Friday Feb. 27th--enough with the boat building already!

This morning I had to nix the boat building and get back to our regular curriculum. What happened is that Connor decided that after he built a few boats, and he has is plans figured out now with the materials list, he is going to then build a hang glider and a hot air balloon. He will test the aerodynamics by jumping out our patio doors. When he has built enough things that float and things that fly, he will sell them all on ebay, or better yet, build a website of his own. Enough already! To appease Connor, I set up an appointment (Sunday at 10am) to consult with an expert. John has been working on his handmade boat (a 24ft. Mahogany Zimmer) for 10 plus years!! Connor can tour John's workshop and ask him all his questions (a zillion) and perhaps learn the reality of boat building. After that issue was settled, ("NO, more boat building today! And NO, you can't jump out the patio doors to test your theories!)we left for morning mass. This time we went to St. Marys in Geneseo. Father Ed always speaks about the history of the church traditions. Today the homily was about fasting,repentance, Yom Kippur, Jewish customs and how it all fits into Lent. Can I list this under the study of History? When we got home, Connor reviewed his vocabulary words in preparation for his Unit 1-3 exam. He scored 91% on the test. This vocabulary text is difficult, even for me. At 10:30am we left for Chess. Connor takes a chess lesson with a group of homeschoolers every Friday. After Chess class, we moved to Math, Science (chemistry), writing, guitar and reading. I copied and administered a test off the internet for the book Huckleberry Finn, now that I finally finished the book myself. Every book that Connor reads, I read too. In this way, I can ask him real questions about the book, rather than the canned ones, as we drive to Rochester. We spend at least an hour a day in the car, and we find car-schooling productive. The canned questions I print, and have Connor answer, just so that I have something on paper to put in his portfolio to show NYS Dept. of Ed. if they should ask. The real thinking and learning I have a hard time documenting. How do I document Connor running down our hill with a big plastic bag held up high over his head? He was testing the pitch and wind for his proposed hang-glider. I'm sure the mothers of Einstein, Edison, Ansel Adams, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Agatha Christie and many others who were homeschooled didn't have to document learning. Oh well;it is what it is. I console myself with the knowledge that if nothing else I can show Connor this blog when he has a child of his own. Unless of course, he remains celibate and fulfills his dream of becoming a priest. Sigh.

Oops, I forgot.

Since I'm supposed to be keeping careful records of our "school," I need to make certain to mention that we read. Duh. I'm a reading teacher, and we read so much and so often that I don't even find it noteworthy. But, to satisfy the powers at be, I need to state that Connor is meeting the NYS guidelines for English Language Arts. Over breakfast, Connor reads either the newspaper, Mind Floss,Popular Science or Science Illustrated. Every time we get into the car, he has a book in hand, and he reads for at least an hour every night. Each week he reads (in its entirety) one book off the John Hopkins book list (this week he is reading the historical fiction My Brother Sam is Dead), and one book of his own choosing. There. Now that I've said it, I hope I don't have to note Connor's reading time in future blogs. Oh yeah, we also study Chinese every day, which I also forgot to mention. We listen to our Chinese Cds in the car, and we use the website that accompanies our latest Chinese book, First Thousand Words in Chinese.

Thurs. Feb. 26, 2009

First thing this morning Connor woke up and ran downstairs to ask if he could skip breakfast in order to research his boat plans. Ok. He did that for 90 minutes and then we left for Mass. I know that Mass doesn't count towards school, separation of church and state and all that, but we sure do learn a lot in Mass. Although Father Schifferle is 90 years old and feeble, he is a fabulous speaker. After Mass,we tried to stay home most of the day because we had the two toddlers that I babysit here. We designated it a "catch-up" day. I had Connor go back to page one of his Math workbook, and go page by page and correct any problems that he got wrong. Boy,did that take awhile. One thing I noticed in school is that after the students worked for 90-120 minutes on the 3 workbook pages, the teacher would then simply solve the problem on the white board for the students to watch. But some students "tuned out," while others just waited for the teacher's lesson and copied down the answers without trying the problem at all. Connor, being so sure he knew the concept already, was one of those students who didn't pay attention to the explanation. I am taking a different approach. I went through the workbook and checked any answers that were wrong. Often Connor rushes through and makes careless mistakes. I want him to see that he isn't always right, even though he understands the concepts and how to do the problems. Also, Connor insists on doing 99.9% of his math in his head. That's all well and good right now, but obviously he needs to learn to calculate on paper. By next year Connor will be doing Algebra, and he must focus on accuracy and writing out the steps. Having check marks to show that his answers were wrong, and no explanation, made him go back and find his mistakes. Often he would insist that he was right, and I had to keep sending him back to find his error. He didn't enjoy the rework to say the least. Connor also played vocabulary games on the computer using the site that accompanies the text book, and he went to a horse-back riding lesson. Guitar practice ended our day on a high note.

Wed. Feb. 25. Boat Building 101

Today Connor began going to his homeschooling class at the YMCA. I dropped him off at 9:30 and picked him up at 2:00P. Since I wasn't there all day, I decided to just let Connor type what he learned today. All I know is that he is frantically searching boat blue prints online and printing his findings. After the boat building class, Connor went to a guitar lesson. Here is Connor's blog about the boat building:

Today was so cool. The class is about building boats. We are actually going to build a life size rowboat. It can hold people and everything! In the beginning, we talked about what a good boat needs. There are tons of things. Here are some of them. A good boat needs to float,be hydrodynamic, water tight, and be capable of motion and weight. We started learning about the blue prints.
There were already some blue prints, but we needed to convert them to another piece of paper. I had to measure really closely. If we were off by a 1/2 a cm it would totally ruin the design. We constructed a paper model of the boat that we might make. There were three different types of boats we could make, but we decided that we would make the life size version of the model rowboat. I had to make three models because I always rush and didn't measure accurately enough. To figure out the boat's shape we did experiments in a big bucket of water, using a round ball and also Styrofoam. I got soaked!! We are going to construct our boat out of wood. That's the cool thing about homeschooling. As long as I get done what the state requires, which takes me about an hour each day, I can spend the rest of the day researching the things that interest me most.

Mom's comments (morning of Feb. 26th) Connor woke up this morning and the first thing he said is, "I'm not hungry for breakfast. I can go research more boat blue prints?" Of course, I said ok.

Tuesday-- our busiest day of the week!

Today we started our day with daily mass. Connor has decided that he wants to go to mass every day during lent. I really couldn't talk him out of it, and I tried. So, before lent starts on Wed., we decided we should go to morning mass a few times just to make certain this is how Connor really,really wants to spend his lent. A trial run so to speak. Naturally, he loved it. Mass on Monday was just amazing (at St. Mary's church in Geneseo). There were approximately 20 parishioners and the priest in a small room. I won't go into lengthy detail, but the historical content of the homily (a discussion of martyrs) made an enormous impact on Connor. This morning we went to St. Matthew in Livonia. It was less personal because it was in the large main church, but was no less appealing to Connor. He now wants me to buy him rosary beads so that he can go earlier to mass and pray the rosary first. Yes, he is an odd child sometimes. After mass, I drove him to Impact Homeschooling Academy. When I picked up Connor at 3p, he was thrilled to recount the speech given by a World War II veteran. Connor blabbed for ten minutes about the battles, the weapons, the Nazis, and this veteran. He also conducted an experiment in science with ink and alcohol, separating the colors. In writing class Connor is starting to write a mystery story. The teacher is having him draw a picture of the protagonist and fill out a character sketch before beginning the story. Connor's character is Chinese, bald, with an eye patch over one eye. Hmmmm. Has potential. After Impact Academy, we went to Chinese class. I am not making as much progress as I'd like with Chinese, but I know it's because I don't study as much as the kids. Whew---I am wiped out after driving around all day, and Connor must be exhausted!

Feb. 23 2009

Whew! Another busy day. But, for those of you who think I must spend every minute "teaching," I don't. In fact, today I had a Doctor appointment, so I gave Connor a list of what he needed to accomplish today, and off I went. I'm lucky that he truly is a self-directed learner and does not get off task, if properly motivated. His motivation today was that if he got all his schoolwork done by the time I came home, then he would be allowed to bake bread. Needless to say, Connor completed another unit in his vocabulary book, finished 6 pages in his math book, read the last 5 chapters in Huckleberry Finn, listened to his Latin Cd, and mastered the geography of the Middle East (he can place the 17 countries, in 35 seconds)all by lunch time. I then handed Connor the recipe for the bread dough, and let him have at it. The only time I had to intercede was when I caught Connor eating some of the raw dough. Of course, this led to a scientific discussion of yeast (it's a fungus), how it works and why it's not good to eat raw. While the bread is rising, Connor is working on a musical composition on his guitar. It's only 2:15 and again Connor has done, completely unsupervised, more today than he would do in a week at school. I am going to create a vocabulary test for units 1-3 for him to do tomorrow, and I correct his math pages, but that is really all I have to do. I give him a list of the day's objectives, and how he accomplishes those objectives (workbook, online games, research, whatever) is up to Connor. I didn't expect it to be this simple!

Free downloads!

I am simply amazed at how many cool educational games we can download (trial period at least) for free!! Three weeks ago, Connor spent hours on Aleks, a math software program. The program tracked Connor's progress and sent me a weekly report (which I should have printed for my record keeping, but didn't). Last week, Connor found BrainPOP. The site has hundreds of online videos explaining bits, bytes and other technology, as well as math, science, art, history etc. This week Connor is learning how to type (the real way--he already hunts and pecks very fast) using a program called Type to Learn 4. Yes, these companies all want us to purchase their programs ($19 a month just for Aleks!), but we find that we can learn a ton just using the 30 day free trial. When the 30 days is over, we simply move on to another program. Even the US government has developed a cool free game, Immune Attack, that teaches anatomy and biology. Home-schooling is often expensive, as in our case: private music lessons, chess lessons, horseback riding lessons, Impact Homeschool Co-op and the YMCA co-op, but it really doesn't have to be as costly as private school. As our economy takes a dive, I may have to reevaluate what and how much I spend on all these extra activities, and it's nice to know I can still get free downloads!

Interesting observations. Feb. 22 2009

I was putting dividers into a second 3" binder today because Connor has almost filled up the first binder. When he saw what I was doing he commented, "Wow, if my school could see all the work I've done in a month they would be amazed! I don't normally do this much in a whole year." I also just received a very nice letter from the Principal of the school. He essentially apologized for not being to meet Connor's needs (interestingly, his child is also gifted) and commends my decision for home-schooling. He offered any assistance he can provide, within NYS guidelines.

Feb. 21st 2009 Vacation is over!

Well, our February break is over!! We are back from skiing and ready to learn. Interestingly, Connor has it in his head that he needs to "make-up" the work he missed during the Feb. vacation. Although it is a weekend, as soon as we returned home from the ski resort on Saturday Connor dove back into his school work with great fervor. Austin and Xiao don't feel that they missed a week's worth of work, but Connor feels the pressure (for some reason). He woke up at 7am this morning and immediately proceeded to "catch-up" on his math pages. As I write, I can hear him practicing Chinese with Xiao. Poor Xiao has spent a great deal of his time in the USA as a private tutor. I guess I'd feel worse about that, but I remind myself that our grocery bill went from $150 a week to $400 a week since Xiao arrived!!!! Tutoring the boys in Chinese and math makes it all worthwhile.

Friday Feb. 13 2009

I forgot to post on Friday, so I'll just quickly sum up what we accomplished. Connor noticed that he's on page 114 in his grade 5 Math workbook, and I noticed that he was only on page 100 in the grade 4 workbook, after six months of working on it 9-11a every day in school. Obviously, Connor wasted a whole lot of time when he was at school. At 10am I took Connor to his chess club. When we got home, Connor completed another unit in the vocabulary book, and we practiced Chinese. Then he read Huckleberry Finn for an hour. I signed us up for a free membership with Brain Pop and Connor watched some of the videos and completed a few of the quizzes. He also spent a whole lot of time building K'nex. We did a whole lot more, but these are the highlights.

Feb. 12, 2009

The newest twist on home-schooling Connor is Austin's reaction! Austin appears to be a little bit jealous!! Several times Austin has mentioned how he is perfect home-school material, since he is self-directed etc. I keep telling him I'm not going to home-school beyond 6th grade. Connor will also attend McQuaid Jesuit eventually. Yesterday, Austin asked me if he could create a test for Connor on one of his subjects. Like a dummy, I told Austin that Connor was due for a math test (since he's on the 4th chapter now) and Austin could design the test. Well, Austin spent almost two hours creating a test, and then he challenged Connor to do it at 8p last night. Next thing I knew, Connor is sobbing, real tears dripping onto his paper. Apparently, Austin feels threatened by Connor's exceptional abilities, and he created a test that was overly difficult. For instance, Connor learned exponents. Austin's questions were things like 8 to the 9th power. With no calculator, Connor was trying to compute the answers. After awhile, he just broke down crying. The bonus question was a geometry problem that Austin' just learned in 7th grade, and Connor was devastated that he didn't know how to solve for the answer. On the one hand, it's good for Connor to realize that there are things he doesn't know yet, but Austin's way of bringing about this realization was not very nice. In the end, Connor scored an 86% on the test and Austin was impressed. Connor was mad he didn't get an A. Now I know not to let Austin create tests for his brother, and I suddenly see how threatened Austin feels by all the attention that Connor is now receiving. This is a learning process for us all.
Now on to the recording what we did on Thurs. for my record keeping.
Connor completed 5 math pages in unit 4 of Everyday Math. For over an hour, he played the vocabulary games online that accompany the unit in the vocab. book. He played the geography games with Sheppard software and is working on Africa now. He wrote a letter to his penpal. He finished another college level packet on identifying major and minor supporting details and creating graphic organizers of expository text. He read Huckleberry Finn for 2 hours! He practiced guitar. Then he took the disastrous math test on units 1-3.

Feb. 11 2009

Whew! I'm just exhausted. Once a week I babysit (although that implies I get paid--and I don't) two toddlers, ages 2 and 3. Yes, I'm crazy, but it's volunteer work and I'm building Heaven points. Anyway,poor Connor has to get up extra early to get his math done before they arrive, and then he spent the entire day trying to do school work in between chasing these two wild Indians around. But Connor did just splendidly. In spite of the absolute chaos, Connor managed to complete an entire unit in his vocabulary book. It's the same book that Austin is using at McQuaid, and I found out from Austin (over dinner tonight) that the 7th graders do a unit a week. Oh well. Connor does a unit almost every day,and doesn't seem to mind. Connor also finally mastered (I say finally, but really it was only a week) Asian geography. He can fill in the map of Asia (30 countries) in 140 seconds now, with 100% accuracy. So we can cross off the USA, Europe and Asia now. Tomorrow we can start on Central America. Good thing I was an international travel coordinator for 15 years and already know this stuff cold. Connor also completed another one of the reading packets I use to teach Reading 101 at Monroe Community college. Connor scored 95% without any assistance. Time to move to a more difficult book. Math was a bummer today. Connor didn't know how to do tessellations, and neither did I. I've decided I'm going to have to cough up the $32 for the solution/teacher manual. Darn. I hate it that I can't do 5th grade math. On a positive note, my Chinese is coming along. We listened to our Chinese Cd for awhile, and "our babies" as I often call them, seemed to like it too. Connor is on page 92 in Huckleberry Finn, and we talked about how the seven years between the novels beginning and its end might have affected the author, Samuel Clemmons (Mark Twain). Connor also went to a horse-back riding lesson today, and a guitar lesson. So, even though we chased around toddlers quite a bit, Connor did manage to accomplish more today than he would in a week at school. He's now starting to tell people (with pride) that he's home-schooled. The guitar teacher told me that he was telling Connor about a band, named the Demos. Connor informed the guitar teacher that Demos, in Latin, means people. Connor wondered aloud if the band knew the definition of Demos and wanted to be a band "of the people." Again, it's all good stuff.

Feb. 10

Today was an Impact Homeschool Academy Day for Connor. He attends this co-op school on Tuesdays, with a few dozen other home-schooled children. Connor was excited to bring the Earthquake cake we made last night (to represent California--see yesterday's post) and to perform the song he wrote on the guitar. At Impact Academy Connor takes Writing, Drama, Chemistry, and Social Studies. He could take Spanish there too, but since he is already studying Latin online and taking Chinese lessons we decided to skip the Spanish class. Luckily, it's the first class of the day, so I just drive him there an hour later. That is the beauty of home-schooling. Connor gets to learn what he and I find interesting, as long as it's within the parameters of the NYS guidelines. After Impact Academy, we went to our Chinese class at the Gil Coterie Language School. Of course, Connor has more time during the day to study, so he is wayyy ahead of the rest of the family with his mastery of Chinese. It's all good though. Connor and I are both learning more and more each day!

Feb. 9, 2009 Monday

Today Connor completed 7 math pages in Unit 3 (Geometry). He researched the natural resources and economy of California, and then wrote a report. Connor had a melt-down when the computer suddenly shut down when he was in the middle of writing his report. He had to re-write the entire report, which brought him to tears. He researched a "typical" food from California, and we are going to make a California earthquake cake tonight. He wrote a summary of the historical fiction Blood Gold. He worked on geography online using the geography game. He listened to his Latin lesson, practiced guitar, and went to a dentist appointment. He began reading his new book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Homeschooling Connor 2/7/09

Well, I've been homeschooling Connor for three weeks now, and I feel that I should write down all that we've been doing. I have to keep careful records anyway, and this is the easiest way to write and reflect. Wow. We have done so much in three weeks that I guess I have to back-track to the beginning. First of all, I've been following other homeschooling blogs for over a year now. I spent last year calling Connor in sick at least once a week so that I could provide enrichment opportunities for him. But our one day together was almost like boot-camp because we had it so tightly packed. We had our crossfit trainer come at 7a, the sewing teacher at 9a, we'd fly over to the art lessons at 11a, and be at guitar lessons by 1p and horseback riding by 3p. Yikes! No time to actually enjoy all these extras. And I kept finding all these cool things for us to do, but we had no time to do them! Connor normally didn't get home from school until 4p, and we have a family dinner around 5:30p. No time for anything really. As Mark Twain said, we have to be careful not to let school get in the way of our education. So I took the leap. Jan 19th was our first official day of homeschooling. For months I'd been planning an elaborate curriculum. My biggest concern is that we'd kill each other in the process because I often lack patience. Therefore,the first week I just tried to take it easy and not follow a strict regimen. All the blogs warn parents not to go jumping into an overly zealous curriculum at first, because the child needs to transition. So the first week, Connor read a whole lot and we loosely followed our plan. Every day he read for at least two hours, and he completed 5 pages in the 5th grade Everyday Math book each day. Connor read The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck (12th grade level), Blood Gold, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Guardians of Gahoole. He also studied Chinese, practiced guitar, played chess a lot, and went to horseback riding lessons. The second week we went to Florida to visit my dad for three nights. We went to an aquarium, the Big Cat rescue, University of Tampa, and a couple of beaches. Connor learned about (and got to touch!!) sting rays, snakes, alligators, sharks, tigers (and lots of other cats). He collected shells and we watched Xiao eat the eyes and brain of a Snapper (a fish). Last week was our third week, and much more structured. Connor wrote his California report (oh, did I mention we've been researching California?), and discovered an online geography site that has him hooked. Connor can now place all the states on a blank map in 63 seconds, and he can place 85% of the countries in Europe in 120 seconds. We will master the geography of the earth within a month. Connor also took apart our old computer on Thursday. We got a new tower, and he decided that taking apart the old one would be cool. He researched computer parts online, with screwdriver in hand. Everyday Connor suffers through his Rosetta Stone Latin program, and he scored 100% on a test I devised of 42 Latin roots. His vocabulary book (7th grade level) arrived, and he's completed unit one. We are on unit 3 in the 5th grade Everyday Math book. He's completed three "packets" that I give my college students (scoring about 85% on each) and a physical features of California map. He wrote a song about early California history on his guitar (lyrics and the written music) to perform at his Impact Homeschooling Academy on Tuesday, and yesterday he found an online penpal from California to correspond with, so that he can find out a regional dish to prepare. Ok. Now that I've sort of filled in what we've done for the last few weeks, I'll try to post everyday. I have to admit, my only regret so far is that I didn't have the guts to do this last year!! Below is the letter I sent the school district (for other new homeschoolers to use as a model).

To Whom It May Concern:

Please consider this as a letter of intent to home-school Connor Peters, age 10, effective January 19, 2009. Although we have the highest regard and admiration for the faculty of Geneseo Central School, the School and College Ability Test indicated that Connor has special educational needs as a highly gifted student. Unfortunately, academic intervention for gifted students is not currently mandated under state or federal law. After researching our educational options, including online courses through the Center for Talented Youth at John Hopkins University, home-schooling appears to be the best plan for Connor at this time.
If it were lawful to home-school part-time and provide Connor additional academic opportunities on alternate days, we would choose this option; however, the New York State Education Department does not authorize part-time public school attendance. Enclosed please find our tentative curriculum, book list, and syllabi for your perusal. We will complete the Individualized Home Instruction Plan after we receive the necessary forms from the district. Please feel free to call or email us with suggestions and feedback, as we value the input from the outstanding teachers at Geneseo Central School.




Sincerely,