Thursday, November 14, 2013
From the neurologists office
I wonder if there is such a thing as medical office ptsd and if so, what kind of studies have been done on it. I realize as a health care professional that offices and hospitals have to be set up in certain ways for functionality, but I realize as a patient who has been through some kind of traumatic shit these places makes me feel like I'm going to vomit until I pass out. I certainly don't feel in control of my own health care destiny or decisions about me or my care.
Sub-thought - Healthcare providers - If we want to improve the way we care for people, and genuinely improve people's health, why not start with empowering them to do so. Don't put them in their underwear and make them sit for 20 minutes. Don't make your intake forms so complicated that they are intimidating. Make people feel valued and in control from the first second. They will do more for themselves to keep in good health, better respect your instructions, and be less likely to blame when things don't go as planned
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Four Years Post-op
Sunday morning I stood up in front of my Fellowship, lit a candle for myself, and explained that four years ago at that time, I would have been part way through a ten hour brain surgery to remove a massive brain tumor. This was the first anniversary year when I truely felt like celebrating. This September 22nd was more of a second birthday than just a bittersweet reminder day.
I remember in a vague, hazy way waking up post-op, somewhere between the OR and the ICU. I imagine the way I felt was similar to that of how a newly born baby must feel. My head was heavy, swollen, and mangled. My lungs were wet and I coughed and struggled (though I've never seen a new baby reach for the stethescope of a nearby staff member and put it on her chest). I felt confused, overwhelmed, and angry. Most of all angry. I had been pulled from this glorious sleep and forced into the light and told to be alive and fight for myself. No machines would do it for me.
So, despite the anger, that's what I did. Like a baby, though in a much abbreviated and significantly more aware way, I learned to swallow my food, to speak in an understandable way, to focus my eyes, to walk and move my arms and legs smoothly, to pee on my own, to think and process and pay attention.
I won't deny that there have been days in the last four years when I questioned whether it was worth it to have had surgery, and worth it to fight. The last four years have undoubtedly been the most difficult of my life. I feel and think differently than I did before surgery. After the obvious recovery issues that everyone could see on the outside (those survival type skills), there has been so much recovery to do on the inside. Additionally, where recovery has not and will not be possible, I've had to learn and develop adaptations. The chronic issues that have ensued following surgery have not assisted in this process.
At four years post-op, however, I know it was worth it to fight. I will never be my old self, but, despite the changes and my limitations, I am learning to be okay with the 'reborn' me. I'm now becoming comfortable with knowing my true limitations. If nothing else, I can laugh at my downfalls. Sometimes there is nothing else that can be done. Not everything can or even needs to be fixed. I said it myself the night before surgery, "It just is, and it's great." (In hindsight, I laugh when I remember how I prefaced that thought with regret over not having had a "spiritual epiphany".)
Things currently stand at a happy, though maybe a little bit unsure, place. I've been off all medications and following the "just be okay" plan for about a year now. I was so delighted in August when I realized I'd gone a whole year without one single doctor's appointment. Whether it's truly a good thing to have gone this long without seeing any sort of medical professional for anything is a bit questionable, but I enjoyed the brake anyway.
I continue to be plagued by headaches and realize that chronic migraine will be a forever part of my life. I wake up most days with a headache to at least some degree, and will feel it come and go throughout the day. The frequency of my true migraines varies significantly from week to week. Some weeks will have three or more migraine days, some just one or even none. When I have a true migraine I will sometimes take a Motrin or Tylenol, but other times just wait it out. Once recently, I was desperate enough to take a percocet. I don't get any sort of aura that a migraine is coming, but do have the classic sensitivity to light and sound. I get confused and "fuzzy headed". Afterward, I get a postdrome where I am exhausted and somewhat useless. Sunlight seems to be a significant migraine trigger. I try to keep sunglasses on my vampire eyes as much as possible.
On the plus side, being able to keep a decent attitude and maybe even a little bit of a smile through such significant pain is an awesome skill worth having and developing. I like to think it makes me a little more of a better person.
In my last post, at three and a half years post-op, I happily declared myself cured of autonomic neuropathy. It turns out, this isn't quite true. While my symptoms continue to be significantly improved from when I was on migraine medications, and I'm sure I no longer qualify as POTS, I'm also sure that I do have autonomic issues. The heat and sun of summer brought a relapse of many symptoms, including not just increased headaches, but also dizziness, exhaustion, weakness, temperature intolerance, and nausea. For many weeks, I was again unable to exercise due to plain exhaustion like cannot even be described. In the future, I'd like to live somewhere cooler and more temperate, but I doubt that will ever actually happen. I have no idea where the best place for me would actually be.
I try to stay relatively well hydrated to help with the dizziness. It is nowhere near as severe as it had been, but I caught myself squatting down in the kitchen while making breakfast a couple times in the last few months. If I can get myself to exercise, it helps with the exhaustion, but sometimes I just have to wait the exhaustion out. It's kind of a vicious cycle, the exercise vs sleepy weakness. I know that, even without my autonomic issues, I will always require more sleep than most people since having had brain surgery. At least now I'm usually good with a stable 8am wake up time, and no longer fall asleep anywhere and everywhere.
I never know if I will be hot or cold, or if my feelings of hot or cold will correlate with actual ambient temperatures. Wearing layers helps.
I get nauseated pretty much every day, most often in the 10am hour. No amount of small, frequent meals or high protein snacks seem to help. I've started chewing ginger candies, which does help, but it's frustrating to feel so bad so much of the time. My entire GI system in general is kind of a mess. Restaurant food, in particular, seems to make it unhappy. I keep my bag stocked with a good supply of Immodium, Pepto, Tums, etc. If you're ever not feeling well, I've got you covered.
The most frustrating "invisible" type thing for me has been the slower processing of my brain. I can't keep track of things the same way I used to. My memory is notoriously terrible. Worst of all, I've been having trouble from time to time with word finding. Matt says that sometimes in conversation the responses I give don't always make sense. I've had a couple upsetting moments when it was difficult to read out loud to the kids. I'll stumble over words, or the words seem to move around the page, or I'll see them and know them but can't get them out. There was one particularly scary time when I lost my words while talking to the kids, and as I tried to stumble for them I just couldn't find them. I had a general idea of what I wanted to say, but no idea how to get the words to come out. It was terrifying. Matt looked worried and asked if I was okay, and all I could do was shrug. Luckily that's only happened once.
Still, I feel so much less intelligent. My vocabulary has suffered in general. I can't concentrate long enough to read a book. Many things I do learn, I don't retain. I'm happy for the internet being there to let me look up random things whenever I need to, and not judging me that they are things and words I should know (and do somewhere deep down).
Being deaf in one ear is both not that bad and worse than I could have imagined it being. The white noise hiss in the "dead" ear is forever present. I can't handle a bunch of other ambient noise. Even the hum of the dishwasher is upsetting when I'm trying to listen to a conversation or TV. I'll generally try to avoid noisy places like busy bars or restaurants. All the noise is so disorienting that I begin to feel confused and dizzy. Being unable to locate sounds can be upsetting as well. Still, I can talk to people, hear the world, and listen to music, so it's not that bad.
My left eye is holding on and stable as far as I know. I've been a bad patient and not been to see Dr L. I still use Refresh Plus eye drops between 1-3 times a day, and thick, nasty ointment at night. It sees fine (with glasses) and doesn't usually hurt or burn toooo much, so I can't complain. I hate the gold weight and the tarsorrhaphy, but it's better than the terrible pain of a slowly dying eye, or a corneal transplant.
My face is what it is. This has been the hardest emotional item to tackle and get used to as being the new normal. I hate pictures of myself, and cling to any I have from pre-op. I'm sad that a lot of the people I now know never knew my "real face". But, no one treats me differently, despite what I see as an obvious, disturbing crookedness. I guess I can see this as a good thing. Anyone who is going to judge me by my lopsided smile and confused eyebrows (yay sinkinesis!) probably isn't someone worth getting to know anyway. I may not be beautiful in a scientific way, but great personality traits like being lighthearted, caring, and a bit of a bad-ass are even better, right?
The most important thing is, that at four years post op I am the healthiest and the most at peace that I've been since this whole ordeal began. I'm no longer angry. I no longer question whether it was worth it to fight. It just is, and it's great. I do question what my next MRI could potentially show, but I also know that if I have to I will be able to fight again, and it will end in just as much dance party as I had by myself last Sunday.
Of course, there would be no celebration without my amazing support system. I could not ask for a better husband, parents, and family. Co-workers and friends have been incredible in supporting and remaining confident in me. I'm lucky to have added, over the past 6 months in particular, to the people I can count on in times of struggle, and I'm looking forward to many more celebrations in the future.
I remember in a vague, hazy way waking up post-op, somewhere between the OR and the ICU. I imagine the way I felt was similar to that of how a newly born baby must feel. My head was heavy, swollen, and mangled. My lungs were wet and I coughed and struggled (though I've never seen a new baby reach for the stethescope of a nearby staff member and put it on her chest). I felt confused, overwhelmed, and angry. Most of all angry. I had been pulled from this glorious sleep and forced into the light and told to be alive and fight for myself. No machines would do it for me.
So, despite the anger, that's what I did. Like a baby, though in a much abbreviated and significantly more aware way, I learned to swallow my food, to speak in an understandable way, to focus my eyes, to walk and move my arms and legs smoothly, to pee on my own, to think and process and pay attention.
I won't deny that there have been days in the last four years when I questioned whether it was worth it to have had surgery, and worth it to fight. The last four years have undoubtedly been the most difficult of my life. I feel and think differently than I did before surgery. After the obvious recovery issues that everyone could see on the outside (those survival type skills), there has been so much recovery to do on the inside. Additionally, where recovery has not and will not be possible, I've had to learn and develop adaptations. The chronic issues that have ensued following surgery have not assisted in this process.
At four years post-op, however, I know it was worth it to fight. I will never be my old self, but, despite the changes and my limitations, I am learning to be okay with the 'reborn' me. I'm now becoming comfortable with knowing my true limitations. If nothing else, I can laugh at my downfalls. Sometimes there is nothing else that can be done. Not everything can or even needs to be fixed. I said it myself the night before surgery, "It just is, and it's great." (In hindsight, I laugh when I remember how I prefaced that thought with regret over not having had a "spiritual epiphany".)
Things currently stand at a happy, though maybe a little bit unsure, place. I've been off all medications and following the "just be okay" plan for about a year now. I was so delighted in August when I realized I'd gone a whole year without one single doctor's appointment. Whether it's truly a good thing to have gone this long without seeing any sort of medical professional for anything is a bit questionable, but I enjoyed the brake anyway.
I continue to be plagued by headaches and realize that chronic migraine will be a forever part of my life. I wake up most days with a headache to at least some degree, and will feel it come and go throughout the day. The frequency of my true migraines varies significantly from week to week. Some weeks will have three or more migraine days, some just one or even none. When I have a true migraine I will sometimes take a Motrin or Tylenol, but other times just wait it out. Once recently, I was desperate enough to take a percocet. I don't get any sort of aura that a migraine is coming, but do have the classic sensitivity to light and sound. I get confused and "fuzzy headed". Afterward, I get a postdrome where I am exhausted and somewhat useless. Sunlight seems to be a significant migraine trigger. I try to keep sunglasses on my vampire eyes as much as possible.
On the plus side, being able to keep a decent attitude and maybe even a little bit of a smile through such significant pain is an awesome skill worth having and developing. I like to think it makes me a little more of a better person.
In my last post, at three and a half years post-op, I happily declared myself cured of autonomic neuropathy. It turns out, this isn't quite true. While my symptoms continue to be significantly improved from when I was on migraine medications, and I'm sure I no longer qualify as POTS, I'm also sure that I do have autonomic issues. The heat and sun of summer brought a relapse of many symptoms, including not just increased headaches, but also dizziness, exhaustion, weakness, temperature intolerance, and nausea. For many weeks, I was again unable to exercise due to plain exhaustion like cannot even be described. In the future, I'd like to live somewhere cooler and more temperate, but I doubt that will ever actually happen. I have no idea where the best place for me would actually be.
I try to stay relatively well hydrated to help with the dizziness. It is nowhere near as severe as it had been, but I caught myself squatting down in the kitchen while making breakfast a couple times in the last few months. If I can get myself to exercise, it helps with the exhaustion, but sometimes I just have to wait the exhaustion out. It's kind of a vicious cycle, the exercise vs sleepy weakness. I know that, even without my autonomic issues, I will always require more sleep than most people since having had brain surgery. At least now I'm usually good with a stable 8am wake up time, and no longer fall asleep anywhere and everywhere.
I never know if I will be hot or cold, or if my feelings of hot or cold will correlate with actual ambient temperatures. Wearing layers helps.
I get nauseated pretty much every day, most often in the 10am hour. No amount of small, frequent meals or high protein snacks seem to help. I've started chewing ginger candies, which does help, but it's frustrating to feel so bad so much of the time. My entire GI system in general is kind of a mess. Restaurant food, in particular, seems to make it unhappy. I keep my bag stocked with a good supply of Immodium, Pepto, Tums, etc. If you're ever not feeling well, I've got you covered.
The most frustrating "invisible" type thing for me has been the slower processing of my brain. I can't keep track of things the same way I used to. My memory is notoriously terrible. Worst of all, I've been having trouble from time to time with word finding. Matt says that sometimes in conversation the responses I give don't always make sense. I've had a couple upsetting moments when it was difficult to read out loud to the kids. I'll stumble over words, or the words seem to move around the page, or I'll see them and know them but can't get them out. There was one particularly scary time when I lost my words while talking to the kids, and as I tried to stumble for them I just couldn't find them. I had a general idea of what I wanted to say, but no idea how to get the words to come out. It was terrifying. Matt looked worried and asked if I was okay, and all I could do was shrug. Luckily that's only happened once.
Still, I feel so much less intelligent. My vocabulary has suffered in general. I can't concentrate long enough to read a book. Many things I do learn, I don't retain. I'm happy for the internet being there to let me look up random things whenever I need to, and not judging me that they are things and words I should know (and do somewhere deep down).
Being deaf in one ear is both not that bad and worse than I could have imagined it being. The white noise hiss in the "dead" ear is forever present. I can't handle a bunch of other ambient noise. Even the hum of the dishwasher is upsetting when I'm trying to listen to a conversation or TV. I'll generally try to avoid noisy places like busy bars or restaurants. All the noise is so disorienting that I begin to feel confused and dizzy. Being unable to locate sounds can be upsetting as well. Still, I can talk to people, hear the world, and listen to music, so it's not that bad.
My left eye is holding on and stable as far as I know. I've been a bad patient and not been to see Dr L. I still use Refresh Plus eye drops between 1-3 times a day, and thick, nasty ointment at night. It sees fine (with glasses) and doesn't usually hurt or burn toooo much, so I can't complain. I hate the gold weight and the tarsorrhaphy, but it's better than the terrible pain of a slowly dying eye, or a corneal transplant.
My face is what it is. This has been the hardest emotional item to tackle and get used to as being the new normal. I hate pictures of myself, and cling to any I have from pre-op. I'm sad that a lot of the people I now know never knew my "real face". But, no one treats me differently, despite what I see as an obvious, disturbing crookedness. I guess I can see this as a good thing. Anyone who is going to judge me by my lopsided smile and confused eyebrows (yay sinkinesis!) probably isn't someone worth getting to know anyway. I may not be beautiful in a scientific way, but great personality traits like being lighthearted, caring, and a bit of a bad-ass are even better, right?
The most important thing is, that at four years post op I am the healthiest and the most at peace that I've been since this whole ordeal began. I'm no longer angry. I no longer question whether it was worth it to fight. It just is, and it's great. I do question what my next MRI could potentially show, but I also know that if I have to I will be able to fight again, and it will end in just as much dance party as I had by myself last Sunday.
Of course, there would be no celebration without my amazing support system. I could not ask for a better husband, parents, and family. Co-workers and friends have been incredible in supporting and remaining confident in me. I'm lucky to have added, over the past 6 months in particular, to the people I can count on in times of struggle, and I'm looking forward to many more celebrations in the future.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
I'm sorry I'm a slacker
I've gotten off the posting habit. Oops. But I have good reason, I swear. I've actually been interacting and spending time with actual, real, face-to-face human beings! I've gotten involved with some great activities and have even made some friends, and have been, for the most part, generally enjoying life. I've started exercising again, baking bread, occasionally reading and painting, and spending time with my family doing game nights and movie nights. The blog is always in the back of my mind, though, and I hope to work back into my schedule some time to post at least semi-routinely. I'm not out of ideas, information, and updates to share!
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Teaching Homeschool History - The First Year
As promised, I'm going to do a handful of homeschool posts grouped by school subject to kind of outline how we cover them. Remember, this is just what we do or have done so far. It's not meant for everyone, and the process is evolving for us as well. I'm still pretty new to all this, with The Big One just being seven, so I'm learning as I go along. Still, if you're a new homeschooler or want-to-be homeschooler, or just curious, and it helps you to see how other people plan and organize their homeschool days, feel free to read on.
I mentioned in my last post, How do you homeschool? Part 3 - A method to the madness, that history is the backbone of our studies. I also mentioned that we loosely follow the plan outlined in the book A Well Trained Mind, which divides history into four chronological sections. Right now we're in the middle of going through the sections the first time on a basic level. Then we will repeat them again on a more detailed level, and finally once more on a deep and analytical level. At least that's the idea. So far we've covered ancient history, and are now most of the way through Medieval history (or, the period from the fall of Rome to the start of the Renaissance). Next year we will cover Renaissance to early modern history, and then modern history the year after.
To prepare for learning ancient history in 1st grade, we started with pre-history as one of our last topics in kindergarten. At the time, like many 5 year-old boys, The Big One had an interest in dinosaurs. We had just finished spending some time on the basics of the solar system, as he also had an interest in space.
To transition from space to dinosaurs, we talked about the birth of the Earth and geologic time. Along with basic level books from the library and videos online, we printed, read, and illustrated the mini-books from this website - http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/montessori_materials.html. We talked about the creatures of the late Permian period forward and proceded chronologically, giving a really super basic discussion of evolution as we went. Much of what we learned at the end of the kindergarten year falls on the line between what's considered "science" vs what's considered "history", but again this was just a kindergarten level set-up.
Clearly, we are secular homeschoolers. I recognize that some families wouldn't find these topics acceptable or desirable in their curriculum.
The Big One really loves movies and generally watches with interest, even if things are beyond his scope of understanding, so we watched BBC's "Walking with Monsters" series, then "Walking with Dinosaurs" and "Walking with Beasts". For language arts, we read from whatever applicable books we could find at the library. The Big One practiced his reading skills in books from the I Can Read series like Beyond the Dinosaurs, The Day the Dinosaurs Died, and After the Dinosaurs, as well as the Pre-level 1 DK Reader Meet the Dinosaurs. He practiced writing by keeping a list of all the dinosaurs he read about, along with what era they were from and whether they were omnivore, carnivore, or herbivore. In math, he made a chart of the numbers of dinosaurs he encountered from each time period and made bar graphs of the dinosaurs he read about by period and diet.
Eventually, this all lead to man. We watched the History Channel special "Ape to Man" as well as BBCs "Walking with Cavemen". We also took a family field trip to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington DC to see all the things we read and learned about up close.
That's where we stood as we started ancient history for 1st grade. I was lucky in that The Big One was a fast and eager learner, even in kindergarten, and was willing to do things when I asked for the most part. With The Little One doing kindergarten next year, I'm sure I'm going to have to come up with a very different plan.
Starting in 1st grade, we got into more of a formalized schedule. I put a lot of time over the summer before 1st grade in planning out how I wanted things to go. Key word being "wanted". I decided on three days a week of history, to be done on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, with roughly an hour or so devoted to history each of those days.
While completing history work three times a week, we had general goals or tasks we were to complete for each day of the week.
On Monday, we would introduce the topic. These are the notes I made to myself in my planner:
Monday, introduction day, would usually start with a discussion of the geographical location we were reading about. The Kingfisher book includes a lot of great maps, and of course there are always maps and graphics online. This means we don't cover geography as a separate subject. "History" for us is really more like "social studies". We cover history, geography, religion, and politics all together as one. This makes logical sense to me as all of those topics are really linked closely together.
Continuing with our Monday plan - Once we understood what area of the world we were talking about, I'd skim some of the pages in Kingfisher and we'd look at the pictures and captions. The Usborne History Encyclopedia is pretty simple and to the point, so we'd usually go ahead and read the corresponding pages of that on Monday. The sentences in the captions are especially easy to read, and The Big One would ask to read them out loud as his contribution to the reading. After reading, if I'd found a video on the topic, we'd watch that. There are tons of videos available online but of course they require adult previewing before showing students. I just this year found this mom's blog where she links to all the videos she found for her history topics. It is a great resource. Before I found this I searched for everything on my own, hopefully in advance though sometimes I didn't plan as well.
After reading and videos, I'd print out a small map of the area we were discussing and have The Big One cut and paste it to a sheet of lined paper. Together we'd pick out three dates of importance from what we read, and he would write them, timeline style, on his paper. This served as writing practice, as well as helping to keep things in chronological context.
Tuesday was reading day. Here are my Tuesday notes:
I mentioned in my last post, How do you homeschool? Part 3 - A method to the madness, that history is the backbone of our studies. I also mentioned that we loosely follow the plan outlined in the book A Well Trained Mind, which divides history into four chronological sections. Right now we're in the middle of going through the sections the first time on a basic level. Then we will repeat them again on a more detailed level, and finally once more on a deep and analytical level. At least that's the idea. So far we've covered ancient history, and are now most of the way through Medieval history (or, the period from the fall of Rome to the start of the Renaissance). Next year we will cover Renaissance to early modern history, and then modern history the year after.
To prepare for learning ancient history in 1st grade, we started with pre-history as one of our last topics in kindergarten. At the time, like many 5 year-old boys, The Big One had an interest in dinosaurs. We had just finished spending some time on the basics of the solar system, as he also had an interest in space.
 |
| His first science fair project. |
To transition from space to dinosaurs, we talked about the birth of the Earth and geologic time. Along with basic level books from the library and videos online, we printed, read, and illustrated the mini-books from this website - http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/montessori_materials.html. We talked about the creatures of the late Permian period forward and proceded chronologically, giving a really super basic discussion of evolution as we went. Much of what we learned at the end of the kindergarten year falls on the line between what's considered "science" vs what's considered "history", but again this was just a kindergarten level set-up.
Clearly, we are secular homeschoolers. I recognize that some families wouldn't find these topics acceptable or desirable in their curriculum.
The Big One really loves movies and generally watches with interest, even if things are beyond his scope of understanding, so we watched BBC's "Walking with Monsters" series, then "Walking with Dinosaurs" and "Walking with Beasts". For language arts, we read from whatever applicable books we could find at the library. The Big One practiced his reading skills in books from the I Can Read series like Beyond the Dinosaurs, The Day the Dinosaurs Died, and After the Dinosaurs, as well as the Pre-level 1 DK Reader Meet the Dinosaurs. He practiced writing by keeping a list of all the dinosaurs he read about, along with what era they were from and whether they were omnivore, carnivore, or herbivore. In math, he made a chart of the numbers of dinosaurs he encountered from each time period and made bar graphs of the dinosaurs he read about by period and diet.
 |
| A list of dinosaurs. |
Eventually, this all lead to man. We watched the History Channel special "Ape to Man" as well as BBCs "Walking with Cavemen". We also took a family field trip to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington DC to see all the things we read and learned about up close.
 |
| His kindergarten work was much beyond the level of my own. |
That's where we stood as we started ancient history for 1st grade. I was lucky in that The Big One was a fast and eager learner, even in kindergarten, and was willing to do things when I asked for the most part. With The Little One doing kindergarten next year, I'm sure I'm going to have to come up with a very different plan.
Starting in 1st grade, we got into more of a formalized schedule. I put a lot of time over the summer before 1st grade in planning out how I wanted things to go. Key word being "wanted". I decided on three days a week of history, to be done on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, with roughly an hour or so devoted to history each of those days.
For our core history texts, I bought copies of
The Kingfisher Book of the Ancient World and The Usborne Encyclopedia
of World History. I divided up the Kingfisher book into about 40 weeks
of lessons*, grouped loosely by geographic area. These books were supplemented by whatever I could find on the subject in the library, plus websites and sometimes videos online or on Netflix.
(*Side
note - How many weeks you out spend of the year "doing school" depends on your
local homeschooling laws and how how you want to organize or not organize things. I prefer to
pretty much work through the summer, and take weeks off whenever we want or
need to throughout the year instead of one long "summer break". We take weeks off for holidays, birthdays, vacations, etc. Other people may prefer to follow the
public school calendar, while still others probably do fewer weeks
of school overall. It's up to what's best for you, your student, and your
family.)
While completing history work three times a week, we had general goals or tasks we were to complete for each day of the week.
"History subject introduction
-discuss what we will be covering this
week
-give basic overview
-watch video on topic, if available
-start reading books on topic, if
available
Map and Timeline page
-see example in history notebook"
Monday, introduction day, would usually start with a discussion of the geographical location we were reading about. The Kingfisher book includes a lot of great maps, and of course there are always maps and graphics online. This means we don't cover geography as a separate subject. "History" for us is really more like "social studies". We cover history, geography, religion, and politics all together as one. This makes logical sense to me as all of those topics are really linked closely together.
Continuing with our Monday plan - Once we understood what area of the world we were talking about, I'd skim some of the pages in Kingfisher and we'd look at the pictures and captions. The Usborne History Encyclopedia is pretty simple and to the point, so we'd usually go ahead and read the corresponding pages of that on Monday. The sentences in the captions are especially easy to read, and The Big One would ask to read them out loud as his contribution to the reading. After reading, if I'd found a video on the topic, we'd watch that. There are tons of videos available online but of course they require adult previewing before showing students. I just this year found this mom's blog where she links to all the videos she found for her history topics. It is a great resource. Before I found this I searched for everything on my own, hopefully in advance though sometimes I didn't plan as well.
After reading and videos, I'd print out a small map of the area we were discussing and have The Big One cut and paste it to a sheet of lined paper. Together we'd pick out three dates of importance from what we read, and he would write them, timeline style, on his paper. This served as writing practice, as well as helping to keep things in chronological context.
 |
| My Sample Map and Timeline Page |
Tuesday was reading day. Here are my Tuesday notes:
"History
-Read related sections from
history texts
-Visit applicable websites
for more information, animations, games, quizzes (Use Usborne
Quicklinks search for webpages if needed)"
On Tuesday we would read the Kingfisher book more closely. It is written at a level above what most 1st graders can handle, but I found this to be a good way to pick up vocabulary and I appreciated that the topics weren't over simplified or dumbed down. Reading this higher level book meant that I needed to pause to give explanations here and there, which took a bit of time, so reading would be most of our hour that day. The Usborne book includes access to a website with reviewed links for kids on the topics for each page. I started the year by searching out my own websites, but often found them already listed on the Usborne site, so just using that saved planning time. The Big One loves computers and games, and there are really some neat online children's activities for ancient history. One day I'll get some lists of links together. On other websites we would just skim and look at the pictures and be done.
Finally, Thursday was wrapping up day. My Thursday notes to myself read:
"History
-read from library books on
history topic to deepen understanding
-refer to example in history
notebook for example history notebook page"
Once a week, on whichever day before Thursday worked out best, we would go to the library and fill a bag with whatever we could find relating to our topic. Or, I would do that while The Big One searched for Pokemon and other TV-show-based books. On Thursday, then, if we hadn't gotten too excited and read all the books ahead of time, we would read library books relating to our topic. Sometimes these were more nonfiction sources, like the DK Eyewitness books. Sometimes these were fiction sources, like a children's version of the Odyssey. Both kids also began to enjoy books on CD, and I found a good selection of folktales and fables at our library that were grouped by geographical location of origin. They're produced by Rabbit Ears Listening Library. So, for example, while learning about ancient India we could listen in the car to stories that came from India.
Finally, on Thursday, we would do what I call a "narration page". For this, The Big One would tell us everything he could remember about the week's topic, and as he narrated I (or Matt) wrote it down. In this first year, we focused little on form. Towards the end of the year we started to talk some about introduction and closing sentences, but the main point was to get him to put the history lesson into his own words. Sometimes that required a good deal of prompting with questions, sometimes not. When he'd finished, The Big One would read what we'd taken down, and then draw a picture of something relating to the week's topic.
 |
| Sample narration page. |
Here's how the year's schedule broke down:
Prehistory
-Week 1
Formations of Earth
– Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic (Usborne History pg 13 & 20-25)
-Week 2
First creatures –
Paleozoic, Mesozoic (Usborne Science pg 186-187; Usborne History pg
18-19 & 26-59)
-Week 3
Start of Cenozoic era
(Usborne Science pg 187), Mammals (Usborne History pg 60-77)
-Week 4
First people
(Usborne History pg 78-101; Ancient World pg 12-15)
The Fertile Crescent
-Week 5
Geography of Fertile
Crescent, First Farmers and Cities
Mesopotamia and Sumer
Sumerians – invention of
writing, crafts and trade, invention of the wheel, kings and war
First cities – city of
Ur
(Ancient World pg 16- 21,
Usborne History pg 108-113)
-Week 6
Mesopotamia and Babylon
Hammurabi
The Hittites and the
Assyrians
(Ancient World pg 22-25;
Usborne History pg 132-133, 146-151)
-Week 7
The Chaldeans and
Babylon
Nebuchadnezzar
The Hanging Gardens
(Ancient World pg 26-27;
Usborne History pg 150-151)
Ancient Egypt
-Week 8
The Old Kingdom
Geography of Egypt and
Nile
The Great Pyramid at Giza
Ra –Sun God
Hieroglyphics
(Ancient World pg 28-31;
Usborne History pg 114-115, 117)
-Week 9
Middle Kingdom
Mentuhotep II
Mummification
Gods, Goddesses, and
Temples
Orisis and Isis – God
and Goddess of the Underworld
Music
(Ancient World pg 32-33;
Usborne History pg 116 & 134-137)
-Week 10
The New Kingdom: A
Golden Age
Tutankhamen – King Tut
Cleanliness and Health
Queen Hatshepsut
(Ancient World pg 34-35)
-Week 11
End of the Egyptian
Empire
The Ptolemies
Cleopatra
Rosetta Stone
(Ancient World pg 36-37;
Usborne History pg 138-139)
The Aegean Civilizations
-Week 12
Geography
Ancient Crete: the
Minoans
The Palace at Knossos
King Minos
Theseus and the legend of
the minotaur
(Ancient World pg 64-65;
Usborne History pg 124-127)
-Week 13
The Mycanaean
Civilization
Trojan War
The Dark Ages of Greece
Homer
The acropolis
Athens and Sparta
(Ancient World pg 66-69,
Usborne History pg 128-131; 154-155)
-Week 14
The Golden Age of
Greece
Athens, Pericles, and
democracy
Temples, columns
Greek Gods – Apollo,
Zeus, Poseidon, Artemis
The Olympics
Hippocrates and ancient
medicine
Euclid, Pythagorus and
mathematics
Drama and plays
Philosophers – Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle
The Peloponnesian War
(Ancient World pg 70-73;
Usbourne History pg 156-159)
-Week 15
Alexander the Great
Arabia
City of Petra
(Ancient World pg 74-75;
Usborne History pg 160-161; 171)
Ancient Rome
-Week 16
Geography
The Foundations of Rome
Romulus and Remus
Roman Gods
Etruscans
Latin
Togas
(Ancient History pg 76-79;
Usborne History pg 164)
-Week 17
Heading Toward an
Empire
Punic Wars
Hannibal
Julius Caesar
Government – Republic,
senate, dictator
The Roman Army
(Ancient World pg 80-81;
Usborne History pg 185-187)
-Week 18
Life in the Roman
Empire
Roads
Bath houses
Chariot racing
Gladiators
City of Pompeii and Mt
Vesuvius
Augustus
Aqueducts
(Ancient World pg 82-85;
Usborne History pg 188-191)
-Week 19
The Decline of the
Roman Empire
Barbarians
Emperor Constantine
Hadrian’s Wall
(Ancient World pg 86-87;
Usborne History pg 194-195)
Ancient Europe
-Week 20
Geography
The Monuments of
Megalithic Europe
Stonehenge
The Bronze Age
(Ancient World pg 102;
Usborne History pg 120-123)
-Week 21
The Celts
Druids
The Gauls
Hilltop forts
“In
Search of New Lands”
The
Saxons
The
Angles
The
Jutes
Runes
(Ancient World pg 108-113;
Usborne History pg 182-183, 204)
The Middle East
-Week 22
Geography
of the Middle East
The
Phoenician Civilization
City
of Tyre
Crafts
– Glassblowing, ivory carvings
Purple
dye from murex shell – dyed cloth
Carthage
Phoenician
alphabet
(Ancient
History pg 89-91; Usborne History pg 144-145)
-Week 23
The
Hebrews and the Land of Israel
Abraham
Moses
and the Ten Commandments
King
David
Jerusalem
King
Soloman
Judaism
(Ancient
History pg 92-93; Usborne History pg 142-143)
-Week 24
The
Mighty Persian Empire
Darius
I
Persepolis
Zoroastrianism
and Zarathustra
The
Parthian and Sassanian Empires
Feudal
society
Shapur
I
(Ancient
History pg 94-97; Usborne History pg 152-153)
-Week 25
The
Lands of Palestine and Judea
Exile
of Jews by King Nebuchadnezzar
Seleucids,
king Antiochus IV, Jews revolt
King
Herod
Pontius
Pilate
Romans
destruction of Temple in Jerusalem
(Ancient
History pg 98-99)
-Week 26
The
Spread of Christianity
Jesus
Resurrection
Paul
and Peter
The
Dead Sea Scrolls
(Ancient
History pg 100-101; Usborne History pg 192-193)
The Indus Valley and India
-Week 27
Geography
Mohenjo-Daro
and Harappa
The
Great Bath
Aryan
India: Tribal Times
Nomads
Sanskirt
Classes
of society
The
Vedas
(Ancient
History pg 54-56; Usborne History pg 118-119)
-Week 28
The
Mauryan Empire and Gupta Dynasty
Asoka
Arts
and entertainment – Indian music, dance, painting, poetry
Hinduism
Brahman
– Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva
Caste
system
(Ancient
History pg 58-61; Usborne History pg 174-175)
-Week 29
Buddhism
Siddhartha
Gautama
Nirvana
Meditation
(Ancient
History pg 58-61; Usborne History pg 174-175)
The Far East
-Week 30
Geography
The First Chinese
Civilizations
The Zhou Dynasty:
Upheavals
Confucious
Lao Tzu
Ying and Yang
(Ancient World pg 38-43;
Usborne history pg 164-165)
-Week 31
The Qin Dynasty: Shi
Huangdi
Great Wall of China
Shi Huangdi and the
Terracotta Army
The Han Dynasty: Uniting
the Land
A Time of Chaos: A Divided
Land
(Ancient World pg 44-49;
Usborne History pg 166-169)
-Week 32
The Early Peoples of Japan
Shinto
(Ancient History p 50-51;
Usborne History pg 170)
Africa
-Week 33, 34, 35
The Americas
-Week 36, 37, 38
Oceania
-Week 39, 40
Just a note - I do not see the last three geographic areas, with no details listed, as any less important than the others. I simply ran out of time while doing my summer planning to write out all the notes I wanted. This is all copied and pasted from a planning document I had made before starting the school year. "Ancient History" refers to the Kingfisher Book of Ancient History and "Usborne History" refers to the Usborne Encyclopedia of World History. You'll notice that the topics are grouped first by geographical area and then in chronological order. I found this easier than setting everything up chronologically and then jumping around the globe, at least for the first year. Maybe when we do ancient history again for the second or third time we'll look at it more chronologically.
For record keeping, The Big One as a notebook dedicated to just history papers. It has three tabs - Narration Pages, Map and Timeline Pages, and People. He files his Map and Timeline, and Narration papers under the applicable tab. People is a tab we started part-way into the year, where I would write the names and basic facts about important people that came up in our reading. Halfway through the year we did a matching quiz on the important people we'd learned so far. We intended to do a second one at the end of year, but then forgot.
So, for example, here's what week 22, The Phoenecian Civilization, would have looked like:
Monday -
-Talk about geography of the Middle East. Look at maps and check out geographical and land features.
-browse Ancient History pg 89-91 and look at the pictures
-read Usborne History pg 144-145
-watch Sailing With the Phoenecians
-complete a map and timeline page
Tuesday-
-read Ancient History pg 89-91
-watch video on glass blowing
-visit websites:
Ancient Civilizations
Carthage.edu
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ancient Encyclopedia of History (timeline on side)
National Geographic (pictures and map on side)
WikiJunior
Thursday-
-read library books
-dye fabric purple and try writing name in Phoencian alphabet (in art)
-narration page
So, for example, here's what week 22, The Phoenecian Civilization, would have looked like:
Monday -
-Talk about geography of the Middle East. Look at maps and check out geographical and land features.
-browse Ancient History pg 89-91 and look at the pictures
-read Usborne History pg 144-145
-watch Sailing With the Phoenecians
-complete a map and timeline page
Tuesday-
-read Ancient History pg 89-91
-watch video on glass blowing
-visit websites:
Ancient Civilizations
Carthage.edu
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ancient Encyclopedia of History (timeline on side)
National Geographic (pictures and map on side)
WikiJunior
Thursday-
-read library books
-dye fabric purple and try writing name in Phoencian alphabet (in art)
-narration page
Our topics in art and music tied into what we did in history, and will be covered in their own posts soon, along with the other subjects.
And that's how we covered history in our first official homeschool year.
And that's how we covered history in our first official homeschool year.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
How My 4th Grade teacher Taught Mindfulness
I don't remember much about 4th grade. I can't remember my teacher's name or what we learned that year. I do remember the look of the classroom, sitting next to best friend, Lindsay, suffering through timed math drills, a field trip to the state's capital, and savorings.
Savorings were a special treat in class. About once a month or so, when we all had been well behaved or performed well on a test, our teacher would give us each a Hershey Kiss. She would turn off the lights, just leaving the dim glow of the emergency light, and have us sit on the floor. We closed our eyes and put the chocolate in our mouths and just sat quietly. We weren't allowed to talk, or giggle, or chew the chocolate. If we did, we were banned from future savorings. We were just supposed to sit and let the Hershey Kiss melt in our mouths, experiencing it, and savoring it.
As far as I know, my teacher never intended to teach meditation, or promote any certain spiritual practice. I don't even know that she intended to teach mindfulness. At least, she never said anything about any of those things. She just loved chocolate. As a kid I assumed she wanted to pass her love of chocolate on it us, give us a treat for being good, and that a couple minutes of quiet in the classroom was an added bonus to her as well.
But looking back as an adult, I can appreciate her lesson even more. First of all, she got 20 or 30-some nine-year-old kids to sit still and quiet, in the dark, with candy in their mouths. I don't know exactly how long it takes for a Hershey Kiss to melt, but it's not instantaneous. A teacher maintaining that level of quiet and calm for even a minutes deserves an award.
Also, I can now appreciate the savorings as a lesson in mindfulness. Our teacher would talk to us quietly as the chocolate melted, not so much about our breath or letting thoughts pass like clouds or anything like that, but about the taste and the texture of the chocolate. She got us to fully focus on the chocolate. I can't say that any one of us was meditating, but just in the piece of getting a bunch of children to allow the Hershey Kiss to melt all the way, without biting it, I know she taught us a good lesson in concentration and patience. In the piece of getting us to experience the chocolate fully, purposefully, and in the present moment, I also believe she taught us a good lesson in mindfulness.
Savorings were a special treat in class. About once a month or so, when we all had been well behaved or performed well on a test, our teacher would give us each a Hershey Kiss. She would turn off the lights, just leaving the dim glow of the emergency light, and have us sit on the floor. We closed our eyes and put the chocolate in our mouths and just sat quietly. We weren't allowed to talk, or giggle, or chew the chocolate. If we did, we were banned from future savorings. We were just supposed to sit and let the Hershey Kiss melt in our mouths, experiencing it, and savoring it.
As far as I know, my teacher never intended to teach meditation, or promote any certain spiritual practice. I don't even know that she intended to teach mindfulness. At least, she never said anything about any of those things. She just loved chocolate. As a kid I assumed she wanted to pass her love of chocolate on it us, give us a treat for being good, and that a couple minutes of quiet in the classroom was an added bonus to her as well.
But looking back as an adult, I can appreciate her lesson even more. First of all, she got 20 or 30-some nine-year-old kids to sit still and quiet, in the dark, with candy in their mouths. I don't know exactly how long it takes for a Hershey Kiss to melt, but it's not instantaneous. A teacher maintaining that level of quiet and calm for even a minutes deserves an award.
Also, I can now appreciate the savorings as a lesson in mindfulness. Our teacher would talk to us quietly as the chocolate melted, not so much about our breath or letting thoughts pass like clouds or anything like that, but about the taste and the texture of the chocolate. She got us to fully focus on the chocolate. I can't say that any one of us was meditating, but just in the piece of getting a bunch of children to allow the Hershey Kiss to melt all the way, without biting it, I know she taught us a good lesson in concentration and patience. In the piece of getting us to experience the chocolate fully, purposefully, and in the present moment, I also believe she taught us a good lesson in mindfulness.
A Healthy Snack Idea with Fage
I love Fage Total 0% Strained Greek Yogurt. It's thick, creamy, and packs a surprising amount of protein into few calories and 0% fat. Being plain yogurt, it can be mixed with many different flavors if you're just looking to eat a flavored yogurt, or it can be subbed for a variety of less health-conscious ingredients in many recipes. I've used it as a sub for part of the ricotta in lasagna, as the mayo in tuna salad, and as the sour cream in tacos. It can also be made into a variety of dips and added to a basic vinaigrette to make a creamy version.
Here's a recipe that requires just three main ingredients, can be whipped up quick anytime, and is good. It's crunchy, creamy, dip-y, and healthy enough that you can chow down without guilt. Try mixing up the seasonings to create your own favorite flavor.
All you need is:
-half a cucumber
-Fage Total 0% Strained Greek Yogurt
-lemon juice
1) Slice one half of a fresh cucumber.
2) In a small bowl or dish, combine 1/4 c greek yogurt, 2 T lemon juice, and a dash of salt and pepper. If you like a little more kick, add a dash of red pepper flakes or Tabasco. Stir to combine.
That's it! Now dip and crunch away.
Calories - 54.6
Fat - 0.2g
Carbs - 7.3 g
Fiber - 1.2g
Protein - 6.8g
Here's a recipe that requires just three main ingredients, can be whipped up quick anytime, and is good. It's crunchy, creamy, dip-y, and healthy enough that you can chow down without guilt. Try mixing up the seasonings to create your own favorite flavor.
All you need is:
-half a cucumber
-Fage Total 0% Strained Greek Yogurt
-lemon juice
1) Slice one half of a fresh cucumber.
2) In a small bowl or dish, combine 1/4 c greek yogurt, 2 T lemon juice, and a dash of salt and pepper. If you like a little more kick, add a dash of red pepper flakes or Tabasco. Stir to combine.
That's it! Now dip and crunch away.
Calories - 54.6
Fat - 0.2g
Carbs - 7.3 g
Fiber - 1.2g
Protein - 6.8g
Friday, May 3, 2013
Lime Green Tea Detox Drink
Recipes for "detox drinks" are all over Pinterest right now. The one that recently caught my eye was for Iced Green Tea with Lime, by FitSugar.com, because I had the ingredients on hand and ready to go. Usually when I see these recipes, that's not the case. Now truthfully, I don't like green tea. I know it's packed full of good stuff and is supposed to make our insides wonderful, but it just doesn't taste right to me. By itself, I think it almost tastes fishy. I love lime, though, so I was willing to give a green tea and lime mix a try.
This was really yummy! The lime took the fishy taste out of the green tea, and drinking it iced was really refreshing. As far as being detoxifying, well, I made enough trips to the bathroom that The Big One asked, "Are you serious?" when I got up to pee again. So I guess that counts as detoxifying.
Here's how you make it.
The first step is to make a big ol' pot of green tea. I didn't measure, but filled a 1 1/2 quart saucepan about 3/4 of the way full and set it to boil. In the meantime, I took four green tea bags (I used Tazo's China Green Tips Green Tea) out of their packages and tied the strings together.
Once the water had come to a rolling boil, I removed the pot from the stove top and dropped the tea bags in. You can let them steep 5-10 minutes, or do like me and walk away, completely forgetting what you're doing, letting them steep for a good half hour before you remember. While the tea is steeping you can wash and quarter a lime or two, and squeeze their juice into a 2 quart pitcher.
Once my tea water was nice and green, I removed the tea bags and gave them a good squeeze to get the "tea juice" out. I'm not really sure what else to call it. Then I poured the brewed tea into the pitcher with the limes, carefully and over the sink. I topped off the container with lots of ice, and gave it a good shake. I didn't add any agave or sweetener like the Fit Sugar recipe calls for, but you may want to if you like it sweeter.
If you're like me and just can't do green tea straight, here's an alternative way to get those antioxidants.
This was really yummy! The lime took the fishy taste out of the green tea, and drinking it iced was really refreshing. As far as being detoxifying, well, I made enough trips to the bathroom that The Big One asked, "Are you serious?" when I got up to pee again. So I guess that counts as detoxifying.
Here's how you make it.
The first step is to make a big ol' pot of green tea. I didn't measure, but filled a 1 1/2 quart saucepan about 3/4 of the way full and set it to boil. In the meantime, I took four green tea bags (I used Tazo's China Green Tips Green Tea) out of their packages and tied the strings together.
Once the water had come to a rolling boil, I removed the pot from the stove top and dropped the tea bags in. You can let them steep 5-10 minutes, or do like me and walk away, completely forgetting what you're doing, letting them steep for a good half hour before you remember. While the tea is steeping you can wash and quarter a lime or two, and squeeze their juice into a 2 quart pitcher.
Once my tea water was nice and green, I removed the tea bags and gave them a good squeeze to get the "tea juice" out. I'm not really sure what else to call it. Then I poured the brewed tea into the pitcher with the limes, carefully and over the sink. I topped off the container with lots of ice, and gave it a good shake. I didn't add any agave or sweetener like the Fit Sugar recipe calls for, but you may want to if you like it sweeter.
If you're like me and just can't do green tea straight, here's an alternative way to get those antioxidants.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Our First Trip to Jamestown
Last week we went to Jamestown with a group of our homeschool friends. We'd had some cool weather earlier in the week, but Thursday was a lovely day to get out. Even better, it was National Park Week so there was free admission. The kids were mostly delighted to run in the fields and grass, which was fine since we didn't plan or prep ahead of time for it to be a more educational field trip type activity. Next year in history we will be covering Jamestown and it will be a better time to come back and read all the signs and take a tour. Still, we saw the remains of the homes in New Towne, walked in the 1607 fort, and saw wildlife along a raised walkway they have over the swamp. They also had a little museum inside where the kids got tags with the picture of an object on it. If they found the object pictured and told the front desk a fact they learned about the object when they returned the card, they got a prize.
We caught a couple minutes of an archeology walking tour and it was really interesting! Even The Big One was listening intently, and probably would have continued with the tour, had he not been even more interested in following his buddies. Maybe I'm just behind, but I had no idea that they were still doing active archeology on Jamestown. I guess we've been learning so much ancient and medieval history that I figured that those more "modern" times had everything known about them.
The Little One especially enjoyed seeing Pocahontas.
We caught a couple minutes of an archeology walking tour and it was really interesting! Even The Big One was listening intently, and probably would have continued with the tour, had he not been even more interested in following his buddies. Maybe I'm just behind, but I had no idea that they were still doing active archeology on Jamestown. I guess we've been learning so much ancient and medieval history that I figured that those more "modern" times had everything known about them.
The Little One especially enjoyed seeing Pocahontas.
Monday, April 29, 2013
"How do you homeschool?" - Part 3: A method to the madness.
Once you take school out of the typical classroom, it can seem like there is suddenly no structure. I think this is where most new homeschoolers initially get stuck, and
what scares some parents who want to try homeschooling off. If you have
no example of or familiarity with homeschooling, there is suddenly this
great unknown. Where do you even start? Is Monday math day? Do I need to make sure we do five hours of language arts each week?
In addition to the confusion, there is an overwhelming feeling of responsibility that if you don't do everything right, your child will be ruined forever. What if you miss something, and one day send this poor young adult into the world who doesn't know the genres of literature or the latest in string theory!?
New parents just starting out will find there are a ton of different "methods" of homeschooling. I won't try to list them or go into a description of them. Just do a Google search and you'll come up with a list including Charlotte Mason, Classical, unschooling, unit studies, Montessori, Waldorf, correspondence school, and more. The main reason I'm not going to get into them because I don't know much about them. In the beginning, I started out reading about all these different methods and quickly became confused. I liked different parts of what I was reading, but nothing seemed exactly right for us. At that time The Big One was young enough that I decided I had time to figure it out and put reading about "the methods" aside to look into later. Once later came, however, I still wasn't interested, so we just started to do our own thing and never looked much into the lists of methods again.
When we began preschool with The Big One, which came not at any particular time or age but just as a natural progression of the teaching we were doing already, we did "school time" for just 30 minutes a day. We would do pages out of preschool workbooks, talk about things we saw outside, do arts and crafts, or spend time on www.starfall.com. We pretty much learned about whatever we felt like, for approximately 30 organized minutes. That was time aside from the normal things most parents do with their preschoolers like read, sing ABCS, and play. For example, if we saw ants outside we might try to catch them to look at, write "A-N-T" on the driveway in chalk, and cut paper circles to make ants with a head, abdomen, and thorax. That was preschool.
We did send him to a 6 week My First School camp, being a little nervous about him not having the "proper" preschool start. The teacher basically told us he was well ahead of where he should be and to not worry and keep doing what we were doing. Our pediatrician said the same and advised that if we weren't going to homeschool him, she would recommend a private Montessori program.
The next year, for kindergarten, we increased our time to an hour. We started a notebook where we would do simple math work, practice writing, and draw. We worked a lot more on reading and writing. I also included whatever "basics" I could think of, such as calendars, cardinal directions and map keys, what is a sentence, question words, basic level charts and graphs, and other things like that. I didn't necessarily think reading and writing were necessary skills yet, but I knew that having a start in them would make it easier for the coming years, and plus The Big One had an interest in them. I do think it's best to build off interests, if you can do so constructively.
Once we started first grade, we divided our time into subjects and started to spend roughly 3-4 hours per day on "school time". This remains the same now. How much time we spend depends on how attentive we all are being (yes, sometimes I am as much of the problem as the kids) and how interested we are in the subject. If we like a history subject, and there are a lot of books and videos available, we may spend longer on it. If it's boring, we'll learn what we need to know and move on. Sometimes there are extra crafts or activities we want to do, sometimes there aren't. This ends up meaning that some days we'll be finished in 2 and a half hours, and some days it seems we're working on school alllll daaaayyyy.
Also, we don't necessarily do 3-4 consecutive hours of work. We can start something in the morning and come back to it after going to the store. We can break for lunch, playtime, or socializing time when we need to.
As a parent, not all of the "school time" has to be spent completely devoted 100% to just The Big One and his work, either. For example, when he's doing math we will start the lesson together and then I will slowly back away while he finishes the practice problems on his own. I can start prepping dinner, work on something with The Little One, or check my email while he works. I mention all this just to give an idea of the time required to homeschool. People always ask me, "How do you have time for that?!" It doesn't require a lot.
Particular methods of homeschooling aside, how scheduled or un-scheduled you decide to be will largely depend on your personal style and that of your kids. I like to schedule and plan. The Big One even more so. It helps us to have a general guideline for what we should be doing.
This probably won't make sense to anyone else, but here's what our schedule looked like last year for 1st grade:
So for 1st grade history we covered the ancients. At the end of Kindergarten we had done the solar system, which flowed well into the birth of the Earth, geologic time, prehistory, dinosaurs, prehistoric man, etc. That left us pretty well set up to slide right into ancient history. I'm going to devote a whole post to each of our major subject areas, including the books and websites we use / have used, coming soon. With that, this will all (including my crazy charts) start to make a little more sense, I promise!
Basically, our schedule is history three days of the week and science two days of the week. We do some language arts, reading, and math every day. I haven't been organized about art and music, but have tried mainly looking at them from the stand point of the historical time we're studying. PE is running around outside, or gymnastics, karate, or sports camps. Health isn't even worth mentioning for 1st grade - teaching your child to brush their teeth, go to the doctor, eat healthy, and the like are daily activities in health.
When we started 1st grade, I made our weekly schedule and compiled a list of the main books we would be using. I somewhat reviewed the county curriculum for 1st grade, which was available online, and found that we were on track or ahead on most things. Because The Big One has a late birthday, the state required I register him as a Kindergartener, which set us even more "ahead" (I say this in quotations because I don't really think there is an ahead or behind. In the end the vast majority of people will end up as capable, functional adults no matter what, and even if not independently functional, we all have the same inherent capability for happiness.)
I organized five different colored binders - one for history, one for science, one for language arts, one for math, and one for PE/health/art/music. They have tabs of the different kind of work we do in each subject. We keep all our work filed in those binders, and date all of our pages. This made it really easy when lived in a state that required county reviews of work, and now it's just a habit.
Our schedule is not perfect. I'm sure some things will get missed. It is evolving. This year I started with changes so it looked more like this (colored coded and everything!):
(Again, I will be posting by subjects and explaining what all this means in the upcoming weeks.)
Next year I will make more changes. But the "method" is not especially stressful to me anymore. I've been around enough homeschoolers who are taught in so many different ways, and they are all still wonderful, bright kids, just like their regular-schooled counterparts. It doesn't seem to matter what the parents do, as long as they are doing something. Part of why many families choose homeschooling is wanting to encourage love of learning and inquisitiveness, which can oftentimes be squelched (inadvertently I'm sure) by school. In this open setting, it is important to be trusting. Trusting in your child that they will learn what they need to learn when they need to learn it, and trusting in yourself that you will know what to teach when you need to teach it. This means changing and adapting when methods don't work. With that being said, while this (above) is the current method to my madness, it's not the only way and probably won't even be my only way.
I'm also sure my children will be "ruined" no matter what I do or don't do, so all I can ask of myself is to give it my best shot.
In addition to the confusion, there is an overwhelming feeling of responsibility that if you don't do everything right, your child will be ruined forever. What if you miss something, and one day send this poor young adult into the world who doesn't know the genres of literature or the latest in string theory!?
New parents just starting out will find there are a ton of different "methods" of homeschooling. I won't try to list them or go into a description of them. Just do a Google search and you'll come up with a list including Charlotte Mason, Classical, unschooling, unit studies, Montessori, Waldorf, correspondence school, and more. The main reason I'm not going to get into them because I don't know much about them. In the beginning, I started out reading about all these different methods and quickly became confused. I liked different parts of what I was reading, but nothing seemed exactly right for us. At that time The Big One was young enough that I decided I had time to figure it out and put reading about "the methods" aside to look into later. Once later came, however, I still wasn't interested, so we just started to do our own thing and never looked much into the lists of methods again.
When we began preschool with The Big One, which came not at any particular time or age but just as a natural progression of the teaching we were doing already, we did "school time" for just 30 minutes a day. We would do pages out of preschool workbooks, talk about things we saw outside, do arts and crafts, or spend time on www.starfall.com. We pretty much learned about whatever we felt like, for approximately 30 organized minutes. That was time aside from the normal things most parents do with their preschoolers like read, sing ABCS, and play. For example, if we saw ants outside we might try to catch them to look at, write "A-N-T" on the driveway in chalk, and cut paper circles to make ants with a head, abdomen, and thorax. That was preschool.
We did send him to a 6 week My First School camp, being a little nervous about him not having the "proper" preschool start. The teacher basically told us he was well ahead of where he should be and to not worry and keep doing what we were doing. Our pediatrician said the same and advised that if we weren't going to homeschool him, she would recommend a private Montessori program.
The next year, for kindergarten, we increased our time to an hour. We started a notebook where we would do simple math work, practice writing, and draw. We worked a lot more on reading and writing. I also included whatever "basics" I could think of, such as calendars, cardinal directions and map keys, what is a sentence, question words, basic level charts and graphs, and other things like that. I didn't necessarily think reading and writing were necessary skills yet, but I knew that having a start in them would make it easier for the coming years, and plus The Big One had an interest in them. I do think it's best to build off interests, if you can do so constructively.
Once we started first grade, we divided our time into subjects and started to spend roughly 3-4 hours per day on "school time". This remains the same now. How much time we spend depends on how attentive we all are being (yes, sometimes I am as much of the problem as the kids) and how interested we are in the subject. If we like a history subject, and there are a lot of books and videos available, we may spend longer on it. If it's boring, we'll learn what we need to know and move on. Sometimes there are extra crafts or activities we want to do, sometimes there aren't. This ends up meaning that some days we'll be finished in 2 and a half hours, and some days it seems we're working on school alllll daaaayyyy.
Also, we don't necessarily do 3-4 consecutive hours of work. We can start something in the morning and come back to it after going to the store. We can break for lunch, playtime, or socializing time when we need to.
As a parent, not all of the "school time" has to be spent completely devoted 100% to just The Big One and his work, either. For example, when he's doing math we will start the lesson together and then I will slowly back away while he finishes the practice problems on his own. I can start prepping dinner, work on something with The Little One, or check my email while he works. I mention all this just to give an idea of the time required to homeschool. People always ask me, "How do you have time for that?!" It doesn't require a lot.
Particular methods of homeschooling aside, how scheduled or un-scheduled you decide to be will largely depend on your personal style and that of your kids. I like to schedule and plan. The Big One even more so. It helps us to have a general guideline for what we should be doing.
This probably won't make sense to anyone else, but here's what our schedule looked like last year for 1st grade:
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | |
| Intro day – reading / videos | Reading – history topic | Science - info day | Reading – history notebook page | Science - experiment day | 60 min |
| Discussion and map page | Writing & word review | Writing & word review | Writing & word review | Spelling & vocab test, writing | 10-15 min |
| ID vocab & spelling words | First Language Lessons | First Language Lessons | First Language Lessons | Week wrap up | 15-20 min |
| Math | Math | Math | Math | Math | 30 min |
| PE | Art | PE | Music | PE | 20-30 min |
| Free read | Free read | Free read | Free read | Free read | 30 min |
I didn't do this completely on my own. I got a rough idea of how I wanted to structure my day from the book A Well Trained Mind, by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. The book is "a guide to classical education at home". I wouldn't say I follow the classical education method, because I don't exactly, but I get ideas from it and use the aspects that are logical to me as a guideline.
As from the book's website:
Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the
mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts,
systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle
grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school
years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is
called the trivium.
The backbone of what we do is history. In A Well Trained Mind, they've divided history into 4 chronological sections - ancients, middle ages, Renaissance, and modern. You go through the four sections on a grammar stage level, then start at the beginning and do it again at a logic stage level, and finally repeat it in a rhetoric stage level. We attempt to link topics in science, art, music, and even language arts, to what we are learning in history.
So for 1st grade history we covered the ancients. At the end of Kindergarten we had done the solar system, which flowed well into the birth of the Earth, geologic time, prehistory, dinosaurs, prehistoric man, etc. That left us pretty well set up to slide right into ancient history. I'm going to devote a whole post to each of our major subject areas, including the books and websites we use / have used, coming soon. With that, this will all (including my crazy charts) start to make a little more sense, I promise!
Basically, our schedule is history three days of the week and science two days of the week. We do some language arts, reading, and math every day. I haven't been organized about art and music, but have tried mainly looking at them from the stand point of the historical time we're studying. PE is running around outside, or gymnastics, karate, or sports camps. Health isn't even worth mentioning for 1st grade - teaching your child to brush their teeth, go to the doctor, eat healthy, and the like are daily activities in health.
When we started 1st grade, I made our weekly schedule and compiled a list of the main books we would be using. I somewhat reviewed the county curriculum for 1st grade, which was available online, and found that we were on track or ahead on most things. Because The Big One has a late birthday, the state required I register him as a Kindergartener, which set us even more "ahead" (I say this in quotations because I don't really think there is an ahead or behind. In the end the vast majority of people will end up as capable, functional adults no matter what, and even if not independently functional, we all have the same inherent capability for happiness.)
I organized five different colored binders - one for history, one for science, one for language arts, one for math, and one for PE/health/art/music. They have tabs of the different kind of work we do in each subject. We keep all our work filed in those binders, and date all of our pages. This made it really easy when lived in a state that required county reviews of work, and now it's just a habit.
Our schedule is not perfect. I'm sure some things will get missed. It is evolving. This year I started with changes so it looked more like this (colored coded and everything!):
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | |
| SOTW chapter + review questions and short narration (AB) | Internet videos, library books, KAMW review | Science - info day (BP & USE) | AB activity | Science - project day | 60 minutes |
| Map Page (AB mapwork) | UEWH pages + timeline page | narration page or animal profile page | websites (UEWH) | observation page or animal profile page drawing | 15-20 minutes |
| Character page | Comprehension quiz | Narration and copywork | Plot Page | Book report | 30-60 minutes |
| FLL | FLL | FLL | 15 minutes | ||
| Free Read | Free Read | Free Read | Free Read | Free Read | 30 minutes |
| Math | Math | Math | Math | Math | 30 minutes |
| PE | Art | Music | PE | Health (BPJ section) | 30-60 minutes |
(Again, I will be posting by subjects and explaining what all this means in the upcoming weeks.)
Next year I will make more changes. But the "method" is not especially stressful to me anymore. I've been around enough homeschoolers who are taught in so many different ways, and they are all still wonderful, bright kids, just like their regular-schooled counterparts. It doesn't seem to matter what the parents do, as long as they are doing something. Part of why many families choose homeschooling is wanting to encourage love of learning and inquisitiveness, which can oftentimes be squelched (inadvertently I'm sure) by school. In this open setting, it is important to be trusting. Trusting in your child that they will learn what they need to learn when they need to learn it, and trusting in yourself that you will know what to teach when you need to teach it. This means changing and adapting when methods don't work. With that being said, while this (above) is the current method to my madness, it's not the only way and probably won't even be my only way.
I'm also sure my children will be "ruined" no matter what I do or don't do, so all I can ask of myself is to give it my best shot.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
My favorite breakfast #1
This is one of my favorite go-to breakfasts. Doesn't it look yummy? It's a combination of Kashi Go-Lean Crunch, Fiber One Original, unsweetened vanilla almond milk, and blackberries.
Fiber One may look like old people cereal when it's sitting there on the shelf, and I'll admit it's not the most exciting by itself, but when paired with the Kashi the light crunch of the Fiber One "twigs" compliments the tough crunch of the granola clusters very well. The Kashi is very crunchy, enough so that I've read some complaints about it, but I find it's just right when eaten with milk. It's packed with protein, and it's sweet enough that the the unsweetened almond milk is just fine. Berries add a nice natural sweetness, too.
Of course, being boxed cereal, it's quick and easy to grab in the morning, as a snack, or even lunch. The fiber and protein are pretty filling!
Best of all, it's a healthy choice. For 1/2 cup Kashi Go-Lean Crunch, 1/2 cup Fiber One originial, 1/2 cup Almond Breeze Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk, and 1/4 c fresh blackberries, here is the nutrition breakdown:
Saturday, April 27, 2013
My Most Recent Painting
Here is the painting I finished this week:
I already had a pair of matted, framed pictures from when I staged our house for sale last summer. The pictures were close-up photographs of dandelions in a kind of a grey scale. I liked them okay, but Matt did not, so I decided to paint over the dandelion papers. I haven't decided what to do on the second one yet.
I'm not 100% thrilled with the outcome, mostly of the shape of the kid's face and left hand, but it was my first time painting a person so all things considered it could be worse. I like the shading of the kid's outfit.
I used this photograph, which I found on Pinterest, as my guide:
It would have been nice to have been into painting when I was in school so I could have taken art class or lessons or something. I guess it's not too late, but, since I'm just doing it for fun and relaxation it's also not really necessary.
I already had a pair of matted, framed pictures from when I staged our house for sale last summer. The pictures were close-up photographs of dandelions in a kind of a grey scale. I liked them okay, but Matt did not, so I decided to paint over the dandelion papers. I haven't decided what to do on the second one yet.
I'm not 100% thrilled with the outcome, mostly of the shape of the kid's face and left hand, but it was my first time painting a person so all things considered it could be worse. I like the shading of the kid's outfit.
I used this photograph, which I found on Pinterest, as my guide:
It would have been nice to have been into painting when I was in school so I could have taken art class or lessons or something. I guess it's not too late, but, since I'm just doing it for fun and relaxation it's also not really necessary.
My favorite chocolate chip cookies
I love cookies. Of all the sweet baked goods, they are easily my favorite. No offense to cake, brownies, and pastries. They're all nice, too. But there's just something about cookies.
Of course, the queen of all cookies is chocolate chip. Who can say no to a chocolate chip cookie? I can't even imagine offering one to someone and having them say no. Reason of allergy excluded, it's just not within the realm of possibility.
This is my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I've been making the same one for years. I don't remember where I got it from originally. While I've pinned a million "best chocolate chip cookie" recipes on Pinterest, and looked at pictures of what the ideal cookie is "supposed" to look like (not like mine), I haven't tried another recipe or technique. I just like these. And I like them just the way they are.
These cookies are soft and not overly chewy. They don't crumble and they practically melt in your mouth, especially if you're getting one just off the cooling rack. If you manage to not eat them all immediately, they can be frozen and later thawed out to be almost just as good a fresh. They are easy to take to a party or give as a gift. And if all that's not enough, they also are simple to make and bake up quickly. The Little One has mixed them up before with just minor assistance, and I've made them with a class of 5 nutty six year old boys. So even if you are not baking inclined, don't be afraid to try these. I'm even including notes, in parentheses, in case you've never baked a cookie before in your life.
Ingredients:
1 c butter, softened (Leave the two sticks of butter out on the counter for about an hour, or until reaching room temperature. You should be able to dent the butter with your fingers, but it shouldn't be melted.)
1 c white sugar
1 c light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 t vanilla extract
1 t baking soda
2 t hot water
1/2 t salt
3 c flour
2 c chocolate chips
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars.
("Creaming" means mixing butter and sugar up very thoroughly until they are fully combined and light and fluffy. Use both sticks of butter and both the brown and white sugars. This is best done with an electric mixer, but can also be done by hand with lots of beating with a fork. Watch as the mixture changes, and once it gets to light yellow and fluffy stop mixing. Over mixing can make butter and sugar separate, but this takes awhile so I wouldn't stress over the possibility of over-mixing very much.)
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time.
(Crack an egg, pop in in the bowl, then stir it up until combined. Repeat.)
4. In a tiny bowl or measuring cup, mix hot water with baking soda and salt. Add the mix to the large bowl, along with vanilla extract, and stir to combine.
(This is a tiny amount so I usually use a 1/4 cup measure to combine the water, baking soda, and salt. Just make sure to measure carefully and mix thoroughly.)
5. Mix in flour, one cup at a time, to make a dough. Stir in chocolate chips.
(This is pretty self explanitory. Dump a cup of flour into the bowl, mix it up, and then repeat x2. Same thing with the chocolate chips.
6. Drop rounded tablespoons of batter onto a greased cookie sheet.
(There is such a thing as a cookie dough scoop, which will help make nice, evenly sized cookies, but it's not needed if you don't have one. Just use a tablespoon or even a kitchen spoon to scoop out a ball of dough, and plop it on the pan. Leave the dough as balls. It will flatten and spread into a cookie shape as it bakes, so there's no need to smoosh the balls into circles. Also, because of the baking and spreading, make sure to leave space around each cookie so they don't end up baking together into conjoined twins. I usually space my cookies in rows of three and two, like the super-sophisticated drawing below.)
7. Bake in preheated oven for 10-11 minutes. Remove cookie sheet from oven and let cookies cool on pan for 5 minutes, then move to cooling rack to finish cooling.
(This step is key. Only bake them for 10-11 minutes. They will not look done, and you're going to be tempted to put them back in the oven. Don't. Trust me. The cookies will continue to bake from the heat of the pan for those 5 minutes they are sitting there, and when they are finished cooling you will have something that is soft-baked and delicious.)
8. Enjoy.
Makes approximately 4-5 dozen cookies.
(The exact yield is going to depend a lot on the size of your dough balls and how much dough you eat while baking. Obviously, smaller cookies = more cookies. Now, the dough does have raw egg so you probably shouldn't eat it and all, but, I've eaten a lot of raw dough and haven't died even once.)
Nutrition Information:
(For a yield of 4 dozen, from CalorieCount.About.com)
I'm labeling these as an "under 200 calorie" recipe because each cookie is under 200 calories, but clearly they are not a health food and have no redeeming qualities beyond taste. And happiness.
Of course, the queen of all cookies is chocolate chip. Who can say no to a chocolate chip cookie? I can't even imagine offering one to someone and having them say no. Reason of allergy excluded, it's just not within the realm of possibility.
This is my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I've been making the same one for years. I don't remember where I got it from originally. While I've pinned a million "best chocolate chip cookie" recipes on Pinterest, and looked at pictures of what the ideal cookie is "supposed" to look like (not like mine), I haven't tried another recipe or technique. I just like these. And I like them just the way they are.
These cookies are soft and not overly chewy. They don't crumble and they practically melt in your mouth, especially if you're getting one just off the cooling rack. If you manage to not eat them all immediately, they can be frozen and later thawed out to be almost just as good a fresh. They are easy to take to a party or give as a gift. And if all that's not enough, they also are simple to make and bake up quickly. The Little One has mixed them up before with just minor assistance, and I've made them with a class of 5 nutty six year old boys. So even if you are not baking inclined, don't be afraid to try these. I'm even including notes, in parentheses, in case you've never baked a cookie before in your life.
Ingredients:
1 c butter, softened (Leave the two sticks of butter out on the counter for about an hour, or until reaching room temperature. You should be able to dent the butter with your fingers, but it shouldn't be melted.)
1 c white sugar
1 c light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 t vanilla extract
1 t baking soda
2 t hot water
1/2 t salt
3 c flour
2 c chocolate chips
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars.
("Creaming" means mixing butter and sugar up very thoroughly until they are fully combined and light and fluffy. Use both sticks of butter and both the brown and white sugars. This is best done with an electric mixer, but can also be done by hand with lots of beating with a fork. Watch as the mixture changes, and once it gets to light yellow and fluffy stop mixing. Over mixing can make butter and sugar separate, but this takes awhile so I wouldn't stress over the possibility of over-mixing very much.)
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time.
(Crack an egg, pop in in the bowl, then stir it up until combined. Repeat.)
4. In a tiny bowl or measuring cup, mix hot water with baking soda and salt. Add the mix to the large bowl, along with vanilla extract, and stir to combine.
(This is a tiny amount so I usually use a 1/4 cup measure to combine the water, baking soda, and salt. Just make sure to measure carefully and mix thoroughly.)
5. Mix in flour, one cup at a time, to make a dough. Stir in chocolate chips.
(This is pretty self explanitory. Dump a cup of flour into the bowl, mix it up, and then repeat x2. Same thing with the chocolate chips.
6. Drop rounded tablespoons of batter onto a greased cookie sheet.
(There is such a thing as a cookie dough scoop, which will help make nice, evenly sized cookies, but it's not needed if you don't have one. Just use a tablespoon or even a kitchen spoon to scoop out a ball of dough, and plop it on the pan. Leave the dough as balls. It will flatten and spread into a cookie shape as it bakes, so there's no need to smoosh the balls into circles. Also, because of the baking and spreading, make sure to leave space around each cookie so they don't end up baking together into conjoined twins. I usually space my cookies in rows of three and two, like the super-sophisticated drawing below.)
(This step is key. Only bake them for 10-11 minutes. They will not look done, and you're going to be tempted to put them back in the oven. Don't. Trust me. The cookies will continue to bake from the heat of the pan for those 5 minutes they are sitting there, and when they are finished cooling you will have something that is soft-baked and delicious.)
8. Enjoy.
Makes approximately 4-5 dozen cookies.
(The exact yield is going to depend a lot on the size of your dough balls and how much dough you eat while baking. Obviously, smaller cookies = more cookies. Now, the dough does have raw egg so you probably shouldn't eat it and all, but, I've eaten a lot of raw dough and haven't died even once.)
Nutrition Information:
(For a yield of 4 dozen, from CalorieCount.About.com)
I'm labeling these as an "under 200 calorie" recipe because each cookie is under 200 calories, but clearly they are not a health food and have no redeeming qualities beyond taste. And happiness.
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