now watching: Kennedys The Curse of Power

Kennedys The Curse of Power

The West (Ken Burns)

mixed media: Founder

mixed media: The Sixties

[Netflix]

week-ing, a school report

With meet season in full swing and BC back at home things around the farm have been a bit hectic.

First, there are the meet weeks. They tend to shorten the school week (for either travel or competition) and increase the amount of farm & house work needed to be done in a shorter amount of time.

Second, Utah is finally having a good winter. Or we all moved to Alaska... either way there is a ton of snow removal work to be done.  Driving errands are plotted out with military exactness. The skiing is amazingly distracting! The mood rests somewhere between snowed in at the Overlook Hotel and Christmas at Hogwarts.

For BC's part he always adds an exciting twist to life.  This time he has brought home boxes (and boxes) of treasure.  Old coins, strange rings, glasses, crystal laden chandeliers, metal work, lamps, door knockers, whatever he found worth saving from the old mansion in DC he was remodeling.

It's kind of like being in a never ending episode of Antiques Road Show without the grand cash values and the guest don't take their shit home...

If you remember I have spent months, literally months clearing clutter from our house. You might see how perplexing the dusty boxes stacked in all the corners are to me.

Then there was the death of my computer and the period of social-media-rest that followed. Amen. And the dawning of the era of new, unsteady, loveless relationship with my new lap top.

Through all that school has been thriving.

What? Yeah, I was surprised too.

This time of year I usually write up a post titled something like "what about school?" Trying to explain how we are holding on by either doing the bare bones or by altering the whole system to make it fit in the current season. Not this time. School is rocking!

So what are we doing different?

For starters, this year we began schooling at night.

This might sound crazy especially considering Beach gets out of gym at 8PM 4 days a week! But with a little tweak to the family charter clause about "not eating dinner in front of the TV", we can watch history and/or science documentaries at night.  Our favorite current media resources; American Experience, BBC, Frontline, NOVA, Nature, PBS, Radio Lab (NPR), & This American Life (NPR).

On the nights we don't have something educational in mind we read or play math games.

Part of what makes this work is that Beach is willing to stay up later (& sleep in a little longer to make up for it). We have never enforced a bedtime for her. We have left it up to her and she has always chosen to retire early. 

Last year she barely made it through eating dinner on a gym night. A game of UNO or an hour long documentary on the space program would have been impossible.

The other factor making this work is her knowledge base is getting so wide it makes it easy to find topics that engage her.  Yes, even history.

With night school in full swing it takes the pressure off during the day. We meet in the morning (8:00 am) and read together.  Spend 20-30 minutes doing math. Mid morning (10:00) we might work on art or photo editing, tackle a science topic, or do a few pages in the testing book (Complete Curriculum). 

If Beach is busy in her room I might pop in and read to her while she cleans (she loves cleaning her room, it helps her relax).

After making and sitting for a hot lunch together we spend about an hour listening to stories from either Creepy Pasta collections or NPR programs: The Moth, This American Life.

I use this time to pick up the house and get ready for work. Beach to draw/paint, eat a late afternoon snack, and eventually prepare for gym.

Another change working for us is the major decluttering of the house and school.  It has made all the difference!  We have just what we need when we need it.  Loosing all those extra books and projects honestly feels like I turned off a radio that has been loudly blaring away for years!  I never realized how much pressure and distraction the long list of what we should be doing next was for me.

The final key to our success under the fire of meet season & the past holidays is Beach's growing independence with her own studies. Not only can she do more on her own she wants to. And I have acquired a new nickname: Controlling Hands.

She has also found a few new mature passions; photography and autism.  A few weeks ago Beach began researching ways she might find a career working with children who have autism.  It shifted our science studies away from hard sciences and into the softer sciences.

So what about school? School is rocking. Right now it looks & feels like I always dreamed it would. Woven into the fabric of our lives, effortless and engaging. That is how it is until the weather changes....

History, putting it all together

This is the first year I have been able to do 2 different studies of History with Beach at one time. Our World History is all by the book, the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History.  The book includes great internet links and we have found some really fantastic documentaries to go along with our studies.  

Our American History is "all" by the book too but a totally different kind- NOVELS.  

Now like any other school kid, Beach has been through early American history a dozen times.  In fact, I believe our first ever history lesson was in a Jamestown build by wooden blocks and populated by Playmobile. 

Each go-around (hopefully) adds in new, more complex information.  Which is great, I suppose... but with Beach, because she claims to not like history our studies tend to end before gaining any ground. The furthest we have ever gotten is Westward Expansion. And somehow we did that without going through the Revolutionary and the Civil War.  

So obviously there were a few holes in our system.  Then we found historical fiction and historical novels. Each book gives a picture window into a specific time and place. Often we find ourselves outside the book talking about events and people creating a broader understanding of the history involved. Yes, there are still holes but as we read more and more the holes are getting filled in.

Last week we finished reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Colonial America/historical fiction).

Beach only had one criticism of the book; she wanted to know more about day to day life in early Colonial America.  So I found this little book put out by Scholastic.  

It was a little bit below her level of curiosity but there was some interesting information that helped finish off our Colonial Times reading. We might spend some time watching Colonial House (PBS), which also has a great interactive web page. 

We have already had some good luck with what I would call bonus points- finding history links to our reading in other places like the poison exhibit at the Natural History Museum and the History Channel's documentary of The Real Story of Halloween. 

  
We started our next book after rejecting 2 very well loved (to other people) award-winning books;  Sarah Plain and Tall just couldn't hold either of our attention and I couldn't stand reading The Gathering of Days... I know, boo if you want but there is so much out there to learn! Why waste time on something you don't love? So we picked up the next one in line Lily's Crossing and guess what?! We already love it.
  

Lily's Crossing is a voice from the American side of World War II, contrasting the experiences of a young *Polish girl during the same time period in The Endless Steppe (historical autobiographical novel).  

*I still view this as American History. It is always important to gain global context.     

After we finish, if Beach is still interested I am considering reading Snow Falling On Cedars and/or *The Diary of Anne Frank.
  

The Far East

The Far East c.10,000BC-c.500AD

Media Links:

 History vs Genghis Khan (Ted Ed)

National Geographic China's Ghost Army Terracotta Warriors (2010)

we made it to Rome (kind of)!

Okay that is we made it to the point when Greece becomes part of the Roman Empire. That officially fills the first section of our timeline. 

More amazing than how constantly we have stayed with our history studies is how often Beach is saying things like, "Wow, that's cool." and "So that is where that comes from..." 

The next section of the book and our timeline takes us to Asia but before we move on we are going to do a little reading from a book Beach loved when I read it to her a few years back Adventures of the Greek Heroes. However, this time around she will be doing the reading. 

Not bad work for a self-proclaimed history hater... eventually she's going to have to give that false title up.

the in school rhythm

We spent Monday cleaning, more sorting/donating, and playing games. No school. Tuesday, we started our school morning early (7AM) watching The Myth of the Minotaur. Followed by anatomy and creative writing. In fact we worked in "school" most of the day. But then on Wednesday, BC took off the morning so we could go hiking as a family. Enjoy the early fall colors and little did we know it when we set off, catch the first snowflakes of the season. 

Thursday (today) it was back to the books...    

Body Systems #1 Anatomy 

(I couldn't find my human paper forms so we used a Snoopy stencil instead)

We finally have our Math workbooks! 

One for Math Theory the other for practice and problem solving. So she did a few pages in both books to get the feel of it. (Hope it's a good fit!)

More reading in our World History book with a few rounds of hangman in between subjects. I like to use words from the day's lessons. Beach likes to use the longest, hardest words she can find!

Around noon I left Beach to work on her own reading and the art projects she is working on using old (I mean really old like 1973!) book illustrations. After lunch we listened to a set of Creepy Pasta stories off YouTube. Then it was off to gym.  

 Tomorrow gym starts a half hour earlier than it does Mon-Thurs. It shortens the day a tiny bit. We don't have anything too big planned. We might hook up with a friend for an art play-date mid morning. Or it might be a good day to do a read-a-thon in the park or even just hang around in the yard.

I'd say it's been a pretty perfect school week. 

great media resource:

The History Channel series Clash of the Gods, 
The Myth of the Minotaur.

Tuesday

I'm still not feeling well so we spent the morning reading from our book The Witch of Blackbird Pond, reading history, and coloring Shrinky Dinks. By mid-morning, we had managed to cover a few major milestones in world history. 

Wanting some sort of proof (that would be me wanting proof) of our studies, I offered the idea of making a timeline. The idea was met with serious skepticism on Beach's part, "yeah.a.timeline.fun." 

Once she realized all the little artistic components she could make she was totally sold. See, history is fun!!!