Celebrating Success, Finding Balance

The past couple of weeks, we have been working on finding a comfortable balance of activities.  I'm trying to be cautious about the slide between quantity and quality, and trying to ensure that we are productive without running our poor little selves ragged, and that Amara is fully learning all the intended concepts and achieving objectives. 

A prime example of our striving for balance is the fact that we are moving through Math more slowly than I would like, but we are making progress; the quality has been shown by my first compilation of Daily Lesson Grades, and by the first Test. Amara has an 85% B average on her daily lessons.  And, as the curriculum suggests, she goes back to the previous Daily Lesson and corrects missed problems during the next Daily Lesson.  On her first Test, she received a 95% A.

In the picture above, Amara is making "Manipulatives" that she cut apart and arranged and rearranged in order to visualize the conversion relationship between fractions, percents, and decimals.  It is an activity the curriculum calls an "Investigation," and it has made the subsequent Daily Lessons easier when she needs help with visualization to complete problems that are related to this math skill.

In order to break up monotony with arts and physical activity and meet new friends, Amara has joined a Pottery Class and an Ice Skating Group. 

She's met some new folks and enjoys these activities, and she is also doing thinks like scouring the Public Library Booksale for mystery and fantasy genre gems. She only found a few, but we frequent the library every week or so to pick up new books that she finds and puts on reserve to go get.

Right now she is reading the Mortal Instruments series, is on Book Four, and we just saw the movie last week and really enjoyed it. Since the official start of homeschool she has devoured 11 lengthy novels at middle grade-ish level. 

One thing that is going speedily along, but that also reflects quality learning is her notebooking activities in Language Arts.  She completed a 6 week unit on Figurative Language in 3 weeks, and completed a unit on the Three Types of Irony last week.  Coming right up this week is a 6 week unit on Reading Literature, with lessons on Plot formation, Character Studies, Types of Conflicts etc.

She is still working on her Social Studies research project, we are taking an extension.  This week, she is moving from compiled notes to drafting of her paper.  I have supplied her with graphic organizers, a template/heuristic for organizing her paragraphs with evidence to support the main points of each and every paragraph to fully support her thesis, and a handout on MLA formatting and the Works Cited page.

She is completing notebooking activities on the Human Skeletal System and will be moving on to the Human Muscular System.  She is working through the Houghton Mifflin Curriculum for science, and the Human Anatomy unit is slated to take six weeks, but I have interspersed the book and web labwork with notebooking activities that treat the lessons in the unit in a more in-depth manner.  For instance, the curriculum asks her to learn about types of bone and functions of bones, etc. and the notebooking has her learning many more names of bones and adding foldables into her notebook, etc.  So, we are purposefully moving more slowly through Science.

As you may have seen, Foreign Language is conspicuously absent.  With our schedule broken up by my activities on campus and extra curriculars, so to speak, we can't seem to religiously fit it in.  She may end up doing language as a summer activity.  As it is, she works from about 9-2 or 4 every day, with some breaks for changing locations/eating etc.

Ultimately, we are adjusting to a new way of life and enjoying our freedom.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that no one is breathing down my neck, and also realize that I tend to push a lot, so I'm confident that on days it feels like we don't get as much done as I'd like, we are still ok.

Oh, someone asked Amara where she is going to college the other day.  I always kind of figured that we don't need to think about it now, because obviously we will be moving before then, and because location needn't influence her decision anyway.  With cousin Clara packing up to attend one of several UC system schools she got into, however, the time is right to be imagining this moment in Amara's life.  We have been discussing this, and soon, we may do a google search of top pre-med programs, so that Amara can be a top surgeon like on Grey's Anatomy when she grows up. ;)