05 September 2010

Sunday Salon: Almost Feels Like Homeschooling

For those of you who didn't know, I taught my eldest child M at home for first grade through fourth grade. After that I went back to work and turned her over to the public school system. Now that M is a senior, I feel like we are homeschooling all over again. The past several years I've tried to treat her like my other kids and trust her to do her own work, which resulted in her barely limping through high school. So this year, I am going back to a hands-on approach. This means that I will be familiarizing myself with classics that I didn't read in high school to help her get through 11th and 12th grade English (yes, she is taking BOTH classes this semester). Thank goodness for Sparknotes!

In other school news, I got the reading plan from C2's teacher last week and I am so happy with it. Instead of emphasizing Acccelerated Reader goals, this teacher will let the kids read any book they want as long as she approves it first. At the beginning of the month, she divides the book's total pages by four, so the kids are reading 1/4 of the book each week. She also has activities that are to be completed in the student's reading journal. Some examples are predicting what will happen in the plot based on the cover and the title or (later in the book) describing main events in the plot. I believe this approach will work much better for C2 since she is a slow reader; one book a month will be much more manageable for her.

CURRENTLY READING: I finally got my hands on Dramarama by E. Lockhart. There was a long queue for it at my local library. Not only that, once I checked it out C1 snatched it up. (That girl is on a serious reading jag this year!) I'm also flipping through Love Soup: 160 All-New Vegetarian Recipes from the Author of The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas. It is the time of year when I start craving soup, but canned soups no longer satisfy me. I'm determined to start cooking soups from scratch, so you will probably see more cookbook reviews in the next few weeks.

UPCOMING: I have two pioneer romances by Lauraine Snelling on the horizon, a Brit chick lit novel, and a collection of Dorothy Parker's "Constant Reader" book reviews. However, I may send all of these back to the library unread and pick something else. They are all books that I want to read, but they don't appeal to me right now. Perhaps I need to find something else on my TBR list that will help me meet my goal of leaving the TV off on weeknights. Tune in next week to find out what decide :-).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I checked the link for Dramarama and have to say while I don't think it would be a book I would read, I think it would be one my wife might be interested in. She was a former theatre geek. :)

On the subject of taking books back unread, I work at a library and only recently took back a pile unread to focus on my own pile of books home. Sometimes you have to take back books unread and start afresh.