Trish’s Blog

September 16, 2009 (Had this in my drafts… forgot to post.)

The biggest highlight of our second week of homeschooling was the integration of a working Macintosh G4 computer. It was given to us by Jason Huebel of FriendFeed out of the kindness of his heart. He is also a fellow Texan and homeschooling parent. Josh met him for lunch when he happened to be in town and was able to ask him a lot of questions about homeschooling. I had texted him “homeschooling?’. It was the only thing he had to go on and he had no idea that I had been talking with my friend Susie who had decided to teach her children at home. Jason had a hand in preparing Josh to receive my enthusiasm that would rain down on him that night. If you’re reading, thanks Jason!

Macs are cool. (Can’t wait to get one of my own in laptop form. Just waiting for that big job to come in.) We are still getting used to the operating system and finding our way around. It was nice for the kids to be able to look up definitions and subjects that we were working on or that just came up in conversation. They also found neat science experiments. We let them play with it, but I had not got around to assigning computer work.

Continuing with highlights of week two…

We had two holidays to learn about, Labor Day and Patriot Day. Labor Day was just a scripture reading and journal day and I read to them the history of Labor Day. For Patriot Day, I found pictures of the World Trade Center Towers (without flames and devastation), the Pentagon, and the White House with flag flown at half staff. I told them that it was such a huge day in history for our country that I remember where I was on September 11, 2001. I told them where they were (Sarah and Zack were asleep and Seth was inside my tummy.) We had received a call from Grandma Niki and she told us to turn on the TV. We were watching when the second plane hit the second tower. It was scary. We talked about how so many people went to NYC to help, how the brave men of the NYFD and NYFD had died to help others, and what we did to help in the aftermath. I had designed a flag t-shirt and with the help of the Young Women in our ward, we sold them at their high school. Half the profit went to a NYC high school that they had picked, and the other half of the profit went to a family in NYC who had lost a loved one. And then I told them that President Obama wants next year’s Patriot Day to be celebrated with some kind of service to those still serving our country in the military. They wrote in their journals what they would do to serve. Later, Josh showed them all a documentary (with flames and devastation). Sarah said she didn’t quite grasp the magnitude of how people died on 9/11. So, I guess the flames and devastation were good at getting the point across.

We did everything I wrote about in a previous post and then added more. I introduced The Story of the World, Volume One: Ancient Times to all of them and Writing Strands Level 3 for Sarah and Zack. All three have started their Easy Grammar workbooks appropriate for their grade level. I also introduced Sequential Spelling and we did the first five days since it was so easy for them. We were laughing because it was so easy, but I know it will get harder, and I’m hoping that they will stick with it long enough to see the patterns emerge from this approach.

I picked up some more books at the library for Sarah on the Salem Witch Trials, one of which in a CD set called The Shape of Mercy (the link will take you to a blog that continues the story — pretty neat idea.). I am learning so much about that time period and maybe the next time I visit Salem, Massachusetts (my mom insists that she took me there) I will remember it better. I’ll take Sarah and we’ll understand a little more of the madness of what went on there.

Some issues that had come up were taken care of. Sarah caught up on her worksheets for reading (The Witch at Blackbird Pond) and Seth cried when he didn’t understand what was going on in Cheaper by the Dozen. He didn’t get the humor of “Does anybody have to visit Mrs. Murphy?” or what it meant. So we switched the reading to Johnny Texas. While reading, we learned that the main character was from Leipzig, Germany — Seth jumped up to get the dictionary to look it up. I didn’t think it would be in there, but we waited for him to find it. And it was! We learn something new everyday, even the teacher does.

Indeed, I had given the boys three words to look up for CBTD and one of them was “quoth”. Sarah recognized that it was from Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. One of her friends from last year had printed it out and given it to her to read.  I looked it up on my laptop and read the whole poem to them. I loved it. My only experience I can remember with Poe is The Tell-Tale Heart which I did not love. Anyway, in a rash and foolish moment, I offered the kids $100 if they could memorize all 18 stanzas of The Raven by the end of the school year or sooner. Sarah has taken the challenge to heart and has the first stanza memorized. I’m trying to memorize it with her. The boys were excited for two seconds, but have not pursued the work needed to gain the treasure.

And finally, one last highlight that I am excited is signing up for homeschooling workshops at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. I happened to be up really late, like 2:00 am on September 8 when registration opened and was probably one of the firsts to sign up. I had checked my email and found notification from HEART that someone had posted the link to register. I look forward to taking the older three to these workshops… gotta find a babysitter for Zoe because she’s not quite ready for these kinds of outings. We are signed up for Ancient Voices, Tell Me a Story, and Time to Travel.

And that’s a wrap. We are all still liking homeschooling and all of the children yet live.

Posted on September 19th, 2009 by trish
Filed under: Haley Kids, Homeschool