Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Week 24

What the what? We're DONE with our first year of CC after this week??

Wow.

We've been tremendously blessed this year.  I'm not going to lie, homeschooling was an adjustment- but it wasn't a bad one! The boys have done fantastic and their reading and math skills have blossomed like crazy! I'm so proud of the hard work they've done and how well they've transititioned.  I'm also thankful for our friends (both PS and HS) who have been supportive and kind in having playdates and keeping us all sane!

This week:

History: The Bill of Rights 
Our book we started last week is going really well! I've had a private laugh about the comparison of my K's writing next to my 2nd grader's writing....but that's irrelevant.  The book is serving as our copy work.  First they did the preamble, taking turns with phrase copying and illustration, and now we'll finish it this week with the Bill of Rights doing the same.  They've worked very hard, so I'm planning to laminate and bind their work for them :) It's a big deal to get something you did laminated. We're also reading a biography of George Mason, who demanded the Bill of Rights.

I  love  you  mom  from  riley.
(I left my computer and had a visitor, I'm not deleting that!)

Science: What is Good Science
I think if we weren't already doing George Mason, I'd throw in a scientist here to study, but since we are, I'm just going to cover a few short scientist biographies from What Your Kindergartner and What Your Second Grader Need to Know.  I hear there are workbooks for these!! Those sound fun! Since I'm using the 1980s editions from when I was little, maybe an upgrade is in order first....

English: Sentence Patterns
Let me be honest here.  We're gonna try to memorize these.  We're going to write some sentences with each one.  CC English has killed me this year, and I'm pretty sick of the crazy ones....this week's seems crazy.  If I come up with some genius thing, I'll let you know :)

Latin: John 1:7: ut omnes crederent per illum. 
We will be finishing our Latin Lapbooks this week, which is exciting! Next year I'll definitely start these sooner!

Presidents
We'll be finishing up our presidents song, too.  And, our presidents lap book.  All this finishing! I should write a checklist just so I can cross things off!

Geography: More Prominent Features
Over the summer, I'm hoping to do a salt dough or rice crispy model of the US with the kids and really reinforce the Geography.  We kind of lost it a little after we finished the states and capitols as far as really driving home the map locations, not just memorizing.

Math: Identity Laws of Addition and Subtraction
We're going to use the M&Ms again.  5 M&Ms plus 0 is 5, and 1 group of 5 M&Ms (in a muffin tin, my favorite multiplication math manipulative!) is 5.

I think that's it.  We'll listen to some Stravinsky, maybe throw in a Bill Nye just because we can, and then the next few weeks will be memory work review and preparation for our standardized testing! I think I'm going to do the CAT test this year for both boys because they've never had one before, and maybe do the Stanford with Riley, and then for next year do Stanford for both.  Not sure, though.

I'm already working on my lesson planning for next year.  I want to have everything ready to go by the end of summer so that I'm not ever scrambling to lesson plan.  We're also planning to implement a work box system for next year.  My friend Sherri, who is the homeschooler I want to be when I grow up, taught me about them, and they sound like a perfect answer to my organization issues.  Our notebooks have worked well, but I feel like I don't mix in enough "fun" activities that are also educational because they don't fit in the notebooks.

This week's lesson plan stinks.  I apologize for that. I think I'm just excited to wrap up our CC year!

Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Week 23

Let's just jump right into this, shall we?

History: Preamble to the US Constitution
In addition to picking up books from the library, we'll be doing a little each day as copywork and, of course, there's a CC song, but it's not as cool as:

I'm beginning to think if I just parked my kids in front of schoolhouse rock they'd have more civics knowledge than their peers.  However, parking children in front of a TV is not very classical model, so instead, we'll also read children's level biographies about Madison and Mason. For the copywork, I found a neat class book (it's a free download) and we're going to alternate pages.  It's always nice to give the kids something to illustrate while I read at lunch!

Science: Charles' Gas Law
Gas expands when it gets hotter and contracts when it gets cooler, you say? Why yes it does!

I also found a little experiment for my kids' age group, and we're going to try that, too.  I cannot tell you how frequently I wish I had access to liquid nitrogen, though, because I'd much rather deflate a balloon in sub-zero temperatures.  Sigh.

Latin: Just keep swimming.

English/Math:
We have memory work for this week, but my main focus is going to be on test prep.  We're getting ready for the Stanford, and I want to make sure that we're ready, so our big focus will be punctuation and on mixed timed review for Riley.  Logan is testing, too, but I don't have a Kindergarten sample test book yet, so we'll just work a few printed sample test pages to get used to bubbling the answer.

Happy last 2 weeks, fellow CC'ers! 

Classical Conversations Week 21 Bonus

Tutoring was really fun! I'm not sure how well I did, but the kids and the parents were very kind if I messed up :)

I wanted to share my math supplement

It's pretty easy, just a printout with the 2 laws and 3 categories.  We did addition, mainly because multiplication would have required too many M&Ms.  The Associative Law for Addition is
(a + b) + c = a + (b + c).  Before class, I put one of the sheets and the candies (2 orange, 3 blue, 5 green, but you can obviously use any color) in a ziplock baggie.  Then we took moved the candies around  to do 5 + 5 and 2 +8.  Either way it's 10!

The woman that I subbed for also left an activity.  It was a printout with the two laws in a much larger font, and then she cut out parenthesis from construction paper for the kids to glue in the appropriate places. 

For my afternoon class, I decided that we would do something that "followed" our history sentence a little.  I brought giant bags of recycling and some boxes, along with tape, glue, markers, tin foil, and whatever else I could dig up.  Then I tasked the kids with creating a rover to explore a new planet I made up.  I provided them with some printouts of the Mars Rover and some guiding questions (How will it get to the planet, how will it move on the planet, what information will it collect and how, how will it communicate with earth) and then I turned them lose in teams. 

The kids had so much fun! I actually had to stop them so that I could get them to present to each other! We spend about an hour and 40 minutes on this activity and then we did a few seconds of outside play.  The kids did a fantastic job.

Classical Conversations Cycle 3 Week 21

This week I'm substituting for a tutor, so that should be a fun experience!  I'm also going to be handling the afternoon class of 6-8 year olds for the next four weeks (We only have four weeks left! Crazy!), so I'll have a little extra planning to do!!

US Presidents: 
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler
I'm so excited!! I have been waiting and waiting to do this game with the kids for WEEKS since I saw it on Pinterest!! Presidential Guess Who? Yes, please!!
As far as a fun song, I hear that we're using the "short" CC song for this, but we're going to throw in the Animaniacs because the kids think they're hilarious :)

And, not to hate on the Classical Conversations songs....but....I mean, would it really kill us to kick it up a notch? Because since we're already the crazy public schoolers, I feel like my kids could really bring it with the Presidential Rap.

I found a few really cute printables, including a "President's Day" word making center where you make as many words as you can using the letters in "president's day" and then write a sentence using one of them.   I also found a lap book, and oh my gravy have we loved lap books, so I feel like this one will be a hit, too! 

History Sentence: Tell me about U.S. Astronauts

This week just couldn't get any cooler, could it?? 

We've got numerous books to read, of course, and I'll come back and report on the ones we like the best. NASA has both a video of the moon landing and some basic facts.  We're going to use the plaque from the moon landing as copy work.

In addition to our history sentence basics about the moon landing, we're going to take some time to talk about the phases of the moon.  

The Children's University of Manchester has a neat interactive on the phases of the moon

NASA also has a nice introduction to the phases of the moon

Visit to the Air and Space Museum? Well, duh, that's totally got to happen.  We've been to Udvar Hazy waaaay too many times for me to think about, so we're going to schlep into DC.

Latin: Cui Nomen Erat Iohannes

I have nothing interesting to report here.  We're going to keep working on our lap books and memorize this.  It's 4 words this week, so I don't really feel a whole lot of pressure to do something fun.  

English: Independent Clause

I have this idea for teaching independent clauses that involves a doll.  Since an independent clause can "stand" on its own and has both a subject and a verb, I'm thinking I should be able to have a "subject" leg and a "verb" leg.  When both are there, the clause (this doll may need to be Santa....you know, "Claus") can stand.  When they're not, he can't.  I'm still working on this concept, but it's 1am, so it's not happening now.  Riley has clause worksheets in his grammar book, and we'll do some more fun sentences mad-lib style.  We'll also do a game where we have two jars, one we'll fill with independent clauses, and one we fill with dependent clauses.  I think it'll be funny.

Science: Uniformitarianism

I'm going to be honest.  I don't really get this.  I get the definition, and I get the counterpoints, but I don't have fantastic examples.  I'm going to try to pick up a few books at the library to help....but right now I'm just wishing that I stole my technological earth science text in 9th grade.  

Also, we're studying the moon this week.  Soooo.....there.

Math: The Associative Laws

We're going to demonstrate these using M&Ms, which are, by far, the best math manipulative on earth.  If a is red m&ms and b is blue and c is green, we can show that we get the same number whether we add red and blue first or blue and green first.  Then we can eat them. Nom nom nom.  

Singapore math plugs on.  Logan is doing much better with place value and higher counting, although he consistently forgets 15.  What did 15 ever do to him?  Riley is going to be drilling multiplication facts this week in addition to his chapter on measurement.

Geography: Territories and Terrains

Coloring! Yay!  I love the giant pull-off maps that I bought at the teachers store and will probably cry next year if they don't have the same thing for our new maps.  

Classical Conversations Week 20!!

I can't believe that we're 4 weeks away from the end of our first year of Classical Conversations!! Crazy!! I feel like this has been a real journey, but we're finally in a great groove, and more so every week.  I have been tremendously blessed to grow in confidence and community and I'm very happy about our decision to homeschool.

This week:

Classical Conversations, Cycle 3 Week 20

History- Brown v. Board of Education
I found a website that has tons and tons of ideas about how to teach civil rights. It includes Brown V. Board as well as several other high-profile events and even has a library list! I really liked the discussion questions here, so we're going to use those for sure. Then I found DocsTeach.org from the National Archives.  This one is FANTASTIC and I'm really excited to have it for the future!!  I love using primary sources as much as possible, and this site has free registration and tons and tons of pre-made activities!! We're going to do one together called Dwight D. Eisenhower and School Integration.  Many are flash-based, which is fun for the kids.

Note to self: The Brown V. Board historic site has 3 different videos for ages starting with Kindergarten.  Too bad I didn't look sooner!! Bad procrastinating momma!! I think I'll go ahead and order the one we'll likely need in 3 years ;)  I did find a fairly simple and straight-forward video on YouTube that includes the Brown Family.

We're also going to do a journal entry about whether why we agree (I guess or disagree, but I'd be sad if they chose that!) with Brown v. Board's decision.

John 1:6- fuit homo missus a Deo
I don't have a fun plan for this- although I'm working on a little latin review game for when we've completed the verse.  The lap books continue to go well!

English- Phrases and Clauses
So, listen.  I can't possible teach Phrases and Clauses without playing my kids Conjunction Junction. It totally gives some examples....right?

For later in the week, I want to introduce Riley to dependent and independent clauses.  In addition to our grammar workbook pages, I found this website with an online quiz.  Getting to do it online makes it 1,000x more fun. We'll also play a game with our die from Scattegories, using the letter we roll to pick words to make clauses or phrases.

Science- Theory of Evolution
Right, so.  This is one where I applaud CC for finding a memory sentence that won't offend anyone, regardless of their level of Biblical Literalism.  We have no problem with evolution in our house, in so much as we're talking about the concept that things change over time, even though we believe in a divine creator.  I don't know how God did stuff, so if he's provided us with a fossil record showing that things change over time, I'm down.  This doesn't make me a Darwinist, it just means that I appreciate that things change. We'll be reading the Biblical account of creation, watching Bill Nye episode 6 from season 3 on Evolution, and talking about whether the two ideas are mutually exclusive.  We know that God created the world and everything in it, but we also know that when he was done creating, the world was set up to run itself over time.  That's just us.  We identify with Intelligent Design, but not as Biblical Literalists.

Math- 1 inch= 2.54cm
We're going to do this on leap day and do some jumping and measuring both in inches and centimeters to make it fun.  Singapore continues to go well, and we're happy with the boys' progress.  (Especially since Logan's kicked math investigations grade 1's booty!)

Geography- Canals
Lucky us, the C&O Canal is nearby!! This calls for a hike.
This week one of the tutors made an enormous rice crispy treat map of the us with candy for features.  We might have to steal that idea!! We have a jello mold USA, too...hmmmm, ideas for review :)


Composer- Tchaikovsky Symphony Number 6

In Which We Consider Schooling

I've been struggling lately with the school that we send Riley to.  Not really his school in particular, but the concept of what public school has become.

The problem here, is that I have never been one to "accept things as they are" and be happy.  I want better for my child.  I don't like Math Investigations and feel like it's wasting his time.  I don't like touchy-feely educationalist movements and the lack of accountability they allow (for teachers, students, and parents alike). And honestly, I volunteer in the school.  I don't like how much of my kid's day is wasted time.  I went to school in the same county we now live in, and I feel like I got a good education, or at least that's what I've always said.  I loved school.  Or, rather, I loved the idea of school.  I loved going somewhere that I was going to learn be better than everyone else.  I actually rather hated "school".  I hated the group work where I was inevitably paired with the "problem" kids so that I could help out by teaching them and getting them to do their work.  I hated people's questions.  I hated listening to people read aloud in 4th and 5th grade who clearly hadn't mastered it.  I really REALLY wanted to learn! I was curious! High School was fantastic, because I could take AP and Humanities classes and do clubs and projects and extra work in subjects that interested me, but before that, really, when I think about it and I'm honest, I really only liked school because my teachers kept telling me how smart I was.

I'm very externally motivated.  It's a problem.

So now when I hear my kid complaining about many of the same issues, I want to fix it.  We've looked at public magnet schools and applied for 1 spot in 2nd Grade that there are 80 some applications for.  (Dear School System: If there are so many parents desperately seeking something else for their children, why, praytell, don't we apply the same concepts to all of our schools?) We've checked private schools, but hubby is uncomfortable with both the price and conservatism.  So, we've moved on to homeschooling.

Homeschooling makes me nervous.  I don't want my kids to be "unsocialized" and I don't know if I can be "on" all day every day for them.  But, at the same time, I feel like me caring so very much would help me get through it.  Plus, our area has numerous cooperatives and support groups in place.  It looks like there isn't a day without a field trip, class, or playgroup. In Middle School, our kids could take 2 classes from the public school in addition to their homeschool curriculum.  They can play sports and attend church, just like the very socialized and educated homeschoolers I've met in my search.

I'm still not sure what we'll end up doing.  I want to believe in public education, I really do.  But looking at the scores internationally, our experience personally, and what I feel children are capable of learning, right now, I just can't.  So, do I stay in and fight tooth and nail to fix it? (Note that parents at our school face signs that say "It's after 8:35 parents may not enter educational hallways" despite the fact that our school board policy is that parents are welcome anytime in classrooms to volunteer or observe) Or do I opt to take another path for our family and give my children the type of educational experience I wish I could have had?

I'll take prayers for discernment, because I really don't know how to make this choice.