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Well, we’re settled into our new home in Minnesota and loving the much cooler weather here! We’ve also met some great people!

9th grade:
My oldest is a 9th grader this year, and has decided to enroll in the Minnesota Virtual Academy High School. She’s a very strong writer, so they’ve put her into 10th grade honors English. They didn’t have enough 9th grade honors students to field a 9th grade honors English class. She’s on track to take AP English her senior year now, though she might just take English through PSEO at that point. She choose German I as her elective.

I’m independently homeschooling my middle two children. I love being in a state that has a legal definition of homeschooling! I’ve noticed that with that legal recognition, places like museums, historical societies, park districts and fine arts organizations often offer classes or sessions specifically designated for “homeschoolers.” In California, we were free to tag along to education performances and classes, but it was rare for a class or event to be designed just for homeschoolers. There’s so much to do here that my Google calendar is nearly full for the next three months! Obviously, we won’t be able to do it all, but I’m so excited to see so many things available! I’ve signed the kids up for homeschool ice-skating lessons through our city’s Parks and Rec department. Now that we’re in Minnesota, we need to learn to ice skate!

6th grade:
My 11 year old 6th grader will be using Calvert’s 6th grade curriculum, and Saxon 7/6 math. She has ADHD, and feels that she’ll learn best with a very structured curriculum. Using Calvert will also help both her and I know that she’s performing at grade level in relation to her peers. She struggles with the physical act of handwriting, so there’s always some question about whether or not the amount and quality of written work she does is appropriate to her grade level. Since my oldest is such a strong natural writer, I often worry that my expectations with my younger daughter are either too high or too low. Calvert will be a big help in that respect. And honestly, this child has ALWAYS worked best with traditional textbooks and workbooks.

2nd/3rd grade:
My just-turned-8 year old son is technically a 3rd grader, since he was a 2nd grader in our charter school last year, but we’ll see how this year goes. Since he’s homeschooling, he doesn’t need to be in a grade. He’s an absolute math whiz, and does all his math in his head. However, his reading skills have come along slowly. This is in sharp contrast to both my girls, who were strong early readers. He also loves science. I’m still working on his plan, but so far this is what I have for him:

Math – Saxon Math 3 (I already owned it, and we’ll just jam through it to get his facts memorized, then move into 5/4)

Language Arts – McRuffy (Covers spelling, phonics, grammar and copywork. I LOVE McRuffy. Wish I’d bought it sooner!!)

History – Story of the World 2 and History Portfolio from Homeschool Journey (which I’ve used before with my girls)

Science – Real Science for Kids, Level 1 Biology (We’ll see how it goes, then choose either Chemistry or Physics when we finish this one.)

Lots of literature and seasonal explorations will round things out. Since we now live somewhere with actual seasons, it’ll be fun to spend some time doing all those seasonal things we were never able to do in California!

Preschool:
We’re waiting to see what the local school district does regarding our 3 year old son’s special education preschool placement. We don’t do anything academic at home, but there will be lots of paint, crayons, reading books, library trips, play-dough, dress-up and outside play. We’ll do what we’ve always done with him… try to encourage his language and social skill development by playing and talking with him!

We recently found out that my husband’s company wants him to relocate to Minnesota, so we’re moving this summer. While I’m excited about the adventure, and looking forward to having four seasons again, it’s a little overwhelming as well. I’m going to miss this house and these beautiful views…

We’ll adapt though. Since I finally found the usb cable for my new camera, here are a couple of other images I thought I’d share. The first is all four kids at Strictly Sail Pacific, in Oakland last month…

And here is Declan’s idea of “doing school.” He loves to get his M&M book, and match the M&Ms to the pictures. I suspect Kiera showed him how to do this…

Yay! After some mishaps with the WordPress import tool, our blog is back! We’re preparing for a likely cross-country move this summer, beginning high school homeschooling in the fall, and a variety of other adventures that I’m looking forward to sharing soon.

The new header image above was created by my oldest daughter, after I asked her to create something to convey what our blog is all about. She decided to focus on the liminal aspect of our lives right now. Given the number of transitions we’re going through or soon to go through, I think her door and gate imagery is pretty spot on.

So I’ve been keeping this blog for a long time, just for my own notes, and recently, I’ve started thinking that maybe it’s time to split up the homeschooling posts into a separate homeschool blog. Originally, I started blogging here for myself, after migrating from livejournal, where I blogged a lot about my grad school classes. Then I went through a period where I blogged mainly about my pregnancy with Declan, for family members. As the kids got older, I talked more about them and what they were doing and most recently about our issues with Declan.

But now it just sort of seems schizophrenic, and the fact that more people are reading it (why, I don’t know…lol) means that I should probably start actually paying attention to what I write. I’d also like to blog more about personal things.

This weekend, I think I’ll sit down and set up another blog for the homeschool stuff and migrate the homeschool posts and links over there. Having a separate homeschool blog will make me feel more accountable when it comes to weekly reports too. I’d really like to start posting those, since this year is the first year where I’ve not kept some sort of electronic record of what the kids’ accomplish. (Of course, we really haven’t been accomplishing much…lol.)

One of these days, I’ll have to wade through all the drafts I have saved here, and post some of them. I’ve noticed that I often start a thought, but then set the post aside and never go back to it.

This afternoon, I’m flying down to Anaheim to attend Blizzcon, a convention held by gaming industry giant, Blizzard Entertainment. This is the first time I’ve been apart from my kids overnight in at least four years, so I have some anxiety about that. I’ve never left Declan alone overnight, but he’ll be in good hands with my dear husband.

This week we were all sick, except for Gene. Really, nasty, if it wasn’t so early in the season I’d think it was the flu kind of sick. We came back from Kansas City with this nasty bug, which apparently only affects women and children, as my husband pointed out. My mom, my sister-in-law, myself and the kids are all sick, but my husband. my brother and my dad seem to have escaped it completely.

Even so, the kids did well with school work. Some quick notes on each one…

Kyla is struggling with trying to balance her homework from her charter school classes with her academic work at home. She’s on the Yearbook staff, and is taking a physical science class in addition to her usual art history and drawing & painting classes. Art history requires essays and art projects each week, and science requires quite a bit of written work.

She’s on campus for 4 hours, two days a week, and so far, only history has really suffered. We’re still trying to find a balance, and she’s trying to learn some time management skills. Fortunately, she’s very disciplined and takes her homework responsibilities seriously, almost too much so. She gets very worked up about “only having a few days” to finish a written assignment that I know will just take her an hour or so.

Kiera did really well this week. I don’t often post about our ADD struggles with her, but we implemented some new strategies this year. I write out all of her assignments in an agenda book, so she knows just what’s expected of her. It seems to help her mental flow. Then I switched her math to MEP, a British developed math program based on a Hungarian model. (Or something like that.) I sit with her through the lessons, and the independent tasks that are assigned are very short, so she only has to sustain focus on her own for a few minutes at a time. We’re also keeping her lessons very short with ample breaks, and trying hard to keep Declan entertained during those times, so that he’s not distracting her.

Darien is a sweetie as always. He does his math independently and without struggle, and his reading is coming along now as well. He LOVES science, and I’ve dropped the ball on that big time. Next year, I think I’m going to try and buy something that has all the materials included. Otherwise, I just can’t motivate to do it, and nature study alone doesn’t cut it for this kid. He wants chemicals and mixing things, and microscope slides and getting your hands dirty type science. I signed him up for a science class, but he’s missed three classes between the wedding and being sick. Hopefully, I can get him there next week.

Declan has done well with his speech and OT. He still struggles to recall words, and his articulation needs a lot of work. This week though, I walked into the room, and he said, “You’re back!”* which is the first time I’ve heard him use that pronoun. He’s also started a little more imaginative play, with Mo-Mo, Squeakers and Monkey Paperwork, the three little toys he carries everywhere.

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* Edited to fix an incredibly annoying typo. Blame it on my “-itis.”

Declan’s language is coming along in leaps and bounds now that his other issues are under control. A few days ago, he named his stuffed monkey, “Monkey Paperwork.”

This week’s biggest new phrase is “I don’t know WHY?!” He says this very dramatically and completely out of the context of whatever else is going on.

Some examples:
“Declan, get off Mommy’s computer please.”
“I don’t know WHY?!”

“Declan, come and eat dinner.”
“I don’t know WHY?!”

“Declan, where are your shoes?”
“I don’t know WHY?!”

“Declan, why is your monkey called Monkey Paperwork?”
“Okay.”

The one time he won’t say “I don’t know why!” is when it would actually fit the question being asked.

Apparently, he really just doesn’t know why. Sometimes, I don’t know why, either.

“It killed off all the Romans, and now it’s killing ME!!!!”

My dear English cousin taught my kids this chant last year, and my middle two chanted it over and over all week long. (Thanks John!! Grrr….hehe)

We started school again this week, and although it doesn’t seem like we got much done amidst a variety of interruptions and appointments, things actually went pretty well. Here are our highlights…

Kyla decided that she didn’t like the history selection we chose over the summer, so we’re going to look for something else over the weekend. Her absolute FAVORITES are Traditional Logic, by Memoria Press, and Wheelock’s Latin. I have a soft spot for ol’ Wheelock, since it’s what I used as a freshman classics major in college. She really, really got into translating sentences. After five years of “fun” Latin, she was definitely ready to buckle down and get serious. We also dropped Teaching Textbooks Algebra, which we’d used last year, in favor of Life of Fred. Lastly, we found the Teaching Company‘s course on “Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature’s Most Fantastic Works,” and Kyla immediately decided that looked FAR more interesting than the reading list we’d agonized over, and I agreed with her! Considering that many of our selections are covered in the course, it’ll be a good fit.

Kiera is a bit of a handful. She’s a very bright kid, but is usually content to do the bare minimum required, and needs quite a bit of supervision to stay on task. She’s easily distracted by noise, and is particularly vulnerable to Declan’s schooltime cuteness. If I don’t watch her closely, she’ll take two hours to do her math because she keeps stopping to play with Decky. She likes workbooks, as much as I hate them, and sometimes I wonder if she’d be better off just using all workbooks for things, so she’d know just how much she had to do before she was done. I also struggle with my expectations for her, because I really don’t feel comfortable with how much is required of a 5th grader in school.
This week, she did some decimal review in Singapore Math, some grammar review, some Latin review and did some reading for history. She also did a few pages in her Can-Do Cursive book. My goals for her this year are to get her writing more comfortably, and to teach her how to type and use a word processor. Kyla tends to dominate the kids’ computer with her digital art, but Kiera needs to start getting equal time.

Dari is struggling with reading. I started him back at the beginning of Hooked On Phonics Level 1, and we’ve reviewed up to mid-way through the orange book. I’m going to have him evaluated this year if he continues to struggle, because we have a family history of learning disabilities, and I want to rule that out early on. If he’s just developing a little slower than his sisters, that’s fine, but I learned with Declan that intervening early can make all the difference. He’s doing very well in Singapore Math, and he LOVES Hillyer’s “A Child’s History of the World.” I bought the Calvert course, which has some enrichment activities and outlines to fill in for each story and we do those orally. Yesterday, we read about cave paintings, looked at some photos of Lascaux online, and then Dari and Decky made their own cave paintings with brown paper bags and some paints. He’s also really enjoying D’Aulaire’s Norse myths (which he choose to read before the Greek myths), and Armstrong’s “The American Story.” We read several chapters in both. For the Norse myths, he’s drawing pictures in a Mead Primary Journal composition notebook, and then copying a sentence from the story on the lines below it. Next week, we’ll start Song School Latin.

Declan had fun watching his siblings, hanging from desks, climbing baby gates, watching the Wiggles on his portable DVD player, playing with Little People, building Legos, and visiting with his speech and occupational therapists. He also took to wearing his bike helmet around the house, and insisting to everyone that he was “Going biking!” (In the photo below, he had used a glue stick all over his forehead, so Kiera wrote a note that said, “I’m a goofball” and stuck it on there. He was quite proud of it for about 15 minutes! hehe)

In all, not a bad first week.

Sent today by Kyla!!!

Hi, this is Kyla. We are not in China! =D (Grandpa complained when I typed “We are in Belize,” so I’m saying we’re not in China instead! XD)

We are at the Black Orchid Resort. Surprisingly, we have internet. We’re using a laptop that they had available for us to use.

We saw Howler Monkeys today. We got to feed them bananas from our hands even though they were wild. One climbed all over Kiera, but when she handed it a banana peel to eat, it sniffed it and threw it on the ground. The one I gave a banana peel shoved the banana peel into its mouth. We also learned how to imitate the big male. We saw three baby armadillos in the jungle too. It was cool because they are normally nocturnal. The guide said it was highly unusual.

Turneffe Atoll, other then having an awesome name(no sarcasm!), was really cool. We saw a dolphin with a skin disease. I named it Skyler. (shyler-shynan-skyler)

We saw….
Green Vine Snake
Spotted Eagle ray
Southern Stingray
Spotted Moray Eel (We saw it very close to shore while we were walking.)
Hogfish (It changed colors from a rusty brown to white in a matter of seconds!)
Stoplight Parrotfish
Sea Cucumbers
BIG Hermit Crabs
Osprey (We saw it flying over us then tuck in its wings and dive. It was very cool.)
Howler Monkeys
….and a ton of other stuff.

We miss you guys. (excluding Declan’s screaming)

Love,
Kyla & Kiera =)

I’ve spent a lot of time this past week or so sitting at my computer typing up plans for the coming school year. Consequently, I’ve also spent more time goofing off and procrastinating by doing things like reading the Well-Trained Mind forum. This evening someone asked whether people had chosen a motto for their homeschool.

Oddly, we’ve never had a motto. According to one definition, a motto is “a phrase meant to formally describe the general motivation” of a group. So I’m thinking, what motivates my kids do get their schoolwork done? What motivates me to keep them home as opposed to sending them off to boarding school?

As I recover from a couple of very stressful weeks, thinking about the things that motivates both the kids and myself is beyond me. The best I can come up with is… “Do it, or else!” which doesn’t really inspire, you know?

I think my favorite motto comes from Terry Pratchett, one of our family’s favorite authors. He says,
“Personally, I think the best motto for an educational establishment is: ‘Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?’”

So there you go:
Faraway Tree School… Or Would You Rather Be a Mule?

Here’s the current working reading list for 8th grade…

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
The Call of the Wild (1903)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1908)
Animal Farm (1945)
The Pearl (1947)
The Great Gatsby (1925)
Fahrenheit 451 (1950 – Post WWII/Cold War)
*Death of a Salesman (1949)
All Quiet on the Western Front (WWI)
Murder on the Orient Express (1935)
The Good Master (Kate Seredy – WWI Hungary)
Diary of Anne Frank (WWII)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
Watson’s Go to Birmingham–1963 (1963)
The Dispossessed (1970)
The Giver (1994)

The following are books I’m thinking about adding…
Civil Disobedience (1849) and Walden (1854)
Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and “Ethan Brand” (1850) (or alternatively The House of Seven Gables, as I’m not personally as fond of The Scarlet Letter, which is sort of the standard Hawthorne work used in middle/high school)

*I opted for “Death of a Salesman,” rather than “The Crucible” because I had to read “Death of a Salesman” something like EVERY year from 8-12th grade. It made me want to beat my head against the desk every time. When I mentioned that to my daughter, she said, “Hey, let’s do that play together then!” Uhm… okay. *beats head against desk*