Math-U-See Primer

I decided to go ahead and start Kimi today with Primer. I spent a good amount of time yesterday once the program arrived looking it over and playing with the manipulatives and doing the lessons myself to get familiar with it, so I had a rough idea what I'm doing. Well, we did lesson 1 today. Kimi and I sat together and watched the DVD lesson on my laptop, then we pulled that worksheet out of her book and got some of the green blocks to do it. We're just having fun with it right now, she did 2 pages of the lesson today and I anticipate that tomorrow and Friday she'll finish the lesson.

Now, this child is one that I sat and seriously debated on what level to buy her. At first, I thought I should get her Alpha until I discussed it with a couple people over at the Sonlight forums. Their input led me to get Primer instead, and once it arrived and I got a good look at the materials I started doubting that it was the right choice for her. But, we're going to do it anyway with her, and I'm having her actually use the workbook instead of my original plan to have her do the work in a notebook. She will likely finish it before Missa's birthday in April, but that's all right. I'm actually planning to purchase Alpha here I think next month for Missa to do, so I'll be ready when Kimi is ready for Alpha. I just hope that starting in Alpha we can treat the student workbook like a non-consumable textbook, and have the girls do the work in notebooks instead.

If you've done Math-U-See Alpha, do you think it will be possible to do the program the way I want to? The cheapskate in me just doesn't like the idea of spending that much on math workbooks if I can reuse them and have them write in notebooks instead. Notebooks I can get 10/$1 during the back-to-school sales so it is a much more economical choice for us to do this instead.

wow they are fast!

As usual, I had trouble sleeping tonight. So, I grabbed my laptop off the kids' school desks and am curled up in bed with it while Scott and Kimi sleep (now when did she come join us? oh well it didn't wake me when she did) and decided to check out where our Math-U-See is at in its shipment. According to UPS, it will arrive on Tuesday, January 25th during their normal delivery hours. It is right now currently January 25th, 4:47am Eastern. So, that means that supposedly sometime in the next 3-15 hours or so it should arrive. And THIS is why we like UPS over FedEx, besides the obvious history we have with them delivering damaged packages, the packages being late, and/or them delivering our package at the other end of town requiring me to start making phone calls and yelling at them until they find my package. Maybe it is just me having issues with FedEx, but whenever possible I go with UPS. My college sends my textbooks UPS every time (thankfully that is their default so I don't need to contact the bookstore and get that changed), and since Sonlight started offering the option of requesting UPS for delivery I take the extra day or two of my order being processed to get it (my requesting the different delivery option means that my orders go from the automatic processing to being manually processed, which is a bit slower at the warehouse I guess since a person has to put it in the system for packing and create the shipping order and notify UPS and all that instead of the computers there doing it all). I avoid FedEx for shipping whenever possible after having my Sonlight core P3/4 arrive late, across town, and when it DID show up the box was damaged and some of the corners on my brand new hardback books were dinged up and bent. Back in the spring I ordered a new guide for my core P4/5 and paid the extra for ground shipping instead of Media Mail since I needed it by a certain date, and they managed to lose my order at the local FedEx building where it was supposed to go on the truck for delivery. They claimed they attempted to deliver it Friday but that my business was closed so they couldn't. Last I checked, this was a residence, not a business. That one, Sonlight personally got involved in finding out where the heck my delivery was while I also was making calls, and then when we finally tracked down my package I threw a FIT on the phone (which if you've ever heard/seen one of my little hissy fits you know it is not something small and it can get loud and very nasty, I've had customer service people in tears before when I throw a fit). Needless to say, by the time Sonlight and I got it tracked down and then I threw that fit, they had a guy who wasn't a delivery person personally bring me my package (he was taking personal time mid-day for a few hours to drive in to Columbus to pick his son up at the airport for a visit and since I live on the way and right off the freeway they had him personally deliver it to me). FedEx and I have a looooong history of not getting along. I much prefer to work with UPS or even the USPS for getting my materials.

And the girls always get super excited when I tell them that UPS is coming that day. They know that even if it is one of my college books, a UPS delivery means that there is something new to look at and it puts a little change in our daily flow and it gives me a little boost to have that small change. This delivery today though, that one should be a BIG deal for Kimi since it is supposedly her first official schoolbooks and they all know that we're switching programs so they are all anticipating this delivery so they can check out the manipulatives and see what this new math looks like before they get their own levels to do.

Math-U-See

I've mentioned it before in past blog posts. I've considered switching to Math-U-See for a long time now, close to 2 years in fact. However, the cost of it has kept us from doing just that.

And then Scott got his paycheck this past Friday. Now, if you know my family we have a VERY tight budget, and every penny counts. On his most recent paycheck, however, we were pleased to find that we had been reimbursed a bit of insurance money. His employer switched health insurance companies for the 2011 calendar year. The old insurance company, they required pre-payment by the employer for the insurance premiums. This means that the money they took out in January was for February's coverage. Well, the new company takes the money the month it is due, meaning that January's withholdings is for January's coverage. So, we got the money that was deducted from his paycheck back in December back. That means that we had a little extra money that we didn't anticipate.

So, we decided to take the plunge. Kimi is 5 now, and bugging us for math lessons of her own. So, on Saturday morning we ordered Math-U-See Primer for her. I've always been spoiled by my experiences with Sonlight for quick shipping, but I don't know anything about how Math-U-See ships. All I knew was from when I ordered and had to pay shipping and that they only offer UPS shipping (cool beans, I don't like FedEx). No clue how long it would take them to ship my order.

Well, I got a tracking number in my e-mail inbox less than an hour ago........ I'm anticipating that we'll have it here by Thursday at the latest. Kimi is really looking forward to it, and Missa is also looking forward to it after I explained that I wanted her to try Kimi's level and see if she wanted to do this math instead of Miquon (since it is rather expensive, I'd like her to get into it and work on some of the material that she struggles with that is in Kimi's level so that she has a real feel for the program before I take the leap and buy her Alpha and Beta both to work at her pace). I have a feeling that by fall all my girls will be doing this math program at their levels and pace.

So, if I changed math to this program, does this mean that next I'll be changing up all my other subjects too? The only one left that I want to change is spelling. I've already changed handwrinting this month, and now math is starting to transition of a new program as well.

eating habits

Yep, we all have issues with this one don't we? Well, since it is the start of a new year, I'm re-evaluating some things. My goal to exercise at least a bit 3 days a week is great, but it isn't terribly effective if I don't have the energy to do it because of inadequate nutrition. So, I sit here contemplating a drastic change.

While I was pregnant with Jojo, I was pretty good with a vegan diet that was at least 50% raw produce. I had energy, I felt great, and just overall I was doing better than I'd ever done. I'm thinking it may be about time to start incorporating more of this into my life. I love veggies, I could live on a veggie and nut diet I think with a daily fruit tossed in for that morning burst of energy (I'm particularly fond of apples with peanut butter)

Now here comes the interesting thing. I'm married to a man who will hang me by my toes if I try to make him give up his "meat and potatoes for every meal" style diet. I need to incorporate this slowly for his benefit. I would love to see him eating the stuff I want to, but he is so picky when it comes to food that I'm going to end up cooking one meal for him and the kids and then preparing something else entirely for me each meal. Oh well, I can handle that I think.

At this point I don't have any money left in my grocery budget to go shopping for produce, so I will use the canned and frozen food items that I have on hand now until we have money again here in about 2 1/2 weeks. I'm going to be doing a lot of recipe hunting and experimenting this next couple of weeks while we switch to vegetarian breakfasts and lunches then go vegan with 50% or more being raw on my birthday.

Who wants to bet my kids try to throw a fit at me for this at first?

Making Math Easy

At yesterday's library trip I decided to check and see what kind of math resources were available that I could use for Kimi to last until I am ready to make my next curriculum purchase from Sonlight. Well, I found a couple things I can use with her, and Jordan at the same time, as filler but the big thing I discovered is a book series called "Making Math Easy."

This series is a set of six books by Rebecca Wingard-Nelson. The six books each cover one topic in depth from basic skills to more advanced concepts. All the titles in this series are:

Addition Made Easy
Subtraction Made Easy
Multiplication Made Easy
Division Made Easy
Fractions and Decimals Made Easy
Word Problems Made Easy

I got Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication for us to check out and review/learn with (multiplication is a subject we've not started yet, and the other two need more practice to solidify skills). The publisher's site also offers free worksheets to download and print for use with the books, so I did just that (however, I only printed the even-numbered pages off since the odd-numbered ones are the title page and answer keys for each worksheet, I can use a calculator to check her work if needed). Now, I have these books for four weeks, plus a renewal for another 4 weeks that I intend to utilize, so I am planning to use these in place of Miquon for a bit to see how Missa does with grasping the concepts.

I also plan to purchase the entire six book series as soon as I have the money to do so. A friend of mine has access to purchasing the set from her local public school district for a slightly discounted price. So I am going to take advantage of this and let her know as soon as I have the money for them, and she is going to check to see if the school has any available to buy. If they do, I'm sending her the money for the books and shipping from Kentucky up here in Ohio. If not, then I'll pay a little more to purchase them online.

If you want to check out this series, here's a link to the publisher's page for the series. I think this is a valuable resource for any homeschooling family, especially if they have a child who struggles with math.

ENSLOW PUBLISHERS, INC.

Dinosaurs!!!!!

I'm creating my first unit study ever. I've done unit studies before, but only the pre-created kind that I can get from sites like Homeschool Share. But, this time I don't have ready access to all the books for the unit we want to do at Homeschool Share, so I'm creating my own for the first time.

They want to study dinosaurs. Lord help me, I still haven't decided if I am in the young earth or old earth camp on this, so I don't know how to approach the times and such. I'm thinking that for now, I'll just go with the mainstream opinion of the Earth being billions of years old and sidestep the dates as much as possible, replacing the "billions of years ago" references with "a long time ago" type stuff and PRAY that Missa doesn't decide to ask me how long ago that "a long time ago" is.

So, for the month of February and maybe a little bit of March I will be doing a unit study for science on dinosaurs. I have a dozen or so books that I got yesterday at the library, and this weekend I plan to go back and get more.

If you've ever created a unit study, do you have any advice for me on this? Missa is VERY interested in dinosaurs and right now is reading one of the books I got yesterday as a first wave of books to consider for the unit, and I know she's going to want to really dig in while at the same time I have a 3 year old who just likes dinosaurs. (and one of the books I got will really appeal to Lydia and her strange fascination with gross things, it is called "Jurassic Poop" of all things LOL) I'm a little nervous about this, since I've only done a handful of unit studies before and NEVER created my own pretty much from scratch like this.

buy a blank book or do a couple dozen lapbooks?

So, as I get ready for tomorrow's lessons, and the start of our newest venture in history with being VERY hands-on, I wonder. I have History Pockets to go with our core, as well as the Handle On The Arts Hands-On History year 1 book and numerous resources for free lapbooking pieces to go with our studies in the rest of core 1. So, do I hunt down some blank books that are going to be big enough for us to put all this in through the year, or do I get a couple more 1" binders and more cardstock to hole-punch for a big notebook we can add to all year, or do I just make a couple dozen or more lapbooks? I have an almost full box of file folders (one of the boxes of 100) so I'm not hurting for folders. I'm just trying to figure out the most practical method of putting this all together for the kids. Scott gets paid on Friday, so if I do something that isn't using a couple dozen lapbooks we can't begin assembling for a whole week (well with the binder option we can begin assembling right away pretty much, as I have some cardstock already on hand and we can punch it for them to use in assembly and then carefully store those pages until we get the binders).

If you have insights or input, comment box is open for it.

A Reason For Handwriting- Transition book

In my last post, I said that we were switching Missa's handwriting program. Well, here's what I think so far.

I've looked through the transition workbook and the "teaching guide" that covers all levels. I like it, a lot. In fact, I like it enough that I've decided to switch all my girls over to this program starting next school year. The only exception will be with Jojo, next school year she will do the preschool level of Handwriting Without Tears before she starts the K book in our new program.

Now, for what Missa thinks of it....... (and I quote her on this one)

"I don't like it. Its too much writing."

LOL Yep, she'll do just fine with it I think. If she sits down and gets to it, she does a great job with it. It is more writing than what she had to do with Handwriting Without Tears, but she'll adjust to it I think. And now for a picture from this morning's practice, it was her first day in it.



Yes, she was up at 6am doing her handwriting practice....... But she did a wonderful job, and I'm very proud of her for it. She's doing the practice lesson pages this week and next to get used to the new style of the paper and such, and then will go into the real stuff. I have a feeling that this will be a good time with her, once we get things going with her and she's ready to move on into the cursive pages (that alone will be what gets her really excited I think, she's been asking for cursive a couple years now)

small changes

You know I'm all about changing things as needed or desired. Well, I am making one small change in our curriculum at this point in the year.

Missa has been asking me to teach her to write cursive, but I've put it off because she has TERRIBLE printing and a lot of issues still with reversals in her writing. I had decided that this school year we'd spend one more year working on her printing before we introduce cursive. Then she finally wore me down after watching me make crazy fast notes on paper regarding my college work for a paper I had to do.

Being the always researching person I am, I started looking at different programs for handwriting. We've always used Handwriting Without Tears here, and it has been a great experience for us. It helped a lot to undo the majority of the damage that was caused by half a year that Missa was in our local public schools. Being a lefty in the schools is not a good thing if you don't go into the school already knowing how to write properly. Trust me on this one, I speak from experience as a lefty who went to public school and had a 1st grade teacher try to correct me by rapping my knuckles with a ruler every time I was writing properly (like I had been taught at home) instead of using that incorrect lefty hook to print. Missa came out of school her K year with the hook, and I spent all of 1st grade undoing that and teaching her to properly position herself and the paper for writing before we started tackling the bigger issues of these reversals and incorrect formations over the summer before we started this year, her 2nd grade school year. We've got her printing proper formation about 95% of the time, and have fixed about 75% of her reversal issues in this year and a half that she's been home. Yes, I think she may be almost ready for cursive.

So, in my searching I knew I wanted something different from the program we've always used. Yes, HWT is a wonderful program and saved us with her (and with Liddy's motor delays, she is doing HWT now very slowly and learning to form her lowercase letters now). However, I do not like the style of cursive that this program teaches. So, we change now. I spent a lot of time looking at different programs before finally settling on "A Reason For Handwriting" and purchasing the transition book set from Sonlight. (I have mentioned how much I love sonlight in the past right?) It arrives in the mail tomorrow, and that is when we will get started on it after I take a bit to get familiar with the program.

I chose this program (and Scott just said ok and handed me the debit card to pay) for a couple reasons. One, they use scripture for the handwriting practice lessons. Now, normally I avoid using Scriptures for anything related to schooling my girls so that I do not influence them to only believe one specific thing without giving them an opportunity to question it. However, when it comes to Missa I do not have this worry. She is one of God's little children, and has already decided that when she grows up that she is going to be a missionary and wants to go to different countries and teach people about God and Jesus. So I do not need to worry as much with her on the influence of scriptures in some of her lessons, she already has made her choice obviously. Also, this particular program has "pretty" pages for the final day of the weekly lessons to write the entire verse on, which is supposed to make the child work harder to do their best because it is paper worthy of being displayed. Yes, I will have regular displays of her handwriting pieces in our home I think. But the main reason we chose this program is because of the transition book itself.

The transition book starts with printing, going through the first half of the book only with printing practice before the students begin cursive midway through the book. This is exactly the type of material I needed for Missa, to use as a motivator for her to do well with the print work beforehand. Since we switched programs for cursive, I would have likely purchased a print workbook before the cursive book to go through with her in any other program so that she has the time to adapt to the different program. The transition book has that built in for me already, so I just have to sit with her each day and do the lesson with her and help her adjust to the differences while we work on improving her printing at the same time.

But the book hasn't actually arrived yet, it is scheduled for UPS delivery tomorrow. And knowing how wonderful UPS is in my area, it will be here right around 8am (usually just before that actually) so I will have more than enough time to look it over before we start lessons in the afternoon. I will update how I feel about it when it arrives, and again after a bit of time with the program.

Welcome to 2011

Yes, it is a new year. A fresh start to things, an opportunity to build memories and make changes for the better. I like to call Mondays the ultimate in the do-over because you are starting fresh for a week. Well, the start of a new year is also one of those ultimate do-overs. Its a new year, who cares if you totally screwed up 2010? You got a fresh start now in 2011, so grab it and run wild.

Often, people make resolutions for the new year. Usually those are things like "lose 20lbs" or "quit smoking." Those are BIG goals, and all people do is stare at the end and then get discouraged when it isn't easy and happen quickly, so they give up. Well, not this year for me. I decided that I need to set a few goals for my own betterment in a few areas. One for my physical/mental health, one for our home environment, one for the kids' homeschool, one for my college, and one for my relationships in general. So, here goes, my list of goals.

1: exercise 3 times a week at a minimum
2: develop a consistent routine for housework
3: be consistent in homeschooling at least 4 days a week
4: get my GPA to a 3.0 by the end of next Semester and maintain it
5: say at least one positive thing about each person I love daily

Now, do you notice that the central theme around my goals for this year involve me doing things on a regular basis? Looks like I am working on becoming more consistent with the things i need to do. Right now, I work out uhhhhhhhhh never. Housework happens when I'm forced to, homeschool may happen a couple days a week randomly, and my grades in college are hovering near that 2.0 line just high enough to keep my financial aid eligibility.

So, I need to come up with a course of action in this matter. I happen to know that I am capable of being consistent with things, as I managed to teach myself to take my meds every morning (it only took me 3 months of having an alarm go off at 6:30am every single day before I was able to shut that off because I take my pills when I get up each day). So, I just need to set myself up for success with this. I am going to start small. I have no clue what I'll do exactly, but I know that I am going to do this. I will find a way to remember to do the things I need to do every day to improve my home, my relationships, my education, and my health.