Poodle Vs. Bigfoot

Thought I might have a really amazing YouTube video to support my title? Nah. Not really.

This afternoon, we were supposed to go to the library to learn about Bigfoot. Well we showed up, but he didn't. He had strep throat. Okay, not really. But the members of the Ohio Bigfoot Research Team had strep throat so they couldn't come do their presentation. I really hope they reschedule. They're supposed to bring some slides and maybe video and footprint casts. Should be fun. And a bit nightmare inducing for me. Since they couldn't be there, the library gave us bigfoot souvenirs. Which were simply a square of faux fur material.

J.T. and I brought ours in and Baby fell in love! She HAD to have the bigfoot fur. Had to!

She didn't want to play with it like a stuffed toy. She wanted to lay and chew on it and threaten to kill anyone that came near her. It's not real animal fur, I swear. I don't know what her fascination is.

In other news...when we picked up J.T.'s PS3, I told him he couldn't play it until he let me take a picture of him with it. This is what he gave me.


Praying to the Sony gods. Yes, he thought he was hilarious.

Another Library Essay Update

Tonight was the award ceremony/pizza party for the winners and honorable mentions (that sounds like underwear for some reason) from the local library's essay contest.

They had a dorky dude dressed funny to sing some songs while everyone came in and sat down. I'm sure he amused the younger children. My 13 year old? Not so much :-p J.T. said he felt embarassed like he was the oldest kid there (he wasn't, actually, he just LOOKS it). I told him not to worry. One of the first place winners (there were two) was a woman who wrote her essay about her grandchildren. I'm sure she loves her library card and all and it's great she raised her family to value the library. Also, there was no age restriction on the contest. Still when the only adult wins one of the spiffy new blue bikes? Okay, whatever, I'm sure it was very fair.

Anyhow, before I get too snarky ;-)



This is J.T. after recieving his award. Being a kid, he didn't realize that when it was handed to him, he needed to be facing me so I can snap a pic.

And this is the award he received. They even framed it :)

That's all for tonight...not feeling great. Will post more when I get some sleep ;-)

English/Literature/Etc.

So, shall we move on?

English/Language/Grammar...whatever you want to call it.

Last year we used the PS textbook. It was okay. Informative but B-O-R-I-N-G.

This year, as you know from an earlier post, J.T.'s first English assignment was an essay for a library contest "What My Library Card Means To Me". I'm happy to announce that we received word just today that the essays had been judged and J.T. won an honorable mention :) J.T. is invited to a pizza party/award ceremony Nov. 5th for some free chow and to be awarded his honorable mention. We are going, of course, and I will do the mom thing and take pictures! I just need someone to remind me to take my camera because I always forget it.

I have a library book ready to continue with English. It is Extraordinary Emails, Letters, and Resumes by Marc Tyler Nobleman. It's time for J.T. to learn about different types of correspondence and I like that this book includes emails in that. We will probably skip doing resumes for a few years. While learning about and writing different types of correspondence, spelling and grammar happens naturally.

I haven't decided yet what we'll do after we finish with correspondence. I think English is learned best with practical applications...figuring out things that you might want to do "in real life" and why it's important to learn how to do that correctly.

For Literature, J.T. always picks out what he wants to read. He is a reluctant reader, so it's important that I don't force him to read something he might not be interested in when it's reading that is independent of other subjects. At the start of this year, he read some Stephen King short stories and has now moved onto Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. To insure comprehension and to help prepare J.T. for tests he may take in the future, for each short story I either have him answer a few questions about the story or have him come up with questions to ask me. For Harry Potter, we'll probably do that every few chapters. And for all that he reads, J.T. always orally summarizes what he read each day.

What now? Oh, spelling. I am very nonchalant about J.T.'s spelling. Spelling came easily and naturally to me when I was in school, but it never has for J.T. We struggled every single week he was in public school. I would drill him on his spelling words, he would spell them correctly, and 20 minutes later would have forgotten how to spell every single word. I do give spelling "tests" to keep J.T. practicing spelling correctly. Each week I pick out ten words from whatever he is reading for literature. He has a pretest to see if he knows any of the words already (almost always the answer is "no" lol) and any words he misses he copies three times. The next day he practices them orally or does a word search. After that, he writes each word in a sentence and copies missed words a few times in cursive (to get some cursive practice in too). On test day, we review orally right before the test. The test is *not* me saying the word and him writing it...we would never be able to progress that way. Instead each word is in a sentence and I have two types of questions...he either picks the correct spelling with multiple choice or he has to decide if the spelling word in the sentence is spelled correctly or incorrectly. If he misses any test questions, those words get moved to the next week's list and that continues until he gets them right. But, like I said, I don't put much emphasis on spelling. There are plenty of bad spellers out there and it doesn't negatively affect them. There's always spell check (though not the best choice) and looking up correct spellings and, as an adult, how often do we have to spell words correctly on the spot without a chance to look them up?

Last year, we started a typing program that is really fun and easy: Dance Mat Typing and we need to get back into that this year. I'd also like J.T. to start a second language, it just seems there's so much "English" stuff to do that I don't want to overwhelm him with subjects.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! Tomorrow will be History.

And Now ~ Science

To start off the year, J.T. and I read a library book The Birth of the Earth by Jacqui Bailey and Matthew Lilly. A small, easy-to-read-in-one-sitting book. We chose this book because we've read and watched so many scientific theories about the beginning of the Earth that it was nice to have a compact, concise explanation to get us started with this year's Science.

And then we moved onto our "real" science book for the first part of the year. It is also a library find. It's one of the Eyewitness Science series titled Evolution. I really like this book because it's chock-full of information...from people of the time, timelines, types of animals and fossils, etc...but is still easy to read. We read about half the book then had a few days of review and a test before J.T. left on his "working vacation".

I should probably explain our tests and grading. I don't do grades. I don't see the point. One of the benefits of homeschooling is that J.T. does a subject or concept until he gets it, so he'd eventually get As on everything. The reviews and testing are mostly because we're so brainwashed by the way public schooling happens that it just feels "right" to have a conclusion for each chapter or section of a subject. And J.T. likes the casual way we do tests...if the tests caused anxiety we wouldn't do them at all. He gets a kick out of showing off what he knows though ;-)

Back to Science. We'll finish up this book on Evolution and head back to the library to figure out what we want to learn next. J.T. is torn between anatomy and learning more mechanical science. He has been dying to dissect a frog and I'm hoping that he'll be satisfied with a frog dissection CD-ROM.

We also use tons of TV programs and DVDs for science. There's so much good stuff out there! I bet J.T. watches three times as many programs that could be considered science than I actually keep track of. With library DVDs, the Discovery channel, the Science channel, National Geographic, and PBS we could probably do nothing but programs for science. The only problem is how it skips around from the different branches of science.

This year I simply let J.T. lead the way and pick out books that looked "cool" at the library. For Math, there are certain concepts he needs to learn in more or less a specific order. But, for just about everything else, he'll naturally learn best when he's picked out subjects that interest him. And with all the great websites, library options, and tv programs, I have yet to see a need for an actual science curriculum.

J.T.'s Library Essay

I know I said I'd talk next about our curriculum, but first I figured I'd share the essay J.T. wrote.

Our local library is having an essay contest. Their motto is something to the effect of "We'll Show You the World" and the title of the essay contest is: What My Library Card Means To Me. Anyone can enter and there's a 250 word maximum. This essay is all J.T. I helped by going over his first draft and finding misspelled words for him to look up and by, while he was writing the second draft, saying "write neater" every so often ;-)

What My Library Card Means To Me

My library card means many things to me. It allows me to get books I need to be home schooled. It also allows me to read about fictional universes, and I can learn about other countries that I'm interested in. I can also learn about ancient history and what life was like back then.

Thanks to my library card, I enjoy learning about ancient history. Like how Hannibal crossed the Alps into Italy to try to capture Rome. I also learned about the mighty 300. Only 300 Spartans defended Greece at the Battle of Thermopylae. They stood ground against over 1 million Persians. It was also fun to read about how Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire.

My library card means many things. I most enjoy using it to travel through ancient time periods.