Wordless Wednesday for 9/27/17

Recent Life in Review

It's been a while since I did a "weekly" update, so I thought it was time.

As May came to a close, my student heaved a relieved sigh to be done with his English 101 course at the local community college. His grade was a good one. Not bad for a 10th grader enrolled in dual enrollment!

His time spent keeping up with his college class did cause his other studies to have less time spent than I would have preferred. So, while most home schools are gearing up for different activities for the duration of the summer, my student and I see school work stretching out before us. The subjects not yet complete are 19th Century History, Algebra 2 and Chemistry.

The Boy Scout Troop celebrated an Eagle Court of Honor, welcoming four scouts to the rank of Eagle.

The troop end of year Court of Honor occurred a couple of weeks later, and my Scout received the last merit badge he needed to get to Eagle. Now he needs to find and do an Eagle Project in the community.
As a Civil Air Patrol Cadet, my SRA was signed up for and rained out of yet another flight. Six and 0 so far. He'll get off the ground some day. My husband signed up to participate with CAP as a senior member and got all his uniforms in order. He has already ranked up his first level as a CAP Officer. 
The squadron split up on Memorial Day. The Color Guard served at a local Flags for Heroes event.

Others recruited sponsorships for Wreaths Across America in December.

Our squadron had its end of year banquet.

Dad got an award. We had a cake.

 The cadet is getting ready for TriWing Encampment and got a military haircut.

He also just got a phone call setting up a summer job internship interview at a local food store. After encampment he plans to take driver's education. Busy, busy!

Well, there is probably more I am forgetting, but I guess that will do it for now. How is your summer shaping up so far?

Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day - Why? What is the significance of Veteran's Day? When did it start? Who does it honor? Why 11/11? Find out by watching this short video:

Free Veteran's Day Unit Study from Enrichment Studies:

Mid-Week School Status

I didn't manage to do a Friday Wrap-Up last Friday, and I'm not likely to get one done this Friday either, so I decided to do a mid-week status report to catch up on last week's school and catch us up to today.

School has been going fairly well in terms of our daily discipline. My student has been getting his PE time in 3X/week. Most days were getting our Bible time in. We've been working on our BJU Algebra II diligently, but the student has struggled with getting a lot of incorrect answers to exercises, resulting in a lack of confidence, discouragement, and thus a bit of resistance to continue. So for the time being we are slowing down to gain comprehension. We're supplementing with CTC Math (thank you CTC and Schoolhouse Review Crew for letting me have this for a year in exchange for my review!).

Our Chemistry study has had fits and starts. We are using Apologia Chemistry, 1st Edition (thank you to my friend, Kay, for lending it to me!). We worked on some experiments last week, but I need to get some denatured alcohol to continue successfully.

                         

We are supplementing with Fascinating Chemistry. (Thanks, Fascinating Education and TOS Homeschool Review Crew, for making this available to us in exchange for my review!)

We've been studying Spanish I by BJU. I've no choice but to conclude that it is next to impossible to teach BJU Spanish if you (the teacher) do not already speak Spanish. I do not.  Fortunately,  Middlebury Interactive Languages has recently made High School Spanish I available to me and my son in exchange for our review (in about two months). Thank you Middlebury Interactive!

 

For Literature we are currently reading Pudd'nhead Wilson (When Worlds Collide - thank you, Sharon Watson!) and A Tale of Two Cities (Tapestry of Grace, Year 3). For Composition we are following a combination of TOG, When Worlds Collide, and Student Writing Intensives (IEW). For Grammar we have been working through The Nose Tree (IEW - thank you!).

For History we have been following TOG, in framework, but tweaked to use what I have. We're currently reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and The History of Us.

My son has his learner's permit and is working off his required hours.

Today was a big accomplishment -- my son took his first PSAT. This was important to introduce him to this format of testing. When he takes it again next year he may be eligible for scholarships. If nothing else, he will be ready to take the SAT or the ACT in the spring of 11th grade.

Well, I think that's everything. How is your school year going?

Travel Log

When I am going out of town I don't like to announce it to the world. I prefer to let the world think my house is occupied always, but later I post to say, ?ah ha! I was away!?

In June my family traveled to Minnesota, and in July I went with our Boy Scout troop to summer camp in Pennsylvania.

June: Minnesota

"Why, Minnesota?" you might ask. Well, have you ever clicked on my "Efraimson" tab and read my family stories? In 1905 my grandmother was born in the Iron Range of Minnesota. Her sister, Jennie, was born next. They lived in a sod shanty, and my great grandfather, Alfred, was working as a miner. Alfred and Emma had a total of 12 children. Arne died as a child from complications of appendicitis. The other 11 grew to adulthood.

The eleven offspring were Esther (my gram), Jennie (never married), Eino (pronounced "Aye-no"), Emma (became O'Brien), Josephine (Jo) (became Larson), Hilda (became Gregor), William (Bill), Viola (Vi) (became Lampela), Carl, Rudy (never married) and Rupert (never married). 

That generation is gone now. Of the twelve, four never married. I was in Minnesota for a family reunion of offspring from the other eight siblings. It was short, sweet, and we had a great time. It deserves its own blog post.

Independence Day

For the Independence Day, my cadet marched in our local parade (center of first row). This mom is proud of her young man!

Boy Scout Camp

As I did last year and the year before, I went with the troop to Boy Scout Camp. I am an Assistant Scout Master for the troop, and the adults who went voted me the Acting Scout Master for the week. I didn't anticipate regrets for that, but what was I thinking. Can't really post it here, but oh my! 

This year we went to Camp Freedom. It rained for seven days straight. "They say that we'll have fun when it stops raining!" (Camp Granada) It stopped raining Saturday morning of day seven. We drove home. See how wet the boards are in my tent? See my Old Schoolhouse tote on the cot?

Seriously, it did not rain the whole time, but the tents leaked, and everything constantly felt damp. I gave up showering -- couldn't get dry. Waited to get home. This, too, deserves its own post, so I'll try to do that at a later time.

Today

Today I am excited about some books that arrived by UPS for an upcoming Crew Review!

 

Video Share for the day

 Takes a bit to make me smile and feel really good these days. This video did that for me today, so I wanted to share. When you can take five minutes for a video, sit yourself down and enjoy this one for your daily feel-good smile. Laughter is the best medicine!

Flying Over America - Cool Video

I saw this today and enjoyed it. Thought I would share it.

Protoge Flash Mob

I just loved this! Wish more than one of my kids had pursued music!

The Pantry - Week 2 of 34 Weeks of Clean Challenge

Okay, here is where my participating in the "34 Weeks of Clean" challenge becomes more of an attempt to humor my readers than to participate in the challenge. Let's just say I am taking a "By" week (or is that "bye"?).


I was very busy and did not do this assignment. I did, however, go through my spices and got rid of old and duplicate spices (by gifting duplicates to another woman's kitchen). Didn't take a "Before" photo. Here's "After":

Hymn Study: I Am Thine, O Lord: Draw Me Nearer

Today's hymn is the Ambleside Online hymn rotation song for December, 2014, "I Am Thine, O Lord," by Fanny Crosby:



I am Thine, O Lord, I have heard Thy voice,
And it told Thy love to me;
But I long to rise in the arms of faith
And be closer drawn to Thee.

Refrain

Draw me nearer, nearer blessèd Lord,
To the cross where Thou hast died.
Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer blessèd Lord,
To Thy precious, bleeding side.

Consecrate me now to Thy service, Lord,
By the power of grace divine;
Let my soul look up with a steadfast hope,
And my will be lost in Thine.

Refrain

O the pure delight of a single hour
That before Thy throne I spend,
When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God
I commune as friend with friend!

Refrain

There are depths of love that I cannot know
Till I cross the narrow sea;
There are heights of joy that I may not reach
Till I rest in peace with

Refrain

Wordless Wednesday for 11/12/14

Wordless Wednesday for 11/5/14

Wordless Wednesday for 10/29/14

Wordless Wednesday for 10/22/14

Wordless Wednesday - 10/15/14

Fortuigence - A TOS Crew Review

As my son began his 9th grade year, I was painfully aware that we have not focused adequately on the skills of essay and composition writing. I was very happy when I learned that Fortuigence was offering the Schoolhouse Review Crew four writing courses, and that my son and I would be given the opportunity to review their Essay Rock Star Expository Essay Writing Course!

Fortuigence is an online company that was founded by a former classroom teacher named
Lily Iatridis. Ms Iatridis taught school for ten years before taking some time off to stay home and start a family. Fortuigence was born of a brainstorm to think how she might begin to offer online writing courses on her own. She has great respect for homeschoolers, and the largest portion of her clients are homeschoolers. Her goal is to help equip students to write effectively while equipping the parents to walk through the writing process with their students.

I approached the Essay Rock Star Expository Essay Writing Course with my son with a bit of trepidation. This is the third student I have homeschooled high school with, so you might expect me to have a bit of confidence. What you may not know is that my older two students were in a co-op in high school, and the co-op included writing as one of its subjects. My daughters were not only not accountable to me for getting their writing assignments done, but their papers were also not graded by me. I found that to be a huge help. I either corrected everything (not giving them freedom to express their own thoughts, but trying to get them to express my thoughts) or else I thought everything they wrote was wonderful (with blinders that prevented me from helping them to improve their writing). Having an impartial 3rd party do the paper-grading was what I needed.

So along came this son that God gave me. He is so different from me. If I ask him to write an essay about "Topic X", he says he wants to write about "Topic Q" that I know nothing about. This leaves me feeling 1) like I cannot score his papers because I don't know if the material is correct or not and 2) like he's never going to learn to write on a topic that is assigned to him. Along came the Essay Rock Star Expository Essay Writing Course.

The Expository Essay Course is broken down into bite-sized pieces. Each step along the way teaches the student (and the parent) how to approach that segment of the essay-writing process. It also gives links, PDF files, and ideas to help the student every step of the way. Each of the following steps was one lesson. After each lesson the student completes a related assignment, submits the assignment to the teacher, and receives feedback on the written work before continuing. Here are the steps/lessons:

1) Course Introduction, Rubrics, and Pre-Assessment (child sends in a sample writing assignment from previous work);

2) Purpose and Description; Brainstorming;

3) Organizing Ideas;

4) Free Writing;

5) Revision;

6) Editing;

7) Wrap-Up.

So we started off with the Pre-Assessment. That doesn't sound too difficult, right? You just send in a previous writing assignment. Well, scroll back up to that first paragraph where I said I have neglected writing and composition. Did you think I was kidding? I didn't have a previous writing assignment. This young man has never before written an essay or a composition. He has written answers to questions in workbooks, and he has kept a journal. Fairly Charlotte Mason in our previous schooling, I have often had him narrate to me orally. I tried to get him to do written narrations one year, but that flopped (he was unwilling and I did not fight with him). He now understands that learning to write essays and compositions is necessary to move forward into college and is willing to learn, but there was no "previous writing assignment". He had to start Lesson 1 by writing an essay to submit for the assessment.

It became necessary for me to instruct him just to get started. I discussed with him the basic five paragraph composition that starts with an introductory paragraph, is followed by three supporting paragraphs, and concludes with a paragraph that restates the introductory paragraph and wraps up all the loose ends. Initially we had some difficulty figuring out how to submit the essay. I tried to attach a document, but my computer was generating different document formats than the Fortuigence site wanted to accept. I finally figured out how to submit a ".doc" document.

We submitted my son's essay, and I waited with anxiety. I had forced myself not to read the essay, not to make corrections or comments. Later the same day, his instructor (who was Lily Iatridis herself, by the way) sent my son a note telling him he is a "competent writer" and had us move on to Lesson 2. Who knew? My son and I were both pleased and relieved.

So we watched the video for Lesson 2 and then read through the documentation that followed the video. There was a link given to a website that offers (limited) free support for brain-storming. I had to prompt my son to give him ideas on what to write on. I suggested he write on something he knows a lot about, and we both thought about that. He picked his topic and went to the brainstorming page and created lots of sub-topics. He had selected a "process" style topic, so I let him know he did not need to be constrained by the five-paragraph format of the previous essay.

Somehow I got lost in what I was reading and I directed my son, incorrectly, to submit a rough draft as his assignment for the brainstorming. He did the work and we submitted his writing.

Ms. Iatridis received this rough draft with surprise. We had by-passed four lessons or something. She read what he had written and responded to him with an email of glowing praise, suggesting that he didn't really need the course, and that if we weren't reviewing the course she would probably give us a refund. What? I mean, this is the second writing assignment in his life. My son responded to me, "Does this mean I never have to do another writing assignment?" I had to let him down gently. There is still so much for him to learn!

So we walked our way through the additional lessons, resubmitting the same essay after each lesson, until the lessons caught up to where my son was, having written his rough draft. Finally, after Lesson 6, his writing was reviewed with a fine-toothed comb. This is where the capitalization was scrutinized, punctuation, unfamiliar words, awkward wording, etc.

My son went over the teacher-markups and is making final adjustments to his composition, to create a great finished product. And I, meanwhile, have saved copies of all the tools and materials provided during the course, so we will have them in our arsenal for future writing assignments. 

While I don't know if my son will ever enjoy writing (especially writing assigned to him by someone else), I think I can honestly say that he and I have both been totally pleased with our experience with the Essay Rock Star Expository Essay Writing Course. The constructive praise and comments made by the teacher were helpful, encouraging, and anything but shallow. And I totally feel this course was as beneficial for me as the teacher as it was for my son as the student.

The Essay Rock Star Expository Essay Writing Course is a perfect fit for 12-18 year old students. It is a "short course" (to be completed over the course of one month) in the Fortuigence offerings, and is priced at $57, counting as only a small fraction of the writing my son should complete this year. The company offered me the opportunity to get the rest of the essay program at a 40% discount, and I am mulling that idea over and will discuss it with my husband and my son. Right now I am thinking I have the skill and ability to teach Essay and Composition to my son, but not the confidence. So purchasing the entire course is a definite possibility.

So go to the Fortuigence website and look around. Be sure to check out the free resources page while you are there. To see reviews by other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew, click the button below. Crew members reviewed four different products, so you can learn about all of them.

A Few Special Items for your Attention - 10/1/14

My Wednesday post was once slated to be "Wednesday Words", and I was posting George Washington's Rules and a translation into English for the 2010's. I was not getting comments. I don't think anyone cared. I don't know if anyone was reading those posts. I did not get all the way through his Rules.

So, here's a small glimmer into me. I watch for comments from my readers. I really do! I don't mind not getting comments on most of my posts, especially when I know they have value. I know we read a lot of posts and don't have time to comment on everything. I get it. But please know: I read all of your comments! They make my day!

So if there is something you like or don't like, send me a comment or an email. I will take your point of view to heart. Honest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So I toyed with the idea of making Wednesday's post a nature post: Wednesday's Walk or something catchy. The thing is, I live in suburbia. I don't come by my own nature photos easily. The thought of having 52 posts for the next year on a new nature find each week seems unattainable.

This morning it seemed the Lord was impressing on my heart that it might be a place for me to share "gems", when I have any. I was impressed that way because of a gem in my inbox this morning. I will try to add to the first one before I post, but this morning's gem (click on over and read it) is a post by Time Warp Wife:

31 Days of Prayer for our Marriages -- Day 1

Amy Puetz: Amy's Corner: Self-Sacrificing Heroines - Click here.

Handbook of Nature Study – October 2014 Newsletter- 2014-10-01 

Andy Andrews on Parenting

Oh, so funny! Enjoy!

George Washington's Rule #38

In working my way through George Washington's Rules for Civility and Decent Behavior, I have arrived at Rule #38 which states:

38. In visiting the sick, do not play the physician if you be not knowing therein. 

This seems self-explanatory. If you're not a doctor, don't attempt to give medical advice to your sick friends. That was George's rule.

Now, George didn't have Google. Most of us, when we ourselves or someone we love is sick or diagnosed with something, we immediately search the Internet to find out as much as we can about the illness and its possible treatments and cures. So on this rule I have to respectfully disagree with George. If I'm sick, and my doctor has prescribed antibiotics, or worse yet chemotherapy, you'd better believe I want to know first what the options are and whether or not this is a good course of action. I take advice from my friends, and I take advice and information from the Internet. And I am open to seeking out alternative,  radical solutions (like following a vegan diet to combat cholesterol, instead of taking statins).

What do you think? Do you side with George Washington, or with me?

George Washington's Rules, Rule #37

Working my way through George Washington's Rules, we are up to Rule #37 which states:

 In speaking to men of quality do not

lean nor look them full in the face, nor

approach too near them at lest keep a full pace from them. 

 I think this rule must have been based on societal norms of the time. For instance, nowadays, when you are speaking to someone, leaning toward them and looking them straight in the eye IS considered polite. It is still true, though, that people like to have about 12-18" of personal space.