I'm going back to school!

I am going to fully do Naia's 12th grade Build Your Library curriculum with her! This does not include math, science, or French. It does include American History, Literature and Composition, Government, Economics, and Photography. We are both going to read Bill Bryson's updated version of A Short History of Nearly Everything. We will mark it all up with different color highlighters, summarize/write narrations.  I'm actually pretty excited. How am I going to do all of this? Here's the plan! I will wake up around 6 and get in 2 1/2 hours of reading before making breakfast for Lela. Wednesdays will be completely dedicated to Naia and BYL until after lunch. I usually have quite a bit of free time on weekends (for now). I'm not sure how time consuming it will be (I think around 15 hours per week). I have asked Naia to ask for three full weekdays off from work so she can complete the assignments. She keeps a planner and will create her own homeschool schedule around her work schedule. In addition to BYL, she will complete Khan Academy's Financial Literacy and continue with French. We will be looking at FAFSA and culinary school for the near future.

Here are the books used in just the first four weeks of the curriculum. I have done the first five days so far and I love it. The only book I don't like is that little red one called American Politics. 

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Mirek and Taven are in public school. So far it's going well for Mirek. He likes it, has made friends, and is excited about his assignments. Taven hasn't said much. His first football scrimmage was a little stressful for me as the quarterback maybe completed three passes. As a receiver he completely relies on the quartback and this is such an important season for college recruitment. It's really just out of my hands and I don't feel like there is anything I can do. Between UIL transfer rules, needing a car to get to another school, the cost of private schools, etc. there are no other options. I am crossing my fingers and I hope this QB can pull some passes out of his ass.

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Eaden is working at various dance studios/schools and is teaching all dance classes and styles at a local YMCA. She will also be a personal trainer at that same YMCA. She plans to move to L.A. next summer. Right now, she is preparing for Europe. Ade, Naia, and Eaden leave after Labor Day. They had to remove their Edinburgh trip from London, but are still going to Paris. I am super excited for them to hang out with their cousin Soraya from Germany. She is 20 years old and will be staying with them for the London part of the trip!

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Lela will have a routine in place with me four days a week. It will look roughly like this:

9-1:30pm (M, T, Th, F)

Breakfast- I prepare and she wakes up and comes to the table to eat it. This has worked perfectly the first week and Naia joins us.

Storytime (1 hour) - Lela and I take turns reading from literature (historical fiction I read and her choice she reads). I read picture books (she still enjoys these), science biographies, Usborne books, and A Really Short History of Nearly Everything. During this time she may narrate and I write down her narrations. She may copy these the next day for handwriting. We will write as neccessary on our historical timeline, locate places from our reading on the globe/maps, and put stickers in our sticker book for every book read.

Main Lessons (1 1/2 hours) - All About Math, All About Reading, All About Spelling, handwriting/cursive and journal.

Lunch - Lela prepares. So far, we haven't really been hungry enough to make lunch so we just grab a snack and head outside.

Outside (1 hour min) - Fun with Nature, Kids Nature Book, 1,000 Hours Outside journal, garden, color outside, ride bikes, hike (learn to name 10 birds, 5 other animals, 5 trees, 5 wildflowers, 5 wild fruits).

On Wednesdays, Lela will still wake up and have breakfast at 9, but can do what she likes until lunch. I will be working on and discussing Naia's curriculum with her. From 12:30-2:30 (after lunch), Lela and I might do a science experiment from Biology for Every Kid, geography games/map art, board games, drawing, embroidery, paint, Pinterest ideas, clay, music, kinetic sand worlds, play dough, slime, etc.

Side Notes: Lela and I will start with a Great Depression theme. Our first read aloud is Turtle in Paradise. We are going to read about American Girl Kit and watch the movie. I also have a few nonfiction titles on the Great Depression. We have a camping trip scheduled for November at Garner! We may also take a closer last minute trip if work and weather allow. 

Our biggest challenge will be Lela waking up. She is a late riser, but this has to happen because of my work. I should not have to work before 4:30 which means I need to be ready to go by 3:45 (some days I don't have to be there until later). I had been making dinner before I left, and should still be able to most days. My schedule is different each week though and comes out on Thursdays. I will have to plan dinners around that. Easy ones or ones the kids make on longer work nights and more time consuming ones when I don't have to be at work until later or on weekends. Edited to add: Lela woke up and came to the breakfast table on time every day last week!

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The Passionflowers were in bloom at Kickerillo.

Gulf Fritillary

Gulf Fritillary caterpillar.

Impressive tendrils.

Monarchs near Lakewood Crossing. There is a small area that was cleared (by Harris County Flood Control I assume). It is covered in these Heliotrope and the butterflies, moths, and dragonflies are all over it.

I had been noticing these Muscadine grapes on the trail and went back with a bag in hand. The vines are way up high and impossible to reach, but I was able to get some that had fallen to the ground.

Deer at the YMCA.

A couple of pictures from our first day.

Some of the books we are reading during storytime. She also now has a chapter book I am reading to her that just came in from the library. It's called Turtle in Paradise.

Lela and I have been taking pictures of various plants, trees, and animals. I will have them printed out and she is going to make identification cards. These will be the ones she memorizes. It's a work in progress and I will update next Sunday. I also forgot to take a picture of her 1,000 hours outside journal. I will do that next week.

Fall Happenings

We finally got a new roof and had our rotten siding, soffit, and fascia replaced. We also replaced all of the siding on the back of the house. There was pretty much no siding around the side of our chimney where water was pouring on it. We need to replace more siding, but that will have to wait. I am very excited about the work we did do though and I have planted some more flowers, herbs, added mulch, etc. We threw away accumulated junk and I dug up grass near the fence line and planted a butterfly garden. We straightened the pergola which was about to fall over.

I finished reading Fahrenheit 451 to Naia and Mirek and we watched the HBO movie. The book inspired some good discussions. Lela and I finished Ways to Grow Love and she really liked it. We are now reading The Storm by Cynthia Rylant. We are still working on our Story of Stuff and Critical Thinking units. Naia, Mirek, and I are reading the graphic novel version of The Iliad and reading about ancient Greek and Roman history. Mirek and Naia both enjoy mythology, Percy Jackson, etc. Mirek is currently reading Vinland Saga which has a lot of Norse mythology. We also had a brief discussion on Thomas Paine's Age of Reason and Christian mythology. I am sad to be handing Mirek off soon and this is likely the last couple of months we will have together before he moves to online school. 

Lela finished AAR Level 2 and her reading is really taking off. It is so interesting for me to see. She is nine. This is considered a very late reader by many. At my work, we have kids in 2nd and 3rd grade come in not able to read. These are seven and eight year olds. My co workers cannot believe it. They think their parents are negligent, the schools have failed them, etc. I think these kids are young and are not ready. Or they simply need one on one instruction and a lot of repetition. The only horrible thing that could happen to your child because she learned to read at 8 or 9 and not 5 or 6, is internalizing the labels adults have put on her of slow or stupid or behind. And obviously she may come to associate reading with hate and frustration. Not what we want. Sure there are kids that pick up reading naturally at four or five. I have a few of these kids at my work as well (and Eaden was this way). But we cannot force all kids onto that same path. It doesn't work and it only causes harm. If we want kids to love reading we don't torture them through learning it. We read to them until they show an interest. Then we follow their lead, meet them where they are, and do so with patience and a positive attitude.

I really need to reign in my book situation. I have probably twenty I am reading. I came up with a system for myself. One fiction, one historical, one spiritual (for me that often means about nature/science), one on education, and any related primary sources. I don't think this system is going to work...

I spend a lot of time thinking about how I want to live, how to organize my days, how much I read, drink, exercise, get on social media, what I eat, etc. I experiment with completely abstaining and then sometimes that leads to then overconsuming. For me, I believe in, but don't always practice, moderation. It's a struggle and I just want it to become habitual already. Right now I am trying to focus on writing my thoughts and asking my questions. Not just writing down the work of others (commonplace journal). I am also continually thinking if the way we homeschool is best. I also think a lot about public schools and private schools and charter schools. More so now that I have a kid and am about to have another in public school. I feel like there is always a better way we could do things if we just get our minds unstuck and become more creative. We need to think way out of the box. 

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From Homespun Mom Comes Unraveled by Shannon Hayes: "And when the people who were closest to the departed can find ways to share their memories with the subsequent generations, their sharing is truly a gift-one that will not wind up in a landfill, that will not pollute the skies, that will not clutter a home, that will always fit perfectly, and will last through time...And as I raise my own children and guide them into this fast-changing world, those collected experiences will enrich our family's bank of wisdom, and become one of the sweetest gifts I've known."

And that is why I blog. To share and pass down stories. What we did, where we went, how we felt. I have 15 or 16 years of blog memories now. I would never have remembered what happened if I had not documented it. I truly think it's the best gift I can give my kids. Even if they don't want me to take their picture as much now or I have made much of what I wrote private, it is still there for them and they still go back and read it often.

From The End of Education by Neil Postman: It is better to have access to more than one profound truth. To be able to hold comfortably in one's mind the validity and usefulness of two contradictory truths is the source of tolerance, openness, and, most important, a sense of humor, which is the greatest enemy of fanaticism...What kind of public does public schooling create?...Any education that promotes a near exclusive concern with one's own group may have value, but is hostile to the idea of a public education and to the growth of a common culture...Sameness is the enemy of vitality and creativity...The law of diversity makes intelligent humans of us all...The history of learning is an adventure in overcoming our errors...There is no sin in being wrong. The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs, and in believing that our authorities cannot be wrong...It holds out the hope for students to discover a sense of excitement and purpose in being part of the Great Conversation...Is the idea of a 'public school' irrelevant in the absence of the idea of a public, that is, Americans are now as different from each other, have so many diverse points of view, and such special group grievances that there can be no common vision or unifying principles...

From Age of Reason by Thomas Paine: You will do me justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it...The word of God is in the creation we behold: and it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man...Human language is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and uniform information, and therefore it is not the means that God useth in manifesting himself universally to man...The Almighy Lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation...Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice...We should never force belief upon ourselves in anything...The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist...What is it the Bible teaches us?-rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us?-to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith...What is it we want to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach to us the existence of an Almighty Power that governs and regulates the whole?...But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange fable of the Christian creed and with the wild adventures related in the Bible, and of the obscurity of obscene nonsense of the Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing all these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable, and as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all...A man, by hearing all this nonsense lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the creation with the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there were none...

From Teaching as a Subversive Activity by Neil Postman: All authorities get nervous when learning is conducted without a syllabus...Good learners can change their minds. Changing the character of their minds is what good learners are most interested in doing. Good learners are not fast answerers. They tend to delay their judgments. Good learners almost always have a point of view about a situation, but are capable of shifting to other perspectives to see what they can find. Good learners know how to ask meaningful questions; they are persistent in examining their own assumptions, they are apt to be cautious and precise in making generalizations, and they engage continually in verifying what they believe...[Curriculum] is largely designed to keep students from knowing themselves and their environment in any realistic sense; which is to say, it doesn't allow inquiry into most of the critical problems that comprise the content of the world outside the school...We do not think it unreasonable to suggest that there are many influential people who would resent such questions being asked-in fact, would go to considerable trouble to prevent their being asked. Such people depend heavily on the continuing irrelevance of most school curricula...Quotes from others within the book-Man comes pretty close to living in a house that language built...The universe is not only stranger than we suppose; it is stranger than we can suppose...

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Baking pumpkin cookies for Tuesday Teatime.

Lela and I have been reading a new page in our Usborne history encyclopedia each day. We are just now getting to the death of the dinosaurs.

Math explorations.

We finally had our book party for Year of the Dog. We ate at a Chinese restaurant and went to Hong Kong Market to get some Chinese candy. The M&Ms are part of the storyline in the book. 

Hanging out with Ella at the Arboretum.

Then to the water wall for a picnic.

More football. Only one game left, and so far, no major injuries. Knock on wood.

Lela's creation.