Fun with Language Arts

Today has been full of language arts.  Maggie has been on a big push to finish her unit of Spelling and English.  She has memorized and passed over 50 words today.  She has been helping me with my sewing projects as well.

Maggie has been working hard to finish these units so that she doesn't get behind. She has recently launched her own business, called Sweet Boy and Gorgeous Horse cookies.  She made $60, and sold out at her last ride. She recently realized she can make them in slice and bake form and let people buy the dough. The horses love her cookies. Even horses who don't like to eat cookies normally.

New School Year

I realized I hadn't posted anything since we quit working last spring. Maggie has hit the ground running and we've been working since the beginning of August. We did just a bit the first few days and then we have gotten more into a routine of working much harder in the days that have followed.  She is almost done with the first unit of language arts and through the first half of her math unit.  I don't know what she's doing in history and science b/c she's supposed to be doing those units at her dad's house. Only, I don't know if they are, so I told her to bring the books home so I could grade them if he didn't do it by the end of this "weekend" with him.  She's really good about doing the work over there, he's not so good about grading it.  They will typically run around one day and then do school work the other day, much like a normal weekend.  She is finding the math tedious. Not because it's at all difficult, but b/c it's a lot of busy work. I told her that's how math is. Lot's of apparently useless busy work that must be done.

Today I was grading her test from unit one of language arts. She didn't do as well as I wanted to her to do, as her score was only a 79%. I discovered that she was supposed to have completed the whole booklet before taking the test. She actually took the test as she went through the book and the test was in the middle of the book.  I hadn't read my directions. So, she actually got at 79% on material she hadn't actually studied yet.  So, she's not finishing up the second and third section and then we'll take the alternative test, which I'm sure she'll pass with flying colors.

Little House on the Prairie

Maggie has just finished reading this book. She has really enjoyed the stories, even though I had to prod her into getting started with them initially. I found her some games and word searches, vocabulary and comprehension tests for her to take tomorrow. Then she will start reading Farmer Boy. It should be fun because there are a bunch of recipes for making natural dyes and I'm sure we will have fun playing with those. We were going to see Little House the musical, but the reviews weren't favorable, so we decided to skip it.

Maggie has been doing a science experiment with her fish.  She was feeding them each day and tapping the sides of the glass. Now when she taps the glass the fish rise to the top, even when there is no food. They have been conditioned, just like Pavlov's dog.

Maggie planted some flowers out front and has been helping me harvest blackberries from our field. We hope to have enough to make one pie. They got ripe this week, but I haven't been able to pick them. I'm afraid they will over ripen and be done before we get them picked. And it's supposed to storm the next couple days. Hopefully tomorrow evening we can get over there and get them picked.

Difficult Day

Maggie doesn't want to work today. I had a hard time getting her up and going. Even though we were only watching a History show, she was still very resistance to learning.  However, we watched the show, she enjoyed it and now I'm having her write a synopsis for her chronology notebook. Since we don't always study things in order, I like the idea that she can flip through and see how events were relevant to one another. She is in better spirits now and as soon as she is finished, we're going to get some lunch and mow for a little while if I have time to get over to the field. They say it's going to rain this afternoon, but right now it looks good.

The donner Party

Today we are having a hard time getting motivated, so we're going to watch one of the American Experience shows I recorded on the DVR.  It's about the Donner party and their supposed cannibalism of each other. I recently read an article that said that the researchers have recently discovered that they ate the family dog, but not each other.

Maggie tends to turn her nose up at my "educational" tv, but in the end she ends up enjoying the shows I present. I figure it's a way to watch TV, but learn something and I always quiz her when it's over. I gave her the choice of The Diary of Anne Frank, Nova or American Experience.

The Pluto Files

We're watching Nova: the Pluto Files. Maggie is not in a good place to work on schoolwork today and our house is in chaos...so, I have hours of educational TV from PBS to watch, so we're watching Pluto. I have Nova and American Experience as well as the most recent film on Anne Frank.

Monday, Monday

This am Maggie worked on Math and did a bunch of housework for me...it was so nice to come home from my clinic and find a clean house. She's getting ready to work on more math and language arts. I'm trying to get her equally caught up on all units. She was ahead in Bible and History b/c they were her favorites.