When you homeschool an only child, you have to own that on an everyday basis, You’re It. You’re the alarm clock, the playmate, the entertainment coordinator, the chef, the teacher, the task master, the parent, and the grown-up. That’s a lot of jobs. Some weeks there’s not much time left for anything else.

For the record, I didn’t realize that I had missed Lesson 6. I thought I was just late posting about last week. This proves that jet lag is not a myth.

Ireland in Social Studies. Well, really the ancient Celts. Social Studies has been a little ‘meh’ the past few weeks. And I know you’re thinking: How is Ireland, where the people practically invented the fairy tale, ‘meh’? The answer is that only one story has fairies in it while the other two are about saints (and no context is given). If we had been on our own instead of enrolled, I would have substituted either more interesting versions of the stories or new stories entirely. As it was, I supplemented. I’ve decided to do social studies backwards when the story is unapproachable on it’s own – we’ll complete the enrichment-type activity first and follow with the story and discussion. At least that way she’ll know what she’s supposed to be gleaning. The art that goes along with the the ‘meh’ has been pretty cool. We made ink.

Science and Language Arts helped alleviate the ‘meh’ of Social Studies. This week we made a leaf ID book for Science. In the weeks before that, the Science focus has been on daily rhythms. She kept a record of her daily wake up time, when she was hungry, and when she had exceptionally high or low energy. The following week was focused on plant and animal life. We have a bevy of wildlife in the woods! All kinds of animals! The only ones who showed up for the record of animal life were lizards, birds, and Tyler.

Language Arts has been all about the poetry. Ellie ‘learned by heart’ the Owl and the Pussycat, set a poem to music, and created her own written language which she used to send notes to Michael. She also wrote and illustrate a couple of story books (one because she got carried away with the assignment and one because it was the assignment). She’s one chapter away from finishing the last of the two provided readers and then we are free to pick whatever we want for read-aloud practice. The thing that struck me as extremely useful was the creation of a personal spelling word list. In typical school, as you know, kids get a list of spelling words to memorize each week. Ellie’s spelling word list is words that she typically (or repeatedly) misspells when she’s writing rather than a random list of words that she may or may not use again or that she already knows how to spell. No test at the end of the week, just practice until the spelling is internalized and no longer a hinderance.

Ellie loves math and is so so so happy to finally be doing ‘real’ math. Story problems during Lesson 6 to review the four processes and horizontal and vertical equations, then 2 and 4 times tables, and this week was 5 and 10 times tables. Memorizing times tables is going to be a total bore. Anything that happens over and over (if it doesn’t involve a Magic School Bus, a witch, or a princess) is an abomination. It’s actually solving the problems that engages her. This bodes well for algebra. She writes smaller so she can fit more problems on a page she likes math so much. I’m going to search the web for some songs or games or something that will help us survive the repetition since my imagination needs a boost.

Since we are enrolled and just finished Lesson 8, I’m working on the second batch of work to submit to her Oak meadow teacher. That means importing photographs and label label label.

piggalicious

I finished my Pig! I also disabled all the toy listings in my Etsy shop. No worries, they’ll be back in October.

School. There was some! Ellie wrote her story-summery paragraph completely independently and it was perfect (except that “ribbin” needed an o instead of that second i).

Up until this point, all the paragraphs/sentences have been focused on retelling/summarizing a story. For Social Studies, she got to editorialize about the story themes rather than just rehashing it. It was pretty precious, she called out all the animals involved for not being very nice. I was very happy to see that the curriculum changes at the right time – Ellie was getting worn out with summaries. So: If you’ve only read the first few lessons in an Oak Meadow Coursebook, don’t think you know what the whole year will be like.

So many costumes – she’s making ribbon bookmarks for art.

This was a really nice week for us with many activities that we’ve come to love and lots of new ones (poetry!!). In Health she tried to convince me that the Princess First Aid Kit had everything a home first aid kit needed (it didn’t, I had brought the Red Cross’ list with us to the pharmacy). We compromised with a regular first aid kit and some Darth Vadar Bandaids.

My flu shot is modeling the aforementioned Bandaids.

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the sun is coming up a little later every day. So I get to see things like this when I walk in the early morning:

*sigh*

I’m going to leave you with that. Next week is something else entirely.

Ellie has been accepted to Oak Meadow, a distance learning program based in Vermont.

She’ll work from home, but her school is in Vermont. Just like Michael works from home, but his office is in California. Or like I work from home and my office is where I’m sitting. I’ll be her main teacher, but she will also have an Oak Meadow teacher who will review and grade her work, provide support and help keep us on track, and maintain her transcript with this fully-accredited school. Oak Meadow has a curriculum-only option, but enrollment feels like a much better choice for our family this year*.

The curriculum has a wonderful Waldorf flavor in the early grades without placing limitations on academic endeavor (unlike traditional Waldorf-Steiner programs). In second grade, Ellie will study poetry, history and geography, fables and folklore, and multiplication. Her science program and the reading selections are focused on animal study (Yay!). Art is integrated throughout the curriculum. If I were going to hand pick a curriculum tailored to Ellie’s strengths and interests, I’d end up with something very close to what has been working for Oak Meadow for 40 years.

As students move through the grades, the curriculum grows and changes. In fourth grade the focus shifts: the syllabus speaks to the student rather than the parent, who begins to take a supportive role rather than one of leadership. It is gratifying to see that the progression of the curriculum reinforces the natural development of the child. This is a program that we can continue all through high school if Ellie chooses. We are incredibly excited. The minute I found their website, I knew it was an exceptional choice for Ellie and for us as a family.

*Left to our own devices, Ellie and I might just read and paint all day. And bake (to learn fractions). With enrollment, not only is my life simplified as far as record keeping, dealing with the local school board, providing balanced learning, and staying on track, but I don’t have to be the bad guy when we’ve got to get stuff done! It’s actually DUE! It has to be TURNED IN! As a first time homeschool parent, this makes me feel a lot less pressured. And Ellie gets to have school swag. Which she loves.