Update week of 9/23/2013

     I didn't manage to update the blog the last few weeks so this post will contain pictures from those weeks.  We just finished week 6 of MTMM and I am very impressed with how Noah is taking charge of his school day.  He starts at 7:30 and takes about a 45 minute lunch break and then is done no later than 1:30.  He has decided he likes to get the right side of the plans done first and that leaves what he considers the fun stuff for the second half of the day. 

     In history he has read about the Gilded age, the annexation of Hawaii, factories, unions, etc.  He seems to find it pretty interesting.  We read the book Factory Girl for our story time and it was a tough book to read.  It really made him realize how fortunate he is.  The follow up activities for the story time have him reflect on different things that use a deeper level of thinking and I really like that.  I have been very impressed with his written narrations.  He is writing lengthy, multi-paragraph narrations.   I pulled out his CTC notebook to show a friend that is considering homeschooling and using CTC and I was amazed by how much progress N. has made in the area of written narrations. 

   One of his history projects was making a Hawaiian Lei.  Cutting and rolling paper is a little tough for N., so instead of getting frustrated he just ends up laughing when he can't quite manipulate things.  I do help him with cutting as needed because otherwise his hands get too tired for other subjects.

Nature Journaling is a subject that also can be kind of tough for him.  He always does the drawing and then I let him type any journaling, but often he doesn't write too much.  I am ok with that.  He isn't a guy that likes to express lots of his thoughts on paper.  As long as he writes something. 

 He likes the variety of the history spines this year.  Here is a pic of him with his reading companion.

He did a drawing of the Titanic from Draw and Write Through History.  It isn't his best drawing ever, but I noticed last year it takes a few drawings for him to get back in the swing of things with these.  I was pleased with his cursive paragraph that he wrote to go with the drawing.  His letter formation is still not perfect, but considering the occupational therapist in ps said the most we could ever hope he would do was to sign his name, I consider this paragraph a success.

I am also pleased with his Presidents notebook entries.  He is learning to take notes from a video, which is an important skill that I see him figuring out slowly but surely.

So far this year has been a smooth one.  I attribute that to all the skill building that is incorporated in the previous HOD guides. 

Weekly update for 9/2/2013

We finished our third week of MTMM.  Unfortunately I didn't do a good job of taking pictures this week.  I will try and do better next week. 

N. is getting into his groove as far as school.  He gets up at 6:30 so that he can have breakfast with his dad.  Then he is ready to start school by 7:30.  I am not so ready to start school by then so he does Bible first.  This has worked pretty well except for the fact that some of the bible questions require him to write long answers and he tends to shorten them to the point that they loose their meaning.  The only solution so far is for him to dictate his answers to me,but I really don't like doing that because it takes away his independence.  I just don't know what else to do.  It really won't work for him to type the answers because it is a workbook.  I guess we could keep his answers in a separate notebook, but that seems very disjointed.  The study is a great study, just need to figure out how to make it work for N.

In Science he continues to do very well answering the questions in the Tiner book.  There was a time when the Tiner books put him in tears and he would miss almost all of the questions.  I pointed that out to him this week when he was getting all the questions right or only missing 1.  It is good for both of us to reflect on his progress.

He enjoyed going out and doing some Nature Journaling this week.  He does more of the drawing and not much of the journaling at this point.  Again because it is so time consuming to come back in and try and type something up that it takes some of the joy out of the activity.

Everything else seems to be going well. He struggled a bit with his written narration from Rescue and Redeemed this week, but I think it is because it was a long reading.  That is when his memory issues are evident.  He ended up narrating mostly the first half of the story and I was fine with that.

He is really liking the BJU lit book.  I am enjoying it because through our discussion of the questions at the end of the story I am able to teach some lit elements and see how he is grasping them.  He amazed me with his ability to find some symbolism in some of the stories this week.

In the category of extra curricular he and his Dad worked on a pretty amazing project this week.  N. is a huge fan of parkour and the tv show American Ninja Warrior.  He takes a parkour gymnastics class and spends most hours outside practicing.  He and my dh designed and built a giant set of monkey bars very similar to something you would see on American Ninja warrior.  It has something called a cliff hanger on one side and a giant peg board on the other. I don't know how N. is able to do these things with his CP, but he manages it.

Weekly update for the Week of 8/26/13

This was our 2nd week of MTMM.  I like to be very candid on this blog so I will say the first few days of this week were a little rough.

It started when N. had difficulty with his oral narration from Rescue and Redeem.  He was back to a very general summary instead of a detailed oral narration.  He only used 3 of the key words he was supposed to use.  He and I talked about it and I made it clear what my expectations were.  I don't expect him to use all the words, but he needs to use more than 3! He also struggled in his other subjects and I felt like he was not giving me 100%.  He was getting the work done, but not doing his best work.  We had several conversations about that.  I really think some of it is the age and some of it is being a boy, however as I pointed out to him the Bible is clear that we are to do all things to the glory of the One who made us.  The third day he turned a corner.  Day 3 and 4 were fantastic days. He put his full effort into everything he did.

For his science experiment this week we had the pleasure of having the principal (Dad) home to help with the experiments since they involved fire and chemicals and those thing make me a little nervous.  This is an Independent box, but tremors and chemicals don't go together very well so often we are N's hands and he tells us what to do.

He used the PDF expert app on his Ipad again to type his science experiment and it worked out well.  His experiment didn't work out as expected so he was able to figure out why that might be.

He studied Hudson Taylor this week so his history project was a scroll or in our case a wall hanging that had the word Christian painted in Chinese.

His written narration was also on Hudson Taylor.  I was a little worried about how he would do since the reading was once again in Rescue and Redeem, but he did a great job.

His Worthy Words document this week was a letter by Hudson Taylor about spiritual issues.  This is right up N's alley and we actually were able to have a pretty good Socratic discussion. 

He finished up Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra and started Teaching Textbooks Algebra.  I plan on supplementing this with some problems from other books just to give him some variety. 

First Week of School 8/19/2013

This has been a very full week.  This past weekend we spent the weekend at a getting started weekend with S. at her college.  Wow, talk about emotional.  It was hard and very strange to drive away knowing this was the first step on her way to becoming an independent adult.  We do feel that God has led her to this college and we loved what he heard at this school.  I think they truly do desire to lead the students into a deeper relationship with Christ and the Bible is the ultimate authority on all things. 

On Monday N. and I decided we would go ahead and start school since it would keep us from missing S. so much.  I am so thankful for the familiar layout of the guides.  N. was able to just jump in and start ordering his boxes and reading the instructions.  I did make sure he understood each box, just like I do every year.  He loves the bible study already.  It is a little tricky for him to write on the small lines and we have had some issue with him writing one or two word answers when he should write a sentence or two.  If I ask him what the word means he can tell me the answer in full detail, he just has difficulty writing it.  We are still figuring out a work around for that.  I love hearing him belt out the hymns in full baritone voice.

In Science he has gotten in the groove of the Tiner book about Chemistry and is doing a good job answering the questions.  He did his first lab and was very thorough in following all the safety directions. I love him in his lab outfit. He was able to type his lab report and that went well.  I need to tweak things a little  as far as formatting, but I think it is going to work.

For Storytime we are reading "Under the Hawthorn Tree".  I am still reading out loud to him.  We both enjoy it and it enables him to concentrate on the story and as a result he does a better job on the bookmark follow ups.  These he also types on the Ipad.

My dear dh designed a Word Template for the Presidents notebook to enable N. to type the information for the President's study.  This worked very well.  I can see a skill he will need to grow into is gathering information from a video.  He struggled with that some this week, but I am sure he will improve.

He did a fantastic job on his written and oral narrations this week.  I am hoping that maybe the struggles he has had in the past with these are behind us, but we will see.  He really likes The Story of the World and says it is easy to understand.

The other area that I can see that will be a skill that will come in time is the Socratic Discussion over the Worthy Words (primary source documents).  This week was mainly me modeling it for him.  He is a man of very few words so lengthy in depth discussions are a little out of his comfort zone, unless they are about the bible then he is all about it.

We are finishing up TT Prealgebra and then will move right into TT Algebra.  I plan on adding a few more practice problems, but overall I am pleased with this program.

At the end of the week he told me that once again he enjoyed his first week of school.  That is a successful week in my book.

Getting ready for the school year

     I have spent the summer finalizing things and getting ready for the school year.  It is weird to have only 1 that I am planning for.  In between buying all the things for S to take to college I have been assembling everything N will need.

     He will continue with HOD and is now in the Missions to Modern Marvels guide.  This guide looks very full and meaty.  It will definitely challenge him.  Usually we follow the guide exactly as written with the exception of math.  This year we are changing up 2 other things, the literature and the writing program.  I am changing the literature because he has already completed the DITHOR 6/7/8 book.  I love DITHOR and think it is a fantastic program, but the one negative for N was that usually he ended up dictating his answers to me which took away some of his independence.  Instead of DITHOR he will use Bob Jones' 8th grade Lit book "Excursions in Literature".  There are varying types of questions at the end of each chapter that we will use as discussion questions.  There is also a teachers CD that has other worksheets.  I will be using these very sparingly in instances where it covers something I know is a struggle for him.  This is only meant to be a 1 semester course so I have also planned out 3 books from the HOD 7/8 book pack that he hasn't read yet.

     The writing program scheduled in HOD is Write With the Best Volume 2.  We did WWTB volume 1 a few years ago and he did well with it and enjoyed it, however as I looked through WWTB vol. 2 I realized there were some things that were going to overwhelm him.  The passages that the dc base their writing off of are very challenging to read.  I knew he would get bogged down there and not be able to see the forest for the trees so to speak.  I had my dh look at it closely and we both agreed to go in a different direction, so we will use Jump In.  I have only scheduled the units that match up with what WWTB teaches so he will still write the same type of essays.  I like the looks of the program a lot and think N will like it also. 

    We are considering this year 8th grade for N even though if he were still in ps he would be in 9th.  He has a late spring birthday so he was always young in his ps classes.  N is in total agreement with this now, but I am going to keep track of grades so that if he changes his mind I have something to show for it.

Here are some pics of getting all the binders ready.

Here is the supplies for his nature journaling.  I am excited to see what he thinks of this.  He loves to draw animals, so I think he will enjoy this.  

 He will study the State of Ohio.  This meets a requirement in our state.

Science is a combination of Chemistry using various things, Genetics, and the book Evolution the Grand Experiment.

He will do a Presidents study.  I was worried about how he would write in his notebook since he has difficulty writing small.  My wonderful dh made a Word template that matches the President's notebook so now N can type his information and just print it and glue it into his notebook.

He will also use the Ipad and an app called PDF expert to fill out other forms that are used in the program. We are looking forward to another good year with HOD.

Graduation!

When S. came home after 9th grade I was pretty nervous about how homeschooling her would go.  I had only 1 year of homeschooling experience under my belt with N. and that wasn't high school.  I knew though that God had brought her home and He would equip both of us for the journey, and He was faithful way beyond what I could have imagined.  It has been a wonderful 3 years.  I can honestly say I have really enjoyed her high school years.  I dont' think I would feel the same if she had stayed in ps.  She has become a different person.  She feels much more able to be herself.  She has been able to pursue her passion which is spending time with kids with special needs.  She has spent hours in a ps classroom, where a good friend of ours is the teacher, helping out with the kids that need more one on one attention.  She now feels very sure of the fact that she wants to become a special education teacher. 

This past weekend we had her graduation party.  This type of thing is out of her comfort zone, but she was a wonderful hostess and it was a fantastic time celebrating her graduation.

She will be attending a wonderful Christian college in the fall and the best thing is that is is only an hour from home.  She is excited, yet sad at the same time.  We both have mixed feelings about this stage ending and another one beginning.  We will miss her daily presence so much, but thanks to technology we can contact her easily and even see her smiling face whenever we want.  I am excited though to see where God takes her next.

Last week of Rev to Rev

We finished Rev to Rev this week.  I asked N. what he thought of the year and how the guide ranked among the other guides he has done. He said it was one of his favorite guides.  The only book he struggled with was The Growth of the British Empire, he said that was his least favorite book of the year.  It is a more challenging book with more challenging vocabulary, so it doesn't surprise me that it wasn't his favorite.  He loved everything else. 

His last project of the year was a salt dough map of the British Empire.  I helped him out by writing the labels since he just can't write that small, but he did everything else.

 He was very excited about some of his last written narrations that he did in his Inventors notebook.  He thought it was great that it was so big he had to fold it in half for it to fit.  He made sure to show his dad this one when he was doing his end of the year show and tell.

He also loved putting together the Composer study lap book.  It gave him quite the sense of accomplishment.  He even had to show his sister all of it.

I think my favorite Storytime book was the one we did last and that was "George Washington Carver".  What an amazing man of faith. N. really enjoyed it also.

It was a good year.  I can look back and see growth.  It is hard if I compare him to other dc his age, but God is teaching me to not play the comparison game and just rejoice in N. and his accomplishments.  We have a tradition that at the end of each guide I take a picture of how he feels about ending the guide/school year.  Here is this years picture.