Tranquility in the City

Yesterday afternoon, I went geocaching with my friend, Viviana, and her children and nephews.  We didn’t have much time, so we only hit up two caches.  The first, “Cheaper by the Dozen,” was evidently in the nearby Krispy Kreme parking lot and appeared to be down in a sewer somewhere.  Guess which six people were not well equipped to be in parking lots or sewers??

Luke is always reluctant to give up, but we finally convinced him that this was not our scene.  However, the kids did get a little “Ring around the Rosy” in before we left:

The next cache was called, “Tranquility in the City,” and it turned out to be perfect.

This hidden gem is on the edge of a large cemetery and seems to be part of its grounds.  There are old houses, like this one, which is one of the oldest houses from the early American era:

Or this Revolutionary-era domestic quarters:

The kids favorite building was the spring house, because that’s where the water came out:

They had so much fun running around and exploring this little area, and we let them do their thing because the weather was beautiful, and we weren’t in any hurry.

Finally, we left and made a pit stop at a nearby playground.  Viv had to be back for a meeting before too long, so we just let the kids run wild for a few minutes before heading home.

It was fun to find this cool little nook, and I know we will be back to visit soon.  What a fun way to spend an afternoon!

Making Connections

On Friday night, the kids and I had a movie night and watched Aladdin.  It was just as funny and entertaining as I remembered from watching it as a child.  What I didn’t remember, however, were all of the historical references.  For example, I nearly fell off the couch when I saw this passing reference to Caesar’s assassination—something we had just covered in school that week.  It was so short that I had to pause and rewind to make sure the kids got it.  What was even cooler was seeing the things that they didn’t need me to explain or figure out for them.  For example, during the song, “A Whole New World,” I asked them to see if they could figure out where the characters were.  Of course, they easily got that the pyramids were in Egypt and that the giant dragon parade was in China.  What I loved, though, was when Aladdin and Jasmine flew over the Parthenon.  Now, we have been studying Rome for weeks and have recently learned about their big temple, the Pantheon.  When they flew over the Parthenon, Luke said, “The Pantheon???  No…it’s Greece!  It’s Greece!  The Parthenon!”  And then at the end, when the genie told Aladdin to wish for the Nile, Luke said, “I know!  He’s talking about the Nile River in Egypt!”

These are the moments I love.  And they aren’t really homeschooling moments, per se.  Every child has these moments when they connect their formal learning to something in real life that seems unrelated.  Those moments of making connections are so important, as I’m learning from the book that I’m (still) reading, called Mind in the Making.  In a world where endless information is at our fingertips, it is arguable that making meaningful connections with that information is more important than simply memorizing the information itself.  And though the Aladdin connections weren’t profound by any stretch of the imagination, it shows me that the history my kids are learning is really sinking in to them in a way that goes beyond the books themselves.

And that’s why I smile when a character in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is named Augustus Plume, right after we study Augustus Caesar.  And when we learn about the Russian czars with Five in a Row, after learning in History that the word czar comes from the word, Caesar.  It’s why I beam when, on the way to church, Luke is looking at a search and find he got from Chickfila and exclaims, “This plane reminds me of Louis Bleriot’s plane when he flew across the Channel.”  And when his next statement is, “And these are like the ships that come off the rockets…you know, like Apollo 11 and 13?”

As a home educator, and more importantly, as a parent, I love the being able to introduce my kids to this big world they live in, and I especially love seeing how some of that information is starting to sink in.  It is so fun to watch them make connections between their daily experiences and the things they are learning in school!

Weekly Wrap-Up, April 21-17

It’s been another fun week over here.  The weather has been beautiful, minus a couple of rainy days—but they were still beautiful in their own way…

In school, we continued to read The Story, study space, and do our read-alouds.  Luke is reading—and loving—Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  He especially loved the chapter about the the chocolate room, with its chocolate waterfall and chocolate river.  In fact, he kept having to stop reading to fantasize about what he would do in such a place, or to inform me that his mouth was watering.  So enraptured were we by the chocolate room that I suggested we melt down a couple of our Hershey bars Greg had bought for s’mores and enjoy a little liquid chocolate!  To top it off, both he and Anna added sprinkles to their bowls, and declared that their chocolate was delicious.

For spelling one day, I used an idea I got from Pinterest and had Luke do his ABC order using Duplo blocks.  First, he wrote his words on stickers; then, he stuck them to blocks.  After that, he alphabetized them.  One cool thing about using blocks to alphabetize is that if you make a mistake or leave one out, you can just unsnap the stack and add the block in.  That’s good, because Luke gets pretty stressed if he leaves a word out of his list!

We did some hard core work on our space book this week.  We finished up learning about the sun and prepared to move onto planets.  Most of the activities I printed off deal with one aspect of all nine planets, so we went ahead and assembled all of the books ahead of time.  Starting next week, we will fill them out bit by bit as we learn about one planet at a time.

Like I said last week, we focused on writing complete sentences this week.  I started by listing all the characteristics of a complete sentence on our dry-erase board, but Luke quickly took over that job.  After discussing the meaning of subjects and predicates, I had the kids build silly sentences out of cards.  I had made three stacks of cards:  one of subjects, one of verbs, and one of descriptive prepositional phrases.  Together, the verb and prepositional phrase made a decent (if nonsensical) predicate.  Then I let the kids pick one of each to make their own sentences.  This exercise was wildly successful.  The kids thought their sentences were hilarious.  After choosing their sentences, I then let them draw at random, which was just as fun.  Each time they built a sentence, I had them identify the subject, the verb, and the whole predicate.  After that they decided that they wanted to act out all the verbs, which is why they are dancing in the bottom right picture.  I also had a reinforcing worksheet for each day, and we discussed complete sentences several times throughout each day.  I think they got it, but time will tell…

This week, we read The Glorious Flight, which is the true story of the first flight across the English channel.  Surprisingly, the kids loved it way more than Madeline.  They looked forward to reading it every day.  Alongside the book, we learned some more about France, charted Bleriot’s flight on a map (I made the worksheet myself and was inordinately proud), learned about similes and onomatopoeia, and built and flew our own model airplanes (thank goodness for Daddy because our models were a wee bit complicated!).  Since my crepes last week were a flop, I just bought a simple baguette for less than $2 at Publix.  Oh my goodness—it was a HIT.  Both kids were fascinated by the length of the bread; in fact, when I first went to serve it as a snack, I couldn’t find it because Anna had it squirreled away in her room!  I toasted some in the oven and then buttered it, and also gave them a little bit plain because I knew they’d want to try it plain.  They loved it so much.  We ate baguette and fruit every day for one of our snacks until it was gone.  I really think I’m going to buy one each week and use it for dinner bread and snacks! 

On Tuesday morning, I taught my last Lipscomb class, while Greg went with the kids on a field trip with their tutorial to Pump It Up.  Pump It Up is a bounce house and play area, and the kids had a blast.  Not only did they bounce on many a bouncy contraption, they also did a bit of rock climbing, played a few arcade games, and enjoyed some pizza for lunch, along with what was by all accounts an ungodly amount of dessert!  So obviously, they enjoyed this field trip mightily.

Here are some other things we did this week:  visited Gramma Dottie and tried out Luke’s new bike; planted potatoes in our new garden on Earth Day; bought and set up a compost bin (also on Earth Day); went and rode bikes on the Greenway and then played on the playground, making several new friends; went to tae kwon do and gymnastics; roasted s’mores for dessert one night and then laid on blankets and looked at the stars; had our friends, the Bills, over to play; met the Bills at the library to watch a puppet show of Hansel and Gretel; had a movie night and watched Aladdin; and this evening, we are having several families from church over for dinner. 

It’s hard to believe that we only have three weeks left of our school year! 

March Madness

Well.  It’s not March anymore.  It’s about to not be April anymore.  And yet, I’m just now getting around to post about March Madness.  I’ll explain why in a minute. 

This year, we decided to fill out brackets for March Madness and to have a little contest amongst our family.  Now, let it be said that Greg is the only family member who knows anything about college basketball.  And as this tournament proved, he is also the only family member who cares anything about college basketball.

Let it also be said that Greg came in LAST!



Isn’t that crazy?  He filled out several other brackets and did well on all of them.  But in the family one, he bombed.

For most of the time, in fact, Anna was in the lead, which was super-hilarious, considering that these were some of the things I posted on Facebook regarding her filling out her bracket:

Greg, explaining the process of filling out our March Madness brackets: There are 64 teams, and they play a big tournament, and we get to guess what team will win each game.
Anna: I hope America!!
Yeah, we're all big college basketball fans around here. Can you tell??

Other Anna comments: "I like Ohio!" "Is it basketball?" (In response to me asking her which of the two teams would win, midway through the process) "I choose the #5 team because I am five years old!" "Are there missionaries in Michigan?" "I love UCLA!" And my favorite: "If Mammaw and Granddad like Louisville, then I like Louisville!" But she picked Duke to win it all:).

Once early on, we all tried to watch a game together.  I posted this collage on Facebook to demonstrate how well the kids paid attention:



To say they were a little distracted would be an understatement.  As the tournament went on, they got progressively more interested—and during the championship game, Luke was going crazy!
That’s because in the beginning, Anna soared ahead, while Luke’s bracket did pretty miserably.  His only hope was that he chose Louisville to win the championship, and the rest of us chose Duke…



…and THAT made all the difference:).

Mom was so happy for Luke (and for Louisville) that she ordered him two championship t-shirts and a hat.  They were already on back-order, so I had to wait for them to arrive before I could blog about Luke’s victory. 

It was also agreed that the winner would get to choose a place to go out to eat to celebrate their victory.  Unsurprisingly, Luke chose O’Charley’s.



As much as we go to O’Charley’s, it was still better than Chick-fil-A, which would have been Anna’s choice!

So that was our family’s first March Madness experience.  I hope it will lead to many more to come, and I have a feeling that the kids will only get more interested as they get older.

Homeschool Weekly Wrap-up April 14-20

Well—this week was a busy one!  Maybe I could say that about every week?  I don’t know, but I will say that I enjoyed this week, as packed as it was.

One great thing was that the weather was fabulous.  After a chilly March and most of April, we were only too glad to finally get to do school outside again.  My kids love reading on blankets, rolling in the grass, and taking breaks to catch butterflies!

For Five in a Row this week, we read Madeline.  Honestly, it wasn’t met with the same level of enthusiasm as Ping was, even by Anna.  But Anna still asked for it daily, and we enjoyed learning more about France.  My favorite thing we did was a lapbook activity where we matched famous landmarks to their names, using pictures on the iPad.  Then, we went through and found those same landmarks in Madeline.  It was cool to see those landmarks in a different way.  I also made crepes on Monday night.  For dinner, we had ham and cheese crepes, and for dessert, I even bought Nutella.  Anna’s face in the bottom left picture is indicative of how the crepes went over.  It is probably due to my lack of crepe making ability, but the kids reactions varied from perplexed to unenthusiastic.  They did love the Nutella, though! 

For math, we used cut-outs of the twelve little girls to make arrangements of 12 and talk about multiplication.  It was mainly geared toward Anna, as she has picked up some idea of multiplication from Luke but could use a little reinforcement.  Since Luke loves anything that he can teach, he enjoyed the math lesson, too!  They both said that I should have done the same thing with Ping’s family.  Yeah—cutting out 68 ducks??  No, thanks!:) 

The kids also worked a puzzle of Europe to reinforce the location of France, and I read to them Madeline Says Merci, which is a great book about manners.

The part that neither of them liked was making monochromatic art.  Greg did that lesson with them while I was at school on Thursday, and both of their monochromatic art pages had “This is dumb” written on the bottom.  Except that both of the kids had misspelled, “dumb.”  So then Greg and I could say, “No—you’re dumb!”  Which we didn’t:).  But we did talk a little about irony.

In math, we continued to review Roman numerals.  They really both have it down, now, which is fun.  Whenever we read our Roman Diary this week, both kids could identify all the dates, which went up into the twenties.  We finished the book, Fun with Roman Numerals, above, which was a really nice guide.  In fact, it really was the guide to their learning.  I didn’t “teach” them, per se.  I just read them this book and went from there.  The craft sticks picture was from last week, but I included it to show one of the ways we used the book.  This week, we made a Roman numeral mini-book to go in our Rome book and finally did some worksheets, just to make sure they got it.  They did.

Tuesday was Box Day.  I’ve already written about that.  LOVED it.

We also went on several field trips this week:

Top Left picture-  On Wednesday morning, we went to see a performance of “Go Dog Go” at the Nashville Children’s Theater.  At first, Luke seemed to enjoy it much more than Anna.  He laughed at the on-stage antics along with all the other kids.  Anna, in contrast, spent much of the time with her arms crossed, shaking her head solemnly, and murmuring, “This is not at all like the book.”  She cracked me up.  I thought the play was going to be her first disappointment in an adaptation (many more to come, sweet girl!), but by the end, she said that she loved it and that it was “even better than ‘James and the Giant Peach’!”  It was homeschool day at the theater, and after the play there was a Q&A with some of the actors.  Unsurprisingly, Anna waved her hand around wanting to ask a question.  She had to be patient because many other kids had questions, and the actors used them as launch pads, often answering them at length.  However, Anna’s perseverance paid off, and they called on her.  She said, “What the big baseball that you used blow-up, or not?”  At one point in the play, they had put a big beach ball out to the audience to hit around.  It was painted like a baseball.  The actors were friendly, but were like, “Um, yes, it was blow-up.”  It was by far the shortest answer we received during the whole interview.  Afterward, I asked Anna why she asked that question (since it seemed obvious), and she responded, “I thought it was, but I wasn’t sure because I never got a chance to touch it.”  Well.  I’m glad we confirmed.

Top Right picture--After the Q&A, we ate a picnic lunch outside the theater, and Luke and Anna played hide and seek awhile with some other kids.  We had already missed tae kwon do and still had some time to kill before heading to gymnastics, so I looked up nearby geocaches.  One that was .2 miles away ended up being a pedestrian bridge across the interstate.  The kids thought it was so cool to cross over the interstate, and I admit, I don’t think I’ve ever done that before! 

Bottom Left—On Saturday, I took Anna up to the library to see a performer from the Nashville Ballet.  She read a cute story about a swan who wanted to be a ballerina, then performed a dance for the kids.  Lastly, she taught the children various ballet moves and then had them put it all together for their own dance.  Anna loved it.  I videoed her dancing, mainly to capture the sweet smiles she kept shooting in my direction.  She was in heaven!

Bottom Right—Also on Saturday, Greg went to the driving range with Luke and a teen from church.  It was Luke’s first experience at the driving range, and he really enjoyed it.  Greg said that he did surprisingly well.  Plus, an older gentleman gave him a putter, so that was pretty cool.  And Luke had a soccer game.

On Thursday, we went to the Adventure Science Center with some friends.  It was a great trip—except for this one ill-advised ride on a flight simulator, which I’ll write about later.  But for 98% of the time, the kids had a blast introducing the museum to their friends, who were on their first visit.

Friday was a light homeschooling day and a heavy cleaning day because I had to prepare for a baby shower I was hosting on Saturday!  It was a double shower for two wonderful ladies at church, and I was so excited to get to host again.  I love baby shower brunches and the chance to use all the nice things I got for my wedding.  I even had a couple of games and prizes this time!  I go to a really small church, so I was a little worried about turn-out, but we ended up having a great crowd and a great time! 

Okay, to close, here are our stats:

What we are studying together:  Elijah, Ancient Rome, George Muller, the sun (science).

What Luke did on his own:  Continued reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, worked on answering reading comprehension questions in complete sentences, worked on irregular plural nouns, completed several pages in his Problem Solving workbook, wrote a couple of multiplication tables, wrote a story about Rome.

What Anna did on her own:  Read several of her new readers from Sonlight (sidenote:  I’m so glad that we got them even though she had already read several.  She loves rereading Owl at Home and Mouse Soup and Frog and Toad.  Neither Luke nor I are really big “re-readers,” so I’m glad that someone in the family can enjoy books more than once.  For Luke, I have gotten several books from the Jedi Apprentice series at the library and McKay’s, and he devours one every couple of days, never to pick it up again.  That was always more my style.).  Okay, back to what Anna did:  several lessons in her Singapore 1A workbook, several pages of her phonics and sight word workbooks, wrote a story about Madeline.

Next week, I’m going to make a purposeful effort to focus again on Language Arts.  We are done with our LA curriculum and our math curriculum for the year, so it’s been a struggle to keep up a good regimen for them.  I’ve supplemented with several cheap workbooks, which are nice and colorful and which speak to their needs, but I’ve realized, for example, that we really need some heavy-duty reinforcement of the concept of a sentence.  They know that it starts with a capital letter, ends with one of three punctuation marks, expresses a complete thought, and has a subject and a verb…but it’s not translating to practical life (i.e. Luke’s reading comprehension questions).  I’ve been so distracted with FIAR and our unit studies on Rome and space that I’ve let LA fall to the wayside for too long.  No more!

Wordless Wednesday

Box Day

Today was my “Box Day,” the day when next year’s Sonlight curriculum was scheduled to arrive.  I had gone ahead and ordered it, even though I’m going to a homeschooling convention in May and have been warned about placing curriculum orders before I see the curriculum available there.  However, I know I’m going to use Sonlight’s Core, and, well, what can I say?  I was just really eager to get my hands on it:).

So eager, in fact, that I may or may not have obsessively tracked its delivery status this morning.  I had a full slate of student conferences at school, and in between students, I would check the delivery status.  Imagine my joy when I saw this page right before my last conference:

Oh my goodness—I was so excited!

Now, you must know, I had told myself that there was no reason to be so giddy.  After all, I had looked at the Core C package so much online that I felt like I practically had it memorized.  And I only ordered the Core this time, not math or science.  I didn’t even anticipate using the Language Arts program, even though it is included in the Core.  After my experience with last year’s LA program, I knew I was going to look elsewhere.

The reason I share those details is because they raised a very interesting question for me:  if this curriculum didn’t include Language Arts, math, or science, then why on earth was I paying so much for it??  Indeed, it cost more than my chosen LA, math, and science programs combined.  For what?  History and geography and read-alouds?  I didn’t even use last year’s included Bible program!

But…then I opened the package…

…and I knew why I spent that money:

See, even though my order of this curriculum doesn’t include the basics of grammar or math or science, it is still the heart of my curriculum.  Through these wonderful—and they are wonderful— books, my children will be immersed in good literature, which will lead to a sturdy knowledge of the world around them, both past and present.  This Core is part 2 of World History, and together, we will be exposed to other ways of life, other experiences, and other lands, all of which have amazing things to teach us.  And we will talk all about the things we read, and we will ponder and question and theorize.

At least, that’s what we have done this year.  Just today, we read a picture book about a Roman battle and put ourselves both in the place of the conquering Romans and in the place of the Dacians, whose village and citadel were burning.  We pondered what the prisoners being led away were feeling, and we even talked about the fear of death.  We also discussed the Roman military formation, testudo, and why it is called that (testudo means tortoise, and the soldiers use their shields to make a protective shell around their group).  We discussed all these things at length.  And then we read from a biography of George Muller, and we pondered the allusion in the chapter title, “Do Unto Others,” and we shared our thoughts on the conundrum he faced regarding whether or not to move his orphanages.  We talked about what “love your neighbor” means and also about the benefit of making pro and con lists and also about the need for fresh air and sunshine.  All from one chapter! 

All of that flowed naturally from today’s Core readings. 

And according to the unrelated book I’m reading, called Mind in the Making, such conversations between parent and children are a reliable predictor of children’s literacy and communication skills. 

So…yeah.  I think this curriculum is worth it.

After all, these are the types of tales I want to read and discuss with my kids:

And these are the type of people and ideas I want to share with them:

And I want them to know all about the world they live in:

And all about the Bible:

And I want them to be exposed to good literature, the type of literature that opens doors in their mind and in their heart—the type of literature that teaches as it entertains:

Seriously.  If that sight doesn’t make you giddy, well…then you and I are very different people:).

Like I said earlier, I did go ahead and get the LA package, including readers, since it all comes with the Core:

I got the Level 2 Language Arts program, even though the reading is below both Luke and Anna, mainly because the Level 3 LA readers correspond a lot with U.S. History, which we study next year in Core D.  However, I’m glad I ordered it now because these readers are right at Anna’s current level.  In fact, she has already read Owl at Home, Mouse Soup, and just finished up Nate the Great today.  So now, I’m just going to let her pick which reader she wants to do next and work our way through this pile. 

In fact, she is at this moment reading Amelia Bedelia for her reading time before bed.

We will still use A Child’s History of the World, The Usborne Book of World History, and Usborne Time Traveler next year.  These are books that formed the “spine” of this year’s learning, and continue up to modern times.  In fact, because I’m a nerd, I have already looked at the first week of next year’s program, and here are the books it will include:

I can’t wait.

Two other things I went ahead and ordered, since Sonlight offered them, was our Art program and a Critical Thinking skills workbook:

I did some serious research on a good at-home art program, and by far, ARTistic Pursuits had the best reviews.  I can’t wait to try it out next year.

So there you have it:  our Box Day (really, my Box Day, since the kids were at tutorial when it arrived).  I can’t wait to get started learning about Vikings and castles and what-not, but thankfully, I’m also excited about learning more of Ancient Rome tomorrow!

Woodbine Weekend

This past weekend, we enjoyed some good times with our Woodbine family.  First, Luke decided that he wanted to play soccer for the Y.E.S. team.  Well, to be honest, he said that he might be interested in playing soccer, which, for Luke, is a big deal.  He quickly backpedaled, but it was too late:  we had already signed him up for the soccer team!  Thankfully, he has really loved soccer.  He didn’t want to go to his first practice, but he had a good time when he was there.  And he was neutral toward his first game (again, a big deal for Luke), and once he got there, he really seemed to enjoy it.

I didn’t take any pictures during the game, but Luke stayed in the mix fairly well.  He definitely seemed to always be aware of the goal and of which direction he was supposed to kick it, which was good.  Honestly, he hung in there like a champ, and really enjoyed himself!

Afterward, we got some team pictures.

It helps that his coach is Will, whom we know very well.  (In fact, Luke was in his wedding.)  Luke also loves his assistant coach, Jamie, who is a student at Lipscomb.

On Sunday after church, our congregation went over to Y.E.S. to eat lunch, and then we did some service projects around the Y.E.S. center and in some of our members’ houses.  In the lull between the meal and the work, Luke and the girls had some fun with a hula hoop.  They cracked themselves—and us—up.

I took some pictures of the day to go in our Woodbine Family yearbook, but I thought I’d share a few here, too.  I love getting to spend time with my church family, and I’m so thankful to be part of such a Kingdom-minded group. 

It was a great weekend, and it really helped me to re-focus and get ready for the coming week!