Review of the Week #3

This has been a busy and productive week. We only held group time twice this week, but we did make it to the library for the first time in a very long time. That means I have read a bunch more children's books to my little ones than usual, so we are definitely going to schedule in the library and have it replace group time that day. We will have group time 3 times a week instead of 4 and I think that will be acceptable. The 2 group times we had were very efficient and worthwhile and fun. I enjoyed them and the kids enjoyed them.

We started a new book for history mainly for the younger kids, but the older kids like to listen as they draw-- Glimpses into the Long Ago

We finished our science book, but didn't pass the little quiz at the end, so I'm not sure how much we learned, haven't decided whether we'll go on and count it as good exposure or go back and make sure we learned some things. We'll probably go back and do some projects to help us remember better.

We have memorized the first 8 articles of faith. We worked on a Greek scripture. We are reading the New Testament and Little Women. We learned about the spinning Jenny and how people used to make thread, yarn and clothing. We read lots of picture books. Berenstein Bears is very popular.

The kids watched the Incredibles in French while I went to the store and were very proud of understanding some words especially "My name is IncrediBoy". We're actually making progress in both Spanish and French. We've got The Incredibles in several other languages as well.

The boys finished all their work for the week. I have to be unbending in the requirements even when they throw fits, because once they decide they will do it, then they do great, but it is hard and they have to concentrate. We are working on times tables, review of 2B for math for the 8 yr. old, he needs to take the test this coming week. The younger boy is on 2 A and doing at least 4 pages a day. He slowed down a little when it got hard but it's easy again especially since we are working on times tables. The 8 yr. old is finally starting to read on his own for pleasure and not just when I make him.

The girls finished everything on their lists except for reports, memorizing a poem and writing a composition. The oldest passed 5B and started 6A. She is doing great. She also finished lesson 3 in the Greek book. It has taken a lot of extra one on one time to get her ready for and to pass the test and start Greek. Those are ou7r main focuses though so it's O.K. Iwill be working more with the next daughter this coming week. She will be taking her 5B test and starting the 3rd year Greek book.

To do this week: I need to print off more efficient lists for the girls
Finish downloading music and audio books for my mp3 player

Scheduling appointments and shopping

This has been a busy week. One thing that was good about this week is that I combined all my necessary trips into 2 days. One day is huge-- we drive about 45 min. each way for vision therapy for my son, then do all our grocery shopping for the week, then go to the park with other homeschooled friends. There aren't many girls at the park, so we may start an arts and crafts club to meet after the park for my daughters. That is a long day, but then I don't have to load up the twins any extra time and we don't get interrupted in our school days.

One other day of the week my daughter has a violin lesson right after lunch for a half hour, then we go the library right after, because the twins are already in the car to take her to violin, so we just stop at home and grab the other kids and go. This is a little disruptive to our at home schedule, but the kids love the library and we had stop going otherwise because I just couldn't take everybody and we had way to many fines because of it. This way we have a weekly appointment so we shouldn't incur so many fines and the kids really learn a lot from their books. They get to check out 4 books of whatever they want and 2 books on something they are interested in learning about. The library took over group time this week. So we may just have group time 3 times a week instead of 4. I'm O.K. with that. That will give me a bit of a break too. I kept having the thought "it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength" (Mosiah 4:27
) run through my mind this week. There are so many things I want to help my children accomplish and so many fun and important things to do, that it can feel overwhelming. That thought helped me destress and keep perspective, that it will be O.K. if we don't do it all. But scheduling is going to help us get some order so we can accomplish a lot.

We're on our way to learning Latin

There is a National Latin Exam. They have an exam for six different years or levels. My husband was fortunate enough to take the first year exam while in high school, because his was one of the few high schools offering Latin. He attributes much of his ability to think critically and learn easily to his study of Latin. Students of Latin generally score higher on standardized tests than those taking other foreign languages. Memoria Press has some great articles on the value of learning Latin if you'd like to learn more check out their newsletter. Here is a link to one of their articles.

In order to be eligible to take the first year exam, the student must be enrolled in a Latin I course without having taken other Latin courses. We of course want our children to do well on that test and we want them to learn Latin well enough that they will be able to read some of the great books in the original Latin. In order to take all six national tests, they need to start Latin I no later than 7th grade. Henle Latin is our curriculum of choice. We have books for all 7 of our children. My husband bought them so that we'll for sure have them. He bought them for the the twins as soon as we found out we were having twins. So in order to learn grammar before we start first year Latin, we are having our children study Greek.

The curriculum we love is called Elementary Greek from www.opentexture.com My oldest is now on the 3rd year book. We are really focusing on the Greek now and moving through the 3rd year much more quickly than we did the first 2, so that she will be ready to start Latin I in September. My second child is finished with her workbook of year 2 but I don't think she is quite ready to move on. She is very bright though, so I think if I work with her enough she may also be ready to start Latin in the Fall also. We'll see, if not she'll certainly be ready to start the following year. I may push her hard this year because it will be easier to teach the 2 girls together. Time will tell.

Interesting articles about Singapore Math

http://www.thedailyriff.com/2010/10/singapore-math-demystified-why-we-should.php

Singapore Math story problems are awesome. They are hard, but the kids learn to do them from the beginning. They then practice the basic math skills by practicing story problems. Very good stuff. There are more links at the bottom of that page to other articles written by him.

Singapore Math-- should we switchover from Saxon?

This is a copy of a post from my other blog:

We love Singapore math. I started my first on Saxon and we both hated it for the constant repetition and it's sooooo dry. The Singapore books are like you're playing. If you did have your kids go back, they'd probably actually enjoy it it because there are so many codes and mazes and things to , so if they already know the concepts it would be a fun review and practice but you can have them take the placement tests on the Singapore site to see where they are.

I have posted a couple posts on our math experience on my blog if you want to read about it. My first daughter had a bit of a hard time transitioning and we took a loooong time on levels 1 and 2, finally by level 3 I decided we needed to really focus on math and get her caught up. Level 4 was tough, but now she's onto level 5 and whizzing through. I'll find out tomorrow how well when she takes her test which is the placement test on their site. I'm hoping she'll start Algebra by the end of this year, she'll be 6th grade age.

It was a tough transition I think mostly because she got a sour taste for math from the boring Saxon books, and she's more of an artsy imaginative kid not real math minded. The other kids who started with Singapore have just whizzed through with no problem. They slow down when we get to a harder section, but once they get it, they're off. They should be fully prepared to start Algebra when they finish level 6, and the story problems are amazing. I'm learning how to solve them without Algebra. Then we plan to use the Algebra and Geometry books from McDougall Littell. We haven't picked the Trig or Calculus books yet.

Also the US edition Singapore math books are the ones they were using in their schools when they were ranked #1 in the world for math. Tried and tested with excellent results. Love it!!! Good luck on your decision.

Review of the Week

I've already detailed Monday and Tuesday of this week. Wednesday was good too. Rotating my time every 30 min. seems to help everybody stay focused 'cause they know we really will stop when the time is up. It took more sessions to get all work done on Wed. than it did on Tues., but that's O.K. The kids got most of their lists finished. The girls have to do some math, Greek, required reading and instrument practice today. The boys finished their work today. We did no school work on Thurs. That is our new shopping/ appt./ park day. We did no school work on Friday because we had to get the house ready for a detective birthday party for my now 10 yr. old. It turned out to be quite fun. The kids were a little stumped on some of the clues but they eventually found the hidden jewels and captured the thief. Very fun. The cake was yummy too. I'll be posting the recipe at www.greattimetolive.com . It was lemon cake with frosting which I have not made for years.

So lots of fun this week. We are making up for some of the fun today. The kids aren't happy about that, but they will be grateful when they're older and getting great scholarships!

Spanish and French were so so this week. We got a whole bunch of "The Incredibles" the movie in many different languages so the kids can exposure to a variety of languages. I don't expect they will learn any of them very well, but at least they will have exposure. It's kind of fun. We memorized the 7th article of faith and continue to read the same books, we are almost done with our science book.

To do list:

find a poem to memorize this week
put some more songs on the mp3 player for music time
rip some cds for music time
add music theory game to kids lists
print new lists for the week

I am looking forward to a nice uninterupted week this coming week!

A Bad Day and a Good Day

Yesterday was a bad day. I didn't get up early enough to exercise before the kids got up and I had to decide whether to start school or exercise. I hadn't exercised for 2 weeks because I was sick and I cut my hand real bad Sunday night washing a glass cup that broke and slipped into my hand plus I hate Mondays. Then instead of letting my girls off the hook after an hour of math work, I made them finish their pages cause I didn't think they were concentrating well enough which took another 1 1/2 hours-- so that was 2 1/2 hours of math. The boys were good just playing around and pulling out every game in the cupboard and I felt bad that I didn't get to their work earlier and then I really regretted it that afternoon around 5 p.m. when I was trying to get them to practice their times tables and finish their other stuff and not making dinner. Also, we had a very short group time, we had to skip yoga and music we didn't do any Greek, and we spent a lot of time talking about how we need to act better. Then my mom came over to visit and I started to get a headache-- for good reason. Not my best day. So I sat in the tub and fortunately the headache did go away. My husband put the babies to bed and everybody else too which was nice and I got to rest. I went to bed early and got some decent sleep. soooooo.....

Today was a really good day. I loved it. I thought about how to make things run smoother and it worked pretty well even with violin lessons in the middle of it all. So this is what we did: I got up before the kids and exercised. I always feel so much better when I exercise. It's the one thing I do for myself. I love it. I just handle life so much better when I exercise. When I was done I started making breakfast and cleaning the kitchen and the kids started getting up. I told the kids to eat and do their chores and start school as soon as possible so that we wouldn't have a repeat of yesterday. They did very well so when it was time for school we had nice clean areas to do it in. I love that. Then I set the timer for 30 min. increments. I told the kids they had to work hard during that time with me helping them, then the boys could have a break while I helped the girls and the girls could do their piano practice or reading while I worked with the boys. I set the timer and didn't add minutes for the time it took for kids to find their books. When the timer beeped we were done.

So I started with boys- we worked on multiplication tables and they did well knowing we would stop when the timer beeped-- the girls did some of the things they can do on their own-- then I did 30 min. of Greek with the girls and the boys continued on with their work that they can do on their own surprisingly because I told them they could take a break. Anyway, when we finished Greek, the girls started math, but they were not allowed to ask me for any help because I was helping the boys finish up their reading, phonics and math workbooks, they were to skip the stuff they needed help with and when the timer went off I would help them. We were done at about 12:45 p.m. It was so awesome. The boys were all done and the girls were done with the hard parts. YAY!!

Then we started some birthday invitations, I nursed the babies, got lunch on the table and we got off to violin lessons. I needed a break after that so we all took one and then resumed school with yoga and music time outside. It was beautiful outside. We came in for Spanish, French, Scriptures, stories and -- oh I guess we forgot science today-- oh well. The rest of group time went rather well. The kids listened and payed attention fairly well. Then the boys went to their friend's house, the girls finished up stuff and I started dinner and then went to vote. My 11 yr.old then baked her 1st loaf of bread all by herself. It took her a while but it turned out pretty good.

Good day-- I guess I'd better go to bed so we can have a repeat of today!!