Sophie's Blog: Hello folks today is day one hundred which I am really excited about because we are more halfway through the year! I am going to a 20 sentence blog. My Annie video is videotaped and ready to get posted. I am very proud of myself. I had singing lessons today and we are working on singing Can you feel the love tonight from Broadway Lion King. Beauty and the Beast from Broadway's, well I think you know! J And we also did As long as he needs me from Oliver. Mom had an awesome trip, so I hear, in Texas. I was really glad she came back today, I missed her a lot. On Saturday, Dad and I went to the Valentines Ball here in Brunswick. It was totally awesome. Dad was really funny doing the chicken dance. I met some of my friends from school which was really nice! On Friday night Lily and Dad went to Jokers and a Japanese smokehouse which I here was awesome. I'll be right back I have to eat Lunch! J I am back! I had clam chowder, Apples, grapes, toast with butter and water. I actually think this has been 20 sentences, let me check! 19 sentences! Ok well thank you for reading my blog, goodbye!
-sophie
Music with Kat
Reading
Talking with Mom
Day One-hundred. Wow. Today's "school" was limited because the girls were at my mom's while I took a much-needed trip away from the cold and snow and dark of Maine to see my brother in Texas. It was a lovely trip and a nice break and I returned refreshed and recharged. I also returned to somewhat of a logistics nightmare but we worked it out and decided it was unnecessary to load Sophie (or I) down on this first day home with school-work that we felt obligated and reluctant about and chose to accomplish what we could and feel good about it. I am reminded again that this is the blessed relief of homeschooling. We don't get half-days or sick days or teacher workshop days but we have so much freedom and choice to alter our plan and revise our schedule. Although there is a sense of accountability to the state of Maine regarding Sophie's education, the reality of homeschooling is Sophie and I are only accountable to each other and ourselves. The truth is how would anyone really know if Sophie and I were actually working as hard as the blog reports? How do you know if Sophie is completing the work I report and upload to the blog? You don't. But she and I do. She's learning because she wants to and she is excelling, beyond what I had expected of her when we began our journey one-hundred schooldays ago. The truth is homeschooling is a better fit for us than I planned for it to be. We are all four happier, healthier, smarter, and more loving to each other. Every day is a good day. That's not to say we don't have bad days but with the freedom and choice and reality of being accountable to ourselves and each other, we take the bad with the good and adjust accordingly. Now that I think about it, Sophie is learning another important lesson with our homeschooling model: prepare for a good day, adjust for a bad, and do your best either way.
This is an interesting article—to sum up—I could have written this same blog: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110216/ap_on_hi_te/us_teacher_suspended_blog Student rudeness, lack of respect, and sense of entitlement, coupled with an interesting dichotomy of acting both at the same time like mini-adults and spoiled children is one of the major reasons I removed myself (and my daughters) from public school. I feel this woman is a hero and should be acknowledged for bringing this very real problem to the attention of voters, parents, and school staff. Good on ya~
Unit Update: We are doing great! She has completed more than half of her Colonial Letters project—and she's doing an excellent job with them! Her next two topics and eight letters will be about Health & Wellness and Clothing then she's done. She and Gamma did a lot of good work planning and preparing her collage book that will collect and bind the story of Rachel and Sarah together is a really neat project, much like the Griffin and Sabine books for those of you who are familiar. We will be entering in her revisions and edits and printing out the final letters on the nice paper this week.
She and I are up-to-date with her web-quests. She has two more to complete—one this week on the 13 Colonies and one next on the Salem Witch trials. She will complete her Plymouth Village video plan this week on the topic of Colonial Family Life, as well as her Jamestown video plan on the topic of Conflict. Next week she will work on her Yorktown video plan on the topic of Commerce and Trade and also one for Salem on Religious Persecution and the Witch Trials. Her final video plan will be completed the week after on Lexington/Concord on the topic of the Old World/New World transition. Come to find out, most of the video sites are closed until Spring. So…we are planning and preparing to complete the unit and be ready to film a soon as the snow melts and sun is out!
She has completed a great detailed map of the Triangle Trade route of Colonial America and she will complete another detailed map of her own creation for the 13 Colonies. She is reading a book about Indian captivity and will do a book report on that and hopefully we can work in a novel about the Salem witch trials too.
One of the easier projects to plan and adjust has been the Human Body project. She has continued to learn with Gray's Anatomy and we are thinking about the project but we have delayed work on it for the last couple of weeks and now it's time to make up for it. The project is one, however, that it will work to do many body parts all at once on one day. So our plan is to work on the bodies next Friday. We're also going to break into the cool Magic Schoolbus Human Body activity box. Friday February 25th will be all body, all day! We plan to take pictures throughout and Sophie will write a nice, long blog about the project too. The brain poem worked really well as a compendium and we plan to write a few more body poems to go with the project too.
She's doing SO well on Math. I couldn't be more pleased with the workbooks we chose and the work she's doing every day with them. We have, at least for this unit, solved the math problem. She completed a review today and got 100%.
I do plan to have her do a science and math review before our trip to Florida next week. She will also complete a review from the information she learned in the webquests.
Her Portfolio presentation for this unit will be the Colonial Letters book and the video, once it's complete—hopefully by June.
I learned that planning the unit in advance worked much better than just going at the unit with a general idea like I did with the Explorers unit. I will follow the second method for planning the American Revolution unit. While we're gone to Florida we will have a good couple of 5-6 days of school for field trips—Kennedy Space Center, Jamestown, Epcot, and a few cool surprise places we're stopping at along the highway of our drive down. In the car she will have some work to do reading and learning some facts and details about the French and Indian War so that when we return home she's ready to complete her cool song project for that important war. Then, in April, we start the American Revolution unit, our third and final for sixth grade!
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