LIFE: When In Doubt...

I am maxed out right now with all kinds of stressors.  My dryer is putting 'black marks' on our clothes and a whole slew of other struggles, but mostly I'm eaten up with indecision about some important things in my life...

One friend has essentially left her blogging life behind, and I so get that~I am struggling with WHAT to say to you all...even on a very infrequent basis right now.  Have I said ALLL I need to say or have a voice to say?  I do know that my life is rapidly changing, and my interests are following in quick pursuit!  Soo the bigger question is~
WHAT DO I have to contribute to you all on this blog? AM I WORTH reading and being kept up with?

Let's get REAL~not much~ I'm guessing...and prob not.  So what purpose will my blog serve YOU and me?

Can I preserve this medium for the occasional review now that we're not traditionally homeschooling and should I have something pertinent to say? Or should I just consider this adventure done and over, moving on to different but less 'virtual' activities in my life?  I can't even find myself purging the old texts/homeschooling books of these past several years right now...

I'm in OVERLOAD...my life is changing so fast that my head is spinning...Oh I know it's an age and a stage of life, but it's NO fun~mostly, no fun...and I don't think I can even stand to tare out the WALL to fix the dryer by plumbing for the new one~just can't hardly *think* of the mess this will create in my life and the amount of work involved...knowing hub is not able to finish it in one fowl swoop (have I EVER said HOW MUCH I hate UNFINISHED projects???)...oh brother! I definitely need a dryer, but in Summer, the clothesline is preferred by me anyway~FOR COST...uh...when in doubt...

DON'T.

Hub's in no mood to hear me on this either, but I am so way worn out...

What about attacking this MESS in a few weeks when he can dedicate the time to FINISH~also, DO IT RIGHT??

Thanks for listening to me vent this morning~What are you up to these days?  Getting ready for back to school? What does THAT look like in your household? Let me know you came by! ;-))
SisterT

Chicken Soup Advice...ON Homeschooling

My friend, Donna has a friend who is new to homeschooling and getting a little nervous with some first year angst.  This is what she wrote for her~I LOVE it, and wanna share it with you~enjoy!

And GO make some chicken soup!

Yep.  The doubts come and usually about the same time of the year - right around weeks six to eight.  Happens again right before Christmas, early spring and then right before the end of the year too. 

However, the first thing to do is take a deep breath - maybe even a couple of breaths.

Now, bear with me a second.  I like word pictures and I think this one explains it best.  When I get a bit down about my choice of homeschooling my daughters, I pull a chicken out of the freezer and make soup.

And this is why...  Right after we started school a couple of years ago, I decided to save some money and really try to make all our meals at home.  This particular week I had planned on soup and decided to pull out one of my favorite cookbooks and make some stock.  One of our meals was going to be old fashioned vegetable soup in homemade chicken stock and I had planned on having the soup on a Tuesday but needed to start the stock the day before.

We started with just water in a big pot.  Added the chicken, some basic uncut vegetables, and seasonings then set the pot to simmer for a while on the stove.  After a long while, the house started smelling wonderfully but what was in the pot didn't look so good.  The chicken was coming off the bones, the vegetables were getting all soft and limp and there was a greasy skim on the top of the water from the fat in the chicken.

We turned the pot off, drained out the spent vegetables, separated the chicken from the bones and tossed the bones.  Then the stock had to cool for a while because we weren't going to make soup until the next day so we set it in the refrigerator. 

The next day, when we opened the container all this creamy white fat was floating on the top.  We took a big flat spoon and skimmed the top of the stock clean. 

Now the stock was ready to use but didn't look too fancy.  It had a decent flavor but wasn't anything particularly special. 

We set the pot back on the stove, added fresh vegetables all cut into proper sizes, tossed some of the chicken meat back in and simmered that pot for a couple of hours, stirring every now and again.  When we sat down that night to have dinner, I admit that was some of the best chicken soup we had ever had.  The next day was even better as we added some homemade pasta to the pot and a bit more stock. 

What do soup and homeschool have in common you might ask? 

You put in all these really wonderful ingredients into the pot and put the pot on to simmer on the stove but after a bit, when the ingredients have given up all they can give you are left with this wonderful broth and the stuff at the bottom of the pot to discard.  Then after the stock cools there is a bit of fat that drifts to the top and you have to skim it off.  You are now left with a delightful stock that can be turned into just about anything in the world - it adds flavor to some ingredients and becomes a melting pot of goulash for other ingredients.  

But, because the process is such a long one, every now and again you have to stop and remember where you were, where you are and where you are going, especially when the doubts drift to the top.

Then you skim the doubt off the top, bag it up and toss it out with the trash.

Is there an assessment I do to make sure we are on target? Not really a test per se but rather I stop and look at what we have accomplished.  Are we moving forward?  Are my daughters learning what we had planned for them up to this point (whatever that is at that particular time)? Have we met all our goals?  Is there something that we aren't doing at this point and is the reason we aren't accomplishing as much as I thought we were going to accomplish because I set the goal too high or because I need to adjust my teaching so they can learn?

Now, tale another breath and slowly let it out then look at what you posted...

You said that you and your daughter have met every goal you have set. 

Read that again - You met them. You didn't fall short.  You aren't behind.  I'm betting that you not only met them but went a bit past some of them too and kept right on pressing forward.  I assume you have goals that you expect to get to throughout the year and you will meet them too.

Is she learning?  If she has met the goals you set, then she is.

Are you both happy with this experience?  Is there something you can do to tweak this way of teaching/learning?  If you are happy and she is learning then take another deep breath, shove that doubt into a little bag and toss it out with the trash.

Good soup takes time.  So does homeschooling.  The stock is made from the love you have for your daughter (water) plus the ingredients you add (the curriculum) and all the seasonings you add (field trips, co-op classes, all the extras you do throughout the year) and at the end of the year, you have this phenomenal, one of a kind education that your daughter will be able to eat for many years to come.  The spent stuff at the bottom of the original stock, before it is cooled and cleaned is the curriculum that you find doesn't work or worked well enough but now it is time to move on to the next step in the process.  The fat is the doubt that will come but after a cooling off period - sometimes just an hour of assessment - congeals and drifts to the top so that it can be spooned off and tossed out. 

The doubt will come.  It is inevitable.  Best thing to do is to take an hour, look through what you have done, see that you are continuing to grow and dismiss the doubt as quickly as you would the fat in the top of the stock.

Keep going.  I'm sure you are doing very well and your daughter is doing fine too.

And maybe go get a chicken and make some soup.  Bet you'd both enjoy a good home-ec lesson too... :)

Just keep cooking!

Thanks, Donna for giving me permission to share this with my readers. Hugs!!

I KNEW IT!

Thanks HomeschoolFreebieoftheDay for sending me this link on  boys reading  and what IS THE WORST thing that deters them...ACK!~I KNEW IT~and we're caught in a trap..but alas...FREEDOM is coming! Pray folks, pray! Thanks ;-))

Ed u ma ca shun~COULD WE Do It Today? Ha!

8th Grade Final Exam:
Salina , KS - 1895

Grammar (Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications
3. Define verse, stanza and paragraph.
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of 'lie,' 'play,' and 'run'.
5. Define case; illustrate each case.
6. What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 - 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. Deep, 10 feet Long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs, what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs for tare?
4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs. Coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7percent per annum.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft long at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus .
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the Unit ed States .
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas .
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connect ed with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour)
[Do we even know what this is??]
1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. Wha t are elementary sounds? How classified ?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e.' Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)
1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America .
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco .
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

 

Notice that the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete.

Gives the saying 'he only had an 8th grade education' a whole new meaning, doesn't it?!

Also shows you how poor our education system has become and,
NO, I don't have the answers!

 Hub sent this to me as an email. I am not the author, but it's well worth repeating!

HELPING My Struggler~Interventions

It's just not worth melt downs and anger is it?  Some days we really struggle to put the pen to paper and get the work done.  I have two very different learners and this can be so challenging. While I combine as much as I can, the way they learn, rate and abilities really varies a bunch! So with all said, we have to juggle and THINK on our feet a good bit.  The other day, as I was "grilling and killing" my 9th grader who is delayed and struggling at times, I found that I was also really holding up my more advanced student...by teaching note taking using a dictation method.  Ha~sooo when you find something NOT working, you know you gotta change, right? Sooo once the mayhem was all over, I began to consider WHAT I could do to teach good classroom skills to a kid who can't keep up with written notes.  I KNOW it sounds really disparaging to say this, but it's true that note taking is a challenge for some.  There are adults who can't do it~sooo WHAT do do~how to help...

I got it in my head that in college while I'm not right now in our homeschooling purchasing an individual (in some cases) text for each child, in college most likely they will have their own and can HIGHLIGHT the text as the professor lectures~~OH yes!!!!!!! Like I've forgotten this little fact, right? NO! I do it, and I take notes in the margins! Actually I only do that IF the professor is lecturing straight from the text, which honestly~sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't~but...it's a credible skill to follow and focus on how to get the notes this way...so I began a system of study that included copying the text and giving my kid a highlighter.  I have one with this way and the other who is note taking! Oh boy, we were able to move! We actually CAUGHT UP with our work and have successfully completed the material to have a study guide written (typed) and ready to go...TEST is tomorrow!!

I know these pics aren't the best, but I want you to see what we did with the study guide questions at the end of the science unit.  My learner typed his answers on a separate sheet of paper and I went over them orally~it was too much for him to rewrite correct answers when he had something wrong or incomplete...and then I cut a part the questions and made flaps so he could quiz himself.  He liked it! If he likes, he will use it! This is the whole idea, right?

I hope if you have a child who is challenging that you can be encouraged to KEEP trying~I NEED this myself~it's hard..I KNOW..but in the end...when we've mastered a skill or gotten it down~wow!  Here's hoping!!

Apple ADDED UP~Just So You'd Know!!

OK! I posted two weeks ago about going to get the apples from a friend, and I wanted to let you know just how many we got~

Are you ready?

48 quarts of applesauce in the freezer.

10 pints of apple jelly!!

AND

We've eaten sooooooooooooo far~three apple crisps AND two apple crisps AND a pot of applesauce AND two dishes of apple salad.

NOW how's them apples??? LOL!

Recipe:

Apple Salad

Ingredients:

apples,
celery
raisins or dried cranberries
black pepper
mayo or Miracle Whip

Directions:
Wash your apples well. Depending upon how much you want to make and how large your apples are is how many you use.  We used about five each time. 

Core and chop into cubes.

Use as much mayo or Miracle Whip to cover the apples.

Chop very small celery.

Raisens or dried cranberries.  Use probably 1/4 to 1/2 cup.

Black pepper.  Use a good bit. This brings up the flavor!

I know it sounds funny to use the pepper, but it adds so much YUM!

Enjoy them apples!

Everyday Life~Pirate Week

Somewhere in this big ole world SOMEBODY is celebrating Pirate Week and I am going to celebrate too!
We're studying the Middle Ages~the age of pirates~so what could be more fun??

My pirate name is
Seaman Bessy the Thieving Leg
What is YOUR pirate name?
Hahahaha!! LOL...and sooo I wonder what kind of sea farer I am then??? Alright me, mateys!! Arrrggghh!

First Week of School 210-11 ~ DONE!

Whew, I just wasn't sure we'd get going or get this first week behind us, and it really took day four (today) to feel like I'd gotten back my groove!  Dunno why either, but it has been an exhausting week.  It first started out with my son going into the rebellious teenager mode. I'd like to report that we NEVER deal in this, but it'd be a lie...cause we definitely deal in all the drama of the teenage world despite our MaGnIcEnT parenting...LOL...ha! But you know, what I mean, right? ...and the bickering:

Daughter:  "Just be quiet and get to work!"

Son:  "I want to be done!"

Daughter: "You won't get done unless YOU do the work!"

Son: "What TIME is school over?"

Daughter:  "Come on! I"m trying to do MY work!"

and sooo on..and on and on and on and on...it went...

Where's my aspirin?? LOL!

Well, we did finish today, and it was great~two experiments down in science, notebook/lapbook begun and ALL subjects delved into!! Oh yeah!  I really was rethinking homeschooling on Day ONE b/c cause my son threw such a fit...a huge fit...really didn't get in gear until I tweeked our schedule to give him some much needed parameters~he likes to be on a schedule and to SEE the end coming...oh boy! This is going to be a rough four years of high school!! But we did get through it, and he did ok..ok.

I'm loving our studies, though.  What we ended up with is this:

Math~ Review of PreAlgebra with Math Tudor DVD PreAlgebra I and I will need to get II...We're using this as a refresher bone up...and then moving on to Alg I...Teaching Textbooks Alg I.

Language Arts~We are doing a combo of things.  I am using Language Arts text McGraw-Hill for grammar. I am lecturing and doing dictation and exercises with them to teach note taking and grammar combo...along with writing exercises.  There are history/science essay assignments and short answer tests...we are focusing on writing this year AGAIN!  Vocb is a combination of things: using Vocabulary Cartoons SAT Word Power Vol 1 and Spell Quizzer software.  I am using the software by typing in the definition and having them type in the word FROM MEMORY...wow~it works!!

Science~Apologia's General Sci along with Knowledge Box Central's notebooking/lapbooking pages. These are NICE!!

History~This is turning out to be a hodge podge of things as I am attempting to give a complete history of the medieval world..beginning with Christ's resurrection and the early church as in the Book of Acts and going onward...Most of the Middle Ages studies begin around 100AD...I am beginning at 33AD...and focusing on the NT...so we are listening to Faith Comes By Hearing KJV NT dramatized Bible...this is awesome! And we are using The Kregal Pictoral Guide to Church History and the New Testament along with Story of the Middle Ages, Veritas Press history cards/work books (appropriate timeline parts), TruthQuest History, MOH2, The Middle Ages: An Illustrated History of the Church (900-1300), Streams of Civilization I and anything ELSE (LOL) I can find...to make it come alive...I have the Genevieve Foster books, World of Augustus Caesar, Columbus and Sons that I hope to read as well...I just believe Rome was such an important civilization and period of history that is relevant to our present world!  I am including geography as well~using Abeka's World Geography to round it out...whew!

Literature is taking on a life of its own~son is reading King Arthur and daughter is reading Foundlings.  I will add other works as part of our history/sci studies...

Son is doing Tell Me More Spanish, and daughter is using Tell Me More Japanese. Their new computers are making it sooo much easier to use AND have enable features they found difficult to use b/c of locked up and slow computer systems!! NEW computers really have been a blessing!!

Music~son is still doing trumpet and daughter the bass...

Drama~daughter is an actress and crew leader and son is on a crew.

Devotionals~daughter is reading One Minute Devotionals, and son is reading a new devo that I can't remember the name right now...ha! I'm fried!! LOL!

But WE ARE ON OUR WAY...now to do the intent and all the junk for the BOA...glad the printer's got ink~but I need some paper NOW LOL!!  It's ONLY beginning....ya think??