O Lord and Master of my life! Take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King! Grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother; For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages.



Amen



Showing posts with label homeschooling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homeschooling. Show all posts

Monday, June 17, 2013

What Worked, What Didn't

2012-2013
They are done.
I still need to finish the actual portfolios, though.  Lucy's is taking the longest to complete.  We are finding that as she nears college {gasp!} these keepsakes are totally going to come in handy.  

For now this is my record of what worked, what got done, and what failed. 
Along with some pictures of their year.

 ~ Lucy ~
Lucy, is easy. She works pretty much independently from me now; with only some exceptions in discussion and advice on her readings.  I don't edit her written work anymore.  This was a big year for her in so many ways; carrying 8.5 credits in addition to keeping up with outside activities.  The Lineman and I couldn't be more proud. I'm SO, writing this last line because I know she reads the blog every now and then.
Hi Lucy!

Just kidding.
We are very proud;

Lucy's year:
Lucy's highs:
1.  Receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation.  It was a beautiful thing to watch and we were over the moon for her.  As she put it, "It was my next step in my faith, I said 'yes' to Jesus."  Cool!

2.  Biology was a huge success this year.  She is a science kid; has been since she was little.  The text was still a bit too dry for her.  She felt that right when the text took you into a deeper level of understanding a concept; be it photosynthesis or cell reproduction, the text often left her wanting more.  That, and the wording was to technical.  There was also a couple of chapters that were about creation vs. evolution.  Lucy, is NOT a creationist; she ended up skipping the chapters after reading a few pages.   

Her science blog, Scientia-Biology, was created with the high schooler in mind.

Simply, Lucy says:
"As a sophomore student, I've found that reading textbooks that explain a lot and yet leave so much unanswered can be extremely infuriating and very tedious. This journal is my inspiration to learn more. It is my hope that it also inspires others to disregard the opinion that "science is boring" just because some lovely textbook left you hanging."

3. She got her driver's permit!

Lucy's lows:
  • Okay, what didn't work for sophomore year?  My editing skills.  Sadly, I am terrible.  Either I felt too critical or I felt like I needed to be more critical because she is my kid.  I finally gave up and delegated the task to someone else.  Evidently, she is a pretty good writer; I worried for nothing.  See, "pray and don't worry".  St. Padre Pio has it right.
  • Another low was in some of the selections in the history.  Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples was especially difficult.  His writing was long winded and dull, per Lucy.  We tried to find his speeches in order to persuade her that the man was awesome.  Sadly, his writing didn't win Lucy over at all.
  • Lucy kept up with her ASL lessons but ended up refocusing on Spanish after the first semester.  She'll continue with Spanish for the remainder of high school; practicing ASL on the side.
Those was really the only lows.  Before the second semester started Lucy wanted to start a class at our local community college; we were all for it.  She only found an Algebra 2 class for early Tuesday mornings but, she was eager to start.  That first day, we got up and ready to roll out... to a college math course.  I suddenly realized how crazy that was.   Her school work was already a lot.  She was gone to music on Thursdays.  She was on the softball team for our local league.  So I told her she had to choose.  Either softball or algebra; she couldn't have both.  

We had some great moments on the field this spring!  


~ Max ~
This year proved to be the hardest for my Max.  He worked his tale off this year; both in math and writing.  I must say, that through all the frustrations we were both glad to see the positive results at the end.  Sometimes  the light bulb takes a bit longer to light.  The point is, that it finally did.  Does this mean that next year should be a breeze?  Nope, neither of us think so.  But, no one beats Max's attitude.  He may have gottan down every now and then, but he always picks himself up.

Max's year:
Max's highs:
1.  Max made long strides forward in math.  He'll be moving on to Saxon 8/7 and work through the summer; reviewing grade 6 via Teaching Textbooks 7.  We stopped using TT ages ago but, the graphics and ease of it would be a good summer 'fun' review for him.

2.  Tutoring.  We are very grateful to have found a good tutor who understands Max and his needs.  Mr. P was great with him and we did see the results.

3.  Max read and completed The Hobbit!  

4.  Winston's Grammar was a hit.  This simple format uses the hands on style that Max does well with.  We used the white board for extra sentence structures and the cards for the decoding.  It was simple enough, yet clearly taught the concepts.

Max's lows:
No lows!  How about that.
  • Okay, there were some lows. Sometime around November, we had just moved into a new home, we lost our rhythm.  It's taken us until, ummmm, the last two weeks before summer break to find it again.  Luckily, the books and lessons we had planned last summer was a good fit for Max.  So, even with distractions and extra long periods of working through subjects; it got done.
  • Noeo Science.  Along the way we had to stop for a bit.  The kids loved the books and readings.  Only, the experiments were too spread out to keep their interest.  Sadly, this will probably be one area I'll change for next year.



~ Rose ~
Our Rose.  What a year for this one, she rocked it!
The avid reader was often found up a tree or curled up in a corner, reading.  She devoured The Secret, Garden, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Charlotte's Web, and is currently working through The Phantom Tollbooth.  3rd grade really agreed with Rose.

Rose's year:
Rose's highs:
1.  She's fallen head over hills with books.

2.  One of her memorable moments was at the spring music festival.  She performed a solo piece on the cello; her first ever solo performance and rated superior.  On the drive to the college, everyone in the car could tell she was nervous.  It was really cute but, I did feel for her.  That was until she stepped out on stage.  Rose rocked the piece!  Her feet tapped, her head swayed, and with all her quirky movements she had the audience smiling and swaying along with her.

Rose's lows:
  • Simply Grammar!  We wanted it to work, really we did.  By, the second semester we just knew that the lessons weren't working well for Rose.  She enjoyed the reciting of the grammar and the oral lessons, in general.  The problem was that she wasn't retaining the lessons.  I found myself supplementing worksheets, she is a worksheet kind of girl, along with her lesson.  That was fine, except I didn't have the extra time to continuously do this.  I've found that with this child, a Charlotte Mason approach isn't quite the fit I had thought it would be.  Instead, she enjoyed working on grammar alongside Max.  It was more hands on for her, fun, and she was retaining the lessons better.  Go figure!
  • What do you do when at the end of a week your child scores pretty well on their spelling quiz; yet their everyday spelling is horrible?  Here is another lesson that I really wanted to work for Rose... failed!  We love Catholic Heritage Curricula here, Cecilia uses their lessons exclusively, but this subject didn't work well with Rose.  We have found that she presents similar learning issues as Max. Not as extreme as his, but enough so that My Catholic Speller wasn't a good fit either.  It really doesn't matter if Rose can learn to spell that, what, does, said for a spelling quiz, then not spell them correctly every where else. So we are off to All About Spelling; I wish I would have started this from the beginning with all the kids.

~ Cecilia ~

Cecilia's year:
Cecilia's highs:

She is reading... nuff said :-)

Okay, Okay, there were lots of highs for Cecilia.  Cecilia stared the violin, she was part of the choir for the co-op's Mass, she is becoming a better swimmer, and play-plays-plays all day long.

A really good year Cecilia!

Next up:
The post for 2013-2014 school year
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