17 May 2013

Year Four -- In the Books


I'm so excited, because waiting for me on my doorstep early this afternoon was a package from Blurb.com.  It was our most recent Homeschool Portfolio Assessment all assembled into a fantastic book as a result of keeping this blog.  This year I splurged a bit -- with a hardback cover, higher quality paper, and some larger photo layouts.  I must say, it looks great.

I finished a little early this year as opposed to other years.  West Virginia requires a homeschool notification and portfolio to be submitted in June.  Ohio was very open-ended on their dates, so I usually waited until later in the summer to complete the assessment.  We have our appointment scheduled with our evaluator in a little less than two weeks.

As I've said before, this is definitely not all we do in a year.  Many real life day-to-day activities and learning experiences do not make it onto this blog.  But, the goal of the assessment is to give a snapshot into a child's learning and academic progress.  I feel that what I post on this blog does that adequately for both my children.  It is easy to manage and fun to review in order to see all that has been accomplished.  I highly recommend it!

Once again I will mention that just because I have a completed book, and we have an assessment scheduled on the calendar, doesn't mean our learning ceases for a few months.  To me, learning is an environment.  It doesn't just happen during certain hours of the day or during certain months of the year.  Our activities may slow down some in the summer months, but our educating will continue.  There is always something more to be learned!



09 May 2013

Day 102 / 102 - Dear Mom / Dear Dad

My daughter turned nine the first week of December.  Just before her birthday I challenged her with a new idea.  I asked her if she wanted to begin writing back and forth in a daily journal.  Well, since she was turning nine, this really did seem like the BEST. IDEA. EVER.  She loved the floral journal I purchased.  When we began writing, she did so several times a day.  We stepped it up a notch by adding stickers and decorations to each page.  Now, we sometimes draw pictures or add quotes.  We've completely filled more than one notebook.

Of course my intention was two-fold.  I knew she would love the idea, but also I wanted her to work on her spelling.  I mentioned earlier this year about her lack of spelling skills, and how we've seen her drastically improve (here).  Keeping this journal was one of the ways we've seen significant improvement in her spelling.  At first I told her I didn't care at all about her misspelled words.  However, it wasn't long before she started asking me to correct her misspelled words.  Then, it wasn't long before she was spelling every word correctly.  Success.

She and I were having so much fun journaling to one another, that my son and my husband quickly joined in and began a journal of their own.  They write more stories to each other, about neighborhood roosters and raccoons, and they tell more jokes.  We've spent quite a bit of time filling up our notebooks this year, so this seemed like an appropriate post to end my 2012 - 2013 homeschool assessment.

08 May 2013

Day 101 / 102 - Piano

After a several month hiatus, my children returned to piano lessons late last fall.  I have been super impressed with the teacher we have located here in Beckley.  She has been such a blessing to us, and she has challenged my children in new ways, especially with some music theory.  I have seen vast improvements in their playing in just a few short months.  I am super eager for them to continue with her throughout our time in West Virginia.  Both my children played in a recital she hosted on Sunday.  They performed beautifully.  She has some amazingly talented students.

Another fun addition has been that we recently purchased a new-to-us piano.  For the few years my children have taken lessons, they've always practiced on an electronic keyboard.  We've tossed around the idea of making the major purchase more than once, but since we always seem to be moving, we've wondered if the purchase would be worth the effort it would take to move a piano in the future.  I'm so glad we made the investment.  It has encouraged my children to practice (and play!) even more.  And, they really do sound so much better on a real piano.

02 May 2013

Day 100 / 102 - Multiplication Drills


I came across this idea on Pinterest and immediately recreated something similar for my own use.  I give my daughter a drill worksheet in a page protector with a dry erase marker.  She fills in the left hand column with the number she is drilling.  We mix up numbers 1 - 12 on the right.  We set the timer, and she has one minute to complete the multiplication problems on the sheet.  If she doesn't complete it in a minute, we start over.  This has been a simple way to drill, and a nice change from the usual Times Tests.

Day 99 / 102 - Noun Usages

Our Classical Conversations' Essentials program teaches us that there are nine different usages (jobs) for a noun (subject, direct object, predicate nominative, etc).  However, my goal over the past few weeks, and throughout the summer months, is to have my children master the main five -- Subject, Possessive, Indirect Object, Direct Object, Object of the Preposition.  Why?  Because one day (relatively soon for my son) my children will take Latin.  In case you are unfamiliar, Latin nouns decline (their endings change) based on their job (or function) in a sentence.

We have been filling our mornings with some learning activities to aid us in our challenge.  Of course the simplest way has been reading....and writing....and rewriting sentences.  Repetition.  We will take a sentence and begin by highlighting all the nouns listed.  Then we will ask ourselves a series of questions to help us identify which function each noun has.  For my children, some are easier to spot than others (a possessive or an object of a preposition).  Once they begin to understand that specific function, I ask them to begin making up their own sentences.   For example. "Give me a sentence with a possessive subject and a prepositional phrase."  Mom's keys are in her purse.

Direct and indirect objects have been a little more fun because we can include our study of action verbs and play a few more games.  Mad Libs and I Spy are two.  I spy the (dog, cat, pinwheel, butterfly, etc).  All those nouns, in that sentence, are direct objects.  In fact, they'll even get creative with 'I spy the neighbor's cat' in order to have a possessive direct object.

01 May 2013

Day 98 / 102 - Cosette


While I was eagerly waiting for the recent movie version of Les Misérables to be released on DVD, I dusted off an old copy of the soundtrack that I had from when I saw the Broadway Tour in the early '90s.  Instantly, my daughter fell in love with the music, (who wouldn't ??) and therefore became quite interested in Les Mis.

She was struck by the song Castle on a Cloud, which is sung by Cosette as a child.  Even after hearing the very brief song once, she asked me the child's story.  I explained to her that Cosette didn't have a father, and that her mother tried to provide for her financially, but couldn't.  As a result, her mother sent her to live with an innkeeper and his wife where she was mistreated and abused.  She had to work very hard at the inn, even as a young child.  Fortunately, as the story progresses, Cosette is rescued and adopted by the protagonist of the story, Jean Valjean.

My daughter then made two statements to me which I thought were very profound.  First, she stated "As I hear this song, I can picture this girl staring out the window watching children play while she has to work.  Is that what is happening?"  If you are unfamiliar with the musical, the answer is YES.  That is exactly what is happening.  Secondly, she asked "Was this book written about the same time as Oliver Twist, because it sounds like Oliver and Cosette have a lot in common?"  Ummmm, again...YES.

She asked if she could watch the movie, and I explained to her not yet.  She is too young.  However, I bought her an illustrated and adapted version of the book.  Miraculously, some publisher managed to take all 1500 pages and condense them into less than 200.  She read it in a day.

Honestly, I don't even remember when she read an adapted version of Oliver Twist.  It must have been a couple years ago.  When she finished Les Misérables we talked about some other similarities between Oliver and Cosette.  Here are a few ideas she mentioned: 

 - Their mothers both died
 - Neither had a father
 - When they were young they had to work for the people who were raising them, and these people treated them badly
 - They both lived in Europe during the 19th Century (we looked at a map and located both France and England)
 - People seemed to have much harder lives at that time
 - Both were given a second chance and were adopted by people who love them

She's nine!

Then, to make this even more fun, my daughter decided her Lanie American Girl doll would make the best Cosette, so she whipped up a dress and headband for her out of fabric scraps, and made the mop out of a stick and yarn (pictured above).  Over the past two weeks, I wasn't planning on a Les Misérables unit study, but we accomplished just that.  The famous illustration of Cosette from the original novel is pictured below.

This is a rather long post, but I wanted to end with one thought.  Jesse Wise Bauer, author of the Well-Trained Mind (one of very few homeschooling books that I highly recommend and consult regularly) maintains that introducing children to adapted classics is a good idea, because then they grow to love the stories and are not intimidated by the original works when they are older.  I could not agree more.