lapbooking, hmmmmmmm

So today I've been thinking about some stuff. I'm not really happy with how our homeschooling has been going. I've tried a few different things the last couple years, and nothing really felt right. So, I think we're going to try lapbooking. A wonderful lady and fellow homeschooler at my church does lapbooking for her homeschool lessons, and I've been following her blog lately to see what all she's been doing with them since her oldest isn't too much older than my oldest girl. I really enjoy looking at the pics of the lapbooks she's done with her kids, and am inspired to do it myself here with the girls. Therefore, I don't know if we'll be starting lessons today like I thought we might last night, or if we'll take this second week off for Christmas break like we had originally planned. I'm thinking that we will take that second week off and start on Monday next week, that way I can plan out a few lapbooks and unit studies to go with them. I just don't know.............. I guess we'll see what happens. I am going to put together a simple-ish unit study and make a sample lapbook before I teach the girls so that we have a visual of a lapbook and so I have some clue what the HECK I'm doing with this idea. I expored the idea of lapbooking in the past, but have never really gotten into it because its a *crafty* looking thing and I am NOT the craafty type if you know me. Well, I like to to things like knitting and sewing, but I don't do art projects and the idea of coloring, cutting, and pasting sends a shudder through me because of the potential mess. But, I'm going to go out on a limb and do a unit study with a lapbook, and just jump right on in and see what happens with it. If it goes well, after we finish the study I may add the unit study and lapbook outline and directions to my geocities page that I keep saying that I'm going to update LOL

last day of Christmas break

Well, I was going to give the girls 2 weeks off for Christmas break this year, but we're all getting pretty antsy and ready to start back to our routines. So, I'm going to be starting up again tomorrow with lessons. That means that today, I am going to be looking at my materials to see what we're covering this week and plan out how to do it each day so that we aren't overloading ourselves and are having fun while we learn. I'm pulling my Sonlight core IG back out, and we are restarting the LA program, so tomorrow will be a completely fresh start for us this school year. I'm also going to get Kimmy started at some basic pre-writing and such since she'll be 3yo in just 2 1/2 weeks. We start the preschool stuff at 3yo, and since I've been saying for a while tht our school years start in January it makes sense that I'd have her start in now.

We're also going to start a new reading program for Melissa that I found free online. Its a reading remediation program for children who are older and not reading, but can be easily adapted for younger kids learning to read. I'm feeling pretty good about it, and will be combining it with our Sonlight LA program to give us the reading aspect of LA.

Scott just read this big front-page article in the newspaper about the public schools and reading. He's now really concerned about how Melissa's doing with her reading because of this article. Let me see if I can get a link to the article online for you to read, I think its a load of BS intended to make parents think the public schools are doing more in this area than they really are. OK here it is:

http://newarkadvocate.com/article/20081228/NEWS01/812280301&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

He read some of it out loud to me, and I just had to laugh about it. I don't agree with this article at all, but there were a few things that I found really funny. There's a section that tells how parents can best encourage reading in their children and help them learn to read, and it starts with "read to your children daily" Hmmmmmmm haven't homeschoolers been saying to do this for years now? Kind of funny really if you think about it.................................

And for the record, I think its great that the paper showed the county schools' 3rd grade reading test scores, but I'd like to know how these schools also did in K, 1st, 2nd, and 4th grades. I bet there's a big difference as they progress through the years.........................

mid-year blues

I don't usually complain about things in general, but I feel a need to do so at the moment. I know some people look at my family and think "gee they got it all together, she's sure a superwoman" but in reality I'm exhausted by it all.

We've been pretty much just unschooling, only doing a little bit of handwriting, math, and language arts sprinkled in when the kids ask to do it. We've had a few runs of the flu this year already, so we've not had the chance to do stuff as much as I would have liked. Every plan I've made for new materials has been scrapped due to money, so I had to take advantage of our Christmas budget to get the girls some stuff for lessons (readers for Melissa, some more read alouds sprinkled among the girls, stuff like that) I'm doubting myself lately with my ability to actually keep doing this, I feel right now like such a failure because Melissa isn't reading hardly at all yet, she won't even try to sound out cvc words any more. She was doing so well in this area too until we had to stop because just trying to talk made her throw up for a week in October. Lydia just keeps wanting more, more, more and I just can't give her any more right now. I keep trying to spread myself thinner and thinner to meet everyone's needs without giving myself the down time that I need so badly, and its just not happening at all right now. Every time something starts going right, I get a huge bump that stops things everywhere else. Like Melissa's reading, it was going so well for a long time and then we all got sick and its like we are right back at square one. She has absolutely no clue any more about how to blend sounds together to read cvc words, and won't even try it again now. I just flat out don't know what to do. I think I may just restart our LA program and see if that helps any. If it does, we'll just keep at that subject through the summer, then take a week or two off before starting the next level to make up for having to restart partway through it. I don't want to do it, but I think I need to do it for her sake.

We're right on target with math though at least, that's one subject Melissa asks for even if she's so sick she can't sit up. I have no concerns about her with math at least.

I mentioned how thin I'm stretched, and I think that stretching is so bad that its got me doubting my own abilities to teach the girls right now. Since October I've been considering enrolling Melissa to start at the start of the new semester at the elementary school down the street, and putting Lydia into the preschool next door to the elementary school. But I can't do that, I can't just hand my girls over to the ps system without even considering the lasting effects of it. We live in a city with a not so great school system, so the local public isn't really an option at all. But I can't feel comfortable with just homeschooling by itself right now, I have so much going on and literally *no* accountability to keep me on track with what we're doing to ensure that we even do anything during the day. I'm considering the Ohio Virtual Academy since it would give us the accountability I need so much, but I don't know if I should to that for this year since I have stuff for the school year this year already. Maybe next school year, but this year I don't think I'll do the OHVA because I don't want to waste the materials I already spent the money on. So I'm going to make a commitment to post here daily starting when we pick up again on January 5th, and I'm going to detail what we did each day. I am GOING to do LA, bible, and math daily, plus at least 2 of the following subjects each day: history, geography, science, art, music, pysical education. That's 6 subjects to pick from daily as our additionals, and if I can't do 2 a day I have problems.

unit studies, unschooling, and lapbooking, oh MY!

So our original plans for this school year have already gotten scratched. Big surprise huh? We were just trying to do too much, move too fast, and nobody was happy. So SCREECH!!!!!!!!! We changed it all up again. Here's what we pulled now.

For science, we are using some ideas from www.letteroftheweek.com in the science of the week section. Next week we plan on using her pumpkin unit, and we'll do a lapbook and some other stuff for it. But mostly, we are just looking up stuff online that we are interested in and doing kitchen chemestry. We are making messes in the kitchen, mixing different things to see what happens. The girls LOVED making flubber, I'll post that recipe here later.

For social studies, we are just learning the basic details about our country right now. The girls can find the US on a world map, and can point out a few different states on a US map. That's pretty good for now, we'll continue to expand on that as we go the next few years. But we're about to take a little side trip to learn about the first thanksgiving and might make a lapbook for it too.

Math is still Singapore math, but that's only because I'm saving up for Math-U-See to do next year.

Language Arts................ now that is a fun one. We bought Sonlight LA K and are doing it. This is going very well for us. We lined up our handwriting books to go with the LA, so we are doing the same weekly letter in both books. The girls are having fun with this one, I'll have to share some pics my dad took of us when we did one of the weekly letter poster sheets.

Piano, well that is on a vacation right now. The girls love to do piano, but its just a thing that we had to put on hold due to other things. But to make up for the lack of music, they are in a choir for their grades and have practices once a week. So they are still getting music classes, just not what we had originally started with.

PE. Now this is a fun one. Melissa and Lydia both are doing gymnastics on Thursdays, and they LOVE it. Now, Lydia was doing a pre-ballet class at the ballet academy, but decided that she didn't like it so much as she thought she would so she tried her big sister's gymnastics class and absolutely LOVED it so we're taking a break from dance for her right now. She's just having so much fun with it, and I am really glad those two got into something they both enjoy and can do together.

Now, I mentioned UNSCHOOLING!!!!! We are indeed moving more toward that philosophy of learning, but still use structured materials. Right now, we've not done much of anything because the kids have been sick on and off since before halloween, but when we are back to it we'll be full force in math and LA, with the other stuff sprinkled in for good measure. We're having a blast with this approach, we aren't completely doing away with all educational texts but I'm definitely relaxing a lot more and starting to do more by following their leads instead of following my IG like its gospel. Its very hard though to not stress over the IG not being followed exactly.

2008-2009 school year plans

I know that I haven't posted much at all on this blog, but I'm busy with my girls. Anyway, this fall Melissa starts K, Lydia will be starting PK4, and Kimmy and Jordan will just hang out and absorb what they do lol They'll only be 2 1/2 and just turned 1yo when we start so no big deal if they get anything at all. But anyway, Scott and I discussed this a lot lately because he's not sure if we should homeschool this year since we are moving on Saturday and PS starts on the 21st, just 19 days after we move (because of the move my thought is to start OUR hs year on September 8th and just pick up some extra days to make up the time between our start and the PS start) So I'm going to make tentative plans for this year while he decides for sure what we are going to do (I gave him a deadline that is a week and a half away, if he doesn't give an answer by then I'll buy our homeschool stuff) Anyway, this is my plan for the upcoming school year.

Sonlight core P 3/4 (formerly known as core A)
revisit core P 4/5 (formerly known as core B)
Teach Your Child to Read In 100 Easy Lessons
the stuff left over from last school year:
- HWT K
- Ready, Set, Go For The Code
- Singapore Earlybird Math (finish 1 and do 2)

And we'll track the weather as our science for the year for our main project. Also, we'll do stuff from Ruth Beechick's 3 R's series to fill in any gaps that may be there. I'm just going to take a good relaxed year I think for homeschool, learning is a marathon and not a sprint after all. I was so gung-ho last year that we were pretty miserable with it all, so this year I'm backing off a bit and just relaxing about the whole thing. We'll play games, learn things pretty relaxed, and not do a bunch of workbook stuff unless the kids ask for it. Also, I have Lydia taking a jazz/ballet combo dance class and Kimmy doing tumbletots gymnastics with Scott at a local gym/dance studio (the one I went to as a kid in fact) and Melissa will either do karate at a local dojo or she'll do gymnastics at the place her sisters are going to, whichever one she decides on.

Yeah, my homeschool plans for this year are real ambitious, aren't they? lol I'm not motivated enough to make grand plans for it, they are so far ahead of the PS district we are moving to already that I am just not going to sweat it at all. They'll learn, and that's all that matters.