In my inexperienced opinion, we are doing great. It's my first time in a homeschool environment, and I'm teaching an almost 4 year old and a 5 1/2 year old with an 18 month old running circles and jumping off the furniture.
It gets a little crazy around here.
According to my lesson planner, Zachary is a day ahead and Gracie is a day behind. I'm not worried about it though, because my goal is to introduce Gracie to all the letters, and if that means we are off schedule a bit but she is solid on them, I'm fine with that.
We (that would be me and the mouse in my pocket) (my teacher's assistant) have discovered that she does love the Have Fun Teaching video series on the YouTube.
(I am sorry, really. Chris's blessed grandma called it "the YouTube" once and we laughed so hard over it - and now we are stuck saying it. Welcome to the workings of my mind.)
Anyhoo. Apparently there's a whole website for Have Fun Teaching, and while I haven't done all of my homework on the whole Common Core issue, I don't think there is anything wrong with using resources that relate to both our homeschooling purposes and also align to CC. Feel free to email me your diatribe on the subject.
Zachary is loving learning how to read. This makes me fifty kinds of happy. My childhood was spent with my nose in a book, and I do not apologize for being a bookworm.
So once we get going in the mornings, which is mostly the kids dragging me from the slumber they keep me from in the night, we are able to get through our work in about 2 hours currently. I have determined that I don't work well if the house is a disaster, because instead of being focused on their schoolwork I am wandering the house in my mind thinking of what needs to be done first. So directly after breakfast is house clean up time, getting dressed, etc, and then we can dive into schoolwork. If that takes all morning and we don't get to school until after lunch, even better, because then Gabriel goes down for a solid nap and we have plenty of time for school AND extended craft time.
I'm looking forward to the day that Zach can work more independently, but I am pleased with his progress so far. I'm also thrilled with how easy they are learning their Virtues, and how applicable they are to every day life. We have gotten through diligent, helpful, perseverant, gentle, content, and currently in attentive, which seems to be sticking the best so far. Maybe because they are able to immediately put it into practice, thank the Good Lord above.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Quick and Powerful
It is my favorite thing to see the precious Word of God in my little son's handwriting.
I am using it to teach memory verses. Gracie has the same verse in a font she can trace, but she tend to lose focus easily so I will keep trying with her.
With these simple verses, I am also teaching them that the Word of God is true, and very important, so we must do our very best handwriting when we write scriptures.
Credit to KirstenJoyAwake.com for Bible Writer Volume 1: God Is ~ this download is available for purchase
Lapbook learning
I have found something to be true for homeschool lapbooks - regular old glue makes a mess.
I need to invest in a reliable double stick tape dispenser. I worked hard to assemble this lapbook base and I will not be deterred by icky glue.
And I also need to start buying washi tape.
(cue the groaning from my husband when I say "I need to pick up a few things at Hobby Lobby.")
I have a counting lapbook I'm starting to get ready for Zach to use. I am using the free Printable Number Matching Cards from Homeschool Creations. Since I used plain white cardstock, I think some washi tape would really help pretty them up a bit without the effort of coloring with markers. This is a long-term lapbook that I plan to use for all three kids, so I would not like to have them color this one. :) Momma gets to have fun with projects too, right?
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Friday, August 30, 2013
The Cat is out of the Bag
If we weren't already aware of the vast differences between Zachary and Gracie, this project should tell all.
I gave Zachary the pieces to color, and he immediately colored a respectable orange tabby. I glued the pieces on, and he began creating dialogue with the cat and having a puppet show. How cute.
Gracie however - took a total of AN HOUR to color the pieces. And that was stretched over a three hour time period in which she also scattered Lincoln Logs all over the living room and then wailed that she was being asked to pick them up.
But when she colors, she does it up right. This cat looks like he has been through the Color Run.
C. C is for Cat.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Momma needs to not confuse the girl
Gracie is so easy to please. She loves coloring and worksheets.
One project this week made me realize that I think differently than a 3.5 year old girl. I thought if I cut the pieces first, and then she colors them, we will assemble the pieces and have a happy alligator.
No.
That confused her.
Zach actually ended up finishing the coloring of the pieces and glued most of it together before I knew what was happening, so I had to take it apart and show her (them lol) that we need to follow directions and wait for Momma, because we were going to make the arms and tail move. Gracie was so delighted at that!
No.
That confused her.
Zach actually ended up finishing the coloring of the pieces and glued most of it together before I knew what was happening, so I had to take it apart and show her (them lol) that we need to follow directions and wait for Momma, because we were going to make the arms and tail move. Gracie was so delighted at that!
Momma learn her lesson? CHECK.
What Zach likes to do
Zach is always my guinea pig. Firstborn, and most everything takes longer with him because I figure out my mistakes on him. He is very forgiving. :)
His first reaction to the first day was: "this is too easy." I had begun to work with him using some old Abeka readers, so some words he has already learned. So I am going to have to find little incentives to help him through this phase. Like googly eyes for his every day dinosaur drawings.
I may need to buy a bigger stockpile of googly eyes.
Also because of the Abeka readers, he was used to learning 15-20 words per book, so 6-8 words per day feels to him like baby steps. So I am working with it by showing him 4 days of words at a time, and then spending a couple of days reading the stories and the review.
Today I gave him a spelling test by giving him a dry erase crayon and letting him spell the words on the shower wall. Seriously, he loved it.
I found a pleasant surprise - Zach likes to do copywork. He was very disappointed that he didn't have worksheets like Gracie. Thanks to Sis Pastor's Wife, I have TONS of handwriting practice paper, good old-fashioned brownish gray thin paper with lines and spaced for beginner writers. So I am not going to be shy about it - I wrote out his words and he happily copied them.
He also surprised me in that he noticed the letter 'a' in different fonts, if you will. I printed it like a circle with a tail, and he noticed the san serif font on the video. So he experimented with how he would write lowercase 'a'. I didn't see that coming.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Saturday, August 10, 2013
School!
I am very excited to share our homeschooling journey! Partly because I am a blogger, oversharing is what I do, and for some reason you already care about me and the oversharing is just part of the charm.
What curriculum are you using?
The bulk of our curriculum is a free program I found online sometime in June. I was very concerned about the cost of curriculum, because we pinch pennies as a hobby and also I could see just from reading the "scope and sequence" and all of the homeschooling learning terms on the many many research sites, and the yada yada yada that I was already going to be dealing with two different styles of student. I knew Gracie would not be satisfied watching Zachary "do school" if she didn't have something to do, but I also did not want to pay for preschool curriculum and Kindergarten curriculum.
I needed a peace in my heart about the program, and I did not want to pay. I could have taken out a whole lot of that last paragraph and that's what it boils down to.
The author of the curriculum we are using prefers to not have others link to her, or name the curriculum, because she wants any web searches to go directly to her site and not be confused by anyone else's site. I fully respect her terms. I will simply call it the curriculum, and you can email me if you want the actual website. I do intend to donate to the author, the work she has done is unbelievably detailed, and I believe in supporting her cause.
I am adding in:
~ Bible Writer, a fantastic Bible memory verse and copywork program. I was able to download this for free at the product launch this summer, but it is only $4.99, and I strongly encourage you to run right over to kirstenjoyawake.com and purchase this program.
~ Character Development, because my kids' Characters Need Developing. I will not insert here how having three kids under the age of 5 was a traumatic experience in realizing that I do not have a stinking clue how to train kids' characters and we have had a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth in the area of Characters That Need Developing. Nope. Not going to go there. Anyways, we are using a simple but effective poster from we-choose-virtues.myshopify.com. I bought this poster on recommendation from a friend, had it laminated, and it hangs on the bulletin board. I want one for each kid's bedroom wall, one for the refrigerator, one for each bathroom, and I'll take one on the inside of my closet door, thanksomuch.
We are not stressing on the extras
We will have some music training, yes. I don't think someone can be a member of our particular family and not love music in some fashion. We will have art, we will have physical education, we will do all that stuff. But it is not going to be a structured thing, and I'm not going to stress myself out about it during these initial years. I have always held that piano lessons before age 7-8 are pretty much setting a kid up to hate the piano by the time they could really start to get good, so when my kids start to hate me for giving them lessons I will gladly pay a professional to motivate and excite them about the world of music.
Enough about my kids' future hatred of me as a teacher. Let's talk about how we are using the Great and Powerful Oz. (see how I did that? Literary reference to make you wanna click on through.)
Gracie-bug, Pre Kindergarten
Gracie will start right at the beginning of the curriculum. She is familiar with letters and their sounds, but there is no way she is ready to read or write yet, so we are starting at the beginning with her.
Zachary, Kindergarten
Zachary is another story. We didn't do any formal schooling with him for PreK, but from what he has picked up from educational videos such as Magic Schoolbus, LeapFrog, various worksheets and workbooks we have done with him, etc, he is going to start in the McGuffy Revised Eclectic Primer portion of the curriculum to become familiar with that method of learning to read. This puts him beginning the actual Kindergarten program around mid-October 2013. Because he is already very familiar with numbers, which doesn't formally start until midway through Kindergarten (GR2), I am going to adjust the math/counting curriculum to help him finish the GR2 math portion while he is finishing the Pre-K (GR1) reading portion, so he can begin the GR2 reading at the same time as beginning first-grade level math.
So the first few months of my lesson planner are a confusing mess to anyone who is not in my brain, but it will even out.
What curriculum are you using?
The bulk of our curriculum is a free program I found online sometime in June. I was very concerned about the cost of curriculum, because we pinch pennies as a hobby and also I could see just from reading the "scope and sequence" and all of the homeschooling learning terms on the many many research sites, and the yada yada yada that I was already going to be dealing with two different styles of student. I knew Gracie would not be satisfied watching Zachary "do school" if she didn't have something to do, but I also did not want to pay for preschool curriculum and Kindergarten curriculum.
I needed a peace in my heart about the program, and I did not want to pay. I could have taken out a whole lot of that last paragraph and that's what it boils down to.
The author of the curriculum we are using prefers to not have others link to her, or name the curriculum, because she wants any web searches to go directly to her site and not be confused by anyone else's site. I fully respect her terms. I will simply call it the curriculum, and you can email me if you want the actual website. I do intend to donate to the author, the work she has done is unbelievably detailed, and I believe in supporting her cause.
I am adding in:
~ Bible Writer, a fantastic Bible memory verse and copywork program. I was able to download this for free at the product launch this summer, but it is only $4.99, and I strongly encourage you to run right over to kirstenjoyawake.com and purchase this program.
~ Character Development, because my kids' Characters Need Developing. I will not insert here how having three kids under the age of 5 was a traumatic experience in realizing that I do not have a stinking clue how to train kids' characters and we have had a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth in the area of Characters That Need Developing. Nope. Not going to go there. Anyways, we are using a simple but effective poster from we-choose-virtues.myshopify.com. I bought this poster on recommendation from a friend, had it laminated, and it hangs on the bulletin board. I want one for each kid's bedroom wall, one for the refrigerator, one for each bathroom, and I'll take one on the inside of my closet door, thanksomuch.
We are not stressing on the extras
We will have some music training, yes. I don't think someone can be a member of our particular family and not love music in some fashion. We will have art, we will have physical education, we will do all that stuff. But it is not going to be a structured thing, and I'm not going to stress myself out about it during these initial years. I have always held that piano lessons before age 7-8 are pretty much setting a kid up to hate the piano by the time they could really start to get good, so when my kids start to hate me for giving them lessons I will gladly pay a professional to motivate and excite them about the world of music.
Enough about my kids' future hatred of me as a teacher. Let's talk about how we are using the Great and Powerful Oz. (see how I did that? Literary reference to make you wanna click on through.)
Gracie-bug, Pre Kindergarten
Gracie will start right at the beginning of the curriculum. She is familiar with letters and their sounds, but there is no way she is ready to read or write yet, so we are starting at the beginning with her.
Zachary, Kindergarten
Zachary is another story. We didn't do any formal schooling with him for PreK, but from what he has picked up from educational videos such as Magic Schoolbus, LeapFrog, various worksheets and workbooks we have done with him, etc, he is going to start in the McGuffy Revised Eclectic Primer portion of the curriculum to become familiar with that method of learning to read. This puts him beginning the actual Kindergarten program around mid-October 2013. Because he is already very familiar with numbers, which doesn't formally start until midway through Kindergarten (GR2), I am going to adjust the math/counting curriculum to help him finish the GR2 math portion while he is finishing the Pre-K (GR1) reading portion, so he can begin the GR2 reading at the same time as beginning first-grade level math.
So the first few months of my lesson planner are a confusing mess to anyone who is not in my brain, but it will even out.
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