Where are we going?

So much for Thursday! :D We had family over for Easter and, well, things got busy.

I've decided to take this week as a brake. I feel behind on everything. I haven't posted a weekly report in ages and Green Hour #5 needs to be written about. Most of all I need to decided what I want for my children in an education.
Before Mariah, Laura, James, David and Douglas joined the family I had no trouble with our cycles. Before I began nature study I had no doubt about what to do in science. Before I began teaching with more curricula I knew just what I wanted to do. Now, I'm at a loss.

Here are the ideas that have benn tearing through my brain recently:

History

My options, as far as I can see are:

1. Continue what I'm doing, teaching Canadian history and SOTW 3. Next year teach SOTW 1 and SOTW 4 so that we can stick to the cycles. OR continue with SOTW 3 and Canadian history. In the summer do a highly condensed version of SOTW 4 and start SOTW 1 in the fall. OR continue SOTW 3 and Canadian history and next year do only SOTW 4.
I don't like any of these ideas. I'm finding getting everything organized for two history lessons tiring and I find it splits up our family into the adopted kids and the non adopted kids which I'm trying to get away from.
If I continue with two cycles now I don't want to do that next year. That would mean doing either SOTW 4 which I don't want to do because we had a catastrophe with it this year or doing SOTW 1 which would mean that Mariah, David and Laura would have skipped a year.

2. Drop SOTW 3 and do only Canadian history. Start SOTW 1 next year.
I don't like this idea either. We've been enjoying our study of Canada but I'm very worried about April and May. I'm planning on covering the first European explorers to Canada to the present day in two months. There is no way we can get a rich, fun and informative study in such a short amount of time. I could spread it out into June but Chelsea is so eager to study government and I don't know where we'd fit that in.

3. Drop Canadian history and do only SOTW 3 but read Canadian books. Next year do SOTW 4 or do SOTW 4 in the summer and SOTW 1 next year.
I like the idea of dropping Canadian history. We have Canadian history books coming out our ears which we could ready without the formality of it being school work. All the kids would be studying the same period which would mean less stress on me and more of a family feeling for the kids. The only trouble is tha Chelsea did SOTW 3 last year and she might find it boring. I asked her and she said it was one of her favourite times in history and she wants to do it again but still wants to read all those great Canada books.
Then there's next year. I really don't want to do SOTW 4, I'll have an 8th grader, 6th, grader, 5th grader, 3rd, grader, two 1st graders, a 4yo who really wants to be a big kid and a toddler who is desperate for his mothers attention. I'm sure the 8th, 6th and 5th graders could cope but I sense chaos, tears and the words "I hate history." with the younger ones.
So, that means doing modern history over the summer and starting SOTW 1 in the fall. I'm compiling a list of "must read" modern history books which I'll post soon. This seems to be the best decision.

I just realised we could drop Canadian history now and do it next year but I'm eager to get back to our history cycles. The winter will be an excellent time to watch the Canada a People's History DVDs and sit by the fire and learn about our history. I've got veracious readers who amaze me with what they have learnt through books everyday. If supplied with the right resources they will be able to discover their history and that of Canada.

Science

Never, right from the start of homeschooling, have I thought that RS4K wasn't an excellent curriculum, the perfect one for us. I've been so content with them and recommended them to everyone. Now, they've been moved off our curriculum shelf.
They aren't he perfect curriculum, they aren't the one for us. I've discovered the beauty of nature study and child led science.
Since we began our nature study science has been the most popular subject at Morning Glory Academy. Our nature journals our stuffed and it seems someone needs a new one daily. My kids our outside in all weather, observing all things and have decided that they'd rather study birds than flowers. They're noses are always in some science book, whether its on marine biology or engineering, inventors or pansies. Chelsea has been writing reports of her own free will on every interesting scientific fact she learns about and Laura has been doing narrations on ever science book in the house.
More than anything else science is driving our homeschool.
But will it stay like this?
I'm not sure but I do now that I just can't teach from a science curriculum. I feel as though I've looked through everything and it all has something "wrong". The curricula I previously thought were for unschoolers only now seem to structured.
What am I going to do? Where is this going? I've been asking this question about science, Bible, spelling, grammar, writing, memory work, copy work, handwriting, literature and logic. The only things I feel in control over are math and history, which I'm not totally in control of.

Coming tomorrow, "Where are we going? 2"

Catch up time!

I'm getting behind in my posting! Thoughts about things I must blog are charging through my brain but my time to log onto Blogger is very limited. I've decided to try to blog every other day. So, look for my next update on Thursday!

Green Hour #4

This week we jumped into Green Hour Challenge #4 and LOVED it. :D
We are supposed to choose a focus and have decided that we will look at flowers, both wild and in the garden.
This week the thing that caught our fancy was cherry trees. We saw a beautiful one and made friends with the lady whose garden it is. She loves nature and would like to participate in our study. The kids and I created a cherry tree lapbook as well as their journal pages. We have another book of pressed flowers and have added a few cherry blossoms to there. We will be going to show our friend on our next visit when we plan to go to the park and see what flowers we can find among the mud. :D
I am a lamination geek so I created a cherry tree life cycle poster and sent it off to work with DH to be laminated. I see a collection of laminated nature posters being added to our other science ones.
We went on a few more walks after our cherry tree one where we observed daffodils, a spider which Megan (6) insists is a black widow even though it wasn't black and heavy, heavy rain. Douglas said excitedly "It's H2Oing!!" However our favourite observation was a crow with a worm hanging from it's mouth. It was flying overhead so we didn't have too much time to watch. We read about crows in A Handbook of Nature Study , Crows and Crows!: Strange and Wonderful. We are in the process of a crow lapbook and will probably complete it on the weekend.
We haven't done any chemistry or physics for months and I'm not feeling motivated to do it so for now our only science will be nature study. We've had a great time with it so far and the kids are very excited to take DH for a walk tomorrow.:D

Zip-a-dee-do-dah

"My oh my what a wonderful day."

I feel like I could dance around singing right now. I'm so happy.:D Today was a GREAT day!

We started off with Bible, all good. Moved on to math, all good. Did a mixture of reading and music practice, still all good. Did history, really good. But the highlight was our first ever formal:

Nature Study

It was a hit, hit, hit, HIT!
Here is Green Hour Challenge Assignment #4 where we're jumping in. We have chosen flowers, both wild and in the garden, as our focus. I'd thought each kid would want to do something else but it was a unanimous vote that flowers are the perfect thing for us. This is Morning Glory Academy.
So we set off for the park, flower spotting eyes on the ready. There were lots of nice flowers on the way but the kids wanted the park so we kept going, until we saw a beautiful cherry tree. Out came the nature journals and we plopped ourselves down on the side walk. :D
We were getting ready to go when a lovely old lady came out of the house. She said she'd been watching us draw and how glad she was that children were still interested in nature. She lets us take some petals to press and did a tree rubbing with us. She told us about her childhood in the woods in the times when people cared about nature and how it changed so that now many people are ignorant of the natural world. We learnt about the stages of a cherry tree and about her favourite flowers, morning glories being one. :D
Then we got caught in a down pour and all went inside for tea and cookies. The kids all turned their cups upside down and said that they'd really rather not have because they'd just been learning about the Boston Tea Party but hot chocolate sounded very good.
We will spend the rest of this week learning about cherry trees and when we got out next week our new friend will come too.

I've been in a happy mood all day and then I just found out that there is an offer on our house!:D It is condition that the bank will give this couple the money and that the house has no major problems but still, I'm happy!:D

Disaster!

Today was the first day back at "school" after about a two month break and a big shake up in our lives. And guess what it turned into? Disaster!
It was probably my fault, okay it WAS my fault. I thought we'd just jump into everything and it would be great. As it turns out, there's a bit more to teaching than just jumping in. I was using a lot of new curricula and teaching more kids and had more little ones to keep an eye on. I should have spent another week getting acquainted with what I was doing. Trouble is, it seemed like if we didn't start now we'd never get into the swing.
In the whole day we did Bible, reading and maybe some math or spelling. Then I realized it was time to stop.
Tomorrow will be better.
I am going to lighten the work load and not expect too much. Our subjects will be:
Bible
Math
History which we missed doing today
Reading
Music
Nature Study

I have chosen Bible, math, history and reading because are what I consider our core topics and driving forces of our homeschool.
Music which is violin or piano practice is on because both music teachers expect 5-7 day a week practice depending on skill and age level.
Nature study is on because I want to do Barb's Green Hour Challenge even though we are jumping in on assignment 4. This will get us outside and I've always loved the idea of a nature study. We were going to start today but didn't make it.
Compared with today it seems like a lot to do. Compared with what we "should" be doing it looks pretty easy:
Science - only nature study
Writing - only in history
Spelling - N0
Grammar - No
Music appreciation - No
Cultural cooking - No
French - No
Latin - No
Phonics - No
Handwriting - No
Logic - No

I think I can handle this.

More is not always better

What I want in a history curriculum:

Christian

Easy to use for multiple ages and makes history a family activity

Classical education approach

Easy to do activities

Flexible

Map work

Colouring pages

Makes history fun for everyone

Plays a central role in our schooling

Offers book suggestions but can be supplemented with other books

Reading is the main focus

Readable for parents and children



I'm pretty picky!:D

So back in January I decided that TOG would be the best choice for us. That was before our family grew considerably larger and recently I was thinking "I'm so glad I bought TOG. It's perfect for a large family." .

Today I sat down for a few hours and looked through every bit of TOG. What I'm thinking now is "More is not always better.".

We loved SOTW (Story of the World) volumes 1-3. Sure, SOTW 4 wasn't a hit but we won't be using it again for years and by then the kiddos will be older. The only reason I wanted to change to TOG was because Chelsea was getting older and I thought she would benefit from TOG. I'd heard great things about it, I'd looked at it on the web and thought it looked great. So, it must be great!

*Sigh*

I can see why people like TOG, it's got church history, philosophy, geography, writing, map work, activities...you name it. But it's all this stuff that's there that is driving me CRAZY!! I like to pick and choose from a variety of resources and curricula so I won't be using lots of stuff TOG has to offer. I then have to filter through and find what I do want and organize that, for six kids! Due to the fact of the various age and reading levels of my kids I'll have at least one child on each level. Lower Grammar, Upper Grammar, Dialect and Rhetoric. I find the thought exhausting.

The other thing I've been doing today is creating lesson plans for this week. Laura (7), David (10) and Mariah (12) are studying the American revolution using SOTW 3. Here's what's planned:
Monday:
Read Chapter 22 of SOTW: Revolution! Discontent in the British Colonies - All
Read about Boston Tea Party in supplementary books - All
Colour while listening to read alouds - Laura
Narration - All
Essay on origins of Boston Tea Party - Mariah
Mapwork - All
Have tea (if wanted) and homemade scones with homemade butter - Whole family
Copywork -All

Wednesday:
Finish Chapter 22 of SOTW - All
Supplementary reading - All
Colouring -Laura
Narration - All
Mapwork - All
Make original American flag with paper -All
Add paper feathers to our pens/pencils and write with a "quill pen" - All
Copywork - All

Friday:
Supplementary reading - All
Colouring - Laura
Essay on American revolution - Mariah
Ethics of war - Mariah and David (?)
Mapwork
Dress in clothing of the day - All
Poetry/Memorywork/Copywork: Paul Revere's Ride - Laura, listening and copywork, Mariah and David, copywork and memorywork
Review on lesson - All

I think it'll be great and I think Mariah and David will both receive an excellent history education without TOG.

So, is TOG for sale?
No way! There are lots of great ideas in TOG and I'm sure that if we don't use it as our main curriculum it will guide us when needed.

I'm back!!

I'm back from France, back from a non blogging period and I'm (hopefully) back to a semi-normal life.

I have a zillion things to tell! I guess the beginning is the best place to start. :D

In my last post I said I was leaving for France. I loved it there! The family we were staying with is lovely. They have three kids 10 yo girl, 7 yo boy and 1yo boy. Chelsea and their daughter had a great time together speaking bad French and bad English. We loved Paris and enjoyed seeing the sites. I would have liked to speak more French but sometimes my French wasn't up to it or the people I was talking to would speak in English. Still, we all improved our French dramatically. Even Cassidy can say a number of words like "chat" (cat) and "bonbon" (candy). The plan was to spend time in France and then head off to Normandy and see stuff on the way. But plans don't always work quite right. Before we headed off there was a flurry of phone calls and e-mails from the Canadian government.


I learnt that my dear friends Michelle and Rob had been killed driving home from a church meeting. Someone was speeding down the wrong side of the road a crashed into them. It was their will that I adopt their five children (12, 10, 7, 6 and 2). Oh, the tears! Michelle and Rob have always been so kind to me. They inspired me to homeschool and have always been there to offer a helping hand on our journey. Now they're gone. May the Lord watch over them in Heaven.


It's next to impossible to get flights for a family of five even when it's an emergency. So I left dh and the kids in France and went home by a very odd routing (Paris to London, London to New York, New York to Toronto, Toronto to Vancouver and Vancouver to Victoria).



I began with the legal procedures but was greatly in need of dh so for the most part I cried and tried to be the best parent to Mariah, David, Laura, Douglas and James that I could.



Due to the chaos we'd just had there wasn't time for dh and the kids to go to Normandy so they spent some more time in Paris before returning home.



Then we really got into the adoption process as well as arranging a funeral and figure out where Rob and Michelle's stuff was going. It was exhaustive and stressful and to make matters worse my best friend wasn't there to offer her advice.



I would have thought that once that was over life would calm down a bit. But, now that I was able to think more clearly I realized what a cramped space we were living in. We live in a duplex and it is very comfortable for a family of five but double that and you're squished.

Our house is on the market and we have one person that has come round three times but no offers have been put in. I'm hoping we can get a house in farming outskirts of the city. I'd love to move to the country but we'd be leaving too much behind here.



We'll have our first week of school together on Monday and I'm trying to get prepared. I have a lot of new curricula to use and I have to try to find the books we need because our library has been locked out. It is so expensive with food and books that we've got to watch our money a lot more than previously.

There is still lots to write but like I said I'm still getting acquainted with some of the curricula we're using and need to track down books.

And please welcome Mariah age 12, David age 10, Laura age 7, Douglas 6 and James 2 to our very blessed family.