hey girl....homeschooling

 

My hubby could've came up with these over the past couple of weeks as I've been planning our upcoming school year.  Need a good laugh as a homeschooling mom?  Check out Homeschooling Ryan Gosling.  It is hilarious! 

the week through the lense of my phone

I love the instagram app for my iphone. It takes all my blurry pictures and turns them into cool shots!  Here are a few glimpses from our week -

Swimming lessons for the girls are every Monday afternoon.  At a hotel pool, 5 minutes from our house.  It is perfect!  I'm so glad a friend let me know about this program.

We couldn't have asked for better weather on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week.  We took the boat out for a little while on Tuesday evening after Scott got home from work and Elle braved jumping in one last time.  The water is cold! 

She can now proudly claim the family record for the earliest to jump in the lake in the spring and the one to jump in the latest in the fall.  :)

School outside on the porch.  I love it. 

A friend of mine had a precious little baby girl this month.  So fun to get to hold a newborn.

school has started

"Success is the sum of small efforts -
repeated day in and day out."
-Robert Collier

We started school last week and it is going well.  We are back to all of our regular activities and a couple of new ones too.  I am so excited about some of the new curriculum that we are using this year!  I hope to be back soon with a post to let you know all about it! 

our home school

Hello!  Wow, it's been a long time since I've checked in here.  Sorry for the unannounced break!  It has took me awhile to get adjusted to having a busier schedule again now that school and other activities have started up again.  I think we have finally found our groove around here so that I don't feel like I am always playing catch up so maybe (hopefully!) I will have more time to update here again. 

We are in our 6th week of schooling and for the most part it is going well.  Thomas is in 6th grade this year, Elle is in 3rd and Ava is a preschooler.  Teaching all three is actually going really well.  It took awhile but we have figured out a schedule so that I can help each one individually while the others are busy with schoolwork on the computer or on an assignment that they can do on their own.  And the best part is that I am usually done teaching by noon!  Thomas and Elle have about an hour or so of 'homework' to finish up after lunch break as well as their reading time and then the rest of the afternoon is free to do our scheduled activities, finish up chores or just play! 

Ava really loves her computer time on ixl.com. (That site is so great for math practice!)  She is so eager to learn.  It's fun to teach her!

This year I ordered Rosetta Stone Spanish and Thomas really likes it.  I am trying to learn it too but cannot keep up with him!  It's fun to be learning it all together.  Even Ava is picking up on some of it.  Often instead of asking for a glass of milk or water she asks for a glass of leche or agua.  :)

random update

It has been so beautiful here.  I'm pretty sure this is the best spring we've ever had in the twelve years that we've lived here.  The ice went out on the lake on April 1st.  Almost three weeks earlier than last year!  Thomas is fishing almost everyday again.

Ava cut her hair.  It was only a matter of time with that girl!  Her hair is usually so wild that we didn't even realize she did it until we found her little scissors and a pile of curls by the sink at bedtime when we went to brush her teeth.  Thankfully she didn't give herself super short bangs or anything like that.  It just looks like she has a bunch of new growth coming in and it no longer can all be pulled back into a ponytail.  Never a dull moment.

We have about a month left of school.  We are all looking forward to summer break!  Elle has loved English this year.  On Fridays she gets to pick a writing assignment from two or three choices.  When she can't decide which one to choose she asks if she can write about each one.  :)  It has been so fun to watch her writing get better and better throughout the year.  She says that she wants to be an author, interior designer or fashion designer when she grows up.

As you can see, Ava has a fun time playing in her room while we do school.  This mess is actually pretty tame.  She has been known to dump out every single bin of toys and play hopscotch with the containers.  I was close to giving away most of the toys on those days!  Today Ava got herself stuck when she climbed into the bottom drawer of one of those rolling bins.  She was calling out for someone to help her and it was pretty funny when we went in there to help her!

Hope you are all having a wonderful spring!

preschool, 2nd grade, 5th grade

We will be start schooling again right after Labor Day. Just a few weeks away! For Elle that isn't soon enough, for Thomas it's too soon. :) I was kinda feeling like Thomas but now that all of our curriculum is here I'm getting excited to start again. We are doing some new things this year that I think we will all enjoy. I've been busy getting everything organized and ready. It was fun to pull out some of the preschool stuff for Ava and think back to when Elle was that age. I still have some work to do to get the room ready, including a fresh coat of paint and furniture rearranging.

For those of you who are curious, this is what we will be studying this year -

Bible - We will be reading aloud together Little Pilgrim's Progress and going through the study guide.

Math - Math-U-See again. We love this program. Thomas will be in Zeta and Elle in Gamma.

English - This year we are trying Shurley English.

Reading - Beyond Five in a Row

History - The Mystery of History, Vol. 1: Creation to the Resurrection. This is probably the subject I am most excited about! Thomas and Elle will be studying this course together and I will just adapt it accordingly.

Science - Exploring Creation with Astronomy. This is another subject we will all do together.

Geography - Both Thomas and Elle will be doing Daily Geography Practice. In addition, Thomas will be doing Beautiful Feet Book's Geography Through Literature and Elle will be learning about the United States using books recommended through Simply Stated.

Handwriting/Writing - Elle will be doing A Reason for Handwriting this year. In past years we've used Handwriting without Tears and have liked it. I still am planning to use the manipulatives in that course with Ava because I feel that it is such a great course to get them on the right track. Elle loves to write though and HWOT tears doesn't offer her enough practice in the workbook plus she was getting bored with it as it felt like she was doing the same workbook over and over. She also loves coloring and this new book combines both. At the end of each week she gets to pick a page to write her memory verse on for the week in her best handwriting and then color or paint it.

Thomas won't be doing a formal handwriting course this year. Instead he will be doing more creative writing and get plenty of practice with typing as well. I ordered Story Starters to help get the creative juices flowing!

Spelling - We are sticking with Sequential Spelling.

Art - I have had I Can Do All Things for a couple of years and just haven't been consistent with it. Elle really, really wants to do art this year though so I think we will give it another go. One of the goals for myself in schooling this year is to encourage my kids creativity. Even if it means messes and incovenience for me. That is another post, for another day.

As for preschool for Miss Ava I've already posted my plan here. The only thing that has changed from that plan is that we are going to wait till January, or even next year, for the math primer. She's not quite ready for that.

testing is done

And they did great! We went to DQ to celebrate!

school

The kids put in a little extra effort this week to finish up their math workbooks. They are seeing the benefit of not taking a spring break this year now that they are getting done earlier than usual! Several of their subjects are completed now. Both of them have science to do yet and we plan to continue with spelling, math drills, and our history reading for the entire month of May. Ideally I'd love to continue with those all summer but I that usually doesn't happen. The standardized tests arrived in the mail yesterday so we will be taking those next week and then it will be time to start thinking about next year!

Now that they have more time, Thomas has grand plans of building a fort out in the woods and Elle has been clearing rocks from an area in front of her playhouse and plans to plant a vegetable garden to tend to all summer. Lots of hands-on learning!

homeschooling preschool

I have had this post in the works for a long time now. A few people have asked me about ideas for homeschooling preschool and I thought it'd be a breeze to put the post together. There are just so many ideas though! I homeschooled Elle for her two years of preschool. She wanted to 'do school' just like Thomas so it was really easy to teach such an eager learner! Ava will be starting next year. She's already been doing several things like learning her colors, sorting, learning her ABC's, counting, puzzles, etc... but we will start a little more structured routine with her in the fall.

As far as a curriculum plan for homeschooling Ava next year I plan to start the Math-U-See Primer book. I went through this book with Elle when she was 3 and it took us two years to get through it. Mastery of concepts is not required like it is in the other Math-U-See books. The Primer is just a good book to use to introduce your child to math. It gets the child familiar with counting, shapes, place value, skip counting and basic addition and subtraction. The use of the manipulative blocks makes it fun for young ones. Elle could not write her numbers a lot of the time we were in this book which was fine, I just wrote them in.

We will be using Handwriting Without Tears manipulatives to learn how to make letters. I did not find Handwriting Without Tears until Elle was in kindergarten. She was struggling so much with writing her letters and numbers backwards. This program really helped change that for her. Hopefully by starting Ava with the wood pieces maniuplatives next year she will not struggle as much when it comes time to actually learn how to write them later on.

I am most excited about starting Before Five in a Row with her though. I love literature based learning and even though I have never used this curriculum before it sounds like it will be right up our alley. It is divided up into 23 different unit studies using classic, quality children's books geared toward 2 - 4 year olds.

That is probably the only formal curriculum I will use. There are plenty of free (amazing!) ideas all over the internet. Especially on mom blogs! One of my favorite blogs for teaching ideas for toddlers is Chasing Cheerios. There are so many great ideas there. If you have a toddler you have to browse through her archived posts! She also has a great list of links to other teaching blogs in the sidebar. One other site that will keep you clicking link after link is - My Montessori Journey.

I'd love to hear from you too! Tell me your favorite ideas/books/websites for teaching preschoolers. Most of my favorite homeschooling curriculum has come from talking with other homeschooling moms!

rest or reading time

I learned early on in homeschooling that we need a break from each other. That's when we started Rest or Reading Time. Almost everyday after lunch (Monday - Friday) as soon as Ava is down for her nap, Thomas and Elle pick a spot somewhere upstairs and they can either rest or read, that's it. It lasts anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, depending on what we have going on that day. When Elle was in preschool she would often end up falling asleep after she'd looked at books for awhile so that is how we got the name. This has been such a great thing for us. It has really helped to cultivate a love for reading in the kids and having an hour of peace and quiet does a mama good! :)

It's a good time for me to clean for awhile, flip through a magazine, blog or even take a quick nap if I'm feeling really tired. We set a timer and when it goes off the kids know that it's time to finish up any school or chores that aren't done yet and then the rest of the afternoon is theirs to do what they want.

It's fun when the weather is warm to let them pick a spot to read outside. It's kind of an adventure to read in the playhouse or while your sitting in the swing.

book-it

Today for lunch we went out to eat at Pizza Hut using Thomas and Elle's Book-It coupons. It's a monthly tradition during the school year that they look forward to. Personally, I don't think Pizza Hut's pizza is as good as I remember it to be growing up but the kids love going. Especially during the lunch hour because they are allowed to use their coupons at the buffet instead of just toward a personal pan pizza. Kids love buffets. So many choices! Thomas came back from the buffet first with a few pieces of pepperoni pizza, the next trip he went to the salad bar and got a plate of peaches swimming in all kinds of syrup, and then back for mac and cheese. He watched the buffet like a hawk waiting for warm cinnamon sticks to come out for dessert.

I'm actually really surprised they continue to let him get the buffet instead of the personal pan pizza. He's at that age where he can just eat and eat and eat right now and yet he wears slim jeans.

Elle was so excited last year when she was finally old enough to participate in the Book-It program. She'd always gone along and ate pizza with us anyway when Thomas was the only one in it but it's more fun when you earn the reward and get to have your name on the wall of the restaurant!

You can enroll your homeschoolers in Book-It for the 2009-10 school year here. The coupons will get shipped to you next September. I think it's really great that they include homeschooling families!

science at the kitchen table

Today for science Thomas dissected two owl pellets. The first one he dissected dry with just a couple of sticks and a tweezers. The real fun was when he soaked the second one in water before dissecting it.

Because we all know what it looks like in that jar of water. :) As you can see, both Thomas and Elle got a good laugh from that one!

We were really surprised how many bones there were in just a single pellet. The big find was the skull pictured above.

He then wrote down his findings. I especially like his answer to the last question that asked him if he enjoyed the experiment and if he thought it was successful -

"Yes, I liked this experiment and it was succsessful because we found out what it ate. It was a big mice lover."

radio station field trip

Today we went on a fun homeschool field trip to a christian radio station in a neighboring town. You'd expect me to have some pictures to show you from it right? Well, when I went to get my camera out of my purse I found only the case. When I got home I found the camera in my knitting bag. I remembered putting it there after I'd snapped a few pictures of Thomas at his last swim meet. I don't know why though!

Anyway the kids had a lot of fun learning how everything works at the radio station and Thomas even got to read the verse of the week on air. Afterwards we all went out for pizza. It is so refreshing to get together with other homeschooling moms and just visit for awhile!

It was totally worth venturing out in the frigid weather. The temperature this morning when we left the house was 20 below zero. It got up to zero later this afternoon. Woohoo! Thankfully it is going to warm up on Sunday and next week looks nice...in the 20's! I can't believe there are still 2 - 3 more months of winter. I say maybe three because our snowiest month last year was April!

fantabulous homeschool links

I've found all kinds of great homeschooling links this week so I thought I'd share them. I would really like to change my blog to a 3 column format and add a link list with all of this info in it. I'd add them to the right column here but it is already ridiculously long. I'll have to see if my techy hubby will help me out with that!

• abcteach.com - My friend Christina shared the link to this one with me. She's a new homeschooling mama and is going to be a fabulous teacher!
  
• worksheetworks.com - This will be a favorite site of mine. I can print excellent quality worksheets for both Thomas and Elle to supplement our curriculum.
• schoolexpress.com - I am so excited about all of the thematic unit studies that are available to print. All of the work is done for me! We are using the South America and Owl ones this week and they are great.
• math-drills.com - This site will be great to go to when we need extra practice on a lesson that is particularly difficult or just for an occasional review of a concept we haven't covered in awhile.
• softschools.com - More great worksheets as well as fun learning activities that the kids will enjoy. I like how it's also organized according to grade as well.

Since it's wintertime it's a great time to take a week learning about snow. See if you can borrow a copy of Snowflake Bentley from the library. Make a bowl of snow ice cream. (I am looking forward to trying out that recipe with the kids when we get a fresh snowfall. Even though we've had 20+ inches of snow this winter already we still haven't tried it. I finally remembered to buy a can of sweetened condensed milk at the grocery store this week!) This site is cool to learn more about snowflakes....more than you've ever wanted to know about them really! :) Of course, then you can't learn about snow without cutting some paper snowflakes. It's entertaining to make a flake online here too. I liked Martha's slideshow of winter craft ideas. The rosy cheeked snowman is so cute. And so easy too! Winter lasts so long here we have to try make it as fun as possible! :)

our homeschool: spelling

This is our 4th year homeschooling and our 4th spelling curriculum that we've used. I think we've finally found the one that works for us. It's called Sequential Spelling. I really like the way spelling is taught. Rather than learning spelling by memorizing phonetic rules, spelling is learned in word families and word patterns. For instance in the early lessons the student learns how to spell 'be' and 'in', then they learn how to spell 'begin'. The next day the lesson includes the same words as the day before only with endings added to them. So now the student learns how to spelling 'inning'. By the end of the week he/she can easily spell the word 'beginning'. Elle loves this because she is learning how to spell big words! You can view the first eight lessons in book 1 here.

The other thing that I like is that each day is a test and that each word is spelled correctly by the teacher after the student has written it in their notebook. If the student made any spelling errors they are corrected right away. I think this works so much better than in the past when I've corrected their spelling after they've took the entire test and then tried to teach them the correct spelling.

our homeschool: creative writing

I found this writing guide called All About Me for Thomas to do once a week. Each page has a question or two for him to answer. There is also space for him to draw a picture about what he's written or to paste pictures in. When he completes the book he will have a story all about him at age 9.

(You can click on the picture to see a larger version of it.)

our homeschool: grammar

Grammar isn't a favorite subject of either of the kids. I can't say that I blame them, I didn't care much for it either. Thomas uses Easy Grammar. This is our 2nd year using this and of everything we've tried this is our favorite so far. I really do not have to do much teaching at all. It is even recommended that the student correct his own work. Each day he tells me if he missed any and we go over a lesson together if he struggled with it. We've also borrowed several of these books from the library to read together and they have helped to make grammar a little more fun.

Elle is going through a workbook called Language Smarts from The Critical Thinking Company. She likes that it's colorful and that there are several different types of activities. It's not the same type of worksheet day after day.

I'd love to hear from any of you other homeschoolers that might be reading here! If there is a curriculum that you've used and love I'd like to hear about it. There are so many choices available it's hard to know what to choose. Some of my favorite things that we use are because I was told about them from other moms!

our homeschool: science

This year Thomas is studying Christian Kids Explore Biology for science. I love how this book is organized. It's easy for me as the teacher to get everything ready for him and he loves the hands-on activities. We begin each week reading and discussing the lesson. His assignments throughout the week are to write the definitions of the words in the lesson that are in bold, complete any of the reproducible worksheets that are included in the book, and read books pertaining to the subject that we have checked out from the library. There is a supplemental reading list for each unit in the back of the book so it's very easy to know which books to request from the library.

I took these pictures a couple of weeks ago when we were studying plant reproduction. He was dissecting flowers trying to find all of the different parts we'd learned about.

He recorded his findings for his science binder that he is making.

And he took a few crazy pictures just to be funny. :)

Elle is reading the Christian Liberty Nature Reader (book 1) for science. She enjoys it and is especially happy if I come up with some sort of craft activity to do for some of the animals she learns about.

our homeschool: handwriting

For the past two years we have used Handwriting Without Tears as our penmanship curriculum. Elle was struggling with writing letters and numbers backwards and this program really helped to correct that. We used a few of the optional manipulatives and they helped her be able to remember the starting place for each letter. Occasionally she still mixes up her lowercase b's and d's but not nearly as often and she always recognizes it right away.

Thomas likes the cursive program. Before finding Handwriting Without Tears we tried a couple of other programs and he often complained about them. Now penmanship is usually the first thing he does. And when he wants to, his handwriting can look really nice. He's a typical boy though and doesn't like to spend a lot of time writing neatly where Elle will erase a letter and take the time to rewrite it if it doesn't look just right.

our homeschool: math

I thought I'd give you a peak into our homeschool this week. I've had a few people ask what curriculum we use and some of our family and friends might be curious about what 'really' goes on here. :)

I try to be pretty disciplined about a schedule when it comes to school. We get started most mornings around 9:00. Right now we are starting each day by reading a little in the book titled Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends. Wishful thinking by mama?! :) The kids enjoy looking up the verses and are also working on memorizing the books of the bible. After this they get started on their subjects.

On Mondays Thomas and Elle are usually starting a new math lesson. We use Math U See for our math curriculum and love it. At the beginning of each lesson they each watch a video of Mr. Demme teaching the new concept. He uses manipulatives to help the kids to really 'see' the how and why of what they are doing.

Then we move to the whiteboard to try out a few problems to make sure they are understanding it before moving on to the workbook pages. The rest of the week is spent reviewing the new material, working in the math workbook and a test is taken on Friday if they are ready. If not, we just continue working on the same concept the next week. MathUSee.com has a worksheet generator to supplement the workbook if more pages are needed. There is also an online drill that we have used over and over. It really is a great program.