Week 5: Day 1

After a rocky start the day ended up being productive, especially for A. He worked hard in finishing his EEL homework and his FF homework. I decided to incorporate a resource that I have owned for years and never used before. It is a book solely on diagramming sentences. Instead of using his books sentences for this week, I picked some more challenging ones from this resource. He had fun, and I was glad to get out of those lame sentences.
This is our second year in Classical Conversations Essentials program. For the rest of the students is only their first year, therefore the teacher has to keep the material at a basic level during class. At home I am making an effort to find resources that complement and challenge him. I have been using different editing exercises ( I didn't care for their editing exercises- year after year they will do the same editing of the Gospel of John ), and different sentences. I make sure he does his charts and we spend time on the concepts he is weak on (so far these have not been many).
He is working on multiplication by two digit numbers and some shortcuts. He is doing fairly well but, as usual his attitude needs some adjustment. Once he finishes his assignments for this week, I want to have him do some extra exercise maybe on the computer.
N.'s day wasn't as productive. I keep waiting for him to come down with something. Yesterday and today he has been sensitive, whiny, and just plain difficult. He only did his math and his memory work.
I need to do some research to help G. with her thesis stament. I need to read the story she read and help her define what is she wants to write about.
All in all, a good day.

Week 4

This has been such a good week! I can't even believe it. What has been different? A's attitude. He has been motivated all week to finish his individual work ahead of time so that he can get up later on Friday. To that end he worked in a block schedule. On Tuesday, he finished all his Essentials of the English Language work. On Wednesday, he finished all his writing. We also dedicated larger chunks of time to some subject like history and science. This worked better than having smaller chunks more frequently.

Another difference: before each math lesson, I sat down with A. and went over what he had to do that day. I read to him from the Instructor Guide and try to go over the textbook orally instead of requiring him to do the textbook exercises in writing. It really, really made a big difference.

An even bigger impact was the fact that N. was not here on Wednesday. I could dedicate more time to A. without feeling pulled in two different directions. Unfortunately this variable is not going to be a factor in this equation. I can not make the poor guy disappear one day each week. Or Can I? Just kidding!

This is what the kids have been working on:

A:

• Math- order of operations, word problems.
  
• English- sentence structure patterns and diagramming exclamatory sentences. He also has done dictation, copywork and handwriting.
• Writing- he worked on polishing a rough draft about Jamestown Colony.
• Typing - only once. I have to incorporate this to his plans so I will remember.
• Continue memory work for CC.
• History- we are beginning the history cycle again. So we are at the beginning of time. He is reading a book called Bible History. This week he read about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel. He is also reading The Story of the World for his FF class. He read about Sumeria and the Jewish people this week. Tomorrow he will read some supplementary books.
• Geography- He is working on a geography research guide. This is basically a guided research. I created a guide with questions about the earth geography. He has to research and record the answers.
  
• Science- we are doing double science. At FF he is studying zoology- land animals to be exact. This week he read about bears today. To complement the CC memory work we are also studying the human body. Yesterday we learned about the skeletal system and tomorrow he is going to start to build a paper model of the human body.
• Religion- we are reading together through the book the Apostle's Creed by Inos Biffi. Today Alex wrote a short narration about the I believe in God the Father Almighty. I am using this book to get him used to write short narrations. Up to this point his narrations have been mostly oral. Now I am trying to transition him to written ones.
  
• Spanish- this week he finished copying a poem and then I had him underlined the verbs, find the meaning and conjugate them in the present tense. I also dictated sentences from our program The Easy Spanish.

N.:

• Math- he is working on addition problems. He is using some Montessori material and some Singapore pages. He also practiced some of the Roman Numerals we learned last year and went on to learn some new ones.
  
• Reading- he is reading through a book The Big Ball of String. He is doing really well. It seems that his reading has taken a great leap.
• Handwriting- he is working on a page a day of his handwriting book.
• Spanish- he is working on the same program A. is working on but at a different level. I let him copy the sentence for the day onto his notebook (at his insistence) and them I make flash cards with the words of the sentence, scramble them and have him put it together. Then, we work on translation. He also played memory match with the verb "ser". He is slowly making progress.
• Religion- we are working on memorizing the Apostle's Creed. Last week we talked about who the apostles were and the difference between and apostle and a disciple. This week we are trying to memorize the names of the twelve apostles.
  
• Science- we read about the skeletal system and he watched a movie about it on United Streaming.
• He continued to work on his memory work for CC.

Week 3: Day 1

What we accomplished today:

• Spanish- Al. is still copying a poem from an old Spanish reading book. (A. thinks we should encase the book in glass to prevent damage. It is so old - it belong to my uncle who would be in his sixties if he were alive). Tomorrow he will finish. Then we will work on translation. N. worked on copying a sentence and some vocabulary words. We also worked on reading in Spanish. I can't get him to make the switch to Spanish. He wants to read Spanish as if it was English.
• While A. did his Essentials work, N. worked on his Math. After doing 4 pages of Singapore, he decided he wanted to revisit the Roman numerals we learned last year along with the Gnomes . We reviewed them and learned some new ones (XI to XV). Tomorrow we will work on making a more neat main lesson page for these. N. also did his Explode the Code pages as well as his handwriting pages.
  
• By the time they were finished it was time for lunch.
• After lunch, A. worked in his writing assignment followed by memory work. While N. listened to the Classical Conversations cd, Alex and I read a chapter from Landmark of the American People. I am finding it difficult to fit in all my ambitious plans for history. We will have to make a very slow progress.
• Around 2:00 p.m. the boys helped me to make some cinnabuns for teatime. When they were ready we sat around the table and learn about ballads and read a poem by Longfellow trying to identify if it was a ballad or not.

While the boys and I were working together, Gabi was in her room working on her Math, Physical Science, Latin and Logic. She also worked on FF writing assignment. She has a very heavy load and I don't know how she is going to cope with her work once her dance starts. We will have to see how well she manages her time.
All in all it was satisfying sort of day. What was accomplished, was accomplished well. That is success in my book.

Re-starting

We have accomplished quite a lot this week. I am surprised since I have been sick. The Lord has been good to me though. I have usually felt well enough in the mornings and didn't start to feel bad until the afternoon. This allowed me to get school done. Praise God!
All the planning that I did before school started has payed off. The plans have been in a place so even though life has come in the way, I have a starting place to get back in the routine. I am also glad that we have a certain rhythm to our days rather that a strict schedule.
I am happy that the main things have gotten covered and there has been even time to for some extras!So far we have accomplished almost everything I had planned.
This year I have introduced two major changes. The first is regarding how we start our days. I have decided that instead of having the A. and N. start with individual work, we will start with a family learning block on those days that we are at home. On those days we start with a Spanish lesson followed with a Catechism lesson. We have been using The Fun Spanish and are reading through Inos Biffi's The Apostle's Creed. I am very happy as how this is working. We stayed at the table after the family learning block and each child then start working in their individual work. This has make A's transition into Math smoother. He doesn't seem to complain so much and is "digressing" less.

The second change has been more of an attitude adjustment. I am determined for us to have teatime on Tuesdays. This will give us some time to seat around the table listening to good poetry. For this we are using the plans that Elizabeth Foss et all have so generously shared at Serendipity I say that this is an attitude adjustment because in the past I had an all or nothing approach. This year I don't want to feel pressure by time. I don't want to feel that I have to cover a certain number of poets per year. I have a main plan and I am going to follow at our own pace. I am making it a priority but if we missed, I know where to start again. That is freeing to me.

I also want to use one afternoon a week to do some art. The ladies at Serendipity also have some art plans. The thing is they are using a book that I don't have. I don't want to invest more money on books this year so I am thinking on doing something with what I have at hand. I found this lessons that use a book we have at home. I am planning to look into it this weekend.

This post is getting too long. In the future I intend to write something at the end of each school day that summarizes what we did that day. Hopefully M. would find time to read it and get and idea of what our days are like.

September 5th

Today, we had our first day at our Friday co-op. It was the only true school we have done all week. This morning I decided to let the kids recover from several days of going to bed late. Doing otherwise would've been setting myself up for failure. I woke them up around 8:45. We prayed the Liturgy of the Hours and then ate some homemade whole wheat muffins. After that we had chores. By the time the chores were completed, the morning was almost gone. I only had time to sit down and read to Nicolas. I have been reading to him from Tasha Tudor's fairy tales book. We read Rapunzel and The Emperor New Clothes. I think is funny how Nico won't let me read Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. We also read some poetry and worked in memorizing a poem for his presentation at CC next Monday.

In the meantime, Alex was engrossed in The Hobbit and Gabi was enjoying this surprisingly cool weather we have been having. She was sitting on the front porch working on her Latin.

I can tell for how our morning went that getting a lot done of Fridays is going to be challenging. To make it on time to co-op we have to eat lunch and be ready to go by 12:30 at the latest. We see how it all goes...

I Was all Ready

I really was. Mostly. I was all set and ready to go with our school year. We had our firs day of Classical Conversations. We had one normal day of school after that and then Gustav started to loom in the horizon. I was asked to head the "Evacuee Relocation Committee" for our community and all normality went away. Time was spent with phone calls and emails. Then there was the Labor Day picnic and welcoming the family that was going to be with us. So when things like this happen school takes a backseat. Thank the Lord nothing major happened and next week our lives should be back to normal. Then I will know if all the planning paid off and the rhythm of our school days will resume.