Meet Monty

Cavalier King Charles puppy...AKA Monty 

Here is Monty, our soon to be, puppy.
This is the puppy we have promised Emma many years ago. when she was 4 she begged for a puppy of her own but we told her she was too young and would need to wait till she was at least 10. Emma turned 10 in November 2014 and all that waiting is about to end.
We will bring Monty home in early February when he is about 8 weeks old. Until then Em and I are preparing for the fur baby by looking at his pics, visiting him weekly, reading about puppy care, and (of course)shopping for his supplies.

Puppy love at first sight

5 weeks 

What a face!

Update on Life of Fred

I thought it would be good to give an update on Life of Fred (elementary series) after using it for a year. Let me just start by saying the love Emma had for Fred has never waned. She still is enjoying this math program even though the books have introduced much harder math concepts.

The books in the Life of Fred elementary series are:
Apples
Butterflies
Cat
Dog
Edgewood
Farming
Goldfish
Honey
Ice Cream
Jellybeans
*Kidney
*Liver
*Mineshaft
*these are the intermediate elementary books
I previously posted I thought each book would concentrate on a math fact like Apples did with the addition facts for 7, but I was wrong. More and more math facts are add in to each consecutive book and by Farming you have learned them all....and the way Fred does it Emma had them all memorized (no more pauses in her recitation of addition/subtraction facts). In Honey you began memorizing the multiplication facts in a way only Fred can do it, which means painless. He even has you make math fact cards and in the next few books you can not proceed to do certain chapters until you work on these cards.

Dr. Stanley Schmidt strongly recommends you start with Apples even if you are in 4th level math. Many will try Apples and feel this is way beneath their child's level, and it will be, however if you bear with the simplicity your child will embrace math like never before. Simply go faster through these first few books and cover the ground work Fred is laying down. Besides the story is fun and quirky enough to keep you and your child interested. Trust me, within a few books your child will go from very simple math to geometry, algebra, trigonometry, and even calculus concepts I never covered until advanced math classes I took in high school/college, as well as all the elementary math concepts they need to know.

In these books when a concept is covered it is not then drawn out to get increasingly harder like most math books do. What I mean is when a child is learning addition facts, they learn all the facts and continue to add one digit to one digit equations (5+6=11) until all the facts are introduced, then proceed to two digit plus one digit (12+4=16), then two digit plus two digit (12+13=25), then carrying and so on....tiny baby steps. Not Fred. Once you begin adding he shows you adding with however many digits you want, and 156943726+852081= is not scary or anymore advanced math then 2+2. I think this helps take the fear out of math for some kids, Emma for one. The not announcing of doing 2 digit multiplication or the starting of algebra keeps some freaking out before they attempt the math and only after they see it and do it do they learn they just did advanced calculus helps add to their confidence that they CAN do math.

Another thing Dr. Schmidt recommends is go through the books together then have your child redo the entire series on their own. I sort of scoffed at this idea as we worked our way through the elementary books, but when we started working through Kidney I felt Emma was relying on me more and more to help her with the Your Turn to Play sections. She was using me as a crutch. I decided to trust Dr. Schmidt and have Emma reread and redo the series over on her own. Emma has worked through Apples to Goldfish so far with only a little help from me. This gives me the reassurance she knows the concepts covered.

So far Emma has worked 2 lessons a day, making each book take about 2 weeks. When we return to school after our Winter break she will start Honey and maybe start doing just a lesson day since things start getting a little more time consuming with the making of math fact cards and the pre-lesson drills.

Life of Fred Intermediate Books

One thing I do find I dislike with Fred is I think a few more daily problems are needed. Maybe a side book for the Elementary series with daily drill work. Although as I type this I am wondering why, since Emma seems to be learning the stuff.

Life of Fred....turns kids from math haters to math lovers.

Time to set my goals

Another New Year has begun and like the last 35+ years I am making goals for myself. There are some that seem to be made every year....eat healthier, get organized, loose weight... and some over the last few years started adding in...maintain my blog, read the Bible, keep our school days full of quality learning...and then there are the new ones thrown in...focus on creating notebooks/journals (for me and for school), practice art weekly, knit more. Usually I start out good but then as the year progresses I become lazy, this blog is a prime example. C'est la vie.

Over the last few weeks I have been looking at myself and at how I do things and I see there are areas in need of great change while other areas just need more focus. In the personal column the "eat healthier, loose weight" will always be there, but there are some things I really want to concentrate on. The idea of journaling has always intrigued me. When I was little my dad made us write in a diary every night. He said we will enjoy them later on and he was right. Emma and I sat reading the old diary and laughed at the day to day adventures a little girl of 7 had. I have another diary I kept during middle school. Oh the emotions a girl of 13/14 can have. As the years went on I would start several more but things tended to get busy and I would stop only to start a new one with promises to keep that one going. Sadly, I broke those promises.

This year I have plans to take the idea of journaling and make it part of my life. I have been doing extensive research on the art of journal writing and can see this working for me. One thing I plan on doing differently is not feel like I need to write daily. This has been what gets the ball rolling on journaling failure for me. I skip a day or two and feel guilty. I would even try to go back and write an entry for the days I missed plus write an entry for that day. It would become too much work and eventually I would stop.Another thing I plan on doing is keeping several journals going at once. This sounds like more work and juggling more then one will lead to failure...I was failing trying to keep one going but now multiple ones, I must be nuts....however, by having journals specifically for different areas in my life it will help those areas get organized and between the two I might just keep them going. Besides, what I have been reading on journaling, this seems to be the norm. So I will have:
gardening journal
nature journal
home organizer journal
common place journal
reflections journal
and possible a knit/projects journal

I found these beautiful journals (set of 3) at Blick that will be perfect for my garden journal. They have a black cover with  a nature study collage on the cover. One has a study of plants, one of flowers and one of mushrooms(I think). The set had a red string and a paper band around them. They just had an aura of old fashion-ness about them that I had to own. With the plants and nature goodies on the cove I knew I had to use them for something with a similar theme and I had just read about a garden journal...perfect combo. My plan is to write what I plant and where, how they are doing, and about future ideas for the garden. Troubles and solutions and anything else pertaining to my gardens and plants (outdoor and in). Since we moved into a new house where the former owners had no sense of gardening (house was surrounded by weed gardens), I have my work cut out to form some sort of visual delight of botanical display. I might as well record the adventures and pitfalls I come across. I only wish I had started the journal when we moved in. I am sure reading about the jungle of weeds I had to remove, the war on chipmunks I campaigned, and the reshaping the yard to include a dry river bed would have been quite entertaining once the blisters had healed. Oh well, I can only go on from here.

The gardening journal is not to be confused with my nature journal. The nature journal will be observations I make about nature, all kinds, from air temperature to clouds and weather, sighting of new bird to spotting a neat mushroom, and mapping out places we hike to drawing the details of a butterfly.  The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady was a big inspiration for me. It has poems and weather, musings and drawings. Besides it is a true delight to look at. Coupled with the Keeping a Nature Journal and Illustrating Nature, I am renewed with the spirit of nature journaling. My interest in drawing (which needs much work) and nature will go together.

The home organizer journal will be my aid to getting organized. We moved into our new house in June and it is time to organize and deep clean this place. The first few pages will contain a cleaning schedules. The rest of the notebook will be in several sections, one will be a month by month breakdown of a detailed cleaning of each room or floor. An example is January is my month to clean the kitchen from top to bottom, I wrote the ideas for January on a page titled January and then I am keeping a daily account of cleaning, organizing. January 1st had: vacuum under oven and dishwasher, wipe dishwasher gaskets, side panels, and front, wipe down oven, vacuum under fridge and around coils, wipe down all sides of fridge, clean air duct. I will dust/clean every surface of the kitchen. Also during this month I will make decorator changes, organize cabinets and drawers, buy new flat wear and towels. I plan on doing the same thing to every room of the house one month at a time. So by the end of the year my entire house will be clean and organized from top to bottom inside and out. Another section will be for house plans I have, things I may have to wait for such as building bookshelves and painting my room. Hopefully this journal will help me get this house organized. It probably will, however trying to get those who live here to keep it organized is another matter.

The common place journal is just a place I will put my thoughts about nothing in particular and lists of just about anything. It will be a place to put the miscellaneous things I want to jot down. I even wrote a few pages on the different fountain pens I am trying, each page written about the pen and it qualities and failures. Silly but it gives me a place to write...and I like to write.

The reflections and knit journals are pretty much self explanatory. The reflections journal might get morphed into the common place journal though. The knitting/projects journal is one I have been wanting to start for a while. I had one started when I first started making things for Jacob when he was a baby. I have the pattern number and a picture of the finished product. I renewed it when I was making clothes for Emma. Making notes on future dresses I wanted to make and finished dresses. But those were sporadically kept. I want this one to be about all the things I am making with notes and pictures, either drawn or taken. For instance I made 3 pairs of fingerless mitts for Christmas presents this year, I should have taken a picture, made notes on the yarn and needle used as well as the size and pattern and any changes I made. Also add in who they were for and why. I think as a knitter and fiber textile artist (souds impressive but it just means someone who works with fiber textiles:yarn and material) it is important I record my craft.

This all sounds like a lot of work but I think it will be a better system for me. I will become a more organized person I believe. But the most important outcome of this new direction in journaling will be the need for more notebooks. I have a tiny obsession with notebooks and anything I can do to feed this obsession I will. Now I have a good excuse.

Life of Fred

I have posted before how much Em hates math. In her eyes math is an evil beast whose only purpose is to make her school life miserable. This has been a challenge for me because I am a math person, love it. For the most part, my boys tended to handle math with very little drama at the arithmetic stages. They learned the lessons, did the problems and moved on. This is what a typical day of math with Em looks like...

We did have one year when I tried doing math with out an actual curriculum. It was a great year. I used Kathryn Stouts's book Maximum Math which is a guide that tells you (and shows you how to teach) the math skills for each grade level. That year we "played" math and kept a math notebook. Em loved it and math was tearless. Sadly we went back to the old way of doing math (not sure why) the next two years and back to tears. However, I have gotten wiser as the years have gone by and decided to go back to the 'playing " math after she finishes the BJU Math 4 book. BUT I have been on a hunt to find something to add to our curriculum to make math a little bit more enjoyable and I think I found it, Life of Fred, the elementary books.

A friend of mine is using this with her daughter and mentioned several times how much they love it. I decided to look into it and see what the elementary series was like. First let me mention that these are not your normal math books. They are written in a story like fashion where a boy named Fred(who is a math genius and teaches math at a college and he is only 5 yrs old) lives his life encountering math along the way. Also the author strongly suggests you start with the first elementary book Apples even if you are in 4th level math, even if you zip through it. Each book is about 18 lessons if you do a chapter a day. This is the book we tried.

At first I was thinking this book was way too simple. I did not grasp how these books teach. As we did the readings little math was introduced and it was introduced very subtle. Each chapter ended with a Your Turn to Play section with 2-10 questions. The book Apples focused on telling time to the hour, members in a set, days of the week, ordinal numbers, and the addition/subtraction facts for the number 7. Does not sound like much but by the end of the book (it took Em two weeks to do the book) Em knew, with out hesitation, the facts for 7...no more counting in her head. I looked ahead at the 2nd book Butterflies and it seems to be focusing on the number 9 facts. I think each of the 9 elementary books will focus on a number to help cement the facts for it in the childs mind.

Since I have only used one of the 9 elementary books some may wonder why I am writing this blog post on Life of Fred. Obviously I do not know what the whole series is about and how the teaching methods will work long term. BUT what I do know is my math hater is asking to do Life of Fred math at 7:30pm on a Sunday night because she did not do any during the day and she "neeeds to have her Fred". Maybe she is enjoying them because right now they are easy for her, maybe it is because we sit together and I read the story to her, maybe it is the story, or maybe it is the few math problems she needs to work at the end of each chapter......whatever the reason, she is loving it. She has a positive math outlook when it comes to math and that is important.

UPDATE on Fred seen here

Map Skills

This week Emma began her study of the 50 states. The plan is to do a state a week with an introductory week for each region plus one week on Map Skills. She will construct an "Interactive Notebook" (this is just a typical homeschoolers notebooking notebook but public schools have just discovered the benefits of this learning tool and have come up with a fancy name, so I figured I would use the new label for it). Another part of the plan is to use whatever I have on hand and can find free on the computer. This week was our fist week and we started off with Map Skills.

We are using a graph notebook, but any type can be used or a binder and plain paper. The only rules I gave were:
1 Title Page for Each section
2 number the pages
3 no skipped pages except for the back of the title page, this is reserved for #4
4 create a contents page for each section

In the notebooks we draw, write, and add any work we do (work pages). Projects will be photographed and a picture with a description will be added.
Here is the title page for Map Skills:

We used an old map and cut out letters. Emma decided it needed her name and age...probably because she just turned 9 and everything she is writing has her name and new age on it. On the back we wrote the contents page to map skills.

We studied map skills for 5 days:
Day 1:
1) look at globe and name the continents and oceans
2) talk about longitude and latitude, equator, and prime meridian, and hemisphere
3) make a "You Will Find Me Here" page...draw the earth, US, Iowa, house with address, and you

4) use Features on a Map notebook page
5) draw longitude and latitude lines across the USA and label, title the page Where to Find the USA (I copied a picture of the US and cut it out, any outline drawing of the US will do)

6) do work page on latitude and longitude, trim, and glue in book (i had a work page from The Teacher's Helper magazine)
7) number your pages and record them on the contents page

Day 2:
1) play with a compass
2) find N, S, E, and W while standing in your house, know what way you are looking when looking out a window.
3) draw a compass rose and add the 4 directions, then add NW, SW, NE, SE
4) look at samples of compass roses on the computer, find 3 and print, glue in book

5) do work pages on state directions and city map (I had these on hand)
6) number pages and add to contents

Day 3:
1) discuss map making and using symbols
2) Draw a detailed map using symbols, be sure to add a key, and add color (Emma decided the night before to draw a map using symbols of a made up place, so I did not make her draw our street, we just glued the one she did in her notebook)

3) add page number and add to contents page
This week we had a Discovery Day at the homeschool assistance program, and the study was Map Skills! Sometimes things just have a way of working together.

Day 4:
1) discuss map scales
2) use a road atlas to practice using a map scale. 
3) do work page with map of Iowa (a work page I found in The Mailbox Magazine)
4) number page and add to contents

Day 5:
1)look at different types of maps and discuss
2) look at different maps of Iowa from atlas and encyclopedia
3) draw 2 maps of Iowa other then a road map
4) number and add to contents page
5) if the weekend weather is nice we will go on a mail boxing adventure to practice map reading and compass reading. If we do, you need to add a picture and write about the map skills used.

So far the new direction of study has gone great. Emma would ask to do map skills first and wanted more to do besides what I gave her. I had a feeling E would enjoy making a notebook like this...it is just the next step up from lapbooking in a way.  Next week we will start the actual study of the states. I am breaking them down into regions so New England Region will be the subject of next weeks work followed by a week on Maine and so on. Hoepfully I can keep this up. I am really, really, trying to use just what is on hand or I can find free....and then carry this idea over to all subjects next year. We will see.

The Art Shirt

"Here mom, I want this on a shirt." said hastily by Emma as she hands me her art picture and runs ahead of me on our way home from art class. I am left looking at her art picture...they learned to draw owls...and try and figure out the best possible way to transfer a picture to a shirt we do not have in the least 'work for me' way.

Owl Art

Luckily I knew just what to do....print the picture on fabric printer paper and iron on a shirt (we will need to get a white sweat shirt). No problem.......yeah right. First problem: a plain white sweat shirt could not be found in any of the gazillion stores we looked in at the mall. Emma decided this was good because she said it would look better on a sweater like the one we got from Old Navy only in a different color. Just so happens this sweater is her favorite and she has been asking for another one. However the idea wasn't too bad, the sweater is cute and cheap. We find one in a mulberry/white stripe that will go great with the colors in the drawing.

Second problem: After transferring the picture to the fabric I realized the printer ink is water soluble...in other words I will not be able to wash the shirt. A very active, loves to play outdoors, girl who will be wearing this shirt. No way can this work. Guess I can outline the shirt in embroidery thread. Took all weekend but I got it outlined. The colored in areas were a different problem. I can outline with a embroidery stitch but fill an area and my stitching shows it's flaws. Sharpies are great for this....why I did not think to use the Sharpies to outline the picture with I do not know, but it would have saved me 2 days of work and countless sticks to my fingers...and we happen to have the exact colors needed. I figured after washing, if the Sharpie colors start to fade she can just color them in again.

Third problem: The picture has areas where Emma used crayon to give it a setting sun look. Coloring this in with Sharpie would take away the crayon look. What to use? Time for a trip to Blick art store. Do you know they have fabric dyes in crayon form? Super neat and easy to use. The results looked exactly like the original art work. Best of all the dye gets set with a hot iron...just color and iron...permanent color.

With the picture now transferred to the shirt I encountered the last problem, it looked sort of plain and just stuck on the shirt. Guess I need to add a border. I found some large rick rack at Michaels and some cute Owl ribbon. I am happy to say the result turned out better then I planned.

Completed Shirt

Closer look

Even closer look

Here are the supplies I used for the "simple" art to shirt project.

Supplies minus the embroidery thread

Em loves the shirt (so all the hard work was worth it) and she has plans to wear it to her next art class. Hopefully that class will not produce another project for me to do.

Unsocialized...in a sense

This week I decided to unsocialize myself. I quit facebook and the forum I have visited for years. No deep philosophical reasons for it, just got tired of the same old stuff. The forum was a homeschool forum and while homeschool was discussed so were many hot buttons. I think my rose colored glassed just got too cracked for my taste. Seeing how people really think, the hate in them, the "me" mentality, the "everyone is an idiot if your view is different" people. Then there are those who can shove tolerance down your throats but have no idea what it really means. I think the thread that got me started on feeling the need to get away from these people was on a thread that discussed breaking laws. Apparently it is okay to break rules and laws if you think they are stupid or don't apply to you and your special family. Boggles the mind...how does one pick and choose what laws and rules to follow and which ones do not apply to you. Change the law don't break it. Don't like a rule of an establishment, then don't go there. Why do you get to decide what is right/wrong/or not needing to pertain to you.

Anyway, I will move on..........
Since I now have eliminated half the purpose of going online for me, I now have more time. Time to focus on the house, on homeschooling, and even on myself. Since Monday I have cleaned the entire house, organized my closet, finished knitting mittens for my hubby (this deserves a blog post of its own), taught school to Em (all subjects)and be finished by 11:30am, read a book, made yarn balls from skeins of yarn, and made gauge swatches for the 3 projects I plan to knit for myself. I have found new enjoyment in the home. I even made a cake and found myself bored for a short time on Wednesday. Even have time to blog again.

The thing is, I never really spent hours and hours on these sites, just while I drank coffee and then an occasional peek to see if anything needs a response. I think the time sucked from my day was the emotional gunk these things placed on me. It slowed me down. Got me irritated and at times in a funk. It was all that gunk I took away from my time online that slowed me down. It was enough of a "gunk takeaway' that not having it anymore was visible...an acquaintance saw me yesterday and commented how happy I looked. I realized I really felt happy. I mean not just surface happy, but deep down. I did not have all that gunk build up anymore.

So there will be no facebook or twitter for me...no following forums. I will be , in the worlds eyes, unsocialized. I will get my rosy glasses fixed. I will be happy.