Catholic Fun

Obviously, the announcement of the retirement of Benedict XVI came as a sad shock this morning. After Mass, my friends and I huddled in the rain talking it over and encouraging each other. Then my friend Alison came up with a brilliant plan: she is going to run a Lenten betting pool in which we pay in $5 to pick which continent the new pope will be from. Then, on St. Joseph's day we'll all meet for drinks and celebrate the winner. Gambling and drinking. I love being Catholic!

iTeam makes the paper

The boys' First Lego League team won the North Carolina state championship and made the local paper. They have been invited to compete in the North American Tournament at Legoland in California in May!

http://www.thepilot.com/news/2013/feb/01/county-team-takes-state-lego-crown/

Mardi Gras Miles

Maria decided to run the 5k without any training. She did very well.

Joseph strutting his stuff

James stayed at the front of the pack for the younger kids

Joseph and James after their 10 minute run. At the end of each lap they get a necklace

Cecilia ran 8 laps and then asked for her inhaler

Charles led the older runners for several laps

Annual homeschool post

Yesterday at the park, I told a friend who has special knowledge in the area that I have very recently discovered that some of my kids have dyslexia. I was standing with a mutual friend who is in the same boat as me. Friend #1's response was intended to be funny, and she said in a joking, exasperated tone, "What have you guys been doing all these years?" I admit, that comment pierced my soul. 

I think I was hurt by the implication that I had either been lazing around or not paying attention and that is why we have just figured this out. Since I first started teaching our kids to read, and we have 6 who read now, I have seen little indications that there was "something there" with them. We used a phonics based method to teach them to read and spell. I did try to teach them to form their letters correctly, put tails below the line and ascenders above, and not to confuse "b" and "d". I have pointed out mistakes and I made them recopy misspelled and poorly punctuated papers that we had to turn in to the school. Almost every paper they wrote, I wrote out first or typed into the computer. I helped them edit each paper line by line, talking through adjectives and adverbs, introductory phrases, transitions, and how to take "there is" out. And it didn't stop there. 

When I saw that they struggled to retain information from their text books, I read them out loud. When math had them stumped, I wrote out each step while they told me what to do next. And when I saw that their Language Arts standardized test scores didn't match what we thought they should achieve, I blamed myself for not trying hard enough (which I wasn't) and redesigned and retaught our spelling curriculum. 

I had to spell that out because I think over time I will forget the work I did to help my kids learn and only remember what I didn't do. I didn't teach spelling consistently when I was lying on the floor in the bathroom with hyper-emesis. I didn't knock down doors fighting for the kid who I knew needed speech therapy at age 4 but the health insurance considered him fine until he was 9. I told myself that letter reversals were normal at a young age and never tried to figure out what age they are no longer normal. I also had to spell it out because otherwise I would have overlooked the natural accommodations I made as a homeschooling mom who knew her kids well and knew their abilities and limits. 

This is my handwriting but their thoughts

When people new to homeschooling say that they think it's great because you can tailor the curriculum to each child, I always try to moderate their enthusiasm a bit. I explain that having 6 students at different ages makes it hard to design a unique curriculum for each child, so often you end up doing the same thing with each child at the same age. To me, this isn't really any different from a brick school which uses the same curriculum for the same grade each year. I don't want to discourage them, but I do want them to understand homeschooling reality.

But after the comment of what have you been doing all these years, I began to look at our curriculum a little differently. Foremost, I've seen the benefit of using a curriculum that insisted on phonics based reading. Otherwise, I don't think my kids would be able read at all. I've also seen the small changes I have made in day-to-day assignments by reading aloud or answering questions orally or grading compositions on content separately from mechanics or doing the writing for them or saying, "School's over. We'll do that tomorrow." I have tailored a curriculum that worked for our family into a curriculum that supported dyslexic children effortlessly. I'm going to remember that the next time someone gushes about homeschoolers being able to make the curriculum fit their family. And the next time someone asks, "What have you been doing all these years?"

Science and Art week again!

Hooray, it's my favorite week of the quarter. Instead of my usual, planning-intensive, combined and cohesive art and science unit planned for multiple levels, we are all working on Maria's TOPS Balance Beam unit. The big boys say it's so much easier this time. And on day one our art consisted of carving pumpkins for Halloween. Ok, it's a little more "crafts" than "arts".

Yes, Maria is Smiling while doing her science!
We have one homemade balance and one that we bought.
Everyone from Joseph up has been able to do the lessons so far. 

Thomas quickly grasped that he could express the equation
of a line graphed on Cartesian coordinates by using the balance.
This line is y= 3x + 1
He then pointed out that the two coordinates we can see from this are (0,1) and (9, 10).
We used graph paper to check his answers and he was right. I'm calling this a big success.

Joseph is carving his own pumpkin!

Cecilia did several practice faces on paper so she could
learn the technique of how to carve without the teeth
falling out. Unfortunately, she didn't quite do as well
with the carving knife, but she used toothpicks for the final
teeth and I really like how it looks.

Charles didnt want to carve his own pumpkin this year,
but he was willing to be very helpful pulling out insides and
scoring designs on the pumpkins for others to carve.

James seemed very excited that he was big enough to use the pumpkin carving tool by himself.

Maria also practiced the art of making crepes which we ate for dinner.

This is possibly the face Anthony was trying to translate onto the Jack O' Lantern?

Maria on taxes

Maria: "I think everyone should have lots and lots of babies so they wouldn't have to pay so much in taxes and then the world would be very nice. And have homebirths. With midwives."

Christmas!

Carmen gives to Monica

Alan L. gives to Stephen

Victoria gives to Maria

Marc gives to Juliana

Chrysostom gives to Theresa

Catherine gives to Cecilia

Michele gives to Laurence

Doug gives to Rachel

Jonathan gives to Dominic

Monica gives to Carmen

Patrick gives to Isabel

John gives to Bill

Theresa gives to Chrysostom

Alan C. gives to Anthony

Isabel gives to Patrick

Gregory gives to Charles

Juliana gives to Marc

Stephen gives to Alan L.

Laurence gives to Michele

Paula gives to Thomas

Naomi gives to James

Veronica gives to Joseph

Rachel gives to Doug

Bill gives to John

Thomas gives to Paula

Anthony gives to Alan C.

Maria gives to Victoria

Charles gives to Gregory

Cecilia gives to Catherine

James gives to Naomi

Joseph gives to Veronica

Dominic gives to Jonathan

Please send any suggestions for gifts to your assigned giver.  For example, I know that Marc needs new Scotch tape to hold his phone together (or even a new phone) but maybe what he wants is the new Taylor Swift CD.  To know for certain, he must send me his ideas.  You, also, go and do likewise.