Outdoor School

I got back from outdoor school on Wednesday.  I was in a cabin with 15 other people including my counselors.  My two counselors camp names were Sulley and Ski. I took four classes while I was there, Photography, Nature Hike, Dutch Ovens, and Sewing.  In my photography class I learned how to make it look like someone is standing on someone elses hand. On my nature hike I learned that there are two types of blackberries but just one of them is native to our area.  I learned that the most reliable way to heat a dutch oven is with briquettes, and in fiber crafts I made P.J. pants out of fleece. I met a lot of new people and learned a lot of goofy songs. :-)

Love Kayla

What Have We Learned?

So....we are two weeks in~still in a happy honeymoon phase! What have we learned so far?
We start each morning out with a cup of tea and the morning readings from:

 It's not intense learning time, but  those 5-10 minutes of picking out tea and finishing the readings ease us nicely into the school day.

MATH:

We spent these first two weeks working through the 26 Lessons of Hands on Equations. It was definitely easier than she needed but it was fun and a painless way to start thinking algebraically while holding a place in our schedule for math.  But I'm excited to begin our much more in-depth Algebra next week:

 from Art of Problem Solving.

GRAMMAR:
 This supposed 5th grade text was a little bit of an eye opener about grammar concepts we both usually use correctly but can't necessarily put into words!   In the first two chapters we have covered: Compound and Simple Subjects and Predicates, Helping Verbs, Verb Phrases, Subject Pronouns, Sentence Types, Diagramming Simple and Compound Sentences, Writing Paragraphs, Comma Splices and Diagramming Sentences Beginning with "There Is/Are".

VOCABULARY:
 Uses Latin and Greek roots to teach English vocabulary.  The first two lessons dealt with numbers and the key roots included:  monos, unus, duo, duplex, bi, tri, tres, quartus, quatour, decem and centum.  Roots that combined with those included: logos, arkos, gramma, polein, lithos, animus, latus, plicare, secare, athlon and gradus.  Words that were new to Kayla (or that she couldn't define clearly) included:  monologue, monolith, monogram, unilateral, bipartisan, triumvirate, quatrain, centenary and decimate.  She was also excited to understand why unanimous, monopoly and centrigrade mean what they do!

PHYSICS:

An area I haven't thought about in probably 17 years! We are both learning as we go (there may be calls to the scientific Auntie in our futures!)  We did a handful of simple experiments to experience the ideas of the first two chapters: speed, acceleration, the acceleration of gravity, vectors/scalars, Newton's Laws, mass vs. weight, terminal speed and some basic equations.

LATIN:

We are alternating Spanish and Latin so we only did Lesson 1: Vocab: amo, porto, laudo, oro, laboro.  First Conjugation: amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant.   But what she was really excited about was learning the Lord's Prayer in Latin. 

SPANISH:  Before our first trip to Mexico, we purchased a language program called Synergy Spanish. Kayla really picked up a lot from it in the months before traveled and is excited to learn more. We had done quite a few of the oral lessons, but not the written. So we went back to Lesson 1 and 2 and worked through the written exercises.  We also grabbed a bunch of children's books while we were in Mexico that have a simple 10 page story followed by activities~so we started in on Peter Pan.  We were excited to find out that between the words that she already knows and knowing the context of the Peter Pan story there were only a few words on each page that she needed to ask about.

HISTORY: The addition of the timeline to our kitchen and hallway walls was by far the most exciting part of history!  But we also read/talked about sections about European Imperialism (1750-1900) and India Under British Rule.  The topics that rose to the top in terms of interest were Queen Victoria and the Victorian Era and Rudyard Kipling....

LOGIC: 
  Basic definitions and introductions to the concepts of logic, simple apprehension, judgement, deductive inference, proposition, syllogism and  mental image. 

READING:  The daily report on this book is basically a barometer of whether it is more or less boring than the day before, with the occasional admission that she enjoyed a passage.  Definitely not her usual pick :)

ART/MUSIC: Daily piano practice,  read about James Whistler and added a couple of Kayla's favorite works to the time line.

OTHER ACTIVITIES:  Nature Walk with Dad and the dog, signed up for Post Crossings~looking forward to receiving some fun mail (and sneaking in some geography!)

WHAT'S NEXT?  She'll spend the first three days of next week at a "Homeschool Outdoor School" at a local(ish) 4-H camp.   I'm excited both because I loved outdoor school and she has never had a chance to go and because it will give me a chance to evalute and regroup.

Favorites

Hi, it's Kayla. Now that I have survived a week and a half of school I have picked out my two favorite things we have done so far. One we did this morning. After doing our morning devotional I suggested that we learn the books of the bible, so to test what we already know we each made a list of all the books we could remember.  I had about forty books that I didn't know so we will keep doing this every week until we know them all. One of my other favorite things is our timeline, it starts near the back door in the kitchen and goes all the way to Owen's door. It starts at 1800 and goes till present day. We have put birthdays, and important historical events on it. It really helps me figure out when certain things take place. For instance, now I know that Whistler's famous painting was created during the victorian time period. Well I have to get back to work now but I will try to start updating more than one a week... LOVE KAYLA. 
Ps. If you want to be on our timeline you can email or call me, or post a comment with your name and birthyear.

Not-At-Home School

There was more school than home in our day today! We got up early, made ourselves some tea and worked on Algebra until time to take Owen to school.  Kayla did her Logic lesson while I dropped him off. We listened to Latin in the van on the way to the orthodontist appointment (bye-bye braces!).  Hung out in a study room at the public library working on grammar and history for the 3 hours until it was time to go back and pick up the retainer.  Reviewed vocab words in the van on the way home.   She finished up her reading and practiced piano and is relaxing for the few minutes until it's time to head back to Albany for gymnastics.  Yesterday was a nice bubble, but I suspect this is what many days in the 'real world' will feel like!

Goal: "To Learn Something. New!"

I'm sure they won't all be as easy or fun as today, but it was nice to get off to a happy start!  Despite her excitement all summer I was a little bit afraid that after today she'd be ready to go back to "real school" and then I'd have to find some neighborhood kid to use this huge stack of books!  

I'm sure I'll be sharing more about them as we go since curriculum questions seem to be the most common question I've been asked since we announced this crazy plan, but right now we're off to cook dinner (which I've been informed I can now call 'Home Ec' and have a helper) so here are a few of my favorite moments from today~

• Hearing   "Whoa that's confusing. I love it! My brain has to work!" while reading the Logic text.  Followed by, "Can I read something cool to you?"
• Finding vocabulary words she didn't already know~and her plans to use them to confuse her brother and dad when they get home.
• Being able to head out the door for a seven minute walk when we started getting fidgety.

Day One Jello and Vectors

So if you didn't see our last post this is Kayla speaking. Today was day one and it went great. We started with bagels and tea then took first day of school pictures. Then we made a name tag then went on to a devotional. After that we moved on to logic, it was so confusing but it made my brain work so I loved it. I loved this part of a qoute out of one of my logic books "You can be as logical about griffins and basilisks as you can about sheep and pigs." After logic we started on my math lesson about Algebra it was so much fun. Then I learned some Greek and Latin roots during vocabulary. By then I was getting hyper so Mom and I took Cypres for a walk. When we came back we spent a while working on grammar. Then we were getting hungry so we made smoothies then practiced Latin. Probably the best part of today was science. I got to do two experiments. The first one was about Vectors, which is an object moving in a direction. For this experiment we got to use Jello!!!!! For my second experiment we got to send marbles down a ramp and I learned that the size of the marbles doesn't affect the time it takes them to travel down a ramp. After that I learned two new songs on the piano both using a new hand position. Then I sat down to eat lunch and read the book Kidnapped. So, we had a busy day but I loved every minute of it. Another thing I love is being able to study at whichever desk I want these are the places I studied today.

Who Said That?

Since this blog is shared between two people we will use different fonts and colors so you can tell us apart.

This is me, Kayla.

This is me, Patty.

So now you know who said what...

Day Zero

Can't start a school without a name!

All good names need to be acronyms...

So welcome to

School for

Teaching

Unusual

Pupil

In our

Domicile

Or, in other words, S.T.U.P.I.D. It's gonna be quite a year here!