structure

I have developed a habit of mentally noting the little ways that school at home differ from the classroom experience. A lot of good habits are created in a class in the way of organization and discipline to work. They slip away quietly in the unstructured time at home. Some details that we needed to keep and expand on:

1. Coming to "class" ready. This is an important detail that obviously needed to be strictly maintained. Use the restroom, get a drink, gather your supplies, come to the table ready to sit for morning lessons without getting up. Going to the pencil sharpener, OK. Wandering around the living room and sitting in the bathroom with a book for 15 minutes? Not OK. The discipline to sit in one place, despite other distractions, and do lessons in one big section is important in the classroom, and is now important at home.

2. Paper organization. I found myself automatically bringing all the books and papers to the lesson and keeping them sorted in folders. Not good. Now he is required to bring the necessary books to lesson and keep his own papers carefully organized in the appropriate folders. It is refreshing to be able to supervise his organization more closely. No more jumbles of bent, torn, folded papers coming home! No more back to school nights of peering into his desk, jammed to the brim with bent, torn, crumpled papers and folders. He is continually pleasantly surprised to find that things are where he left them, and that life is actually easier when you take one minute to put work in its' place - neatly. "Amazing," he says nearly everyday as he pulls out his history folder and, to his astonishment, his history work is sitting there all ready!

3. When he talks. When would he talk in his regular classroom? That's when he can talk at home. He needs to hear out a lesson, think through the work, formulate appropriate questions the way he would in class. Talking over me to "explain" what he already knows? No more. (OK, I wish he would stop this completely. Work in progress.)

4. Revisions. I would correct his work AS he wrote. This does not work for writing. I need to leave him to write the whole assignment. (Summary, narration, analysis - whatever) I take my red edit pen and make editing symbols, and he takes it to rewrite. I have begun reading his writing aloud after he finished rough drafts so he can hear how his thoughts sound on paper. I use a pencil to mark the sections he wants to fix or reword immediately. This has helped him do this on his own.

5. Bathroom. Drinks. Snacks. Daydreaming. These are important parts of a boy's life. Just not during math.

on another note, but maybe not

If I seriously plan on being ready to sing the very beautiful nay, transcendent, alto aria O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion in two concerts less than two months from today - I am going to need to stop losing my voice yelling at my children. I hate yelling and I hate that I yell. It accomplishes nothing except a ragged throat and bitter children.

quiet.

Day 35

I find myself in the middle of a daily battle  between covering a little of everything and covering a few things in depth. I sat down over the weekend and pored over the school days between now and Christmas.

(Funny thing, the school year has always felt too long in the past. This year I am wishing for another month between now and Christmas to fit everything in!) I am attempting to plan more throughly in advance so as to facilitate alternating days where we cover a little bit of everything, and days where we go into depth in a few places.

Our writing curriculum has a "pecked to death by ducks" strategy that has worked so well I have adapted it for use across the disciplines. However, there are some things that simply need time every single day or the rust begins to spread. Speedy multiplication can be achieved with the duck philosophy. Learning and developing and applying new math skills takes a commitment of 60 minutes each day.

We spend quite a bit of time practicing music in a week, and I alternately justify this time as education (as valuable as his most important subjects) and question whether or not it is. Between violin and choir he is in lessons or practicing 9-10 hours in five weekdays. Besides his Messiah learning he has begun studying music theory: A Young Singer's Journey and he is learning A Ceremony of Carols for his Christmas concert mid-December.

All of this does take away from in-depth days. Mostly we are able to cover the basic subjects everyday: grammar, writing, spelling, reading, math, memorization (poems, math facts, parts of speech,etc.) and then we have to move on to afternoons of music practice and lessons and rehearsals. (That he actually has energy for these days!)

I have begun to worry constantly that I am not doing enough schoolwork... and I am not sure how I am supposed to know or gauge whether or not I am doing enough.

92 or something?

It was hot and dry in Ventura this morning (which did not bode well for what Pasadena would hold)  and my two people to watch the babe were both house-bound by illness. So, the plans changed somewhat.

First, we made sure to get free tickets for next month this morning. I anticipated that today would be brief and exhausted... so I wanted to have another day to look forward to.

Secondly, I decided to bring Alice with us and Jay worked from home for the afternoon so we could still leave the babe behind. Napping. And eating. On schedule. The only way she is good for anything.

Thirdly, frozen yogurt.

We made our first stop at 21 Choices because that is what you do when you leave a hot Ventura and go to an even hotter place, Pasadena. Pasadena to spend the afternoon walking in the sun, 15% humidity, and the 92 degrees. Seriously.

It was a beautiful trip. The cool, very temperature controlled library where they display the Gutenberg Bible, an original King James Printing of the Bible, an Ellesmere Chaucer was that much more welcome a respite. We walked through the conservatory that houses a rainforest and cloud forest and the most incredible variety of carnivorous plants! After the humidity inside the conservatory, the outdoors felt a cool relief! The kids and Grandma lay on their stomachs over the koi pond and touched the open mouths of the beautiful fish, many of them comparable in size to tunas! We lingered in the herb and rose gardens as closing time approached and we felt the staff herding us towards the exit.

A kind of learning. The kind you use all of yourself for... and that's nice.