Heart of the Matter Meme

This year I am homeschooling our youngest daughter for year three. She is a twelve year old sixth grader. After coming home from teaching everything from PK Gifted children to English and Math 7/8 and all levels of special education and gifted education, it was really a struggle for me not to reinact my public school classroom at home. This child, though, is not a traditional learner. She inherited dyslexia and dyspraxia from her natural father, has my high creativity needs, and in general is a bundle of energy. She loves to learn, yet reading was truly a struggle for her. About 7, when one of my friends worked with her and tried using overlays on her reading material, she danced and said….”the words stopped dancing”…and hince we began to truly comprehend that she sees everything differently. When we were in kindergarten, it took fully until 5 to identify letters….we could NOT figure out why….all the others in our household could do that at 3….but once you start understanding that everything she perceptualizes she has to learn to recognize differently than we see it, its a little easier to plan.
Madison also has a different need food wise. Super sensitive to sugar and carbs, if she is sugar or carb loaded during learning hours or 8 hours before them, you can count on alot of ADD behavior. Here I was telling the world as a sped/gt teacher that sugar wasn’t the culprit, low and behold I had a child who proved me wrong. She truly is sensitive to diet. On school days we protein load her and wait until after 3 to do fruit and juices and sugary stuff. if we don’t, you can rest assured, she’ll learn it that moment, and three minutes from now it will be a new lesson again that isn’t known. We did that for 3 whole years before we figured it out…..talk about RELIEF! When we figured out it wasn’t permenant memory issues, but daily diet issues….wow…what a moment, and in six weeks she caught up about as much as she learned in the whole of 2 years at school.
So to answer the question: What do we use for homeschooling this year. Our focus is going to be on the era of the Impressionist Artist. France in the 19th century. For Math we will use rod and staff for our mechanical bases, but for real life application, we’ll study how the industries operated in France during that period. We’ll look at prices and economy issues of the time. We’ll see how education and birthright could affect your station in life. We’ll study five of the artist of the time, and how their “renegade” perceptions of life changed society at that time. We’ll study the architecture of the period as well as the lay of the land and where the artists’ painted and how far they were from one another and from the venues in which their paintings were discussed. We’ll learn how to use watercolors paints and sketching in new ways. We’ll use the Huntsville Botanical garden to do some Charlotte Mason method walks and scientific sketching as well as journaling there weekly. Because we’re super spoiled by her dad, twice a month we will be driving to Huntsville to go to NASA’s center and following the programs there in the afternoons. We’ll follow Bob Ballard’s journey’s this year via the internet at home and do PBS’s programs on History with the Smithsonian, free from home along with other school aged children. For spelling, we will work with the words from our Impressionist unit study but also 10 from a sixth grade spelling list the public school here uses. For Science we will be continuing a garden study in year round gardening, growing for consuming as well as using our animals to study life cycles and nutrition. We have a rabbit, fish, dogs and a cat. This fall we’ll use a microscope to study what’s in the local water and to visit the plant here in Decatur on how water is prepared for local use. We’ll also study the river, take samples there and in the reserves locally and a few ditches around town and compare and contrast what is in them as we sent then off to be analyzed, carefully keeping notes on all of it as we go . (scientific method) Our library has Rosetta stone, and Miss Madison wants to use the French cycle this year to go with our study.
Our daily routine will involve math 4 days a week, writing 4 days a week and reading 4 days a week. This 1.5 hours keeps Madison focused. The other 2 hours a day will be on our unit study topics. For this she’ll work out of a 3 ringed notebook and she’ll take digital pictures, notes, journals, and research to eventually write her own book(scrapbook style) of what she learns about the Impressionist. We’ll use alot of internet support for The Impressionist but the time period for them works will be studied from art, history, and books on France we’ll get from the library. Each week she’ll keep a “look it up” list as we go and biweekly we’ll go to the local library for the entire afternoon to find the answers we didn’t find on the internet. We do school 4 days a week formally. The fifth day is still school, but its independently done. At that point, she may use the software for her grade level we use (Adventure Workshop) or catch up her journaling digitally with the camera as she writes what she is seeing, or she may simply choose to read that morning. Its a planned finish up day and independent work day. At times this day is also our evaluations day. (I can’t let go of every now and then a straight out test to see if the objectives we set for her were met and she can do them independently) We do handwriting and Bible time every day. ( I cheat, she copies the verse of the week, then writes the paragraph we develop together of how that verse applies to our lives, or to her life specifically and then once a week she writes a letter to someone, we edit, correct it and she rewrites a final copy and we mail it!)
Now for those who are saying, MY GOSH, remember, I was a teacher for 17 years, alot of this isn’t any more to me that what I was trained to do. We’re VERY laid back, I am running laundry, or writing when she writes, we’re very casual about where she works, some days its at a desk in my office, other times she’s spread out on the table in the kitchen. Other days on the deck with whatever plant or animal we’re working on. Homeschooling is about doing what works for you! This is what has worked for Madison, so its how we do it!

That’s how we do it this year!

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hugs! hugs hugs!
S