Figuring out Writing

I've always (from the time Maxwell was in first grade) felt like I had math figured out since Rightstart worked so well.

I've felt like over the last EIGHT years (two rotations) of science and social studies, I've refined it, and my kids are getting it.

I've felt like I figured out handwriting.

I've felt like I've figured out devotionals.

I've felt like I've figured out teaching dyslexics to read.

But writing. Teaching grammar and writing. I was really stressed out. I knew I was failing at that.

When I got Fit It! Grammar, my outlook, and my lack of hope started to change. I started to see the way forward, and have hope.

Now I think I've figured it out. It comes in three parts until they can read smoothly, and once they can do that, IEW takes over.

1-Have them dictate to you in small chunks. With Maxwell, when he would dictate to me it would take up so much time. Why do it for so long which makes it a daunting task? We talk about the Setting, characters, and events, and then flesh out the story. BUT we only do 30 words a day. 

2-Spelling-spelling on the computer which has a recording of me giving the test words, and then they have to see if they got it right from the answer sheet, but eventually (once they are very sure they'll get them all right) they come to me and then they get lots of school points.

3-Barton writing.

Of course, the spelling words are Barton words too.

It helps me feel like I’m headed down a road that will actually get us somewhere instead of uncertainty. We’ll see.

I’ve started Foundation in Sounds with William. He seems to like it. They use the word “game” a lot in their manual, and that helps his overall attitude towards it.

Also, William really did get through his entire Handwriting Without Tears book.

As for math, Daniel is done with grade four math! Thankfully, the last few lessons of the Rightstart year are usually very simple and are usually geometry or something. What a blessing to feel done.

For social studies, we learned about population. One of my favourite homeschool lessons we do (we do it every four years) 1-bring out a world map 2-have toy soldiers representing the distribution of the world’s population 3-have candy corn representing the distribution of the world’s food 4-have sweetheart candy represent the distribution of the world’s wealth.

Africa only gets a fourth of a sweetheart and Asia gets over half of the soldiers.

Then we learned about resources. We learned how countries who depend solely on one resource can really suffer. Of course, what activity could be better than Settlers of Catan when trying to teach kids about resources? They loved it.

Also, in our recent travels, we happened upon the place where the Canadian Railroads were first joined. No golden spike like in Promontory Point, but still fun to be there to learn about it.

Science-One science class we talked about the earth’s atmosphere. We talked about heavy air and light air. We talked about oxygen and carbon dioxide. We did one where the water went up when the oxygen was burned up.

 My whole group. I sure love these kids:

The next week we learned about air pressure. One of my favourite subjects. We did lots of things that felt like magic tricks including putting a card on the bottom of a jar filled with water and having the air pressure from underneath keep the card from spilling the water.

We also did the good ol’ egg in a bottle trick.The kids love it.

As part of this, we learned about aerodynamics. We learned about how the shape of a wing creates lift because of air pressure.

Practically the next day we went to the Cardston airport for a picnic and saw the shape of wings face to face!

The next week we went to the city’s water purification facility!

It really was like a humungous Britta Water filter. We are the first city to get the water from the mountains. After that, we treat our waist and put it back into the river. So the water the other cities get is our recycled tickle!  

The city worker was so informative and interesting. I loved it, and I think the kids did too. I totally want to make this a tradition.

Okay, so I must say that the last couple of weeks have been very emotional at our alternate school. There’s been a lot of debate and clarification about what our program actually consists of.

You see, there’s things that the government requires, things that the parents want, and the combining of the two.

In the city next to us, they’ve tried doing what is basically short standardized tests EVERY WEEK to prove to the government that they were teaching what they wanted.

Umm…NO!

Are you kidding?

There was a big hullabaloo about what kind of assessments would be part of our program. What they were doing in the other city is, in my opinion, about the worst kind of assessments there are.

It made lots of moms look for a different educational provider altogether. 

In Canada, we need to go to a government approved facilitator which is getting government funding. Not the perfect solution when you want free thinking, but there are currently lots of options, including religious schools, which is impressive.

There’s a school called “School of Hope” that is Catholic, but friendly to other faiths, that many of the moms seem like they are going to go with next year.

I honestly feel like I get more freedom with Westwind, and I love the teachers there. I’ve talked to the principal personally a couple of times in depth in the last month, and I honestly feel like he heard and reacted to what I said.  I like feeling like if I have something to say, I get heard. I doubt I would feel that way with school of Hope.

We had an amazing meeting where we called out exactly what the government needed, what the parents needed and how to combine the two. It was really productive. 

Now let’s see how they carry out what we talked about.

You see, one of the main concerns with homeschool families, which in this area are really big families, is that we are teaching multiple age groups. That means we don’t want to have to teach this child biology and this child physics and this child astronomy. We want to teach them altogether.

For instance. I think I do an awesome job at teaching science. I am confident that my children are prepared for a high school level of science by the time they are Maxwell’s age (13.)

But the government wants me to teach certain things at certain ages, and frankly I just ignore it.

They want grade six to learn about aerodynamics. I just taught my kids about aerodynamics because that’s the point in science that we were at, and it made sense to teach it then. None of my kids are in grade six.

In one year, Hyrum will enter grade six. Will I teach aerodynamics? Probably not. I will actually teach it twice, once when we talk about air pressure and once when we learn about the Wright Brothers, and maybe another time, but probably not when one of my kids is in sixth grade, and I don’t really give a crud whether or not they are in the right grade when they learn it. The point is that they learn it.

But last year, when Maxwell was in grade six, I forgot that I taught it when we taught about the Wright brothers that year, and I side stepped the question and started talking about lung models, tendon models, dissecting eyeballs, hearts and brains.

In the government’s eyes, they think I’m probably failing at teaching science because although I dissected brains and made models of the human ear, I did not teach about aerodynamics.

See the problem?

Also, my kids are dyslexic. They are not going to fit in a “grade” box in anything anyway.

But I feel like we are on the right track. Maybe next year won’t have all the kinks figured out, but the year after that hopefully.

And hey, homeschooling actually works. Here’s my loverly niece who was practically “unschooled” (the right way of “unschooling” if you know what I mean) and went to high school for a couple of semesters and got straight “A”s got a good ACT got accepted to college, BYUI, and all before 17.

She never got to go to grad, but this year she got asked as a date.

And my kids certainly get enough social experience.

They had soccer just like the “normal kids.”

They have birthday parties full of friends,

And they have lots and lots and lots and lots of family social times:

(My parents in law’s 50th wedding anniversary party on the coast!)