Recently in homeschooling Category

feebeeglee.blogspot.com

Hope you follow me over there. I’ll be back here someday, but it’s too buggy for now and Sean hasn’t got the time to fix it for me this semester.

I’m getting back into the SCA. That’s the Society for Creative Anachronism,

…an international living history group with the aim of studying and recreating mainly Medieval European cultures and their histories before the 17th century.

Those guys.

I used to be in the SCA as a teen. I have thought about it for a few years but decided against it because the kids were too young. They keep growing up, these kids, so I’m going to take the plunge.

The two things that tipped me over the edge were S.M. Stirling’s novels of The Change - most particularly the first three, Dies the Fire, The Protector’s War and A Meeting at Corvallis - and the plan of study for the Gleeschool this year: the Middle Ages.

So I want things like this (hold the rayon, please)

Linen Fabrics at Dharma Trading Co.

and perhaps a pair of these, with decidedly non-period soles, thanks.

Soft Star Shoes for Grown-Ups

Of course we’ll need some outerwear from this

Denver Fabrics 100% wool

or this

Wool Blankets

The plan is for me, Faith and Abby to get set up first. Then, we can see whether we like it before going all-in as a family. Bede, while very appropriately named for a historical reenactor, is maybe not so much the fan. We’ll see.

I’m glad that the period I’m interested in has nice, simple clothing. I’m leaning toward ninth century Ireland. And at this point that means everyone gets ninth century Ireland.

This is completely insane.

I’m keeping the homeschool notes for the year at gleeschooling.blogspot.com

so as not to overwhelm this blog with daily “Today we read…” entries. I’ll be posting a picture at least once a week of something homeschooly.

Abby’s fic, To Be Human, is in the Phineas and Ferb fandom, and answers these burning questions: What if Perry the Platypus was human? Does Ferb own any other clothing? And, most important of all, what are Phineas and Ferb going to do today?

Chapters 1-9 are here.

Faith’s Warriors fic, Stars of Gray, is also at their blog, but not neatly next-chapter-formatted yet. It features Graystripe, Faith’s favorite Warrior cat of that era. Prologue Chapter 1 2 3 4 5

Goodness what a time. We put up the easy-set pool finally, and have been in it every day since. Except for one day when the actual air temperature was 105 and the pool was 97.

It gets quite hot here.

I am, I hope, ready for school this year. Tentatively. I think.

Religion:

Once upon a Time Saints
More Once upon a Time Saints
Around the Year Once upon a Time Saints (Illustrated by Ben Hatke yay!)
A Life of Our Lord for Children (Illustrated by Ted Schluenderfritz yay!)
My Catholic Faith

Whew. That seems like a lot. But what all of these theology books have in common is utter charm. They are delightful books. I know many Catholic homeschoolers who use the Faith and Life series from Ignatius. I have the second grade catechism, Jesus Our Life, and I was unimpressed with the layout and writing. They are very much textbooks, which are a distant fourth choice on my list of educational materials. The above books are nothing like that. The saint stories are amazing, written like once-upon-a-time, just as the title says. Life of Our Lord is a biography of Jesus, which I hope will segue quite nicely into reading the Gospels after we finish it. My Catholic Faith is the best teaching catechism I have ever read - it was the book I read as a catechumen. It’s like an expanded Baltimore Catechism. (The Baltimore Catechism is written like an FAQ for Catholics, for those among my readers who are unfamilliar with the work.)

Mathematics:

Kickin’ it old school here. We’re going to use the Ray’s Arithmetic series. You can get them for free from Google Books or purchase a bound box set (Ray’s Arithmetic Series 8 Volume Set) if you’d rather. That’s first through eighth grade there, too. Hot diggity! Ray’s books are unlike modern math programs in that the focus is on mental math and story problems from the get-go. I’m quite excited about this one too.

Science:

The Everything Kids’ Science Experiments Book: Boil Ice, Float Water, Measure Gravity-Challenge the World Around You! (Everything Kids Series) - an experiment a week.
Nature Study every Friday afternoon

Literature:

The Random House Book of Poetry for Children - reading poetry several times a week, and illustrating poems the kids especially enjoy.
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys - this is the hardcover, and worth it!

I think I’ve overposted again. Best be off to bed. I’ll stop being Johnny-One-Note on the schoolbooks soon, I think!

Our friends:
Ben Hatke and
Ted Schluenderfritz.

These are the history books I plan to use this year. We’re covering (mostly) Britain, from the exit of the Romans to Henry VII.

Nonfiction:

Our Island Story: A History of Britain for Boys and Girls, from the Romans to Queen Victoria. This is our history spine. Faith is All About Anglophilia, so we’ll be spending the majority of our time on British history. This should segue nicely into American history.

The Medieval World. The illustrations in this one are really nice. Tends to two-page spreads on a given topic, like ‘Hunting and Hawking’ and ‘Knightly Orders’.

Archers, Alchemists, and 98 Other Medieval Jobs You Might Have Loved or Loathed. This has short sections on various medieval vocations, each around 200 words, with clever cartoony pictures.

Fiction:

The Dark Is Rising Sequence: Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King; Silver on the Tree. I’m so excited about these. They are my favorite books from childhood, especially The Dark is Rising. Arthurian extrapolation, modern day.

Time Cat (Puffin Modern Classics) You can’t go wrong with Lloyd Alexander. This one dances through history with a boy and his talking cat.

Tales of King Arthur (Usborne Classics Retold). Modern-language Arthurian legend. The best I’ve found, very chaste but not babyish or stilted.

Catherine, Called Birdy. A delightful book. First person, diary of a 14 year old girl of minor nobility in the 13th century.

Son of Charlemagne. One of our ventures to the Continent.

Beorn the Proud . Vikings! Grr!

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village. This one is unique - it’s a series of monologues intended to be read aloud or performed. Everyone in it is a child or teen in a medieval English village. It’s really good!

Usborne Time Traveler. The Viking and Medieval sections will be used this year. I read this in fifth grade under a different title and was so happy when I redicovered it.

Castle Diary: The Journal of Tobias Burgess, Page. Be sure you get the large-format hardcover for this one. The illustrations are such a huge part of the book and they don’t translate well to small and no color.

Castle. A classic. The illustrations are most often mentioned but the story behind them is great too.

I also have religion, math, and science. Another post!

Still gently planning the homeschool year. In fact, I nodded to Luke Holtzmann on Twitter about it: I can see why buying a year’s worth of scheduled readings, with open-ended discussion questions included, all for great, REAL books that are a joy to read… is a heck of a lot easier than doing it all yourself, from scratch.

I didn’t go with Sonlight again for several reasons.

1. Sonlight is Christian but not Catholic. Sonlight’s religious materials are Evangelical Protestant in tone and mission, which can be fine - or intolerable. This year, I am focusing on teaching Roman Catholicism to our kids, and I need the materials to support that. In our last Core I used Sonlight’s books and stressed the commonalities that all Trinitarian Christians share. This year, I need more than that. I could have gotten a Core but not the Bible, but the EP overtones are present in many of the other subjects too, notably History, Literature and Science.

2. Sonlight doesn’t have a Middle Ages Core. The Middle Ages are covered in Sonlight’s World History Cores, but we wanted more detail. Winter Promise makes a full-year Middle Ages program but they also have the same trouble as reason 1 above.

3. Sonlight is 36 weeks, and we wanted 45. We’ll be doing four days a week for 45 weeks. Sonlight has a great four-day option that’s included with every Core but it’s still only 36 weeks.

4. Sonlight is slightly more expensive. Honestly, this isn’t much of a reason. I doubt I’ve saved much money. I’ve been able to buy a few things used, and I don’t have the expense of the Instructor’s Guide. Sonlight isn’t raking in the dough. Their Cores are expensive but you get real value for your money.

That’s about it. We will likely return to Sonlight in the future. Their High School Cores are very intriguing, and having everything just In A Box and DONE is worth a lot, let me tell you.

I’ll publish our schedule and booklist when I finish. I’m doing the first 15 weeks, so if we just hate it I won’t have wasted as much time.

I’m trying to plan the year for our homeschool. We school pretty much year round, which lends us great flexibility. Legally I am required to have 180 days of attendance for all of my children between the ages of five and 18 years, equivalent to about 1000 attended hours in a year. Going all year means we do four hours a day, five days a week. These are not like hour-hours, but are attendance hours, and are better thought of as “lessons.” (In other words, I don’t teach them all for four hours every day. That counts the time they read to themselves or work alone and the time they discuss what they have read or worked on with me.)

It is MUCH easier for me to take attendance with Charlotte Mason than it was when we were unschooling. It always felt like unschooling took so much explaining, especially to the governmental types. For such a simple concept it can be remarkably difficult to understand, if you think children only learn when they are taught.. When we were investigated by DHS, Faith was the only child of school age, and she was five - it’s not difficult to demonstrate unschooled learning in a five-year old. But with older kids, it’s trickier, or it can be.

Since we’re studying the Middle Ages, we’ll be covering about a thousand years, approximately 500 to 1500 AD. Conveniently, Our Island Story and A Child’s History of the World both finish up the Middle Ages at chapter 61! This would be even more convenient if they both started at the same chapter. But… no. A Child’s History of the World starts the Dark Ages at chapter 40, and Our Island Story starts them around chapter 8.

(That’s if you consider the Dark Ages to have started at a different time on the continent than in Britain, which I do. If you don’t think that, then OIS starts it at chapter 12. But I digress.)

259 pages for OIS, 93 for CHOW. So what we’ll do is read two or three chapters of OIS for every one of CHOW. There’s several read-alouds in there too. I think they’ll be for another post, as will our math plan…

Trixie, age four, has a hard time using a computer mouse and becomes upset by her own lack of dexterity. This sets her up to miss again, because the more upset she is, the less skill she has at her disposal. Feedback loop, you see.

As a result, she doesn’t use the computer, and doesn’t get any better. She doesn’t care a bit, as she is content to watch the older children. I don’t care either because she’s four. So what if she can’t use the computer. Except… she kinda wants to, now and again

I guess this is all my roundabout way of saying I had the obvious idea to hold Trixie on my lap and be her mouse, clicking where she told me to on the Starfall ABC page. (Duh. See, six kids and I still miss the soft questions.) We had fun! I’ll try to set aside time for this more often, but I want it to be entirely fun for her, with no sense of work or unease, for several reasons:

1. She’s four.
2. She loses 50% of her ability after one failure, and 100% of it after two.
3. More than fifteen or twenty minutes and she loses focus, and I don’t want to say “Trixie, look here..”

I don’t care a bit when she starts reading. She may be six or she may be ten (although I doubt that) but she will read, and effortlessly. In the meantime we will continue with our vigorous program of lazily reading whatever books she demands I read to her throughout the day.

Learn to Read at Starfall

Farenga and Holt on late reading ages in homeschooled children

Bede likes to draw in the dirt, then…

…blow it away.

Gloria likes to take time to stop and eat the flowers.

Abby drawing, as usual.

Faith makes a face like Agent P, on her shirt. Dooby dooby doo bah!

I leave you with a longsuffering Mistyfoot.