lapbooking

I've been considering this for a LONG time as part of doing lessons with the girls, and always dismissed it in the past really. I would look at pictures of other peoples' lapbooks and just get so overwhelmed that I'd chuck the idea. Well, now here I am planning some lapbooking for the upcoming school year. I'm going to do as many as I can with Melissa in as many areas as possible because that really is how she learns best, so right now I'm planning out the different lapbook topics we'll do in each subject. Here's what I have so far.

our solar system
counting to 100
basic addition facts up to 9
basic subtraction facts up to 9
telling time
a "history notebook" world tour of different countries
a "my body notebook"
sight words
phonics rules
several "just for fun" ones on some of their favorite stories

I'm feeling pretty confident in doing this, and I *hope* to have some plans made to share later before the start of the next school year (we'll be starting in July, Monday after the 4th I think but maybe sooner or later, we'll see what happens) We'll also do the alphabet notebook at Homeschool Share with Kimmy.

rough ideas for next school year

As you know, I'm planning for next school year already so that I can relax and enjoy the year without worrying too much, and to tweak as much as I want. Anyway, I am doing some unit studies and lapbooking this year I think instead of what we've done in the past. It will be Melissa's 1st grade year and Lydia's K year, so I'll only need to do reporting for Melissa. Now, we aren't still 100% sure that we're going to homeschool, but we feel a need to be ready just in case we do decide to (we're about 95% sure we will at this point, unless I start back to college like we are also considering) Anyway, I just had this huge ah-HA! moment while looking at the Hands Of A Child lapbooks and a dear friend's homeschool blog. She did a unit study on the movie "Finding Nemo" and turned it into a HUGE lapbooking project, learning about the animals in the movie and about Austrailia and even dissecting some of the sea critters they learned about. What if I take a movie that the girls really enjoy and learn about the area and time period its set, the famous people that may be in the movie, animal life, the culture of people there, and such? For example:

the movie Pocahontas (the girls LOVE this one)
we learn about:
the story of Pocahontas
the Jamestown settlement
exporer life in the New World
the indian tribe (lifestyle, traditions, religous beliefs, etc)
the main wildlife in the movie (raccoon, hummingbird, that obnoxious doggie LOL)
maize and corn (their main crop)

The movie "The Lion King"
we learn about:
African geography
african safari
wildlife
maybe even a couple african tribes if we want to
go visit that area of the Columbus Zoo

Do you understand what I'm thinking about? Its kind of hard to explain really well.................. I have it really solid in my mind and know how it'll work, and I know the kids will have an absolute ball with it. I can do this with all their favorite movies in one way or another, and our big science study for the year will be incorporated into it as we learn about the plant and animal life of different areas that we "visit" in our world tour. I'll probably do the Finding Nemo unit my friend did, but a bit differently than she did it, and instead of traditional lapbooks I'll have each girl do binders for their world tour, using dividers to mark each area we visited.

counting to 100

I had a conference with Melissa's teachers on Friday, and got the skinny on how she's been adjusting and where I need to work with her more. She apparently can't count past 12 according to the teachers based on the initial assessment, and she only knows the sight words "a" and "I" and can't pick individual sounds out of words at all past the beginning sound. They gave me ideas on how to work with her in these areas, like using flashcards for her numbers and sight words and having her practice writing words as they sound and stuff like that. Well, I'm using flashcards for sight words, and so far she knows 9 of the 25 I made cards for. Not bad considering we've worked with them just a couple times the last 3 days. For math, I *was* going to use M&Ms and let her eat however many she can count each day (go until she can't get any more correct in a row and then work on the next 5 numbers up together for a minute or two before letting her eat the ones she counted correctly) BUT the little turd snuck into the kitchen and ate the entire big bag of candies I had hidden (well I thought I hid them really well and out of reach LOL) So, instead I'm doing something a bit different. I went to Donna Young's website and printed off some 100 charts, the page with 2 on it. I did filled in ones and blank ones both, and handed her one of each, a pen, and a yellow highlighter. She's sitting at the table with these items, saying each number before she writes it on the blank chart and then highlighting it on the filled in one. When she gets stumped, I tell her the number and she repeats it before writing and highlighting. Its a very dry method of working on her numbers, but I'm sure that after a few weeks of doing this daily she'll be able to count and write her numbers to 100, and recognize each number in isolation. That will completely catch her up with her classmates in math, and then we'll attack the sight words harder with "rainbow writing". That is a thing they do in her class, the teacher hands each kid a page with the sight word in big letters and the kids trace it with 5+ different colors and then read it out loud as a class 5 times before writing it at the bottom of the sheet 5 times. We'll do that along with flash cards daily until she learns the sight words completely, but we'll "rainbow write" only one sight word daily. She needs to know the list of 25 plus 5 from a second list of 50 words for her final assessment to pass K.

I've determined that if I can successfully get her caught up to where she needs to be to pass the assessment in the spring, then I'll be able to tackle homeschooling her again for certain. If I can pull off this, then I can do just about anything when it comes to teaching her.

Now, somebody explain to me why Melissa is giggling nonstop and telling me that this math work I gave her is so much fun. If I were to do this assignment I'd probably be bored to tears................................. lol She just finished it and is asking for MORE schoolwork...................... I guess she likes doing lessons at home again.

rough times

Well, we decided that with all the issues with many things in our home, it would be best to send Melissa to the local public school. Now, I have issues with this anyway, but I went ahead and enrolled her. She's been in school for 3 weeks now, and its just a struggle every day she has school. This morning was especially hard, she had 5 days off because of bad weather then a 4 day weekend for inservice and a holiday, and it just collapsed under me. I had to carry her into the school while I was in my 3" heels and she was kicking my knees repeatedly and screaming in an attempt to get me to put her down. Then when I got her to where she needed to be, she chased after me thinking that if she followed maybe I'd bring her home. I take her back only to have her do it again, then when I took her back again her teacher was in the hall and saw the struggles so she jumped in and pulled her over and helped me get her in the school and stay there. This is a pretty typical day, she waits by dropoff most mornings to give me a hand with getting Melissa into school and staying put while I leave. Rips my heart out, but I'm still doing it for now.

But she won't be staying past this school year. In the fall she'll be coming back home again, no matter how difficult it is. Its just too much for me and her to go through these struggles every day just to get her to school. I can't wait until the end of this school year, and neither can she (yes we already talked about it, I needed to make sure she knows that its just temporary and was hoping that it will help with her getting off to school, I'll find out tomorrow if it did help any with that)

And totally off the topic of our educational adventures, but it will have an impact here in the future. My sweet Kimmy was at the doctor this morning, and the doctor was checking out her dry skin and doing a typical sick kid appointment (barking cough and major runny nose) Well, poor sweet Kimmy has asthma, multiple environmental allergies, and excema. The inhaler that the doctor prescribed for her is the same brand and dosage as the one I use that was prescribed to me by *my* doctor (for the record, I'm 27 and have had an asthma diagnosis for 15 years) We also have prescription allergy medication and a prescription cream that I need to dole out daily for Kimmy. But she is loving her new inhaler, when I asked her if she liked it she grinned and said "I love my new medicine, it makes me not hurt here any more (rubbing chest with both hands)" Ahhhhhhhh the simplicity of a 3 year old. She does think her allergy syrup is yucky though, and said she doesn't want to take it any more. LOL Sweet little thing.

Now why did I say that will impact us in the future? Doctor appointments, tests, and potential hospital visits come to mind right offhand. I can just see it throwing a big kink into our homeschooling starting in the fall, but I'm ok with that. That's the best part of homeschool, we can grab workbooks and take it with us no matter what we're doing. We don't need the dining room table to do our schoolwork, just a flat surface, workbooks, and pencils/crayons.

we started K finally!

In case you didn't know, for preschool last year with Melissa we had so many interruptions that we only got about half our work done for the year. This is what I love about homeschooling by the way. So when we started this year with Melissa, we were picking up in the middle of preschool materials. Well, I managed to get a wonderful deal on Sonlight core K and science K (I'm talking $50 and my spare tv here, the seller was a friend of mine who knew my money plight with the materials I needed) and I spent a week studying my instructor guides before we started this week. I was all geared up to start yesterday; I had gone to the library to get a few books to add to it and had copied the worksheets for the week and typed up a simple lesson plan for the week with all the assignments for the week in each subject that we are going to do. Then when yesterday came, the girls fought me on their morning cores and managed to drag them out until suppertime so we didn't get to lessons. No biggie really, they were really sad that they didn't get to do lessons (after all, these are the children who asked me on Christmas Day if they could do lessons before they asked if they can open presents, and when they asked me we were standing by the tree with all the presents under it LOL) but they must not have cared that much because they dragged folding a small basket of their clothes (I'm talking small enough it barely holds 3 pairs of adult jeans, not a huge rectangle one) and put away a few toys in their room.

But anyway, our read aloud is "The Boxcar Children" and for history we are learning about Martin Luther. Today in science we learned about the water cycle and how rainbows are made. In language arts, our weekly letter is Mm so we did our letter page today, and the copywork is our street address. In math, Melissa FINALLY mastered counting by 2's to 10 so we moved on to ordinal numbers 1st-5th. Yep, today was a hit. We did very well, and I'm really happy at how things turned out for us.

Oh, and we also watched the presidential inauguration this morning, and talked a little about Barack Obama and his job. Melissa asked me how old his daughters are, and if they go to a school or do school at home. She thinks his girls look like they would be fun to play with and didn't quite get that she can't just go to their house for a playdate (but oh man would I love to do that, a trip to the White House is on my list of things to do in the next 5 years for school-related field trips) So I'm guessing that as soon as we are done with Martin Luther, we'll learn about our new President and do a lapbook about him.

January 7th lessons

Well, today was another super simple day for lessons in our home. Its snowing here, and I can't seem to keep a fire going in the fireplace effectively, so its been difficult finding the energy to really do much of anything.

Melissa started with a math lesson. Today we did more practicing of determing even and odd numbers up to 10, and then we practiced counting to 10 by two's. She really did *not* like the lesson because this is a totally new concept to her, so she spent half our our 20 minute lesson time whining and complaining while trying to sneak out of her seat to hide under the table. There's a reason we keep lesson time for each subject short, when it gets difficult she usually starts whining horribly. Then she did 2 pages in her handwriting book, and ended with a couple pages in her Explode The Code book (we're still on the primers with her, as review and fun stuff for her as well as to help her start breaking down the individual sounds in words to help with reading and spelling)

Lydia did another letter sheet today, this one she drew a picture of an Aa item (she chose apple) then she wrote what it is on the line (I had to spell it for her though, no biggie she'll get to that point on her own eventually) She also did a review page from her shapes workbook. She finished up with a page in her handwriting book.

Kimmy colored in a page for the colors red and blue. The pages just had drawings of things that color and we talked about the color and then went over what the items she was coloring are. Then I showed her the right crayons to use, and she did her page. She finished up the rest of lessons time with her number puzzle again, she really likes that thing.

Tonight the girls are going to AWANA for bible, and then tomorrow we'll pick up their memory verses for our bible study until the next AWANA time. Then tomorrow we have gymnastics, so it'll be a busy day there. Ugh, I'm already tired just thinking about it.......... lol

January 6th lessons

Well, today was another day lol I did our lessons today, and it went pretty well I thought. Kimmy spent the whole time working on board puzzles for the letters and numbers.

Melissa, today in math we started learning about even and odd numbers up to 10. I used legos and some of our pattern blocks for manipulatives to help teach it, and I think she's starting to get the hang of even vs. odd numbers. By the end of the week she *should* be able to rattle off her evens and odds up to 10 if I keep working with her on it. We aren't doing any actual reading lessons, as she's still pretty resistant at this point to even trying it. So, instead we are doing spelling words. I asked her to write out 8 simple words on a piece of paper and draw a picture to go with each word, and then I asked her to read each word back to me when we were done. I'm going to do the same words again later in the week, because she seemed to be able to just sound them out a little and tell me exactly what the word was. I think we may try doing this for a while instead of the reading part of our language arts program just to see how its going.

Lydia, today she did a matching worksheet to review numbers 1-5 for math. In her language arts, she did a letter worksheet. She had fun with it, since it was a coloring page. She had to color the apples with a captial A red, and the ones with a lowercase a yellow. Then she colored the tree. She also participated in the spelling lesson with Melissa, but we only did a couple words with her.

Jordan napped through the whole thing thankfully, she's been getting her 1 year molars in and has been a total beast to live with for a week and a half now. I'm ready for her to finish this teething sesson already, she's by far the worst teether I've had yet. She just screams and cries nonstop and inconsolably almost every minute she's awake it seems like, and I just want to run screaming half the time becuase I'm so tired of hearing the constant screaming, crying, whining, and screeching.

When Jordan woke up, we all snuggled on the sofa together while I read a couple stories to the girls. The theme for this week is honesty, so we read about George Washington and the cherry tree as one of our stories. The point went right over Melissa's head I think LOL But then, this is the same child that last night spent 15 minutes trying to convince us that she wasn't standing in the kitchen eating the grated parmesean cheese straight from the container, while she stood in the kitchen next to the empty contain sitting on the counter with cheese all over around her mouth, down her shirt front, and on the floor at her feet. I was less than amused, but now I can look back at that sight and chuckle about it. I have a feeling that any lessons in honesty will be hard to teach her, so I'm preparing myself for a long hard series of lessons with her on the subject.

Oh yeah, this afternoon I also sat down with Kimmy for a few minutes and we counted her fingers and toes together, one hand/foot at a time. I'm working on teaching her to count to 10, so we are doing fun little things with it for a couple minutes each day.

January 5th's stuff

So we kicked off the restart of our school year yesterday. I decided to take it really easy, so we didn't do too much. Yesterday, we talked a bit about good foods and bad foods, and how we need good foods to fuel our bodies. I showed them their food pyramid printouts I got online from www.mypyramid.gov and then we made an uber-healthy lunch of pbj, carrot sticks, cottage cheese with strawberries, and citrus blend juice to drink. Its a pretty typical lunch for us to have, so while being fairly healthy it was also familiar. We didn't do a lot else, but it was a good start to easing back in I think. Today we're going to dig a bit more on the basics of the food groups and food pyramid, and we'll add in language arts as well. Maybe we'll do handwriting too, we'll see how it goes.

Ahhh the new year!

So here it is, the first day of 2009. Isn't it lovely? I took some time to really evaluate where Melissa's at this year so far, almost halfway through the "school year" and am now setting some loose framework in what I'd like to do with our remaining time before we start next school year in September (this year it looks like we won't get much of a summer break)

I'm feeling pretty good about the fresh start that I have now, I have had time to reflect the last few days that I've been injured (I hurt my hip while walking the puppy in our back yard, I found a hole lol) and I realized that while we haven't made as much progress as I would have liked, we did make some progress so far this year. No, we aren't as far in our math as I hoped we'd be, and we have to restart our reading and LA program because Melissa lost it thanks to a long run of the flu in our home, but that's ok in my eyes. I'll get us there, it just may mean that we carry into the summer and don't get a "spring break" this year and we may have a few weekends. I doubt Melissa will object to this anyway, she was asking me if she could do lessons on Christmas morning before she asked when they would get to open presents LOL So that's where we are at now, its literally a fresh start for me with lessons. I am almost done creating a really fun study on the food pyramid and the food groups, which will be the majority of our science study the rest of the year (at least through the winter) We're going to expand it beyond just talking about what good foods and bad foods are and what food group things are in, we're also going to include fitness and cooking and even learn about some of the exotic foods that we don't eat much and where they come from (as well as where our regular foods come from, how they grow, and how they go from nature to kitchen) Its a huge study, but I'm really looking forward to it. While we do our basic food pyramid learning, we're going to touch on the names of the continents and oceans and learn where on a world map they are. Nothing too rigorous, but its something they'll need to know for when we delve further into our health study. When we finish that, we'll pick up one of the girls' favorite books from our core, its a Usborne book called "Things People Do" I'm sure you've seen it before, its a wonderful picture book about the different jobs and what the people do in those jobs. The girls got a real kick out of it, so we're going to do a study of it again and focus on one 2 page spread a week, and do a lapbook on the book (I have a feeling it will end up as big as the lapbook a friend of mine did with her 7yr old on "Finding Nemo" if not bigger LOL)

So, I need to learn how to add pics to my blog posts, because I'll have pics soon probably to share of our lapbooks as we do them.

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.

Christmas break

Whew, what a whirlwind year this has been for us all. We welcomed baby Jordan Nicole into our family on Sept. 3rd, started a new school year on the 11th for me and the kids all at the same time, and a million other little things. We are making great progress with homeschooling, far more than I ever expected to make. Melissa is getting ready to start K level math and handwriting when we restart on Monday (12/31) and is doing great with Hooked On Phonics. However, she is not enjoying our Sonlight core very much, so when we restart I'm going to try doing things a bit differently. I had originally chucked our instructor guide for the core because it jumped around ay too much, but now I'm thinking that I'll pick it up and start at the beginning of week 1, and just go straight through from there. We'll see what happens.

When we start, I also intend to supplement using Old Fashioned Education kindergarden program since its totally free. I am always open to trying additional stuff, especially free stuff. LOL I'll let you know ho I like it when we get going with it, I have a feeling that its just what we need to really get into homeschooling. Melissa just isn't the kind of kid who enjoys lots of being read to.

started yesterday officially

Well, yesterday we started our "official" school year, now that Jordan was born on Labor Day. It went very well in fact, much better than I expected it to. Melissa did some mental math aloud with me, both girls enjoyed their read-alouds, and the day's workbook pages were completed quite easily. We are really enjoying Sonlight core B right now, but I have a feeling its a bit over their heads so I'm working on attempting to get up the funds to buy the new core A that is coming out to do with them this year, and putting up core B until next year. Although, I intend to do core B a second time next year even if we go through it this year, so its no real big deal if I can't get core A, I may try to get just the instructor's guide for it and use our library and pick up single titles as we have the extra money, and just add it in to our current stuff this year for fun.

Today is going well also. Right now the girls are watching Letter Factory, that's a Leap Frog movie that teaches letter sounds. After its done, I'll do today's read-alouds with them, and then we'll take a break from seatwork until after supper. I don't want to give them too much at a time, they are only 3 and 4 after all. But they are really enjoying their "school time" and its meshing rather well with my college classes, so I have no issues with doing as much as they want each day.

I am going to let them watch the Letter Factory DVD every day I think, to teach them their letter sounds, for as long as they want to watch it daily. They are really enjoying this video, and its educational, so I see no issues with allowing it in our school lessons. Then once they get the letter sounds down, I'll get out the Hooked On Phonics stuff for Melissa, and let them both play at www.starfall.com for a little bit daily. And I'll introduce Melissa to Get Ready, Set, Go For the Code workbooks also, to reinforce the letter sounds while working on her handwriting a little bit. She'll really enjoy that I bet. Tomorrow I'm going to add in our Handwriting Without Tears pre-k workbooks for the girls to do, that should be fun for them too. They've thought everything we do so far is a ball, so I doubt they will object to another subject added in if it means a workbook. LOL These girls love their workbooks............................

starting the year

Well, we took a year to just relax and enjoy life, which we seriously needed. Now we are beginning. Its been a busy year for us too, we basically just unschooled and had fun with things. Now we are kicking off our first *formal* year, starting it now because I'm 22 weeks pregnant with a surprise blessing we'll call Jordan. No we don't have a gender yet, we find that out in about 6 weeks or so. But anyways, about my upcoming year for Melissa and Lydia.

This is what we bought to use:

Sonlight core B (formerly known as core prek)
Singapore Earlybird Math 1 (also got EB 2 so that there's no wait when we finish EB 1)
Handwriting Without Tears prek
Ready, Set, Go for the Code (shelved for now though, I'm getting Melissa's handwriting up a little more first)
Kumon tracing book for Lydia
Kumon cutting book for Lydia (shelved for now)

Its really going well so far, we are finishing up our second week of lessons but its still week 1 in the IG, I'm going half speed for the sake of stretching.

Hooked on Phonics

Yes, I tried this one too already. Melissa's been begging me to teach her to read so I checked it out from the library 4 weeks ago. Well after 4 weeks she's not gotten anything, she hates it as much as I do. Sooooo back it will go on Saturday. I'm going to just keep reading to her for a couple hours a day and see if she picks it up on her own like I did at her age. If not then I have a backup plan already.

Letter of the Week

I tried Letter of the Week a few different times with Melissa, its a great program in theory. Its a free program which was the biggest appeal to me, but once I committed to it I had some real trouble just ging with it. All the prep for materials and books to do, getting things ready for activities, it just took too much of the little free time I actually have available. And it wasn't a good fit with Melissa either, she loves books and being read to but it really wasn't clicking well with her, I had a really hard time getting enough books from the library on the weekly theme to read to her and a lot of the activities just plain didn't interest her at all. So I decided that Letter of the Week isn't a good choice for us to do with her right now, but maybe later when she's grown a bit more she'll show an interest in it. I guess I'll give it a 5th try this summer when we can do some outdoor activities with her instead. And I was really excited about the program too, having it all laid out for me to do (the book lists made out, the themes chosen, activies planned, it really is well thought out) I guess maybe its just not time for her yet with that one.

chucked all my old plans, here's what's now happening

I decided that I really want to try and hold off Melissa a little longer on homeschool to try and combine Lydia in with her as they get older, and that means putting her off one year probably since they are almost exactly one year apart in age. So today I put in a request for a free shipment from a company that does monthly activities and learning themes for kids ages 1-6 and I'm going to try that out with Melissa and see how she likes it and how well we like it. If we like the free monthly theme then we'll think about doing it every month for a while, combining Lydia in when she's ready for the activities. I'm still planning on going with Sonlight curriculum for when we start homeschooling school age (we'll start when Melissa's 5 and Lydia's 4, the cores that Sonlight has are very good for combining multiple kids close in age and if I wiggled it enough I could add Kimmy in the same core with her big sisters but I'm not going to, I already have a plan laid out for Sonlight and hope to stick with it as best I can, depending on where life takes us with teaching our girls) I'm really looking forward to getting our free month package, and I'm not even out shipping costs, which is cool by me. LOL The site I went to for this monthly theme is Brighter Vision and it looks like Melissa may really enjoy it, last month I got a packet in the mail offering the free month and I decided today to just give it a shot and see what happens.