Divide & Conquer

A few weeks into our term & I heard a child state, "I'm bored." I wasn't surprised to hear the statement considering he'd fallen asleep through the last week of reading aloud, history, & other such learnings. Truth be told when I mapped out the second half of our World History plans I really only had my eldest in mind. I'd added in a couple of books, here & there, to add a little fun & flavour to it. In fact the extra books I selected for my boy were books scheduled for children in 8th grade or higher.

Books like our European History are much better geared for the older crowd without doubt, & when that book came out every morning the younger one pulled his quilt up a little higher, closed his eyes & settled in for a bit of sleep. "I tried, I really tried to stay awake, but eventually all this stuff just made me sleepy."

Admittedly I wasn't very pleased with him at first, mostly because the desire to stay up late chatting & reading paid off when he knew he could nap on the sofa 30 minutes after getting up.. dozing through history led to dozing through our devotions & things got a little rough around the edges when I saw a bad habit forming out. So I took my boy aside & discussed what he was going on.

"I'm bored. I don't mean to be bored, but I am."
"Why?"
"I all ready know this stuff I guess."
"I don't think that's true. I know we learned things this week that shocked you so I don't think you all ready know this information."
He sighed deeply, "I'm just bored."
"Do you think maybe you're bored because you don't understand the information?"
"Maybe. I understand some of it, but not all of it."
"Do you understand the orange book?"
"No! I don't really like that book at all. It's so boring with people just fighting over who's church is right & I don't know which church is which & I just want to shout at them to stop being so stupid."

And thus we'd found the real problem. This happened last year too where he was okay for a little while, some of the books really grabbed his attention, & others were flying over his head. I've always taken the approach in educating my children where most people tend to label it as, "better late then early." I can handle that label. I'd rather my child understood, fully, what he's studying, then that I rush him through something just so I can say we did it.

Our conversation ended with my reply of, "I think that maybe you should think about something you'd really love to study & then come & tell me. We'll save the other history for Morgan, because it's meant for his age."

My boy was a little taken aback, all though it's not the first, & unlikely to be the last, time he's been asked to make a choice, but it's a big responsibility & despite his crazier side he takes it very seriously. It took him 2 days to decide that what he'd most especially love to learn about would be the Civil war.

His theory, oh I love it when they share their thought pattern, was that he knew about the Civil War, but he didn't know a lot about it like he did about the Revolutionary War. I was reminded that I have the 10-Week Civil War study from Spirited Autumn Hope & I pulled that up to look over one evening. Which reminded me to peep at Winter Promise's All-American 2.

It too starts with a Civil War study, just slightly shorter, & then continues forward with Westward Expansion & continues until modern times. It includes book much more suited to my non-fiction lover on topics he's not familiar with & in bite sized bits to keep him from finding the need to close his eyes & drift off to sleep.

He was excited to look over the book selections & to see he could still start out with a Civil War study first. We had several of the books on our shelves all ready as this was the original plan for him way back when we discussed the plans for the 2016 school year. This allowed him to really get a feel for what he'd be studying despite not having all the books yet.

Come Term 2 he'll start working through AA-2 & he's so excited about his Civil War Study he's rounded up a few books from around the house he thinks might be helpful. Never mind he's all ready read those books & will likely read them again because it's just what he does. This is the kid who is most often curled up with a non-fiction book & then proceeds to tell us all the wonderfully amazing things he's learned.

This takes us back to our original plan which allows the eldest to work independently, something he's very very good at now that he has his lovely tints. He's also an early riser which allows him to dig into his work rather then tapping his toes & impatiently waiting for his brother to rise & shine.

We're calling it our Plan B: Divide & Conquer.

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Divide & Conquer

5 Things We Love About Winter Promise LA

1. PDF Format. I love that I can obtain these in PDF format & print them out on my kids specially coloured paper. Each child needs a different shade of paper to be able to see the written words properly & with curriculum in PDF format it saves me a lot of time, headaches, & money being able to simply print them out via our home printer. For those of you opposed to ebooks, please be aware you can order them in hard copy from WP.

2. Quick & Simple. That’s not to say that each lesson is overly simplistic, they aren’t, not at all. Rather the work is broken down into bite sized bits to set children up for success. I love this, & it helps the kids to feel accomplished as well. I love it when the kids can read the instructions & dig into the work without feeling stressed & needing more information. Win-win!

3. Pre-Scheduled. Years ago I use to schedule everything we did. I made unit studies, lesson plans, & crafts. I borrowed from many resources to combine exactly what we needed. I was seriously on the verge of absolute burnout, & then we found Winter Promise. I love that the work is scheduled over 4 days leaving us with a catch-up day, if needed, or we can choose to work ahead if we want. The schedule even includes spelling, writing, & reading work too.

4. Story Lines. In LA Level 3 you met Scout the dog & followed him around. In LA 4 you solved mysteries with a Cliff, the fun Detective. In LA 5 you meet up with Scout again, & in LA 6 you’re back to solving mysteries. The material, presented in a story form, is far less dry then working from a typical text book, but it’s just as informative & educational.

5. Levels. I mentioned this in my more detailed review over on The Curriculum Choice last year, but I seriously love that WP refers to their LA in levels vs Grades. My children both have Visual Processing Disorder which means they may not be up to par with their spelling or writing. Allowing them to work at a level vs a grade is awesome.

To learn more about Winter Promise Language Arts programmes check out their online conference videos. If you’re interesting in trying out Winter Promise Language Arts I urge you to check out the evaluation at the bottom of the page to see which level is right for your family. You can also check out Scout's Mini Unit on Verbs Free. 

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5 Things We Love About Winter Promise LA

Winter Promise LA

I've been a bit slack in sharing some of the reviews we've written, & I'd really meant to share the one done on the WP LA we've been using. We've enjoyed it so much, & shared a bit here & there about the enjoyment the kids have had in using the programme.

It was out first official LA curriculum that we've ever used. We've read books about parts of speech like The Word Spy & really enjoyed every minute of our time with the books. In fact, my boys recently reminisced that they hoped the Word Spy was off on another adventure collecting more information to write a third book.

As for the WP LA, I've really enjoyed using it with the kids & watching them learn as they move along solving mysteries. Level 4 is not the only series in which there is a mystery to solve, Level 6 has a space themed mystery too, where as Levels 3 & 5 visit with Scout The Dog who is also a very loveable character to get to know.

My only word of warning is not to make a quick purchase without checking through the samples & considering looking over the Placement Test. Having not had previous experience this was a non-issue for me, but I've heard from others who've made the switch & ended up ahead of where their child was academically. Also, be aware that if you purchase Level 6 there is only very moderate instruction as the level was written under the premise that your student would have been learning all the information for the past 3 levels & is now ready to put it all to use.

For links to the placement tests & a few more details check out our review over on The Curriculum Choice.

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Winter Promise LA

Quest For Royals & Revolution

We're about to embark upon a new time period in history, & we're pretty excited. It's been a long journey & I'm glad we traveled it from the comfort of the sofa & not on foot! My feet ache thinking about it actually.. As we head off into the Renaissance & beyond it was time to select new books for our pleasure.

I always struggle with this, because the truth is there are just too many great books! Deciding exactly which ones we'll use & which ones we'll have to leave laying by the wayside can take a lot more effort then it really should, in fact I'm pretty sure it took me about 3 months to make official plans on how I was going to handle this time period. I wasn't kidding when I said it could take a long time!

Eventually we settled on our beloved Winter Promise. We've really enjoyed every theme we've used from the lovely company, & I'm kinda desperately hoping they'll come out with the final Quest Theme before we finish this one, hey I can dream!! Either way, we opted to go with the Quest For Royals & Revolutions. We had it on the shelf as I'd picked it up earlier in the year in anticipation of using it, which does make one wonder why it took me 3 months to finalise plans, doesn't it?

The thing is, I also have Bookshark 7 on my shelf, Sonlight W, & Sonlight H. That's really too many choices to be honest & it made narrowing things down a lot harder! The upside is that many of the titles used in Sonlight & Bookshark are the same so that helped me narrow things down just a wee bit more.

In the end I decided we would use all the beautiful non-fiction selections from QFR&R. That was one problem solved. However, we're nearly done with the Story Of The World Series, so I figured we'd go ahead & finish those via the BkSk schedule. As for our literature, I took note of all books suggested by each curriculum & weeded out the ones I knew we wouldn't use. From there I compiled everything else into one massive list in chronological order, with a quick quip about what the book covers, which gives us one big list of books to work through!

If you're curious about the list, or keen for a peek, you can find it here. Our Middle Ages list is over here.

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Quest For Royals & Revolution

2014 Week In Review: Week 32

Another week has flown by for us, & it was a semi-short week as Mr S was home on Friday so we took the day off as well. The kids still did a fair amount of work, but they had to work a bit more a few days in order to have that time.

We had hoped to whisk them away for some fun activities for the day, but life happens & it wasn't to be. Mind you, they weren't disappointed by it because they had no expectations either.

Maybe next time, & as it's a holiday weekend here in our neck of the woods {no, not Halloween} there's still a possibility we might be able to fit a few of the fun things in we'd hoped to do on Friday.

We're still working our way through our poetry book this year. We're scheduled at roughly 3-4 poems a day? I'm not sure, but we read a few more here or there & less other days. It all depends on what the day holds for us. The boys are still using the math flash cards, especially Jayden as he embarks on division with remainders so those were out in use this week. We tend to do poetry followed up by our Memory Box.

Speaking of division, He really rocked this lesson. He was, in all fairness, petrified of it, but I assured him that he's been doing division & multiplication long enough he was ready for this lesson. Just to assure him we pulled out the MUS blocks which we haven't used in forever & a day. We backed off from 2 pages per day this week 2 just 1 page in order to give him time to let the new idea sink in without him feeling overwhelmed. This seemed to work quite well & my typical math hater was heard saying, "Wow, this is probably the easiest lesson I've ever done in this book." I refrained from saying, "I told you so.." Or explaining it was easy from all the hard work we put in memorising those lovely multiplication facts.

I spotted this naughty little doodle in my eldest's math book. We actually don't encourage doodling & generally they get a telling off, but I found this one quite funny & didn't make him erase it. Morgan embarked on multiplying decimals up to thousandths. He did well with the theory behind the lesson but struggled a little bit this week with his vision. I have no idea what was up, but everything was back to front {notice the n's his drawing} which resulted in carrying 1's & putting 10's down.

When we hit a situation like this with his SSS I do have him help with the fixing up of the mess, but generally I just have him sit with me while I say, "Your answer is wrong, but only because.." then we erase the numbers in the wrong spots & put them back in the right spots reworking anything that needs it. It does not help him feel any less incompetent with what he's doing/done, & there can even be a few hot tears & angry words that are shed over it. However, I try to point out he knew exactly what he was doing & give him a few aids to help him out. This week I handed him a place value sheet & had him write his double digit numbers on it prior to putting them into place in his math book. I also had him pull out his graph book to use for working math problems & between the two he had the problem conquered before the end of the week which was a huge relief to both of us.

There are not always reasons for his off days. As in, it's not because he's had a headache or overused his eyes. Somedays are just harder then others. Helping him learn to cope without losing his cool is important so he can understand that he doesn't need to throw in the towel when he has a down day.

 

We're still in 2 Timothy for our Bible Study & will probably be there for the remained of our term. The first 18 verses are looking quite colourful & busy at this point but all of it means something to us. I've had some questions about this method which I'll answer better in another post, but I did want to clarify that yes we can still read our Bibles just fine.  We also finished reading Romans & began Galatians.

We read about the Byzantine Empire & The Golden Age Of India in our studies this week. We tend to listen to SOTW first & then read from our encyclopedia. From there if we have a corresponding chapter in CHOW we read that. The other 2 larger books we only read 2-4 pages a day from. It all blends together quite nicely. In fact after reading about the Golden Age Of India in SOTW I was going to google a few of the things we'd heard about, but there were pictures for it in Kingfisher which was a delight to see. Before I'm asked, I'm using this chart here to match up CHOW to SOTW.

Black Horses For The King is our current read aloud, we'd hoped to finish it this week, but it wasn't to be so we should wrap it up over the weekend or in the coming week. Either way works for us & then we need to check our list to see what our next read aloud will be. The only problem we are having there is that we have so many delightful books to read it's always choosing the next one that becomes hardest! As for our current book I'm curious where the final bits will take us, but thus far the book has been quite lovely to read & if you have a horse enthusiast there's a lot of equine information inside. In fact a few of us have been heard saying, "No hoof, no horse.." this week.

We're still moving along with Our Island Story as well which is, as mentioned before, the history of England. Having done a geographical study last year where we briefly touched in the history of each country, compounded with learning about middle ages this year it's been really interesting to read this book each week. We covered chapters 10-12 & I meant to have the boys pull out their Travel Diaries & look at the photos we'd printed out last year of the Giant Causeway, but I forgot.

We had a lighter week of science, as Chapter two in CKE was only about lab equipment. It turned out to be a great week for a slower chapter with little to no additional reading due to our short week. While it's not pictured we did read pages 18-25 from Chemical Chaos this week. The boys are really loving that book. We also tackled chapter 2 in The Story Of Science. We didn't get to our scientist biography this week, but I'm not stressing over it. The boys were a little disappointed that there were no major experiments this week, so I didn't tell them that next week there's a huge amount to tackle. I thought the surprise of it would be fun.

Our weather has been insane here this week with incredibly strong winds {our trampoline blew away & we had to retrieve it then put it int he garage}, rain, rain & more rain. We get a bit of sun, but as soon as we'd gear up for a bike ride the rain would open up on us. With no swimming happening right now we were all getting extremely antsy so I pulled up The Ultimate Homechoolers Physical Education Game Book. If you have Kindle Unlimited it's free. Personally, I think you really need a proper copy of this book, but an ebook works too. I selected Basketball Golf to play with the boys as our hoop has finally been installed. We have our own score sheets & we played several rounds. We don't have 9 hoola-hoops and the few we had were MIA, but we have a driveway & I always seem to have chalk on hand so that worked too.

While I don't have photos of it, the kids each continued reading in their currently assigned book. Jayden is really loving his book which is called Bible Wars & Weapons. He's enjoyed building, via his army men & such, scenes from what he's reading or asking me if I knew about one person or another. As much as he's enjoying it he asked if he could read ahead {as if I'd say no!} because he can't wait to read King Arthur which is next on his list. Morgan is still plucking along with The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe & on track to finish it next week. I was quite worried that with the vision issues he was having he'd struggle with reading, but he was fine. It may help that I've found a larger print version which he's currently using. He found the finer printed one much more difficult on his eyes again. I'd love to obtain the entire collection of the larger print ones for him.

They also did another weeks worth of work in their Langue Arts workbooks completing nouns & verbs. That sounds very basic but it was determining the difference between linking, helping, being, & action verbs based on the predicates. The nouns had to be classified as concrete or abstract. They found the noun work really easy, & found the verb work a bit more complicated. They wrapped up another case & finished Workbook A!

They also had spelling all week & finished off lessons 14-18. I loved that by this point of working with these words they were looking for syllables to decide about how many consonants to include when suffixes were in use. They both did outstanding on their spelling work & I saw a lot of the carrying over to written work this week which was nice to see for a change.

We're also doing history quizzes this term because I feel it's important for the kids to know how to take a test & this is a great way to start. This term tests can be open book if they aren't certain of an answer, but they only needed that luxury with 1 of the 2 history quizzes they took this week. 

We also caught up with friends at the park for a play & chat which was a lovely way for the kids to finish up their week as they had Friday off. Not too shabby considering our much shorter week.

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2014 Week In Review: Week 32

Planning Ahead

I'm constantly trying to stay a few steps ahead of the game when it comes to planning out what we'll study next, at least in the history & science departments. I like to be prepared, have a plan, & be ready to roll. These two subjects are the only ones that seem to demand a bit more of me in those regards, probably because they are the ones we use the least traditional curriculum for.

When we opted to spend a year studying Middle Ages, we also decided we'd spend a year studying Renaissance. We're planning to use Quest For Royals & Revolutions from Winter Promise. It will lend itself well to allowing us to decide to study US history afterwards or Australian history. It also allows us to continue forward with using Mystery Of History.

In fact, we ordered Volume III recently & were so excited when it arrived as we'd heard about the new looks for volumes 3 & 4. I had a hard time getting our copy away from the kids so I could actually have a turn with it!! Instead of having one huge book, you have a hardback storybook of sorts that has all the lessons in it. Then you have the softcover teacher's guide with the maps, quizzes, etc. in it. The hardcover storybook has all the artefacts & other pictures inside in colour now which really appealed to my colour lover as well.

I should clarify that MOH 3 is not a required item with QFRR, but one we're choosing to use. There are quite a few other books that are used instead of another MOH book as a spine. We may choose to drop one or simply do all of them, we'll decide when the time comes. In the mean time we're pretty excited with our copy of MOH 3!

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Planning Ahead

Gearing Up For Middle Ages

After wrapping up Ancients I knew we'd move into Middle Ages. I was originally planing a 6 week stay here so we'd have time for fun, a few projects, & lots of great literature, but our plans changed after wrapping up Ancients. Morgan was disappointed with the ending of our previous spine & I didn't blame him, but his comments that the breezed over Jesus & his disciples made me aware that if we spent only 6 weeks on Middle Ages we'd end up doing the same thing. So I changed plans.

I had debated at the start of the year using Quest For the Middle Ages {QFMA} because I love the way it integrates the new church with other middle age history. I also love the slower pace it sets compared to what we were paving before. It means we can take our time moving through MOH Vol. 2 & still enjoy all the great literature we had hoped to read in the beginning.

Of course, once Jayden caught wind he wanted to know if he could break from his studies to do knight & castle school too. So the plan is for both boys to spend the next 36 weeks on middle ages & then they'll each return to wrap up the other things they were studying before we delve into Australian history. Mind you, things could change & we could hit Aussie history prior to wrapping up their world history studies, but we'll see. In the mean time I'm really looking forward to our current study of choice!

It did, however, mean that we had a lot of guides between our two science choices, language arts, & QFMA. I was debating about binding them all up, pulling a terms worth of weeks into one notebook, or a variety of other ways I've kept a running notebook for myself when I had the thought that removing the spines on all my little notebooks & just feed a spiral binding through all 4 of them. The result is crazy thick, but it worked & instead of having to locate all 4 I can just grab the one & flip to what we need each day. It's quite nice to be honest! In fact the only thing missing is the reading schedule each child is using, but I can write that in my planner or on the bottom of a given LA schedule if I need/want. I had enough room in the front to slip in the book list I made up to go with our studies.

QFMA has a lot of lovely literature & fun non-fiction books scheduled in that we're looking forward to, but we had a few of our own books picked out we wanted to be sure to include too. I wanted them all on one list so that I didn't forget what I had going on. You can check out our book list here if you're interested.

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Gearing Up For Middle Ages

Edible Roman Road

With our studies of Rome we learned about Roman Roads & how they were built. The activity, however, in Explore Rome! was simply to see if you could walk from your bedroom to the kitchen in a straight line. This is how roads were built in Ancient Rome, in the most direct manner possible. Unfortunately for Morgan, we're not really keen on knocking out the wall in the bathroom so he can maintain a straight line, so he was going to have to take at least one turn in order to make that trip. However, in my searches I stumbled upon plans for making an Ancient Roman Rome that one could eat.

There are a few variations on how to accomplish this, but we went with the main idea located here. We had to make a few adaptions to accommodate food issues in order to make it dairy & gluten free:

For the base layer of crumbs we used the Leda Arrowroot Biscuits.

We made our own chocolate pudding from scratch, this is the recipe I use as the guys all go nutters with it. I opt out of the curry powder, swap corn for arrowroot if I'm out of the later, & don't use the toasted coconut. We use the Whittakers 75% dark chocolate which is dairy & gluten free, but also very dark. It's the only way my milk chocolate eaters will consume it.

For the chocolate chips in the pudding we chopped up additional Whittaker Chocolate & just mixed it through once the pudding/custard was cool enough not to melt it through.

Cream Cheese was out & I had a couple of recipes for making your own that I was keen to try. I went with this particular version this time around. It was so-so. We'll try again adjusting a few things, but it worked in this recipe, all though Jayde hated it. Having said that, he's never liked cream cheese & despised cheesecake when he could eat it. Until I find chickpea miso I can't actually try the other recipe I've had flagged for ages. I will say that because I was worried about the tartness of this "cheese" I added a little cocoa powder & extra sweetener to it. It was better the second day vs the first.

We opted out, totally, of the whipped cream. I'd love to try the shelf stable version, Healthy Top, I've seen that uses almond milk & coconut cream, but the only shop in Australia that was selling it was sold out & now no longer carries it. Yes, I know you can scrape the top layer of cream off a tin of coconut cream to make it that way, but I'd still like to try the other version.

For the tea biscuits on top we used a gluten free version, which I apparently failed to read the label on because after Morgan put them on top I was looking at the box & saw that they had milk in them. I snapped a quick photo & flicked them all off, much to Morgan's horror. Then I promptly spat the piece in my mouth out, which managed to horrify both kids, & Mr S joined their horror when I started gulping water directly from the tap & spitting that out too.

Seriously, despite all our changes it was not that difficult or time consuming to make. It was more a matter of keeping the kids out of the arrow root biscuits long enough to get the custard & cream cheese mixture made!

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Edible Roman Road

2014 Week In Review: Week 14

A much fuller week this week with everyone being healthy, Mr S back to work, & our scheduled returning to normal. Always makes for a better school week.

Yes, that's the table designated for school work, & yes it does look like that at the end/start of each day. Only, however, because I tidy up the school room of each day. I can't think straight when books are all over, that & I'm hoarding the last 2 pencils until our new package arrives. Yep, I'm that kinda desperate.

Seriously though, the boys generally find their planners at their places on the table, pencil boxes, & the book they are currently reading to me. Morgan's Bible was out when I was tidying up & I wasn't sure where he was currently stashing it & knowing he'd need it in the am I just left it at his place on the table. It helps eliminate the whole, "MOOOOOOOOM, where's my.." This, my friends, is why I paid to have his spare glasses fixed & keep them in my super special secret location.

We filled in more places along the way this week. All though I think we missed a few as Jayden read about so many locations this week as we read through his readings for Sea & Sky. No need to fuss about every single one, especially since he'll often sit with a globe in his lap to look for places as I read. We do try to mark each place we hear in the news or read about in our Current Event articles.

Swim lessons are still in full swing here, with our new location we don't actually get breaks between terms. We've also moved our start time a half hour later in the day which works better for us to accomplish a wee bit more before we go. While I had a chat with the boys swim-coach this week the boys had a grand time diving for rings with a friend. We hit the pool for practice a few times as well, but I warn you {if you're local} that hitting the pool before 3 is essential or not bothering again until 7 M-Th. Friday seems to be okay to hit it earlier then 7 as there's no swim squad meets.

Jayden wrapped up The Middle Ages & started in on The Renaissance period with his school this week. While we generally only work on one week at a time, it was nice to boost ourselves ahead after our long linger with Vikings.

Quite a few pages for his notebook with Middle Ages which were fun. He especially enjoyed the page he's working on in the above picture which had to do with drawing. No, he wasn't working through lunch he opted to cook himself some pasta in broth for morning tea.



This was one of our favourite pages this week. Each of the pictures above lifts up for more information under them. Jayden loved the information learned on this page & was super keen for a page to remember it all with. Each of the picture items above was printed on sticker paper so I folded back just enough sticker paper to cut off & then he pressed it down over the box to create the flap without covering up the words.

Jayden & I read all of the above books this week as well as Ships. Ships is scheduled in the older Sea & Sky, but as the book is out of print it's not scheduled in the newer version. It's a complete shame the book is out of print because it's really lovely. The top book is the one we've added in as a read aloud & we're enjoying it thus far. He was a little wary of it at first, but the other evening as I laid it down he was eager to know what would happen next. No picture of it, apparently, but he's still listening to SOTW Vol. 1, he's really loving it. I turned it on for him earlier this week & heard a huge gasp, thinking something had broken I went out to ask if all was well & was given a long chat about how long mummifying processes took. He's really only listening for the fun of it as he's getting plenty with Sea & Sky, however he is using timeline pieces to put up on the wall to go along with the book. He's pretty proud of those.

Morgan is still in Ancient Rome & covered the fall of Israel amongst other topics this week. He enjoyed working on a notebooking page from WP's Quest for Ancients that involved looking up Bible verses & figuring out what word was needed, at the end you take one letter from each word to make up a sentence.

He worked on some other things based on readings this week as well. The top booklet on Homer came from Homeschool Share's Greek Lapbook. The Jonah & Found of Rome pieces came from Dynamic 2 Mom's, & the Olympic Prizes piece came from an Olympic lapbook we picked up ages ago. He simply takes notes while he's listening to MOH & then records the pertinent information in the booklets.

This was actually his second hearing about the Ancient Olympics as we read it about it earlier this year in CHOW as well, but this time we recorded a little bit, snippets & facts really.

Morgan & I worked with these books this week. The Augustus Caesar's World is scheduled pretty quickly through Sonlight's Core W, I think next time through with Jayden we may slow the pace down just a smidge. It's a lovely lovely book & we're really enjoying it. There's some amazing pages inside that, if copied & coloured in would be beautiful for his timeline. The top book is our current read aloud & while the story is fantastic reading those Roman names is another story!

Morgan works with these books on his own. He's still working at the pace of 3 lessons a day with MOH. The Bronze Bow is scheduled with 2 chapters per day, some days he manages it some days he doesn't. I think he's currently behind a little bit, but it all evens out in the end. He's really enjoying the story, which I suspected he would when I preread it myself earlier this year.

Jayde is still reading his Pony Express book to me, he's pretty sure he knows what's gonna happen so now it's a matter of seeing if he's right. The book is up his alley in regards to content, but it is below his reading level. Again, not worried about it for a variety of reasons. We're working through a set of books with a specific schedule in order to build up his endurance & to get him to stop skipping difficult words. 

Morgan is reading Ralph S. Mouse to me & he's truly not enjoying the book at all. I'm not entirely surprised as it's certainly more of a Jayde story then a Morgan story. Mr S is disappointed because he, personally, loves Ralph. I suggested Morgan leave it & move on to the next book we have scheduled, but he's determined to see this one through a little farther to see if it picks up it's pace any. It's more of a feel-good type story & less of an action filled page turner type book, which is what he prefers.

We also hung out at the park this week with friends from our homeschool group & I apparently have no pictures of the science we did this week either which is a bit weird. I'll have to check & see if I've simply overlooked them & update if I find them.

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2014 Week In Review: Week 14

Science: Simple Machines

Video Link on QuieTube
To get things rolling around here again with our science we're working on Simple Machines as a kick-off to our year of physics. Yes, I know we're a bit late in the year to be "kicking it off" but such is the way of life sometimes. 
Back in the summer we started a 7 week study via WinterPromise/Spirited Autumn Hope with Simple Machines. We haven't quite wrapped that up, so I pulled out a few other resources we have on hand to go with it & we'll spend the next 2 weeks working on Simple Machines. Some of the starter info was pretty much review today, but that's a great way to build off of simplistic ideas so we can beef them up a bit.
There's enough of an age gap with my kids for one to still be at that simplistic idea phase where the other is most certainly capable of understanding beefier ideas. With that in mind we work from one book together & then they are each welcome to listen in on the other child's book to glean more, but it's not a requirement.
We regroup at some point in the day for notebooking pages, experiments if there are any, & a video tie-in if I have one of those. I've gotten pretty good at locating videos for the majority of the science for the next two weeks. I have one who needs to hear certain things repetitively to help them sink in, while the other enjoys seeing what we've learned in action.
While making my plans & schedules for our time with Simple Machines I flagged a few videos, one of which I shared above. It's rather cheesy, & full of giggles for the olders & adults. There's points in the video where a news reporter pops up & it's a great time, if you want, to pause the video to discuss the information shared & decide for yourself what you think might be happening in the core.
The video does an amazing job explaining mechanical advantage as well as force which made the cheesiness of it totally worthwhile. There's even a song & dance routine, all though you'll have to listen closely to catch all of the words in the song. All in all it helped tie our lesson together today!

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Science: Simple Machines

Ancient Rome: Aquaduct

Exploring Ancient Rome is a lovely book used in the Winter Promise Quest For Ancients & it doesn't fail on information & projects. We started it last week, yes during that crazy short week & read about running water & sewer systems in Ancient Roman times. Each chapter ends with several project to choose from, or do them all, depends on what you want.

I had a child wandering around stating he wasn't quite sure what to do when I handed him the book & reminded him he was going to do a project from Chapter 1. He was eager to look at the instructions & get to work with it. He managed the whole thing on his own aside from the trimming the box. I can only presume that shoe boxes here in Australia are also different sized then they the ones used in the book so we altered the measurement for cutting a little bit & went with it.

He had a grand time building it & then testing it out both as you can see above & then in the sink. He wanted to see if the one he made could hold up to constant running water as the one we'd read about in the book could. It did!

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Ancient Rome: Aquaduct

Making Curriculum Work For You

For the past four years we've been using 1 of 2 out of the box style curriculums. It was a tough choice for us when we first left behind the curriculum we'd been using. It's easy to feel that way when you are comfortable for something, & it takes courage to step away from what's not working, even if it's familiar, & move forward with something that is unfamiliar but better suited for your needs. 

The curriculums we chose fit those exact needs, & while we may borrow from here or there to fully round out our studies we're not left lacking regardless of what we choose to do. I get that boxed curriculum isn't for everyone & that's okay, because we all need to pick what works best for our families, but I gotta say one thing that really drives me batty is when people say they could never use a curriculum because a small portion here or there doesn't work for them.

Many boxed curriculums were created out of need. As in, a parent created these curriculums to use with their own families & over time their friends found out & wanted in on it. Those same friends had friends who also wanted in on it & assured the original family/author that people would pay for it. And people do. Sure, not all aspects may appeal & please, but that's the beauty of homeschooling, you can make the curriculum work for you instead of bending the child to work with the curriculum.

Which is exactly what we do: make the curriculum work for us. If we feel a book doesn't fit our families needs we drop it, if we find a book that would tie in well with our studies, we add it to our list. If we find an additional craft, movie, website, or outing that will help round out our studies, we attack it with gusto. It's what helps make the curriculum ours, it's what endears it to us, it's what makes us want to recommend it to our friends, & shout all about how awesome it is.



The first thing I do each year when our new instructor guides show up is to find the book list & check it out in full. Now I'm not gonna kid you hear, chances are I know that book list inside out because I've been exploring it prior, but this is my chance to write all over that page & start making firm choices on what books we'll use & what, if any, we'll drop. This year, for instance, with world history being covered in 12 months I had a plethora of books, all so deliciously wonderful, I had to make hard choices about which ones to use & which ones we just wouldn't have time for.

This year I went crazy & not only retyped up our book list but included dates & themes for the books. Our list was extraordinarily long, so we peeked to see what we could find available in audio format, & were pretty amazed with what we found. All the books we found in this format we simply removed from our main list. These books are now assigned throughout the year for him to read. Not only does this help us delve deeper into some time periods & topics, it also allows him to work on goal setting & time management as he learns to complete these books within a set amount of time. 

The rest of the books are put on our World History Book List in chronological order & these are the ones we read together throughout the year. These include our various spines, non-fiction, & historical fiction books.

All of these books are labeled for easy finding on our shelves, baskets, & tables around the home. Now I know it would be so much more simple to put them all in one place, but we're kinda out of bookshelf space & our book baskets are overflowing too. So we put things where they fit & locate them as needed keeping 6 weeks or more worth of books at easy reach. Plus, some books I prefer to preread prior to sharing with the kids.

The coloured labels, in this case green, are for one curriculum, while the quite labels are for another. The letters on them mean something to us, all though we've been asked about them by people pursuing our home library. If you're one of those who happens to be wondering, W stands for World History, & QA stands for Quest For Ancients. Pretty simple, yes?

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Making Curriculum Work For You

A Couple Of Reviews

Apparently I'm behind sharing some of the reviews we've written for The Curriculum Choice. Two months ago we shared our experience with the theme, Children Around The World which we spent the entirety of last year using. It really is a lovely theme & we enjoyed our time with it. We shared lots of pictures, details, & "how we did its" over on TCC if you're interested in checking it out.

This is a theme I get asked a lot about so if you're one of the many who've asked me about it, be sure to check it out! Also note that Winter Promise recently redid their website & that includes the store front. So if you go looking for samples on their new site you'll need to go into the store to find them!

Last month our review of The Picture Smart Bible was shared over there. You'll probably recognise the name as an item we used regularly a year or two ago & shared some of our happenings with. We really should pull it back out to use again as we make our way through the OT this year. Anyway, if you're curious about it you can check that out over at TCC as well.

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A Couple Of Reviews

Free Viking Game

Jayden is on a huge Viking kick with his studies lately which really doesn't surprise me. Last week I dug out some of the crafts & things I'd flagged to use during our time with Vikings & this freebie game was one of them. Jayden was so excited about playing a Viking game I'm pretty sure in the 20 minutes it took to assemble the cards & game board I was asked at least that many times if it was ready yet.

It's actually made to help students {or parents for that matter} learn the trading routes that Vikings used. The game is pretty simple once you get the game board made & the cards all printed out. The rules were super simple & straight forward too.

We printed ours out on typical A4 paper & then I trimmed it so everything lined up when I taped it together. I taped the front & the back so that it held together from both sides. All though I don't know if you'd need to do that, especially if you taped it down to some poster board or something. Either way, we chose the coloured version so we could get into playing it straight away.

Someone had the wrong paper in the printer so the cards were printed on thin paper which made them pretty easy to read through. So while we listened to an audio book I cut them apart & then glued them onto some coloured paper which we cut apart. They aren't very stiff for a typical shuffling, but you can easily mix them up & stack them up for the game.

After that all we needed was to locate some dice & markers. The chips came from a phonics curriculum the kids used when they were much much younger. We seem to have a plethora of them laying around still & we use them for all sorts of things, like playing viking games! The instructions said it could take up to 30 minutes to play, but perhaps they were playing with a lot more people because our first game was short enough that the boys begged for another. In fact, they'd have been keen to have spent the whole afternoon playing it, but we did have a few other things to do.

You can find the free printable game, instructions, & information here if you're interested. It's a great addition to Week 5 in Adventures in Sea & Sky, or any other Viking study for that matter. For storing it we simply folded the game board in thirds & banded the cards together. I didn't put it in the came cupboard though, instead I put it on the top shelf of our bookcase where it can remain flat.

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Free Viking Game

Adventures In Sea & Sky

This year Jayden chose to do Adventures in Sea & Sky. Nearly our entire theme is inside that big old notebook, all though many things are also on the Kindle{s} and/or iPad as well. We're all most done with term one with our this study & I thought I'd share a bit more about it & how we're enjoying it as I get lots of questions about our Winter Promise studies.

First off, I'm going to start by stating that I generally buy digitally from Winter Promise. Remember, we live "overseas" compared to most of the world & thus purchasing digitally allows our homeschool budget to go farther. I appreciate that!

When I get our digital products I generally try to print out the Guide first & foremost so I can read through the introductory materials. You don't have to, you can easily read through it on e-devices or directly on your computer. I've done, & do, that too. While many times the introductory material can be the same from Theme to Theme I always love the refresher & reminders inside. I've shared before about my favourite quotes from the WP Themes being the Aunt Lucy Quote. I need that reminder, often.

I really like to print out the Overview Of Studies. This is like a Table of Contents in regards to what you'll be studying each week for the next 36 weeks. As you can see, we're only 7 weeks into our 10 week term & mine is marked up all ready. By the end of a year it could be marked up to the point where I often need to print out a new one! The basic scribble on it you can see above is me breaking down what we'll study in each term, but if life happens & we spend time reading the books from Aunt Lucy then I need to change things up a bit, & that works too. This is probably my biggest Go-To page in the entire Guide, & I often have one in the notebook, one on each of our e-devices, & often another one in my planner. Seriously!

Another set of pages I like to print out are the craft pages. Winter Promise themes are really loaded with hands on projects. I select ones, highlighted, that I know my child{ten} would enjoy, but it's never written in stone that any of the projects have to be done. I like to print out these pages though so that my children can be the ones to collect the supplies needed. They put away dishes, & collect up recycling so it's easier for them to see what items they might need to put away for use with a craft later. One year Morgan was on a war path for a cereal box as we don't buy a lot of it. Every morning when Mr S had his Weet-Bix we heard how desperately he needed that cereal box only to discover one morning not only did it get thrown away but ripped up! Next thing we knew the box for the cornflakes was missing but the pouch of cereal was happily sitting on the shelf, which now causes us an awful lot of laughter whenever we have a box of cornflakes in the house. Needless to say, some of us take our crafting supplies more seriously then others! Having these papers really helps though.



Next up I like to print the field trip suggestion page out as well. It can be easy to get stuck in the mind trap that we live in a small town & there won't be anything we can do in those regards, but seeing a list in front of me can change my attitude entirely. It also causes me to stop & read the boards at the library about upcoming events, & carefully watch the advertisements the local council releases about upcoming events. Basically, it gets those creative juices flowing for ideas of places to go! We have a few ideas flagged, & a couple of outings planned for this year that have our boy quite excited. Of course, he's thought up a few ideas of his own, which weren't too hard considering we live in a costal town.

One of the things I really appreciate each time we use a Winter Promise theme are the notebooking pages. Last year when we used the World Travels Diary my kids had a blast with the pages & ended up with an Atlas of sorts that they had created all on their own. This year's pages are a different as they are historically bent & perfect for slipping into our timeline notebooks. The only downer is that Jayden doesn't like glue. He refers to it as his mortal enemy, but he was really excited about the notebooking pages again this year. Which is when I came up with a plan to conquer his mortal enemy.

My solution was sticker paper. I ended up printing out all the "cut & glue" pieces on sticker paper so that he can just stick them down without messing with glue. He's been delighted each week when we pull a set out, all though I'm pretty sure the fact that he's been learning about Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, & Vikings has also had a lot to do with it. He was so excited to get to use some of the really "big" stickers! I'll tell you something else too, not only does he enjoy tackling the notebook pages now there are no more laments & groans from his corner of the table or a billion cries of, "Help it's stuck to me!!" Seriously, this child & glue don't mix well!

Each week we have a lovely introduction page. I love them! At a glance i know what we'll be studying & I tend to read it out to Jayde or just give him a paraphrasing of what we'll be learning for the week. Each time I read something out to him he's given a little fist pump & a, "Yes!! I've been waiting to learn about..." Seriously, a lot of the cultures we've read about this year are ones he's checked the same books out of the library about for a long time now. He knew a good deal of the information about the Roman & Greek ships, but was delighted to learn the why behind it & see the photos.

Each of these pages is followed by a weekly schedule. One for the parent & one for the student. They differ slightly in that the student's schedule has blank spaces for adding in other lessons like math & their schedule doesn't have items on it that the parent reads with the child. Each schedule is for a 4 day week which is really nice for us at this stage. While I do have these schedules on our electronic devices I print them out each week & staple them right into my planner ticking off each thing as we go along or making simply noting which things we aren't doing. I also date each day so I know which day we did what on should I need to remember for some reason. This means I can use the lovely schedule & have no need to copy all that into my planner since all the work was all ready done for me!

There's generally 6-8 notebooking pages a week as well, most of which are based on his reading, but some expand a little beyond it giving us more details on the smaller things we read about. He loves using his notebooking pages & then showing them off each weekend to Daddy. I love that many times the details he's learned are spoken of again on the pages because that way if he forgets or wants to refresh himself I can tell him to check his notebooking pages. I don't know about in your home, but in our home notebooking pages & lap books come out often, not just for sharing with family members who may be visiting but also because a child remembers some acute fact they learned & knows they've recorded it.

Something I like to do with all our notebooking pages over the summer is number them. You'll find on your schedule that it will give a topic for each notebooking page & what day of the week to do it on. They generally coincide with your reading which is great. So when I'm setting up our notebooks at the start of the year I jot down the week & day on the bottom of each notebooking page. So if we're on week 7 you may find a notebooking page labeled: Wk7-D1 to indicate when to do it. This works for us, but isn't necessary.

The new S&S theme has more pages in the Under The Sea book, & notebooking pages in the Make Your Own Captain Log based on the readings. These can be filed in a science notebook or in his timeline notebook & I often leave that choice up to him. Which means they are generally still hanging in a page protector on our schoolroom wall. Does that sound odd? Let me explain. Each week there are a set of notebooking pages filed behind that introductory page in his massive notebook. We pull them out & as we complete them we put them in a page protector that is hanging on the wall above his notebook & book basket. That way we file all our page at one time & he can show them to Daddy before he files them. So, for pages he might be undecided on which notebook to file them in, they often remain in the page protector!

The books, oh the books! Now, you probably know we're all ready a big book family with several read alouds going, a few audio books, plus each person's individual reading as well. I like to keep each child's books for the year in a large basket somewhere in our learning area. Most of Jayden's books for this theme are in this basket, all though some are still coming, & many are on a Kindle which is in that basket, all though perhaps no visible. I also obtained a few of his readers/read aloud as audio books as well because I enjoy curling up with the kids & listening the afternoon away. It's not abnormal for us to pop up a bowl of popcorn, grab our quilts & lose track of time as we listen.



All the books this year have been lovely. Our first book, The Strange Intruder, kept everyone captivated & we had to delay our reading at times because Morgan was busy doing his own things & didn't want to be left out. We ended up listening to Treasure Island when it arose on our schedule & oh my did the boys love that book. I found a website with colouring pages & even the 2 paper dolls above which Jayden insisted on printing out & putting together. He was desperate for characters from the rest of the book & was a little disappointed when I said there were no more.

Which reminds me, all though I don't have a photo of it here to share, there's another page that I always print out as well & it's the 2 pages with the books listed on it. 1 page has the books you really need to complete this study & the other page has books dubbed as Adventure Reading. They aren't needed to complete the study, but they give you that much richer of an experience. Books like Treasure Island, Stowaway, Carry On Mr Bowditch, & Around The World In 80 Days. I also print out the readers suggested for each theme, & you can obtain a schedule for them as well. Again, they aren't needed to complete the study, but they sure do make the experience that much more fun!

In fact Jayden's current reader, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is one the whole family is enjoying listening to. Jayden was a little put off by it at first because he thought it might be a girlie story, but I suggested he give it a chance & could make a choice after we listened to some. I say listened, because we chose to do this one as an audio as well. When I went to turn it off he was quite dismayed! In fact as I'm writing this I'm torn on finishing this blog post & suggesting we put the book on, it's just that lovely of a story.

Needless to say we're thoroughly enjoying our studies this year with our Adventures In The Sea & Sky. We'll check in later this year with it again to let you know how we're going then & share a few of his completed projects as well.  He has grand plans of making a cardboard figurehead to go with a cardboard longboat. I'm actually interested to see how it turns out!

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Adventures In Sea & Sky