Museum Time

Early Sunday Morning  --Edward Hopper

I took W to a cool class at the Whitney Museum of American Art on the Upper East Side.  We discussed a painting by John Sloan called Backyards, Greenwich Village from 1914 and two paintings by Edward Hopper.  One was called Barber Shop and the other was called Early Sunday Morning.  With this last one, the kids were told to imagine what they thought might be inside the shops along the street.  They were given art stix and paper to draw with.  We never went to the Whitney before.  It was really nice to be with our friends there.

After that, W, a few friends, and I walked over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It's been 4 or 5 years since we'd been there, so I figured it was time.  Outside, we all got some hot dogs from the street cart and took a few pictures.  It's such a gorgeous building.  My corporate membership got my friend and me in for no charge and all kids under age 11 are free - so that was cool.  We started in the Egyptian gallery (my favorite) and ended up in Ancient Rome.  Of course we hit the gift shop before we left.

Sushi

Yesterday W had a great time making sushi in the West Village.  It's always fun getting together with our homeschool group and thanks to some really creative moms, we usually get to do these interesting activities.  We had all the tools and ingredients - bamboo mats, avocado, cucumber, rice vinegar, soy sauce, fake crab, nori sheets, teriyaki eel, and a rice cooker.  We were shown how to layer on the ingredients and then how to roll it using the mat.  The kids did such a great job with it.  I tried one too, but my roll sort of fell apart, lol. 

When we got home, we decided to do a few of those extra subjects we often neglect.  So we listened to each of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" while looking at the beautiful paintings of Caravaggio.  We did this for over 30 minutes with great discussion about the time periods in which they lived, what the style of dress was, Italy, how religion seemed such a big part of life, etc.  Then we researched a few things about trees for about 20 minutes.  It was late in the day, so we didn't get to Spanish or Dictation, but we'll figure that out by next week.  It was fun and reminded me to make a stronger effort to fit these subjects in every week.  

Busy Busy Busy

Beautiful pink winter sunrise on my block

I haven't posted our homeschooling schedule since the beginning of December.  This is the one W thought of and we've been using it.  I still love it and so much gets done.  Here's how it's laid out:

Mon, Wed, Fri
Math
Spelling
Read-to-Me
1 AO Reading w/narration
1 Free Reading
Poetry
Copywork


Tue
Read-to-Me
Artist Study
Composer Study
Dictation
Spanish
Nature Study


Thu
5 AO Readings w/narrations
Spelling
Read-to-Me

W's duct tape wallet...and what his work table usually looks like

And W's new "Read-to-Me" is A Cricket in Times Square.  Yes, that's right.  He picked it and he is actually reading 2 pages each day out loud to me from that 6th grade-level book.  I cannot tell you how proud of him I am.  Backtracking to an easy reading book then up again to something harder tends to work with him. 

W chopping onions.  He did wash his hands, but the paint wouldn't come off, lol.

W has planned and made his meals for his scout project.  I did one with him.  He knows a lot about cooking.  Besides that, he has been modding Nerf guns, making new crossbows, and even made himself a trifold wallet out of duct tape.  All the while he continues to make tutorial videos about cartoon drawing, Super Mario Bros. on the Wii, and different ways to change-up Nerf guns - I should suggest making a cooking one!.




J had finals this week at school.  Then today her English quiz was to perform a monologue from "Fences".   And tonight is her school dance.  Thankfully, she enjoys keeping busy.  Tomorrow is her 9am pointe class, then she teaches her new baby class, then there's 3-4 hours of solo, duet, and group numbers rehearsal with her dance team.  After that, she grabs a quick lunch with her friends and heads to another friend's house to spend the day.  I'm exhausted for her, lol.

Scouts

At scouts last week, W has another cool project to do.  He is working toward getting his Family Badge (or something like that).  He has to plan out 3 meals, make a shopping list for those, and prepare everything himself.  He knows how to do this already, having done it a few times, but now it includes writing things down and thinking of whole meals instead of just one dish.  He's excited to get started.  Since B is the chef in the house, they will be doing everything together (there's never enough dad and son bonding).  I hope I remember to take pictures.

The scouts also went ice skating yesterday.  They went to a brand new place that was just created this winter.  It seems like they just sealed off an area, filled it with some water, put some plastic railings all around, and called it a rink.  Simple, yet so nice.  There's a mall across the street and a huge cemetery across the other street.  They had the whole place to themselves and had a great time.


I re-organized my entire apartment (again, lol) and I'm so please with how it looks now.  We threw out so much stuff - it looks so much bigger in here!  An open, clutter-free home does wonders for my motivation.  I have so many plans brewing!

Justified.

J did an essay for English the other day.  When she handed it in, the teacher read the first paragraph and told J it was VERY good.  Most of the kids didn't understand the assignment (and didn't do it), so the teacher told them to look at J's "because she did an excellent job".   Ok, now, what I'm finding incredible is that J has never really had any sort of real writing instruction.  She writes from her heart and how she'd tell someone a story out loud.  The teacher is probably used to the cookie-cutter way of writing all kids learn in elementary/middle school and I would think it's refreshing to see more of someone's personality in their work.  Another hat-tip to homeschooling.  Best decision we ever made.

Reading

We haven't finished AO Yr 2.  Oh well.  We'll get to it.  We tend to do more readings than each AO week requires, so we'll eventually catch up.  I'm not worried about it.  W is on track with math, spelling, & reading.  That's right...reading.  He has been reading to me a lot and his fluency, intonations, and comprehension are spot on.  The book we're using as his "read-to-me" is an old one I've had lying around since K was little, called, Treasury of Virtues.  It's below his reading level, which I did on purpose, to boost his confidence.  And it worked.  It creates a fierce belief in himself that he really can do it.  I can see that he tries so hard - and it has really paid off.  So proud of him.  Here's some more of what we did this week:

Spelling Skills 4:  Synonyms; Using commas
Copywork:  Poetry
TT5:  Subtraction (Regrouping twice with 2 zeros)
Readings:  Five Children & It,  An Island Story (we're up to the mid-1300s AD),  Pagoo,  Seabird, & Child's History of the World (all about Gothic cathedrals and churches)

His narrations are great.  He's been doing them for 2 years now and has it down pretty good.  Starting next week, he'll be writing one of them down in paragraph form.  I wanted to wait until we started Year 3, but who knows when that will be.  He's ready for writing and I'm excited to see how he does.

Holidays!

We had a wonderful Christmas.  We went out to my mom's again on Christmas Eve.  We had our 7-fishes traditional Christmas Eve dinner, which included:  shrimp parmigiana, fried calamari, stuffed flounder, and pasta with a zuppa de pesce sauce.  Everyone was in bed before 11pm.  They figured that the earlier they get to sleep, the faster they'll wake up, LOL.   Mom and I arranged all the gifts, stuffed the stockings, and watched Meet Me in St. Louis with some tea and cheesecake.

Christmas morning was fun, as usual.  The kids opened their big gifts first.  Then onto everything else.  It was great.  Opening gifts lasted a lot longer and was so much less chaotic (but still really fun, I swear) when I did things my way, lol.  Breakfast was eggs and bacon, flavored coffee, rye toast, tea, etc.  My sisters came over and we exchanged more gifts and did more eating. 

Dinner was at around 5pm.  We had stuffed shells, chicken francese, loin of pork, etc.  Always too much food.  We brought home a bunch of it, though.  At 6pm we packed up and headed back into Queens to see dh's family at MIL's house.  More gifts, more food and we were home by 10pm.

I had most of the week off from work - mainly due to the ridiculous snowstorm we had here.  Normally it wouldn't have been a problem, but our spiteful sanitation workers decided to take out their frustrations on everyone in the city who was not involved in their budget cuts and hiring freezes.  So instead of taking less than a day to get the city up and running again after 20" of snow, it took 4-5 days.  Conveniently, they do this right after they all got their Christmas envelopes.  grrrr.

But overall, and through most of us battling stomach viruses, colds, and coughs, we had a wonderful holiday season.  We topped it off by celebrating New Years Eve with some homemade sangria, trays of snacks,  playing Taboo, and trying to stay awake til midnight. 

2011 is going to be a year of new beginnings.  I think I say that every year, but I'm going to really make it happen this time.  Anything I don't like, I'm changing. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERY ONE OF YOU.  MAKE 2011 THE BEST!

SIX

Six years ago today I wrote my first blog post. 

Can't believe J was only 8 then.  K was 11.  W was 3. 

We've come a helluva long way. 

December!

We are having a fantastic December.  W is getting so much reading, writing, and math done.  He decided that he wanted to try Spanish again, so while at Costco last week I found this knock-off, Rosetta-Stone-like program on sale for $18.  It comes with a bunch of CD Roms and you can record yourself saying the words.  It's fun and he likes it so far.   We're half-way through TT5 math now - right on track to finish it by the end of 4th grade in June (then we're doing TT7 from the beginning of 5th grade to the end of 6th grade).  I find that it's best for us to stretch out the math.  W retains it better that way as he isn't inundated with too many new math concepts each month.  We do math 3-4 times a week (sometimes once or twice a week - December slows us down a bit, lol).  The schedule that W made has been working well - actually better than anything I came up with. 

W had a party and awards ceremony at Cub Scouts this month, too.   He was presented with a bunch of patches and badges he's earned over the last half-year.   In addition to the patches in the picture below, his 4 activity badges were:  Citizen, Readyman, Outdoorsman, & Artist badges.  He got a patch, pocketknife pledge card, and badge for the Whittling Chip.  The badge states that W "has earned the right to carry a pocketknife to designated Cub Scout functions", because he demonstrated knowledge and skill in its use and completed the safety requirements and promises to abide by the Knives Are Not Toys guidelines.  He's proud of that one the most, I think.  We also got our Pinewood Derby car to build for the big race in a few months.   This is such a wonderful pack and troop of scouts.   

W's New Cub Scout Patches

 

We have also been going to the pool hall in the West Village every week.  I'm so glad it's that time of year again!  For a few hours W gets to play games with friends and moms get to relax and chat and listen to some good jazz music - usually being played by various bands who use the space to rehearse.  It's a dark, gritty, oh-so-cool atmosphere that just drips the essence of New York City out of its walls.  W and I really look forward to this every week.

W and Friend Playing Pool

As I mention every year, NYC is the most incredible place to be at Christmastime.  The kids and I decided to walk around the mall in the Time Warner Building at Columbus Circle.  This is where we were a few years ago when we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade go by.  For Christmas they have these beautiful hanging stars that light up to the beat of the Christmas carols being played.  The kids loved it.

Christmas Stars in the Time Warner Building

K, J, & W under the Christmas stars reflected in the window

A Tree in Columbus Circle

Ballet & Modern

Today, parents got to observe dance classes at LaGuardia High School.  I watched all 3 hours of J's classes and was in awe.  There are 33 kids in her dance class.  They started with an hour-and-a-half of ballet - first stretches, then exercises (at the barre and the floor), then combinations.  The next class was an hour-and-a-half of modern (Graham).  This was a bunch of different floor stretches and across the floor combinations.  It was just beautiful to watch.   Live music in the dance classes add so much to the whole atmosphere.  The dance teachers and piano players are really in tune with each other.  I don't know how they do it, but the timing is always spot on.  Sometimes they just play piano, others they'll have a bongo drum with it.
The children are so focused and determined and the teachers are so incredibly aware of each child.  I noticed eager hands up to answer questions and to volunteer a demonstration.  They are treated like professionals and in turn, they act as such.  What a wonderful treat to get to see this kind of training in action. 

Hairspray!

LaGuardia High School has their annual musical going on this month.  Hairspray opened Thursday and is scheduled for 8 shows - a longer run than usual.  The LaGuardia Concert Hall seats 1100 people.  Ticket pre-sales (online) filled up more than 90% of all 8 shows.  Add that to the amount of walk-in ticket-buyers and yes, all 8 shows will be sold-out.  We all went on Friday (the 5 of us and my mom).  I cannot even begin to tell you how impressed I was.  I have seen tons of Broadway shows and this was right up there with those.  The sets, and the acting, singing, and dancing were unbelievable.  Costumes and sets are all done by the tech and art majors.  The orchestra from the pit was fabulous as well.  I had tears in my eyes after every number, mostly because I was so grateful and proud that my J goes to this amazing school, but also because all this talent is coming from 15-17 year-olds.  This isn't like any high school play anyone has ever seen.  Wow.

Guess who's visited the school over the last few months:  Adrien Grenier, Madonna, Ellenore Scott, and a few famous classical musicians.

Schedule

Today, W felt like creating a daily schedule.  We always just use the AO weekly one, doing whatever it is we feel like each day, as long as everything on the list gets checked off by the end of the week.  W wanted more structure with that, so he came up with a workable plan for each day. It's interesting that every time we tend to veer toward less structure, W is the one to turn that right around.  Hey, he likes a strict schedule, what can I say?


So, one day a week is for all the extras:  Artist, Composer, Nature, Foreign Language (right now it's Spanish), & Dictation.  Another day has 5 AO readings along with some Spelling workbook.  And the other 3 days of the week include:  Math, Spelling, 1 AO reading, 1 Free reading (we're doing Hans Christan Anderson stories now), Poetry, & Copywork. 

Almost all the AO readings go hand-in-hand with an oral narration.  We haven't started written ones yet, but we will soon.  And every day also includes a "read-to-me" time.  W's reading is so good now and I believe it's the daily practice that keeps him on track.  He alternates between an AO free reading and his own book to use as his read-aloud. 

Dictation is something he would like to do every day.  It's like the spelling "tests" we used to do - he loves that kind of a challenge.  The other day we decided that instead of a literature or poetry dictation exercise, we could do try it with states and capitals.  It was great!   I took 5 state flashcards and went over the capitals with him.  Then I gave him the 5 cards and told him he had 3 minutes to look them over.  Then I took the cards back and read the name of the state and the capital and he had to write them down with correct spelling and capitalization.  Learning the capitals of each state is not the point of this exercise, but it happens anyway.

I'm looking forward to finishing up Yr 2.  We'll finish by January, but maybe not til the end of January.  Not sure yet.  I really don't want to rush through the readings, so we're just going to continue taking our time and enjoying it.   The Year 2 readings are technically for 2nd-4th grades, but they seem way harder and more advanced than anything I've ever seen for 4th grade.  So, we'll shoot for Yr 3 starting January 31 (it's a Monday).  The curriculum is not season-based, so you can start any time of the year.

Holiday Season!

This year for Thanksgiving we went OUT to eat.  In my 40+ years on this earth, my family has never strayed from the big home-cooked Thanksgiving.  But my mom decided she did not want to spend hours preparing and cooking and cleaning.  She wanted to actually be able to sit and eat with no worries.  I was so happy about this.  We reserved seats at the East Wind Caterers Thanksgiving Day Buffet.  Definitely worth doing at least once in your life.


We got back to my Mom's house before 5.  She had stocked up on what she calls "pickins" - cheese, crackers, rolled cold cuts, hot chocolate, cookie dough to bake, etc.  And by about 7-8pm we were all a little hungry again.  We put some Christmas music on and went about putting together Mom's new tree.  (We always had real trees growing up, but when cousins of mine saw their house burn to the ground because their real tree caught fire, we've used artificial ones ever since.)    It was a pretty and pre-lit and about 6.5 feet tall.  Mom has lots of ornaments from when I was little and it's always so fun to put them on the tree.

We left at around 11am the following morning.  K went to work and, in the evening, hung out with her best friends on a main shopping strip here in Queens.  J went to the dance studio to start choreography on her new duet.  Dance was 2 hours and then she met up with a bunch of her homeschooled friends to go ice skating at the Pond at Bryant Park.  It's beautiful there at nighttime.  She had a lot of fun and then slept over her friend's house.

My tree is going up this week and I'm happy to report that about 90% of my Christmas shopping is done.

Weekly Recap & What's Coming Up

This past week was just focusing on academic stuff.  I'm still hoping we can get to AO Year3  by January.  It's looking pretty good.  W is still enjoying the work - and that's what matters.  He takes the lead.  I show him what's on the agenda for the week and he picks what he'd like to do each day.  He had a part in choosing the curriculum and he can choose what the mornings look like.  It's great.  I love that he owns his learning.  And because of that, he retains just about everything.  It's common sense, it works, and everyone's happy.

So in math, we're doing decimals involving money, using the cents and dollar signs, and adding/subtracting decimals.   W is resigned to only use the TT5 workbook.  The company isn't too keen on just selling the book by itself, so thankfully we already own TT7 (which we'll start next year for 5th grade).  After that, we'll see. We're almost finished with The Little Duke (he's already getting sad about it coming to an end, lol) and we're going strong with Wind in the Willows, An Island Story, Seabird, & Pagoo.  The Spelling Skills workbook is our favorite, still.  W just finished a cumulative review of the first 6 chapters and got everything right.  The activities and repetition in that book are just what he needs to build his reading vocabulary.  I already have the 5th grade one, too.  For $6.95 ($5.21 with educator discount!) it's amazing. 

I plan on taking W on a lot more field trips soon.  I keep a list of over 80 museums in NYC.  I'd love to try and get to at least one a month.  There are so many we haven't seen yet.  I'll get fresh batteries for my camera and be sure to take lots of pictures. 

The girls are doing great.  K's birthday is in a few days and she's already starting the celebrations.  I can't believe she's almost 17.  On Friday night she went out with friends to a Mexican restaurant where they sing Happy Birthday in Spanish, lol.  She has work both weekend days and loves that it's a short school week.  We're in the process of getting college applications out.  She has a few ideas as to where she wants to go and seems on top of it all.  I'm so glad her college applications are a year after J's high school applications.  I would have went crazy if they were during the same year.  

J's still loving school.  Her grades have been wonderful and she's made dozens of friends.  I can already tell the difference in J's dancing since she's been at school.  15 hours a week of ballet and modern technique really does wonders.  Her solo for this season's competitions looks so great.  It's a lyrical/contemporary number from one of the studio's special choreographers from California.  She's so happy with it - more so than she's ever been with her solos.  She is also about to start choreography for a new duet.  She'll be doing this one with her bff and duet partner from last season.  It's going to be "fierce", as I'm hearing, lol.  Competition season is right around the corner.  Can't wait.

Dance News

J had a guest dance teacher at school yesterday.  Her name is Linda Sims and she dances with the Alvin Ailey Company.  It was great because they got to be with her for the whole 90 minutes when J normally has modern dance.  Then J had her 90 minutes of ballet.  On Thursday she was at the dance studio at 3:30pm working on her new solo for this season, then spent 4 hours on group choreography (not to mention the other 9 hours of dance at school and 3 hours of dance at the studio this week).  So much dance going on - and she'd have it no other way.

Academics and Broadway

Today W learned about decimals and converted them to fractions  (and reviewed perimeter, area, subtraction with regrouping, multiplication, and various word problems).  He zipped through the new lesson and did all 22 problems in less than 15 minutes.  I'm so glad he loves math.  I read Seabird to him and he read Pagoo to me.  Pagoo is great!  It's the perfect reading level for him - just challenging enough to learn from, but not so challenging that he'll get frustrated.  We'll try and do a chapter a week, one or 2 big paragraphs a day.  He did a proofreading exercise after learning 20 new spelling words and wrote out a poem in cursive for copywork.  We read more of Wind in the Willows and another chapter in An Island Story.

J had a school trip today to a Broadway show!  They went to see The Scottsboro Boys - a brand new Kander & Ebb musical directed by Susan Stroman.  It was a fully funded trip, which is amazing, since ticket prices range from about $40 to $250.  J loved it.  After the show, she hung around the Broadway area with friends for a bit, then took the subway back up to her school to meet up with a friend, then they took the train together to Queens where J went to the dance studio for 3 hours of new choreography.  She's a pro at the subway now, becoming confident and streetwise, but still careful.  Thank God for cell phones, though.  I cannot even imagine life without them now.

Book Attachment

So, W and I finished D'Aulaire's Abraham Lincoln and Holling's Tree in the Trail yesterday.  We have been reading a couple of pages a week from each of these for a long time.  W read to me almost every day from Lincoln.  Just this one read-to-me book has improved W's reading in so many ways.  He read the whole book to me, one slow page at a time.  And it was wonderful.  I read Tree in the Trail to him.  1 or 2 pages a week.  One of my favorite features of Ambleside Online is stretching out a book over months.  This is a great way to savor the classics.  W still remembers Viking Tales, Paddle to the Sea, and Aesop's Fables from Year 1 - and how much he loved those books.  He still won't let me resell them.  It's the same now with the ones we've just finished.   The first thing he said was, "I want to keep these.  Please don't give them to anybody".

Rockin' and Rollin'

W is on a good track to finish AO Year 2 before January.  It would be nice to get to Year 3 while he's still in 4th grade.  Yesterday we spent almost 3 hours on:

• Wind in the Willows - Readaloud with narration
• Abraham Lincoln - W read a page to me
• Five Children & It - Readaloud, no narration
• Teaching Textbooks Quiz - W took another math quiz.  It had 25 questions which included fractions, area, perimeter, rounding to the thousands, subtraction with borrowing, 4-digit addition, and types of triangles.  He missed only one. 
• Copywork - W asked to do this.  He copied the first half of a poem into his notebook and used cursive.  He was so proud of how nice he writes, that he even signed it when he was done, lol. 
• An Island Story - 2 stories on King Edward.  We're in the Middle Ages - right around year 1200.
  
• Spelling Skills - This week he's doing words with the Long E sound (e.g. reason, between, scream, squeeze).  Today's exercise was to proofread a paragraph, circling spelling mistakes and adding missing punctuation and missing words.  He found all the mistakes.  I was so pleased to see that he can recognize misspelled words and know the correct spelling - except for 1 where he knew it was misspelled, but wasn't sure of the right spelling.  This kind of exercise is so difficult when you have issues with reading. 

His reading is improving every week.  I feel that the excellent books and slow reading schedule used in Ambleside Online, and what we do for spelling and writing has turned W into a capable, confident, fairly strong reader.  The strength of those 25 out of 26 dyslexia symptoms he exhibited about a year ago has decreased so dramatically and some have even disappeared.  It's almost shocking to see how far he's come. 

In other news, J is doing great in high school.  She loves it so much.  It's tough.  Her schedule is grueling.  She's still dancing at her studio and doing a work study there on Saturdays.  With all of that, she gets her homework, studying, and projects done without issue.  She's pulling top grades - she even has a 90 average in French.  It's been so wonderful for her.  Homeschooling allowed and nurtured so much of J's independence, self-sufficiency, self-esteem, and the confidence that she can accomplish and achieve anything.  Her amazing high school gives her the platform to use these skills.  It's working out better than I could have imagined.

Scout Camp

B took W camping this weekend with the scouts.  It turned out to be a beautiful few days with great weather.  The trees are starting to turn colors and it was just chilly enough to really enjoy the campfire.  W is a webelo scout now and he was so happy to finally earn his whittling chip.  This means he can now bring his pocketknife to all the scout camping trips.  He sailed through the whittling test with lots of kudos from the scoutmaster and few other kids.  W has been using a pocketknife for a while, though, carving and whittling any piece of wood he could find.

The rest of the weekend was filled with fun activities, games, and playing, which included:  pumpkin decorating, archery, target practice with a fire hose, running in and out of a big pirate ship, and hanging out in the cabins. 

Manga Drawing Workshop

I took W to a Manga drawing workshop today here in Queens.  As interested as he is in drawing and cartooning, it was the perfect outlet and learning opportunity for him.  Located in the Little Asia section of Flushing on Main Street, this workshop was held on the lower floor of an office building.  The instructor (Hojin) does this kind of cartooning for a living and was a featured artist at the NY Comic-Con being held this week at the Javitz Center in Manhattan.  W was completely rapt and gave his full attention for the 2 hour class.  W's drawings have mainly been very cartoonish - big round heads, round bodies, disproportionate limbs - but today he was taught to really visualize the human form.  Hojin explained you have to know how to draw people correctly before you can transform them into cartoon - "You have to know the rules before you can break the rules".  So, W worked on head shape, proportion, muscle placement, and most importantly - visualizing or coming up with a plan of action before drawing.  And a really helpful thing was learning how to create anything using only a few basic shapes. 

W couldn't get enough.  I knew this would spark a renewed interest in art.  He could have stayed another 2 hours.  They gave him lots of pencils, sketch pens, thick white erasers, and plenty of paper.  I was told he was very bright, very creative, and that he seems to love to draw. 

The funny thing is that this time slot didn't have anyone in it except W and 1 adult art student.  The one-on-one was great, but I realized something.  Schoolkids don't want to go to a class on their day off from school, and homeschoolers don't want to do a (public) class when schoolkids are off.  I am in the latter category, but now I think I'll try and find more of these types of classes.  Maybe they'll do a series of workshops just for us homeschoolers.  There's nothing like learning something from someone who is passionate about the work.