Another week of school is over. In addition to circle time and math, we added exercise, required musical instrument practice, and Greek lessons for P13.
One of the results of our experiment last February was that P13 tried several languages and settled on learning Koine (Biblical Greek). I've wanted to learn Koine myself, so we're working together. We've been using Elementary Greek by Christine Gatchell. It's laid out to be used by people (like me) with no prior Greek knowledge. Each lesson consists of a memory verse (or portion of a verse), five vocabulary words, and a grammatical concept. We had completed about 10 lessons by the end of last year, and did occasional review over the summer, but it slipped off our list of priorities for the last month or so. However, neither P13 nor I had completely forgotten all the vocabulary or grammar forms, and after a few days' worth of diligent review at the beginning of each day, we're back up to speed. The pace is fairly slow, designed for children as young as third grade, so now that we've reviewed the material, we may start doing 2 lessons per week.
Over the summer, I did not require my children to practice their musical instruments on a daily basis. Instead, I presented them with goals: a certain piece (or pieces) to be thoroughly learned, and rewarded with a trip to McDonalds for ice cream. When we go, everyone gets an ice cream cone, and the child being rewarded gets two. The result was that E11 made significant progress in violin over the summer, H5 occasionally took out his violin but not regularly, B7 avoided the piano entirely, and P13, uncomplaining child that she is, never mentioned to me that I had forgotten to set her a goal, so just played piano and recorder for the fun of it. H5 earned one ice cream treat, and E11 earned 2 or 3. Now that we've started school again, I'm asking H5 and B7 to spend 10 minutes a day practicing, and E11 and P13 to spend 15 - and all 4 of them have goals to work toward. E11 spends more than his required 15 minutes, playing through all his repertoire and learning a new piece. P13 practices willingly but not enthusiastically, precisely until the timer beeps, and I can hear improvement. H5 requires my constant attention and encouragement during practice time, but is also improving. B7 has his own ideas of how to practice. His goal for the next reward is to learn the next 2 pieces in the book. I asked him to learn the first one hands separately, paying particular attention to the pattern in the left hand. If I don't swoop in and stop him every day, he will play the first two bars of the piece hands together, find the third bar difficult, go on to the second piece, play the first two bars hands together, find the third bar difficult, and go back to the first one. He complains that playing hands separately is "too easy". When I actually coerce him into doing it, he makes many mistakes, proving my point. He is impatient, wanting to hear the piece the way it will sound when he has finished learning it, and thus is unwilling to put in the time to learn it. I think that having to slow down and do something that doesn't come easily to him is good for his soul, which is why I will continue to require him to practice!
For exercise, I realized that I needed to set a good example. It's one of those things that easily moves down the priority list until we go hiking as a family and I realize, puffing to keep up, that I'm not as fit as I could be. I have the T-Tapp 15-minute workout DVD, so a few weeks ago I did "boot camp" (doing the workout every day for a week), and now I'm doing it 3 days a week. I wanted to add some aerobic exercise, and struggled to think of when to fit it in. Finally I realized that in the morning, while the oatmeal is cooking, I can go for a walk while I pray instead of sitting in my room trying to get E3 and H5 to stop barging in and asking for things. Usually Ari is still eating his breakfast at that time, and if he's gone, P13 and E11 are able to take care of the little guys' needs. It wasn't my example that inspired E11, though. 2 1/2 weeks ago at church camp, one of the speakers compared the Christian life to a marathon, and asked if anyone in the congregation thought they'd like to run one. The enthusiasm of E11's response was impressive, and convinced us to try to find a race for him to compete in (maybe shorter than 26.2 miles, to begin with). Every day this week, he has run almost 4 miles. He requested an alarm clock so he can wake up at 6am, run before the heat of the day, and make it back for breakfast by 8:15 or 8:30. Nobody else's choice for exercise is quite as impressive. P13 has a ballet lesson DVD and some aerobic exercises of her own devising, and the little guys like to walk to the playground and run around there. Archery will be starting up in September, so P13, E11, and B7 will participate in that.
Math continues in much the same way as it did last week. The Life of Fred math book E11 is using has a section called "The Bridge" after every 4-5 chapters, consisting of a 10-item quiz of which 9 must be answered correctly before going on to the next chapter. E11 hates these, because the problems lack the fun narrative of the chapters, and because too many careless errors can mean he'll have to do the next one as well. There are 5 different quizzes in each "Bridge" section, and he has thus far completed the first 3 with up to 80% accuracy (and thus, more than 80% tears). I'm hoping he rocks the next one on Monday. H5 has been working to understand place value, and enjoys playing the "Trading Up" game. This game requires base ten blocks (unit cubes, ten-sticks, and a hundred-flat), a 6-sided die, and a whiteboard and marker. H5 rolls the die, takes that number of unit cubes, and, if appropriate, trades up 10 unit cubes for a ten-stick. The game ends when he trades 10 ten-sticks for the hundred-flat. Each turn, we write the number of tens and ones on the whiteboard, and H5 reads the number. He finds it endlessly entertaining (that makes one of us), and is starting to grasp the concept pretty well.
The last couple of days, I tried starting Circle Time as soon as I finished my own breakfast (as opposed to waiting for every slowpoke to join the Clean Plate Club). This has more than one benefit. Firstly, we get started sooner, and people have less time to disperse (and to create a need to be rounded up). Secondly, since E3 is the slowest poke, starting before he's done eating automatically gives him something to do quietly while I read. E3 has seemed somewhat emotionally needy this week, so I may try finishing Circle Time by reading a story just for him.
Next week, I plan to add in science and current events. Check back here to see how it goes!
One of the results of our experiment last February was that P13 tried several languages and settled on learning Koine (Biblical Greek). I've wanted to learn Koine myself, so we're working together. We've been using Elementary Greek by Christine Gatchell. It's laid out to be used by people (like me) with no prior Greek knowledge. Each lesson consists of a memory verse (or portion of a verse), five vocabulary words, and a grammatical concept. We had completed about 10 lessons by the end of last year, and did occasional review over the summer, but it slipped off our list of priorities for the last month or so. However, neither P13 nor I had completely forgotten all the vocabulary or grammar forms, and after a few days' worth of diligent review at the beginning of each day, we're back up to speed. The pace is fairly slow, designed for children as young as third grade, so now that we've reviewed the material, we may start doing 2 lessons per week.
Over the summer, I did not require my children to practice their musical instruments on a daily basis. Instead, I presented them with goals: a certain piece (or pieces) to be thoroughly learned, and rewarded with a trip to McDonalds for ice cream. When we go, everyone gets an ice cream cone, and the child being rewarded gets two. The result was that E11 made significant progress in violin over the summer, H5 occasionally took out his violin but not regularly, B7 avoided the piano entirely, and P13, uncomplaining child that she is, never mentioned to me that I had forgotten to set her a goal, so just played piano and recorder for the fun of it. H5 earned one ice cream treat, and E11 earned 2 or 3. Now that we've started school again, I'm asking H5 and B7 to spend 10 minutes a day practicing, and E11 and P13 to spend 15 - and all 4 of them have goals to work toward. E11 spends more than his required 15 minutes, playing through all his repertoire and learning a new piece. P13 practices willingly but not enthusiastically, precisely until the timer beeps, and I can hear improvement. H5 requires my constant attention and encouragement during practice time, but is also improving. B7 has his own ideas of how to practice. His goal for the next reward is to learn the next 2 pieces in the book. I asked him to learn the first one hands separately, paying particular attention to the pattern in the left hand. If I don't swoop in and stop him every day, he will play the first two bars of the piece hands together, find the third bar difficult, go on to the second piece, play the first two bars hands together, find the third bar difficult, and go back to the first one. He complains that playing hands separately is "too easy". When I actually coerce him into doing it, he makes many mistakes, proving my point. He is impatient, wanting to hear the piece the way it will sound when he has finished learning it, and thus is unwilling to put in the time to learn it. I think that having to slow down and do something that doesn't come easily to him is good for his soul, which is why I will continue to require him to practice!
For exercise, I realized that I needed to set a good example. It's one of those things that easily moves down the priority list until we go hiking as a family and I realize, puffing to keep up, that I'm not as fit as I could be. I have the T-Tapp 15-minute workout DVD, so a few weeks ago I did "boot camp" (doing the workout every day for a week), and now I'm doing it 3 days a week. I wanted to add some aerobic exercise, and struggled to think of when to fit it in. Finally I realized that in the morning, while the oatmeal is cooking, I can go for a walk while I pray instead of sitting in my room trying to get E3 and H5 to stop barging in and asking for things. Usually Ari is still eating his breakfast at that time, and if he's gone, P13 and E11 are able to take care of the little guys' needs. It wasn't my example that inspired E11, though. 2 1/2 weeks ago at church camp, one of the speakers compared the Christian life to a marathon, and asked if anyone in the congregation thought they'd like to run one. The enthusiasm of E11's response was impressive, and convinced us to try to find a race for him to compete in (maybe shorter than 26.2 miles, to begin with). Every day this week, he has run almost 4 miles. He requested an alarm clock so he can wake up at 6am, run before the heat of the day, and make it back for breakfast by 8:15 or 8:30. Nobody else's choice for exercise is quite as impressive. P13 has a ballet lesson DVD and some aerobic exercises of her own devising, and the little guys like to walk to the playground and run around there. Archery will be starting up in September, so P13, E11, and B7 will participate in that.
Math continues in much the same way as it did last week. The Life of Fred math book E11 is using has a section called "The Bridge" after every 4-5 chapters, consisting of a 10-item quiz of which 9 must be answered correctly before going on to the next chapter. E11 hates these, because the problems lack the fun narrative of the chapters, and because too many careless errors can mean he'll have to do the next one as well. There are 5 different quizzes in each "Bridge" section, and he has thus far completed the first 3 with up to 80% accuracy (and thus, more than 80% tears). I'm hoping he rocks the next one on Monday. H5 has been working to understand place value, and enjoys playing the "Trading Up" game. This game requires base ten blocks (unit cubes, ten-sticks, and a hundred-flat), a 6-sided die, and a whiteboard and marker. H5 rolls the die, takes that number of unit cubes, and, if appropriate, trades up 10 unit cubes for a ten-stick. The game ends when he trades 10 ten-sticks for the hundred-flat. Each turn, we write the number of tens and ones on the whiteboard, and H5 reads the number. He finds it endlessly entertaining (that makes one of us), and is starting to grasp the concept pretty well.
The last couple of days, I tried starting Circle Time as soon as I finished my own breakfast (as opposed to waiting for every slowpoke to join the Clean Plate Club). This has more than one benefit. Firstly, we get started sooner, and people have less time to disperse (and to create a need to be rounded up). Secondly, since E3 is the slowest poke, starting before he's done eating automatically gives him something to do quietly while I read. E3 has seemed somewhat emotionally needy this week, so I may try finishing Circle Time by reading a story just for him.
Next week, I plan to add in science and current events. Check back here to see how it goes!
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