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Melanie

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Everything posted by Melanie

  1. My sixth grader's day might look like this: 6:30 She wakes up, eats breakfast, and watches television on her iPod until I make her put it away and brush her teeth. 7:00 Algebra. She goes to the bathroom so many times during the next hour that I begin to worry about her health. She picks fights with her older brother (stop jiggling the table, tapping the table, touching the table, looking at her, breathing, blinking) until I put my scary face on and look at her with it. 8:00 By this time I'm irritated by how little algebra is actually getting done (seven problems in an hour? seriously?), so I tell her to move on to Latin. She's furious. She'll NEVER finish math NOW, I'm SO UNREASONABLE, I don't tell older brother what to do, blah, blah, blah. Scary face goes back on. 9:00 She has worked for a solid hour on Latin. She's happy. I'm happy. She moves on to Greek. She spends 15 minutes working, and 15 minutes discussing Greek grammar with her older brother, who should be doing his own Greek, but isn't. The chatter is at least academic, so I ignore them. 9:30 She watches a logic video and takes notes, then answers a few questions about the first section of the chapter. 10:00 It's time for English. She spends 15 minutes wandering around the house looking for her book, 10 minutes in the bathroom, and five minutes telling me how superior The Deluxe Transitive Vampire is to Rod & Staff English. Then she starts reading. 11:00 Piano practice. 12:00 She has practiced diligently for an hour, and it's time for lunch. 12:45 It's time for either history, literature, or science. I don't care which, so she chooses literature and reads To Kill a Mockingbird. Every few pages or so she updates older brother on her progress. They're talking too much, but I don't care because they're talking about a book. 1:45 She finishes her algebra lesson. I put the scary face on to head off any shenanigans, but I end up not needing it. 2:30 She's done for the day. She has a few hours to mess around before ballet class. She decides to bake a cake. 7:00 Dinner, then chores, then free time. She decides to work on her cookbook while she watches a movie. 10:00 Bed.
  2. My blog is in my signature. I've used Blogger, Typepad, and Wordpress, but I like Squarespace the best. It is a little on the expensive side (the cheapest plan is $12 a month), but the ease of use has been worth it to me. You don't have to give a credit card number to try it; if you sign up, you'' have two weeks of free access to all available features. If you choose not to continue, they'll just delete the site. I just wish they supported threaded comments - it's the only thing I miss.
  3. Yes. My son covered units 1-7 in 7th grade. My daughter covered units 1-3 in 5th grade.
  4. Congratulations to all! Our results finally came in today; my son received a gold medal on the Latin II exam (he missed one), and my daughter scored a perfect paper on the Intro to Latin exam. I'm proud of both of them, of course, but I'm especially proud of my boy; he's essentially self-taught. :)
  5. If I could do it over again, I'd bite the bullet and start with Wheelock's.
  6. Math (math, logic) Languages (Latin, Greek, Hebrew) English (grammar, composition, rhetoric, vocabulary) Great Books (history, literature, religion, philosophy) Science Music So, we could have either six or fifteen subjects. I prefer six. ;)
  7. We're using the first edition of Scales, Intervals, Keys and Triads by John Clough.
  8. Saxon Advanced Math (lessons 1-90, 1 hr daily) Henle Second Year Latin (1 hr daily) Athenaze Greek Book I (1 hr daily) Hebrew (15 min daily) Material Logic (1 hr, 2-3x per week; finished some time ago) English/Rhetoric (1 hr daily) Great Books (ancient history/literature; 2 hrs, 4x per week) Geology (college texts + The Teaching Co. lectures; 2 hrs, 2x per week + lab time) Piano (1-1.5 hrs daily; includes music theory) Drama (4+ hrs weekly)
  9. My 6th grader is using Henle First Year Latin and is doing every exercise on paper, copying the Latin before writing down the English translation. She also fills out the MODG charts daily. It's a lot of writing. :)
  10. My son is using Athenaze after three years of Latin and all three levels of Elementary Greek. I listen to paradigm recitations and quiz him on vocabulary occasionally, but otherwise, he's on his own. It isn't the best situation (when I try to grade his English to Greek translations, I am flummoxed by the accents), but it's as good as it's going to get right now. As far as I can tell, he's doing beautifully. I guess we'll find out for sure when he gets to college. ;) I do have the teacher's handbook for Athenaze; I bought it from Rainbow Resource Center. It includes translations of the readings, answers to exercises, and many teaching notes.
  11. My 9th grader spends an hour each day on each language. My 6th grader spends an hour on Latin and about 30 minutes on Greek.
  12. We're in our 9th year of homeschooling. I wish we had spent more time outside. I wish we had been able to scrape up the money for drawing lessons. I wish I had spent the early years preparing for high school. I should have put the mop down and learned calculus while the kids were playing. I wish I'd started formal academics earlier with my son. I wish I had insisted on proper pencil grip and letter formation. I wish I had started with Latin right away, instead of trying to appeal to them with sign language, Japanese, and Spanish. The last three wishes are related to my biggest wish: that I hadn't listened to the people who said, "Relax or you'll kill their love of learning!" Otherwise, I'd probably do everything exactly the same. :)
  13. The DVDs just go over the material already presented in the book. We used them, but we wouldn't have had to.
  14. Mine designed their ultimate fantasy gardens, pasted in seed packages and pressed leaves, added pictures of their crops, drew and identified common (and not so common) garden pests, and probably more, but it was a long time ago and my memory is failing me. :001_smile: ETA: My son just reminded me that they drew the different root systems and listed the types of natural fertilizer (cow poop, horse poop, chicken poop, rabbit poop - the poop made an impression.)
  15. We are doing both, and we've been successful so far. My son is halfway through Henle Second Year Latin and Athenaze Book 1, and recently added Hebrew, though that is just for kicks. My daughter is halfway through Henle First Year Latin and is working through Elementary Greek 1. We're having a lot of fun with it.
  16. Mine watches hockey and says, "I trust you implicitly, darling, so buy whatever you want and hush." ;)
  17. I use unbleached white flour, Crisco, and a dry cast iron skillet. I wrote a blog post (with pictures) about them recently.
  18. It's not even dinnertime in Hawaii, so I'm in. :D Memory Work Monday This was a fantastic idea - thanks!
  19. My son is using the geology one this year, and will use the astronomy one next year. I don't think they're strong enough texts to use on their own. I'm having him read the self-teaching guide as an introduction before turning to his college level textbook. This year we've been using both texts simultaneously, but it's a pain since the topics aren't aligned. Next year I'll have him read the self-teaching guide all at once at the beginning of the year, and then move on to the main science text.
  20. My 9th grader read it at the beginning of the year; my 6th grader is reading it now. I wouldn't dedicate more than a month to it. It's exactly what you say - an entertaining overview. Enjoy it, and move on!
  21. Our history studies in the earlier grades were fragmented, too (more interest led than parent directed), so for 8th grade, I pretended my kid had never done history before. I had him do a "survey" course of world history, with a slight emphasis on American history. He read A Short History of the World by J. M. Roberts, and wrote a summary after each section. Once American history started coming up, I added in primary source studies. I assigned documents appropriate to the time period, then had him answer the primary source questions in The Well-Trained Mind. The resources I used were: The American Reader; Diane Ravitch Great Issues in American History, Volumes 1-3; Richard Hofstadter Letters of a Nation; Andrew Carroll This seemed to prepare him very well for our great books study in high school. (He'll go through the four-year rotation as described in TWTM.)
  22. We used Traditional Logic 1, Traditional Logic 2, and Material Logic by Martin Cothran.
  23. My son will be in 10th grade next year. Math: second half of Saxon Advanced Mathematics Latin: Henle Third Year Latin Greek: Athenaze Book 2 Logic (review): Socratic Logic; Kreeft Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student; Corbett Science: Astronomy (haven't designed the course yet) Great Books: Medieval history and literature Fine Arts: drama, piano Phys Ed: Water sports (scuba, sailing, surfing, swimming) We are considering letting him take biology at the community college at some point next year, but that's still up in the air.
  24. We use his videos. We love them as much as we could love anything having to do with math. ;)
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