Halloween '11

So last year, I had a silly list of things I felt nostalgically guilty about Sofia missing out on as a result of not going to public school. Among them were that she wouldn't get to buy a cute backpack, go back-to-school clothes shopping, and participate in the school Halloween parade. Well, not only have more serious concerns been completely abated by her and my experience with public school this year, but my silly ones have as well. There was no Halloween parade or any Halloween festivities allowed at school.

This year, I wasn't to creative about costumes, so I decided to recycle the old chickens I made for Sofia and Marcelo a few years ago, and use them on Marcelo and Peter this time around. I wasn't sure what Sofia would be. If I left it up to her, it would be something different each day up until Halloween and I don't need that kind of drama in my life. So I thought, she'd just be sort of a circus gypsy, because I figured we could throw that together with some things from her own closet. At the last minute, I got a sale e-mail from PBK and instead of deleting it like I customarily do, I found a cute, and easy-to-wear wolf costume on sale with free shipping in the right size! I love it when these things happen. I thought it would be cute with the chickens. Not being sure it would get here in time, I didn't mention it to Sofia. Luckily, it arrived just in time. Sofia loved it as, unknown to me, she was on a wolf kick that week after watching some wolf movie on Netflix. She wore it the very day it arrived on a family trip to the mall with her brown leather riding boots. Very stylish. She got compliments in every store.

Later that night, she thoughtfully asked me if a wolf had to be killed to make this costume. At first, I was taken aback by the ridiculousness of this question paired with her unexpected naivety. But then, I realized her question did make some sense and I appreciated the fact that for a moment she had stopped to ponder such a poignant question.

The Story of the World: The Old Kingdom of Egypt

For our ancient history studies, we've begun using The Story of the World (SOTW) Vol.1 Ancient Times.  For the chapter on the Old Kingdom of Egypt, I ordered this little treasure chest which proved to be very exciting.  I had it sitting out on the study room table for Sofia to find when she got home from school.  (Who needs homework when you can do homeschool like this!)  This might be cute or somewhat interesting to a kid with no background on Ancient Egypt but paired with a quick read-aloud on the topic, suddenly it brings everything you've been learning about to light. 

Sofia had a great time exploring all the little things the treasure chest had to offer: an information guide, a board game, hieroglyphics stamps, a sumerian scroll, and a secret drawer with more goodies including a paper temple.

She was very quick to learn some basic hieroglyph letters. I didn't even realize how much she already knew until she immediately started pointing out discrepancies between the symbols in the set, and what she had learned from browsing through some library books we checked out.

Masquerade Party

For Sofia's seventh birthday, she got to invite some friends from school to her party. There was much hubbub about the party at school. She told kids they could bring their little brothers and sisters. She invited more kids that hadn't really been invited. When I went to volunteer, I was very popular and constantly solicited for invitations. In the end just the right amount showed up. I loosely themed it a masquerade party. Sofia dressed up sort of gypsy-ish / princess-y with black wings. I opted to have the cake made this year to lessen the load on my sanity but I was not all too happy with the colors and details. I wish I had had more time/energy to do it myself. I departed from my regular invitation style and tried something new. I also had to make a new birthday bunting banner as the old one is partly lost. We made some cool butterfly decorations for the living room and our big thing - the party craft project which was to make a feathered mask with crepe paper.  Sofia and all the kids really enjoyed it

Field Trip: "Hoo Ha Barns"

Entering the corn maze.
(Oh, look!  There's one adult not wearing the standard Utah uniform -gym shoes and jeans.  Note the hair.  She's not from here.  You can also tell she's not from here because she's wearing event appropriate shoes AND a wool coat in Winter!  That kind of thing is pure nonsense to a real Utahn).

Sofia's first school field trip was to Hee Haw Farms, or in Sofia-speak, Hoo Ha Barns. I got tired of correcting her. She grew equally weary of correcting me.  I volunteered to go of course, because after being banned from the school's Facebook page for demanding such things as cleanliness and learning in the school environment, I want to show everyone that I am doing my part. And, also because God knows what would happen if I wasn't there to supervise. Right? It was an uncharacteristically cold and crappy day in October. I was really regretting the whole, I-love-to-volunteer facade I was trying to keep up, especially when I found out I would have to ride the bus and have no means of escape for two hours. I forgot to bring an umbrella and I couldn't find my winter gloves. Luckily, I was only assigned three kids to look after and only one of them screamed bloody murder at me when we were told to go to the pumpkin patch and she wanted to go to the slide instead. No wonder people say Sofia is so well behaved. And this whole time, I didn't understand how they were getting that impression. Now, I think she might actually be an angel sent from heaven to grace me with her kindness.

Among the activities we were treated to were a hay ride around the hay where you get to sit on hay; muddy, maneur-y farm animals, a slide, a maneur-y corn kernel pool, a hay stack jumping accident-waiting-to-happen, pedaled vehicles, pumpkins, scary metal playsets, and lots of mud.

Luckily, it didn't rain for the whole two hours we were there. I didn't lose any of my kids like a couple of other really nice looking mom's did, not even the fit-thrower deflected. Sofia still thinks it's neat when I'm with her at school. You never know. She didn't think it was cool when she was three and I went to pick her up from daycare. Her favorite part was getting to ride the bus. My favorite part was that my thermos with hot tea was still waiting for me when we got back in the bus. Thank you thermos for keeping my tea hot, you are more reliable than anyone I know. You made my day.

(It was reported by the boys that there was a dead horse in there.  Luckily, we were too lazy to walk that far and didn't see it).

Prehistory

Our homeschooling approach is mostly classical which has a strong emphasis on the study of history. Well, I like to be thorough in everything I do so I thought we should start at the beginning. One of the coolest things that we have been able to do as a result of homeschooling is studying prehistory. Initially, I thought we would do this quickly in the course of three months or so, but it was more like a school year's worth. Of course, there is no curriculum for primary level on this subject so I made up our own. Using the Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of World History, the Walking With ... series on Netflix, additional read-aloud books, crossword puzzles and the construction of a time line. I wasn't sure how much of this a six-year old would get, but like everything else, they get a lot if one just gives them the opportunity to be exposed to the information.

So now, we are finally at the end of our studies and have begun the classical curriculum, The Story of the World, for Ancient History which is already lots of fun. I'm relieved to not have to come up with my own crossword puzzles and collage pictures anymore. Now it's all about hands-on-projects like making a caveman game bag, constructing a replica of the Nile River, and coloring history pockets. (I think we'll skip the mummifying a chicken this time around. We'll revisit Ancient History in more depths in four years). I don't know why they don't do this stuff in public schools (in Utah). It's so much fun, it's chronological, history makes sense, and kids really get it. In short, I'm so glad to have made the trepidatious decision to homeschool (homeschool is a verb now, right?) a little over a year ago. We've learned so much and the way of learning has been the most enjoyable. Everyone gets something out of it, even the little brothers and dad.

On a side note, I can't wait to see Sofia's 9-week report card from regular school. Yesterday, she told me she wrote all her answers on her math test in roman numerals. (No, they have not studied roman numerals at school, but we have!) I can just see her paper littered with X's, V's and I's. I bet that made the math teacher do a double take.

Hey, remember me?

... your mom.  I'm submitting this picture for the record.  I was there ... with you ... every day.  Nagging, consoling, teaching, wiping, feeding, carrying, crying, laughing, watching ...

When you're older and you look back, you'll see lots of pictures of you, you and your little brothers, you with your dad and little brothers.  I probably won't be there most of the time.  I'm not there because I was taking the pictures.  But, I was always there.

Bargain Shopper



All this for under a dollar, .90 cents!



Only .06 cents

First Day of Public School ... ever

Today was Sofia's first day of public school at Quail Run Primary School, a charter school about fifteen minutes from our house. We are trying it out on trial basis. I know that was kind of redundant. Because raising children is like an ongoing experiment.

On the way home, she reported to me that:

• There were lots of spiders (this took up the majority of the conversation).
• She got lost after lunch and didn't know what class to go to. (Their curriculum is set up like high school -no home room). But she got a flash of genius and remembered to refer to the schedule I printed out for her. With that, she was able to figure out where to go along with another lost girl and managed to help a couple of other stragglers on the way there too.
• She didn't do anything in Art because she couldn't reach the crayons. ??? I think this must have been a combination of bad ADHD meds / fatigue / stubbornness / I want someone to pay lots of attention to me.

The decision for her to go to a public charter school began with the idea to apply for admission at a couple of charter schools in order to have a Plan B, a better alternative to the regular public school, in the event that for what ever reason, I couldn't home school Sofia anymore. Applications for these lotteries are rather high so we didn't really expect to get a spot as we didn't get one at Renaissance Academy last year. But, if we were to find ourselves in this situation, I would have hated to not have even applied. Then we kind of forgot about it. At the end of spring we were notified that we got a spot at QRPS, an "ecologically responsible, multi-sensory learning" charter school.

Anyway, as I thought more about it and how to juggle Sofia's more demanding curriculum with the two little monsters that require more and more of my time, I started to think maybe I could take advantage of the schools programs which I don't or can't do at home such as music and dance. Sofia would have a better chance to make friends since our neighborhood has been a bust for that. And I would still get to cover the subjects public school can't offer (like witch craft, pre-history, and evolution) or doesn't do well, at home. I didn't realize at the time, that it's not necessarily the best move to sign up with a brand new charter school while they are trying to figure out how to actually run a school. This one had only been running for one year.

Upon filling out registration papers, I made sure to ask if they accepted "dual enrollment", the ability to attend part time and attend another form of school (private, other public school, or home school) the rest of the time. They assured me they did. I went so far as to ask if there was anyone with this arrangement enrolled in the school already and what kind of arrangements and schedules they had. I got several examples.

Well, when I went to try to make these arrangements at the start of school, the saga of charter school hell began. I got passed from one admin to another until I went full circle and finally face to face with the Director of the Board of Trustees (basically, the lady that founded the school). A nasty, rude, classless lady -no, that's wrong- b*%ch. She told me they did not have a "dual enrollment" policy in the charter, goodbye. When I questioned her about the existing students, she flat out lied to my face and told me there were none, and if there were, no one had any knowledge of them. I pressed the issue at which point she painted a picture for me of a lengthy board meeting hell of drafting a policy, talking about a policy, voting on the policy for several months and then gave me a blank stare, which I think, again, meant "good bye". After the crickets and an equally dead stare from me, she asked if I actually still wanted to pursue this. At that point, my blood was boiling and I wanted to set her on fire. I had no intention of sending my daughter to a school run by morons, BUT ... I said "ABSOLUTELY." Secretly, I wanted them to waste three months of their lives talking about dual enrollment just like they wasted my time planning for Sofia to go there.

Later, I got wind of the fact that the public can attend their secret club board meetings as long as they agree to wear a gag ball and not make direct eye contact with anyone. So I did. I had to enter the Twilight Zone to do it but I learned even more about their extra terrestrial origins and non-humanoid qualities. When they finally got to the discussion on dual enrollment, the biggest concern was how home schoolers would bring their test scores down. (Test scores which apparently they're ashamed of because they refuse to provide them for me). Second, how can we force them to take 99.9% of the classes here. Third, we don't want them to ride our buses (they could have lice -no I just made that part up, but not about the buses). Fourth, how much of our precious front office time are these HOARDS of free loader people going to take checking in and out of school? Fifth, this is getting really hard, why don't we just let them choose what programs they want since we do get FULLY FUNDED FOR THEM ANYWAY!!!

They actually started to attempt to draft a policy at that point which of course, they will probably vote down on account of spite. I left because my ass had fallen asleep on the hard wood torture device they made me sit on and I felt weird being the only one there without a laptop and facebook on my screen. No, there were no other parents there. It's possible, they were buried in the basement, though.

Another thing I wanted to accomplish having Sofia go to public school was to set on her on track for advancement. Not because of her pure genius but merely because of her close birth date to the public school cut off date for grade assignment and because we had already covered 1st grade at home, I wanted her to start in 2nd. Setting this in stone now, seemed easier than doing it later and possibly less demanding on her.  Trying to arrange evaluation testing and an appointment with the school psychologist was another ridiculous joke.  No one has ever gotten back to me on this despite my repeated attempts to follow up.


So why is she going there and going there full time at this point?  Well, I finally realized that instead of trying to do things the right way, in order to get along with people, I just need to do things the wrong way like they do.  Go around the system. Instead of fighting with their incompetency, all I needed to do was take advantage of their incompetency.  Point 1 for me:  Although, they were vehement about telling me she had been placed in 1st grade and that it was necessary to waste weeks determining if she could be placed in 2nd, they placed her in 2nd grade without even realizing it probably because that's what I had written on the registration papers. Point 2 for me: Not only do they not have a dual enrollment policy, more interestingly, they don't have an attendance policy at all!  That means, I can take her there and pick her up whenever I choose.


So,  I got the two main things I needed out of the school and really I had to do nothing.  Now, I just hope they get the rest of their academics together so she can actually benefit from their program.  What attracted me to this school was not only their ecologically responsible philosophy, but their emphasis on customizing the core subjects to the students individual abilities by breaking them up in to groups for reading and math.  They have a hands on approach to learning, no worksheets, and no homework.  They offer Music, Dance, and Drama as part of the regular curriculum as well as Spanish, ASL, Science, and Art.  They have a boxed vegetable garden outside. In addition, they have after school enrichment programs from soccer and ballroom dance to community service club.  Of course, these things sound great on paper.  Now I will have to see how well they actually materialize.


I'm already having withdrawls from our home school routine and miss being the one imparting her with the tools and knowledge to learn and to love learning.  Marcelo is also missing her, asking why I didn't make lunch for Sofia or calling her over to look at the horses, not remembering she's not here anymore.

Bargain Shopper

Sofia and I have been making it a habit on Sunday to make our weekly trip to the office supply store to shop their back to school penny deals. She gets to practice her addition and money counting and get some great stuff for school. It's nice because there's usuallly nobody in the store and she can take her time counting her coins and chatting with the clerk. On this day, she got all this stuff for .70 cents!

Her first week she spent all of .03 cents including tax ; ) and got three pencil sharpners.

Painted Horse

A couple of weeks ago, I was welcomed, as I came down to make breakfast by Sofia and Marcelo enthusiastically declaring that there were wild horses in our backyard. I'm not a morning person so I felt the need to immediately put a stop to such nonsense, "No, of course there aren't any horses in our backyard. What are you talking about!". They insisted and insisted, and when Sofia stammered through her excitement and clarified that they really were on the other side of the fence. I thought I better go look.

Yup, there were two horses in the previously empty field behind our back yard. Needless to say, Sofia was very excited about this development. At least a few times a week, she'll report where they are and what they're doing. A few days ago, she declared there was another wild horse, a painted horse just like "Pony", one of her beloved stuffed animals, that had joined the other two.

Last night, she couldn't go to sleep, I went in to check on her and asked her what she was writing in her little notebook. She told me, quite seriously as she looked out in the distance through her bedroom window, that she had been considering hopping over the fence and riding the painted horse.

[Ensue visions of The Black Stallion] I didn't know what to say. My jerk reaction was to squash her spirit and inform her of the dangers of trying to climb over a six foot fence which is followed by another chain link, six foot fence and then attempting to ride a "wild" horse, especially with no saddle!!! But I just said nothing. Let sleeping dogs lie.  Hopefully, she doesn't actually try to do it.

Day Camp #1 Transportation

After attending day camps at Thanksgiving Point last summer, Sofia had the confidence of a bull for her first one this year.

Seven Peaks

Rainbow folklore

According to Sofia, there is not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but actually what it is is -if you can catch the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow, THEN you get a pot of gold (like a reward, I think). Every time we see one, I have to make an excuse why we can't drive there so she can catch the leprechaun.

Spring

On our way home from library story time, we stopped at this old building for a quick photo shoot test before it started sprinkling. Sofia in her new pants (Old Navy), old shirt (Old Navy) for Spring, old, old rain jacket (Gap), and hand-me-down rain boots.



Duckies crossing the street.

Midyear Doldrums

I don’t know how it works, but apparently there is an internal calendar telling kids that they’re half-way through the school year and they’ve had enough (even when the school year starts in January). Or maybe, it’s just spring and that sun that just keeps staying up later and later disturbing the piece of home schooling. So, Sofia is in a bit of a rut. All she wants to do is watch movies and eat candy.

I don’t really have many creative school tricks up my sleeve (I have considered getting a yard stick), but when things get old, I generally try to come up with something new. As small as it may be, if it’s new, it usually helps to breathe life back into her. I already did the A Tooty Ta dance a couple weeks ago. Today, I coaxed her in to The Study with a new puzzle of Europe I was saving for our countries study in the fall. There’s nothing like masquerading educational activities as a let’s-waste-our-homeschooling-time-doing-something-fun activity. I love it. It makes me want to do one of those ridiculous, evil laughs.

Anyway, she was excited to do the puzzle, but she was super delighted when she got to the very last piece and discovered that the capital of Bulgaria is “Sofia”, with an “f”! She kissed Bulgaria many times.

Butterfly Lab

For our Life Science studies, we did a butterfly lab where we got to see the butterfly life cycle from egg to larva to pupa to adult unfold before our very eyes!

(Somehow, I think I managed to lose the larva pictures)

There were ten tiny caterpillar that grew very quickly.  (I neglected to read the direction that said you were supposed to move the chrysalids to the butterfly pavillion after they were formed, so one of the butterflies hatched out in the little jar before we even realized it). Ironically, the rest came out of their chrysalids within the next 48 hours and we managed to miss every single one of them emerging!  Even when we had them propped on the table right in front of us. They're awful quiet, I guess.

We then quickly moved that one into the pavilion along with the other chrysalids.

We fed them carnations and Sofia renewed their sugar water supply daily.

After several weeks, they came to the end of their life span.  This one died in captivity so we decided to take out our yet unused microscope we got for Christmas to take a closer look at it. Sofia was sad of its passing. 

As soon as it was warm enough outside, we let all the others out into the garden.  At this point, they were a bit old and so they were also quite docile.

Sofia encourages this one to hop onto a rare bloomed flower.

I think he (she?) liked it. R.I.P.

[Also, I now have a new excuse to buy a macro lens.  My all-purpose one struggled to get this picture.  I love homeschooling and the school supplies it requires].