reviewing

I wrote up a list months ago and have glanced it over most weeks since then, hoping for a time to reflect on these priorities and record these aims for our schooling.  Here’s what I need to keep reminding myself of… ways in which I want to aim my kids' schooling and home life towards excellence in more ways than just academics (though certainly including that!).

We get to focus our learning and growing together on 
A. Life:  character and relationships... This summer we are going to pay special attention to another round of Manners Class.  Especially greeting people kindly, eye contact and answering when you are spoken to, friendships, gift giving and table etiquette.  
B.  Home-ing:  cooking, cleaning, hospitality, repairs and maintenance skills with daddy, and gardening
C.  Schooling:  detailed below.  

1.  Bible.  I've written before how I wanted Matt to get to lead our Bible time, so we didn't do Bible as a subject during our homeschool time (when daddy was at work.)  But we've changed that up.  Matt leads our family devotions, but the Bible also leads our learning and is first among our subjects.  For now, this means we work on scripture memory together in homeschool time and as we always have, that we seek in all our subjects to apply a Biblical worldview and study each subject as "from him and to him and through him."

2.  Language Arts.  yea!  I'm learning to keep this simple!  Thank you Charlotte Mason!  We go heavy in our lessons on reading excellent literature aloud and copying excellent pieces as example texts to learn new vocabulary, spelling, punctuation and beauty.  Lesson planning is easy for this now!  We have a Sylvan workbook the kids enjoy doing a few pages from each week (it's colorful and cool) and the kids are getting there basic pieces of grammar... Parts of speech, types of questions, selling rules.  Besides that, we copy our Bible verse, sometimes a poem, and/ or sometimes a snip from Simply Charlotte Mason's SPELLING WISDOM  It makes perfect sense to me to follow the age old idea of apprenticeing our kids to learn English from the masters...  like the jade sculptor who had his apprentice hold and handle a chunk of jade for dozens of hours before he let him even begin polishing it- that way he could tell a fake piece from the real stuff and he knew quality based on simply observing.  Why not the same for English? Just one of the perfectly convincing reasons I use to excuse our crew from having to study terrible grammatical jumble at this age but aim to spend much more of our LA time knowing and appreciating excellent writing, excellent pieces.  

3.  History.  We've continued using Veritas Press' self-paced online hisotry course because it's chronological and covering the right time so that we can pick up with Tapestry of Grace in the future.  I really love Tapestry of Grace, the attitude they present of respecting other cultures and learning from them and speaking the truth of the Gospel into other contexts.  This is what I feel is missing from the lessons they're doing now.  But these lessons have hit the spot for me, giving me a bit more availability to attend to other things, even though, sadly, they're presented with a sometimes more arrogant tone.   So far in our kids history lessons, we've spent most of our time in the ancient world but also some time on American History.  

4.  Science-  We've kept this super simple so far.  Basically all that we've done this year is memory work (from Classical Conversations app) and some read alouds from the Christian Liberty Nature Reader or from Apologia textbook.  We're looking forward to a more intentional class arrangement for science next year- usuing Apologia textbook and notebooks for the kids.

5.  Math-  this is the crazy exciting thing for me right now.  Our kids are bright and blazing in math!  They have both finished their grade level textbooks in Chinese mathbooks a little bit early and are beginning to move ahead into next year's level.  Also, they have completed three mental math practice books each this year.  And their sweet fantastic teacher has incorporated lessons from the Olympic Math textbooks.  Check their graduation post below to see how awesome their math work has been!

6.  Chinese-  daily practice in Chinese reading and writing and vocabulary development (which means, more reading aloud.)  Both Isaiah and Marian feel confident to write characters, the order of the strokes, the names of the strokes, the names of common radicals.   They can read and write at probably an advanced first grade level and we are content with that, and content knowing that they are continuing to progress with Hanzi from there.  

7.  3rd Language-  our kids also have "minority language game time" 3-4 days a week (when their teacher, who is also a grad student, can come).  They don't have any tests or homework for this time but they're learning to follow directions, listen to stories and sing songs and answer questions.  We are thrilled with this.  All along, we've wanted our kids to be academic in English and Chinese and conversational in the local language.  

8.  Piano-  They're making progress, but slowly.  And sometimes I'm not content with how slow or how low the level is (especially for Marian right now).  But we are grateful to have a doable plan for their learning (Piano Marvel) and grateful that they both seem to enjoy it just enough (and are encourageable when they do get disinterested) to keep at it.  

9.  Memory-  We use the Classical Conversations app and Fighter Verse ipad app to memorize scripture and science, history, math facts.  The fighter verse app also has quizzes that have been helpful for our kids to find letters on a keyboard.... super basic typing exposure.  

10.  Physical Education/ Creation Exploration-  Matt's company is a super help for this.  The kids play baseball at least once a week with dad and friends.  I also want to aim them to be more observant and appreciative of nature-  clouds, weather, plants, flowers, bugs, animals.... We are so grateful to have a large patio where they are each tending the little budding plants from the seeds they each picked out.

EXTRAS-  the kids are getting to particpate in an art class in Chinese and I want to not loose sight of incorporating art and music appreciation for them too.  Those things are highly valued for me, but in the real world of time constraints and play that is still needed for our kids (at least an hour or so a day!) we can't add any more regular lessons since our kids spend a fair bit of time in Chinese lessons and home work and U language class too.  

Now for the more Mom-ish stuff, the priorities I get to hold to as Mom more than Teacher…  I can’t make all this happen and I know that full well.  But I also don’t want to loose track of the goals altogether just because I can’t focus on them entirely right at this season.  

Spiritual Focus:  Model devotions- daily reading and discussion at the breakfast table.  Train them in personal devotions.  Model repentance and humility, seeking reconciliation and peace and speaking truthfully and calmly.  

Relational - Character Focus:  1:1 time with each kid weekly (goal!), praise and positive encouragement, Firm and Loving Parental Authority.  Whisper correction to them privately- no yelling.  Good sportsmanship attitude and actions.  Confidence to speak kindness and lead others in goodness.   Train them in endurance, perserverance through hardship. (This is the goal, however I must note that the reality is that our kids, boys especially, are quite naturally wimpier rather than brave.... Oh God make us steadfast!)

Mental Focus:  Guide the kids for Time Awareness-  punctuality/ preparing ahead.

Physical Focus:   Harvest heavy diets (fruits and veggies).  Multi vitamins.  Koombucha- a shot a day for the brave ones who can get it down :).  More bone broth, using whole chicken instead of just the breast.  Balance exercise and juggling type skills practice.  Cardio.  Stretch and limber.   

2nd and 3rd Grade Graduation!

We had a joyful celebration last night in our home...  celebrating our big kids finishing a great school year with their Chinese teachers.  We'll have a Creative Arts Concert sometime this summer that will be with some English speaking kiddo friends.  But this time was special for the kids to celebrate their Chinese learning and to honor and thank their tremendous teachers.  They've done so well this year!  The Lord has sure blessed us with these fantastic young ladies as a Chinese and a Math & U teacher.

I just have to rave a little.  Our big guy is in 3rd grade and his teacher has been supplementing a standard 3rd grade level math book with the Chinese Olympic Math textbook.  Each kiddo also filled out three mental math practice drill books in this past semester.  They've been working hard, and it's been paying off.  Olympic math is a high level, logic heavy math book that kids all over the country feel enormous pressure to attain to.  Their sweet teacher Eldonna put the Olympic math problems at the bottom.  Isaiah conquered this whole poster of problems and the two biggies at the bottom in seven minutes!  (Ok, there were a few errors, but on the whole, he knows how to go after these problems and he did super well :)  The bottom problem... it breaks down into 4x25x4 (which he can do in his head) and then times 64....  sweet smarty boy!

Marian's Olympic math problem was like this:  You see 10 heads in a field and you count a total of 26 feet.  How many of the heads are chickens (2 feet) and how many are rabbits (4 feet)?    She nailed it:  3 rabbits and 7 chickens... and I still don't understand the straightest way to figuring that out!

We love this teacher!  

Our homeschool motto hasn't yet changed...  I do hope it will graduate with these kids from high school and into life beyond!  "Hard Work and High Spirits for His Glory"

The kids both read a selection from their Chinese textbook and recited a few verses from Psalm 103 (v. 11-13).  We had memorized the whole Psalm in English but only shared these few verses with the friends at our graduation gathering.  

This sweet Chinese teacher has only been with us for the past two months and I hope she'll stay with us for years to come.   We love her so much!  She's getting married early June and our girls will get to be flower girls for her... which they are over the moon happy about.  

We won't have any English "show" for this year... but the kids will participate in a Creative Arts Concert with other english speaking friends sometime this summer.  It has been a neat thing to hear them brining pieces together from their history class, the literature we read aloud in the afternoons and Bible...  so sweet to see them growing and learning and loving to read and loving the Lord.  Now... if we could just see more of loving each other!  

Oh we have a painful bickering crew on our hands... but we love them still!  If you pray for any one thing for our family, I would ask for the Lord's help for our kids to learn to wait and speak kindly with each other and generally, to lighten up and laugh and show love to one another.  We struggle so sadly much in this area!