ThadenPierce School

A Christmas Carol

British Christmas

Discussion questions.

If you’re okay with heights?

I’m handing out allowance early because I’m bad about remembering and because tomorrow is fast Sunday (stake conference the first week of December.) I also transferred the kids’ savings from this year into their savings accounts and pulled out their tithing for them to turn in tomorrow and that left just their spending money in the family bank. Moira had just under $20 left so I swapped out her one dollar bills for the $20 bill and when Mo saw she was crushed! She saw one bill and a couple coins and said, “That’s all I have left??” I pulled it out to show her that it’s not a one, it’s a twenty and she wasn’t impressed. Then I pulled out twenty ones to show her it was equivalent and she still wasn’t impressed. She wanted the ones.

I’ll be sure to work on this money concept more, it’s really so abstract but we’ll help them get the hang of it.

Poem & Lesson Plan

I’ve only just skimmed that but we’ll be doing whatever parts are age appropriate for our kids.

Fun site and I think we’ll do 1015 onion strings, chili, and some ruby red grapefruit to celebrate our state study. Not all at once.

I’m going through some of my school binders and came across notes from the CM group I attended a couple years back. Here are some other posts I’ve written on Charlotte Mason. It’s hard for me to summarize what a Charlotte Mason Education means – there is no one definition, but here are some high points from the notes in the group:

- Incorporating our faith into study.
- Habit training children (and adults!)
- Encouraging a relationship with nature/extended time outdoors; nature study for science.
- Exposure to great ideas and allowing them to make the connections. Don’t tell them what to think allow them to think.
- Living books (no “twaddle” or pointless stuff.)
- Meaningful memorization work, not just pointless stuff but scriptures, hymns, good poems, etc.
- Work towards independence in reading; internal motivation.
- Narration (telling story back in own words, good for later note taking in college.)
- Copy work (for handwriting & to aid memorization.)
- Combination of phonics & sight/whole word approach to reading.
- Teacher directed learning: structured lessons in morning, free time in afternoon for child led exploration.
- Short lessons & focused attention (20 minutes tops, but focused entire time.) Teaching young children to lengthen attention span.
- Hands on math, tactile & manipulative.
- Proficiency in one language besides english, AND latin.
- Daily physical activity.
- Delaying formal lessons (sit down table work, handwriting) until after six years of age. Until then, much reading, nature time, arts, hands on activities, still learning but not formal lessons.

Monday:
- review SWR cards, memorization work
- math lesson
- grammar lesson (handwriting)
- art
- motor lab

Tuesday:
- speech therapy
- spelling list (handwriting)
- math lesson
- co-op
- PE

Wednesday:
- spelling game online
- math flashcards (no lesson)
- piano lesson
- Cub Scouts
- motor lab

Thursday:
- speech therapy
- spelling enrichment activity
- grammar lesson (handwriting)
- math lesson
- history/geography work
- PE

Friday:
- spelling test
- math games/manipulatives
- swim lessons
- horseback riding
- teaching the classics (story charts, read aloud, etc)
- catch up day

Saturday:
- handicraft
- science reading & experiment

Sunday:
- journals
- letter writing
- Thaden-Pierce projects

So the goal is –
math (3 lessons week, 1 day games, 1 day flashcards)
spelling (review, list, games, enrichment activity, test)
grammar (2 lessons/week)
handwriting – during other lessons (journals, letters, spelling, etc)
reading – daily, Mon: artist; Tue: co-op; Wed: composer; Th: history; Fri: classic.
extras: art, co-op, music, history, classics, science, PE (swim, PE, horses, motor lab), therapy (speech, motor lab, horses, PE)

We learned about this from a friend today and Christopher is already hooked – you can type in spelling words with the batch upload (easier & faster I think) and the kids can do lessons, tests or games… fun!
Spelling City

I’m struggling. Though NO one is going to check up on us, I need 180 days/year for homeschooling in Texas. My default thought is I’m suppose to be doing school at least five days a week, Monday through Friday… though often we do lessons on Saturday if science or history or whatever works best then. And we school year round, though we in theory take off a week here and there – we really don’t take off vacation weeks, even the week of Christmas or the trips to see my parents we still do lessons. I feel bad if I’m not consistently doing school five days a week but I’m not feeling AT ALL motivated to do it that often. I keep thinking, “Oh, it will get easier when x, y, or z happens,” but in reality there is always something coming up – a new therapy program, a doctor visit, sickness, friends in town. Life happens and then I don’t get my five days of lessons done and I’m wasting time feeling bad and trying to figure out how to be more consistent.

Maybe I need to question why I assume five days a week is necessary??? My kids are obviously learning, thriving, enjoying learning (when I’m not forcing them to do lessons five days a week out that are sit down/formal) and even if we took off the next YEAR they would still be ahead of where they “should” be academically. But I don’t want to just coast, I do want to teach them a good work ethic – I need to teach MYSELF a good work ethic!!

SO I did some math. Questioning my old assumptions, let’s see if my math computes – 52 weeks in a year, 104 weekends that we don’t plan to do lessons, leaving 261 one possible school days. If we only need 180 day school days according to Texas homeschool law then that leaves 81 weekdays that we do NOT need to do school… which means every single week we could take a day off and still come out ahead…

If we wanted to take off two days a week we could do that for 40 of our weeks and only need to do school 5 days a week for the other 12 weeks. That means only three months a year we would need to do a month of typical, five day a week school. The other nine months we could do school only THREE days a week and still be ahead. (Which realistically, that’s what we’re doing.)

Part of me goes, “But wait, in the real world you don’t get to work only three days a week,” BUT in the real world you also don’t get off three months of summer to play. My brain better handles school year round with a lighter schedule rather than nine months on, three months off…

So we could do a five day a week schedule in January, July, and November. That leaves our spring & fall for the busy schedule of other activities and leaves the nicer months & December (holidays) on a lighter schedule so we can play. In those “light” months we could do just 3 days a week or we could do a five day week for a couple weeks and then take off almost two full weeks if we’re going on vacation/sick/etc. I would probably still aim for five days a week even on the light months, knowing that things will always pop up to throw things off kilter.

Hmm… I feel suddenly liberated!

So, in summary – you could do school four days a week year round and take off seven FULL weeks and you would still hit your 180 days a year for school. Or you could do school three days a week for nine months out of the year and do school five days a week the other three months and still hit 180. Hooray for flexibility!!

Christopher asked if he could rake leaves this morning and postpone his math lesson. I said yes. While I think it’s important we get our lessons done (haha… in theory I think it’s important, in reality I’m not so consistent) I also think if my seven year old wants to rake leaves then I’m going to let him embrace that desire to work and be outside. That seems to be more important than reviewing his multiplication facts this morning – and we can do math later. His motivation to get in the yard and do some labor may not last for long – I’m going to embrace that.

But I always feel like I have to explain that I think having my kids be outside is inherently valuable. Not necessarily doing lessons or nature journals or doing any structured learning experience – just being outside I think has value. Laying there in the grass, raking leaves, watching bugs, feeling the breeze, enjoying the sunshine. I think we could all benefit from more of that in life so if we’re blessed with a sunshiny day in the autumn then I’m going to let book work wait while we enjoy some nature.