I'm Back! Recap for the last two weeks :-)

Good Morning!

I was doing so good with those updates. . . oh well! We have been having a lot of fun the past two weeks and staying REALLY busy, but I will do a quick update for anyone (family) interested :-)

Two weeks ago we learned about MONKEYS. The girls loved this unit! We read a ton of books but their favorites were Caps for Sale and Hand Hand Fingers Thumb! We played gamed where we walked around balancing caps/hats on our heads, placed items under a hat and the girls tried to guess which hat it was under, danced around to the wonderful DVD that Gregg got from the library for them The Monkey Doos. It was a somewhat laid back week, at least in comparison to our Berry week, but it was fun!

Last week we learned about BEES! I did not remember to take a great picture of our table, but we read The Bee Tree, DK's book on the Bee Movie, Backyard Books: Are you a Bee?, The Very Angry Bee, and The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive. We watched The Magic School Bus episode Inside a Beehive, Hermie and Friends with Buzby the Misbehaving Bee, as well as watched Bee Movie, which we all just love!

I had never read The Bee Tree before and I have to say -- This might be one of MY favorite books now! For those of you not familiar with this story, it is about a girl who tells her "Grampa" that she is tired of reading and that she would rather be playing. He decides that it is time for an adventure chasing bees to the bee tree! Many other characters get involved in the chase and they have a wonderful, and very funny, adventure. Upon returning home for "baking powder biscuits, fresh brewed tea, and of course, the honey," Grampa took Mary Ellen aside and spooned honey on the cover of the book. He told her to taste it. After savoring the honey, Grampa told her these words, the best in any book that I have read in a long time, and words that I pray my girls believe:

There is such sweetness inside of that book too!" he said thoughtfully." Such things. . . adventure, knowledge and wisdom. But these things do not come easily. You have to pursue them. Just like we ran after the bees to find their tree, so you must also chase these things through the pages of a book!

Awesome, right? We read this book everyday and every time I was smiling from ear to ear at that part! :-)

This weekend we visited with friends in Austin and I went to a homeschool conference! This is actually the first I have gone to "live." I have participated in Cindy Rushton's Ultimate Homeschool Expo and have listened to other talks before, but this was my first in-person Vendor Hall and it was awesome! Getting to actually hold and see up close all of the wonderful books, curriculum and programs I have read about and learning about SO much more! It was also a fun girl bonding trip with my Austin friend, Alicia, who is considering homeschooling.

I will post later about our unit this week: Butterflies and Caterpillars!!!

Have a wonderful week!

Read More...

Summary only...

You have to read this

Greetings!

I am a bit behind in my posting, huh? I will catch up soon on our Monkey Adventures, my amazing husband and his weekend alone with our girls, and on this week's journey with Bees, but until then, I wanted to share THIS. The Old Schoolhouse Minute had a link to an old CM Carnival from November that I decided to check out. In it was the above posting by Dewey's Treehouse that was inspired and inspiring. It was on the wild adventure that books can take you and just explains my heart so much better than I could :-) Read it -- be blessed!

Read More...

Summary only...

Just Monkeying Around. . .

In case you are Curious what we are learning about this week, we are learning about MONKEYS!

I am still getting the hang of the whole table set up but we are having fun with it and the girls do get so excited! The hard part for me is keeping the theme and books a secret until they see it on the table! I hope to add in more fun games or crafts and make it look a little prettier in the future, but for now this is really going well!

The books we are reading this week include: Hand Hand Fingers Thumb by Al Perkins, Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina, Curious George by H.A. Rey, Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann, Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed and Five Little Monkeys Wash the Car by Eileen Christelow, and Monkey See, Monkey Do: An Animal Exercise Book for You! by Anita Holsonback with rhymes by Deb Adamson.

Supplemental videos are: Curious George (the movie with Will Ferrell and Drew Barrymore), Curious George cartoons on PBS mornings, The Jungle Book (King Louie), Aladdin (Abu), Dora the Explorer video (Boots lol), The Sky Above from It's A Big Big World (we actually have this one for another unit but there is a monkey in it, so there you go), Blues Clues: Blue Wants to Play a Song Game (in this episode they sing the "five little monkeys jumping on a bed" song), The Proud Family: Monkey Bidness, Jackie Chan Adventures: Monkey a Go Go, My Gym Partner is a Monkey (short Toon Disney cartoon), Bindi the Jungle Girl:Monkeys in the Jungle, and a REALLY funny episode of America's Funniest Home Videos that featured monkeys! We might not watch all of these but it is summer and we are having fun with supplemental videos and Gregg has been finding AWESOME videos on TIVO for us!


So far we have just been having fun reading the books and acting them out a bit (eating bananas while reading, obviously lol). We have talked about the stories as we read them and discuss things like what a cap and peddler are (Caps for Sale), predicting what will happen in the story, and singing the "Five little monkeys jumping in a bed song" repeatedly. We will be making monkey masks later this week and do a few more lessons from BFIAR and HSS (see above for the links to the units on HSS).

The rest of our time has been spent reading a lot of other books because I am gearing up to teach a Preschool Co-op for my Homeschool Association.. Yikes! :-) I am working on the format but since I am leading it, I get to make it the way I want -- which would mean great stories from FIAR and HSS and fun activities! The hard part is picking the best books! I will be posting about all of those plans soon, but if you are in a co-op and have any tips or ideas, or if you wish you were and want to tell me what you think would be great to include, please leave me a comment!

I hope to have some more pictures soon to post from this week and a few that I need to catch up on from the last few months that I have been promising family! :-)

Blessings!

Read More...

Summary only...

The Joy of Parenting. . .

We were having our Father's Day dinner with my parents. . . Gregg was picking up his cell phone to call his step father to wish him a Happy Father's Day when Jordan walked up to him and said, "In your face, Daddy!"

We were shocked, and in shock busted out laughing. (Yes, I know, bad reaction, but where on earth did she get that? I am assuming maybe one of the children in the nursery at church this morning). Anyway, after we collected ourselves, my parents and I told her that even though we laughed because she surprised us, that it was actually bad manners (following up on our manners discussions via Strawberry Shortcake from this week). I told her that it hurts people feelings when you say that and it is rude. I told her to go to Daddy and tell him she was sorry.

Jordan walked up to Gregg and said "I'm sorry Daddy, I was just kidding. PLEASE, in your face?!?!"

Well. . . that is an improvement right? LOL

For what it is worth, Gregg asked her "What do you mean? What about my face?" and she said, " You need to go in." So obviously she has NO CLUE what the expression means, but we definitely have to nip this one in the bud. Ahh, the joys of parenting :-)

Happy Father's Day!

Read More...

Summary only...

Going on a Berry Hunt!

We have had such a BLAST with this unit! Here is a quick recap since our last post on Tuesday!

Wednesday:
This was a light day because Gregg was coming home from a trip to Chicago ( in other words, the house had become a wreck in his absence lol) so we mostly read a lot of our books, watched Strawberry Shortcake, Dora's Berry Hunt and talked more about the different tastes - is this salty, sweet, sour or bitter?

Thursday:
This was an AWESOME day! We woke up and brought Daddy to work, so we got to start our morning with Strawberry Shortcake and her catchy songs during the car ride. They are really learning about manners from this episode, as well as being exposed to the different types of berries, so it is a very successful tag-along in my opinion! We went to the library after dropping Gregg off to get a bunch of videos to use in our upcoming units, including the DVD of Blueberries for Sal to watch again before going on our own blueberry hunt!

Then we decided it was time to make strawberry jam!!! I have never made this -- or any type of jam or anything close -- before, so this was going to be a first for all of us! The girls love cooking so they helped with all of the steps, which we followed exactly from the book. The only problem is that this recipe was actually part of The Berry Book by Gail Gibbons, not a true cookbook, so it was kinda just thrown in -- meaning it didn't give tons of details. So I grabbed a pan and followed along, and wondered why they didn't mention that it would take a couple hours to start to boil.... um, after two hours, and after I added the remaining sugar and looked at the final product, it dawned on me that maybe we used too big a pot!!! Ok, no problem, we had tons of strawberries and better yet -- tons of smaller pots! So we made two more batches, both of which only took about 10-15 total LOL! You can probably tell from the picture the one that is total sugar (after all that time, I am guessing the liquid evaporated? Is this still usable for anything? I didn't have the heart to throw it out since the girls were so happy with everything!) and the ones that were done a little better. A quick taste test before canning was a very delightful surprise -- I expected to make this and only use some of it for some tarts we are making Saturday morning, and throwing the rest away (we aren't jam eaters) BUT I think we may be holding on to this after all!!

After jam, we cleaned up, loaded into the car, picked up Daddy, and we were on our way to Moorehead Blueberry Farm for our own re-enactment of Blueberries for Sal!! ANOTHER FIRST for all of us!

I was worried driving in since the van read the temperature at 90 degrees and we were all in jeans, but it ended up being a very nice and we even caught an occasional breeze :-) The girls dived right in with their buckets and started picking berries like they had been doing this forever. They dropped them in "kaplink, kaplank, kaplunk."

There was a lot of laughter and Jordan kept saying, "This is AWESOME! " and "This is SO much FUN!" So, as you can imagine, I was in Mommy Heaven! Cali was her usual funny and spirited self. She enjoyed picking for awhile and then decided to start entertaining us. First she channeled Little Sal from the story and started eating the berries out of her pail, which I informed her was probably frowned upon since we have to pay for them! Then she decided to dump her pail out (there were only a few in there at that point anyway since she had added hers to Jordan's pail) and put the pail on her head! That girl is so super silly!
They really got into picking and didn't want to stop! I was so proud of them and I definitely think we will be making this a regular family tradition. We also enjoyed talking about all of the fun creations we can cook up with the fresh blueberries. . . I love that they love cooking, as that is something that Gregg really enjoys and something that I am learning to really enjoy as well. My wonderful mother-in-law gave me an awesome idea for a blueberry dump cake, which turned out amazing, and of course there are the blueberry pancakes and blueberry muffins option, but if you have any yummy recipes to share, I would love to get them!

While we were there, our girls made some friends. . . like they do EVERYWHERE they go! Jordan loved pointing out where the blueberries were and "helping" the little girl pick blueberries, although the girl was a year or two older and didn't really need any help lol. But they all had a blast showing each other their buckets and congratulating each other for doing such a great job :-)

Finally it was time to go. . . it was getting late and we still had to eat dinner. We ended up picking just over 3 pounds of blueberries! Not bad for a short excursion and our first time!

We picked up a yummy (and cheap) Wendy's dinner and had a car picnic while watching Blueberries for Sal and Strawberry Shortcake.

Friday and Saturday:
We have been having a fun and relaxing weekend. We went to the movies to see Kung Fu Panda and came home to watch the free movies we are taping off of the wonderful Directv Free Preview weekend for ALL of the Premium Channels. You know you are a homeschool dork when you get excited about all of the educational programming and supplemental movies coming on that we can use in the future lol!

Friday night we made a Blueberry Dump Cake and Saturday morning the girls and I made strawberry jam tarts! Yes, it has been a very successful and fun week!

Here are a few more pictures from our Berry Hunt:

And, I'm spent!

Read More...

Summary only...

Continuing down the Berry Trail

I love homeschooling! I love the flexibility and the ability to go with the lessons that God brings across our path. :-)

After a lot of cuddling this morning, the girls asked to go play outside. Since it was still early (in other words, not AS hot as it normally is) and it looked as though it would rain later, we decided to go play in the hot Texan heat. The girls had fun on the swings, watering their pretend gardens and bringing me their nature finds, while I read a bit more in Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home by Elizabeth Foss. This book is SOOOO Good!!! After awhile, we all decided it was time to go back into the A/C!

We then drove to our handy dandy drive-thru library to pick up a new title for our Berry/Jam week, Bread and Jam for Frances. This is the fourth book that I have gotten that ended up being one of those "big books" that publishers put out for classrooms to try to recreate the home setting of sitting on someone's lap. . . The girls love these books because they are different (although there is definitely a challenge in turning these huge pages when you actually do have little ones on your lap!) but they are definitely not drive-thru friendly! They are way too big for the little slide window thing they have, which is similar to a teller window at a bank. I wish they had a different code or something that let me know ahead of time the format the book will be, but luckily the librarians know me by now -- I am the crazy homeschooling lady who picks up at least 10 books on most trips -- so they just laugh and run out to bring it to the car. Oh well. . . like I said, the girls do love these books, so it is worth the extra bit of hassle :-)

Once we got back home, we immediately cuddled up and read our new book along with Jamberry and The Giant Jam Sandwich. We talked more about rhyme and we did the tracking exercises the HSS unit study recommends -- the characters in Jamberry are wearing hats or at least have them on every page, and it is a good pre-reading skill to look for the hats on each page.

We ate some more berries for lunch and watched a Dora the Explorer episode on Berry Hunting that my wonderful husband found on TIVO for me! I always forget to do that but he made wishlists for "berry," "jam," and "jelly" and set all the good options to record. He is such a good homeschooling Daddy :-) We then planned on making Strawberry Jam but we noticed the sky getting really dark and you could hear the wind blowing hard. I could tell the girls were interested, so I decided to go with that!

We pulled up all the blinds and sat in quiet listening and watching the storm outside our window. Until it started coming down hard, we pushed the window up as well so we could feel the wind, too. It was fun talking about the wind, thunder and lightning, and we had a really good discussion on why rain is actually a gift from God. All the songs they hear and know are things like "rain rain go away, come again another day," so they started to sing that before I told them that rain is actually a really good thing! We talked about all of the benefits of rain and how it is one more way that God takes care of us. It was one of those really good homeschooling moments, you know? It wasn't planned but it was fun, gentle learning together and a nice memory.

A little later, we decided to watch Magic School Bus. This weekend, Gregg and I went through and recorded all the episodes we had on TIVO and made a list of them all. There are 55 episodes in all, and we (now) have 46! We all love these shows so much, and I plan on making it the bulk of our science curriculum for the next few years, along with the applied science in all of our unit studies. ANYWAY, wouldn't you know that today's episode was on the weather! It was about how the town really needed a rain storm and they all hopped on the bus to learn how weather happens.... all about wind and rain! Isn't it so cool how things work out sometimes? :-)

The rest of the day was just fun. We cuddled, tickled and talked a lot, we watched an episode of Between the Lions about Popcorn, and we made and ate our own popcorn. So maybe it didn't fit all my well laid out plans for the unit study, but we definitely still learned about berries and jam, had fun with rhyming and other lessons in the unit, and then took a totally unexpected rabbit trail! I hope that I am always able to see these opportunities as good things, and not interruptions or worse, not even think about the learning potential in the LIFE happening around us, instead focusing only on what is on my lesson plan. Everyday life truly has so much learning potential for all of us if we embrace it!

Read More...

Summary only...

Visit me at Proverbs 31 Ministries Blog!

Please visit the Proverbs 31 Ministries Everyday Life section. . . scroll to the bottom and you will see my tribute post to my amazing father Crawling into the lap of Love, A Tribute to Fathers!

I am married to a devoted father, was raised by a wonderful father and am the daughter of the ultimate Father. . . I am truly, truly blessed! Please visit Proverbs31, read my contribution and be blessed by the MANY MANY other contributions there. . . they are such an amazing Ministry!

He he, this is fun!

Read More...

Summary only...

Adventures in Berryland

Our week with Berries started this morning! This was my first time setting the stage for our week of learning by placing all of the books we will be using out in a nice arrangement. I will get better at this as I get used to it. . . including having the girls dressed before they come down so the pictures come out a little better, ha! :-)

But the girls noticed the books immediately and were really excited -- even though they had already seen these books when I brought them home from the library! There really is something to the whole arrangement thing!

They started reading the books to themselves and after I snapped a ton of pictures, we cuddled on the sofa and read them all! We read Jamberry, The Giant Jam Sandwich, Blueberries for Sal, The Berry Book and The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear. We also read Father Bear's Special Day, which is about Father's Day, and a couple stories in The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury that I managed to fit with our theme (we just checked this book out and are loving it!)

After we read the stories, several of which were read multiple times, we then decided to try some berries! We had purchased a few different types of berries at the store yesterday -- Strawberries, Blackberries and dried Cranberries (not quite the same as fresh but hey it is better than nothing). We didn't get Blueberries because we are picking a bunch of those Thursday evening! So we sat down and tried them. . . Cali loves her Strawberries and has decided it is still her favorite, whereas Jordan has a new favorite -- Blackberries (good thing, too, because I'm not such a fan lol).

After having fun with that for a bit, I told them that the berries were sweet and that there were other tastes as well -- salty, sour and bitter. So I got out a potato chip and had them lick it to taste the salt... they did very well with this and were patient until I told them they could go ahead and EAT the potato chip, too! Then we tried a berry again for sweet. Then came unsweetened chocolate for bitter -- YUCK! They both did better than me, I ran to the sink to spit it out while I was trying to get us all something to drink. . . Jordan just sat there with a pained look on her face until she got some juice, LOL! Then we got out the lemon for sour. Jordan loves lemons, but her favorite was sweet with the berries. Cali's favorite was salty with the potato chip.

For lunch we made Blueberry muffins... not quite the same as fresh berries, but we will have those later this week. After lunch, we watched a Strawberry Shortcake DVD that has all the berries in it and has a fun lesson on the importance of good manners, which Jordan has been repeating all afternoon! We also have had fun talking about rhyme and making up words -- in Jamberry, the author adds the word "berry" to many words : hatberry, basketberry, etc; So we have come up with bedberry, petberry, Mommyberry, blanketberry, bathberry, whaleberry -- as in her whale floaty toy for the pool that has now become like a not-so-imaginary friend!-- and more!

It has been a lot of fun today and they really remembered the different tastes. Later in the day, Cali asked for a strawberry and after I gave her one, she asked for "sour", pointing to the lemon! A few hours later, Jordan said she wanted sweet (meaning she wanted some more berries) and Cali asked for salt (wanting some more chips). Fun and learning with food!

Tomorrow we will be making Strawberry Jam! Not sure how this will go since I have never done this before but I have a recipe that was in the back of The Berry Book and some canning jars, so we shall see :-)

Read More...

Summary only...

My own Cinderellas

I have been sitting here blessed beyond measure while the girls watch their favorite show Word Girl. I checked the FIAR boards to catch up on the latest posts and saw a comment about Steven Curtis Chapman's family.

As many of you know, this gifted artist and his family is suffering an unspeakable tragedy as they try to make sense of the death of their five year old Maria. Maria was one of two inspirations behind his popular song Cinderella and while I have been reading stories of this family, I have been blessed -- blessed to see how this family loves their Lord and how they are handling this tragedy in light of their intense faith, and blessed because tragedies like these only help you to realize how fragile life really is, and how possible it is for one of my own Cinderellas to be taken from me in an instant.

Since these posts have blessed me the last thirty minutes, I wanted to link to them here for anyone else who might be interested in learning more about this amazing family and to send their condolences.

The first is a blog by Kerry Hasenbalg, who is in ministry at Shaohannah's Hope with the Chapman family. She has several posts about her own tragic loss in January, how the Chapman family comforted her then and how she was able to use her suffering and the words of healing they gave her then to attempt to comfort them now. Warning -- get out your Kleenex. . .the post entitled A Weekend Remembering Maria, and reading about the whole "shoeless" thing really got me.

The second is the Shaohannah's Hope website, where you can learn more about Maria, whom they adopted from China four years ago, the same birth country of Shaohannah and Stevey Joy, whom the Chapman family had adopted previously. The mission of Shaohannah's Hope is listed on the top of the page, "mobilizing the Body of Christ to care for orphans." On the site, they have an entire section called "Remembering Maria" that shows pictures from the memorial service, tells her story, and has a link to donate to Maria's Miracle Fund, which is what the family is asking for in lieu of flowers.

And finally, from that site they link you to a blog that was set up for condolences for the family and shows an adorable video of Steven singing and washing dishes with Maria. She was truly a beautiful little girl!

May you all be blessed and hug your own little ones a little tighter! They are the most amazing gifts from God, aren't they?

Read More...

Summary only...

The Men have taken over Heart of the Matter!

The men have hijacked Heart of the Matter :-) In honor of Father's Day this weekend, the women have been given a week off (hmm, that sounds a bit odd lol) and we will be blessed with tons of articles from terrific homeschooling dads! Some are very well known, some are published authors and company owners, and others (like my amazing husband) are Heart of the Matter husbands!!

Every day there will be a giveaway as well, so you don't want to miss reading this week! It will truly give you a glimpse into the HEART of our wonderful husbands and fathers, and give us a chance to win some really cool additional Father's Day gifts (you know, in addition to the adorable handmade arts and crafts!)

Today, Chuck Black (owner of Perfect Praise Publishing and author of the Kingdom series) has given us a real treat with a wonderful look at A Father's Manner of Love. We also have a really fun contest to win a COMPLETE SET of the Kingdom Series!

I will continue to keep you posted on the fun happening over there. And don't forget to read this month's edition of Heart of the Matter Magazine, hot off the press!

Read More...

Summary only...

June Edition of HOTM is up!!!

Be sure to check out this month's edition of Heart of the Matter! I have two contributions this month. . . an original article for this edition Planning our Preschool and they also included my post from last week Do You Know My Friend Worry? :-)

Gregg will also have an article up on the Heart of the Matter blog soon. . . and it is REALLY good! I will let you know when it is up!

Read More...

Summary only...

Our June Units, and Fish Out of Water in Review

Good Morning! I LOVE Fridays, don't you? :-)

So I have told you our plans for all of next year, and our book list for the rest of this year. As I mentioned before, our plan is to take our book list for this year and pick 4 or 5 books and/or units for the month ahead. I am not really assigning them to a particular week in the month, unless there is a holiday that warrants it. I am going to gather all of my resources the month before and then let the girls pick each week what unit they want to cover next!

For June, we are going to have fun learning about:

• Fish out of Water
• Berries/Jam (Jamberry, Giant Jam Sandwich and Blueberries for Sal and MANY others)
• Caterpillars and Butterflies (many different resources)
• Monkeys with Caps for Sale and Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb
• Bees (lots of resources here, too).

I will do a Week in Review for each unit, letting you know the books we read and the activities we did. This week we "Rowed" Fish Out of Water! This book is SO Cute! I was a little worried when I first picked it up from the library, as it has 63 pages. The book has big pictures on each page with the type, though, so the story looks a lot longer than it really is. And I was happily surprised to see that both of my girls (2 and 3) sat completely still throughout the reading, and subsequent readings since they ALWAYS ask me to "read it again!"

For those of you who don't know, this was written by Helen Palmer and illustrated by P.D. Eastman in 1961. It is a story about a boy who gets a new fish that he names Otto, and what happens when he doesn't listen to the pet store owner and ends up feeding the fish "Too Much!" The girls love this story and Jordan has been telling animated narrations all week, sometimes adding her own twists and explanations for the happenings in the story. In the beginning of the week, she told us stories about her own fish (this would be a pretend fish as we do not have one yet) and how she took care of it. Now she has added a name, Buster (yeah, Buster the fish!) and has given me and Daddy our own fish as well!

For our lessons, we have used Homeschool Share's Unit and I also combined that with Christian Preschool Printable's unit on Fishers of Men. Monday was a busy day and we weren't able to actually pick up the book until mid-day from the library, so basically we just read the story a few times. That night for bedtime, we read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. On Tuesday we snuggled on the sofa and watched Chicken Little. I was hoping they would pick a movie with fish in it, but imagine my surprise when I saw one of the characters -- Fish out of Water!!! I had totally forgot about him! I didn't push that really, but mentioned it and that was enough for me :-) We also read the story several times. We talked about why you shouldn't feed a fish too much, and what parts of the story were real and which parts were pretend. We went in the pool and pretended to swim like fish. We also read the story about Jesus calling his disciples to be Fishers of Men, colored pages illustrating this story, and discussed it a bit.

On Wednesday, we read a few more supplemental books that we have: Ocean Wonders (a tab book), Little Mermaid and Officer Buckle and Gloria (a story about a police officer and his dog partner. In Fish out of Water, a policeman comes to help the little boy). We snuggled on the sofa and watched Little Mermaid. We then got out the fish diagram and labeled the gills, fins, scales, eye and mouth. We talked about how a fish is different than a human (breathing through their gills instead of lungs). Then we had a fun math lesson with Goldfish crackers! In the beginning of the story are 12 fish. . . so we talked about what a dozen means, and then we counted out twelve fish for each girl. We called it a dozen. Then we had fun with subtraction, finding out how many were left after they ate one. They thought this was a lot of fun! That night, I gave them each a dozen kisses (thanks Jocelyn!)

Thursday was a busy day -- we went to the Used Book Sale at our local conference downtown. On the way, we watched Little Nemo in the car! When we got back home, we had a lot of fun reading tons of books, both ones I purchased and new ones we had picked up from the library on the drive home (I love that drive thru window at the library!). We then read Fish Out of Water again and talked about Rhyme. We used the HSS lapbook component for rhyming "Fish" and I came up with "Dish" and Jordan came up with "Wish." That was all we could think of, so then we had fun rhyming the word "Bat." Jordan came up with "That," "Cat," "Mat," and "Sat," and Mommy added "Fat," "Hat," and "Rat." We also read Swimmy from the 20th Century Children's Treasury. (Fun note about that book -- they have Chica Chica Boom Boom in there! We haven't read that book since last October, but BOTH girls remembered it! They LOVE this story!!)

Today we will talk a bit more about Community Helpers (a fireman and a police officer are in the story) The girls both know their full names, address and phone number, which I had put to song before, but we will fill that in the HSS lapbook component as well. We will talk about 911 and when to call, and maybe post information near the phone in case the girls HAVE to call one day. Tonight we are planning on trying out the new Whole Wheat pizza at Papa John's and checking out Veggie Tale's Jonah!

This weekend I hope to maybe come up with a fire escape plan and practice it, but if we don't, we will revisit this topic in the coming months with Chair for My Mother. Another topic to be discussed was the food groups, and how much is "too much" for us. I left this out because this will fit in nicely with our Food unit on Berries and Jam we are going to do next week (I gave the girls the choice yesterday and that is what they decided!)

This weekend will be a busy one, so I might not post again until Monday. . . Have a WONDERFUL weekend!!!

Read More...

Summary only...

HOTM Review: The Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories

Can I just tell you how excited I was to review The Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories? As mom to two preschool princesses/future ballerinas, this book was a perfect fit for us! What I love the MOST is that it truly can grow with your child. Confidently, I can share with you my opinion for the preschool set, as this is my experience, but I cannot imagine any girl who would not fall in love with this book!

My daughters, at the ages of two and three, immediately fell in love with the beautiful artwork. So did I! The cover greets you with a lovely ballerina surrounded by delicate pink roses, posing in front of a castle that is the picture of every fairy tale you have ever read. The pages inside are full of both half-page and full-page photos that are simply breathtaking in detail, color, movement and design. We also loved the lyrical tone of the stories themselves, written by Jane Yolen and Heidi E. Y. Stemple. They serve as perfect read aloud choices for this age group and above.

The ballets highlighted in this anthology are: Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty; Delibes’ Coppelia; Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and The Nutcracker; Prokofiev’s Cinderella; Pickard’s Shim Chung; and Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. By compiling all of these stories into one collection, not only does your child get exposure to some of the most famous ballets in history, but it also provides plenty of fodder for some sneak attack educational opportunities!

As the book jacket promises. . .

To read the rest of this review, and be entered for a chance to WIN a copy of this wonderful book, please visit me at Heart of the Matter Online.

Read More...

Summary only...

HOTM Article: Do You Know My Friend Worry

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Matthew 6:27

Am I doing enough? Am I doing too much? What are they supposed to be learning at this age? Will they be able to get into college? Are we on schedule? Can we get back on track? Am I enough? In my last article, I listed the 8 main stumbling blocks to a joyous homeschool, based on your amazing feedback. These themes were Comparison, Busyness, Health, Worry, Scheduling, Interruptions, Housework and Media. In that article, I focused on the first three of these. As I sat down to expand on the remaining themes, I was hit by an epiphany. Looking over them now, I see that they can all really be boiled down to one simple, nasty five letter word . . . W-O-R-R-Y!

Worry and I are good friends. Even while typing and reflecting on Jesus’ wise words above, I worried about getting lunch ready, the house cleaned, and taking too long to write this article. What about you? What have you worried about today?

How about your Schedule? Did your day get started when you planned, or did an unexpected interruption sneak up? Did discipline issues or sibling squabbles hijack your well-thought-out Lesson Plans? If so, maybe it is time for a “time out”. . . for all of you! Mommy-to-four Tristan said that for her family, a too rigid schedule can be a major steal joy. “I find when the kids and I get too locked into a schedule and I start saying "We've got to get this done..." and skipping the fun breaks, that is when everyone gets crabby.”

Or maybe you are worried because a particular subject lasted longer than expected, or the kids interrupted read aloud time with a thousand questions every five seconds? This is something that I definitely deal with in our preschool, but I have learned that . . .

To finish reading this article, please visit me at Heart of the Matter Online

Read More...

Summary only...

Themes for 2009

Are you sick of these posts yet? :-) As promised, here are the themes and corresponding books for our 2009 School Year (January - December).

I have not determined how long a theme will last. . . that will be totally delight directed. Also, I have made notations next to the themes in regards to what month would seem to make the most sense BUT this, too, will be determined by delight. If the girls appear to be interested in a particular topic, we will cover that theme then, but if they seem to be open for anything, I can fall back on this somewhat scheduled list! ( I have noticed that often times, their delight is dictated by the theme we are covering. So many things to still expose them to, and there are so many rabbit trails to take within a given theme!)

Again, the majority of these books were listed in FIAR or HSS, so they have corresponding unit studies. Also, at that point I will be supplementing with our Bright Beginnings curriculum, which has so many units that fit perfectly with these themes! I plan to pick and choose between all of the lessons and only cover what fits us best!

Also, throughout the year, we will be adding in extra lapbooks for fun reinforcement of some skills we will be covering (all from HSS, of course) including Counting 1-100, The Grocery Store, Short and Long Vowels, and Poetry.

January
This month we will celebrate Cali's birthday (24), Le Befana (6th), A.A. Milne's Birthday (18) and Chinese New Year(26th). Not sure if we will do a unit for Le Befana or just read some fun picture books (Gregg's family is Italian and I LOVE Italy!)

Ballet Unit: Tchaivovsky, Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, etc; Will probably revisit the Sleeping Beauty Unit I wrote (link in my side bar) and also use the awesome Barefoot Book of Ballet Stories that I reviewed for HOTM (and that I will post here soon!). Will probably also read a few Angelina Ballerina stories, use the tot dance videos we have and get some ballet videos from the library. Possibly go ice skating.

Snow: Snowflake Bentley, Katy and the Big Snow, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Snowy Day. Lots of snow crafts (tips I got from Candace's site- tide detergent to make snowmen, shaving cream/glue for snow pictures, paint with marshmallows and q-tips).

Winnie the Pooh: Not sure exactly what we will do for this, besides getting out our big book of A.A. Milne stories and poems and watching cartoons :-) A. A. Milne's birthday is January 18th, and we will do some sort of unit that week to celebrate.

Chinese New Year: Will revisit our favorite China stories and activities from this past year, probably visit the Imperial Garden in Katy, have a tea party, make lanterns, and tons of fun stuff! We loved our China studies this year! Will definitely pull out Daisy Come Home by Jan Brett and Ping. Round is a Mooncake, while it was not our favorite story of that unit, does discuss the New Year, so we will probably revisit that as well. Will look into the recommendations on Dawn's site: Lanterns and Firecrackers: A Chinese New Year Story and Happy New Year!

February
This month we will celebrate Groundhog Day (2), Valentine's Day (14), Mardi Gras(24) and George Washington's Birthday (22). I am pretty sure I will skip a unit this year on Washington's birthday, but we will talk about it and depending on how the schedule is going, may do a few crafts.

Groundhog Day: I know we will discuss this, just not sure how in detail we will go. Might be a short unit, but I saw the following recommendations on Dawn's site: Goundhog Day!, How Groundhog's Garden Grew, and Groundhog Stays Up Late.

Princesses: Will revisit my Cinderella unit (also has a link in the sidebar), and Candace's awesome Princess Unit at HSS. We will read His Princess, The Duchess Bakes a Cake and the Princess Primer I picked up at the Scholastic book fair I raved about! We will go over the Armor of God and do a lot of crafts and activities based on that, as well as talk about castles and Knights. HSS is about to post an awesome unit on Knights that we might use, as well.

Valentine's Day: Definitely will do Cranberry Valentine and Valentine Bears, May read the following recommendations from Dawn's site: Saint Valentine, Love Is. . ., All for Love, The Best Thing About Valentines, The Very Special Valentine, and Franklin's Valentine's.

Mardi Gras: We had a lot of fun going back home for some family friendly parades this year, so I am hoping we will go to New Orleans. Not sure of any books I will read, but will do a lot of cultural things, eat king cake, crafts with beads and masks.

March
This month we will celebrate St. Patrick's Day (17), Dr. Seuss' Birthday (2), Vivaldi's Birthday (4), National Waffle Day (25) and Make up Your Own Holiday Day (26). I had NEVER heard of the last two before Dawn's list, but I LOVE them, ha! Also, we will be celebrating the birth of my amazing husband and His 30th Birthday!!!

Dr. Seuss Week: HSS has an awesome Multi Book Unit on Dr. Seuss, we will also read Horton Hears a Who (and finally see the movie!), Horton Hatches an Egg, Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, and a few others. We will make and eat crazy food and do a lot of rhyming activities! ALSO, since Vivaldi's Birthday lands in the middle of this fun, we will just work him in :-) Listen to samples of his music and hopefully read a picture book or something... any ideas?

St. Patrick's Day: Big Green Pocketbook, That's What Leprechauns Do, Jack and the Leprechaun, and picture books on St. Patrick and Ireland. Dawn had the following on her site, so I plan to look into these: Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland, St. Patrick's Day, St. Patrick's Day in the Morning, St. Patrick's Day Alphabet. I may extend this to two weeks so we can cover Ireland a bit more. Will possibly read Jamie O'Rourke and the Pooka, and Jamie O' Rourke and the Big Potato. Any other great ideas for Ireland studies?

Rabbits: We love our bunny stories! Also Easter will be on the 12th of April, and I plan to do a couple weeks with that unit so this will be a perfect lead in. We will read our favorite children's story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit along with his cousin Benjamin Bunny, and the Flopsy Bunnies. We will also read Velveteen Rabbit, The Runaway Bunny, Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!, The Little Rabbit and a few Max and Ruby books. Most of these will be repeats but we love them! Depending on interest and ability, we might hit into the Beatrix Potter unit at HSS, or just do a really good row of Peter Rabbit, using the wonderful unit FIAR has. Also, this will most likely be the end of the month, which means Waffle Day and Make Up Your Own Holiday will fall in this unit. So obviously we will be baking waffles and creating a holiday of some sort!

April
This month we will celebrate Palm Sunday (5), Easter (12), Earth Day (22) and Arbor Day (24). It is also National Poetry Month. We will probably work in poetry throughout the month.

Easter: As mentioned, I will most likely extend this study for two weeks. We will cover the The Bunny who Found Easter (by Charlotte Zolotow, one of my favorite authors!), Parable of the Lily, The Easter Story, Legend of the Easter Egg, The Very First Easter, and a few picture books we have around the house. We will do resurrection eggs, look at lilies, get Miss Pattycake's Eggstravaganza and have a lot of fun with candy I am sure.

Rodeo: Ok, my well thought out plans aren't so perfect here. The Houston Livestock and Rodeo Show will be held March 3-22, 2009, BUT the units I have planned for March are all pretty secure. My co-op will most likely get a tour and field trip day during the rodeo, and I guess I can pull on their memories of that lol. I will also probably bring the girls to see horses at a nearby ranch. We will cover Armadillo Rodeo and maybe revisit a few of our favorite books from our Horse Unit that we are doing this year, for example Fritz the Beautiful Horse.

Garden Unit: We will work this in with Earth Day and Arbor Day. We'll discuss recycling and picking up trash and hopefully find the Charlie Brown movie about Arbor Day. We will read the Carrot Seed, Franklin Plants a Tree, Tops and Bottoms, Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots: Gardening Together with Children, From Seed to Plant, and several Magic School Bus Books. We will also watch some Magic School Bus episodes and any other videos I can find on gardening. And, obviously, we will ATTEMPT to garden (I say attempt b/c I am a total novice here and have not had much luck in the past but I am working on it!)

May
This month we will celebrate Mother Goose Day (1) My Birthday (2), Cinco de Mayo (5), Mother's Day (10), and Memorial Day (25). Also, National Police Week occurs this month and I hope to work in some service opportunities with the girls. With the different holidays taking up time with crafts and vacation time, and since I picked such huge themes for this month, we are keeping it to only two themes for May.

Art: I plan on having fun with this and probably extending it for a bit. We will cover both making art and picture study of great artists. Will read Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Art Lesson, Purple Green and Yellow, Billy the Bunny (and do the unit I wrote for HSS), and I am an Artist. We will also pick 1 or 2 Big art books and I hope to get some of those wonderful artists board books. We will do lots of crafts and painting and hopefully some Museum trips.

Zoo: There is so much to do here with lots and lots of rabbit trails! If I ran the Zoo, Put me in the Zoo, Zoo Animals on Strike, Giraffe that Walked to Paris, and Andy and the Lion. We will do the big Multi Book Unit on We're Going to the Zoo at HSS. Obviously, we will take a trip to the zoo. This unit may be extended into a larger unit on animals and we can work in animal classification, visiting a farm, etc.

June/July/August
In June, we will celebrate Father's Day (21) and it is National Outdoors Month. In July, we will celebrate the Fourth of July. For the Summer we will probably do school a bit light. We will focus on Insects and cover the Eric Carle books more in depth, as well as some extras -- maybe the Bee Tree, for example. I hope to take the girls to the beach for a day so we will probably do a unit on that. If it looks like we need more structure and units, I will revisit Candace's site and idea -- she covered the days of Creation, based on the Simply Charlotte Mason book -- for an entire summer and, as always, posted some great ideas! Besides that link, Homeschool Share's yahoo group has amazing ideas for a creation based unit study in the files section!

September
This month we will celebrate Labor Day (7), and National Grandparent's Day (13). Autumn also officially begins this month!

Bears: We love Bears for some reason! There are so many cute books written about these ferocious animals! We will be reading Going on a Bear Hunt, Corduroy, the Jesse Bear series, Pocket for Corduroy, and Ask Mr. Bear. We will also look at the HSS Karma Wilson Multi Book Unit on Bears. This will probably be a multi-week unit. May also trail into Winnie the Pooh stories! :-) Will probably read and have a Teddy Bear Picnic, and learn more about this animal in general.

Music: Will flow nicely after Bears as one of our FAVORITE books is Berlioz the Bear! Will also read Zin Zin Zin a Violin, Meet the Orchestra, and Peter The Wolf. I also hope to get some picture books on a few composers. We will get the Reading Rainbow videos on these books, make our own instruments, and hopefully find some good field trip opportunities. Obviously, we will be listening to a lot of music during this study as well! Will most likely be a multi week unit!

October
This month we will celebrate Columbus Day (13) and Halloween (31). Columbus Day really just gives me an excuse to introduce the topic a bit :-)

Science: We love Magic School Bus here! The girls also like experimenting but I don't feel I get an opportunity to focus on this enough, so my solution is to have a couple weeks devoted to nothing but science! We will read LOTS of Magic School Bus books, watch a lot of their videos, Get the Bernstein Bears Big Book of Science, do lots of easy experiments, get a few picture books on various science topics of interest at the time and maybe do a quick lesson/picture book/activity on each of the major areas of science in an age appropriate way!

Halloween: Yes, we celebrate Halloween. It is fun to dress up and go around, meet the neighbors and get free candy. I don't think I am doing permanent damage to my children letting them experience this, but it is definitely a topic that can get heated and is up to each individual family. We will probably do a multi week unit, covering pumpkins and Halloween. We will read It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, Pumpkin Jack, Angelina's Halloween, The Lonely Scarecrow, Too many Pumpkins, and Pumpkin Soup. *Crystal commented with a wonderful choice, The Pumpkin Patch Parable, by Liz Curtis Higgs, whom I love! Thanks, Crystal! * We also have a few picture books on Halloween that we will read. We will get a pumpkin and carve it and maybe try a few pumpkin recipes. We will also revisit the life cycle of the pumpkin and possibly use it as an excuse to watch Cinderella!

November
This month we celebrate All Saints Day (1), All Souls Day (2), Veterans Day (11), National Homemade Bread Day (17), Jordan's Birthday (22), Thanksgiving (27) and Our Anniversary (28).
I am actually leaving part of this month open intentionally... for any delight directed studies, and some free room for any breaks taken during the year. We will start our Thanksgiving unit the week before Thanksgiving, with all the fun of family coming in town the week of Thanksgiving and the cooking festivities!

Thanksgiving: We will read Cranberry Thanksgiving, Give thanks to the Lord, Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Prayer for a Child, A Turkey for Thanksgiving, The First Thanksgiving: A Counting Story, Franklin's Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day at our House: Poems of the Very young, and a few picture books we have. We will do lots of fall and turkey crafts as well, and of course, lots of cooking and baking!

December
This month we will celebrate Jan Brett's birthday (1), National Cookie Day (4), the beginning of Winter (21), Christmas (24th and 25th) and New Year's (31).

Jan Brett: We will have fun covering all of our favorite Jan Brett books! We will pick and choose from the different units available but mostly just read some great books this week! We will also cover Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett for National Cookie Day!

Cookies: We will revisit our Cookie unit the week after National Cookie Day (this will kick it off). We will cover Honey Cookies, If you Give a Mouse a Cookie, Milk and Cookies, Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar, The Best Mouse Cookie and Yum! A Tale of Two Cookies. We will be baking a lot this week as gifts to give to neighbors and friends.

Christmas: We will be covering Advent throughout the month and maybe the Jesse Tree as well. We will read Polar Express, Night Before Christmas (traditional and Jan Brett version), Polar Express, Legend of the Candy Cane, Cranberry Christmas, Charlie Brown Christmas, The Wild Christmas Reindeer, Clown of God, picture books on Le Befana, and several of the picture books we have around here. ALSO The Cajun Night Before Christmas -- a MUST! We will have a Birthday Party for Jesus and do a few service projects.

WHEW! That is our year! I would LOVE to see any plans that you have, or hear any recommendations you have for books or crafts! :-)

Read More...

Summary only...

June - December 2008 Book List and Unit Study Plans

I recently finished an article for Heart of the Matter's June edition about how I plan for our preschool. Many of the ideas I listed were things that I have talked about on this blog tons of times before, but other ideas are recent editions that I am excited about! Jocelyne and Dawn have both really inspired and re-energized my lesson planning!

Jocelyne gave me the idea of writing all the books down that I wanted to cover and picking loosely from those. I will take one week a month to prepare for the month ahead, choosing the books to cover and pulling lesson ideas together. Dawn has inspired me by her Themes and Plans posts to really incorporate more holidays and celebrating life into our homeschool! As each month comes, I will post about the books I plan to cover, any ideas for lesson plans and the ideas I am using from Dawn's amazing site!

Next year, starting in January, we will follow a theme based schedule. My brain seems to work better that way and it was easy to put together those themes based on my overall book list that I wanted to cover for the next year and a half. The remaining awesome books will be what we read for the rest of the year, June - December 2008. I have roughly planned this out -- just to make sure that the number of books I had left would fit in the number of weeks left -- but, besides this month and November and December (due to the obvious choices that fit better with those holidays), I plan on keeping it loose.

While I have gotten a few from other sources (like the Prep Curriculum book list at Letter of the Week), the majority come from FIAR lists and HSS, which means they have corresponding unit studies. While a few of the book choices are stand alone options, I have learned that I love supplemental tag alongs, so I have included those as well. Also, it should be said that while some of these are in a group with other books, it does not mean this will be the only time we will cover these books. For the FIAR books in particular, I have found that exposing the girls to them and discussing them lightly now works best since they are still a bit young, and then really going over the meaty lessons at a later date.

Here are the wonderful books we will be covering for the rest of 2008 (I will be updating as we go along, and all books that have been read or covered will be highlighted):

• Fish Out of Water (June)
• Jamberry (June)
• Caterpillars and Butterflies Week (I know this isn't a "book" but we have tons of books that we will be using this week and I will list them all then! Also a June study)
• Caps for Sale and Hand, Hand, Fingers Thumb (another June study on Monkeys!)
• Bees! (yes, again, I know this isn't a "book" but we have tons of great books we will be using, along with their love of the Bee Movie and The Magic School Bus episode on making honey! This will finish out our June studies, carrying into July)
• Family Relationships (this was a surprise unit with TONS of books, listed in its own post)
• Rainbow of My Own (they ended up not having this title at my library but we did a multi-week science unit on Rainbows using lots of other resources listed in its own post)
• Katy No Pocket, Wombat Stew, and Does a Kangaroo have a Mother, too
• Beach Week (Tons of books listed in that posting)
• Bedtime for Frances, Sister for Frances
• Olympics/China unit
• Pets Week (This week we will revisit some of our favorite stories from the past and a few new ones on pets -- Angus, Harry the Dirty Dog, Comet's Nine Lives, Three Names, Salamander Room and MANY others)
• Camping Unit (To go along with our family camping trip!)
• Transportation Week (Little Engine that Could, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Mr. Grumpy's Motor Car, The Glorious Flight, Choo Choo The Runaway Engine, Thomas the Train books and using components from the Homeschoolshare Lapbook on Transportation and on Trains!)
• Horses Week (Fritz the Beautiful Horse, Twist and Ernest, Calico the Wonder Horse or the Saga of Stewy Stinker, Old Thunder and Miss Raney, Robert the Rose Horse, The Sleep Ponies)
• Madeline (learn about poetry, human body, how God made us special and France)
• Autumn! Learn about leaves, apples, colors and seasons. The highlight book will be Leaf Man.
• Circus Unit. While there is a lot of books and resources we will use, our "quality literature" book will be Mirette on a High Wire
• Halloween Unit (Angelina's Halloween, The Pumpkin Patch Parable, Too Many Pumpkins, Its a Great Pumpkin and a few other fun books we have in our library)
• Give Thanks to the Lord/ Prayer for a Child (in November to prepare for Thanksgiving)
• Cranberry Thanksgiving (in November to prepare for Thanksgiving)
• How to Make an Apple Pie, The Duchess Bakes a Cake, Cook a Doodle Doo (Cooking Unit around Thanksgiving to incorporate learning into the massive cooking/baking extravaganza!)
• Cookies Unit to use while baking for Christmas gifts (Gingerbread Baby, If you Give a Mouse a Cookie, Honey Cookies, Milk and Cookies, Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar? The Best Mouse Cookie, Yum!: A tale of two cookies)
• Cranberry Christmas, If Jesus Came to My House
• Christmas Unit (Polar Express, Nutcracker, Charlie Brown Christmas, Twas the Night Before Christmas, If Jesus Came to my House, Jan Brett's Night Before Christmas, Legend of the Candy Cane, The Wild Christmas Reindeer)
• Winter and Inuit Unit - Mama do you love me, The Three Snow Bears, Very Last First Time

Next up, I will be posting the Themes I have planned for 2009, along with the book choices. Then I will be done - I think (lol) - with the posts concerning all of my HUGE planning. I will start posting about our Weekly Plans and overall plans for the Month of June!

Read More...

Summary only...

June 2008 - December 2009 Focus Points

I have written down goals for the future, and have written down goals for a subject perhaps, but I have never written out the educational goals that I have for each girl for our school year. I am sure I have seen tons of people do this, but what really inspired me was Tonia's K4 Schedule.

I loved the idea of having OUR family's goals or focus points for the year -- ones that were created by my husband and I -- instead of worrying about following some government or publisher scope and sequence. This is personal. This is what matters to us the most. If by the end of next year, we succeed in these goals, everything else is just the sweet icing on the cake. And, if we don't meet all of these goals. . . that is OK, too. I am not going to use this as a task master, but rather as a check point for myself. How are we doing on these goals? Have they mastered this, but need extra work on that? Have I even provided them opportunity to work on that goal?? Have I been too busy worrying about what is in someone else's Lesson Plan and not focusing on what is truly important to US?

These focus points are probably going to be tweaked (apparently, my new favorite word lol) as the year goes on but I think these are very tangible and realistic goals for us. Next, I guess I need to work on my educational goals for myself! :-)

I will be using FIAR and Homeschool Share lessons throughout. In January, I will be adding Bright Beginnings to our curriculum, picking and choosing from those lessons. At some point, maybe in the next month or so, I plan on purchasing Language Lessons for Little Ones from Queen Homeschool, which you will see noted below. Besides those resources, we will be using materials and resources we already have, some of which I have noted below.

So, for anyone interested in our focus points/educational goals, here they are (Hi, Mom!):

Bible

1. Read through our current Children's Bible (Read with Me Bible, an NIrV Story Bible for Children)
2. Daily Devotional (currently Big Thoughts for Little People by Kenneth Taylor)
3. Christian Children's songs during free play time (e.g., Wee Sing, 102 Bible Songs, Big Steps for Little Feet)
4. Be able to narrate the following stories:

• Adam/Eve
• Noah's Ark
• Joseph (coat of many colors to saving Egypt)
• Moses (baby to 10 Commandments)
• David and Goliath
• Daniel in the Lion's Den
• Esther saves her people
• Jonah and the whale
• Story of Jesus' birth
• Child Jesus in the temple
• Parable of the Good Samaritan
• Parable of the Prodigal Son
• Parable of the Talents

5. Work on scripture memorization (e.g., Hide 'em in your heart CD/DVD, and Bright Beginnings curriculum)

Phonics

1. Letter Recognition/Sound Recognition (Just reinforcement here, as they are both confident in this, thanks to Leap Frog DVDs) (Language Lessons for Little Ones, Leap Frog DVDs, Phonics Games, PBS shows, Bright Beginnings)
2. Simple CVC Words (Language Lessons for Little Ones 2, Flash cards, Phonics game)
3. Dolch sight words (Language Lessons for Little Ones 2, Flash cards)

Language Arts

1. Story Comprehension
2. Oral Narrations (Language Lessons for Little Ones)
3. Simple Dictations to Me -- Creative Writing, Oral narrations, adding new endings to our stories (to keyboard, print, illustrate and put in our notebook) (Mommy created opportunities, FIAR, HSS, Language Lessons for Little Ones 2)
4. Exposure to Poetry (Language Lessons for Little Ones)

Fine Motor/Pre-Writing/Writing

1. Work on scissor skills
2. Lots of opportunities for coloring and drawing
3. Circles, X's, tracing (can do some, but need to work on perfecting) (Language Lessons for Little Ones)
4. Begin learning correct formation of letters (Language Lessons for Little Ones)
5. Lots of Playdough Play!
6. Pouring skills -- Bath tub, pool, kitchen sink and pouring their own drinks
7. Butter knife skills (Peanut Butter and Jelly, fruit, buttering bread)

Math and Logic (this might be tweaked further after reading Ruth Beechick's 3 R's which I just got in!)

1. Measuring (Cooking and Baking) (FIAR Cookbook. . Thanks, Marsha!)
2. Grouping/Sorting (Counting Bears, Sorting M&Ms)
3. Puzzles (We have tons!)
4. Adding/Subtracting small numbers (Bright Beginnings, flash cards, Leap Frog's Math Circus)
5. Skip Counting by 10s and maybe by 5's (We currently have fun beginning this skill by giving "high fives" and "high tens" in a pattern -- 10, 20, 30.... or 5, 10, 5, 20.... The girls CRACK UP!)
6. Counting to 100 (handy dandy wall poster at the back of the 3 R's!)
7. Time -- first to the hour both digital and hand, then half hour (they can do this somewhat. We went over this in our Cinderella unit and found tons of wonderful books at the library as well as fun educational videos! They also have a play clock to manipulate)
8. Calendar skills -- the days of the week, months of the year, how long a week is
9. Money -- tell the coins apart (Bright Beginnings)

Art, Dance and Music

1. Exposure to Classical Music and Composers (Listening during the day, Little Einsteins and Picture books)
2. Review of the instruments (bookmarked interactive Internet sites, Youtube)
3. Playing our own instruments upstairs
4. Looking at Paintings/Pictures/Art (Language Lessons for Little Ones)
5. Occasionally talking about what the characters in the art are feeling, dressed like, Medium used (Language Lessons for Little Ones, FIAR, HSS, Questions listed in the Sonlight Core B schedule posted in the yahoo group)
6. Watching different styles of dance, ice skating, gymnastics, etc (ESPN, Field Trips, library videos)

Science

1. Nature explorations (Neighborhood, park days, Monthly Nature Group)
2. Basic gardening (watering the tree, planting herbs, etc)
3. Magic School Bus episodes/videos/books
4. Easy Experiments
5. Hygiene -- Brushing teeth twice a day, washing hands, bathing themselves, potty training, getting dressed (self created, Bright Beginnings, HSS)
6. Cooking

Geography

1. Continue to discuss the countries the characters live in (FIAR/HSS)
2. Discuss fun facts about those countries and basic words from the languages (FIAR, HSS, Galloping the Globe Resources, Children Like Me, Cultures)
3. Finding countries on a map or globe

Social Studies and Civic Responsibility

1. Basics that are covered in the FIAR and HSS lessons
2. Sibling relationships -- sharing, importance of service to each other (HSS, FIAR, self created)
3. Family relationships -- Who our family is, Family Tree, Chores (cleaning room, making bed, picking up toys, dishes in sink, helping mommy and daddy) (you could add knowing your address and telephone number here but they know that)
4. Service/Community Helpers (self created)
5. Manners -- Please, thank you, ma'am, sir, first time obedience, waiting your turn, sharing, quiet when others are speaking, telephone skills
6. FPU Junior Stories

Spanish

1. Focus on the words in our Spanish picture book, a page until mastery
2. Fun Spanish videos at the library (they LOVE Hola, Amigos!)

Read More...

Summary only...

Trusting My Instincts

Our girls are 14 months apart. In November of 2008, Jordan will turn 4, and in January of 2009, Cali will turn 3. Since they are so close in age, I plan on keeping them together for all subjects, unless one develops a particular unique interest or is developmentally ready for something before the other (for example, Reading instruction, although both are doing amazing thanks to Leap Frog videos!).

We have been using a year round schooling model and plan on continuing as such, taking breaks as needed and for holidays. Since we will school year round, a starting and ending point for the year can be hard to determine. I could start in August or September, following a public school model, but since the rest of our lives are based around the calendar year, that is what we will use as our school year as well (January - December).

Even though our next school year will not technically start for another six months, we have been schooling pretty much non-stop for over nine months. Mommy was needing a break for a couple weeks to get recharged and put my changing thoughts regarding the girls education on paper. When we first realized we were being called to home educate our children, I was swayed by several different educational approaches. Looking back, I acted as though I had something to prove, like "I can do this" so I put way too much emphasis on academics in the early years. I don't think the girls or outsiders would be able to really tell the difference between my approach then and today, but it was definitely an inward pressure I put upon myself. Now that we have been doing this for well over a year, and I have been exposed to and read so many wonderful books and educational philosophies, I have been able to better identify my educational approach.

I realize this approach can change in the way it is implemented through the years, and that my personal approach might not end up being the best fit for my children -- and I am OK with tweaking and revisiting ideas as the years go by -- but right now I am feeling more confident in my abilities and my plans. The books and people that have most influenced me and helped me to realize my own beliefs and thoughts are: Cindy Rushton, Ruth Beechick, Robin Sampson, Elizabeth Foss, Katrina Kenison, Ami Brainerd, Loree Pettit, the Lamberts, and of course, Charlotte Mason!

Words and Phrases like "living books," "love of learning," "whole language," "read alouds," "narration," "copywork," "dictation," "notebooking," "nature study," "picture study" and "composer study" are all things I had never really heard about before, yet they have all captured my heart. I have a vision of what I want our educational experience to be -- I can say "OUR" educational experience because I love that I am learning right along side my girls, even at the preschool age!! I have learned so much from Magic School Bus, Homeschool Share and Five in a Row in the past year, and it truly excites me about the future!

I just finished reading The Language Wars and Other Writings for Homeschoolers by Ruth Beechick and am eagerly diving into Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home by Elizabeth Foss. I am being inspired and learning to believe in myself and the ideas that I have, beliefs that I have been fighting because they don't feel like the traditional schooling that I remember as a child. . . But then again, why should it? I have the ability to customize my children's education, to draw on all the MANY resources out there and provide for them the education that I wish I had experienced and could have had if my poor teachers hadn't had to worry about 30 other kids as well. To instill a love of learning that will hopefully last a lifetime. . . a love of books, a love of family, and a love of God. Our role as homeschooling parents is indeed a MIGHTY one, one that will require much prayer and faith to accomplish, but one that will be so worth it in the end!

Next up, I am going to be posting our Preschool Plans for the rest of this year and for the 2009 school year, as well as our family's educational goals for the year. :-)

Read More...

Summary only...