Over at TWTM Forum Curriculum boards folks are starting to post their curriculum choices for next year. At first I thought—oh my, NO, NOT NEXT YEAR ALREADY! I’m still trying to work through this year, and get into the groove of this year. NO, I WILL NOT THINK ABOUT NEXT YEAR and what I NEED to buy.

Then it dawned on me. I already have everything we NEED for next year. I must admit though that I did start looking at Earth-Space science textbooks for MilitaryKid, but I stopped myself. All the earth-space science books ScienceKid used are sitting there on the shelf, the course outline is already made, and IFFFFF we follow the course outline he’ll be exposed to loads of great science. Why does that happen; I mean, being so tempted? I read about the Prentice Hall Science books several moms over at WTM were using and I thought for a nano second or two that they would be so super for MK to have. I explored their site, read what I could about them, searched for used copies at EBay, WTM For Sale Board, and Half.com before I stopped myself. Why do we do that? So often I tell moms; if what you are doing is working don’t switch. But here I was exploring alternatives for a science book when the present one wasn’t broken. It is so easy to do. But the book wasn’t purchased and I decided that we don’t need to change what we are doing afterall.

So, I breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t have to go out and buy anything for next year. There’s nothing we really NEED, although there will always be those little extras that I purchase; a few more novels for us to read, a few videos or Teaching Company courses, but nothing major. We are all set for next year.

On Friday ScienceKid went to a birthday party sleep-over for one of his Science Olympiad partners. From what I heard they had a nice Italian dinner followed by games of tag, football, and basketball. Finally they called it a night.  SK said he really enjoyed himself too.   In the morning the birthday boy’s mom brought the guys back here to work on their Mission Possible event. We at home Friday night had a nice pizza and got to bed as soon as Brutus did. Early night which is what we all needed. Saturday night I took a hot shower and went to bed at 7:30. Eleven hours later Brutus woke me with his—I really, really need to go outside—-cries.

Sunday afternoon we took Brutus to a friend’s home. She has a 6-month old lab and we wanted the two to meet. OK, I’m really into socializing Brutus as much as possible and this was just one more way to accomplish my goal. Plus, it was nice to see her lab who has grown quite a bit since we saw him last. He’s also a very docile pup so I thought he wouldn’t overwhelm Brutus. The two pups played just as you’d like to see pups play and it was a great time.

And now it is Monday and time to get the boys up and ready to go on school.

My DS is quite amazing — Yea, I know, us moms are always talking about how amazing our kids are, but recently I was really awe struck by ScienceKid. The conversation went something like this as he walked by me in the kitchen;

“Mom, thanks for the idea. It really worked.”

“What idea? And what really worked?”

“The idea to gnarl the wheel and axle.” He shows me the wheel and axle which will be one of the simple machines in his Science Olympiad Mission Possible event.

“When did I give you the idea to gnarl that?”

“Remember when you asked me to hand Brutus the white bone?”

“No”

“Well you did, and I noticed how it had all these bumps on it, and that made me realize that if I gnarled the wheel and axle it would help it to be rigid which is what happened. It works GREAT now.”

Right, so somehow me telling him to hand the dog a bone caused him to come up with the solution to a problem he’s been having for over a week. OK, if he says so.

I will take the credit though in working with ScienceKid the last 5 years on making connections, in history and science and literature — always asking him to ask questions such as, how the Magna Carta related to our Bill of Rights? How an event in China connected to other events around the world? Asking him constantly to pay attention to cause and effect and to think about cause and effect by walking him through this everytime I possible could, in every subject. It is something us Classical Educators focus upon when our kids enter the Logic Age. No longer do we simple ask the child to tell us the facts as we did in the Grammar years but now we ask our child questions such as, why did the War of 1812 happen? or why did France sell us the Louisiana Purchase? What was the cause and what were the effects? Connections. Cause and Effect.

And somehow ScienceKid connected bumps on a dog’s chew bone to a solution for his problem he had with his wheel and axle. Pretty cool connection if you ask me. Pretty amazing too.

Thankfully I woke without any aches and pains this morning and shortly after a shower was walking Brutus outside. He looks at me often now, with a look of asking for direction, eager to comply to ‘SIT’, or ‘DOWN’. He is learning our hand signals and seems to quickly be picking these up too.

Once inside I venture over to the pantry to pull out breakfast supplies—crash, the doors fall off their slides. This is almost a daily occurrence now and I’ve learned to just breath, soon I’ll have a new kitchen. Breakfast completed MK flew through handwriting, grammar, spelling, and moved over to the sofa to read through ‘One Small Square, Backyard.’ SK started with Algebra 2 and moved onto reading Euripides Ten Plays in Great Books.

CRASH

I opened the laundry room door to find the ceiling light globe on the floor leaving 2 holes in the tile floor. WHY? It seems like something is always falling apart in this house, always something else breaking and creating another item on DH’s ‘Honey-DO-List’.

The rest of the day was rather uneventful. MK was pleased that he did 12 pages in his math book — he enjoys geometry and worked quickly through the geometry sections. He worked quickly today. In the evening SK, MK and I visited a nearby Dog Training School — it didn’t stay on our short list of possible dog schools. DH is convinced we do not need to take Brutus to any school but can do it ourselves. As I explained to a friend—

I’ll use this analogy as to why I like obedience training; you want to ballroom dance, and you want to do it really well, so you need a partner who also knows ballroom dancing really well, and it helps tremendously when you are learning to ballroom dance together that you have someone on the sidelines who can watch how you and your partner are working together so helpful suggestions are made so that you and your partner ballroom dance great together, and move as one unit.

Now some folks would say, oh hell, just go out on the dance floor and enjoy yourself, it’s easy just follow your partner and move in a box…….. obedience training helps to have a healthy pack and done right is really great fun for the owner and dog….and there’s competitions, and agility trials,……

Slowly I climbed out of bed. ScienceKid has come down with a cold and my body is achey as if all my limbs are fighting off some illness. After a hot shower I retrieve Brutus from SK and take him outside. Brutus has slept through the night for three nights in a row. Outside Brutus seems obibilious to the snow, does his business and comes inside for his breakfast. I check emails, put bacon into the oven and urge the boys to get up. Every morning it is the same—they get out of bed and move down to the sofas for another bit of shut-eye. MK tried to convince me that he was fast reading his Greek Heros and Mythology book but I actually caught him fast asleep.

8am the boys are finally at the island chowing down some bacon, Abington Crumb Cake and chocolate milk. Noticing that Brutus was fast asleep I urged them to move onto school work.

MK quickly threw Spelling Power over to me and asked for his words. Typically MK misses few of the words in the list, and after practicing them one or two days knows them. This time he has had great difficulty with these words and has worked on learning them for over a week—- usually, accidentally, slowly, ….. — but today he finally gets most of the words correct. He moved on to do a page of handwriting practice, and then opens his math book. Two hours later I told him to move onto his grammar, Latin and Classical Composition.

SK started the morning with his Great Books studies. He read from his Euripedes Ten Plays book for awhile before writing a short summary of his reading for the day. Next he moved to Latin, working through 3 exercises. He finds he can read Latin quickly but he has not mastered the ability to translate from English to Latin with the correct endings. I know he’ll get there but he is frustrated by it. After Latin he turned to listening to a few lectures from the Teaching Company’s Western Civilization DVD. By late morning he moved onto working through a section of Algebra 2. SK understands the material however he is finding that his small errors result in incorrect answers.

In the middle of school there are runs outside with Brutus, playtimes with Brutus, and more mad dashes outside with Brutus. In the afternoon MK works through Latin and rewrites his Classical Composition. SK chose to spend more time on Algebra before moving on to study his Science Olympiad Food Science event.

While the boys finished up their afternoon work I walked into the school room for the first time in 2 weeks with my eyes open. The room is a mess with books, papers, science-stuff, and telescope gear everywhere. The feeling of being overwhelmed with a disorganzed house hit me at that moment so I moved over to the kitchen; one room I can usually straighten up rather quickly. Breath, breath, let the stress go, was what I was telling myself. I unloaded the dishwasher and discovered that another cabinet shelf had crashed onto the lower shelf. Yep, such quality cabinets these are not. The shelf, a corner cabinet so it has loads of extra room was only holding 12 small salad dishes and 12 little pie plates on the one shelf.   That’s it.   DH had told me not to put too much on any one shelf cause these are the cheapest cabinets either of us have every encountered, even cheaper than cheap apartment cabinets—-yep, cheap, reallly cheap….. Breath, breath, let the stress go, was what I was telling myself. So I thought I would grab some veges out of the freezer for dinner. No such luck—-the freezer top is covered with DH’s tools—-always the case, always….. so I have resigned from any cooking……

Breath, breath, let the stress go,……

I haven’t felt like writing stuff for all the world to see cause, quite frankly it has been a &%&# week.

On Monday morning I discovered that our septic system alarm, silenced by someone was ON. This meant that our tank was not pumping out into the leach field. DH didn’t want to deal with shit so I did the only thing I could do which was to call the Septic Tank pumpers and have both our tanks pumped. It wasn’t due to be pumped for a few more months but I knew this would buy me a few days. I also feared that we’d be replacing the pump, again, and feared seeing all these $$$ going out the window again. Thankfully DH examined the system today —- at times it is really great having a handy-man for a DH but a pain-in-the-butt at other times— and he discovered that the wires going to the pump had been burnt through. He’s in the process of replacing the wires.

On Wednesday afternoon I visited my Optometrist. For the last upteem months I’ve had double-vision but only after reading and mostly with my right eye. I didn’t think too much about it until DH told me that I needed to get things checked out. To see him concerned about anything medical is cause for alarms to start screaming. It wasn’t until I was in the Dr. office though that I realized how serious this could be —the Dr. ruled out a mini-stroke, aneurysm, cataracts, nerve damage, tumor,… it looks like it is probable just that my eyes do not converge so we are going to try glasses with prisms —- as he said, ‘you probable cannot read for any length of time cause your eyes get too tired.’ WOW! I have not been able to read for any length of time for years and years but it has been even worst lately. I was also heard to say during the exam —-you mean objects aren’t supposed to jump around like that?

Just a few stressful things this week. Neither ScienceKid nor I had a uninterrupted sleep this week since Brutus was waking us up every 2hrs. That’s 14 days of being woken every 2hrs, every night…. We’ve been reading a few puppy books and made a few changes around here yesterday. The first was that Brutus is offered water every-other hour and no-water after 7pm. Friday was the first day we did not have an accident in the house. We can’t say that about today since DH didn’t listen to me when I said “Brutus needs to go out.”

DH–”Yea, yea, he’s fine.”

Yep a minute later, and one load dropped on the kitchen floor told a different story. But last night we tied Brutus to ScienceKids bed post when SK went to bed, and Brutus slept through the night!!! Glorious sleep!

There is this view out in the homeschooling community that Classical Educators are rigid, forcing our children to do tasks just to get the work done. After all, we make our kids do grammar, and spelling, and Latin, and write compositions, and do school for hours on end, all while sitting at a desk. Oh how I’d like to dispel that myth, but I know that isn’t possible, so here’s a little glimpse into our school day.

Presently ScienceKid is lying on the sofa reading Euripides Ten Plays. He insisted that this was the book he wanted to read next for his 9th grade Ancients Great Books course. He actually started reading the book over the weekend for fun so I agreed with his decision. Yesterday he finished writing an argumentative essay on Antigone reflecting on whether it was morally right for Creon to forbid the burial of Polyneices. Already he is reflecting on the story-line differences between Euripides and Sophocles and I imagine that his next essay will be a compare and contrast between these two authors who lived at the same time in history. He is the one concerned that he is not doing enough writing, not doing enough reading, not as far along as where his PS peers are. I really do not know where he gets these ideas that he is behind but he has them.
ScienceKid has always been one to jump at learning with gusto but what do we Classical Educators do when our child lags behind? You see that is MilitaryKid.  MK entered fifth grade this year which in the Classical Educators world marks the beginning of the Logic Stage. Of course not all children enter the Logic Stage at the same time, nor do they magically enter it when 5th grade begins. One Logic Age skill is to learn to outline a piece of writing. I taught SK at the beginning of 5th grade how to outline, so in September I sat down with MK and began the process of helping him learn this skill too.  We began with a bucket of Legos and organized them into different groups by an attribute. We then took one of these groups and organized these pieces into sub-groups by a new attribute. I think the first time we did this, MK chose shape for his major attribute. We then took one of the groups and MK chose to further sub-categorize these pieces by the number of pegs the piece had. MK caught onto this concept right away but he wasn’t able to transfer this concept to outlining his history book. We sat together a few times, me leading him through the process of picking out the topic sentence and the few supporting items to form the outline. The experience however was like trying to stop a new puppy from chewing on chair legs—-frustrating. I put outlining aside for a few months, and had MK answer questions about his history reading instead, continue with adding dates to his timeline, write short descriptive sentences about the wars or the people he was reading about, and find on a map the area discussed in his reading.

Last week in history we revisited outlining and I sat with MK pointing out the topic sentence, suggesting the supporting items and guiding him on how to write an outline from his history reading. He GOT IT!! The following day he began his outline, asked me if he had the ‘right’ heading, and did he have the ‘right’ supporting points, and of course I enthusiastically said he did. It was so neat to see him get it. Then today I sent him off to re-write his spelling words from his Spelling Power book, and suddenly realized that he had been sitting at the island a very, very long time.

“MK, what are you doing?”

“Mom, I’m doing my History outline. What’d you think I was doing?” Sure enough he had a wonderful outline. I was sure he was goofing off and that my bathroom would soon be cleaned. No such luck :-)  He had finished one topic and moved onto the next subject since he knew the task that needed to be completed.  He also verbally shared the early Chinese history he had been reading and outlining with me.  

Also in the fall I started MK in the writing program Classical Composition. I had taken SK through this program and knew that folks start kids in CC in 4th grade. I didn’t try to start this program last year since I felt MK had plenty of other stuff on his plate so we began this fall. That first assignment was like trying to push a rope along. It wasn’t working so CC was put on the side. Seeing how independently MK was working on history outlines I pulled CC back out. He breezed through the outlining on Tuesday, breezed through re-writing sentences on Wednesday, and breezed through re-writing the story today.

So that is what this Classical Educator does. I have certain skills I want my kids to learn as we work through our school years, such as outlining, such as writing a composition from an outline, and a certain timeline for when these skills should be mastered. When I saw that MK was not grasping the idea of outlining, the task was put aside for awhile. If he had not grasped it last week it would have been put aside again for another 3 months or so, and then we would have tried again.

So, that’s a little glimpse into our school day. Just a little I know but I do need to watch a puppy so he doesn’t eat our home.

I am so exhausted today — another 2:30am wake up followed by a 5:30am wake up. Nope, couldn’t go back to bed and sleep like the rest of the family cause there were families coming at 8am to do Science Olympiad in our kitchen and the kitchen had 2, maybe 3 days of dirty dishes in the sink.  When DH got up he told me to go to bed, but then who would finish putting away the Christmas Nativity scene, clean-up the school room and put together next week’s school schedule?

I hit WalMart also and picked up a few Safety Gates for our doorways. Now when Brutus is up we can easily keep him in the family room and kitchen with us.

I really feel for all moms hs’ing with an infant. How do you get any schooling done?

Hopefully I’ll get some sleep tonight.

I am so tired and so wiped out — Saturday night the puppy alarm went off at 12:30am, and at 3am, and at 5:40am — each time I carried the 16#’er out to the side yard. Each time he did his business as I repeated my signal, “Get Busy”

DH informed me on Monday that that signal isn’t a good one. He reminded me that we used that signal before kids but now with kids we tell them “Get Busy” often. Opps. We aren’t changing the signal.

Sunday I was just a little bit bushed but it was the males of the house who complained of being tired out on Sunday. Hmm, they didn’t get up, walk down the stairs, walk around outside, carry the 16#’er back inside, and place him into his crate. Nope, they were only bothered by puppy cries —- but of course they are the ones that are all tired out.
Early in the morning we threw around puppy names. In the lead was Roscoe, Leo, Oberon, Maximillian, Sherlock, Bear, Ben — too close to our Great Dane’s name of Benson–, Ajax, Obi-Wan, Wookie….on and on it went. Finally SK and MK agreed upon Roscoe.

By the evening I called time-out, and asked for the boys to consider a new name for our puppy. MiltaryKid has an accent that sounds similar to a British accent, so every time he said Roscoe it sounded just like Oscar. Oscar was our previous dog, a German Shepherd with a mind of his own. No, that’s being kind. He was stubborn, assertive, determined and positive that rules could be changed and that he could become the Alpha dog any moment. I needed our puppy to have a different name.

I consulted with my TX sis who suggested Tex, along with a few others. Bruno, Rufus, Romulus, Caesar, … nothing seemed to fit. Suddenly it hit me though, my Ohio State Buckeyes would be playing football this Monday night for their National Championship….. Brutus the Buckeye is their Mascot and Brutus would make a fine name for this puppy. SK was on board right away, and soon MK was on board too.

Brutus the Buckeye.

Sunday evening I was in bed and asleep by 9:30 with the promise from SK that he would take the first shift and take Brutus outside. Before DH went to bed at 11pm he took Brutus outside, put him into his crate and went into the bathroom. Unfortunately he didn’t tell me that he had done that so when I heard Brutus crying I got up and took him outside. Brutus is not thrilled with his crate yet so he cries a bit for the first couple minutes he enters it. UGH, if I had only known. I was up again at 3:30 to tell SK to take his turn, and the alarm got me up at 5:30. It was raining hard, all night too. Brutus somehow was well rested and wanted to play from 6 to 9:30.

ScienceKid — he was sound asleep on the sofa while MK and I played with the puppy.

We worked on making the crate a fun place today by placing a few biscuits in there, broken up so the pup would have some fun seeking them. At night the crate is besides MK’s bed and it really takes only a few minutes for Brutus to accept being in there. He’s adjusting and I know it is the safest place for him at night. Maybe tonight he won’t cry when we put him in it for the night.

We also placed a bell on our outside door today. Everytime we take Brutus outside we ring the bell. We’re hoping to train him to ring the bell when he has to go outside to do his business. Well, by the late afternoon Brutus was ringing the bell !!!!
Oh, and as far as school work, the kids got a few things done but it was far from a really productive day. We also visited the vet; Brutus has gained 7# in 12 days. Hmm, he’s gaining weight almost as fast I gain weight, but he is supposed to be gaining weight.

Tonight, well Brutus is asleep and I’m watching my Buckeyes get trounced by Florida. They aren’t even giving them a run for the money. UGH is a common sound being heard around here. I should get to bed instead of staying up to watch thi trounce cause I know Brutus will be asking to go out a few times during the night and I’ll be the one walking out into the cold.

“MK, how’s your math going? Let’s see your work.” I look at the page, filled with doodle work—and this is a child who really doesn’t care to draw.

“Upstairs. There’s a toilet with your name on it that needs to be cleaned.”

We had a little chat this evening about choices. We once again explain to MK his choices: do his math work and other school work without wasting time, or do janitorial work around the house. He said he’d rather do his math. We’ll see tomorrow what he chooses.

SK really surprised me this afternoon. SK spent several hours at the library studying Science Olympiad material, MK met a friend who took him to her home for an afternoon of socialization play, and I surfed the net. Late in the afternoon we left the library and headed off to pick up MK when SK shocked me. It seems he now loves math. He added that he figures he got that math love from me, and his love of building things from his Dad. Geez, isn’t he a teenager? Aren’t teenagers supposed to want to disassociate themselves from their parents and reject what their parents like?

What a sweet kid! It pleases me more though to know that he is in love with math, that it is making sense to him. You see this is a child who just last year, and numerous times over the previous years, chanted, yelled, expressed with joy how he HATED math. What a turn-around. It seems that learning Algebra helped SK to see that math makes sense, that it is all just adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Simple stuff that finally so made sense to him. Maybe there is hope that MK will turn-around too.