Mineralogy Day 2

Sometimes I am reminded why I should use curricula as a guide, not a manual. Today I read an essay by Goethe to the boys, a lesson from Live Education's Mineralogy book. Um, no. They didn't love it and they didn't connect with it. I am finding that I am really going to have to tweak a lot of these lessons and create blocks that are fun and educational for my boys.

They did each do a drawing of mountains and copy a quote from the essay, one that I thought would resonate most deeply (the suggested excerpt was rather religious).

In such a mood I approach you, the most ancient, the most exalted monuments of the ages. Sitting on a high, bare summit and surveying the wide landscape, I may so to myself: Here you are resting directly on a foundation which reaches down to the deepest layers of the earth. (Goethe)

J-Baby offered no resistance to doing his copywork; I decided to allow him to use a graphite pencil with an eraser rather than the usual Lyra colored pencil. He just gets so discouraged when he makes a mistake and he hates cross outs. I have to admit that I completely understand; I was am the kind of person who will start an entire new sheet of paper if I make a mistake (or even if I don't like how my hand writing looks). It was a rather big hindrance when I was a student. Even now I have to work really hard not to allow myself to start over when I am making something like a list.

On the Homespun Waldorf forum I have read several posts that have encouraged me to stop holding the main lesson book as the end-all, be-all in Waldorf education.  Really, why I am following the main lesson book rules when they don't necessarily work for my children? And what purpose does the main lesson book serve? If it is simply output, there are many ways we can do that. If it is a record for the parent to see at the end of the term, that is completely unnecessary. If it is, as I have read, a record for the child, then I have to figure out if that is something my children need. My boys don't actually have a major problem with MLBs so much as I have ideas about how they should look, and I need to let that go (or make my own MLB, which I used to do when the boys were younger).

We also did grammar, a fast fact sheet, and a Life of Fred lesson. I was so happy to see that a two week sleep with our math work really worked well for the boys.

Family Fun ... on the Cheap

(Oops, I left this in my drafts instead of queuing it up for the weekend. I didn't really mean to miss a post for NaBloPoMo.)

This afternoon we went to see our beloved CSUSB Coyotes play basketball against UCLA.  We're Division II, they are Division I (and ranked 17th nationally). We lost, but it didn't matter; we gave them a game to remember. It wasn't a blow out, we held the lead several times, and they had to actually play against us.

Watching CSUSB basketball is one of the things we do as family each year; we are able to do so because we've chosen to live a slower life, keeping our weeknights open during basketball season. I love the ease of it; we eat dinner at home, drive to the arena, grab our seats on the bleachers, and watch. I always knit. Each year we get to know the new players and we say goodbye to the graduating seniors. There are giveaways, awards nights for local schools, staff appreciation nights, and more.

It's frugal too; as members of the alumni association Papa and I each receive one free admission for ourselves and one for a guest, so all we pay for is parking (some nights it is free). (The big UCLA game was an exception; we paid good money to see them play at a regional arena.) We take our own water bottles and snacks, too.

Come summer our boys go to basketball camp at CSUSB, learning skills from the same players they've watched play all season, deepening the connection they have with this team,

Let's go 'Yotes!

Life Skills: Housekeeping

(Oops, I left this in my drafts instead of queuing it up for the weekend. I didn't really mean to miss a post for NaBloPoMo.)

This morning we cleaned the house together. All of us, boys included, and the boys are now in a place where their contributions are extremely helpful. They cleaned two of the three bathrooms and vacuumed all of the wood floors plus the Persian rug (along with their own rooms). Papa cleaned the master bathroom and the kitchen (and mopped all the bathrooms). I dusted all the living areas and my bedroom, polished furniture and some of the wood trim, cleaned a door that had been missed last weekend, touched up the windows, wiped everything in the laundry room, and vacuumed my bedroom. We were done in a little over two hours.

Last weekend we did a fall cleaning and the boys were incredibly helpful. They helped with everything; in addition to their regular weekly housecleaning chores (see above) they deep cleaned the breakfast nook, helped scrub walls and baseboards, and helped me clean up outside, including scrubbing all the outdoor furniture.

I had to clean house when I was a child, and yet until the last year or so my boys did very few chores. Oh, when they were little they might follow along in imitation, dusting and wiping here and there, but it didn't lighten the work load for the adults in the household. Off and on we've hired house cleaners, depending on my health. When I started feeling better a couple of years ago (and got unhappy with yet another cleaning service) Papa and I decided that we would clean the house together as a family and that the boys would learn how to do it. At first they did little more than clean their own rooms, but over time they have learned a lot of new tasks and I am so proud of them for stepping up and doing a good job.

They also help with the daily house maintenance, doing quick wipe downs of two of the bathrooms each day and vacuuming all of the public areas of the house each day. They take turns with dinner dishes, wipe the table after each meal, set the table for dinner, take out the garbage, and do all of the dog chores. And really, they rarely grumble about any of it, which tells me that they understand that this is simply something that has to be done. The bigger lesson is that we do what we have to do and that having a cheerful attitude makes it more pleasant.

Mineralogy Day 1

We did it! The boys are feeling somewhat better and we managed to squeeze a main lesson into our rather busy day. I don't have pictures; we mostly looked at pieces of granite as well as mica and quartz and talked about the composition of granite and how it is formed.

Earlier this year I picked up a complete classroom sampler of 50 rocks and minerals at the thrift store. It seemed spendy at $15 (we later found it online at $29 + s/h so we did rather well), but my rock hound really wanted it and I thought it might come in handy for this block, and already on day one it has. After hearing that the Romans used mica (Muscovite) as window glass they boys held up our specimens to the light and were able to see that they definitely were transparent and would serve that purpose well. The piece of granite in the sampler also showed the mica, quartz, and feldspar components better than the pieces of granite we had chosen from our own collection.

I decided that the boys were feeling well enough to attend park day, however the weather wasn't cooperating so a few of our park day friends came to visit us at our home. All three families already had children with the same cold as the children were all together on Halloween. We had a really nice visit and could hardly believe that it was Friday already; the week flew by!

Stalled

I had planned for us to be take a break the week of Thanksgiving, but I certainly hadn't planned on losing nearly a week of lessons to Halloween and illness. This morning I still had one child in bed (awake, but not ready to get up) and both of them were still sniffling and coughing and generally not feeling well. This illness leaves them feeling heavy and lethargic and very much in their bodies; it isn't the time for head work.

The thing is, we were excited about this block, or at least J-Baby and I were excited and T-Guy was at least looking forward to the change of subject material. Trying to kick it off when the boys aren't feeling well will only lead to losing the block in the very beginning. I'm hoping we can start it tomorrow and I am planning to use the first two days of Thanksgiving week so that we have enough time for the block.

In the classroom lessons go on whether or not the student attends; the student must make it up at some point. But in the homeschool we must stop when the students aren't capable of being present; not that learning ceases to happen (for instance, today we had lessons in making herbal tea, the healing properties of various herbs, the benefits of local honey, how to cook scrambled eggs, why we have rain gutters, and few more), but the main lesson and heavy academic work has to wait. Thus we have to find a way to be flexible otherwise we'll never finish out the homeschool year having completed the lessons we intended.

NaBloPoMo

We had a sick day today, which means we took it easy and still haven't started our Mineralogy block. The boys mostly read, interspersed with sniffling, coughing, and moaning. We did spent a few minutes talking about palindromes (today is 11-02-2011, or 2011-11-02 if you prefer international standard notation). I have no pictures, however.

Still, it is National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) and I figure I can slam dunk it here on this blog (we won't talk about my other blogs), whereas I know NaNoWriMo simply isn't going to happen. Indeed, after completing NaNoWriMo in 2007 (after great tragedy) I seem to have invited mishap (or more) every timeIi say I'm going to do it. So I'm not doing it this year.

Hopefully this will post; last night I lost a post I had written for another blog. I'm using my iPad as my MacBookPro is currently undergoing experimental surgery; removal of old hard drive to be replaced with a solid state drive as well as starting completely over (we migrated my account to the iMac first). Which is another reason I can't post a photo – Blogger really should have an iPad app!

Hmm, I learned that can't post from an iPad at all.  Quick copy and paste here on the iMac and we are good to go. Thank goodness for iCloud and the syncing of email! I thought to copy to the post before I tried to publish it on the iPad so when it failed I didn't lose anything (see, I learn from my mistakes). I emailed it to myself and here we are, back in business.

Oh Wait, I Said I Would Come Back, Didn't I?

Busy busy busy. Well, I wasn't busy at the beginning of my blog break, I was at the beach. Every fall we head to the coast for a week to reconnect with nature. I'd like to think that we are always connected, and we are, but this is different: with a focus on relaxation as well as being away from our normal responsibilities we feel the connection more deeply. Plus there is just something about the ocean, a primal connection that grounds us

For us this is also our annual class trip, a time to have a week of science and nature learning that a week in the homeschool classroom simply can't give.

We went to Legoland; they have great prices for homeschoolers on Mondays during the school year. They've opened the new Star Wars area of Miniland which was a hit with this family.

This year there is a brand new Mindstorms class called Dr. Heartbeat which the boys really enjoyed.We decided to check out the SeaLife Aquarium for the first time. It was well worth the extra $1 per person we paid. J-Baby thought the jelly fish were exceedingly cool.

Tuesday the weather was mostly cloudy so we went to the Bolsa Chica Reserve. We hadn't been since the boys were much younger. To say that it was a wow experience would be understating it. This is a Great Egret (yellow bill, black feet) in flight.

We also got up close and personal with a California Brown Pelican. T-Guy has loved pelicans from his very first beach visit.

Bordering the Reserve is a fence and just on the other side were coyotes. They aren't fenced in and on display, but they are frequent visitors. Here you can see how close they get to civilization. We truly live with coyotes and other wildlife around us everyday.

Here is a close up of one coyote. We were literally 25 feet from her, shooting through the fence.

Wednesday we had sun! We spent an hour or so at the Environmental Nature Center in Newport Beach. We mostly enjoyed walking the trails, but J-Baby did ask to have his photo taken grinding acorns.

This being our beach vacation we spent a lot of time at the beach. With the new moon came several nice minus tides that occurred in the late afternoon which meant that tide-pooling was on our agenda.

 Hermit Crabs

 A Big Crab

 The first sea star we have seen in the wild in Southern California. We've seen them on exhibit many times and also in Northern California and Oregon, but never here before. Unfortunately it was impossible to get a full photo as the sea star was vertical on the tide pool rocks.

We came home and that is when the busy began. Every year we host a Halloween party for our homeschool group; it is one of the highlights of the year for us. Of course, between vacationing and home remodeling we were woefully unprepared to host a gathering and so we busted our tails off getting the house ready. Something about a freshly painted exterior made us decide to clean the windows inside and out. The loss of the family room (in the reshuffling) meant we needed a clean outdoor space so the boys and I cleaned the patio/carport and all the furniture (which is good as we are once again in the kind of weather that we enjoy eating outdoors in). For reasons completely unknown I decided that we should wash the walls in our hall (they were grungy both because of child fingerprints and dogs rubbing along them). We cleaned the house from top to bottom as we haven't had a good go at it for a couple of months. We shopped, we cooked, and in the end, we partied! Only this morning did I realize that we didn't take a single picture, which makes me kind of sad. I'll have to see if anyone else got a photo of my boys in costume.