Schola of Liber Sententia

2008-09-15T16:28:00.002-05:00

This is my last post at this blog, I've got a new one. It has a better Latin name then this one. I wasn't happy with this one, but it was the best I could do at the time.

So here's the link: www.cogitationisliberae.blogspot.com . This one will still be here, I'm not going to delete it, but please note the new address, and come visit us there!

Thanks.

2008-08-21T20:59:00.026-05:00

We are on week three of the "new school year" now. It will be mid-Sept before I have everything worked into the schedule, but for now we're doing math, science, history, Latin, medieval lit read alouds, classic lit read alouds, memory work and handwriting as a group. Kyden is also doing spelling, Aralia is also doing reading lessons, and Zaith is also doing phonics lessons. We're concentrating on Earth and space science, and on the medieval period for history.

Next month, we'll add art once a week. Kyden will also start doing writing four times a week and grammar three times a week. Zaith will also start doing math.

One of the projects we did for history was to make a pocket. In the time period we're studying right now (the end of the Roman Empire) pockets had yet to be invented. Instead, people had sort of portable pockets which they hung on their belts.

This pocket actually fit right in with the outfit Aralia had chosen to wear that day. DH and the kids are fans of the cartoon Samarai Jack. Its really a pretty neat cartoon, not many words, and different from other cartoons. Its about a samarai transported in time to the future, he's trying to get back to his own time and along his journey in a very strange land he battles his arch nemesis Aku the shapeshifter. To emulate Jack, who is a character worth emulating, my kids take white tee-shirts and convert them into Jack-style clothes. They wear one tee shirt the correct way, and the other one, the one that goes on the bottom, they stick their legs through the arm holes and that leaves the rest of the shirt hanging down something like a kimono. Sometimes they wear this outfit to bed even.

For Latin, we've been learning the words for family members. Mater for mother, pater for father, frater for brother, soror for sister. Basic stuff. :) We had a workbook page that called for the kids to draw a picture of their family members and label them. Kyden did the artwork while the other two looked on. This is what he came up with.

Zaith is under the table, which oddly enough, he often is during meals. I don't think that was intentional on Kyden's part but it's realistic. Kyden also drew Aralia in her glasses.

Thats Kyden working out of his Zaner Bloser handwriting workbook. Tomorrow is his LAST page in the workbook. Woo hoo! We do the Finished Workbook Dance everytime we finish a workbook, have a treat of some kind. Next week he'll start the Zaner Bloser book that teaches cursive. We've worked on cursive a little bit already. We're going to start this next book in the middle, the first half of the book is devoted to more manuscript writing. Which Kyden has down so no need to waste time there. Just going to jump in to the cursive. He reads it pretty well, gets a little confused with all the loops when he tries to write bigger words.

To be fair, here is where Aralia is on her handwriting. She does these type of worksheets from donnayoung.org combined with the ZB level K workbook, where the writing is a little smaller. We also do copywork of short sentences once or twice a week.

And this is what Zaith is doing, printing readiness worksheets.

Unless he gets bored with those, then he starts drawing. No, that is not his artwork, thats Kyden's. DO NOT tell Kyden that Zaith drew on his art.

Zaith is working on his vowel sounds, the short vowel sounds. We did A last week, one activity we did was to make an anteater. He cut out the shapes and we put brads in it so it moved.

Later on that day, someone put the anteater in a wet spot on the counter, and the anteater was no more.

Kyden's been working on adding 4-digit numbers. We started out working them on the abacus, where he could see the trading (carrying), the place values, and to visually experience what happens when you add.

Now he's at the point where he doesn't use the abacus to do the worksheets. He's doing just fine with it, but math is just not something he's very interested in. Last week he earned the privilege of playing PS2 over the weekend, this week he has not. Not unless he can earn 5 mathitude marks in one half hour math session tomorrow. Not very likely.

Oh, and I gotta tell about this. Yesterday Kyden just had a bad day. He got upset with some of his schoolwork and the dog got ahold of one of his toys and chewed it to pieces, through no fault of Kyden's own. He was very angry. He came to me with this picture

This, he said, was what he wanted to do to get rid of his anger. So I blew up a balloon for him, and he went to town on it.

I usually discourage the word "stupid". I tell them they can't use the word stupid until they're grown up enough to use it wisely. :P Ya know, cause its okay to call things or situations stupid some of the time, but not people and not in a way that hurts people. The distinction can be hard for younger kids, so they have to wait. But in this case, I decided to let it go, and you notice the balloon says "stupidness" so he IS mindful of the rule, even if he is bending it.

Horrid! Don't you love it?

Then he took a yarn needle and popped it. Said he felt better.

Here's our doggy.

And here's miss Aralia in a dress that I made for her.

Yes I sewed that. I actually sewed that last summer, but it turned out too big, so she's wearing it this summer. Sewing is not my forte. I never get sewing projects right. Once I made a pair of shorts out of fabric with a one-way whale pattern. I was very careful not get the pattern upside down. But I got the pattern upside down anyway. And of course I didn't notice til the whole thing was finished.

And this? This is the most perfect loaf of bread to come out of my bread machine ever. Yeah, I thought it was worth a picture. Indulge me.

2008-06-27T15:47:00.009-05:00

Ok, there's a couple of pics to prove that we have been doing lessons, despite lack of documentation. :P Thats Aralia working on a Happy Phonics game, and Kyden doing math at the kitchen table.

In other news, we got a new car. This is the old one, it was an Aztec and we loved it. We just got too big for it. The kids were jam packed into the back seat. So we got a minivan. I don't have a picture of it to post yet because I still have not come to terms with the fact that I'm driving a minivan. I will need some time to adjust.

After we left the Boring Center (as the kids called the dealership), Aralia was so upset that we left the Aztec behind that she cried all the way home. :(

In yard news, it was a very good year for the roses. We have three wild roses in the yard. This one was barely growing in the shade between two dead trees and a fence until last fall when we cut down the trees and the fence and provided a trellis for support. Now it looks great.

This is one of the other rose bushes, the biggest one. Its a little more "wild" then the other one.
It also goes up really really high into the tree.
We also have a catalpa tree. Here's a pic of Aralia with a leaf so you can see how big they get. I've seen catalpas with bigger leaves then this though.

Zaith, Kyden and I went to the "carnival" at the library to start off the summer reading program. Kyden played skee ball.

And got his arm painted.

One thing I've been wondering how to address is the way Aralia holds her pencil.

I can't decide if it matters if she doesn't hold it "properly". I hold my pencil a couple of different ways, and I know others who hold it oddly too. So maybe its just not that big of a deal. I guess if it works for her......

We've been studying plants for science. One of the labs we did was to identify parts of a flower. They all did a worksheet.
Kyden

Zaith (doesn't he color neatly for a 3 year old?)
and Aralia

For history, studying Ancient Rome, we made some puppets out of the History Pockets.

We also found a couple of cool looking caterpillars out in the yard. We've brought them in and put them in the "Butterfly Garden."

This one is the caterpillar for the American Dagger Moth. It made its cocoon the very same day we put it in the Garden.

This one will be a WhiteMarked Tussock Moth. Its a really neat looking caterpillar, this picture isn't all that great.

Kyden made lego models of our caterpillars.

As interesting as these caterpillars are, with their spikes and tussocks (?), they both turn into very ugly moths.

American Dagger Moth

Whitemarked Tussock Moth

Pretty common, eh?

Ok, now to address the garden.

A couple of entries ago, we couldn't find the garden.

But I'm proud to announce, that we have made giant steps towards reclamation of this area. And this is how we did it.

Yeah, thats right, we (mainly me) literally pulled out every.single.weed. in that garden. See the progress? So far, I've worked a total of 10 hours over two weekends, and I've almost got it licked. I figure 4 more hours this weekend and it will look like its supposed to.

This first weekend, I was the only one who weeded. This past weekend, though, everyone pitched in for a couple of hours. It went so much faster.

It was really hot, so afterwards, we cooled off with the sprinkler.

Ooooo, I had a new visitor to the birdfeeder recently. I didn't get a pic, I was afraid I'd move and scare him away. I haven't seen him since, but he was an indigo bunting. Very pretty.

Well we've had this week off from lessons as Aralia had a day camp that she and I went to every day. But next week we'll be back to cracking the books. And swimming, it is still summertime afterall.

Wordless Wednesday

2008-06-25T08:22:00.000-05:00

Wordless Wednesday

2008-06-18T00:05:00.002-05:00

HIDDEN PICTURE GAME

2008-06-16T21:42:00.006-05:00

Find the Hidden Objects in the Picture Below

Objects to find:

1. my garden

2008-05-23T11:27:00.013-05:00

We've haven't done a whole lot of school work this past week and here's why:

That is our office/school room.

Its a mess. We suddenly decided to re-arrange and re-organize both this room and the master bedroom which is right next to it.

I blame this mess on two things.

Books

and

ants.

Every spring we wage war with the ants. We're peaceful people, we don't start the conflict, THEY invade US.

So every year we spray the house inside and out very thoroughly with ant spray. I don't like using a poison, but I've tried various "natural" ant remedies and none are effective. They might work in a house where there is just the occasional ant trail, but sometimes I think our house was built in the middle of a giant ant complex.

OK, so maybe we did invade first.

But we're bigger and smarter so we win, nyah.

So in order to spray thoroughly, we move furniture away from the walls. This year we figured since we have the furniture moved all out anyway, we might as well get that new headboard put on the bed, you know that headboard thats been sitting in its box for a month now.

So we did.

At the same time we were dealing with ants and headboards, we were also dealing with books.

In the past month I have brought hundreds (no exaggeration) of books into the house. I purchased about 50 of them, most I called home from my parents' attic.

More books means more shelves for books. So while we had the bedroom furniture all moved around, we bought 3 bookshelves to go in our room.

And thats where we are stalled. We need more shelves. You can call me neurotic, organized, weird, stubborn, OCD, or unreasonable, but I'm not putting books on shelves until I have ALL the shelves. I want everything I am working with laid out in front of me. I have the books organized into categories, but I need to see what I have to work with before I commit. :P

So our schoolwork has been rather light recently.

We did finish a week on Darwin. We got out the globe and plotted his 5 yr trip on the Beagle. We read several biographies.

Kyden drew a picture for his biology notebook.

Thats Darwin with the Beagle in the background. You can also see the finches that Darwin studied while on the Galapagos. Kyden got sidetracked and drew another character next to Darwin. When I asked about it, he said it was a guy with ants in his pants. Ok.

Here in a closer look, you can see Darwin is holding up his own book.

Aralia also drew Darwin.

Here's a couple more of her drawings. The pink one is a self-portrait on a dry erase board.

This next piece of her artwork requires some explanation. Get comfortable.

A few weeks ago, we saw the movie Ratatouille. Little did we know.

The movie is about a rat that cooks.

Ever since seening the movie, Aralia has been obsessed with rats.

Obsessed is not too big of a word either. The first thing out of her mouth most mornings is rat-related.

She wants a pet rat, but she's a long way from being responsible enough to have one. And I already have the responsibility of the dog, the turtles, the tadpoles, and the fish.

I don't want anymore pet responsibilities.

(The tadpoles, by the way, STILL do not have legs. I think they are retarded.)

So I told her when she turned ten we would see if she was responsible enough to have a pet rat. Which immediately translated in her mind to "I get a pet rat the very second I turn 10."

What amazes me is that the fact that 10 is still 5 years away in no way daunts her. But then, she doesn't have any real concept of how long a year is. Which is good, because if she was upset she had to wait so long things would be a lot more whiny around here.

This has been going on for a couple of weeks now, she re-watches the movie at every opportunity. I did explain to her that rats are not like the rat in the movie. I told her they don't talk, they don't look like that, and they don't cook.

She was ok with that, but decided she's going to teach her rat to cook. I let her think that, 10 years old is a long way from now so why spoil it.

One day she asked me for a picture of a rat from the internet. So we went to Google Images and looked at rats for awhile. She is a VERY selective child. She finally picked one and I printed it for her. You know what she did with it? She cut it out and carries it with her, its her pet rat! I thought that was great.

We also went to a pet store last week with the express purpose of Aralia holding a real rat. I wish I could've gotten pictures of that, but I was using my hands to help hold the rats, I didn't want the kids to accidently free half the rat population of this store.

So this picture is a picture of a house, a rainbow, some clouds, and a rat. You know, the usual "girly" drawing.

Up in the corner it says "mad bi Aralia"...don't take that too literally. Its kindergartenese for Made By Aralia.

She also started on her math curriculum recently. Kyden and I have more or less hammered out our teacher-student relationship. It has its flaws (more on that later) and we are still working on it, but we're down the road a bit. And I've learned much. Now that I have Aralia as a student I'm being very very very careful how our interactions develop. And anyone thats ever met Aralia knows how critical this can be. What ever you give Aralia, be it an inch or a millimeter or even a a micro quark, she runs with it. Before you know it, she's gotten so far out of hand that you can't figure out how she got there. The girl is good. You have to stay on top of her. She knows where your buttons are, she knows where the line is and more often then not she'll choose to push and cross those things just to entertain herself.

So I'm being very careful and slow in how I choose to react to her testing me when it comes to lessons.

Anyway, this is her making a quadrilateral out of craft sticks. This was kind of her idea, we were using the craft sticks in the lesson for tallying objects. After we spent a few minutes discussing triangles and quadirilaterals and the differences between them she decided she wanted to build the biggest quadrilateral she could.

**************************
Somehow, between the rain and storms, we managed to get our garden in. We planted tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, watermelon, honeydew melon, cucumber, basil, oregano, tarragon, sage, broccoli, and beans.

We already had onions, garlic, horehound, and hyssop growing.

One of the basils is cinnamon basil. Supposedly the leaves will smell like cinnamon. So far they definitely do not. I don't know if they will be any good for cooking or medicine, but they might smell nice if I cut them and brought them in the house.

We had the sprinkler on the garden one day, the kids liked that.

And yes this might be somewhat scary, but this is me, I do in fact exist in this family, despite the lack of evidence in the photo albums.

And I work too. I pretty much planted the whole garden by myself. :)

The tilling of the garden though, that was done by Thomas, so we've both got some sweat invested in it.

We also spent some time getting out the outdoor furniture. I rinsed everything off with the hose and set it all in the sun to dry.

Zaith had his own plans though.

Kyden provided the theme music for us one day. For a short time. A very short time. Then he provided the theme music for them while I watched from the other side of the yard.

Zaith and Aralia also tried some bird watching.

And then they came in and rested.

Math has been a subject of contention between Kyden and I pretty much since day one. It has recently come to a head. Last week he spent three hours on fifteen problems. At least two of those hours were spent whining, crying, protesting, stomping, refusing, and postponing. I left him to it, we went on with our day.

He does just fine when the lessons are on something easy. As soon as it gets a little bit hard, he has a breakdown. He doesn't want to think. Its not the work is beyond is ability, its not. Its that he is lazy. He doesn't want to apply himself. Effort and attitude, thats what its all about.

So I decided that had to change, because it really is awful to try to teach through that. His attitude is just appalling. So, I made a "mathitude" chart. And anyone who knows Kyden knows he liked the word "mathitude."

Now he has to earn the privilege of playing video games on the weekend. Everytime I catch him displaying a good attitude and especially a little bit of effort, he gets a tally mark. This week, the first one, he has to have 5 marks to earn 30 minutes of game play. I made it an attainable goal, I didn't want to set him up for failure. Next week I will up the ante a little bit, make it 6 or 7 marks, so I can get more than one show of "mathitude" during our daily lesson.

We haven't done math today, its next on our agenda. He has four marks, hopefully he can get that last one.

And thats where I need to go now. Time to break out the abacus. Wish me luck.

Wordless Wednesday

2008-05-14T07:51:00.000-05:00

2008-05-11T10:41:00.006-05:00

Jenny my friend and fellow Tool fan from the WTM board has tagged me.

Here are the rules:

1.The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.

2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.

3. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their name, then goes to their blog and leaves them a comment, letting them know they have been tagged.

Here goes:

What was I doing 10 years ago? I'd been married a year, I was living in a trailer park out by the lake with DH and two cats. I worked at a data entry job that created the computer book files that libraries use. I was also taking college classes.

Five snacks I enjoy:
Chocolate especially dark chocolate
Chocolate especially dark chocolate
Chocolate especially dark chocolate
Chocolate especially dark chocolate
Dark chocolate

In the real world I am:
always thinking, multi-tasking, occasionally obstinate, flexible, thorough, and usually up too late.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
I would buy books, I would buy many many many many books

I would adopt an unwanted child, perhaps from China

I would pay off the bills and debt of everyone I cared about, maybe buy everyone a new house or car or boat or plane...something like that.

I would also pay the tuition of anyone of those people who wanted to go to or return to school, including my kids and myself.

DH would quit his job and we would travel.

I would give as much as possible to the causes I believe in.

I would fund scientific research. I would particularly fund sciences that would promote colonization of space.

I would set up an entire organization devoted to the dessimation of misinformation, in all its evil forms.

We would spend a lot of time helping people in parts of the world that need help, in the form of money, food, work, teaching, etc.

Five jobs that I have had:
1. worked in a greenhouse
2. worked at a bar
3. did data entry for various companies, including one where I worked from home
4. worked at two daycares
5. worked as an office clerk

Three of my habits:

1. I bathe every single night before bed, almost without fail, in super uber hot as I can stand it water. Even when its a 90 degree day and we don't have the air on yet, I still take a warm bath. When I'm sick I take even more baths. I've been so sick once I took 6 baths in one day.

2. I read everything in front of me. If there are words in front of my eyes I read them. I did not occur to me that one could make a choice about reading the words around them until I was in my 30s. Once a friend and I drove past a bar that had been teepeed. And while I noticed that I couldn't read all the words on the sign in front of the bar....I did not notice that the reason I couldn't read all the words on the sign was because someone had teepeed the whole thing.

I do however draw the line at reading commercials when I have the mute on. Its bad enough when I have to listen to someone trying to sell me something. it, I'll be damned if I'm going to read it. But its HAAARD not to.

3. I have to lie on my stomach before I fall asleep. However, I can't fall asleep while on my stomach. Its tricky.

What do you want others to get from your blog?:

Just to see what we are doing, the particuluar way our family does homeschooling, and life in general. And maybe learn a little something in the process. Or not.

So now I tag:
Tawni at Memories and Milestones

Kel at Fawkes Academy

Shasta at Voyage of the Orion

Melissel at Tall Oaks Academy

Paula at Wakefield Academy

Won't they be surprised. :P

2008-05-04T21:36:00.009-05:00

********************

Here's the flower, as blue as we got it before it wilted.

The letter sound that Zaith has the most trouble with is Y. He always wants to pronounce Y as the W sound. So last week we made a Y booklet, here's the cover and one of the pages.

Thats some yogurt and a yak. Focusing on the Y alone did help, we'll continue to concentrate on it for a few more days just for reinforcement.

This last week was one which we took off from academics. We had some nice days, so we spent some time outside.

Here they all are in the pear tree. I think we have four pear trees, this one is the biggest. Its the one that has perfect branches for climbing. Zaith figured out all on his own how to get up there, didn't ask for help or anything. I just looked up the yard from what I was doing and there he was.

The boy has a good grasp of fundamental physics, better than the other two did at his age. His balance is good, he seems to have a fine understanding of the way liquid in a big boy cup behaves, he seems to be advanced in his comprehension of cause and effect and he just "groks" things that I would've thought to be beyond him.

Oh, and he's finally potty trained. ;)

(hows that for a reality check?)

Here are a few samples of Kyden's art from the week.

What he's working on here is a playdoh sculpture. And pretty much nothing is off limits for Kyden as art material.

This one had to be disassembled upon completion because he used our scissors among other things. Its a spider on its web, the web being made of scotch tape.

We also had a little drama over the week. Showing true shades of her mommy, Aralia stubbed her toe. I stub a toe pretty much daily. Occasionally its pretty bad, like this one was for Aralia. It was swollen and hot and really pained her, so she spent some time soaking it in cool water. That however, is a completely opposite shade from her mother, no way do I put my foot in anything less than room temperature. She did a great job with that, much more resolution that I could muster, even put the second foot in to keep the first one company.

We went to a park that we'd never been to, even though the day was chilly and windy. The kids had fun, weather schmeather.

The blossoms on the fruit trees were at their peak last week. This picture and the one up at the top show our most productive apple tree.

The redbuds are also blooming.

And here's a little honey bee doing its job. I don't know if you can see it or not, but the bee's pollen bags on its legs are full.

And this weekend we did some more yardwork. Thomas and Kyden raked up some sticks and debris from the garden spot so we can get it tilled tomorrow (finally). I cleaned up the hosta bed and got it ready for two or three more hostas to be fitted into it. I also cleared out two groups of irises that were in too much shade to ever bloom very well, and I put them into a new sunny flower bed that I made last fall which has a rose growing on a trellis in the middle. Pictures of that maybe next time.

While digging out one batch of irises, I found a gigantic earthworm. When it stretched itself out, it measured at least 9 inches, maybe 10 or 12. It was big. Here it is in my grubby hand.

While Thomas and I were busy working on our yard projects, the kids had one of their own. This is a bird trap. There's birdseed in the dumptruck bed, and some nesting material in the buckets. They also wanted to build a moat around the tree to prevent cats from eating the birds they caught. They think of everything don't they?

And thats pretty much what we've been doing. Tomorrow its back to acadamia. We finished the study of Ancient Greece and now we will work on Ancient Rome. For science, we're going to finish up the evolution unit, we moved kind of slow on that. Its hard to find resources for grammar age kids on evolution. Which is a shame because children have no problem grasping the fundamentals of evolutionary concepts. Not only that, but evolution is the theory upon which modern biology is built, so its really a disservice to leave this key out of their education.

I've managed to find some things though, and there are at least plenty of resources on Darwin himself. So we have a few more books to read, a DVD, some writing, and a couple of activities before we are finished. Then we will work out of the REAL Science book again and do 4 to 6 weeks on plants.

Aralia will be starting math this week, the curriculum I ordered for her arrived. Its RightStart level A, a GREAT program I can't say that enough. I think even Zaith will be able to join us. After looking through it, I believe its something he's ready for. Whether or not he will go through the whole book with her I don't know, he is only 3.

After these next four weeks of learning (I'm trying to avoid using the word school around here), we'll have another one week break and then seven weeks of light summer....learning. I'm going to need a thesaurus.

Have a good week, I'll update the pagesides soon.

Wordless Wednesday

2008-04-29T23:32:00.003-05:00

Wordless Wednesday

2008-04-23T08:13:00.004-05:00

2008-04-22T21:43:00.047-05:00

Happy Earth Day

We'll start with an update on Zaith's plant:

Those are radishes on the outside, the long stringy things that need more light. In the middle is the bean plant. The radishes were thrown in there because they sprout practically instantaneously, which is right about the same length as the attention span of a typical preschooler.

Tadpole update: No legs yet.

For history, we made little Parthenons. In Ancient Greece, the Parthenon was a temple that was built upon the acropolis in Athens to honor the goddess Athena. It had an almost 40 foot tall statue of her inside which was made from gold and ivory.

Here's Kyden's. In typical Kyden fashion, he painstakingly decorated each column with a colorful design.

Here's the inside of the Parthenon, with a picture of the statue, and little squares containing information about the Parthenon.

Here's Aralia with hers.

As you see, in typical ever-so-thoughtful Aralia fashion, she added windows on the back of the Parthenon so that the goddess could look out.

A couple pieces of art from Kyden:

This one is a picture of a Greek olive grove.
Olives and olive oil have been grown and used in Greece for thousands of years.

This is one he drew on his own, I thought it was really great. I can tell when he has learned a new technique or a new idea from book illustrations or comics.

Zaith played Egg Carton Phonics, a game idea from the Happy Phonics kit.

There's a bead in there and after he shakes it up, he opens it to see where it landed and then he says the letter sound and we come up with words that start with that sound. We just started working on the vowel sounds so I wrote those letters in there, as well as the few consonants that he has the most trouble with, and also qu, and a couple easy ones for him.

Over the weekend, we burned the brush pile that was on the garden space.

It was a pretty small one, especially compared to the first one we burned. It was here when we moved in, then we added to it and by the time we burnt it, it was at least half the size of the house. The kids gathered all the sticks in the yard and hauled them to the pile, earned themselves each a dollar.

Zaith watching the fire: Thomas also cut down a plum tree that was dead and we added it to the burn. The tree had one good year the first year we moved here and every year after more and more of it died.

Kyden was VERY upset about this. He sat on the hill and cried. This was the best tree they had for climbing.

We ended up taking only the branches of the tree, so that cheered him up. It was still climbable.

The trunk is enclosed with wire fencing, so we're going to have to dig a hole around the tree in order to get the chainsaw down low underneath the fencing and cut the rest of it down.

We also have a pear tree that I think is EVEN BETTER for climbing. I showed this to Kyden and after he learned how to get himself up on that first branch, he was quite happy.

Thomas' birthday was over the weekend as well. The kids decorated the cake, notice the candle sticking out of the side (a la Kyden).

And this was a spur of the moment science experiment. The kids picked a flower yesterday and we put it in a vase. I decided to add blue food coloring and voila: instant lesson on the vascular system of plants. :)

For math Kyden is working on mentally adding double digits. We've been camped out at this lesson for almost 2 weeks now. Our curriculum so far has taught us several methods of mentally adding double digit numbers, so we are now working on perfecting them,and using them easily. For example, one method that can be used is called the 2 fives method. Or, in the case of double digits: 2 fifties method. It only works if you are adding two numbers that are both over 50.
So, for 54 + 63=
the first thing we do is break it down to
50 + 60 and 4 + 3

for 50 + 60...we take 50 out of each number (thats where the 2 fifties come in) to make an even hundred...what is left....10.
So now we have 100 + 10 + 7 which is a lot easier to solve in your head.

Thats just one of the methods, and actually I've been learning and using them too and they work a lot better than the way I used to do it. Which sometimes actually involved counting on my fingers, or on imaginary dots on the number. I was taught to use those dots in grade school. So basically I'm not doing math, I'm counting.
Even on the times I wasn't using counting methods to solve a problem, I would still go back and check the math I had just done without counting methods, with counting methods.
This way's better. :)

All for now.

Wordless Wednesday

2008-04-16T07:51:00.002-05:00

2008-04-12T20:45:00.021-05:00

We're lucky in that our state is one with minimal requirements for homeschoolers. We are considered a private school. Homeschoolers must file a form with the state BOE giving the name of the school, the address, phone number and contact person. The only things mandatory are that the children attend school from the ages of 7 to 16, and that they attend 180 days per year.

We homeschool year round, which is not nearly as bad as it sounds. Our official school year starts the first week of August and ends the last week of May. Because we start early like that we are able to take off one week after every six weeks of school, and also take three or four weeks off in Dec/Jan.

For June and July we do light schooling. This year I'll keep Kyden going on his spelling because he is doing work now below his ability level and I want him to move up a little bit, and he'll play math games to keep his skills sharp. Aralia will just continue practicing reading and writing. Zaith will keep working on his letter sounds, he's not ready yet to move on to putting letter sounds together, so we'll just play around with basic phonics until he gets there. We're also going to start Latin and do a science kit from Homeschool Science Adventures. We have reading, grammar, and science games as well. And books.

And of course, learning happens all the time, its just less directed in the summer.

*****

So, what have we done this week?

We have 2 tadpoles, have had them for about 2 weeks now. No legs yet.

The kids named them Hornet and Jaguar. Yep, Hornet and Jaguar, our future frogs. And get this: they came up with these names after I was told in no uncertain terms that we were NOT going to name the dog Bat, because there is something wrong with naming an animal after another animal.
Guess we changed our minds eh? :)

And I ask you.........

Have you ever seen a dog more deserving of the name Bat???

We did a few crafty type things for history. The Greeks made mosaics to decorate their houses. We aren't able to use the materials they did, so we made mosaics out of small squares of construction paper.

Here's Kyden's:

In case you can't tell, that is a vicious. A vicious being one of the many of Kyden's imaginary creatures. There is also a soldier and a robot in this picture. How this relates to ancient Greece, I have no idea. When I asked Kyden, he told me that viciouses used to roam Greece in ancient times. Okay, works for me.

Aralia really didn't produce much. She scribbled her glue stick around, decided she wasn't happy with the result, asked for a new piece of paper, drew a picture on both sides of it with the glue, then lost interest.

Zaith created this:
Definitely a more minimalist approach. :)

This is Kyden's depiction of Ancient Greek armor. Its a helmet, a shield, leg guards and a spear. Notice the labels.

Zaith also planted his bean plant this week. It was part of the Brighter Vision package he gets in the mail.

Yes I know, its an empty pot. But in the words of The King from Alice in Wonderland: "Begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end, then stop." So, there's our "beginning." And Zaith is pretty pleased with it.

We also made Greek alphabet cookies.

And ate them. :)

So there's our week. See ya next time.

2008-04-05T22:30:00.003-05:00

We have homeschooled since the very beginning. In fact, I knew I was going to homeschool before I had children...before I had a husband even. There are many named methods of homeschooling, we mainly follow the classical method as presented by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer in their book The Well Trained Mind. This method puts an emphasis on reading quality literature, high standards of writing, and of course learning Latin.
Here at Schola of Liber Sententia, we also place a very big emphasis on science and math. Which works out well because I love science, my kids love science and I love math and my kids.....do well at math once they stop grumbling. :)

My hope is to keep this blog up on a weekly basis, providing pictures and updates on whatever we may happen to have worked on over the week. And to start it out, I'd like to post this list from Secular Homeschooling Magazine. For people who are not of the homeschooling world, here's a taste of it. For fellow homeschoolers, just you TRY not to relate!

Homeschooler's Wishlist:
by Deborah Markus

1 Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2 Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.

3 Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

4 Don't assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

5 If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.

6 Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.

7 We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

8 Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

9 Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

10 We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

11 Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.

12 If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.

13 Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.

14 Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

15 Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.

16 Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

17 Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.

18 If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

19 Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.

20 Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.

21 Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she's homeschooled.

22 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.

23 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.

24 Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

25 Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!

Laugh. Its funny.