Wow, I have not been on top of things this year. I'm averaging one post a month, not one a week. Oops.
Well, for what seemed like forever, at least one person in my family was sick. It took a lot of steam out of school, and science came to a halt.
But we did accomplish things.
We did do history.
We continued to talk about Rome, and we focused on the gladiators, the colosseum, and death by games.
We have this coloring book that turns into a colosseum as our activity, and it is the most morbid colouring book you will find. I forgot to take pictures, but there are animals eating people and gladiators stabbing each other. Here you go children, have fun!
The whole gladiator concept is very disturbing to me. I remember four years ago when we studied this, I had just read "Hunger Games" and was geeking out at the parallels of history and fiction. Thank goodness for CG or we might have them today, who knows!
We also talked about Constantine, christianity becoming legal, and the Nicene Creed. I read Classical Conversation's take on the Nicene Creed to myself and chuckled at such a drastically different perspective on things. I certainly am grateful for the prophet Joseph Smith and for clarity on what the Godhead is.
We made mosaic crosses for our activity. It was nice to have a talk with my kids about the godhead, and how we differ from other religions, and a talk on the cross and what is means to others, and why it's not all over our churches.
We also learned about Beowulf, Justinian, and Camelot, although we didn't do any activities for these. A good child friendly version of Beowulf was one written by Katz.
We also talked about Paganism in the form of LEPRECHAUNS!!! Yes it's that time of year again, to make traps for leprechauns. Maxwell started his traps days before hand and was very focused on making his trap such a nice place for his leprechaun that he wouldn't want to leave.
Daniel made his all by himself too, and it was pretty cute as well:
Hyrum wasn't interested in making traps that much. He isn't interested in crafts unless I guide him through, and the traps were supposed to be unguided. William also did a trap, but wasn't interested in esthetics either. He just was interested in paint, paint, and more paint.
We did eventually all get over our sicknesses, and we had a clean bill of health to do science last week. We learned about soluable and insoluable. We made "lava lamps" out of oil and water. They look cooler on Pinterest.
And we also had a snail focused week or two. It all started when Maxwell read the book "Sally Snail." It sounds like a book for a kindergartener, but it was really a book that was advanced enough, that I was quite proud that he read it.
It described the significance of snails, and this got Maxwell convinced that he wanted one....or two ...or more. He made a habitat for them, complete with a background that he made himself on photoshop.
And then he made another home for them, and then another. Sad thing is, the only snails for sale around here need a warm aquarium, and none of his homes he made fit the requirements, so we are still a snail-less house.
Yah, so when I travel I guess I'm not as good at doing this every week. But I'm sure you survived without my posts.
I realised we didn't post about Valentine's day, and then realized I've been lazy about writing. This Valentine's day we didn't have anyone to send love letters to, but we DID make sugar cookies. Well, or sugar cakes. It was a bit of a sugar/fat overload. Doubt if we will do this again.
But most importantly, DUSTIN CAME HOME! Behold my African Prince:
He was dressed like that when I picked him up at the airport. I died laughing. He says this is conservative for Benin. Thankfully the tailor made the sleeves a little snug, or he would be wearing it every day, I'm sure.
My boys were pretty excited that Dustin gave them rocks. They had asked for some because they are really into rocks because of the Curiosity Museum. They have this Trading Post where you give them rocks, and they give you points that you can buy different rocks and things with.
My mom (who was AWESOME with my kids) fed their rock passion by taking them to a store where they sold rocks of all sorts. They all got some really cool rocks that started a rock collection Bonanza!
This is not the whole collection, this was just the beginning.
Also, when we got back I thought "I'm done with extra curricular. Only science and robotics for me." But then of course I saw the Alternate school offering classes about rocks.....I caved.
So for history we have actually done some things.
We learned about Alexander the great and made lighthouses as our activity. Of course when we were studying him, we realized that the Pharos lighthouse was actually built after Alexander died. Uhh perhaps next time around we will do an activity about a black horse. That would be more fitting.
We studied Romans. I feel like my kids know quite a bit about Romans because of Story of the World. We learned specifically about Pompeii that day (well Romulus and Remus, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra were taught as well.) But MAN there was some crazy stuff in Pompeii. Editing was necessary.
Anyway, we made our own Mt Vesuvius as our activity. Pretty lame, should have at least used food colouring.
And WHO is the most important figure in all of history? Jesus of course, but we need to celebrate the prophet who paved the way for him: John the baptist. And to celebrate John the Baptist, we ate "locust."
Those were the best tasting locust EVER.
And then (once we were home) we did an activity celebrating JESUS. We made a cup into a cloud and had Jesus ascend into the cloud. I liked it better then our sheep activity we did four years ago.
We have also been learning the Classical Conversations timeline song, and I LOVE the part where it slows down and sings "JESUS THE MESSIAH!!" and pauses. It's like it's pointing out that this is the best part of the timeline of the world. It gives me chills.
We actually did science this week since we came home. We learned about metal and metallic qualities like conducting electricity.
We checked to see if other things were conductors of electricity as well...
I actually did not support this.....he did this on his own.
This science topic and experiments were not hugely amazing. Maxwell said it was the most boring class ever. That kid is SPOILED!!
As far as school subject staples, it has been working to teach one child a day, however, I've gotten a little lazy because I know that I don't have to freak out about staying on schedule in order to get things done, and then things happen, and then I say "oh I'll just teach you Barton tomorrow," and that is just not fun to have to teach two kids again.
I've been so impressed with my boy's math lately. Maxwell is doing questions like 2k-3=5 and he's also been doing 2537 divided by 3.
Hyrum has been doing awesome. Look at this worksheet he just did.
And Daniel has continued to love the Piano. He's actually very intense about it. It's like it's stressful and hard but he is DETERMINED. He started making up his own compositions. Check it out:
I'm not sure if you could tell, but for the past year and a half, when I've had a baby, a toddler, and been trying to teach three different aged children, homeschool has not had the joy that it once had.
Sometimes I've felt like "This is hard and stressful, but I have no choice." I was doing doing doing and not accomplishing half of what I wanted to, which made me feel constantly like I was hurried, behind, and incomplete.
I've never really felt like public school was an option. My kids' scholastic and emotional issues would not be fixed there. The more I research dyslexia, the more I dread public school teaching a dyslexic child.
And I never felt like "unschooling" or anything like unto it was an option. I didn't feel like if I just stopped teaching them everything would become roses and I would feel good about everything.
I also didn't feel like computerized curriculum was the answer. I truly love Rightstart math for my kids, and feel like they need the interaction with me. Also, Barton IS working slowly but surely, which is something that can't be said for the online reading programs I've tried.
But I knew it wasn't working. I was constantly burnt out.
Dustin was leaving for Africa, and we decided that I should spend the time he's gone with my mom. I needed her help.
When I got here, my mom remarked how she could tell that I was stressed, and I just bawled.
I went on a date with Dustin after that, and my mind was reeling, trying to figure out some sort of answer.
What if I taught Daniel and Hyrum together? It actually sounded more stressful than teaching them alone, but then more time would be freed up. What if I taught them twice as many lessons and didn't teach Maxwell until the next day and doubled his lessons too. And then I came up with the real answer:
One child a day who does two lessons.
BINGO! Maxwell on Monday, Hyrum on Tuesday, Daniel on Wednesday, Maxwell on Thursday, Hyrum on Friday, Daniel on Saturday.
We still do devotionals and individual book reading everyday, and it would mean each child got four lessons a week instead of five, but honestly....they usually got only four anyway. And it would mean I was doing schools on Saturday, but Daniel's lessons are the shortest anyway.
So, for a week and a half we have been doing school this way, and the result?
SUCCESS!!!
Of course, most of the time my mom has been taking ALL the other children OUT of the house while I am teaching that one child.....but even on the days when she hasn't been able to do this, the stress levels are not as high as they were before.
Before this change, most of the time wasted was in between children. Also, it was draining to have to convince each child that school was a good thing. Each child every day. Also, making sure we had everything for the lessons and getting into the mode. Each child every day.
SO are two lessons too hard for my kiddos? Two Rightstart lessons and an hour of Barton?
Nope.
Hyrum was quite worried the first day when he heard my idea. We were doing math and I said "just do these problems, and you're done with math!" and he started being very dramatic saying "Yah, but then I have to do ANOTHER math and it will take as long as this and that's not fair and..." "Hyrum, you've already done two maths." "Hu?....oh!"
I even did three lesson with him the other day because his book has so many lessons to get through, and he handled it beautifully.
I'm a little concerned that there won't be as much repetition, but I'm willing to take the chances.
And I know it won't be as easy without my mom. I am seriously considering putting William in preschool next year, and kindergarten after that (not seriously considering full day first grade though) He is bored, and needs to get out of the house or he will destroy it.
But what about when I need to teach FOUR boys, you ask (or at least I have asked myself.) Well, by that time, Maxwell will be done with Rightstart and will be done with Barton.
Rightstart really suggests you use Videotext math after you're done with their program. Videotext is a computer/video type math, where I would not have to teach him, videos would. And since he would hypothetically be done with Barton, I would not have to worry about whether or not he could read all the instructions.
And since he would be done with Barton, he could start being self directed in online courses. With Coursera, or Williamsburg, or maybe even BYUI online.
Of course, this is just my theories, but perhaps, Maxwell could be fairly self directed, and so I can take him out of the rotation, and add William in.
So, after all that explanation, this has been my experience:
I wake up late (because I've been facebook messaging Dustin after midnight.) and I still get in devotionals and individual reading, Then mom leaves with the other kids, and I do that one child's school and it's not more stressful than before, and then mom's still not back yet, so that child and I decide what we want to study together.
Daniel decided to do photoshop one day:
CREEPY!!
Then we still have time and energy to do history!
And I still have time for my life!
And I'm SANE again!
YIPEEEEE!!!!
So now on to a normal report of the past couple of weeks:
We left our beloved Cardston for who knows how long. We will miss our Westwind classes. This is of last semester class:
And before we left, we had Maxwell's birthday. I was trying to get ready for our trip, and I was totally stressed out with school, and then I give in and do an elaborate birthday party with TWENTY kids....not happening again.
It was a Minecraft party. It was pretty awesome if I do say so myself, but I left too much to the last second, and so I was totally stressed out for awhile.
See how William got to the cake before I could take a photo? the stinker.
And then we were off. On the road, I made more sight cards. I had made one on the computer, and it is my boys' all time favourite:
They informed me that Steve never actually raises his hand like that....whatever.
When we got here, there was more snow than Cardston!!! So much for avoiding the winter. Last year, Utah was warm and snow free this time of year. Oh well
Before Dustin left, we went to the Provo City Centre Temple open house, which I think was some of the best education they have gotten all year long.
By the way, I took this photo of something Daniel wrote out of the blue. I thought it was so precious:
"families stay together forever" I hope when his pronunciation improves, his spelling will too!
Dustin sadly left, but we've been keeping busy. We went to the Curiosity museum, which is totally AWESOME!!! We spent two hours there, but we didn't see it all.
Check out our movie:
We went with my sister's family who had never been there either. So fun.
My mom's been taking the kids to the library and my Dad's been taking Maxwell fishing.
We're spoiled.
We also went to the circus. Pretty spectacular.
And we went to two plays that were playing here in Salem. Annie Get your Gun and Alice in Wonderland.
We have also actually done history!!!
We've studied ancient Greece. The olympics, philosophers, and the myths are what we've mainly focused on.
We made olympic medals out of ceramic casts of Greek horoscope characters as one of our activities:
And we went back to the Curiosity museum and went through their maze as an activity because we had read the Minotaur and the Labyrinth story.
Maxwell was super excited because he found out about their rock exchange program and can't wait till Papa comes back from Africa with awesome rocks that he can trade with.
Speaking of Dustin, I'm so in awe of who he is and what he's doing I feel so blessed to have the Van Duyses in our lives and for Dustin to be having all these experiences. Although, he went swimming in by a waterfall...that could have had crocodiles, snakes, and/or bacteria in it. NOT a Happy wife about that.
Well, Christmas break is now over. I LOVED having a break. I decided that I wasn't going to worry about teaching my kids AT ALL and instead focus on fixing up the house.
I painted, caulked, built, and cleaned, but I did NOT get out any school or craft supplies.
Well, that's not entirely true, we had a kid Christmas party, and I had to get a little crafty for that:
It was kinda hard to get back to the grind. In fact, this week went a little slow, but I will forgive myself ;)
We did do science. I thought I was going to get through way more material than I actually did. We learned about water. Its molecular composition, the water cycle, and all that fun stuff.
For some reason I thought we would be able to do this water filter device experiment that I had, but we ended up doing it just with my kids after everyone had gone home. It was way more peaceful that way. This is Hyrum pointing at the DIRTY water in the cup that we poured into our water cleaning tower to his right.
For some reason I thought we could also get to experiments on chemical reactions. Why? I have no idea. But I got the Mentos and Coke experiment ready and even though it had absolutely nothing to do with water, we did it as our finalee.
Way more impressive than our other attempts eh? I finally used REAL diet coke, and made sure it was nice and warm. That was the key.
This week we did do a little math. Hyrum's techniques are pretty fun for his multiplication. To do his 5s times tables, he times by ten and divides it in half. Sometimes he has actions to go along with this:
Of course, throughout the break we were experiencing quality literature. Maxwell got Where the Red Fern Grows on audiobook for Christmas, and he has listened to it like three times now. He would be listening to an audio book at all times if we would let him. (We have a family rule that you can't wear headphones, and so hearing his books ALL THE TIME gets taxing.)
These are some of the new ones he's been listening to, although he likes to go to his old ones too. Specifically "Farmer Boy." That seems to be his favourite.
None of these were abridge, and the Huckleberry Finn one I got from this awesome site where you can download free audio books. They are read by volunteers, so you get some good ones, some bad ones, and some weird ones. https://librivox.org/ Librivox.
And now for the "New Hope" portion of this post.
Hyrum has been "officially" diagnosed with ADHD, ODD, and language Processing disorder. The speech pathologist has been sweet and kind, but not that helpful. The psychiatrist just directed us to others and I'm still on the waiting list for an educational psychological analysis. So basically, I've been feeling like I'm just spinning my wheels.
But I was directed to Conrad Boehme, the school district's main child psychologist, by many people this last semester, and I don't know why I didn't get on that earlier. In fact, he's in my ward and was Hyrum's sunday school teacher for two years! His sister-in-law is a friend, of mine, and I see him all the time! WHY did I wait!?! In the end HE tracked down ME!!!
Hallelujah that he did. He was actually thinking I wanted to talk about Maxwell's dyslexia, but I then told him about Hyrum. It was an amazing visit. The kind of visit that makes me so happy to live in my tiny town.
One thing that came to a clarity is that Hyrum's ADHD and ODD are actually mostly the byproduct of the Language Processing disorder. Mostly, but not completely, but it means that focusing on helping the Language Processing, and there is actually HELP!
It's called Visualizing and Verbalizing by Lindamood Bell. It looks SO promising!!!! It seems like it was made just for Hyrum! I have so much hope, but it's expensive and I need to figure out a couple of things, but we are going in the right direction, and not going in the circles that I feel like we have been.
Well, another week has passed. This week was still a bit slow, but I have a scripture for that:
This needs to be my mantra. I do all things that lay in my power (with a little facebook break in the midst here and there) but I certainly don't always do it cheerfully, and I most definitely DON'T stand still and trust.
I need to be partners with Christ in teaching my kids. I have forgotten that. Church today was just for me.
It's the middle of the year, and I am more or less where I should be with math, and if I'm not going to get through the whole book by May 31, well, we'll for sure get through it before June 30, so I'm just going to chill about it.
And if we don't get all our reading in, well, we do it throughout the summer, so there. Be still.
And science while we're traveling? forget it.
History? I want to, but if not, I'll plug in "Story of the World" and my kids will survive.
It's okay. I AM ENOUGH. I AM DOING ENOUGH.
Sorry....I just need to tell myself that.....a lot.
So this week was our last science for a while...snowbirds that we are. It was all about Chemical reactions. How light, heat, condensing, catalysts and such effect reactions. We also talked about exo and endothermic reactions.
One favourite thing was the exothermic reacting pens:
The kids created art that could be erased and brought back by heat and cold
Soooo fun. We also had fun using concentrated hydrogen peroxide to do some pretty cool experiments. Remember how lame that genie in a bottle experiment was for history? We did that again, and it was lame again, so I put it to the side, and then about 5 minutes later it WORKED! Surprise!
And we also tried the Elephant toothpaste experiment again, and It worked as well!
And one more tid bit. I have DREAMED of the day when Maxwell would pick up a novel of his own volition and start to read and I would take a photo, and post it on here, and it would be a glorious day. Who knew that "Novel" would be the Book of Mormon:
Yep! Dustin got our family an ultra deluxe Book of Mormon family edition. That coupled with his primary's encouragement has got him reading on his own! Love that boy.
