Homeschool Spanish Academy

This morning at 9 AM, both of my sons logged into their Spanish lessons on Google Meet.  Each had a 50-minute private lesson with a native Spanish speaker and trained tutor, who teaches from Guatemala.  Neither son complained.  Both enjoy their lessons and are developing beautiful accents, a love for the language, and an interest in other cultures.  I highly recommend Homeschool Spanish Academy.  

https://www.spanish.academy/

Back to Cozi for planning

With the New Year, I realized that we needed to change our system for keeping the family calendar.  With me in graduate school, an active volunteering life, 2 kids homeschooling, and the other in a final year of free range preschool, the system I had been happily using (paper planner/bullet journal) was about to break down.  The main issue was that I needed to enter a lot of repeated events (karate practice, zoom classes, etc), and the time it would take to enter everyone's activity into a paper calendar was not feasible. Not to mention the fact that the data would not be portable or easily transferrable to anyone else.  

I first tried Homeschool Planet (yet again).  This is the third time I have tried it, and I do not like it.  I also do not understand why it looks the same as it did several years ago.  I find it complicated and clunky, and every time I access it, it is more dated.  

I then decided that everything I need to do (since I do not track grades), I could do in Cozi, which I had used years ago.  I put everyone's scheduled activities into it.  I also put in all chores and assignments as all day events.  All of us have the app on our phone.  Each boy's individual agenda is also printed, and I put them on the refrigerator with magnet clips.  

Here is what I like about this system:  

• My husband and I and each boy can be clear on our expectations, eliminating a lot of the fuzziness that was so bothersome to Bug. 
• I can punch holes in the agendas when the week is over, and I actually have a record of what they did!  I can also jot things down (documentaries they
  watched, etc) that were not assigned.  This is good protection for me in the extremely unlikely scenario that we would be accused of educational neglect.  Of course, in that scenario, I am also pretty sure that 5 minutes of a social worker chatting with my kids about any academic subject would do the trick as well.  
• We can all access the calendar from our phones.  
• I can use the reminder function.  
• It's easy to input events, to make them repeat, and to change them.  

What I don't like:  

• I feel like the to-do function could be improved.  I would like to input their chores and repeating assignments as to-do items rather than all-day events.  
• There is so much on the calendar that the monthly view isn't usable.  
• I liked my simple, low-tech paper system.  It was calming.  But 5 people with irregular schedules is too much for me to keep up with using a low tech system.  

Planning English class (7th and 11th grade combined)

With Bee home next semester, and Bug no longer taking English at his co-op. I am coming up with a plan to teach them both myself.  The truth is that I really don't like teaching writing.  It's the subject I am most qualified to teach and also the one I actually have professional experience teaching (college writing lab).  It comes very easily to me, however, and I find it frustrating and tedious to try and teach it.  When I write something, I often start at the beginning and end at the end, with minimal planning and revision.  I have a process for writing research papers which involves a bit of writing notes and quotes, but it is mostly internal and difficult to explain to an overwhelmed young writer.  

The most enjoyable curriculum I have used has been WriteShop.  It breaks the process of writing down in ways that I honestly can't.  So, I will continue with Bee where we left off in the program a couple of years ago and start Bug in WriteShop I.  

I will also be working with them both on some basic skills with writing research papers.  I ordered a book of citation exercises to use with Bug, and a book of help for writing a research paper for Bee, but I may just use both for both.  We will see.  I've learned that too much advance planning tends to backfire.  It's best to be loosely prepared and go with the flow.  

But the part of their English classes that I'm truly excited about is POETRY.  This is the perfect thing for us to study because poems are short.  I can choose a poem, we can read it together, discuss it, do some analysis, and be done.  Very little preparation is required.  And poetry is so important and so understudied in high school and college.  I hope to have them take turns choosing poems at some point.  I'm excited about this new adventure!  

And we come full circle

Some time ago, I posted about how Bee's homeschool journey had come to an end.  Well, 3 semesters later, we think we're going to pull him out again.  The school system's pandemic learning plan has been a disaster, especially for someone like him who is twice exceptional.  I will not violate my child's privacy by discussing all of the particulars, but there are other problems as well.  Traditional school is not a good way for him to learn.  I'm not sure it is good for anyone, including the teenage girls in his advanced classes who cry regularly over the workload and the pressure.  

There has been discouragement and disillusionment among all of us, especially my husband and Bee.  The system pretends to be something that it is not.  Mastery of material or profound engagement with subject matter aren't the focus--assignment completion and following instructions are.  Helps for kids with ADHD is abysmal, so we've found.  Advocating is pretty much a waste of time.  It's not the people (administrators and teacher); the system is deeply flawed.  

Bug has been taking outside classes.  They are good, but I'm coming to realize that I do just as good a job if not better with helping my children learn than any teacher.  And signing my kids up for classes often causes me more stress than just doing it myself.  (Except for science, where my interest and ability is very low).  So, Bug will be taking fewer classes too.  

I am in a hybrid-distance seminary program, receiving A+'s.  This has done a massive amount for my confidence level.  Homeschooling is so thankless, with no outside gratification.  It's nice to feel competent and knowledgeable at something.  

So, I will be back to homeschooling my boys.  Bee has three more semesters until graduation! I am truly thankful to have the option to homeschool my children.  It is so hard sometimes, but after much prayer, I believe we are making the right choice for our family.  

Shiller Math: After 27 Lessons

Dot and I have completed 27 lessons on Shiller Math, and we are loving it so far.  She begs to do it most days.  I'm thrilled because it is such a nice program.  It seems thorough, gentle, and, just like in a Montessori class, it's learning through exploration. 

As a trained Montessori teacher, I find the materials a little different, and sometimes things are scripted in a way that aren't quite the way I was trained.  That's okay, and I just make adjustments. 

The Shiller material, like Montessori material, is diagnostic.  Because it isolates concepts so effectively, it is easy to tell what a child has mastered and also to see what concepts she might need more work on.  I quickly learned that Dot needs to practice counting a little more and gain a little confidence in counting numbers over 5 (which she finds slightly overwhelming). 

I am love with the Montessori "bank" material.  Of course, I love the golden beads used in the Montessori classroom, and the blue plastic units are growing on me too.  It gives me a thrill that she can now identify which ones are the tens, hundreds, and thousands.  Such a fun thing for a 4-year-old to be exposed to.  I enjoyed watching the kids with these materials when I was a student teacher.  They love playing with the large quantities.  Dot likes to play with them outside of our lessons, which I think is great. 

All About Reading: Pre Reading: After 15 lessons

Dot and I have been working through All About Reading: Pre Reading, both due to her interest in letters and due to not having much else to do with so much shut down for Covid-19. 

We truly enjoy it, and she asks to do her letters most days.  Sometimes we get tired of decorating the letter pictures, and I tell her that we have to finish our picture before doing another lesson.  We tend to spread out the lessons over two days, one for the oral parts of the lesson and the other for the coloring page.  I really like all the word games that we play, as I can see how it helps her to think about the smaller sounds that words are made up of. 

She knows most of her capital letters, but several are still being solidified in her head.  She has started writing words a lot, asking how to spell them.  She often remembers how to write "hi" on her own. 

It is lovely to have this third child and to not be in a rush.  (Except sometimes I long for the day when she'll lose herself in a book). 

Simon Bloom Series: Living Books for Middle School Science

I am thrilled to have discovered the Simon Bloom series by Michael Reisman.  They are exciting stories for middle schoolers that weave in scientific concepts.  

I wrote in my last post that I am working to beef up Bug's science learning for the semester.  He is the biggest bookworm ever to talk the planet, making living books the best way for him to learn almost any topic.  He prefers audio books.  He loves fantasy and science fiction.  When he runs out of new books, he will re-read his favorite books (Artemis Fowl, Magnus Chase), but he becomes increasingly bored and restless and then has to be convinced to try new ones.  Bug lives on interesting and exciting books.  

In my googling, I came upon Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper.  I read the description to Bug, and he frowned and said it sounded too dramatic, but he did reluctantly agree to try it.  This was yesterday afternoon.  As of this morning, he has finished the 7-hour book and asked to download the next one in the series, Simon Bloom: The Octopus Effect.  The three books together take around 25 hours to listen to.  So three days for Bug.  Yes, he's quite the bookworm, and I'm very proud of him.  

There is one more book in the series (Simon Bloom: The Order of Chaos), and I'm hoping he'll retain his excitement and read that one as well.  I'm delighted at this addition to Bug's 6th grade science learning.