We are using Artistic Pursuits Book 1 this year for our art curriculum.  I bought this curriculum over a year ago with the full intention of using it then, but never pulled the trigger because I was intimidated by it.  The reason isn’t because the curriculum is difficult to implement, in fact, it’s very easy to do and quite appealing as well.  I was simply intimidated by my lack of art background.  I didn’t grow up with art and had never experimented with any art mediums.  Art is such a foreign subject to me so I naturally block it out of my brain.

What I’m discovering is that my children are quite different from me.  They simply like to draw and make things.  I decided that I should really take my art curriculum out of the corner of the room and start teaching it.  I’m really enjoying it and so are the kids.  The boys did water colors for today’s lesson.

They liked it so much that they asked to do more.  Here are their creations:

Doing hard things and persevering through a difficult task do not come easy for children.  Frankly, it’s not easy for adults either.  Today, once again, one of the kids grumbled when I said, “Time to do math!”  I was met with resistance and a grumpy face.  I allowed him to work on other subjects first and then return to math at a later time.  However, when it was time to do math, he once again resisted.  I was dismayed, but I was not going to let this go.  I decided it was life lesson time, a lesson about the importance of perseverance.

Rather than simply telling him that perseverance is important and that it’s a good character trait, I decided to ask him some questions in order to draw out his thinking on the subject.

I asked him, “Suppose Daddy was assigned a project at work, but because this project would take too long and too much effort, Daddy decided that he doesn’t want to work on it.  He’ll just quit the project either right at the beginning or half way through. What do you think would happen to Daddy at work?”  I followed up with a series of questions.:

• “Would his employer still keep him if he didn’t simply quit working hard?”
• “If Daddy doesn’t work hard and persevere, would other employers want to hire him?”
• “What would happen to us if Daddy gets let go?”

From this specific example and set of subsequent questions, my boy was able to answer and come to the conclusion that perseverance is important.

I also told my son that persevering in the midst of a problem is not easy but when you develop the habit of not persevering, you’ll suffer consequences later in life.  Once a habit is developed, it’s harder to break.  If he has a habit of quitting when something gets difficult, this is how he will approach life in every aspect.  He will realize this mistake when he’s an adult but by then, it’d be lot harder to correct.  He would wish that I had taught him to persevere when he was young.  I wanted to give him a broader picture and how his lack of perseverance in doing math might possible affect his life.  After this long talk, I believe he got it and we proceeded to solve math problems.

Even though the point of our conversation was persevering through doing hard things, I still wanted to present math more palatable to him.  This is not an effort to try to cater to him, but to make it more digestible and appealing to him.  One of his complaints is that math takes too long and even after working through all 30 problems, he still needs to go back and correct the ones he missed.  I can understand that.  I decided that I would split up the problems where he would do some of them orally, some on the white board, and some on the paper instead of all of them on the paper.  We were able to do many of them orally so he only needed to do 14 problems on the paper.  He was so thrilled!  He was so excited that he told his brother about it!

Sometimes we just have to be careful how we implement the process by which our children learn perseverance.  We should be understanding and sympathetic of their struggles.  Instead of just playing hardball with them and demand that they just work on it no matter what, we should figure out how much they can handle and how much we should push so that they learn about perseverance.

Too often math is taught in isolation from the practical math we encounter day-to-day.  Of course not every math concept can be applied to our daily lives, but many do.  Our children should know that the math knowledge they obtain is something that’s real, applicable for everyday lives in shopping, cooking, etc.  You don’t need a curriculum to teach practical math.  Just look at our daily lives and see where math is required.

As I was eating lunch and browsing through the ads that just came in through the mail, it dawned on me that I can do practical math with my boy using these ads.  You see, a homeschooling mom is always teaching, even on her lunch break.  I summoned my son and told him to look at the CVS ad.  I directed him to a page where snacks are marked 10/$10.  I explained that this means that if you buy 10 of these items, you pay $10.  In such example, how much is each item?  He quickly calculated in his head and said it was $1/snack.  Yay!  First problem solved!

Then I pointed to another sale where the cereal bars are going for 2/$5.  Again, I asked how much is each item and he answered $2.50 per bar.

Then I gave him a slightly more complicated problem where pasta sauces are 4/$5.  Now he can’t calculate it as quickly in his head so I asked him for a number sentence or an equation to solve this problem.  He said to take $5 and divide it by 4, which is exactly right.  I worked with him to work out the math and figured out that each item is $1.25.

I directed him to the Parmesan cheese that’s on sale for $2.99 and posed another question for him.  If you have 3 items to buy where the first two items cost $2 each and the third one is $2.99 like this Parmesan cheese, how can you quickly calculate or estimate how much you’d have to pay?  I told him that the first two items is $4 and now we just have to add it to the third item.  Rather than trying to work out the actual $2.99, we should round it up to $3.  Now that it’s a round number, we can quickly add it to the first two items and come up with $7.  This is estimation.

Next time we’re at the store, I will also do the same thing with him, teaching him to calculate how much each item is and estimate the amount of our bill.

We had another fun history day and it involved FIRE!  We studied Daniel’s friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego who got thrown into a firey furnace because they refused to bow down to King Nebudchadnezzar.  Rather than getting killed in the furnace, God protected them.  All of them were unharmed and not even a hair was singed.  The activity associated with the lesson was burning various items.  Don’t worry, fire safety was taught way before this activity.  We also had a bowl filled with water so that we can extinguish any burnt item.  The kids had fun finding various items to burn such as paper, hair, penny, apple, rock, wheel, screw, plastic and feather.

This little girl wished she could burn something.

This girl was too scared to participate so she just sat and watched.

I’ve been very happy with Jessie Wise’s phonics book Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading as I’ve successfully taught two kiddoes of mine to read.  Now I’m in the process of teaching progeny #3 to read using the same curriculum.

For today’s lesson, we played a reading fishing game.  To reinforce the sounds of /ang/, /ong/, /ing/ and /ung/, we place leading letter (s) such as s, w, g, sw, d, b, z, cl, etc. on the floor and the child is to fish the leading letters and match it with one of the/ang/, /ong/, /ing/ and /ung/ sounds.  For example, if she fishes a “s” letter, she is to put it together with “ing” to make the word “sing.”  After she says the word correctly, she fishes another letter.  If she gets “w” this time, she is to put it together with “ing” again to make “wing”.  Once all the leading letters are used for one particular sound, we move on to the next set.  We made ad hoc fishing rod using a magnet, a chop stick, and string.  The hook on each letter card is a metal paper clip.  This game was a hit and every child who played this game previously was enthused.  I’m happy because learning is so much fun for the kids.

Emmie fishing for a letter:

Got her letter!

Even progeny #5 wants to fish:

A common fear of homeschooling parents is the fear of educational holes or gaps.  What if our children grow up not knowing something everyone else in the public or private school learned?  This fear is very paralyzing and the consequent temptation to send our children to the “trained professionals” is great.  So, how can we deal with educational gaps in our children’s intellectual life?  Even if there are educational gaps, will we even know it?  After all, it’s a blind spot and a blind spot is something we don’t see.

As for me, I accept that fact that my children WILL have educational gaps because this is fact of life.  In addition, I also believe children in the public or private schools have educational gaps as well.  Even those who attended the best of the best schools will and do have educational gaps.  Why?  Because what one experiences or knows is not the same as the next one.  We can’t possibly experience or learn everything there is to know.  Rather than being paralyzed by how my children compares to their counterparts, I simply accept that fact that they won’t be the same — and endeavor to focus on what they will learn rather than what they might inadvertently not learn.

I believe that if we as parents are faithful in educating our children as well as educating ourselves, the fear of educational gaps won’t be as scary.  We should always strive to give the best we’ve got.

Our school is in full swing and so far the kids are still excited about it.

We studied the prophet Ezekiel in our history lesson today.  Part of the vision God gave Ezekiel was eating of the scroll (Ezekiel 3:1-3) and to illustrate the lesson, we made edible scrolls.  To document the occasion, here are the children making their own edible scrolls and enjoying them.

First, we flatten the bread with a rolling pin.

Second, we spread it with Nutella or peanut butter or both.  Then we carefully roll it up like a scroll.

Finally, we consume our scrolls.