A very long overdue post

It's been months and months since I've blogged. We switched things up a little last year with the kiddos going to a Montessori school a couple of days a week. It was a good fit for them, but it caused a real time crunch for me, trying to cram five days of lessons into three days. I felt like I didn't have time to do anything extra, so the blog got put on the back burner. I regret not having blogged much last year because I really enjoy going back through my old posts from the first couple of years and seeing what we did.  It's a homeschool diary.

Today was a beautiful day here in OK so we headed out to the nature preserve this afternoon. It's one of our favorite local places to hike, and every time we go there, I wonder why we don't go more often.

While we were hiking around, 

looking for letters in nature for art projects for the kids' rooms, 

enjoying having our pictures taken,

and watching butterflies do their thing, 

I had a moment of clarity. 

Lately, I've been feeling like I'm at a crossroads with this whole Otherwise Educating thing. This is our fourth year, and I've loved it. I haven't loved everything about it. There have been days when I have not loved it at all. But overall, it has been a wonderful experience for me and for my children. I wouldn't care if they hadn't learned anything (they have), I would not trade the time I have had with them for all the money in the world. However, we are quickly approaching the high school years with Thing 3, and Thing 4 has been telling me she wants to go back to school. She doesn't want to go back to any school. She thinks she might want to go back to public school. You know, that place from which I rescued her over three years ago. 

I've had many conversations in my head, with my husband, with my neighbor and favorite homeschool mom about whether or not to continue on this path. I wonder if my children would be learning more in school.  Would they be better off socially? I have doubts about my ability to homeschool high school.  It's one thing to homeschool elementary school kids. Anyone can teach state capitals and multiplication tables. But how will I teach geometry, chemistry, writing? Can I do this for the long term? Do I even want to? Should I have done this at all?

And then, as she often does, Thing 4 said something that brought me back to the moment. She has been learning about food chains and food webs. Before we headed out today, we covered (for the third time) the various parts of the food chain...producers, consumers, scavengers, decomposers. As we walked past a log that had been eaten by termites, I casually mentioned, "Oh look. Termites have been eating that log. Where do you suppose termites fall in the food chain?" She looked at me, looked at the log, thought for a minute and shouted, "Decomposers! They're decomposers. And look, Mom! You can see how they're breaking down this log. It's turning back into soil." Then, "Wow. You know, it's one thing to read about decomposers, but when I can actually see and touch what they've done, I really get it." 

And that's why I do what I do. I'm doing it again tomorrow. After that, who knows? For now, I'm just going to enjoy the moment.

New School Year, New Fashion Statements

(The iPad camera still stinks, but it is super handy for blogging.)

-Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Some days are good math days...

...and some days aren't. I've finally learned that it's better to let go of math on the bad math days and move on to something else.

It was a bad math day but an excellent day for flower arranging. Thing 4 spent a great deal of time carefully choosing flowers and greenery from our backyard and making flower arrangements. This was one of her favorites.

It made the bad math day a lot less frustrating.

Canaanite Mask

Last week in Oak Meadow 3 Social Studies, Thing 4 studied Phonecia and the Canaanites and how they used different types of resources to create and trade goods. We talked about natural, human and capital resources and how they interrelate. She was really interested in this, and I was really happy (again) to be using OM, because I would never have thought to teach her this at this point in her learning.

To go along with the lesson, she created a Canaanite ceremonial mask out of Sculpey clay. Cool!

In Monet, I Find Hope...

...for my most challenging wonderfully creative, free-spirited, child.

"I was undisciplined by birth, never would I bend, even in my tender youth, to a rule. It was at home I learned the little I know. Schools always appeared to me like a prison, and never could I make up my mind to stay there, not even for four hours a day, when the sunshine was inviting, the sea smooth, and when it was joy to run about the cliffs in the free air, or to paddle in the water." -Claude Monet

(Yes, that's underwear on her head and socks for ears.)

The girl is something else, and I wouldn't trade her for the world.

Math Can Be Dangerous

Watercolor Painting a la Oak Meadow

I'm learning that Oak Meadow is not a curriculum to be rushed. Everything we do in OM is very "intentional" with a real and well-thought out purpose. In addition, everything is a process. In fact, for Third Grade, I have a Home Teacher's Process Manual that covers everything from Guidelines for Recorder Playing to Crayon Drawing.

Today we worked on Watercolor Painting. There are four pages in the Teacher Process Manual devoted to teaching Watercolor Painting. Who knew painting with watercolors was so complex?

With Oak Meadow, there is no using those nasty watercolors that come in the plastic box...the ones that all turn black after a couple of uses because all the colors get mixed up, but then it doesn't matter anyway because they crack when they dry out and you have to buy new ones. No, we used high quality paints and a good paint brush.

We used just the three primary colors. Sometimes less is more. At first, Thing 4 balked at the lack of choice, but she quickly figured out that mixing colors to create other colors is fun! With this technique, you mix the colors on the paper as you paint, not in a dish.

Oak Meadow encourages a "wet paper" method of watercolor painting. When the paper is wet, the colors blend more easily, and it allows more movement of the paint lines. I thought it was a strange concept until we tried it. If you're going to use the wet paper method, it's important to use high quality watercolor paper. All of my high quality supplies came in the art kit I ordered from OM, but you could find them at a craft store.

Today she really enjoyed just experimenting with the colors and seeing them blend.

It's not exactly a Monet, but she had fun! There's no going back to those nasty watercolors in the plastic box.

Oak Meadow, Grade 5- Review of the First Two Weeks

Tomorrow we finish our second week of Oak Meadow. So far, I am loving it! I am using OM Grade 5 History and Science for Thing 3.

While I have a fabulous language arts curriculum for him, I am finding that I really like, no, I love, the language arts component of 5th grade OM, so I'm using it in addition to our other program. In Oak Meadow, Language Arts (which OM still refers to as "English") and History are integrated, so the spelling and vocabulary words, grammar lessons, as well as the writing assignments (and there are a lot of those!) and art activities are all related to the history readings. Because of this integration, by the end of a week of lessons and activities, the theme is firmly cemented in my kiddo's mind and he can see the broader picture instead of bits and pieces.

The writing was a little overwhelming at first, but it gets better with each assignment. One thing I appreciate about OM is that there are usually several writing options from which to choose. Today's history lesson listed 8 different writing assignments and had the student choose two. We took it a step further and used the other options as discussion questions which we talked about together. In the first two weeks, Thing 3 has completed 5 separate writing assignments.

As a part of the history lesson last week, we spent some time one night lying on the patio trying to locate the North Star because that's how the early explorers navigated. It turned into a family event! We all agreed that using the Garmin is preferable to navigating by the stars. The next day, Thing 3 had to write a poem about the night sky and illustrate it. He really enjoyed that.

This week, as we study Columbus, the OE Dad (what a guy!) is helping Thing 3 build a sailboat which we will try out in the pool this weekend. (Pictures to follow soon!) That's been a fun activity for the two of them.

OM Level 5 Science is fantastic, too. It starts with the basics and will build from there. The first week, we learned about Scientific Inquiry by studying and classifying birds. This week we are learning about the Scientific Method, and we're studying frogs (the barometer of environmental health) and their habitats.

My only small complaint about Oak Meadow is that I feel a little rushed at times with the weekly schedule. I really think we could spend two weeks on some topics. In the future, we may stretch some things out over a couple of weeks so we can dig a little deeper. I know that some families stretch one level of OM over two school years. The other option would be to continue OM over the summer, but, based on my history, we all know that, despite my good intentions, that's probably not going to happen.

I am so happy to have found Oak Meadow. It's perfect for us.

Ruth Heller World of Language Series

Quite by accident, I recently came across a lovely series of language arts books. I wasn't even looking for a language arts curriculum, but saw these books mentioned on an Oak Meadow forum that I frequent and knew I had to check them out.

The Ruth Heller World of Language Series is a beautiful collection of picture books with each book highlighting a particular part of speech. There are eight books in the series:

• Merry-Go-Round, A Book About Nouns
• Mine, All Mine, A Book About Pronouns
• Kites Sail High, A Book About Verbs
• Many Luscious Lollipops, A Book About Adjectives
• Up, Up, and Away, A Book About Adverbs
• Behind the Mask, A Book About Prepositions
• Fantastic! Wow! And Unreal!, A Book About Interjections and Conjunctions

This afternoon I received the first four that I ordered.

I loved them so much that I ordered the other four tonight. (It helps that Amazon has a "buy three, get the fourth free" promotion going on right now.)

These living books, have beautiful, lively illustrations and are written in engaging rhyme.

Thing 4, who is a highly visual child, will love this series.

Who knew that grammar lessons could be so much fun?

One Year Down!

Our first year of Otherwise Educating is finished and we're well into our summer break. I had big plans to school over the summer, but so far those plans haven't materialized. Neither have my plans to paint two rooms and organize all my closets. Oh well...at least I'm consistent.

I learned a lot in my first year of Otherwise Educating. Here are just a few things I learned:

• Homeschooling is harder than I thought it would be.
• Greek Mythology is really interesting!
• So is Ancient History.
• I own the curriculum. The curriculum doesn't own me. (Many thanks to veteran HSing mom, Meredith, for that pearl of wisdom.)
• It's tough for some kids to hold on to a pencil for longer than five minutes at a time.
• When you realize the day is going downhill fast, it's ok, and probably even wise, to ditch school and do something fun. There's always tomorrow.
• A good network of homeschooling moms is essential.
  
• Making the bed is overrated.
• So is cleaning up the breakfast dishes before dinner.
• Time spent with my children is priceless.

While I'm enjoying our summer off, I am excited to get started next year. I have finally settled on all of my curriculum. I'm going to start seriously planning as soon as our new Latin and Language Arts programs arrive.

I'm really excited to start using our Oak Meadow curriculum. I'm hoping it's going to add some fun and creativity to our school days.

And just because I think all blog posts are better with a picture or two, here are a couple of pictures from our summer vacation.


Thing 4 at Space Center Houston:




Thing 3 as an X-Man:

Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead!

Thing 3 finished 4th Grade Shurley English today! I don't know who was more excited...him or me. I'm pretty sure it was me.

I have a love/hate relationship with Shurley. In October, I almost divorced her. I couldn't handle the jingles, detail and repetition any longer. I was about ready to set fire to the books when I decided I didn't want to spend another dime on curriculum and vowed to give it one more try. I went through the curriculum, figured out what parts of it would work for us and ignored the rest. Once I did that, it worked beautifully. Thing 3 developed a really solid grammar foundation, and for that, I'm glad I stuck with it. That said, Shurley and I are going our separate ways next year.

We headed to Quik Trip this afternoon for a celebratory Icee.

As if we don't draw enough attention to ourselves just by being out and about during school hours, Thing 4 got some extra attention by wearing her favorite shoes.

The old me...the one who didn't expend a ridiculous amount of energy every day arguing about subtraction...might have said "no" to wearing those shoes out. The new, tired me was just glad she was getting out of the house.

Freedom To Be Creative

Thing 4 loves to create. It doesn't matter if she's creating with paint, clay, sticks or trash she found in the street. The simple act of creating feeds her sweet little soul. So last week when she took one of her frequent outdoor breaks, it was no surprise to me that she came back in with an armload of flowers, (or weeds, depending on your perspective) and asked if she could make some flower arrangements.

We still had math and cursive to complete, but who am I to stifle the creative spirit of an 8 year old? Math and cursive can wait. Creativity can't. She spent the better part of the next 90 minutes creating and then placing her beautiful arrangements around our home.

I know people wonder how she will ever learn to cope in the "real world" if I don't make her sit for most of the day doing pencil and paper work. I have heard that criticism concern first-hand.

How will she ever learn to sit at a desk for hours at a time if I give in to her need to move?

The answer is "She won't", and that's precisely the point.

I could fight who she is and we would both be miserable. Instead, I choose to allow her to be the person God created her to be, (as much as it frustrates me sometimes).

Learning To Type

Thing 4 has decided that it's time she learn some keyboarding skills. Unsure of where to start, I consulted my homeschool network and one of my homeschooling friends directed me to Dance Mat Typing. Thing 4 loves it! She has learned a lot already. I love it, too, because it's another one of those self-paced, self-directed activities which allows me time to work one-on-one with her brother on another subject.

I think it's more appealing to the younger set than it would be to older kids. If you have a younger child who needs to learn to type, check it out!

Fun New Math Game

As I may or may not have mentioned, teaching AC math is a bit of a challenge. It's not that she's not good at math, quite the opposite is true. She is a math whiz if she's doing it in her head. She just has a mental block where math work is concerned. I think it's partly a confidence issue.

After beating my head against a wall and causing my ever-patient homeschooling friends to want to beat their heads against a wall due to my incessant whining about our math struggles, I finally took the advice of all three of those friends and ditched our math curriculum (for the time being). Instead, we do kitchen math, mental math, math games, games that are not math games but that require math skills (like Yahtzee), and work from the incredible "Math Pamphlet" that my good friend made for AC. (That's a whole other post. It's really wonderful.)

In my search for ways to work on math without it seeming like we are working on math, I came across the Exact Change Card Game. Not only is it a great way to teach money skills, but it is perfect to teach children how to add a series of numbers with regrouping. I have AC do all the adding for all of us. It's great practice and is a good confidence builder for her. I think it's really going to help. Hopefully, we can start our Singapore Math curriculum again soon.

She *Is* Learning Something!

One of my little Otherwise Educated kiddos is an active learner. He is always engaged when we do school, even when he's not particularly enjoying what we're doing. I can tell he's "getting it". The other one...not so much. She is, how can I put this? Well, she's just a little less focused. She is a lot less focused. She completely lacks anything resembling focus. To be more accurate, teaching her is a lot like herding cats. Let's just say that it's a challenge most days. She is always rolling around on the floor, jumping up to follow the gnat that flew by, running to the window to see what caused the sound she heard, stopping mid-assignment to practice a dance step, picking her pencil up off the floor for the 145th time that day. She's not unlike a pinball. There are days when I've considered medication...and not just for her.

It's not that she's not smart. Quite the opposite is true. She is highly intelligent. But like many truly gifted children, her brain just works differently. Every day, I plug along and continue to try to find ways to reach and engage her and to teach her something. I'm never entirely sure she has heard what I've said, let alone retained anything.

However...

You know that we did this little Christmas Around The World Unit Study. When we studied Christmas in Australia, we read that seasons in the Southern Hemisphere are opposite of the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere due to the tilt of the Earth. In Australia, Christmas comes in the summer and Santa arrives in a boat.

So the other day when Thing 4 was out with her daddy, she said, "I think Santa has two coats. A heavy coat for when he's in the Northern Hemisphere and a lighter coat for when he's in the Southern Hemisphere."

Praise the Lord and pass the champagne! She really learned something from me!

2nd Grade Math Is Going To Kill Me

I tend to post about all the fun things we do here in our little school at home. Readers of this blog (all three of you) might get the idea that it's just all rosy and cheery all the time...that all we do is read, do crafts, cook, take field trips, socialize (imagine that!) and have fun. We do a lot of that.

We also do math. Or at least we try.

I used to be able to get my hair colored every six weeks. That is, I used to do it every six weeks until I started teaching Thing 4 math. Now I have to go every five weeks and I should go every four. I have a lot of gray hair. I blame it all on math.

Thing 4 does not like math. In fact, she hates math. She will do just about anything to avoid doing math.

She's not bad at math. Actually, she's quite good at it as long as it's not pencil and paper math. Ask her how many eggs are in four dozen and she can tell you without even stopping to think about it. Ask her how many weeks are in three months. She can tell you that, too. You can even ask her how much change she'll get back if the item she's purchasing is $14.50 and she gives the clerk a twenty.

But she hates doing math in school.

Math is going to be the death of one of us.

Here's a photo I took the other day when we were doing math. When I left, there were only two problems on the board...nothing else. The problem on the left, I worked with her. The problem on the right (the one where she is incorrectly subtracting from left to right) is the one I gave her to do while I ran and switched the laundry out and started another load. One problem. That's simple enough, right?

When I came back, the board looked like this:

Excuse me while I call the salon.

Are You Smarter Than A Second Grader?

On Thursday, my daughter was watching "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?" The question was, "Which of the original 13 colonies was the last to ratify the Constitution?" The adult contestant answered "Pennsylvania".

Thing 4 came running into the kitchen and said, "Oh. My. Goodness. That man thought Pennsylvania was the last colony to ratify the Constitution! Everyone knows Pennsylvania was the second to ratify it! He's not even smarter than a second grader!"

As a slightly insecure Otherwise Educating mother, I really love it when we have those moments when our decision to OE is validated. It's great when I see that my children really are learning something from me and I see that I'm not completely screwing up their lives...unless you think weird, nerdy kids who wear pajamas until noon most days and who ask to study History and read about Odysseus are screwed up. If you do, then I've totally screwed them up.I feel compelled to point out, however, that they were weird and nerdy before I started OEing them. But they didn't wear pajamas until noon. That's all my fault.

Just don't ask Thing 4 what colony was the third to ratify the Constitution. We haven't gotten that far yet. We got a little sidetracked with our study of Greek Mythology.

There's just too much to learn and not enough days in the week!

Another Installment of Project Runway

Because I know you all anxiously await photos of Thing 4 modeling her funky wardrobe choices, I'm posting this picture of how she dressed for school yesterday. It's sort of a Jamaican Prairie look, Mon.

Are you starting to see why Otherwise Educating might be just the right thing for this unconventional child?

I've considered making her wear a button that says, "I dressed myself." Surely that goes without saying...right?

Dress Code

There is no dress code here in our little school. It's a good thing or this child would be in detention almost every day.

More Nature Journaling

It was a gorgeous day yesterday, so we cut our school day a little short and headed to the a local nature center for a nature walk and some nature journaling. There was so much to look at that it was tough for the children to choose something to journal.

Thing 3 chose to journal this wildflower. I think it's actually ragweed, but I can't be sure. For research purposes, I declared it was ragweed.

In our research, we learned that bees love ragweed because it produces so much pollen. Some people say that a single plant produces a billion grains of pollen in one season! Please pass the Zyrtec.

Thing 4 chose to journal a garden snail that she found hiding under this rotting piece of wood. She sort of rushed through her drawing so she could play with her new friend. They're really pretty interesting creatures, what with those eyes on stalks.

You'll notice that she continues to make interesting fashion choices. She tells me that matching clothes are so dull.

Both kiddos thought this guy was cool, but he wouldn't hold still long enough for either of them to sketch.

"Let them once get in touch with nature and a habit is formed which will be a source of delight and habit through life." Charlotte Mason