Boys are out Trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. YES!!!

The best part though was the glee MK had when he shared with his Dad that he had DONE ALL HIS WORK. There was such a sense of accomplishment coming from him. He knew that he had really worked hard and diligently all day.

Our one neighbor gave them each a Halloween teddy bear and pumpkin — sweet of them. Here’s the two of them with full, and very heavy bags:

MK was told last night by the Principal, aka DH / Dad, that unless his work was completed there would be no Trick-or-Treating Tuesday night. MK joined his Dad for breakfast at 5:30am, and started by 6:15AM —- ahhh, a nice little attitude adjustment—-real world.

Last evening I shared that MK had not completed his work for the day; it wasn’t the fact that he wasn’t done but that his attitude during the day was missing the mark. He was doing worst than dwalding his day away, he was wasting my time too. DH responded to MK sharing that MK was responsible for his education and that a solid education was necessary for MK to be able to pursue whatever dreams he had. He continued explaining that we are here to assist, to lead him to the subjects we feel are important to making sure that those doors are ajar for him to push through but he had to take responsibility for putting forth effort. Then DH landed the blow—nothing physical, we DO NOT SPANK—-without completion of his work on Tuesday MK would not go out Trick-or-Treating. It is within his grasp to complete the work, and if he worked with effort should be done by noon each day, however he typically is still plugging away at 4pm with little to show for his day. It isn’t that he’s ADHD, he isn’t; it is that he’d rather be sleeping or watching his frog or picking the nits off his sweater then putting forth mental effort.

He’s sitting beside me; it is only 7:10AM and he has already completed his penmenship, MindBenders (Logic), and is almost through his Singapore Math worksheet. I haven’t had to say any of the normal ‘GET WORKING’ type comments either. ahhhh, so nice.

Our boys also know that we never make idle threats. Tune in tomorrow to hear about the rest of our day.

Have you noticed the new photos this week on the blog? I finally decided upon the camera and ordered it in from Amazon. Ahhhh, a new toy. The boys have played around with it a bit and figured out all its features. Hopefully this weekend I’ll get to read the manual and figure it out. Typical me, I’ve got to read the directions and not just wing it when I get a new toy. Directions first, fun later. I went with a Canon Powershot A640.

So, here’s a shot of what MK and I did Tuesday afternoon and well into the night. A before shot; well actually he had just cleaned the stuff out from under his bed but there already was loads of stuff on the floor. He did not like having the photo taken,

And here’s the after photo with the little guy sleeping:

We took three overflowing laundry baskets of toys out of the room to the basement, and toys were not sent to the dump, yet. MK was happy by that. In addition a huge bag of paper airplanes, paper cranes, newspapers, and other paper were taken out of the room. One laundry basket was filled to overflowing with dirty clothes. Funny cause MK was complaining about not having any socks to wear, but he does now. Looks pretty good now.

Our science lab on Monday dealt with Osmosis — the movement of molecules from areas of high concentration to an area of low concentration. Inside this permeable membrane was a solution of starch and sugar while the beaker contained an iodine solution. Soon the iodine diffused across the membrane and into the bag turning the solution from white to purple. COOL!! Starch molecules are unable to diffuse across the membrane so the beaker containing the iodine solution remained yellowish-tan.

I love when science labs work.

We could see a distortion at the base of the bag from a material diffusing out of the bag. We’re pretty sure it was the glucose diffusing out across the membrane however we weren’t able to detect it with our Benedict indicator later on in the lab.

I don’t know where the name came from but the boys named her Missy. Her real name is just yellow-and-black garden spider. She has caught grasshoppers and crickets the boys have thrown into her web. Great nature studies!

She’s about 2″ long and won’t make her web where I can get a great direct on-her shot.

I won’t make any money if I share with you my approach to writing; actually no one can make any money on this approach, and probable that is the reason why so many will not believe that this simple approach to teaching writing will yield results, but it does do just that. I’ve seen the effects of this writing curriculum and they are outstanding. Amazing that a free-writing curriculum works, and is just so easy to use. Free and easy, it must not be right, but it is and does.

Last weekend I attended a weekend Writing Workshop hosted by Veritas Press featuring Susan Wise Bauer as the speaker. Susan is the author of Story of the World, The Well Educated Mind, The Well Trained Mind, and several other books; and someone I have heard several times over the last 4 years. Some of my home educating friends have suggested that I might fall into the category of being a “swb groupie” , but not really. I just find that the education approach suggested in TWTM suits me quite well, and I enjoy getting away for a weekend of professional education, but let me get back to explaining this free writing curriculum.

Last weekend’s workshops were on writing; a skill area that I sorely lack skills in, and consequently an area I always want to read and hear about in the hopes I can pick up some tidbit to pass onto my boys so they will have the writing skills their mom lacks. Many years ago, even before I started homeschooling I wished for two things for my sons—that they would LOVE to read and be able to write without struggle. Remembering how I struggled to write throughout high school, college and well into my early working years was not something I wanted my boys to experience. Heck, I still struggle with writing.

For the past seven years we have strictly followed TWTM, never deviating from the plan laid out for a classical education. You might be wondering what all this has to do with last weekend, and writing, and why I won’t make money but what MK wrote today prompted me to share with you our approach to writing.

Back when MK was in his preschool years and well into first grade his writing program consisted of daily copying a sentence someone else had written. He absorbed the grammatical conventions of our language; and absorbed the words good writers used. Sometime in second grade MK switched from doing copywork four times a week to only doing this two times a week. In place of copywork MK now switched to ‘dictation’. On these days I would recite a short sentence to MK, twice, and then he would write these sentences. The sentences did not come from some fancy, over-priced ‘dictation’ book or ‘copywork’ book but from his favorite Read-Aloud book. By the beginning of 3rd grade MK was doing dictation 3 or 4 days a week, and writing several sentences during our 15 minute session.

Another part of MK’s writing program began back in his preschool days too, narration, or the simple act of retelling the story he had just heard. At the beginning of his schooling MK narrated fables, and later he narrated history or science stories. Sometimes I wrote these narrations down for MK but around 3rd grade MK began writing his own narrations.

This year MK is in 5th grade and is required to write a short narration in the subjects of history, reading and science weekly. He’s also learning to outline using his history book and will soon go through the process of taking this outline and writing a report from it.

Today MK did not have his history narration completed before we were ready to go to the homeschooler’s Friday skate. He promised to write the narration when we returned from skating or miss a friend’s birthday party on Sunday. Sure enough when we came home MK started writing the narration. He began by verbalising the entire story line to me; he wanted to get the ideas into his head. As he put the pencil on the paper he stated his first sentence, dictating it to himself out-loud, and then he wrote it down. He read the sentence over, checked that the grammatical conventions were there, and then repeated the process. In less then 20 minutes he had a two page summary written explaining why Egyptians mummified their pharaohs based upon an Egyptian tale we had read earlier in the week. Each sentence was a complete sentence, and one thought flowed into the next with ease. It was a lovely piece to read and thrilled me to no end.

This is the second child I have taken through this writing approach, and am pleased to see such an easy approach to teaching writing to work. Neither boys’ writing education is complete but it is so rewarding to see MK reach this point and know he has a great foundation that we will continue to build upon. So often I hear HS moms express concern over what writing program they should use with their first or second grader, and even though I have shared our approach the continue to search. I know, I should just package this writing approach, put a huge price-tag on it and market it as the sure fire way to give your child a great writing foundation. But I won’t. Copywork, dictation, narration; so easy.

If you want to read more about this approach to learning to write read how Benjamin Franklin taught himself to write, or read about this approach in Ruth Beechick’s, A strong Start in Language book, and of course The Well Trained Mind.

Last Friday morning Terri, Beth and I headed to a writing workshop in Richmond Virginia sponsored by Veritas Press with my favorite speaker, Susan Wise Bauer. I’ve heard her before, at other conferences but this entire workshop was just Susan speaking on writing. I also heard Jessie Wise on Friday afternoon. I look at these little outings as professional education, and something quite needed at least yearly, even if you have heard the speaker before.

I gained a few tidbits from the workshop about home life, schooling and enjoying these years. What I gained is just helping me to trim our ’sails’ so to speak, not changing our homeschooling direction, but helping me in little ways. For one I have taken vocabulary off the boys plate and they’ll use this time to do a bit more reading. I also added a new habit: after my morning walk I am reading for 30 minutes before looking at emails and before rushing off to shower. Ok, it isn’t really a habit yet, but so far I’ve done this the past 4 mornings. One point that finally hit home is that I must make time for educating myself. For me that means sitting down and reading all those classics sitting on my shelf but read so far only by ScienceKid. So far I’ve read through Gilgamesh and most of Job.

I laughed and cried during Jessie’s talk on ‘If she could do it over again’—laugh more, smile more, praise her children more, and exhibit a happy attitude while schooling instead of wearing a frown. Oh how I felt the weight of that one and so I have worked this week on praising the boys more, laughing and smiling more, and being happy but that one is really hard when the guys are working so slowly.

ScienceKid and I have talked quite a bit about his education and the reasons for different things being on his plate. He has been very vocal these past few weeks concerned that I am not pushing him hard enough, and suggesting that I am way to lax. LOL!! This child works from sunup to sundown trying to get everything accomplished I have put on his plate. Sometimes in the same breath of complaining that I’m too lax, he’ll chide me for obsessing about homeschooling. But tonight, tonight he surprised me immensely stating after we hugged goodnight —

Mom, thanks for taking such an immense interest in my education.

I rarely have one of THOSE days, but today was one and the stress hit me full force. First I wasn’t really ready for school to start up after my little weekend away at the SO Conference. Second, as I approached my desk, as my kids call the table in the school room, all the crap on it pushed me over the edge; reminded me of the time and effort it took to get through all it when we returned from our 6-1/2 week west trip. It was really getting to me though how ‘everyone’ in this home thinks the table in the front room is a dumping ground for every piece of junk known to this family! So I went wading through all the papers and mail, thinking I was through it all but do you know that in my house folks bring the mail in and drop it in one of a dozen different places for me to then find and go through? So, just when I thought I was through it all, I discovered more mail for me to go through.

Being in this sour, stressed mood I also found myself lacking tolerance for all the dirt tracked into said home by the male occupants over the weekend. Guess no one had the ability or inclination to remove their dirty shoes–muddy, dirty type shoes—when they came in from working on the garage while I was away. Nothing like an hour of vacuuming during the school day to mess with a school day schedule, but I needed to clean up the mess to help my mind get de-stressed, KWIM.

Then the Naysayer—remember my post about him a few months back? — came by today too. What great timing! Won’t even bother to share his naysaying comments today. They were icing on the cake to an otherwise ‘One of Those Days’ day.

ScienceKid spent the morning going through his Classical Music Experience book and reading The Annotated MonaLisa — he has discovered, much to his surprise, that he is after all enjoying these books I forced into his schedule. Amazing how he keeps discovering that he enjoys what I place on his educational plate

Then I learned that ScienceKid did not do the Biology Labs assigned to him last week! UGH!! Of course, in his mind his Mom has no idea why he should bother doing labs when he already knows what will happen. My response was that he is to do them since I spent tons of time pulling together all sorts of really cool labs for him and he just might learn something. He continued to claim that he didn’t want to do labs cause they are all so dumb! At around this point I just wanted to scream. ScienceKid was quite shocked though when I pulled one chemical after another called for in his lab, and it did turn out to be a really cool lab for him to do. It was about fats, starches, sugars and proteins—food science stuff and watching how different enzymes reacted or didn’t react with the proteins, starches, and sugars. Cool colors; nice lab, and ScienceKid learned a bit about lab procedures too.

Ahh, finally school was over and it was only 6pm. No kidding. We called it a day finally at 6pm. Pat made it home from work at 7:15pm so it was a late dinner tonight. I threw a load of laundry in while the boys cleaned up the dishes and as Pat and I read digital camera reviews it hit me—-where’s my cell phone? did I leave it on my jeans? Yep, there it is, in the wash! Yep it has been

ONE OF THOSE DAYS!!

ScienceKid and I laughed this evening about the kind of day it was, and I remarked that I should have stayed in bed but that tomorrow surely has got to be better. He doesn’t think so and suggested that I stay in bed tomorrow too. No, it has got to be better. Besides, I go in for my yearly check-up and I do not need to continue to have “ONE OF THOSE DAYS” tomorrow.

We returned last night at 11pm from Hammond, IN and the SO Coaches Clinic — great time, we learned allot, had a few too many late nights but I’m really energized for this coming coaching year.
Everyone I spoke to noticed that we’re homeschoolers and the response was quite positive, particularly from the vendors. I did run into one lady, in one class who I thought was out-of-line. As the instructor explained the do’s and don’ts for one event he used past tournament run-ins with coaches for examples. He was quite entertaining and engaging with the class. To one story about a coach who flew into a rage when he learned that his students tower weighed greater then it weighed back at the school; and the rage was directed at the event judge, the lady sitting directly behind me loudly commented:

‘ Oh, he must be a republican’

The class broke into loud laughter. When the instructor spoke about how the tower must be light-weight he shared about the lack of drive some kids had to experiment with different designs and the need to do so—–the child must do this to learn how to build a lightweight but ultra-strong tower. He shared how one kid had the attitude of :

‘I only want to build this thing once, so I’ll make it big and heavy so it won’t fail and last all my years of SO competition’

The child doesn’t have a chance to win with this altitude, but to this story the lady commented

‘the kid must be a republican.

Now, I don’t agree with everything every republican does but I dislike sterotypes even more-so which is why I didn’t reply to her comment, but I so wanted to say:

“No, the kid must just be the result of the public school system’

but I didn’t dare —- the room was filled with PS teachers and I knew that would not be a good image to leave in their minds about HS’ers. But I so wanted to say it.

On the home-front the guys are finishing up installing the siding on the workshop! The garage doors are on, the locks are on, and of course Pat surprised me by having asphalt laid from the old driveway up to the new workshop’s garage doors.

This coming weekend dirt will be delivered on Saturday and the guys will spread it around the building. While they are doing all this I will be in Richmond, Virginia with a few other hs’ers from Delaware attending Susan Wise Bauer’s writing workshops. Next Sunday, provided the rain has not hampered operations on Saturday, we will be landscaping around the garage. Hopefully the weather will cooperate so this work can be completed and then the building will look finished from the outside.

What a fun day we had yesterday. Our day started with a late morning breakfast; at least eating breakfast at 10am is late for me, and then strolling along Lake Michigan at the Indiana Sand Dunes for a few hours. What a beautiful area. We finished our day by meeting 758 other people crazy about Science Olympiad at the Science Olympiad Clinic.

Pat and the boys had a fun day too back in Delaware. They headed over to Hershey, PA and visited the Antique Car Show going on there. It is so wonderful that I can just take off and know that the boys are in great hands. Shouldn’t that be the way it should be? Why shouldn’t the Dad be able to take care of the children; be trusted with the children? Too often I hear homeschool moms remark that they can’t leave for an overnight conference because their husband can’t handle or care for the children alone. WHAT!!!

Ladies; what if something happens to you or you need to be away to care for a parent? Perhaps ‘they’ haven’t demonstrated their ability to care for the children because you have always been there, doing what needs to done. Give your husband a chance; let him care for the children his way which will surely be different than your way, but they will still be well cared for. Will they miss you? Sure. But my boys have learned through my being away that not only does Dad do things differently than mom but that he IS a really good cook. There are some things Pat does that the boys enjoy and some they do not. Being left to make sure the house is back in the order I left the home is left up to the boys, and they really do not like this aspect of me being away.

It is so comforting knowing that while I am off at a Science Olympiad conference they are having fun with their Dad .