Week 16 - Water cycle. George, and who sewed the first American flag?

Moving right along with science, we transited from the rock cycle to the water cycle. We started our week making "fossil" ornaments out of clay.

I also found a book called Rocks and Fossils which is perfect for his reading level! We talked a lot about the different parts of a non-fiction book and he read a lot of the information. It helped that he loves rocks and geology too.
http://www.amazon.com/Rocks-Fossils-Kingfisher-Young-Knowledge/dp/0753456192/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418159289&sr=8-2&keywords=rocks+and+fossils+kingfisher

For the water cycle we did a little experiment (pinterest inspired of couse!) to create rain inside of a jar. Oscar deemed it "pretty cool."

In social studies we're continuing our unit on famous Americans, and we watched a cute video and read a short book about George Washington. We also learned that while Betsy Ross is credited as sewing the first flag, history is no longer sure that she actually sewed it! She definitely was involved in the process though, so we made a Betsy Ross 5-point star (with only one cut!) in her honor. It made a nice addition to our tree as well!

Week 15 - Getting back into the swing of things

After a week off, we eased back into our school routine. I'm starting to have some doubts again about what I'm doing and if it's enough to keep him up to speed. I feel pretty good about the content we're covering in math, science, and social studies, but I'm really concerned about his reading level - if I'm doing enough, and if it will be enough for him to enter 4th grade. Ultimately, it doesn't matter on some level. I don't want to push him too hard, and if he is at least at a 3rd grade level when we arrive in Nairobi it should be OK. But another part of me would love for him to stay at grade level. Yet another part wants him to do third grade again, to build up some confidence and maturity… Sigh. At any rate, we had a pretty good week and we're moving right along!

Barton is going well, and we started up with level 3. In this level we work more with reading actual paragraphs, spelling, and sight words. I think both of us appreciate seeing where the program is going! I also finally looked up the tutoring help page and found a ton of info on more practice, spelling games, apps that we can use to help mix our lessons up a little and keep things more exciting!

I do not take photos of the tears that happen…this week it was because he drew a picture on a card about Squanto (Native American who helped the pilgrims survive their first year in Plymouth) and drew him with a gun instead of a spear. The great thing is that he realized his error that Squanto would not be using a gun to help the pilgrims, the bad thing was the 20 minutes of crying and discontent followed…The positive side is that we always ends with science and that usually allows us to finish our school day on a positive note -

We continued our work with rocks and transitioned into soil. Oscar LOVED making soil out of yummy layers of marshmallows, pudding, crushed vanilla wafers, and gummy worms…

Week 14 - mixing up math, moving along with Barton

Phew! Homestretch to get us up to date! I decided to start a math program I got from one of our friends who used to homeschool their kids. It's actually a Christian program, but we've fortunately only come across one comment about God creating 7 days….and the rest of the word problems have been about pets and animals. What I love about it is that (1) it was free (2) it's cumulative, so it introduces a new idea, but them reviews older information (3) every lesson starts with some mental math and flash card work and (4) it's so much less work for me! With the lessons laid out, I'm essentially just his guide. To keep him from just doing worksheets the whole time, I also bring in some math apps to review and a hands on activity at least once a week. This week we're focusing on multiplication facts and did the skip count stomp (essentially like sight word stomp - but it's a hit so we stick with it). I'll also keep an eye on the VA curriculum and pick certain activities to focus on each week to make sure they're covered in this one. He struggles a lot with all of the reading, but I'm doing that for him at this point. Hopefully, he'll start reading some of the problems on his own by the end of the year.

In Barton we're moving into the 3rd Level. He's doing great, although keeps insisting that it isn't helping. It's not the same thing as reading a book so he doesn't see the improvement, but he consistently does an awesome job with each lesson and new skill. In order to make sure he's not falling too far behind on other English material, I'm trying out some second grade passages with his for reading comprehension and sight words. That seems to be pretty good for him, and he did an awesome job on a Thanksgiving passage we worked on this week!

In science we're moving into geology, and started our unit making different rocks with starburst. Needless to say it was a hit and here is is eating his metamorphic rock, while watching his igneous rock melt! We also did an experiment freezing water in a glass jar to tie into A Magic School Bus video on Rocks and Erosion (still one of his fav videos - along with Jeff Corwin). We've introduced the scientific method and will start using it with every experiment we do! Gotta love Dinosaur Train for introducing what a Hypothesis is.

Week 12/13 - More fun with Audubon, Civics, and Math review

We're going back to a little sight words work, now that we're got a few of the Barton lessons under our belt. OScar really likes the active games, and I'll be incorporating more into our work. Here's some sight word stomp in action:

We also had our second Audubon zoo field trip to the insectarium this time around. Fun with bugs and butterflies! I love these classes, and wish there we remote than 4!

Our final field trip with Audubon was at a Wilderness Park that isn't normal open to the public. It was a great walk in the woods (minus the mosquitos) and an awesome opportunity to get up close with Uno the owl and a beautiful king snake. The king snake is my new favorite, since it's non-venomous, and eats all the venomous snakes!

a beautiful yet poisonous caterpillar!

It was election day this week, so we tied that into our social studies with a little lesson on civic responsibility and the process of voting. For math, we spent some time reviewing - fractions, place value, time, money….we're about to switch things up with math and use a more formal curriculum which will REALLY help since I spend a LOT of time on prep work and I'm trying to reduce that so I have more time to do all the other things in life :) We also started working on multiplication, and I found this awesome art/math project online to make an "array city" and I personally loved the final product!

We also started volunteering in Livi's school to help out at lunchtime. I think Oscar enjoys it a little bit, but sometimes gets annoyed when all the kids ask who he is and why he isn't in school. It's fun to see Livi during the school day though and well worth it, although I do feel like Adam Sandler's lunch lady a bit…

I'm rushed in these posts, since I realized how far behind I am, and how much I've forgotten since I'm not posting these in real time! Here's to hoping that improves in December!

Week 7-8 - Dyslexia

It's official now. After the evaluation, the specialist determined that he does have dyslexia. It makes so much sense in terms of how much he's been struggling with aspects of reading that should've been easy for him at his age.

While reading is on hold, we've continued with our regular schedule for other subjects. One advise the tutor gave us was to read him all instructional material in all subjects until he's up to speed so as not to tax him too much. I've honestly been doing that all along.

In Social studies, we were studying the Ancient Civilization of Mali, and as part of the unit watched some videos on African drumming and dancing. We also made a few drums to try out!

For science, we're working on the different biomes of the world. To set the mood, we listened to sounds from each biome, read books, watching short video clips, and drew pictures of each biome.

We had a nice break for our monarch release (which tied in well with migration and hibernation)!

Week 11 - More field trips and Halloween

Our adpatation unit fit in nicely with a homeschool offered by the Audubon Nature Institute. For our first class, we got a special class at the aquarium, on a day it is usually closed to the public!

For our unit on European Exploreres, we made cork boats and had them enoucnter various weather calamities. Unfortunately none of our explorers made it to their final destinations!

Oscar continues with his class with the homeschool group at Big Easy Sportsplex. He loves PE, enjoyed cooking, but does not like Spanish (unfortunately). To be honest, the class seems a little boring, with not much hands on acitviites, and a lot of writing. Here's his work from one week, and I LOVE the accompanying drawings…

In line with Halloween and animal adaptations, we watched Magic School bus goes Batty, which is always a hit in Oscar's eyes.

Working on estimation jars for math, showed his skills for guessing again, getting REALLY close to the amount of candies in each jar. A few candy corns were in order for his hard work.

Week 9 and 10 - Break and Barton

We started off our fall break with fevers. We had big plans to hit all the favorite kid haunts in New Orleans, but ended up ticking close to home instead. We did make a trip to the sculpture garden and beignets in City Park. And of course made a few crafts for Halloween prep!

Once everyone was feeling better, we headed out to our delayed trip to the beach and had an awesome time in Florida! Really, are there beaches anywhere that are quite as beautiful as this?

Once we got back home, we started up on the special reading program for dyslexia - Barton Reading and Spelling. He seemed to like it, esp since we weren't reading anything as we started back at the basics of phonics. He would get frustrated when I'd correct him about going too fast or if I wanted him to repeat something. That's something we always work on though. He has a hard time if he doesn't think he's doing something right, and really has trouble accepting that mistakes are OK…

Here's a little number line and fraction work for math!

We also started doing some history from The Story of the World. It's essentially a chronology of short stories with engaging writing. It's apparently Christian "friendly," but does talk about all the world religions so hopefully things will stay secular for the most part! I love that it's short stories are great to introduce a topic, I can just use internet for hands on activities to help round the lesson out.

We rounded our week out at the zoo, and talked about the animals we saw in the context of their habitats and adaptations. We got a lovely first hand exerpience of watching a few snakes eat some mice. That was a new experience…. Plus, the two-headed snake obliged us for for a photo op.

Week 5-6 - Big Easy SportsPlex

The best new thing we've added to our schedule is PE Plus at Big Easy Sportsplex. An amazing mom of 5 (she home schools them all!) started the homeschool group we connected with and managed to arrange this great 3-hour block of classes every Wed morning. Each hour has a different class, and aside from PE (which he LOVES) this semester has Spanish and cooking as well. I love this time since Oscar gets a few classes with the same group of kids, that all seem to get along well.

For our regular subjects, in Science and Social Studies I'm using the Fairfax County curriculum as a guide for our year, adding projects and experiments with the help of Pinterest and other internet sources. There's a ton of stuff out there, and the hardest thing is actually stopping myself from constantly researching since there is so much available and I'm always finding cool new things! Unfortunately I haven't come across a one stop shop, so each topic is a whole new researching ball game.

For science we worked a little with research. I had him pick animals he was interested in and look up cool things about them and how they're adapted to their environment. He chose jellyfish and sharks as his first animals, and it was fun to see him using some of their adaptations in creating his lego guys! He made a weapon that was based off the tentacles of an octopus (and also created Hades in lego form). This topic will lead us nicely into ecosystems, food chains/webs, and biomes.

When I got confused about when Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece were in time in relation to each other, I realized we needed a timeline for social studies! We worked together to put some interesting facts about both cultures on our timeline, and will build on it as we go through the year.

Our timeline, vocab walls, and world map on the 3rd floor. 

Math has been a little different. I have the Fairfax County curriculum guide, but also have Singapore Math textbooks to use as a base. He does exercises in IXL on the computer as well. The program isn't ideal to me, since it has a ton of questions to complete for each specific topic, but it's nice to see how he's doing on questions that I don't make myself, get a break from doing worksheets, and familiarize him with the computer as a testing platform (aside from just work in apps which are more in a game format).  I also browse the internet for hands-on ways to explore the topics and keep it more exciting, for both of us!

The format I use is still evolving, since I love the activities, but am still trying to balance how many problems he needs to sit down and work on to make sure he's got the topic down. The exercises in IXL and SM workbooks both seem like overkill, and honestly bore both of us! Maybe that's the amount of problems he "should" be doing but it ends up frustrating both of us. I mean, if he gets 10 problems of varying degree of difficulty right, it seems to me like he shouldn't have to do 25 more, right? Anyhoo, I'm still working out that balance and it's evolving… My plan starting next week is to create activities for each topic we've covered, and have "center time" once a week where he works through each activity (of his choosing) to help enforce the concepts we've covered.

So far we've covered money, graphs, fractions, time, and place value. His favorites have seemed to have been fractions with legos, rolling a dice for making numbers for rounding, and making patterns with playing cards. He also has had fun doing some apps, including sushi math and oh no fractions. He's been doing really well so far, although incredibly hard on himself when he gets anything wrong. That goes for every subject though, and an issue we're constantly working on with him.

English is our Achilles heel… His reading has improved, but still is way below grade level. For every 3rd grade topic I've tried to cover, I've found huge gaps in his basic ELA knowledge. Nouns, verbs, adjectives? Never heard of them. Did he learn those in India and forget, or was he never introduced to them? His reading decoding strategies were also non-existent so we started focusing on a few of those. We are also going to have him evaluated for dyslexia next week. There are just patterns that he has that point to it, and after working with him a little at a grade level curriculum, I realized that he can't read any of the work he would be expected to in all subjects if he were in a regular third grade classroom. I was trying to move him forward, thinking that he would start to "get" the patterns if we focused and moved slowly, but quickly realized things just weren't sticking. I did find a program online called "progressive phonics" that works with phonics patterns…well…progressively :) He likes the rhymes and silly stories they have in them, so we'll stick with this for a bit until we find out if he has dyslexia and what should be our next step. To be continued…

Here's the first paragraph he wrote in his journal about a pet he would like to have. When he was done, we talked about his work. I touched on what he needed to work on (spelling and remembering to write full sentences), but I was really impressed with it overall! Again, he's so hard on himself I spent more time highlighting the good things he did - the right paragraph format (intro sentence, 3 different details, closing sentence), a great ending, and even though he spelled some words wrong, he knew (circled) exactly which ones he misspelled!

It all makes it worthwhile

Happy Money from Oscar for teaching him this year.

Week 4 - It's clicking

I have had a roller coaster of emotions regarding homeschooling Oscar… Am I doing enough? Is he getting enough school? Is Livi really OK with it? Will this make it easier or harder to go back into a "traditional" public school?? At any rate, we made the choice and things seemed to be coming together as our first month came to a close.

Oscar is apparently enjoying himself, and he announced this one day loudly in the kitchen - "Thank you New Orleans for having horrible schools!"

Ancient Greece transitioned well into Ancient Rome. We talked a bit about their armies and built mini bows and arrows, along with catapults to learn about their military tactics. Oscar was a little upset by the concept of gladiators and the colosseum, so we glazed over that topic a bit and focused more on their architectural feats.

this was supposed to be made with plaster of paris, but we did quite well with play dough

Who can talk about Ancient Rome without exploring Pompeii? We spent a few days watching some reenactments of what the erupting of Mt. Vesuvius might have been like, and tried our hands at a few volcanoes.

To help involve Livi, we saved the big volcano for her, and then had some fun making ice volcanoes. They bubbled a little, but I think the lava was more impressive with the bigger volcano. The ice was a lot of fun to play with though as the volcanoes melted, and provided quite a bit of entertainment, especially for Livi. 

Our final project for ancient Rome involved mosaics, and his kitten turned out beautifully!

Science brought us to metamorphosis! We talked about both frogs and butterflies and did a little puddle exploring in the neighborhood (which actually had tadpoles in them) and butterfly watching at the library butterfly garden. (We fortunately got to come back to this topic a few weeks later when our neighbors gave us some monarch butterfly caterpillars to watch transform!).  Here Oscar is comparing and contrasting the life cycles of the butterfly and frog with a Venn Diagram.

Livi joined us for our artsy afternoon to make insect shooters. Livi won for "beauty" since she made the pretty butterfly. Oscar won for distance, as he quickly determined the best shooter shouldn't have points sticking out. My ladybug was a solid middle-of-the-road performer: