Homeschooling an Extrovert in a House Full of Introverts

Bunny is an extrovert and I don't know where she got that from, because neither me nor my husband are extroverts. She's always wanting to have friends over or visit friends, she makes friends easily in new environments, and she loves a big gathering of kids. The rest of us, however, like to be alone. We like our quiet downtime. We get overwhelmed by too much socialization. After spending time with people we want to crash.

Before we began homeschooling  Bunny, I knew that one  area of concern could be meeting her need for friend time. I hate the misconception that homeschoolers are isolated or don't get enough socialization, because homeschoolers rarely just stay home all day. Even before Bunny joined us, we were out multiple times a week at activities and we saw friends not just on weekends, but also sometimes on weekdays too, because we had more time for play dates during the week. We were happy with this level of social engagement, but anticipating Bunny's increased need for time among other people, we joined a co-op that meets every other week. She has met a few friends through this co-op and now often asks to get together with them.

I'm ok with SOME play dates during the week, but in the past 8 days, she has had play dates 7 out of those 8 days. The one day we decided to just go up the street to the park, she wanted to know what friend we could meet there. I, on the other hand, was looking forward to just having a quiet time at the park, just the 3 of us. After the past 8 days, I'm exhausted from being around people so often. Admittedly, that week was unusual for us to have that many social plans in a week, so it's definitely more than average. I'm glad this week has nothing scheduled! Ideally, I think I can handle social events maybe 4 out of 7 days of the week. I do hope though, that this is enough for Bunny. She misses time spent with kids at school, and I'd really hate for her to start resenting homeschooling because she misses the  social environment at school. So, I'll have to come up with some plans with friends this week after all...

Chemistry for Tweens

Monkey has always been interested in learning about chemistry, even in early elementary school. Unfortunately, chemistry was not one of the areas covered in public school. When we began homeschooling, we were excited to finally have the time to teach him some chemistry! We began with:

Christian Kids Explore Chemistry - I think this was a great introduction to concepts and terminology of Chemistry. It had an activity for each unit, and was laid out very simply, with review questions that were easy to use. It covers the parts of atoms, molecules, acids and bases, chemical symbols, and even some very basic introduction to organic chemistry (hydrocarbons, esters, etc). It's a pretty straightforward text, with simple explanations, but it wasn't EXCITING...






We completed this at the end of his 4th grade year and sort of forgot about it. Recently, Monkey again expressed interest in learning more chemistry, and after asking him about what he learned already, I realized he didn't retain a lot of it (mostly not remembering the alkanes/alkenes/alkynes, acids/bases; the basics of atoms and bonding were among areas he did remember). So we searched for another Chemistry curriculum, since I had already sold the Christian Kids Explore Chemistry book.

We found Ellen McHenry's book:

The Elements - This starts from the basics, so some of it is review for Monkey, but it works out great since Bunny wasn't with us the first time we covered chemistry. This one is written in a way that kids can really relate to, with humorous drawings and explanations, and LOTS of hands-on ideas. There's 'worksheet'-like activities to reinforce the lessons, there's jokes, and games to print out, and links to resources on the internet. We are LOVING this! It really makes chemistry a lot more fun! For a reluctant chemistry student like Bunny, this is perfect. For the more serious student, this might seem too goofy, but as a kid, I think they would still enjoy the casual, everyday language and the references to more relatable ideas like baking.  We will follow up with her second chemistry book: Carbon Chemistry

Along with this, we are using Fizz, Bubble, Flash , which goes through various elements by families with lots of hands-on activities/experiments and interesting tidbits about compounds made with those elements.






These books are both fun and engaging, cartoony, yet filled with a LOT of information. Definitely beats a science textbook for this age range.

Language Arts Options For Kids Who Like Variety

I've hard such a hard time sticking with one Language Arts program.  Because of this, we've tried a variety of approaches and materials.  Maybe one day we'll find the perfect fit, but until then, it is trial and error. I like getting a taste of the different approaches because:

•  I don't think there's one single "perfect" way to teach Language Arts-there's many learning styles and many different needs among all kids. 
•  I don't think there's any program that will 'teach everything' that encompasses Language Arts-some will focus on writing, others on spelling, or vocabulary or grammar. Honestly, I tried teaching spelling separately and gave up. It just got too be too much, when adding writing on top of that, and grammar, and we only recently started adding vocabulary formally. 
• I don't think that there's any one program we could always stick with forever for any one child, because the child's needs change over time. Maybe they need work on grammar one year, maybe an emphasis on writing another year, and maybe creativity in yet another year. 

This is what we've used/currently use:

Writing Strands, Level 3 : The text is written to the student so it can be done independently. It gives specific assignments, how much to write, what order to write it in, but doesn't give much guidance in making it sound good. We used it for about a year and then switched to IEW for writing. 

Learning Language Arts Through Literature, Purple Book :  This is a very gentle approach to LA. It covers copywork, spelling, grammar, a little bit of writing and vocabulary, all based on a literature passage. There's some passages which have a whole book study included in the book, and some passages are just passages from another book that the student may or may not have read. We intended to read all the books referenced, but found that 1-2 were not easily found (not in the library). Each day's lesson may only be as short as 4-5 practice words/sentences to practice that day's lesson. It didn't seem very systematic in presenting the spelling or grammar rules, it's just based on what is found in the literature passage. It makes it less 'rote' and 'dry', but may seem a bit haphazard to do '-es' plurals one day, and prepositions the next day, then 'research this person' the next day. But at the same time, it gives variety so keeps it from getting repetitive or boring. The kids thought it was too easy though, but at the same time, these were new lessons to them in terms of various grammar rules or spelling. I think that just speaks to the fact that it makes grammar and spelling seem not-so-out-of-reach. I liked that the spelling words are picked from the passage and chosen by the student based on what they don't know yet.

Institute of Excellence in Writing (IEW)- This is a GREAT writing tutorial! We did the Student Intensive A, which has a video that teaches how to structure various styles of writing (e.g. reports vs fictional narratives), and also how to make it sound good with what they call "dress-ups" (sentence openers, adverbs, clauses, transition words). It's VERY specific about asking students to incorporate certain techniques, giving them practice in using them. My kids didn't always enjoy writing this way (being told they HAD to use certain "dress-ups"), but they definitely expanded their writing styles and sounded much more polished after going through this. We are currently using American History Volume 1, but they chose not to write on the topics given. We were still able to use the techniques being practiced, but they chose their own topics to write about.  The topical guides include vocabulary so we have been using this set of words for vocabulary this year. 

Grammar Land - Very old story with the parts of speech as personified characters in a court case. It was pretty amusing and a good introduction to the different parts of speech. I think some of the older language style was difficult for the kids to grasp, but overall, I thought it was a fun way to learn about parts of speech.

Brave Writer, Writer's Jungle - We used elements of this writing approach. It's almost the opposite of the IEW approach, but I think both have valid points about the teaching of writing.  While IEW focuses on specific methods to create structure and style, Brave Writer's approach is more 'question driven', personal, and free-flowing.  The premise to her approach is that writing is an expression of yourself, so you want to be gentle and let students find their voice, and become comfortable expressing themselves in the written language, rather than force them to write on topics they are not excited about and using specific structures that feel awkward to them. I think you need both, so for some periods of time, we use the IEW lessons, and other times, we use the Brave Writer approach, with a lot of 'free writing', and copywork and limited 'must add these things in your writing'.

The Word Snoop - This is a fun book that explains all kinds of interesting tidbits about the English language-palindromes, anagrams, lipograms, malapropisms, oxymorons, etc., plus a history of the evolution of the English language-where it came from way back in history, to current day text-speak. We all loved this-very informative, yet fun to learn about. 

Life of Fred Language Arts - My kids love Fred. He's quirky and smart and talks about a lot of random facts that the kids find very amusing. Even though these are supposed to target high schoolers, my 4th and 6th graders have been doing OK with them. The first one definitely is OK for younger kids, but I've read that the other three books are much harder.  We are now in the middle of the second book, and it does introduce a lot more concepts that may or may not be above their heads, but so far, they are still absorbing the information, if not mastering it.  I believe these books are meant to be read and re-read, so I don't mind them not mastering it all on the first time through, as they will encounter it again later, and at least now, they have been exposed to the information.  This, like the Life of Fred math books, does not go in any particular order and does not present anything as a straight-foward 'lesson', but as Fred's story unfolds, he throws in all kinds of grammar lessons in the midst of telling the story. The downside of this series though, is the lack of practice questions (this would be a 'plus' according to my kids though, as they hate repetition). But because of this, for additional practice and correcting errors, I've started using this next product.

Editor-in-Chief , Critical Thinking Company - We are using Level B1 right now, using their software package rather than the printed book.  This product gives a variety of passages with errors that need to be corrected (grammar, spelling, punctuation, and I think later on, content matching the illustration), The student acts as a 'detective' in searching for these errors and marking the corrections, based on a series of options which they select.  I love the concept, but I think I would go with the book next time. The software is interactive and has 'bonus games' as a reward for completing the lessons, but trying to click on the right reason for the error has been very frustrating for my kids (does the subject/verb agreement fall under 'Usage'? or 'Grammar'? or 'Spelling'?).  They know it's wrong, but can't find where to locate the reason in the menu system.  Both of my kids need a lot more practice in detecting errors in their own writing, but, going by the 'Brave Writer' approach, being critical of their own writing is disheartening, so I like the idea of searching for errors in SOMEONE ELSE'S writing.  

Total Language Plus Study Guides - This incorporates reading comprehension, grammar, spelling, and vocab all based on a piece of literature. There's many guides for specific book titles. We used the one for "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch".  I was drawn to it because it covers reading comprehension, as well as the other areas of LA that LLATL covered, but it includes the entire book in depth, chapter by chapter, not just short passages. I like that this includes vocabulary/spelling with words found in the book, and discussion questions/reading comprehension questions for each chapter. The grammar is mostly dictation and 1 'activity' a week of correction, underlining parts of speech, etc.  I felt that having more direct grammar teaching would have been more useful. I don't know if other study guides are similar, since I only have experience with this one. We ended up skipping a lot of the spelling exercises, just because I don't feel like it was all that necessary. Some kids may enjoy the various spelling practice though (my kids don't).

With all these options, we tend to mix it up every few weeks. Some weeks, we do 1 day a week of copywork/cursive, free write, Editor-in-Chief, Latin/Greek roots(just looking up 2 assigned root words on wikipedia and making an index card for their notes), and 1 chapter of Life of Fred.  Other weeks, we do a week-long writing assignment from IEW. Some weeks, we focus on a single book, like the Word Snoop or doing a study guide from Total Language Plus. I think breaking it up makes it more enjoyable for the kids and keeps them from getting tired of the same thing week after week. 

I'd love to hear any other suggestions of what has worked well for other people and perhaps we'd add it to our medley of choices!

Celebrating Chinese New Year

We don't do many Chinese cultural traditions around here. I cook Chinese food maybe once a week sometimes not at all in a single week, and when I do, we don't even use chopsticks! Maybe it's a product of being raised here in the US; the cultural traditions become more and more diluted the longer people are away from the origins of those traditions.

Every now and then though, there are occasions that prompt me to bring back some traditions, and be purposeful in sharing them with the kids. I want them to know their heritage and have memories of Chinese traditions, even as a half-Asian.

Most of our closest friends are Asian (is that coincidence? is that my own tendency to lean toward common experiences in choosing my friends? and if so, why doesn't my husband have his own tendency toward Caucasian friends? ), and they are in the same 2nd-generation-boat that we're in...grew up here in the US, sprinkling a few Asian traditions in here and there.  We don't sit around talking about Asian-American issues or send our kids to Chinese school, but we DO like to celebrate Chinese New Year together, reliving fond memories from our own childhoods.

Making dumplings as a group is a memory I specifically wanted to pass down to my kids. I remember family gatherings where my parents and the my aunts and uncles would all work together to make lots and lots of dumplings together. They always asked us to help, and occasionally we did, making funny-shaped dumplings, laughing at our awfully mis-shapen results, and then we'd run off and play with the other kids.  It was like history repeating it self when our group of kids do the same thing...but over the years, they are getting more proficient at making dumplings.

We used food.com's Asian Pork and Cabbage Dumpling Recipe for the filling, and my dad's dough recipe, which is 6 cups flour, 2 1/2 cups water, 1/2 tsp salt (knead together until thoroughly mixed and workable). 

We also had a hot pot, with plenty of meat, fish balls, seafood, and noodles, which is another favorite tradition of mine. 

For dessert, we had a huge assortment of Asian treats-egg tarts, pineapple cake, rice cake ('nian gao') in 2 flavors, almond jello, oranges, and sponge cake (not sure that was specifically Asian, but it's reminiscent of the lighter, fluffier cakes that are common in Chinese bakeries)!

2 Years Already!?!

I cannot believe it was 2 years ago this week, that we pulled Monkey out of school. I was both scared and excited to start! Looking back, I think I was TOO eager to start, we started right after coming back from our Christmas vacation trip, when I think we should have taken a few more weeks off to 'de-school' before jumping in.  Anyway, hindsight is 20/20, and while it did take a while to get into a groove, I think we have finally found that groove! Adding Bunny to the mix only slightly stirred the pot, but overall, we have gotten in a good routine that seems to be working.

After 2 years, I think we've finally settled into a routine that feels comfortable.

Each week, I pencil in what they'll do for the week. Sometimes I don't know what we'll cover on which day until the night before, so I don't fill it in until after we've completed the day. For History or Science, I have a list of readings, activities, videos, links that we plan to do over a whole unit, which might last 1-2 months, so we just go down the list and try to plan how much to cover each week.

I write up what they need to do for the day on a white-board (sometimes separating the independent vs. work I do with them), and they erase it as they go:

And generally, this is how our day goes: 

• Morning Bible lesson/devotional together at the breakfast table
• Science/History - read aloud and any activities together (We are alternating Science/History every couple of weeks)
• The rest of the morning is spent doing what is on their white-board, which usually covers math, geography, Chinese, and/or language arts. If I need to spend time individually with one of them for any subject, I do it one-on-one, but mostly this is when I do my work for my job.
• Lunch - While they eat, I will often read aloud some light geography or history when our focus is science, or we will watch a Chinese kids' video over lunch, or practice some Chinese words. 
• After lunch, they finish up any other individual work that needs to be done, and can read, play, whatever until whatever afternoon activity we have (sometimes shopping errands, or extracurricular activities or playdates). They get screen time if they've finished their work, read something, done something creative, and played outside (or inside if weather is bad). 

It's not quite a schedule and every day there's flexibility for them to choose in which order to do things. When we have co-op or field trips or other activities, we just push things back or skip the 'schedule' for the day. 

So as I enter my third year, these are some of the areas I want to work on:

• Adding more formal Chinese teaching, maybe introducing more reading/writing, since we've mainly focused on listening and speaking.
• Getting them to pick up more life skills/chores, such as cooking or cleaning. 
• Give them some practice with studying and taking tests, since we have not done any testing (we will do our first standardized test this spring).
• Doing more discussion about their reading. We don't have any reading plan or curriculum right now, so we need to work on understanding more complex literary elements.  

We're in a happy place right now so I don't want to rock the boat too much, but hopefully I'll add these in slowly as we continue. 

Christmas Unit Plans

Next week, I'm so excited that we are planning a week of reading Christmas-related stories. Although we have not done "Santa Claus" at all for Christmas, they know who he is. I wanted to introduce them to some other familiar classic stories related to Christmas, so next week we will read a couple of picture books to introduce them to:

• The Legend of St. Nicholas
• The Nutcracker
• A Christmas Carol 
• "The Night Before Christmas" poem

We are planning to write our own rendition of "The Night Before Christmas" and maybe watching a version of A Christmas Carol. We are also planning to see a performance by the Russian Ballet of the Nutcracker at the end of the week. This will be their first exposure to a ballet performance. I'm curious what their response will be!  Anyway, I figure all of this can be considered Language Arts (Reading, Poetry) and Music/Arts (Nutcracker Ballet). If I can get them to DO some ballet, perhaps we'll throw in Phys Ed in here. :) 

Weekly Wrapup: Human Anatomy Skeletal System

Taking a break from US History, we've started in on our Human Anatomy unit. We are using Apologia's Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and so far, I love it! It gives a lot of in-depth detail, with lots of hands on ideas. We are also reading from Sassafras Adventures: Anatomy, because the kids like the adventure story of the Sassafras twins.  The teaching aspect though, is really too high level and rushed, so we use it as an overview/introduction to the system we are studying.  They cover each of the systems in the human body in 2 chapters, with one of the characters usually being an 'expert' that shares information about the various body parts, but I feel like the way it's done, it's all blurted out in a really dense paragraph of scientific detail, thrown in the midst of the adventure story. It's not slowly interspersed, and I think when it's too condensed the kids don't really absorb any of it. So for scheduling purposes, we are going in the order of the Sassafras book chapters so that we can read the story in the correct order, and then skipping around in the Apologia book to use the chapter which corresponds with the system being studied. We are planning about 2 weeks per system.

We started off with the skeletal system, covering joints, cartilage,  bone structure, formation of new bones, names of various bones of the body. Some of the hands-on projects we did were:

•  a beaded spine craft on a pipe cleaner with sequins in between, different colors represent the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar vertabrae 

•  looking at a shin bone from a piece of meat to see the compact bone vs the soft inside
•  looking at the bones of a rotisserie chicken
•  looked at paper skeleton that we just happened to have access to because my husband made on back in high school

• soaking a chicken bone in vinegar to see what happens when the calcium is removed by reacting with the vinegar (the bone becomes soft)

Many of the ideas I'm using for our Anatomy plans came from a Konos user who has posted her lessons on her Free Unit-Study webpage. This is a great resource that we're going to use throughout our unit. 

 

We also tied in our Chinese lessons, learning the words for various body parts, as well as the word for bone.  Unfortunately, my Chinese vocabulary doesn't extend to words like "osteoblasts" or "cartilage" or "mandible"! 

While we are taking a break from History, I am still reading aloud from George Washington's World, which gives us a brief look at what was going on in the world during various parts of George Washington's lifetime. We are not studying world history in depth right now, but this will give a bit of backdrop to the events of American History that we had recently studied, so later on, when we do world history they will have some familiarity with it.

This post is linked up with Weird, Unsocialized Weekly-Wrapup.