Education is a Life...Mornings

As I continue to meditate on Organized Simplicity, I find myself seeking more intentional schooling. I can look back over the conferences I have attended, webinars I have participated in, and books I have read I see that this is what God has been preparing in me for a while...intentional schooling! With that said, I thought I would share the evolution of our typical school day.

This is mainly what the later half of our week looks like. On Monday we host a co-op here in our home and I try to stick to the idea of the schedule but am realistic enough to know that things happen and that my schedule is meant to be my guide not my dictator. On Tuesdays we are out of the home for a different co-op and after school activities.

Mornings:

We begin our morning with dictation.
I use the Well-Planned Day for our choices.
I do love that planner!
After dictating the selection, we read over it again and punctuate the sentence.
This is where we briefly discuss grammar. We will get more grammar during writing.

This is my youngest's handwriting book.
He copies an English proverb in cursive and then practices saying & writing phonograms.

In order to give our hands a break, we switch gears and read aloud a lesson.

After our Thinking Toolbox lesson, we pull out our respective math lessons and work quietly.

Sometimes I will turn on a Pandora playlist depending on our mood!

Then on to my favorite subjects.
Honestly I could spend hours here and try really hard not to be overwhelming.
I let Tapestry of Grace "drive" the subject.

We read a variety of books and work in our Century Charts or History notebooks.
In this picture, my youngest is reading Story of the World while listening to the CD

Once again, Tapestry of Grace is my resource for Literature study.
I find that the pace is a little ambitious for our family so we do slow things down a bit.
Planning helps in this area.
I have also been having great success with the Go!Chart and like pulling this out on occasion.


Afternoons:
One area of weakness I have is science.
Knowing this about me, we have chosen to seek co ops that offer the sciences.
During the week, each one works on the reading and labs and/or activities are done in co op.
This has been a great help

This is the core of our year. We have languages, music study, art study, etc. but these are not daily activities and so they are interspersed throughout the week.
We also have books we read and our Bible study time before school or in the evenings.

Each year our typical day looks a little different as our needs and schedules change. Only recently have I been able to turn over the responsibility of driving the older ones to their work and activities. This has certainly helped to keep the atmosphere of our day in order. I try very hard to guard our calendar and truly pray over our long-term commitments. Each year has different priorities and goals. I am enjoying our mornings quite a bit more but a huge part of that is being prepared myself. It is not enough to say you want to live simplistically. I think the other part of that must be organization. When things become crazy I still have a plan. I still have a system that I can rely on with minimal effort. I am truly enjoying seeing all the threads of my life weaving together and am finding great peace in knowing the God has been the one behind it all. I am finding great joy in my mornings!

Valentine's Day...McSteininurley Style

Very rarely do I have my act together but this Valentine's I wanted to bring the homemade back to the holiday. Inspired by the idea to live simply, we began our preparations over the weekend.

Making Red Velvet truffles

Over the weekend my youngest and I made Oreo truffles and Red Velvet truffles. We had a good time and even had a magical moment. I asked him to read the recipe as we went through the kitchen and pulled it out. He got to the Oreos and looked at me with a curious face. We don't buy a lot of sweets so he was thinking there would be none. I told him to close his eyes and we should wish together that there would be Oreos. He squeezed his eyes tightly as we chanted, "I wish we had some Oreos." Then we began searching. I let him discover the package I had hidden away and he was thrilled to see them appear! After putting all the cookies in the bowl and realizing he wanted some more, he tried chanting again. I told him only one wish for the day. :-)



We started off the morning with homemade Cinnamon Muffins made from my homemade Crock Pot Yogurt.
Can you see how proud I am? :D


 


We were wild about this Valentine craft from the Tip Junkie. The perfect place for our truffles.

 



This little lady stole the show!

We had an additional family with us and all the girls took turns playing with her,

reading to her, & even taking walks with her

Of course the day is not complete with out an edible craft!

This week we had a total of 4 families: 3 teachers, 6 girls, and 4 boys. We had preschool, elementary school, middle school and high school and even attacked some difficult subjects. I truly am thankful for my partners in crime. They make it look easy! 



20th Century Diner Project...

After some impromptu presentations of our 20th Century Diner History projects, I decided to put it all together in a little movie. Hope you enjoy!

20th Century Thanksgiving...

It's turkey time and what better way to celebrate with our little co-op than to embrace my inner nerd and celebrate 20th century style!

Setting the table

The menu

I decided to google an early 20th century Thanksgiving menu.

• Fruit cocktail - We substituted Fruit salsa
• Cream of Corn soup
• Stuffed onions
• Stuffing
• Mashed Potatoes
• Turkey & Cranberry sauce - We opted for no turkey since we would have plenty this week
• Pie



Happy Thanksgiving!

Century Chart

Curse you Charlotte Mason! It is evening time and the house is quiet so I have decided to work on my Century Chart. Yes, I am doing one as well! However there should be a disclaimer when venturing in to the wonderful world of CM. You should have some sense of artistic ability!

AHHHH

Is it cheating if I have a friend draw for me? Maybe I can just cut and paste in some pictures? LOL I am at the point where I am only desiring to add items to my chart that I think I can actually draw. Now I know what you are thinking, doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of the project? But really, have you seen me draw?

So here are the more positive notes I can relate to you...I can now verbally describe the Wright Brothers airplane as I have now studied various pictures trying to draw some facsimile of it for about 20 minutes only to decide that maybe they aren't as important as I originally thought. haha

In all seriousness, this is a great tool to reinforce what you are learning. Careful observation and reviewing the dates allows the student to personally own the information. Another thought I have is that I am having to chose what I want to put on my chart which means that I am owning more than what I put down.

Instead of sharing the artistically-challenged Century chart. I thought I'd post some of the more talented ones.

Personal Century Chart

Notice each one is unique

The child's personality is displayed

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The 50 States...

This year our family decided to participate in a mini co-op of sorts but also to participate in a larger more structured co-op. In each co-op you, as the parent, are asked to teach a subject. I chose my favorite subject...history! For the elementary aged class I wanted to spend time exploring the 50 states. I spent most of the summer searching the Internet for great projects that would work in a co-op setting and that would be somewhat simple to teach. There were some great ideas like creating a 50 states book using postcards from the different states, creating lapbooks, and notebooking.

One of my biggest challenges was deciding exactly how much I would spend on each state. We would need to cover about 2 states per week and I wanted it to be engaging. I really liked the lapbook idea and found a great blog article on one but I was concerned about the prep time. If I weren't already doing so much this wold have been my first choice.

So I continued my search. I have decided to take the kids on a family trip using Our 50 States as inspiration. The illustrations inside are a treat and so we will be following this family as they travel across our great land.













I also picked up a wonderful treasure called The Little Geography of the United States. This book covers the different geographical areas of the United States. I plan to use this book as we introduce the different regions. My final book I wanted to use is called The Children's Book of America. This book is filled with tales of the United States and songs like America the Beautiful.












Now I had my inspiration pieces for the class. I also have a puzzle of the United States that we can play with throughout the year. I decided to make a basic template with areas to draw the State Bird, State Flower and paste in the State Flag. My hope is that as we travel with Annie, Ben, and Alex and create our notebooks our imaginations will take us to each place. I am still navigating these waters and am hoping that more inspiration **hint hint** will come to me. But for now we are packing our bags and heading on a year-long trip around the United States.

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A Picture Perfect Day...

I was browsing a friend's blog and loved seeing her day in pictures so I thought I would share our first day of school pics. So without further ado here is our first day of school...in pictures.

       

Hard at work!

This year we have organized a small co op for my high school aged daughter. Our home can quickly become a wi fi hotspot. We use iTunes to listen to stories on www.librovox.org. Often the computers come in handy as the older ones research topics for our history discussions.

Nothing says mid-day break like M&M's!

Lunch time! Another great co op idea...each family alternates in providing lunch.
Today was chicken salad & veggies. Yummy!

The end of the day...Some chose to celebrate while others just laid down in exhaustion. :)

One small step for man...

Today has been one been one of those days...

As the children quickly ran off to all corners of the house to explore their more leisurely passions, my friend and I began exploring ours. Yes, I am a complete nerd. I love reading, planning, and discussing school. With laptops running, papers strewn across the table, and laughter filling the room we began the task at hand. This year we are using Tapestry of Grace (TOG) Year 3 and are now in Unit 3. As each child grows, I continue to tweak and improve in all areas. I feel an excitement as I read through the Unit synopsis and my imagination runs wild. I admit it...I can get carried away but I love learning!

Today's task to work with my friend on best adapting Unit 3 to our particular needs. I have heard TOG described as a buffet table. There are many choices and each family will have similar "plates" but not exactly the same. That is what drew me to TOG in the first place. It is perfect for many types of families. In our home, we currently have 3 of the 4 classical levels.

1. Rhetoric
2. Dialect
3. Upper Grammar

This can make teaching a challenge if each child is on his own individual plan. But using the unit study approach can simplify the process.

Today, I worked through the reading lists and began adapting. My youngest (7) has been blessed with growing up in a more Charlotte Mason friendly home. This year we are making a history book filled with maps, oral narrations, and pictures. He has enjoyed reading living books and then re-telling me what he has heard. So using my library's online catalog search and www.Amazon.com, I began building his reading list for this unit. My daughter (12) is my more literal child and so we searched for activities and reading that would help develop and excite her. For my oldest (16), we discussed the virtual co-op plans and went ahead and wrote out our exam questions Charlotte Mason style. I will post those in my next blog. What an accomplished day!

A whole new world...

Last week was our first sessions of virtual co-op and it feels like a whole new world has opened up for our family. Armed with humor, two laptops, PowerPoint, and our texts for school we began our journey.

The first class was a Study Hall of sorts. We spoke briefly of Jane Austen and tried to began discussing her beautiful work, Pride & Prejudice (one of our family favorites). This was also a great opportunity to learn more about the functions www.wiziq.com has to offer. This online learning tool allows the students to raise their hands, work directly on the whiteboard, and type questions as we go along. Our second class was an adventure in Apologia's Human Anatomy. A few weeks prior, I had begun a developing a PowerPoint presentation that hit the highlights of the chapter as well as answer the study guide questions. Students were able to interact with the whiteboard and each other.

The idea of the virtual world has always intrigued me. My children are all 4-5 years apart in age. This presents a challenge when looking for co-ops and extra classes because inevitably some one will be left out. I love the accountability that a co-op brings and for me this has been a great merge.

Digital Diva...

This week I have been learning about a whole new world called "virtual co-oping." About a year ago, I began to roll around in my mind just how this could be done. Then I found some wonderful ladies who have pioneered this process and have had a successful co-op for five years now.

The toolbox:

• http://www.wiziq.com/ - this is a free online whiteboard. I have looked at others but this one has been pretty user friendly...so far.
• power point - this is where I have been working the most preparing slides to go with my lectures.
• online file sharing system - I personally like http://www.yahoogroups.com/
  schedule - with yahoo groups you can have a shared calendar listing class times, important dates, vacations, etc.
• like-minded families - this is the key to success

Here is a sample of my work for Apologia Human Body module 1. The kids will have the opportunity to answer questions by "virtually" raising their hands, discuss live the subject matter, review, even play games, or take a quiz. The possibilities are endless!