Musings.

We're currently on a break - we're studying Christmas and the winter solstice.  But once again, Monkey surprised me.  This evening, as I was setting dinner on the table, he was sitting in his bean bag chair with a lapful of Dr Seuss books.  I couldn't hear well enough to make out what he was saying as he flipped through them, but I do believe that he was actually reading those books to himself.  Part of confirming that suspicion is that he read the title for "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish," when he would usually say "white fish green fish red fish blue fish," and the rest was that the instant he saw me looking, he dropped the books and ran off to play with his trains.

How very interesting.  Looks like he's more ahead than I thought in reading as well as math.  Should be a fun second semester!

End of week 22.

Well, it wasn't as great a week as I could have hoped for - we came home from Hammie's just in time to get sick.  So, in the end, we didn't get all five days done, but only four.  Still not too bad.

Monkey is now essentially a reluctant reader.  If he wants to read something, he can.  If he doesn't want to, he suddenly finds out that he "can't."  Always entertaining.

Next week we will finish up Right Start Level A, so it's a good time for a bit of a break.  We'll finish that, and then simply move along with a unit study on winter Solstice and Christmas.  It is shaping up to be quite a well-timed season, and I like that.

Really, there isn't a lot new to report, so it could be a lot worse, no matter what we didn't cover this week.

Week 22

We're back from a break, and ready to go again!

It's been a long time since we've had school time, which I think is part of why this has been The Week of Crazy so far.  We cancelled school on our last Tuesday for an emergency dental visit for Monkey. On Wednesday, Monkey had a molar extracted, and I had a cyst removed from my back. On Friday, we went off to visit Hammie and Buppa.  We got back on this past Monday, and I had a Rheumatology appointment on Tuesday, Wednesday/Thursday is our usual weekend, and then... off we went!

Raz-Kids is still doing well for us for Reading.  Monkey enjoys it, but again, we're trying to get back in the swing.  He's progressed from the beginning of level aa to the middle of level A, which is fantastic, and we did some work with word families ( -ab and -ack, -ag and -ail specifically) as well.  There's more work to be done this week, but that's okay, we're moving at a good clip.

Monkey plowed through three Math lessons yesterday.  I only gave him one lesson today, largely because I'm lazy and didn't want to clean up after weighing to then bring out water to measure volume.  But, volume will come tomorrow, and we'll find octagons and tessellating, quarters, fractions, shapes (like cones and prisms)... and he's done with level A.  Holy COW!  I expect that will be next week, and we'll start level B right behind it.

Logic was an interesting time today.  Monkey was doing relationships, which he usually is very good at, and in his primary grouping were grapes, a ring, an orange, and a peppermint.  He somehow arrived at the conclusion that these things were all food, and crossed out everything but the smiling face (which resembles the smile cookie at our local coffee/donut stop).  For the flaw in the logic, it worked well, but it was still not right, and he's still insisting you can eat a ring, so there's nothing to be done there.

In other news (not taking into account the subjects we haven't done yet), I just nabbed an amazing deal.  The homeschool co-op occasionally has people listing the things that they're getting rid of - today I scored the Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedias of World History, Science and World Geography (with world atlas) for $30.  As in, $30 got me all three.  If I'd gotten the new books as I'd planned, I'd have spent $75 plus tax and shipping.  I'm THRILLED.  All in all, it's a good week, which is a nice shift for a first week back after two weeks off.

Week 21's wrap up.

This week was surprisingly easy for us.  I've put in a couple changes, which seem to have made a really large difference.

Reading:  Reading is the first big change. Instead of spending the week doing trash words, we've been using "Raz-Kids."  My cousin has a subscription through her school district, and has 5 additional spots for her students that she's not using, so she put Monkey into one of those spots, and off we went.  He read, and read well, all 18 of the Level aa books this week, and is about set to move on to the next level.  I'm really proud of him, he's doing an excellent job using the pictures for clues, and also sounding things out when he needs to.  We'll see how well he does with A next week.

Math: Math is the other big change.  Instead of taking Right Start math one lesson per day and moving along, we've hustled it all up a bit, and he's now skipping anything review-related and working at about two lessons per day.  He was, oddly, bored, and so he was acting out for it.  Next week will be interesting, as I'm going to be trying to plan for it this week.  However, Monkey can now tell analog time to the hours, which he is loving.  I'm very pleased with his hard work, and he's doing a great job, and moving right along!

Logic: I still really need to get Lollipop Logic 2.  Monkey is really anxious to do more than one lesson in a day, and I'd like to let him, but I'd also like the curriculum to actually last us a bit.  He's still doing spectacularly at this, and there's very little else to say about it.

French: French has kind of dissolved on me. It would be easier if I knew what I was doing before I started, but I'm still going to keep trying.  I've been, if nothing else, letting Monkey watch movies on Fridays... but we're using the French audio tracks (and English subtitles), so I'm hoping that counts at least a little.

History: We made our own personal seals this week. Depressingly, our clay did not dry as it was supposed to, so we have a week later, still soft seals. I'm thinking of doing this with Play-Doh tomorrow just to make the point, have the seals dry, and then make our pieces.  Worst that happens is the lesson gets done twice.

Science: Monkey is having a great time with science, and we're averaging two experiments per week.  We are still in The Human Body, and he knows so much about it now that it's almost frightening.  I've never heard a four year old give a minor lesson on digestion or white blood cells before.  However it comes, though, he's really loving it, and I'm thrilled to be able to be involved in it.

Next week will stay with Human Body, move ahead in History, try to move ahead in French, see what we can get to in Math, and for Reading, we'll keep with Raz-Kids, and see what he's able to get to.  I'll pick up actual instruction after American Thanksgiving.

Week 20's Recap

For once, I'm right on top of this.  Turns out, we got our work done today by 10:30, so it's no hurry trying to get the blog updated before gym class.

For the next 8 weeks, our schedule goes:
F: Homeschool
S: Homeschool (video call with Hammie!)
Su: Homeschool
M: Preschool, Science experiment
Tu: Homeschool, Gym
W: Preschool, Weekend
Th: Weekend

We're busy, which is good, but it's a bit of a stretch trying to get our four days of school in.  Monkey has a hard time focusing if more people than just the two of us are around, so Wednesday and Thursday are out, as Skeeve is home.  After preschool, it seems mean to put homeschool on top of it, so we skip Monday as well.  As a result, we're working on four day weeks, and I'm trying really hard to make sure we keep our four day weeks - and not falling back to three day ones.

I've also realized that I'm not really actually teaching much yet. For now, I'm still just finding the bottom end of what Monkey already knows and essentially getting ready for next year.  I suppose that's all JK is anyhow, getting ready for the following year, but it seems really weird to be proposing a JK curriculum that "studies" grade 2 reading, kindergarten math, grade 1 history, logic, French, and some kind of weird K-2 science. I suppose that's the beauty of homeschooling, though.

Anyhow!  The update.

Reading: We've adapted Trash Words for our use here.  Monkey loves it.  I've taken the review words from unit 3, and he reads them to me.  He is better at the beginning of the game than at the end, but that's pretty normal for him, so I'm not worried.  He also LOVES playing, so it's even better.  More often than not, he has a great handle on what is being asked of him, but the problem is that too much review makes him twitchy. So, Trash Words has been working well, and we'll watch Unit 3 a few more times, and then we'll move right on to level 2, and I can toss his sight words in as well, which will help, too.

Math: We've had a bunch of issues with math recently, it's become a struggle to get math done on a daily basis.  However, I have no real way of knowing whether it's because of too much review, or too fast a pace - either way I get the same result - Monkey refuses to do the work. So today, we had a nice chat about how I really need him to answer the questions if he knows the answers so I can move on - otherwise I don't know he knows, and we keep working on the same things.  This resulted in three rapid-fire answers, and so we moved on.  In the last two days, we covered four lessons and skipped several others (all review!), so we're certainly moving right along.  And it keeps Monkey happier, so I'm glad to do it.

French: Really unsurprisingly, French is difficult for us.  I have a hard time trying to get Monkey to understand that it's a real thing, and that people in other countries, and in other parts of Canada, speak this way instead of how we do.  I'm doing what I can, but I have plenty of time. He needs two years of French between now and grade nine, so I think we'll be okay.

Logic: This is still fabulously easy for him. Aside from some confusion over the instructions (he was trying to physically fit items into the starting box, instead of matching their use), it was really easy for him, and he was looking to do some more right away.  I really need to get the next few books of logic so we don't run out quickly.

History: This is still a bit of a struggle.  I'm not too worried, as we'll likely hit on Egypt and Akkadia again eventually, and he is enjoying the mapwork, so it's not a total loss.

Science: This is no end of fun.  Monkey is adoring his unit on the Human Body, and is branching out every which way he can around The Magic School Bus.  It's really neat, watching how quickly he picks things up out of thin air.  I'm really proud of him.

Week 19 Wrap.

This week was a bit of a toss-up for us, honestly.  Some things were easier than I'd thought, others were suddenly like pulling teeth, and then we had a moderate revelation that will hopefully make life easier for all of us.

Reading: This was substantially easier than I'd thought.  I'm still not sure if this is boring to him, or if he's still learning.  Tonight, he wanted to watch one specific episode of The Magic Schoolbus - "the one with Ralphie!"  The title screen came on "Inside Ralphie," and he jumped and cheered.  I have no idea if this means he can read "Ralphie," if he recognizes the episode that starts with I and R is the one he wants, or even if he just knows that the second episode on the disc is the one he wants, but SOMETHING is up.  He's busted out reading things before, and I don't know what his actual reading ability is anymore.  I know his prediction skills are fabulous, and I know he is wonderful at putting in words that match pictures, but his actual ability to read?  No clue anymore.  We're going to look into Magic Schoolbus books for him so we can see if he's willing to read them or not.  Who knows, really?

Math: For whatever reason, this week Math was suddenly like pulling teeth.  Wanted NOTHING to do with it at all.  I don't know if it's just not moving fast enough for him, if there's too much repetition, or if he doesn't like having to work at it, but something is up.  I'm going to see how next week goes, and once we're through that, if it's still an issue, I'll ask him his thoughts, and see where we end up.  We made our way through three lessons this week, each taking one day.  We're rapidly approaching the end of the book, with lesson 52 starting this week, and 77 lessons in the book.  When did this happen?!?  Yikes!

French: We're working on a two-week approach to French as well.  Week 1 is an introduction to the concept, week two is a review of things to date.  I have no idea how this is going to go, as Monkey still doesn't seem to grok the concept that some people speak another language.

Logic: Again, this seems ridiculously easy for him. He's flying through each lesson, then asking if we can do some more.  I have to hold him back, expressly for the reasoning of not having the next book in the series yet, and not wanting to fly through a year worth of curriculum in a month.  I'm looking at getting the next book at the next available opportunity, and we'll see where we go from there.

History: This week, we built a pyramid.  Monkey adored it.  Just adored it.  It took a while for him to understand the "stair step" concept around the design, but once he got it, it was 45m spent building a pyramid, taking it apart, and building it again.  He's LOVING it.  I'm always so excited when he's happy with lessons.

Science: He loves science.  Can't get enough of it.  It's crazy.  This week's experiment was making a stethoscope so he could listen to his heart beat.  We talked about what the heart does, that it's a muscle, it's size, all that, and he thinks this is just the coolest thing ever.  He is really taking off, courtesy of The Magic Schoolbus DVD we got, the LeapFrog Tag board he has, and the Little Labs he's loving so much.  It's so neat to watch him just absorb all this stuff.  He was telling me today during his lab that yes, the heart pumps the blood full of nutrients around the body, and the blood gets nutrients from the small intestine, but really, they come from the villi in the small intestine, which soak up the nutrients from the food we eat, that goes through the stomach, after the esophagus, which is where it goes once you swallow after you chew.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with this child sometimes.

All in all, a great academic week.  He also had a great week at preschool, which is wonderful news.  We also found out that Monkey is a very sensory-seeking child.  He is avoidant in some things, but he is primarily seeking.  We have now given him unrestricted access to an iPod of music, and a pair of child-safe headphones.  Whenever he feels upset, he can turn on his music and calm himself down.  I'm also trying to make a point of keeping music playing all day, so there is some background noise, as the quiet seems to drive him nuts.  We shall have to see, once again, how it goes, and with any luck, this will be a great breakthrough for our sanity!

Week 18

Week 17 completely passed me by, unfortunately.  We have been the house of plague this month, so it's been harder and harder to not only accomplish what we have planned, but also to remember to update status reports on it.  Week 18 though...  That's a doozy.  Week 18 is officially the halfway point of the year. Big stuff, especially for October!

Our Progress to Date:

Reading: With the completion of this week, Monkey has mastered three of the six skills I had set out for the year.  While I'm not willing to assert mastery of Table of Contents, Retelling, or anything to do with Handwriting, I am willing to say he is reading at or above a grade 1 level, he understands the basics of punctuation, and he has a good handle on grammar and the concept of spelling.  I think we're well on target to not only meet, but also exceed our reading goals for the year.  I have some reservations about "effort" on this, as there is a lot of "I don't want to do that" interspersed with the "I want to learn to read!" going on here, but all things in time.  I'm now just waiting for the moment when he realizes he already CAN read. He's quite capable, he just doesn't realize he is.

Math: With the completion of this week, Monkey has progressed through Lesson 48 of Right Start's Level A.  There are 64 lessons remaining in my goal for us for this year, but as the goal was created using the notion of schooling from June to May, no 3-month break, I'm fairly confident in thinking that he will continue to meet expectations, and we will progress through the remainder of Level A, and into Level B by the new year, and then move through Level B at a good enough clip to see us complete the first 35 lessons well ahead of schedule.  He is still plowing through lessons at 1 per day, and given that math tends to fall by the wayside whenever we get sick, I'm not entirely surprised we're "behind" on this - or, at least, compared to other subjects.

Health: We have been slowly working on health aspects in with the rest of our lives. We're working on Human Body right now for Science, which will cover all aspects of health with ease.  While we don't have perfect mastery of all concepts, he is quickly picking up many things just by being involved in preschool and home life.

Science: Science is continually evolving.  Both in classroom and out, I suppose.  However, Monkey is doing a fine job of picking things up, and of working on experiments and on jumping in with both feet when we hit new topics.  He has a good grasp of living and non-living things, he has an astounding grasp of Sun/Moon/Stars/Planets, he understands experimentation, and he is working toward understanding scientific method.  I don't expect mastery of that for many years, but being exposed to it is always good. The remainder of the year will see us cover things like weather and seasons, air and water, fire and temperature, and solids/liquids/gasses.  Some things will be more practical than lab, but that's perfectly fine by me.

Social Studies: This is ridiculously easy as far as most scope and sequences are concerned.  The goals I originally set are all but met - Monkey needs to work a little more on map reading and holidays, as well as heritage (I have no idea how to cover this, so it's fallen by the wayside), but everything else is completed.  No worries.  As far as history, though, I've opted to take my time.  We're going to work on one chapter of reading, then spend the following week doing extension activities.  For example, we learned about ancient text, then made cuneiform "tablets" the following week.  Last week, we covered the Pyramids.  This week, we're going to build our own pyramid.  History will take a lot longer than I'd planned, but we've gotten a significantly earlier start on it than most, so I'm not worried even slightly.

All told, if I had to guess, I would say that Rowena's Browncoat Academy's JK program runs the gamut of "regular" school grades SK-2, depending on the subject.  I'm not sure if I'm impressed, frightened, both, or just hanging on and hoping for the best.  ^_^

State of the Academy and Week 16 Wrap.

From September 12-27, we were on a break.  We left the country to attend a funeral, so it wasn't exactly fun and games around here.  However, because of the nature of life, we covered basic geography, existential questions on the nature of life and death, and trees, grasshoppers, and what happens if you poop in your pants and mama doesn't have a spare pair.  Generally, a very educational trip, though not in the formal sense.

Week 16, we were back with a vengeance.  This ran from 9/28 to 10/2.

Reading: We worked with vowel blends this week, ow and ai specifically.  Monkey grasped these very well, and very nearly right away, so it was actually ridiculously easy.  We haven't gone back to silent e words yet, though I do intend to review that shortly.

Math: Monkey made it through three lessons this week, 42-44, with no particular difficulty.  He seems to have a grasp of math that I just never did.  I'm glad to see it, but I'm wondering when these lessons that are supposed to take two and three days... will.  So far, they're not.

Science: Monkey and Skeeve have moved up to two experiments per week, and an occasional lab report.  The report is more for my benefit than Monkey's, but it's there all the same.  This week, they grew cress seeds and built a barometer.  We're still observing the barometer, and we observed the seeds all week.  Lots of fun had by all, and Monkey seems to be at minimum entertained by the experiments, which is good.

History: History seems to be an awful lot like pulling teeth.  Monkey does NOT want to sit still to listen, but if he doesn't, he doesn't listen at all.  I'm hoping this has something to do with his lack of interest in the subject matter, so it is something I can correct as we enter "pyramids" and "mummies" and such.  Much more interesting than "these rivers" and "ooooh, floods!"

Logic: Once again, logic is Monkey's absolute strong suit.  We have moved into relationships now, and if I let him, we would blow through the Lollipop Logic book in a whopping 4 weeks, as he would go through each section in one fell swoop.  However, as I'm not in the mindset to be going through textbooks by the millions, I'm holding him to one lesson per week.  His skills in relationships are rather impressive to me - he got 4/5 questions "correct" per what I thought the answer would be, and the 5th one... Well, that one was right, too, but for a different reason.  He was given a picture of a birthday cake.  Then told to pick which picture was related to it - a book, a party hat, or a pencil.  He chose the book.  I went with it, and at the end, asked him his reasoning.  Turns out, he chose the book because it would be the one closest in size to the cake.  I gave him full credit for that one (as in, "hey, that was really nicely reasoned, I hadn't thought of that" not "full marks"), and we hung it on the fridge.

French: This week, we introduced French.  I think Monkey is having a failure of understanding (also parsed as "What we have here is failure to communicate.") as to what the purpose of this is.  I ask him "Comment t'appelles-tu?" and he looks at me and says, "I'm FIRESTAR!" Which, in and of itself is an appropriate answer, as he'd not five minutes before run to the kitchen to "transform" into Firestar, but when I prompt him to use Je m'appelle with that, he tells me, "No, not Je m'appelle Firestar, just Firestar!"  So, I'll have to work on that one.

In other news, we went to Circle R Ranch this week!  We participated in their Farm Animals program, and had a wonderful time.  Monkey got to ride a pony, pet two other ponies, take a hay ride (with REAL HAY and not straw!), pet a sheep, a goat and a pig... He had a great time.  I just wish these outings were easier on both of us than they are.  It's so hard to keep a psychomotor-ly overexcitable child engaged in this sort of setting without losing him entirely - which almost happened.  He very nearly ran away on me, and because I get the "wow, helicopter much" looks while I'm out with him in open spaces, nobody would listen and GTFO my way when he did run off.  After all, he should be just like all the other kids and stop where he's told.  But he doesn't, and he nearly chased a farm cat into the woods, then took off into the parking lot.  Maybe next week.  o.o;;

Also coming up on the horizon, we've enrolled Monkey in a gym class for homeschoolers!  It's indoors, which will make it so much easier to avoid the running away, and he will undoubtedly love it to bits.  I'm really looking forward to it!

Monkey is also enrolled in twice-weekly preschool.  He adores it, and he's getting more social interaction, so it's all good.  They want me to put him in for a third day per week, but I don't know that this is a feasible option for us.  We'll have to see how it goes.  I don't like the idea of losing an educational day from our regular homeschool week, and I'm not sure we could afford it even if we weren't losing the day.  Ah, well.  We'll see how it goes, and run from there!

A Belated Week 15 Wrap.

Week 15 overall went well.  We're now juggling scheduling with preschool, which eats up parts of our Mondays.  But, since Mondays are usually a science read-aloud, fluency, and something fairly easy for math, it's not too bad.

Respectfulness went about as well as can be imagined for a 4 year old.  It's getting better, but for most of the week, I've wanted to hit myself over the head with a shovel.  However, we made progress, we got through our schoolwork, everything was mostly uneventful, and we carry on from there.

This week, we are doing Not Week 16.  Monkey and I are leaving town to go back to my mother's house for a funeral this week.  We're leaving early Monday morning, and probably returning on Wednesday.  Because I'm so completely wrecked (a friend of mine died unexpectedly at 34 {natural causes} and the funeral arrangements have only recently been set), I'm not focusing properly, and I don't want to subject Monkey to half-assed teaching.

Instead, I will take my child, who is obsessed with all things relating to death and dying, and bring him to a funeral and hope for the best.  I need to say goodbye to an old friend, and this is the only way it would make sense to do so.  So Rowena's Browncoat Academy is closed for the week, and we will pick up week 16 when we return.  Hopefully, that will turn out to be the smarter move.

15-1.

Also known as "the day I want to rip out all my hair."

Reading: Monkey did very well with lessons 5 and 6 of his reading.  He is still struggling with silent e words - when they're presented to him without any preamble, he defaults to short vowel sounds, then ignores the silent e - but ee, ea, ow, and oa were all rather easy for him.  I'm thinking we'll move on, and review silent-e words as we go.  That may also be a fluency/context thing, as cub makes no sense in something like "the six sided die is in the shape of a cube."  I suppose we'll see.

Math: Always fun, that math.  It was ridiculously easy for him to count by tally marks, but apparently Monkey's focus and my patience are on holiday in the Caribbean together today, as partitioning (as in splitting 5 into 1-4, 2-3, 3-2, 4-1) was an utter bust, and while he added plus-ones competently (when he would hold still), he didn't quite see the pattern.

I'm thanking lucky stars at this point that Fridays don't have a third subject yet.

Last night, we had a family meeting.  We talked about being respectful, and about school, and work before play, and things like eating meals in less than 3 hours, and such.  I'm hoping it's just a matter of getting used to the new normal, but right now, it's insanity in here.  Belligerence, screaming, rudeness, hitting, completely ignoring instructions (be they "add one bead" or "don't stand on the easel," or "could you please bring me your froggy bowl?")...  It is an utter nightmare in my house, and I'm debating running away.  However, I'm trying to hang in, and see what happens.  I'm also considering returning to dairy-free.  That made a difference forever ago, I'm not sure if it's something we're going to be able to do, but we can sure as all get out try.  I need to do something or I'm going to go nuts.

Week 14, Day 4

Today went remarkably well for being right after a massive sick day.

We got done most of the things I wanted to, we are only behind in math (I'm so not doing two lessons in one day) and Monkey is having enough trouble concentrating that I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't something more going on than just "he's an active boy."  Tomorrow is our Not Going Back To School picnic - we hope.  It might be a trip to the Central Library, as it's supposed to be miserable and rainy, but I'm still hoping we'll be out to the park.  Monkey needs the time to run and be free.  ^_^

All in all, a productive week.  The only problem I have for the foreseeable future is that he is now sounding out ALL a-words with a long A sound.  Including things like cat and has.  Whoops.  We'll get there, though.

14-3?

Well, I prepped for today last night.  That should have been my first clue.  Skeeve is home from work sick, which makes anything school related an absolute bear, as Monkey hates an audience.  However, I am also down with a stuffed, fuzzy head and sore throat, and Monkey isn't any much better.  Therefore, today has been called in favor of sick day, and getting better before we get worse.  Ugh.

In other news, I've sent an email off to the GDC in Colorado.  If I don't hear anything, I will give them a call on Tuesday.  I'm trying to sort out what kind of testing they will want to do, and how much it is likely to cost us.  I can see some of the things being an absolutely invaluable resource, but the fact that it's worth the money doesn't make us any more likely to actually have the money, so...  It's a research mission.

Week 14 Day 2

Today, as predicted, went much easier than yesterday.  Happily.  It seems Monkey is coming down with something, though we're not exactly sure what yet.  Skeeve has a headache and sore throat, which we're thinking came from Monkey, so...  We'll see.

Anyway!

Reading: Reading went exceptionally well.  He watched and completed lesson 5 today, with absolutely no difficulty.  I was rather surprised, as we didn't even need to talk about what ee and ea say before he was competently able to sound out the words on screen.  Tomorrow will be sight words, though if we have more time on our hands, I might just see if I can get him through a couple more lessons - not pushing, just looking to see what he'll get up to.

Math: Math was also ridiculously easy.  It was another day of adding, this time using numerals and not tally sticks, but he used the abacus to add up to tens.  It was really rather nice, and while the warm ups were challenging (due to a thorough dislike of repetition), the math itself was simple for him.  I'm again leery of the rest of the week, on account of that whole review thing, but I'm hoping it will go much like today.

Logic: Today we did some review, and a few changes to methodology. We only did one new sequencing exercise, but instead I pulled number cards 1-6, and the last three lessons we worked on.  We lined up the cards in order, then lined up the lessons underneath them.  It turned out well, and he seemed to understand what I was asking a little better.  When we went through the new exercise, he made a couple errors, but they were due to rushing rather than incomplete knowledge.  I can certainly handle that.

All in all, a good, productive day.  I like when those happen - it's not entirely a frequent occurrence, but I'm hoping it will be more frequent as time goes by.

Week 13 Wrap, Week 14 Day 1.

Week 13 ended on a high note.  Monkey did very well across the board.  I was happy.  He was still sleeping like crud, though, so there was never any time to blog.  There was never any time to shower, much less blog.  Mercifully, Skeeve can keep an eye on a boy while I get wet - same is never the case for blogging.  It's all time full of "What'cha doin', Mommy?  What's that? Can I type letters, too? I wanna play too!" and nothing gets done.  Right now, I'm blogging during reading review in the hopes that it will keep him occupied long enough to get something done.

Reading:  Reading went well.  Monkey went through both long A words, and long I words.  I wanted to (and did!) review them with him in the beginning of week 14.  He retained fairly well, and while he does need occasional prompting on the silent e, once that's done he kind of goes "OH!" and gets everything pulled together.  I'm pretty cool with that.  Sight words are still hard going, but I suspect anything memorization-based will be.  He's not so good with memorizing things he doesn't see a need for.  His fluency is still behind, though that's fine.  He is reading the Thomas the Tank Engine phonics readers for his checks, and as they keep getting harder, I'm not expecting him to make huge strides.  He's sitting at an average of about 22 words per minute, which is low for his instructional level, but for his age it is phenomenal.  So I'll more than take it.

Math: Math went very easily.  As expected, he blew through the lessons with ease.  He is now capable of counting to 50 by ones and twos, and to 100 by 10s.  He also adds within ten.  Week 14 will be continuing to add, which I don't know about.  He may do very well, he may revolt against all the review.  No way to tell until we get there.

Logic: Logic, as usual, went quickly and easily.  I'm going to review this next week, just in case.  He understands what is being asked of him, but doesn't often have the focus to really work on it, so he half-assedly hands me whatever is in front of him.  We'll review, and I'm fairly certain he'll have a handle on it by the time it comes up in week 14.

History: History went spectacularly well.  He did his mapwork and his coloring pages and had a wonderful time of it.  He traced the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and stayed on the lines, which was impressive.  He also took pains to color the land green and the water blue.  I was fairly impressed, all told.  His narration isn't the best, but he can answer review questions, so we're working on it.  He'll get there eventually.

Science: We covered the life-sustaining properties of Earth.  How sunlight alone is not enough for life, and water is needed.  We currently have three pots of cress seeds around the house - one marked Venus, one marked Earth, and one marked Saturn.  Saturn lives in the freezer, the other two out in the yard.  We water Earth every day, and Monkey pointed out to me today that the seeds are growing in the Earth pot, but not the Venus one.  Skeeve will talk with him later about how that is, and why that happens - Skeeve is the science experiment guy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Week 15 will start French.  Week 14 is planned and underway.  As it's our Monday, today we only have Reading and Math.  Next week, we'll have French on this day as well.

I think Monkey's sleep will be better soon.  Last week he was having trouble with long I words, even after having gone over the silent e long A words. Today, I wanted to cover long O words.  He blasted through the review of long A and I, so I tried him out on the remaining lessons in the unit.  Sure enough, he was perfectly able to work his way through lessons 3 and 4 as well.  Tomorrow, instead of working on long O, he's going to be working on 'ee' and 'ea' combinations.  We'll see how it goes over and where we go from there.

Like I said with math, he'll either ace this week or hate it.  It's all reviewing how to add, and how to add with the abacus, or the tally sticks, or using them to make the numerals and adding with the numerals - along with the abacus and tally sticks.  The leap to just using the numerals will be interesting, but they're taking it nice and slow, so it's hard to say what will happen.

Fridays are always difficult.  We're just coming off our weekend, when Skeeve is home to allow nearly unlimited television time, and we're generally off our routine.  It'll be nice to get back to it, but until tomorrow, the "it's school-time" stuff tends to be met with "but I wanna watch SpiderMan and his Amazing Friends!!!" and another chat is had about needing to finish work before we play.  I have to laugh, though, as he'd be starting full day JK this year, where much more would be expected of him than one hour of activities - and I get the feeling a lot of people would give me crap about his having to "do school" every weekday, when it's a whopping hour to hour and a half in our house.  Versus six hours at JK.  Sheesh.

Week 13 - Catching Up.

This week has been a little weird at best.  I have everything all planned out well, and pacing is good, but Monkey has decided that the only way to sleep is in 20 minute increments, and after that time is up, he needs to wake up screaming and crying - unless we are in the bed with him, of course.  So, while my planning time is fine, my prep time is gone, which makes things feel harried.

Reading: We made it through both long A and long I.  Again, it takes a little working on it to get there, but he does understand the principle, and he still hates practice.  I checked to see if he "got" silent e words as a concept, and he hadn't yet, so we're doing one vowel at a time.  He's doing great, and is using the time between reading and math to play Starfall on my computer, also eating into my blogging time.  Ah, well.  He's enjoying it.

Math: Math is still flying right by.  We'll need to reinforce what a "dozen" is, but as of right now, he's still going through both sections of a lesson in a day.  Even more fun, though, is that he has decided that if he fights me on doing it, I'll somehow let him play Starfall more.  I'm not sure where he got that, but whatever.  So, he spent half an hour this afternoon dinking around instead of putting together seven cents.  I finally snapped and told him flat out that not only was he not watching television, but he wouldn't play on the compy anymore if he couldn't get his act together.  He assembled seven cents in about three seconds.  I'm glad he gets it, but I am unamused at the stalling tactics.  Maybe we'll save Starfall for after the school day is completely done.

History: We wound up doing both sections of chapter 1 today - the nomads, and the nomads becoming farmers.  He did *spectacularly* well on the mapwork for the fertile crescent, and he did a wonderful job coloring the farmer with his shadouf as well.  I was really impressed that he is now choosing his colors with care - he wants blue for the water, green for the grass, etc.  It used to be that he'd just color whatever he wanted in whatever his favorite color of the hour was.  So I was pretty pleased.  He also did a fair job with the review questions.  I think it might take a little while to get him narrating, but that's okay.  I'm happy to know he listened, and happy to hear him able to answer questions - even if the nomads were camping out in tents.

Logic: This went well, too.  I printed out three lessons, colored in the boxes, and cut them out.  Then I scrambled them (within lessons) and put them down for Monkey to determine their order.  I'm still doing a bit of scaffolding there, but he seems to be catching on faster, so I'm cool with it.  He's also doing more sly-putting-things-in-the-wrong-order-to-see-if-I'll-call-him-on-it, so I'm going to have to find strategies to get him out of that habit.  'Cause I do not deal well with the "I'm going to deliberately waste your time!" stuff.

Science:  This week science will cover living conditions, and whether or not life is sustainable on other planets.  I'm looking forward to that, truth be told.  I'm loving the science, and Monkey is a big fan of the experiments.  Should be a good time.

I may have to drop back to a once per week wrap up, 'cause I'm having such a hard time keeping up between Starfall, PBSKids and Monkey's poor sleeping.  I keep trying to blog, and then get sideswiped by something every time I try.  Go figure.

Falling Behind.

Well.  Blogging, reading, teaching, cleaning, gardening, reading and teaching seem to be completely impossible to complete simultaneously.  Particularly if my browser window crashes and I forget to reopen blogger.  Whoops.

This week has been a bit of a bust.  I didn't get a chance to plan, due to lack of sleep, which was caused by reading a really good book... so it's my own fault, really.  But, we did do work every day, so it's something.

Reading: I seem to have found Monkey's instructional level for reading - 2.2.  Now, that's subject for revision as I found a way to make the long a sound stick today, but we'll see.  This week's lesson was on silent e words with the long A.  So, we watched a lot of LeapFrog Word Caper, and we did endless repetition of "silent e makes the first vowel say its name" that didn't help in the slightest.  So, today, in reading the actual 'practice' section of the book, I finally just said, "Monkey, all these words have the long A sound.  The A says A in all these words."  Thinking about it, I don't think that's any much different than "Now you're going to learn to read words with the long A sound" so I'm thinking he may just blow through this as well - once I find the keys to teach him what sound we're working on, he's racing ahead.  He went through the first line (of three) in probably half an hour. Then, I hit the "everything says A" and he went through the last two lines in about five minutes.  So, we'll see what we get tomorrow.

Math: Today we did combinations of coins, counting by 10s, evens, odds, and halves.  Monkey raced right through that lesson as well, once I got him focused on the work.  He even drew the correlation that we were cutting shapes on the lines of symmetry (which, since we folded paper shapes in half, then cut on the fold, was 100% accurate).  I about fell out of my chair.  He can do a lot more than I planned.  Most of the rest of the week, he was working on evens and odds, and counting by tens to ten-ten.

Science: Today we talked about the relative size of the sun, and why it looks so small in the sky when it is, in fact, unimaginably huge.  We also talked about what the word diameter means, as well as which number was bigger - the 500 miles we drive to Hammie's house, or the 856,000 mile diameter of the sun.  He got that in one, too.  Skeeve will work on the actual experiment for this concept on Wednesday or Thursday, cementing the idea.

Logic: I spaced on logic this week.  I think, over the weekend, I'm going to give Monkey some logic puzzles to solve, and see what happens - what this means is that I'm going to print out the lessons he's already done, color them, then cut them out.  Monkey can then use the squares individually to arrange them in order.

History: This will be gone over tomorrow.  It will probably be the only thing gone over tomorrow, as we have a load of grocery shopping to do, and I'd forgotten to get on that earlier.  No big, though, as I plan for four day weeks.  Anyway, history will be the first piece on The Earliest People.  I really need to spend the next bunch of time going through the history book.  There's more than one religious story presented as fact, and this is only the case for one religion, and that seems... not equitable.  Therefore, I need to edit the sections as I go, making sure that everything is presented fairly.  Should be interesting.

Pre-School: Monkey will (I hope) be rejoining his preschool from last year.  They work on things like his fine and gross motor skills as well as his social skills - things which are exceptionally handy for me to not worry about.

Next week, I wish for better planning and a less engrossing series of books to read.  The bright side is that I'm now at 78 books read for the year, with a goal of 100.  So at least some kind of goal is being met?

Week 11, Days 2&3

I thought I'd forgotten to update...  Ah, well.

Saturday was Monkey's birthday party, so it was a school holiday.  Therefore, yesterday was day two, and today is day three.

Day 2

Reading: We read for fluency, choosing Hop On Pop as that seems to be the bigger success for him.  He jumped from 20wpm to 28wpm, which is a great thing.  He doesn't want to do it... but then when we start, he doesn't want to stop either.  It's very odd.  I have no idea how else to encourage fluency, and I have no memory of learning to read myself, so it's a struggle for me to sort out how to help his fluency match his skills.  He is perfectly capable of reading the words through the end of unit 3, but actually reading them - as in from a book instead of sitting down to sound out individual words - is incredibly tedious for him.  I'm guessing this will be an area of asynchrony for him, and I need to just let it go.

Math: We covered sorting for ease of counting today.  Making rows of tens so it is easy to count large groups.  He still has some trouble with it, in that he wants to make one large line instead of many small ones, but with a little support to remind him to break at 10, he does well, and then counts easily.  It is much easier for him if the groups are sorted by color according to his abacus, but either way, he can do it, and that was the important part.

History: We talked to Hammie about her history.  We filled in her page in our family history book, and we reviewed historians and archaeologists, what historians do, and what archaeologists do.

All in all, day two was easy, and a resounding success, which makes things seem much more do-able.

Day 3

Reading: Today we went over sight words.  With the exception of two words, he has mastered the group of sight words he's been given, and I'll start adding a few more as we go.  Now, he's watching unit 3 one more time before we bump him up to the next level of reading.  Fluency is still a worry for me, but again, I think it's going to be one of those things I need to just let go of.

Math: We finished lesson 30 today, talking about estimation.  He's not particularly good at estimating, but he understands the concept, which is good.  We'll review more in the coming days, which will cement that, and I'm good with it.

Science: I'd say today was science review day, but really, he knows more about the solar system than I do I sometimes think.  We'll spend some time this afternoon playing with the Solar System Adventures set he got for his birthday for the Tag, and call it a wrap.

Week 11 has been good to us.  There is very little going on that shouldn't be, everything that is going on has been covered well, and there are very few areas of confusion.  I'm pretty pleased with the whole thing, truth be told.  I'm enjoying this review week thing - and it came at a good time, too, with Monkey's party right in the middle of the week.

Week 11, Day 1

Thankfully, week 11 was already decided to be a review week.  Skeeve is home from work ill today, which throws a lot of things out of whack if we're looking at new learning.  Obviously, not his fault, but I'm really glad for the review, as it means there's less concentration needed in most things.

Reading: Reading went remarkably well.  We reviewed Unit 3, going over the review page.  Monkey still has an issue with slowing down to read the words that are printed rather than the words he wanted to see there, but since I had the same problem as a child and read absolutely voraciously (and always have), I see no reason to worry.  Particularly not since when I slow him down, he has no issue sounding out the correct word.  His fluency still pretty well bites.  He sounds out everything, rather than using past knowledge - his use of past knowledge comes into play for things like "dented" where he says /d/-/e/-/nt/... dentist!  So he is capable of the fluency, he just needs to actually use it appropriately.  That's okay, though. We're working on that.  It would be less of an issue if he didn't need the repetition for this, but he hates repetition.  Reading and re-reading the same things makes him nuts.  This review week is only bearable because he's able to color his sheets, and he's able to jump and play while he reads the words.  I know he needs it, but holy WOW is it difficult to get done.

Logic: He re-did the lesson 1-3 worksheets.  He understands exactly what the lesson wants of him, but refuses to slow down to get the right answers.  There's a lot of scaffolding going on here, largely because while I know he knows this, I also know that getting them entirely wrong isn't a matter of lack of understanding, but instead lack of care.  I'm not sure how to instill that care, though.  I suppose we'll see as we go.

Math: This will go all day.  Literally.  We're reviewing the values of a penny, a nickel, and a dime, and how to enter them on the abacus.  This is, again, something he full well knows.  He just doesn't want to slow down enough to make sure the answers he's giving are the ones he wants to give.  And so, we review, and hope for the best, really.  He's good at it, but it's a challenge trying to make sure he slows down enough to demonstrate what he knows versus what he simply can't be arsed to do.

All in all, this is a good day. A little awkward, with Skeeve home and Monkey's penchant to not learn well with many people around, but that's okay.

Another Moment of Freaking.

Every Thursday, I take part in the NAGC chat (Twitter chat at 9 Eastern, 8 Central, #nagc ).  This week was "Back to School Hopes."  We got onto the topic of the Common Core Standards in the US, which 45 states have adopted, with leniency in how they are implemented. These are the standards I use as a basis for the scope and sequence for Rowena's Browncoat Academy.  Obviously, as these are common to the US, this does not apply to us here in Ontario.  I base my school thus on the very simple concept that I was trained as a teacher.  I graduated with a BS in Elementary Education in the state of Illinois, so using their standards was familiar to me.  I went with it.  Not long ago, I learned that the standards in Canada are very different.  Generally speaking, whatever grade a child is in at their American school, they will likely be studying the same things in Canadian schools... anywhere between 12 and 18 months later.  I've known this for a while now, as I was looking into Canadian curricular and educational standards months ago.  But chatting tonight brought it to the fore, and left me assembling the pieces in all my utterly dumbfounded glory.  I have been basing Monkey's educational plans on the theory that, according to the standards I have, he is firmly (currently) sitting between a 1st and 2nd grade level.  This depends on the topic - he is very good at social studies, reading, and science, but he is learning an entirely new math system, so that's slower than it could be.  When I put it together, this puts him anywhere between 2nd grade and 4th grade in Canadian schools.  This is just boggling to me.  Granted, this changes nothing.  I have no "shout it from the rooftops" plans, I have no intent to suddenly enroll him in college at age 6, nothing changes. But sometimes, ones mind is so thoroughly blown that you have to express it somewhere.  And really, where better than the homeschool blog dedicated to the adventures of educating a gifted Monkey?

Week 10, Day 4

This should probably be alternatively titled "Mommy is entirely too under-caffeinated for this."

Reading: Today I wanted to do some more work on sight words.  Skeeve had done a review mid-week on the sight words, and Monkey did really well, so I was expecting this to be a not-big-deal.  Turns out, I was mistaken.  Instead of doing the first bunch of sight words, then moving on to the second set, we did the first set and kept at them.  I think we're going to keep that going, and see what happens.  I still need to do a review of Unit 3, but that can be done whenever we have time.

Math: We didn't have math today, though we did talk about numbers when we went for a walk, and we talked about coins as we cleaned and found pennies, nickels, and dimes, so I suppose that's really a review in and of itself.  So, I suppose we'll play some games and review sorting-for-counting over our 'weekend' and see what happens.

Extras: We didn't have any of our usual extras.  Today is Grocery Shopping Day!  So, it's a lot of social, and a lot of how-stores-work.

All in all, a very relaxed sort of day, which is a good thing, as I'm woefully under-caffeinated for the day.  I've been trying to schedule things so that Tuesdays are a light day.  We're not behind in any way, and if I leave Tuesdays for a light day, it gives us the day for review if we need it.  Of course, the hard part is that Tuesdays are grocery days, so we have to make sure to hustle and get things done early, before Omero wakes for the day and we all go shopping.  Once shopping is done and Omero is up, there's no going back - Monkey is thoroughly wound up, and won't work at all.  He will work on things if it's just him and either Skeeve or me, but any more than that, and it's just... no.  Pulling teeth is easy comparatively...  Anyway!  Week 10 wrapped up on a high note, and week 11 will see us reviewing most of week 10, just for the sake of a "quarter" review.

Do You Know Where Your Towel Is?

Something I am learning more and more as time passes is that Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, while not the genuine hitchhiking guide my mother assumed it to be all those years ago, it is very right about its cover.  "In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover." -Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams, 1979  

Don't Panic.  This is often where my life is anymore.  It's four o'clock, and dinner's not even a concept?  Don't panic, we'll find something.  It's August, it's a million degrees outside, and the garden is wilting - except for the tomatoes, which look like a jungle and are threatening to eat neighborhood dogs?  Don't panic, the hose and a bungee cord will handle everything.  Then...  We arrive at my Monkey.  

Monkey is currently happily "playing" video games with Uncle Omero.  Monkey has a controller that lights up.  It isn't hooked to anything, but he likes being One Of The Big Guys.

I mean, look at him.  He looks pretty normal for a nearly four year old.  He's (mostly) sweet and kind, he's curious and loves to play, and in my own opinion, he's cute as a button.  But then, then there are days where I actually think about what we're working on for school.  These days are usually triggered by what other people's children roughly Monkey's age are doing.  Today's freak-out was triggered by a giveaway.  The blog I stumbled into was giving away a "learn the alphabet" CD/DVD+workbook.  The poster's 3.5 year old loves the system.  There were several commenters that mentioned that they think their four year olds would love it, too.  So I go check it out, because really, if the kids are loving it, and it's a giveaway, I may as well enter, right?  Not today.  The system in question is to teach children letter sounds and formations.  I have no real use for either aspect of this.  Monkey's fine motor skills won't support pencil writing in workbook sizes.  His letters tend to be about 18" tall, when he makes them at all.  Letters with curves (C,D,B, etc) are barely legible at all, even at that size.  But letters and sounds, Monkey knew all of those before he turned two.  He knew uppercase and lowercase letters and could make the sounds for all of them before he turned three.  And I hadn't paid any much attention to his learning at that point. Then, at 3y2m, he asked me to teach him to read.  So, I gathered myself up, and off we went.  He is now just shy of four (like, two days shy!), and happily working on Hooked on Phonics.  We started Hooked on Phonics in June, and now he's getting ready to finish the first grade levels.  Also, since May, he's done 12 weeks of math work.  Not terribly impressive until you realize he's done those 12 weeks of work in eight four-day weeks - making the actual numbers more like he's done 15 weeks of work in his 8 weeks.

This is where I panic. And not a little either.  Everything is all about Back to School.  Monkey would be gearing up for his first year of public school, entering Junior Kindergarten for full-day, spending the day with children who are socially and chronologically his age, but emotionally years older than him, and cognitively years younger.

I look at the numbers on the materials he's using and my mind rebels.  As Monkey is my only child, and we don't know any other children his age, he seems like he's just a normal kid. His books and interests tell me another story. It's confusing and slightly disturbing.  He doesn't fit any "regular" parameters.  Parenting books are no use - what section do you turn to?  2, 4, or 8?  Other people don't understand - I'm not pushing my son.  He just does this. The only thing I push is that he has to try.  Even if it's just for a minute, he has to try.  Since he'd be starting school in the fall anyway, I don't feel this is unfair in any respect.  He asked me to teach him to read.  He could add and subtract within ten before I even realized he could, before he was 3. This is who he is, this is how he is.  I wouldn't have him any other way.  And then, there's the flip side - he throws epic fits when he is upset.  I hesitate to call it temper tantrum, because this is not a "for attention" thing, it's simply that he's upset and can't manage his emotions.  And these storms are not quiet, they are not short.  These are epic screaming, crying, kicking, hitting, flailing storming fits.  And people look at me and wonder why I don't "discipline" him, why I don't make him mind me, why I don't sign him up for group sports that are drop-off-and-let-coach-deal events.  It's not that I'm sheltering him, or trying to raise a terror.  It's that emotionally, my child is about two. He is just not ready.  This is just who he is, this is how he is.  I wouldn't have him any other way.

Having a gifted child is absolutely a gift.  So is having a "regular" child.  Just as having any other child is full of ups and downs, good times and hard times, so is having a gifted child.  I'm sure that if I weren't panicking about Monkey's academics, I'd be panicking about something else.  But as it stands, this child I have surprises me on a nearly daily basis, and most of the things he comes up with pull me up short, reminding me that I really need to find a good picture to hang all over the house - one that clearly states, in large, friendly letters, "Don't Panic."

Week 10, Day 3

Today was a bit of a rough start.  We drove Skeeve in to work, as it's a holiday and the bus doesn't come in time to get him in.  This means our day started by 7 instead of by 9.  However, there was an awful lot of First Thing Dawdling that went on.  Really, from both of us.

Reading:  Reading went... fairly well.  It was a fluency day, and when things got cleaned up for our Tuesday Night Game Night, Monkey's Slim Sam book went a-missing.  Bad news, since that's the one we were using for his fluency scoring.  AUGH.  So, instead, today we broke out Hop On Pop.  This was sort of a bonus.  The last two times I'd checked his fluency, he was reading 6 and 10 words per minute. Today, he got a whopping 20.  Now, as "fluent" is 45 words per minute, he's got a ways to go.  But, for a picture book, 20 seems pretty good to me.  Thing is, Monkey seems to have a one minute timer.  Once his minute of timed reading is up (whether he can see the timer or not, whether he knows I've started it or not!), he stops reading, and starts goofing off.  Really odd to me.  I am, however, glad I can get that first minute out of him.

Math: Math was a whole lot of crazy.  Monkey got the concepts, but was steadfastly refusing to use the abacus.  So, I would ask him to enter his dimes on the abacus, and he would enter them as ones, or as a random number of tens.  If I asked him what he had, he would tell me the right amount, but entering it was just not happening.  So, I cut the lesson a bit short, and we'll work on it again tomorrow instead.

Science: This went fairly well.  The only issue is that he adores the science book.  This is an issue only because he loves looking through it at all the things that are there, and I need him to focus on the surface of the moon today - we're going over the lunar surface in his experiment this week, so today we read about it.  Initially this went well, but as we got on, he wanted to explore the rest of the book.  So, once we made our way through the lunar surface pages, I let him browse whatever he wanted, and he was happy.

School today was done by 9:30.  So, while I cut math short, that still puts us on three subjects in about an hour and a half.  This tells me we will likely see (as we go on) three subjects happening in right about two hours, which puts us at two hours per day, four days per week.  Not too bad!  And certainly beats the tail off of public school with its six hours per day.  Rock.

Week 10, Day 2

Reading was a right pain in the tuckus. Monkey would much rather have been watching Blue's Clues than lessons, and since Omero was home and up this morning, it put a little wrench in the works - Monkey doesn't like to work in front of people who aren't me.  He feels the need to show off instead, but he won't show off his academics, he would rather showboat in chatter.  Fine, but if I'm hoping he'll work, it's a little harder.  Anyhow, he read his words, and we eventually got him to go through all of them - chipmunk, hopscotch, suspect, etc.  I'm not sure how much of his reluctance falls under "I caaaaaaan't!" and how much of it falls under his hating review, but once he actually paid attention, he was great at it.

Logic got dumped into today after yesterday's mess.  There was a fair bit of scaffolding involved, as he wasn't quite understanding what was being asked of him.  However, once he understood what I was looking for, he was good at the concept... but also very easily distracted by the illustrations.  I think I'm going to find some similar things for him to work on during the rest of the week - he loved it, blew through three lessons, and wanted another one.  I stopped him at three as that was all I had printed, but I think I'll make some more sheets for him to practice on.  For the moment, he's content to color the pictures from the pages he's done.

Math may have been pushing it.  I went for all three back-to-back, which would have seen us done (on an ordinary day) for the day by noon.  Now, it could have just been that the math lesson was supposed to take three days, but again, he got it in one.  I'll want to review grouping by 10s for ease of counting, as that was where he started getting fidgety, but otherwise he seems to have gotten it with no problems.  He continues to astound me.  Anyhow, he got "opposites" and more/less just fine, and I'll see about playing the Less Game with him this afternoon just for reinforcement.  He also nailed "copy" and "reflection" just fine. It was almost eerie how quickly he got that one.  Tomorrow we're back to money and estimating, so I'm hoping he'll grok onto grouping by 10s tonight/tomorrow, if for no other reason than making tomorrow's lesson easier.

Today was also a history day. We're doing the second half of the first chapter, but I just didn't have a chance to get an archaeology dig set up for him.  So, we went over his history book instead - he's asked Daddy about his history, and I filled in my own, so we reviewed what Mommy's history is.  Then we did the review questions and the narration.  Unfortunately, this has a history of being very like pulling teeth, so I went in expecting this to be difficult, and trying not to let him know I was expecting it.  The read-aloud itself went much better than I thought it would.  Last go-around it was a challenge to keep him from running through the house shrieking.  Today, he sat and listened.  Of course, when it came time to answer questions (what does an archaeologist do?), he decided it was naptime and he'd tell me when he woke up in the morning.  Once we got going, though, it was pretty easy to determine he had been listening.  He was able to tell me what archaeologists do, give me some examples of things they would find, and how they do it - I just had to find the right tools to link it to something he cared about.  When we went to the Children's Museum, he and a friend played at digging up fossils of dinosaurs.  Linked to that, he has a crystal clear idea of what an archaeologist would do, what he would find, and that he could learn about history itself from the kinds of things left behind. 

All in all, I'm very happy.  He's done wonderfully, and took the addition of logic completely in stride.

Week 10, Day 1

Reading: Holy COW!  Unit 3 is *hard.*  It hadn't occurred to me just how many sounds -ed makes - there's "ud" like lifted, there's "t" like kicked, and then there's "d" like smelled.  WTF, English?!?  Could you be more confusing?  I'm sticking with the same tack as I've been using, though, letting him watch the unit as much as he wants, and then I'll see what he got out of it when we get to the end of the week.  If he didn't retain much of it, then we'll do it again next week, and that would be okay with me.  This whipping through things at mach two is a little dizzying.  It looks, however, like he was doing pretty well with it, so we'll see where it ends up.

Math: Geometry Whiz, coming through!  Today's lesson was on coins (penny, nickel), and on reflections and lines of symmetry via geoboard.  The penny and nickel were difficult for him, so I'm going to keep right on reviewing those with him.  The lines of symmetry and making reflected shapes on a geoboard?  Yeah, that was apparently the hard part of the lesson, and he whipped through that too.  He has taken to geometry like a fish to water.  I'm a little astounded, as I know I don't particularly care for it, but hey.  Whatever he likes, right?

Today was also supposed to start logic.  However, as we had a video call with my mother today, and once we hung up, Omero came downstairs to play videogames... that never did happen.  I'm going to try again tomorrow, see what we get.  The bonus is that I can tell science is sticking - Monkey made a point of informing us we all live on the planet Earth.  And quite solemnly declared it was very large.  

Week 9: The "We Really Should Have Done This Earlier In The Week" Edition.

Today is Friday, which would ordinarily be the start of Week 10.  However, Skeeve's work schedule was severely borked this week, which means our weekend was Th/F instead of W/Th.  All that should have needed accomplishing today was Monkey's science experiment (a flip book on phases of the moon), but due to general craziness and the aforementioned borked-schedule, we also needed to review unit 2 of reading and re-do history.

The science lesson went well.  Very well.  Everything else... was like pulling teeth.  And that was putting it lightly.  History was a page and a half read aloud with two narration/review questions.  Half an hour to finish the read aloud, and another 15 minutes to finish the questions.  Reading, we spent more time watching Monkey's fingers pretending to be Thing 1 and Thing 2 who were going to read the words than we did actually reading the words.  However, when he actually focused on the words in front of him, he read them just fine.  His fluency and speed still are really bad for level, but he can do it.  I suspect when we find something, anything that really interests him, though, he'll take off.  

Tomorrow we start our official Week 10.  We will add in logic 1x week, which will be simple - at least to start with.  I suspect these concepts are not going to be new or difficult for him, at least not at first.  Once we get into the swing of things, it'll be much easier, and I'll be able to better figure out where he is.  If nothing else, we're covering a lot more than JK would, in less time, so I'm not worried about taking this year to make our way through these things.  Though, I think I might print out two lessons of the logic and if it is that easy for him, we can do two.  Since the lessons seem to break up by twos, it shouldn't be a big deal.  I suppose we'll see!

Week 9, Day 4.

Well, today is the end of week 9.  Our week has been all kinds of weird, as Skeeve's work schedule has been screwy.  He hasn't had a full weekend in a while (okay, he had one day off last week instead of two), and is working today, but off Friday, so we've shifted a little.

Today we had no math, I figured to use the day for whatever review Monkey night need.  However, he seems to have the concepts down well, so we really just "did math" as we went - reading signs with numbers, counting steps, things like that. We also reviewed counting by twos.

Science was today's "extra" subject.  We went over phases of the moon - waxing, waning, full and new.  Skeeve will do an experiment with him on this over our weekend.  I'm also going to try to squeak in another go at the history lesson that didn't go so well the other day.  That's sort of an 'if time, then history' thing, though, so it's not too bad.

Reading was the hardest of the lot.  Not because it was inherently difficult, but because sight words as a concept require memorization, which is not Monkey's strong suit.  Not that his memory isn't good, but that he actively dislikes the process of memorization.  I think I might see if I can get a game together for this.  Maybe I'll get a sheet of plastic, anchor it, and write the words on it.  Then I can call words, and he can go jump on them.  I really do think sight words are going to be the hardest thing for him.  I suppose we'll just have to see how it goes, though.

And so, for this week, we've accomplished:
Reading: Lvl2, lessons 5-9, kindergarten sight words
Math: Lessons 25-27
History: Introduction, What is History, begin family history
Science: Phases of the moon

Week 9, Day 3

Reading today was, unsurprisingly, like pulling teeth.  Monkey's fluency is well behind his skill, and today we were working on his fluency.  For this, we read one of the Hooked on Phonics books.  The same one.  Then I keep track of how fast he's reading in the middle of the book.  Last check saw him reading 6 words per minute.  He sounded out every one, and dawdled between them.  Today, we were at 10 words per minute.  He didn't sound out as many, but the dawdling was ridiculous. You'd think the boy never saw a book with illustrations before. He spent more time telling me about what colors the hangers were in the second picture than he spent on the entire rest of the book.  GAH.  Slowly but surely, right?

In mathy news, he is apparently good at geometry. The first task set to him was to look at honeycomb, then take a stack of hexagons and put them together to make the best use of space. This took a whopping two seconds for him to decide how to best do it, and then it was all over but the repetition.  Craziness.  Same applied for lines of symmetry, shapes, and counting by twos to 30.  I was pretty impressed, actually.  I was expecting this lesson to be difficult, or at least time-consuming, and that's not what happened at all.  I have tomorrow/Wednesday slated as an as-needed day, maybe we'll review equations and lines of symmetry, plus anything that was either really fun or really hard.  Seems like a good use of time.  I'm not sure if I'm surprised by how fast he's going through this or not, but he's on his way through kindergarten math, and he's just finished lesson 27.  I think there's only been one or two that he's needed to spend more than one day on.

Week 9, Day 2.

Yes, I am writing a ridiculous amount on all this. It will probably level out in time, but until then, I find it to be a helpful record of what is going on in our homeschool, so it is what it is.

Today in reading, we covered the Big Words from Lvl 1, Unit 3.  These words are harder for Monkey, as he doesn't really have the patience to deal with them. Words like muffin and kitten, which are words for things he likes, are easier for him than words like happen and Dennis, which are words he knows, but doesn't really care about either way.  However, while he is still slow on the fluency side, he more than understands the concept of figuring out how these words work.  I think putting them on a once-per-week rotation should be good - it's enough that he can review them without being so often that he's bored out of his skull with them.  I wrote both the syllables and the words on the whiteboard. He was able, once we were done doing the reading, to erase all the words and syllables, which made him happy. Hopefully, I can keep coming up with entertaining ways of reviewing so he doesn't mind continuing.

Math was a little harder.  It was much harder to keep him focused, which presents a challenge when you're working with manipulatives.  Once we got going, though, it seemed to be a review, mostly, for him. There were some issues with evens/odds, and thinking a problem through, but all in all, he did well. Today's lesson was #26, Equations and Overlapping Tens and Ones.  He's doing a really great job of it, despite his having a case of the wiggle britches all morning.

This afternoon, we did a bit of what could probably be called social studies.  We went out and interacted with our town.  We walked (okay, I walked, Monkey rode) 4.21 miles to run errands. We saw vegetable stands, we saw stores, shops, traffic, lights, crossings, streets with no crossings, cashiers, sales people, and the basic etiquette of the bank lobby when the clerks are closed.  I think this afternoon I'll show him the map of where we walked, and we'll go over basic geography as well.  Really, a very full, albeit not feeling very full day.

Begin Week 9

This week is beginning a day late. We had our backyard fence put in yesterday, and I'd have gotten all of nothing done, so I figured to start on Saturday instead of Friday.  Good plan.

Of course, no good plans come without their challenges. It took about half an hour to get Monkey settled into his reading lessons this morning. He spent a large portion of time resisting anything that wasn't throwing toys around, which he's not allowed to do anyway.  Sigh.  However!  Once he settled in, he blitzed through Unit 2 without any problem.  I typically sit with him and 'help' him sound out words, as if there is too much repetition, he loses interest and is easily distracted.  So I sound out one word (today, things like "m-i-lk"), and then he sounds out the next. He goes through these units so quickly.

Again, in the "challenges" department, we had L pop by to see if Monkey could come out to play.  At 10:30. And 11:00 and 11:10, and 11:20, and I finally told him we would come out when we were done and refused to answer the bell or knocking any more after that.  This, of course, made everything take tons longer.

Today being Saturday, when we finished our reading, we hooked up Skeeve's computer, and got going on a video call to Hammie.  This is a great deal of fun for us (and for Hammie!), and helps Monkey keep track of his weeks, and keeps him from missing his Hammie and Buppa too much.  This takes about an hour, which I consider time well spent.  We eat lunch while we chat, and then move along.

Math took a whopping 10 minutes.  We did a review of Lesson 25, as we've not done any math in several weeks.  He blew through it like I couldn't believe.  It was a bit of a struggle when we left, but this time he flew through it. I'm looking forward to tomorrow!

Now, we also have history today. This will be our first lesson out of Story of the World. I'm actually rather looking forward to using the book, though I'm a little unsure why.  Monkey, on the other hand, found this to be the most traumatic subject in the history of EVER.  There was a page and a half to read, and it was a fight to get through it. We also did the student pages, which he colored while we talked about what went on the pages. The topic was "My Family History," so at least it starts out with the familiar.  I strongly suspect this will take us double time to complete.  However, as I have us planning for about half an hour of history on each of two days per week, it isn't exactly hard to spread it out. We'll see how the pace goes for him, and adjust from there. I don't want history to be awful for him, but I do want him to learn it, so it's really just a matter of getting it together - it's not like we're behind, so I'm not particularly worried, even if this year's history curriculum takes two years to go through.

End of Week 8

I'm calling this week something akin to a wash.  Monkey has been sleeping poorly, and this has led to an absolute lack of planning time for me.  As a result, I have a whole load of nothing planned, and have been mostly winging things.  Math, however, does not lend itself well to winging it.  I also still have to do our science and history read-alouds.  So, it looks like several things get pushed back to next week, which is workable, but not what I'd hoped.

However, Monkey blazed through 14 reading lessons in the last three days, so it's not all a loss.  I'm now putting him into a bit of a holding pattern, and adjusting my expectations so that he does not finish level two in three days.  I'm going to instead spend one day on The Big Words (like happen and traffic), one day on his sight words, one on new lessons, and one on fluency.  He can watch his current (and past) lessons as often as he'd like, but we're not covering more than one unit per week until I can get the next level in the house - I don't want him to get used to not doing any reading again.

For history, I'm going to give Story of the World a go.  We'll see what Monkey makes of the text and the student book.  I'm not sure how it will go, with his fine motor skills being fairly on target for an early-three, but we'll certainly try it.

Science I need to plan.  I don't know what the next experiment is, so I don't know what to be reading.  I need to get on that, and hope for the best.  Usually, it's no problem, but I'm so scattered from lack of planning I feel almost adrift!

Tomorrow should be swimming.  I'm not sure if that will get pre-empted for grocery shopping, but we'll see what happens.

In The Beginning

Our home schooling journey, moderately regularly chronicled.

In our house, very little is normal.  Certainly not Skeeve, absolutely not me, and therefore by default not Monkey either.

Monkey will soon be four.  This fall he would start attending junior kindergarten at the local public school.  However, this turned out to be problematic for several reasons.  Monkey is an asynchronous child.  He is unable to sit any kind of still.  And if that's not enough, this year our local public school has mandated full day junior kindergarten.  Six and a half hours per day, five days per week.  This would not work in any kind of way for a little boy who can't sit still for more than three minutes without his own interests driving him.

As we go along, I will keep tabs on what we are doing and how it is going, and I'm hoping to get a better handle on Blogger formatting so I can keep a page of introductions, a page of curricula, and a page of our read-alouds by age.  With any amount of luck, this will be considerably more fun than it sounds.