Homeschooling Confessions

Someone in a homeschooling forum recently described me as having "her daughter in about twelve things a day and STILL finds time to cover everything academic, all while being perky and well-rested to boot."

I cracked up. I am generally pretty confident in my homeschooling and parenting. Maybe I'm just in denial. But perky? Most definitely not!

So, some of my homeschooling/parenting confessions:

• I hate long, involved projects. We're making a chicken mummy right now. Why? What the flip are we going to get out of this? Will she even remember it in a few years? Plus, The Kid wants to make canopic jars for the innards. Seriously? Do you actually think we're keeping mummified chicken innards long term?
• When the woman who is wonderfully heading up an American Girl book club asked parents if they would like to help, I said no. I'm sending my kid to the book club specifically so someone else can plan projects and I don't have to. I did offer to help furnish any supplies needed.
• I'm intentionally holding my daughter back in gymnastics. The level she is in meets during the daytime, when the center is nearly empty. All the later levels only meet during the evening, when the center is crowded, noisy, and has extremely limited seating and parking. She can stay with the daytime preschoolers, thank you very much.
• We barely "do" academics. Seriously, it looks like a ton of stuff when I post about it, but it's somewhere around 90 minutes a day. Plus random educational things to watch on tv and lots of books.
• My child is a great reader. Okay, that doesn't sound like a confession. But you know those history lists I put together that have a bunch of books listed? And you're maybe thinking that I read them all aloud to her? Or we read them together? Nope. She takes a stack to her reading space and reads them. We read maybe 10% of them together.
• We never did get signed up for Girl Scouts. There were a ton of roadblocks in the way. They didn't make it easy. They're all based around the schools so that girls are with their classmates. The school near us mixes all the girls ages 5-12 together and is poorly organized. The school where most her friends ended up going would be a pain to get her to. And there is no way I'm starting my own troop. No Way.
• We're one and done. The Kid will forever remain THE Kid. There will be no Next Kid. There will be no Third Kid. Yeah, we still do a bunch of activities, but I have ONE KID. If we didn't do a bunch of activities, she would want me to be her playmate and that just isn't happening. Five year old's games aren't really that interesting to me. So we go to gymnastics and book club and dance and soccer and music and park day and this and that and the other thing. Then someone else can keep The Kid occupied for a while. Bonus points if it's a drop-off activity and I can go run errands in peace!

There. That's what I can think of off the top of my head, which means there's at least five times this amount that I'm not listing :)

How about you? Any homeschool confessions?

Fairy Tale Project: The Ugly Duckling

September's BraveWriter-inspired fairy tale project was The Ugly Duckling.

We read:

• The Ugly Duckling adapted and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
• The Ugly Duckling retold and illustrated by Roberta Angaramo
• The Ugly Duckling retold by Lilian Moore and illustrated by Daniel San Souci
• Presenting Tanya the Ugly Duckling by Patricia Lee Gauch and illustrated by Satomi Ichikawa
• Ugly by Donna Jo Napoli and illustrated by Lita Judge

The Jerry Pinkney version had my favorite illustrations, though it was also the most simplified version of the story we read. Napoli's Ugly was a random find at the library, but we ended up really enjoying it. It is an expanded version of the original story with much more detail given, especially as regards how the duckling spent his winter.

Though The Kid enjoyed the Ugly Duckling stories, she struggled with recalling as much information as she wanted when it came time to narrate. She was obviously frustrated with herself for not being able to tell the story. Though I wouldn't normally go this route with a young child, I decided to show her how to take quick notes on a book to help her keep the story in her mind. We grabbed the simplest version we had of the story (Pinkey's version), reread it, and made a quick note on a piece of paper every couple of pages or so about what was important to the story. The Kid then used these notes as brief prompts to herself when she was dictating the story to me.

We'll be taking a break from our fairy tale project for a couple of months. October is busy with an upcoming history fair and The Kid will be participating in NaNoWriMo in November!

BFSU: Living Things Unit

Resources: Magic School Bus episodes (while certainly optional, the episodes in this unit were especially informative)
                  Insect Lore Caterpillar-to-Butterfly kit
                  Blood and Guts by Linda Allison
                  Brain Pop videos

** If you wish to do any life cycle observations in conjunction with BFSU B-4 I would suggest you purchase or collect your animals at the very beginning of this unit. For the caterpillar-to-butterfly kit, I had to order the kit and wait a few days for it to arrive, then order the caterpillars and wait nearly a week for them to arrive, then it took about two weeks from arrival until release.

Lesson 1: BFSU B-3: Distinguishing Between Plants and Animals
Lesson 2: Magic School Gets Planted
Lesson 3: BFSU B-4: Life Cycles
Lesson 4: Magic School Bus Cracks a Yolk
                Related Brain Pop videos: Metamorphosis, Amphibians
Lesson 5: Blood and Guts by Linda Allison, read pages 123-127 on reproduction (We are fairly direct about human reproduction with our child, you would obviously want to preview these pages to see if you are comfortable with them.)
Lesson 6: BFSU B-4A: Identification of Living Things (Similarities and Differences)
                Related Brain Pop videos: Amphibians, Arachnids, Classification
Lesson 7: BFSU B-4B: What is a Species
                Related Brain Pop videos: Classification, Six Kingdoms
Lesson 8: BFSU B-5: Food Chains and Adaptations, part 1
Lesson 9: BFSU B-5: Food Chains and Adaptations, part 2
Lesson 10:  Magic School Bus In The Rainforest
                  Related Brain Pop videos: Camouflage, Energy Pyramid, Food Chains


This post is part of my series on using BFSU as a science unit study.