Friday March 20

Mass today was in Leicester, 15 minutes away. Connor figured out that he has atteneded 8 churches so far this Lent. Pretty neat. After Mass, Connor worked on his Math test,units 4-6, and then we left for Chess at 10am. On the way to Rochester, we listed to Grammar Rock and Fill Your Head vocabulary Cds. We stopped to pick up Connor's friend, Ezra, and arrived at Chess by 11a. At 12:30 we grabbed lunch and went to the Rochester Museum and Science Center. We spent 3 hours touring the exhibits, learning a ton of Science stuff (that I won't bother listing here). After the museum, we stayed to watch the Spring Skies show at the Planetarium. We didn't get home until almost 5:30pm. It's 6p, and Connor is upstairs practicing guitar now. What I liked best about our day was listening to Connor talk with Ezra in the car. Every other sentence began with, "The thing I like best about home-schooling is..." For instance, "The thing I like best about home-schooling is that we get to go to the museum when it's not crowded. When I went with my school on field trips, it was always chaotic." His words, not mine. To be fair, he did say something negative too. "One thing I don't like about home-schooling is that I never get a break. Even when we went to Florida my mom brought my Math book and stuff and made me do school work." Overall, it was just great that Connor found a home-schooling friend who understands him. Ezra seems like a good fit for Connor,and I hope they get to spend more time together in the future.

Thurs. March 19

I just realized that I have been home-schooling Connor for exactly two months. Wow! Time does fly. It is almost time to write my quarterly report to the Superintendent. Yes, home-schoolers have to submit reports four times a year. I know that it is to make certain that parents are really teaching their children, but it does seem rather "big-brother" like to me. Luckily, I enjoy blogging each day about our objectives and lessons, and I can use these ramblings as a basis for my report. Mass this morning was at 8am in Mt. Morris. We have been rotating churches almost daily, and it has added to our Lenten experience. We learned recently from Father Ed that in Rome it was the custom during Lent to attend a different church each day of Lent. We didn't realize we were on to something. The Mass today was about the Feast of St. Joseph. The reading was the story of when Jesus (at age 12) got lost during a Pilgrimage and how his parents searched for him for three days. When they found him, Jesus was sitting in the temple asking questions and participating in the adults' dialogue. It reminded me of Connor. He is fascinated with religion and takes every opportunity to question the traditions and practices of all faiths, including ours. I know church is not part of our school curriculum, but it has expanded our learning exponentially. After church Connor finished his Math Journal number one. He will begin the second Math journal next week. Writing a summary of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle came next. Connor already wrote an essay for me about the story, but now he has to write a summary of a novel for his writing teacher at Impact. At first I thought it was redundant, but it gave me an opportunity to teach him the difference between writing a thesis driven essay compared to writing a summary. Summaries simply retell the story, whereas the essay he wrote for me makes an argument. Guitar practice and Chinese were next, and then unit 6 in the vocabulary book. At 3p, we were off to horseback riding lessons. At 4:30p Connor went outside to play. He was begging to go out all day, and I kept him inside to finish his work. As the weather gets nicer, I may have to do more school work in the evening and give Connor a recess outside during the day. It's good exercise and he does learn a lot through play too. I am just so focused on my own agenda sometimes that I forget to let him guide the learning too. I need to work on that. I don't want him to hate being home-schooled, but I want him to value his education no matter where it takes place.

Wed. March 18, 2009

Our morning routine was a little less hectic this morning because we had to attend my Aunt's funeral. Before leaving at 9am (90 minutes later than usual) Connor completed 5 more Math pages, wrote an email letter to our Chinese teacher (in Chinese), and to his penpal in California. Then we left for the funeral. It was a long drive, and in the car we listened to Chinese and Connor read the last few chapters of the historical fiction, The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I dropped him off at his boat-building class at noon, after the very long funeral Mass. I will have him blog about the boat-building class below.After the YMCA boat-building class, Connor went to his guitar lesson (at 4p) and then played Chemistry and Math games on Freerice.com. Now, it's 5:30pm and after he blogs about his day (below) we will officially end our school day. He will, of course, read for at least an hour before bed too. We never really end our school day, as Connor often reminds me.

This is Connor:
Hello everyone! Today,we got to the boat class late so I ate lunch first. After that, we had to twist tie(with special clips) the boat to keep it together. That took about an hour. Then some people found a boat in the forest so we got to repair it. There were two cracks. To repair the damage, we cut the cracks to make them bigger. If you don't cut them to make them bigger, the cracks will continue to ruin the boat. After that, we put fiberglass on the boat, and then put resin to reinforce the fiberglass. After that, we played for about 15-25 minutes. Then the class was over.

Tues. March 17

By 7:30am,Connor ran a mile on the treadmill, finished writing his Mystery story, and read a chapter in the book The Witch of Blackbird Pond. During 8am Mass we learned about ST. Patrick (of course) and celebrated Father Schifferli's 64th anniversary of being ordained. It was a lovely Mass. Then I drove Connor to Impact HS Academy. During Drama they assigned roles for the play. Connor is playing "Hopeful." He has a ton of lines, he says. In Chemistry they experimented with invisible ink and took a test on Chemistry vocabulary. He scored 100%. In writing, they did peer editing of their mystery stories. I had already edited his story, so Connor was ahead of the group. We then went to Chinese class. We are now on lesson 17. I've asked the teacher to focus more on conversational Chinese, and less on just compiling a list of nouns to learn. We want to actually be able to speak to others when we travel to China next year. That's about all we did on Tuesday.

Monday March 16, 2009

This blog is boring lately, and I must apologize.By the time I sit down to write it, I am ready for bed and too lazy to write too much. Today Connor read to page 99 in The Witch of Blackbird Pond. He wrote a fabulous 5 paragraph essay (in response to a writing prompt) on the book The Red Badge of Courage. After that, he completed another unit in his vocabulary book, did 5 Math pages, played a geography game online, played Immune Attack (biology), read chapter eight(and created corresponding flash cards for the vocab.)in his Chemistry book, studied Chinese flashcards, and practiced guitar. Yes, he worked on school stuff from 7am until 4p, with only 20 minutes for lunch. We go heavy on the school work on Mondays, so that he can afford the time to go to his boat-building class on Wednesdays, horse-back riding on Thursdays, and Chess on Fridays.

Friday March 13

I forgot to blog on Friday, so I'll try to remember what we did and sum it up quickly. We went to church, of course, but we found out that Mass was canceled because there was going to be a funeral at 11a. Drats. At least we went three extra times before lent, so we decided that would make up for it. Then I took Connor to his private chess lesson, and then his group class. Afterwards, we went to Connor's friend's house. There Connor found deer skulls and bones in the woods. When he got home, he did his math pages,the geography game online, a chapter in the vocabulary book and he read The Witch of Blackbird Pond. This is the third historical fiction book he has read about US history. I remember hearing him practice guitar too, and we listened to Chinese in the car. I'm sure we did more, but I don't remember now. This is why I try to blog every day; when I miss it, I forget all the little things we do.

Thursday March 12, 2009

Connor was an altar server today at 8am Mass, which he enjoyed immensely. We also had "our babies" here today, which is always a challenge. I must say though, we are getting better at getting school work done in spite of all the distractions. In fact, Connor accomplished everything I had on his list and more. He read an entire book in one day (The Red Badge of Courage), played a geography game online, worked on his vocabulary words online, completed 5 math pages in his workbook, wrote an essay on the novel The Secret Garden, wrote more of his mystery story,and practiced Chinese. All this with a houseful of kids here. We also had Skylar and Chasen's siblings here, for a total of 4 visitors under the age of 8. Chaos seems to bring out the best in Connor. I'm exhausted though.