Well, my blog entries are few and far between, but I thought I would post about how our first day back at school after our Christmas break went.  Feel free to share how yours went also.  Ours was long!  The kids weren't all that cooperative and everything just seemed to take loooooonger than usual.  I found that even though we just took 3 weeks off, we need to take some time to review this week before we can start back with some of our subjects. 
We are also trying to get used to the new routines of following the chore charts again, and they are doing pretty good (with lots of help).
Here is what we finally managed to get in by 3 p.m. (to be fair, we did spend a good bit of time outdoors too).
Bible - We have started instituting a morning quiet time for everyone.  We get up and have ours before the kids.  When their alarm clock wakes them up, they get dressed (in the clothes we hopefully picked out the night before) and come join us.  Elizabeth has a devotional Bible and she reads her day's entry.  Katie has a begin to read storybook Bible and she reads it aloud.  I help her with the words she doesn't know.  Then we have a Baby Bible with very short stories and actions that we do with Michael.  As part of my "word" this year, my focus is on priorities.  I want us all to learn to put God first.  We also need to work on our prayer life and teach our children to do more than just pray before meals.  We hope to start and end our day with prayer, but it's hard to remember sometimes.
Here is what else we did for Bible today:
Memory verse (with song) from The Memory Bible -  "As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless." (2 Samuel 22:31) 
By the way, I really want to set up this Scripture memory system.  It is on my long list of things to do, so who knows when I will actually get it done.  :eyes:
http://simplycharlottemason.com/timesavers/memorysys/
Studying God's Word, Book B (catechisms) "Sin Breaks God's Law" (brief discussion)
31 day devotional (also brief) - topic this month (or however long it takes us to actually finish) is self-esteem
Five in a Row unit study on "The Bee Tree"
Today we discussed Michigan and the Great Lakes.  We went over some worksheets from Enchanted Learning with maps and flags and a few questions about the Great Lakes (all done orally).  Talked about the mnemonic HOMES to remember the names of the Great Lakes (Huran, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior).  DH brought up that the art was similar to the art from "Mrs. Katz & Tush" which brought us to mention that it was the same author/artist and to review a bit of the culture we had previously studied.  We also went back through the book and discussed signs from the pictures that showed the time setting of the book.  We also talked briefly about what traditions are, and about hospitality.  We mentioned how we are going to be trying this year to be more hospitable & invite people over to visit more often.  (That is one goal I have for this year, to be more social and reach out to others more.)
Handwriting - using various manipulatives from Handwriting Without Tears, we reviewed the proper formation (and neatness) of our capital letters.  What I did is I would show them the capital letter card (the one that you use the wood pieces for, as the parts are numbered in the proper order).  The girls would write the letter on their chalkboards, then erase with the tiny sponge (the "wet dry try" method, sort of, modified since it was only review).  While they were doing that, I would help Michael make his letter with the wood pieces on the blue mat, then I would use the magnetic stamp & see screen to make the letter & he would trace it.  We went through all the capital letters, and tomorrow we plan to have the girls write them out on the gray block paper.  Then Wednesday we plan to review the lowercase letters, and Thursday/Friday to do a bit of copywork from a sentence from The Bee Tree.
Math - Even though our intent was to switch from Math U See to Horizons, both girls (Katie especially) expressed an interest in continuing and doing both math programs.   Today Katie did a page of lesson 12, adding doubles.  We skipped Horizons for the day and did a bit of review work with the Flashmaster instead.  We didn't have Katie do so much review as we feel she's pretty advanced in math for a kindergartner anyway.  For Elizabeth, she did one page of Horizons math, but when it came to the second page (a bunch of addition) we were met with tears.  We decided to work on reviewing her basic facts for the rest of the week using Flashmaster.  We sat with her and did the inputting of her answers, so we could see where her strengths & weaknesses were (i.e., which problems she needs more review of).  We had her begin with 60 second "timed tests" at level 2, level 3 and level 4.  We were watching for speed as well as accuracy.  I found she needs more review of 3's & 4's, so I had her review those in "table no order" format.  Then I had her do level 4 again, but with timed practice instead of timed test (the difference being that with practice, it incorporates review of missed problems).  For 180 seconds, she did 31/33, with 94% accuracy.  We felt this was enough math for the day and stopped here.  Tomorrow we plan to re-do the 180 second timed practice at level 4.  I'd like her to get to a better speed of at least 45 problems in 180 seconds at 100% accuracy, before moving on to the next level. 
In some ways, I can't help but feel like she is "behind" but I feel it is so important to get this basic facts down cold, so that is what we are working toward for now and will put aside the workbooks until we utilize the flashmaster to the fullest extent with addition and subtraction.  I guess that is the nice thing about homeschooling is that your child can work at his/her own pace and even be on different levels in different subjects, depending on their own strengths & weaknesses.  Even though she struggles a bit with math, Elizabeth does excellent work in all her other areas, especially reading.
And Katie seems to be the opposite.  She loves & excels in math, and for her reading almost seems a drudgery that she knows she has to do, but she doesn't particularly like it all that much.  She loves books, but just doesn't care so much for the "work" of learning to read them.  She is only in K though, and I am confident this will come in time.
I guess that brings me to our next subject area for the day, which is reading/phonics.  Katie did 3 pages of Explode the Code book 2.  Elizabeth worked ahead before Christmas, so she didn't have to do ETC today.  Elizabeth did read one segment out of Christian Liberty Press's Nature Reader Book 3, and we discussed it.  We began Lesson 85 of Reading Made Easy with Katie, but she was struggling with words she had already learned (sight words), so I decided to do review instead.  We went over to the computer and I brought up a notepad document and changed the font to the largest size.  We started the review with lesson one and (working through the table of contents) I typed up one word at a time (for each new "sound" she's learned from each lesson) as well as the sight words in the order she learned them, and had her read them to me from the screen (in the big font).  I was trying to make the review a bit interesting.  It held her attention for the most part, and hopefully with this review behind us, we can pick back up with our regular lesson again tomorrow.  Also, Katie has a short little reader (similar to Bob books) and read one short story from that.
During our recess we practiced with the kids throwing a ball and hitting it with the bat (sort of our P.E. for the day, I guess).
Overall, other than the slowness of it all, I guess it was a pretty good day as far as getting through the lessons is concerned.  It would have been better if we would all have been a little more cheerful, loving, kind and obedient though.  We are all works in progress though, and I am thankful that God gives us a new day and a chance for a fresh start every single day.

Things are going well here.  I just thought I'd give a little update on where we are in our school.  (Well, not so little, as I just finished typing it all out and it is rather lengthy.)

Five in a Row - this is the "spine" of our homeschool (in other words, what most of our studies are based on).  It is weekly unit studies based on wonderful children's literature.  Much of the work is done orally, but since the children have a mental "hook" in their minds on which to hang the facts they learn (the story is the "hook"), they are more likely to remember what they have learned.

This past week, our unit was on Storm in the Night and this is what we discussed.  We did a different subject each day.

Social Studies - We discussed human relations, in particular, the close and loving relationship between Thomas and his grandfather.  We also discussed the emotions of fear, and how it is normal to experience fear, and that fears can be overcome.  We didn't really do any geography for this week as we placed our "story disk" on Mississippi since we have so many summer afternoon thunderstorms here, and the girls are already very familiar with the name and location of our state.  We've been having great weather for this book this week! 

Language Arts - We discussed what italics were, and why they were used in this story.  We discussed what quotations marks are, and how they are used.  The vocabulary we learned was mandarin (orange colored), bough (branch of a tree) and errand (something that one goes to do).  We also reviewed onomatopoeia, personification and similes, which have all come up in several previous Five in a Row stories.

I was working on Art and also on Science day, so Matt taught those lessons.

Art - They talked about the reflections in the story (in the windows) and how some other smooth, shiny surfaces can reflect also (even how you can see yourself in someone else's eyes if you look closely enough).  They talked about how you can tell which direction someone is looking by the whites of their eyes.  He also discussed with them the contrast in the last picture in the book and how it was used to make a dramatic statement.  He also briefly touched on what a   profile is (the side view of someone's face).

Science - He talked about sources of light such as sun, moon (light reflected from sun), stars, lightning, fire, lightning bugs, moonjellies (we've discussed bioluminescence before), flashlights, light bulbs, etc.  They talked about our five senses and how when certain senses aren't being used, other senses seem more acute.  We also talked about clouds and thunderstorms, and read various books from the library and also from our home library about weather and also about our senses.  Elizabeth even read a few related books on her own.  We read a library book about thunderstorms, and turned off most of the lights.  DH provided special effects for our story with the lights (for lightning), banging on a cookie sheet (for thunder), spritzing us with a water bottle (for rain) and even tossing a bit of crushed ice on us (for hail).  We had a lot of fun with it.  Oh, and he even blew on us for wind. 

Applied Mathematics - We discussed shapes and demonstrated various shapes using a geoboard.  It is basically a peg-type board you use rubber bands on to make a variety of shapes.  We discussed pentagons, hexagons and octagons, as well as reviewed squares, triangles, rectangles, diamonds and parallograms.  We talked a bit about right angles also.

In our Bible/devotional time these past few weeks, we've been sharing from a devotional called Promises for Kids as well as a book called 20 Bible Stories Children Should Know.  That one even has a CD to go along with it.  Our devotionals this week have been about obedience.

In the area of life skills, we are continuing to work on getting the children to help out more around the house.  They are now responsible for folding all the towels, and they are able to empty most of the dishwasher, and to help reload it.  They can also set the table and help prepare drinks and help a tiny bit with meal preparation.

Mathematics

Elizabeth continues in the Math U See Alpha book.  She has mastered +0, +1, and +2, meaning she understands and has memorized those fact families.  She can answer 20 questions in less than 60 seconds (even when she is having to write the answers herself).  Currently we are working on lesson 8, solving for the unknown.  For example, what plus two equals 9?  The goal is for her to master each lesson as she goes, as the lessons build upon each other, and if she has fully mastered addition (including solving for the unknown) subtraction should come easier to her.  The Math U See site has a nice online drill page as well as a worksheet generator that we can use to create more sheets as needed.

This is the scope & sequence for alpha. 

http://www.mathusee.com/pdfs/alphascope.pdf

Math U See teaches using a mastery method instead of a spiral method, meaning the child is expected to fully master each area before moving on to anything new.  It uses blocks as manipulatives and we have heard almost nothing but good things about it.  The only thing is that due to the untraditional scope & sequence, she won't be introduced to some topics until later in the program, but we have bought a few inexpensive workbooks from Sam's so we can make sure she is at least exposed to other areas of math.  Also, she can already tell time to the nearest five minutes, as we did that last year, and of course we teach money here and there as necessary, as well as measurement.  (There is a lot of applied mathematics in Five in a Row as well.)

Katie is about halfway through the Math U See Primer, which does not require mastery.  She already knows most of it, but I feel it is a good gentle introduction to math and I don't believe she is ready for mastery yet.  Elizabeth did the primer last year for kindergarten.  Even though Katie won't be 5 until November, she is doing kindergarten level work as she is ready for it.  After she finishes the Math U See Primer, we will probably work on some other inexpensive and colorful and fun kindergarten math workbooks and wait to start Alpha until she is closer to six, or maybe at least 5 & 1/2 years old.  This week, Katie just finished lesson 14, which is counting & writing the numbers to 20.  She can actually already count to 100, by 1's, 5's & 10's though.

Handwriting 

The girls both continued in Handwriting without Tears.  Elizabeth is writing words and practicing lower case letters.  Katie is working on upper case letters.  We also had Elizabeth do copywork of a few sentences from our Five in a Row story last week.  This is a good opportunity for her to practice writing neatly and be exposed a bit to proper capitalization, punctuation and grammar.

Reading

Science

The Five in a Row science (above) is really pretty complete, but we like science here, so we add extra for our family.  We have an Abeka grade one health reader that we are reading through this year, as well as some Usborne science books that we use when we want to read a bit more about science topics (and of course the library is our favorite resource of all).  We also have a subscription to United Streaming, which is an online resource of educational videos for educators.  The girls watched an episode of The Magic School Bus Kicks Up a Storm the other day, while Michael watched the Letter Factory video. 

Preschool

Katie is on the next to last book of the Rod and Staff preschool curriculum workbooks.  These are actually used by some of the Mennonite schools as a kindergarten curriculum, as official school does not begin for some of them until first grade.  They teach the basics very well.

http://www.timberdoodle.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=963

Grammar

For grammar, Elizabeth is working through First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind.  Most of this is done orally and there is a lot of memorization and repetition.  Right now, she is learning about proper nouns (and before that learned about common nouns).  She is also memorizing her second short poem, and writing the name of our city and state.

Miscellaneous

Our family does not watch much television at all (we don't even have cable) but the children do enjoy watching Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, Between the Lions (about phonics) and Cyberchase (about math).  They don't necessarily watch them all every day though.  It just depends on how our day goes. 

For chapter book read alouds, we finished The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary a week or so ago and are currently near the end of the sequel Runaway Ralph.  The girls have really enjoyed listening to Ralph the mouse's adventures.  For reading time, since our children are still very young, I implemented an idea I got from another online homeschooling friend.  We spread a blanket on the floor and get out a quiet toy like bristle blocks or other building-type toys that they can all share, and the only rules are that they have stay on the blanket and they have to be quiet.  I will however ask questions, especially of Elizabeth, now and then to be sure she really is paying attention (and she usually is).

We don't have anything particularly structured for physical education and we are still trying to decide whether we want to enroll the girls in something like gymnastics or dance this year.  They are still so young for us to be always on the go, so we are still thinking about and praying about this.  They both played T-ball but that was a relatively short season.  Last year they took gymnastics in a town about 40 minutes away but the drive got to be too much, and this year due to Elizabeth's age, it would likely have to be in the evening, and rush hour anymore down there is awful.  We do try to take family walks though, and need to incorporate more of these.  My goal lately has been for us (as a family) to get at least 20 minutes of physical activity in, on each day that I am not working.  We've been doing okay on this but have a little bit of room for improvement.

We are about to participate in a "swap" of sorts with Flat Stanleys.  It is based on a book called Flat Stanley about a boy who got squished flat by a bulletin board and all the fun adventures he could have since he was flat and could even go through the mail.  We are in a group of 7 families.  We made our own "Flat Stanley" though the girls have actually done "Flat Care Bears" (Funshine and Friend bear to be exact) and we will send them, along with a journal, to the person who is on the list after us.  Each month, our Flat Stanleys will visit a different family and they will take pictures of them with things that are local to them or their area, and write about it in our journal, while each month, we will have a different "visitor" here that we will host and do the same for.  At the end of the six months, we will have a wonderful journal detailing our Flat Stanley's adventures.

As time allows, we are also working through Home Economics (by the Pearables) (ages 6 & up) with Elizabeth, as well as The ABC's of Money Management for Kids.  And as time allows, Matt has been teaching Elizabeth a bit about the piano, music notes, etc.  We also try to play fun and educational games (both board games and computer games) sometimes.  Most of all, we do a lot of reading around here and visit the library quite often.  After Labor Day, the children's activities at church should resume.

We are all having fun on our homeschooling adventure and learning lots!  Thank you if you read this far!  Feel free to email me if you have any questions about anything.  Have a happy and blessed day.

In order to plan to try to have a productive day today, I laid out my clothes before I went to bed, and this  morning I got up & got dressed all the way down to my lace up shoes (a flylady tactic, but I think it really does help me not be so lazy, LOL!)
At breakfast, we started a new devotional.  We had been doing this one:

Character Building for Families Vol. 1
http://www.rainbowresource.com/proddtl.php?sid=1153807373-1803522&id=000655

However, Matt felt it was a bit much for our kids at this time (and some of the scripture references he didn't feel were appropriate for the ages of

our children & their innocence, which we feel is our God-give duty to protect.)

A few weeks ago, I picked up some short little books at Lifeway Christian Stores for $2.99 each in the kid's section.  I tried to find them online but

was unable to do so.  Each book contains 31 days worth of devotions, with an accompanying scripture verse.  There aren't really any Bible

passages to look up, but I preferred to have our Bible handy to look up the verses in our preferred translation (NIV) as well as Elizabeth's Bible,

the NIrV:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310926564/sr=8-9/qid=1153809323/ref=pd_bbs_9/104-7637258-0274326?ie=UTF8

The one we are starting now is titled "Promises for Kids."  We also have "Questions Kids Ask," "Ten Commandments for Kids" and a variety of

"Little Book Devotions" about various character traits, such as obedience, honesty, sharing, forgiveness, self-esteem, self-control, attitude, kindness and patience.

Each volume is geared toward lasting 31 days, which I like since looking at a book of devotions isn't so overwhelming.  I like these books

because the daily lessons are aimed more at younger listeners.  They are short enough that we don't lose their attention halfway through the

lesson.  And they are really just nice discussions.  Each day seems to have a Bible verse, an explanation, a tip for kids, a relevant quotation (for example, from a famous person), a tip for parents, and a prayer.

On to other areas, this morning it appeared that Elizabeth (and maybe Katie?) dressed Michael.  He is wearing the only outfit I have ever sewn (in spite of my good intentions to get more done, somehow life just happened and I never did yet get around to any more sewing).  It is a favorite though as I made it when Elizabeth was a toddler and all three children have worn it.  It is red overalls with an animal print.  The girls put it on him backwards but since it didn't really matter, we didn't worry about it.  And he went around all day with the snaps in the crotch unsnapped since we never did get around to fixing them up after Elizabeth said she couldn't do them (though I think she could have if she'd just tried).  Anyway, he still looked awfully cute today and it didn't really matter since we didn't go anywhere today.

After breakfast, around 9 p.m. we got started with our "seatwork."  First of all though, I got out a bag of sea creatures to occupy Michael on the

floor.  Katie worked on 1 & 1/2 pages of her Explode the Code phonics book.  She is working on the short "a" sound as in cat.  She's a bit young

for this really but she likes it & wants to do it.  They both worked in their Handwriting Without Tears books.  Katie is learning how to form her

capital letters now (today she reviewed R and began N) and Elizabeth is writing words and lower case letters (today she did words and also d).
Next we said the Lord's prayer and I prayed for our day (good thing, as my patience was already beginning to wear thin)  We said the pledge of

allegiance & discussed the fact that today was Monday, July  24, 2006 (which Elizabeth later wrote on our dry-erase board).

Yesterday I had rented a carpet cleaner, so during this school work time, Matt picked up our bedroom & vacuumed to prep for the cleaning.  The

kids were getting kind of cranky & I was getting fed up, so Matt took a break from the floors to help us out.

Matt helped Katie with her new Math U See Primer lesson (today she is starting to learn her addition symbols & the basic meaning of addition). 
Elizabeth & I watched the Math U See DVD lesson 8 on solving for the unknown, then we took our small dry-erase board and our box of math

manipulatives (blocks) into the living room to work on the lesson.  I had her work about 5 problems for me, then I had her pretend to be the

teacher showing me how to do the problems, and she made up a few problems for me.  Then we went back to the schoolroom & she completed one page of her workbook.  After we finished our seatwork, Elizabeth picked up Michael's toys from off the floor.  She is becoming very helpful when she wants to be, which makes me proud.

The children watched PBS (Reading Rainbow and Between the Lions) while lunch was being prepared by me & while dad was cleaning the

carpet in our bedroom.  While the kids ate lunch, I took a much needed break.  Afterward, Matt & I put dinner in the crockpot.  We put in it

porkchops, minute rice and some various "cream of" soups, plus some flavorings.  It turned out nice later on.

Matt left around 1:30 to go clean some carpets at his mom's house & run some errands (to take back the carpet cleaner, take some clothes to

the cleaner's, and the library).  The carpet cleaner was due back to the store by 3:30.

While Matt was gone, I spread out a blanket on the living room floor & got out a quiet toy (bristle blocks) for the kids to play with while I read their

chapter book.  We read chapters 5 & 6 of the mouse & the motorcycle.  I allowed the kids to eat grapes in the living room (even though the

carpets had just been cleaned) as they stayed on the blanket.  As I was reading, I would stop periodically to quiz Elizabeth to make sure she was

paying attention.  We had to take a break halfway through when Michael came back from the other room smelling a stinky finger from where he'd

stuck it down in his diaper (making me wish I'd fastened the snaps on his overalls earlier!)  The girls were very helpful to help me quickly gather

up what I needed to change his diaper, then after he was cleaned up, we got back to our book.  Around 2:30 the girls watched clifford while

folding towels, while I cleaned the kitchen.  (Michael had fallen asleep on the living room floor.)  I paid 2 cents for each washcloth or bib, 3 cents

for hand or dish towels, and 5 cents for bath towels.  Elizabeth earned 46 cents & Katie earned 65 cents. 

I asked Katie if she would wipe the table and she said no.  I asked Elizabeth if she would do it for a nickel and she agreed.  Katie got mad and started saying she wanted to do it.  I realized I wasn't being fair because I offered to pay Elizabeth but not Katie.  So I let them split the table (w/ only a bit of squabbling over what exactly constituted each half) & they each earned a nickel for doing a thorough wiping of the table plus 3 chairs each.  When they were done, I had them check each other's work for missed spots.  At some point in here, I did have to send Elizabeth to her room for 6 minutes for an ugly attitude that made no one want to be around her.  The girls watched Cyberchase while I finished in the kitchen & put away the towels they'd folded.  I had plans to do a bit more school in the afternoon but it didn't work out that way (well, we had some education

experiences, but not what my plans were for the rest of the day).  It's okay though as it is nice to take advantage of natural opportunties & lessons

from lifeee.  After Cyberchase, I did let the kids have some free play time for the afternoon as it was good for their imagination, plus they also

needed a break.

Matt got home a little before 5 p.m.   While he was still gone, there was a bug on the ceiling that I thought was a walking stick.  When Matt got

home, he caught it in a jar so we could examine it more closely.  He thought maybe it was a praying mantis.  It was hard to tell though, so we

looked it up online via google & I asked a science email loop I'm on if they knew anything about it.  I got a couple of helpful sites:
http://www.whatsthatbug.com
http://bugguide.net/node/view/15740
I printed out a couple of coloring/info sheets on praying mantis and walking sticks. 

All on her own volition, Elizabeth went into our school room & brought back a few books about insects that she started looking through.  She

found a praying mantis in a magic school bus book.
We finally identified our bug as a grass-like mantis, Thesprotia graminis.  The site said it is found in the south & often confused with walking sticks.
http://whatsthatbug.com/mantis.html
In fact, another site said another name for it was  walkingstick mantis.

Matt took the kids outside to watch the wind blow as some dark clouds were coming in, and had them chasing after leaves.  Matt & the kids

made jello w/ fruit.  Supper was served up, and Matt & the kids ate on the back porch.  I did not join them as I'm not much for eating outdoors
(I don't like bugs).  We had a bit of rain, and then as Matt was taking the food out, he saw a beautiful rainbow that arched across the whole sky,

and we had a perfect view from our back porch.  That rainbow faded while they were eating.  Then it rained more and another huge rainbow

appeared with a secondary rainbow, with the colors in reverse order.  It was beautiful.  Matt explained a little about the science of the rainbow to

the kids.  It started to rain lightly again (no thunder and lightning though) so the kids & I went out to play in the rain & gaze at our beautiful scenery. 

We started to rinse our feet off and ended up playing in the hose & we all got soaking wet but had a blast.  The kids even sat in their kiddy pool a

bit.  We were dressed but didn't care.  We were just having fun and acting silly.  Katie broke the small pumpkin and I put it on top of the fence

and recited humpty dumpty.  Then we did "where is thumbkin" and had to explain to Elizabeth why a certain gesture with the tall man finger was

inappropriate.  Matt didn't want to get wet, though I tried to encourage him to "let his hair down" (figuratively speaking of course) and relax & have

a little fun & not be so "stuck in the mud."  He did end up getting wet also but didn't seem all that happy about it. 

We all had fun running around the yard with the hose though.  At one point, I got a couple of fire ants in me & hopped into the kiddy pool to get my feet wet quickly.  Out of the blue Katie started singing, "The Ants Go Marching One by One, Hurrah, Hurrah!"  We all laughed so hard about that.  I wanted Matt to record it so he went to get our camera so we could re-enact it.  We all had fun acting silly for the camera.  After a bit we all rinsed off our feet, came in, bathed & got into PJ's.   The kids took forever to clean the living room & their bedroom but it had to be done as someone is coming to clean tomorrow & I don't want her to have to pick up their clutter or work around it.  We did a reading assessment on Elizabeth (same one we've been using) and from mid-May to now, she's gone from a 3.0 level to a 4.5 level!  We only have one lesson of Reading Made Easy left.

She loves reading & seems to have taking to it well & can read some really challenging words, but she still lacks confidence & gets intimidated

by pages with a lot of words on them or without a bunch of pictures.  Right now she is reading a Clifford Chapter book though.   It was very late &

the kids were going to eat their jello but Katie fell asleep on the couch before she got to it.  Michael ate his & then went to sleep on the floor in his bedroom.  Elizabeth took her Clifford book to bed with her but I don't think she read much before she fell asleep as it was so late, so she was very tired.  We didn't get to our new Five in a Row book (Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel) so we will begin that fun adventure tomorrow instead. 

Today seemed to hold enough adventures of its own.  :) 
I might come back later & add a few relevant pictures to this entry.  Please excuse any typos due to the lateness of the hour.  If you read this long entry, bless your heart, and have a blessed day!

This posting contains pictures of our finished school room that I am excited to share. 

Please see my previous post if you want more details of anything you see in my school room (like where we got certain shelves, etc.) 

Here is a link to my previous post about my "in progress" school room.

http://homeschoolblogger.com/BlessedBeingMom/122304/

You can also see how much has changed since the last set of pictures, about six weeks ago.

We are starting our new school year next week & can't wait to have fun in our new room.  Of course, we do a lot of couch school & outdoor school & school all over the house, but it is nice to have a designated place for it also, especially if we are in the middle of a lesson and it is lunchtime or something and we don't want to have to put it away.  It is so nice to have all our school stuff gathered together too.  These pictures start at the door & go counterclockwise around the room.

This over-the-door shoe hanger is already wonderful to hold all the small stuff!  Thanks to the ladies on the Five in a Row board for the idea! 

P.S.  Notice the pencil sharpener mounted on the wall.  Now we feel like a real school. 

My husband built these simple shelves to help make the best use of this small area.  The basket on the very top shelf holds our Sonlight Science K kit materials, and below it is a box of perler beads that we wanted to keep up high to avoid a huge mess everywhere.  A lot of our manipulatives are in this small cabinet.

We love the flat space on top of these bookshelves almost as much as the bookshelves themselves.    One of the bags up top is full of all kinds of preschool & kindergarten type flashcards that we bought here & there but never used much.  Maybe one day we'll get them out again.  At least now they are in sight so we are less likely to forget we have them.

We like to start our day with the Pledge of Allegiance, so we had to make sure to hang up our flag in our school room, and of course our calendar for morning calendar time.

The kids and I (mom) sat down one day & colored all the pictures on the Handwriting Without Tears alphabet & number wall cards so we could hang those up as a border in our school room.  And we absolutely LOVE our rain gutter bookshelves that dad installed!

The baskets below hold our Bibles & devotionals as well as pencils, crayons & colored pencils.  Our most often used school books are in the shelves on the table, and our copier is to the right of the shelves (with our Math-U-See manipulatives on top of it).

We moved our dry erase board from the wall in our living area (living room/breakfast area).  Right now we are using it to hang up a poster, but we do have the dry erase markers handy also, though it is a bit low & out of the way to be very easily accessible to mom or dad.

Here you can see the floor to ceiling shelves that Matt installed.  The bottom three or four shelves are mostly for easy reader type books.

We finally got our curtains from ebay and they are great.  You can't see it up close but it is a schoolish pattern in primary colors.  There was a delay on the valances due to the seller having a family emergency, but she had excellent feedback so I didn't mind waiting.  After all, curtains are not so important in the great scheme of things.

We have yarn strung from nails along this wall to hang the kids artwork, and the shelves below hold games (which are both fun and educational).  The desk apprentices on top of the shelf hold my files for the various Five in a Row books we are going to be teaching.  The white baskets hanging beside the tall bookshelf hold my label maker (top basket) and our Handwriting Without Tears manipulatives.

And here is the final bookshelf.  The top shelf contains all our Five in a Row volumes & books.  The white basket above holds our ziplock bags of preschool activities, and our cash register is beside it.  This is also where we have our "book hospital" for books needing some tender loving care.

And, we finally got around to making this animal classification chart.  I got the idea from the Five in a Row archives and bought the display board for it over a year ago but just never did get around to working on it.  It feels good to get it done and hopefully it will come in quite useful as we do our studies this year.  This is what is on the board:

Vertebrates:
Mammals
Fish
Birds
Reptiles
Amphibians

Invertebrates:
Insects
Arachnids
Crustaceans
Other invertebrates

I was finally able to get Matt to finish re-hanging our map with the molding he prepared.  I think the map looks great.  Our world map is hung similarly on the opposite wall of this hallway.

Thank you for stopping by to view my pictures and share our joy!  Have a happy and blessed day!  And please excuse any typos as the hour was late when I wrote this, as I was trying to get it done while the kids were sleeping. 

Our new table & chairs for our school room finally got delivered today & we couldn't wait to get started!  The first thing we had to decide was where we wanted to put the table & whether or not we wanted to leave the leaf in the table.  We finally decided the more space, the better, so we did some rearranging of our original plans to make it fit, since it is a rather large table (54" by 54" with leaf in).  It is a nice, large & sturdy (and heavy!) table.  Our school room is approximately 11' by 11' with a triangle shape cut out of one corner (where the door is).  Here is a view looking out the door of our school room.  Our maps hang on the wall in the hallway.  We have a world map and a map of the United States.  Matt made the frame for our world map by using the molding that usually goes up near your ceiling and staining it a nice brown color and trimming the corners on a diagonal to fit together nicely.  We are going to be making a frame for our other map this same way, but it is not done yet.

Okay, so I am going to post pictures in the order of our room as you look counterclockwise around the room.  Keep in mind that this is a work in progress and I still have to get out all the books & make room for them.    As we love books, there are quite a few that I am going to have to figure out how to arrange!

Above is a nice double bookcase that we bought at Sam's.  The very top of the bookcase will make nice storage for oversized games or anything we want to keep out of reach of our children. 

This is the bookcase we bought:

http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?dest=5&item=162674

Beside this bookcase (half hidden by the door) is this Multi-Purpose Storage Unit that we bought from here:

http://www.lakeside.com/details.asp?ITN=XMS1&CAT=0&KWD=&ST=_23

It's a little small (but perfect for that small space there) and makes a nice place to hold some our educational manipulatives.  It has four small shelves & two small drawers.  I think Matt is also going to make some small shelves that we can hang above it to make better use of our storage space.

Okay, here is another view of this same wall, plus part of the next wall.  We have four bedrooms in our house.  This particular room used to be a playroom since it has the largest closet but the smallest room size.  The closet still holds toys & games (the ones that we had before we were married, like Monopoly, that our kids aren't old enough to play yet).  Elizabeth & Katie share a bedroom, and right now Michael shares our room, but will have his own room once we get around to arranging it.  Right now it is a holding area for all the toys that we took out of the playroom.    We are still waiting on the bunkbeds for the girls to arrive (they were backordered till the end of this month), then we will be giving away the queen bed they currently share and will have more room in their room for their toys.

Okay, let me insert this brief intermission into my typing here...  

So, I had stopped at the end of the previous paragraph to save it yesterday because I had to stop typing right then.  This morning I came back to finish it.  I had typed in a lot more paragraphs about the rest of the pictures below, as well as a bunch of links I'd had to find on the internet, and was at the very end and went to insert the little smiley for ROFLOL when I did something wrong and instead of clicking on the smiley, I tried to drag it over here to this window.  Well, don't ever do it, because it totally ruins everything you typed since the last time you saved the draft and you lose every last thing since your last save. 

  Lesson learned, save OFTEN!!!  :::::going to save right now, and pull my hair out while I am at it!::::::::: 

Okay, so, here I am again!  The picture above shows our wonderful new table and chairs.  We bought a grayish/black 12 compartment organizer at Sam's to hold our workbooks & the girls' notebooks, but since it is sized to hold 8.5" by 11" paper, most of our workbooks won't fit in it the standard way.  We ended up removing all of the shelves except the top one & we will see how it works this way.  It looks something like this:

http://www.webmasterwebsites.com/woodland/images/10AC2889A_large.jpg

Our crayons & pencils are on top of this organizer, but I am thinking of placing a pretty basket on top of it to hold them so it will look more attractive.

The wall beside the window is approximately 36" and we are going to put floor-to-ceiling rain gutter bookshelves along this wall.

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/oliver.html

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/rah_chpt6_p4.html#rain-gutter

The lower shelves will hold books for our children, and the upper shelves will hold our "how to homeschool" and other teacher-type books.  Along the wall above the table, we plan to put educational posters, a dry erase board or a bulletin board.  I'm thinking a dry-erase board would be hard to write on though with the table in the way, and we already have one anyway in our living room/breakfast room area that we use to make lists and to write the date, temperature and weather daily.

Beside the wall where we will be putting the rain-gutter bookshelves is a window that is about 6' wide.  I just bought these valances (from ebay) to hang on the window:

http://tinyurl.com/eq35z

Then we have these print wall cards from Handwriting Without Tears that we plan to hang around the room (sort of like a border) near the ceiling.

http://www.hwtears.com/printwallcards.html

Above are the bookshelves that will hold our Five in a Row (FIAR) library.  We are going to keep one shelf for kid puzzles, and we have this puzzle chest for our wooden puzzles:

http://www.backtobasicstoys.com/item/productid/3742/

Michael likes them, and I want to have plenty of fun, yet educational, things in our school room for him to play with while the girls are doing their lessons.

In front of the window we have the girls' rocking chairs that Grandma made for them at Christmas one year.  I thought they would make a nice place for them to sit and read.

In the picture above is a set of mission bookshelves that we bought from Home Depot.  We added extra shelves, so there are four total shelves that are about 6 inches apart.  We are going to keep the kids' games here.  They used to be in a cabinet that was locked up and since they were out of sight, they were seldom played with.  Since our children are still so young (ages 2, 4 & 6) I want to be sure to encourage lots of playtime, with toys that will be stimulate their intellects & imaginations.  Above all, I want them to have fun! 

We also have two of those desktop apprentices that we got from staples.com:

http://tinyurl.com/l95vx

I still have to figure out exactly how I want to use them in the great scheme of things.  I think on the inside of one of them, I'm going to put some hanging files and make a file for each FIAR book that we row (a.k.a. study).  Since FIAR is geared for ages 4 to 8, it contains a wide variety of topics to cover for each book, and many are not yet age appropriate, so we will likely re-row the books again at a later date when Elizabeth is older, so we can save any related printouts, ideas, etc. in the file folder for that book to make it easier the second time around.

Since this room is carpeted, we really aren't going to be doing anything messier than crayons, scissors & glue in here.  We do have another room (the one intended to be a formal dining room, but we don't own any formal furniture as it just isn't practical for this stage of our lives) where we keep my scrapbooking/sewing stuff and the kids' craft stuff, so we can do the messier activities in there where there is a plastic table and tile floor.  I can't post a picture of it right now as it is too messy. 

Anyway, so there you have it.  I will try to come back later when we are "done" and post more pictures. 

Oh and we also have these hanging baskets in white that we plan to hang beside the tall bookshelves in the picture below (in between it and the shorter shelves).  We will probably put more manipulatives there, like maybe our handwriting ones or something.

http://www.lakeside.com/details.asp?ITN=OIQ7&CAT=0&KWD=basket&ST=_38

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at this blog post.  If you have any great ideas to share, please feel free to email me or post a comment!  Thanks! 

I just have some reading-related things I wanted to share and a couple of questions, so I thought I would put them all together. First of all, our library recently got some new books that we've really enjoyed. It is a series -- "We Both Read." The parent (or older sibling if you wish) reads the longer portion on one page, and then the new reader reads the facing page, which has fewer (and easier) words. There are different levels depending on the ability of your reader.

Also, about 6 weeks ago, I had Elizabeth do this informal reading assessment:
http://highland.hitcho.com.au/readingassessment.pdf

She scored about a 1.25 reading level. Well, over the last month we've only done 8 lessons out of Reading Made Easy (which is rather slow as I'd prefer to do 3 lessons a week, but we've been slacking off). She's been doing a lot of reading aloud though, and we've been helping her with the words she does not know. Her reading skills have really seemed to blossom lately, and I was curious so I had her repeat the reading assessment today. I was pleasantly surprised that even though we've been kind of slacking off, she knew a lot more of the words and is now at a 1.95 reading level! She's gone through lesson 76 so far in RME.

Okay, in other reading news, Katie has been expressing an interest in learning to read for some time, so we decided to try RME with her and just go at a slower pace. Well, even though she really wants to learn to read, it just isn't clicking for her yet. I'm not that worried about it anyway due to her young age, but it's just that this is something she really seems to want. Well, I had a brainstorm. With Elizabeth, we went through the Explode the Code primers for preschool and she enjoyed them, so I bought ETC book 1. After looking at it though, the amount of writing was much more than the primers and she just doesn't particularly like writing or workbooks, so we decided to skip it since it just didn't seem to be a good fit for her. I decided to go ahead & keep it in case we wanted it some day for one of our other kids. We actually bought the primers for Katie to use also, but she's already working through the Rod & Staff preschool workbooks, and the ETC primers really just seemed like they would be busywork since she already knew the info from them. But today I decided to bring out ETC book one and Katie already loves it! We did the consonant pretest pages & she aced them (except a few where she really didn't know what word the picture was supposed to represent) so I know for sure the primers would be too easy for her. She is so excited about her new book, and she loves writing (even at her young age) so I really think this will be a much better fit for her than RME at this stage. (But we may still give RME a try later on when she's more mature.)

And finally, I have a couple of questions. In her reading, Elizabeth often mixes up saw & was, and also no & on. Is this normal? She just turned 6 last month. And when she's reading out loud, she often mixes up her articles, like saying "a" where the book has "the." I am thinking she's just busy focusing on the harder words & not paying that much attention to the smaller ones, because I know she really knows them. Does this seem normal also?

Thanks for any input.

Happy new year everyone!  We only have 76 days of school left to cover!  Our state does not require us to keep up with the number of days, but I do it for my own peace of mind.

I recently decided to try something new, and I downloaded homeschool tracker for lesson planning & assignments.  Thankfully I was off this weekend (and we start back to school Monday) so I was able to spend some time figuring out the program.  There does appear to be a learning curve to it, as with anything else new.  I think I am going to like it though.  I like doing things on the computer anyway, and I like to plan out my long-term lessons (like at least several month in advance) without having to write or type each separate entry.  It helps me to be better able to tell if we will soon be done with a book and needing to purchase new curriculum.  My son Michael will be 2 in February, and I am scheduling some time to work on Before Five in a Row (BFIAR) with him and his 4 year old sister Katie.  This is something we hadn't really been doing.  BFIAR is for ages 2 to 4.  Our eldest daughter Elizabeth is doing the regular FIAR, which is for ages 4 to 8, but sometimes I think it is too much for 4 yo Katie and she doesn't often sit in for the actual lesson unless it is something like an art project. 

Our first FIAR book of this year will be Lentil, followed by A Pair of Red Clogs.  Our first BFIAR book will be Good Night Moon, followed by Yellow Ball. 

We are looking forward to getting back to work again, and I love the look of my assignment sheets that I was able to print out from homeschool tracker.  Also, what I decided to do was to have the "due date" for each lesson of that week be the following Sunday.  Our typical school day is Monday through Thursday, but this allows us the weekend to "catch up" if needed, and we can spread the lessons out throughout the week.  I will be happy as long as it all gets done sometime that week.  I just hope this works out okay for DH, since I am the planner & he teaches over half the lessons.

Anyway, now that the new year has come & gone, it is time to hit the pillow.  Happy New Year!