Space station
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Posts posted by Space station
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My dh loves to tell the story of when he was hired as a teen one summer by the town he grew up in. Their job one day was to put up signs near the creek bed that read, "Mercury contaminated soil - No digging." After digging holes all day long for the posts, his friend looked at him and said, "Wait, do they mean THIS soil?" Yep, no protective gear, nada. The national lab had "LOST", literally (and I mean this) TONS of Mercury which were later found in the creek beds. Of course, this was Oak Ridge, TN where cars were routinely scanned to see if the tires were radioactive from running over frogs from the nuclear waste ponds, so no one even blinked at a little Mercury exposure. :eek:
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How about using the OUP volumes The Ancient Near East, The Ancient South Asian World, The African and Middle Eastern World, and The Asian World?
Then take a look at the fiction books that Sonlight uses in their Core F, History of the Eastern Hemisphere, to add some fiction readings. Some of them are good, and some are too much from a Christian, Western point of view. If that is what you want, then you could just follow their whole program. If not, here is the list of books we read and liked (some from Sonlight, some not): Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, The Master Puppeteer, Young Fu, and Daughter of the Mountains, A Single Shard, The Kite Rider, The Big Wave, The Cat Who Went to Heaven, Li Lun, The Samurai's Tale, Sadako & the Thousand Paper Cranes, Mieko & the Fifth Treasure, The Good Earth, Leaving Mother Lake, Breaking Stalin's Nose.
Anyway, that is what I wish we had done, instead of doing the Core F with co-op last year. We only did the first half of it though, so there may be other books from Core F that are worthwhile in there as well.
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Yes, we read the pdf version linked above and enjoyed it.
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The Waldorf schools that I know of would not do very much in the way of traditional academic work at that age. So if that is the school you are considering, maybe consider just switching to that style of homeschooling for this year. Lots of time outside (PE), nature study (science), cooking (science & math), making up stories (LA), finger knitting (helps develop fine motor skills for writing, so this is LA!), no reading except what he chooses, building forts.
You could still have him home and this way of homeschooling is easier to include your younger kids in as well. (I think you mentioned that he is your oldest, so I assume you have some preschoolers running around, too.)
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Supercharged science?
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CE2 includes a lot of review of CE1 as well as building on it. I don't see anyway to do CE without making flash cards which my kids do on a free app called Quizlet. Then besides reviewing like traditional flash cards, they can also do activities that are game-like. My younger daughter is on list 19 and just adds to her flash card list each week. Now she is reviewing about 180 stems and words every day. It doesn't take her very long. We also do all of the activities from the book together. My older daughter is doing WWW2 and makes a new file for each lesson, and then she rotates which lists she studies to keep them all fresh. If your dd is not reading and delving into the book, she can't be infected by MCT's obvious love and passion for words.
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We hosted an 11 year old from S. Korea for 3 months one year. It went very well, so I don't see why it wouldn't work the other way around. They didn't yet have the reverse part of the program set up yet, mostly because they couldn't find enough american kids who wanted to learn Korean, but it was a neat experience even just to have her with us that year.
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You could have your ds make the reference chart as his final project for grammar this year. Emphasize that it should be beautiful enough to be proud to hang on the wall and carefully made enough to last until your next dc has to make theirs! This way all of the information is presented in the way he has learned it.
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Is this helpful?
http://www.hannasd.org/Page/4421
If so, let me know; I'll be needing something for next year!
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For 6th grade we used Critical Thinking Book 1.
http://www.criticalthinking.com/critical-thinking-book-one.html
My son liked the series quite a lot. And now there is a third book in the series! Too late for my ds1, but I will be using it in 8th grade with my younger son.
This is the same thing I am using right now with three 6th graders and an 8th grader. We spend a lot of time laughing and learning a lot. I think this is the highlight of the day when we do this on Tuesdays and Thursdays!
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Hunter, you are amazing! These resources look great.
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When the bickering exceeds my patience, I send them outside to either rake leaves, pull weeds, shovel snow or pick up dog poop. If the weather is too bad for those, I send them to clean the basement or crawl space. Their small annoyances can't last against strenuous or disgusting work, AND I don't have to listen to them. It is really a win for me. I sometimes have to warn them that if they complain about each other or the work, I will continue to assign more until they can get along.
I agree. Extra chores have always been a consequence of bickering around here. It doesn't always cure the problem, but at least some cleaning gets done! :tongue_smilie: Seriously though, often all I have to do is say something like, "Wow look at all those leaves on the lawn," and the bickering stops. If I hear it again, they get extra chores. The other result is that sometimes I have caught them bickering sotto voce with each other, but at least they are keeping it quiet and not bothering me!
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I don't know if this will be helpful, since I'm the average one in my house. School bright, but not gifted like dh. When I ask a question, he has learned to ask me, "Do you want the long or short answer?" He means, do I want the summary sound byte, or do I want to take the time to try and really understand something. It helps that he is a natural teacher and can usually come "down" to my level. He has never shown frustration with me, though I suppose he might feel it sometimes. He usually just finds another way to express something if I don't seem to get it. I am also honest with him about when I think something is beyond me. He stretches me, but doesn't push.
With my kids, especially dd10, I often have to ask them to let me catch up to their line of thinking and remind them that their brains work faster than mine. They skip steps or make leaps that I have to work out explicitly. Sometimes they get frustrated with me, but it helps that I still have enough credibility with them, because sometimes they do still make mistakes that I catch in my methodical way. 😊 I like to think that I am the one in the house that trains them to still be able to have conversations with the rest of the world and not feel like they are "better" than anyone else. It helps that they love me!
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We use murderous maths as read alouds when requested and for choice reading.
ETA, I don't think you have to be overly mathy. The explanations are pretty straightforward.
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Here is what is on the syllabus for the well trained mind academy:
The Holy Bible, NIV or New King James translation
Epic of Gilgamesh, any translation
Homer, The Illiad, translated by Richmond Lattimore or Robert Fagles
Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Richmond Lattimore or Robert Fagles
Virgil, The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fagles or Robert Fiztgerald
Aescylus, The Oresteia, translated by Robert Fagles or Richmond Lattimore
Sophocles, Three Theban Plays, translated by Robert Fagles
Euripides, Medea, any translation
Aristophanes, Birds, translated by David Barrett or Alan Sommerstein
Plutarch, Lives
Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by A.D. Melville or Allen Mandelbaum
Plato, Republic, translated by Robin Waterfield
Aristotle, Poetics, any translation
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. Translated by William Leonard or John Godwin
Aurelius, Meditations, any translation
Augustine, The Confessions, any translation
Fulfills 1 high school credit in world literature or English.
Designed for grades 9-12
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Golden goblet and cat of butastes are definitely young for high school reading; my dd read them in 4th grade. I mean, he could still read them if you want him to, but they won't take very long or add that much. I also don't see how screwtape letters fits in for ancient lit. It is a terrific thing to have him read, but I'm not sure it belongs there since it is a conversation between 2 demons set in the 20th century. I'd take those out of ancient lit and add one or 2 of the others from your optional list instead.
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These kind of posts belong on the sale board.
Good luck!
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I don't have toddlers, but I do daycare for 2. I second (or third) the previous suggestions about not using nap time for read alouds and having the older ones alternate playing with the toddlers while you work with the other. Also, spend some time with the toddlers in a fun productive way while the others are working independently, even if it really makes your work take a little longer. (Laundry, washing windows, scrubbing the floor, scrubbing the tub, etc. are serious fun to most of the toddlers I know.) Helping mom is fun for them, especially if they feel like they have your attention while they are doing it.
I also think that learning doesn't always have to be fun, as long as it is rewarding, if that makes any sense. So I bet your older kids are doing great, as are you!
(Edited for clarity)
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Faber has an adult piano adventures series.
http://pianoadventures.com/publications/mainLibraries/pa/adult.html
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Thanks for the links, orthodox6. I will have dh check them out. He learned Russian in college, used it for years in the business world, and at one point was fluent enough to do simultaneous translations, but that was a while ago. Still, he is fairly competent in Russian, if a little rusty. My dd wanted to learn it because she has decided that she wants to be an astronaut, and she saw some US astronauts interviewed who all said the hardest part of their training was learning Russian, so she decided to get a head start!
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Dd made it through the systems of equations chapter ok, but hit a wall on the harder ratio problems this week. She happily accepted a break from AOPS for a few days to just do LoF. It's just tough stuff to grasp, especially when they are so young.
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I don't understand the criticism either. As the OP said, her ds's reaction caught her by surprise. She didn't get up this morning and decide to deprive him of his favorite subject. We all make plans about our school days and how to cover the myriad of subjects we want our kids to learn. Sometimes things just don't go as planned.
OP, congrats on finding such a good curriculum match for your son!
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I forgot to comment on the violin part. Maybe he would enjoy that again if you let him work on some easy, fun pieces. Have him pick some fun fiddle pieces or something he likes and don't make him fix everything. Just let him enjoy it for a little while. My daughter has a mixture of pieces to work on, from easy stuff that she can sight read and perform right away to very challenging stuff that I know will take her all year to get close to ready. Since she can work quickly on some stuff, if seems to make it easier for her to slow down and focus on the hard stuff. She also "grants requests" to dh when he comes home and plays favorite pieces from the past for him. On days when the tough stuff might be kicking her down, it really lifts her up to see how far she has come.
Logic for 6th/7th grade
in Logic Stage & Middle Grade Challenges
Posted
Comments like this always remind me how grateful I am that we have so many choices so that everyone can find what works for them. I would never describe Critical Thinking 1 as boring and dry; we have so many laughs with it! I'm glad that reefgazer found a curriculum that does that for them, too!