Books We Are Using This Year
  • The Story of the World: Ancient Times (Vol. 1)
    The Story of the World: Ancient Times (Vol. 1)
    by Jeff West,S. Wise Bauer,Jeff (ILT) West, Susan Wise Bauer
  • Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2
    Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding: A Science Curriculum for K-2
    by Bernard J Nebel PhD
  • Math-U-See Epsilon Student Kit (Complete Kit)
    Math-U-See Epsilon Student Kit (Complete Kit)
    by Steven P. Demme
  • First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 4 Instructor Guide (First Language Lessons) By Jessie Wise, Sara Buffington
    First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind: Level 4 Instructor Guide (First Language Lessons) By Jessie Wise, Sara Buffington
    by -Author-
  • SPELLING WORKOUT LEVEL E PUPIL EDITION
    SPELLING WORKOUT LEVEL E PUPIL EDITION
    by MODERN CURRICULUM PRESS
  • Drawing With Children: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, Too
    Drawing With Children: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, Too
    by Mona Brookes
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Entries in nature (19)

Monday
Oct102011

Journal entries—Activities activites

We've barely been home at all in the past week, and I'm obviously having trouble keeping up here. Three journal entries a week, but do I have time to post them here? I should. I've started posting them along with my own blog entries in the journal, but for those who visit only this page, here is some of what we've been up to.

Friday
Sep302011

Journal entry—Hiking for nuts

Thursday
Aug112011

Journal entry—I dig dirt!

Friday
Aug052011

Journal entry—wading the lakeshore

Friday
Jul082011

Before and after journal entries—chronology

Just a couple of weeks ago I sat down and spent some time talking with Calvin about interesting and varied sentence structure. That went over pretty well, so when this week he wrote an entry with a Proustian sense of chronology I decided it was time to tackle that "language arts" subject as well. It's actually not a new subject for us—when he was younger we out story cards in order after reading books, and his entries summarizing the Oz books has been good practice as well—so our chat was a brief one.

After he'd written his entry I asked him a few questions about it. "Were the raccoon prints and mole hole part of the game? If all those things happened at the end during the game, what did you do during the actual program? Of course, having been at the event I understood where the time warp had happened in the act of writing about it. (You might also notice some missing letters. Those had been erased for handwriting purposes, to make sure that they were readable, but they never got rewritten because he wrote a second entry instead).

The  journal "re-entry" gained not only a smoother time line, but also a little more sentence variety and clarity, and improved handwriting. Sometimes I think it's just a matter of concentration.