I'm having a little trouble learning how to post pictures here, so check out my other blog that has a couple of pictures of what we have been doing lately...

http://myhearttoyourhome.blogspot.com/

Julie

I don't know what the problem is, but lately I have had a really hard time keeping up with my house....huh.. now that I mention it .... it's probably because I'm always on this darn computer looking at everyone's really cool blogs.  Ugh!  They are so addicting.  So, today I will be kicking it into high gear to get my house somewhat back in order.  I will also be taking a nap, because boy am I tired! 

I've been doing a ton of research on curriculums.  I decide what I'm going to use and then I change my mind.  Some curriculums stay the same and some seem to always be changing.  The one that has stayed the same is the spalding curriculum.  I have looked at doing SWR instead of WRTR, but I keep coming back to WRTR because it has a lesson plan book.  I really want things mapped out well for my first year.  I will have enough of a hard time just trying to keep us all on schedule without having to worry about lesson planning for WRTR.  I did read SWR, though, and got a ton of great ideas from it.  I really appreciate the work that Wanda Sanseri has put into her book.

I have been teetering back and forth between Sonlight and TOG- Tapestry of Grace.  I have to admit that I absolutely fell in love with both of these programs.  They are amazing!  Homestly, these companies did a great job of incorporating quality literature.  I am a huge fan of using living or real books instead of textbooks. ( However, I do plan to use textbooks for my LA/spelling/writing program as stated earlier as well as for my math program.) I think that I have decided to go with Sonlight for at least Kindergarten and probably 1st or second grade as well.  The reason for this is that I really do want my lesson plans laid out for me in most of my curriculum to begin.  Also, I feel that the main benefit of TOG is that you can easily teach several different levels at the same time and I will only be teaching 1 level when I begin to 2 students.  So, when my youngest is older and ready for school I will look at TOG again.  That's the plan, at least.   If you can't tell I am REALLY a planner.  I have to have everything planned out.  Actually, I can do spur of the moment, too.  I just love planning.

Anyways, the plan is to use Sonlight (SL) for History, Geography and Bible.  It is possible that I will use them for science.  It depends on where we live.  At first, I was very against using them for science but I have begun to warm to the idea.  If we are living in Africa by then I will probably go with SL for my science so that I have everything that I need and I don't have to be trying to search for everything in Africa to do all of the hands on projects that I want to do.  Otherwise, if we are still living here I will be piecing together my own science curriculum.  I know, I said that I wanted everything layed out for me, but I haven't been able to really find what I want in a science curriculum.  With science all that I want to accomplish in Kindergarten is to establish a love for it.  I plan on mostly doing experiments and following all of the little bunny trails that result from the experiments.  I ordered some great science books that Cathy Duffy recommends.  I haven't gotten them yet, but when I do I will start planning a few projects that I want to do, and the rest I will figure out when we get there.  I don't really feel that science is all that necessary in Kindergarten.  I just want to expose them to it.

That leaves me with math.  Ugh!  I have only heard amazing things about Math-U-See (MUS).  I really love this program, but the advances nature of Singapore math is really drawing me in as well.  I ordered the free demo video that you can get from MUS and I really enjoyed it.  So, basically, I don't have a clue which one I am going to go with.  I guess that I have a few months to decide.  I know that if I go with MUS I want to get the new binding, etc. that they are coming out with in March.  So, I would wait to buy that stuff.

There's my ramblings for today.

It took me longer to get to his than I thought that it would, but here is the first book that I will be using in my birds unit study:

Science and Nature Guides Birds

I found this book at my local libraby.  For this book, since it is the first day of the unit study I plan to just look through the book with them and possibly read some short parts of the book.  Mostly, I am just using this book to peak their interest in birds.  I will also keep this book around as a reference tool while we go through our unit study.

A few ideas for discussion while looking through this book might include:

colors of the birds

birds in your state

what different foods the birds eat

God made the birds

On this day I would also show them a movie pertaining to birds.  Reading Rainbow has a movie called Birds of a Feather.  I found this book at my local library.

The main focus of the first day is just to get them interested in the subject that you are about to cover.

I thought that I would let you all in on a little secret.  Right now Media Angels is having a HUGE sale.  This is one of the books in Cathy Duffy's 100 Top Picks.  I'm gonna paste the link below:

http://www.mediaangels.com/home/2009-specials

Check out the sale!

Julie

I've decided to keep this blog even though I have another blog on blogger.com.  I really like this blog.  I like having all of the homeschooling blogs together in one place so that I can easily find other people that HS.  On blogger it is harder to find other people that have common interests.  However, I really like how easy it is to use blogger.  It is very easy to use. 

I have decided to do a bird "unit study" with my 2 oldest.  I guess it would be called a unit study.  I went to the library and found a bunch of books about birds.  I started with books that are more generic and cover a vast array of different kinds and types of birds.  Then, I picked some books about specific parts of birds (such as beaks), but it still covers all birds.  Then, I went more specific and found some books on different types of birds.  For example, turkeys, penguins, owls, etc.  This way they could see that there are lots of different types of birds.  If the kids get really interested in one of the birds we may stop and cover that bird more extensively. 

After I compiled all of my books I found some great experiments/crafts/projects to use with each book.  They are really fun ideas!  One of them includes making a bird feeder to hang outside and see what winter birds come to it.  Then, we will graph them for added bonus later in the week.  How cool is that?!  You could also do a lapbook if that is what your family enjoys. 

Anyways, over the next week or however long it takes me to get it all out I plan to share our complete unit study with you guys.  Each day I will add a little more info. for another day of the unit study.  It will include the books that I used and the activities that I used. Plus, probably some additional ideas of what you could do.  Hope you enjoy!

I got a little overwhelmed last night.  I am currently trying to pick out the curriculum that I am going to use with my children in about a year and a half.  I know, I'm starting kind of early looking for the curriculum, but for my first year I think that I can probably use all of the extra time that I have. 

I do have some curriculum that I want to use.  My sister was a kidergarten teacher at the top school in the county and one of the top in the state.  While she was a teacher there they used Saxon math.  I have since then heard some really discouraging things about using Saxon.  I have also heard that Math-U-See is an awesome curriculum that is similar to saxon is some areas, but better.  Is there anyone out there that has used both curriculums?

Secondly, they used Spalding for their LA.   I have heard that SWR is better organized than Spalding.  I have also heard that they are practically the same thing, but SWR is just presented in a better format.  What do you guys think?

The area that I am really interested in hearing people's opinions is with the history/geography/Bible area.  I really like a curriculum that is not just text books.  I want my children to love learning, and enjoy hands on learning when possible.  So, a couple of curriculums that I have looked at for this area are Sonlight (money is not a deciding factor) and TOG (Tapestry of Grace).  Has anyone used these 2 curriculums?  Is anyone willing to give me their thoughts on the 2?

At this point I don't know WHAT I'm going to do for Science.  I'll wait to figure that out after I have figured some of these other curriculums out.

Thanks for any help!

I HONESTLY did not think that my kids Christian (3) and Faith (4) were gonna like the newest book that I picked out from the library.  It is called Children of the Frontier by Sylvia Whitman.  I thought that maybe I would convince them to look at the pictures, but shortly after I came home from the library the kids asked me to read a chapter out of it (there are only 3 chapters). Okay, I thought, I'll read, but I'm sure as soon as they see how over their heads the writing is and heaven forbid... the pictures are only in black and white they would decide to move on to a more interesting book.  Boy was I wrong! They actually listened to the whole chapter, and they asked questions about what I was reading throughout the chapter.  Hmm.. I thought. 

Today they brought me the book again asking for me to read the second chapter.  Wow!  We read the second chapter with the same result.  We plan to read the last chapter of the book tomorrow.  At the end of the book there is a recipe for johnnycakes which I went out and bought the ingredients for so that tomorrow after we have completed the book we can bake up some good ol' frontier food.  Yee haw! 

It was really cool to see them actually learning from the reading, and I think that it was cool for them to read about how it used to be living in Wyoming and other places similar to Wyoming (We live in Wyoming now).   This book is part of a series.  Maybe we will pick up another one out of the series.

Wow!  How exciting to be a part of such a huge group of homeschoolers.  I hope to share some of my ideas for using real books to teach my youngins'.  I also hope to learn so much more from looking through all of your blogs.  I am new to homeschooling.  My children are 4, 3 and 8 months.  However, I'm not that new to teaching.  I am the Director for our preschool during church, and I just started a co-op at our church for 3-5 year olds.  Our co-op is going to be a little different from the traditional co-op from what I have read.  I'm very excited about it!  I love to organize and plan things...pretty much anything.  

I have a wonderful husband who works very hard in our landscaping company to put food on the table and to enable me to be at home full time with our children.  I couldn't imagine not raising my children.  I also have a Savior named Jesus whom I love with all of my heart.  He is very real to me.  He is my friend. 

Mostly, I hope to share about my everyday life.  Whatever that might entail with so many little ones running around all of the time.  We hope to bring a couple more little ones into our lives sometime in the future.  They probably will be adopted, though.  I have had 3 c-sections, and I really don't want to have another one.  Obviously, that isn't the only reason we want to adopt, but it is one of them.  

Our family is also planning a lengthy trip to Africa in the next year or so.  You may be hearing some about that.  I do have another blog completely devoted to that trip.  So, I guess, here we go...