Our First Month of School with Michigan Connections Academy

          Well, it has almost been a month since Autumn started her first day of school with Michigan Connections Academy (MICA), and we have been a lot more busy with school than we would like to be. This is evidenced by the fact that this is the first blog I have had a chance to post since school began!

          The first week of school was stressful because we had company, and then we went on a trip. I made the mistake of allowing Autumn to do most of her online course work and then put off some of the paperwork like worksheets, book problems etc that was assigned with each lesson. For example, she would complete her math lesson and do all of the activities online and take the quiz, but skip the math problems. Or do the language arts assignment online, but not complete the 5 pages of worksheets that went with the lesson. We kept saying, we'll do that later when we get back.....BIG MISTAKE! We found out very quickly that it is not a good idea to put off any assignments or projects while using MICA. A couple of lessons set aside for a later time could mean A TON of work if you continue trying to accomplish future lessons and projects at the same time.

                 This doesn't necessarily mean that we think the workload is too much, but we are finding that the pace can be challenging if you don't work quickly and do the tasks the same day as they are assigned. We are used to spending a long time on projects or new concepts and at times we have said "YIKES! That is due already? It feels like we just were assigned that!" Or "Wow, there is already a quiz on this material!" This feeling is probably happening to us just because we aren't used to working on a teachers deadlines. I think we also feel this way because the computer system doesn't do a very good job of breaking up projects into smaller tasks. There is no hand holding. The job of time management and breaking apart large projects into smaller tasks each day (hand holding), seems to fall mostly on my shoulders. This is not good, because I am a procrastinator and often pass this nasty habit along to others. I am quickly learning that there is no time to procrastinate with MICA.
                Also, we are probably adding too much pressure on Autumn by adjusting the assignments to meet our own personal standards of education.  For example in math, we really want Autumn to grasp the material she is covering, so we think it is important to do ALL of the problems in her textbook for each lesson. We have found that this will usually cause her to run into a couple of tricky problems that she would otherwise not see if she only did the ones assigned by her teacher. However, doing 60 math problems each day on top of all of her other paper assignments and computer assignments and live lessons and need for exercise, reading, eating, sleeping, etc. is turning into a challenge. Plus, Autumn has always worked at a VERY leisurely pace, and it was never really been a problem, but now she needs to adjust her rate of work to this new work load.(Something she seems reluctant to do, which irritates me a great deal because I feel like the pressure is on me to get her to keep the pace up) I have to say, it has been a challenge at times motivating her to accomplish all of the tasks without feeling like we are destroying all of the reasons we are homeschooling in the first place!

             Yet, we are only a month in and we are just starting to relax into the schedule. Autumn is now navigating the computer system on her own, which is nice, because the first couple weeks I felt like I had to guide her through each step. She is still not doing very well with typing, which we discovered right away is a skill that would be helpful to have, since most of her answers online need to be typed. There is nothing more painful than watching your child plunk out a paragraph letter by letter at the pace of a snail. If you are thinking about enrolling your child in an online school we HIGHLY RECOMMEND an intensive TYPING CLASS. Autumn and I both agree that better typing skills would save us both a lot of stress. We have a few websites that we are visiting to work on this problem, but it is slow coming and we wish we would have mastered this skill over the summer while we had more time on our hands.

Autumn had to take a few Scantron Performance Assessment tests online, Leap Tests, and at the beginning of October she has to travel to Cheboygan to take the MEAP tests. These tests haven't been too time consuming, but Autumn and I do find them slightly irritating, just for the fact that we don't really need a test to tell us what we know and don't know and where we are struggling,.... we know already. She will be required to do testing again in the Spring.

Probably the thing we like least about MICA right now is the grades. So far Autumn has really high scores on everything, so it is not because she isn't doing well. Rather, it is the way the grades make us feel about learning. We are used to doing an assignment or quiz or test over and over again until we get 100% on it. We have always felt that fixing your mistakes is the best way to learn, and so getting graded on everything feels so foreign. I notice that when Autumn gets an answer wrong she is adopting the same attitude that I had in school... the feeling of failure, and what is the point of the grade anyways....it doesn't help me learn. The grades make her feel pressure and stress. Instead of wanting to discover the right answer, there is something about a system that uses grades that makes the student feel like they are doing all of the work for the grade instead of for the learning. If a student is getting all A's that is probably a bad thing, because it means they aren't being challenged enough. But is they are getting all C's, which most likely means the material is a challenge, instead of having the student practice the skills that are difficult until mastery is demonstrated, the C grade is just given and the student moves on.....Grades in other words are really quite pointless and detrimental. A's are bad, but C's are bad too!  We like the lessons MICA offers and the way they are all organized for us and how we are being motivated with the knowledge that we are being supervised by teachers afar, but we think the use of the A, B, C... grading system doesn't work at all with this new technologically based learning. It is very cold, impersonal and unmotivating, and seems wrong with a system like this, where they have the capability of using the technology to ensure that every kid grasps all of the material....why settle for anything less? (which is what a grading scale does). Every kid should be required to demonstrate mastery of ALL the material, not just 75 percent of it!

Autumn loves to practice math on a website called Khan Academy because when she gets an answer wrong they don't give her a red X and a 90% and tell her to move on. Instead, she can demonstrate mastery of the new skill. When she does this she earns points and stars that eventually lead her towards earning badges etc. She never feels like a failure on this site because it is a pass/ or try again system. You either understand the material and move on, or you don't, and you keep on practicing it until you do. This is what we were doing last year with our homeschooling, and I think it is the only thing that truly motivates kids to succeed without hurting their self-esteem and their eagerness to learn. It would be awesome if MICA would adopt this type of evaluation system,...It would be cool if teachers made you rewrite your paper until it was perfect, instead of just plunking a grade on it. Imagine if we did that in other areas of our lives. "Well, I only give this building a D rating, but we'll live in it anyways and hope it doesn't fall down...." No! That would be crazy. Instead you would ask the builder to make the necessary changes until you were satisfied with the results. Or you might even ask the builder to tear the building down and start all over.....But I guess schools haven't figured this out yet, and we are going to have to just play their games and put up with the antiquated A, B, C, system and try and find time to force ourselves to review material we don't master.

               Overall, we are not sure yet whether MICA is the best choice for us or not. We are not unhappy, but we are not as excited as we were on the first day of school. We wish the school would use video streams during live lessons so we could see our teacher's face while she lectures. We wish our conference calls with our teacher would be over Skype instead of the phone so that they could be more personable. We wish that there was more opportunity to connect with the other kids enrolled in the school in a meaningful way. But, the school is still very young, and technology is always changing, so who knows what kind of adaptations they will make in a years time. For now, we are just doing are best to make things exciting and fun while still keeping up with the daily influx of new assignments.

                Also, it doesn't help that the weather has been rainy and cold and we have been stuck inside doing school work almost all day, every day. This is not typical of September. Usually in September we are playing on the beach and enjoying all of the time we have outdoors, while thinking about all the poor kids stuck in school....This week I am praying for some sun, the chance to get caught up or even ahead on our work, and I'll gauge how we feel about MICA again in another months time.

Sarah

Our Trip to Madison, Wisconsin

First Day of School

Today is our first day of school enrolled in Michigan Connections Academy. Grandma and Grandmpa Veramay arrived at our house last night and plan to visit for a few days, so Autumn and I woke up extra early to start our school work so that we would have time to play. It turns out that today is a bit dreary and humid, so right now the girls are playing Scrabble with Grandma and Grandmpa at the dining room table instead of swimming at the beach like we anticipated. But, waking up early has still really paid off.

Autumn started working on her school assignments at 5:30 a.m. and was done with 90% of them by 10a.m. She still has an assessment to complete in math, and she needs to rewrite a science journal entry due to spelling mistakes, but other than that she is done for the day if she wants to be. We really liked that our first school day with MICA wasn't like a first day at a brick and mortar school. We got to dive right into our lessons and start working on assignments without wasting time on covering procedures, rules, introductions etc.

In preparation for our first day we enjoyed reading a few picture books about going to school Our number one pick was:

First Day Jitters, by: Julie Danneberg




We thought this was a great book to read before the first day of school because it reminded us that starting back into the school schedule can be a challenge to everyone.....including adults, and even teachers! We highly recommend it.

So, far our first day of school is going smoothly. We hope you and your family are enjoying your first day back to school, and that many more successful days will follow this one.

-Sarah

It's Time To Go To The Fair!

Yesterday, Saturday, Aug 25th, was the beginning of the Chippewa County Fair, which will be going all the way until Monday, Sept. 3rd in Kinross, MI. Our family has always enjoyed walking through all of the barns and petting the animals, learning more about farm life, and partaking in some cotton candy or elephant ears. So, we are definitely going to be heading to the fair sometime this week. But, to make things seem a bit more special this year I checked out "Charlotte's Web," by E.B. White from the library. It has been our bedtime read aloud this whole week, and it is the PERFECT book to read before venturing off to the fair. The girls had already read this story before, but it is such a wonderful read that they are fully engrossed in it again. This week when the girls and I arrive at the pig stalls I know we are going to be imagining they are Wilbur and Uncle, and I am sure we will be glancing up into the corners for any webs and down into the straw for rats.We will be seeing the fair through the eyes of Fern, Wilbur and Charlotte and it will make it that much more meaningful for us this year. In fact, we have enjoyed it so much that we will probably make reading it before fair time a new family tradition.

If you are taking your kids to the fair this week, we recommend reading "Charlotte's Web!"

See you at the fair!

LSSU Cross Country Camp, Wolverine Michigan, 2012

Steve offered us the opportunity to attend cross country camp with him and his LSSU team. The girls and I had a wonderful week and feel so blessed and lucky to have the chance to experience going to camp and all of the fun times that come with it. I am very thankful to all of the college athletes who welcomed us into their fold, and suffered through Autumn's and Alaina's constant shenanigans and endless energy. We sure enjoyed all of the athletes!

This is a picture of the girls on the Ferry Boat heading over to Mackinac Island on the first day of camp.

While the athletes ran around the perimeter of the Island and then hit the trails in the interior, we went for a very long walk, and then took a rest in the grass field below Fort Mackinac.

This is Autumn in costume for the "Talent Show" night, which she and Alaina advertised for by putting signs all over camp. I don't think the athletes were as excited about the Show as the girls were, but they still played along. :)



Alaina dances a duet with Rob during the Talent Show.



Wolverine Camps used to be a fish hatchery. There is a big, cold pond right outside the kitchen, and the girls were really excited to find these two resident ducks. The ducks were happy too, because the girls were constatnly throwing them duck feed!



Autumn and I both got to challenge ourselves on the high ropes course.

Climb On!



ZIp Line!



Alaina found a new friend in freshman, Ben, who she quickly figured out was great at shoulder back rides and flips.
 Poor Ben :)



Our group safely back on the ground. The last time I was on a high ropes course I cried....I didn't cry this time, but I still hugged a few trees :)



Dion and Autumn working in the kitchen.



Is that sanitary???



Autumn doing the "Trust Fall"



Steve being caught by his team.



The weather was beautiful and we ate a lot of our meals outside.



"Flip me like Ben."



Alaina and Rob on the low ropes course.



The trails at Wolverine were awesome. This is a "Rails to Trails" that I rode my dirt bike on while pulling Alaina. It runs along the sturgeon river and there is lots of wildlife. We saw deer, rabbits, woodpeckers, bald eagles, and lots of birds.



UNO!





On their way home the team stopped to run at Wilderness State Park. The girls liked this pond, where they found a three legged frog!



Camp was great! The girls and I got to know a lot of the athletes, mountain bike on hilly dirt roads, swim in Silver Lake, eat healthy food, and have all sorts of new experiences. For example, I was stung by my very first yellowjacket, which I was actually really excited about because it didn't hurt as bad as I had imagined, and now I know I am not allergic to stings.

Camp also symbolizes the end of summer for our family. College classes start on Monday, Steve gets into his schedule of coaching in the mornings, working in the afternoons, and teaching in the evenings, and we hunker down and start studying here at home. It is our families final hurrah together and also a chance for Autumn, Alaina and I to become excited about being a small part of these young college kids lives. Getting to know the athletes makes it easier to accept Steve spending so much of his time with them. Even though we don't get the chance to see the athletes on a daily basis or even go to all of their meets, over the course of their four years at LSSU many of these kids begin to feel like family, the girls absolutely adore and look up to many of them, and we enjoy watching them change and grow, and cheering them on through that process.

Well...

Good-bye Summer,

Hello, Fall!

Steve's 1/2 Ironman Triathlon Turned Family Vacation

Steve competed at a Rev 3 Half Ironman in Wisconsin Dells last weekend, and our whole family was able to enjoy attending the race because of the location. Steve had an awesome race, and afterwards the girls were really excited to ride rollercoasters and go carts for the first time ever. It was a fantastic trip. Here are two videos to give you a taste of our trip. The first is snippets from Steve's race and the second is of us riding a few rides at the parks.

Happy Music

For Autumn's last poem recitation she chose "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes. This was a long poem, and so we got on YouTube to see if there were any good videos that would make the job a bit easier. We discovered an artist named Loreena McKennitt. She sang this poem beautifully and we used this to aid in our memorization. Here is her version:

I enjoyed discovering her music so much, that I started searching for other artists that turn famous poems into song, and I was blessed with the rediscovery of the artist Natalie Merchant, who is the lead singer from 10,000 Maniacs. I used to listen to a lot of her music when I was in college, but I never owned any of her albums, so I had kind of just forgotten about her. There were two songs back then that were definitely on my list of "happy music." They were the type of songs that could lift up my spirit no matter how many times I listened to them. Everybody has there own taste in "happy songs," but to make it onto my list a song has to make me want to dance or at least tap out a beat. I thought that maybe these songs wouldn't affect me in the same way now that I am older, but I have found that they still make the top of my "happy" list. Maybe they will make yours as well, here they are:


# 1. These Are The Days

# 2. Thank You

I discovered that Natalie Merchant put out an album in 2010 called "Leave Your Sleep" that contains songs using the words of other poets as the lyrics. I was able to listen to most of the songs on this album on YouTube and enjoyed the following two the best because they have such moving instrumentals. I think these two song- poems are going to be added to our family list of future poems to memorize. I hope you will enjoy listening to them as well...here they are:

# 1. Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

# 2. Crying My Little One

Sometime soon I will have to start working on compiling a complete list of my "happy songs" so I don't 'loose' any again.....plus, it would be a great playlist to take to the gym or on a hike in Mother Nature.  You could help me out by sharing a few of your favorite "happy" songs with me. What songs always lift you up? What music do you imagine playing behind you as your soundtrack on a good day? I would love to hear your picks!

-Sarah

Poetry With Autumn: "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes

This poem is really long, so it took a while for Autumn to memorize. This take of her reciting it had a few mistakes and I had to toss her a word, but since it is over five minutes long to recite she decided it was good enough. I have to agree! We are really enjoying video taping these recitations because it motivates us to work hard, but sometimes we wish we had a video editor...and my arm wishes we had a tripod :)

Do any of you use video editing software? What would you recommend? We would need something user friendly because we wouldn't want to waste a lot of time on it, but we think it would
 be fun to use for school projects to splice together some movies or music videos or add background music or titles etc.

Poetry With Autumn (and Willow), "Eldorado" by Edgar Allen Poe

Funny Fox

This morning I woke up a bit earlier than usual, and I was awarded with the entertainment of three fox kits playing in our yard for a whole hour. They were tossing acorns with their mouths, pouncing onto each other for a bit of play fighting and wrestling, and stopping to roll in the grass and take quick naps. It was certainly an enjoyable and peaceful way to spend the first hour of my morning. I videotaped them for a bit, and then woke the girls up so they could share the experience with me. I often comment on the fact that we see less wildlife up here in Northern Michigan than I did when I was a kid growing up downstate...but, I guess the trade off is that when we finally do see some wildlife it is extra special and truly appreciated. Especially when it is in our own backyard!


Here is a video I took so you can enjoy them as well!