What happens if we get behind?

I’m having a panic attack over whether or not we’ll finish by the end of May.  I doubt it.  We might be working over the summer.  My friend, Crystal, said she would have to work over the summer if Lacie wants to graduate on time.  Now that’s a good point.  While this is my first time home-schooling, it’s not my first time working with teens.  Freshman are at a critical junction and are learning to take responsibility for their education.  Lacie needs to think about college and career.

But, if we don’t finish, we have choices.  We can work all summer.  We can postpone graduation.  We can work longer days.  We can stop worrying about it.  I’ll do my part and stop worrying.

More on the Lacie files...

After Chemistry Co-op Class, Lacie spent over an hour rewriting her history answers for Chapter 2.   Yeah!  Did she have her Robinson Crusoe outline?  Nope.  After lunch, and a search in her history book for all eleven good emperors and all four bad emperors, she asked to work on Chemistry problems and conversions.  Since the lion share of our time this past two days has been on Chemistry, why not? This is after spending four hours on Tuesday!  In Chemistry class the kids worked on Bowling for Density and Kool-aid—and accuracy and precision.  (Here is the Bowling for Density follow-up.). Bowling for Density is homework.  Each kid has a different weight of a bowling ball to use to determine its density.  I made them up: 11.5, 13.5, 14.5, etc.  The kids copied the notes posted on the board.

In any case, Lacie wanted to do the calculations.  She asked if the density was 18.9 g/cm3.  Nope.  But, Lacie identified the problem!  She hadn’t converted the circumference from inches into centimeters.  That’s progress.  The second time, she had a value of 1.3 g/cm3.   Yeah!  The last part was an explanation of why the ball would sink.  She had it!  1.3 is greater than the density of water, which is 1.0 g/cm3.

She did the Kool-aid activity, too.  Her pack of Kool-aid is 6.5g.  She has to use the recipe for Kool-aid, but reduce all of the proportions to one three ounce cup.  She did it!  Yes, it took an hour.  So, we did not do any Algebra today; instead, we spent the afternoon doing more conversion problems.  We used this one.  After she corrected her answers (17/20), Rob and I made our own conversion problems based on the ones she missed.  We added a few English to Metric conversions with the unit factor method.

I reminded her to finish the I Am paper for Theology and the outline for Robinson Crusoe.  Next week is a new day and time.  With any luck, we’ll start Latin Tuesday.

Brit Lit Today: Medieval Times Continued

Today, we worked on timelines.  Angel was out taking a training.  Anna completed a timeline for the early Medieval period.  I did the middle Medieval period.  We'll have Angel work on the next clear period of time.  The tentative plan is to have timelines for each period.  We may add the dates for significant works of literature.  We are reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Robin Hood.  Yes, we plan to watch movies.  Anna loves Robin Hood.  I'm going to try the Robin Hood series.  My husband wants to watch Robin Hood Men in Tights.  We've been watching loads of these movies hunting for Brit Lit material.  So much is awful!  I'm watching everything to check.   I've had to turn a few movies off.  Yucky.
 Here are two timelines.  If you are making timelines, use graph paper and space the dates evenly.  We include monarchs, their birth and death, and their rule.  I mark b.,d. and r.  respectively.  Discreet events, such as the Battle of Hastings are a single line.  I like each event and ruler to be a different color to make it easy to read the graph.  The graphs are for the students.  Once they make a few notes, organize their dates, and create the graph, they know quite a bit about the period.

Latin 1: Henle Lesson 1

We haven’t started Latin 1 yesterday.  We’ll begin next week.  I went through all of the exercises in the first unit.  I started the second noun declensions but had had enough today.   Over the past few weeks, I’ve been memorizing first declension nouns.  Here’s the issue in Latin; it’s a tremendous amount of memorization, Grammar, and translation.  I took two years of Latin in high school.  But, I took some Spanish, and had loads of French for fun.  I like languages, memorization, and grammar.  

Are you teaching Henle?  Start by memorizing the first declension nouns.  I write nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative singular and plural next to the declension.  Initially, I wrote the translations next to the Latin, too.  I also wrote the parts of speech next to the nouns.  For example, Nominative, singular, terra, subject, land.   Genitive, singular,  terrae, possessive, belonging to the land.  I did this many times to make sure the ending stick.  Then I repeated this process for each of the nouns listed.  Then I looked for more first declension nouns and repeated the process.  

Once I had a handle on the declensions, I began all of the exercises.  Initially, I diagrammed and labeled each sentence.  Once I completed each exercise, I checked and corrected every answer—even the accents.  Is this a lot of work?  It is.  I studied French in France.  I learned that the only way to master conjugations is to write them repeatedly.  Noun declensions are like conjugating verbs.  You have to write them over and over.

My high school Latin class was traditional.  I don’t see any short cuts.  Instead I see a lot of hard work.   I decided to start Latin next week and postpone Composition, Grammar, and Vocabulary—all of which have separate textbooks.

The Latin sentences initially are simple to diagram.  Lacie can diagram simple sentences.  All of the Latin in Lesson 1 is simple.  She is going to write the sentences in Latin, translate it into English, identify the parts of speech, and diagram each sentence.  Then we are going back to Easy Grammar for Grade 5, locate more examples and diagram them.  I’ll let you know how this goes.  I anticipate it will go slowly.

The Lacie Files

Update: The Periodic Table test is over fo Lacie.  It took eight or nine attempts, spelling elements ten times, and hours of time; but we’re done!! six down, two to go in Chemistry.


Today we spent several hours on Chemistry.  In the morning Lacie and Gen worked on Bowling for Density, which they filmed.  Lacie is still working on the fifty elements she needs to learn.  She has 47 memorized.  The spelling is wonky on two of these.  Lacie redid her test two or three times this afternoon.  Then she did some Algebra and Guitar with my husband, Rob. Rob and I agree; if the answer is wrong, the child corrects her work until it’s correct.  All of the work.


 I made Chemistry my focus today.  Tomorrow I’ll check History and Theology to see if those assignments are completed and work on Grammar.  I need to check the Robinson Crusoe outline and assign Latin declensions.  I’m working on memorizing the first declension and working through all of the exercises.  Having done this, I think, Lacie will need to write declensions, memorize the genders and memorize the meaning of the nouns.  So, we still have loads of grammar to master before Latin; but, I think we can start Latin first declension nouns, some vocabulary, and genders.

Digital Portfolio

I’m using Lacie’s blog posts and some of these general posts to document how I’m instructing Lacie and what we accomplish each week.  I created separate Classrooms in Google Classroom for each of her subjects: Theology (Faith), Western Civilizations (History), Fine Arts ( Guitar), Latin1, Language Arts (Composition, Grammar, and Vocabulary), Literature (British Literature), and Algebra 1.  Every assignment completed is posted to Google Classroom.  For example, each week Lacie and my husband, Rob, have a 30 minute guitar lesson.  I post the lesson and tasks, such as which chords were introduced.  (BTW I need to remind Lacie to practice. Every. Single. Day.).

Note I said I post completed assignments.  Lacie corrects her work until I’m satisfied with her answers.  All of the Algebra problems must be corrected—actually she does more practice on topics she missed.  History and Theology work must be written in complete sentences with details.  Sometimes, I require more than her Kolbe syllabus requires just because I think it’s important.  For example, one question had the answer Juda (Judah).  I insisted she use Genesis to write all 12 sons of Jacob by wife or the wife’s servant in birth order.  Why?  The twelve sons represent the twelve tribes of Israel.  I think that is important.

Why have a blog when I can just post grades in Classroom?  The blog can report Lacie took her elements test for Chemistry five times before she earned 100%.  (It may be six or seven times.  She hasn’t earned 100% yet.). The blog is a record-a digital portfolio.

Your child may be an experienced home-schooler. She may use a blog to keep a reading log.  I have used the blog as an instructional tool.  My kids in Physical Science teach Newton’s Law problems by video and post them to my YouTube channel.  I’ve had Chemistry students post lab demonstrations to You tube, too.  Kids love it.  If their information is inaccurate or they forgot to add the units of measure they retake the video before it’s posted.  In fact, this gave me an idea.  I’m going to have one of the kids make a video on Bowling for Density to post on my science blog.  See why I blog?

Why blog?

Why blog?  My husband, Rob, is using Mrs. Daniel’s AP Stats blog to organize his Stats class.  It’s the first time teaching Stats.  He asked me why a teacher would create a blog.  Good question.  I originally started to blog when I was teaching in a public school.   I wrote grants and had a huge environmental club.  (Cacapon Institute was a parter.  Scroll down the projects to 2014 and older to see Musselman High projects.). I wrote grants for $5000- $10,000 to fund tree plantings, wetland enhancements, raised beds, etc.  Musselman’s WET club had several partners and raised funds from several foundations or agencies.  Projects and programs must report the results—preferably with photos and publicity to the funding agencies.  I tried to set up a blog to document projects.

While I taught full time at Musselman, I also taught home-schoolers in my classroom after school.  Yes, it’s very unusual for a public school to grant permission.  My colleagues were so awesome they loaned us dissection equipment and microscopes, too.  One of the home-school families was enrolled in Mother of Divine Grace School, MODG.  I wrote lists of labs and took photos—I was already in the habit of taking activity photos for grant projects to show evidence we did what we said we did, say plant 50 trees.

Once I retired (ran screaming) from public school I taught two days in a small private school and one day a week with two Co-op science classes in my home.  I began to blog and take photos in earnest, mainly to make writing reports for MODG or other schools easy.  It was helpful to organize my thoughts and materials.  When a child missed class, the previous class material was available online at the blog.

One reason teachers post work to blogs is for absent students.  Assignments are online; it reduces excuses for missed work.  It should eliminate excuses-kids just create new reasons, such as the internet is down or my cell phone was off.  Additionally, if the kids use Chromebooks, they can work directly from the computer.

Why do I still blog?  I’ve learned it helps to assess class or work completed.  I do not have trouble providing evidence my Co-op completed a year long class.  I post to the blog often, usually weekly.  The photos show kids working, samples of completed assignments, and equipment used in lab.  Guess what?  Home-schoolers miss class, too.  The blog posts summarize class for mom to read.  My husband, Rob, and I also use Google Classroom to store material, links, and grades.  Google Classroom archives to Google Drive.  Yes, I bought extra gigabytes from Google so I don’t worry about running out of storage space.

BTW, blogs, Drive, and Classroom are all stored digitally.  I search old blog posts to look for material, such as a timeline photo.   I encourage you to start a blog and document your child’s progress.  Create a Google Classroom and add every assignment your child finishes.  You’ll be creating a digital portfolio.  It can be a pain to record every assignment; next spring’s report to MODG or Seton or Kolbe will be easier.

British Literature: Medieval Period

Right now, the girls are completing character studies for The Canterbury tales and are researching significant dates in Medieval History in England.  Next class, we are making time-lines.  I don’t think  a little history will kill us and should put the Lit into context.  The girls are watching West Side Story (Romeo and Juliet) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Medieval History) for class.  I’m taking creative, license to teach this class.

Lacie this week...

Today, we had Chemistry Co-op class in the morning until 11:20.  Immediately after class, Lacie and James, a classmate, spent two hours working on Bowling for Density. (See my post here.). I believe James and Lacie understand how to calculate density for a bowling ball.

Last week, Lacie was I’ll and missed class all week.  This put me into panic mode.  I emailed her History and Theology assignments to do before today.  To her credit, she did most of it.  I am strict and insisted she add loads of details to her answers.  Additionally, I had her research in the Bible the twelve sons of Jacob in order according to their respective mothers because the twelve sons comprise the origins for the twelve tribes according to Judaism.  I sent home more Theology.  Thursday, we’ll work on Algebra, the Robinson Crusoe paper, Latin nouns, Grammar, and Guitar.  Lacie needs to retake the Periodic Table test.  But, we are moving forward!  I can see that Lacie is already making strides.  Her answers are in complete sentences.

British Literature Stobaugh

This year, the Co-op had some upheaval and upper school Literature was lost.  Angel’s mom, Terri, was worried about Literature.  She hadn’t had British Literature.  Anna needed Literature, too.  Both Anna and Angel are in Rob’s Statistics class.  I teach British Literature while he teaches Physics.  We use the older version of British Literature.  It was cheap!  The three of us slogged through Anglo-Saxon lit—aaarrrgghhh!  Beowulf!  (My husband kept saying, “Go ahead.  Read the Cliff Notes. I won’t tell.”  It’s a matter of principle!)

Now, we are into Chaucer.  Much better.  In high school, I had to memorize some of the Prologue,—The piece with the Knight.  We waded through the prologue and are working on Character studies.  Anna and Angel each selected three characters.  The rule is to slog through the translation before turning to Cliff Notes or Spark Notes.

Our plan is to work through the entire British Literature course.  Amazon’s Kindle Store has many of the course books free.  I’m also locating translations online—all free.  After using the Brit Lit textbook, I’m using this guide for Chaucer.  Hey!  The girls are getting exposure to a number of classics.

I’m learning as I go.  I decided we should add a bit of history to the literature content, beginning with BBC’s Life in the Middle Ages.

From the Where are they now files.....

Lacie was ill and missed Chemistry classes and the extra day of work.  I sent her a week’s worth of Theology and History to do before Tuesday.  If she works through the material well, I won’t be so anxious.

On a positive note, the British Literature (Stobaugh) is going pretty well.  Anna and Angel are in the midst of Chaucer.  The girls are working on Character maps.  Cliff notes has loads of useful material such as this hierarchy of social classes and degree of morality.  Here are character map hand-outs. 
I got the idea for character maps here and am using their suggestions for traits to examine, such as personality.

Here’s how we are doing Literature.  The girls each chose three characters.  They must use The Prologue and translation first to locate quotes and details.  Then, they may use he internet (I.e. Cliff Notes or Spark Notes) to flesh out details.  Struggle with the text first, use outside information second.

Our family is split.  My husband, Rob, had his older brother’s complete Cliff Note collection in high school.  He only read a few books.  I read every book and assignment, except The Great Gatsby—just hated it.  All of our literature teachers forbade Cliff Notes.  I happened to love Literature; Rob happened to loathe it.

As I work through the literature with the girls, I tend to use Oxford web sites—not Wikipedia or Spark Notes.  But, the Cliff Notes material is excellent, organized, and available.  We’ll start with the Brit Lit textbook, read a good translation, and then Scout for notes on the internet.

Lacie and her classes

Lacie and I are settling into more of a routine.  She comes for Co-op Chemistry Tuesdays from 10:00 am -11:15.  After class, we dive into school work until lunch. (My husband, Rob, has Physics until 12:30.  We eat around 12:45.)  Simultaneously, there are two girls doing British Literature with me. I give Lacie an assignment and then plunge into British Literature—with Stobaugh.  On Thursday, Lacie arrived at noon, instead of 10 am.  (I have a Human Biology class wrapping up and an anatomy class beginning soon.  We meet weekly for two hours.).   Lacie arrived right after the kids finished their lab this week.  We ate and plunged into class.  Friday is a repeat of Tuesday.

Now, on Tuesday, we worked from 10-4 with a break for lunch.  On Thursday, we worked for 12:30-7pm.  Friday was 10-4.  Rob says it’s like trying to drink from a fire hose.  We spent a long day Tuesday working through Humani Generis and Algebra 1.  Thursday was memorizing elements for Friday’s test, the Robinson  Crusoe paper, and Guitar.  Friday was more Guitar, more elements, loads of History, and a little more grammar.

Normally, Theology and History do not consume huge blocks of time.  Humani Generis is tough!  I also wanted Lacie to catch up on History and take a quiz.  I’m trying to squeeze in more quizzes in Algebra, History, and Chemistry.  Literature and Theology have more short answers, Study Guide Questions, and essays.  We are in the middle of learning how to write an annotated paper for Robinson Crusoe.  Things are taking forever because Lacie is young.  Critical thinking and literary analysis are not learned in a week.

My goal is to have 18-20 contact hours per week.  Lacie is practicing her guitar, reading novels, and studying at home.  When I taught in public school, we met for seven hours a day with seven classes.  If you deduct 1 1/2 hour for lunch, announcements twice a day, and passing time, classes were 5 1/2 hours.  I spent very little time on administrivia such as attendance.  But there were always disruptions: misbehavior, class interruptions, drills, class meetings, assembly’s, etc.  At best five hours per day were spent on academics.  For some reason each year, my best Chemistry class was right before lunch, fourth period, which was cut to 35 minutes every day.  Really.  Yet, we covered everything the other two chemistry classes had in 42 minutes because I didn’t have to discipline them or repeat instructions.

Yes, at best we had 25 academic hours per week.  I know if I have 20 hours one on one with Lacie, we should be fine.  We’re meeting three hours per week in Chemistry Co-op class twice a week for 35 weeks and do cover every topic.  My husband manages to cover all of the Physics topics in the same time period each year, too.

We are keeping a close eye on Kolbe Academy’s syllabus, the topics, and our schedule.  So far, so good.  But, we may be doing grammar next summer.

How to write a science lab report!

Today, my Human Biology class did a respiration lab on tidal volume.  Here is my lab rubric.  The first step is to determine either a hypothesis or the purpose of the lab.  Most labs have a purpose rather than a hypothesis.  The purpose of the Tidal Volume lab was to understand tidal volume.

Next, the kids write the materials using complete sentences.  For example, "The materials include the following: one milk jug, two meters of aquarium tubing, one milk jug, one 1000 mL beaker, and one bucket.

The methods follow. The first step is to fill a bucket about half-full.  Next one fills one gallon milk jug with water and caps the jug.  After filling the jug, the student inverts the jug into the bucket of water, removes the cap, and inserts the plastic tubing.  The students work in pairs; one student is responsible for removing the cap and holding both the tubing in place and the jug up-ended in the bucket without cutting off the tubing.  The next step is to take a deep breath and inspire into the jug via the tubing.  Next, one removes the jug from the bucket and measures the remaining water.  It is necessary to measure the amount of water in the full jug initially, also.  It measures slightly more than one gallon.  The results represent three trials for each student and tabulated.

The data table for this lab has results for four students: 600 mL, 550 ml, 500 mL, 300 mL, 750 mL, etc.
Data: Tidal Volume
Trial                       Volume (mL)
1                                   600
2                                   550
3                                   500

The results are next.  The results for this lab should include the mean, median, and mode.

The next section is discussion.  In this section the student explains possible sources of error.  For example, it may be difficult to regulate a deep breath.

The last section is the conclusion.  An acceptable conclusion is, "More study is indicated."  For most experiments, the class size is too small to make broad statements about the validity of the results.  For example, the average tidal volume for a healthy, young, male adult is 500 mL.  Today, we took about 12 trials using four students.  There is insufficient data or trials to draw meaningful conclusions.

Lab reports are good examples of technical report writing.  My students use complete sentences using the third person, present tense, active voice, and indicative mood.  Sometimes, the passive voice (i.e. The results are repeated.) may be used.

My students rewrite their lab reports three or four times.  I require citations if the lab requires background information.  My husband assigns several formal lab reports in Physics.  I assign two or three formal lab reports in Chemistry.  I may insist on a data table or summary statistics.  Two or three times for each course, my students must write and correct formal lab reports.  The Human Biology class met weekly for two hours and began in May, met over the summer, and is concluding the end of September.  The class was treated as a one semester elective.  The tidal volume lab will probably be the only formal lab report.

How to write a paper! Let's get started.

We are working three long days a week.  Lacie has read Robinson Crusoe.  We plan to complete Kolbe Academy's questions in the study guide next.  I also want her to write a paper.  One of Kolbe's essay topics is to describe how the island made RC a better man.  (The wording is a bit different.)  We are using this topic as a thesis statement for a research paper.  We are starting with a list of RC's character traits before and after with quotes from the book.  This is a work in progress.  We started by discussing RC's traits before writing the list.  Another approach is to use concept maps.  I use IHMC's free concept mapping software.  My Science blog has examples of the concept maps like this one.

Lacie is taking Chemistry with me, too.  I'll go over concept maps soon then.  After, we can apply concept maps to literature.  In fact, concept maps are good tools to think about the parts of a paper or the story line.

After Lacie wrote the list, I asked her to go back and locate quotes that represent the traits of RC.  I'm having her write a bit of the quote and the page number in her copy of the book.  This discussion led to the use of MLA to cite quotes from a novel.

The next step is writing an outline for a five (or six) paragraph essay.   

History: How to Read

Lacie and I are still novice learners.  She's still learning how to study and I'm still learning how to teach a bunch of disparate subjects.  Lacie was reading Light to the Nations.  I spent a few minutes showing her how I read.  One of the toughest skills to master is how to study.  When I read, I need to take notes.  I told her to start with the summary, vocabulary, and questions at the end of the chapter; the questions, summary, and vocabulary are clues to the most important aspects of the chapter.  I have to take notes. I may never refer to those notes again--but I must write things down. 

For example, right now, I'm teaching a Human Biology class.  I was a Biology major; I had several anatomy courses.  With all that said, I don't remember every detail.  Before class I prepare the weekly lesson.  I start by reviewing all of the headings and skimming the chapter.  Next, I make a list of notes for each major heading, say in digestion: major organs, how food forms a bolus and travels, through the digestive system, mechanical vs. chemical digestion, etc.  Then, I plan a quiz, activities, and labs. 

Once Lacie has an idea of the important points in the chapter, I made a point to show her how I focus on a new topic.  For example, in Chapter 1, there is a brief description of Herod the Great.  Who was Herod?  How was Herod appointed?  What is an Edomite?  What territory was under Roman rule?  Why was there a census?  The Bible mentions a census, too; how is this significant?  (It's historic evidence.) 

In traditional school settings, kids are accustomed to having a teacher tell them to read a chapter, define the vocabulary, and answer the questions.  This does not teach a child to study.  If the student asks herself questions, makes note of significant information, learns to recognize what is important to understand in the content, the child learns how to study--not just complete an assignment.  The home-school students learn how to study.  Too many kids in traditional school settings do not learn how to study.  Hopefully, Lacie will.

Week Three Lessons

We started the Chemistry Co-op class today.  In Chemistry, we introduced graphing calculators and a brief review of graphing in general: title, axes labeled with units of measure, appropriate scale, etc.  I have another high school student who is doing British Literature right after Chemistry.  My husband and I are teaching Chemistry and Statistics simultaneously; after he teaches Physics.  I start working on other lessons with Lacie.  I just added Angel as a student for British Literature.  We are using British Literature by Stobaugh.  I bought an older set on eBay.  For now, we're reading each lesson and answering questions.  My goal is to complete four essays each term with a final term paper.  My goal is one lesson per week.  Today we started The Seafarer and went over questions.  I did teach Junior Literature one year.  I'm not an English teacher.  My goal is to expose Angel to a wide, traditional range of British Literature, in chronological order.  Boring?  Yes.  It won't hurt to read the classics.

Lacie is still working through the introductory Theology and History questions.  My son, Fr. Josh, was visiting.  Lacie received a thorough explanation of why the Catholic Church rejects Sola Scriptura.  She's still young.  This year, we'll work on critical thinking skills.  I did some editing again today.  For literature, Lacie is making lists of Robinson Crusoe's characteristics before and after a lengthy stay on the island in preparation for a composition, "How did the stay on the island make Robinson Crusoe a better man?"  First she's making a list and next an outline.

My husband, Rob, is working through Algebra 1; she's on Lesson 2.  Our goal each week is four lessons to complete the book by June.  That may be too ambitious.  We're not moving ahead until she understands each lesson.  We did extra work in metric measure conversions.  This is important for Chemistry all year.  I wanted her to have a head start.

In History, I reviewed questions from Chapter 1, assigned more questions, and encouraged Lacie to find a good time to work.

In Latin, she's learning terra, terrae, porta, portae, first declension nouns.   So, truthfully, we have not started Latin.  Instead, we're working on grammar.

Lacie had a guitar lesson and did more grammar work in 5/6 Easy Grammar with diagramming.  I know diagramming is old fashioned.  I'm a believer!  Diagramming, parsing verbs, and understanding mood, etc. will help her to understand Latin.  The reason people struggle with foreign and ancient languages is understanding the grammar, such as the subjunctive mood.

We think Lacie needs to spend three days at our house and do all of her work then.  She can read at home independently.  It's hard with little ones to concentrate.  If we work 20 hours a week, she can spend several hours at home reading, which is easier to work in during the course of the day.

It's a work in progress!