I have said many times here that Saskatchewan does not have a very long summer season. Usually by the end of August, the days start to get chillier and you know that the end of summer has arrived. It is unheard of to wear shorts in September. I can remember one year, in the beginning of September, having to wear my winter coat when I went to take meals to the guys who were harvesting. This has been a very hard adjustment for an Ontario girl.
This year has been totally different. I have been holding on to this year because I know that it will probably never happen again. It has been so warm this month. Unbelievably warm, I mus say. During the last two week, the temperature has been 20 degrees Celsius and above. Yesterday, being the first day of October, the temperature got up to 30 degress C. Again, totally unbelievable! I was wearing shorts yesterday and it was October! I have so enjoyed this month. This month's weather has been Ontario weather, actually it has even been better than Ontario weather.
The extension of summer has helped in getting that last push of yard work that needs to be done before the snow flies. I was able to clean out the flower gardens yesterday. Today, the plan is to prune the hedges and cut the grass on one section that just didn't get done last week.
This month has been an amazing weather month. I am holding on to this, as I know that next year it will probably snow in August!
We had such a great day yesterday. We did our school work in the morning and then we rushed around like crazy people so that we could get out of the door by noon to go to swimming lessons. Our homeschool group has made it possible for all of us to have swimming lessons together. I am loving this so much. It is good for the kids to have lessons with their friends and it is also good for mom to have a visiting time with her friends. Usually when we take swimming lessons with the community I don't know anyone there so I end up hiding in a book. This time around, though, I know everyone who is there so I am a visiting fool. It is so nice. I have found myself looking forward to swimming lessons more than the kids are.
All of the moms had a great visit at the pool and then a few of us took our visiting over to McDonalds for ice cream. The kids were able to play on that climbing thingy and the moms were able to visit more. There is a new homeschooling family that has joined our ranks so I was able to get to know her better yesterday. We had a great time.
After the ice cream, the kids and I were at the grocery store stocking up on food. I was trying to decide which crackers to buy when this lady came up to me and started talking. It took me a few minutes before I realized that she was a homeschooling mom whom I had met in the spring. This lady said that she had been thinking about me quite a bit lately (well, at least somebody does 
) The reason for my presence in her thought life was that I have girls. She has girls as well and they do not have many girl friends. She wanted to know it we could get together so our girls could play together. Well, Praise You, God!!!! This has been an item for prayer for both Mia and I for a long time. Mia's friends have all moved away this year and it has been very hard for her. We have been trying to find some other girls her age that she could spend time with but this has been next to impossible. All of the girls we know are 12 and 11 years old. Three years is a big gap when you are 9.
The woman at the grocery store has two girls: 9 and 7. This is just perfect. I told Mia afterwards and she broke out in the biggest smile that I have seen in a long time. I am meeting this woman on Sunday night at our Mom's Night Out and we will get a date together for a visit. Oh, this is such good news!
I left the city yesterday feeling so good about life. It is so good to find friends who are like-minded with you. It takes away the barriers that you feel with others. Yesterday was simpy a good day.
I had to teach Sunday School yesterday. I had my lessons all ready to go but when I got to church there was a little kerfuffle so I had to ditch all of my plans. Fortunately, though, I had brought my Bibleopoly (don't know if that is the correct spelling) game along just in case we had some extra time at the end of the lesson. Well, turned out we had lots of extra time so we played this game in lieu of a lesson.
I was quite surprised by what I saw as we were playing this game. The children who were playing this game fell into the 8 -- 10 year old age range. Most of these children could not figure out what the total was when they rolled the dice. They could not add the two dice together without using their fingers. There were six children playing this game. The only ones who could add without their fingers were a boy and my Mia.
I had divided the kids up into teams to play this game. A 10 yr. old was teamed up with Mia. This girl could not count out her money. Many times Mia had to offer to count the money for her. Mia had no problems with counting the money. She did it quickly and correctly, just as she did the adding and anything else that was math related in this game.
I had always assumed that with Mia's difficulties in math that she was behind her grade level in this subject. I have stressed myself out about this so many times. God gave my yesterday morning to see that I have no reason to be concerned. Mia is not at all behind. She is doing very well in math compared to her peers in public school. In fact, from what what I saw yesterday, I would even go so far as to say that Mia is ahead of some of these kids -- even the 10 year olds.
I was shocked at what I saw yesterday. Yet, I was also a bit comforted. I guess we are on the right track after all.
The family of Emily Stauffer need your prayers right now. Emily, who is 14 years old, was walking along a path near her home in Edson, Alberta yesteday when she was attacked and killed by an unknown man. Emily's mom is on a few of the same e-groups that I am on. I have been in shock ever since I found out about this last night. Please pray for Emily's parents, sisters and brother as well as the church that Emily's dad pastors as they maneuver themselves throughout this nightmare.
I read an online profile of Emily that was done earlier this year ( for some reason, I can't link to it here.) Emily was a girl who had hope and love in Jesus. Even though, the logistics of this situation fills us with horror, we should be comforted by the fact that Emily is now in the arms of her Saviour. Emily's faith has been replaced by Jesus' face. Praise God!
We had a great week this week. Everything went smoothly and there were no tears at all this. Things are looking good!
We started our week off with Math Day, Mrs. K came with her children for a day of exploring math. We looked at how the ancient tribes kept track of their herds and food without numbers. We discovered how to use tally sticks. We didn't do as much as we usually do as the kids were itching to go outside and play. Our math day was really our math morning. I am so happy, though, that my kids are making good friends with Mrs. K's children. It is so nice to see how close they have become over the past months.
Due to math day, we didn't start back to our regular schedule until Tuesday. I am making myself relax more over this loop schedule. I have a mantra going on a daily basis: It's okay if we don't finish today. It's okay if we don't finish today. The mantra seems to be working as I am getting that bit of laidback-ness back into my day.
Here is what we did this week: Mia has stepped into the scary world of division and we have found that it isn't too scary after all. She has caught on quite quickly. Whew! I have to admit I was a bit tense about division. i had envisioned more tears and hissy fits but she breezed through the worksheet with no problems. Again, whew! Rocky has moved on to time. We played some games with the clock to help cement those five minute intervals. Number 7 was still the number of the week for Missy. We tried reviewing our numbers with tally sticks and the abacus -- need some more work on this. Missy has become enamored with the concept of adding. The girl does not know her numbers yet but she loves to add. She has asked me to make up practise sheets on adding like I do with her brother. Whatever works.
This week was notable in the fact that Rocky was able to answer all of my questions based on his writing passage. I read a paragraph from Farmer Boy and then asked Rocky questions about the reading. Usually, I have to re-read some sections because Rocky isn't listening. He was listening this week, though. Even he noted that he answered all of the questions on the first try.
For Grammar, I have introduced nouns to Rocky. We are going to do this informally. I am going to gradually introduce parts of speech and then we will find them in his copywork. That is what we have been doing this week: finding nouns in his copywork. Mia has been working on prepositional phrases and adjectives. She has become good at diagramming.
Earlier this week, I posted about our Partitioning Palestine Cake that we did for History. We also have been learning about the Marshall Plan. Science was a bit of a bust this week. The experiment that we were supposed to do to show the properties of gases didn't work as we needed a glass bottle with a narrow opening. Here on the Prairie, finding such a bottle is impossible. All we have are plastic bottles. The book specifically said not to use plastic. Oh well! Another experiment out the window. We don't do well in this area.
Books that we are reading this week: Still reading Nanny McPhee by Christianna Brand. Mia has moved on to A Horse and his Boy. I have given Sophie's World a bit of a break so that I can read my new library book. It is also on philosophy. Socrates Cafe by Christopher Philips is an interesting book about how the Socratic Method can enrich our lives. I have only just started it but it is quite intriguing.
I think that wraps up our week. It was a short one but, again, a tearless one. It is all good.
There is a new phrase being bandied about in the Classical Ed/CM world as of late. It is MorningTime. This is an old concept but with a new name and a new life. A homeschooling mom has dusted that concept off and has given it its new life. Cindy from Dominion Family blog has resurrected the idea of starting your school day with a meeting of all of your children for a time of singing, poetry, reading, etc. She has deemed it Morning Time. This concept and new name has a life of its own right now. Many are adopting this idea to fit their families and lifestyles.
Our family has been doing MorningTime for a few years now. Over the years it has evolved from just reading the Bible into the foundational time that it has become for us now. We have a different name for it, though. We call it circle time. This phrase has its birth from my preschool teaching days.
We start every day off with circle time. The kids are disappointed if, for some reason, we have to bypass it. It has become the foundation for our day. We start our circle time off with Bible reading. We use to sing hymns or choruses at this time but we have gotten away from it. I have been reminded, with all of the hubub about MorningTime that I need to start this again. We, then, have a time of singing preschool songs (for Missy's benefit,) reading and reciting poetry and reading picture books. We also use this time to read our Shakespeare selection. Circle usually takes about half an hour. As the children get older, though, I would like to extend it and have more serious readings.
MorningTime is one of those things that need to fit your family. I love hearing how other families are implementing Morning Time. Some families take this time to do their Ambleside readings. They might also do their read aloud at this time as well. Picture Study and Composer Study can also take place at this time. You can do all of those little subjects that seem to get swept up in the busyness of the day during MorningTime. It is a great way to start the day.
Due to all of the interest of MorningTime, Cindy has started a Yahoo group for those of us who take part in this as a way to share ideas. You can click here to find more information.
Yesterday in History we were reading about how Palestine, an Arab country, became Israel and was given to the Jews. The Jews had been a 'scattered people' and, especially after the Holocaust, they just wanted a place in the world that they could call home. The United Nations partitioned Palestine and gave them a place that they could have for their own. This, of course, caused great dissension amongst the Arabs and their neighbours.
To ilustrate this partitioning, Story of the World, Vol. 4 suggested making a Palestine cake. We attempted to do this yesterday afternoon. Attempted is the key word in that sentence. We had lots of fun doing it but, alas, it bombed. It didn't turn out the way that it was supposed to turn out. I think I know where we went wrong though.
We made a 13 x 9 white cake. Before we baked it, we put in red M&M's (representing the Jews) and green M&M's (to represent the Arabs). We icened one half red (for the Jews) and one half green (for the Arabs.) When the cake was cooled, we were to give each one of us a red piece and a green piece of cake. We were to tear the pieces apart and take out the red pieces of candy and place them with the red piece of cake. We were to do the same with the green pieces as well. This was done to show how difficult it was to partition the country and put the right people in their 'right' places.
The directions of this activity said that we should use red and green candy cherries for the Jews and Arabs. If we didn't have any cherries we could use M&Ms. They cautioned us that it might not work as well. They weren't kidding. Of course, being a chocolate loving family, we didn't have any cherries but had oodles of M&Ms (in all fairness, I had just bought the candy on the weekend for another project we were going to do this week....really!) Those M&Ms sunk down to the bottom of the cake pan and held on for dear life. They weren't going to be partitioned for any reason. So the partitioning was a failure. I have made a note to myself that when we do this again in four years to use candy cherries (no matter how distasteful that seems to us at the time. )
Even if those M&Ms didn't want to come out, the kids still had a great time tearing apart their cake and searching. Of course, though, the best part was eating Palestine.
It has been five weeks now since we have implemented the loop schedule. I have mixed feelings about this. In some ways, the loop is an answer to prayer. In other ways, it is my worst nightmare. How's that for two ends of the pendulum?
The loop is a type of schedule in that you have the subjects that you want to accomplish listed out for each day. You go through that schedule every day. Ideally, you are done the day's schedule by noon. If you do not get through it, then you do the subjects that did not get done that day to the next day. You start the next day with the unfinished sujbects. In this way, every subject is being attended to and there is little neglect taking place.
The loop intrigued me for a number of reasons. One--that we were able to get done school by noon. Two--that we would be able to attend to every subject. There would be no more sloughing off art or science to find that it hadn't been looked at for a month. Three--that Missy would be given equal time with me as she would be written into the loop. These were all of my postives....and they still are. My children also like the loop. They like the 'being done at noon' part the best.
As the school year ravels out, though, there are some nasty things happening with the loop as well. I don't know if I particularly like these nasty things. The loop is taking away my laidback--ness that I have treasured this past year. I feel like a woman possessed since this school year started. All I can think of as we are going through our morning is "we have to speed through math if we are going to get this all done this morning. Why, oh why, did we read that extra book during circle time. Now we are behind. There is no way that we can do that art project today because then we will be behind." Alas, I think I have created a monster.
I am fully aware that this is my very own character flaw. I am reminded this everytime I read a thread on loops on the WTM board. Every mom, who is looping, is talking about how relaxed and laidback school is now that they are looping. Hold the phone! I missed that memo. How is it that these moms are more laidback with the loop while I have become a Nazi in training with this same schedule? How can this be? Maybe it is because I am a closet perfectionist and the loop is feeding into my 'everything has to be perfect' state of mind that I have been trying to keep at bay for the last few years.
Technically, this should be a laidback way of doing school because you know that whatever doesn't get done today will get done tomorrow. No worries! It my world, though, if we don't get done through the list, then that means that I have failed. We didn't get through the list. Not good. Not good at all. Do you see those perfectionist inklings creeping through? I know that this is why I am stressing out over this. I know this is the reason why I have a ball of crud sitting in the pit of my stomach. I know all of this. Now, what to do about it.
One thing I could do is just ditch the schedule and figure something else out. The thing is, though, that everyone else in this house likes the loop. The other thing is is that I really need to get done by noon as I am exhausted by that time. I need the afternoon to rest. Also, I don't want to ditch it. Other than the fact that it makes my one big character flaw shine like a full moon, I like doing school this way. Methinks the solution is to ditch the perfectionist attitude. Yeah, easier said than done. Maybe the work this year is to be to figure out how to keep the perfectionistic tendencies at bay while doing this schedule. Better yet just exonerate those little nasty nigglers and enjoy the laidback--ness that the loop can be about. I know that you can be laidback with the loop because everyone else is able to do it. I will just have to slay the ugly head of perfection whenever it pops up. Again, easier said than done. When I look at the positives of doing school the loop way, though, I think this attitude adjustment will be well worth it. My new resolution: I am going to be laidback with the loop even it it may kill me.
Stay tuned for more exciting adventures of The Slaying of the Monster of Perfection.
I was introduced this weekend to a beautifully written book. These incidences stand out to me because they don't happen very often. Especially in this day and age, it is hard to find a book whose words move you to tears or tug at your heart's emotions.
An online friend shared her website that she uses for her Co-op Composition class. I was meandering through the site looking at the assignments and seeing what she was expecting from her early highschoolers. It was there that I found the title to this book. It is The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving. Now, this is where my ignorance comes into play. I had heard of his short stories of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I have never read them. We are scheduled to read them for Mia this year but I haven't pre-read them yet. I didn't know that these stories came from this book. I should have known that these short stories had to be housed in a bigger vehicle but I had never given it much thought before.
As fortune would have it, this book can be found online (I love it when this occurs.) You can look at it here. I started to peruse this book and I was caught up in its words. I decided to print out some chapters so that I could enjoy it upstairs cuddled up on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate (it is starting to get nippy here on the Prairie.)
As I read page upon page of Irving's book, I was caught up in his imagery and his selection of words. This book is so beautifully written, at times it takes my breath away. There are two passages that left me with a dropped jaw and I would like to share them with you.
"they have gone down amidst the roar of the tempest... Silence, oblivion, like the waves, have closed over them and no one can tell the story of their end. What sighs have been wafted after that ship! what prayers offered up at the deserted fireside of home! How often has the mistress, the wife, the mother, pored over the daily news, to catch some casual intelligence of this rover of the deep! How has expectations darkened into anxiety--anxiety into dread--and dread into despair! " from The Voyage
"A lIttle while, thought he, and the smile will vanish from that cheek--the song will die away for those lips--the lustre of those eyes will be quenched with sorrow; and the happy heart, which now beats lightly in that bosom, will be weighed down like mine, by the cares and miseries of the world." from The Wife
Those two passages struck me so deep. I read four chapters from this book on Saturday night and was eager for more. I have been told (by my online friend) that there are some instances in Iriving's writings that may cause strong opinion amongst the reader. I haven't come upon them yet, though. All I have read are beautifully chosen words that cause my heart to reflect on just how powerful literature can be.
Our week got off to a bad start on Monday when I had to take Mia to get her arm x-rayed in the morning. So we have been a day behind in the schedule all week. Note to self: don't put specifics in the schedules that you make up ahead of time because it makes you antsy when you miss a day. Now, I knew that. I have learned this lesson already but in my enthusiasm with looping I put down every specific lesson number we were going to do. When we miss a day, I get this huge lump in my chest because we are getting 'behind' (whatever that means.) When I make up the schedule for Oct. I will only put the subjects down and then the weekend before I will slot in the lesson numbers. Whew! Lesson learned! (again.)
Even though we missed a day, we still completed oodles of work. I don't know about my kids, but I learned alot this week.
For math, Mia started doing more word problems and how to solve these problems by figuring out tables and charts. Rocky did more on mental addition and he also entered into the land of multiplication. Number 7 was the number of the week for Missy. We are learning the days of the week (7) and colors of the rainbow (also 7.) To learn the colors, we made a rainbow stick. Missy painted a toilet paper roll and then glued various colors of tissue paper on the end of the roll. Of course, her brother and sister had to be let in on the fun, too.
Writing is going well. Rocky is starting to understand that when Mom reads, you have to listen because, darn it, she is going to ask questions that you need to know the answers for. She's tricky like that. Mia is starting to do dictation for writing without hyperventilating. This is huge for us on the Prairie. If you only knew how huge it was. 
Mia also learned about prepositional phrases and objects of prepositions for Grammar. I introduced nouns to Rocky so we will start picking them out when we are doing our reading. I am going to the informal route for Grammar with Rocky. I think this will be more beneficial for him. I read Tom Kitten to MIssy as this week was "K" week. She also did some work in her ETC book. Oh, and Rocky has graduated to Book 5 in ETC. I don't know how far we will get before he hits a wall but he loves doing ETC that I didn't want to stop him. So we will keep going until we hit a bump.
This week in history we learned about India and the partition of Pakistan. This is one of the things that I learned this week. So we spent some time learning about Hinduism. In honour of this, the kids and I learned some Yoga positions. They loved this. Today we are going to learn about the partition of Palestine. I am going to illustrate this by making a cake and then partitionaing it much in the same way as Palestine was. I will post about this on the weekend and give more details. It looks like fun.
We learned how to find the volume of a solid in Science. The kids got all sorts and sizes of rocks. We slipped then into a measuring bowl of water and then noted how high the water went. The kids made a notebook page writng up what we did during the experiment. I got a bit of attitude but at least it didn't last all week long like last week.
Reading: We finished The Silver Chair by C.S.Lewis and started on Nanny McPhee We watched the movie during the summer. What a delightful movie. I think the book, even though it is much different than the movie, will be equally as memorable. Mia is reading the Narnia Chronicles on her own. She has read Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader within three days. She has decided to skip over The Silver Chair as we just read that and is now on The Horse and His Boy. I am still reading The House at Pooh Corner by Milne. This is going at a snail's pace but I know that Rocky doesn't mind. He could stay in the land of Pooh for the rest of his life.
There. That is it for this week. We will be going swimming this afternoon with our homeschool group so I don't think we will do much in the way of academics this morning. I think we will just play some math games, read some History and call it good.
We had a weird, mixed up day yesterday. I had planned on having a stay-at-home day. I really like those when it is a school day. Unfortunately, though, life happened.
Last week, Mia fell of the couch and twisted her arm. At the time we thought it was just sprained. This past weekend she started complaining about it again. It hurt her to lift objects and to do simple everyday things ike brush her teeth. So we decided that we should take her to town for an x-ray just to make sure nothing was broken. There went my stay-at-home day.
Our appointment with the dr. was for middle morning. The planner in me realized that we could get at least an hour's worth of school done before it was time to leave. So we were able to read a picture book and get everyone finished on their math work. I had then planned to pick up where we left off when we came back. After all, there is that schedule to keep to you know. You can't mess up the schedule. (Have I said before that I really like the loop schedule but that I don't like that I am a slave to it.)
We had to wait quite awhile in the dr's office but we were in and out at the hospital to get the x-ray. So we were on our way home by noon. By this time, I was tired. Not just "middle of the road pooped " kind of tired but, rather, "I don't think I can put one step in front of the other" tired. I still had to go home and make lunch for the harvesters. I quickly became of the mind to ditch the schedule and just rest for the rest of the afternoon.
After lunch, I was able to have a rest. I felt revived after that so I decided to tackle cutting grass. I got one lawn done and then rested again. I also got the car washed after that and, yeah, I had to rest again. Things get done at a snail's pace these days, but they do get done and that is the most important thing. I keep telling myself this, maybe one day I will believe it.
Today is a stay-at-home day. So we will be able to get all of our school things done today. Whew!
We have been reading some wonderful picture books lately. I thought I would share the titles here.
Jesse Owens: Fastest Man Alive by Carole Boston Weatherford/Eric Valasquen -- I never knew too much about Jesse Owens other than he was an Olympic runner. I didn't know that he ran in the Olympics at the time that it was at Hitler's Germany. Hitler expected his German's to win the medals for the running races as his people were far superior than a black man (insert heavy sarcasm.) He didn't even show up for the medal ceremonies when Owens won so he wouldn't have to shake a black man's hand. The story is fascinating and the pictures are beautiful. This book fell in so nicely with our study on WWII.
All the Secrets in the World by Jane Yolen -- another sweet book about WWII
The Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitch-Smith/Cornelius Van Wright/Ying-Hwa Hu -- a story on native customs.
A Song for Lena by HIlary Horder Hiippely/Leslie Baker -- an autumn ritual for our family is to read this book about kindness even when times don't allow for it. We then make the enclosed recipe for Apple Strudel. Yum!
Week #3. What a week it was, too. I don't think I have experienced such a discouraging week as the one that we just travelled through. Every day I encountered tears, meltdowns and good old drama. And no, it wasn't just from me. Mia is having a very difficult time in accepting that she is getting older and she has to do more work than her siblings. In the past, I have accommodated her hissy fits by easing up on my expectations. I told her that I couldn't do this anymore. She has to learn to tow the mark and to do it without any moaning and groaning. I have been slacking off a bit on the amount of written work that I have been requiring of her but I told her this week that we had to step that up as well. sigh I am not looking forward to the oncoming weeks. I think I will be spending most of this time on my knees in prayer.
Even though my week was full of drama and emotion, we were able to get some things done. We had our math day on Wed. so that broke up our week a bit. I don't know if I like that. It makes it hard to get back into the groove on Thursday.
Mia continued to work with squares and square roots. She also is using the concept of squares in figuring out area. Rocky is knee-deep into mental addition of multi--digits and he is swimming through it just fine. This week was number 6 for Missy. Missy sort of got lost in the shuffle due to the hissy fits. I am hoping that I will be able to spend more time with her next week. Thank goodness that there is always next week.
We are meandering our way through WWE. Rocky is having difficulty in giving me details about the passages that I read to him. He can get the gist of what I am reading but has problems with the little details. Mia is trying to conquer the skill of whittling down a passage into two or three sentences This is very difficult for a verbose drama queen.
I received in the mail this week the Demo from the Barton Reading and Spelling organization on their reading program for learning difficulties. I was quite impressed with this. I think that we will be using this for Rocky and possibly for Mia (for spelling.) That was my one encouragement for the week.
This week for History we are finishing up our study into WWII. We talked about how HItler invaded France and attempted to do the same with Britain. The people of these countries never knew from one minute to the next when a bomb was going to be dropped. They had to be prepared to leave their home at a moment's notice. To illustrate this, I put suitcases on each of the kid's beds. I told them that i was going to give them five minutes to pack all of the essential things they would need if they, too, had to leave their home due to bombing. The kids loved this. It was such a hoot seeing them scurrying around. You know where there priorities lie by looking into their suitcase. Rocky forgot to pack clothes but he did have most of his stuffies crammed into his suitcase.
We didn't get all of science done this week so we might do some on the weekend. We are discussing Matter this week. We made an atomic model with styrofoam balls. I didn't have enough styrofoam balls so this was a team effort. It looks pretty awesome. Mia will begin to make notebook page for this model as well.
We are still reading through The Silver Chair by C.S.Lewis. I love this book as much I loved The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Would it be sacriligious of me to admit that I like these two books more than The LIon, the Witch and the Wardrobe ?
So that is it in a nutshell. I am praying that we will have a more productive week next week with a little less emotion. Less emotion is always a good thing around here. 
We went to Mrs. K's yesterday to have Math Day #2 with Secret Agent Man and Yep Girl. It did not start out too promising, though. A half hour before we were to leave, it started to pour outside. I have said before that when you live on 15 min. worth of gravel road, any kind of weather plays havoc on your travel plans. My concern was that if it rained all day, the roads would be pretty soupy by the time we came home at 4:00. So I vacillated back and forth quite a few times trying to decide what to do. I usually end up taking the 'buck up and do it' road and then I regret it as weather conditions seem to turn out worse than I had thought they would. I didn't want to make that mistake again. Hence, my vacillating.
After much hemming and hawing and oomphing, I decided to buck up and do it. The roads weren't that bad going as it hadn't been raining for that long but there were sections that were a bit scary. I tried to push the thought of what it would be like later on out of my head and enjoy the day. I was able to do this.
I decided to leave early if it was still raining atfter lunch so we didn't get as much done but the kids still had a good time. We started off our math time with a quote. I can't remember who said the quote so I won't write the quote out word for word. The gist of the quote is that if you hear something, you will forget it. If you see this same thing, you will remember it. It you do this same thing, you will understand how it all works and comes together. I illustrated this quote by making something from a recipe. I read the recipe for the kids and asked them to tell me what to do. Of course, they couldn't. I had Mia look and read the recipe. She remembered the ingredients but she wasn't too sure of the steps. We, then, made the recipe and the kids all understood then what we were making and how it all came together. I applied this quote to the exploration of math.
We, then, read a story about the history of numbers. This was a great book. It delved into how the ancient tribes could keep track of their herds without the use of numbers. We also looked into modern-day tribes in far away countries like New Guinea who still only count up to two. This fact amazed the kids. We looked up these countries on the map to get a visual on how far away they were from us.
I explained to the kids the importance of a Lebombo bone to the history of numbers and counting. People of long ago couldn't count the days of the week or the cows in their herd, so they would make marks on cow bones to represent the numbers. This was the beginning of the use of tally marks. The kids made their own Lebombo bones from clay. We put them in the oven to harden then the kids made their own counting marks on their bone.
I used the Living Math History lesson plans for our activities as well as the book The Secret Life of Math.
Lunch time came upon us and then, as it was still raining, we packed up and went home. The kids were a bit disappointed as they were having so much fun playing with Secret Agent Man. He had one of those huge jumpy, bouncy things in his playroom and the kids had a blast playing with that.
On the way home, the rain stopped but the roads were scary at places, especially on the sections of new road. There was a whole lot of slipping and sliding go on, let me tell you. We made it home safely which made for a perfectly good reason for popcorn. The kids changed into their pyjamas. We lit candles and then played math games while eating our popcorn and listening to Beethoven (at Rocky's reguest.) After supper we watched the season finale of Canadian Idol to see who had won. Wahoo! It was Theo Tams from Lethbridge, Alberta. That boy can sing rings around people. He is amazingly good.
That, my friends, was our day.
This week is National Awareness Week for Invisible Illness. I used to scoff at these weeks because they seemed to have such obscure issues attached to them. It comes with the whole thing about labelling. We always seem to have a need to slap a label on something to make us feel better about it and ourselves. Invisible Illnesses? What is up with that anyway?
Invisible Illnesses apply to those people who, when you look at them, they look physically well. They have all of their body parts. They are not losing weight. They look just fine on the outside. But inside, their body is full of pain. They are having problems getting through the day due to the pain and discomfort that their illness has thrown their way. Due to their outside appearance, people with invisible illnesses are not taken seriously. They are accused of lying, especially when the doctors cannot find anything wrong with them--all of the tests come back positive.
I find it interesting that this week is deemed to be the week to try make people aware of the reality and seriousness of invisible illnesses. If I had read this three months ago, I would have scoffed with the rest of you. Things are different now.
Do you remember in May when I had an infected bump on my head? The infection was pretty serious. They pulled a honkin' big ball of pus out of my head. I was on anitbiotics for a very long time trying to get rid of the infection. I haven't been feeling well, though, since that incident. I have been to the doctor twice since then. I have had blood taken twice but everything came back normal. But I knew deep down that everything was not normal. Something was very wrong with me. I had no energy to get anything done. As time went on, my body began to ache. Don't let that little word fool you. Ache is another pc word for 'hurts like the dickens." I knew there was something wrong but I didn't know what.
I decided to do some investigating on my own. My symptoms were similar to that of Mono and Fibromyalgia. So I started there. The internet is a wondrful thing, isn't it? The age of information. Anyway, I found information on the web that crossed out Mono. Even though I had most of the symptoms of Fibromyalgia, it just didn't seem to be what I had. There were some pieces that didn't fit. On the web page of Fibromyalgia I read that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is sometimes confused with Fibromyalgia. I had heard of CFS but didn't really know what it was all about. With a mighty click of my mouse, the lightbulb flashed on.
As I was reading the symptoms, the little voice inside of me was screaming, "YES! YES!" I believe that I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I have all of the symptoms (sore throat, headaches, fever, aching joints, insomnia (due to the joint pain,) mental fogginess (now, many would say that I have always been foggy mentally but it has increased in past months. I know. That is scary) and immense fatigue.) I also have two of the causes. They say that CFS can be started by a severe infection (infected bump on head) and extended use of antibiotics (5 weeks.)
Now, this is not an official diagnosis, of course. I don't even know if that is the wisest thing to do. You need to have these symptoms for 6 months before the dr.s will give you an official diagnosis. Even then, there isn't really anything that they can do for you. I'm not too sure that I want them to do anything for me anyway. I would like to deal with this on my own, in my own way. I am trying to alleviate the symptoms by better lifestyle choices. I am limiting our extra-curricular activities. I am trying to exclude sugar and refined flour from my diet. Drink more water. Ugh! Also, pacing myself is important, too. I am finding that when I am having a good day I try to push as much into that day as I can. I pay if for the next day as the pain seeps back into my shoulders, neck or lower back. I have to work harder on that pacing.
I feel so much better knowing that there is, indeed, a name to slap on this invisible face. I know, though, that there will be many people around me who won't believe me. You know what? I don't care. I know deep down that this is my problem. I have to start trusting that little voice inside of me, instead of believing what others (who don't really know as much as they think they do) say.
Even though I go through my days hurting and tired, I am so happy that I am not losing my mind and that there is a name to go along with my symptoms. In this case, labels are a good thing.
We live in between two towns. The one town might be considered a city depending on where you are from. If you are from Saskatchewan, it would be considered a city. If you are from Ontario, you would call it a town, albeit a big town, but a town nevertheless. The other town we are close to can be considered a town regardless of where you are from. The population is around 1,000. Even though this town is quite small, they do have a movie theatre and a library. The library is very small. Wonderful things come in small packages, though. I am continually amazed at the quality of books that this small-town library has on its shelves.
The adult section of htis library is much to be desired. They have their fair share of fluff books. I do not even venture to that side of the library. Their children's section, though, is wonderful. You can tell where they do most of their business. They have very good picture books as well as an astounding juvenile non-fiction section. Their non-fiction section is ten times better than the town/city that is on the other side of us. We are quite blessed to have such a great choice of books.
There are other things that make this library great, in my opinion. The main thing is the librarians. They are so helpful and friendly. They all know that we homeschool. They consider me a teacher. In this library, each school teacher has a shelf in the office. When the teachers order books ILL, there books go on their shelf. I have a shelf, too. For some reason, this meant alot to me. Whenever we go in for books (which is every week) the librarians always ask about what we are learning in school or if we are taking the summer off, when we are starting up again, how the year is going, etc. They are very open with us about our homeschooling choice. This is so refreshing as the others in this town treat homeschooling as a pink elephant ( I have to admit, though, this is gettting better.)
If by chance, I can't find the books that I want then I order them through Inter-Library Loan. This is the handiest thing and essential if you live in a small town. I can order my books through ILL online. I have said before that Saskatchewan doesn't have all of the new-fangled things that other provinces have in the areas of medicine, industry, etc. We are a bit behind. The one area where we are ahead, though, is in library books. I always have a list of 30--40 books that I order through ILL every month. I, usually, am able to find most of them somewhere throughout the province of SK. Through what I am reading about other's library experiences, this is pretty amazing. The only books that are hard to find are Christian books and American history books. The rest are on someone's library shelf.
This weekend I stumbled upon a list of a few worldview books. These books looked quite interesting. I decided to find out if my library system had these books. If they didn't, then I would buy them through Amazon. I was shocked to find out that they had three of these books. Now these books are not your mainstream kind of books. I was surprised that the SK library system would have these books. Surprised and delighted.
I was again reminded of how fortunate we are to have such a great library system in SK. It makes my job as homeschooling mom that much easier.
I spent last spring wringing my hands and gnashing my teeth trying to find a suitable writing program for Mia. I had tried Classical Writing and I liked it, but I couldn't understand why we were doing what we were doing. I couldn't see the goal at the end of the road. For some reason, this bothered me. I guess I'm a girl who needs to know what the goals are before she embarks down that path. I had read and re-read CW this past summer and I was starting to see the light regarding the goal. I had bought Writing Strands but I had heard so many negative things about it that I decided to ditch it and stick with CW. I still had that gnawing feeling that this wasn't going to work out, but I swallowed it down. I kept telling myself that once we started, that feeling would disappear.
It was around this time that I heard of Susan Wise Bauer's new writing program, Writing With Ease. Basically, this book is just a fleshing out of what she has written about writing in The Well-Trained Mind. The thing is, though, that this book is only for Grades 1--4. This did not help my dilemma with Mia. I didn't think there was any point in doing just Year 4 with her as we would have to find a new program for next year anyways. So I decided to buy WWE for Rocky and then I could also use it for Missy when the time came.
I received the book three weeks ago. I love this book and how it teaches writing. It is a no-frills, easy to find goals kind of writing book. It is a slow, incremental way to learn how to write effectively. I so wish I had had this for Mia when she was in Grade 1. This program uses copywork, narration and dictation as the basis for learning how to write. I realized, in reading this book, that there are two ways of narration (in fairness, I had always known there were two ways but it wasn't in reading this book that I realized the value of doing narration SWB style.) There is the CM way in which you tell everything you know about what you have read and you use descriptive and flowery words to do so. Then there is the classical way of narrating in which you tell what happened in a few short, concise words. This prepares you to find the basic idea of what you have read and it also prepares you for outlining (which begins in Grade 5.) I have always let Mia do narrations CM style. Now, this is not a bad thing if I was going to continue with CM, but I was intending to start teaching Mia how to outline and write precis, etc. in the next few years. I saw, through this book, that she would need to know how to narrate SWB-style, if the outlining was going to be my goal.
With this information finally loaded into my brain, I decided to go back with Mia to the early years of WWE and relearn narrations SWB style. This has proved to be a challenge for this girl. Mia, the drama queen that she is, finds it exquisite torture to have to refrain from all of the flowery words and just give the facts. I can see that this might take a bit longer than I had anticipated. I am trying to take heart , though, that the s long, slow road, in the long run, will be the best travelled road.
With Rocky, I have never done narrations with him as we were focusing on reading and writing last year. We are still focusing on the reading, but his writing has improved quite a bit so I decided to start him in Year 1 of WWE. We are off on the right track. Rocky is doing very well on the copywork but he needs more practise on narrating. He can give me the gist of what is happening in the passage but he isn't focusing enough to give me little details. We are working on this.
I write all of this to say that I am very pleased with WWE. It is an easy to implement writing curriculum that does not give me that dreaded antsy feeling that the other writing programs give me. I just wish SWB would hurry up with her adult history books so she can continue on with the other books in this writing series. I am not looking forward to revisiting the wringing of hands and gnashng of teeth in which I try to find the right kind of writing curriclum for us. Again.
I knew that it had to happen sooner or later. In using the loop schedule, I knew that eventually we would come to the day where we wouldn't get everything done in the morning and we would have to push something back to the next day. I didn't know how this was going to all play out, though. Well, that day came on Wed. and it all worked out very well. We missed Geography on Wed. but we were able to do it on Thursday and still get all of Thursday's schedule done as well. It's all good.
This is what we accomplished this week: I am so very happy on how Math is going for both Mia and Rocky. MIa learned about square numbers this week. I really like how RightStart teaches square numbers. They do it in a visual, hands-on way that makes so much sense. Mia has no problems with squares. Rocky is reviewing adding double digits. He is very good at math. It is such a joy to just say the equation orally and have him spit out the answer right away. There are no tears or gnashing of teeth. This is a wonderful, new experience for me. Missy is learning the number 6 this week. She is learning how to find the number 6 with tally sticks and the abacus.
We have picked up the pace on Rocky's reading. I have finally taken my head out of the sand and realized that we need some help in the area of Rocky's reading. I can't do this without a special program. So we are in the process of buying that special program. I am praying that this is the right step and that we will be able to see some positive results.
Mia and I have started our literary discussions with The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit. I have decided to step things up a bit in literature and have informal discussions about the literary elements. It went well this week so far.
Writing With Ease is still going well. The only problem I am having is finding the right selections for Mia. The passage that I picked out for this week was a bit too obscure for her to figure out the basic ideas. I am going to have to take more time to find passages that are a bit more easier. Rocky is getting better at listening to his passage and picking out the information that I ask for.
Mia did diagramming exercises for the four types of sentences this week. She also memorized I Never Saw a Moor by Emily Dickinson. Rocky memorized At the Seaside by Robert Louis Stevenson. They are both memorizing Josh. 1:9 as well.
We made pine cone creatures this week. There were a vast array of kings, princesses and serving girls being made. Of course, all of these characters were made so that a play could be put on. Everything revolves around plays in our house. We also made the Victory Gardens that I posted about on Tuesday. For science, we learned about the famous physicists and the Table of Elements.
Picture Books Read This Week: What Charlie Heard by Mordecai Gerstein, Maria's Comet by Deborah Hopkinson, Island Boy by Barbara Cooney.
Our new read aloud for this week is The Silver Chair by C.S.Lewis. All I have to say about this is that we miss Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. We long for the good old days.
I have some links that I would like to pass on to you today.
TheCanadian Home Education Blog Carnival is up again this week. Check it out
I found the neatest links this week through the Carnival. Ann @ Holy Experience has posted a plethora of links that give us information on a daily basis on a variety of subjects. I have bookmarked quite a few of these links. They are quite helpful.
Cay from Author Fiesta has posted the author for the month of September. I really like this guy.
Earlier this year, I told you about a new blog entitled Serendipity. This was the ingenious idea of two homeschooling moms who pooled their creativity together to make lesson plans for various subjects. These plans reflected the merging of the CM and Waldorf philosophy. The blog has morphed into a website to make easy access to the blog posts. The creative team has expanded in bringing in more moms to help out. The subjects have also expanded. There are lesson plans for American History (why doesn't someone do this sort of thing for Candian History? I know the answer to this one: if you want it done , do it yourself,) poetry, music as well as continued ideas for math, the alphabet path and grammar. This is a beautiful site.
For the last link, I found a neat math site. I am not sure how often these math problems are posted, but a math problem is given in the form of a story and the child has to figure out, thorugh manipulatives, how to solve the problem.
Enjoy!
I have always considered a classic to be a book that was written in decades or centuries gone past and has withstood the test of time as far as its popularity and readability. Anne of Green Gables, LIttle Women, Swiss Family Robinson, Kidnapped, these are all classics. My definiton of classic, though, has changed in the past years. I have discovered a book that was written about four years ago and I consider this book a classic.
We read The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo a year and a half ago. I was smitten with this little mouse as well as the author's writing style. This story was so endearing. It was chock full of themes about honour, courage, and the human spirit. It was an unlikely tale of a mouse who was a little bit different than the other mice. This mouse believed in fairy tales. He believed in happily ever afters. He believed that he was in love with a princess. This love gave him the courage to face many dangers and to overcome obstacles. I loved this story so much as did Mia.
I decided to kick off this school year's read aloud with a return to Desperaux. This time all three of the children would be able to hear of this delightful story. It was wonderful to see the emotions written on Mia's face as we went through all of Desperaux's adventures with him. Rocky understood the story but I don't think he got the full depth of it. Missy, well, Missy was just along for the ride. You know what this means, don't you? I get to read it again in a few years. I just might be able to read it a few times, actually.
I found that in this time around, I fell more in love with Desperaux and his story. I was more in awe of Ms. DICamillo's writing. In a time when modern writing falls short of the classic level, it is so refreshing that some people still have it. Desperaux, even though, it was written in the 21st century is a classic.
If you have not read The Tale of Desperaux then I urge you, reader, to run, not walk, to your local bookstore or click as fast as your fingers can click to Amazon and put this baby in your shopping cart. It can be enjoyed by people of any ages. This book is truly a delight. I don't think you will be disappointed.