Old Time Summer

Category: Motivation

  • First use of Artes Latinae I

    On Friday I did use the Artes Latinae Level I program through 108 Frames at least. It is a nice program. My eldest, Russell, worked on it also. On Saturday my second child, Victoria worked on it.

    I’m an adult and found it easy to understand and had to force myself to pay more attention to it so as not to have to go back to find out how an earlier frame had an answer to a later frame and I couldn’t remember what it was. I have relaxed my brain over the years some with study methods, so this is a nice program to make one THINK about that and solidly apply themselves forward from there.

    Russell turned 13 just in the last couple of weeks, and was slower than me advancing through the frames, but did understand them easily and get faster as he went along. Victoria is 10 (and almost 1/2) and struggled a bit here and there, but eventually was on-board and going through it faster. She is the one I was most concerned about using it, and I was hopeful it would motivate faster thinking for her, and already I’ve seen progress.

    The point of the first section of Artes Latinae Level I is to get the user familiar with how the program works and to start using better study skills (remembering what you have read). One does learn some facts of Roman origins and some other things along the way, but they are not to be tested on.

  • Mourning

    On Saturday it was noticed that our eldest cat, Princess Sonia, 16-years old, wasn’t doing so well, and then seemed to do a bit better and then on Sunday morning was the same and progressed then to worse and eventually died.

    We all had heavy hearts, with Victoria and me being outwardly emotive and overwrought over her leaving us. She was my dear cat for over 16 years, and Victoria is an emotive sort of person. I am not. But things that are deep with me do cause me to emote. So I wasn’t able to get any schooling done this week, and am only now trying to catch up with thinking about what to do, get the house back on track and such.

    I have more motivation now than I did a couple of days ago, but still it’s far from the norm for me, which isn’t too very high in the first place most days in and of itself. FWIW.

  • Getting things in order

    Our living area (room) is small and the only place I have our true schooling things, but many things have been in totes for months and months … or longer. Having a baby puts many things on hold, and some are reticent to come back online, even almost two years later, …

    So now I stand here trying to type about this and Baby Q is pulling on me “c’mon, c’mon!” tying to pull me away and get me to go outside with him. It’s his new thing, since Spring has begun in earnest. His toddler self opening up and 80% if waking time is trying to get outside.

    I’m trying to get the oldest two children to empty a partially loaded bookcase in the basement so that I can move it up here to the living room in front of the fireplace for spring/summer to get more schooling stuff out again. Having things out on the shelves get me more involved with integrating good things into our daily lives.

    So now that Baby Q knows fully that I’m not going outside he’s gone into the kitchen, pulled a heavy chair up to the sink, and is playing with whatever is in there. Sigh.

    We’ll get something done today. Cleaning up has been better lately, the past few days at least. I’ve gotten some new idea sheets created on my computer and printed some out for binder use (the children and me) but I wanted to do more than that and getting the bookcase up and re-loaded.

    Bad habits are hard to break, the children are used to carving out their own time with me busy with baby, and try as I may it’s hard for them to stay with what I’ve asked nowadays. I’m buckling up, or meaning to be doing so. Trying is hard for me too …

  • The reasons for this blog

    I have been blogging since 2002, but have had a website since 1995. Our first child was born in 1996 and recently turned 13 years of age. We have three more children, ranging from 10 years down to nearly 2 years of age.

    We homeschool in a casual sort of way, and the idea of an old-fashioned summer, the way the summer memories of old feel in our minds is the idea of education I have for my children. I want them to remember their young years from that romantic position. That is, the idea of a Monet painting, a blue sky, seaside classic sort of feeling.

    Learning is to be loved, cherished. Many things are learned in very early childhood, and they are very important. The first thing to be learned once ready to learn more officially though is “how to read”. This can be accomplished through many ways, but the first thing that must be learned is “what is the child’s learning style” and then the right method can be chosen to aide them in reading.

    Some children learn to read easily and others take more time. My first two children learned easily, nearly as easily as it seems to me that I learned all those years ago. It just happened over time, with reading at ages 6 & 7 occuring, but really reading for themselves, longer and longer books, happening once they turned 8 years old. Voracious reading set in at that point.

    My third child is now 8 and isn’t yet reading. Nothing can induce him to actually read, though he’s wildly intelligent and clever, smart and active. He’s coming along slowly with reading, sometimes seeming to get more, it’s 3 steps forward, 8 steps back. He’s fine on learning and understanding and so much, just doesn’t really want to read, isn’t ready for it for some reason yet. I’m not concerned for it’s not totally unusual for a boy to not read until around 10 years of age. I’m starting to do more with vertical phonics with him, and just need to make a date for daily short lessons (Penny Primer/TATRAS) instead of the less often lessons that we never get ahead in.

    My youngest is too young to read, but he’s ramping up in knowledge daily. He’ll turn 2 near the end of June. It’s my plan now with my experience with 2 easy reading learners and 1 hard case that I need to get this last one into the Penny Primer in a few years and keep at it right from the start (though I truly must stress I am not worried about my hard case boy, I know he’ll read when he’s ready, I just have to have him into the groove more to get online with it as SOON as he’s ready, and will do that from the very start with my youngest.)

    My idea of education is semi-Charlotte Mason, though I don’t have the dedication to such rituals and she espoused. I try and try and it’s just more than I’m want to push myself into. I have such a Romantic notion of what education is, something beautiful, full of knowledge and a love of learning everything, nothing in that old rote prussian school model way.

    I’ve had an education blog before, but I lost the host I had it on and didn’t put it back up when I got a new host. It wasn’t much in the first place, it’s more for my own motivation truly, but I want it for a record of what we do well, and it seems like it’s something that will be great, so this is to that end.

    I’ll write about things in our home school here, link to products and sites in posts and on the sidebar and pages. My children will have blogs as well as their own subdomains for web development. I’ll be putting together a front page with sections of fresh info pulled from subdomains later.