Catch Up - August

We are halfway thru Chapter 8 of Inside of a Dog.

Sam read (listened to) Eragon, Book 1, and is mostly finished with Book 2.

We are almost done with Honey in Life of Fred.  We also did the Times Tales video tape (which he hated).

We are almost finished with Chapter 21 of Story of the World.

August 22

We finished Chapter 19 in SOTW and Sam drafted a copy of his "Magna Carta" for his room.  He answered all of the questions, learned about Robin Hood and King John.  Then we had Devin over for the rest of the day - I call it gym.  And computer.

August 14

Not a hugely productive homeschooling day, because I was lazy and tired, but it's still summer.

We did Chapter 18 in Life of Fred, stalled out on the last question at the end of the chapter.  Sam still panics when he doesn't know the answer immediately.  So we backed off and will review it again tomorrow.

We also finished Chapter 18 in Story of the World.

August 11

Sam and I finished Chapter 17 in LOF: Honey.  He's still doing most of the math in his head, and adamant that he cannot and will not ever understand division.

We read the first half of Chapter 2 in the Inside of a Dog.

August 10

We finished Chapter 16 in Life of Fred Honey.  I'm making a multiplication chart for his room to make it easier for him to memorize it.  But we blew thru the chapter and he did the questions at the end.  We still have to work on the memorization - but I told him that since we're almost done with this book, and because we were really haphazard and messed up this summer, I'm going to re-read the book, without making him do the questions, so that he's caught up on the story before we move onto Ice Cream (the next book in the series).  But while we're reading it - I'm going to be working with him to memorize his multiplication facts as well.

August 7

This summer didn't go the way I had planned.

We lost Lucky, first of all.  And that led to weeks of Sam literally not sleeping at night, and sleeping all day instead.   Then we finally got Elizabeth Mocha Latte Tallulah Boo Cohen, and life is good again.  I gave him an extra week off - to adjust to sleeping like a normal person, and to bond with our little dog.  But we're back to summer homeschooling once again.

We just finished up Sassafras Zoology this morning.  I'm really happy because I think he retained a lot of it.  I asked him questions based on the book that I had forgotten the answers to, and he knew them.  So I'm going to count Sassafras as a win for curriculum, because he loves it, retains it, and is happy to keep going. We're going to order the next book in the series.

In the meantime, I'm reading Inside of a Dog - What Dogs See, Smell and Know by Alexandra Horowitz to him.  This is a great bridge, not only because it's about dogs, which is a topic he adores, he transcends zoology and anatomy (the next book in the Sassafras series), but he is considering a career in psychology, using therapy dogs, so it's pushing him towards the future as well.

We read the first half of Chapter 18 in Story of the World - covering the Crusades, the People's Crusade, the First and Second Crusade.  And then I literally FELL ASLEEP reading to him - so we stopped for the day.

I'm super impressed at his ability to retain information, though.  He really does remember a lot of the little details from what we were learning before we lost Lucky.  He's a great auditory learner....

July 25

Finished Chapter 18 in Sassafras.

Homeschooling has been really rough since we lost Lucky.  And Jessie's at camp, and Sam's still not sleeping at night.

Getting our new dog soon, hopefully things will pick back up next week.

July 20

Read the introduction and first four chapters of Where is the Colosseum?  Had discussion about the wisdom and value in reading different books about similar subjects, because you get a different perspective from each.  Even though we studied ancient history extensively earlier this year, we still found out some interesting new facts that neither of us knew about.

July 19

Finished reading Marco Polo, and started reading Neil Degrasse Tyson's book on astrophysics.  Decided it was a little over his head (in that it was a little over MY head), and decided to get a different book on the subject that was more age appropriate.

July 18

Read the first half of Who Is Marco Polo

Lucky passed away last week

Everything is temporarily on hold, at least in terms of the homeschooling schedule I had going.  

Sam's sleep schedule is a complete disaster.  He's not sleeping thru the night, I'm spending most of the week working on just trying to straighten that out.  

My plan for this week is trying to get him healthy, with normal and natural sleep habits. We're homeschooling by reading a biography of Marco Polo (history) and the book "And Then You Were Dead" - which is oddly scientific, as well as gory as hell.

July 12

Went to Hermit Island for a few days.  We didn't "homeschool" specifically, but he was learning the whole time.  He also did audio books like a mad man, listened to all of Hunger Games and is about a third of the way thru Catching Fire.

Today, we did the first section in Chapter 18 of Sassafras.

July 7

We took Wednesday (I had to work/Sam had an appt with Caitlin), and Thursday (Dude turned 11!!) off from homeschooling.  We did, however, get his new IPAD.  And have spent many hours figuring out how to work it, and how to access the features that will work best for him, reading wise.

Today, we did math, chapter 15 and review questions.  He's learning multiplication, division, fractions - and oddly enough, apiary stuff.

In history, we covered Chapter 17 - we did the sections on English Code of Chivalry and the Samari: Japanese Knights and answered the review questions for each one.

July 3

Took a few days off for summer :-)

This morning, we did the YTTP for Chapter 13, flash cards for the 2, 3, and 4 times tables and read chapter 14, and finished the YTTP for it as well.  Yay math.

Just finished up Chapter 17 in Sassafras.  We covered king penguin and codfish.

We finished reading Chapter 16 in Story of the World and completed the review questions at the end.

And then I shipped him outside with Julie to build a fairy house for Persephone and EagleFeather.  We'll call it art class.

June 27

We did the first section of Chapter 16 - the English Language in Story of the World.

We finished half of the first section of Chapter 16 in Sassafras.

We also did ten minutes of multiplication tables.

And in even bigger news - WE WENT TO THE MOVIES!   First time since the accident, and it worked great.  He could totally see the screen.  He started to panic about going to see his therapist this afternoon, and I got him thru it.  He went in without hesitation and did great.

All in all, a good day.

June 26

We took a few days off, just to enjoy summer vacation with the girls.

Just finished up Chapter 15 in Sassafras.

June 20

We finished reading Chapter 15 - the First Kings of England in Story of the World, and completed the discussion questions in the Activity Book.  He also has two coloring pages he's going to work on this afternoon.

The low vision doctor had suggested that we start with graphic novels, fun stuff for him to read, with the CCTV, and do a few minutes a day.

It didn't go well.

We did the first page of the graphic novel of White Fang.  He can read.  He stumbles over words sometimes, guesses instead of reading, but he's more functional than I think.  But it was stressing him out - and he ended up crying afterwards and complaining that his head hurt.  Did his head hurt?  I don't know - he seems perfectly fine now that I've backed off. I gave him one tylenol, but it's only been a few minutes.

So many worries - does his head hurt?  What if the psuedotumor is coming back?  I don't think that's it - I think he really stresses out over reading - he doesn't do it well, and it's hard for him to see it anyway, which makes his chances for success that much smaller.  But what do I do now?

(edited to add)

The headache never really materialized - I think it was because he was stressed about reading.  I took a break, fed him, picked up the girls, and then we just did the first section of Chapter 16 in Sassafras Zoology.

June 19

Field Trip to Southwicks.

It was tough - he can't see well enough to see the animals.  He could see shapes, colors, but no real detail.  The major accomplishments was that he was there, interacted with a whole bunch of people, including former teachers, and didn't fall apart when he couldn't really see them.  We were able to problem solve, and take pictures of the animals with his kindle that we can blow up at home and look at.

June 16

We read thru the first half of chapter fifteen in Story of the World: The First Kings of England.
We finished off Chapter 15 in Sassafras.
We read the first two chapters in The Mixed Up Files.

June 14

Doctor's appointment today - it turns out that Sam isn't legally blind after all.

Mixed feelings about this - obviously thrilled that we don't have that designation, because nobody WANTS their child to be legally blind.  But the reality is that he's still very much visually impaired, and the major impairment is going to be in terms of his education.  He needs things to be 48 or 72 font in order to read them easily.

The good news is that Sam did really, really well at the exam, and obviously, the news that he can see better than we anticipated is wonderful.  Also slightly vindicating - because I always felt like he could see better.  I kept thinking it was just that I didn't want to admit that he was disabled, that I couldn't acknowledge the problem, and felt guilty about that.  Turns out that I was right - and while he still can't see well enough to read easily, and may never see well enough for that - he can see well enough to probably drive a car eventually.

June 13

It's a bad homeschooling day.  After a bad homeschooling day yesterday.

Sam's resisting everything right now.  Tears and stubborn push back when I started a discussion on the book we're reading.

I don't even want to attempt math today.

Maybe I just chalk this one up as a lost week, and give him a few days off.

June 12

Homeschooling was more of a struggle today.  We got thru chapters twelve and most of thirteen in Life of Fred - but it's starting to get hard, and he was fighting it the whole way.

So for a change, I started reading the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  I'm going to look for a homeschooling curriculum to go along with it for English.

June 8

We did chapters nine thru twelve in Life of Fred

We also did Chapter 14 in Sassafras - covering the Artic Reunion and the Animals in a Flash sections.  We learned about the musk oxen and the snow geese.

June 5

Not a hugely productive day, as Julie's got a doctor's appointment this afternoon.  But we rehashed chapter 7 in Life of Fred, and read thru Chapter 8.  I feel like the math is getting a bit more challenging, as he's really working on learning multiplication and division at the same time.  So far, he seems pretty enthusiastic.  I've explained that I didn't force Jessie to memorize her multiplication facts, and it made it a lot harder on her.  This will be the summer of multiplication tables - Sam is learning them because he has to, Jessie will be learning them because she didn't do it originally, and Julie... well, she'll just be super ahead when it comes time for her to learn.

June 4

Monday -

We completed all of chapter seven in Life of Fred: Honey, including the YTTP.  We started with half of chapter eight, but he was pretty much done with the whole thing.  Chapter seven was a LOT though, we learned more thoroughly about division, and went thru several problems, really trying to cement the whole divide/multiply/subract/bring down concept.

For science, we did Chapter Thirteen in Sassafras Science Adventure: Volume One Zoology: Trekking in Sichuan.  The first section was Meeting Monkeys, where we learned about the Golden Haired Monkey and then we did the second section on Moving in with the Mice, where we learned about, you know, mice.

We also finished reading Chapter 14 in Story of theWorld, The Arrival of the Norsemen, the Viking Invasion, Eric the Red and "Eric's Son", the Norse Gods, and read the story of Thor and the Giant King.

He's finishing up the audio book series.  He's re-reading the first Percy Jackson series and is mostly done with the fifth book.  We've got the second series all queued up and ready to go.

He's having his first playdate - ALONE AND AT SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE - today.  I'm dropping him off at Harrison's house this afternoon.  Even though it's not technically homeschooling - it's still a pretty intense achievement for a kid who hasn't been able to pull this off in over a year.

First Year of Homeschooling

My first year of homeschooling is sort of over.  I plan on continuing thru the summer at roughly this same pace – it’s more relaxed, and there’s a huge focus for me on getting him healthy and out of the house.  We covered a LOT this year.  I started his math curriculum from scratch, and we went thru the first seven and half books in the Life of Fred series.  I’m planning on spending the next six months on getting him thru the next five books, and then we’ll dive into the middle school curriculum.  We spent the fall on electoral politics, exploring the history of elections in the United States and the women’s right to vote history.  Then we started at the very beginning, and completed the first book of Story of the World (ancient history) and are mid-way thru the second book (up to the Middle Ages).  Science – we did mostly biology, exploring biomes and different animals that live in them.  We did most of one biology textbook and then switched to a living book on Zoology that he LOVES.  In terms of ELA – he read (or listened to) close to 100 audiobooks.  We did all of the Rick Riordan series (a couple of times) which dovetailed perfectly with the ancient history curriculum, and then he listened to a whole bunch of other authors as well.   We studied parts of speech with a formal ELA textbook, as well as madlibs.

My plans for next year are to continue with both the science, history and math curriculum.  I’m going to add in keyboarding and spelling next year, as well as more formal writing.  He’d also like to add in cooking classes, with the goal to start making Shabbat dinner every week for us.