Betsy Bailey

WOW, I feel SO good about my accomplishment today!!!! Two problems have been driving me absolutely batshit.

1. Jake’s toys. We have a large bin in the family room that contains pretty much ALL of his toys. (What isn’t scattered randomly all throughout the house, that is.) And my SIL has donated a bunch of toys and puzzles that my niece has outgrown. Which is awesome, but they have too many pieces parts to be stored higgledy-piggledy in a bin. Consequently, we have a bunch of toys cluttering the house and Jake isn’t even really getting anything out of them.

2. Bailey’s homeschooling supplies. Out of control. I had stuff stacked on the dining room table in the living room area, stuff stacked high on my upstairs office desk, plus misc on kitchen counters and in various other places. Aside from the stressfulness of the clutter, Jake is also getting to the point where he can reach it and therefore destroy it.

Two other problems that are unrelated, but tied into the issue at hand:

3. Desktop computer (Windows) downstairs in corner of dining room SO junked up with malware that it wasn’t even useable. But last weekend, Scott reformatted the drive, installed linux and set up user accounts for all of the kids. Also added memory so it’s zippier than it used to be.

4. Bookshelf on the landing that was mostly empty and made me nervous. Even though it’s pretty much gated off from Jake right now, eventually he could figure out how to use it as a ladder to perch on the balcony wall, potentially falling to the hard tile below and killing himself. Yep, not comfortable with that location.

So today, it all just jelled. Since Scott fixed the downstairs computer, Bailey has been using it as much as possible for her school work. As a result, more of her materials were getting stacked up on the dining room table. I started thinking, man, I really need a book shelf there…. <light bulb>.

So Scott got the bookscase downstairs and anchored to the wall. I consolidated ALL of Bailey’s learning materials (and some of her sisters’, too) – as well as all the piano music that Jake can get into when it’s on the music rack – onto the bookcase. I also now have a place high up out of toddler reach to store the puzzles and sorting toys and all the other stuff with multiple, small pieces, so we can bring them down one at a time, play with them and then put them away. Huzzah! He still has a toy bin full of toys, but that’s mostly his trucks and cars and plush toys and various noisemakers, etc.

That just all worked out very nicely.

Note the toddler-proofing chairs barricading the computer. LOL Love this age.

Funny how that stuff that was taking up SO much surface space on tables and counters, hardly looks like *anything* when organized neatly on the bookcase. I even have extra space to expand into.

Isn’t homeschooling fun? Cooking is part of Bailey’s curriculum, and today’s assignment was making Cake in a Mug! HM happened to have a half day of school today, so she joined in the fun.

It was a messy endeavor (since tweens were involved) and delicious. They made me a mug of cake, too. Homeschooling rocks!

Here’s all you do:

Microwave Cake in a Mug

adapted from Chocolate Cake in 5 Minutes

1. Assemble your ingredients:

4 Tablespoons flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil

2. Mix the dry ingredients in a mug: flour, sugar, cocoa.

3. Crack the egg into the bowl and mix it in.

4. Stir in the milk and oil

5. Microwave on high (1000 watts) for three minutes.

6. Dig in.

I had mine with some milk splashed in. A scoop of ice cream or dollop of fresh whipped cream would have been mighty fine, though. Mighty fine.

We’re grooving along day to day, so not much new to report on that front.

We did recently join a local homeschooling group. It’s just gearing up this month for the “school” year. I’ve volunteered to help coordinate a monthly art activity for the group.

In other news, I’ve been reading The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home. Fabulous resource – I love the focus on critical thinking, logic and rhetoric. While I don’t think Bailey would respond to a strict classical curriculum, there are several things I intend to incorporate from their recommendations, including the beginning logic/deduction books they suggest.

I’m also incorporating a unit on outlining as a study habit into Bailey’s curriculum later this year. Depending on how she responds to that, we will try the classical approach to history as the year progresses.

And for grammar, I want to try the diagramming resource they suggest. A lot of people hate diagramming sentences, but a lot of people aren’t my visual-spatial girl, Bailey.

I got exciting reading this book realizing how HM would completely thrive on the challenge and rigorousness of this curriculum. Especially the rhetoric stage:

Rhetoric is the art of expression. During the rhetoric stage, the student learns to express herself with fluency, grace, elegance and persuasiveness.

But that’s high school level. The middle years are very focused on learning critical thinking skills and formal logic (something I didn’t study until college). This is a curriculum that really plays to HM’s strengths and suspect I would use it undiluted for her education.

So I set Bailey up with a subscription to the ALEKS math program this week and she LOVES it. For the first time in… ever, I heard her describe math as FUN.

What is particularly fun is watching her progress from master account access muahahahaha. She does amazingly well getting her instruction from the written word. Any audio component and she totally tunes it out.

Another place I’m seeing significant progress is with her typing skills. I figured if she’s going to spend so much time learning with the computer, she should be a competent touch typist. She plugs away industriously at Mavis Beacon’s typing course each day. The result? After two weeks, she has started touch typing when she *doesn’t* have to. Today she told me excitedly that she touch typed her entire Latin translation entry on her blog. Huzzah!

This morning we woke up to a rousing thunderstorm and she offered to make pancakes for breakfast. What a cozy, delicious morning. I love having my children around. She’s going to wake up earlier tomorrow so she can make pancakes for her sisters before they go to school. What a sweetie.

Here’s her week so far:

Monday, August 25

[ ] Division math facts at math-u-see site

[ ] ALEKS math for 30 minutes

[ ] Science workbook: Read pages 8-11 and complete all of the exercises.

[ ] Typing for at least 30 minutes

[ ] Gone With the Wind – read for 30 minutes

[ ] Latin, review lessons 1-9 and complete lessons 10 and 11 – please do the translations on your blog!

[ ] Treadmill day! Couch to 5K: Week 2, Day 1

Tuesday, August 26

[ ] Division math facts at math-u-see site

[ ] ALEKS math for 30 minutes

[ ] Read Chapter 7 in You’re Amazing (Family). Answer this question in an email to me: If you could tell your parents and other adults in your life one thing you need to hear from them to help you be strong, smart and bold girl, what would it be?

[ ] Science workbook: Review pp. 8-10 Read pp. 11-12 and complete all of the exercises.

[ ] Typing for at least 30 minutes

[ ] Gone With the Wind – read for 30 minutes

[ ] Latin, complete lessons 12 and 13 – please do the translations on your blog!

[ ] Artistic Pursuits – do the exercise on p. 12. Take at least 15 minutes on your sketch.

[ ] Watch Roots, episode 1

Wednesday, August 27

[ ] ALEKS math for 45 minutes

[ ] Read Chapter 8 in You’re Amazing (Tough Breaks). Please blog the “Journal It!” exercise on p. 91.

[ ] Science workbook: Review pp. 11-12 Read pp. 12-14 and complete the exercises on those pages

[ ] Typing for at least 30 minutes

[ ] Gone With the Wind – read for 30 minutes

[ ] Latin, complete lessons 14 and 15 – please do the translations on your blog!

[ ] Complete the Greek Gods crossword puzzle. You can use your Mythology workbook to help you find the answers.

This site will also help! http://www.mythweb.com/gods/index.html

[ ] Treadmill exercise… Couch to 5K podcast: Week 2, Day 2

Thursday, August 28

[ ] ALEKS math for 45 minutes

[ ] Creative writing exercise. Finish this story:

Write a short story on your blog about time traveling with Dr. Who. Where would you go? What time would you visit? Who would you meet? What problem would you solve?

[ ] Science workbook: Review pp. 12-14. Read pp. 15-17 and complete the exercises on those pages

[ ] Typing for at least 30 minutes

[ ] Gone With the Wind – read for 30 minutes

[ ] Latin, complete lessons 16 and 17 – please do the translations on your blog!

[ ] Spend 30 minutes with your Mythology workbook. You decide what looks interesting to you and what you want to work on. You can skip around.

[ ] Artistic Pursuits – do the exercise on p. 11. Take at least 15 minutes on your sketch.

Yesterday, I put a roast in the crockpot around 1 pm. Kind of late in the day to slow cook a tender roast, but I had *just* enough time. An hour later, I noticed that I’d forgotten to plug in the crockpot…

We had takeout for dinner last night while the roast continued to cook. But this morning, Mira requested that I make beef noodles with that roast. That sounded like an awesome idea to me!

I had a meeting at the office today, so Bailey and I decided to make homemade egg noodles in the morning before the meeting so that they would have plenty of time to dry. She has made lots of noodles with her dad and grandma, so she’s justifiably very proud of her ability to manage this task.

She got a day off from structured curriculum, but on the drive to and from the meeting, I witnessed how much learning energy she really has. The car is really such a fabulous place for good conversation with one’s children.

Bailey is doing a physics experiment about gravity with the physics workshop kit we ordered. She assembled the testing structure yesterday and this evening we’ll conduct the experiment as a family. Yesterday she also got a new pair of glasses. On the drive she was looking at herself in the vanity mirror and commenting that the glasses left an impression on her nose. She noticed that my glasses also left an impression, but not as much of one. How could I resist turning this into a discussion about gravity and why her heavier glasses would leave a deeper impression than my lighter ones.

The conversation about gravity segued into a discussion about the Earth’s atmosphere and the solar system which segued into a conversation about planets and stars and the sun and why is it that it’s a STAR, but it’s the “only one we can’t see at night.” So we talked about exactly why it is we can’t see the sun at night and how the moon is illuminated and on and on and on. Seriously, she was so curious and invested in the conversation. I’ve always known she has it in her, but it’s a spark that was definitely smothered by the school environment. Her curiosity and *attendance* to the conversations we’re having let me know that we are on the right track. She thought she hated science. And now I have a slew of new ideas about what is interesting to her that we can explore more indepth.

Oh another question she asked that I didn’t have the answer for off the top of my head, but that we’re going to study together: “Why isn’t water as warm as air?” She is bursting with questions. And she’s very proud of it, too. We also had a conversation about how curiosity is a key measure of smarts. A lot more so than how much information is in your brain at any point in time. She said, “I guess one reason you are so smart is because you have lots of questions and like looking up the answers.” Bingo.

So then on the way home, she observed that Scarlett O’Hara is a VERY complicated character… “she makes really horrible decisions, but she’s also very smart.” And here’s where my heart just melted with her sophisticated critical thinking: After enlarging on some of Scarlett’s bad decisions, and citing some examples of her good decisions, she says, “Margaret Mitchell was an amazing artist. Writing such a complicated character is very difficult.”

Brilliant!! She gets it. Was I even looking at literature with such a critical eye towards how it was written when I was 12? (For the most part, I gobbled the story down at face value and moved on.) How can she think she’s dumb?

I suggested that as a future assignment I could give her some guidelines for developing a character study and she could try HER hand at conceiving a well-rounded, complex character. She grew very excited at the thought of this challenge. A girl who two weeks ago told me she HATED writing and sucks at it and hates to have anything to do with it. (Note: Typing on the computer vs. writing in longhand seems to make ALL the difference in her desire to write.)

It’s stunning, really, how quickly and ferociously she responded to this change in learning environment.

Bailey embarked upon the following activities at 8:00 am, working steadily until 3 pm. I kept checking to see if she was bored or losing interest and offering breaks, but she was having a blast! She did not enjoy watching a math lecture on DVD, so we may modify our approach to that instruction if her frustration with it continues or escalates.

Monday, August 18

[ ] Math facts (multiplication) for at least 15 minutes:
http://mathusee.com/drill.html

[ ] Watch Lesson 1 on the Math-U-See DVD, then complete Lesson Practice 1A, 1B and 1C in the Student Text.

[ ] Typing practice (Mavis Beacon) for at least 30 minutes

[ ] Read Chapter 4 in You’re Amazing and blog the exercise on p. 39. Also tell me in your blog entry what was the most important thing you learned from this chapter and how you think it will affect your life.

[ ] Gone With the Wind – read for 30 minutes

[ ] Gone With the Wind Worksheet – read the worksheet and complete the “Activities while reading the book” section

[ ] Latin, Lesson 1

[ ] Read and complete the exercises on pages 1-4 in your Classic Mythology workbook

[ ] Read pages 4-6 in ARTistic Pursuits and complete the drawing challenge on p. 6

[ ] Read pages 7-9 in the Physics Workshop experiment manual and then… make a Potato Trap!

[ ] Couch to 5K: Week 1, day 1 podcast – 30 minute walk/run program on the treadmill

Unfortunately, Jake was getting quite ill with a stomach bug on Tuesday last week and we ended up taking him to the hospital for IV fluids that evening. Very scary! Bailey and her sisters spent the remainder of the week with their dad, while Jake recuperated in the hospital. During that time, Bailey kept up with her reading of Gone With the Wind (she’s almost halfway through and loving it) and wrote some fiction entries for her blog.

We received most of her homeschool materials by the end of the week last week, and we’re raring to go with all the new stuff tomorrow!

So, anyway, on Tuesday last week, she completed the following tasks. She really enjoys the Mavis Beacon typing program!

Tuesday, August 12

[ ] Math facts (multiplication) for at least 15 minutes:
http://mathusee.com/drill.html

[ ] Typing tutor for at least 30 minutes:
http://powertyping.com

[ ] Read Chapter 3 in You’re Amazing and blog the exercises. Also tell me in your blog entry what was the most important thing you learned from this chapter and how you think it will affect your life.

[ ] Write a story for your blog, called In Your Lunch. Here’s the prompt:

[ ] Gone With the Wind – read for 30 minutes

[ ] Review the brownie recipe you made yesterday in your blog. Include a link to the recipe, maybe a picture of the brownies, and information about what it was like making the recipe (easy or hard? were the instructions clear or confusing?) and, of course, how the brownies turned out. What was their texture like (Where they crumbly and dry or moist and dense?) How did they taste?

[ ] Watch the Origins of Slavery video and read the accompanying text.
http://hippocampus.org/hippocampus.php/course_locator.php?course=US%20History%20I&lesson=7&topic=1&width=800&height=550&topicTitle=Origins%20of%20Slavery&skinPath=http://hippocampus.org/hippocampus.skins/default

[ ] Slavery vocabulary exercise – see email.