The Boys Schedule

This is the schedule we've come up with that incorporates the boys' goals. This is just a general guide.

8:45 a.m. be ready to leave for Mass
9:00 a.m. Mass
9:45 home again and breakfast
10:15-10:45 Acting (memorization, recitation)
10:45 - 11:15 Creative Writing
11:15 - 11:45 Music (mostly ear training and sight reading)
11:45 - 12:15 Drawing

Break for lunch (either an hour or 1/2 depending on how well things went in the a.m.)

After lunch - Sit down work (for Sean this means math and penmanship)
2:30 digital arts for 30 minutes and then focus on each boy's particular art form; Will - music, Josh - game design, Sean - animation

4:00 p.m. Free time - which needs to include physical exercise and hopefully playing outside

7:00 dinner
7:30 No screen! Boys work on schoolwork. For Sean this means Monday - history, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - Latin and Religion. Also 30 minutes of reading every night after dinner. Dad's read aloud, prayers.
10:00 p.m. Bedtime for Sean. 11:00 for Josh

Will and Josh are going to follow this as closely as they can, but they have other external factors that will change the schedule for them. Josh especially needs to focus on his classes and won't be able to spend mornings working on the 5 arts. I really predict he'll break away from this whole scheme just out of necessity.

Also Fridays will be different. Josh will be in his Biology class and it is a half day for us all. I want to cover Vocabulary, Grammar and Science on those mornings with Sean.

(I haven't forgotten about Becky, but since I am just working with her one on one, we get started together @ 10:15 a.m. and we are finished by lunchtime with time to spare!)

Weekly Report 8/30-9/3

I've actually been keeping daily journals each day. That helps me get things clear in my mind about how we are proceeding. So this is just a summing up of what went on and what we need to work on for next week. Mostly it's about attitude!

Becky - on the whole she's been rather fidgety this week. However, she certainly loves Map Skills. She even got her book out to show her dad when he got home from work last night. I am enjoying the read alouds with, especially Little Women. It is fun to snuggle on the couch and do our studies that way. It is a great lesson in patience for me, to learn to humor and cajole her through the lessons she doesn't like as well. You'd think I'd have learned to be patient by now with all these years of homeschooling. I do think I am somewhat more patient but still have a ways to go! Mostly I bottle up my frustration and vent here.

Sean - even though Sean adores Will, he was giving him the same flack he gives me all the time whenever I try to force lessons on him. Even though this was all stuff that he and Will agreed to and which they love to do!!! Sean really is at the mercy of his moods. I hope he learns to temper them more. He's so extreme, he either obsesses over something or he can't simply can't focus on it. You can talk til you are blue in the face to him and he doesn't retain a bit! He really needs to try to make an effort to focus himself on things that aren't currently all-absorbing to him. He did some math this week and some cursive penmanship. Today I had him work in his vocabulary book and also listen to me read the first science unit on plants. He needs to work on neatness too. He makes math errors because he writes so sloppily. It is evidence of his lack of care. Again, I need to be patient with him, explain again and again why certain things are important for him to learn and why I insist on them. At the same time, I try to respect him and his unique free spiritedness. Balance is what is needed!

Josh -has been staying up too late each night and is having trouble curtailing his computer time. In fact last night he snuck back downstairs at midnight to get on the computer. Big no no!

What has been wonderful is the boys going to mass each morning. They didn't make it this morning because 1) Josh needed to study for his Bio quiz (he didn't allow enough time to get done last night) and 2) I think Will has also been staying up late and by the time this a.m. rolled around he just needed to sleep more! But also I love that they are doing so much on their own initiative. They are good boys.

Friday - this a.m.

Will slept in.
Josh got up and studied for his Bio quiz then I took him to class.
Sean worked in his vocabulary book, listened to a lesson in Science
Becky - read the first story from 50 Famous Stories Retold about King Alfred. Read next ch. of Little Women, she also listened in on science lesson.

Had a meeting with Will and Sean about our schedule for next week. We are trying to work out what works best for everybody's interests.

Daily Journal 9/2/10

Boys went to Mass again this a.m. I am jealous. I want to go too. Have to get Becky on board with this!

Becky

• was being quite the hypochondriac this a.m. so she curled up on the couch with a blanket and we did things there.
• I read part of the story of Elijah and Elisha from Bible History. The story was long, the language antiquated, and Becky grumpy, so we kept it short.
• Read a couple of paragraphs from Wild Animals I have Known. She is not taking to this book so we might stop after this first story (which is rather long). She narrated back.
• I don't know why I am having Becky do all this narration. She narrated more Great Brain and Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane to me this a.m. Plus a chapter or two of Ellen Tebbits by Beverly Cleary.
• Becky wanted to do Map Skills so we did a page that had you study a map and then answer T or F to statements on it.
• We reviewed very briefly our Latin up until now and learned the word Agricola. She already knew it and proceeded to tell me a snippet from the Penderwicks where one of the girls is studying Latin but hadn't gotten any farther than agricola, agricolae.
• Did a couple of problems in Saxon Lesson 2 orally and then did the mental math from Lesson 3.
• Did day 3 of Week 8 WWE1.
• Becky perked up a bit after an early lunch. She did some verbal puns with me she had seen on pbskids.org. For instance she wrote the word school on the top of a piece of paper and I had to figure out it meant 'high school.' She did several of those. They were fun and she was learning to spell the words.
• Becky decided to draw. I had to tell her 3 things to draw and she would - she drew a tea kettle on a stove, a picnic under a tree, and a bedroom.

Boys

• For some reason it was Josh and Sean who worked on the Ferris Wheel scene from the 3rd Man today. Don't know what happened to the Gettysburg Address for Josh.
• Josh worked on math all morning, completing lesson 83 and taking test 20 in Alg II.
• Sean worked on making things for his friend's birthday using an online 'painting' program.
  
• Will worked with Sean doing Saxon L. 3
• Josh went to his math tutor 1:15 to 2:15.
• Sean spent more time on garage band and then spent time somehow creating a 'trading card' as a gift for his friend on the laptop. Don't quite understand it but he kept asking me how to spell things.
• Sean did some penmanship
• Will and I talked to the Collegeplus coach and order books for the CLEP tests.
• Becky watched a of tv in the afternoon
• Josh goofed off until after dinner when he started on his Biology homework (which is proving to be quite challenging).
• Read Becky Chapters 14 and 15 of Little Women.
• Had Sean read 30 minutes of The Treasure Seekers
  

Daily Journal 9/1/10

• Boys got up and went to Mass
• Began lessons @ 10:15. Will and Sean continued to work on the Ferris Wheel scene from The Third Man. They even went into the study and watched a clip. Josh has decided to memorize the Gettysburg Address. I gave him Michael Clay Thompson's Lincoln's Ten Great Sentences book and he pretended to read it while snoozing on the couch!
• Then they worked on ear training and then drawing.

Becky:

• We began her new cursive penmanship book. She did a matching game between capital manuscript letters and cursive letters. This took a long time because she kept wanting to chat and tell in great detail a game she and Sean had been playing on their bikes.
• I decided to use the kitchen timer to keep us focusing a la CM.
• Just as we were starting math, Hannah called. I hated to cut her off so Becky got an early break.
  
• We did the mental math portion of Saxon 5/4 Less. 2, the practice set and then the first seven mixed practice problems before the timer went off.
• Becky begged to do Map Skills. She loves it. She finished one page and then did another. Still practicing the scale concept. Map of Pennsylvania. We talked about the different cities. She knows of Phila. We talked about Pittsburgh where my Dad was from and other cities.
• I read a passage from WWE, (Caddie Woodlawn - have to see if the library has it on audio) then Becky had to narrate back to me in complete sentences. Then she had to tell me the thing she remembered the most. She dictated it to me in a complete sentence and I wrote it out for her in cursive. Then she read it back to me. She enjoyed this.
  
• We did a very brief review of the Latin lessons 1 thru 3 and then did Lesson 4. These are very, very brief lessons. Becky was not in the mood to cooperate.
• Lastly, I read one long paragraph from Wild Animals I have Known and then made her narrate it back to me. She did pretty well. We were done before noon. If we hadn't had interruptions and if Becky hadn't been balking so, we'd have been done sooner!
• She then joined the boys in their drawing practice though mostly to annoy them!

After lunch:

• Josh made chocolate chip cookies! That's a first!
• Sean did a math lesson and a little bit of cursive practice
• Took Becky to VT
• Sean and Becky have been having lots of fun today recording songs on garage band.
• Josh worked on math
• Will went to his first voice/sight reading/ear training lesson with his new teacher
  
• Josh went to CLC
• Becky insisted on telling me the whole story of The Great Brain in great detail. I rudely fell asleep on her. Terrible mother moment.
  
• After dinner read Becky Ch. 13 in Little Women
• Made Sean sit down and read The Treasure Seekers for 30 minutes.
  

Daily Journal 8/31/10

Boys got up and went to 9 a.m. Mass.

I made bacon and eggs for breakfast. We started lessons @ 10:15

Boys worked on drawing, ear training and music.

I worked with Becky

• I began reading aloud from Wild Animals I Have Known from Ernest Thompson Seton. She wasn't that enthralled. She was having trouble settling down.
• She didn't want to do work in her phonics workbook, so instead we played Phonics bingo with blends and digraphs. We played for about 20 minutes. Becky was the caller and read the words aloud. She read well. She misread Think for the word thick but she caught most of her mistakes. After 20 minutes neither of us had bingo and we were starting to get bored. During this we listened the first cd of music that came with our Discovering Music program. Beautiful background music.
• We took a little break because Becky really wanted to play Connect 4 with me but she couldn't find the game.
• After break, Becky did copy work from WWE. It took forever! Very slow, easily distracted but very perfectionistic when writing. Lots of erasing.
• I told her she didn't have to do Map Skills today but she wanted to. She did almost 3 pages just for fun. She didn't quite finish up the 3rd page. Part of the exercise was learning about scale. So she got out a ruler and was figuring out how many miles things were from each other. Since this involved measuring and simple multiplying I decided that would do for math today as well.
  
• She was fidgeting again. She really has the attention span of a gnat right now! So I got her some goldfish crackers and a cup of chocolate milk. We had a discussion about toilets! She's been listening to the Great Brain on audio and apparently there was a discussion about outhouses and the first toilets brought to Utah. She was very interested in the history of toilets. We wikipedia'd it and did you know there were flush toilets in Orkney in 31 BC?????
  
• I read her Ch. 1 of Faith and Life 4.
• She read one paragraph from McGuffey's 2nd reader. We discussed the fact that the meal Tea can mean a formal tea or is really just another word for supper.
  

Will took Josh to his first Biology class @ 12:25.

• In P.M. Sean worked on math. Will and Sean worked on digital arts. Josh came home from Biology and then worked on gaming stuff.
• Becky, inspired by our measuring during map skills, took all her magnetix and lined them up so and then measured them with a measuring tape. 192 inches, she informed me!
  
• Read Becky a chapter of Little Women while she swam around in the bathtub. Then she listened to more Great Brain.
• Josh did math.
• Sean went swimming with his friend.
• Signed Becky up for a fieldtrip to the National Building Museum, City by Design. They have a homeschool day on 11/22.
• Will, Sean, Becky and I watched the first unit in Discovering Music. Promises to be good!
  

Daily Journal 8/30/10

This was supposed to be our first day of the Academic 2010-11 year. I awoke at 5:30 with a horrible migraine. It is now 12:39 and it is mostly gone but as usual I feel weak and spacey. I did manage to some lessons with Becky.

• We looked over her new books.
• I told her that at the end of this school year she would be reading chapter books and she'd be able to sit down and write a paragraph easily. She was impressed!
  
• On her own initiative she wrote out words she knew how to spell in a brand new composition book. I think the newness of the book inspired her. She managed to write: the, to, too, two, at. Then she wrote out the word 'morning' because she knows how to spell that too. The whole time she was doing this she was chatting up a storm about everything! I had to constantly get her back on task to do the very simplest thing.
• Then we did a page out of her new MCP Phonics C.
• Then I showed her the Writing with Ease book from last year. We started up at Lesson 8 where we left off last spring. However, she balked at doing copywork, so we put it off until tomorrow. I told her a little about Caddie Woodlawn though, which is where the lesson is taken from.
• I showed her the Kolbe Map Skills workbook and she was intrigued. So we did the first page which was a map of Washington DC and the monument and reflecting pool area. She knows that area! So that made it more interesting. I wrote out the fill in the blanks for her but she answered the questions. She then numbered the symbols in the chart and matched them to the different geographic points.
• We did the first lesson in Saxon 5/4 orally. Not the problems just the mental math and intro to concept. She was losing focus at this point.
• Took a 10 minute break then I read the next story from Bible History - Achab and Jezebel. What nasty people! Becky really was not engaged and didn't narrate well at all.
• Started with first lesson of McGuffey's Reader. I read first little paragraph and then she read para. 2. She wouldn't let me help her but sounded through everything and then had to reread read it for comprehension. She read 'both' as 'doth' and struggled with other words like 'learned' pronounced it lean-red'

Sean

• Will and he worked on memorizing and acting out the ferris wheel scene from The Third Man. We watched this movie over vacation and everybody was impressed by it.
• Sean worked on typing out a script he is working on
• Sean did the first lesson in Saxon 7/6
• Sean went to his friend's house to play.

Josh

• Josh finessed memorization of The Walrus and The Carpenter
• Worked more on his 'idea bucket' for writing
• Did Lesson 82 in Alg II (most of it)

There was a big break in the afternoon. Will kindly took Becky and Sean to their playdate and went grocery shopping for me.

In the evening all three boys worked on their drawing skills and digital arts and music. They were actually working up until 10 p.m.

Josh is reading Mockingjay. Sean was supposed to start a book. He chose The Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit. Don't know how much he actually read.

Weekly Report 8/23-27 - the unschool edition

We aren't officially starting our fall studies until next week on 8/30. However, this week the three boys decided to take matters into their own hands. Really it was Will's idea.

Each morning they went to 9:00 a.m. Mass (except on Wednesday because something was wrong with the car - wound up taking into the shop the next day and getting it fixed.)

I decided to encourage them in this by providing them with nice breakfasts. I put out place mats and set the table nicely on our screen porch. We enjoyed the beautiful weather and dining outside each morning. Sean informed me that my breakfast skills were getting better! LOL!

After breakfast they worked on memorizing poems. Will worked on the soliloquy from Hamlet, Josh on The Walrus and the Carpenter (which he recited to me quite nicely Friday), Sean couldn't decide on a poem he wanted. He tried Poe's the Raven but decided it was too long, then he was going to memorize some of Lear's Limericks but none grabbed him. Then he decided to memorize The Owl and Pussycat but he soon realized he already had it memorized!

Next they worked on writing. I don't think any actual writing took place, though. Josh started a short story and Sean wrote a little poem but they gave up after the first day. However, they did have fun brainstorming and they came up with an 'idea bucket' which was making up a lot of creative writing prompts.

They also focused on music. Will on guitar and piano for many hours. Josh worked a bit on learning to play the Ocarina. Sean fooled around on the keyboard. Will did voice training with them. Becky joined in on that. Sean got a jaw harp on Wednesday and has been playing it ever since.

They've also been doing a lot of work out of Mark Kistler's Draw Squad. We've discovered Josh can really draw! Sean of course drew the most because he aspires to be an animator.

Josh really focused most of his attention on learning the more complex stuff off of Gamemaker. He really wants to learn game design and computer programming stuff. He designed a couple of video games, but I haven't seen them yet.

Josh went to his CLC meeting on Wed. night.

Becky was out of the loop on all this. She spent most of the week watching Phineas and Ferb shows. This is her last TV week. Next week we start a more austere schedule when it comes to tv viewing! We also started reading Little Women out loud. Love it! She's hung out with her brothers sometimes participating with them and sometimes just annoying them. She also did some impromptu science. She went through a rock collection we have and poured vinegar over each rock to see which would fizz (rocks will react to acid if they have carbonate in them.) She also made props for Sean's recitation of the Owl and the Pussycat out of cardboard. Very cute! She found a big cardboard box and decorated it and cut out windows for it. She danced and played dress up too. She picked flowers from around the pond. Today she helped me set up our nature table. She put on it her deer bone collection, her seashell collection, her pressed wildflowers (from a couple years ago) and the flowers she'd picked earlier in the week on the nature table. She also listened to The Horse and His Boy and Hoot on audio this week. She went to Vision Therapy.

Hannah got her wisdom teeth pulled on Tuesday morning. Was rather miserable Wednesday and Thursday and left this morning to return to the University of Dallas.

One thing the boys learned was that it is hard to get into a routine. We've been so used to staying up and sleeping in. The decision the get up every morning by 8:30 and go to a 9 a.m. mass took some effort. I was really proud of them for that. I was also quite impressed by how they worked hard on the things they were doing. Sean had the hardest time because he was trying to keep up with two teen boys and they kept forgetting he's only 11 and can't focus as intensely for as long as they can.

Will also did some job hunting. He went to the School of Rock, Music and Arts, Noodles and Co, Gamestop, Coldstone Creamery and Starbucks to ask for jobs. School of Rock said maybe he could sub. Music and Arts isn't hiring. Noodles and Co, Coldstone and Starbucks all said to apply online. Gamestop, though, gave him an application and said they might be looking for someone in October.

Next week I hope to fold in math, assigned reading (nobody seemed to be reading this week at all)and PE (except for Will, he's been going to the gym regularly).

Also, Josh will be starting his high school Biology class on Tuesday afternoon.