World Geography

.

I purchased Trail Guide to World Geography, by Cindy Wiggers, this summer to use with my 4th and 7th grader, and to let my kindergartner play along.

So far I have a mixed relationship with it.  First off.  Let me state that I dislike abbreviations.  If a book title is so long that it must be abbreviated every time the book is mentioned then, it's just too long.  I have many students/children doing many different curriculums.  My brain is too busy to mess with TUG, OMB, and the million and three other references all constantly referred to by abbreviations.

You may have noticed I like to exaggerate.  Maybe there are not actually a million reference books with this curriculum.

I somewhat naively thought that since I bought the cd to print out the children's workbooks that the workbooks would contain all the maps I needed for weekly work.  I find it frustrating that I still have to print out maps that I can't stick in the workbook, since I had the workbooks spiral bound.

However.  And that's a big However.  I really, really, like the curriculum. I may even come to love it, once I feel more competent with it.   I feel like my kids are learning a lot.  I like the mix of different types of assignments.  I like the fact that our geography conversations can include 3 children at different levels of comprehension.  I like the fact that the kids have to search for answers.  

Working for answers means they are retaining more.

I love that this curriculum can be used in many different ways for more than a single year.  It's definitely a keeper. I'll continue using parts of it to support our history curriculum long after we have finished covering "geography."

By the time I finish schooling my troop of children I may even have all the abbreviations memorized.

Day 4

.


Every have a great beginning to a new school year?

One that confirms all you ever hoped about homeschooling?  A day that you and your children click along and you can almost hear their brain neurons firing.... And then you wake up the next morning and catch yourself thinking, "What! I have to do it all over again for the next ___ years!?!"

Or what about a day where everything falls apart?  Interruptions, missing book, tears....

Yesterday was hard.  The day started with my kindergartner crying when I had to wake him up.  "I'm too tired, I need to be in bed," he complained.  The day ended with a different child calling some difficult German work, "Stupid."  Not a word I take kindly to.  Not my favorite way to end the day.

But... no matter my failings as a teacher, nor my children's failings as their own independent persons, today is the day that matters.  I don't have to look ahead or behind.

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,

   for his compassions never fail.

 They are new every morning;

   great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:22-23

.

On Paper

.

I'm sitting on my front porch sipping coffee on the first cool we've had in months. My littles have pulled out every bike, trike, scooter and skateboard we own and are building a "store."  Right in the middle of the front walk, of course.

I have paper and pen and am trying to write out a schedule for this year's school. This year marks the largest range in levels and learning styles that I've ever tried to teach at once. It's not just the age range that has me a bit stumped but the need that everyone will have this year for one-on-one instruction.

Long gone are the days of sitting snuggled with my three eldest, reading aloud their history and literature and everyone doing the same science experiments. Also gone is my ability to keep everyone doing the same subject at the same hour with me as wandering tutor. This year I'm going to be teaching "conference" style.

Johanna Gilbert calls it block scheduling and wrote a fabulous description of it in her blog, Life Of the Gilbert Gang.

I can't wait to give it a whirl.  I think this it will help sort out a schedule complicated by not only multiple levels and abilities but also multiple teen part-time jobs and extra-curricular activities. 

Time will tell.

Immersion Experience For The Unimmersable

.



A cheap, faked immersion into German with my favorite of all mediums... imagination.

I've long been a member of audible.com*, it's where I've purchase Pimsleur language learning downloads for my home school.

But recently I became happier because I realized that though I can't get German language novels through audible.com I can through audible.de.  Wahoo.

It's way cheaper than I can order and pay for shipping of German language books on cd or print books at all.  For my first book to listen to I chose a translation of a Nicholas Sparks novel.  Umm, gag, I won't bother with any more of his.  Not that I'm opinionated or anything.  Imagine the oddity of an opinionated home schooling blogger.

Excepting the gag factor the Sparks book was a perfect first German audio-book.  It was in a familiar setting so I wasn't thrown by cultural differences and I didn't have to translate difficult idioms.

For my next audio book I think I'll choose Cornelia Funk's Tintenherz for the opposite of the above.


 I may not be able to travel at this point in my life to immerse myself with native speakers- but I can keep my brain active and trick it into thinking in German.


*Though I would love to be highly compensated for writing- especially if it involved very little work on my part- Audible has no idea how happy I am with them. 

French

.

Last month I started a little French club with some of my younger children and some of their friends.  For the record, I don't speak French even though I had years of it in starting in 6th grade in Canada and then through my sophmore year of college.  Therefore, I'm not calling myself a teacher, I'm merely learning (or re-learning) alongside the kids.

We are using L'Art de Lire by Nallenart. The French Canadian bent suits me just fine. I figure as the kids get a little further along I'll add in Pimsleur and the accents will balance each other, and most hopefully of all, cancel out their Tennessee drawls.

So far the things I like:

• phonetic layout and presentation
• grammar within a story line context
• useful vocabulary
• easy to divide up daily work
• the audio track reinforces daily work
• almost no prep work required

All in all I'm finding the first book to be a very gentle introduction to a foreign language.  Very doable for my younger students and an easy extra-curricular for my older students. 

I'm looking forward to seeing how the programs builds and grows.

A Week Journaled

   


In my life this week...  My in-laws are coming this Thursday to whisk away my 9th, 5th and 3rd graders for a roadtrip to Washington D.C.  The children are so excited they may end up vibrating out of the visible spectrum.

In our homeschool this week... I'm working on how to make change quickly and accurately with my 3rd and 5th grader.  I'm also doing a brush-up course on American History and Government.

My 9th grader is still slogging through The Virginian. I got a good laugh out of the fact that she felt like I was doing her a favor when I allowed her to go ahead and start on A Comedy Of Errors.  Owen Wister is not a favorite but Shakespeare is. 

My favorite thing this week was... Our church's youth group cleaned up the yard of an elderly widow on Saturday.  The sky was blue, her yard was a rambling gardener's paradise.  The kids had a blast working.  The day was satisfying on so many levels.

What's working/not working for us... The Young Scholar's Guide to Composers.  Curriculum can't work if you never take it off the shelf.  Somehow, I've just not gotten around to using it this year.  In theory I still think it looks like a great music history curriculum and I hope to start using it after our June break.

Homeschool questions/thoughts I have...  I'm looking at Hey Andrew Teach Me Some Greek because my 9 year old really, really, wants to learn Greek. I think the idea of a different alphabet is what he finds so enticing.  I'd love opinions or advice on Greek.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share... My 16 year old has fallen head over heels into a book of Emily Dickinson's poetry.  She was watching her littlest brothers play outside with sidewalk chalk... and copied a poem she found amusing.

Graffiti, home school style.

 

It's That Time Of Year

.


Things I love about this time of the school year:

1. Some projects and curriculum are coming to an end.  My 9 year old just finished his Queens Spelling Workbook.  It's a short curriculum, basically a really nice light review of spelling rules.  Perfect for his needs this year.  He was so proud that he could put away the book for his younger brother to use in a year.
2. It's the time of year that I start daydreaming about what I want to do next year.  Daydreaming is always fun because all projects in my daydreams are glowing successes.
3. It's the time of year we always seem to start on a few short units that were not in my original plans.  For instance, I recently realized my elementary aged children don't know how to quickly calculate change, so we are doing a "unit" of playing store and making change.  To add urgency and excitement I told them if they could keep all the practice money if they became proficient before the end of two weeks.  Often my spontaneous units are more fun and successful that my carefully planned ones.
4. Used Curriculum Sales.  
5. Sunshine.  How can you not love a day where your family does all their reading sitting outside in the sun?
6. I must repeat- Used Curriculum Sales.
7. I love looking back and seeing how far my children have progressed during the year.  
8. With warmer weather open windows.  Fresh air seems to brush the cobwebs of home school burn-out away.

Defining Fluency and Philosophy

.

Part of the joy/hardship of home schooling is that to a certain extent you decide on the degree of rigorousness you require of your students/children.  Even harder- your philosophy of education decides the actual point of said rigorousness or... lack thereof. 

I don't put a lot of faith in tests.  At 17 I CLEP-tested out of two years of college French.  However, at the time I couldn't have had more than a brief (and atrociously accented) discussion of what I wanted to eat and could have participated in only a basic touristy conversation.  I was merely talented at- 1. reading and 2. guessing- which are two test taking super-powers.


My high school junior is going to be studying German in Vienna for part of her senior year.  She has to take a placement test about a month before she starts class.  It will be interesting to see how she does because she is my German-language-learning guinea pig.  

There are not many home school German curriculum options.  In fact, there is not a single one that I found tolerable.  I tried a few versions of newer German language text books but they tended to be picture heavy, disjointed, grammar light, and didn't provide enough practice.  The Practice Makes Perfect series is great- but only after you've already built a broad vocabulary base.

Instead, I've hobbled together Pimsleur German with an intense little college German textbook (purchased at Goodwill) from the 1960's, some dictionaries, web access to German language news and blogs, German language versions of popular fiction along with matching audio books, and English Grammar for the Student of German.  She's also been emailing a couple of Austrian friends in German.

How I wish someone would create a Pimsleur-ish curriculum that includes a written component and that is less aimed at being a traveler and more aimed at living within a family setting.

Yesterday, I stumbled across an internet argument on what constitutes fluency.  Curious, I goggled the matter:  The Association of Language Testers In Europe had an interesting table.  Given their parameters I certainly didn't deserve any college credit for French! 

Given their parameters, I know where I want my daughter to be by the end of her senior year.  In fact, I know where I want my German to be by the end of my daughter's senior year.  Then, perhaps teaching my younger children German won't be the struggle it's been with my daughter.

Some interesting language links:


Fanfiktion
All sorts of educational links from a French site.  Just click, "Allemand."
Netflix.com has a few German language movies- most of them inappropriate- but there are a few like Hilfe.
BBC.com
Deutsche Welle
How To Learn Any Language

For news:
Tagesshau.de
Bild.de
Welt.de

Don't forget to look on itunes for podcasts.
It's amazing if you goggle, "german language website," how many sites you will find. 





 

On Foreign Languages

.


If you've ever searched reviews of a foreign language curriculum you may have noticed that the most positive reviews are almost always written by people who have been using the curriculum for less than a year.

I've been homeschooling since before the internet was useful.  I've watched foreign language programs come in a blaze of glory and then disappear.  Rarely do you see truly critical reviews.  Even rarer do you hear about programs that worked (in a quantifiable way) long term.


In my opinion and experience sending a child to a tutorial to fulfill a high school foreign language requirement will do just that, and no more.  Buying a curriculum and having a child complete it... ditto.  And that's o.k.  It depends on your goals and your child's goals.  As well as inherent strengths.  After all, I'm completely comfortable with wanting my children to fulfill their math requirements merely so they can score well on the SAT's.

However, I want my children to be able to converse with native speakers.  I'm discovering that means I have to learn with my children so we can practice/converse at home.  I have to search out opportunities for my children to be immersed in the language they are learning.  It requires learning grammar.

Rats.  That's a lot of work.

Most of the curriculum out there wants to be fun and colorful.  They want you to learn "organically."  It's a sales pitch.  Rosetta Stone and their imitators especially irritate me.  Think about it:  A child learns a language organically by being immersed in it for about 6 years- and then they still have to be taught correct grammar and spelling and writing in school. Plenty of children need speech therapy for their native language.  Give me a break- a computer program (even an over-priced one) can't do that in 30 minutes to an hour a day.

The only short-cut is hard work.

Rats.

Year-Round

.
We started back to school last week.  Phew.  Just in time.  Summer break was wearing me out.

We used to school basically year round because with our Charlotte Mason approach it just worked for us. 

Then a son took a dual credit course and a daughter started taking piano on a college campus with college schedules. Not to mention part-time jobs... It quickly became evident that I needed to start considering schedules other than my own.

Sigh.

Everytime I get a system down that works I revel in it.  I think it will work always, for all time, forever.  I often think that everyone should try my fantastic new system which could bring about world peace.

Then something changes, and I flounder and fuss until I realize that once again I must tweak schedules to meet life.  Not life to fit schedules.

I would have made a grand Pharisee.

Gardening Assistant

Gone Swimming

Summer is here with a vengeance.  Humidity is staying around 95%, heat about the same.  Gills would be appropriate wear for our area of the country.

Tonight our friend-of-a-friend's-daughter arrived from Switzerland for a month long stay of language study.  Her english is already wonderful, she will be mostly increasing her vocabulary and perfecting her grammar.  I hate correcting her accent, it's so beautifully Italian with a pinch of the Brit thrown in.

It's going to be a great month.  She's going to help us with our Italian (currently non-existent) and with our embarrassingly awkward German.

--------------------------------------------------------

For those of you who have been faithfully checking back for Family Garden 101 and it's Monday linky.  I'm so sorry.  Summer has been busier than I could have imagined.  I've been in the garden more than I've been writing about it!

I'll be back come Monday with a new linky, and if my wonderful husband manages to fix my camera I'll have pictures.  I hope you'll link up with your green goodness too.

For now, when I'm not weeding, I hope to be swimming.

Family Garden 101

Hopefully Late is better than Never. 

That's the refrain that's been going on in my brain for the last two weeks.  My garden has been drying out from the flood and blessedly my tomatoes have been thriving. Unfortunately I've not been able to get out to plant the okra, beans, and purple hulls or the companion flowers that I had in my mental schedule.

I also still do not know about all the seeds I planted before the flood.  They may be sprouting in Kentucky right now...

Plus no pictures.  Waaa.  I really love pictures.

This week I hope to get the rest of my seeds in and then some young plants of a few variety of squash.  Plus I need to figure out how to support my tomato plants.  Not to mention I'm sure I've got some weeds that need tender-loving eradication.

On the home garden-box front- we've had more lettuce than we can eat, out of just 6 heads of lettuce!  Yummy.

I hope your gardening week has been earthy and lovely!

Wild Turkeys, Flood Waters...

My husband and two teen-aged daughters had managed to plant 72 tomato plants of several varieties and about 72 various types of pepper plants the day before all the weekend storms rolled in.


Our area got hit with about 20 inches of rain in 2 1/2 days.  You can just see the top of a sign in the middle of the first picture.  This lake is not supposed to be there.  In fact that's not even an area that has a creek.

 The second picture is directly to the right of the top picture.  It shows the right half of the garden that was still covered this morning. It seems my garden area was not submerged- at least not for long, but not all the gardeners were so lucky.  The back 1/2 acre is still covered with water.

I wonder where all the bush bean seeds I planted last Wednesday now reside? I'm not complaining, I'm warm and dry and my family is safe.

Please pray for all the families in our area who were not so fortunate.

Family Garden 101

 My normal gardening post is rather short this week due to health issues.- Unfortunately, I spent several days in the hospital with my 4 yo.  He's much better and is currently sword fighting with his 8 yo brother.

We did manage to pick up our flats of tomatoes and peppers from the local 4-H sale.  The sky opened and it rained and rained here.  I can't wait to get out and plant.  Hopefully the dust-bowl look will not return.

Blessings All!

Family Garden 101

April 19th

The theme of this gardening-week is No Rain.  As in none, nada, zilch.  It's been the driest April I can remember.

The week was not without false alarms though.  Saturday morning we were supposed to get thunderstorms so I drove over and spent an hour frantically planting Lavender, fennel, dill, swiss chard, chamomile, leeks, stock, and giant zinnia seeds.

Alas, the sky cleared; no rain.

 Hope's hoses to the community garden spot were damaged.  Let's just say 700 feet of neatly coiled hoses don't fare well when they are inadvertently run over by a tractor pulling mowing equipment.  So... bring out trusty teens and water buckets.

I love these girls!  I know that the watering was more fun because they got to ride in the back of the pickup from the water spigot to the garden.  I just hope we start getting spring showers before the novelty wears off.

Under the top layer of the dust-bowl look the earth is still a bit damp.  Surprisingly, in all that dust we have seedlings coming up especially the beets, and turnip greens.

Besides the watering we spent a bit of time weeding and planting bush beans.  I put in 2- 40 foot rows that were 2 plants wide.  I plan to plant 2 more rows in 2 weeks to stagger the harvest a bit.  I also started the sunflower house.  The seed packet didn't hold much; so far the house has 3 walls.

Our onions are doing well.  We have several patches of both purple and white.  I forgot to take a photo of the potatoes but they are up and pretty.

Totals for the week?

2 trips out to the garden and 3 hours time spent working/riding around in a pickup.  No $$ spent this week.

Back to Work

My family has been given the opportunity to participate in a community garden.  I'll be posting updates on our grand veggie-experiment.  Join me each week at Family Garden 101 with a link to your garden project and we'll have a virtual community garden to enjoy.  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a week off, we were back to work this week.  We did everything outside, if it was at all possible.  

Spatial reasoning and pre-math.

Pre-reading and pre-spelling skills, i.e.- tree climbing.

Horticulture, ecology, design....

Nature study of Lilacs

Sketching Azalea blossoms

Literature, math, anything portable, which is almost everything.  Now if I just had an Ipad...

It was a lovely week.  The weather goes from mild to hot pretty quickly where we live.  Already my two youngest can't play outside after lunch- it's too stressful for their metabolism.  We are now spending the mornings outdoors, everyone working on their own projects and then starting "school" for the older kids right after lunch.  

It was a wonderful idea, in theory.  I'm loving the mornings.  I'm not loving the afternoons.  My brain simply does not want to explain math at 1:30 p.m..  I don't want to help with vocabulary words, or term paper questions at 3:30 p.m..  I'm not remembering to check german or copy work....   

Time to rethink, re-plan, re-motivate.  I don't want the school year to end in a whimper. 

Family Garden 101

Weeding and Waiting

Last week we didn't plant anything new.  We are still waiting for our last frost date- the 15th of April is the magic day.

We did go out and check for wild turkey damage- blessedly there was none!  We saw lots of deer tracks.  I'm sure they are blogging a thankfulness post about the buffet someone is kindly preparing for them.

 We also weeded for a little over an hour.  

With 7 active weeders, the weeding was actually pretty easy work.  It was mostly grass, but the ground was well tilled enough that the grass came up easily. You can see our onions in the foreground of this shot.  They are about 3 inches tall and doing great.  Our first visual sign of success.

Two not-so-active weeders got in a spot of trouble for running off to climb in the van in order to honk the horn.  They look like the day laborers that didn't get hired. 

With so many helpers I ran out of garden tools and decided to weed with a broken ruler.  See my hand wrapped in a dish towel?  That's so I could continue weeding after I gouged a hole in my hand. Very stupid of me.  My hand still hurts.  

On the home salad front:  We are enjoying more and more fresh lettuce. It freaks my toddlers out every time they watch me cut some and eat it.  We've had lots of discussions about how not all plants are edible but that all our food does actually come out of the dirt in some form or fashion.

We cleaned out some more containers for our home garden.  I'm planning on planting mostly herbs and spinach for now.

Time moves slowly when you are waiting to plant tomatoes and peppers!  

Family Garden 101

April 5th Edition

Last week, we didn't go out to our community garden a single time.  I thought about it a lot.  I pictured it completely grown over with weeds or drowning in rain puddles.  The only thing I didn't picture was wild turkeys.

Yes.  Wild turkeys.  I talked to my friend that owns the land- no weeds nor huge boggy puddles, but she did warn me that they've had a lot of wild turkeys this year.

Evidently wild turkeys love to ravage potatoes. You have to admit- that's just funny.

We are going out today to check our crops, to weed. and to plant another row of beets plus some mustard greens and fennel.  Hopefully, we won't have to replant potatoes. My family is going to do all of the above and then my children plan on having chatting/playing/chasing time with the other families that will be there working on their plots.  It's all good.

I'm also hoping to finish laying out, on paper, where the rest of my after-frost-date plantings will go.

On the home salad garden front, we ate lettuce from the garden for dinner yesterday.  Everyone got a tiny, pathetic little piece of green on their sandwich.  Everyone told me, with great sincerity, that it tasted great.

Have a great gardening week!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Which I Reveal My Stunning Lack of Focus

My family has been given the opportunity to participate in a community garden.  Each Monday I'll be posting updates on our grand veggie-experiment.  Join me at The Flexible Homeschooler with a link to your garden project and we'll have a virtual community garden to enjoy.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's been absolutely gorgeous this week.  We've spent every moment we could outside.  Thus the title to my post.  

My 10 yo is enjoying  a Spring  project.  A few mornings a week she finds something growing in our yard that she thinks looks interesting.  She then does a careful and detailed drawing of it in her nature notebook. Next, with my help, she looks up information about it.  She then labels her drawing and copies the information she found most interesting.  So far she's done entries on forsythia, violas, flowering quince and moss phlox.

Now if she would only let me photograph some of her project.  She's rather shy about her artwork.

I'm thrilled that my 13 yo finished her math curriculum early this year.  Wahooo!  As for my 8 yo's lost math notebook.  I think he ate it.  Someone must have.

My 8 yo has his first piano recital on the 12th.  He's starting to get excited and is practicing more and more on his own.  We are still working on reading the notes without fudging.  He keeps trying to count lines quickly thinking I won't notice.  It's the equivalent of skip-counting instead of knowing the multiplication tables.  

I posted my 18 yo son's Full Moon Film Festival entry on my other blog already- so apologies to those who are already fatigued by my exuberance but- They Won 3rd Place and Best Mockumentary!!!  

Hamilton vs. Burr from Luke Tipton on Vimeo.


Term papers are in full swing.  18 yo is writing on the formulation of a world view.  I have no idea how he is going to pull that off.  15 yo is writing on William Wilberforce.  One of her favorite movies is Amazing Grace, which was about Wilberforce's struggle to end the slave trade in England.


A bit of this, a bit of that, and peach cobbler for breakfast on the deck.  I love Spring.

To read what other home schoolers have been up to this week go to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.