August 2020

Goodness! This was a stressful month. Frankly,  it flew by like a blur.

I taught four science classes during August. The first focused on the properties of air, the second focused on static electricity, the third focused on sound and the fourth focused on rockets.

For the properties of air, we spoke about matter. I demonstrated that air has weight and occupies space.

For static electricity we covered what matter is made out of: atoms. What atoms are made out of: protons, neutrons and electrons. We covered how electrons can leave the atom, and how free electrons can jump (shock). We talked how we can protect ourselves from static electricity: by using special clothes and boots, by touching metal when leaving a car, by being inside during a storm, or making ourselves into a small ball if we are outside. I demoed how charged balloon attracts another balloon, or pieces of paper, or pieces of salt and pepper, or dripping water, or a can of soda.

For sound: we build a popper, a whistle, a popsicle kazoo, a straw kazoo,  a paper flute and noise makers with balloons. We talked about vibrations, how sound waves travel, how our ear works and how to protect it.

For the rockets we reviewed the forces that need to be overcome for a rocket to leave Earth. We made rubber rockets, balloon rockets, straw rockets, and skewer rockets.

We also benefited from some classes that we offered by other people working in my company. S. took an improvisation class, a painting class, a song writing class and a book club. B. took a Lego class. 

We also went on a week long vacation to Michigan. It was very pretty and we needed that vacation very much. Bryant Park is great. Haserot Park on the Old Mission Peninsula is possibly the only public park there. It is very pretty, and not busy on the weekends. The Empire Beach was my favorite in 2010 and 2014, but the beach portion has shrunk substantially. I am not sure why but I was unpleasantly surprised. I do not recommend it.

I starting reading a lot of books, and did not finish any. Grit, It's even worse than you think, So you want to talk about racism, Just Mercy(we also watched the film)(I recommend this TED talk by Bryan Stevenson), The New Jim Crow, Port Chicago 50, Stella by the Starlight, Bob. I need to read Roll of Thunder, Hear my cry and The Birchbark House.

We also continued to homeschool. We are somewhere a third of the way in 5th grade and 7th grade.

August 2020 Homeschool Update:

5th Grade:

Math: PreAlgebra Ch 1

English: IEW 10, 11, 12, EIW-Lessons 1-8, Novel - Front Desk

Portuguese: Simple Past Tense, Simple Present Tense, Lessons

7th Grade:

Math: Geometry-polygons, Competition Math - number theory, Counting & Probability - tricky counting and probability

English: IEW 6, 7 ; Novel - Lu, Hello Universe, Just Mercy

Portuguese: Simple Past Tense, Simple Present Tense, Lessons

Read Aloud: Ghost, Sitting Bull

Social Studies: Just Mercy (Movie)

Movie related to a book: The One and Only Ivan

Exercise: Bike, Basketball, Run, Swim, Hike

Here are our 5th and 7th grade curricula:

5th grade Curriculum:

Music: Daily Piano and Cello practice

Arts: Paper & Scissors recreation of battles

English Writing: IEW- Medieval History and Essentials in Writing 5

English Spelling: All About Spelling 5 & 6

Literature: One book a month (three novel studies - Old Yeller, The Giver, Hatchet), one month focused on non-fiction texts, one month focused on fiction short stories and poetry.

Math: AOPS Pre-algebra and Geometry

Portuguese: Brasileirinho, reading, Gramatica Ativa 1

Social Studies: focus on American history from perspectives of Native Americans and Immigrants, critical look on American history and traditional look on American history.

Science: We will focus on hands-on science using books such as:  Explore Gravity (Physics, Forensics, Blood Bullets and Bones,  Rocketry, Exploring the Solar System, Beyond the Solar System, The Apollo Missions, Scientists in the Field Series (The Manatee Scientist, Sea Turtle Scientist, Inside Biosphere 2, Eclipse Chaser, Mission to Pluto, The Mighty Mars Rovers, etc.)

PE: workouts at home, bike, play outside, basketball, swim, hike, walks

7th grade Curriculum:

Music: Daily Piano and Violin practice

Arts: Whatever she finds on the internet

English Writing: IEW- Modern History

English Spelling: All About Spelling 6 & 7

Literature: One book a month (three novel studies - Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry, The outsiders, The Westing Game), EIL 7

Math: AOPS Algebra, Geometry, Counting and Probability, Competition Math, ACM prep, and MathCounts prep

Portuguese: textbook, reading, Gramatica Ativa 1 & 2

Social Studies: focus on American history from perspectives of Native Americans and Immigrants, critical look on American history and traditional look on American history.

Science: We will focus on hands-on science (making observations, taking measurements and drawing conclusions)  using books such as:  Explore Gravity (Physics, Forensics, Blood Bullets and Bones,  Rocketry, Exploring the Solar System, Beyond the Solar System, The Apollo Missions, Scientists in the Field Series (The Manatee Scientist, Sea Turtle Scientist, Inside Biosphere 2, Eclipse Chaser, Mission to Pluto, The Mighty Mars Rovers, etc.). We have a subscription to MEL Chemistry and will follow the experiments for an introduction to chemistry.

PE: workouts at home, bike, play outside, basketball, swim, hike, walks

First Grade-Third Grade

It is September. New School year has begun. Here are our short term and long term plans.

Ballet Girl is in third grade. 
She is an independent reader and will be tasked with reading one required book per month (my choice) and anything else she chooses. My goal with this is to keep her engaged at least to some extent with well written and meaninful books. I will also ask for short book summaries, as well as short discussions about the interesting points in the books.
Writing will be primarily devoted to spelling and dictation in the first half, and to retelling of a familiar story in the second half of the school year. For spelling we will finish review the AAS3 she forgot, finish the remaining portions of AAS3 and move into AAS4.
Grammar will be addressed as nuances are encountered. I plan to incorporate grammar with the learning of bulgarian and portuguese. We will mainly be concerned with the tenses this year.

On the math front, Ballet girl is beginning with BeastAcademy, series 4. We finished the assessments for BeastAcademy series 3, and are reviewing some of the points she has forgotten. So far so good. My plan is to move through the BA4 series; to drill units conversions, especially squares; to drill the associative property of multiplication. We will definitely touch on some number theory, geometry and algebra. I will prepare her for the math challenge competition this year. We will start in earnest in October.

Portuguese is the emphasis this year. I am going to stick to individual and group instruction each day. We will finish Vamos falar portuguese and Salpicos 3. I also hope to go over most of tenses exercises in Brazilian Portuguese Grammar book 1. Listening will imporve through read alouds and youtube movies.

Bulgarian will be on a secondary stage for the first half of the year. I am putting portuguese and math ahead for the moment. However, we will refer to its grammar during portuguese lessons, and we speak it daily.

This year we will take it easy with piano.No rush to finish the book by the end of the year. I want it to be a fun and easy piano year. There will be no competitions unless she asks for it. Violin is a slightly different story. I suspect that by the end of the year the first book will be completes, and there will be a recital. I think that the teacher has a solid grasp of timing and expectations, and will help with the heavy lifting. I don't know why the piano book graduations turned out to be so stressful.

Sports will be represented by swimming lessons in the fall, gymnastics in the winter and nothing in the spring. For now, at least. We are planning a trip abroad.

Sunlight boy is in first grade. 

The emphasis for him this year is learning to read fluently in English. He can sound out words, and is already improving. We abandoned the Bob Books and went to AAR 1 which has worked great for us for the summer. We will stick with it and continue onto AAR 2, along with any other school related work.

Spelling is secondary, although he is picking up the basics fairly well. I have started with AAS1 but we will stop, go, review as needed, not as dictated by the school. I don't have expectations on that front.

Math will be interesting. We are still reviewing Grade 1(Challenging Word Problems-Singapore Math-Common Core Edition) material that he knows. He is getting better at some of the quick computations. At the moment we are focusing on time, recognizing time to the hour and half hour. We will start reviewing Grade 2 (Challenging Word Problems-Singapore Math-Common Core Edition) next month and hopefully start on Grade 3 (Sinfapore Math primary books) material in January. I do not plan on preparing him for the math challenge competition at his school. If he quaifies, he qualifies-if not, oh well!

Portuguese means daily 1-1 and group session. We are going over a book teaching reading, but we are mostly using it as a simple way to learn to listen and understand. We are also going to stick with read alouds and movies as primary sources of communication.

Bulgarian will be maintained once a week, through some short reading exercises. Once English is at a comfortable level, then I will upgrade bulgarian to reading twice a week.

Piano continues as before. He is most likely going to finish book 1 this year and have a recital. I think the review for the recital will be easier because we are constantly reviewing songs. I have lower expectations of him at this stage than I did of his sister, because he is not well coordinated yet, so I hope to not be as stressed as I was before.

Sports will be outdoor play, swimming in the fall and gymnastics in the winter, with the low possibility of soccer in the spring.

We are going to attend some classical concerts, but the venue has moved and is not as close as it was before. We are also going to see two kids' theatrical performances at the Beverly Arts Center. This year we will keep it simple. We over did it last year I think.

We have not read any particulary interesting read alouds recently. I highly recommend Mouse Called Wolf, and Leonardo DaVinci by Diane Stanley.

Springtime and blossom all around

Ballet girl took part in the Music Connection's second solo contest. She performed Sonatina in G Major by Beethoven and received a perfect score and a wonderful review. All students whose performances were excellent were invited to a Honors Recital. This was a very happy occasion.

Sunlight boy should have performed as well. His performance of French Childrens' song was judged only one point shy of perfect. He has become a very good audience member and has been cheering for his sister most of his life, so we do not have any dramas.

Both kids are advancing very well and are way on their way of making good music. Sunlight boy is half way through piano Suzuki book 1. Ballet girl is one song from completing piano Suzuki book 2, and she is making astounding strides in violin Suzuki book 1. All teachers are raving about the kids' efforts and results. I am too. Music education is a wonderful opportunity to learn discipline, to learn that good effort equals good results, to learn to be critical, and to learn to deal with hard moments. Music is a wonderful way to make good friends and to avoid going down the wrong path.

The highlight for our spring is music. May will offer two opportunities for performance (IMA competition and Annual Bulgarian Piano Festival), and June will offer two more (Guild and End-of-year recitals). Then we will settle in the calmness of summer.

We will be spending the summer in the midwest. Portuguese family camp and Portuguese Youth camp for the young lady in Bemidji, MN. My folks will spend a week in Bemidji with the young man as well.

Some other updates:

1. English:
• Ballet Girl is an avid reader. She devours books of any kind. When she listens she listens with understanding and offers a lot of questions and logical commentary. She is a few lessons shy of completing AAS 3. I think we will finish AAS3 during the first weeks of school in August. I am focusing on review of what we have practiced to date. She is also very interested in writing original stories. I happened to come across a Usborne, write-your-own adventure story book while visiting Seattle. This book has served us well, and have offered us the basis to discuss the structure of short stories and also books. Quite informally at this moment but sufficient to set the stage for future discussions.
• Sunlight Boy is reading well as well. We were reading the Bob Books and reached the fourth set when I decided that it is better to switch him to AAR1. I am glad I did. The level is quite simple and offers us the opportunity to practice the essential building blocks of reading. I am seeing the young man starting to read in his head. I am hoping that this level will bring him to reading with understanding and expression, and will help him to decode better. So, we are going simple for the rest of teh school year and the summer. I think that in first grade, we will go with AAR2. I bought it for Ballet girl because I was overwhelmed when I realized that I may have to teacher her to read, but she did not need it; she was a few levels ahead of AAR2 when she began first grade. However, with my slower reader we will take full advantage of AAR2. The boy is also beginning to spell phonetically. We may or may not start AAS1 next year. Depends. AAS1 worked for my daughter but the child has to be ready. He needs to  be a strong reader first, and then we will work on the spelling.
2. Art:
• Ballet Girl loves art. She draws, she builds sculptures, she loves chalk now that the weather is on her side. She expresses herself very confidently with art. 
• Sunlight Boy loves art too. It is the new great activity he discovered in Kindergarten this year. He has been coloring, drawing, cutting, molding. He made himself a sword by drawing it on paper, cutting it and taping it to a stick from a game. He also made a terracotta warrior from cardboard boxes, and has been punching this thing for days. I have always said that boxes make the best toys! His imagination is wild. He gets inspiration from movies, books, conversations. Earlier in the month he asked me to make a copy on the printer of one of his favorite characters. I did. He cut the image and used some cottom balls which he taped in the back of the image, and then taped another piece of paper behind that. This was a stuffed super hero toy! This child is amazing. 
3. Math:
• Ballet Girl is advancing really well. She is a few problems shy of completing Beast Academy 3C. The plan is to move through Beast Academy 3D before the end of the summer. The only thing she needs to work on is not panicking when facing a problem she has not seen before. Once she puts her thinking cap she can tackle the problems very easily. 
• Sunlight Boy is also making great advances. I am holding him a little back at the moment. He is very close to doing 2dx2d multiplication. We are currently covering fractions. Over the summer I am planning on covering with him challenging first grade challenging problems; formal addition, subtraction and multiplication strategies; and mental math tricks. 
4. Portuguese

1. Ballet Girl has been interested in speaking for a while. She has no problems remembering conjugations of verbs. The grammar she gets easily. She is also reading quite well. I will continue to read through our textbook with her, continue covering grammer and will download all Carrossel episodes she wants on her Kindle. 
2. Sunlight Boy is also doing well in portuguese. He is not readily interested, but he understands a fair amount and reluctantly repeats. He is close to finishing one textbook and I will move him to the next level.
5. Sports: There is no time for sports. I am relying on plenty of free time in the park and in the garden. I will try to enroll them in soccer in the summer for a full week, and hopefully, there will be an option to enroll them for weekday-only games in the late summer/early fall. During June the kids will be in a full-day summer camp near the house. In July they will be away to MN for a week. Hopefully, during the first week of August they can play soccer again. The rest of the time will be pool time:).
6. Cultural Activities
• We have been attending a lot of events. Locally we like the Illinois Philharmonic. 
• We recently went to a Bulgarian Folk Festival. We did not expect to sit through the entire three hour event, but we loved it and we sat through it.
• We also watched The Producers, a very funny musical, quite relevant to the political campaign that is happening in the US.
• We also saw a few movies this month. We watched Zootopia which we loved. It was very clever and the first movie Ballet Girl was able to make connections between references and the real world:). She, I and a friend also watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which was funny and light-hearted, nothing spectacular, but definitely not crude. How could we miss the jungle book?! Yes, we saw it the first week it came out. I loved it. It was mostly true to the book, and the visual effects were wonderful. I still need to sit and talk to the kids about the meaning of the story. Maybe one day we will rent it from the library, watch it and discuss it. I recommend the Jungle book and Zootopia.

This month our read-aloud time has focused on Lunch Money, Tools of Ancient Greece and Simple Machines. We are also going to read about the Librarian who measured the Earth and Archimedes.

I love Tools of Ancient Greece. It is a book I will have my kids refer to later on when they themselves get to explore the ancient world. I view our current exploration as a very nice sneak preview, but probably the real learning will happen in a few more years. Simple Machine is wonderful because it really well explains a lot of physical concepts which again will become more approachable at later grades, but this is a fabulous foundation. 

Lunch Money is a book I adore. First because it offered a wonderful illustration of principles of story telling that were discussed in the Usborn's write-your-own story book, and also because it is a very thoughtful read. We talked a lot about money, how money are made, how money is being used, what money really means. We talked about competition, price, value, charity, and many other concepts. As with all learninig, I have learned that unless a topic is encountered many times and discussed from many viewpoints, the topic is not really learned and understood. Hence I again see this book as one of the many books we have used to think about money.

Bittersweet March

All journeys have their uphills and downhills. Likewise, homeschooling has been both a source of a lot of joy and a source of a lot of frustration and doubt. Before March, I never before experienced an emptiness and inadequacy, almost an apathy and indifference associated with this particular journey, almost a desire to let it go. Of course, this is not my style, so we trail on.

Accomplishments:

First, ballet girl did wonderfully at the annual math competition that her school holds. She placed first in mental math and third overall.

Both kids participated in the music school competition. Ballet girl performed wonderfully and received highest score. Sunlight boy performed very well as well. He is still walking the walk, and he is walking it with confidence, dignity and hard work. He is advancing very well.

Ballet girl is advancing very smoothly with her violin as well.

Struggles: 

Ballet girl is really bright but it has been a struggle for me to teach her mathematics which is something that I am very passionate about. I have explained, and shown examples, and yet, certain things just did not stick as I expected. I have learned to step back and return to something simple for a confidence boost. I have just wished she would more proactively reach out and do the work. As a kid, I remember early on realizing that the more problems I solved, the better I got, and the more I wanted to solve. I never stayed hungry for problems because we had tons of books. I wish my daughter would one day just reach out and experience the hunger that I had. It is something that I cannot teach. It is something that I can just arm myself with patience for. I wish she were a bit more proactive and thorough.

History and Science:

We talked mainly about ancient Greece. We talked about democracy and the way of life in the city-states. We read a few fiction and a few non-fiction books.

We will continue to cover this topic with more non-fictional books during the month of April. We will also study simple machines and learn how they helped the greeks.

This month we also did a quick impromptu run through the major religions my kids are aware of.

Reading, Writing:

Ballet girl reads independently. We are half way through AAS 3 and I am delighted with the progress she makes. We cruise effortlessly and would have advanced more but I don't think it is necessary.

Sunlight boy is reading really. He is also attempting to spell. He is quite aware of the fact that he knows how to read. He is working on finishing the Bob Books 4 set, and we will continue practicing with AAR 1.

Portuguese:

This is our weakest link. We have been reading the adventures of Hercules as presented by Monteiro Lobato. It has been a bit too long and all the characters are a bit complicated and disconnected and connected all at the same time. I bet that if you were hearing these stories over and over, the characters will eventually sink in. We will continue by returning to the adventures of Peter Pan, again retold by Monteiro Lobato.

During April, I am hoping to follow up more seriously and consistently with portuguese lessons and intense practice.

Read Alouds:

We finished the first part of the Jungle book. We like it but we will rest before we venture into the second book. I have grown tired of translating so I have been reading more and more translated literature in bulgarian.

Currently we are enjoying the bulgarian folk stories. We read about three per night and we talk about them. Nothing fancy, but I share my uncommon views with the kids. For instance on the story with the bird and gardeners, I said that the bird is not lazy - it just  has no business doing the work of the gardeners. This is not the moral kids are supposed to walk out with. I think we will read short stories for a couple of months because they are easy going and you don't have to keep track of anything monumentally complex.

Activities:

Gymnastics is ending this month. Ballet girl asked to try figure skating next year instead of gymnastics. I will probably have her try it in the fall and either do gymnastics of dance in the winter and the spring.

Sunlight boy loves gymnastics but he will be happier with soccer. Next fall is soccer once again for him. I hope he can do gymnastics again in the winter and the spring. It is good for him.

The summer both kids will be in summer camp for a month and in July we will all be back in Minnesota for two weeks, for Portuguese immersion camp.

The pleasant chaos

Kindergarten-Second Grade: Month 1 Update

Our read alouds this month were "Emil ot Lionaberia" by Astrid Lingren, "Toshko Afrikanski" by Angel Karaliichev and "Peter Pan" by Monteiro Lobato. Quite the collection of entertaining pre-bedtime reading. A mischievous monkey, a mischievous boy and a mischievous band of pirates.

 During a typical month we typically read through a good list of books. In light of this fact, the current month is unusual. Yet, it was equally rewarding, because we became familiar with some fabulous characters. We are still reading about Emil and Peter Pan. Peter Pan we will finish but the third part of Emil's adventures we will finish maybe next summer.

Our next stop is history. We will be travelling to Ancient China. October!

Here is a quick update on Sunlight boy:

1. He is going through a creativity boom. He has been building all types of inventions with Legos. He is a problem solver at heart and a charmer. 
2. He finished the first level of the Bob Books yesterday! He is very proud of himself. I am also extremely proud of him. He picked up reading very well, faster than I anticipated. I think he will not have difficulty following Ballet Girl's reading path. 
3. He finished the second grade Singapore Math books last week, and this week we began the third grade books. I am very impressed with him, there are some activities such as given a bunch of digits to construct a certain digits largest or smallest number, I thought would be tough, but no! Very very easy! He handles multiplication well too!
4. He continues to read really well Bulgarian!
5. At the piano he is becoming more at ease. He reads music so we may have to walk a fine line between Suzuki and traditional approach. I am very happy with his progress. I am discovering that both approaches have a lot of strengths that are valuable to him.
6. I think that he pays attention at school, but he probably has an attitude, as in "I know this already, so I won't bother to participate". I never had a problem with Ballet Girl regarding being ahead academically than her peers; she has always been happy to do repeatedly the mundane, which has its brilliance, as long as I ensure that she is challenged enough along the way. Yesterday alone, Sunlight boy made the connection between my mom's comment about "everyone's unique set of mnemonics for remembering the multiplication table" and "schema" which is a word used in school to describe the prior information one possesses about a topic or object.
7. Soccer has been his highlight! He loves it, and we love the passion and energy with which he runs and fights on the attach and on the defense.

Here is a quick update on Ballet Girl:

1. Ballet girl continues to be busy with creating accessories from rubber bands, hair bands, pieces of thread, and pieces of cloth. She loves drawing and is always with a note pad and pencil for sketching and writing.   
2. She learned the multiplication table! Hurray! We finished Beast Academy 3A and have moved on to Beast Academy 3B. We are also going to finish the last few topics from Singapore Math 3A&B so that she can take the tests and we can move on to the next levels in depth. Beast Academy offers fun math, not math drills, and when we get bored from the SM books, I move on to Beast Academy. I have warned before that while really good, Beast Academy has its weaknesses, its points of negligence. I follow my own curriculum and I use these books for support, while also teaching critical thinking.
3. We are continuing with All About Spelling Level 2. We are throwing in words that sound the same but mean different things and are spelled differently. We also talked about some irregular plurals and some irregular verbs. Today we talked about the change in the pronunciation of "read" from present to past tense. I have also begun to introduce the rules of punctuation. We started with the comma and the famous "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" book. Ballet Girl reads at 3.8 level, so way to go, girl! Every once in a while she gets into the groove of reading, but this is not frequent. I don't push her, but I do hope that one day soon, especially in the cold days of winter, the curiosity will overcome her to dig in with more zest.
   
4. I moved her from the 10th piano piece to the 11th. This and next week the aim is to learn the second half and I really look forward to the 12th piece. I hope that by the end of the year, we will be done with that, and by the end of January we will be done with Suzuki Book 2. This year I want to concentrate on music theory and solfege as well. Overall, we have been progressing slowlier, but at least we are moving and not stuck!
5. Portuguese is coming along well for her. She is using more and more words and is understanding better but I want to introduce her to some formal material. I need to push for the Portuguese lessons in earnest for both kids.
6. In November she will start gymnastics which is a long standing wish of hers.

We went to a Pumpkin Patch which the kids loved. We planned next summer too. May, June and part of July, the kids are going to Bulgaria. In July we are all going again to Minnesota. This, of course, followed by August soccer camp.

Overall, a peaceful month. October will be exciting. We have a busy October. One birthday-Ballet Girl, one opera-Marriage of Figaro, and one half marathon-Prarie State on the north side:)

February Books

The themes his month are two: 1) Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, 2) accomplished African Americans, and 3) Charles Darwin and Evolution

                                                                                                                           

We already started on this journey with a real journey. Our New Year's trip to Arkansas was the igniting factor. Since then we read the two Magic Tree House books about Abraham Lincoln and Abe Lincoln's hat. We are currently reading the Magic Tree House Civil War on Sunday. I have not read to the kids the Gettysburg address but I have told them why and when it was delivered and that it is the most famous speech delivered by Lincoln. We love Lincoln. We just need to visit his memorial in Washington DC.

We are also reading about George Washington Carver. This was again inspired by our trip in the south. I am very pleased because I am learning so much as well. I am fascinated by this man who has accomplished so much by sheer perseverance,  hard work, desire, and curiosity. We will also read about Elija McCoy, an African-American inventor whose inventions will be dear to sunlight boy's heart and soul.




We will talk about the essence of slavery and the underground railroad. It will be an interesting journey and I will be posting the pictures of the books along with comments as we encounter them.

The My First Biography book about Harriet Tubman ballet girl read on her own. It is a very easy read. She read it the day after we read together the Picture Book of Harriet Tubman. The picture book contains richer information and pictures, and can be the lead to good, thoughtful discussions. To me what was interesting was that this woman activist did not settle with freedom from slavery, she kept going long after the civil war had ended and entered the battle for equality for women. I was impressed. I have never heard of this woman. We are going to read next Sweet Clara's quilt about the ingenuity of a slave in making a lasting, reliable map for many to follow the path to freedom along the underground railroad.

Before we read about Harriet Tubman, we read about Henry. I didn't spend much time on 'what happened to his family' because what I wanted to emphasize is that he wanted to get out, not let go and give in and give up. To him, his escape was a rebirth. This is what it means to be free. I am sure this is how many of the hostages we hear about in the news these days feel once on home ground. If we read the book about Henry again, which I plan to do, just to reinforce the ideas, we are going to 'wonder' what happened to his family. It will allow us to flow into the next book I have planned-Now, let me fly. This particular book I think condenses many aspects of the slavery trade within a short and simple text-I want to see how my kids react, what their feelings are, what their questions are. A question that they have asked is 'why was slavery needed in the first place' and I think that I will be able to address this question from geographical(South America, Africa), historical(Portuguese explorers) and biological(climate, immunity, agriculture) and economics points of view. A question that I do want to address is why slavery eventually ended-why did the white folks from the north decide it's not such a good idea after all.

I wanted to emphasize that among the blacks there were progressive folks, even among runaway slaves. The story of Elijah McCoy is a great example. The Other Side is a great illustration of the absurdity of segregation. I did not use the word, I used the word separation, but I emphasized that the fence is a physical boundary to be feared, but there were other forms such as the bathrooms and the drinking fountains, and the trains, etc. What is weird is that I said: this is like the water and oil, they don't mix, there is a boundary of separation, similar to this one. Just as there is emulsifiers there are ways to integrate blacks and whites together. This is very abstract but we had just visited the science of emulsifiers that evening so I went on with the analogy.

We are going to read about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King as well.

We are starting our journey in Evolution and Charles Darwin's trip by re-reading an old favorite about the Galapagos islands-One Cool Friend and others.

This book is great. It is not only the story of the Galapagos islands but also the story of the Hawaiian islands and any other volcanic islands. I absolutely love this picture book because most elements relevant to evolution are clearly depicted in the pictures and described within the text. Fabulous book!

We are going to read another book about the Galapagos islands which has a lot of illustrations and then we will move on to Charles Darwin and his journey, his observations and his conclusions. Then we will read the one book about evolution that I have wanted to read for quite a while to them which illustrates all the phases of extinction.



Related to his topic is geology. We are taking the fiction route to geology this time around. We started with the Magic Tree House Vacation under a volcano.

I do not like the Magic Tree House books. The text is very shallow and elementary even if they do contain some historically accurate information. However, my children find these books quite wonderful and accessible. I am pleased to read them but I will try to space them a little more in the future.

All About Spelling review: I thought out loud on my feed tonight whether it is best to learn one word at a time or through rules. I think rules are better for already English speakers because they have an arsenal of words to which they can apply the rules which are being taught. On the other hand, one word at a time makes complete sense for people who are growing a vocabulary one word at a time. By the time these foreign speakers have acquired large enough vocabulary they would have seen the patterns which are otherwise deliberately taught in schools. I was satisfied with my answer.

All About Spelling and Reading

Well, it was not my intention to teach my daughter reading and spelling but oh, well, circumstances dictated otherwise. I intended to keep her from instruction in mathematics and science only with language arts and social sciences fully covered in school.

Unfortunately, Common Core played me a trick. Social Science and Science are both integrated in the Language Art curriculum in our district. This means that if I take her out of Social Science and Science, I am effectively taking her out of Language Arts or in other words, I am effectively taking her out of school. Since I do not want to do this, the teacher and I agreed that in school Ballet girl will receive instruction during two periods, whatever the covered subject matter is: from 8:45am to 12:15pm when she is supposed to be instructed in reading mostly, and from 1:35pm to 2:15pm when she is supposed to have either PE or Music. With the first break we skip math. With the second break, from 2:15pm to 3:25pm, we skip writing and spelling. Thus, all of a sudden I found myself responsible for writing and spelling. Writing is a breeze. Spelling, on the other hand!!!! Oh my, horror!

I only know the way I learned to spell-word by word with tons of intuition, lots of reading, lots of writing and lots of copying. I was older than Ballet Girl when I started learning English and English was a foreign language and I was not seeing the learning as urgent. With Ballet Girl the situation is upside down. English is the language she does need to be well versed in. Teaching her, I felt, is a huge responsibility, which I had not researched. What to do? I turned to the few homeschooling blogs that I follow and from all I extracted fabulous reviews for a program called All About Spelling and All About Reading. The explanations and the website did not make it very clear to me what the content of the program itself is, but the promotional videos that I watched did make a few points regarding spelling that intuitively I agreed with. So, under pressure, I purchased Level 1 and Level 2 of the spelling program and Level 2 of the reading program. As I said, the website did not do a good job in describing the included materials, so I assumed that as with math, the student book and the interactive package would suffice. Wrong! The program requires the teacher's manual. I would not follow it because it is scripted and this is contrary to my style. I will need to read it and execute the recommended exercises on my terms. What was disappointing to me is that from the activity book I could not deduce the exercises/assignments that needed to be carried out. Not only that but the two readers, not included in the student package, were essential. So, I was disappointed that I had to shed more money to get the teacher's manuals. Thankfully I found them through the Rainbow Resource Center which did not charge me shipping as would have done the All About Learning site. I decided that I should obtain the teacher's manuals but I will not purchase any of the other levels unless I find them for very cheap on eBay.

I looked over the student package for all three packages that I had ordered and they appear very simple. Reading and Spelling are being taught through some games. With my kids I have found that while games are fun, they are not needed-give them the principle and let them use it is sufficient. If your child learns more through play, this program may  be successful for you. I don't think we needed it but I will go ahead and test drive it and update this review later.

Update 9/2/2014: Well, I am the owner now of the complete AAS-Level 1, AAS-Level 2 and AAR-Level 2 sets. I read through the first few steps in AAS-L1 and AAR-L2 and I think that this program is how I would have wanted a reading/writing program to be structured. The build up is gradual with lots of review until mastery is demonstrated, without a trace of doubt. The steps are ordered into a very logical sequence which pleased me.

I think that the hands-on activities are a bit excessive, but I do see the point-children do learn through physical interaction with their environment.

To begin AAS-Level 1, I think one needs to be somewhat of a reader. Ballet girl is an almost fluent reader, reading at around beginning second grade level. To reach this level we have encountered a lot of books with various word patterns in them and I have pointed them out along with examples that follow the  same patterns. So, she is aware for instance how the following patterns 'oo','igh','ight','silent E', 'ck','ould' are pronounced. She also understand that there are some exceptions-door, some, etc. In pre-K and K she also practiced the sounds of the individual letters. I think that this reading/discussion practice has laid a nice foundation to begin systematic study of the rules of the English writing.

In school, she had one-syllable, 3/4-letter words with silent A to practice. At home I wanted to review the principles and establish a routine which she can follow to systematically deduce the spelling of the word she hears.
         Step 1: We count the syllables (the bigger parts of the words): we put out fist under the chin, pronounce the word and monitor how many times the lower jaw moves.

         Step 2: Each syllable we break into its sounds. We count the sounds and write that many space on the white board.

         Step 3: For each sound we try to see which letters or letter-combinations can produce that sound.
For example, the word CAN. The first sound can be produced by C,K,CK. The CK lives mainly at the end of words. C and K both work, so we keep the C (the C wins).
For example, the word KIT. The first sound can be produced by C,K,CK. We rule out CK as before. C, followed by I is typically pronounced [S]. This leaves us with K.
SIT is an interesting example. The first sound can be produced by S and C and both work. This is where reading experience helps. THE FAT CAT SAT ON THE MAT is a famous first book. So, the past tense of SIT is SAT. If we wrote the word as CIT, the then past tense will be CAT which is pronounced [KAT] because C followed by A makes the [K] sound. So, some detective word is involved and it is fun. This particular example is useful to show that there will be times when it is very useful to put the word in a sentence and try different tenses. This seams like a lot but if the child has some reading experience under his belt, I think that this logic is not a stretch.

Now, the most stunning thing is that after having played detectives, we will be going back to basics to make sure Ballet Girl has mastered the basic letter-sound correspondences so that in the future with practice such detective work will be a breeze/fun/entertaining for her.

Update 11/9/2015: I do not like the organization of the series. I do like the content of the series, I object o the sequence. For example, when studying the J-sound in the context of soft G, why not finish the topic and discuss the choice between GE vs DGE. Once there why not finish with CH vs TCH as they are so analogous, why wait until another book. With regards to the plurals-why not study the complete set of rules along with the irregular plurals which for a native speaker are well known. I feel I do a lot of unnecessary jumping around, pulling the information from here and there. Overall, as I said, the information is great, I just wish it was organized in a manner that seams more logical, at least to me.