School Ramblings {August 6, 2016}

We have just finished our second week of the new school year. We've been easing in with half days. I'm really not looking forward to full days as the half days have been perfect. I might have to look over the calendar one more time to see if we can afford a few more half days. ; )

Last spring I started doing these post called School Ramblings and I plan to continue them this year. It will be a look into our homeschool. I probably won't get them done every week.

What's in the Morning Basket? Well, this heading is being changed to Afternoon Basket. This year it just works out to do this in our afternoon. Our Afternoon Basket for the first weeks have gone well. We have the following things in the basket that we will be working through this term and some items all year.

Music Appreciation:  SCM Music with the Masters-Beethoven,

 listening to folk songs, learning hymns, reading The Listeners Guide to Music by Percy A. Scholes (can find free online)

Reading the following books: Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham; Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder; Ourselves by Charlotte Mason; A Field Guide to the Familiar by Gale Lawrence; The Forty Dreams of St. John Bosco; The Children's Plutarch: Tales of the Greeks by F.G. Gould.

 We are studying the works of Constable using SCM Art Portfolios. We will be using The Law's Guide to Nature  Drawing & Journaling by John Muir Laws on weeks that nature study isn't possible. 

We are reading poems by Williams Wordsworth and listening to Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare.

Nature study is also scheduled during this time once a week if weather permits.

Tyler's favored book: Tyler read Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan for free reading and flew through it and enjoyed it. I asked for a review and got nothing except that it was much enjoyed. ; )

What's this? (improvement needed) It has been a struggle to get going in the morning and starting school on time. We've done well, but I really need to work on my attitude. I've been unpleasant and my voice is stern and that really makes everyone anxious. My morning grumpiness is due to low B12 levels and I'm working on getting those up, but I really shouldn't let that show and I need be more loving in the morning no matter what. I hope to work on this next week.

 

We've got this! (improvements made) Caleb and I were really nervous about starting back to math this year. Caleb was just past the halfway point in Algebra I. It actually went really well! I cut back his math to thirty minutes instead of forty-five that we did the previous two years. It seems like we are getting the same amount of work done with less frustration.

Looking ahead (teacher duties): I need to fine tune that schedule and do a little rearranging to fix some bumps we hit during our first two weeks. I also need to work on a post with our book list for the year. I intended to have that post done before now.

Clicking Around (some links I've enjoyed recently):
Do You Plan for Bad Days? from Kortney Garrison @ One Drawer Deep
Not a Math Person: How to Remove Obstacles to Learning Math   
Friday Philosopher: No STEM for CM from Anna @Little Drops of Water

How was your week? 

Our Plans {2014-2015 Term 2}

It's hard to believe we are a third of the way through the school year! This post will have what we are continuing from term 1 and what new books we are using for term 2. A * will indicate any new selections for term 2 or books we switched to after school started and weren't included in the term 1 post.

Tyler~10 years old~5th grade:

History/Geography: 

Visits to North America  (map work)

The Cat of Bubastes (historical fiction)
Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (ancient history)
The Story of the World 1 (Ancient History) 
Augustus Caesar's World  (will be added in about halfway through the term)*
Stories of America Volume 2 (American History)*

Math:
We switched to Saxon 5/4 earlier in the school year and have been very happy with this switch.
Life of Fred (math review for Tyler)
Times Attack  (for additional fact practice)

Science:
Tyler has two more weeks of weather study and then he will be starting Focus of Chemistry*.
Health 5 from Seton

Religion:
Life of our Lord For Children
St. Joseph's Baltimore Catechism *

Language Arts:
IEW Fix It Book 1 (applied grammar)
All About Spelling 4 
Keyboarding Skills 
Copywork
Writing (working on written narrations and other writing projects)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe * (for literature) 



Caleb~13 years~8th grade

History/Geography:
Caleb requested to stop ancient history studies and switch to modern history. So, we are going to use plans for studying the 20th century from Mater Amabilis (World and American History)
American Gun: A History of the US in Ten Guns (American History)
Hittite Warrior (Ancient History-he's enjoying this book and wanted to finish it; we will replace it with a book off the MA list once done)
Visits to North America (map work)
Current Events using our Diocese's weekly paper
Geography Games (map drill)

Math:
Saxon 8/7 
Times Attack (for additional fact practice)

Science:
CHC Life Science by Michael J. Spear *(which is a complete change from our original plans)

Religion:
The Virtue Tree Program  (which is from CHC and I found it in their old Middle School Guide-but the current lesson plans are in the seventh grade lesson plans)
St. Joseph's Baltimore Catechism No. 2 *
The How-To Book of the Mass *

Language Arts:
IEW Fix It Book 2 (applied grammar)
All About Spelling *
The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien (literature)
Writing With Skill Level 1 *
Written Narration once a week from history

We also have 45 minutes first thing for Morning Basket and 30 minutes at the end of the school day that I like to call Afternoon Basket. This is the work we do together. 

For Morning Basket I plan to spend 15 minutes on each topic and get down three each day. We were running a few minutes late this week and just read a little less in the read aloud.

For Afternoon Basket I just pick a topic that I want to do that afternoon and do one or a few of the suggestions under it.

Morning Basket links:
Swallowdale (read aloud)
A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls (history)
Grammar Town *(grammar)
St. John Paul II: Be Not Afraid *(religion-saints)
The Father Brown Reader II *(read aloud)
Faith & Life 5 (religion-catechism)
The Fallacy Detective (logic)
The U.S. Constitution and You *(civics)

Afternoon basket links:
Chalk Pastel
Ed Emberley
Art Through Faith
The Ultimate Homeschool PE Book *
Memorizing poetry using How to Teach Your Kids Shakespeare and The Harp and Laurel Wreath
A Midsummer's Night Dream  (Shakespeare)
Lewis Carroll
Handicrafts Made Simple-Hand Sewing *

Our First Month of School {2014-2015}

We have completed our first month of school and it has gone well. Of course, there were changes.

The biggest changes are always my doing. Usually something in me needs to change, an attitude or a habit. There is a lot of growth to be done as mom and teacher. Those must be done first before we expect our children and students to change.

I'm loving Pam's post at Everyday Snapshots, It's 3:16. How's Your Homeschool Plan Holding Up? Part 1 and Part 2. She gets it and has some wise words.

Our first set back was starting back to school at the end of July. It's always tough and I did expect it. Nothing makes you feel more like a weird homeschooler when you are back at school and everyone else is still on summer break.

Another issue that arose was that I had more planned for Caleb than could actually fit into our schooling hours. I had to cut out and rearrange. It was difficult. We are still working on this. This week I have everything fit into the schedule but our margin is very small. The question is whether we are disciplined enough to handle that. The answer is no at the moment and we are working on that.

I also had to rework our Morning Basket Plans. It was taking too much time and other subjects had greater priority. I also thinking I need to loop it. We are trying that this week. I'm not a looper . . . . I tend to think things are optional when I try to loop them. I'll reevaluate at the end of the week.


I'm happy with almost all of our original plans. I wasn't too impressed with Our Mother Tongue just because I think it needs a workbook with it. Caleb wasn't impressed with Memoria Press's Botany study (Book of Trees). Tyler enjoys all his book.

I'm still working on fitting in all of Caleb's Language Art subjects and I still see myself playing around with the schedule on this. I did or will be changing out some books. Memoria Press Classical Compositions has been replaced with Writing With Skill Level 1.I decided I needed to be less involved in his writing. WWS seems to be the perfect amount of involvement for me. Of course, we have only completed a week of the program (in a week's time I should add) which is far better than one day of lesson one in the MPCC over three weeks.  

 
Tyler, on the other hand, is getting done with school too early. It looks like we do have time for Latin this year.  ; )  Tyler disagrees! Actually I do too. I don't have time to teach it. Right now I'm trying to decided if I should increase Tyler's per subject time or throw in some extra books. 

I do have one BIG change for Tyler and I really hate to talk about it so I'll just whisper it. That would be math. His current program just isn't working for him. I have something different coming our way. That's another post though.

Zebra sleeping through Morning Basket.

 

Our Morning Basket Plans

My favorite part of homeschooling is our Morning Basket. I finally got our Morning Basket organized and put into daily use after I read about it at Jen's Wildflowers and Marbles (this is her most recent post, be sure to check out all her post on this topic!) a few years ago. It was something we did from day one of homeschooling, but it wasn't very organized until the last few years.

Other places to learn about Morning Basket (aka Morning Time, Circle Time, Together Work, Family Work) include Sarah @ Amongst Lovely Things and Cindy @ Ordo Amoris along with Mystie @ Simply Convivial. Please share in the comments any bloggers who inspire your Morning Basket!

I started a wonderful list of ideas for Morning Basket and as I was planning, my original plans got pushed aside and my Morning Basket plan ended up not looking like what I intended. 

I was getting pretty anxious about it and knew I had to start over. I went back to Jen's most recent post and noticed my original list looked very similiar to her's. Jen had done all the work for me! So, I printed off her list and went through and crossed off some titles and changed them to the books I had on hand. I followed her weekly plan for Morning Basket and made changes to fit our schedule. I'm very pleased! I finally got things on the list that I've been wanting to do a long time.

Our Morning Basket last around 60-90 minutes. I have two boys (ages 13 & 10) who don't sit still! We take a break, if needed, and they also fiddle with thinking putty, fold laundry, or draw, if needed. Our goal is to get done anything that we plan to do together (family work) and the rest of the day is for independent work or work alone with mom. We may meet back up in the afternoon (very end of the day) for an elective (like PE).

I don't loop* our Morning Basket. I plan what I want to do each day. If we get behind in one area I'm fine with switching up the schedule as needed. I will make some changes each term and switch out books as we finish them.

Here is the plan for term 1:

Art Appreciation using Art Through Faith 

Read aloud for Literature: Swallowdale and Canadian Summer 

Read aloud for history: A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Story of the World Volume 1

Poetry: reading from Lewis Carroll, Around the year, and The Harp and Laurel Wreath  

Shakespeare: we will read A Midsummer Night's Dream and memorizing a passage using How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare

Geography: Tree in the Trail using the Beautiful Feet Guide.

Character Training on kindness using Simply Charlotte Mason Laying Down the Rails.

Music Appreciation: Listen to The Piano Guys (you can find them on youtube or listen free if you have Amazon Prime)

Art: Drawing Together (set timer for 20 minutes and draw using our Ed Emberly books) or any other art project I run across that looks fun. I have some chalk pastels from Hodgepodge that I would like to use too.

Music: we will be learning some Hymns and Folk songs from Our Musical Year (a resource I've had on hand since our first year, but haven't used in a long time).

Memory Work: we will be making sure we remember all the prayers we already (should) know and will be learning a new one each term. Also, will be memorizing bible verses which I took directly from Jen's plans which came out of the Harp & Laurel book.

Civics:  How the US Government Works (I have an older edition) and some books about Missouri checked out from the library.

We will be doing Logic of English everyday too (for twenty minutes)during Morning Basket, assuming that we can do this together. We may have to move this if I need to work separately with each boy. I noticed some gaps in their phonics (and especially spelling)that needs some attention. I've put it off for a long time because they "test" highly in reading (and spelling too and one of them can't spell much of anything), but I'm catching mistakes during narration and when they read to me. (An example to show that standardized testing is not reliable.)

What are your Morning Basket plans?