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Today, I George Washington, met with two of my very capable and influential leaders, Samuel and John Adams. We reviewed why our forefathers, the Separatist Puritans (the Pilgrims) came to this country to escape religious persecution and tyranny of the Kind of England. I then discussed how the King has now begun to impose his will on the colonies of America in a fashion not in the best interest of the colonialists.

The topic of current urgency today was the matter of the King sending his officers to harass and steal from the colonialists, clearly a show of the Kings superiority on our people.

While it was suggested to take up arms against the Kings men, we all realize that the Kings army would show no mercy toward the colonies for any of this type of insubordination. So we shall use all diplomatic processes at our disposal to resolve this matter.

We shall promptly get a committee together to meet with the Kings representatives and discuss this matter.

Last summer our history lesson/role playing was on the Pilgrims. It only lasted a few weeks, but the girls still talk about it. So this year, we are role playing the period leading up to the Declaration of Independence.

Everyone knows that the main reason for the Revolutionary War was taxation without representation….or was it? This summer, we will find out.

During the Pilgrims trip to the New World a baby was born on the Mayflower. On the (real) Mayflower, the baby’s name was Oceanus, on our trip, the baby’s name is Isaac Matthew.

We fear for our lives. King James men know that we are worshiping within our homes and, while we continue to move our worship in different locations, we fear that one day soon, they will find and in prison us.

I have heard that the low countries allow freedom of worship. In the morning, we shall pack our things and be off to Holland. This move is a cross that I must bear, for I know that my home is not of this world, but of Heaven (1).

In this new land, they will not speak English but Dutch. So we must learn their language. Homework for this week, learn where Holland is and basic Dutch greetings:

• Hallo (“HAH low”) – Hello
• Goedemorgen (“KHOO duh MORE khen”) — Good morning
• Dank u wel (“dahnk oo vel”) — Thank you very much
• Alstublieft (“ALST oo bleeft”) — Please or if you please (formal)
• Hoe gaat het?  (hoo ghaat het) — How are you?
• Heel goed (hayl ghoot) — Very well

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(1) Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

King James men found out that we were worshiping on the Sabbath in my (Wm Bradford) house and were coming to arrest us. We fled to another person from our congregations house and proceeded to worship. We must make plans and be prepared in case we are forced to leave our homeland.

Homework – make a list of things that we want to take with us if we were forced to leave Scrooby from the persecution of King James

Summer is my favorite time of year. The girls have freedom from their otherwise strict schedules, the days are longer and, most importantly, summer learning begins.

This year we were blessed with health during the school year. Sara missed only a few weeks of school during the year so ended the third grade ready for fourth. Sophia had a great year of kindergarten and seems to be ready for first grade.

The last few summers I’ve had to cram to get the girls ready for their next year of school, but this year, we have the luxury of time. We now have the freedom to learn for fun not out of necessity to catch up. So, this year I am adding history to our curriculum.

This summer we are going to experience the life of the Pilgrims (Separatist Puritans) and their journey to America. We have 8 weeks to role-play the decisions, obstacles and victories of the Puritans as they left their homes in Scrooby, England through establishment their settlement in Plymouth. We have books to read, budgets to make and, most importantly, hats to wear.

So now, we’re off to Scrooby, England 1607….

For most of Sara’s second grade experience, her teacher noted on her weekly goals to use “more interesting language.”  I’m not exactly sure what exercises she was supposed to do but I didn’t see much progress in her vocabulary during the year.  So this summer we are working on dynamic and impressive words.  Unfortunately, vocabulary is not one of my strengths.

Oh, what to do?

One night, as I read a book to the girls titled “Consider Love” by one by one of my favorite children’s authors, Sandra Boynton, I realized that she was using beautiful, interesting words to describe love.  Viola!  Here is my vocabulary list for this summer.  We have words like: frivolous, mysterious, despairing, unbounded, etc.  I love when I seek an answer and it simply appears.

So I made a list of the words that we are going to study this summer.  The trick then, was how to incorporate our vocabulary words with all of the other English lessons I want to teach.  After five failed attempts, I finally got the answer.  The exercise sheet looks something like this:

• Write a definition of the word.  Yes, we have to pull out a paper-based dictionary and flip through pages..how retro!
• What part of speech is it?  We are learning nouns, verbs and adjectives
• Name four things that are {insert vocabulary word here}.  Trying to broaden our understanding of nouns
• Name four things that {insert vocabulary word here} things do.  Trying to broaden our understanding of verbs
• Write a sentence that uses the vocabulary word, a noun and a verb from the lists.

We are having a hard time coming up with the list of nouns and verbs but I guess that’s what exercises are all about.  My goal is that this exercise can help Sara understand how an interesting adjective and verb can really add flavor to her writing.

I’m not sure how much Sara is learning but I can tell you that I’m learning scads!

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test everything; hold fast what is good. (Thessalonians 5:22)

Ask any teacher who follows the common core (CC) curriculum and they will tell you that the old fashioned “algorithm” of borrowing and carrying is too prone to mistakes, no one understands it and it doesn’t teach placement value of numbers. For full disclosure, I haven’t interviewed every teacher of CC, but the teachers I’ve interacted with and websites I visit say the same thing.

Granted, borrowing and carrying is difficult to understand but the CC answer borders on insanity, here’s a video describing their methods: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVqqPwhZRDs. On the video they missed the CC strategy of having a kid count on their fingers and toes (and for really big numbers, their neighbors fingers and toes)!

While I understand all of the methods and what they are trying to teach, I’ve also seen the effects of teaching a second grade kid three, four or five different methods to solve an equation; they don’t really understand any of them. Confusion, frustration, anger, hopelessness…and those are just my emotions when forced to solve a simple equation with multiple CC methods, you should see Sara’s list of emotions!

Plus it’s simple statistics, the more calculations they do, the more prone to error the calculation becomes. As you saw in the video, some of the methods have exponentially more calculations than the “old fashioned” way.

What’s a summer homeschooling dad to do?
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