Keep the Way: Homeschool Happenings

Showing posts with label Homeschool Happenings. Show all posts

Friday, March 4, 2011

The Pilgrims Have Landed

It has been another wonderful week of learning this week at the whole Keep the Way Christian Academy household. The main topics of the week were: Jesus the Light of the World, Mayflower and Pilgrims and Stars.

Two weeks ago we went to Austin for an impromptu mini-vacation, and while we were there, we went into a Borders store that was sadly closing. The good news is that we were able to get some good books, including new curriculum for Handwriting and Spelling! If you remember from previous weeks, Spelling has been my all time biggest failure this year, as far as consistency goes. Well that problem is now fixed and we are really loving our new approach!

Here is how the rest of the week broke down:
Breakfast Time Table Talk:

We are still focusing on our first Memory Verse, John 8:12. The girls have had it memorized from week one, but we are following the curriculum as provided in regards to this and just really working on internalizing it.
During Character Training, via the book EVERYDAY GRACES, we read about the life of Louisa May Alcott, poems by Blance Bane Kuder and Florence Bone, and tales from Aesop and Hans Christian Anderson. The theme is Loving Your Home and I just continue to adore this time together. Love love love this book!

School Room Topics:

History:

The Pilgrims have landed! This week we have discussed the Pilgrims in depth, reading through THE STORY OF THE U.S as well as AMERICAN PIONEERS AND PATRIOTS. Their entire history from London, to Holland, through the hard journey across the ocean on the Mayflower, to the rough beginnings once they landed has been discussed and acted out. They also each dictated a summary for their Notebooks.
This is Jordan's notebook page: Once Squanto helped the Pilgrims make plants grow faster by putting a dying fish in the hole next to the seeds. Then when he was dying, he asked everyone to pray so he could go to heaven.
This is Cali's notebook page: Pilgrims came from England on a boat named the Mayflower. When they got to America, they planted corn. They put a dying fish next to the seed. Squanto came and they had a feast.
I should explain the dying fish comment they both made. Apparently they were taught to put a fish next to the seeds while planting, but I am sure it was a regular fish at the time--I don't really know. But both girls faces automatically went a little traumatic at the idea of being buried alive so I told them they were dying and then it was suddenly okay.

Handwriting:

Because of their age, I really wanted to focus on fundamentals and slowing things down a bit here. I think we will go with a curriculum next but for now we are using Kumon workbooks and the girls are loving it. Can't beat them being excited and asking for more pages, right?

Creative Writing:

For Cali, I realized that we had come up with all the parts of her paragraph for her recollection paragraph before on Mississippi, but never actually wrote it. So we started the week doing that, and then moved into our new topic.
This is Cali's paragraph: I had fun being with my family in the woods in Mississippi. I went on the four-wheeler with Paran David and went through a sprinkler. I went through it more than one time! The water got on my head and when I got back, Paran David said I looked like I went into a swimming pool! And I went into the woods with Nanny Donna and saw a bunny. It was light brown, and he stayed with us for awhile by the bush, but then he ran off because he was afraid. During the day, Hayley, Jordan, and I had a pretend camp out! We watched movies and we ate marshmallows! I got to give my family really big hugs. I liked being in Mississippi!
The rest of the week was spent discussing the Parts of a Story (plot, setting, characters, and conflict). As I am sure you know, I loved this lesson and we had fun breaking down The Three Little Pigs together, and then she did Cinderella on her own. This was a lot of fun.
For Jordan, we worked on adding detail to our sentences, in particular in how things move. Examples she came up with was prowling casually, crawling sluggishly, and creeping.
Then Jordan dictated a paragraph to me with the leading line, "I wish I could go to . . ." I was very impressed not only with her three points, but the detail she put into them!
Here is Jordan's paragraph: I wish I could go to a hockey game. The best part of hockey is it has ice skates. The very, very, very super cool part is when they try to get the puck away from the goalie and into the goal! It's like they're trying to get a Princess into a castle and past the ogre! Hockey has action, excitement, and surprise. Action appears when they try to get the puck paste the other team. The excitement is when we can see if they get hurt and fall on their bottom when they are first learners or professionals who win the game. And we don't know who will win, so the surprise appears when we find out who will win. When you go to a hockey game, it's like you are watching a movie, but you are in the movie!
For the record, we've never been to a hockey game, but apparently we need to! Jordan has also been creating more and more poems that we are planning on putting together and putting up on Barnes and Noble's self publishing format.

Spelling:

Woo hoo, no more hiding my head in the sand! Both girls are enjoying their new workbooks. Cali is using Grade One in the Master Skills Series and Jordan is using Spectrum's Grade 2. For Jordan we could have easily gone to Grade 3 but some of the activities they did with the words were a little more advanced considering her age (6) and we wanted to give her some confidence going into this new curriculum. For Cali (age 5), this grade level is perfect. Very happy here!!

Reading:

Jordan finished ahead of schedule reading RIDING THE PONY EXPRESS. She reads on her own, comes to discuss it with me, and comprehends beautifully.
Cali is moving along with reading through the Bible and gaining confidence daily. She reads quite fast and I continue to be impressed.

Read Alouds:

We finished SQUANTO, FRIEND OF THE PILGRIMS this week. The girls loved this story and I loved that it was a great first autobiography and worked so well with our History.

Math:

Since we had hit a wall at this point, the 2 facts, the last time we did this curriculum, I decided to just take a week reviewing what we have done and doing math games. It has been fun and we shall see what next week brings!

Science:

The girls loved learning more about constellations, galaxies, and particular stars this week. Next week we move onto Bread and Yeast experiments.

So that is how our school week went. How about yours?

Have a Great Weekend!

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Why I love Homeschooling (aka Week 4)

Yes, I am aware that it has been three weeks since the last post and only one week in our homeschool curriculum. Isn't homeschooling wonderful? :-)

Two weeks ago the Houston area was below freezing more days than not, and in the middle of our homeschooling week, the energy company decided it would be a great time to do rolling black outs in freezing temperatures. After the 3rd time the power went off in the same hour, we packed some goodies and hiked across the yard to my parent's house with the lovely generator. Now, freezing temperatures, power outages and hanging out at MamaRosie and Crawdaddy's house is just way too exciting to get school work done, so we took the day off. The next day was just as cold and we all started feeling a little icky so we took the next day off.

Last week I (aka the teacher) was sick as a dog. I literally stayed in bed almost all day for most of the week with two wonderful little nurses. Of course, education is a lifestyle for us, so learning moments were constantly being worked in, but we took the week off the curriculum all last week, too.

This week was a half week since our curriculum is set up in 4 day blocks, starting Monday on Day 3 would just confuse everything. So the girls did a lot of reading (and playing Nintendo DS) while I got some writing done, and then we picked things back up on Wednesday.

All that to say, we had another wonderful week in our homeschool, even though there was some lag time in between. :-) And we are all excited to have a belated Valentine's Day Fancy Friday with our homeschool friends tomorrow where we will be doing crafts and having goodies!

Breakfast Time Table Talk:

Bible time had us beginning memorizing our first Memory Verse for the year. John 8:12- "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
We read Exodus 13:21-22 and Nehemiah 9:7-12 where God led His people through the wilderness with a pillar of fire at night, and we discussed how Darkness can never overcome light. Today, we made switch plate covers that say "Jesus is the light of the world."
Our Character Training with the book EVERYDAY GRACES is centering on sibling relationships and the importance of getting along with each other . . . which I am all about! It could be a coincidence but I have seen a marked improvement in their play time in enjoying each other's company more, so thank you Everyday Graces!
Our Manners Devotional is still going well. We've talked more about greeting and what to do when others are handicapped (and I was glad to have this opportunity to talk about sensitivity with this subject) or have a cold and can't shake your hand (very important right about now!).

School Room Topics:

History:

North American Indians has been the theme of the week and we have learned about the various tribes, home styles and hunting habits, along with Native American sign language. We are continuing with our Squanto read aloud and the girls are really engaged in his story. Very, very pleased with My Father's World so far!
We also got some library books on this topic and by far, their favorite was THE ROUGH-FACE GIRL by Rafe Martin, which is a retelling of the Cinderella story. Out of all the retellings we've read, this may be my favorite!

Handwriting:

We have finished the alphabet a letter at a time and I am right now debating on whether to start it back up again for reinforcements, look for handwriting books that break it down more, or continue back with tracing copywork. But they are both doing very well.

Creative Writing:

Cali's assignment this week was on Field Trips. She wanted to write about her field trip to Mississippi where she got to visit her Nanny Donna, Paran David and Taylor and Hayley. Highlights of her paragraph include riding the four wheeler with Nanny Donna and spotting a rabbit, riding with Paran David and going through the sprinkler, pretending to be on a campout with Hayley in Nanny's room, and being able to hug her family. (cute, right?) I am continuing to notice a big jump in Cali's ability to tell complete sentences and thoughts and her creativity, and my goodness does she have a memory on her!
Jordan's writing took another step this week. First we talked about strong vocabulary and using better verbs--a HUGE topic for me with my writing. We talked about how it is "okay" to say you walked to the mailbox to get a package but what else could you say that would be more interesting, and other scenarios. She did excellent with this and came up with "flying to the mailbox," "sleepwalking home" after a boring event, and "racing to a friend's house." Then with paragraph work, we took last week's assignments and first made them into complete sentences. This could have been really easy if I followed directions or even just said "Oh, she's six, let me just write what she says," but I know what she can do so I wanted to challenge her. I taught her how you should mix up your sentences to add variety, not simply have every one be, " I like this because . . ." At first, she gave a little push back but after explaining it a bit more, she started smiling and came up with very exciting, interesting sentences. I was very proud. The next step was putting those sentences into a paragraph. I am enjoying this style of breaking down the paragraphs as I think it makes each step very clear. Very pleased with Sonlight for both girls.

Spelling:

(Hiding head in sand) I have found my weak link. The hard part is that one of them works best on the computer but doing that during school time slows things down with both of them wanting to be online at the same time, and after school I need to be online for my writing. No excuses, this is my failure . . . for the second week in a row. Obviously I have some work to do here!

Reading:

Jordan is a week ahead of schedule, so I let her read on her own this week. She is a very good reader and read Highlights, Animorphs and some Science books on stars this week.
Cali is still loving reading the Bible and one day ended up reading the story about the God leading his people with a pillar of fire at night, so it tied in beautifully!

Read Alouds:

Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims is our main read aloud right now during the day and our bedtime book is still Fairies and the Quest for Neverland.

Math:

Another easy, almost review week for the girls where we learned the "zero" addition facts. Now a year and a half or two years ago when I started this curriculum with Jordan, we went about one more week and then hit a wall at the "2 facts." So we shall see what the future brings, but for now, it is going great.

Science:

We got a ton of library books on stars, constellations and the sun and read them this week. The girls have always loved astronomy so this was perfect. Our plan is to go outside on a clear night either tonight or this weekend and star gaze.

So that is how our school week went. How about yours?

Have a Great Weekend!

Friday, January 28, 2011

Another Week Down, Thirty-Three Left To Go :-)

Week Three is in the books for our mostly-second-grade adventure, and things are still going beautifully. The literature based approach just fits our family dynamic and passions so well, and the books that make up the My Father's World and Sonlight curriculum are not only beautifully written and engaging, but have the girls excited to do school. And I'm sorry, that is just worth the price of admission right there :-)

So, here is this week's Bloggy Breakdown (anyone watch Tosh.o and see his video breakdowns? No? Never mind . . .)

Breakfast Time Table Talk:

Bible time centered on three main topics this week---Jesus Saves, Living Like Jesus and Jesus as a Child. We talked about WWJD (what would Jesus do) in everyday moments and now bring it up throughout the day when problems arise, and our discussions on Jesus as a child blended beautifully with our Character Training this week on obeying our parents (Luke 2:51-52)
Our Character Training with the book EVERYDAY GRACES could not be going any better. They love the literature selections chosen to correspond with the topic and have great discussions afterward. They are getting exposure to classic literature I would normally never read at this age, yet they are grasping the material, and the poetry selections this past week by Jack Prelutsky have even inspired Jordan to write her own poem!

Why is everything so expensive?
Everything looks so nice.
The lolly pop aisle in the corner,
Is only half the price.
And in the other corner,
There's only frozen pizza pies.
Why is everything so expensive?
I simply don't know why!
By Jordan Harris age 6

Ha! She keeps asking about getting published and throwing in all the book biz lingo she's been hearing around the house for the last few months, and it is so cute! Next on my to-do list is to buy a big book of Jack Prelutsky's work!

Our Manners Devotional is still going well and our focus this week was looking people in the eye when they talk and shaking hands properly.

School Room Topics:

History:

The girls are still totally loving both the Pledge of Allegiance and and God Bless America. They make their toys dance along to the CD of the song :-) (in fact, as I am typing this, Cali is singing the song to herself while cleaning up her toys!)
Jamestown and Squanto were the themes of the week! The girls loved learning about Pocahontas and reading the stories of the children of Jamestown in AMERICAN PIONEERS AND PATRIOTS. The plan is to pick up some movies on Pocahontas from the library this afternoon and watch them this weekend

Handwriting:

I decided to skip the copywork selections Sonlight provided this week and work more on the fundamentals of the letters this week. We worked on K-R and I am very happy with their continued effort and improvement. Next week we may just finish out the alphabet before going back to the Sonlight passage and working in letter practice the rest of the week.

Creative Writing:

Cali's assignment this week was on dialogue. Now considering that I wrote my first novel last year and am working on my second--and dialogue is a very important aspect of that--I really enjoyed this lesson. I of course had to tailor it to her level and not point out that they are completely WRONG to keep changing the attribution (using mumbled, muttered, etc instead of just said, which is always preferred unless you avoid the attribution all together and you an action tag instead). Cali wrote about a conversation between her and Jasmine, where Jasmine invites her to a tea party!

"Oh. Hello, Cali," said Jasmine.
"I'm so happy to see you for my very first time," said Cali.
"I'm going to let you come to a tea party in my house," said Jasmine.
"Thank you!"
By Cali Harris, age 5

Jordan's paragraph work took a step this week with introducing "home plate" which is the topic sentence. This has been actually challenging to completely explain and have her do. She keeps wanting to either talk about one aspect in particular or just re-list her three favorites/points for the paragraph. But she is doing a very good job and loves this time . .. and I learned that She Loves Homeschooling because she gets to use all kinds of pens, can be at home and her teacher is in her family and she gets to learn about Columbus, Her Mom Is Great because she is silly, laughs so much and and is beautiful (I promise this was an actual topic Sonlight had, not self created lol), and that Riding The Pony Express, The Magical Ballet Shoes and The Bible are all her favorite books, but that while the first two are ordinary books, The Bible is extraordinary. :-)

Spelling:

Um, yeah, epic fail on this one. Jordan was ahead of schedule, though, and Gregg and I are meeting this weekend to talk about what we want to do with Cali's spelling, so um, yeah, that's okay! (ha!)

Reading:

Jordan is still a week ahead of schedule. She read Keep the Lights Burning Abbie and is half way through Riding the Pony Express, which she is loving.
Cali is still loving reading the Bible and one of the stories she read about was Joseph and his robe. Well this weekend, we are taking the girls to a play --Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat!

Read Alouds:

We have added Squanto, Friend of the Pilgrims into this time, so Ella took a bit of a back seat this week--but we are totally picking it back up next week. Bedtime book is still Fairies and the Quest for Neverland.

Math:

Another easy, almost review week where the girls learned the colors of the Math U See blocks, which makes adding easier in the coming weeks, and review of Place Value. Girls loved it and flew through it.

Science:

Ha! I totally thought I was going to have to say I failed again--last Friday's cleaning session for the family coming in town took a lot longer than anticipated, BUT we did all three weeks worth on Wednesday! WOO HOO! We have a few experiments we will do this weekend, but they are all super easy and on air. The girls of course loved doing science this week. I still think I might stick with doing massive Science days on every other Friday, just not when family is coming to town.

So that is how our school week went. How about yours?
Have a Great Weekend!

Friday, January 21, 2011

The Nina, The Pinta, The Sant-a Maria!

Another week down at Keep the Way Christian Academy, and the girls are still loving it. I am loving our curriculum choices for the year and having fun teaching. After our long break (April -December), I was worried it would take a little while to get into a groove and find the enjoyment, but My Father's World and Sonlight have totally come through!

Here is this week's Bloggy Breakdown (anyone watch Tosh.o and see his video breakdowns? No? Never mind . . .)

Breakfast Time Table Talk:

Bible time has had us searching for clues in the Old Testament that point to Jesus. The girls are quickly picking this up and having fun playing detective.
Our Character Training is still a wonderful time and I am constantly being amazed at how the story snippets the author uses to portray Manners at Home (the theme of our current section) tie in beautifully with what we are learning in history! Yeah, I totally planned it that way . . .
Manners Devotional is still going well and this week we practiced having gentleman pull out our chairs and seating us, and smiling when we greet someone.

School Room Topics:

History:

We begin with the girl's enthusiastic Pledge of Allegiance (like REALLY enthusiastic! They spent a lot of time last Friday teaching their friends the Pledge. They think it's totally cool for some reason) and singing along with My Father's World's supplied CD to God Bless America.
This week we learned about Columbus. Since I love ditties, I taught them the one we all know about "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." They sang that over and over again. Then a few days later, for some inexplicable reason, I started saying Columbus's three ship names over and over, sing-song style. "The Nina. The Pinta. The Sant-a Maria." You just have to trust me, it's very catchy. So now, the girls skip around the room singing this over and over again. It was cute . . .the first hundred times. But it all worked because when notebooking time came around, their narrations were wonderful.
Daddy helped the girls make shiny aluminum boats to symbolize the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, which they then played with at bath time.
We read a story about pioneers from Spain who traveled across the Atlantic to establish the first colony in Florida. I must admit that when I first saw one of the books My Father's World uses as a spine, American Pioneers and Patriots, I was nervous. It looked very text booky to me, and I did not want that. But I should've known better. It reads like a story book and the girls fell in love with the children, Catalina and Pedro, and loved hearing about their adventures. Mom even learned some things (like how they cooked on the boat via a box of sand and an open flame).

Handwriting:

The girls both did their copy work on Monday via Sonlight and then worked on mastering a set of letters each day after. This week was C-J. Both girls are doing very well tracing the samples. Jordan should be ready to write on her own in a few weeks but I really want them to trace right now as we work on mechanics. Cali does really really well--sometimes cleaner than Jordan even, despite being younger--but she has a perfectionist attitude and one small mess up can break her heart on the wrong day. We just take a breath, talk about how God doesn't expect us to be perfect but to try our best, and try again.

Creative Writing:

Cali continued working on description but focused on similes this week. We took the descriptive paragraph she wrote last week and turned each description into a simile. I was very impressed with how well she grasped this concept, and how quick she was able to come up with examples.
Jordan is still focusing on grouping 3 main topics for a paragraph, and this week we focused on how the first topic is always the most important, followed by the second and third most important. This week, I found out her favorite subjects are (in order): Science, History, and Creative Writing.

Spelling:

This week Cali continued on the list from week 1 as we are experimenting with finding the best way for her to learn the words. It needs to be fun and very non-pressure-y (yes, I know that is not a word and seems an odd choice in a sentence on spelling but oh well). Next week we may experiment with two nights a week working with Daddy and having it be special one-on-one Daddy time.
Jordan finished two spelling lists this week. The first list she learned and took the test on the same day and only missed one word (she wrote cymball instead of cymbal.) The middle of the week was a little hectic so she got her new list yesterday and took the test the same day again. She scored 100%. At this rate, she will be finished with her curriculum by mid year if not sooner!

Reading:

Jordan read 3 books this week. She was scheduled to read one entire book and one chapter of another. She read The Long Way Westward, Prairie School and Christopher Columbus. The third book was a step-into-reading I had bought one day at a used book store and threw in yesterday so she wouldn't get too far ahead of her curriculum and because it was on topic. She read the whole thing quickly. Then she picked up Cali's beginner's Bible and started reading. And reading. She sat there last night for about 45 minutes reading the Bible (Adam and Eve to Saul). The only reason she stopped was because it was bath time!
Cali has been enjoying reading the Bible and reading ahead as well. I am noticing how fluent she is and how easily she reads the words, especially for her age (she turns 5 on Monday). Watching her sister read the past few years has definitely motivated her!

Read Alouds:

We are reading two books by the talented Gail Carson Levine. At lunch time we are reading ELLA ENCHANTED, which the girls are loving (although the chapters this week had me speaking in gnomic and I had no clue how to say any of it.... the girls loved my gobbly gook language, though) and FAIRIES AND THE QUEST FOR NEVERLAND at night. I am still very pleased with our selections of more contemporary, girly, fun works for this time.

Math:

This week was rather easy--counting and writing to 20--and while I could have skipped it all together (both girls can count to 1000), I went with it to focus on mechanics of writing the numbers. I am not worried about perfection here, due to their age, but it was a great excuse to tie this in. For their tests yesterday, they also had to review place value and they both scored 100%.

Science:

Today, after I take a shower and try to massively clean the house for the influx of relatives coming up from New Orleans for Cali's birthday party, we will have MEGA SCIENCE DAY. We will put together the last two weeks of Science and do them all. Since Fancy Friday is only every other week, I think this will work well going forward. Today's experiments are all about air!

So that is how our school week went. How about yours? Any fun ideas you can share for my five year old's spelling?

Have a Great Weekend!

Friday, January 14, 2011

School Is Back In Session

School has started again here at Keep The Way Christian Academy. And the usual question begins: What grade are your girls in?

I watched a series of videos from the wonderful Gregg Harris (homeschool dad and author, not my husband! Yes, very weird coincidence.) where he discussed this question. His answer was: "In what subject?" See, you would have to be pretty average to be in the same grade for all of your subjects, right? I'd never thought of it like that before, but it definitely made answering the question easier :-)

So here are the stats (FWI:Jordan turned 6 at the end of November and Cali is turning 5 in exactly ten days):

Bible, Character, Devotional:

For our Bible time in the mornings, we are following along with My Father's World Second Grade's Adventures in My Father's World. This week has been focused on the importance of names, and what our names represent. Gregg and I wrote letters for them, telling them why we named them "Jordan Faith" and "Carolina Grace." What is awesome is that Jordan does have this AMAZING Faith that inspires us, and the name Carolina comes from the name Charles, which means Warrior. Since Cali is known for her spontaneous, EXTREMELY heart-felt prayers, we talked about what it means to be a Prayer Warrior. Later in Handwriting, we had them trace their names and how the attributes associated with their meanings can be used for the glory of God!

After we read from the Bible and discuss, we move onto Character Training, and we are reading through Everyday Graces: Child's Book of Good Manners. Oh my word, I heart this book!! It takes classic children's literature and poetry and uses samples and snippets to correspond with the topic of the chapter. Yesterday we read a piece from The Princess and The Goblin and I think next week we will be reading something from Pinocchio. So cute!

Our Devotional is Manners Made Easy For the Family: 365 Timeless Etiquette Tips for Every Occasion by June Hines Moore. It goes over manners for just about everything you can think of and has a corresponding Bible verse at the bottom. The girls love this!

History and Science:

My Father's World, Adventures In My Father's World, Second Grade. We are looking forward to a wonderful year learning about American History and Geography! We will be learning about all fifty states along with key characters in our nation's history and important things like the Pledge of Allegiance. This week, we've covered map skills, talked about North America in depth and discussed the other continents, and learned about the Vikings. They have done excellent notebooking pages on all of these topics and go around saying the Pledge all day lol!

Science actually didn't happen this week. But it is probably for the best. They LOVE Science, in particular the experiments, and this week's lessons was just short readings in the Encyclopedia that I am sure they've already confiscated and read through anyway. Next week we'll sit down and read for probably an hour all the pages at once and then be able to do an experiment.

Handwriting, Readers, Language Arts/Writing, Spelling:

Handwriting is something we are working on everyday. We purchased Sonlight Language Arts, different levels, for both girls. They only list Copywork on Mondays. So the rest of the week I added other copywork, used the meaning of their names from Bible and then used some suggestions from My Father's World yesterday. How we do this, since they are still so young, is that I write the sample in pencil in a lined handwriting notebook we bought from Walmart, and then they trace over the letters while I watch, correcting for "proper formation." This is going very well and I am very pleased!

For reading, it is almost going too easily. I am waiting for the other shoe to drop as last year, before our huge break from April till now, this time took a good deal longer, even though they both could read and wanted to learn. Now, the time is over in ten minutes . . . if that!! We purchased Sonlight Language Arts 2 for Cali and Level 2 Intermediate for Jordan (she could've gone up even higher but then next year or the year after we'd be dealing with advanced topics for her age that while she could read, would be too heavy for her. Better have her read something she flies through then deal with that). Jordan asked if she could read her samples on her own and we discuss later, using the short list of questions Sonlight provides in the Teacher's Manual to check for comprehension. This week she read Clara and the Book Wagon and The Long Way to a New Land. Yesterday, she read 3 days worth of reading, basically reading an entire reader in one day, so next week she will get to choose a book from her shelf for this time. Cali is reading The Beginner's Bible, one story a day. Well, she is supposed to do that. Apparently she's been grabbing it and reading ahead, so I've been asking her the next day to tell me about the stories she's read secretly and we move on, lol.

Language Arts themselves and Writing is going beautifully. I love Sonlight's curriculum for this reason in particular. Short lessons that cover so many topics and really focus on strengthening creative writing skills which I place a strong importance on. Even more so now that I am writing my own novels. This week Cali worked on description and wrote a cute descriptive paragraph about a crocodile named Louis and Jordan worked on grouping like topics for strong paragraphs.

Spelling has been a learning curve. I discovered Spelling City over a year ago and the girls loved it then, so while I went over their words once with them, I then had them use that program for learning the words by playing the games everyday and yesterday we took the test. Jordan got everything right . . . well actually the game said she got them all wrong because she took the time to put her keyboard skills to use and started each spelling word with a capital letter and the computer didn't recognize them as the same word since I put them in with lower case --I told her that was HOGWASH (a word she giggled at) and wrote 100% on top of the paper with tons of stamps :-) Cali struggled just a bit more, knowing that many of the words had a silent "e" but putting them next to the other vowel instead of at the end of the word. So next week we are goign to keep with the same list and do much more one-on-one spelling with manipulatives and use the computer just for fun reinforcement.

Math:

After much debate and going through our variety of math curriculums--we have MUS Alpha (which Jordan had started over a year ago and we had to stop as it focuses on mastery and she wasn't quite there . . . after all, she had just turned 5 lol.), Horizons K (which the girls had started when Alpha stopped and they loved for awhile and they quickly HATED), and Critical Thinking Press workbooks--we decided to try MUS Alpha again. This time is going very well and both girls got 100% on their Unit 1 tests yesterday. They are actually getting a little cocky with it but right now I am so proud of them, and so glad they are enjoying it, that I am finding it amusing!

Read Alouds:

There are great lists provided in My Father's World and Sonlight has some good ones, but I am doing my own thing this year. They are young and I want to just enjoy this time. Plus, Jordan has developed an obsession for the old series Animorphs and I want to make sure we read lots of books that have appealing topics for them that she will want to pick up instead. So right now we are reading Ella Enchanted. They got so excited the other day when they were watching one of their videos and saw a commercial for the movie! So I guess we'll be renting that this weekend :-)

And finally, today is Fancy Friday:

We get together with our friends Skylar and Emy two Fridays a month for art and music appreciation. While we were winging it and doing our own thing before, today I am going to start teaching out of Artistic Pursuits. We are excited!

So, whew! What is your school year looking like? How was your week? Any new curriculum you're starting? Anyone else out there use the beginning of the calendar year as the beginning of their school year?

Happy Friday!!

Friday, March 5, 2010

Jordan 12:20

This week has been so full - and exhausting! We have been doing a lot more spontaneous reading cuddled in various locations throughout the house, we have played a different game each day (I am really leaning towards relying heavily on games for math this coming year, so we have played Yahtzee, Uno and Battle so far), and we have had a lot of outdoor time.

With all of that going on, I have also started nap/quiet time again, where we gather in Mama's bed, read a chapter from a book -- currently Winnie the Pooh -- and then we all close our eyes. The rule is that you must be quiet, still and have your eyes closed for twenty minutes (Mama too!) and if after that time you aren't asleep, you can then play quietly in your room until the hour is up. Cali has fallen asleep everyday, and Jordan has even taken a nap half the time. Yesterday was not one of those days, however.

After the 20 minutes was up, and I could tell she was getting restless, I told her to go to her room and play quietly. She wasn't supposed to come out until 4:00, when the hour was up, unless it was to go to the bathroom. She came out after a few minutes, and I normally would have promptly reminded her of the rules (since this is a new thing we are starting) and sent her back in -- but for some reason I held my tongue.

She quickly asked for materials to make a Scripture Verse. See, early last year we used a curriculum for Preschool called Bright Beginnings and in it, we had a memory verse each week. We decided to make a big poster for each one and hang it on our wall in the Living Room. We ended up with around 13 huge posters around the room (no mistaking our beliefs the second you walked in the house!), and they stayed up until about 3-4 months ago when I finally took them down.

Well apparently, Jordan was either reading a book about an angel in her room, or she was

playing pretend, but she came out saying that her and this angel were talking, and she wanted to make her own Scripture Verse. I helped her get out the large white paper and crayons, and she sat down on the other side of the room. She asked for help with the word "destroy" and then asked how to spell "Evil" to make sure she had it right. She was about to ask how to write the number 12 again (occasionally she writes the second number first like 21) but then she remembered our learning poster that has the numbers so she looked up instead. I was very curious which verse she could be writing -- she knows quite a lot at this point, but nothing that seemed to have all of those elements.

After adding a smiley face at the bottom of the paper (something her Daddy always did with the others. . . one to be cute, but mostly to cover up a dark spot that appeared at the bottom of all the papers) she announced that it was ready to be put on the wall. I walked over and just smiled.

The poster reads:

Jordan 12:20

SONGS OF GOD DESTROY EVIL

I knew she made it up herself, but that made me smile all the more. She didn't worry that her verse wasn't actually from the Bible. She believed she had a message about God and His power that was important to share -- and I agree.

We know that speaking the Word of God does destroy the darkness and evil, and that praising God by singing His Word is just one way of brandishing that 'Sword of the Spirit,' which is the word of God. We do a lot of singing around here -- me with my off-key self and all :-)

I have no idea where she got the "Address" part, and it might not technically be in the Bible, but I think this is one verse I may keep on my wall for awhile. . . and it is already one that I have memorized!

Friday, February 26, 2010

Our Language Arts Adventures

I have shared what we are going to be doing for History and Science in earlier posts, so I wanted to share our thoughts on Language Arts, but I thought it would also be helpful to share what we have used and loved so far, as well as F-L-O-P-S!

We have explored many different products and methods in regards to Language Arts over the past few years. We have had some big winners and we have had complete duds. One of the best parts about homeschooling is that you can tailor the education to the child. . . no cookie cutter, one size fits all approach here!

Jordan learned to read using a variety of sources. Leap Frog videos, Starfall.com, letter games, flashcards and reading with Mom and Dad are the main ways she learned. I actually often say that she taught herself! I think PBS shows like Super Why, World World and Between the Lions helped a lot, too. We supplemented with Zoo Phonics and Explode the Code, as well, but I don't really know how much this taught her as just reinforced what she already knew. Looking back, she was much more of the whole word approach rather than phonics, but we are working on the phonics as well to help her with spelling and fluency. But we plan on stopping ETC after this workbook.

Cali is learning to read using a variety of sources, too, but completely different. While she loved watching the videos with her sister when she was little, and it is how she learned her letter sounds at 18 months, she actually doesn't like to watch the videos now. It is really strange, I don't know where she changed but she refuses to watch them with her sister when Jordan asks to wat

ch them! She did the Zoo Phonics with us last year so she was exposed to the idea that letter sounds can be in the beginning, middle and end and was good at sounding out 3 letter words by the age of 3, but while she wanted to learn how to read like her sister so badly, she got frustrated very very easily. The Sonlight Readers did not work --- Bob books did. Sonlight LA did not really work at all for her actually. What worked for her was a combination of songs for word families, some letter games, and mostly using workbooks -- in particular Queens Language Lessons for the Very Young 2 and to a somewhat lesser extent, Explode the Code. She loves these and we may continue throughout with these resources (meanwhile Jordan doesn't like Queens Language Lessons!)

For Spelling words, Jordan being a visual learner has made things interesting. In the beginning what worked best was writing the words with colorful markers on the big white board. After that got old, I didn't understand why using the hands on methods that would work wonderfully for Cali (magnet letters and stamps) wasn't working for her, so I admit I got a little frustrated. Luckily, I stumbled across the idea of using flashcards but tracing the different sounds in different colors so she could visually see the word in her mind, broken down into sounds which helped her in spelling. For instance the word tighten would be broken down where "t" is purple, "igh" is blue, "t" is red, and "en" is green. This helped her tremendously!! And now that our computer is working again, Spellingcity.com has been amazing! She learned two weeks of words within 3 days using that!

For creative writing, I love to have the girls tell me stories while I copy them down word for word, and this does work for the most part. . . but we also use a tape recorder for the girls to tell their stories, I listen and keyboard, then we discuss (and correct if we are using as an assignment). I love the idea of also keeping these tapes for them to listen to when they are older -- I have a couple from my childhood that the girls get a huge kick out of listening to! The only problem I have found with this is that for Jordan at least, her stories tend to be more concise and to the topic when I have to stop her occasionally to write it down, where when she uses a tape recorder it can follow a few rabbit trails being more free form, but it is still an excellent tool.

Finally a favorite idea that we have done in the final months of our K year for Jordan has been to abandon the LA program we were using (besides Spelling and ETC) and have been working on a story for the PBS Story Contest. Using it as a way to wrap up all we learned this year about similes/metaphors, dialog, adjectives, varying sentence structure, etc has been a lot of fun and a great way to review. The idea was to also use this as copywork as well, and her art could be the illustrations. The only problem is that we started somewhat late on this and I need to play with how I broke it out as she is now at the illustrating part and is kinda "over it." LOL But we will definitely do this again next year!

So that is our look at Language Arts over the years. Going forward Cali will be continuing Queens Language Lessons for the Very Young (moving on to level 3) as well as Explode the Code (finishing Book 3 and going at her own pace from there). I will be using the Spelling words from Sonlight LA 2, using SpellingCity to learn as well as magnets to build the words. For Creative Writing, we will be focusing on journaling and Queen Language Lesson writing prompts.

Jordan will be using Critical Thinking Company's Language Smarts. While she used Sonlight LA 2 this year, we will be using Grade 1 just to reinforce what we have learned and fill any holes. She LOVES the colorful look of the workbook so I think it will be a lot of fun! I will be us

ing a Spelling List I got from our homeschool group for the K-3 National Spelling Bee, putting it into SpellingCity and also a new product I will be reviewing soon, SpellQuizzer. We will be working a bit on vocabulary using Worldy Wise 3000 Book 2 (although we won't be buying the book yet. . . They actually have games online that teach the words and have a few activities! I plan to use this to see if she likes it and then may buy the book later in the year or next year). For Creative Writing we will focus on journaling and story starters, along with self created stories.

Finally for Handwriting, we will continue to either have them trace my handwriting (via Walmart tablets) or worksheets here using Copywork. When I post our unit plans, I will post the copywork that I chose for each week -- mostly focusing on either facts of the time period or great writing samples from the Literature we are using.

Have a great weekend!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Oh, My!

I recently added the Follow Me feature on my blog so I can see the lovely faces of my readers, but also because I am trying out for the TOS Crew and thought they might like to see it.

Anyhoo, I tell you this because as people are being added to this feature, I am going in and following them as well. AND WOW AM I GLAD I AM!

Kimberly was just added, so I quickly went over to her site to see if I could follow her as well. Apparently Ms. Kimberly just started this blog, she only has two posts, but WOW what a second post. Here, go over and read it, comment and then come back. . . I'll wait.

Did you start crying like me??? This really hit me! If you notice the comment section, I gave a huge reply that basically let her know that I will be reflecting on this for quite some time.

If your and/or your family have creative ways you go out helping others in need that do not necessarily involve money, I would REALLY love to hear them. Please comment and leave your thoughts, ideas, or blog posts you have shared in regards to this topic and I will share them with everyone here. This is something that is near and dear to my heart and if you read read my comment on her blog, you know that I get caught up in thinking it has to be money which is hard for me to do right now.

How else can we truly be Jesus' hands and feet in this world of suffering? How can we get our children, even our little ones, involved? I know that my girl Candace always has wonderful ideas that I will probably be re-reading today as well (but if you are reading Candace, please leave me your favorite ideas here, too!).

In His Service. . . .

Our Science Plans

I am really excited about our upcoming "year" that begins in a few weeks. Along with our sweeping overview of American History that I posted about earlier, we will be studying Human Anatomy in depth.

The girls absolutely LOVED learning about the Human Body as part of NOEO Biology I this past year, so I decided to take a whole year and go in more detail and include more hands on projects. After debating over various spines, I decided to stick with the Usborne First Encyclopedia of the Human Body again, even though we just finished reading it in December. It is really well done and since we didn't have a working computer at the time, we were not able to utilize the Internet links the book provides, so this will definitely add a different element.

We will be looking at all of the major systems of the body, with varying amounts of detail. The two units I am looking forward to the most are about nutrition (tying in with the digestive system) and reproduction. The girls started asking a lot of questions recently about babies, which definitely kicked up during the holidays when they saw Nanny Dani's adorable pregnant belly. We will be using the God's Design for Sex series, along with a few good picture books I found at the library, that will focus on age appropriate information and on the miracle of life.

I am sure you were expecting it, since I shared my "pitch" for American History, so here is the corny, catalogy-sounding description of our science plans for the upcoming year that I put together for my husband, who does such a wonderful job of smiling and putting up with my dorkiness! Love you, baby!

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
A Human Anatomy Course for Young Scientists

Investigate, discover and explore the intricacies of the human body and learn how truly wonderfully we were created! This year long course will focus on our body’s systems, senses, parts and needs. Utilizing popular children’s literature, vivid picture books, entertaining and enlightening videos, and picture filled children’s encyclopedias, your future scientist or doctor should find plenty to feed their delights!

This year course is divided into six, six week blocks, giving ample time to discover each topic and avoid burnout. Unit topics include: Cells – the Building Blocks of Life, The Beautiful Brain and Nervous System, Our Magnificent Muscles and Strong Skeletal System, Respiration and Circulation – Pretty Important Stuff, The Miracle of Me, and Nutrition – Fueling My Body for Service.

Living books will be your guide on this exploration. The basic “spines” that you will refer to throughout the year, Usborne’s First Encyclopedia of the Human Body, has been specifically chosen for its gentle, age appropriate information and pictures. Supplementing this selection is the DK Guide to the HUMAN BODY, which will be used mainly for additional pictures and any delight directed rabbit trails you encounter!

The rest of the literature package includes selections from the Magic School Bus series, Lets Read and Find Out Science series, Young Genius books, and children’s picture books that are sure to make science a joy. You will finish the year with a unit on nutrition, the food pyramid, menu planning, healthy grocery shopping and nutritious cooking. Come enjoy science with us this year!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Gearing up for American History

We are in the final weeks of Sonlight K and I am putting the finishing touches on our new curriculum that I put together myself.

Because I am a huge nerd (HA!) and wanted to let my husband know what I was thinking of doing when I presented him with my ideas for the coming "year," I put together a little description similar to one you would see in a catalog. I titled our program Welcome to American History For Young Historians, and I thought I would share my description here so you can see what we will be exploring next!

Welcome to a year full of fun age-appropriate literature that is sure to whet the appetite of your young historians!

Explore the new world with Christopher Columbus, travel and establish a settlement with the Pilgrims and experience the world of our Founding Fathers. Discover what life was like for the Pioneer family, fight on a Civil War battlefield, ride with the Pony Express and learn the art of Victorian decorum. And end your travel adventure by experiencing the world of the 30s and 40s through the eyes of two young girls, eager to help their families through the turbulent Depression and World War II eras.

The year will be divided into eight unit studies. The first semester includes the following topics: Explorers, Voyage to a New World, and Revolutionary America. The second semester covers: Pioneer America, the Civil War, Nation Expansion and the American West, Victorian era, and World War II America.

Your children will become friends with real American Heroes and be exposed to concepts in a very gentle and enjoyable way. Literature selections rely mainly on D’Aulaire biographies, American Girlhood and Magic Tree House historical fiction and a variety of ‘I Can Read It’ selections hand picked to focus on real people and events to truly make American History come alive.

Hands on projects include notebooking, lapbooking, crafts, cooking period meals, field trips and more! Join us for the fun!

Of course I realize that most of you will not be able to physically join us on our adventures, but I will post our plans here, and if I can figure out how to do it, I will even post my 36 week schedule I put together.

The only difference between what I wrote and what we will actually be doing is that we will now be flip flopping the semesters. In putting together our homeschool budget, I decided to cut it in half in order to get the girls a Nickelodeon Netbook, which will be a huge hit but did cause me to have to make some decisions. Field trips are really important to me, but so are my biographies, so I faced the possibility of cutting out some trips. . . until I noticed that one of the local living historical farms will be having a Homeschool Day May 28th that will show time periods from the Pioneer days thru Victorian era!

While I am sure it could work to have them experience it first and then learn about it toward the end of the year, we decided to flip the semesters, so we will begin with the New Nation and Pioneers in a few weeks, go all the way through the 40s, and then do the "prequel" so-to-speak, and cover the beginning of American History. I am really excited!!!

Monday, February 22, 2010

Jordan's First Semester

Our first semester ran from 6/29/09 - 11/20/09. Jordan was four for the first semester, turning five November 22. Although we have been homeschooling preschool for several years, this was her first "official" school year and it has been a great year! Here is a detailed review, for our records and for anyone interested. (for a few shared subjects, the information is either the same as Cali's or similar with unique comments and with a few slight variations)

Overall, Jordan is doing very well! In the first 18 weeks of school Jordan completed both her Health and Math curriculum. For Math, we began with Math U See Alpha and she was doing

wonderfully until we got to the required mastery of addition facts. She was able to add numbers quite easily with counting, but struggled with memorization. After a couple of weeks in lesson/week 9, we decided to combine her with Cali in the middle of Primer, which really is their K product. This has similar concepts but does not require memorization of facts (beyond skip counting). The final week of the semester we graduated to Horizons K Math and she is flying through with ease. Health went wonderfully and we finished in half the time due to interest. We will focus on PE next semester.

Language Arts is a very broad subject that covers alot, but this is definitely a strong suit. Spelling is being handled just like a second grader, as that is her current level. In the beginning her tests were one word at a time said orally or written on our large whiteboard. Then we moved to spelling computer games for her words (love Spelling City). By the end of the semester, she was taking a full spelling test done via dictation, correcting her own work, and adding any missed words to her Spelling Notebook/Dictionary.

Phonics work is done independently through Explode the Code worksheets while I work with Cali and she is doing very well learning syllables, rules, etc; Grammar work is done on the 2nd day of each week with our Sonlight LA curriculum, applying grammar principals to our copywork passage. Handwriting began with Italic but was quickly changed to standard manuscript. In the beginning, a 2-3 sentence copywork passage would take all week. Toward the middle of the semester, it went to 2 days, and now it is completed the first day, as expected for 2nd grade. I used to have to model each letter prior to her tracing -- now she does this independently as well.

Creative Writing has been spectacular. Most of her work is done simply by explaining the assignment and copying verbatim what she narrates verbally. When instruction/leading/correction is needed there has been occasional pushback, as she is pretty confident in her work, however each lesson has ended with a final product that is her own work that both of us are extremely proud of. Along with these assignments, she frequently creates stories on her own that are quite imaginative, and she does an excellent job of including techniques that she has learned like similes, metaphors, dialog, adjectives, etc; Journal writing is in the beginning stages -- definitely wanting growth here. She is great at creating stories that are elaborate, but struggles with wanting/ability to express her own life events in personal journal form.

Reading is awesome! She reads very fluently, with dramatic flair and expression. She has begun to read for pleasure on her own, as well as to earn computer time. We did begin the idea of a "presentation book" -reading a very easy reader very well with dramatic interpretation - but Mommy dropped the ball. Would like to pick this back up.

Art consists of her hundreds of drawings she does throughout the day. She really enjoys drawing, as well as any other artistic projects we do, and she shows a real aptitude and skill for drawing.

Read Aloud Literature consists of daily chapter books, shorter literature stories, and poetry. Comprehension and enjoyment is high for all of these.

Our Read Aloud Books and Novels this semester have included:
Hero Tales (stories of missionaries -- we really enjoy this!)
The Boxcar Children
Eric Carl's Animals Animals
The Real Mother Goose
The Apple and the Arrow (actually only read 1/2 of this book. Girls did not like at all!)
My Father's Dragon
The Hundred Dresses
Dolphin Adventure
James Herriot's Treasury for Children
Little House in the Big Woods
Pioneer Sisters chapter book
Capyboppy
The Wizard of Oz (for the most part. . . we kinda let this one fizzle out during a vacation, oops!)
too many library books to count or name

History is going pretty well. We decided against doing a timeline this year, as they are still so young, but we do read the daily selection and discuss. While there is some interest (and much more with living books and biographies when used here), this would probably be the least enjoyed subject at the moment -- but still learning and comprehending nicely. Unfortunately the bulk of Sonlight's History consists of Usborne Encyclopedias, which aren't the living books I would have picked, but we are changing this in the coming year.

** NOTE- after the first few weeks of the second semester, I noticed a big jump in interest with asking them to act out or do charades of their favorite parts of the daily history readings!!! **

Science is wonderful! Biology I is the course this year with NOEO, and so far we've covered most of the animal kingdom, weather, Bacteria and Fungi, and 2 Habitats (woods and seashore). Experiments have not gone so well, but the reading assignments have been a favorite reading, and they complete creative narrations 2-4x's a week. So far Jordan's narrations have included stories, highly illustrated drawings and creative storytelling/puppet shows. Favorite Resource here has been the Usborne Pocket Nature Encyclopedia.

** NOTE -- after finishing NOEO, ahead of schedule, I can quickly say that the Pocket Nature Encyclopedia got a big run for its money when they started reading Usborne's First Human Body Encyclopedia!! **

Bible reading is very well comprehended and told back with great accuracy. Jordan lives up to her middle name -- Faith! She inspires me!! While we use a variety of Bibles at different times, choosing the one that tells each story the best for their age, the Egermeier's Bible Storybook is definitely our primary text. We began using our own Devotionals around mid-semester, and are now near the end of our second book. I am very pleased with this time, spiritual insight and understanding, and growth.

Scripture Memory had been excellent. Mom did not stress this for a 6 week period in the middle, but all verses before and after are well memorized and enjoyed.

Extracurricular Activity is Drama. This has been excellent!! While most of the drama classmates appear to have been entered to get over shyness, Jordan is flourishing in a creative outlet. The only problem with this class, in fact, is the stress on creativity, which ends up feeding her stubborn streak a bit -- for example, when she chooses to do a certain assignment differently then what the teacher asks for, and it is accepted as a wonderful use of creative free expression. For this reason, there has been some discussion of supplementing with another extracurricular that requires more discipline (music, art, karate, or soccer).

For school, the daily schedule has gone through multiple revisions, however the current set up seems to be working very well. Short lessons with a timer helps keep focus and best effort. Also for creative tendencies during "lessons", trying to stick to the Listen-Do-Then Share Creative Thoughts and Ideas works well. Also clearly stating expectations -- in school and before outings - has been crucial.

The schedule used for the majority of the first semester (and was changed shortly after, ha!) consisted of Bible/Devo/Scripture with Breakfast, move to counter for Language Arts work, then either a short play time of 15 minutes or straight to the sofa for Story Time.

During Story Time Jordan reads her independent reader to all of us, then I read History, Science, Poetry and our "lighter literature" selections (we have a 12 book collection called My Book House that we are reading through). On Tuesday and Thursday, at a minimum, we would follow this time with picture science narrations. We would sometimes have another short break here or go straight to the counter for Math and Health. Our chapter book Read Aloud Literature was read after lunch. Drama is every Monday from 5:00 - 5:45 pm.

Chores - Most days Jordan gets dressed on her own without prompting. With prompting, she makes her bed, picks up dirty clothes, and brushes teeth/washes face. She also occasionally feeds Shawn (the dog).

Future Changes -- There were a few times when Bible was moved to lunch and it worked beautifully tying our conduct/effort in school with devotional discussions. May be good to begin the day in prayer but permanently move Bible/Devo/Scripture to later in the afternoon. There has also been great results with moving our Literature Read Alouds to lunch time.

That sums up Jordan's first semester! Now we are winding up the final two weeks of her second semester. Hopefully I will be able to do much more frequent posts so to avoid such lengthy ones :-)

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Cali's First Semester

Our first semester ran from 6/29/09 - 11/20/09. Cali was 3 during this time, having turned 4 in January. Even though she is "the baby" of the family, and is technically tagging along for a lot of subjects, she hasn't really struggled much at all in her constant attempt to keep up with big sister! Here is a detailed review, for our records and for anyone interested.

Overall, Cali is doing wonderfully! She is 3 years old completing first grade Language Arts and Science, and advanced K level Math, History, Bible and Literature. In the first 18 weeks, she completed both her Health and (initial) Math curriculum.

For Math, she finished the entire Math U See Primer (K Level) program in 4 months and began Horizons K (what is a slightly advanced K program from what I have been told) before the end of the first semester. Cali is doing extremely well in this subject. She understands the concepts of place value, addition, subtraction, missing value, skip counting, tally marks and time. She has memorized "double facts" (1+1, 2+2, 3+3, 4+4, 5+5) and skip counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. Math was supplemented with Critical Thinking Books Can You Find Me, Kumon Cutting, and Sesame Street Activity Books on Counting. Horizons lessons 1-3 completed before the first semester and the following concepts were introduced: counting carefully, position words, writing numbers, one to one correspondence and right and left.

Horizons Health K went wonderfully and we finished in half the time due to interest. We will focus on P.E. next semester.

Language Arts is a broad subject covering many things, and we used a wide variety of sources.

We began with Sonlight LA 1st grade, mostly doing oral work, but it was not a good fit. She had extreme interest in wanting to learn how to read like her sister, but it was a matter of the right approach. While Cali loved the book with the word lists and could read them, she completely balked at the idea of reading them in the fairly long-page stories SL used.

Instead, we began a hodge podge of things that actually worked very well. Along with self created song games and activities, we would occasionally use Bob Books as readers and Starfall.com. Most of the work, however, was done with Explode the Code and Queen Homeschool's Language Lessons for Little Ones 2 (LLFLO). She began with ETC Book 1 (having established that the Primer A,B and C books were too easy) 8/18/09 and was 1/3 of the way through Book 2 by 12/15/09, doing a page or two a day. Cali also does 2-3 lessons in LLFLO's a day due to interest.

Explode the Code covers letter sounds, beginning/middle/end sound recognition, word recognition, reading 3-5 letter words, reading and matching words to pictures, spelling, blends and reading comprehension. Cali ended the semester with the test for Book 1 which involved dictation (I say a word and she would choose the correct word from a set of 3), reading sentences and choosing the word that makes sense, and reading 3 sentence paragraphs and choosing the word the paragraph described. She did perfectly and was very proud of herself!

Language Lessons for Little Ones coves Poetry Appreciation and Narration, Picture Study and Narration, Creative Expression, Copywork, Letter Sounds, and reading words and sentences. In two and a half months, Cali completed 1/3 of the book.

Handwriting began with Donna Young prewriting lessons, focusing on lines, circles, slanted lines and hills. She did wonderfully! After a month, she moved onto copywork as well, using a variety of Scripture verses, samples from SL LA1, and LLFLO. Cali has very good motor skills! She can glue and line pictures up very well, her letter formation and pencil control is great and her scissor work is decent. Handwriting, for her age, is extremely impressive.

Art, which includes any drawings she does throughout the day and various picture narrations, is growing daily! She began the semester with simple scribbles and explosions of color on paper. This evolved to writing her name and letters and now is much more focused on a part

icular result -- using shapes and lines to form people or objects!

Creative Writing is good for her age. She is getting more and more comfortable creating imaginary scenarios and characters. Narrations have grown considerably - she is able to tell back most of our readings pretty well and has wonderful comprehension.

Read Aloud Literature consists of daily chapter books, shorter literature stories and poetry. Comprehension and enjoyment is high for all of these.

Our Read Aloud Books and Novels this semester have included:

Hero Tales (stories of missionaries -- we really enjoy this!)

The Boxcar Children

Eric Carl's Animals Animals

The Real Mother Goose

The Apple and the Arrow (actually only read 1/2 of this book. Girls did not like at all!)

My Father's Dragon

The Hundred Dresses

Dolphin Adventure

James Herriot's Treasury for Children

Little House in the Big Woods

Pioneer Sisters chapter book

Capyboppy

The Wizard of Oz (for the most part. . . we kinda let this one fizzle out during a vacation, oops!)

too many library books to count or name

History is going pretty well. We decided against doing a timeline this year, as they are still so young, but we do read the daily selection and discuss. While there is some interest (and much more with living books and biographies when used here), this would probably be the least enjoyed subject at the moment -- but still learning and comprehending nicely. Unfortunately the bulk of Sonlight's History consists of Usborne Encyclopedias, which aren't the living books I would have picked, but we are changing this in the coming year.

** NOTE- after the first few weeks of the second semester, I noticed a big jump in interest with asking them to act out or do charades of their favorite parts of the daily history readings!!! **

Science is wonderful! Biology I is the course this year with NOEO, and so far we've covered most of the animal kingdom, weather, Bacteria and Fungi, and 2 Habitats (woods and seashore). Experiments have not gone so well, but the reading assignments have been a favorite reading, and they complete creative narrations 2-4x's a week. Cali's narrations have been full of color and while she normally only focuses on 1 thing or picture from the reading, she does a good job making the idea her own through pictures, story narrations and puppet shows. Favorite Resource here has been the Usborne Pocket Nature Encyclopedia.

Bible reading is comprehended and narrated very well. While we use a variety of Bibles at different times, choosing the one that tells each story the best for their age, the Egermeier's Bible Storybook is definitely our primary text. We began using our own Devotionals around mid-semester, and are now near the end of our second book. I am very pleased with this time, spiritual insight and understanding, and growth.

Scripture Memory had been excellent. Mom did not stress this for a 6 week period in the middle, but all verses before and after are well memorized and enjoyed.

Extra Curricular is Gymnastics. This has been wonderful! We did switch places a few weeks in, but since the move, it has been a highlight of Cali's week! Floor and Balance Beam exercises are her strengths and she loves the physical activity/exercise it brings. She often practices throughout the house, throughout the week. Teacher-student ratio is very good, thus bringing in more discipline as well. The main highlight, however, is the pride she has in herself and the obvious joy she gets from each class!

Our school schedule has gone through multiple revisions, however short lessons (with a timer sometimes) helps focus and best effort. Also, for creative tendencies during "lessons," trying to stick to the Listen-Do-Then Share Creative Thought/Ideas works well. Also clearly stating expect

ations in school and before outings has been crucial.

During Story Time Jordan reads her independent reader to all of us, then I read History, Science, Poetry and our "lighter literature" selections (we have a 12 book collection called My Book House that we are reading through). On Tuesday and Thursday, at a minimum, we would follow this time with picture science narrations. We would sometimes have another short break here or go straight to the counter for Math and Health. Our chapter book Read Aloud Literature was read after lunch. Gymnastics was every Friday from 5:45-6:45 and is now every Saturday from 11-12.

Chores - with prompting, makes bed (Very well!), gets dressed (or at least picks outfit out), picks up dirty clothes, and brushes teeth/washes face. Actively searches out for ways to help daily around the house.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

So what should we start with?

We are off to a bit of a late start this morning! I appease my guilt by telling myself that the girls do have a touch of a cold and are cuddling and resting watching PBS, which isn't the worse thing in the world, but we do need to get started.

I am hoping to come back later this afternoon and begin my updates, but I ask you (my lovely family members and a few loyal blog land friends who are still checking on this little blog), what would you like to see?

Should I do updates about the past year or just begin where we are now? One thought I had is that I did do a progress report for each girl for my own records at the end of the first semester of Kindergarten that was pretty detailed, so I could just post those for each child along with updated pictures, then start fresh with where we are now.

The only problem with that is that the "reports" are a bit lengthy as I wanted to be thorough in my records and for my own memory, but then again it would be shorter than going over it week by week, and this blog is really meant to be a record of sorts of our homeschool journey so it would be nice to have it here as I do plan to print this out as a book eventually.

So I think that is what I will do, but please let me know if there is anything in particular you would like to see, hear about, know, etc. Thank you all for the welcome back emails already -- "you made my heart smile." :-)

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

To get it out of the way. . .

I have actually had a working computer now for a couple of weeks. It went from not working at all for what seems like forever, to one day working like nothing had ever been wrong!

It was perfect timing as I was just beginning planning for our "new year" curriculum -- we are in the final weeks of Sonlight K and we have decided to do our own thing for our next year, which will begin in a month or two.

Now that the planning is completed, I have been sitting here thinking that I should/need to/want to start blogging about our family, home, life and school again, but since it has been so long, I have put off the first post. . . thinking that I would really need a great big update, full of stories, pictures, and information on what we have been doing this past year. That task seemed too daunting so, to get it out of the way, I thought I would just do a quick little post to say. . . .

"I'M BAAACKKK. . . " (knock on wood)

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Kindergarten Begins!

Week One: Review

So, we did begin our Kindergarten journey on June 29th. While we have always been year rounders, we decided to go to a 6 week on / 1 week off format for this year. When Monday came around, I had all six weeks figured out -- although that was pretty easy since I was using curriculum that is pre-planned for you.

I did try my variation of Workboxes this week, with pop up hampers that I had purchased from the $1 bin at Target. I had a schedule for each of them that had velcro for either numbers (that correlated to a number on a box) or a picture card (such as Computer Time, Tea Time, Lunch, etc;). I must say that I love the idea of workboxes, how they are meant to give a child a sense of accomplishment -- seeing what has to be done each day and the sense of pride of finishing them one by one -- and I love that it should provide me time to work one on one with each child for Math and Language Arts, since they are on different levels this year. However, they did not work as planned and we abandoned them in week 3. I am really looking forward to the HOTM Conference tomorrow where I can hear Sue Patrick, the master mind behind the concept, and hopefully figure out some tips!

Back to Week One, we used Sonlight for Bible, Scripture Memorization, History, Literature, and Poetry for our "together" lessons, Horizon Health, and NOEO Biology. For their separate subjects, Cali did start with Sonlight LA 1st grade and Math U See Primer, and Jordan used Sonlight LA 2nd grade and Math U See Alpha.

Our daily schedule this week had us doing our morning chores before sitting down to breakfast at 8:30. During this time, I read aloud our Bible lesson (this week we covered creation - the beginnings of Abraham), and we listened to the Sonlight Scripture CD for the verse of the week (All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God). The CD is a huge hit with the girls, probably because it is what they are used to -- I always made up silly songs and dances to help them remember our verses each week, I am just now happy to not have to be coming up with them myself! During this time, we also went over our Health lessons. The first unit focused on feelings, so we discussed different emotions each day.

After that, we moved upstairs. This week, since we were attempting the workbox idea, Jordan would get computer time (she loves Starfall and educational sites like that) while I would work with Cali on her language arts. This was a tricky week because she would easily be able to read the words while on index cards, and would beg to be able to read them in the Sonlight Word List Book (a book that simply listed the spelling words in list form) BUT would completely freak out about reading those very same words in the stories Sonlight provided! We broke it up as best we could, we would cover up the rest of the words, but it still wasn't completely working at this point. Daddy would also read with her in the evenings, as she loved having one on one time and they have a similar learning style so he "gets" her wiggleness much more so than I do :-) We worked on the basic "at" family this week. I will say the biggest struggle is that she wants to learn how to read, she is always looking at books and she sees how well Jordan can read and wants to be just like her, so she asks for it. . . and really, she can sound out pretty easily all CVC words and knows several sight words, but she just doesn't have the confidence that she can do it. I see her frustration sometimes and I try to stop -- I mean, hey, she is only 3!!! -- but that makes her even more upset. So we have been focusing on just trying to be low key and keep it fun (I figured out many more ways to do this, and things started going much better in week 2!)

Then it was time for Cali to get on the computer and Jordan work with me on Language Arts. Jordan's language arts is much more involved, being at a second grade level, and I hear a lot of people say that the language arts is either too busy or "too natural" but I have to say that we ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT! We do make a few modifications, however. She gets her spelling words at the beginning of each week, which I first say outloud and she attempts to write on the white board. This week was all about compound words and she knew them on the very first day. We did have fun mixing and matching endings and different words. All week she LOVED finding examples of compound words in different things she read or heard! :-)

Jordan's copywork was not so good -- we began using Italic print, using StartWrite. Unfortunately, any time that Jordan didn't try her best or would make a mistake, she would just say that it was "an ITALIC H" or "an ITALIC S." That was not going to fly! We did split up the copywork assignment to a few words each day, to last all week, and quickly decided to switch to your standard "ball and stick" penmanship in week 2!

For Jordan's creative writing assignment, on Wednesday she answered five questions to work on "Descriptive Words." She held out one of her favorite toys -- Chattery -- and answered questions in regards to how it looked, smelled, tasted, sounded and felt like. My job at this point is to ask the questions, help her understand what they want and simply copy down word for word what she says. Even though she is only 4, she has NEVER had a problem with story telling or describing ANYTHING, so this was just a fun exercise for her! Thursday she then "wrote" a Descriptive Paragraph that was 6 sentences long and was just wonderful. At this stage, at least, she is very gifted in storytelling!

We do not do the optional Explode the code or Wordly Wise with her, as we feel that would be unnecessary busy work. The only other part of her Language Arts is the actual reading. She is reading The Beginner's Bible, one story at a time, and is reading with such fluency and dramatic flair that it is a pure joy!

At that point, Jordan would get a "FUN" box -- such as her Draw Write Now book or Lite Brite or something, while I worked with Cali on Math. Math U See Primer is the only one that is not mastery based, you can move at their pace, but Cali is absolutely flying through this! We are on week 6 right now and she is in Chapter 15! Really, she would sometimes look at me with the "Are you SERIOUS?" look on her face before answering the question in a "No Duh" type voice, HA! She is such a silly nut!

Cali would then get a "FUN" box -- maybe a preschool activity in a bag, a lace up shape or colors -- while I worked with Jordan on Math. She is in Alpha, which is the mastery level, but she is also doing very well. She flew through the first few chapters, getting a perfect "score" (although we don't really keep grades) on the "tests" for chapters 1 -4 within the first week and a half! I can't remember which chapters she did this week exactly, but what I do know is that both girls enjoy Math and I am not afraid to teach it, which is GREAT!

At this point it would be around 10:30 and the girls would get free time while I recapped with Gregg via IM, check email, do a few chores and begin lunch.

This week, we would just enjoy lunch, and then move to our Read Aloud time. We have made some changes to this, but just remembering how well it went is making me want to try this again. I absolutely LOVED our Read Aloud time! We would all snuggle up in my big bed and read our Literature, History and Science pages.

The Boxcar Children was our literature selection this week. We were only "supposed" to read Chapters 1 -5 and it was "supposed" to take 3 weeks, but we finished the entire book this week! I would read only one chapter in the beginning, then move onto History and Science, saying that I would read more IF they listened just as well to the other two subjects. Our History read aloud was from Hero Tales, a book on missionaries, and we read about Gladys Aylward. I had been leery of this book, hearing it was too advanced for the age group, and my girls are younger than the suggested age, but we had no troubles at all. The girls were able to do easy narrations and enjoyed it! Our Science read aloud was DK Weather as NOEO focused on weather for the first 4 weeks. We would look at the pictures, read the captions and just talk about the subject with narrations and discussing examples. Then we would always go back to The Boxcar Children! :-)

After this, I was trying a Nap Time. One day that worked. . .

Then it was free time (although they did have two boxes with "FUN" items in it, if they wanted -- but we never got to them!) until 3:00, which was Tea Time. We would have a fun snack and read the Poetry selection from Sonlight, Language and Thinking from Sonlight, or other literature selections from other "treasuries" we are working through, as well as just recap our day and listen to music.

Besides the workboxes, the other thing that I had planned out that didn't work as planned was working in a SL Prek Theme schedule (which I got from a SL yahoo group). I had been concerned that the K schedule might be over Cali's head, since that is what everyone warned about, so I wanted to work in books that would be more age appropriate. Really, she has been doing wonderfully, and I have just pulled some favorites out to read with her one on one in case she was too young to remember them (since we had read almost all before). We hadn't read 20th Century Treasury before and that has moved to Tea Time, and besides that, all the other ideas I had to make it more "hands on" and supposedly more "age appropriate" has just felt like busy work to both of us and has been phased out. :-)

Well, I think that is a good review of Week One. I am sure there were wonderful discussions had that could have been included, and I could have listed Jordan's descriptive paragraph, but this is already pretty lengthy!

I will be back with Week 2 in Review soon. . . I hope! :-)

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