a temporary change of course.

Feb 8, 2008
I will be late with niece’s card. I always am. Brian always acts like he’ll take care of it and never gets to it. Why should he? He’s busy too. I should just do it and not pay heed to the fact he says he’ll do it. Just do it anyway.
At least they are always cute handmade cards.
Spelling Tests. Connor asked if they’d be writing them or using sign language. I asked which he preferred and he wanted to do sign language. Gavin said he didn’t care one way or the other. I asked he’d write them. He was fine with that. I think he prefers that. Both boys have the same word list so if they both finger spelled I’d have to do one at a time.

We were doing irregular verbs. Our spelling tests aren’t soley for speling. They are for grammar and writing pactice, so sometimes they are easy words to spell, but there is a different lesson.
This week they have verb sets. Like “catch-caught” and “bring-brought”, “inlay-inlaid”. So for the test I said the present tense and they had to spell the past tense. So if I said “fight” they spelled “fought”.Gavin sat at the table and has his back to me. Connor sat between Gavin and myself, facing me. So I could watch Connor finger spell and gavin wouldn’t be distracted by it.
Ki asked to do fingerspelling for his words. He thought it was fun. I’d saw “swim” and he’d say “ AH-HA! That means I spell SWAM!” it was like a game. And it seemed a good exercise for them to have think of the spelling word with the clue word I gave them. Using Sign Langauge for our spelling has been a great thing for their dyslexia. It helps them make physical connections to the abstractness of letters and sounds.

Then we read some of Story of the World and talked about the blue, naked, fighting Celts with their magical blue armor.

I then read through the rest of what they need to do for school today and set out for the coffee shop to do some planning. The boys have asked to have a weekly chart like we have used before. A weekly chart lists what they need to do every day (read and play a multiplication fact game on the leap pad and write 12-25 minutes) and has a list of work they just need to have done by Friday. They can do that work whenever they want to do it. They can get it done by Tuesday if they work hard or pace themselves and be done Friday. Because I want to teach classes/lessons with them I have listed that in their weekly list.
For example on Ki’s chart it says:
“Read Peoples of the World book with mom and visit links. 3 times. 30-45 minutes each time.” And I have the numbers 1……2….3…. for him to cross off each time he does it. We will still have Story time and Brain Gym together in the morning.and the boys will have to schedule time to do their "with mom school work" .

I told Gavin I’d play Battletech with him when I get home. This is the ULTIMATE of “spending time in their world- esp when you don’t enjoy it.” He will teach me how to play a short game of Battletech. I want to cry just thinking about it. But he asks me to play it from time to time and I haven’t yet. So today is a good day for it. It’s a short school day and I don’t have to make dinner tonight.

http://www.hakujin.net/Games/BTech/btechq-a.html how to play Battletech and about the game. Read it and weep. it's not the difficulty, it's that it is one of those games that takes too many hours to play. I asked for a short sample game.

**Kimberly**~7th year homeschooling 3 boys~

My boys are Elliptical

Feb 6, 2008
Gavin was up making a Lego Mind storm Robot. A ‘walking’ something or other. He called it a dog. Connor discovered if you hold it an angle you can use it to clean up Legos. Gavin’s walking dog seemed a bit frail and had some problems getting tripped up easily. Connor redesigned it worked better.
(and they have a 'fleet' of catapualts now and have their castles they are storming with the catapaults and the balls from the Geomags)

Then Gavin decided to pick up his crocheting. He is getting fast at it. Connor “querro mas rapido egual Gavin” (which I’m sure is most likely improper Spanish and not spelled correctly.) I told him Gavin has gotten fast because he “mucho practicar”. So Connor got his knitting to practicar.

So my two robotic engineering boys took a break to do some needlework.
I guess, if nothing else, they are well rounded. Or at least a bit elliptical.

After showers and some chores, I read from Jesus Freaks and then from Story of the World. Ki was in charge of 3 Brain Gyms.

Then Ki and I practiced his spelling words using sign language. Connor and Gavin quizzed each other using sign language. They have to say the word, then say each letter as they sign each letter.

They went through their words a couple of times then made lunch.

We went to homeschool gym. I did some thinking there on how to arrange independent work and still get some class lessons done. I need to sit at the coffee shop to do the rest, I think

The boys did some math and their reading.
Gavin and Connor didn’t read their DNA stuff I wanted them to get to today, but they can do that tomorrow.

I helped Ki plan a few European meals for next week. (From his Peoples of the World study)

The snake with a GREAT personality!

January 31, 2008

Gavin made pancakes for breakfast. He cut strawberries and stirred a little sugar into them. It was a yummy breakfast.

(Connor made breakfast yesterday; waffles)

Ahhhh.. the ease of having homeschooled 7 yrs…… I can write a lovely plan for the entire week while sipping coffee and looking over past work….. Or I can get up in the morning and jot a few things down on a piece of paper from the top of my head and have a good school day.

I want to go to the store this morning so I jotted a few things down on the White Board.
G&C- read SOTW out loud.
3T- do 3-4 Brain Gym activities
G&C – read + Ki: 4 games “beat the Clock”
Ki- Read + G&C 3 games “B. the C.”

I told them that was their morning school work, I’d be back from the store shortly. They did it while I was gone. Well, they were still doing it when I got home. I was just gone about 30 minutes.

We have Homeschool Gym today, so I think we’ll just stick with the 3Rs plus history (Story of the World).

Then we will do some Home Economics….. (homeschool lingo for ‘house cleaning’ )

I’d like to get in some Sign Language as well.

after all the homoeschool activities this week, that have left us to just sticking with the 3Rs, I look forward to a nice relaxing, scheduled week next week...

Once again we used the nanofictionary Cards for spelling/writing. They had 2 options.#1- choose one character card and one problem card and write a short story using those cards and your spelling words.#2- choose a different card for each word and just use that card and that spelling word for iindividual sentences.Gavin and Ki do well with these exercises. Connor always struggles withthem for a while, them gets really goofy.
Some Examples of their work:

The black cate ate enough brownies.
His WORD was 'enough', he choose the character "the blak cat" and his problem card was "someone ate the brownies"

The Ace pilot shot down eight planes.-
the word was EIGHT, the card was "the ace pilot" (they could choose 1 or 2 cards if they took the individual sentence route)

The snake with a great personality soughed off his skin.
WORD was slough
card was "the snake with the great personality"

The 3 wisemen argued roughly about something unimportant.
WORD was 'roughly' cards were "the 3 wisemen' and 'argued about something unimportant"

I am rethinking the wisdomof giving them 'slaughter' on their list.....
**Kimberly**~7th year homeschooling 3 boys~

Game Show Spelling

(from Jan 11, 2008)
We do a sequential type of spelling with the older boys. For some reason it just confuses Ki.Anyway, we did something a little different yesterday and they seemed to like it.

I always start them on Monday with a small list is words and we build on them throughout the week and by Thursday they have about 20 words.Normally they write them all from memory (as opposed to conventional spelling where the teacher calls out one word at a time and they write it). It works well. They actually improved when we switched to that way.BUT- Here is what we did this time:Monday the base words were
people
popular
populate
vacate
locate
solve
resolute

they had to write each word 3 times and think of 3 alternate forms to write down. They wrote: vacated, solving, location, locating,solves.

Tuesday I went over the words and added a few. They wrote 10 sentences and used 15 words (as many alternate forms as they could think of to use)I have them think of the other word forms on their own and they figure out how to spell them and we go over them.

Wed- I listed all the forms they had come up with and corrected any spelling. (they got almost everything correct) Then I added a few more forms. And I had them look up definitions to a few words and write the whole list correctly in their notebooks.I think our list by then was:
people
popular, unpopular, popularity
populate (s) (d), populating, population, populations, repopulate, repopulating, repopulated
vacate (s) (d), vacation (s), vacationing, vacationed
locate (s) (d), location (s), locating, relocated, relocating, local,
solve (s) (d), solving, solution, resolve (s)(d), resolvin
resolute(d), resolution (s)

Thursday-we spelled words using sign language. I do a few with them and then they quiz each other while I do sign language withKi's words.That was all pretty much the same as always.

Friday's test was different.Gavin slept in, so I started with Connor. I said the word an he had to finger-spell (sign language) to me. When I got to 15 I told him that he had 13 out of 15 and asked if he wanted to keep that score or do more words to try to better his percentage. but if he missed them he'd lower his percentage.
It was kind of a Game Show Flavor... "Do you want to take the money you already won or try to move up and earn more at the risk of lowering it"

He liked that idea. I'd ask him at each word if he wanted to stop now with what he had or go for one more. He stopped at 19 and didn;t miss anymore, so we figured out what his percentage would have been if he had stopped and how much better his percentage was now. Then we worked on a bonus word. I helped him figure out how to use the words in his list to help him spell 'revolutionary'.

I did the same with Gavin, he thought out the risk of doing more words more than Connor did. He figured put 'revolutionary' on his own so he got more bonus points.

Ki finger-spelled his words to me and asked for a bonus word.Just thought I'd share our 'game show risking more points' method. My boys love to watch those shows, where the contested is asked is he wants to walk with the money or risk losing it to make more.

**Kimberly

ASL spelling meltdown

We use sign language with our spelling list. We fingerspell the words and we learn the signs for some of the words. 1 or 2 xs a week we have ASL class with spelling words. We start by doing the alphabet together, twice. I use both hands, sometimes they do. I will have everyone's words on the dry erase board. And I call on the kids and tell them to spell a specific word. They are to use their hands AND their voice. So they are using more than one part of their brain simultaneously. It enhances learning when they can use multiple areas of the brain or multiple ways of thinking at the same time, esp when they use both sides of the brain at the same time.

Anytime you can something physical to something cerebral it enhances learning,
Today, we did the sign language alphabet twice,then they took turns fingerspelling words. After that I would finger spell one of their words and they'd have to figure out which word. and I don't do it nice and slow....

Then Ki did GRAB BAGS! a brown lunch bag for each word. the lunch bags are numbered and inside are plastic letters (or letter tiles or squares-of paper with 1 letter each). He dumps out the letters in the bag, unscrambles them to get one of his spelling words. He lists the numbers on a piece of paper with the word from that bag next to it.

he had a little melt down half way through. he was SURE a word was something different. it was the word 'fart' but he was SURE it was 'fatten' because the 'f-a-t' came out of the bag first, so he was trying to find the missing letters and wanted to go through other bags and through the pile of letters he has already done and had them all jumbled...... he got pretty upset when i had him put all the letters back, remove all the letters he has already done and LOOK AT the letters from that bag. He get saying it was SUPPOSED to be "flatten"! (yes, 'fart' is one the words he chose himself this week)

he finally got through them all. and I did joint compressions with him and had him do wall push ups.