The Shadow

Assignments & Record Keeping

Homeschooling: One of the things we've struggled the most with homeschooling is how to handle assignments and record keeping. We've managed to bumble through a variety of methods from "come see mom" for each thing which doesn't work all that well since I work full time and am not always available, to an online system that just wasn't flexible enough. We also have to find a solution that works for both kids who have very different needs and learning styles. One gets overwhelmed when he sees more than 5 assignments at a time. The other likes to see all her work for the full week. Both tend to jump around from doing one subject per day and then doing all their math for the whole week the next day. There's trade offs.

The online system we've been using since September let them see the assignments for EACH day (though not a week at a "glance") but working ahead really mucked up the system because then I had to keep track rather than the program and they had to remember to mark those assignments complete on future days. What resulted was a semi-chaotic state where I wasn't ever quite sure what they had done or not.

I spent this weekend developing yet another new "system". It starts with a binder with a special cover page. I was out of blue ink when I printed this one but I sort of like the "orange" look I got and let it go.

Next is a "week at a glance" of subject assignments with color coordinated tabs.


Under each colored tab are all the assignments for that subject for the full week. The column to the left is so they can date them and to the right they can fill in the grade if it's something they do online that grades itself (they still have to email or print the results though so I can verify what they wrote).


All of it is coordinated through this Numbers document (Excel for you PC users!). This is the master list of assignments for each subject for the year. I simply cut and paste them into the weekly charts and copy the grades back into this chart for safe keeping and a permanent record.

So far so good but it's only been ONE day!

SPUR Banquet

Horses: Today we attended the SPUR of the Moment Horse Show banquet. Equestrian girl did VERY well in that series. She was the champion for 2 classes. And reserve for many others!

That's our friends Sheri and Sandhya in the background handing out the awards.


This is "Mad Dog", one Equestrian Girl's horse show buddies. Her nickname just kills me!


Sandhya is getting married in June. If she uses that smile at her wedding she'll be a beautiful bride. Sheri is getting married too but I didn't get any great pictures of her smile. And the guy with the hat kept hiding his behind his coffee cup...


This is another of the horse show buddies...she looked so cute all dressed up I didn't even recognize her!


Mad Dog and Equestrian Girl hamming it up for the camera.

My Time of Year...

Horses: This is my time of year. Or it will be as soon as shopping is done. I truly enjoy cold weather and am happiest when I'm bundled up head to toe. I know how to dress for the cold and tend to look oddly at those who choose to suffer rather than just add an extra sweatshirt. I purposefully buy jeans that are a size or two too big just so I can wear thick long johns underneath. And the fleece turtlenecks from Lands End that I bought last winter are my best friends. My husband's old Carhartt is big enough to put over top of multiple layers of sweatshirts and I wouldn't live without my stick on toe warmers bought by the case at Costco each fall.

This is also my time of year because I get to ride. A lot. As much as I want. Equestrian Girl sits around being very bored while I take my dear sweet time bopping around on Stanley. Last night she gave me a lesson. She told me I was a terrible student. She set up a pattern for me. The first time through she gave me "last place". We tried harder and I got a "4th". Yea me!

Motocross: There is absolutely nothing to write about for our motocross world. It's on hold.

Homeschooling: We are in a good rhythm right now. Equestrian Girl is pounding out the work to finish by Wednesday ever week. Motocross Boy is working on math every day with Dad and is two clicks away from totally mastering division. He loves Aleks math and watching his pie chart grow.

I'm thinking about adding a new piece to our curriculum through Defined Stem Learning. We are doing a 14 day trial and I'm hoping the kids like it as much as I do. So far I'm quite impressed and for my very visual learners I think it's a good fit.

Happy Horse Dance!

Horses: We are doing a little happy dance around here with Equestrian Girl. The year end results were finally posted for the Michigan Paint Horse Club and....drum roll....she did fantastic! Three 1st places with a 1st place tie in trail. One 2nd and four 3rds. We are especially happy since this was her first year showing breed (Paint) and her first year riding canter and her first year riding Stanley!!

This handsome boy below is Floyd. He's Kim's boy - Kim is Equestrian Girl's trainer. We stopped out to see him at his new barn.


The little guy with Floyd is his pasture pal - a rescued pony that is now about 100 years old! Not really but he has grown the longest winter coat that I think I've ever seen on a horse - it's got to be about 4 inches long or more.



This is Kim riding Floyd. He just learned how to steer last week.


The two cuties below look like twins but they aren't. Both are weanling Friesians with one being a girl and one a boy. They have long YELLOW hair growing out of their ears and are just totally adorable.

Cold. It's Cold.

Horses: Yesterday afternoon Equestrian Girl and I drove up to MSU to watch a little of the Cowboy Christmas Horseshow and do a little browsing at the tack booths set up. We knew for sure one of the ladies from the barn was taking her horse up to show tomorrow in the regular classes (actually her trainer is going to be doing the showing) and we figured we were bound to know a few other people as well.

When we got out to the arena to sit down, they had just finished up the 13 and under versatility challenge for English/Western (they'd come back later to run barrels) and were excited to see a couple of girls from our old barn getting ready to go in for the 14-19 class age group. In that class was our old trainer and a horse we knew from Paint shows but we didn't know the rider. (Later we found out it was her friend riding).

The fun really started when they got ready to do the barrel racing. Most of these horses were NOT speed horses at all. In the 13 and under group one of Equestrian Girl's friends from the SPUR shows was there and did a nice slow lope/trot around the barrels - she had fun seeing her and went down to talk to her later. Our old trainer was riding a horse that wasn't at all happy about running barrels. The Paint we know turned into quite a show as his rider tried convincing him it was okay to go faster than a trot!

We had wanted to stay for the freestyle reining class but it was already 8:30 and we have an hour drive home from MSU with a big day planned for today. Another horse filled day! But it's also going to be a bundle up day. Last night driving home it was 24 degrees with a bright clear sky. This morning its.....13 degrees. It will be fun to see how our new trainer from FLORIDA handles this cold day!

Homeschooling: I recently wrote about how I feel we should embrace technology. The very next day I read about a study that shows that kids who use technology such as texting, email, blogging, and even facebook actually have better writing skills than those who don't. I'm always a little leery of such studies wondering who paid for them but in this case the study was done in England where full disclosure and restrictions are a bit stronger. It was done by a British university...

Birds & the Bees...when you homeschool you have total control over this topic to present it and teach it and explain it how you feel best. A while back we started family reading time where we went bit by bit through a birds & the bees book. I had carefully researched various books and had found two that I felt would work best for our family. After each section we talked a little bit about it and made sure both kids had understanding. And then we dropped it as a 'topic' of homeschooling. That's not to say we stopped discussing it in total - we often had either private or family discussions as things came up. A few days ago I came across the book and pulled it out thinking it might be a good time for a quick refresher. I also suspected one of the kids would see the book and take it for their own personal reading. Sure enough, last night Motocross Boy came downstairs to get some index cards and saw the book asking if he could take it upstairs to read...

Rain, rain go away...

Horses: It rained here yesterday afternoon and part of the night. It was a deep drenching rain so no doubt we'll have plenty of mud again. I just love when the ground gets nice and soft so the horses can churn it all up good and then it freezes into something totally impossible to walk on. It's like what I imagine the surface of the moon to be like...

We didn't go to the barn to ride Stanley last night. That was mostly me - I had no desire to go out in that dark rain. But we have been going at least 5 out of 7 days and I've been riding myself every time we go too. I don't usually ride at all during show season, or at least I don't ride Stanley. I felt very strongly that being a new horse to us last winter it was important that Equestrian Girl and him develop a strong bond and he didn't get confusing signals on a regular basis from two very different riders. I believe it worked. He is very connected to her now. We've been tossing around the idea of me riding in a class or two at the open shows next year but we'll see. I will take a few lessons this winter and see how it goes and if I can find some cheap show clothes, maybe.

Motocross: Last winter there were THREE indoor race tracks for motocross in Michigan. This year there are NONE. One was rather far away but the boys went out there early in the winter season to check it out. Their first comment was that the ventilation was terrible. It was built in one of those golf dome type places and the air exchange just wasn't enough. A few weeks later they were shut down for just that reason. Every time they thought they had it "fixed" they would get shut down again. Another place that the boys had gone to a LOT the winter before had trouble with his lease on the building. No go this year. The third track was our favorite. They had a nice pit area that was semi-heated, fan stands that were toasty warm, and a pretty nice track that was well maintained. They held a race series that Motocross Boy loved and a great banquet at the end of the year. A few weeks later the place was locked up and closed down in foreclosure.

All this means that if Motocross Boy is to do any racing this winter it will have to be outdoors if the weather is okay or they'll have to travel. Apparently there's a couple places in Ohio and Indiana but none are real close...several hours away.

Homeschooling: I read an interesting article this morning about how schools have been fighting the use of cell phones in class and how they are so often used for cheating. Students will save information on their phones and then use it during a test. Or they will text questions and answers to other students. Motocross Boy is an expert at figuring out ways to cheat on some of his on-line material (which is why I now have to print so much!) but he's never used his cell phone and I don't think he knows anyone to text to get an answer during the day! Equestrian Girl has never used hers to cheat (that I know of anyway) but she has used it to take a photo of her on-line test results to send me. We use one on-line program for science that we all really love but there's no way for them to email or save their test results for me to see if I'm not there. Since this program is quite independent, I'm don't make it a habit of being around when either of them use it. Thus the reason for taking a photo I guess!

There's a lot of controversy in the homeschool world about how much technology to embrace in schooling. We are more on the side of "more is better". Our society is advancing so quickly in this field that it's difficult to keep up. Both of my kids can do things with computers that I still have a hard time comprehending. Equestrian Girl can whip stuff out of Gimp or Photoshop before I can figure out which icon to click on. Motocross Boy can track down a piece of information he needs in seconds. When I told him he needed to read for "exactly" fifteen minutes, he quickly downloaded a little program that was a digital timer. The other day Motocross Boy came in asking me how to spell Adolf as he typed it into Google. Huh? He had caught the tail end of a program on the history channel that mentioned Adolf Hitler and wanted to learn more about him. Instant access to a world of information....

In my opinion our society is changing and our kids need to keep up. We do too. I remember at work when we first got our laptops and were told that we would learn to use them and work with our contact database program or find another job. We had people leave because they were afraid of that black hunk of plastic and electronics. I jumped on the opportunity (I was also much younger then) and it paid off handsomely. I was considered one of the go-to people and am still considered one of the more techno-literate people. We don't have many around that can handle both PC based and Mac based programs...but I can and it helps. Our kids are going to have that leg up if we continue to expose them to technology in age appropriate safe ways.