CrazyBusy

Oct. 13, 2009

Our Schedule And What We're Using This Year

Aug. 15, 2009

Test Scores Are In- Help!

I got the children's ITBS test results back and there are some things I've been thinking about. If you have any thoughts, please share! Want to share this first- Julianna enjoying a ride on the swing. So these are my very random thoughts after looking over their test results. Alek's composite score went down a point; Gracie's went up one. While I'm not too terribly upset about Alek's score going down, looking at the specific results for each category has me wondering about a few things. 1. Alek's overall math score went down quite a bit- 10 percentile points, actually. Now there were a couple of things at play here. We knew about these things right after he took the test when we asked him how it went- it wasn't the score that prompted us to ask. First, on one section of his math test, he had written all of his answers in the wrong section and had to erase and transfer them to the right spot. Also, since he's been working so far ahead in math for so long, he said there was one part, estimating of all things, that he hasn't done in a long time & forgot how to do it. He did poorly on that section. (well, for him- he scored in the 70th percentile on that section) Also, he did not finish all of the questions like he normally does. I don't know if having to transfer his answers affected that. Also, I've read so many mixed reviews of Teaching Textbooks that I'm HOPING that using this curriculum is not the reason his score went down. But at the same time, I KNOW he's being challenged and learning a lot in math. So confused. 2. BOTH of the children did poorly in the capitalization section of the test. So hmmm... should I find some material for them to help them learn the rules of capitalization? They both scored above average (Gracie slightly; Alek WAY HIGH) in the language portion of the test. Capitalization was a weak point for both of them though. 3. I'm also concerned, and wondering how concerned I should be, when it comes to Gracie's ability to get the questions answered in a timely manner. In other words, how important do you think it is for a child to be able to finish all questions (or most anyway) in a timed test? At this age (to be in 5th grade)? Should I have her start working on it now? Worry later? Math is not her thing. Never has been, probably won't ever be. On any portion of the test that had math questions, she obviously slowed her pace WAY down. Out of 111 math related questions, she only answered 67 of them. And of course she didn't get all of those right. So I'm thinking of putting Gabe &  Gracie together, working as partners, drilling each other on math facts using flash cards. I was having them do Quarter Mile Math but it'd be quicker just to whip out the flash cards. But as far as test taking speed- leave it alone for now? Work on timed test-taking skills? 4. When these types of questions pop up in my head, the first thing I ask myself is, "What do you think GOD wants you to do? Does He care if Gracie can do math problems within a specified time frame? What is His best for these children?" And really, I don't think there is a clear answer. In a way, I think, yes, I think God would like our children to be shining examples of the homeschool movement and to do our best in everything. But then I also think, no, I really don't think God cares about timed math test. I think He cares more about our character and THAT is where we should shine. I flip flop back and forth on this a lot. 5. Another thought. I just looked at Alek's math scores one more time. You know, he got 100% of the questions he answered CORRECT under "Math Computation". But he didn't answer 7 questions, so that brought his score down on that section. And on the "Concepts & Estimation" section, not counting the estimation subsection, he only got 2 problems wrong + didn't answer one question. On the estimation portion, the part he KNEW he didn't do as well on, he only answered 7 out of 10 questions and got 3 of those wrong. So really, I don't think I can blame Teaching Textbooks. He did quite well. He just needs to work on his speed & maybe we need to look over the typical scope & sequence for math for his grade level & see if there are any topics he needs to review at the end of each year so he doens't get stuck like that again. That was frustrating for my perfectionist child. 6. Maybe I shouldn't even read the test results. 7. If I do continue to read the test results, maybe I should avoid looking too much into them. 8. I also should avoid blogging in the daytime, when my thoughts are interrupted 4,367 times by young children. Maybe my posts would be more coherent. And the children would have my attention. 9. That is why most of my posts mainly contain photos. I don't have to do a lot of thinking posting a photo. 10. Amen. I've enjoyed keeping up with my friends here- the back to school posts are exciting yet making me nervous as I am NOT READY to start school back up. We have thoroughly enjoyed this summer and I'm not ready for it to end. Mostly. Some days I AM ready for more structure to our days and getting back into a good routine. See? Flip. Flop. Hmm... flip flops. I want to go to the beach...

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Jan. 17, 2009

Dictation: How To Fit In Multiple Students On Different Levels

Jan. 16, 2009

The Sly Red Fox by Alek

Aug. 31, 2008

Looking For A Schedule For Sonlight's 3-4 y/o Preschool Program? (and a fun video at the end)

Aug. 22, 2008

Got Their Test Scores Back

Apr. 13, 2008

An Actual Post About Homeschooling (our plans for next school year)

My recent prolonged absence wasn't only due to all of the time that went into re-doing a few of our rooms (see the 3 "Home Makeover" posts here, here and here). I was also doing some major planning and organizing for our next school year... or two.... or three. After talking things over with Kenton, we decided that instead of stopping our school year on May 30th as planned, we'll keep going for 3 more weeks, extending our last day of school to June 20th. Why? Well, the baby is due July 3rd, which in my pregnancy language, means the end of June. I want to ENJOY this baby without the added responsibility of homeschooling for as long as I can. I figure that if we start our next school year in June, we could start back up September 15th (which would give me 2.5 months off with the baby), take a week off at Thanksgiving, 3 weeks off in December and still finish by May 29th of 2009. Of course, I do realize that I may need to be flexible, but as of now, our next school year is completely planned out. I have all of the children's assignments put into Homeschool Tracker (I L-O-V-E  that program- have used it for years now!), which believe me, is a very time-consuming chore because I sometimes get pretty detailed in the directions for assignments. I figure the more detailed I am, the less the children will have to ask me what they're supposed to be doing. Anyway, I love this program because by putting in all of the assignments the children do on their own, it accomplishes 3 things for me: An easy way to input grades All I have to do, since I assign certain assignments a grade point value, is click on the "points earned" box, input a number & mark it as "complete." I don't even have to open up each assignment individually; I can just go down the list of assignments for the week and click in a number into the points earned field. I try and do this weekly and it only takes about a minute or two for each child. Voila! Grades are up-to-date! Attendance calendar is a breeze We have to keep up-to-date attendance records here in WA. There is an option in HST that if checked, when you mark an assignment as complete, it will automatically mark the attendance calendar for that child as "present" for that day. As long as I keep up with inputting grades each week, my attendance calendar is also up to date each week. Makes a nice checklist for the children By putting in all of the assignments my children will be doing on their own, I have the option of printing out a weekly checklist for each of them. It makes it so much easier on all of us if I can just run down their list and see what they need to be doing for the day and what they've already done (so I can look over their work.) They check off their assignments as they go and know what they have to do for the day at a glance. Here is a screen shot of one of Alek's Mondays (his heaviest school day). If you'd noticed that I allow him to check his work on his own, he is the only one that has this privilege as he has proven himself to be completely honest and responsible in doing so. Also, his Monday assignments are two pages long- this is just the first page (if you were wondering why he didn't have to do math). Last year, if you remember, I spent half of my summer planning out this school year. That was a bummer. There is a link to the schedule I came up with here that you can download if you'd like. That one is in Word format or click here for the PDF version (be sure to read the very last page to understand my abbreviations). The colored dots you see next to some reading assignments are my cue to check my teacher's notes (which are separate from the schedule). Our scripture memory plan can be found here. And just FYI, we never did do Picture This!- a draw your way through the bible type program. It was one of the first things that got cut due to time. Anyway, I have since found Winter Promise. They use Mystery of History as their spine for history as I did this year. I think someone here may have suggested to look into them back then, and I did, but the age span for their Ancient World program was listed as for 4th to 6th graders, and I was hoping to use it with a 1st, 3rd and 5th grader. Well, looking back, this program would've easily worked out for us. It's actually not a whole lot different than what I'd planned anyway, and Gabe (my first grader) has had no problem keeping up with us. So sometime early in this school year, when I realized that Winter Promise (WP) would've worked just fine for us, I planned on using it for our 2008-2009 school year, thus saving me 1.5 months of my summer planning it out myself. (thank you Lord!) I went ahead and ordered WP's Quest for the Middle Ages at the beginning of February. It looks absolutely wonderful! We have REALLY enjoyed Mystery of History 1 this year so I am happy to continue into the next volume next year. Well, then I got to thinking. I had planned to use QMA with my older 3 and then use Sonlight K, which we already own, with Millie. However, out of all of the years we used Sonlight (PreK to 3), K was my least favorite. The last time I used it (when Gracie was in K), I remember having to replace a bunch of the books I didn't care for/thought would be over Gracie's head, with ones I thought we'd like better. That ended up being more work and I don't care to go through that again. I decided to look into some of WP's other programs for younger children and thought the Animals and Their Worlds program looked pretty fun. I thought it would be a nice change of pace- a science oriented study rather than history-oriented. I talked it over with Kenton & then went ahead and ordered it. And then I got to thinking again. Gabe has followed along with Alek & Gracie since he was in K. He has probably had more history than most 1st grade children will have by their 3rd grade year. I thought it would be fine if he skipped a year with a history oriented unit and decided to let him choose if he wanted to follow along with Millie or Alek and Gracie. I KNEW what he'd choose because he's more into animals than any of my other children. It was a no-brainer for him- he will be doing Animals and Their Worlds along with Millie next year. I really think he's going to enjoy it. There are a couple of books that they use that teach children to draw animals. He is my most artistic child so this will be good for him. An added bonus to this will be there will be no more fights as to who gets the coveted spot next to mom during reading. I will have 2 children in each program. I did have to alter the reading schedule in QMA for Alek though. Using WP's reading schedule (the books the children read on their own), Alek & Gracie would be reading the same books at the same pace. Well, they are NOT at the same reading level- Alek needs to be challenged a lot more than that. Gracie will be reading 9 books next year per WP's schedule, which will be challenging enough for her, and I believe I have scheduled out 19 books for Alek to read. I lightened up his Friday load a bit since we usually have homeschool co-op on those days anyway. He will have read 20 books by the end of this school year. I also planned out all of their memory verses for the year. This sounds easy but it took me an entire day to do this! We have songs that go with all of their verses and I even made the CD already. The first 2 verses they will be learning are sung in a lullaby. I want them to learn this before the baby arrives so they can sing it to her. :) It's the 3rd track on the Hide 'Em In Your Heart lullaby CD and is really sweet (you can listen to a short clip of it on Amazon). Gracie wanted me to print off the words and has it pinned on her bulletin board in her room. I think she knows it already. We love to read poetry and WP only has 1 poem scheduled per week in the Animals and Their Worlds (AW) program. I have a few poetry books just about animals so I scheduled out a poem to read every day that goes with the animal we're studying. I'll read one a day to Alek & Gracie too but don't need to schedule that out as we'll just go through an entire book. I also decided that I wanted to do Bible with all of my children together. I am also hoping that we can make this the first thing we do in our day. We will be reading through Leading Little Ones to God. This is a book Sonlight uses in, I believe, grade 1, so Alek & Gracie have already read through it. However, it's a wonderful book and it's been long enough for them that I believe it will be beneficial for them to listen to it again. I also wanted to continue to read about missionaries or people of great faith. We will read two YWAM books, about a chapter each Monday throughout the year. We will be reading about Eric Liddell our first semester (the Chariots of Fire guy) and Corrie Ten Boom the second. We will top off each book with a movie night about each of them. We will also be reading from two other types of books: one called Polite Moments (an awesome little book of manners), and a (very) short moral story with books mostly from the Building on the Rock series. This may sound like a lot, but will only take about 15-20 minutes to do at the most (I did a trial run with our schedule). Here's a screen shot of a typical bible reading week: This school year I printed off a bible reading schedule for Alek & Gracie. They check off the passages they read as they go. Their instructions for bible reading are to pray first, then read the Word. It's funny how much they enjoy this- on Fridays when we have homeschool co-op, I will let them skip several assignments (mostly all but reading and math) but they do NOT want to skip their bible reading! I am hoping to instill a lifelong habit in them. This was not on Gabe's assignment list, but he decided he wanted to read the bible every day too- so he has been lately! Not only do I want them to read the bible, I also want them to know how to apply it to their lives. I've kept an eye out for devotional books for them to do on their own and found one for each of them that I think is going to be awesome! Gabe will be going through a book called God's Mighty Warrior Devotional Bible.  Gracie will be going through it's counterpart, God's Little Princess Devotional Bible. They are both written by Sheila Walsh and are geared for 4-8 year olds. The devotions are short and sweet, easy to read and easy to understand. I think they will be perfect for those two. I read through most of the lessons and I am just really impressed. They will do a devotion out of their books on Mondays and Wednesdays (which includes reading a portion of scripture out of the devotional book) and reading the bible on their own following a reading list on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. I have been on the lookout for something to use with Alek for a couple of years now. I found two devotional books at Plain Path Publishers for him that I am SO excited about! I really hope and pray he takes these lessons to heart because they are so meaty- there is so much to be gleaned from them! They could really make a difference in a child that takes them seriously. I purchased both Christian Manhood and Christian Character. They are both geared for 10-14 year olds, but I think they could be used for advanced 9 year olds to young men older than 14 easily. I had Kenton look them over and he thought Alek should go through the Christian Character book first. Check out the links I added above to view sample chapters of these studies. I think you'll be impressed! For the first part of the year though, since we will be studying Saul/Paul, the apostles and the early church, Alek will be reading through the book of Acts and doing a study guide put out by the Hey Andrew, Teach Me Some Greek folks. It's called I Can Study Acts, Alone With God. They also have sample pages you can view on their website. It looks great too. It will take him 2 school years to get through all 3 of these books. I have all of our school books for next year in two tubs- one for the AW program and one for the QMA program. My teacher's binders are put together and completely organized. I still have a few things I could do to make life easier once we start school, but are not completely necessary. For the most part, if we had to start our next school year tomorrow, I am completely ready to go! And as you homeschoolin' mamas can imagine, that is a time-consuming accomplishment!  But BOY, does it feel good to be DONE with that! Oh, and I already have a good idea of what we're going to use for our 2009-2010 (S&S for the boys and CAW for the s Sonlight preK for Josiah) and 2010-2011 (QRR for A & Gr- and maybe Ga & E too if WP comes out with one for their age, Josiah??) school years... Crazy, huh? So there's a peek at what we'll be doing next school year!

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Apr. 10, 2008

Homeschooling Tool You Can't Live Without?