First Quarter Down!

I had goals to write here at least monthly, if not weekly.  But somewhere between five kids and keeping house, this keeps getting pushed to the wayside.  We are now down NINE WEEKS of school.  WOOHOO!  We are on break next week and everyone is feeling happy that we are off, even Mom!

Preschool:

Hyrum loves the What Your Preschooler Needs to Know books.  And like my other kids that I've had this series with, he has periods of nothingness, and then binges where he works through pages at a time.  Most notably, we did LOTS Goldilocks and the Three Bears and I'm a Little Teapot.

 

 Every other Friday, we've done a letter craft.  Hyrum has known all of his letters for YEARS, but they're still fun, right?  This quarter we did all of the letters in his name.  H (house), Y (yarn), R (robot), U (umbrella), M (money).

 

He also regularly pulls out as many games as he can throughout the school day.  He LOVES Operation.

Five in a Row:

We have only done this when we've been capable.  If it's been a nice day, we've valued play above extra seatwork for the five-and-under crowd.  As a result, we've only rowed two books: Peter Rabbit and Ferdinand.  We did some lapbook Elements with Ferdinand, but Peter Rabbit was all oral.  We'll have to do more lapbook elements, though, because Ellie loved it.

 

Grammar: 

Abby has completed lessons that discuss nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs as well as diagramming sentences with these parts of speech.  She was SUPPOSED to memorize A Tragic Story by William Makepeace Thakeray, but she's resisting.  In the past few years, she has loved memorizing the poems so I'm not sure why she's resisting.

 

Emmett is working in FLL 2.  He's a bit ahead and I'm not in a rush for him to finish it any time soon, so he's been pretty lax with it.  He's memorized his pronouns and state of being verbs.  Most days his lessons are short and sweet.  He does not find memorizing as easy as his sister.

Spelling:

We picked up the Writing Road to Reading this year.  We started with just working on memorizing all of the phonograms.  Abby whizzed through these.  Emmett has spells where he remembers the first 60 (out of 72) that he has learned, and other times (especially when applying to reading or writing) that he can't recall any phonograms and makes random guesses.  I'm not sure how, but the spelling words I've given him have still stuck and he spells them correctly. I suppose he might be more a whole language reader/speller.  Abby detests spelling, but does not struggle with it at all.  Once she marks the words, she remembers them.

Abby enters her word in her book in cursive and Emmett does manuscript.

 

 

Ellie is slowly learning the phonograms when SHE feels like it.  We are also working through proper letter formation since she has a tendency to form the letters from the bottom up and clockwise.

Hyrum is very often hanging around when we're drilling phonograms with any other kid.  He loves to write his letters and is pretty decent with his capital letters.  He often steals the iPad with the kids' spelling game (Spellosaur) and tries to play it as well.  I set up his own account with simple words (no, yes, stop, play, go, etc) and he loves doing "spelling" too.

Reading:

Abby is zooming through the list of books I had made up based on the time period we're studying in history.  A lot of them are abridged or edited versions of the books because she is a bit young for some of the more mature themes in early modern literature.  I'm aiming for familiarity of the storyline so language isn't a struggle in later years. She has done Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables, and the Three Musketeers.  This last week the local Performing Art Centre was playing Les Mis and her and I enjoyed an evening together.  She loved going and watched the whole play.

 

 On her free time, Abby is zooming through Harry Potter.  She totes her Kindle everywhere with her.  Last year she read books one and two and wasn't motivated to start any more.  Within the last six weeks, though, she's completed three, four and five and started on book six.  She often pretends that she is a witch who will be attending Hogwarts.  She'll be going as Hermione for Halloween.

Emmett took nearly six weeks to buddy read an abridged version of Robinson Crusoe.  BUT, he finished it!  He and I were both pleased it was done.  We watched Cast Away as a celebration and all of the kids, even the three-year-old, watched the whole long film in rapt attention.  After Crusoe, though, I decided to pick up something fun with him.  He's working through Wayside School and the short chapters and funny stories are good motivators all on their own.  I'd like to transition him to reading on his own, but he still sort of lazily skims through a book if I ask him to read something that wasn't his choice.

Ellie is working through her lessons beautifully.  This is the ONLY schoolwork that I'm requiring of her right now. And even then, her fine motor skills are such that I do not require her to complete the accompanying worksheet.  She has thirty lessons left and then we will move on to her reading us real books.  She has done better than I had even hoped she would.

Writing:

I took Abby through the first section of Treasured Conversations.  This section emphasizes strong word choice and grammatically correct sentence structure.  She really enjoyed it.  We took the last week off from writing and now I'm not sure what we'll move into.  I'm not sure if she's ready for the second section.  I may move into WWE 3 or CAP's Writing and Rhetoric program...it's a good thing I have a week to figure that out.

Emmett has completed the first nine weeks of WWE 1.  He tried the first few weeks last year, but he was very resistant.  It is a much better fit this year!

 

Latin:

Abby is LOVING Getting Started With Latin.  Just yesterday, she has just completed the lessons where she learned about conjugated her first action verb.  I found this video on youTube, which she thought was really funny.

Math:

I had hopes that we could still use Beast Academy for Abby on Fridays, but she was very resistant.  Teaching Textbooks has been a very good fit for her.  Level four has yet to find anything that she's not learned yet and she hasn't struggled with any of the lessons or problems.  She is halfway through Year Four. At this pace, she'll work through most of Year Five as well.

Emmett is finishing up Singapore 2B.  Most days, I point out the main point of the lesson, he directs me in working through a few problems from the textbook, and then works the workbook problems without issue.  I should probably test him out of plenty of this, but he is working through all things reading and spelling related, so I want to let him have something easy.  He is also greatly looking forward to beginning Beast Academy.

History:

We have finished through chapter eleven discussing the Moghul emperors of India.  I did have to sit down each kid at a point and explain to each that my goals for them were different with history.  Emmett is working on holding the picture in his head.  Abby is working on having a bit more understanding of the details.

 

We have a local family that we are teaming with to do history projects.  The kids enjoy it and it reminds me to DO all of the project ideas.  For the chapter on slave trade, we built plantations out of Lego.  For the chapter on Indian spices and the hunt for a better route to them, the kids explored how different foods tasted with different spices.

We also have been singing the timeline song from Veritas Press's Explorers to 1815.  The kids have memorized up to event 17 (out of 32).  When we can, we look up the extra information from the back of the card in Joy Hakim's the Story of Us.

Geography:

Abby is working out of the Big Book of Geography and Emmett is working through Beginning Geography.  I don't teach out of these.  The kids read and do two sheets every time we do history.

 

 Science:

The kids LOVE the projects we've been doing (from Adventures with Atoms and Molecules), but they HATED writing about their projects.  There's been lots of illustrating projects.  Because of other extra-curricular activities, we are barely getting history-work done during the week so we have moved science projects to Saturdays.  This has the added benefit that Daddy can be home to help out with the projects and with the Littles.

 

Extracurriculars:

Abby picked piano back up this year.  She took it like she remembered everything.  I regret having to pause it because she really does derive a lot of satisfaction doing it.  Her current teacher is really expensive so I'm not sure she'll keep with her teacher after her recital in November.  She is enjoying having lessons from someone other than Mom.

Emmett's swim is going okay. He still has focus issues or knowing-when-to-stop issues.  HOWEVER, he has an awesome coach.  When I asked him this week what he was working towards on each stroke, he could give me a technique for each one.  He had a meet a couple of weeks ago and had great times.  He placed first place in the 8 and under 25 back (25.33), third place in the 8 and under 25 free (20.43), fifth place in the 8 and under 25 breast (29.33), and disqualified on his 25 fly (swam the wrong stroke).

Ellie did swim for a bit, and even swam one practice with the pre-team.  She's decided it's too much work.  We'll wait a few more months at least before she tries again.

Back to School 2014

A lot has changed since I last blogged. We moved across the country from Oklahoma to Alaska. The kids are loving the new neighborhood as it's a cul-de-sac with lots of kids. Daily they are begging me to go to the park or hang out with their friends. In OKC, these opportunities were very rare. Moving has cracked their social life wide open!

In between managing kids, I've been working on getting our house set up, and that includes the school area. In the house, we have two living spaces, which means we don't have to do schoolwork at the kitchen table any more. Oh yeah! So, we bought some desks and small chairs and the kids are happy to have their own space. I would like to eventually like to buy bigger chairs for the older kids, but these will do for now.

The neighborhood kids ago back to school on Wednesday so we are starting this week too. We've had a very large break (nearly four months!), so it's definitely time.

Enzo - Toddler

This boy is my shadow. He's always in the same room. He constantly is checking for me, grabbing my legs, climbing up me, and patting me. At the same time, he demands that he must play whatever the Bigs are playing. He's very determined. He also likes to undo. Any neat pile I've got doesn't stay neat for long. He's going to be the spice of our school year.

 

Hyrum - Three School

This year he will be working on potty training. That's the big focus, he's ready, but I've got to be more consistent than I've been. We didn't even approach it since we knew we were moving.

Hyrum is also going to work on the Core Knowledge preschool books with Mom. He's also started independently writing small words, so he's going to be learning proper handwriting formation along with Ellie. He will probably tag along with her Five In A Row studies.

 

Ellie - Kindergarten

It's crazy to believe Ellie is in kindergarten! She has sort of been working through some reading lessons when we remember. She's really excelled with Funnix and is on lesson fifty-something. It's almost halfway through the lessons.

My main focus with Ellie is to get her reading and reading well. Once she finishes with Funnix, she will move on to other things more intensely. For now, she will be dabbling in math (Miquon), spelling (Writing Road to Reading), and Five in a Row.

My secondary focus is to get her properly forming her letters. Her mind does not seem to process things linearly and I wonder if she's a whole-to-parts, visual/spatial learner. It's hard to know at five. Regardless, her fine motor skills have been slower to develop and she's only just begun to write letters. She is inclined to write letters from the bottom up and use clockwise strokes (gah!), so we will be drilling proper formation a lot.

Ellie also hopes to join a swim team this year. She will either work on a pre-team or attend lessons for proper stroke formation. She has an evaluation soon.

 

Emmett - First Grade

Emmett is my math/science kid. He is pretty advanced in his math and will finish up Singapore 2B before moving into Beast Academy. He seems to understand the mental calculation and crossing tens with ease. So well, in fact, that he argues about using the standard algorithm for regrouping. He doesn't see the point because he can do it in his head.

He is still not as confident in his reading as I would like. He reads fluently, but either guesses unfamiliar words or skips over them completely. For this purpose, this year he is going to really focus and solidify his reading. We are going to start him at the beginning of the Writing Road to Reading and I am hoping that analysis will help him become a stronger reader.

Emmett will also work through Writing With Ease 1, which is basic copywork and narration. We will focus on keeping his writing neat and focusing enough in stories to tell back what happens. We've been listening to a lot of audiobooks this summer (thank you, Audible!) and he's finally transitioned into listening and enjoying stories so I'm hoping he's matured enough that WWE won't be too difficult. He will do First Language Lessons 2 for his grammar.

Emmett's continuing swim this year. He is swimming with Knik Aquatics and loving it. His coaches are great. He had his first meet this past weekend and cut significant time off all of his events.

 

Abigail - Third Grade

Abby is my reader. She loves to disappear inside stories and books. She's also a perfectionist, however, and allows some of her anxiety about being wrong to impede her own progress. This year I'm going to expect more out of her - more quality writing, more reading, more willingness to try.

For language arts, she will be working on writing strong sentences and working up to good paragraphs. I don't ascribe to the public school philosophy that writing a bunch will make a good writer. Rather, I want to teach her the importance of word selection, constructing complete thoughts with good descriptions. We are going to be using a mash-up of a few things for writing. For the first few weeks we'll be working from Treasured Conversations. The first part of this curriculum works on making strong and descriptive sentences. Afterwards, we'll move on to CAP's Writing and Rhetoric and Writing With Ease 3. She'll continue with First Language Lessons too.

Abby has no issue with writing besides spelling. She freezes and refuses to write anything if she doesn't know how to spell all of the words. She gets so worked up over the one word, everything else becomes a jumble and she can't even begin her task because she's already worked up over it. We are working on learning to take things one step at a time, but also increasing her spelling abilities. When I had her take the standardized test (CAT) last year she schored very high across the board on everything (8th and 9th stanines) but spelling. Her spelling was at grade level. Obviously this is frustrating for her. She's going to use WRTR as well in hopes that we can accelerate some of the easier stuff and increasing her spelling ability. Apparently All About Spelling moved too slowly and some of it didn't stick.

She is also going to pick up Latin with a book called Getting Started With Latin. Mom's going to be learning right along with her and she's actually excited to do the lessons with me.

We are also trying a new-ish approach with math. Once again, Abby's perfectionistic tendencies inhibit math to some degree. She won't try problems if they seem too hard. She's already ahead a year in math, so this year is going to be a coast year a bit. She's going to become a bit more self-directed, a bit more confident, and still learn a few new things. We are going to keep using Beast Academy on Fridays. She's moving in to 3D and she loves those monsters. For M-Th, though, she's going to be working from Teaching Textbooks 4. TT should be a bit a more self-directed. It will be confidence-building because the the curriculum is considered a year behind in a lot of teaching circles so it should be mostly review. She will work double time until she's reached a spot where she should be working.

Abby also wants to do 4H this year. The base has options, but nine is the minimum age. I'm still hunting for a group.

She also is going to restart piano lessons this year. And I won't be the teacher. Woohoo!

 

Combined Content

Ellie and Hyrum will be working through Five in a Row this year. It might be a bit of a reach for Hyrum, but he constantly surprises me so we are going to include him and let the chips fall how they may.

Abby and Emmett will be using Story of the World 3 this year. I'm very excited to move into some US history. The kids will be reading in SOTW, using some Veritas Press history cards, and looking at the first few books of Joy Hakim's The Story of US. We are also going to be memorizing states and capitals and the presidents.

We will also begin chemistry. I think we are starting the year with Ellen McHenry's the Elements. I'm not sure if we'll move into Carbon Chemistry or RSO or just explore the rest of the time with books and projects. I guess we'll see!

 

2013/2014 School Year - Curricula and Kids

Life has gotten busy and I haven't gotten around to updating this blog all year. Here we are more than halfway through the school year and I have yet to get to typing what we're using!

Lorenzo - Age 11 months 

Enzo mostly is in the background of schooling either nursing, crying, eating or crawling. Mostly crying.  He is probably the biggest reason that the school blog kept getting put off this year.  He's been a pretty fussy baby.  Even our neighbors have said they've felt bad as they've heard him crying everyday... (And, no, we don't share any walls!)  He's getting a bit more independent, however, and proves to be a quick kid.  He says yum, Mom, all done, bye, and nose.

Hyrum - Age 2.5 

Hyrum has been working on speech this year. At 2.5 he still wasn't making sentences much, so I had him evaluated by the birth-to-three faction in our state. At the time of the evaluation, however, he had sprouted a ton of words and now talks up a storm in full sentences and paragraphs. He qualified for speech therapy due to articulation, though that was completely subjective and his speech therapist thinks he's totally age appropriate as far as articulation goes. So, we discontinued services after two months.

Hyrum's also been having his ears and hearing tested due to the speech issues. There is a slight chance that he has some hearing loss so the doctors and audiologists are following up on that.

Hyrum's funny because he loves much of our schoolork. He will sit at the table with crayons and paper pretending he is doing what the others are. He also loves to listen to the audio companion to First Language Lessons and regular walks around singing the prepositions or clapping his state of being verbs.

Ellie - Age 4.5 

Ellie is my first kid to finish the What Your Preschooler Needs to Know workbook.  It was great for her and quick for me!  She begged for more all of the time.

She has recently started reading lessons with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. She has surprised me with being able to blend simple CVC words and rhyme with ease.  She also is capable of doing simple addends-under-five addition.

Emmett - Age 6, Kindergarten 

Emmett's birthday is in October, which makes him officially a kindergartener this year. He doesn't fit in a box that nicely, though.

LA: 

Emmett still is working on becoming an independent reader. He and I did a lot of buddy reading at the beginning of this year. He still reads to me quite frequently.  Sometimes he insists that he's read whatever I've sent him to read in his head, but he "finishes' 80 page books in 5 minutes.  Riiight.  He can read when prompted, but still doesn't choose to do it on his own.  I want him to love it.  Because I'm swamped and I don't want to be beating a dead horse, I've decided that he will just continue working on his phonics via Explode the Code.  He's just started book three, which starts with VCE words.  It's a good fit for him because he still forgets to make those vowels long even though he's practiced this concept forwards, backwards and upside-down for the last year or so.

Despite not being 100% independent with his reading, he sailed through All About Spelling 1 for his spelling. He's just started AAS 2. 

 First Language Lessons 1 has been another success for grammar this year. He has enjoyed memorizing the poems in the book. He just memorized all of his pronouns. 

 After working through all of these things for LA, we gave writing a try. Unfortunately, Emmett had a hard time with narration and answering follow-up questions. So, we decided to give him some time to mature a year.


Math: 

Emmett really likes math. I wonder if he'll continue to like it like his mom did. I tried to slow him down a bit this year by doing half lessons and the like, but he still zoomed through. He just finished up the Singapore portion of 2A portion involving adding and subtracting three-digit numbers with regrouping, including the standard "stack-it-up" algorithm.

Abby - Age 7.5, Second Grade

 

LA: 

Abby is working on reading good books. This year she has read quite a few books, most notably the Tale of Despereaux, Door in the Wall, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (an indulgence), Black Beauty, Misty of Chincoteague, The Story of Dr. Doolittle, the Voyages of Dr. Doolittle, the Secret Garden, etc.

She finished up her grammar (First Language Lessons level 2) for the year.  She enjoyed jumping to her prepositions as she memorized the list.

For writing, she is finishing up Writing With Ease 2.  She's done great with her narrations and takes dictation well (even if she claims she hates it).

Spelling has sort of been up in the air.  We took a bit off and then reviewed some to let her spelling sink in.  She finished through the middle of AAS 3 and we have moved into R&S Spelling by Sound and Structure Level 3 because it's more independent and AAS (while phonetically awesome) is very teacher/parent intensive.

Math:

This year Abby has taken Beast Academy for a whirl.  It's a very challenging curriculum, but she has absolutely loved the little beasts.  Some critique Singapore because it doesn't teach kids as incrementally as they would like.  For Abby, however, I have realized it is still very incremental and she often gets caught up in the little things while completely understanding the big picture.  The ability for her to tease out HOW to approach problems and to puzzle through difficult problems has been HUGE for her.  She still flips out over math sometimes, but not because she doesn't get it.  Most of her drama about it is because she has spells of forgetting her facts.  She is about halfway through 3C and loving long division (which is HUGE for her).

All Together:

History: 

Abby and Emmett are doing Middle Ages this year. Emmett sat in on history last year, but his participation was sketchy. This year, however, he is in there understanding more, figuring out the geography, and enjoying all of the battles. His narrations for history really feel like they've come a long way. In this way, we'll keep practicing narrations even though he's not doing a formal writing program.

Science: 

Last year, Emmett LOVED all things science. We are using RSO again this year, but it is not catching him as interesting as the human body section. Apparently earth and space science is not nearly as interesting as biology.  We are in the middle of making a lapbook about the Solar System.  I've been having Ellie sit in making the lapbook and have her begin to give small narrations.

Extracurriculars:

Abby has remained in gymnastics all year long.  Besides a mishap at a local play area the resulted in a broken clavicle, she has practiced handstands and cartwheels when she could.

Emmett joined swim team at the beginning of summer last year. He is loving swim and swam at the state swim mett this past February.  His coaches even recognized him for how much his attitude, practice, strokes, and event times have improved in the last 10 months.

Ellie has continued in gymnastics as well.  She enjoys gym but doesn't seem passionate about it either.  It is good for her to keep active, however.

The Big News 

AKA 

The Whole Reason I Have Been Too Busy to Keep Up This Blog

Last September we learned that we will be PCSing.  That's military-speak for moving.  For the last six months, my husband and I have been as busy as we could getting the house fixed up and finally on the market.  It's been quite a task with five kids and homeschooling!  Hopefully the house will sell soon.

This summer we are going from Oklahoma to Alaska.  We will be driving and camping along the way.  We are so excited to see and explore half the continent!  We told the kids they could switch extracurriculars if they wanted.  Emmett will continue with swim, but Abby has decided she might like to try drama and Ellie wants to give figure skating a go.

Homeschooling in Alaska should be fairly straightforward, which will be nice.  We are definitely lookingn forward to the next big adventure!