Coming up this Week

Vocabulary: frigate, necessity, patience, dilemma, obliged, exasperated, amble(d), lunatic, jostling, hospitality, undertaker, imposter, courteous, awesome, extractor, elated, petrified, peer(ing), elegant, exaggerated(d), emerge(d), notoriety, idly, bedrock, fisticuff

Words that sound alike/Homophones

Prefixes and suffixes

Read-a-loud: Finish ‘Turn Homeward, Hannalee’

Reading Comprehension: Main idea, recognizing details

Writing: The Hook, organizing a new article, write a news article, art for news article.  Topic sentences and supporting detail.  In-depth review of business letter.

Grammar: Similes, synonyms and antonyms, palindromes

Reading and Social Studies: Continue reading ‘All Sail Set’, ‘Helen Keller’, start a new book.

History, Art, Science: Continue work on Landscape with focus on Native Americans of LowCountry, dwellings, food, clothing.  Mammals of LowCountry.  Fish, birds, trees of LowCounty

Create a diorama from Stuart Little unit

Math: Place value to millions, rounding, review multiplication using ‘fact factory’, multiplication tens, hundreds, thousands.  Greater than, less than, equal to.  Introduction to carrying and borrowing in division.  Numeration through 1,000,000.  Adding and subtracting 3 through 5 digits.

Copywork: 5 days this week.

Science: Use of flags to communicate from Stuart Little unit.  Parts of sailboats.  Use of natural power.

Social Science: Making choices from Stuart Little unit

It’s Thursday. It’s Flooding.

Common here in Chucktown, a heavy rain to start the morning, with wellies required to walk around downtown.  Miss Bliss has to wade to class, her school often being an island when there is a downpour.

So it goes…

Mr. Brilliant is still ill.  We are going to call today a school day.  I’d not send him to class if he were in public school, but he’s getting cabin fever just sitting at home watching TV and playing video games.  He’s healthy enough to do school work cuddled on the couch with me or Mr. A+.  Speaking of my husband, he went into A-Fib again last night.  I slept in my clothes with my phone on and under my pillow, just in case.  Thankfully we had a mostly peaceful night and Mr. A+ converted overnight.

Today is our 20th wedding anniversary.   I am so lucky we are celebrating our 20th anniversary, we nearly didn’t make it.   Mr. A+ suffered deep vein thrombosis last year and that resulted in 4 pulmonary embolisms and a cardiac thrombosis.  He also suffered a small stroke.  The cardiac thrombosis resulted in him suffering now from arterial fibrillation.

 

School items for today include:

• Writing: Putting Ideas Together.  Using Fewer Words.  Nouns, common nouns and proper nouns.  Review outlines using ‘Sing Down the Moon’.
• Vocabulary: Synonyms.  Unscrambling words.  Abbreviations of months.
• Animals that Swim — From the’ Stuart Little’ unit
• Placing Countries on the Map from the South America unit
• Subtracting 2 digits from 3 digits (with renaming)
• Copy-work
• Reading Comprehension: Stories from Kipling, related to fables and creation stories
• Read ‘Indian Fables’
• Read ‘All Sails Set’
• Read History text
• Spanish lesson with Ms. Naomi
• Review ‘The Great Turkey Walk’
• Continue building Catboat – from ‘Stuart Littl’e unit, with research of ship terms from ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ unit.

This Week at A+

Science  –  Continue work on Landscape box -Plants of South Carolina

Grammar:  Suffixes –  Subjects and Predicates  -Compound Predicates – Compound Subjects – Combining Sentences

Vocabulary  –  Suffixes  —  Idioms

Writing  – Journal  — Paragraph, Super Supper  —  Outline using ‘Three Little Kittens’  —  Paragraph, Create Your Own Town  — Using Colorful Speech, — Paragraph, Solutions  — Proof-reading

Literature  – Finish reading ’Freedom Train’ by Dorothy Sterling – Finish Reading ‘William Wilberforce’ by John Holzmann  — Read all of ‘Shoes for Everyone’ by Barbara Mitchell and ‘The Great Turkey Walk’ by Kathleen Karr

Reading Comprehension: Short study of Venn diagram – Fantasy vs Reality in Tall Tales and Fables

D.E.A.R =Drop Everything and Read:   

Math: Rounding 10s, 100s, 1000s  — Place value  —  Skip Counting  —  Addition and subtraction

Life Skills  –  Use a Compass Rose

Spelling:  The ‘s’ sound; s or ss, c, ce, sc  — syllables

Art: Draw your perfect city, and label buildings.  Draw a scene from ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’

Geography:  Countries and Capitals of South America

Social Studies/History:  Bill of Rights

Spanish: Nouns, definite articles.

Music: Songs of America

This Week at A+

Science  —  Shapes in Nature  — Square, Circle, Spiral, Triangles, Stars, Pentagon, Hexagon.  After finding them in nature we found them in the man-made world.  We discussed form and function.  —  Landscape – Make River using wax and blue-green dye.  —  Make bread.  Learn more about yeast, sourdough and how flour and water turn into bread.  Learn about breads around the world.  Learn about grains eaten around the world.

Grammar  —  The simile, using personification, telling a story using the five senses (Gold Nugget story, you are a gold nugget, what do you see?  Hear?  Taste?  Smell?  Touch?  Continue working on type of sentences.  (Command, Exclamation, Question, Statement).  Correctly writing book titles.

Vocabulary  —  Breaking News Paragraph, finding morals in fables.  Commonly Confused Words.  Synonyms, Antonyms.

Writing  — Friendly Letter  — Thank you to Grand-dad and Gigi  —  Carrie

Literature  —

‘Stuart Little’  —  Quiz.  Map of New York City.  Challenges Stuart dealt with, ‘Meeting a Challenge’ worksheet.

Poems; ‘Blind man & Elephant’ by John Godfrey Saxe and ‘The Village Blacksmith’ by Longfellow.

‘By the Great Horn Spoon’  — comparing Gold Rush Prices for common good to today’s prices.  Study of diseases common to 1849.

Reading  —

Fables comic series

The Wright Brothers

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

The Monitor and the Marrimac

William Wilberforce

Math  —  Word problems, multiplication facts, review borrowing, sequence, reviewing adding and subtracting 1 & 2 digit numbers.

Life Skills  —  Making bread, menu planning

Spelling  —  Long vowels, ea, ee, ay, ai, k sound.

Art  — Outlines, drawing with and without.  TJ created a battle scene.  Creating Marzipan animals, related to Civil War unit (Marzipan being used commonly as decoration).  Melted wax and added color for Landscape box.

Geography  —  Continue unit on South America  — Pampas, Andes, Amazon River — Studied Hemispheres.

This Week at A+

Mr. Brilliant is still fighting me tooth and nail.  He wants to be parked in front of a computer 24/7/365.   Everything thing, and I do mean everything, with the exception of computer time and TV time, is greeting with moan and groans and OMG!!!11! it goes on for ages.

I could never, would never, un-school with this child.  He’d be living in my basement at age 45, if I did.

So, what did we do?

We watched ‘Young Thomas Edison’.  Fun movie, great to watch a black and white movie with Mr. B.  He usually goes on and on about how *BORING* it is to watch a black and white movie.  Mr. B identified with young Tom, as portrayed in the movie.

Mr. B wrote in his journal daily, he did copy work and worksheets.  We worked on vocabulary, we studied long and short a and e, covered homophones, synonyms and antonyms, we reviewed complete sentences, capitalization and use of periods, question marks and exclamation points.  We covered adjectives briefly.  In math we continued multiplication facts, word problems using charts and ordering numbers from least to greatest.

We are studying South America.  This week we began discussion of the Andes Mountains.

We made a Dirt Cake as a project from ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’  Mr. B made it all by himself, the first time he’s followed a recipe and made something from scratch.  It worked out well and tasted great but I doubt we’ll make the Dirt Cake often, it is very high in sugar and fats.

Mr. B resisted all attempts to work on his landscape box, he insists on doing it with his dad (who does not have time).  So the soil sits on my porch next to the box and the big dog is locked out of his favorite lounge, since he will dig into the soil (he already ripped both bags open).

Mr. B was also supposed to write a news report using words from his vocabulary.  He dug in his heels, again, insisting on doing that with his dad.  He’s got to do it today, no matter what.  His sister is off school today, due to Hurricane Irene, so maybe she’ll get him rolling.

Another writing assignment ignored, Mr. B was supposed to write a story about the life of a gold nugget, told from the nugget’s point of view.  The assignment sheet has gone on walk-about.  I suspect Mr. B ‘misplaced’ the assignment on purpose.  We did some of the work this assignment was to cover, similes.  I don’t think Mr. B really understands them yet.  We will review similes in depth this coming week.

Mr. B did write a friendly letter, a thank you note to his grandfather (who took the entire family to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. this summer).  He didn’t address it yet so the job is not done.  Again, fighting me.

We spent a morning discussing and researching what to do in case of electrical shock.  We also had the practical experience of preparing for an evacuation and a hunker-down.  Turns out the preparations were for naught, Irene is coming abreast of us now but will pass about 250 miles out to sea.  We hope.

Just as I finished typing that we had our first big blow, winds topped 45mph and there I was, with stuff still on the porches and in the yard.  I called out to the kids to come help me bring in the items what would go flying and we all got drenched to the skin.  The blow passed just as we finished.  *shrugs*

For ‘Stuart Little’ we discussed the difference between fiction and real life (can a family really adopt a mouse for a son?).  We also researched animals in literature.  Mr. B made a list of animals that were the main character in a story.  We talked about fiction vs. real life some more (Do animals think so much like humans?  Can they really talk to one another?).  This sparked another project, Mr. B has decided he wants to have a golden hamster as a pet, so he had to find out what such a pet requires to stay happy and healthy and write-up a shopping list.  Mr. B hasn’t earned a hamster, not yet.

We continue reading poems and memorizing two poems.  Mr. B continues reading about Thomas Edison to himself (he’s read two books so far).  He is also reading about William Wilberforce to himself.  He dislikes the Wilberforce book, I am on the hunt for a better one.  I am reading ‘Freedom Train’ aloud to him, we are going to begin working on projects for that book next week.

Next week we begin Spanish again, the following week we begin working with Mrs. Lincoln, Mr. Brilliant’s Literature teacher.  Mrs. Lincoln is a real life Ms. Frizby from Magic School Bus.  More about her another time.  Hopefully tennis will also begin next week.  Still searching for a swim coach.

Terrific Tuesdays

Tuesdays, the day I talk about something that turned out terrific.

Sonlight has a huge yearly reading list for the fourth grade.  We’ve read ‘Moccasin Trail‘, ‘Plain Girl’, ‘Sing Down the Moon’, and  ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ so far.  ‘Freedom Train – The Story of Harriet Tubman’ is in progress.  From the Oak Meadow curriculum we’ve read ‘Stuart Little’.

‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ has become our greatest hit so far.  Mr. Brilliant loves it, has read it twice.  Before we read the book I told Mr. Brilliant about his great-great-great grandfather, the sea-captain, who sailed ’round the Horn a number of times, often going through the Straights of Magellan, and took gold miners from Boston to San Francisco during the gold rush.  This gave Mr. Brilliant a personal connection with the book.  I purchased ‘Using ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ in the Classroom’, as I wanted to go into more depth than the Sonlight curriculum does.  This combination has worked out great.  I’ve even tied in some of our studies of South America to this book.

From Mr. Brilliant and I, ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ is highly recommended.  Speaking to other homeschooling parents, if you are covering the westward expansion of the US, the Gold Rush, California history, or South American geography, or if you are looking for a book that including examples of friendly letters, ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’ fits the bill.  I’d also recommend this title to the reluctant reader, the action moves fast enough yet the writing flows easy for a child reading at grade level.

To briefly cover the other books, ‘Moccasin Trial’ was a slow start but my son did get into it and did finish reading it with relish.  We read ‘Plain Girl’ out of sequence, during a visit to the Amish country.  I could tell Mr. Brilliant liked it, but he was embarrassed to admit it.  Both my kids read ‘Sing Down the Moon’ and both found it interesting but depressing.  Mr. Brilliant swallowed both ‘Freedom Train’ and ‘Stuart Little’ crossing the Atlantic.  He read them so fast that I’m having him re-read ‘Freedom Train’ again (I’m reading it aloud to him).  Mr. B had read ‘Stuart Little’ before, and I’d read it to him a few times when he was a wee thing, we both felt he didn’t need to read it again before we started on the projects.

This week at A+

Mr. Brilliant got off to a rough start.  Monday was his first day of school and he felt it awfully unfair of me to ask him to start school a day before his sister started school.  My son feels the injustices of his life very keenly.

This week we read (Stuart Little, a biography of Thomas Edison).  We continued work we started last term on ‘By the Great Horn Spoon’.  In Math we worked on multiplication facts and place values, with a little money work thrown in for fun.  Mr. B played a game of Risk with his dad using ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Risk set.  (My brother-in-law purchased that set about 10 years ago, we never used it, now I know why).  The game didn’t go well but my husband tells me Mr. B is learning strategy and finally ending his habit of cheating if he thinks he is losing.

We used a number of worksheets.  I’m not a big fan of worksheets but my son likes to work on his own, at his own pace.  Worksheets allow him to get back into the swing of school work without my standing over him every second.  He also likes the feeling of mastery that the worksheets allow.  He can pick up the sheets and go hide in his room, he doesn’t need me to explain.  We will phase out the worksheets as he becomes comfortable working on his own projects.  Right now he is still trying to avoid work in favor of video games.

We do copy work.  This is something many home schoolers hate.  My husband disagrees with my choice to use copy work.  My son says he hates it, but he does it willingly.  One thing Mr. B never learned at school is to do a thing well, just to have done it well.  I require him to slow down and do his best work on the copy work.  Best handwriting, proof-reading for spelling and punctuation.  The work is super easy and it gives him a feeling of success.

Hmmm…  Even though everything he worked at, at school in 2nd and 3rd grade, Mr. B never felt he was doing things well.  He was always being told he could do better.  Perhaps that is why the copy work and worksheets are both boring him yet focusing him.  Success is easily observed, improvement swiftly achieved.  I must ponder this thought awhile.

We start each school day with journal writing.  Mr. B hated that at school, he hates it at home.

We spent some time drawing mice this week.  Mr. B drawings were nearly perfect.  Rather worried about that, as he took no enjoyment out of that exercise, but sweated until he’d completed it as close to a perfect copy of what was in the book.

No outside lessons this week, will be starting those over the next three weeks.

What we are doing here

As I’d mentioned, my son, Mr. Brilliant, is in 4th grade.  He left/was asked to leave his previous school because, although he was getting straight A’s, he was bored to tears and his teachers all agreed, he wasn’t working up to his potential.  That much was clear, while my daughter was sweating bricks for each A and B, he was getting the excellent grades without effort.  He was learning that life is a free ride and if it didn’t come easy it wasn’t worth doing.

Not lessons his father and I wished him to be learning.

So, what curriculum were we to use at home?

The easy answer was using one of the on-line K-12 programs issued by the state.  Easy, everything comes in a box, you just need a computer and an internet connection and off you go.  Or was it so easy?  I didn’t want my son parked on the computer, surfing on the net all day.  Turns out the state systems are lock-step, it is classroom instruction at home.  My son would not be able to work ahead or dive deeply into something that interested him, nor do only the basics on subjects that he’d already covered or were of little interest.  Additionally, taking time off to travel would be just as difficult as if he were in a brick and mortar campus.

The tough answer, but the better answer for Mr. Brilliant and our family, was a combination of ‘out-of-the-box’ curriculum with addition of items of my choosing.  First we purchased the Oak Meadow 4th grade curriculum.  Oak Meadow is a Waldorf based program, the work is gentle and flowing, an ideal step away from the rigid system my son had been exposed to so far.  Working with Oak Meadow for the last quarter of 3rd grade, I was able to see where my son’s strengths and weakness lay.  My husband and I came to realize that the Oak Meadow, by itself, was going to be too light and too little to keep my son engaged, although the depth of the projects would allow him to enjoy a peacefully educational progress he’s never experienced before.  Oak Meadow was also going to allow Mr. B to delve into the wonders of cross-discipline learning (The ‘Stuart Little‘ project would encompass literature, biology and arts and crafts as well as written expression).

I have added a number of items from The Well-Trained Mind program.  My son was very weak on grammar and history, two subjects WTM covers well.  He also needed to slow his pace and while copy work bores him, the passages he copies from are well written and engage him.  Finally, since I am starting at the beginning of their programs, it is maintaining his illusion that school work is easy, but the program moves forward quickly enough, that he’ll feel challenged soon (but not overly so).

Next, how to engage his interest?  How do make the process of learning ‘fun’?  Enter the Sonlight program.  Mr. B insisted that reading books was boring and he wanted to spend this next year doing unit studies, something easy enough to do with Oak Meadow.  However I found that Mr. B didn’t have the ability to remain focused long enough to work for weeks at a time on a unit study (though that is something we’ll re-exam in about six months).  Sonlight provides excellent books, primarily well written and engaging fictional stories well suited for a boy my son’s age.  They have the added a delightfully easy to follow teacher program that makes it pleasant to follow should you decided to work it closely or vary wildly.  One book could be somewhat glossed over (My son didn’t cotton to ‘Sing Down the Moon’), while another book could be featured at great length (“By the Great Horn Spoon’ was a massive hit.) and many lessons from one book were re-framed in the next, so the important points weren’t lost if you read one book merely for pleasure while delving into the other book for a few weeks.

So, that covers the core of English, Literature, Grammar and Written Expression.  Next up, Math, Science, PE, Art, Music, Spanish and so forth…