Day 33 / 104 - Enjoyment at my Dining Room Table

Last night, I participated in a local homeschool mom's time where I listened to several others share what homeschooling looks like in their home.  This is one of my favorite things to do.  I enjoy homeschooling.  And, I love to hear how others organize and structure their day while fulfilling their role in providing education for their children. 

One of the presenters happened to be yours truly, so I (hopefully) entertained the others with this picture of my dining room table.  My dining room table looks like this at least four days a week.  However, I have posted before how I will never have a school room.  For a variety of reasons, we discovered that our learning works best around this table, and we have gladly accepted the fact that we will eat standing up at the kitchen counter several days a week.  It works for us.

Homeschooling can be difficult.  Everyday I'm with my children.  I have very little free time.  I have quite a bit of chaos and clutter.  As my children age, their work load becomes more demanding.  Some days, I'm rather tired.  Some days, none of us get along.  Some days, I don't really want to do what I need to do in order to make this entire operation work.

However, as I collected my thoughts for the evening, and as I listened to others, I was reminded again and again how much I enjoy my children.  I am beyond thankful for the opportunity that I have to educate them at home daily.  It is a great privilege.  There's nothing else I'd rather be doing.  I enjoy homeschooling, and I desperately want others to enjoy it also.

Posting pictures of her life and her home, my friend Gina encourages others to find beauty in the day-to-day.  Coupled with that thought, and fresh with my vision of how much I enjoy my children, I snapped this picture this morning of our dining room table.  It doesn't look much different from the link posted above.  However, in less than five minutes I challenged myself to find five enjoyable moments around this educational explosion.  Easily, I could have identified a dozen.  My goal has always been to keep my blog posts brief, so I'm attempting to share my enjoyment with you as quickly as possible.

1.  The glue-gun, feather, ribbon, sequence concoction is a result of my daughter planning the craft time for our American Girl co-op class on Friday morning.  Before I left yesterday evening, I asked her, "Can you figure out how we can make this?" Naturally, she far exceeded my expectations.  I long to show you what she actually created, but I'll save that for class on Friday.  Her design of the craft and her ability to communicate that to others ministers to me more than you can imagine.

2.  The same Gina from above taught my daughter a math game in her Essentials class called Shut the Box.  My daughter has played this for at least six hours in the past two days.  Seriously.  The game requires two dice, but only one shows up in the picture.  The other one is most likely buried underneath something else on the table.

3.  My son is learning Latin.  On his educational journey, we have worked harder at this than any other subject thus far.  It takes time and effort.  I have helped him make mental connections, and I have witnessed him have a-ha moments independently.  All this is enjoyable.  Last Friday he said, "This is probably my favorite subject yet."

4.  For his Science strand this year, my son is learning how to research.  (I'm anticipating posting more about this in the future.)  Each week he is assigned a topic.  He is required to write a paper, draw a picture, and prepare a presentation on that topic.  He loves this and takes great pride in his work.  This week it is on the Bald Eagle, so there are several Bald Eagle resources floating around that area of the table.

5.  My son is reading a beginner's weightlifting guide on how to squat properly.  We love this.

My dining room table is no longer a mess.  It's a hotbed of enjoyable educational activities shaping my children into the people they will one day become.  Finding enjoyment in the chaos and clutter makes homeschooling worthwhile.  I encourage you to do it, too.

Day 32 / 104 - Meet Felicity

Week two of our American Girl co-op class had us discussing Felicity.  If you are unfamiliar, Felicity Merriman is the historical character who lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, during the time of the American Revolution.  Naturally, there is quite a bit of American History to discuss surrounding Felicity.

We enjoyed faux-sewing these colonial mob caps.  I lifted the idea from this site.  For sake of time, we sewed with the ribbon and glued on the lace trim.  Our class is superb.  I think most all know how to operate a hot glue gun independently!

To end our hour as appropriate colonists, we enjoyed mid-morning tea.

Day 31 / 104 - De Herinacio

I would encourage you to spend two minutes today watching this video.  It's in Latin with English subtitles.  As I watched it with my children, we listened for any Latin vocabulary we recognized.

But, my favorite part came when my children and I quickly discovered this story came from the 13th Century Rochester Bestiary.  A quick Wikipedia search taught us that a Bestiary is an illustrated collection of animals popular during the Middle Ages.  (Illustrations were always the best in the Middle Ages !!) Each beast in the collection was accompanied with a moral lesson.  This quote, which I lifted straight from Wikipedia, explains it best:

This reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word of God, and that every living thing had its own special meaning.

Wikipedia nailed it for me today.  Simply beautiful.

Hopefully there will be more videos with this theme in the future.

[View the video by clicking on this link.  http://vimeo.com/109377646]

Day 30 / 104 - Meet Kaya

I'm teaching a co-op class this fall within our county's homeschool association.  It has been several years since I've helped to facilitate a co-op class, (basically, since before my responsibilities with Classical Conversations increased) but my daughter was eager to play with dolls this fall, and I was happy to oblige.  I coerced another mother to assist, and she graciously agreed.  All that to say, our next six weeks will be busier than usual, but we're committed to having some educational fun !!

We are studying American History this year, so it seemed only appropriate to use the American Girl historical characters to supplement our studies.  Each week in class we are briefly studying a different historical girl.  We mark her location on a US map, and we mark her era of life on a timeline.  Then, we discuss some elements from her book(s), and compare and contrast her to the other historical characters and ourselves.  Finally, we complete a related craft. This part is probably the most fun.

For the first week, we discussed Kaya from the Nez Perce tribe in the western United States.  Using tan felt, we whipped up these Native American dresses for our dolls and included some beaded accessories.  The girls in the class did a far better job on their dresses than my sample one.  I fully expected this.

The American Girl website has a Teacher's Link full of Learning Guides for book clubs.  There's a wealth of information here.

P.S.  Be prepared for several more American Girl posts over the next six weeks !! ;)

Day 29 / 104 - Bridge Day 2014

Annually, on the third Saturday in October, Fayette County, West Virginia hosts the largest extreme sporting event in the world, Bridge Day.  Bridge Day is the one day a year where it is legal and (relatively) safe to BASE jump from the 876-foot New River Gorge Bridge.  On Bridge Day, the New River Gorge Bridge is closed to traffic and open to approximately 200,000 pedestrian spectators.  450 trained skydivers attempt the jump, many more than once.

Look closely.  There are tiny blue parachutes in the trees.

You may remember that my husband and my son headed out to the Gorge for this event last fall.  Fortunately this year, my daughter and I were able to attend also.  It was simultaneously one of the most spectacular, yet terrifying, events I have ever witnessed.  Surprisingly, injuries are minimum.  Yet every 20 seconds, when I would watch a different jumper launch off that platform, I couldn't help but wonder if this would be the jumper whose chute would cease to open.

We spent a portion of our day observing the action from the bottom of the Gorge at Fayette Station.  There is excitement here.  Roughly 70% of jumpers land on the ground, 29% land in the water, (I must admit, the Rescue Boats are a thrill to watch) and an unfortunate 1% land in trees, on rocks, on train tracks, etc.  Seven people went to the hospital yesterday.  We saw three of them.  The worst ended up being a broken leg, although his injuries appeared to be much worse when his landing actually occurred.    

The majority of the spectators view the action from the bridge watching jumpers step, cartwheel, flip, jump, and even catapult off of the bridge's platform. Route 19 is lined with vendors and food trucks, which makes the festival worthwhile!!  If you live within a couple hundred miles of the New River Gorge, I definitely think you should observe the Bridge Day activities at least once.

To be honest, my minimal pictures do not do this day justice.  If you want to see the action via the internet, I would recommend checking out this locally made 3-minute video.  Red Bull is always a sponsor and promotes several jumpers.  A quick youTube search will result in some of their incredible videos from past years.

Day 28 / 104 - South America

Tomorrow is our last day studying the Americas.  Next up, we're crossing the Atlantic to Europe. 

Day 27 / 104 - Latin, Year 1

My son and I are learning Latin this year.  It is a process, and one I do not expect to master overnight.  In fact, he will use his text, Latin: First Year (Henle Latin), for the next three years exploring more of its contents annually.  We are nine weeks into our Latin journey, and I feel like we are off to an above average start.  Our success thus far has been as a result of the minimal preparation we put in ahead of time.  Fortunately, Classical Conversations planned it this way by building their programs to complement and enhance one another.  Our preparation did not take much effort on our part, but it has made all the difference when it comes to our current daily studies.  I'm witnessing how this all plays out in two very specific ways.

First, my son has all five of the Latin noun endings memorized to catchy little children's songs like B-I-N-G-O and Jingle Bells.  This was part of his Foundations memory work from Cycle 1.  Having the declensions memorized, knowing the Latin noun cases, and being able to recall this information with ease has enabled him to learn and study this subject.  It has been phenomenal.

Secondly, my son is able to look at a sentence and parse it (identify what role the words are playing) because of his time studying English Grammar in Essentials.  Independently, he can ask himself a series of questions about who is doing what in the sentence, and to whom, in order to identify the subject, verb, direct object, indirect objects, etc.  He does this regularly before he translates a sentence into Latin.  Once he is able to identify the role of the English word, he then figures out what Latin case is appropriate to decline the noun correctly.  You can see in the photo above how he worked this process in that sentence.  Very early on, when we were attempting to translate an English sentence into Latin, he looked at me and stated, "Mom.  How do people who haven't had Essentials do Latin?"

I have found the process to be far more rewarding than frustrating, and I've truly been enjoying it.  Plus, like so many other subjects over the years, studying Latin has once again assured me that anyone can homeschool.  This is not a subject I had previous experience with.  Yet, I'm learning it right alongside of my son because we have been equipped with the tools to learn.

Day 26 / 104 - Tie-Dye

If you follow this blog regularly, it should come as no surprise to you that over the weekend my daughter taught herself how to tie-dye t-shirts from a youTube video.

I attempted to tie-dye t-shirts in high school, but I was never successful in creating any patterns on the shirts.  She has already surpassed my skill.

Day 25 / 104 - Sense of Taste

In her Foundations class last week, my daughter presented on the sense of taste.  The five senses are part of her anatomy memory work this fall, so it was simple for her to create a presentation based on these facts.  She included an illustrated picture of both the tongue and a closed taste-bud, as well as sweet, salty, bitter, and sour food samplings for her class.

Day 24 / 104 - Carry On, Mr. Bowditch

My son has a Literature and Exposition strand this academic year where he will be reading several books (this is not new to us) and writing papers about them (this is new to us!).   We are using material from The Lost Tools of Writing to train us in our skills of composing a persuasive essay.

We spent the last three weeks discussing the Newbery Award winning Carry On, Mr. Bowditch.  If you are unfamiliar with this book, I would encourage you to read it.  It is fantastic.  Set during the American Revolution in Salem, Massachusetts, it tells the tale of Nat Bowditch.  Nat is a young, brilliant man who is forced to quit school and become an indentured bookkeeping servant because of his family's economic circumstances.  Eventually, he published The American Practical Navigator, a comprehensive reference work for sailors still used today.

My son wrote his first persuasive essay supporting Nat's father's decision to have him indentured for nine years at the age of 12.  The indenture led to learning opportunities that otherwise might not have been available to Nat, as well as opportunities to influence, train, and lead others.  For a first attempt at a persuasive essay, it wasn't half bad.

For added learning, and to integrate our Geography strand, he also traced some (but not all) of Nat's journeys to sea.

Day 23 / 104 - Descriptive Adjectives

This is quality.