Week 23

This is our fiftieth blog post here! Woohoo!

We had a good week. We have been reviewing the continents and this week we did Antarctica. We also are slated to complete Mr. Popper's Penguins today. We'll watch the movie on Sunday. With all of that happening, of course it was perfect timing to do a little mini-unit on Penguins. I love synchronicity like that!

PreK:

Emmett played around with Starfall and ReadingEggs this week. He also loves to do BrainPop. I got smart and had him use earphones so Abby couldn't be distracted by his noises.

Math:

We worked through MEP 1B week 25. MEP is still overwhelming to her at times, but it just is the way it is.

I've been weaving in Miquon and some Math Mammoth pages as her warm-up exercises, which she loves. This Friday, we got Singapore Math 1B. As I thumbed through it, I realized she really would have been ready to begin it right after completing 1A. I had been under the erroneous assumption that she should be able to construct her sums to 20 with automaticity. Apparently not. Abby's not the only one learning new things!

So, on Friday, we worked through some SM as well. She completed an entire week's worth in one sitting and asked for more. It's safe to say she prefers the look and sequence of Singapore vs MEP. Too bad I'm a mean mommy and will require her to complete the MEP pages as well. The question will be, which should we work through first? I'm not sure I know yet...

And, sometimes, this is what I do while I'm encouraging her to work through a problem independently. C rods aren't just for kids, you know...

We also got the Singapore CD-ROM game Rainbow Rock in the mail. We haven't fiddled with it much because it isn't supported by Windows 7...so we have to use it on my dinosaur laptop.

The kids still love to watch Math Monsters. That counts too, right?

Language Arts:

Spelling is still review. On Thursday we received the next level of All About Spelling. I need to go over it before we start it...so who knows when that will happen. She's still just five, right? Maybe this week I'll sit down and prep it...

Cursive is going swimmingly. She is resistant to it because it is hard. I know we've established that she's a perfectionist. It really does frustrate her, but I can see her working through it and she feels accomplished by it. This week she mastered the letters s, i, and t.

We jumped ahead a few weeks in our Sonlight Readers schedule. I reserved Hill of Fire from the library and it became available quicker than I anticipated. It was no struggle. I don't think we're going to go back and read most of the ones we skipped...

This week we began First Language Lessons. It's fairly simple and only takes us five minutes three times a week. The only thing that tripped her up was when I asked her what we call two girls who share the same parents. She replied, "We call them siblings." Uh...yes...but not what I was reaching for. LOL

She has nearly memorized the first poem from the book. It was introduced on Wednesday and this video is from Friday. She is pretty pleased with herself. I'm not surprised since memorization is not difficult for her.

We are finishing up Mr. Popper's Penguins this weekend. Daddy is still working through My Father's Dragon with Emmett. In her free time, Abby is reading a Cam Jansen book on my kindle.

Science:

Our little impromptu penguin unit morphed into some talk about eggs and birds. We discussed the strength an egg is afforded by it's shape. I illustrated this by showing the kids how four eggshells could hold up a fair amount of books. Daddy thought this was pretty impressive too.

Of course, the kids tried to squeeze the egg to crack it as well.

Daddy was adamant that he could actually crack an egg this way. When he first grabbed it, he didn't place it in his palm, but held it in such a way that his fingers could puncture the shell. I corrected him and had him wrap his fingers all the way around the egg. He was a bit chuffed that he couldn't crack it this way either.

We also discussed what is inside an egg and what an eggshell is made of. This led to dissolving an eggshell in vinegar.

Geography:

We studied Antarctica this week. We talked about sunrise and sunsets and the differences in Antarctica vs here. We observed how Antarctica doesn't look like a flat strip of land like we see on maps either.

We also discussed Penguins and made a fair share of these activities from this Easy Make and Learn Projects: Penguins book. (I bought this one during the Scholastic Dollar Days!)

We read all those books that our shells held up.

The kids watched a bit of Discovery Streaming. It has the Life documentary with a segment on the poles.

PE:

The Air Force base nearby has a large virtual academy group that gets together and does a PE class in the Youth Center's gym. A new group has spun off for independent homeschoolers that we have gone to a couple of times. There aren't enough kids to really play anything, but they do get to use a few typical PE things.

Abby keeps practicing her jump rope skills. The poor kid has a hard time commanding all her limbs (which are quite long) while keeping time with the jump rope. Again, she is overwhelmed and frustrated with it. She keeps trying, though. :) Much to her surprise, however, she can dribble!

They also have these scooters that the kids love. Last week my kids used jump ropes to tie them all together to make a large train and coerced one of the older boys to pull them along. Not exactly physically taxing, but at least they were using their imaginations!

Extra:

We had a mini box day! I ordered the next few things that will take us through most of next year. These things will last us for a while, though. It's nice to have the beginning of next year already planned out.

Here's our tentative curriculum list:

First Grade!

Math: continue on with Singapore Math, and MEP and Miquon

English: First Language Lessons 1 (and maybe move into 2), Writing With Ease 1, All About Spelling 2 (and maybe move into 3)

History: Story of the World: Ancients, its accompanying Activity Guide, and a lot of "living books"

Science: Real Science Odyssey: Life, definitely a lot of books, and maybe a few lessons from Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding

Art and Music: as outlined in the Core Knowledge sequence

K4:

Emmett will continue tagging along where he chooses. Sometime around this summer I will start him with Funnix. Learning to read will be his main "schoolwork." When that becomes a bit more fluid, he will start some gentle Miquon-esque activities. If these things work out, he might start some FIAR-type activities. I am calling it K4 because he will be ready for these activities, but if he were attending public school, he wouldn't be doing Kindy until fall of 2013.

PreK/ThreeSchool:

Ellie will be three this summer. If I can get it together, she might enjoy some themes surrounding certain picture books. I can see a lot of LeapFrog's Letter Factory in her future.

Toddler:

*gasp!* By the time next school year starts, my sweet baby will be moving into toddlerhood! His plan? Learn to walk and talk, I guess. ;)

Fall Line-Up

We are getting ready for "back-to-school" at our house, just like everyone else in the US. Abby keeps asking me when she'll go to "real school." Umm...maybe never? LOL I tell her usually, "We'll see."

Lately, though, she keeps asking me when school starts. So, we've set a date so she can see it on our calendar. I'd like to start with an all-about-you type of page and "first day" pictures and a few light lessons and then maybe we'll go off and do something fun. That something fun, I'm hoping, will emphasize the fact that kids in school don't get to do fun things during the day like that. Daddy's also going to take off, so it will be lots of fun...whatever we do. I haven't decided that yet...

Anyway, with the fall semester coming, it's a great time to evaluate and really see what we're going to do. I'm saving the start of some lessons for the 22nd of August, which is our start date.

This list is subject to change or rearranging as I see fit. After all, it is our first year of homeschooling with curricula and as much as I've read reviews and researched and picked what I think will work...the fact is, it may not.

Abby turned 5 at the end of May.

For Language:

• She is at a solid second-grade reading level. We stopped Funnix 2 halfway through because it was getting repetitive and not necessary. I'm hoping a spelling program that is rich in phonics instruction will fill in any holes in her phonics understanding. For that, we'll be working with All About Spelling Level 1.
• To encourage her reading, I'm going to have her read to me the Sonlight Readers. We'll back up to grade 1 and read through those and the grade 2 readers as well.

For Math:

• I've ordered RightStart Level A and are awaiting its arrival. I think she'll have fun with all the manipulatives. The scripted lessons, I think, we'll be good for her. She does not care for open-ended lessons at all. She wants to be told what to do and complete it effortlessly.

Outside of the House:

• Swimming lessons at the local community college. She really wants to take gymnastics too. Hopefully I can find a way to make that work...

For Everything Else (science, history, art, etc, etc):

• Five in a Row! Enough said. We've done seven units so far and LOVE the curriculum! We own all of the books that aren't out-of-print in the second volume. As we row the other volumes, we'll collect those books as well.

Emmett turns 4 in October.

For Language:

• We'll do lots of letter play and phonemic awareness activities. My aims for him this school year will be to work on rhyming and an increased phonemic awareness. If he's really interested we'll start some of the earliest blending exercises...but probably not. Whatever he wants to do...

For Math:

• He is the type that I could see loving the discovery method of playing with Cuisenaire Rods and Miquon Math. For the next few months the rods will be special time to play between myself and him. Gradually we'll work ourselves into some Miquon-ish type activities.

Outside of the House:

• Swim lessons at the local community college, which he loves! He is quite the little swimmer as well!

For Everything Else:

• Tagging along with his big sis doing FIAR!

Our full-time tag-alongs include:

Ellie turned 2 at the end of July.

• What can I say? She's two. Our goals this school year for her include colors, shapes, speaking in better sentences and finish potty training. Oh, yeah...and trying to contain the toddler tornado. Wish me look on that one.

Hyrum just turned 2 months.

• My goal for him this year would be those typical of the first year of life: giggle, roll, sit, crawl, feed self, stand, walk... Most importantly? Be CUTE!

Join the Blog Hop and see what everyone else is doing!

Week of 19 June

We're slowly easing back into a few things, but we have a few vacation trips planned, and it is summer after all! So, we'll probably have "spurts" of activity here and there.

Phonics/Reading:

Abby is nearly halfway through Funnix 2. Because the rest of the program really feels like we're just building fluency, I'm starting to thinking about dropping it and moving towards a phonics-based spelling program and just having her read aloud to me regularly... She still enjoys the stories, though...

ABCs:

We went over the letter E this week. Ellie has decided she's going to really play along and learn some letters too. It's been a gradual interesting, mostly with her demanding to be held up to point at the letters and say what they say (when I prompt her) when Emmett does the same on his coconut tree. Well, imagine our surprise when we realized that Ellie knows the letters T, O, and S!

We also got cuisenaire rods in the mail and with them came this awesome book about the alphabet. Emmett LOVES the rods, so adding in this will be perfect for our letters.

Five in a Row:

The circus came to town! I hurried and tried to capitalize on such a fun event with a quick rowing of Mirette on the Highwire by Emily Arnold McCully.

We found France on our map.

Abby is fairly familiar with France thanks to Fancy Nancy. We found a video on youTube about the Eiffel tower and watched it.

We talked about practice and perseverance. We also talked about boasting.

We learned what a compound word is and used a game from homeschoolshare to reiterate it. Ellie loves the pocket that holds the words.

Making our own highwire and attempting to walk it was on my list of to-dos, but the kids beat me to it. :)

And, of course, we went to the circus!

Getting a picture of the tightrope walkers was fairly difficult from our seats with the low lighting, but I did my best! The kids were riveted during most of the circus, but especially during this part.

Life:

Like I mentioned, we got our Cuisenaire Rods in the mail. I am fascinated by Miquon and the C Rods that it uses because in some ways, I manipulate numbers in ways that are emphasized by the use of the rods. I actually thought Emmett would love the rods, and I'm right. He played with them for an hour on the first day. Since then, when I pull them out, it's Emmett who is fascinated with it. Abby has a push-me-along personality whereas Emmett's is much more discovery oriented. Abby will manipulate the rods if I encourage it, but she doesn't show much interest in them.

We did try out Funnix Beginning Math. It was a free download that was offered in the month of June. It starts out really slowly, so I had both Abby and Emmett doing it. It's not something that I think we'll do anything with for the older two, and I knew that when I downloaded it. But it might be nice to have eventually...

Ellie is finally starting to show a bit of interest in playing with the iPod touches/iPhones around here. For a long time, she wasn't interested at all...she just wanted to play the music. (I promise her hair gets done just about daily. I just never seem to capture it when the moment arises.)

While I was lucky enough to get the rods this week, Daddy was really lucky--he got an iPad2! Of course, Ellie now thinks it's hers (just like everything else in our house).

Dan and I both feel that the iPad will be helpful with school, for adults and children alike! Here they are facetiming Grandma and Grandpa.

Now we can check out all those neat iPad learning apps we hear awesome things about!

Trying This Out

I have a regular blog that I post on quite frequently (can we say daily?). I want it to remain to be about the sum-up of our days and the funny things my kids say and do. However, I also want to document our journey as we figure out this homeschooling thing. I did not want to feel inundated with school-y type stuff on our daily blog, so we are trying out a blog simply for school. My goal for this one is to write (maybe weekly?) about the things we're accomplishing, units we're doing, and maybe some fun things along the way.

If Abby were going to public school, she would be starting kindy this fall. We've chosen to keep her home for a number of reasons:

1. The schools in our area are not great. While the school in our neighborhood is rated highly on greatschools.org, we feel as though they are still not the standard we would choose for our children.
2. I really don't want my kids indoctrinated by someone else. I want to be the one picking what my children are learning, and I don't just mean curriculum-wise. My children don't need to be the progeny of a teacher's hidden (or unhidden) agenda. At such an age where they are so impressionable, I want them to hold dear the things that I do.
3. I like the flexibility that comes with homeschooling.
4. I'm selfish and want to keep them home and see them as much as possible.
5. I like my kids.
6. I want my kids to be able to enjoy and love learning. I want to encourage their strengths and buoy their weaknesses. I do not want them falling through the cracks because they are not the proverbial squeaky wheel. I do not want them bored to tears because the rest of the class is a level behind them. I want to foster their desire to understand the world and people around them.

I'm sure I've left reasons out, but those are the important ones.

I've always done school-y activities with my kids. Even my 18-month-old is no stranger to paint and stamps and letters and colors. However, it has been mostly interest-guided since I am a strong believer in learning through play in younger years. As I grow in my parenting and understanding of children, I relax about teaching my children in their toddler years. Abby knew her colors by 18 mos and letters and what they said by 2. Emmett is 3 and still is learning his letters (though, he does know all his numbers and understands one-to-one correlation). Ellie is 18 mos and I'm happy she can do finger-plays, point to major body parts, and tell us in her mono-syllabic way what different animals say (though she can potty in the toilet like a champ). I don't think that means that Abby is more gifted than my younger two. It only shows that I had more time to focus my attention on Abby when she was my only. And, that now I realize the importance of play and making messes in a toddlers life much better now.

I'm hoping to enroll Abby in a virtual school that uses the k12 curriculum, however, it is only offered for grades 1-11 for the next school year. So, for this school year, we'll be keeping it simple. It is only kindergarten and a lot of it should be fun and relaxed.

Reading/Phonics:

Abby is a third of the way through the Funnix Reading System and loving it. I plan to

complete that with her before our next baby is born (May/June).

Emmett is still learning his letters. This school year we're placing a lot more emphasis on letters and the sounds the say. We'll do some drawing of letters, crafts, the LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD, and some starfall.

Math:

We'll be using RightStart Math Level A. I'm thinking that we could use Level B, but Emmett seems a bit more mathematically interested at this point so I am hoping he can join in on the lessons/games most of the time. Even if/when we do enroll Abby in k12, I am planning on keeping up with this curriculum until we at least complete Level B.

Everything Else:

We are no strangers to unit study. This year we're going to use Five in a Row to help cover the rest of our learning. I am looking forward to spending a lot of time on the couch with all my little ones around me and a good book on my lap. We're buying maps and are going to explore the regions that each stories take place in as well as marking the areas that we've been to or where we have family living.

I should also mention that while I am a stay-at-home-mom of three (soon to be four!) little ones and life is busy in the aspects of teaching and helping and safeguarding and training my children, my husband and I are also in school ourselves. Dan makes a good living for us in the United States Air Force but still is seeking further knowledge. He's currently taking two courses (6 credit hours) at a local community college. His current major is pre-nursing, but it very well could change. I am almost done with my associates with a major in history (after this semester, only five more classes!) and I hope to move on and earn my bachelors as quickly as possible.