Summer Education with the Prepubescent 10yo Male, Duncan

This week we started our Summer Schedule: MBtP Literature Study- A Wrinkle in Time; Astronomy Study- astronomy chapters from Conceptual Physical Science, George's Secret Key to the Universe, and library books; math tutor; Kumon Math; Evan Moor Daily Paragraph Editing.

What did we actually accomplish? Let’s see we skipped math tutor this week. And, well, Duncan finally finished Evan-Moor Daily Math 5. I know that isn’t on my list of summer things, but I really thought he would be finished with it before now.

Duncan completed 3 days of the MBtP literature study, Chapter 26: The Solar System in Conceptual Physical Science, 16 chapters in George’s Secret Key to the Universe, The Tour of the Solar System section in Planets, Stars and Galaxies: A Visual Encyclopedia of Our Universe, and 6 days in Evan Moor Daily Paragraph Editing.

MBtP A Wrinkle in Time Literature Unit

There is even a website for this book.

Monday, Duncan went to Kumon for several hours while I worked. Tuesday, he went to mandolin. Wednesday, he went to Games Workshop where is playing in a Fantasy league battle and went back over there today, Saturday, and did the same. He will stay there for 6 or 7 hours. It’s crazy. Duncan has rediscovered the Xbox 360 and the thrill that is Halo. No idea how long it has been since he played it, but we had to “find” the Halo disc and put new batteries in the headset. Also, MapleStory had a major update, so much excitement over that as well.   

Warhammer is a game played with miniatures on a 2'x4' playing surface.

MapleStory is a MMO that Duncan has played for half his life.

 

Thursday night we had a Mei party. Mei is my good friend’s 13yo daughter. My husband took Mei and Duncan bowling until midnight where they bowled 11 games.  Yes, you read that correctly- 11 games. Friday, Mei and Zak met a new violin teacher at 10 a.m. They both liked him, so Duncan is going to try him again next week. If it goes well, we may set up a weekly lesson with him.

After violin, we went home, had pizza, and made banana bread, but that wasn’t the fun part. We watched Pitch Perfect and Mei and Duncan worked on The Cup Song. However, they were both tired, so I didn’t make a video. They can do the cup part, but there was a disagreement over the singing. :-/ Maybe, next week. Mei has a scruffy voice that is perfect for this kind of song. 

Do you notice what is missing from this list? Yes, that is correct. We did not go outside. Friday, Mei’s mom, Sarah, did take Duncan and Mei to the pool at around 5. I did not go, because, yes indeed, the sun was still up.

I know that some children complain about being at home and want to go, go, go, but that isn’t how our house rolls. This is plenty of activity for one week.

Summer, Summer, Summer has reared its ugly head and summer school begins Monday.

Today is officially the first day of summer... although the weather in middle TN has loudly declared summer for a while now, :-/ Have I mentioned how much I dislike heat and all things green? Summer reeks of sweat and allergies. As my least favorite season, I announce that I plan to ignore its existence and, therefore, will no longer be traversing my threshold except at night, other than to skulk my way to a vehicle where the AC will produce arctic wind for my enjoyment or to allow Pretty Princess Prancey Paws to relieve herself, until the end of September and the first day of fall.

To this end, we will begin summer studies on Monday when we will jump into the 13 day Moving Beyond the Page A Wrinkle in Time Literature unit. I plan to spread it over 15 days. I did not purchase the coordinating space study, but we will be studying space via George's Secret Key to the Universe, books from the library, and the astronomy chapters from Conceptual Physical Science. During summer with the constant interruptions by friends, family, and summer events, these 15 days may take 6 weeks instead of 3, so I am not wasting my time, even though it is tempting, planning any other cool, fun, indoor projects. Ds will also continue with the Evan Moor Daily Paragraph Editing that he started in January, his math tutor, and Kumon math.

Although I dislike the hot, humid weather and the nasty botanical growth that it encourages, I find much pleasure in the more relaxed days that accompany our summer schedule. :-D

Tuesday's Active Learning Group and Week in Review 3/4-3/8

Duncan and I decided to share our last trimester studies by inviting a group of friends to share our introductory day on Tuesdays. So, here is what we did in just under three hours with a group of six middle schoolers and a kindergarten tag-a-long using a little Waldorf, a little Montessori, and a little lapbooking and then tying it all together with Charlotte Mason's patience and short lessons.

Active Learning Group Week 1 

I. Poetry

    A. Introduce ourselves

    B. Define poetry, stanza, end rhyme, and poetic license

    C. Read and discuss Fields section of TheTree That Time Built

 II. Geometry

    A. Short quote about geometry

    B. Brief biography of Euclid (I used the info in the first 2 paragraphs and in the last 2 paragraphs.)

    C. County map to discover points, lines and line segments

    D. A starry night drawing to discover rays

This is my teaching sheet. It is made from small pieces of water color paper glued to a 12x18" sheet of black construction paper.

Mei's County Map

Mei's Starry Sky

Mei's Definition Sheet

III. Biology- Introduction to Botany

    A. Lead students in the Activity for Introducing Botany

    B. Tell the made-up story of Elzeard Bouffier. Here is the story on youtube. I have the book, but told the story more like the woman in the video except with a Southern accent. :)

    C. Read poem Smells by Kathryn Worth 

    D. Define botany

    E. Give students choice of activities

        1. draw tree from my instruction sheet

        2. copy poem from my instruction sheet

        3. work with the parts of a flower set

        4. work with Montessori 3-Part Plant cards

        5. fill in the parts of plant mini-book

This is my instruction sheet. I drew it on 18x24" drawing paper.

Close up of the top left

Close up of the bottom right. This was here.

First page of Duncan's plant mini-book on left and the coordinating teaching card on right

Montessori 3-Part Cards

Parts of a flower learning booklet, pictures from the booklet, and definitions to match to the pictures

IV. Social Studies- Achaemenid Persia week 1 of 4

    A. Physical geography of Iran

    B. Story of Esther 

    C. Fill in a mini-book retelling the story of Esther using WIN's The 7 SentenceStory

    D. Eat hamantaschen

The outside of Sevanne's Esther mini-book, the inside of Mei's mini-book, and the inside of Duncan's mini-book. At the end of the 4 weeks they will be able to put all their work on Achaemenid Persia into a lapbook.

Duncan and I made hamantaschen on Monday and shared them with the group on Tuesday. Here is our hamantaschen ready to go into the oven.

I am not giving grades or assigning homework. This is just a casual three hours of fast-paced introduction of topics. My son will be doing more work with the poetry after reading the poems on Tuesday using the student pages from Moving Beyond the Page Ages 10-12- Concept 4: Systems and Interaction, Unit 2: The Tree That Time Built (LA). Duncan is using MUS Geometry, so this geometry on Tuesday is just for fun. Because he is using Science Daybook the rest of the week, Duncan will not be doing anything else with botany unless he wants to explore it further on his own. He will not be specifically working on the ancient culture introduced, but will be studying that region of the world through stories, poetry, literature, and cultural geography.This week he continued reading in Clouds of Glory, a collection of Jewish Midrashim, and A Picnic of Poems: In Allah's Green Garden. He also read two books by Demi: Rumi and Muhammad.

I guess this is all the stuff that is interesting to share, but he also watched a couple of MUS Algebra 2 videos and did some MCP Word Study, Evan Moor Daily Math, Evan Moor Daily Paragraph Editing, Kumon Math, and Time4Writing.

Who are you?

`Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'

Goals for 5th Grade

Short Term:
In 5th grade I would be thrilled to see him become as excited over anything educational as he becomes fairly frequently while playing MMOs, because last year was a dead zone as far as educational joy.


Long Term:
I want my child to be firm in his knowledge of appropriate conduct. I want him to learn the difference between what he wants to do right now and having a strong enough will to do what is appropriate/ right. He must also be taught to be careful not to rationalize something to be right simply because he wants it to be so. Along these lines, there can be no true happiness without first taking care of responsibilities. “…the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them.”

"I am, I can, I ought, I will." is the place from which I instruct, because we achieve through diligence not through intelligence or imagination. I use habit training as a road to success, because I want him to be a responsible, decent, moral person who possesses positive and productive physical and mental habits. I want him to learn to apply these habits to whatever he chooses to do in life whether that is a tinker, a tailor, a soldier, or a sailor.

I exercise habit training alongside the idea that “perhaps the business of teachers is to open as many doors as possible.” I respect that he is born whole and that his mind is naturally designed to learn. I can provide the nourishment of education for his mind to grow healthy through a learning lifestyle where he is trained to be disciplined not in subject matter but in life for "education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."

However, my child is not a blank slate, but is a whole person complete with his own personality and capacity for good and evil. Neither my self worth nor his hinges upon his going to college. I will for my part try to open doors and windows and widen chinks in the walls, but ultimately he will choose his own path. I hope that he chooses one that is fulfilling.

Mandy, with quotes from Charlotte Mason

Our Core Book

We do half our year before winter break and half after winter break. Years that are divided into trimesters stink, because the middle trimester is split in two. So, one thing that I strongly prefer is quarters over trimesters. I would really like eight weeks and an exam week to make a 9 week quarter.


I am very happy with the CM-ish/ classical-ish work that we will be doing this year. I created a lesson plan/ core book that seems to be working well. I turned a word doc to landscape, let my little man pick a background color, typed The Well-Nourished Mind across the top, underneath this I typed Overview of Weekly Topics for Recreation, Recitation, and Reproduction, and inserted 6 text boxes. I like this style of Guide.

Text box 1 is narrow and runs about 2/3 of the page with the words artist, composer, poet, life skills/ handicraft, nature walk, and unstructured play/ masterly inactivity. Text box 2 is wide and also runs 2/3 of the page. It has space for memory work in English grammar, cultural geography, political geography, science, Latin, and Farsi. Running underneath and the length of boxes 1 and 2, box 3 goes to the bottom of the page and is my space for dictation. Box 4 begins at the top runs 3/4 of the way to the bottom and is where I will place the poem that the little man is working to memorize. Box 5 is in the little space below box 4 and has space for the title of the literature book he will be working on with room underneath to check off 2 days of narration and 2 days of reading aloud. Text box 6 is narrow and runs the length of the doc for spelling words.

Week in Review, 7/2-7/6

Duncan is my 9yo and this week we started fourth grade.

Well, here we are again. I had expected to begin our new year next week, but as it turns out there are some days next week when we will not be able to do school. So, we stretched two days scheduled for next week over three days this week. We started memory work and he made index cards, but, since he is expected to have it memorized by next week, I will post the week 1 memory work with next week's week in review. It wasn't a stellar start in attitude, quantity, or quality, but at least the ball is rolling.

In Religious Studies and Mythology this partial week
Selections from The Children’s Bible in 365 Stories by Mary Batchelor

Artist, Composer, Poet Study this partial week
Benjamin Britten: Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. We listen to two broadcasts online at Classics for Kids- The Instruments of the Orchestra - Part 1 and Part 2. Then, we listened to the entire piece on youtube. This was definitely a good review and a good start to the year.

The Blue Rider: The Yellow Cow Sees the World in Blue pp. 1-11 focusing on Kandinsky. We are going to cover this book quickly for an overview of the group, but later this quarter we will be covering the works of Franz Marc in detail.

Color Me a Rhyme by Jane Yolen pp.8-17
Duncan memorized Orange.

Orange

by Jane Yolen

I want to take a bite

out of that sunset sky,

letting the orange juices
run down my chin,

spitting out the pulp

onto the rocks below.

  
In Math this partial week
We have not totally stopped doing Kumon Math this summer even though this past month has been more than somewhat inconsistent. This week we managed to squeeze in 2 days- H 181-185 and H 186-190. The plan is to begin Duncan's math text 7/16, his first full week of school.

In Language Arts this partial week
This week Duncan began reading Rascal by Sterling North. He read chapters 1 and 2, so of course now he wants a raccoon as a pet. This book was a huge favorite with my big boys so I am glad to now be sharing it with the little man. As a read-together, we began It's Our World, Too! He completed Harvey's Elementary Grammar and Composition- Lessons 1 and 2 alongside the first two lessons in the coordinating Mott Media's series 4 workbooks and Spectrum Writing 5- Lesson 1. We also began looking at Webster’s 1824 Speller from Don Potter’s site and started Figuratively Speaking Lesson 1: Denotation and Connotation.

In Geography this partial week
In cultural geography Duncan read about the Mound Builders. In physical geography he reviewed the continents and oceans. He also completed the first two days of week 1, the introductory week, from WinterPromise's Children Around the World. We are using the 2008 print edition that uses How People Live as its spine.

In Science this partial week
Duncan completed lesson 1 from Memoria Press's fourth grade science- Insects. This is a beta test book and the reader had a number of typos in lesson 1, so I ended up reading it aloud to him. I didn't notice any errors in the workbook.

In Foreign Language this partial week
Duncan began Lesson 1 in Latin Primer: A First Book of Latin for Boys and Girls and completed the introduction section in Your First 100 Words in Persian.

On the Violin this partial week
On violin this month Duncan is working on mastering song 1 from Suzuki book 2- Chorus from Judas Maccabaeus, William Tell Overture from Essential Elements for Strings book 1, and the Star Wars Theme Song. (Because math comes so naturally for Duncan, I had hoped that this would also be the case with violin. Uhhm- not so. He practices a little and goes to lessons, but unless there is a huge change this is not something that I see being a huge part of his future in any way other than for the fun of it.)