School's cool

Yay! Our week off starts on Monday. Actually, for Alexandra, it started this past Wednesday. You see, we started a sequence of 4 weeks on, 1 week off. I felt this was a bit too short (sure the girls weren't too unhappy with it, though) so I then decided to do 5 weeks on, 1 week off instead. This worked much better for me. But then, just before Christmas, I realised that if we did 6 weeks, we could have 2 weeks off around Christmas - bonus! So after some negotiating (and motivating!), that's what we did. And it wasn't too bad :) 6 weeks seemed to go by with us all coping. When we picked up tools again in January, without saying anything, I just let us keep going into the 6th week!
Oh dear! Melt down!

(Original picture at http://images.search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0PDoTD52TdP.C4AyQKjzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBtdXBkbHJyBHNlYwNmcC1hdHRyaWIEc2xrA3J1cmw-/SIG=12vsl58at/EXP=1329089145/**http%3a//www.onlysuper.com/index.php/2009/09/02/super-crying-melting-glacier/)

By Tuesday, I could see Alexandra was not coping too well. By Wednesday, she was in tears! And so, because home educating our children is also about watching over them, taking note of where they are at, I called a halt to her school time. Phew, sigh of relief all round.
I gave Sarah the option of stopping as well, but she had set herself goals of completing certain tasks by Friday, so she continued with those and now she can also take a break.


With Sarah now in "secondary school", she is doing more work independently. I miss our times working together :( we used to do SA history

 and science  (Exploring God's creation)

  together, but now they each do their own work.




Sarah has started Algebra I (Math-U-See) as well as working through some Key Stage 3 work. She is working towards doing English Language and English literature iGCSE (possibly in November, depending on where we are!) She is following a super course by Catherine Mooney.
For Science she has completed Apologia's Exploring Creation through General Science and has started on their Biology book.

And for History/Geography, she is working through a Bob Jones course, World Studies.


Sarah is easy - like me she enjoys working through books in this way.


Alexandra is different! (It has taken me  along time to get to the place where I am comfortable changing how/what she learns!...sigh!!)


She is not a workbook type person! She also doesn't like learning for the sake of learning - she wants a reason for it! And she wants a say in what she learns.
So: Maths and English just have to be (in my opinion!!) She continues with Math-U-See Epsilon. Both also do Mathletics - a super online maths programme available in different countries.
For English, we are still using Bob Jones grammar and writing as well as their reading/literature programme.


For the rest, this is what we are doing:
She opted at the end of last year to use Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology.

I think she wishes now she had rather chosen the animals book, but she is persevering.
For geography, instead of bookwork, we bought a CD ROM programme, but quite honestly, it is just bookwork on a computer, so she is not that keen on it.


BUT! We have gone the route of given her the option to either work with the science or geography as mentioned above, or not. If not, she can read/investigate/internet search whatever she wants to :) And this is working much better. She does still use the programmes we bought, but every so often, she finds something else she would rather read about. She has even bought herself  a book on astronomy on her Kindle and is much keener now on telling us what she is learning about ;)
So, a bit of  a break through there, I think. Now I am keeping my eyes open for books that she may want to read and look through. And to inspire Sarah to also look further than her "school books" :)


But I do miss our times of working together, and so this is what I have come up with :)
On Friday, we only do English and MUS. And for the rest we together read some poetry - Christina Rossetti has been our poet these last few weeks:
 LOWERS preach to us if we will hear:-- 

The rose saith in the dewy morn:

I am most fair;

Yet all my loveliness is born

Upon a thorn.

The poppy saith amid the corn:

Let but my scarlet head appear

And I am held in scorn;

Yet juice of subtle virtue lies

Within my cup of curious dyes.

The lilies say: Behold how we

Preach without words of purity.

The violets whisper from the shade

Which their own leaves have made:

Men scent our fragrance on the air,

Yet take no heed

Of humble lessons we would read.

But not alone the fairest flowers:

The merest grass

Along the roadside where we pass,

Lichen and moss and sturdy weed,

Tell of His love who sends the dew,

The rain and sunshine too,

To nourish one small seed.

For music appreciation, we listen to Classics4Kids  and I have bought a membership to Naxos, which means we can listen to a lot more of a composer's work during the week :) We also do some music theory together. Individually, the girls are moving along beautifully with their instruments. Sarah has moved onto Gr 2 violin and Alexandra has added strumming chords on her guitar.


Art (previously a 3-letter word!) has also found more of a home in our home.


Using a slightly Charlotte Mason approach : , “Children should learn pictures, line by line, group by group,

reading, not books, but pictures themselves.

… After a short story of the artist’s life … the pictures are studied one at a time.

Children learn not merely to see a picture but to look at it, taking in every detail.” (Taken from Practical Pages)
we have looked at artists like Thomas Cole, George Seurat, Berthe Morisot and Alfred Sisley

Thomas Cole - Garden of Eden

.
Some of the time we have just looked and talked about the pictures, other times we "reproduced" a work and sometimes we did work in an artist's style. I am thankful to Nadine and Patti for their ideas!


But for our own pictures, we have joined in with Sketch Tuesday . Here are some of the pictures we have done:

Alexandra - Wild West

Sarah - Super Hero

And lastly, we have also added nature study into our routine on a Friday - although, we don't always do all of the above on 1 Friday. We have done nature walks and hunts in woodlands around Long Ashton and also sometimes followed ideas by One Hour Nature challenge


So all in all, it is working for us at the moment...but, like all life, our home educating journey is dynamic and I constantly need to ask our Lord for wisdom to change/add/remove...  as He leads. After all, He made our children and knows them infinitely better than we do. And He knows the plans He has for them :)