Bridgetender School Update--Kids

I talked about the curriculum and some of the fun stuff we did during our first nine weeks of school. I thought you might be interested in hearing about the individual kids.

Elizabeth, sixth grade: Elizabeth is not liking sixth grade very much. She is in what Tapestry of Grace calls the "dialectic" stage, when they expect kids to start making connections. She is used to discussing facts, not trying to make connections. She has a lot of reading and extra work to do verses the other kids. Her favorite form of non-fiction is diaries, which she decided after reading Diary of a Napoleanic Foot Soldier by Jakob Walter. I had her write about three page paper about John Watt, the "inventor/improver" of the steam engine. We both learned a lot from this process, particularly how few books there are for kids considering the man jump-started the Industrial Revolution. I will be sending out her paper to family. If you are not family and I know you, I will be happy to send it if you send me a request in the comments section. She has almost finished Epsilon in Math U See, which involved learning about fractions and everything related to fractions, like factoring, finding the greatest common factor of two numbers, etc. It also introduced some pre-algebra concepts. Her biggest challenge, this year, however, is to write legibly and follow directions. Whenever I ask her to write neatly her response is, "I am like my dad, Mom. I can't write neatly." She is taking horseback riding lessons once a week, guitar lessons and is attending a homeschool youth group once a month. She is also serving with her dad in 1st grade and has developed a knack for being able to calm a special needs kid down when he gets out of hand.

Jessi, fourth grade: Jessi worked very hard to master multiple digit multiplication to be able to graduate to the Delta book in Math-U-See. Like Elizabeth, it took her a long time to get neat enough to be able to properly add the lines without forgetting or mis-reading numbers. She is doing great remembering Spanish words and loves putting together newsletters which have been assignments for science. She is getting very talented at using Hallmark Card Studio. She is enjoying all of her reading. She is also learning to be organized, with some progress. She started her first horse-riding lessons last week and really enjoyed it and she loves playing the piano. She also participates in the church's children's choir, which leads the elementary and pre-school in worship and verse memorization once a month.

Kyle, Second grade: His biggest challenge is in writing. He writes beautifully, but it takes him a very long time to write a short sentence and his hands tire out easily. However, with all the writing he has had to do, he is making progress in this area. He loves math the most, though I think he is also enjoying learning about mammals. He has not met a book that he doesn't like. For "fun" reading, he picks books about Canada, the Mexican-American war and other wars. He is even reading long chapter books like "The Hardy Boys" series and "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" series. He is playing baseball and enjoying being a Tiger Scout. He was absolutely ecstatic when he learned how to shoot a bow and arrow and a BB gun at the last Boy Scout camp.

John, Kindergarten: He is picking up sounds of letters very quickly, knowing at least 13 different letters. We are using the Ruth Beechick method of phonics to teach him to read. It has worked for my three oldest kids and he seems to be enjoying it. He has picked up blending sounds very quickly. While we learned about the letter "L", we worked on his pronunciation so it no longer sounded a lot like the "r" sound. For math concepts, he has learned the days of the week and can count to 100. We are working on months of the year and being able to recognize numbers up to 100, mainly by dot-to-dot pictures. He also listens in on some of our group studies, like science and our history discussions. He is really good in art, IMHO. His biggest challenge is to know when to stop being "funny" or "sarcastic" and give me a serious answer. He is taking Tae Kwon Do twice a week and really enjoys it.

Our week off started with a little excitement as Kyle learned that bagels do NOT need 20 minutes in the microwave on high to defrost. I stopped the microwave much sooner than the 20 minutes mainly because the fire alarm was triggered by the yellow smoke pouring out of the microwave. After turning off the alarm, stopping the microwave and re-assuring the alarm company that we really didn't have a fire, I set up fans to send the smoke outside. The bagel was charcoal and the red, plastic, flower-shaped plate was partially melted. The kitchen still smells of smoke and we are hoping that the baking soda in the microwave will absorb the smoke that seems to have been absorbed by the microwave.

If you are getting tired of homeschool updates, rest assured, this is

THE END.

Bridgetender School Update--pictures

In case you missed it, I gave a general update of the first quarter of our homeschool. However, I started writing it, then added a link to a worship song that I liked and posted that before I finished the update. Therefore, the Bridgetender school update is below the worship song link. So go here to read it before you continue. Below are pictures of the kids showing off their geology creations. One of the things that Tapestry of Grace had our kids do is create geographic land forms like peninsulas, isthmus, island, mountain, precipices, etc. We used salt-dough clay, which took a while to dry and then painted them. The blue construction paper represents water. Before we destroyed them, I took a picture of each child in front of their creation : John, Jessi, Kyle, and Elizabeth.

I have also included a collage of pictures. Three pictures have kids showing off the paintings they made of a specific mug as part of our art class at home. I don't know why I didn't include Elizabeth's painting. The other pictures are pictures of a hike we took at Papago peak, a collection of "cute, little" mountains separating Phoenix from Tempe. The idea was to try and mimick a Lewis and Clark hike by having the kids carry a backpack full of water, clothes, drawing materials for their journal, and some "provisions". It was perfect because we had never been on this particular trail. Then we talked about the differences between our hike and their exploration, like the fact that we have a restroom nearby, marked trails, a playground, packing a small snack vs. packing food for a month or more with camping provisions, which makes packs a LOT heavier than what they carried. The hike also only took about ten minutes to climb up vs. spending a whole day walking. And if we decided that we were hungry, we had the choice of going to a fast food restaurant to get more victuals. Since the hike and the playground didn't take very long, we drove to a nearby tomb in the form of a pyramid for one of Arizona's former governors and his wife. All this is very close to the Phoenix Zoo and the Phoenix Botannical Gardens.

This month, our homeschooling group had a field trip to Mother Nature's farm. It is not necessarily a place that I would recommend, although it did have a cow that would "moo" on demand and it had a small hay maze that they kids liked and a bounce-n-play. It is primarily is a tourist farm located in the middle of Gilbert suburbia with a clear view of an empty businesss park. They were able to "decorate" pumpkin with foam shapes. Kyle refused to decorate his, however, so we don't have a picture of it. I think Elizabeth would win for most area covered. Last year, the kids and I went to a farm that had a "pizza garden" and an awesome corn maze, which we might re-visit if I can remember the name of the place.

We have a week of rest from school while I get ready for the next unit and we have some fun times together.

Next Post: Bridgetender School Update--The Students.

Bridgetender School First Quarter Update--Curriculum

This posting is for the benefit of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, who I want to thank for their encouragement in so many ways. Homeschooling is more difficult than I ever imagined and, even though I still have a much better teacher-to-student ratio than any public school classroom, it is a huge challenge to teach four children in a one-room schoolhouse environment. Every year, I pray, asking God if He wants me to continue homeschooling and if so, what He wants me to do for the coming year. So far, I still am getting the message to keep them at home. Over time, I am learning that the most important lessons I can teach my kids do not involve history, math, or language arts, but interpersonal communication because I am realizing that the two job objectives given to all humans by God is to "Love the Lord God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37). I feel like the blind leading the blind in these two areas, sometimes.


Having said that, I having included a character development skill in our school. Our focus for this year is "listening" and that isn't just in the context of "obeying", it includes knowing when to speak and when to hold our tongues. Our key verse is James 1:19-20. This is an excellent chance for me to improve my listening skills, too. I am finding that they do excellent work when we are practicing as part of school, but aren't so great at applying it to "real world" situations, so I expect it will take a full year to work on it and a lifetime to get really good at it. :-) We are also studying the book of James, using Kay Aurthur's "Precepts for Kids" series.

In terms of academics for the three older kids, we are using Tapestry of Grace for history, geography, and literature; Math U See for math; Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW) for a combination of grammer and writing skills; Apologia...Land Animals... for science; reading Spanish-English books for Spanish, and occasionally doing dictation and copywork for penmanship, writing, and listening skills development. We are doing art at home, using Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner to work on their drawing skills as well as suggestions from the Tapestry of Grace arts & activities sections. The kids are attending SportskidzAZ for one day of P.E. a week and they are involved in outside sports activities. John, my kindergartner is currently studying numbers and the calendar for math concepts, is learning letter sounds, and plays or doodles nearby during the group studies for "osmosis" learning.


Tapestry of Grace has required a huge adjustment. It is a curriculum involving books, writing and other activities for a specific period of history that is divided into four different age levels--lower grammer (Kyle), uppper grammer (Jessi) and dialectic (Elizabeth). And it has reading for me so that I know what my kids are learning. I have provided a link if you want more information about it.



The IEW course for writing teaches children to write by giving them a paragraph, teaching them how to create an outline the paragraph and then re-write the paragraph based on their notes. As they improved, you introduce, one at a time, "dress-ups" like a "who-which" clause, participles, and work on developing a list of synonyms for overused words like "small", "nice", "good", etc. You let them play with the different "dress ups" in re-writing. So far, I am using what we are reading in the Apologia science book for source material, though I may include history, too.


I am very thankful to God, who continues to show me ways to improve the schedule and gives me great ideas to make studies more fun, like having the kids "ride the rapids" like Lewis and Clark in a laundry basket down our hallway. It involved me pushing the kids as fast as I could and then releasing them to see how far they would slide. I was half tempted to oil the bottom of the basket if the clean up wouldn't have been so difficult and if there hadn't been a distinct possibility of damaging walls. I am also thankful that we were able to experiment with the schedule for the first month or so before the outside activities began. I am also thankful to my husband, who is such a great encourager when I need it most.

Next post: Children's Progress at Bridgetender School

Bridgetender School Update

It has been a while since I gave an update on what our school has been doing, so I thought I write something brief.



History: We are studying American History. We started with the discovery and exploration of the Americas up and have now started reading about the beginnings of the American Revolutionary War, which, as was pointed out in "Drive Through History", was originally considered a civil war. In between, we learned how the British, French and Spanish extended their European Wars to the colonies and how the British ended up "owning" most of the 13 colonies. Part of the discussion was how the British colonists changed the landscape from woodland to farmland, destroying the Native American's hunting ground. We also discussed how the Native American's fought back, usually in sneak attacks that usually, thought not always successful. The French were not necessarily farmers in the lower colonies, choosing to hunt and trade with the Natives as friends, though they tried to start colonies up and down the Mississippi. I have really learned a lot more about our country's development, which I really enjoy. Elizabeth has mentioned that she really enjoys history.



Science. We are studying flying animals. We started with birds and bats and are now studying flying insects. We are trying to hatch butterflies from catepillars, using a kit, but have not been incredibly successful. Of five catepillars, only one chrysallis survives and it, too, might have a dead pupa. If this doesn't work, we will order some more catepillars and try again. The principal refuses to have an ant farm, which sounds a whole lot easier at this point, although it does seem counter-intuitive to encourage ants to develop in the house when we usually work hard to keep them out.


Language Arts: We have been studying poetry after reading two novels before Christmas and discussing the elements of a good story. The kids have written some of their own poetry and have read from _Runny Babbit_ for fun, _The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere_, some Native Amerian poetry and haikus. We will be finishing it up by having the kids memories two poems each, one of my choosing and one of theirs. My choosen poems are the following: Kyle is memorizing "Concord Hymn" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jessi is memorizing "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus and Elizabeth is memorizing "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Once they are done working on those poems, I will let them choose their own with very little requirements. I am trying to memorize them too. The kids are progressing nicely with spelling and grammer. They have written some haiku's and some specialized poetry, as well as miscellaneous writing assignments. Jessica just finished reading The Wind in the Willows and Elizabeth is reading Robinson Crusoe, which I am also reading for fun to the kids.


Math: Elizabeth is going through fractions this year and is now learning about Greatest Common Factors and how they can be used to reduce or simplify fractions. Kyle is over halfway through his book of addition facts. Jessi is working on her single-digit multiplication facts, but soon will be learning how to multiply with more than one digit.

We listen to classical music and are looking at the Roccocco period of art because that is the art of the 18th century. We will also be looking at folk art and engravings, because that was pretty popular at the time. The kids are also baking.

Elizabeth is progressing in her Latina Cristiana latin studies and all three are working on Spanish through bilingual books and a Spanish matching game and storytelling game.

Elizabeth and Kyle want to learn how to whittle. The principal tells them that they need to read up on knife safety first.

Their homeschool group, Veritas, organized a field trip to an turn of the century house in downtown Phoenix, where they learned about how people slept in Phoenix in summer before air-conditioning was invented. The answer is that they moved their mattress out on the porch. There was no answer to how they survived in their petticoats and long sleeves. In the next two months, they will be visiting the "Hall of Flame" and the Museum of Mining.