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

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.

New School Year

New School Year is upon us. I find it challenging already.

Ballet Girl is in Second Grade. For her the emphasis is reading, spelling, grammar and math.

• For reading, we are continuing with reading for fluency. I try to find texts that are interesting and engaging, often familiar so that she will have no difficulty decoding. I also insist that if she encounters an unknown word, she looks it up and writes it down and reviews it with me or someone else periodically. The girl reads well, but she would not readily reach out for a book and would not spontaneously read. This is bad and is completely contrary to what needs to be happening. Readings does need to be pleasure and not a task, and should be sought more than TV. So, this is a big challenge at the moment.
• For spelling, we are continuing with All About Spelling. We just finished reviewing level 1, about half of level 2 and a few small parts from level 3. While level 1 was mostly basic rules which are true most of the time, level 2 and beyond contain rules that have exceptions which need to be either memorized or learned through a lot of reading, as well as homonyms-words that sound the same but mean different things. Many of these features are best learned in small doses but regardless of the volume a requirement is repetition. For us,this requirements means that we need to 1) read the words visually a few times, 2) write the words a few times on a piece of paper, 3) say or write a sentence with the words, 4) dictation and 5) continuous review. This brings the challenge of how often and how much to assign; what are the consequences for a missed assignment. I don't believe in catch-up work and doubling the work. I believe in move on kind of work but I do recognize that when I am willing to accept slack, the kid is willing to take it to the next level and test my limits. So, I need to be more strict and disciplined.
• Grammar is a new subject for us. I briefly introduced some simple concepts at the end of first grade. The plan is to cover verbs and tenses both in grammar and spelling; singular and plural nouns in both grammar and spelling, and the separate roles of the words in the sentence, as well as the basic sentence types. We will also follow the Bulgarian grammar for second grade as a guide.
• Math is the cool subject. The girl is figuring out a lot of things on her own, and I am pleased, but because she prefers playing and would not by herself sit and work on problems, she is not fluent yet with the multiplication table, which I find frustrating. We are chagging along and the plan is to finish Beast Academy 3 B,C,D and Singapore Math 4A and 4B. I think this is doable but requires the girl to concentrate more than she has been concentrating the last few months.
• Science and History we are going to cover in Portuguese, and will be mostly learning in parallel.  For instance while studying the Ancient Egyptians we will talk about their scientific discoveries and we will try to solve some of the same problems with what we have today. This is also helping with building the foundation in Portuguese which I am also supporting with read alouds- Turma da Monica, Don Quixote, Peter Pan, Historias do Mundo; filmes-Carrossel, Mulan, etc; e cancoes.
• Piano, continues as usual, I am frustrated that we spend way too much time on a simple piece. For instance in the summer I was hoping to have completed two, instead we were stuck at one. Boo. I know her teacher wants to polish the pieces, but I am getting fed up with hearing the same piece for months, so no, thank you, we do need to move along and improve along the way, but learning has to be more active, especially now, when school work is not overwhelming.
• Sports. We are in the midst of soccer season. She loves it. She wants to move on with gymnastics in the winter and the spring. In the spring, I also plan on having them take swim lessons at the park district. 

Sunlight boy is in Kindergarten. The plan for him is to get him reading in English, continue reading Bulgarian and move on in math.

• English - he is reading the Bob Books. We are in set 1, 8 books in and thus far the progress has been satisfactory. He is approaching the reading with enthusiasm and pride. I think that he will be a reader by the end of K and in the summer we will continue along the road I took with the young lady.
• Math- we are almost finished with Singapore Math 2B. I will teach him to multiply 2-digit numbers before moving him to Singapore Math 3A and 3B. The goal is to finish the Singapore Math 3 sequence by the beginning of first grade.
• The young man started piano this fall and is enthusiastic about it as well. He is picking up the material with fair ease although his hands are still slightly uncoordinated and very stiff, but regular practice and encouragement will resolve this issue, I hope.
• Science, history, Portuguese and Sports apply equally to both kids. The young man is in soccer, which he loves, and will be forced into gymnastics and swimming before the end of the year.

We are reading every day. On the weekends sometimes I read twice, sometimes just once, depends on my energy. 

We have read some great books thus far. Most recently in August we read books about Ancient Egypt, The Adventures in Ancient Egypt book is very similar to the book we read about Don Quixote in portuguese. It is layed out in a cartoon format and is very accessible and entertaining. Overall the adventures of the boy and girl resemble a little the Magic Tree House books, but these are annotated with historically accurate information right when needed, and as such I consider them better.

Yes, we talked about the daily life of the egyptians. We talked about their beliefs and hierarchial system. We talked about their traditions and inventions which have come about from basic and logistic social and individual needs. I am pleased with how we covered Ancient Egypt as a first visit.

In August we read a book about pranksters, the Terrible Two. The author is the same as the author of Battle Bunny which we met last summer. We loved this book and ballet girl was able to foretell many of the things to come about. Overall, a great story about turning the ordinary life in the middle of nowhere (read Iowa) into exciting adventure. I also loved the emphasis on planning and thinking and designing. Love the book. Now in September, we are reading Toshko Afrikanski, which in many way resembles the adventures of Paddington, but is relevant to Bulgaria in the 20's-40's. It is a very funny read and the kids are loving it. I have to start inserting comments about the reality of Bulgaria at the time just to complete the learning.

In August we read Don Quixote das Criancas, which in style is similar to Adventures in Ancient Egypt. Greate fit in terms of Genre. The book is also nice because it contains in the back relevant information about the historical time and the author. We also read a lot about the adventures of Turma da Monica. I suspect we will be coming often to these adventures for stress free, goal free, readings.

In September, we are finishing another version of Don Quixote, which is a longer narrative with more descriptive adventures. After we are done we are going to read Peter Pan and some information from the Historia do Mundo para as criancas-up to Babylon.

This is another book from the Monteiro Lobato series that I acquired in August which we will read later on this year as well, or if not all of it, at least some parts.

King George and what is his problem I just finished reading. Oh, I did not learn a thing from US History class, but I learned a lot from this one simple book. It made me wonder if the Civil Warn reenactment that we witnessed was not actually accurate. From the description of the revolutionary war, the war seemed like a slug with luck written all over it. America is a very lucky country. Read this book to your kids, they will walk away with more than the mumbo jumbo in the history books. The US history books in order to make it a full year course include complicated, unnecessary information which forces the student to understand nothing. Maybe the goal of education is to produce low self esteem individuals with no knowledge and no critical thinking skills. How sad if indeed this is the goal.

Readiness

My daughter showed interest in the piano about two months after she turned five. We were visiting a family member who had a piano and whose children played. My daughter was fascinated and wanted to try it, so she sat and experimented. Then I found her a few simple tunes she could try and she memorized them in no time. OK, I said to myself, it is time for formal lessons.

When my son approached five, I sat him at the piano. His fingers were too small, and too rigid. OK, I said, you are not ready. We will try again. Few months passed by and we tried again, and nothing had changed, so I waited for another opportunity and another and another until one day when I said, OK we will start gently now. Initially, I was discouraged and thought to myself, it is going to take us years to get through one song. But no, it took us one week of 10 minutes each day to go through the song. During this week, after just a few consecutive days, I saw how something clicked, some connection was made in his brain. He was able to not only play and memorize, but he learned to read the notes from the book. I say learned because he taught himself to play a different song by following the notes. Piano at the moment is joy, he wants to try it, he has discovered something he couldn't do before and now is all excited about it. I am very happy.

Why I am writing this? To basically confirm that yes, kids are ready when they are ready. No reason to push them based on some expectations. Adults are ready when they are ready, there is no reason to push them. What I wanted was for my kids to find the joy. They did. I didn't want them to be grand musicians. I wanted them to be happy about music, to love to play the piano, to love the sound they discover and the abilities they acquire which will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

Here is an article which promotes this same tactic for reading and other academic disciplines. What is the rush, I ask. Consistency and persistence, positive attitude and enthusiasm will carry you further than artificial efforts and ambitions.

Here is the book we use:

Venn Diagrams

The English teacher in first grade showed the kids what a Venn diagram is in the context of the content of books they have read in class. They read two books and drew two circles representing different characteristics and based on these two the students classified to which region in the diagram the books they had read belongs. They also drew Venn diagrams to show the common and the uncommon themes discussed in the books they had read.

I did not know that when the teaching/learning took place. I only learned about this when Ballet Girl and I encountered Venn diagrams in the context of shapes in Beast Academy 3A. I was delighted to talk about Venn diagrams and bring about again the idea of classification. The first example I coined was about bird belonging to the class of animals but not all bird being able to fly, and not all flying animals are birds. Then we went to the library and saw the different ways books are classified and discussed how there is always some element which produces an overlap, just like the game Spot It!-there is always an overlapping element in the cards that are presented!

I can only rave about the Beast Academy books. Even if your child is not a math whiz, these books are so entertaining that your child will extract something useful from them. Again, I encourage and recommend these-not as a curriculum, but as a supplement to a regular curriculum.

I also encourage parents and teachers to think outside the box when presenting concepts. When I was little we were told to memorize and retell, but when I hit high school, we were told to come up with our own examples. By that moment, this task was incredible difficult. So, my recommendation is, in order not to scar your children, think outside the box for examples, and most importantly after you have thought of a few, let your children come up with their own. Learning with all senses is the most lasting learning.


Happy math Happy learning!