Friday, August 13, 2010

Dd's back from camp

Not sure what to share about the past couple of days. School-wise, I have noticed that I really need to show my 5yo niece how to write a printed 'a' correctly. It almost looks like she's drawing it sigma-style. Other than providing colouring pages, I'm not sure I've done much directed stuff. I read a lot to the 2yo niece, pulled out some puzzles, ran some errands. Nothing very exciting nor Montessori. I've just really not been up to thinking and directing more than that!

I did clean up dd's room and purchased a new bedspread she'd seen in a Bed, Bath and Beyond flyer. It was all ready and set up for when she came home from camp today. Which was an experience, apparently. Dh went by himself to go get her, she got into the car and said she wasn't feeling great, then said she felt like she was going to throw up and within 15 minutes of leaving camp, blaugh. On herself, on the car door, seat, mat, speaker... Dh cleaned up a little bit what he could, but he didn't have a lot of  options on the side of the road. They had a 1.5-hour drive home to go, too. :( She seems fine now, but others at the camp apparently had this stomach bug, too, and others had it worse, so we'll just knock on wood. In any case, she was happy to come home to see her room cleaned up for her (she had complained before leaving that she wanted it clean but just felt like she never got anywhere with it) and the new bedspread in place. With her cat already sleeping on it. ;)

Dd's doing math calculations (with the calculator), calculating how many days we've been alive. I'm glad we count our age in years and not days. ;)

Let's see, what else? I've finally gotten to work on some year plans for dd and ds. Very brief year plans, but it's nice to get them down. I'm never very good at following the plans, but dd and I seem very motivated and focused. A good portion of it is stuff she wants to do: German, music, art and math. She is very eager for us to replace my old keyboard (did I already blog about that?), but we still need to wait because I want to try out the one I think we'll get.

I feel like I'm not making any sense. It's only 8pm but I'm thinking I ought to brush my teeth and put on pj's, curl up with a book and let myself fall asleep.

Back to what I was saying (this is the most disorganized blog post ever, isn't it?), it's nice to have at least something written down for both dd and ds. Kind of started the plan for "Bob", too, but he's only covering 3 subjects for first semester, so it's not too bad. Although I do have to figure out his English and which resources we will use.

The plans are very brief, as in, for example, dd's:

German:
*finish workbook
*check APS outcomes for grades 7 and 8
*use lots orally on a daily basis

Math:
*finish the first two Life of Fred books
*work on mastering tables

Etc.

There's a lot in dd's plans, but I think that's good. We spent so much of last year with her kind of flitting around, her wanting me to give her something to do, me not knowing what to give her. If I can have this basic plan in place, something we can refer to, then it'll be easy to go, "Well, you haven't worked on this and this, so get to it." ;D One thing I would like to figure out is how to meet the Montessori idea of having her involved in the community somehow, involved in how the world around her works. She would LOVE to have a part-time job, but she's 12 and looks 10. It's just not going to happen this year. If she gets more involved in producing art this year, that's always something she could work at--creating her own enterprise. She's a natural artist and loves it, but isn't always consistent. We have some fantastic resources for her this year and a little nudge will help her get going. I'm also hoping our school board will run a session again with the same painting instructor from this past year.

There are some little holes in her plan, like what to specifically study for social studies and science. I've got question marks beside the ideas. She learned a bit about the Aztecs while at camp, so that could be an interesting culture and history to delve into, or others in the same area and same time. Or I could take a CM approach, Ambleside's history recommendations or something else. I guess part of me is trying to find "the right" thing for her to study this coming year when it probably doesn't matter much. She loves *real* history, so right there, I can at least know in which direction to head for her, whereas for ds, right now it's all about maps and where places are in the world, etc. So, for his plan, I've got the focus on world geography for social studies. (Again, such disjointed sentences/paragraphs. I'm frankly too tired to care at the moment.) Ancient North and South American civilizations could actually be a fascinating topic for her, finding biographies, journals, etc. for her to go through.


All right, enough for tonight! My brain's turning to mush!

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