Why I stopped posting

I think it's a pretty good reason.  Don't you?

After a hard pregnancy with Hyperemesis Gravidum, we welcomed Sweet Pea into our family this fall.  Bean and Dozer are overjoyed with her arrival and dote on her constantly.

Now that I'm feeling better, I expect to start posting more often.

Wordless Wednesday: Chuckwagon Chili

Wordless Wednesday: B-ball!

No more (formal) reading!

When I was college, my focus was on Psycholinguistics - the study of factors that enable humans to learn, use, and understand language.  After I graduated, I pursued a Master's Degree in reading and I taught English as a Second Language, English, and Reading classes in the TX public school system for 5 years.

And yet, when it was time to teach Bean "reading" (the academic subject vs. "c-a-t spells cat") I was nervous.  I wasn't sure that I trusted myself to cover all the bases that I needed to on my own.  So I picked a canned reading program to do with her.  I liked that was all set up so that I knew I was covering what I "should be."  I liked that it matched our language arts program.  I could even overlook the religious aspect of the stories.

There was just one problem with it: It was way too easy.  The units looked more and more like busywork as we went through it.  And since it was no where close to instruction at the level Bean was at, she was bored.  Then, I realized she wasn't learning anything from it.  All her jumps and leaps came from reading on her own or from reading that we did together.  At some point, it became a box to check off each week...and staying away from doing things because we "have to" was part of the reason I decided to homeschool!

So I've decided to do something completely different.  I've tossed aside CLE Reading 200, which we were supposed to start this week and I bought last year at the same time I bought CLE Reading 100.  Instead of reading stories from a textbook, Bean is reading stories from real books.  I'm working hard to correlate the books I assign her with our history from The Story of the World, much like Tapestry of Grace does.

Next week we're studying The Celts and the Barbarians so I found a children's version of Beowulf that she's going to read (in addition to what's in SOTW) and some books on Celtic fairy tales, as well as a selection of non-fiction books about the Celts.  As she reads them, we talk about them and she gives me a short narration.  For some books, I make a reader's guide for her to fill out while she reads them.  The reinforcement of topics between history and reading will be a nice bonus.  Even better is that she'll be reading versions of Chaucer's stories, Shakespeare's works, and Beowulf as we learn about them and the time periods they were written in.

In addition to assigned reading for school, I require that she read for 30 minutes a day for fun.  She loves reading so this isn't really an issue with her.  She can pick a picture book, a chapter book, whatever she wants.  Currently, she's rereading the Pathway Readers and alternates between Magic Treehouse books so she can play on the Magic Treehouse website, Ramona books, Roald Dahl books, and the like.  From talking to her about the books she learns for fun, I'm learning more about Ramona, Jack, and Annie than I ever knew!

I'm excited to see how this new plan is going to work for us!

Week 16 Check-In

We finished CLE LA 100 in the middle of this week.  I gave Bean a mini-break so we'll start LA 200 on Monday.  I don't think I've mentioned it in a while, but we're still working our way through Sequential Spelling as well.

I introduced Bean to the Magic Treehouse website this week so she's been going back and rereading a bunch of Magic Treehouse books so that she can take the tests over them and earn medals.  She's also rereading the Pathway Reader Days Go By because she wants to read the entire series from the beginning. To correlate with our history studies, she read Growing up in Ancient Rome this week, as well as Galen: My Life in Imperial Rome

We had a great week for math this week.  Bean is rocking her way through her math book.

We started The Story of the World: The Middle Ages this week.  Our last book ended with the fall of Rome and this book began with the fall of Rome so we've covered it twice.  There were things in this book that weren't in the last though so it worked well.  And Bean loves Rome so she was happy to do Rome for one more week.

We learned the Latin names for some animals this week, which Bean loved.  We adopted a kitten 3 weeks ago so Bean was excited to find out how to say cat in Latin.  We also have a black Lab and learned the word for dog in Latin too, which made Dozer quite happy as well.

Science this week focused on finding fossils.  We looked through fossils that we've already collected in nature walks, talked about the dinosaur digs where we've gotten to dig for dinosaur fossils, and watched a documentary about paleontological dig, and read some books about fossils.

It was a good week!

Wordless Wednesday: Caught Reading

A Day in Our Life

I thought I'd share an average day at Hill Country Classical Academy.  This was a day from last week, not actually today's day.  I meant to post it last week and I just didn't get around to it!

The kids came into our bed before sunrise and fell asleep with us.  Like most mornings, they went back to sleep and make a shambles of our bed after Tech Guy and I get out of bed.

Once I woke them up, Dozer requested dinosaur pancakes for breakfast.  Blueberries are one of his favorite foods so I added those on the side, along with an egg for some protein.  

Bean requested Minnie Mouse pancakes, along with blueberries and an egg.

After breakfast, Bean did school.  She prefers doing her work curled up on the couch.  She was finishing a math worksheet here.  We do a file system so you can see her week's folder under her math paper.

At some point, Bean decided that she was cold and changed her shirt.  When the natives became restless, we stopped to have lunch.  Lunch today was a peanut butter and honey sandwich, along with a banana.  Right after I took the picture, the kids reminded me that I forgot their milk and the carrots.  Oops!

After we finish school, it was time for swim lessons!  Bean's class swam in the big pool and her focus was on perfecting her technique and building endurance.

Dozer's class swam in a smaller pool.  His class is focused on learning to swim.

We ate a quick dinner and I forgot to take pictures of it.  Oops!

And then it was off to roller skate with Bean's Girl Scout troop.  This particular skating rink has a big area where you can skate as well as a multiple-story playscape for little ones.  Bean rollerbladed with her friends while Dozer played in the playscape.

Once we got home, it was time for showers and bed!  And that's an average day around here!