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Living and Learning With the Kvenvolden Bunch
May. 27, 2009
March huh?
March, the last day i posted AND the day BEFORE we found out are having TWINS! Talk about extreme parenting, two newborns at once! wow... still slightly in shock from that one!
So my homeschool planning has taken on an additional ZING to it. I ran the whole gambit from wondering if i should be homeschooling at all, to considering just homeschooling the older 2, and putting the middle 2 in school, (since Alex is soooo far ahead in math and doing fine in everything else and independent, and Nik is too far behind.) However, in the end we decided we REALLY wanted to stay homeschooling, and are just going to suck it up and make it happen! We decided to stay with the virtual school we've been with the last couple years because of the money thing mostly, we get a very good sized allocation to use on most homeschooling items and our family school budget this year would be ZERO. Although we WILL be getting a good tax return next year, it will most likely need to go to a 9 passenger vehicle, so we don't have to go everywhere in 2 vehicles... so CVA it is! They really aren't so restrictive anyway, and our advisor is the BEST, he's AWESOME. SO, my task then became coming up with a plan to make life SANE! I explored a lot of possibilities. Talked to Mr. Gilson, got some feedback there, talked to DH, who despite being gone all day is amazingly insiteful in ways of homeschooling wisdom, and came up with a plan-
We will be using Timberdoodle's packaged curriculum. We will actually have to break up the packs and order stuff individually since they contain the Apologia science, which isn't approved due to Christian content, which i'd planned on ordering myself, seperately, however, my middle 2 really aren't liking the one we are doing now so much.. they think the language is a bit condescending and babyish... "I" like it! LOL. Anyway, the Timberdoodle plans are solid but only require 2-4 hours depending on grade.
So that's where i'm at for next year! i'm eagerly watching my friend Joann's blog, http://www.homeschooldistractions.com/ because she's going to be posting info on the organizational system she uses, which i plan to use too, and think might save my butt next year!
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Mar. 23, 2009
Ok...
So i know i've not blogged since OCTOBER(!!!!!) but i'm really hoping to get back on track with that, and since we had a GREAT day today, i thought now would be an awesome time to start!
So, today, got up, and off to a bit of a rough start since alex had to shower still, and by the time he was done, Leif was awake :-( its MUCH easier to work on alex's scedule when leif is sleeping!! but Leify was on pretty good behavior so we pulled it off.
So we went through last week's schedule. the only thing that didn't get completed was Science, pretty much the whole science week was blown off, but that was because grandpa and aunt dorie were here, so good excuse. so, this week we vowed to get back on track. This week's schedule has tuesday blanked out because we leave at 8 am for Tacoma to do the midwife appointment and ULTRASOUND!!!! woohoo!
So we set next week's schedule. Alex is starting to read Tom Sawyer, having finished Treasure Island, his critical thinking is focusing on Logic, symbols and all, Fallacy Detective looks compelling as always... The two of these are quickly becoming his favorite subjects! OOPS, we forgot to schedule economics! have to go back and do that! He's starting Saxon Calculus today, in fact he's working on that now, and he's been hiding out for a long time... i hope its going well! Today he also took his spelling test, perfect score, and took the apologia science test with Nikolas, working together open book since its been so long since they've studied that, and again, perfect score.
Nik worked on his, math, and copywork, Chloe did her spelling, math, phonics, and copywork, with PERFECT handwriting, she's such a perfectionist! Nik still needs to do his spelling and phonics, and reading and together we are going to start on Apologia Botany too, as a precurser to our GARDEN this summer, woohoo! Nik is overlapping sciences, doing both physical science with Alex and Botany which is with Chloe and more grade appropriate. He likes science, and its a good way to get his hours in, and also keep his mind occupied!
Anna has spent the morning sorting buttons into categories and drawing.
A GOOD DAY today is! We are trying to cram a lot of work into today since tomorrow is an outing day.
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Oct. 28, 2008
OH my goodness!
It is nothing short of amazing watching how God has created each of my children so uniquely. And furthermore, its a beautiful thing watching them learn. We are finally back to a semi normal non crisis mode schedule and i was doing spelling tests this am. Chloe's spelling book was MIA so i had her work on a different language arts workbook and she was off the hook on spelling. I had Nik prepare for his spelling test and i watched him. He underlined the word carefully as he sounded the word out slowly aloud. he did this with all the words and he managed to get only one wrong! As he was doing his test, he'd recite the words aloud. As he struggled, i wanted to say to him, "Write the words down! then you can SEE if they are spelled right!" but he's an auditory learner and i'm visual. What works for me, doesn't necessarily work well for him, so i resisted and let him continue on with his own methods. He did great! Then i gave alex HIS spelling test. Nik perched on the side of the table, and comically made sentences with each of the words i gave alex. He had us all cracking up laughing with his hillarious sentences and funny faces. He got them almost all right! He missed "Affidavit" and another one, but he got "resurrect" and "consolidate" and words like that! So while Nik has a HARD TIME with spelling, even very simple words, his vocabulary is out of this world excellent! Alex, meanwhile, was working feverishly on his spelling. His method was carefully scrawling the word on the paper, looking at it, then reciting it. Often he'd erase what he wrote and rewrote it before he recited it. Alex is very visual. He, like I, needs to SEE the word before he can spell it. Its really remarkable. I really enjoy being a part of this beautiful unfolding of my children's intellect! What a priviledge!
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Oct. 16, 2008
We are SLACKERS!!!!
WHEW this week has been a whirlwind!! Alex got his tonsils out, dad was home for 2 days, so today we are watching mythbusters and the girls are doing crafts in their ballet costumes, LOL. thought i'd share pics.
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Oct. 13, 2008
A new Ebook from TOS!!
WOW!! i was blessed to be a tester for a new Ebook out by The Old Schoolhouse Called "Homespun Holidays, fall and winter." And WOW, if you are a fall, Christmas, or winter nut, you will LOVE this ebook!!! I personally enamored with autumn. I love the changing colors, the cool, crisp, wind, the raking, the huge yard waste bin FULL of huge pine needles, the early sundowns, walking in the sunrise, ANYTHING PUMPKIN, and the list is endless!! This ebook is a delight to the senses, you can almost taste the scrumptious recipes. But this ebook is NOT all about recipes! there's a plethora of family activities, crafts, just a world of ideas ready to implement. If you implement one tenth of what is available in this ebook, you will benefit of the aroma of home cooked fall food, new family traditions, fun family crafts, and lots more! I highly reccommend!
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Oct. 7, 2008
Amazing book giveaway!!
Oct. 3, 2008
a great resource!!!!
OH my gosh, i just discovered this, they offer a free audiobook every month, this month is C.H. Spurgeon's All of Faith. It looks outstanding. http://christianaudio.com/
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Oct. 3, 2008
Our Week
Its been a good one...
Going into our 9th year, i FINALLY feel like i'm getting it together and we are having success. I am at that critical juncture of routine with flexibility. Things are going well... reading seems to have finally "clicked" with Nik, Chloe is spending "HOURS" on starfall practicing reading, Math U See has actually brought a SMILE to nik's face when he gets it, and we are back on track reading aloud, at least partially back on track, i want to do a LOT more. Alex is reading "the Chosen" and i think enjoying it, actually we are reading it together. Gosh i love homeschooling, i love getting to learn alongside my children. I totally feel so spoiled and priviledged! We did take yesterday off as Chloe was throwing up, and after a very dilligent week i figured they deserved a break anyway, today we are back to the grind, but that's fine. Too many off days and they get loopy anyway!
We need art... i'm still waiting for many of our supplies from Rainbow resource but i really need to make it happen... hmmm...
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Sep. 29, 2008
September 29
Well, today we are getting back into the swing of things, WOOHOO! its been a busy, fun, productive day... here's how it went...
5:30 Got up, did bible study with dh
had breakfast with dh and chloe who got up with Andy, even before ME!
6:00 got chloe set up with starfall phonics so she could work on that when i went for my walk, i went for my walk....
6:30got chloe started on her math book, using Calvert where she left off last year, she's NOT liking math u see! She finished that up and took a break.
715 woke up the boys, they took showers and got ready,
745 got the computer ready for the creation science class the kids are doing online through Cindy Rushton
800 Alex, Nik, and chloe sat at the computer and listened to creation science seminar, Alex was fine because he got to chat in the text section while he was listening, Nik was fine because he's VERY auditory, and likes to listed to stuff but chloe was chomping at the bit to get done... she's visual, not sure she got much out of that!
11:00 Started Chloe on her handwriting, and written phonics, and alex started his precalc. and set up Leif and anna with the baby show in my bedroom so nik could listen to the math u see video in peace. Eventually Anna and Leif started playing with the math u see blocks, which are just great fun.
Now- 11:30 Alex is still working on precalc, everyone else is playing math u see blocks!
I am so happy i could SCREAM! NIk just finished his math u see lesson, HE GETS IT! not only does he get it but he has to do very little of his written work since he understands it, and when you understand it you don't have to be stuck with a bunch of busywork. He's SO proud of himself and was actually LAUGHING and smiling after math today instead of CRYING!!! oh my goodness, what a treat! He is so auditory that hearing a story of how stuff works, is SO well suited to him!!!
That reminds me... does anyone use audio radio shows in their homeschool? i bought the annual subscription to the homeschool radio show people, the same ones that do this freebie site? do you know aobut it? its AWESOME!!
http://www.homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com/
Anyway, i'm curious how you integrate the radio shows into your schedule... it will be PERFECT for NIkolas, who so often gets left out of the shuffle due to his extreme auditory nature, and will be a very good exercise in expanding Chloe and NIk's repetoire!
Well, better go, duty calls!!
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Sep. 25, 2008
Adding a few scrapbook layouts of our recent adventures...
This is us in August at the museum of flight during the Blue Angels show!
This is a page for Nik's book about when Alex, Nik and Chloe got to Sing the Star Spangled Banner, along with their choir, Cantate, at the Tacoma Rainiers baseball game last July!
This is a page for Chloe's book about our Shark study and where we sifted for shark teeth! super fun!!!
This is alex, when we went blackberry picking :-)
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Sep. 22, 2008
CURRICULUM ARRIVES!
Woohoo!!!!! i got a big box o books today! after my Winter promise order was rejected by CVA for being too overtly Christian, i went ahead and bought biblioplan and ordered resources to go with it through CVA. Here's what i got.
For alex's writing class
The chosen
Emma
Improve your grammar
General history:
Story of the world volume 1
Ancient Israelites:
Our young folks Josephus Audio
Ancient israelites and their neighbors
For the Temple, cd,
For ancient egypt studies (everyone)
Pharoahs of Ancient Egypt
Biblioplan map packet
Timeline and figures
Ancient egyptian costumes paper dolls
cat mujmmies
golden goblet
Tales of ancient egypt
Cat of bubastes Cd,
Egyptology (Nik absolutely FREAKED about this, he LOVES egypt!)
Greek:
Hannibal (ancient biographies)
tales of the greek heroes
Famous men of Greece
Greek Myths CD
Librarian who measured the earth
Riddle of the rosetta stone
Rome:
Famous men of rome, book, study guide, teacher's guide
Economics for Alex
MOney mystery
Economics: a free market reader
Bluestocking guide, solving the money mystery
WOOOHOOOO!!!! this is just a beginning, i had to go through our list and order stuff really fast, but its a good start! i'm hoping to start on our timeline and post a pic later today... we'll see!!!!
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Sep. 18, 2008
"Can you please try to CONTAIN your inner Rothberg???
Is what my dh just told my kiddos... LOL!!!! he elaborated to say, "Can you please let your scandinavian quietness shine through?"
Yes, its getting late... both Andy and I start to have sensory issues with the noise level in our house by about 8:30 at night, which is just one reason why bedtime is at 8:00! This week, however has been the exception to everything! Andy has been on vacation from work this week (we can't ever actually afford to GO anywhere on vacation, but usually have company, and this vacation it was JUST us, which is so nice.. Don't get me wrong, i LOVE Having grandpas and grandmas to visit, but wow, this week has been SO relaxing... EXCEPT for the Puyallup fair fiasco, which i think everyone thoroughly enjoyed EXCEPT me... ugg... crazy busy, CRAZY expensive... our budgeted $80 didn't even come CLOSE to being sufficient... ugg. But it was fun, we saw a GREAT horse show, and got to see lots of horses up close, and now the kids are really interested in horses so i'm going to do a unit study with them on horses... PLUS they will be watching the waterhorse on dvd tomorrow and Saturday we are taking a field trip to Emerald Downs to see the horse racing!!! its an organized field trip with lots of educational stuff, and we are REALLY looking forward to it! we also have the herd your horses game, and i'm planning to dig through my educational files to find materials... i know we have a brandenberg unit study, which will be AWESOME. So anyway, that's where we are at now... trying to get back on track for next week after having a vacation this week, and sick last week!
So, despite this week being on vacation, we have done a PLETHORA of educational activities... it amazes me how slowing down actually INCREASES our quality learning... isn't that NUTS?? but its true! we went berry picking tuesday and wednesday and today we made blackberry crisp and Blackberry FRUIT LEATHER! thanks to Homemakers mentor which has the most AMAZING mommy lessons!!!!
it was so much fun, and since we've discovered such a treasure trove of wild blackberries, we will be doing this a LOT!
fun fun stuff!!!
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Sep. 9, 2008
RAW MEAT, North Carolina!
Ok, so SOMEWHERE along the line, Annabeth, my music loving 4 year old, added the educational CD with the states and capitals to her collection of CD's. I've heard her listening it to it several times... so anyway, we were eating dinner tonight, and she was procrastinating with her beef stew, which she did not find at ALL appealing, and had a carrot speared on her fork and she said, "Is this raw meat?" At this point we just ignored her because she'd been dilly dallying for a long time and we were hoping she'd just eat her dinner... she went on to say, "Raw meat, North Carolina!! Raw meat, north carolina! It occurred to me then was she meant.....
RALEIGH, North Carolina!!! ROFLOL!!!!!!!
All this time, she thought the State capitals CD was singing "Raw meat Carolina"
HA!!!! I swear, WHERE else can you get quality entertainment like this....
ON a more serious note, i clearly dropped the ball on the whole blog thing... i'm hoping to get back in the swing of things soon, but for now, i'm just doing life till i get my writing mojo back!
Sooo.. lets see to catch up... this week has been pretty fruitless, just pretty much watching educational television, getting exercise and practical life experiences. So i guess not ENTIRELY fruiltless. Alex went to the Dr. today. He has a double ear infection and Bronchitis! ugg. poor guy.... the thing is, he has this most amazing high tolerance for pain, his ears don't even hurt... he just has been having difficulty hearing so we took him to the dr. and found all that out! sheesh!
Off to get the kiddos to bed!
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Aug. 31, 2008
i am a SLACKER!!!
Ok, so first week and i didn't even make it happen! i'll do a quick recap of the rest of the week for the sake of continuity....
THURSDAY- same old same old... usual school rotation... the only notable thing was the fun basketball game Alex and i had... very fun... we deduced that its a lot easier to net the ball from a medium distance than it is from a far or near distance... (what happens when 2 nerds play basketball) since the ball tends to ricochet too far off the backboard.
FRIDAY- was a bit of a wash... i had to do the grocery shopping and also order books for school so it didn't really happen, just a fun, laid back day!
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Aug. 28, 2008
Yesterday
BUSY BUSY BUSY!!! we had a big house cleaning effort yesterday because Grandpa Ed went back to Minnesota that morning, the girls room got a mom cleaning (which means when they are still asleep, mom goes in there and throws stuff away with reckless abandon and puts away that which can't be thrown. Then We changed sheets, and washed their comforter, and cleaned the bathroom and everything else we could get to. Then at one we went to the open house for Alex's new writing class. It looks AWESOME!!! i'm so glad we registered for this! he's going to be reading classics, the first being "the chosen" AWESOME book, and writing and someone OTHER THAN ME is in charge of it, WOOHOO!!! I'm a writer and for some reason, its always come easy to me. I just don't teach it well!!! Anyhoo... after that the kiddos rested and then I took Alex to youth group, and then Andy and I had parents meeting for youth group so it was a very packed, albeit not very academic day!
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Aug. 26, 2008
08/26/08
UGG! i just lost EVERYTHING i typed for today!!! AAAK! i hate that! i wish this saved automatically like blogger does!
Ok... so let me retype it all...
First this morning i discovered that i really needed to wake everyone up in a staggered schedule in order to have a more productive day. Once the afternoon hits we all really want to do our own thing, and that's fine as long as we get up early enough in the AM! so Chloe was up when i got up at 6, so she started some "time4learning" which she loves to do. Then I did my devotions, had breakfast, did a little housework, and got alex up at 7. He did his devotions, chores and i had time to help him with his language arts before waking up Nik at 7:30 When Nik got up he had breakfast and did his reading. Then i got up anna around 8 and we were able to start circle time.
As always we did our hymn, then our Bible story and discussion, and then moved on to geography. In the future we'll be alternating geography and history but i've not started them on their history yet... i figured i'd wait till the boys' winter promise curriculum came. so for now we are just doing geography. So we spent a good amount of time reading about Turkey, and mesopotamia, and did some mapwork. Chloe did her mapwork for the first time and it was METICULOUS. She is quite a perfectionist! They marked the seas, the strait, the plateau, as landmarks on their maps.
At that point everyone was getting restless so we had recess outside.
They rode scooters, walked, ran, and anna did what appeared to be practicing being a stewardess :) Finally i called them in and the older 4 did copywork. I had anna practice her name, since she wasn't getting the copywork so well. Everyone else did great.
Now i'm hurrying up and typing all this up since grandpa is here and insisting on going to the ocean so that's what we are doing. I had planned on continuing on with Apologia today to learn about senses but i think i'll make the ocean our science for today. We can expect to see sea anenomies and crabs and hopefully lots of other cool stuff. HOPEFULLY i'll get some good pics to upload later!!
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Aug. 25, 2008
Our first day of school!! 8/25/08
Dad helping Nik read.
Ok, so not ENTIRELY true... we've been doing partial days the past 2 weeks to ease into the school schedule after a long summer break, which worked AWESOME! it was the best transition we've had so far in 8 years of schooling!
Today we started the school year with Alex, 8th grade, Nik, 3rd grade, Chloe, 2nd grade, and Annabeth, Kindergarten. I was surprised at how well Anna assimilated into our class. She's by far the most advanced of all the children at age 4, hence why she is starting K a year early!!
Our day began with mom and Alex doing our individual devotions, and Nik reading his story bible to dad to practice his phonics. Then we commenced with our first hymn. We are studying and learning the hymn "come thou fount" which we will be singing and memorizing for the first part of this year. When that is learned we'll move on to another. Then we prayed together and read the Vos story Bible together. That prompted a discussion about WHERE on earth the garden of eden was located. Dad, who was home due to a sprained wrist from yesterday when he was playing soccer with the kids in the rain and slipped and biffed it, landing on his wrist! ouch! Helped to research on the internet about the garden, and we determined that due to the flood it would be hard to say with any definity WHERE the garden of eden was. Most scholars think it was in Turkey, which HAPPENED to be the first unit in our geography study we just started "A child's geography, the holy land"
Dad pointing out places on the map
So on we proceeded to geography! we found Turkey on the globe, then alex found it on the mark it map and labeled it. We learned about the 4 seas bordering Turkey and a bit about the culture and how Istanbul is divided by the strait of bosphorous causing that city to be located in both asia AND europe!
We continued with lunch, leftover chinese food :-) and after chores the children split up and Anna played with Leif as Chloe did her phonics and math practice on time4learning and Nik and Alex continued their Science study that we've been doing the past few weeks to learn about how the brain processes the sense of taste. They learned about taste buds and we planned to do the experiment from the module tomorrow since we were way out of time today.
The afternoons are typically free for the children to pursue their own personal interests as well as doing their assigned and free reading for the day.
Whew! it was a good day!
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