We were able to order Birdie’s Science for this year. We really like Sonlight’s Science guides. She will be doing Science 5 this year. This will prove to be a rather interesting year for her. She is still very much interested in all things pink, glittery, and of the world of princesses and faeries. She cares not about the changes just around the corner.

Lottie (9yo) and Flynt (6yo) will be working through the Sonlight Core 1 and Sonlight Science 1 together and I am sure that Bairno will be joining in as well. Flynt is doing the Sonlight Advanced Reader 2.

Portions of the two science levels will dovetail nicely, not the whole, but some of it. they both have a mix of health and basic biology.

Order #2: 2 large, 1 medium

Example of a conversation this past spring:

Moggie was working through some square roots and had a question about one of her problems. RevMrKnowTea answered it and she continued working. Flynt (just turned 6 at the time) looked up from peeling his tangerine and said, “What’s a square root?”

RevMrKnowTea: The number you get when you multiply another number by itself. The number that is multiplied is the root of that square. So 2 times 2 equals 4. The number four is the number that is square and the square root, the root number times itself to get four, is the number 2. So 3 times 3…

Flynt: (interrupting quickly)…is 9, so the square root is 3. And 4 times 4 is 16 and the square root is 4. Yeah, yeah, I get it.

So what do you do with a child who just gets stuff sometimes. This is how he was at four when he asked me about multiplication. After a quick answer explaining what a set is he replied, “Oh, so four sets of five blocks is twenty blocks.” He just gets it.

He’s not had much in the way of formal reading lessons either. He hears me or his father teaching another child and he remembers it. We have never pushed him, but he reads above a fifth grade level. I am going to use the Advanced 2 Readers with him as a base for introducing other language skills. I am not sure how much of the LA IG we will use, but it is nice having a guide.

And Bairno is just behind him with the reading skills. He will look at a word and say, “How do you spell _____?” I think he is wanting confirmation he is correct, but I always chuckle a bit because he is obviously reading the word he is asking about.

a really bad picture; I was in a hurry and forgot to change my camera settings

The other day I was playing Angry Birds on my iPhone (oh my, you have to get that game if you have an iPhone.) One of the screens looked like this:

and Bairno said, “Are you gonna crash that Hollywood wood?” Dude is three years old!!

I got off track, didn’t I?

Well, we got the rest of our books ordered. They arrived Wednesday morning and I spent the rest of the morning checking off the shipping list, sorting the books and making new todo lists for myself.

I didn’t really have all the preparation time I wanted before we started on Monday, but we started anyway and will hit it hard on Tuesday.

When the scholarship money came in at half of what we needed we prayed real hard about what we were supposed to do: stick with Sonlight and go ahead with our plans or completely shift gears. There were no real clear cut answers. Nothing seemed to be God saying do not do this, switch to another curricula and style and system of doing things, or put them in school. No real clear answers so we moved forward. We looked at what we had decided to order. We discussed paring it down, combining in a different way, doing something else, totally different for the younger ones. I was working on it and had accepted that the best plan of action was to take the weight of the work on myself to create, last minute, something totally new for the younger three and sue the money for the oldest ones where high school credits and records were of the most important right now. Box Day came on August 7, 2010!

Having only ordered what we were going to use for the two oldest and the core for our Birdie, we were trying to keep our hearts open to what God wanted. There were already so many new changes in our lives that I thought maybe God was doing something else and I needed to step out of the way and let Him. I’ve made a decision to do what I wanted, my way, before. Going against what God is telling you to do does not end well. Just trust me in this. Please. I know as human nature will have it some of you will have to learn this the hard way, by doing it for yourself. Like I have.

We had worked out what to do and how to do it. We thought we were headed in the right direction. Then this broke and that broke and this fell through and that fell through and our budget for the plan fell apart as the priorities rearranged themselves on us. I hit panic mode. I cried into my pillow that Tuesday night (the 17th) while talking to God and begging for answers. “Do we send back our Sonlight order and send back the scholarship money? Do we put them in the schools? God, we have less than 48 hours to get the paperwork done, school supplies bought, and uniforms for five children bought. Please tell me what you want us to do.” Then I cried into my pillow some more as I laid out the fleece before Him and I fell into a deep sleep.

So I awoke Wednesday morning (8-18-10) at peace and said on facebook:

Big decisions today. Decisions I don’t want to face, but must. I sat with my morning coffee to check emails and I found some Happy there waiting on me. I can hardly wait to show you why there is a big silly grin on my face right now. Alas, the Happy wasn’t for me BUT for one I love and THAT makes me happy too!

For anyone curious about the Happy in my inbox it was the artwork at the top of this page!

Cropped just right he looks a bit Quaker or Amish. Doncha think?

Sometime mid morning on Wednesday someone knocked loudly on our front door. I got away from what I was doing and when I opened the door and looked around no one was there. Something fell to the ground at my feet and I picked it up. We have had a high number of politicians or their volunteers come by lately and leave things for us in their attempt to win our vote. Some of these people stay around to see if someone opens the door and talks (or tries to talk) with them. Some of them just place, knock and leave. Since I was a bit slow getting to the door I wasn’t too surprised when no one was there. I looked around for the politician volunteer since no one was there, but I could not see one. It did not help that I did not have on my glasses nor was I wearing my contacts. I am blind without, not able to see clearly more than, maybe, three feet in front of me.

I turned to walk in the house and realized that I was not holding a political ad, but an envelope with some cash in it. I turned around and looked outside again. Then I came back in again realizing that who ever did it wanted to be anonymous. Whoever you are I want you to know that you were a direct answer from God to a very specific prayer. You were God’s messenger and we thank you. I am not going to tell anyone exactly what that prayer was or exactly how that prayer was answered. What I will tell you all is that because of the answer God sent, the children are staying home this year and we are all so very thrilled.

The cash was not enough to cover everything we would need to fill in the gaps to order the rest from Sonlight, but a specifically answered prayer made it clear we were to keep them home and that the financial would definitely work out, even if I needed to accept another style of schooling or another curricula. I was at peace and I knew that no matter what route we took it would all work out.

So Wednesday we woke with broken, but open hearts, ready to listen, to accept what we may not want. God is awesome! He makes the way clear & bright! Keep your hearts open to what He wants to do. Be prepared to put aside what you want, your plans, and you may just find that they are His plans, too.

* * * * * * * * * *
When RevMrKnowTea came home for lunch he walked in the door with a black cowboy hat in his hands and said, “Hey, who left this here? It was in the front on the sidewalk in front of the porch.” I was dumbfounded. How could I not have seen a black cowboy hat that close to the house? Oh yeah, no glasses/contacts. But I have no idea if this hat has anything to do with the knock on the door or not.

We got a little silly with the hat. I will not the boys play with it even though they are dying to do so. I posted on facebook about the hat find and an old friend from college (coughcoughMarkcoughcough) begged me to take pictures of RevMrKnowTea in the black hat because “he’s such a black cowboy hat person”

screen shot from facebook, blurred because I didn’t ask first

Mr. Smirk. (This one’s for you, JMarkT!)

I don’t know whose hat this is or how to get it back to its owner. I don’t know who to ask if this is their hat. They obviously acted with anonymity in mind. If it is yours I want you to get your hat back, so I have to think how to do this, but I’ll figure something out that will allow you to keep your anonymity status. Maybe next time we make a run to the Twin Cities I’ll post on fb when and we’ll leave it on the front porch or something so you can come get it while we are gone. hmm, yeah, maybe.

Mr. Anonymity, all rights reserved (by me)

Part 3 tomorrow.

We began reading about it and decided to go for it. The scary thing about it was that we wouldn’t know about it until time for ordering books was just about up to start at a decent time on the calendar. We filled out the forms, made copies of income statements, tax forms, listed our choice of curriculum, signed it in blood, stuffed all of that along with our first born child and some of my organs as required by the organization.

It was a long, painful wait to find out if we would be getting any of the scholarship and if so, how much. We got our letter 5 weeks after we applied and while grateful we only got half of what we would need. We felt a mixture of relief and remorse at the same time. Thrilled for the help at hand, but remorseful not knowing what to do now. Here we were just a couple of weeks out of the start of what I had planned to be our first day as well as near the day for the public school to start.

We really didn’t want to send our children back to the public school, for many reasons. Many of those are the same reasons we homeschool to begin with and many for other reasons, especially for some abuse our special needs daughter experienced. Trying to balance three at home and three in school was more than my sanity wanted to even fathom.

We decided that we would keep our minds and hearts open to the fact that maybe God wanted them in the local schools this year. This was hard to accept even the thought of doing so when this is what we wanted. Or what the children wanted.

I posted on facebook that it looked like we were going to have to send our Sonlight order back and put the children in the schools. The outpouring of ideas and wishes to help was wonderful. I had not expected that. I had expected words of encouragement about the schools, but I didn’t expect the encouragement to make it work. We began looking into other homeschooling styles and curricula and options. It was a very scary concept to make a change of that magnitude, one forced on us (read: me and my time) to buy what we would need with half of what we thought we could do it.

We pushed forward in faith that it would work out, that we were doing what God wanted our family to do. We proceeded to order what the oldest ones needed from Sonlight this year. August 7th became Box Day, part 1.

the first three boxes (taken on iPhone)

Moggiepillar will be using Sonlight‘s Core 200, Sonlight’s Schedule for Apologia Biology (woot! for dissection)via home and our homeschool co-op, Teaching Textbooks for math, and some other Literature and writing thrown in.

unpacked and ready to sort (taken on iPhone)

Mc will be using Sonlight’s Core 7 (World History Part 2); he did Core 6 (part 1)last year. He will be tackling Apologia’s General Science text this year via Sonlight’s schedule and our homeschool co-op. He is also using Teaching Textbooks for math, along with some other Literature and writing thrown in as well.

Oh, Look! Sonlight sent me a boy. (taken on iPhone)

It was hardest deciding what to do for Birdie. Already having Core 6 on our shelf this would have been the most economical choice but she has already had so much US History and a good bit of general world history and western history that we decided the focus on the Eastern Hemishpere would be the best fit for her. She has been very inquisitive lately of the Asian history and culture and she adores it so this is a good year to do this. Core 5 is extremely full we will have to work hard at making sure we don’t get all bogged down in it. She will also be using Sonlight’s Science 5 and Teaching Textbooks.

Where’d he go? (taken on iPhone)

Flynt will be using Sonlight’s core 1 with the advanced Reader’s 2 this year. His Language Arts, Math, and Critical Thinking skills tested well above a 5th grade level a few months ago, but he is still a 6-year old boy. Balancing his abilities with proper content can be challenging. We will probably push through the readers at a faster pace (whatever pace he sets) than Sonlight uses; I want to make sure that he doesn’t miss any important skills that might be left in the cracks because he can already do so much. Technically we don’t have to register him with the state until he is seven years of age. I used a very relaxed approach with him last year and I’m thrilled that he asked for more this year and we are really excited about moving ahead. This year we are going to give Horizons Math a try, but I am still not sure about this for him. I am second guessing this choice.

Ah, a perfect fit. (taken on iPhone)

Master Bairno will be going along for the ride although I have put together some Preschool 4/5 basics for him. We are going to do some loose handwriting skills this year. He writes really well for a three year old, but I have noticed some bad habits I want to break now instead of later. Simple practice and reminding the of the correct way to do some things is all he needs.

Race Cars! Airplanes! Speed Boats! I see a theme here. (taken on iPhone)

Lottie, being our special needs child, will be working along with her brother, Flynt (for the most part). Teaching a special needs child whose retention levels are so very hard to measure can be a real struggle. We never want to leave her out of anything, but the reality is there are some things she just can not do. We always allow her to try and encourage her as much as we can. We teach to mastery in this house, no one moves on to the next thing until they show mastery. This often means a lot of repetition with Lottie. We are having to rethink a few of these philosophies with Lottie. She can not always show us she has mastered something via testing. Often times her tests are worked into life
skills. I really need to write a post just about her and teaching her. So look for that in the near future if you are curious about teaching a child with special needs.

all sorted and ready for shelving and use; this photo has notes on flickr

Our Library entry for Walk The World’s Rim.

Here is Birdie’s student review.

I like this book because the boy goes on many adventures with the raven. The raven and his sister join him in many adventures. I would recommend this book because it is an exciting read.

–Birdie, age 9

Our Library entry for Om-kas-toe.

I did and did not like this book. I did like this book because it has very small cliff hangers and I like cliff hangers. I did not like this book because it is long and boring, in my opinion. I would recommend it because it teaches history about life long ago.

–Birdie, age 9

Our Library entry for Walk The World’s Rim.

Papa’s review.

Then one day I found a really cool program called StartWrite. This nifty little program allows me to create and print handwriting worksheets for them. Not only can I print worksheets for them, I can print plain paper for them as well.

Want cute graphics? Go for it! While there are some included with the program you can use your own as well, just browse to the file and choose it to add to your page. Large fonts? sure! Small Fonts? why not! Dotted fonts? Dashed fonts? Starter dots? Directional arrows? Yes. Yes. Yes. and Yes.

Let me take a list off the website itself and show you just a few things it can do.

• Choose Handwriting Fonts including Manuscript (similar to Zaner-Bloser), Manuscript-Simple (similar to Zaner-Bloser, Simplified), Modern Manuscript (similar to D’Nealian) and Italic (similar to Getty-Dubay or Portland Italic).
• Use Cursive Fonts that correspond to the above-mentioned educational fonts, for the advanced student.
• Expand Font Sizes anywhere from 1/4″ to 2″.
• Choose Shading of Fonts from Dark to Light for all levels of learners.
• Choose From Four Guide Line Options: Top, Middle, Bottom and Descender. Change any line to solid or dashed and colors to red, black or blue.
• Type dotted, dashed, or solid letters.
• Starting Dot to help in your child’s learning of letters.
• Stroke Arrows for proper letter formation.
• Clip Art Included or import your own JPG or BMP clip art to make pages fun…
• Print Worksheets on Plain Paper from your own printer–no hassle and no expensive special paper needed.
• Print in Landscape or Portrait for your convenience and creativity.
• Custom Lessons are included (or can be downloaded free from Homepage) for quick and easy lesson preparation time.
• Use Startwrite’s other Standard Word Processing Functions like cut, copy, paste, new, open, save, print, zoom, etc. for extra ease in preparation.
• Utilize 100,000-Word Spell Checker for accurate worksheet preparation.
• Save Lessons for future use to create your own curriculum in minutes, and save time and effort when repeating lessons.
• Use Spanish and Math Fonts* for even more learning potential.
• Create a Variety of Pages like phonics pages, spelling pages, a letter to a friend, scrapbook pages, etc. for more practice and fun while learning handwriting.
• And much more.

Here’s the full list of available fonts: Manuscript, New American Cursive, ManScrip2, Cursive-Simple, Modern Manuscript, Modern Cursive, Italic, Italic Cursive, PLMR, PLMR Cursive, HWOT, HWOT Cursive.

Along with each of these fonts and all the available variations for printing sheets with these fonts you can add text boxes that will utilize any font already installed on your computer. So if you want to type up some instructions for your work sheets you can use any font on your computer for that. You can even use multiple options on the same page simply by creating a new box to format. And the formatting is as easy as clicking an option button right at the top of the screen.

This program is available to both the PC and Mac markets and is currently priced at $39.95US. I bought this program a few years ago for my PC (you know, back before I was a cool kid with a MacBookPro). I e-mailed them about switching the licensing code to my Mac OS and the customer service they provide is spectacular; not only was the e-mail reply speedy, but the response was personal. I needed to follow up with a phone call for making the switch (requested by company) and Ms. C. (I did not get permission to use her name) was very courteous and helpful.

Get yourself a FREE TRIAL

The Free Trial Version of Startwrite is a Fully Functioning, Complete Program. You are allowed to use it 1 time with all the features. After the first time, then several of the letters and the Spell Checker are deactivated, but all other functions will still work.