Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

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

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.

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.