Kolbe update, week 5

We just started week 5, thought I’d give a little report on how things are going.  Re-cap: This is our first year using Kolbe.  6th and 4th grader are enrolled, and mostly following the plan with a couple substitutions.  2nd grader and kindergartener continue to do the home-grown, relaxed-schooling thing.

Overall Impression: Very happy with the decision.  On a day like today (evil dictator felled by an evil-er cold), wow it is SO MUCH BETTER having the plans ready-to-go.  Oh I know, it is so easy to make your own course plans.  Oh, I know, it only takes a few minutes to type them up each week.  But wow, being able to growl at a child and say, “Where are you in your homework?” is even easier.

–> Without ready-made, day-by-day plans, two big kids would definitely still be on the relaxed-schooling plan, which I really love for the little guys, but is not the ideal choice for our older kids.  Way too many disruptions in the school year so far (exhibit A: evil dictator with evil cold), no way I could have held together a formal curriculum if it relied 100% on my willpower alone.

Some comments on specific subjects:

Latin: Mr. Boy is doing the first year of New Missal Latin.  I like it pretty well.  Like the kolbe-published supplemental resources.  Will say this: In my opinion, the teaching parent needs to either have a smattering of Latin under the belt, or be ready to learn-along.  Having already done the intro to classical Latin in previous years, these first few weeks have been largely review for Boy & myself, and yes that is very nice.  Now is not my time to be learning a new language.  No really.  Sometimes it is not that time.

(Remind me also I have some other comments on this particular Latin program and the pro’s and con’s.  For a post another day.)

Grammar:  No shock here, I’m one of ten people in the known universe who actually likes Voyages in English.  So far, no difficulties.  Definitely if you haven’t diagrammed sentences before, you want the intro to diagramming booklet as a supplement.

Composition: I failed to observe that there is a separate composition book for 6th grade in addition to the vocabulary and grammar books.  Kolbe plans call for one assignment a week from that book.  I’d already maxed out the book budget.  So I typed up 36 composition assignments for the Boy, and stuck those in his plan book.  Conveniently, 6th graders do not use the composition portion of VOE, so I borrowed from there.

Spelling / Vocabulary:  The kids hate this.  Lot of work.  I keep reminding them that a good PSAT / SAT score is worth cold hard cash.    They get that.  We’ve used Spelling Power in the past, and have good results with using that study method for studying the words missed on the pre-test.   The whole amount of Kolbe-assigned words is a lot, though.  And we’ve had a couple weeks with enough disruptions that I couldn’t keep up my end on this one through the whole week.  We just move on to the next week, rather than piling up.

Word Study:  Oh, yeah, and word study.  Gee these children get a LOT of language arts.  They tell me this one is easy (MCP Plaid).  It is also good for them.  Happy there.  Decided this was one workbook the kids could write their answers in, would be a royal pain to have to do the assignments on a separate page.

Geography:  Lovin’ the geography books.  Short, easy assignments, genuinely useful map skills.  Makes me happy.

Religion: Of course I like it (Faith & Life), I was already using it anyway.  This is the other activity book I let the kids write in.  Pretty happy with the addition of the St. J’s Balt. Catechisms as well, serious retro power going on there.  My DRE also likes the program.    She’s experimenting with one section of F&L for 8th grade CCD this year.  (Rest of us are using our same Loyola Press books from previous years.  Which are fine.  But I’d still make my kids do F&L at home.)

Science:  Not a demanding program, which works for me.  We skip the Monday “investigation” every week, so far there hasn’t been one worth the hassle.  Also, I have the workbooks but the course plans don’t call for them, and both kids have decided we are happier not doing them.  I’m good with having them do just the textbook reading and review questions, and they can unschool any other science they desire. I like that balance.  [Recall: Two real microscopes in my living room.  Engineer at the dinner table every night.  Unschooling science is a viable option.]

Literature:  Um, where are the study questions? Apparently they are in some other place than the course plans.  I guess a Kolbe booklet I was supposed to buy?   For the uninitiated: You acquire the book you are studying — White Fang and Misty of Chincoteague to start, for us — and then the course plans give you chapter reading assignments and a weekly short essay to write, book report at the end.  And those plans also mention these “study questions” and “vocabulary” and stuff.  But they aren’t in the plans.    And no, I can’t be bothered to go look back at the Kolbe catalog, nor to post a question on the Kolbe forums.  Because, um, my magic pen of you-don’t-have-to-do-this works great!  I just cross out assignments!  We love it!

–> As a result: I let the girl take her final exam open-book and open-dictionary (Misty only takes 5 weeks), since it would be requiring her to have memorized study questions she’d never seen.  Flipped around the final week course plans to have her do the exam first and write the book report second.

Math: Not using Saxon.  Nothing against it.  We’re just still happy with Math-U-See, didn’t see a reason to switch when that was already working. 

History: Recall everyone’s doing Rome this year, which would ordinarily be the 5th grade course.  Very happy both with using the program as written for Mr. Boy, and subbing in History Pockets for the first two quarters for the girl.  Not much else to say.  The Kolbe-recommended course is very good.  And one of my children really needed to meet Ancient Rome in a perkier manner.

[But yes, I had to pick up a library book on the Aztecs, because HP fails to mention the, er, human sacrifice, those amazing wonderful ancient Aztecs were practicing during the European renaissance.  Yeah, I’m a western culture snob.  Facts are facts.  I vote for the no-live-beating-human-hearts-in-the-hands-of-the-priest every time.  Give me self-flagellating, slightly sore-backed penitents over flayed-alive sacrificial victims any day.]

Funny story though: We’re planning to go see our local Roman legion when they gather not so far from us in November.  Except the girls only want to go if they get to dress up.  So a certain growing 4th grader is going to be let loose with some discount linen between now and then.  Luckily the rest of us already own passable garb that still fits.

Homeschool Photos Episode 1: Organization

Now for the personal tour, divided up by theme.  We are five days down, 175 to go, so homeschooling is pretty much all I think about right now.  I am not a naturally organized person, but through a series of miracles, I think I finally have something that works.  This is what it looks like.

 

Command Central

1.  This is my office.  Those shelves contain my books, including course plans not in use and all the solutions manuals.  Also contains school books that I don’t want kids getting into, either because of replacement cost or a very-PG rating.

Squint at the desk on the right, and you’ll see this:

My brain.

 

It took me, oh, you know maybe TWENTY YEARS to figure out I needed a desk-top file box.   There’s a file in there for any kinds of papers I need to either access quickly or file frequently: phone number lists, activity calendars, kids’ current-year school portfolios, and an assortment of other odds and ends for me personally.  (SuperHusband gets the other desk.)

The bulletin board behind the desk is for near-term papers I need in my face.  Last week it held a copy of the girls’ party invitation.  Right now it has the announcement for the local catechist training seminar coming up.  I like it empty.

Sitting on the desk is my personal calendar, week-at-glance.  I take it with me whereever I go, or else I am very very sorry I did not.  (Did I lose your phone number that you wrote on the church bulletin? See?  I should have brought the pink book.)  Also, I always regret it if I don’t look at the calender every morning.  But a lot of mornings I don’t.  And then I regret it.

The public end of my brain.

3. This is the freezer door, and behind it lie the wonders of science.  But on the surface is the more pressing homeschooling need, the calendars everyone else looks at.  I put the week’s activities on the dry-erase board, and then use empty squares to write in items for the grocery list as needs are made known.

[I used to keep this on the wall behind my desk.  And I never used it, because it was awkward to write on.  Then I saw one just like it at my friend Judy’s house, only she used hers.  Because it was on her freezer.]

The tiny strip of bulletin board holds up a monthly calendar, which I update every now and again when we need to figure out whether we are free for this or that.  It also holds important papers such as the list of meals for the week (torn off from the paper grocery list I took to the store), and the list of lost homebrewing supplies we would dearly like to find again.  Behind the monthly calendar, on their own tacks, are the church youth group activity calendar and the altar-server  schedule, since both of those I need to actually look at pretty often.

Also on the freezer is a little metal organizer that holds dry-erase markers, the dog’s thyroid medicine, and bills that need to be paid.  [All the other pet meds are on top of the freezer, and I finally got smart today and put them in a big ziplock bag so they wouldn’t fall off the freezer and dissappear forever.  They could still fall off, but they’ll do it in giant blob that won’t slip into the dusty communal grave of Things That Got Kicked Under the Fridge.]

The Land of Books We Need Right Now.

4.  This year I made a little zone in the living room for all the kids’ current-year school books.   So they are all in one place.  In previous years I let certain children keep their books on their desks in their rooms.  Bad idea.   Recipe for lost books.

On the top shelf you see a milk crate for each big kid.  All their books plus a binder with the quarter’s course plans, daily grading sheet, and a dry-erasable daily checklist they can choose to use or not, go in that box.  Nearby (you’ll see it in a future episode maybe) is the chair where I sit to issue and grade homework.  A kid stands by that chair and delivers to me the book & work I request, and puts back what I’m done with.    So far, 5 days into the year, that process is working great, except that I need to make a box for the solutions manuals so I can haul them into the living room with me.  It turns out I don’t actually know that much Latin.

Top shelf of the wooden bookcase contains library books, a box with blank penmanship worksheets (kids just choose whatever they want for that day from what is in the box — they all write about the same, I know), and the five-year-old’s “workbox”.  That means her basket of activity books to do school-y stuff with when she is bored waiting on me to work with her.

Middle shelf has two little girls’ real school books, plus frequently-referenced extra books, like the dictionary.  And whatever else the kids randomly put away there.

Bottom shelf has the 2nd grader’s workbox and more related-but-not-required books.  All kids are studying Ancient Rome / Ancient Civilizations, so those types of books from our family library are there right now, and American History (so last year) are off on a different set of shelves elsewhere.

To left of the shelves are the Math Drawers.  Bottom drawer contains math activities (thank you Laura B.!), top drawer contains upper-grades math manipulatives for fractions and algebra.  Or something.  The big box on the top has containers with little Units and Tens blocks, and then a stack of Hundreds blocks.  Except that everyone seems to be doing math in my bedroom, which means many of the blocks have now found a home on top of the old ice chest by my bedroom door.

Way up on top of the milk crates are the good school books that the kids don’t need yet, but belong in the pile of current-year books, and I don’t want anybody touching them.  But I want to remember where they are, because soon, very soon, some child will need them.

School Photos, Prologue

So we’re officially entered in Dorian & Bearing’s homeschool photo contest, and it looks like the deadline is being extended, yay!   So if you have had photo drama as we did, do not despair.  Share your pics.

I submitted seven in the official flicker location — the ones that looked most homeschooly.  I thought, does anyone really want to see the purple hippos?  Even though they are an integral part of my homeschool?  You’ll be relieved to know that most of the photos we took never made it to the internet!  Yay!  But if you want the complete flicker Fitz homeschool collection, it’s here.

–> Note that there are some duplicates, because we had three photographers working on this project, and they all got to post their favorite photos, no matter what. And since two of us shared a camera, there was some arguing over who snapped which shot.  Not all the captions are my work either – check the tag to verify.

Counting down . . . entering the contest

The girls are busy running around taking photos of the schoolhome for Dorian & Bearing’s contest.  It seems like a better idea than cleaning than the house.   Photo-essay coming.  I hope these people of mine know how to upload their photos.

Kolbe – episode 2

So we decided to go ahead and register with Kolbe for next year, for the two big kids.  Here’s the beta, for those who are considering a similar plunge:

Glad we registered silly early. Kolbe lets you send in your registration (and tuition, of course) as early as you like, and then you school year still runs for the 12 months you indicate.  So we mailed forms in March, but that is to cover the year running August 2011-July 2012.  Why bother registering so early?

• Avoid overwhelming the staff during crunch season.  We had a big box of course plans and parent information on our doorstep within a week.   One item was missing, and it was no problem to whip out an e-mail and the registration guy could just pop it in the mail.  You don’t want to be sweating waiting for materials a week before you need to start.
• Time to look through the course plans, and get an idea of how the recommended books will be used.  So you know whether ________ supplemental text is something your student will really need, maybe want, or can do without.  Handy.
• Time to bring the kids up to speed on their weak subjects.  Which is why . . .

The Assessment Tests are Gold.  Get them. These are the tests that measure how much of the current year’s work your student has mastered.   And here’s the secret that nervous, overwhelmed parents need to know: You don’t have to administer the test. If you’ve been teaching your student one-on-one, you can probably just look at them and get a good idea of how your student stacks up to plan.

For example, you might look at the end-of-third-grade grammar test, and say to yourself, “Egads! my 9-year-old has never even heard the word ‘Predicate’!  Somebody, quick, find me a grammar book!”  And so you google “free grammar practice worksheets”, and find this great site, and you spend the rest of the spring introducing your child to the wonders of formal grammar study.

No need to traumatize anyone by actually administering the test.  You can traumatize yourself just by looking at it.  (And, also, be reassured that the idea of a ‘predicate’ is pretty easily explained, once your child learns what nouns and verbs are, which is also pretty easy.  Which is why you weren’t sweating grammar up till now anyway.)

***

So that’s what we’re doing this spring.  Intensive grammar, math, and penmanship; structured unschooling for the rest.

 

***

PS: Funny conversation with the boy:

Mom: I think you’ll find the history next year pretty light.

Mr. Boy: Kolbe must not really care about history.

Mom:  No, actually they care quite a lot about history.  It’s that most kids your age don’t read adult history books for fun.

Mr. Boy: Oh.

(FYI rest assured, not all my children are like this.)

Under the microscope

(Um, just a homeschooling post.  No deeper meaning.)

I’ve been planning school a month at  a time lately.  February went a little haywire, between guests, the flu, and the 6-week mark on the library cycle (all books to be returned).  So yesterday morning with life resuming a semblance of normalcy, had to figure out what to do about science.  Kids had really enjoyed the lab science feel to our Drop of Water study, and they’d been complaining about the endless animal research reports last fall, so I thought maybe it wasn’t the auspicious week to return to Zoo Pass Science Class.

Instead I announced that as soon as the kitchen table was clean after lunch, I’d pull out the microscopes.  We have one very nice low-power microscope that the SuperHusband acquired from work.  He had spied one sitting unused and unwanted in the lab, and in lieu of a bonus, asked his boss if he could have that instead.  The other is a hand-me-down from Ann Miko at Phos Hilarion, a good sturdy cast metal unit retired from a school science lab.

So science this week is this: You can look at anything you want under the microscopes.  Having them out for free use is turning out to be much more peaceful than having everyone gathered for one short class and having to fight for turns.

Kitchen table can be devoted to this because the weather is so nice this week.  We’re having meals and most homework outside at the picnic table.  I’ll be frank here: This is one of the primary reasons we homeschool.  Seriously.  Living in the south, our glorious summer days all come during the school year.  (In what gets called “summer” it’s one giant three-month-long sauna.)

So I was sitting outside yesterday, feeling like the luckiest person in the world (fairly accurate), and there was that little voice saying “Your children should be sitting inside under flourescent lights all day, because that’s how they’ll become prepared for the adult world”.   Because I guess people who do math in broad daylight are rank hedonists.

But people say this.  There’s this notion floating around that Children Must Suffer.  It is not enough to master the material, It Must Be Boring.  It is not enough to devote hours a day to schoolwork, it Must Be Done Someplace Unpleasant.  It is not enough to have a varied social life, There Must Be Bullies.

Now if there were something natural about spending large quantities of time sitting indoors under artificial lighting, I could be persuaded that the resistant child must be conformed to the human condition.  But given that long stretches sitting still, and long hours of daylight spent inside, are actually linked to health disorders?  It becomes a bit like insisting that because the child will likely one day work in the mines, he must be sent underground from the age of five so that he might become accustomed to the dark and damp and coal dust.

So that’s us.  Rank hedonists.  Happy Spring, southerners.

Math War (card game)

Math War is a fighting game disguised as a math game.   Played like the card-game “War” (aptly named), each card contains a math fact question, but no answer.   At each turn, the player whose card has highest answer gets to take the pile.  The kids, of course, have to figure out the answer to each card’s math fact, in order to know who wins the battle.

You can purchase a deck, or make your own using index cards, which would allow your children to practice whichever facts you choose.  (With a mixed-ability group, you could mix decks and assign each kid to answer a certain type of fact.)

This game is a great way to keep your kids learning on a day when you are feeling tired of the same old math book routine.  Your homeschooled children think they are studying math facts, but in fact they are mastering important socialization skills they might otherwise miss, such as bullying, cheating, and hurling all the cards across the room and stomping away.  Guaranteed to motivate the teaching parent to quickly return to those delightfully boring workbooks.