Tickers and Trivia

I moved a couple of tickers over to my sidebar from my other blogs.

For the Walk to Rivendell challenge, a tip of the beanie to my daughter, who told me about it a few years back. I guess if I can make it to Rivendell, I can keep going to Minas Tirith or to Lonely Mountain, depending upon if I decide to be in Bilbo's company or in Frodo's.

I don't exactly WALK -- I ride on the exercise bike, which Clare tells me is within the rules. But I managed to start up a habit of riding again after a prolonged lapse during the holidays. I am trying to alternate 5 miles one day with 3 miles the next. Today is my easy day.

The other ticker is for our progress through the "academic year" of 180 days. Here in California we are required to keep attendance records, 180 days of a 4-5 hour day. So the ticker is a fun way to keep track of where we are and how far yet to go. There have been days when I would have let the homeschooling slide altogether if I hadn't remembered the ticker.

I have a weight maintenance ticker too but I would blush to put it on my sidebar right now.

Speaking of tickers, Aidan has recently been fascinated with a wind-up alarm clock. He carries it everywhere. I can hear it behind me somewhere right now though neither Aidan nor the clock is in sight right now, which gives me this Captain Hook sort of feeling.

I think it may be a good opportunity to work with clocks a bit because the Spell to WRite and Read curriculum has some activities to work with clock faces in order to prepare for directionality in writing. It also has some activities for children with gross motor delays who are otherwise ready to learn to spell and read. I really like this program and have been studying it this week trying to figure out how to get it off the ground for Kieron, Aidan and Patrick.

The other ticking thing that has been fascinating Aidan recently is his old oxygen saturation monitor. He discovered it under a dresser and had me reassemble it. It makes a high-pitched tick which changes tone as the oxygen levels and heartrate fluctuate. He keeps checking his sats and announcing the results with great enthusiasm.

The speech therapist is working on "functions" with him, so she showed him a train and asked him what it does. He said, "It takes you to Hanford and Bakersfield!" That's because we rode on the Amtrak with him to convey his older sister part of the way to Santa Paula for a visit to Thomas Aquinas College (and from thence, to the San Francisco Walk for Life. .... the last time Clare was in SF was related to Aidan's liver transplant and subsequent hospital stays, so going back to SF brought back all kinds of associations with that time in our lives).

Week 18 in Review -- Midyear Summary

I am taking a break from my Schola et Studium blog so for the time being, the weeks in review are coming over here. Previous ones are here and here. In case you don't already know, we do a blend of classical, Charlotte Mason, and unschooling. I do a sort of not-very-intense LCC for the basics (which are to me Math--Language/Latin/Greek--Literature), use Charlotte Mason ideas for the "atmosphere, discipline, and life" (habits, nature study, living books) and the unschooly ideas sort of flow around the edges in my theories and principles and how we make our educational decisions around here.... This has evolved through the years of finding what works for us and the balance changes from season to season and year to year. Anyway....you can see the Week in Review Mr Linky over at Trivium Academy.

This week in review also happens to be a mid-year review since last week we reached 90 days – halfway through the school year. Hooray!

Looking at the progress charts for the 3Rs, I was happy to see that we are closer to track than I had thought. You can click on the charts to make them bigger. This is for a just-turned 15 year old in "Year 9" and a just-turned 12 year old in "Year 6" (both their birthdays were in January and the older one's was just this week)

This chart is year 9 for the basic subjects. Logic took a hit, and so did Latin, when the Algebra started taking up a bigger part of the day.

Here is Year 6. I had handwriting down, and it transferred to spelling, and I didn't know quite how to work it so that it showed easily on the chart. So that looks a bit worse than it actually is.

Here is Year 9 -- readings and narrations. I stopped keeping conscientious records on these ones sometime in December, plus we let science take a back seat.

Here is Year 6 -- a partial list of readings and narrations.

General Notes and Thoughts:

I don't have my oldest scholar, a senior in high school, on the charts because she is quite independent and keeps her own records. Nor do I have the little ones on here. Paddy is a kindergartener and Aidan, who functions between late kindergarten and early first grade, is special needs and I find it very difficult indeed to project where he will be in a given amount of time.

Looking at these charts, I am a bit relieved because I thought we had fallen further behind than we had in fact. But I see what we need to focus on and that would be, um, writing. We do some written narrations but there is room for lots of improvement. My older children learned to write happily and competently just by example, time and plenty of cooperative projects. Basically we unschooled writing, in a word-rich environment. But for this set, I would like to focus on it a bit differently. So that's something to ponder and plan for.

Anyway, that is a long enough post for now. Overall, we had a good week. The first couple of weeks after resuming our studies after Christmas were a bit rocky, mostly for me changing tracks back from lots of free time to not very much. But now I've resigned myself and am back to having fun planning history and literature and trying to plan our progym.