6/30

April had to work again today so Lorelei, Audrey, Sweet Pea, and I headed off to Arapahoe Pass.  For some reason, when I asked them to pose for a picture for me to text to April, Audrey started throwing up gang signs, while Lorelei decided to go for a Cosmo cover-shot, while making the someone-tooted face.  I may or may not have just eaten a can of baked beans before we took this hike.
 

Anyway, it was a great hike, and now I'm the sorest I've really ever been.  Lorelei rode the Kelty most of the way up and half of the way down.  I was saying to April that I was never this sore after taking Audrey in the Kelty at 2 years old, and she reminded me that Audrey was in the 5th percentile for weight at that age.   So that explains it.
 

Both girls definitely showed a marked interest in all the bugs we encountered, which I think is largely due to our 'flies.  Audrey carried this guy around in his flower for the better part of an hour.


And, of course, we made homeschooling hay of the whole event by reading How Mountains are Made tonight for bedtime.
 
 

6/29

So we had a showing today.

April had to work, so the girls and I were on our own.  We hadn't gotten a call for a showing or anything, but I felt like something might happen, so we cleaned hard all morning. They did the basement and Lo's room and took out the recycling while I did the kitchen and bathrooms and our room.  We all worked for nearly 3 hours solid, and everything looked great, but no call came. 

Around 4, April was at a birthday party with the girls and I was just lying down for a nap, when there was a knock at the door.  It was a realtor and his client.  He seemed kind of annoyed and wanted to know why it took so long for me to come to the door and why the dog and I were in the house.  It turned out he was there for a showing they had scheduled at out neighbors' place.  I gave them directions and invited them to have a look at ours when they were done.

I ran round re-tidying after ourselves from the day and left the house.  They did come see the house which was great, but as I did my usual walk-around after a showing to see what they've moved or changed, I discovered what I had missed in my re-tidying: a little-girl poop in the toilet in the main floor bathroom.  Seat cover up and everything.

Well, at least we won't be holding our breath for feedback on this one...

6/27

Nautilus Sailing offers these long-weekend classes at Blue Mesa Reservoir covering all kinds of topics to bring a novice sailor up to speed on a huge range of topics from basic terminology and sailing techniques to heaving-to and emergencies at sea.

There's also Victoria Sailing School which a wide range of more bite-sized courses including this awesome celestial navigation class.  That would be so cool.  Though I have to imagine that there are cheaper ways to learn celestial nav...

I'm excited to get this awesome illustrated Iliad for our first readings from the ancients.

Audrey did 4 pages of math, 6 of spelling and one of handwriting today.



6/26

Audrey wrapped up unit 2 in the Kindergarten A math book this morning; did another page of her Z-B handwriting book; and did 2 pages of her Modern Curriculum Press spelling workout.

Listening to Matt Rutherford of Solo the Americas on The Sailing Podcast this morning, something finally clicked that I'd heard years ago, yet never fully understood (and still probably don't): that we can achieve things we would not have thought possible if we are really willing to prioritize them.  It sounds entirely un-profound as I read what I've just written, and maybe it is more apparent to others than it has been to me, but I've only recently begun to recognize just how many implicit and unquestioned assumptions I live with about what's important in life, and how liberating it is to begin to abandon those. I won't elaborate at present, as it's late, but maybe sometime soon...

6/25

April and Audrey did four pages of Zaner-Bloser handwriting today, while Audrey and I did four pages of Unit 3 in Singapore math:



6/24


We had a great visit from Mom and Dad and got lots of great support and encouragement on our homeschooling efforts.  

We forged ahead in handwriting and math over the weekend.  

I saw some great sailing and navigation classes here in Colorado and I'm
excited to get more information on those.

6/22

We had a showing today, and another scheduled for Monday. 

We read the chapter on socialization in The Well Trained Mind. The authors make some great points about the unique nature of the social situation in grade school.

6/20


Yesterday Audrey and I did sections 2.9 and 2.10 in Singapore Math; went through addition wrap ups for 1s; and looked at groups of 1s, 2s, and 3s with the unit blocks.  I read Lorelei a chapter of Anne of Avonlea.  April and Audrey did 8 pages of the Zaner-Bloser workbook and they both read each other a bunch of books, including our science book on plants and seeds.  

They did 4 pages from Zaner-Bloser today and Audrey read April the plants and seeds book.

6/18

Sounds like Wondertime's uncertainty about the length of their welcome in NZ, has been resolved, and happily.  I wonder how that came about.  I'll have to ping them for details.

We started in on Stevenson's "The Sun's Travels" today.  I love his stuff.  It's so deliciously flowery, yet precise, and to hear it come out of my 2- and 5-year-olds' mouths is just priceless.

Here's a tentative outline for our first actual homeschooling schedule:


reading
- 30 min assigned / day, 5 days / wk; do a related notebook page
- 30 min “free” / day, 7 days / wk
- 1 short poem / 2-3 verses of a longer poem/wk
  - introduce Sunday
 
  - practice daily 
  - do a notebook page early in the week 
  - recite Saturday

handwriting
min 2 pp. 5-20 min / day, 5 days a week

math
min. 1 lesson (2pp.), 30 min / day, 5 days/wk

science
- fun with critters (sea monkeys, ant farms, clear-skinned frogs, farm camp, others)
- related library reading, crafts, activities, and field trips

6/17

Audrey and April did a couple pages of Spelling Workout A today and Audrey and I did Lessons 2.7 and 2.8 in our Singapore Math book A.  Lorelei is getting pretty good with some colors and is getting lots of repetitions with letter names and sounds.  She really wants to read like her sister so we tried again with her with TYCTR yesterday, but she's just not quite ready for that yet.  Soon, though...

Thanks for the nice blog comments, Mom.

6/16

Zero showings this weekend.  Sure would be nice to sell this house...

We did some more good planning for homeschooling today.  We still need to answer a number of questions but here are our notes so far for most of the subjects we'll tackle in fall (we'll also do art, music and PE):

Composition:
curriculum:
Writing with Ease
approach:
letters to friends and family
rotating copy work and narration
papers go into language notebook
schedule:
WWE (Writing With Ease): 4 days per week for 36 weeks
TWTM (The Well-Trained Mind): letter writing twice a week, copying sentences 2 or 3 days per week, starting at 5 minutes per day and working up to 20.  
Our schedule: TBD
goals for the year:
  • TWTM: copy a 10 word sentence without error
  • TWTM: accurately answer questions about a 3-5 paragraph passage
  • TWTM: answer the question: what is one thing you remember about the passage, with a complete sentence.

Handwriting:
curriculum:
Zaner-Bloser K, 140 pages
schedule:
minimum of 2 workbook pages a day
TWTM: 5-20 minutes per day, 5 days a week
goals for the year:
get through the K book for summer and the level 1 and possibly level 2 Z-B books for the year

Spelling:
curriculum:
MSP Spelling Workout A
36 lessons
schedule:
Susan recommends: 10 to 15 minutes 5 days per week
goals for the year:
           work through the A book and continue to the B book

Grammar:
curriculum:
First Language Lessons
100 lessons (approximately 3 per week)
schedule:
TWTM: 15-20 minutes a day 5 days a week
approach:
memorization, narration, copy work, parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, verbs)
goals for the year:
            complete FLL book
   

Reading:
schedule:
assigned reading (30 minutes 5 days per week)
recreational reading (30 minutes 7 days per week)
approach:
            need to read a little more on this
create notebook pages (including narration, illustrating)
goals for the year:
            ?

Math:
curriculum:
Singapore Early Bird Kindergarten Book A plus workbook A, 10 units
Singapore Early Bird Kindergarten Book B plus workbook B, 10 units
schedule:
minumum of 1 unit per week (approximately 30 minutes per day 5 days a week)
goals for the year:
write and count numbers through 100, by 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s; shapes and patterns; sets; time; money; length; size; weight; addition and subtraction

History:
curriculum:
The Story of the World Vol. 1: the Ancients
43 chapters
schedule:
3 hours per week in 2 or 3 sessions
approach:
get relevant biographies, easy history books every week from the library
take field trips
do activities and craft from activity book
narration for notebook pages
for each story in the book
    make a narration page
ask the child to illustrate or color a related page about the story and write a caption
    find the area on a globe, a wall map, and color the black line map
    go to the library and find out more on the subject
    memorize specific important dates, events and names and their order in history
goals for the year:
complete the book, subject to keeping up with the language and math
memorize two lists from the back of King Fisher history encyclopedia

Science:
curricula/materials:
DK first animal encyclopedia
Kingfisher 1st human body encyclopedia
Green Thumbs a kids activity book to gardening
schedule:
twice a week for 1 hour
approach:
study animals, the human body and plants
suggest animal kingdom 20 weeks
human body for 10 weeks
plants for 6 weeks
goals for the year:
           get a lot of exposure to biology stuff and have fun with it

Father's Day


For father's day I did a Mad-Libs type thing with Audrey about her daddy. I think some of her answers are pretty adorable!


My Daddy
by Audrey Champness, Age 5

My Daddy’s Name is Jacob.
He is 50 pounds and 40 feet tall.
He has brown hair and blue eyes.
My daddy likes to wear shorts and T-shirts.
His favorite book is Anne of Green Gables, and he likes movies about Saint Patricks Day
He likes to go to restaurants that have nachos and he loves to eat coffee and noodles.
My daddy is smart because he knows how to read and he taught me
My daddy always tells me how smart I am.
For fun he likes to stay up late with me and Lorelei
I love it when my daddy reads stories to me.
If I could give my daddy anything it would be a special book about Rose
My favorite thing about my daddy is that he loves me so much!

I LOVE MY DADDY!

I'm so lucky to have such an amazing partner. He is a fantastic father! He is so focused on making the best possible life for our kiddos. 

6/15

We had a nice planning meeting for our educational efforts for this fall.  Here are the math, science, history, grammar,  spelling, and composition curricula we've assembled so far.


We've gotten things rolling with reading, handwriting and math and we'll keep that up and gradually add the other stuff once we consolidate our routine with those.  We'll get all these balls in the air for fall and be off to the races. 

At our present pace, I'm pretty sure we'll complete the first math book and handwriting book by the end of summer, so well just continue with next books this summer. 

We released our 'flies today.  They were great!

I did some research on working in Oz and NZ, as it seems like a common pattern to sail that far, then stop and work for a bit before continuing.  Happily, it looks like software engineers and psychotherapists are on the lists of occupations which are eligible for temporary work visas.  I'll continue this line of research and hope to get good advice from a number of cruisers we follow who've done it.

6/14

April and Audrey got rolling on our handwriting curriculum and had good success.  They did the first 20 pages of the Zaner-Bloser book.

6/12

Audrey did lessons 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 in the Singapore math book and activities 1, 2, and 3 for chapter 2 in the activity book.

We're on the third verse of memorizing Isabel's adventures, in which she contends with the hideous giant.

Lorelei's getting better with her colors though she's still pretty sure red and green are both called "yellow." I'd forgotten but I guess knowing all the colors is really more a 3 or 4 year old milestone. 

She's also a die-hard poetry fan lately and seems to prefer Robert Louis Stevenson to just about anything else.

We're 5 for 5 on the 'flies.  Spot them all?

6/11

We've been continuing to work on memorizing.  Along with "Work" and "Caterpillar"  and we've all been working on "The Adventures of Isabel."  We've gotten halfway through.  It's got some great words like, "enormous," "ravenous," "cavernous," "rancor," "hideous," "zwieback," and "concocter."

We've been starting to get more calls for showings, and we've also reduced our price by $8000.  Let's get this place sold!

6/10

These guys finally joined us:



6/8

Some great inspiration from Behan and Jamie and Mike via The Sailing Podcast this weekend...

6/6

First showing in weeks.  Here's hoping...

6/5

Audrey read these books this evening.





And we memorized "Work."

6/3

We've all memorized the caterpillar poem, Lo included.  It's supposed to be ever so good for us, and is an integral part of the classical education.  So next time you see one of our girls, ask to hear about "Brown and furry."

Audrey is really enjoying this Singapore Math book.   

These guys have moved over to butterfly town finally.  I hope we get to see it when they come out.


6/2

Finally, five chrysalides.  Tomorrow morning, they'll move to the butterfly tent once those last 2 are hardened.  That spider-looking thing is just a bit of old exoskeleton.

Serendipitously,  the first memorization exercise in our grammar curriculum is a poem about caterpillars and butterflies.  We're all committing this to memory.

Audrey read this one tonight, though we're a little past it.























Here's our writing curriculum.

We've started our Earlybird Singapore Math K-A and that's going swimmingly.

On the advice of Bauer and Wise we've gotten a bunch of George MacDonald audio (free from librivox) and the girls love it.  The vocabulary is well beyond them, of course, yet they are completely absorbed.  It's wonderful. 

6/1

Great post from s/v Northern Passage today on being a kid boat.

We're preparing to order up the Zaner-Bloser handwriting stuff and Modern Curriculum Press Spelling stuff.