Logic Stage History: A Follow Up - part 1

I blogged back in September concerning some of the changes I wanted to make regarding Jessie's history related writing. Basically my goal was to try to start moving beyond the confines of basic narration (at least as I see them) by slowly introducing more of a research driven writing format. After a full semester of using Jessie as my writing guinea pig, I'm pleased to see a lot of progress in both her confidence and her writing ability. I have also gotten several comments and some questions regarding exactly what we are doing for history writing this year, so I though I would revisit the topic and lay out some more specific examples, if for no other reason than so I don't have to reinvent the wheel in two years when Violet reaches this stage.

This week, I'll answer the question of where do I come up with my ideas. I'd love to have a magic resource or curriculum to plug in here and tell you it only takes me five minutes to glance through a list of suggestions and pick one, but sadly I know of no such resource (although I'm considering creating one). Instead, every weekend I gather together all of the resources I'm planning to have Jessie read for the week and try to find a quiet corner in my house to think. Some of the material, I've read before so I can just skim back through the pages to refresh my memory. The rest I read through and jot down some notes regarding the content.

Once the reading is finished, I ask myself a two questions. 1. What do I want her to learn from the material? I consider what topics are presented, how much information is available on each topic, whether to combine topics of keep them separate, etc. I also try to consider the amount of time we have each week. While I'd like her to write about everything, I sometimes choose to focus the writing assignments on only a portion of the reading and leave the remainder for discussion or just exposure. 2. What's the best way to write up the information? Basically I play student. If I was presented with this material and assigned to write a paragraph, essay, etc. what would I write about and what steps would be required. Then I consider the best way to break it down for Jessie and write up her daily reading and assignments. Sometimes I can just tell her to take notes and write a paragraph. Other times I provide her questions to help focus her attention on a certain area. Overall, it generally requires an hour or an hour and a half, but I consider it time well spent since she can then work fairly independently during the school week.

WW: Just Like Dad

Sink Reflections - 52 in 52 Week 2

Sink Reflections by Marla Cilley - The FlyLady

Every January I always get the urge to buckle down and get something accomplished that I've been putting off for a while. This month, I decided I really needed to revise my housecleaning / chore system to reflect the changing needs of my house. I also needed some inspiration to do some decluttering. I had visited the FlyLady website several years back and thought a quick read through of her book might give me some inspiration and some new ideas to incorporate for myself.

PROS

I love the FlyLady for several reasons. She is an excellent cheerleader. When looking at a kitchen that looks like it's been hit by a hurricane, her simple basic encouraging words often come to mind. "Your home did not get dirty in a day and it is not going to get clean overnight." When I ask one of the girls to do something, and they only do it what I would consider halfway, I remember "housework done incorrectly still blesses your family." When I'm facing a project that I don't think I have time to complete, I remember how 15 minutes a day can make a big difference. She's an excellent source of inspiration and a great motivator to get you started one step at a time. The basic set up of her system will work for anyone. Daily chores are accomplished by establishing routines in the morning and evening. Creating a weekly plan to manage the basic cleaning needs of the house and establishing zones to focus on deeper cleaning on a monthly basis(once you've finished decluttering) help eliminate the frustration of doing little bits here and there without being able to see improvements. Beyond basic housecleaning, there are chapters for paper clutter, laundry, menu planning, vacation planning, and moving. She also has a wonderful sense of humor (decluttering while singing "Please Release Me, Let Me Go) and a no nonsense attitude (no whining or excuses allowed).

CONS

I personally am not a true FlyBaby although I did try her website at one time (the emails drove me bonkers.) It simply didn't work for me. I personally find her basic weekly plan insufficient for my household. She only vacuums and mops once a week. (Don't ask me how she finishes each task in 10 minutes.) That set up might work if my house was empty most of the day, but with 4 kids home all day and a shedding Golden Retriever my floors alone would be a disaster after a couple of days (and no, I don't expect my floors to be perfectly clean all the time.) While I agree that making cleaning fun is a great way to get the kids involved, I don't think there needs to be a reward every time they help. When I tried her zone system for monthly chores, I found the distribution of work very uneven. Week 3 includes the main bathroom, kid's bathroom, children's rooms, office, and laundry area. She solves this problem by focusing on different rooms each month, but it just doesn't work for me. If I were going to change one aspect of the book, I would love to see more of an emphasis on personalizing the system with more examples of how different moms set up their routines and cleaning schedules.

FINAL THOUGHTS

For inspiration, motivation, and ideas to get you started, the FlyLady's book and website are excellent. The principles of the system do work. My caution for anyone reading is to remember that your household is unique. Following the FlyLady's or anyone else's house cleaning schedule, most likely will not work. Take the principles learned and figure out what works for your family. Make your own routines and weekly plans, and set up reasonable zones for your house. Apply what works and change or ignore what doesn't. Then you're end result will truly be one that works for you.

Week 20: Adjusting to Changes

It's been a crazy week. We finally got a new computer on Sunday. I spent three mornings trying to download the virus software update (68MB on dialup is no fun), but I finally succeeded on Wednesday and did a little happy dance around the room. Jessie and I have been working on how to get around on the new desktop and find things in the new Word program. She's not as ingrained with the old software as I am, so she's catching on much faster. Now I just have to get the typing program set back up for her, and hopefully get the old files off the hard drive of the old computer. (Thankfully almost all of my homeschooling files are on a flash drive.) Here's our week.

MATH

Jessie finished up the last review exercise in her 5A workbook as well as the end of semester review in her 5A IP book. She's excited to be halfway through her math program for the year and ready to start the 5B books next week. Overall she did very well on the review. There were a few careless mistakes here and and there and the usual couple of problems that require a second look from Mom to figure out. ( At least they're not too hard once my brain wakes up for the morning.)

Violet has been working steadily through the money unit at the end of the 3A textbook and workbook. Most days she actually went ahead and started the workbook pages on her own without a lesson from Mom. ("It's just adding/subtracting", she tells me. "I don't need any help.") There were a few borrowing mistakes which prompted a quick review, but otherwise she has done an excellent job without me teaching any of the concepts from the textbook, generally finished well ahead of schedule for the morning.

Benny has continued working on the adding and subtracting section of Miquon Orange without any help from me this week. In Singapore 1A, he began the unit on subtraction within 10 in the IP. Basically, I read the directions for him and helped him stay on task. (The IP assignments tend to be a little longer than the regular workbook ones.) He's also been having DH write out a series of numbers for him to practice copying. I'm not sure what gave him the idea, but he's worked very hard on it.



LANGUAGE ARTS

In spelling, Jessie successfully completed her second lesson in SWO H. Monday, she took the unit test on pronouns for grammar. The rest of the week was spent in the new unit on adjectives. I understand why they gave her the four question (which, whose, how many, and what kind of) to help her find adjectives. I'm not sure what the purpose of classifying adjectives as either descriptive or limiting is when they're diagrammed the same way. In CW, she completed her rough draft of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit", edited it, and finalized her story. Hopefully, next week we can get on track to both analyze and write the story in a week. In literature, she's still not thrilled with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but she finished it on Friday. In Age of the Fable, she finished reading about Aeneas and read a chapter which discussed the Egyptian gods and goddesses.

Violet's spelling continues to go well. She completed another 1 1/2 lessons this week. In grammar, we worked a little more with direct objects before switching topics to discuss paragraphs. Two days were spent rearranging sentences within a paragraph into the correct order. The third day, we discussed what a topic sentence was and how the other sentences relate to it, and then she applied the knowledge by finding the topic sentence in a paragraph and crossing out sentences that didn't belong. In CW, she completed her rewrite of "The Hare and the Tortoise". She also completed reading The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Before Achilles for literature.

Benny and I continued to work on the long a sound. He still automatically uses the short sound, and I have to tell him to use the long sound. I think there is at least one page in the Pyramids book that we can read next week. We may need to do some practice with the letter magnets as well. His copywork for this week was "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star".

HISTORY / ART

In Old Testament history this week, we continued with the story of King David. The girls each completed a map showing the kingdom of Israel under Saul and the land added under David. Violet finished her readings on David and added to her notebook. Jessie has a day or two of reading next week in order to finish up her David summary.

In ancient Greece, this week we visited Athens. The girls completed summaries of Draco, Solon, and Pisistratus. They also read about the lives of women and children in ancient Greece. Jessie wrote a couple of paragraphs, while I had Violet just list 5 things she found interesting. For maps, they both marked Athens, and Jessie also colored in Attica. There were lots of timeline figures for this week and last. The girls added Lycurgus, the rise of Sparta, the Olympics, Draco, Solon, Pisistratus, and democracy in Athens. Benny and I looked at a few pages in his coloring book on life in ancient Greece covering the gymnasiums and the Olympics. The other book I had scheduled wasn't available, and I missed doing the Athens pages Wednesday since I was concentrating on keeping the computer online and downloading.

No art this week.

GEOGRAPHY

We started our study of Africa this week by having each of the girls build our Middle East & Africa puzzle. Now I really need to get cracking on those notebooking pages. DH also ironed out my markable map for me, and we put it back up on the wall. Each of the girls on their own went through and named as many of the countries as they could.

SCIENCE

This week we learned about the periodic table, metals, non-metals, and hydrogen. DH did the metals lab with the kids since wiring a flashlight bulb to a battery is more up his alley than mine. We were a bit hard-pressed to come up with items listing partially hydrogenated oils on their labels in our cabinet. Luckily DH insists on Ritz crackers and Peter Pan peanut butter. We waited to start the lab for non-metals on Friday since the egg was supposed to sit in fluoride toothpaste for three days. I'll tell you more about it next week.

LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie completed her normal logic work, as well as lesson 17 in LfC B. Violet tested for lesson 1 of LfC A on Tuesday and then started lesson 2. She's doing very well, but she needs to watch her spelling. She kept changing the stem of amo to amo instead of ama.

OTHER

Henry has donned DH's orange stocking cap every morning this week right after breakfast before heading off on an adventure. Most of the adventures simply involved playing with siblings or trying to sneak into Benny's room to play with the train track. Friday, he decided to test his climbing skills by climbing the piano down in the basement while his sister was in the bathroom. Needless to say DH and I weren't two thrilled with that expedition.

WW: Big Boy in Brother's Shirt

Love and Respect - 52 in 52 Week 1

Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires, The Respect He Desperately Needs by Eggerichs

Summary:

Miscommunication is easily the most common cause of conflict within a marriage. Eggerich focuses on the difference between what a man or a woman need and how that influences their their perception of the words and actions around them. A man's greatest need is for respect. He knows his wife loves him, but he may not think she likes (respects) him. A woman's greatest need is for love. She knows she loves her husband but wonders if he loves her as much. Conflict arises when a husband comes across as unloving, prompting a disrespectful response from his wife, which in turn results in more unloving reactions, and so on. Similarly when a wife comes across as disrepectful, the husband reacts unlovingly, and the two negative behaviors feed on each other. The result is called the Crazy Cycle.

In contrast, when the cycle is reversed, a wife gives her husband respect (or he shows her love), then a good-willed spouse will respond in a positive fashion creating a positive feedback loop called the Energizing Cycle. He explains how a husband can love his wife using the acronym COUPLE (closeness, openness, understanding, peacemaking, loyalty, and esteem. He also explains how a wife can respect her husband using the acronym CHAIRS (conquest, hierarchy, authority, insight, relationship, and sexuality). While the hope of receiving positive feedback from one's spouse is a good motivator to change one's behavior, Eggerichs closes by suggesting that a better reason is to act simply out of faith. A Christian husband should be loving towards his wife simply because Christ calls him to do so. A Christian wife should be respectful of her husband simply because Christ calls her to do so.

RESPONSE

I confess that I understood the wife's side of the argument 100% of the time the first time through. I didn't always agree with the stereotype, but I could understand the point he was trying to make. Understanding the husband's point of view in fairness is going to take a second or third reading and some more time to process and consider the information. Despite my complete lack of understanding, I decided to pick a couple of the suggestions from the CHAIRS section to work on during the course of the week. I won't go into details, but the results have been very positive. I would definitely recommend it for any married Christian, even those with a "good" marriage.

Week 19: Trying to Restart

It has been a long week. On the school front, the new schedule is working well. I just need to tweak a couple of places. Both girls have been completing their schoolwork early by getting started on their own before 8:00. On the home front, my computer crashed Thursday afternoon. Today I'm using my MIL's computer to do this report and prep next week's lessons. I need to also do some research to replace our broken pc because I'm not buying a new motherboard for a 9 year old pc.

MATH

Jessie spent the first half of the week completing the section on angles in her IP book. A few of the problems were challenging enough that we worked on them together. Thursday and Friday , she completed the last review exercise in her 5A textbook. She should finish both the workbook and IP next week, and then it's on to the 5B set.

Violet completed the IP section on multiplication with 6, 7, 8, and 9. Wednesday she began the final unit on money in the 3A textbook and workbook. We also realized that she has gotten ahead in her CWP book. Since she just completed the CWP money section, she'll get a couple of week off. Her Miquon just started multiplication of large numbers, so it will provide some good review.

Benny is still adding and subtracting in both Singapore 1A and Miquon Orange. Some days he needs the blocks, and other days he doesn't. Some we work through the page together, and others he asks me to let him do it alone.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Jessie started SWO H this week and scored a 95 on her first test. In grammar she finished up the textbook pages on pronouns and is ready to test on Monday. We did have to review the definitions of demonstrative pronouns, indefinite pronouns, and interrogative pronouns when they had her using all three at once. We only completed half of her CW work before the computer crashed, so we'll try again next week. She's started the Legend of Sleepy Hollow for literature, which she tells me is even more boring than Rumpelstiltzkin in the beginning. In Age of the Fable, she has been reading about Aeneas.

Violet completed another spelling lesson successfully. In grammar, she learned to diagram direct objects. Then she had sentences with and without direct objects to find the direct objects and diagram. In literature, she has picked back up with her previous selection and requested that she read The Children's Homer for her next book. In CW, we completed the analysis work for "The Hare and the Tortoise".

Benny has started on long vowel words this week. So far we're just working with the long a. He's starting to catch on as we slowly go through the first page a second time. For copywork, he's been writing the lyrics to "Jesus Loves the Little Children". In literature, we picked back up with the previous books.

HISTORY / ART

In Old Testament history, we've all been reading about the reign of King David. The girls completed maps showing Ish-bosheth's kingdom and David's kingdom. The notebooking pages will be put together next week once we finish David.

In ancient Greece, this week's focus was the Spartans. Jessie read about Lycurgus, Spartan life, the Messenian War, and the Olympics. She completed a map of Sparta and Messenia and wrote paragraphs covering everything but the Olympics. Violet read about Lycurgus and Spartan life and marked Sparta on a map. No drawings this week. No timeline figures either because of the computer crashing before I printed them.

GEOGRAPHY

Not completed.

SCIENCE

We started God Design Properties of Atoms and Molecules this week. We covered matter, chemistry, atoms and their parts, and different ways atoms combine. The girls have enjoyed the hands-on aspect. I've been pleased with how the worksheets they've completed have helped apply what they learned in the reading. I'll post a more detailed review in a few weeks.

LATIN / LOGIC

Jessie completed another lesson in LfC B. The week emphasized conjugating duo and Roman numerals. Violet started LfC A and has enjoyed it so far. Logic was completed as usual with Jessie starting Think-a-Grams A2 and Min Benders B3.

OTHER

Henry has been all over the place this week. He's spent a lot of time with DH. He also discovered that he can reach the dog treats and loves to have the dog follow him all around the house before giving him the treat.