Blue Yonder

If You Let a Boy Make Cranberry Muffins...

..... he will remember Cranberry Thanksgiving and ask you to read it. 

And if you read it to him, it will remind him of all the fun he had creating his own cranberry bog and he'llwant to do it all over again. 

And if you let him do it all over again it will lead to lots of questions about REAL cranberry bogs. So you will have to do some research and watch lots of videos. 

And if you watch lots of videos about cranberries it will make him very hungry and he will want you to make some more muffins!

Pardon This Interruption....

Hi all! I hope that all our stateside friends had a wonderful Halloween!

I can tell you that Frankenstein, Darth Vadar and Sir Ryder, The Royal Knight, had a whopping good time. 

Of course for the mama, it was a last minute scramble.... Darth couldn't find his cape. Frank needed shoulder pads to give him that burly monster look (a most wonderful use for plastic grocery bags if you ask me!) and the knight.... Well he was SUPPOSED to be a soldier, had his costume all ready, and then the day before Halloween he gave me his sad eyes and said, "but mama I don't want to be a soldier, I NEED to be a knight instead!"

See, he came home from the Renaissance Festival with a new shield and sword, and he was just itching to parade them around the neighborhood. So, Halloween eve found me desperately trying to fashion a knight's helmet from cereal boxes and duct tape. In the end, he was pleased with himself, and that's what counts, right? 

There was curb side service, care of Grumpy's Halloween Hayride. Bags and tummies were full of sweets. And then as I tucked them in, sleepy, but smiling and warm, it dawned on me that my throat was feeling rather crummy. 

I spent all day yesterday in bed. Which, save for the aching head and throat, isn't such a bad way to spend a day. 

Of course it means that I didn't prepare for our school week, nor did I unpack from the Renaissance Festival, nor did I write that Crockpot post that I've been promising you. Nothing like starting the week out already behind, huh? 

Bear with me friends, I'll be back tomorrow full of slow cookery stories. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all your recipes and make ahead meal ideas on our last post. You guys are fantastic! 

Until tomorrow then, I thought I'd share a few glimpses of our trip back in time to the Renaissance. 

To See What We Could See

My guys have been wanting to hike this one particular trail for some time. We wandered the lower trails  in the summertime, but just couldn't work up the nerve to make the big climb in the heat. 

So yesterday, when the clouds parted, the rain stopped and the perfect golden autumn day emerged, it was time to call an end to the school work and see if we could make it to the top. 

Little did I know what an adventure it would be! We have been reading aloud D'aulaires' Book of Greek Myths, so of course, they decided that it was not just any old mountain that we climbed. It was none less than the great Mt. Olympus!

We found evidence that Persephone has not yet been carried off to Hades this year. 

We saw Bellerophone, great tamer of Pegasus. 

We witnessed poor Arachne, doomed to forever spin her web. (And in this case, spinning her silken ties around her latest catch!)

We glimpsed the golden Elysian fields, final resting place of heros. 

Then my weary little Titans, and Cerberus (three headed dog of Hades - aka our Jasper) headed home for ambrosia and nectar (milk and graham crackers). 

What a lucky mama I am, to get to see the world through the eyes of little boys. 

The Homeschool Post (Volume 4)

At long last we've arrived at the final post in our homeschooling series. And honestly, it seems rather appropriate that I'm late for the post in which I tell you how we plan our time, doesn't it? 

So what follows is a run down of how our homeschooling day works. Now many of you are going to read through this and think, "Why is this crazy woman posting all these details about her life and why on earth would anyone care?"

Well.... I do it because I've gotten lots of questions about how I get things done and also because I know that there are lots of homeschoolers out there trying to find that balance between free time for exploring and structure in their days (not to mention time to brush their teeth and get dinner on the table). Our schedule won't work for everyone, in fact in years to come it may not even work the same way for us, but maybe in sharing, something of our day will help you in finding your own balance. 

So.... 

The boys (and as a result I) wake up around 7 or 7:30. They wake up slowly.... with lots of snuggling under quilts while mama makes a big breakfast with NPR on the radio. 

On Monday and Wednesday afternoons we have music lessons, which makes for days that are a little more full and frantic than others. On those days, I try to balance some of that extra busyness by getting all my cooking done in the morning. Dinner goes in the crockpot. Lunches go in lunch boxes. 

After breakfast the boys get dressed, clean up their rooms, make beds, and bring their laundry baskets to the laundry room where they'll dump any dirties and pick up the clean things that need to be returned to their rooms. 

"What," you may be asking, "do dinner and laundry have to do with homeschooling?" Well, for me at least, a lot. Before our new schedule, I had such a hard time keeping all the balls in their air.... learning, feeding everyone, keeping the house picked up, bathing... it was all one big jumbled mess and it seemed like if I did one thing well, say the house was clean, everything else fell by the wayside. If we had a particularly wonderful day of learning the house was a wreck and dinner was late and a little wanting. And you know what, some of that is really fine and to be expected, but when it becomes the rule rather than the exception, not so much. 

So our new homeschooling plan needed to bring some order to our beautiful mess, and somehow make it possible for us to enjoy our home, and be nourished, mind and body... and you know, for mama to keep the few remaining shreds of sanity that she has.  

While the boys are cleaning up their rooms and dressing, I'm folding clothes and clearing away breakfast. Sometimes I get a shower, but more often than not, I just get dressed and save the showering for later. 

Around 9 the boys grab their snacks and water bottles and head to our school room. Those snacks and water bottles are key because someone is ALWAYS hungry or thirsty. This way we minimize the interruptions. 

We start our days with a bell and the pledge. I find this kind of funny and a bit much really, but they've seen this sort of thing in movies and books, and they get a big kick out of the bell ringing and the solemn oath-making, so we do it. It is apparently a great honor to be the bell ringer or the flag holder, so we have to take turns. After that are prayers and at the moment we're learning a hymn each week. I've found some great bluegrass renditions that my fiddler and guitar picker are loving. For Ryder's benefit, we have a classroom calendar. Each day he gets to post the new date. Then, someone feeds the fish and just like that, our starting rituals are done. 

Honestly, I would have scoffed at some of this sort of "recreating school at home" stuff, but it really does help to sort of signify that it's time to still our hearts and prepare to focus. What can I say? It's working for them, silly as it may seem. 

After the official opening of our school day, we get out our folders. 

Sonlight comes with 36 weeks of charted out, week by week plans of study. Each week I make copies of those for the boys. I write in their math and reading assignments, and also make spaces for charting their music and AWANA practice. As they finish something they color in the boxes. A part of me rails against all that charting and plotting, but it really does help so much. They know exactly what is going to happen, and they feel a sense of accomplishment and ownership completing those charts. And...it helps too that it's not always ME telling them what needs to be done... it's part of the plan, it's on the chart. 

First up in our school day is our history/geography/Bible/social studies segment. We do this as a family (save, of course, for Daddy, who is working away in his office in our backyard). This is the really cool thing about how Sonlight is working for us. It's meant to serve a range of ages, so we can all work together rather than being sectioned off with different leveled textbooks all the time. 

Here's a little example of how this plays out: 

Say our Bible reading is about the tower of Babel. We'll read that section and then paste a little tower in the appropriate spot in our Book of Time (a sort of book version of a timeline). Our history reading will coincide with that time period. In this case it's about the Sumerians and the ziggurats that they built. Then for geography we find Sumer on our big map. This happens to be present day Iraq. Then we'll do some reading about Iraq's culture and people. We'll look up photos online, maybe try to listen to a news broadcast or call to prayer or something that will give us a feel for their language. 

I'm really loving how the Bible/history/geography and social studies all fit together to create one big picture. And I have to say that I'm learning so much right along with my boys. I am sorry to admit that I would have been hard pressed to find Oman on an unlabled map before this school year. But now, we can all find and identify all 15 middle eastern countries, and, more importantly, we also know something about the different people groups inside those countries. This week, we're moving on to Eastern Europe!

So you can see already how this new curriculum of ours is helping to satisfy those requirements we had... particular the "family time," "faith" and the "broader world view" aspects. 

All of this usually takes about an hour or, if we find some cool videos online or decide to try to build ziggurats with sugar cubes, an hour and a half. 

After that we have what we call "one on one" time. 

I will work for about 30 minutes or so with one of the older boys while the other plays with Ryder. Then we swap. I use this time to go over the work from the day before, introduce their math and reading lessons for the day. I listen to their AWANA verses to see how they're coming along. We take a look at their handwriting page, and we'll do their spelling work together. 

Then, the older two boys get started on their assignments while I work with Ryder. Now, at four, I don't think there's really any need to do any kind of formal schooling. Four year olds learn through play and that's just as it should be. But when you are the third boy and your big brothers have books and one on one time for learning with mama, you want very badly to be big too, and you just might insist that you too have a desk and workbooks and a pencil box, maybe even a folder with charts!

So, Ryder has one on one time too. And he has a box. And a folder. With a chart. And he will tell you that his is the best because it has STICKERS - some of them are even scratch and sniff!

   

 Ryder is currently using: 

Phonics Pathways

Learning Through Sounds

CLE Math

Kumon Uppercase Alphabet

Dick and Jane

And these crazy cool alphabet flash cards. 

Right now he gets a huge kick out of doing this stuff. It makes him feel big and he's doing so well with it all. If there comes a time though when he doesn't want to do it. We'll lay off a while. He's still so little to be doing any kind of serious school work. 

At this point Daddy will probably come in and he'll be inundated... "Daddy did you know that the tower of Babel might have been a ziggurat?.... Want to see me make a letter K in cursive?... want to hear me read Dick and Jane"... do you know where the Persian Gulf is Daddy? I do!... Daddy listen, Ryder can say the whole Pledge of Allegiance... Daddy, Daddy, DADDY!"

Eventually, I'll rescue him with "Alright guys, lunch is ready!" Remember, two days a week I make lunch in the mornings. The other two school days are "hot lunch days." We have real school trays and everything. The boys love hot lunch days, and mama kind of does too.... all those little compartments are great fun to fill up. On hot lunch days there might even be some terribly rare and wonderful treat like store bought cookies or single serve apple sauce. Wonders never cease. 

We all have lunch together. We all pitch in to clean up, and then we sit on the couch for our chapter book read aloud. The boys might build with Legos or draw while they are listening because it's awfully hard for boys to be still. 

After the reading, the boys go play. They play long and they play hard for a couple of hours. This is the part where I get to shower, put wet clothes in the dryer, return phone calls, catch up with email, or just sit and look at a magazine... because sometimes that's really very important. 

Some time in the afternoon we have "Quiet Hour." This is time when the older two occupy themselves with finishing up their assignments, reading, working in their nature journals or on any of their ongoing projects. 

During this time, Ryder and I hang out. We fingerpaint, play with playdough, get up a rousing game of Memory, sing songs, bake cookies. It's our time. I really love this because before our new plan, I always felt like Ryder got the raw end of the deal. I was so busy managing the ideas and projects of the other two boys that focused time to just hang out with my baby was hard to come by.

After quiet hour we go on walks, visit the library, read together, share our projects or just play. 

All of that happens Monday through Thursday. On Thursday afternoon we celebrate. We might go get ice cream or go to the park, we might bust the TV out of the closet, make up some popcorn and open up a red envelope (the Brady Bunch is our new favorite show :-). Fridays we sleep in and stay in our pajamas half the day. We meet friends, play games, hang out. We have people over, we cook. 

So, all in all, it's pretty busy, pretty full, but I feel like there's lots of wiggle room in there. After lunch each day and all day Friday and Saturday and some of Sunday are open to interpretation. Oddly enough this little injection of structure has left me feeling MORE free. When we finish up our morning studies I feel like the rest of the day is icing on the cake. The official school work is done, the house is picked up, the meals are planned and we're open to whatever adventures we dream up. 

So there it is. Everything you ever wanted to know about how we homeschool (and probably far MORE than you ever wanted to know too)! Why do I feel a little like I've just made you sit through two hours of home movies? I do hope that there were at least a few bits in there that might spark ideas for your own family's learning adventures. Now, if there's anything else you'd like to know, questions you have or ideas to share with me, I'd love to hear them! The floor's all yours!

The Homeschooling Post (Volume 3)

Happy New Week to ya!

Alright, if you’ve been following along you know that we are in the midst of a sort of “War and Peace”- like series of posts on homeschooling. You can read the first installment here and part two here.

 And now we have come to the part where I tell you exactly what it is that we are doing, the nuts and bolts of our homeschooling.  I’m going to say right here and now that what you will read in a moment will make your head spin. It’s going to seem overwhelming and maybe confusing. I know this because it was very hard for me to see the big picture until we were really putting it into practice. It's also probably going to make you think, "What??? What's this big list of curriculum stuff?" At first glance this seems to really go against our sort of explore-the-world-and-follow-your-passions take on homeschooling. Bear with me, okay? 

Take a deep breath and imagine yourself here: 

Now read on, but know that it will make a LOT more sense tomorrow when I tell you how all this fits into our daily/weekly life. If you start feeling a little faint, just return to your seat by the river for a few minutes. Put your head between your knees if you need to and take a few cleansing breaths. 

Here we go: 

 First and foremost, we are, after a great deal of thought and consideration, using Sonlight.

 In a nutshell, this is a curriculum in which the bulk of the learning is achieved through real, honest to goodness, books (not textbooks). When you purchase a “Core” package, you get a whole bunch of chapter books, a 36 week plan of study (complete with discussion questions, map and timeline activities, etc, for each book. This is minimal and not “busy work” at all), and related reference books.

 You can add to that, should you so choose, your choice of math programs, throw in some handwriting, language arts, science, and even some electives like art, music and foreign language studies. We didn’t add in all of that stuff, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

 First, let me say that I was VERY cautious about buying into Sonlight because, well, I don’t do real well with anyone telling me when to do what, and I do even less well at following charts and lists (great at making them, not so good at following them). Plus, considering the price tag, I felt like it would be a very big deal to try this out and find that we couldn’t stick with it. (Although, they do offer a new “time payment” option, allowing you to stretch out the bill a bit and they also let you try the goods for 18 weeks. If you don’t like it, you can send it back for a full refund in that time.)

I was pretty convinced though that the key to meeting all of our needs was going to be adding in just the right amount of structure to our days. So, after a lot of repeated poking around their site, and several months of hand-wringing I finally broke down and ordered it. I’m so, SO glad that I did. It has been exactly what we hoped for and then some. After 4 weeks of sticking to the plan (with some minor modifications) I (and they) could not be happier.

Sonlight has adhered to our list of “homeschooling needs and desires” so well! I will explain more about exactly HOW it fits into that list tomorrow when I show you how it all works when put into action. 

 If you are even thinking about someday trying out Sonlight, I would really suggest you read their 27 reasons to love Sonlight and (in my opinion even better) the 27 reasons NOT to choose Sonlight. They’re pretty spot on.

 We ended up with the 4 Day Core 1+2, Condensed Introduction to World History with Advanced Readers. To that I added Singapore Math and A Reason For Handwriting.

 I’m really happy with our choices save for a few things:

I chose the Advanced Readers because my guys enjoy reading and are good at it. My oldest has read a few Beverly Cleary books that I thought would be comparable to the ones on the reading list. As it turns out, those “readers” (which are not readers at all, but chapter books meant for them to read on their own) are a bit too advanced for my boys. They can read them, but slowly and jerkily and hence not so enjoyably.

 So, we just have two read alouds. We read the one that they are SUPPOSED to be using as a read aloud at lunch time, and the one that they are supposed to be reading on their own at bedtime. It works just fine.

 So far the books that we have read are not ones that I would have chosen or that they would have chosen on their own, but they’ve been very good. (Red Sails to Capri, The Whipping Boy, More Stories From Grandma's Attic and currently Shadrach and Ginger Pye) Some of those books have taken me (and them) a few chapters to really get into, but by the time we are finished we were wishing there were more pages. So… good stuff.

 Since our readers were too advanced, I decided to go back to the Christian Light Readers that we had been using before and for the first time add in the “Light Units.” These are a set of 10 small workbooks that go with each reader. They review the story, and work on some writing and language arts skills. It takes about 4 weeks to finish one unit and then you get to chalk that off as an accomplished bit of work and get a fresh new book to work in. I like that sort of built in incremental achievement.

 The boys like these books. They are sweet and old fashioned but also interesting. I wasn’t so sure they’d dig the Light Units, but I’ve yet to hear a complaint. I think they offer just enough information and review without being work for work’s sake. They introduce things like homophones, synonymns, contractions and the like, and they also teach kids to use the sorts of pronunciation symbols found in the dictionary, which is turning out to be very helpful.

 I’ve also been less and less fond of Singapore Math lately. I like the idea behind it… they teach to the “why” of math rather than rote drills and memorization. But as the concepts have gotten more complex I felt like the boys weren’t getting enough practice and that some of the things they learned a while back hadn't stuck as well as we thought. There are extra practice books that you can buy, but I wasn't really hoping for MORE work, just more comprehensive work.

 So, considering the success of the Christian Light Reading, I thought we’d try out the math. It has a similar 10 workbooks per level approach. It’s a spiral program, meaning each day’s work includes some of the stuff you’ve already learned and mixes is a new concept too. Our books just came on Thursday, so I can't yet speak too much to how well they work in practice.

 My two oldest boys are more or less on the same level mathematically, so I just ordered the Grade 3 teacher’s guide and two 301 light units so that we could try it out without investing too much.  After having a look I think it’s going to go really well. It seems to be like the reading books – just enough work to be useful, but not so much that it will burn them out.

 My youngest really is getting such a great big kick out of being big like his brothers. He wanted SO badly to have “math books” too, so I bought a 101 light unit for him.

 He’s done several pages over the weekend, just cuz he likes it. I don’t know how long that will last or how the others will take too to this math program, but I’ll keep you posted. Maybe we'll end up back with Singapore, maybe with Math U See (I've heard so many great things about it), maybe we'll stick with Christian Light. Maybe one thing will speak to one child and the others will be lit up by something else. I just can't say right now. 

 The boys dig the handwriting because they are learning cursive, otherwise known as “fancy writing.”  So that’s working out fine.

 The only other thing we added to the Sonlight Core was something we were already doing… Spelling Power. We don’t do the suggested spelling stuff with the Sonlight materials. It seemed a little arbitrary. We’ve been doing Spelling Power off and on for a year now and really like it. My boys see it as a game. We have lots of spelling bees, so they see spelling time as practice for the big event. Basically, with this program you test FIRST, then just study the words you missed. That way there’s no extra fluff work.

 As for science, art and music… we do lots of nature study and experimenting so I didn’t really think this was necessary at this point.  

The boys also each take music lessons (Luke plays the fiddle, James the guitar and Ryder is beginning to learn some things on the piano from Mama), so again, I didn’t think we needed to add to that right now. 

We do own and sometimes use  “Artistic Pursuits, Book 1,” as well as a number of drawing books. I get lots of ideas from Art Projects for Kids too.  Mostly though we visit museums, check out art books from the library, have various replicas of famous works around and keep lots of art supplies on hand. So far that’s an art program that’s serving us very well.

 So, is your head spinning now? Just writing it out it seems like so much, but really it’s folding into our day so nicely – inspiring, illuminating, edifying and also leaving lot’s of that precious UNPLANNED time.

 So please, come back tomorrow and I’ll show you how the day/week plays out. It will make so much more sense, and sound like a heap more fun, then. Pinky swear.