portfolio review- CHECK!

Ahhhh, spring. Grass is growing, flowering trees are in bloom (my willow out front is BEAUTIFUL right now), and there are lots of puddles for splashing in when mommy's not looking. Yes, it is a lovely time of year, and when we usually are at our most productive in homeschool.

Spring also marks the time when most homeschoolers are usually finishing up their stuff and getting their reporting options done. Here in Ohio, we are blessed to have a couple choices for reporting. One option is to do a standardized test and submit the scores. The other is to have a review done by a teacher certified to teach in the state. We chose the review this year, after much discussion and prayer on the matter.

This was my first official portfolio review. I had no clue what to expect, and was pretty sure I'd not get our letters to send the school district. After all, I'd been diagnosed with mono the first day we were out on our own homeschooling, away from OHVA, and then we'd been plagued by various illness and injuries since my recovery from mono in January (because I just won't stay in bed like the doctor says to, nope I take my kids trick or treating all over a small town a half hour from my home a week after diagnosis lol). We'd had a rough time finding curriculum that fits our needs and everyone's style of teaching/learning, just now settling into a bit of a groove this past few weeks with things. I think it is safe to say I was just *slightly* anxious about this review.

Thankfully, we had opted to make the 1 hour drive from my home to Grove City to see Dr. Holinga at The Reading Doctor. She was a homeschooling mom and understands the more non-traditional methods that sometimes happen as life gets in the way of textbook learning. We had a great time with her, and it was just so fun to get out and on the road. I had forgotten how much I love to drive, and the girls seemed to enjoy our road trip as well once we had all gotten bathed, dressed, and in the van. I had all our stuff that I could think of to bring for the review, we had math books (both the ones we started with in October and the current program we do now), journals, and samples of the history stuff we're doing (gotta love the queen of supplementing, I had their History Pockets and the current lapbooks to show her) along with a book for each girl so she could informally assess their reading. Missa rocked it with her Bible, and Liddy giggled her way through Green Eggs And Ham. Goofy child....... and we now have 2 pretty yellow sheets of paper for me to send with my notification that says they have completed a year of schoolwork at their levels and pretty much to back off me for a year. She was the PERFECT choice for us this year for review, and I plan to go back every year for review with her as long as I refuse to use standardized tests.

So now let's get rocking with our homeschool, its kind of funny to say that, since we did a year-end assessment at what would be closer to the start of our school years. We have decided it would be better for our family to take winters off the full courseload and do just a minimum of work, and then hump it through the spring, summer, and fall. I don't do as well mentally in winter, and we have so many illnesses that plague us during that time that it really is more practical for us to do it this way. As long as they make progress though, how cares how we do the school year right?

preschool plans

As you may or may not know, we don't do much normally for preschool here. We are big believers in the better late than early philosophy, and take a completely child-led approach for any child not under our state compulsory education laws. If I don't have to send in notification with that child's name on it, I don't force learning. That said, I do have a preschooler working almost daily in math, reading, and handwriting lessons because she has requested schoolbooks to be like her big sisters.

This upcoming fall, that child will her a K'er still not under compulsory attendance. She will continue her learning as she is doing now with Math-U-See (I have Alpha waiting for her currently), Handwriting Without Tears, and Sonlight readers at her pace and ability. It is her little sister that I am choosing to write about today.

Jojo is a typical 3 year old child. She likes to make messes, and sometimes these messes can take HOURS to clean up. Her beach in my kitchen is one of those messes, she dumped my sugar and flour to make the sand on my wood floor then used the kitchen sprayer to make the ocean. It took her about 3 minutes to do something that took me 4 hours to clean up sufficiently to not leave a sticky residue on the floor (as if anyone would notice my floor being sticky in there, you know what I mean if you've ever been in my kitchen LOL). She flushes entire rolls of toilet paper at one time, has plugged my bathtub with a washcloth, drawn on every wall and door in my home, writes on windows. Yes, she is 3 1/2 and she is VERY good at it.

SO, imagine my surprise when I was putting away the school supplies one day last week and she was helping me sweetly. Very carefully she handed me books to go on the shelf, and when I was marking off the boxes in my Sonlight core guides she fetched me a pencil. She wanted something.......

So I dared to ask her what it was she was wanting. I was not prepared for her answer.

"I want mine own Jojo spelling box and math book mommy, just like mine sisters."

Now, if you know anything at all from reading this, you know that we have been using Math-U-See for the older girls (Liddy, my 1st grader, is switching effective TODAY from Horizons math into Alpha with her older sister) and that Missa, my 2nd grader, does All About Spelling. She wants to do seat work just like the big sisters do.

OK, fine you say. Just hop online to the dozen freebie sites I know and grab worksheets for her, I hear you saying. Well, she's been doing those freebies for over a year now, and is becoming less satisfied with the work. I was anticipating that sometime NEXT school year she would have this request, so I didn't budget in to shop for her when we were at the homeschool convention. Now I'm in a bit of a pickle, aren't I?

So what did I do? First, I checked out blogs and chat forums that I frequent to read some stuff and get a few ideas on what to do with her. We're already lapbooking our way through Sonlight core P3/4, so she'll just move up to P4/5 with Kimi this fall. That takes care of social studies and read aloud time. Science is covered with our choice to do Real Science 4 Kids pre-level 1 with all the girls, she'll just join in on that one easy as can be. She's quite happy with that stuff in fact, she likes being included. But now, she also wants her own math and such.

Well, I personally think she's too young for Missa's spelling program. She'll be barely 4 when we do the official changing of the grades here in September. So I need to come up with something to substitute for the spelling. No problem, they also have a reading program called- you guessed it!- All About Reading! We'll buy that to give her a program of her own in that area. Math, well I'm just going to get the child a copy of the Primer level in our program, and let her go at it as slowly as she wants. She doesn't need to do a whole lesson daily like her big sisters sometimes do.

Crud LOL And here I was hoping for another year before she started asking me for real school books.

All About Spelling

This is one of those new things we got at the convention for next school year. Well, I spent the weekend cutting up the tiles and applying magnets and prepping the review box for Missa, as well as looking over the material so I know what I'm doing. This morning I got out the big magnetic dry-erase board and sorted out the tiles to get out all the ones we need for this level, putting the ones it said we need to start with on the board and the ones for later into a baggie. I think we will try starting this one today, and see where it takes us. If it proves to be a little too much on top of our current heavy load in history and our current pace in math (Missa's doing 2 lessons a week in Math-U-See at the moment now that we've got her into a routine) then I'll set it aside until around June or so. I try to ease us into new materials, and with as many things as we've changed for next school year we are really trying to start this transition now. It is the only way that I can handle working with the changes, doing it all at once just messes me up too much.

And since we're in the routine with history, math, reading practice, and Missa working on cursive, I thought it would be a good time to try and add in a little more now.

ancient Mesopotamia

I told you that we supplement our Sonlight core curriculum with a couple other programs right? Well, we do. We add History Pockets and lapbooking to our studies. In fact, right now while I type this post, I am pausing every few minutes to flip pages while I copy the activities for our ancient Mesopotamia lapbook from my new HOAC project pack. At convention I bought this as a full package complete with a prefolded folder and a set of the activity pages on color paper. Well, we are taking the folder from our next unit's pack out so they both have a blue folder, and then they are going to alternate who gets a color activity and who gets black and white (Liddy has been assigned to odd-numbered activities in color and even in black and white, while Missa get odd-numbered activities in black and white and the even-numbered ones in color). They have the understanding that if they share well for the next 2 units with the color activities, that I will buy colored file folders and paper and we will do more lapbooks with colored activities. If they don't, then it is back to black and white minit books and plain folders. I don't anticipate there being much of a problem with these two sharing the color printed activity pages.

Now, these aren't my first HOAC lapbooks. I've done a couple in the past that I borrowed from a friend to have a couple components to add to the free stuff. But this IS the first time that I've done a HOAC unit lapbook as the main component of our lapbooking. Usually we use free things from Homeschool Share to make our lapbooks, and then worksheets and coloring pages from various other sites to add in a bit more. I have never paid for all this material that we've added before this school year. This is the first year we've been able to afford to pay for extras after buying our core program for history, and I'm really enjoying it. I really enjoy not having to take the time to find minit book templates that will work, clipart that is relavant, and create a sort of lesson plan to include it with our Sonlight materials. I don't have to spend the time researching the topic to create a read-aloud handout for the girls to take turns reading me (which was something we wanted this year) and there is no need to spend a lot of time looking through library books to find ones that will work for us with the unit. With the addition of the two programs that we chose to add, I have all these things already finished for me. I just need to take the time to print it all up. My printer is getting *quite* the workout in "copy" mode lately as a result........ lol

But our plan for this week is to get into ancient Mesopotamia real good, hopefully completing half of our lapbook AND history pocket for both. I intend to spend 2 or 3 weeks studying this area, pulling worksheets from the k12 history book that we had for Liddy at the start of the year before we pulled out of OHVA. So, this week I need to get to the library and pick up some books for our study if there is anything available. It may not be super fancy or exciting, but the girls should enjoy it before we dig into our big unit with ancient Egypt. That one, I should purchase a couple more HOAC units to do (in eBook format though) but I'll decide on that after I get us started on this unit. Our Handle On The Arts materials came with a lapbook for ancient Egypt that I'm adding in as well, so we may be able to get away with just the one HOAC unit I bought and the various resources available free online. But I am looking at the HOAC Pyramids unit, so I may end up buying that one no matter what we decide.

my first homeschool convention

OK so I blogged a couple times about going to the Midwest Homeschool Convention this weekend. Well, last night we loaded up the girls to stay the night with grandma, and then Scott and I drove down and got a hotel room for the night so we could attend today. We slept in, then had breakfast and got to the convention right around 10am. I just wanted to go into the vendor's hall, as I knew what I wanted to get and look at, plus I wanted to explore some new stuff. So, we did for 4 hours before my hip and leg started to give out. In that time, we looked at several different science programs and picked one!!! YAY!!!!! We also managed to get the following other items:

All About Spelling levels 1 and 2 (from the company itself)
Math-U-See Beta with 2 student books, an Alpha student set, a second set of blocks, and the wood storage case (all sold out so they will ship to us)
Real Science 4 Kids Pre-Level 1 Chemestry, Biology, and Physics bundles
Write Foundations books 1.1 and 1.2 times 2 kids (will ship free to us)
Mathematics standards K-12 guideline book (badly needed for my own reference here!)
a book for me to enjoy
Hands of A Child Complete packs for Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt
a new Sonlight catalog that isn't all torn up so I can read it plus a discount code for my next purchase

Now, I just have to comment on some of this. The Write Foundations books for Missa and Liddy are a spontaneous purchase, and part of my plans for the upcoming school year to try and get them writing more on a daily basis. I walked by their table at the convention, and something made me stop and look. So, being the faithful person I am, I decided to. What the heck, I can learn about something new right? Obviously I liked what I saw and heard, because I got it for 2 kids. I have no clue if it will work well for us, but hopefully it gets them started to thinking about the writing process a bit and starting to write more in general.

My decision to get Real Science 4 Kids came after we looked at several different programs. I've tried so hard to like Sonlight science, I really have, but I just don't like it. Sorry, Sonlight, but it is the truth. It is too random and jumpy for our family, moving from topic to topic and too many books to read from each week. It is a great program overall, but is not the right choice for our family. So, we put science research at the top of our list. I'm familiar with several programs already, so I wanted mainly to get Scott's opinion of the different options. How it worked was...... He looked at Apologia's science books and got this look on his face like he had seen a fat man in a skintight micro-miniskirt with fishnets, heels, and all that nasty stuff. He was horrified by it, and refused to let me even consider it. I have to agree, it wasn't a good fit for our family's needs (and his opinion wasn't based on the religious content either, he read through part of a chapter and was horrified at the way the material was presented and said that it made him want to cry at how terribly it was written with so much misinformation, I didn't bother looking at it myself because I won't use a program without his agreement). A few others we looked at were poorly laid out, or too parent-intensive for finding materials, or too much time in front of a computer screen, so we ended up right back at the Real Science 4 Kids table at the end making a purchase. We are hoping to use all 3 books in the next two years with the girls combined into one big group, and just have fun with it before we move up to level 1.

Now, I'm sure you saw on this post that I bought All About Spelling from the company itself. I was planning to buy from Sonlight, but I wanted Scott to take a look at it before I bought it. So we headed over to the table, and then after he got a look at it and listened to their speil about the program he suggested that maybe we should buy it today. I agreed, and then decided that since I got it today that poor Missa will start it most likely on Monday. My hands are still tingly and sore from cutting up all the letter tiles to put the magnets on them.

Now, I also hear you asking why I would get just a new Sonlight catalog and a coupon code from them. Well, my new catalog was damaged by the USPS in shipping and it arrived on Monday. I decided that it would be better to just grab a new one at the convention instead of asking Sonlight to ship me another one and risk the post office damaging it too. And that coupon code will come in VERY handy here soon, as I am planning to place an order this weekend for the next set of readers that Missa needs and that package is priced high enough for me to use the coupon code. :)

Oh and the lapbook units. Yes, we use Sonlight for history, but we also add in History Pockets, the k12 history 1 student pages that apply, and lapbooking to our Sonlight to give it a much better hands-on appeal for Missa. That gives her another way to absorb the material, and I noticed in the past that when we lapbook she is engaged and interested and actually retains information better. So yeah, I use 3 curricula to teach the same material. No big deal. We are also adding a lot of depth to our core program (the Sonlight) with these added materials, giving Missa the extra that she craves. We chose to repeat ancients this year despite doing it just last year with k12 because she loved it so much and I wanted to dig in deeper to fuel that interest. So we take 2 or 3 weeks sometimes to finish a week of core work, but its ok because other weeks we may bust through a couple weeks of our core work in this subject. So there you have it, we tweak and modify to encourage the maximum potential of each child in their learning and that includes doing lapbooking, history pockets, and the occassional worksheet (for Liddy's sake, she's my worksheet kid).

So, my very first convention was a blast. I'm hoping that next year Scott can get convention week off work so we can go the whole thing, then I'll be able to explore every vendor they have there and go to some of the workshops. I can't wait, I have my list of this year's vendors and I plan to spend the year researching the ones I'm unfamiliar with to see if they are worthy of my investigating further.