sequencing down well enough to drop it from our work.
I plan to spend some time next week printing up worksheets and puzzles for him, so that I'm ready. He needs to do hidden pictures, word finds, code games, pattern games, and the like, but those require printing. Which I stink at, printing the day of. So I thought I'd print a few weeks' worth all at once, and have them on hand.
I did threaten the boys that if they can't get along, we definitely can start school early. They're meant to have off until October 1st, but yesterday was a grouchy day, due to boredom levels. School would be a perfect remedy there.....
What does your school year look like? Anything new on the horizon?
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Back from Vacation --- Plans for 2013/2014 School Year
Yikes, what a long break! I didn't mean to neglect this blog for so long, so if anyone is still reading -- thank you! We had a family trip to the US over August, and now are busy preparing for our move back to Texas this December, but meanwhile, school still has to happen. For that to work, I need plans. More scheduled plans than usual, because there's too much to juggle in my usual "it happens when it happens" method.
My youngest needs a predictable routine, and I'm finally admitting that and trying to work that into our day-to-day life. I didn't attempt it before our visit to the US -- no sense starting a routine that would just be disrupted the minute we stepped on the plane. But now, a new school year, and an upcoming move, having a familiar routine in place well before then -- one we can maintain in our own new home -- will be key to helping him adjust to the changes going on around him.
For most of our family, this move is a move "back home." For him, who came to Brazil as a 2 year old, this is a move to a foreign country, even if it is one we've visited often. He told me this last trip, more than once, "I think I am more from Brazil than I am from Texas/The United States." Of course he's my most change-resistant child anyway, so this move should be lovely.
Sorry, getting sidetracked there....where was I going? Oh yes, schedule. Plans. Routine. With The Writer entering 10th grade, and after a 9th grade year that was slow going, he needs a more set schedule to stay on pace. Ditto that for The Artist, who is entering 7th grade this year. And as mentioned, The Adventurer needs the routine for stability. So, a schedule.
I decided to mimic a public school, with periods. Time slots. Start at this time, do this subject, then do this, then this, then that, until finished. My older boys will still have some freedom within that framework; they can move right from one subject to the next, or they can take little breaks in between as needed, but anything not finished within the hour-long "period" for each subject will be "homework" to be finished after-hours or on the weekend. No more saving hard projects for later.
Luckily for me, their on-line school is implementing a new tool to help with just that; lessons will only be unlocked in consecutive order, the next one available when the previous is turned in & graded. Two will be open at a time, so that the student can work on the second while the first is graded, but no more than that. This will be a huge help, and hopefully alleviate the one flaw we felt with their system.
Here's what their schedules will look like, then:
10th Grade/The Writer --
9 a.m. -- breakfast
9:30 a.m. -- 1st period/Algebra II
10:30 a.m. -- 2nd period/World History
11:30 a.m. -- 3rd period/Music History
12:30 p.m. -- lunch/Chemistry help
1:30 p.m. -- 4th period/Spanish I
2:30 p.m. -- 5th period/Psychology
3:30 p.m. -- 6th period/English II
He may have to use extra time for Chemistry; we're not sure yet how that is going to work out. My husband The Chemist is going to help him with this, hopefully over lunch, but I'm not sure how it will play out. He might have to do book work ahead of that Skype session, or he might then have homework to do in the evenings, I'm not sure. English is scheduled last so that he has plenty of time to do whatever written work is required.
7th Grade/The Artist --
9 a.m. -- breakfast
9:30 a.m. -- free time on the computer
10:30 a.m. -- 1st period/Pre-Algebra
11:30 a.m. -- 2nd period/History
12:30 p.m. -- lunch
1:30 p.m. -- 3rd period/English
2:30 p.m. -- 4th period/Science
3:30 p.m. -- art/projects/free time
His schedule is a bit lighter since he's not in high school yet; his art class is a home course (Artistic Pursuits), and Pre-Algebra is Teaching Textbooks; the rest are on-line with Texas Tech University ISD.
2nd Grade/The Adventurer --
After much debate, we're calling this 2nd grade although he is 8.5 years old and could be considered 3rd grade. With his delays, and state laws in Texas that allow us to delay his Kindergarten start until age 6, and a firm belief I would have done so (in fact, I did do so in our home school), this is where he is.
His routine will look like this:
10:30 --Writing Road to Reading -- 1 lesson per day
11:00 -- Therapy Block -- alternate activities, 2 activities per day (approximately 15 minutes)
11:15 -- Handwriting Without Tears -- half a lesson per day, in the Kindergarten book, + sight word review
11:30 -- Game Time -- he will choose one board game from a designated selection, as a mental break/recess
12:30 -- lunch
1:30 -- History -- one chapter, more or less, per day; studying an overview of American & Texas history
2:00 -- Math -- one lesson per day from Singapore Math 2
2:30 -- Earobics & Edmark -- phonics/reading therapy software, one session of each per day
3:00 -- Activity & Science -- he can choose a hands-on activity, from a pre-set selection, and I will read Science to him
3:30 -- story telling -- he'll tell me a story, using story starters, that I will type, he will illustrate, and we will read together throughout the week; aiming for one story/week
Times on his schedule are best-guesses; things may or may not take this long, but breaks are built in so what looks like a long day, isn't really. Mostly the guide is "what comes next" which is the part we'll follow and stick with.
Going to be a busy year! We're scheduled to start October 1st......wish me luck!
My youngest needs a predictable routine, and I'm finally admitting that and trying to work that into our day-to-day life. I didn't attempt it before our visit to the US -- no sense starting a routine that would just be disrupted the minute we stepped on the plane. But now, a new school year, and an upcoming move, having a familiar routine in place well before then -- one we can maintain in our own new home -- will be key to helping him adjust to the changes going on around him.
For most of our family, this move is a move "back home." For him, who came to Brazil as a 2 year old, this is a move to a foreign country, even if it is one we've visited often. He told me this last trip, more than once, "I think I am more from Brazil than I am from Texas/The United States." Of course he's my most change-resistant child anyway, so this move should be lovely.
Sorry, getting sidetracked there....where was I going? Oh yes, schedule. Plans. Routine. With The Writer entering 10th grade, and after a 9th grade year that was slow going, he needs a more set schedule to stay on pace. Ditto that for The Artist, who is entering 7th grade this year. And as mentioned, The Adventurer needs the routine for stability. So, a schedule.
I decided to mimic a public school, with periods. Time slots. Start at this time, do this subject, then do this, then this, then that, until finished. My older boys will still have some freedom within that framework; they can move right from one subject to the next, or they can take little breaks in between as needed, but anything not finished within the hour-long "period" for each subject will be "homework" to be finished after-hours or on the weekend. No more saving hard projects for later.
Luckily for me, their on-line school is implementing a new tool to help with just that; lessons will only be unlocked in consecutive order, the next one available when the previous is turned in & graded. Two will be open at a time, so that the student can work on the second while the first is graded, but no more than that. This will be a huge help, and hopefully alleviate the one flaw we felt with their system.
Here's what their schedules will look like, then:
10th Grade/The Writer --
9 a.m. -- breakfast
9:30 a.m. -- 1st period/Algebra II
10:30 a.m. -- 2nd period/World History
11:30 a.m. -- 3rd period/Music History
12:30 p.m. -- lunch/Chemistry help
1:30 p.m. -- 4th period/Spanish I
2:30 p.m. -- 5th period/Psychology
3:30 p.m. -- 6th period/English II
He may have to use extra time for Chemistry; we're not sure yet how that is going to work out. My husband The Chemist is going to help him with this, hopefully over lunch, but I'm not sure how it will play out. He might have to do book work ahead of that Skype session, or he might then have homework to do in the evenings, I'm not sure. English is scheduled last so that he has plenty of time to do whatever written work is required.
7th Grade/The Artist --
9 a.m. -- breakfast
9:30 a.m. -- free time on the computer
10:30 a.m. -- 1st period/Pre-Algebra
11:30 a.m. -- 2nd period/History
12:30 p.m. -- lunch
1:30 p.m. -- 3rd period/English
2:30 p.m. -- 4th period/Science
3:30 p.m. -- art/projects/free time
His schedule is a bit lighter since he's not in high school yet; his art class is a home course (Artistic Pursuits), and Pre-Algebra is Teaching Textbooks; the rest are on-line with Texas Tech University ISD.
2nd Grade/The Adventurer --
After much debate, we're calling this 2nd grade although he is 8.5 years old and could be considered 3rd grade. With his delays, and state laws in Texas that allow us to delay his Kindergarten start until age 6, and a firm belief I would have done so (in fact, I did do so in our home school), this is where he is.
His routine will look like this:
10:30 --Writing Road to Reading -- 1 lesson per day
11:00 -- Therapy Block -- alternate activities, 2 activities per day (approximately 15 minutes)
11:15 -- Handwriting Without Tears -- half a lesson per day, in the Kindergarten book, + sight word review
11:30 -- Game Time -- he will choose one board game from a designated selection, as a mental break/recess
12:30 -- lunch
1:30 -- History -- one chapter, more or less, per day; studying an overview of American & Texas history
2:00 -- Math -- one lesson per day from Singapore Math 2
2:30 -- Earobics & Edmark -- phonics/reading therapy software, one session of each per day
3:00 -- Activity & Science -- he can choose a hands-on activity, from a pre-set selection, and I will read Science to him
3:30 -- story telling -- he'll tell me a story, using story starters, that I will type, he will illustrate, and we will read together throughout the week; aiming for one story/week
Times on his schedule are best-guesses; things may or may not take this long, but breaks are built in so what looks like a long day, isn't really. Mostly the guide is "what comes next" which is the part we'll follow and stick with.
Going to be a busy year! We're scheduled to start October 1st......wish me luck!
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Three Week Check-In....
Midway through the third week of our second semester, and I thought I'd check in and update on how things are going.
The Monday to Thursday schedule is working beautifully! Now, there's a definite feel of "projects get done on Friday, or carried to the weekend, but no later" which helps tremendously. Also, if any other subject gets "behind" the boys are able to use what would be free time on Friday and finish that up, as well. Having an almost free day once a week cuts down the "we need a break" syndrome, too. All in all, it's been a fantastic schedule help -- I am so glad I remembered a friend doing it and decided to try it in our home school. Yay!
The Writer is currently working on an art project that has been a multi-step thing; I can't wait to see the finished product. It's an abstract self portrait, with very specific guidelines, and so far it is amazing. That should be a Friday finish this week, so I can post pictures this weekend or Monday. yay!
The Artist is pushing, hard, through his English course so that we can move on. The writing projects are not the easiest thing for him, but he's doing well. I am so proud of him in that he doesn't give up, even when things are hard. And he's getting pretty good grades on things, with helpful feedback as well -- his teacher is fantastic and really seems to use grading as a teaching tool to show him where he can improve for next time. I hope he gets the same teacher next semester (with TTUISD, you register one semester at a time, and the 2nd semester teacher is not always the same as first semester).
The Adventurer is plugging along. We've hit a bit of a stall on phonics acquisition, and I remind myself that this road to literacy is a marathon, not a sprint. I thought we'd found a trick to help with the portion of Earobics that most frusttrates him, but he is still not able to do that particular game very well, and I'm not sure why; I think it's a matter of brain maturity, and his is just not there yet. So, I've tabled that game, and we will plug on and keep working.
He is showing some strong dislike for the curriculum we use as far as history, Bible & science -- he sees his brothers "doing" stuff for school, and he wants to "do stuff" too. So I'm on the hunt for history & science curriculum that has him "do stuff." If anyone has ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them! Something activity or computer based would be awesome. I have some DVDs to try for science, but I fear that watching a DVD will not be enough "doing stuff" for him and he'll protest that as well. With his multitude of learning challenges, finding a curriculum that interests and excites him and thus gains his cooperation is vital. With so much else to overcome, resistance to the very curriculum is just not something I want to add/keep in our school day. In the meantime, I'm focusing only on his math and reading skills, and trust he'll pick up history and science later on.
We have made strides in his behavior, through a very simple diet change...more on that in an upcoming post!
Hope your semester is going well, whether you are just starting like we are or winding down like much of the US is. Happy Wednesday, all!
The Monday to Thursday schedule is working beautifully! Now, there's a definite feel of "projects get done on Friday, or carried to the weekend, but no later" which helps tremendously. Also, if any other subject gets "behind" the boys are able to use what would be free time on Friday and finish that up, as well. Having an almost free day once a week cuts down the "we need a break" syndrome, too. All in all, it's been a fantastic schedule help -- I am so glad I remembered a friend doing it and decided to try it in our home school. Yay!
The Writer is currently working on an art project that has been a multi-step thing; I can't wait to see the finished product. It's an abstract self portrait, with very specific guidelines, and so far it is amazing. That should be a Friday finish this week, so I can post pictures this weekend or Monday. yay!
The Artist is pushing, hard, through his English course so that we can move on. The writing projects are not the easiest thing for him, but he's doing well. I am so proud of him in that he doesn't give up, even when things are hard. And he's getting pretty good grades on things, with helpful feedback as well -- his teacher is fantastic and really seems to use grading as a teaching tool to show him where he can improve for next time. I hope he gets the same teacher next semester (with TTUISD, you register one semester at a time, and the 2nd semester teacher is not always the same as first semester).
The Adventurer is plugging along. We've hit a bit of a stall on phonics acquisition, and I remind myself that this road to literacy is a marathon, not a sprint. I thought we'd found a trick to help with the portion of Earobics that most frusttrates him, but he is still not able to do that particular game very well, and I'm not sure why; I think it's a matter of brain maturity, and his is just not there yet. So, I've tabled that game, and we will plug on and keep working.
He is showing some strong dislike for the curriculum we use as far as history, Bible & science -- he sees his brothers "doing" stuff for school, and he wants to "do stuff" too. So I'm on the hunt for history & science curriculum that has him "do stuff." If anyone has ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them! Something activity or computer based would be awesome. I have some DVDs to try for science, but I fear that watching a DVD will not be enough "doing stuff" for him and he'll protest that as well. With his multitude of learning challenges, finding a curriculum that interests and excites him and thus gains his cooperation is vital. With so much else to overcome, resistance to the very curriculum is just not something I want to add/keep in our school day. In the meantime, I'm focusing only on his math and reading skills, and trust he'll pick up history and science later on.
We have made strides in his behavior, through a very simple diet change...more on that in an upcoming post!
Hope your semester is going well, whether you are just starting like we are or winding down like much of the US is. Happy Wednesday, all!
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Homeschooling on the Road: Flexibility at its Finest
For my last post in the "Day in the Life..." Home School Link-Up party at Grateful for Grace, I thought I'd highlight the reality of the past week for us: Homeschooling on vacation. Or rather, on a business trip.
The Chemist has to travel for work; roughly 25% of his year is spent away from home on one business trip or another. Sometimes, that means he leaves early in the morning, flies to a nearby city to visit clients, then returns late that same night. Sometimes it means he goes for 2 to 3 days at a time, and sometimes, like this past week, it means he is gone for five days straight.
We can't always go with him, but when everything lines up just right, we love to tag along. As he doesn't usually have more than a few weeks' notice that he has a trip coming up, it is usually a last-minute type affair. Flexibility in action. This past week was no exception to that rule.
With only 2 week's notice, I scrambled over Christmas break to rearrange the 6 week lesson plans that I'd just completed, so that one week would then reflect "go on a trip with Dad" and thus lighter work loads. Lighter in the sense of less work than normal, and in the sense of "I'd rather not pack all those bulky, heavy textbooks..." as well.
Since we do have an outside deadline this year, due to using an on-line distance learning program, I couldn't just give the boys the week off altogether; they are closing in on crunch time and need to finish this last six weeks of material in time to request final exams, take said exams, submit, get them back graded, and still have time to retake the exams if needed (their program allows only the final exam to be retaken, and only once; I doubt we'll need to use the do-over option, but just in case, I want them to have time to exercise that right).
Plans rearranged, we packed up. Three laptops. Art supplies. A few textbooks. Notepads, paper, pencils, crayons. Coloring book and math workbooks. Assignment folders. Big plans to catch up on some time-intensive projects. Even that had to be flexed a bit as the week came together. Here's a typical day...
7:00 -- up & at 'em so we can all eat breakfast together before The Chemist goes to work for the day
8:00 -- breakfast in the hotel: cake, jello, scrambled eggs, bread, cheese, grilled sandwiches, fresh orange juice, chocolate milk, fresh fruit. No coffee, because the hotel coffee was horrid. Which is crazy, given where I live.
9:00 -- The Chemist goes to work for the day; I check email, link my already written blog-posts up, check Facebook, etc. while the boys either finish waking up, play, sleep a bit longer, whatever.
10:00 -- Okay, really; school. I direct The Writer to read & summarize the article over the Arizona Immigration Law and do that paper for Geography; I instruct The Artist to do his English assignments (I first make him daily pages to fill in so he can brainstorm for his short story assignment), and I sit down with The Adventurer for a nice, quiet math session. Except, no one told The Adventurer it was to be a nice, quiet session.
10:01 -- The Adventurer is beside himself with anger, frustration, and defiance. Learning challenges at their ugliest; taken out of his home routine, all the little signals he looks to that help him understand his surroundings are gone, so he is out of sorts (because, remember, everything coming in visually or auditorally is garbled). He thrives in routine; the predictability takes away the guess work and the effort he has to put forth to understand what we want him to do.
Also, he finds great comfort in his familiar surroundings, toys, games, etc. I bring as much as possible for him, but two under-bed sized boxes of Legos just do not pack well when traveling. He fights me, mightily, about having to do school. Full on, haven't seen this level of anger in a very long time, meltdown. Kicking, screaming, yelling meltdown. I stay calm (really), love him through it, and eventually we do a math page, a Scribbles page, and some sequencing cards. We are both exhausted at the end of it.
11:45 -- The Adventurer is still cranky, even though we've just finished his school work. He wants me to make The Artist play with him, but The Artist still lacks Science before his school day is over. The Writer has stared at the same article for the past hour & a half, unable to summarize it because in the confines of our hotel suite, he can't think over the screaming. I declare a break for lunch --- down to the beach. Go. Now.
11:48 -- we stop for ice cream or a snack and then sit on the beach for a few hours. One day was ice cream, another day snacks & drinks from a beach-side restaurant, another day we stayed in and watched a movie instead. Some days the fussing did not last quite so long, but we had to take this break every day. The Adventurer is instantly transformed once he's had a bite of food and is turned loose to play in the sand & the surf. I relax and enjoy the moment.
1:15 -- while The Artist & Adventurer play, The Writer sits with me in the shade of a tree, sipping fresh juice on the beach. He picks up a handful of sand, sifts it onto a white napkin, and comments on all the colors. Intrigued by the awe in his voice, I scoop up my own handful of sand, eager for this moment of precious connection with my oldest son. He's right; the sand is multi-colored; grains of red, pink, orange, yellow, tan, white, clear, gray & black, plus some that sparkle like diamonds when the sun hits them. Beautiful. Without looking closely like this, it just looks tan & black. I love that my son looks for ways to see beauty, and shares it with me when he finds it. Precious.
2:00 -- back to the room. The Adventurer has been a delight while we took our break; The Writer reads the next part of Romeo & Juliet and takes his on-line quiz for that section; he did very well with this, reading more than I thought he would and finishing the play & all quizzes. Now he just has to create a soundtrack for the play (using 20th century music, though from any part of the 20th century) and he'll be done with that unit. The Artist does his science, and The Adventurer fusses only a little while I set up a movie for him to watch; I sit with him for a bit, he settles in and watches Sponge Bob, and the next hour & a half is quiet. I read a free book I downloaded to my Kindle, once I've finished scheduling Geography for The Artist.
3:30 -- The Chemist is done for the day and home from work. The Artist & The Writer are done with school for the day. The Writer promises to try the Geography project tomorrow (he will finish it this weekend, as it just was impossible to get done). The Adventurer is all smiles, mostly, and makes it hard for The Chemist to believe just how grumpy he'd been earlier. We go back to the beach for the afternoon, where we all share a snack & drinks. *our hotel was literally across the street from the beach. Nothing fancy, just a beach town where everything is across from the beach...
6:30 -- up from the beach; showers, change into non-sandy clothes, walk to dinner.
9:30 -- home from dinner; brush teeth, put on a movie for the boys, in bed by 10:00 because we are all tired.
Far less school work got done than I had planned; The Artist did pretty well, though 2 papers are still not written. The Writer did well, considering the challenges. He did very well with R&J, never did write the sonnet he was supposed to write, tried the geography project, and I never even mentioned geometry or art to him, as we just did not have time. The Adventurer's outbursts in the morning meant I was not available to help; The Chemist's short days meant we did not have sufficient time for long days of school; our mandatory break in the middle likewise cut our time for school short.
But. We will just keep being flexible. Projects can be homework, done evenings & weekends. The boys understand and accept this, no problems. The time together was priceless; despite the very rocky mornings, I am very glad we went. I am grateful, again, for the flexibility we have to just get up & go when The Chemist asks us to tag along.
This side of flexibility (vs. the kind you need when kids are sick, life interrupts, etc.) is my favorite part of home education; we set the hours, days, and overall schedule. Love that. Absolutely love it.
The Chemist has to travel for work; roughly 25% of his year is spent away from home on one business trip or another. Sometimes, that means he leaves early in the morning, flies to a nearby city to visit clients, then returns late that same night. Sometimes it means he goes for 2 to 3 days at a time, and sometimes, like this past week, it means he is gone for five days straight.
We can't always go with him, but when everything lines up just right, we love to tag along. As he doesn't usually have more than a few weeks' notice that he has a trip coming up, it is usually a last-minute type affair. Flexibility in action. This past week was no exception to that rule.
With only 2 week's notice, I scrambled over Christmas break to rearrange the 6 week lesson plans that I'd just completed, so that one week would then reflect "go on a trip with Dad" and thus lighter work loads. Lighter in the sense of less work than normal, and in the sense of "I'd rather not pack all those bulky, heavy textbooks..." as well.
Since we do have an outside deadline this year, due to using an on-line distance learning program, I couldn't just give the boys the week off altogether; they are closing in on crunch time and need to finish this last six weeks of material in time to request final exams, take said exams, submit, get them back graded, and still have time to retake the exams if needed (their program allows only the final exam to be retaken, and only once; I doubt we'll need to use the do-over option, but just in case, I want them to have time to exercise that right).
Plans rearranged, we packed up. Three laptops. Art supplies. A few textbooks. Notepads, paper, pencils, crayons. Coloring book and math workbooks. Assignment folders. Big plans to catch up on some time-intensive projects. Even that had to be flexed a bit as the week came together. Here's a typical day...
7:00 -- up & at 'em so we can all eat breakfast together before The Chemist goes to work for the day
8:00 -- breakfast in the hotel: cake, jello, scrambled eggs, bread, cheese, grilled sandwiches, fresh orange juice, chocolate milk, fresh fruit. No coffee, because the hotel coffee was horrid. Which is crazy, given where I live.
9:00 -- The Chemist goes to work for the day; I check email, link my already written blog-posts up, check Facebook, etc. while the boys either finish waking up, play, sleep a bit longer, whatever.
10:00 -- Okay, really; school. I direct The Writer to read & summarize the article over the Arizona Immigration Law and do that paper for Geography; I instruct The Artist to do his English assignments (I first make him daily pages to fill in so he can brainstorm for his short story assignment), and I sit down with The Adventurer for a nice, quiet math session. Except, no one told The Adventurer it was to be a nice, quiet session.
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| The Artist, being goofy, looking at his assignment folder for the day |
10:01 -- The Adventurer is beside himself with anger, frustration, and defiance. Learning challenges at their ugliest; taken out of his home routine, all the little signals he looks to that help him understand his surroundings are gone, so he is out of sorts (because, remember, everything coming in visually or auditorally is garbled). He thrives in routine; the predictability takes away the guess work and the effort he has to put forth to understand what we want him to do.
Also, he finds great comfort in his familiar surroundings, toys, games, etc. I bring as much as possible for him, but two under-bed sized boxes of Legos just do not pack well when traveling. He fights me, mightily, about having to do school. Full on, haven't seen this level of anger in a very long time, meltdown. Kicking, screaming, yelling meltdown. I stay calm (really), love him through it, and eventually we do a math page, a Scribbles page, and some sequencing cards. We are both exhausted at the end of it.
11:45 -- The Adventurer is still cranky, even though we've just finished his school work. He wants me to make The Artist play with him, but The Artist still lacks Science before his school day is over. The Writer has stared at the same article for the past hour & a half, unable to summarize it because in the confines of our hotel suite, he can't think over the screaming. I declare a break for lunch --- down to the beach. Go. Now.
11:48 -- we stop for ice cream or a snack and then sit on the beach for a few hours. One day was ice cream, another day snacks & drinks from a beach-side restaurant, another day we stayed in and watched a movie instead. Some days the fussing did not last quite so long, but we had to take this break every day. The Adventurer is instantly transformed once he's had a bite of food and is turned loose to play in the sand & the surf. I relax and enjoy the moment.
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| The Artist & The Adventurer play in the sand & surf |
1:15 -- while The Artist & Adventurer play, The Writer sits with me in the shade of a tree, sipping fresh juice on the beach. He picks up a handful of sand, sifts it onto a white napkin, and comments on all the colors. Intrigued by the awe in his voice, I scoop up my own handful of sand, eager for this moment of precious connection with my oldest son. He's right; the sand is multi-colored; grains of red, pink, orange, yellow, tan, white, clear, gray & black, plus some that sparkle like diamonds when the sun hits them. Beautiful. Without looking closely like this, it just looks tan & black. I love that my son looks for ways to see beauty, and shares it with me when he finds it. Precious.
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| The Writer & I sit in the shade |
2:00 -- back to the room. The Adventurer has been a delight while we took our break; The Writer reads the next part of Romeo & Juliet and takes his on-line quiz for that section; he did very well with this, reading more than I thought he would and finishing the play & all quizzes. Now he just has to create a soundtrack for the play (using 20th century music, though from any part of the 20th century) and he'll be done with that unit. The Artist does his science, and The Adventurer fusses only a little while I set up a movie for him to watch; I sit with him for a bit, he settles in and watches Sponge Bob, and the next hour & a half is quiet. I read a free book I downloaded to my Kindle, once I've finished scheduling Geography for The Artist.
3:30 -- The Chemist is done for the day and home from work. The Artist & The Writer are done with school for the day. The Writer promises to try the Geography project tomorrow (he will finish it this weekend, as it just was impossible to get done). The Adventurer is all smiles, mostly, and makes it hard for The Chemist to believe just how grumpy he'd been earlier. We go back to the beach for the afternoon, where we all share a snack & drinks. *our hotel was literally across the street from the beach. Nothing fancy, just a beach town where everything is across from the beach...
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| a crab we saw on the beach his big brothers (much bigger) become snacks later, but I did not take pics of those |
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| our hotel, seen from the beach. The white building with all the balconies. our room was on the side and did not face the beach directly. |
6:30 -- up from the beach; showers, change into non-sandy clothes, walk to dinner.
9:30 -- home from dinner; brush teeth, put on a movie for the boys, in bed by 10:00 because we are all tired.
Far less school work got done than I had planned; The Artist did pretty well, though 2 papers are still not written. The Writer did well, considering the challenges. He did very well with R&J, never did write the sonnet he was supposed to write, tried the geography project, and I never even mentioned geometry or art to him, as we just did not have time. The Adventurer's outbursts in the morning meant I was not available to help; The Chemist's short days meant we did not have sufficient time for long days of school; our mandatory break in the middle likewise cut our time for school short.
But. We will just keep being flexible. Projects can be homework, done evenings & weekends. The boys understand and accept this, no problems. The time together was priceless; despite the very rocky mornings, I am very glad we went. I am grateful, again, for the flexibility we have to just get up & go when The Chemist asks us to tag along.
This side of flexibility (vs. the kind you need when kids are sick, life interrupts, etc.) is my favorite part of home education; we set the hours, days, and overall schedule. Love that. Absolutely love it.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
The Plan, The Hope, The Road to Literacy
Yesterday I shared our journey to diagnosis; today, I will detail the plan that fuels my hope. As there is much work to be done, the plan is lengthy and detailed, so the post is long.
Once we had a diagnosis, names to put to all the things standing in the way of The Adventurer's ability to learn, we set out to find answers. Tools. Activities. A plan.
The Edu-Psych we used was an absolute gem in that regard; if any of my readers are in the Houston area and need an evaluation for their child, let me know, I will pass on her name and information. She was a treasure to us. She provided in her report not only a name for the problem, but also 13 pages of curriculum suggestions, adaptive technologies we should begin using, free activities I could do with The Adventurer at home, links to websites that have games and materials that can serve as therapeutic activities for him, and referrals for follow-up testing.
She also wrote out what accommodations he would need in a typical classroom setting, so that I would feel free to adapt and so that if we ever put him into a typical classroom, we will have the first step in place to getting him the help he needs. She gave us a plan, a plan that holds out hope. A plan that will lead to success.
It has taken me from September until now, early January, to turn all of her suggestions into a workable routine. I was, at first, very overwhelmed. There is a LOT that needs to be worked on. I laid all of that out in the last post, so I won't go over it again. Trust me when I say it has been a very daunting task, I have had many moments of panic and fear of failure. I have stared, weeping, into The Chemist's eyes and cried, "I can't do this" with a despair that made his heart ache as much as mine. Yet every time, he calmed me, reassured me, and directed me back to the materials, the curriculums, the activities that the Edu-Psych suggested and that we bought, and reminded me that yes, yes I can.
He's right. We have a name for what we're fighting. We have tools. Others have gone before and written curriculum and software and games that have been proven to work against this. We are not all alone, and we do have hope and a plan.
So, what is the plan? In a nutshell......
*he does a Scribbles page while I read Bible & History out-loud
*we do one activity from the Therapy Drawer
*I teach him the next math lesson in the book, and he does the assignment in the workbook
*we do another activity from the Therapy Drawer
*we do Handwriting Without Tears (HWT), cycling through the various hands-on activities
*he gets time for free play, usually with math manipulatives or handwriting manipulatives
*after this break, he does Computer School (aka, therapy software)
*and when he is done, he picks a fun game for a rewared
Now, what does all of that mean???
Scribbles Pages --- this is a directed coloring book. What that means is that each 2-page spread has a one-sentence instruction across the top. Today, for example, he had "Who is looking out of the windows? Draw them." Below that was a house and a barn, with three empty windows showing. He drew a stick-figure person in one, a cat in another (with a trip to my kitchen window to show that the cat was standing on the windowsill), and a skeleton in the third window. This works his following directions skills as well as fine motor skills, and helps him to transition from Not School Time to School Time. Mostly this is transition, so he can get his brain into school mode.
Math --- we use Singapore Math as his primary math, with Miquon sometimes thrown in, and LOTS of hands-on with math manipulatives. Counting bears, counting squares, linking cubes, gram/centimeter cubes, pattern blocks (with several sets of cards to use with them), Cuisenaire Rods, and Base 10 Unit Sticks (the little marked rods that show 1, 10, or 100). He is working through book 1B of Singapore right now, and Miquon Orange.
HWT --- he is doing a quick pass through the PreK book (reviewing each letter, learning the HWT way of making each letter, reviewing sounds letters make, etc.) before moving on to the K level book. I expect we will spend roughly 5 to 7 weeks going through the PreK book before going forward.
We follow a routine with this; Monday I show the Capital Letter Card for each letter we'll cover that week, and he uses the wooden pieces to make each one on the outline that is on the card. Tuesday he uses the mat to make the letters, only looking at the card if needed, then he traces some of the letters in the workbook. Wednesday he traces the remaining letters and uses play dough to make them (using the Roll-a-Dough kit). Thursday he draws each letter on a slate, with chalk, using the Wet-Dry-Try method as outlined in HWT. Friday we do the letter/picture matching that is on the back of each capital letter card and review what the lower case version looks like.
Computer School --- he is using a software called Earobics for help with his Auditory Processing and Phonemic Awareness; he will need to make serious progress in this before we begin the reading curriculums (yes, plural) that we will one day use to teach him to read. I will detail this in a later post, but basically it involves identifying rhyming sounds, are two sounds the same or different, does a spoken word contain a target sound, and learning to do all of those while background noise is masking the target sounds. The software auto-adjusts based on his proficiency.
Finally, what is in the Therapy Drawer?? I cycle through the activities in this drawer now; from September to December we did just these activities, 30 minutes a day of working on something from each category. That is while we were waiting on the curriculum to come in (mail takes a while from US to S. America). He likes rotating much better. Here's what we do, and what area each activity targets.
Random Access Naming -- I keep a variety of flashcards in the drawer, and we do 2 minute drills. I show a card to The Adventurer, he names the object on the card, I write down how many objects he named in a 2 minute time span. This speeds up how long it takes his eyes to see something, his brain to get the message, and then send the name to his mouth, and his mouth to verbalize the answer.
When we started, he got 12 to 15 objects in a 1 minute period. He now gets over 50 in 2 minutes. For variety & double-duty, I use First Thousand Words (by Usborne); I have him quickly name all the objects that are around the page, then we play hide & seek, finding each object in the picture. That works his visual scanning/visual processing speed, yet feels like one activity.
Digit-Span -- this is a fancy name for "how many letters, numbers, words, or combo thereof can you remember if said to you in a row?" I use number flashcards and games for this. When we started, I would just go through saying the digits of all the family birthdays. It was exhausting to think up numbers. Flashcards are much easier; I pull 4 to 6 random cards, show them & say them (hiding them once shown), and then he has to repeat back to me the numbers I said. He is supposed to do this backwards, too, but we've not worked up to that yet. This is to strengthen his working memory.
For variety, I use games such as "I'm going to Grandma's, and I'm taking a ......" where I say one object, he repeats the phrase & my object, then adds his own object; I repeat the whole thing back to him and add a 3rd object, and so forth & so on. I also double this up by changing where we are going; another activity we're to do is "name things in a given category" so I will say "I went to the beach and I saw...." and everything we name has to be beach related. I love activities that can be double-duty.
Sequencing -- I bought a set of cards for this. I lay out 3 or 4 cards, each depicting a scene from an ordered bit of action (ex: a child on home plate, bat at the ready; child hitting the ball; child running away from home plate; child safely on 1st base) and he has to put them in order. We do 3 to 5 sets of cards per session, depending on his tolerance that day. This strengthens the foundation for story comprehension, works his visual scanning, and helps him order material which will carry over into listening and ordering when he hears a story.
Worksheets -- I print worksheets from www.edHelper.com (a subscription website), Highlights Kids.com (free), No-Glamour Memory book on CD (purchased CD) and assorted other places. Worksheets I print are to work on following directions, matching, visual scanning (hidden pictures, for example), listening skills (for example, I read a series of clues and he has to circle the correct picture), etc. Matching can be picture matching, number matching, number to set of objects, letter to letter, uppercase to lowercase, etc.
Matching -- he's supposed to work on matching, for visual processing issues. Aside from the worksheets, we do ABC bingo, Eye Spy matching cards, Memory games, Go Fish (using assorted cards, sometimes numbers, sometimes letters, sometimes pictures), Jr. Yahtzee (Mario version), Dwarves & Dice game, Teddy Bear Match-Up, Uno, and Dominoes. Variety, variety, variety.
Storytelling -- I bought Rory Story Cubes for this. This is to work on one of his strengths, as well as strengthen story comprehension. I choose a few of the dice, roll them, and he has to make up a picture using at least 2 of the pictures shown on the dice. I don't make him use more than that, because he's just starting. Usually though he is able to incorporate everything; he is a dramatic and very creative story teller, as long as he's in a story telling mood.
Sometimes I record his stories, type them up, print them in large fonts, and we use them for story time later. Again, to help with comprehension, listening, etc. and also to practice "reading" or pre-reading -- by following along, he learns to track, turn the page when we get to the end, and since he knows the story he can start to more easily connect the written words to the things I'm saying; suddenly, the type on the page means something, and that helps him realize he can pay attention to text around him.
Following Directions -- This is to help with auditory processing as well as working memory, and we mainly play games. Lots and lots of games.Simon Says. Mother May I. "Where's Wario?" (I tell him where to hide a toy; he has to hide it). Scavenger hunts (oral clues). I also made up a game where he has to tell me true or false and repeat after me; I say a sentence about our kitchen (or whatever room we're in), he has to listen, tell if it's true, and repeat back to me what I said. If I say something silly, I then say the true version and he repeats that.
He likes when I say totally nutty stuff, like "my mom is the most beautiful mom in the world!" He laughs and laughs and says "that's false!" until I correct it and say "My mom is kind of pretty" at which point he says, "hmmm, yes, that is true." (of course I am talking about his mom, not mine) (yes, that's a true story)
Fine Motor Skills --- for this he plays with play dough, does lacing cards, bead stringing, and colors things that require detail coloring. The HWT helps with this, as does the Scribbles book and using a pencil grip to write. These activities also help improve his visual-motor coordination (aka, hand-eye coordination).
Perceptual Reasoning/Visual-Spatial Reasoning --- this is his biggest strength; he tested near the upper limits on this subtest. To help him stay challenged in this area and have time with one of his strengths, he has tangrams, pattern blocks, a geoboard with rubber bands and designs to copy, and various games that work with this (Rush Hour, and several other ThinkFun games). His fine motor & perceptual reasoning activities are just reserved for free time/game reward time and aside from the Scribbles page and HWT these are NOT scheduled parts of his school day. He enjoys the games/activities, so we use them as a reward and unstructured playtime instead.
Whew! Are you as tired as I am now??? Our day actually flows much better now that we're rotating the Therapy Drawer activities instead of doing several of each every day. The Earobics software drills a lot of the same things I was drilling before, the handwriting and Scribbles pages both work fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination (oh yeah; he's also supposed to work on his hand-eye coordination), listening to stories out loud helps his reading/listening comprehension better than anything else could, etc. Once we are fully through the Kindergarten book for HWT, I will start the multiple reading curriculums with him. For now, on the reading front, we've got an ABC chart going around the walls in his bedroom, and we are working on learning sight words and creating opportunities for environmental print.
No, this doesn't mean environmentally friendly, it means print that he sees in his day to day environment. Since all signs, restaurants, billboards, and generally all print that he sees in the world around him is not in English, we have to label things in our home and create a word wall for him so that he can really start associating print/text with objects, realizing that letters make words, and words stand for things. One of the pitfalls of living internationally, and not something we anticipated.
Moving to literacy is going to be a slow, long road; a marathon, not a sprint. But with this plan, I do have hope; hope we'll get there, hope he will read, hope he might one day not need me to scribe for him when he "writes" all of his stories; hope for his success. More than hope, I have confidence. He can do this, and I can teach him how.
Once we had a diagnosis, names to put to all the things standing in the way of The Adventurer's ability to learn, we set out to find answers. Tools. Activities. A plan.
The Edu-Psych we used was an absolute gem in that regard; if any of my readers are in the Houston area and need an evaluation for their child, let me know, I will pass on her name and information. She was a treasure to us. She provided in her report not only a name for the problem, but also 13 pages of curriculum suggestions, adaptive technologies we should begin using, free activities I could do with The Adventurer at home, links to websites that have games and materials that can serve as therapeutic activities for him, and referrals for follow-up testing.
She also wrote out what accommodations he would need in a typical classroom setting, so that I would feel free to adapt and so that if we ever put him into a typical classroom, we will have the first step in place to getting him the help he needs. She gave us a plan, a plan that holds out hope. A plan that will lead to success.
It has taken me from September until now, early January, to turn all of her suggestions into a workable routine. I was, at first, very overwhelmed. There is a LOT that needs to be worked on. I laid all of that out in the last post, so I won't go over it again. Trust me when I say it has been a very daunting task, I have had many moments of panic and fear of failure. I have stared, weeping, into The Chemist's eyes and cried, "I can't do this" with a despair that made his heart ache as much as mine. Yet every time, he calmed me, reassured me, and directed me back to the materials, the curriculums, the activities that the Edu-Psych suggested and that we bought, and reminded me that yes, yes I can.
He's right. We have a name for what we're fighting. We have tools. Others have gone before and written curriculum and software and games that have been proven to work against this. We are not all alone, and we do have hope and a plan.
So, what is the plan? In a nutshell......
*he does a Scribbles page while I read Bible & History out-loud
*we do one activity from the Therapy Drawer
*I teach him the next math lesson in the book, and he does the assignment in the workbook
*we do another activity from the Therapy Drawer
*we do Handwriting Without Tears (HWT), cycling through the various hands-on activities
*he gets time for free play, usually with math manipulatives or handwriting manipulatives
*after this break, he does Computer School (aka, therapy software)
*and when he is done, he picks a fun game for a rewared
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| The Adventurer does school (shown: Handwriting Without Tears) He works in the kitchen. Quiet, with no distractions. I sit to his side, so we can be face to face while I read & give instructions, so he can watch my mouth while I talk, which helps his brain receive what I'm saying. |
Now, what does all of that mean???
Scribbles Pages --- this is a directed coloring book. What that means is that each 2-page spread has a one-sentence instruction across the top. Today, for example, he had "Who is looking out of the windows? Draw them." Below that was a house and a barn, with three empty windows showing. He drew a stick-figure person in one, a cat in another (with a trip to my kitchen window to show that the cat was standing on the windowsill), and a skeleton in the third window. This works his following directions skills as well as fine motor skills, and helps him to transition from Not School Time to School Time. Mostly this is transition, so he can get his brain into school mode.
 |
| skeleton is bottom left window; cute, huh? |
Math --- we use Singapore Math as his primary math, with Miquon sometimes thrown in, and LOTS of hands-on with math manipulatives. Counting bears, counting squares, linking cubes, gram/centimeter cubes, pattern blocks (with several sets of cards to use with them), Cuisenaire Rods, and Base 10 Unit Sticks (the little marked rods that show 1, 10, or 100). He is working through book 1B of Singapore right now, and Miquon Orange.
 |
| math book open (Singapore 1B), and pencil with pencil grip the pencil grip helps correct the dysgraphia (difficulty writing) that he also has |
HWT --- he is doing a quick pass through the PreK book (reviewing each letter, learning the HWT way of making each letter, reviewing sounds letters make, etc.) before moving on to the K level book. I expect we will spend roughly 5 to 7 weeks going through the PreK book before going forward.
 |
| the Handwriting Without Tears drawer still labeled as Math; I need to switch that We had to put labels up on things so he would have text in his environment that is also in English |
We follow a routine with this; Monday I show the Capital Letter Card for each letter we'll cover that week, and he uses the wooden pieces to make each one on the outline that is on the card. Tuesday he uses the mat to make the letters, only looking at the card if needed, then he traces some of the letters in the workbook. Wednesday he traces the remaining letters and uses play dough to make them (using the Roll-a-Dough kit). Thursday he draws each letter on a slate, with chalk, using the Wet-Dry-Try method as outlined in HWT. Friday we do the letter/picture matching that is on the back of each capital letter card and review what the lower case version looks like.
Computer School --- he is using a software called Earobics for help with his Auditory Processing and Phonemic Awareness; he will need to make serious progress in this before we begin the reading curriculums (yes, plural) that we will one day use to teach him to read. I will detail this in a later post, but basically it involves identifying rhyming sounds, are two sounds the same or different, does a spoken word contain a target sound, and learning to do all of those while background noise is masking the target sounds. The software auto-adjusts based on his proficiency.
Finally, what is in the Therapy Drawer?? I cycle through the activities in this drawer now; from September to December we did just these activities, 30 minutes a day of working on something from each category. That is while we were waiting on the curriculum to come in (mail takes a while from US to S. America). He likes rotating much better. Here's what we do, and what area each activity targets.
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| the therapy drawer |
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| assorted games, manipulatives, fine motor practice, and miscellany that he uses for free play time or game reward time |
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| the books and play dough storage he uses play dough as a free play/game reward; he doesn't realize it is also helping the fine motor/hand strength issues. |
Random Access Naming -- I keep a variety of flashcards in the drawer, and we do 2 minute drills. I show a card to The Adventurer, he names the object on the card, I write down how many objects he named in a 2 minute time span. This speeds up how long it takes his eyes to see something, his brain to get the message, and then send the name to his mouth, and his mouth to verbalize the answer.
When we started, he got 12 to 15 objects in a 1 minute period. He now gets over 50 in 2 minutes. For variety & double-duty, I use First Thousand Words (by Usborne); I have him quickly name all the objects that are around the page, then we play hide & seek, finding each object in the picture. That works his visual scanning/visual processing speed, yet feels like one activity.
Digit-Span -- this is a fancy name for "how many letters, numbers, words, or combo thereof can you remember if said to you in a row?" I use number flashcards and games for this. When we started, I would just go through saying the digits of all the family birthdays. It was exhausting to think up numbers. Flashcards are much easier; I pull 4 to 6 random cards, show them & say them (hiding them once shown), and then he has to repeat back to me the numbers I said. He is supposed to do this backwards, too, but we've not worked up to that yet. This is to strengthen his working memory.
For variety, I use games such as "I'm going to Grandma's, and I'm taking a ......" where I say one object, he repeats the phrase & my object, then adds his own object; I repeat the whole thing back to him and add a 3rd object, and so forth & so on. I also double this up by changing where we are going; another activity we're to do is "name things in a given category" so I will say "I went to the beach and I saw...." and everything we name has to be beach related. I love activities that can be double-duty.
Sequencing -- I bought a set of cards for this. I lay out 3 or 4 cards, each depicting a scene from an ordered bit of action (ex: a child on home plate, bat at the ready; child hitting the ball; child running away from home plate; child safely on 1st base) and he has to put them in order. We do 3 to 5 sets of cards per session, depending on his tolerance that day. This strengthens the foundation for story comprehension, works his visual scanning, and helps him order material which will carry over into listening and ordering when he hears a story.
Worksheets -- I print worksheets from www.edHelper.com (a subscription website), Highlights Kids.com (free), No-Glamour Memory book on CD (purchased CD) and assorted other places. Worksheets I print are to work on following directions, matching, visual scanning (hidden pictures, for example), listening skills (for example, I read a series of clues and he has to circle the correct picture), etc. Matching can be picture matching, number matching, number to set of objects, letter to letter, uppercase to lowercase, etc.
Matching -- he's supposed to work on matching, for visual processing issues. Aside from the worksheets, we do ABC bingo, Eye Spy matching cards, Memory games, Go Fish (using assorted cards, sometimes numbers, sometimes letters, sometimes pictures), Jr. Yahtzee (Mario version), Dwarves & Dice game, Teddy Bear Match-Up, Uno, and Dominoes. Variety, variety, variety.
Storytelling -- I bought Rory Story Cubes for this. This is to work on one of his strengths, as well as strengthen story comprehension. I choose a few of the dice, roll them, and he has to make up a picture using at least 2 of the pictures shown on the dice. I don't make him use more than that, because he's just starting. Usually though he is able to incorporate everything; he is a dramatic and very creative story teller, as long as he's in a story telling mood.
Sometimes I record his stories, type them up, print them in large fonts, and we use them for story time later. Again, to help with comprehension, listening, etc. and also to practice "reading" or pre-reading -- by following along, he learns to track, turn the page when we get to the end, and since he knows the story he can start to more easily connect the written words to the things I'm saying; suddenly, the type on the page means something, and that helps him realize he can pay attention to text around him.
Following Directions -- This is to help with auditory processing as well as working memory, and we mainly play games. Lots and lots of games.Simon Says. Mother May I. "Where's Wario?" (I tell him where to hide a toy; he has to hide it). Scavenger hunts (oral clues). I also made up a game where he has to tell me true or false and repeat after me; I say a sentence about our kitchen (or whatever room we're in), he has to listen, tell if it's true, and repeat back to me what I said. If I say something silly, I then say the true version and he repeats that.
He likes when I say totally nutty stuff, like "my mom is the most beautiful mom in the world!" He laughs and laughs and says "that's false!" until I correct it and say "My mom is kind of pretty" at which point he says, "hmmm, yes, that is true." (of course I am talking about his mom, not mine) (yes, that's a true story)
Fine Motor Skills --- for this he plays with play dough, does lacing cards, bead stringing, and colors things that require detail coloring. The HWT helps with this, as does the Scribbles book and using a pencil grip to write. These activities also help improve his visual-motor coordination (aka, hand-eye coordination).
 |
| drawing with & without the pencil grip each pair shows one with, one without, the pencil grip center: stick figure (L is with, R is without) top center: cup of water (L is with, R is without) bottom center: Christmas tree (L is with, R is without) right: House (top is with, bottom is without) left: cat (top is with, bottom is without) using the pencil grip makes a visible difference |
Perceptual Reasoning/Visual-Spatial Reasoning --- this is his biggest strength; he tested near the upper limits on this subtest. To help him stay challenged in this area and have time with one of his strengths, he has tangrams, pattern blocks, a geoboard with rubber bands and designs to copy, and various games that work with this (Rush Hour, and several other ThinkFun games). His fine motor & perceptual reasoning activities are just reserved for free time/game reward time and aside from the Scribbles page and HWT these are NOT scheduled parts of his school day. He enjoys the games/activities, so we use them as a reward and unstructured playtime instead.
Whew! Are you as tired as I am now??? Our day actually flows much better now that we're rotating the Therapy Drawer activities instead of doing several of each every day. The Earobics software drills a lot of the same things I was drilling before, the handwriting and Scribbles pages both work fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination (oh yeah; he's also supposed to work on his hand-eye coordination), listening to stories out loud helps his reading/listening comprehension better than anything else could, etc. Once we are fully through the Kindergarten book for HWT, I will start the multiple reading curriculums with him. For now, on the reading front, we've got an ABC chart going around the walls in his bedroom, and we are working on learning sight words and creating opportunities for environmental print.
No, this doesn't mean environmentally friendly, it means print that he sees in his day to day environment. Since all signs, restaurants, billboards, and generally all print that he sees in the world around him is not in English, we have to label things in our home and create a word wall for him so that he can really start associating print/text with objects, realizing that letters make words, and words stand for things. One of the pitfalls of living internationally, and not something we anticipated.
Moving to literacy is going to be a slow, long road; a marathon, not a sprint. But with this plan, I do have hope; hope we'll get there, hope he will read, hope he might one day not need me to scribe for him when he "writes" all of his stories; hope for his success. More than hope, I have confidence. He can do this, and I can teach him how.
Friday, January 11, 2013
A Day in the Life.....of a Middle-School Boy
I'm writing this Thursday night, so will just talk about it as "today" even though by the time you read this, it will be yesterday, 'kay? 'Kay.
Today, The Artist. Newly-turned age 12, he is in his 2nd semester of 6th grade. He is enrolled in Science & English via the same TTUISD that we use for The Writer; Science is a print-based course, meaning they sent us a PDF of the course syllabus & assignments and we type his answers and email them back (or, if we were in the US, we would mail them in). English is on-line and is done the same way as The Writer's courses; reading assignments are posted, he reads in a textbook and completes quizzes and worksheets on-line, and submits written assignments by typing them, saving them, then uploading them to the website.
The Artist also does Teaching Textbooks Math 6 and reads assorted history books; he is supposed to be doing World Geography, but I have seriously let that slide. The therapy stuff for The Adventurer really threw me for a loop, and most of my planning time from September to now has been used up with sorting out what all of the Psychologist's suggestions mean. I have not had time to be in charge of directing The Artist through a research based geography course, so instead have been handing him biographies to read and historical fiction about different time periods and parts of the world; thank goodness for all the leftover Sonlight books!
I've decided to save The Adventurer's routine for next week, so today, just a quick look at a day in the life of a middle school boy. Today his day involved a LOT of computer time. The boys rediscovered Civilization III last night, so he's been playing it basically every time he can convince me to let him on the computer. As I was fighting a sore throat and general blah feeling, and it was raining so outside activity was a definite no-go, he got let on the computer a lot.
Between Civ III sessions, though, he attempted to do research for a paper on volcanoes (for English, not Science) and despite 45 minutes of faithful effort, could not find the answers he needed. I decided I did not have enough brain power to direct his research, so told him I'd help him later. That no due date thing is a blessing. Or a curse. Whichever.
Instead of working on the paper, then, he had to write a 500 word essay on a hero in his life. I typed up the questions that his teacher wanted him to answer and left space between each so he could fill in a chart and organize his thoughts. Then I spent two hours helping him develop his thoughts into well-written, well-developed paragraphs. We managed to get from "My hero is my dad. He is good at Resident Evil, is very nice, and makes great apple pie" to a fairly good essay, though we did stop at 479 words because I just could not see how on earth to add those last 21 words to what we had. And after two hours, I was ready to quit. I uploaded the file, clicked submit, and crossed my fingers. Here's hoping the teacher likes it.
Aside from that, The Artist had one math lesson and read half a chapter of Science. Or, as he puts it, "two entire sections....." He did learn a lot about types of energy, though, and spent the rest of the afternoon telling me what types of energy exist in all the objects in our house. And which civilization he was going to conquer next. But I don't think that was from Science.
Oh, and he read. A lot. As he is never without a book (or his kindle), I forget to count that as school. He reads while he eats breakfast, reads while he eats lunch, reads between school assignments, reads out in the hammock in the afternoons, reads at night after going to bed......he is always reading. Right now he's reading through the original Boxcar Children series, as a 12-book set was recently free for Kindle. Right now he's advising his older brother on the best strategy for Civilization III......
Over the weekend (you don't have to stop by, but I'd love it if you do) I'll post up The Artist's essay, and hopefully his grade, so you can see what an average 6th grade boy writes and how it gets graded by an average school teacher; I will also share some quips and quotes from The Adventurer's past week just to give you a glimpse of who he is before I really get into his therapy needs. Monday (and probably a lot of next week) will be all about how a veteran home school mom can be totally caught off guard by something like a dyslexia diagnosis, what all therapies were suggested, what all we're doing, and how that fits into our day. In a country where every aspect of his therapy and remediation rests solely on me, because there simply are no options available to us in English otherwise.
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| The Artist, sipping some hot tea, and reading. Of course. |
The Artist also does Teaching Textbooks Math 6 and reads assorted history books; he is supposed to be doing World Geography, but I have seriously let that slide. The therapy stuff for The Adventurer really threw me for a loop, and most of my planning time from September to now has been used up with sorting out what all of the Psychologist's suggestions mean. I have not had time to be in charge of directing The Artist through a research based geography course, so instead have been handing him biographies to read and historical fiction about different time periods and parts of the world; thank goodness for all the leftover Sonlight books!
I've decided to save The Adventurer's routine for next week, so today, just a quick look at a day in the life of a middle school boy. Today his day involved a LOT of computer time. The boys rediscovered Civilization III last night, so he's been playing it basically every time he can convince me to let him on the computer. As I was fighting a sore throat and general blah feeling, and it was raining so outside activity was a definite no-go, he got let on the computer a lot.
Between Civ III sessions, though, he attempted to do research for a paper on volcanoes (for English, not Science) and despite 45 minutes of faithful effort, could not find the answers he needed. I decided I did not have enough brain power to direct his research, so told him I'd help him later. That no due date thing is a blessing. Or a curse. Whichever.
Instead of working on the paper, then, he had to write a 500 word essay on a hero in his life. I typed up the questions that his teacher wanted him to answer and left space between each so he could fill in a chart and organize his thoughts. Then I spent two hours helping him develop his thoughts into well-written, well-developed paragraphs. We managed to get from "My hero is my dad. He is good at Resident Evil, is very nice, and makes great apple pie" to a fairly good essay, though we did stop at 479 words because I just could not see how on earth to add those last 21 words to what we had. And after two hours, I was ready to quit. I uploaded the file, clicked submit, and crossed my fingers. Here's hoping the teacher likes it.
Aside from that, The Artist had one math lesson and read half a chapter of Science. Or, as he puts it, "two entire sections....." He did learn a lot about types of energy, though, and spent the rest of the afternoon telling me what types of energy exist in all the objects in our house. And which civilization he was going to conquer next. But I don't think that was from Science.
Oh, and he read. A lot. As he is never without a book (or his kindle), I forget to count that as school. He reads while he eats breakfast, reads while he eats lunch, reads between school assignments, reads out in the hammock in the afternoons, reads at night after going to bed......he is always reading. Right now he's reading through the original Boxcar Children series, as a 12-book set was recently free for Kindle. Right now he's advising his older brother on the best strategy for Civilization III......
Over the weekend (you don't have to stop by, but I'd love it if you do) I'll post up The Artist's essay, and hopefully his grade, so you can see what an average 6th grade boy writes and how it gets graded by an average school teacher; I will also share some quips and quotes from The Adventurer's past week just to give you a glimpse of who he is before I really get into his therapy needs. Monday (and probably a lot of next week) will be all about how a veteran home school mom can be totally caught off guard by something like a dyslexia diagnosis, what all therapies were suggested, what all we're doing, and how that fits into our day. In a country where every aspect of his therapy and remediation rests solely on me, because there simply are no options available to us in English otherwise.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
So, how does that on-line high school stuff work, anyway?
As I've mentioned, this year we enrolled The Writer in an on-line high school program. We chose TTUISD because it offers a certain flexibility that not all programs offer. This flexibility is both the best and the worst thing about the program. Best in that he has no due dates for anything, so we are free to take off when & why we want, no questions asked. The Chemist travels for work pretty often, and we sometimes go with him, so this was a big deal to us -- not to have our lives disrupted and heavily altered by having to follow a traditional school schedule.
But, worst, in that he has no due dates. The only due date is that each course expires 6 months after he enrolled, which means he must submit his final exam prior that date. That gives a lot of leeway, which we love, but it also means that it is far too easy to skip over harder projects and save them for later. If they have no due date, they can not be late; since they are never late, the only penalty he will suffer for this is that one day, it will be "later" and he'll have a stack of hard projects waiting for him.
Even with that, he's learning some excellent lessons in time management; already he had to work over Christmas break to catch up on some of those "saved for later" projects, and will have to work on a few of them over our upcoming trip with The Chemist, as well.
Beyond that, though, how does his course work? Well, his particular course has been described by others as a directed study course; he does not have any live on-line lectures, nor video lectures, at all. He has assigned reading, sometimes slide shows & videos (not of lectures), and assigned quizzes and worksheets that serve as measuring sticks to see how he's doing, as well as reinforcements to help him retain the information. He also has the aforementioned harder projects.
He is enrolled in 6 courses: Biology, Art, English, Health, World Geography, and Geometry; this is a full 9th grade schedule. Yesterday's schedule held the following:
Biology -- do workbook page 77 (20-odd questions over chapter 15)
Art -- do the self-evaluation questions about the prior Studio project
English -- take the quiz over Romeo & Juliet, Act II Quotes; read Act III in the modern text
Health -- do the chapter 22 vocabulary quiz
World Geography -- watch a video on Great Britain & the Industrial Revolution; do the accompanying quiz
Geometry -- do Chapter 3, section 7 (read section and complete assigned problems)
Now, this doesn't look like too much; that's because he spends Monday and Tuesday reading chapters, copying vocabulary, etc. and then usually has a lighter day on Wednesday, with Thursday & Friday holding more reading & vocabulary for the next chapter.
Now for the nitty gritty, how did that schedule play out....
10:00 -- wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, etc.
10:30 -- start school; do Biology workbook page and Health quiz
11:30 -- tell Mom I'm ready for one of the hard subjects, either Geometry, Art or English; Mom prints the Self-Evaluation form for Art, I fill it out.
12:00 -- start Geometry with mom
1:15 -- take a break to eat lunch (left over homemade steak fingers)
1:45 -- get back to Geometry. This slope of the line stuff is so not fun.
3:00 -- we have worked through the section and done 3 of the 12 assigned problems. Mom has to do school with The Adventurer and The Artist, so she makes me take a break and do my other work. I hate Geometry.
3:15 -- do the Romeo & Juliet quiz.
4:00-ish -- take a break to play with the dogs; it is pouring down rain, so can't take them for a walk; play with the squeaky toy instead.
4:15 or 4:30 -- watch the Geography video and try the quiz. Doesn't make sense; ask Mom for help. Find in the chapter where it talks about this stuff; now it makes sense. Finish quiz.
5:30 -- done with the quiz. Find mom; time to finish Geometry. Work through the remaining 9 problems.
6:50 -- finally done. Copy the Geometry problems that were done in pencil into the electronic notepad (that requires an electronic pen) that I have to use so I can submit my work.
7:30 -- done tracing/copying the problems. Finally. No more school for the day. Except I either have to read Act III tonight, or tomorrow......
I feel for him, I really do. Geometry is kicking our behinds. Like I mentioned yesterday, I'm good at math; he's good at math; we are not good at math together. I am wide open to suggestions there. We will finish this semester and next using this same program, but next year is Algebra II and then Trigonometry or PreCalculus. I need, desperately, to find something that has someone else as the teacher. Any suggestions?
UPDATE: I'm a dork. Turns out, the textbook that TTUISD assigned for Geometry actually has, right there in the margins of every single section of every single chapter, notes to Go Online for help. I've ignored those until now. I just discovered that the publisher has linked video tutorials, practice (interactive) activities, homework help, and basically everything I've spent the last 2 days looking for in an outside source, free (if you own their textbooks). We will begin utilizing this wonderful resource first thing Monday; I look forward to stress-reduced Geometry from now on. Even if it took me three entire chapters (and 12 weeks) to pay attention and discover this.
As for the rest....time consuming; yes. Partly because he is a perfectionist and gives his absolute best, 100% of the time. Always. Most days do not take quite this long, but just as I had an easy day the day before, he had a hard day on this day. Luckily the other courses were light so that the 4 hours of geometry was not a huge hindrance.
The awesome, amazing, makes me so very proud thing is, he never complains. Even during the geometry marathon, he keeps a good attitude and if he does get frustrated, he gets up, walks the dogs, grabs a snack, whatever. He doesn't take it out on me or on his brothers, and he has not once complained about the work load, at all. In fact, he has admitted he likes the heavier load; he finally feels he's being stretched and challenged, and this has been so very good for him.
Outside accountability, someone else grading his papers and affirming what I've always said, that he's very smart, has been wonderful as well. It's one thing to hear Mom say what a good writer you are; it's another thing to consistently earn grades of 100 on every writing assignment and project you turn in.
Will an on-line program like this be the right fit for every kid? No, of course not. But it has definitely been a perfect fit for The Writer. Except maybe the Geometry......
But, worst, in that he has no due dates. The only due date is that each course expires 6 months after he enrolled, which means he must submit his final exam prior that date. That gives a lot of leeway, which we love, but it also means that it is far too easy to skip over harder projects and save them for later. If they have no due date, they can not be late; since they are never late, the only penalty he will suffer for this is that one day, it will be "later" and he'll have a stack of hard projects waiting for him.
Even with that, he's learning some excellent lessons in time management; already he had to work over Christmas break to catch up on some of those "saved for later" projects, and will have to work on a few of them over our upcoming trip with The Chemist, as well.
Beyond that, though, how does his course work? Well, his particular course has been described by others as a directed study course; he does not have any live on-line lectures, nor video lectures, at all. He has assigned reading, sometimes slide shows & videos (not of lectures), and assigned quizzes and worksheets that serve as measuring sticks to see how he's doing, as well as reinforcements to help him retain the information. He also has the aforementioned harder projects.
 |
| The Writer, working on a Geography quiz the blue folder (open) in front has his weekly assignments, separated by day |
He is enrolled in 6 courses: Biology, Art, English, Health, World Geography, and Geometry; this is a full 9th grade schedule. Yesterday's schedule held the following:
Biology -- do workbook page 77 (20-odd questions over chapter 15)
Art -- do the self-evaluation questions about the prior Studio project
English -- take the quiz over Romeo & Juliet, Act II Quotes; read Act III in the modern text
Health -- do the chapter 22 vocabulary quiz
World Geography -- watch a video on Great Britain & the Industrial Revolution; do the accompanying quiz
Geometry -- do Chapter 3, section 7 (read section and complete assigned problems)
Now, this doesn't look like too much; that's because he spends Monday and Tuesday reading chapters, copying vocabulary, etc. and then usually has a lighter day on Wednesday, with Thursday & Friday holding more reading & vocabulary for the next chapter.
Now for the nitty gritty, how did that schedule play out....
10:00 -- wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, etc.
10:30 -- start school; do Biology workbook page and Health quiz
11:30 -- tell Mom I'm ready for one of the hard subjects, either Geometry, Art or English; Mom prints the Self-Evaluation form for Art, I fill it out.
12:00 -- start Geometry with mom
1:15 -- take a break to eat lunch (left over homemade steak fingers)
1:45 -- get back to Geometry. This slope of the line stuff is so not fun.
3:00 -- we have worked through the section and done 3 of the 12 assigned problems. Mom has to do school with The Adventurer and The Artist, so she makes me take a break and do my other work. I hate Geometry.
3:15 -- do the Romeo & Juliet quiz.
4:00-ish -- take a break to play with the dogs; it is pouring down rain, so can't take them for a walk; play with the squeaky toy instead.
4:15 or 4:30 -- watch the Geography video and try the quiz. Doesn't make sense; ask Mom for help. Find in the chapter where it talks about this stuff; now it makes sense. Finish quiz.
5:30 -- done with the quiz. Find mom; time to finish Geometry. Work through the remaining 9 problems.
6:50 -- finally done. Copy the Geometry problems that were done in pencil into the electronic notepad (that requires an electronic pen) that I have to use so I can submit my work.
7:30 -- done tracing/copying the problems. Finally. No more school for the day. Except I either have to read Act III tonight, or tomorrow......
 |
| ...and working on Geometry, despite The Adventurer's toys all over the kitchen table... |
I feel for him, I really do. Geometry is kicking our behinds. Like I mentioned yesterday, I'm good at math; he's good at math; we are not good at math together. I am wide open to suggestions there. We will finish this semester and next using this same program, but next year is Algebra II and then Trigonometry or PreCalculus. I need, desperately, to find something that has someone else as the teacher. Any suggestions?
UPDATE: I'm a dork. Turns out, the textbook that TTUISD assigned for Geometry actually has, right there in the margins of every single section of every single chapter, notes to Go Online for help. I've ignored those until now. I just discovered that the publisher has linked video tutorials, practice (interactive) activities, homework help, and basically everything I've spent the last 2 days looking for in an outside source, free (if you own their textbooks). We will begin utilizing this wonderful resource first thing Monday; I look forward to stress-reduced Geometry from now on. Even if it took me three entire chapters (and 12 weeks) to pay attention and discover this.
As for the rest....time consuming; yes. Partly because he is a perfectionist and gives his absolute best, 100% of the time. Always. Most days do not take quite this long, but just as I had an easy day the day before, he had a hard day on this day. Luckily the other courses were light so that the 4 hours of geometry was not a huge hindrance.
The awesome, amazing, makes me so very proud thing is, he never complains. Even during the geometry marathon, he keeps a good attitude and if he does get frustrated, he gets up, walks the dogs, grabs a snack, whatever. He doesn't take it out on me or on his brothers, and he has not once complained about the work load, at all. In fact, he has admitted he likes the heavier load; he finally feels he's being stretched and challenged, and this has been so very good for him.
Outside accountability, someone else grading his papers and affirming what I've always said, that he's very smart, has been wonderful as well. It's one thing to hear Mom say what a good writer you are; it's another thing to consistently earn grades of 100 on every writing assignment and project you turn in.
Will an on-line program like this be the right fit for every kid? No, of course not. But it has definitely been a perfect fit for The Writer. Except maybe the Geometry......
What the Mom Does....
Yesterday I shared a Semester Check-Up; today I'd like to share what things look like from the Mom side of things.
With three boys -- one in high school, one in middle school/jr. high, and one in elementary school but with learning challenges -- my job is primarily to remain flexible.
Like any stay-at-home mom I have the obvious jobs of running the household; cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. As a home school mom as well, I have the added job of educating my boys. Some days are easier than others, and honestly the last two days I've been blessed with rather easy days.
So how does that work, juggling household chores, supervising high school, supervising and helping with middle school, doing intense therapy/remedial school work with the youngest, and still have time for hobbies like reading and quilting? Yesterday looked something like this.....
I got up at the usual time, about 7, to spend a little time with The Chemist before he headed off to work. He gets up and lets the dogs out, I get up and feed them and start the coffee. Then we chat while he irons his shirt for the day (I do not iron. He is fine with this, because he is better at it than I am. Thank goodness.), have coffee together, and just enjoy a quiet half-hour when we can pretend to be just the same in love couple we've been since high school, and for that little moment, focus on each other as people instead of mom, dad, etc. Have to admit, it's my favorite half hour of the day, chatting over coffee with my husband.
By 7:45 or so, he's out the door, The Adventurer is up and asking for a movie, and I am able to start my morning routine. I settle The Adventurer on the couch for a movie while the older boys are still asleep, then I settle in to my computer chair, coffee in hand, and surf the 'net for a while. I check email, write any replies to things that have come in over night (time zones and all that...), check Facebook, browse a forum or two and read blogs, then stop by and update my own blogs. Usually I'm interrupted a time or two, and yesterday was no different -- once to fix cereal for The Adventurer, once to kill a wasp that had gotten in the house, once for water to cure his hiccups, and 2 or 3 times to quiet the dogs, busy barking at the gardener next door.
By 10:00, The Adventurer's movie is long over and his patience and ability to keep playing, ALONE, is long gone. As we're still recovering from too many late nights during Christmas break, I went and woke up the older boys (Monday they slept past 11!) and then headed to my sewing room to do some organizing. Quite a pile of scraps had accumulated there over the break, so I organized things, folded the larger pieces, tossed the odds & ends into my scrap bucket, found the next pattern I needed to start and cut the fabric for that, went through my blues, purples & aquas to select fabrics for the next next thing, etc. A few interruptions here, too, as I broke up an argument between The Artist and The Adventurer, opened the door now that the gardener was done both next door and had come and gone from our yard, too, and put more juice in the fridge so we'd have some cold in time for lunch.
While I was doing this, The Writer was started on school work and the other boys were playing together. I allow them play time in the mornings as they do not work well first thing; none of us is morning people, and all of us need time to come fully awake before doing things that take brain power, so until such time as school no longer fits in that time slot, they are allowed to wait and start after lunch.
For lunch yesterday I heated up frozen chicken patties. I really need to find a healthier alternative to these, but they are quick, easy, and everyone likes them; I cut mine up into a salad, but the boys eat them plain. They cook slowly which gives me time to sneak a chapter or three of whatever book I'm reading, too, and still not burn them, which is nice.
After lunch is when my day begins to get hectic. The Writer is almost 100% independent, so I just sort of keep tabs on what subject he's on and make sure he is, in fact, progressing through his day; The Artist requires a bit of direction and of course The Adventurer receives the lion's share of my time and attention as far as school goes.
So, after lunch I directed The Artist to do his English first, not his math. Reason being, we were in the midst of a thunder storm and power could go out at any moment; if it did, the internet would go down and may or may not come back up. Better to get the internet-dependent school over & done with first, while he still could, just in case. He balked a little at this change in routine (he prefers to do math first, as he enjoys it far less), but agreed and got started. In the little time that elapsed during this discussion, The Adventurer had fallen asleep on the couch. I took advantage of this unexpected free time to start the sewing project, but it was much interrupted.
That done, I went back to sewing. Until "Mom......I'm done...." Nope, son, sorry, you still have to do math. Yes, really. Yes, just the evens, now get going.
Back to sewing. Oh, except, then The Adventurer was awake, but very grumpy, so I went to take care of him.
The Adventurer has a pretty intense amount of school, most of it in the form of various therapies. Because these are therapies, they are not always easy and comfortable for him. Like a lot of kids, he gets frustrated when work is too hard, so starting with an already grumpy boy makes things difficult. I cannot complete his therapy and school work if he does not cooperate. Yesterday looked like it might be one of those days, but I opened his first activity, a directed coloring book, to a random page and got lucky. This coloring page asked him to "save the little fish" and showed a drawing of a small fish with a very angry looking shark nearby; his job was to draw something that would keep the little fish from being eaten. This appealed to his boyhood sense of being a hero, cheered him right up and we were able to have a pretty good session. Until....
"Mom, I don't understand this math problem...." came from the school room; I left The Adventurer playing with pick-up-sticks and went to check on The Artist. I drew him a visual of what it might look like to start with a 34 foot log and then break off first a 9 foot section, leaving behind a log of what length? and then cut off a 12 foot section from that, and with the drawing he was able to find the answers to how long the 3rd and final piece was. Whew. Back to The Adventurer.....
A few more interruptions due to dogs, The Artist looking for a book to read (after math, he really was done), The Writer asking could he take the dogs for their walk (and that is quite the ordeal, because our oldest dog is very particular about how she gets leashed up and such, or she won't go....), The Adventurer needed a snack and a drink, etc. Up and down, up and down, and finally we got through all the interruptions and all the school/therapy stuff we needed to do for the day.
By this time it was close to 4:30, and The Writer had not yet asked for help on Geometry. Hmmm. Oh, wait, he decided on Monday that he'd try reading the chapter alone, then come to me only if he needed help; okay. Done then with my Artist and Adventurer school duties, I washed up the dishes and then went back to sew some more. I was only working on one single 12" quilt square, and not even half way done due to all the school stuff; I was hopeful I'd be able to finish (I didn't). About this time, The Chemist called to say he was heading home (well, it was 5-ish by then..), The Writer came out to say he needed some help with Geometry, so I sat with him and went over that. I showed him an example of how to work each of the first four problems, made sure he understood what to do (he said he did), and sent him back to his room to do them, then I'd check them, read the 2nd half of the chapter and help with the last problems as needed.
With The hemist on the way home I figured I'd better do a little straightening up, just after I finished this one little part on the sewing project.......if you sew, you know what happened; I kept sewing, and just like that, The Chemist was home. Oops. It was also at this point that The Writer came out of his room, still not done with Geometry (folks, by now it was after 6 p.m.) and asked what he had to do today for Art and English. What??? He hadn't done either one yet??? (nope). -sigh-
I walked with him to his assignment folder, where everything for every day of the next six weeks is clearly laid out, day by day. I looked at what was listed for English, and what had and had not been checked off on Monday; discovered he had a quiz to do. Six o'clock in the evening is not a good time for him to try and work through a quiz analyzing quotes from Romeo & Juliet, and his Wednesday list was pretty brief, so I allowed him to shift the quiz to Wednesday, to be done along with the regular Wednesday stuff.
Flipped back to last week's art, where he'd stalled out; found the Art Criticism assignment, printed it for him, handed him the sheet of questions and the book and out he went to the back patio while I chatted with The Chemist about how our days went, allowed the younger boys some Nintendo time, did the straightening up I'd neglected while sewing, etc.
By 6:45 I found The Writer still sitting on the patio, one of four answers done. Sigh. I took the book from him and asked the questions out loud; he answered, I wrote. I "translated" some of the questions into plain English instead of Art-ese, which helped. Handed him back the book so he could "think about it in an emotional way" and answer the remaining questions about the emotional response to the drawing, then went inside to help The Chemist start dinner. At which point The Writer confessed to still not having finished Geometry, so he brought that into the kitchen, I walked him through the assignment and The Chemist cooked dinner.
That part would have been comical if not so frustrating. The Writer had 12 problems to do, so I worked an odd problem as an example (his were all evens) and had him follow along, then had him do the even that corresponded. In between, The Chemist was asking advice on how to do the mashed potatoes, I was doing more dishes, The Writer kept getting tripped up (slope intercept and such, y'all; not fun). This half hour/forty-five minutes was probably my least favorite of the day -- I am not the best multi-tasker, so Geometry, dishes and dinner prep all at once was just a smidge overwhelming for me. The main problem being the Geometry.
I understand math and am relatively good at it; The Writer understands math and is pretty talented at it. We do not, however, learn math the same way, so the way I teach math is not the way he best learns math. This is why I keep trying to outsource it. His on-line program though does not have live lectures (or even recorded ones), so I am still teaching Geometry, even though someone else is grading it. We are thinking that next year, we need to find something with an actual outside teacher for math, for The Writer's sake and mine.
Finally at 8:00 we were done cooking, done Geometry'ing, and could sit down, eat dinner, watch a little TV, do a little more sewing, and just enjoy the evening. Whew! Notice that yesterday did not include any laundry or deep cleaning; I should have done a load of laundry but did not, and we do our deep cleaning on Fridays, period. The other days I only sweep as needed and do things like dishes and clean up spills.
Come back tomorrow for a look at what The Writer's day looks like, a freshman in high school using an on-line program. Friday will be The Artist's day & The Adventurer's day (I'll combine those, as neither of them takes a full day), and next week I'll share what it's like to take school on the road when Dad has a business trip.
With three boys -- one in high school, one in middle school/jr. high, and one in elementary school but with learning challenges -- my job is primarily to remain flexible.
Like any stay-at-home mom I have the obvious jobs of running the household; cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. As a home school mom as well, I have the added job of educating my boys. Some days are easier than others, and honestly the last two days I've been blessed with rather easy days.
So how does that work, juggling household chores, supervising high school, supervising and helping with middle school, doing intense therapy/remedial school work with the youngest, and still have time for hobbies like reading and quilting? Yesterday looked something like this.....
I got up at the usual time, about 7, to spend a little time with The Chemist before he headed off to work. He gets up and lets the dogs out, I get up and feed them and start the coffee. Then we chat while he irons his shirt for the day (I do not iron. He is fine with this, because he is better at it than I am. Thank goodness.), have coffee together, and just enjoy a quiet half-hour when we can pretend to be just the same in love couple we've been since high school, and for that little moment, focus on each other as people instead of mom, dad, etc. Have to admit, it's my favorite half hour of the day, chatting over coffee with my husband.
By 7:45 or so, he's out the door, The Adventurer is up and asking for a movie, and I am able to start my morning routine. I settle The Adventurer on the couch for a movie while the older boys are still asleep, then I settle in to my computer chair, coffee in hand, and surf the 'net for a while. I check email, write any replies to things that have come in over night (time zones and all that...), check Facebook, browse a forum or two and read blogs, then stop by and update my own blogs. Usually I'm interrupted a time or two, and yesterday was no different -- once to fix cereal for The Adventurer, once to kill a wasp that had gotten in the house, once for water to cure his hiccups, and 2 or 3 times to quiet the dogs, busy barking at the gardener next door.
By 10:00, The Adventurer's movie is long over and his patience and ability to keep playing, ALONE, is long gone. As we're still recovering from too many late nights during Christmas break, I went and woke up the older boys (Monday they slept past 11!) and then headed to my sewing room to do some organizing. Quite a pile of scraps had accumulated there over the break, so I organized things, folded the larger pieces, tossed the odds & ends into my scrap bucket, found the next pattern I needed to start and cut the fabric for that, went through my blues, purples & aquas to select fabrics for the next next thing, etc. A few interruptions here, too, as I broke up an argument between The Artist and The Adventurer, opened the door now that the gardener was done both next door and had come and gone from our yard, too, and put more juice in the fridge so we'd have some cold in time for lunch.
While I was doing this, The Writer was started on school work and the other boys were playing together. I allow them play time in the mornings as they do not work well first thing; none of us is morning people, and all of us need time to come fully awake before doing things that take brain power, so until such time as school no longer fits in that time slot, they are allowed to wait and start after lunch.
For lunch yesterday I heated up frozen chicken patties. I really need to find a healthier alternative to these, but they are quick, easy, and everyone likes them; I cut mine up into a salad, but the boys eat them plain. They cook slowly which gives me time to sneak a chapter or three of whatever book I'm reading, too, and still not burn them, which is nice.
After lunch is when my day begins to get hectic. The Writer is almost 100% independent, so I just sort of keep tabs on what subject he's on and make sure he is, in fact, progressing through his day; The Artist requires a bit of direction and of course The Adventurer receives the lion's share of my time and attention as far as school goes.
So, after lunch I directed The Artist to do his English first, not his math. Reason being, we were in the midst of a thunder storm and power could go out at any moment; if it did, the internet would go down and may or may not come back up. Better to get the internet-dependent school over & done with first, while he still could, just in case. He balked a little at this change in routine (he prefers to do math first, as he enjoys it far less), but agreed and got started. In the little time that elapsed during this discussion, The Adventurer had fallen asleep on the couch. I took advantage of this unexpected free time to start the sewing project, but it was much interrupted.
"Mom, I need your help answering these questions. You might have to read the story first."And we tackled the questions, me explaining both how to pronounce hyperbole (no, it's not hyper-bowl) and what they are; him finding examples on the given pages and then writing a short paragraph on why authors of tall tales use them.
"What's the story?"
"Pecos Bill."
"Oh, no, I've read it before; let's look at the questions....."
"You mean it's an old story...?"
(did he just imply I'm old???) "Yep; been around even longer than me....."
That done, I went back to sewing. Until "Mom......I'm done...." Nope, son, sorry, you still have to do math. Yes, really. Yes, just the evens, now get going.
Back to sewing. Oh, except, then The Adventurer was awake, but very grumpy, so I went to take care of him.
The Adventurer has a pretty intense amount of school, most of it in the form of various therapies. Because these are therapies, they are not always easy and comfortable for him. Like a lot of kids, he gets frustrated when work is too hard, so starting with an already grumpy boy makes things difficult. I cannot complete his therapy and school work if he does not cooperate. Yesterday looked like it might be one of those days, but I opened his first activity, a directed coloring book, to a random page and got lucky. This coloring page asked him to "save the little fish" and showed a drawing of a small fish with a very angry looking shark nearby; his job was to draw something that would keep the little fish from being eaten. This appealed to his boyhood sense of being a hero, cheered him right up and we were able to have a pretty good session. Until....
"Mom, I don't understand this math problem...." came from the school room; I left The Adventurer playing with pick-up-sticks and went to check on The Artist. I drew him a visual of what it might look like to start with a 34 foot log and then break off first a 9 foot section, leaving behind a log of what length? and then cut off a 12 foot section from that, and with the drawing he was able to find the answers to how long the 3rd and final piece was. Whew. Back to The Adventurer.....
A few more interruptions due to dogs, The Artist looking for a book to read (after math, he really was done), The Writer asking could he take the dogs for their walk (and that is quite the ordeal, because our oldest dog is very particular about how she gets leashed up and such, or she won't go....), The Adventurer needed a snack and a drink, etc. Up and down, up and down, and finally we got through all the interruptions and all the school/therapy stuff we needed to do for the day.
By this time it was close to 4:30, and The Writer had not yet asked for help on Geometry. Hmmm. Oh, wait, he decided on Monday that he'd try reading the chapter alone, then come to me only if he needed help; okay. Done then with my Artist and Adventurer school duties, I washed up the dishes and then went back to sew some more. I was only working on one single 12" quilt square, and not even half way done due to all the school stuff; I was hopeful I'd be able to finish (I didn't). About this time, The Chemist called to say he was heading home (well, it was 5-ish by then..), The Writer came out to say he needed some help with Geometry, so I sat with him and went over that. I showed him an example of how to work each of the first four problems, made sure he understood what to do (he said he did), and sent him back to his room to do them, then I'd check them, read the 2nd half of the chapter and help with the last problems as needed.
With The hemist on the way home I figured I'd better do a little straightening up, just after I finished this one little part on the sewing project.......if you sew, you know what happened; I kept sewing, and just like that, The Chemist was home. Oops. It was also at this point that The Writer came out of his room, still not done with Geometry (folks, by now it was after 6 p.m.) and asked what he had to do today for Art and English. What??? He hadn't done either one yet??? (nope). -sigh-
I walked with him to his assignment folder, where everything for every day of the next six weeks is clearly laid out, day by day. I looked at what was listed for English, and what had and had not been checked off on Monday; discovered he had a quiz to do. Six o'clock in the evening is not a good time for him to try and work through a quiz analyzing quotes from Romeo & Juliet, and his Wednesday list was pretty brief, so I allowed him to shift the quiz to Wednesday, to be done along with the regular Wednesday stuff.
Flipped back to last week's art, where he'd stalled out; found the Art Criticism assignment, printed it for him, handed him the sheet of questions and the book and out he went to the back patio while I chatted with The Chemist about how our days went, allowed the younger boys some Nintendo time, did the straightening up I'd neglected while sewing, etc.
By 6:45 I found The Writer still sitting on the patio, one of four answers done. Sigh. I took the book from him and asked the questions out loud; he answered, I wrote. I "translated" some of the questions into plain English instead of Art-ese, which helped. Handed him back the book so he could "think about it in an emotional way" and answer the remaining questions about the emotional response to the drawing, then went inside to help The Chemist start dinner. At which point The Writer confessed to still not having finished Geometry, so he brought that into the kitchen, I walked him through the assignment and The Chemist cooked dinner.
That part would have been comical if not so frustrating. The Writer had 12 problems to do, so I worked an odd problem as an example (his were all evens) and had him follow along, then had him do the even that corresponded. In between, The Chemist was asking advice on how to do the mashed potatoes, I was doing more dishes, The Writer kept getting tripped up (slope intercept and such, y'all; not fun). This half hour/forty-five minutes was probably my least favorite of the day -- I am not the best multi-tasker, so Geometry, dishes and dinner prep all at once was just a smidge overwhelming for me. The main problem being the Geometry.
I understand math and am relatively good at it; The Writer understands math and is pretty talented at it. We do not, however, learn math the same way, so the way I teach math is not the way he best learns math. This is why I keep trying to outsource it. His on-line program though does not have live lectures (or even recorded ones), so I am still teaching Geometry, even though someone else is grading it. We are thinking that next year, we need to find something with an actual outside teacher for math, for The Writer's sake and mine.
Finally at 8:00 we were done cooking, done Geometry'ing, and could sit down, eat dinner, watch a little TV, do a little more sewing, and just enjoy the evening. Whew! Notice that yesterday did not include any laundry or deep cleaning; I should have done a load of laundry but did not, and we do our deep cleaning on Fridays, period. The other days I only sweep as needed and do things like dishes and clean up spills.
Come back tomorrow for a look at what The Writer's day looks like, a freshman in high school using an on-line program. Friday will be The Artist's day & The Adventurer's day (I'll combine those, as neither of them takes a full day), and next week I'll share what it's like to take school on the road when Dad has a business trip.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Welcome! Who we are, and how we got here....
So, who are we, and how do we home school?
If you've clicked over from our family blog, this is all old news to you. But if you've clicked over from somewhere else, let me introduce us. You can read through the blogs labeled "Home School Routine" and that will give you an idea of who we've been over the years, but as our home school has changed a great deal in the last 12 or so months, what you'll read there is more history and not so much current events. So who are we today? And how did we get here?
Well, it all started when my oldest son was only 3.5 years old. He wanted to learn to spell, and didn't understand why the letter A could say different things, such as in apple vs. able. Not knowing what else to do, I called my aunt who home schooled and she suggested we start phonics work. I bought Explode the Code pre-Code books (Get Ready, Get Set, and Go for the Code) and he dove in, happy to have something telling him the rules for letters, sounds, spelling and reading. Before that year was out, I'd bought our first full curriculum (Sonlight's then K level Core, which used to be called Basic....) and he had typed a story. I'll have to dig it up and post it sometime....
By the time he was Kindergarten aged (nearly 6, because of cut-off dates and a fall birthday), he was reading at a 3rd grade level, doing math at a 2nd grade level, knew a ton of science stuff and history and I knew that a traditional Kindergarten classroom would bore him. So we kept doing what we'd been doing and entered the official world of home schoolers.
A few years later his younger brother was ready for school, so I just added him in, passing down the books we'd used with my oldest. He didn't quite take off with reading in the same way and was almost 7 before he moved from leveled readers to beginner books like Frog and Toad. Once he started, though, he never looked back.
That year, and the 2 or 3 years after, was hectic. Our youngest son was born nine weeks early and spent seven weeks in a NICU several hours from our home. Once he was finally home, he had various therapists who came to the house every other week to work with him. And he never napped. At all. And he didn't understand boundaries. At all. He climbed things (like bookshelves and tables) before he could even walk. So for about three years, we did as little formal school as possible, scraping by with the bare minimum, the most necessary of necessities.
Then we moved. To a different country. Where home schooling wasn't really heard of, at all, and was almost kind of sort of not really okay. Luckily, by this time, the youngest was calming down some and so we could do more than the bare minimum. More luckily, when we informally tested our boys just to check, they scored around the 85th percentile on standardized tests for their grade levels, even after nearly three years of bare minimum schooling. For the first four-ish years then we scooted along, still doing what we'd always done, only alone.
Then "kind of sort of not really okay" became "definitely not okay" and we had to change things. As of this past year, we enrolled the oldest in an on-line private school for his first year of high school. We enrolled the middle son into 2 classes at the same on-line school, for his first year of middle school (and will increase that each year until he has a full course load as well). And we had the youngest evaluated for dyslexia as, at 7.5 yrs old he still couldn't always remember what sounds each letter made, let alone put them together into words.
So here we are now. The boys are now 15, 12 and nearly 8. I oversee the work of the oldest, just making sure he stays on schedule with things. He is earning As and high Bs in all his courses. I oversee the middle boy's work -- two on-line classes (English and Science), one at home computer course (math), and do minimal teaching (history/geography) but he's mostly self-directed. He is earning As in all of his computer based courses and I don't grade geography. And I've just started a very intense program with the youngest to help move him towards literacy, per the suggestions of the Educational Psychologist who evaluated him. She helped me work up a curriculum plan, and we all have high hopes that he will, in fact, learn to read one day.
My/our home school today looks vastly different than I ever imagined it would, but it keeps with my philosophy of meeting each child where he needs. Each boy is thriving in his own way and getting exactly what he needs right now, to the best of our ability to provide it. Even if it's coming mostly from textbooks now instead of Sonlight books, which is not something I ever thought would happen.
So, that's us. Who we are, what our school looks like now, and how we got here. Follow along and watch where we're going next.......
Friday, September 28, 2012
What our (not so home) School looks like this year....
In the month or so I've been catching up the blog with posts about our Texas trip, life here at the ReaderChemist household has marched on, so now I've got various things to share about what's been going on.
The biggest news is school -- The Writer is officially A Freshman this year. Wow. He's enrolled in TTUISD's on-line program, which has taken us some getting used to but is mostly good. There's one class and teacher that I am not thrilled with, but his other five courses seem to be very good with teachers who have obviously put a lot into their classes.
The set-up for a TTUISD course is not like K12, which is what everyone thinks we're using. There are no live lectures (or even video lectures), no chat rooms or on-line tutoring sessions. There is, instead, an on-line listing of assignments for each class, with as little or as much extra information as the individual teacher wishes to supply. For some of The Writer's classes, that's been quite a lot. For others, it's been barely enough to manage the assignments.
Challenges and all, though, The Writer is doing very well. He's just finished his second week and we're still tweaking things like pace and schedule of course work, but he's tolerating it nicely. I won't quite say enjoying it, because the longer day is a bit of a drag, but he is thriving academically which is nice. It's a bit of an affirmation to put your always homeschooled student into an outside high school program and see him handling the work load with ease, making 100 after 100 on the quizzes and assignments he's submitted thus far. It's a bit of a joy, too, to watch and see that his work ethic doesn't waver even in the face of lost free time. I am so proud of the student he is, of the man he's becoming.
The Artist is taking one class thus far from TTUISD, and we're waiting (rather impatiently) for his second course to be uploaded so we can officially enroll him. The plan was for him to take Science and English from TTUISD (and continue with math, geography, and extra reading at home), but the English class hasn't yet been released. I'll be working on a schedule this weekend that he can use to begin working through the textbook, just in case. Meanwhile, he is powering through his other course work. He's got all 100s in math so far, has finished the first section of a study on Africa, is reading The Hobbit (with thanks to his M friend for some needed encouragement), has improved his cursive dramatically and is zooming through a vocabulary workbook as well. He's had The Chemist help him with a few science experiments and is enjoying the material for that class quite a bit. We submit his first set of assignments today, once I figure out the exact procedure for his class, and I'm proud of the work he'll be turning in. Bar graphs, lab reports, quizzes....he is doing a fantastic job.
The Adventurer is surprising me with his attention span. We've taken a very gentle approach to most of his school subjects the past few years as we focused on helping him learn to read. This year he's got a full course load --- history, Bible, science, math, and read-alouds (aka, story time). We will add in reading lessons soon; I'm still formulating a plan for how to effectively teach him to read. On the other stuff, though, he's thriving and blowing me away. We start with math -- he uses Miquon math which has a hands-on component (Cuisenaire rods) -- and then he plays with the math manipulatives while I read to him from a history book, then a bible story, then his science book. He listens throughout, interrupting with questions at least once per subject. He even comes to me later in the day, or sometimes a day or two later, to ask follow-up questions about what we studied, which shows me he's not only paying attention, he's also retaining what he hears. Later in the day, when he is struggling with boredom because his brothers are still doing school, we stop and read a story. I planned to read him a chapter per day; he's asked for no fewer than three chapters per day and so we've finished two books already and are three chapters into our third. Two weeks into the school year. (so far, we have read George's Marvelous Medicine, by Roald Dahl, and Capyboppy, by Bill Peet; currently we are reading My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannet).
I am mostly enjoying the role of overseer instead of teacher; I no longer have to sit and supervise every single subject, which frees me to focus on The Adventurer, and to sew. It's odd, this feeling of having more free time in the day, even while my boys have less. Of course, that means I no longer have an excuse when I forget to do the dishes, but at least I'm getting more sewing done! That has to count for something, right???
All in all, a good first two weeks. I look forward to what the rest of the year has in store.
The biggest news is school -- The Writer is officially A Freshman this year. Wow. He's enrolled in TTUISD's on-line program, which has taken us some getting used to but is mostly good. There's one class and teacher that I am not thrilled with, but his other five courses seem to be very good with teachers who have obviously put a lot into their classes.
The set-up for a TTUISD course is not like K12, which is what everyone thinks we're using. There are no live lectures (or even video lectures), no chat rooms or on-line tutoring sessions. There is, instead, an on-line listing of assignments for each class, with as little or as much extra information as the individual teacher wishes to supply. For some of The Writer's classes, that's been quite a lot. For others, it's been barely enough to manage the assignments.
Challenges and all, though, The Writer is doing very well. He's just finished his second week and we're still tweaking things like pace and schedule of course work, but he's tolerating it nicely. I won't quite say enjoying it, because the longer day is a bit of a drag, but he is thriving academically which is nice. It's a bit of an affirmation to put your always homeschooled student into an outside high school program and see him handling the work load with ease, making 100 after 100 on the quizzes and assignments he's submitted thus far. It's a bit of a joy, too, to watch and see that his work ethic doesn't waver even in the face of lost free time. I am so proud of the student he is, of the man he's becoming.
The Artist is taking one class thus far from TTUISD, and we're waiting (rather impatiently) for his second course to be uploaded so we can officially enroll him. The plan was for him to take Science and English from TTUISD (and continue with math, geography, and extra reading at home), but the English class hasn't yet been released. I'll be working on a schedule this weekend that he can use to begin working through the textbook, just in case. Meanwhile, he is powering through his other course work. He's got all 100s in math so far, has finished the first section of a study on Africa, is reading The Hobbit (with thanks to his M friend for some needed encouragement), has improved his cursive dramatically and is zooming through a vocabulary workbook as well. He's had The Chemist help him with a few science experiments and is enjoying the material for that class quite a bit. We submit his first set of assignments today, once I figure out the exact procedure for his class, and I'm proud of the work he'll be turning in. Bar graphs, lab reports, quizzes....he is doing a fantastic job.
The Adventurer is surprising me with his attention span. We've taken a very gentle approach to most of his school subjects the past few years as we focused on helping him learn to read. This year he's got a full course load --- history, Bible, science, math, and read-alouds (aka, story time). We will add in reading lessons soon; I'm still formulating a plan for how to effectively teach him to read. On the other stuff, though, he's thriving and blowing me away. We start with math -- he uses Miquon math which has a hands-on component (Cuisenaire rods) -- and then he plays with the math manipulatives while I read to him from a history book, then a bible story, then his science book. He listens throughout, interrupting with questions at least once per subject. He even comes to me later in the day, or sometimes a day or two later, to ask follow-up questions about what we studied, which shows me he's not only paying attention, he's also retaining what he hears. Later in the day, when he is struggling with boredom because his brothers are still doing school, we stop and read a story. I planned to read him a chapter per day; he's asked for no fewer than three chapters per day and so we've finished two books already and are three chapters into our third. Two weeks into the school year. (so far, we have read George's Marvelous Medicine, by Roald Dahl, and Capyboppy, by Bill Peet; currently we are reading My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannet).
I am mostly enjoying the role of overseer instead of teacher; I no longer have to sit and supervise every single subject, which frees me to focus on The Adventurer, and to sew. It's odd, this feeling of having more free time in the day, even while my boys have less. Of course, that means I no longer have an excuse when I forget to do the dishes, but at least I'm getting more sewing done! That has to count for something, right???
All in all, a good first two weeks. I look forward to what the rest of the year has in store.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
What Will School Look Like This Year.....?
My friend Mindy over at Grateful for Grace is talking about school curriculum choices, and while I already mentioned that we're using an on-line school for the boys I thought I'd go into a bit of detail about what that will look like. I know you've been burning with curiosity, right???
The Writer, who begins 9th Grade this fall, will enroll in six courses from Texas Tech University's on-line high school program (TTUISD). His schedule will include:
The Writer, who begins 9th Grade this fall, will enroll in six courses from Texas Tech University's on-line high school program (TTUISD). His schedule will include:
- English I -- this will encompass literature, grammar, vocabulary, etc. He will still read other books for fun &/or at my direction as well.
- Biology -- study of living things. Should be interesting.
- Geometry -- he's finished up Algebra I this year so will move onto Geometry (he needs a break before going to Algebra II, though I've honestly never understood why we split up the Algebras and put Geometry in the middle....). He's excited to have a math that is NOT Algebra, though, so that works for me.
- World Geography -- he was hoping for US History, but the great state of TX puts freshmen in Geography; as he will enroll in the full-time program next year, which involves all that end of year testing stuff, he needs to take the history courses in order. He is, however, excited to know that World Geography focuses on different things than World History (which he's just finished 2 years of), so it should be a good year.
- Health -- a pretty basic health course. I haven't seen the text yet, so not sure what all it covers. I remember my public school health class as being fascinating, so I hope he enjoys this.
- Art I -- Texas requires a fine art credit, and he couldn't decide between Art, Music History, or Theater. As the Theater course required watching various DVDs, videos and even a real play -- things we weren't sure we could locate here in Brazil -- we suggested he take Art. He likes to draw (I am, after all, making a quilt showcasing his comic strips) and is hoping to improve through this course; while it's an on-line course, he will have projects and have to submit photos via email, so it should be a lot of fun.
A pretty full schedule, and using all textbooks, which is new. He's used a textbook based math & science this past year, so it won't be totally foreign to him, which is good. He is looking forward to being challenged; he complained this year that, aside from Algebra, his coursework was too easy. Hopefully this will keep him busy, challenged, engaged. I love that he is maturing to the point where he recognizes that working hard is good for him and he'd rather push himself than coast through life. He definitely inherited his father's work ethic.
The Artist, who begins 6th Grade in the fall, will be taking a few on-line courses and a few at-home courses as we transition him into junior high/middle school. His line-up looks like this:
- TTUISD: English 6 -- this 6th grade English course encompasses reading, grammar, vocabulary, etc. He, too, will still read for fun; not that we often see him without a book or three around anyway. I don't think we could stop him from reading if we tried. A boy after my own heart! I so love that....
- TTUISD: Science 6 -- a general 6th grade science course. Science is my weakest area, and while it is a strong subject for The Chemist (he didn't get that nickname by accident), his job keeps him too busy to spend time doing actual, consistent teaching like he used to when the boys were younger. Out-sourcing this class just makes sense.
- At Home: Math 6 -- Teaching Textbooks again. I love that this allows the boys to be independent in math. As I need to devote more and more time to The Adventurer, I can trust that The Artist is getting proper math instruction (via CD-Rom tutor) even when I'm not the one explaining how to do things.
- At Home: World Geography -- although he will repeat this in 9th grade, I had already bought a great program and so want to go ahead and use it. With both older boys studying Geography, I hope they can help & encourage one another as they learn the countries, landmarks, rivers, etc. The Writer will use the State of TX approved text; The Artist will use Around the World in 180 Days. Should be an education for all of us.
- At Home: Art -- he has been using, off & on, a program called Artistic Pursuits. It's a student-directed program, he can work independently, and he enjoys it. He will continue to make his way through this program in the coming year.
Not as full as The Writer, but then 6th Grade and 9th Grade aren't supposed to be equal. Still a sufficiently heavy course load for him, and one I think he'll enjoy. He will continue his keyboard/piano lessons as well, which he loves & excels at. Should be a good year for him.
And that brings me to The Adventurer. He will be doing a variety of things:
- Miquon Math -- this is a hands-on math program, using manipulatives and Cuisenaire rods to make math concrete. He loves it. His math box is a favorite activity, and he often pulls it out in his free time just to play. We will stick with this until we've completed the program.
- Explode the Code -- he's finished the 1st three "pre-Explode the Code" books (Get Ready, Get Set, and Go for the Code) and will move on to the actual Level 1, 2 & 3 books this year. We'll work our way through at his pace, and supplement with alphabet games, activities, scavenger hunts, and whatever else is necessary to cement the information firmly in his head.
- History/Literature -- he will make his way through Sonlight's old-version Core 1. I have no idea what this package is called now; we'll be using the books that I first purchased when The Writer was about 5 years old and just reading them at our own speed. This package is a beginning introduction to world history, focusing on ancient Egypt, Greek mythology, and other fun stuff. It is full of information that appeals to a 7 year old boy and I know he'll enjoy it.
- Science -- we'll work through a very casual study of the world, using a great National Geographic set we also bought back when The Writer was about four or so. The titles include one on weather, space, earth, mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, volcanoes....just a slew of titles on different general-interest subjects. We'll use those as our starting point, explore any topic he wants in greater detail, and just have fun. The books will be a good introduction to the world of science, and at a level and speed I can handle.
I'm excited to have more time to spend focused on The Adventurer, and excited about the things we'll be reading about and learning about. Even though this will be my third time through the Sonlight books, I know I won't be bored; watching The Adventurer learn about mummies should be entertaining and educational for both of us.
Not a typical home school year at all, but as we're on-line schooling instead I guess that makes sense. Our curriculum and course plans for the year are exactly what we need right now, and I'm anticipating a very good school year for everyone.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
It's time...
Time to talk about some things I've been avoiding lately. Please bear with me as I walk you through some happenings in our life; this post will sound like a bit of a downer for a little bit, but I hope to leave you on a hopeful note, for I am in a place of hope right now, not sadness. Hang in there to the end, then, and don't feel sorry for us but cheer us on to the next phase of life.
I hate when good things come to an end, but here we are, facing two different endings all at the same time. I'm not thrilled. But I am trusting God for what comes next.
Before you ask, no, we are not yet leaving Brazil; that one has no end in sight. But, some very dear friends are leaving Brazil. For good. In a week. And I am not thrilled.
We met this family during their very first week in Brazil, and have been good friends ever since. We've spent at least one day of every weekend together, with exceptions only when one or the other of us is out of town. It has been a wonderful three & a half years of friendship, fellowship, togetherness, fun, laughter, sharing the ex-pat experience, watching our kids grow up together, and watching Brazil shape us all.
And next week, it will all be over.
They'll return to the US, not to any state anywhere near where we routinely visit. For good. And we'll stay here. For who knows how much longer.
The kids will, we hope, continue their routine of shared on-line gaming & skype-chatting while they play. We'll continue, we hope, to email and chat. We're planning, loosely, a US meet-up a year from now; turns out Walt Disney World is equidistant from both of our home states.
But our weekends will now be free.
Free, but not empty. We do have other friends, and we look forward to getting to know them better and spending more weekend time with them. We've also just now found a church we're willing to visit again, which is something we've been sorely missing.
It's very difficult to find a comfortable church when you don't speak the language (or the kids don't) well enough to follow the entire sermon; when the few Protestant denominations are mostly things you've never heard of and so don't know if you agree or not with the major points of theology they teach; when you come from a place with one hour long services, into a place with two hour services; when you want to be both anonymous and welcomed, but not feel like "the Americans" in a fish bowl before the entire congregation. But now we've found one that we like, and we plan to go back. Weekly, even. With the exception of The Adventurer, we're all excited about that.
The other ending is school. Our home school. My role as teacher is shrinking, as we're shifting the two older boys into an on-line virtual school. Beginning in September, The Writer will have all of his classes at TTUISD; The Artist will have half of his classes there.
There are a few reasons for this, but the main reason is the legality of doing what we're doing, where we're doing it. By enrolling the boys in a virtual school, we'll gain both an answer to give when asked "where do you go to school" as well as a bit of legitimacy that people here will recognize.
The other big reason is so that my time is free to devote to The Adventurer, who learns so very differently from how the older boys learned. His style of learning takes a great deal of time and effort, so out-sourcing the teaching for the older boys will free me to focus on the little guy instead, where my focus needs to be just now.
Which means our last day of school this year (Friday) will really be our last day of home school, ever, in some ways. Yes, the boys will continue to be at home, but I will be the parent, not the teacher. It's a shift, an odd feeling, but a needed one and I believe a good one. I look forward to what parenting a child through high school looks like when one is not also the teacher. I look forward to watching the boys thrive under someone else's instruction, and to really helping The Adventurer grow once he is able to have my undivided attention during school time. So, yes, an ending, but a hopeful one.
We'll celebrate on Friday, the end of our home school year. Goodbye eight grade, fifth grade and (no discussion on age vs. grade here) Kindergarten. Hello, "summer" vacation!
We'll gather on Saturday to say a different goodbye, Goodbye, dear friends. Hello, new adventure!
Two endings, back-to-back. A time of vacation to adjust to the newness, and a new church to help us through the changes. I look forward to what God has in store for us in this next chapter, and while I'm not thrilled with some of this, I am comfortable with all of it and hopeful about what the future has in store.
I hate when good things come to an end, but here we are, facing two different endings all at the same time. I'm not thrilled. But I am trusting God for what comes next.
Before you ask, no, we are not yet leaving Brazil; that one has no end in sight. But, some very dear friends are leaving Brazil. For good. In a week. And I am not thrilled.
We met this family during their very first week in Brazil, and have been good friends ever since. We've spent at least one day of every weekend together, with exceptions only when one or the other of us is out of town. It has been a wonderful three & a half years of friendship, fellowship, togetherness, fun, laughter, sharing the ex-pat experience, watching our kids grow up together, and watching Brazil shape us all.
And next week, it will all be over.
They'll return to the US, not to any state anywhere near where we routinely visit. For good. And we'll stay here. For who knows how much longer.
The kids will, we hope, continue their routine of shared on-line gaming & skype-chatting while they play. We'll continue, we hope, to email and chat. We're planning, loosely, a US meet-up a year from now; turns out Walt Disney World is equidistant from both of our home states.
But our weekends will now be free.
Free, but not empty. We do have other friends, and we look forward to getting to know them better and spending more weekend time with them. We've also just now found a church we're willing to visit again, which is something we've been sorely missing.
It's very difficult to find a comfortable church when you don't speak the language (or the kids don't) well enough to follow the entire sermon; when the few Protestant denominations are mostly things you've never heard of and so don't know if you agree or not with the major points of theology they teach; when you come from a place with one hour long services, into a place with two hour services; when you want to be both anonymous and welcomed, but not feel like "the Americans" in a fish bowl before the entire congregation. But now we've found one that we like, and we plan to go back. Weekly, even. With the exception of The Adventurer, we're all excited about that.
The other ending is school. Our home school. My role as teacher is shrinking, as we're shifting the two older boys into an on-line virtual school. Beginning in September, The Writer will have all of his classes at TTUISD; The Artist will have half of his classes there.
There are a few reasons for this, but the main reason is the legality of doing what we're doing, where we're doing it. By enrolling the boys in a virtual school, we'll gain both an answer to give when asked "where do you go to school" as well as a bit of legitimacy that people here will recognize.
The other big reason is so that my time is free to devote to The Adventurer, who learns so very differently from how the older boys learned. His style of learning takes a great deal of time and effort, so out-sourcing the teaching for the older boys will free me to focus on the little guy instead, where my focus needs to be just now.
Which means our last day of school this year (Friday) will really be our last day of home school, ever, in some ways. Yes, the boys will continue to be at home, but I will be the parent, not the teacher. It's a shift, an odd feeling, but a needed one and I believe a good one. I look forward to what parenting a child through high school looks like when one is not also the teacher. I look forward to watching the boys thrive under someone else's instruction, and to really helping The Adventurer grow once he is able to have my undivided attention during school time. So, yes, an ending, but a hopeful one.
We'll celebrate on Friday, the end of our home school year. Goodbye eight grade, fifth grade and (no discussion on age vs. grade here) Kindergarten. Hello, "summer" vacation!
We'll gather on Saturday to say a different goodbye, Goodbye, dear friends. Hello, new adventure!
Two endings, back-to-back. A time of vacation to adjust to the newness, and a new church to help us through the changes. I look forward to what God has in store for us in this next chapter, and while I'm not thrilled with some of this, I am comfortable with all of it and hopeful about what the future has in store.
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