5 weeks down!

Time has been flying by in our house. I spend most of my hours either teaching or planning what to teach or having conversations about teaching. I will certainly enjoy all of our holiday breaks this year.

This last Friday our youngest spent his first full day schooling with us. Up until now, he has been in school (private K, 3 days a week) or with another child care provider most of our school hours. I was avoiding the time he would need to be integrated into our little system. Things went much more smoothly than I could imagine! Granted, we didn't get as much 'hard-core' learning done that day, but it wasn't bad for a first attempt. We started the day with Geography. JT and I had been studying the 13 colonies. I had E (3rd child now dubbed) work on putting our giant USA floor map together while we were working on the colonies. During math, JT learned about Roman Numerals while E used a yard stick as a number line and did simple addition problems. We also had art...easy stuff for mom! We did a Science experiment with yeast and went on a bike ride late in the afternoon. The only time all day I had to send E to find something to keep him occupied, was during JT's Spelling test.

I know next year it won't be as easy when I actually have a lesson plan I need to follow for both boys. If E continues to progress at the rate he seems to be going, he should be reading independently by then. That would make things much easier. If either of them could be told to read something while waiting for my attention, I could juggle things a little better. Fortunately, I have almost a whole year to dread that step!

Thanks to a friend who took pity on our caterpillar situation, we now have two Black Swallowtail caterpillars living in our jar! We are hoping these guys will put on a real show for us. They are feasting on dill and slowly turning green. JT said they are, "turning into pickles". :-)

What is the right answer?

It's been another fairly good week. I keep waiting for the crisis when I say, "I CAN'T do this anymore!". There are definitely moments. Most of them involve JT completely ignoring my pleas that if he'd just finish the 5 problems left on the paper, we could have free reading time. Stalling is certainly one of his strong characteristics.

Our new schedule seems to be working fairly well. Sometimes we don't get through all I want to do in one day, but neither do teachers with a classroom full of students. This week JT did his Lesson 20 tests. Every 20 lessons there is a series of tests that are completed and sent in to the school. Some of these tests have questions that have wording I consider confusing. JT proved the point today when he came across the fill in the blank question:

The ability to do work is called ____________.
Instead of using the words in the box he was supposed to choose from he wrote "a learned trait". The correct answer (I assume, as I do not have the answer key) should be "energy". I thought his answer made sense. He did a couple others in the same way. Now if he was in a traditional classroom, the teacher would have spent the last 2 weeks being sure he was programmed with the correct answer through tedious review. I took my chances with just reading the chapters in the Science book and going over the review questions once or twice and then jumping into something JT had more interest in learning. Does this mean I have not taught my son well? I can't believe that that is true. Last night as he was getting ready for bed he said to me, "I think we should use some of the words in my History lesson as Spelling words. I think they are probably on my level and I would really like to be able to spell declaration, independence and constitution". By giving him the desire to learn I have opened far more opportunities to him than by teaching him to recite the answer I expect to hear.

On a side note, last week I posted about our capture of the Monarch caterpillars. It turns out, I should have done my research better. My poor child trusted his mother to know a Monarch caterpillar from a Tiger Moth caterpillar. (see here)
They both like to munch the Milkweed....who knew? Since the Tiger Moth overwinters in his cocoon, we won't be having any excitement for quite some time. At least we learned something new this week!

Settling In

The classroom is almost complete! We just need some curtains... eventually. Things are coming together in other ways this week too. I have finally set up something remotely like a routine. We now have a weekly schedule that I try to stick to. Calvert provides a suggested schedule, but it wasn't working for us. Calvert's schedule has History two times a week and Mythology two times a week. I found that we needed more time for History and less for Mythology, so we borrowed a day from the Mythology schedule and compacted it. We like to really immerse in the History discussion, so we do!

I had another 'duh' moment this week. As I've said before, the Spelling list is definitely below level for JT. I hadn't really even looked at the book closely. I would pull out the list, orally pretest JT and throw it back on the bookshelf for a week. This week, I happened to look at the book closely. It turns out, the entire Spelling list is in Spanish in the back of the book. Over the summer, we started a little introduction into Spanish and I had been planning on adding Spanish to our day. Now I have my material! I guess I should investigate all of the material they sent me a little more closely.

We went on a nature hike on Wednesday. We wanted to find some Monarch caterpillars and we came home with two. Now we just need to wait for them to turn into butterflies. JT is keeping track of their every movement in his Science Journal.

Also this week, the Reading assignment included a short version of a story of Sacagawea. So, we went into a little more detail. I had JT read a more thorough version of her story. In Geography, we were learning how to measure distance on a map, so I incorporated the Lewis and Clark journey into that. I had JT plot the route on our large USA map with a dry erase marker. Then we measured the distance.

None of these things we've done this week are part of the curriculum provided. I have been staying up until midnight every night planning the next day's work. That will have to stop soon! I think now that we're getting a rhythm, I should be able to lay out at least a couple day's worth of work. Overall, things are good. Every morning, JT and I have a prayer to start our day. This week he thanked God that his mom could be his teacher now. That simple thought makes it all worth the effort.

Realizations

My friends were right. I am exhausted! I think things are starting to move towards something like regularity. It's still hard to judge.

I spent the first week attempting to follow my own altered version of the Lesson Plan book provided with the Calvert material. I pretty much disregarded the Phonics book, skipped through the Spelling book and massively compacted the Math. What I was left with still felt too much like busy work. Then I began to panic. What things did I absolutely have to use from the curriculum in order to allow JT to pass the assessments? Was I short-changing him by skipping too much? I am so incredibly thankful to have a friend that has been cyber schooling longer than I have. She is full of encouragement and advice. The kind of advice you can take and use!

I called her and vented one day because I could not get JT to sit and do one lousy math worksheet. It took one ENTIRE hour to complete. Now, this had nothing to do with the level of challenge. He just didn't want to do it. He wanted to draw a picture of a space battle (which he did in the space between the math problems). This was a creative drawing, spaceships and planets named after elements; planet Neon being attacked by the spaceship named Hydrogen. However, it was not the right time for Art! How strict must I be with our schedule? An important thing to know about me is that I am a list person. I get great joy from crossing things off the to-do list. In fact, right after I had our last son, I felt like I could never get anything done. I would write things on my list after I had done them, i.e., "took a shower", and cross it off to feel that satisfaction. My friend was straight with me and told me to stop trying to pack in so much stuff that really wasn't necessary. She made me realize that JT will get more new learning time in half an hour at home than he would have in a whole day in a brick and mortar school. That idea really struck a chord with me. I had the power to give him that learning, if I could just stop feeling the need to follow the drill I had been given.

So, this morning I said to JT, "I think this 3rd grade Science book is too easy for you. I believe you already know most of what is in here. What do you think?" He agreed with me. I happen to have a 6th grade Science text book from the same series. I told him if he would look at the chapter in the 3rd grade book and be sure he could answer the questions, we would move on to the 6th grade book instead. We had a wonderful day! The stress level was much lower. We went outside and dropped rocks off the deck to prove that objects of different weights really do fall at the same speed. I did have to do a little arm twisting to complete the dreaded Composition assignment. But as a reward for minimal whining, we did the enrichment activity included in the History assignment about Molly Pitcher. We cooked Johnny Cakes for lunch!

So, my new plan of attack will be to keep the individual subject lessons as brief as possible. I will also attempt to offer fun, hands on activities after every lesson that requires sitting still. When JT asks a question requiring more information than I can pull from my brain, we will spend the time to look it up. I realized I was doing the same thing to him that his previous school had done. He would ask a deep, probing question and I would say, "Not now, we have to finish this worksheet." Wasn't that one of the reasons for bringing him home? I want to allow him the chance to immerse himself in something he's interested in. Why continue having him do the busy work, just because it's in the box. Sometimes I can be so dense.....

Ready or not, here I come!

We are up and running! Monday morning we spent some time working on a few subjects, but didn't really dive in since our youngest was at home. Tuesday morning, with the little one off for his first day at K, we started the real thing. We are using our new classroom. The addition is mostly finished. I still haven't moved everything into it's rightful location, but we are getting there.

*from here on out, I will refer to our son as JT...I'm tired of saying, "our son" or "our child"!

The first day went pretty well. It's really difficult for me to decide exactly how much of the provided material I need to cover. I want to be sure JT has a full grasp of all of the content in each course and yet, I know he doesn't need the volume of repetition provided. I used the vocabulary words as a substitute for spelling words as I had planned. I was so happy! He got six wrong out of 15! It may seem funny to be happy about wrong answers, but for the first time my son needed to study his spelling to prepare for the spelling test he will have tomorrow. I think he will still get a 100% on the final test, but he had to work for it. The main problem with using the vocab words is that there are no exercises in the material for those words. They are meant only to be a challenge to read, not spell. So we went for the old fashioned, write a sentence using the word method.

Another challenge has been dealing with perfectionism issues. Calvert curriculum encourages third graders to be using cursive writing. JT spent little time in second grade working on his penmanship. When I asked him to write a few sentences for practice, he had a minor temper tantrum. It finally dawned on me that he was worried he wouldn't do it perfectly. I encouraged him to "just try" it. Finally, he made a very half-hearted effort and did a lot of grumbling under his breath. I heard him muttering, "I can't believe I thought this would be better than public school...". I would have to say that has been the low point of this week! After lunch, he had recovered and we had a good afternoon. Today I told him we would need to work on his writing again, but he could chose when in the day he wanted to do it. That made all the difference. He said he'd like to get it out of the way, we did it immediately and he did a great job.

Some other issues with Calvert...the material does not have the depth my child desires. For example, the History course for third grade is a study of famous Americans. It starts with Samuel Adams. There was a short passage (less than two pages) with a worksheet or two following. Then it moves on to Patrick Henry. We went to the library Monday afternoon and took out books on both men. He has already finished the one on Samuel Adams. We were able to have a much more thorough discussion after that. I would love to see PA Cyber look into possible supplemental material for advanced students. They could take the framework of the Calvert curriculum and provide a few extras for those who request it. I even said so in our GIEP meeting this afternoon.

The GIEP meeting was kind of funny. Having been a pretty outspoken advocate for my child's education for the last 3 years, it was very difficult to accept the meager GIEP we were offered. I know the GIEP really means nothing since I am able to provide appropriate education within what they require from me. However, in principle, it bothered me to sign something I would have laughed at had our original school provided it. The PA Cyber reps were very positive on the phone and offered to look into getting additional materials about ancient history and WWII (JT specifically requested learning about those this year). We were also offered opportunity to sign up for a few virtual enrichment classes, which we will check out. BTW, the Scantron tests I was worried about, turned out fine. His scores were good and our IS (Instructional Supervisor) was happy with them.

I tried to plan for the next days work during times that JT was completing worksheets or reading from his books. So far, that has worked pretty well. I can't plan too far ahead, since I am not following their Lesson Plan book very closely. Right now, we are on Lesson 20 for Math, Lesson 5 for most other subjects and we are completely skipping Phonics and only occasionally pulling necessary info from the Spelling text. I am following a friends advice to mark each topic with a different colored skinny post it sticker. That is keeping me mostly sane.

So, all in all, this week has been positive and fun. I hope I can keep up with the demands of home and teaching. I know I will really start to appreciate the weekends!

Determining Where and When to Start

The official first day of school for PA Cyber was August 18th for Calvert students. The virtual classes begin on September 2nd. Our addition is slated to be mostly done Tuesday, August 26th. I didn't really want to start classes until then anyway, since our youngest starts Kindergarten that same day. When I called the school to ask if the 18th was set in stone, no one wanted to give a definitive answer. Apparently, as long as we log our 180 school days by the end of the year, it's up to us how we go about it. So, we will have our first "official" day of school on the 26th.

This week we had some 'sort of' school days. We did some pre testing. The first chapter of spelling was no problem...so spelling is finished for this week. Now, I know that was not the kind of challenging material I want to be offering for my child. I am planning on pre testing the bulk of the Spelling within the first month of school and then moving on to some other materials. A friend found a link for me to a Teacher's Guide to the Fellowship of the Ring.

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/lotr/fellowring.shtml

There are comprehension questions, vocabulary words and discussion and essay topics for each chapter. Since our son has started reading the book in the last week, this seems like a great possibility for us. We may use the vocab words as spelling words. If they are too difficult, I'll step it down and use the reading words provided by Calvert. They are more challenging than the spelling and we will come across them in the other materials.

We also did a little math pre testing. The Calvert math book comes with a review and test at the end of each chapter. I used the review as a pre test. Out of the 10 lessons from chapter one, there were two concepts we needed to solidify. We spent a little time one day working on one and will finish the other Monday. On the first day of school, we will do the chapter test. None of the reviews or tests from the book are sent in for grading. At the end of lesson 20 (day 20) students take tests in each subject that are sent in to the school. We will do the first math test by the end of our first week of school. We are allowed to send more than one math test in at a time, so when we send our Lesson 20 packet at the end of September, we will send in as many as we have completed. I'm guessing we will have two or three done. After that, there are a few concepts that will be new material so our pace may slow.

This week our child was required to complete two online pre-assement tests. I spent a few hours convinced that I would certainly go crazy during this school year. While taking the computer test, my son was incapable of sitting still for more than 5 seconds. When he wasn't bouncing out of his seat, he was chatting away about the questions...even when I left the room! It will be interesting to see what kinds of scores come back. I learned two things from this process. I will absolutely have to get an exercise ball for him to sit on during class ( a suggestion from at least two friends with similar kids) and the possible need to play music while he is working. My husband concentrates best with music playing. I'm guessing my son will be similarly motivated.

Overall, there was learning this week regardless of the lack of a true classroom. We completed a weeks worth of spelling, almost 20 days worth of math, began reading a book that will challenge and expand his vocabulary and had a wonderful discussion about how to identify male and female daddy long legs while spitting watermelon seeds in the backyard. (I was the one who learned how to tell them apart, my son taught me!)

Now that's a school I can support!

Distractions

Today while painting our soon to be completed classroom, I started thinking about how I was spending so much time getting the room ready to teach and not nearly enough time on preparing to teach. How true is that in the brick and mortar schools?? There are so many things the administration gets caught up in that have absolutely nothing to do with learning. That's what school is for....learning, right? Instead they need to worry about No Child Left Behind, safety in the schools, problem students and don't even get me started on sports....

I'm taking comfort in the fact that once I have given the initial time investment to establish our little learning zone we will have little to concern us beyond actual learning.


We have our GIEP (Gifted Individualized Education Plan) meeting Thursday the 28th. It will be a phone conference. We received the NORA (Notice of Recommended Assignment) in the mail this week along with a questionnaire for both the parents and the student. On the child's portion, when asked what he expected to learn this year, our son wrote, "improve my reading level, understand more of what I read". I thought that was kind of funny considering he's 7 and already reads somewhere around a 5th grade level. The reading materials they have provided are not going to help him meet that goal. I decided I would finally let him start reading The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkein. He's been bugging us to let him read it for a year. I was holding off until he was a little older. I'll just need to find a good study guide online to make it work.

The other funny thing about the papers they sent, was the NORA. As a charter school, they are not held accountable to Chapter 16... they don't have to provide anything special for gifted kids and are not subject to the regulation. It was a painful experience to sign my name to the most inferior GIEP I've ever accepted. But I know the GIEP isn't what's important in this situation. We can allow our son to learn. I don't need a special paper that will make that happen now. I get to make it happen!