Week 1 of Oak Meadow

Well we completed our first week of Oak Meadow and I am very happy. It will take some time to get the feel for how days/weeks should go but I know it will be more relaxing than the classical pace.
Big Mac began IEW writing this week as well and I am hoping that will give her guidance and confidence in her writing. She likes the history element of OM and I am only picking and choosing which grammar we do since some of it is review of what she already knows. She continued with 5 lessons and some corrections in Horizons math and I look forward to her switching over to Teaching Textbooks next year. We already have Mr. Q' science and she enjoys the style of writing so she continued her study of biomes and did some work with food chains that we will continue next week.

Chickie is a total writer/creator/independent thinker. She has a poem, from the OM syllabus that I copied for her, and is turning it into a booklet by researching and drawing or printing pics of the flowers mentioned. She even discovered that the earliest blooming flower we have out front is a windflower! We made grapefruit bird feeders and have been patiently waiting for visitors with little luck. I think perhaps our backyard might be a better place.

Wildman has been a bit under the weather and did not do much this week. He is ahead by OM standards since K and 1st are a slower pace than what I had been doing. He has a knack for math and we are continuing with Singapore since he likes it. He also love any Burgess animal story and asks for those to be read. He addressed an envelope to his friend by himself and spelled out "Dilin" for Dylan yesterday and I was impressed. He can sound out words but has never tried in writing by himself.
I ditched Caesar's English for Big Mac and have listed it for sale. Instead I ordered Sadlier Vocab Workshop to give her a boost since she is a reluctant reader and lacks extensive vocabulary. Looking ahead to Phonics Road 3 I can see that we may be crunched to do IEW, PR, and Sadlier all at once. It is MUCH more involved than PR 2. I really like what I see and the writing picks up BIG TIME at this level.
With any luck I will be posting more about our OM days and feeling the release of stress!

Back to blogging and ditching it all!

After a long break and some chaos in my train of thought I am back in full force. I came to the realization that a "rigorous" classical education is not what 2 of my kids can handle. I also learned that I was doing more stressing, more planning, and more yelling. Where is the love of homeschooling when the days are long and frustrating?? I was trying to piece together so many different things I was just not able to keep my sanity or focus. Solution? Oak Meadow.
Oak Meadow is  more relaxed curriculum that is all laid out for me and will get the job done while not sucking the life out of us. I am adding in Phonics Road(for now) for the grammar/writing tweak and we will continue with Meet the Masters and our current math/science. I also have Big Mac starting on IEW History based lessons to get her into more writing. I will see where OM takes us drop the writing from one of them if it gets to be too much.
Anyway, having spent last week in Disney and then coming home to order new curriculum...well we did little this week other than math and reading. I am all set for next week!

Science is...well...fun!

When I would hear nature study I would cringe. I mean how do you measure and evaluate such an animal? You don't and that is the beauty of it. You look, listen, enjoy, and just revel. We took a hike through a local park and the things the kids notice now is just, well, a homeschool thing. Here is some of what we saw.

It appears to be an egg sack we think? Cool to say the least. A great variety of fungi and stuff went well with our recent discussions.

Okay so maybe that cute thing holding the leaf was not found out in the woods....but an awesome example of nature anyway! Much to Chickie's dismay, these were not just seeds that she touched, but fox scat. The big eeeewww for the day but educational to say the least. We also encountered a frog, lots of water spots, geese flying overhead in the classic V formation, and showers of falling leaves. Wonderful time spent in the woods!

School so far...

When we started the year I was bent on trying to get Big Mac to be the perfect classical student. WE WILL be a note taking, encyclopedia reading, outlining machine!!! No. Not happening. She is not that type of student. Regroup....
Ok, I am backing down on my classical aspirations and decided that Charlotte Mason is more my style. I rearranged the classroom and am bringing a LOT more living books into our lives. I am making read alouds a priority as well. I have turned back to WWE 3 for Big Mac as well. WWS was not working.
Things that are working are:
Phonics Road
Latin for Children
Horizons math
Nature study
and this week we start Trail Guide Pathways of Exploration! So excited!!

I am letting nature dictate Nature Study and we go with the flow. Since squirrels abound I got a bunch of books on squirrels, including this one which looks really good!

Our rotation schedule seems to be working out well. This week Chickie is off and she does really well at entertaining Mini monster. It is a bit of work keeping track of who did what in history since I run them together, but since Big Mac needs more depth I can use this week to do that with her.

Wildlife pastry? Not quite!

Here are some pretty peculiar nature finds. Since they grew in the leaves under a cherry tree it was safe to assume that they were some form of fungi. But which one? Thank goodness for Google. After searching online and in the Handbook of Nature Study we concluded that there delicate looking things were earthstar mushrooms! The ones shown at left are the miniscule variety. The ones we have are about twice that size.
The small top pouch contains spores that puff out as it dries out. Looks like we will be stopping for some unscheduled nature study tomorrow as we sketch and research fungi! Oh the boundless freedom of homeschooling!

AHHHHH spiders

Quite in line with the current nature theme and the fact that we are nearing Halloween, spiders abound! We have a big, ugly, orb weaver on a bush on the side of our house. I guess to his mom he is pretty-lol. His beautiful web is about 2 feet across. Later in the day we went out to check on him and he was not alone!







He had a meal with him! Stink bug roast to be exact! EEEWWW.
The girls did their own drawings of Mr. Spider in their nature journals and we will keep checking on his progress!

Another peek at nature!

So this past spring Chickie found a bird's nest with some ummm...remains in it. She wanted to examine it and I suggested letting nature take its course and wait until it was just bones. Well last week she decided to dig the nest out of hiding. What we found was pretty amazing. Yes those little tiny things, compared to Big Mac's thumb, are bones!!!