My baby boy is starting FIFTH GRADE?!

I know that just all of cyberspace is dying, just dying to know what The Boy is going to do next year in homeschool. Bwaa-haa-haa! Too bad! I'm going to tell you anyway!!

This year, The Boy worked his way through the 4th grade curriculum from the Calvert School in Baltimore. I liked using the Calvert School materials and lesson plans, because it gave me much-needed structure and scope, and because I could be reasonably sure that he’d learn “what a fourth grader should know”. While I was happy with the Calvert School homeschool curriculum, my overall impression of this year was “unremarkable”. Even my husband keeps saying that the year before was more fun.

The biggest problem with a soup-to-nuts curriculum is that (as you'd expect) everything is at the same grade level. I didn't like the Calvert math, but I could swap it out for Saxon. The spelling and grammar were way to easy, so I'd have to swap that out, too. He’s outgrowing the “survey of science” textbooks, and needs more in-depth studies. His writing skills are still a bit fractured, but coming along pretty well, using the Writing with Ease approach -- learn to understand what you read, learn to summarize what you read, learn to outline what you read, learn to write from an outline, learn to write your own outlines. I don’t think the “practice, practice, practice” approach to learning writing will work for another year.

This said, I’m not going back to Calvert next year. I appreciated how easy it was to use, but it’s not serving our purpose right now. Next year, I’m planning on mixing-and-matching.


His language arts will come from Michael Clay Thompson Language Arts: Caesar’s English, Music of the Hemispheres (poetry), Grammar Town, Practice Town (workbook). This is a “gifted” series for language arts, designed for children to love to roll in language.

We’ll continue with to Susan Wise Bauer’s Writing with Ease series, since it’s been so helpful in teaching him some organization and comprehension. I’m also learning how to teach a product named “Excellence in Writing”, which is similar, but more active.

I've bought a few literature guides for formal reading. One is for a Short Stories collected by Avi. Another is The Trojan Wars, by Olivia Coolidge. I don’t have a reading list for next year yet, but it will probably include How to Train your Dragon, Hank the Cowdog, and the Warrior series. I’ll be looking toward Harry Potter and The Hobbit as well. There are certainly plenty of reading lists out there.

Since the critical thinking work from Calvert was so helpful this year, I’ve bought one of the Critical Thinking Company’s books for him: Building Thinking Skills, Level 2 (grades 4-6). This series focuses on both visual and verbal critical thinking skills, such as analogies, Venn diagrams, opposites, relationships, exceptions to the rule, etc.

He’ll be using Life of Fred – Fractions by Stanley F. Schmidt for his math. Now that he has mastered arithmetic, it’s time to play with mathematics. This densely-packed story of a five-year-old college professor teaches fractions without all the repetitiveness that bugs The Boy so much. Review is built into each lesson. This series continues on through Calculus, but I’ve only bought this one, to see if he likes it.

He’ll be starting a weather and climate unit study from a company named Moving Beyond the Page. The instruction is from their own book Weather and Climate - A Student Directed Science Unit by Katie Durgin-Bruce. The source material is in Weather by Brian Cosgrove, and I’ve bought their Weather and Climate Kit to use in the labs. The series continues with geography, and geology, but I’ve only bought the Weather and Climate, to see if he likes it.

We finished our study of regions of the United States this year with Calvert, and I think we’ll head back to ancient history for a while. Year before last, we covered prehistory through the fall of the Minoans. We had started ancient Greece, but lost traction. We’ll head back into The Story of the World, Ancient Times by Susan Wise Bauer, picking up where we left off. I think we may fold in D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, just for fun. If we lose traction again, I may switch to the American history series History of US by Joy Hakim, which has study guides as well.

I’ll probably continue with his handwriting work. I’ll also try to find him some art and music activities, since he really does seem to enjoy it.


See? You're still reading. Now, was that so bad? ;)

Nothin' doin'...

Has it been since June 27? But it's barely July -- OMG! It's July 8th!



I keep meaning to post, but I never think that there's anything to post about. Except when I'm in the shower. Then I'm freakin' brilliant! Pulitzer prize material, I tell you, but by the time I'm dry. Nada.



The Boy has been in compute graphics camp all week, and am I exhausted. Oh sure, he's exhausted, too. Mostly it's the noise, the pressure, the unexpectedness of it all. Then there's the things that bother The Boy. ba-bum-bump! (Did I mention that I'm tired..?)



We're having "something made of ground beef" tonight. The Boy's calendar o' food says "meatloaf", but he's not getting it. I might cook the beef. Yeah, I think it's going to be cooked beef. And, umm, leftover brown rice and leftover pasta, and a bag of steam-in-the-microwave veggies. Maybe I'll melt cheese on The Girl's beef.



All I know is that The Man is going back into work this evening after the grave insult of being asked to come home a little early this afternoon so my dad wouldn't go nuts watching PBSKids' cartoons with The Girl all afternoon. Yeah. The Man's office hours ended at 2:30, so he came home, worked out, and took a nap. How do I get in on that deal? ;)

The secret to child discipline, according to Auntie

Well, I'm at my brother's house, out of state. No one has killed anyone, which is good. And we're all getting along pretty well.

I have, however, added child-rearing to my list of things I don't discuss with my brother. Why is it that I can order my girlfriends around, and they either say, "Oh, good idea!" and ignore me, or they just plain ignore me, but my brother says things like, "I know you think I'm just your baby brother, but I do have a brain!" Jeez. If he had gotten half of what my sister and I have from my mother, he'd know that listening is optional. Actually taking the advice is just weird. I swear to the living God, if my mother had said, "You know what you really OUGHT to do..." one more time I'd have shot her.

The Boy and Small Cousin (age 4) have been at it hammer and tongs. Until last month, she's been an only child. Nothing happens in this house without her approval. Her parents talk tough, but she's not fooled. She whacks The Boy with a throw pillow because he won't let her play his DS, and he whacks her back, so she cries, "Auntie, he hit me!" Uh-huh. Did you hit him first? And how'd that smack feel? Uh-huh. Maybe he doesn't like it either. Live and learn babe, live and learn. You can almost hear the lights turning on in her brain.

For the most part, The Boy is being very kind and helpful to Small Cousin, taking her outside to blow bubbles, letting her poke his DS occasionally, amusing her in the restaurant. The hysterical part is that she's a bad influence on him. Yup, she talks him into doing things he KNOWS are wrong. I heard her telling him, "I know Mom says no, but it's okay! C'mon!" He can't say I didn't warn him.

See, I'm from the "natural consequences" school of thought. If you smack someone, they may smack you back. Hmm. Maybe you shouldn't do that. Hmm. If you leave the table during dinner, someone may eat your ice cream. Hmm. Maybe that's not a good idea either. After all, I DID promise you that I would. The problem is that tough love is hard on everyone. "I promised you that if you didn't do X, you wouldn't be able to do Y, didn't I? Sorry, that ship has sailed. Move along."

The trick? The secret to handling kids? Shhh. Don't tell anyone, now.

DISENGAGE.

Yup, you have to appear not to care if they scream the paint off the walls. You cannot let them see you grit your teeth, you can't yell at them when they Do Wrong. You just implement the consequence (or let it happen by itself) and tell them that you did promise that it would happen.

After 10 years, I think I care little enough about their "hurt feelings" that I can let it go. Too bad they'll be teenagers soon. And when I try to pass on this wisdom to the younger generation, they refuse to listen. It's enough to make you scream.

Disengage, dear. Disengage.

Living in squalor

Aha! I've just discovered why I (and oh, so many men) don't clean the house until it's filthy.

If you put off house cleaning long enough, it crosses the line between house cleaning and home repair. Home repair: good, fun, creative, big change when you're done. House cleaning: bad, unredeemingly boring, house looks about the same as it did when you started.

Example: If I let the kitchen floor become so filthy that I have to strip and wax it, the job is more like home repair than housecleaning.

Home repair makes you a hero. Mopping the kitchen floor makes you a patsy.

Now, how do I change my lousy attitude so we're not living in squalor?

Spelling list half-full...

You know when you've achieved special-needs-mom nirvana when...

you realize that you're happy the kid learned 12 new spelling words this week, rather than being pissed that she failed another spelling test.

Seriously. Kid's brain half-full, not half-empty.

Selfish woman...

Been out surfing the blogosphere for a few days now, and I'm starting to feel selfish. Not sharing enough.

School ends for us on Friday. The Boy is finishing up a year of Calvert School. It was a good year, but in retrospect, rather uneventful. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. His last year of public school (two years ago) was rather, umm, eventful. And not in a good way. But this was just, well, there.

As I've been finishing up Calvert's 160 lessons and 16 review lessons, I've been slacking on The Girl a little. She hasn't minded much.

I know that The Girl slacking off sounds bad, but actually, it's very good. The Girl tends to get bored with her limited diversions -- drawing, watching PBS Kids, and talking to her small stuffed toys -- so she likes school. 365 days of the year! For fun, outside "school", she has started doing crossword puzzles and multiplication tables. Yes, you heard me, multiplication tables. They all have different tunes, and are sung as loudly as possible. The sixes are done to the can-can: "6, 12, 18, 24; then 30, 32; then 36 and 48 and 54; that's eight!" She brings me the white board and markers. I "get" to write the equations first, then she writes the answers. We are so close to having the frickin' things down that I'm getting giddy.

Anyway, I'm hoping that The Girl takes a little break this summer, just to give me a break for a while. I have needs, too, you know! I need to paint the living room, I need to fix the garage shelves, I need to build a new end table for the bathroom. NEEDS, I tell you!

I've also been collecting stuff for next year. Bwaa-haa-haa!! The Boy is in for a shock. He's spent the last year complaining that school is boring. To be honest, if I have to teach "food webs" again, I'm going to scream, so I kind of hear where he's coming from. He studied grammar that he already knew, phonics that he already knew, and some science that he knew and some he didn't. He wasn't all that interested in learning about the other regions in the country. He read a few books he liked, a few that he tried not to like, and a few he loved. Turns out The Boy loves Nordic sagas. Who knew?

The best thing we got going this year wasn't even in Calvert. It was Writing with Ease by Susan Wise Brown. She contends that first they have to learn to think in sentences, learn to put words on paper, and THEN write down their own thoughts. The Boy buzzed through about half of book 1, then started on book 2. We're learning to summarize text now. It's been very useful to his scattered thoughts. Yayyyy!

I know that no one wants to know what we're going next year, so I'll probably post it later. ;) Lots of exciting stuff!

Shocked! Shocked at all you lightweights!

Two days after school let out, I ran across my first "Take my children. Please, take my children!" post. Jeez you guys... Two days?

I've been living with my kids 24/7 for the last two years, and I don't twitch. How is it that you can't handle two days?

Theory 1: Your kids are used to being entertained and directed for six hours a day, and now they don't know what to do.

Theory 2: Your kids are conditioned by the public school "survival of the fittest" attitude, so now they fight constantly and antagonize everyone for amusement.

Theory 3: Your kids are normal, but you're just out of shape. Use it or lose it, honey.

Theory 4: All that "alone time" made you forget that your kids are still rambunctious, and they're not using it all up at recess anymore.

Theory 5: You're a wuss. Hey, it's possible... I'm just sayin...

Anyone else? Theories?