This Week at the Homeschool Odyssey: Faithfulness

As I mentioned in my last post, we have had a good bit of upheaval in our homeschooling schedule thus far, and despite my best efforts, this week was no exception. Dentist appointments, lack of sleep, unexpected errands, and grumpy attitudes all came together to make for a disjointed and incomplete school week. We plowed through as best we were able, but, as I told my husband, "we cried over grammar, sighed over math, grumbled through Bible, and yelled through (and in) German."

Being a planner, my first response to a week like this is to go back and investigate the plan. What didn't work? What should I change? 

In all my research prior to starting homeschool, I found lots of wonderful advice to troubleshoot those exact questions, and I feel blessed to begin our homeschooling journey on the hard-won knowledge of those who have gone before. Short lessons? Check. Incorporating interests and passions? Check. Variety? Check. Ditch the busywork in favor of meaningful narration and notebooking? Check, check, and check.

Yes, all these concepts and more went into my carefully laid out plan. But what is rarely mentioned - or perhaps it was and I just couldn't see it for my rose-tinted glasses - is that sometimes kids just don't want to do the work of learning. In the words of my very wise 4th grader: "Mom, I'd rather keep doing what I know."

Fair enough. Who among us really wants to go beyond our comfort zone? Is it not easier to simply maintain our status quo than to stretch a little farther? Yes, learning is work, and work is usually uncomfortable to a certain extent. It is supposed to challenge us. Growth rarely occurs without some discomfort...or outright pain! (Believe me, we're in the throws of waking up in the middle of the night with growing pains, so I know all about that.)

Yet, we recognize it's value so we push on. And, with a little discipline, we can even come to enjoy that process.

Sometimes a successful week is not that you checked off every box (on your loop schedule so that you're not actually ever "behind"), but that you faithfully persisted in showing up and going to the next thing when the last was complete. Sometimes a successful week does not mean that you were able to school for four hours straight, but that you picked back up where you left off after you got back from the dentist's office...and the grocery store...and the tantrum...and the kid was having trouble holding it together too!

Oh yes, the plan will no doubt need some tweaking, but for now, I think it simply needs faithfulness. 

On to what we actually did during our school days!

Bible

We read through chapters 4 and 5 of Genesis, discussing the fall, Cain and Abel, and the brief mention of Lamech. Ms. Spontaneity asked some good questions and together we were able to mine out some good answers. We took a look at a map to view the present day Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and she completed a notebooking page on Cain and Abel. I think my favorite line from her report was, "He got married and had a son, who got married and had a son, who got married and had a son....who got married TWICE and both had sons!"

We also continued studying Psalm 119:10-12

Math

We did a small amount of work with fractions, ensuring that she was comfortable recognizing and defining some of the less common ones, like 2/3 and 5/8, etc. She seemed to really enjoy the memory match game I created to help her practice fraction recognition, although I suspect it really was a bit too easy for her. I'm still feeling my way through to find out what she knows and what she hasn't yet been introduced to.

Later, I introduced Roman numerals, a completely new concept to her. Thus far, she has been able to grasp it pretty easily, so in our next lesson we will cover how to make numbers with 4's or 9's in them. I also found the book Fun with Roman Numerals by David A. Adler at the library and had her read that and she seems to have really enjoyed it.

via Amazon

Finally, we've continued to practice our 3's multiplication tables (next week we move on to 4's) and building up speed with simple addition.

Language Arts

Oh, this was our particular nemesis this week.

On the easy and enjoyable side, we finished three chapters in Caddie Woodlawn, and she has begged me to read a little more over the weekend.

She memorized the poem "The Tea Party" by Jessica Nelson North and loved that so much, she made up a tune for it and went around singing it repeatedly. She threw me quite a curve with this one as I rather expected resistance to poetry memorization and figured it would take her a while to memorize. Now I have to track down another poem!

We were also able to squeeze in a little bit of penmanship, and she was thrilled to be able to write an entire word without having to ask me how to form a letter.

For spelling, I have decided to begin by drawing from a list of fourth grade words I printed off the internet. Each week I have her take a spelling "test" on five words to see if she already knows how to spell them. If she can do so confidently, we check that one off; if she is able to guess the answer or isn't confident about the spelling, then we just make sure it pops up again in copywork and dictation so that she can get some practice. If she spells the word incorrectly, then we will study and review the word. This week she was able to spell three with no qualms and two will go on our list to practice to build up her confidence with them. Next week we will choose new words, and I will incorporate a few I have noticed her struggling with in her writing.

And then, there was grammar. Following the curriculum, I attempted to introduce the concept of the subject and the predicate, but only succeeded in driving her to tears in frustration and confusion. Apparently these were things that she had very little background in, and what little she was familiar with seemed to conflict with what I was trying to teach. After talking with her for a while to figure out where we got tangled up, I am hopeful that I have an idea of how to begin again, and next week we will start by identifying some of the parts of speech. My thinking is that if she can concretely identify the role of specific words in the sentence, we will be able to backtrack and begin to zoom out to see the subject phrase and the predicate phrase.

History

We spent some time working on our memory work, "America the Beautiful."

We also did a little studying on the farming practices, diet, and music of ancient Egypt. To bring our studies to life, we built a working shaduf; by using this mechanism, a farmer could draw water up from the river Nile with the help of a counterweight for emptying into the canals that would run throughout his fields.

Ms. Spontaneity really enjoyed the challenge of using the materials I provided her to come up with a pulley system to haul the water. On her own, she was able to figure out a system that was quite close to the Egyptian shaduf, so once she had an almost working system, I made a couple of tweaks and demonstrated how the Egyptians utilized the same materials to solve the problem.

We were also scheduled to make a meal using ingredients available to (or at least, inspired by...I prefer my flatbread without rocks, thanks!) the ancient Egyptians, as well as listening to some Egyptian music, but that got overcome by events, so hopefully we'll manage to do that sometime this weekend.

German

Ms. S logged about 40 minutes working on her German this week using Duolingo. It's the only computer-based curriculum we use, but it's fun, effective, and free so I'm ok with it, at least for now. While I hope to actually do more intentional review during our school time, for now we gratuitously work in what few words we know to our daily conversation. Here's a sample of a real conversation from yesterday:

"Mutter, may I have some vasser?"
"Ja" {supplies requested glass of water}
"Danke."
"Bitte."
"Mutter, may I have some brot?" {grins mischievously}
"Nein. Go to bed."
"Mutter..."
"Go to bed!"

Character

While I gave it my own twist, the theme of the lesson was inspired by Character First Education (you can follow the link to access their free teaching resources or to go to their shop where you can purchase the actual curriculum).

We took a look at diligence, gave it a definition, and then watched a fascinating video about beavers. After watching the video, Ms. S was asked to tell me how the beaver demonstrated diligence.

And that's a wrap! 

Unfortunately, we did not make any progress in science, art, or music this week, but that's where the patience and faithfulness come into play.

Homeschool Planning Series: The Big Picture

Image via pixabay

Between last week's Independence Day celebrations and Ms. Spontaneity's first trip to an overnight camp (and oh, can I tell you how hard that has been for this mama!), we have had yet another extended break in our homeschooling.

I decided to make use of this week by myself to do some intensive planning - and I'm not sure which I am enjoying more...a week to myself or the intensive planning. :)  And I decided to make use of the break in the weekly summary posts by working through a series on how I've been accomplishing said intensive planning.

Object Lessons: Creation

As I mentioned in my previous post, we recently did a simple but powerful object lesson to illustrate the requirement of a Creator for the world around us.

To begin with, I collected a small number of bottle caps (Scrabble tiles would have been even less work, but I didn't have any handy and just worked with what I had) and wrote a letter on each one to spell the word "CREATION."

Next, I placed all of the caps into a cup and shook them around vigorously, finally pouring them out on the floor. I asked Ms. Spontaneity if they had fallen out to form a word. When she answered that they had not, I offered her the cup and invited her to shake the caps again to see if we could make a word. After several failed attempts, she exclaimed, "They will never spell the word!"

I then introduced a quick summary of the "Big Bang" theory often used to explain how the universe came into existence. She declared that that seemed like a really silly idea since we couldn't even get a word to fall out of a cup! Out of the mouths of babes. :)

Next, I asked her what the Bible says about how the world was created and we took a look at Genesis 1:1 to find our answer.

Finally, I carefully lined up the letters to spell out the word we had been searching for, explaining as I did so that it required wisdom and intentionality to create order out of chaos.

This was so easy to pull together, but I think that it really cemented the understanding in my little one's heart that we are not here by any mere accident. Only the work of our wise, powerful, and loving God could create the wonders of the created world.

Catching Our Breath!

Wow! How have two - or is it three?! - weeks gone by without my noticing???

The past few weeks I have fallen back into old habits of poor prioritizing and allowing myself to be at the mercy of my calendar, instead of being in charge of it. (I'm hoping to do a post on my other blog Planned Spontaneity soon to talk more about that and what we're doing to work on it...again!) Unfortunately, homeschooling has been one of any number of other things that have shuffled to the back burner as I struggle to keep up with all our commitments.

Still, we did do some things in the last few weeks. Here's what we've been up to...

Bible

We finished our discussion of why it is important to study the Bible by taking a look at the armor of God as discussed in Ephesians 6. While Ms. Spontaneity worked on filling out a notebooking page depicting the different items in the armor, I took the opportunity to summarize notes from this webpage regarding why each piece was important, and chimed in a few thoughts I had gleaned from my own study prep on the passage. While we didn't get around to doing it, I thought this was a great object lesson to illustrate the point.

Next we launched into our "proper" Bible study, beginning with Genesis 1:1. Thus far we have read the account of creation and are finishing a notebooking page depicting what ocurred on each day.

We have continued to work on Psalm 119:10-12 for our memory work. I created a simple set of fill-in-the-blank pages, graduating from only a few missing words to nearly an empty page, as an aid for us to practice. We also tried alternating each word, such that I would say the first word, then she the second and so forth. We had fun trying to see how fast we could accurately say the verse that way. Finally, we started working on penmanship as well as we began copying the verse in cursive today. Ms. Spontaneity has not yet learned how to form all of her cursive letters, so we are learning and practicing each new letter she comes across. That may not be the official way to learn cursive, but it's working so far and she is enjoying it and picking it up quickly.

Reading

We have continued reading a chapter {almost} daily from Caddie Woodlawn, often with playdough work as I read aloud, and Ms. Spontaneity has officially declared that she likes the book!

Math

We began to work on memorizing our two's multiplication tables and go over them each day, varying the style or focus a bit to keep it from becoming monotonous. We've also started alternating flash cards and speed drills - addition to start - to help her with her speed.

Meanwhile, we have continued placement testing to find the extent of her current math knowledge in each area. This week we discussed telling time, multi-digit addition (into the millions and with four or more addends), place value, and greater than/less than/equal to.

Last but not least, I picked up a copy of The Life of Fred book, Apples, for her to try out. The math itself is rather simplistic in this specific volume, but I thought the style might appeal to her since she enjoys math and brain teasers so we're just trying out the idea. She seems to enjoy it thus far, and it makes a fun "addition" (haha!) to our math time.

History

This week we began our history study, using Year 1 from the Good and Beautiful curriculum. I love that it includes biblical accounts in its history timeline, however I am mostly summarizing the first few chapters since the info overlaps with our study in Genesis. Shortly we will begin a study of ancient Egypt and we are both so excited.

We did a simple but effective object lesson discussing the necessity for having a Creator of the universe and stated that history began at that point in time. We also started a Book of Centuries (at least, that's what we're calling it, though I'm not sure if it fits all the standard requirements and criteria), as well as a read-aloud based in ancient Egypt, titled The Golden Goblet.

Science

We also began our science study this week. Initially I couldn't find a curriculum I was wild about so I created my own. Naturally, the day I finished up the outline, I discovered the Elemental Science Classical series. I'm planning to check that out when we do our next unit, but for now, we are going to make use of all the hard work I put into planning!

It was no surprise that Ms. Spontaneity wanted to start with a study of astronomy: she's wanted to be an astronaut for as long as I can remember! We're starting with an overview of the solar system and astronomy in general. We spent a great deal of time drawing the title page for our astronomy notebooks - very important! We also read Boy, Were We Wrong about the Solar System by .... selected mainly because that's what our library had available. It offered an entertaining and informative overview of both true and false beliefs about the solar system from ancient history to present. We also began work on a poster "map" of the solar system.

Our First Week as Homeschoolers!

This past week marked our very first as an official homeschool family. Monday, despite the holiday and being the first Monday of summer vacation, was our first day of school.

It was certainly an interesting beginning, and showed me that no matter how many plans I carefully lay, there will always be things that cause them to go awry. Sometimes those things are outside my control. Other times it is a case of self-sabotage. Either way, it helps to laugh whenever possible and hold your plans in loose hands.

Monday

Although we will ultimately be studying the book of Genesis, we are spending our first few Bible lessons answering the question "Why should we study the Bible?" After reading the parable of the sower and the four kinds of soil, I introduced Ms. Spontaneity to the concepts of narration and notebooking. After briefly retelling the story to me and answering a few questions designed to make her think about what she read, she drew a picture and wrote a summary.

In prayer, I showed her my idea of a rotating prayer schedule. This is based of the premise of a prayer notebook, but I felt that having so many different prayer topics in one day might get overwhelming for her, so I broke them down and we cover one each day. On Monday, we spent time praising God for who He is.

We introduced our first memory verse, from Psalm 119:10-12, and read through it.

After a short break to complete one of our daily chores and get something to drink, we came back for math. This week is all about placement testing. She chose to complete four worksheets in all covering identification and addition of money and identification and sequencing of numbers up to 10,000.

We read the first chapter of our read a loud, Caddie Woodlawn. Ms. Spontaneity complained a bit about the story selection - it being one that she would certainly not have chosen for herself - so I allowed her to draw while I read. I was reassured that was indeed listening and taking in the reading when she presented me with a series of drawings depicting the events of the story at the close of the chapter.

Next, we worked on our outdoor habit. I say "habit" because at this point we have not officially started nature study, but I'm trying to build the time in for it right from the outset. We spent about 10 minutes walking around our backyard and observing: "Check out this bug! Did you see that bird? What kind of animal could have made that sound?" and the like filled our conversation as we strolled about the yard, chatting happily. Next, we spent 10 minutes playing at whatever outdoor game she wanted. This is to get out some of the wiggles for her and to appease the constant plea to "Play with me!" that so often comes from only children. I guess I can call it PE. :)  Finally, after an exhausting (to me, anyway!) game of tag, we spent another 10 minutes in catching our breath, lounging on the porch, and generally soaking in the fresh air and sunshine. Then I was ready to go in and soak up the air conditioning!

We rounded out the day with another scheduled chore and some free reading time.

We started at 8am and were completely done by 2:30pm, having taken liberal breaks and allowing Ms. Spontaneity to extend our required time in a given subject as long as she wished (to include our notebooking project in Bible and the 3 extra worksheets in math).

Tuesday

Because we are a blended family and Ms. Spontaneity is gone part of the week, Tuesday is already regularly scheduled as a half day of school. Though we ran into a few more hiccups than the day before, it was on a whole a successful day. Ms. Spontaneity requested to begin school early (which I granted) and to skip Bible and go straight to math (which I did not).

We added a song to our morning routine, and Ms. S. chose "The Name of Jesus" from my song binder (leftover from my brief stint helping out with the worship team at our last church).  Then we finished up our notebooking pages started the day before.

In prayer, we tackled the topic of confession, and spent 5 minutes contemplating some reflection questions and letting God speak to our hearts.

We read through our memory verse.

In math, she smoked a worksheet on fraction recognition...and came to a screeching halt when I gave her several worksheets on measurements. We worked through a brief meltdown when she took it very personally that no one had taught her anything to do with standard or metric systems of measurement.

We shuffled our day around a bit and went outside for our observation time, followed by time to play her own made-up game "Kingdom." In case you're curious, it is rather like a simplified version of "Capture the Flag" wherein the guard (player one) has to prevent the robber (player two) from getting to the castle/base (touching a tree) by patrolling a designated circle around it and tagging the robber anytime she is within the circle. We enjoyed ourselves and Mama was exhausted afterwards, per usual. If I don't lose some weight homeschooling, I don't think anything is going to help me!

We finished up our official school day with another chapter of Caddie Woodlawn and a bit of playdoh smooshing as I read. I was able to squeeze in one scheduled chore and had to be content to call it a day.

Thursday

Ms. Spontaneity came home earlier than usual so that we could check out a potential co-op group. We joined in for their end of year kickball game. Despite navigating the challenges of exhaustion for both of us and the inevitable tensions that arise from a competitive game spanning across multiple age groups and both genders, we managed to have fun and make a few new friends. We ate a quick picnic and then dashed off to the library for about an hour. Once we were home from the library, Mama hit a wall and could not do anything else, so I succumbed to a nap while Mr. Planned helped Ms. Spontaneity navigate an afternoon with some reading, resting, and not too much screen time. It was a girl scout night, so after I woke up, we inhaled a quick dinner and dashed off to our meeting.

It was a long and busy day, and this was probably a good example of the self-sabotage. I have a nasty habit of trying to cram too much into one day.

Friday/Saturday

Friday saw us recovering from the exhaustion of the previous day and we could not seem to get anything going, so we opted to swap our normal Friday routine of school for our Saturday routine of projects and relaxation. On Saturday, we picked up with school and managed to get mostly back on track.

Ms. Spontaneity taught me a song from her Bible class she had taken over the school year.

We introduced the parable of the wise man and the foolish man, and then hiked outside to try an experiment. Princess Belle served as our wise man/foolish man...

... and discovered that she could withstand the rains just fine on the firm foundation of the paver stone.

However, when she attempted to stand without a firm foundation, she was unable to withstand the "torrents" of life.

This experiment was a lot of fun and definitely served its intended purpose of giving a strong visual and experiential component to an otherwise abstract idea.

In prayer, we discussed praying for ourselves from the perspective of praying to become more like God. We also started writing out our memory verse.

We resumed our math assessments and worked through a multi-digit/multiple addend addition worksheet.

At that point, we decided to call it a day since our library was hosting a magic show to kick off the start of their summer reading program. Ms. Spontaneity has been fascinated by magic tricks since she was a wee thing, so this was quite a treat.

We all agreed this week was a great beginning and we are excited to see what next week will bring. Our history curriculum arrived and I have been working diligently on the space unit for our science studies, so the next week or two should see things stepping up a notch!

The Saga Begins

Welcome to The Homeschool Odyssey, my little corner of the internet where I hope to document our homeschool journey from start to finish.

I chose the name The Homeschool Odyssey because learning is a life-long journey and an adventure. For us, homeschooling will be a key part of that journey, filled with ups and downs and, lets face it, a little bit of drama. I wanted to acknowledge that we are about to embark on a long and arduous task; yet there's a sense of adventure, mystery, wonder, and excitement. 

Why Homeschool? 

The decision to homeschool has actually been over a year in the making. I began as one of those moms who declared that I would NEVER homeschool. Homeschooling was a thought that would pop into my mind at odd moments, as though presenting itself for consideration yet again, and I would dismiss it - though each time rolling it about in my mind for a little longer before writing it off as a foolish idea and an impossibility. 

Up to this point, Ms. Spontaneity (a carry over from my everything-not-related-to-homeschool blog, Planned Spontaneity) had attended a very small private school. In addition to the cost of education, we were frustrated by the limited exposure to new ideas - particularly in history - and the lack of academic challenge and accountability. Throw in a marriage and a move and it became clear that we would need to make a change. We decided (after a lot of prayer, discussion, and, on my part at least, anxiety) to try public school. We hoped that the larger setting and wider access to materials and resources would effect a change in our areas of concern. It did not, and over the past couple of years we have seen those frustrations simply become magnified rather than resolved. 

So it was in September I approached Mr. Planned (another carry over) and told him I had a crazy idea that I wasn't even sure I liked but to just think it over and we'd talk about it again down the road...and that thing that I was sure I would NEVER do escaped my lips and planted a seed: HOMESCHOOL.

As you can guess from the presence of this blog, we did talk it over and ultimately decided this just might be for us. So here we stand, preparing to embark on our homeschool odyssey.