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Homeschooling January 2006 Comment on this item
Submitted by witchiepoo on Sat, 01/07/2006 - 7:48am.
I want to revive this thread to try and give myself a bit more accountability. I was slacking off more than I should, but now we seem to be on a better track, and I hope to keep it up. -Jo Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious | digg | reddit | google | yahoo | technorati | stumble upon | sk*rt( categories: Homeschooling )
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 The LatestOur recent topics of interest are: telling time dinosaurs volcanoes subtraction faries and unicorns Colonial America Right now DD5 is digging plastic dinosaur bones out of a chunk of what looks like brick. It's really messy and a lot of fun. Once she gets all the pieces out and cleaned off, we will try to assemble them into a T-Rex skeleton. Yesterday she asked if her next unit after the dinosaurs could be volcanoes, so that should be fun too. She got a watch and is very into telling time. She has mastered the hour and half-hour. We have been reading the Felicity American Girl books and DD is intrigued with life during the colonial time. I had the Felicity craft and cook books from when I was teaching, so we are going to do some of that too. We continue with the math and phonics lessons, although not at the pace we should be. She knows all the sounds and lowercase forms of all the letters and can read words with consonant blends. She has also started writing very simple sentences. In math, she has started and really likes subtraction. We also started fractions, and she got the concept of half much more quickly than I thought she might. I need to be: better about consistency with the math and phonics. She likes them, they are important, and I am just being a slacker. documenting more consistently for her portfolio. I have to use it to prove mastery of the concepts I put in my curriculum document with the state. Anyone else wanna chime in? -Jo  What's up with usJosie got an American Girls collection about Kit, so we've been studying the Depression, the economy, and reporting. (Kit wants to be a reporter.) Josie is expecting delivery of her Great-Uncle Jimmy's typewriter, and once she has it intends to start writing a newspaper for her daddy so he knows what happens during the day when he's at work (just like Kit--those American Girls books, they're great for getting girls going!). And we've been studying the weather. She's been interested lately, so Santa brought her an Oregon Scientific Weather Center and a rain gauge. She and Lou have been perusing the seed catalogs deciding what to plant. We've also been knitting, and using The Mary Frances Sewing Book to learn handsewing on burlap. Lou likes sewing buttons to anything that's not nailed down and Josie is practising her stitches very carefully in embroidery floss. It took her forever to figure out catch stitch, but she almost cried in excitement when she did. I'm not really sure what's up with Josie but she's gotten very formal about her schooling lately. She wants uniforms (!) and homework and writing on the chalkboard. What's so funny about this longing for "school" is that if she were actually there it would drive her bananas. Lynn Siprelle, Editor DentistToday DD5 and DS13 had dentist appointments. We decided to go a little early and try the new sushi place, which is 30 miles closer to our house than the one we usually go to. The employees there came out of the kitchen to gawk at my kids twice. I guess they've never seen sushi-loving, chopstick-master children before. The woman who took our order confirmed their orders twice with each of them and once with me. I don't know, I thought everyone loved sushi! Then two full fire departments (8 trucks in all) and four police cars went roaring by us as we headed up the road toward the dentist. We got stuck in the drama for about 7 minutes and my kids got a close up look at emergency responders responding beautifully. The officer waved us over and made us park and they shut down the street, broke in the storfront window of the tatoo place that was on fire, and evacuated the building. Once the fire trucks were in position to spray, they let us go. Then when we got to the dentist, we found out DD had her first x-rays scheduled. She was quite excited with the whole process, and the hygenist was so taken with her verbal skills. She even got to hold her own x-rays and put them up on the light box and turn it on! Tomorrow we have to go to Montpelier to the Agency of Transportaion and the IRS office to pay taxes on and register some trucks. Since the AOT is downstairs from the Dept. of Ed. and DD is obsessed with "people in Montpelier who will look at my portfolio" I think we will pop upstairs and pay a little visit to the homeschool office. We are also going to go take a quick self-tour of the Capitol Building. So, two big homeschooling days! And we even got our math and phonics in today.  We are working at gettingWe are working at getting going again after twins, trips and holidays. It's been a while since we did anything very consistent. I joke with peopl that we are focusing on learning life-skills this year. Today we did some math though. DD6 always gets excited and does extra pages. Darn. Hopefully, we can keep going, especially with the math. Lauralyn Writing bugsI've posted this link before but inevitably the right link isn't up when you want it to be, so I'll throw it in for you Lauralyn: http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/archives/writing_bugs.shtml there's such a huge variety of assignments that maybe your DD can find something she'd enjoy. Might save you having to think some up for a while! I'll mostly just be reading along to see what everyone's doing here. It's fascinating stuff. I have to get my kids back learning Chinese. They've done almost nothing since we left Singapore last summer and it will be painfully obvious when we go back for a week at the end of this month. DS7 in particular remembers almost nothing. DD9 was further along and just better at it, so she's lost a bit less ground. Reading along here might help me sort that out a bit, fingers crossed! Kerri. ChineseKerri, what if DH always spoke Chinese to them and you always spoke English - would that work? Or if you all spoke Chinese on certain days or something. I once knew a Chilean/English family who did that (Though not with Chinese, obviously! Language at home...I have friends who only speak Spanish at home and all things else are English!. Wonderful idea Honey. Jana it works better IF...and there's always an 'if' - the mother is the one with the 'other' language. Since their father is away quite a bit there's no consistency, and the kids tend to switch off most times unless he's bumped into a teaching moment. we've worked it out that it is possible if 3 of us work together as teachers. DD is quite self-sufficient in both working and her actual attainment level, so she can work fairly independently. She can also learn things by helping her brother - reading to him, talking to him, correcting him (her favourite!). When DH is home he needs to check through their work and work out what comes next. My job is to ensure that any of it actually gets done, which explains why it isn't getting done at the moment. My Chinese is weak to say the least, but I can still manage some pointers for DD and know what she needs to learn mostly. DS is easier of course. I also need to set the time and sit them down and actually force them to do the work I set. Then I need to force DH to take time marking it and going through it with them as well as talking to them. We bought plenty of materials before we left Singapore so that's not a good excuse. I just need to get them moving. So who's going to get me moving!?!?! it was noticeable in families where the mother's English was weak that the kids' English would be weaker than their mother tongue. That's why the 'other language' inSingapore schools is referred to as Mother Tongue (whether it's Chinese, Tamil or Malay). Sadly they never really got it when I pointed out that their 'Mother Tongue' was NOT actually Chinese! Sense of humour like the Germans! Kerri. French BreakfastsKerri, I read an artile recently about a family who hold French Breakfasts once a week where they eat French food and speak French. Perhaps you could have a go at a regular Chinese Supper where you all speak Chinese? Zillah Big Field Trip DayYesterday I had to go to the Agency of Transportation to register some big trucks and get our IFTA permits. Since the office is in Montpelier, our state capital, I decided to make it a field trip day!!! Whoo-Hoo! First we did the AOT paperwork stuff to get it out of the way. Then we popped upstairs to the homeschooling office in the Dept. of Ed and said "Hi!" because DD is quite obsessed that "people in that office in that place will look at my work" (Translation: the homeschool consultants will assess her portfolio for appropriate progress) and I wanted her to feel more comfortable about that. None of the consultants was actually in, but the office manager was wonderful and now DD has a positive image of them. Then, we went to the State House. We visited the House and Senate Chambers, looked at the portrait of a former governor who is a friend of the family, and hunted for fossils in the marble tiles on the floor. (We found a ton!) She was also very interested in the news reporter filming a segment there, so we watched the 6 o'clock news, and she almost fell over when she saw on TV what she had seen in person. Finally, we went to the Historical Society Museum. There is a real life-sized Abenaki longhouse in there which is full of baskets with please-touch-me items. DD loved this best of all and did not want to leave. I got some great pictures for her portfolio! On the 90+ minute ride each way we listened to two different Jim Weiss tapes of Greek Myths. Last night we read 2 chapters of Felicity, and today she is just blowing through her "paper-work" with great focus. Kerri, many of the families in this area are French/English bilingual and the parents do the Mom speaks French only, Dad speaks English only thing. I tried to get my FIL to speak only French to my kids, but he refused. He's still mad because he didn't speak English when he went to school, so he flunked first grade. worth a gonot sure if the kids will go for it - I think they'd be happier with the French breakfasts! Somehow they're interested enough in learning French thanks to some videos they were given years ago. The problem is that they both, especially DD, associate Chinese with soemthing they MUST do, and which requires exams. Well they must, but no exams now at least. Stephanie also had two years with some utterly dreadful Chinese teacher and that really set her back. need to find fun approaches but also actually get it moving. Rather than just talking about it! Keep the ideas coming - they're useful for me and I'm sure there are others who will benefit too. Wasn't Shaun teaching her girls Spanish?? Kerri. we posted the same time Jo!My German should've been great since my grandmother is German, but it was bad precisely because of that. I hated that woman (and her nasty sister) as a kid so the only reason I took German was because I could waltz through it getting an A and still not be able to make a sentence! Kerri. Very Focused Young LadyDD has become lately! She is just learning and growing like mad. It now takes us about 40 minutes to get through all the day's "paper work" for homeschooling, when as recently as early December it took twice that long. I can't get over her. Last night she asked to make apple butter, (Felicity makes apple butter), so we will try to do that tomorrow. Today we worked some on our state symbols. She now knows our: We are cranking along pretty darn well! Hope it lasts! Chinese New YearOne of DD's social studies themes in holidays. I have been avoiding reading some fine print in my sales & use tax manual by planning our study of Chinese New Year, which this year falls on Sunday, January 29th. One of DD's best friends was adopted from China, and we are going to celebrate with her family and another DF, who traveled with Amy to China when she went to bring the baby home. There will be 16 of us celebrating and here is our plan: Clean House-all 3 families will clean their own homes together on Sunday during the day to sweep away any back luck from the previous year, then they will come to our house in the late afternoon. Make decorations-the kids will make paper lanterns (younger) and paper cutting pictures (older) and glitter fireworks on black paper, and red envelopes with their age number symbols drawn on them with black sharpies. They can also make scrolls by painting black symbols for wishes for the New Year, such as prosperity, health, or peace on long white paper and mounting them on red background papers. Money for the red envelopes: each child will have some crisp new money put into his/her red envelope. We will make dumpling filling at our house and provide wrappers, so everyone can pitch in to make dumplings when we get hungry. One family is bringing noodles and the other a ginger custard, so we should be pretty well set for food. I also have some gorgeous Chinese bamboo flute music we can listen to, Amy is bringing a large map of China, and both other families are bringing their photo albums of the trip to China 4 years ago so we can look at those again as well. Should be fun! Gung Ho Fat Choy or is it Kung Hei Fat Choy? CNYI think Cantonese= Gong Hei Fat Choy and I know Mandarin= Gong xi fa cai (pinyin)/ Kung hsi fa tsai (Wade-Giles). Kerri will have to bring you up to speed on the other dialects. More Writing PromptsI was into my collection of writing prompts for a friend's daughter and thought I'd throw out a few more: What would you like to be famous for? What would it be like to have an identical twin? Why do people cheat, lie, or steal? Is it ever OK? The day stared out normally, but sure didn’t stay that way for long!… What foods to you most hate and why? I can’t wait… "You have got to be kidding me…" His coal-black eyes gleamed as he… What are five things you would love to do in your lifetime? Suddenly, my submarine sprang a leak… When I was five… Describe your dream bedroom. When my mom (dad) came back from her (his) business trip to the planet Zeenox… I am a beautiful, long, sharp, new pencil… Who is the funniest person you know? What makes him or her funny? I think everyone should learn… What is your earliest memory? Write at least 10 descriptive phrases about winter (or spring), and then arrange them into a poem… Ah-ha! I knew it was a magic wand! What is the best thing about living in your state? When I want to, I can be really annoying… I heard a noise under my bed… In the blink of an eye I found myself… In the year 2050… When I opened my eyes I was one inch tall… Brain too dullto remember Hokkien at the moment and the only other one would be the Cantonese. Will check with DH later in the week. BTW... you should really clean on Saturday which is the last day of the old year. Otherwise you are sweeping away the new year's good fortune instead of the old year's bad fortune. The night before is also the time for the Reunion dinner which is the highlight of CNY really. Family all tries to get together, no matter what, for this meal (that includes us flying 8000miles for a meal I can't even stand!). The meal itself is 'steamboat' or 'huo guo' which is basically a steaming bowl of stock into which various pieces of meat, seafood and vegetables are thrown to cook at the table. Each person uses their chopsticks or a small wire net scoop thingy to take out food for themselves. Of course many of the foods are traditional and symbolic, includng that disgusting black seaweedy hair stuff. Dammit - my brain shutdown. Can't remember names for anything tonight. Many of the foods, like many Chinese traditions, are homonyms for some lucky phrase. They might mean sea cucumber in English but in Mandarin it might be prosperity or long life or... something. Pineapples are a big thing too - that's good fortune. In Singapore that means we've taken a Nonya (mix of Malay and Chinese cuisine) pineapple tart and made it a CNY tradition! Plenty of gambling at New Year too - we all play Blackjack (even my MIL who despises gambling the rest of the year) - except we usually play mostly in Hokkien, which is where most of my Hokkien comes from! I like the card playing part of CNY best really because all my husband's brothers and sister really get chance to spend time together and one of my other SILs too. The last is thick as pig-shit and can't count high enough!! Lots of relative visiting on the first and second day (which is exactly what the days translate as), then one can visit friends. I sort of dread it most years but it's also kind of fun. Much like Christmas I guess. My MIL has been tricked into letting go of doing all the cooking for steamboat and the other umpteen dishes she prepares (not supposed to cook or handle knives on the first day I seem to recall). We've often gone on holiday for a few days over CNY in recent years because she wouldn't let the work go to anyone else but was really not able to do it all herself. I think she might have liked me to be able to do it in some ways. I'm quite glad we're going back now because you've kind of made me 2nd-homesick!! Kerri. Awesome InformationThank you so much Kerri! It seems we will have to move it all up a day to Saturday. And add some pineapple! Oh yes...How could I forget!?!?! My China SIL makes tons and tons of dumplings most years. She's from Beijing and dumplings are more of a northern tradition. Hers aren't a patch on her mother's mind you, but having her mother around upsets and irritates my MIL, so only good dumplings makes up for that! OOOOHHHHH YUMMY - DUMPLINGS!
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I actually found a writing assingment DD9 enjoyed. It's a miracle. We got a couple of Shel Silverstein books for Christmas and she's been reading them non-stop. I had her choose her favorite poem and tell me why she liked it. It was pretty basic, but she didn't complain, so I was happy about that. She loves to read, read, read and can enjoy writing when she wants to do it, but doesn't like to be asked to write anything--even a journal. DD6 wrote a good journal entry today about losing her tooth a few days ago. 
) It seemed to work quite well for them.
Oh yes, new clothes for the first day is another tradition. Everything new - some people have their whole houses renovated for CNY!! Did I mention the Chinese are crazy!?!?! 
