Spring Break

There's a special magic in the air that arrives with spring break, which is similar to that of a full moon....maybe it's the pollen in the air that drives the senses wild and causes the mind to careen out of control. I felt it in the house today as the boys tried to demonstrate their "good" listening skills. Children are not robots. They weren't made with "off" buttons, or an "EASY" button for that matter. All I know is that sometimes it's better to join them, than to beat them, of course I would never mean that in the physical sense; however, when the statement was delivered, "when I hear that noise, I feel like banging on the source with my fist to get it to stop," the child replied, "that's OK mom, sometimes I feel like doing that to my brother, so don't feel left out," well, let's just say we all felt that magic of spring break in the air and had a good laugh. A good laugh is what we often need to get through a history lesson in which there is no field trip available that will take its place.

History class was never my favorite. As a grown-up, I can understand the pressures teachers are under to grab a childs attention and present him with information that is so important that you see his eyes staring back intently, hanging on each syllable you utter, which flows like a musical note from your lips. Well, that's how the teacher feels about the lesson, while the student cannot relate to the purpose of learning old things that happened long ago. Text books present the information in a boring, clinical tone; though making the information relevant to him is as challenging as producing a broadway show.

If ever I could use a mentor, it's definitely in the area of history. My educational style is not one that agrees with rote learning, but history is one subject where I have to stretch my imagination to be a "creative" teacher. I welcome any recommendations for a fun history curriculum.

Voice to text

We are having lots of fun today....OK, I'm not sure if fun is the proper description, but we are definitely being challenged. Using the vocabulary from Moby Dick, the boys are making vocabulary tables, which will be cut into cards for a matching game. The hard part of the task is that they are inputting the words into a chart using Dragon Naturally Speaking software. Dragon changes spoken words into text. Hehehe, unfortunately, the words are really hard for the program to recognize; therefore, Ben has to train the program to recognize each one. Josh is working the keyboard and mouse, while Ben is speaking into microphone and reading the words and their meanings. Doing this together makes the work is harder than doing a three legged race because they have to watch and listen for each other to know when to do their parts. I'm certain that the task could be completed quickly and easily if they were to type the information, but using the software makes it more fun and challenging.

Colonies, Math and Moby Dick

After a good nights sleep and a cup of coffee I was ready for Herman today. We've been reading Moby Dick by Herman Melville for weeks and have not yet encountered a whale. Actually, we are on chapter 31. Today was a difficult day of reading because it read almost like a script. It described each of crew members who were on the upper deck singing and dancing. Whew I was happy to finish that chapter and glad it was relatively short. One thing Moby Dick is not short on is vocabulary terms. Each page can offer the children 5 new words, though I only assign those they cannot understand in context.

Reprieve from reading aloud comes with our math curriculum. The boys are using Math U See, which presents the lesson on DVD. That gives mom a chance to take a break while the boys have a new lesson presented.

History is one of the boys favorite subjects. The All American History by Celeste Rakes is the series we are using. It's very textbookish, but thorough. The book alone can be dry, so additional biographies from the library are helpful. The teachers book is loaded with activities that extend the lesson. Today we read more about the North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia colonies.

Today Ben made his first batch of homemade buttermilk biscuits. He should be proud. They turned out very well.