And So I Find Myself Planning For Grade 10

Here it is, high school. Here in Nova Scotia, high school officially starts in grade 10. Universities don't generally look at anything earlier then that so next year is the big one for me. Thankfully, it doesn't seem that difficult and much of what we've done this year is leading nicely into our selections for next year.

Math
Geometry by Harold Jacobs.

This is the second edition rather then the current third. I choose the older book because the third gave up some of the work with proofs in favour of some discovery activities. Discovery math is not Catherine's great joy in life. Logical proofs, that's Catherine to a tee. I had some worries about finding an answer key but Alibris came to the rescue and I got the text and answer key for under $60. Score!

Latin

Lingua Latina

Why yes, that is Catherine's Latin text from this year. Thing is, as wonderful as it is to have a text that's focused on fluency rather then translation, LL really demands a knowledgeable tutor or a student willing to read, review and review again in order to really get to know the grammar otherwise a person could finish the text with only a superficial understanding. Catherine is that disciplined, review obsessed student but as a result it is going rather slow. It's a text that often gets broken up over two year anyway but I think Catherine might go three. That means Latin costs me nothing this year. Fine with me!

English

Catherine will be reading Medieval and Early Modern literature. She may continue with vocabulary as well but that will be because of her interest in it, not my insistence. Formal grammar and writing instruction are both finished. I'll buy her a good grammar guide and she'll be writing papers on her reading, history and science but other then that it's now all spit and polish. My one hope is that I can find a mentor who can critque her writing as she needs someone with a lot more knowledge then me.

Science

 I am thinking we'll do Chemistry next year. Catherine's eyes lit up when she was telling me about a chapter from Natalie Angier's Canon on molecular biology but I think Chemistry is the foundation we'll build the other sciences on. CK12's Chemistry Flexbook was the top runner. It is free and, I've been told, of good quality. But then I saw this site where a homeschool mom has planned out a whole year of Chemistry using Zumdahl's Introductory Chemistry. Jeepers! How can I pass up on the opportunity to have everything planned out for me? Especially when she's even using the lab book,IIllustrated Guide to Home chemistry Experiments, that I'd been intending to use? And I'd been intending to use that lab book because the author sells affordable lab kits to go with his books! How much better can it get? This will be the expensive course. Just the kit will cost me over $200 and I haven't even started researching the price of the textbook.

History

Catherine has enjoyed Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Ancient World so we will likely continue with History of the Medieval World. We'll also add in some primary sources and Stanford's Reading Like A Historian lessons. I either have the stuff or it's free. Easy.

Theory of Knowledge

Aha! A new course! When a retired educator heard I was homeschooling a girl that wanted to be a writer he recommended some epistemology and pointed me towards texts for the IB Theory of Knowledge course. After some poking around I think I've decided on the Cambridge University Press text (it was that or Oxford. Who knew I'd ever have to decide between the two?). It's cheaper then the Oxford book, has some recommendations from a few fellow homeschoolers, and there are resources available for free online. 

I think that's pretty much the meat of her year. She'll continue with programming Python on her own time as well as violin lessons. She also wants to learn how to sew and I intend to teach her more cooking skills but I think I've got the core figured out. 

Now I just have to go spend all that money.

It's Tadpole Season

Several weeks ago I finally got my hands on a QX3 digital microscope. It's a hard thing to buy in Canada but thankfully, someone local had one listed on Kijiji and after years of lust, I picked it up.

So what to do? Get a good look at the brine shrimp for one.

Now that the tadpoles are out we had to examine them as well. We scooped a bunch of eggs out of the ditch in front of our property and deposited them in an aquarium. Then we took out a couple and examined them before returning them to the water.

Now there are two local amphibians that are laying eggs right now, Wood Frogs and Spotted Salamanders. Since frog tadpoles don't have external gills, we're guessing we have the salamander tadpoles. Both kids did some drawings and took notes on their observations. We later looked up egg identification, went back to the ditch and realized that most, if not all, the eggs were salamander eggs.

This was an especially nifty discovery because just a week before, while doing some spring cleaning in the yard, we found a Spotted Salamander under a bit of debris. I previously mentioned the find here.

In a month or two we should have Leopard Frog and Green Frog eggs from our pond but in the meantime we'll enjoy watching the salamanders develop.

Activities: Observation, drawing, setting up aquarium.
             

Resources: How to Hatch Frog Eggs at eHow
                 Egg Mass ID at Field Herp Forum

Switching Up Science

   What homeschooler doesn't switch approaches and programs midstream on a regular basis? Seems to come with the territory. So it shouldn't be surprising that despite the fact that we're now halfway through our school year I've gone and taken a new approach to Harry and Catherine's science.

   I was browsing the Well Trained Mind forums when I found a reference to Aha! Science. I went to the website, took a look around and decided that it looked interesting. Harry really likes Creativity Express Online, his art program and another online subject, so I thought it might be good to try him with Aha! Well, it's only $15 for a year and turns out it's right up his alley. He enjoys it, retains what he's learned and I have the added bonus of having a website that tracks his progress and grades so I have something to stick in his records. Wonderful!

   But that wasn't the only change I made. We own a little over 2 acres on the edge of a forest. We have laying hens and raise meat chickens and turkeys in the summer. We have a large pond that hosts everything from toads to a muskrat. Certainly we can do a fair bit of science just by walking out our front door, no?

   So the kids are starting a blog where they'll record observations, pictures, experiments, etc. that have to do with our property. We have some microscopes, a water test kit, fertilized chicken eggs, an old aquarium and other tools to help in that. Over the next 12 years they'll record a year in the life of and on our land. I'll post the blog as soon as they get it up and running, hopefully by next week.

   Meanwhile we got a start last week taking some pictures of the pond and today we were outside again playing around with some of the remnants of yesterday's work and enjoying the beautiful weather.

The burn pile yielded lots of charcoal that Catherine and Harry (yes, he is in his pajamas and housecoat) used to draw with. 

Catherine spent some time writing at the edge of the pond.

Lauchie and I chased, and were chased by chickens. No pictures of that though!

Spring Cleaning

Yesterday was brilliant. Not too cold and lots of sun. We decided it would be the day, after we finally got the yard cleaned up.

First order of business when cleaning up rural property is the burn pile.

Old cardboard, christmas trees, old pallets and branches get chucked in the pile and set alight. The wood in the foreground doesn't. It's firewood for next winter and it will be stacked when we get some new pallets to stack it on.

Lauchie had a great time, although he never cracked a smile. It was up and down and up and down and up and down the back stairs for him.

Much of the work was picking up garbage that had tumbled out of the car or been dropped by the kids or picked out of garbage bags by crows. We got a fantastic surprise when we picked up a small pile of stuff on the lawn.

Its a Yellow Spotted Salamander. I hadn't seen one in years and was a little taken aback by how big it was (hence my fingers for reference). They hide under logs and such during the day so to make sure he was okay we put a few things back on top of him that we'll clean up today if he's moved. 

Resources I'll be using: Harry - Salamander printout from Enchanted Learning

                                      Spotted Salamander Facts

              Catherine - Yellow Spotted Salamander

Spring!

It's springtime. I have a new smart phone and a Blogger app. Wheeee!!!

Expecting More of the Kids

   I am constantly expecting too little of my children and they are constantly proving that I can safely expect a lot more from them.

   Catherine is reading ancient great books this year. She whipped through Gilgamesh (she thought the bit where Gilgamesh and Enkidu behead and disembowel the Bull of Heaven was hilarious) and then moved on to a good slice of the Old Testament. I gave her a choice between the Good News Bibles and my huge Oxford Annotated NRSV. I thought the Good News Bible was a better choice for a first read because it's written in plain language and the Oxford one is dense and filled to the brim with even denser foot notes.

   After a quick review Catherine choose the Oxford.

   Turns out she found the plain language of the Good News Bible flat and uninspiring. I let her know she could skip the foot notes and off she went to read.

   A couple of hours later I went to check on her progress. She said it had gone really well and her eyes lit up as she told me that she loved the foot notes. They had made the stories much richer and given her connections between Genesis and Gilgamesh that she might not have noticed otherwise. She was also greatly surprised to learn details like the fact that, absent a Christian lens, the serpent was likely more of a mischief character then an evil one.

   So lesson learned yet again. I should never limit my children by what I think they might be able to handle. I should never hesitate to push of offer materials even if I think they might be a bit beyond my children.

And Now For the Grade Five Line Up

   Yesterday I outlined the programs and resources my daughter is using for Grade Nine. Planning for my son has been a little easier as we're simply continuing with many of the things we had success with last year. I've finally learned what I think is probably one of the most important lessons in homeschooling, it's not the curriculum, it's the commitment. I can be swayed by all the fun and fancy programs out there but ultimately the ones that bring the most success are those I simply keep puttering away at and refuse to give up on even when they get boring and hard for Harry and I.

   English is finally starting to feel like a real subject. Harry is finished the Dancing Bears reading series and is now a confident and capable reader. He's still working through Apples and Pears spelling from the same publisher and will likely finish the last two levels during this school year. For grammar it's back to KISS. Yes, the site is hard to navigate and yes, there's a lot of printing but it's free and probably one of the best grammar programs out there. So far he's enjoying it. For writing It's Writing With Ease which he definitely isn't enjoying right now but I don't care. I've learned the virtue of pushing him through things he's not found of because he eventually reaps and enjoys the reward.

   Math became a bit of an issue because I was skipping back and forth between Singapore Primary Mathematics and Math Mammoth. Harry liked both but I kept running into issues where one would work for one concept but another was better for something else. I solved it this year by going with the Key to...Series. Since Harry understands arithmetic we'll keep it fresh with drills and occasional worksheets but otherwise he needs a more specific and in depth program for each of the concepts that are starting to pop up in math.

   History may finally get done this year. I'm back to Gombrich's Little History of the World. It's a magical book that seems to work well for Harry. Bringing Up Learners offers it's Mosaic World History program for free and LHotW is one of the two spines you can use. I'm modifying it quite a bit as it's a bit young for Harry but it's still a great outline for us to follow.

   Science is, as always, the toughest subject for me. There's nothing out there that is really written for homeschoolers from a secular perspective. With Harry I'm simply going to read lots and have him do some notebooking.