Gloomy Days

Our second day of the Tennessee trip was spent in downtown Gatlinburg. We went to the aquarium and did some shopping and eating. The aquarium was more pricey than other nicer aquariums we have visited in the past. As part of our package for our rental we got one free admission. If it wasn't for that, we probably would have skipped it.

The town itself is interesting. My husband described it as a boardwalk minus the beach. There were stores selling just about anything you could think of, lots of places to get food, and even a Sky Lift that runs from the main street up the mountain. We spent a few hours walking and shopping, then had dinner at Calhoun's, a great BBQ place. Later we went to the Gatlinburg Church of Christ to see a couple that had moved from our area congregation nearly 20 years ago. It was fun to walk in and visit after not seeing them in so many years. My next post will be our final day in Gatlinburg before we traveled further west in Tennessee.

As far as things going on in life right now, this whole week we have been dealing with very thick fog in our area. I'm not sure what has caused it, but I know I am tired of not seeing the sun. JT was complaining tonight about feeling exhausted for the last few days. I think we are all experiencing some gloomy feelings because of the lack of sun. This picture is right before sunset when the fog starting thickening up for the night. We went to game night at the library; driving home I didn't get above 15 mph on our road because I just couldn't see anything. This morning the sky is still hazy, but I did see a little sun peeking through the clouds. I plan to drag the kids outside for a walk if it lasts. I guess I shouldn't complain, last year on this day we had about nine inches of snow on the ground!

For the last few months I have been trying to find an Envirothon team for JT to join this year. It looks like that is not going to work out. No local homeschoolers seem to have a team and our school district is not participating due to budget issues. I did connect with the science teacher who has coached the team in the past; she loaned me a lot of good material from a previous year. I will use those to round out JT's ecology course for the remainder of the year. The last two weeks have been focused on the environmental movement. He watched a PBS American Experience film, Earth Days. I downloaded the teacher's guide from the site and he's been doing the activities. We just ordered the documentary Silent Spring through our inter-library loan system to finish the remaining activities from the guide. In the meantime he's reading the book, Last Child in the Woods by Robert Louv.

I just looked out the window and the gloom is gone! I think it's time to act on some of the ideas in that book and get these kids outside.

Getting Back on Track

I had very good intentions to get back to weekly posting after we came home from our trip to Tennessee. Seven weeks later... here I am! My plan for the next few weeks is to include a picture with a short description of a part of our trip at the beginning of each post in order to give a summary of our adventure. The picture here is from the top of Clingman's Dome, one of our many stops in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. To get there we left the park visitor center and followed the Newfound Gap Road up the mountain, turning on to the Clingman's Dome Road. The drive took us to an elevation of about 6,340 feet. After arriving in the parking area we needed to hike about half a mile up a rather steep, paved trail, to get to the observation tower. The dome is at an elevation of 6,643 feet. The view is incredible and well worth the short, strenuous hike.

Since we've been home, the boys have been doing quite a bit of school work. Both of them wrote a short composition about our trip. It was interesting to see what each considered to be the important details and best parts of the vacation. EM expressed that he was ready to come home a few days before we did, but JT was happy to be traveling. A week after we came home, I saw a great deal for a weekend trip to the shore, but when I mentioned it to the boys, EM said, "We just got home! I don't want to go on any more trips." The plans wouldn't have worked out anyway, but if they had, I think I may have had to do a lot of persuading to get him interested in the trip.

We are working our way through the Lightning Lit materials I bought this year. EM is using the Seventh Grade books and JT is using the American Lit. EM recently read Alice's Adventure in Wonderland, thoroughly enjoyed the book, and did the activities from the guide. He is still very resistant to any writing assignments so I limited the work to just a few things. JT did not enjoy reading The Scarlet Letter for his most recent novel. The study guide had a long discussion about kinds of conflict in literature. We realized that JT's least favorite literature all has a large quantity of internal conflict which would explain why The Scarlet Letter was not an especially gripping read for him.

Since we have been home JT has also been working on reading and researching the Civil Rights Movement for his American history paper. He has read quite a few books, watched a PBS American Experience movie called Freedom Riders, and watched the movie Selma. The topic for his paper will be why the non-violent protests were effective. This week he has been putting his outline together and started writing his introduction. This paper will be his 10 page paper required for the PHAA diploma program. I would like to see him get it out of the way before Christmas break. Last year, the paper was the last thing he did for the year and I felt like it was hanging over our heads at the end. I'm glad he is making the progress that he is so we won't have to experience that again.

As of this Friday, we will have 82 days of our required 180 days completed. Even if we take a two week break for Christmas, our school year should end at the beginning of May. I feel like things are on target with their work and going smoothly even with our extended vacation in October. That's a good feeling to have!

Travel Adventure 2015

Who says homeschoolers stay at home? Monday morning we started our long awaited fall vacation. We left Pennsylvania around 9am and arrived in Gatlinburg, Tennessee around 7pm. It was a mostly uneventful drive with only one nasty bit of traffic in southern Virginia. I have never been to Tennessee before but I have always thought it would be awesome to see the Smoky Mountains. So when the boys and I talked about places we would like to visit, I convinced them that we should travel to Tennessee this year. The trip gradually evolved into a twelve day trip, later cut to ten days. We spent the first 4 days in Gatlinburg at a Stony Brook Chalet. Tonight I only have time to throw a few pictures up here because we leave in the morning to continue to Kentucky. I hope to really go into detail about the first half of our trip in my next post.

This is the living room of the rental home where we stayed. The whole house was absolutely gorgeous and had everything we needed. I loved this room. The bright sunlight made it the perfect place to hang out. The boys spent more of their time in the family room downstairs playing air hockey and pool.

But with a view like this from the deck, I really just spent most of my time looking at the mountains.

I could sit at the kitchen table and have coffee while watching the cloud shadows on the mountains.

Or sit in the hot tub and look at the mountains.

The last night we were there, we had a fire when it got a little cooler.

Which of course meant S'mores!

I had a very hard time leaving this house. I think we may have found the best place for us to retire when we are ready. In fact, it could even turn me into a morning person if I could see a sunrise like this living there.

 

 

On the Road Again

I know... I've been really slacking off here. I have been working hard to get the boys ahead of the game for the year because we are about to head out on a travel adventure. The bags are nearly packed, the school work is wrapped up, the maps are printed. We will be traveling nearly 2,000 miles over the next ten days with stops in Gatlinburg, TN to hang out at the Smoky Mountain National Park, Henderson, TN to see friends, Mammoth Cave National Park, KY, and The Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY. We have never taken such a long trip with our boys before so it has taken a lot of planning on my part. I will try to blog while we are on the road, but I hope you'll excuse me if I don't find time to do it. When we get home, I'll be sure to share all the details of our trip.

Reconnecting with my Local Homeschool Community

A few years ago I had been actively involved in a Meetup group for local homeschoolers but when the leadership in the group changed and they started charging dues, I decided to drop out. I really hadn't been very involved in the community; I would look at the upcoming events parents were posting and sometimes we would attend. Not all of the events were sponsored by members of the group, sometimes it worked more as a central location to learn about things happening in the community where homeschoolers could participate. When the leadership changed there seemed to be more focus on the local homeschool co-op that I had no interest in joining. The structure of co-ops really doesn't fit our style.

My boys attend a few regular activities with other homeschoolers, our monthly book club and bi-weekly game nights at the library. At the last game night a mom was talking about an ecology day that had been planned and posted in the Meetup. I realized we were missing out on events because I had quit the group. So I reluctantly paid my dues and started checking out the site.

I spent some time reading the schedule for their weekly co-op and I started to think, "Wouldn't it be great to take advantage of these classes?!" But then I thought about the time commitment we'd have to make; even though it's only one day a week, we'd be unable to travel during the months co-op was in session. I'd have to agree to teach or help in some way. We'd have to be there early in the morning and spend a whole day doing classes. This was starting to sound more and more like 'regular' school, except in this case, we'd have to pay a fee! One way it wouldn't be like regular school was that these classes are only held one day a week. I couldn't really see how a once a week class could really do much to improve the boys' math, science, or history learning. So even though some outsourcing may be appealing, I decided it was not worth it.

But then I found something we would be interested in trying. One father was putting together a three on three basketball program. Last year was our final year with Upward because EM has reached the maximum age. This would be a great opportunity for us. The group will meet one day a week for some instruction and then games. It looks like the rules will be very similar to Upward which will make it easy for them to adapt. The cost will only be a $20 participation fee. Overall, it looks like a great fit for us. The only problem is that the first week will be when we are traveling, but the coordinator said it wouldn't be a problem for us to miss one week. So I signed them up and we'll be playing basketball later this fall.

I found myself checking and re-checking the conversation about this event. Hopefully Meetup doesn't turn into another time waster like Facebook for me. Believe me, I don't need any more distractions from what I am supposed to be doing around here! It's hard enough to stay focused and get these kids a little education when there are so many other things that can suck up my time.

Admitting my Weaknesses

For years I have been struggling with the problem of math instruction; I even took an algebra class on Coursera to try and help myself get back up to speed. I quickly found that this wasn't going to turn me into a good math teacher. All it did was remind me how little I really remember. EM seems to naturally pick up math with little or no instruction, so he hasn't needed much from me. But JT has the same struggles I do with math and that hasn't been a good thing. 

For the last two years, JT had been using Thinkwell for his math learning. I only needed to jump in to correct the worksheets and <Hooray!> the answer keys were provided. This year he did not want to continue with Thinkwell so I had to find a Geometry text book that he could use. We found a good fit with an old Harold Jacobs book published in 1974. But guess what? Only selected answers in the back of the book! After a week or so I realized I was out of my league. It was time to pass the torch to someone who knows what they are doing. Hooray for former math major husbands!

I'm not sure if it will continue to be true throughout the year, but for now, I think JT is doing better in math than usual. Part of the reason is that he is finally receiving appropriate math instruction. For years I've fallen victim to the fallacy that all gifted kids are naturally good at math. Even though I knew he was struggling, it just felt like he should be able to do this by reading the book and working harder. I still believe working harder would help him, but now I know he needs more direct instruction. My husband is a good teacher. He isn't a teacher in the professional sense, but he does teach classes at our church, both to adults and children, and he's very good at helping people understand the material he is presenting. When I asked him to take over math instruction this year, he agreed to do it with the caveat that he might not be able to do it at the time JT was used to, but it would get done by the end of the day. So far, things are working very well and I am far less stressed out because kids are not coming to me with math questions that I can not answer. Instead, I got to do some art with EM today.

When I'm feeling overwhelmed by schooling, the fun things tend to get pushed aside. This week we made time for a little watercolor work. We printed out templates from the Woo!Jr site, cut them out, traced them on to our watercolor paper in pencil, then went over the pencil with a Sharpie marker. We added the veins and then started painting. EM chose an oak leaf and I did an elm.

EM is using Thinkwell this year for his prealgebra course. This is his first year away from Singapore math so it's a little different for him. When he used Singapore, I'd do a little instruction if he needed it, but that was rare. If he ends up having any questions this year, I'll just send him off to talk to his Dad and I can get on with the things I am good at like art projects, history, science experiments, and literature.

School and Fun

Foil Hat!

Things are moving along pretty well for our start of the year. We are finding our groove and things are going smoothly. This week we took a break from the new routine to go to a concert given by the king of the non-conformists. My husband and I have been fans of Weird Al since we first heard him on Dr. Demento so of course we have raised our children on a steady diet of musical parody. When we saw that the Mandatory Fun tour was coming within easy driving distance, tickets had to be purchased for the whole family, including my adult daughter and her husband. This was EM's first concert experience and he had a great time.

As far as schooling goes, I made a decision to buy a few more books for our literature study this year. I had already purchased Lightning Literature's Mid to Late 19th Century American Lit book for JT from a friend a few years ago. When I started looking through it, I decided to go ahead and buy the Early to Mid 19th Century Student Guide and the teacher's guides for both books. Then I started looking at their 7th Grade Literature program for EM and decided it would be a great fit for him. I bought the student guide directly from Hewitt Homeschooling but found a copy of the student workbook on Amazon for a little less. I'm still hoping to buy the teacher's guide without paying full price, but don't know for sure if I need it until I see the student books after they arrive. Sometimes I find the teacher's guides don't offer much more and I can figure out answers on my own. When I buy math and science books, I like to have the teacher guides so I don't have to figure out all the answers on my own. I don't always want to have to read all of the textbook to check their work. One nice thing about the Lightning Lit teacher's guides is that they give you a nice schedule for your student. I found that the 7th grade schedule is available as a free PDF download so as long as I can figure out answers on my own, I shouldn't need to buy that one.

Next week the boys are going to the annual Fire Safety Camp for three days so we will once again have a shortened classroom schedule. The following week we should be up to full speed and be able to continue with that until we take our two week vacation in October. There will be a few days of schooling during the trip, but mostly it will be a true vacation for all of us.