The big news this week was an overhaul in Jimmy's memory work. The Classical Conversations' memory cards were fabulous, but they are designed to help reinforce CC lessons. I decided that our memory cards should be reinforcing our lessons. So I took a few hours to figure out what that meant. The cards from CC were a great starting point - I'm even using several as-is. We will have 7 subjects to memorize - History, Bible, Geography, Grammar, Math, Science, and US Presidents. The History group will reflect the lessons from our History textbook (The Story of the World v1 by Susan Wise Bauer). Bible will help us memorize the 10 commandments (split up more than they were in the CC cards) and 14 catechism questions. For Geography, we'll be memorizing the 13 original US colonies and then all of the US states by region. We'll add a little bit of map work to our lessons. Grammar cards will be all of the preposition cards from the CC set (memorizing the definition of preposition as well as all of the prepositions).. For Math, we'll memorize several conversions (like feet to miles) and several equations to calculate area (like the area of a triangle). I pulled out several of the CC science cards for our new memory stack, focusing mostly on classification of living things, rocks/volcanoes, and atmospheric science. Finally, we'll be memorizing the US Presidents, with some flash card lessons to explain who these people are. Now that we're matching the memory work to our actual lessons, Jimmy seems to be retaining more.
The big news in Math is testing. We have added speed drills & tests to Jimmy's lessons. Speed drills are 1 minute quizzes. Jimmy is struggling a little with the speed (he likes the time to figure out the answer with logic, like Mommy), but we talked about the need to memorize the easy stuff so he has time to puzzle out the harder stuff. He still gets frustrated, but we're moving in the right direction. I feel your pain, kid. He had the first official math test today - 100% on both written & oral tests! He was very proud of himself.
Caleb demanded phonics work to be added back in to his lessons, lol. So we'll be reviewing phonics flash cards on Jimmy's reading days. We did Bb, Dd, and Cc this week - and he remembered all of the sounds! Even Cc's duel sounds. So proud!
Jimmy finished the first set of spelling words this week. The toughest words from that list were "am" & "first" - they each required several attempts. Other words tackled this week were game & trust.
Both boys are getting more comfortable talking about the Psalms as we read them. Jimmy surprises me often with his depth of insight. One passage described God's wrath toward sinners. Jimmy not only realized that we all deserve that wrath, but he understood that Jesus took that punishment for us. "Whoa!" he said. Our favorite insight, however, was how "O Most High" sounds a lot like "Almost High". Silly boys!
This week was a little tough on me personally. We had previously planned to close on our new house yesterday. I had been hoping to set up our new school room. I don't know what God has planned for us, but I really hope we'll be moving soon. The commute is rough on Randy & the constant show-ready cleaning is rough on me & the boys. I have to get over this pity party & trust God. I'm cranky & the boys are getting cranky in sympathy. Please pray for us, dear readers.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Second week & going strong!
This week was hectic. We're starting back up with open houses (our house went on the market in June, got an offer in Sept, and fell through in Oct - the relocation company dropped the ball & lost us our sale). Lots of cleaning and "don't touch that!" going on in our home. I hate doing this to the boys. One plus is that, during our open house on Wednesday afternoon, we skipped school & went to the park. It was a fun, refreshing time.
History is Jimmy's clear favorite subject. He loves listening to the stories. He even makes more of an effort to memorize the History memory cards than any other subject's cards. We read another 3 chapters, bringing us up to the Israelites in Egypt. I was surprised when we read that story. I thought this was a much more secular history text.
Caleb's favorite subject is Math. We played with counting bears & made a pictograph this week. Caleb got the concept of a graph right away. (I remember Jimmy struggling a bit to keep things lined up without skipping columns.) I think Caleb is going to be a visual learner while his big brother is a thinking/doing learner.
Jimmy's math is going well, too. He now has seatwork that he does on his own before we have formal lessons. First seatwork attempt took way too long, but setting a timer seems to be helping a lot. Today, Jimmy even beat the timer by a considerable amount of time. He gets the occasional problem wrong, but they're always because he wasn't paying close attention. All of the warnings that "most children have difficulty understanding this concept" mean nothing to him. My little geek!
Spelling is going surprisingly well. Our biggest challenge is convincing Jimmy this it is OK to make mistakes. He sometimes just refuses to even try if he's not 100% sure about how a word is spelled. This week's words were home, bring, truck (repeated), sting (repeated), am (repeated & to be repeated again), and first (to be repeated next week).
In Bible, we read Psalm 5-8. Jimmy surprised me yesterday by asking some pretty deep questions about a passage that described God's wrath towards sinners. We had a good chat about how Jesus took that punishment for us. He was appropriately impressed.
Memory work is going more slowly than I had anticipated. The Classical Conversation memory cards have a LOT of information to memorize. I'm having trouble memorizing some of them, too. We'll keep working at it, but I might have to repeat a week here & there. Caleb got some new memory work, too. His Sunday School class is working on the kids' catechism, so we're helping him during daily memory work. He's up to questions #1-4. He has them down pat.
So far, everyone is still excited when I call "School time!" Let's hope that keeps up!
History is Jimmy's clear favorite subject. He loves listening to the stories. He even makes more of an effort to memorize the History memory cards than any other subject's cards. We read another 3 chapters, bringing us up to the Israelites in Egypt. I was surprised when we read that story. I thought this was a much more secular history text.
Caleb's favorite subject is Math. We played with counting bears & made a pictograph this week. Caleb got the concept of a graph right away. (I remember Jimmy struggling a bit to keep things lined up without skipping columns.) I think Caleb is going to be a visual learner while his big brother is a thinking/doing learner.
Jimmy's math is going well, too. He now has seatwork that he does on his own before we have formal lessons. First seatwork attempt took way too long, but setting a timer seems to be helping a lot. Today, Jimmy even beat the timer by a considerable amount of time. He gets the occasional problem wrong, but they're always because he wasn't paying close attention. All of the warnings that "most children have difficulty understanding this concept" mean nothing to him. My little geek!
Spelling is going surprisingly well. Our biggest challenge is convincing Jimmy this it is OK to make mistakes. He sometimes just refuses to even try if he's not 100% sure about how a word is spelled. This week's words were home, bring, truck (repeated), sting (repeated), am (repeated & to be repeated again), and first (to be repeated next week).
In Bible, we read Psalm 5-8. Jimmy surprised me yesterday by asking some pretty deep questions about a passage that described God's wrath towards sinners. We had a good chat about how Jesus took that punishment for us. He was appropriately impressed.
Memory work is going more slowly than I had anticipated. The Classical Conversation memory cards have a LOT of information to memorize. I'm having trouble memorizing some of them, too. We'll keep working at it, but I might have to repeat a week here & there. Caleb got some new memory work, too. His Sunday School class is working on the kids' catechism, so we're helping him during daily memory work. He's up to questions #1-4. He has them down pat.
So far, everyone is still excited when I call "School time!" Let's hope that keeps up!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Classical education - what is it?
For anyone who was wondering what I meant by "classical education" in my last post, here is a fantastic link that helps explain the theory behind it.
Classical Education
I love the concept of giving my children building blocks they can later use to form thoughts & arguments. I remember it being very difficult to memorize, for example, names & dates of important events in high school History. How much easier would it have been to understand the politics of US History if I already had all of the important events stored away in memory?
The great part about this educational style is that it seems fairly easy to adapt to whatever other materials you are already using. Just focus on memorizing stuff in their early years, and transition to using that stored information in their older years. Sounds easy enough. Now to put it to practice!
Classical Education
I love the concept of giving my children building blocks they can later use to form thoughts & arguments. I remember it being very difficult to memorize, for example, names & dates of important events in high school History. How much easier would it have been to understand the politics of US History if I already had all of the important events stored away in memory?
The great part about this educational style is that it seems fairly easy to adapt to whatever other materials you are already using. Just focus on memorizing stuff in their early years, and transition to using that stored information in their older years. Sounds easy enough. Now to put it to practice!
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Back to school!
We started our new school year this week! I was going to wait until after we moved, but our moving date got trashed. Long story.
Anyway, back to school! We have a lot of changes this year. We're not starting FIAR just yet. There are only 15 books in volume 3, so there will be plenty of time for that later. I'm incorporating what we had planned (but didn't do) for the summer into the first half of this school year. So far, so good!
Math. Caleb is starting Saxon Kindergarten. He had two lessons this week. I think this is the perfect age for him to do this. Jimmy was bored at this stage, but Caleb is content to play & have fun. Jimmy is starting Abeka Grade 2. We switched from Saxon to Abeka because, while Abeka moves more slowly, it has colorful worksheets. I am hoping that will help keep Jimmy's focus. We did 4 lessons of that this week, and so far he loves it! He did notice that is was a little beneath his abilities, though - I told him that we were just reviewing things before we jumped in. Here's hoping!
Bible. Instead of memorizing verses, I've decided to read longer passages to the boys. After a wonderful workshop where I focused on Psalm 2, I thought the Psalms would be perfect. I read one Psalm each day to them - Psalms 1-4 this week. They're antsy during reading time, especially Caleb, but I think everyone will settle down once the routine is established.
History. This is new. We did a little history last summer, and this was to be our more formal attempt this summer. I am reading The Story of the World, volume 1, to them a chapter at a time. It's a wonderful books full of stories about how ancient life might have been. Jimmy in particular was fascinated by the 3 chapters we've read so far. I'm learning a lot, too!
Spelling. This is also new. This replaces copywork from last year. This is only for Jimmy. I googled lists of spelling words for first graders to start. I also got a list of first grade spelling words from a friend whose son just started second grade (it was his spelling work from last year). The plan is to do 3 words each spelling day. If Jimmy gets the word correct, we move on. If it's wrong, it becomes one of the three words next time. This week's words were drop, at, up, nest, will (repeated), nine, home (to be repeated next week), and bug.
Finally, I added memory work for Jimmy. Since we're not memorizing Bible verses and I want to add in classical style education, I found a memory card set from Classical Conversations, a classical education homeschooling co-op. I am not interested in a co-op just yet, but some of their materials are very useful. The memory cards we'll be using this year are from Cycle 1 and cover History, Math, Geography, Science, & Grammar. (There is also Latin, but we're skipping that.). This week, Jimmy memorized Commandments 1-5 (History), the 1 & 2 tables (Math), 5 parts of the Fertile Crescent (Geography, which also tied into this week's History lessons), the 5 kingdoms of living things (Science), & the definition of "preposition" (Grammar). Not too shabby!
We had school Monday through Thursday this week. I took Friday off since I wasn't feeling well. =( On Wednesday & Thursday, we went to a rummage sale at my in-law's church - the Big R. It was good to get away. The boys still did a great job at school even with the travel. I think we've got a good thing going so far!
Anyway, back to school! We have a lot of changes this year. We're not starting FIAR just yet. There are only 15 books in volume 3, so there will be plenty of time for that later. I'm incorporating what we had planned (but didn't do) for the summer into the first half of this school year. So far, so good!
Math. Caleb is starting Saxon Kindergarten. He had two lessons this week. I think this is the perfect age for him to do this. Jimmy was bored at this stage, but Caleb is content to play & have fun. Jimmy is starting Abeka Grade 2. We switched from Saxon to Abeka because, while Abeka moves more slowly, it has colorful worksheets. I am hoping that will help keep Jimmy's focus. We did 4 lessons of that this week, and so far he loves it! He did notice that is was a little beneath his abilities, though - I told him that we were just reviewing things before we jumped in. Here's hoping!
Bible. Instead of memorizing verses, I've decided to read longer passages to the boys. After a wonderful workshop where I focused on Psalm 2, I thought the Psalms would be perfect. I read one Psalm each day to them - Psalms 1-4 this week. They're antsy during reading time, especially Caleb, but I think everyone will settle down once the routine is established.
History. This is new. We did a little history last summer, and this was to be our more formal attempt this summer. I am reading The Story of the World, volume 1, to them a chapter at a time. It's a wonderful books full of stories about how ancient life might have been. Jimmy in particular was fascinated by the 3 chapters we've read so far. I'm learning a lot, too!
Spelling. This is also new. This replaces copywork from last year. This is only for Jimmy. I googled lists of spelling words for first graders to start. I also got a list of first grade spelling words from a friend whose son just started second grade (it was his spelling work from last year). The plan is to do 3 words each spelling day. If Jimmy gets the word correct, we move on. If it's wrong, it becomes one of the three words next time. This week's words were drop, at, up, nest, will (repeated), nine, home (to be repeated next week), and bug.
Finally, I added memory work for Jimmy. Since we're not memorizing Bible verses and I want to add in classical style education, I found a memory card set from Classical Conversations, a classical education homeschooling co-op. I am not interested in a co-op just yet, but some of their materials are very useful. The memory cards we'll be using this year are from Cycle 1 and cover History, Math, Geography, Science, & Grammar. (There is also Latin, but we're skipping that.). This week, Jimmy memorized Commandments 1-5 (History), the 1 & 2 tables (Math), 5 parts of the Fertile Crescent (Geography, which also tied into this week's History lessons), the 5 kingdoms of living things (Science), & the definition of "preposition" (Grammar). Not too shabby!
We had school Monday through Thursday this week. I took Friday off since I wasn't feeling well. =( On Wednesday & Thursday, we went to a rummage sale at my in-law's church - the Big R. It was good to get away. The boys still did a great job at school even with the travel. I think we've got a good thing going so far!
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