Smrt Lernins

Captain Science is motoring through some stuff!

This week, he completed the second unit of his PLATO Earth Science, watching the main video, doing the application activity, finishing the 7-page packet, taking the practice tests (and getting 100% on them), and then passing the unit test w/ a 90% (27 out of 30 correct). He started the third unit today and completed the video and the application activity.

Math is coming along nicely. Captain Science completed lessons 4-7 of Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra/Fred’s Home Companion, including the first set of cities (which this book has instead of the bridges in the previous books). He got all the problems in Adin and Elberfield correct! He’s also enjoying the Math Olympiad meetings, though he hasn’t completed the homework for next week’s meeting yet.

This week in history, he read about the first emperor of ancient China and about civil service careers in ancient China. He wrote his first history summary of the year, choosing to write about the civil service exams, their importance, and the risks of cheating. A valuable lesson, if there there was one. He wrote a first draft and a final draft.

In computer programming, he started his first actual piece of programming, a very simple application that pops up the text “hello, world!” He also reviewed the previous chapter and did a short test on those chapters.

I think he has finally finished The Secret Garden. He’s dragging it out, possibly because I also gave him It’s Perfectly Normal his week, a book on human development/puberty/sex ed. He’s alternating between the two and, as long as I don’t bring up puberty, seems perfectly comfortable learning about it. If I so much as say “hair under your arms,” he gets mad at me and says, “Can we change the subject?”

Tank also had a good week. He’s working on tracing, which is as much an exercise for his patience as for his hand. He worked on tracing shapes, identifying and writing the numbers 1-5, tracing big A and little a, and identifying words that start w/ an “a” sound. He finished a few pages in his workbooks on matching and comparing, as well. We’re hoping his friend Dimhibbins* will be joining us soon, perhaps as early as next week, for some additional pre-K fun!

Babypie’s big thing this week has been working out a nice balance of smacking and biting with Badge the beagle. She slaps him, he gently bites her, I intervene and fuss at both of them, they both look chastened, and as soon as I walk away, she’s smacking him and he’s nipping her. Honestly, since neither one is crying about it, I suspect this might be how they play. Puppy pals, maybe?

Today, we wrapped up our day with a “surprise” field trip to Fernbank to meet up with some friends and go back through the gecko and Sensing Nature exhibits more carefully, now that most of the public schools are back in session. Much less crowded! We blew some great bubbles, played with the sound exhibit (where I was faux-chided by my friend’s husband for saying “the magic of science,” because he says that’s the very thing I rant about on my blog), and looked at a backlit gecko’s internal organs through its translucent belly. All three of my kid came home with small plastic geckos (which only cost $.93 a piece before my 10% membership discount).

Anyway, that’s our week in review. Our Michael Clay Thompson stuff came today, so we can jump right back into that come Monday!

This has been a great week for working on projects and getting things done.

Our Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra and Home Companion books finally arrived. Captain Science completed lessons 1-3 in Home Companion. He also had his first Math Olympiad team meeting last night. I’m not exactly sure what he worked on or how well he did, but he enjoyed it, and enjoying math is a goal that all parents should want their parents to achieve! We’ll go weekly on Thursday, 6:30-7:30, which makes Thursdays a busy day for us!

Captain Science is still working on his Pantheon Project, writing the blurbs for the cards. We’re waiting on our next MCT curriculum to get here, so this is a good opportunity for him to focus on a little writing. He’s completed the work on the Greek pantheon cards and will go ahead and do the Roman pantheon next. Speaking of Rome, he also finished all the flash cards for Cesar’s English I, which we should have been doing this whole time, I realize now. It really cements the words in his memory. We’ll continue with the flash cards for the remainder of the book and with Cesar’s English II.

Computer programming began this week, too. It was mainly vocabulary and history of computers, but a nice foundation on which to build. We’ll be setting aside a two hour block every Thursday for Captain S to work on it. The final project of this semester is to program a game of Pong!

We’re finished the first unit in our PLATO Earth Science course. Captain Science passed the skill mastery test with 96%. He started the second unit today. We’re working on science four days a week, M/T/W/F.

Captain Science has almost finished reading The Secret Garden. It’s a nice change of pace from Where the Red Fern Grows, what with no dogs dying. He was excited to recognize one of the sentences from the first chapter, which has been used in Cesar’s English I as an example sentence! So far, not a peep of argument about the assigned reading, though. I think we’ll start The Black Stallion next week.

Tank got two new giant workbooks from Nana, who picked them up at Costco. He happily worked on them Monday through Wednesday, then declared yesterday that he was too tired to work on anything but drawing (which he did, quietly, in his room) and flat out refused to do anything but watch Go, Diego, Go with our brand new DOG!!!!! this morning. Last week, Tank and I discussed that if he were going to school at his old preschool, he’d only be going four days a week anyway, so anything he does on Fridays schoolwork-wise is lagniappe, anyway. On Monday, I think we’re going to do some more time-telling work, since he’s enjoying that and has grasped the concept of the small hand telling the hour.

We were able to successfully run the PLATO Earth Science program today, meaning Captain Science could finally start that course. It only took trying three different browsers (wouldn’t open in latest version of IE or in Google Chrome, would open in Firefox) and fiddling with pop-up blockers to make it happen. I printed out the worksheet that accompanies is, a 7-page monstrosity that assumes I have a color printer (I don’t) for him to work on tomorrow while we’re at the La Leche League meeting, because Officer Daddyman has a week on the firing range and won’t be home in the morning so Captain S can stay home.

He also got started with his KidCoder computer programming curriculum today. It was mostly vocabulary and background information on hardware, software, languages, systems, etc., but he was so excited to get going! We got it as a last-minute buy through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op and seems to have been worth the money. Officer Daddyman is helping him with this one.

Captain Science is also using some great computer program Daddyman downloaded to make the cards for his Pantheon Project, which didn’t really get worked on much over the summer, despite our best intentions. Captain S and Daddyman have developed a neat system for the game, a sort of rummy-style 2-4 player game. Anyone interested in playtesting it once it’s finished?

Our 2010-2011 school year (our second homeschool year, for those of you who are newly on board the Starship McLernins) started smashingly!

This week, Captain Science mostly reviewed things and freshened up his memory a bit. He had a wonderful positive attitude, once again affirming our decision to homeschool. Even in his good year at public school, he was never happy like this. It’s like have my son back again, the happy and curious child who wants to learn!

Captain Science completed the fourth and fifth tries of the final bridge of Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents. He also did a page of math problems Officer Daddyman wrote up for him, so he could practice a few key concepts he hadn’t remembered as well. He’s ready to start Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra if the darn thing ever shows up! Come on, Mister Postman!

We began ancient China in history. Captain Science read two two-page spreads and one one-page spread in History: The Definitive Visual Guide, covering the Bronze Age, unification of China, and the first empire. He also read part of Eyewitness: Ancient China on the same topics. I’m looking for a good documentary on this era of China, so if you have any recommendations, let me know!

For language arts, Captain Science did eight sentences in Practice Town to make sure he remembered his grammar and usage. He completed chapters 16, 17, and 18 in Caesar’s English I (we only got about halfway through it las year) and today, started making flash cards of the stems and vocabulary words for later review. It was his first flash card experience, and while the tedium of filling out the note cards was frustrating, he seemed to agree that it made sense that the cards would help with memory. I don’t know if they’re making note cards flimsier these days, if I’m remembering them incorrectly, of if we just bought cheap cards, but these note cards we’re using are so flimsy. I might have to go get some nicer ones. He also did the final lesson in Building Poems again as a means of reviewing concepts.

He also did some logic work and read Where the Red Fern Grows, which he completed in just two and a half days (and cried off and on for the second half of the third day). Next book is A Secret Garden as his request, since it has a happy ending and a mystery!

We weren’t about to start science or computer programming this week, as we didn’t get internet access back at the house until Wednesday night. We’re having some issues with the PLATO science program. It won’t load on my computer! Hopefully we’ll get that ironed out for Monday.

Tank’s first week of preschool went well in most respects. He’s an eager learner…too eager, in fact! He has surprised me by expressing a fierce love for workbooks, which Captain Science never had, and I am woefully understocked on workbooks. Luckily, Nana brought two giant books over today, so I’ll have something for him to work on. He’s also worked on multiple pages from this free worksheet site. Every day, we have “block and trampoline time,” where he goes down to the playroom to build something and jump on the minitramp for a while. This gets him out of the room so I can focus on Captain Science for a while and keeps him from getting restless and bored. All in all, I’m glad to have him home. I just hope I can keep up with his expensive workbook habit.

Babypie is…fierce. Fierce and fiercely busy. I thought Tank might make homeschooling Captain S a little harder this year, but no; it’s Babypie. She’s up the cabinets. She’s up the piano. She’s up the gate. She’s upon Daddyman’s desk, hopping her butt up and down on his keyboard shrieking, because Tank is trying to play a Pencil Pals preschool game and she doesn’t want him to. In between schooling, she’s a joy, but oh man oh man. She adds an extra element of excitement to education! She’s also parroting everything we say, from “click” to “peaches,” perfectly. Time to start her with a list of vocabulary, right? Say “vexation,” Babypie! Say “disambiguation!”

I can’t complain about this week at all. THIS is the way all weeks should go! Slap-happy and snappy.

Is it Wednesday yet? No, it clearly isn’t, as I’m using the free WiFi at McDonald’s instead of blogging from the comfort of my own home.

Tuesday is apparently crab cake day, because everybody woke up crabby. I had all of two hours of sleep last night, only about 30 minutes of that consecutive, between Babypie’s unexplained restlessness and Tank’s 3am nightmares. I’m not sure what Captain Science’s boggle was, because he also woke up on the sour and evil side of the bed, throwing and banging things around, hollering at Tank, etc., at least until his run, after which he was sweetness and light. Never, ever, ever doubt the power of a runner’s high as a panacea for disgruntled children and foul dispositions.

It’s only Tuesday and we’re already running out of workbooks for Tank. This might be a problem. I’m still waiting on Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, which my mother-in-law is sending, so we’ve been using various workbooks. We’ve done colors, shapes, comparative lengths, sizes, and locations, patterns, copying letters and numbers, for a total of 20 or so workbook pages over just two days. Tank is proving to be as high-needs of a homeschooler as he was a baby! His thirst for knowledge can only be somewhat quenched by drawing robots to demonstrate his comparing abilities and marking up a dozen wipe-off pages.

Captain Science is still in full-on review mode. It’s amazing how much the lernins trickle out of a child’s head over a month of no school work. Yesterday, he forgot what prepositions were and today, he drew a temporary blank on long division. All Swiss cheesing of memory has been swiftly remedied, but I’ll be glad once we’ve reactivated all his stored knowledge cells so we can start moving forward again.

In the spirit of punishing Captain Science for entering the 5th grade and turning 10 this fall, I have started assigning him some of those great books I remember reading in 5th grade. Why punishing? Well, I started the kid off with Where the Red Fern Grows today. He picked it up, looked at it, and said, “I am guessing this book ends like Old Yeller and the dogs die.” I told him that in books like that, the dog almost always dies, because the dog represents the innocence of child/boyhood. He rolled his eyes at me a little bit, but I like putting that idea in his head as he’s reading. We’re starting to work on symbolism and literary criticism this year, looking deeper into texts. If he knows that dogs represent something and that dogs usually die in books, he might start looking a little more deeply into why they die. Or maybe he’ll just do what I did and bawl when Old Dan and Little Ann bite it.

Apropos of nothing, Babypie has a mosquito bite on her face that makes her look like she’s been on the losing end of a boxing match.

We’ve successfully started our school year on a positive foot! Captain Science rocked his first day of fifth grade (seriously, am I old enough to have a 5th grader? when did this happen?) and Tank thoroughly enjoyed his first day of homeschooling.

Captain S. woke up at 8 and by the time I was downstairs at 8:15, had his morning chore completed, was dressed, had been on his run, and had eaten breakfast. He filled out his daily schedule, deciding he would do history, grammar review, and then math review. He finished his history chapter, a two page spread on Bronze Age China in History: The Definitive Visual Guide, in under a half-hour, then did a few sentences in Practice Town, which necessitated a brief review of the various phrases, and then did a pass on the final bridge of Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents. He’s gung-ho about starting his new materials and his online classes (which he can on Wednesday, when our Internet is hooked up!).

Tank loves, loves, loves his school work. He did about eight pages on colors in a wipe-off work book and then another five or six pages in a book on opposites. I had to actually cut him off and send him to do some other tasks. I insisted that “block time” was an important part of pre-school and that he needed to go down and play with blocks for a while. We also had a little trampschooling for a while, when I put him on the minitramp for exercise time. I’m going to have to come up with a lot more to do, even when we add in the reading stuff.

All in all, great first day. Go us!

Alas, this isn’t a post about how great I look in my swimsuit, posed on top of a classic convertible.

I’m finishing up our school calendar for the year. Isn’t that exciting? For comparison, here is the 2010-2011 calendar for our public school district. They’re starting on Thursday, Aug. 5th and ending on Wednesday, May 25th. We are starting on Monday, Aug. 2nd and ending on Friday, May 20th (My 32nd birthday present to myself is to give myself a last day of school. Aren’t I considerate?). Cobb is also shortening the year by 5 days for budgetary concerns that I don’t share.

Cobb County has adopted a “balanced” school year, with breaks spread a little more evenly throughout the year. I actually like that model and am using something similar in our calendar, with 5-6 weeks on and then a week off. I am intentionally scheduling our breaks before or after the public school system’s breaks, however, because I don’t want to share our time off w/ the whole county. I’m selfish that way.

Patchfire’s need for symmetry drives to her implement a perfectly symmetrical year, with 90 days before and 90 days after midpoint*. I almost managed that, darn it, but then ended up with 93 days before the midpoint and 90 after. I’m wrestling with whether to leave those days there in case we need them, to schedule three extra 3-day weekends before midpoint, or to schedule one or two extra 3-day weekends before midpoint and the other one or two after.

These are serious issues, guys. My sanity hinges on knowing my school days ahead of time! Quit looking at me like that. Quit snickering!

If you really want to take a look at our quasi-completed school calendar, you can sneak a peek at it here. It formatted weirdly, so just mentally skootch those numbers back over into the squares where they belong, ok?

*Ok, she points out that this is not entirely true. She just needs to hit at least 90 days by midpoint and have the number of days be divisible by five, and counts the extra as being ahead. She is encouraging me to keep those days as emergency backup days. I decided I’ll keep two of them as backup days and add one as a three-day weekend in April (92 before midpoint, 89 after).

We’re back from our week-long vacation with Officer Daddyman’s family. We fell in love with the Asheville area and were sorry to leave it.

Now we’re home, however, and the frenzy of school year prep and buying has begun. Shortly before we left for our trip, we ordered a subscription to the PLATO Life Science and Earth/Space Science courses for Captain Science. I’m glad to have science taken care of, as that is the one area where I worry about finding comprehensive materials that are secular/scientific enough for our needs. I ordered these courses at Patchfire’s recommendations, so Captain Science and Eclectic Girl will still be right about apace with their science, which means we could still get together to do a little work occasionally.

Another area I’ve stressed over is that of extracurricular activities, especially art. Daddyman really wanted to start doing some computer programming with Captain Science this year, too. We really lucked out by making it home just in time to take advantage of the last minute deal on the KidCoder computer programming curriculum through the Homeschool Buyers Co-op. We’re also picking up the Meet the Masters series for both boys. We’re probably getting bundle 4, which includes Tracks A, B, and C for ages 5-7. Even though Captain Science is well above that age level, he has had almost no formal art instruction, so I think he’d be best served by starting with something very simple. If he enjoys it and needs a higher level, we’ll pick up the bundle for his age group, too. We’ll have access to the course for three full years, since each track is supposed to take about a school year.

We still have to place our order for Life of Fred: Beginning Algebra and Fred’s Home Companion, as well as Captain Science’s Michael Clay Thompson materials for the year and Tank’s Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading materials. We’re also starting a new organization system to help us stay on top of our materials, using a folder system similar to the one Daddyman uses for organizing his own paperwork.

I’m starting to get so excited about the next school year! How’s your planning/prep going?