Monthly Archives: February 2011

Homeschool

This week in homeschooling: Same as it ever was

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home/schoolI almost didn’t write an update this week, because things are pretty much the same as they were last week. I’m choosing to see that as Moving Right Along rather than Being in a Rut, though. So everything is well, but I wasn’t sure how to write “we did exactly the same stuff” without saying it just like that.

Anyway, next week’s update will be fresh and new and packed with field trips!

Math
Math was mostly smooth this week. Poppy loves Dreambox Learning, so I’ve been using that as an incentive to get her daily worksheet finished. She doesn’t need any extra push at all to do the word problems, happily. She loves drawing out the pictures to accompany the problem. Which makes me think, again, that RightStart math and all its manipulatives might be the best thing for her.
Word problems

Spanish
Poppy had been getting less than enthusiastic about her daily Spanish lesson, so we’ve started doing it four rather than five days a wee. I think the mid-week break is making it seem like less of a hassle.

Physical education
Ballet.

Recitation
This week’s poem is Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers.” It’ll be next week’s poem as well, because she doesn’t quite have it down yet.

Hope is the thing with feathers
Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Reading
“The Secret Garden”

Geography
Connecticut.

Science
This was another parent’s week to host Science Club. She arranged to have it at the library, which meant I got to wander unencumbered while Poppy and her friends learned about blood and the heart. Oh, it was lovely. And she learned about white blood cells and red blood cells and platelets. So that part was good, too.

menu plan Monday

Hard-boiled eggs and casseroles don’t mix

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My dear friend Amy got me a subscription to Food Network magazine, and the latest issue grabbed Poppy’s attention. She was fascinated by the “Mix & Match Baked Pasta” feature, which is in the “Fun Cooking” section of the magazine. Well played, Food Network magazine. Anyway, I told her she could help with the mixing and matching, and we’d make it for dinner one night this week. She chose:

Fusilli + shredded chicken + hard-boiled eggs + artichoke hearts + a creamy sauce + mozzarella

The very idea of hard-boiled eggs in a baked pasta makes me gag a little, so I planned to leave that out. The rest of it sounded fine, though, so I put it on the menu. And I told her later that we’d be having it on Monday night. “Great!” she said. “I won’t eat it.”

Of course not.

We did reach an agreement, though. I’m going to make her a dish of just pasta and sauce, and I’m going to put some chicken on the side.

She’ll grow out of this someday. I was a picky kid, too — not as picky as some people, though — and I grew out of it. Eventually. When I was 20 or so.

Sigh.

Monday: Baked chicken & pasta

I’m making it with chicken, roasted red peppers and spinach.Menu Plan Monday

Tuesday: Meatballs & polenta

Tuesday is usually kids’ choice night, but since Poppy chose something other than eggs or spaghetti this week I decided to have two kid nights. This is Pete’s choice. The meatballs are, anyway. I’ve never made polenta before. I’m counting on it to be awesome.

Wednesday: Dinner with friends

Thursday: Kung pao chicken

Thursday is supposed to be bean night, but this week it’s Rockford’s Choice night. And he picked kung pao chicken. I’ll be following the Cook’s Illustrated Kung pao shrimp recipe. The ingredient list is approximately two miles long, but it comes together easily and is delicious.

Friday: Pizza

Homeschool

A few small changes make a big difference

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We hit our 100th day of school this week, and we did absolutely nothing to mark the occasion. But we had a pretty productive week anyway.

home/schoolMath
This week’s math lessons continued to be laborious until this morning. Poppy’s worksheet today was all word problems, and instead of making her sit down, read and solve them, I read them to her while she did a puzzle. When she needed a visual, I drew it for her on a small dry-erase board, but for the most part she just answered the questions without prompting. It was such a relief to have a frustration-free math lesson.

Spanish
I didn’t think we had a microphone on the computer Poppy uses for Rosetta Stone Spanish, so we haven’t been using the pronunciation feature. But this week she discovered that there is indeed a microphone built in, and she’s been enthusiastically practicing with it ever since. She has to do her regular lesson before she gets to play with the microphone, though, so she’s been zipping through them quickly this week.

Physical education
Ballet class, as usual.

Recitation
Poppy worked for two weeks on Sara Coleridge’s “A Calendar” before she had it memorized. It was quite a bit longer than any other poem she’d done before. This week she did a much shorter one — “The Falling Star” by Sara Teasdale — and she had it down by Wednesday.

Reading
We seem to be going through a Frances Hodgson Burnett phase. We finished “A Little Princess” last week, and we started “The Secret Garden” on Monday. We’ve been reading a chapter a day at lunchtime, so Pete’s involved in our reading, too. I read this many, many times when I was young, but this is the first time I’ve read it out loud. And speaking with a Yorkshire accent? Not happening for me. So I’m having to “translate” all the Yorkshire on the fly. I’m sure that detracts from the book somewhat, but at least the kids can understand what I’m trying to say.

Geography
We studied Vermont this week, and Poppy was very excited to learn that two of her favorite things are made there: Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and maple syrup.

Science
We hosted a meeting of a fledgling science co-op this week. I’ve been referring to it as “science club,” because “co-op” seems more formal than what we’re actually doing. There were three other little girls in attendance this week, and they played in Poppy’s room for about 20 minutes before we did our “experiment,” which was based on “The Magic School Bus in the Artic.” We read the book first, then I pulled out a bag of ice, a bowl of ice water, a “polar bear mitt” and a “walrus mitt.” The instructions for the activity are on the Scholastic website. It was very easy to pull together, but it ended too quickly for Poppy. She wanted “more experiments.” Duly noted, kiddo.